Dartmouth Events

After the Warsaw pogrom of 1882, the Polish intelligentsia distanced itself from antisemitism, insisting that pogroms were a Russian phenomenon. An enslaved Poland, they argued, could not behave like Russia—associated, after all, with the barbaric waves of anti-Jewish violence between 1881 and 1883. But was the Kingdom of Poland truly a distinct zone within the Russian Empire when it came to attacks on Jews? Can we discern a specifically “Polish” character to this violence? What were the connections between "pogroms" and acts of individual violence during this period? Was there a recurring script of violence—one that might even be detectable in the post-Holocaust era? The study of anti-Jewish violence remains of immense importance. To this day, we lack a full understanding of its origins and often isolate it from broader research on violence as such. Let us therefore confront these problems—so central to Jewish studies and to historical thinking more generally.