"He Loved Freedom and Russia"

On October 1, 1905, a crowd of thousands escorted the attorney Lev Abramovich Kupernik to his final resting place in Askold’s Grave, one of Kiev’s Christian cemeteries. They carried hundreds of wreaths from institutions, political parties, and private individuals, many with red ribbons that the police made them remove once they caught up with the procession. Revolutionary speeches were delivered in Russian, Polish, Yiddish, and Georgian. When the funeral concluded and some in the crowd began singing revolutionary songs as they filed out of the cemetery, their path was blocked by the police. A shoot-out began, and a young woman, a Jewish student, was mortally wounded, enraging the crowd and transforming the funeral procession into a full-blown antigovernment protest.

One remarkable detail about the passing of this Christian convert that became known across the world was that he was commemorated with the El Malei Rachamim prayer for the dead in synagogues throughout Russia, remembered as “Aryeh Leib ben Abraham Kupernik.” In other words, although he had converted, he still held a place in the hearts and minds of his fellow tribesman as a “true Jew.”

This striking historical phenomenon has provoked the interest of scholars. Cultural studies expert Shulamit S. Magnus points out that, among converts who did not break with their fellow Jews and indeed worked to further Jewish welfare – the likes of Daniel Khvolson, Jan Bloch, and Victor Nikitin, whom she refers to as “good bad Jews” – Kupernik alone was unreservedly counted by Jews as one of their own. And this despite the fact that he himself was not imbued with a sense of his own Jewish identity and was a staunch advocate for the total assimilation of the Russian Jewry. At the same time, he was an ardent defender of Jews, never failing to intercede on their behalf and never afraid to expose government wrongdoing.

So who was this eminent figure, and how did he earn such universal esteem from the Jewish people?

“You have to be very careful in choosing your parents,” Kupernik liked to joke, and he had indeed chosen well. He was very proud of his father, an imposing figure and man of many talents. Abram Aaronovich Kupernik (1821-1892), on top of having a natural gift for business, was also a prominent philanthropist, educator, and writer, as well as an active participant in the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement and a respected figure within Kiev’s Jewish community. A graduate of the Volozhin Yeshiva, he embraced the ideas of the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) and taught himself languages and the secular sciences. He was a First Guild merchant, Hereditary Honorable Citizen, a Knight of the Order of St. Stanislav, and recipient of medals awarded “For Diligence” on the ribbon of the Order of St. Vladimir – not bad for a Jew from the shtetl! Abram Kupernik had many good deeds to his credit: he founded a Jewish charity hospital in Kiev, served as president of the Kiev Philanthropic Committee and director of the Prison Committee, was a member of the Red Cross Society, involved himself in the efforts of the Kiev Literacy Society, and in 1863 helped found the Society to Promote Culture among Russia’s Jews. He had a significant presence as a writer, publishing regularly in Jewish periodicals and producing, in 1891, a book on the history of Kiev’s Jews. He had a reputation for enviable wit and “wise kindness.”

Lev’s parents both wanted to provide their son, who from an early age exhibited exceptional intelligence and insight, the most well-rounded education possible, including an appreciation of Jewish traditions. He was enrolled in the Kiev Gymnasium, where he so excelled that he was able to graduate at fifteen. Next came Kiev University’s law school, since, as he later wrote, it was specifically this profession that would contribute “vital and animating principles to Russian life.” He began writing early, publishing his works in Kiev’s journals, where he took a civic stand combining a staunch opposition to obscurantism and reaction with faith in a beautiful and rational future, and the ideals of love, fraternity, equality, and freedom. It is not entirely clear what freethinking article provoked ire in the powers that be, but Kupernik was ordered out of Kiev. He completed his law studies at Moscow University at the age of nineteen.

Kupernik’s 1864 graduation coincided with Alexander II’s judicial reforms, part of his overall program of reforms that included the liberation of the serfs. The freshly minted graduate immediately knew what he wanted to do and, starting in 1867, soon after being admitted to the newly established bar association, he began to serve in the newly created position of barrister (присяжный поверенный). He would continue in this capacity for forty years, first as an assistant barrister and, starting in December 1872, as barrister. He served in Moscow until 1877.

One of his first trials turned out to be a high-profile case that entered the annals of Russian jurisprudence. Kupernik was appointed to defend a hardened criminal who had murdered four people. When this killer casually, even proudly, told the court what he had done, instead of delivering an argument for the defense, Kupernik stated: “If the law permits an accuser in good conscience to withdraw his charge, I consider myself to be within my rights to withdraw my defense.” Although the Moscow Council of Barristers proclaimed Kupernik’s statement to be “inappropriate,” the act drew sympathy and prompted a lively debate within legal circles. Kupernik never again took on a case that went against his conscience.

Early, very early, he manifested the sort of social nobility that was unfailingly reciprocated: As his daughter later wrote in her memoirs, The Days of My Life («Дни моей жизни»):“Wherever he went, involuntarily, without the slightest effort, he became the focal point to which everyone else was drawn... Before long, everyone was addressing him first, listening to him, and feeling a heightened interest in him of the sort only exceptional phenomena can elicit.” Everything he said was fascinating, exceptionally elegant, and animated by subtle comparisons, striking imagery, and quotes from famous writers.

While in Moscow, Kupernik experienced a momentous event in his personal life: it was there that he finally married, to the great consternation of his father, who had intended to find him a bride of his choosing. The story of how he met his wife sounds like something out of a nineteenth-century novel. It begins in the home of the vice chairman of the Moscow District Court, Pyotr Mikhailovich Shchepkin (1821-1877), the son of the great actor Mikhail Semyonovich Shchepkin (1788-1863). The Shchepkin home was a welcoming gathering spot for the city’s intelligentsia and university students. On one occasion, the lawyer Prince Alexander Urusov, a frequent visitor to the house, brought a gift of fruits that Shchepkin categorically refused to accept. His young daughter Olga, however, took an apple and almost forced it into her father’s hands, saying: “Since you don’t want it yourself, give this apple to the first person you see at the court and tell him it’s from me.” Shchepkin laughed and replied “The first person I see is the guard Mikhei,” but he nonetheless promised to cater to his daughter’s whim. As it turned out, the first person he encountered was not the guard, but Lev Kupernik.

“Here, my daughter sent this to you,” Shchepkin seriously pronounced.

Unperturbed, as if it was nothing out of the ordinary for him to be given apples by the daughter of the vice chairman of the court (he had never met her), Kupernik bit into the apple and, just as seriously, asked:

“And may I thank your daughter?”

“Be my guest!”

Olga Petrovna Shchepkina (1850-1893) – a pianist and student of Nikolai Rubinstein’s at the Moscow Conservatory – of course had no idea that sending an apple would prove such a fateful act.

Not long after this, Kupernik stunned his father with a telegram that read: “Fell in love, was baptized, married.” Indeed, marrying Shchepkina involved giving up the religion of Moses and adopting Christianity, which he did in the name of love. Furthermore, for him, Orthodoxy was an inalienable part of the Russian world, of which he felt himself to be an organic part. According to the reminiscences of his contemporaries, Kupernik frequently attended church and appeared to be devout in his Orthodox Christianity.

But for the elder Kupernik, his son’s marriage was a blow. His daughter later recalled: “He saw the conversion to Orthodoxy as a betrayal – not of religious convictions (of which he had none), but of political ones, a concession to dark forces. His letters were full of Biblical lamentations in that regard.” His father’s view of conversion as cowardice and outright treachery was informed by the hostility most Jews faced from the surrounding majority. On the other hand, we know that Lev’s father responded to his next letter, written in Yiddish, with his characteristic humor: “I am prepared to forgive your betrayal of the faith of our fathers out of the love for a woman, but I will never forgive you for spelling ‘Jacob’ with the letter ain rather than alef.” In the end, Abram Aaronovich came to terms with his son’s apostasy, however, his less forgiving wife never accepted her granddaughter, the “spawn of Shchepkin.”

As it turned out, Kupernik’s marriage to Olga Shchepkina proved to be unhappy and was quickly destroyed by his relentless womanizing. “Nobody could resist Lev Abramovich’s charms,” it was said. When Olga found out about Lev’s very public affair with a married woman “of irresistible allure” who was raising children with him, she could not bear the shame and left for St. Petersburg, taking their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Tatyana. (Tatyana Shchepkina-Kupernik [1874-1952] grew up to be a famous actress, writer, playwright, and translator who, despite everything, maintained close, lifelong relations with her father.) Kupernik was legally married two more times, both to Russian Orthodox women. He liked to joke that he had “made himself 40 daughters from different mothers.”

Meanwhile, Kupernik’s star kept rising. In 1876, a sensational trial involving the insolvency of the Moscow Commercial Loan Bank was held in Moscow. The defense was conducted by the renowned Fyodor Plevako, while the interests of the deceived investors were represented by Kupernik (the aftermath of this bankruptcy has been marvelously depicted in Vladimir Makovsky’s painting, The Bank’s Collapse). Kupernik emerged from these highly adversarial proceedings victorious: the court sentenced all the bankers to various terms of incarceration, and the main culprit, Strousberg, was sentenced to seven years in a debtor’s prison, although he was exiled from Russia in 1882 and died in poverty abroad. As the saying truly had it, “Kupernik is the enemy of all Plevakos”!

While living in Moscow, in parallel with his practice of law, Kupernik published articles in professional journals, such as The Lawyer («Юрист»), The Historical Herald («Исторический вестник», and The Legal Herald («Юридический вестник»).

In 1877, Kupernik moved back to Kiev, where he continued his selfless service to the legal profession. However, soon after his return, in 1878, he set out for Kutaisi, Georgia, where the sensational trial of nine Jews from the village of Sachkhere was underway. The defendants were accused of the ritual murder of a Georgian girl, Sara Modebadze.

A doctor’s report concluded that the girl’s body showed no signs of violence, that she had perished by “drowning during a heavy rain,” and that “the wounds on her arms were caused by small animals and birds of prey after her death.” Nevertheless, political forces were determined to frame the case as a Jewish attack in search of Christian blood, alleging that the accused Jews had abducted Modebadze on the eve of Passover, killed her, and, discarded her body outside the closest village to throw investigators off their trail.

The defense was conducted by Kupernik and Pyotr Alexandrov. The lawyers skillfully cross-examined more than one hundred witnesses and took the prosecution’s case apart piece by piece.  Kupernik’s closing arguments are still considered a brilliant example of courtroom eloquence. It opened with the words: “From the start, the investigation set out on an absolutely false path, determining in advance that the girl was abducted by Jews. Through its court and official authority, [the government] gave its support to a ridiculous, nonsensical fairy tale and failed to investigate the improper actions that brought the Sachkhere Jews to the dock.”

Assembling the evidence and systematically going over all the circumstances involved in the case, he undertook to “uncover just what the accusations consisted of and lay bare the facts for all to see, to examine... the question of whether Jews use Christian blood.” He was determined not to leave the slightest doubt on that count: “not a single spark out of which a new fire could later erupt!”

As a result, on March 13, 1880, the court acquitted all of the Jewish defendants. No elements of the alleged crime could be proven, so the prosecutor himself was forced to withdraw the charges. In his book, Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia, the historian Donald Rayfield described Kupernik and Alexandrov as “two of Russia’s greatest advocates” for securing the acquittal, pointing out that they did so “pro bono publico.” After the trial, as Sholom Aleichem wrote in his autobiography, From the Fair, “the name Kupernik or, as Jews called him, Kopernikov, was almost as well-known as [the Prussian polymath and geographer] Alexander von Humboldt in Europe or Columbus in America.”

On March 29, 1882, during the first days of Passover, a pogrom broke out in the Ukrainian town of Balta, which was 70 percent Jewish. The town’s Jews had formed self-defense units and at first forced the gang of ruffians to retreat and take cover in a fire station. However, when the police and soldiers arrived, the perpetrators were emboldened and came out into the open. Instead of dispersing the rioters, the police and troops started beating the Jews with their rifle butts and sabers. Someone sounded the alarm, which drew a steady flow of the town’s worst elements. Over the course of three or four hours, the Turkish side of town, where the Jews lived, was destroyed. That night, the police arrested 24 looters and a large number of Jews – the latter because they had had the audacity to defend their property. The Christians were released the following morning, and they joined the ranks of the looters. A crowd attacked a liquor warehouse, drank its fill of vodka, and went on a wild rampage of killings, rape, and plunder. A total of 976 houses, 278 shops, and 31 wine cellars were destroyed. The financial losses reached R1.5 million. In terms of casualties, 211 people were wounded, 39 gravely, and 12 were killed outright or died of their wounds later. There were 20 cases of rape documented. More than 50 people were arrested. Some of them faced trial in the nearby town of Podolsk.

The victims were represented by Kupernik and Alexander Urusov (he who had brought the gift of fruits that led to Kupernik’s first marriage). Referring to the pillagers, Kupernik sarcastically remarked: “It would be naive to think that the heartfelt words of an honest man could transform these inveterate scoundrels, pathetic idiots, and ignorant fanatics.” The pogrom’s perpetrators were given various sentences, including two sentenced to be hung and three to fifteen years hard labor.

Kupernik voiced his passionate civic feelings in Kiev’s political and literary newspaper The Dawn («Заря»), which had a liberal and markedly antigovernment orientation. In 1885 he took over as its publisher and editor. The following year, the authorities shut it down, and in 1891 the oppressive political atmosphere in Kiev forced Kupernik to move to Odessa.

There he immersed himself in politics with a heightened fervor, secretly traveling to London (the trip, nevertheless, wound up as part of his police file). In London, Kupernik had talks with the Free Russian Press Foundation, recently established by the revolutionary emigres Sergei Stepnyak-Kravchinsky and Felix Volkhovsky. Kupernik wanted to publish his “Draft Russian Constitution” in the foundation’s Free Russia journal. It came out in 1894. He expressed the belief that a new constitution for Russia was “possible and achievable right now,” should guarantee “all the blessings of civic and political freedom,” be “an engine of progress,” and “protect people from arbitrary violence.” In 1895 Kupernik also discussed the idea of publishing the newspaper Zemsky Sobor with the foundation in London, a project in which he collaborated with the revolutionary Georgi Plekhanov. (The newspaper’s title refers to the assemblies that represented Russia’s first attempts at limited democracy, dating back to the sixteenth century.)

But Kupernik was incapable of staying away long. Soon after returning from his travels, he wrote to his daughter:

“I started to develop such nostalgia: like Turgenev, I began to pine for ‘radishes, kasha, kvas, baba’ and so forth. I left without regret and returned home with pleasure. I may be a Jew, but I passionately love ‘Mother Rus,’ I feel good here. There is despicableness everywhere, but of course nothing is worse than foreign despicableness: here at least it’s our own, and you know you can at least do something about it.”

In 1896, Kupernik again returned to Kiev, where he spent his final ten years. He was a towering figure in the Kiev legal community and gained renown as the “darling of all Kievans.” Of all the trials from that period, it was those involving the Jewish pogroms of 1903-1904 that had the greatest impact on society.

On April 6, 1903, a pogrom broke out in Kishinev that was believed to have been sanctioned by Internal Affairs Minister Vyacheslav Plehve, who purportedly wanted to distract the disgruntled masses from politics by “throwing them a bone” in the form of Jews. The death toll was approximately 50 (including 10 women), 600 were seriously maimed, and almost half of the town’s buildings were damaged.

“The faces of the killed were so disfigured,” one witness reported, “that their closest relatives, the wives and children of the dead, were not immediately able to recognize them: broken skulls with brains protruding, smashed faces with lower jaws wrenched off, covered in blood and plastered with down, did not recall their former beloved features... Everywhere the trees were covered in down, like snow. Many houses stood gapping, their doors and windows torn off. You could see the frenzy with which the thugs were working.”

Under pressure from the public, the government was compelled to bring the perpetrators to trial. However, a directive circulated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs that reflected the government’s view of the “disorder” cast the Jews themselves as responsible for the bloodshed in Kishinev. Furthermore, on August 28, 1903, the Ministry of Justice decided to close the doors of the court hearing “to protect the dignity of the governmental authorities,” and on November 6, 1903, the day the trial itself began, Plehve demanded that, “in the interest of government order,” Vladimir Davydov, who was presiding over the trial, “take all contingent measures to promote the expedited conclusion of the trial... not allowing the administration’s instructions to be questioned or criticized.”

When the court refused the defense’s demand that the governor, the head of the secret police, and the police chief be called for questioning, the lawyers walked out of the proceedings in protest. This was the first, but far from the last, strike by the lawyers. Kupernik wrote to his daughter at the time: “I find myself utterly despondent as a result of the Kishinev pogrom... It’s something outrageous and horrific. And the actions and behavior of the authorities before, during, and after the pogrom are unprecedented. The police, governor, investigators, prosecutors, ministers, and ‘he himself’ – they should all be tried! Tyranny, lawlessness, lies, baseness – it’s all here.” Referring to the trial, Prince Sergei Urusov, who soon after the pogrom was appointed governor of Bessarabia (the region in which Kishinev is located, today’s Moldova) and later a member of the First State Duma, spoke of “special moral norms” applied in Russia in dealing with “the rightless Jews.”

On September 1, 1903, there was another Jewish pogrom, this time in Gomel (in today’s Belarus). Hundreds of Jewish-owned stores were ransacked, several people were brutally murdered, and many Jews were beaten and maimed. This time, however, for the first time Jews were put in the dock alongside the pogrom’s perpetrators – 36 who had dared to fight back against the marauders and murderers.

The court tried to represent the unrest as spontaneously arising out of a pogrom aimed at Russians, a gross distortion of a fight between the forester Shlykov and a woman named Malitskaya who was selling herring, an altercation that might at most have been worthy of a brief police report had it not been for the interference of peasants crying “Beat the Jews!” The peasants went on to attack Jewish shopkeepers but met unexpected resistance.

Everything that contradicted the “official version” of events was disallowed, threatening to turn the trial into a travesty. Nevertheless, a cascade of probing questions from Kupernik eventually brought out the truth that the Jews were completely unarmed, that there was no attack by Jews against Russians, that the local constable and the police had pressured witnesses and coached them on what they should say in court, and, finally, that, with the full connivance of the authorities, all manner of anti-Jewish agitation had been carried out in the town’s entertainments and on its squares to raise the level of the masses’ “pogrom electricity.”

Nevertheless, pressure from the judicial authorities was building, and, as a result, on December 21, 1904, almost all of the lawyers representing the Jews refused to take part in the trial. They enumerated the reasons for their refusal in a letter to the editor of the weekly publication, Law («Право»):

We were not allowed to investigate the causes of the pogrom... or to delve into the question of why the troops and police failed to act (even though this is at the heart of the trial)... We consider it essential that all of society be given the ability to understand whether the defense may have been or should have been, not just constrained in its investigation in the Gomel trial, but also personally demeaned.

This move by the guild of lawyers, along with countless telegrams of support from every corner of the empire, toppled the already tottering edifice of the indictment: 13 Jews were completely acquitted, 13 were sentenced to five months and 10 days in prison, and the rest were given even lighter sentences.

Kupernik also gained renown as a commentator who not only “wrote a great deal on the Jewish question” but whose writing “often sparkled with wit.” He was published in the newspapers The Russian Ledger («Русские ведомости»), The Kiev Gazette («Киевская газета»), and Kiev Reactions («Киевские отклики»), among others. His opinion pieces and feuilletons published in the Kiev press (primarily in The Kiev Gazette) were brought together in the 1904 book, The Jewish Kingdom («Еврейское царство»), which was dedicated to the fates of its author’s fellow tribesmen in Russia. In it, Kupernik bitterly lamented the inescapable “presumption of guilt” that pursues the Russian Jew: “Any person is considered decent until proven otherwise; conversely, any Jew is considered a scoundrel until proven otherwise.”

Describing blatant cases of “legal” discrimination against Jews, he attempted to find a rational justification for them, but could not.

Either Jews are people like any others or they are harmful bacilli. Whichever it is, that is how they should be treated. If they are people, then they should not have their human rights infringed; if they are harmful bacilli, they should be exterminated, annihilated. “It’s all the fault of the Jews!” They are guilty of all past and present pogroms, and they will be guilty of all future pogroms. They are guilty of the suffering of those who loot, rampage, and kill when they are brought to trial, and they are guilty of trying to defend themselves from attack.

But Kupernik did not believe Jews should leave Russia and create their own national homeland beyond its borders. He was a vocal and obstinate opponent of Jewish separatism in general and Zionism in particular. According to Kupernik, for the majority of Russian Jews (approximately 5.5 million throughout the Russian Empire at that time), “the Jewish question is really a Russian question, the correct answer to which can only be found if all involved work together: the state, Russian society, and Russian Jews.” Calling on the Russian state to introduce equality for all ethnic groups (“there should be no Jews, no Hellenes”), he proclaimed himself a committed Russifier:

Jews should become Russian; they should put every effort into achieving this, selflessly and sincerely, but emphatically and relentlessly. They should remember their Jewishness when they enter the synagogue and forget it when they leave it... [The Jewish] people must speak the language of Russia, study in its schools, work in its fields, dress in its clothing, and participate in its affairs... And Russia can and must transform a tribe that has been historically linked with it and that it accepted into its bosom, it must assimilate it into its mighty organism.

In other words, he was opposed to the Jewish national idea in principle.

In 1904 and especially in 1905, Kupernik spoke at dozens of political trials (sometimes several times a month). As his obituary tells us: “There was almost no major political trial where he was not an advocate. No cases in the army, navy, and other courts were tried without his participation. Despite his 60 years, he literally spent the past two years either on a train or in the courtroom.” These cases involved members of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (the party that would later split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks), secret Socialist Revolutionary Party printing presses, the transport of illegal literature, and unrest in the Black Sea fleet. Kupernik also published a defense of Lev Tolstoy after he was attacked by Archpriest Ioann of Kronstadt and was active in the liberal opposition, becoming involved in the illegal Union of Liberation political movement, and, in particular, organizing the Union’s “banquet campaign” in Kiev in 1904 – part of a nationwide effort to hold freedom-promoting public dinners complete with speeches and resolutions.

In his rare hours of leisure, Kupernik devoted himself to literature, the theater, and music. His spacious apartment in one of Kiev’s finest buildings was often filled with artists, writers, singers, and musicians, as well as the sounds of vocal and instrumental music. Although he lacked formal education in that sphere, he had a keen understanding of music. He could not follow a score, but he had perfect pitch and was able to lead a symphonic orchestra through any work.

An enthusiastic promoter of the arts, Kupernik made major contributions to Russian culture as a music critic, publishing articles about opera premieres, virtuoso performances, symphonic concerts, and other musical events in Kiev and Odessa.

Dating back to his student days, he had been an ardent admirer of the Maly Theater, and himself performed in amateur productions. He especially loved the role of Podkolyosin in Gogol’s Marriage. Later, as a member of Kiev’s Literary and Artistic Society and chair of Kiev’s Dramatic Society, he was a major patron of the arts and helped to develop theatrical talents.

During the final months of his life, Kupernik was absolutely indefatigable. One moment he was traveling to Glukhov for a political trial, and the next he was off to Odessa for a military proceeding. At congresses of criminal lawyers in St. Petersburg and Kiev that were not permitted by the authorities, Kupernik was unanimously elected chairman, for which he was threatened with Article 126 of the Criminal Code (relating to participation in an organization aiming to overthrow the governmental and social order). As his daughter describes it, he responded with uncharacteristic melancholy: “All the better! The time has come. Now or never our Motherland must achieve freedom.” He was not about to apologize for a life spent fighting for that freedom. During the foul-weather month of September, 1905, Kupernik caught cold but nevertheless traveled to Zvenigorodka for a trial, returning home in terrible shape. Not long before passing, seeing the signs of a new era, he kept repeating: “Just don’t make concessions! No constitutions! Everything should be torn down, leveled – a republic immediately. That’s the only way anything will be achieved!”

In the end, it was his daughter who best described Kupernik’s mentality and aspirations: “He was a man with a multifaceted soul who loved freedom and Russia most of all. As he himself put it, for him there was ‘neither Hellene nor Jew,’ but he had exceptional feelings for Russia – as for a mother whom you love and pity, whatever her faults.”

In a poignant twist of fate. Kupernik died October 11, 1905, just one week before Nicholas II reluctantly issued his October Manifesto, proclaiming, among other freedoms, freedom of religion.