Free Russia

A bishop, who has travelled much in his country, tells me they are ten or eleven millions strong. A minister of state informs me they are sixteen or seventeen millions strong. "Half the people, even now, are Old Believers," says a priest from Kem; "more than three-fourths will be, the moment we are free." My own experience leads me to think this priest is right. "I tell you what I find in going through the country," writes to me a German who has lived in Russia for thirty years, knowing the people well, yet standing free (as a Lutheran) from their local brawls; "I find, on taking the population, man by man, that four persons in five are either Old Believers now, or would be Old Believers next week, if it were understood among them that the Government left them free." This statement goes beyond my point; yet I see good reason every day to recognize the fact – so long concealed in official papers – that the Old Believers are the Russian people, while the Orthodox Believers are but a courtly, official, and monastic sect.

Nearly all the northern peasants are Old Believers; nearly all the Don Kozaks are Old Believers; more than half the population of Nijni and Kazan are Old Believers; most of the Moscow merchants are Old Believers. Excepting princes and generals, who owe their riches to imperial favor, the wealthiest men in Russia are Old Believers. The men who are making money, the men who are rising, the captains of industry, the ministers of commerce, the giants of finance – in one word, the men of the instant future – are members of the Popular Church.

Driving through the streets of Moscow, day by day, admiring the noble houses in town and suburb, your eye and ear are taken by surprise at every turn. "Whose house is this?" you ask. "Morozof's." "What is he?" "Morozof! why, sir, Morozof is the richest man in Moscow; the greatest mill-owner in Russia. Fifty thousand men are toiling in his mills. He is an Old Believer."

"Who lives here?" "Soldatenkof." "What is he!" "A great merchant; a great manufacturer; one of the most powerful men in Russia. He is an Old Believer."

"Who lives in yonder palace?"

"Miss Rokhmanof. In London you have such a lady; Miss Burdett Coutts is richer, perhaps, than Miss Rokhmanof, but not more swift to do good deeds. Her house, as you see, is big; it has thirty reception-rooms. She is an Old Believer." So you drive on from dawn to dusk. You go into the bazar – to find Old Believers owning most of the shops; you go into the University – to find Old Believers giving most of the burses; you go into the hospitals – to find Old Believers feeding nearly all the sick. The old Russ virtues – even the old Russ vices – will be found among these Old Believers; not among the polite and enervated followers of the official form. "In Russia," said to me a judge of men, "society has a ritual of her own; a ritual for the palace, for the convent, for the camp; a gorgeous ritual, fit for emperors and princes, such as the purple-born might offer to barbaric kings, not such as fishermen in Galilee would invent for fishermen on the Frozen Sea."

An Old Believer clings to the baldest forms of village worship, and the simplest usages of village life. Conservative in the bad sense, as in the good, he objects to every new thing, whether it be a synod of monks, a capital on foreign soil, a cup of tea sweetened with sugar, a city lit by gas. Show him a thing unknown to his fathers in Nikon's time, and you show him a thing which he will spurn as a work of the nether fiend.

These Old Believers are as much the enemies of an official empire as they are of an official church. The test of loyalty in Russia is praying for the reigning prince as a good Emperor and a good Christian; but many of these Old Believers will not pray for the reigning prince at all. Some will pray for him as Tsar, though not as Emperor; but none will pray for him as a Christian man. They look on him as reigning by a dubious title and a doubtful right. The word emperor, they say, means Chert – Black One; the double eagle an evil spirit; the autocracy a kingdom of Antichrist.

All this confusion in her moral and political life is traceable to the times of Nikon the Patriarch; a person hardly less important to a modern observer of Russia, than the great prince who is said by Old Believers to have been his bastard son.

About the time when our own Burton and Prynne were being laid in the pillory, when Hampden and Cromwell were being stayed in the Thames, a man of middle age and sour expression landed from a boat at Solovetsk to pray at the shrine of St. Philip, and beg an asylum from the monks. He described himself as a peasant from the Volga, his father as a field laborer in a village near Nijni. He was a married man and his wife was still alive. In his youth he had spent some time in a monastery, and after trying domestic life for ten years, he had persuaded his partner to become a bride of Christ. Leaving her in the convent of St. Alexie in Moscow, he had pushed out boldly into the frozen north.

At that time certain hermits lived on the isle of Anzersk, where the farm now stands, in whose "desert" this stranger found a home. There he took the cowl, and the name of Nikon; but his nature was so rough, that he was soon engaged in bickering with his chief as he had bickered with his wife. Eleazar, founder of the desert, desired to build a church of stone in lieu of his church of pines, and the two men set out for Moscow to collect some funds. They quarrelled on their road; they quarrelled on their return. At length, the brethren rose on the new-comer, expelled him from the desert, placed him in a canoe, with bread and water, and told him to go whither he pleased, so that he never came back. Chance threw him on shore at Ki, a rock in Onega Bay; where he set up a cross, and promised to erect a chapel, if the virgin whom he served would help him to get rich.

On crossing to the main land, he became the organizer of a band of hermits on Leather Lake (Kojeozersk) in the province of Olonetz. From Leather Lake he made his spring into power and fame; for having an occasion to see the Tsar Alexie on some business, he so impressed that very poor judge of men that in a few years he was raised to the seats of Archimandrite, Bishop, Metropolite, and Patriarch.

Combining the pride of Wolsey with the subtlety of Cranmer, Nikon set his heart on governing the Church with a sharper rod than had been used by his faint and shadowy predecessors. A burly fellow, flushed of face, red of nose, and bleary of eye, Nikon resembled a Friesland boor much more than a Moscovite monk. He revelled in pomp and show; he swelled with vanity as he sat enthroned in his cathedral near the Tsar. Feeling a priest's delight in the splendor of the Byzantine clergy, even under Turkish rule, he sought to model his own ceremonial rites on those of the Byzantine clergy, not aware that in going back to the Lower Empire he was seeking guidance from the Greeks in their corruptest time. His earlier steps were not unwise. Sending out a body of scribes, he obtained from Mount Athos copies of the most ancient and authentic sacred books, which he caused to be translated into Slavonic and compared with the books in ordinary use; and finding that errors had crept into the text, he bade his scribes prepare for him a new edition of the Scriptures and Rituals, in which the better readings should be introduced. But here his merit ends. Nikon knew no Greek; yet when the work was done for him by others, he proceeded, with an arrogant frown on his brow, to force his version on the Church. The Church objected; Nikon called upon the Tsar. The priests demurred to this intrusion of the civil power; and Nikon handed the protesting clergy over to the police. Alexie lent him every aid in carrying out his scheme. Yet the opposition was strong, not only in town and village, but in the council, in the convent, and in the Church. Peasants and popes were equally against the changes he proposed to make. The service-books were old and venerable; they sounded musical in every ear; their very accents seemed divine. These books had been used in their sacred offices time out of mind, and twenty generations of their fathers had by them been christened, married, and laid at rest. Why should these books be thrown aside? The writings offered in their stead were foreign books. Nikon said they were better; how could Nikon know? The Patriarch was not a critic; many persons denied that he was a learned man. Instead of trying to gain support for his innovations, he forced them on the Church. Nor was he satisfied to deal with the texts alone. He changed the old cross. He trifled with the sacraments. He brought in a new mode of benediction. He altered the stamp on consecrated bread. By order of the Tsar, who could not see the end of what he was about, the Council adopted Nikon's reforms in the Church; and these new Scriptures, these new services, these new sacraments, this new cross, and this new benediction, were introduced, by order of the civil power, in every church and convent throughout the land. The Nikonian Church was recognized as an Official Church.

Most of the people and their parish clergy stood up boldly for their ancient texts, especially in the far north countries, where the court had scarcely any power over the thoughts of men. The view taken in the north appears to have been something like that of our English Puritans when judging the merits and demerits of King James's version: they thought the new Scriptures rather too worldly in tone; over-just to high dignitaries in Church and State; less likely to promote holy living and holy dying than the old. In a word, they thought them too political in their accent and their spirit.

No convent in the empire showed a sterner will to reject these innovations than the great establishment in the Frozen Sea. When Nikon's service-books arrived at Solovetsk, the brethren threw them aside in scorn. The Archimandrite, as an officer of state, took part with the Patriarch and the Tsar; but the fathers put their Archimandrite in a boat and carried him to Kem. Having called a council of their body, they chose two leaders; Azariah, whom they elected caterer; and Gerontie, whom they elected bursar. All the Kozaks in the fortress joined them; and, supported from the mainland by people who shared their minds, the monks of Solovetsk maintained their armed revolt against the Nikonian Church for upward of ten years, and only fell by treachery at last.

In Orthodox accounts of this siege the captors are represented as behaving as men should behave in war. They are said to have put to the sword only such as they took in arms; and borne the rest away from Solovetsk, to be placed in convents at a distance till they came to a better mind. But many old books, possessed by peasants round the Frozen Sea, put another face on such tales. A peasant, living in the Delta, pulled up a book from a well under his kitchen floor, and showed me a passage in red and black ink, to the effect that the whole brotherhood of resisting monks was put to the sword and perished to a man.

What the besiegers won, the nation lost. This victory clove the Church in twain, and the end of Nikon's triumph has not yet been reached.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

OLD BELIEVERS

The new service-books and crosses were ordered to be used in every Church. The Church which used them was declared official, orthodox, and holy. Every other form of public worship was put under curse and ban.

Princes, Vladikas, generals, all made haste to pray in the form most pleasing to their Tsar. Cajoled and terrified by turns, the monks became in a few years orthodox enough; and many of the parish priests, on being much pressed by the police, marched over to the stronger side. Not all; not nearly all; for thousands of the country clergymen resisted all commands to introduce into their services these suspected books; contending that the changes wrought in the sacred texts were neither warranted by fact nor justified by law. They treated them as the daring labor of a single man. Not all of those who held out against Nikon could pretend to be scholars and critics; but neither, they alleged, was Nikon himself a scholar and a critic. When he came to Solovetsk he was an ignorant peasant, too old to learn; when he was driven from Anzersk by his outraged brethren, he was as ignorant of letters as when he came. Since that time he had led a life of travel and intrigue. If they were feeble judges, he was also a feeble judge.

Clinging fast to their venerable forms, the clergy kept their altars open to a people whom neither soldiers nor police could drive to the new matins and the new mass. Many of the burghers, most of the peasants, doggedly refused to budge from their ancient chapels, to forego their favorite texts. They were Old Believers; they were the Russian Church; Nikon was the heretic, the sectarian, the dissident; and, strong in these convictions, they set their teeth against every man who fell away from the old national rite to the new official rite.

From those evil times, the people have been parted into two hostile camps; a camp of the Ancient Faith, and a camp of the Orthodox Faith; a parting which it is no abuse of words to describe as the heaviest blow that has ever fallen upon this nation; heavier than the Polish invasion, heavier than the Tartar conquest; since it sets brother against brother, and puts their common sovereign at the head of a persecuting board of monks.

One consequence of these Old Believers being driven into relations of enmity towards the Government is the weakening of Russia on every side. The Church is shorn of her native strength; the civil power usurps her functions; and the man who brought these evils on her was deposed from his high rank. Nikon was hardly in his grave before the office of Patriarch was abolished; and the Church was virtually absorbed into the State. The Orthodox Church became a Political Church; extending her limits, and ruling her congregations by the secular arm. Imperious and intolerant, she allows no reading of the Bible, no exercise of thought, no freedom of opinion, within her pale. The Old Believers suffer, in their turn, not only from the persecutions to which their "obstinacy" lays them open, but from the isolation into which they have fallen.

From the moment of their protest down to the present time, these Old Believers have been driven, by their higher virtues, into giving an unnatural prominence to ancient habits and ancient texts. Living in an old world, they see no merit in the new. According to their earnest faith, the reign of Antichrist began with Nikon; and since the time of Nikon every word spoken in their country has been false, every act committed has been wrong.

Like a Moslem and like a Jew, an Old Believer of the severer classes may be known by sight. "An Old Believer?" says a Russian friend, as we stand in a posting-yard, watching some pilgrims eat and drink; "an Old Believer? Yes."

"How do you read the signs?"

"Observe him; see how he puts the potatoes from him with a shrug. That is a sign. He eats no sugar with his glass of tea; that also is a sign. The chances are that he will not smoke."

"Are all these notes of an Old Believer?"

"Yes; in these northern parts. At Moscow, Nijni, and Kazan, you will find the rule less strict – especially as to drinking and smoking – least of all strict among the Don Kozaks."

"Are the Don Kozaks Old Believers?"

"Most of them are so; some say all. But the Government of Nicolas strove very hard to bring them round; and seeing that these Kozaks live under martial law, their officers could press them in a hundred ways to obey the wishes of their Tsar. Their Atamans conformed to the Emperor's creed; and many of his troopers so far yielded as to hear an official mass. Yet most of them stood out; and many a fine young fellow from the Don country went to the Caucasus, rather than abandon his ancient rite. You should not trust appearances too far, even among those Don Kozaks; for it is known that in spite of all that popes and police could do, more than half the Kozaks kept their faith; and fear of pressing them too far has led, in some degree, to the more tolerant system now in vogue."

"You find some difference, then, even as regards adherence to the ancient rite, between the north country and the south?"

"It must be so; for in the north we live the true Russian life. We come of a good stock; we live apart from the world; and we walk in our fathers' ways. We never saw a noble in our midst; we hold to our native saints and to our genuine Church."

The signs by which an Old Believer is to be distinguished from the Orthodox are of many kinds; some domestic – such as his way of eating and drinking; others devotional – such as his way of making the cross and marking the consecrated bread.

An Old Believer has a strong dislike to certain articles; not because they are bad in themselves, but simply because they have come into use since Nikon's time. Thus, he eats no sugar; he drinks no wine; he repudiates whisky; he smokes no pipe.

An Old Believer of the sterner sort has come to live alone; even as a Hebrew or a Parsee lives alone. He has taken hold of the Eastern doctrine that a thing is either clean or unclean, as it may happen to have been touched by men of another creed. Hence he must live apart. He can neither break bread with a stranger, nor eat of flesh which a heretic has killed. He can not drink from a pitcher that a stranger's lip has pressed. In his opinion false belief defiles a man in body and in soul; and when he is going on a journey, he is tortured like a Hebrew with the fear of rendering himself unclean. He carries his water-jug and cup, from which no stranger is allowed to drink. He calls upon his comrades only, since he dares not eat his brown bread, and drain his basin of milk in a stranger's house. Yet homely morals cling to these men no less than homely ways. An Old Believer is not more completely set apart from his neighbors of the Orthodox rite by his peculiar habits, than by his personal virtues. Even in the north country, where folk are sober, honest, industrious, far beyond the average Russian, these members of the Popular Church are noticeable for their probity and thrift. "If you want a good workman," said to me an English mill-owner, "take an Old Believer, especially in a flax-mill."

"Why in a flax-mill?"

"You see," replied my host, "the great enemy of flax is fire; and these men neither drink nor smoke. In their hands you are always safe."

CHAPTER XXIX.

A FAMILY OF OLD BELIEVERS

In the forest village of Kondmazaro lives a family of Old Believers, named Afanasevitch; two brothers, who till the soil, fell pines, and manufacture tar. Their house is a pile of logs; a large place, with barn and cow-shed, and a patch of field and forest. These brothers are wealthy farmers, with manly ways, blue eyes, and gentle manners. Fedor and Michael are the brothers, and Fedor has a young and dainty wife.

The family of Afanasevitch is clerical, and the two men, Fedor and Michael, were brought up as priests. On going into their house you see the signs of their calling, and on going into their barn you see a chapel, with an altar and sacred books.

That barn was built by their grandfather, in evil days, as a chapel for his flock; and during many years, the father of these men – now gone to a better place – kept up, in the privacy of his farm, the forms of worship which had come down to him from his sire, and his sire's sire. This barn has no cupola, no cross, no bell. So far as takes the eye, it is a simple barn. Inside, it is a quaint little chapel, with screen and cross, with icon and crown. It has a regular altar, with step and desk, and the customary pair of royal gates.

The father of Fedor and Michael, following in his father's wake, appeared to the outside world a farmer and woodman, while to his faithful people he was a priest of God.

These lads assisted him in the service, while his neighbors took their turn of either dropping in to mass, or mounting guard in the lane. His altars were often stripped, his books put in a well, his pictures hidden in a loft; for the police, informed of what was going on by monkish spies, were often at his gates. At length a brighter day is dawning on the Popular Church. A new prince is on the throne; and under the White Tsar, the congregations which keep within the rules laid down are left in peace.

"You hold a service in this church?"

"My brother holds it; not myself," says Fedor, with a sigh. "My priesthood is gone from me."

"Your priesthood gone? How can a priesthood go away? Is not the law, once a priest always a priest?"

"Yes, in a regular church; but we are not now a regular church, with a sacred order and an apostolic grace. We are a village priesthood only; chosen by our neighbors to serve the Lord in our common name."