Local violence often accompanies momentous political change, as feelings of political threat intersect with preexisting prejudices to endanger groups popularly associated with reform. This dynamic played out dramatically in Imperial Russia during the 1905 Revolution. Following military defeats in the Russo-Japanese War and a crippling general strike, Tsar Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto in October 1905, ending centuries of absolute autocracy and promising civil and political rights. Many Russians celebrated in the streets, but conservative supporters of the monarchy blamed Jews—who were prominent in liberal and radical movements and comprised over 30% of political arrestees from 1903-1905—for forcing the Tsar’s hand. Within weeks, over 250 anti-Jewish pogroms erupted across the empire’s western territories, with pogromists shouting slogans like “There’s your freedom, there’s your constitution and revolution.”
Within this general context of reform-induced backlash, what sort of communities proved most vulnerable to violent attacks? Existing scholarship offers competing predictions. Some theories emphasize that conflict should be more likely when ethnic groups are roughly equal in size—that is, when society is polarized—because this maximizes the perceived threat groups pose to one another. Other perspectives suggest simpler relationships, with historians of this period arguing that violence was either more likely in settlements with large Jewish populations (due to their visibility and perceived threat) or less likely (because Jews could mount stronger resistance or had greater political influence).
In this paper, the authors study how community demographics shape violent backlash. They analyze comprehensive data on over 1,370 Jewish settlements in the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement from 1904-1906. The authors exploit the October Manifesto as a natural experiment, comparing pogrom incidence before and after the reform across communities with vastly different religious compositions, from settlements where Jews comprised less than 1% of residents to those that were nearly 100% Jewish.
- The sharp increase in pogroms following the October Manifesto was much smaller in settlements with larger Jewish communities. A one standard deviation increase in Jewish population share (26 percentage points) reduced the differential probability of a pogrom by more than one-third of the mean pogrom incidence rate.
- In contrast, religious polarization showed no systematic relationship with violence. Unlike Jewish population share, measures of ethnic polarization, which capture the probability that two randomly selected residents belong to different religious groups, had no robust relationship with pogrom incidence after the October Manifesto.
- The pattern held across numerous robustness checks. The core finding persisted when controlling for economic shocks, spatial diffusion, industrial composition, prior pogrom history, proximity to transportation networks, police presence, and military mobilization patterns.
To explain these results, the authors develop a theoretical model building on established conflict theory. The key insight is that political reforms like the October Manifesto create systematic winners and losers, unlike typical models that focus on random local factors. In this context, only the group that loses from reform, conservative supporters of the old regime, decides whether to use violence to reverse the changes. Their willingness to fight depends on whether they expect to win against organized resistance. The model reveals the following:
- Violent backlash decreases as the beneficiary group grows larger because the disadvantaged group faces higher expected costs when confronting a relatively larger opponent capable of effective resistance. This dynamic distinguishes reform-induced violence from symmetric ethnic conflicts, where polarization typically matters most for determining conflict likelihood.
This research provides new insights into a fundamental question about political transitions: under what conditions does reform trigger violent backlash rather than peaceful adaptation? The findings suggest that while expanding political rights is essential for justice and development, the safety of reform beneficiaries depends critically on their local demographic strength. Minority communities with insufficient numbers to organize effective resistance face the greatest vulnerability during periods of political change.
The implications extend to contemporary debates about democratization, constitutional reform, and minority protection. Understanding how demographic composition shapes responses to political change could help policymakers design transitions and security arrangements that minimize risks of violent backlash while preserving the essential goals of expanding political inclusion and civil rights.