Pogroms during the Russian Civil War
The pogroms during the Russian Civil War were a wave of mass murders of Jews, primarily in Ukraine, during the Russian Civil War. In the years 1918–1920, there were 1,500 pogroms in over 1,300 localities, in which up to 250,000 were murdered. All armed forces operating in Ukraine were involved in the killings, in particular the anti-Communist Ukrainian People's Army and Armed Forces of South Russia. It is estimated that more than a million people were affected by material losses, 50,000 to 300,000 children were orphaned, and half a million were driven out from or fled their homes.
Pogroms of 1918–1920
January 1918-
November 1920
50,000–250,000
AFSR, White movement
(17-50% of killings)[2][3]
Green armies
Red Army
(2-9% of killings)[2][4]
Ukrainian People's Army
(25-54% of killings)[2][5]
Background[edit]
From 1791, Jews living in the Russian Empire were almost exclusively only allowed to live in Pale of Settlement, in the western part of the country. There was also a ban on holding state and public positions.[6] In the years 1881–1884 and 1903-1906, vast waves of pogroms took place.
During World War I, almost half a million Jews fought in Imperial Russian Army.[7] However, the command of the Russian army was prejudiced against the Jews. Academy officers were convinced that Jews undermined the power of the tsar, blamed them for not recognizing God in Jesus of Nazareth and stigmatized them as foreigners.[8] During the war, much of the Russian population blamed Jews for causing food shortages and price inflation, or for spreading rumors about the lack of weapons, despite it being one of the most widely known public secrets.[9] The situation was complicated by the establishment of the "German Committee for the Liberation of Russian Jews" in Germany, whose founders saw the war with Russia as a method of liberating Russian Jews from the Tsarist autocracy.[10]
During the withdrawal of Russian troops in 1915 from Congress Poland, under pressure from the Central Powers, the military command deported 250,000 Jews deep into Russia. 350,000 more refugees joined this number. Their property was plundered frequently.[11] The newcomers did not receive legal security in their new homes.[12]
The dispersion of the population across the territories of several countries and the division of forces during World War I meant that Jews found themselves on different sides of the front. On each of these sides, they were collectively accused of favoring the enemy, including spying on behalf of the opposing army. Espionage suspects were usually hanged without a trial.[13] According to the historian Peter Kenez, most of the accusations of desertion, after being executed, turned out to be false.[14] A rising atmosphere of antisemitism caused pogroms to break out in Stanyslaviv, Chernivtsi and Tarnopol, during the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region.[15]
After the Tsar was overthrown on 2 April 1917, Alexander Kerensky's Provisional Government abolished the Pale of Settlement and repealed the restrictions on national and religious minorities.[6] These decisions resulted not only in the flourishing of Jewish cultural and political life, but also led many Jews to enthusiastically support the Kerensky government. At that time, the most supported political movement was Zionism, with 300,000 members. 34,000 people belonged to the General Jewish Labour Bund in 1917. At the same time, support for communism was slim: the 1922 Russian Communist Party census showed that, before 1917, only 958 members were of Jewish origin. Most Russian Jews had no reason to support communism: the Kerensky government, which granted them equality and looked favorably on their cultural development, completely satisfied them, and communism as an atheistic ideology opposed to private enterprise, was against Judaism and the livelihood of many Jews.[16]
Later pogroms (1920)[edit]
The greatest escalation of anti-Jewish violence took place in Tetiyev in the spring of 1920. Following a pogrom by the Whites the previous year, the town became a site of another massacre, this time perpetrated by Ukrainian anti-Bolshevik insurgents. On 26 March 1920, Cossack troops scattered around the city and began killing Jewish residents. The synagogue complex, where about 1,500 people were hiding in the attic, was set on fire. Most of them were asphyxiated by smoke, and those who escaped through the windows were killed. Some local peasants participated in the pogrom, killing Jews or handing them over to their attackers and loading the stolen property onto carts. Out of the 7,000 Jewish inhabitants of Tetiyev, 4,000-5,000 died, and almost the entire town was ruined.[69][70]