Antisemitism in Ukraine has been a significant issue in the country, particularly in the twentieth century. The history of the Jewish community of the region dates back to the era when ancient Greek colonies existed in it. A third of the Jews of Europe previously lived in Ukraine between 1791 and 1917, within the Pale of Settlement. The large concentration of Jews in this region historically made them an easy target for anti-Jewish actions and pogroms. Since April 2026, antisemitism in Ukraine is punishable, including by imprisonment.
Before the 20th century
In 1113, there was anti-Jewish violence in Kiev, in the context of a rebellion sparked by the death of the unpopular Sviatopolk II, Grand Prince of Kiev, in which Jews who participated in the prince's economic affairs (particularly the salt trade) were targeted by townspeople.Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History, edited by John Doyle Klier, Shlomo Lambroza, pp. 13 & 35 (footnotes). John Klier: "upon the death of the Grand Prince of Kiev Sviatopolk, rioting broke out in Kiev against his agents and the town administration. The disorders were not specifically directed against Jews and they are best characterized as a social revolution. This fact has not prevented historians of medieval Russia from describing them as a pogrom." Klier also writes that Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath has advanced a strong argument against considering the Kiev riots of 1113 an anti-Jewish pogrom. Pereswetoff-Morath writes in A Grin without a Cat (2002) that "I feel that Birnbaum's use of the term 'anti-Semitism' as well as, for example, his use of 'pogrom' in references to medieval Rus are not warranted by the evidence he presents. He is, of course, aware that it may be controversial."George Vernadsky: "Incidentally, one should not suppose that the movement was anti-Semitic. There was no general Jewish pogrom. Wealthy Jewish merchants suffered because of their association with Sviatopolk's speculations, especially his hated monopoly on salt." George Vernadsky, Kievan Russia, Yale University Press, 1973, p. 94 The earliest source of this is not until centuries later, and the event may be apocryphal.
Incidents befalling the Jews of Ukraine in the 13th century, such as the Mongol raids which wiped out entire Jewish communities, appear not to be related to antisemitism, according to Kevin Alan Brook.
The pogroms of 1648–49 under Khmelnytsky were marked by brutal anti-Jewish violence.
In 1768, many Jews were massacred by the Haidamak rebels under Ivan Gonta in the Massacre of Uman. Haidamaks were Ukrainian low-noble and peasant Cossack formations active in the Polish-Lithuanian Army. Over three thousand Jews were massacred in the streets and the synagogue with no mercy for age or sex, and their corpses were thrown to pigs and dogs. After this, the Haidamaks went on to slaughter Poles and Ukrainian Uniates, before their leaders were captured and executed for treason against Poland-Lithuania.
The 1821 Odessa pogroms are sometimes considered the first pogroms. After the execution of the Greek Orthodox patriarch, Gregory V, in Constantinople, 14 Jews were killed in response.Odessa pogroms at the Center of Jewish Self-Education "Moria". The initiators of the 1821 pogroms were the local Greeks, who used to have a substantial diaspora in the port cities of what was known as Novorossiya.Pogrom (Virtual Jewish Encyclopedia)
Major anti-Jewish riots swept through southwestern Imperial Russia (present-day Ukraine and Poland) from 1881 to 1884, when more than 200 anti-Jewish events occurred in the Russian Empire. The most notable were pogroms in Kiev, Warsaw and Odessa. Pogrom , based on Alina Cała, Hanna Węgrzynek, Gabriela Zalewska, Historia i kultura Żydów polskich. Słownik, WSiP. The event which triggered the pogroms was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on 13 March [1 March, Old Style], 1881, for which some blamed "agents of foreign influence", implying that Jews committed it.The Jewish Chronicle, May 6, 1881, cited in Benjamin Blech, Eyewitness to Jewish HistorySankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti newspaper №65, March 8 (20), 1881
Early 20th century Pogroms during the Russian Revolution of 1905
After the publication of the October Manifesto, which promised citizens of Russia civil rights, many Jews who lived in the cities of the Pale of Settlement, went to the demonstrations against the government. For the local residents acting on the side of the incumbent authorities, this was the pretext to start a new wave of pogroms against Jews.
In February 1905, a pogrom took place in Feodosia, on April 19 of the same year a pogrom occurred in Melitopol. The pogrom in May in Zhytomyr surpassed the rest of the pogroms in terms of the number of victims. The most serious pogrom occurred in Odessa. 300 Jews were killed and thousands injured. Another serious pogrom occurred in Ekaterinoslav, during which 120 Jews were killed. Pogroms occurred in 64 cities (Odessa, Ekaterinoslav, Kiev, Simferopol, Romny, Kremenchug, Nikolaev, Chernigov, Kamenets-Podolsky and Elisavetgrad) and in 626 villages. Approximately 660 pogroms occurred in Ukraine and in Bessarabia. The pogroms lasted several days. Participants in the pogroms were workers of trains, traders of local shops, artisans and industrialists.
The pogroms of 1903–06 marked the beginning of Jewish unification in Europe. They became the motive for the organization of Jewish self-defense, accelerated emigration to Palestine, and initiated the HaShomer organization there.
The activities of the Union of Russian People and of other Black Hundreds organizations nurtured antisemitism in Ukraine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Russian Civil War
In February 1919, a brigade of Ukrainian People's Republic troops killed 1500 Jews in Proskurov. In Tetiev on March 25, 1919, Cossack troops under the command of Colonels Cherkovsky, Kurovsky and Shliatoshenko murdered 4000 Jews.M. I. Midlarsky. The killing trap: genocide in the seventeenth century. Cambridge University Press. 2005. p. 46. Jews had tried to take refuge in the wooden synagogue but it was set ablaze. The Tetiev pogrom become the prototype of mass murder of Polish Jews,M. I. Midlarsky. The killing trap: genocide in the seventeenth century. Cambridge University Press. 2005. p. 46. Infants were tossed into the air and their bodies dashed on the pavement, Approximately 4000 of the 6000 Jews of the town had been killed on the single day of March 25, 1919. Tetiev's Jewish quarter was burned in its entirety, including the synagogue and other houses of worship and study, where hundreds of people had sought refuge. Some 23,000 Jews had been recorded as residing in the vicinity, of Tetiev according to the imperial census of 1897; only 242 Jewish residents were documented in 1926. With no Jews found in a town of 10,000 where the Jewish population had previously been estimated at 6,000, a Joint Distribution Committee report sums up the Tetiev situation in this way: "locality ruined." In Dubovo on June 17, 1919, 800 of the town's 900 Jews were murdered in an assembly line fashion, two executioners stood with their sabers on top of the stairs and where they decapitated Jews forced to approach the staircase.
During the Russian Civil War the Jews of Uman in eastern Podolia were subjected to two pogroms in 1919, as the town changed hands several times. The first pogrom, in spring, claimed 170 victims; the second one, in summer, more than 90. in a break with traditional mass murder of Jews in the region, the Christian inhabitants of Uman helped to hide the Jews. The Council for Public Peace, with a Christian majority and a Jewish minority, saved the city from danger several times. In 1920, for example, it stopped the pogrom initiated by the troops of General Denikin.Encyclopaedia Judaica, second edition, vol. 20, p. 244
During the Russian Civil War, between 1918 and 1921, a total of 1,236 violent incidents against Jews occurred in 524 towns in Ukraine. The estimates of the number of killed range between 30,000 and 60,000."History and Culture of Jews in Ukraine ("«Нариси з історії та культури євреїв України»)«Дух і літера» publ., Kyiv, 2008, с. 128 – 135D. Vital. Zionism: the crucial phase. Oxford University Press. 1987. p. 359 Of the recorded 1,236 pogroms and excesses, 493 were carried out by Ukrainian People's Republic soldiers under command of Symon Petliura, 307 by independent Ukrainian warlords, 213 by Denikin's army, 106 by the Red Army and 32 by the Polish Army.R. Pipes. A Concise History of the Russian Revolution. Vintage Books. 1996. p. 262. During the dictatorship of Pavlo Skoropadsky (29 April 1918 to December 1918Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States: 1999, Routledge, (p. 849)), no pogroms were recorded. When the Directorate replaced Skoropadsky's government, pogroms once again erupted.Сергійчук, Володимир. Симон Петлюра і єврейство. Київ: національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка; Центр українознавства, 2006. 152 стор.: стор.90-97. 2-ге вид.[ Volodymyr Serhiychuk. Suymon Petliura & Jews. Kyiv: Tarash Shevchenko National University; 2006. 152 pp: pp. 90–97]
Directorate of Ukraine (1918–1920)
In December 1918 Hetman of the Ukrainian State Hetmanate, Pavlo Skoropadskyi, was deposed and the Directorate (also called the Directoria) was established as the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic (Ukrayins'ka Narodnia Respublika, abbreviated UNR).Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988,
This new Ukrainian government immediately reacted to the acts of violence which happened in January 1919 in Zhytomyr and Berdychiv. The Ukrainian government informed the Jewish leaders and the government of Berdychiv on January 10 that the instigators had been shot, and that the army squadron which took part in the action had been disbanded. The head of the government, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, stated that the pogrom actions were initiated by the Black Hundreds. He also stated: "the Ukrainian government will actively fight anti-Semitism and all occurrences of Bolshevism".
The pro-Bolshevik delegate of the Bund, Moisei Rafes, who initially stated that "the special detachment that was sent to Zhytomyr and Berdychev to fight the Soviets initiated a pogrom", later in a speech at the meeting of the Labour Congress of Ukraine on January 16, 1919, changed his mind: "The Directoria states that it is not to blame, that it is not to blame for the pogroms. None of us blames the Directoria for the responsibility of the pogroms."
Symon Petliura made attempts to stop the occurrence of pogroms among Ukrainian detachments. When he discovered from the Minister of Jewish affairs of the UNR that the transiting squadron at the Yareska station had initiated violent acts against the Jewish population, he immediately sent a telegram to the military commandant of Myrhorod: "I command that the matter be investigated and reported back to me, and to use immediate measures so that similar excesses do not have a place and will be punished – 28 January – Head Otaman S. Petliura.
When Petliura took charge of the Directoria in 1919, at his initiative the government investigated the Jewish pogroms in Kamianets-Podilskyi and Proskuriv, demanding that the commanders "use decisive actions to totally liquidate the pogromist anti-Jewish actions, and the perpetrators are to be brought before a military tribunal and punished according to the military laws of war".