On March 1, 1881, one event had a most profound impact upon the history of the world and the Jewish people.


The Russian Czar Alexander II was heading toward his winter palace in St. Petersburg. He had just signed a document granting the first ever constitution to Russia. En route, radical members of the Narodaya Volya, or The People's Will, tossed bombs under his heavily fortified coach. When the Czar exited in order to check upon the wounded soldiers accompanying his coach, he was killed by another bomber, who took his own life in the blast.


Publications blaming the Jews for the pogroms and all the ills of Russia proliferated.



Among the group of six conspirators was a Jewess, Hessia Helfman, giving rise to the accusation that the Jews were responsible. Suddenly, the assassination triggered a massive wave of anti-Semitism. Just six weeks later, pogroms broke out in the southern Ukraine, in the city of Elizabethgrad, and soon spread throughout the region. In the year that followed, over two hundred Jewish communities would be ravaged. Hundreds would be murdered, thousands wounded. Tens of thousands would become homeless refugees. All the while, anti-Semitic publications blaming the Jews for the pogroms and all the ills of Russia proliferated.


In an area with as long a history of barbaric pogroms as the Ukraine, the events of 1881, although devastating, were not new to the Jews, but they followed the relatively lenient rule of Alexander II. He had sought to enact reforms aimed at granting more freedoms to Jews. Just months before the assassination, few had expected that such tragic events would unfold.


The new Czar, Alexander III, who was far too slow to prevent the pogroms, enacted new restrictions against the Jews. Known as the May Laws, they forbade Jews to reside in hundreds of villages. Almost a million Jews were forced out of their homes and thus deprived of their livelihoods.


There were many effects of the 1881 pogroms. A mass exodus of Jews to the West began that would continue for the next forty years. In total, over two million left.


1881 was also a milestone in the Zionist movement, as ideas supporting Jewish statehood became more widespread. The Chovevei Tzion (Lovers of Zion) movement, stressing a return to Zion, became increasingly popular.


The pogroms also greatly impacted the Maskilim, or "Emancipationists" - those Jews who fervently sought to be accepted as equals in Russian society. During the era of Alexander II, more opportunities were open to Jews. As in other parts of Europe a century earlier, Jews became welcomed in universities and they became accepted into many fields once closed to them. Alexander II had raised the expectations and hopes of many Jews. When he was assassinated, those dreams were abruptly shattered with the outbreak of pogroms. Many Maskilim now reassessed their positions. They concluded that not only were their dreams of assimilation futile, but they were also false.


Journalist and Forward editor Abraham Cahan wrote of a group of Jewish radicals who entered a synagogue filled with "weeping mournful Jews." One of the radicals went before the congregation and said, "We are your brothers, we are Jews just like you. We regret having considered ourselves Russians and not Jews. The events of the last few weeks - the rioting in Yelizavetgrad, in Smela, here in Kiev, and the other towns, has shown us what a grievous mistake we were making. Yes, we are Jews."


In a synagogue in St. Petersburg, professionals and upcoming Jewish members of Russian society gathered on January 22, 1882, and, in solidarity with their Jewish brethren, adopted the slogan Pora Domoi ("Time to Go Home"). In other words, it was time to return to their people.


A poet of the Haskalah, Yehudah Leib Gordon, wrote, "I believed that haskalah would surely save us, but the blessing was turned into a curse, and the golden cup from which we

"No matter how much the Jew renounces his nationality, he will never be viewed as an equal." - Yehudah Leib Pinsker

 drank was flung into our face." Like so many other Maskilim, Moshe Leib Lilienblum declared that following the pogroms of 1881, he had become "a different man." Chaim Chissin, one of the original members of the first wave of Aliyah, known as BILU, wrote in his diary, "Until these events began, I had thrust aside my Jewish origins. I considered myself to be a devoted son of Russia."


Another former 'devoted son of Russia', Yehudah Leib Pinsker, wrote in his groundbreaking work on Zionism, entitled Auto Emancipation, his summation of the events in 1881 Russia: "No matter how much the Jew renounces his nationality, he will never be viewed as an equal."


By being rejected by the very nation in which they sought acceptance, many Maskilim found refuge in a Judaism from which they were initially distant.


There were some Jews who did not draw these conclusions, and stubbornly remained loyal to regimes that oppressed Jews through the 1917 revolution, the Ukrainian pogroms of 1919, the Communist persecutions, up to the Stalinist purges. In the end, their loyalty was folly. They abandoned their true identity as Jews as they sought to live as Russians, but they were always despised as Jews.


In today's world, there are some who dream of peace based upon Israeli territorial concessions. Somehow, some perceive that the Jews by their own actions will change Arab perceptions, and create a grand transformation to one of true acceptance of Israel. Some perceive that the events of the past year alone in the Palestinian Authority, Gaza, Sderot, Lebanon, Egypt and Iran can somehow be erased, and that a new reality can be created.


Yet, as the events of 1881 show, history has a memory. Even when we want to forget the events of the past, they have a way of creeping up on us to serve as a reminder and warning.