DOUKHOBORS AND OLD BELIEVER SECTS
DOUKHOBORS AND OLD BELIEVER SECTS. The priestless Old Believers (q.v.) gave rise to many sects in imperial Russia over the intervening centuries since their beginnings in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. In general these priestless sects (bezpopovtsy) were like the ancient Montanists and Messalians. They had a negative worldview and believed their rites brought them into direct contact with the Holy Spirit (q.v.), so that Christ could be reincarnated in various persons generation after generation.
Beginning in chronological order, the Khlysts were a 17th c. dualistic Old Believer Russian sect, whose founder claimed to be God; and in succeeding generations one male disciple was Christ while a female disciple was the Mother of God. In 1740 more than 400 people were prosecuted in Moscow for this heresy, which later flourished underground so that there were 60,000 adherents by 1900. In doctrine they denied the Holy Trinity (q.v.): God inhabited the man Jesus who died, as he would inhabit other members of the Khlysts. When God is incarnate in the Khlyst, the spirit directs everything, making all books (including the Bible) and authority (q.v.) meaningless. Members were outwardly pious Orthodox parishioners (e.g., Rasputin) since liturgy (q.v.) was a symbol of their own mysteries, while privately their communities were each led by a “Christ” and “Mother of God”, and their ritual was frenzied dance after which ecstatic prophesies were made. Their belief was dualistic, since they believed that the body is the prison of the spirit, marriage is condemned, and children are “incarnations of sin.” In this way they are similar to previous gnostic (q.v.) groups.
One branch of the Khlysts from the late 18th c., the Skopts, practiced castration in order to prevent all sexual relations, naming it a “baptism of fire.” Their leader was Conrad Selivanov, who was exiled under Tsarina Catherine II, but was personally known to both Tsars Paul and Alexander I and flourished under them. Tsar Nicholas I persecuted the group, and they were forced underground, and there continued in great numbers.
The Doukhobors (Spirit-Wrestlers) began as an 18th c. Ukrainian sect that combined Socinian doctrine (16th-c. unitarianism of the Italian Faustus Socinius), Freemasonry (q.v.), and Khlyst teachings. They believe in one God manifest in the soul as memory (Father), reason (Son), and will (Holy Spirit), while Jesus was not God but possessed the ultimate divine reason. (For the triad memory, reason, will, see Augustine; Trinity.) Scripture and dogma (qq.v.) are to be interpreted allegorically (q.v.), and the eternal human soul undergoes transmigration or metempsychosis. They were and are organized in strict pacifist communes, which prosper through hard work and sober living. The sect made contacts with famous people including Grigorii Skovoroda and Lev Tolstoy. Tolstoy and the Quakers provided funds in 1899 for a large group to emigrate to Cyprus and Western Canada where they live, but refuse to own land or register vital statistics.
An early moderate offshoot of the Doukhobors were the Molokans (“Milk-Drinkers”), who altered their doctrine to resemble Protestant evangelical sectarians (i.e., the Bible as the sole authority for faith), and reject the cult, icons, and fasting (qq.v.)-and drink milk on fast days. They evolved further in the early 19th c. under the influence of the Russian Bible (q.v.) Society, holding that the Bible alone was the means of salvation, giving up sacraments and patristic writings. A sizable group of Molokans emigrated to San Francisco in the 19th c. and continue their community there today on Potrero Hill.
The sect of the Stranniki (“Wanderers”) was founded by a man named Evfimii in the 18th c. They regarded the other Old Believer groups (soglasie) as worshipers of the golden calf and prisoners of Antichrist. Taking vows as pilgrims, they wandered the highways and byways, avoiding any officials of the Russian government, regarding them as agents of the Antichrist. Another fanatical sect, the Za-poshchevantsy, was characterized by extreme asceticism and ritual suicide.
The Stundists also developed similarly to the Molokans in the second half of the 19th c. They espoused a Western Protestant type of sectarianism among Russian and Ukrainian peasants, emphasizing personal meditation on Scripture, the singing of hymns in common, and promptings of the Spirit. Originally influenced by German Mennonites, by the end of the century they were under the sway of Baptist preachers. This led to activities which were socially and politically inflammatory, so that Stundism was forbidden by the government (1894) and missionized against by the Russian Church (1895). In general the forced Russification policies of Ober-Procurator C. Pobedonostev toward these groups under the last two tsars, Alexander III and Nicholas II, were reactionary policies that created grave difficulties for all non-Orthodox religions in Russia, and especially the sects. Pobedonostev also limited religious freedom in the Russian Orthodox Church as well, and ended up as the last of the despotic Ober-Procurators.