I think that this account of eastern European anti-semitism conspicuously misses the class dimension - Russia was a backward feudal empire that kept its peasant population in line by crude force and periodical pogroms were orchestrated by the authorities to vent frustration of the masses.
However drawing similarity between Russia and the US is very interesting, indeed. The analogy goes well beyond geography and into the class structure. Brenner argues that what sets Eastern Europe apart from the West is peasant eastward migration in the early middle ages. This eastward migration broke the traditional village community that protected peasants against feudal lords in Western Europe, and established settlements where the lord had clearly the upper hand (as compared to France or the Netherlands, for example). Of course forced eastward migration continued in Russia to the 20th century. It was orchestrated by the tsarist government and often used as the means of social control and punishment for sedition.
It is interesting to note that migration patterns to the US had a very similar effect on the class structure. Migration broke the continental Europe's social solidarity ties, and made the migrant population vulnerable to US capitalist barons. These barons often used migration as the means of breaking labor. What is more, the government sponsored westward migration and genocide of the Native Americans could be conceived as the means of social control by dispersing the "dangerous classes" - akin to Russia's relocations to Siberia.
I think of the US as an essentially totalitarian country with a well-maintained democratic façade - which brings another Russian analogy, that of the Potemkin village, except much better executed. The US is essentially a Russia with money - the testimony of what money can do.
Wojtek