Editing Pogrom (section)

== The word ''pogrom'' ==
{{Annotated image |float=right |width=220 |height=203 |caption=An early reference to a "pogrom" in ''[[The Times]]'' of London, December 1903. Together with ''[[The New York Times]]'' and the [[Hearst Corporation|Hearst press]], they took the lead in highlighting the [[Kishinev pogrom|pogrom in Kishinev]] (now Chişinău, [[Moldova]]) and other cities in Russia.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Zjj18NXZg2wC&pg=PR12 |title=Sunshine, Blossoms and Blood |access-date=15 February 2015 |isbn=978-0-7618-3142-6 |last1=Feinstein |first1=Sara |year=2005 |publisher=[[University Press of America]]}}</ref> In May of the same year, The Times' Russian correspondent Dudley Disraeli Braham had been expelled from Russia.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_mQhzI-nfHsC&pg=PA99 |title=Easter in Kishinev |access-date=15 February 2015 |isbn=978-0-8147-4223-5 |last1=Judge |first1=Edward H. |date=February 1995 |publisher=[[New York University Press]]}}</ref> |image=The Russian Pogrom, The Times, Monday, Dec 07, 1903.png |annotations= |image-top=-1 |image-left=-1 |image-width=222}} 
{{main|Definitions of pogrom}}

=== Etymology ===

First recorded in [[English language|English]] in 1882, the [[Russian language|Russian]] word {{lang|ru-Latn|pogróm}} ({{wikt-lang|ru|погро́м}}, {{IPA|ru|pɐˈɡrom|pron}}) is derived from the common prefix {{lang|ru|po-}} ({{wikt-lang|ru|по-}}) and the verb {{lang|ru-Latn|gromít'}} ({{wikt-lang|ru|громи́ть}}, {{IPA|ru|ɡrɐˈmʲitʲ|}}) meaning 'to destroy, wreak havoc, demolish violently'. The noun ''pogrom'', which has a relatively short history, is used in English and many other languages as a [[loanword]], possibly borrowed from [[Yiddish]] (where the word takes the form {{lang|yi|פאָגראָם|rtl=yes}}).<ref name="dictionary" /> Its modern widespread circulation began with the [[antisemitic]] violence in the Russian Empire in 1881–1883.<ref name="Bergmann" />

=== Usage of the word ===
[[File:TulsaRaceRiot-1921.png|thumb|The 1921 [[Tulsa race massacre]], which destroyed the wealthiest [[African American|black]] community in the United States, has been described as a pogrom.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-reading-ferguson-books-on-race-police-protest-and-us-history-20140818-story.html |title=Reading Ferguson: books on race, police, protest and U.S. history |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=18 August 2014 |access-date=30 July 2016}}</ref>]]

According to ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'', "the term is usually applied to attacks on [[Jews]] in the [[Russian Empire]] in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, [and] the first extensive pogroms followed the assassination of [[Tsar Alexander II]] in 1881".<ref name="Britannica" /> The ''Wiley-Blackwell Dictionary of Modern European History Since 1789'' states that pogroms "were [[antisemitic]] disturbances that periodically occurred within the tsarist empire."<ref name="WileyBlackwell" /> However, the term is widely used to refer to many events which occurred prior to the [[Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire]]. Historian of Russian Jewry [[John Klier]] writes in ''Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882'': "By the twentieth century, the word 'pogrom' had become a generic term in English for all forms of collective violence directed against Jews."<ref name="Klier58" /> [[Henry Abramson|Abramson]] points out that "in mainstream usage the word has come to imply an act of [[antisemitism]]", since while "Jews have not been the only group to suffer under this phenomenon&nbsp;... historically Jews have been frequent victims of such violence."<ref name="Abramson" />

The term is also used in reference to attacks on non-Jewish ethnic minorities, and accordingly, some scholars do not include [[antisemitism]] as the defining characteristic of ''pogroms''. Reviewing the word's uses in scholarly literature, historian [[Werner Bergmann]] proposes that a pogrom should be "defined as a ''unilateral, nongovernmental'' form of ''collective'' violence that is ''initiated by the majority population'' against a largely defenseless minority ethnic group, and occurring when the ''majority'' expect the state to provide them [sic] with no assistance in overcoming a (perceived) threat from the minority".<ref name="international"/> However, Bergmann adds that in Western usage, the word's "anti-Semitic overtones" have been retained.<ref name="Bergmann" /> Historian [[David Engel (historian)|David Engel]] supports this view, writing that while "there can be no logically or empirically compelling grounds for declaring that some particular episode does or does not merit the label [pogrom]," the majority of the incidents which are "habitually" described as pogroms took place in societies that were significantly divided by [[Ethnic group|ethnicity]] or [[religion]] where the violence was committed by members of the higher-ranking group against members of a stereotyped lower-ranking group with which they expressed some complaint, and where the members of the higher-ranking group justified their acts of violence by claiming that the law of the land would not be used to prevent the alleged complaint.<ref name="Engel" />

There is no universally accepted set of characteristics which define the term pogrom.<ref name="Engel" /><ref name="Bergmann2" /> Klier writes that "when applied indiscriminately to events in [[Eastern Europe]], the term can be misleading, the more so when it implies that 'pogroms' were regular events in the region and that they always shared common features."<ref name="Klier58" /> Use of the term pogrom to refer to events in 1918–19 in Polish cities (including the [[Kielce pogrom (1918)|Kielce pogrom]], the [[Pinsk massacre]] and the [[Lwów pogrom (1918)|Lwów pogrom]]) was specifically avoided in the 1919 [[Morgenthau Report]]; the word "excesses" was employed instead because the authors argued that the use of the term "pogrom" required a situation to be [[antisemitism|antisemitic]] rather than political in nature, which meant that it was inapplicable to the conditions which exist in a war zone.<ref name="Engel" /><ref name="Pietrowski" /><ref name="Pease" /> Media use of the term pogrom to refer to the 1991 [[Crown Heights riot]] caused public controversy.<ref name="JewishWeek" /><ref name="New York Magazine" /><ref name="Conaway" /> In 2008, two separate attacks in the [[West Bank]] by [[Israeli Jews|Israeli Jewish]] [[Israeli settlement|settlers]] on [[Palestinian people|Palestinian]] [[Arab]]s were characterized as pogroms by then [[Prime Minister of Israel]] [[Ehud Olmert]].<ref name="smh"/><ref name="bbc11">{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7770384.stm |publisher=[[BBC News]] |title=Olmert condemns settler 'pogrom' |date=7 December 2008 |access-date=15 February 2015}}</ref>

Werner Bergmann suggests that all such incidents have a particularly unifying characteristic: "By the ''collective attribution'' of a threat, the pogrom differs from other forms of [[violence]], such as [[lynching]]s, which are directed at individual members of a minority group, while the ''imbalance of power'' in favor of the rioters distinguishes pogroms from other forms of riots ([[food riot]]s, [[race riot]]s or '[[communal riot]]s' between evenly matched groups); and again, the ''low level of organization'' separates them from [[vigilantism]], [[terrorism]], [[massacre]] and [[genocide]]".<ref name="international" />