Violent Backlash to Political Reform: Evidence from Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the 1905 Russian Revolution

Abstract

Local violence often accompanies moments of momentous political change, as feelings of political threat intersect with preexisting prejudice to endanger groups popularly associated with that change. We examine the relationship between such violence and population diversity in the context of the 1905 Russian Revolution, which triggered numerous anti-Jewish pogroms. Counter to an extensive literature that emphasizes the contribution to conflict of ethnoreligious polarization, we show that the sharp increase in pogroms after October 1905, when publication of the October Manifesto and accompanying antisemitic propaganda increased feelings of political threat among many non-Jews, was smaller in settlements with relatively large Jewish populations. We demonstrate that this empirical pattern can be rationalized with the Esteban-Ray (2008) model of conflict when, as with anti-Jewish pogroms, initiation of conflict is one-sided rather than symmetric.