Kiev pogrom (1881)

[3] However, professor John D. Klier of modern Jewish History at University College London (who spent almost his entire academic life researching Jewish life in Russian controlled territory) came to the conclusion (in his detailed study Russians, Jews and the Pogroms of 1881-1882) that, far from passively allowing the pogroms to take place, the Tsarist government actively and repeatedly issued orders to the police, and military to suppress them.

[6]The extent to which the Russian press was responsible for encouraging perceptions of the assassination as a Jewish act has been disputed.

[7] Local economic conditions (such as ancestral debts owed to moneylenders) are thought to have contributed significantly to the rioting, especially with regard to the participation of the business competitors of local Jews and the participation of railroad workers.

[8] These rumours, however, were clearly of some importance, if only as a trigger, and they drew upon a small kernel of truth: one of the close associates of the assassins, Hesya Helfman, was born into a Jewish home.

During these pogroms thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, many families were reduced to poverty, and large numbers of men, women, and children were injured in 166 towns in the southwest provinces of the Empire.