Modernization and pogroms: Lithuania and Belarus at the beginning of the XX century
Keywords:
рogrom, Belarus, Lithuania, Russian Empire, Modernization, ConfessionAbstract
In this article I argue that Lithuania is a very suitable region for comparison with Belarus, when investigating the antiJewish pogroms in the 19th century. If at the beginning of the 1880s the scale of anti-Jewish violence was minor in both the Lithuanian and Belarusian provinces, then during the 1905 revolution and even on its eve the situation in these two regions already differed radically (few pogroms in Lithuanian and approx. 70 in Belarus’ between 1903 and 1906). This article argues, that it was the anti-tsarist nature of Lithuanian and Polish nationalism that is the most important difference between Lithuania and Belarus during the Revolution of 1905, when a wave of pogroms swept through the Russian empire, including Belarus, one of the main reasons for which was a desire on the part of the Orthodox population to teach the Jews a lesson for being revolutionaries.
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