Odessa pogrom

"The community did not escape the horrors of the pogrom. Indeed, the very first pogrom in Russia occurred in Odessa in the year 1859.

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Odessa pogrom

Pogrom

A pogrom is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious, or other, and characterized by the killing and destruction of their homes, businesses, and religious centers....
 may refer to antisemitic communal violence

Communal violence

Communal violence refers to a situation where violence is perpetrated across ethnic lines, and victims are chosen based upon ethnic group membership....
 in the city of Odessa

Odessa

Odessa or Odesa is the Capital of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major port located on the shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 ....
 (in today's Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south....
). Such events took place in 1821, 1859, 1871, 1881, 1886 and 1905. Odessa is a port city on the Black Sea

Black Sea

The Black Sea is an inland sea sea bounded by southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and the Anatolia and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean Sea and Aegean Seas and various straits....
 and its multi-ethnic population included Greek, Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian, and other communities.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia

Jewish Encyclopedia

The Jewish Encyclopedia was an encyclopedia originally published between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901....
 (1906 ed.),

"The community did not escape the horrors of the pogrom. Indeed, the very first pogrom in Russia occurred in Odessa in the year 1859. This was in reality not a Russian but a Greek pogrom; for the leaders and almost all of the participants were Greek sailors from ships in the harbor, and local Greeks who joined them. The pogrom occurred on a Christian Easter; and the local press, in no wise unfriendly to the Jews, attempted to transform it into an accidental fight, the Greek colony at that time being dominant in the administration as well as in the commerce of Odessa. Further pogroms occurred in 1871, 1881, and 1886."

Historians note economic antagonism between the two urban minorities, in addition to religious frictions. In the 1881 and 1905 pogroms, many Greek houses were also destroyed.

Pogroms were often perpetrated with tacit approval of the Tsarist authorities. Evidence exists that during the 1905 pogrom, the army supported the mob:

The Bolshevik Piatnitsky who was in Odessa at the time recalls what happened: "There I saw the following scene: a gang of young men, between 25 and 20 years old, among whom there were plain-clothes policemen and members of the Okhrana, were rounding up anyone who looked like a Jew—men, women and children—stripping them naked and beating them mercilessly… We immediately organised a group of revolutionaries armed with revolvers… we ran up to them and fired at them. They ran away. But suddenly between us and the pogromists there appeared a solid wall of soldiers, armed to the teeth and facing us. We retreated. The soldiers went away, and the pogromists came out again. This happened a few times. It became clear to us that the pogromists were acting together with the military."

See also

• 1941 Odessa massacre

External links