Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they announced the overthrow of a world scarred by exploitation and domination. In the very moment of revolution, these sentiments were put to the test as antisemitic pogroms swept the former Pale of Settlement. The pogroms posed fundamental questions of the Bolshevik project, revealing the depth of antisemitism within sections of the working class, peasantry and Red Army. Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution offers the first book-length analysis of the Bolshevik response to antisemitism. Contrary to existing understandings, it reveals this campaign to have been led not by the Party leadership, as is often assumed, but by a loosely connected group of radicals who mobilized around a Jewish political subjectivity. By examining pogroms committed by the Red Army, Brendan McGeever also uncovers the explosive overlap between revolutionary politics and antisemitism, and the capacity for class to become racialized in a moment of crisis.

Acknowledgments; A note on translation; Terms and abbreviations; Introduction; 1. 1917: antisemitism in the moment of revolution; 2. 'Red pogroms': Spring 1918; 3. The Soviet response to antisemitism, 1918; 4. Antisemitism and revolutionary politics: the Red Army in Ukraine, 1919; 5. The Soviet response to antisemitism in Ukraine, February–May 1919; 6. Conclusions: anti-racist praxis in the Russian Revolution; 7. Reinscribing antisemitism? The Bolshevik approach to the 'Jewish question'; Epilogue: in the shadow of pogroms; Conclusions; Bibliography; Index.

Brendan McGeever is Lecturer in Sociology at Birkbeck, University of London. His work examines the relationship between antisemitism and racism, historically up to the present day. He is based at the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, University of London, where he teaches in the Department of Psychosocial Studies. He is a 2019 BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, with his work featuring across television and radio.