documents you wish to see, please tell me, and I’ll do everything in
my power to copy them for you.”13 Not one to turn down a good offer,
Dubnov asked for several files, including a handful pertaining to the
Velizh case. Gessen had outlined an extensive research program for
himself long before he set foot in the archive. But all the topics on
the list, he quickly realized, paled in comparison with the blood libel
case. In fact, after Ryvkin had asked him to look at some of the newly
discovered archival papers, Gessen decided to focus all his energy on
Velizh. “Perhaps I am wrong,” Gessen confided to Dubnov, “but I don’t
trust [Ryvkin] and this is why I am being extraordinarily cautious.”
“If you have decided to put aside your work on the ritual murder case
in Velizh,” he continued, “I would be grateful if you passed it on to
me.”14 Dubnov not only approved the request, but he also shared all his
research notes with his protégé.
At the archive, Gessen located the prized memorandum, as well as
eight additional “bundles of uncatalogued manuscripts.” To transcribe
the entire case record would take months, possibly even years. Eager to
make a name for himself in the scholarly community, Gessen wanted
to publish his research as quickly as possible. He requested help from
Preface
xv
the Jewish Historical- Ethnographic Society, but the organization was
not in a position to support such an extensive project. Undeterred, the
ambitious historian pressed ahead. By August 1902, Gessen had man-
aged to complete a full draft of a manuscript. The result is a concise
and extremely valuable historical reconstruction of the case, based on
a close reading of the Senate memorandum, as well as Dubnov’s notes
and additional published sources.15
For years, every scholar who worked on the Velizh case recognized
its extraordinary potential— not only for narrating a highly dramatic
crime story, but also for illuminating an entire historical epoch. Yet no
one was able to make good use of the archival materials. Ryvkin had
no luck locating the memorandum. Gessen did not have the time and
the financial resources to read all the uncatalogued documents. In the
early years of the revolution, the Commission for Investigating Blood
Libel Materials decided to publish the entire archive, but those lofty
plans were never realized. In late December 1920, as part of a nation-
wide campaign to centralize cultural organizations and initiatives, the
Commissariat of Education and the Evsektsiia (the Jewish section of the
Communist Party) dissolved the commission. According to Dubnov’s
recollection of the events, the scholars spent more time debating the
veracity of the ritual murder charge than editing the documents for
publication.16
Thus, in spite of all the noble aspirations, the Velizh archive sat
untouched for more than ninety years on the dusty shelves of the old
Senate building. Although I spent much time in the reading room of the
Russian State Historical Archive, I stumbled upon the case by accident,
in the most unlikely place— Washington, DC. In the spring of 2008,
I was on research leave at the Woodrow Wilson International Institute
for Scholars. Among the many privileges of working at the institute is
requesting items directly from the Library of Congress. One afternoon
while I was browsing the library’s online catalog, a book entitled the
Memorandum of a Criminal Case piqued my curiosity. To my surprise,
I received an oversized volume, bound in sturdy brown leather, without
an official title page or place and date of publication. After glancing at
the first page, I quickly realized that this was the official protocol of
a sensational ritual murder case prepared by the highest court in the
Russian Empire. In all probability, the Library of Congress acquired
xvi
xvi
Preface
the memorandum in 1931, when the Soviet government sold off some
two thousand volumes of the Winter Palace Library of Tsar Nicholas II.
Some of the books in the collection are deluxe copies in sumptuous
bindings made specifically for presentation to the tsar. Others, such
as the memorandum, are extremely rare legal and administrative texts
issued in minuscule print runs.17
This was an extraordinary find, and I immediately arranged for a
photocopy in hopes of working on the case at a later date. Several years
later, when I returned to St. Petersburg, the Russian State Historical
Archive had relocated to a modern facility at the very edge of the city. It did not take me long to find the index card in the card catalog. Russian
archives are full of immaculately preserved court cases, many of which
are large in size and include a wealth of documents in the dossiers: for-
mal indictments, summaries of evidence, descriptions of testimony,
depositions, petitions, letters, illustrations, and maps. Russian bureau-
crats were well known for their exceptional record keeping, but the
Velizh case, I quickly realized, was larger and more complicated than
any I had ever encountered. Here was a truly remarkable opportunity to
explore a time, place, and community that seldom appeared in studies
of the Russian Empire or East European Jewry.
aCknowledgments
•
this bOOk has been in the making for over seven years. It is a pleasure
to thank the friends and colleagues who took an interest in my work and
helped along the way. They include Todd Endelman, Robert Greene,
Beth Holmgren, Val Kivelson, Diane Koenker, Mikhail Krutikov,
Binyamin Lukin, Alexander Martin, Harriet Murav, Janet Rabinowitch,
Ellie Schainker, David Shneer, Shaul Stampfer, Jeff Veidlinger, Bob
Weinberg, and Paul Werth. Elissa Bemporad and Hillel Kieval read the
manuscript in its entirety and offered numerous constructive comments.
Jeffrey Shallit of the University of Waterloo helped organize the trip to
Velizh and allowed me to use his photographs. Lina Kachulina, the
director of the Velizh Museum, gave us a personal tour of the museum
and the town. I would like to say a special thank you to Emanuel Rota,
David Cooper, Lera Sobol, Eleonora Stoppino, and Harry Liebersohn
for their friendship.
I had the opportunity to present parts of the book at workshops,
conferences, and talks. I owe a debt of gratitude to the feedback on my
work at the Association for Jewish Studies; the Association for Slavic,
East European, and Eurasian Studies; Duke University; the University
of Michigan; the University of Montana; Tel Aviv University; the YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research; the European Social Science History
Conference; the Max Planck Institute for Human Development; and
the University of Illinois.
The University of Illinois provided generous research and administra-
tive assistance. Tom Bedwell took care of all the paperwork. Grants from
xvii
xvi
xviii
acknOwleDgments
the Research Board enabled me to hire three remarkable research assis-
/> tants: Nadja Berkovich, LeiAnna Hammel, and Emily Lipira. The staff
at the Slavic Reference Service and the Interlibrary Loan tracked down
obscure references. I am deeply grateful to the staff of the archives and
libraries where I conducted the research. They include the Center for
Jewish History in New York, the Central Archives for the History of the
Jewish People in Jerusalem, the National Historical Archives of Belarus
in Minsk, and the Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg.
This project has received generous support from different sources.
These include the Tobor Family Endowment, the National Council
for Eurasian and East European Research, the American Philosophical
Society, the Workmen’s Circle/Dr. Emanuel Patt Visiting Professorship
from the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and the Memorial
Foundation for Jewish Culture. A National Endowment for the
Humanities Fellowship, a Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship
from the American Council of Learned Societies, and a Center for
Advanced Study Fellowship from the University of Illinois gave me
extended leaves from teaching and supported the research and writing
of the book.
My editor at Oxford University Press, Nancy Toff, responded to
all my queries in record time, offered numerous helpful suggestions,
and was a delight to work with. I would also like to thank the team
at Oxford— Elda Granata, Julia Turner, Tim DeWerff, and Elizabeth
Vaziri— for their attention to detail and shepherding the book through
the publication process. It was a pleasure to work with Dina Dineva on
the index.
I could not have written this book without the support from my fam-
ily. My parents, Michael and Tanya Avrutin, went above and beyond
the call of duty, helping with things large and small on my extended
absences from home. My wife Yingying and daughter Abi constantly
remind me of the things that matter most. I dedicate this book to them.
THE VELIZH AFFAIR
•
x
A map of the Russian Empire, showing the boundaries of the Pale of Settlement, the fifteen provinces in which Jews (with some exceptions) resided until 1917.
Introduction
•
at first, there DiD nOt seem to be anything highly unusual about
the murder. The idea that Jews killed Christian children to mix their
blood with matzo for the Passover service had circulated in oral and
written traditions since the Middle Ages. In its broad outline, the case
resembled that of dozens of similar investigations from around the
world. From the trial records, we learn that on April 22, 1823, in the
town of Velizh, two small children finished their lunch and went to play
outside. Fedor, a three- year- old boy with short blond hair, gray eyes,
and a middling nose, and his four- year- old cousin, Avdotia, left their
home and walked down a dusty path in an easterly direction. When the
children reached the Konevtse Creek, Avdotia invited her cousin to cross
a small bridge and continue on a walk to the forest. But Fedor refused
and remained there alone, gazing at the construction site of a new home
on the embankment.
It was Easter Sunday when the children went on their walk. Avdotia’s
mother, Kharitina Prokof’eva, did not supervise them and instead used
the time to beg for alms. Kharitina lived at the very edge of town with
her sister, Agafia Prokof’eva, and her brother- in- law, Emel’ian Ivanov.
After receiving alms, Kharitina chatted with a neighbor for several hours
1
2
2
the Velizh affair
until Avdotia came looking for her. To Kharitina’s surprise, Avdotia was
without her cousin. “Where is Fedor?” Kharitina inquired immediately.
Avdotia replied that she had left Fedor standing alone on the bridge and
had not seen him since. Wasting little time, Kharitina took Avdotia to
look for the little boy, but try as they might, the search proved unsuc-
cessful. Several days later, a town resident found the boy’s body in the
thick woods on the outskirts of town, stabbed to death in numerous
places.
In small market towns, where houses were clustered together, resi-
dents knew each other on intimate terms, and people gossiped in tav-
erns, courtyards, and streets, even the most trivial bits of news spread
like wildfire. It did not take long before rumors began to spread that
Jews murdered the little boy. Given the intimacy of small- town rela-
tions, it is tempting to make the argument, as so many scholars do, that
ritual murder accusations were the product of deep- rooted anti- Semitic
prejudice, motivated by ethnic hatred, spite, and resentment.1 No
doubt, these reasons help explain why certain individuals denounced
Jews for engaging in blood sacrifice. Yet they do not offer a satisfac-
tory explanation for the vitality of the tale in the popular psyche— for
why almost all Christian neighbors in small towns like Velizh believed
that Jews were capable of committing the crime. Was this some sort of
conspiracy? Did the townspeople harbor resentment that was brought
out in the open at the time of the investigation? Or were other, more
powerful forces at work?
Thomas of Monmouth, a monk of the Norwich Cathedral Priory,
crafted the definitive account of the first known accusation of Jewish
child- murder. On the first day of Passover in March 1144, Jews allegedly
seized and tortured a twelve- year- old boy named Wil iam. The mur-
der took place in Norwich, a provincial Anglo- Norman city, during
the High Middle Ages.2 “Having shaved his head, they stabbed it with
countless thorn- points, and made the blood come horribly from the
wounds they made.” Jews proceeded to carry the body in a sack into
the woods and bury it in a shallow grave. Just as the streets of Norwich
stirred with strange excitement, the town residents suspected that the
Jews had wrought the evil deed. Shortly thereafter a fiery light “flashed
down from heaven, the which, extending in a long train as far as the
place where the aforesaid body was, blazed in the eyes of many people
intrODuctiOn
3
who were in various places thereabouts.” Thirty- two days after the boy’s
death, the unmutilated and uncorrupted body was found whole and
intact. Fresh blood gushed from the nostrils, astonishing the throng of
bystanders. As the holy boy William, the blessed martyr of Norwich,
performed miraculous cures and wonders, a deadly master narrative
was born.3
In the centuries that followed, the accusations spread from medie-
val England to France and on to the Holy Roman Empire. The earliest
known criminal investigation of Jewish consumption of blood took
place in the Germanic town of Fulda in 1235. The precise details of a
case could change according to the time and location of the accusation.
But much of the basic storyline— that the killing took place during a
ritually charged season of the calendar year, that it was done in imitation of Christ, and that Jews required Christian blood for a peculiar ritual
custom at the time of the Passover holiday— stayed the same.4 Just how
frequently were Jews tried for ritual murder? The most reliable estimates
cite no more than two dozen accusations, most of which occurred in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, although it seems likely that undocu-
mented cases could be discovered in the archives.5
Growing Christian concerns with demonic activity and heresy, to
say nothing of the religious fixation with blood, played an important
role in highly elaborate investigations of ritualized infanticide and can-
nibalism. The vast majority of blood pilgrimages, host miracles, libels,
and blood legends took place across the German- speaking lands of
Central Europe. Ritual murder charges provided the judicial impetus
for political persecution, riots, and the expulsion of entire German
Jewish communities.6 A great deal of the violence took place during the
Paschal season, a time when ritual observances reenacted Christ’s arrest,
torture, and crucifixion. Holy Week, the most emotionally intense time
of the Christian religious calendar, often coincided with Passover. The
similarities between the two ritual systems could lead to intense misun-
derstandings between Jews and Christians, usually over the ceremonial
consumption of unleavened bread, and even to violence.7
It is hard to deny that the blood libel was the product of a dark
imagination. But much like fantasies about witchcraft, the emotion-
ally charged tale of abuse possessed a rationality of its own, drawing its
strength from a culturally specific way the universe operated. One of the
4
4
the Velizh affair
most important reasons for the extraordinary popularity of the blood
libel was the role that magic played in everyday life. Far from constitut-
ing ignorant superstition, or a false belief, magical practices influenced
everyday events.8 In a world where poverty and disease were common
features of daily life, apprehensions about Jewish ritual murder provided
convenient explanations of who was to blame for deaths and illnesses
that defied explanation.9 Spoken spells, potions, and charms not only
protected against natural maladies but also caused personal misfortunes,
The Velizh Affair Page 2