Can someone help me wit a question on "fiddler on the roof"

You might want to ask on the history board, but here is my answer (let me preface by the disclaimer that I am no expert.) Pogroms were condoned because the country was strongly anti-semitic. In the movie (which, is like the play, as near as I recall,) it needed to take place to motivate Tevya and family to move from Russia. Without some motivation, he, as a character would have stayed put in his little village. The play would have meant an entirely different thing, then. The play was based upon a short story writer (name escapes me,) who was called "the yiddish Mark Twain," or maybe it was "the Russian Mark Twain." Really, try go ask on the history board, or let's hope lightwizard notices this and has a better answer than I...

Yes, Czarist Russia was notoriously anti-Semetic. There really is no reason beyond that for the pogroms. Many Jews in Russia at the time felt that life under Communism would be an improvement. They were wrong. If you want some personal history about someone who actually lived at the time of the Czar as a kid, and then under Lenin, you should read my grandfather's memoirs here: http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7047

Incidentally, the author of the short stories in Yiddish that inspired the play/movie was named Sholom Aleichem.

Good answers, guys and gals -- did Lola pull that one out of her garter?