The Moral Economy of Ethnic Violence: The Pogrom in Lwów, November 1918

The article analyzes an anti-Jewish pogrom which occurred in November 1918 in the east Galician city of Lwów/Lemberg (present-day L'viv) following the defeat by Polish forces of Ukrainian insurgents, who had seized control following the collapse of the Habsburg regime at World War I's end. Several days of violence inflicted on the Jewish population by Polish troops and civilians exacted a heavy toll in life and property. The essay offers an analysis focused on the expressiveness of popular violence, reading the social and cultural meanings which the perpetrators invested in the violence. The argument is that these meanings dramatized or embodied a popular moral economy, embraced more or less consciously within the Polish community, concerning normative Polish-Jewish relations. The article contrasts such an interpretive approach to the more widespread concentration in the scholarly literature on the politically or economically driven instrumental rationality of ethnic violence.