Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution

Brendan McGeever

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781107195998
• eBook ISBN: 9781108173971
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

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 antisemitic pogroms swept the former Pale of Settlement. The pogroms posed fundamental questions of the Bolshevik project, revealing the depth of antisemitism within sections of the working class, peasantry and Red Army. Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution offers the first book-length analysis of the Bolshevik response to antisemitism. Contrary to existing understandings, it reveals this campaign to have been led not by the Party leadership, as is often assumed, but by a loosely connected group of radicals who mobilized around a Jewish political subjectivity. By examining pogroms committed by the Red Army, Brendan McGeever also uncovers the explosive overlap between revolutionary politics and antisemitism, and the capacity for class to become racialized in a moment of crisis.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• A Note on Translation
• Terms and Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 1917: Antisemitism in the Moment of Revolution
• 2 'Red Pogroms': Spring 1918
• 3 The Soviet Response to Antisemitism, 1918
• 4 Antisemitism and Revolutionary Politics: the Red Army in Ukraine, 1919
• 5 The Soviet Response to Antisemitism in Ukraine, February–May 1919
• 6 Jewish Communists and the Soviet Response to Antisemitism, May–December 1919
• 7 Reinscribing Antisemitism?: The Bolshevik Approach to the 'Jewish Question'
• Epilogue: In the Shadow of Pogroms
• Conclusions: Anti-Racist Praxis in the Russian Revolution
• Bibliography
• Index