Kiev pogrom (1905)

The Kiev pogrom took place October 18–20, 1905 (October 31–November 2, 1905, New Style) in Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire. According to the Wikipedia article on the event, the violence followed the collapse of a city hall meeting held on October 18, 1905, which drew a mob into the streets. Among the perpetrators were monarchists, reactionaries, anti-Semites, and common criminals, who proclaimed that "all Russia's troubles stemmed from the machinations of the Jews and socialists."

Historian William C. Fuller, as quoted in the source material, described the pogrom as "an orgy of looting, raping, and murder chiefly directed against the factories, the shops, homes, and persons of the Jews." Fuller's account states the riot claimed the lives of between forty-seven and one hundred people, seriously injured at least three hundred more, and destroyed between 10 and 40 million rubles of property. Historian Simon Dubnow, as cited in the same account, described this pogrom and others sweeping the southern Russian Empire at the same time as together amounting to "Russia's St. Bartholomew's night."

The source material indicates the Kiev pogrom followed a broader, country-wide wave of anti-Jewish violence in the preceding months. Citing the Jewish Encyclopedia, the article notes that anti-Jewish riots broke out earlier in 1905 in Elizabethgrad, Kiev itself, Shpola, Ananiv, Wasilkov, and Konotop, and in roughly 160 other locations in southern Russia over the following six months. The Jewish Encyclopedia account cited states that the riots "were premeditated," offering as an example that Kiev's chief of police, Von Hubbenet, reportedly warned some Jewish acquaintances of the coming riots a week before they broke out.

The dossier's source material also includes a passage attributed to "a Russian from Kiev," published in Prince Vladimir Meshchersky's journal Grazhdanin (The Citizen) and quoted by Vladimir Lenin, describing an atmosphere of suspicion, informing, and hatred at the time.

Historian Shlomo Lambroza, distrusting police-sourced figures, is cited as having used opposition-derived data to count 3,103 murdered Jews across all of Russia during the broader 1905–1906 wave of pogroms, of which the Kiev pogrom was one incident.

The Wikipedia source does not name any individual perpetrators, victims, or persons who were charged or convicted in connection with the Kiev pogrom, and no legal proceedings are described in the available material.