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JewishHistoryעברית

Elisavetgrad pogrom

Date
27 April 1881 – 28 April 1881Hebrew date: 28th of Nisan, 5641 – 29th of Nisan, 5641
Location
Elisavetgrad (Kropyvnytskyi)Ukraine
Then part of
Russian Empire
Perpetrators
  • Local rioters (Mob)
Killed (estimate)
No reliable estimate
Category
Pogrom
Confidence
High

Summary

The first pogrom of the 1881–1882 wave broke out in Elisavetgrad, Kherson province, on 15 April 1881 (27 April New Style), in the week after Easter and in the unsettled atmosphere after the assassination of Alexander II. The Jewish Encyclopedia records that a dispute in an inn over the blood libel served as a pretext; rioters wrecked Jewish shops and warehouses for two days, synagogues were damaged, and soldiers called to protect the Jews took part in the pillage. About 500 houses and 100 shops were demolished, with property losses put at about 2 million rubles (Jewish Encyclopedia) or 1.9 million (Encyclopaedia Judaica). News of the riot spread and copycat violence followed in the region.

Sources

  1. John Klier, Pogroms. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
  2. Herman Rosenthal, Isaac Broydé, S. Janovsky, Yelisavetgrad (Elizabethgrad). Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
  3. Kirovograd. Jewish Virtual Library (Encyclopaedia Judaica)

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 7,800,000[4]c. 1880
  • Russian Empire: 3,932,000 – 4,748,640[19]c. 1881Bartal and Moss (Posen Library) give about 2,912,000 Jews in the Pale of Settlement and 1,020,000 in Congress Poland in 1881 (sum 3,932,000), excluding Jews outside those zones. Boustan cites about 4.1 million for the empire in 1881. A contemporary German compilation of Russian Jewish statistics (Freimann Sammlung) reconstructs 4,748,640 for 1879/1884 (Pale 2,920,639 + Poland ~1,078,000 + outside the Pale ~750,000) and says the total had by then passed five million. Figures cover the Russian Empire including Congress Poland.
  • Elisavetgrad (Kropyvnytskyi): 8,073 – 24,340[3]Jews in Elisavetgrad in 1861 (8,073, Encyclopaedia Judaica), twenty years before the April 1881 pogrom, and in the 1897 imperial census, sixteen years after. Encyclopaedia Judaica gives 23,967 for 1897; the Jewish Encyclopedia gives 24,340. No fetched source gives a count for 1881.

Sources for population estimates

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  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
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  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
  10. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History. Handbook chapter PDF via zvi-eckstein.com
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  20. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank / Israel CBS host (2025)
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  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
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  64. All-Union 1959 census — ethnic composition of the USSR. Demoscope Weekly (РГАЭ РФ fond 1562)
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