The Velizh Affair

by Eugene M. Avrutin

  different religious origin or social status, civil courts provided the most effective means of adjudicating disagreements. People turned to district

  or provincial courts to settle a broad range of issues involving contrac-

  tual obligations, monetary compensation, rent, inheritance rights, and

  property.65 Even in those instances when two Jews could have turned to

  the Jewish court system, they usually opted to use civil courts. For the

  ordinary person, the abstract principles of Jewish law proved difficult to

  comprehend, while a ruling based on established commercial practices

  made more practical sense.66

  Not surprisingly, lawsuits represented only a fraction of the total

  number of disagreements that took place between neighbors. Then

  as now, neighborly disputes centered on mundane things: loud noise,

  verbal altercations, rowdy gatherings, rude comments and gestures, per-

  ceived slights, odd or malicious behavior, or anything else that might be

  interpreted as particularly rude or offensive. Scholars working on civil

  litigation practices in other settings observe that many more disputes

  are resolved amicably before they ever appear in court. In whatever time

  or place they live, in other words, people use all possible means to set-

  tle their differences by negotiating, persuading, and reasoning.67 While

  most neighborly feuds were resolved informally, individuals turned to

  imperial Russian courts, in part, because they had few alternatives avail-

  able to them in the first half of the nineteenth century. What else could

  they do, to whom could they turn, if a neighbor refused to return their

  debt, pay their rent, or fulfill their contractual obligation?

  Social tensions were a fundamental, even productive, reality of every-

  day life.68 But benign annoyances always had the potential of erupting

  into something much larger and sinister. It was not unusual for Jews and

  their neighbors to get into arguments, which on occasion could turn

  into fistfights, or for judges to punish residents for theft, arson, personal insults, offensive threats, and vandalism. According to one sample of

  criminal cases, theft and robbery accounted for most crimes committed

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  by and against Jews.69 Although homicide by Christians against Jews or

  Jews against Christians turned out to be an extraordinarily rare phenom-

  enon, it was not uncommon for spontaneous disturbances to take place

  during religious ceremonies, as they did from time to time during the

  Paschal season, with the awesome power of solidifying social boundaries.

  The market town was filled with filth and disease. Poorly ventilated

  and overcrowded homes facilitated influenzas and measles. Animals gave

  humans many of the worst infections, including tuberculosis and viral

  pox, while poor sanitation caused waterborne bacilli to germinate with

  frightening speed. Feces and other water pollutants insured the spread

  of polio, cholera, typhoid, viral hepatitis, whooping cough, and diph-

  theria. People with a low standard of living had a particularly hard time

  fighting off outbreaks of infectious diseases.70 In their journeys across

  the Pale of Settlement, travelers recounted that inns were littered with

  “all kinds of slop and kitchen leftovers,” and that streets were typically

  “narrow and impassably dirty.” The huts, one observer wrote, “sagging

  and propped up on stakes, [resembled] not so much a human habitation

  as a barn.” The economist Andrei Subbotin was struck by the unsightly

  “filth and stench” in Jewish courtyards, although he conceded that the

  buildings “turned out to be much cleaner inside than we expected.”71

  Abraham Cahan recalled that Velizh was surrounded on all sides by

  “expanses of mud and puddles,” the size of which he had never seen

  before.72 Turning his attention to everyday afflictions, the ethnogra-

  pher Moisei Berlin noted that young Jewish children were susceptible

  to hemorrhoids (from sitting down in one place for too long), con-

  sumption (from lack of fresh air and physical exercise), and scrofula

  (from unsanitary home environments and poor diet).73 Thinking back

  to his childhood years, the Yiddish writer Yekhezkel Kotik remembered

  how every year epidemics would break out in his hometown. Children

  would fall ill with measles, smallpox, and scarlet fever. “Diseases, peo-

  ple believed, were inflicted by God himself, and the brackish pool [the

  section of the river alongside the bathhouse] was left to spread diseases

  and epidemics, year in, year out.”74

  In Vitebsk province, scurvy, catarrhal inflammation, scarlet fever,

  and bloody diarrhea were the chief biological killers.75 Experts tour-

  ing the region determined that improper diet, caused mainly by poor

  harvests, contributed to the high mortality rates. Animals desperate for

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  nourishment were vulnerable as well. To understand the complexities of

  Russia’s life, the most capable administrators urged their subordinates

  to compile accurate data about the state of the province. In 1827, more

  than 830 livestock succumbed to disease, causing an estimated 24,900

  rubles in damage.76 Nineteen years later, more than 13,750 horses, 72,000

  horned cattle, and 95,200 small livestock reportedly died from eating

  plant toxins and contaminated grass.77 The health crisis, for humans and

  animals, was probably much more severe than the raw numbers suggest.

  The Ministry of the Interior had a hard time trusting the data that were

  being compiled at the local level. To eradicate frightful afflictions and

  provide medical care in a timely manner, the Vitebsk Provincial Gazette urged physicians to report accurate numbers. Russian authorities were

  particularly concerned that neither public health workers nor private

  practitioners bothered to “report how many sick patients they treated

  or who had received the vaccinations.”78

  It was one thing to know what ailed people, but an entirely different

  matter to treat sick patients. In the second quarter of the nineteenth cen-

  tury, Vitebsk province lacked the basic infrastructure— hospitals, clin-

  ics, and poorhouses— to provide effective medical services. According

  to one inspection report, most of the facilities were housed in primi-

  tive buildings, which often lacked beds, clean linen, patient garments,

  medical supplies, and dishes. Even the largest public hospital in the

  provincial capital of Vitebsk struggled to maintain adequate sanitary

  conditions. Without enough trained doctors and medical assistants, it

  could not keep up with the growing demand in healthcare. Predictably,

  the situation turned out much worse in provincial towns such as Velizh

  and Polotsk, where patients were given their meals in “rotten wooden

  bowls.”79

  By the turn of the twentieth century, the situation in public health-

  care showed no signs of improvement. Vitebsk province maintained ten

  public hospitals and sixty- nine pharmacies. But with only one certified

  physician for every 9,500 or more residents, sick people chose to visit a

  local apothecary t
o relieve their pain and discomfort instead of waiting

  in long lines at hospitals. Housed in a private home or shop, apothe-

  caries were unofficial laboratories, specializing in secret medical prod-

  ucts, usually of substandard quality, and exotic powders, spices, pills,

  balsams, healing herbs, oils, and rubs. At least 167 apothecaries were in

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  operation, treating everything from syphilis, scarlet fever, dysentery, and the flu to typhoid, Siberian ulcers, whooping cough, and diphtheria.

  Health inspectors conceded that it was nearly impossible to close down

  the “underground pharmacies,” run by healers with no proper medical

  training, because they “satisfied the needs of the masses.”80

  When dealing with health and disease, Jews and their Slavic neigh-

  bors shared a common cultural frame.81 To manipulate reality, they

  filtered Latin, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Yiddish

  elements and expressions. The remarkable elasticity of this system of

  thought meant that Jews and Slavs employed similar magical tech-

  niques to manipulate the natural world. A network of medical prac-

  titioners, folk healers, and sorcerers relied on a regimen of potions to

  treat common ailments and dysfunctions. They used plants, herbs, and

  roots to prepare special powders. One tried and tested remedy, designed

  to treat fevers, called for exactly seventy- seven grains of legumes to

  be poured into a special pot with a lid. The owner of the pot was

  required to urinate on the legumes and put soft mud around the lid

  so that it would stick firmly to the pot. Afterward, it was to be bur-

  ied deep in the ground where no one would pass over it.82 This and

  many other similar remedies made it into popular handbooks, filled

  with Kabbalistic references, alchemical and astrological symbols, and

  fancy diagrams. On other occasions the do- it- yourself concoctions

  were preserved for posterity in a rich oral folk culture, to which both

  communities contributed.

  The Vitebsk Provincial Gazette featured numerous columns with

  homemade recipes treating everything from Siberian ulcers and diar-

  rhea to common headaches and eye ailments.83 To the believers, the folk

  cures possessed their own inherent logic. Slavs relied on a wide range of

  prayer formulas, spells, and objects to protect themselves and their loved

  ones against hidden dangers lurking within. Men and women employed

  techniques that touched on all aspects of the life cycle, including pre-

  dicting the length of a person’s life, discovering the sex of an unborn

  child, and warding off hidden dangers associated with death and after-

  life. They turned to icons imbued with miraculous healing powers to

  protect homes from fires, cure blindness, and help with difficult child-

  births. They cultivated elaborate friendships with their saints in search

  of wondrous medical cures for paralysis or arthritis. A touch of a saint’s

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  holy body, for instance, could heal an especially piercing toothache or a

  severe inflammation of the nerves. Rubbing a bit of holy oil was widely

  considered an indispensable treatment for a wide range of afflictions.

  Fortune- tellers used water, fire, and mirrors to look into the future to

  discover marriage prospects, address an evil spirit, or find a missing

  person. Dream and vision interpretation was considered a particularly

  effective method to gaze into personal fortunes and misfortunes.84

  Belief in the power of magical cures was widespread among com-

  mon town dwellers, as well as progressively educated elites. Pauline

  Wengeroff, who grew up in a wealthy and very pious Jewish home

  in Brest, recalled how a local folk healer eased pain and affliction. To

  ward off the evil eye, the healer would take a piece of clothing, usually

  a sock or a vest, whisper a secret text, and spit on it three times. For a

  toothache, he would lead the sick child outside at midnight to face the

  moon, and would first stroke the right cheek and then the left one, all

  the while murmuring mystical words. From Kislev until Adar on the

  Hebrew calendar (usually, November until February), Wengeroff also

  noted, her parents roasted goose fat in complete silence, so that the evil

  eye would not fall on it.85 Yekhezkel Kotik’s childhood was stricken by

  fears of evil spirits, demons, and witchcraft. To cure afflictions associated with the evil eye, local healers would rub small bones from a human

  skeleton or two eggs on the spot and whisper incantations. To cure nag-

  ging ailments, for both Jews and Christians, they would apply cupping

  glasses, administer enemas, and perform bloodletting.86

  Attitudes toward the supernatural realm were eclectic and attracted a

  diverse group of practitioners. Tales of spirit possession— the phenome-

  non that an alien spirit, either a dead human or departed soul, entered a

  person and controlled that person’s actions— enjoyed immense popular-

  ity.87 Hasidic parables and tales, as told by tsaddikim to their followers, revealed how wandering souls entered the body of a living person to

  either fulfill a mitzvah or atone for a sin. They described the prolifera-

  tion of dark forces in everyday life and the triumph of tsaddikim over the powers of impurity.88 Kotik recalled how everyone in his hometown

  believed in the existence of demons, devils, and evil spirits. The teachers would “stuff the heads of their pupils with innumerable tales of devils’

  doings.” They knew exactly what awaited a man as soon as he entered

  the world to come, and how he ascended to heaven. When someone

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  would die that person would be “laid out on the floor, not on the bare

  floor, but on straw, so that each wisp pricks him a thousand needles.

  Then evil spirits surround him during the funeral procession. And when

  the body is lowered into the grave, the Angel of Dumah . . . rips open his

  belly, plucks out his guts, and flings them into his face. He then turns

  the corpse over, strikes it with a white- hot iron rod, subjects it to excru-ciating torture, and finally tears the body to pieces.”89

  The power to heal and to harm developed in relation to one another.

  The invisibility of demons was their most frightful attribute. Jews exper-

  imented with an eclectic mix of magical practices to counteract elements

  deemed harmful or suspicious. To protect their earthly possessions,

  they wore protective amulets containing biblical texts, numerical and

  alphabetical codes, and precious stones. They hung mezuzahs outside

  their doors and recited the Shema (the oldest fixed prayer in Judaism)

  into their children’s ears while they were asleep.90 No less significant

  were the ways in which the diabolical anti- world played in creating

  strains, divisions, and fears in daily life. Since the late Middle Ages, an extensive Christian folklore had told elaborate stories of Jewish sorcery,

  the potency of blood, and the salvific powers of human sacrifice. The

  conviction that Jews deployed magic to inflict harm on their neighbors

  ran deep in the popular imagination. In Velizh, as in so many other

  sma
ll towns in the borderlands, tales about evil Jews and ritual murder

  circulated by word of mouth in streets, taverns, and courtyards.91

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  sar Alexander Pays a Visit

  in aPril 1825, tsar alexanDer I and his wife, Elizabeth Alekseevna,

  decided to take a holiday somewhere warm before the start of the

  autumn rain. They talked of Germany and Italy but in the end agreed

  on Taganrog, a quiet port town on the Azov Sea. Elizabeth’s health had

  deteriorated, and she often took to her chamber for days at a time.

  The route Alexander chose ensured that every arrangement had been

  made to guarantee her rest and comfort. They would avoid major urban

  centers, where there would be official processions and exhausting reli-

  gious ceremonies. From St. Petersburg, they would proceed due south

  to Velizh, turn southeast by way of Dorogobuzh, Roslavl, Novgorod-

  Severskii, and Belgorod, and pass through Bakhmut before reaching

  their destination. After months of careful planning, Alexander left the

  imperial capital on September 1, three days before Elizabeth. Traveling

  some 1,400 miles at a reckless pace in a carriage drawn by three horses,

  Alexander took exactly thirteen days to reach the Azov Sea.1

  The tsar tried to keep his travel plans a secret. In the last years of

  his life, dissatisfied with himself and his accomplishments, Alexander

  preferred to spend his days in solitude and quiet. News, however, not

  only reached the diplomatic corps in the capital but the provincial

  towns along the mapped out itinerary as well. The moment he set foot

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  in Velizh on September 4, Alexander was handed a complaint by none

  other than Maria Terenteeva:

  In the year 1823 (I can’t recall the exact month and date) a misfortune

  befell my son. In the town of Velizh, in Vitebsk province, the Jews,

  residents of that town, stabbed my son Demian Emelianov [ sic] to

  death on the Slobotsky Bridge. I only recall the names Iuzik and his

  wife Khanna who grabbed [my son] on the bridge and killed him.

  Because of this incident, I personally asked the chief of police, whose