‘Satan in the form of an angel’? The Russian Orthodox Church’s controversial case against the Moscow brattsy, 1909 to 1913

ABSTRACT

This contribution examines the Russian Orthodox Church’s controversial case against the popular lay preachers of scripture and sobriety, Ivan Koloskov and Dmitrii Grigor’ev, in the early years of legal religious toleration. Accused of heresy and excommunicated in 1910, the ‘Moscow brattsy’ were arrested and tried as ‘fanatical and immoral’ sectarians. In attempting to prove the brattsy’s alleged deviance to a sceptical public, clergy and missionaries resorted to morally and ethically questionable tactics including false accusations and the fabrication of evidence. While offering a window onto the fraught relations between clergy and laity as Russia entered a modern era of religious pluralism, tenuous democratic practices, and mass media, the case raises issues relevant to the contemporary Russian Orthodox Church, especially its ongoing mission to promote a single community of faith and tradition in a diverse and increasingly ‘mediatised’ public sphere.

KEYWORDS:

• Orthodox Church
• heresy
• sexual deviance
• Moscow brattsy
• trezvenniki
• mass media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The term bratets was commonly used at the time to address or refer to male lay preachers and sometimes to male members of religious ‘sects’ (sestritsa was most often the corresponding term for women). While the appellation bratets was sometimes used pejoratively by religious authorities, like-minded believers or followers generally intended it as a term of affection and respect. Given that the literal translation, ‘little brother’, fails to capture this second meaning of the term, I have decided not to translate it here.

2. The term trezvennik (trezvennitsa for a woman) was used widely to refer to a follower of any one of the brattsy (Koloksov, Grigor’ev, and Churikov), indicating the individual’s devotion not only to a given lay preacher but also to their sober teachings. Since the literal English translations of the term, either ‘sober people’ or ‘teetotallers’, fail to indicate both meanings, I have kept the term in its transliterated form.

3. Beliaev’s testimony can be found in the Russian State Historical Archive (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv, hereafter: RGIA) fond 821, opis’ 133, delo 207, listy 104-107ob.

4. For example, Koloskov had made an error in his translation of Psalm 50 (51 in Western Christian translations), ‘grekh moi predo mnoi est vynu,’ (‘my sin is ever before me’) interpreting the word ‘vynu’ to mean ‘vynut’ (to extract) rather than ‘vsegda’ (ever) RGIA, f. 821, op. 133, d. 207, l. 104ob.

5. RGIA f. 821, op. 133, d. 207, l. 106.

6. RGIA f. 821, op. 133, d. 207, l. 105.

7. RGIA f. 821, op. 133, d. 207, ll. 112ob-113.

8. RGIA f. 821, op. 133, d. 207, l. 114.

9. RGIA f. 821, op. 133, d. 207, l. 107ob.

10. RGIA f. 821, op. 133, d. 207, l. 107.

11. State Museum of the History of Religion (Gosudarstvennyi Muzei Istorii Religii, GMIR), f. 13, op. 1, d. 338, l. 3.

12. Spiritual elders, defined by Irina Paert as ‘persons of exceptional spiritual insight who often (but not necessarily) provided religious directorship to neophytes’, were very common in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia. While they could be priests, monks, or laymen, elders offered a form of informal ministry, and their reputation was established by ordinary believers as opposed to the Church (Paert 2010, 4).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities Research Grant [2009-10]. Any view, findings, and conclusions expressed here are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the NEH.

Notes on contributors

Page Herrlinger

Page Herrlinger is Associate Professor of History at Bowdoin College. She is the author of Working Souls: Russian Orthodoxy and Factory Labor in St. Petersburg, 1881–1917 (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2007) and is currently completing a book on ‘Brother Ioann’ Churikov and his followers in the twentieth century.