Citation

Herbeck U. Stud. Ethn. Nation. 2007; 7(3): 171-184.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1754-9469.2007.tb00168.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In the period between 1914 and 1922 Russia experienced an enormous upsurge of violent antisemitism. In just one year, an estimated 60,000 to 200,000 Jews were killed in the wave of pogroms that swept through the Ukraine in 1919. Antisemitism must be considered as key element of an emergent nationalism which, in the phase of crisis and breakup of the Russian empire, was on the verge of replacing the imperialist ideology of the old Russian ruling elite. During this period, anticommunism and antisemitism merged to form the imagery or myth of ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’. Russian nationalist ‘White’ officers, an important part of the Russian Orthodox Church, Ukrainian nationalists and various peasant movements were united in their opposition to what they called ‘Jewish rule under the guise of Bolshevism’. ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’ must be analysed as a crucial aspect of Russian nationalist ideology of the time.