The Velizh Affair

by Eugene M. Avrutin

  were fair game.52

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  •

  Boundaries of the Law

  tO bring its inVestigatiOn tO a resolution, the inquisitorial commis-

  sion needed to establish with certainty that Jews played a formative role

  in the murder conspiracy. To do this, the inquisitors needed to elicit a

  full confession from the Jews themselves: that they had taken part in

  the affair in all its grisly details. In the early modern world, authorities could choose from an extensive repertoire of instruments to establish

  what really happened in a case: the tying of hands and the application

  of hot pincers to the soles of feet, stretching on the rack, ankle presses, metallic braces or screws to crush legs, sleep deprivation, cold water

  drips, knouting, and the strappado. The strappado was the most pop-

  ular method of forcing people to talk. The accused’s hands were tied

  together and attached to a rope; the rope was thrown over a beam, at

  which point the person was hoisted high into the air, brought down

  for a short period of time, and raised again.1 All these techniques were

  used to get criminals to confess to their dark secrets, to provide more

  information, or to affirm a recantation.

  As surprising as it may seem, Russia followed what might be termed

  the basic principles of Confucian justice, applying torture sparingly and

  discriminately.2 But in contrast to the Chinese legal system, the Russian

  government had no interest in sanctioning the use of pain solely to make

  the victim suffer. In early modern Russia, judicial torture was prescribed

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  only to double- check the veracity of the confession and the names of the

  co- conspirators. Muscovite courts went to great lengths to limit the use

  of unregulated torture, stipulating when and how much pain could be

  administered at any given time.3 In fact, torture was an exceptional pro-

  cedure in the criminal law, reserved for crimes such as witchcraft, reli-

  gious dissent, espionage, and urban uprisings. On those rare occasions,

  the guilty were subject to mass spectacles of punishment— flogging,

  branding, beheading by ax and sword, bludgeoning on a large wooden

  wagon wheel, and public executions.4

  In the eighteenth century, the Russian government further lim-

  ited the use of state- sanctioned violence, reserving judicial torture

  and capital punishment for extraordinary crimes such as premeditated

  murder and homicide.5 As the logic of cruel bodily punishment came

  under restriction, Russia— in comparison to other European states

  and China— was among the front runners in reducing the violently

  physical element. On September 27, 1801, Tsar Alexander I formally

  abolished the use of torture, declaring that “nowhere in any shape or

  form should anyone dare to permit or perform any torture, under pain

  of inevitable and severe punishment . . . that accused persons should

  personally declare before the Court that they had not been subjected

  to any unjust interrogation.”6

  This does not mean, of course, that the Russian law code prohibited

  the application of various other tactics to compel people to talk. During

  the reign of Nicholas I, it was not unusual for suspects to be flogged and

  harassed, set in pillories, and confined in damp and dark cellars.7 The

  inquisitorial records— and especially Jews’ personal correspondence—

  demonstrate in extraordinary detail the methods that the inquisitors

  used to exploit prisoners’ weaknesses. Operating in the privacy of a room,

  relying on a variety of confrontational and manipulative strategies to

  uncover the depth of the conspiracy, Strakhov and his team worked the

  prisoners into a state of frenzy. Jews were placed in semi- solitary, indefinite detention and interrogated for hours on end. Some were humili-

  ated, restrained in leg irons, and threatened with coercion. Others were

  slapped and beaten at will until they agreed to sign written statements.

  The inquisitors used the threat of pain, false- evidence ploys, and lengthy questioning to lower the Jews’ psychological capacity for resistance.8

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  In addition to rendering pain and emotional desperation, something

  else was driving their actions. Strakhov knew all too well that, if the Jews failed to provide a fundamentally convincing narrative of what happened in the spring of 1823, the chances of successfully resolving the case were radically diminished. Time and time again, the inspector- councilor

  decided to put Jews through particularly grueling sessions designed to

  break down the human spirit by assaulting the victim’s dignity.9

  In the initial stages of the investigation, Strakhov shrugged off the

  reports of abuse, telling the governor- general that “not one prisoner

  has required even the slightest medical treatment.”10 But even if the

  inquisitors did not stray outside the bounds of the permissible (a highly

  unlikely proposition), confinement not only made the prisoners physi-

  cally weak; there were emotional consequences as well. Shmerka Berlin

  suffered from tuberculosis, and it did not take him long to have trouble

  breathing and eventually fall into a state of hysteria. Shifra Berlin passed away from poor health not long after she was taken into custody. Evzik

  and Khanna Tsetlin and their daughter Itka suffered mental breakdowns

  from induced debilitation and repeated abuse.

  Imprisonment took a physical and an emotional toll on the pris-

  oners. Standing in front of the inquisitorial commission, many Jews

  found it difficult to cope with the trauma of the oral interrogations.

  Some individuals had a hard time getting their point across in a lan-

  guage only a handful of people knew reasonably well. Others suc-

  cumbed to depression from which they never fully recovered, and often

  lost their train of thought in mid- sentence during the interrogations.

  In this respect, the Velizh Jews shared with many other prisoners in

  diverse geographic and temporal contexts the different emotions— fear,

  loneliness, melancholia, futile rebellion, abject despair, boredom, and

  blind rage— that made prison life so painful.11 For the prisoners and

  their families, long silences or interruptions in communication exac-

  erbated the isolation. The Jews yearned for mundane details about the

  health and safety of friends and relatives, of wives and husbands, and

  especially of young children who were suddenly left without a parent.

  Predictably, not knowing how events were unfolding at home— while

  having little physical contact with their loved ones— wreaked emo-

  tional havoc on their psyches.

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  Although the evidence is sketchy, the individuals swept up in the

  investigation— jailers, guards, accusers, and inquisitors— suffered as

  well. Some fell ill for stretches of time; others were unable to confront

  their own demons. Given the proclivity for the inquisitors to omit

  or erase incriminating details from the official documentary record,

  we have only a few examples, though they are revealing in their own

  right. The domesti
c servant Maria Kovaleva, who allegedly assisted

  Jews in murdering two Christian boys, committed suicide after going

  through a particularly trying interrogation session. Perhaps her con-

  science got the better of her?12 Ivan Cherniavskii, a security guard,

  had an affair with Melania Zhelnova (the eighteen- year- old peasant

  girl arrested in 1825). Although she did not play an important role

  in the case, Zhelnova had a baby and was forced to reside with the

  child in a small wooden cottage for the duration of the investigation.

  After several years of sneaking across the courtyard for nighttime

  visits, Cherniavskii was reprimanded and put in isolation. Eventually,

  the guard ended his life by slashing his throat with a razor. Shortly

  before he was found in his room in a pool of blood, another offi-

  cial overheard Cherniavskii complaining that “his life had become

  unbearable.”13

  Strakhov had much to gain by successfully completing his assign-

  ment. At the very least, the inspector- councilor would set himself up for

  a handsome promotion and a nice increase in monthly salary. Perhaps

  he would even receive an appointment to an administrative post that

  carried with it an impressive jump in civil service rank. To be sure,

  zealous service was an important measure of achievement in Russia’s

  bureaucratic world. Nevertheless, it would be misleading to interpret

  Strakhov’s obsessions solely in terms of his career aspirations. Belief in

  the efficacy of diabolical ritual practices retained much of its appeal to

  a broad spectrum of the population, including the judges, magistrates,

  and administrators who controlled the judicial machinery in the pro-

  vincial world and beyond. In the Russian Empire, as in other times and

  places around the world, the distinction between enlightened skeptics

  and believers in supernatural, demonic forces was never rigid. What

  applied for the witch- hunts was also the case for the blood libel: judicial uncertainty could and often did coexist with the belief in the reality of

  the crime.14

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  The documentary evidence suggests that Strakhov was convinced that

  Jewish ritual murder was a fact of life. In the very first months of the

  investigation, the inspector- councilor outlined some of the reasons in

  a communication to Nikolai Nikolaevich Khovanskii. First, Strakhov

  dismissed the fact that not one blood libel accusation had stood the test

  of legal scrutiny, even though such cases were investigated “rather fre-

  quently.” Strakhov was convinced that Jews were unusually resourceful

  at covering up their tracks and that they managed to find creative ways

  to mask their “evil deeds.” That the accusations were made only in places

  where Jews enjoyed residential privileges served as the best indicator

  that they continued to practice demonic rituals. It was no coincidence

  that “in those provinces where residence was prohibited to Jews not one

  accusation had been made.” Why would someone want to commit the

  offense? The most common explanations for any ordinary criminal act

  were enmity, hardship, and financial gain. But none of those potential

  motivations was helpful in solving this particular case. After a careful

  consideration of the facts, Strakhov concluded that Fedor’s murder

  was no ordinary crime: “The boy was not in any position to harm any-

  one. Furthermore, what would someone gain from killing an innocent

  child? Even if we were to imagine that someone hoped to profit from

  the [murder], then wouldn’t he have been killed by one blow [to the

  head], and not ritually murdered, as the forensic evidence demonstrates

  [so clearly]?”15

  Taking a sweeping look at the fruit of the commission’s labors,

  Strakhov could not have been more pleased with the progress. None of

  the extravagant claims made against him stood the test of legal scrutiny.

  By the fall of 1828, the inquisitorial commission amassed an impressive

  dossier: a forensic report, an assortment of confessions, one blood-

  stained cloth, two knives, a piece of foreskin, and reference works that

  clearly established the theological origins and historicity of ritual mur-

  der. As the investigation shifted to last, critical stage, all signs indicated that it was just a matter of time before the inquisitorial commission

  would resolve the contradictions and put the pieces together.

  An impressive list of sophisticated accusatory works helped Strakhov

  and his team of inquisitors rationalize the murder. These learned

  treatises— based on a wealth of printed and oral expert testimonies—

  provided textual proof that ritual murder was real. By the end of the

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  eighteenth century, no fewer than seventy- six books and pamphlets were

  printed in old Poland. Providing long descriptions of past cases, the pub-

  lished works played a significant role in the prosecution of Jews. Highly

  detailed quotations from the Talmud and other sacred writings— usually

  made by converts or renegade members of the Jewish community with

  knowledge of the Hebrew language— helped bolster the charge.16

  The inquisitorial commission collected several different works, all of

  which justified the basic premise that Jews needed Christian blood for

  ritual purposes.17 The most important of these was a partial translation

  of Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk’s brochure Złość żydowska (Jewish Wrath).

  Sołtyk first gained notoriety in a ritual murder trial in Zhitomir.18 In

  1753, he accused thirty- one Jews of using Christian blood in religious

  rituals, twelve of whom were found guilty of the crime and sentenced

  to death by quartering. Sołtyk not only reprinted documents from

  the trial, but also referenced evidence supplied by an extremist Jewish

  sect known as the Frankists (fol owers of a man named Jacob Frank,

  a self- proclaimed prophet of Shabbetai Zvi). In highly publicized dis-

  putations with Polish rabbinical authorities, the Frankists, who at one

  point converted to Catholicism and attempted to conceal their Jewish

  identity, argued that all prophecies about the coming of the Messiah

  had already been fulfilled, that a person can achieve faith in the Messiah

  only through baptism, that the Talmud teaches that Jews need Christian

  blood, and that whoever believes in the Talmud is bound to use it.

  Manipulating a wide range of Jewish sacred works, usually by mistrans-

  lating or misrepresenting key passages, the Frankists taught that human

  sacrifice and the ritual use of Christian blood was an intrinsic part of

  Jewish religious practice.19

  Borrowing freely from previously published almanacs and pamphlets,

  including Frankist popular teachings, Sołtyk explored ritual murder as

  both a religious and social phenomenon. First published in 1760 and

  subsequently reprinted several times, Złość żydowska demonstrated that holy books commanded Jews to use Christian blood in their rites and

  rituals and to defile Christian sacred objects. For Strakhov, Sołtyk’s work was a crucial piece of expert evidence that connected the past with the

  present
, because, as he explained to Khovanskii, it “described actual

  cases of superstitious acts and demonstrated convincingly that Jews

  required Christian blood for religious rituals.”20

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  The Reverend Robert Walsh’s 1827 travel narrative of the Ottoman

  Empire served as further proof that ritual murder could occur anytime

  and anywhere. Walsh described how one day, while passing through

  Galata, a suburb of Pera (in present- day Istanbul), he heard rumors that

  Jews had ritually murdered a Greek boy. “The child of a Greek merchant

  had disappeared,” Walsh explained, “and no one could give any account

  of it.” At first, the authorities thought that a Turk had taken the boy

  for a slave. But after the body was found, with the legs and arms bound

  tight and the wounds visible on the side, they assumed that the boy had

  died “in some extraordinary manner and for some extraordinary pur-

  pose.” Everyone immediately suspected that Jews were responsible for

  the gruesome death. “As it was just after their paschal feast, suspicion,

  people said, was confirmed to certainty. Nothing could be discovered to

  give a clue to the perpetrators, but the story was universally talked of,

  and generally believed, all over Pera.”21

  Walsh bolstered the tale’s credibility by referencing a pamphlet written

  by a Greek Orthodox monk, a convert from Judaism named Neophytos.

  Written in Romanian and originally printed in 1803, Neophytos’s

  A Mystery Hitherto Concealed and Now Published for the First Time

  revealed how Jewish fanatical sects— influenced by ideas found in Jewish

  sacred writings— consumed Christian blood for ritual and medicinal

  purposes. The pamphlet circulated in East European Orthodox mon-

  asteries and was reissued several times.22 In the Russian Empire, the

  production and consumption of accusatory literature on the blood

  libel lacked the vigor of those works produced in early modern Poland.

  Only a handful of books and pamphlets were published in the Russian

  language, nearly all of which were translations of Polish originals.23

  Nevertheless, this genre of literature— much like demonological mate-

  rials on the practice of witchcraft— added religious and intellectual