Introduction

The genocidal impulses that erupted during the pogroms of the Russian Civil War (1917–21), together with the recurring claim of Jewish ritual murder and its multiple permutations, became necessary components for the events that unraveled in the so-called Bloodlands. The persistence, the permutation, andthe responses to anti-Jewish violence and memories of violence suggest that Jews (and non-Jews alike) cohabited with a legacy of blood that did not vanish. It is in fact difficult to fully grasp thedynamics of violence unleashed during World War II in the region of Eastern Europe, which comprised present-day Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, without integrating the historical violence and memories of violence that earmarked Jews. The blood legacies played a central role in the carnage of European Jewry and made the Bloodlands likely. Under the Soviets, who from the beginning outlawed antisemitism, violence against Jews did not supersede entirely, and even when it was forbidden (like in the case of the pogroms), it was not forgotten. There is an unexplored history of antisemitism in the Soviet lands that sheds light on the complicated experience of concurrent Jewish empowerment and vulnerability in Soviet society.