JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

290 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 3:289
minds of the perpetrators to be disposed to taking the extra step toward
genocide if ever the conditions should call for it.
While this latter situation did not occur in Russia, the destruction that
rained down on Jewish communities at the end of the nineteenth and the
start of the twentieth centuries was no less horrifying for the Jewish communities
and individuals who suffered. The formula attributed to the conservative
Russian statesman Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827-1907)—that
the solution to Russian’s Jewish problem would be for one third to die, one
third to assimilate, and one third to emigrate—found expression in the
pogroms: certainly there were deaths, certainly there were those who sought
sanctuary through merging into the general population (difficult though that
was), and certainly there was intimidation, leading many Jews to flee
overseas.
This book examines the phenomenon of the pogrom and its effects,
seen through a new lens and asking by the asking of new questions. The
story of the pogroms is essentially connected to the Jews of Russia, though
the pogrom as a device for terrorizing Jews and attaining antisemitic policy
goals spread throughout eastern Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth
century. This book, which comprises a number of articles originally
presented as papers at an academic conference on the subject held in Stockholm,
Sweden, in May 2005, examines the pogrom not only in the late
Russian Empire, the Revolutionary period, and the early Soviet Union, but
also localizes the phenomenon through considered studies of Ukraine,
Poland, Lithuania, Siberia, and Belorussia.
While the various essays all bring their own distinctive perspectives on
pogroms to the table, the Introduction by the editors provides a very useful
unifying structure to the volume overall. A brief consideration of the nature
of anti-Jewish violence as a general theme in European history gives way to
a definitional discussion concerning the notion of the pogrom itself: what it
was, how it varied from place to place, and what its intentions were. A
conclusion worthy of note is that while the pogroms stimulated a considerable
outcry from foreign observers, and a resultant sympathy for the persecuted
Jews, this did not lead to any form of concrete action to alleviate their
distress.
An additional point made in the Introduction—for some readers no
doubt an obvious one, for others perhaps not so obvious—is that the
pogroms have been largely overshadowed historically by the far greater
antisemitic explosion that took place a generation later under the Nazis, the
Holocaust. It should not be held, though, that these were necessarily two
distinct experiences. The precedents offered in Russia were noted by many
in Germany and elsewhere, and the political, social, and psychological uses
that could be made of anti-Jewish violence were studied carefully by Euro-