Pogroms In Russia

The anti-Jewish riots in Russia, termed the ‘pogroms’, were not of such organized planning and plotting. Therefore, the origin and execution of the pogroms is unclear and left unto interpretation. For a while, the pogroms were open to understanding as a conspiracy theory, in which case the Russian government plotted the pogroms. Now, more modern interpretations are of more thought-out theories, in which case there were many underlying causes imbedded and rooted into the Russian resentment and ultimate looting of the Jews. The sources used in this essay are those that changed the way we analyze the pogroms. In their own way, the historians revolutionized the study of the pogroms, transitioning it from the conventional idea of a government conspiracy,

Avrutin notes that up until about fifty years ago, many historians were puzzled by how quickly the pogroms broke out, and how all the pogroms occurred simultaneously. It was a very commonly held idea that the government conspired against the Jews and did not come to their security or condone the pogroms at all. Therefore, it would make sense that people would instantly believe that the Pogroms must have been organized by some greater power like the Russian

While this paper includes many books and historiography articles that have the same or very similar theses, Aronson’s history study is most in-depth. Aronson delves into the many root causes of the harsh Russian resentment towards the Jews. These sources of resentment include economic, social, political and religious conspiracies embedded into the Russian resentfulness towards the Jews. Aronson’s organization of his book is helpful to understand the flow and natural progression of the resentment, and the eventual build-up, resulting in the disastrous pogroms. The sources and evidences that Aronson used to further develop his thesis make his proposition seem nothing but logical and valid. To me, the arguments made by Aronson are most fascinating. Aronson uses sources not only derived from the government in order to attest his thesis, but also Russian citizens who were culprits of the