The pogroms of 1881 and 1882, which occurred in waves throughout the southwestern provinces
of the Russian Empire, were the first anti-Jewish attacks in the Russian Empire to assume the
nature of a mass movement.
In the course of more than 250 individual events, millions of rubles worth of Jewish
property was destroyed.
The total number of fatalities is disputed among historians, but the impact of this massive
outbreak of violence on the Jewish population was extreme.
Coupled with the worsening of their economic state, the horrors of the pogroms led many
Jews to seek a better existence for themselves.
Some joined the Zionist movement and fled for Palestine known also as the Land of Israel,
while a very large number, approximately two million, ended up immigrating to the United States.
Among the Jews who remained in the Russian Empire, many were attracted to various revolutionary
circles in the hopes of bettering the lives of the empire's residents, themselves included.
The increased participation of Jews in revolutionary movements had a strong effect on the development
of the late 19th century antisemitism in Russia.
Jews were perceived as a foreign and destabilizing force accused by counter-revolutionary forces
as wanting to bring down the Russian Empire.
This accusation was combined with the traditional perceptions of Jews as a worldwide threat
leading to the formulation of antisemitic texts such as the Protocols of the Elders
of Zion and a renewal of anti-Jewish violence in the early 20th century.
Two infamous manifestations of this violence were the 1903 pogroms in Kishinev where 50
Jews were killed, in the 1905 to 1907 pogroms that followed the failed 1905 revolution.
In these latter pogroms hundreds of Jews were murdered by counter-revolutionary elements
in places such as Odessa and Kiev.
One of the major antisemitic events which took place in the Russian Empire at the time
was a blood libel case known as the Beilis Affair.
The affair took place in Kiev between 1911 and 1913, culminating in the trial of a Kievan
Jew, Mendel Beilis, who was accused of having slaughtered a young Christian child for ritual
reasons.
This blood libel case is probably the most notorious case in pre-Holocaust Europe.
There was a sensational trial that took place in Kiev covered by all major newspapers in
Europe, in America, The New York Times.
Throughout Russia this case really broke up in two Russian society and the Russian public
opinion, just like the Dreyfus Affair did a few decades before in France, meaning that
you have the right-wing press that argues very blatantly and systematically that the
Jews engage in this ritual and that indeed Mendel Beilis did carry out this murder and,
on the other hand, you have the more liberal - you know - public voice of Russian writers
- for example Tolstoy, for example - who speak out against this accusation.
What is interesting in this case is that first of all during the trial the prosecutors bring
in the voice of respectable professors and religious leaders in order to legitimize the
accusation - right - for the public.
On the other hand, what is very interesting is that ultimately the verdict of this trial
is that, while Mendel Beilis is acquitted of the crime, but in the verdict of this trial
there is very clearly stated the possibility that the crime was carried out by a religious
sect, which then of course leaves open the fact that this crime is indeed carried out
by Jews regularly, right? Because ... maybe it wasn't Beilis himself but other Jews did it.
You know, maybe a sect of Jews did it.
Maybe Hasidim did it.
So it leaves this scenario of possibilities open and what is so interesting here is that
if you look at what happens in the 1920's 1930's and later, the fact that this trial
took place will legitimize at the popular level - even though Beilis was found not guilty -
but it will legitimize at the popular level the idea that Jews carry out the blood libel,
that they carry out ritual murder for the purposes of abusing Christian blood.