Why Were There so Many Violent Pogroms in Russia in the Later Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Why were there so many violent pogroms in Russia in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
Contemporary sources on this topic have often pointed to the Russian authorities claiming they incited the violence that was prevalent towards Jews in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact John Doyle Klier claims that “almost without exception secondary sources argue that the tsarist authorities actively planned, encouraged or at least welcomed pogroms”.[1] While there is some evidence to suggest that the authorities played a role in encouraging anti-Semitism and allowing violence to continue many historians have argued that this theory does not stand up to scholarly research of primary sources. Many more factors have been put forward for the sudden wave of violence that broke out in 1881 and continued sporadically over the next few decades. Factors such as the unstable environment, both socially and politically, caused by Russia trying to modernise through a series of reforms, or the instability of authority during the soviet revolution, allowing pre existing anti-Semitism to spill over into outright violence. Like many countries in Europe Russia has a long history of anti-Semitism. However unlike many other countries Russia retained many anti-Jewish policies that resulted in segregation and poor living conditions even in the nineteenth century, as Neil MacMaster writes “Tsarist Russia, among all European states, had retained the most powerful and elaborate legal and political system for the segregation and oppression of the Jewish minority”,[2] most notably the laws regarding Jewish settlement which limited them to the Pale of settlement and segregated them from the rest of the populace. This bred hostility and effectively marked the Jewish community as the unseen ‘other’ to their Christian neighbours. This arrangement is important to consider in studying the pogroms since in the mindset of the perpetrators it is far easier to attack
Contemporary sources on this topic have often pointed to the Russian authorities claiming they incited the violence that was prevalent towards Jews in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact John Doyle Klier claims that “almost without exception secondary sources argue that the tsarist authorities actively planned, encouraged or at least welcomed pogroms”.[1] While there is some evidence to suggest that the authorities played a role in encouraging anti-Semitism and allowing violence to continue many historians have argued that this theory does not stand up to scholarly research of primary sources. Many more factors have been put forward for the sudden wave of violence that broke out in 1881 and continued sporadically over the next few decades. Factors such as the unstable environment, both socially and politically, caused by Russia trying to modernise through a series of reforms, or the instability of authority during the soviet revolution, allowing pre existing anti-Semitism to spill over into outright violence. Like many countries in Europe Russia has a long history of anti-Semitism. However unlike many other countries Russia retained many anti-Jewish policies that resulted in segregation and poor living conditions even in the nineteenth century, as Neil MacMaster writes “Tsarist Russia, among all European states, had retained the most powerful and elaborate legal and political system for the segregation and oppression of the Jewish minority”,[2] most notably the laws regarding Jewish settlement which limited them to the Pale of settlement and segregated them from the rest of the populace. This bred hostility and effectively marked the Jewish community as the unseen ‘other’ to their Christian neighbours. This arrangement is important to consider in studying the pogroms since in the mindset of the perpetrators it is far easier to attack