by Secre

Created on: March 05, 2009   Last Updated: March 07, 2009

A look at how pogroms gave rise to genocide in Russia

The word pogrom is used to describe any kind of riot which is based against any particular group, whether that is an ethnic, religious or any other group, it originally comes from the Russian word which means "to wreak havoc, to demolish violently". It is characterised by the killing of their people and the burning of their homes, businesses or religious centres. The first use of the word in English was in relation to massive anti-Jewish riots in Russia, and it is therefore mostly used to describe violence to the Jews although it can be used for other minority groups.

Although the first pogrom in Russia is seen to have been in 1821 in Odessa which killed 14 Jews, the first time that they became a mass movement was in 1881 when Alexander II, the Tsar-Liberator was assassinated. This created an avalanche of rumours, and a massive amount of uncertainty, and in the wake of this the Jews were blamed.

In April 1881 these pogroms destroyed thousands of Jewish homes reducing many of the Jewish to complete poverty, along with many men, women and children being injured. The new Tsar Alexander III originally blamed the revolutionaries and the Jews themselves, and placed harsh restrictions on the Jews even though they were the ones who were being persecuted. Although these first main pogroms killed very few Jews, the destruction and devastation was massive, this led many of the Russian Jews to emigrate, particularly to the United States.

A far bloodier set of pogroms broke out in 1903-1906, which left 2000 Jews dead and many more injured, the massacre in Kishinev, Bessarabia has been said to have been well planned and was organised for the day after Orthodox Easter. What followed was a massacre led by the priests with a cry of Kill the Jews' spreading over the city, and this was caused by the death of a young boy who had actually been killed by a relative. However, insinuations from anti-Semitic newspapers suggested that the boy had been killed by a Jewish man, and this gave rise to a three day riot which killed forty seven Jews and left over 500 wounded.

Although this is not a genocide by what we would in today's world class as a genocide, it is still a widespread attempt to kill and scare Jews out of a country which makes it possible to argue that the Russian pogroms were in their own right a genocide against the Jews.

This does not make the earlier question null, but it does raise another question, if the pogroms can

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