The Kutaisi case: the first acquittal on a blood libel in a Russian court

On 4 April 1878, at the village of Perevisi near Sachkhere in the Kutaisi Governorate, Sarra Modebadze, a Christian girl of seven, disappeared. On 6 April her body was found; the cause of death was never established—officially drowning or suffocation, while the defence later argued death from exposure.

In 1878 nine Jewish men of Sachkhere were arrested and charged—formally with abduction resulting in death, not with ritual murder. In March 1879 a ten-day trial was held in the Kutaisi Circuit Court. In the spring of 1879 all nine were acquitted—to applause in the courtroom. In April 1880 the prosecutor appealed to the Tiflis Judicial Chamber, and the prosecutor Bykov rejected the case, finding the testimony "tainted by antisemitic prejudice": "You cannot rely on the words of people who testify… under the impression of the prejudice that Jews make use of Christian blood."

The defence was conducted by Pyotr Aleksandrov of St Petersburg—the very advocate who had just won the acquittal of Vera Zasulich—and by Lev Kupernik of Moscow, with the Georgian jurists Mose Kikodze and Lolua. The case was covered by Kavkaz, Tiflisskii vestnik, the Georgian Droeba, the Russian-Jewish Rassvet and the Hebrew Ha-Meliẓ.

Three corrections. "The Kutaisi trial" and "the Sachkhere case" are the same case, and its year is 1879, not 1878: 1878 is the year of the child's death, the trial was in March 1879, and the case was finally killed in April 1880. Sources that date "the Sachkhere blood-libel trial" to 1878 are conflating the crime with the proceeding. The charge was not ritual murder: the indictment spoke of abduction resulting in death, and the prosecutor himself conceded in court that "the purpose of the abduction has not been proven"; the blood-libel content was in the air—the abduction was alleged to coincide with Passover—but not in the law. That is precisely why an acquittal was obtainable. And the significance of the acquittal is usually understated: Kutaisi 1879 is the first acquittal on a blood libel in Russian judicial history, thirty-four years before Beilis, and under the same reformed courts introduced in 1864.

And finally, about Georgia itself. Its history is habitually told as "there was no persecution here." Yet six blood libels are recorded in Georgia—reportedly the highest concentration of such cases anywhere in the world. Both statements are true at once: expulsions there were almost none, and libels there were—and a reference work should print both.