Jewish Discussions in Exile in the 1920s: Pogroms 1918-1921 and "Jewish Bolshevism"

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Raphael Gross
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2011 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 193047272

The purpose of this application is to finish this research project, which was conducted for 24 months 2011 until 2013. The research had to be paused because of teaching duties at Keele University. It will lead to a study with about 300 pages which will be published as a volume within the "Wissenschaftliche Reihe des Fritz Bauer Instituts". The topics include: 1) Russian Civil War and the anti-Jewish pogroms 1917-1921 2) The antisemitic stereotype of socalled Jewish Bolshevism during the Russian Civil War and the early Weimar republic 3) Jewish historiography and the gathering of documents in Kiev from 1918 onwards 4) The Historical Ostjüdische Archive in Berlin from 1921 onwards 5) The Historical Section of YIVO, founded in 1925 6) The Shvartsbard defense-committee 1926/1927 in Paris 7) The place of these Jewish pogrom-historians in Jewish historiography. The Russian Civil War and the anti-Jewish pogroms are still somewhat in the shadow of the Second World War and the Shoah. The analysis of the stereotype Jewish Bolshevism for the period until 1921 will emphasise that it is in its core an antisemitic construction, which included of course a radical anti-bolshevic sentiment, but was at the same time intrinsically entangled with an anti-western notion. The extent and the methods of anti-Jewish violence, the biggest mass killings of Jews before the Shoah with ca 150 000 victims in Ukraine and Belarus, were incisive and unseen before. The general historiography both on the Russian Civil War and the anti-Jewish pogroms has still some way to go until it has accomplished a sufficient differentiated view. The precise reconstruction and analysis of this group of Jewish historians with Elias Tscherikower at its center will advance our knowledge considerably. This group created the Historical Ostjüdische Archive, gathered documents, and provided material help to the victims for two years in Kiev, and fled then to Berlin. The most important sources are the files in the YIVO, New York. They include the historical documents and testimonies, much of the administrative material and the correspondence as well as the protocolls of all the meetings. A large and sufficient amount of sources has been read and copied, but not yet thoroughly and comprehensively studied by this researcher because it does take some time to decipher the offen handwritten documents, mostly in Yiddish and Russian. (An assistant will help doing the transcriptions with 360 hrs.) This group of Jewish historians is not only important because of its work on the pogroms. Some of its members played an essential part in the initiative to found the YIVO in 1925, and constituted the core members of its historical section. Historiographically these historians are to be considered pioneers of a modern Jewish historiography, which tried to analyse anti-Jewish violence in a pathbreaking modern way.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants