Eschatological Foundations of the Congregation in Russian Religious Dissent

Abstract

This article analyzes the eschatological basis of the communal (congregational) structure of representatives of pre-revolutionary Russian religious divergence: radical Old Believer priestless (bespopovskikh) interpretations on the one hand and intra-church mystical outgrowths — khlystovstvo (asceticism/fl agellation) and skopchestvo (castration) — on the other. The author assumes that all such divergences are largely based on the Russian pre-schismatic eschatological tradition, which postulates a special spiritual and political mission of the Tsar — bringing his people from the earthly reality to a heavenly one. Nevertheless, in the discourse of the radical bespopovites and inner-Church mystical sectarians, there is a cardinal substitution of eschatological aspirations. The idea of the unity of the people through the Church in the struggle for the triumph of the “Heavenly Jerusalem” is replaced in this discourse by the idea of a full disclosure of eschatological reality in small religious groups, each of which considers its “ship” as eschatological completeness led by “Christ the King.” Thus by considering the specifi cs of eschatological consciousness the article raises the problem of the specifi city of the monarchical self-consciousness of the pre-revolutionary Russian peasantry.

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