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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
1 See Klibanov, “The Dissident Denominations in the Past and Today,” Soviet Sociology, III (1965), No. 4, 44-60, for a brief illustration.
2 As I have suggested elsewhere ( Ethel, and Dunn, Stephen P., “Religion as an Instrument of Culture Change: The Problem of Sects in the Soviet Union,” Slavic Review, XXIII, No. 3 [1964], 462–64Google Scholar), this position does not correspond to the facts, a detailed examination of which would probably show that considerable support for the Bolshevik Revolution came, at least in the preparatory stages, from sectarians of all classes, including the bourgeoisie Klibanov works so hard to discredit.
3 It is worth noting that Verigin was interested in obtaining for his group privileges which had been extended to Russian Old Believers of Semipalatinsk Guberniia until 1878 ( E. E., Blomkvist and N. N., Grinkova, Bukhtarminskie Staroobriadtsy [Leningrad, 1930]Google Scholar). This group had paid a iasak tax (after 1878 the tax was calculated in money at eight rubles a head); they were also exempt from military service—privileges more usually extended to non-Russians or “aliens” living on Russian soil. According to Klibanov, the Dukhobors considered themselves not Russians but members of an enclave “Dukhoboria.“
4 Cessation of the export of Russia's raw materials; institution of an intensive effort at industrialization, with a “popular-state industry,” dispersed outside the cities; reduction of taxes to a minimum; a volunteer army which would pursue a policy of neutrality; setting up a volunteer militia for the keeping of internal order; and speedy limitation of the city system, “directed toward the complete liquidation of the cities” (p. 120). This nonpartisan program would have solved many of the problems Russia faced at the time— and in large part still faces.
5 See the chapter on Siutaev in Prugavin, A. S., Religioznye otshchepentsy: Ocherki sovremennogo sektantstva (Moscow, 1906)Google Scholar.
6 As Prugavin noted in the foreword to his book Monastyrskie tiurmy v bor'be s sektantstvom: K voprosu o veroterpimosti (Moscow, 1906), despite the declaration of religious toleration, some sectarians were kept in the dungeons of Orthodox Church monasteries. Klibanov also notes the emigration between 1901 and 1911 of 3500 members of the sect of Priguny (a wing of Molokanism) to California (p. 145), but he prefers to see in this not the failure of toleration of sectarianism but the desire of the Molokans (and Dukhobors) to develop along capitalist lines under better economic conditions than existed in Russia at the time.
7 Alexander Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture (Stanford, 1963), pp. 3-70. According to Vucinich, Peter the Great's outlook on life was thoroughly Protestant, and most other tsars were pragmatists and not bound by religion in terms of culture change.
8 “In the explanation of the governor of Tambov Guberniia to the Department of Spiritual Affairs ‘on the propaganda of Baptism in the Guberniia’ (February 1912), the cause of this was connected with the Stolypin reforms: ‘As a consequence of the land reforms in Tambov Gub[erniia], otrub agriculture has appeared. The settlement of small property-owning peasants on otruba has told in a highly negative manner on their religio-moral condition. They are forced by the new conditions of life to settle far from churches and schools. Full freedom of propaganda on the khutora is opened to sectarians’ “ (Klibanov, p. 227).
9 This is Klibanov's abstract (pages 137-38) of an account published in 1915 by a man who had grown up in the community and taught in its school, but Klibanov is vague about its location. Though the Obshchee continued to grow in numbers, by 1910 communal living had long since gone by the board, perhaps because of population pressure, though Klibanov does not say. Russian communes often functioned best with a small membership.
10 Analogous figures are introduced by Klibanov for Vorontsovka, in Borchalinskii Uezd, Tiflis Guberniia, a well constructed village of 272 households more than 100 versts from the nearest city, which had been able to haul 100,000 poods of hay out of the uezd to market (p. 159).
11 For a 10-hour day a weaver got 10-18 rubles a month, a metalworker 15-20 rubles, female workers 4.68-6.50 rubles, and girls and adolescents 4.10-4.60 rubles.
12 Molokan farmers eagerly bought virgin land—or established claim to it by occupying it for a specified period. Under the primitive technological conditions of the time, they often cleared the land for farming and then after a few years moved on to other ground, because land was cheaper than labor. But for the most part, the Molokans cultivated more intensely than their neighbors—more of the land in their possession was actually under cultivation, and yields were higher.
13 In 1908 a non-Russian got 15-17 rubles a month. The migrant Russian worker in the Amur region got one or two desiatinas of land to work (small by local standards), a maximum of 25 rubles a month grubstake, and 1-1.25 rubles’ worth of hay (p. 154).
14 la. Iakovlev, Derevnia kak ona est’ (Ocherki Nikol'skoi volosti) (Moscow, 1923).
15 Vucinich, pp. xv, 6-7.
16 For this one must look in relatively unusual places. For instance, in P. I. Mel'nikov's novel Na gorakh, the rich (and miserly) Old Believer merchant Marko Danilych Smolokurov has just bought a large quantity of books for his daughter: “In the purchased box there were a good number of mystical books coming to us in Catherine's time and especially at the beginning of the present [nineteenth] century. Then they not only printed translations of Boehme, Lamotte-Guion, Jung-Stilling, and Eckartshausen but even published a special mystical journal, Sionskii vestnik. All this, although it was written in cloudy language, nevertheless penetrated in great quantity to the half-literate simple people. City and village readers read these books with great willingness; it pleased them to break their heads over ‘not easily understood speeches,’ to judge and weigh them in comradely conversations, to discuss them from all angles. With sincere conviction the readers supposed that, having read these books, they would penetrate into the very depths of human wisdom. And even now one may still find in some bourgeois or peasant home some of these books, which have become great rarities. These books are especially preserved among the Molokans and among adherents of various branches of the Khlysty. Some, having read these books, entered ‘the ship of God's people’ [as, a footnote by Mel'nikov explains, communities of Khlysty were called]. The teachers and prophets of the Khlysty, in their frenzied speeches and in their written works, cite these books [Mel'nikov's footnote here names them, adding that they were also held in high regard by the Molokans]. Those who had read Sionskii vestnik even formed a special sect, ‘the Church of Zion,’ or the ‘Christians of the Right Hand’ [by Old Believer belief, the devil sat on the left hand or shoulder]. These Right-Hand Christians are also called ‘Labazintsy,’ from the name of the editor of that journal, who was exiled to Simbirsk” ( Mel'nikov, P. I., “Na gorakh,” in Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh [Moscow, 1963], IV, 542 Google Scholar). This passage illustrates neatly the wide distribution of ideas common in one degree or another to all the sects in the nineteenth century, and to some degree even now. Baptists, Evangelical Christians, Adventists, and to some extent Jehovah's Witnesses (with whom Klibanov does not deal) found a fair number of converts among the Molokans and the very much smaller sect of “Right-Hand Christians.“
17 Among the Molokans the Prokhanov family was associated with considerable wealth. whether as owners or as trustees for the community Klibanov does not make clear. It is possible that well into the nineteenth century property belonging to the community could legally be attributed only to the individual (see Klibanov's statement that the Sirotskii Dom—a Dukhobor bank and charitable institution—had been the personal property of the Dukhobor leader Kalmykova).
18 Klibanov interposes an exclamation point after the word bezbozhnoe, but compare the death-of-God theology recently expounded by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his followers.
19 Mitrokhin, “Trud o russkom sektantstve,” Voprosy filosofii, No. 9, 1966, pp. 150-54.
20 It is worthwhile to note a book by F. Federenko, Sekty, ikh vera i dela (Moscow, 1965), which attempts, in a far less scholarly fashion than Klibanov would have adopted, to provide some of the missing intellectual parts to the description of sectarianism from a Marxist point of view, at least as interpreted by Federenko. Sandwiched between two citations from the works of Marx and Engels, we have the following: “The study of economic and political conditions alone cannot give a complete explanation of the reasons for leaving some sects and joining some others, the decline of some sects and the birth of others. For we know that religion also influences those people who do not experience economic and political oppression” (Federenko, p. 31). Federenko has thus opened an avenue for himself which the more scholarly Klibanov either could not or would not see, and it must be said that the result is a strange book. On the one hand, it allows the reader to speculate that perhaps there are two trends in sectarianism—militant and pacifist—and that perhaps this is as important a principle as that of class struggle. On the other hand, perhaps this is an illusion, and the operative factor is an impenetrable language barrier. Federenko discusses at considerable length the ideas of I. E. Voronaev, a Pentecostalist ministermissionary with truly hypnotic powers, and those of A. Demidov, an Adventist and former editor of Golos istinny. It is possible for me to understand and even to admire both men, although I certainly am unable to believe in the Christian revelation. Federenko's purpose, however, is to demonstrate that both men are in reality playing fast and loose with the ideals of communism for their own evil ends. One wonders whether Soviet readers to whom this book is addressed—in an edition of 70,000 copies—find the demonstration convincing.
21 Kon, “Katyn-Arynskoe skopcheskoe selenie (Fakty, tsifry, nabliudeniia),” Izvestiia Vostochno-Sibirskogo otdela Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, XXVI, No. 4-5 (1896), 58-117.
22 Vinogradov, “Smert’ i zagrobnaia zhizn’ v vozzreniiakh starozhilogo naseleniia Sibiri,“ Sbornik trudov professorov i prepodavatelei Gosudarstvennogo Irkutskogo universiteta (Irkutsk), No. 5, 1923, pp. 261-345.
23 Vorob'ev, “Materialy po bytu russkogo starozhil'cheskogo naseleniia Vostochnoi Sibiri: Naselenie Prichunskogo kraia, Eniseikoi gubernii,” Izvestiia Obshchestva arkheologii, istorii i etnografii pri Kazanskom Gosudarstvennom universitete, XXXIII, No. 2-3(1926), 59-112.
24 Mel'nikov, “Na gorakh,” in Sobranie sochinenii, V, 23 n.
25 This conclusion is most explicitly argued in Stephen P. Dunn and Ethel Dunn, The Peasants of Central Russia (New York, 1967).