Anastasiya Alekseevna Kruzhalina,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia, e‑mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“The Beilis Case” in the Reflections of the “Jewish Soviet Intelligentsia” (on the materials of A. Kagan’s heritage)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-1-7
The article deals with the most famous court case of the late Russian Empire period, the Beilis case, as interpreted by the Soviet Jewish intelligentsia and based on the example of A. Kagan’s legacy. Half a century after the event, the famous Jewish writer Abram Yakovlevich Kagan wrote his novel “Crime and Conscience” exposing the criminal intentions of the Kiev branch of the “Union of the Russian People”, which actually fabricated the case on charges of “blood libel”. The author of the article introduces a little-known and little-known note by A.Ya. Kagan, submitted to the Prosecutor General of the USSR in 1954, after he was arrested in 1949 in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, requesting his release from prison. In the note, the author reflects on the events surrounding Mendel Beilis, based on personal impressions, opinions and reviews of participants, contemporaries of the events and their descendants, as well as draws upon archival documents and memories of witnesses previously published on the “Beilis Case” in the USSR and abroad. Basing on the available source material the author concludes that the actions of Russian nationalists represented by the Kiev branch of “Union of Russian People”, aimed at exacerbation of anti-Semitism in order to “switch” the public attention from the short-sighted policy of the tsarist government, which led to the formation of revolutionary situation in the country, to the “internal enemy” in the face of Jewry, were extremely negatively perceived by the advanced creative intelligentsia and Jewry in Russian Empire.
Publishing: 28/02/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 30.11.2021
How to cite: Kruzhalina A.A. “The Beilis Case” in the Reflections of the “Jewish Soviet Intelligentsia” (on the materials of A. Kagan’s heritage) // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 1 (21), pp. 72–76. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-1-07.pdf]
The author expresses gratitude to the Jewish Museum and Archive of the Interregional Public Organization “Federation of Jewish Organizations and Communities – Vaad (Council)” for providing access to historical sources of the A.Ya. Kagan Foundation.
Links: Issue 1 2022
Keywords: China, USSR, Russian emigration, perusal, INO OGPU (Foreign Department of the United Main Political Directorate)