God's people in the early eighteenth century : The Uglich affair of 1717 (original) (raw)

DOSSIER

J. EUGENE CLAY

GOD'S PEOPLE

IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE UGLICH AFFAIR OF 1717

In the mid-seventeenth century, a mysterious sect arose in the Volga-Oka basin. Calling themselves God's People, these sectarians were distinguished by seven characteristics:

1. their ecstatic form of worship, which included singing, dancing, and prophesying;

2. their strict asceticism which demanded total abstinence from sex, alcohol, and swearing;

3. their belief that their leaders were divine or divinely inspired;

4. their conviction that the end of time was at hand;

5. their ecclesiology, which represented them as the community of God's chosen people;

6. their external adherence to Orthodoxy;

7. the equal participation of women in the sect. Originally a peasant movement, the sect advanced from the Volga, moving mainly southward. By the early eighteenth century, city monks and town merchants were joining the sect.

As they grew, they attracted the enmity of both the official Church and the schismatic Old Believers. Thus, although the sectarians called themselves God's People (or Israel, Spiritual Christians, brethren in Christ), outsiders stuck them with pejorative epithets, the most common of which was the term "flagellant" (khlyst). The sectarians avoided this name, which they considered no more than an Orthodox slander. (1)

But the opposition was more serious than simple name- calling. During the eighteenth century, at least three criminal investigations were conducted against God's People - in 1717, 1733, and 1745-1752. These government documents form the most valuable source for the early history of the movement, since they contain the sectarians' own descriptions of their faith and practice. Although much has been written about God's People, little is known about who they were and what they practiced, and even less about why they practiced it. These documents carry the historian a little farther in his attempt to answer those questions.

Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique, XXVI (i), Janv.-Mars 1985, pp. 69-124.