Kishinev and the Twentieth Century: Introduction

Abstract

BECAUSE THE HOLOCAUST DOMINATES our historical awareness, it is doubly important to recover the force of the events at Kishinev in 1903 on their own terms. How the memory of Kishinev shaped the responses of the actors and bystanders during the Holocaust period and how, in turn, the memory of the Holocaust shaped the memory of Kishinev are all, to be sure, legitimate and even crucial questions. But we must start with the event itself. The case for the status of Kishinev as a turning point in modern Jewish history rests on its relationship to the wave of pogroms that were visited upon Jewish communities in southern Russia in 1880 – 81. It was that earlier outbreak that was the real surprise. In contrast to the common notion that the story of Eastern European Jewry is the story of one pogrom after another, the pogroms of 1880 – 81 were wholly unprecedented in their volume, ferocity, and concerted nature. They marked the appalling debut of a modern form of antisemitism that was fomented by both the Right and the Left, and, within the internal sphere of Jewish culture, they brought the lingering aspirations of the Enlightenment to a crashing demise. What had shifted profoundly between 1881 and 1903 was Jewish political self-awareness. The shame of mass victimization had spurred the emergence of political Zionism and Jewish socialism, both of which emphasized the exigent need for organized self-defense. This was a priority taken up not only on the level of ideology but at the most applied local level in the Zionist and socialist clubs and associations that were established in almost every Jewish population ❙ 1