As it turns out, the October 1905 pogroms were not just "anti-semitic," as usually described. In fact, while Jews were a major (the main) target, they were far from the only one... Chris Doss
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This interests me for a side note. Evidently the main rail line from Odessa to Germany ran through or very near Marburg. Some Russian jews escaping from the 1903-5 pogroms by train from Odessa got off the train at Marburg and stayed in local barns.
Leo Strauss's father sold farm equipment in Marburg and on one of his rounds he took little Leo (age four or five) with him, were Strauss remembers seeing these immigrants staying in barns. He mentions it as an early experience of what it could mean to be Jewish. (I suspect he didn't really remember it per se, but remembered through later family discussions and memories...)
This childhood memory would become part of Strauss's own political identity and set part of the backdrop for his writing on Zionism just after WWI---and when he met Valdamir Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky (born and raised in Odessa) was involved in organizing a militia against the pogrom in Odessa and went to Kishinev to cover the aftermath of the pogrom there as a journalist. (Any interesting details about either of these cities--or Jabotinshy--and their pogroms would be appreciated.)
I haven't read anything on the Russian pogroms. But I got the impression that during the 1903-05 period they were part of a general government sponsored suppression of anti-modernization, anti-liberal, anti-revolution communities, and Russian Jews (or at least the urban and/or working class) were prominently involved in these anti-tzarist movements.
Is that a correct impression?
I also had the impression (indirect suspicion gained from reading unrelated material) that the Russian Jews leaving in the wake of the pogroms were a very motley crew (ragged, hungry, poor, desperate) and were a shock to the rather effete German middle class Jews who took them in---something along the lines of say Black southern dirt farmers showing up in Chicago in the 20s and 30s and boarding with better off Black urban families. (With the implicit sense: `you think its bad in Chicago, you should try Mississippi..')
Is that a correct impression?
The reason I ask is because these impressions form part of how I understand Strauss... For example he seems incapable of grasping several all-american values like political `equality' between people and classes. In effect he is a class ridden, demi-racist snot...but this personal view is masked by transforming it into an Aristotelian hierarchy of values and judgments---natural ordering of species sort of thing.
CG