The Russian Pogroms on a more Personal level essays

The Russian Pogroms on a more Personal level essays Russian Pogroms on a more personal note At the beginning of Nicholas II's reign in 1894, Russia was faced with revolution. People were beginning to fight for political reformations, and their right to freedom of speech, but Nicholas II was attempting to make it clear that he was going to be just as strict in his guard of the autocracy as his father, Alexander III, was before him. The Russian government had just failed to gain warm water ports in the West, and was now turning toward the East, which meant inevitable war with the growing Far East empire, Japan. This far off war also served to distract the Russian people from pursuing revolution and deflect their attention to the nationalistic battle in the East. However, violence resided not only at the front against Japan, but at home within Russia's borders in the form of pogroms, where Jews were sought out and murdered by the hundreds and in some places, the thousands. In the Pogroms of 1903 to 1906, thousands of Jews were slaughtered across Russia in these waves of anti-Semitic hatred. After violent anti-Semitic campaigns had been breaking throughout Russia for months, the Russian city of Kishinev witnessed the first pogrom. Forty-five people were murdered, and 1,300 homes and shops were plundered. The violent participants in the Kishinev pogrom received very light criminal punishments, and Russians everywhere were shown that pogroms were to become perfectly acceptable and even encouraged. Russia fell to disastrous defeat in the hands of the Japanese. As the Russians were looking for someone to blame for their devastating loss, the government proposed the Jewish people as a scapegoat for the people's anger and frustration. This new program of the extermination of the enemy Jews was done quickly and without remorse, before the heat could be turned back onto the Czar and while there was still a chance that the fires of revolution could be rekindled. People were con...