old believers and the new faith

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The Old Believers and the New ReligionAuthor(s): Michael CherniavskySource: Slavic Review, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Mar., 1966), pp. 1-39Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2492649 .

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Articles

MICHAEL CHERNIAVSKY

The Old BelieversndtheNVew eligion

Eornearly wo hundred years the history f the Raskol,' the Rus-sian Church chism f the seventeenth entury, as a secret ne. To be sure,the Old Believers wrote, nd in enormous quantities, but they wrote-byhand-secret manuscripts, opied secretly nd circulated secretly. And, ex-cept for official ondemnations f schismatic eachings nd the publicationof laws directed gainst the raskol'niki, more or less serious historical nves-tigation tarted only in the last years of the reign of Emperor Nicholas Iand was confined o printed but highly estricted memoranda passed aroundin the Ministry f Internal Affairs.2 ven the nature and the chronology fearly Raskol historiography aise questions about the nature of the schism.Why was the history f the Raskol secret or uch a long time? Why were theOld Believerspersecuted by the government or so long? Was it all, as thegovernment aintained, because they were gnorant, lliterate, uperstitious,fanatical, nd disobedient toward the Church?

With the death of Nicholas the persecution f the Old Believers lackened,and the historiography f the schism merged nto the open. In the last cen-

tury n enormous mount has been published on the Raskol-its meaning,earlyhistory, nd development-and in most of this work he motivation ndpresuppositions re unequivocal.

First, here s the official Orthodox position, represented argely by pro-fessors t the various mperial theological cademies.3The historians f this

1Raskol means schism. Until 1905 the official name for all the sectarians who did notacknowledge he official hurch was raskol'niki schismatics). The term staroobriadtsy OldRitualists or Old Believers) was used only by the liberals. After 1905 the official, egal ap-pellation, too, became Staroobriadtsy. n this paper, to avoid monotonous repetition,use the terms Raskol, "schism," nd "Old Belief" interchangeably.

2Theywere sometimes obtained through underground channels and printed abroad.

See the collection put out by V. Kel'siev, Sbornik Pravitel'stvennykh vedenii o Raskol'-nikakh (4 vols.; London, 186o-62).Even some of the laws concerning the Old Believerswere, in effect, ecret and cannot be found in the Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov (hereafterreferred o as PSZ); see Sobranie Postanovlenii po chasti raskola, printed by the Ministryof Internal Affairs St. Petersburg, 1875), editorial note. See also F. Sakharov, Literatura,istoriia oblicheniia russkogo askola(3vols.;Tambov, 1887-19oo), assim.

3See the numerous works of N. Subbotin, N. Nil'skii, V. Belolikov, and E. V. Barsov,







2 SLAVIC REVIEW

"school" did excellent work n publishing he source material;4 heir expla-nation of the schism nd the schismaticswas simple: the rejection of theNikonian church eform n the seventeenth entury was a reflection f popu-lar (and clerical) ignorance and obscurantism, he mistaking f ritual forsubstance. Rejecting all progress nd change, the schismatics ad rejectedand continued to reject legitimate uthority-of the church hierarchy, nwhich their ouls depended, and of the state as well, inasmuch as it sup-ported the official hurch-sinking ever deeper into a fanaticism f eithertotal and irreverent ndividualism nd sectarianism r of hopeless nternaltheological nd ritualistic ontradictions.5 he Old Believers were mpelledby a superstitious eligiosity, hough this basic motivation arried politicalovertones o the extent that the raskol'niki disobeyed the authorities whotried to rescue them from erdition. There is little one need say about thesenineteenth-century rthodox professors. hey were convinced that the OldBelieverswere heretics r, at best, chismatics orrejecting he authority ndlegitimacy f the Church hierarchy; hey published a great deal of sourcematerial, nd we should not expect anything lse.

Simultaneously ith the Orthodox view emerged liberal, populist posi-tion. Led by Shchapov, whole group of historians uggested more compre-hensive xplanation of the schism which produced the Old Believers.6 heRaskol, as they aw it, wasonly uperficially religious plit. Religious issuesprovided the opportunity or the expression of social and political protest:social, against the ever-increasing mportations rom he West-clothes, cus-toms, nstitutions; olitical, against the central fact of seventeenth-centuryRussian history-the egalization n 1649 of the complete enserfment f thepeasants. These historians bserved that, fter he first ewyears, he schis-matics were exclusively of lower-class origin-peasants and some of thepoorer townspeople-but that, ather han being the gnorant nd dark ele-ment of Russia, they contained and continued to contain a much higherpercentage f iterate eople than the Orthodox population. Hence, the Old

Believers epresented eneral popular opinion and its desire to preserve, fparticularly heir studies in Khristianskoe htenie, Tserkovnyi vestnik, Pravoslavnoe oboz-renie, Trudy mperatorskoi Kievskoi dukhovnoi akademii, and Bratskoe lovo.

4See, for example, the basic collection by N. Subbotin, Materialy dlia istorii raskola zapervoe vremia ego sushchestvovaniia 9 vols.; Moscow, 1874-90), hereafter cited as Sub-botin; E. V. Barsov, Novye materialy dlia istorii taroobriadchestva, VII-XVIII vv. (Mos-cow, 1890) and his "Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii raskola v XVIII stoletii," Chteniia vObshchestve storii drevnostei ossiiskikh, o. 2, 1889,pp. 1-87; and the sources publishedin Bratskoe lovo (edited by Subbotin) in 1884, 888, 1890, and 1891.

riA prime example of this dilemma was the Old Believer position on the priesthood.Not wishing any change, let alone reform, he Old Believers found themselves n an im-possible situation: as the first eneration of Raskol priests died off and no bishop joinedthe

schism, where were theyto

get new priests? f from the Nikonian church, then thewhole schism would be rendered meaningless. And if they did without any priests, thenthey had either to give up all the sacraments r end up (as many did) with the Protestantlogicof each man his own priest.

,See A. Shchapov, Russkii raskol staroobriadchestva Kazan, 1859) and Zemstvo i raskol(St. Petersburg, 1862); and the many works of A. S. Prugavin, V. V. Andreev, V. G.Druzhinin, nd I. Iuzov (I. I. Kablits).







OLD BELIEVERS AND THE NEWRELIGION 3

nothing more, popular customs nd institutions gainst the encroachmentof the centralizing nd bureaucratizing tate.7 he conception of the Raskolas social protest s shared, of course, by Soviet historians, hough nitiallyfew nterested hemselvesn this problem. But in the ast fifteen ears, nderthe impetus of the enthusiasm nd erudition of V. I. Malyshev, Old Be-liever tudies have acquired a new prominence.8 he chief oncerns f Sovietscholarshave been with the ocial structure nd ideology f the Old Believersand with hewritings f the Old Believer hurch athers-Avvakum, pifanii,Lazar', Feodor-as secular iterature.9

Within this historiographic ontext, ecent American scholarship ounds

a curiousnote. No special work on the schism s such has been written, utall the recent or recently evised)general histories f Russia, of course,men-tion the Raskol, presenting t as the expression f Muscovite traditionalism,attention o form rather than substance, gnorance, nertia-the antithesisto the Western Reformation nd its search for change.10

7Shchapov,Zemstvo raskol, pp. 59 ff.8 Malyshevbegan his hunt for Old Believer documents ome thirty years ago. Since 1947

every volume of the Trudy Otdela Drevnerusskoi iteratury as contained his articles andhis manuscript discoveries. See, for example, his "Dva neizvestnykh pis'ma protopopaAvvakuma," TODRL, Vol. XIV (1958);"Tri neizvestnykh ochineniia protopopa Avvakumai novye dokumenty o nem," Doklady i soobshcheniia Filologicheskogo instituta Lenin-gradskogo gosudarstvennogo niversiteta, Vol. III (1951).The manuscript collection of theInstitute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskii Dom), which he heads, is unique. See alsohis Ust'-Tsilemskie ukopisnye borniki XVI-XX vv. Syktyvkar, 960).

9See, for example, L. E. Ankudinova, Sotsial'no-politicheskaia ushchnost' religiozno-obshchestvennogo vizheniia v russkom gosudarstve tret'ei chetverti XVII veka (unpub-lished dissertation, Leningrad, 1951) and "Sotsial'nyi sostav pervykh raskol'nikov," Vest-nik Leningradskogo universiteta, eriia istorii, azyka i literatury, Vol. III, No. 14 (1956);A. I. Klibanov, "K kharakteristike ovykh avlenii v russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli vtoroipoloviny XVII-nachala XVIII vv.," storiia SSSR,No. 6, 1963;A. N. Robinson, "Avvakumi Epifanii (K istorii obshcheniia dvukh pisatelei)," TODRL, Vol. XV (1958),"TvorchestvoAvvakuma obshchestvennye vizheniia v kontse XVII veka," ibid., Vol. XVIII (1962),andZhizneopisaniia Avvakuma i Epifaniia (Moscow, 1963); and N. S. Sarafanova, "Ideiaravenstva iudei v sochineniiakh protopopa Avvakuma," TODRL, Vol. XIV (1958).

10The schismatics clung persistently o the old ways" according to Jesse D. Clarkson,A History of Russia (New York, 1961), p. 157. The problem was in the ignorance andilliteracy of the "tradition-bound Muscovite clergy," states Herbert J. Ellison in hisHistory of Russia (New York, 1964),pp. 77, 79. "To many of the Russian Orthodox theslightest lteration in religious practices .. appeared to be the work of the devil" (SidneyHarcave, Russia: A History [3d ed.; New York, 1956], pp. 39-40). "Attention to the formrather han the substance of Christianity, hich had long characterized Russian Orthodoxy,brought tubborn upport for the strange practices even when they were shown to be with-out scholarly foundation" (Michael C. Wren, The Course of Russian History [New York,1958],p. 237). "First and foremost was Muscovy's traditional attachment to external ob-servances -. no question of principle or dogma was involved" (Michael T. Florinsky,Russia: A Short History [New York, 1964], p. 150). "Over a long period of time, errors ntranslation from the Greek and other mistakes had crept into some Muscovite religioustexts nd rituals .. But in the face of general ignorance, nertia, and opposition little wasdone until Nikon became patriarch" (Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia [NewYork, 1963],p. 219; see also pp. 220 ff.). The only accurate and also detailed account is bySergeA. Zenkovsky, The Russian Church Schism: ts Background and Repercussions," TheRussian Review, Vol. XVI, No. 4 (1957). His interpretation follows those of pre-Soviethistorians uch as Kapterev and Mel'gunov.







4 SLAVIC REVIEW

What does it mean to speak of the Russian masses in the seventeenth

century s tradition-bound? ompared with whom? Traditions are not im-mutable, nd each age has its own. In the West as well as in the East, allChristian eform movements ffered return o the past (whatever he realmotives f the movements may have been). The problem always has beenwhich of the many pasts to defend. Why s it more "intelligent" o use threefingers n crossing neself than two? Despite patronizing references o the"strange practices" of the Old Believers, ll religious practices, r perhapsnone, have "scholarly foundation"; in matters of ritual and theology asource an alwaysbe found to support one's position, nd the Old Believerscould and did point to many very ancient icons showing the two-fingeredsign of the cross." True, as Florinsky as stated, there seems to have beenlittle "principle or dogma" involved, but the issue of a double or triple"hallelujah" is equal in importance o the filioque clause and the leavened-unleavened bread controversies hich, upposedly, ave divided the Romanand Greek churches, ntil today. These categories hen-traditionalism, he"perfectly orrect form," even national self-awarenessl2-are bstractionswhich explain nothing and which, n turn, create other abstractions-theReformation, rthodoxy, scholarly oundations" f ritual.

From the contributions f populist and Soviet scholars, we can derive

four general observationswithout going into the details of the arguments.A very ignificant umber of Russians embraced the schism-from the start,probably s many as 20 percent were Old Believers.'3 The Raskol was mostwidespread n the areas where the power of the central government was lesseffective han elsewhere or a variety f reasons-lack of serfdom, istance,political considerations. Hence northern Russia, the Urals, Siberia, theCossack ands, and large ections f the western rontier ere overwhelminglyschismatic.'4 Old Believers were severely, nd often brutally, persecutedfrom the beginning of the schism until the middle of the nineteenth en-tury.'5 And the Raskol began in a century f profound ocial upheaval andtension. t is hard to find decade of the seventeenth entury which s not

"On this whole issue, on the symbolism of the two and the three, and on the factthat, n the course of Christian history, he number of fingers sed has ranged from oneto all five, ee, for example, P. S. Smirnov, perstoslozhenii St. Petersburg, 904).

12Florinsky, . 154.:"'We have no statistics for the Old Believers until 1852, when a secret government

expedition came to the conclusion that the official igures epresented bout one tenth thereal number. Subsequently, both the government nd the liberal scholars agreed on thefigure f about 2o percent. See the government stimates made by the expedition of 1852,by Nadezhdin, and by Liprandi in Kel'siev; and, for an example of liberal calculations, I.Iuzov (I. I. Kablits), Russkie dissidenty, tarovery dukhovnye khristiane St. Petersburg,1881), Chap.

3.More convincing than all the statistics s the fact that, in his rebellion,

Pugachev offered he peasants their "old faith" again, and, as far as we know, none of thegreat mass that he reached turned him down.

" Partly, of course, because the Old Believers fled to the peripheries but also becausetheir propaganda was particularly uccessful n those areas.

-5Except for the times of Catherine II and Alexander I; see Sbornik Postanovlenii pochasti raskola for the periods of those reigns. n general, egislation on the Raskol can serveas a touchstone or the evolution of government olicy n Russia as a whole.







OLD BELIEVERS AND THE NEW RELIGION 5

marked by rebellions and unrest of peasants or Cossacks, townspeople or

strel'tsy.16Paralleling hese re the triumph f the gentry ervice lass after he Timeof Troubles, the Ulozhenie (Law Code) of 1649, which legalized serfdom,the state-church ontroversy f Tsar Alexis and Patriarch Nikon, and thebeginning f the Petrine reforms.

In other words, he Raskol assumed huge dimensions; t was most preva-lent wheregovernment uthority ould be most asily resisted r disregarded.It was considered serious and major problem by the government. Andthere weremore than enough concrete olitical and social reasons to accountfor ts origins nd spread. This is not to argue that the other factors n theschism-cultural tradition, heology, itual-did not exist. Like all hetero-dox or schismatic movements, he Raskol developed and expressed itsideology n the language of religion. This language is not ours today andhence offers ifficulties f interpretation. he issue is not that the OldBelievers or the Russians, or medieval man in general) necessarily houghtin a manner o different rom urs about politics, conomics, ocial problems,or their ife in general but that they used a particular and comprehensivevocabulary to express their thoughts.'7 And this theological or religiouslanguage, ike all language, possessed a logic of its own. And, indeed, inthe course of their history he Old Believers (like the Protestants n theWest) could be forced nto rather radical theological views because theologi-cal terms, o matter why used, evoked theological onsequences.'8 till, thislanguage can be analyzed, ts origins uggested, nd its meaning understoodin its proper context.

The Old Believerswrote bout many things-details of ritual, dogma,wayof life-but at all times one of their chief concerns was with authority,government, r, symbolically, he tsar. For, in the final analysis, t was thetsar, wielding absolute power over both state and church, who cut them

off rom herest of

society, pprovedtheir

beingexcommunicated nd even

anathematized, orced them to be so different, istinct from others, andpersecuted hem with such violence. This strand of Old Believer thought,regarding he state and the tsar but expressed n theological terms-whatone may call the political theology f the Raskol-is our theme. Our first

"IThe civil wars of the Time of Troubles, the peasant unrest in the 1630s, the townrebellions in the 164os and 1650s, the Cossack uprisings in the 1660S and 1670S (whichusually involved the peasants), the strel'tsy ronde in the 168os and 169os. The strel'tsywere the nfantry egiments reated by Ivan the Terrible and armed with muskets.

17 As was the case in the religious conflicts f the sixteenth and seventeenth enturies nwestern Europe. On this problem see the very nteresting uggestions of Ia. S. Lur'e, "K

izucheniiu klassovogokharaktera drevnerusskoi iteratury," ODRL, XX (1964), 10o-120.18 ee note 5 above. For example, opposing Nikonian reforms, he Old Believers also hadto oppose the Nikonian clergy. This could only be done by denying the validity of clericalordination performed y a heretical church. But then, f there were no priests, here couldbe no valid sacrament; and if no sacraments, hen what about communion, absolution, ormarriage n a theological or even social sense? Once every man became his own priest, therewas no limit to how far one could go, and the Raskol suffered constant splintering offof small and large sectspushed ever further y the logic of religious anguage.







6 SLAVIC REVIEW

concern, hen, s with the anguage n which the concrete ocial and political

problems involving imperial power were couched. Where did the OldBelievers find the terms hey used, what was the logic of their thought,what were heconsequences f this hought, nd by whom was it understood?

The obvious starting oint is the religious reforms n the middle of theseventeenth entury which provoked the schism-but without osing sightof the fact that correction f texts and changes in ritual began in Russiabefore Nikon became patriarch n 1652. In the fourteenth entury, whenHesychast nfluence ransmitted he Neoplatonic concern with words andmeanings, Russia was probably flooded by corrected exts from the SouthSlavic lands;'9 in the fifteenth entury Grand Prince, Ivan III, and a

Metropolitan f Russia, Gerontii, lashed violently n points of ritual;20 ndin 1551 van IV (the Terrible) called together he so-called Stoglav Councilto legislate eforms f morals and ritual.21 inally, s N. F. Kapterev howedsome eventy ears go, a systematic rogram o correct iturgical extsbegan,probably under Patriarch Filaret in the 162os, and at the latest underPatriarch osif in the 1640s; consequently, Nikon and the higher clergy ngeneral were the executors f reforms nitiated nd guided by the tsar, hatis, the secular government.22

The reform movement, n fact, was by no means monolithic, nd one candistinguish hree strands of reform hought nd action. There were whatone may call purely dministrative eforms-legislation ffected y the state,culminating n the article of the Ulozheniewhich established he Monastyr-skii Prikaz (Department of Monasteries) and which, in effect, bolishedseparate ecclesiastical jurisdiction and much of ecclesiastical economicpower.23 his strand necessarily verlapped with the administrative-intellec-tual reform-correction r emendation of texts nd ritual out of desire foraccuracy nd uniformity. his reform an be identified ith Greek nd SouthRussian scholars subsidized and supported by Tsar Alexis and by hischamberlain postel'nichii), he boyar F. Rtishchev, who paid for much ofthe research nd founded a school for theological and linguistic tudies.24Then there were the "Zealots of Piety" Revniteli blagochestiia), group ofpriests nder the eadership of the archpriest tepan Vonifatiev, onfessor oTsar Alexis.25 he concern of these priests was the moral, spiritual reform.

la D. S. Likhachev, Kul'tura Rusi vremeni Andreia Rubleva i Epifaniia Premudrogo(Moscow and Leningrad, 1962), pp. 48 ff.

20 Polnoe sobranie russkikh etopisei St. Petersburg, 834-), VI, 221 ff.Stoglav, ed. D. E. Kozhanchikov St. Petersburg, 1863), passim. See also A. A. Zimin,

Reformy vana Groznogo Moscow, 1960), pp. 375ff.22N. F. Kapterev, Patriarkh Nikon i ego protivniki 2d ed.; Sergeiev Posad, 1913 [first

published in 1887]);hereafter ited as Nikon i protivniki.2SPSZ,Vol. I, "Ulozhenie," Chap.

13;see also M. Arkhangel'skii, 0 sobornom Ulozhenii

v otnoshenii k pravoslavnoi tserkvi St. Petersburg, 881). The Code also registered egisla-tion which was clearly formulated at the council of 1666-67, by which parish priests,formerly hosen by their parishioners, were henceforth ppointed by the bishops, underwhose total control hey passed.

24See N. F. Kapterev, Patriarkh Nikon i Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich Sergeiev Posad, 1909),I, 71 ff.; ereafter ited as Nikon i Aleksei.

2 See Kapterev, Nikon i protivniki, pp. 105 ff. The makeup of the Zealots reflected








This does not mean that they were not involved with the administrative

and intellectual eforms, s in the case of the famous ssue of edinoglasie,26but their main efforts ere directed oward mprovement f public morality,toward religious revival. Their chief vehicle, one which was dormant nRussian ecclesiasticalpractice, was the public sermon. n fact, the clericsof this group owed much of their power and influence o their effectivenessas preachers n the various churches of Moscow.27The members of thisgroup were, n effect, he founding fathers f the Raskol-reformers whowere closely associated with Nikon before he became patriarch but whoopposed his later reforms o the point of schism. Hence, even on a purelyreligious lane it is not possibleto contrast reform" nd "tradition." All theparties nvolved, ecclesiastical and lay, were for reform f some kind orother.28

Now a summary f the ecclesiastical ontroversy:29n the first wo yearsof his patriarchate, 652-54, Nikon decreed changes n ritual-the sign ofthe cross, he number and manner of prostrations, he hallelujah glorifi-cation-and published new service books. He was opposed by the majorityof the white clergy nd many of the prelates. n a seriesof councils between1654 nd 1656 Nikon forced hrough cceptance of his reforms nd condem-nation of his priestly pponents who would not submit.30 y i656 thesewere, apparently, very few in number-a small group of the Moscowpreachers ed by the archpriest vvakum. They were severely unished andexiled, n the line of hierarchic iscipline, but in the last two years of histenure Nikon appears to have lost interest n the whole reform ssue.3'After he abdication-or removal-of Nikon in i658 the obstreperous rieststook heart. They were allowed to return o Moscow,where they continuedto argue against the ritual and textual changes and to plead with the Tsar

the traditional split in the Eastern Church, between the white clergy-priests required tomarry-and the black, who were monks. Again traditionally, nly monks could becomebishops and hence control both the monastic nd the episcopal hierarchy.

20

The issue was edinoglasie single voice), i.e., the conduct of the service with each litanyrecited eparately, n sequence, versus mnogoglasie many voices), an arrangement n which,to save time, several deacons would recite a number of litanies and psalms simultaneouslywhile standing n different arts of the church. On this problem and its history, ncludingthe Stoglav egislation concerning t, see Kapterev, Nikon i protivniki, p. 133ff.

27Ibid.Some of these priests, eginning with Avvakum himself, were such fiery reachersthat they had to flee to Moscow from nfuriated provincial parishioners whose sins theycastigated.

28See the formulation of P. Pascal, Avvakum et les debuts du raskol (Paris, 1938), pp.xvii ff.; he, in effect, ejects both the Orthodox and the liberal interpretations nd sug-gests hat the controversy riginated from clash between two conceptions of Christianity,spiritualized nd secularized, hat existed n Russia.

29 For a highly detailed account, ee Kapterev, Nikon i A eksei, , io6 ff.30Nikon failed to get any active

supportfrom

Constantinople but managed to get theofficial dherence of Patriarch Macarios of Antioch, who was in Moscow in 1655. See the ac-count of Macarios' son, Paul of Aleppo, in Patrologia orientalis, Vol. XXII, Part i; Vol.XXIV, Part 4. The Russian translation, Puteshestvie Antiokhskago patriarkha Makariia vRossiiu," was published by G. Murkos in Chteniia, No. 4, 1896; No. 4, 1897; and No. 4,1898.

ftThis lack of interest ontinued during all the long years after his abdication, until hisdeath two decades later.







8 SLAVIC REVIEW

to abolish the work of the deposed patriarch. o far, hen,no issue of schism;

at most, an ecclesiastical ontroversy nd a problem of discipline-priestsenjoined to obey their hierarchic uperiors and the Russian Tsar. Theexplanation for this mildness on the part of Church and state authoritiesis probably n the fact that both the prelates and the Tsar were too muchinvolved with the problem of the patriarchate-Nikon's attempts o regainhis see and to involve the whole Orthodox world in this issue to botherwith a few disobedient nd popular priests. As late as i666 a council ofRussian bishopsoffered, n effect, compromise-it confirmed he Nikonianreforms ut without condemning the earlier practices and texts and, inreturn, sked the Avvakumians for so they may be called by this date) torefrain from insisting that the new practices and texts were heretical.Avvakum and his colleagues rejected the compromise, nd the PatriarchalCouncil of 1666-67, ed by the patriarchs f Antioch and Alexandria, ettledthe issue; the old practices nd texts were proclaimed heretical, nd thoserefusing to obey the council were anathematized.32 he council alsoinsisted n secular punishment. vvakum nd his companions eodor, Lazar',and Epifanii all three with their tongues cut out) were imprisoned n thefar north, t Pustozersk. n i682 they were burned at the stake.33

The schism, nstituted n 1667,seems at first o have been between theRussian Church on the one side and four Russian clerics on the other.34Yet by the 168osOld Believerswere preading ver much of Russia. At somepoints and in someways, hen, he thought f the Raskol fathers must haveintersected ith other deologicalstrands within Russian society.What werethe thouglhts f these onely clerics?35 rom the beginning, f course, theywere able to attack the Nikonian changes at their most vulnerable point-their scholarly foundation. The deacon Feodor pointed out that the sixeditions of the missal published by Nikon all differed rom one another.36With the best will in the world and despite the help of the monasteries f

32To avoid confusion call the council of Russian bishops which opened in April 1666the "Church Council of i666"; and the council presided over by the Eastern patriarchs,which opened in December i666, the "Patriarchal Council of 1666-67." Kapterev's argu-ment, n Nikon i Aleksei, I, 360 if., was that the decisions of the second of these councilswere the result of the cleverness f the Greeks-filled as they were with contempt for theRussians-in bringing pressure on the council to condemn all things Russian. But the argu-ment does not hold, for Kapterev himself howed how totally dependent the Greek prelateswere (particularly while in Russia) on the Russian government and how careful theywere to anticipate every wish of Tsar Alexis (and then impose it on the Russian prel-ates).

-"See Pascal (p. 545, note 158),who points out correctly hat we have no definitive vi-dence for the burning. The details of the execution are known to us only via Old Be-liever tradition.

34 This is, of course, an exaggeration; a number of priests shared the views of the

prisoners, hough they behaved with more circumspection. And then there was the activeand fanatic adherence of the famous Sokovnin sisters-Feodos'ia, married to the boyarMorozov, nd the younger Evdokiia, married to Prince Urusov. Both sisters were eventuallyimprisoned for their continued participation n the schism. ee Pascal, esp. pp. 34ff.

Nearly all their writings are published in Subbotin; Barsov, Novye materialy; andIa. L. Barskov, Pamiatniki istorii staroobriadchestva XVII veka (St. Petersburg, 1927;"Russkaia Istoricheskaia Biblioteka," Vol. XXXIX).

MSubbotin, V, go ff.; ee also Kapterev, Nikon i Aleksei, , 451ff.







OLD BELIEVERS ANDTHE NEW RELIGION 9

Mt. Athos, he scholars mployed by Nikon could not obtain and properly

date and collate all the necessarymaterials, nd the results f their work wereinevitably nconsistent. ence, what shocked and outraged Avvakum andhis followers was the arbitrariness f Nikon's despotism n matters f faith.The changes were inconsistent, onfusing, wrong; yet the Patriarch threwin his whole enormous police power to enforce hem against the oppositionof the ower lergy. Was it all the personal whim of Nikon? Avvakum houghtso at the beginning,37 ut then found that the explanation could not suffice.The issue was whether he Nikonian reforms were necessary, nd what theysignified.

Inasmuch s both the Nikonians and the anti-Nikonians tood for reform

to some degree, he ustification or their positions had to be found in thepast. For the anti-Nikonian riests, with their emphasis on the moral andthe spiritual, rue religious reform ouched only the inner man. The pastthese men drew upon was the individual past, for all men really knew orcould be reminded f what was good. The Nikonian reform, hough, aisedquite different ssues. It lies outside our scope to search for the originalreasons for textual and ritual emendations, ut there s little evidence tosupport the hypothesis hat the reforms were motivated by foreign policyambitions of the Russian government.38 more simple explanation maybe merely he presence n Moscow of Ukrainian theologians,well trained sphilologists. Concern with texts, translations, ollation, and nuances wastheir profession, n defending Orthodoxy romCatholicism n the Ukraine.And turning heir ritical pparatus on Muscovite exts, hey ould point outmany problems. Neither the problems nor the Nikonian reforms nvolvedany principle or dogma. Both Nikon and Tsar Alexis probably thought fthem, n the beginning, s at best desirable rather han vital. But then, howwere hese hanges obe proven necessary, nd how were they obe justified?The first rinciple used for ustification was authority; he patriarch hadthe right to legislate changes n texts and rituals, and this right was con-firmed y the council of 1654; the duty of his flock, nd that includedpriests,was to obey it was the use of this principle with all its implicationsof arbitrary ecisions that provoked the violent hatred for the person ofNikon). At the same time, herewas the egitimate ppeal to the past-to thefurthest ast of Russian Christianity, hich was Greek Orthodoxy. Thatpast, however, was ambiguous. Necessarily, Nikon turned from the deadpast to the living-the Eastern patriarchs f his own day. Here came themost revealing aspect of the Nikonian reforms, or the answer from Con-stantinople was that the new practices onformed o the Greek practices butthat no issue of dogma was involved; so that, n effect, here was no reason

to forbid the traditional Russian usages.39The internal ogic of Nikon's legislative eforms endered his answer un-37 ubbotin, II, 264.

I.e., plans for hegemony amongst the South Slavs and in Constantinople. Robinson,Zhizneopisaniia, dheres to this view but gives no reasons for doing so; he gives the litera-ture on this problem on p. 17, note 58.

S3 See Kapterev, Nikon i Aleksei, , 151 ff.







IO SLAVIC REVIEW

acceptable, however, xactly ecause the reforms ere egislative. sar Alexis

had been able to issue his new Law Code in 1649 with the rationale that theold lawswere either nadequate or no longer relevant. Nikon, and the Tsar,legislating n ritual and sacred texts, ould not use this rationale. The onlyjustification ossible for eligious hangeswas that the old ritual and the oldtexts were wrong; nd, if wrong, hey had to be condemned nd forbidden.For this reason the Russian prelates had to anathematize the two-fingeredsign of the cross n 1656, nd the Patriarchal Council of 1666-67, n support-ing Nikonian reforms, ad to go on all the way and deny the legitimacy fthe StoglavCouncil of van the Terrible, which, oo, had legislated n ritualand usage.40The issue, then, was the legitimation of Church legislationparallel to that of the secular civil egislation f 1649. But, given the natureof the necessary ustification or religious changes, this issue of legislationresulted not only n a reaffirmation f the deal Christian past but also in acondemnation f the Russian historical past.

The fathers f the Raskol accepted the challenge with eagerness. Timeand again they osed the confrontation: f one is to impute heresy, ne mustmake one's choice either for the Russian past, the saints, and the HolyCouncil presided over by the pious and Orthodox tsar, van IV, or for thedespotic Nikon.41And thus they evoked the obscure doctrine of "Moscowthe Third Rome" 42-meaning to them that n the processof translatio m-perii Moscow was the spiritual capital of Christianity nd that her uniqueand exclusive orthodoxy was historically roven and divinely confirmed.And, as the Third Rome was also the ast, this meant that MuscoviteOrtho-doxy was the only currency f the economy f salvation. f Moscow were tofall from race,betray hefaith s had the first wo Romes, t would mean notonly the fall of Moscow as a state, s divine punishment, ut the end of thewhole world; a fourth Rome there could not be, and Moscow's fall wouldsignify he end of the possibility f salvation for all men, and the comingof the ast days.Both the utility nd the danger of this doctrine re obvious.

On the one hand, it allowed the Old Believers to dismiss the authority fthe Eastern patriarchs, epresentatives f the Second,and fallen, Rome. Onthe other hand, the issue was imbued with enormous tension and urgency;one could not afford mistake, ven a temporary ne, for the stakes wereultimate and the penalty irreversible.

The framework f Moscow the Third Rome, of the confrontation fIvan the Terrible with Nikon, made the argument historical ne, over the

40Subbotin, I, 22o ff."See Avvakum's reminders, n all his letters to Tsar Alexis, of the latter's "pious an-

cestors." For a highly dramatic and very ate illustration of this tension, ee the statement

of Ivan Ermakov during his interrogation n 1855:"The civil laws are created not by thetsar but by the authorities nachal'stvom) .. Therefore I find these laws false and illegal,and I recognize only] the Stoglav law of Ivan Grozny" Kel'siev, I, 221). Ermakov rejectednot only ecclesiasticalbut all laws passed after van IV.

42 See Subbotin, II, 247, esp. 158-59; V, 227 (Avvakum). t is interesting hat in one ofthese references o Moscow the Third Rome (Subbotin, VII, 86-87) the monk Filofei ofPskov, who first nunciated the doctrine, s called Saint Filofei; see Kapterev, Nikon iprotivniki, 153-54, note 1.







OLD BELIEVERS AND THE NEWRELIGION II

meaning of the Russian past and the significance f the Russian present.

The historical ocus llowed and encouraged he expression f prejudices-dislike for he Greeks oming for lms, for the earned Ukrainians corruptedby "Latinity," nd for the presence of Western foreigners f all sorts nMoscow,with their heretical eligions nd strange ustoms; ll these tirrednoisy argument n Russia and its religion. But within the religious con-troversy here eems to have been very ittle religion. For the Nikoniansthe ssue was one of authority, f discipline, f the right o legislate, nd howlittle the substance f the reforms mattered o the arrogant nd obstinatePatriarch an be seen from his lack of interest n them after his firstabdication n 1658.If Nikon was inconstant, he anti-Nikonians were in-consistent. or them, oo, the issue seems to have been authority, he rightof legislation.And the Third Rome doctrine made them peculiarly vulner-able in this respect. For what they denied to Nikon and Tsar Alexis-theright to legislate on ritual-they gladly granted to Metropolitan Makarii,Tsar Ivan IV, and the council of 1551.

The problem does not end here, however, or t is clear that the Nikonians,too, accepted the doctrine f the Third Rome. Nikon used the authority fthe Greeks s long as he found it useful, but after 1658 his denunciationof their orruption nd heresy more than matched that of Avvakum.43 rue,the Greeks became Nikon's political enemies in his struggle with TsarAlexis, but to express his enmity he used a Third Rome, anti-Greekvocabulary which was, apparently, becoming commonplace. And Alexis'view of the Greeks and hence, of Russian Orthodoxy) was best shown atthe council of 1666-67.There the Tsar learned (as did everyone lse) thatthe patriarchs who condemned Nikon, confirmed Nikon's reforms, ndanathematized the Old Believers were-both Macarios of Antioch andPaisios of Alexandria-deposed and no longer patriarchs.44 lthough theTsar spent much effort o have them restored o their ees, n his contemptfor the Greeks-and even for the Russian prelates-he did not see fit to

question the decisionsf

a council conducted under such dubious chairman-ship. The issue, therefore, as not whether ne rejected or accepted Moscowas the Third Rome, but what the Third Rome meant. Nikon and Alexiscould afford o drop the Greek patriarchs, r anything lse, precisely be-cause Moscowwas the Third Rome; for, then, anything hat the tsar andthe patriarch of the Third Rome did was, by definition, rthodox andlegitimate.

At a more profound evel, then, the controversy as not really historicalbut theological. t was equally possible to argue that, because Moscow was

the essenceof Orthodoxy, ll its actions and changes were legitimate, s to4sKapterev, Nikon i Aleksei, II, esp. 216 ff. Nikon's statements nd opinions were pub-

lished in Zapiski Otdeleniia russkoi slavianskoi arkheologii Russkogo arkheologicheskogoobshchestva, ol. II (i86i); hereafter ited as ZRAO.

"See Kapterev, Nikon i Aleksei, II, 465 if.; in addition, Metropolitan Paisios Ligarid ofGaza, so instrumental n pushing through the Tsar's objectives, had actually been deprivedrf his episcopal status.







I2 SLAVIC REVIEW

contend that, because Moscow was Orthodoxy, othing might be changed.

But the theology was political in its implications. This is best illustratedby the fact that, for both Nikonians and Avvakumians, the final andsupreme uthority n matters f faith, f ritual, of the Church was the tsar.At the center of the Third Rome doctrine, nd at the center of Russianseventeenth-century olitical theory, tood the theocratic Russian tsar. Inthe eyes of the monk Filofei, who first ormulated he Third Rome ideology,it was the Russian ruler who preserved rthodoxy n Russia and hence n thewholeworld, nd the burden of the Third Rome, of keeping the faith, estedon his shoulders.45 he seventeenth entury, he reign of Alexis n particular,was the apogee of the theocratic deal.46Elected by God, Crowned by God,Most Pious and Orthodox, the Most Gentle Tsar ruled Russia as autocrat,but his life was conducted, own to the smallest detail, to correspond o thereligious ideal.47 Certainly Alexis lived up to this ceremonial ideal assuccessfully s had Ivan the Terrible, the pious tsar of the Stoglav Council.The controversy hus becomes still more puzzling-why and how resistthe Most Gentle Tsar, how deny him the right to do what his pious andsaintly redecessors ad done legitimately?

The answer would like to suggest s that the theocratic sar began toring a little false n the ears of the raskol'niki, hat something ifferent ndnew was beginning oshow through he theocracy.What that something wascan be illustrated y the first aw of the Ulozhenieof 1649,which establisheda new category f crimes, olitical crimes.48 he law itself only gave formto a conception which had arisen n the early eventeenth entury, onveyedby the sacramental phrase slovo i delo gosudarevo word and deed concern-ing the sovereign).49 n other words, we have here a symbolic ndication ofthe early secular state, for which the sacramental phrase was crime d'e'tat,as for the full-blown ecular state t was, and is, raison d'etat.50

The tenuous nature of my llustration hould warn us, however, hat theprocessdescribed here was very omplex and subtle. Secularization, hat is,

the ustification f this world by this world, showed through but little andwas not, of course, recognized s such, and the theocratic deologypersistedfor long time. Men went on using the old formulas s their ontent lowlyevaporated r changed. So,while Nikon acted, and could only act, with thesupport of the Tsar, the Raskol fathers deluged the "Most Pious, MostOrthodox and Most Gentle" Tsar with their appeals to defend the Ortho-

45 For the writings f Filofei, see V. Malinin, Starets Eleasarova monastyria ilofei i egoposlaniia (Kiev, 1go1), Appendix.

X1For details, ee my Tsar and People (New Haven, 1961), pp. 44 ff.47 See ibid. for the references o the impressions f Paul of Aleppo; see also I. E. Zabelin,

Domashnii byt russkikh sarei v XVI i XVII stoletiakh Moscow, 1872), for a most detaileddescription f the daily life of the Russian tsars.48PSZ, Vol. I, "Ulozhenie," Chap. 2.

See N. B. Golikova, "Organy politicheskogo yska ikh razvitie v XVII-XVIII vv.," inAbsoliutizm v Rossii (XVII-XVIII vv.) (Moscow, 1964), pp. 244 ff.

50 or the medieval theological origins of these terms n the West, see E. H. Kantorowicz,"Mysteries f State: An Absolutist Concept and Its Late Mediaeval Origins," Harvard Theo-logical Review, XLVIII (1955), 65-91.







OLD BELIEVERS AND THE NEW RELIGION I3

doxy of his saintly ncestors, o save the faith and make salvation possible.To these appeals no answer came, and the council of 1666-67 left littleroom for hope. What could one make of all this? The logic of schismaticthought s extremely imple, deceptively imple, for t does not convey theenormous ainfulness f the whole ssue, the shock of the logically necessarydeductions, nd their revolutionary ignificance or the Old Believers.

There was only one general conclusion possible: if Moscow, the ThirdRome, had instituted eligious hanges which required the condemnation fitself n its own past, then Moscow had accepted heresy-and the end was athand. The end was not something ague or ambiguous. t was the apocalypse,described n greatest etail by St. John of Patmos and St. Cyril of Jerusalem.The end of the world was preceded by the second coming of Christ, who,in turn, was preceded by the Antichrist. o repeat, this conclusion wasemotionally o monstrous hat even Avvakum could not come to it easily;he struggled hard to postpone the ultimate confrontation. he Cyrillianinterpretations avehim some eeway: Antichrist as a person, ut there wasalso the spirit of Antichrist, manifest whenever postasy took place. Apos-tasy on a mass scale certainly resaged the physical Antichrist ut still leftroom for hope that the process could be stopped and even reversed.51Nevertheless, he spirit of Antichrist needed some material instrumentthrough which to work, nd the candidate for such an instrument as nothard to find-a patriarch f the Third Rome who was a manifest eretic.52

Nikon as the precursor f Antichrist asshocking nough, lthough heerhatred for the person of the Patriarch may have made the dea less painful.But this explanation was not sufficient, irst, ecause Antichrist imself wasan imperial, not an ecclesiastical igure nd, second, because Nikon was notacting on his own authority. ehind him was the figure f the pious andOrthodox Tsar, traditionally esponsible orOrthodoxy nd salvation. Thisis to say that, s apostates, Nikon, Alexis, and the bishops who obeyed themall signified hespirit f Antichrist. ut, as holders of supreme power, Nikon

and particularly Alexis had a greater responsibility.53 hey were not justpart of the general spirit of the times but were guiding the work of Anti-christ; hey were, n a sense, part of Antichrist, r at least of the apocalypticvision-being cast interchangeably s precursor, s Antichrist himself, ras the Beast of the Apocalypse.

Tsar Alexis as a precursor, r symbolically ne of the two "horns," ofAntichrist as far more painful to accept; nothing ould more surely meanthe end of the world than the Orthodox Tsar as a horn of Antichrist.54 ut

51See,for example, Ia. L. Barskov, Pamiatniki istorii staroobriadchestva XVII veka, cols.771-85, where the point is that though the spirit of Antichrist s present, he himself has notyet come.

52 ee, for example, Pascal, p. 209, note 66; P. S. Smirnov, Vnutrennie voprosy v raskole vXVII veke St. Petersburg, 898), pp. i6 ff.

53There were few attacks on Nikon after his abdication, and the emphasis shifted to theTsar. For numerous xpressions f this, ee Pascal, passim.

" See Smirnov, Vnutrennie voprosy, pp. 31 f. Antichrist, ike angels-or Moses-hadthe two horns of divinity. ee Avvakum on this n Subbotin, V, esp. 230.







I14 SLAVIC REVIEW

it made sense, articularly fter 1658,when Nikon was gone and the reforms

were nonetheless maintained. Still, Nikon, too, had done his work, andtherefore oth Tsar and Patriarch, he former s Antichrist, he latter asthe Beast of the Apocalypse, appear in an illustrated pocalypse (Figurei).55 It is certainly ard to prove that the portrait s that of Alexis (not tomention Nikon).56But in comparing the imperial crowned figure f theminiature with the official ortrait f Tsar Alexis (Figure 2) and, particu-larly, with that of his father, Tsar Michael (Figure 3)-and confusion ofthese two n official ortraiture would be natural enough-the resemblanceis suggestive.57 qually suggestive s an eighteenth-century iniature how-ing the "rulers nd judges" bowing before the spirit of Satan (Figure 4),58

especiallywhen compared with an early portrait f Alexis (Figure 5).59Andany doubts bout the dentification re completely emovedby a nineteenth-century miniature, drawing upon an old iconographic tradition, whichshows the unholy trinity-Alexis, Nikon, and Arsenii Sukhanov (a scholarmuch involved in the work of the textual reforms)60-as he serpent, thebeast, and the false prophet of the Apocalypse (Figure 6).61 The humannumber nd the number of the beast-666-rules over both the complemen-tary mages.

If Tsar Alexis was the precursor f Antichrist, e could not have becomethat overnight. n fact, s deacon Feodor, one of the four Pustozersk athersheard, Alexis was from the start-that is, 1645, when he inherited thethrone-a horn of Antichrist.62 n other words, the conclusion had to bedrawn that the apostasy of the Tsar was not an accident, temporary ndrandom, but part of an irrevocable divine and satanic process. f so, whenwas Antichrist imself o come? The Old Believer position on the datingof the apocalypse was established by the mid-i65os, t the very beginningof the schism, nd subsequent events confirmed t by giving substance tothe date of 1666.63 abalistically hisworked out quite nicely n at least two

0 Biblioteka Akademii nauk, Leningrad BAN), ms 33-5-10, p. 15 r.51

Thisidentification as

suggested byV. I.

Sreznevskii,n Sreznevskii nd F. I.

Pokrovskii,Opisanie Rukopisnogo Otdela Biblioteki Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk (St. Petersburg,1910), , 54-

57The portraits are from the Tituliarnik of 1672, ordered by Alexis, containing theimages of all the Russian rulers, as reproduced in Portrety, gerby i pechati Bol'shoiGosudarstvennoi Knigi I672 goda (St. Petersburg, 1903), plates 32 and 31 respectively. heRussian tsars n general were portrayed ufficiently like (compare the portraits of Ivan IVand Vasilii Shuiskii), except for the moustache of Michael with its upward sweep (whichleads me to suggest Michael as the prototype for the Antichrist) hat a mistake would benatural. And by the early eighteenth entury Old Believers would not have cared enoughto distinguish etween the two Romanov tsars.

,8 ublichnaia Biblioteka imeni Saltykova-Shchedrina PB), Leningrad, ms Q.I. 1076,p. 660b.

69Unnumbered portrait from the collection of the Muzei Istorii Religii iAteizma(MIRA), Leningrad.

?See S. A. Belokurov, Arsenii Sukhanov Moscow, 1891).6Institut Russkoi Literatury IRLI) (Pushkinskii Dom), Leningrad, ms 625 of the Peretts

collection, p. 26r27 b.62 a. L. Barskov, Pamiatniki pervykh let russkogo staroobriadchestva St. Petersburg,

1912),p. 333-ImSee,for xample, Pascal, p. 250.








computations, iven that 666 was the number of Antichrist.64 ubstantively,

the council of 1666-67 cted as the final proof, lthough most of those wait-ing for the apocalypse-Avvakum among them-still could not face thelogical conclusion hat the end of the world was really at hand. It may havebeen the enormous vitality f the archpriest hat prevented him from ac-cepting he dea of the total end; and while he spared few curse words whendescribingNikon and even Alexis, he preferred o emphasize that only thespirit of Antichrist was present-that is, the apostasy which was not finalas long as men were willing to hold out against it. Yet this reluctance ofAvvakum o face the apocalypse may have led him to ideas which hint atthe political underpinnings f apocalyptic theology. For, in order not to

acceptAntichrist, vvakum n effect ttacked the theocratic ature and roleof the Russian tsar. By this stage he was furious with Nikon's exaltationof the "most pious, most gentle, most autocratic sovereign." 5 Nikon waspraising he Tsar above all the saints, nd called Alexis sviatoi tsar' (holytsar).66 hough Avvakum argued that Nikon was confusing he person ofthe tsar with the imperial office, he very mage of the theocratic sar wasinevitably ased on this confusion.67 ut even the office f the tsar was notexempt from Avvakum's arguments: he tsar had no right to "possesstheChurch and change dogma"; his task was only to protect the faithful,"not teach [them] how to hold the faith." 8 In other words, f Alexis wasnot responsible or the faith of the Third Rome, then his heresy was not sodecisive. Thus Avvakum seems to have abandoned the "traditionalist,"

" These calculations can be found in virtually very one of the Old Believer apocalyptictracts, which number n the thousands. One theorem holds that Antichrist was to lie boundfor the first ooo years; released, he then obviously waited for his number, 666, to come up.The other theorem-more historical-is that the year iooo marked the first ppearanceof the beast, with the fall of Rome from orthodoxy the reference s clearly to the splitbetween the Eastern and Roman churches-1054). Another 6oo years pass before his sec-ond appearance (the Union of Brest, 1591), and then 66 years before his final appearance.On this ast step, there are variations, with the third appearance coming 6o years after thesecond, or in i66o, marked by the beginning of heresy, famine, and unrest; and then, 6

years ater, thefinal

coming.The variation

providesa nice

symmetry-6oo, o,and

then 6.65 a. L. Barskov, Pamiatniki istorii staroobriadchestva XVII veka, col. 464. See alsoRobinson, Zhizneopisaniia, p. 29, where he argues that the glorification f the ruler grewgreater between 1651and 1657,that where the service book (sluzhebnik) of 1651commemo-rates the tsar quite casually, among the other Christians, the service book of 1657 pub-lished by Nikon commemorates Our Most Pious Tsar and Grand Prince," etc. There isno doubt that the reign of Alexis was the triumph of theocratic ritual and practices, butin this instance Robinson made a mistake. He is correct about the 1651 text (edition ofJuly i8, p. 146), but he checked only one of the liturgies, nd not a prominent one. Theliturgy f St. John Chrysostom as the usual glorification f the pious ruler (p. 161), andthe liturgy f St. Basil the Great included the real memorial, the prayer for the "well-beingand salvation of our pious and Christloving overeign" p. 112). This formula s repeated,word for word, n the St. Basil liturgy f the edition of April 4, 1657. In fact, n checking

all the printed service books published in Russia between 1602 and 1676, was unable tofind ny significant hanges or variants n the memorial prayers for the tsar.'*Ia. L. Barskov, Pamiatniki istorii staroobriadchestva XVII veka, col. 464; Subbotin, V,

229 ff.7 For Avvakum's arguments, nd also for his violent personal attacks against Alexis, see

the references athered n Robinson, Zhizneopisaniia, pp. 28 ff. On the identity of personand office n Russian theocratic ulership, ee Tsar and People, Chap. 2.

Is a. L. Barskov, amiatniki istorii taroobriadchestva VII veka, cols. 467, 477.







I6 SLAVIC REVIEW

conservative osition on the evel of political theology, ust as he had on thelevel of pure theology. bviously, herewere nconsistencies ithin his view,as when he denied Alexis the imperial rights which he defended for theTsar's ancestors; but then, van the Terrible was dead and gone and nolonger problem. Alexiswas alive and pressing, nd in desperation Avvakumpleaded with him: "After all, we are not taking away from you yourempire .. but are defending our faith." 9 Despite the various incon-sistencies, however, toward both Church and state, the Old Believer,Avvakumian positions appear far more consistently evolutionary nd"reformist" han they have been generally hought.

The Raskol fathers were driven by their ircumstances o explore the ogicof their own views. But if they were understood nd followed by others, sthey were, t meant that their anguage and their ogic were also understoodand accepted. One reason for this understanding was the apocalyptic moodof the mid-seventeenth entury. Parenthetically, ne might note thatapocalyptic hought, he expectation of the end, does not seem to arise atmoments f great and apparently ataclysmic hreats o Russian (nor prob-ably any other) society-the Mongol conquest, the Time of Troubles withits Polish intervention-but rather at a time when society s undergoingan internal crisis of basic transformation nd change.70 n the seventeenthcentury e can date this mood at least as early s May 1644,when the govern-ment's Printing Office ublished the so-called Book of Cyril, collection ofSouth Slavicand Ukrainian apocalyptic writings. he volume sold over 500copies in one month-an incredible sale for the time.7' The book, andothers ike it printed a little ater, obviously met intense popular demand.Probably, however, he apocalyptic strand of thought was present as earlyas the 1630s. It is associated with the name of Kapiton, a hermit renownedfor his asceticism, ounder of a hermitage near Tot'ma, in the north, n1630.72 ery ittle s known of his theology, ut his name is linked with the

earliest-pre-Old Belief-cases of self-immolation, nd Kapitonovshchinawas a movement f flight rom he world, the expectation of an immediateapocalypse.73n fact, t was from he hermit Mikhail, a follower f Kapiton,that deacon Feodor learned that Tsar Alexis was "not a tsar but a horn of

119bid., col. 477.7?See,for example, N. A. Kazakova and Ia. S. Lur'e, Antifeodal'nye reticheskie vizheniia

na Rusi, XIV-nachala XVI vekov (Moscow, 1955), for the apocalyptic thought of the latefifteenth entury, which accompanied the emergence of the centralized state underIvan III.

71S.A. Belokurov, z dukhovnoi zhizni Moskovskogoobshchestva XVII v. (Moscow, 1902),pp. 152ff. he role of the printing press n forming ublic concerns r mood deserves tudy,

though t would be most difficult o do for Russia. One can hypothesize, however, that themassproduction of a book would at least create a situation in which an enormous numberof people (by medieval standards) would be concerned with the same problem at thesame moment. And this, n turn, could generate a sort of dynamic spontaneity on a scaleunthinkable for societydependent on manuscripts.

72For the literature on Kapiton, see Pascal, p. 62 and notes.78 Ibid., pp. 35ff.; Barskov, Pamiatniki pervykh let russkogo staroobriadchestva, pp.

xiv ff.








Antichrist." 4 By the 1640s, then, there was a certain mood or ideology of

insecurity, f rejection, n which men associated the evil they were rejecting,or fleeing rom, with the Tsar. And the ideology of the early Raskol inter-sected with, f it did not draw upon, this mood.

The apocalyptic utlook was not restricted o the Kapitonovshchina un-aways,hermits, nd dissatisfied ower clergy. his is not the place to discussthe great controversy etween Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexis; on theface of t, Nikon's drive for power and his motivations n general were quitedifferent rom those of Avvakum.75But after the break came, in 1658,Nikon began to sound very much ike Avvakum. We have already noted thatthe disgraced atriarch ccepted nd used, n his defense, he doctrine f the

Third Rome. But Nikon went much further han this, for he attacked thetheocratic ole of the "most pious, most gentle" Tsar. "How did you acquirethe nsolence o inquire about us [prelates] nd to judge us?" wrote Nikonto Alexis.76n his nsistence hat the priesthood was above secular authority,Nikon denied the Tsar any role in the Church except as an obedient ex-ecutor.77 is greatest ury he directed t the Ulozhenie-the Law Code of1649-which established the Monastyrskii rikaz and generally presumedto legislate n the Church. The compiler of the Code, Prince N. Odoevskii,pretended o refer o the old sacred aws of the apostles, he Church fathers,and the Byzantine mperors; ut, n fact, he was making up new laws, "likea new Luther" And these aws were suggested o him by his teacher, heAntichrist.78 o, Nikon, too, ended up denying Alexis the rights he allowedto Ivan the Terrible or to the Byzantine mperors. He could draw only oneconclusion from the situation as he saw it-the reign of Antichrist hadcome. n accord with St. John the Divine, Nikon wrote, he envisaged theAntichrist s spiritual rather than incarnate; the power of the Antichristwould be manifested y the fact that "lay authority, tepping over divinecommandments, ill take possessionof the Church," 9 and this, obviously,had come to pass. In other words, Nikon's logic paralleled that of Kapitonand Avvakum within general pocalyptic mood. The end of the world wasnear, and the responsibility or this cataclysm ay with the Tsar, whosepowerwas spreading ut into new areas or was no longer egitimate n areaswhere t had once prevailed. Hence, the apocalypse as political theologyfocusedpretty xclusively n Antichrist; ew men seem to have been inter-ested n what was theologically o follow-the second coming of Christ. TheRussian Church, beginning with the successor of Nikon, Iosaf, and on

74 ee p. 14 above and note 62.7rThe best account of the Nikon-Alexis controversy nd the most complete sources for

it are the studies of Kapterev cited above.76ZRAO,II, 543.77See bid., passim; Kapterev, Nikon i Aleksei, II, 178 ff. The sources of Nikon's Hilde-

brandine doctrines Ukrainian scholars, Muscovite tradition?), owever, have not been suf-ficiently xplored.

78 Kapterev, Nikon i Aleksei, I, 196-97, notes.791Ibid., . 201, notes. Nikon wrote this in a letter to his friend, the boyar Ziuzin, who

paid heavily for this friendship. ee Delo o Patriarkhe Nikone (St. Petersburg, 1897), pp.1goff. a publication of the Arkheograficheskaia omissiia).







I8 SLAVIC REVIEW

through he great prelates of Petrine Russia-Dimitrii of Rostov, Stepan

Iavorskii, eofan Prokopovich-hammered way at the fact that the secondcomingwasa mystery nd that men were forbidden o try o anticipate God'swill concerning t. But no one was trying o anticipate the second coming,and an Old Believer "Booklet about Antichrist" f 1707 cunningly ointedout that the proscription gainst guessing he date applied to the coming ofChrist only; the coming of Antichrist was not a mystery nd obviously be-longed to a different heology.80

It is clear that he political theology f Avvakum nd his friends nteractedwith a tradition hat was both older and broader than the immediate reli-gious controversy n which these men were involved. Still, so far we havebeen discussing general mood and an ecclesiastical ontroversy. t whatpoint and in what way did it all become a schism, he Raskol proper? t isnot possible,for ack of evidence, o trace the spread of the Raskol in time,place, and numbers. But three major events took place during the lifetimeof the Raskol fathers, nd these events can serve to illustrate t least whatit was that was spreading o rapidly over large parts of the Russian state.First, here s the case of the Solovetskii Monastery, ne of the holiest placesof Russia, situated on an island in the Arctic Ocean, rich, remote and henceaccustomed to independence)-the monastery, ike so many of the whiteclergy, efused to accept the Nikonian reforms.81 he monks went muchfurther, owever, han the majority f the opposition; they embarked uponoutright ebellion, and closed the monastery o imperial authority. heirarguments were not new; like Avvakum, hey did not admit any disloyaltyto the Tsar, but professed greater oyalty o their faith nd their alvation,which were being threatened.82 till, they refused o obey the Tsar, ceasedto pray for him, and endured a siege of eight years 1668-76) before themonastery ell and the monks and laymen within t were massacred. Thesignificance f this drama is heightened by the second of our events-thegreat rebellion of Stepan Razin, 1670-71. The rebellion followed what had

been the classical pattern incethe Time of

Troubles, at the beginning ofthe century-it was started nd organized by Cossacks, then spread to thepeasants. The organized, Cossackphase of the rebellion was over within ayear, hough the government as badly shaken by the massivenature of therevolt. There seems to be no evidence that the Razin uprising ncluded OldBeliever elements r ideology, hough Razin himself, n previous years, hadtwice visited the Solovetskii Monastery s a pilgrim.83 ut the reverse wascertainly not the case. Whether to exonerate themselves r to say things

'I BAN, Druzhinin ms 134 "Knizhitsa o Antikhriste"), p. 16-17."IFor sources on the Solovetskii ebellion, see the works by Barskov cited above (notes 35

and 62) and, in particular, Barsov, Novye materialy, nd Akty storicheskie St. Petersburg,1841-42),Vol. IV, passim.82 SeeAndrei Denisov (one of the founders f the great Vyg community f Old Believers),

Istoriia o otsekh stradal'tsakh olovetskikh, d. V. T. Usov (Moscow,1907), pp. 20-21.8 See Pascal, p. 443 and note 12, for the legend that Razin, in his rebellion, was ac-

companied by Patriarch Nikon. In popular tradition, herefore, verything ot mixed up-Nikon, Avvakum, Razin, the Tsar-and the one clear fact that remained was rebellionitself.








which their nterlocutors xpected and welcomed, the captives taken after

the fall of the monastery ll testified o the leading role of outsiders-fol-lowers of Kapiton, runaways, on Cossacks-in the monastery.84 ertainlythe government elieved that the main impetus for resistance n the monasterywasprovided by former members f Razin's scattered rmies.85

It is not possible to prove conclusively connection between the Razinuprising nd that of the SolovetskiiMonastery; he significance f this con-junction ies in the fact hat the Moscow government irmly elieved n sucha connection nd that t even acted accordingly. t is at least difficult o seeas pure coincidence the fact that the year of the outbreak of the Razinrebellion, 670, marked new and brutally everemeasures toward Avvakumand his fellow prisoners f Pustozersk.86 ut if one may have doubts aboutthe ntersection f Old Belief and Razinovschina, none can exist regardingthe third vent n this series-the strel'tsy prising of 1682. True, this up-rising did not occur within the life span proper of Avvakum and his col-leagues-they were executed in April, while the strel'tsy ose in May of1682-but the dates are closeenough, and the strel'tsy id not know, whenthey marched n the Kremlin, hat Avvakum was dead. The many politicaland economicgrievances f the strel'tsy ad been complicated by the delicatepalace situation of the two young co-tsars Peter I, ten years old, and hishalf brother, van V, sixteen nd half-witted) eing edged out by their oldersister, ophia.87 n any event, the "Petition" of the strel'tsy was an OldBelief tract, drawn up by the Raskol priest Nikita Dobrynin "Pustosviat"(the Bigot), who was in close touch with Pustozersk.All the economic andpolitical grievances were submerged n the religious anguage of the "Peti-tion." The strel'tsy leaded for tolerance: What was wrong in using twofingers o make the sign of the cross? hould one mutilate nd burn men forthis? Moscow, after ll, was the Third Rome, and its faith should not bedetermined y renegade Eastern patriarchs.88 t the debate which took placein the mperial palace, however, he plea for toleration uickly turned nto

a demand for religious restoration. f the reforms were suggested by rene-gades, they were heretical, nd, as Tsarevna Sophia pointed out in a burstof anger, hestrel'tsy ere accusingof heresy ot only Nikon but her father,Tsar Alexis, as well.89

The soldiers were pacifiedby a mixture f force nd concessions, nd theyrepudiated Nikita, who was executed on Red Square. But again the govern-ment howed ts awareness f the intersection f Raskol ideology with pop-

" See Barsov, Novye materialy, sp. p. 122.8 See ibid., "Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii Solovetskogobunta," for the reports of the

local governor n the interrogations f prisoners.m

See Pascal, pp. 435 ff.87 On the role and problem of the strel'tsy, ee S. M. Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii (Moscow,1959-),Vol. XIV; Ocherki storii SSR:Period feodalizma, XVII v. (Moscow, 1955).

mThe full account of this affair s to be found in the Istoriia o vere i chelobitnaia ostrel'tsakh f the ex-priest Sawa Romanov, who wrote it in 1682. A nineteenth-centurymanuscript f this work was used for the edition by Nikolai S. Tikhonravov, in Letopisirusskoi iteratury drevnostei, , Sec. II, 111-48.

8 Tikhonravov, . 139-







20 SLAVIC REVIEW

ular discontent; nd again one wonders whether he execution of the Pusto-zerskprisoners t a time of great trel'sty nrest, ust before he outbreak nMay, was purely coincidence. Shortly fterwards he government emon-strated ts conviction hat the theology f the Raskol was primarily po-litical one; a law of 1684 made adherence o the schism secular, tate crimewith the punishment f death for the nonrepentant chismatic.90 nd thegovernment ad reason: Beginning with the insurrection f 1682, everypopular uprising n Russia-the continued strel'tsy roubles, the Cossackrebellions under Peter I (Azov, Astrakhan, Bulavin's uprising), and theclimax of the great uprising of Pugachev under Catherine I-was foughtunder the banner of the Old Belief; the restoration f old ritual, cons, andbooks was inextricably onnected with the program of massacring he aris-tocracy nd abolishing erfdom. hus, the early i68os mark the beginningof the real Raskol, the massmovement within he Russian state, which camewith the death of the first eneration, he ideologuesof Old Belief who stillhad hopes for ecclesiastical victory; he first prising with Raskol slogansand program; nd the nitiation f relentless overnment ersecution f theRaskol as a crime against the state.

As a mass movement with complex motivations, he Raskol soon lost itstheological unity, for n the realm of theology he choices and possibilitieswere virtually nlimited, s they lways are when men are suddenly boundonly by the imits of their ndividual reason. n the sphere of the politics ofapocalypsewhich oncerns s here, however, hree hoices were possible.Onewas the belief that the end was here and now; the last days had come andAntichrist was present, n person. The second was the conception of thespiritual Antichrist, manifest n general apostasy and corruption, ocusedin the government s the source of all power, but diffused ver all of Rus-sian society and the world at large. These were legitimate theologicalalternatives. he third choice was expressed n a curious synthesis f the

first wo: the idea of an incarnate Antichrist uling on earth, but withoutthe theological consequence of this fact, that is, the end of the world andthe second coming within forty-two onths Antichrist's eign was supposedto last three and a half years). The escape from this impasse lay in thepositing of an Antichrist who, though corporeal, was a body corporate-that s, the person of Antichrist was the Russian imperial dynasty. o long,then, as the dynasty went on reigning, he world continued, though cor-rupted, s in the eyes of those who believed n the spirit of Antichrist nly;but the source of all corruption was a flesh-and-blood ntity-each succes-siveRussian ruler, who was the physicalAntichrist hile he ruled.

How one chose one's apocalyptic politics and what the choice meant canbe seen most easily n the case of the most extreme hoice. f Antichrist washere on earth, n person, there was only one way to escape him, and thatwas by death. It is significant hat suicide as a solution appeared (and the

90PSZ,Vol. I, item 1102.








first eported nstances of collective self-immolation ccurred) within Ka-pitonovshchina, efore the Raskol fathers ook a position on the question.The logic was clear: Believers fled Antichrist, iding in the forests, ut ifhe reached out for them, f he sent his servants-officials, oldiers, ax col-lectors, ensus takers-then they died, preferably y the cleansing fire, e-fore alvation was endangered by contact with, or submission o,Antichrist.The Raskol fathers were not in agreement bout this solution, but Avva-kum, for one, acknowledged ts legitimacy s a last resort n the struggleagainst the Antichrist.91 eginning ome time before 1664and reaching tsclimax in the reign of Peter I, the wave of self-immolation arried awaywhole communities, nd the total number of suicides ran into tens ofthousands on a small scale the practice continued at least until 186o).92Our knowledge f the motives for the mass suicides necessarily omes fromgovernment eports, nd the government, or once, felt confused and un-sure as its traditional nd reliable means of persuasion-the whip and Si-beria-proved singularly rrelevant. ut we know the general setting or theself-immolations: n every case, a peasant group or community f Old Be-lievers; n every ase, an impending government ntervention f some sort,either umored r real. And in at least one case, in 1756,we know the mo-tives, tated by the leader of the suicides just before they set fire to the

chapelin which

theyhad

barricadedthemselves: a

mnogimi nynenarod-

nymi iagostiami, ikakoi chelovekv mire spasti sebia ni kak ne mozhet,kogda de sozhgutsia, o de spasenie poluchit' mogut Because of the manypresent burdens on the people, no man in the world can save himself byany means; but if they burn themselves, hen they can obtain salva-tion).93 he theological conclusion s based on concrete ecular conditions.The argument s powerful nd touching-life, the purpose of which was toallow men to gain salvation, had become so difficult nd burdensome hatit no longer provided ven the possibility f salvation.

In the world of the immanent Antichrist he other side of the coin of

despair was outright ebellion. The shift o this other side is suggested ythe fact that n nearly ll casesof mass suicide there was active resistance othe police or soldiers ent by the government. he theocratic deologycon-tinued to survive for a long time; hence the many rebels during the reignof Peter fought him as the Antichrist ut also argued that he was an im-postor, not the real and legitimate sar. Yet, as in the case of the suicides,underlying he correct heologywere nontheological motivations: Chto namtsar'? Takaia ikh mat' kak i nasha. . . Vot, poidem na Moskvu . . tak, kak sSten'koi nami uzhe ne sdelaiut (What about the tsar? They [tsars] have

"1For the whole problem, see D. I. Sapozhnikov, Samosozhzhenie v russkom raskole(Moscow, 1891); also published in Chteniia, 1891, No. 3 (subsequent citations refer to thepublication n book form).

92 apozhnikov, p. i44. See also E. V. Barsov, "Samosozhigatel'stvo raskol'nikov vOlonetskoi gubernii," n Pamiatnaia Knizhka Olonetskoi Gubernii za I868-69 god, II, 194-96; "Samosozhzheniia staroverov," Olonetskiia Gubernskiia Vedomosti, No. 57, 1878, pp.698-700.

98Sapozhnikov, . 126.








A large minority efused to go along and left the Vyg, starting newsplinter ect-the Filippovtsy, amed after their spokesman, he elder Fi-lipp.98Their choice was the third, he synthesis. hey were not preparedto die nor to rise n rebellion; but for them Antichrist was incarnate n theperson of the Russian ruler. The theology f their politics was best formu-lated in the 178os by Evfimii, ounder of the sect of Stranniki Pilgrims,Wanderers), r Beguny (Fugitives):99 eter I was the material Antichrist,the real and the last Antichrist; is successorswere but extensions f thephysical Antichrist n time. Evfimii imply extended the forty-two onthsof Antichrist's eign ndefinitely, ut maintained that nothing would change,no hope was justified.100 he Beast of the Apocalypse, n fact, was im-perial power as such; the "icon" (or image) of the Beast was all civil au-thority; ts body, spiritual authority.101 ere is the crux of the matter-wasgovernment s such the Beast of the Apocalypse?

To repeat, the Raskol splintered way into dozens of sects separated bythe finest nd pettiest theological distinctions. Overarching ll of them,however, was one great distinction: the spiritual or the material Anti-christ, raying r not praying for the ruler. The nature of the choice wasindicated by the Vyg community; t had prospered, nd the world, thoughdangerous,was bearable if not pleasant. The majority f the Old Believersdid not prosper. And so, while a theological debate on the prayer went onendlessly, he merchants, s Evfimii himself uggested, rayed for the ruler(however eluctantly); he peasants did not.102

The politics of apocalypsereached their climax in the first our decadesof the eighteenth entury. ut here a caution about the sources s in order.The Old Believers wrote enormously; n particular, hundreds, f not thou-

98 On the Filippovtsy, ee Kel'siev, V, 236-41.99 The Stranniki would have nothing to do with any aspect of Antichrist; hey would not

touch money, which bore the ruler's portrait and the state coat of arms; they would not

obtain a passport, pay taxes, etc. To survive, the sect created the institution of shelter-givers; these people would live in the world, and, in effect, acrifice, r pollute themselves,by worldly success. Their function was to provide shelter, food, and safety for the trueStranniki. requently shelter-giver ould be initiated as a true Strannik on his deathbed,so that he too might be saved completely. ee S. G. S., in Vera i Razum, No. 23, 1892, pp.642ff.

100 For the argument that the forty-two months must be understood symbolically ndthat they could actually last many years, ee P. S. Smirnov, Spory i razdeleniia v russkomraskole v pervoi chetverti XVIII veka (St.Petersburg, 909), p. 173.

01Kel'siev, IV, 252 ff-102Ibid., . 279; see also I. Iuzov (I. I. Kablits), "Politicheskiia vozzreniia Staroveriia,"

Russkaia Mysl', No. 5, 1882,p. 1go. That the merchants rayed, lthough reluctantly, s wellillustrated by the famous Gnusin case. The Preobrazhensk Cemetery n Moscow was the

richest nd most powerful Old Believer community n Russia, for years under the patronageof the Moscow governors general and, during the reign of Alexander I, in effect underimperial protection. n 1820, however, the government earned that everything was notquite ideal in the community. Police officers who came to search the buildings and thechapel found, n fact, a portrait of Alexander I, with horns and tail, the number 666 onthe imperial forehead. The painter, named Gnusin, managed to flee in time, and theportrait unfortunately or us) was destroyed. ee Kel'siev, , 43; Trudy Imperatorskoi Kiev-skoi Dukhovnoi Akademii, No. 1, 1876,p. 115.







24 SLAVIC REVIEW

sands, of illustrated pocalypses, handwritten, ave come down to us. But

if they wrote or said anything xplicitly olitical, n the eighteenth enturythe risks they ran were monstrous-the whip and Siberia could be counteda stroke f luck. So Old Believer iterature s strongly ichotomous. On theone side is the enormous mass of tracts-repetitive, autious, hinting butnot really saying very much, sometimes daring and then pulling back.103On the other side is the smaller number of things aid or written by menwho could keep silent no longer, who frequently were looking for martyr-dom. Even the government f Peter I was disturbed by this phenomenon;a law of 1722 tried to prove that self-willed martyrdom, result of criminaland traitorous cts, was not true martyrdom nd could not bring glory ndsalvation. Moreover, t argued, "sufferers ho insult and dishonor theirjudge, even if he is unrighteous, re not following n the footsteps f Christ.And, if one does not follow Christ, how can one be legitimately martyredand hope for a heavenly crown?" Men who did this were suicides andblasphemers.'04 et these were the men, "extremists" hough they were,that are now our best sources, onveying oth the drama and the flavor fapocalyptic olitics.

Grigorii Talitskii was a Moscowscribe, copying books and manuscriptsfor sale. Some time before 1700 he became obsessed with the problem ofAntichrist. e set down his conclusions n two treatises: Concerning theComing of Antichrist nto the World, and the Time from he Creation ofthe World to Its End" and "The Gates," which proved, with elaborate cal-culations, that Peter I, as the eighth tsar of the apocalypse,was the Anti-christ nd that the last days had come. Talitskii enjoined the people not toobey Peter or pay taxes. He made copies of his writings nd sold themwidely and, apparently, quite openly. One of his customers was Ignatii,bishop of Tambov, who wept as he listened to the scribe's exhortations,kissedhim, and gave him five ubles. Finally Talitskii decided to give awayhis treatises ree and tried to have the texts engraved on boards with the

purpose of printing many copies. At this point, on June 28, 1700, he wasdenounced and taken to the Preobrazhenskii rikaz-the political or statepolice office.105here, questioned and tortured, alitskii readily admittedall that he had done, planned, and thought.106 e named eighteen people

103For instance, PB, ms Q.I. 1141, an illustrated apocalypse in which there are emptyframes wherever he image of Antichrist r of his demons should appear. In contrast, nexample from he year 1691, is an apocalypse borrowed by Old Believers who then drew infour-pointed Latin" crosses and the "reformed" episcopal staffs n "indecent places"; seeBarsov, Novye materialy, . 17.

104SZ, item 4053.'Or n the evolution of the Preobrazhenskii Prikaz into a political police, see Golikova,

pp. 243-80.061In is eagerness to suffer martyrdom alitskii is a striking xample of that categoryreferred o by Peter in the law quoted above; he and others like him (see the Levin casebelow) were more than eager to talk and explain their theories. This did not exempt them,of course, from the classic Preobrazhenskii Prikaz routine: interrogation with torture,confrontations, nterrogation with torture until the same testimony was obtained threetimes running-then on to the next witness. No difference n procedure obtained betweenthe accused and the witnesses.








among thosewho had aided, istened o,or agreed with him, ncluding Bishop

Ignatii and Prince Ivan Khovanskii, cion of a family with strong trel'tsyand hence Raskol connections. All were found guilty by the Prikaz andrepented, xcept for Talitskii and his friend, n icon painter named IvanSavin. Talitskii, Savin, and three priests n the group were condemned todeath, the others o the whip, branding, nd Siberia. Talitskii and Savin,unrepentant, were condemned to kopchenie-being smoked to death likebacon. In the course of this ordeal Talitskii gave way; he was taken downand confessed hat all he had said and written was a lie. Hearing this, avin,too, asked to be taken down and also confessed, meanwhile reproachingTalitskii for having ied to him and misled him. The record breaks off t

this point, but, according to Old Believer tradition, oth men earned themilder death at the stake. There is no evidence n this case that Talitskii,or anyone lse nvolved,wasan Old Believer.107

Vasilii Levin was of the very poor provincial service gentry. rom thepeasants on his small estate during his childhood he had heard talk ofAntichrist, f the last days, and of Peter I as Antichrist according to histestimony); wo of the villagershad been burned at the stake n Moscowforbelonging o the Raskol. In 1701,very unwillingly, evin enrolled in thedragoons and became a captain by 1711. By 1715 he was determined toleave the military ervice, o flee Antichrist; ut his request for retirementin order to enter a monastery was denied, as Peter had forbidden his kindof transfer. n 1719,pretending nsanity nd paralysis, Levin managed toget his release. By this time he had become friendly with the father on-fessor f Prince Menshikov himself, he priest Lebedka; the two men dis-covered that they thought like-that all piety and orthodoxy were gone,that Peter was the Antichrist, he proof of which was that he had killed hisown son.108 mong other things, evin heard while in St. Petersburg hatships had brought n branding rons from broad and that only those whowere willing to be branded would receive any bread, that Peter had drilledthree ompanies of troops on the surface f the waters of a river, nd thatPeter had transformed ater nto blood. Most of Levin's informants weresoldiers or corporals n the guard regiments. n 1721Levin decided to goto an obscure monastery lose to his home-Zhadovskaia Pustyn'-andthere preach the existence of Antichrist. n December 6, 1721, Levin wasattending mass in church; as the priest came forth with the cross to blessthe parishioners, evin shouted: "Listen, Orthodox Christians, isten Soonthere will be the end of the world The Sovereignhas collected the entirepeople in Moscowand will destroy t there." Pointing to his palm, he wenton: "Right here, on this spot, the Tsar will brand them, and they will

believe in him then." The end came for Levin in 1722when, already amonk, he was preaching his repertoire o a country air from the roof of ahouse. On his testimony-Levin mplicated everybody-the nhabitants of

The case is published in G. Esipov, Raskol'nich'i dela XVIII stoletiia (St. Petersburg,1861), , 59-87.

I" Tsarevich Alexis was condemned nd died under mysterious ircumstances n 1718.







26 SLAVIC REVIEW

an entire monastery were shipped in irons to Moscow. After five torture

sessionsLevin admitted hat he had implicated ome people, his family orinstance, hoping that they would want to share his martyrdom; e stuckto everything lse he said and declared that he would speak no more. Hewas condemned o death by torture, ut when the execution began, he re-canted, s did Talitskii, nd was beheaded a week ater.109

In 1733Akinfii ysoevwas caught giving alms to Old Believerswho hadbeen arrested nd were on their way to jail. When he was searched, note-book in his handwriting, ontaining great deal of cabalistic nformation,was found. According to his calculations (slightly utdated) there was tohave been (and had been) great news and commotion n the world n 1731.Desolation and rebellion were to have come in 1732; the sun and moonwould change places, portents would appear in the sky. n 1733and 1734all the world would recognize Christ again. In 1735-36one quarter of theworld would perish. In 1737 the false Christ would come, and then, in1738-39, Christ himself would come to judge all men. Under tortureSysoev aid that Peter was the first east of the Apocalypseand then for atime refused to say more despite all the skilled persuasion of the SecretChancellery successor f the Preobrazhenskii rikaz). Finally, he asked fora copy of the Book of Revelation and read his exegesisto his curious andmost peculiar audience: the seven heads of the Beast of the Apocalypsewere van the Terrible, his son Feodor, Tsar Michael, Tsar Alexis, van V,Peter I, and Peter JJ.*11 Sysoev even had an explanation for the tencrowned horns on the seven heads: these were the ten oligarchs, Vremen-shchiki, who tried to rule after Peter II by imposing a limited monarchyon the new empress,Anna. (One might rgue that, for the so-calledconsti-tutional crisis of 1730and the oligarchic onstitution f the ten aristocratsand Petrine executives, pocalyptic politics provide as good an explanationas Realpolitik.) Sysoev thought hat all the heretical Church reforms wereintroduced by Peter I, simultaneously with the laws on beards and foreign

clothing.Further onfirmation f Peter as the

Beastof the

Apocalypsewas

that the Beast had the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion. An acuteobservation, his-for Peter was pigeon-toed, nd his mouth was grimenough. The Empress Anna was identified asily by reading Revelation,Chapter 17, about the great whore sitting upon the waters. Sysoevdied inprison, fter hree orture essions, ncluding one by fire."'1

These are three asesamong many,'12 ut they re representative nough109The case is published in Esipov, pp. 3-55.n10 f course Sysoevhad to make the tsars match the symbols of the prophecy, but it

is interesting hat he included the half-witted alf brother of Peter, Ivan V, and omittedFeodor (II), son of Alexis and oldest brother of Peter, as well as Boris Godunov and VasiliiShuiskii-tsars who were not members of the Riurik or Romanov dynasty.

Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi rkhiv Drevnikh Aktov TsGADA), fond 7, Raskol'nich'idela, delo 359.

See Esipov, Raskol'nich'i dela, passim; M. I. Semevskii, lovo i Delo (St. Petersburg,1885);Esipov, Liudi starogo veka (St. Petersburg, 88o); Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii, Vol. XV;Chteniia, from 1863, passim; and the TsGADA folders of the Preobrazhenskii Prikazand the Secret Chancellery Tainaia Kantseliariia).







I' F gu ire

Ka0l7JR

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Figure i.







(fl#"t 86~~~~~Figure 4.

o-s, ; 6 52?~~~~~~s4,jLL

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to convey ome features f the apocalyptic tmosphere n early eighteenth-

century Russia. One of the striking spects of this atmosphere s the inter-mingling r dentity f Old Believer nd non-Old Believer deology.Talitskiihad no Raskol connections t all; Levin had known Old Believers n his child-hood but took hisvows n a monastery f the official hurch; Sysoev ave almsto Old Believerprisoners, ut except for the fact that his case is to be foundin the Raskol section of the archives, here s no evidence that he was anOld Believer himself, nd he denied having any questionable associations.Yet all three men expressed he pure Raskol political theology.And at leastthe first wo had been able to express t to an astonishingly ide public,literally houting t from the roof tops, for a long time with impunity.Only after years of active preaching were they denounced, and onemust assume that their audience shared their views or sympathized withthem.113An interesting eature f these audiences, by the way, s the verygreat number of lower clergy-priests, monks-involved in such cases; thetradition f priestly articipation n the schism was being carried on and in-deed spread at a time when, with the abolition of the patriarchate nd theestablishment f the Holy Synod under a lay procurator, he Church hadbecome a bureaucratic department f the government.)114 he thought ofthese deological rebels displayed a truly cholastic onsistency; very vent,every feature even Peter's feet and mouth), every portent were fitted ntothe apocalyptic cheme and explained thereby. Hence the fanatic strengthof conviction, he nonviolent but total opposition to the government, heacceptance, nd even seeking, f martyrdom-all broken, f at all, only byunspeakable tortures.

To an enormous degree the apocalypticvision, before 1725and after, wasfocused on Peter I. But it would be incorrect o assume that Peter forcedthe Old Believers to a new conception, hat his actions and policies, nde-pendent of his predecessors, voked the image of Antichrist. he strel'tsy,the Cossacks,Talitskii, Levin, and many others whose cases fill the recordsof the

Preobrazhenskiirikaz

thought of Peter as Antichrist efore1700,

before Petrine policies and reforms ould really be identified nd rejected.Still, the world which the Old Believerstried to explain was dominated byhim far more than by Nikon, Alexis, or anyone else because, as we shallsee, he defined that world more bluntly and more violently than any-one else. There is at least one vivid iconographic testimony o this-theilluminated Apocalypse 156 of the Museum Collection in the State His-torical Museum, done shortly fter 1725.115 n this case there s no need to

118The records how, time and again, how many were punished in these nvestigations orhearing talk like this and not reporting t. According to the law, this made them guilty of

the same crime; that is, in matters of state crime, misprision of treason was equivalent totreason.114 For example, in the early 1730S an astonishing number of priests used any dodge, fair

or silly, to avoid swearing allegiance to or praying for Empress Anna-excuses of illness,absence, ignorance of the requirement, or lack of opportunity. See the cases before theMost Holy Synod in the year 1773 alone, in Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi storicheskiiarkhiv TsGIAL), Leningrad, fond 796, 1733, cases no. 14, 156, 185, 226, 233, 240, 268.

ll6Gosudarstvennyi storicheskii Musei (GIM), Museinoe Sobranie, No. 156 ("Tolkovyi







28 SLAVICREVIEW

speculate about the possible identifications. he illustration or the versereading that Antichrist will be born of the tribe of Dan shows Antichristwith the face of Peter I, dressed in the uniform of the PreobrazhenskiiRegiment Figure 7). The baby Antichrist, itting n the arm of his mother,Antichrist's ife, s a small double of his father.116 gain, Antichrist uper-vising the building of the new temple in Jerusalem s Peter in his usualuniform; xcept for one companion and the demons, the people in theminiature re dressed n traditional Russian clothes (Figure 8).117 (Thereis a complete resemblance between this Peter-Antichrist nd the Peter ofthe numerous ecular paintings which show the Emperor, with outstretchedarm, upervising he building of St. Petersburg.) very one of the dozens ofminiatures n this manuscript hammers way at the same point, that theworld of Peter s the world of Antichrist: he demons are dressed n Petrinearmy uniforms; he woman sitting upon the waters is portrayed n thegarb of a Russian empress f the early eighteenth entury; he text describ-ing the time of Antichrist s one of war and trouble s illustrated y a battlescene between Cossacks and Petrine demon-soldiers; he prophecy hat thearmy of Antichrist would come and devastate the land is illumined bythe Russian guards regiments, nd so on.118Again there s the consistencyof explanation, the daring (in view of the risk), and the profound convic-

tion that Peter and everything etrine embodied Antichrist, material andimmediate.If Peter was Antichrist or even only the Beast of the Apocalypse, the

eighth tsar-Antichrist f the Third Rome),119 ow did one know this, or,rather, how did one substantiate ne's conviction within the closed circleof apocalyptic ogic? Levin indicated some of the portents nd some events,such as the execution of Tsarevich Alexis, and Sysoev nachronistically t-tributed he Nikonian reforms o Peter; but while we can hardly expecthistorical ccuracy from the sources, t is worthwhile o fill n, in greaterdetail, the Raskol image of Peter. A virtually niversal premise mong the

Old Believers and the discontented, tribute to the strength f the theo-cratic deal, was that Peter I was illegitimate.'20 ome expressed the theo-logically correct position that, nasmuch as Peter was born in 1672, afterApokalipsis"). See V. N. Shchepkin, "Dva litsevykh sbornika Istoricheskogo Museia,"Arkheologicheskie zvestiia i Zametki, V, No. 4 (1897), 97-102. The manuscript was writtenin the Far North, n the Pomor'e (Arctic Ocean coastal area), and is, apparently, unique inthe boldness of ts iconography.

116 50r. If the baby is the Tsarevich Alexis, he was obviously associated (correctly) withhis father's policies, rather than seen as a symbol of opposition to Petrine reforms nd asthe defender f ancient Orthodoxy.

117 35r354118 Because the State Historical Museum manuscript was being readied for publication,

I was allowed photographs of only the two miniatures which had been published byShchepkin n 1897.

'LIThis arithmetic onjunction is emphasized in BAN, Druzhinin ms 171, p. io6r. Theusual count was from van III. Avvakum got Tsar Alexis as the eighth tsar by countingVasilii III and including all the tsars. ee Subbotin, V, 247.

'-2 For the numerous expressions of this conviction, ee the literature isted in note 112.







OLD BELIEVERS ANDTHE NEW RELIGION 29

Alexis' apostasy, he was by definition not the legitimate nd true tsar.121Most thought of him as a changeling, brought nto the palace after thebirth of a daughter o the wife of Alexis, or substituted or the real Peterduring the latter's travels broad; the man on the Russian throne was anon-Orthodox oreigner, German. But whatever the variations on thetheme, Peter was not a true tsar,122 or the Antichrist ould not be of trueimperial birth.123

His name, too, gave him away. His original name was Augustus, ccord-ing to one tradition, ut he was then given the name of Peter, signifying"stone" to reveal the nature of his reign.124 he name "Peter" had a higherrationale, ccording o

Evfimii,or t

was part of the tension Simon-Peter,Simon Magus, and hence Simon-Peter, n this case, was the proper nameof Antichrist.125 eter himself named his new capital St. Petersburg, vfimiipointed out, saying that he was as holy as St. Peter the Apostle.126Histitles were even more revealing. n 172i he usurped the title of the patri-archal office, which he himself had abolished, by calling himself otetsotechestva father of his country).127n the same year he all but openlydeclaredhimself y taking on the new title of imperator, which was a slightdisguise;but if analyzed and spelled out as inperator, t revealed the num-ber-666-which was the mark of Antichrist.'28 hus, with Peter's two ti-

1On the nature of the true and legitimate tsar, see my Tsar and People, pp. 55 ff.'2At this point it is impossible for me to resist a personal anecdote. While working n

June 1965 on the frescoes of the Arkhangel'sk Cathedral in Moscow, I was engaged inconversation y a guard from the Kremlin Museum, assigned that day to the Cathedral.In asking me about my work, he displayed great interest n the question of balance be-tween church and state power. He said that only under Peter did the state win completedomination over the Church. I pointed out, casually, that Alexis seemed to have hadlittle trouble handling Nikon (we were standing next to Alexis' tomb). But that was quitedifferent, e argued. The clash was a personal one. Alexis was away at war quite often,and the patriarchal and imperial palaces were connected by a passage. So, Nikon used tostroll over and ... anyway... Peter was really Nikon's son, and this was the reason forAlexis' enmity. In fact, of course, Nikon abdicted in i658, and Peter was born in 1672.)

The man was not an Old Believer (I asked him about this). In fact, he was a professedatheist. Yet, in 1965,he believed in a legend which clearly belongs to the Raskol ethos.123 ee, for example, "Knizhitsa o Antikhriste" BAN, Druzhinin ms 134), pp. 26 ff. n

fact, ccording to a tradition dating back to the second century, Antichrist ad to be a Jew(of the tribe of Dan), a requirement which presented some problems for Old Believerhistoriography nd was constantly mphasized by the Orthodox prelates, who argued thatPeter could not be Antichrist.

124"Sobranie ot Sviatogo Pisaniia o Antikhriste," n Kel'siev, II, 249. See also the variant"Istoriia pechatnaia o Petre Velikom: Sobranie ot Sviatogo Pisaniia o Antikhriste,"Chteniia, No. 1, 1863.F. Eleonskii, 0 sostoianii russkogo raskola pri Petre I-om (St. Peters-burg, 1864), p. 102 and note i, shows convincingly hat the work was originally composedimmediately fter 1725, though most of the available manuscripts re of a later date.

125Kel'siev, V, 252.12ff

Library of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences,Kiev, ms 97,p. Ior.127 ee, among many references, Sobranie," in Kel'siev, II, 248. We have here, in theplay on the words "patriarch" ~ "father," n example of the fitting n and utilization of allevidence. See below for the particular significance f the usurpation of a patriarchal, ec-clesiastical itle.

128 n the Old Russian system f designating numbers by letters, = 1o, n = 5o, p = 8o,and so forth. ee, for example, Evfimii, n Kel'siev, IV, 253. The new title did puzzle many







30 SLAVIC REVIEW

tles-blagochestivyi osudar' (the pious sovereign) nd imperator-he bore

two horns, he horns of Antichrist.129 onstantly mphasizing he dualismof Peter-the proper and the terrible itle, he imperial and the patriarchaltitle, the acting out of more than the one proper role-the Old Believerssaw one of the chief ymbols f the state, he two-headed agle of the Russiancoat of arms, s a reflection f these two horns and accused Peter of takingit from the satanic Pope of Rome.'30 Not all Old Believer sources at-tributed o Peter the two-headed agle (adopted at the end of the fifteenthcentury y Ivan III), but in the general tradition t was a symbol of Anti-christ,'3' nd the Antichrist-Emperor as made to carry t together with thepatriarchal taff Figure ).132

All these aspects of Peter-Antichrist llustrate the peculiarly dialecticnature of apocalyptic hought. The point about Antichrist was that he wasa mirror mage of Christ; hence, once the premise that he was present hadbeen accepted,he was to be identified y his Christlike eatures. he samequalities which dentified he Most Gentle Tsar, the Christlike Byzantine)Emperor, he saintly prince, the theocratic uler in general, also, and forthat very reason, dentified he Antichrist, when the aim of political the-ology had been changed. This logic was applied to the issue of imperialanointment s well. Peter, t was asserted, had been anointed all over hisbody, in the Jewish manner," nd therefore as given the title which dis-tinguished Antichrist-pomazannik, the anointed one.133The "Bookletabout Antichrist" f 1707 pointed out that Peter, prince of this world,whose title was obderzhatel' vsego mira (possessor f the whole world) andwho was the false Christ, was called Christ khristos), nd by whom?By thearchbishop tefan avorskii, who should have called him, correctly, Anti-christ." 34 Actual anointment with oil at the coronation was adopted onlyin the seventeenth entury, t the coronation of Michael, and hence wassomething f an innovation;'35 nd the perfectly orrect ppellation-thepeople, who neither pronounced it correctly or understood t. Some of them paid a veryhigh price for their lliteracy n the cellars of the Secret Chancellery; see Solov'ev, Vol. XV,passim.

129 SeeS. G. S., in Vera i Razum, No. 23, p. 646.130ee, for xample, the testimony f Ermakov n 1855, n Kel'siev, , 220.'31 See, for example, the eighteenth-century anuscript "O napisanii dvoeglavogo orla,"

in Gosudarstvennaia Biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina (GBL), Moscow, fond 238, ms1307,pp. 371r-391ob. In contrast, he eighteenth-century anuscript PB, Q.I. 1075, p. 91,pushes the attribution of this symbol, actually adopted in the 1490s, back to VladimirMonomakh in the twelfth entury nd hence exonerates t from all satanic implications.

a:GIM, Khliudov Collection, No. 361,a roll of 1841, ntitled Ob Antikhriste."33"Sobranie," n Kel'siev, I, 248-49.

134BAN, Druzhin ms 134, p. 23ob; for the same argument, ee GBL, fond 98, ms 779 (endof the i8th century), . 29ob and r. See also the sermons of Iavorskii, Propovedi blazhenyiapam.iati Stefana avorskogo (Moscow, 1804), II, esp. 112 ff.; nd the law (PSZ, item 3891)in which the Most Holy Synod ordered that the Old Believers praise the emperor: meti byiako glavy voia i otsa otechestva, khrista ospodnia.

'at See E. V. Barsov, "Drevne-russkie pamiatniki Sviashchennago Venchaniia tsarei natsarstvo," Chteniia, No. 1, 1883, pp. go ff. and 1o5, for the coronation of Peter's olderbrother, Feodor Alekseevich, t which he was anointed on his head, his body, and hislimbs, .e., n an episcopal fashion.







OLD BELIEVERS AND THE NEW RELIGION 3I

anointed one (pomazannik in Russian, khristos n Greek)-began to be

used, interestingly nough, only with Peter.136 here was room, therefore,for confusion nd misunderstanding f terms. But Old Believer causalityand methodology emain quite clear: that Peter was Antichrist was not de-duced from vidence but revealed as a premise, nd the more Christomi-metic Peter was, the more the premise was confirmed; nd again, the sameconsistent tilization f every fact-anointment, Russian translation, Greekoriginal word-for every fact was revealing for those who had eyes to seeand ears to hear.'37 A fascinating nd final llustration f this kind of rea-soning: Peter, according to Old Believer tradition, nstituted governingSynod of the Russian Church made up of twelve prelates, o that he, pre-siding over t, would be the thirteenth, hat s, Christ, hus again revealinghis true nature as Antichrist. n other words, Peter was accused of doingsomething which every Christian ruler from Constantine the Great haddone-imitating Christ-and the irony of this accusation is that the OldBelievers ad to tamper with facts n order to make this charge-the Synodof the Russian Church had only elevenmembers.138

Peter the Antichrist meant doom for the whole world and threatened hesouls of all men. But this doom was also prefigured, ver and over, n thedaily policy conducted by the ruler-Antichrist, hich made life more andmore ntolerable. One aspect of this policy, of course,was the extraordinarybrutality Peter displayed.'39 n broader terms, Petrine policy was con-veyed, ather ffectively, y an epithet pplied to Peter-tsar' voin, the war-rior tsar.140 he coming of Antichrist meant war and destruction, nd there-fore t was fitting hat Peter's whole reign was virtually ne long war. Deathand destruction s features f the reign of Antichrist, owever, re still atheological onception ully ustified y sacred texts. The Old Believers wenta good bit further, nto the sphere of apocalyptic ociology. What did thereign of Antichrist mean, concretely, o those living under his rule? Theanswer was given by Satan or Antichrist imself, n response to an imagi-

nary plea for ustice: "Your passport, lease, your soul tax for this year, ndI' These appellations were used constantly by the metropolitans Stefan Iavorskii and

Feofan Prokopovich n their sermons, nd they took special care to explain the meaningof the words. In medieval Russia, however, the term pomazanik was applied to theanointed clergy and to Biblical figures, particularly to King David; see Sreznevskii,Materialy dlia slovaria drevnerusskogo azyka, . v. pomazanik.

187 For example, the calendar reform of Peter, changing the beginning of the year fromSeptember to January , and the year count from the creation of the world to the birthof Christ. Hence the apocalyptic prophecy that time and law would change under Anti-christ was fulfilled by Peter, who, they said, introduced the "Janus count," two-faced,counting forward from Christ) and backward (before Christ), and who picked January 1in honor of Janus, a pagan deity and therefore atan. See "Sobranie," in Kel'siev, II, 248;

BAN, Druzhinin ms 134, p. 23r.38 ee Kel'siev, V, 265-66; Chteniia, No. 1, 1863,p. 7; Eleonskii, p. io8; S.G.S., in Vera iRazum, No. 23, p. 647.

'-"An example of the awareness of Peter's brutality was the rumor that he was going tomassacre two hundred soldier-deserters y lining them up and shooting cannon at them;see Esipov, Raskol'nich'i dela, I, 564.

l40See Smirnov, pory razdeleniia, p. i6i.







32 SLAVIC REVIEW

any other back taxes [first], nasmuch as you live on my land." 141 In this

instance the theological anguage becomes quite transparent. ertainly heOld Believers took advantage of the term podushnaia podat' (soul tax),with all its obvious levels of meaning; and the passport, a consequenceof the census which the new individualized tax required but which carriedall the implications f the Augustan census, was also pregnant with apoc-alyptic meaning.142This is what Levin was trying o conveywith his imageof the brand of Antichrist.) ut under all this was the simple fact that onehad to pay more money and that the government knew who one wasand could collectmore efficiently.

The apocalyptic word-play nd the reality behind it allowed the radicalEvfimii o construct striking mage of apocalyptic society nd state. Be-fore he census, his display of state control, men were free, e argued; nowcounted-stamped with the seal of Antichrist-they elonged to Antichrist.The social evil of Peter-Antichrist as that he divided men, introducingthe dea of svoe, "one's own" the idea of property-which was the ultimateevil. Peter, in fact, introduced three evil passions among men: avarice,self-love, nd voluptuousness.143hat is to say, Peter created a social orderor society uch as we know, which was so unacceptable to Evfimii hat hesaw in it the origin of all social evils. Hence to his earlier description fAntichrist s having an icon (image) and a body, he added a third compo-nent: Antichrist was made up of image, body, and corpses; the governmentwas the image or visage, spiritual authority was the body of Antichrist,and the people were the corpses.'44

Though all such arguments were based, to some degree, on the Revela-tion of St. John, the connection was rather tenuous. Political theology, neffect, llowed, as always, reversal of causality-it was not the Antichristof Revelation who determined he features f Peter I, but Peter I who de-termined he features nd behavior of Antichrist. And Peter contributedto at least one rather curious aspect of Antichrist. rom the beginning, s

we have seen, one of the features f Antichrist or the Old Believers wasthat he united in himself both spiritual and temporal authority. azar',the companion of Avvakum, had written hat Antichrist eigned n Romebecause"the spiritual man, the pope, has usurped mperial divine power." 45

The formulation s a bit strange, yet recognizable; "spiritual" rather than"ecclesiastical"or "clerical" could hardly be accidental and, repeated timeand again, seems designed to evoke a particular association.146 he mostobvious s the famous Pauline formula-the spiritual man judges all and isjudged by none-designed to describe he free man under God, and utilized

'41 "Sobranie," n Kel'siev, I, 251.'4" The cases quoted in Solov'ev, Vol. XV, are full of references o the tax on souls and

what t portended.14Sel'siev, V, 254-65.144bid., pp. 263-64-'4'Smirnov, Vnutrennie oprosy, . ii; Subbotin, V, 251.146For example, Evfimii lways used the term dukhovnaia viast' for ecclesiastical author-

ity.








historically o buttress apal claims to universal udicial supremacy. t ismost ikely hat, from Nikon's claims for the supremacy f the ecclesiasticalover the temporal, he Old Believers knew about the papal use of the for-mula, but their translation f St. Paul involved much more than a tradi-tional condemnation f the Roman papacy: The Antichrist, ot the spirit-ual man, "subjects ll [men] to his judgment but will not himself be sub-ject to the udgment of any man" (vsekh sudy svoemu podverzhet, samnikomu podsudnym byt' ne pokhoshchet).147 I am not able to suggest nyclues to either the origins or the implications of this extraordinaryconception. Perhaps, with all the associations of the Last Judgment, twhich Christ s the Judge Ordinary of all men, it relates to the final andultimate accusation raised by the Old Believers against Peter the Great.The basic issue, argued their "Petition, or History of Peter the Great,"was that Peter made himself od; he was the god on earth zemnoi bog), themirror mage and total antithesis f the God in Heaven.'48

So far we have dealt, in some detail, with the very complex, yet steadyreaction by the Old Believers to the many and also complex changes, mostof them nonreligious, hat took place in Russian society nd the state dur-ing the first ecades of the Raskol. These details have been arranged n the

rather procrustean, verarching cheme of political theology with its cli-mactic conception of the Russian ruler as Antichrist nd god on earth.Rather than attempt o trace more closely the various social and politicalchanges and relate them to the details of Old Believer thought, wouldlike to suggest an equally overarching onception which sums up thesemany hanges nd describes hem n the anguage of political theology.

The obvious focus for these issues of political theologies s the Petrineparadox. Whatever the Old Believers were opposing was, clearly, oncen-trated n Peter I, expressed by Peter I, hated in Peter I. Yet one of Peter'searly aws (1702) proclaimed the principle of religious toleration s the law

of the Russian state.149 dmittedly, eligious tolerance was not practicedwidely, and there were legal limitations o the profession f Old Belief:Old Believers could live openly and practice their faith by registering sOld Believers nd paying double taxes;'50 heyhad no right o preach theirdoctrines;'5' they ould not be elected or appointed to any public office.'52Still, in comparison with the law of 1684, Peter's religious egislation wastruly enlightened, s the leader of the Vyg community, ndrei Denisov,emphasized n arguing that one should pray for Peter. But then we must

147GBL, fond 8, ms i668, p. 23 b.148"Chelobitnaia, ili Istoriia Petra Velikogo," in Shchapov, Russkii raskol staroobriad-

chestva, p. 106-9.149PSZ, item 1910.150 bid., item 2991.151Polnoe sobranie postanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispo-

vedaniia Rossiiskoi mperii (St. Petersburg, 1869-1916), II, 102, 410.1' Ibid., I, 27. For other discriminatory egislation see Smirnov, pory i razdeleniia, pp. 3

ff.







34 SLAVIC REVIEW

repeat the question, why was Peter seen as the enemy above all others, s

god on earth? The reign of Peter I was also the time of the worst perse-cutions, f horrible nd endless torture nd investigation. nd Peter, whopassed laws on religious tolerance, pointed up this paradox in a law inwhich he fulminated gainst "treasonable and Raskol inventions" vorov-skie i raskol'nich'i vymyshleniia), quating treason and Old Belief inheinousness.153

The contradiction s compounded if we consider Peter's personal re-ligiosity, ignificant nough in the context of absolutism. One need onlythink of the All Holy Drunken Council (Vsesviateishii ianyi Sobor), es-tablished by Peter and headed by the Prince-Pope, Nikita Zotov, personal

servant nd court ester of Peter. At the frequent meetings f this "Coun-cil," which ncluded every prominent man in the government, ll conceiv-able and inconceivable blasphemies were performed; nd though Peterhimself held only the rank of deacon, he was obviously the leader inthem.154 et Peter's viewson religion were not limited to his drunken mockcouncil. Golikov, in his Anecdotes, tells us what happened when Peterheard that the historian nd statesman V. N. Tatishchev was engaging nfree-thinking, astigating reedy nd ignorant lergy nd superstition n gen-eral. The Tsar called out to him at a court assembly: "'How dare youweaken a string which forms he harmony f the whole tone? And, on topof this, you did not speak with sufficient espect bout some of the sacredwritings .. I will teach you...' And the Emperor hit Tatishchev with hiscane: 'Don't tempt believing ouls... don't introduce free-thinking, hich sfatal to good order; I did not train you and teach you so that you shouldend up an enemy osociety nd to the Tsar ' " 155

The paradox, on the face of it, remains unresolved. Religious toleranceand the double tax, appeals against suicide and the equating of the Raskolwith treason, blasphemy nd the conception that religion was the weft ofthe social fabric-what in all this was the unifying rinciple for Peter, andwhat was it for the Old Believers, convinced that Peter was Antichrist?The answer clearly ies not in the religious phere but in the nature of thePetrine state and society-a state and society which can be characterized,sketchily nd only symbolically, y some of Peter's laws (not necessarilyrepresentative f the whole mass of Petrine egislation but suggestive f theessenceof the Petrine state): In 1698 Peter ordered all members f the rul-ing class-aristocracy, ffice olders d'iaki), service entry-to shave off heirbeards.156 law of 1700 ordered the same people, as well as all the regis-

153 SZ, item 2877; see also item 3479.154 See, for example, Prince I. Khovanskii's ater confession o Talitskii that he had been

appointeda "metropolitan" in the "council" and might have gained eternal life by re-fusing and undergoing martyrdom ut that he lacked the courage. Esipov, Raskol'nich'i

dela, I, 68-69.1' Ivan I. Golikov, Deianiia Petra Velikogo, Dopolneniia (Moscow, 1790-97), Vol. XVII:

Anekdoty, p. xciv, 354-56.:15See Solov'ev, XIV, 570 and notes. See also PSZ, item 2874, Dec. 29, 1714; all these

prescriptions were repeated over and over, with reminders of the heavy fines mposed fordisobedience.







,OLD BELIEVERS AND THE NEW RELIGION 35

tered townspeople-merchants, rtisans-to wear "Hungarian"-style lothes,

with precise specifications rovided by the government.157 law of 1714forbade the sale of Russian-style lothes nd boots on pain of the whip andhard labor in Siberia.158 law of 1715 pointed out that Russian boots weresoled with nails and metal strips; the punishment for selling these itemswas hard labor in Siberia.159 nother aw of 1715 imposed fines for notconfessing nd attending ommunion at least once a year.160 The Ecclesi-astical Code (DukhovnyiReglament) of 1721 required reports from parishpriests n those who did not confessyearly.161 law of 1722 transferred olay courts cases of nonperformance f "Christian duties," including con-fession nd communion.162 he law of July 3, 1722, set out the particularholidays n which church ttendance was obligatory they were about evenlydivided between Christian and imperial holidays).163 he law of May 17,1722, required priests to report to the authorities ecrets heard at confes-sion, if they nvolved either crimes planned for the future or crimes forwhich the confessant id not repent.164 law of 1717forbade the writingof letters ehind closed doors (except for teachers n church schools) andpunished those who did not report such secret etter-writing s offendersagainst His Majesty's honor, even though "they did not know what wasbeing written, ut only that someonewas writing ehind locked doors." 65

The law of Alexis on political crime, n 1649, was a hint; proclaimed halfa century ater, these all-embracing aws reveal the essence of the absolut-ist secular state. The material foundations of such a state cannot bedealt with here; suffice t to say that secular absolutism means mobilizationof the resources f a society n a larger scale than previously, he reorder-ing of the social structure for example, the gentry) o achieve this mobili-zation, the control of society for the purposes of efficient xploitation andof eliminating the opposition created by this mobilization and this socialrestructuring, nd, finally, he exercise of far greater power than beforebecause the centralized tate possessedfar more power than it had ever

had. The ideology built on such foundations was based on two relatedconceptions: the state as a perfectly elf-sufficient, elf-contained ntity,and the state as the measure of all things. Everything ecessary or man'sexistence was to be found within the state, and, at the same time, reasonsof state, he nterests f the state, were the ultimate tandard for udging allactions and motives. The ruler of the secular absolutist tate filled with hisown person the full deological gamut from the First Servant of the State"

157PSZ, tem 1741; see also item 1887 in the year 1701).Dummies dressed n such clothingwere prominently isplayed for he benefit f the public.

158Ibid., tem 874.159 Ibid.,

item2929.

16Ibid., item 2991;see also item 3169(in the year 1718).""Ibid., item 3718, dated January 19, 1721.162Ibid., tem 963.1OIbid., item 4052. Birthdays and name days of the royal family and anniversaries of

coronations were called tsarskie ni (tsar's days, or imperial holidays).I" Ibid., item 3893.135Ibid., tem 223.







36 SLAVIC REVIEW

to "l'Etat c'est moi," serving n abstraction which only he had the right todefine.

These are all certainly ecular conceptions; yet t is possible to revert othe language of the Old Believers and translate hem, without much diffi-culty, nto theological terms. Theologically, secular absolutism meant thetranslation f the heaven above to the state on earth. Formerly he exist-ence of the state was justified y its role within the economy of salvation;the purpose of life and thus of political society ay outside of life andpolitical society, nd the state existed n order to help men achieve salva-tion above. The secular state had to justify ts existence by offering mensalvation-the good life-here on earth, within ts own boundaries, for t

acknowledged othing of independent value beyond or above these bound-aries. Hence, the multiple role of the ruler, which so disturbed the OldBelievers, for the old dichotomy of Christ's functions-king and priest,ruling men and saving men-became meaningless when salvation wasachieved through uling. And hence the all-embracing ature of the claimsof secular absolutism including prohibition f letter-writing ehind lockeddoors)-now all of men's actions and thoughts nvolved salvation, for theold distinctions etween spirit and body, God and Caesar, were no longerrelevant; t was the state, r ruler, who alone dispensed alvation.

The real nature of the crime of the Raskol now becomes evident. As

religious ccentrics he Old Believers could be tolerated though taken ad-vantage of and exploited) as long as they registered nd paid the taxes-in other words, belonged. But their real and ultimate crime was exactlytheir refusal to register, o pay taxes, to participate, nd hence to acceptthe society of Antichrist. his is what Levin meant when he warned hisaudience that by accepting the "brand of Antichrist' census, registra-tion, participation-they would "believe in him." And this is why therewas the mad intensity f persecution, without ny legislation o justify t infact, or the crime of rejecting he state s the ultimate crime and yet by itsvery nature it eludes laws designed to define the state. The Old Believerswere "outside," denying he reality f the new salvation, nd this the statecould not forgive.166

Levin's suggestive hrase should be taken seriously. t signified hat thenew theology was the rationalization f a new religion-the religion of thesecular state. The reforms f absolutism were many, varied, and over-whelmingly ecular in nature. Yet one can illustrate their religious over-tones by one example: The issues of beards (or shaving) and of "foreign"style clothes were discussed and debated in Muscovite Russia from theearly years of the sixteenth entury.167 hey were the subject of ecclesi-

16One striking expression of this can be seen in the amnesty proclaimed after thevictorious peace with Sweden in 1721. It applied to most criminals, but Old Believers

sentenced to hard labor were forgiven only if they renounced their "obstinate" beliefs(PSZ, item 3842).Another interesting spect of this attitude was the welcome Peter ex-tended to all foreigners, uaranteeing them full tolerance and protection, xcept for onegroup-the Jews ibid., item 1g9o). They, too, of course, were always "outside."

167See the sermons of the Metropolitan Daniil during the reign of Vasilii III, in V. I.Zhmakin, Mitropolit Daniil i ego sochineniia," Part 2 (texts), n Chteniia, No. 2, 1881.








astical injunctions, prescriptions, nd insistence, but until Peter I they

were not the subject of legislation. What do the Petrine laws on clothes,beards, habits, and customs mean? They are, theologically, he definitionsof the new priesthood required by the new religion; whereas canon lawshad previously rescribed priestly nd episcopal raiments n minute de-tail, departure rom which implied heresy, ow such details prescribed heappearance of clerks, ervice entry, ristocracy, nd particularly he new ec-clesiaarmata, he army.168

Iconographic evidence on this new priesthood and its symbol, he Em-peror, s overwhelming n quantity, but the illustrations rovided by theopposite side, the Old Believers, re more dramatic and also indicate how

great was Raskol awareness of the issue. One drawing held by the Lenin-grad Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism-unfortunately, otof sufficient efinition o reproduce here-depicts the Nikonian church. Thealtar is surrounded by Nikonian symbols-the "Latin" four-pointedcross, he "new" spelling of the name of Jesus Iisus), the episcopal staff;and, standing to the right of the altar, is a new priest-booted, sworded,clean-shaven-an officer f a guards regiment.'69

Figures o-12 are from manuscript ntitled On the Two-Fingered ignof the Cross" (O Dvoeperstii). The manuscript, f the late nineteenth reven early twentieth entury, s aesthetically rude and yet powerful n itstotal commitment o the now traditional nd rigid dentification f the evilin this world. Figure io illustrates he apocalyptic text of martyrs boutto be executed by the evil tsar who forbids them to worship Christ,and the tsar is a rather good portrait of Alexander 11.170 In Figure 1i,overlookedby the sun of the Apocalypse, he prophet Ezekiel is about to dieagain at the hands of the servant f Antichrist, ressed n the uniform f ageneral serving s aide (general-ad"iutant) o Alexander II and hence hav-ing the right to the initial of the Emperor on his epaulets.17' Figure 12illustrates he two churches, f Christ and of Antichrist, with the latterborne on the shoulders of his priests, arefully rrayed n the uniform ofnineteenth-century ussian gendarmes; ne of them arries he big gendarmesword, he palash, n his right and.172

Finally, there are the illustrations f an apocalypse of the nineteenthcentury, one in an aesthetic enre which suggests cartoon series entitledeither "The Adventures f St. John" or "The Adventures f Antichrist."One of the miniatures hows the dramatic moment when, with the breakingof the second seal, the red horseman of the Apocalypse rides forth-thehorseman who will destroy eace and law on earth and spread destruction

"Is See PSZ, item 1898,prescribing he parade dress proper for ceremonial days and holi-

days. On the significance f the uniform nd its role in the religion of the state, see E. H.Kantorowicz, Gods in Uniform," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, CV,No. 4 (1961),368-93.

"I"Eighteenth-century rawing on cardboard from MIRA, Druzhinin Collection (no ac-quisition number).

170 MIRA, ms B-607-IV, p. 12r.17TIbid., p. 80ob*1721Ibid., p- 50?







38 SLAVIC REVIEW

with his sword Figure 13).173 What we see as the destroyer f peace andorder s a gendarme, he embodiment f imperial law and order, wavinghis large sword, hooting ff revolver the smoke rings ndicate this), ndsmoking big cigar.'74

In the eyes of the Old Believers the new priesthood erved Antichrist,and within hesecular state t served the new god, the ruler, whether t wasthe Emperor Peter , who was also Petr Alekseevich,most pious and gentletsar,175 r the Empress Anna (daughter f Ivan V but duchess of Courlandand a woman), who was incongruous s a theocratic sar. This does notmean that the old religion of the state and the old theocratic magery wereabandoned. The new religion was, as usual, a syncretism f old political

theologies, nd the sermons f the eighteenth entury re filled with magesof the Emperor s Christ, s David, as Moses,as Constantine,176 s well asthe newly dded images of the ruler as Hercules, Apollo, Astraea, and Mi-nerva.177 heologically, ne can argue that the secular absolute ruler meantin general the shift from the ruler as the image of Christ to the ruler asthe image of God the Father. This made sense, for the Christomimesis fthe theocratic uler nvolved a model and a standard which were above theruler and outside his realm; or, to put it in another way, the ruler whojudged all was judged by at least one, Christ. To be God the Father was tobe the awgiver, he Creator, nd this was the constant heme n the pane-gyrics o Peter 1.178 "Our father, eter the Greatl You have led us fromnonexistence o existence.... The drops of sweat of your abors were ouraromatic myrrh," wrote P. N. Krekshin, nd though the sweat magery wasborrowed from the Christlike Byzantine emperors, t was applied to thelabor of creation.179

To create from nothing, denying the past, being the fatherless eter I,the Great, rather than the Tsar Petr Alekseevich, on of Alexis, was cer-

173IRLI (Pushkinskii Dom), Kerzhenshoe obranie, ms 74, p. 82r.174Alexander Herzen, with his usual insight, aw the chinovniki reated by Peter's "revo-

lution" as a civil clergy, performing holy services in courts and police" (Byloe i dumy[Moscow, 1956], I, 252 [Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati omakh,Vol. VIII]).176For the Old Believers, Peter I" was, in itself, roof of Peter-Antichrist, or the omis-sion of the patronymic cknowledged what they suspected, that Peter was not the son ofAlexis; as Antichrist, e had no father, nd hence was the first f his name.

176For a madly incongruous mage of Catherine I, the servant-girl wife of Peter, as St.Olga (grandmother f St. Vladimir, who, according to historical egend, brought Christianityto Russia in the tenth century), ee Address of the Most Holy Ruling Synod, July 5, 1725,in Barsov, Novye materialy, . 159.

177See the sermons of Iavorskii (Propovedi blazhenyia pamiati Stefana lavorshogo) andof Feofan Prokopovich Sochineniia [Moscowand Leningrad, 1961]);and Tsar and People,p. 94 and note 47. On the Astraea imagery n general, see F. A. Yates, "Queen Elizabeth asAstrea," Warburg Journal, X (1947),27-82.

178For a typical variant, Peter as Augustus-like reator, ee Prokopovich, esp. p. 45. Forthe ruler as creator, s the life-giving rinciple, n the West during this period, see E. H.Kantorowicz, Oriens Augusti-Lever du Roi," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, XVII (1963), 165ff.

179"Kratkoe opisanie Blazhennykh Del Imperatora Petra Velikago, SamoderzhtsaVserossiiskago," n Zapiski russkikh liudei: Sobytiia Vremen Petra Velikago, ed. N.Sakharov (St. Petersburg, 1841), p. 4. See also Zapiski Ivana Ivanovicha Nepliueva (St.Petersburg, 1893),pp. 12o ff.; Razskazy Nartova o Petre Velikom, ed. L. N. Maikov (St.Petersburg, 891),pp. 6o ff.








tainly a mark of divinity. For those who lived within the self-containeduniverse reated by the secular ruler, he was the god, and this s what thepriests f Peter, his officers nd servants, alled him-zemnoi bog, the god onearth.180 The Old Believers knew the famous verse of Lomonosov,On bog tvoi, bog tvoi/ 0 Rossiia... (He is your god, your god/ 0 Rus-sia.. .), and threw t back into the faces of the new priests: You call himthe God of Russia " 181 If here the Old Believers and the new religionseem to have shared a common political theology, t is only because thenew religion continued to use the old theological anguage, although themeaning f the terms nd the context had changed; and in all their writingsthe Old Believers howed their awarenessof this fact and their bitter out-

rage over t.Why the outrage? Again, the answer can be given in theological terms.The Old Believerswere of the lower classesand represented he ideologyand aspirations of the Russian masses. The new dispensation, thegood life here on earth, offered hem nothing; t was a caricature of theold salvation. Yet, as I have tried to show, even the old dispensation, o-cially at least, no longer worked, for in the seventeenth entury men in-creasingly oubted the efficacy f theocracy. o, for the Old Believers, vergrowing n numbers, here was no way out. Rejecting the new salvationwhich offered hem no salvation, hey ived in a state of permanent poca-

lypse.Obviously these forms f the secular absolutist tate and the Old Believerreaction to it were, n many ways, peculiarly Russian; uniquely so in theinability of the secular state to provide salvation for the great masses andhence in the permanence nd ideological violence of the reaction, ymbol-ized by the Raskol. Yet some Russian aspects of the transition from thetheocratic centralized state to the secular absolutist state seem to carryoutside the Russian borders. t is surely not pure coincidence hat the Span-ish Inquisition reached ts heights not during the Middle Ages but duringthe secularization of the Spanish state in the seventeenth entury; thatthe rigid laws of Religious Conformity ere imposed in England, in theseventeenth entury, y a secular-minded overnment; hat the GermanReformation, ompleted politically by the Thirty Years' War, producedthe curious theological principle Cuius regio, eius religio; and that therevocation f the Edict of Nantes took place at the end of the seventeenthcentury, nder Louis XIV, whose secular concern was expressed n theslogan engraved on some of his medallions, gain expressing curious the-ology:Un roi, une foi, une loi.

If this s so, wherever he secular state was being constructed, ympathymight well be found for the cry of the Old Believerswhich symbolized heirreal protest: All power is Antichrist ecause u nei vsia chelovetsy pokor-stve ostoiatsa all men are in subservience o t).182

'0See, for xample, RazskazyNartova, p. 69.'81"Sobranie," n Kel'siev, I, 256.182V. Farmakovskii, O protivo-gosudarstvennom lemente v raskole," Otechestvennye

old believers and the new faith

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