The Velizh Affair
Title | The Velizh Affair PDF eBook |
Author | Eugene M. Avrutin |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | 249 |
Release | 2018 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0190640529 |
The Velizh case was the longest ritual murder investigation in the modern world. Drawing on newly discovered trial records, historian Eugene M. Avrutin looks beyond antisemitism as the single most important factor in understanding ritual murder accusations, and in the process, provides an intimate glimpse of small-town life in eastern Europe.
Pogroms
Title | Pogroms PDF eBook |
Author | Eugene M. Avrutin |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | 288 |
Release | 2021-09-24 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0190060115 |
From the 1880s to the 1940s, an upsurge of explosive pogroms caused much pain and suffering across the eastern borderlands of Europe. Rioters attacked Jewish property and caused physical harm to women and children. During World War I and the Russian Civil War, pogrom violence turned into full-blown military actions. In some cases, pogroms wiped out of existence entire Jewish communities. More generally, they were part of a larger story of destruction, ethnic purification, and coexistence that played out in the region over a span of some six decades. Pogroms: A Documentary History surveys the complex history of anti-Jewish violence by bringing together archival and published sources--many appearing for the first time in English translation. The documents assembled here include eyewitness testimony, oral histories, diary excerpts, literary works, trial records, and press coverage. They also include memos and field reports authored by army officials, investigative commissions, humanitarian organizations, and government officials. This landmark volume and its distinguished roster of scholars provides an unprecedented view of the history of pogroms.
Ritual Murder in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Beyond
Title | Ritual Murder in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Beyond PDF eBook |
Author | Eugene M. Avrutin |
Publisher | Indiana University Press |
Total Pages | 0 |
Release | 2017-07-12 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780253026408 |
This innovative reassessment of ritual murder accusations brings together scholars working in history, folklore, ethnography, and literature. Favoring dynamic explanations of the mechanisms, evolution, popular appeal, and responses to the blood libel, the essays rigorously engage with the larger social and cultural worlds that made these phenomena possible. In doing so, the book helps to explain why blood libel accusations continued to spread in Europe even after modernization seemingly made them obsolete. Drawing on untapped and unconventional historical sources, the collection explores a range of intriguing topics: popular belief and scientific knowledge; the connections between antisemitism, prejudice, and violence; the rule of law versus the power of rumors; the politics of memory; and humanitarian intervention on a global scale.
Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond
Title | Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond PDF eBook |
Author | Sergey A. Ivanov |
Publisher | OUP Oxford |
Total Pages | 492 |
Release | 2006-04-06 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0191515140 |
There are saints in Orthodox Christian culture who overturn the conventional concept of sainthood. Their conduct may be unruly and salacious, they may blaspheme and even kill - yet, mysteriously, those around them treat them with even more reverence. Such saints are called 'holy fools'. In this pioneering study Sergey A. Ivanov examines the phenomenon of holy foolery from a cultural standpoint. He identifies its prerequisites and its development in religious thought, and traces the emergence of the first hagiographic texts describing these paradoxical saints. He describes the beginnings of holy foolery in Egyptian monasteries of the fifth century, followed by its high point in the cities of Byzantium, with an eventual decline in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. He also compares the important Russian tradition of holy fools, which in some form has survived to this day.
The Jewish Unions in America
Title | The Jewish Unions in America PDF eBook |
Author | Bernard Weinstein |
Publisher | Open Book Publishers |
Total Pages | 334 |
Release | 2018-02-06 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1783743565 |
Newly arrived in New York in 1882 from Tsarist Russia, the sixteen-year-old Bernard Weinstein discovered an America in which unionism, socialism, and anarchism were very much in the air. He found a home in the tenements of New York and for the next fifty years he devoted his life to the struggles of fellow Jewish workers. The Jewish Unions in America blends memoir and history to chronicle this time. It describes how Weinstein led countless strikes, held the unions together in the face of retaliation from the bosses, investigated sweatshops and factories with the aid of reformers, and faced down schisms by various factions, including Anarchists and Communists. He co-founded the United Hebrew Trades and wrote speeches, articles and books advancing the cause of the labor movement. From the pages of this book emerges a vivid picture of workers’ organizations at the beginning of the twentieth century and a capitalist system that bred exploitation, poverty, and inequality. Although workers’ rights have made great progress in the decades since, Weinstein’s descriptions of workers with jobs pitted against those without, and American workers against workers abroad, still carry echoes today. The Jewish Unions in America is a testament to the struggles of working people a hundred years ago. But it is also a reminder that workers must still battle to live decent lives in the free market. For the first time, Maurice Wolfthal’s readable translation makes Weinstein’s Yiddish text available to English readers. It is essential reading for students and scholars of labor history, Jewish history, and the history of American immigration.
Peasant Rebels Under Stalin
Title | Peasant Rebels Under Stalin PDF eBook |
Author | Lynne Viola |
Publisher | Oxford University Press, USA |
Total Pages | 325 |
Release | 1999 |
Genre | Collectivization of agriculture |
ISBN | 0195131045 |
Based on newly declassified Soviet archives, including secret police reports, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin documents the active history of the vast peasant rebellion against collectivization between 1928-1932. Lynn Viola reveals the manifestation in Stalin's Russia of universal strategies of peasant resistance in what amounted to virtual civil war between state and peasantry.
Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia
Title | Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Weinberg |
Publisher | Indiana University Press |
Total Pages | 204 |
Release | 2013-11-20 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0253011140 |
This “riveting history . . . brings us face to face with this notorious trial” of a Russian Jew who was framed for ritual murder in 1913 (Jewish Book World). On Sunday, March 20, 1911, children playing in a cave near Kiev made a gruesome discovery: the blood-soaked body of a partially clad boy. After right-wing groups asserted that the killing was a ritual murder, the police, with no direct evidence, arrested Menachem Mendel Beilis, a thirty-nine-year-old Jewish manager at a factory near the site of the crime. Beilis’s trial in 1913 quickly became an international cause célèbre. The jury ultimately acquitted Beilis but held that the crime had the hallmarks of a ritual murder. Robert Weinberg’s account of the Beilis Affair explores the reasons why the tsarist government framed Beilis, shedding light on the excesses of antisemitism in late Imperial Russia. It is a gripping narrative culled from trial transcripts, newspaper articles, Beilis’s memoirs, and archival sources, many appearing in English for the first time.