The Icon and the Axe

by James Billington

  The Sectarian Tradition

  More than krizhanich-or any other foreign religious voice in seventeenth-century Russia-Kuhlmann was a harbinger of things to come in Russia. For the rejected radical Protestantism of Central Europe was to find roots in eighteenth-century Russia second in importance only to those it found in America.

  Kuhlmann was, of course, only one of many prophetic influences that helped launch the vigorous Russian sectarian tradition. There is no firm evidence for the contention that Kuhlmann's teachings provided the original doctrine for either of the two sects that he is sometimes alleged to have founded: the khlysty, or "flagellants" (the sect that first appeared in the late seventeenth century) or the Dukhobortsy (the "spirit wrestlers" who date from the eighteenth century). But the teachings of these and other Russian sects bear greater over-all similarities to the teaching of Boehme, Kuhlmann, and other sectarian Protestant extremists than to that of the Russian schismatics with whom they are often loosely identified.22

  In practice, of course, sectarians (sektanty) and schismatics {raskoV-niki) were equally persecuted and equally fractious forms of religious dissent. They often merged or interacted with one another (and at times also with Jewish and even Oriental religious traditions). Moreover, Russian sectarians generally shared with schismatics a hatred of bureaucrats and "Jesuits" as well as a general expectation that providential changes in history were about to take place. Nonetheless, the two traditions are fundamentally different. For the sectarians represent totally new religious confessions rather than attempts to defend an older interpretation of Orthodoxy. This distinction separated the heirs of Kuhlmann from the heirs of Awakum in two important ways. First, the sectarians built their devotional life around an extra-ecclesiastical calisthenic of self-perfection and inner illumination. Russian sectarians disregarded church ritual-old or new-and paid little attention to the celebration of sacraments in any form-or even to the building of churches.

  A second difference between schismatics and sectarians lay in the contrasting nature of their historical expectations. Although both traditions were prophetic, the schismatics were basically pessimists, and the sectarians optimists. The followers of Awakum dwelled on the coming reign of Antichrist and the need to prepare for judgment. They believed that earthly corruption had gone so far that God's final, wrathful judgment was all that could be expected from history. The followers of Kuhlmann, on the other

  hand, generally believed that the promised thousand-year reign of righteousness on earth was about to begin. However sectarians differed as to the nature and location of this millennium, these self-proclaimed "men of God" generally believed that they could help bring it about.

  The Old Believers believed that heaven had moved irretrievably beyond reach; the men of God, on the contrary, believed themselves capable of bringing heaven back within man's reach.23

  The sectarians were in many ways modern religious thinkers, beginning with the assumption that man was essentially an isolated being, separated from God in an unfriendly universe. The aim was to recapture lost links with God by uniting oneself with divine wisdom. Following the pantheistic tendencies of Central European mysticism, they saw all of creation as an expression of divine wisdom, for which Boehme used the hallowed Greek word "sophia," giving to it for Russian mystical and sectarian thought a different meaning from what it had traditionally possessed in Eastern Orthodoxy. "Sophia" was understood as a physical-sometimes even sexual-force as well as a merely intellectual form of "divine wisdom." New paths to salvation were provided by a host of sectarian writers, some emphasizing the physical and ecstatic, some the rationalistic and moralistic, path to God. Occult and kabbalistic tracts were translated, revised, and plagiarized by a series of religious popularizers. Boehme's claim to have unraveled the "great mystery" of creation and read the divine "signature of things" inspired other prophets-as it had Kuhlmann-to draw up their own "new revelation" or "key to the universe."24

  Each sect tended to regard the teachings of its particular prophet as the revealed word of God, which was meant to supplement if not supplant all previous tradition and scripture. The emphasis on simplifying ritual and introducing new beliefs gave sectarianism many points of contact with the emerging secular culture of the new aristocracy. In contrast, the schismatics remained suspicious of, and isolated from, this new and Westernized world. Only when the aristocratic dominance of Russian culture came to an end in the mid-nineteenth century did the schismatics become an important force in the main stream of Russian culture.

  The Russian sectarian tradition can be traced not only to the prophecies of Kuhlmann but also to transplanted White Russian Protestants who filtered into Muscovy in the late seventeenth century: the persecuted survivors of a once-rich Polish Protestant tradition. Typical of these was the gifted Jan Belobodsky, against whom Medvedev wrote his doctrinal treatises. Belobodsky was formally converted to Orthodoxy apparently to qualify as a diplomat and official translator in Moscow. His main interest,

  however, lay in converting the new academy in Moscow into a kind of revanchist theological bastion for the struggle with the Jesuits: the "Pelagians" of the modern world.25 The Jesuits offended Belobodsky's Calvinism by placing too much emphasis on what man can accomplish through his own works and on the saving power of the sacraments and too little on God's awesome remoteness. Although Belobodsky was soon condemned for heresy, his anti-traditional approach became fashionable in Petrine Russia, where even native Russians were found substituting a placard of the first two commandments for the traditional icon in the reception hall.26

  Under Peter one finds the first mention of a new Russian sect: a curious group who called themselves "God's people" (Bozhie liudi). Their more familiar name, "flagellants" (khlysty), points to the ecstatic, Eastern strain that was incorporated into Russian sectarianism.27

  The first documentary reference to this sect occurred in 1716, at the time of its founder Ivan Suslov's death; but it allegedly originated in the weird proclamation of a runaway soldier, Daniel Filippov, on a hillside near Viazma in 1645. Daniel claimed that he was God Sabaoth himself, come to give men twelve commandments in place of the ten originally given on Mount Sinai. He spent the disturbed early years of Alexis' reign prophetically exhorting Russians to leave the existing church in order to live as "God's people," throwing all books of secular learning into the Volga, and abstaining from alcohol, honey, and sexual relations. In 1649 Daniel apparently declared that Suslov (a peasant formerly bonded to the Westernized Naryshkin family, from which Peter the Great was descended) was his son, and thus a Son of God. Suslov's followers referred to Jesus as "the old Christ" and Suslov as the new. As he moved from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow and thence (apparently in 1658) to prison, fanciful pseudo-Christian legends were attached to his name. The building in Moscow where his followers met was said to be "the House of God" or the "New Jerusalem." Suslov was said to have been born of a barren 100-year-old woman, crucified in the Kremlin (with Patriarch Nikon as Caiaphas and the author of the law code of 1649 as Pontius Pilate), and then resurrected from a tomb which was watched over by a faithful group of virgins dressed in white.

  Actually, Suslov appears to have lived on in Moscow until his death at the age of nearly 100, and the Suslov legend may well have been embellished by the new "Christs" that succeeded him.28 The first of these was a former leader of the streltsy, who entered a monastery and began systematically recruiting harassed monks for the new sect in the early eighteenth century.29 His wife also entered a convent and began winning over feminine followers. The growing strength of the sect led to a heresy trial

  of seventy-eight in 1733, the exhumation and complete destruction of all remains of the two "Christs" in 1739, and a further trial involving 416 of "God's people" that lasted from 1745 to 1752. But the sect flourished under conditions of increased publicity and martyrdom. New "Christs" began appearing in various sections of Russia, often accompanied by twelve apostles and by feminine "angels" who were in turn headed by a
prophetess known as the "Mother of God."

  The forms of devotion practiced by "God's people" link them with the classic dualistic heresies of Christendom with their demands for self-mortification and their claim to constitute a secret elect. "God's people" met not in a church but in a secret meeting place usually known as "Jerusalem" or "Mt. Zion." They conducted not a service but a "rejoicing" (radenie) or "spiritual bath." They comprised no* a congregation but a "boat," and were led not by a consecrated priest but by a "pilot" for the voyage from the material to the spiritual world-into the seventh heaven where men could in fact become gods. The means of ascent lay partly in the "alchemy of speech"-spiritual songs were sung and incantations uttered in semi-hypnotic repetition, such as "Oh Spirit, Oh God, Tsar God, Tsar Spirit." Soon, however, rhythmic physical exercises began; and the one most certain to produce spiritual ecstasy, a sense of liberation from the material world, was the "circle procession." As the pace of circular motion increased, these whirling dervishes of Russian Christendom began their process of mutual- and self-flagellation accompanied by the rhythmic incantation: "Khlyshchu, khlyshchu, Khrista ishchu" (I flagellate, flagellate, seeking Christ).30

  If the flagellants represent the frenzied aspect of Russian sectarianism, the second important sect to arise, that of the "spirit wrestlers," illustrates a more moralistic, Western element. Characteristically, this sect arose as a reform movement among "God's people" rather than as a completely separate movement. The sectarians, like the schismatics, split up into many subgroups, but all sectarians shared key characteristics derived from the first sect, just as all schismatics derived their main characteristics from the original, fundamentalist martyrs.

  The spirit wrestlers first appeared in the 1730's or 1740's in the region of Tambov. They accepted the flagellant idea of the need to combat earthly things while seeking the world of spirit; and they produced as many "Christs" for leaders as had their forebear. But the new sect appears to have been largely founded by military personnel seeking refuge from tsarist service. Their main interest was in finding a faith more simple than that of the alien Orthodox Church and in securing relative freedom from the authority of the state-controlled hierarchy. Within their own communities

  they became increasingly concerned with moral questions-leading a highly puritanical, communal life that minimized prophetic revivalism in favor of homely readings from their "revealed" book: The Living Life.31

  Only a little later than the "spirit wrestlers" a similar sect arose in the Tambov region: the "milk drinkers" (molokane). The spirit wrestlers received their name from a Church official who had meant to imply that they were fighting with the Holy Spirit; and they accepted it as an indication of their intention to combat matter with spirit. The milk drinkers had been so named because of their practice of continuing to drink milk during the Lenten fast, but they too accepted the name, insisting that it meant they were already drinking the milk of paradise, or dwelling by milky waters. They insisted more than any of the other sects on equality of wealth, and their efforts to produce a simplified, syncretic religion led them to incorporate certain Jewish practices into their essentially Christian forms of worship. One of the most interesting of the many splits that developed within the sectarian movement is the one that occurred between the "Saturday" and "Sunday" milk drinkers.32 The very fact that Jewish elements participated in the life of the sects provides testimony to the fact that the sectarian communities tended to be cosmopolitan in composition. Unlike the Great Russian schismatics, the sectarians tended to welcome all comers as "brothers" (the usual term for member) in a common effort to attain the true spiritual life. The growing number of foreign settlers-particularly Germans and Central Europeans with Mennonite and Anabaptist backgrounds who began streaming into southern Russia after it was opened to foreign colonization in 1762-reinforced the trend toward austere egali-tarianism. But this was already implied in Kuhlmann's teaching that in the coming millennium "there will be no Tsars, kings, princes, but all will be equal, all things will be communal, and no one will call anything his own… ."33

  In addition to this tendency toward communal and egalitarian living, Russian sectarians shared a common belief that man was capable of attaining direct links (if not actual identity) with God outside all established churches. Behind all the sects stands the symbol which Kuhlmann (following Boehme) had used as the frontispiece for his new book of spiritual psalms: the figure of a cross melded into a latticework leading men up through the symbolic lily and rose to a new heaven and a new earth.

  For each new sect, the ascent to higher truth lay in fleeing the material world outside for the spiritual world within. In place of the old liturgy and ritual, the sectarians worshipped with "spiritual songs," which became a rich and many-sided form of popular verse. The word "spirit" (dukh) itself was to be found in the name or credo of each of the early sects. The

  flagellants considered the most important of their new commandments to be "Believe in the Holy Spirit," and intoned their prayers and incantations to "Tsar spirit." The spirit wrestlers carried the dualistic denial of the material world even farther than the flagellants, viewing all of world history as a struggle between the flesh-bound sons of Cain and the "fighters for the spirit" who were descended from Abel. The name the milk drinkers gave themselves was "spiritual Christians."

  As with other dualists, there was a kind of totalitarian fanaticism about the sectarians. In rejecting the "tyranny" of the established churches for the "freedom" of spiritual Christianity, the sectarians tended to set up even more rigorous tyrannies of their own. Contending that earthly perfection was possible within their community led them to assume that such perfection was possible only within their community. New forms of "higher" baptism and new sources of infallible truth were introduced; and the quest for perfection often drove them on to acts of self-mortification. It is characteristic that the popular names assigned to all the major sects of the eighteenth century designated some action which was thought to expedite their flight from the material to the spiritual world: flagellation, wrestling, drinking, and finally-in the last and most eerie of all the eighteenth-century sects-self-castration.

  As time went on and Russian sectarianism became influenced by pietistic sectarians from the West, the masochistic and dualistic qualities of the tradition tended to be less dominant. Nonetheless, sectarianism kept alive its pretensions at offering a Utopian, communal alternative to the official Church; and it played an increasingly important role in the depressed agrarian regions of southern and western Russia. Sectarianism exercised considerable influence as well on the intellectual community. Its greatest periods of subsequent growth at the grass roots level coincided with the periods of increased political ferment and ideological Westernization at the intellectual level: under Catherine, Alexander I, during the sixties and nineties of the nineteenth century-and perhaps even the fifties and sixties of the twentieth.

  Thus, contact with the West brought sectarian Protestant ideas into Russia along with secular rationalism. The centers of this strange sectarian tradition were the relatively new, western cities of Russia: St. Petersburg and the cities that had arisen on the southern plain of Russia during the Tatar and Ottoman recession: Voronezh, Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav, and Tambov. This latter city played such an extraordinary role in producing prophetic sectarians that it was often popularly called Tambog ("God is there").34 It seems darkly fitting that Tambov should prove a center of Utopian anarchism during the Civil War, one of the last to capitulate to

  Bolshevik rule, and the one to which anxious Soviet academicians flocked in the late 1950's seeking to discover why sectarian sentiment continued to exist after forty years of atheistic rule.35 Perhaps it is also appropriate that the leading defender of an ascetic and Utopian reading of Communist doctrine amidst the waning of ideological fervor in post-Stalinist Russia was Michael Suslov, who was brought up in a family of religious dissenters and bore the name of the founder of Russian sectarianism.

  The New Wor
ld of St. Petersburg

  The eighteenth century was greeted in Moscow with parades, festivities, and bonfires that lasted for an entire week. Like almost everything else in the official culture of the century to follow, these activities were ordered from above for reasons of state. Author of the decree-and ofjjthe change in New Year's Day from September to January-was, of course, Peter the Great, who has remained in the eyes of historians as towering a figure as his six feet eight inches rendered him to contemporaries. Having finished his tour of Western Europe and crushed the unruly streltsy, Peter was to turn in the first quarter of the new century to the administrative reforms and military campaigns that were to consolidate the position of Russia as a great and indisputably European power. In 1700 he took the first decisive step: he decreed that^beardsjshould henceforth be shaved off and'short, [German style of coats worn for "the glory and beauty of the government."36