A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel by Edmund Levin Page B

have children with a second husband bearing “the outer traits and character of the first husband.”)
    Sikorsky’s pseudoscientific principles easily extended into ardent and avowed racism. Central to his beliefs was the notion that theraces could be divided into two types, “higher” and “lower.” During their meeting in 1890, Leo Tolstoy already sensed something not quite right about this professor, who apparently treated him to a disquisition on his obsession, the danger of national “hereditary degeneration.” After Sikorsky took his leave, Tolstoy wrote in his diary of the man’s “astonishing foolishness” and added one curious but pungent remark: “A nice fellow—but gone rotten.”
    When it came to the Yushchinsky case, however, the problem with Sikorsky was not his pseudoscientism or, exactly, his racism; racial pseudoscience was widespread in the era. Rather, it was that these intellectual foundations gave rise to a late-blooming,fanatical anti-Semitism that would poison his inquiry into the murder. Sikorsky had previously expressed alarm about the rising number of Jews in the empire and hinted that Jews were responsible for the plague of Russian alcoholism. (“Moneylenders”—their ethnicity was clear—supposedly lent the common folk the funds to buy liquor on what the professor called “ruinous terms.”) He emerged as a full-fledged political anti-Semite in April 1910, when he delivered an address at the Club of Russian Nationalists. (The term “nationalists” generally referred to a political group that was somewhat more moderate than theBlack Hundreds.) While wars used to be primarily over territory, Sikorsky argued, now one of the main aims of the enemies of the Russian people was “spiritual destruction.”At the front lines of this conflict was an army of scribbling lowlifes in the liberal press, ideological warriors who attacked the nation’s great men. Behind them, Sikorsky declared, stood a certain “opponent” of the Russian people. “This opponent consists of those pious people who hourly, from the depths of their offices, send up their prayers to the Almighty so that he would not lessen their profits on their international loans. These pious people … believe in the power of gold.” Again, he did not need to specify the ethnicity of this “opponent.”
    When Sikorsky received the official request to consult on the notorious Yushchinsky case, he must have been gratified. His academic career had been in decline; he had found himself pushed aside by younger colleagues. He welcomed this unexpected opportunity to regain his prominence and determined to make the most of it. Sikorsky’s academic writings could be long-winded, but for this case he would coin a memorably concise statement of the blood accusation: deftly epigrammatic, it would echo through the trial and beyond.
    Liadov explored the cave where Andrei’s body had been found. He met with Professor Sikorsky and they visited the anatomical theater, where they were shown the victim’s preserved organs, and conferred with Dr. Nikolai Obolonsky, who had performed a second autopsy on the boy.
    Given the case’s notoriety, the authorities had retained Dr. Obolonsky and autopsy specialistN. N. Tufanov of St. Vladimir University’s department of forensic medicine to perform an independent examination of the corpse. They did not endorse theritual version but would not rule it out.Their autopsy report differed from the coroner’s in only one significant respect: they concluded that in the course of the crime “there took place the body’s almost complete exsanguination” and that the cause of death was “acute blood loss.” As will later become clear, these conclusions were dubious. They were likely rendered under pressure from high officials.
    Liadov then went toKiev’s Monastery of the Caves to meet a monk namedAmbrosius. If Golubev was a Christian detective likeThomas of Monmouth, then Ambrosius was an avatar of