“DEEP DARKNESS CASE”: SACRED SERVICERS ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE MULTAN CASE

Abstract

The collection of documents of the Central State Archive of the Udmurt Republic (TsGA UR) contains a selection of materials on the so-called "Multan case" - a false accusation of Udmurt peasants p. Old Multan in human sacrifice to pagan gods. Along with the official police inquiry, the Sarapul spiritual government instructed the priest John Anisimov to conduct his own investigation into the murder of the Russian peasant Konon Matyushin with the aim of "making a human blood sacrifice to the votsk pagan gods". According to the results of the investigation, in the “Note” presented, not one of the priests interviewed who had direct contact with the multants confirmed the rumors about human sacrifices in their midst. Researchers believe that the reasons for the false accusation of the Udmurts are not only rooted in the ignorance of a significant part of the population and their “ethnographic illiteracy”, they are also associated with the crisis that the Russian Empire was experiencing at the turn of the XIX - XX centuries, the government’s attempts to force the incorporation of national suburbs into the empire , unify them not only in administrative, but also in cultural aspects. The outcome of the Multan case was the victory of the progressive Russian public, science and Russian law over police-judicial arbitrariness, ignorance and prejudice, but on the accused Multans, and in general on the Udmurts, the "Multan Trial" had a huge negative impact.