ABSTRACT
Russia’s pogroms, the most violent and heinous form of antisemitism prior to the European-wide Holocaust, evoke such strong condemnation that their reality and horror may have left the full record of what they revealed unexplored. Even more than rape or murder, whose circumstances are investigated to establish the guilt of the murderer or rapist, no very thorough inquiry has normally been required or pursued in the case of pogroms. This chapter explores and unpacks the reasons for the massive political violence unleashed against Russia’s Jews in one of the three massive pogrom outbreaks that occurred in Imperial Russia’s last years. It looks beyond anti-Jewish animus, arguing that once it took the form of Russia-wide, massive, simultaneous attacks on Jews it involved other dimensions and requires another, broader explanation from that applied to local antisemitic events, even locally based pogroms. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
