This day occupies pages 476 through 531 of Volume I of the
transcript.
Today Sergey Ivanovich Brazul-Brushkovsky testifies about
his two private investigations of Yushchinsky’s murder, and Arnold Davidovich
Margolin about his involvement, particularly the trip to Kharkov. These two and Krasovsky were closely involved
in identifying the role of Vera Cheberyak and her gang in the murder, waking
the government up to the fact that they weren’t going to get the easy verdict
they thought was their due as stemming from the will of the Tsar.
One of the most astounding statements in the trial is in this
part of the testimony. Brazul (as he is
usually called) claims that Fenenko told him on 28 December 1911 that Vera
Cheberyak couldn’t lie. It is impossible
that Fenenko could have taken four depositions from Vera and two from her
husband and still say this. The record
of the trial and of other work on the subject of the trial show that he could
not have been that naïve and still survive his own refusal to endorse the
ritual murder charge. Perhaps Brazul
misunderstood.
Vipper here insists on a number of those questions that should
never have been asked. He should never
have asked Brazul whether the interest of the latter depended from the start
and through the end of 1911 on the supposed ritual nature of the murder. The government was trying to pretend that ritual
murder had nothing to do with the case right up until May 23 1913 when they
published the indictment that would be used at trial. Vipper wasn’t involved until March 1913 and more
than once has acted as if he had no clue as to previous machinations.
In the middle of the day, Shmakov rants about foreign
newspapers getting hold of Brazul’s material and publishing it, and says or
pretends that Brazul made this happen.
Apparently he has no idea that there are foreigners in Russia who could
have read Brazul’s work, translated it and sent it to their own newspapers in
hardcopy or by wire. Shmakov is mad
because the articles discredited the government case before it even went to
trial. He has a worse problem, however,
because a monarchist newspaper, Kievlyanin, has been supporting Brazul’s
position. Pikhno and Shulgin, the
editors, both disagreed with Shmakov’s ritual murder obsession and said so in
the pages of Kievlyanin.
The other problem here is the prosecution’s and judge’s
failure to deal adequately with Brazul’s entire history in the case. They blame him for contradicting himelf when
actually, he clearly says that his December 1911 conversation with Fenenko and
his January 12 1912 declaration to Chaplinsky came from data given him by Cheberyak,
but the May 6 declaration and May 31 publication derived from information he
got after he lost all his trust in her, and his July 1912 written denunciation
of her as a participant in the murder was the basis for his testimony to
Mashkevich in July. Unfortunately
instead of repeating this timeline again and again until he wears them out --
which is the only way to deal with them -- Brazul goes off into philosophical
issues.
Margolin does something that more of the defendants should
have done: every time he gets asked a question he already answered, he points
that out. Shmakov gets this treatment a
lot, plus before Margolin answers Shmakov’s typically incomprehensible questions
he pins Shmakov down on exactly what it is he wants to know instead of guessing
and getting sneered at.
Margolin says one thing in his testimony that probably went
under everybody’s radar. On day 12,
Gaevskaya told the court that Cheberyak said to udalit Andrey, while
Vera claimed she was talking about her kids making noise at Christmas. When Margolin retails Vera’s rant about
Andrey’s relatives killing him, Margolin uses the identical word. He is obviously quoting Cheberyak since there
are lots of words in Russian, just as in English, for getting rid of
somebody. On day 12 Cheberyak denied
using the phrase in December 1910 to refer to Andrey, but on day 13 Margolin
says she used the phrase in December 1911 to refer to Andrey, even though she
is pretending to speak to the motives of his family. Nobody noticed because there were so many
glaring examples of her lies in her depositions and in court.
Judge: Fyodor Boldyrev
Prosecution:
Criminal
Prosecutor, Oscar Vipper
Civil
Prosecutor Georgy Zamyslovsky
Private
Civil Prosecutor Aleksey Shmakov
Defense:
Oscar
Gruzenberg
Nikolay Karabchevsky
Dmitry Grigorevich-Barsky
Alexandr Zarudny
Vasily Maklakov
Page
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Witness
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Notes
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Transcript
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Translation
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Statement
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Sergey Ivanovich Brazul-Brushkovsky
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Writer, published in Kievan Thought, conducted private
investigations in 1911 and 1912
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476
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1094
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1
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Arnold Davidovich Margolin
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Attorney; appointed Gruzenberg to Beilis’ defense, friend
of Brazul
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521
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1185
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1372
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© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights
Reserved
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