Red anti-Semitism: anti-Jewish violence and revolutionary politics in Ukraine, 1919

McGeever, Brendan Francis (2019) Red anti-Semitism: anti-Jewish violence and revolutionary politics in Ukraine, 1919. Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History (15), ISSN 2037-741X.

Abstract

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they announced the overthrow of a world scarred by exploitation and domination. In the very moment of revolution, these sentiments were put to the test as anti-Semitic pogroms swept the former Pale of Settlement. The pogroms reached a devastating peak in the year 1919, marking the most violent chapter in pre-Holocaust modern Jewish history. A century of scholarship has conclusively shown that the bulk of the atrocities were perpetrated by forces hostile to the revolution. But anti-Semitism was not the preserve of the counterrevolution: it manifested across the political divide, finding traction on the revolutionary left as well. This article examines the nature and extent of anti-Semitism in the Red Army and wider Bolshevik movement in Ukraine in the spring and summer of 1919. In bringing together internal Bolshevik security reports, memoirs, newspapers, and Party and governmental communications, the article shows that revolution and anti-Semitism could be overlapping as well as competing worldviews. It does so by offering an analytical framing of Red Army anti-Semitism: drawing on the works of Critical Theory, it brings into view the importance of class relations, and uncovers the complex ways in which anti-Semitism could find expression through revolutionary politics.

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