Orthodox Inquisition in Russia. Report by the Institute of National Democracy

· Analytics, Persecution, Books, Vestibule, Orthodoxy, Russian Empire, Russian Orthodox Church

In this work, the Institute of National Democracy examined the problem of religious oppression and persecution in modern Russia. An excursion into history is provided, along with facts of persecution of people by state-supported pro-Orthodox state institutions today. The historical unity of totalitarian imperial ideology and the ideology of the Russian Orthodox Church is also shown. The report is not directed against sincere believers in God.

The Institute of National Democracy thanks the Russian National Democratic Movement (ANP portal) for consultative assistance in preparing this report.

Contents:

1. The tradition of Orthodox inquisition in Russia. The ROC as a bastion of totalitarianism.
2. The ROC as a persecutor of science and progress.
3. Modern Orthodox inquisition. The Expert Council for State Religious Studies Expert Review under the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.
4. Facts of persecution of Protestants and those included in “sect” lists.
5. Imposition of compulsory Orthodox education in schools.
6. The ROC against Russian folk tales.
7. Attempts to canonize Stalin.
8. Imposition of a monarchical model of statehood as the “only true” one for the Russian people.
9. The ROC as a hotbed of anti-Semitism.
10. Conclusion.

Part 1. The tradition of Orthodox inquisition in Russia. The ROC as a bastion of totalitarianism.

Throughout many centuries of its history, the Greek (Russian) Orthodox Church played, in most cases (with the exception of certain historical periods), a determining role in shaping the worldview and state ideology in Russia. In doing so, it waged an ideological struggle against alternative ideologies and worldviews, using not only methods of verbal persuasion (both in print and oral form), but also coercion and persecution, up to and including torture and the death penalty.

In the book Essays on the History of the Russian Church, the well-known theologian, Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod, Professor A. V. Kartashov notes:

the first introductory task of the newly established church in Rus’ was to implant the new Christian faith in the pagan soul of the Russian person. … but the simple masses of the people could by no means become such bold rationalists as to deny the existence of national gods, and while growing accustomed to the Christian God, they at the same time reverently honored their former sacred objects. Prayer in a Christian church did not calm the fearful thoughts of the newly baptized Russian, and he hurried to pray in the barn, the grain field, the grove, and by the water, so as not to offend the age-old patrons of his everyday life, and brought usual sacrifices in the swamps and by the wells. The period of such pure and conscious dual faith, as a common phenomenon in folk life, judging by the time when the written monuments that speak of it were created, encompassed the eleventh, twelfth, and partly even the thirteenth centuries…. In the course of time, under the influence of persistent persecution by the clergy, whose jurisdiction included crimes against the Christian faith, and of artless preaching that the pagan gods were evil demons—the clear faith in the old deities faded in the popular consciousness. Specifically, through the substitution of several pagan gods with images of Christian saints (Perun with the image of Elijah the Prophet, Volos with St. Basil, Yarilo with St. George).

The clergy persecuted and destroyed the volkhvs (magicians) and witches, demolished cult structures (idols, temples), and ruthlessly dealt with other faiths and those who refused to be baptized.

This Christian-celebrated event—the Baptism of 988—occurred a year after the Bulgarians, on April 23, 987 (the day of commemoration of the Ancestors), killed their Metropolitan Sebastian for having mindlessly sent a great number of those who had not accepted Christ to execution. Croatia (modern Transcarpathia) was laid waste, and all large settlements and villages there were burned. Saint Makary wrote: “when we received holy baptism from the holy Grand Prince Vladimir, then throughout the Russian land the foul pagan prayer sites were destroyed.”

The retinues of Vladimir in Novgorod the Great, sheltering behind the good name of Christ, cut down in the blazing city 5,000 townspeople led by the tysyatsky Ugonyay, who shouted: “Better to die than to give our gods over to mockery.”

The Christians Dobrynya and Putyata, forgetting the commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” burned the priest Bogumil.

“Voluntary acceptance of Christianity” continued in 992 in Chernigov, when a revolt raised by pagan priests was suppressed by the princes.

In 994, all Slavs on the Elbe rose up, and by 997 they had beaten and expelled all the Christians (German settlers) together with Archbishop Gisler.

In 988, the Obodrites destroyed the monastery of Hillersleben.

In 1000, Prince Vladimir and his retinue repelled a pagan campaign against Kiev led by Volodar.

In 1013, the baptism of Smolensk and the adjoining lands took place, accompanied by widespread killings of volkhvs and the devastation of the pagan Krivichi.

In 1024, an uprising was raised in Suzdal by volkhvs. During a famine, the Christian boyars tried to defend their private grain reserves, violating the ancestral law of mutual aid. The uprising was suppressed only after the invasion of the retinues of Yaroslav the Lame.

In 1036, Luka Zhidyata became bishop in Novgorod, who, without counting, personally chopped off heads, burned out eyes, cut out tongues, and burned pagans.

In 1069, a volkhv came to Novgorod, whom Prince Gleb killed before all the assembled people.

In 1071, uprisings accompanied by the killing of Christians and the burning of churches swept through the lands of Novgorod, Rostov, and Yaroslavl.

E. F. Grekulov, in the book The Orthodox Inquisition in Russia, published by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, reports that the Vladimir bishop Feodor, who lived in the twelfth century, deprived his opponents of villages, turned some into slavery, threw others into prison, cut off their heads, burned out their eyes, cut out their tongues, and crucified them on walls. Being a major feudal lord, Bishop Feodor refused to recognize the authority of the Kiev metropolitan:

Having accused his opponents of heresy, he sentenced them to death through his own court, secured the confiscation of their property, and cast many into prison. In his struggle with the Kievan Metropolitan, Fyodor suffered defeat and was handed over to the Metropolitan for judgment. The Metropolitan’s court, in turn, accused Fyodor of heresy and subjected him to savage punishment: his tongue was cut out, then his right hand was severed, and his eyes were “taken out,” i.e., he was blinded.

The killing of pagans continued for centuries… To this, one can add the entirely anti-popular policy of the churchmen. The Church, headed by metropolitans and patriarchs who were, as a rule, Greek by nationality, incited internecine wars in Rus’ and was the initiator of the Horde invasion of Rus’, which led to a change in the civilizational system and the creation of the despotism of Muscovy-Russia. (See the sensational study by Professor P. Khomyakov — “Russia against Rus’”).

The very first mention of burning at the stake is found in a chronicle entry for the year 1227.

In Novgorod, four volkhvy (sorcerers) are bound and cast into the fire. Were the executioners Christians? The chronicle leaves no doubt about the answer to this question—the Novgorodians who arrested the volkhvy first brought them to the archbishop’s court. Clearly, we are dealing with devoted adherents of Orthodoxy.

Around the same time in Smolensk, the clergy demanded the execution of the monk Avraamy, accusing him of heresy and reading forbidden books—the proposed forms of execution were “to nail him to the wall and set him alight” and to drown him. The Life of Avraamy unambiguously names those who demanded his execution: “Priests, hegumens, and clergymen—if they could, they would have eaten him alive.” “Shamelessly the priests, and also the hegumens, roared at him like oxen; the princes and boyars found no guilt in him, having examined everything and become convinced that there was no untruth, but that all were lying about him.” Noteworthy is the conformity of the methods of execution—burning and drowning—with the Christian prohibition on the shedding of blood.

Furthermore, in 1284, a grim law appears in the Russian Kormchaya Book (a collection of ecclesiastical and secular laws): “If anyone shall keep heretical writings, and believe in sorcery using them, let him be accursed with all heretics, and let those books be burned upon his head.”

Having physically annihilated the supporters of the native Russian faith (paganism), the ruling Church turned on its “competitors” within Christianity.

In the 14th century, the same Kormchaya Book includes the apocryphal “Rule 165 of the Holy Fathers of the Fifth Council: Concerning Those Who Offend the Holy Churches of God,” punishing the plundering of church property by burning at the stake. The chronicle for 1438 mentions the “Holy Canons of the Holy Apostles,” prescribing “to burn with fire or to bury alive in the ground” for heresy (another variant: “The Holy Canons of the divine law of the Holy Apostles command such a corrupter of the Church to be burned with fire or buried alive in the ground”).
According to the Gustyn Chronicle (17th century), in 1438 Metropolitan Isidore, who had accepted the Catholic Union, “was condemned by the holy synod to be burned, but fled from the prison.” It is obvious that the 17th-century author saw nothing unusual in such a sentence by the Synod. According to the Voskresenskaya and Second Sofia Chronicles, the prince did not send a pursuit after the fugitive, precisely because he did not wish to burn him. It is also clear that the appearance of the aforementioned laws in Rus’ is connected with the Christian Church. The methods, again, are without the shedding of blood: burning and burying in the ground.

It is doubtful that Isidore was the only one to whom they dared to apply the enumerated laws. Perhaps the following executions of witches are connected with them: in 1411, twelve sorceresses were burned by the inhabitants of Pskov on suspicion of having brought pestilence upon the city, and in 1444, the Prince of Mozhaisk ordered the boyarina Marya Mamonova to be burned “for sorcery.”

I. Berdnikov mentions the Principality of Mozhaisk as an example of the Church’s influence on secular justice—Prince Andrei Dmitrievich of Mozhaisk corresponded with Hegumen Kirill of Beloozero, who wrote him an epistle with advice on punishing criminals. The son of this prince—Ivan Andreevich—was the one who burned the witch. It is reasonable to assume that Ivan Andreevich received an upbringing deeply rooted in Orthodoxy, including in the area of law. Undoubtedly, according to the laws of that time, “sorcery” was considered a crime subject to ecclesiastical court. This also confirms that the Prince of Mozhaisk acted in alliance with the church authorities.

In 1490, Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod ordered birchbark helmets to be burned upon the heads of several condemned heretics (apparently recalling the law on burning heretical books on the head of the heretic). Two of those punished went mad and died. Archbishop Gennady has been canonized by the Church.

In 1504, the famous church council was held, sentencing an unknown number of “Judaizer” heretics to be burned. The chronicler lists eight people by name but adds, “and many other heretics they burned.” One of the initiators of the burnings was Hegumen Joseph Volotsky—also canonized by the Church.

The burnings were supported by the heir to the Grand Prince, Vasily Ivanovich, who ascended the throne a year later. The absence of information about burnings in Rus’ during his reign may be linked to the insufficient number of sources.

They were punished for everything. Paphnutius, hegumen of the Yelizarov Hermitage, who lived in the 16th century, remarks in his epistle to the namestnik (governor) of the city of Pskov: “When the day of the Forerunner’s nativity comes, and on the eve of that, on Kupala, men and women sorcerers go out through the meadows, and through the marshes, and into the wilderness, and into the oak groves, seeking deadly poison for the destruction of man and cattle; there also they dig up wild roots for the beguilement of their husbands. All these things they do by the working of the devil on that day, with satanic incantations. For when the feast comes, during that holy night the whole city is scarcely thrown into commotion, and in the villages they rage madly, with tambourines and pipes and the humming of strings, with dancing and leaping, women and maidens nodding with their heads and with their lips a hostile cry, all sorts of foul songs, and the swaying of their spines, and with their feet hopping and trampling; here there is a great fall for men and youths, male, female and maidenly whispering, a lustful gazing upon them, and for married women defilement, and for maidens corruption.”

During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, a certain Russian heretic who fled to Lithuania and was nicknamed “the second Luther” there, recounted that in Moscow he was supposed to be burned, but the tsar commuted the death sentence. Doctor of Historical Sciences R. G. Skrynnikov links this account to the Church Council of 1553–54, at which a group of heretics led by the hegumen Artemy was condemned. The Council charter noted about Artemy: “The Tsar and Grand Prince spared Artemy the punishment,” i.e., the pardon was the tsar’s personal decision.

A list of those executed during the time of Ivan the Terrible is preserved in his “Sinodik” (Memorial Book), compiled by officials from archival records. But the Sinodik does not mention how or why the persons listed in it were executed. Comparisons with other sources allow us to specify that the carpenters Neupokoy, Danila, and Mikhail were burned in the spring‑summer of 1569 for eating veal, which was forbidden by church rules, and in August 1575, 15 witches were burned in Novgorod (“and they are said to be sorceresses”). The foreigner Petreius, in his early 17th‑century notes, wrote about the Terrible:

However cruel and furious he was, yet he persecuted and hated no one for their faith except the Jews who would not be baptized and confess Christ: them he either burned alive, or hanged and threw into the water.

The drowning of the Jews is known from a chronicle, but Petreius’s report about their burning is unique. There is no evidence of the church’s involvement in the burnings during the Terrible’s time, but we should not forget the basic principle of the Inquisition — the execution is carried out by secular authorities.

Furthermore, regarding the burning of witches:

The Tale of Sorcery, written for Ivan the Terrible, proves the necessity of strict punishments for sorcerers, and sets as an example the tsar who, together with the bishop, “ordered books to be written and confirmed, and cursed sorcery, and commanded that such be burned with fire in the villages.”

Undoubtedly, the author of the Tale spoke from the standpoint of Christian piety: his reference to the bishop is an example of the union of secular and spiritual authority in dealing with offenders against religion.

In 1584, the extremely pious sovereign Fyodor Ivanovich ascended the throne. In 1586, a certain Job (canonized as a saint) became head of the Russian church; in one of his writings he approved the execution of pagan priests. As far as the surviving sources allow us to judge, burnings became a common punishment during Job’s time. The English envoy Fletcher, who lived in Moscow from November 25, 1588, to May 6, 1589, describes one of the burnings of heretics as an eyewitness:

…a man and a woman… were burned in Moscow, in a small house that was set on fire deliberately for that purpose. Their crime remained a secret, but probably they were punished for some religious truth, although the priests and monks assured the people that these persons were wicked and cursed heretics.

The reliability of Fletcher’s account is confirmed by the description of the method of execution — burning in a log structure, often mentioned in Russian documents of the 17th century but unusual for other countries. If within half a year only in Moscow Fletcher managed to witness the burning of two persons, there is reason to suppose that such burnings were far more numerous. A chronicle under the year 7099 (1590/91) describes the burning of sorcerers in Astrakhan by order of Fyodor Ivanovich: “after torturing them, the sovereign commanded that they be burned.” Together with the message of Patriarch Job:

O great sovereign, God‑crowned Tsar and Grand Prince Fyodor Ivanovich of All Rus’! Truly you have shown yourself equal to the first Orthodox tsar Constantine, shining in piety, and to your ancestor Grand Prince Vladimir, who enlightened the Russian land with holy baptism: for each in his own time trampled idols and embraced piety; but you, great autocrat and true zealot of piety, are now not only smashing the idols but also utterly destroying those who serve them…

This gives us grounds to believe that during the time of Fyodor Ivanovich, executions for spiritual crimes were not exceptions.

The same tendency continued under Boris Godunov, with Job remaining head of the church. In January 1605, a charter from the Moscow government about the appearance of the False Dmitry to the northern towns stated:

People who in the state for their God‑abominable deeds have been condemned to burning, and others to exile, have fled to the Lithuanian land across the border and have been sowing evil heretical tares.

That is, there were not a few people condemned to be burned for heresy. Under the same year 1605, chronicles report the execution of the apostate Smirnoy. According to the “Piskarevsky Chronicle” (written in 1621–1625):

…the strelets commander Smirnoy Mamatov, from Georgia, fled to the Qizilbash and there became a Muslim, took a wife. And for that the tsar ordered him to be executed with various tortures: “You, they say, abandoned the Christian faith and became a Muslim!”

The “New Chronicler” (compiled in the patriarch’s circle in the 1620s) specifies the method of execution:

…he learned of the infidel Smirnoy, that he had become a Muslim, ordered that he be subjected to various tortures, and finally, the accursed one, he ordered to be doused with naphtha and set on fire. And so the accursed one died.

The patriarch Filaret’s circle obviously approved of the execution — “accursed.”

That under Filaret — the de facto ruler of the Russian state — burning was regarded as the usual punishment for religious crimes is evidenced by a charter of Mikhail Fedorovich to the Archbishop of Tobolsk (February 5, 1623). Burning is mentioned as the punishment prescribed for “great spiritual matters.” The tsar responded to the archbishop’s complaints as follows:

…rogues insulted the cathedral’s archpriest in the presence of the boyar and the voivodes and the dyak. And the boyar and the voivodes did nothing to them for it. And then, on the same week, in your presence, our intercessor (the archbishop), and in the presence of the boyar and the voivodes, many people were implicated in great spiritual matters. And the boyar and the voivodes, having consulted with you, our intercessor, punished them lightly and sent them to various towns, but did not carry out the punishment to the end and did not burn them with fire.

The tsar refused to deliver a judgment until the archbishop wrote to him explaining “which people, for what offenses, deserved to be punished to the uttermost and burned with fire, and what their great crimes were.” From the document it is clear that the hegumen was displeased with the overly merciful sentence of the voivodes, who had not carried out the punishment “to the uttermost.” The tsar did not object, but wished to know the specific spiritual crimes of the condemned.

From 1647, a decree of Alexei Mikhailovich addressed to the Shatsky voivode Grigory Khitrovo has come down to us:

And you, having provided the woman Agafyitsa and the peasant Tereshka with a spiritual father, shall order them to be given the Holy Mysteries of God, if they are worthy, and after they receive the Holy Mysteries, order them to be led out to the square and, having declared their guilt and their God-abhorrent deed, order them to be burned on the square in a log structure, covered with straw.

Agafya and her instructor in sorcery, Tereshka Ivlev, were accused of having, by means of incantations and “a dead man’s thread with a spell,” brought about the death of several peasants. The text of the decree is most pious.

In 1649, the Zemsky Sobor in Moscow adopted the legislative code “Sobornoye Ulozhenie” (Council Code). The very first article of the Code stated:

Should any heterodox person, of whatever faith, or a Russian person, direct blasphemy against the Lord God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, or against Her who gave Him birth, our Most Pure Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, or against the precious Cross, or against His holy saints — a thorough investigation shall be made into this matter. And if the matter is established beyond doubt, that blasphemer, having been convicted, shall be punished — burned with fire.

Also noteworthy is the 24th article of the 22nd chapter of the “Ulozhenie”:

And if any Muslim, by any means, whether by force or deceit, compels a Russian person to his Muslim faith, and circumcises him according to his Muslim faith, and this is established beyond doubt, that Muslim, upon investigation, shall be punished — burned with fire without any mercy. And the Russian person whom he has turned into a Muslim shall be sent to the patriarch or to another authority, and he shall be ordered to issue a decree according to the canons of the holy apostles and holy fathers.

The lawmakers are not entirely consistent. If a Muslim missionary succeeded “by any means” in converting a Russian to his faith, then those means must have been either force or deceit. Yet the Russian who was forcibly “made a Muslim” is also not left unpunished.

The “Ulozhenie” was compiled in accordance with the canons of the apostles and holy fathers, the laws of the Greek emperors (i.e., the “Kormchaya Book”), the decrees of Russian tsars, and the sentences of the boyars — that is, in accordance with tradition. The “Ulozhenie” was signed by all the participants of the Sobor, including the Consecrated Sobor — the higher clergy. Among the signatories was Archimandrite Nikon, who four years later became patriarch. The then head of the Russian Church, Patriarch Joseph, in the same year wrote a message to the tsar in which he referred to the first article of the Code:

“In the Ulozhennaya Book it is written: whoever speaks any blasphemous words against the Catholic and Apostolic Church — let him die the death. And he, Stefan (archpriest of the Annunciation), not only brought blasphemy against the Catholic and Apostolic Church and against all God’s churches, but also dishonored us, your intercessors. Merciful… Tsar and Grand Prince Alexei Mikhailovich! … Grant us, your intercessors; do not, sovereign, permit your sovereign Ulozhennaya Book to be violated — and command, sovereign, that we, your intercessors, in accordance with the canons of the holy apostles and holy fathers and the commandments of former pious tsars, convoke a council [i.e., a council trial] against him, Stefan. Tsar sovereign, have mercy!”

The sovereign, however, did not hand over the archpriest Stefan for reprisal.

Thus, burning at the stake according to the Code of 1649 was approved by the Orthodox Church, which thereby took upon itself part of the responsibility for the executions that followed under this Code.

Later sources speak directly of the relationship between church and state developing according to the scheme: customer — executor.

The scribe G. K. Kotoshikhin, who lived in the 17th century and is known for his work “On Russia in the Reign of Alexei Mikhailovich,” tells of the system of terror regarding ecclesiastical opponents that existed in his time (he served 1658–1664):

… and when among them (in the courts of the patriarch and church authorities — E. O. Sh.), someone is sentenced to death for spiritual matters … the sentence that each one deserves, they, having written out their verdict from the case, send with those condemned people to the tsar’s court, and according to their verdict, the tsar’s court orders their punishment without delay, each according to his deserts.

In the Robbery Chancellery “they burn a person alive for blasphemy … for sorcery, for black magic, for the distortion of books, when someone begins to interpret anew, thievishly, contrary to the apostles, prophets, and holy fathers, with blasphemy.” “Capital punishments for the female sex are: for blasphemy … they burn them alive; for witchcraft … they behead them.”

Torture of the accused was also carried out at the demand of the spiritual authorities:

“When it was necessary to torture someone, the spiritual authorities would send the accused to the secular authorities.”

Another specific decree—Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov wrote to the Archbishop of Tobolsk:

And should persons in spiritual matters become liable for some punishment, you shall order them to be humbled according to the canon of the holy fathers, so that they may henceforth be restrained from every lawless act. But if any persons in spiritual matters prove disobedient and harsher punishment is called for, you shall send them to our boyar and voivodes.

The Austrian diplomat von Mayerberg (in Russia 1661–63) reports of the patriarchs’ rights:

… they adjudicate all cases pertaining to the clergy, church obedience, and Christian morals, and never receive a refusal from the tsar for requests to confirm these sentences.

Foreigners who visited Moscow in this period recount the burning of heretics as eyewitnesses:

Heresy is punished by fire. The heretic goes out onto the roof of a small house and from there leaps inside; straw with kindling is thrown upon him; the flames quickly suffocate him. This punishment is sufficient, even too severe. Those who stir up any doubts concerning the faith are confined inside small wooden houses and burned alive, looking out from within.

Let us return to the witch hunt.

In early 1653, the voivodes of Tula, Karpov, Mikhailov, Mosalsk, on the Oskol, and others received decrees that people “should henceforth hold no God-abominable deeds, and that they should burn those renounced and heretical books, writings, spells, fortune‑telling books, roots, and poisons, and should not go to sorcerers and soothsayers, and should hold no witchcraft, and should not cast lots with bones or anything else, and not harm people.” Regarding those who “do not abandon such evil and God-abominable deeds, such evil people and enemies of God are commanded to be burned in log houses without any mercy, and their homes are commanded to be destroyed to the ground, so that henceforth such evil people and enemies of God and their evil deeds shall not be remembered anywhere.”

Was the church involved in the decrees against “enemies of God”? It is known that in the 17th century, punishments for witchcraft were considered a church, spiritual matter. On the eve of the decree, in mid‑1652, Nikon became patriarch, whose influence on secular authority was initially unprecedented in Russian history.

In 1658, Nikon fell. The church experienced a period of anarchy. In 1664, the strict administrator Metropolitan Paul became the guardian of the most important Moscow diocese. In 1666‑1667, the ill‑fated Church Council took place, at which the Old Believers, as well as all those not submitting to the church, were anathematized and declared worthy of “corporal” punishment:

And if anyone does not obey our commands and does not submit to the Holy Eastern Church and this consecrated council, or begins to contradict and oppose us, we, by the authority given to us … deliver such an opponent to curse and anathema. … we will punish such spiritually; and if they begin to despise our spiritual punishment, we will add to them also bodily afflictions.

The peak of religious repressions is linked to these two events. Within a week of Paul’s appointment, Avvakum was arrested and exiled. Military expeditions fell upon the forest refuges of the Old Believers. From 1666 onwards, reports of burnings become regular.

In 1666, in the Vyazniki forests, the Old Believer preacher Vavila was captured and after interrogation burned. A contemporary, the monk Serapion, wrote approvingly: “the God‑abominable monk Vavilko was burned for his stupidity.” In the same year 1666, the hetman of the Moscow part of Ukraine, I. M. Bryukhovetsky, burned six witches. The following is known about Bryukhovetsky’s relations with the Moscow government.

Having become hetman, B. began to strengthen his position through ties with Moscow. He introduced into his dealings with the Moscow government a fawning and obsequiousness from which the Ukrainian hetmans had hitherto refrained: in his addresses to the tsar he called himself “Ivashka”, the tsar’s “footstool”, etc. He was the first hetman to go to Moscow to pay homage, accepted the title of boyar, and married a Moscow noblewoman, Saltykova. But the most important way he calculated to fully purchase Moscow’s favor and consolidate his position was the proposal to the Moscow government, ostensibly on behalf of the land he governed, for intensified intervention in its internal life. Such a proposal was extremely pleasing to Moscow, as it cleared the desired path for its traditional policy. Moscow voivodes with expanded competence and the right to collect taxes were now sent to all major cities of Little Russia. For taxation purposes, a census was conducted, which provoked general murmuring. In his obsequiousness, B. went so far as to request the appointment of a metropolitan from Moscow, which the Moscow government refused.

In light of the above, it is quite logical that Novombergsky asserts that the burning of witches on Bryukhovetsky’s order was the execution of Moscow legislation.

In 1670, a woman, the fugitive nun Alyona, was burned. Primary sources provide the following information.

1670, December 6. Report of the regimental voivode Yu. Dolgorukov to the Chancellery of the Kazan Palace about his entry into Temnikov and the testimony of prisoners:

They brought to us, your slaves, a thief and heretic, a nun, who had committed theft and gathered an army for herself and committed theft together with thieves, and with her they brought thievish incantation writings and roots… The thief nun, under interrogation and torture, said her name was Alyona, she was, Sovereign, from the city of Arzamas, a peasant daughter of the Vyezdnaya Sloboda, and she was married to a peasant of the same sloboda; and when her husband died, she took the veil. And she was in many places engaged in theft and harmed people. And in this, Sovereign, year 179¹, coming from Arzamas to Temnikov, she gathered many people for theft with her and committed theft with them, and resided in Temnikov on the voivode’s court with the ataman Fedka Sidorov and taught him witchcraft… We ordered the thief nun, for her theft, and with her the thievish writings and roots, to be burned in a log house.

“Report concerning the details of the rebellion recently carried out in Muscovy by Stenka Razin” (Arkhangelsk, September 13/23, 1671. On the ship “Queen Esther”):

Among other prisoners, a nun in men’s clothing worn over her monastic habit was brought to Prince Yuri Dolgoruky. This nun had seven thousand men under her command and fought bravely until she was captured. She did not flinch and showed no fear when she heard the sentence: to be burned alive. Fleeing from a monastery is considered among the Russians a terrible crime, punishable by death. Before she died, she wished that more people would be found who would act as they ought and fight as bravely as she did, then surely Prince Yuri would have turned back. Before her death, she crossed herself in the Russian manner: first the forehead, then the chest, calmly mounted the pyre, and was burned to ashes.

In 1671, the Old Believer Ivan Krasulin was burned in the Pechenga Monastery – the place of execution itself is eloquent. In the winter of 1671‑72, the prominent Old Believer Avraamiy was burned in Moscow, and a little earlier, also in Moscow, the Old Believer Isaiah ascended the pyre.

In 1672, in Astrakhan, the voivode Odoyevsky burned K. Semenov, from whom a notebook with spells had been found. Generally, the executions of the early 70s can easily be connected with Razin’s revolt: Alena and Semenov took part in the uprising, while Avraamy and Isaiah were leading a dangerous Old Believer opposition in Moscow. The union of Church and state in the fight against the Razin movement is indisputable — the Church anathematized Razin.

The Case of the Boyarynya Morozova.

In 1673, Joachim became patriarch, having been “a tested specialist in ‘working’ with the Old Believers.” The role he played in the case of the boyarynya Morozova is telling. A close friend of the first wife of Alexei Mikhailovich and a member of a most noble family, she openly made her home a center of Old Belief in Moscow and for a long time enjoyed immunity from the surrounding orgy of persecution. It was Joachim — then the archimandrite of the Chudov Monastery — who put an end to this stronghold of the old faith. On the night of 14 November 1671, Joachim with his men appeared at Morozova’s house and had the recalcitrant woman put in irons. Soon she, along with her sister and a friend, were transferred to monastery confinement. Despite all persuasions, all three continued to adhere to the Old Belief. Patriarch Pitirim considered it reasonable to set the women free: “It’s a woman’s affair; what do they really understand?” Joachim held a different view.

At the end of 1674, radical methods of persuasion were applied to the obstinate Old Believer women: torture on the rack and the whip. Having achieved no success, they decided to burn Morozova, but at that point the old Moscow boyardom could not endure it and appealed to the tsar with a protest — the Morozovs were one of the 16 highest aristocratic families of the Muscovite state, possessing the right to hereditary boyarship. In 1675, the three noble prisoners were starved to death (while the simple nun Justina who sat with them was burned after all). Touching details of the death of the three women have been preserved: they begged the guards, “Have mercy on me, give me a little roll!”, and in reply from the guards, who had strict orders, they heard: “I’m afraid” or “I have none.” The method of execution was once again Christian — without the shedding of blood.

The young woman Fedosya, accused of witchcraft, went to the stake in 1674, in the northern town of Totma. Before the execution, she declared that she had not harmed anyone, that she had slandered herself because she could not bear the torture. In 1676, in the village of Sokolskoe, another tsar’s decree ordered the burning of Panko and Anoska Lomonosov, who had done sorcery using roots:

To the gunner Panko Lomonosov of Sokolskoe and his wife Anoska, give them a spiritual father and declare their guilt before them on a market day with many people present, and order them to be executed by death, burned in a log frame together with the roots and herbs.

That same year, 1676, the Old Believer monk Filipp, who had established Avvakum’s contacts with the centers of the schism, “was burned with fire” in Moscow. In 1677, an Old Believer priest was burned in Cherkassk, on the orders of the Don Host ataman M. Samarin.

In 1681, a Church Council headed by the patriarch addressed the tsar with a humble plea:

We ask and humbly entreat the Great Prince Feodor Alekseevich, Autocrat of all Great, Little and White Russia: as for those corrupters and apostates who, after much church teaching and chastisement and after our hierarchical request for their conversion to true repentance, will be found resistant and disobedient to the Holy Church, would the Great Sovereign Tsar and Great Prince Feodor Alekseevich, Autocrat of all Great, Little and White Russia, deign to order that such offenders be sent to the civil court and that, according to His Sovereign’s examination, command be issued as each deserves. And of this, letters should be sent to the voivodes and officials in the towns and villages that are now under their administration, and henceforth it should be written into the instructions for all voivodes and officials that this matter be firmly maintained under His Sovereign’s dread, and that hereditary landowners and estate-holders and their stewards, wherever such offenders are or will be, likewise declare them in the towns to the hierarchs and voivodes, and wherever schismatics appear and, by the hierarchs’ summons, become obstinate, the voivodes and officials should send service-men (i.e., soldiers) after those schismatics.

On 14 April 1682, Avvakum and his three fellow prisoners — Feodor, Epiphanius and Lazarus — were burned. The motivation for the sentence is often cited in literature as “for great insults against the tsar’s house,” but it is taken not from any official document, but from the memoirs of Count A. S. Matveev, written only after 1716. It is rightly noted that the execution followed the decisions of the Church Council of 1681–82 which handed Old Believers over to the “civil court.”

In Avvakum’s writings, much information has been preserved about the burning of Old Believers. Hilarion, a streltsy soldier, was burned in Kiev. Polyeuct, a priest, was burned in Borovsk (“and with him 14 people were burned”). Ivan the Fool-for-Christ was burned in Kholmogory. “In Kazan the Nikonians burned thirty people, in Siberia the same number, in Vladimir — six, in Borovsk — fourteen people.”

Kostomarov had no doubt about the burnings of Old Believers prior to 1682 (the lines he places in the mouths of participants of the Old Believer uprising of 1682) — Khovansky: “Do not hold it in your mind that they would start executing, hanging and burning you in log frames in the old way!”

The dispute over faith between Old Believers and Nikonians as presented by Kliuchevsky:

To all the questions the patriarch answered only one thing: “We bear upon us the image of Christ, and it is not for you, the laity, to teach us!” The schismatic disputant Pavel Danilovich, a Moscow townsman, remarked in a quiet voice on these self-assured words: “It is true, Your Eminence, that you bear the image of Christ and that we laymen should be in obedience to you, but Christ showed us the image of humility and fortitude, and with His most pure lips said: ‘Look upon Me, how good and humble of heart I am,’ and He did not teach people by bonfires or by the sword.” And the authorities had nothing to reply to these lessons.

The patriarch’s answer:

We torment and burn you for this: because you call us heretics and refuse to obey the Church.

Moreover, at the beginning of 1682, a ukaz on the establishment of the Slavic-Greek Academy appeared, prescribing burnings for many types of religious crimes:

All those coming from various faiths and heresies to our Orthodox Eastern faith and accepting it shall be entered in the books and handed over to the custodian of schools with the teachers, so that they may observe them in the keeping of our Orthodox faith and church traditions, and may have information on how each of them conducts his life in it, and whether he firmly and wholly holds to it and the church traditions. And if any of the newly enlightened appear not to be keeping our Orthodox faith and church traditions wholly, such shall be banished to our distant cities, to the Terek and to Siberia. But if anyone appears to be holding to his former faith or heresy from which he came to the Orthodox faith, and reviles our faith, such shall be burned without any mercy (point 13).

And concerning this, the custodian with the teachers shall strive mightily that no one among clergy and laity of every rank should possess at all any magical, sorcerous, fortune-telling and all books and writings forbidden by the church, and blasphemous and God-hating, nor act according to them, nor teach others to do so. And those who now have such books or writings shall burn them, and shall not in the future keep any sorcery, magic, or divination. Likewise, no unlearned people shall keep in their houses any Polish, Latin, German, Lutheran, Calvinist, or other heretical books of free studies, and shall not read them for lack of sufficient discernment and lest they cause doubt in our faith, and nowhere and to no one shall they hold disputations or adduce pretexts from those heretical books and their interpretations contrary to our Eastern Orthodox faith and church traditions; for it is the custom of deceivers, as they, adducing such pretexts, say that they do so not for the sake of doubt in the faith and church traditions, but by way of learned disputation. And such heretical books shall be burned or brought to the custodian of schools and the teachers. And if anyone proves to be disobedient to this our royal command and from now on anyone of the clergy and laity of every rank shall in any manner keep magical, sorcerous, fortune-telling and all books and writings forbidden by the church, and blasphemous and God-hating, and act according to them, and teach others to do so, or without writings commit such God-hating deeds, or boast of such evil deeds, saying that he is able to do such things, then such a person, upon credible testimony, shall be burned without any mercy.

And if anyone unskilled in free studies has Polish, Latin, German, Lutheran, Calvinist, and other heretical books in his house, and reads them, and holds disputations from the books, and adduces pretexts for doubting our Eastern faith and church traditions; such shall be subjected to punishment, unsparingly, according to their guilt (point 14).

If anyone of foreigners or Russian people, at a feast or in any other place, before sufficient witnesses, shall revile our Orthodox Christian faith or church traditions and utter any insulting words about it, such shall be handed over for trial in that matter to the custodian of schools with the teachers. And if anyone, according to the trial, is found reviling our faith or church traditions in insulting words, or is convicted of denying the invocation of the saints for help, the veneration of holy icons and the honoring of holy relics, such shall be burned without any mercy (point 15).

Thus, the decree on the establishment of the Academy consolidated all previous laws on burning apostates, holders of heretical books, and blasphemers.

In the beginning of 1682, Marfushka Yakovleva was burned in Moscow, convicted of casting a hex on Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich. The state of the archives does not allow an exact count of those executed in the 17th century. A pre-revolutionary researcher who studied the history of exile to Siberia at that time wrote:

In Yeniseysk I intended to examine the old papers of the local archive, but unfortunately I learned that the ancient scrolls and other documents had all without exception burned in two fires.

Since the burned ancient documents had been housed in the Yeniseysk Nativity Monastery, I resolved to inspect that monastery with the thought of discovering any written or oral traditions there. My assumption was to some extent justified; in the monastery I met a most remarkable person — the abbess of the monastery, Hegumeness Devorra. According to Devorra, within the stockade walls of Yeniseysk there existed a vast prison… and in the monastery a special prison section with iron bars was arranged for the confinement of female offenders… in the Yeniseysk stockade prison a great many people exiled to perpetual confinement for black-magic were kept. There was a special execution yard there, and, among other things, tradition preserved that several persons, convicted of acquaintance with the unclean power, were burned here at the stake.

On 22 October 1683, the Old Believer Varlaam was burned in Klin; the sentence was passed on him by the secular authorities in Moscow. In 1684, Sophia signed a decree “…on the punishment of those who spread and accept heresies and schisms,” if “…under torture they begin to persist stubbornly and do not submit to the Holy Church…” “…after threefold questioning at the execution, if they do not submit, burn.” Among those burned in 1684, the Old Believer preacher Andronik is known. His sentence (dated 8 April 1684) read: “That monk Andronik, for his opposition to the holy and life-giving cross of Christ and His Holy Church, is to be executed, burned.” Andronik had in some way earned his fate (he preached self-immolation), but he was executed precisely for opposition to the Church and for reviling the four-pointed cross, after refusing to repent.

The “Statutory Articles on Schismatics” of 7 April 1685 confirmed:

Those schismatics who oppose the holy church, and heap reproach upon it, and do not attend church or church singing, nor go to confession with their spiritual fathers, and do not partake of the Holy Mysteries, and do not admit priests into their homes with holy objects and church necessities, and who, among Christians, cause scandal and disturbance with their unseemly words, and stubbornly persist in that criminality: those criminals are to be tortured [interrogated], to find out from whom they learned such things, and how long ago, and upon whom they will inform, and those denounced people are to be seized and questioned, and face-to-face confrontations are to be arranged between them, and following the confrontations, they are to be tortured; and those who, under torture, continue to persist stubbornly and do not offer submission to the most holy church, such persons, for such heresy, after a three-time interrogation accompanying the punishment, if they will not submit, are to be burned in a log structure [srub] and their ashes scattered.

According to the testimony of foreigners, the pious Patriarch Joachim celebrated Easter in 1685 by having about ninety schismatics burned in log structures. The total number of Old Believers who suffered in the pre-Petrine era is unknown. V. Tatishchev, following fresh tracks, believed it to be several thousand:

Nikon and his successors, carrying out their ferocity upon the mad schismatics, burned and cut down many thousands or drove them out of the state. This practice, which his Majesty Peter, eternally worthy of memory, great in the world not in name but in deed and true glory, put an end to, and thereby brought no small benefit to the state.

Patriarch Joachim hated those of other faiths. In his “Testament,” he left much good advice on how they should be treated:

To heretics of other faiths—to the Roman churches, to the German kirks, and to the Tatars—mosques in his tsardom and dominion are under no circumstances to be permitted to be built anywhere… places of prayer according to their heresies are by no means to be allowed to be built anywhere for their gatherings, but those that are here now, near to or among Christian homes—those too it is fitting and proper to destroy, as dens of the devil.

Joachim sought especially energetic measures against missionaries:

…let them command by the Tsar’s decree: that those of other faiths, having come here into the pious tsardom, should absolutely not preach their faiths, and should not engage in discourse with anyone disparaging the [Orthodox] faith, and should not introduce their foreign customs according to their heresies for the seduction of Christians. And this must be firmly forbidden to them under penalty.

In practice, these benevolent principles were applied to the Quaker preacher Quirinus Kuhlmann and his associate Nordermann, who were burned on October 4, 1689.

The inquest file of Kuhlmann has been preserved. The reasons for Kuhlmann’s execution are stated in it as follows:

The criminal and apostate Kvilinko Kulmann, while in Moscow, committed many heresies and seduced his own brethren, the foreigners, and many heretical, God-abominable, and blasphemous books and writings were seized from him, by which God-abominable and heretical books he seduced many foreign people and taught that heresy; and under questioning and under torture he confessed to all these heretical matters, and by our Great Sovereigns’ decree, for this criminality he, Kvilinko, was burned along with the God-abominable books and writings.

Nordermann’s guilt, judging by the inquest file, consisted in the fact that he “still holds that Kvirinko as a prophet, and a preacher, and a great man, considering him a learned man who has been in all states.”

In a letter to Kuhlmann’s mother, the following details about their last minutes, communicated to her from Moscow, have been preserved: “On the evening of September 3rd, they (Kuhlmann and Nordermann) were told to prepare themselves: tomorrow morning they would be set free. But on the following day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, they, as false prophets, were brought from confinement to a vast city square, where a small house made of tar barrels and straw had already been prepared [That is, a log structure srub, surrounded by sheaves of straw and tar barrels]. And when these innocent people were led to death, and there was no one around them to offer them comfort, and they would not grant them a reprieve—they both stopped and began to pray, turning their eyes to heaven. And when they approached the little house and no longer saw any salvation, then my son raised his hands and cried out with a loud voice: ‘Thou art just, great God! And righteous are Thy judgments: Thou knowest that we now die without guilt.’ And both, comforted, entered the little house and were immediately given over to the fire; but no further voice was heard from them.” According to another account, Kuhlmann and Nordermann were lowered into the log structure from above, so that thereafter it was impossible either to see them or to hear them (Arnold: Kirchen-und-Ketzer-Historie. — P. 512). The painter Genin (another of Kuhlmann’s like-minded associates) did not wait for a similar fate and poisoned himself in prison.

Was Patriarch Joachim involved in Kuhlmann’s case? Historians’ opinions differ.

By order of Sophia and Patriarch Joachim, Kuhlmann and Nordermann were seized.

Joachim fought fiercely against propaganda of other faiths—Catholic and Protestant. Thus, he banned the sale and purchase of icons painted on paper sheets, especially “German heretical” ones; Quirinus Kuhlmann was condemned in 1689–1690, not without his participation.

Other authors believe that since the secular authorities conducted the investigation, the patriarch and the church had no relation to it whatsoever. It seems the former are correct—let us recall that, by ecclesiastical law, it was precisely the secular authority that was supposed to carry out the execution. The denunciation against Kuhlmann was initially filed with the patriarch; therefore, it was he who set the matter in motion. Furthermore, during the time of Kuhlmann’s case, the secular authority in Russia changed. Sophia was overthrown, and her favorite, Prince Golytsin, was exiled. It was Golytsin who conducted the inquest against Kuhlmann. Nevertheless, the change of secular rulers had no effect whatsoever on Kuhlmann’s fate; he was burned after Golytsin’s exile. It was precisely at the time when the death sentence was carried out on Kuhlmann in the name of the young tsars that Patriarch Joachim enjoyed exceptional influence over the secular authority, because he had supported Peter against Sophia. Finally, Joachim’s “Spiritual Testament,” which called for prohibiting the activities of foreign preachers “under strict penalty,” appeared exactly at this time. On January 8, 1690, by a boyar sentence, two sorcerers were burned in a log structure. After this burning, such occurrences, which had happened regularly before, ceased for a long time. It cannot be considered a mere coincidence that it was precisely in the beginning of 1690 (March 17) that Patriarch Joachim passed away.

The abbreviated reference to the year 6179 “from the Creation of the World” corresponds to the year 1670 “from the Nativity of Christ.”

The burnings of the 18th century are a curious example of Russia’s lag behind Western Europe, where by that time burnings had practically ceased (with the exception of Spain). On 29 November 1714, in Moscow on Red Square, the heretic Fyodor Ivanov, who had hacked apart an icon, was burned in a log frame. The sentence was again signed by representatives of the secular authorities (members of the Moscow Senate Chancellery Y. F. Dolgorukov and Saltykov). But the instigating role was played by the Holy Church Council headed by the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, Stefan Yavorsky. It was the Church Council on 24 October 1714 that excommunicated the heretic, delivered him to anathema and handed him over to the city court for execution. Thus, another instance of inquisition.

In 1721, the blaspheming sexton Vasily Efimov was burned. Efimov had staged a false miracle in order “to incline people to give offerings for the building of the church.” He then confessed to his spiritual father, but the confessor imposed no penance on him. Thereupon the sexton denounced himself to the archbishop. Article 1 of the Law Code of 1649 was applied to Efimov: “instead of glory he brought blasphemy upon the name of God.” Sentenced to burning, on 19 December he was burned by imperial decree. For some reason, the Synod insisted that his bones, which survived the first execution, also be burned. Again, cooperation between the spiritual and secular authorities. Moreover, the Law Code of 1649 was applied, which in its own time had been adopted with the active participation of the church.

In 1721, the townsman Ivan Oreshnikov was executed for blaspheming God and the tsar. Initially, the blasphemer was to be burned (on the basis of the Law Code of 1649), but Peter substituted beheading for burning.

The diary of the German chamber-junker Bergholtz relates the following account of an execution:

2 October 1722 … Concerning the unimaginable cruelty of the Russian people, the envoy Stamke told me yet another story, which he himself had witnessed a few years earlier in Petersburg. There a man was burned alive who, during a church service, had knocked an icon of some saint out of the bishop’s hands with a stick and said that according to his conscience he was convinced that the veneration of icons was idolatry that ought not to be tolerated. They say that the Emperor himself went to see him several times while he was being held in custody and after the sentence had been pronounced, and assured him that if he would only say before the court that he had been in error, his life would be spared; he even postponed the execution more than once. But this man remained firm that his conscience would not permit him to do so.

Then they placed him on a pyre built from various combustible materials and bound him with iron chains to a post set up on it, with a cross plank on the right side, to which his right arm was fastened with thick iron wire and then tightly wrapped with tarred canvas together with the stick that had served as the instrument of his crime. First they set fire to this right arm and let it burn alone until the flames began to spread further, and the Prince-Caesar, together with other grandees present at the execution, gave the order to set the pyre alight. Despite such terrible torment the criminal did not utter a single cry and remained with a completely calm face, even though his arm burned alone for about seven or eight minutes before the whole structure was finally ignited. The whole time he fearlessly watched his arm blazing, and only turned his face away when the smoke began to sting his eyes very much and his hair started to burn. I was assured that some years earlier this man’s brother had been burned in almost the same manner and for a similar offence.

Russian historians have no doubt as to the reliability of Bergholtz’s reports — from the first publication they noted his impartiality, conscientiousness, artlessness, and accuracy of description (N. Ustryalov, N. Pavlov-Silvansky, V. Naumov). It must be borne in mind that the diary was written for personal use and was only published after the author’s death. On the other hand, the information came second-hand. It is difficult, however, to suppose that Stamke would, for no known reason, deceive a fellow countryman. The modern researcher Doctor of Historical Sciences E. B. Smilyanskaya has no doubt as to the accuracy of the execution description.

There were also burnings of sorcerers: 1702 — the monk Dionysius of the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery for sorcery and apostasy; 1720 — Minka Buslaev “and his companions” for casting spells. Evidently no fewer than three persons were burned in 1720.

One might even find the details of the Dionysius case amusing, were it not for its terrible ending:

In the investigative materials on the case of Dionysius the Greek we read: “By those writings he renounced the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and bore the cross under his heel, and called on Satan and demons for help; and he read those writings over drink and gave it to girls to drink for lecherous purposes and drank himself.” All this outrageous behaviour Dionysius the Greek had learned from Dionysius Kobyla. To verify the efficacy of the sorcery, they went to the landless peasant Semyon Cherny with the intention of enticing his two daughters into fornication by giving them wine over which spells had been spoken. The girls “had no desire to commit lewdness” with the elders. The exasperated Dionysius the Greek even “cursed with foul language” Dionysius Kobyla, “saying that by those writings he blasphemes God’s name and invokes the Devil, but by his invocation nothing comes to pass.” And Dionysius Kobyla defended himself and gave examples when the spell had worked and girls had consented to lewdness.

Five burnings over twenty-five years — that is not many (compare with the data cited above for 1666–1690 — hundreds of schismatics alone, plus regular executions for sorcery). For that reason it would be profoundly mistaken to think that execution by burning was a consequence of the influence of Western countries on Peter (in the Netherlands, which had become his model, there were no burnings at all). The burning of Efimov was the enforcement of 17th-century Russian legislation. Peter commuted Oreshnikov’s burning to beheading. The tsar tried by every means to avoid the burning described by Bergholtz. The condemnation of F. Ivanov was secured by the Holy Council.

The next eruption of religious terror occurred during the reign of Anna Ioannovna. The harshness of Anna Ioannovna’s government toward religious offenders is vividly demonstrated by the decree on punishments for sorcery dated 25 May 1731:

If any person henceforth, without fear of God’s wrath and not dreading this decree of Her Imperial Majesty, summons sorcerers to themselves, goes to their houses for any magical purposes, or talks with them on the roads about sorceries and follows their teaching, or if any sorcerer on his own performs sorcery to someone’s harm, or supposedly for someone’s benefit — then for that, those deceivers shall be executed by death, burned; and those who, for an imaginary soul‑harming benefit, demand their services, shall be subjected to severe punishment, beaten with the knout, and some, according to the gravity of their guilt, shall also be executed by death.

The decree, apparently, was not very strictly observed. But there is considerable evidence of executions for other religious crimes.

1730 — sentenced to be burned for blasphemy: the 19‑year‑old soldier Filipp Sizimin and the household serf Ivan Stolyar.

1732‑34 — the case of the Khlysty sect (Christ‑faith believers, called “Khlysty” by opponents, a distortion of “Khristy”; according to the sect’s teaching, God’s Son Christ incarnates not once, but constantly — the leaders of the sect called themselves Christs). Following the denunciation of a certain robber Karaulov, over a hundred sectarians were arrested in Moscow. Four persons — including the nun Anastasia (Agafya) Karpova, revered by the Khlysty as the Mother of God — were executed; 116 accused were beaten with the knout and exiled.

1732‑36 — the affair of one of the Russian “Fausts.”

In 1732, the wife of Yakov Yarov, a townsman‑healer of Simbirsk, denounced her husband, saying she saw him “performing heresy according to his heretical books and praying westward face down with his left hand”; and when she was pregnant, he allegedly said: “If she gives birth, let that infant be given to his father Sataniel to be baptized.” Yarov himself, during interrogation in the Simbirsk city hall, confessed that, having found a “love spell for fornication” booklet in 1723, he renounced Christ, summoned Satan, as well as certain heretics Dionysius and Varlaam, and called himself their slave. Although subsequent testimony was contradictory, Yarov, who never offered church repentance, was burned on March 18, 1736.

1738 — two women were burned in a log frame for having spat out the Holy Gifts during liturgy — the court referred to the Council Code of 1649.

1738 — the archpriest Ivan Fedosyev was executed for having drunkenly declared:

What is the Mother of God to me? I’ll commit foul deed with her three times (and he said it outright in common speech).

1738‑40 — cases of conversion to another faith cost four criminals their lives, three of whom were burned. More detail follows.

In 1738, the Jew Borukh Leibov managed to convert naval Captain‑Lieutenant Alexander Voznitsyn to Judaism. Voznitsyn even underwent circumcision and was exposed for apostasy by his own wife. She filed a denunciation, and by the highest confirmed resolution of the Senate, Leibov and Voznitsyn were burned:

…both to be executed by death, burned, so that others, ignorant and godless, seeing that, might not depart from the Christian law (like Voznitsyn), and such seducers as that Jew Boroch would not dare to seduce from the Christian law and convert into their own laws.

The pious widow, besides the lawful portion of her husband’s estate, received an additional hundred souls with lands “as a reward for the righteous denunciation.”

Toygilda Zhulyakov — in 1738 was burned for having “been baptized into the faith of the Greek confession, then again accepted the Mohammedan law, and thus not only fell into a God‑abominable crime, but like a dog returned to his vomit and scorned his sworn promise given at baptism, thereby committing great opposition and outrage against God and His righteous law.” The execution was carried out “in the presence of all baptized Tatars,” “to frighten others such as, who from Mohammedanism have been brought into the Christian faith.”

So what were the reasons for such piety? Two explanations are likely. The desire of the Empress, who had lived 20 years in Courland, and her German entourage, to emphasize their adherence to Russian customs. The continuation of the policy of Peter I, for whom crimes against faith were, above all, state crimes.

And how did the church react? According to the assessment of N. Kostomarov:

However harshly Anna Ivanovna’s government treated the schism and religious errors, it was still milder and more lenient than some zealous clerical dignitaries desired. So, for example, in 1737, the Ryazan bishop reported to the Synod that, in his old age, it was difficult for him to debate with schismatics, and he found that it would be better to subdue them by fasting and the lash. To this he received the following answer: “Schismatics must be instructed in a pastoral manner, by the word of teaching, and one must not consider it difficult, for every task is subject to labor, and all the more must one apply one’s labor for a perishing soul, to which His Eminence is called and by such character honored.”

Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor E. V. Anisimov also notes that the harshness of state religious policy lagged behind the demands of the clergy:

The conservative‑minded churchmen saw the main evil of Bironovshchina precisely in the strengthening of religious tolerance. In the first sermons after the coup of November 25, 1741 (which brought Elizabeth to power — E. O. Sh.), the motif of the struggle against heresy that had flooded Russia became one of the most important.

There is no information about any objections from the church against religious repressions. The clergy actively participated in secular terror as well. By a personal decree, Anna Ioannovna rebuked the clergy for frequent groundless denunciations, threatening false denouncers with defrocking and exile. But we do not find approval of burning, specifically, on the part of church figures. Moreover, the women who were burned in 1738 by a secular court had been sentenced by the Synod, prior to that, only to penance. True, the local secular authorities who sentenced the women to burning were executing that very Code of 1649, the responsibility for the adoption of which lies with the church. Besides, the women had been arrested upon the denunciation of the Siberian archbishop.

In 1743, the Senate sentenced the apostate Nesmeyanko-Krivoy to be burned. The latter not only renounced the Orthodox faith and took off his cross, but also split an icon. Reference to the Senate verdict is in S. Solovyov’s history under the year 1743. In 1744, Empress Elizabeth ordered that all death sentences be presented to her for signature and she did not approve a single one.

What took their place is illustrated by one sentence from that same year. In 1744, by decree of the Synod, the sailor Nikifor Kunitsyn was imprisoned in the Solovetsky Monastery prison, so that “for his apostate, self-written letter, such as he wrote to the prince of darkness, he should be kept in eternal monastic labours from which there is no exit until his death, and for such a grave sin before God he should bring repentance to the Lord God all his life, coming from work to the church for every divine service every day.”

During the time of Elizabeth, M. V. Lomonosov wrote a satirical “Hymn to the Beard,” in which he mockingly referred to such a theological argument as burning in a log structure.

The last known burning occurred in the 1770s in Kamchatka, where a Kamchadal sorceress was burned in a wooden log structure. The execution was supervised by Captain Shmalev of the Tengin fortress, and unfortunately, “this act, worthy of barbarian times, committed during the reign of the wise and humane Empress (Catherine II), went unpunished for Shmalev.”

As early as 1792, several Dukhobors were sentenced to burning but were pardoned and exiled to Siberia.

Burnings were carried out by the secular authority in alliance with the ecclesiastical one.

Open struggle with paganism continued at least until the end of the 18th century. In 1793, in Russia, at the insistence of the church, 18,656 (!) books and ancient manuscripts were consigned to the flames, possibly including wooden tablets inscribed with cuts and notches.

Of course, it is difficult to speak of trends in the 15th and 16th centuries. The focus is, of course, on the period of particularly fierce struggle against the Old Believers, the second half of the 17th century, namely the period from 1670 to 1690, which accounts for the majority of recorded executions by burning in log structures.

The Patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church at that time were:1667 — 1672 — Joasaph II (? — 1672) — Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia from 1667. 1672 — 1673 — Pitirim (? — 1673), Most Holy Patriarch in 1672–1673.1674 — 1690 — Joachim (born Ivan Petrovich Savelov) (1620 — 1690) — Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia from 1674. The majority of all burning cases occurred during the patriarchate of Joachim (January 6, 1621, Mozhaysk — 1690, Moscow). In general, he is the Grand Inquisitor of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Under Patriarch Joachim, the archpriest Avvakum was burned, who gave testimony about other burnings — I quote from Shatsky:

Hilarion, a strelets, burned in Kiev. Polyekt, a priest, burned in Borovsk (“and with him 14 people were burned”).

Ivan the Fool-for-Christ was burned in Kholmogory. “In Kazan, the Nikonians burned thirty people; in Siberia, the same number; in Vladimir, six; in Borovsk, fourteen people.”

Joachim was also known for asking Peter for the head of Sophia’s well-known favorite, Sylvester Medvedev, who was sentenced to burning and executed, but how? There is no information. The fact is that the number of burnings decreased noticeably after his death. The period of “Joachimovshchina” was also famous for the flight of schismatics to the outskirts of Russia and beyond its borders. How many fugitives there were is unknown, but probably this can also be estimated even indirectly.

Part 2. The Russian Orthodox Church as a Persecutor of Science and Progress.

If it be true that planets are
Worlds like our own, then there afar
Of course their sages there must be,
And more than all, their priests decree,
Swearing by the beard, that we
Have no head here, as you can see.
If one should say, “We’re here, it’s true,”
In a log frame they’ll burn him through.

M. Lomonosov,
from “Hymn to the Beard” (1757)

As E. F. Grekulov notes in his book “Orthodox Inquisition in Russia”:

The Church, in alliance with autocracy, was a persecutor of the enlightenment of the people and planted ignorance and obscurantism. Enlightenment was used to justify serfdom and the exploitation of the people. The government and the church tried to prevent the spread of literacy, to educate the people in the spirit of devotion to autocracy and religion, and to divert them from revolutionary struggle. The Orthodox Church recognized only that enlightenment which was based on religion. Enlightenment not sanctified by the grace-filled influence of religion, its representatives said, was rather pernicious than beneficial. Hostile to the enlightenment of the people and to the development of native science, the church often initiated the persecution of the most talented scholars and progressive teachers. It hindered the development of enlightenment and science, and sought to destroy the books of advanced scientists.

In this connection, the perpetual backwardness of Russia compared to the West in terms of scientific developments and achievements is not surprising. Thanks to Luther, scientific thought saw a new flowering and made a scientific-technological leap. “Dark” heretics, as a rule, came from people who knew much and were accustomed to thinking. Even many priests in Russia were illiterate. Others read nothing but church literature. In 1601, the Lithuanian Chancellor Lew Sapieha, who was in Moscow with an embassy, questioned the boyars about the fate of the Greek library that had come to Moscow after the marriage of the Moscow prince to a Byzantine princess. The following part of the conversation is of interest to us:

When the Chancellor asked the first senators whether they possessed a large quantity of books, the Muscovites, having the custom of answering about everything that they had a great abundance of it, here too said that they had many books at the patriarch’s, and when asked what kind of books, they said: psalters, epistles, gospels, menaia, and in general church books.

Sapieha himself, confirming that the boyars “definitely denied that they had any famous library, nor any Greek books except a few church ones, such as, of course, the psalter, the book of the epistles of the blessed Paul, the gospels, and others of this kind,” added: “for in Moscow there are no public schools or academies.” At the end of the 17th century, the Likhud brothers, graduates, founded the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy in Moscow, but were removed from teaching for teaching physics and philosophy — here the Jerusalem Patriarch Dositheus took an active part.

The Orthodox Church, under threat of excommunication, forbade the playing of chess, which was officially enshrined in the Kormchaia Book of 1262 and confirmed in 1551 by the Stoglavy Sobor. There is no record of an official lifting of the church ban on chess. Clergy spoke out against a number of sports until the early twentieth century. Thus, the Venerable Varsonofy of Optina said of the football that had appeared in Russia: “Do not play this game and do not go to watch it, for it was introduced by the Devil and its consequences will be very bad.”

A circular from the Minister of Public Education in 1833 ordered trustees to “strictly observe that nothing that shakes or weakens the teaching of the Orthodox faith is concealed in the lessons of professors and teachers.” It was also required “to strictly observe” that “in the book depositories intended for the use of students there are no books hostile to the faith.” Finally, “it was ordered to read the New Testament, the Proverbs of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach, in class; for this, students were assembled in the gymnasium every day half an hour before classes began, and also on feast days and Sundays.”

In 1901, Bishop Amvrosy of Kharkov wrote that the development of science leads to the growth of unbelief, and he called scientists “the most dangerous enemies of the church.” Bishop Innokenty urged the abandonment of the scientific worldview and a return to faith. In 1905, Bishop Nikon of Moscow accused Moscow professors of ruining the youth and drawing them into the revolution. The same opinion was held by Metropolitan Antony Vadkovsky of St. Petersburg.

Astronomy

The concept of a plurality of worlds and the heliocentric system were subjected to criticism.
In 1740, at the initiative of M. Lomonosov, Fontenelle’s book “A Conversation on the Plurality of Worlds” was published. The Synod declared the book “contrary to faith and morality”; the book was confiscated and destroyed [P. P. Pekarsky. History of the Academy of Sciences, vol. II. SPb., 1873, pp. 603-604].

In 1757, the Synod demanded that Lomonosov’s scientific activity be “suspended,” who had called “especially not to revile the sciences in sermons” [P. P. Pekarsky. History of the Academy of Sciences, vol. II. SPb., 1873, p. 671], that his works be consigned to burning, and that Lomonosov be sent to the Synod “for admonition and correction” [P. P. Pekarsky. History of the Academy of Sciences, vol. II. SPb., 1873, pp. 603-604]. The Synod’s demand was not carried out.

In 1764, the scholarly-artistic journal “Monthly Essays for Benefit and Amusement,” founded by Lomonosov at the Academy of Sciences, was closed down for publishing articles on astronomy “contrary to the holy faith and discordant with honorable morals” [“Readings of the Society of Russian History and Antiquities,” book 1. M., 1867, pp. 7-8].

In 1743, at the demand of the censorship, an astronomical calendar published by the Academy of Sciences was confiscated because the ecclesiastical censorship found in it information about the planets “inclined to popular seduction.”

The ROC criticized the heliocentric system until the beginning of the twentieth century. Until 1815, a school textbook “The Destruction of the Copernican System” was published with the approval of the censorship, in which the author called the heliocentric system a “false philosophical system” and a “revolting opinion” [B. E. Raikov. Essays on the History of the Heliocentric Worldview in Russia. L., 1947, p. 364.]

In 1886, at the insistence of the clergy, the book by the famous French astronomer Camille Flammarion, “The World Before the Creation of Man,” was banned because it “refutes” the biblical teaching on the creation of man and undermines religious foundations.

The last work that criticized the heliocentric system was the book by the priest Iov Nemtsev, “The Circle of the Earth Is Immovable and the Sun Moves,” published in 1914 [B. E. Raikov. Essays on the History of the Heliocentric Worldview in Russia. L., 1947, p. 375]. The author “refuted” the Copernican system with quotations from the Bible and the writings of the Church Fathers.

Biology

The ROC fought against evolutionary teaching from the moment of its appearance.
In 1873, Haeckel’s work “The Natural History of Creation” was banned. In 1879–1880, Haeckel’s book “The History of the Tribal Development of Organisms” was banned and burned [L. M. Dobrovolsky. The Russian Forbidden Book 1855–1905. L., 1945, p. 184, dissertation.]

In 1890, S. Albert’s book “Charles Darwin and His Teaching” was banned. [“Questions of the History of Religion and Atheism,” 1960, No. 7, pp. 411-421]

In 1895, Ch. Darwin’s book “The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection” was banned for its “materialistic character.” [“Archival Affairs,” No. 1 (45), p. 89.]

In 1902, the entire print run of Haeckel’s book “The Riddles of the Universe” was burned because “the idea of the animal origin of man ran like a red thread through the book” [I. M. Ostroglazov. Rare and Valuable Books. “Russian Archive,” No. 2, 1914, p. 302].

Medicine

In 1866, “for the exposition of the most extreme materialistic views,” I. M. Sechenov’s book “Reflexes of the Brain” was placed under arrest, and the author was forbidden to give public lectures. [“Materials for the Revision of the Current Press and Censorship Regulations,” part I. SPb., 1870, pp. 499-505]

The Metropolitan Isidore of St. Petersburg asked the Synod to exile Sechenov “for humility and correction” to the Solovetsky Monastery “for his insolent, soul-destroying, and pernicious teaching.” Later, the arrest on the book was lifted, but until 1894 it remained on the lists of books forbidden for keeping in libraries [V. Prokofiev. “Atheism of Russian Revolutionary Democrats.” M., 1965, p. 88].

In 1819, all the exhibits of the anatomical cabinet of Kazan University were interred, because it was “abominable and contrary to God” to use “the creation and likeness of the Creator, man, for anatomical preparations” [“Russian Archive,” book 3, 1880, p. 310].

History

Works on the history of religion that did not correspond to the views of the church hierarchs were destroyed by the ecclesiastical censorship.

In March 1879, all 580 copies of George Finlay’s book “A Byzantine History from 716 to 1453” were destroyed because it contained “thoughts directed against certain teachings of the Orthodox Church” [L. M. Dobrovolsky. The Russian Forbidden Book 1855–1905. L., 1945, dissertation, p. 306].

Also, in 1879, 5000 copies of the “Public Calendar,” published by the Academy of Sciences, were destroyed because of an article about the medieval inquisition [L. M. Dobrovolsky. Russian Banned Book 1855-1905. Leningrad, 1945, dissertation, p. 311.].

In 1842, N. I. Kostomarov’s dissertation “On the Causes and Character of the Union in Western Russia” was banned. Archbishop Innokenty (Borisov) found in the book “a multitude of insolent expressions concerning the Eastern Church and its patriarchs.” The archbishop’s opinion was supported by the Minister of Education S. S. Uvarov. As a result, all copies of the dissertation that could be collected were burned. In 1997, Innokenty (Borisov) was canonized as a locally venerated saint of the Odessa Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Philosophy

Under Catherine II, a number of works by J.-J. Rousseau (“Reflections on the Greatness of God, His Providence, and Man,” “Confessions,” etc.) were banned for “unsatisfactory religious concepts” [A. Kaganova. The French Bourgeois Revolution and the Contemporary Russian Press. “Questions of History,” No. 7, 1937]. The works of Diderot were banned for “presenting a dangerous theory of materialism” [“Book News,” No. 18, 1937, p. 64].

In 1830, the spiritual censorship banned Holbach’s “Table Talk” for containing ideas “contrary to Christian morality, government, and religion” [A. Kotovich. History of Spiritual Censorship. St. Petersburg, 1909, p. 457].

In 1860, Feuerbach’s work “History of Modern Philosophy from Bacon to Spinoza” was banned [“Questions of Philosophy,” No. 9, 1958, p. 89].

In 1868, Voltaire’s book “Philosophy of History” was destroyed, in which the censors discovered “mockery of the truths and refutation of Holy Scripture” [“Archival Affairs,” 1938, No. 1 (45), p. 93].

In 1871, Helvetius’s book “On Man, His Intellectual Powers and Education” was banned for a “completely materialistic view of education” [“Archival Affairs,” No. 1 (45), 1938, p. 86].

In 1874, at the demand of the Synod, the Russian edition of T. Hobbes’s book “Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth” was completely destroyed [L. M. Dobrovolsky. Russian Banned Book 1855-1905. Leningrad, 1945, p. 184, dissertation].

In 1890, Voltaire’s “Satirical and Philosophical Dialogues” were destroyed, and in 1893 — his poetic works, in which “anti-religious tendencies” were found.

The works of the Russian writer and philosopher A. I. Herzen, in which he exposed the reactionary essence of the Orthodox Church, its defense of autocracy and landowners, were under censorship ban. In 1893, the spiritual censorship did not allow the publication of Herzen’s works, the reason being “the atheism of A. I. Herzen and his social ideas.” Representatives of the ecclesiastical department, in the pamphlets they published, called Herzen “an apostate and enemy of the Christian faith, an opponent of Orthodoxy.”

Geology

Spiritual censorship, right up to the end of the 19th century, hindered the development of geological science. According to Metropolitan Philaret, scientific geology refutes biblical cosmogony and therefore “cannot be tolerated” [“Collection of Opinions and Responses of Metropolitan Philaret…”, vol. IV, p. 315].

In 1850, V. Gutzeit’s article “On the Fossils of Kursk Province” was not allowed for printing because it explained “the universe” “according to the concepts of some geologists, entirely inconsistent with the cosmogony of Moses” [M. Lemke. Essays on the History of Russian Censorship. St. Petersburg, 1914, p. 267].

In March 1858, in connection with the Moscow Metropolitan Philaret’s actions against the unfolding geological work, Prince V. F. Odoyevsky addressed a letter to the Chief Procurator of the Synod, Tolstoy: “Russia has already suffered enough hardships and losses from the terrible persecution of geology, by whose grace we lack our daily bread, that is, coal…, whereas all this persecution is based simply on ignorance of the subject” [“Russian Archive,” No. 2, 1874, pp. 22-23].

After Roulier’s publication in 1859 in the newspaper “Moscow News” of lectures on geology, the author was forbidden to give public lectures, and was required to rework the work so that the reader could “reconcile geological facts with the first chapter of the Book of Genesis” [“Russian Antiquity,” No. 12, 1903, p. 687].

In 1866, books on geology deemed “harmful and nihilistic” were removed from the libraries of a number of educational institutions [M. Chaly. Bila Tserkva Gymnasium in 1862-1869. Kiev, 1901, p. 48].

In 1893, G. N. Hutchinson’s book “The Autobiography of the Earth: A Popular Sketch of Historical Geology” was withdrawn from circulation. The spiritual censorship justified its decision by saying that the author did not align his views with the church teaching on the creation of the world, and therefore the book “undermines the foundations of religion” [“Literary Heritage,” No. 22-24, 1935, p. 627].

Pedagogy

In the second half of the 19th century, to strengthen the influence of the clergy in the field of public education, a wide network of parish schools was organized, which were to bring up children in the spirit of devotion to the autocracy and the Orthodox Church. In the curriculum of parish schools, the main place was occupied by church subjects — the Law of God, Church Slavonic, church singing, liturgy. Rejecting the textbooks of progressive pedagogues — K. D. Ushinsky, I. A. Khudyakov, V. P. Vakhterov — because they, according to the opinions of spiritual censors, hindered the development of religious feelings, anti-scientific textbooks compiled in a religious-monarchist spirit were used. The ecclesiastical authorities held a negative opinion of secular primary schools, calling them “instruments of the corruption of the people.”

The clergy opposed the attempts of advanced teachers to give children the rudiments of a scientific understanding instead of a religious interpretation of natural phenomena. The clergy wrote denunciations against teachers and secured their dismissal. Representatives of the church said:

“Let the children rather remain ignorant people, but good Christians and faithful sons of the tsar and fatherland, than be literate but steeped in the poison of revolution.”

In parish schools, priests instilled in children the idea that Darwin’s theory was heretical because it contradicted the Bible, and that Darwin himself was an apostate who rose up against Holy Scripture. Priest-teachers forbade the use of teaching aids—maps of geography, zoology, even the globe—because school must develop not the mind, but the heart and religiosity.

Literature

The hatred of the ecclesiastical authorities was aroused by the work of the outstanding Russian enlightener N. I. Novikov (1744–1818), who in a short time published many books on every branch of knowledge. Those books sharply criticized religious fanaticism and superstition. On the denunciation of the Archpriest of Moscow’s Archangel Cathedral, Peter Alekseev, the books published by Novikov were confiscated, and Novikov himself was arrested and imprisoned for fifteen years in the Shlisselburg Fortress for his oppositional attitude toward the autocracy, his active educational work, and his criticism of religion and the Church.

The outstanding Russian writer A. N. Radishchev (1749–1802), author of the famous “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” also suffered persecution from the spiritual authorities. A materialist, Radishchev held that matter and nature exist eternally and can be neither destroyed nor created. His views on the unity of soul and body, his criticism of religious teachings on the immortality of the soul, his condemnation of tsarist despotism and religious superstitions were found “contrary to God’s law, the Ten Commandments, Holy Scripture, Orthodoxy, and civil law.” Radishchev’s book was destroyed, and he, as “a rebel worse than Pugachev,” was sentenced to death—a sentence commuted to ten years’ hard labor. Even a hundred years after Radishchev’s death, his book was condemned by the Church: in 1903 spiritual censors decided that it was still dangerous for religion and the Church, that it undermined the authority of secular and ecclesiastical power, and they therefore destroyed the entire printed edition.

In the 1830s, at the demand of the Most Holy Synod, five thousand copies of the Pentateuch of Moses, translated into Russian and published by the Bible Society, were burned. Yet thirty years later Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) recalled this event with regret: “One cannot recall this without deep sorrow, especially at a time when, with the spreading movement of natural reason, ignorance in matters of faith would debase faith before the eyes of reason….”

In the 1840s, works by G. R. Derzhavin, A. D. Kantemir, A. S. Pushkin, V. G. Belinsky, M. Chénier, V. Hugo, O. Balzac and many others were added to the list of books banned on religious grounds.

In 1853, when the complete works of N. V. Gogol were being published, the spiritual authorities demanded the removal of many passages from his works that were deemed offensive to the Church.

In the works of M. N. Zagoskin (1830–1904) Moscow Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) (canonized in 1994) found a “confusion” of ecclesiastical and secular subjects; as a result, the author was forced to thoroughly rework his writings.

Metropolitan Filaret also approved the actions of the rector of Trinity Theological Seminary, Savva, who, learning that seminarians possessed printed and handwritten works of Gogol, Lermontov, Pushkin, Belinsky and others, conducted a night search and ordered that all confiscated books be given to a “solemn burning” in the academy courtyard in the presence of faculty and students. Savva later became the metropolitan’s assistant.

In the 1860s the publication of Jules Verne’s novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth” was banned; spiritual censors found in it anti‑religious ideas and a danger of destroying trust in Holy Scripture and the clergy.

In 1889, when the collected works of N. S. Leskov were being published, the spiritual censorship “tore to pieces” the sixth volume, which contained works about clerical life. The entire print run was destroyed. N. S. Leskov called this reprisal “vile arbitrary rule and tyranny at the hands of every scoundrel.”

Representatives of the spiritual censorship accused Maxim Gorky of placing not the spirit but the body at the center of his works, thereby undermining the religious foundations of society.

The clergy regarded with great hostility the works of progressive foreign writers who exposed the nature of religion and the activities of its servants. Thus the books of the outstanding German writer Heinrich Heine—“Book of Songs,” “Gods in Exile,” and others—were declared blasphemous and destroyed at the insistence of the spiritual censorship. Even in 1904, in the complete works of Heine, many passages that “undermined” piety were excised.

The spiritual authorities banned works by such French writers as Gustave Flaubert, Anatole France, Émile Zola, Henri Barbusse, and others, in whose writings “sacrilegious and blasphemous” thoughts and mockery of Christianity were found.

The Excommunication of Leo Tolstoy

At the insistence of the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, K. P. Pobedonostsev, who personally monitored Leo Tolstoy’s literary activity, many of the writer’s works, as being contrary to the teaching and spirit of Christianity, did not see the light of day in their time. As early as 1901, for “disrespectful statements about the Orthodox Church and Christianity,” the Synod secured the banning of Tolstoy’s novel “Resurrection.”

Father John of Kronstadt called Tolstoy the forerunner of the Antichrist and even the Antichrist himself, and his struggle against the Church—a devilish work. As Ya. Illyashevich (pseudonym I. K. Sursky) wrote in his book “Father John of Kronstadt,” Father John foretold a “fierce end” for the writer.

John of Kronstadt, answering Tolstoy’s appeal to the clergy, wrote:

Tolstoy’s hand was raised to write such vile slander about Russia, about its government!.. A brazen, inveterate atheist, like Judas the betrayer… Tolstoy has distorted his moral personality to the point of monstrosity, to the point of disgust… acquaintance with Western atheists helped him even more to embark on this terrible path…

On February 2, 1901, Leo Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church. From the Synod’s Determination:

In his writings and letters, which he and his disciples disseminate throughout the world, but especially within our beloved Fatherland, he preaches with the fervour of a fanatic the overthrow of all the dogmas of the Orthodox Church and the very essence of the Christian faith; he denies the personal Living God, glorified in the Holy Trinity, the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe; he denies the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-Man, Redeemer and Saviour of the world, Who suffered for us men and for our salvation and rose from the dead; he denies the divine conception of Christ the Lord according to His humanity and the virginity before and after childbirth of the Most Pure Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary; he does not acknowledge life after death and retribution; he rejects all the sacraments of the Church and the grace-filled action of the Holy Spirit in them; and, mocking the most sacred objects of the Orthodox people’s faith, he did not shudder to subject the greatest of mysteries—the Holy Eucharist—to derision.

As Metropolitan Kirill (now Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia) stated, by excommunicating Tolstoy the Church simply stated what had already happened in reality.

In his “Response to the Resolution of the Synod,” L. N. Tolstoy wrote:

The Synod’s resolution has many flaws: it is illegal or deliberately ambiguous; it is arbitrary, unfounded, untruthful, and, moreover, contains slander and incitement to evil feelings and actions. <…> That I have renounced the Church that calls itself Orthodox is perfectly true. But I renounced her not because I rose up against the Lord, but on the contrary, only because I wished with all the strength of my soul to serve Him. Before renouncing the Church and the unity with the people that was inexpressibly dear to me, having, by certain signs, doubted the correctness of the Church, I devoted several years to investigating her teaching theoretically and practically: theoretically, I read everything I could about the teaching of the Church, studied and critically analysed dogmatic theology; practically, I strictly followed, for more than a year, all the Church’s prescriptions, observing all fasts and attending all church services. And I became convinced that the teaching of the Church is theoretically a cunning and harmful lie, and practically a collection of the crudest superstitions and sorcery that conceals entirely the whole meaning of the Christian teaching.

In 2001, L. N. Tolstoy’s great-grandson Vladimir Tolstoy, the director of the writer’s museum-estate at Yasnaya Polyana, sent a letter to Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia with a request to reconsider the decision to excommunicate the great Russian writer. The Patriarch stated that this was impossible.

Part 3. The Modern Orthodox Inquisition. The Expert Council for State Religious Expert Review under the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.

“First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I kept silent—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, but I kept silent—because I was a Protestant. Finally they came for me, and by then there was no one left to raise a voice in my defence.”

Pastor Martin Niemöller, 1945.

Even though, under the Constitution of the Russian Federation, religion is separated from the state, representatives of the ROC today are steadily expanding their influence. One form of influence on the lives of believers that threatens the freedom of religion of Russian citizens has been the creation of the Expert Council for State Religious Expert Review under the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, vested with powers similar to the Soviet-era Council for Religious Affairs. It was established by Order No. 61 of the Russian Ministry of Justice of 3 March 2009.

Such a council had existed before, in the 1990s. Its function was to carry out state religious expert review as part of the state registration of religious organisations. Its membership was approved at the level of the Russian Federation Government. But in 2008 the authority to approve the membership was given to the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, which approved a new statute for this expert council. That was when the entire meaning embedded in the state law on religious associations began to change.

The original law assumed that religious expert review must be conducted during the registration of those religious associations that are not centralised. Now, an amendment has been introduced into the law that envisages religious expert review for already registered religious organisations. That is, after conducting an expert review, the expert council may issue certain recommendations to the Ministry of Justice in respect of already registered religious organisations. In this case, the subordinate legal act of the Ministry of Justice contradicts the federal law. Three possible scenarios for further developments exist.

First, amendments will be made to the federal law.

Second, this subordinate legal act will simply be repealed.

Third, the Court will give an interpretation to the effect that the Ministry of Justice did not violate the federal law.

In accordance with the new statute on the Expert Council, a new composition of the council was formed.

In addition to recognized scholars and experts, it included, in particular: Alexander Dvorkin, head of the St. Irenaeus of Lyons Center for Sect Studies; Alexander Kuzmin, head of the Saratov branch of Dvorkin’s Sect Studies Center and author of the material on which the anti-sect leaflet, later declared extremist by a court, was based; Evgeny Mukhtarov, a Yaroslavl-based journalist and sect researcher; Russian Orthodox Church priest Lev Semenov, a staff member of Dvorkin’s Center; and Andrey Vasilchenko, a Yaroslavl sect expert specializing in German fascism, author of numerous popular books on the history of the Third Reich, and one of the founders, together with Evgeny Mukhtarov, of the nationalist “League of Patriotic Youth” in the 1990s.
This lineup is somewhat one-sided. Mr. Dvorkin is in open conflict with a number of evangelical associations. For example, there is a legal conflict with the Russian United Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith and its leader Ryakhovsky. Dvorkin’s associates are also rather odious figures who have made statements in the press that contradict the Constitution of the Russian Federation. It is interesting that the head of the Ministry of Justice himself once studied at a higher Orthodox educational institution, where one of his teachers was Mr. Dvorkin.

In effect, the entire composition is a lobby of the Russian Orthodox Church, which pushed its own people through in order to deal with competitors—the Protestants, who are rapidly gaining popularity among the Slavic population of Russia. The expert council has no complaints against representatives of the Muslim confession; adherents of the pagan faith (Rodnovery) have practically been crushed by the security services, have long been denied official registration, and lack the competitive power of the mighty ROC, which is fully supported by the state. Muslims, on the other hand, are on very friendly terms with the ROC. At one time, the ROC even proposed uniting with the Muslims but was rebuffed.

What gives grounds for such conclusions?

The concept of state expert review in Russia is an authoritative one. Despite its advisory nature, Russian courts and other authorized bodies will be guided by the conclusions of this review to close churches or significantly restrict their activities. The danger is that the legal mechanism of expert opinion is being replaced by an extra-legal one. The composition of the council conducting the review is deeply biased.

A protest reaction from evangelical churches does exist, but as lawyer and pastor Yuri Snisarenko from St. Petersburg notes, there is no unified, consolidated stance among the leaders of Christian churches on defending believers’ rights. There has been no appeal addressed to the president. In America, for example, there are many quite influential legal organizations defending the rights of believers. In Russia, there is only one such organization—the Slavic Legal Center. But this state of affairs in Russia at the SLC resembles the Andropov-era Leningrad Rock Club, when all rock musicians were gathered under one roof under KGB surveillance, where one could play for one’s own pleasure. The trouble is that no one heard them.

Noted Pastor Ryakhovsky observed that the activities of the religious council under Dvorkin’s chairmanship would be carried out under the supervision of the Public Chamber, in which an alternative expert council would be created. Nevertheless, the Public Chamber will not be able to exert decisive influence, because the courts will still be guided by the provisions of the Ministry of Justice. And only lawsuits filed on behalf of, for example, the Union of United Evangelical Churches—which does not currently exist—could somehow affect the development of the situation. According to lawyers of the Slavic Legal Center, to turn the situation around it is necessary to invest in the future and train Christian lawyers and religious scholars who could become members of any most authoritative expert council.

On the whole, lawyers correctly discerned a usurpation of power and a violation of freedom of religion that contradict the Constitution of the Russian Federation and began voicing their concerns immediately after the creation of this Council in April 2009. Meanwhile, the Council has actively set to work.

In full accordance with the ideas of the council’s chairman Dvorkin, who has written several books on sect studies, a huge number of Christian-oriented religious organizations were declared sects. With state support, a vast number of websites were instantly created, stigmatizing the activities of “sects.” Moreover, Mr. Dvorkin’s definition of sects covers practically any organization or even just a company. Lists of those declared heretics or, as they put it today, sectarians are posted on these sites. Here are just a few examples of such websites:

https://www.anticekta.ru/index.html
https://sektainfo.ru/index.htm
https://www.iriney.ru/

Part 4. Facts of persecution of Protestants and those included in the lists of sects.

Incidents of harassment of Christians by Russian authorities have occurred even before 2009. In particular, in the first four months of 2005 alone, various forms of persecution, harassment, and violations of believers’ rights and freedoms surpassed the combined total for 2003 and 2004. Incidents involving attempts to seize or demolish church buildings, arson and bombings of houses of worship, insults, assaults, and beatings of Protestant Christians were recorded in Moscow, Tula, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Podolsk, Chekhov, Izhevsk, Balashikha, and the Voronezh region. In the current situation, one can assert that there is a planned and consistent persecution of Protestant churches in Russia.

In 2007, in his report to the U.S. Congress, the State Department of the United States of America, as well as to the International Committee on Religious Freedom located in the American capital, renowned human rights activist Boris Perchatkin noted:

“I believe that in Russia today, a so-called inertia of fear effect is being employed,” says Boris. “What does it consist of? The authorities select a few churches and torment the believers to such a degree that it becomes unbearable. This achieves the desired effect: on the one hand, the persecuted churches appear to be a minority—no one in the West will ever believe there is mass persecution—but on the other hand, those churches left untouched will behave, as they say, like a mouse under a broom, because each one thinks: what if they come for me tomorrow?”

In support of his words, the well-known human rights activist showed video recordings he gathered during his latest trip to Russia. In footage shot with an amateur camera by believers in central Russia, one sees representatives of the security forces beating Christians, roughly handling their children, and striking and choking the pastor of a Pentecostal church. Letters from imprisoned Pentecostals in Yakutia were also read aloud, describing how law enforcement officers abuse them—breaking ribs, knocking out teeth, making them stand for many hours undressed in the freezing cold.

Interestingly, every harsh crackdown on Protestants has been preceded by conferences of Orthodox priests. For example, just the day before in Saratov, a “scientific-practical” conference titled “Neo-Pentecostal Sects in Russia: The Threat of Religious Extremism” was held. This conference was organized by the Russian Orthodox Church. It was attended by 232 delegates, most of them Orthodox priests.

The “Final Document” of the Saratov conference, in the finest tradition of denunciation, has been sent to all government bodies of the Russian Federation. The conference organizers hope that the authorities will support them in the fight against an “enemy” that is prevailing over them.

The authorities did not take long to respond. They learned their lesson. An expert council was formed fully in line with the demands of the Orthodox priests. Only, whereas before they acted crudely, now they decided to operate within the framework of Russian law, forcing the Ministry of Justice to adopt a by-law that contradicts federal legislation and revives the “best” traditions of pre-revolutionary Orthodox inquisition and censorship. Here are just some of the facts about the persecution of Protestants in the Russian Federation since April 2009.

1.  Unscheduled inspections of religious organizations began in various regions of Russia. They are carried out by representatives of law enforcement agencies and subdivisions of the Ministry of Justice, the TBN press center told the Christian Megaportal invictory.org. Special attention is paid to the financial side of evangelical churches’ lives and to the tiniest details of their charter documents. The Association of Christian Churches was required to produce financial reports for the past four years, even though each year, in accordance with the law, the documents were duly submitted to the appropriate state bodies.

Sudden inspections started in Nakhodka and Saratov, Tyumen and Nizhny Novgorod, involving snap checks, unfounded warnings, and pressure on the leaders of evangelical churches. The number of cases is increasing day by day. This is all the more strange considering that quite recently, at a State Council meeting in Tula, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for cooperation between the state and the country’s religious organizations.

2. Under pressure from Tula sectologists, inter-confessional cooperation between the Protestant Evangelical Christian Church “Loza” and the Catholic parish of Ss. Peter and Paul in Tula was terminated, reports the Christian Megaportal invictory.org, citing the press service of the Slavic Legal Center.

As the pastor of the Evangelical Christian Church “Loza,” Alexander Karavaev, noted in an interview with the SLC press service, since 2008 the church had been holding services in the Catholic church by agreement with the parish. In addition, the Protestants helped the Catholics landscape the grounds around the church, planned a joint summer youth camp, and together with other Tula Protestants joined the Catholics in prayer for the unity of all Christians.

However, according to Alexander Karavaev, at the beginning of June the attitude of the parish priest, Father Rafail, changed abruptly—he asked the Protestant community no longer to gather for worship in the Catholic church. The pastor stressed that someone had greatly frightened the church rector and slandered the Evangelical Christian Church before the Catholics. Father Rafail merely told the pastor that he could not say everything and could not say who had spoken to him. According to Karavaev, believers tried to explain to the Catholic parish priest that he was simply being misled. The previous rector, Father Peter, a Slovak, had initiated cooperation with Protestants, since in Europe inter-confessional cooperation among believers is common practice. As a result, the “Loza” church managed to maintain good relations with the Catholics, but had to look for a new place to hold its services.

The likely culprits behind the incident quickly revealed themselves. On June 25, Alexander Karavaev received an email from Andrei Bulavin, who signed as the head of the Moscow headquarters of TICC (the Tula Information and Consultation Center on Sectarianism). Bulavin is one of the sectologists who founded and edit the website — www.sektainfo.ru. In the letter, Bulavin writes to Pastor Karavaev: “You will soon have to change the meeting place of your religious organization. We believe that the Catholic church is not suitable for the ‘worship services’ of ‘Loza.’ So, you will have to move out. Andrei Bulavin, head of the Moscow headquarters of TICC.”

3. According to sources close to the Ministry of Justice, an unprecedented action is being prepared against the Christian community, aimed at suppressing associations, especially Protestant denominations. The source also reported that in many regions of the country, the creation of 34 expert councils for state religious studies expertise is being prepared. These councils will operate according to Alexander Dvorkin’s scheme, which can only be called inquisitorial. In this regard, many Christian ministers are calling on Christians to express a resolute protest against such practices of fighting for the “Purity of Faith” and not to allow the “inquisitors” to continue persecution and infringement of believers’ rights.

4. On May 22, 2009, according to the press service of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, the Ivanovo Regional Court considered the case of American missionary Chris Willeck, who had filed a petition to declare illegal the decision on the undesirability of his stay in Russia. Despite the fact that neither the Federal Migration Service nor the Federal Security Service presented evidence that Mr. Willeck had violated Russian law, the court decided to refuse to satisfy his request as set out in the petition. In other words, the court did not consider the actions of the FSB illegal.

The court’s decision can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Russia and to the European Court of Human Rights. The senior presbyter of the ECB churches in the Ivanovo and Vladimir regions, Vladimir Miskewich, called on believers “to continue praying for Chris, for wisdom in resolving this case and, especially, for our safety. We are on the front line of attack. We believe that God is for us, and that Chris did nothing illegal.”

5. The Prosecutor’s Office of Komi organized an inspection of the legality of the religious campaign “Feel the Power of Change” held in the region. As reported to Interfax by Natalia Sekhlyan, senior assistant prosecutor of Komi, the regional oversight body sent materials on the “anti-crisis” campaign of several religious movements in the republic to the prosecutor’s office of Syktyvkar. The reason for organizing the inspection was media publications. The prosecutor’s office of the capital Syktyvkar was instructed to determine whether the campaign complies with Russian legislation. “The city prosecutor’s office will inform us of its results, and then it will be possible to talk about making decisions,” N. Sekhlyan noted.

6. “To vacate the religious buildings by July 20, 2009,” was demanded of the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church by the deputy governor of Vladimir Region, director of the Department of Property and Land Relations of the regional administration A.V. Denisov. According to a correspondent for “Portal-Credo.Ru”, the relevant official letters, dated June 26, arrived in early July at the office of the Bishops’ Synod of the ROAC in Suzdal.

The first letter concerns three churches — St. Michael the Archangel in the village of Ivanovskoye, St. Alexander Nevsky in the village of Ves, and St. Ephraim the Syrian in the village of Omutskoye — transferred to the Suzdal diocese in 1996–97 under contracts for transfer for permanent gratuitous use, signed by the diocese with the regional Committee for State Property Management. Citing paragraph 1 of Article 699 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the vice-governor declares the “refusal” of the Vladimir Region administration from the aforementioned contracts and “proposes to vacate and transfer” the three churches to the State Center for the Protection and Use of Historical and Cultural Monuments of Vladimir Region.

The second letter lists three more churches from which the administration intends to expel ROAC believers — St. George the Victorious in the village of Krapivye, St. Basil the Great in the village of Borisovskoye, and St. John the Baptist in the village of Pavlovskoye. As A.V. Denisov claims, these churches are currently “under the operational management” of the State Center, although they were transferred to ROAC communities under protective contracts in the early 1990s and restored from ruins by the faithful. According to the vice-governor, “these properties were not provided to the specified religious organizations by the Department of Property and Land Relations of the administration of Vladimir Region.”

7. In early July 2009, it became known that in Salsk (Rostov region), the judicial consideration of the city prosecutor’s lawsuit to declare a number of Jehovah’s Witnesses materials extremist is ongoing. What exact materials are being referred to is not reported.

The relevant statement of claim was sent by the prosecutor’s office to the Salsk City Court on December 18, 2008. Court hearings began on March 12.
In May 2009, the court partially granted the prosecutor’s motion to order a psychological-linguistic examination of the materials. A religious studies examination was also ordered. The venue for its conduct was designated as the “Russian Federal Center for Forensic Examination under the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation,” located in Moscow. Previously, the examination had been intended to be conducted at the “Southern Regional Center for Forensic Examinations” in Rostov-on-Don.

8. A supporter of the “VOLYA” party, A.I. Resnyanskaya, submitted documents for registration as a candidate for deputy of the Duma of the Togliatti city district. The documents were submitted on time and in the form prescribed by law. https://volya-naroda.ru/comments.html

In its notice of refusal to register, the election commission indicated that “the documents and personal information about the candidate were not provided in full,” but did not specify which particular personal information about the candidate was missing from the documents and what exactly constitutes the incompleteness of information about the amount and sources of income, property belonging to the candidate by right of personal ownership, bank deposits, securities, and what constitutes a violation of the requirements of the law.

Part 5. Despite a possible violation of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the Russian Orthodox Church is lobbying the State Duma for mandatory status for the school course “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture.”

Currently, the course is part of the regional component of school education; the decision to introduce it must be made by the school principal (or the District Department of Public Education, RONO) after gathering enough signatures from students’ parents in favor. Although the subject is positioned as secular, in 20 regions of the country (Moscow, Smolensk, Kursk, Ryazan, Samara, Belgorod, Vladimir, Omsk oblasts, Krasnodar Krai, and others) teaching is conducted by clergy. In two regions of the Black Earth area—Bryansk Oblast (the course “Meeting with History”) and Belgorod Oblast (the course “Orthodox Culture”)—the Basics of Orthodox Culture (BOC) is compulsory. In 2008, it was mandatory in five regions.

In July 2007, an open letter was written to President Putin expressing concern over the Russian Orthodox Church’s (ROC) penetration into state institutions and public education. The letter from ten academicians claimed that the Patriarchate had attempted to introduce a subject on Orthodox doctrine into the school curriculum under the guise of “Basics of Orthodox Culture.” A circular letter of Alexy II (No. 5925 of December 9, 1999), addressed to “all diocesan hierarchs,” noted that “we will not accomplish the task of spiritually and morally educating Russia’s future generations if we neglect the state education system.” The concluding part of that document states: “If obstacles arise in teaching ‘Basics of Orthodox Doctrine,’ call the course ‘Basics of Orthodox Culture’; this will raise no objections from teachers and principals of secular educational institutions raised on an atheistic foundation.”

The prosecutor’s office canceled the compulsory nature of the course in Penza Oblast due to violations of the laws “On Education” and “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations.” Nevertheless, State Duma deputy A. V. Chuyev proposed amendments to the education law and the law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Belief” to legitimize the course. Chuyev also pointed out that, in the near future, as a result of legislative changes, it would legally become possible to introduce the subject “God’s Law” into school curricula. “We are solving this problem,” he stated.

Undoubtedly, if legal changes to legislation are enacted, this will mean the end of the secular state and the beginning of religious dominance in society.

Part 6. The ROC Against Russian Folk Tales.

Russian folk tales, beloved by all of us, unique works of national folklore and treasures of world culture, reflecting the distinctive character of the Russian people, are seen by the ROC as devilishness. In effect, a war has been declared on Russian folk tales. Their share in the total volume of children’s books is slowly but surely approaching zero.

In 1860, the renowned researcher of Russian folk art A. N. Afanasyev published another collection of folk tales. The Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, Count A. P. Tolstoy, sent a letter to the Minister of Public Education:

Regarding the book by Mr. Afanasyev, entitled “Russian Folk Legends,” which was published (i.e., passed by the censor Naumov), His Eminence Metropolitan Philaret has addressed me with a letter in which he explains that … to the name of Christ the Savior and the saints, this book appends tales that offend pious feelings, morality, and decency, and that it is necessary to find means to protect religion and morality from printed blasphemy and mockery.

As a result, by order of the Main Directorate of Censorship, it was prescribed to prohibit the reprinting of the new edition of the book “Russian Folk Legends Collected by Afanasyev,” and 5,000 already printed copies were destroyed.

It must be noted that Russian folk tales have conveyed to us the pagan images of our ancestors and have also transmitted their archetypes. Over a thousand years, followers of the Orthodox inquisition have destroyed almost all ancient monuments connected with folk beliefs on the territory of Russia. Such a policy is comparable to the Taliban’s destruction of a UNESCO Buddhist monument in Afghanistan. The ROC does not rest on its laurels today either.

In 2001, the Vologda Diocese declared Grandfather Frost (Ded Moroz) a pagan deity. Bishop Maximilian (Lazarenko) of Vologda and Veliky Ustyug openly stated that the Church would take part in celebrations in Veliky Ustyug (the fairy-tale hero’s birthplace) only if Grandfather Frost’s official biography noted that he had received Orthodox baptism.

In 2001, in the town of Kirillov, the Vologda Diocese shut down a unique fairy-tale museum of Baba Yaga. Bishop Maximilian accused the fairy-tale character of Satanism:

Sometimes she lures the geese-swans into a totalitarian sect, other times she steals small children. There are witnesses (Ivanushka the Fool) accusing the old hag of cannibalism.

In an effort to attract tourists, the village of Kukoboy in the Pervomaisky District of Yaroslavl Oblast was declared the birthplace of Baba Yaga. A hut on chicken legs was built there, and costumed performances were organized. This brought a great influx of tourists from Vologda, Cherepovets, Yaroslavl, and Kostroma and helped stabilize the village’s economy. Annual Baba Yaga festivals began to take place every summer.

Additionally, Poshekhonye, the district center of Yaroslavl Oblast, was declared the birthplace of the water spirit (Vodyanoy).

The Yaroslavl Diocese of the ROC sharply condemned these phenomena. An official statement from the diocese declared:

The powers that be patronize the deification of fairy-tale characters: Baba Yaga and the water spirit. Neo-pagan temples are artificially created, where pseudo-religious rites are beginning to be performed, and children are being drawn into these rites. Tourist trails are laid to these demonic temples. Thousands of people are being lured into worshiping the demon, inflicting terrible harm on their immortal souls… If the authorities find the water spirit and Baba Yaga closer than Christ, the Mother of God, and our saints, then such authorities are worthy of pity, as is the people who elected them.

As Father Alexander, rector of the Church of the Savior, declared:

The dictionary says: “a fairy-tale monster, the boss over all witches.” What does that tell us? That she is Satan’s henchwoman. That’s not my invention. She is bareheaded, in nothing but a shift, with no girdle. Both are the height of indecency.

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, also cautioned against toying with Baba Yaga.

As Moskovsky Komsomolets correspondent I. Bobrova reported, during a Baba Yaga festival (in 2005), priests from the Yaroslavl diocese came to the village of Kukoboy. Men in cassocks shouted insults at those present, frightening tourists and locals with threats of God’s punishment. The woman playing Baba Yaga had “Devilry! Get out of here!” yelled at her.

From the viewpoint of proponents of Baba Yaga’s Slavic (classical) origins, an important aspect of this image is that she belongs to two worlds at once — the world of the dead and the world of the living. A well-known specialist in mythology, associate professor Alexandra Barkova, offers an interesting interpretation regarding the origin of the “chicken legs” on which the famous mythical character’s hut stands: “Her hut ‘on chicken legs’ is portrayed as standing either deep in the forest (the center of the other world) or at the edge — but then its entrance faces the forest, i.e., from the world of death. The name ‘chicken legs’ most likely derived from ‘smoke-cured,’ i.e., smoke-cured posts on which the Slavs set up the ‘house of death’ — a small log cabin containing the ashes of the deceased (such a burial rite existed among the ancient Slavs as far back as the 6th–9th centuries). Baba Yaga inside such a hut was depicted as a kind of living corpse — she lay motionless and did not see the person arriving from the world of the living (the living do not see the dead, the dead do not see the living). She recognized his arrival by smell — ‘it smells of the Russian spirit’ (the smell of the living is unpleasant to the dead).” “A person who encounters Baba Yaga’s hut at the boundary between the world of life and the world of death,” the author continues, “is usually on his way to the other world in order to free a captive princess. To do so, he must become part of the world of the dead. He usually asks Yaga to feed him, and she gives him the food of the dead. There is another variant — to be eaten by Yaga and thus end up in the world of the dead. Having undergone the trials in Baba Yaga’s hut, the person turns out to belong to both worlds simultaneously, acquires many magical qualities, subjugates various inhabitants of the world of the dead, vanquishes the fearsome monsters dwelling within, wins back a magical beauty from them, and becomes a king.” (Encyclopedia “Slavic Mythology and Epic”, article “Beliefs of the Ancient Slavs”).

The “spiritual vanguard” of Orthodox hierarchs, like the Taliban who revile Christians as “cross-worshippers” and classify them as non-persons based on their faith, tar the mythological Baba Yaga with black paint and label her an unclean force. Yet the origins of this heroine go back to deep antiquity and stem from long-vanished civilizations. Many volumes of fascinating research have been written about the origin and meaning of such “mundane” fairy-tale characters as Baba Yaga, Koshchei, Vasilisa the Beautiful, Zmey Gorynych, and others — research that draws on ancient cultural sources not only from Rus but also from Southeast Asia and Ancient Greece, the Middle East and Scandinavia.

Part 7. Attempts to Canonize Stalin.

Today, within the inner circles of the Moscow Patriarchate, there are people who publicly demand the canonization of literal executioners of their own people, such as Stalin and his henchman, Marshal Zhukov. These people are not up to their knees but literally up to their necks in the blood of their compatriots. Yet the distorted religious consciousness of some people demands their glorification as saints. The fairly well-known priest of his time, Dmitry Dudko, wrote in the newspaper Zavtra: “One longs, at last, to exclaim (with regard to Stalin): ‘Holy Righteous Joseph, pray to God for us.’”

A perfectly consistent picture, considering the fact that Joseph Dzhugashvili was the founder of the Russian Orthodox Church and toasts were constantly sung in his honor in the churches. After the death of the “leader of the peoples,” before the memorial service on April 9, 1953, Patriarch Alexy of Moscow and All Rus said literally the following:

“Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, the great Leader of our people, is no more. A great force has been abolished — a MORAL, social force: a force in which our people felt their own strength, by which they were guided in their creative labors and undertakings, by which they were comforted over the course of many years. There is no field which the great Leader’s profound gaze did not penetrate. Men of science marveled at his deep scientific erudition in the most diverse fields, at his brilliant scientific generalizations; soldiers — at his military genius; people of the most varied labor invariably received from him powerful support and valuable guidance. As a man of genius, in every matter he discovered what was unseen and inaccessible to the ordinary mind. And we, gathered to pray for him, cannot pass over in silence his always benevolent, sympathetic attitude toward our church needs….”

In the Church of St. Olga, Equal-to-the-Apostles, in Strelna, the abbot, Hegumen Evstafy (Zhakov), has put up an icon of Blessed Matrona of Moscow, about whose life many legends circulate. One of them says that “Mother Matrona” held confidential conversations with the “father of the peoples,” and in the autumn of 1941 received him when he was very worried about the situation in Moscow and calmed him down, saying: “You alone will remain in the city. Send everyone else away, but do not surrender the city. And you will not surrender it.” This very meeting is depicted on the icon.

Hegumen Evstafy declared that he venerates Joseph Stalin “as his father.” “The feeling that Stalin is the father of the peoples, that he is also, in part, my lofty father, has never left me all my life,” said Father Evstafy. “Any attacks on Stalin are both ridiculous and repulsive. I do not want to listen to these poodles of democracy who bark at the dead lion; I listen to my heart. I commemorate Joseph Vissarionovich at all services where it is appropriate, especially on the days when he was dying, on the day of his birth, on the days when he celebrated our people’s common Victory.”

Konstantin Dushenov, editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Rus’ Pravoslavnaya” and former secretary of the late Metropolitan Ioann of Saint Petersburg, published in 2002 the book “The Mystery of Lawlessness in the Historical Destiny of Russia”. He shaped the doctrine of Metropolitan Ioann into a program of Orthodox fundamentalism: “Russian democracy is corrupt”; “Russian ideology is Orthodoxy”; “Russian imperialism is derzhavnost.” Such views are expressed by the society “Radonezh,” “Union of Christian Revival,” “Black Hundred,” and some others. Before the Duma elections in 1999, K. Dushenov issued a statement in support of the People’s Patriotic Union of Russia of G. Zyuganov and the broad “communist-patriotic” bloc “Victory” of V. Varennikov, because these two organizations turned out to be ideologically close in promoting “Russian Orthodox Slavic socialism.” Abbot Alexy (Prosvirin) declared solidarity with A. Makashov in 1998 after the latter’s anti-Semitic statements. According to Abbot Alexy, the words of the Apostle Paul — “there is neither Greek nor Jew in Christ” — are “not for us, the sinful.” The ideology of A. Makashov and Alexy most likely fits the definition of “Orthodox Stalinism.” It is also known that Konstantin Dushenov is the author of virtually all the books of the leader of the Russian communists, Gennady Zyuganov.

All attempts at the canonization of Stalin, presented by propaganda as a grassroots popular initiative, together with the state campaign “Name of Russia,” in which Stalin “won,” quite possibly are a rehearsal for the canonization of a future emperor, a spiritual justification of an authoritarian style of governance.

Part 8. Imposing the Monarchical Model of Statehood as the “Only True One” for the Russian People.

The very concept of monarchy was brought to Rus’ from Byzantium and imposed “by fire and sword.” Historically, monarchy and Orthodoxy went hand in hand, preaching an imperial mindset, stifling individual freedom, and professing totalitarian principles of governance. There is ample evidence and historical documents to this effect. The monarchical House of Romanov, which established itself on the Russian throne through a coup d’état and marked the beginning of its rule by executing the lawful heiress Maria Mniszek at the gates, also ingloriously ended its period of rule in Russia. The entire Romanov family was shot. The Russian people in 1917, crushed by the monarchy and the despotism of the ROC, made their choice in favor of freedom at the first opportunity. No one rose to defend either the tsar or the priests. Priests, like the court camarilla, were shot en masse throughout Russia.

Today, with state support, an attempt is again being made to impose the monarchical idea on the Russian people. Moreover, the advocates of monarchy are exclusively representatives of Orthodoxy. Numerous institutes are involved in imposing on society the idea of restoring monarchy. The heiress to the throne herself — Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna — is interested in the restoration of monarchy. It is stipulated, however, that this is possible only if there is an expression of the will of the Russian people. She also does not lay claim to power, but only to representative “decorative” functions. According to sociological surveys, however, only about 10% of the population would consider such a step by the government appropriate. In disputes with Protestants, Orthodox often point to the Kingdom of God as a Monarchy and, consequently, recognize the monarchical system of government in this earthly life as the most preferable.

Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, for her services to the Church and Russia, received from Patriarch Alexy II the first Order of Saint Olga. Organizations supporting the Grand Duchess include the Russian Monarchist Public Movement — www.monarhia.ru, the Russian Imperial Union-Order, the Russian Assembly of Nobility, and the Movement “For Faith and Fatherland,” the Cells of the National-Syndicalist Offensive, the “Russian Imperial Union-Order,” “Pamyat,” “RNE,” the “Black Hundred.” Popularization of monarchical ideas is contained in the “Project RUSSIA,” the “Russian Doctrine,” and in the program of the public movement “People’s Assembly.”

Together with the growing crisis phenomena in society, attempts are intensifying to present monarchy as the only way out of the resulting crisis situation. Meetings and conferences of various public organizations are tirelessly held, often with the assistance of the administrative resource of the president and the government.

On March 15, in the former Institute of Marxism-Leninism, the All-Russian Scientific-Practical Conference “The Monarchical Idea in the 21st Century” took place, organized by the all-Russian public movement “For Faith and Fatherland,” the Russian Assembly of Nobility, and the Russian Imperial Union-Order. It was attended by State Duma deputies, Orthodox clergy, well-known scholars, and public figures:

Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Sergey Nikolaevich Baburin noted the inevitable nature of the return to traditional values in Russia.

Archpriest Alexander Makarov. In his opinion, it is precisely the monarchical movement today that could most successfully promote the churching of the Russian people.

Head of the Union of Orthodox Citizens Valentin Lebedev expressed firm hope that the time will come when the Russian emperor will ride into the capital on a white horse. “For now, the throne is empty. And the Russian heart yearns without a tsar,” summed up the head of the UOC.

Head of the “Christian Revival” union Vladimir Nikolaevich Osipov subjected February and modern “Februaryism” to devastating criticism.

State Duma deputy Alexander Chuev expressed confidence that Russia will inevitably return to the idea of monarchy as a permanent power that will be fully responsible for Russia and will represent a moral alternative to the modern world.

Hieromonk Nikon (Belavenets) delivered an apology for the Russian Imperial House and the descendants of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (whose role, it should be noted, in the events of the February Revolution was quite ambiguous).

Deputy Andrey Nikolaevich Savelyev, having posed the question at the beginning of his speech, “When can the monarchy be restored in Russia?” — himself answered: “Tomorrow!” — which drew applause from those present. For this, in Savelyev’s view, it is necessary to adopt a declaration of sovereignty and a declaration of continuity that would justify the right of succession of the present Russian statehood from the Russian Empire.

Deputy Alexander Vladimirovich Fomenko spoke about the traditional monarchism of the Russian consciousness. The people demand from the president not the performance of a job but service; however, the duty of loyal subjects, in Fomenko’s opinion, is even more difficult to fulfill than the duty of the Sovereign. Fomenko compared the current state of Russian society to orphanhood, but with it remains the hope of gaining the right to live in a family.

Also taking part in the conference were the Director of the Chancellery of the Russian Imperial House, A. N. Zakatov; the historian and publicist, author for Pravaya.Ru, A. V. Yeliseev; and others.

Two months later, on 13 May 2009, the third scholarly-practical conference, “The Monarchical Idea in the 21st Century,” was held in Moscow, in the conference hall of the State University of Trade and Economics. The theme of the conference was “The Role of the Monarchical Idea in the Modern Unity of the Peoples of Historical Russia.” The roster of participants was expanded.

Guests came from Transcarpathia and the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, all supported at the expense of the taxpayer of the Russian Federation through various educational programs. This time, the Grand Duchess was already personally present.

A report was delivered by the acting First Vice-Leader of the Russian Assembly of Nobility, A.Yu. Korolyova-Pereleshina: “The Current Situation in the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and the Visit of the Head of the Russian Imperial House to the PMR.”

The advocates of a monarchical empire are also drawing neighbouring countries into their project:

For example, on 18-19 July 2009, at the initiative of the All-Ukrainian public organization “Orthodox Choice,” a scholarly-practical conference will take place: “Kyiv in the Period of the Russian Orthodox Monarchy,” reports the portal https://www.novorossia.org.

The aim of the conference is to popularize the Russian Orthodox Tsar and other members of the imperial family in Ukraine, primarily among the residents of Kyiv. The organizers of the conferences hope that its participants will prepare reports of up to 5 pages of printed text on the following topics: “Orthodox Monarchy as the Ideal of State Power for an Orthodox People”; “On the Support of the Kyiv Metropolia of the Russian Orthodox Church and Kyiv’s Holy Sites by Representatives of the House of Romanov and the Sovereigns Personally”; “The State and Charitable Activities of the Romanovs in Kyiv”; and others.

From the above examples, it is evident that in Russia, at a quasi-public level (all programs are subsidized from the budget of the Russian Federation), the idea of restoring the institution of monarchy, the idea of the Russian Empire, the idea of totalitarianism is being actively pushed forward. Government structures in this case are acting hand in hand with public organizations directly linked to the ROC. According to data from some researchers of the ties between the ROC and the security services https://www.anvictory.org/pages%2Bview%2B400.html, the staff of the ROC both in Russia and abroad is densely packed with representatives of the security services, who serve as a mouthpiece for promoting totalitarian imperial ideas alien to systems of popular democracy and individual freedom.

Part 9. The ROC as a Hotbed of Anti-Semitism.

As Vyacheslav Likhachev noted back in 2003 in his mini-study “Anti-Semitism, the Orthodox Church and the State in Contemporary Russia” https://www.jcrelations.net/ru/?item=1791, three main ideological currents are clearly distinguishable within the ROC MP, conventionally termed: “church liberals,” “Orthodox fundamentalists,” and the “nomenklatura-clerical centre.”

The most numerous elements in the bosom of the ROC are those of the “right,” the “fundamentalist” wing. From their side, too, at times very sharp criticism is directed at the hierarchy for “modernism.” The Patriarch and many hierarchs are criticized for a conciliatory stance, for betraying the foundations of uncompromising, militant Orthodoxy for the sake of momentary political interests. All attempts to introduce any changes into the doctrine of the Church “from the left,” including in matters concerning the attitude toward Jews, are rejected by the Orthodox fundamentalists as a “betrayal of the Faith.”

Initially, the “zealots of Orthodox piety” were engaged only in polemics with the initiators of the ritual-ecclesiastical reform under discussion (translation of the liturgy into Russian, transition to the New Julian calendar, etc.); however, gradually they elaborated a comprehensive ideological-religious system of responses to the challenges of “modernity.” Orthodox fundamentalism took shape as a full-fledged ideology. While Ioann (Snychev), Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga (died in the autumn of 1995), known for the orthodoxy of his views, was alive, he was regarded as the generally accepted authority for all right-wing radicals within the ROC. With his death, there remained no such charismatic patron for the fundamentalists among the upper-level episcopate of the ROC. Lacking support from the highest church hierarchs, the fundamentalists rely on church public opinion and numerous nationalist-radical and anti-Semitic political organizations.

The fundamentalists, in fact, do not proclaim any new ideas. They are rather simply conservatives than “conservative revolutionaries” (though there are exceptions). In the sphere of anti-Semitism, they do not even particularly attempt to adapt classical Christian anti-Judaism to modern conditions. Their distinctiveness lies precisely in accentuating those theses of Scripture and Tradition that are ignored or directly violated by the hierarchy of the ROC. The range of these problems is quite broad — from the routine failure to observe the Canonical Rules on the prohibition of commerce within the church enclosure or on priests charging money for rites, to the ecumenical activity of the Moscow Patriarchate, which is dubious from the point of view of an Orthodox tradition intolerant toward non-believers and “heretics.” To this same series also belongs the “Jewish question.”

According to the views of church orthodox, Jews are conscious God-fighters who hate Christianity (especially Orthodoxy, as its most pure branch in form and content), even while understanding its truth. The Jews did not accept Christ, though the prophets spoke to them of His coming. In this sense, the Old Testament tradition is the foundation of Christianity, not of Talmudic Judaism at all. From the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy, post-Christ Judaism is illegitimate.

The main anti-Judaic mythologemes of Orthodox fundamentalism are the assertion of the vicious and immoral nature of Judaism, the thesis of the deicide people, the idea of the “blood libel,” and the statement of the metaphysical opposition of Judaism to Christianity, the satanic essence of the latter.

Briefly, the vision of Judaism within the historiosophy of Christian radicalism is as follows. The Jews, who were given the covenant to carry the word of God to the surrounding nations, took the secondary idea of their national chosenness as the primary one and did not fulfill their part of the covenant. Therefore the blessing of the Almighty was removed from them, and the Son of God came into the world. The Jews did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah because, intoxicated by the idea of their own chosenness, they expected someone who would elevate them above the nations, not one who would come to save all humanity. Since then the Jews have continued stubbornly in their error, and chosenness has passed to the Christian community, the New Israel (the “supersessionist concept”). The logical conclusion of this ideologeme is the identification of the Messiah expected by the Jews with the Christian Antichrist. Jewry is viewed as a collective “Wandering Jew,” under the disfavor of the Almighty because of its own depravity and crimes. Thus Judaism appears as the pole of metaphysical evil, of God-fighting, and consequently of Satanism; Jews are not only enemies of humanity but conscious enemies of God. “The word ‘zhid’ signifies a person who personally hates Christ,” writes the priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, Fr. Alexei Kagirin. “One can abstract from contemporary Judaism and imagine a Jew who knows nothing about Christ: such a Jew will not be a zhid,” he continues. This idea is a logical continuation of the traditional Christian thesis of the Jews as the deicide people.

Inasmuch as Jews, awaiting the Antichrist-Mashiach, may in some sense be called Satanists, Christianity must oppose these enemies of Christ. From the fundamentalists’ point of view, “Orthodoxy is the only faith which not merely has nothing in common with Judaism, but directly sets itself against Jewry.” Correspondingly, a perfectly natural idea within this logic is that the haters of Christ have directed their emotions chiefly against Orthodoxy, as the most “pure” and consistent Christian confession. This idea was notably voiced by the indisputable religious authority of the fundamentalists — the aforementioned Metropolitan Ioann. “The full weight of the hatred of the deicide people has inevitably and lawfully concentrated upon the God-bearing people,” he writes in his principal and most popular work, “The Autocracy of the Spirit.” Proceeding from this thesis, it is easy to understand the motives of the Jews, tirelessly weaving a conspiracy against Russia. “None of such clashes, neither in the ferocity of the struggle nor in its consequences, can compare with the religious war that Judaism has stubbornly and continuously waged against Christ’s Church for two millennia now. The spiritual principles of the two sides are utterly opposite and irreconcilable,” asserts Ioann elsewhere.

A natural continuation of this line of thought for Orthodox fundamentalists is the assertion of Jewish and Judaizing infiltration into the church hierarchy. The concept of a “fifth column” within the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is quite popular both in fully orthodox circles of the Church itself, including among clergy, and (to an even greater extent) among believers oriented toward “alternative Orthodoxy.” The inconsistent and cautious ecumenical and liberal tendencies of recent years within the ROC are perceived very painfully by the orthodox. Naturally, the guilty party is found in the Jews, who are allegedly converting to Orthodoxy en masse not in order to be saved, but in order to “save” the church from true teaching. Of course, this accusation is directed more against “church liberals” than against the entire hierarchy. “Changing the order of worship, ‘translating’ Church Slavonic into modern street language, omitting the names of ‘unacceptable’ saints and even ‘inconvenient’ parts of the Creed — they find none of this difficult,” writes Vladimir Osipov, the leader of the fundamentalist Union “Christian Revival,” in a document with the telling title “The Church under Siege.” To be fair, Osipov seems to believe (and backs his thesis with the example of Fr. Alexander Men) that the danger posed by Jewish clergymen lies not in a conscious destructive intent, but in their mentality, “in an organic rejection of all that is ‘historical’—i.e., canonical Orthodoxy, which they have branded as ‘Black-Hundredist.’” A similar statement is contained in the classic work of Christian anti-Semitism—Deacon Andrei Kuraev’s book “How They Make an Antisemite.” According to Kuraev, Jews, by virtue of the national character of their religiosity, even when fully churched, still do not set themselves the goal of salvation by joining the Church; rather, they attempt to “save” the Church itself from “heresy” (in their view), whether from the right or the left. Kuraev’s position merits attention also because it can fairly be regarded as an almost official point of view of the Church. To be sure, the author himself writes: “This book does not have official blessing. This means that I alone, and not the Russian Orthodox Church, am responsible for everything written in it.” Yet A. Kuraev is a symbolic figure; he is practically the only person in the Church who voices its position on topical issues, regularly appears on television, and actively publishes clarifications about various problems. Within the Church, he is perceived (perhaps for lack of a better alternative) as practically an official authority. As far as is known, no condemnation or doubt about the correctness of his works has ever been voiced by the church hierarchy. For many fundamentalist leaders, by contrast, such statements have indeed been made. Kuraev appears to express the position of the “right center” in the ROC.

According to another, more radical point of view, the infiltration of Jews into the clergy is part of a global plan to seize power in the world, “is built strictly according to the scheme prescribed by the great rabbis,” and pursues “goals defined by Talmudic laws.” Characteristically, this position belongs to Anatoly Makeev, the leader of the Oprichnina Brotherhood in the name of St. Joseph of Volotsk, a “catacomb Christian.”

Any attempts on the part of ROC hierarchs to establish amicable contact with Jews meet an extremely wary and painful reaction in reactionary Orthodox circles. Primarily, this refers to the well-known address of Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’ Alexy II to American Jews in 1992 (“Our prophets are your prophets…”), which nearly caused a schism in the ROC. The resonance of that speech was extraordinarily wide. The Patriarch was called a “heretic,” his “non-Russian” origins and the surname Rediger were pressed upon him, etc. A movement of “non-commemorators” even emerged—i.e., some priests excluded the mention of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’ from the Liturgy, thereby demonstratively distancing themselves from his “ecumenical” line. Though, realizing that “non-commemoration” created the preconditions for a break in canonical communion and a schism, most parishes soon abandoned this practice (the threat of schism is one of the factors seriously restraining the internal “right” opposition within the Church). However, it is obvious that all subsequent statements by the Patriarch declaring his tolerance and benevolent attitude toward Judaism and other religions in general have been far more cautious and less provocative.

A characteristic remark by ROCOR parishioner Konstantin Kasimovsky, former editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Stormtrooper”: “When the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’ says to the Yids: ‘Shalom to you, brothers, we believe in one God and you and I have common prophets and Gods,’ that deserves to have the Patriarch defrocked and generally excommunicated from the church.”

The desire of the primate of the ROC to demonstrate his benevolent attitude toward Judaism is viewed by fundamentalists, even those within the bosom of the ROC, as an attempt to “turn Orthodoxy into Judaism with a Christian ‘postscript.’” The idea of reconciliation between Christianity and Judaism is perceived by them as an attempted compromise, which in matters of faith can in principle not exist: “Either—or. Either Holy Orthodoxy or Christ-hating Talmudism.”

In far-right, pseudo-ecclesiastical religious periodicals, the classic accusation against Jews of ritual murder frequently appears. This accusation, “sanctified” by tradition, fits neatly into the logic of Orthodox anti-Judaism. Sometimes, to be fair, it is not Judaism as a whole that is accused of ritual murder, but only Jewish sects (usually the Hasidim): “I want to reassure ordinary Jews, for whom killing a child is as heinous a sin as it is for any other person. No one accuses the Jewish people of these crimes. But there are Jewish sects that engage in satanic rituals, using the blood of Christian infants,” writes the publication most “authoritative” on the subject of ritual murder—the newspaper Black Hundred. Orthodox-monarchist journalism often claims that the murder of Nicholas II was also ritual in nature. The policy of state atheism that followed the fall of the autocracy, in the ideology of the near-church far right, was actually dictated by the primary driving motives of the “God-fighting anti-Russian forces” (i.e., the Jews)—a desire to overthrow Orthodoxy. The destruction of churches and killing of priests under Soviet rule was supposedly prescribed by Jewish sacred books and carried out in strict accordance with those prescriptions.

The Sretensky Podvorye in central Moscow, headed by Archbishop Tikhon (Shevkunov) (rumored, though unconfirmed, to have been the spiritual father of President V. Putin), houses one of the largest church publishing houses with its own website, Pravoslavie.Ru. Through the use of the newspaper and radio station Radonezh as well, Orthodox-fundamentalist views are actively disseminated from here.

Thus, Orthodoxy among Christian confessions occupies the most conservative (orthodox) position, and is slow to react to the “signs of the times” coming from the West, expressed in particular in a revision of the traditional Christian view of Judaism. One can assert that, despite certain liberal and “philo-Semitic” tendencies in Russian Orthodoxy, the Church as a whole continues to adhere to a medieval position which, with some exaggeration, may be characterized as Christian antisemitism. Moreover, ultra-reactionary elements are strong both within the ROC and beyond it, paying particularly close attention to the “Jewish question.” In Orthodoxy, anti-Judaism and antisemitism are an organic and inseparable part of the worldview, and this situation is unlikely to change in the near future.

Part 10. Conclusion.

The tsar’s power guards the faith,
The faith the tsar’s power confirms;
United, they oppress society:
One strives to shackle reason,
The other seeks to crush the will;
“For the common good,” they say.

Russian writer and philosopher Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev (1749–1802).
Ode “Liberty” (1781)

From the facts presented above, one can draw an unambiguous conclusion: the ROC and the public institutions dependent on it, in which it plays a decisive role, are trying, as they did a thousand years ago, to impose on the whole of Russian society the “only correct,” in their view, world-understanding, interpretation of history, and concept of the divine. Examining the ideological line of ROC hierarchs today is impossible apart from the current policies of state leaders. The ROC institution, usurping people’s right to an independent critical evaluation of events, uses its close connections in the state security organs. The modern ROC, which was created under the direct leadership of the KGB and the tyrant Stalin, today seeks to enshrine at the legislative level its dominant, privileged position in Russian society. Orthodoxy serves as an active conduit of totalitarian ideas, acting as the strangler of what is most precious to a person—freedom of choice. This can and should be viewed as an attempt at a revanche by totalitarianism and the medieval inquisition.

The fusion of the ROC religious institution and the state is a dangerous trend, threatening to deprive people of fundamental freedoms and to de facto formalize the ROC as a totalitarian institution of suppression of human and citizen rights and freedoms. On July 8, 2009, the chairman of the State Duma Committee for Labor and Social Policy, Andrey Isaev, following a meeting with Patriarch Kirill, stated that the ruling party “United Russia” intends to involve the ROC for discussion of social matters. He also noted that henceforth “United Russia and the ROC will monthly discuss draft laws with representatives of the ROC in order to avoid misunderstandings.”

To justify the dominant role of the ROC in state policy, ROC patriarchs often misinform the population with unrealistic figures of the percentage ratio of Orthodox to other religions and confessions. In reality, a mere 1.5% of Russian citizens regularly attend Orthodox churches and participate in their religious rites.

“More than 2.1 million Russians took part in the Christmas services held last night. This was reported to ITAR-TASS by the press secretary of the Department of Public Order Protection of the Russian Interior Ministry, Olga Shklyarova.

The population of Russia is 140 million. The Christmas service was attended by 2.1 million people, which amounts to 1.468%.”

Despite this, the ROC, using its privileged access to the mass media controlled by the government in Russia, conducts a massive propaganda campaign for its totalitarian ideas, alien to the greater part of Russian society.

Evident is the merging of the state repressive apparatus with the excessively bloated staff of the ROC (Russian Orthodox Church), largely maintained at the expense of Russian taxpayers. Representing the interests of a minuscule part of the Russian Federation’s population, the ROC’s influence on the formation of totalitarian ideology in the Russian Federation is disproportionately large. Historically serving as a conduit for ideas of intolerance and a bulwark of tsarist, imperial tyranny, the ROC continues to destroy the remnants of Russia’s pre-imperial, free, democratic culture preserved in Slavic lands, effectively justifying the vertical of power and serving as its spiritual—if the word “spirituality” is at all applicable here—support. The Orthodox Inquisition today has infiltrated the legislative bodies of power and is already openly manifesting its tyrannical traditions. At this pace, it is just a stone’s throw away from an officially proclaimed inquisition.

List of references.

Report compiled by:
Vladislav Pochepinsky, Oleg Troshkin
Institute of National Democracy

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