Old Believer burning as a phenomenon. "Fire Communion

31.12.2023

Maria, Kazan

How to explain the mass self-immolations of Old Believers?

Good day! I am studying the history of the Old Believers. I'm on my way to going public. Please tell me how to explain the mass self-immolations of Old Believers? How should I answer this question, were there any? Was it allowed by Archpriest Avvakum? This is the sin of suicide. I have come across this information several times in a variety of history books.

Hello! Everything is very complicated and ambiguous. You will have to do a lot of reading, searching, and prayerful thinking on your own.

According to the laws of the Russian Empire, captured “schismatics” who did not repent of their choice were subject to burning. “Repentance” implied a renunciation of the Orthodox Faith, the one that was accepted in Rus' at its Baptism under Prince Vladimir. The Christian was faced with a choice: “keep the old Faith until death” or renounce and accept something “not Orthodox.” For fear of renouncing Orthodoxy under torture, Christians fled from the authorities to distant lands, forests and countries. If they were caught, then the choice became incredibly difficult.

Christ said: “Greater love has no one than the one who gives his life for his friends” (John 15.13), and “Pray for those who hate you and do evil to you” (Matthew 5.44). Christians who voluntarily went into the fire took upon themselves someone else’s sin of murder...

Is there a clear indication of support for the practice of self-immolation among SMCs? Habakkuk - unknown. Many researchers consider the words about this in the works of the holy martyr to be late “insertions.” But at the same time, there is such a thing as “private theological opinion.”

One thing is certain: self-immolations were not widespread; this is not the teaching of the Church; Without knowing the details of each of the “burnings”, we cannot say anything definite, because often self-immolations were a disguise for military clean-up operations, where there were no perpetrators or witnesses...

May God grant us all spiritual intelligence!

G. G. Myasoedov. "Self-burners", 1882

“The ground shook heavily, an explosion thundered, and air hit everyone in the chest. Smoke appeared from the cracks under the roof, fell thicker, became illuminated... Tongues of fire licked between the logs...

When the door fell apart under the blow, a burning man with a charred head jumped out, like a worm, he began to squirm in the snow. Inside the prayer room there was a smoky flame swirling, people engulfed in fire were jumping and rushing about. The fire was coming from under the floor. Smoke was already falling from the straw all around.

The soldiers backed away from the unbearable heat. It was impossible to save anyone. Taking off their cocked hats, they crossed themselves, while others shed tears.<…>The glow illuminated the snowy forest brighter. There was nowhere to hide from the smell of fried meat.”

Alexey Tolstoy. "Peter the First"

Solovetsky Monastery. Here, in 1635, the peasant son Nikita Minov took monastic vows under the name Nikon. The future patriarch was in charge of the liturgies and the economy of one of the monastery monasteries, but four years later he came into conflict with the initial elder of the monastery, the Monk Eleazar, and left the monastery. Next time he will return here as a patriarch in order to forcefully take away the relics of St. Philip (Kolychev) from the monastery.

“Get out of this monastery”

The church reform, “the book on the right” of Patriarch Nikon, was branded by the brethren and the abbot of the Solovetsky Monastery as a heresy. The Council of Elders rejected the new liturgical books sent from Moscow. 10 years later, the Great Moscow Cathedral anathematized the Old Believers. A new abbot was sent to the Solovetsky monastery, but he was expelled. A riot began.

In 1668, the monastery was besieged, but was taken only eight years later as a result of the betrayal of one of the Chernets. The capture of the holy monastery by the sovereign army, torture and execution of monks and holy fathers made the split among Russian believers irrevocable.

The Solovetsky events also provoked the largest soot- mass self-immolation of Old Believers. It was arranged by the former black deacon of the Solovetsky Monastery, Ignatius, one of the ideologists of the rebellion. His signature was on three of the five petitions that were sent from Solovki to Moscow during 10 disputes and correspondence between the monastery and the capital, before the start of the Solovetsky sitting.

Shortly before 1668, Ignatius was defrocked and expelled from the monastery. At the monastery at that time lived the “wonderful monk” Gury, the holy fool, who, as it is reported, used to “to enter a hot bread oven and there, closing the doors, pray, not paying attention to the heat”. It was this man who said to Ignatius: “Get out of this monastery, for you will build your own monastery, equal.” Subsequently, historians of ancient Orthodoxy interpreted Gury’s words as follows: “monastery” means the followers of Ignatius who died with him in the burning.

G. G. Myasoedov. “The Burning of Archpriest Avvakum,” 1897. This picture is historically incorrect - Avvakum and his companions were burned in a log house, and not tied to pillars.

After leaving Solovki, Ignatius began active preaching: he visited Old Believer hermitages and villages, and taught followers. Ignatius became one of the founders of the Vygo-Leksinsky hostel - the largest Old Believer settlement in the upper and middle reaches of the Northern Russian Vyg River in the forests of Zaonezhye.

A few years before his death, Ignatius wrote: “If you die us inseparably in one place, then may the mercy of the Lord be upon you, and may your soul and hearts be enlightened with its ever-present light and lead you to the knowledge of true piety.”.

It was in this way that in 1276, 26 inhabitants of the Greek monastery of Zograf, who opposedUnion of Lyons - the Latins who besieged the monastery burned them alive in the monastery tower - this is what Ignatius hints at.

In 1676, Alexei Mikhailovich, under whom the schism began, was replaced by his son Fedor. To the horror of the Old Believers, he turned out to be the king of a European upbringing and, moreover, did not wear a beard - either because of his youth, or out of principle. A few months later, the Solovetsky Monastery fell and terrible executions took place.

The monk Ignatius had a vision: “... four great ships, full of a multitude of Christian people, like sailing on the sea through the air.” The ship (“lunar”) in Christianity has always been a symbol of the miraculous salvation of believers. In January 1687, Ignatius and his followers settled in the Paleostrovsky monastery. Having waited for the arrival of the royal troops, they burned themselves.

The first Paleostrovskaya fire may have claimed the lives of up to 2,700 people, but it was not the last: Ignatius bequeathed to several followers to assemble their “ships.” More than 4 thousand people died in the burnt areas in Berezovo Navolok, the second Paleostrovskaya burnt area and the burnt area in the Strokina Hermitage.

But what made the former deacon and many of his followers think that the situation was so hopeless that the only thing left to do was burn out? And how did they comprehend taking their own life - the gravest sin in Christianity?

Causes, signs and comet Kirch

The book on the right - a comparison of Russian liturgical books with Greek models - was begun in Moscow in 1649 by the efforts of the Kyiv monks who knew Greek - the Uniates, who joined the Catholic Church in the Union of Brest in 1596. Now we understand what Ignatius wrote about.

For Old Believers, serving according to books corrected by the Uniates, messengers of the devil, means serving precisely him. Cross yourself with three fingers instead of two, write not “Jesus”, but “Jesus”, walk in procession against the sun.

The Western Russian theologian Stefan Zizaniy, an active opponent of the union, in his works, which were actively disseminated in the Muscovite kingdom (they were included in the Book of Cyril (1644)), argued: the Antichrist came “half a thousand years ago” from the creation of the world - with the accession of the popes. and personified by them; and the end of the world comes in the eighth millennium - that is, after 1592. As they say, everything comes together. And finally, according to the prediction of the holy fathers, the Antichrist should reign in Jerusalem, and Nikon assigned the name “New Jerusalem” to the Resurrection Monastery he built near Moscow.

Patriarch Nikon

In June 1654, the plague was brought to Moscow for the first time in history. By the end of July the city was empty, the pestilence reached Tula and Kaluga. The capital was ruled from New Jerusalem by Patriarch Nikon - the king was in the army near Smolensk, and his family was evacuated from the city. On August 2, a total solar eclipse occurred. It terrified everyone who saw it: thus, Avvakum remembered it as a sign of the end even 10 years later, in a petition to the king.

By winter, the plague was over, but the fields remained unsown, and the country was at war. Famine led to scurvy and other diseases, which created a new wave of mortality. The year 1666 from the Nativity of Christ came - many people actually celebrated the New Year in shrouds, and in the Vologda district one of the first organized fires occurred, 17 people died.

In 1680, an event took place straight out of the Apocalypse.

“The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven to earth, and the key to the pit of the deep was given to it.”

Revelation of John the Evangelist

In November-December 1680, in the Northern Hemisphere, even in the daytime, one could see a bright star with a huge tail - Comet Kirch, or the Great Comet of 1680. The first comet noticed by mankind using a telescope reached the brightness of the North Star by early December, and disappeared by February 1681.

Archpriest Avvakum

"In the summer of 7189 [The year 7189 according to the ancient reckoning means 1680. - Approx. ed.] December, opposite the 15th, from the first hour of the night, a great comet appeared in the west, in the likeness of a light white pillar, the underside ... with a width of an arshin, a spear-shaped or like a pyramid, and a visible height from the earth, like the sky, and went exactly with the stars to the north 40 days".

From the Russian chronicle

Government against Old Believers

1649 - death penalty for heresy (according to the Council Code)

1656 - the Old Believers were declared heretics and anathematized

1681 - schismatics are equated with blasphemers

1682 - Fyodor Alekseevich allows the use of the army to influence the Old Believers

1682 - Archpriest Avvakum and his comrades were burned in a log house in Pustozersk

1684 - in Moscow they began to demonstratively burn Old Believers in log houses (more than 100 executions). Death penalty introduced for preparing to commit self-immolation

Under these conditions, Old Believers began to leave Central Russia en masse in search of places where they could live more freely, not pay exorbitant taxes on beards and faith, and somehow survive in the conditions of the coming Apocalypse. The most radical of them - the Bespopovtsy, who did not recognize priests ordained after the schism - settled in the North, on Vyga and in other thickets of Zaonezhye, as well as on the Kerzhenets River in the modern Nizhny Novgorod region.

Religious functions in these communities were carried out by mentors and teachers - elders who knew the pre-schism liturgical books and knew how to perform the sacraments. They became the instigators of the fires.

Mentors

The influence of the mentors (the Nikonians called them schismatic teachers) was based on the idea of pilgrimage: Christ was a wanderer and a beggar, and the Russians always perceived pilgrims, travelers, and vagabonds as the personification of the Lord. What can we say about the learned, wise and gray-haired elders. The Bespopovites, left without spiritual leaders, were fertile ground for their sermons.

The Old Believer mentors were much more motivated than the Nikonian priests: the Old Believers acted independently, according to ideological convictions, supported by faith in the sanctity of their mission.

As Ekaterina Romanova, an authoritative researcher of the burning phenomenon, points out, “unlike Nikonian priests, Old Believer teachers visited even the most remote settlements, preaching the old faith and performing church sacraments on converts.”

Even under Alexei Mikhailovich, the authorities began hunting for mentors, but it was not easy, they all looked like a grandfather with a gray beard. As historian Mikhail Pulkin reports, peasants during interrogation could describe the mentors as follows: “I saw two elders: one old man without an ear, and the other younger.”

Elder Kapiton Kolesnikov was known as an ascetic even before the schism. In 1639, he was exiled to Tobolsk “for fury”: the church authorities considered that the elder, who, for example, did not eat at all for three days for a week, was not fasting, but was torturing himself. In 1652, Kapiton was declared a schismatic:

“He wore stone chains, a slab on the back, and another on the front, one and a half pounds in both, and a total weight of three pounds, the loop was his belt, and the hook was in the ceiling, and both were iron, and then he made a bed: hooking the hook into the loop, "Hang on to sleep."

The elders tried to gather as many people as possible into the burning place. The authorities naively believed that this was done by mentors in order to take possession of the property of those who burned down - however, sources show that almost all mentors burned down along with their “spiritual children.”

The title of mentor, notes Romanova, “implied that the spiritual father was responsible before God for the sins of his children. Their salvation also meant the salvation of the shepherd himself”: by organizing the burning, the teacher helped his children leave the world, which had turned to the kingdom of Satan, and appear before the Lord.

As Ekaterina Romanova proves, the “teachers” did not initially set self-immolation as their goal. Often they lived for a long time among their “flock,” peacefully performing rituals and rising to pray; however, learning about the approach of a search or even a military command, both peasants and mentors understood: they would have to either abandon the Lord or die in fire according to the new laws. Death by fire especially threatened those communities that had already built a “burnt house” - the room in which the burning took place.

Solovetsky Monastery, modern view

Burnt house

Even before the start of mass self-immolations, the Old Believers “protected” themselves, that is, they starved themselves - this is what Capito’s followers did, even more radical than him; There are also cases of burying oneself in the ground.

Gradually, a terrible system of preparation for self-immolation was developed. For this purpose, a special building was built - a burnt house. It was huge, up to five rooms, with windows too small to climb out.

During the peak era of burning - the reign of Fyodor Alekseevich and the regency of Princess Sophia - burnt houses were fortified to protect themselves from the military command.

“The fort has a gate, and its doors are secured by many locks. And the fort was made of thick timber, measuring three fathoms from the ground (about 6 meters - editor's note), and there were frequent loopholes, and log rollers at the top, and bridges were made inside the fort, and there was a lot of stone on the bridges, and guard towers were made, and inside that prison there were four huts, on them there were cages (that is, the huts were two-story. - Ed.), at the gate there was a hut on the basement, on it there were towers ... " - in such a prison in the Arkhangelsk diocese in In 1685, 230 people were burned.

In the 18th century, when fires became more rare, peasants began to make burnt houses out of several huts. In the underground of the huts they collected tar, birch bark, straw, and sometimes they placed a powder charge. Particular importance was attached to locks on windows and doors.

The huts were surrounded by a fence made of vertically buried logs, and sentries with guns were placed on the roofs of the huts. Inside, in addition to guns, they kept spears, reeds, and axes. They didn’t hesitate to get weapons by robbing people on the highway - it was the end of the world.

The buildings were sometimes erected long before the burning. Peasant Leonty Sidorov, during an interrogation about self-immolation in Mezen in 1743, said that the chapel in which the self-immolation took place was built a long time ago and “about 20 years ago, the walls and ceiling were prepared, and so was tar and straw for that these schismatics always had the irrevocable intention that when they were found out, they would burn themselves to death...” The burnt houses were not used either for housing or for farming.

“I will bring persecution to you, children”

The fire could have started with the news that a “manhunt” was approaching. But sometimes even a regiment passing by on its own business was enough to make the Old Believers “light up” - especially if everything had already been prepared and the community lived in constant fear. Well, if there was no command in sight, the Old Believers could stage a provocation.

An opponent of burning, the Old Orthodox theologian Monk Euphrosynus quotes the words of an Old Believer mentor, whom his flock asks - how to burn if there is no persecution? “I will cause persecution for you, children: I am going to church, follow me; Having stolen the priest’s cup, I will spill the sacrament, the king and the patriarch, and all heresy I will curse; the priest is for me, and you rather for the priest, having tied up the apostate under the church, we will throw the intercessors and defenders there with him; If they write to us at the beginning and send us a parcel, then we will suffer persecution; and we will burn ourselves into ruins and burn, we will burn ourselves, but we won’t give it to ourselves.”

Vygo-Leksinsky Old Believer hostel. Miniature

As is clear, “persecution” was necessary for the burning - then those who burn do not simply destroy themselves, but become like martyrs dying for their faith. Understanding this, the authorities strictly forbade military teams to attack the Old Believers.

They were instructed to arrest the instigators and prevent the fire before it started - or save people from the fire, if possible. In some cases, it was possible to stop the burning by promising, after the death of the fire victims, to collect their per capita salary from the rest of the village residents who were not participating in the burning - however, the poor rarely participated in the burning. Sometimes part of the village going to the fire did so with the consent of the village meeting.

There were other ways. One talented lieutenant from Kuznetsk hid people in the forest in 1746, and he himself came to an Old Believer village, saying that he “didn’t care” about the Old Believers. The lieutenant, apparently, had the gift of persuasion: strangely, the schismatics went home, and at night the lieutenant and the soldiers caught several of the instigators of the fire, after which the Old Believers calmed down. The statistics, however, are inexorable: of the 87 burnt-outs investigated by Romanova, 80 took place, 2 were stopped, and there is no information about the outcome of five.

Fiery ferocity

During the preparation process, the mentor acquired several of the most devoted assistants who helped him convince people to go to the fire. People often came from neighboring villages, alone or with their families. It’s scary that some were brought in by force. “There are examples when adult children, often already having their own families, were forced to participate in self-immolations, often under the threat of a parental curse, which, judging by many beliefs, had special power over children,” writes Romanova.

Fathers of families could bring their relatives by force. Then, when the hut is on fire, it is the mentor’s assistants who will keep people from trying to get out of the flames - even at the cost of being hit with an ax or knife.

Before the burning, the peasants crossed themselves once again; then many took monastic vows, some came in monastic robes. As a form of obedience, prayers and services of the daily cycle were offered to those waiting for the gari. Just before the burning, believers were put on paper aureoles with an eight-pointed Old Believer cross, as if they were living dead. Finally, the “persuaders” with a military team approached, and the Old Believers locked themselves in the burnt house.

Of course, the Bespopovites were fanatics. And for them, who considered it impossible to even touch the “servants of the devil” - soldiers and Nikonian priests - burning was the last way of dialogue with the authorities and the official church - in the form of protest.

When the “persecutors” surrounded the building in which the Old Believers were locked, the mentor spoke. He denounced the heresy of the patriarch and the tsar, convinced his supporters inside the hut of the need for self-immolation, reminding that everyone was in danger of being desecrated by the “Antichrist seal” - three-fingered; It’s better to burn yourself.

The exhorters, who were given strict instructions by the authorities to stop the burning, brought with them priests, sometimes former Old Believers, or they themselves - army officers - entered into polemics.

Sometimes the Old Believers were silent, but threw pre-written letters out of the windows - “fairy tales” (in the 17th century, a “fairy tale” was any short official document) with their sermons. Sometimes clothes, utensils, even money and valuables flew from the windows - all this should have gone to the soldiers.

There is a lot of evidence of the sympathetic attitude of the participants in the burning towards the “persecuting” soldiers - not wanting unnecessary deaths, those burning often warned in advance that they, for example, had a keg of gunpowder, and the soldiers had better move away - the burnt house would soon fly into the air . The Old Believers could not help but recognize the role of the “persecutors” in their salvation - and they wanted them to do their job, referring to the Gospel, where Jesus tells Judas: “Whatever you do, do it quickly” (John 13:27).

*** * ***

There is no clear connection between government persecution of Old Believers and the frequency of self-immolations.

Peter I, contrary to popular belief, was perceived by the Old Believers as the Antichrist to a much lesser extent than his father or Nikon. Peter even came to Vyg, and during his reign the persecution against the Old Believers was insignificant compared to the era of Fyodor and Sophia.

However, the frequency of burns did not decrease. Later, in 1762, trying to fight with the carrot method, they issued a decree “On stopping the investigation of self-immolators,” then they allowed Old Believers to wear beards and settle anywhere in the country, in 1782 the double capitation salary was abolished, and in 1784 Old Believers were banned in official documents and the press call them schismatics.

However, fires continued; from 1762 to 1825, 23 fires were recorded. Nicholas I, on the contrary, attacked the Old Believers with repressions - but the number of fires did not increase. They continued to occur less and less frequently in the second half of the century. But not only them.

In 1896– In 1897, in Tiraspol, the Old Believer peasant Fyodor Kovalev buried 25 people alive, including his two young children, his wife, brother, sister and 60-year-old mother, who wanted to avoid the All-Russian census of 1897.

Wikipedia also reports on one of the last known “self-destructions” of Old Believers - in Tuva in 1941. At that time, Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union was mistaken for the coming of the Antichrist.

The burning of archpriest Avvakum and his associates in the log house. Miniature

Even at the end of the 19th century, in the Karelian village of Lindozero, annual services were held in memory of self-immolators - Old Believers revered them as martyrs. Both Ignatius and the Solovetsky elders who died in the Solovetsky uprising became martyrs in their belief system.

The Paleoostrovsky monastery today consists of several huts. In the forests, on the site of an entire wooden city that was the Vygo-Leksinsky hostel, there are villages of lumberjacks and dacha associations. There are no forest settlements on the Kerzhenets River - now it is too close to civilization. In Russia there are still separate forest towns of Old Believers-bespopovtsy.

More recently, in October 2007, 35 Christians - they called themselves the group "Mountain Jerusalem" - went into voluntary seclusion, settling in a dungeon in the Penza region.

They first expected the end of the world, which was supposed to happen as a result of the fall of a comet, in 2012, then postponed it to May 2008. The first people began to leave the dungeon in March 2008. By May 16, all the morticians came out of the ground, except for two who died during this time and were buried by their brethren inside the cave. The mentor of this group, Pyotr Kuznetsov, was unable to sit in the dugout: since 2007, he has been under compulsory psychiatric treatment.

They asked the king, under the leadership of local bishops and governors, to send service people to forcibly bring all the Old Believers to the courts for torture and execution. For this purpose, special armed detachments were sent, which burned the houses, monasteries and monasteries of the Old Believers, and all the Old Believers were to be taken to these courts. The local clergy in Russia headed the Inquisition. Soon the “Twelve Articles” of Princess Sophia were published, according to which it was prescribed that all Old Believers, if they did not want to switch to new rituals, after questioning three times at the execution, were to be burned in the log house and the ashes were scattered. Most often, interrogations were carried out on the spot.

Theological definitions

According to Orthodox teaching, which was shared not only by supporters of the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, but also by their opponents, voluntary taking of one’s life is one of the gravest sins. In this regard, the official Russian Orthodox Church condemned mass suicides among the Old Believers and in 1667 pronounced an anathema on disobedients and detractors, and the government began to take measures to capture the rebels and incendiaries and put them to death.

At the same time, apologists for such self-destruction among the Old Believers prefer not to use the terms suicide And self-destruction, and the Old Believers interpret the mass taking of their own lives in various ways as voluntary martyrdom. At the same time, preference was given to “death by fire” or the so-called burning. Self-immolation was interpreted as second baptism, "baptism by fire".

Background

Self-immolation was practiced among some religious movements in early Christianity, such as the Montanists, Donatists, and Circumcellions.

The religious movements of the Donatists and Circumcellions that existed in the 4th century often resorted to self-immolation in response to persecution by the authorities, citing the words of the Apostle Paul “ I will betray my body to burn it"(1 Cor. 13:3).

Story

17th century

The idea of taking one's life for religious reasons originated in the Old Believers in the 17th century after the church reform of Patriarch Nikon in terms of non-priesthood, which was called netovshchina. Some of the followers of this teaching believed that since the disappearance of the “true priesthood and sacraments” on earth, one can only save one’s soul by personal feat or personal renunciation, such as taking one’s own life. The first preacher of this idea was the monk Kapiton, who denied the need for spiritual rites and proposed to seek salvation in asceticism, in which he especially emphasized fasting. After his name, the doctrine of martyrdom was called “ capitonicism" Later, this idea was developed by a native of Yuryevets-Povolsky district, a certain Vasily Volosaty, who began to preach “fasting until death.” Thus, the first method of suicide preached among the Old Believers was self-deprecation. Supporters capitonics They were accused of “putting people in coffins alive,” locking people in cells and starving them to death.

Suicide received a slightly different meaning among the rest of the Old Believers. The doctrine was based on the idea of the coming of the kingdom of the Antichrist. Martyrdom was understood as a means of maintaining faith, preserving the robe of baptism from desecration, and not destroying the fruits of repentance. The requirement of martyrdom was considered mandatory for everyone, since it was believed that no one could escape the seal of the Antichrist. Archpriest Avvakum offered martyrdom only to the chosen ones, as “unauthorized martyrdom,” justifying it exclusively with holiness.

The first known case of self-destruction occurred in Vyazniki; it soon spread to the Nizhny Novgorod district, and the Chornoramensky forests in Vetluga became especially famous. In the 1660s, in the Vologda, Kostroma, Murom and Suzdal forests, “stainers” - preachers and participants in mass suicides by hunger - became quite widespread. They " locked themselves in huts or holes to avoid the temptation to save their lives, and there they kept a complete fast until their last breath».

Soon, self-immolation became the most common method of suicide among Old Believers. In 1666, a certain “small” Senka reported to the Nizhny Novgorod governor I. S. Prozorovsky that “ in the Nizhny Novgorod district, the Chernetsy, when the archers arrived, locked themselves in their cells, set them on fire and burned" In March of the same year, a certain S.A. Zubov wrote from Vologda to Moscow that the first self-immolation took place here: “ Four people brought hay and fire into the hut, locked themselves, and lit it from the inside and burned; Yes, seven people, hiding from people, left the village at night in the field and sat in a tar log house, and lit it themselves, and burned in that log house" In the 1660s, self-immolations also began in Pomerania.

In the 1670s–1680s, the center of self-immolation became Poshekhonye, where, perhaps, not only local residents were burned, but also Muscovites who took the preaching of “fiery death” to heart. According to various sources, up to 4–5 thousand people died in “burnt areas” during this period in this area. So, in 1672 in Poshekhonsky district, in Beloselskaya volost, Pyatnitsky parish, 1920 people were burned. In the city, the preachers of self-immolation (a native of the city, Polikarp Petrov, the “newly ordained” priest of Poshekhonsky Semyon, the “man” Semyon - the prophet, the clerk Ivan Grigoriev and a certain Andrei Okun) achieved that the whole city was ready to die “in fire” or “in water” , and only the successful intervention of their opponents prevented the implementation of this intention. Burnt fires also became widespread in the Arzamas district, where they continued from 1675 to 1678.

Despite the fact that the controversy among Old Believers about the admissibility of self-destruction began immediately after the appearance of this phenomenon, in the mid-70s of the 17th century it became especially acute. Among critics of suicide, the student of abbot Dositheus, Elder Euphrosynus (Evfrosyn), who in turn had many students and followers, who even formed a special “skete” or “stanitsa” named after him - Euphrosyneism, is especially famous among critics of suicide. In the mid-70s, on behalf of Dositheus, he wrote a refutation of the “epistolium” of the Novgorod preacher of self-immolation Ivan Kolomensky, and in 1691 - “A reflective writing about the newly invented way of suicide deaths.” Monk Efrosin equated the “sinful” “fiery death” with suicide, entailing eternal church damnation, rejecting the pain and suffering of people as incompatible with the norms of natural human existence, laments the destruction of property, books and icons, exposes numerous “miracles” and criticizes apologists “ suicide death." In his opinion, life is the greatest gift and one cannot arbitrarily “run away” from the “long labors and sweats” that fill it, and the one who pushes people to self-immolation is the enemy of the Old Believer “bright Russia” and the culprit of its “emptiness.” As a way out, the Old Believer world must be prepared for material losses, flight to uninhabited places and the creation of new settlements.

On January 6, 1679, the first known case of self-immolation in Siberia occurred, organized in the Tobolsk district on the Berezovka River by the Old Believer leader Domentian, during which, according to various sources, from 1,700 to 2,000 people died.

On the night of March 9-10, 1682, the first known case of self-immolation in the Novgorod region occurred - in the village of Fedovo, Novo-Torzhsky district, about 50 people burned themselves. Large self-immolations were noted in the Kargopol district, in Dory.

However, after this, cases of self-immolation only became more frequent. The largest episodes of self-immolation took place in Karelia - Paleoostrovskie burnt areas in 1687 and 1688, in which more than 4 thousand people died and Pudozh fire 1693 with one thousand victims. In 1687, in the town of Berezov, Olonets region, more than a thousand people, led by a certain Pimen, burned to death. In the same year, in the Paleoostrovsky monastery, in the northern part of Lake Onega, the monk Ignatius of Solovetsky and 2,700 schismatics burned themselves in front of the authorities who came for them. In 1693, a crowd of armed Old Believers, having destroyed the church of the Pudozh churchyard, locked themselves in four fortified huts in the village of Strokina. The archers rushed to cut down the huts, but the Old Believers themselves caught fire in them and burned down among 800 people.

On October 24, 1687, a mass self-immolation occurred in the Tyumen district, in which about 300 people died. In the same year, about 100 people were burned in Verkhoturye district. In 1688, about 50 people voluntarily burned themselves in the Tobolsk district. However, in Siberia burning soon stopped for half a century, and the next self-immolation took place only in 1751.

At the end of the 17th century, Prince Pyotr Petrovich Myshetsky burned himself and 100 followers, persecuted by the government for spreading the rumor that Tsar Peter I was the Antichrist.

XVIII century

During the reign of Peter I, a turning point occurred in the spread of fires, and soon, according to D.I. Sapozhnikov, “a gradual but slow disappearance of this fanaticism from the historical scene should have followed.”

However, from the 1740s, representatives of the Filippov Consent stood at the head of the self-immolators, which gave new strength to the phenomenon. Their mentor, Elder Philip, with 70 followers died in the fire of self-immolation organized by him in 1743 on the Umba River near the Vygov monasteries, inspiring his followers to new suicides by personal example. Until the end of the 18th century, according to the calculations of D.I. Sapozhnikov, 32 self-immolations occurred in the Tobolsk province, up to 35 in the Olonets province, 11 in the Arkhangelsk province, up to 10 in the Vologda province, 8 in the Novgorod province, 4 in the Yaroslavl province, and 4 in the Nizhny Novgorod province. Penza and Yenisei - 1 each, and in total - 103 self-immolations.

At the same time, the trend in this phenomenon has been a gradual reduction in the number of their participants. The 18th century, as N.N. Pokrovsky points out, “was not characterized by grandiose fires, each of which claimed thousands of lives in the 17th century.” If in the first self-immolations in the 17th century, according to the Old Believer Synodik, 8,416 people died, then in the next 15 burns, 1,537 people died, and the last mass suicides of the late 18th – 19th centuries led to the death of 149 people.

19th century

Mass suicides among the Old Believers decreased, but did not stop in the 19th century. So, for example, in 1827, about 60 residents of the village of Kopen, Atkarsky district, Saratov province, from among the Netovites, decided to voluntarily die: 35 of them were killed. In 1860, in the village of Volosovo, Kargopol district, Olonets province, 15 people, including women with young children, were burned in the forest, in a log house.

XX century

There are two known cases of mass suicide among Old Believers who did not want to take part in the 1926 population census. In addition, in 1941, after the German attack on the Soviet Union, Old Believers living in the Republic of Tuva committed mass suicide, as they perceived this event as the coming of the Antichrist.

In culture

Notes

Past lectures | Let's dedicate Sunday to God! Old Believer online lectures (undefined)
Christian Old Believer School. About Metropolitan Ambrose and his reception - Priest Vadim Korovin. 06/15/2016 (undefined) (June 12, 2016). Retrieved June 16, 2016.
Pulkin M.V. Self-immolation of Old Believers
Church and ritual reforms of Nikon - Nikolaev Mikhail Grigorievich | Let's dedicate Sunday to God! Old Believer online lectures (undefined) . pvdb.ru. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
N. M. Mikhailova. Search for schisms. Part III. Sectarianism and the split of the “Old Believers” in the 17th century. Chapter 12. Self-immolation. 1995
V. V. Bolotov. Lectures on the history of the Ancient Church. Donatist split
V. V. Bolotov. Lectures on the history of the Ancient Church. Montanism
// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
(undefined) . Retrieved April 10, 2013. Archived May 17, 2013.
Barskov Ya.L. Monuments of the first years of the Russian Old Believers // Chronicle of the studies of the Imperial Archaeographic Commission for 1911. St. Petersburg, 1912. P. 334.
NEW HISTORICAL NEWSLETTER History, historical journal, history of Russia, bulletin, periodicals, periodicals, memoirs, reviews, civil war, White Case, Russian ... (undefined) . Retrieved April 10, 2013. Archived May 17, 2013.
Zenkovsky S. A. Russian Old Believers: spiritual movements of the 17th century. M., 1995. P. 272.
Barskov Ya.L. Monuments of the first years of the Russian Old Believers // Chronicle of the studies of the Imperial Archaeographic Commission for 1911. St. Petersburg, 1912. P. 335.
Zenkovsky S. A. Russian Old Believers: spiritual movements of the 17th century. M., 1995. P. 327.
Sapozhnikov D.I. Self-immolation in the Russian schism (From the second half of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century): Historical essay based on archival documents. M., 1891. P. 8.
Sirotkin S.V. “Schismatic charm” in the Arzamas district in the 70s. XVII century // Old Believers in Russia (XVII–XX centuries). M., 1999. P. 262.
Loparev Kh. M.. - Ripol Classic. - 237 p. -

If we turn to the history of the Old Believers, we will see that, starting
since the 70s XVII century, the Old Believers exterminated tens of thousands of their
adherents, including children. And the vast majority betrayed themselves
self-immolation.
In the second half of 1721 - early 1722 the central
government agencies sent new decrees and orders with
demand to quickly complete the registration of schismatics with double salary. 24 February
1722 followed by the instruction “On the testimony of male souls”, given
Major General P.G. Chernyshev and determined the order of the first audit.
One of the surprises for Peter’s legislators was the stubborn
the reluctance of the Old Believers, especially in the north and east of the country, to recognize
double capitation system of enrollment. Agreement to pay double salary
was considered by many of them as submission to the forces of the Antichrist and assistance to them.
A persistent reluctance to be included in the lists of “servants of Satan” was typical
for the radical trends of the Eastern Old Believers throughout
XVIII and XIX centuries.
The direct conduct of the census was entrusted to the military. In Tara
A detachment led by Colonel A.I. Parfenyev was sent to the monastery. Expedition
Colonel Parfenyev in the eyes of many was a new confirmation of the end
light and led to tragic consequences: it revived a desperate
a form of Old Believer protest of the past 17th century. - mass self-immolations.
In his reports to the government, Metropolitan Anthony emphasized that
self-immolations were a protest against the introduction of double salary and that
Old Believers categorically refuse both to pay this salary and
join the Orthodox Church.
The first after the 80s. XVII century outbreak of mass self-immolations in Siberia
was a clear indicator of the tension of the situation. The victims of these
self-immolations - runaway peasants or peasants who left their villages
directly for self-immolation. In October 1722, the Tobolsk authorities were
concerned about the first news of unrest in Ishim, Yalutorovsk, Tyumen
peasants In this area in the fall of 1722 - spring of 1724. the following occurred
self-immolation:
burning in the village of Zyryanskaya, Tyumen district (shortly before the middle
October 1722), a fire in the village of Korkinoy in Ishim, Yalutorovsky district;
a major self-immolation on the Pyshma River, in which, according to rumors spread
in mid-October 1722, about 400 died in Yalutorovsk villages
Tyumen and Yalutorovsk peasants; self-immolation of peasants on December 25, 1722
in the village of Irovskaya Abatskaya Sloboda on Ishim; 21 April 1723 inhabitants 10
courtyards of the village of Kamyshevskaya on Iset, 78 people gathered in the house
retired soldier Maxim Dernov for gas burning, after persuasion from the authorities
7 of them abandoned their intention, and the rest burned down in early May; between 12
and on March 28, 1724, 145 people burned in the swampy forests beyond the Pyshma River,
who came here from various Tyumen and Ishim villages; among them
there were several residents of the city of Tyumen.
A. S. Prugavin, pre-revolutionary historian of the Old Believers and sectarianism,
in one of his articles published in 1885 in the magazine "Russian Thought",
tried to count the number of schismatics who doomed themselves to death in fire.
Until 1772 alone, at least ten thousand people burned themselves alive. Necessary
It should be noted that this number of self-immolators should be considered minimal. Reporting
group and family self-immolations, archival documents very often
they add the words “and others with them” to one or another figure. Bonfires
self-immolations broke out after 1772. According to information collected by the same
historian, for example, in 1860, 18 Old Believers burned themselves.
The situation of the Old Believers in Russia especially changed for the worse after
Catherine's accession to the throne. In 1764, tsarist troops defeated
schismatic settlements on Vetka. In 1765, it was prescribed instead of tax payments
to take money from the schismatics recruit in kind (even those who
was in monasteries). By decree of 1767 for merchants registered in schism,
introduced the collection of double salary from the taxes they paid and other fees from
trades and trades.
In 1768, in opposition to the decree of Peter III, it was again forbidden to build
schismatic churches and chapels. Justifying this decision, the rulers of the Orthodox
churches from the Synod wrote: “It is true that in the Russian Empire non-Orthodox
Christian religions have public churches, and Mohammedans have their own places of prayer
it is allowed to have; the schismatics are not an example, for from those our Orthodox
no damage occurs,” is a different matter from the popular
Raskolnikov.
At the same time, the path to unity of faith was taken: the subordination of the independent
the state of the Old Believers of the official church.
By the decree of 1764, those schismatics who
the Orthodox Church does not shun the sacraments of the Church from the Orthodox
they accept priests,” but they can be baptized with two fingers.
The hierarchs of the official church called the schism “hydra.” Becoming like
Hercules, executioners in uniforms not only chopped down, but burned Protestants with fire
bonfires and log cabins. At the same time, protest among schismatics grew. IN
In response to the defeat of Vetka in 1764, the log cabins of the self-immolators began to burn again.
In Olonetsky district, a group of schismatic peasants, together with some
the newcomers locked herself in the hut. The headman and the ten's men approached the house and began
ask about unknown people. Instead of answering, one of them went outside with
with an ax in his hands, he hit the tenth and cut off his hand. The amazed crowd
moved. The stranger calmly returned to the hut and slammed the door. IN
Flames broke out in the windows. 15 schismatics died this time in the fire.
In the Novgorod province, the peasants of the village of Lyubach were brought to
despair. 35 people gathered at the peasant Ermolin’s and announced that
will be burned. Their intention was reported to the authorities. Lieutenant Kopylov arrived in the village
with a team of soldiers, a bishop and a priest. They told the self-immolators that if they
accept double salary, they will be sent home without any punishment for
gathering. The schismatics answered:
- Your faith is wrong, but ours is true, Christian; cross
four-pointed - charming (in the sense of “to seduce” - author), revered
octagonal; Yes, and in the divine scripture you have many inaccuracies, and if
they will ruin us, then we will not give up and will do what the Lord commands. A
If they don’t ruin us, then we don’t want to burn. Let us have a letter
behind the Empress’s hand, so that we can continue to live, and not have a double salary,
and they will not force us to go to church.
Soon 26 more people joined those holed up in the hut. The end has come
August. The vegetables are ripe in the garden. The schismatics asked Kopylov to allow them
go for cabbage. They were allowed to do this. About 20 men and women came out of the hut
with guns, axes, clubs. They picked up bags full of vegetables and again
locked themselves in the hut.
The Senate reported all this to the Empress. They suggested that if
the schismatics will continue to persist, then take them by force and send them to
Nerchinsk. But Catherine decided differently: she ordered to choose among
make the schismatics smarter and direct them to negotiations. After much persuasion and
convictions, the Lyubach schismatics went home and signed up for the double
salary.
The fire of self-immolation was blessed by the highest authorities of the schism, in
first of all, Archpriest Avvakum. In one of his essays, written
already during the years of imprisonment, the first self-immolators were praised: “The essence
Having understood the flattery of apostasy, let the evil ones not perish in their spirit, gathering in
courtyards with wives and children and are burned with fire by my own will. Blessed is this will
Lord."
Most often, schismatics did not live compactly, but were dispersed among
other population. By entering into common municipal associations, they at the same time
formed their own religious communities, united not only by the unity of faith,
but also a community of purely everyday interests.
The prototype of schismatic associations closed in themselves were
ancient Christian communities. Based on their legends, the schismatics revered
only themselves as true Christians, surrounded by a world of pagans.
The supporting bases for the formation of religious communities of schismatics were
hermitages and chapels. For example, at the beginning of the 19th century in the Tver province, in
area of Teterka, lost in the forest, there was a monastery of Fedoseevsky
consent. It was soon destroyed by the authorities.
The schismatics, persecuted by the government and the church, were defamed in every possible way,
spread all sorts of tales about them, forced them to wear a yellow trump card
on outerwear. As a result, they turned into renegades, on some of them
people looked at them as something terrible, and the yellow trump card gave away a schismatic
to the ridicule of any yard boy. In this situation, persecuted
the schismatic "clutching his nose and ears, hurriedly ran past the Orthodox Church,
so as not to smell the incense coming out of her, and not to hear her
bell ringing."
This is how the character of the schismatics was formed over a number of generations:
secretive, proud, but at the same time moral and honest.
All convinced Old Believers were very fanatical. Especially women. At
persecutions, during interrogations they usually answered everything briefly:
- Do what you want with me.
- Take him to execution.
“Many would willingly subject themselves to torture,” notes one
pursuers of schism.
In the 19th century, the split increasingly reached a dead end. Earthly life,
It seemed to the schismatics that it no longer promised them anything positive. Remained
the last hope for the kingdom of heaven. Under these conditions, savage violence breaks out
trends in religious sanctification of suicide. A schismatic sect emerges
"morelists", from whom, in turn, rumors arose
“self-burners” and “those uniting with Christ” - suicides or beggars
fellow believers to deprive them of their lives.
Similar trends formed especially among Netovites and
Filippovites. They argued that if anyone starves himself to death by fasting, or himself
If he burns it, he will become the same saint and great martyr as the saints.
So, around 1830 in the village of Kopeny, Atkarsky district, Saratov province
several dozen people, adults with children, were chosen by lot from their
environment of one destroyer and everyone was killed by him.
Another group of people, having gathered in a separate building, surrounded it
straw, brushwood and set it on fire.
Many were burned, but most of the self-immolators were pulled out of the fire
the police arrived.
In the Kalyazinsky district of the Tver province there are two young Filippovites, 30 and 18
years old, decided to accept martyrdom. The eldest wrote a will,
which reflects their mood before death - renunciation of everything earthly in
waiting for the kingdom of heaven:
Farewell, our beloved fathers, do not remember us with dashing words and do not cry for us.
pour it out, only trust in God... And we go to the glory of God.
At night, the young people went into the forest and built a fire. Standing in front of
with flames, prayers were sung frantically. The eldest wanted to throw himself into the fire first,
but the younger one begged to be given this right, feeling a lack of strength
endure the spectacle of a friend's torment. Singing a hymn of praise to God, the young man entered
into the flame. At the sight of his friend’s torment, the elder could not stand it. Full
compassion, he threw himself into the fire, pulled out his half-burnt friend, waited,
until he regained consciousness, he began to convince him to save his life, and when
the younger comrade again fell into oblivion and himself entered the flames. Exhausted young man
witnessed the superhuman willpower of his older friend. They found him in the morning.
The young man was still alive, told about everything, but soon died from burns.
In the Vladimir province, the peasant Nikita burned down his house and two people in it
his own children, previously slaughtered by him on a mountain outside the village. On
During interrogation, he testified that he acted this way under the influence of the Bible and committed
infanticide in the likeness of Abraham, who sacrificed his son to God
Isaac. Nikita was exiled to Transbaikalia. He settled in Srednyaya Borza on Argun.
While living here, he often went into the forest, where there was a small chapel. He spent a long time
didn't come back. One day the shepherds entered the chapel and found it
the following: under the canopy, a large wooden cross was dug into the ground. His
Nikita himself cut it down and dug it in. And on the cross hung a crucified man: his head in
crown of thorns tilted to one side. In the bitter frost he hung naked, only
girdling the lower abdomen with a white scarf. There was a wound in the side, the whole body was splashed
blood. At the foot of the cross lay a spear and instruments of the Lord's passion. When
people took the crucified man down from the cross, he was still alive. Nikita was cured and called to
interrogation He answered that he sacrificed himself for human sins and chose for this
Good Friday evening.
He crucified himself. First he nailed his legs to the cross with his right hand,
holding the crossbar of the cross with his left hand, then placed his left hand on
a large nail, previously driven in so that the point stuck out. I wanted to do the same
and with his right hand, but his strength left him - he weakened and hung. Yes, with the lowered
hand, and the shepherds found him. "I wanted to die as Christ died for
people," Nikita said.
The righteous fire was far from the only way for the Old Believer
the Kingdom of heaven. There was hunger, and a whirlpool, and an ax, and a knife.
In 1896, the first general census of the empire's population took place. On
A schismatic nun lived in the Tiraspol farmsteads of the Kherson province
Vitaly, who had a great influence on the Old Believers. In an organized
census, she saw the approach of the end of the world, the Last Judgment. She
taught that it was better to die than to be included on the census forms.
According to the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod Pobedonostsev, some sectarians
believed the nun and reacted negatively to this census, seeing in it
violence against their faith and considering it a means of putting them on the lists with a seal
Antichrist. Various means were used to avoid this census.
up to the intention of self-immolation.
It was on this basis of religious intolerance that a terrible incident occurred.
burying schismatics alive with their consent. Influenced by sermons
nuns Vitalia, the inhabitants of the farms decided to accept martyrdom, but
stay true to your religion. December 23, 1896 nine sectarians
They prepared a pit for themselves and sang the “rite of burial” over themselves. When they lay down in
hole, Old Believer Fyodor Kovalev, as a mason, at their request, laid a hole
brick.
F. Kovalev was a killer of 25 people, including two of his own minors
children, wife and 60-year-old mother. Everyone buried alive and Kovalev himself were
They are convinced that this death will lead them to the “kingdom of heaven.”
Four days after this incident, six more were walled up alive.
Human.
On the day of the census, Vitaly, together with some other co-religionists
refused to give information to the census takers. She and five other sectarians were
imprisoned, but after a 5-day hunger strike they were released.
In February 1897, Fyodor Kovalev buried another
ten people, including Vitaly.
The discovery of this terrible case led to the arrest of Kovalev and imprisonment
him to jail. Later the Synod went further and sent him to prison
branch at the Spaso-Evfimeevsky Monastery in Suzdal.
Fyodor Kovalev was imprisoned in the prison department on February 22, 1898.
and placed in a separate cell under the strict supervision of the monastery authorities. IN
he spent seven years in the monastery prison, and then was transferred to a cell
monastery In his letter to his sister, Kovalev reported his reconciliation with
life of a prisoner: he lived in this “box” for seven years, but even if he lives
here until 70 years old, will not ask for his release.

Catastrophes of consciousness [Suicides, religious, ritual, everyday, methods of suicide] Revyako Tatyana Ivanovna

Self-immolation of Old Believers

If we turn to the history of the Old Believers, we will see that, starting from the 70s. XVII century, the Old Believers exterminated tens of thousands of their adherents, including children. And the vast majority committed themselves to self-immolation.

In the second half of 1721 - early 1722, central government agencies sent new decrees and orders demanding that the enrollment of schismatics in double salary be completed as quickly as possible. On February 24, 1722, the instruction “On the testimony of male souls” was given to Major General P. G. Chernyshev and determined the procedure for the first audit.

One of the surprises for Peter's legislators was the stubborn reluctance of the Old Believers, especially in the north and east of the country, to recognize the system of enrollment in a double capitation salary. Agreeing to pay double salary was considered by many of them as submission to the forces of the Antichrist and assistance to them. A persistent reluctance to be included in the lists of “servants of Satan” was characteristic of the radical trends of the Eastern Old Believers throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

The direct conduct of the census was entrusted to the military. A detachment led by Colonel A.I. Parfenyev was sent to the Tara monasteries. The expedition of Colonel Parfenyev, in the eyes of many, was a new confirmation of the end of the world and led to tragic consequences: it revived in Siberia a desperate form of Old Believer protest of the past 17th century. - mass self-immolations.

In his reports to the government, Metropolitan Anthony emphasized that the self-immolations were a protest against the introduction of double salaries and that the Old Believers categorically refused both to pay this salary and to join the Orthodox Church.

The first after the 80s. XVII century The outbreak of mass self-immolations in Siberia was a clear indicator of the tension of the situation. The victims of these self-immolations are runaway peasants or peasants who left their villages directly for self-immolation. In October 1722, the Tobolsk authorities were concerned by the first news of unrest among the Ishim, Yalutorovsk, and Tyumen peasants. In this area in the fall of 1722 - spring of 1724. The following self-immolations occurred:

burning in the village of Zyryanskaya, Tyumen district (shortly before mid-October 1722), burning in the village of Korkina on Ishim, Yalutorovsky district; a major self-immolation on the Pyshma River, in which, according to rumors spreading in mid-October 1722, about 400 Tyumen and Yalutorov peasants died in Yalutorovsk villages; self-immolation of peasants on December 25, 1722 in the village of Irovskaya Abatskaya Sloboda on Ishim; On April 21, 1723, residents of 10 courtyards of the village of Kamyshevskaya on Iset, in the amount of 78 people, gathered in the house of a retired soldier Maxim Dernov for self-immolation, after persuasion by the authorities, 7 of them abandoned their intention, and the rest burned down in early May; between March 12 and 28, 1724, 145 people who came here from various Tyumen and Ishim villages burned to death in the swampy forests beyond the Pyshma River; among them were several residents of the city of Tyumen.

A. S. Prugavin, a pre-revolutionary historian of the Old Believers and sectarianism, in one of his articles published in 1885 in the magazine “Russian Thought”, tried to count the number of schismatics who doomed themselves to death in fire. Until 1772 alone, at least ten thousand people burned themselves alive. It should be noted that this number of self-immolators should be considered minimal. When reporting on group and family self-immolations, archival documents very often add the words “and others with them” to one or another figure. Bonfires of self-immolators broke out even after 1772. According to information collected by the same historian, for example, in 1860, 18 Old Believers burned themselves.

The position of the Old Believers in Russia especially changed for the worse after Catherine’s accession to the throne. In 1764, tsarist troops destroyed schismatic settlements on Vetka. In 1765, it was prescribed that instead of ransom money, recruits in kind should be taken from schismatics (even those who were in monasteries were no exception). By the decree of 1767, for merchants registered in schism, the collection of double wages was introduced on the taxes they paid and other fees from trades and trades.

In 1768, in opposition to the decree of Peter III, the construction of schismatic churches and chapels was again prohibited. Justifying this decision, the rulers of the Orthodox Church from the Synod wrote: “It is true that in the Russian Empire, non-Orthodox Christian churches, public churches, and Mohammedans are allowed to have their own prayer sites; The schismatics are not an example, for from them no harm comes to our Orthodox,” - it’s a different matter from the schismatics popular among the people.

At the same time, the path to unity of faith was taken: the subordination of the Old Believers, independent of the state, to the official church.

By the decree of 1764, those schismatics “who are not alien to the Orthodox Church and accept church sacraments from Orthodox priests” were exempted from double taxes, but they could be baptized with two fingers.

The hierarchs of the official church called the schism “Hydra.” Like Hercules, the executioners in uniforms not only chopped down, but burned Protestants with fire at the stake and in log cabins. At the same time, protest among schismatics grew. In response to the defeat of Vetka in 1764, the log cabins of the self-immolators began to burn again.

In Olonetsky district, a group of dissident peasants, together with some strangers, locked themselves in a hut. The headman and the guards approached the house and began asking about unknown people. Instead of answering, one of them went out into the street with an ax in his hands, hit the tenth and cut off his hand. The astonished crowd did not move. The stranger calmly returned to the hut and slammed the door. Flames broke out in the windows. 15 schismatics died this time in the fire.

In the Novgorod province, the peasants of the village of Lyubach were driven to despair. 35 people gathered at the peasant Ermolin’s and announced that they would be burned. Their intention was reported to the authorities. Lieutenant Kopylov arrived in the village with a team of soldiers, a bishop and a priest. They announced to the self-immolators that if they accepted double salary, they would be sent home without any punishment for the gathering. The schismatics answered:

Your faith is wrong, but ours is true, Christian; the four-pointed cross is charming (in the sense of “to seduce” - author), we honor the eight-pointed one; Yes, and in the divine scripture you have many incorrectnesses, and if they begin to ruin us, then we will not give up and will do what the Lord commands. And if they don’t ruin us, then we don’t want to burn. Let us have a letter in the hand of the empress, so that we can continue to live, but not have a double salary, and we will not be forced to go to church.

Soon 26 more people joined those holed up in the hut. It's the end of August. The vegetables are ripe in the garden. The schismatics asked Kopylov to allow them to go for cabbage. They were allowed to do this. About 20 men and women came out of the hut with guns, axes, and clubs. They collected full bags of vegetables and closed themselves in the hut again.

The Senate reported all this to the Empress. They suggested that if the schismatics continued to persist, then they should be taken by force and sent to Nerchinsk. But Catherine decided differently: she ordered to choose smarter ones among the schismatics and send them to negotiations. After much persuasion and convincing, the Lyubach schismatics went home and signed up for a double salary.

The fire of self-immolation was blessed by the highest authorities of the schism, primarily by Archpriest Avvakum. One of his essays, written already during the years of imprisonment, contains praise for the first self-burners: “Having understood the flattery of retreat, let the evil ones not perish in their spirit, gathering in the courtyards with their wives and children and being burned by fire of their own will. Blessed is this will in the Lord.”

Most often, schismatics did not live compactly, but were dispersed among the rest of the population. Entering common municipal associations, they at the same time formed their own religious communities, united not only by the unity of faith, but also by a commonality of purely everyday interests.

The prototype of self-contained schismatic associations was the ancient Christian communities. Based on their traditions, the schismatics considered only themselves to be true Christians, surrounded by a world of pagans.

The support bases for the formation of religious communities of schismatics were monasteries and prayer houses. For example, at the beginning of the 19th century in the Tver province, in the area of Teterka, lost in the forest, there was a monastery of Fedoseyevsky consent. It was soon destroyed by the authorities.

The schismatics, persecuted by the government and the church, were defamed in every possible way, all sorts of fables were spread about them, and they were forced to sew a yellow trump card on their outer clothing. As a result, they turned into renegades, people looked at some of them as something terrible, and the yellow trump card gave out a schismatic to the ridicule of any yard boy. In this situation, the persecuted schismatic “clutched his nose and ears and hurriedly ran past the Orthodox church so as not to smell the incense coming out of it and not to hear its bell ringing.”

This is how the character of the schismatics was formed over a number of generations: secretive, proud, but at the same time moral and honest.

All convinced Old Believers were very fanatical. Especially women. During persecution and interrogation, they usually answered everything briefly:

Do whatever you want with me.

Lead to execution.

“Many would willingly subject themselves to torture,” notes one of the persecutors of the schism.

In the 19th century, the split increasingly reached a dead end. Earthly life, it seemed to the schismatics, no longer promised them anything positive. There was only one last hope left for the kingdom of heaven. Under these conditions, savage tendencies of religious sanctification of suicide flare up. A schismatic sect of “morelists” emerged, from which, in turn, the rumors of “self-burners” and “those uniting with Christ” - suicides or asking fellow believers to take their lives - emerged.

Similar trends formed especially among the Netovites and Filippovites. They argued that if someone starves himself to death by fasting, or burns himself, he will become the same saint and great martyr as the saints.

So, around 1830, in the village of Kopeny, Atkarsky district, Saratov province, several dozen people, adults with children, chose by lot one destroyer from among them and they were all killed by him.

Another group of people, having gathered in a separate building, lined it with straw and brushwood and set it on fire.

Many were burned, but most of the self-immolators were pulled out of the fire by the police who arrived.

In the Kalyazinsky district of the Tver province, two young Filippovites, 30 and 18 years old, decided to accept martyrdom. The eldest wrote a will that reflects their mood before death - renunciation of everything earthly in anticipation of the kingdom of heaven:

Farewell, our beloved fathers, Don’t remember us in a dashing way, And don’t shed tears for us, Just trust in God... And we go to the glory of God.

At night, the young people went into the forest and built a fire. Standing in front of the flame, they sang prayers frantically. The elder wanted to be the first to throw himself into the fire, but the younger begged to be given this right, feeling a lack of strength to endure the spectacle of his friend’s torment. Singing a hymn of praise to God, the young man entered the flame. At the sight of his friend’s torment, the elder could not stand it. Full of compassion, he rushed into the fire, pulled out his half-burnt friend, waited until he regained consciousness, began to convince him to save his life, and when the younger comrade again fell into oblivion, he himself entered the flames. The exhausted young man witnessed the inhuman willpower of his older friend. They found him in the morning. The young man was still alive, told about everything, but soon died from burns.

In the Vladimir province, the peasant Nikita burned down his house and two of his own children in it, who had previously been slaughtered on a mountain outside the village. During interrogation, he testified that he acted this way under the influence of the Bible and committed infanticide in the likeness of Abraham, who sacrificed his son Isaac to God. Nikita was exiled to Transbaikalia. He settled in Srednyaya Borza on Argun. While living here, he often went into the forest, where there was a small chapel. He did not return for a long time. One day, the shepherds entered the chapel and found the following in it: under the canopy, a large wooden cross was dug into the ground. Nikita himself cut it down and dug it in. And on the cross hung a crucified man: his head in a crown of thorns was tilted to one side. In the bitter frost he hung naked, only with a white scarf around his lower abdomen. There was a wound in the side, the whole body was splattered with blood. At the foot of the cross lay a spear and instruments of the Lord's passion. When people took the crucified man down from the cross, he was still alive. Nikita was treated and called in for questioning. He answered that he sacrificed himself for human sins and chose the evening of Good Friday for this.

He crucified himself. First, he nailed the legs to the cross with his right hand, holding the crossbar of the cross with his left, then he placed his left hand on a large nail, which had been driven in in advance so that the point stuck out. He wanted to do the same with his right hand, but his strength left him - he weakened and hung. So, with his hand down, the shepherds found him. “I wanted to die as Christ died for people,” Nikita said.

The righteous fire was far from being the only path to the kingdom of heaven for the Old Believer. There was hunger, and a whirlpool, and an ax, and a knife.

In 1896, the first general census of the empire's population took place. In the Tiraspol farmsteads of the Kherson province lived the schismatic nun Vitaly, who had a great influence on the Old Believers. In the organized census, she saw the approach of the end of the world, the Last Judgment. She taught that it was better to die than to be included on the census forms.

According to the chief prosecutor of the Synod, Pobedonostsev, some sectarians believed the nun and reacted negatively to this census, seeing in it violence against their faith and considering it a means of putting them on the lists with the seal of the Antichrist. Various means were used to avoid this census, including the intention of self-immolation.

It was on this basis of religious intolerance that the terrible incident of burying schismatics alive with their consent occurred. Under the influence of the sermons of nun Vitalia, the inhabitants of the farms decided to accept martyrdom, but remain faithful to their religion. On December 23, 1896, nine sectarians prepared a pit for themselves and sang the “rite of burial” over themselves. When they lay down in the hole, Old Believer Fyodor Kovalev, like a mason, at their request, filled the hole with bricks.

F. Kovalev was a killer of 25 people, including his two young children, his wife and 60-year-old mother. All those buried alive and Kovalev himself were convinced that this death would lead them to the “kingdom of heaven.”

Four days after this incident, six more people were walled up alive.

On the day of the census, Vitalia, along with some other co-religionists, refused to give information to the census takers. She and five other cultists were imprisoned, but were released after a 5-day hunger strike.

In February 1897, Fyodor Kovalev buried ten more people alive in two stages, including Vitalia.

The discovery of this terrible case led to the arrest of Kovalev and his imprisonment. Later, the Synod went further and sent him to the prison department at the Spaso-Evfimeevsky Monastery in Suzdal.

Fyodor Kovalev was imprisoned in the prison department on February 22, 1898 and placed in a separate cell under the strict supervision of the monastery authorities. He spent seven years in the monastery prison, and then was transferred to the monastery cell. In his letter to his sister, Kovalev reported his reconciliation with the life of a prisoner: he lived in this “box” for seven years, but even if he lives here until he is 70 years old, he will not ask for his release.