Skoptsy

RIA Novosti is running a series on Russia’s religious sects. The news service takes a look at the history of some of these groups and their leaders, and also asks “why Russia has proved such fertile ground for the growth of new and bizarre beliefs.” Part one:

MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti’s Marc Bennetts) – Russia has seen a colossal number of sects and fringe religions throughout its long history, from the 18th-century self-castrating Skoptsy to the modern-day doomsday cult whose members threatened to burn themselves alive in the Volga Region last year.

Up until the mid 17th century, the Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed complete spiritual authority. However, in 1666, Patriarch Nikon decided to bring the Russian Church in line with Greek Orthodoxy, and ordered the rewriting of ecclesiastical tomes.

His move, in a country where dogma and tradition had always played a large role in religious life, caused an uproar.

Nikon’s assertion that Orthodox believers should use three fingers instead of two to cross themselves led to him being labeled the Antichrist by opponents of his changes. Pious Russians had long feared the year 1666, with its satanic associations, and Nikon’s actions seemed to them to be a sign that the Apocalypse was fast approaching.

The Old Believers subsequently fled to Siberia and other remote areas of Russia to escape persecution and await the end of the world. Some of the groups cut themselves off so effectively that isolated communities that knew little of developments in the modern world were still being found in the 1960s and 1970s by Soviet geological expeditions.

This 17th century rejection of the Church’s authority laid the roots for a subsequent explosion of sects and cults, many of them fixating on a single piece of scripture, or an interpretation of scripture, and basing their entire belief system around it. Continue reading →