A01=Eugene M. Avrutin
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Eugene M. Avrutin
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJD
Category=HBLL
Category=HBTB
Category=HRC
Category=HRJ
Category=JKV
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
Category=QRAX
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780197645338
- Weight: 426g
- Dimensions: 237 x 157mm
- Publication Date: 12 Jul 2022
- Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
On April 22, 1823, a three-year-old boy named Fedor finished his lunch and went to play outside. Fedor never returned home from his walk. Several days later, a neighbor found his mutilated body drained of blood and repeatedly pierced. In small market towns, where houses were clustered together, residents knew each other on intimate terms, and people gossiped in taverns, courtyards, and streets, even the most trivial bits of news spread like wildfire. It did not take long before rumors began to emerge that Jews murdered the little boy.
The Velizh Affair reconstructs the lives of Jews and their Christian neighbors caught up in the aftermath of this chilling criminal act. The investigation into Fedor's death resulted in the charging of forty-three Jews with ritual murder, theft and desecration of church property, and the forcible conversion of three town residents. Drawing on an astonishing number of newly discovered trial records, historian Eugene M. Avrutin explores the multiple factors that not only caused fear and conflict in everyday life, but also the social and cultural worlds of a multiethnic population that had coexisted for hundreds of years.
This beautifully crafted book provides an intimate glimpse into small-town life in eastern Europe. The case unfolded in a town like any other town in the Russian Empire where lives were closely interwoven, where rivalries and confrontations were part of day-to-day existence, and where the blood libel was part of a well-established belief system.
Eugene M. Avrutin is the Tobor Family Endowed Professor of Modern European Jewish History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His books include Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia and Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin. He is also the co-editor of Pogroms: A Documentary History.
