Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

In order to make this dream a reality, Patriarch Nikon started church reforms that would bring the Russian Orthodox ritual closer to the Greek—the Balkans were envisioned as part of the new empire. In particular, Nikon ordered all members of the church to make the sign of the cross not with two but with three fingers, and repeat “Hallelujah” not twice but three times, like the Greeks. The liturgy and the rituals of christening and repentance were simplified and the corresponding changes entered into church books.

As is customary in Russia, this was done hastily and unceremoniously. Nikon’s reforms upset and angered many believers, who considered them the work of Satan. The defenders of the old faith, who resisted even after they were anathemized, were branded “raskolniki,” “breakers-off,” but they called themselves Old Believers.

One of their leaders was a former friend of Nikon’s, the young and charismatic Avvakum, who at thirty-one had already been elevated to the rank of archpriest. In Moscow Avvakum, who preached at the important church of the Kazan Mother of God on Red Square, caught the attention of Tsar Alexei, who appreciated his “pure and irreproachable and God-emulating life.”¹⁹

Avvakum later remembered one episode in particular. The tsar came to the Kazan church for Easter and wished to see the archpriest’s young son, who was out playing somewhere. Alexei, as Avvakum later recalled, “sent my own brother to bring the child and stood for a long time waiting until my brother found the boy outside. He gave him his hand to kiss, but the boy was stupid and did not understand; he saw that he was not a priest, so he did not want to kiss it; the Sovereign brought his hand up to the child’s lips himself, then gave him two eggs and patted him on the head.”²⁰

But the tsar’s goodwill did not protect the archpriest from harm. When the persecution began of Old Believers, Avvakum and his wife were exiled to Siberia. There, under harsh conditions, they lived for eleven years.

In 1664, after ridding himself of the power-hungry Nikon, the tsar returned Avvakum to Moscow. He wanted this outstanding priest as his ally and therefore, according to Avvakum, treated him gently: “When he walked past my yard, he would bless himself and bow to me, often asking about my health. One time, sweetly, he even dropped his hat bowing to me.”²¹

Alexei even offered Avvakum the position of royal spiritual adviser. But as soon as Avvakum realized that the tsar had gotten rid of Nikon but had no intention of abandoning his church reforms, he wrote Alexei an angry letter. Their subsequent meeting in church was described vividly by Avvakum: “I stood before the tsar, bowing, looking at him, saying nothing. And the tsar bowed to me, stood looking at me and saying nothing. And so we parted.”²²

Avvakum and three of his friends were exiled to the small town of Pustozersk in the north, in a “place of tundra, cold, and no trees,” where they spent the last fifteen years of their lives (1667–1682). In Pustozersk the quartet of disobedient Old Believers unleashed a storm of dissident writing, sending incendiary letters to their associates that were distributed across the country in specially constructed wooden crosses with secret compartments. Three of the men were punished, their tongues cut out and the fingers of their right hands chopped off—so they could not conspire together or write their rebellious letters, or cross themselves with two fingers.

The tsar spared only Avvakum, causing him to fall into a deep depression: “I wanted to die, not eating, and I did not eat eight days and more, but the brothers forced me to eat.”²³ Avvakum and his “brothers” were placed in separate dug-out cells that had only a small window through which food was thrown down to them.

Avvakum sarcastically described his life in the dugout: “where we drink and eat is where we defecate, and then put the shit on a shovel and out the window! … I imagine that our Tsar Alexei does not have a chamber like this.”²⁴ So the treasure of ancient Russian literature, The Life of Archpriest Avvakum, was written by the author in proximity to his own shit—a symbolic picture, to be sure.

Avvakum’s fierce energy found an outlet in obsessive writing: of the nearly ninety works that have survived, more than eighty were written in prison. The most famous is Life, first published in 1861, after almost two hundred years in secret circulation among the Old Believers. Life stunned Russian readers with its vibrancy, colorful descriptiveness, and bold mix of Church Slavonic and colloquial Russian, often coarse but always expressive.