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The 1918 to 1921 Ukrainian Pogrom Wave and Its Many Perpetrators

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The 1918 to 1921 Ukrainian Pogrom Wave and Its Many Perpetrators

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

An aggregate wave of anti-Jewish pogroms swept the territory of present-day Ukraine during the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution, carried out by multiple armed factions and civilian mobs rather than any single organized campaign. Symon Petliura's Ukrainian People's Republic forces, General Anton Denikin's White Volunteer Army, independent warlord and ataman bands, and, to a lesser extent, Bolshevik Red Army units, all attacked a Jewish population caught in the collapse of imperial authority. Historian Jeffrey Veidlinger documents over a thousand anti-Jewish riots and military actions across roughly five hundred towns and villages between November 1918 and March 1921.

No single regime directed the wave; it was carried out by whichever armed force controlled a given locality at a given moment amid the civil war's shifting front lines. Nahum Gergel's contemporary 1920s tally attributed roughly forty percent of documented pogroms to Petliura's Directory forces, a substantial further share to Denikin's White Volunteer Army, a large remainder to independent ataman and warlord bands operating outside any regular command, and a small share to Bolshevik units and to peasant mobs acting on their own initiative. Veidlinger and other historians treat this fragmented responsibility as central to why the violence proved impossible for any single body, contemporary or later, to be held accountable for.

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In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The 1918-1921 Pogroms in Ukraine and the Onset of the Holocaust
Jeffrey Veidlinger, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2021
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