Khlyst. Sekty, literatura i revoliutsiia (review)

In this fascinating, path-breaking, encyclopedic survey of Silver Age images and myths about religious sectarianism, the prolific cultural commentator Aleksandr Etkind argues that sects, literature, and revolution are tightly related:

Beginning with the Time of Troubles and ending with the Silver Age, the native Russian mysticism of religious sectarianism exerted a growing influence on Russian civilization. This influence corresponded not to the activity and expansion of sects, but to the position from which people of culture accepted them.

(675–76)

Silver Age writers, Etkind goes on to say, used their images of popular religious dissent to fashion texts that revolutionaries such as Vladimir Lenin and Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich later brought to life. The Bolsheviks followed a script created by the Russian cultural elite: "Exoticizing the sects, exaggerating their statistics and radicalizing their myths, Russian ethnographers promised to the revolution great secret resources that no longer existed anywhere. Sacralizing the common people, problematizing social and gender relations, inviting the reader to the Apocalypse, Russian symbolism created models for the transfer from the popular utopia of the 19th century to the ideological utopia of the 20th" (676). Moreover, this cultural work was absolutely necessary for the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution. After all, "revolutions do not create their own projects; on the contrary, they realize desires which were dreamed, discussed, and written about in the underground" (676).

Etkind bravely tackles one of the chief questions of the intellectual historian: how do the ideas of the cultural elite affect historical reality? But the answer that he provides is too simplistic. In his work of nearly 700 pages, he seriously examines only one single Bolshevik, Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich (1873–1955) – certainly not the most influential party member. And even in the case of Bonch-Bruevich, it is difficult to see how the Silver Age writers created the Bolshevik program.

The chief value of this work does not lie in Etkind's broad generalizations, but in the wealth of detail that he adduces about each text he discusses. In his preface, Etkind claims that he is engaging in a Foucauldian project of textual archeology. Indeed he privileges the texts of the Silver Age writers, and he organizes his book so that each chapter is devoted to a specific writer. But in doing so, he neglects the historical context in which artists, writers, and philosophers produced these ideas, images, myths, and texts.

The very title of Etkind's book illustrates his disdain for precise definitions and historical context. The word khlyst, which means whip or flagellant, had become, by the late 18th century, a term of opprobrium for several unrelated religious movements. No religious group claimed to be khlysty; this epithet was imposed upon them by their enemies, including Orthodox missionaries, state officials, and even other rival religious dissenters. The term khlyst, like the American English word "cultist," lacks precision since it does not refer to a single religious tradition or set of practices. For example, the term khlyst was originally applied to the followers of Danilo Filippov, a 17th-century Kostroma monastery peasant who apparently claimed to be an incarnation of Christ. Danilo's followers were originally secret Old Believers. Like other Old Believers, they crossed themselves with two fingers, welcomed Old Believer monks who refused to adopt the Greek liturgical vestments introduced by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow (r. 1652–58), listened to the apocalyptic sermons of itinerant Old Believers, and maintained Old Believer icons in their holiest places.¹ Later, however, the term khlyst was also applied to an entirely different spiritual movement founded by the serf Abbakum Ivanov Kopylov (1756–1838) of Tambov province. Kopylov's followers knew nothing of Danilo Filippov and did not venerate him. Moreover, Kopylov was no Old Believer; on the contrary, Kopylov and his followers sought validation of their movement from Orthodox bishops, read the works of the Orthodox bishop Tikhon (Sokolov) of Zadonsk (1724–83, canonized 1861) in their assemblies of prayer, and faithfully attended the Orthodox church.² In the late 19th century, the...