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To be fair with history the Russian anti-semetisim was born near the end of Czarist rule when the powers of the Czaris state were weakening and he was losing control. Pogroms are always a result of such weak regimes as a way to shore up the state. The last years of Czarist rule created the anti-semetisim that many here think always existed in Russia. It did not - at least not in the pogrom mode.

Again truth be told - the reason so many Jews were to be found in the east - not all inside Russia - but in Austria-Hungry and Poland and Ottoman Turkey - was because they were kicked out in the West. Norman England was the first "judenfrie" nation in Europe. Even in these eastern havens they were restricted. Jews for example payed a dhimmi tax to the Turks just like the Christians and had pogroms fall on them as well - but are not remembered well by Westerners.

History is not as simple as we all like to think.

English King Edward 1st expelled all Jews in 1290 AD and confiscated their wealth. It took 400 years for the Jews to return when English dictator, Oliver Cromwell asked the Jews to return to England to re-boost English international trade.

The Russian pogroms date back only to 1881-1884 when a wave of Jewish pogroms swept southern Russia after the assasination of Czar Alexander II the emancipator of the Serfs.

The communist Soviets (who were of many ethnic and religous backgrounds) hated all minorities that had a tradition that had the potential to divert loyalty away from teh communist party. So Soviet communists also discriminated against Jews because of that - many times those persecuting Jews were party memebers who happened to be Jews themselves.