ABSTRACT
“Pogroms” among the rural population—those that occurred outside towns, in predominantly peasant-populated areas—provide the clearest example of the term being used to cover events that victimized Jews, but having quite different origins, features, and results from those that occurred among town populations. Peasants from the rural hinterland of Pale towns had much less contact with Jews than town dwellers, encountering them only in the provincial towns they visited to sell and purchase goods and infrequently in their own hamlets and villages, as some Jews continued to live and work in rural areas, even though the May Laws of 1882 had restricted any further Jewish residence outside Pale towns. Although rural and urban ways may not have been clearly distinguishable in Russian village life, the parameters and assumptions of rural violence can be distinguished from those that characterized anti-Jewish violence in cities.
