| FA-231945-16 | Research Programs: Fellowships for University Teachers | Eugene Michael Avrutin | The Velizh Affair: Jews and Christians in a 19th-Century Russian Border Town | 6/1/2016 - 5/31/2017 | $50,400.00 | Eugene | Michael | Avrutin | | | | Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois | Champaign | IL | 61801-3620 | USA | 2015 | Jewish Studies | Fellowships for University Teachers | Research Programs | 50400 | 0 | 50400 | 0 | A book-length study analyzing the complex relationships between Jews and Christians based on an extensive murder case from the 1820s-30s in Velizh, a small town about 300 miles west of Moscow.
The Velizh affair was the longest ritual murder case in the modern world. The investigation lasted twelve years (1823-1835), generating an astonishing number of documents. The archive includes hundreds of depositions and petitions, official government correspondence, reports, memos, and personal letters. The case opens a window onto a time, place, and people that seldom appear in studies of either the Russian Empire or East European Jewry. Furthermore, it offers a unique window onto not only the multiple factors that caused ruptures and conflicts in everyday life, but also the social and cultural worlds of a multi-ethnic population that had coexisted for hundreds of years. Using the newly discovered documents, the book project: (1) reconstructs the mental universe of a multi-ethnic border town and analyzes otherwise opaque realms of human experience; and (2) rethinks the role that antisemitism played in the ritual murder charge. |