Antisemitic expressions in the early 20th century

Prof. Elissa Bemporad

The pogroms of the late 19th century continued into the early 20th century, and Jews were increasingly seen as a destabilizing, conspiratorial, and anti-Russian force in this time period. One of the major antisemitic events which took place in the Russian Empire at the time was a blood-libel case known as the Beilis Affair.

What can the Beilies Affair teach us about antisemitism in late Imperial Russia on both the governmental and grassroots level?

References

• Avrutin, Eugene M., Jonathan Dekel-Chen and Robert Weinberg, eds., Ritual Murder in Russia, Eastern Europe, and beyond: New Histories of an Old Accusation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017).

• Leikin, Ezekiel, ed. and trans., The Beilis Transcripts: The Anti-Semitic Trial That Shook the World (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1993).

• Lindemann, Albert S., The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank), 1894-1915 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1991).

• Zipperstein, Steven, Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History (New York: Liveright, 2018).