Blackwell Reference Online

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Derived from a Russian word meaning “riot” or “devastation,” these were antisemitic disturbances that periodically occurred within the tsarist empire. Though controversy exists about when they first erupted, pogroms were certainly widespread in the three years immediately following the assassination of alexander ii (1881), which the popular press blamed on the jews . Concentrated particularly in Ukraine and southern Russia, these attacks drew on the traditional wellsprings of popular antisemitism and were further encouraged by the institutionalized hostility of officials who did little to curb the violence. The pogroms prompted widescale Jewish migration , both to other parts of Europe and to the USA (see also zionism ). Further outbreaks erupted during the period 1903–6, when the regime clamped down on supposed revolutionaries, as well as during the russian civil war which unleashed extensive ethnic violence. The term pogrom has been applied additionally to the campaign of anti-Jewish violence perpetrated by nazism , especially in the genocidal form of the final solution . ... log in or subscribe to read full text