by James Millar
SERGEI BOGATYREV
OKUDZHAVA, BULAT SHALOVICH
(1924-1997), Russian poet, singer, and novelist.
Bulat Okudhava’s parents were both professional Party workers. In 1937 they were arrested; the father was executed and the mother imprisoned in the Gulag until 1955. At age seventeen Okudzhava volunteered for the army, saw active service, and was wounded. After the war he graduated from Tbilisi University, then became a schoolteacher in Kaluga. In 1956 he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and moved to Moscow. He worked as a literary journalist, and joined the Union of Writers in 1961. He made his name as a prose writer with the controversially unheroic war story “Goodbye, Schoolboy,” and followed this with a series of historical novels depicting various episodes from nineteenth-century gentry life.
In the late 1950s Okudzhava pioneered “guitar poetry” songs performed by the author to his own guitar accompaniment. This genre drew on long-established traditions of Russian drawing-room art song (“romance”), student song, and gypsy song, as well as that of the French chansonniers, who became well known in Russian intellectual circles in the late 1950s (Okudzhava’s favorite was Georges Brassens). Okudzhava cultivated an amateur-sounding performance manner. In actual fact, he was an extremely gifted natural melodist, creating dozens of original and unforgettable tunes. Okudzhava’s songs are suffused with nostalgic, agnostic sadness. They deal with three principal themes: love, war, and the streets of Moscow. In his treatment of love he is an unrepentant romantic, idealizing women and portraying men as subordinate and flawed. In his treatment of war he is anti-heroic, emphasizing fear, loss, and mankind’s seeming inability to find a more humane way of settling disputes. In his treatment of Moscow he looks back to a time before the city became a Soviet metropolis, when it offered refuge for the vulnerable and sensitive in its courtyards and neighborhoods, especially the Arbat district. His treatment of war and Moscow were particularly at odds with official notions about these matters. At about the time that Okudzhava created his basic corpus of songs, the tape recorder became available to private citizens in the USSR, and the songs were duplicated in immense numbers, completely bypassing official controls.
By the mid-1960s Okudzhava had become, after Vladimir Vysotsky, the most genuinely popular figure in the literary arts in Russia. He was unique in that, while he remained a member of the Party and the Union of Writers, his work was published abroad (without permission) and circulated unofficially in Russia, while continuing to be published officially in the USSR. Shielded by his popularity and his fundamental patriotism, he was never subjected to severe repression. From the mid-1980s until his death he was something of a Grand Old Man of Russian literature, the doyen of the “men of the 1960s.” In 1994, his novel The Closed Theatre, a barely fictionalized account of his parents’ life and fate through the eyes of their son, won the Russian Booker Prize. See also: JOURNALISM; MUSIC; UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Smith, Gerald Stanton. (1984). Songs to Seven Strings: Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet “Mass Song.” Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press.
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Makarov, Dmitriy; Vardenga, Maria; and Zubtsova, Yana. (2003). “Boulat Shalvovich Okoudjava.” «http:// www.russia-in-us.com/Music/Artists/Okoudjava».
GERALD SMITH
OLD BELIEVER COMMITTEE
In 1820, Emperor Alexander I convened a secret committee to guide him in policies regarding the Old Believers (also known as Old Ritualists or raskolniki-schismatics). The secret committee included some of the most important churchmen and ministers in Russia, including the minister of religion and education (Prince Vasily Golitsyn) and Archbishop Filaret Drozdov, later to become metropolitan of Moscow and the preeminent prelate of mid-nineteenth-century Russia. Originally given the task of finding an appropriate form of toleration within the Russian legal system, the committee quickly broke into liberal and conservative factions. Internal politics of the committee, added to the emperor’s own vacillating desire for a “spiritual revolution” in Russia, weakened its ability to make significant changes. Ascendance of conservative members pushed the committee’s views from tolerance of the Old Belief to more stringent enforcement of punitive laws against them. After the death of Emperor Alexander, the secret committee became mostly a forum for discussion of anti-Old Believer policies in the Russian government. It continued to exist into the reign of Alexander III, whose landmark law of 1883 finally revised the legal status of Old Believers in the Russian empire. See also: ALEXANDER I; FILARET DROZDOV, METROPOLITAN; OLD BELIEVERS; ORTHODOXY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nichols, Robert L. (2004). “The Old Belief under Surveillance during the Reign of Alexander I.” In Russia’s Dissenting Old Believers, ed. Georg Michels and Robert L. Nichols. Minneapolis: Minnesota Mediterranenean and East European Monographs.
ROY R. ROBSON
OLD BELIEVERS
The term Old Believers (or Old Ritualists) includes a number of groups that arose as a result of Russian church reforms initiated between 1654 and 1666. Old Believers desired to maintain the traditions, rites, and prerogatives of Russian Orthodoxy, whereas Nikon, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, wanted to make Russian practices conform to those of the contemporary Greek Orthodox Church. Nikon’s opponents, conscious of both a departure from tradition and an encroachment of central control over local autonomy, refused to change practices.
ORIGINS OF THE MOVEMENT
The reforms took two general forms-textual and ritual. In the first, a group of editors changed all Russian liturgical books to conform with their contemporary Greek counterparts, rather than old Russian or old Greek versions. The most famous of these was the change in spelling of “Jesus” from “Isus” to “Iisus.” While the Old Believers rejected all innovation, the symbolic centerpiece of resistance was the sign of the cross. Traditionally, Russians put together their thumb, fourth, and fifth fingers in a symbol of the Trinity. The second finger was held upright, to confirm Jesus’ form as perfect man; the middle finger was bent to the level of the second, symbolizing Jesus’ Godly form that bent down to become human. These two fingers touched the body during the sign of the cross, showing that both natures of Jesus (human and divine) existed on the cross. In Greek practice, the fingers were re-versed-thumb, second, and third fingers were held together and touched the body, while the fourth and fifth fingers were held down toward the palm. When Nikon obliged his flock to change their hands, it seemed that he wanted them to discount the icons in their churches and the instructions in their psalm books, which explicitly showed the old Russian style of the sign. In fact, the Stoglav Council, convened exactly a century earlier, had condemned anything but the “two-fingered sign.”
The implementation of reforms were draconian. Ivan Neronov and Avvakum Petrovich, who had been part of Nikon’s circle, challenged the patriarch. Sometimes left alone, at other times persecuted, Nikon’s opponents included some of the most respected churchmen in Muscovy. In an unusual move, Neronov was finally allowed to continue using the old books for his services, but Avvakum was exiled to Siberia and finally burned at the stake for his extreme anti-reform posture. Even women were not spared-the boyarina Feo-dosia Morozova was carried out of Moscow to the Borovsk Monastery, where she perished in jail.
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For each of the famous anti-reformists, thousands more pious Russians simply paid no heed to the calls for reform and continued to pray according to the old style. Their existence underlined the limit of Nikon’s other goal, which was to limit the expansion of central control of religious affairs to the patriarch alone, taking away local prerogatives. The vast majority of Old Believers simply refused to accept either the reforms or the centralization that Nikon imposed on his flock. The traditionalists, of course, perceived themselves as true Orthodox, and called followers of the reformed ritual “new believers” or “Nikonians.” Much of this early history, ho
wever, is still poorly understood. Recent scholarship has shown that the Old Belief did not coalesce into a movement until perhaps a generation after the schism. Because local concerns tended to override any broader organization of Old Believers, the leadership of the Old Belief probably had only limited authority over a small core of supporters.
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
For the Old Believers, the possible loss of sacramental life splintered the movement shortly after the 1666 schism. Since no bishops consecrated new hierarchs according to the old ritual, Old Believers quickly found themselves bereft of canonical clergy. Old Believer communities solidified into a number of soglasiya, translatable as “concords.” The differences among the concords lay not so much in doctrinal issues as in sacramental procedures and interaction with the state.
Old Believers developed a spectrum of views on the sacraments. Half-Old Believers, for example, accepted some Russian Orthodox sacramental life but prayed regularly only with other half-Old Believers. Many such half-Old Believers never openly aligned themselves with any specific concord but instead maintained a secret allegiance to the Old Belief. Although scores of small, locally formed groups sprang up, they tended to wither and die, leaving few traces of their history.
The priestly Old Believers (popovtsy), on the other hand, at some point in their history came to accept clergy from new-rite sources. These priestly Old Believers included the Belokrinitsy and the be-glopopovtsy (fugitive-priestly), the latter accepting clergy consecrated in the state-sponsored church. Furthest from the church were the priestless Old Ritualists-the Pomortsy, Fedoseyevtsy, Filippovtsy, and Spasovtsy-all of whom firmly believed that the sacramental life had been taken up into heaven, just as Elijah had ridden his fiery chariot away from a sinful world, only to return in the last days. Priestless Old Believers were more likely to reject accommodation with the state than their priestly coreligionists, sometimes even eschewing the use of money or building permanent homes. While some Old Believers lived openly in their communities, others traveled from place to place, preaching and living off alms.
In broad terms, Old Believer communities on the local level were organized according to similar patterns, regardless of concord. Clergy (priests, preceptors, and abbots) usually came from within the community or from one nearby, and all members of the concord elected the group’s clerical leadership. Democratic management of religious affairs found precedent in both the autonomous organization of pre-Nikon parishes and in the monastic rule maintained at the Solovki Monastery in Russia’s extreme north. This monastery, a dramatic holdout against the Russian Orthodox church, saw its continued expression in the Vyg and Leksa monastic settlements that, in turn, established the Pomortsy concord.
LEGAL AND SOCIAL STATUS IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
Reaction against Old Believers emanated from both the Russian Orthodox Church and the secular state. In pushing through his ritual and textual changes, Patriarch Nikon relied heavily on his relationship with Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to suppress popular opposition. The history of the Old Belief’s early years tells of numerous confrontations between agents of the state and Old Believers. At times, they were subjected to corporal punishment such as having a tongue cut out, being burnt at the stake, or even being smoked alive “like bacon.” Sometimes, however, death came at the hands of Old Believers themselves. On some occasions, Old Believers burned themselves alive in their churches rather than accept the ritual changes of the revised Russian Orthodox Church. Although this was the most extreme form of resistance and did not happen often, it did provide an effective and surprisingly frequent deterrent to state seizure of Old Believer groups. Self-immolation continued even into the period of Peter I, a whole generation after the first reforms.
Peter I’s position regarding the Old Believers was mixed. Old Believers were not tolerated as political opponents of the state, especially of Peter’s
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Woodcut ordered by Peter I to encourage men to shave their beards and to ridicule Old Believers who refuse to shave. © HULTON ARCHIVE Western-looking reforms. He implemented a double poll tax on Old Believers and even imposed a tax on the beards that Old Believers refused to shave, as well as the traditional clothing that they would not exchange for Western European dress. In matters advantageous to the state, however, Peter I allowed Old Believers to live as they wished. For example, he refused to persecute Old Believers in the Vyg community while they were producing ore.
Even when allowed to exist, Old Believers often suffered under separate laws and governmental decrees, some of which were secret and therefore not published. The situation of the Old Believers improved dramatically, however, during the reign of Peter III, who tolerated them. During the rule of Catherine II, the great Old Believer centers of Pre-obrazhenskoe and Rogozhskoe were founded. In these centers, curiously known only as “cemeteries,” Old Believers created large complexes of chapels, churches, bell towers, and charitable institutions, such as hospitals and almshouses. Preobrazhenskoe and Rogozhskoe became the focus of Old Believer merchant and industrial development for succeeding generations.
Meanwhile, the church itself had softened its attitude about the Old Ritual. In 1800, it created the edinoverie, an arm of the official church that continued to use the old rite. Although initially successful, the edinoverie never swayed the majority of priestly Old Believers, and even fewer of the priestless Old Believers, who had become convinced that priesthood would be lost until the Second Coming of Christ.
With the succession of Nicholas I to the throne, Old Believers once more found their legal status eroded. Even by the end of Alexander’s reign, the state had already begun again to refer to Old Believers as raskolniki (schismatics). This name had earlier been dropped as too judgmental. As Nicholas worked out a new relationship between church and state, he began to close the Old Believers’ places of worship, seize their property, and harrass the faithful. By 1834, the gains made by Old Believers before 1822 had been completely lost.
The policy of the next tsar, Alexander II, toward Old Believers proved much more liberal than that of his father. Although laws from Tsar Nicholas’s period curtailing Old Believer freedom stayed on the books, the state generally stopped enforcing them. Old Believers again flourished both in Moscow and in the far reaches of the empire. The Russian Orthodox Church remained an adamant opponent of the schism but began to pursue expanded missionary activity to the Old Believers, rather than engage in direct persecution.
The succession of Alexander III further revised the Old Believers legal status. Study of the Old Ritualist question increased during the early years of Alexander III’s administration and culminated in the law on Old Believers of May 1883. This new law served as the capstone to imperial policy on the Old Belief until the revolutionary changes of 1905. At that time, against the wishes of the Russian Orthodox Church, the emperor granted full toleration of all religious groups through his edict of April 17, 1905. In the late imperial period, this date would be celebrated by Old Believers as the beginning of a silver age of growth and wide public acceptance.
No one knows how many Old Believers lived in Russia. The first census of the empire had convinced Old Believers that to be counted was tantamount to being enrolled in the books of Antichrist.
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Moreover, Old Believers realized that being counted made them more easily subject to the double poll tax. Thus, Old Believers rarely cooperated with imperial authorities during enumerations. The Old Believers could hide from the authorities simply by calling themselves members of the Russian Orthodox Church, especially if they had bribed the local priest to enroll them on parish registers. The question of numerical strength in relation to gender remains sketchy at best. The figure of ten percent of the total population, however, has been regarded as authoritative for the imperial period.
Old Believers tended to live either in Moscow or on the outskirts of European Russia. Often far from imperial power, Ol
d Believer communities tended to include active roles for women and devised self-help programs to insure economic survival. The wealth of Old Believer merchants and industrialists has been noted many times, but even the most modest Old Believer communities usually made provisions for mutual aid, rendering their settlements more prosperous-looking than other Russian villages. Old Believer industrialists were also widely reported to give preferential treatment, good benefits, and high pay for co-religionists working at their factories. Russian Orthodox authorities even claimed that the Old Believers lured poor adherents of the established church, including impoverished pastors, into the arms of the schism.
OLD BELIEVERS IN THE SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET PERIOD
The situation for Old Believers in post-1917 Russia has not been thoroughly studied, though some generalizations can be made. In many cases, churches were closed and their believers persecuted, especially in the period of the cultural revolution. Activists were jailed or sent to the Gulag camps, as were many other religious believers. In other cases, Old Believers followed a path of partial accommodation with the state, much like the practices of some Russian Orthodox. Taking advantage of Soviet laws, some Old Believer communities used their previous history of persecution and tradition of communal organization to appeal for churches to stay open. This strategy had mixed results. A few major centers were allowed to exist in Moscow, for example, and, after World War II, in Riga, but others were closed or destroyed.
Old Belief was weakened significantly during the communist period. Ritual life regularly became covert, rather than public. After having been baptized as children, Old Believers often ceased to take part in church rituals as they grew older. Some, especially in the urban centers, became Communist Party members, perhaps to revive their religious life in retirement. Older women, with little to lose politically or economically, attended churches more openly and frequently than working men and women.