Black Hundreds - Wikipedia
The Black Hundred (Russian: Чёрная сотня , romanized: Chyornaya sotnya ), also known as the black-hundredists (Russian: черносотенцы ; chernosotentsy), were a reactionary, monarchist and ultra-nationalist movement in Russia in the early 20th century. It was a staunch supporter of the House of Romanov and opposed any retreat from the autocracy of the reigning monarch.[1] The name arose from the medieval concept of "black", or common (non-noble) people, organized into militias.[2]
The Black Hundreds were noted for extremism and incitement to pogroms, nationalistic Russocentric doctrines, and different xenophobic beliefs, including anti-Ukrainian sentiment[3] and anti-semitism.[4]
The ideology of the movement is based on a slogan formulated by Count Sergey Uvarov, "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality".[5]
The term was intended to be pejorative in revolutionary newspapers but adherents used it in their own literature. They traced the term back to the "black lands" where peasants, merchants and craftsmen paid taxes to the government (lands owned by the nobility and church were called "white lands"), and the hundred existed as a feudal administrative division. In the right wing extremist imagination it was the loyal people of the black hundreds who gathered to fight Poles and traitors when it was needed.[6]
