CHAPTER XXII
THE SELF-MUTILATORS
The thirst for perfection, the ardent desire to draw near to God, sometimes takes the form of an unhappy perversion of reason and common sense. The popular soul knows no hesitation when laying its offerings upon the Altar of the Good. It dares not only to flout the principles of patriotism, of family love, and of respect for the power and the dogmas of the established church, but, taking a step further, will even trample underfoot man's deepest organic needs, and actually seek to destroy the instinct of self-preservation. What even the strictest reformers, the most hardened misanthropists, would hardly dare to suggest, is accomplished as a matter of course by simple peasants in their devotion to whatever method of salvation they believe to be in accordance with God's will. Thus came into existence the self-mutilators, or skoptzi, victims, no doubt, of some mental aberration, some misdirected sense of duty, but yet how impressive in their earnestness!
The sect having been in existence for more than a century ought perhaps to be excluded from our present survey; but it has constantly developed, and even seemed to renew its youth, so merits consideration even if only in the latter phases of its evolution.
The skoptzi were allowed, at the beginning of the twentieth century, to form separate communities, and the life of these communities under quite exceptional social conditions, without love, children, marriage or family ties, offers a melancholy field for observation. Indeed, these colonies of mutilated beings, hidden in the depths of Siberia, give one a feeling as of some monstrous and unfamiliar growth, and present one of the most puzzling aspects of the religious perversions of the present age.
After being denounced and sentenced, and after performing the forced labour allotted to them—a punishment specially reserved for the members of sects considered dangerous to orthodoxy—the skoptzi, men and women alike, were permitted to establish their separate colonies, like those of Olekminsk and Spasskoïe.
The forced labour might cripple their limbs, but it did not weaken their faith, which blossomed anew under the open skies of Siberia, and seemed only to be intensified by their long sufferings in prison.
The martyrs who took refuge in these Siberian paradises were very numerous. It has been calculated that at the end of the nineteenth century they numbered more than sixty-five thousand, and this is probably less than the true figure, for, considering the terrible ordinances of their religion, it is not likely that they would trouble much about registering themselves for official statistics. We may safely say that in 1889 there were about twelve hundred and fifty in the neighbourhood of Yakutsk who had already accomplished their term of forced labour. They formed ten villages, and it would be difficult to specify their various nationalities, though it is known that in Spasskoïe, in 1885, there were, among seven hundred and ten members of the sect, six hundred and ninety-three Russians, one Pole, one Swede, and fifteen Finns.
To outward view their colonies were rather peculiar. Each village was built with one long, wide street, and the houses were remarkable for the solidity of their construction, for the flourishing gardens that surrounded them, and for their unusual height in this desolate land where, as a rule, nothing but low huts and hovels were to be seen. A house was shared, generally, by three or four believers, and—perhaps owing to their shattered nervous systems—they appeared to live in a state of constant uneasiness, and always kept revolvers at hand. The "brothers" occupied one side of the building, and the "sisters" the other; and while the former practised their trades, or were engaged in commerce, the women looked after the house, and led completely isolated lives. On the arrival of a stranger they would hide, and if he offered to shake hands with one of them, she would blush, saying, "Excuse me, but that is forbidden to us," and escape into the house.
The existence of the "sisters" was indeed a tragic one. Deprived of the sweetness of love or family life, without children, and at the mercy of hardened egoists, such as the skoptzi usually became, their sequestered lives seemed to be cut off from all normal human happiness.