An aggregate wave of anti-Jewish pogroms across 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, against a Jewish population caught in the collapse of imperial authority. Veidlinger documents over a thousand anti-Jewish riots and military actions across roughly five hundred towns and villages between November 1918 and March 1921, arguing the wave's methods and its bystanders directly foreshadowed the Holocaust two decades later.
Facts
Disputed
Death TollNahum Gergel's contemporary 1920s reconstruction, based on 887 major pogroms and 349 lesser attacks he was able to document individually, counted 31,071 confirmed dead directly attributable to the violence itself, a figure historians have long treated as a conservative floor rather than a full accounting, since it counts only deaths his own sources could individually verify. Death TollA wider figure for deaths directly caused by pogrom violence itself, distinct from the larger synthesis figure named separately below, that later historians working from a broader base of local and regional records have put forward as more complete than Gergel's own conservative count while still describing killings alone rather than the fuller human cost of the wave. Death Toll AssessmentVeidlinger's own widely cited synthesis puts the wave's full toll at over 100,000, a figure some contemporary observers placed as high as 300,000. This is not a count of direct killings alone: it folds in the substantially larger number who died in the wave's aftermath, of wounds, disease and exposure while displaced or in flight, on top of those killed outright in the pogroms themselves, which is why it sits well above the direct-killing bounds named above rather than replacing them. Both figures are named because the atlas treats direct and indirect mortality as distinct claims, not because either supersedes the other. 2 The Event
When It HappenedNovember 1918 to March 1921 1 Principal PartiesNo single force carried out the wave. Nahum Gergel's contemporary 1920s tally attributed roughly forty percent of documented pogroms to Ukrainian People's Republic (Directory) forces under Symon Petliura, a substantial further share to General Anton 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 Red Army units and to peasant mobs acting on their own initiative, against Jewish communities across the contested territory. 1 Victim GroupThe Jewish population of roughly five hundred towns and villages across present-day Ukraine, attacked by successive armed forces and mobs as each in turn passed through or occupied a given locality during the civil war. 1 Perpetrator RegimeNo 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, from the Ukrainian People's Republic's own forces through its White Russian and Bolshevik opponents to bands operating under no effective higher authority at all, a fact Veidlinger and other historians treat as central to why the violence proved impossible for any single body, contemporary or later, to be held accountable for. 1 Consequences
What It SettledInternational Jewish relief organizations, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, mounted large-scale aid efforts amid warnings from aid workers on the ground that the region's entire Jewish population, then numbering some six million across the former Russian Empire, was at risk of complete destruction. The wave produced a mass refugee crisis, accelerated Jewish emigration from the region in the years that followed, and, in Veidlinger's argument, normalized methods and bystander patterns of anti-Jewish violence that recurred under Nazi occupation two decades later. 1 Religious DimensionThe violence targeted Jewish communities as such, with attacks frequently accompanied by the destruction of synagogues, desecration of Torah scrolls and killing of rabbis alongside the wider civilian toll. Astashkevich's study documents rape used systematically against Jewish women across the pogroms, arguing the pattern reflects a genocidal logic aimed at the community's religious and social continuity rather than opportunistic wartime disorder alone. 2 Status
Official RecognitionNot formally recognized by any body 1 Recognition BasisNo international body has made a genocide or crimes-against-humanity determination for the wave as a whole, and no successor state ever prosecuted it as such amid the civil war's collapse into competing governments. Veidlinger's scholarly framing situates it as a direct forerunner of the Holocaust rather than an isolated episode, a reading gaining wider acceptance among historians of the period but never converted into any formal recognition process. 1 Learn More
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.
The Ukrainian Pogrom Wave as a Forerunner of the Holocaust
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Veidlinger's own widely cited synthesis puts the wave's full toll at over 100,000, a figure some contemporary observers placed as high as 300,000. This is not a count of direct killings alone: it folds in the substantially larger number who died in the wave's aftermath, of wounds, disease and exposure while displaced or in flight, on top of those killed outright in the pogroms themselves. This atlas records both this aggregate figure and the narrower direct-killing bounds of roughly 31,000 to 60,000 as distinct claims, since neither supersedes the other.
The violence targeted Jewish communities as such, with attacks frequently accompanied by the destruction of synagogues, desecration of Torah scrolls and killing of rabbis alongside the wider civilian toll. Astashkevich's study documents rape used systematically against Jewish women across the pogroms, arguing the pattern reflects a genocidal logic aimed at the community's religious and social continuity rather than opportunistic wartime disorder alone. Veidlinger's scholarly framing situates the wave as a direct forerunner of the Holocaust two decades later, a reading gaining wider acceptance among historians of the period but never converted into any formal recognition process; international Jewish relief organizations, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, mounted large-scale aid efforts at the time amid warnings that the region's entire Jewish population was at risk of complete destruction.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Judaism, Religions Ukraine's Jewish population across roughly five hundred towns and villages was the wave's target throughout its two and a half years.
Ukraine, Countries Took place across the territory of present-day Ukraine during its 1917 to 1921 civil war.
Belongs to Tradition
The wartime population across the contested Ukrainian territory was predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian by ordinary communal identity, but the pogroms were carried out by multiple armed factions of no single religious character, driven by wartime collapse, nationalist and revolutionary conflict and antisemitic scapegoating for the era's turmoil rather than by any church doctrine or hierarchy; this edge connects that shared communal identity to the wave without asserting it as Eastern Orthodoxy's own position.
Sources
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