The Velizh Affair
Page 25
Rokhlia Feitsel’sonova
43
November 9, 1827
Rokhlia Livenson
37
November 9, 1827
161
162
162
aPPenDix
Name
Approximate Age
Date Arrested
Iankel’ Chernomordik
59
November 11, 1827
Ester Chernomordika
57
November 11, 1827
Abram Katson
52
November 17, 1827
Abram Kisin
35
November 29, 1827
Risa Mel’nikova
45
November 30, 1827
Khasia Shubinskaia
36
December 22, 1827
Khaim Khrupin
39
December 22, 1827
Leia Rudniakova
36
December 23, 1827
Itsko Vul’fson
34
January 5, 1828
Iosel’ Glikman
56
January 5, 1828
Ryvka Berlina
74
January 6, 1828
Genemiklia Iankeleva
19
January 6, 1828
Itsko Tsetlin
19
January 7, 1828
Bliuma Nafonova
37
January 9, 1828
Zusia Rudniakov
31
January 17, 1828
Khaika Chernomordika
30
January 27, 1828
Malka Baradudina
61
February 3, 1828
Leizar’ Zaretskii
57
February 4, 1828
Nota Prudkov
36
February 4, 1828
Feiga Vul’fson
34
March 9, 1828
Movsha Belenitskii
35
August 9, 1828
Nokhon Perepletchikov
54
November 7, 1828
Zelik Brusovanskii
57
November 9, 1828
Iankel’ Korshakov
44
February 5, 1829
Source: Spravka k dokladu po evreiskomu voprosu, part 5 (St. Petersburg: Kantseliariia Soveta ob”edinennykh dvorianskikh obshchestv, 1912), 52– 61
notes
Abbreviations
CAHJP
Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
GARF
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv rossiiskoi federatsii
KAA
Kauno Apskrities Archyve
NIAB
Natsional’nyi istoricheskii arkhiv Belarusi
RGIA
Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv
RNB
Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka
YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research
Preface
1. On the blood libel commission, see Viktor E. Kel’ner, Missioner istorii: Zhizn’
i trudy Semena Markovicha Dubnova (St. Petersburg: Mir, 2008), 512– 546; and Sergei Kan, Lev Shternberg: Anthropologist, Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 289– 290.
2. Mary McAuley, Bread and Justice: State and Society in Petrograd, 1917– 1922
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 47– 69, 261– 304.
3. On the Jewish cultural renaissance in Revolutionary Russia, see Kenneth B. Moss, Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
4. Simon M. Dubnov and Grigorii Ia. Krasnyi- Admoni, eds., Materialy dlia istorii anti-evreiskikh pogromov v Rossii, vol. 1 (Petrograd: Istoriko- Etnograficheskoe obshchestvo, 1919), v. For a brief description of the activities of the archival commissions, see 163
164
164
nOtes tO Pages xi–2
Alfred Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship and Scholarly Institutions in Soviet Russia, 1918–
1953 (Jerusalem: Centre for Research and Documentation of East European Jewry, 1978), 8– 9.
5. The Velizh affair archive is preserved at the RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, ch. 1– 25; and the NIAB, f. 1297, op. 1.
6. As quoted in Kel’ner, Missioner istorii, 516.
7. YIVO, RG 80, Box 100, Folder 945, pp. 73904– 73905 (letter from L. N. Etingen to Simon Dubnov, April 19, 1893).
8. YIVO, RG 80, Box 100, Folder 945, pp. 73906– 73908 (letters from L. N. Etingen to Simon Dubnov, May 26 and June 29, 1893).
9. YIVO, RG 80, Box 100, Folder 945, pp. 73912– 73913 (letter from M. D. Ryvkin to Simon Dubnov, November 21, 1893).
10. Simon Dubnov, “Alitat dam be’ir Bobovne: ve- yihusah li- gezerat Velizsh,” Luah Ahi’asaf, vol. 2 (1894): 282– 298; vol. 3 (1895): 303– 306.
11. Simon Dubnov, Kniga zhizni: Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, ed. Viktor E. Kel’ner (St. Petersburg: Peterburgskoe vostokovedenie, 1998), 183.
12. YIVO, RG 80, Box 100, Folder 945, pp. 77156– 77157 (letter from M. D. Ryvkin to Simon Dubnov, February 5, 1901). Ryvkin’s publications on the Velizh case include “Velizhskoe delo v osveshchenii mestnykh predanii i pamiatnikov,”
Perezhitoe 3 (1911): 60– 102; and the historical novel Navet: Roman iz epokhi Alexandra I— Nikolaia I (St. Petersburg: Dvigatel’, 1912), which was translated into the Yiddish in 1913 and into the Hebrew in 1933.
13. YIVO, RG 80, Box 100, Folder 945, pp. 77158– 77159 (letter from Iulii Gessen to Simon Dubnov, February 5, 1901).
14. YIVO, RG 80, Box 100, Folder 945, p. 77163 (letter from Iulii Gessen to Simon Dubnov, April 15, 1901).
15. Iulii Gessen, Velizhskaia drama: Iz istorii obvineniia evreev v ritual’nykh prestupleniiakh (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia A. G. Rozena, 1904). For the earliest analysis of the case, see Robert Lippert, Anklagen der Juden in Russland wegen Kindermords, Gebrauchs von Christenblut und Gotteslästerung: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Juden in Russland im letzten Jahrzehend und früherer Zeit (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1846). For a recent treatment that relies heavily on Gessen’s original research, see I. M. Shkliazh, Velizhskoe delo: Iz istorii antisemitizma v Rossii (Odessa: [n.p.], 1998).
16. Dubnov, Kniga zhizni, 437.
17. Paul L. Horecky, “The Slavic and East European Resources and Facilities of the Library of Congress,” Slavic Review 23, no. 2 (1964): 311.
Introduction
1. See, for example, Helmut Walser Smith, The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and AntiSemitism in a German Town (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002); Alan Dundes, ed., The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti- Semitic Folklore (Madison: University
nOtes tO Pages 2–4
165
of Wisconsin Press, 1991); Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Pierre Birnbaum, A Tale of Ritual Murder in the Age of Louis XIV: The Trial of Raphael Levy, 1669, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012); and Hannah Johnson, Blood Libel: The Ritual Murder Accusation at the Limit of Jewish History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012). An important exception is R. Po- chia Hsia’s The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).
2. On ancient sacrifice legends, see Jan N. Bremmer, “Human Sacrifice: A Brief Introduction,” in The Strange World of Human Sacrifice, ed. Bremmer (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2007), 3– 4; Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom, rev. ed. (London: Pimlico, 1993), 5– 7, 35– 37; and Hermann L. Strack, The Jew and Human Sacrifice, trans.
Henry Blanchamp (New York: The Bloch Publishing Company, 1909).
3. Thomas of Monmouth, The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, trans.
and ed. Augustus J
essopp and Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1896), 21, 36, 51– 53. On William of Norwich, see E. M. Rose, The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Gavin I. Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 209–
236; and Miri Rubin, “Making of a Martyr: William of Norwich and the Jews,”
History Today 60 (2010): 48– 54.
4. Smith, The Butcher’s Tale, 91– 103.
5. Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 3.
6. Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Europe and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 5– 6.
7. On the ritual calendar, see Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 70– 72, 233– 238; and Elisheva Carlebach, Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 146– 148.
8. Stuart Clark, “Witchcraft and Magic in Early Modern Culture,” in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Period of the Witch Trials, ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 108; and Richard Godbear, The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 13.
9. Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 10.
10. Quoted in Cecil Roth, ed., The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew: The Report by Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli (Pope Clement XIV) (London: Woburn Press, 1934), 97– 98. Pope Innocent IV issued the pronouncement to the archbishops and bishops of Germany and France on July 5, 1247.
16
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nOtes tO Pages 4–6
11. Brian P. Levack, “The Decline and End of Witchcraft Prosecutions,” in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 3– 93.
12. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Penguin Books, 1971), 538– 539.
13. Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder.
14. Zenon Guldon and Jacek Wijacka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500– 1800,” Polin 10 (1997): 139– 140; and Jacek Wijacka, “Ritual Murder Accusations in Poland throughout the 16th to 18th Centuries,” in Ritual Murder: Legend in European History, ed. Susanna Buttaroni and Stanislaw Musial (Krakow: Association for Cultural Initiatives, 2003), 195– 210.
15. Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post- Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 113–
121; and Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755– 1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 94. For the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, see Jurgita Šiaučiunaitė- Verbickienė,
“Blood Libel in a Multi- Confessional Society: The Case of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,” East European Jewish Affairs 38, no. 2 (2008): 201– 209.
16. For a bold rethinking of the formation of the Jewish community in Eastern Europe, see Shaul Stampfer, “Violence and the Migration of Ashkenazi Jews to Eastern Europe,” in Jews in the East European Borderlands: Essays in Honor of John D. Klier, ed. Eugene M. Avrutin and Harriet Murav (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 127– 146.
17. Arlette Farge and Jacques Revel, The Vanishing Children of Paris: Rumor and Politics before the French Revolution, trans. Claudia Mieville (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 112; and Michael Specter, “Comment: The Fear Question,”
The New Yorker, October 20, 2014, 29. See also Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 56– 86. For studies that largely stress the significance of print culture for the dissemination of ritual murder discourse, see John D. Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1855– 1881 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 418– 436; and Hillel J. Kieval, “Death and the Nation: Ritual Murder as Political Discourse in the Czech Lands,” in his Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 181– 97. For an influential statement on the importance of oral culture, see Robert Darton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), esp. 75– 106.
18. John D. Klier, “The Origins of the ‘Blood Libel’ in Russia,” Newsletter of the Study Group on Eighteenth Century Russia 14 (1986): 12– 22; Klier, “Krovavyi navet v russkoi pravoslavnyi traditsii,” in Evrei i khristiane v pravoslavnykh obshchestvakh Vostochnoi Evropy, ed. M. V. Dmitrieva (Moscow: Indrik, 2011): 181– 205; and Marcin Wodzinski, “Blood and the Hasidim: On the History of Ritual Murder
nOtes tO Pages 6–8
167
Accusations in Nineteenth- Century Poland,” Polin 22 (2010): 273– 290. For two recent explorations, see Robert Weinberg, Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia: The Ritual Murder Trial of Mendel Beilis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014); and the essays collected in Eugene M. Avrutin, Jonathan Dekel- Chen, and Robert Weinberg, eds., Ritual Murder in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Beyond: New Histories of an Old Accusation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017).
19. On the modern revival argument, see David Biale, Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 126– 129.
20. Yohanan Petrovsky- Shtern, The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 164– 171. Jolanta Żyndul provides a wonderful (but by no means exhaustive) map of blood libel accusations in the Russian Empire, Kłamstwo krwi: Legenda mordu rytualnego na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Cyklady, 2011), map insert between 116– 117.
21. V. I. Dal’, Zapiska o ritual’nykh ubiistvakh (Moscow: “Vitiaz’,” 1995), 48– 54. The booklet was first published as Rozyskanie o ubienii evreiami khristianskikh mladentsev i upotreblenii krovi ikh. Napechatano po prikazaniiu g. ministra vnutrennikh del, L. A. Perovskii (St. Petersburg, 1844), and is preserved at the RGIA, f. 1282, op. 2, d. 2138, ll. 1– 118ob. The identity of the author has aroused considerable debate over the years, and it is not my intention to revisit the question here. Most likely, the celebrated lexicographer and folklorist Vladimir Ivanovich Dal’, who was serving at the Ministry of the Interior at the time, authored the report. For a succinct overview of the controversy, see Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 418– 419; and Anne J. Frederickson, “The Dual Faces of Modernity: The Russian Intelligentsia’s Pursuit of Knowledge and the Publication History of ‘Note on Ritual Murder,’ ” MA thesis, Arizona State University, 2004. For an argument that opposes this view, see Semen Reznik, Zapiatnannyi Dal’: Mog li sozdatel’
“Tolkovogo slovaria zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka” byt’ avtorom “Zapiski o ritual’nykh ubiistvakh”? (St. Petersburg: Filologicheskii fakul’tet Sankt- Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 2010).
22. “Gavriil,” in Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia, vol. 10 (Moscow: Tserkovno- nauchnyi tsentr, 2005), 200– 201; and Sviatoi muchenik Gavriil Belostokskii: Nebesnyi pokrovitel’ detei i podrostkov (Minsk: Belorusskaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’, 2009).
Believers connected to their patron saints a great range of powers to work miracles on all aspects of the human condition. See Robert H. Greene, Bodies like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Press, 2010), 60.
23. Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); and Joy Wiltenburg, Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012).
168
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br />
24. On the deeply divisive nature of affairs, with forces lining up with the villain, victim, or forces of authority, see Sarah Maza, Violette Nozière: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 142.
25. Quoted in Sidney Monas, The Third Section: Police and Society in Russia under Nicholas I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 141.
26. W. Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas I: Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Press, 1989), 236; and Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 303. See also A. I. Stan’ko, Russkie gazety pervoi poloviny XIX veka (Rostov- on- Don: Izdatel’stvo Rostovskogo universiteta, 1969).
27. Edward Morton, Travels in Russia, and a Residence in St. Petersburg and Odessa in the Years 1827– 1829 (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1830), 71– 72.
28. On the inquisitorial system, see Edward Peters, Torture, expanded ed.
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 40– 73; and Adhémar Esmein, A History of Continental Criminal Procedure: With Special Reference to France, trans. John Simson (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1913), 78– 144.
For Russia, see Nancy Shields Kollmann, Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 114– 121. For Poland, see Michael Ostling, Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 90– 92.
29. Brian P. Levack, “Witchcraft and the Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian Levack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 473.
30. Not all the jurisdictions that had adopted the inquisitorial mode convicted large numbers of suspects. Those regimes such as the Spanish, Portuguese, and Roman inquisitions that had adhered to strict procedural rules processed much smaller numbers of convictions. On inquisitorial techniques, see James B. Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 23– 51.
31. Richard S. Wortman, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 15. See also Claudia Verhoeven, The Odd Man Karakozov: Imperial Russia, Modernity, and the Birth of Terrorism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 13– 14.