A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel

by Levin, Edmund

  One of the last people to be questioned in this initial phase of the investigation, sometime in April, was Vera Cheberyak, who was happy to aggravate the rumors. Investigators were aware, of course, of her villainous reputation; she and her gang were currently under investigation in two major robberies, including the theft of two thousand rubles’ worth of revolvers. But they viewed her mainly as the woman who, along with her son, had helped identify Andrei’s body and had no reason to speculate that her criminal activity was related to Andrei’s murder. They might have thought differently if they had known that Cheberyak had withheld a vital piece of information: her son Zhenya had gone out to play with Andrei the morning he disappeared. Revealing that fact would have made it clear that the murdered boy had last been seen alive just a few dozen yards from her doorstep. She told the police nothing of particular note, but she did volunteer that she was surer than most about who had killed Andrei. Having seen the Black Hundreds’ leaflets at the funeral, she said, “Now it seems to me that Andrusha was probably killed by Jews since no one in general needed Andrusha dead.” She admitted, though, “I cannot offer proof confirming my supposition.”

  Just a few days after Vera Cheberyak’s testimony, Alexander Liadov set about searching for proof of the “supposition” that a Jew had committed the crime. The motives of Vera Cheberyak and those of the state would eventually intersect and produce one of the stranger collaborations in judicial history. But that lay many months in the future. Meanwhile, three obstacles stood in the way of any attempt to pin Andrei’s murder on Jews: the lack of evidence, the absence of witnesses, and the opposition of the two respected local officials in charge of the case—the local prosecutor, Nikolai Brandorf, and Investigator Vasily Fenenko.

  Liadov later claimed that he had no preconceived notions about what he sought to find. But according to Fenenko, in early May, when Liadov summoned him and a number of others for a meeting in his rooms at the European Hotel, he revealed a very definite view of the case—a view he made it clear was shared by the man who had sent him on this mission. The meeting would turn out to be one of the most pivotal events in the whole affair. Liadov, in Fenenko’s telling, declared that “the Minister of Justice does not doubt the ritual character of the murder.” Chaplinsky, Kiev’s chief prosecutor, piped in that he was glad to hear that the minister was of the same opinion as he was. One participant in the meeting expressed the fear that propagating the blood accusation could provoke a pogrom. Chaplinsky, according to Fenenko, replied he would have no objection “if the Jews were beaten up a bit.” Given the government’s intense concern with preserving order, it is inconceivable that Chaplinsky meant this remark to be taken seriously. In fact, just days earlier, Chaplinsky himself had warned the justice minister about the danger of a pogrom. But the sardonic taunt exposed the government’s official stance: in this matter, Jews were targets.

  Investigator Fenenko and Prosecutor Brandorf believed the ritual-murder explanation of the crime was absurd. The autopsy reports told a story of homicidal rage and possibly revenge, not of a calm and deliberate ritual for collecting blood. In the days leading up to Liadov’s arrival from St. Petersburg on May 1, the two men must have felt under increasing pressure to produce a definitive dismissal of the ritual-murder hypothesis. But how could they dispose of the ridiculous charge once and for all? One approach would be to profile the mind of the killer or killers based on the autopsy and what evidence there was at the crime scene. In late April, before Liadov’s arrival, Brandorf recommended to Investigator Fenenko that he retain a renowned professor of psychiatry, Ivan Sikorsky, to analyze the full range of evidence. Students of the case have long assumed, quite reasonably, that Chaplinsky must have recommended Sikorsky, hoping that he would support the ritual accusation. But the documents suggest that getting Sikorsky involved in the case was very possibly Brandorf’s idea. Brandorf may have sincerely hoped that seeking the distinguished professor’s opinion would help lay the ritual accusation to rest. But it was a step that would help tip the case into madness.

  Professor Emeritus Ivan Sikorsky of Kiev’s St. Vladimir University was one of Russia’s most eminent psychiatric researchers. While his achievements would soon be far outshone by those of his son, the aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky—already gaining fame in 1911 as the inventor of the helicopter—Ivan was so esteemed that he had once been honored by the great Leo Tolstoy with an audience at his estate at Yasnaya Polyana. He was the author of works on general psychology, and numerous specialized studies on subjects ranging from child development to the effect of fatigue on intellectual function, which were widely published and cited abroad. He had started out his career as an anatomist-pathologist and was active in promoting the new science of criminalistics and the systematic use of psychiatric expertise in the courts. He was considered an expert on religious fanaticism and folk belief: his most popularly known work was a report on the horrific mass suicide in the town of Ternov, where twenty-five members of a Christian cult had themselves intentionally buried alive.

  Sikorsky could by all rights have been considered the ideal man to evaluate the evidence in a case centering on questions of human anatomy and the fanatical mind. But his arrogant devotion to the pseudoscience of his day inspired and reinforced in him a virulent racism and anti-Semitism that would prove profoundly destructive to the cause of justice he professed to support. Sikorsky emerged as a full-fledged anti-Semite only very late in life, not long before Andrei’s murder. An early indication of his noxious system of thinking can be found in his preoccupation with “sectology,” the study of religious sectarianism, a discipline that had an inevitably political slant.

  Russians at all levels of society were engaged in a scattershot spiritual awakening, with a proliferation of unconventional forms of belief, or “God-seeking,” a quest for meaning amid the turbulence and trauma of the modern age. The most renowned God-seeker, Leo Tolstoy, had died only a few months earlier in the fall of 1910: his search had led him to a Christian-anarchist, pacifist philosophy that rejected basic tenets of the Orthodox Church, resulting in his excommunication. The search for the transcendent drew God-seeking intellectuals and members of the upper class to mysticism, spiritualism, and Eastern religions and healing. Tsar Nicholas and the empress Alexandra, in their devotion to a spiritual guide, were in many ways typical God-seekers of their era. (In fact, before Rasputin, in the years 1900–1902 the royal couple had formed a close bond with another mystic and faith healer, the Frenchman Philippe Nizier-Vachod, who was sent packing when his powers failed to help the empress conceive a male heir.) The lower classes were drawn to individual charismatic leaders in a popular religious revival that was rightly regarded by the Russian Orthodox Church as a threat to its authority. Some charismatic leaders were even imprisoned.

  Sikorsky’s worldview was largely constrained by the pseudosciences of his day, from social Darwinism to physiognomy. (In his analysis of a photograph of Fyodor Kovalev, the young man who buried alive the twenty-five Ternov cultists, Sikorsky wrote, “The left eyebrow is a little higher than the right, while the muscle around the eye on the right side is contracted more strongly than on the left, as a consequence of which the right eye seems smaller than the left one. This irregularity of his expression … constitutes a sign of degeneration and indicates Kovalev’s belonging to a psychopathic family.”) Sikorsky idolized Herbert Spencer, the renowned British social Darwinist and, like Spencer, simultaneously believed in Darwinism and the very theory it had discredited, Lamarckism, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, including ancestors’ learned behavior. (Attributes could travel curious paths indeed: a widow, Sikorsky believed, could have children with a second husband bearing “the outer traits and character of the first husband.”)

  Sikorsky’s pseudoscientific principles easily extended into ardent and avowed racism. Central to his beliefs was the notion that the races could be divided into two types, “higher” and “lower.” During their meeting in 1890, Leo Tolstoy already sensed
something not quite right about this professor, who apparently treated him to a disquisition on his obsession, the danger of national “hereditary degeneration.” After Sikorsky took his leave, Tolstoy wrote in his diary of the man’s “astonishing foolishness” and added one curious but pungent remark: “A nice fellow—but gone rotten.”

  When it came to the Yushchinsky case, however, the problem with Sikorsky was not his pseudoscientism or, exactly, his racism; racial pseudoscience was widespread in the era. Rather, it was that these intellectual foundations gave rise to a late-blooming, fanatical anti-Semitism that would poison his inquiry into the murder. Sikorsky had previously expressed alarm about the rising number of Jews in the empire and hinted that Jews were responsible for the plague of Russian alcoholism. (“Moneylenders”—their ethnicity was clear—supposedly lent the common folk the funds to buy liquor on what the professor called “ruinous terms.”) He emerged as a full-fledged political anti-Semite in April 1910, when he delivered an address at the Club of Russian Nationalists. (The term “nationalists” generally referred to a political group that was somewhat more moderate than the Black Hundreds.) While wars used to be primarily over territory, Sikorsky argued, now one of the main aims of the enemies of the Russian people was “spiritual destruction.” At the front lines of this conflict was an army of scribbling lowlifes in the liberal press, ideological warriors who attacked the nation’s great men. Behind them, Sikorsky declared, stood a certain “opponent” of the Russian people. “This opponent consists of those pious people who hourly, from the depths of their offices, send up their prayers to the Almighty so that he would not lessen their profits on their international loans. These pious people … believe in the power of gold.” Again, he did not need to specify the ethnicity of this “opponent.”

  When Sikorsky received the official request to consult on the notorious Yushchinsky case, he must have been gratified. His academic career had been in decline; he had found himself pushed aside by younger colleagues. He welcomed this unexpected opportunity to regain his prominence and determined to make the most of it. Sikorsky’s academic writings could be long-winded, but for this case he would coin a memorably concise statement of the blood accusation: deftly epigrammatic, it would echo through the trial and beyond.

  Liadov explored the cave where Andrei’s body had been found. He met with Professor Sikorsky and they visited the anatomical theater, where they were shown the victim’s preserved organs, and conferred with Dr. Nikolai Obolonsky, who had performed a second autopsy on the boy.

  Given the case’s notoriety, the authorities had retained Dr. Obolonsky and autopsy specialist N. N. Tufanov of St. Vladimir University’s department of forensic medicine to perform an independent examination of the corpse. They did not endorse the ritual version but would not rule it out. Their autopsy report differed from the coroner’s in only one significant respect: they concluded that in the course of the crime “there took place the body’s almost complete exsanguination” and that the cause of death was “acute blood loss.” As will later become clear, these conclusions were dubious. They were likely rendered under pressure from high officials.

  Liadov then went to Kiev’s Monastery of the Caves to meet a monk named Ambrosius. If Golubev was a Christian detective like Thomas of Monmouth, then Ambrosius was an avatar of the renegade Jew Theobald, the “converted enemy” who reveals his people’s clandestine rituals.

  Ambrosius was the first “expert” in the case to testify to the existence of ritual murder.

  He claimed that during his residence at another monastery:

  I had numerous occasions to talk on the subject (of ritual murder) with various people, in particular with two Orthodox monks who had been converted from the Jewish religion to the Christian … All these discussions … gave me reason to believe that among the Jews, especially the Hasidim, it is the custom to obtain blood, particularly by the murder of Christian boys. This blood is required for the preparation of the Paschal matzos for the following reasons:

  According to the Talmud blood is the symbol of life; the Jews are the sole masters of the world and all other peoples are simply their slaves; and so the blood of Christian boys in the matzos symbolizes that to the Jews is given the right to take the lives of those slaves … The Jews want this to be known by non-Jews, too, and that is why the body of a Christian from which the blood is taken must not be completely destroyed … When such bodies are found, the Jews arranged it so that there is no clue to the place where the murder was committed, but the non-Jews who find the body are made to remember that the Jews have a right to their lives as masters of life and death.

  Ambrosius also claimed that “there must be a specific number of wounds in such cases in a specific part of the body: the number of wounds is approximately forty-five.” In his May 1911 deposition Ambrosius acknowledged that he himself had not personally studied the alleged Jewish texts concerning the ritual murder of Christians. Moreover, he admitted that the two monks who were his main sources were “Cantonists,” Jews who had been impressed as early as the age of twelve into the tsar’s army for twenty-five years and knew little of their religion. Liadov nonetheless was highly impressed with Ambrosius’s testimony.

  On May 8, Professor Sikorsky rendered his psychological profile of the perpetrators. It was based on an astounding interpretation of the autopsy materials. “All the damage and wounds were inflicted by a steady and confident hand, one that was neither trembling in fear, nor moving with exaggerated scope and force out of rage,” he pronounced. While Fenenko and Brandorf believed the four dozen wounds, all over Andrei’s body, many with no clear purpose, testified to a crime committed in a frenzy, Sikorsky insisted, “This was precise, ruthless, cold-blooded work, such as might have been performed by someone who was accustomed to slaughtering.” Chaplinsky reported these revelatory findings to the justice minister:

  Professor Sikorsky, based on considerations of an historical and anthropological character, considers the murder of Yushchinsky, in its chief and consistent characteristics—the slow draining of blood, torture, and killing of the victim—typical of a series of similar murders which have happened repeatedly in Russia and other countries. The psychological basis of this type of murder, in the opinion of Professor Sikorsky, is the “racial revenge and vendetta of the sons of Jacob.”

  “The racial revenge and vendetta of the sons of Jacob.” This was a powerful new formulation. Unlike Golubev and Ambrosius, Sikorsky was no one’s avatar. In the drama of the blood accusation he had created a new role—the psychiatric explorer—and added modern elements to the myth. “The nationality which commits this horrible deed,” Professor Sikorsky concluded, “as it is scattered among other nations, brings with it the traits of its racial psychology.” Race, genetics, inherited behavior—Sikorsky renovated the myth with pseudoscientific rigor. It was a signal achievement. The Jews had committed such “horrible” deeds in the past that they had become conditioned to perform them in the future and for all time. Murder was in their blood.

  Liadov now declared himself to be confident that the crime had the character of a secret ritual. Based on what he had heard from Professor Sikorsky, Ambrosius, and the pathologist, he later said, he had “formed the personal conviction that Yushchinsky was killed by Jews.” But who was the culprit?

  Liadov began to play detective, taking an unusual interest for a high official in the investigation’s operational details. He called attention to the testimony of the boy Pavel Pushka who said Andrei would buy gunpowder from a Jew in Slobodka. According to Fenenko, Liadov instructed him “that as soon as the identity of this Jew was determined, he should be charged and placed under arrest.”

  The gunpowder-selling Jew was never found, but another Jew of interest was identified. In a deposition on May 5, 1911, Golubev told investigators:

  Near [the area of the cave] there is located the enormous estate of the Yid Zaitsev. The manager of that estate and of the brick factory [there] is a certain Yid Mendel … who a
fter the discovery of Yushchinsky’s body behaved somewhat strangely, giving out candy to children and asking them not to say anything to the police.

  This is the first mention in the official record of Mendel Beilis. (Beilis was not the “manager,” but the clerk of the brick factory. All the rest of the report was unsubstantiated rumor.) Questioned the following day, Golubev again mentioned “the little Jew Mendel.” He told the authorities, “My personal opinion is that the murder was probably committed either [at the Zaitsev estate] or at the Jewish hospital” adjoining the factory, though adding with unaccustomed humility, “Of course, I am not able to present proof of that.”

  Golubev would now dedicate himself to providing that proof.

  3

  “A Certain Jew Mendel”

  On May 4, 1911, Nikolai Krasovsky, a provincial police official in western Ukraine, received an urgent telegram. The message was brief and clear: “By order of the governor, go to Kiev.”

  Until the previous fall, Krasovsky had been the acting head of the criminal investigation division of the Kiev police force—the city’s chief detective. He had taken over the division three years earlier in the wake of a tremendous scandal. The then head of the division, Spiridon Aslanov, was exposed as being in the pay of Kiev’s notorious “King of Thieves.” The King, a flamboyant crook who also went by the nickname “Stovepipe Hat,” boasted of an income of a hundred thousand rubles a year and prided himself on stealing only from the well-off, sharing his booty generously with his small army of pickpockets, burglars, and second-story men. The gifts that he bestowed on Detective Aslanov, including a ring studded with precious stones, were for him the cost of doing business.

  After Aslanov’s arrest, Krasovsky quickly gained respect by cracking a slew of cold cases. By the fall of 1908 he had become celebrated as the Sherlock Holmes who solved Kiev’s most sensational crime, the Ostrovsky murder case. The stabbing deaths of a middle-aged couple in their home, along with a young acquaintance, their laundress, and a seamstress, had traumatized the city. As the killers remained at large day after day, the Kiev journalist and politician Vasily Shulgin wrote, “It seemed as if a dark cloud were hanging over the city … Crowds of people stood for hours in front of that house [where the murders were committed], gloomy and distraught, staring at those walls with superstitious horror.”