Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire

The term pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...

as a reference to large-scale, targeted, and repeated antisemitic rioting saw its first use in the 19th century.

The first pogrom is often considered to be the 1821 Odessa pogroms (in modern Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

) after the death of the Greek Orthodox

Eastern Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...

patriarch Gregory V

Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople

Gregory V was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 1797 to 1798, from 1806 to 1808 and from 1818 to 1821. He was responsible for much restoration work to the Patriarchal Cathedral of St George, which had been badly damaged by fire in 1738...

in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

, in which 14 Jews were killed. The initiators of the 1821 pogroms were the local Greeks that used to have a substantial diaspora in the port cities of what was known as Novorossiya

Novorossiya

Novorossiya is a historic area of lands which established itself solidly after the annexation of the Crimean Khanate by the Russian Empire, but was introduced with the establishment of Novorossiysk Governorate with the capital in Kremenchuk in the mid 18th century. Until that time in both Polish...

. Some sources consider the first pogrom to be the 1859 riots in Odessa. The issue of pogroms arose sometime after the Pale of Settlement

Pale of Settlement

The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...

was created by the Russian government trying to expel or eradicate Jews from the country unless they would convert to Christian Orthodox

Eastern Orthodox Church

1881-1884

The term "pogrom" became commonly used in English after a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish riots swept through south-western Imperial Russia (present-day Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

and Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

) from 1881-1884 (in that period over 200 anti-Jewish events occurred in the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

, notably the Kiev

Kiev pogrom

Kiev pogrom may refer to* Kiev Pogrom * Kiev Pogrom * Kiev Pogrom * Kiev Pogrom * Kiev Pogrom...

, Warsaw

Warsaw pogrom (1881)

The Warsaw pogrom was a pogrom that took place in Russian-controlled Warsaw on December 25–27, 1881, then part of Vistula Land in the Russian Empire.-Warsaw Pogrom:...

and Odessa pogrom

Odessa pogrom

Odessa pogrom may refer to antisemitic communal violence in the city of Odessa . Such events took place in 1821, 1859, 1871, 1881, 1886 and 1905...

s).

The trigger for these pogroms was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, for which some blamed "the Jews". The extent to which the Russian press was responsible for encouraging perceptions of the assassination as a Jewish act has been disputed. Local economic conditions (such as ancestral debt

Usury

Usury Originally, when the charging of interest was still banned by Christian churches, usury simply meant the charging of interest at any rate . In countries where the charging of interest became acceptable, the term came to be used for interest above the rate allowed by law...

s owed to moneylender

Moneylender

A moneylender is a person or group who offers small personal loans at high rates of interest.-See also:* Microfinance - provision of financial services to low-income individuals....

s) are thought to have contributed significantly to the rioting, especially with regard to the participation of the business competitors of local Jews and the participation of railroad workers, and it has been argued that this was actually more important than rumours of Jewish responsibility for the death of the Tsar. These rumours, however, were clearly of some importance, if only as a trigger, and they had a small kernel of truth: One of the close associates of the assassins, Gesya Gelfman

Gesya Gelfman

Gesya Mirokhovna Gelfman ; , Russian revolutionary, member of Narodnaya Volya,...

, was born into a Jewish home. The fact that the other assassins were all atheists had little impact on the spread of such antisemitic rumours. Nonetheless, the assassination inspired "retaliatory" attacks by Christians on Jewish communities. During these pogroms thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, many families were reduced to poverty, and large numbers of men, women, and children were injured in 166 towns in the southwest provinces of the Empire such as Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

.

There also was a large pogrom on the night of 15/16 April 1881 (the day of Eastern Orthodox Easter) in the city of Yelizavetgrad (now Kirovograd). On April 17 the Army units were dispatched and were forced to use firearms to extinguish the riot. However, that only incited the whole situation in the region and a week later series of pogroms rolled through parts of the Kherson Governorate

Kherson Governorate

The Kherson Governorate or Government of Kherson was a guberniya, or administrative territorial unit, in the Southern Ukrainian region, between the Dnieper and Dniester Rivers, of the Russian Empire. It was one of three governorates created in 1802 when the Novorossiya guberniya was abolished...

.

On April 26, 1881 even bigger disorder engulfed the city of Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

. The Kiev pogrom of 1881 is considered the worst one that took place in 1881. The pogroms of 1881 did not stop then. They continued on through the summer, spreading across a big territory of modern-day Ukraine: (Podolie Governorate, Volyn Governorate, Chernigov Governorate

Chernigov Governorate

The Chernigov Governorate , also known as the Government of Chernigov, was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire, which was officially created in 1802 from the disbanded Malorossiya Governorate with an administrative centre of Chernigov...

, Yekaterinoslav Governorate

Yekaterinoslav Governorate

The Yekaterinoslav Governorate or Government of Yekaterinoslav was a governorate in the Russian Empire. Its capital was the city of Yekaterinoslav .-Administrative divisions:...

, and others). During these pogroms the first local Jewish self-defense organizations started to form with the most prominent one in Odessa which was organized by the Jewish students of the Novorossiysk University.

The new Tsar

Tsar

Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...

Alexander III

Alexander III of Russia

Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov , historically remembered as Alexander III or Alexander the Peacemaker reigned as Emperor of Russia from until his death on .-Disposition:...

initially blamed revolutionaries and the Jews themselves for the riots and in May 1882 issued the May Laws

May Laws

Temporary regulations regarding the Jews were proposed by minister of internal affairs Nikolai Ignatyev and enacted on May 15 , 1882, by Tsar Alexander III of Russia...

, a series of harsh restrictions on Jews.

The pogroms continued for more than three years and were thought to have benefited from at least the tacit support of the authorities, although there were also attempts on the part of the Russian government to end the rioting.

Altogether, these pogroms claimed the lives of relatively few Jews. Two Jews were killed by the mobs, and 19 attackers were killed by tsarist authorities, but the damage, disruption and disturbance were dramatic.

The pogroms and the official reaction to them led many Russian Jews to reassess their perceptions of their status within the Russian Empire, and so to significant Jewish emigration

Emigration

Emigration is the act of leaving one's country or region to settle in another. It is the same as immigration but from the perspective of the country of origin. Human movement before the establishment of political boundaries or within one state is termed migration. There are many reasons why people...

, mostly to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

These pogroms were referred to among Jews as the 'storms in the negev

Negev

The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...

', negev being a Biblical word for the south. Changed perceptions among Russian Jews also indirectly gave a significant boost to the early Zionist movement.

1903-1906

A much bloodier wave of pogroms broke out from 1903–1906, leaving an estimated 2,000 Jews dead and many more wounded, as the Jews took to arms to defend their families and property from the attackers. The 1905 pogrom against Jews in Odessa

Odessa

Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...

was the most serious pogrom of the period, with reports of up to 2,500 Jews killed.

The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

described the First Kishinev pogrom

Kishinev pogrom

The Kishinev pogrom was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Chişinău, then the capital of the Bessarabia province of the Russian Empire on April 6-7, 1903.-First pogrom:...

of Easter

Easter

Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

, 1903:

"The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....

[modern Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

], are worse than the censor will permit to publish. There was a well laid-out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Orthodox Easter. The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, "Kill the Jews," was taken up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 [Note: the actual number of dead was 47–48] and the injured about 500. The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babies were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews."

There is also evidence which suggests that the police knew in advance about some pogroms, and chose not to act.

This series of pogroms affected 64 towns (including Odessa

Odessa

, Yekaterinoslav, Kiev

Kiev

, Kishinev, Simferopol

Simferopol

-Russian Empire and Civil War:The city was renamed Simferopol in 1784 after the annexation of the Crimean Khanate to the Russian Empire by Catherine II of Russia. The name Simferopol is derived from the Greek, Συμφερόπολις , translated as "the city of usefulness." In 1802, Simferopol became the...

, Romny

Romny

Romny is a city in the northern Ukrainian Oblast of Sumy. It is located on the Romen River and is the administrative center of the Romny Raion...

, Kremenchug, Nikolayev

Mykolaiv

Mykolaiv , also known as Nikolayev , is a city in southern Ukraine, administrative center of the Mykolaiv Oblast. Mykolaiv is the main ship building center of the Black Sea, and, arguably, the whole Eastern Europe.-Name of city:...

, Chernigov, Kamenets-Podolski, Yelizavetgrad), and 626 small towns (Russian городок) and villages, mostly in Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

and Bessarabia

Bessarabia

Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....

.

Historians such as Edward Radzinsky inform that many pogroms were incited by authorities, even if some happened spontaneously, supported by the Tsar

Tsar

ist Russian secret police

Secret police

Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....

(the Okhrana). Those perpetrators who were prosecuted usually received clemency by Tsar's decree.

Even outside these main outbreaks, pogroms remained common; there were anti-Jewish riots in Odessa in 1859, 1871, 1881, 1886, and 1905 in which thousands were killed in total.

The 1903 Kishinev pogrom

Kishinev pogrom

The Kishinev pogrom was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Chişinău, then the capital of the Bessarabia province of the Russian Empire on April 6-7, 1903.-First pogrom:...

, (also known as the Kishinev Massacre), in present-day Moldova killed 47-49 persons. It provoked an international outcry after it was publicized by The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

and the New York Times. There was a second, smaller Kishinev pogrom in 1905.

A pogrom on July 20, 1905, in Yekaterinoslav (present-day Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine), was stopped by the Jewish self-defence group (one man in the group killed).

On July 31, 1905 there was the first pogrom outside the Pale of Settlement

Pale of Settlement

The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...

, in the town of Makariev (near Nizhni Novgorod), where a patriotic procession led by the mayor turned violent.

At a pogrom in Kerch

Kerch

Kerch is a city on the Kerch Peninsula of eastern Crimea, an important industrial, transport and tourist centre of Ukraine. Kerch, founded 2600 years ago, is considered as one of the most ancient cities in Ukraine.-Ancient times:...

in Crimea

Crimea

Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...

on 31 July 1905, the mayor ordered the police to fire at the self-defence group, and two fighters were killed (one of them, P.Kirilenko, was a Ukrainian who joined the Jewish defence group). The pogrom was conducted by the port workers, actively aided by a group of Gypsies apparently brought in for the purpose.

After the publication of the Tsar's Manifesto of October 17, 1905

October Manifesto

The October Manifesto was issued on 17 October, 1905 by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia under the influence of Count Sergei Witte as a response to the Russian Revolution of 1905....

, pogroms erupted in 660 towns mainly in the present-day Ukraine, in the Southern and Southeastern areas of the Pale of Settlement. In contrast, there were no pogroms either in present-day Poland or Lithuania. There were also very few incidents in Belarus or Russia proper. There were 24 pogroms outside of the Pale of Settlement

Pale of Settlement

The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...

, but those were directed at the revolutionaries rather than Jews.

The greatest number of pogroms were registered in the Chernigov gubernia in northern Ukraine. The pogroms there in October 1905 took 800 Jewish lives, the material damages estimated at 70,000,000 rubles. 400 were killed in Odessa

Odessa

, over 150 in Rostov-on-Don

Rostov-on-Don

-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...

, 67 in Yekaterinoslav, 54 in Minsk

Minsk

- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...

, 30 in Simferopol

Simferopol

—- over 40, in Orsha

Orsha

Orsha is a city in Belarus in Vitebsk voblast on the fork of the Dnieper and Arshytsa rivers.-Facts:*Location: *Population: 125,000 *Phone code: +375 216*Postal codes: 211030, 211381–211394, 211396–211398-History:...

— over 30.

In 1906, the pogroms continued: January — in Gomel, June — in Belostok

Białystok pogrom

The Białystok pogrom occurred between 14–16 June 1906 in Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire, now in Poland. During the pogrom between 81 and 88 people were killed, and about 80 people were wounded....

(ca. 80 dead), in August — in Siedlce

Siedlce

Siedlce ) is a city in eastern Poland with 77,392 inhabitants . Situated in the Masovian Voivodeship , previously the city was the capital of a separate Siedlce Voivodeship ....

(ca. 30 dead). The police and the military personnel were among the perpetrators.

In many of these incidents the most prominent participants were railway workers, industrial workers, and small shopkeepers and craftsmen, and (if the town was a river port (e,g, Dnepropetrovsk) or a seaport (e.g. Kerch

Kerch

)), waterfront

Waterfront

-In music:*Waterfront , a 1980s British pop duo*Waterfront Records, an Australian record label*"Waterfront" , by Simple Minds*Waterfront Blues Festival, in Portland, Oregon-In film and television:*Waterfront , directed by William A...

workmen; peasants mainly joined in to loot.

By 1907, the pogroms subsided, as the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

administration became overwhelmed by a large influx of immigrants, and pressured the central Russian government to take action.

During the Civil War period in Russia

Many pogroms accompanied the post-1917 period of the Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

: an estimated 70,000 to 250,000 civilian Jews were killed throughout the former Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

; the number of Jewish orphans exceeded 300,000. In his book 200 Years Together, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...

provides these numbers from Nahum Gergel

Nahum Gergel

Nahum Gergel was a Jewish rights activist, humanitarian, sociologist, and author in Yiddish...

's 1951 study of the pogroms in Ukraine: out of an estimated 1,236 incidents of anti-Jewish violence, 887 mass pogroms occurred, the remainder being classified as "excesses" not assuming mass proportions. Of these incidents, about 40% were perpetrated by the Ukrainian forces led by Symon Petliura, 25% by the Ukrainian Green Army and various Ukrainian nationalist gangs, 17% by the White Army, especially the forces of Anton Denikin. A further 8.5% of Gergel's total figure is attributed to pogroms carried out by soldiers assigned to the Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

- although the Red Army pogroms were not sanctioned by the Red Army leadership, and where Red Army troops had perpetrated pogroms, the Bolshevik high command subsequently disarmed entire regiments and individual pogromists were court-martialed and executed to deter further outbreaks.

There were exceptions, however, as related by Gentile author and future Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin. On May 15, 1919, Bunin wrote in his diary,

"Members of the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

in Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...

led a pogrom against the Jews in the town of Big Fountain. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky and the writer Kipen happened to be there and told me the details. Fourteen comissars
Commissar
Commissar is the English transliteration of an official title used in Russia from the time of Peter the Great.The title was used during the Provisional Government for regional heads of administration, but it is mostly associated with a number of Cheka and military functions in Bolshevik and Soviet...

and thirty Jews from among the common people were killed. Many stores were destroyed. The soldiers tore through the night, dragged the victims from their beds, and killed whomever they met. People ran into the steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...

or rushed into the sea. They were chased after and fired upon -- a genuine hunt, as it were. Kipen saved himself by accident -- fortunately he had spent the night not in his home, but at the White Flower sanitorium. At dawn, a detachment of Red Army soldiers appeared 'Are there any Jews here?' they asked the watchman. 'No, no Jews here.' 'Swear what you're saying is true!' The watchman swore, and they went on farther. Moisei Gutman, a cabby, was killed. He was a dear man who moved us from our dacha
Dacha
Dacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and post-Soviet cities. Cottages or shacks serving as family's main or only home are not considered dachas, although many purpose-built dachas are recently being converted for year-round residence...

last fall."

Gergel's figures, which are generally considered conservative, are based on the testimony of witnesses and newspaper reports collected by the Mizrakh-yidish historiche arkhiv, which was first based in Kiev, then Berlin and later New York. The English version of Gergel's article was published in English in 1951 in the YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science titled "The Pogroms in the Ukraine in 1918-1921"

Russian pogroms in arts and literature

In 1903, Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik

Hayyim Nahman Bialik

Hayim Nahman Bialik , also Chaim or Haim, was a Jewish poet who wrote in Hebrew. Bialik was one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew poets and came to be recognized as Israel's national poet.-Biography:...

wrote the poem In the City of Slaughter in response to the Kishinev pogrom

Kishinev pogrom

The Kishinev pogrom was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Chişinău, then the capital of the Bessarabia province of the Russian Empire on April 6-7, 1903.-First pogrom:...

.

Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel

Sir Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE; born September 30, 1928) is a Hungarian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and...

's The Trial of God
The Trial of God
The Trial of God is a play by Elie Wiesel about a fictitious trial calling God as the defendant...

depicts Jews fleeing a pogrom and setting up a fictitious "trial of God" for His negligence in not assisting them against the bloodthirsty mobs. In the end, it turns out that the mysterious stranger who has argued as God's advocate is none other than Lucifer

Lucifer

Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...

. The experience of a Russian Jew is also depicted in Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel

's The Testament
The Testament
The Testament is a legal thriller by American author John Grisham. It was published in hardcover by Doubleday on February 2, 1999.-Plot summary:...

.

A pogrom is one of the central events in the play Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in Tsarist Russia in 1905. It is based on Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem...

, which is adapted from Russian author Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman stories. Aleichem writes about the pogroms in a story called "Lekh-Lekho." The famous Broadway musical and film "Fiddler on the Roof" showed the cruelty of the Russian pogroms on the Jews in Anatevka in the early 20th century.

In the film An American Tail
An American Tail
An American Tail is a 1986 American animated adventure film directed by Don Bluth and produced by Sullivan Bluth Studios and Amblin Entertainment. The film tells the story of Fievel Mouskewitz and his family as they immigrate from Russia to America for freedom. However, Fievel gets lost and must...

, set during and after after the 1880s pogroms, Fievel and his family's village is destroyed by a pogrom (Fievel and his family are mice and cats are their Cossack attackers).

The novel The Sacrifice by Adele Wiseman

Adele Wiseman

Adele Wiseman was a Canadian author.Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she received a B.A. from the University of Manitoba in 1949...

also deals with a family that is displaced after a pogrom in their homecountry and who emigrate to Canada after losing two sons to the riot and barely surviving themselves. The loss and murder of the sons haunts the entire story.

Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

gives graphic descriptions of the Russian pogroms in Reflections on Religion, Part 3, published in 1906.

External links

Lenin's speech: About Anti-Jewish Pogroms (Text of the speech)
Jewish history of the Russian Federation (through the Second World War)
Modern History Sourcebook: The Jewish Chronicle: Outrages Upon Jews in Russia, May 6, 1881
Jewish Virtual Library page "Pogroms"
History of pogroms in Odessa
The Pogrom of 1905 in Odessa: A Case Study
Kishinev pogrom history

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