4.  THE RITUAL MURDER TRIAL OF SARATOV

One more detail was lacking to complete the dismal picture and to bring out the full symmetry between the end of Nicholas’ reign and its ominous beginning:  a medieval ritual murder trial after the pattern of the Velizh case.  And a trial of this nature did not fail to come.  In December, 1852, and in January, 1853, two Russian boys from among the lower classes disappeared in the city of Saratov, in central Russia.  Their bodies were found two or three months later in the Volga, covered with wounds and bearing the traces of circumcision.  The latter circumstance led the coroners to believe that the crime had been perpetrated by Jews.  Saratov, a city situated outside the Pale of Settlement, harbored at that time a small Jewish settlement consisting of some forty soldiers of the local garrison and several civilian Jewish tradesmen and artisans who lived in the prohibited Volga town by the grace of the police.  There were also a few converts.

The vigilant eyes of the coroners were riveted on this settlement.  An official by the name of Durnovo, who had been dispatched from St. Petersburg to take charge of the case, began at once to direct the inquiry into the channel of a ritual murder case.  Needless to say there were soon found material witnesses from among the ignorant or criminal class who were under the hypnotic influence of the ritual murder myth.  A private, called Bogdanov, who had been convicted of vagrancy, and an intoxicated gubernatorial official by the name of Krueger testified that they were present at the time when the Jews squeezed out the blood from the bodies of the murdered boys.  They also mentioned by name the principal perpetrators of the murder, the “circumcision expert” in the local Jewish settlement, a soldier called Shlieferman, and a furrier named Yankel Yushkevicher, a devout Jew.  The incriminated Jews were thrown into prison, but, despite excruciating cross-examinations, they and the other defendants indignantly denied not only their complicity in the murder but also the ritual murder accusation as a whole.

The investigation became more and more involved, drawing into its net a constantly growing number of persons, until in July, 1854, a special “Judicial Commission” was appointed by order of Nicholas I. for the purpose of disclosing not only the particular crime committed at Saratov but also “of investigating the dogmas of the religious fanaticism of the Jews.”  The latter task, being of a theoretic nature, was entrusted, in 1855, to a special commission under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior.  Among the theologians and Hebraists who were members of that Commission was also the baptized professor Daniel Chwolson who had scientifically disproved the ritual legend.  In 1856, after a protracted inquiry of two years, the judicial commission, having failed to discover evidence against the accused, decided to set them at liberty, but “to leave them under strong suspicion.”