Anti-Russian Orthodox Discourses in the Trial of Anton Berezowski

ABSTRACT: In 1867 a Polish refugee in France, Anton Berezowski, tried to assassinate Emperor Alexander II when he visited Paris for the Great Exposition. Berezowski was tried for premeditated homicide and was defended by a prominent republican advocate who had a history of defending political crimes, Emmanuel Arago. In his pleading for the defense, Arago spun the attempted assassination as a political crime by invoking anti-Russian and anti-Orthodox motifs that had become commonplace in French public discourse. He portrayed Russia as the persecutor of martyred Poland, the tsar as the pope of the Russian Church and practically a self-proclaimed deity, and Berezowski's family as victims of tsarist religious persecution. Without legitimizing assassination, Arago used religious discourses to portray Berezowski as a misguided but devout Polish patriot. On the whole, Berezowski's trial represented a symbolic and moral trial of Russia in the court of public opinion for its treatment of Poland.