Old Believer communities exist in remote parts of Russia to this day. The self-immolation practiced by some Old Believers eventually became an emblem of Russia’s dark side. Mussorgsky’s great opera Khovanshchina, for example, is based on events surrounding the Old Believer schism, and ends with a mass suicide by fire. Avvakum’s autobiography exerted an enormous influence on the Russian radical intelligentsia, and on such literary artists as Merezhkovskii, Voloshin, and Nagibin.43 There is probably an interesting article waiting to be written about the similarities between what Ziolkowski calls Avvakum’s “auto-hagiography” and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s narcissistically charged The Calf Butted the Oak.
Christian Russia was (and in some respects still is) a land of myriad schismatic and sectarian groups, most of which arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition to the Old Believers (including the numerous subgroups within this group, such as priested and priestless varieties, or those who “wander” and those who do not) there are, to name a few: the Dukhobors or “wrestlers for the spirit,” who reject established churches and civil authority; the Molokans or “milk drinkers,” whose asceticism is moderate and who eat dairy products on days of fasting; the Khlysty or “Flagellants”/“Christs,” who attain religious ecstasy (“radenie”) by various forms of self-mortification including possibly self-flagellation (depending on which expert you consult); the Postniks or “fasters;” and the Skoptsy or “castrators,” who (the experts agree) mutilate themselves by removing their reproductive organs.44
Again, Billington refers explicitly to the “masochistic” qualities of Russian sectarianism.45 The masochism is particularly obvious among the Skoptsy, although it does not appear to be erotogenic, even though the sexual organs are involved. That is, the mutilation does not involve sexual orgasm. Indeed, guilt over sexual feelings seems to be the cause of the mutilation, for such feelings were perceived as an obstacle to spiritual salvation. Among men one testicle might be removed (“poluoskoplenie” [half castration]), or both (“malaia pechat’” [minor seal]), and sometimes the penis itself would be removed as well (“bol’shaia pechat’” [major seal] or “tsarskaia pechat’” [the tsar’s seal]). Among women the nipple(s) or the entire breast(s) would be removed. The clitoris and/or labia would be cut out in some cases. Many, perhaps the majority of the Skoptsy, however, preferred “spiritual” castration, that is, sexual abstinence, to actual bodily mutilation.
As a result of their extreme practices members of some of the sects imagined that they became “Christs” (or, if women, “Bogoroditsy” or “Mothers of God”). This idea is actually a logical extension of a notion prevalent among all practicing Christians in Russia. The ideal sufferer in the “Russian religious mind” (to use Fedotov’s expression) is, after all, Christ himself. Averintsev says that Russian saintliness is characterized by the most literal possible imitation of Christ, by a total willingness to “turn the other cheek,” as Christ both practiced and preached.46 For example, Saint Boris “imitated” Christ (the verb is “s” podobiti”).47 Epiphanius says of Sergei of Radonezh that “in all things and at all times he imitated his Master Jesus Christ our Lord….”48 Professor Brostrom has examined Avvakum’s imitation of Christ in some detail.49 The monastic director (“starets”) Amvrosy (1812–91) repeatedly advised his listeners and correspondents to imitate Christ, for example: “You should… try in every way possible to pull out this root [of evil], through humility, obedience, and imitating the Lord Himself Who humbled Himself to the form of a servant and was obedient to death on the Cross and crucifixion.”50
The poor and suffering peasantry of Russia were, by their very misery, often thought to be perfect imitators of Christ (cf. the tradition of confusing “krest’ianin” [peasant] with “khristianin” [Christian]).51 To this day even not particularly religious Russians will, in a bad situation, utter the proverb: “Bog terpel, i nam velel” (“God [i.e., Christ] endured, and ordered us to [endure] too”).52 In suffering, a Russian is by definition imitating Christ.
Imitation of Christ is not some fuzzy, distant ideal for the religious Russian. It means concrete, physical and/or mental suffering. It can even entail a conscious search for humiliation. Dunlop says that starets Amvrosy “elected to spend his life hanging on a cross of self-abnegation.”53 The image of the cross is of course the Christian image par excellence. But here is a concrete example of just what that “cross” was for Amvrosy. The scene is the Optina Pustyn monastery in 1841, when Amvrosy was not yet a starets and was known as Alexander:
Once when… Alexander and Staretz Lev were together the Staretz suddenly intoned, “Blessed is our God, now and ever and unto ages of ages.” Alexander, thinking that the staretz desired to commence the evening rule began to chant, “Amen. Glory to Thee, O God, Glory to Thee. O Heavenly King….” Suddenly the staretz brought him up short, “Who gave you the blessing to read?” Alexander immediately fell down on his knees, prostrated himself and asked for forgiveness. The staretz, however, continued his tirade, “How dared you do that?” And Alexander continued his prostrations, murmuring, “Forgive me for the sake of God, Batiushka. Forgive me.” By fighting down the instinct of self-justification Alexander was able to crucify the “old man” in him and put on the new.54
Such complete self-abnegation is the truest possible imitation of Christ.
Toward the end of his unhappy life the Russian writer Nikolai Vasil’evich Gogol (1809–52) became more and more attracted to religious self-abnegation. Christian humiliation became a goal for him. A great admirer of The Imitation of Christ, he gave advice such as the following to readers of his Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends: “Pray to God… that someone should so disgrace you in the sight of others that you would not know where to hide yourself from shame…. That man would be your true brother and deliverer.”55 This advice Gogol applied to himself as welclass="underline" “I myself also need a slap in public and, perhaps, more than anybody else.”56
If a slap was what Gogol wanted, a slap is what he got, for even friends repudiated Gogol’s book which, among other things, pretended to give religious advice to the tsar, requested that everyone in Russia pray for him (Gogol), advocated flogging for both the offender and the victim, and claimed that the common folk were better off illiterate. The publication of Selected Passages was followed by further masochistic acts. For example, Gogol burned the manuscript of a book on which he had been working for five years, the second part of Dead Souls. He grew increasingly religious, visiting Optyna Pustyn on several occasions, and developing a close relationship with an Orthodox priest by the name of Matvei Konstantinovsky. The latter recommended fasting and incessant prayer. Gogol followed this advice with a vengeance, and as a result he died of starvation and exhaustion on February 10, 1852.
There is a rich and ever-changing terminology for the various forms of religious masochism in Russia. For example, in the Russian theological literature Christ’s voluntary relinquishment of divinity in order to experience human suffering is often termed “kenosis” (from the Greek, meaning “self-emptying”; cf. Philippians 2:6–8). The meaning of the term expands when scholars characterize the imitation of the self-humiliated Christ as “kenotic.”57 The meaning expands even further when, in her book The Humiliated Christ in Modern Russian Thought, Nadejda Gorodetzky says: “meekness, self-abasement, voluntary poverty, humility, obedience, ‘non-resistance,’ acceptance of suffering and death would be the expression of the ‘kenotic mood’.”58 Fedotov, although resisting the breadth of Gorodetzky’s conception, adds a spatial dimension: “It [kenoticism] is a downward movement of love, a descending, self-humiliating love, which finds its joy in being with the rejected.”59 Even Mikhail Bakhtin, whose dialogic theories would appear to have nothing to do with religion at all, gave kenoticism a central role.60