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For the Bolsheviks, stopping pogroms was a matter of self-interest as well as ethics. They had long known that the conflation of Jew and revolutionary would redound against them, and Trotsky's role as leader of the Red Army brought these slanders to a fever pitch. [...] Levin himself made a gramophone recording to convince soldiers that antisemitism was a tool of the bourgeoisie.

The audiobook narrator just pronounced Einstein as “Einshtein” when she had not talked like Sean Connery once before. Then she pronounced the word “Haitians” as “Ha-ee-tee-ans.” Many such examples before this. It’s so grating and distracting. I wish Molly had narrated the whole book and not just the intro. Very tempted to pick up a physical copy to finish the rest.

Just like lynchings in the American South, pogroms were family affairs. Blood-smeared Russian mothers loaded their pushcarts with the spoils from looted Jewish houses, then had their kids torch the homes behind them as they left.