Kaufmann

[lynn cates]

finis

Hello All. Finis.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

pt 6

Hello All. Pt 6.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

pt 5

Hello All. Pt 5.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

pt 4

Hello All. Pt 4.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

pt 3

Hello All. Pt 3.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

pt 2

Hello All. Pt 2.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

pt 1

Hello All. First part.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

Father Gapon

Hello All. Here is an interesting story from the "NY Times" November 7, 1909.

It concerns Father Gapon, a man who became a spy for Rachkovski. I post his sketch below and plan to post the story afterward. (I apologise in advance for the poor quality of some of the print.)

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

oops

Hello Maria. Oops, missed your question. My finding this was mere happenstance. I have wondered where Rachkovski played up the Ripper killings. Here it is. Vassiliev--in the form we know it--was a myth.

Cheers.
LC

[mariab]

Hello Lynn,
fascinating posts about Vassiliev, and 110% worth researching about his activities in London, particulalry in relation to the IWEC. I'll look around in the French spies reports (those I already have and those not yet consulted, next month im Paris) for any mentions of his name. The Arbeter Fraint might be very helpful for this as well. Can I ask if you already knew about the Okhrana agenda pertaining to Vassiliev, or if you just happened upon the newspaper snippet?

One thing that strikes me as odd, is the complete silence in newspapers about him after the turn of the New Year, 1889.

Hello Phil. I wonder if there might be more newspapers snippets pertaining to Vassiliev as a supposed “Ripper suspect“, without us having yet noticed.

[lynn cates]

pass

Hello Phil. As the old saying goes, "You gotta know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em."

Cheers.
LC

[Phil Carter]

Hello Lynn,


Not exactly the sign of an intrepid gambler, is it?

best wishes

Phil

[lynn cates]

know when

Hello Phil. It always feels like someone knew when to quit.

Cheers.
LC

[Phil Carter]

Hello Lynn,

Many thanks for this transcription and the previous posting from the Newspaper.
One thing that strikes me as odd, is the complete silence in newspapers about him after the turn of the New Year, 1889. This matches certain policemen and others, stating that the last of the "Ripper" murders was MJK in November. Most watchers have mentioned Druitt in the same breath as this. Does Vassiliev also slide into this catagory, one wonders?

best wishes

Phil

[lynn cates]

Casebook dissertation

Hello All. I copy and paste the last few paragraphs of the Casebook dissertation on Vasiliev below. Quite illuminating.

"Despite this apparently final verdict on Vasiliev, his newspaper trajectory was not yet finished. On the same day, 17 November (5 November according to the Julian calendar), the St Petersburg newspaper Novosti published a brief article reporting the murder of Mary Kelly and speculating on the possible identity of the murderer: its readers' fellow Russian, Nikolay Vasiliev.

On 28 November 1888, both the Pall Mall Gazette and the Daily Telegraph published articles which began as follows: "The Novosti, a Russian paper, is responsible for the following startling revelation regarding the Whitechapel murderer: 'He was born in Tiraspol in South Russia in 1847, and graduated at the Odessa University. After 1870 he became a fanatical Anarchist, and emigrated to Paris, where he went out of his mind'". The articles concluded: "He went to London, and there lodged with different compatriot refugees until the first woman was assassinated in Whitechapel, since which time his friends have not seen him".

An article worded somewhat differently was published on the same day, 28 November, in the Star, which two weeks before had denied Vasiliev's existence. None of the articles said anything about Vasiliev's membership in the Skoptsy, but affirmed instead that he was an anarchist. In this connection it is worth noting that revolutionaries such as the narodovoltsy, the members of the Narodnaya Volya, the People's Will, who assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881, considered the Skoptsy as potential allies. However, the original Russian article published in the Novosti on 17 November was actually a reprint of foreign, most likely French, press reports which said nothing about anarchists but repeated the version known to us about the Skoptsy.

The rumours about Vasiliev were picked up by the newspapers soon after the double murder on 30 September 1888. On 12 October, the British newspaper Weekly Herald ran an article entitled "A French Whitechapel Murderer", which managed to tell the entire story without ever mentioning Vasiliev's surname or his nationality. On 2 November, the Russian journalist (and rumoured Tsarist agent) Olga Novikoff, a friend of Gladstone, Madame Blavatsky, Henry M Stanley and William T Stead, who named her the "MP for Russia" because of her tireless work on behalf of her country, asked her Parisian correspondent for information on Vasiliev. Press reports published in mid-November gave Belgium and Switzerland as the sources of the initial information about Vasiliev. Later France was also included in this list.

At that time, the Foreign Bureau of the Tsarist Secret Service, the Okhrana, had its headquarters at the Russian consulate in Paris and maintained a network of agents in Switzerland. The Foreign Bureau used provocation primarily to persuade the French to take action against Russian radicals and cooperate with the Okhrana. The most notorious provocation occurred in Paris in 1890, when an Okhrana operative, Arkadiy Harting, organized a team of bomb-throwers whom he later betrayed to the Sureté. Their heavily publicized arrests helped convince the French public of the dangers posed by Russian radicals in France.

The head of the Foreign Bureau, Pyotr Rachkowski, was a specialist in provocation who refined the art of what is known today as active measures or perception management techniques. Rachkowski paid subsidies to journalists to write articles favourable to Russian interests and acquired or subsidized such periodicals as Le Courier Franco-Russe and Revue Russe. He also founded the Ligue pour le Salut de la Patrie Russe to promote positive views towards Russia among French citizens.

The articles published in the Pall Mall Gazette, the Daily Telegraph and the Star resemble other articles planted in newspapers by the Okhrana as part of its provocation campaigns and may have been based on the assumption that Mary Kelly's murder would be followed by more murders in November or December. Giving 1870 instead of 1872 as the year when Vasiliev emigrated to Paris would have served to link his name more closely with the radical Commune of Paris and with the slaughter of hostages by the Communards.

In addition, Vasiliev could be safely described as an anarchist because this definition was applied to practically all foreign radicals, since the British public were not familiar with all revolutionary trends. Members of the International Working Men's Educational Club, the Socialist club in Berner Street, for instance, were frequently described as anarchists.

The press reports stating that Vasiliev lodged with compatriot refugees may have been aimed at inducing the Metropolitan Police to interrogate Russian immigrants, thus gathering valuable information about Russians in London which the Okhrana could collect through its agents in Scotland Yard. Contemporary Okhrana documents mention the names of two agents, John and Murphy, both of whom probably served in the Special Branch.

By 1888 the Okhrana Foreign Bureau had completely infiltrated and demoralised Russian immigrant communities in the Continent, but it could not reach the revolutionaries living in Britain. The Okhrana's interest in the British capital is shown by Rachkowski's journey to London in June 1888, as well as by a veiled mention of a trip to Britain by secret agent Gurin, who was known for his active participation in the destruction of the Narodnaya Volya printing press in Geneva in 1886.

But the provocation * if that was indeed what it was * did not go any further and left no trace except for one newspaper report. When the Ripper vanished, the possibility for the Okhrana to use his name for its own purposes vanished with him. By the New Year, 1889, Vasiliev had disappeared from the pages of the newspapers. He remains an elusive legend, which probably had some basis in reality, but was mostly embellished by the journalists who wrote it up."