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    Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History
    Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History
    Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History
    Audiobook6 hours

    Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History

    Written by Steven J. Zipperstein

    Narrated by Barry Abrams

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    So shattering were the aftereffects of Kishinev, the rampage that broke out in late-Tsarist Russia in April 1903, that one historian remarked that it was "nothing less than a prototype for the Holocaust itself." In three days of violence, 49 Jews were killed and 600 raped or wounded, while more than 1,000 Jewish-owned houses and stores were ransacked and destroyed. Recounted in lurid detail by newspapers throughout the Western world, and covered sensationally by America's Hearst press, the pre-Easter attacks seized the imagination of an international public, quickly becoming the prototype for what would become known as a "pogrom," and providing the impetus for efforts as varied as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the NAACP. Using new evidence culled from Russia, Israel, and Europe, distinguished historian Steven J. Zipperstein's wide-ranging book brings historical insight and clarity to a much-misunderstood event that would do so much to transform twentieth-century Jewish life and beyond.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateMar 27, 2018
    ISBN9781684410552
    Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History

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    Reviews for Pogrom

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      A graphic and compelling account of a savage attack that set off a wave of reaction, including the founding of the NAACP.
    • 4/5
      The book is a must read for people with a serious interest in Jewish or Russian history. The book eloquently describes how the world fell apart for what had, at the time, been probably the largest concentration of world Jewry. A combination of envy, greed and hatred boiled over and resulted in anti-Jewish riots that in many ways foreshadowed the Holocaust, or Shoah.

      I have major disagreements with some aspects of the book. The author takes issue with the a poem that popularized the view that the Jews did not resist in general, and that the males did little to protect their wives from the gang rapes of the rioters. Unfortunately the Jews were historically scholarly and not focused on combat.

      The riot and the poem, I believe, galvanized Jewry into a more pro-active stance. The book is sure to provoke thought and debate.
    • 4/5
      This is a fascinating and clearly written book about the Kishinev pogrom. This tragic event took place, obviously, in the town of Kishinev, which is in Moldavia, relatively close to the seaport of Odessa, 1903. Somewhere around 50 of the towns Jews were killed in the riots, many women were raped, and of course many more people were injured. Businesses were destroyed, as well. There were many, many first-hand, written accounts of the violence, which spread over two days, and in particular two journalists who spent weeks in the town afterwards taking down survivor and witness testimony. Zipperstein makes the point that the fact that Kishinev is on the very westernmost area of the Russian Empire made it easier for news and information about the event to get out into the rest of the world than pogroms that took place deeper inside of Russia.Zipperstein does a very good job of placing the Kishinev pogrom in historical context. In fact, although his description of the violence is detailed, graphic and horrifying, it takes up a relatively small portion of the book's 208 pages. The first several chapters describe conditions in the town of Kishinev, describing the town, the people who live there and relations between the various nationalities and between Christians and Jews. Other historical currents presented are the state of anti-Semitism in Russia in general, the radical and reform movements, both of which had high Jewish memberships that led to suspicion of Jews in general, and the Zionist movement, both inside and outside Russia.Zipperstein also deals with the several widely believed falsehoods about the pogrom. On the one hand was/is the belief, basically accepted as fact, that the pogrom was planned ahead of time, or at least given permission and concrete support, by elements within the national Russian government. Zipperstein debunks the idea with solid proof and lays the blame for the violence with a prominent local newspaper owner and vicious anti-Semite named Pavel Krushevan. In fact, Zipperstein also provide solid evidence, and a lot of it, that Krushevan was in fact the original author of one of the most notorious forgeries in modern history, and certainly the most damaging as far as anti-Semitism goes, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.Another falsehood that has come down through the years mostly unchallenged was the belief that the Jewish men of the town acted in cowardly fashion throughout the violence, frightened to defend themselves from attack or to defend their wives and daughters from being raped. In fact, Zipperstein shows, there was a whole range of reaction, as one would expect, up to and including organized armed resistance on some streets. One of the first journalists on the scene afterward, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, interviewed scores of survivors, and his notes include plenty of reference to these instances of resistance. Yet what he ultimately wrote, instead of a piece of journalism, was an epic poem about the event called "On the Slaughter," in which he chose, while intimately describing the violence and terror being perpetrated, to castigate the Jews of Kishinev for the shame of their supposed cowardice. Bialik, Zipperstein believes, was making a political and cultural point about the dangers of isolated Jewish life in Russia and throughout Europe, including a meekness acquired in the service, over the centuries, of survival. He felt justified, therefore, to employ this strong creative license, which has had many consequences in the intervening century.The poem became an instant sensation around the world, and has been a staple of the education of system in Israel since even before the inception of Israel of a country in 1948. The ideas presented, according to Zipperstein, has served as a touchstone in the differing viewpoints of Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews for decades. Netanyahu still quotes the poem, quite selectively of course.Finally, Zipperman shows how the strong reaction against the pogrom throughout the U.S. became linked to the nascent Civil Rights movement, as some, both black and white, came to see the hypocricy of condemning the anti-Semitic violence in Russia while remaining silent about, or even defending, lynchings and anti-black riots in America.So, all in all, this is a very interesting history of a dramatic, tragic event placed within the flow of both the events that led up to it and the events and concepts that emanated in its wake.
    • 4/5
      Much of this book is about how the conventional wisdom relating to the great pogrom of 1903 is often simply wrong, most notably that this atrocity was conducted at the instigation of Russian Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve; while the man was an anti-Semite through and through the letter documenting his supposed involvement is a fraud. There is also the notion that the events occurred because of Jewish unwillingness to defend themselves, instead, it seems quite clear that most of the bloodshed happened after a cadre of Jewish men tried to defend their community, provoking more violence. At the end of the day while the events in Kishinev were ugly, a large part of the reason that this became a big deal is simply because it was easy to get news out of the region because it was on the border of the Russian empire.More interesting are the side effects of the event. For one, this crystallized the notion that there was no place for a Jewish population in Romanov Russia; the only question being whether the main option was flight or revolt. Two, reaction to the atrocity went a long way towards energizing civil-rights organizing in the United States; including the creation of the NAACP. Three, the foundations were laid for the Zionist philosophy that extreme retaliation was the only reasonable response to threats against the Jewish community.Finally, one of the malign results of this event was the creation of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" by Pavel Krushevan. Krushevan is a historical character that Zipperstein became particularly interested in during the course of his research. Reminiscent of a contemporary "edgelord" with his pursuit of notoriety for its own sake, the man probably had as much to do with the initial violence due via his agitation in his newspaper, only to be nonplussed by how the event was seen as unjustified aggression against a peaceful community, not a defense of a homeland against aggressive aliens, thus leading to his screed against the supposed depths of Jewish conspiracy.