Oko.press:
Moving reading.
Antony Polonsky, Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University:
This well-documented and pathbreaking study examines the wave of anti-Jewish violence that occurred in the summer of 1941 after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. It seeks both to explain why pogroms occurred in some localities and not in others and examines the reasons for their outbreak. This book is essential reading for all those interested in the Holocaust in Eastern Europe and, indeed, in Europe in the twentieth century.
Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University:
The history of pogroms arouses passions, and its study requires sober creativity. Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg, outstanding political scientists representing different approaches, have collaborated on this subject for a decade, mining archives, refining data, and considering interpretations. The result is a work that opens a new era in this field of study. Scholars of the Holocaust not only should but will read it.
Matthew Lange, Professor of Sociology, McGill University:
Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg's Intimate Violence is an enjoyable read, rare in its analysis of the pogroms, and offering a relatively new interpretation of their causes. The authors do a very impressive job of gathering and analyzing data and offer a nice statistical analysis showing evidence in favor of the threat-power model in this well-written and easy-to-follow book.
Dariusz Stola, Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences:
Intimate Violence is a piece of scholarship of supreme quality and is a significant contribution to Holocaust history and studies of interethnic violence. Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg skillfully apply statistical methods and they offer insights that reach well beyond the specific time and region of the events.
[T]hey clearly demonstrate that divisive and polarizing nationalist politics is a principal cause of intercommunal violence in the modern democratic era, which in circumstances unrestrained by state and local authorities may take a genocidal turn.
Kopstein and Wittenberg, in Intimate Violence, leave us with a better understanding of these terrible events.
An original and well-crafted study of interethnic competition on the eve of the Holocaust. The book advances our understanding of the microfoundations of ethnic conflict and challenges existing explanations of violence against Jews in twentieth-century Eastern Europe. Kopstein and Wittenberg also assemble a fine-grained historical data set that could help address further questions about interethnic relations. As such, the book has much to offer scholars of intercommunal violence, nationalism, and Eastern European politics.
Kopstein and Wittenberg took an initiative with this critical, interdisciplinary step toward a subtler understanding of the origins of communal violence.... The chief merit of the book lies in the refutation of certain persistent arguments that historians have advanced regarding the pogroms.... Kopstein and Wittenberg have offered an excellent outline for more research. It is an innovative and elegant book.
Offering an interesting political-scientific take on the pogroms in this region, Intimate Violence is sure to spark debate.
These are thought-provoking arguments and provide researchers with methods for a macro-level examination of variation in local violence. They also draw needed attention to explaining the non-occurrence of violence in contexts in which it seems likely to take place.
