A 'Jewish-Gypsy Pogrom' and Occasions for Violence in the Imperial South

• In Event: Pogroms: Memory, Politics, and Economy

Abstract

A few years after the first major wave of mob attacks against Jews in 1881-82, the press reported on the news of another ‘pogrom,’ this time perpetrated by Jews from a small village along the Dniester River against a group of Romani migrants. Scholarship has tended to single out ‘pogroms’ in the Russian empire as a particularly anti-Jewish form of mob-led violence. Histories of anti-Jewish violence treat ‘pogroms’ in a comparative perspective, searching for patterns that might link together attacks against Jews under a variety of historical and political circumstances, an approach which has necessarily emphasized ethnicity as the lens through which to understand these events. Considering a late nineteenth century ‘pogrom’ where Jews were perpetrators, rather than victims, will provide a starting point for revisiting the broader nineteenth century context in which attacks against Jews took place. Using police files and press coverage of the event across the Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian press, this paper will reconstruct the attack, its contested causes, and the ensuing controversial trial. Moving beyond an understanding of violence between groups which sees prejudice as its primary cause, this unusual case of ethnic violence can help us explore the different kinds of marginality minority groups experienced in the empire, and the relationship between migration, economy, political rights, and violence.

Author

• Tova Benjamin, Davidson College