by David Hornestay

Created on: August 01, 2011   Last Updated: August 03, 2011

Pogrom is a Russian word denoting devastation and destruction which came to be commonly applied in the late 19th century to mob violence against ethnic, religious, or racial groups. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum web site reports the first use of the term in 1821 to describe anti-Jewish rioting in Odessa, Russia, but its regular application accompanied mob violence against Russian Jews following the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. Although the assassin was not Jewish, historians believe that the Russian government encouraged local attacks on Jews to give citizens an outlet for the agitation and unrest in the wake of the Czar's murder.

Pogroms are generally, but not always, distinguished from official government persecution of ethnic, religious, and racial groups. However, in many cases, as above, government agents instigate the violence, often to redirect dissatisfaction with rulers. Thus, pogroms flared up in Russia in the early years of the 20th century during pre-revolutionary days as well as the civil war period after the overthrow of the Czar and the short-lived democratic regime.  The scene shifted to Germany as the Nazis first sought power on an anti-Semitic platform and then gained it in 1933. Pogroms preceded the introduction of harsh anti-Semitic legal measures that year and in 1935, and reached their peak at the notorious Kristallnacht in 1938, when subsequently revealed records documented a systematic destruction of Jewish businesses and houses of worship in one night.

The human toll of pogroms varies widely, usually in line with the degree of tacit or more direct involvement of the authorities. Much of the Russian and early Nazi era violence resulted in dozens of dead, more maimed, and damage or destruction to homes and shops. But approximately 8,000 Jews were killed when Rumanian and Nazi troops took part in riots in 1941 in Rumania. The supposedly "spontaneous" violence against the Jews on Kristallnacht, which took over 90 lives, was followed within days by the imprisonment of 30,000 Jews in concentration camps and a huge fine imposed on the Jewish community for the damages caused that night.

Although the term pogrom was '"popularized" in the anti-Jewish context, it has been applied to destructive violence against other groups, including the attacks on ethnic minorities in the former Yugoslavia, most prominently in Bosnia and Kosovo.                     

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