The pogroms destroyed the authority of Nicholas II’s regime at
home and abroad, breeding contempt among moderates and conser-
vatives at home, and causing diplomatic protests from a number of
states. The first American confrontation with Russia came over the
Kishinev pogrom of 1903. That year the U.S. Congress passed a joint
resolution denouncing the tsarist regime. The pogroms also drove
many young Jews into the revolutionary parties: the SR, the Bolshe-
viks, and anarchist fighting groups.
Pogroms are also associated with the Russiancivil war. Both
White and Red forces participated in anti-Semitic outrages, and thou-
sands of Jews perished in organized violence. During the Great Pa-
triotic War, the Nazi authorities encouraged pogroms in occupied
Soviet territory to win support among the Slavic peasantry. Some of
the mass killings in Poland and the western Soviet Union were con-
ducted by Russian, Byelorussian, and Ukrainian paramilitary units
cooperating with the Germans.POLISH CRISES. Poland was always a problem for Russia. From the
1863–1864 uprising until the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1991,
Moscow tried in ham-handed ways to dominate its western neighbor.
In 1921 the Bolshevikstook their revolution to Poland. Polish com-
munists like Chekaleader Feliks Dzerzhinskybelieved that victory
in Poland was the first step to world revolution. The Red Army, how-
ever, was defeated on the banks of the Vistula, a battle that one
British academic claimed prevented Russian from being the language
of instruction at Harvard and Cambridge.
Following the defeat of the Red Army, a large Polish communist
movement was based on Soviet soil. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin,
however, saw the Poles as an enemy nation, and this attitude affected
Soviet policy for decades. In the Yezhovshchina, a major target of the
NKVDwas the Polish Communist Party. In 1937–1938, the entire
leadership of the Polish Communist Party was tried and shot. In
1939–1940, it was Stalin’s intention to ensure that an independent
Poland could never exist again in the wake of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
Through massive deportations, over a million Poles were exiledto
Siberia by the NKVD; over one-half perished. Stalin also ordered the
murder of 26,000 Polish officers, civil servants, and clergy. Mass
graveswere later discovered in places such as Katynand Kuropaty.POLISH CRISES• 19906-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 199