Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust

Winner of the Bronisław Malinowski Award in the Social Sciences Why do pogroms occur in some localities and not in others? Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg examine a particularly brutal wave of violence that occurred across hundreds of predominantly Polish and Ukrainian communities in the aftermath of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The authors note that while some communities erupted in anti-Jewish violence, most others remained quiescent. In fact, fewer than 10 percent of communities saw pogroms in 1941, and most ordinary gentiles never attacked Jews. Intimate Violence is a novel social-scientific explanation of ethnic violence and the Holocaust. It locates the roots of violence in efforts to maintain Polish and Ukrainian dominance rather than in anti-Semitic hatred or revenge for communism. In doing so, it cuts through painful debates about relative victimhood that are driven more by metaphysical beliefs in Jewish culpability than empirical evidence of perpetrators and victims. Pogroms, they conclude, were difficult to start, and local conditions in most places prevented their outbreak despite a general anti-Semitism and the collapse of the central state. Kopstein and Wittenberg shed new light on the sources of mass ethnic violence and the ways in which such gruesome acts might be avoided.

Table of Contents:
1. Why Neighbors Kill Neighbors 2. Ethnic Politics in the Borderlands 3. Measuring Threat and Violence 4. Beyond Jedwabne 5. Ukrainian Galicia and Volhynia 6. Pogroms outside the Eastern Borderlands 7. Intimate Violence and Ethnic Diversity

About the Author :
Jeffrey S. Kopstein is Dean's Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Politics, Violence, Memory and The Assault on the State. Jason Wittenberg is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Crucibles of Political Loyalt.

Review :
These are thought-provoking arguments and provide researchers with methods for a macro-level examination of variation in local violence. They also draw needed attention to explaining the non-occurrence of violence in contexts in which it seems likely to take place. (CANADIAN SLAVONIC PAPERS) Offering an interesting political-scientific take on the pogroms in this region, Intimate Violence is sure to spark debate. (Choice) Kopstein and Wittenberg took an initiative with this critical, interdisciplinary step toward a subtler understanding of the origins of communal violence.... The chief merit of the book lies in the refutation of certain persistent arguments that historians have advanced regarding the pogroms.... Kopstein and Wittenberg have offered an excellent outline for more research. It is an innovative and elegant book. (Reviews in History) An original and well-crafted study of interethnic competition on the eve of the Holocaust. The book advances our understanding of the microfoundations of ethnic conflict and challenges existing explanations of violence against Jews in twentieth-century Eastern Europe. Kopstein and Wittenberg also assemble a fine-grained historical data set that could help address further questions about interethnic relations. As such, the book has much to offer scholars of intercommunal violence, nationalism, and Eastern European politics. (Perspectives on Politics) Kopstein and Wittenberg, in Intimate Violence, leave us with a better understanding of these terrible events. (The Times of Israel) [T]hey clearly demonstrate that divisive and polarizing nationalist politics is a principal cause of intercommunal violence in the modern democratic era, which in circumstances unrestrained by state and local authorities may take a genocidal turn. (Journal of Modern History)