2014 10/15 Darius Staliunas

Enemies for a Day: Anti-Jewish Violence in Russian-Ruled Lithuania

Darius Staliunas

Institute of History, Vilnius

This paper explores the anti-Jewish violence in the Lithuanian lands of the Russian Empire. Specifically, it examines how widespread were anti-Jewish feelings among the Gentiles in the nineteenth century, placing the main focus on blood libel accusations, as well as the rise of modern antisemitism. The paper also attempts to reveal structural preconditions and situational triggers that helped to transform anti-Jewish sentiments into acts of collective violence. Putting the very nature of anti-Jewish violence in Lithuanian lands under scrutiny, the paper compares local pogroms to anti-Jewish violence in other regions of the Russian Empire. The ultimate goal of this paper is to explain the small scale of anti-Jewish violence in Lithuania. As I argue, pogroms in Lithuania followed a specific “communal” pattern of ethnic violence, which made them very di. erent from deadly pogroms in other parts of the Russian Empire.

Darius Staliunas has been deputy director of the Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius since 2000. He is the author of Making Russians. Meaning and Practice of Russi. cation in Lithuania and Belarus after 1863 (2007). His research interests include Russian nationality policy in the so-called Northwestern Region (Lithuania and Belarus), ethnic conflicts, Jewish-Lithuanian co-operation in late Imperial Russia, as well as historiography and memory in Lithuania. Since 1997, he has been lecturing at Klaipeda University; prior to that he taught at the Military Academy of Lithuania and European Humanities University. Staliunas is a member of the Science Council of the Herder Institute (Marburg,

Germany); a member of the Lithuanian National Committee of Historians, as well as the Lithuanian-Russian Historical Commission. In 2009−2010, he was the chairman of the Academic Council of the Eastern European Jewish Culture and History Research Center (Vilnius). He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Ab Imperio, Studia z Dziejów Rosji i Europy Srodkowo-Wschodniej, Central and East European Review, Pinkas: Annual of the Culture and History of East European Jewry, Lithuanian Historical Studies, Nordost-Archiv. Zeitschrift für Regionalgeschichte, Prace Historyczne, Lietuvos istorijos metraštis, Lietuvos istorijos studijos.