Russian Antisemitism in an European Perspective: The Beilis Affair and its Treatment in the French Press

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to show how Russian antisemitism in Imperial Russia is related to a broader European context, beyond its specific features. The research is focused on the narration by French press of a judicial case involving a Russian Jew, Menahem Mendel Beilis, accused of committing the ritual murder of a child in 1911. The Beilis Affair took place between 1911 and 1913, six years after the resolution of the Dreyfus Affair, which divided the public opinion not only in France but all over Europe.It was quite controversial, and it also had resonance abroad: analyzing the reception of this trial by the French press allows to see how it involved the Dreyfusards and Anti-Dreyfusards sides. It also shows how a case of ritual murder in Russia was transposed and narrated in the French context, thus revealing the broader circumstances in which Russian antisemitism arose. The work will be thus structured in three chapters. The first part will analyze the phenomenon of antisemitism focusing on its origins in the 19th century: this will then allow to discuss the Jewish question in the Russian Empire. This historical context is necessary to focus, in the third chapter, on the Beilis and its reception by the French press.