The Icon and the Axe

Those who chose the latter course, the native Russian bourgeoisie, were spiritual relatives not of the secularized entrepreneurs of early modern Europe but of its messianic urban preachers: Waldo, Savonarola, and Winstanley. But unlike these Western preachers, the Old Believers were able to survive and flourish into modern times. They were sheltered by vast spaces and fortified by the belief that they were defending the true tradition which would yet prevail rather than synthetically re-creating early Christian piety. By appealing to instinct rather than intellect, to communal honor rather than individual reason, the Old Believers achieved a popular following that proved more enduring than that of most revivalist prophets in the West.

Old Believers rejected the name raskol'nik, or schismatic, which they applied rather to the new, synodal church. Nonetheless, the word raskol, with its physiological suggestions of cracking open as well as its theological meaning of schism, indicates the historical effect of this movement on Russian life. The wounds which it opened in the body politic would never be entirely healed. It weakened Russia politically and lent a Utopian and apocalyptical flavor to its internal debates which frustrated the harmonious development of a stable national culture.

Here are but a few of the divisions opened up by the raskol'niki. There was, first of all, their own separation from the civil as well as the religious life of Russia. The Old Believers went so far as to use secret codes, nets of informers, and at least two private languages for their internal communications.76 They were, moreover, split off from history- believing that earthly history was nearing an end and that all talk of historical greatness in the empire represented only the predictable delusions of the Antichrist. Among themselves the raskol'niki were soon split into endless divisive groups: the Theodosians, Philipists, wanderers, runners, and so on-each pretending to be the True Church of the original Old Believer martyrs. There was, finally, a schizophrenia in the attitude of all these Old Believers toward the world about them. Extremely stern, puritanical, and practical in everyday life, they were nonetheless ornate, bombastic, and ritualistic in art and religion. Indeed, one may say that the simultaneous allegiance of Old Muscovy to both icon and axe, to both formalized idealism and earthy harshness, was kept alive by the Old

Believers. With the passing of time their influence grew and deepened. Some of the oppressive restrictions of the early eighteenth century were removed in the 1760's. Important settlements of both "priested" and "priestless" Old Believers were established shortly thereafter, significantly in Moscow rather than St. Petersburg.77 They became pioneers in providing care for the sick in destitute sections of Moscow. Gradually, the Old Believers began to attract sympathizers and sentimental admirers and to become, in spite of themselves, an influential force in the formation of a new national culture.

The second tradition of conservative protest against the new world of St. Petersburg, that of Cossack-led peasant insurrection, bears many points of similarity to that of the fundamentalist Old Believers. Both traditions have their origin in the religious revival of the Time of Troubles and produced their greatest martyrs during the great change under Alexis. Stenka Razin was for southern Russia the same semi-legendary hero that Awakum and the monks of Solovetsk were for the north. Yet, just as the Old Believers' tradition did not become fully formed except in reaction to Peter, so the tradition of peasant insurrection was in many ways established only with the Bulavin uprising against Peter's rule in 1707-8.78 If the merchants who led the Old Believer movement were protesting against the destruction of the old urban liberties by the central government, the Cossacks who led the insurrectionists were also protesting the extension of burdensome state obligations to their once free way of life. Just as the Old Believers were able to survive because of the remoteness of their settlements and the value of their commercial activities, so were the Cossacks able to sustain their traditions because of the distance of their southern settlements from the centers of imperial power and the importance of their fighting forces to the military power of the empire.