Early morning, October 25, 1917. Workers are taking up strategic points on the windswept streets of Petrograd. In the Winter Palace, head of the Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky anxiously awaits his getaway car. Outside, Red Guards have taken control of the central telephone station. The Bolshevik seizure of power is immanent.

There are no lights or phones in the palace. From his window, Kerensky can see the Palace Bridge: it is occupied by Bolshevik sailors. Finally, an American embassy car is secured, and Kerensky begins his escape from Red Petrograd. As the vehicle turns a corner, Kerensky notices some graffiti, freshly painted on the palace walls: “Down with the Yid Kerensky, long live comrade Trotsky!”

The slogan retains its absurdity a century on: Kerensky, of course, was not Jewish, whereas Trotsky was. What the slogan does point to, however, is the messy and contradictory role that antisemitism played within the revolutionary process. In much of the existing literature on the Russian Revolution, antisemitism is understood as a form of “counterrevolution,” as the preserve of the anti-Bolshevik right.