R U S S I A O N T H E EV E O F M O D E R N I T Y

Russia on the Eve of Modernity is a pioneering exploration of a world that has been largely destroyed by revolutionary upheavals and obscured in historical memory by scholarly focus on elites. Drawing on traditional religious texts, ethnographic materials, and contemporary accounts, this book brings to light the ideas and perceptions of the ordinary Russian people of the towns and countryside who continued to live in a pre-modern, non-Western culture that showed great resilience to the very end of the Romanov Empire. Leonid Heretz offers an overview of traditional Russian understandings of the world and its workings, and shows popular responses to events from the assassination of Alexander II to the First World War. This history of ordinary Russians illuminates key themes ranging from peasant monarchism to apocalyptic responses to intrusions from the modern world and will appeal to scholars of Russian history and the history of religion in modern Europe.

Contents

Introduction

1 The traditional worldview 14

2 The Old Believers: modernization as apocalypse 42

3 The sectarians: dualism and secret history 76

4 Folk eschatology 102

5 The assassination of Alexander II (1881) and folk Tsarism 119

6 The year of famine and cholera (1891–1892): demonization of the nobility 130

7 The Japanese War: peasant Russia and the wider world 145

8 1905: revolution or reaction? 157

9 The Great War and the crisis of the traditional culture 191

Epilogue 234

Bibliography 239

Primary sources 240

Secondary sources 247

Index 257

Introduction

Imperial Russia in the last decades of its existence provides an intensely fascinating field of inquiry for the historian and for anyone with an interest in the manifestations of the human spirit. Russia at the turn of the century was a country and a civilization of astounding cultural complexity and wealth. The Empire, with its vast expanse and the multitudes of peoples it held in its sway, was an entire world in its own right. Morever, this world encompassed the extremes of historical development, producing arts and sciences of the most advanced and innovative sort, while allowing for the continued existence of traditional cultures of the most archaic nature. The vitality and intricacy of the Empire’s civilization arose from the interaction of the dynamic principle of modernization with the more passive yet extremely resilient {inert} force of tradition. The thought and activity of Russia’s Westernized elite in that period has been the subject of extensive study. This work is meant to be a contribution to the contemporary scholarly effort to fill the great gap in the historical picture by bringing to light the beliefs and ideas of the great mass of the Russian population which continued to live within the traditional culture. (1)

(1) Since the great majority of these people were villagers, most of the material examined in this study will be of peasant provenance. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that traditional society in this period did not consist exclusively of peasants. A large segment of the town population had not been brought into the modern culture by this point, and many urban dwellers were recent arrivals from the village. Expressions of the thinking of these subgroups within the traditional culture will also be included in this study. In addition, materials from the Eastern Ukraine (Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv provinces) will be used. Although the Ukrainian villagers and townsmen of this cultural zone differed in some respects from their Great Russian counterparts, they may be included in our analytical unit by virtue of their Orthodox religion and centuries-long historical experience as subjects of the Tsars.

THE PERSISTENCE OF TRADITION

Russia’s place in twentieth-century consciousness has been determined by the Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent decades of Communist rule. Inevitably and understandably, people’s interest in Russia’s past has centered on identifying the causes of the revolutionary upheaval. Several generations of inquiry and debate on the origins of the Revolution have produced a wealth of valuable material on political development and socio-economic change in Imperial Russia. However, the focus on identifying the forces for change has obscured the crucial factor for understanding turn-of-the-century Russia on its own terms, namely, the remarkable power of tradition and cultural inertia.

Of course, almost all observers of late-Imperial Russia have stressed the country’s ‘‘backwardness’’ in comparison to the West, and it has been the common practice to identify the peasantry as the embodiment and prime manifestation of that aspect of Russia’s sorry condition, and to provide

telling statistics on peasant illiteracy and vivid anecdotes illustrating popular superstition, with the argument usually being that rural benightedness {мракобесие} and immiseration generated the negative energy necessary for the revolutionary explosion. In the work of generalists, the peasantry has been presented as a rather simple and straightforward phenomenon, albeit one which is alien and ultimately unknowable. In fact, thanks to the work of turn-of-the-century Russian observers and of more recent cohorts of scholars in Russia and in the West there exists a substantial body of knowledge about the Russian peasantry in the period in question, and it depicts a traditional culture of complexity, vigor and great resilience.

For the purposes of this discussion, it is important to stress that recent studies have shown that traditional patterns and practices continued to dominate Russian peasant life at the beginning of the twentieth century. To take just a few examples drawn from disparate areas of culture, if one looks at decorative arts, (2) at drinking practices, (3) at perceptions of witchcraft, (4) at legal notions and practices, (5) and, most important of all, at the peasant commune {общи́на, мир}, the basic form of social organization, (6) one finds that on the eve of the Revolution the Russian peasantry believed, thought, and acted in accordance with ancient tradition that extends as far back in time

as the historical record takes us. (7)

(2) A. Netting, ‘‘Images and Ideas in Russian Peasant Art,’’ Slavic Review 35, no. 1 (March 1976), 48–68.

(3) P. Herlihy, ‘‘ ‘Joy of the Rus’: Rites and Rituals of Russian Drinking,’’ Russian Review 50, no. 2 (April 1991), 131–147, and the same author’s The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

(4) C. Worobec, ‘‘Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices in Prerevolutionary Russian and Ukrainian Villages,’’ Russian Review 54, no. 2 (April 1995), 165–187.

(5) Stephen P. Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

(6) B. Mironov, ‘‘The Russian Peasant Commune after the Reforms of the 1860s,’’ Slavic Review 44, no. 3 (Fall 1985), 438–467.

(7) Although some of the scholars cited point to indicators of incipient cultural breakdown or transformation, they all agree that traditional patterns remained overwhelmingly predominant in the period in question. Also, it might be suggested that perceptions of change could be an optical illusion resulting from the post-1917 perspective – tremendous change came with the Revolution, so we see foreshadowings of it in the pre-revolutionary period.

To comprehend the full import of such findings of cultural persistence, one must be aware of the integral or ‘‘holistic’’ nature of traditional culture, not only in Russia but throughout the world. In contrast to modern life with its various independent spheres or ‘‘compartments,’’ in traditional society all aspects of belief and behavior form a unified whole. This ‘‘interconnectedness’’ of the elements of peasant culture was a primary fact in the persistence of tradition in Russia. The old way of life provided a comprehensive guide to thought and action, and proved to be very resilient in the face of various challenges. The ‘‘integral’’ quality of the traditional culture will also be very important to the argumentation of this book. Given the paucity in early twentieth-century Russia of opinion polls and other modern devices (or semblances of devices) for ostensibly measuring popular opinion, (8) I will not be able to prove quantitatively that this or another belief was general in the peasantry; however, if I can show that it fits with other things we know, and if we accept the ‘‘interconnectedness’’ of the elements of the traditional worldview, I will be able to argue plausibly that specific examples illustrate broader themes.

(8) Here I should stress, however, that the non-specialist reader may be surprised to discover below that a number of very useful systematic surveys of popular culture were in fact carried out in turn-of-the-century Russia.

The primary challenge to the traditional culture came from the forces of the modern world, chief among them the state apparatus, the educated classes, and the urban economy. Until very late (arguably, until Stalin’s First Five Year Plan), these forces were not strong enough to challenge the foundations of peasant existence. In fact, for the period examined in this work, the ‘‘modernizing’’ forces had the paradoxical effect of reinforcing the traditional culture {'dug in heels' effect}. All of the topics sketched out below will be dealt with in detail in the body of the book, but for now it should suffice to outline the main points.

In any discussion of ‘‘modernization’’ in the European context an ‘‘enlightened’’ bureaucracy is seen as playing a primary role in cultural transformation. Russia would seem to be a classic example of this pattern. The autocracy initiated the process of ‘‘Westernization’’ in Russia, and till

the very end the Imperial Russian state was animated by a spirit of enlightened absolutism and viewed itself as the only force possessing the reason and understanding necessary for the country’s advancement. (9) The Empire succeeded in creating a modern educated society. Moreover, it projected a mystique of autocratic power, and was in fact capable of causing grief to its open political opponents. The image of Tsarist Russia as an all-powerful autocracy and tyrannical police state obscures the fact that the Imperial regime lacked the means of exerting day-to-day control over its subjects at the local level. Compared to their West European counterparts, the Russian peasants  were relatively free of the ministrations ["good intentions"] of bureaucrats: at the beginning of the century, for every thousand inhabitants there were 17.6 government officials in France, 12.6 in Germany, 7.3 in England, and only 4 in Russia. (10) If one leaves aside the cultural/enlightening activities of ideal bureaucrats and looks only at the most basic state function of maintaining public order, the figures are equally shocking: in 1900, 1,582 constables (stanovye pristavy) and 6,874 sergeants (uriadniki) – themselves villagers and not Frederician {Frederick the Great 1712-1786} enlightened state servants – policed a rural population of approximately one hundred million. (11) Indeed, an early twentieth-century commission investigating the legal condition of the peasantry concluded that until very recently ‘‘peasant life was left almost entirely to go its own way [and] remained outside all supervision by the government.’’ (12) Although the Empire lacked the means to ‘‘modernize’’ the peasantry, it was capable of exercising extractive functions. For the villagers, government officials existed to draw blood (recruits) and money (taxes) from the community, and interaction with them served as a periodic reinforcement and exacerbation of their hostility toward ‘‘lordly’’ outsiders.

(9) On the origins of the modern state idea and its introduction to Russia, see M. Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983); on the development of the autocracy and state apparatus, see R. Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (New York: Scribner’s, 1974).

(10) O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: a History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Viking, 1997), p. 46. These statistics are even more remarkable if one considers that they are for the population as a whole, and that officialdom was concentrated in cities.

(11) S. Frank, ‘‘Cultural Conflict and Criminality in Rural Russia, 1861–1900,’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1987, p. 157.

(12) Trudy redaktsionnoi kommissii po peresmotru zakonopolozhenii o krest’ianakh (Saint Petersburg, 1903), vol. 1, p. 5, cited in Mironov, ‘‘Russian Peasant Commune,’’ 464.

In the historiography of modernization and nation-building in Europe, military service is usually depicted as having a decisive cultural effect on the rural population. According to this line of analysis, the army, in many ways the quintessence of rationalistic/mechanistic modernity, takes

peasant boys out of the self-contained village community and exposes them to the wide world. In the case of Russia’s adoption of the Prussian system of universal service, the reforming autocracy of Alexander II hoped that the new army would serve as a giant schoolhouse of enlightened citizenship for the newly emancipated peasantry. (13) Although military service did have a great disruptive impact on the life of peasant men, it did not succeed in transforming the village culture. By all accounts, the Russian officer corps was ill-suited for an educational role and kept strictly apart from the soldiers, (14) and in cultural terms the men were left to their own devices, free to create an approximation of a peasant community, preserving village attitudes and practices. (15) As we shall see in the chapters on the Japanese War and the First World War, it was precisely within the peasant army that many of the most intense manifestations of traditional thinking occurred.

(13) For the motivations of the reform, and especially for its cultural/educational aspects, see G. Dzhanshiev, Epokha velikikh reform: Istoricheskie spravki (Moscow, 1900), part VII .

(14) For an excellent treatment of officer culture and values (and the very low place of ‘‘enlightening’’ recruits among them), see A. Denikin, Staraia armiia (Paris 1929–1931) (better known as commander of the White Armies of the South during the Russian Civil War, Denikin was also a military journalist and a very fine and perceptive writer). For a vivid account of the difficulties of educational work in the army, see the passage on ‘‘book-learning’’ (slovesnost’ ) in Kuprin’s novel The Duel.

(15) This is the argument of the best contemporary specialist on the culture of the late-Imperial army. J. Bushnell, ‘‘Peasants in Uniform: the Tsarist Army as a Peasant Society,’’ in B. Eklof and S. Frank, eds., The World of the Russian Peasant: Post-Emancipation Culture and Society (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 101–114.

One would assume that cultural modernization in its most direct form would take place in schools, and that the acquisition of literacy by peasants would be their decisive first step away from the traditional world and towards the realm of light and reason. Although Imperial Russia had made

substantial progress in providing primary education to the rural population by the beginning of the twentieth century, one cannot make a direct equation between that schooling and modernization, and one cannot use basic literacy even as a rough indicator of the adoption of modern attitudes. In many (but by no means all) villages, peasants expressed a strong desire for education, but that desire should not be interpreted as apostasy from traditional culture. On one level, villagers showed a utilitarian attitude toward schooling – they saw the concrete practical benefits of knowing how to read and do arithmetic, but at the same time they were hostile to the cultural content offered by teachers. (16) Up to a point, peasants could have it both ways, acquiring useful skills without giving up their old ways, for, as an American specialist on rural education in Russia has argued, literacy can be made to fit into traditional cultures without necessarily causing disruption. (17) Indeed, numerous turn-of-the-century surveys of peasant tastes in reading are unanimous in concluding that literate villagers ranked religious material first in their order of preference. (18) Thus, literacy, rather than opening peasant minds to the truths of positivism or Marxism, often had the effect of reinforcing the values of the old culture, and the role of the written word – both in the form of traditional religious texts and the modern medium of the newspaper – in the development of traditional attitudes will be a major theme of this book. (19)

(16 ) This insightful generalization was made by S. Frank in ‘‘Cultural Conflict,’’ p. 43.6

(17) B. Eklof, ‘‘Worlds in Conflict: Patriarchal Authority, Discipline, and the Russian School, 1861–1914,’’ Slavic Review 50, no. 4 (Winter 1991), 793.

(18) For a summary and analysis of survey findings, see M. Gromyko, Mir russkoi derevni (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1991), pp. 295–311. Many contemporary Western scholars have reached the same conclusion, see, for example, J. Morison, ‘‘Education and the 1905 Revolution,’’ Revolutionary Russia 1, no. 1 (June 1988), 6–7.

(19) Other writers, most notably J. Brooks, in When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861–1917 (Princeton, 1985) have stressed the modernizing effects of literacy. Brooks’s work provides an abundance of valuable information, but the overall picture of incipient secularization is achieved by the author’s highly problematic (given what we know of Russian popular preferences) decision to exclude religious literature {common trick, see the 'Renaissance'} from his analysis.

In many strands of scholarship, there is a fundamental assumption, based ultimately on the notion that economic ‘‘existence determines consciousness,’’ that capitalist or market relations are by their nature destructive of traditional cultures. Contemporary economic developments and the global monoculture whose ghastly visage is now coming into view suggest that this understanding is ultimately true. However, the extent to which rural and provincial Russia had been brought into the modern urban-based economy is very much open to debate. (20) Without denying that the market and money were making deep inroads into many areas of rural Russia, I would argue that at the turn of the century the situation was not yet critical and that peasant relations to the modern urban economy were in many ways actually reinforcing the traditional culture. On the level of economics, money earned by peasants who had gone to the cities for work (usually seasonal or temporary) served to bolster and sustain village households. (21) While in the cities, peasants tended to remain apart from other social classes, and maintained village-based social relations and cultural forms. (22) Rather than causing a cultural ‘‘citification’’ of the countryside, Imperial Russia’s industrialization was imbuing the cities with a pronounced rural coloration. In addition, most peasants went back to the village as soon as was feasible, (23) which suggests that Russian cities did not yet possess the irresistible attraction which urban areas have exerted throughout the world in recent decades. At the same time, the village community evinced great anxiety over the corrupting effects of its members’ exposure to city life, (24) and economically motivated contact with the city acted as a negative stimulus reinforcing traditional attitudes.

(20) For an overview of the enormous literature on the question, and for an interpretation which differs from my own by stressing the element of cultural change wrought by the market, see J. Burds, Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861–1905 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998).

(21) See, for example, R. Munting, ‘‘Outside Earnings in the Russian Peasant Farm: Tula Province, 1900–1917,’’ Journal of Peasant Studies 3, no. 4 (July 1976), 428–446, A. Baker, ‘‘Deterioration or Development?: The Peasant Economy of Moscow Province Prior to 1914,’’ Russian History 5, part 1 (1978), 1–23.

(22) R. Johnson, ‘‘Peasant and Proletariat: Migration, Family Patterns and Regional Loyalties,’’ in Eklof and Frank, eds., World, pp. 81–99.

(23) See, for example, J. Bradley, ‘‘Patterns of Peasant Migration to Late Nineteenth-Century Moscow: How Much Should We Read into Literacy Rates?,’’ Russian History 6, part 1 (1979), 22–38, and I. N. Slepnev, ‘‘Novye rynochnye realii i ikh prelomlenie v mentalitete poreformennogo krest’ianstva,’’ in Mentalitet i agrarnoe razvitie Rossii ( XIX – XX vv.): Materialy mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii. Moskva. 14–15 iiunia 1994 g. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996), p. 227.

(24) B. Engel, ‘‘Russian Peasant Views of City Life, 1861–1914,’’ Slavic Review 52, no. 3 (Fall 1993), 446–459.

The purpose of the preceding discussion has not been to negate the intrusion of new forces into the life of the Russian people at the turn of the century. Rather, by stressing continuity and challenging stereotypical indicators of ‘‘modernization’’ or incipient transformation I have sought to provide context for my study of the vitality of the traditional worldview, which is intended as a corrective to the Revolution-induced analytical fixation on change and as a modest contribution to the creation of a historical picture worthy of the complexity and richness of late Imperial Russia.

RELIGION AS THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING THE TRADITIONAL WORLDVIEW

This work will focus on what is, relatively speaking, the least developed aspect of the study of pre-revolutionary Russia, namely, the traditional worldview of the Russian peasantry, and specifically the ways in which the carriers of that worldview made sense of historical events of the late nine-

teenth and early twentieth century. It will be argued throughout that religion offers the key to understanding that worldview.

The question of religion is among the most stridently debated and divisive issues of Russian studies (and, for that matter, of the analysis of human affairs in general). On the one hand, historians – usually generalists or those concerned primarily with issues other than the peasant culture itself – can boldly assert that ‘‘the religiosity of the Russian peasant has been one of the most enduring myths . . . in the history of Russia,’’ (25) following the line of the great nineteenth-century radical thinker Vissarion Belinsky*, who argued that the Russian peasant was basically materialistic and atheistic, and that his supposed piety was largely a matter of custom and ritual {denial of eschatological views}. On the other hand, many of those who try to understand the peasantry on its own terms reach the opposite conclusion, namely, that the peasantry as a whole was fervently attached to its religion, and attempt to use that religion as a means of analyzing the peasant culture. (26)

* Белинский, Виссарион Григорьевич (1811-1848). Виссарио́н Григо́рьевич Бели́нский — русский литературный критик, теоретик, публицист. Vissarion Belinsky. Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency.Belinsky played one of the key roles in the career of poet and publisher Nikolay Nekrasov and his popular magazine Sovremennik. He was the most influential of the Westernizers, especially among the younger generation. He worked primarily as a literary critic, because that area was less heavily censored than political pamphlets. He agreed with Slavophiles that society had precedence over individualism, but he insisted the society had to allow the expression of individual ideas and rights. He strongly opposed Slavophiles on the role of Orthodoxy, which he considered a retrograde force. He emphasized reason and knowledge, and attacked autocracy and theocracy.

(25) Figes, People’s Tragedy, p. 66.

(26) To cite only a few of the most useful of numerous possible examples, I will point to three specialists of widely divergent scholarly formation and outlook who stress the centrality of religion to the understanding of the peasantry: Moshe Lewin, ‘‘Popular-Religion in Twentieth-Century Russia,’’ in Eklof and Frank, eds., World, pp. 155–168, M. Gromyko, ‘‘Pravoslavie v zhizni russkogo krest’ianina,’’ Zhivaia starina, no. 3 (1994), 3–5, and C. Chulos, ‘‘Myths of the Pious or Pagan Peasant in Post-Emancipation Central Russia (Voronezh Province),’’ Russian History 22, no. 2 (Summer 1995), 181–216.

The traditional religious worldview will be the subject of this book, and the reader will see the relationship between my approach and the work of scholars who accept the fact of popular religiosity. At this point it is necessary to make a number of critical remarks about the ‘‘peasant-

piety-as-myth’’ tendency. In their treatment of religion (and not just traditional Russian religion), many modern scholars have evinced attitudes ranging from indifference to hostility, and from what might be called tone-deafness all the way to utter incomprehension. Scholarly difficulties in dealing with religious matters stem from an intricate and tightly wound knot of philosophical, psychological, and political factors, and the Russian case offers a useful illustration of the general problem. In large measure, the rejection or dismissal of the reality of Russian peasant religiosity arises from the fact that educated Russian observers in the past as well as more recent generations of scholars have viewed the question across the deep divide separating the modern and traditional worldviews. The underlying assumptions for modern assessments of religious phenomena were created by the Protestant Reformation, which, as many have argued, opened the way for modernity by attempting to distinguish between essential and supposedly superficial elements of religion and in the process shattered the traditional, ‘‘holistic’’ culture of Medieval Europe. Keith Thomas opened great opportunities for historical analysis when he argued that the Protestant definition of religion in terms of individual belief ‘‘helped to form a new concept of religion itself,’’ and one that did not fit medieval popular Catholicism or other traditional cultures, in which ‘‘religion was a ritual method of living, not a set of dogmas.’’ (27) As anyone familiar with the Russian field will quickly recognize, Thomas’s position goes to the heart of much of the discussion of Russian peasant religiosity (and towards Belinsky’s framing of the entire debate). In effect, many observers past and present, although far from religion themselves, have applied the standards of evangelical Protestantism to the Russian case: Russian peasants knew little of formal theology, they were devoted to ritual observance, and often behaved in a less-than-saintly manner; therefore, they were not Christian, or they did not take religion seriously. Viewed on its own terms, however, the traditional Russian culture was subjectively, i.e. by self-definition, Christian, as will be demonstrated throughout this book. Moreover,  Christianity, specifically Eastern Orthodox Christianity in its Russian redaction, was the source of almost all of the basic categories and images of the traditional culture.

The development of modernity into materialism in the nineteenth century has intensified our difficulties in understanding religion-based traditional cultures. For the various materialist schools of thought, religious ideas have no existence in themselves, but are merely reflections of socio-economic realities, and they represent an inferior mode of comprehension or a ‘‘false consciousness.’’ Although interpretations based on this assumption have reached great heights of subtlety and insight, in the Russian case the results have usually been more meager and crude.

Present-day Western scholars might be tempted to lay all the blame for ‘‘vulgar materialism’’ on now-discredited Soviet Marxism and to minimize the extent to which we are all living ‘‘in an age in which the understanding of anything that surpasses the material level has practically ceased to

exist.’’ (28) If anything, Marxism, with its fundamental humanism, does not even approach the utter materialism of present-day Western trends such as neoliberal economic theory, ‘‘rational choice’’ political science, neurochemical psychology, and reductionist Darwinist/geneticist sociology. Given the pervasive materialism of our contemporary worldview, we must make a great effort of empathy to understand the culture of people vitally concerned with things which mean nothing to us. Many of the ideas and attitudes examined in this study have a direct link to the material world and the needs of physical existence; however, the key elements of the traditional Russian culture are to be found in an autonomous religious sphere of human life.

(27) K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), p. 76.

(28) P. Sherrard, The Greek East and the Latin West: a Study in the Christian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 50.

Related to the problem of cultural materialism is the fact that sensitivity to religious matters is to a certain extent the product of personal religious experience. This is true regardless of how one defines the reality of such experience – even if it is merely the product of chemical reactions in the

brain, only those in whose cranial cavities such processes have taken place can have a feeling for it. The point can be illustrated by contrasting ‘‘inter-faith’’ and secular interpretations of religion. Although the adherents of various religions have manifested hostility toward traditions other than

their own (and this is not just the case with the monotheist faiths, as any acquaintance with the real, as opposed to the idealized, histories of Buddhist or Hindu societies shows), by virtue of their own belief they can at least perceive that religion motivates the others, and interaction (whether positive or negative) is on the same plane. In contrast, most observers of a purely secular formation apply non-religious criteria to religious phenomena. For them, religious texts are either meaningless gibberish, or records of humanity’s fantasy life, religious movements the secondary and superficial manifestations of processes occurring in the ‘‘real,’’ which is to say physical, world.

The assessment of Russian popular religiosity has been severely affected  by the intense political struggles (pro- and anti-Tsarist, pro- and anti-Soviet, now pro- and anti-‘‘reform’’) which have provided the underlying framework for most scholarship on Russia. The Russian autocracy was

rooted in traditional religious conceptions of monarchical authority, and perceptions of the degree of popular piety (particularly within the bounds of Orthodoxy) have inevitably been influenced by the observer’s attitude toward the legitimacy of Tsarist rule. At a very basic level, Western study of Russia is largely dependant on the insights of turn-of-the-century Russian liberalism (and to a much lesser extent on those of Russian Marxism), and it was this profoundly secular movement with its all-consuming political drive which created the standard historiographical picture of traditional Russian culture.

In terms of fundamental sociological and cultural categories the author has relied on the conceptual model offered by Max Weber and his successors. Specifically, the basic dichotomy will be that of modernity and tradition, the former being defined as the adherence to scientific reason as the basic guide to understanding the world and determining action and its application to ever-widening spheres of life, the latter in the sense of a religious/supernatural conception of the universe and its phenomena. The terms ‘‘secular’’ (meaning an attitude which seeks explanations and places the ultimate values in this present, material world) and ‘‘pre-secular’’ (opposite of the above) are also crucial to the definition of this dichotomy. In effect, this work is a study of the Russian traditional, ‘‘pre-secular’’ mind as well as its view of the modernizing ‘‘secular’’ elite culture of the Empire during the period of crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century. Insofar as this work is a study of a pre-secular culture, it will by definition be dealing with religious beliefs. For characterizations of specific folk notions and the peasant religious worldview in general I will rely on Mircea Eliade’s History of Religious Ideas (English trans., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978–1985), especially its chapters on popular religion. Eliade’s work and its extensive guide to literature has been most useful for placing Russian peasant beliefs in a broader context and in identifying some of their ultimate sources.

One work in particular, by now a classic, helped inspire me to conceive of this project, namely Eugen Weber’s {1925-2007, a Romanian-born American historian with a special focus on Western civilization} Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1871–1914 (Stanford, 1976), which pioneered the historiographical study of the survival of the traditional worldview into the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Western Europe.

The source base for this work consists primarily of published materials culled from the vast Russian scholarly, journalistic and belletristic productivity of the last decades of the Empire. Given the highly specific nature of the subjects dealt with in this work, a survey of source materials and a brief discussion of relevant historiography is included at the beginning of each chapter. A listing of the readings – both in the primary sources as well as in the secondary scholarly literature – which informed this work is available in the bibliography.

The actual types of materials used for this study vary greatly. They may be divided into two broad categories, namely, direct expressions of traditional thinking on the one hand, and indirect recordings on the other. 1) Direct expressions include written texts of traditional provenance (e.g. writings and publications produced by the Old Believers themselves) and ethnographic recordings of songs, proverbs, legends, and so forth. Although this latter subgroup of materials – originally oral – went through the hands of outsiders (folklorists) and the medium of printing, they were collected by professional scholars with the express intention of recording manifestations of peasant culture on its own terms and as accurately as possible. They are as close as we can get to the traditional culture of the turn of the century. 2) Indirect expressions are those recordings of popular thinking which may be found in contemporary journalism and in later memoirs. Although these are more problematic as a source, they can also be used if treated with critical discretion.

The basic argument of the present study may be summarized as follows: The traditional understanding of the world was deeply pessimistic, with a strong tendency toward dualism in the religious sense. Life was hard, and evil and injustice were predominant in the present age. The worsening condition of humanity would bring down divine punishment. Amelioration could only take the form of intervention from on high which would eradicate the existing social order. In the context of this dualism and eschatology, the ‘‘lords’’ (meaning educated society as a whole) were identified as the agents of evil, and their actions and ways were seen as the source of the injustice prevalent in the world, as well as the main reason for the afflictions and chastisements which were visited upon the land. The Tsar, on the other hand, was the force for good and justice. The popular interpretations of events analyzed in this work were manifestations of this set of principles.

I begin with an outline of the traditional worldview, the ways in which popular Orthodoxy understood the nature and workings of the world, highlighting contrasts with the ruling culture of secular/rationalist modernity; here I also show the origins of traditional ideas and the means of their transmission and preservation. I then turn to an examination of the belief systems created by Russian religious dissenters, a major presence in the life of traditional Russia. Although very distinct on some crucial points from the majority population, and profoundly separatist in outlook, the religious dissenters were, in a sense, the most articulate and ideologically developed products of traditional Russian culture, showing some of its tendencies in exaggerated and even grotesque form.

In the second part of the book I turn to the traditional understanding of history and specific historical events, beginning with an examination of ‘‘folk eschatology,’’ that is, the popular understanding of the origins of the world, the reasons for the current state of things, and the ultimate direction of events. I then develop these themes by showing some of the ways in which the traditional mind responded to two great crises – the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, the immense shock of which forced the articulation of what I call folk tsarism, and then the concurrent outbreak of famine and cholera in 1891–1892*, which provided a concrete focus for the anxieties and misgivings aroused by change in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. From that point on, I will provide examples of the folk interpretation of subsequent developments, beginning with the Japanese War, continuing with the Revolution and agrarian unrest of 1905–1907, and concluding with an examination of the Great War.

* Голод в России [Russian famine of 1891–1892] (1891-1892). (...) Страдания голодающих вызвали большое сочувствие в образованной части общества, в деревню устремился поток интеллигентных добровольцев, стремящихся организовать помощь крестьянам. Государство, пытаясь контролировать этот процесс, организовало систему официальных благотворительных учреждений и попыталось наладить сотрудничество с добровольцами, привлекая их к составлению и проверке списков получателей помощи. Наиболее эффективной формой общественной помощи крестьянам оказались благотворительные столовые. Действия правительства по организации помощи пострадавшим от голода были восприняты общественным мнением критически. По мнению как современников, так и историков, голод послужил начальной точкой в развитии конфликта между самодержавной властью и общественностью. Russian famine of 1891–1892. The Russian famine of 1891–1892 began along the Volga River, then spread as far as the Urals and Black Sea. The famine caused 375,000 to 500,000 deaths. The reawakening of Russian Marxism and populism is often traced to the public's anger at the Tsarist government's poor handling of the disaster.

Although the perception of a profound difference between educated society on the one hand, and the peasantry or ‘‘people’’ on the other is a historiographical commonplace, the people’s traditional culture has not received its due in historical scholarship. It is hoped that the material and the analysis presented in this study will enhance the historical picture of the late-Imperial period by illustrating the popular notions and beliefs which formed such a vital part of the cultural and psychological atmosphere of the age.

CHAPTER 1

The traditional worldview

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the great majority of Russians lived within an integral, traditional, religious culture which directed all aspects of life and action and which infused the world and events with meaning. The following pages will sketch the outlines of the traditional Russian worldview, paying particular attention to the traditional understanding of causality. This

examination will, in turn, provide the key for making sense of peasant interpretations of specific historical events of the last decades of the Russian Empire.

SOURCES

The reader might assume that the ideas and beliefs of the traditional Russian peasantry are beyond the reach of the historian because of a dearth of documentation. It is certainly true that details (e.g. folk responses to specific events) are very elusive, but there is in fact a great abundance of information on Russian peasant culture, particularly for the late Imperial period. Most notably, there is the immense body of material collected by Russian ethnographers in the latter part of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth. (1) Although numerous valuable works on folk beliefs have appeared in monograph form, the great bulk of information remains in the condition of raw, primary material to be found in periodicals. The scholarly ethnographic journals of the period offer an extensive (although far from complete) picture of peasant life and belief, (2) and much relevant information can be found in general academic publications, (3) as well as in official organs of the state and church. (4) In addition, a comprehensive survey of folk beliefs was undertaken at the turn of the century. (5) In addition, materials useful for the purposes of this investigation are of course scattered in various other periodicals, in memoirs, and in the novels and stories of Russian writers.

(1) A good sense of the quality and breadth of this work can be gained from a useful new bibliography, Russkii fol’klor: 1881–1900 (Leningrad, 1990).

(2) Most valuable in this regard are the journals Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (published 1888–1916), Zhivaia starina (1890–1916), as well as the serial publications of the Imperial Geographic Society and its various local branches.

(3) Most notably in Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve Istorii i Drevnostei Rossiiskikh (henceforth: ChIOIDR), which ran a regular series of publications of primary source material for ethnography, and Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia (henceforth: ZhMNP).

(4) Ministry of the Interior publications from the Pravitel ’stvennyi Vestnik to the various Gubernskie vedomosti frequently published ethnographic material in their ‘‘Unofficial sections,’’ as did the Eparkhial ’nye vedomosti of the dioceses of the Orthodox Church. Missionerskoe obozrenie, the journal of the ecclesiastical ‘‘thought-police’’ was especially concerned with sectarian and (aberrant) folk beliefs and contains much of value even about the non-dissident peasantry. Unfortunately, I have had limited access to the Rukovodstvo dlia sel ’skikh pastyrei, which devoted much attention to folk belief and superstition. {Азбука веры - Руководство для сельских пастырей}

(5) This survey, known by the name of its sponsor, Prince Tenishev, consisted of a questionnaire compiled by the eminent folklorist S. V. Maksimov and was sent to ‘‘village intelligentsia’’ (to use Soviet terminology), i.e. teachers, medics, agronomers, priests, throughout Russia. The prominent ethnographer S. Maksimov compiled excellent thematic synopses of the material (published separately and in the latter volumes of his Sobranie sochinenii, Saint Petersburg, n. d., c.1900).

ORTHODOXY, PAGANISM, ‘‘DUALFAITH’’: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING THE TRADITIONAL RUSSIAN WORLDVIEW

At the outset of our investigation we must deal with a question which has generated much controversy and confusion, namely, the categorization of traditional Russian folk culture. Broadly speaking, there have been three approaches to the problem: 1) the view, associated with the Russian right, of the peasantry as fundamentally and profoundly Orthodox, ‘‘the God-bearing people’’ of Dostoevsky’s famous phrase; (6) 2) the notion, forcefully expressed by Belinsky and typical of the Russian left, that the villagers were practical-minded materialists, for whom religion was empty ritual; and 3) the idea, which has flourished in Russian scholarship and literature, that the strange belief-world of the peasant represented a survival of paganism, or an amalgam of superficial Orthodoxy with a deep underlying heathenism (‘‘dvoeverie’’ or ‘‘dual belief’’). All three of these ascribed identities were generated by educated, ‘‘modern’’ Russians, and until very recently no one has thought to determine how the peasants defined themselves. Of the three, the pagan/semi-pagan model has enjoyed the most illustrious career and caused the most damage, particularly in the West, (7) and therefore merits the closest critical examination (Belinsky’s view, although familiar to any student of Russian history, has not had great influence on scholarship {not 'sexy' enough}, and in any case, the present work can serve as a refutation of the great literary critic, since it provides hundreds of documented examples of popular religious thinking (8)).

(6) Although, as will be argued below, the Russian Right was correct in its assessment of the Russian peasantry as Orthodox and Tsarist, this does not mean that there was a convergence of rightist and popular attitudes and goals. Traditional peasant monarchism was useless to the Right in political terms (witness the miserable performance of the rightist parties among the village electorate in the Duma era). The right-radicalism of the late Imperial period was a (minority) phenomenon of Russia’s educated society; as such, it was alien to the traditional mass of the people.

(7) To illustrate the state of the serious secondary literature, one could cite O. Figes {Orlando Figes, b 1959; a British historian and writer known for his works on Russian and European history}, who writes that peasant religion was really ‘‘a thin coat of Christianity’’ over an ‘‘ancient pagan folk culture’’ full of pagan cults, magic and sorcery (People’s Tragedy, p. 66). {Orlando Figes - A People's Tragedy. The Russian Revolution - centenary edition with new introduction. 2017}

(8) Without going into detail on the sources of Belinsky’s attitude, I would speculate that Belinsky might have projected onto the Russian villager the image of the grossly materialistic, calculating peasant which was a staple of the great French novels of his time.

In attempting to understand the world, educated Russians have relied on European ways of thinking. In the specific case of elite views of popular culture/religiosity, we can see the cumulative distortions produced by the application to a pre-modern, non-Western peasantry of successive interpretive lenses of Western manufacture. The first and most important of these, identified by Keith Thomas in the Western context and referred to in the introduction to this book, was the Protestant definition of true Christianity as pure faith based on Scripture, by which measure all rituals or beliefs lacking in explicit Biblical sanction are heathendom and devilry. A second distortion was produced by the Enlightenment and its general attitude of contempt for organized religion: even in its official versions, traditional Christianity represents gross superstition, and whatever influence a corrupt and obscurantist clergy is capable of exerting on a benighted flock only serves to keep that flock mired in the swamps of primeval ignorance. The third refraction occurred with Romanticism (which, it should be stressed, gave birth to the scholarly study of the Russian people) and its obsession with real or imagined antiquity {e.g. Bogomilism}; for the Romantic, folk beliefs and practices provide unique and priceless clues in the great search for authenticity, which is now lost but had once existed, in the childhood (assumed to be pre-Christian, and therefore pagan) of the race {primeval innocence and blissful ignorance}. {Political expediency} The final and fatal distortion occurred when educated Russia entered into its mortal struggle against the autocracy, which was, of course, allied to the Church. In the context of the political conflict which permeated all aspects of the life of Russian educated society, the observer who identified elements of Orthodoxy in the life and beliefs of the peasantry would be seen as serving the cause of oppression, while the investigator who uncovered folk paganism or sectarianism was doing his part to chip away at the legitimacy of the system. All four of these successive refractions worked in the same direction – to accentuate paganism/dual faith, and to obscure Christianity.

The pagan/dual-faith model is firmly established in the published corpus of Russian scholarship which has served as the basis for Western study of Russia. Until very recently, Russian traditional culture as such was of little interest to Western Russianists, whose prime focus was first politics and then socio-economic problems, both from the point of view of the overwhelming fact of the Revolution. Insofar as traditional culture could be more-or-less convincingly adduced in favor of one or another political or socio-economic argument, Western scholars would rely on the generalizations of earlier Russian writers, and thus the semi-pagan picture of the Russian peasantry entered into Western historiography. An added factor in the wide circulation and persistence of this image is the fact that very few Westerners specializing in Russian studies have familiarity with the folk cultures of their own countries; if they had an idea of what goes on outside the bourgeois milieu which produces most academics, they would find the Russian peasantry not nearly as unique or exotic as it appears to them now, and they would be much less quick to assign it to the outer reaches of strangeness, which the pagan/dual-faith model does.

Despite its influence and durability, the dominant model is fundamentally flawed, and can be challenged on the level of source material, interpretation of evidence, and most important, the self-identification of the Russian peasantry in late Imperial times.

Any paganism or dual faith would, of course, have to have come from some powerful native religious tradition which existed prior to the arrival of Christianity and which was strong enough to withstand the thousand-year-long onslaught of the Orthodox Church and successive Russian states. The reader, thinking by analogy with the Mediterranean realm, or perhaps being familiar with Russian literary fantasy, might assume that there is a body of evidence illustrating the existence and functioning of a pre-Christian Slavic religion with a pantheon and priests and all the other accoutrements of any self-respecting heathendom. But here we come to a plainly evident but usually ignored fact: we know almost nothing of Russian/Slavic paganism (the entire documentary basis for the study of the topic consists of sixteen(!) sources, the majority of which deal with the West Slavs rather than the ancestors of the Russians (9)), and what we do know suggests a very rudimentary form of religiosity {yet still rich in ritual ??}. (10) Archeology offers a bit more (primarily ornamentation and graves, and by no means temples {which aren't really needed for religiosity to exist -> village shaman-volkhv} or anything spectacular like that), (11) but it is a hard task to make dead bones speak and tell of the ideas of the pre-Christian religion, and in any case showing continuity on the level of beliefs is well-nigh impossible. (12) {i.o.w. not much evidence of institutionalized religion. Shamanic beliefs can be even more persistent, because they don't rely on a complex doctrine which may be forgotten.}

{PAGANISM = THEURGY (but not all theurgy is - directly - paganism)}

(9) M. Kulikowski, A Bibliography of Slavic Mythology (Columbus, Ohio, 1989), pp. 45–47. Of course, one could use this sparse source base, in combination with archeological evidence, to make various interesting extrapolations and interpretations regarding the distant past, but making connections to late Imperial folk culture would be highly speculative, to say the least, while working on the premise that the peasantry in 1900 was Orthodox is backed by thousands upon thousands of sources.

(10) A close and conscientious examination of the ‘‘pre-Christian’’ religion shows that there was almost nothing there by way of a pantheon or a cult. See V. J. Mansikka, Die Religion der Ostslaven, Folklore Fellows Communications No. 43 (Helsinki, 1967) (reprint of 1921 edition).

(11) For an encyclopedic presentation of the archeological material, with much more by way of dubious interpretation, see B. A. Rybakov {Рыбаков, Борис Александрович (1908-2001; археолог)}, Iazychestvo drevnikh slavian (Moscow, 1981) and Iazychestvo drevnei Rusi (Moscow, 1987). The massiveness of these two volumes creates the fundamentally misleading impression that there is a massive amount of reliable knowledge about actual (as opposed to ‘‘reconstructed’’) Slavic paganism. Most of the bulk of these works is provided by a rehash of nineteenth-century speculation (one might have hoped that Rybakov, as a Soviet academician, would have adopted a ‘‘scientific-socialist’’ approach, but instead he follows the lead of the great Romantic Afanas’ev {Афанасьев, Александр Николаевич (1826-1871; историк)}).

(12) Unless one follows the lead of Rybakov, who reconstructs ancient Slavic paganism by projecting backwards what we know about folk religiosity in the late-Imperial era(!); if the researcher ranges freely over centuries and blots out the overwhelmingly Christian content of later material, he can use the incantations and actions of nineteenth-century medicine-men (znakhari) to generate the practices of first-millennium pagan priests {знахарь - лекарь-самоучка, действующий собственными невежественными способами, якобы с помощью колдовства}, whose cult (insofar as they or it actually existed) is otherwise completely obscure (Rybakov admits to this dubious methodology – Iazychestvo drevnei Rusi, p. 294 –which is typical of the way in which the ‘‘paganism’’ of the secondary literature was created.

Although the source-base for the actual and original Russian/Slavic paganism is meager (to say the least), this regrettable state of affairs has not prevented scholars from demonstrating the strong persistence of supposedly pagan elements in Russian folk culture down to the present day. On the level of material culture, any folk ornamentation or pictorial depiction which is not explicitly an icon or a cross is identified as a pagan survival, especially if one can point to some similar motif on an artifact dated to pre-Christian times. (13) More commonly, the enterprising researcher categorizes any popular belief and practice (and there are a lot of them) which is not contained in the official teachings and liturgics of the Orthodox Church as pagan. (14)

(13) Rybakov (ibid.) does this with remarkable zeal and patience, over hundreds of pages. Here is a characteristic example: he reproduces a late nineteenth-century embroidery depicting a woman standing between two horses, and identifies the picture as ‘‘the goddess Makosh’’ and ‘‘symbols of fertility’’ (Iazychestvo drevnei Rusi, p. 676). To give the reader a sense of how tenuous such assertions are, it is worth noting that the goddess Makosh’/Mokosh’ owes her flourishing existence in the secondary literature to a series of five letters in an obscure passage in the Russian Primary Chronicle (this is her only documentary attestation), and that it is by no means clear that the letters in question refer to a person, much less an exalted member of the Slavic pantheon. On the etymology of mokosh’ and the possibility that it might in fact refer to behavior (fornication) and not a person, see A. B. Strakhov, ‘‘Kul’t sv. Germana i narodnaia etimologiia,’’ in Tematy: Ksie ̨ ga jubileuszowa w 70. rocznice ̨ urodzin professora Leszka Moszyńskiego (Gdansk, 1998), 411–417.

(14) The best example of this venerable and still very widespread practice, S. A. Tokarev, Religioznye verovaniia vostochnoslavianskikh narodov XIX –nachala XX v. (Moscow, 1957), is nevertheless an exceptionally useful exposition of folk beliefs and rituals, and probably the best introduction to the subject.

* PD Страхов, Александр Борисович (1948-2021). Алекса́ндр Бори́сович Стра́хов — русский поэт и учёный-этнограф-лингвист. Отец актёра Даниила Страхова. С 1989 года жил в США, редактор и издатель международного журнала «Paleoslavica».

* PD Токарев, Сергей Александрович (1899-1985). Серге́й Алекса́ндрович То́карев — советский этнограф, историк этнографической науки, исследователь религиозных воззрений. Доктор исторических наук, профессор.

The insurmountable objection to such approaches, without which the folk paganism/dual faith models cannot be sustained, is that they do gross violence to the peasants’ own conception of themselves {"I am a Christian"}. What one can do and remain fair to the peasants is to show that they retained beliefs (mainly regarding the interpretation of events in nature as well as the operations of evil spirits {theurgy = coooperation of the spirits}) and rituals (in the sense of the proper way to perform various functions of everyday life) that can be plausibly derived from a pre-Christian paganism that is itself reconstructed on the basis of those same nineteenth- and twentieth-century beliefs and practices. (15) One cannot however argue that the peasants maintained paganism in conscious distinction to Christianity. The core of the peasant identity, and the bulwark of the peasants’ human dignity in the face of the various forms of degradation inflicted by social weakness, was Christianity (which equals Orthodoxy in the Russian context). We shall see how the Old Believers and other religious dissidents, although animated by intense hostility to the official Orthodox Church, invariably thought of themselves as the true Christians, and thus remained within the cultural/psychological sphere of Christianity. (16) As for the Russian peasantry as a whole, we can cite Moshe Lewin: ‘‘The majority of Russian peasants, well into the late 1930s, were Orthodox Christians and said so’’ . . . ‘‘the statement [in response to the question of identity] ‘We are the Orthodox’ is not to be taken lightly.’’ (17) Lewin’s generalization, based on an overview of the secondary literature, has been supported by recent detailed work. Thus, Chris Chulos, who recently carried out an in-depth local study, writes of the peasants that ‘‘[n]ot only were their references to religion entirely couched in Christian ideology and imagery, but, with few exceptions, they failed to see themselves as anything other than Orthodox Christians.’’ (18) For my part, in years of research I have yet to find even one manifestation of conscious paganism or dual faith emanating from the peasantry, or any examples of village atheism prior to the revolution of 1905.

* PD Moshe Lewin (1921-2010). Moshe "Misha" Lewin, was a scholar of Russian and Soviet history. He was a major figure in the school of Soviet studies which emerged in the 1960s.

(15) For the results of this approach, see N. I. Tolstoi, Ocherki slavianskogo iazychestva (Moscow, Indrik, 2003).

(16) Even the ‘‘Sabbatarians’’ (subbotniki ), a small dissident movement which rejected Christianity in favor of the Mosaic Law, cannot be said to have escaped the orbit of the general Christian culture because, after all, the New Testament is grounded in the Old (it is not as if the ‘‘Sabbatarians’’ turned to a completely alien guide for their religion), and their effort to maintain correct belief and practice, although explicitly non-Christian, was nevertheless typically Orthodox in its psychological underpinnings. {belief as attitude}

(17) ‘‘Popular Religion in Twentieth-Century Russia,’’ in Eklof and Frank, World, p. 157, p. 156. In fairness, it should be noted that Lewin follows the ‘‘dual faith’’ model, and draws a sharp distinction between official and popular religion.

(18) C. Chulos {Chris J. Chulos}, ‘‘Myths of the Pious or Pagan Peasant,’’ 207. Chulos is one of the first American researchers to attempt to cut through the constructions of educated-class observers and determine the peasant self-identification.

Because it is very unlikely that the reader (even a specialist in Russian history) has had any exposure to actual documentary record (as opposed to the scholarship) of traditional Russian folk belief, and might be inclined to project onto the Russia field knowledge of actual paganism (such as that of the ancient world) or actual syncretism (such as exists in the Caribbean), it might be worthwhile to deal briefly with the Russian peasant belief in supernatural beings and magicians which is the cornerstone of the dual-faith model. First off all, it is worth noting that belief in spirits, witches, conjurers, etc. is backed by the unshakeable Scriptural authority of the Old and New Testaments, and can therefore hardly serve as evidence that the Russian peasants were not really Christian (even if the Bible doesn’t mention the specific characters – forest devils [leshye] or what not – of Russian demonology). (19) Furthermore, the so-called spells (zagovory) of the folk-healers (znakhari, znakharki, depending on gender) and sorcerors, the ostensible bearers of the ancestral pagan faith, were usually called ‘‘prayers’’ (20) (and not zagovory – more a usage of scholars), and were usually thoroughly Christian in their invocations, (21) and in any case, as Keith Thomas noted, the distinction between a ‘‘Christian’’ prayer and a ‘‘superstitious’’ spell is Protestant in origin, and alien to traditional religiosity. (22) To cite but one of literally thousands of recorded examples of popular religious practice, village midwives (whom one would expect to be especially resilient carriers of pre-Christian beliefs, according to recent feminist trends in scholarship) accompanied their work with cleansing rituals and constant invocations of the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and ‘‘King David and Grandma Solomonida.’’ (23) Although none of this was canonical, it does not place its practitioners outside the realm of Christianity. (24) Even those rituals which can plausibly be traced to the pre-Christian period were invariably given Christian forms of expression. (25) Russian folk culture was so thoroughly permeated by Orthodoxy that even its literal outlaws – thieves – had their own zagovory using Christian imagery, (26) and their own holiday: Annunciation (27) (presumably from the Archangel Gabriel’s ability to pass through walls).

* PD Keith Thomas (b 1933; historian). Sir Keith Vivian Thomas is a Welsh historian of the early modern world based at Oxford University. He is best known as the author of Religion and the Decline of Magic and Man and the Natural World.

(19) At the risk of beating this into the ground (which might be necessary given the distortions of the Russian field), it might be worth asking whether anyone would deny that the Irish were really Catholic because they believed in leprechauns, or that the colonial New Englanders were Protestants because they were afraid of witches? That would be a Western analogy to what is routinely done with the Russian peasantry.

(20) Tokarev, Religioznye verovaniia, p. 23.

(21) For the texts of hundreds of spells (as well as commentary and analysis), see Otrechennoe chtenie v Rossii XVII – XVIII vekov (Moscow, 2002) and A. L. Toporkov, Zagovory v russkoi rukopisnoi traditsii XV – XIX vv.: Istoriia, simvolika, poetika (Moscow, 2005). The great bulk of them are suffused with Christian imagery; some are not explicitly Christian, but fit in the apocryphal tradition to be discussed below; a few are satanic, but even that derives from the idea-world of Christianity.

(22) Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 61.

(23) ‘‘Pomiani, Gospodi, tsaria Davida i babushku Solomonidu,’’ cited in T. A. Listova, ‘‘Russkie obriady, obychai i pover’ia, sviazannye s povival’noi babkoi (vtoraia polovina XIX –20-e gody XX v.),’’ in Russkie: Semeinyi i obshchestvennyi byt (Moscow, 1989), pp. 146–147. The first half of this phrase is a line from Psalms frequently used in Orthodox liturgy, the second invokes the apocryphal midwife, more often called Salomea, who delivered Christ. Enthusiasts of the dual-faith model strip away the mass of Christian content in the zagovory and focus on what little can be construed as paganism.

(24) Gabriele De Rosa {b 1917; Italian historian}, dealing with analogous non-canonical practices in Southern Italy, asks ‘‘who authorizes me to intervene and relegate such actions to the world of superstition? . . . Would I not be doing violence against a mode of behavior which, after all, reveals a high degree of sprituality?’’ ‘‘Religione popolare o religione prescritta?,’’ in Chiesa e religione popolare nel Mezzogiorno (Rome, Bari, 1978), p. 6.

(25) For a forceful statement of this view, with numerous supporting details, see S. V. Kuznetsov, ‘‘Vera i obriadnost’ v khoziaistvennoi deiatel’nosti russkogo krest’ianstva,’’ in Mentalitet, pp. 285–293. With regard to the application of Christian symbolism in ancient agricultural rituals (surely a place where ‘‘dual faith’’ could be expected), Kuznetsov writes ‘‘A ritual, although having no connection to either Church canons or Church practice, nevertheless became Christian in its sacral meaning, because the use of sacred objects [crosses, icons] had the purpose of filling the ritual with Christian content and giving it operative force’’ (p. 293). Kuznetsov’s point on the derivation of ‘‘operative force’’ is particularly important.

(26) For the horse thief’s prayer, see S. Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict and Justice, p. 195. {Stephen Frank - Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914}

(27) Tokarev, Religioznye verovaniia, pp. 145–146.

The researcher who categorizes various popular religious notions or practices as pagan/semi-pagan ascribes to them a significance which contradicts the meaning given them by their carriers. Such scholarly hauteur, although typical of the glory days of Western science in the late nineteenth century, runs counter to present-day trends, and would be unacceptable in studies of oppressed peoples in Africa or Latin America, although it persists in the field of Russian history. The image of the peasantry as semi-pagan and not really Orthodox was largely the creation of Russian scholars of the Left (broadly speaking), who sincerely identified with the people and devoted their lives to the people’s cause; ironically, their scholarly/literary construct, by the standards of the peasants’ own traditional culture, dehumanized the people much more thoroughly than did the condescending and repressive attitude of the blackest reaction. Today, we are far removed from the political struggles which shaped Russian scholarship, and we can allow the peasantry to define itself in its own terms: for better or for worse, the Russian people as a whole was Orthodox up until the Stalin era, and any serious examination of their culture must begin with a recognition of that fact.

ORTHODOXY AND THE FORMATION OF THE TRADITIONAL WORLDVIEW

The beliefs examined in this work are ‘‘folk’’ in the sense that they were adhered to and carried by Russian peasants at the turn of the century and were alien and generally unknown to the modernizing ruling strata of Russia. However, it would be a grave error to interpret the designation

‘‘folk’’ as signifying only original and spontaneous peasant creativity which occurred in an obscurity impenetrable to outside observers. The content of popular thinking is no mystery, being attested in numerous sources, and the provenance of popular ideas can be traced: the main wellspring of the fundamental beliefs analyzed in this chapter was Byzantine Christianity (in both its Orthodox and heterodox {apocrypha} variants) as refracted through the Muscovite prism. {Arianism // The proto-orthodox church had a dichotomy for teachings; they were either orthodox or heterodox. Orthodox teachings were those that claimed to have the authentic lineage of Holy Tradition. All other teachings were viewed as deviant streams of thought and were possibly heretical. // BOUNDARIES OF CHRISTIANITY : HETERODOXY AND ORTHODOXY FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE MODERN WORLD} The ‘‘folk’’ maintained such of those beliefs as continued to have relevance, and adapted them as necessary to make sense of new information and changing circumstances.

It would be an endless task to detail the role of Orthodoxy in the formation of the traditional Russian peasant culture. As one contemporary Russian specialist puts it, ‘‘Orthodoxy was not merely a component part of the culture of the Russian people. Its influence on the life of the people was truly all-encompassing.’’ (28) The key here is to define Orthodoxy broadly as a civilization {!!} comprising not only a set of canonical beliefs but also a very rich popular/apocryphal tradition. (29) Russian traditional culture in 1900 contained many elements which were not ‘‘orthodox’’ in a dogmatic sense, but almost all of its major ideas and images can be traced to the old Christian world {+ gnostic in origin / appropriated by / suitable for gnostics ??} of the Eastern Mediterranean. Within the very broad parameters of the question of the influence of Orthodoxy on the Russian peasant culture a number of points of direct relevance to our investigation can be made. We  shall deal first with the message and means of the official Orthodox  Church, and then turn to the content and transmission of the apocryphal tradition.

(28) Kuznetsov, ‘‘Vera i obriadnost’,’’ 293.

(29) This argument is made most forcefully in a very useful article by A. B. Strakhov, ‘‘Stanovlenie dvoeveriia na Rusi,’’ Cyrillomethodianum 10 (1987), 33–44.

Although it is of course difficult to generalize about such an immense topic, the Orthodox Church to whose ministrations the Russian people were subject for almost a millennium (or thirty generations) is characterized by the following defining features (although this is by no means an

exhaustive list), all founded on the central idea that Christ is God Incarnate and Savior of the world: the crucial importance of participation in liturgical worship and the sacraments (or, to use the Greek term, ‘‘mysteries’’), the promotion of ascetic practice (primarily fasting), the veneration of an ideal apostolic and patristic past, the great significance accorded to right belief (although dogma is not systematized in the manner of Aquinas and Calvin), and emphasis on the ephemeral nature of the present world, with consequent devaluation of the relative importance of this world. (30) To convey this set of attitudes, the Orthodox Church made use of an institutional network of facilities and ‘‘cadres’’ which was arguably the most extensive in Russia (exceeding the reach of the secular bureaucracy). (31) In terms of the influence of physical objects on culture, the church buildings which dominated both the urban and rural landscapes of Imperial Russia were in themselves a tangible assertion of religion, while the iconography to be found inside them (and almost all peasant, but not educated-class, dwellings) was in part intended to teach the fundamentals of the faith to illiterates (the majority of Russians in our period of inquiry). Liturgical activity carried out assiduously (which even the most strident critics of the Church would not deny, although they would consider that work to be useless) and attended more-or-less regularly by the great majority of the commonfolk, (32) consisted of worship, the sacraments, and teaching in the Church Slavonic language.

(30) For a good overview of Orthodoxy, see T. Ware, The Orthodox Way (New York, 1979); for a useful effort at contrast which helps clarify points of similarity and divergence in the development of Christianity, see Sherrard, Greek East and the Latin West. {Philip Sherrard - The Greek East and the Latin West: A Study in the Christian Tradition, 1959}

(31) For a rich social and cultural history of the clergy in the Imperial period, see G. Freeze, The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA 1977) and The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform (Princeton, NJ , 1984).

(32) Gromyko {Громыко, Марина Михайловна (р 1927; историк, этнограф). С конца 1970-х годов исследовала традиционные формы поведения, общения и религиозной жизни крестьянства России в XIX—XX века. "фундаменталистский подход, отождествление религии и религиозной институции"}, summarizing the findings of the Tenishev survey, says that ‘‘all correspondents reported church attendance on Sundays and major holidays,’’ but also shows variations in frequency according to season, geographical conditions, and in some places gender. Mir, pp. 112–113.

* Тенишев, Вячеслав Николаевич (1843/44-1903). Князь Вячесла́в Никола́евич Те́нишев — русский этнограф, археолог и социолог, присяжный поверенный, основатель Те́нишевского реального училища в Санкт-Петербурге. Наиболее известными социальными проектами Тенишева были Тенишевское училище и «Этнографическое бюро» (научно-исследовательское учреждение для изучения жизни современного крестьянства. // 200 000 руб. вложил князь Вячеслав Тенишев в созданное им этнографическое бюро. Он был рационалистом и никогда не стал бы тратить столь значительную сумму просто ради удовлетворения научного любопытства. На основе полученных сведений князь надеялся выработать универсальную методику управления российским населением. Методика так и не появилась, зато любители истории, которых князь совсем не уважал, считают собранные им материалы важнейшим источником информации о быте русских крестьян. А равнодушный к гуманитарному знанию и современному искусству топ-менеджер вошел в историю как один из отцов русской этнографии и один из основных спонсоров художников Серебряного века. Коммерсантъ - Меценат, презиравший искусство

* Тенишев, Вячеслав Вячеславович (1878-1959). Князь Вячесла́в Вячесла́вович Те́нишев — русский общественный деятель и политик, член III Государственной думы от Орловской губернии, коллекционер. Сын князя Вячеслава Николаевича Тенишева. Продолжал этнографические исследования своего отца и в 1907 году опубликовал книгу «Правосудие в русском крестьянском быту».

The degree to which the Russian peasantry understood Church Slavonic is a subject of great debate. Generally speaking, the broad Russian ‘‘Left’’ has argued that the liturgical language was almost totally incomprehensible to the peasants and served only the purposes of mystification and mumbo-jumbo, while the ‘‘Right’’ has denied any real difference between Russian and the usage of the Church. The issue, like so many others, is clouded by the application to the Russian context of categories drawn from the West, in this case, the linguistic controversies of the Reformation {Latin <> vernacular} (to frame the language question in terms of intellectual comprehension – as opposed to the evocation of a certain psychological state – is to accept the premises of Protestantism {that the commonfolk must be able to fully understand the "word" (??)}). Church Slavonic, an artificial language created by Byzantine clerics for missionary work among the Balkan Slavs, and sustained and developed over the centuries for liturgics, is certainly not vernacular Russian, or even an archaic version of Russian. Nevertheless, it is ‘‘closer’’ to Russian than Latin is to the Romance languages. An illiterate Russian (who would have, after all, constant exposure to Church Slavonic) would readily understand the basic supplicatory prayers and much of the Gospel lesson (based on a straightforward Koine exposition), but probably have a hard time with the Pauline epistles (difficult in any language) and be unable to follow the ornate liturgical poetics (translated word for word from a highly stylized Atticistic Greek), which would, however, serve well to imbue Christ with ineffable majesty, and instill a sense of veneration for the Virgin Mary and the saints.

* Atticism. Atticism (meaning "favouring Attica", the region of Athens in Greece) was a rhetorical movement that began in the first quarter of the 1st century BC; it may also refer to the wordings and phrasings typical of this movement, in contrast with various contemporary forms of Koine Greek (both literary and vulgar), which continued to evolve in directions guided by the common usages of Hellenistic Greek. Atticism was portrayed as a return to Classical methods after what was perceived as the pretentious style of the Hellenistic, Sophist rhetoric and called for a return to the approaches of the Attic orators. Although the plainer language of Atticism eventually became as belabored and ornate as the perorations it sought to replace, its original simplicity meant that it remained universally comprehensible throughout the Greek world.

In terms of ideas and information expressed in words (as opposed to visual art or music), the following generalizations can be made, based on liturgical emphasis/repetition and the relative accessability (in vocabulary and diction) of the Slavonic texts: the peasantry would have little exposure to the Old Testament (this is important in the context of the apocryphal creation stories to be discussed below), with the great exception of the Psalter, arguably the best-known book in traditional Russian culture (33) (here it should be stressed that in addition to the magnification of God and His works, the Psalms offer a picture of a world full of troubles and evildoers – this had great resonance among the simple folk of Russia, and fit the dualist tendency of their worldview), but would definitely know of Israel as God’s people (and therefore, somehow ‘‘us’’), of Jerusalem as the spiritual center of the cosmos, and of prophets who foretold the coming of Christ. Of the New Testament, the Epistles were obscured by language and Revelation excluded from liturgics (the only segment of the Russian people which was systematically exposed to the Apocalypse of St. John was the Old Believer milieu, although the figure of the Antichrist as the ultimate enemy of God and good was generally familiar), but the basic Gospel narrative was conveyed very well – any peasant would know of the birth, miracles, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ as Savior and God Incarnate (in the liturgics referred to as ‘‘Christ our true God,’’ ‘‘Christ-God,’’ ‘‘Christ our God and King’’ (34)), and of the teaching encapsulated in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes*. (Here it should be noted that  the distinction between the ideal Kingdom of God and this world {"князь мира сего"}, where things are not as they should be, resonated very deeply.) Of Church dogma, the [Nicene] Creed was the foundation and the limit; of tradition, above all the life and miracles of the Virgin Mary (or presviataia Bogoroditsa [‘‘most holy Birth-giver of God’’] in the traditional Russian usage, quite different in emphasis from the Western ‘‘Madonna’’ or ‘‘Blessed Virgin’’ {a mother rather than a maiden ??}), followed, collectively, by the multitude of saints who, generically, excelled in piety, wonders and/or charity {examples ??}, and asceticism (the prominence of martyrdom and mortification of the flesh in the Orthodox conception of sanctity played a major role in the anti-somatic {"Anti-cosmic dualism (negative view of the material world) is usually strongly anti-somatic, relegating the body to the evil world of matter and opposing it to the soul, the latter having its origin in the realm of light and spiritual good."} tendency of the traditional culture).

(33) The Psalms are used extensively in Orthodox liturgics, and until the twentieth century the Psalter served as the primer by which the literate segment of the people learned to read; the Slavonic Psalter permeated the traditional Russian culture of countryside and town in a way comparable to the role of the King James Bible among the humble folk of the early American Republic.

(34 ) This is worth stressing because the traditional Orthodox perception/presentation of Jesus differs from those of modern Western culture, where human aspects are emphasized.

* R Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are sayings attributed to Jesus, and in particular eight blessings recounted by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, and four in the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of Luke, followed by four woes which mirror the blessings. Each is a proverb-like proclamation, without narrative.

* Anti-cosmic dualism. Exploring the characteristics of Gnosticism the authors focus on the Gnostic myth in the guise of which the Gnostic representatives promoted the anti-cosmic dualism marked with a negative view of the material world and Christian cosmology of creation. One of the essential characteristics of Gnostic dualism is a clear distinction between the Supreme Being and God who creates this world, but who is evil, incompetent and ignorant. From such a mythological view on the world, a whole theological system, based on dualism, has developed. This is primarily the dualism between two Gods, that is, between the two beginnings of the universe from which it originates, but it is also the dualism between the spiritual and material components of the world. Finally, a part of the anti-cosmic dualism is the anthropological dualism that in humans differentiates material and spiritual reality {body vs. spirit (with soul in between)}, which are opposed to each other, but at it the spiritual (pneumatic) reality is true and is endowed with the ability to free itself from the body as its prison in which it resides and to join up with its Origin. Gnosis and gnosticism: problems of terminology and dualism as the most important characteristic

To what extent did the Church’s message get across to its humble flock? Here I should stress that the grand old debates – on the relative quality and zeal of the clergy, and on the sanctity or sinfulness of the peasants – are beside the point (and beyond our judgment). Rather, we should compare the ideas and images emitted by the institutional Church with those present in (and therefore having been received by) the popular culture (and attested in the documentary record). In terms of the flow of information, the impact of the Church on the peasant culture can only be described as a torrent, compared to which all other influences (even those of the apocrypha) are minimal.

Orthodoxy laid the foundations and established the basic categories of the traditional folk worldview: God, in ineffable power and majesty, is creator and king (or perhaps the Russian usage ‘‘Tsar’’ would be more effective in the context of the present work) of the world, but in the present order of things His authority is challenged by Satan {plays a far more modest role in Orthodoxy than in Catholicism; impure vs. evil spirits}, cause of all the evil, injustice and suffering around us, and thus the world and the individual soul are a battleground contested by the forces of God (the Virgin Mary, the angelic hosts and the saints (35)) and those of the Devil (the demonic ranks, witches and sorcerors {rich ones, that is}, sundry evildoers (36)). It is this struggle which provides the causation for events great and small as well as the context for their interpretation. The peasants took the side of good (as they understood it), but avoiding the snares of the enemy camp required enormous vigilance and exertion, consisting of the observance of the ritual and moral code (which came together in the ascetic practice of fasting), as well as the help of the more powerful – the Mother of God and the saints. (37) Such, in brief, was the traditional popular understanding of the nature and workings of the world, and it is in the context of this relatively straightforward and cohesive set of fundamental beliefs that we can interpret specific examples of popular thinking on various questions.

(35) For a thorough summary of folk beliefs with regard to the forces of Good and their operations in the world, see S. V. Maksimov, Krestnaia sila, vol. 17 in his Sobranie sochinenii (Saint Petersburg, n. d., c. 1900).

(36) S. V. Maksimov provides an excellent overview of popular ideas about this side as well, in his Nechistaia sila, in his Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 18, Saint Petersburg, n. d.

(37) The intense veneration of the Mother of God and especially the very vigorous cults of the saints have often been adduced as evidence of ‘‘dual faith’’ and superstition. Here, once again, we have the application of outside standards (obviously, those of Protestantism). The beliefs and practices in question were based on canonical Orthodoxy (although they often also included elements of popular improvization). Whether they were truly Christian or not is a matter for theological debate; in terms of cultural history, they were clearly derived from traditional Orthodox Christianity.

THE LEGACY OF THE APOCRYPHA

Although Christianity in its Orthodox variant provided the foundation and parameters of the Russian peasant worldview, ‘‘unofficial’’ (and often heterodox) Christianity, the spirit of which is best expressed in the old apocryphal literature, (38) had a strong impact on the forms and specifics of folk belief. The apocrypha dealt with those questions on which the Christian canon was relatively reticent, but which excited popular curiosity. These topics included matters of what might be termed ‘‘personal interest’’ (i.e. added details of the life and deeds of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints), as well as useful advice of a magic nature (handbooks of divination, lists of lucky and unlucky days, and so forth) but also, and more significantly, speculations on the most troubling and profound problems – the origin of evil in the world, the role of Satan, the fate of the sinful and the righteous in the afterlife, and, of particular relevance to our study, the end of this world. The Byzantine civilization produced an extensive and rather motley body of apocryphal literature on these questions.

(38) NB: In common Western parlance, ‘‘Apocrypha’’ usually refers to those books of the Old Testament excluded from the canonical Bible by the Protestant Reformers (but maintained and widely used by the Orthodox, like the Catholics); here it is used for the corpus of unofficial religious writing produced in the late-Roman and Byzantine world.

Kievan and then Muscovite Russia received a significant portion of this apocryphal corpus along with Byzantine Orthodox Christianity. (39) It is of the utmost importance to stress that these writings were funneled through the Slavonic-language culture of Bulgaria, homeland of the Bogomils and the point of entry into Europe of conscious and coherent religious dualism; (40) thus, Russia’s cultural inheritance was tainted by the dualist ‘‘‘heresy of evil’ which traversed Medieval Christianity from East to West, from the Bogomils all the way to the Cathars.’’ (41) Here it should be stressed that dualism entered as if by stealth, (42) and not as a{n overt} religious teaching opposed to Orthodoxy.

(39) For the classic anthology of the apocrypha which circulated in Russia, see N. Tikhonravov, ed.,

Pamiatniki otrechennoi russkoi literatury, 2 vols. (Saint Petersburg, 1863).

(40) For an anthology and analysis of the literature of the Bulgarian dualists, see I. Ivanov, Bogomilski knigi i legendi (Sofia, 1970) (reprint of 1925 edition). The Bogomils created some original religious writings of their own, but, more typically, they reworked existing apocrypha in the spirit of dualism. Therefore, the book culture of medieval Russia contained apocryphal writings which would have been of dubious content in any case (i.e. had the older Greek originals been available), but which had been given an added, dualist, heterodox twist.

(41) G. Gnoli, ‘‘L’évolution du dualisme iranien et le problème zurvanite,’’ Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 51 No.2 (1984), 116. To grossly simplify the ideological/geographical trajectory: Iranian dualism + Christian elements/Manicheism > Armenian Paulicians > Bulgarian Bogomils > Western European Cathars/Albigenses.

(42) J. Fine, ‘‘Were There Bogomils in Kievan Rus’?’’ Russian History 7, pts. 1–2 (1980), 21–28, outlines the transmission of the dualist apocrypha and states that the native Kievan texts show no awareness of Bogomilism (in other words, the clerics of Rus’ were not even conscious of the problem and had a naive view of ‘‘sacred texts’’; I would argue that for the clergy, this situation continued until the arrival of textual criticism under Nikon {did he acknowledge dualist influences and try to eliminate them ??}, while for the traditional laity it persisted into the twentieth century (and in some ways down to the present day).

The dualism of the Bogomil apocrypha espouses the following ideas: the cosmos is organized according to the apposition God/Good/Heaven/Spirit vs. Devil/Evil/Earth/Matter, or, in the striking formulation of ‘‘The Lord’s Debate with the Devil’’ [‘‘Prenie Gospodne s diavolom’’], (43) {Прение Господне с Дьяволом} one of the works most seminal in the Russian context, ‘‘The heavens are Thine [God’s], but the earth is mine [the Devil’s]’’ [Tvoia nebesa, a moia est’ zemlia], (44) a distortion of the scriptural verse in which God asserts that the heavens and the earth are ‘‘mine’’; the soul (which comes from God) is twice-trapped: in the body and in the present age {??}, both the province of the Devil; the means of escape/salvation are knowledge of dualist truth (derived by means of allegorical interpretation of Scripture and presented in symbolic/arcane terms) and extreme asceticism (especially with regard to sexuality {and food (fasting, dietary restrictions) ??}). This set of beliefs is obviously part of the same great tradition which has manifested itself over the centuries in Gnosticism, the Albigensian movement, and the writings of William Blake, to cite only a few of the most notable examples. In the Russian context, it was preserved in undiluted form only among the Khlysty {??}, but also exerted influence on the general culture, enhancing existing dualist tendencies derived from Orthodoxy and from the perception of the obvious fact that all is not right in the world.

(43) For two Russian redactions, one from the seventeenth century, the other from the eighteenth, see Tikhonravov, Pamiatniki otrechennoi russkoi literatury (St. Petersburg, 1863), vol. 2, pp. 282–288.

(44) Ibid., p. 286. This is based on a verse from the Psalter frequently invoked in Orthodox liturgics, but here the meaning is completely reversed (although the authoritative sound is preserved).

* Прение Господне с Дьяволом (apocrypha). В книге Тихонравова "Памятники отреченной русской литературы" 1863 года издания в т. II, с. 282-288, есть интересный апокриф Прение Господне с Дьяволом. В книге указано, что это список с рукописи начала 17 века из Императорской публичной Библиотеки. Разговор Христа и Дьявола

* Для понимания древнерусской теодицеи не менее важна славяно-русская апокрифическая литература, описывающая моменты появления природы зла. В наиболее полном виде принципы апокрифической демонологии изложены в «Заветах двенадцати патриархов». Согласно этому источнику существование зла в универсуме зависит от нахождения дьявольской силы в природном естестве. Движение или воля этого естества находится во власти дьявола. В завете Рувима греховное поведение человека выводится из подчинения естественной природы, земного бытия «духам прелести». В «Завете» утверждается ноуменальный, духовный, но не онтологический характер зла. Мотив ноуменального господства дьявола во всем многообразии природного естества, присутствует в «Слове об Адаме». Сатана был свержен на землю и наступило антагонистическое бытийственное разделение на «небо» и «землю», где дьявол пытается выступать в роли Демиурга, противостоящего Абсолютному Логосу. Этот мотив ярко раскрывается в славяно-русском апокрифе «Прение Господне с дьяволом». В «Беседе Козьмы Пресвитера на еретики» содержится православная полемика с гностическим мнением, что Бог не створил ни неба, ни земли, но «все по диаволе воли суще вся». Происхождение и бытийственное преступление дьявола в мире, приведшее к появлению зла в мире, описывает апокрифическое произведение «Беседа трех святителей». Раскрыть представления о естестве зла помогают апокрифические сведения, касающиеся описания устройства Вселенной, в том числе «Книга Еноха», «Видение Исайи», «Откровение Варуха», «Откровение Авраама», «Видение апостола Павла», которые вместе образуют значительный массив апокрифической древнерусской литературы в той или иной степени, изображающие метафизические проблемы древнерусской теодицеи. Например в «Книге Еноха» описывается локализация абсолютного зла в веществе и его ноуменальной природе. В «Видении Исайи» герою открывается на небесной тверди вражда дьявольских сил. В апокрифе «Подвиги Федора Тирона» обнаруживается описание архаичного змея – властителя подземных вод, абсолютного бытийственного зла. Щеглов, Андрей Петрович - Философские представления о природе зла в Древней Руси

THE TRANSMISSION OF APOCRYPHAL IDEAS TO THE PEASANTRY

The textual legacy and intellectual baggage which we have briefly examined was originally the property of the old Russian/Muscovite ecclesiastical elite and not part of the life and culture of the Russian peasantry. We must now turn to the question of how certain ideas from this ‘‘high culture’’ reached the level of folklore. Broadly speaking, there were two channels for transmission – one written (in which the texts themselves were preserved and circulated), and the other oral (by which the apocrypha left the manuscript page and entered the realm of recited verse).

In terms of transmission via written texts, the crucial role was played by the literate segment of traditional society (i.e. those people who could read but were not part of the ruling Westernized, modernizing culture). Old Believers {post-1650 !!} comprised one major segment of the traditionalist minority of literate Russians. The Old Believers, in their programatic and ideological adherence to Russian antiquity, played a crucial role in the preservation and multiplication of old apocryphal writings; moreover, certain Old Believer factions were rather aggressive in the propagation of their teachings, and would expound their thoughts, including many ideas and images drawn from the apocrypha, on the crossroads and in the marketplaces.

Another major pool of ‘‘literate traditionalists’’ consisted of townspeople (above all merchants, who as a class showed a remarkable conservatism down to the twentieth century) and the lower ranks of the Church staff {lower clergy} (psalm readers and so forth; by the latter part of the nineteenth century the priests themselves had been rather thoroughly brought into the dominant modern culture {by means of .. ??}, although they continued to be an isolated subgroup within it). These groups manifested a strong attachment to the old religious literature, especially to the apocrypha. Here is how Maksimov described the situation in the late nineteenth century as revealed in the Tenishev survey:

Among the townspeople of the backwaters so-called hand-written religious literature continues to enjoy great popularity. It is true, of course, that the clergy is trying by all means possible to take these remnants of antiquity out of circulation; nevertheless, pious townswomen, prosphora bakers [women charged with the responsibility of preparing Communion bread], religious bookworms (nachetchiki [Начётничество]) and semi-literate merchants continue to copy [such apocrypha as] ‘‘The Dream of the Mother of God’’ [Son Bogoroditsy [Молитва "Сон Пресвятой Богородицы" Сон Пресвятой Богородицы - Золотое пособие народного знахаря], an extremely widely circulated tract on the sufferings of sinners in hell], and ‘‘The Lesson of our father among the saints Clement, Pope of Rome, on the Twelve Fridays’’ [a list of rewards/punishments for observing/breaking fast on various Fridays]. It is remarkable in this respect that the copiers scrupulously hide this literature not only from persons of the clerical calling, but from all educated (intelligentye) people in general, because these, they believe, want to see the manuscripts out of idle curiosity, and not out of the zeal of truly believing Christians. Our correspondents, at least, writing from various places, say that it was only with the greatest effort that they managed to get texts. (45)

(45) Maksimov, Krestnaia sila, p. 218. It is worth noting that this passage gives a good (if relatively mild) example of the suspicion with which traditional Russians regarded the representatives of the educated elite (much more on this below).

The behavior of these simple townsfolk provides striking illustration of the contrast between modern and traditional attitudes towards information: in pursuit of secular ends of practicality or pleasure, we allow torrents of facts to pass through our consciousness (usually with minimal lasting impact); our ancestors learned a few things well, focusing on that which they considered to be of eternal significance. The traditional approach allowed for the preservation and transmission of ideas across great expanses of time and space. (46)

(46) In the passage cited above, Tenishev refers to the apocryphal ‘‘Letter of St. Clement’’ on the observance of the Friday fast. In Central Europe, the same text dealt with honoring the Sunday day of rest (an analogous problem, but showing a different emphasis in religiosity – sabbatarianism rather than asceticism). This text has been traced as far back as the end of the first millennium, with attested Coptic (both Egyptian and Ethiopian), Nestorian, and Armenian versions (see F. Branky, ‘‘Himmelsbriefe,’’ Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, vol. 5, 1902, pp. 149–158.

In terms of the oral communication of the apocryphal legacy, an amalgam of Orthodox and apocryphal teachings were carried to the Russian peasantry by professional singers of religious verse. These men, generally known in Great Russian territory as kaliki, (47) startsy and liubtsy in Belorussia, (48) and as lirnyky and kobzari in the Ukraine, (49) and their songs, known as ‘‘spiritual/religious verses’’ [dukhovnye stikhi [Духовные стихи]], (50) were an essential part of peasant life and religiosity up until the time when Stalin demolished the traditional village culture. Prior to the Revolution, the songs of the kaliki were a favorite source for scholars interested in the (religious) worldview of the people and the kaliki were usually seen as carriers and articulators of typical folk notions. This is not, however, valid without qualification. Although ‘‘of the people’’ and recruited and replenished from the people, the kaliki were in fact a highly distinct subculture, along the lines of a guild or even a secret society, (51) with their own group organization, interests, and, to put it rather strongly, ‘‘ideology,’’ some of which they made public in the course of their performances in town squares and churchyards. The core idea of the kaliki is the sinfulness and corruption of the present world, and there is significant overlapping between their folklore and that of the khlysty in terms of ideas (above all in anti-somatic attitude) and manner of presentation. However, unlike the khlysty, the kaliki propagated their ideas openly and were not considered heterodox by the majority population. Although they showed certain sectarian tendencies, I will analyze them in this chapter for a number of reasons. First, they, in contrast to the religious dissidents, did not consider themselves to be at odds with the dominant Orthodox Church. Second, the peasantry as a whole was very open to them, and they, in turn, had to take peasant tastes into account (or else they would not receive alms) – therefore, their creativity can be seen as both an influence on and reflection of peasant sensibilities. More important, because it was their job to memorize and perform long and complex oral compositions derived in large part from the old apocryphal religious texts, (52) they were a main conduit through which ideas and images from the old literate culture entered into the largely unlettered world of the Russian peasantry.

(47) For a description of the Russian kaliki in the latter part of the nineteenth century see S. V. Maksimov, Brodiachaia Rus’ Khrista-radi (SPb, n. d.), pp. 223–282.

(48) For an examination of the life and culture of this group in Belorussia see E. Romanov, ‘‘Ocherk byta nishchikh Mogilevskoi gubernii,’’ Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, No. 4, 1890, 118–145. There was a significant overlapping between the guilds of spiritual singers and beggars. In Belorussia the beggar element predominated.

(49) For a reliable (rather than Romantic) description of the Ukrainian kobzari in the late Imperial period see Sbornik Khar’kovskogo Istoriko-Filologicheskogo Obshchestva 13 (1902), the second section of which contains several articles on the current state of the kobzari. The literature on the kobzari offers a vivid illustration of the misapprehension of traditional culture by Romantic scholars: nineteenth-century Ukrainophile folklorists, pursuing the legendary Ukrainian Cossack past, focused on the Cossack epics (dumy) which formed a small part of the kobzar repertory and neglected the much larger religious element, thereby creating the false impression that their subjects were uniquely Ukrainian versions of Homer rather than a local version of a general East-Slavic religious subculture.

(50) For an exhaustive anthology of the dukhovnye stikhi see P. Bezsonov, Kaleki perekhozhie: Sbornik stikhov i issledovanie, 6 vols. in 3 (Moscow, 1861–1863). The kaliki repertory of the pre-revolutionary period was essentially the same as that recorded by Bezsonov and his collaborators in the early 1860s. The Bezsonov collection also includes Belorussian and Ukrainian variants, which differed from the Great Russian in little else but language.

(51) For a striking (if problematic) literary evocation of this aspect of the question in the Ukrainian context, see Mykola Bazhan’s poem Sliptsi [ru].

(52) For an unsurpassed analysis of the dukhovnye stikhi and their sources and parallels in the literature and folklore of Byzantium and Europe, see A. Veselovskii, Razyskaniia v oblasti russkogo dukhovnogo stikha, 24 parts in 4 vols. (Saint Petersburg, 1879–1891).

* Изначально исполнителями псальм были калики перехожие — паломники во Святую землю, а позднее бродячие слепые певцы. Поскольку духовный стих несёт в себе глубокое назидательное, учительное начало, то он, как замечает Фёдор Буслаев, «изъят из общего ежедневного употребления и предоставлен как особая привилегия только тем лицам, которые тоже будучи изъяты из мелочных хлопот действительности, тем способнее были сохранить для народа назидательное содержание его религиозной поэзии». Вплоть до XIX века бродячие певцы оставались основными творцами и исполнителями духовных стихов в Белоруссии, на Украине, в Болгарии и большинстве регионов России. Но начиная с XVIII века псальмы получают широкое распространение в среде старообрядцев и сектантов — хлыстов, скопцов, молокан, духоборов (в хлыстовстве и скопчестве духовные стихи обычно назывались «роспевцами»). В этой, более религиозной, среде духовные стихи стали петь обычные люди. Как пишет фольклорист Серафима Никитина, "В старообрядческой среде духовный стих переживает своё второе рождение. Духовные стихи старообрядцев были поэтическим воплощением их истории и учения: осмысление никонианской реформы, разгром и закрытие монастырей, начиная с Соловецкого, «выгонки» в отдаленные места, подвиги и мучения героев и страдальцев — протопопа Аввакума, боярыни Морозовой, Симеона Верхотурского и др., учение об антихристе, споры о браке, указание путей к спасению — все становилось предметом поэтического описания. Однако основная функция стиха у старообрядцев оставалась та же — они связывали мир христианской книги с миром народных представлений, толковали сложные тексты понятным языком." В сектантстве, соответственно, бытовали псальмы о Даниле Филипповиче, Кондратии Селиванове и других основателях толков. Хотя наибольшей популярностью псальмы пользовались среди староверов и сектантов, сами духовные стихи по большей части не были выраженно конфессиональными — одни и те же псальмы пелись православными, старообрядцами, хлыстами и баптистами — образуя основу «народного православия». Псальмы имели календарную привязку: это песни, которые можно петь в пост. (Духовные стихи)

The world as depicted in the creativity of the kaliki was a grim and hard place, in which suffering and injustice predominated, and in which the loss of an earlier perfection was acutely felt. This vision is beautifully presented in one of the most famous and popular (among peasant audiences) of the dukhovnye stikhi, ‘‘Adam’s Lament’’ (Plach Adama), on the difficulty of life and work in the fallen world, contrasted with the ‘‘fruits of paradise’’ and the ‘‘archangelic voices’’ lost to Adam and all his descendants through Eve’s sin. (53) Another favorite theme of the kaliki is the glorification of poverty and the denunciation of wealth, expounded in songs such as ‘‘The Poor Lazarus’’ (from the Gospel parable) and ‘‘Alexis the Man of God’’ (about an early Roman saint who abandoned his hereditary wealth and nobility and took up the life of a beggar). (54) Finally, the Last Judgment, at which the wicked and powerful would be laid low and the pious and poor exalted, played a central role in the repertory of the kaliki. A ubiquitous presence in the landscape of traditional Russia, the singers of ‘‘spiritual verses’’ served as carriers and preservers of ideas and images drawn from the ancient apocryphal legacy.

(53) For the text of ‘‘Adam’s Lament’’ see E. A. Liatskii, ed., Stikhi dukhovnye (Saint Petersburg, 1912), p. 3. In a classic apocryphal twist, expressing dualist and related misogynist tendencies, this song places the entire blame for the loss of Paradise on Eve and implies that her sin was sexual intercourse.

(54) For the texts see Bezsonov, Kaleki perekhozhie, 1, p. 55, and p. 144, respectively.

A TAINTED CREATION

Having identified component elements and traced paths for their transmission, we can now attempt to put the pieces together and provide an outline of the traditional worldview. As should be clear by now, that worldview was fundamentally religious in nature, and one with a strong tendency toward dualism. As the prominent Russian folklorist Nikita Tolstoi summarizes the issue:

In the folkloric conception, Heaven is occupied by the heavenly, righteous and divine forces, while Hell, the subterranean world, swamps, pits and ravines are the domain of the unclean and dark powers. Earth is the place of combat between these two worlds and principles, and the human being and the human soul are the focal point {soul can be corrupted i.e. vanquished} of that struggle. At the same time, God’s will and God’s providence rules over all and determines all. Such is the folk Christian worldview. (55)

(55) N. I. Tolstoi, ‘‘Slavianskie verovaniia,’’ in Slavianskaia mifologiia (Moscow, 1995), p. 16.32

This simple yet cogent picture provided traditional Russians with the framework for understanding the world and their place in it, and it offers us the basis for making sense of their perceptions of historical events. However, in order for that to work, we have to see how the folk culture dealt with the great problem of monotheism, namely, reconciling the omnipotence of God with the presence and action of evil in the world {theodicy / problem of evil}. Here, the apocrypha provided an answer of sorts, one that posited an autonomous existence for the Devil, and credited him with a role in the establishment of the present order of things.

It is in the folk myth of creation that we find a most forceful and striking manifestation of the dualist (in the Bogomil sense) tendency of the popular culture. First, it must be said that the full Genesis version of creation did not penetrate the consciousness of the Russian peasantry to any significant extent, although, to be sure, elements of it did (e.g. Adam as forefather of mankind and prototype for its fate). Rather, the Russian peasantry usually expressed its understanding of the origin of the world in the terms of the myth of the cosmic dive {/plunge}, as in this characteristic recording:

[Before the creation of the earth] God was floating [over the primordial sea] on a white rock. He spat, and that’s what the Devil [here symbolized by an aquatic duck – Gogol’ ] {'Sotonoel'} came from. The duck dove, but couldn’t reach the bottom; he dove again and grabbed some sand, but the water washed it out of his hands [sic]. At God’s command, he dove a third time and brought up five grains of sand in his mouth. He gave God four, with which God created the Earth, but hid the fifth for himself. That’s why there is mainly evil in the world, because the sand for the creation of the earth was brought by the Devil. (56)

(56) A. I. Ivanov, ‘‘Verovaniia krest’ian Orlovskoi gubernii,’’ Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, No. 4, 1900, 69–70. Of the numerous recordings of this legend in turn-of-the-century Russian folklore, I have chosen this version because, with the exception of the numbering of the grains of sand, it represents a sort of lowest-common-denominator, minimalist version.

This story might strike the reader as hopelessly strange, but it had wide currency among many traditional peoples, and enjoyed great prominence in the Bogomil apocrypha (as a variation on the evil demiurge theme). Mircea Eliade explains that ‘‘its considerable circulation in Eurasia and in central and southeastern Europe {"Slavic creation myth"}* proves that it met profound needs of the popular spirit . . . in accounting for the imperfection of the world and the existence of evil, the myth disassociates God from the gravest defects of the Creation.’’ (57) Mankind, through its forefather Adam, was similarly flawed from the beginning in the folk conception, as in this story, recorded in Poltava province in the late nineteenth century:

Having created the Earth, God went to work creating man. Having created a beautiful body for man, God let it lie for awhile, until it would be ready to take in the soul, and He Himself went off on other business. Satan came by to see what God had created, and he saw man lying there, beautiful and clean, and this made him sad. Having stood there sadly for awhile and having thought it over, he threw up all over man. ‘‘What have you done!,’’ God scolded him. ‘‘What did you expect?’’ Satan answered. ‘‘Why did you make him so beautiful? Being like that, he never would have remembered that I’m in the world. This way, he’ll think of me once in awhile.’’ God saw that Satan had wrecked things, but there was nothing He could do: once God has made something, He doesn’t make it over again. But the Lord didn’t want to just leave man all covered in vomit, so He turned him inside-out. And now our bodies are inside out – what had been inside, is now outside, and what had been outside, is now inside, along with everything that Satan had vomited. And when you think about it, what do we have inside? Guts, intestines . . . And don’t all sicknesses start inside? That’s all because of the Devil’s mischief. 58

(57) M. Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, 3 vols., trans. W. Trask (Chicago, 1978–1985). vol. 3, p. 36.

(58) E. Barsov, ‘‘Narodnye predaniia o mirotvorenii,’’ ChIOIDR (October–December, 1886), No. 4, 5. Recorded in Poltava province, original in Ukrainian.

* Сотворение мира в славянской мифологии. Сотворение мира — сюжет в славянской мифологии, который объясняет, как возник мир. В аутентичном виде этот миф не известен, как и славянская дохристианская мифология в целом. Возможна лишь его реконструкция на основе вторичных письменных, фольклорных и вещественных источников. На фольклорную космогонию повлияла библейская, прежде всего апокрифическая традиция, в том числе богомильская картина мира. Продолжением космогонических сюжетов являются антропогонические легенды — о происхождении людей. К космогоническим сюжетам примыкают многочисленные этиологические легенды pourqui/origin story/tale, повествующие о происхождении светил, земли, гор, водоёмов, грома и др. Сюжеты. Два творца. Дуалистические версии сотворения мира и человека, известные у восточных и южных славян, восходят к архаическим космогоническим мифам о двух творцах — добром и злом, которые плавают в виде двух птиц (гоголей — черного и белого, уток и др.) в волнах первозданного океана. Эти сюжеты развивались под влиянием апокрифической (предположительно, богомильской) книжности, прежде всего — «Сказания о Тивериадском море». В этом произведении Тивериадское озеро представлено в качестве первичного океана. Бог опускается на море и видит Сатанаила, который плавает по воде в облике гоголя. Последний называет себя богом, но истинного Бога признаёт «богом над богами». Бог велит ему нырнуть на дно, достать песку и кремень. Песок Бог рассыпает по морю, создавая землю, кремень разламливает, правую часть оставляет у себя, левую отдаёт Сатанаилу. Ударами посоха о кремень Бог творит ангелов и архангелов, а Сатанаил создёт бесовское воинство. Дуалистический миф о сотворении мира ныряющим «злым богом» имеет 24 свидетельства на балтославянских территориях и 12 свидетельств на финно-угорских. Эти дуалистические легенды сохранялись в фольклоре болгар, поляков, украинцев, русских и неславянских народов Северной Евразии. (......) // Сатанаил. сатанй, дьявол — в славянских космогонических легендах глава злых духов. Имя С. восходит к христианскому сатане, однако функции С. связаны с архаическими дуалистическими мифологиями. В дуалистической космогонии С. — противник бога-демиурга. В средневековом южнославянском и русском апокрифе «Сказание о Тивериадском море» Тивериадское озеро представлено как первичный безбрежный океан. Бог опускается по воздуху на море (ср. космогонический сюжет в Книге Бытия) и видит С., плавающего в облике гоголя. С. называет себя богом, но признает истинного Бога «господом над господами». Бог велит С. нырнуть на дно, вынести песок и кремень. (...) PETER GREIF`S  SYMBOLARIUM - SMES (Славянская мифология. Энциклопедический словарь) - Сатанаил (SMES)

* Брак неба и земли или светил. Славянский фольклор сохранил следы космогонических мифов о браке неба и земли, оплодотворяемой небесным дождём (ср. рус. мать сыра земля), о свадьбе солнца и месяца. В сюжете сербской песни Денница (планета Венера) женит Месяц, сватает match у тучи молнию. В кумовья {кум godfather} она зовёт самого Бога, которому дарит небеса. Деверьями brother-in-law выступают Пётр и Павел, которым достаётся fall to one's share летний зной (Петров день). Старшим сватом {посажёный отец sponsor at a wedding} становится Иоанн Креститель, который получает крещенские {Epiphany, 6 Jan} холод и снег. Воевода свадебного поезда — святой Никола, получающий власть над водами, возница charioteer — Илья-пророк дары которого — молнии и громовые стрелы. (Сотворение мира в славянской мифологии)

Although the story (like the previous myth) might seem to be very far from Christianity, this is an illusion created by the use of non-Biblical symbolism, underneath which its basic premises are typically Christian: one God who creates the world and man (as opposed to a multiplicity or absence of gods and a universe without beginning or end), and Satan (identified by name) as His adversary who damages man. However, the story is clearly not Orthodox (although the peasants who told it would not recognize that); rather, it brings us deep into Bogomil territory, and expresses the characteristically dualist revulsion for the body manifested in more extreme form among the Khlysty and the radical Old Believers {as well as among Protestants and some Catholics, i.e. a universal Christian hangup; body vs. spirit (Paul et al.)}. For the general peasant culture, the body and its functions were a source of deep unease, and control of the flesh (chiefly through observance of fasts and the code of sexual morality) was a central preoccupation {100% Christian}*.

* Christian body hate. // Onfray identifies the source of Christianity’s harsh asceticism in Paul’s theologised self-hatred: "His [Paul’s] hatred of self turned into a vigorous hatred of the world and all its concerns: life, love, desire, pleasure, sensations, body, flesh, joy, freedom, independence, autonomy." For Onfray, "Paul’s pen drips ad nauseam a hatred, a contempt, a permanent mistrust for the things of the body". 1 Corinthians 9:27, where Paul describes pummelling his body to enslave it, is presented as evidence of the apostle’s body-hating masochism. (...) First, it is important to concede for the sake of truth that within historical Christianity there has been an unfortunate and unnecessary form of extreme ascetism founded on a hatred and suspicion of the body. For example, during the high and late Middle Ages, Western Christianity’s St Bartholomew of Farne’s maxim provided the rationale for the soma sema doctrine: "We must inflict our body with all kinds of adversity if we want to deliver it to perfect purity of soul." The body was sin’s instrument and therefore had to be rigorously tamed to defeat temptation. St Francis of Assisi, the Christian saint normally regarded as a model of Christian gentleness taught hatred of the body for its sinful ways. The most common methods of controlling the body were self-flagellation, fasting and sleep deprivation. Consequently, St Dominic would beat himself three times a night: once for his own sins, once for the sins of the world, and once for the sins of those in purgatory. Such radical practices, however, are not the teachings of Scripture. Peter Harris - Is Christianity a Body-Hating Worldview?

The same dualist tendency expressed in the folk creation myths is manifested in the popular assessment of the relative power of Good and Evil in the present world: God (and Good) is omnipotent and will ultimately triumph, but in the circumstances of mankind’s contemporary flawed condition the force of Evil is preeminent. This view has its classic poetic and allegorical expression in the so-called ‘‘Golubinaia kniga,’’ [Голубиная книга Golubinaia Kniga" - Sviashchennoe Skazanie Russkogo Naroda "The Golubinaia Kniga is a book based in the Slavic pagan creation myth with Christian elements incorporated. For a time it was regarded as an apocryphal book, but in the 18th century it was forbidden. The cores of this book is reputed to be almost 5,000 years old." Dove Book "The poem is generally thought to have been written ca. 1500 in the Novgorod region, though Russian nationalists postulate its great antiquity." ГОЛУБИНАЯ   КНИГА] in which, following a losing confrontation with Injustice (Krivda), Truth/Right (Pravda) withdraws to Heaven, leaving the Earth under the sway of its opponent. (59) Applied to humanity, this dualism was shown in statements such as the following, recorded in the remote Elatom district of Tambov province in the late 1880s:

God . . . assigned each person a guardian angel . . . and flew away from the Earth for good. Satanail [note the Bogomil dualist terminology] put his own demon/tempter at the side of every person and went to his kingdom – tartary {Тартар (в древнегреческой мифологии: ад, преисподняя) Tartarus, abyss}. And the two powers fight, but neither God nor Satanail come to the Earth themselves. They will come for the last time at the end of the world and divide up the righteous and the sinners between themselves: whoever has more will win. But man is giving in more and more to the Devil. The angels are leaving for Heaven, and when they all do that will be the end of the world. Satanail will come out of his kingdom and reclaim his former throne on Earth, but not for long – God will only allow him to reign for three days. He [God] will take his fiery sword and defeat the whole demonic force. (60)

The identification of the ‘‘camp of evil’’ within Russia will be a chief focus of the latter part of this and of subsequent chapters.

(59) The text of the ‘‘Golubinaia kniga’’ is widely available in anthologies of Russian folklore. For a recent edition, see Golubinaia kniga: Russkie narodnye dukhovnye stikhi XI – XIX rekov (Moscow 1991), pp. 34–48.

(60) A. Zvonkov, ‘‘Ocherk verovanii krest’ian Elatomskogo uezda, Tambovskoi gubernii,’’ Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, No. 2, 1889, 67. This story shows obvious signs of Bogomil-derived apocryphal influence and not only in the name used for the Devil. The length of his reign is derived (albeit in garbled form) from the ‘‘Disputation of the Lord with the Devil,’’ to which I have made reference, and from Revelation.

THE PEASANT UNDERSTANDING OF CAUSALITY

In order to gain an understanding, however incomplete or imperfect, of the peasant perception of the events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we must first examine folk notions of causality, i.e. of the reasons for why things happen. It should come as no surprise to the reader that the folk understanding of causality was fundamentally different from that of the modern mind in that it sought (and found) answers not in the realm of the material and the observable, but rather in the sphere of the spiritual or, for lack of a better term, the ‘‘supernatural.’’ At the same time, there was no notion of random, impersonal events – things happen for a reason {teleology}, deriving from some person’s (whether human or not) active volition. Moreover, this peasant understanding reveals a deep pessimism with regard to the state of the world in general and to human (or individual) capabilities in particular. In the course of this examination, I will make mention of folk beliefs that are, on the whole, well-known (at least superficially) to those with even a cursory knowledge of Russian (and, for that matter, any other) traditional culture. It is, however, worthwhile to bring these beliefs more strongly into the purview of historiography and thereby help overcome the compartmentalization (typical of Russian studies) by which the historian recognizes that the Russian peasant culture was traditional but then proceeds to analyze peasant behavior (voting for the Duma, land seizures, etc.) by modern, rationalist/materialist standards.

In the traditional peasant view, the basic parameters of a human being’s existence, i.e. one’s station in life, the major events which influence the course of one’s life, and the time and circumstances of the end of one’s life, were determined by ‘‘fate’’ (sud’ba; dolia) {fatalism}. This idea is dealt with extensively in the dukhovnye stikhi, but it is also expressed in concentrated form in proverbs such as ‘‘In all things – fate, [one’s own] will in nothing’’ (‘‘Vo vsem dolia, da voli ni v chem’’). (61) Moreover, the Russian folk conception of fate was of a grim and inexorable kind. As Veselovskii writes : ‘‘ . . . the Russian ‘‘fate’’ (dolia) . . . is felt as an oppression (gnet), in the form of illfate (nedolia). Was it not this feeling of oppression and of restriction, which created in the Russian folk imagination the primarily negative images of Woe, Injury, Want (Gore, Obida, Kruchina, Nuzha); was it not this which gave the concept of Fate (Sud’ba-Sudina, Sud’bina) . . . the concrete meaning of Ill-Fate (Zlaia Sud’ba, Nedolia)?’’ (62)

(61) Cited in A. N. Veselovskii, ‘‘Sud’ba-dolia v narodnykh predstavleniiakh slavian,’’ in his Razyskaniia v oblasti russkogo dukhovnogo stikha, part 5 (1889), p. 223.

(62) Ibid., p. 259.

This deeply pessimistic attitude is of course typical of the traditional understanding of human existence. People are born into their station in life, the great majority into a lowly condition of hard work, and all are at the mercy of higher powers that can turn their lives upside-down with no warning. Modern man proudly refuses to acknowledge these facts, and the dynamism of modern society results from the belief in individual agency/empowerment; traditional folk humbly submit to them, invoking the notion of fate – the intentional will of a higher, personal force – to make them comprehensible. In religious terms, the Russian peasant tendency toward fatalism raises a number of interesting questions: theologically speaking, it was one of the elements of popular culture furthest from Orthodoxy, which emphasizes the doctrine of free will, but culturally it coexisted without perceived contradiction (in some ways like Fortuna in Catholic Europe); at the same time, it cannot be seen as totally independent of Orthodoxy – Providence and Fate can be confused (especially since sud’ba - from sud-in the sense of [Divine] ‘‘judgment,’’ ‘‘determination’’ was common in official religious usage), and emphasis on the latter {Fate} preserves the notion of God’s sovereign power while disassociating Him from the harsh facts of existence (cf. Eliade’s interpretation of the ‘‘earth-diver’’ myth). In terms of effects, the fatalist element in folk psychology was an enormous force for stability and the acceptance of difficult conditions.

The Russian peasant saw the explanation for many specific events and actions in the myriad spiritual forces which surrounded him in his everyday life and which inhabited well-nigh every place and thing. (63) The perception (or perhaps ‘‘sensation’’ would be a better word) of the omnipresence of spirits is one aspect of traditional psychology that the modern person, product of the ‘‘dis-enchantment’’ famously identified by Max Weber, cannot really imagine, even with the most strenuous effort at empathy. Nevertheless, in order to gain any insight into the popular understanding of things we must constantly remind ourselves that the entire, well-known menagerie of spirits of the home (domovye), forest (leshye), fields (polevye), waters (vodianye), etc., was still very much alive in the Russian traditional culture on the eve of the Revolution.

(63) For the best concise demonology, see Tokarev’s Verovaniia. {Токарев Сергей Александрович - Религиозные верования восточнославянских народов XIX -- начала XX века, 2020}

On one level, the spirit world explained everyday occurrences in what we would call the physical realm. To cite but one example, it was generally believed that water spirits (vodianye) were the cause of drownings (no such thing as our modern journalistic cliche, the ‘‘accidental’’ drowning), dam breaks, and flooding (in other words, the rotting dam doesn’t give way under the pressure of a large volume of water, as in the modern, impersonal/materialistic view; rather, someone intent on mischief breaks it). Fishermen or millers, dependent on water for their livelihood, necessarily incorporated awareness of this fact into their day-to-day work. (64)

(64) See S. V. Maksimov, Nechistaia sila, pp. 110–111.

Mundane misfortune and tribulation could also be explained by the malicious activity of people (sorcerers, witches, etc.) in league with the omnipresent evil spiritual forces. (65) Thus, a cow’s lack of milk – a major setback for a peasant household economy – was almost always attributed to witchcraft, and as of the late 1890s peasants all over Russia generally refused to even consider what would from our point of view be natural explanations such as disease. (66)

(65) Witchcraft belief is one aspect of traditional Russian culture that has been the subject of much

recent Western work (see Introduction). This research {S. V. Maksimov, Nechistaia sila ??} has provided many valuable facts and insights, but it tends to have one major limitation – following the pattern set by studies of the

persecution of witches in early modern Europe and New England, it tends to derive witches from

community dynamics (e.g. the identification and elimination of outsiders, the patriarchal control

of women and their sexuality), and neglects the fact that there were (and are) many ‘‘subjective’’

witches (i.e. women and men who believed themselves to be engaged in magic) in the village.

(66) Maksimov, Nechistaia sila, pp. 148–149.

In addition, the traditional Russian peasantry also credited much of the negative side of human behavior, especially of the criminal and atrocious kind, to demonic inspiration. Maksimov gives a vivid example involving a case of binge-drinking and arson:

One upstanding and devout young man who had been leading a solid and prosperous life suddenly began to drink for no apparent reason. A week later, he torched his village. The peasants caught him on the spot, and with the match still in his hands. They bound him tightly and were planning to take him to the volost’ administration. At the outskirts of the village the arsonist stopped to bid farewell to the people. He bowed to the ground and cried:

‘‘Forgive me, Orthodox Christians! I myself don’t know how such a sin came to pass, and whether it was I alone who set the fire, or whether someone helped me or talked me into it. All I remember is that someone put a lit match in my hand. I thought he was helping me to light a cigarette, but he took my hand and passed it under somebody’s roof. And he was a stranger, and all black. I pulled my hand away, but the roof was already in flames. I wanted to repent of the business, but he whispered, ‘Let’s escape from them!’ Somebody caught up with me and hit me in the neck, knocking me off my feet. That’s how they tied me up. I looked back and half the village was burning. Forgive me, Orthodox Christians!’’

He knelt, all pale, and looked at the people mournfully, and implored them in a pitiable voice. With his tears he drove several others to tears. Someone spoke:

‘‘Just look at him. Is that what criminals look like?’’

‘‘It’s obvious – the Devil made him do it (chort poputal).’’ ‘‘The Devil made the boy do it!’’ Everyone took up the cry. They decided to forgive him in the name of the whole commune, but the [volost’] starshina threatened that the whole village would have to answer for him, so they agreed to send him into [Siberian] exile. (67)

(67) Ibid., pp. 13–14. Unfortunately, Maksimov doesn’t provide the exact place or date of the occurrence. However, given the timing and scope of his survey, it is reasonable to assume that this incident took place on Great Russian territory in the 1890s.

This incident shows another implication of the traditional Russian peasant perception of the omnipresence of supernatural forces and the relative powerlessness of man: if the capabilities of people are woefully limited, and if spirits (or overwhelming forces such as fate) are the cause of almost everything that happens, then it is not too difficult to absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions.

In the late Imperial period, these peasant notions of causality continued to be highly resistant to modern, scientific modes of explanation. (68) One of Maksimov’s correspondents in Orel province describes a case involving the beating of a suspected witch {"no witch hunts in Russia" narrative: no organized top-down hunts (Inquisition), but, 1. left to the people (??), 2. plenty of executions were justified by accusations of sorcery} in 1899. The villagers in question took their complaint (against the woman they had beaten) to the volost’, where they were told that ‘‘they were going to get it from the land captain [Land Captain], because now there are orders not to believe in sorcerers and witches [teper’ v koldunov i ved’m verit’ ne veliat].’’ Shortly thereafter, they received written instructions to the effect that ‘‘no such stupidity would be tolerated in the future, and that if such incidents continued the guilty parties would be punished in accordance with the law, and furthermore, that the matter would be brought to the attention of the land captain.’’ The correspondent concludes his report with the reaction to this attempt at eradicating superstition through the administrative method: ‘‘The peasants, having listened to the reading of the order, decided in council (vsem mirom) that the witch must have cast a spell on the administration (nachal’stvo) and that therefore in the future they would have to take the necessary measures against her themselves.’’ (69)

(68) To be sure, the traditional supernatural mode of analysis began to give way with the exposure (through secular education) of peasants to modern ways of understanding the world and its phenomena. The Tenishev/Maksimov survey, for example, found that by the turn of the century many peasants (albeit a minority) were questioning the traditional belief in (and terror of) devils, sorcerors, and so forth. However, we should not exaggerate the swiftness of this process. Jeffrey Brooks (who demonstrates the triumphal advance of the scientific worldview by the dubious expedient of excluding religious literature from his analysis of popular literature) shows that attacks on superstition were a favorite theme of the books published for newly literate Russians of the lower orders of society. As Brooks points out, the relevance and immediacy of the anti-superstitious theme in this literature is in itself evidence of the vitality of traditional non-scientific thinking: ‘‘ . . . the very emphasis [in the popular literature] on debunking shows the low level of the Russian common readers compared to those in the United States and Western Europe [It is obvious that Brooks has not carried out a study of popular reading tastes in the West.] Questions about the supernatural were still alive for lower-class Russian readers, and a repudiation of demons was still called for.’’ When Russia Learned to Read, p. 267.

(69) Maksimov, Nechistaia sila, pp. 152–153.

* Jeffrey Brooks (b 1942; historian). Jeffrey Brooks is Professor of European History at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of When Russia Learned to Read (Princeton), which won the Vucinich Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and of many articles on Russian and Soviet culture and politics.

DIVINE JUSTICE: THE PEASANT UNDERSTANDING OF MAJOR EVENTS

Thus far in our examination of the peasant conception of causality we have focused on what might be termed the ‘‘micro-level,’’ i.e. the course of the individual’s life and the events of mundane reality. On this level, as we have seen, misfortune is usually credited to the actions of more-or-less

malevolent supernatural powers. In contrast, calamity on the grand scale – e.g. war, famine, pestilence – is, in the traditional peasant mind, attributed to God in His capacity as judge.

In the popular conception, general well-being was dependent on general adherence to God’s laws, understood primarily as ritual observance and control of the flesh through fasting and sexual propriety. Within the broad complex of ritual and moral demands made by the Orthodox Church on its members, compliance with the many obligatory fasts was the focal point and emblem of Russian folk religiosity. (70) For a sense of the extent and rigor of peasant fasting at the turn of the century this over-all summary, based on the Tenishev survey, is quite useful:

Our people not only observe fasts according to the full strictness of church regulations, but even go farther in this respect, setting fast days unknown to the church {Kapiton; fasting as a boast (??)} . . . One can judge how pedantically the peasants keep the fasts by this very characteristic incident, described by a priest in Vologda province. An old woman confessed to him that the cursed one had tempted her and made her eat skorom’ [food forbidden during fasts – in general, all animal (and often fish) products] {скоромь*} during Lent. In answer to the priest’s question of what, specifically, she had eaten, the old woman said radishes, the seeds of which had been soaked in milk before planting {!!}. On the same grounds the peasants consider it to be an unforgivable sin to drink tea with sugar during a fast: Tea itself is a semi-sinful drink, while sugar is unconditionally skorom’, because, in the understanding of the peasants, it is made out of animal [specifically: dog] bones. In light of this harshly ascetic attitude toward fasting it is not surprising that mother’s milk is also considered sinful skorom’. [Although, in contrast to the not-too-distant past, the peasants no longer deny infants milk during fasts.] Once they are weaned, children are made to observe fasts as strictly as adults . . . The same is expected of seriously ill people . . . In general, the peasants, especially the elderly . . . would sooner decide to die than defile their souls with skorom’ food, and only the young in certain rare cases give in to the directions of doctors, but even then only with the permission of their priest . . . It is worth noting that if such permission is granted easily, the peasants lose respect for the priest, since he is not maintaining the height of church demands and encouraging . . . the ‘‘light’’ attitude toward fasting which is characteristic only of the spoiled gentry (gospoda). ‘‘Nowadays,’’ they say, ‘‘only we muzhichki can fulfill the fasts, because the educated and the noble ones won’t . . . – they couldn’t last a day without tea and beef.’’ (71)

(70) For an overview, see L. Heretz, ‘‘The Practice and Significance of Fasting in Russian Peasant Culture at the Turn of the Century,’’ in J. Toomre and M. Glants, eds., Food in Russian History and Culture (Bloomington, IN , 1997). For the topic in the broader context of traditional European folk culture, see A. B. Strakhov, Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom: Narodnoe khristianstvo i rozhdestvenskaia obriadnost’ na Zapade i u slav’ian (Cambridge, MA , 2003), pp. 275–278, 287–296.

(71) Maksimov, Krestnaia sila, pp. 84–86.

* Скоромь. Ско'ромь - forbidden meats {and other food}, flesh-meat. скоромить, о- contaminate with forbidden meat; -ся eat forbidden meat {~ haram (??)} // Скоромь ж. скоромятина, скоромная пища, скоромщина, все скоромное. СКОРОМНЫЙ яросл.-пош. скоровный, противопол. постный; воложный, пища, дозволенная в мясоед, и частью в мясопустие (на масляну), пища от теплокровных животных, мясо, молоко, масло, яйца и пр. у католиков, одно только мясное. Скоромный стол. Скоромные дни, когда едят скоромное. *Скоромные речи, непристойные. Вам скоромно, а нам на здоровье, и обратное. Скоромное масло, коровье. Скоромный пост, католический. Про ваше здоровье и говорить скоромно, распутен. || Скоромный, влад.-квр. говор. вм. постный. Толковый словарь Даля - скоромный // Скоромь, простаки или большею частию, суеверы поставляют за великий грех выговорить в посты слово мясо, и когда случится в разговоре то необходимо, то приговаривают всегда "помяни Господи на светло Христово воскресенье" или "на рождество Христово", то есть на тот день, в который следует по посте том розговенье. М.Д. ЧУЛКОВ - СЛОВАРЬ РУСКИХ СУЕВЕРИЙ, 1782

{М.Д. ЧУЛКОВ - СЛОВАРЬ РУСКИХ СУЕВЕРИЙ, 1782}

This adherence to fasting regulations served two purposes. On the one hand, it was the most visible proof of obedience {+ exercise/investment in the Hesychast sense: salvation and enlightenment require sacrifice and effort} to God’s laws and at the same time evidence of membership in His people {the New Israel}. In this respect the traditional Russian peasantry (and the devout segment of the Russian population in general) offer an interesting comparison to traditional Jewry, for whom observance of kashrut {'kosherness'} was emblematic of compliance with God’s commandments as a whole and a major measure of the fidelity of Israel. (72) On the other hand, fasting was a manifestation of anti-somatic tendencies and constituted the most important means of combatting, or at least regulating, the flesh, source of so much trouble in the folk dualist understanding of things. Moreover, as the above quotation suggests, the traditionalist peasantry viewed its position with regard to fasting in very serious terms – with the lapsed religious condition of Russian educated society, the full burden of maintaining God’s commandments and thereby averting God’s punishment fell on the peasantry, which thereby came to play a central role in the spiritual economy of the world.

(72) It is interesting to note that there are recordings of Russian and Ukrainian peasants expressing strong admiration for Jews who were exceptionally and heroically stringent in the fulfillment of their ritual and dietary obligations. Conversely, the major cause for folk anti-clericalism was not disagreement with church teaching or even resentment of payment for ritual services, but the failure of Orthodox clergymen to live up to the exceedingly strict ascetic ideal.

If ritual observance represented compliance with the divine will and order, its neglect was thought to arouse divine wrath. As one observer wrote, ‘‘the peasants view every single popular misfortune – whether fire, failed harvest, or disease – as God’s punishment, the inevitable result of infractions against the religion.’’ (73)

(73) V. Bondarenko, ‘‘Ocherki Kirsanovskogo uezda, Tambovskoi gubernii,’’ Etnograficheskoe obozrenie No. 3 1890, 74–75.

In vivid illustration of the sincerity of this belief, we have examples of its ‘‘practical’’ application – instances when villagers refused to take measures against locusts because they were ‘‘God’s punishment’’ and therefore had to be accepted. (74) It is this understanding which is the key to the apocalyptic expectations and fears which will be examined below. It is important to note at the outset that this way of thinking worked both ways – events were seen as divine judgment of mankind’s behavior, and on the other hand, bad behavior seemed to call for punishment in the form of general misfortune. In other words, in a self-reinforcing dynamic, disaster on a grand scale was seen as retribution for iniquity of an extreme degree, and the perception of the sharp increase of impious behavior led to the anticipation of divine punishment of a great magnitude, perhaps even the final destruction of the present world.

(74) Tokarev, Religioznye verovaniia, p. 53. Tokarev also notes the picturesque belief that the wings of locusts had writing on them, indicating the particular sin for which punishment was being meted out.

THE RESILIENCE OF THE TRADITIONAL WORLDVIEW

By way of concluding the present outline of the traditional worldview, it would be worthwhile to focus on the single most powerful force in the preservation of the old ways, namely, the communal structure of peasant society and the attitudes which it engendered and sustained. In his landmark study of Russian peasant society in the late-Imperial period, Teodor Shanin* identifies traditionalism and conformism as defining features of the social dynamic of the commune. (75) Boris Mironov*, whose seminal article published in 1985 demonstrated the vigor of the commune into the Revolutionary period and set the parameters for contemporary study of the institution, highlights the same theme: ‘‘The relationship between the peasant and commune may be called organic, voluntary conformism. This conformism was political, intellectual, moral and social.’’ (76) Moreover, and of particular importance for our topic of the preservation of traditional attitudes, Mironov identifies the old men (stariki) as the real ‘‘leaders’’ of the commune, (77) and stresses that the commune exerted ‘‘social control [which] was so powerful that it was quite literally impossible for peasants to exist – physically or psychologically – if they found themselves in a hostile relationship with the commune.’’ (78)

(75) T. Shanin, The Roots of Otherness: Russia’s Turn of Century (New Haven, 1986), vol. 1, p. 84.

(76) Mironov, ‘‘Russian Peasant Commune,’’ Slavic Review 44 (Fall 1985), 450.

(77) Ibid., 447.

(78) Ibid., 445.

* Teodor Shanin (1930-2020; sociologist). Teodor Shanin was a British sociologist who was for many years Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. He was credited with pioneering the study of Russian peasantry in the West, and is best known for his first book, The Awkward Class: Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Society, Russia, 1910–25 (Clarendon Press, 1972). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Shanin moved to Russia where, with funding from The Open Society Institute, Ford Foundation and others, he founded the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences in 1995. Shanin was President of the Moscow School, Professor Emeritus of the University of Manchester, and an Honorary Fellow of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences. His main research interests were Marxism, peasant studies, historical sociology, sociology of knowledge, informal economies, epistemology, and higher education.

* Миронов, Борис Николаевич (р 1942; историк). Бори́с Никола́евич Миро́нов — советский и российский историк, клиометрист, специалист в области исторической социологии, социальной, экономической и демографической истории России, антропометрической истории и методологии исследований. Один из «пионеров создания исторической социологии России». Boris Mironov (historian). Boris Nikolaevich Mironov (Russian: Бори́с Никола́евич Миро́нов) (born September 21, 1942) is a Soviet and Russian historian, cliometrist, specialist in the field of historical sociology, social, economic and demographic history of Russia, anthropometric history and research methodology.

The religious worldview outlined in this chapter comprised the ‘‘philosophical’’ content of the tradition which the commune sustained and to which Russian peasants conformed. Its basic categories are those of traditional cultures throughout the world, with distinguishing elements derived from the specific teachings of Orthodox Christianity. In Russia, as elsewhere, the traditional religious worldview displayed a remarkable durability, one obscured in the scholarship by historiographical focus on modernizing elites.

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CHAPTER 2

The Old Believers: modernization as apocalypse

Although the majority of Russians in the late Imperial period were members of the official Orthodox Church, a significant minority rejected the state religion and strived to maintain Orthodoxy as they understood it in a welter of dissident groupings known collectively as the Old Belief. Although there were many things that set the Old Believers apart from the majority, in some ways they manifested the tendencies of the general culture in particularly acute forms. In particular, the Old Believer Schism represents the basic Russian negative response to modernization. In its desperate attempt to create and define an ideal of Russian tradition and in its concomitant rejection of Western ways in their entirety, the Old Belief foreshadowed in every essential question the development of ‘‘modern’’ Russian conservatism {what is that ?? Slavophiles, Eurasianists ??} which emerged as significant elements of the Russian modernizing strata {intelligentsia ??} lost faith in the process of which they were both the products and promoters; at the same time, the Old Belief’s radical and total negation of the developing order of the Petrine Empire {a result of polarization rather than a reason for existing} helped create the climate for and indeed influenced – both directly and indirectly – the appearance of the Russian revolutionary movement {dubious: social and economic factors}. Most important for the specific purposes of this work, the Old Belief offers forceful and articulate expressions of the traditional Russian worldview, the underlying tendencies of which were evoked and brought into sharp focus in reaction to the assertion of modern principles by Russian reformers and Westernizers.

SOURCES AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

The Schism has generated an enormous body of secondary literature, covering a myriad historical, cultural, and economic issues. (1) Although the various works vary greatly in terms of approach, analysis, and insightfulness, a number of broad generalizations about the literature can be made. Pre-revolutionary scholarship set the pattern for further investigations. What may be termed the broad liberal grouping of scholars, i.e. classic nineteenth-century Russian historiography, focused on cultural issues and viewed the Old Belief as the premier manifestation of Russian conservatism (indeed, obscurantism) and national exclusivity {Holy Rus}, that is to say as the last heroic (if misguided) manifestation of the pre-Petrine Muscovite culture. This basic approach has been continued by many scholars in the West. (2) The revolutionary populist school, on the other hand, treated the Schism and other, later, religious dissident movements, as an expression of popular social protest against the injustices of the existing socio-economic system, the social hierarchy, etc. This line, adapted to the Marxist framework, has been developed by Soviet scholars. (3) Both of these modes of analysis have much to commend them, although they also suffer from limitations of perspective. This is especially true of the social approach which discounts, or has no feeling for the religious–cultural aspect. (4) I propose to examine the Old Belief on the level of ideas, specifically, its religious understanding of the world and of historical events.

(1) For a survey of the pre-revolutionary literature see A. S. Prugavin, Bibliografiia staroobriadchestva i ego razvetvlenii (Moscow, 1887). The state of research in the Soviet period is reflected in Bibliograficheskii ukazatel ' po issledovaniiu pravoslaviia, staroobriadchestva i sektantstva v sovetskoi istoricheskoi nauke (Moscow, 1974). For an overview of more recent developments in Russia and the West, see R. Crummey's ‘‘Old Belief as Popular Religion: New Approaches,’’ Slavic Review 52 (Fall 1993), 700–712.

(2) The best and most useful examples of this in the West are P. Pascal, Avvakum et les débuts du Raskol: La crise religieuse au XVII siècle en Russie (Paris: Champion, 1938), which stresses the religious essence of the seventeenth-century conflict, and S. Zenkovsky, Russkoe staroobriadchestvo: Dukhovnye dvizheniia semnadtsatogo veka (Munich, 1970) {Зеньковский С. А. Русское старообрядчество: Духовные движения XVII века}, which offers a useful and extremely thorough overview of the standard literature on the seventeenth century and, more important, analyzes the various strands of the Old Belief from the point of view of universal church history.

(3) For a detailed discussion of the ideological and political biases of the study of Russian religious dissent see the next chapter.

(4) To be sure, this does not have to be the case; for a social and economic history which never loses sight of the religious essence of the Old Believer community, see M. Hildermeier's ‘‘Alter Glaube und neue Welt: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Raskol im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,’’ Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 38 No. 3 (1990), 372–398, No. 4 (1990), 505–525.

SCOPE OF THE INVESTIGATION

Although the association of ‘‘ideas’’ with the Old Belief might be jarring to those accustomed to seeing that great movement as blind fanaticism and obsession with superficial detail, the fact is that the Raskol arose and evolved as a result of the clash of principles, and in this chapter I will attempt to identify these principles and show their turbulent interaction. Rather than attempting a comprehensive history of the ideological development of the Raskol, I will examine the main points of that history as it was enshrined in the Old Believer canon of the late Imperial period. This chapter will be divided into two main parts; the first will focus on the ideas attributed to the legendary seventeenth-century founders of the Raskol, the second will analyze and illustrate the variegation of the Old Belief as various factions took one or another fundamental assumption to its logical extreme. The examination of the ideas of the legendary founders of the Raskol will support the contention that the Old Belief was an expression of apocalyptic anti-modernism, while the outline of sect formation within the Old Belief will illustrate the ways in which the traditional Russian mind dealt with the trauma of modernization.

The discussion will make reference to historic events, but will also reflect history not so much as it actually occurred but as it was remembered and enshrined in the Old Believer sacred canon of the late Imperial period. For an Old Believer in 1900 (or at the present, for that matter), the writings of Avvakum and his cohorts exerted the authority of scripture, and the tribulations of the ‘‘zealots of ancestral piety’’ constituted sacred history in the fullest sense {Житии = new sacred history}. Although the various subgroups of the Old Belief examined in this chapter emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they continued to exist – whether in social fact or as fossils in the Old Believer text-based culture – and were a vivid part of social and cultural life in the period dealt with in this work. (5) In a deeper sense, applying elements of the synchronic approach (to borrow a term from linguistics) is justified by the fact that for the Old Believer mind, time stood still – Holy Russia had fallen, and the world was suspended on the verge of ultimate catastrophe. In Old Believer lore, centuries of mundane events are as nothing, and the passage of chronological time in no way lessens the vitality and immediacy of the cardinal events of sacred history. In this, as in much else, the Old Belief offers vivid expression of the fundamental tendencies of the traditional culture in general.

(5) For a a broader and more detailed treatment of the topic, see A. Leroy-Beaulieu's invaluable

L'Empire des tsars et les Russes (Paris, 1990, first published in 1881), which contains an extensive

and insightful treatment of the Raskol and dissent in general, written by an observer with a keen

understanding of the religious mind.

FRAMING THE QUESTION

The standard picture of the origins of the Old Believer Schism is familiar to any student of Russian history: with the growth of the power and international contacts of the Muscovite Tsardom in the mid-seventeenth century, Russian reformers, guided by the complex and forceful figure of the Patriarch Nikon, undertook the task of bringing Muscovite Church usage and practice into line with that of the Orthodox world as a whole, so that Muscovy might better fill its natural role of leadership. This alteration of traditional Muscovite scripture and ritual evoked a fierce nativist response, headed by the striking personality of the Archpriest Avvakum, and the resulting violent controversy rent the Russian people asunder and gave rise to the Old Believer Schism, which would subsequently reject any and all alien innovation. In the context of the issues dealt with in the present study, one can discern in the actions of the Patriarch Nikon some of the first assertion of modernity in Russia, and in the reaction of his opponents the genesis of conscious traditionalism.

Whatever else may be said of Patriarch Nikon (that he was driven by quasi-papal ambitions {Universal Orthodoxy}, or that his activity had a pronounced millenarian character – through reform to the New Jerusalem {idem (??)}), for the purposes of this work it is necessary to focus on one central and undeniable fact, namely, that Nikon attempted to reform Russian church texts and liturgical practice through the application of the (textual) critical method* {Old Believers used the exact same method, and applied a lot more conscientiously, to debunk his views}. Nikon forcefully introduced the critical principle {??} and by doing this made a crucial first step in Russian intellectual modernization {intellectual fraud}, and, in effect, followed (albeit not consciously), the Western pattern of development. Like much of that which we associate with modernity, textual criticism had been an essential part of intellectual life in antiquity. However, this approach had fallen into oblivion in the barbarian West; its rediscovery marked an essential turning-point in the direction of modernization. In Renaissance Europe {Protestant Reformation}, the critical method had developed as part of a search for an earlier, lost, scriptural purity and perfection. In time, the critical faculties which it sharpened and the textual consciousness which it heightened came to challenge the authority of religious tradition and helped to establish the modern supremacy of the sovereign human mind. (6) In Muscovy, as in any traditional religious society, the dominant attitude was one of {<>} reverence and awe for sacred texts and all of the heritage which had been handed down from the more pious and perfect past. Nikon's application of the textual-critical method, although aimed at a restoration of an idealized past {??} (as was the case, to be sure, of analogous efforts in Europe), explicitly challenged tradition, and evoked a ferocious reaction which would, in time, coalesce into the Old Believer Schism. {Nikon as a quasi-Protestant reformer ???????}

{HERETZ: FALSE (??) TRADITION/MODERNITY DICHOTOMY. "Modernity as some ideal to be aimed for. <> Old Believers as independent merchants: at the very forefront of "modernity". The fact that their ways seemed archaic doesn't change that. Old Believers as "experimenters" in search of new, more equal, social relationships: same story.}

* Textual criticism. Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. (...) The objective of the textual critic's work is to provide a better understanding of the creation and historical transmission of the text and its variants. // Textual criticism is concerned with documents written by hand. It is both a science and an art. As a science, it is involved in the discovery and reading of manuscripts, cataloguing their contents, and, for literary works, collating the readings in them against other copies of the text. James Keith Elliott - Textual Criticism of the New Testament

Nikon's opponents, above all the Archpriest Avvakum, responded to this challenge with a remarkable comprehension of the nature of the matter. Although poorly educated by contemporary Western standards, the founders of the Old Belief evinced an understanding of the relationship between what we would call modernity and tradition which was far ahead of its time and which would not be reached in Europe until the reaction against the Enlightenment {Old Believers as proto-Romantics ??}. From the point of view of cultural history, Avvakum and his cohorts might be seen as precursors of the profound conservatism which rejects modernity in its essence. Their thoughts would later be echoed by philosophical reactionaries {such as .. ??} in Europe and by anti-Western traditionalists throughout the world.

(6) This argument is made most forcefully in E. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1979).

THE MEANS FOR ARTICULATING THE TRADITIONALIST REACTION

At heart, the reaction of Avvakum was instinctive and elemental {disdainful}: tradition was sanctified by God and pious forefathers; altering it by willful human reason was the Devil's work. In order to express this understanding in words, the founders of the Old Belief made use of the intellectual tools available to them {disdainful; so did the authorities. NIKON AND THE CHURCH AND STATE AUTHORITIES ARE APPARENTLY TO BE CONSIDERED A RATIONAL FORCE HERE}. The Russian thinkers who rejected Nikon's program of change relied on a disparate body of ideas and images {disdainful} with which to conceptualize and express their opposition. This corpus included the heritage of Byzantine Orthodoxy as transmitted (however perfectly or imperfectly) {disdainful} to Russia in hoary antiquity. In addition, and despite the opposition's programmatic and fundamental claim to ‘‘oldness,’’ it consisted of the recent body of works and ideas generated by the rise of Muscovite power and international contacts {Third Rome} (most fatefully, with the Orthodox Ruthenians of Poland-Lithuania {anti-Catholic polemics} (7)). It was from the interaction of these elements that Old Believer anti-modernism acquired its particular apocalyptic cast. {THESE VERY SAME ELEMENTS DECIDED CHURCH/STATE POLICY}

(7) For a comprehensive treatment of the role of Ukrainian clerics in Muscovite intellectual life during the reigns of the first Romanovs, see K. Kharlampovich, Malorossiiskoe vliianie na velikorusskuiu tserkovnuiu zhizn ' (Kazan', 1914).

In terms of Byzantine influence or, more properly, the continuation of the Byzantine line of thought, the most important seventeeth-century development was the application of the Byzantine conception of ‘‘sacred history’’ to Muscovite Russia. The core of this way of thinking was the central role assigned to the Orthodox Empire (Tsardom) in the economy of salvation and therefore in the fate of humanity. The fall of Byzantium created a vacuum at the center of the Orthodox understanding of the world. Over time, many Orthodox clerics in lands subject to non-Orthodox rulers came to believe that Muscovy should fill that gap {out of self-interest (jobs, alms)} and propagandized this idea among the Russians. Although the origins of the ‘‘Third Rome’’ idea have been mythologized and distorted {??}, the fact remains that this concept had achieved wide currency in the seventeenth-century Muscovite literature and was preserved and elaborated by the Old Believers.

Another seventeenth-century innovation which played a crucial role in the emergence of the Old Belief was also tied to the problem of the understanding of history. In the course of the religious battles of the Reformation and Counterreformation, the Orthodox religious polemicists of Poland-Lithuania adopted a number of essentially Protestant themes which they transmitted to Muscovy. (8 ) Foremost among these themes was a Revelation-based apocalypticism assigning the central negative role to the Roman church. (9) In terms of derivation and argumentation this stands in contrast to earlier Byzantino-Muscovite eschatology, which was based either on simple numbers with little else by way of causality (i.e. that the world will come to an end when 7000 years have passed since creation – by the Byzantine reckoning, in AD 1492), or on a motley collection of apocryphal apocalyptic works, and not only on John's Revelation. In identifying the enemy, the earlier eschatology did not focus on Rome, which simply was not important enough in Byzantine eyes to merit such a grand position. Rather, it dwelt either on a generic Antichrist who was too remote (in the future) to be clearly perceived, or on one who was linked to immediate threats such as Islam. The new, essentially Protestant, reliance on Revelation in eschatology and the association of the Antichrist with Rome (and therefore the West) would have the most fateful implications for the development of the Old Belief. Also, as we shall see, the forerunners of the Old Belief manifested other, less tangible but nevertheless very important, Protestant-like qualities in their style and worldview.

(8) For a survey of the Ruthenian (Ukrainian/Belorussian) religious polemical literature of the period, see A. Arkhangel'skii, Ocherki iz istorii zapadno-russkoi literatury XVI – XVIII vv. (Moscow, 1888). On the transmission of these works to Muscovy, see K. Kharlampovich, Malorossiiskoe vliianiena na velikorusskuiu tserkovnuiu zhizn ' (Kazan', 1914), and on the explicitly Protestant element, D. Tsvetaev, Protestantstvo i protestanty v Rossii do epokhi preobrazovanii (Moscow, 1890), as well as his Literaturnaia bor ' ba s protestantizmom v moskovskom gosudarstve (Moscow, 1887).

(9) See Zenkovsky, Russkoe staroobriadchestvo, pp. 54–55.

* PD Цветаев, Дмитрий Владимирович (1852-1920). Дмитрий Владимирович Цвета́ев — российский педагог-историк, управляющий архивом Министерства юстиции и участник создания Центрального государственного архива древних актов в Москве (ныне — РГАДА), автор первой монографии о царе Василии Шуйском; тайный советник. (...) Специальные научные изыскания Цветаева по русской истории были посвящены главным образом «немецкому» вопросу в России и состояли в документальном выяснении положения, жизни и деятельности иностранцев и инородцев протестантского и католического вероисповеданий и отношения русских к этим людям и к западноевропейской культуре и образованности. «Протестантство и протестанты в России до эпохи преобразований» (Москва, 1890, докторская диссертация). Основные взгляды Д. В. Цветаева на русскую историческую жизнь наиболее цельно были сформулированы им в статье «Россия и Западная Европа в их взаимных отношениях» («Русское обозрение», 1895, II), исходной мыслью которой служит положение, что "по своей природе и истории Россия, как самостоятельное государство, безусловно необходима для правильной жизни самой Западной Европы: до вступления своего в круг европейской системы она была охранительницей её от азиатского напора и разрушения со стороны диких полчищ; по вступлении же своём в систему европейских государств (в эпоху Петровских реформ) она стала незаменимой посредницей между борющимися там сторонами, оберегающей политическое равновесие и тем обеспечивающей благосостояние и возможность беспрепятственного дальнейшего культурного развития западноевропейских государств и народов…"

A third source of ideas for the nascent Old Belief was the dualist-tainted body of apocrypha which Kiev inherited along with Orthodoxy and the Church Slavonic language. Dualist themes which can be traced directly to the apocrypha do not play a major role in the polemics of Avvakum and his cohorts, although there is evidence of a dualist influence in some of their works. However, among the Old Believers of the Imperial period, ancient dualist writings (although, to be sure, not perceived as such) received wide circulation.

THE ‘‘SEAMLESS GARB’’ OF FAITH AND PRACTICE AND RUSSIA AS ITS MOST PERFECT MANIFESTATION

Essentially, it was the application of the (textual) critical method which engendered the traditionalist reaction which came in time (and in combination with other factors, most notably the policies of Peter I) to constitute the Old Belief. The main issues of contention – old vs. new texts, the spelling of the name ‘‘Jesus,’’ the number of fingers used in making the sign of the cross – are well known to the readers of the general literature on Russian history. It is, however, important to keep in mind that over time there came to be countless other points of controversy, many of such intricacy and obscurity as to boggle the mind. (10) It is a historiographical commonplace to point to these issues of controversy as evidence of the superficial and ritualistic, yet at the same time fanatical, nature of Russian religiosity. Admittedly, there is abundant evidence of fanaticism here; however, it would be a fundamental misunderstanding to view the controversies as evidence of pettiness.

(10) For an excellent and exhaustive survey of Old Believer doctrinal and ritualist controversies, see A. Kandaritskii, Opyt sistematicheskogo posobiia pri polemike s staroobriadtsami, s kratkim ocherkom razvitiia drevnikh sekt i russkogo raskolostaroobriadchestva (Sterlitamak, 1907) {Священник-миссионер А. Кандарицкий - Опыт систематического пособия при полемике с старообрядцами, 1907.}. Although this work was produced for the purposes of the anti-sectarian ‘‘Mission,’’ and has therefore a readily obvious slant and utilitarian character, it is nevertheless invaluable by virtue of the author's outstanding erudition in Old Believer issues and in church history.

In order to reach any understanding of traditional thinking, one must be aware of and have empathy for the ‘‘holistic’’ nature of traditional culture. The forerunners of the Old Belief {??} expressed this ‘‘holistic’’ quality in Russian culture in striking and vivid terms. The Old Believers, products of Orthodox Christian culture, held dogmatic purity and unanimity of thought and belief as the highest values, and, in keeping with the traditional mindset, they viewed church teaching and practice, like the Church itself, to be a ‘‘seamless garb.’’ Given this mindset, typical of religion-based traditional culture in general, error on any specific question equaled betrayal of the whole, and therefore damnation, since each individual issue was charged with the overwhelming and absolute importance of the whole. To this way of thinking gradations, ‘‘scales of values,’’ differentiation between the essential and non-essential, content and form are totally alien.

Avvakum expressed this mentality explicitly, giving his interpretation of Luke 16:10: ‘‘He who is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much . . . Are you listening, Christian: if you neglect [reject] even one small thing of the faith, you have ruined everything.’’ (11)

Another of the anti-Nikonian zealots, the deacon Feodor Ivanov {Федор Иванов (ум 1666+; вожд ь старообрядческой оппозиции); Федор и Никита раскаялись и подписали требуемые от них грамоты} gave voice to this same way of thinking in an expansive tirade:

We shall not betray our ancient piety or its salutary and immaculate dogmas, through which we were born in holy baptism and sanctified, and in which ancestral laws we have been brought up since our youth. And we have been commanded by our holy pastors to hold firm to the true Christian faith, and to be ready to suffer unto death for even one word added to or subtracted from our faith, and all the more so to die rather than accept the corruption of the whole of our dogma, and to lay down our lives for orthodoxy. This our faith . . . is the one true Christian faith, this is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the martyrs, this is the faith of the confessors, this is the faith of the saints, this is the faith of our fathers, confirmed by the seven ecumenical councils. And wearing this untorn garment of godly knowledge from on high . . . we shall die in this faith and be resurrected in it, and in this faith we shall stand at the dread judgment {страшный суд} {"Orthodox English" - About 55.600 results} of Christ unashamed. (12)

(11) ‘‘Beseda vtoraia,’’ in Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka (RIB), vol. 39, pp. 259–60.

(12) N. Subbotin, ed. Materialy dlia istorii Raskola za pervoe vremia ego sushchestvovaniia, 9 vols. (Moscow, 1874–1895), vol. 6, pp. 291–292.

This lengthy and impassioned statement shows not only the ‘‘holistic’’ way of thinking but also shows the ideological basis {faith of our fathers, ancestral laws (??)} for the traditional religious mind's application of the whole force of faith, tradition, and sacred history {martyrs, saints} to any particular religious issue.

The forerunners of the Old Belief believed Muscovy to be the last remaining repository of pure faith and practice in the fallen world and assigned it the central role in sacred history. Feodor Ivanov gives a characteristic expression of this attitude and at the same time shows what contemporary ideological sources he is drawing on:

Under the earlier pious Tsars the ecumenical patriarchs Theophanes {Феофан III [патриарх Иерусалимский; Theophanes III of Jerusalem] (ок 1570-1644); 1619-1621 после встречи с Константинопольским Патриархом Тимофеем II он осуществил визит в Россию и Речь Посполитую; совершил интронизацию Филарета Никитича Романова на престоле Патриархов Московских и всея России} and Jeremiah {Иеремия II [патриарх Константинопольский; Jeremias II of Constantinople] (1530-1595)} [were in Moscow] and they praised and wondered at the piety and faith of the Muscovite Tsardom. And even before them in the Cosmography* our faith is praised above all the kingdoms and lands thus: ‘‘nowhere is there such true faith as in the Muscovite Tsardom; although the Christian faith has also been in other lands, there it has been much mixed with heresies; and [nowhere] is there such a pure faith as in the Russian land . . . ’’ And in the History of the White [Bishop's] Hood . . . the Emperor Constantine and Pope Sylvester appeared to the Patriarch Philotheus and said: ‘‘the first Rome fell to the Apollinarian heresy {??} {Apollinarianism [Аполинарианство] (IV); Jesus had a normal human body but a divine mind instead of a regular human soul; deemed heretical in 381}, and here, in the second Rome, the faith shall dry up under the Hagarian {Arab} onslaught. However, in the third Rome, in Moscow, piety will shine forth more [brightly] than in the first [two] kingdoms. And therefore God shall call it radiant Russia {Сияющая Россия ??}.’’ (13)

(13) Ibid., pp. 276–7.

* T Космография [на Руси] (XVI-XVII). Космогра́фия — название ряда географических сочинений, переводных или русских компилятивных, появившихся на Руси не позднее XIV века и распространённых в рукописной книжности Русского государства (Московской Руси) XVI—XVII веков. Содержат описание различных стран и обычаев населяющих их народов. На Руси получили распространение в основном переводные космографии.

[Apollinarism] [Why are Arabs referred to as Hagarians in some ancient near-Eastern sources?]

The texts Feodor is pointing to were generated during Muscovy's recent rise to international power. The exalted depiction of Muscovy/Russia was not, however, primarily a product of native Muscovite confidence. Rather, it was also the result of a more or less spontaneous (that is to say not coordinated) effort by Greek and above all Ukrainian Orthodox clerics to convince Muscovy to come to their rescue. Ironically, a later phase of these Ukrainian/Greek/Muscovite relations involved the church and cultural reforms which Feodor so vehemently rejected {??}.

Whereas Feodor and others present an imperialist (modeled on Byzantium) conception of the place of Russia in sacred history, Avvakum goes directly to the Biblical roots of the Christian understanding of history when he writes of ‘‘. . . the Russian people – the last remnant of the seed of Abraham on this earth, that is to say, the new Israel, the people of renewal.’’ (14) In this dramatic statement, Avvakum reworks a major theme of his contemporary culture, which had developed a whole complex of imagery and ritual based on the equation of Russia with Israel. (15) The existing

model was ‘‘statist,’’ but Avvakum places his entire emphasis on the Russian people, and makes no mention of the Russian Tsardom. This is an early expression of an idea which would find wide currency in later Russian religious dissent during the Imperial period, namely, the assignment of Russia's ‘‘world-historical’’ role in the scheme of sacred history to the Russian people (or at least a saving remnant, identified with any given sect), and not to the Russian state. (16) Although the later Old Believers would occasionally think and write in terms of this Russia/Israel equation, the Byzantine/statist historical conception would be predominant in their thought.

(14) ‘‘Beseda sed'maia,’’ RIB 39, 328.

(15) For a thorough treatment of the subject, see Daniel B. Rowland, ‘‘Moscow – the Third Rome or the New Israel?’’ Russian Review 55 (October 1996), 591–614.

(16) For a comprehensive discussion of the applications of this concept in Russian religious dissident thought see chapter 3 on the sectarians.

* Daniel B. Rowland (????). Daniel Rowland is associate professor of history at the University of Kentucky and has published numerous articles on art, architecture, and political culture in early modern Russia as well as contributing to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History. Daniel B. Rowland - Moscow-The Third Rome or the New Israel? Russian Review 55 (October 1996).

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Михаил Минаков - Философия свободы: От Третьего Рима ко Второму Израилю - Ведомости

also: Михаил Минаков: Миф о Третьем Риме не определяет русскую историю

Основополагающей политической идеологемой «третьеримство» становится только в ХІХ в. /РИА Новости

Что объединяет русского либерала и русского консерватора? Верный ответ: вера в то, что Россия - Третий Рим. Только оценка этого факта будет у них противоположной. Для либерала Третий Рим - беда, мотивация к созданию экспансивных несвободных режимов и причина повторяющегося поражения либеральных политических проектов в России. Для консерватора - это дар небес и славный повод сделать карьеру на патриотической риторике. Ни первый, ни второй не подвергают сомнению сам факт тождественности России и имперской несвободы.

В современном контексте вера в Третий Рим означает согласие с тем, что русская традиция государственного строительства связана лишь с имперским мышлением (противоречащим республиканизму) и подданничеством (противостоящим гражданственности). Уверенность в том, что история России может обосновывать только несвободу, столь же поразительна, сколь и повсеместна. Однако ни Третий Рим, ни несвобода не являются единственной основой русской политической культуры. Только идеологи ХІХ в. вывели идею монархического Третьего Рима в центр имперского проекта.

Для обоснования своего права на державное правление государи Восточной Европы часто объявляли себя наследниками Константинополя. Это было и в Болгарии, и в Сербии. Первые попытки применения политического опыта южных соседей в этом плане продемонстрировал московский князь Иван III. Все проекты Третьего Рима были связаны с политическими целями растущих государств, нуждающихся в легитимации своих геополитических претензий.

Нет сомнений, митрополит Зосима Брадатый и старец Филофей писали о Московской Руси как о Третьем Риме. И великие князья Василий IІІ и Иван IV использовали эту концепцию для подтверждения своего царского титула. Но основополагающей политической идеологемой «третьеримство» становится только в ХІХ в.

Исторические исследования Владимира Иконникова* привели к тому, что имперские идеологи обратили внимание на мессианские потенции мифа о Третьем Риме. Мой земляк киевлянин Иконников описал этот политический миф в диссертации «Опыт исследования о культурном значении Византии в русской истории», изданной в Киеве в 1869 г. Раскрытые им темы дали «научно-историческое» обоснование для нарождающегося имперского проекта. Политические эксперименты с поиском новой легитимации империи Романовых привели к оформлению политического содержания идеи Третьего Рима как альтернативы западничеству.

* Иконников, Владимир Степанович (1841-1923; историк) . Влади́мир Степа́нович Ико́нников — русский историк, профессор и декан историко-филологического факультета Императорского университета Св. Владимира. Vladimir Ikonnikov. Vladimir Stepanovich Ikonnikov (Russian: Владимир Степанович Иконников) was a Russian Imperial historian specializing in study of the Russian historiography.

Вера в то, что Россия основана на идее Третьего Рима, кажется абсолютной. Но, как и всякая претендующая на абсолютность идея, «третьеримство» является заблуждением. Современная историография не раз показывала лживость утверждений, что русское государство изначально основано на идее Третьего Рима как единственной имперской идее. В 1996 г. Даниел Роуланд, американский историк, в статье «Москва - Третий Рим или Второй Израиль» вернул историческое научное сообщество к рассмотрению идейного многообразия российской государственной традиции. Фактически речь идет о том, что прошлое может обеспечить нынешних сторонников гражданских свобод не менее значимыми идеологическими смыслами, укорененными в государственные традиции России, чем их евразийствующих противников.

Для Московской Руси важнейшим государственным мифом был Второй Израиль. Как бы жутко это ни звучало для нынешних патриотов, московские князья частенько ссылались на этот образ. В основе его лежала идея того, что сильное централизованное государство сможет обеспечить свободу русских людей от рабства. Израиль был символом свободы народа, а Моисей - воплощением лидера свободной нации. Именно вопросы свободы {Tatars ..} ставились во главу угла {ставить во главу угла - считать, признавать что-либо главным, основным, наиболее важным} создания сильного русского государства, способного остановить набеги поработителей {enslaver}. То, что это наследие забыто, говорит о креативной импотенции российских сторонников гражданских свобод.

К той же идеологической слабости либералов стоит отнести и веру в то, что крепостничество, касавшееся в худшие времена до четверти населения империи, до сих пор имеет влияние на состояние российского общества. Каким-то образом и русская городская культура {destroyed}, и казачество Юга {destroyed}, и вечевые традиции Севера {destroyed}, и самоуправление раскольников {destroyed}, и предприимчивость сибиряков {destroyed} выпадают из поля зрения идеологов свободы.

Нынешнее доминирование консерваторов всех мастей в российской политике связано не с седой стариной Третьего Рима, а с косностью {inertia, stagnation} нынешних либералов. Если уж нужна россиянам укорененность в традиции для того, чтобы уважать гражданские свободы, нужно обращаться к идейному богатству прошлого.

Да и вера в Третий Рим не так уж и безнадежна! Романовский Третий Рим может стать республиканским Третьим Римом в духе Джузеппе Мадзини*. В интерпретации великого республиканца первый Рим принадлежал императорам. Второй Рим был папским. Третий Рим, идею которого отстаивал Джузеппе Мадзини, был новой республикой {arbitrariness of application: in this scheme the original Roman Republic was apparently the "Zeroeth Rome"}. Идейный плюрализм еще можно вернуть в идеологически обнищавшую политику России.

* Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872). Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian politician, journalist, and activist for the unification of Italy and spearhead of the Italian revolutionary movement. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century. An Italian nationalist in the historical radical tradition and a proponent of social-democratic republicanism, Mazzini helped define the modern European movement for popular democracy in a republican state. Mazzini's thoughts had a very considerable influence on the Italian and European republican movements, in the Constitution of Italy, about Europeanism and more nuanced on many politicians of a later period, among them American president Woodrow Wilson and British prime minister David Lloyd George as well as post-colonial leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Veer Savarkar, Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, Kwame Nkrumah, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sun Yat-sen. An Italian nationalist, Mazzini was a fervent advocate of republicanism and envisioned a united, free and independent Italy. Unlike his contemporary Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was also a republican, Mazzini refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the House of Savoy until after the Capture of Rome. While he and his followers were sensitive to the question of social justice, starting a dialogue with socialism and Mazzini, in particular, finding many affinities with the Saint-Simonians, Mazzini was vigorously opposed to Marxism which for him was "a dreadful perversion of utilitarianism because of its insistence on class interests, especially class struggle, a conflictual vision that could not harmonize with Mazzini's unitarianism". Mazzini also rejected the classical liberal principles of the Age of Enlightenment based on the doctrine of individualism which he criticized as "presupposing either metaphysical materialism or political atheism".

* Materialism is a form of philosophical monism that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. // Metaphysical materialism: matter (and energy) as the only thing(s) ontologically real ??

Русскую историю не определяет миф о Третьем Риме. Идейное богатство прошлого гораздо более многообразно, чем это может показаться. Вырытая монархистами «колея track, furrow истории*» вовсе не должна определять выбор России в ХХІ в. Либерализм присущ русской политической культуре {e.g. Non-Possessors} и имеет столь же глубокие исторические корни, как и монархизм. Уважение к свободе человека - не импорт. В фундаменте русской государственной традиции достаточно несущих частей для построения политического режима со свободными гражданами и подотчетным accountable правительством.

* Колея истории: Постсоветская демодернизация: период нового околдования?

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SACRED HISTORY AND THE ASSAULT ON ‘‘HOLY RUSSIA ’’

To the mind of the founders of the Old Belief (and, indeed, of most later Russian radical anti-modernists) it was the very holiness and cosmic centrality of Russia that made her the target of the forces of evil. Since their conception of history was a variant of the Judeo-Christian and therefore essentially eschatological, they perceived the aggressive actions of evil in apocalyptic terms. It is, however, crucial to note that the specifics of their apocalyptic analysis was derived primarily from Protestantism and not Byzantine Orthodoxy. The Ruthenian Orthodox of Poland-Lithuania {see: Ruthenian Uniate Church; confrontation among Ruthenians; Union of Brest; Catholisation and Polonization; Khmelnytsky Uprising; partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; territory annexed by the Russian Empire; most of the church eparchies forcibly converted to Russian Orthodoxy} served as the conduit for this mode of thought.

By way of interpretation the Old Believers were guided by a number of patristic exegeses and, most fatefully, by anti-Catholic polemics of the Orthodox of Poland-Lithuania who, in their resistance to the aggressive Catholicism of the Counterreformation, drew not only on Orthodox tradition but also on contemporary Protestant millenarian themes. The most influential of these Ukrainian works, was an anthology of apocalyptic patristic writings compiled and enhanced by the L'viv Orthodox bookman Zyzanii {Зизаний, Стефан Иванович [Stefan Ivanovych Zyzaniy/Zyzanii] (1550-1634; писатель-полемист); приверженность реформационным идеям {a.o. about the pope-Antichrist}; убеждённость в единство души и тела - отрицал тезисы о посмертном блаженстве души {!!}; Стефан Зизаний - Приход Антихриста (1666)}. This book, known variously, as ‘‘The Book of Saint Cyril’’ [of Jerusalem] {Печатный двор - Книга иже во святых отца нашего Кирилла, архиепископа Иеросалимского, на осьмый век [Кириллова книга] (1644). Главным сочинением книги, по которому она получила название, являлось эсхатологическое «Сказание на осмыи век», впервые опубликованное в Вильно в 1596 году. Оно представляло собой перевод 15 огласительного слова святого Кирилла Иерусалимского с комментариями Стефана Зизания, составлявшими большую его часть. В «Сказании» утверждалось наступление конца света в восьмом тысячелетии по летоисчислению от Адама, а также доказывалось, что Папа Римский — предтеча Антихриста.} for the church father whose writings begin the compilation, or ‘‘The Book about Faith’’ (Vilna 1602, Kiev 1619, revised Moscow edition 1644 17 ) {Печатный двор - Книга о вере единой истинной православной [Книга о вере] (1648); раздел «Об антихристе»; мысль о духовно-нравственном падении христ. общества как свидетельстве приближения антихриста; воцарении антихриста в России в связи с реформами патриарха Никона, для рассуждений о 1666 г.; «Книгу о вере» обильно цитировали старообрядческие писатели при полемики против реформы патриарха Никона; полемике против католиков и униатов («Об отступлении apostasy римлян»} contains patristic commentary on the Apocalypse applied to contemporary developments in the Papacy intertwined with Zyzanii's observations, which are not in the text differentiated from the original. The terrible fascination of the topic made Cyril's Book a favorite even before the Nikonian crisis; with that crisis it attained instant and terrible relevance, as the apocalyptic effort of the Papacy to subvert and take over Orthodoxy seemed to have reached success. In a coincidence that was to have the most profound repercussions, Zyzanii, posing as St. Cyril, prophesied that ‘‘those who live to the year 1666 will go forth to do battle with the Devil himself.’’ This prophecy, applied to the events of the Moscow Church council of 1666 {Great Moscow Synod "The council condemned the famous Stoglav of 1551 as heretical, because it had dogmatized the native Russian church rituals and usage at the expense of those accepted in Greece and other Orthodox countries. This decision precipitated a great schism of the Russian Orthodox Church known as the Raskol." Stoglav}, has sustained generations of Old Believers in their conviction that the reign of the Antichrist had (has) commenced. Thus, it can be argued that Russian apocalypticism, which found its most fervent expression in the Old Belief, was, in part, derived from Protestantism as transmitted through the Ruthenian Orthodox prism. Ironically, the initial apocalyptic thrust of Ruthenian Orthodoxy was defused by the later Kievan enlightenment {??} {Митрополит Петр Могила (1596-1647). При его участии был основан крупнейший на Украине центр просвещения — Киево-Могилянская академия (??)}, which took a more scholastic/rationalistic approach, and subsequent generations of Ukrainian ecclesiastic intellectuals comprised the overwhelming majority of the reformist cadres who both provoked and then sought to extirpate the Old Believer reaction. (18) Thus, in effect, one generation of Ukrainian intellectuals produced much of the literature which inspired Old Believer apocalypticism, while the succeeding generations carried out the Reforms and persecuted the Old Belief {..}.

?? (17) Unfortunately, I have not had access to this book. I have had to make do with the summary and extensive extracts in A. Lileev, O tak nazyvaemoi Kirilovoi knige (Kazan', 1858).

(18) This was especially true in the time of Peter and his immediate successors, when the Empire adopted a conscious pro-Ukrainian, anti-Muscovite policy in its selection of ecclesiastical cadres because it associated the Kievans with progress and suspected the Russians of retrograde tendencies. On this, see G. Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), ch. IV .

A number of the forerunners of the Old Belief engaged in apocalyptic exegesis based on Zyzanii's ideas. The deacon Feodor Ivanov was fascinated by the role of numbers: drawing on Zyzanii, he provides an eschatological, Moscow-centered scheme of history focusing on the fateful progression of dates – the year 1000 witnessed the fall of Rome into heresy {1054 East–West Schism}, 600 years later ‘‘Little Russia’’ fell (a reference to the Union of Brest in 1596), 60 years after that came the tribulations in Muscovy {1653 Nikon reforms}, and in 1666 the anti-christian Council of Moscow (at which the Eastern Patriarchs condemned the zealots of the old rituals and also deposed Nikon) took place. (19) The villain in this story is demonically inspired man aspiring to displace God. For the early Old Believers, this spirit was most clearly manifest in the Papacy {papal interference with Russia}. As the priest Lazar' writes: ‘‘Now, for its various heresies Rome is, according to scripture, Babylon and Egypt. For in Rome, an ecclesiastical [spiritual] man, the Pope, appropriated for himself God's sovereign power: since that time the seat of the Antichrist's power has been in Rome.’’ (20) This sort of elaborate and allegorical apocalyptic interpretation would be very characteristic of the Old Belief in the Imperial period, when this type of analysis would be applied to new personages and events.

(19) Subbotin, Materialy dlia istorii Raskola, vol. 6, pp. 283–284. This approach combines the eschatological category of 1,000 years as well as the number 666.

(20) In ‘‘Rospis' vkrattse novovvodnym tserkovnym razdorom, ikhzhe sobra Nikon patriarkh so Arseniem cherntsem ot raznykh ver,’’ ibid., p. 251. A later Russian conservative, Dostoyevsky, would expound the same idea in his writings, most notably in The Idiot.

Avvakum, on the other hand, did not display a strong inclination for intricate scripturally based exegesis. Although his core idea was essentially the same, he stated it in straightforward and in some ways more disturbing fashion: ‘‘Satan asked for and received radiant Russia from God; so be it. It is with joy that we shall endure martyrdom for our faith.’’ (21) Avvakum's idea, analogous to that of the Book of Job, raises numerous troubling questions and points in the direction of a dualist assessment of the current state of Russia {>>}. Here we have an early and classic statement of the Old Believer conception of the interaction of or relationship between Good and Evil or God and the Devil, usually expressed in the formula ‘‘Bogu popushchaiushchu, vragu zhe deistvuiushchu’’ (With God allowing, and the enemy acting) {Грѣхъ же ради нашихъ богу попущаюшу , а врагу дѣиствующу. // учение о том, что от Бога исходит только благо, а зло случается «Богу попущаюшу»} which has disturbing implications on the nature of God and the relative power of Satan. At any rate, that idea that God had given ‘‘radiant Russia’’ over to Satan led to a de facto dualist situation {in a Gnostic (evil matter), not a Manichaean (equal forces) sense (??)}, because in the present circumstances the Devil's influence was paramount.

(21) RIB, vol. 39, p. 52.

REASON AS A SATANIC FACULTY; SIMPLICITY AS COUNTERWEAPON

The forerunners of the Old Belief were anti-modern and not merely xenophobic. This fact, crucial to my argument, is convincingly demonstrated by their identification of human reason as the principle weapon used by the forces of evil in their assault on Russia and Orthodoxy. In their writings, Avvakum and Feodor Ivanov display an impassioned and rather coherent anti-intellectual, anti-scientific outlook. Nikon and the reformers clothed themselves in the garb of contemporary Greco-Ukrainian sophistication; their opponents equated that sophistication with the sin of pride and, ultimately, Satan himself.

Avvakum provided the most forceful and eloquent expression of the anti-scientific attitude in his work ‘‘On Outward [superficial] Wisdom’’ [O vneshnei mudrosti] {Протопоп Аввакум. О внешней мудрости.}, inspired by a verse of Saint Paul's (‘‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise . . . Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the

world?’’ I Corinthians 19–21):

The almanac writers and star-gazers and all the Zodiac readers [almanashniki i zvezdochettsy i zodeishchiki] perceived God through their outward cleverness and did not honor and glorify Him as God, but rather fell victim to the vanity of their conceits and began to liken themselves to God in their wisdom, as did the first of them, the lewd Nimrod, and after him the scandalmonger and fornicator Zeus, and the drunkard Hermes, and Artemis the adultress, of whom the Granograf [Хронограф (книга)] and all the chronicles give testimony; after them were Plato and Pythagoras, Aristotle and Diogenes, Hippocrates and Galen {Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus, often Anglicized as Galen and sometimes known as Galen of Pergamon, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire.}, all of whom were wise and all of whom went to hell. With Satan, they reached for the very firmament of heaven and understood the movement of the stars through their reason . . . And in their wisdom they likened themselves to God and thought they knew everything. And just as the Devil said long ago ‘‘I shall place my throne on the heavens and be like unto the most high,’’ so do these say ‘‘We understand all things in heaven and on earth, and who is like unto us!’’ (22)

(22) Subbotin, Materialy dlia istorii Raskola, vol. 5, p. 298.

Avvakum identifies this spirit of intellectual pride as the source of Russia's current problems at the same time as he expresses sympathy or regret for its carriers: ‘‘This is not your own doing, but demonic inspiration. I should weep for you, and not curse you, for you are flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.’’ (23) It is important to stress that for Avvakum, the evil to which his countrymen had succumbed was as ‘‘holistic’’ as the traditional piety which they had deserted – pride {reason} was part of a unified complex of sin involving everything from excesses of the flesh to sorcery. (24)

(23) Ibid., p. 299. Avvakum expounds at length on this theme of blood ties and shattered bonds of brotherhood. In this, as in his idea of the Russian people as Israel (see above), he seems to be showing the outlines of a proto-national (as opposed to purely religious or statist) consciousness.

(24) On the specific issue of the relationship between science and sorcery, Avvakum's words would have sounded like obscurantist nonsense to a late-nineteenth-century reader trained to think in terms of the total opposition of science and the supernatural. However, in this, as in much else, Avvakum was very perceptive, and sensed what late twentieth-century scholarship would establish, namely, the link between early modern science and magic [ the investigation of nature, most notably, alchemy, astrology, and magic]. See, for example, Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, vol. 3, pp. 251–261.

The founders of the Old Belief pointed to simple faith as the only effective antidote to the demonically inspired pride of human reason. As Feodor Ivanov writes, ‘‘It [true, divine understanding] has been hidden from those who think themselves wise and clever, and been revealed to the children, that is to say, all of the simple and meek disciples [of the Lord].’’ (25) Feodor, Avvakum and their cohorts pointed to the example of the apostles and the holy ascetics of ancient Russia, who, although simple, and in many cases unlettered men, spread the Christian faith and were the true paragons {exemplar} of virtue, in contrast to the proud and deluded learned men of contemporary Europe.

(25) Subbotin, Materialy dlia istorii raskola, vol. 6, p. 291.

In this claim to what might be termed ‘‘evangelical simplicity’’ the founders of the Old Belief introduced, yet again, a new and essentially Protestant theme, and once again they drew on the Ukrainian Orthodox polemical literature {names ..} of the early seventeenth century. The Orthodox of Poland-Lithuania of that period found themselves ill-prepared intellectually to withstand the assault of Counterreformation Roman Catholicism (specifically in its Jesuit manifestation) and several of their polemicists adopted a Protestant populist defensive stance. The most influential promoter of this line was Ivan Vyshens'kyi {Иоанн Вишенский [Иван Вышенский] (1545 / 50-1620 +; духовный писатель, полемист); «Обличение диавола-миродержца»}, a Ukrainian monk whose anti-Catholic polemics were transmitted to Moscow in the first decades of the seventeenth century. (26) The next generation of Ukrainian churchmen moved away from apocalyptic thinking; similarly, that next cohort achieved the intellectual heights of early modern Europe in the Kievan Academy*. The Old Belief would, however, preserve the ideas and positions of the earlier Ukrainian generation {names ..}.

(26) For Vyshens'kyi writings, see Ivan Vyshens'kyi, Tvory (Kiev, 1959). His ‘‘Quarrel of a Simple Ruthenian with a Learned Latin’’ {По-видимому, Иоанну же принадлежит «Зачанка мудрого латынника с глупым русином в диспутацию», известная под псевдонимом Христофора} contains the most cogent presentation of the populist, anti-intellectual position.

* Киевская духовная академия [Kiev Theological Academy] (1615). Ки́евская духо́вная акаде́мия (укр. Київська духовна академія) — старейшее высшее учебное заведение Украинской православной церкви, находящееся в Киеве. История восходит к началу XVII века, когда Киевская митрополия была в юрисдикции Константинопольского патриархата. Её преподаватели сыграли ключевую роль в становлении высшего образования в России в середине XVII века. История. Киево-братская школа (1615—1631). Первоначально, в 1615 году, архимандритом Елисеем Плетенецким в Богоявленском монастыре была учреждена Киево-братская школа, предназначенная для изучения классических языков, риторики, богословия и некоторых предметов элементарного образования. Киевский митрополит Пётр Могила объединил эту школу с основанным им училищем; заведение получило впоследствии звание высшего учебного заведения, известного под названием Киево-Могилянской коллегии (1631—1701). Киево-Могилянская коллегия (1631—1701). По своему основному характеру коллегия напоминала иностранные {Catholic} коллегии и академии, в которых обучался сам Могила. Здесь преподавались: языки (славянский, греческий и латинский), пение и элементарная теория музыки (по европейскому образцу), катехизис, арифметика, поэзия, риторика, философия и богословие; ученики делились на восемь классов: аналогия, или фара, инфима, грамматика, синтаксима, пиитика, риторика, философия и богословие. Кроме изучения этих предметов, воспитанники каждую субботу упражнялись в диспутах. (...) Kiev Theological Academy. The Kiev Theological Academy (1819—1919) was one of the oldest higher educational institution of the Russian Orthodox Church, situated in Kiev, the Russian Empire (now Kyiv, Ukraine). It was considered as the most senior one among similar academies in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Kazan. It was located at the Kiev Podol within the Kiev Epiphany Monastery. In the Russian historiography, the Academy′s predecessor was the Academia Kiioviensis Mohileana that was founded earlier in the 17th century. Predecessor Kyiv Mohyla Academy. The Kiev Theological Academy traces its history back to 1615, when Yelisey Pletenetsky founded a school at the Brotherhood Monastery in Kiev. Several decades later, Peter Mohyla, from 1632 an Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, merged it with a newly established Lavra school into the Mohyla Collegium (Latin: Collegium Kijovense Mohileanum). The Collegium alumni include Innokentiy Gizel, Lazar Baranovych, Dmitry Tuptalo, Stephen Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich and many other state activists and Orthodox clerics who helped reform the Russian Orthodox Church under the auspices of Patriarch Nikon and Peter the Great. In 1658 under the terms of the Treaty of Hadiach the Collegium obtained the status of an Academy, similar to Cracow Academy. This was recognized in 1694 by the Russian tsar Ivan V, then reaffirmed by Peter I in 1701, when it became the Mohyla Academy. Establishment of the Theological Academy. The Mohyla Academy was closed in 1817 by the decree of Alexander I of Russia. In 1819, the Kiev Theological Academy, an ecclesiastical educational institution, was opened in the Brotherhood Monastery. In contrast to its predecessor, the Mohyla Academy, like all similar establishments in Russia at the time the Kiev Theological Academy admitted sons of clergy only. The Kiev Theological Academy continued under this name until its closure by the Soviets in 1919. Some unofficial courses were held even at a later period. The academy was revived in 1992 and is based on the grounds of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. (The main cathedral of the Brotherhood Monastery was destroyed in 1935 by the Soviet authorities).

From the beginning of the Schism and, arguably, for the succeeding centuries, the Orthodox and the Old Believers have talked past each other. As has been noted above, Nikon and his successors have made their argument on the basis of learning and enlightenment. Despite the fact that Avvakum and his cohorts were members of the Muscovite cultural elite, they almost immediately conceded this ground and stated their position in terms of morality. Vis-à-vis the sophistication of the Greeks and the Orthodox of Poland-Lithuania they assumed the garb of evangelical simplicity, making a virtue of their deficiency in worldliness and scholarship {"proud to be stupid"}, pointing to the example of the apostles, who, in terms of social standing and education, were simple men (the Old Believers seemed not to have been aware of the contradiction between this and their other role models, the Byzantine Church fathers, who were anything but lowly and unlettered). Further, they attached their cause to the memory of the great saints of the Russian past (whose cults had been greatly enhanced and systematized in the century preceding the Schism) and held up as their banner the holiness of ascetics and wonderworkers of Old Russia (especially those whose activities included the defense of Russia against foreigners), who stood in such sharp contrast to the corruption and worldliness of the infidel West and the fallen Russian present. In this assertion of Russian superiority based on traditional holiness and morality set in uniquely Russian terms, the Old Believers foreshadowed the position which would be taken by later Russian conservatives (up to the present day) who, while admitting that Russia lagged in organization and technology, argued that their country maintained a special and unique virtue. In a broader sense, the Old Believers' recourse to moral worth as the answer to intellectual/scientific sophistication can be seen as an early example of the position to which traditionalists in many other societies have been driven by interaction with the modern West.

‘‘ CHARISMATIC ’’VS . PHILOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION: TWO CASE STUDIES IN THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE TRADITIONAL AND MODERN APPROACHES

In their defense of old ways the forerunners of the Old Belief offer many classic expressions of the idea of ‘‘charismatic’’ (i.e. granted by God to those sanctified by faith and holy life) understanding, in contrast to what they saw as the deluded pride in human reason which animated the reformers. Feodor Ivanov states the ‘‘charismatic’’ position in a rebuke to the Nikonians:

Deluded pastors! It is not fitting that you interpret scripture and all manner of ancestral tradition simply [straightforwardly]. Rather, one must search for the sense [imbedded] in the very letters and dogmas of the church. For the law is not merely in the words; rather, in that which is said [written] there is a meaning of the spirit. (27)

(27) In an addendum to his ‘‘Poslanie iz Pustozerska k synu Maksimu i prochim srodnikam i bratiiam

po vere,’’ Materialy dlia istorii Raskola, vol. 6, pp. 164–165.

Although at first glance this statement may strike one as murky and consisting of mere generalities, in effect Feodor Ivanov makes a very important point, namely, that the true meaning of sacred texts is not readily apparent and that each letter and practice is imbued with profound significance. Here we have an expression of the symbolic and allegorical approach to scripture [and events] which would be so prevalent in most Russian religious thought. Feodor Ivanov himself gives numerous examples of this interpretational method. Thus, in a lengthy tract arguing that each of the proposed changes in the wording of the Creed would lead to heresy (and therefore damnation) he writes:

And now they have removed the {anti-Arian} letter ‘‘a’’ from the Symbol of Faith – where there had been ‘‘rozhdenna, a ne sotvorenna’’ [of Christ, that he had been ‘‘begotten, and/but not made’’ {as Arius has argued}] . . . although that letter ‘‘a’’ stands, without fail, in all the [old] books . . . ; it is not fitting to say in the Symbol . . . rozhdena, ne sotvorena [begotten, not made]. With such words they are deluding themselves, wishing to display their impious reason everywhere . . . The holy fathers had thrust this letter ‘‘a’’ as a sharp spear into the vile heart of the heretic Arius, which [heart] had thought the Son of God to be a mere creature . . . And who now wishes to be a friend of that mad heretic Arius? – He who, following his own caprice throws the letter ‘‘a’’ out of the Symbol of Faith. I dare not even contemplate such a thing, and do not destroy the tradition of the saints. Grant me, oh Lord, the part of the holy fathers. (28)

(28) Ibid., pp. 11–12.

The Old Believers would apply this type of reasoning to every issue: each detail of wording, practice, and, in the Imperial period, lifestyle would be interpreted in the light of religion and charged with the full force of the faith and hope of salvation.

The church reformers, or proto-modernizers approached matters very differently. In the conflict between the ‘‘Nikonians’’ and the founders of the Old Belief we see early examples of the interaction between the traditional and modern worldview in Russia. For the Old Believers, their opponents were the embodiment of evil. The ‘‘Nikonians’’ did not, however, return the favor by ascribing to their foes a similar dignity. Rather, they viewed them as misguided fanatics stuck in the mire and darkness of ignorance.

A characteristic example of this interaction is the debate between Metropolitan Dimitrii (Tuptalo) of Rostov and the Old Believers on the spelling of the name Jesus. (29) The traditionalists contended that the new spelling ‘‘Iisus’’ [Иисус или Исус: буква раскола] also denoted a different personage, certainly not Jesus Christ, but rather, the Antichrist. Dimitrii, a Ukrainian cleric with a European-type scholastic education obtained at the Kiev Academy, responded in what might be termed a modern manner. He argued that the person of Christ, and not the spelling of this name was important, making a distinction between form and content alien to the traditional mind. Then, in essentially modern philological mode, he argued for the superiority of the ‘‘Iisus’’ spelling because it better reflected Greek and Hebrew usage. At no point did he say that ‘‘Isus’’ was not God. However, he did say that the old spelling, if broken down etymologically, meant ‘‘even-eared’’ in Greek and that therefore obstinates would in effect be calling Christ not ‘‘Savior’’ (Iisus) but ‘‘Even-Eared’’ (ravnoukhii). The fact that Dimitrii could make such a joke was a reflection of the early modern (or transitional) distinction between the essence of religion (sacred and above any humor) and externalities, which could be referred to disrespectfully and even lampooned. The Old Believers, on the other hand, with their traditional holistic conception approached all aspects of the faith with a dread awe born partially out of insecurity and mortal fear of falling. To them, Dimitrii's words were utter blasphemy, and continued to figure in Old Believer polemical attacks on the Orthodox church into the twentieth century as an example of the utter cynicism and depravity of the official hierarchy. This incident, although minor in itself, is typical of the Old Believer/Orthodox interaction. On the one side furious denunciations and the accusation that the Church of Christ was being replaced by that of Antichrist, on the other side attempts at historical and critical argumentation, condescension to the opposition, and occasional contemptuous mockery.

THE ASCETIC IDEAL VS. INCIPIENT SECULARISM

In order to fill out our picture of how the founders of the Old Belief set the pattern for Russian traditionalist anti-modernist behavior we must examine the strong current of hostility to the human body which runs through the thought of men such as Avvakum. For Avvakum, the ideal for personal behavior is an ascetic propriety derived from Byzantine monastic literature. He shows a profound unease about the body and views martyrdom (described and urged in lascivious detail) as a means of freeing oneself from imprisonment in the corrupt physical world for passage into the perfect, ethereal world projected in the icon. This is how he describes this more perfect way of being:

Look at the holy icons and see those who pleased God, and how the good icon painters depicted their images: the face, and hands, and feet and all the senses are thin and exhausted from fasting and labor, and from all the sorrows that befell them. (30)

Avvakum contrasts the ascetic, spiritual ideal with what he sees to be the sensuousness and depravity of his opponents and their Western models. For Avvakum, the realism and sensuousness of the Western style of painting then making inroads in Russia represented a rejection of the heavenly/spiritual realm and a wilfull preference for the fallen world and for sin. Avvakum's repertory of invective against the ‘‘Nikonians’’ centers on fornication, pederasty, and obesity. For him, lack of control over the body is tied to general spiritual failure; the ‘‘Nikonians’’ being mired in corporeality is what allowed the Devil to make use of them.

In his antisomatic tendencies Avvakum reflects the dualist tendency of Russian culture and points in the explicitly dualist direction several of the later Old Believer offshoots would take, to the point where they would on many issues converge with other sects such as the Khlysty, dualist in the strict sense. At the same time, he foreshadows the concerns of later traditionalist peasant moralists, who would be very much preoccupied with problems of sexual misconduct and lack of ritual fast observance in their assessment of modernizing Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

(29) The documents relevant to this controversy are to be found in Kandaritskii, Opyt sistematicheskogo posobiia, pp. 562–564.

(30) Subbotin, Materialy dlia istorii Raskola, vol. 5, p. 300.

IMPLICATIONS FOR SUBSEQUENT RUSSIAN DEVELOPMENT

The thought of the ecclesiastical dissidents of mid-seventeenth century Russia merits attention in its own right as an expression of the crisis of a traditional culture enduring the first strains of modernization. Moreover, this body of ideas, or, more precisely, this way of looking at the world, offers us a means of gaining a better understanding of later Russian cultural development. In terms of direct influence, Avvakum and the others provided the philosophical stance and rudimentary ideology which would be adopted and developed by the Old Believer movement[s] of the Imperial period as the premier expression of Russian radical traditionalism. These Old Believers would in turn have an impact on the attitudes of the ‘‘generic’’ (i.e. non-religious-dissident) peasantry and townsmen. At the same time, this thought provides the basic typology for Russian anti-modern reaction (both of the ‘‘rightist’’ and ‘‘leftist’’ variety). Later generations of Russian conservatives would in effect voice the ideas of the forerunners of the Old Belief, while the Russian revolutionaries would show something of the spirit of Avvakum in their principled rejection of the state of the world, their drive for martyrdom, and their yearning for a total transformation of mankind.

THE OLD BELIEF IN THE PETRINE EMPIRE

The Old Belief emerged as a multi-faceted mass movement in reaction to the cultural turmoil caused by the policies of Peter I. (31) As such, it produced the most forceful and articulate expressions of radical anti-modernist thinking in the Imperial period. In this section, I will focus on the ideas and perceptions of the Old Belief, as opposed to other aspects (social, economic, etc.) of its history. This analysis will, after a certain point, be a-chronological, because the basic categories of Old Believer thought, as well as the specific teachings of various subgroups, were defined rather quickly in reaction to the initial shocks of Peter's reign. The subsequent intellectual history of the Old Belief has essentially been the reiteration and elaboration of ideas generated in the first half of the eighteenth century.

The initial shocks of modernization during the church conflicts of the mid-seventeenth century produced the elite apocalyptic traditionalist reaction analyzed in the first part of this chapter. The much more far-reaching changes wrought by Peter brought disruption to the lives of a much broader swath of Russia's population, and the reaction to them was correspondingly more broad and intense. The anti-Petrine reaction followed the outlines set by the founders of the Old Belief. Avvakum and his cohorts had created a contemporary, anti-Western apocalypticism in Muscovy. In effect, they provided a ready framework for making sense of traumatic events; moreover, this framework was based on the categories and beliefs of the traditional culture. Their ideas achieved a wide currency and relevance as Western models were forcibly imposed on Russia.

(31) In making the distinction between the antecedents of the Old Belief in the seventeenth century and the mass movement which emerged in the Petrine Empire I am following the lead of Georg Michels, At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Stanford, CA , 1999).

THE DEMONIZATION OF THE NEW: QUESTIONS OF PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND LIFESTYLE

Peter went to great lengths in his attempts to impose a contemporary Western appearance on his armed forces and class of servitors, the key tools in his efforts to transform his barbarian kingdom into a great power (Peter's emphasis on these externalities can itself be seen as a type of magical thinking – if one shaves like a European, one will have the wealth and power of the European). His policies were thereby given a concrete and readily discernable visible image which the radical traditionalist opposition – the Old Belief – infused with the full force of their apocalyptic rejection of the current state of things.

In heroic drive to preserve the holistic, religion-based culture of pre-Petrine Muscovy, the Old Believers have shown remarkable conservatism in question of lifestyle. Superficial observers have seen this as plain conservatism and have missed its apocalyptic underpinning: for the Old Believers, adoption of the new ways signified submission to the Antichrist. In other words, this conservatism was not a simple nativist affirmation of the superiority of the traditional Muscovite lifestyle, as many observers have been content to believe, but rather it reflected a pressing and overwhelming fear of perdition.

The most obvious question was, of course, that of external appearance – shaving and wearing of Western dress (it should, however, be stressed at this point that the Old Believers themselves avoided these changes in externalities at the price of the double poll tax [for registered dissenters 1714 <> Beard tax 1698] they paid the eighteenth- century Empire for their limited tolerance). The Old Believers' revulsion at shaving (bradobritie, in the contemporary usage) has at times received a more-or-less condescending treatment in the literature, although, to be sure, the better works stress that the Old Believers fanatical adherence to the beard is in keeping with the position of all traditional religion derived from Mosaic monotheism with its idea of man created in the image of God (thus Orthodox Jews, to cite an obvious example, have shown no less devotion to their facial hair). However, this explanation, although valid, does not do justice to the elaborate, highly charged interpretation which the Old Believers gave to this question. For them, this issue was infused with the significance of the whole, inter-related complex of Orthodoxy, faithfulness to ancestral ways, sexual propriety and the patriarchal order. The Old Believers were fond of quoting the early seventeenth-century Patriarch Filaret, who saw in the shaven male face ‘‘the demonic snare of the lascivious image.’’ (32)

Similarly, Western clothing or ‘‘German dress’’ (nemetskoe plat'e) was a direct assault on Byzantine-derived Muscovite notions of propriety and modesty, and was linked to the question of patriarchal male authority and female chastity. However, the Old Believers were not content to revile the ‘‘German clothes, and related depravities’’ merely because they represented ‘‘love of the flesh and passion for fornication’’; (33) contemporary Western dress was for many of them the concrete ‘‘image of the Antichrist’’ (obraz antikhristov).

The Old Believers similarly found much to be wary of in all products brought from the West. Thus, tobacco, potatoes, sausage, tea (this, of course, was from the East, but it was put in the genral rubric of recent and therefore suspect foreign imports) were rejected. This was not a mere nativist rejection; the traditional Muscovite mind found deep significance in every innovation and made sense of it from the point of view of an all-encompassing religious ideology. Moreover, in their explanations for why these products were unacceptable, the Old Believers used essentially dualist argumentation. Thus, tobacco grew from the corpse of a harlot. (34) The potato was a ‘‘prolific, fornicating plant’’ (mnogoplodnoe, bludnoe rastenie), and had an especially lurid origin, detailed in the following manner in an Old Believer folk legend recorded in Arkhangelsk province in 1916: ‘‘A

princess had relations with a dog. But her nannies told on her – they saw her [breast]feeding the dog. They told the ruler . . . and he ordered that she and the dog be buried in the earth. Potato grew from the dog, and tobacco came from her.’’ (35) Other Old Believer accounts credit the Devil himself in the creation of the suspect plants. In any case, this derivation is a striking assertion of dualist thinking: the Devil (or evil) plays a role in creation, and there is a strong element of aberrant sex in the origin of bad things.

The traditional Muscovite mind quickly found absolute religious reasons to explain the natural or instinctive suspicion or antipathy for the ways and manners of foreigners. This hostility for different ways of doing things is deeply rooted in human nature and manifests itself at all levels of group and individual identification; in the Muscovite case (as in certain others), where identity was tied to religious infallibility and exclusivity, this natural tendency took a religious and absolute form.

Here it is necessary to compare the Russian traditionalist to that of other societies in order to better understand the unique aspects of Russia's traumatic modernization. In most traditional societies exposed to the West, the traditional mind initially focused on ‘‘superficial’’ differences in appearance and habits, infusing the trappings of the West with either glamor and allure (in the case of those predisposed to taking the Westernizing route) or, conversely, decadence and evil (the traditionalist opposition or reaction). For the latter, the European and his ways were frequently associated with the Devil, but also with effeminacy and unnaturalness, and this set of associations often took a disparaging and comical tone. In any case, the foreign devils were (are) rarely accorded a stature equal or superior to that of the force of good (defined as traditional religion). In Muscovy, the traditionalist opposition defined its adversary in the most grave and grim terms, as the Antichrist, the ultimate evil, both in the sense of degree and historical chronology. Any tinge of humorous contempt is totally absent. ‘‘German’’ (i.e. foreign) dress is not effeminate foppery, but ‘‘the image of the Antichrist.’’ The extremity of this opposition derives from the exalted Muscovite conception of self, the Christian eschatological scheme of history and the dualist substratum of Russian culture, which accorded the force of evil a great power in the present order of things. The net result of this was (is) that modernizing change, difficult in any traditional society, was exceptionally traumatic in the Russian case because it was associated with grand, metaphysical evil.

(32) ‘‘[B]ludoliubivogo obraza prelest ' ,’’ cited in Kandaritskii, Opyt sistematicheskogo posobiia, pp. 695–696.

(33) Mid-eighteenth-century book of regulations for a priestless Old Believer sect, reproduced in N. Popov, ed. Sbornik dlia istorii staroobriadchestva (Moscow, 1864), vol. 1, p. 95.

(34) Kandaritskii, Opyt sistematcheskogo posobiia, p. 697.

(35) P. Bogatyrev, ‘‘Neskol'ko legend Shenkurskogo uezda Arkhangel'skoi gubernii,’’ Zhivaia starina 25 (1916) No. 4, p. 075. This story, a variant of old dualist/Old Believer themes, was told by an elderly peasant.

THE IDEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE OLD BELIEF

The creative tension of the Old Belief, the predicament which powered the generation of religious polemics and inquiry as well as the formation of every new factional offshoot, resulted from the unbearably perilous position in which the early Russian conservatives found themselves in the wake of the church reforms of Nikon and the general transformations initiated by Peter. The traditional Muscovite identity had been based on an all-encompassing culture defined by Russian (Muscovite) Orthodoxy. Every aspect of life – belief, government, business, social relations – was regulated and imbued with meaning by a universally accepted religious worldview, and there could be no differentiation or ‘‘scale of values’’ or relevance since everything was part of one seamless garb of life and belief.

For the Old Believers, the fall of the Russian hierarchy and the Russian Tsardom into the abyss of heresy meant, at the very least, that their ideal of Holy Russia had been shattered and, insofar as the Russian Orthodox Tsardom had been the last bastion of Christianity in a heterodox and faithless world, the situation of the universe as a whole was indeed grave, on the verge of or even at the beginning of the End. The creative energy of the Old Belief derived from two related problems – 1) the assessment or analysis of the condition of the world in the wake of the fall of the Orthodox Christian stronghold and 2) the means of maintaining Orthodoxy in these dire circumstances. On the first question, the Old Believers came up with two basic responses – 1) that the world had entered its final period of decline which would result in the reign of the Antichrist and the Second Coming (this was the position of the ‘‘moderate’’ Old Believer factions which retained priesthood through various means) or 2) the reign of the Antichrist had already begun and the world was therefore in the most advanced and dangerous state of defilement (this was the platform of the radical Old Believer denominations which rejected the existing priesthood). The second question, that of adherence to Orthodoxy, posed excruciatingly difficult problems for the Old Believers. Orthodoxy was the definition of Old Believer identity and the reason for the existence of the Old Belief. Yet Orthodox Christianity as a religion offers salvation through the sacraments and purity of faith and teaching. With the fall of the Russian hierarchy into the ‘‘Nikonian heresy’’ the Old Believers were deprived of the episcopate – the source of continuity and legitimacy in sacramental life and the guarantor of Orthodox dogma and church discipline – and, in time, with the loss of the pre-Nikonian dissenting clergy to persecution and death, of the priesthood, the dispenser of the sacraments. Thus, the Old Believers found themselves in the truly tragic position  of being fanatical adherents to the body of Orthodox dogma and canon, the functioning of which absolutely demanded a church hierarchy which they lacked. The Old Believers' heroic efforts to find a way out of this quandary depended in large part on their stand on the question of the apocalypse.

THE ‘‘PRIESTLY ’’ OLD BELIEF (POPOVSHCHINA)

Those Old Believers who decided that the world, for all its problems, had not yet entered the reign of Antichrist have spent the last three centuries devising ways to obtain sacraments. (36) These, the so-called ‘‘priestly’’ or ‘‘priested’’ (Popovtsy) relied on dissident priests who rejected Nikon in the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries, then were forced to make do with renegade priests from the state church in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, until, in the 1840s, they enticed a Greek Metropolitan of Sarajevo [Ambrose of Belaya Krinitsa Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy] who had been deposed by the Ottoman government to join them and consecrate an Old Believer hierarchy, which continues to exist down to the present day. (37) The Popovtsy present much of interest to the historian in social and cultural terms, (38) with their rigidly conservative lifestyle and especially with their huge role in pre-revolutionary Russian commerce and industry, but their intellectual output has been limited to ceaseless vitriolic attacks on the state church and other Old Believer factions, and above all an endless and extremely contorted effort to provide canonical justification for their policies of accepting priests and then a bishop from the loathsome and heretical ‘‘new-rite,’’ Nikonian church. (39)

The apocalyptic expectations of the priestly Old Believers greatly weakened over time. They, arguably, truly deserve the designation of ‘‘old ritualists’’ (staroobriadtsy) since the old rituals were, in the end, all that concerned them in religious terms, and only a vehement hatred of the ‘‘official’’ church inherited from the early days of struggle and persecution prevents most of them from a compromise along the lines of Edinoverie (unity of faith) [Edinoverie], a compromise promulgated by Metropolitan Platon (Levshin) of Moscow at the behest of Catherine II and Paul by which the Old Believers would receive the sacraments reserved for bishops and be allowed to use their old books (including publication of same) and rites if only they recognize the authority of the ‘‘official’’ church. Such recognition was, however, too much to ask of most priestly Old Believers, who had developed into a self contained religious organism in the course of several generations of  persecution and separation. Indeed, the hereditary hatred of the Orthodox Church proved so intense that the dominant ‘‘Austrian’’ faction of the Popovtsy itself underwent schism in the 1860s when its moderate lay leadership advanced the idea that the official church also worshipped God and not Antichrist. (40) By the twentieth century the position of the dominant ‘‘Austrian’’ church was merely to discredit the Orthodox Church, argue for Old Believer moral superiority, and urge Old Believer unity for practical and political gains. Also, it sought to improve its ‘‘public image’’ by distancing itself from and arguing against the principled yet senseless (in the eyes of the ‘‘Austrian’’ establishment) fanaticism of the more extreme Old Believer sects. (41)

(36) For an excellent and extremely readable account of the Old Believers' efforts to maintain a church structure with sacraments, see P. Mel'nikov (Pecherskii), Istoricheskie ocherki popovshchiny, in his Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Saint Petersburg, 1897–1901), vols. 13–14.

(37) For a comprehensive, if hostile, account of the formation of this Old Believer hierarchical church, see N. Subbotin, Istoriia Belokrinitskoi ierarkhii (Moscow, 1874). This church, often referred to by its headquarters in Belaia Krinitsa in the Austrian province of Bukovina, is also called (disparagingly) Austrian. It should be noted at this point that a signicant number of the Popovtsy refused to accept the ‘‘Austrian’’ hierarchy and continued to rely on renegades from the Russian official church ["Those who could not accept the hierarchy continued to accept priests from the Russian Orthodox State Church who had denounced the novelties of Patriarch Nikon. These Old Believers remained Beglopopovtsy." Beglopopovtsy]. These factions were not nearly as prolific in writing and publishing as the ‘‘Austrians,’’ and present little of interest in terms of the development of Old Believer ideas.

(38) For the classic literary account of priestly Old Believer life in the mid-nineteenth century, see Mel'nikov-Pecherskii's novel V lesakh (Moscow, 1955). This work contains a wealth of cultural and ethnographic material.

(39) For a comprehensive summary of the arguments of the various priestly Old Believer factions in the pre-revolutionary period, see Kandaritskii, Opyt sistematicheskogo posobiia.

(40) The ‘‘Encyclical Epistle’’ (Okruzhnoe poslanie) of the 1860s created incredible ideological turmoil among the Popovtsy with its argument that while the old rituals and texts were best, the new ones were not the work of the Devil. The controversy continued into the twentieth century and down to the present day. For the text of the Okruzhnoe poslanie, as well as the main diatribes against it, see N. Subbotin, ed., Perepiska raskol ' nicheskikh deiatelei: Materialy dlia istorii Belokrinitskogo sviashchenstva (Moscow, 1887–1899), 3 vols.

(41) The newspaper Staroobriadets, published in the years after the Edict of Toleration of 1905, conveys the views of the ‘‘Austrian’’ establishment.

THE PRIESTLESS OLD BELIEVER (BEZPOPOVTSY) AND THE PRESENT REIGN OF ANTICHRIST

Much more interesting, from an intellectual point of view, has been the historical development of the radical, ‘‘priestless’’ Old Belief which takes as its starting assumption that the reign of Antichrist has already commenced in the world. This awesome fact, which the Bezpopovtsy understand ‘‘spiritually’’ – i.e., Antichrist is not a person, but ‘‘apostasy,’’ the spirit of the times – has determined the growth and differentiation of the radical Old Belief. (42) Rather than engaging in the canonical contortions of the Popovtsy in obtaining sacraments, the Bezpopovtsy posit that, with the apostasy of the clergy in the present dire time, the priestly sacraments (i.e. those requiring the participation of bishops and priests) have been suspended and the Orthodox must make do without them, and in effect, recognize only baptism, which, according to the canons, can, in extremity, be performed by laymen. Although this stance would seem to suggest a decisive step in the direction of Protestantism (i.e. the redefinition or even rejection of the clergy and sacraments) the great majority of the Bezpopovtsy have never made an ideological break with the idea of the clergy. In principle they adhere to the whole canon of Orthodoxy, the governance and religious life of which necessitate clergy, at the same time as they lack its episcopal and priestly linchpins.

(42) The bezpopovtsy arrived at this understanding of the Antichrist through allegorical, or, as they put it, ‘‘spiritual’’ interpretation of the relevant parts of scripture (for them, the Bible and the corpus of old Russian books). The actual argumentation is rather intricate and has been elaborated by several generations of Old Believer writers. It is not feasable to present the argument here. For a good summary, produced by the Bezpopovtsy themselves, see L. Pichugin, ‘‘O vsepagubnom antikhriste,’’ and I. Zykov, ‘‘Ob antikhriste i prorokakh Enokhe i Ilie,’’ both in Deianiia Pervogo Vserossiiskogo Sobora khristian-pomortsev, priemliushchikh brak (Moscow, 1909), pp. 49–73.

MEANS OF ESCAPE

The process of differentiation and sect formation among the Bezpopovtsy was powered by the search for the proper course of action in the dreadful present circumstances. The basic impulse was separation, whether in a concrete, geographical sense, i.e. flight to remote regions, or a spiritual/cultural one, i.e. strict isolation from the surrounding infidel society (the two could overlap). For some, geographic and cultural remoteness sufficed; this was the formula of the Pomortsy (so named for their original major settlement on the shores – pomor ' e – of the White Sea, which was a fascinating attempt at creating an Old Believer theocratic society), (43) who, having achieved a more or less satisfactory degree of separation tried to lead more or less normal lives, including, for the majority Pomortsy faction, the institution of marriage. The Pomortsy, who found a way of continuing day-to-day life within the circumstances of a prolonged apocalyptic situation, have been the most productive of the Bezpopovtsy in intellectual terms. Their literary creativity was focused on elaborate allegorical interpretation of scripture, religious explanation of and justification for the old ways, polemical attacks on the Orthodox Church and the Popovtsy (considered to be as bad as or worse that the former), and admonitions to the more radical Bezpopovtsy (seen as errant brethren, who, through lack of erudition, misdirect their laudable zeal). The themes they developed are those dealt with throughout this chapter.

(43) There is an excellent study of the Pomortsy in English: R. Crummey, Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: The Old Believer Community at Vyg (Madison, WI , 1970).

COMBATTING THE FLESH: THE FEDOSEEVTSY

The Bezpopovtsy's idea of the present reign of the Antichrist offered an opening for the expression of dualist, antisomatic tendencies present in Russian culture. If the entire world had succumbed to the spirit of apostasy, was it then not, as a whole, defiled and evil? The Bezpopovtsy with this frame of mind broke from the Pomortsy on the question of the possibility of continuing normal life, most specifically – marriage and the family. The fact that they chose this specific issue is yet another manifestation of Russian unease about the body in general and sex in particular, and the radical Bezpopovtsy developed traits of thought and behavior congruent to those of the premier Russian dualist movement – the Khlystovshchina.

Old Believer dualism of a sexual focus was most forcefully expressed by the Fedoseevtsy (after their legendary founder, Feodosii Vasiliev, first half of the eighteenth century), the most numerous and aggressive priestless faction. (44) Ideologically, the Fedoseevtsy were implacably hostile to the Imperial state and taught that the reigning members of the dynasty were the incarnation of the spirit of Antichrist. However, following the general pattern of Russian religious dissent, this theoretical negation never led to open, concrete acts of defiance. Rather, the Fedoseevtsy were content to nurture their hatred of the state in secret and to avoid any moral contamination by withholding spiritual support – in the form of prayers – for the powers that be. This, however, did not prevent the Fedoseevtsy, most notably their great leader, the merchant Il'ia Alekseevich Kovylin (1731–1809), who created their religious center at the Transfiguration (Pre-Preobrazhenskoe) cemetery and hospice in Moscow, from currying favor with the ruling elite through bribery, lavish entertainment, and dissimulatory masking of hostility.

The Fedoseevtsy view the world and majority of society as being totally defiled and corrupted by the current reign of Antichrist. However, this state is a continuous and prolonged one, and the Fedoseevtsy did not withdraw from the world entirely (as did a number of other radical sects,  as we shall see below) but made their living through commerce and crafts. Each transaction and meeting inevitably involved defilement, and the Fedoseevtsy's ideologues devised an elaborate program of cleansing penance and prayers for all the acts of daily life which involved contact with outsiders. (45)

The most striking feature of the Fedoseevtsy was their denial of the possibility of marriage and family in the circumstances of the present reign of Antichrist and the related absence of clergy for the performance of the sacrament of matrimony. Sexual relations unsanctified by matrimony were a mortal sin. Unfortunately, the Fedoseevtsy community as a whole was not capable of abstinence, although their ideological forebears of the seventeenth century, who expected the Second Coming to be imminent, were. Here, the tragedy of the idea of the long-term reign of Antichrist became apparent in its practical consequences. The majority of Fedoseevtsy fell and fell regularly, and a vicious psychological and social pathology developed. The Fedoseevtsy came to loath their bodies and lack of willpower, which kept dragging them into the fatal realm of sin, despite their heroic efforts to maintain ideological and religious purity.

This attitude had tragic implications for the [unwanted] progeny of the sect. The children born out of sin, as concrete products and reminders of the Fedoseevtsy's incontinence, were held up for special revulsion. The children of the Fedoseevtsy were called greshki (little sins) and beseniata

(little demons), (46) and were considered to be members of the camp of Antichrist until they reached maturity and could be admitted to the ranks of the Fedoseevtsy. Thus the dividing line between the saved (hopefully) and the damned ran between parents (individuals, not husband–wife pairs) and their underaged children who, as often as not, were given away to others or, if kept at home, raised in harsh isolation, in keeping with all the canonical regulations, banning contact with heretics (such as, for example, eating at the same table or from the same utensils). The attitude of the Fedoseevtsy toward sex, reproduction and child-raising contributed greatly to the harsh fanaticism of the sect. Also, it shows most clearly the tendency of Russian religious extremism to develop along the lines of the Khlystovshchina. Although the Fedoseevtsy and the Khlysty started from different assumptions, they reached essentially the same conclusion – that the present, physical world was the realm of evil, and adopted strikingly similar policies with regard to sex and children, products of the same.

(44) For a contemporary outsider's account of the life of the Fedoseevtsy in the eighteenth century, see A. Zhuravlev [Ioannov], Polnoe istoricheskoe izvestie o drevnikh strigol ' nikakh i novykh raskol ' nikakh, tak nazyvaemykh staroobriadtsakh (Saint Petersburg, 1799. Reprint: Moscow, 1890), pp. 101–111. For later developments, see Kandaritskii, Opyt sistematicheskogo posobiia, passim, and the relevant article in the recent Staroobriadchestvo: Opyt entsiklopedicheskogo slovaria (Moscow, Tserkov', 1996).

(45) For the Fedoseevtsy regulations on contacts with the heathen (i.e. the majority population) and for their purificatory ritual, see Popov, Sbornik dlia istorii staroobriadchestva, pp. 10–21.

(46) For an example of this usage among the anti-marriage faction, see Pavel (Liubopytnyi), ‘‘Istoricheskii slovar' starovercheskoi tserkvi,’’ ChIOIDR (1863) No. 1, 161.

DESTRUCTION OF THE BODY AS A MEANS OF SALVATION: THE SELF-IMMOLATORS

The sect of the Filippovtsy (named after their founder, the monk Filipp, d. 1743) took the escapist policy of the radical Old Belief to its extreme and fused it with dualist elements. (47) Their cult centered on the means for best escaping the corruption of the present age. Their formula was mortification of the flesh, ranging from extreme fasting to self-immolation. In effect, the Filippovtsy took what had been, for the first generation of the Old Belief, a heroic means of deliverance from impossible circumstances of persecution, and made it the center point of their doctrine, a sacrament to replace those which had been lost. The mental condition which could lead to self-immolation is conveyed in a radical Old Believer verse of the first half of the eighteenth century which begins with the statement that the spirit of Antichrist had entered the world and was trapping all of mankind in his wiles, and then has Christ show true believers the way to salvation:

Do not submit

To that seven-headed serpent,

Flee to the mountains and caves.

Build great bonfires there,

Throw burning sulphur into them,

Burn your bodies.

Suffer for me

and for my Christian faith;

For that I will open to you the chambers of paradise

And lead you into the kingdom of heaven,

And I myself will live with you there forever. (48)

The Filippovtsy shared in the general Bezpopovtsy idea of the long-term reign of Antichrist, so self-immolation was not, for them, an immediate necessity as it had been earlier, but rather a heroic, final exertion to consummate a life of spiritual purification. (49) Self-immolation is a most extreme expression of hostility to the corrupt physical world and the body which keeps the soul trapped in it. In a sense, the Filippovtsy were to the Priestless Old Believer what the Skoptsy were to the Khlysty – that radical element which acted on the hatred of the body. Even their preferred method of self-destruction might fit into a possible Irano-Russian dualist substratum with its idea of the purifying quality of fire. This fire fixation also found expression in a Muscovite textual aberration purged by Nikon but enshrined in the Old Belief that at Epiphany Christ had been baptized with water and fire. Although the Filippovtsy were the only Old Believer sect to focus primarily on self-immolation, members of the Old Belief as a whole (including the Popovtsy) continued to exhibit suicidal tendencies when circumstances seem to close in on them and evoke exceptionally acute apocalyptic forebodings. (50)

(47) For a brief description, see Kandaritskii, Opyt sistematicheskogo posobiia, p. 76, or Zhuravlev [Ioannov], Polnoe istoricheskoe izvestie, pp. 116–120.

(48) Cited in V. Strazhev, ‘‘Petr Velikii v narodnom predanii,’’ Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (No. 3, 1902), 111.

(49) For a gruesome statistical summary of their success in these efforts up to the end of the eighteenth century, see D. Sapozhnikov, ‘‘Samosozhzhenie v russkom raskole so vtoroi poloviny XVII v. do kontsa XVIII ,’’ ChIOIDR (1891) issues 3–4. The latter part of this study is concerned mainly with the Filippovtsy.

SMALLER GROUPINGS

One of the most notable characteristics of the Priestless Old Belief has been its propensity to generate splinters and factions. Of the numerous other smaller Bezpopovtsy groupings it would suffice to mention a couple to illustrate a number of tendencies of the radical Old Belief and thereby, more importantly, to indicate the degree of trauma inflicted on the traditional Russian mind by modernization and the church schism.

One group, the Beguny (escapers, fleers) or Stranniki (wanderers) determined that flight from Antichrist's authorities and constant movement (to prevent being bogged down in the corruption of the present world) as the only possibility for salvation. (51) The Beguny, or, to use their twentieth-

century self-designation 'Istinno-pravoslavnye Khristiane-Stranstvuiushchie' (IPKhS – Truly-Orthodox Christians – Wanderers) were (and are) composed of a monastic core of wanderers supported by a network of settled supporters, who, in theory, will themselves take up the spiritual heroism of wandering when they are ready. The Stranniki avoid any contact with the personnel or accoutrements (passports, etc.) of the state power (whether Imperial or Soviet), which they identify as being that of Antichrist, and the most principled of them refuse to even touch money, since it bears the ‘‘mark of the beast’’ (double-eagle or sickle-and-hammer). (52) However, it is important to note that the Beguny never made the ideological leap into true anarchism – although they denied the legitimacy of the present state power, they never reject the past ideal of the Orthodox Tsardom. The fact that this group of extreme de facto anti-state thrust never took this theoretical step reveals, yet again the great vitality of the Tsarist idea in Russia.

Although small in number, the Beguny are worthy of note for several reasons. First, they were disseminators of apocalyptic ideas and interpretations, mobile missionaries of such views. They took their message not only to the settlements which they visited but also injected it into the pilgrim culture which was such a major part of Russian folk piety, thereby spreading these ideas among the most devout elements of the majority population. Also, they serve as an extreme and dramatic illustration of the alienation caused in traditional Russian society by the modernizing program of the Empire.

Another group, despairing of finding any reliable spiritual authority amidst the competing and mutually exclusive claims of the various factions, took up the practice of auto-baptism (hence their name – the Samokreshchentsy, self-baptizers). One eighteenth-century Self-Baptizer gave an especially eloquent expression of the radical Old Believer theme of the defilement of the present world when he explained why he gathered rain water to carry out the sacrament on himself:

In the time of Antichrist there will be nothing clean on the earth; and therefore today not only all people, livestock and wild animals, but even the elements themselves are infected by the arrival of Antichrist. Therefore, there are no rivers, springs, or wells that have not been defiled by contact with the servants of Antichrist; the seas and lakes are full of the ships and other vessels of Antichrist; in a word, there is no water in which one could baptize oneself. (53)

The Sredniki (Wednesdayers) illustrate the disorientation evoked by Peter's calendar reforms. The Old Belief as a whole thought that Peter had ‘‘stolen eight years from God’’ when he subtracted 5508, and not 5500, from the year since creation to derive the Anno Domini. Numbering was connected with several grave issues, including the Easter cycle, and, more important, predictions of the end of the world. If Peter were the Antichrist and could obscure the real date, he could delude the faithful and lower their guard. The Sredniki took this suspicion even further, and concluded that Peter (or, in another variant, Nikon) had shifted the days of the week, and that which the majority society considered to be Wednesday was in fact Sunday. Therefore, everyone's cycle of fasts, holidays, and above all Sunday services was hopelessly and fatally off. (54) This might seem to be an example of comical obscurantism. However, it offers graphic illustration of two points: the degree of mistrust of Peter and also evil power attributed to him, so extreme that he was deemed capable of something so far-reaching and nefarious as moving the days around, and, equally important, the extent to which everything had been turned upside down by his reforms, so much so that people felt unsure about something as basic as the days of the week. In addition, the confusion among the early twentieth-century Sredniki as to whether Peter or Nikon was responsible for the problem shows that in the folk perception both men had become prototypes of evil change.

Finally, one major faction of the Bezpopovtsy resolved the Old Belief's tragic contradiction – the attempt to maintain Orthodoxy in the absence of an Orthodox episcopate – in a strikingly radical way. First, they concluded that the sacramental and ritual life of Orthodoxy could not be maintained now that grace, as channeled through the clergy, had dried up. From this denial of the possibility of the sacraments and the efficacy of ritual they derived their popular nickname of the Netovshchina (nothingness from ‘‘Net’’ in the sense of ‘‘there is not’’). (55) Further, they posited that in these dire circumstances of the rule of evil the individual believer had no recourse but to the personal guidance of Christ, who would indicate to him or her the right course of action. On the basis of this policy they came up with their chosen self-designation of Spasovo soglasie (the concord, or denomination of the Savior). Thus, out of the cauldron of Old Believer polemics, we have the emergence of a de facto Russian Protestantism. However, it is important to stress that the Spasovo soglasie was not Protestant in the ideological sense. The Netovtsy did not deny the necessity of sacraments and canons in a theological sense, they merely reached the conclusion that they were no longer possible. Although the Netovshchina can be seen as an extremely consequential, and therefore, in a sense, fanatical development of radical Old Believer ideas, it soon led to a kind of religious quietism, and, over time, even indifference, as the Netovtsy came to turn to the Orthodox for birth and marriage certificates, etc. The sacraments had for them no meaning, but the documents greatly eased everyday life in the Empire with its official church.

(50) The census of 1897 induced a number of cases, as did the mobilization of 1914, involving not only suspected Filippovtsy but also Popovtsy. See F. Kruglov, ‘‘Sovremennoe samosozhzhenie v raskole staroobriadchestva,’’ Missionerskoe obozrenie (1916) No. 5/6, 137–145, and Hans-Jakob Tebarth, ‘‘Zur Geschichte der Ersten Allgemeinen Volkszählung des Russischen Reiches vom 28. Januar 1897,’’ JBfGOE 38 (1990) book 1, 81–83.

(51) On a brief outline of the teachings and practice of the Beguny, see Kandaritskii, Opyt sistematicheskogo posobiia, p. 77.

(52) For an account of the stranniki in the late Imperial period, see O. . .n [sic], ‘‘Begun-bezdenezhnik. (Iz zhizni sibirskikh strannikov),’’ Missionerskoe obozrenie (1916) Nos. 7–8, 498–517. For their activities under Soviet rule, see Istinno-Pravoslavnye Khristiane-Stranstvuiushchie (Moscow, 1974).

(53) Partial paraphrase by A. Zhuravlev [Ioannov], Polnoe istoricheskoe izvestie, p. 139. The mention of ships might be a reflection of Peter's role in building the navy.

(54) For a brief summary of the beliefs of this sect at the beginning of the twentieth century, see Deianiia Pervogo Vserossiiskogo Sobora khristian-pomortsev (Moscow, 1909), pp. 28, 145. The author of this report estimates that there are 10,000 sredniki in his area, the second okrug of the Don oblast ' (in 1909).

(55) On the early Netovshchina, Zhuravlev, Polnoe istoricheskoe izvestie, pp. 120–121. On its early twentieth-century condition, see Kandaritskii, Opyt sistematicheskogo posobiia, pp. 77–78. It should be noted that the Netovshchina itself split into a number of smaller sects, but the details of these divisions are not as significant as the overall group's theoretical basis.

TEXTUAL FETISHISM: THE OLD BELIEVER LITERARY/RELIGIOUS COUNTER-CULTURE

One of the most striking characteristics of the Old Belief was its bookishness. In sharp contrast to Orthodox Russian folk piety, and also to other dissident religious movements in Russia, the Old Belief depended for its existence on the written (and printed) word. The Old Belief, especially the radical priestless factions, was maintained by a network of nachetchiki (loosely, ‘‘bookworms’’), who preserved and developed a traditional literature which has continued to exist to the present day alongside modern Russian ‘‘high’’ culture. The guiding theme and main topic of this literature is the Apocalypse.

Following the traumatic loss of the church hierarchy as a source of authority, the zealots of the old ways in Russia were forced to turn to an accepted canon of sacred writing as the guideline to salvation in the perilous times of the apostasy of the clergy and the state. This body of texts, which has served to fuel Old Believer literature and polemics for three centuries, is, in a sense, haphazard, since, in effect, it consists of whatever was printed in Russian Church Slavonic before Nikon (and in a number of cases a few later works). (56) The Old Believer repertoire includes first, but by no  means foremost, the Bible, especially those passages devoted to eschatology, the Kormchaia, or compilation of the rulings of the Ecumenical councils, the basic texts for church services, a number of patristic writings, and a motley assortment of polemical works of the early seventeenth century. (57) This body of writing, known, in sum, as Holy Writ (sviashchennoe pisanie; the Old Believers like traditional Russians in general, did not adopt the Western Reformation's strict distinction between the infallible Bible and other religious writing open to criticism), consisting of a dozen or so volumes, guided the religious life of the Old Believers, served as the point of reference for all questions and, over the past three centuries, has generated an Old Believer literature consisting of thousands of titles. (58) In this literature, all interpretation and argumentation must be buttressed by references to the holy canon. (59) The qualities most valued in a nachetchik were, predictably enough, knowledge, preferably by rote memory, of passages of the canon, and agility and facility in applying it in religious debate. In this respect, and indeed in their textually based religiosity as such, the Old Believers resembled traditional Jews and stood in sharp contrast to the Orthodox folk, which was notably lacking in skills for text-based religious polemics.

Given the essentially patristic nature of its textual base, Old Believer literature was, in a sense, a contemporary revival or manifestation of Byzantine culture on the peripheries of Russian culture in the Imperial [and Soviet] period. For the Old Believers, the religious conflicts of the first millennium of Christianity were of direct relevance, as if they were occurring at present, or at least had taken place just yesterday. Spiritually, the Old Believers of, for example, late nineteenth-century Nizhnii Novgorod lived and thought as if they were contemporaries of the Ecumenical Councils, and in their polemics accusations of Montanism and Donatism fly as immediately understood and directly relevant references. (60) Also, the Old Believers' psychological immersion in this period is an added factor in their stridently hostile attitude toward heretics, i.e. everyone outside of their faction.

In general, the ‘‘priested’’ Old Believers, in keeping with their general relative ‘‘moderation’’ took a more-or-less precise and literal approach to Scripture and were interested mainly in the practical application of church law to justify their various schemes for obtaining and maintaining clergy. The radical Priestless Old Believer considered this to be the fatal ‘‘Jewish’’ heresy of literalism (bukvalism), and, as more authentic exemplars of the Russian imagination adopted spiritual or symbolic understandings of Scripture, which, in effect, meant that there was no limit to speculation as long as it could be more or less plausibly supported by some authoritative quote or another.

The Old Believers' policy of enshrining antiquity had a major impact on the traditional culture. Since the time of Nikon the Orthodox Church, in a modernistic policy of textual criticism and firmer definition of the canon of orthodox religious writing, has systematically weeded out the apocryphal literature which had such a dominant place in the cultural world of the old Russian bookman. The Old Believers, on the other hand, clung to everything old, and thereby, prolonged the cultural life of the medieval apocrypha up to the present.

(56) For a listing and description of the books in the Old Believer canon, see Kandaritskii, Opyt sistematicheskogo posobiia, pp. 113–125.

(57) In another ironic twist, the Old Believers authoritative source for church history is the Russian abridged edition (translated from the Polish) of the monumental achievement of Counterreformation historiography, the Church Annals of Cardinal Caesar Baronius. This work, intended by its author to be an exhaustive and unassailable proof of the primacy of the Pope, served in the Russian context as the Old Believers' favorite source of information on early Christian heresies (the relevance of this subject will be explained below).

(58) For bibliographical description, see V. Druzhinin, Pisaniia russkikh staroobriadtsev (Saint Petersburg, 1912), and Pavel (Liubopytnyi), ‘‘Katalog ili biblioteka starovercheskoi tserkvi,’’ ChIOIDR (1863) No. 1, 1–122. The latter work is especially interesting, since its author was himself a prominent mid-nineteenth-century nachetchik.

(59) It can be argued that Bolshevik science, with its obligatory dependence on ‘‘the classics’’ of Marxism–Leninism, evinced a certain similarity to the Old Believer method.

(60) For a vivid twentieth-century manifestation of this spirit, see Deianiia Pervogo Vserossiiskogo Sobora, pp. 50–59, where the Pomortsy attempt to define other priestless factions in terms of the heresies of the patristic age.

CONCLUSION

The Old Belief is the primary (both in terms of chronology and significance) reaction of the traditional Russian culture to the crisis of modernization. In ideological terms, the essential characteristics of this reaction are the following: (1) the projection onto the past of a utopian ideal, the main features of which are purity and unanimity in faith and practice, (2) a ‘‘holistic’’ outlook, which views all aspects of belief and life as part of an all-encompassing and absolute whole, (3) the idea that Russia plays the central role in the eschatalogical scheme of history, (4) interpretation of events in the light of the above ideas, leading to an apocalyptic understanding of modernization and a demonization of the features and carriers of modernity. In terms of practice, the Old Belief manifested the following characteristics: (1) escapist and isolationist tendencies of varying degrees of extremism, at times associated with a dualist-type hostility to the body, (2) intense doctrinal absolutism and factionalism within the context of a bookish religiosity. The Old Belief can act as a typology for Russian anti-modernism, insofar as most subsequent Russian extremist movements (of both the Left and Right) have exhibited many of the patterns of thought and behavior outlined above. Of the most direct relevance to this thesis, the Old Believers – who were a most vivid and active part of Russian social and cultural life at the beginning of this century – can enhance our understanding of the great mass of the traditional Russian people insofar as they reflected and influenced peasant attitudes toward modernization and the Westernizing strata in Russia.

CHAPTER 3

The sectarians: dualism and secret history

Although the majority of its Russian subjects were members of the ‘‘official’’ Orthodox Church, Imperial Russia generated a great variety of religious dissident groupings. These religious forms are in themselves a fascinating field for inquiry, and familiarity with them is essential for an adequate understanding of Russian culture. (1) Insofar as historians have paid attention to the topic, it has been the usual practice to categorize the ‘‘sectarians’’ as being in sharp and total distinction to Orthodoxy. This approach derives from the nineteenth century, when the literary-propagandistic efforts of two mutually antagonistic groups – the radical opposition and the Orthodox clergy – created the standard picture of the Russian sectarian as the enemy of Orthodoxy and established order. The pre-revolutionary intelligentsia was quite correct in seeing the Orthodox Church as a bulwark of autocracy, but it deluded itself when it assumed that dissent from the Church was a total rejection of Orthodoxy and therefore a harbinger of a fervently awaited general popular rejection of Tsarism. Conversely, the Orthodox clergy was justified in seeing dissent as a repudiation of ecclesiastical authority and separation from the Church, but wrong in portraying it as a complete break with piety and a first step to open sedition. From a cultural–historical perspective, the picture is quite different – rather than setting off in radically-new directions, the various sects took specific elements of the general traditional culture to their extreme and thereby offered vivid illustrations of the underlying (and oftentimes obscured) tendencies of that culture. This is particularly the case with regard to the sectarian assessments of the nature and workings of the world which will be the focus of the following pages.

(1) For example, few Western specialists in Russian history have more than a vague (and usually very skewed) notion of what a Khlyst was, while most can give a competent summary of the factional splits within Russian revolutionary populism. Even in simple numerical terms, there were many more Khlysty than members of ‘‘Land and Freedom,’’ and the dynamics of the latter group are more readily understood if one has an awareness of the Russian sectarian tradition.

SOURCES AND HISTORIOGRAPHY: THE POLITICIZATION OF THE SUBJECT

The study of Russian sectarianism presents a number of severe methodological and analytical problems. Foremost among these is the nature of the source base, which has, by and large, been assembled by people with an agenda other than knowledge for its own sake. Beginning with Metropolitan Dimitrii (Tuptalo) of Rostov at the turn of the eighteenth century, the Orthodox Church took the lead in the collection of information on the sects. The purpose of this investigation was not to gain a theoretical understanding of the sects, but rather to serve the utilitarian ends of aiding Orthodox missionaries charged with bringing stray sheep back into the fold. (2) The Orthodox Church and the Imperial Administration held a monopoly on the study of sectarianism until the mid-nineteenth century, when the Russian opposition entered the field with the hope of finding evidence of popular socialist and anti-autocratic inclinations, and with the intention of documenting persecution of the sects in order to discredit the regime. (3) Despite their biases and ulterior motives, both rival camps of researchers did succeed in amassing a large volume of invaluable material and, with the maturation of Russian learning in the last decades of the Empire, made significant contributions to the scholarly understanding of sectarianism. Without their work, the study of the religious dissident movement would be well-nigh impossible, because the sectarians themselves offered little material for outside consumption. This secretiveness was not merely the result of generations of persecution at the hands of the regime, but more important, a reflection of the general sectarian hostility to the outside world.

(2) For a characteristic example of the vast literature produced by the ecclesiastics, see any issue of Missionerskoe obozrenie (The Missionary Review). In the course of its existence in the last three decades of the old regime, this periodical changed its subtitle from the forthright, if rather harsh, ‘‘An Antisectarian Journal,’’ to the more mild ‘‘A Journal of Christian Apologetics,’’ before settling on the neutral and accurate ‘‘Organ of the Domestic Mission.’’

(3) The revolutionary collection of material on sectarianism, begun in the 1860s by men such as Herzen's cohort Kel'siev and the populist Pryzhov, reached its apogee with the publication of the monumental six-volume Materialy k istorii i izucheniiu russkogo sektantstva (Saint Petersburg, 1908–1916), compiled by the Bolshevik V. Bonch-Bruevich. For a description and analysis of the efforts of two prominent populist writers, see M. Comtet's ‘‘S. M. Stepnjak-Kravčinskij et la Russie sectaire 1851–1895,’’ Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique (1971, No. 4), 422–438, especially useful on the political/propagandistic aspect, and the same author's ‘‘V. G. Korolenko et les sectes russes (1853–1921),’’ Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique (1973, No. 3), 281–307. For an evaluation of Bonch-Bruevich's work, see E. Müller, ‘‘Opportunismus oder Utopie? V. D. Bonč-Bruevič und die russischen Sekten vor und nach der Revolution,’’ Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (1987, No. 4), 509–533.

There have been three basic approaches to the problem of Russian sectarianism. Orthodox churchmen focused almost exclusively on the doctrinal aspect of the sects and offered little by way of social or historical context. Most of the church literature was produced with the intention of providing Orthodox missionaries with a succinct and ostensibly complete summary of sectarian beliefs and practices for the purpose of polemics, and its major drawback is over-systemization. (4) By far the most pernicious effect of the clerics' efforts has been the basic categorization, adopted in various forms by later scholars, of sects as either ‘‘mystic’’ or ‘‘rationalist.’’ The less troublesome former term was applied to sects of religious ecstatic nature, while the latter label was attached to groups who rejected Church ritualism and patristic tradition in favor of the Bible as the sole source of teaching. The ‘‘rationalist’’ designation has created the completely false notion that sects such as the Dukhobory or Molokane were somehow analogous to contemporary mainline Western Protestantism, or at least to Tolstoy's religious teaching, and has greatly obscured the intensely mystical essence of these groups. Moreover, the surface similarity to Protestantism (the application of what seems to be the principle of sola scriptura) masks an underlying truth of the utmost importance for the understanding of traditional Russian culture – in Russia, there was no ‘‘fundamentalism’’ in the sense of Biblical literalism. Among religious dissidents in particular all scripture was interpreted ‘‘spiritually,’’ i.e. symbolically, which meant in effect that there was almost no limit to speculation and imagination.

The revolutionary populist students of the question focused on the sectarians' communitarian or communistic tendencies and on their evangelical social morality. (5) This in itself is useful and revealing, but the populists evinced little interest in or understanding for the esoteric teachings which lay at the basis of the material and moral aspects of sectarianism that the revolutionaries found so appealing. The approaches of both the missionaries and the populists were essentially a-historic – the clerics viewed the sects as the work of enemies, both corporeal and ethereal, the revolutionaries saw religious dissent as an expression of the eternal human yearning for freedom and brotherhood in the face of oppression and exploitation.

(4) See, for example, T. I. Butkevich, Obzor russkikh sekt i tolkov, s izlozheniem ikh proiskhozhdeniia, rasprostraneniia i veroucheniia i s oproverzheniem poslednego (Saint Petersburg, 1915), 2nd edn.

(5) For a classic exposition of the revolutionary populist approach, see A. Prugavin, Religioznye otshchepentsy (Saint Petersburg, 1904).

In the person of Pavel Miliukov [Russian historian and liberal politician], Russian Liberalism made a heroic attempt at providing a general, historical explanation for the phenomenon of Russian sectarianism by applying the then-current European historical self-conception to the Russian case. In Miliukov's view, Russia was belatedly (as always) but inevitably (of course) following the path set by Western Europe – Russian sectarianism, like the Protestant Reformation, represents the struggle of the spiritual to free itself of the ritual, the revolt of the human mind against authority and tradition. (6) Implicit in this approach is the conviction that the process will result in the triumph of reason and science. Insofar as the sects, at least on the surface, were evidence of breakdown of traditional religious cohesion, Miliukov may have been right in his assumptions on the direction of developments; however, in the narrower sense of analyzing the sects themselves, Miliukov was sorely inadequate in his understanding of the mystic and radically anti-rational nature of his subjects.

In the Soviet period, the assaults of Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev on religion generated most of the literature on sectarianism and set the tone for all discussion of the subject. However, it was also under the Soviets that the most serious effort at giving the study of sectarianism a social scientific basis was made. In contrast to earlier writing, Soviet research on the religious dissidents is marked by a strong reliance on statistics; the Soviets then make this mass of numbers fit the analytical framework set by Engels: at each stage of historical development, religious movements emerge as an expression of protest against the existing system of exploitation and serve to undermine moral authority of the reigning order. However, they are in turn co-opted or highjacked by new, emerging oppressor classes who use them to legitimize their own, new stage of exploitation (if one views Communism as a quasi-religion, Engels's analysis fits the history of Bolshevik Russia quite well). (7)

In a sense, the literature on the religious dissidents is emblematic of the study of the Russian people as a whole. Analysis has been greatly skewed by the ideologies and political agenda of the opposing camps of the Russian elite. In viewing the peasantry in general as well as the sectarians in particular, researchers as well as politically engaged literary figures saw what they needed to buttress their own programs. (8) Since the Western study of Russia has, in large measure, been a development of the body of ideas created by Russian scholars at the turn of the century (as well as of the images depicted by writers of artistic literature), their biases have entered very deeply into the field. The legacy of politicized Russian elite perceptions has fused with Western materialism and tone-deafness in matters of traditional religion to produce statements such as the following, which may be seen as typical of Western treatment of the topic: ‘‘Theological differences [among the sects] do not concern us here – they seem to have been insignificant in any case – but each of these dissident movements arose and developed in a particular social setting and reflected the interests and aspirations of some specific group.’’ (9) In the following pages I will argue the exact opposite – that ‘‘theological differences’’ were the raison d 'être for the sects, and that Russian religious dissent reflected development in the realm of ideas, and not of mundane, socio-economic concerns. In doing so, I will be contributing to the most recent trend in scholarship that properly places religious belief at the center of the study of the history of religious movements. (10)

(6) P. Miliukov, Ocherki po istorii russkoi kul ' tury, 2nd edn. (Saint Petersburg, 1898), vol. 2.

(7) The premier exposition of the Soviet scientific approach is A. I. Klibanov, Istoriia religioznogo sektantstva v Rossii (60-e gody XIX v.–1917g.) (Moscow, 1965).

(8) For an expansive and insightful treatment of how members of the late Imperial elite dealt with the topic of sectarianism, see Aleksandr Etkind, Khlyst: Sekty, literatura i revoliutsiia (Moscow, 1998).

SCOPE OF THE INVESTIGATION

A religious cultural analysis can provide a more satisfactory explanation for the phenomenon of Russian sectarianism. Rather than being an expression of one or another form of socio-economic discontent, the Russian sects were a response to the same overwhelming and simple fact that has given rise to all religion and philosophy – life is hard and ends in death. Different cultures deal with this reality in various ways. The Russian religious dissident groups provided a number of strikingly vivid answers to the general problems of human existence. Although the sects were hostile to the ‘‘official’’ Orthodox Church, they did not escape the cultural sphere of Orthodoxy – sectarian belief-systems were comprised of selected and exaggerated Orthodox teachings and attitudes, applied to specific matters of particular concern. In the late Imperial period, adherence to a religious dissident group was determined by family tradition or personal psychological formation and experience, and not by socio-economic oppression.

From the point of view of this study the primary interest of the sects lies in their illustration of the workings of the Russian traditional culture – how various individuals and groups of an acute religious sensibility used the categories of that culture to make sense of the world and of the things happening in it. Although the sects varied in terms of their provenance, teachings and religious practice, one can discern a stark underlying unity in the sectarian understanding of the world and the direction in which it is heading. This basic consistency underneath the confusion and contradictory superficialities of Russian sectarianism can in turn enhance our understanding of a number of the categories of Russian culture and thought. For the purposes of this discussion I will begin with a detailed analysis of the world view and eschatology of the Khlysty, (11) and then of two distinct movements – the Skoptsy (Castrators) and New Israel – generated by the Khlystovshchina. Finally, I will make incidental references (that is, without a complete summary of teachings and practice) to several other sectarian groupings in the course of elaborating a number of conclusions.

(9) S. and E. Dunn, The Peasants of Central Russia (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), footnote, p. 30.

(10) For Russian sectarianism, I can point to two exemplary works, one Russian – A. A. Panchenko's Khristovshchina i skopchestvo: Fol ' klor i traditsionnaia kul ' tura russkikh misticheskikh sekt (Moscow, 2002), and one American – Laura Engelstein's Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: a Russian Folktale (Ithaca, NY , 1999).

THE KHLYSTY: DUALISM AND ARCANE KNOWLEDGE

[Хлысты

Происхождение

В вопросе о происхождении хлыстов можно выделить следующие точки зрения. Во-первых, это представление о влиянии западно-европейских протестантских мистических сект и масонства. Во-вторых, гипотеза более раннего южного влияния болгарских богомилов, а через них ещё более древнего манихейства. В-третьих, взгляд на хлыстов как русское самобытное явление, генетически связанное со славянским язычеством и эзотеризмом. Наконец, в-четвёртых, это точка зрения также признающая самобытное происхождение хлыстов, но связывающая их с христианскими явлениями религиозной жизни XVII века: преимущественно, русской православной традицией исихазма с идеей «обожения» и радикальными толками старообрядчества.

История

Несмотря на то, что в песнях хлыстов есть указания на деяния их учителей ещё во времена Дмитрия Донского и Ивана Грозного, основателем секты ими же считается крестьянин Костромской губернии Данила Филиппович (Филиппов). Предание гласит, что в 1645 году в Стародубской волости Муромского уезда Владимирской губернии, в приходе Егорьевском, на горе Городина, сошёл на землю сам Господь Саваоф и вселился в плоть Данилы Филипповича и дал людям 12 новых заповедей. В дальнейшем Данила Филиппович жил в Костроме и умер на сотом году жизни 1 января 1700 года. Так как по учению хлыстов Господь Саваоф сошёл на землю лишь однажды, то преемники Данилы Филипповича были уже «Христами» (помимо христов-преемников в каждой общине также были свои христы). Первым Христом стал Иван Тимофеевич Суслов, проживавший в селе Павлов Перевоз Нижегородской губернии. Второй Христос — Прокопий Данилович Лупкин, живший сначала в Нижнем Новгороде, а позднее в Москве. При Христах были и «Богородицы»: имя первой не известно, а вторую звали Акулина Ивановна. В 1716, 1721 и 1732 годах были возбуждены первые судебные дела о хлыстах. По указу императрицы Анны Иоанновны от 7 июня 1734 г. можно судить о популярности христоверия не только среди крестьянства, но и среди «разных чинов людей». В этой «ереси были многие князья бояре, боярыни и другие разных чинов помещики и помещицы; из духовных лиц архимандриты, настоятели монастырей». Там же отмечается, что имелись целые монастыри, мужские и женские, поголовно уклонявшиеся в хлыстовщину. В 1739 году Сенат постановил выкопать и сжечь тела Ивана Суслова и Прокопия Лупкина, ранее похороненные в Московском Ивановском женском монастыре, в котором они пользовались влиянием среди монашествующих. Вероятно, движение хлыстов с самого начала не было жестко централизовано, являясь своего рода ассоциацией независимых общин.

Исихазм

Исиха́зм (от др.-греч. ἡσυχία, «спокойствие, тишина, уединение») — христианское мистическое мировоззрение, древняя традиция духовной практики, составляющая основу православного аскетизма.

Hesychasm is a mystical tradition of contemplative prayer in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Based on Jesus's injunction in the Gospel of Matthew that "when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray", hesychasm in tradition has been the process of retiring inward by ceasing to register the senses, in order to achieve an experiential knowledge of God (see Theoria).

Hesychast controversy

About the year 1337, hesychasm attracted the attention of a learned member of the Orthodox Church, Barlaam, a Calabrian monk who at that time held the office of abbot in the Monastery of St Saviour in Constantinople and who visited Mount Athos. Barlaam took exception to, as heretical and blasphemous, the doctrine entertained by the Hesychasts as to the nature of the uncreated light, identical to that light which had been manifested to Jesus' disciples at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, the experience of which was said to be the goal of Hesychast practice. His informants said that this light was not of the divine essence but was contemplated as another hypostasis. Barlaam held this concept to be polytheistic, inasmuch as it postulated two eternal beings, a visible (immanent) and an invisible (transcendent) God.]

There are three main reasons for emphasis on the Khlysty. First of all, the Khlystovshchina represents by far the broadest and most deeply rooted Russian sectarian movement, and can be seen as an acute expression of certain basic elements of popular Russian religious consciousness. Second, and organically related to this, other Russian religious dissident movements large and small, both of indisputably Orthodox (as in the case of the Johannites and Enochites) and Protestant (e.g. the evangelical Shtunda) origin strongly tended to develop in the direction of Khlystovshchina or, at the very least, to generate offshoots of a pronounced Khlyst character both in world view (dualism, hostility to the physical world, and especially the human body, worship of their leaders as Christ) and religious practice (above all mortification of the flesh, but also to a more limited extent ecstatic religiosity). Third, the historical picture of the Khlysty is distorted to an extent that is extreme even by the standards of the field of Russian studies, and the following is intended in part as a corrective to the prevailing view. (12)

Since this work is concerned primarily with the sectarian worldview, this discussion of the Khlystovshchina will be based primarily on the religious folklore of the Khlyst ecstatic rituals (radeniia, from radet ' ) (Russian soft studies ‘‘to work,’’ in the sense of doing God's work and mortifying the body and not, as one might presume, radet ' , ‘‘to rejoice’’) [радеть, по- a. oblige, take care оказывать содействие, заботиться о ком-чём-н..; у нек-рых сектантов: совершать обряд с песнопением, беганьем, кружением <> радовать, об-] [радение = устар. действие по значению гл. радеть; устар. результат такого действия; забота о ком-либо или о чём-либо; устар. старание, усердие; религ. обряд в некоторых религиозных сектах (скопцов, хлыстов и т. п.), сопровождаемый самоистязанием и другими действиями, совершаемыми в состоянии религиозного экстаза, фанатического исступления]. One ninteenth-century authority on the Khlysty succinctly argued for reliance on this source: (13)

The composition of the [Khlyst] songs is the province of the prophets, who are required during each of the radeniia to compose or improvise a ‘‘new song to the Lord’’ . . . They [the songs] represent a rich and in some cases sole source for analysis of the sect of the Khlysty. In many of them we find a mass of dogmatic and moral ideas . . . Although these thoughts are often expressed . . . incompletely and [are scattered] in various songs, if compiled and grouped together they can form something of a whole . . . The value of the songs as a source . . . is also raised by the fact that, because of the dearth of other sources, they are in fact the [only] primary sources. In addition, the songs are free and spontaneous creations of the Khlysty in which they [the Khlysty] pour out their thoughts and feelings, the way they actually think and feel . . . The official [court] statements of the Khlysty are in most cases marked by insincerity and therefore inaccuracy; in contrast, in their songs one can find more sincerity and truthfulness. (14)

(11) Any discussion of Russian sects is complicated by the difficult question of terminology, since most sects had numerous names. The sectarians themselves usually used one or more designations which meant little to outsiders, who normally referred to them by some (pejorative) nicknames. In this case, these particular sectarians often called themselves the Khristova vera (Christ's faith) or Khristovovery. Among the population at large, they were known as Khlysty, which is apparently a corruption or folk etymology of the sectarians' own term and which is connected to the verb khlestat ' , ‘‘to flagellate,’’ from this sect's practice of the mortification of the flesh ['Khlyst', the name commonly applied to them, is a distortion of the name they used. The original name was the invented word Христововеры (Khristovovery, "Christ-believers") or Христы (Khristy). Their critics corrupted the name, mixing it with the word хлыст (khlyst), meaning "a whip". It is also possible that the word 'Khlysty' is related to the Greek word 'χιλιασταί' (=millennialists, chiliasts; pronounced 'khiliasté'), or with "klyster"[citation needed], meaning "one that purges". Millennialism has many different branches and sects and their teachings have common points with those of the Khlysty.]. Some researchers, presumably in the interests of scrupulous objectivity, used the sectarian term (see, for example, Klibanov, Istoriia religioznoga). I will follow the lead of others, such as Panchenko, who, while showing no hostility toward the sectarians, nevertheless use the somewhat pejorative, but generally accepted, popular term.

(12) For a recent example, see Figes's People ' s Tragedy, p. 29, where you have the entire litany of

misconceptions, the Khlysty described as being ‘‘semi-pagan,’’ as believing in sin as the first step

to redemption, as engaging in group sex as an essential part of their religious practice. Thus, the

Khlystovshchina, which is in fact one of the most extreme manifestations of the ascetic impulse,

appears as some sort of orgiastic, Dionysian cult.

(13) We are fortunate to have an excellent and exhaustive collection of these songs: T. S. Rozhdest-

venskii and M. I. Uspenskii, eds., Pesni russkikh sektantov mistikov, Zapiski Imperatorskogo Rossis-

skogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva po Otdeleniiu Etnografii, vol. 35 (1912) [Песни русских сектантов мистиков. Записки Императорского Русского Географического Общества по отделению этнографии.], which, in addition to original material gathered by the editors, contains everything of relevance to the topic from the massive Bonch-Bruevich compendium as well as many sources drawn from periodical literature.

(14) K. Kutepov, Sekty khlystov i skoptsov (Kazan, 1882), p. 5.

The actual history of the Khlystovshchina will not be covered here; (15) rather, I will provide a sketch of its mythic history as remembered by adherents, using Khlyst material from the latter half of the nineteenth century.

According to a dominant current of Khlyst lore in that period, Christ's faith (Khristova vera, whence the popular usage ‘‘Khlyst’’) was restored to earth by God in the person of the Iur'evets peasant and army deserter Danila Filippov, who, in 1631, declared existing religious ritual and doctrine to be corrupt, burned the holy books, and began to expound (or reassert) his own, pristine, teaching, complete with an enhanced set of Twelve Commandments, which it would be worthwhile to cite, as they give a good insight into the Khlyst mindset:

1. I, Danila, am God, foretold by the prophets; I am come down to earth to save people's souls; there is no other God, but me.

2. There is no other teaching. Do not look for one.

3. Where I have placed you, there you should stand firm.

4. Obey God's commandments and you will be universal fishers [of men].

5. Do not drink strong drink and do not commit the sin of the flesh.

6. Do not marry, and whoever is married, live with your wife as if she were your sister. The unmarried should not marry, and the married should get unmarried (zhenimye razzhenites ' ].

7. Do not speak obscene words or obscenity (skvernosloviia).

8. Do not go to weddings and christenings and do not take part in drunken gatherings.

9. Do not steal. If someone steals even one kopeck, in the next world that kopeck will be put on top of his head and he will not receive forgiveness until the flames of hell have melted the kopeck.

10. Keep these commandments in secret, telling neither father nor mother; if they beat you with the knout and burn you with flame – hold fast. He who holds fast to the end is faithful; he will receive the kingdom of heaven, and spiritual joy here on earth.

11. Visit one another, show hospitality to one another, love one another, follow my commandments, pray to God.

12. Believe the Holy Spirit. (16)

(15) For the best recent effort at that, see Panchenko, Khristovshchina [Панченко А.А."Христовщина и скопчество: Фольклор и традиционная культура русских мистических сект" / Часть I Часть II Часть III], pp. 101–231. Of particular relevance to the argument of the present work, Panchenko derives the Khlystovshchina entirely from Christian ascetiscism and apocalyptic belief.

(16) Butkevich, Obzor russkikh sekt, pp. 19–20.

A Khlyst song on the manifestation of God/Danila in his ‘‘Jerusalem on High’’ of Kostroma [It is said to have been founded by a peasant, Daniil Filippovich, (or Filippov), of Kostroma.], contains many of the elements of this teaching at the same time as it shows the Khlyst assessment of the state of the world:

It was upriver from Iur'evets and downriver from Kineshma,

Dark forests grew, Forests dark and slumbering.

In those dark forests. God's people worked their salvation,

They ate leaves and roots, Day and night they prayed to God.

Day and night they served Christ, They poured out their tears,

They withered their bodies, They went about unclothed,

They burned in the heat, They froze in the cold,

They endured want and sorrow, They sought the Kingdom of God. God's people

gathered in holy circle . . .,

They prayed to heaven above, They raised their arms to heaven,

To entice Christ to new torments, To call God down from heaven to earth.

In the whole wide world the true faith was no longer to be found,

In the whole world grace had dried up.

Then a radiant falcon flew down from . . . seventh heaven . . . and granted comfort

to God's people

And prepared for them the kingdom of Heaven.

It is not a crooked little boat that's floating down the Volga,

It is a little ship that's sailing on the sea of life,

At the helm stands the Savior himself, guiding the boat toward blessed paradise. (17)

The imagery and terminology of Khlyst folklore express in vivid poetic form the sectarian moral negation of the existing world. For the Khlysty the word ‘‘world’’ (mir) is charged with negative associations and is defined as the whole complex of physical needs (above all, but by no means exclusively, sexual) which tie the soul down and impede its strivings for salvation and freedom. (18) The Khlysty focus their hatred of the physical on the human body, the symbol and concrete form of the soul's imprisonment in the material world, calling it ‘‘the evil growth’’ – (zloe zel 'e) – ‘‘the fearsome inner viper’’ (liutyi vnutrennyi zmii'), or ‘‘cruel, blind nature,’’ (19) and direct special loathing at [their] children, ‘‘little sins’’ (‘‘greshki’’), the product and evidence of the inability to restrain bodily passions. (20)

The most common Khlyst symbol (and one derived from standard traditional Christian imagery) for the world is the sea, not in the sense of some Mediterranean paradise of blue waters and sun-washed shores but the ocean as perceived by the land-locked Central Russians, a terrible condition of storms, full of turbulence and imminent and overwhelming peril. Along these lines, the Khlyst community as a whole, as well as individual local groupings, are usually referred to as a ship (korabl ' ), in which the small flock of the elect try to weather the mortal threats of life in the corrupt physical world (the ship imagery also conveys the Khlyst ideal of total separation and escape from the surrounding world). The Khlysty refer to themselves in terms such as ‘‘doves,’’ ‘‘sheep,’’ ‘‘orphans,’’ which evoke the idea of innocence, timidity, and powerlessness, while they call the hostile majority society ‘‘the evil world,’’ ‘‘the faithless race,’’ ‘‘thieves,’’ ‘‘the cruel predator,’’ or ‘‘the fiery river.’’ (21)

At the top of the demonic world order lurk the ‘‘black ravens,’’ the state and ecclesiastical authorities who hound and torment the Khlysty. The Khlysty call the governors, police officials and bishops who comprise the worldly establishment ‘‘bloodthirsty beasts,’’ ‘‘vicious wolves,’’ ‘‘godless Jews’’ (bezbozhnye iudei), ‘‘Pharisees,’’ ‘‘Sadduccees,’’ etc. (Here it must be stressed that the Khlysty, like traditional Russians in general, differentiate between [Biblical] Israel, with which they identify themselves, and the ‘‘evil’’ Jews). It is of the utmost importance to stress that the Khlyst assessment of the world and the terminology used to express it are drawn from Christianity in general and Russian Orthodoxy in particular. The Khlyst and the Orthodox would differ in the acuteness and intensity of their perceptions, but they would agree with St. Paul that the whole world is mired in evil, and they would see taming the flesh as an arduous necessity for salvation. Indeed,

Khlyst asceticism can be seen as an extreme folk application of the Orthodox monastic ideal, as ‘‘the elaboration (by religious virtuosi among the common people) of very Orthodox traditions.’’ (22) Khlyst lore is also quite striking in its combination of ecclesiastical language and imagery with popular diction – older material is highly reminiscent of traditional oral poetry, while the early twentieth-century productivity of the Khlyst ‘‘New Israel’’ bears the unmistakeable stamp of the newspaper style. Rather than being an alien, ‘‘un-Orthodox’’ phenomenon, the Khlystovshchina was (and is) a radical elaboration and exaggeration of a number of fundamental ideas of the traditional Russian religious culture, expressed in popular language.

(17) Ibid., pp. 4–5, first published by Mel'nikov Pecherskii in 1873.

(18) Unless otherwise noted, this discussion of Khlyst vocabulary is based on the glossary of Rozhdestvenskii and Uspenskii, Pesni russkikh sektantov, pp. xi–lv.

(19) Kutepov, Sekty khlystov, pp. 307–308.

(20) Ibid., p. 314. Khlyst discomfort with the functions of the flesh was reflected in special contempt for the person of the midwife (see, for example, T. A. Listova, ‘‘Russkie obriady, obychai i pover'ia, sviazannye s povival'noi babkoi (vtoraia polovina XIX -20-e gody XX v.),’’ in Russkie: Semeinyi i obshchestvennyi byt (Moscow, 1989), p. 146). This attitude toward children is also related to the deep revulsion the Khlysty felt at the sight or thought of swarms of small, crawling things as manifestations of the filth and corruption of the world. For an analogy to this see the attitude of one late nineteenth-century Khlyst subgroup toward food: ‘‘The most revolting, the most unclean thing people eat [is] the egg . . . for it contains (potentially) not only meat (the chick), but all sorts of insects and serpents and unclean things, because the chicken eats not only grain but also insects, worms, even snakes, and picks through filthy manure.’’ M. A. Kal'nev, ‘‘Novokhlysty Kubanskoi oblasti’’ in Kal'nev, ed., Russkie sektanty, p. 217. The Khlyst aversion to children and crawling things is an extreme reflection of a basic unease which is deeply rooted and reflected in language. See, for example, M. Vasmer, Etimologicheskii slovar ' russkogo iazyka (Moscow, 1964), gaved ' – Russ. ‘‘trash, abomination,’’ Polish ‘‘gawiedź ’’ – ‘‘little children; chicks; parasites,’’ etc., vol. 1, p. 379.

(21) Kutepov, Sekty khlystov, p. 333.

(22) Eugene Clay, ‘‘The Theological Origins of the Christ-Faith (Khristovshchina),’’ Russian History, vol. 15, no. 1, Spring, 1988, p. 23. Although one might take issue with details of his argument (e.g. the derivation of the radeniia from Hesychasm), Clay deserves great credit for placing the ‘‘ChristFaith’’ in the traditional Orthodox context, and not assuming ‘‘pagan’’ origins as many scholars do.

The guiding theme of Khlyst religious folklore is an intense yearning to escape the wiles and entrapments of the corrupt physical world and to find salvation and peace in the spiritual realm: ‘‘farewell dark world, I hasten toward the heavenly city, toward blessed, radiant paradise.’’ This desire to escape the world is not static, i.e. it does not assume that the coexistence of the evil physical world and spiritual paradise will last forever. Rather, Khlyst belief is apocalyptic and based on the conviction that things as they are cannot continue and that the resolution of the conflict is at hand. (23) The expectation of the imminent end fortified the Khlyst in their spiritual endeavors, for, as their leaders admonished them: ‘‘Friends, the last dread judgment is near! God will come to judge like a thief [in the night].’’ (24) The pathos of the Khlyst religious life lay in the heroic effort to keep from getting mired down in the muck of the world and to hold out until the fast approaching redemption. As one song put it, ‘‘We must think and plan, brothers, how we are to live out this last remaining time.’’ (25)

For the Khlyst the method for holding out was severe mortification of the flesh. This involved intense fasting, abstinence from meat, abstinence from liquor and tobacco, and exhaustion of the body in religious rituals of jumping and dancing. (26) The essential condition for making this struggle against the body (and, by extension, the world) successful was direct inspiration from God, through the medium of his Christ[s] and prophets. (27) Here we come to those elements of Khlyst religious belief and practice that most impressed and shocked outside observers: 1) the use of rhythmic movements and chant to achieve an ecstatic state and 2) the belief that certain charismatic leaders of the movement were Christ, their consorts – the Virgin Mary, their cohorts – apostles and prophets. (28) Hope for the final and decisive triumph of good over evil was tied to each individual in this series of Christs, and the eschatology of the Khlysty therefore centers on their lives and persons.

Although only scattered fragments of this mythology remain, it appears that the Khlysty created an alternate or secret history of the world (that is, Russia), especially for more recent times. This ‘‘history’’ was based on the Khlyst idea of the parallel physical (evil) and spiritual (good) realms. The visible world, sensate reality, was at best an illusion, at worst a deception; the Khlysty sought to discern the spiritual (and therefore secret and true) meaning of events. They promulgated the idea that alongside the visible and corrupt world order there also existed a hidden spiritual authority. (29)

Thus, alongside the visible government and religion, there was the hidden Tsar – the Khlyst Christ and the true church – the Khlyst community. Also, the Khlysty adhered to and developed the identification of Russia with Israel, that is, with the geographical and national locus of sacred history and the enactment of God's plans for mankind. In the opening of one epic recorded around 1900 we see the typical Khlyst attribution of divine and kingly qualities to their leader as well as the Russia/Israel equation:

Our lord and father prospered,

The son of God was resplendent,

A wealthy merchant, Tsar of heaven,

Merciful judge in his holy Rome-Jerusalem,

In Moscow our mother. (30)

The Khlyst counter-history centers on the sufferings inflicted on the various Christs by the forces of evil which rule the world (here it should be stressed that, in a sectarian analogy to the peasant concept of the good Tsar, actual Russian monarchs are almost never blamed for these persecutions unless they are of dubious legitimacy – women or foreigners; rather, the onus falls on governors, and especially the new institutions of the Senate and Synod, on which the Khlysty blame most of their problems). These persecutions are presented as the crucial events of history and, like the crucifixion of Jesus, are described in an intensely vivid and naturalistic way reminiscent of the Roman Catholic depiction of the Passion and Shiite cult of the martyrdom of Hussein. This positively lascivious fascination with the details of physical torment reflects the Khlyst obsessive concern with (and hatred for) the body. In theological terms, this suffering serves the same end as that of Jesus – the redemption of sinful humanity – with an added element of exhortation toward imitative (self)infliction of punishment on the flesh. This persecution and humiliation is not seen as evidence of the powerlessness of the Khlyst Christs. On the contrary, it showed their Christ nature – the lord of the universe condescended to take on the outward appearance of a Russian peasant and accept abuse at the hands of the wicked in order to atone for the sins of the world. Despite their apparent lowly position in the present world, the Khlyst Christs are invariably referred to in a complex of epithets which denote their divine, and above all, kingly qualities. These honorifics are derived almost exclusively from the folk vocabulary describing the earthly Tsar and epic heroes and show, as will be discussed at length below, the sectarian analogy of Russian folk Tsarism and the yearning in Russian folk culture for what might be called a Tsar of one's own – a tangible and accessible object for the expression of Tsarist feelings.

The sufferings visited on the Khlyst Christ and his followers are but a prelude to the fast-approaching day of Khlyst triumph. The Khlyst lived in expectation of the time when their Christ would manifest himself in power and glory, reward the faithful ‘‘small flock’’ of the Khlysty and destroy the corrupt world and powers that be. The scene of these events would, of course, be Russia: ‘‘The first point of gathering [for judgment] . . . will be Moscow. When the Moscow Tsar-bell sounds all the people on the face of the earth will head for Petersburg; here the Last Judgment will take place.’’ (31)

The millenarian expectations of the Khlysty are not, as a rule, expressed in the terms of Revelation. Rather, their imagery, although strong and colorful, is that of the Second Coming and Last Judgment as described or hinted at in the Gospels. Perhaps even the single line from the creed – ‘‘i paki griadushchago so slavoiu suditi zhivim i mertvym, i tsarstviiu Ego ne budet kontsa’’ (and He is coming again in glory to judge the quick and the dead, and His kingdom shall have no end) sufficed to inspire the sectarian imagination, with the phrase ‘‘so slavoiu’’ (in glory) being especially effective.

(23) The fundamental and thoroughgoing apocalypticism of the Khlystovshchina has been almost totally ignored in the secondary literature (Panchenko's work being a recent exception). For writers not concerned specifically with religion the Khlysty are interesting only by virtue of their orgiastic reputation and because of Rasputin's supposed Khlyst connections. In the literature written by specialists on Russian sectarianism, the focus has been on their dualism and ecstatic religious practice.

(24) Kutepov, Sekty khlystov, p. 304. The second line, which might strike the reader as somewhat odd, is a garbled reference to the 'Little Apocalypse' in Matthew, 24. ["The so-called Little Apocalypse, a sermon by Jesus found in Matthew (24–25) with parallels in Mark (13) and Luke (21), foretells the imminence of collective tribulation and chastisement before the coming of the “Son of Man” who will “sit upon the throne of his glory” and separate “the sheep from the goats.”" The "Little Apocalypse": Matthew 24 (King James Version)]

(25) Rozhdestvenskii and Uspenskii, Pesni russkikh sektantov p. 420.

(26) It is a beloved theme of the missionary literature (and one that invariably comes up whenever late Imperial Russian writers touch upon the topic of the Khlysty) that this exhaustion of the flesh was brought to summation with a sex orgy. As should be obvious from the preceding discussion, the Khlysty viewed sex as the central, mortal sin, so it is dubious that they would consciously make it part of their ritual. Panchenko (Khristovshchina pp. 159–170) finds no place for orgiastic sex in Khlyst belief or practice, and argues that it was a slanderous projection of outsiders. Etkind is also sceptical, but allows that some groups may have practiced it, while others condemned it (Khlyst, p. 48). The nineteenth-century specialists – contemporaries of the Khlysty – take it for granted. How are we to know? Given the deep psychological links between religious exaltation and sexuality, as well as the frenzied physical nature of Khlyst worship, it seems plausible that their radeniia could at times unintentionally end in a way which would go against doctrine.

(27) For an interesting and extensive belletristic account of how these principles were applied in Khlyst life in the nineteenth century, see Mel'nikov-Pecherskii's Na gorakh: Prodolzhenie rasskazov ‘‘V lesakh,’’ Moscow, 1955, 2 vols. The author based his lengthy realist novel – which should be used with caution, more as an evocation of the topic than as a source – on his many years of experience as a government official charged with combatting sectarianism [Мельников-Печерский - На горах].

(28) For an introduction to the exceedingly complex and murky subject of Khlyst Christology as it appeared in the mid-nineteenth century, see Kutepov, Sekty khlystov, pp. 274–291. For a recent attempt at making sense of it, see Panchenko, Khristovshchina, pp. 311–321. Panchenko rejects Kutepov's ascription to the Khlysty of belief in serial incarnation – which has become a commonplace in the literature, and instead writes of the Khlyst ‘‘Christs’’ as ‘‘living icons,’’ and performers of vatic [describing or predicting what will happen in the future] and salvific [leading to salvation] functions.

(29) This belief, like many others in Khlyst teaching, is reminiscent of Shiite Islam, in this case, of the concept of the Hidden Imam.

(30) Rozhdestvenskii and Uspenskii, Pesni russkikh sektantov, p. 638.

(31) Kutepov, Sekty khlystov, p. 305. Here Kutepov is presenting a composite of various Khlyst teachings. Although specific Khlyst songs may differ in detail – e.g., the Tsar-bell motif may be absent, or St. Petersburg may not play a crucial role – the identification of Russia and Moscow as the focal points of the end of history is pronounced in Khlyst lore.

THE ‘‘SKOPTSY’’ (CASTRATORS): MESSIANIC TSARISM

In the second half of the eighteenth century the Khlystovshchina gave rise to a unique and resilient religious movement, that of the ‘‘Skoptsy,’’ or ‘‘Castrators.’’ (32) As with the Khlysty, I will not attempt to reconstruct the actual history of Skopchestvo, but will instead show how it was remembered/mythologized by its adherents in the late Imperial period. From that point of view, the Skopchestvo was centered on the life and work of Kondratii Selivanov (died, officially at least, 1832). A peasant of Orel province, Selivanov spent his formative religious years as a Khlyst. Accepting wholeheartedly the Khlyst conception of the world, Selivanov was disturbed by the insurmountable difficulties of battling the flesh and by the inability of even the elect – the Khlysty – to withstand temptation. In an uncharacteristically (for a Russian) literal reading of Scripture (‘‘For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb; and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.’’ Matthew 19:12), Selivanov found a simple if drastic resolution of the inner contradictions of the Khlyst faith – castration – and set about propagating a religion based entirely on this idea, which he and his followers called ‘‘baptism by fire.’’ (33)

(32) Engelstein's work cited above offers a comprehensive treatment of the history and beliefs of the Skoptsy, and one that serves as an excellent introduction to the topic of Russian popular religiosity in its sectarian aspect. Following Panchenko (Khristovshchina, pp. 365–374), I would however caution against Engelstein's association of castration with crucifixion; she conveys the thinking of the Skoptsy more accurately when she states that their signature act of self-mutilation ‘‘returned males and females to the prelapsarian asexuality disrupted when Eve and Adam entered the cruel flux of time, with its cycles of conception, birth, and death’’ (p. 93).

(33) The majority of Khlysty did not follow Selivanov's lead and considered his ostensibly heroic solution to be cowardice. ‘‘It's not hard to fight a dead enemy,’’ they reasoned, ‘‘you try fighting a live one . . . What kind of victory is it to triumph over an enemy who has been killed already? This isn't godly work, this is pusillanimity, pure and simple.’’ Cited in Kutepov, Sekty khlystov, p. 390.

Selivanov did not present himself merely as a religious teacher or prophet; rather, he claimed to be the Second Coming of Christ in the person of the deposed Emperor Peter III [Peter III (1728 – 1762) was Emperor of Russia for six months in 1762. He was born in Kiel as Karl Peter Ulrich von Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp, the only child of Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (the son of Hedvig Sophia of Sweden, sister of Charles XII), and Anna Petrovna (the elder surviving daughter of Peter the Great). The German Peter could hardly speak Russian and pursued a strongly pro-Prussian policy, which made him an unpopular leader. He was deposed and possibly assassinated as a result of a conspiracy led by his German wife, Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, who succeeded him to the throne as Catherine II. Peter had been popular among the Raskolniks (schismatics, or dissidents) because he granted them liberty of conscience, and among the peasants because when pillaging the convents he divided their lands among the labourers.]. Here we have an intriguing combination of the Khlyst identification of the charismatic leader with Christ and the phenomenon of Russian pretenderism, for which the unfortunate Peter III provided so much inspiration. Selivanov's movement, based on the three ideas of the Second Coming, the claim to the Russian throne, and castration achieved remarkable success in Khlyst-inclined peasant circles and then moved upward through society, capturing a number of adherents among the Orthodox clergy, and above all, among the Russian merchant caste. As Prugavin wrote, ‘‘This sect encountered special sympathy and support among our bourgeoisie, in the milieu of the rich and well-known merchantry of Moscow, Petersburg and the provinces. The commercial dynasties of the Solodovnikovs, Kolesnikovs, Shingarevs, Nenast'evs and Plotitsyns were the main pillars of Skopchestvo.’’ (34)

In addition, the sect attracted several converts from the ranks of the bureaucracy, and, in the person of A. M. Jelanski, former Kamerger to the Polish king Stanislaus Poniatowski, found an ideologue and propagandist of high social and cultural status. (35) In an interesting illustration of the mystic tendency of the conservative reaction against the French revolution, Paul I and Alexander I treated the Skoptsy with a great deal of tolerance and even interest (both emperors actually met with Selivanov) at first, and this apparent official favor helped the Skoptsy's proselytizing efforts and had an especially strong effect on the development of their mythology.

Using the basic ideas of the Khlystovshchina as a foundation, the ‘‘White Doves,’’ as they called themselves, created a body of religious lore which far exceeded anything produced by the Khlysty in terms of elaborateness, intricacy, and outlandishness.

As could be expected, this mythology centers on the Little Father-Redeemer (batiushka-iskupitel ' ) Peter III/Selivanov/Christ, who had come to complete the work begun by the prophets and the apostles of spreading the good news of castration. (36) In keeping with his promise, Christ had returned at the end of time in glory, as Peter III, Emperor of all the Russians, miraculously born son of Elizabeth. Before reaching the age set for openly revealing himself, Peter III was forced to flee the throne by the murderous plots of his wanton wife Catherine, who had been enraged to discover that her husband had castrated himself. Christ/Peter III continues to wander Russian land in humble guise, ministering to his people (this is a fusion of two beloved Russian motifs – that of Christ in Russia and of the wandering, suffering Tsar) ["A wandering tsar blesses the union between human and alien."]. The Second Coming presumes an Antichrist and the Skoptsy, also in a reworking of common contemporary themes, found theirs in Napoleon, product of a liaison between Catherine II and the Devil. Following his defeat, Napoleon lives secretly in Turkey and the Skoptsy magnanimously believe that even he, the Antichrist, would eventually be redeemed (i.e. castrated). (37)

The Skoptsy took the Khlyst idea of the distinction between the visible/illusory and the hidden/true to a much higher pitch. Unbeknownst to the profane mass of humanity, Christ/Selivanov was directing the affairs of Russia and the world, now sending his follower the Cossack Pugachev [Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev was a pretender to the Russian throne (impersonating the late Emperor Peter III) who led a great popular insurrection during the reign of Catherine II.] to impersonate him and raise a rebellion to break French influence at Court, (38) then deposing his faithless son Paul [?? Paul I reigned as Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801. Officially, he was the only son of Peter III and Catherine the Great, though Catherine hinted that he was fathered by her lover Sergei Saltykov, who also had Romanov blood, being a descendant of the first Romanov tsar's sister, Tatiana Feodorovna Romanova. Paul remained overshadowed by his mother for most of his life. His reign lasted four years, ending with his assassination by conspirators.]. (39) In relations with the visible, earthly Tsars, Selivanov adopts a positively condescending and paternalistic tone, as in a song about the eve of Austerlitz, in which the ‘‘heavenly Tsar’’ withholds his blessing from his grandson Alexander I, explaining that ‘‘the cup of Bonaparte's sins is not yet full,’’ and promising that in due time he himself will take care of the enemy. (40)

Along these lines, the comings and goings of Selivanov, his persecutions at the hands of the evil and crafty visible Senate and Synod [The community of Selivanov's followers, numbered at 246 people, were put on trial in 1772. Selivanov was convicted of having persuaded thirteen other peasants to castrate themselves. He was released in 1802, and for eighteen years, until 1820, he lived in Saint Petersburg. Despite the furious investigations of the Third Department (Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery - the tsar's secret police), Skoptsism did not disappear after Selivanov's death, and scandals continued to arise.], are presented as the central events of history, and the places of his captivity become Mount Zion and even heaven on earth. Because of the pretender element, Skopchestvo was much more political than the Khlystovshchina; the Skoptsy were fascinated by current events and high politics, which they interpreted in the highly original manner outlined above, and called themselves ‘‘Courtiers of His Imperial Majesty the Lord J. Christ, Little-Father-Redeemer and Beneficent Sovereign Peter Feodorovich’’ (Pridvornye ego imperatorskogo velichestva Gospoda I. Khrista, batiushki iskupitelia, milostivogo gosudaria Petra Feodorovicha). (41) The Skoptsy observed in awe as Selivanov went about establishing his kingdom. This is how they described his return in glory from exile in Irkutsk:

Out of the white dawn the bright sun has come to us,

The bright sun, our lord and father,

Our lord and father, our radiant redeemer.

Zion, mountain most high!

Frightful thunder, thunder most terrible,

Fire and flames, hot lightning!

In the boat there is a countless host,

By the millions, by the billions,

Clouds of white doves fly –

All the Skoptsy, merchants of the Greek land;

All navigators, all millionaires

Noble and famous . . .

God comes with a reward for suffering –

Gifts of gold, silver, fat pearls and shining diamonds.

The God of gods is with us, the Tsar of tsars is with us,

He has passed through fire, fire and flame,

He is entering the kingly estates,

The kingly estates, the places of paradise,

The dwelling place of David, the mystery of God! (42)

The day of the Skoptsy's final triumph would come when their ranks reached the number of 144,000 (Revelation, 7:4). A song recorded in Kursk province in the first years of the twentieth century shows the apocalyptic aspect very clearly:

They are the numbered army of one hundred forty four thousand,

The Theologian wrote that number is his book of Revelation,

All of them wear white raiment,

And they are innocent and incorruptible,

All washed in the blood of the Lamb.

The name of God is on their foreheads,

The kingly banner is in their hands.

These are God's virgins – redeemed from all the ages,

Warriors of God on high

They have triumphed over the cruel serpent and the seven-headed dragon. (43)

Unlike the millenarian fantasies of some other sects, the Skoptsy idea of the Second Coming is remarkably mild and pacifistic. Selivanov will not mete out punishment to the wicked; rather, they will see the light and accept castration, and from his New Jerusalem of Saint Petersburg Selivanov will rule over a blissfully peaceful world of Skoptsy.

Despite the persecutions of the late Imperial government (after Alexander I's period of tolerance, the regime decided to stomp out the ‘‘anti-natural, fanatical sect’’) and Selivanov's lack of haste in establishing his Kingdom, the Skoptsy community survived into the twentieth century both in Russia and abroad. (44) The sect could maintain itself only through proselytizing, which was inspired by the need to reach the apocalyptic number of 144,000. Its last major success in recruiting new adherents occurred in Leningrad in the 1920s. (45)

(34) A. S. Prugavin, Raskol vverkhu: Ocherki religioznkth iskanii v priviligirovannoi srede, Saint Petersburg, 1909, p. 76.

(35) Ibid, pp. 77–78.

(36) The following summary of Skoptsy history as remembered in the 1880s is based on Kutepov, Sekty khlystov, pp. 362–390.

(37) In a bizarre coincidence (or perhaps something the Skoptsy, always alert to anything that served to confirm their belief, may have learned through their own channels, which included high-born people with contacts abroad), it was rumored in the West that Napoleon did, at the advice of his confessor, castrate himself during the last days of his life on St. Helena.

(38) Kutepov, Sekty khlystov, p. 419.

(39) Rozhdestvesnkii and Uspenskii, Pesni russkikh sektantov, pp. 41–46.

(40) Ibid., pp. 60–61.

(41) Kutepov, Sekty khlystov, p. 418.

(42) Rozhdestvenskii and Uspenskii, Pesni russkikh sektantov, pp. 46–47. In Khlyst and especially skopets poetic vocabulary, the terminology of physical wealth is used to symbolize spiritual riches – thus, the sectarian Christs are often called ‘‘rich merchants’’ (‘‘bogatye gosti’’). This song of the Skoptsy coming into their kingdom is not, however, merely symbolic in its references to money and jewels. Many Skoptsy sublimated their urges in trade and usury and, in the Russian version of the primitive accumulation of capital, played a crucial role in the creation of the Empire's banking system.

(43) V. Shevaleevskii, ‘‘Dukhovnye pesni skoptsov Kurskoi eparkhii,’’ Missionerskoe obozrenie (1906 No. 2), 191–192.

(44) The Skoptsy's favorite places of refuge were Jassy and Bucharest where, in the latter part of the

nineteenth century, these Russian sectarians worked in finance, merchandizing, and the hackney

trade.

(45) A. I. Klibanov, Iz mira religioznogo sektantstva (Moscow, 1974), pp. 26–28.

NEW ISRAEL: NEW WINE IN OLD KHLYST BOTTLES?

[New Israel: Transformation of a Branch of Russian Religious Dissent]

At the end of the nineteenth century what might be termed a modernizing trend emerged within the broad Khlyst movement. This sect – ‘‘New Israel’’ – was essentially the creation of one man – Vasilii Semenovich Lubkov (1869–193?) – who took basic Khlyst beliefs and practices, reworked them in a turn-of-the-century urban style and infused them with ‘‘progressive’’ political content. Lubkov also succeeded in creating an approximation of a church structure within the hitherto amorphous Khlystovshchina. Although his New Israel did not encompass all of the Khlysty, Lubkov can be credited with most of the creativity in the late Imperial phase of the evolution of the movement. It was also in New Israel that the apocalyptic aspect of Khlyst belief was brought to its highest and most explicit point, as the very name ‘‘New Israel’’ and the title of Lubkov – ‘‘Chief of the twenty-first century’’ – indicate.

Most of the essential lines of Lubkov's teaching are the basic tenets of Khlystovstvo as described at length in this chapter – the Khlysty as spiritual Christians and a remnant of true faith and good in a fallen and faithless world, the opposition between the apparent, but false reality of the visible universe and the hidden, true reality of the Khlysty's spiritual realm and the imminent triumph of the latter over the former, Christ being present in the Khlyst leader – in this case, Lubkov – and so forth. However, Lubkov did away with the previously essential element of ultra-asceticism – his followers were allowed to marry, eat meat, drink alcohol, etc., as well as the ecstatic worship. (46) What is most strikingly novel in New Israel is organization and presentation, both of which showed the influence of modern models – bureaucracy and show business, respectively.

The son of town-dwelling peasants of Voronezh province, Lubkov was drawn into the Khlystovshchina by his uncle. In 1894, upon his return from the administrative exile he suffered for the active propagation of his faith [In 1891, Lubkov, who was 22 at the time, declared himself to be the living God and took control over the New Israel. In 1905, under the leadership of Lubkov, the church moved its center of operations to Rostov-on-Don. The church later spread its influence over the south of Russia.], Lubkov was recognized as Christ by a significant Khlyst faction and set about creating a new structure for the implementation of his will among his co-religionists and followers. Within a short time Lubkov set up a theocracy along the following lines:

Lubkov's ‘‘Kingdom of God’’ consisted of all of Russia, which he divided into ‘‘seven ends of earth’’ corresponding to the seven local churches which unified the local communities of New Israel. Lubkov ruled the seven lands of his Kingdom with the help of ‘‘archangels’’ whom he himself appointed . . . and who informed ‘‘Christ’’ – Lubkov – about everything that went on in the territories under their supervision and thereby constituted the ‘‘all-seeing eye’’ of ‘‘Christ’’ . . . Lubkov had a sort of consultative organ comprised of 4 evangelists, 12 apostles, and 72 men equal-to-apostles designated by him. The 7 archangels also took part in this. Except for the times when Lubkov gathered his upper hierarchy – called the ‘‘heavenly review’’ – its members traveled, announcing the will of ‘‘Christ’’ to the faithful . . . For exceptionally weighty business congresses were summoned. (47)

Lubkov brought about a shift of similar magnitude in Khlyst religious practice. Lubkov fought to replace the old, ecstatic radeniia with more subdued services with the singing of his hymns and, for special occasions, grand theatrical presentations such as ‘‘The Transfiguration’’ or ‘‘The Last Supper’’ starring himself and involving hundreds of sectarian extras. In keeping with the spirit of the times among the urban population, the Lubkovite religious message had a strong ‘‘progressive’’ note, with prominent play given to such modern words as ‘‘reason’’ and ‘‘liberty’’ which simply did not have relevance for earlier Khlysty. As Lubkov declared: ‘‘We recognize only one deity: the teaching of common sense, which is the spirit of life.’’ (48) Many of Lubkov's poetic creations are highly reminiscent, in both style and message, of secular revolutionary songs, and it can be

argued that, to a certain extent, New Israel represents a point of intersection in the development of Russian sectarianism and the Russian revolutionary movement. Their hymns told of ‘‘the triumph of the glorious ideas of truth, love, and peace,’’ ‘‘the renewal of life,’’ and ‘‘sane teaching’’ that would ‘‘destroy superstition and scatter the fog of ages.’’ (49) The Lubkovite use of ‘‘progressive’’ terminology, as well as the tendency to categorize sects according to the worthless ‘‘mystical–rational’’ dichotomy, led many observers to conclude that New Israel represented a rationalizing movement within the Khlystovshchina. (50) To cite one striking example which shows the great hopes revolutionaries placed on religious dissent, Bonch-Bruevich declared that New Israel's ‘‘inner emancipation’’ ‘‘from Byzantine heathendom’’ opened the prospect ‘‘of a universal Reformation, and one that would be much more substantial than that which took place in Western Europe.’’ (51) However, Lubkov's more-or-less skillful invocations of concepts such as ‘‘reason’’ and ‘‘common sense’’ are profoundly misleading, because for him these terms had nothing to do with logic and materialism, as they did in their accepted turn-of-the-century meaning.

Lubkov's faithfulness to the essence of Khlyst tradition is readily apparent in the eschatological teaching which is at the heart of his message. Lubkov takes the fundamental Khlyst idea of the opposition between visible (and therefore false) reality and secret, spiritual reality to its ‘‘logical’’ conclusion. According to Lubkov, or, as he modestly called himself, ‘‘The Commander of the World and Son of the Free Ether’’ (Povelitel ' mira-Syn vol ' nogo efira, PMSVE for short), (52) the establishment of God's Kingdom on earth was already taking place, although the corrupt and spiritually blind majority could not yet see this. Lubkov conveyed this idea through his writings and through mystery plays/ritual enactments (sodeistviia – literally, ‘‘facilitations,’’ an earlier version of the ‘‘happenings’’ so beloved of Russia's presentday avant-garde) such as ‘‘The Coming of the City of Jerusalem to Earth’’ (Soshestvie grada Ierusalima na zemliu) which accompanied what the Lubkovites believed to be the invisible establishment of the apocalyptic New Jerusalem in 1895. According to New Israel's song of this event, ‘‘The New Kingdom has been established like transparent glass’’ (Tsarstvo novo utverdilos ' kak prozrachnoe steklo). (53) Lubkov was already carrying out the Last Judgment, unbeknownst to unsuspecting sinful humanity:

Yet he goes along his unseen path among the stormy seas of life,

Like a thief in a starless night he breaks in, takes, and will not leave,

For he has brought vengeance with him. (54)

The crucial external event which cleared the earthly way for Lubkov's Kingdom was the end of the existing autocracy, and New Israel dated its era from October 17, 1905 [1905 Russian Revolution "The Tsar waited and argued for three days, but finally signed the manifesto on 30 October [O.S. 17 October] 1905." October Manifesto]. (55) The march inspired by that occasion called for triumphant rejoicing, as ‘‘now there is no obstacle for us on this earth.’’ (56)

The Lubkovite apocalypse was to have been an essentially spiritual event. New Israel interpreted the words of the Apostle ‘‘and the earth and all the works on it shall be burned’’ (2 Peter 3:10) to mean that at the fast-approaching culminating moment of history all the peoples of the earth shall be illuminated by Christ/Lubkov's teachings and abandon their sins and errors. (57) Lubkov expressed this idea in appropriately contemporary terms as follows: ‘‘in the fullest sense the day of the Lord will come when the mind of Christ fuses with the soul and free thought of men.’’ (58) Therefore, the crucial condition for universal peace and bliss was enlightenment and unity of belief. (59)

New Israel marked the culmination of the development of the Khlystovshchina in Imperial times. (60) The Bolsheviks' hostility to religion sent the Khlysty back into deep underground. Without going into their subsequent history, I would say that declarations of the Khlystovshchina's demise, whether on account of the triumph of the materialist worldview or of the attraction of new, Protestant, denominations, have proven premature.

(46) Panchenko, Khristovshchina, p. 195.

(47) Klibanov, Istoriia religioznogo sektantstva, p. 63.

(48) Ibid., p. 66.

(49) Rozhdestvenskii and Uspenskii, Pesni russkikh sektantov, p. 802.

(50) For a summary of the discussion, see Klibanov, Istoriia religioznogo sektantstva, pp. 65–67. Klibanov himself accepts this ‘‘rationalist’’ definition, but for different reasons: he tries to show that the Khlystovshchina fits the Marxist scheme of religious development in which cults must adopt some of the trappings of science in a vain effort to survive the triumphant onslaught of materialism.

(51) Cited in E. Müller, ‘‘Opportunismus oder Utopie,’’ 516. It should be stated again that Bonch-Bruevich was a very serious person, one of Lenin's closest collaborators and for a time manager of the offices of the first Bolshevik government, the Council of People's Commissars.

(52) Lubkov was quite casual in revealing the meaning of the last three letters, even though they are taken from Lermontov's Demon and could be construed to imply that the bearer was Satan, but rarely revealed the significance of ‘‘PM.’’ I found it in only one source: D. Gratsianskii, ‘‘Rukopis' khlystovskogo lzhekhrista,’’ Missionerskoe obozrenie (1906 No. 10), 457. Klibanov and others who wish to demonstrate New Israel's rationalizing side do not refer to this outlandish title.

(53) Rozhdestvenskii and Uspenskii, Pesni russkikh sektantov, p. 796.

(54) Ibid, p. 763.

(55) Ibid., pp. 805–806.

(56) Ibid., p. 806.

(57) A. A. Afanas'ev, ‘‘Novyi Izrail',’’ in Kal'nev, ed., Russkie sektanty, p. 245.

(58) Klibanov, Istoriia religioznogo, p. 66.

(59) Although Lubkov usually presented his apocalypse in such pacifist terms, there are indications of a much more violent vision, as in a 1900 communication in which the Son of the Free Ether informs his followers that he, as ‘‘holy wisdom,’’ has ‘‘walked the abyss’’ and ‘‘measured the dead sea’’ and that the Creator had sent him there to evoke ‘‘terrible malice and a world war,’’ in which ‘‘whole peoples will be annihilated as worthless creatures and millions will perish like locusts on the field.’’ Rozhdestvenskii and Uspenskii, Pesni russkikh sektantov, p. 768.

(60) The Lubkovite epic in Russia ended on the eve of the First World War with the emigration of Lubkov and a portion of his followers to Uruguay, where they attempted to set up an ideal community (Klibanov, Istoriia religioznogo sektantstva, p. 76).

SECTARIAN TSAR-LOYALTY

Despite the sectarians' pronounced and straightforward dislike for the powers that be in Russia, their attitude toward the linchpin of the Imperial system – the Tsar, or the idea of Tsarism, is marked by a strong need to maintain the Tsarist principle. Prugavin, who devoted a special study to this question, concluded that anarchism, i.e. anti-Tsarism, was wholly alien to the sects of popular origin (except for a tiny number of radical Old Believer factions) and could only be found in intellectual religious

creations (such as Tolstoyism (61)). This more or less universal sectarian loyalty to the Tsar is a reflection of the general Russian popular monarchism, or, more precisely, Tsarism. Like the peasants, the sectarians steadfastly believed that the Tsar was really on their side. Because of their much more obviously afflicted and persecuted state, and in keeping with their occult and symbolic worldview, the sectarians devised justifications for Tsarism which are more elaborate and convoluted than those of the peasants, who were content to believe that the will of the good Tsar was being thwarted by the lords.

For the Khlysty, with their idea of the visible (i.e. false) versus the secret (i.e. real), and with their belief in dissimulation as a high virtue, the explanation was rather straightforward: the visible Tsar appeared to rule, while the Khlyst Christ was the actual, if hidden, lord of Russia and the universe. Here it must be stressed that the Khlyst attitude toward the visible Tsar was not marked by the extreme hatred and loathing they directed at the visible Synod and Senate (church and state apparatus). Rather, he is either a protege of the sectarian Christ (in Skoptsy mythology) (62) or else a Khlyst who, like all good Khlysty, dissimulates. Indeed, there are even suggestions that some Khlyst groups worshipped a number of the late Romanov Emperors, most notably Alexander II, but also Nicholas II, as Christs. (63) The late Imperial period also generated some new sects that were very much preoccupied with the Tsar, and that in apocalyptic terms. One example of this is provided by the Johannites, who worshipped the charismatic and immensely popular Father Ioann Sergiev of Kronstadt (1828–1910) [John of Kronstadt Иоанниты (секта) Федерация еврейских общин России нашла в выступлении Милонова признаки антисемитизма] as Christ (64) (here we see yet again the pull of the Khlyst-style urge to identify concrete individuals as Christ). (65) The Johannites could be found throughout Russia, but were particularly concentrated among the poor of Saint Petersburg and in the pilgrim subculture. They exceeded the object of their devotion in monarchism, and believed that those identified by Father Ioann as enemies of the Orthodox Tsardom were Antichrist (notably Tolstoy and Witte; (66) the former should be clear – Tolstoy attacked church and state and espoused a new religion; Witte – presumably for perceived usurpation of Tsarist powers). [Sergei Witte]

For another sect, that of the Enochites (designated thus because their leader claimed to be the second coming of Enoch foretold in Revelation), the troubles of Russia around the turn of the twentieth century were of such apocalyptic gravity that only the False Tsar/Antichrist idea (first inspired by Peter the Great) could suffice to explain them. Their elaborate theory ran as follows: the False Nicholas II/Antichrist blew up Alexander II with a bomb, poisoned Alexander III and overthrew (the real) Nicholas II. (67) He took a German woman and Rasputin as helpers. He slaughtered masses of people during the Japanese War and Revolution of 1905, and the cholera epidemic and plague were the result of his poison. He recorded everyone in his book and placed his seal on them (the census of 1897). He corrupted the church with money and decorations, and ruled from his capitals of St. Petersburg and Moscow – Sodom and Gomorrah, respectively. In its corruption, faithlessness, and hardheartedness Russia was the equal of Old Testament Israel on the eve of Christ's first coming. Meanwhile, the real Nicholas II lived as a homeless beggar, sharing the sufferings of his people. (68) Enochite teaching shows numerous contemporary tensions in sharp relief and also highlights the vitality of several traditional motifs. We have, besides the Russia–Israel equation, the notion of a Tsar–impostor, the popular fascination with the idea of poisoning (both in the case of the rumors regarding the death of Alexander III, which foreshadow Stalin's ‘‘Doctors' Plot,’’ as well as the attribution of epidemics to poison), anti-urban sentiment (the identification of the capitals), apocalyptic unease about the census (this is a nearly universal phenomenon in Christian countries at certain stages in their history, including the United States in 1790), and, finally, the beloved and ultra-Tsarist Russian folk theme of the true Tsar wandering the Russian land among his poor, oppressed people. The Enochites merely combined and amplified a number of current beliefs. Sectarian beliefs, although often bizarre individually or when taken as a whole, are nevertheless valuable indicators of more general cultural patterns and tensions.

In sum, sectarian views of the Tsar reflect the general folk conceptions of Tsarism. The fact that the religious dissidents, despite the hounding and persecution which they endured, and despite the potential for radical innovations in basic belief offered by their esoteric teachings, continued to adhere to Tsarism offers a vivid illustration of the intense devotion of the traditional Russian people to the Tsarist idea.

At this point it should be stressed that, as a rule, the sectarians were even more passive in the face of oppression than the Russian peasantry, whose centuries of long-suffering were at least punctuated with violent, if futile, outbursts of resistance. We are forced by the evidence to agree with a Stalinist scholar who, for his own reasons, states that ‘‘in settlements populated by sectarians there was never even a single case of an armed rebellion [in the Imperial period]. Even at the height of the Revolution of 1905–1907 there were no violent uprisings in sectarian villages and farmsteads.’’ (69) Western specialists have also pointed to the lack of revolutionary action among the dissenters. (70) Despite the sectarians' radical discontent with the world, and despite the self-sacrificing fanaticism of their religious faith, the Russian religious dissidents never undertook a bloody attempt to bring about their utopia, although the revolutionaries continually tried to induce them to do so. Rather, the sectarians focused all of their energies on self-preservation and escapism in a long, hard, and sad effort to hold out and survive in a hostile world. Given their passivity and pacificity, the sectarians did not play a direct role in Russian practical and political development; however, they provide an invaluable indicator of a number of the deeper patterns of Russian culture.

(61) A. S. Prugavin, Nepriemliushchie mira: Ocherki religioznykh iskanii: Anarkhicheskoe techenie v russkom sektantstve (Moscow, 1918), p. 5. Prugavin states this observation and then devotes the rest of this work to the anarchist ‘‘intellectual’’ and Old Believer sects.

(62) This view persisted until the very end. During the First World War, those Skoptsy who worshipped an old man named Lisin believed that he, their ‘‘Dear Father Savior,’’ would grant Nicholas II victory over the Germans, just as he had allowed Alexander I to triumph over Napoleon (Engelstein, Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom, p. 190).

(63) On Alexander II, see Aleksii (Dorodnitsyn) ‘‘Shelaputskaia obshchina,’’ Russkii Vestnik (1904, no. 11), in which March 1, 1881 is identified with the Passion of Christ, cited in Rozhdestvenskii and Uspenskii, Pesni russkikh sektantov, pp. 675–678. Parts of this song are variations on the ‘‘Lamentation for Alexander II’’ discussed at length in a later chapter, while others bear a more pronouncedly Khlyst coloration, referring to the murdered Tsar's continued mystical presence (signated by the ringing of the carillon in the Peter and Paul Fortress).

(64) Ioann of Kronstadt is the subject of an excellent recent book by Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Russian Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People (University Park, PA , 2000), which can serve as well as a fine introduction to the broader topic of Orthodox religiosity in the late Imperial period. She deals with the Johannites (she calls them Ioannites) on pp. 197–232.

(65) It was well known that John of Kronstadt completely abstained from marital relations with his wife (on this see Kizenko, Prodigal Russian Saint, pp. 27–35). This fact illustrates the attraction of radical asceticism (far beyond any requirement of the Church); since the Johannites were aware of it, it provides yet another point of intersection between them and the Khlysty.

(66) Ibid., p. 230.

(67) This interpretation was inspired by the Book of Daniel 7:24 on the tenth in the series of kings who will destroy his three predecessors.

(68) The preceding sketch of Enochite belief is derived from V. Smirnov, ‘‘Enokhovtsy,’’ in Kal'nev, ed., Russkie sektanty, p. 283.

(69) F. M. Putintsev, Politicheskaia rol ' i taktika sekt (Moscow, 1936), p. 37.

CONCLUSION

Despite the dizzying variety of details of Russian sectarian belief and practice, there are within Russian sectarianism a number of pronounced common themes which indicate an underlying unity. In turn, this underlying cohesion of the religious dissident worldview manifests, albeit in what often appears to us to be grotesque or pathological form, certain basic ideas of the broader (i.e. non-sectarian) Russian culture.

Foremost among these is a strong tendency toward dualism, both in the sense of deep misgivings with regard to (up to total rejection of) the existing material world – and especially the flesh – as an emanation of evil as well as in crediting the forces of evil with great power in the present order of things. Related to this discomfort with the existing, apparent world is the nearly universal sectarian identification of good or ‘‘real reality’’ with the hidden or secret spiritual realm and hence the sectarian inclination toward an arcane or occult interpretation of the world and of religious teaching and texts. In stark, diametrical contrast to the American religious experience, there is (was) in Russia no room for a literalist or fundamentalist attitude toward Scripture; rather, every statement, every image in the Bible, even what seems to us to be the most straightforward, required ‘‘symbolic,’’ ‘‘spiritual,’’ allegoric explanation. Russian sectarians, the initiated, those on the side of good, identified themselves exclusively with good and truth; the unenlightened as well as persecutors remained, wholly in the realm of evil, there being no room for any intermediate position. Along these lines, the sectarians identified themselves and Russia as Israel – the locus or focal point of history in the cosmic sense, the place where God's plan and the struggle between Good and Evil were being carried out. Almost all the sects were apocalyptic in the sense that they believed that this struggle was nearing its culmination and they lived in fervent expectation of God's Judgment – the annihilation of the evil existing world and the creation of a Paradise exclusively for the righteous (i.e. the membership of their particular sect). Also, in a development of the basic dualist attitude as well as the ‘‘symbolic’’ understanding of religious teaching, the sectarians were strongly prone to seeing certain individuals (most often the sectarian leaders) as Christ incarnate. Less well developed is the idea of the Devil incarnate, although this is partially compensated by false (i.e. evil) Tsar theories.

All of these basic attitudes manifest, albeit in exceptionally stark and exaggerated form, a number of the fundamental characteristics of the general (i.e. non-sectarian) Russian culture's worldview –

1) deep misgivings, sometimes up to the point of total negation of the legitimacy of the world as it exists;

2) the perception of a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil, with the latter being accorded a relatively high, even equal, power in the present state of things;

3) the feeling that this struggle is approaching its culmination and decisive outcome and 4) the strong identification of Russia as the focal point or location of that struggle;

5) the identification of one's own group (whether religious, social, or political) with the principle of Good, and the concomitant designation of others (not just outright enemies) to the camp of Evil, with no intermediary position being possible;

6) a pervasive sense that things are not really as they appear, that visible, external reality (or at the very least, government statements and newspaper reporting) is some sort of illusion or even deception, and a resultant predilection for searching for the true and therefore hidden meaning of events.

There is also the tendency to identify great (in both a negative and positive sense) men (past, present, and anticipated) as the embodiment of Good or Evil.

In sum, Russian sectarianism shows, in exceptionally high relief, many of the psychological tendencies and patterns of traditional Russian culture.

(70) For example, see the cited works by Comtet and Müller, or G. P. Camfield's ‘‘The Pavlovtsy of Khar’kov Province, 1886–1905: Harmless Sectarians or Dangerous Rebels?’’ Slavonic and East European Review 68 (October 1990), 711–712 (here Camfield is writing about religious dissidents in general, and not just the Pavlovtsy in particular).

CHAPTER 4

Folk eschatology

Earlier, an outline of what might be called the ‘‘static’’ aspect of the traditional worldview was presented showing popular conceptions of the nature and mundane functioning of the world. This chapter will attempt to add movement to the picture by presenting folk perceptions of the character and direction of fundamental change, in other words, it will try to recreate the traditional Russian understanding of history. In a culture formed by Christianity, the only possible model for history was of course eschatology, through which events are interpreted in light of the anticipated cataclysmic end of the present world. In a pattern which should be familiar by now, Orthodoxy set the parameters for popular historic conceptions, while the apocryphal legacy filled out the details. An analysis of expressions of folk apocalyptic thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will allow for the development and elucidation of themes already presented in this work, and at the same time offer valuable insights into the state of mind of the Russian peasantry in the last years of the Imperial regime. (1)

(1) Russian folk eschatology is an underdeveloped topic. V. Sakharov's excellent study Eskhatologicheskie sochineniia i skazaniia v drevne-russkoi pis’mennosti i vliianie ikh na narodnye dukhovnye stikhi (Tula, 1879) focuses on the theme of the apocalypse in the old apocryphal literature and on the creativity of the professional singers of religious verse, who, although of peasant origin, represented a very distinct subgroup. D. Chistov dealt with the topic in works such as his invaluable Narodnye sotsial-utopicheskie legendy (Moskva, 1967); this is based mainly on material from the Old Believers, infinitely more articulate and elaborate in their folklore than the ‘‘generic’’ peasantry, and concentrates on the eighteenth century, whereas I have attempted to deal with the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most recently, A. A. Panchenko covered some of the same material as I did, and came to comparable conclusions on certain key issues – most notably the centrality of eschatological thinking in the peasants' interpretation of perceived change; see ‘‘Eskhatologiia i akkul'turatsiia,’’ included in his Khristovshchina i skopchestvo, pp. 353–365, although this section is not about the sectarians as such.

‘‘OFFICIAL’’ ESCHATOLOGY

Russian folk eschatology was built on the stark and simple foundation of the Christian teaching of the Second Coming and the Last Judgment (or, in the Orthodox usage, ‘‘Dread Judgment’’). The notion of Judgment was conveyed in the Creed (the relevant Slavonic phrase – suditi zhivim i mertvym – being readily intelligible), sung at every liturgy and read during each service, and in the supplication for a ‘‘good response at the dread judgment seat of Christ’’ (dobrago otveta na strashnem sudishchi Khristove), repeated several times in all services. The typical Russian peasant would hear these words literally thousands of times over the course of a lifetime. In addition, there were frequent readings of Gospel lessons referring to the awesome matter. In terms of the visual transmission of the idea, a vivid iconographic depiction of that ultimate event was a standard part of the design of churches, (2) and from the eighteenth century onward popular prints (lubok art) showing the Dread Judgment were published in large quantities and sold by peddlers at churches, monasteries and fairs. (3) The concept of the Judgment was a central component of the consciousness of all traditional Russians. Actions and events on both the individual and collective plane derived their lasting significance from that ultimate point; in other words, ‘‘history’’ was a function not of the past in itself or of present concerns, but of the future, and its full meaning would not be known until it was over. To use geometric imagery, the endpoint of Doomsday provided linear direction for events; traditional Russians (in keeping with the well-known pattern of pre-modern cultures) applied piety/morality as the only relevant criterion for assessing change in the condition of the world, and by that measure they perceived accelerating decline from one generation to the next, from God-fearing ancestors down to the present corrupt race, and anticipated Judgment as the imminent end of the downward movement.

Although immense emphasis was placed on the concept of the Dread Judgment, official Church teaching was much more reticent on the timing and indications of the Second Coming (in keeping with venerable tradition and Christ's admonition ‘‘Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh’’ Matthew 25:13). Of the Scriptural bases for Christian eschatology, only the so-called ‘‘Little Apocalypse’’ (‘‘And ye shall hear wars and rumours of wars . . .’’ Matthew 24) was given prominence in the regular cycle of liturgical readings, and elements of it can be found in many recordings of folk thinking. The Book of Revelation, in contrast, was not read in church, and consequently it did not figure prominently in popular consciousness (with the notable exception of the Old Belief). This point bears stressing, so that the reader does not project onto Russian culture the great centrality of Revelation in Western Protestant (and especially American) popular religiosity.

Aside from liturgics, which exercised an all-pervasive influence on the popular culture, the Church also engaged in publishing, and here the apocalyptic element in official teaching was much more prominent, although the reach of such activity was much more limited than that of formal public worship. In the nineteenth century, Church publications for a mass audience focused on hagiography (and thereby served to sustain the ascetic tendency in folk religiosity described in previous chapters), but the rise of the revolutionary movement, and especially the great shock of 1905, brought eschatology to the fore, as a means of categorizing the threat to the Orthodox Tsardom and of warning the common folk away from the forces of sedition. (4) In addition, Father John of Kronstadt, the greatest figure in popular piety in the last decades of the old Regime, espoused an apocalyptic understanding of Russian events, and his writings and published sermons reached a very wide audience, their message reinforced by the immense prestige of their author. (5) Such publications injected a strong element of what might be termed ‘‘applied eschatology’’ (i.e. the use of prophetic ideas and images to interpret current events) into the popular religious culture, and their influence can be seen in the reaction which followed the revolution of 1905.

(2) For a detailed description of Russian iconography of the Last Judgment see F. Buslaev, ‘‘Izobrazheniia Strashnogo suda,’’ in his Istoricheskie ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti i iskusstva (Saint Petersburg, 1861), vol. 2.

(3) A. Ia. Shevelenko, ‘‘Apokalipsis i ego siuzhety v istorii kul'tury,’’ Voprosy istorii, 11–12 (1996), p. 33.

(4) E.g. Tolkovanie na Apokalipsis Sviatogo Andreia, Arkhiepiskopa Kesariiskogo (Moscow, 1901) – probably the most influential eschatological tract in revolutionary Russia, and Ephrem the Syrian's Slovo na prishestvie Gospodne, na skonchanie mira i na prishestvie antikhristovo (Sergiev Posad, 1908), both publications going through many editions. It is worth noting that the Church was loath to present Revelation without patristic commentary as a means of keeping the speculation it aroused within the bounds of orthodoxy.

(5) See Kizenko, Prodigal Russian Saint, ch. 7.

ESCHATOLOGY OF THE APOCRYPHA

Just as the Dread Judgment dominated ‘‘official’’ eschatology, so too did it occupy the central place in apocryphal creativity on the end of the present world and of every person in it. Most influential in this regard was the repertory of the kaliki, the professional singers of religious verse who played such a prominent role in the cultural life of traditional Russia.

The standard collection of dukhovnye stikhi contains eighty songs on the subject of the Judgment and what awaits sinners in hell and the righteous in heaven. (6) Most of these are relatively predictable in terms of content. With their images – standard for Christianity in general – of archangels blowing trumpets, the dead arising, stars falling and fiery rivers destroying the earth, etc., they must have made a harrowing impression on listeners. It is important for our purposes to note that the sins most often cited as reason for damnation were a lax attitude toward the flesh (which prevented participation in church services and observance of the fasts) and lack of charity toward the poor and sick (the latter theme reflected in part the corporate interests of the kaliki). Both expressed and reinforced the main tendencies of the peasant religious worldview – a deep concern for ritual and ascetic observance, a problematic attitude toward the body, and an identification of goodness with poverty and weakness.

As to the mechanism for the destruction of the present world, the preferred instument of the kaliki was all-consuming fire, which fits well with official teaching (II Peter 3:10) [But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.]. However, the famous Golubinaia kniga, the kalika encyclopedia in verse, offers the following:

The Whale-fish is mother [greatest] of all the fishes.

Why is the Whale-fish mother of all the fishes?

[Because] the Earth is founded on three whale-fishes;

The Whale-fish stays still and does not move;

But when the Whale-fish turns over

Then mother-earth shall tremble,

Then our bright world will come to an end:

That is why the Whale-fish is mother of all the fishes. (7)

Here we are moving further from official Orthodoxy and deeper into the world of the apocrypha. The idea of the earth resting on whales was a commonplace of Byzantine Christian popular culture (its non-native provenance in Russia should be clear from the fact that the East Slavs were not geographically positioned in such a way that the sea and its creatures could loom large in their consciousness). The presence of this image in the Golubinaia kniga provides striking illustration of the survival of antique elements in the folk culture of late Imperial Russia.

(6) Bezsonov, Kaleki perekhozhie, vol. 5, pp. 65–260. On the issue of cultural transmission, it is interesting to note that Dies irae, that stupendous creation of the Western apocalyptic imagination, had made its way to the East Slavs via Catholic Poland, and was sung (in translation) by the kaliki all over Russia.

(7) Bezsonov, Kaleki perekhozhie, vol. 1, part 2, p. 289. This version was recorded in Poventsi district.

It is in the apocryphal manuscript tradition that we find the sources for many of the specific details of folk eschatology. In this respect, the apocrypha performed their natural function well, offering a wealth of images and ideas about topics on which official Church teaching was reticent. A relatively small number of apocryphal texts (8) played a decisive role in generating traditional Russian notions of the indications and timing of the end of the world.

Perhaps most influential in its eventual ‘‘trickling-down’’ to the folk was the Prenie Gospodne s diavolom [Прение Господне с диаволом]. Although this work is relatively short and offers little by way of elaboration, it contains a number of striking phrases which made their way into the popular culture (including Satan's assertion of ownership over the world, dealt with earlier). In terms of eschatology, the Prenie contains a memorable passage on the elasticity of time at the end of the world (Christ says that during the Devil's apocalyptic three-year reign [this time-span being a corruption of Revelation], He shall make ‘‘a year [pass] like a month, a month like a week, a week like a day, a day like an hour, and an hour like a twinkling of the eye’’ (9), and the awesome image of the sky being rolled up like a scroll and the earth being fired (melted) like iron [Sov ' iutsia nebesa, aki svitok, i razhgu zemliu, aki zhelezo]. (10) These two passages provide an excellent illustration of the working of the apocryphal imagination, in that they give elaboration and concreteness to Scripture (in this case, II Peter 3:8, 10), and offer fruitful material for those inclined to religious speculation.

Another apocryphal work which would have a far-reaching impact in Russia was the ‘‘Discourse of Methodius of Patar on the Reign of the [Heathen] Nations at the End of Time’’ [Slovo Mefodiia Patarskago o tsarstvii iazyk poslednikh vremen] [СЛОВО МЕФОДИЯ ПАТАРСКОГО О ЦАРСТВЕ НАРОДОВ И ПОСЛЕДНИХ ВРЕМЕНАХ, 5-12 Борис Георгиевич Деревенский. Книга об Антихристе], a grandiose (and mind-boggling) mythological history of the world culminating in the final assault of the infidel races on the Orthodox Christian Empire. (11) This classic of Byzantine eschatology, inspired by the rise of Islam (or the ‘‘Hagarians,’’ in traditional Orthodox usage) was especially effective in the Russian context because it tied the Christian apocalypse to the history of the Orthodox Empire, in other words, it offered a religious/political understanding of events. The full Slovo was used by the theoreticians of Muscovite Tsarism, and enjoyed great prestige among the Old Believers as a means of interpreting what they saw as the fall of Holy Russia into heresy. In the general popular culture we find only fragments of the Slovo; however, one of its ideas, that of the Messianic Tsar Michael (the name itself being derived from Scripture: Daniel 12:1) [And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.], who would be roused from slumber and go forth to do combat with the forces of evil, (12) served as a stimulus to peasant Tsarism, especially that of a millenarian cast, in the late Imperial period, but did not reach its full flourishing until after the abdication and murder of Nicholas II. (13)

To summarize, the popular imagination had the following elements to work with in thinking of the End: the awesome idea of the Dread Judgment, a limited number of indications drawn from Scripture (but not, until very late in the history of Imperial Russia, Revelation), and a few clues provided by the apocrypha. We now turn to an examination of various apocalyptic ideas generated by this relatively meager and simple pool of information.

(8) For the best survey and analysis of the apocalyptic apocrypha available in Russia, see Sakharov, Eskhatologicheskie skazaniia.

(9) Ibid., p. 288.

(10) Ibid., p. 286. I have cited these passages because the images, and often the exact wording, would be recorded from peasants interviewed at the turn of the century.

(11) For Russian texts of the Slovo, see Tikhonravov, Otrechennye knigi, vol. 2, pp. 213–281.

12

This is one of the most powerful motifs in Christian mythology. In his ‘‘Opyty po istorii razvitiia khristianskoi legendy,’’ ZhMNP, April, 1875 (part CLXXVIII ) and May (part CLXXIX ), pp. 48–130, Veselovskii traces the circulation and development of this theme from the pseudo-Methodius through Europe and shows its manifestations in such Messianic legends as that of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa asleep in the Kyffhaeuser.

13

Although this aspect of the question is outside of the chronological parameters of this work, it is interesting to note that in the early Soviet period Messianic hopes centered on a Tsar Michael would focus on the brother of the last Romanov Emperor. Sometimes, this could result in bizarre combinations: one Soviet writer, himself of peasant origin, describes how villagers in the mid-1920s expressed the hopeful belief that ‘‘Trotskii will join forces with Michael, and the Bolsheviks will be finished soon [Trotskii s Mikhailom soediniaetsia, skoro bol ' shevikam konets].’’ R. Akul'shin, ‘‘O chem shepchet derevnia,’’ Krasnaia nov ' (1925, No. 2), 248. Much later, Gorbachev would be identified with this apocalyptic namesake (L. Iuzefovich, Samoderzhets pustyni: Fenomen sud’by barona R.F. Ungerna-Shtern berga [Moscow, 1993], pp. 139–40), but sometimes in an inverted fashion, as agent of doom rather than of salvation. Among traditionalist Greeks, elements of the legend persist, in the belief that an Emperor Michael sleeps under the altar of the Hagia Sophia and will awaken at the end of time to vanquish the Turks and re-establish the Orthodox Empire (personal communication to the author from Dr. Maria Salomon Arel).

A ‘‘GENERIC’’ VISIONOF THE END

We will begin with a typical example of folk eschatology, recorded from an elderly peasant of the Tver' region at the turn of the century:

The sky will be rolled up like a tablecloth; this old earth will be burned away, and there will be a new one, on which the Lord will set up paradise. And 12 angels will whip Satan with iron canes and his screams will be heard throughout the universe. And then they'll throw him on the kumova [?] bed [Кумова кровать (Афанасьев)]. That's a kind of bed that he's afraid of already: it's all aflame, and has iron nails. When they throw him on there, he'll be finished, but for now he's free to do what he wants. And it's been determined that the world will last seven thousand years: they say that now the eighth thousand is coming, and maybe that's all true. The Lord said: ‘‘I can add on [years], or take away,’’ if I see that man is worthy of it. (14)

This miniature apocalypse is quite revealing as to the workings of the popular mind. It shows the influence of apocryphal literature, characteristically altered: the idea of the sky being rolled up is a striking image drawn from ‘‘The Lord's Disputation with the Devil,’’ although most versions of the written text refers to a scroll [svitok] and not a tablecloth [skatert ' ]. (15) Presumably, the narrator heard this during the religious disputes he attended in Moscow; this might be evidence of the role of the Old Believers (a great presence in the traditional urban life of the old Russian capital) in the preservation and transmission of the old apocryphal writings. The other images used are also concrete and vivid. Further, the concern with numbers is very characteristic: in most expressions of folk eschatology a round number of thousands (whether the ancient 7,000 years from creation or a more modern 2,000 years according to the civil chronology) is the apocalyptic figure and is invariably seen as fast approaching. (16) Related to this, we have the idea of the elasticity of time,

a concept which exerted a great fascination on peasant sages. Finally, the narrator places God's timing of the End in a causal relationship with the behavior (religiosity) of the people. The connection between the religious fidelity of mankind (understood as the collective body of the inhabitants of the peasants' world) and God's favor (or, more to the point, disfavor) toward the world was the central idea of the peasant understanding of events and their ultimate direction.

(14) V. Suvorov, ‘‘Religiozno-narodnye pover'ia i skazan'ia (Zapisany v Kaliazinskom uezde Tverskoi gubernii),’’ Zhivaia starina (1889, No. 3), 394. Recorded from an illiterate seventy-five year-old peasant who had worked as a bootmaker in Moscow and enjoyed listening to religious debates and readings there.

(15) Tikhonravov, Otrechennye knigi, vol. 2, p. 285.

(16) Although many of the folk thinkers quoted in this chapter knew the significance of the year 7000 for eschatology, as a rule they did not realize that this year had already passed (in AD 1492) according to the Byzantine chronology, when, by the way, it had evoked great apocalyptic turmoil in the Muscovite Tsardom. [1492 – War with Lithuania started August ??]

MODERNIZATION AS APOCALYPSE

As the forces of social and economic modernization began to intrude on the traditional peasant culture in the aftermath of Emancipation [Emancipation reform of 1861 (*)], peasant eschatological thought concentrated on the agents and symptoms of that disruption. In terms of agents, we have Russian educated society (or, to use the peasant terminology, the ‘‘lords,’’ gospoda, bare, pany) and new technology (especially the railroad); in terms of symptoms, the perceived deterioration of patriarchal authority, sexual morality and, above all, religious observance. Numerous recordings of peasant apocalyptic thinking, although varying in specifics, show a striking overall unanimity: things were getting out of control and this loss of order would end in disaster, or, to put it another way, the ancestral religious/moral code was breaking down, and therefore God's Judgment was imminent. The famine and cholera of the early 1890s provided confirmation and concrete focus for such expectations.

(*) The serfs of private estates received less land than they needed to survive, which led to civil unrest. The redemption tax was so high that the serfs had to sell all the grain they produced to pay the tax, which left nothing for their survival. Landowners also suffered because many of them were deeply in debt, and the forced selling of their land left them struggling to maintain their lavish lifestyle. In many cases, the newly freed serfs were forced to "rent" their land from wealthy landowners. Furthermore, when the peasants had to work for the same landowners to pay their "labor payments", they often neglected their own fields. Over the next few years, the yields from the peasants' crops remained low, and soon famine struck a large portion of Russia. With little food, and finding themselves in a similar condition as when they were serfs, many peasants started to voice their disdain for the new social system. On one occasion, on 12 April 1861, a local leader murdered a large number of uprising peasants in the village of Bezdna.When the incident was over, the official report counted 70 peasants dead and another 100 wounded. After further investigation, and trial of some members of the uprising, five peasants were found guilty of "agitation" and not uprising.That said, several different instances did take the form of an uprising. In Congress Poland and in northern Russia peasants became both free and landless (batraks), with only their labour to sell, while in other areas peasants became the majority land-owners in their province(s). The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto affected only the privately owned serfs. The state-owned serfs were emancipated in 1866 and were given better and larger plots of land.

OMENS AND PORTENTS: ‘‘CONTEMPORARY LEGENDS’’

For our purposes, one of the most interesting genres of Russian folklore is the so-called ‘‘bylichka’’ [Быличка жанр устного народного творчества: рассказ «очевидца» о встрече с нечистой силой / a story of Russian folklore about an allegedly true event involving a meeting with spirits] or ‘‘byval ' shchina,’’ [Бывальщина Быва́льщина (быль) — в русском народном творчестве краткий устный рассказ о происшествии, случае, имевшем место в действительности, без упора на личное свидетельство рассказчика. Перекликается с термином «городская легенда» (калька с англ. urban legend). Бывальщина (по сравнению с быличкой) уже ближе к легендам и сказаниям («люди сказывают, что…).] an account, spread by word of mouth, of some extraordinary recent occurance. In contemporary America, an analogous genre is known as the urban legend and refers to apocryphal stories which circulate very rapidly, are accepted as true, and become part of the general consciousness. (17) I shall use the term ‘‘contemporary legends,’’ since it conveys both a mythic quality and a present setting.

In both the Russian and American context these stories reflect contemporary concerns and anxieties – they always have a relevant ‘‘moral’’ – and, most characteristically, they are told ‘‘third-hand,’’ i.e. their source is close enough to be plausible. Presumably, analogous stories had existed earlier in Russia. What is qualitatively new at the turn of the century is the extent of their circulation – improved transportation and communications lifted what would have remained local prodigies to the level of ‘‘all-Russian’’ folk knowledge.

The most persistent and vivid of these contemporary legends went as follows: In a certain place (in the variants of this legend a more-or-less specific location is usually indicated) a church watchman heard roosters crowing in the sanctuary at night, but when he went to investigate, he found nothing. He informed the priest, who decided that someone must spend the night in the church in order to find the explanation for the mysterious noise. However, no one was brave enough to do this, until one young man (or, in other versions, a skhimnik, i.e. a monk who had taken on the ‘‘grand schema’’ of the highest degree of monastic asceticism) agreed. In one of the earliest recorded variants the story proceeds like this:

They shut that young man in the church for the night: there he took the Gospel and began to read. He read and he read, and it was midnight already and the roosters were crowing in the village; suddenly, the gates of the altar swung open . . . and a white rooster came out and cried ‘‘ku-ka-re-ku’’ from the pulpit and went back into the altar. The gates closed after him [This procedure is repeated a second time by a red rooster, and then a third time by a black rooster.] After that a monk, all dressed in black, came out of the altar and asked the young man ‘‘Do you understand what these roosters foretell?’’ ‘‘No, I don't,’’ answered the young man. ‘‘Well, then listen: the white rooster means that in the near future there will be an unusually rich harvest, the red one, that there will be an unprecedently terrible bloodletting, and the black one – so many deaths, coffins and graves that there will be no one left to eat the bread.’’ (18)

This recording was made in the circumstances of the cholera epidemic and the famine of the early 1890s [Russian famine of 1891–92 (*)]. However, this legend did not die out with the passing of those crises, as the scholar who published it thought it would. (19) Rather, it would show a remarkable vitality and tenacity over the coming decades and would be modified to explain current events. Thus, during the Boxer Rebellion, the rooster symbolism is interpreted as follows: ‘‘The red rooster means a bloody war with China (20) – the Chinese will come and massacre the people and burn down the cities and villages. And those Russians who manage to escape from the Chinese will die from the plague – that's what the black rooster foretells.’’ (21) The recurrent theme which kept this legend alive was the expectation of a massive ‘‘dying-off’’ because of a terrible war and plague and/or pestilence. In this respect, the bad years of the early 1890s were a crucial turning point. From then onwards there would be plenty of fodder to sustain the grimly pessimistic strain in folk belief.

(17) For an introduction to this very active field in American folklore, see the works of J. Brunvand,

beginning with The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and their Meaning (New York,

1981).

(18) D. I. Uspenskii, ‘‘Tolki naroda (Neurozhai – Kholera – Voina),’’ Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (1893, no. 2), 186.

(19) ‘‘The popular mood is improving . . . and these gloomy stories are beginning to slowly loose their significance and are being forgotten,’’ ibid., p. 189.

(20) This reference to China (Kitai) is significant. A Tsar ‘‘Kitai’’ or ‘‘Kitoian,’’ who may or may not be related to the actual country we know as China, plays a role in apocalyptic rumors at the turn of the century. In addition China occupied a prominent place in the folk conception of the world, as will be shown in the chapter on the Japanese war.

(21) P. Ivanov, ‘‘Tolki naroda ob urozhae, voine i chume,’’ Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, (1901, no. 3), 134. Unfortunately, the author does not indicate where this version was recorded.

(*) In 1891 a particularly dry autumn had delayed the planting of the fields. That winter, temperatures fell to −31 degrees Celsius (−24 degrees Fahrenheit), but very little snow fell therefore the seedlings were totally unprotected from the frost. When the Volga river flooded the lack of snow caused the water to freeze, killing more seedlings as well as the fodder used to feed the horses. Those seedlings that were not killed by frost were blown away along with the topsoil in an uncommonly windy spring. The summer started as early as April and proved to be a long dry one. The city of Orenburg for example had no rain for over 100 days. Forests, horses, crops and peasants all began to die, and by the end of 1892 about half a million people were dead, mostly from cholera epidemics triggered by the famine. Weather alone cannot be blamed as there was enough grain in Russia to feed the starving areas. The peasants used medieval technology like wooden ploughs and sickles. Russia's primitive railways were not up to redistributing grain. The affected area was a stronghold of communal land distribution so that households had no incentive to improve the land or mechanize, but every incentive to produce as many children as possible. The main blame was laid at the government, which was discredited by the famine. It refused to use that word: golod, they called it a poor harvest, neurozhai, and stopped the papers reporting on it. The main reason the blame fell on the government was that grain exports were not banned until mid-August and merchants had a month's warning so they could quickly export their reserves. he government also contributed to the famine indirectly by conscripting peasant sons, sending taxmen to seize livestock when grain ran out, and implementing a system of redemption payments as compensation to landlords who had lost their serfs. On November 17, 1891 the government asked the people to form voluntary anti-famine organizations. Leo Tolstoy, the most famous volunteer, blamed the Tsar and the Orthodox Church for the famine. As a result of this, the Orthodox Church excommunicated Tolstoy and forbade citizens from accepting help from his relief organization. Starving peasants had to eat raw donated flour and "famine bread", a mixture of moss, goosefoot, bark and husks. The United States formed "Russian Famine Relief Committee of the United States". [Запрещенные картины Айвазовского. О чем молчит российский официоз.]

WARNINGS FROM ON HIGH: ‘‘CHAIN LETTERS’’

Another means of expressing and transmitting apocalyptic ideas at the turn of the century was that of the religious ‘‘chain letter.’’ It is closely related to the genre of popular religious manuscripts such as ‘‘The Dream of the Mother of God’’ and ‘‘The Twelve Fridays’’ which had their greatest circulation in the traditionalist segment of the Russian urban population (merchants, the lower orders of the clergy, etc.). What I call ‘‘chain-letters’’ differ from these in their pressing apocalyptic message and the imperative that they be copied and passed on. In an unusual side-effect of such modernizing developments as the rise in peasant literacy and improved transportation and communications, these arch-traditionalist writings gained extensive circulation throughout peasant Russia in the late nineteenth century.

The religious ‘‘chain-letters’’ were presented as direct communications from God or from some great saint, warning the people to abandon their wicked ways in the face of fast-approaching Judgment. They invariably focus on the moral/ritual issues which are central to folk religiosity, and point to current disasters of war and pestilence to underscore their apocalyptic message. In addition, these letters promise blessings to those who heed them and spread them, and to those who carry them on their persons (in effect, as talismans). Thus, they serve as expressions of popular religiosity in its moralistic and apocalyptic aspects, and also as manifestations of the traditional magical/talismanic attitude toward the sacred written word. It would be worthwhile to examine these letters at some length.

The ‘‘Scroll of the Portent of Jerusalem’’ (Svitok Ierusalimskogo Znameniia) was presented as a letter directly from Christ delivered by way of a ‘‘small but exceedingly heavy’’ meteor which fell in the Holy City. Here are excerpts from a version recorded in the Poshekhon'e region of Iaroslavl' province at the beginning of the twentieth century, copies of which the recording ethnographer says were found ‘‘quite often’’ among the people:

I am your God and you, people, obey my philanthropy and this Divine command and message. He who with faith obeys my commandments and keeps them will receive good fortune in this life and repose for his soul and I will grant him eternal life. He who does not obey will be cursed by me. And I write this message to you that you love one another; do not swear and do not commit fornication. [Christ then says that He would have killed the people with famine long ago if His

Mother had not interceded for them.] Desist from all your evil, and from your foul and unclean cursing and from fornication. He who falls into fornication not only destroys his soul but also makes defilement with his whole body and members . . . My Divine words can not pass in vain, for the years are growing old and the times are coming to an end; the dread judgment is being readied, God's Throne is being put in place, the holy books are being opened and all of your secret deeds are being made open [there follows a long passage on the necessity of refraining from work on Sundays and holidays and of observing the Wednesday and Friday fasts], [otherwise:] I will loose infidel nations on you and send down great frosts and hail upon you . . . Whether he can read or not, he who keeps this message in his home will have his home filled with every manner of good thing and

at his death will see the Lord God Himself, granting him benediction and grace. Amen. (22)

The ‘‘Jerusalem Scroll’’ shows the main concerns of folk religiosity in sharp relief: fear of the defilement (and damnation) which result from a lack of self-control and the belief that disasters are God's punishment for non-observance of moral and ritual prescriptions. It also highlights the fact that folk eschatology was centered on the idea of the Last Judgment (as opposed to ponderings on Biblical prophesy, as was the case with the Old Believers).

Another ‘‘chain letter’’ presents the apocalyptic dangers of religious non-observance in greater detail. This work, which invokes Christ, Pope Leo, icons of the Archangel Michael, Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives ‘‘in the Greek land’’ for greater authoritativeness, (23) was recorded in the Stavropol' region in the late 1890s by a priest who noted that such literature had appeared recently in his area and that it was copied and circulated very swiftly among the people, who treated it with religious awe and were loath to show it to outsiders. (24) In the ‘‘Holy Epistle,’’ Christ warns that if the people do not observe holy days and fasts

I shall kill you off and punish you with hail and ill winds, and with a terrible war; tsar shall rise up against tsar, king against king, prince against prince, father against son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor; and there shall be a great blood-letting among you; I shall bring woe to you and tame you with thunder and lightning, hail and snow. Behold the wrath of God: I shall also send down upon you flying birds, which will bite and will defile the air; I shall create a bronze sky and a stone earth, and the sky shall not give rain, nor the earth fruit. (25)

The ‘‘epistle’’ continues with a relatively elaborate listing of rewards for those who heed it and threats against those who refuse to copy and circulate it, very much in keeping with the style of the ‘‘chain letter.’’ This specimen of religious writing is worthy of note for several reasons. Above all, it illustrates the idea of elemental and social chaos as divine retribution for ritual/moral impropriety. Ritual obedience is the prerequisite for order. Moreover, the reference to the refusal of the earth to bear fruit reflects one of the most archaic religious conceptions of mankind, namely, that agriculture, and with it human life, depends on the proper ritual propitiation of the higher, supernatural power. Finally, it expresses traditionalist anxieties and shows the sorts of fears that were current among the conservative element of the peasantry as Russia entered the Great War and collapsed into chaos under its strains.

(22) Reproduced in V. Balov, ‘‘Ocherki Poshekhon'ia:Verovan'ia,’’ Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (1901, no. 4) 91–2. The ‘‘Jerusalem Scroll’’ is a good example of how older works gained greater circulation with rising literacy and improved communications. Bezsonov gives similar texts, with the same title, dating back to the eighteenth century (Bezsonov, Kaleki perekhozhie, vol. 6, pp. 74–96). These versions, which carry a strong Old Believer cast, were much more elaborate than those which came to circulate among the peasantry in the late nineteenth century.

(23) As we have seen in khlyst folklore, it is a highly characteristic feature of the folk religious imagination to jumble and interchange the limited number of sacred places and personages which figure in the popular consciousness.

(24) A. Semilutskii, ‘‘Selo Pokoinoe, Stavropol'skoi gubernii, Novogrigor'evskogo uezda,’’ Sbornik materialov dlia opisaniia mestnostei i plemen Kavkaza 23 (1897, part 2), 329.

(25) Ibid., p. 331.

MISTRUST OF SCIENCE: PEASANT ANTI-RATIONALIST AND TECHNOPHOBIC TENDENCIES

Thus far, we have focused on the perceived breakdown of religious observance and morality [ = CHANGE] as the main stimulus for popular apocalyptic fears. Although the perceived spread of impiety was the main cause of traditionalist distress, new technology, and even, in the case of some peasants who took a deeper, ‘‘philosophical’’ view, the scientific mindset itself aroused grave misgivings.

The traditional peasant understanding of the world accorded the highest value to the ancient, ancestral beliefs and ways of doing things, and the forefathers were credited with a heroic piety which served as the standard, but was far beyond the reach of the present corrupt generation. This deeply conservative attitude of self-deprecatory filial piety is expressed in proverbs such as ‘‘In the old days people were smarter’’ (‘‘Vstar ' liudi byvali umnei’’), and ‘‘What's older is better/more proper’’ (‘‘Chto staree, to pravee’’). (26) In its religious aspect it also evinced a strong scepticism as to the efficacy of human faculties. Here is how one ethnographer described the attitude of the peasantry around Kupiansk in the Eastern Ukraine:

Mistrust [nedoverie] of the human mind is the fundamental characteristic of the worldview of the peasants. Reason and feeling ["passions"] are powerless to find the truth: this is located in revelation and without faith it cannot be known. Faith alone gives true knowledge; through it everything is clear to man and has a definite goal and meaning; scientific knowledge is only relative. (27)

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, this traditional worldview was challenged by the aggressive encroachment of new ways of doing things and new technologies born of the alien scientific mindset.

(26) Cited in F. Buslaev, ‘‘Russkii byt i poslovitsy,’’ in his Istoricheskie ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti i iskusstva (SPb, 1861; reprint: The Hague, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 102–103.

(27) P. I. ‘‘Iz oblasti malorusskikh narodnykh legend,’’ Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (1893, no. 2), 83. Unfortunately, the author uses scholarly language to summarize the peasant view. Although the terminology is somewhat misleading, the basic idea is sound.

THE RAILROAD AS ENGINE OF THE APOCALYPSE

The railroad represented the most powerful and visible intrusion of modern technology into the life of the Russian peasantry. Therefore, it is perhaps predictable that unease about the new would focus on it. For many among the traditionalist peasantry, the increasing application of technology threatened to bring the world to ultimate disaster. Thus, according to villagers of the Orel region:

‘‘Stone roads will appear, and then iron ones, and after that people will begin to fly in the air; the earth will cease to bear fruit [perestanet rodit ' ] and will finally turn to stone, and that will be the

end of the world.’’ (28)

This same peasantry (or more precisely its parents' generation) greeted the opening of the Moscow–Kursk Railroad by bringing out their icons with the intention of stopping the train, which, as they believed, was being propelled by a devil; when the train stopped at the station, they were all sure that they had succeeded in warding off that demon. (29)

According to another version, recorded in Voronezh province:

Before the end of the world fiery chariots will ride over the earth and the earth will be encircled with a wire; the land will be taken away from the lords and given to the peasants [!!!]. And all of this is already happening now . . . the train (chugunka) [чугунка = железная дорога ( прост. устар. )] is running – that's the fiery chariot, and telegrams are sent over the wires – that's the earth girded by a wire. (30)

This identification of the train as an agent and portent of the end of the world is of course a commonplace of the folklore of nineteenth-century Europe. It is almost impossible for us to imagine the shocking monstrosity of the thing when it was new. The Russian peasantry lived and worked in an environment that had existed unchanged since the world began, as far as a peasant could tell. This primordial (and therefore God-given) order is upset by an infernal contraption, created by the ‘‘lords,’’ source of all manner of evil and misery. Such innovation could only end badly.

(28) Ivanov, ‘‘Verovaniia krest'ian Orlovskoi gub.,’’ 70.

(29) Ibid., p. 70.

THE PERILS OF LIVING BY ONE ' S WITS

Occasionally, peasant anti-rationalist and anti-technological feelings were expressed in surprisingly articulate terms, although, of course, using the vocabulary and images available to the traditional culture. Thus, one village sage in Boguchar district, Voronezh province, made this striking assessment of the condition of humanity in the last two centuries of the second millennium [ AD ]:

Solomon's years have arrived. God wrote two thousand years less two hundred and nailed them to a board; then Solomon came and added to the list and said: ‘‘Why not a full second thousand; let it be full!’’ God said ‘‘Well, it might seem nice for it to be full, but it's going to be tricky [mudro] to live in those years that you've added on. Well, they'll live through them somehow, if only by their wits [mudroshchami].’’ And that's why living has become so complicated [mudro]. I often wondered to myself: why did the Devils pull this Solomon out of the sea after the crab chopped the chain when he [Solomon] was trying to reach the bottom of the sea? [This is a reference to the apocryphal story ‘‘Solomon i Kitovras.’’] [СКАЗАНИЕ О ТОМ, КАК БЫЛ ВЗЯТ КИТОВРАС СОЛОМОНОМ Китоврас Solomon and Marcolf] He would have perished, and he wouldn't have been able to write the [extra] years. It must be that the demons knew that they would gain from this: those people born in Solomon's years will all go to hell, because they don't believe that God exists anymore, that only nature does. (31)

Although its specific details are isolated and not representative of some widespread legend, this passage offers numerous valuable insights into the thinking and imagination of peasants with a moralist and philosophical bent. In order to provide a framework for his ponderings, the narrator relied on characters and events derived from the corpus of old apocryphal writings, that treasurehouse of ideas and images. At the same time this passage reflects the popular fascination with numbers and years (here, as always, seen as drawing to a conclusion) but in an intriguing semi-‘‘modernized’’ form – the relevant numbers are drawn from the standard European count (AD), and not from the Byzantine chronology and its dread eschatological year 7000 (or 8000) which fascinated the older Russian culture. Most important, this statement offers more evidence of the trepidation which the spread of atheism or godlessness evoked in Russian traditional society. Here, however, the causality is reversed – whereas, as we have seen, it was more typical for traditionalist Russians to see the increase of godlessness as hastening God's judgment, i.e. as being a cause of the end of the world, here atheism is caused by the very nature of the last years of this age, when people try to make do with only their wits to guide them.

(30) ‘‘Tolki naroda o skoroi konchine mira,’’ Mir Bozhii (November, 1894), 178. On the wire: this might reflect the influence of the eschatological prophecies of the Greek St. Cosmas Aitolos (1714–1779), who foresaw that ‘‘a time will come when the earth will be be girded by a thread’’ (cited in C. Cavarnos, St. Cosmas Aitolos (Belmont, MA , 1985), p. 79. Until the Revolution of 1917, Mount Athos served as the focal point of a vigorous Russo-Hellenic religious interaction. Note also that the end of the world is tied to the land question.

(31) Cited in M. Dikarev, ‘‘Tolki naroda v 1899 godu,’’ Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (1900, No. 1), 162.

ESCHATOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF SCIENTIFIC NEWS

Thus far, we have examined apocalyptic beliefs which drew entirely on the categories of the traditional culture. A characteristic phenomenon of the turn of the century was the intrusion into the peasant world of scientific information from the ‘‘outside world’’ of modern, educated Russia. In cases when this news was exceptionally dramatic or portentious, the peasantry often reinterpreted it in its own terms and gave it a distinctively apocalyptic cast.

One of the most striking examples of this development was the peasant response to newspaper reports of astronomic predictions of the visitation of a major comet in late 1899. This news, which spread quickly through the agency of literate peasants and soldiers, caused many in rural Russia to spend the autumn of the year in dread expectation of the end of the world and the Last Judgment. Here is a recording of the response of two peasants in Kursk province:

This fall, on November 13th, we're all going to die . . . They say there's going to be some kind of comet that's going to brush against the earth and pull down all the buildings and crush everybody, and everything will be burned by it; and homes that will be very far away from it will fall by themselves and drop into an abyss . . . This was all in a book at the train station in Belgorod, it costs 15 kopecks . . . [Another peasant says that maybe this news isn't true, because the person who wrote it didn't ask God. The other responds:] Now people have already outsmarted the Devil, pretty soon they'll work their way up to God . . . We have to think how we're going to answer before God: we've sinned alot, and now don't have time to pray for forgiveness [odmolit ' ] [отмолить] [One of the peasants then describes what the people in the neighboring village are saying about the comet:] This fall a fiery ball will fly across the sky, and another one will chase after it. [Really, these fiery balls will be] the Archangel Gabriel and the Devil. When the Archangel catches the Devil they'll fight and whoever wins will have his way over the whole world; if the Archangel Gabriel wins, people will be able to live on this earth a little while longer; if the Devil wins he will reign, or maybe the Antsykhryst will; now he's bound up in hell, but November 13th is the date for him to break free [. . .the two peasants then discuss the sins-sexual impropriety and religious laxity – above all of the nobility, which are bringing down God's judgment.] Now it's clear that the end of the age is near. Our Savior said: ‘‘If you are righteous in your actions, I will add to the age, but if you act badly, I will take time away.’’ Probably he will take away, and if he does the dread judgment will be this year, because he'll take a hundred years from two thousand and throw on a hundred more. It seems that he'll take time away, because people have become worse than livestock, before they used to fear God more, but now some even say God doesn't exist at all; how can we expect anything good to come of this? (32)

I have quoted from this source at some length because it reveals many of the salient features of peasant eschatological thinking. In this case, scientific information, namely, the secular and rational interpretation of a natural phenomenon (and here the means of transmission are given rather clearly) is reinterpreted according to peasant sensibilities. The comet is not merely a dramatic astronomical event, but threatens to bring ultimate disaster to the world. This disaster is not conceived of in secular terms, but is seen as the end of the world, which, for the peasantry, equals Judgment Day. The thought of the Last Judgment, in turn, inspires a religious/moral assessment of the world, which is inevitably found wanting, mainly because of sexual and ritual imperfection, both functions of irreligiosity, which makes people ‘‘worse than cattle.’’ At the turn of the century, the traditional culture was still strong enough to receive news from the modern world and assimilate it according to its own categories.

(32) Ibid., 163–165.

CONCLUSION

Russian folk eschatology is derived from the same sources as the traditional worldview as a whole: it shows the decisive and all-encompassing influence of the basic ideas of Orthodox Christianity, with an admixture of elements from the old apocryphal tradition, which provided detail on questions left unanswered in official Church teaching and injected a current of dualism into the popular culture. In the traditional understanding, God is Creator and Lord of all, but Satan has great power over the present world, which is falling ever more deeply into sin. When corruption reaches its nadir, Christ will return as Judge to punish the wicked and restore righteousness.

Folk eschatology centered on the contemplation and anticipation of this event, and reinforced the great imperative of popular religiosity, namely, the maintenance of piety, ritual observance and morality, indispensable for assignment to the righthand side of the Dread Judgment Seat of Christ. These simple yet immensely powerful concepts provided the perceptual framework for traditional Russia's understanding of events on the level of the individual, the community, and the world as a whole. Within the context of the traditional worldview and eschatology, two forces that exerted power over the peasant's world – the Tsar and the ‘‘lords’’ – played a crucial role. The next chapter now turns to an examination of popular conceptions of the Tsar as the primary agent of God and Good in the world, and of the nobility as the camp of Evil, and of their fateful interactions.

CHAPTER 5

The assassination of Alexander II ( 1881 ) and folk Tsarism

[Alexander II of Russia Alexander's most significant reform as Emperor was emancipation of Russia's serfs in 1861, for which he is known as Alexander the Liberator (Russian: Алекса́ндр Освободи́тель)]

From time to time, great events such as war and famine would upset the stasis of the traditional life and evoke a popular response sharp enough to pierce the obscurity which hinders our perception of the workings of the traditional mind. The murder of Alexander II was one such cataclysm, and the articulate reaction it engendered allows us entry into the complex of beliefs that comprised the phenomenon of folk Tsarism. (1)

PARAMETERS OF THE QUESTION

The topic of folk Tsarism is one of the most fiercely contested issues in the field of Russian studies. Was Russian peasant monarchism merely an ‘‘enduring myth,’’ (2) or did the Russian peasants ‘‘recognize no other authority except that of the Tsar all the way up until the abolition of the autocracy’’ in 1917? (3) The latter quote points to another aspect of the debate: if Tsarism is accepted as having existed in the past, and there is little question that it formed a crucial part of Muscovite culture, (4) at what point can we say it was dead in popular belief – Bloody Sunday? (5) The elections to the Duma? (6) The frustration of hopes for redistribution of the

land in the aftermath of 1905? (7) The abdication of Nicholas II? (8)

The problem of folk Tsarism brings us to the heart of the politicization which has shaped the study of Russia and which has been a major theme of the present work. Russian scholarship developed in the context of a mortal struggle for power between the autocracy and Russian educated society; that conflict ended in catastrophe for both sides, and the Bolshevik regime that established itself on the ruins of Imperial Russia explicitly politicized all aspects of science. The Western study of Russia has largely been dependent on pre-revolutionary Russian scholarship for the formulation of the basic questions, and grew in response to the practical political challenges of dealing with Soviet power. For several generations, much of the historiography in Russia and in the West has in effect revolved around the issue of the legitimacy of the Imperial regime; in that context, and with the more-or-less conscious acceptance of the democratic assumption that legitimate power derives from the consent of the governed, folk Tsarism was a matter of the greatest importance, and the negation of it a necessity for revolution, whether Liberal or Socialist.

For better or worse, none of this has practical political relevance anymore – the Imperial regime and its Soviet successor are gone forever, and we can examine the issue of folk Tsarism in terms of cultural history. From that point of view, we find a simple yet powerful set of beliefs that fit well into the traditional worldview of the Russian people. Although we have no means of providing a quantitative assessment (i.e. what portion of the peasantry continued to adhere to traditional Tsarism, how that portion changed over time), it is clear from the documentary record that folk Tsarism continued to exist throughout the period examined in this book, and was capable of responding to new events such as the revolution of 1905 and the Great War.

(1) Although ‘‘Tsarism’’ is an abstract coinage and alien to the actual popular vocabulary, I will use it because it avoids the connotations of ‘‘monarchism,’’ which clearly refers to a modern (if reactionary) political philosophy espoused by elements of the educated classes. The term ‘‘Tsarism,’’ for all its clumsiness, preserves the ancient, popular word for the earthly sovereign, and therefore highlights the traditional folk essence of the topic in question.

(x2) O. Figes, ‘‘The Russian Revolution and its Language in the Village,’’ Russian Review 56 (July 1997), 331. In this otherwise useful study of a new and important topic, Figes disposes of peasant monarchism with a report of the Provisional Government (it is hard to imagine a more biased source) claiming that the Rasputin scandal had resulted in the universal discrediting of the Tsar, but then goes on to cite peasant demands for a ‘‘Tsarist republic,’’ or that the Tsar be elected President, which can be seen as evidence that Tsarism remained a living force.

(3) Iu. P. Bokarev, ‘‘Bunt i smirenie (krest’ianskii mentalitet i ego rol’ v krest’ianskikh dvizheniiakh,’’ Mentalitet, p. 176.

(4) On the conception of the Tsar in Muscovite high culture, see B. A. Uspenskii, Tsar’i patriarkh: kharizma vlasti v Rossii (vizantiiskaia model ’ iee russkoe pereosmyslenie) (Moscow, 1998); for folk ideas as well see M. Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).

(5) This view, a commonplace in the secondary literature, is a relic of the political polemics of 1905, when the opponents of the regime declared that the events of January 9 severed the traditional popular attachment to the Tsar which had blocked the previous efforts of the ‘‘Liberation Movement.’’ Bloody Sunday was undoubtedly an epochal event in the political history of Russia, but, as we shall see below, there is little evidence of it having made much of an impression on provincial rural Russia.

(6) Daniel Field, author of the best study of the topic, asserts that ‘‘the myth of the Tsar was dead after 1905 because the regime could not draw on it,’’ Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston, 1989), 2nd edn., p. 21. It is important to note that Field focused his investigation on the 1870s, where he found the myth very much alive, and that his comment on the post-1905 period is not based on similar in-depth research. The present work will provide evidence of active Tsarist belief in 1905 and beyond.

(7) E. Vinogradoff, ‘‘The Russian Peasantry and the Elections to the Fourth State Duma,’’ in L. Haimson, ed., The Politics of Rural Russia 1905–1914 (Bloomington, IN , 1979), p. 226. As will be demonstrated below, folk Tsarism had simple mechanisms for surviving such disappointment.

(8) V. L. D ’iachkov et al., ‘‘Krest ’iane i vlast ’ (opyt regional ’nogo izucheniia),’’ Mentalitet, pp. 146–154, makes the common argument from inaction – the peasants did not defend the Tsar when he was forced to abdicate, so therefore their loyalty was gone. In 1917, the Russian people were presented with a fait accompli; in 1905, in contrast, the Tsar was threatened but remained on the throne, and popular monarchism could manifest itself.

THE ‘‘LAMENTATION FOR ALEXANDER II’’

Several years after the assassination of Alexander II, police found the following curious text in the course of arresting a group of religious sectarians in the Don Cossack region (unfortunately, more specific details of the provenance are not available):

Let us think, friends, / all about the white Tsar,

The merciful Sovereign, / Tsar Alexander the Second.

He burned with love for all, / and wanted to give freedom to all.

He held everyone under his wing, / and averted chastisement from all the people.

He righted all the laws / and heard the groans of the poor people.

He rushed to help all / while taming the evil-doers.

The evil-doers gathered in council / to destroy the Tsar.

They spent much treasure / and bribed desperate people,

They handed them grenades. / They are cursed by the Lord.

They laid mines everywhere, / but didn ’t kill our father.

Sentries stood everywhere, / guarding the sovereign.

On the first of March / [his] life ’s end came,

It’s too terrible to think or say: / to raise one ’s hand against the Tsar.

A malicious spirit possessed them, / a second Judas appeared.

Among the throng of people, / from what direction – unknown,

A great explosion appeared, / smiting the sovereign.

They ended the Tsar ’s life, / they crucified Christ a second time.

The smitten Tsar fell / and sadly said:

‘‘Lift me up, my children, / my life on this earth is now over.’’

His servants rushed to him / And took him in their hands,

They wept bitter tears, / Great was the passion here,

When Tsarist blood flowed.

You laid down your life / Because you did much good.

You did good unto your enemies / And that is why you spilled your blood.

O father, our earthly god, / That is why you lost your legs.

They are carrying you into the palace, / You, our father.

[. . . Goes on to describe the death watch and mourning in Petersburg . . .]

When they hit the telegram / The sun was darkened for us,

Everywhere great confusion / And a shock for all the earth.

When the news reached even us / The sun ’s rays were darkened

We lost the white Tsar.

Let us remember him, brethren, / And sing for the repose of his soul!

Glory to God and to Him power / To the ages of ages, amen. (9)

The contents of this song (henceforth: ‘‘Lamentation’’), and what we can reconstruct of its origins and transmission, give us many valuable hints as to the dynamics of traditional culture in the late nineteenth century. It may have arisen among religious dissidents (and bears a decidedly Khlyst cast in its apposition of pure good and pure evil as well as its emphasis on physical suffering), and then seems to have spread through the non-sectarian population – it was also recorded from peasants in Voronezh province, (10) and from kaliki in the Don region, (11) and Kharkov province. (12)

Its reference to the telegram highlights an important point: by 1881, traditional elements in society were getting news through modern means. A number of the details of the ‘‘Lamentations’’ (‘‘you lost your legs,’’ ‘‘you are carried to the palace’’) clearly seem to have come from newspaper accounts, which, according to one authoritative study of the Russian press, all carried the same ‘‘stunning particulars’’ as Golos for March 3, 1881, ‘‘Both legs between the knees and feet had been reduced to a mass of scraps of muscles . . . the Tsar summoned enough strength to ask that he be taken to the palace.’’ (13) Whatever its derivation, the ‘‘Lamentation’’ quickly entered into the channels of traditional communication – asked by an ethnographer of its origins, one lirnik [Ukr. Лі́рник (пол. lirnik) — народний співець і музикант, який супроводить свій спів грою на колісній лірі. Лірник Lirnyky were similar to and belonged to the same guilds as the better known bandura players known as kobzars. However, the lirnyk played the lira, a kind of crank-driven hurdy-gurdy, while the kobzars played the lute-like banduras. Lirnyky were usually blind or had some major disability.] reported that he had been taught it after he had lost his sight, by an elder member of the blind fraternity of kaliki/lirniki, while another said that it had been brought from Jerusalem by an old woman who had gone on pilgrimage. (14) Thus, the ‘‘Lamentation’’ can be treated as an authentic manifestation of the traditional culture. Evoked by the severe shock of the murder of the ‘‘Tsar-Liberator,’’ it offers unusually explicit and articulate expression of folk Tsarism, and provides us an entry into the whole set of ideas which constituted that phenomenon.

(9) ‘‘Kak vosplakalas ’ Rossiia o svoem Belom Tsare,’’ [Как восплакалась Россия о своём Белом царе // Русская старина. 1890. № 11 689 ЖИВАЯ СТАРИНА // Годъ XXV 327] Russkaia starina 68 (1890), 689–690. In the naive punctuation of the original most lines end with an exclamation point. [Народная поэзияо гибели императора Александра Второго]

(10) B. E. Ketrits, ‘‘Iz proshlogo: ‘Psalom’ ob imperatore Aleksandre II,’’ Istoricheskii vestnik (March, 1898), 1126–1127.

(11) N. Kul ’man, ‘‘Pesnia na konchinu imperatora Aleksandra II,’’ Russkaia starina 102 (1900, June), 651–653.

(12) E. Krist, ‘‘Kobzari i lirniki Khar ’kovskoi gubernii,’’ Sbornik Khar’kovskogo Istoriko-Filologicheskogo Obshchestva 13 (1902), part 2, p. 130. Krist does not reproduce the text of the song and calls it ‘‘The Death of Alexander III.’’ This appears to be a typographical error, although, to be sure, Alexander III ’s early demise evoked suspicions of poisoning and may have inspired a song (as did his 1888 train wreck).

(13) L. McReynolds, The News Under Russia ’s Old Regime: the Development of a Mass-Circulation Press (Princeton, 1991), pp. 94–95. McReynolds says the physical details ‘‘demystified the man . . . by accentuating his mortality’’; in the ‘‘Lamentation’’ they do the opposite, evoking Christ ’s Passion.

(14) N. Kul ’man, ‘‘Pesnia na konchinu,’’ 653.

SOURCES OF FOLK TSARISM

At the most basic level, folk Tsarism was a recognition of reality: since the beginning of time, as far as the peasantry knew, there had been a Tsar who ruled over them. It is almost impossible for us to relate to this, because we know at least something of the variety of forms of government over the course of history, and we are all products of the modern ideological triumph of the concept of popular sovereignty. For a Russian peasant in 1900, though, the Tsar was a fact of life, like the sun rising in the east. It goes without saying that the Russians were not unique in this – monarchy was an essential part of the traditional order of things for peasants the world over. Here is one attempt to place the issue in a global perspective: ‘‘At the basis of so-called peasant Tsarism we find one of the deep stereotypes of the agriculturalist’s perception of the sovereign power as the carrier of cosmic order, uniting society and nature in the process of regenerating life on Earth. In the eyes of the peasants, this order implied not only the restraining of anti-social impulses, but also the normal course of natural phenomena.’’ (15)

In Russia, this basic tendency of traditional thought was developed and intensified by monotheism in its Orthodox Christian form. (16) The role of Orthodoxy in the formation of Russian Tsarism has properly received much scholarly attention. Without going into detail, a number of key points can be made: the Byzantine model of one God, one Faith, one Church, one Emperor, with its procession and equation of monads, had a certain cogency and lapidary logic to it; this model, itself the product of a long historical evolution, (17) showed a remarkable durability in its homeland, sustaining a religious–political order for a millennium; applied to Russia, the Byzantine conception blended well with the patrimonial attitudes and practices of the local rulers, (18) and over the course of centuries developed into the starkly powerful ideology of Muscovite autocracy.

In terms of the development of popular attitudes, Tsarism was incessantly reinforced in words and images emanating from both state and Church. Until 1917, the Tsar’s visage adorned all official places as well as the coinage, and his name was invoked in all public and legal actions, most notably in the swearing of oaths. Each church service would contain the following supplication, intoned in solemn voice by the deacon:

Let us pray for our most-pious, most-autocratic great sovereign the emperor Nicholas Aleksandrovich of all Russia.

Let us pray for his spouse, the most-pious sovereign lady, the empress Alexandra Feodorovna.

Let us pray for his successor, the right-believing sovereign, the tsesarevich and grand prince Alexis Nikolaevich, and for all the reigning house. (19)

The name of the Tsar was invariably surrounded by a dense cluster of epithets of majesty, stressing the defining characteristics of Orthodoxy and earthly supremacy. The current of religious energy surrounding the Tsar was strengthened by the coincidence of his title with that of God in His capacity as King (both ‘‘tsar’’ in Slavonic and Russian), and by numerous scriptural references to the centrality of the king (most notably in Psalms, that favorite book of traditional Russia).

(15) A. V. Gordon, ‘‘Khoziaistvovanie na zemle – osnova krest ’ianskogo mirovospriiatiia,’’ Mentalitet, p. 62.

(16) Although Orthodoxy took the concept much further than Western Christianity, monarchy has firm grounding in Christian scripture (Matthew 22:21, Romans 13:1–7, I Peter 2:13–17, etc.). This is worth noting because in the American religious context (shaped in large part by the radical Puritan theological rejection of royal authority) monarchy is sometimes assumed to be alien to Christianity.

(17) For a cogent treatment of the fusion of Roman, Hellenistic, and Judaic elements in the Byzantine religious–political ideal, see A. Guillou, ‘‘L ’Orthodoxie byzantine,’’ Archives des sciences sociales des religions 75 (1991 July–September), 1–10.

AN OUTLINE OF FOLK TSARISM

Folk Tsarism consisted of a simple and cohesive set of ideas, based on analogy between the Tsar and God, and, secondarily, between the Tsar and the father as head of the family. (20) The monotheistic underpinning of Tsarism is expressed cogently in the proverb ‘‘One God, one sovereign’’ (Odin Bog, odin gosudar’ ). (21) In the cosmic order, there is a division of spheres of authority, with the Tsar playing a subordinate yet nevertheless exalted role: ‘‘God in Heaven, the Tsar on earth’’ (Bog na nebe, tsar’ na zemle), absolutely indispensable to the proper functioning of the universe: ‘‘Without God the world cannot exist – without the Tsar the earth cannot be ruled [properly]’’ (Bez Boga svet ne stoit, bez tsaria zemlia ne pravitsia). (22) In this scheme of things, the Tsar is guided by God (‘‘The earthly Tsar walks beneath the Tsar of heaven’’ [Tsar’ zemnoi pod Tsarem nebesnym khodit]) and serves as the agent of God’s justice (‘‘The Tsar is God’s watchman/policeman’’ [Tsar’ ot Boga / pristav]). (23) Paternal imagery conveys the same notion of the Tsar as defender of the divinely appointed moral order: ‘‘Without the Tsar Russia is a widow [or: the people is an orphan]’’ (Bez tsaria Rus’ vdova/narod sirota). (24)

The basic religious/paternal understanding of the Tsar opened the way for several lines of thought. On one level, exalted authority implied unique responsibility. Although thought of by analogy with God, the Tsar was definitely not God, nor was he perfect/sinless, and ‘‘God punishes the whole world when the Tsar sins, but has mercy [on the world] when the Tsar pleases Him’’ (Za tsarskoe sogreshenie Bog vsiu zemliu kaznit, za ugodnost’ miluet). (25) Thus, the Tsar plays a decisive role in the religious/moral economy of the world. Here is how one Russian village sage of Tver province described the Tsar’s position: ‘‘The Tsar has a hundred million of us, but all of us together couldn’t obtain [through prayer] forgiveness (umolit’ ) for even one of his sins; he alone, on the other hand, can solicit (uprosit’ ) the Lord’s forgiveness for the sins of all of us.’’ (26)

In the ‘‘Lamentation,’’ Alexander II is credited with a virtue sufficient to avert God’s punishing wrath from all the people. On another level, the analogy between God and the Tsar is the ultimate source of the Messianic element in Russian folk Tsarism. We have already touched on the Byzantine roots of this theme, which developed in tandem with the idea of autocracy in Muscovy. (27) The cultural trauma of the Nikonian and especially the Petrine reforms, followed by the succession of female sovereigns (utterly incomprehensible from the point of view of the traditional conception of proper order in the universe) deprived Tsarism of its normal focus, and made the need for rescue particularly acute; in the confusion, Messianic Tsarism found its outlet in ‘‘pretenderism,’’ (28) of which ‘‘more than twenty’’ examples have been counted for the seventeenth century, and ‘‘no fewer than forty’’ for the eighteenth. (29) With the reestablishment of a more-or-less regular, male succession in the nineteenth century, ‘‘pretenderism’’ seems to have withered, ‘‘ordinary’’ Tsarism (i.e. directed toward the reigning monarch) reasserted itself, and the popular mind usually attached the Messianic aspect of the idea to an expected future Tsar–Redeemer, as opposed to any actual, present figure. The one great exception to the latter point was Alexander II, marked by a stupendous act of liberation as the one who might restore justice to the world. The ‘‘Lamentation’’ ascribes to him the traits and actions which identify the Messiah: he is motivated by love for humanity; he comes to rescue the poor and the suffering; he establishes a new and just and liberating law; he tames the wicked.

Of course, the Christian conception of the Messiah contains the key element of the Passion, and here we come to a very important point: in the traditional Russian understanding, the Tsar was capable of redemptive suffering, by analogy with Christ. (30) The religious verse on the death of Alexander II is clearly patterned on the Gospel narrative, presenting the following elements in succession: the council of the evil-doers, with money as their weapon, who hire a ‘‘new Judas’’; the assassination, explicitly called a second crucifixion, explained as recompense for doing good, with great emphasis on the flow of blood; the darkening of the sun and the quaking of the earth at the sovereign’s death. The ‘‘Lamentation’’ stops short of outright deification of the murdered Tsar, and brings him back down to the human level by ending with prayer for the repose of his soul. Only an event as shocking as the assassination of Alexander II could evoke the full expression of this aspect of folk Tsarism. (31)

(18) R. Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime (New York, 1974).

(19) O blagochestiveishem, samoderzhavneishem, velikom gosudare nashem imperatore Nikolae Aleksandroviche vseia Rossii, etc., to be found in any pre-revolutionary service book.

(20) Lest the reader think the following to be a reflection of some uniquely Russian, or at least non-Western servility, it would be worthwhile to cite how the theoreticians of French royal power defined the king: Hugues de Fleury: ‘‘the image of the Father’’; Bodin: ‘‘the image of God on earth’’; Grassaille: ‘‘God on earth’’; Savaron: ‘‘god in the flesh.’’ Cited in J. Barbey, Être Roi: Le Roi et son gouvernement en France de Clovis à Louis XVI (Paris, 1992), p. 153.

(21) V. Dal ’, Poslovitsy russkogo naroda (Moscow, 1984), vol. 1, p. 189.

(22) Ibid.

(23) I. D. Belov, ‘‘Russkaia istoriia v narodnykh pogovorkakh i skazaniiakh,’’ Istoricheskii vestnik 17 (1884), 246.

(24) Ia. Kuznetsov, ‘‘Kharakteristika obshchestvennykh klassov po narodnym poslovitsam i pogovorkam,’’ Zhivaia starina (1903, no. 3), 403. The ‘‘people as orphan’’ variant is from Belov, ‘‘Russkaia istoriia,’’ 246.

(25) V. Dal ’, Poslovitsy, vol. 1, p. 190.

(26) V. Suvorov, ‘‘Religiozno-narodnye pover’ia i skazan’ia (Zapisany v Kaliazinskom uezde Tverskoi gubernii),’’ Zhivaia starina (1899, no. 3), 397. Cf. ‘‘Narod sogreshit – tsar ’ umolit; tsar’ sogreshit – narod ne umolit’’ ‘‘If the people sin, the Tsar will obtain forgiveness; if the Tsar sins, the people cannot obtain forgiveness,’’ V. Dal ’, Poslovitsy, vol. 1, p. 190.

(27) For a detailed elucidation of the topic, see D. Goldfrank, ‘‘Pre-Enlightenment Utopianism in

Russian History,’’ Russian History 11 (Summer–Fall 1984), 123–147.

(28) For an interesting analysis of the cultural dynamics of pretenderism during the age of the women rulers, see A. S. Myl ’nikov, Iskushenie chudom: ‘‘Russkii prints,’’ ego prototipy i dvoiniki-samovzantsy (Leningrad: Nauka, 1991). [Мыльников, Александр Сергеевич Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Мы́льников (1929 — 2003) — советский и российский историк-славист. А С Мыльников - Искушение Чудом]

(29) P. Longworth, ‘‘Peasant Leadership and the Pugachev Revolt,’’ The Journal of Peasant Studies 2 (January 1975), 188.

(30) There are hints of this in the popular cult of Paul I. See M. V. Klochkov, Ocherki pravitel ’stvennoi deiatel ’nosti vremeni Pavla I (Petrograd, 1916), p. 583.

(31) Although this is outside the chronological boundaries of the present work, the redemptive-suffering idea is still productive in Russia, as evidenced by the presentday popular veneration of Nicholas II.

THE NOBILITY: ENEMIES OF GOD, THE TSAR AND THE PEOPLE

The popular understanding of events in the human sphere closely paralleled the traditional conception of the workings of the universe as a whole: God reigns supreme, but the world at present is full of evil because of the power of Satan; the Tsar is the earthly agent of God’s justice, but his beneficent will is thwarted for a time by the Devil’s minions. It is clear from the documentary record that the Russian people identified the nobility as the camp of evil, and this topic will be investigated in detail in the next chapter. For now, we will examine the issue in the context of the assassination of Alexander II.

The ‘‘Lamentation’’ does not explicitly name the ‘‘evildoers,’’ and in a sense it does not have to, because, for the popular audience, it goes without saying. Who on earth would want to cut down the man who had come to rescue the great, suffering mass of the poor? There could only be one answer: the rich and powerful, who had to be tamed in order for justice to prevail. The ‘‘Lamentation’’ attributes to the ‘‘evildoers’’ all the stereotypical traits of the nobility: they are evil by nature and inspired by the Devil, they act in secret, they use money as the best tool for the achievement of wicked ends, and, very significantly, they prevail yet again, in the endless story of the frustration of the hopes of the poor.

What the ‘‘Lamentation’’ does elliptically, other sources state explicitly, and there are numerous recorded instances of the people placing blame for the assassination on the nobility. One scholar who has surveyed the matter states that of the ‘‘great multitude of rumors and interpretations’’ evoked by the murder, the majority espoused the notion that the Tsar had been killed for freeing the peasants, and cites the peasant memoirist Stepan Grishin of the village of Volkonka in Orel province who wrote in 1898: ‘‘When people speak of the murder of the Tsar–Liberator they say, sometimes with tears, but always with sighs, that ‘They killed him because of what he did for us, that he gave us freedom, God bless his soul.’’’ (32) In a powerful illustration of the fact that culture/worldview and not economic function are decisive in shaping people’s understanding, the same idea was expressed by industrial workers in St. Petersburg, some of whom railed against the ‘‘cursed godless socialists’’ who had done the deed (33) (as we shall see in the later chapters, a ‘‘godless’’ socialist intellectual could be a functional ‘‘lord’’ in the popular perception).

Other rumors made the assassination not so much an act of vengeance as one of preemption: according to this line of reasoning, Alexander II was killed by the nobles in order to prevent him from carrying out land redistribution (the chernyi peredel/‘‘black repartition,’’ so designated

because it would be in favor of the ‘‘black-boned’’ commoners, and at the expense of the ‘‘white-boned’’ lords, favorite theme of both folklore and scholarship) [ЧЕРНЫЙ ПЕРЕДЕЛ РЕФОРМ ИМПЕРАТОРА АЛЕКСАНДРА II (??)) Narodniks The Narodniks were a politically conscious movement of the Russian middle class in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology was known as Narodnichestvo (народничество), from the Russian народ, narod, "people, folk", so it is sometimes translated as "peopleism" or, more commonly, "populism". A common slogan among the Narodniks was "хождение в народ" (khozhdeniye v narod), meaning "going to the people". Though their movement achieved little in its own time, the Narodniks were in many ways the intellectual and political forebears of the socialist revolutionaries who went on to greatly influence Russian history in the 20th century. Land and Liberty (Russia) 1870s. In August 1879, however, Land and Liberty broke up in two independent organizations: Narodnaya Volya and Chernyi Peredel. Narodnaya Volya Narodnaya Volya was a 19th-century revolutionary political organization in the Russian Empire which conducted targeted killing of government officials in attempt to promote reforms in the country. The organization declared itself to be a populist movement that succeeded Narodniks. Narodnaya Volya emerged in Autumn 1879. Black Repartition (movement) Black Repartition, Party of Socialists-Federalists was a revolutionary populist organization in Russia in the early 1880s. "Chyornyi" in this context does not literally mean "black" but "universal". «Чёрным Переделом» назвалась система перераспределения земли в крестьянских общинах, другое название — коренной передел. Originally, the BR members shared the ideas of Zemlya i volya, renounced the necessity of political struggle and were against terror and conspiracy tactics of Narodnaya Volya. BR preferred propaganda and agitation ('agitprop') as their tactics.]. This was expected as the logical next step after the emancipation. (34) Indeed, after an initial confused period in which some feared that Alexander III had been placed on the throne by the lords and would reinstate serfdom, folk Tsarism attached itself to his person, and in May–July 1881 Ministry of the Interior reports from Viatka, Chernigov, Novgorod, Poltava, Nizhnii Novgorod, Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan, Voronezh, and Tambov provinces (in other words, the length and breadth of the territory dealt with in this book) tell of peasant rumors that the new Tsar would carry out the repartition. (35)

The popular apportionment of blame for the death of Alexander II to the lords offers a stark illustration of the radical difference between the modern and traditional understanding of events. It seems clear to us, as it was to educated Russians in 1881, that the assassination was the work of a new factor in Russian history, namely, revolutionary intellectuals who identified fanatically with the cause of the people. In contrast, the people themselves saw the assassins not as benefactors and not as something new, but as agents of the ancestral enemy, the nobility, in its age-old struggle against the people’s earthly champion, the Tsar. Moreover, they could be very resistant to countervailing information. The governer of Orel province reported that peasants categorically refused to believe that (People’s Will members) Rysakov and Mikhailov were peasants, and answered those who insisted on the fact, citing the newspapers, that ‘‘if they are peasants, they were bought.’’ (36) Thus, the popular view did not allow for novelty in its basic assumptions, and made sense of things in terms of traditional categories.

(32) Gromyko, Mir, p. 214.

(33) D. Pearl, ‘‘Tsar and Religion in Russian Revolutionary Propaganda,’’ Russian History 20 (1993), 90. In this excellent article, Pearl demonstrates the resilience of traditional religious/Tsarist notions, but she places their effective demise at an earlier point (by 1905) than I do. This difference could in part be explained by Pearl’s focus on the capitals, where the informational dynamic was very different from that in the provinces.

(34) I. N. Slepnev, ‘‘Novye rynochnye realii i ikh prelomlenie v mentalitete poreformennogo

krest’ianstva,’’ Mentalitet, p. 226.

(35) S. Valk, ‘‘Iz zapisnoi knizhki arkhivista. Posle pervogo marta 1881 g.,’’ Krasnyi arkhiv (1931, no. 2), 156–157.

(36) Ibid., p. 155.

CONCLUSION

Tsarism was a key component of the traditional worldview of the Russian people, and the reasons for the existence of faith in the Tsar are no mystery. As Daniel Field, author of the seminal English-language study of the topic, summarizes, grounds for that belief can be found ‘‘in folklore and religion, in the social structure and the nature of the Tsar’s authority, and in experience.’’ (37) The assassination of Alexander II brought out the basic categories of folk Tsarism in exceptionally high relief. As the following chapters will attempt to show, folk Tsarism retained its vigor as long as there was a Tsar on the throne, and continued to serve as a lens through which traditional Russians viewed historical events.

Before we can procede with our investigation, two problems of perception have to be dealt with. For us, the assassination of Alexander II is a very distant event, both chronologically and emotionally; for Russians in the late Imperial period, it was very recent, and the intense responses it evoked had not yet had time to dissipate. To put the matter in some rough perspective, for a Russian in 1905, the assassination was as close as Watergate is to an American at the beginning of the twenty-first century; for 1917, the chronological comparison would be with another assassination which has caused continuing cultural reverberations, namely, that of President Kennedy.

Another difficulty is that we think of historical figures in terms of ‘‘personality,’’ while traditional Russians did not, except with regard to certain personages of immense power (of the Tsars, only Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great made an impression deep enough to endure as vivid and distinct personal images in the popular mind). We know, or think we know, much more about the individual characteristics of Nicholas II than any Russian peasant did. Our familiarity, such as it is, derives from the distillation of numerous elite sources of information that were simply not available to the great majority of Russians in late Imperial times. For us to see Nicholas II as Russian peasants did, we have to suspend our knowledge and think of him not as an individual but as a type – the Tsar – defined by the categories of thought which have been the subject of this chapter.

(37) Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar, p. 17.

CHAPTER 6

The year of famine and cholera (1891–1892): demonization of the nobility

If the assassination of Alexander II brought folk Tsarism into sharp focus, the misfortunes of the early 1890s, particularly the cholera epidemic that struck Russia, highlight a complementary issue, namely, the peasant identification of the nobility with the force of evil. The perception of a fundamental opposition between the lords and the people, and of a cultural chasm separating them, is of course a commonplace of the study of Russian history, and one of the most productive analytical categories in the field. An examination of popular thinking during the year of famine and cholera (1891–1892) will show that from the perspective of the people, the antagonism between the groups was even more drastic than educated Russians (and Western historians) have imagined: the opposition was absolute, in the context of the dualism inherent in the traditional worldview, and the conflict between the groups was understood in apocalyptic terms.

POINT OF ENTRY

In his memoir of the year of cholera, Stepan Anikin, a populist politician of peasant background, an astute observer of the people in late Imperial Russia, (1) describes the following scene in the town of Astrakhan’:

The people in the town were agitated. Crowds gathered in the bazaars, taverns, hiring points, and on the banks of the Volga. They spoke in a tone of grim accusation:

‘‘Russia is finished. Killer disease has been let loose [Konets Rassei: moru napushcheno] . . . ’’

God help him if they spotted a man dressed like a lord [‘‘barinom’’] in the crowd. Immediately, hundreds of inquisitorial eyes would glare, and knuckles would crack as fists tightened.

‘‘Long-trousered killer! Get him! [Golenastyi morilo! u-u!]’’

The ‘‘lord’’ would be filled with dread. He would try to avoid the crowd, or better yet hire a carriage and flee. Safer that way.

Evil sounds followed him, as if he were a wolf:

‘‘Sick ’em! Sick ’em! [Uliu – liu-liu-u!]’’ (2) [улюлю - крик охотников при травле зверя собаками, в знач. бери! лови! хватай!]

Anikin’s recollection of a moment in Russian life raises a whole set of important issues, and can serve as our point of entry into the popular understanding of the ‘‘lords’’ and their place in the grand scheme of things.

(1) We are fortunate to have a concise scholarly treatment of Anikin’s life and work: S. Seregny, ‘‘Politics and the Rural Intelligentsia in Russia: a Biographical Sketch of Stepan Anikin, 1869–1919,’’ Russian History 7 (1980), 169–200. According to Seregny, Anikin viewed 1891–1892 as a watershed: up to that point, the traditional worldview held an unshakeable sway over the people, but the crises of that year allowed an opening for the entry of new, modern ideas. That perception may well be true, but there is no indication that tradition vanished quickly, and the present work aims to illustrate its persistence, as a counterbalance to the historiographical emphasis on the forces for change.