The Russian Revolution and the Civil War pogroms

Prof. Elissa Bemporad

Both the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War had far reaching effects, causing radical social and political change and bringing about extreme violence. These did not spare the Jews of the former Russian Empire who found themselves becoming equal citizens in the newly formed societal and political structure, but also targets of vicious pogroms.

What effect did the Civil War pogroms have on the self-association of Jews in the newly formed Communist state? How did this affect the way they were perceived?

References

• Abramson, Henry, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917–1920 (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press: 1999).

• Bemporad, Elissa, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).

• Budnitskii, Oleg, Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

• Fitzpatrick, Sheila, The Russian Revolution (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2001).

• Moss, Kenneth B., Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 2009).