During the Civil War in Russia, over 100,000 Jews became victims of pogroms. This was the most massive murder of Jews in the twentieth century before the Holocaust—which, in a certain sense, these killings foreshadowed. Little wonder, then, that the history of anti-Jewish pogroms of the Civil War era has engendered a vast literature. The pogroms perpetrated by anti-Bolshevik forces, such as Ukrainian nationalists and the White Army, have received most of the attention. It is only recently that the literature on the pogroms perpetrated by the Red Army has appeared. The Red Army was responsible for a relatively small share of all pogroms (8.6 percent), although this fact did not make the plight of the victims of “red” pogroms any easier. In the vast historiography of this blood-soaked topic, Brendan McGeever found his own niche—and a very important one. His book is devoted to the Bolshevik confrontation with antisemitism during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. Specifically, it deals with the Bolshevik response to the anti-Jewish violence perpetrated by the Red Army—one of the pillars of Soviet power.

The book consists of seven chapters, and it is organized chronologically: from the manifestations of antisemitism during the revolution of 1917 and the “red pogroms” in the spring of 1918 to the culmination of anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine in 1919 and the Soviet reaction to them. The events of 1919 are dealt with in three chapters. The first of them analyzes antisemitism in the Red Army and the policy of the Soviet government of Ukraine toward Jews. The chapter is focused on the Grigoriev uprising (Grigor΄evshchina)—the anti-Bolshevik revolt of the Red Army division led by its former commander Nikifor Grigoriev, an officer-turned-ataman. The Grigoriev uprising was marked by some of the bloodiest anti-Jewish pogroms in the history of the Civil War. Two other chapters focus on the Soviet response to antisemitism: one deals with the period from February to May 1919, and the other—from May to December of the same year.

The author stresses that the Bolsheviks were anti-racist and that they opposed antisemitism. However, they were not prepared for such a massive outburst of antisemitism during the Civil War, especially among the people they considered their social basis—workers, and especially peasants, who constituted the bulk of the Red Army. The Bolshevik's reaction to the cases of antisemitism in the Red Army was often late and not always adequate. Systematic propaganda and education work against antisemitism were organized only in the second half of 1919, and even then, they were not always up to the task. The Committee for the Struggle against Antisemitism of the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment, which was established in August of 1919, de facto only existed for several weeks and barely managed to start performing its tasks (169–77). The liquidation of the committee was explained in the following way: “the critical moment of antisemitic propaganda has passed and therefore continued existence of a special committee is no longer necessary.” According to the author, the closure of the committee “was emblematic of the sporadic and reactive way in which the Bolshevik leadership approached the issue” (177).

The core argument of the book is that there was a Soviet response to antisemitism, but it was not Bolshevik in origin. To a large extent, this response came from the activities of the small group of non-Bolshevik Jewish radicals within the Jewish Commissariats and the Jewish sections of the Communist Party (Evsektsii) (8). The author argues that “…proximity to a Jewish socialist-national project facilitated a more urgent form of political practice on the question of antisemitism” (182) and “the Soviet response to antisemitism during the Russian Revolution was actualized, and often sustained, by a group of non-Bolshevik Jewish socialists” (216).

In short, the importance of the book and of Brendan McGeever's contribution to the historiography is in the scrupulous analysis of the struggle of radical Jewish socialists against antisemitism within Soviet institutions. The analysis is based on new materials from more than ten archives (including five in Russia and four in Ukraine). Among the main protagonists of the book are Territorialist David Davidovich (L΄vovich), Zvi Fridland (Poalei Zion), Bund members Abram Kheifets, David Lipets, and Moishe Rafes, and several others. In addition to brief biographical information about these protagonists, the book contains photographs that were discovered in the archives or supplied by relatives. They, undoubtedly, constitute a valuable addition to the book. All protagonists, except Davidovich, joined the Bolshevik party. While the point that antisemitism and pogroms led to the Sovietization of Jewish socialists is not, strictly speaking, new, it is indisputably correct.

What, from my point of view, is lacking in the book? An analysis of the nature and evolution of the Red Army. The author only briefly touches upon this key question and correctly points out its complexity (44–46). By the end of the Civil War, Red Army personnel numbered 5.5 million; in 1918–1920, approximately four million had deserted. Many in the Red Army (just as in the military formations that opposed the Bolsheviks) had served, voluntarily or not, in armies or gangs of all stripes. For example, ataman Grigoriev, a former staff captain (shtabs-kapitan) of the imperial army, also served in Hetman Pavlo Skorapadsky's army and in Symon Petliura's units. In February 1919, he and his followers joined the Red Army, only to take up arms against the Bolsheviks in May. As McGeever correctly writes, “the lines of demarcation between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary…were, in actuality, fluid and porous” (99). It is, therefore, all the more strange that he calls the Grigoriev uprising the “zenith” of red antisemitism (156) despite the fact that the revolt was put down by Red Army troops.

The activities of the Committee for the Struggle against Antisemitism and other Soviet institutions tasked with fighting antisemitism were, first of all, propagandist and educational. They issued many broсhures explaining that Jews were not enemies of workers or peasants and that pogroms were bad. However, the book does not consider what influence these broсhures and lectures denouncing antisemitism had on the semiliterate or illiterate Red Army masses. And, perhaps, this is impossible to determine.

From my point of view, the Bolshevik response to antisemitism was first and foremost not in declarations, newspaper articles, or speeches. Rather, it was in the fact that those guilty of pogroms were mercilessly punished, sometimes by mass executions, as was the case with the soldiers of the Sixth Division of the famous First Cavalry Army who had “distinguished” themselves by engaging in pogroms when they were retreating from the Soviet-Polish front in the autumn of 1920. In the circumstances of the Civil War, the guilty were not always punished, but there was little reason to question the Bolshevik attitude toward pogrom perpetrators. The Bolsheviks had delivered the Jewish population from the horrors of pogroms by the Petliura troops, the Whites, the Greens, and others. Bund member Ester Frumkina knew what she was talking about when, in March 1919, she proclaimed that the Red Army was “our army.”