By
Eric Vandenbroeck 18 July 2018
Because today I will be leaving for on a lecture and
seminar tour in China, I will not be able to post much on this website for a
while. But considering that a recent two-part article detailing a plan to save the Tsar and his family
plus the British Banking scheme to control
Russia's economy and the Allied intervention, has drawn such a large
readership, proceeding where I left off with the previous two I will add a
third article with some less known information.
As expected, thousands of Russian religious pilgrims
have walked in an overnight procession in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg to
mark the 100th anniversary of the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
Law enforcement agencies reported that over
100,000 pilgrims participated. Another 20,000 people joined the commemorations
when the procession arrived at the monastery in Ganina
Yama after covering the distance of 21 km.
The importance of the years 1917-18 is that it would
not only drastically alter the course of Russian history but of the 20th
century itself. First the triumph of Bolshevism ignited
a vicious civil war and the rise of a one-party state that spied on its
people. It also gave way to the rise of Joseph Stalin,
whose grim rule is one of the factors that led to the cold war that involved a
majority of countries in the world including the US and the USSR coming close
to World War III.
This while the death of Nicholas II and the Romanov
family remains a controversial moment in Russia’s history. Tsarism and
Bolshevism are, for the most part, not presented as conflicting forces in a
battle in which one order defeated another. Rather, tsars, Bolsheviks and later
communists, are seen as a succession of “greats.” In
Moscow, visitors can admire the glamour and grandeur of the tsars at the
Historical Museum in the Red Square before lining up for the Lenin Mausoleum
only a few steps away.
One of the personal inadequacies
of Nicholas and Alexandra that deserve mention, led them both to seek
support and advice from Grigori Rasputin and became one of the factors that
further isolated the couple from the government and people of Russia. An underresearched subject to date, it might be useful at this
point to throw some light on how the abdication of the last Tsar develloped. Of course it cannot be denied that the German
Emperor Wilhelm II (the tsar's nephew) spent
huge sums to foment Revolution in Russia. And together with his chancellor Bethmann Hollweg (see Whitewashing
the White Book in the following link) one could also have
said tricked Nicholas II in what Germany then would
use as an excuse to start its war with Russia.
Little-known Facts Of How The
Abdication Of Nicholas II Developed And Its Consequences.
On 3 August, Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Sazonov confided to French Ambassador Paléologue:
“The Emperor is the sovereign, but it is the Empress who governs under
Rasputin’s guidance.” (1) Sazonov’s complaint
clarifies why many wanted to be rid of the Siberian muzhik.
The crisis of World War I placed the fragile regime
under intolerable stress. In February 1917, Nicholas II lost control of
protests in St. Petersburg (which had been renamed Petrograd during the war to
sound less German) and was soon forced to abdicate, replaced
by a republic under a provisional government.
Following the disastrous events in the war, when Kovno (now Kaunus, Lithuania) was
captured by the Germans, Russia was embarrassed by its continuous military
losses. Paléologue noted in his diary (2) that the
disaster was placed on Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich’s shoulders, as the
Supreme Commander. In an attempt to lessen further
military embarrassment, the emperor dismissed the grand duke and took over as
Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces.
Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna
provided a personal insight regarding her son’s decision in her diary: 1915, 28
August. “Pavel Benkendorf visited me after a long
absence. We were both in despair about the terrible communication from the
front and other events, which are occurring and about
which are now spoken. Before everything, it is, that the irate soul of Gr[ igorii] has returned, and also
A. [Alexandra Fyodorovna] wants Niki to take the
Supreme Command for himself instead of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich; have to
be mindless, to do that!” (3) [Yulia Kudrina, Maria Fyodorovna’s
biographer, provided the following sentence that is missing in the recent
Russian edition, which was sourced from a Danish source: “She must be
psychiatrically insane, if she honestly believes this!” (4) which are spoken
about in the city. Niki arrived with his 4 girls. He began to say himself that
he will take over the command instead of Nikolasha, I
was so horrified, that I nearly collapsed, and told him, that it was a huge
mistake, [I] pleaded not to do it now, when everything is bad for us, and added
that, if he does this, everyone will see, that this was Rasputin’s Prikaz. I believe that this impressed him, because he
became significantly red. He simply does not understand, what danger and
suffering this may bring us and to the entire nation.” (5)
Kerensky explained that after the February Revolution,
the Provisional Government found out that the Germans had covertly gained
Rasputin as one of their agents. (6) It is difficult to understand why Kerensky
made such a spurious claim when the Commission he set up revealed that Rasputin
did not influence Russian domestic affairs during the war.
Mikhail Rodzianko who became
one of the key politicians during the Russian February Revolution claimed that
it was the Germans who had spread the rumor that Rasputin was being told
military secrets by the “debauched German tsarina.” The German disinformation
was supposed to demoralize the Russian army into defeat. (7)
Around October 1916, British Ambassador to Russia
Buchanan was concerned about the rapid turnover of ministers, especially Sazonov’s departure, who had commanded the trust of the
Allies and “because he was seen as a force for modernization in domestic
politics.” He blamed those objectionable changes on the “dark forces at Tsarskoe Selo.” (8) Buchanan
supposed that a large section of the governing clique was Britain’s enemy. (9)
Given these facts, the meaning behind Samuel Hoare’s
(10) admission that safeguarding the Entente drove the British to destroy the
‘dark forces.’ Secretary of War Lloyd George did not sanction the operation to
murder Rasputin (11) because there was no need to approve an operation that involved
willing Russian citizens to carry out the murder on their own territory. The
British were only interested in the outcome. Hoare only needed to assure to his
superior that the matter would end favorably.
Stephan Dorril revealed that
MI6 preferred the use of third parties. (The SIS
emerged as MI6 after WWI.) For that reason, Secret Intelligent Service
(SIS) agent Oswald Rayner’s role on the night of 16/ 17 December was to act as
an observer, ensuring the liquidation of a common enemy would be carried out on
the designated night. His second duty would have been to confirm the result to
his superior, who would have notified Buchanan.
Buchanan’s audience with Nikolai II on Friday 30
December 1916 at 11 in the morning (12) was significant in that the emperor
knew the British were involved. Buchanan told the emperor that it would be
ideal to “break down the barriers that separate you from your people and to
regain their confidence.” He then added that the Germans were “pulling the
strings and were using as their unconscious tools those who were in the habit
of advising His Majesty as to the choice of his ministers.” (13) Nikolai II
interrupted the flow of words and explained that he chose the ministers.
Bruce Lockhart (Consul-General in Moscow) recognized
Buchanan’s mission this way: “… future generations will recognize how great was
the work accomplished by Sir George Buchanan in helping to keep Russia in the
war.”
On 28 February 1917 it was announced in the Duma, in
front of a crowd composed mostly of workers and soldiers, that a provisional
Duma Committee had been created. It was declared that the Duma Committee held
exclusive authority and that it was vital that everyone submitted to it “and no
other authority” and that this committee was headed by Mikhail Rodzianko with Alexander Kerensky acting as its deputy.
Mikhail Rodzianko signed a Declaration that there was
a change in power. (14) This notice came days before Nikolai II was pressured
into abdicating.
On 1 March Grand Duke Kirill (wearing a red band)
brought his regiment to the Duma and declared their allegiance. (15)(16) Ambassador Buchanan
noted that Kirill was the first Romanov “to recognize the revolution and to
hoist the red flag.” (17) Countess Kleinmichel said that
it was believed that Kirill had acted on Buchanan’s advice. (18)
A second matter that same day concerned the appearance
of a joint Declaration, signed by Ambassadors Buchanan and Paléologue.
They informed Rodzianko that “the governments of
France and Britain are entering into official relations with the Temporary
Executive Committee of the State Duma, as the expression of the true will of
the people and the sole lawful government of Russia.” (19)
On 2 Mai Alexander Spiridovich
(20) and Vasily Maklakov (21)
thought that had the emperor refused to abdicate, he would have been killed.
The Russian statesman Aleksandr Ivanovich Guchkov found military officers willing to accomplish that
deed. (22)
Nikolai II responded to the usurpers’ demand with his
own improper response. Signed in pencil and not addressing anyone, it was a
piece of paper, which had no legal force. Having in hand what they wanted, not
one lawyer cared to question it.
The social and political fabric of the nation now was
transformed. Property became a commodity for the taking. (23) The Committee’s
Order, dated 2 March, declared that those guilty of harboring “supporters of
the old regime would be court-martialed.” (24)
At Tsarskoe Selo, under General Kornilov’s orders, the Okhrana that
guarded the perimeter of the Alexandrovskii Palace
was replaced. At the 5 March Provisional Government meeting, the second item on
the agenda confirmed that the Winter Palace had become nationalized property.
(25) On 7 March, the Provisional Government decided the former emperor and his
wife would be deprived of their liberty.
Kerensky recognized that as the former head of state,
Nikolai II “could not remain at liberty” a position that was endorsed by the
worker’s Soviet. 1543 They issued a ‘Protocol’ stipulating that “Nikolai
Romanov should not be permitted to depart for England” and ought to be sent to
the Trubetskoi Bastion prison. (26)
One could argue that had the field commanders remained
loyal to the emperor and to their Oath of Allegiance and focused solely on
military matters, the Duma would not have succeeded in its quest for change.
As I further pointed out in my earlier article the
British only became concerned when the Bolsheviks, now gaining a foothold in
Siberia, would seize control of the Tsar and his family at Tobolskand
and potentially use them as political pawns in a game of power play with the
Germans over a separate peace deal hence a plan was
hatched to move the Tsar.
The imperial family’s presence in Tsarskoe
Selo became politically awkward, therefore Kerensky
decided they must leave. (27) Buchanan’s telegram to Arthur Balfour (the
British Foreign Secretary) on 12/ 25 July 1917, revealed why the relocation was
necessary. It was “the fear of counter-revolution among the socialists.” (28)
The relocation had nothing to do with safeguarding the imperial family.
Kerensky selected Tobolsk, a city where he had spent
his formative years. The city’s remoteness, where Decembrists from the failed
1825 uprising and recent revolutionaries were sent, reinforced its “special
geographic circumstance.” (29) Once the imperial family had re-settled,
Kerensky was no longer answerable for their welfare. Upon reflection, he
accused Rasputin for directing “the tormented path … of the imperial family”
(30) but then argued, once the Bolsheviks took control, they were culpable for
the family’s fate.
Another two controversies are that on 27 November,
2017 that Russia’s equivalent of the FBI, announced that it would look into the
claim that the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family was a Jewish
“ritual killing” followed by a recent announcement that the Russian
Orthodox Church had not yet taken a position on the continued analysis of the
Romanov family's remains. In particular, the church
has refused to recognize the bodies of two Romanov children. The family and
experts had hoped that the matter would be resolved by the time of the 100th
anniversary of their deaths this week. Yet it
has now been postponed until at least 2020.
The Blood Libel As Jewish
“ritual killing”
Originating in England with the 1144 case of William
Norwich, the accusation – that Jews allegedly murder Christian children for
ritual purposes, enjoyed popular appeal for hundreds of years. The most
publicized case was that of Mendel Beilis (31), who
was accused of ritually murdering the thirteen-year-old boy Andrei Iuschchinskii on March 20, 1911. The Beilis
trial was widely reported in newspapers worldwide and became an international
cause célèbre.
Russia has had a long history of promoting ritual
murder accusations. The blood libel survived on Russian soil since the end of
the eighteenth century, when the Russian government acquired the largest Jewish
population in the world as a consequence of the
partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the first half of the
nineteenth century, almost all of the documented cases
occurred in present-day Lithuania and Belarus. Here, an unusually high proportion
of the inhabitants – from the common folk to the well-educated members,
believed that Jews were capable of committing the
crime.
In 1816, several Jews in Grodno were blamed for the
death of a peasant girl whose arm had been cut off at the shoulder blade and
whose body had several puncture wounds. Similar accusations surfaced from time
to time. In 1821, rumors circulated that Jews were responsible for another
grisly death after the body of a young woman was found in the Western Dvina.
The most sensational case took place in Velizh, a small town located on the northeastern edge of
the Pale of Settlement. Now erased from historical memory, the Velizh affair was the longest ritual murder case in the
modern world, and most likely in world history.(32) The
case lasted approximately twelve years, from 1823 to 1835, and resulted in
charges of ritual murder against forty-three Jews. Unlike the Beilis trial, the Velizh case was
conducted in strict secrecy, according to the guidelines established by the
inquisitorial procedure code. Imprisonment took a physical and an emotional
toll on the prisoners. Standing in front of the commission, many Jews found it
difficult to cope with the trauma of the oral interrogations. Some individuals
had a hard time getting their point across in a language only a handful of
people knew reasonably well. Others succumbed to depression from which they
never fully recovered.
By the fall of 1828, the Velizh
inquisitorial commission amassed an impressive dossier: a forensic report, an assortment
of confessions, one blood-stained cloth, two knives, a piece of foreskin, and
reference works that clearly established the theological origins and
historicity of ritual murder.
The Velizh case reached the
Senate and the State Council, the highest judicial bodies in the Russian
Empire. Eventually, the charges against the Jews were dropped. Convicting Jews
of blood sacrifice required empirical evidence of the highest order. Yet
however powerful the evidence may have been in the Jews’ favor,
Tsar Nicholas I was wary of dismissing the ritual murder charge outright. “I do
not have and indeed cannot have the inner conviction,” he stated, “that the
murder has not been committed by Jews.” Numerous examples from different times
and places around the world, he believed, revealed that “among Jews there
probably exist fanatics or sectarians who consider Christian blood necessary
for their rites.”
Leaving open the possibility of ritual intent,
Nicholas I’s opinion in 1835 cast a lingering shadow over all future blood
accusations. As the recent events suggest surrounding the Russian Orthodox
Church’s probe into the 1918 execution of the Romanovs, for many Russians, it’s
entirely within the realm of perceived wisdom that Jews could commit the crime
at any time and place. Even a
recent mall fire sparked blood libels accusations against Jews.
Controversies And Mysteries
Initially following the First World War little information
was available as to what really happened on 16-17 July 1918. Or as the often quoted
member of the Ural Soviet commissar Voikov (who later
became Soviet Ambassador to Poland) stated: The world will never know what we
did with them.
It would be another seventy years before it came known
what had happened, this while rumor and counter-rumor flourished
and pretenders came forward one by one purporting to be one of the children,
there was no trace of the family and no bodies were found.
In the west, interest in Russia’s last imperial family
withered on the vine with the rise of Soviet Russia, except for the occasional
flurry of interest, such as that over the false Anastasia claimant, Anna
Anderson, who in the 1920s became notorious after persisting for many years
with her claim to be the tsar’s youngest daughter and thus sole survivor of the
1918 massacre. She was
brought to fame by cult followers of the famous occultist Rudolf Steiner.
Initially general secretary of the German branch of
Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy in 1913 he started his own occult group naming
it Anthroposophy. Active in the Steiner movement the first to make "Anne Anderson"
(in reality of Polish origin) famous was Harriet von Rathlef-Keilmann when she published a book about her
friend: Anastasia: A Woman's Fate as a Mirror of the World Catastrophe. (For
more on Steiner sie also Rudolf
Steiner’s "mystery plays")
This soon reached Prince Sigismund of Prussia who had
been close to Rudolf Steiner and earlier had received Steiner as a guest at his
Liebenberg estate. It was Prince Sigismund who then in 1927 asked another
follower of Rudolf Steiner his brother in law Prince
Friedrich (whose older brother Georg Moritz was also an Anthroposophist) to
go and see how one could help what was possible his niece Anastasia. In 1946,
Prince Friedrich helped "Anne Anderson" across the border to Bad Liebenzell in the French occupation zone. And in 1949
Prince Friedrich in 1949 spent the last of his Deutschmarks on what was to
become Anna Anderson's first permanent home in Unterlengehardt.
Though the villagers knew nothing, initially, of
Anna's Romanov claims, she seemed to establish herself swiftly as a sort of
resident of honor, referred to as Hohe Frau: She was
no doubt bemused to find herself treated to a reverential moving-in ceremony,
with children lining the road carrying bouquets. One of the anthroposophists,
Adele von Heydebrandt, became Anna's carer and the pair lived together in the fourteen by
eighteen-foot barack type cabin. They would later be
joined by a friend of the wife of Rudolf Steiner, Marie Steiner, Monica von Miltitz.
Ian Lilburn, a member of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland and the grandson Sir Hugh Reid Bart, drove tirelessly around Europe
collecting witnesses. Today he retains his unshakeable conviction that Anna was
the Grand Duchess. Lilburn who visited Anna at Unterlengenhardt
commented that the Anthroposophists
were friendly but overly analytical: If you were to say "good
morning", they'd be wondering what you meant.
In her book, Anastasia Retrouvée
(1985), Tatiana Botkina-Melnik describes her visit to
Unterlengenhardt. "Through a small window nearly
blocked by vegetation, the dull day barely illuminated a veritable Aladdin's
Cave. Picture frames, knick-knacks, postcards, photographs were piled up
everywhere, a bizarre quantity of objects among which I recognized official
portraits of the Emperor and Empress, old epaulets, a Cossack officer's belt
decorated with tarnished silver ornaments and everywhere unopened letters.
Envelopes invaded everything and stamps in all colors bore witness to the most
exotic parts of the world ... And then, when my eyes had finished taking in
this baffling spectacle, I perceived at the end of. the room a large wooden
bed, with covers, piled one on top of the other, concealing a human form. I
approach. Anastasia is there."
"Anna Anderson" died on 12 February 1984
followed by Prince Friedrich's own death on January 23, 1985. But Anna never
quite went away. In 1986, a TV mini-series, Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, was
broadcast; this particularly unlikely version of the story depicted Anna naked
in bed with a character obviously based on Prince Friedrich. It is not known
whether the principal actresses were aware of the liberties taken with the
truth, but both said there were moments when they believed Anna's claim.
Then in April 1989, the Moscow News reported the
grave's discovery. That same month President Mikhail Gorbachev was received in
London by the queen.
In 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union by
orders of Boris Yeltsin the grave was officially excavated. When the grave was
opened, the remains of only nine bodies were found. Two bodies were missing.
They turned out to be those of Alexei and one of his sisters. The news caused a
media sensation and reignited stories of the escape of one of the tsar's
daughters.
In a ceremony in 1998 attended by Russian president
Boris Yeltsin and 50 or so Romanov relatives, the remains were reburied in the
family crypt in St. Petersburg. When the partial remains of two skeletons
believed to be the remaining Romanov children, Alexei and Maria, were found in
2007 and similarly tested, most people assumed they would be reburied there as
well.
Instead, events took a strange turn. Even though both
sets of remains were identified by teams of top international scientists, who
compared recovered DNA to samples from living Romanov relatives, members of the
Russian Orthodox Church questioned the validity of the findings. More research
was needed, they claimed.
Last fall the official state investigation of the
tsar's murder was reopened, and Nicholas
and Alexandra were exhumed, as was Nicholas's father, Alexander III. Since
then there have been conflicting reports from government and church officials
on when, or if, the entire Romanov family will be reburied and reunited, even
if only in death. Yet the powerful Russian Orthodox Church to date has refused
to recognize the bodies of the two Romanov children and now announced that they
want to postpone
a decision until at least 2020.
The Church has said the remains must be tested
further, but it also appears to fear offending clergy, including a bishop close
to Vladimir Putin, who believe the relics were destroyed in a
Jewish conspiracy. Clerics also fear alienating numerous people who believe
in multiple legends including that one or more of the children (and according
to the following suggestion by a Russian historian again Anna Anderson) may have survived. To date, Anthroposophists and Steiner followers still do believe
this to be the case. So also does Thomas Meyer the co-author of a book
publishing (the "postmortem" letters Steiner penned down with the
alleged message from the deceased" Head of the German General Staff
General from Moltke to his wife) who wrote in his publication "The
European" (Der Europäer) dated 18 July 2018 that
Anastasia (in the form of Anna Anderson) "survived the assassination of
the tsar's family"; Anastasia überlebte die Ermordung der Zarenfamilie im Juli 1919."
1. Paléologue, M. Diary
excerpt, Thursday 3 August 1916 (N. S.), An Ambassador’s Memoirs, [Volume II],
p 31
2. Paléologue, M., Diary excerpt,
Wednesday 18 August 1915, (N. S.), An Ambassador’s Memoirs, [Volume II], p 53
3. Maria Fyodorovna, Diary
excerpt, Saturday 8 August 1915, Dnevniki Imperatritsi Marii Fyodorovni, p 88-89
4. Kudrina, Yu., Imperatritsa Maria Fyodorovna
Romanova, p 149
5. Maria Fyodorovna, Diary
excerpt, Wednesday 12 August 1915, Dnevniki Imperatritsi Marii Fyodorovni, p 89
6. Kerensky, A., Tragediya Dinastii Romanovikh, p 43
7. Radzinsky, E., The
Rasputin File, p 355
8. Pokazaniya P. N. Milyukov, 7 August 1917, in: Padeniye
Tsarskogo Regima, [Volume
VI], (1926), p 350
9. Alexandra Fyodorovna,
Letter to Nikolai II, 4 November 1916, reproduced in: Platonov,
O. (III), Nikolai Vtoroi v Sekretnoi
Perepiske, p 652
10. Hoare, S., The Fourth Seal, p 159
11. Cook, A., To Kill Rasputin, p 230
12. Nikolai II, Diary excerpt, Friday 30 December
1916, Dnevnik, p 373
13. Buchanan, G., Mission to Russia, [Volume II], pp
43-46
14. Izvestiya Petrogradskogo Soveta, February
28, 1917, No. 1, p 2, reproduced as Document No. 13, in: Skorbnii
Put’ Romanovikh (1917-18), Arkhiv
Noveishei Rossii, [Volume
III], p 36
15. “Protocol Sobitii Fevralskoi Revolutsii”, Document
80, 27 February – 4 March 1917, reproduced in: Tretyakova,
V., Otrecheniye Nikolaya
II, p 311
16. Izvestiya Revoliutsionnoi Nedeli, No. 4, 1
March 1917, p 1, reproduced as: Document No. 42, in Browder, R. and Kerensky,
A., The Russian Provisional Government 1917 Documents, [Volume 1], p 64
17. Buchanan, G., Mission to Russia, [Volume II], p
101
18. Kleinmichel, M, Memoirs of a Shipwrecked World,
Brentano’s Press, New York, 1923, p 232
19. “Official Recognition of the Provisional
Government by England and France”, reproduced in: Golder, F., Documents of Russian History 1914-1917, The Century
Co., 1927, p 284
20. Spiridovich, A., Velikaya
Voina i Fevralskaya
Revolutsiya, p 387
21. Maklakov, A., “Padeniye Russkoi Monarkhii: Pro i Contra”, Istoriya i Istoriki Journal, Moskva, 2001,
p 312
22. Spiridovich, A., Velikaya
Voina i Fevralskaya
Revolutsiya, p 477
23. Kerensky, A., Rossiya v Povorotnii Moment Istorii, p 215
24. Izvestiya Revoliutsionnoi Nedeli, No. 5, 2 March
1917, p 1, Order to the City of Petrograd, Reproduced as: Document No. 46, in:
Browder, R. and Kerensky, A., [Volume 1], p 66
25. Provisional Government Sitting No. 5, 5 March
1917, Item No. 4b, reproduced in: Zhurnali Zasedanii Vremennogo Pravitelstva, Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii Rossii, [Volume VII], p 34
26. Kerensky, A., Tragediya Dinastii Romanovikh, p 114
27. Ispolkom Protocols, 9 March 1917, reproduced as
Document No. 40, in: Skorbnii Put’ Romanovikh, Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii Rossii, [Volume III], p 63
28. Kerensky, A., Tragediya Dinastii Romanovikh, p 126
29. Telegram from Ambassador G. Buchanan to Arthur
Balfour, 12 (25) March 1917, reproduced as Document No. 59, in: Skorbnii Put’ Romanovih, Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii Rossii, [Volume III], p
81
30. Pokazaniya A. Kerensky, 14-20 August 1920,
reproduced in: Alexandrov, A., Rassledovaniye
Tsareubiistva- rassekrechenniye
dokument
30. Kerensky, A., Tragediya Dinastii Romanovikh, p 51
31. For the context of the Beilis
case see Edmund Levin, A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in
Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel, 2014.
32. See Eugene M. Avrutin
"The Velizh Affair: Blood Libel in a Russian
Town" (Oxford University Press, 2018), Avrutin
is also the co-editor of "Ritual Murder in Russia, Eastern Europe, and
Beyond: New Histories of an Old Accusation" (Indiana University Press,
2017).