The Castrates, the Specter of Pugachev, and Religious Policy under Nicholas I

Abstract

The Castrates, the Specter of Pugachev, and Religious Policy under Nicholas I Maureen Perrie (bio) The tenure of L. A. Perovskii in the Ministry of the Interior (1841–52) witnessed a growing interest by the tsarist government in the collection of information about the Old Believers, the traditionalist Orthodox Christians who rejected the church reforms introduced under Patriarch Nikon in the 17th century. Perovskii's policies have been well described by Thomas Marsden in his book on religious toleration in 19th-century Russia. Marsden sees Perovskii's approach as marking a new stage in government policy toward the Schism. By stressing its political significance and depicting it as a potential threat to the security of the state, Perovskii laid the basis for the policies of his successor, D. G. Bibikov, who in 1853–55 embarked on a campaign of harsh repression of Old Belief.1 Marsden identifies three main areas in which Old Belief was found to be a political threat in the mid-19th century. First, in 1846 the priested Old Believers (popovtsy) established an episcopate in Austrian Belaia Krinitsa which could ordain priests for their community in Russia, thereby evading the restrictions on their acquisition of priests that had been imposed by the government of Nicholas I. Second, the community of priestless Old Believers (bezpopovtsy) based in the Preobrazhenskii Cemetery in Moscow was claimed to harbor antistatist elements who refused to pray for the tsar, while some of them even regarded the monarch as the Antichrist. And finally, in 1850 one of the fact-finding expeditions that Perovskii sent to the localities to collect information "discovered" in Iaroslavl´ Province the sect of beguny (Runaways) or stranniki (Wanderers), whose identification of the tsar as Antichrist had led them to avoid all engagement with the state and its institutions, thereby committing acts that officialdom understandably [End Page 299] considered to be criminal, such as nonpayment of taxes and refusal to register for the census or provide recruits for the armed forces.2 Although Marsden provides a detailed and thoroughly researched account of Perovskii's policies toward the Old Believers, his decision to focus on the schismatics, rather than the non-Orthodox sects, means that he only briefly mentions Perovskii's interest in the Castrates (skoptsy), which first drew the government's attention to the political aspects of religious dissidence as early as 1843.3 In this article I examine the government's investigations into the skoptsy in 1843–45 to demonstrate that they regarded them as a threat not only because, as Marsden states, they identified Kondratii Selivanov, the founder of their sect, with Tsar Peter III (who had reigned briefly in 1762), but also because Perovskii's officials suspected that they regarded Selivanov as a potential Pugachev, the Don cossack claiming to be Peter III who had led a mass popular uprising against the government of Catherine II ("the Great") in 1774–75.4 Since the skoptsy also believed that Selivanov (who had died in 1832) was still alive, the prospect of a new insurrection led by a pretender-tsar (samozvanets) was still—the government feared—an immediate one. Such an insurrection could involve not only large numbers of Old Believers, as the Pugachev uprising in the 18th century had done, but also discontented members of the lower classes more generally. Moreover, because of their belief that Peter III was still alive, the skoptsy rejected the legitimacy of his successors, including the reigning tsar, Nicholas I. In this respect—Perovskii's advisers suggested—they resembled other religious dissidents, especially the more radical Old Believer priestless sects who viewed the tsar as the Antichrist. Thus in spite of the relatively small numbers of skoptsy, it was argued that they had much in common with other more numerous dissident groups who shared their hatred of the existing order. The reports on the skoptsy compiled by Perovskii's advisers—I [End Page 300] argue—paved the way for a broader mood of suspicion within government of the potentially politically subversive nature of religious dissent that would eventually lead to the extreme repression of the "Bibikov system" of 1853–55. The article therefore makes a contribution to our understanding of government policy not...