Hirsh Lekert’s Revenge
The Escalation of Violence on the Imperial Periphery around 1900
Felicitas Fischer von Weikersthal, Anke Hilbrenner
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
From the perspective of the centre, the outer rim of the Russian Empire was marked by backwardness and violence. The Jews in the Pale of Settlement represented an allegedly dangerous mix of alien religious traditions and polit-ical radicalism. Tsarist policy responded to this complex situation with a particularly repressive policy. The microcosm of the Vilna province in spring 1902 shows how imperial and anti-imperial violence escalated step by step. A key event in this escalation was the assassination of Viktor von Wahl, the governor of the Vilna province, by the Jewish shoemaker Hirsh Lekert. Lekert was executed, but his example was instructive. In the revolutionary year of 1905, violence on the periphery spread to the point of conflagration.
(Osteuropa 4/2016, pp. 3–4)