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The Beilis case: Anti-Semitism and Politics in the Reign of Nicholas II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Hans Rogger
Hans Rogger*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

The Beilis case—a charge of ritual murder brought against an obscure Jewish clerk in July 1911 and tried before a Kiev jury in September 1913— has more than once been called Russia's Dreyfus Affair. As a shorthand summary, the comparison serves well enough. In both instances an innocent nonentity was plucked out of obscurity to become the object of a contest whose larger implications, while they agitated politics and opinion, escaped the victim or left him indifferent. Beyond this, points of difference loom larger than those of similarity.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , December 1966 , pp. 615 - 629
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1966

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References

1 E.g., by Richard Charques, The Twilight of Imperial Russia (London, 1958), p. 194.

2 A. S. Tager, Tsarskaia Rossiia i delo Beilisa (Moscow, 1933; 2d ed., Moscow, 1934).

3 G., Barandov, Stolypinskaia reaktsiia (Moscow, 1938), pp. 36–37 Google Scholar. Since this article was submitted, an excellent new book on the Beilis case has appeared: Maurice, Samuel, Blood Accusation (New York: Knopf, 1966)Google Scholar. Although the author follows Tager in saying that the case was manufactured by government authorities and the right wing to inflame the populace against the Jews and defeat the liberals in the 1912 elections (pp. 6, 135), he has a very much more subtle appreciation of the interaction of prejudice and politics than does Tager.

4 Leopold Hairason, “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917,“ Slavic Review, XXIII, No. 4 (Dec. 1964), 624-27.

5 Tager, p. 43.

6 Kievlianin, Oct. 24, 1913; Rech', Oct. 26, 1913; New York Times. Nov. 14, 1913.

7 Sliozberg, G. B., Dela minuvshikh dnei (Paris, 1933), III, 312–13 Google Scholar; Thomas, Riha, “Paul Miliukov's Parliamentary Career, 1907-1917” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1962), p. 92Google Scholar.

8 George W. Simmonds, “The Congress of Representatives of the Nobles Associations, 1906-1916: A Case Study of Russian Conservatism” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1964), pp. 162, 172, 220.

9 See Hans, Rogger, “The Formation of the Russian Right,” California Slavic Studies, III (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964), 66–94 Google Scholar, anc* “Was There a Russian Fascism: The Union of Russian People,” Journal of Modern History, XXXVI, No. 4 (Dtec. 1964), 398- 415; V. N. Kokovtsov, Out of My Past (Stanford, 1935), p. 337; Viktorov, V. P. and Chernovskii, A., eds., Soiuz russkogo naroda (Moscow and Leningrad, 1929), p. Leningrad Google Scholar.

10 Quoted in Kievlianin, Oct. 24, 1913.

11 Edward, Chmielewski, “Stolypin's Last Crisis” California Slavic Studies, III (1964), 95–126Google Scholar; Novyi voskhod, No. 18 (May 15, 1911), p. 3.

12 Kievlianin, Oct. 24, 1913.

13 V. A., Maklakov, “Spasitel'noe predosterezhenie: Smysl dela Beilisa” Russkaia mysl', No. 11 (Nov. 1913), 139–41Google Scholar; Elpat'evskii, S. I., Vospominaniia za $0 let (Leningrad, 1929), pp. 366–67 Google Scholar.

14 Quoted in Krylenko, N. V., Sudebnye rechi (Moscow, 1964), p. 44 Google Scholar.

15 P. E. Shchegolev, ed., Padenie tsarskogo rezhima (Moscow and Leningrad, 1924-27), III, 104.

16 Ibid., p. 359.

17 Ibid., p. 368.

18 Tager, pp. 59-60; Krasnyi arkhiv, No. 44 (1931), pp. 85-89.

19 Jacob Maze, Zihronoth (Tel Aviv, 1936), III, 65-66.

20 Sliozberg, III, 36-37; I. V. Gessen, V dvukh vekakh (Berlin, 1937; “Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii,” Vol. XXII), pp. 303-5.

21 For the prevailing view, in addition to Tager and Barandov see Charques, p. 194, and Du pogrom de Kichinev a I'affaire Beilis (Paris: Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, 1963), p. 3.

22 Alexandre, Spiridovich, Les dernieres annies de la cour de Tsarskoie-Selo (Paris, 1928), II, 447Google Scholar.

23 Krasnyi arkhiv, No. 5 (1924), pp. 105-7; Kokovtsov, p. 166.

24 Quoted in Mark Vishniak, “Antisemitism in Tsarist Russia,” in Pinson, Koppel S., ed., Essays on Antisemitism (New York, 1942), p. 1942 Google Scholar. See also Baron, Salo W., The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets (New York, 1964), p. 1964 Google Scholar, and Sliozberg, I, 115-18.

25 See the most sober recent study of Rasputin, Martin Kilcoyne, “The Political Influence of Rasputin” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Washington, 1961); and Aron, Simanovich, Rasputin i evrei (Riga, n.d.), pp. 57, 110Google Scholar.

26 Spiridovich, II, 472; Ernst, Seraphim, Russische Porträts (Vienna, 1943), I, 120–21 Google Scholar.

27 Padenie tsarskogo rezhima, VII, 221-22; and note 9 above.

28 Baron, pp. 75-76; Sliozberg, III, 93; Gerassimoff, Alexander (Gerasimov), Der Kampf gegen die erste russische Revolution (Frauenfeld and Leipzig, 1934), p. Leipzig Google Scholar; Urussov, S. D. (Urusov), Memoirs of a Russian Governor (London and New York, 1908), pp. 42–43 Google Scholar; Seraphim, I, 97-98, and “Zar Nikolaus II und Graf Witte,” Historische Zeitschrift, CLXI, No. 2 (1940), 285; Henri, Rollin, L'Apocalypse de notre temps (Paris, 1940), p. 13 Google Scholar; Germany, Auswärtiges Amt, Akten, microfilm reel 306, Nos. 318 and 207, June 19, 1903, and Oct. 22,1913.

29 Padenie tsarskogo rezhima, II, 396-97.

30 Ibid., VII, 276; Maze, pp. 65-66; Krylenko, p. 43.

31 Padenie tsarskogo rezhima, II, 339-51.

32 Tager, p. 37.

33 Padenie tsarskogo rezhima, II, 354; IV, 379.

34 Tager, pp. 273-74.

35 Ibid.,p. 192.

36 Gruzenberg, O. O., Ocherki i rechi (New York, 1944), p. 1944 Google Scholar; Vasilii, Klimkov, Raspravy i razstrely (Moscow, 1906), p. 30 Google Scholar; Kozlynina, E. I., Za polveka (1862-1912) (Moscow, 1913), p. 526 Google Scholar; Arnold, Margolin, The Jews of Eastern Europe (New York, 1926), pp. 216–17 Google Scholar; Sliozberg, III, 79; Elpat'evskii, p. 371.

37 Tager, p. 272.

38 V. V. Rozanov, Oboniatel'noe i osiazatel'noe otnoshenie evreev k krovi (St. Petersburg, 1914), p. viii.

39 Letter to N. V. Plehve, Nov. 1, 1913, in Viktorov and Chernovskii, eds., pp. 162-63.

40 Letter to Skvortsov cited by Maevskii, V. A., Revoliutsioner-monarkhist: Pamiati L'va Tikhomirova (Novi Sad, 1934), pp. 71–72 Google Scholar.

41 Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew (New York, 1948), p. 16.

42 Volkischer Beobachter, No. 10, Jan. 14, 1926. This issue carried only the first installment of a series of six articles which the official newspaper of the National Socialist Party devoted to the Beilis Affair.