Russia, as Seen and Described by Famous Writers

by Unknown

Let us turn our attention from the Raskolniks, or Old Believers of the far North, who, as we have seen, so literally "forsook all" for their ancient Faith, to some few of the many new, or lately developed creeds whose followers are seeking after truth with equal earnestness and vigour, but along very different lines. Sect begets sect in the world of theology, much as cell begets cell in the economy of life. Change seems the active principle of all dissent; new cults are forever springing up in the mystic childlike minds of the Tsar's great peasant family, nor could one expect uniformity of confession, when the size and neighbours of that family are considered, for Mohammedan, Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, and Shamanist surround it, are made subject to it, and eventually become a part thereof. A Mosque stands opposite the Orthodox church in the great square which forms the centre of Nijni-Novgorod, a Roman Catholic and a German Lutheran church almost face the magnificent Kazan Cathedral, in the Nevski-Prospekt of St. Petersburg. The waiters of nearly all restaurants, from Archangel to Baku, are Mohammedan Tartars, the Jew is in every market-place, the native heathen races, Lapp, Samoyede, Ostiac, Yakout, and a score of others, are closely connected by the bonds of commerce: can it be wondered at if the ideas of the peasant become tinted by his surroundings?

It cannot be gainsaid that the lifelessness and emptiness of the State Church, with its hireling and often ignorant priesthood, fails to satisfy the great mind of Russia—the peasant mind—but now awakening from its long infant slumber, as did the mind of Western Europe three centuries ago. Next perhaps to the extreme literalness with which the Mujik interprets Holy Writ, this dissatisfaction with the official Church is the greatest cause of the grip which the chameleon-like "dissent" has taken hold of the popular mind. With very few exceptions—notably the Skoptsy—the 150 sects which are stated to exist within the pale of Christianity and the borders of the Empire of the Tsar, begin and end with the Mujik; the official world is of necessity Orthodox, the wealthy world careless, and this fact, of the peasant origin and development of the denominations, must be carefully borne in mind when attempting to form any idea of the widely different meanings and shades of meaning which have been put upon the one Bible story.

Of the strictly rational, and more or less Protestant, portion of Russian dissent, the Dukhobortsy, or "Wrestlers with the Holy Spirit," and their descendants in the faith, the Molokans, or "Milk Drinkers," are perhaps the best known to us, from the fact of their having emigrated to English-speaking lands, and from the valiant championing of their cause by Count L. D. Tolstoi. They form the antithesis of the Old Believers, as is well set forth in the conversation between A. Leroy-Beauleau (in the Empire of the Tsars) and a fisherman of the persuasion, who said, "The Raskolniks would go to the block for the sign of the Cross with two fingers. As for us, we don't cross ourselves at all, either with two fingers or with three, but we strive to gain a better knowledge of God"; and, indeed, his words may stand for a declaration of the simple faith of his people, for their worship is marked by a deep contempt for tradition, dogma, and ceremony. They have even done away with the church, and, as a rule, use the house of their elders as a meeting-place. Communion has been simplified away, marriage reduced to a simple declaration, and invocation of God's blessing, the priesthood question, the rock which first split the Old Faith, solved by making every man a priest in his own family: surely their motto, "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life," has been well acted up to. Indeed, the whole theology of the Dukhobortsy may be summed up as a bold attempt to depart from the empty Greek formalism and arrive at a spiritual and unconventional worship, an enlargement of the outline given in the shortest and grandest of sermons.

The Molokani are said to have obtained this name from taking milk and butter during fast times when they are forbidden to the Orthodox, but more probably from the fact of their having colonies on either bank of the river Molochnaia, so called from the whiteness of its waters, due to potassium salts. They are very closely akin to the Dukhobortsy, of which sect they are an offshoot. They hope for a millennium, and to this end tend all their communistic experiments; for each of their village settlements is striving to manufacture its own earthly Paradise and run it on its own lines.

SHRINE IN THE CONVENT SOLOVETSKII, KOLA.

The Stunda is perhaps the largest and most rapidly developing faction of nonconformity, for it has ramified from Odessa—its starting point—throughout Tsarland, save in the extreme north and north-east. This faith can be traced directly to the influence of certain Lutherans who emigrated from Würtemberg and settled in the fruitful "tchenoziom," or black earth lands, some half-century ago. The Stundist organization is much like that of the "Low Church" division of Protestantism, save that it has no ordained clergy, a body whom it regards as a somewhat expensive luxury, and replaces by elected elders, who lead the very simple services, at which any man or woman who feels called upon to do so may say what he or she will. These gatherings are more prayer-meetings than services, for there is no "Form of Prayer" to be used, but simply informal prayer, praise and song in the best room of a farmhouse, though, now that the Government are not so strict in their search after heretics, regular wooden "meeting-houses" have appeared in some of the Stundist villages.

If few of the rational sects have committed their history and their views, or indeed their creeds, to writing, lest they should fall into the hands of spies and be used in evidence against them, much more is this the case with those whose search after truth has led them to forsake the lines of rationalism and enter the land of mysticism and spiritualism. But two of these mystic schisms need we touch upon in this article, in order to show to what lengths the Mujik will go in his efforts to escape from the trammels of Orthodoxy, and with what logic he will follow up any given line of thought. Most of the irrational sects are older than those already mentioned, and do not seem to have their roots in other lands, but to be the expression of the Mujik's own mind in its waking moments: thus the "Khlystsy"—the name is a nickname taken from the word "Khlyst" (a whip)—date back to the early days of the Seventeenth Century. They hold that Christ has made and still makes repeated appearances on earth and in Russia, and indeed they are seldom without an incarnate God present with them in flesh and blood.

The Khlystsy meet by night, with the utmost secrecy, and are reported to dance, after the manner of the Dervishes, with ever-increasing rapidity, until their feelings are worked up to such a pitch that they are able to receive messages of inspiration, which they shout out to their fellows. If one of their number has a fit—not an uncommon event in some communes where close intermarriage among relations has been the practice for generations—he is safe to be regarded as an inspired messenger and duly honoured as such. Charges of every kind of vice have been laid at the door of the Khlystsy; their secret services have been called cloaks for immorality, and doubtless on occasion have been used as such; but, as the character of their congregation stands for high honesty and industry, it is surely more charitable to assume that their worst feature is their extreme secrecy, and that this, when added to the hatred of orthodox marriage which the sect shows, lies at the base of most of the accusations. Closely connected with these dancing Khlystsy are the jumping Shakuny, whose jumps are said to increase in height as do the circular movements of the former, until the proper state of mind for inspired prophecy is reached.

Among the stockbrokers and money-changers of Russian cities, as well as among peasants, may be seen the pale and almost hairless face, wavering voice, and mild manner of the "Skopets" who has put in practice upon himself the strange doctrine of self-mutilation. These "White Doves" as they call themselves, base their self-sacrifice upon the literal rendering of such texts as, "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out," "Except a man become as a little child, he shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven," and argue that in order to be pleasing to God, man—and in some instances woman—must become like the angels, whom they assert to be sexless, on the ground that "they neither marry nor are given in marriage."