The notion of Eastern European anti-semitism is mainly a product of Western imagination, similar to that of the myth of the vampire.
The concept of vampire is etymologically derived from Slavic languages (cf. upyr, wapierz, vypyoor) denoting something "washed out" i.e. a human being deprived of its "primary" soul by his death but having his "secondary" soul keeping him alive and wandering through earth (hence to the wooden stake to kill that "secondary" soul). "Vypyoors" were pretty much harmless, perhaps a bit scary, but not the blood sucking creatures in the Western imagination. Blood sucking was the domain of a different set of mythical creatures (the "stshyghas") which usually took the animal form (a mouse, a bat, a cat, a bug, e.t.c. but never a wandering ghoul) and sneaked during the night to human dwelling to suck blood or suffocate their victims).
The Western "vampire", clearly influenced by Eastern European mythology as described above mixed with historical figures (Vlad the Impaler), basically reflects the fears and nighmires of Westerners - that of Festung Europa, the beacon of light, with the forces of darkness at its gate - as skillfully reflected in Werner Herzog's film _Nosferatu_.
The concept of Eastern European anti-semite belongs to a similar genre. The Jewish and Gentile communities symbiotically coexisted in Eastern Europe for centuries - each one separate and rift with its own prejudices against each other, but also interacting with each other at various levels (business, inter-marriages, culture) and with very permeable boundaries and in-between areas populated by colorful characters - as skillfully reflected in novels by Isaak Bashevis Singer (cf. _The magician of Lublin_, _The satan of Goray_) or Bruno Schulz (_The cinnamon stores_). Not to mention the urban Jewry, without which there would be no Eastern European cities with their sweatshops, merchants, and, for that matter socialists. (BTW, I see myself as a heir to that tradition, both ethnically, as my ancestors were Polish, Jews, and Czechs, and more importantly culturally - as Eastern European culture is an amalgam of Russiam Jewish, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Roma etc. but also German influences that gives it distinctively unique flavor).
Pogroms were but one aspect of that rich Jew-Gentile universe of Eastern Europe, undoubtedly horrifying events, but certainly not defining that relationship (as for example racism and slavery defined the white -black relationship in the US). However, the Western concept of anti-semitism is a projection of the dark side of Western civilization - the civilization that brought death, genocide and destruction to four continents, but also feared the "eastern hordes" (the Ottoman empire) at its gates. The western notion of Eastern European anti-semitism is a cognitive exercise of attributing one's own faults to a perceived enemy, or perhaps to a scapegoat. Jews are in Eastern Europe because they fled the Inquisition and extermination in Western Europe, and it is Western Europeans, the Nazis and their puppets in France, Austria, the Netherlands etc. who dealt the final blow to Yiddish communities, just as they wiped out the native Americans, the Australian aborigines, Africans etc. By projecting its own sins on the "second class Europeans" (the Russian, the Poles, the Ukrainians, etc.), Western Europeans and the US-ers try to come out with "clean hands."
It is not that I am anti-Western, but the Westerners calling Eastern Europeans "bigots" is a classic example of a midget calling a dwarf "short." Anyway, these are my two groschen.
Wojtek