Between restrictions, reforms and pogroms

Dr. Judith Kalik

Following the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century, the Russian Empire gradually included the largest Jewish population in the world. Living restrictions meant that these Jews were mainly concentrated in the Lithuanian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire, and in the Kingdom of Poland.

How were Jews treated and perceived in the Russian Empire by both the ruling class and the masses?

For additional visual materials as well as relevant quotations please see “downloads” below.

References

• Klier, John D., and Shlomo Lambroza, eds., Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

• Klier, John D., Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1885-1881 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1995).

• Lederhendler, Eli, Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

• Stanislawski, Michael, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825-1855 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America).