Pogroms outside the Pale

The ubiquity of virulent antisemitism in the Russian Empire is attested by the occurrence of anti-Jewish prejudice and pogroms outside the Pale, where the numbers and density of Jewish settlement were lower, but where, nonetheless, antisemitic prejudice fostered antisemitism and pogroms. Outside the Pale, as well as inside, attacks on Jews occurred as inextricable parts of the social and political crises of the 1905 era. The pogrom in Tomsk offers one of the clearest examples of enmity and violence against Jews being entangled in other, equally contentious issues raised and revealed by the disorders in 1905. The Volga town and province of Saratov were an area settled by Tatars, Cossacks, and Russian peasant migrants, and it had been a center of rebellion since the 17th Century. Three distinctive features of Saratov’s situation in October 1905 should be noted in order to understand the October events: the town’s radical political history, role of Archbishop Hermogen, and that of Governor Petr Stolypin.