The Velizh Affair
Page 28
23. Kalik, “Christian Servants Employed by Jews in the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 266.
24. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 91– 92 (December 4, 1825).
25. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 96– 96ob (December 5, 1825).
26. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 98– 99.
27. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 127– 128, 132 (December 15, 1825).
28. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 128ob– 130.
29. John P. LeDonne, “Criminal Investigations before the Great Reforms,” Russian History 1, no. 2 (1974): 102.
30. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, l. 213ob.
nOtes tO Pages 70–76
181
31. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 151, 155. Strakhov interrogated Anna Eremeeva on December 28, 1825 (RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 145– 162).
32. Peter Brooks, Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 40; and Richard A. Leo, Police Interrogation and American Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 38– 39.
33. On systems of proofs, see Elisa M. Becker, Medicine, Law, and the State in Imperial Russia (Budapest: Central European Press, 2011), 28– 39; and Kollmann, Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia, 114– 118. For a broader prospective, see John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Regime (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
34. Brooks, Troubling Confessions, 35.
35. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 2157– 2158, 2162– 2171ob; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 171, 174.
36. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 167– 178ob (Terenteeva, January 12, 1826); ll. 401– 416 (Terenteeva, June 3, 1826); ll. 455– 458ob (Kozlovskaia, June 14, 1826); ll. 589– 606ob (Terenteeva, September 23, 1826); ll. 615– 617, 620– 632ob (Maksimova, October 17, 1826). A succinct summary is included in RGIA,
f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 30– 39.
37. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, l. 615 (October 8, 1826).
38. On the emergence of the Christian servant as a character in the blood libel tale, 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).
39. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 38– 39. See also RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, 167– 178ob.
40. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 40– 41.
41. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 42– 43. See also RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 401– 416.
42. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 43– 44.
43. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 44, 50. See also RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 615– 617.
44. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 50.
45. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 51.
46. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 51.
47. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 52. See also RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 620– 632ob.
48. Barbara Skinner, The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in 18th- Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009), 60– 61.
49. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 44. See also RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 589– 606ob.
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nOtes tO Pages 77–81
50. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 45, 48– 49.
51. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 37.
52. For an enlightening discussion of the challenges of convicting witches in early modern Germany, see Thomas Robisheaux, The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009).
Chapter 4
1. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 2, ll. 1337ob– 1338 (oral interrogation of Itsko Nakhimovskii, May 25, 1827).
2. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, l. 464ob (Strakhov described the conditions of the local prison in a memo to Khovanskii).
3. On Russian prisons, see Nancy Shields Kollmann, Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 83– 93; Evgenii Anisimov, Dyba i knut: Politicheskii sysk i russkoe obshchestvo v XVIII veke (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1999), 589– 614; and Daniel Beer, The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile under the Tsars (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017). For a recent analysis of the exile system, see Andrew A. Gentes, Exile to Siberia, 1590– 1822 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); and Gentes, Exile, Murder, and Madness in Siberia, 1823– 1861 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
4. Bruce F. Adams, The Politics of Punishment: Prison Reform in Russia, 1863– 1917
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), 9. For a comparative perspective on the limits of using local prisons for incarceration, see Randall McGowen,
“The Well- Ordered Prison: England, 1780– 1865,” in The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, ed. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 91.
5. Ritual murder was not specifically a feminine crime, and gender did not seem to play a factor in who was formally accused. On gender and witchcraft accusations, see Alison Rowlands, “Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Europe,”
in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian P. Levack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 449– 467; Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 259– 286; and Valerie Kivelson, Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth- Century Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 127– 167.
6. For an exhaustive treatment of face- to- face confrontations in Russian criminal practice, see Anisimov, Dyba i knut, 313– 390.
7. Thomas Robisheaux, The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 193– 212. This technique was used in the Soviet Union. See, for example, Hiroaki Kuromiya, Conscience on Trial: The Fate of Fourteen Pacifists in Stalin’s Ukraine, 1952– 1953 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012).
nOtes tO Pages 81–90
183
8. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 2, ll. 1484– 1490ob; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 71 (oral interrogation of Shmerka Berlin, June 15, 1827).
9. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 2, ll. 1484– 1490ob; RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 1735– 1736ob; RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, l. 1954; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 72.
10. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 2, ll. 1462– 1463, 1465– 1466 (oral interrogation of Slava Berlina, June 9, 1827).
11. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 1699– 1703 (ochnaia stavka, July 7, 1827).
12. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 2, ll. 1465– 1466, 1467– 1472ob; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 69– 70.
13. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 2, ll. 1620– 1628 (oral interrogation of Hirsh Berlin, June 30, 1827).
14. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 74– 75.
15. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 1784– 1786ob, 1789– 1790 (oral interrogation of Noson Berlin, July 13, 1827); and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll.
1792– 1793ob, 1795– 1797ob (oral interrogation of Meir Berlin, July 13, 1827); and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 76– 79.
16. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 1922– 1923, 1930– 1938ob (oral interrogation of Evzik Tsetlin, August 3– 4
, 1827); and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 59– 62.
17. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 59.
18. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 60.
19. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 159– 160.
20. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 2, ll. 1449– 1449ob (June 7, 1827).
21. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 57.
22. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 63.
23. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 95.
24. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 109.
25. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 117.
26. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 4, ll. 2651– 2651ob; RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 1773– 1774; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 87 (oral interrogation of Basia Aronson, July 13 and October 31, 1827).
27. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 88– 89.
28. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 98– 99.
29. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 98– 99.
30. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 109– 110.
31. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 111.
32. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 101.
33. Guy Geltner, The Medieval Prison: A Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 72. On the practice of keeping captives in private homes in medieval Europe, see Jean Dunbabin, Captivity and Imprisonment in Medieval Europe, 1000– 1300 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 62– 79.
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nOtes tO Pages 90–97
34. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 416ob.
35. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 336.
36. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 413. For an insightful analysis of sign language and other forms of communication in prisons, see Patricia O’Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth- Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 77– 79, 88.
37. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 1833– 1834, 1892– 1897, 1925– 1925ob.
38. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 334ob.
39. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 418ob.
40. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 188; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 2, l. 1236.
41. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 418ob.
42. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 415.
43. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 414.
44. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 489.
45. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, ll. 489– 490.
46. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, ll. 585– 585ob.
47. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 334ob.
48. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, ll. 335– 335ob.
49. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 489.
50. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, ll. 857– 857ob.
51. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 858.
52. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, ll. 590– 590ob.
53. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 182.
54. For a perceptive analysis of concealment practices, see Frank Rosengarten,
“Introduction,” Letters from Prison: Antonio Gramsci, vol. 1, ed. Frank Rosengarten, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 13.
55. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, ll. 858– 858ob.
56. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 187.
57. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 485ob; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 187.
58. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 10, l. 379.
59. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 188.
60. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, l. 188.
61. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll.188– 192, quotes on ll. 190, 192.
62. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 102– 106; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 2, ll. 1337– 1337ob, 1339ob (oral interrogation of Itsko Nakhimovskii, May 25, 1827).
63. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 134– 149; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 6, ll. 4767– 4767ob.
64. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 7, ll. 5371– 5371ob, 5380– 5381ob, 5932– 5933ob (discussion of failed attempt to escape and desire to convert).
nOtes tO Pages 97–103
185
65. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 1781– 1783ob (oral interrogation of Fratka Devirts, July 13, 1827).
66. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 2135– 2136 (petition by Rieva Kateonov, August 29, 1827).
67. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 2103– 2112.
68. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, ll. 2103– 2112; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 134– 149.
69. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 3, l. 2347; and RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 134– 149.
70. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 25, ll. 134– 149.
71. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 7, ll. 5839– 5839ob (on Fratka’s attempt to commit suicide). When the case was finally closed, all the items, including the alleged piece of foreskin, were forwarded to St. Petersburg. The knives eventually ended up at the Russian State Historical Archive, as did the foreskin, which, according to a medical examiner, was the intestines of a fish and not a piece of human flesh. The same official determined that at least one of the knives was in such bad shape, bent and rusty in places, that he did not think it was “capable of cutting very much.” (The archival inventory does list an envelope with a “piece of dried leather” [kusok sukhoi kozhitsy], but the archivist refused to show it to me.) For a discussion of the knives and alleged foreskin, see RGIA, f. 1345, op.
235, d. 65, chast’ 7, ll. 6048– 6048ob, 6051– 6052ob, 6073ob; and chast’ 8, ll. 6130, 6131– 6132.
Chapter 5
1. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 418– 421ob (complaint by Shmerka Berlin and Evzik Tsetlin to N. N. Khovanskii, May 25, 1826).
2. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 418– 421ob.
3. Eli Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 33– 35.
4. On the emergence of the new Jewish networks in global perspective, see Abigail Green, “Old Networks, New Connections: The Emergence of the Jewish International,” in Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, ed. Abigail Greene and Vincent Viaene (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 53– 81. See also Green’s “Intervening in the Jewish Question, 1840–
1878,” in Humanitarian Intervention: A History, ed. Brendan Simms and D. J. B. Trim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 139– 158; and “Nationalism and the
‘Jewish International’: Religious Internationalism in Europe and the Middle East c. 1840– c. 1880,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, no. 2 (2008): 535– 558.
5. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 461– 465 (memorandum from Strakhov to Khovanskii, June 27, 1826).
6. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 465ob– 468ob.
186
186
nOtes tO Pages 103–109
7. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 636– 643 (complaint by Sheftel Tsetlin and Berka Nakhimovskii, August, 27, 1826).
8. John D. Klier, Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the “Jewish Question” in Russia, 1772– 1825 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Pre
ss, 1986), 104. See also Marcin Wodzinski, “Blood and Hasidim: On the History of Ritual Murder
Accusations in Nineteenth- Century Poland,” Polin 22 (2010): 273– 290.
9. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 464, 466.
10. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 767ob, 772ob, 782ob, 785ob (memorandum from Strakhov to Khovanskii, November 17, 1826).
11. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 777– 780ob.
12. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, ll. 781– 781ob.
13. RGIA, f. 1345, op. 235, d. 65, chast’ 1, l. 781ob.
14. Quoted in Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics, 53.
15. On the politics of intercession, see Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics, 30– 33; and Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772– 1881, trans.
Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 24– 26.
16. On Jewish deputies, see Ol’ga Minkina, “Syny Rakhili”: Evreiskie deputaty v Rossiiskoi imperii, 1772– 1825 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011); Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics, 52– 57; Iulii Gessen, “ ‘Deputaty evreiskogo naroda’ pri Aleksandre I,” Evreiskaia starina, nos. 3– 4 (1909): 17–
28, 196– 206; and Vassili Schedrin, Jewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds: Jewish Bureaucracy and Policymaking in Late Imperial Russia, 1850– 1917 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016), 31– 36.
17. Ol’ga Minkina, “Rumors in Early 19th Century Jewish Society and Their
Perception in Administrative Documents,” Pinkas: Annual of the Culture and History of East European Jewry 1 (2006): 41– 56. For a wide- ranging analysis of Jews and secrecy in early modern Europe, see Daniel Jütte, The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400– 1800, trans. Jeremiah Riemer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).
18. Minkina, “Syny Rakhili,” 153– 156.
19. Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics, 57.
20. On the pre– Great Reform Jewish community in St. Petersburg, see Iulii Gessen,
“Sankt- Peterburg,” Evreiskaia entsiklopediia: Svod znanii o evreistve i ego kul’ture v proshlom i nastoiashchem (St. Petersburg: “Terra,” 1991), 941– 942; and Minkina,