longer they talked, the more coherent was her narrative. Strakhov spoke
with Terenteeva on no fewer than seven occasions, with Maksimova
nine times, and Kozlovskaia six times.36 In the spring of 1826, Strakhov
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announced to the governor- general that “Maria Terenteeva’s and Avdotia
Maksimova’s confessions revealed that the boy Fedor Emel’ianov had
been abducted because of Jews’ beliefs and enticements.”37 By April
1827, after several more rounds of interviews, Strakhov was able to
obtain a full confession from Kozlovskaia as well.
After many months of intense work, Strakhov was able to get
Terenteeva, Maksimova, and Kozlovskaia to corroborate each other’s
testimonies to the last intimate detail. The richly textured story con-
tained al the salient tropes of the ritual murder drama as enacted in
settings around the world: of deceit and conspiracy, sexual transgression
and apostasy, and shockingly cruel actions inspired by fanatical rituals.
It also contained many familiar motifs and stock characters such as the
Christian maidservant who was intimately familiar with Jewish affairs
and religious rites.38 Ultimately, what began as a set of discrete, highly
fragmented testimonies turned into a tightly controlled confessional
narrative, with four principal elements: abduction, torture, conversion,
and aftermath.
In the final form, Khanna Tsetlina masterminded the affair, and Maria
Terenteeva, contrary to previous accounts, was the one who enticed the
boy with the sugar. On Easter Sunday the beggar woman came by the
Tsetlin home for a visit, as she did on occasion. Khanna gave her wine
and a five- ruble silver coin and instructed her to bring back a Christian
boy. Although Maria refused at first, Khanna reassured her that the boy
would be loved and cared for, at which point she gave her two additional
silver rubles, more wine, and the sugar. Avdotia Maksimova overheard
the entire conversation. Later that afternoon, she greeted Maria and the
boy at the gate. There were many Jews at the Tsetlin home, including
Khanna and Evzik Tsetlin, their daughter Itka, and nanny Risa. The
moment that Maria and Avdotia were safely inside, Khanna offered
more wine, making them promise not to say a word to anyone.39
Under cover of darkness, they sneaked the boy across the marketplace
to Mirka Aronson’s house, where Shmerka and Slava Berlin enclosed
the child in a tiny little room. Maria spent Holy Week (excluding
Saturday, the obligatory day of rest for Jews) transferring the boy back
and forth between the two homes. That Wednesday, Khanna instructed
Avdotia to place the boy in an old chest that was used to store bottled
preserves. To make sure that no one would locate him, they decided to
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73
wrap him in linen. So the boy would not suffocate, the door of the
chest was left slightly ajar to let in a bit of air. Maria noted that this
was why the investigators were not able to locate the boy when they
searched Aronson’s house. Avdotia observed that Jews “withheld food
and drink the entire week,” while Praskoviia revealed that “special
guards were stationed outside the house the entire time the investiga-
tors conducted the investigation.”40
At the back of the house, in the middle of a large chamber room, a
wooden barrel lined with steel nails hung on a rope directly from the
ceiling. A table covered with a white tablecloth, with a large candela-
brum and candlesticks, stood adjacent to the window facing the court-
yard. To get them in the mood, Khanna and Mirka offered Maria and
Avdotia wine and an assortment of snacks and afterward told them to
throw the body in the river as soon as they collected the blood. At that
point, Maria and Avdotia went down to the cellar to fetch the boy.
While they were undressing him, Praskoviia walked in and mumbled
something under her breath. Avdotia immediately told Slava not to let
Prakoviia leave the room, warning her that she would meet the same fate
if she dared disobey. Praskoviia fetched a copper basin and fresh water.
Maria grabbed the boy by his face, placed him on the table, and carefully
washed the body, from head to toe, before enclosing him in the wooden
barrel. All the Jews who had gathered around took turns swinging the
boy back and forth; the ritual lasted nearly two hours. When he was
finally taken out, the entire body looked bright red, as if the skin had
been burned. Fedor was placed on top of the table, at which point Shifra
Berlina trimmed the boy’s nails and Poselennoi circumcised him.41
The time had now come to take the boy to the “great Jewish school”
or “synagogue,” as it was called on occasion. Located on Shkolina Street,
around a two- minute walk from the marketplace, the school was taller
than all the buildings in its vicinity and played a central role in Jewish
communal life. It was still dark outside when the boy was brought to
the school, where a large group of Jews had gathered. Maria covered
the boy’s mouth with a handkerchief to prevent anyone from hear-
ing him scream. Fedor was placed on another table covered with a
white tablecloth with both of his legs and hands firmly bound together
with a leather belt. Maria started the ritual by softly slapping the boy’s
cheeks two times. Avdotia and the Jews took turns doing the exact same
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the Velizh affair
thing. Poselennoi handed Maria a steel object that resembled a nail, and
ordered her to puncture the skin just below the boy’s left nasal passage.
The thought of injuring the boy frightened Maria, and when she saw
blood, she threw the nail on the ground. Poselennoi handed the nail
to Avdotia who pierced the right side in the same exact manner. For
the next several minutes, Maria, Avdotia, and the Jews took turns stab-
bing the boy’s body. The boy screamed in pain, but after a few minutes
passed, offered a timid smile until he finally lost consciousness and died.
When Maria took him out of the basin, the entire body was pierced with
tiny little holes covered in blood. Avdotia cleansed Maria with a special
liquid, and then proceeded to dress the boy in the same exact clothes he
wore when he set out on his walk on Easter Sunday.42
Fearing that their secrets would be exposed, the Jews forced all
three women to convert to the Jewish faith. Whereas Praskoviia con-
verted to Judaism only a few hours before the boy was tortured and
ritually sacrificed, Maria and Avdotia partook in an elaborate con-
version ceremony several days before the kidnapping. It was Holy
Wednesday when the medical healer Orlik Devirts invited Maria to
his home. Offering her wine, he warned her that authorities would
exile her to Siberia if she refused to convert. Maria did exactly as she
was told. Orlik led her to the Jewish school, where a group of Jews
had gathered, many of whom she had never seen before. Maria drank
a glass of bread wine and immediately became inebr
iated. Three Jews
proceeded to take off all her clothing, and as she sat drunk and naked
on the floor, they washed her with wine or some special liquid that
stung her skin. Afterward, so as to mask her identity, they dressed her
in a man’s overcoat and took her to the river, where she was immersed
in the water. Before bringing her back to the school, the Jews sprinkled
warm water on her.43
In a ritual resembling the witches’ sabbath, Maria passed through
a fire ring and stood on top of a sweltering hot iron pan. The Jews
encircled Terenteeva so that she would not be able to escape. They cov-
ered her mouth so she would not be able to scream and ordered her to
swear allegiance to the Jewish nation, renounce her Christian beliefs,
and accept the tenets of the Jewish faith. Only after she agreed did they
permit her to step down from the hot iron pan. Afterward, Maria put
on a special blouse and rubbed her burned feet with yellow ointment.
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75
She then stood in front of a wooden cabinet (Torah ark), where the
Commandments (Torah scrolls) were hidden behind a curtain.44
As Maria sat in front of the Torah ark on the very tips of her fingers,
covered in a black and white prayer shawl, Iankel’ Chernomordik, the
schoolteacher, came over and sat next to her. Iankel’ placed a piece of
paper on her knees with the image of the Holy Spirit, calling it “the
gods of the Christians,” and put a similar piece of paper on his own
knees. Maria then spit on the image, renounced her beliefs, and recited
several strange words. The schoolteacher proceeded to spit on the image
as he instructed Maria to open the cabinet with her left thumb. And as
she was holding the Commandments in both hands, he kissed her and
called her by her new name, Sara.45
In no time, Chernomordik (who also went by the nickname Petushok
or Cockerel) kissed her and informed her that it was now time for the
wedding ceremony with Khaim Khrupin. Maria was led into a special
chamber where there were two beds, one of which was designated for
her. The moment that Khaim lay down next to her, he “caressed her
in the same exact manner he would caress his wife.” When they finally
returned to the school, the Jews offered her an expensive dress and a
nice pair of shoes. Khaim warned her that she should continue to wear
her simple peasant clothing so that no one would be able to recognize
her. All the Jews began to kiss and congratulate her for converting to
the Jewish faith, although Maria “knew deep down in her soul that she
remained a devout Uniate.”46
A similar religious ceremony awaited Avdotia. Khanna offered
Avdotia plenty of wine to drink, making her promise not to say a word
about anything she had witnessed. To be certain that none of the secrets
would be revealed, Khanna wanted Avdotia to convert to the Jewish
faith. It was nearly nightfall on Low Monday when the ceremony took
place. That day, Avdotia was given more spirits to drink than usual and
was sent over to Petushok’s cottage. Avdotia told Petushok that she did
not know why she was required to convert. But Petushok reassured her
that he would teach her how to pray and that she would become a faith-
ful Jew. He brought her to “the school where all the rich Jews came to
pray,” wrapped her in a plain white shawl, and brought her in front of
the Torah ark. Petushok opened the curtain and explained that this was
where the Jews kept the Commandments.
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As she stood in front of the ark, Petushok took out a special note-
book and told her to repeat strange words after him. Afterward, he spat
nine times, telling her that “in the sky, land, and water there’s only one
God. And even though every person in the universe prays to their own
God, there’s only one eternal truth.” He then handed her a whisk to
hold in her right hand and a citron in her left hand, and made her bring
her hands directly to her mouth. After kissing the tips of her fingers,
he placed them on the Commandments, called her by her new Jewish
name Risa, and offered her a glass of red wine.47
After Praskoviia Kozlovskaia’s conversion ceremony, Iosel’ Glikman
led all three women to the Torah ark. As he was taking a big book
from behind the curtain, Iosel’ reminded them not to tell a single soul
what they had witnessed. He then recited several passages from the
book. And once Glikman stopped, a group of Jews walked in with the
antimins— a rectangular piece of linen, decorated with representations
of the entombment of Christ, the four Evangelists, and inscriptions
related to the Passion— that they had stolen from the St. Il’insk Church.
In Eastern Orthodoxy, the antimins is used to celebrate the Eucharist
and is unfolded only during the Divine Liturgy.48 Only after Maria and
the Jews took turns doing unimaginable horrors to the sacred piece of
cloth did they dispose the body in the river. It was early in the morning
and the sun was about to rise. Fearing that someone would see them,
the women reasoned that the most inconspicuous thing to do was to
dump the body in the woods on the outskirts of town.49
It was now time for the most important part of the ritual: the distri-
bution of the blood. All the blood was collected in a special basin and
stored in three large glass bottles. While the women were busy dumping
the body in the woods, Iosel’ Glikman took one bottle to the town of
Uly. Fratka Devirts took everyone back to the school, where a table with
two glass bottles and a basin stood in the middle of the largest room in
the building. Her husband, Orlik, divided the blood into two bottles
and soaked up what remained of the liquid with a large piece of linen
that measured around four and a half feet long. The cloth was cut evenly
in small pieces and distributed among the Jews. The bottles were stored
under lock and key in a special closet in Mirka Aronson’s house. The
following year, at the time of Passover, Orlik Devirts took Terenteeva
to Vitebsk. They went directly to a house made of bricks, where two
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77
Jewish women greeted them at the door. The older one knew just what
to do with the blood, and immediately took the bottle inside and mixed
it with an unidentified liquid. On their way back home, Terenteeva and
Devirts stopped by Liozno, a neighboring town, to drop off the third
bottle. Kozlovskaia testified that she witnessed Mirka Aronson’s cook,
Basia, mix small drops of blood to bake krendels (pretzels).50
The confessional narrative provided authorities sufficient grounds to
move forward with the criminal investigation. It remains unclear what
Terenteeva, Maksimova, and Koslovskaia hoped to gain from implicat-
ing themselves in the murder conspiracy. Perhaps they thought that
Strakhov would release them as soon as they told what he wanted to hear?
After all, was it not the Jews he was really after? Or perhaps jealousy and greed motivated them to tell
their tale? Whatever the case, Nicholas’s
paranoia with the dangers of religious sectarianism meant that authori-
ties responded to the allegations in a most serious manner. The idea was
to uncover the conspiracy and remove once and for all the socially harm-
ful elements from public view. In April 1827, nearly nineteen months
after the case was officially reopened, Khovanskii sealed shut the great
Jewish school and ordered Strakhov to “get to the bottom of things as
quickly as possible.”51 To expedite matters, the governor- general sent
officer Zaikovskii of the Vitebsk provincial treasury, collegiate- assessor Khrutskii of the Vitebsk provincial court, and general- major Shkurin
to assist Strakhov with the case. Although the crime was most serious,
punishable by the harshest penalties in the Russian criminal law code,
convicting Jews of ritual murder was an entirely different matter.52 To
establish a foolproof case, Strakhov and his team of inquisitors would
need Jews to confess to their darkest secret: that a Jewish cabal had in
fact conspired to sacrifice a Christian boy for his blood.
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4
•
The Confrontations
During his first few mOnths in Velizh, Vasilii Ivanovich Strakhov
resided in a modestly furnished apartment in the very center of town. It
did not take long for the inspector- councilor to set up a regular harem
in his home. Women of ill repute, disguised in black cassocks, with
cups of wine or vodka in their hands, were reportedly spotted there at
all hours of the night. The word on the street was that Strakhov paid
handsomely for their company, and that he, too, could be seen in the
sort of large flowing garment usually worn by priests, bishops, and
monastics.1 As time went on, Strakhov realized that he needed a larger
venue to carry out an elaborate criminal investigation. In July 1826, he
found just the place he was looking for. This wooden house, located on
Bogdanovicheva Street, was spacious enough to comfortably accommo-
date al the members of the inquisitorial commission. The local jail, with
space for no more than six inmates, was in a state of disrepair. Strakhov
wasted no time in transforming the remaining rooms of his new home
into a makeshift place of detention.2
The Bogdanovicheva house played a central role in the criminal inves-
The Velizh Affair Page 12