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9. The Missing Pogroms of Belorussia, 1881– 1882: Conditions and Motives of an Absence of Violence
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9 The Missing Pogroms of Belorussia, 1881–1882: Conditions and Motives of an Absence of Violence CLAIRE LE FOLL The presumed absence of violence in the provinces of historic Lithuania and Belorussia/Belarus played a very important role in the formation of the classic interpretations of anti-Jewish pogroms of 1881–1882. The quiet and order that reigned in the region was attributed to the determined stance of Eduard I. Totleben, the governor-general of the northwest region of the Russian Empire (the provinces of Vilna, Grodno, and Kovno). Totleben’s behavior indicated to his subordinates that pogroms would not be tolerated—and none occurred. His actions were compared unfavorably against those of officials such as Aleksandr R. Drentel’n, the governor-general of the southwest region (the provinces of Kiev, Podolia , and Volhynia), where pogroms were rife. Drentel’n’s well-known Judeophobia and alleged inactivity permitted pogroms to erupt, intensify, and spread. Historians such as Simon M. Dubnov, seeking to attribute culpability for the pogroms to Judeophobic authorities in the provinces, claimed that resolute action was sufficient to stop pogroms, as demonstrated by the example of the northwest.1 Subsequent research has challenged this interpretation. On the one hand, the briefest examination of published archival materials reveals that Drentel’n, and other authorities, were just as active as Totleben in issuing anti-pogrom warnings, and in taking the usual police and military precautions .2 On the other hand, Darius Stalivnas has shown that the Lithuanian provinces were not as free of anti-Jewish violence as is often assumed, even if it never reached the level of the urban pogroms in Elizavetgrad, Kiev, or Balta.3 This latest scholarly investigation of the pogroms prompts an obvious question: if violence was a possibility, and if the activity of tsarist officialdom does not explain the absence of major violence, why was the northwest spared the mass violence that wracked the southwestern provinces of 160 REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES the Russian Empire between 1881 and 1882? This essay will attempt to answer this question with reference to the provinces of historic Belorussia/ Belarus, primarily Minsk, Vitebsk, and Mogilev. It will show that the “northwest exception” casts light on the mechanisms of interethnic relations in the Russian Empire during the second half of the nineteenth century and also illustrates the local differences relating to the social, economic , cultural, and political development of each region in the Pale of Settlement. In addition to the disorders noted by Darius Stalivnas, Jewish communities , panicked by events in Ukraine, reported to the authorities a number of insults, threats, or rumors about pogroms said to be in the planning stages.4 Drunken peasants called upon their fellows to “beat the Jews like in the province of Kiev.” The police gave the provincial administration accounts of growing agitation in railway stations (Novogrudok, Pinsk, Minsk, Stolin), and of rows in taverns, for example in Novogrudok and Rechitsa (Minsk province) in the summer of 1882.5 In the provinces of Mogilev and Minsk, adjoining the pogrom-ridden province of Chernigov where pogroms took place, some conflicts occurred.6 This rise of interethnic tensions threatened worse but nothing more happened. Globally, the situation was calm, as the police repeated in its reports,7 and the sporadic disorders that did occur were immediately stopped.8 In a collective letter, the Jewish community of Dokshitsy even thanked the authorities and the local ispravnik (district police officer) for their vigilance and energy.9 The success of the local police in preventing pogroms was generally regarded as linked to the decisive action of Governor-General Totleben. Yet it primarily benefited from the fact that the violence it had to control was far weaker and less serious than in the southwestern provinces. The thesis of this article is that the “absence” of pogroms—collective attacks on the Jewish population and its goods in Belorussia—resulted from the persistence of the ancient semi-feudal economic system and thus from the perpetuation of existing social and interethnic relations. We will scrutinize how this historical specificity developed and manifested itself in the realm of socioeconomic organization, anti-Jewish stereotypes, and interethnic relations. Socioeconomic Stagnation Three socioeconomic factors—industrialization, urbanization, and economic competition between Jews and non-Jews—have been identified in recent historiography as decisive for the pogroms in the southwest prov- [52.90.50.252] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:36 GMT) THE MISSING POGROMS OF BELORUSSIA, 1881–1882 161 inces of the empire. These were all weakly developed on...