Authors

Discussion

The Russian Civil War is one of the most brutal wars of secession and still characterizes the understanding of violence within the post-Soviet space today. Where today the Ukrainian army continues to put up fierce resistance against the Russian occupying forces, a laboratory of violence had already developed over a hundred years ago, which Timothy Snyder aptly described as the ‘Bloodlands.’

One population group that suffered particularly badly from the escalation of violence was the Jews, most of whom lived in the Pale of Settlement, an area that encompassed large parts of present-day Ukraine and Belarus. Jews had already experienced bitter instances of sometimes systematic violence here during the First World War. However, the civil war brought with it an unprecedented level of terror. In Ukraine alone, more than 1,500 pogroms took place between 1918 and 1920, resulting in around 60,000 victims. Recent studies show that a considerable proportion of the pogroms were committed by members of military formations under the authority of the  Directorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic. According to witnesses, the Cossack units were disproportionately represented among the perpetrators of violence.

This raises questions about whether the Cossacks can be ascribed a special position in connection with anti-Jewish violence, what factors might have created the basis for the violence and favored it, and how the experiences of violence affected both the perpetrators and the victims.

To obtain answers to these questions, this study focuses on anti-Jewish violence by the Cossack units of the Ukrainian People's Army between 1918 and 1920. The investigation utilizes archival documents and eyewitness accounts of the pogroms from the period of the Russian Civil War preserved in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP). In particular, the archives of Elias Tcherikower and Simon Dubnow yield insights into the peculiarities of the pogrom dynamics, providing a perspective on the approach of the Cossack units.

Finally, this research employs a comparative approach to draw parallels between the Cossack units and the Russian military regarding their communication with civilians in the occupied territories of Ukraine.