 |
New Israel: Transformation of a Branch of Russian Religious
Dissent
by
Sergey Petrov
Novyi Izrail’ or New Israel is a small religious movement of Spiritual
Christians that emerged in Russia in the late nineteenth century. Its
beliefs include the worship of God in spirit and truth, the rejection of
traditional Orthodox religious practices and an emphasis on rationalism. The
following scholarly article by Russian religious historian Sergey Petrov
examines the origins and history of New Israel and investigates the radical
reform of the sect undertaken by its most famous leader, Vasily Semenovich
Lubkov (1869-1931). One of the principal questions the author addresses is
the amazing similarity between the character of the New Israelite movement
and that of another Spiritual Christian group, the Doukhobors. This is no
coincidence, he contends, as he demonstrates how Lubkov, heavily influenced
by the Doukhobors, whom he lived amongst in the Caucasus for a time,
consciously and deliberately emulated them, which led to a radical
reformation of the New Israelites, and ultimately the immigration of a part
of the sect to South America in the early twentieth century.
Introduction
The question of the genesis of the group of Russian religious dissenters
called Dukhovnoye Khristantsvo or
"Spiritual Christians" as well as the degree and the character of the
influence they exerted on each other at different times under a great
variety of circumstances has been and remains a somewhat obscure subject.
Conjectures and hypotheses concerning the origins of the Spiritual
Christians go as far as the alleged links of the Russian sectarians to early
Christian heresies, Gnosticism, Manichaenism, medieval Cathars and Balkan
Bogоmils. Other scholars saw the phenomenon of the mass dissent among
Russian peasantry as the indirect output of the Western Reformation,
particularly, the radical movements of Quakers and Anabaptists. Finally, one
more group of scholars attribute the appearance and rise of Spiritual
Christians to Russians themselves and believe that those dissent movements
were born on the Russian soil as a result of re-thinking of traditional
Orthodoxy.
Not all of the sectarians known under the umbrella term “Spiritual
Christians”, explicitly called themselves that way, although their
self-consciousness as those “worshiping God in spirit and truth” as opposed
to those practicing “outward” and “fleshly” forms of worship, is obvious.
Contemporary researchers of Russian sectarianism usually apply the name to
the Khristovschina ("Christ-faith"), Skoptsy ("Castrates"), Molokany ("Molokan"),
Dukhobortsy ("Doukhobors") and Izrail’ ("Israel") movements, a branch of the
latter being the subject of this paper.
Orthodox Bishop Aleksii (Dorodnitsyn) of Sumy, who published an extensive
article on Israel communities in Eastern Ukraine, based mainly on personal
observations of the author, testifies that members of the Israel communities
called themselves “Spiritual Christians”.
 |
|
Early leaders of the New Israel sect (l-r): Porfirii Katasonov, Vasily Lubkov,
Vasily Mokshin. Museo de Los Inmigrantes, San Javier, Uruguay. |
The purpose of the present paper is to explore the origins and the history
of one of the more recent groups of Spiritual Christians that became known
under the name of New Israel, and to investigate the reasons and the meaning
of the radical reform of the sect, undertaken by the prominent leader of New
Israel, Vasily Semenovich Lubkov (1869 – ca. 1931). One of the questions
that will need to be raised in this connection is an amazing similarity
between the character and the results of the reforms and the doctrine and
practice of a much more renowned sect of the Doukhobors. The relatively high
proportion of the scholarly attention to the latter group is explained by
the dramatic immigration of the Doukhobors to Canada after a period of
severe clashes with the Russian civil authorities with the monetary help of
the famous Leo Tolstoy and the British Quakers. The alleged connection and,
possibly, a common origin of New Israel and Doukhobors has been a subject of
some speculation and considerable controversy in the scholarly discourse. It
seems likely, however, that the nature of such a similarity was a conscious
and deliberate imitation of the latter by the former that resulted in a
thorough revision and amendment of the theory and practice of Lubkov's
organization and finally led a part of New Israelites to the immigration to
South America.
Sources
The available literature on New Israel is not at all rich and consists
almost entirely of books and articles published in the Russian language. A
feature of virtually all of the sources is their tendentiousness or a high
degree of subjectivity. The sources of information on the Israel
movement can
be divided into three subgroups – 1) writings by the sectarians themselves
(including texts of the songs), usually incorporated into books produced by
outsiders, 2) non-sectarian observers, most of them Orthodox priests or
professional anti-sectarian missionaries, and later on Soviet atheist
writers who had a clear intention of destroying the sect, with very scarce
exceptions when the purpose was to justify the dissidents, sometimes
overemphasizing their real and imagined good qualities, and 3) a small group
of authors, who tried to come up with a relatively objective and unbiased
accounts.
Among the most comprehensive books on the subject is a highly sympathetic
account written by Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich
(1873-1955), a socialist scholar of the Russian religious dissent. The book
by Bonch-Bruevich under the title Novyi Izrail’ was published in 1911 as
Volume 4 of his series of materials on Russian sectarianism and Old Belief .
One of the main merits of the Bonch-Bruevich’s book is the great number of
original documents it contains, including numerous writings by the New
Israel leader Vasily Lubkov and other members of New Israel. The views of
Bonch-Bruevich are highly pro-sectarian, for he tended to see Russian
religious dissenters as a force of protest against monarchy and the evil
social structure of the Russian Empire.
A number of books on Russian sectarians were written by their natural
opponents, clergy of the Orthodox church. In spite of the subjectivity,
their authors give substantial first-hand evidence concerning the topic.
Volumes I and III of Khristovshchina published by a professional Orthodox
anti-sectarian missionary Ivan Georgievich Aivazov (b. 1872) consist of
court rulings, legal documents, police reports, testimonies given by a wide
circle of those involved, examples of the sectarian religious poetry and
other materials . Among other books of the Orthodox anti-sectarian writers
of special interest for us have been a book on Khristovshchina and Skoptsy
(Castrates) by Konstantin Kutepov and a review of all known sects attempted
by a priest and church historian Timofei Ivanovich Butkevich. Another priest
and missionary, Simeon Nikol’sky, published a theological analysis and a
refutation of the Catechism of the New Israel community in 1912.
Journal articles on New Israel, a large number of which appeared at the end
of nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century in the church press, especially
in Missionerskoe Obozrenie ("The Missionary Review") and newsletters and
bulletins of various church districts (Eparkhial’nye Vedomosti) also
contribute to the task of building a broad picture of the origins and
development of the New Israel movement, although the main purpose of those
articles was to teach parish priests how to fight the sectarians more
efficiently.
Semen Dmitrievich Bondar’, an official of the Ministry of Interior Affairs,
published a book on a wide circle of dissident religious movements . Bondar’
was commissioned by the Ministry to the South of Russia in order to conduct
a research of the sects. The author, apparently did not feel any sympathy
towards the sectarians, but his account is characterized by a high degree of
diligence and factual accuracy.
The only contemporary attempt to investigate the mechanisms behind the New
Israel immigration to Uruguay, was made by a journalist, V. M. Muratov, who
published an unbiased and impartial analytical article on the New Israel
move to South America.
The New Israel movement entered a phase of decline following the
emigration of the part of the adherents of the sect to Uruguay that occurred
in 1911-1914 and the establishment of the Soviet regime in Russia, although
occasional data on New Israel does occur in the 1930s in the Soviet
anti-religious press, for example in Dolotov’s book on church and
sectarianism in Siberia and the critical book by S. Golosovsky and G. Krul',
Na Manyche Sviashchennom ("On 'Sacred' Manych") on the New Israelite
planned community in Sal'sk district, authorized by the Soviet
authorities in the 1920s.
Literature
The most prominent scholar of religion of the Soviet period who wrote about
New Israel was Aleksandr Il’ich Klibanov (1910-1994), whose Istoriia
religioznogo sektantstva v Rossii ("The History of the Religious Sectarianism
in Russia") is one of the most comprehensive books on the subject. Klibanov
conducted a number of field trips, among those a trip in 1959 to Tambov area
where the Israel sect originated. Klibanov describes his experiences during that trip
in his book Iz mira religioznogo sektantstva ("From the World of Religious
Sectarianism").
The only work on the Israel/New Israel movement published in English is The
Russian Israel by Dr. Eugene Clay, a US researcher of Russian sectarianism
and Old Belief of Arizona State University. The article contains a brief
historical account of the movement along with the tables showing the
leadership transfers and partitions within the sect as well as the dates of
both ecclesiastical and civil trials of the sectarians.
The purpose and the subject of the present paper necessitated the use of
literature on another sect of Spiritual Christians, the Doukhobors. Already
mentioned, Obzor ("Review") by Butkevich contains a fair amount of information
on the Doukhobor history and teachings, of course, from the Orthodox
standpoint. The part that is of especial interest for the present paper is
the original Confession of Faith composed by the Ekaterinoslav Doukhobors.
The dissertation The Doukhobors, 1801-1855 by Gary Dean Fry, which gives a concise, accurate and highly
objective account of the Doukhobor history, beliefs and living conditions
within a broad panorama of the Russian economical, political and ideological
context, has also been extensively used.
History
Kopylov and the
Fasters
One of the branches of the so-called Spirit Christians in Russia, along with
more widely-known groups such as the Khristovshchina ("Christ-faith"), Molokans and
Doukhobors, was a clandestine movement called Izrail’ ("Israel") which began
in the first quarter of nineteenth century. The group first appeared among the
Orthodox peasantry in Tambov province as a reaction against the superficiality of personal
spiritual experience within the state-sanctioned church. An official report of the Tambov provincial government of 10 April 1851 stated that
the sectarians “call the Christian (Orthodox) faith the faith of the Old
Adam, not renewed in the spirit. They consider church sacraments mere
rituals” . The founder of the movement was Avakum (also spelt Abakum)
Kopylov, a peasant of Perevoz village in Tambov province. Kopylov was an
ardent reader of the Orthodox literature, especially Lives of the Saints,
and apparently tried to imitate the life of the Orthodox ascetics. He fasted
frequently for long periods of time, abstaining from any kind of food
altogether. Once, after having fasted for 40 days in a row, he felt he was
taken to Heaven in spirit and talked to God face to face. He said God had
commissioned him to "study books" in search of salvation and spread this
knowledge around. Allegedly, Kopylov then went to the local Orthodox bishop
and told him what had happened. The bishop, according to the story, approved
of the Kopylov’s experience and gave him a few Orthodox books, among them
“On Duties of a Christian” by the Orthodox bishop Tikhon Zadonsky. The
story hardly has any factual truth behind it, but it can clearly be
interpreted in the sense that Kopylov and his followers saw themselves as
Orthodox Christians, although they tried to enhance and enrich their
Orthodoxy with strict asceticism, piety and personal experience with the
Divine.
 |
| Members of the New
Israel sect in Uruguay, c. 1914. Museo de Los Inmigrantes, San Javier,
Uruguay. |
Kopylov preached celibacy, temperance, abstinence from alcohol, tobacco,
meat, fish, garlic, onion and potatoes, and emphasized fasts as an efficient
means of spiritual progress. Many of Kopylov's followers had a
"spiritual spouse" from among the members of the group that were assigned by
the prophets. Such spouses were supposed to support and comfort one another
spiritually. Any sexual intercourse was, nevertheless, forbidden. Kopylov’s
followers did not call themselves "Israel". Rather, they referred to their
community simply as postniki ("fasters"), bogomoly ("those who pray to God"), or
“The Faith of New Jesus Christ”, according to the evidence brought forward by Aivazov and Butkevich. It is difficult to say, though, how Kopylov himself
called his group. In any case, his followers began using both postniki and
bogomoly for self-identification rather early, and the term postniki survived
until at least 1959 when Klibanov conducted field
research in Tambov province. The meetings of the postniki consisted in
reading the Bible and Orthodox literature on practical ways of attaining
personal sanctity, singing of the Orthodox prayers and songs composed by
themselves, revealing the sins of the members and their public confession,
and prophecies. At the same time, the followers of Kopylov faithfully
attended Orthodox services and very often were a lot more accurate and
serious than the average Orthodox people in terms of observance of
church rules and generosity towards the priesthood. Even in 1901, followers
of Kopylov, being asked by Orthodox clergy about their religious
affiliation, answered that they were "Orthodox postniki".
Soviet scholar Klibanov conducted field research in the Tambov area as
late as 1959; that is, when the Orthodox church was completely stripped
of all former privileges. In a conversation with a faster, Klibanov learned
that the members attended the Orthodox church if they wished. The same
person said that fasters observed and revered essentially the same things as
the Orthodox, but only in a better, firmer and more complete manner. The
main point of their deviance from the Orthodox doctrine was the belief that
the priests were not quite worthy since they didn’t live a holy life and,
therefore, the sacraments performed by the priests were not as effective as
the immediate and unmediated relationship with God at their meetings.
Anti-sectarian Orthodox writers often insisted that the leaders of the Fasters
were revered by their followers as incarnations of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
There is no evidence that Kopylov saw himself as Christ or a divine figure,
but later developments of the theological thought of his co-religionists
apparently contain an idea of spiritual christhood. According to the above
mentioned Report, published by Aivazov, the sectarians believed that Jesus
Christ was a man whom Holy Spirit chose to dwell, therefore everyone who
attains grace of the Holy Spirit and is spiritually reborn may be called
Christ. On the same basis a woman who is likewise favored with God's grace
and spiritually reborn may be called the Virgin Mary. Notably, the sectarians cited
the following assertion from the book by Tikhon Zadonsky to substantiate
their argument: “everyone is called by the name of his progenitor”.
Possibly, the concept of incarnate christs becomes a part
of the Fasters' doctrine at a later time. In 1901 Aivazov cites Fasters who openly called
their female leaders bogoroditsa ("God-bearer" or "Virgin Mary") and asserted
that there may be more than one christ; although Aivazov's testimony should
be treated with a degree of caution due to his decidedly anti-sectarian
bias. In any case, the opinion that the Fasters worshiped their “living
christs” instead of the historical Christ, seems to be a misunderstanding.
Rather, it can be said that the Fasters saw the divinity of their leaders in
terms of a symbolical analogy with the Biblical figures. The real object of
their worship, rather, was the Holy Spirit seen as a force and an agent of
the divine in the world. The living voice of the Fasters, their songs, bear
witness of that, for the Holy Spirit is the permanent theme and hero of
practically all the known songs, and not historical figures of distant or
recent past, present, or future.
It is interesting to look at the version of the emergence of the movement
told by Faster Ivan Seliansky as cited by Klibanov. According to
Seliansky, Tat'iana Chernosvitova, the closest collaborator of Kopylov (Bondar'
calls her Kopylov's spiritual wife , and Kutepov – his bogoroditsa )
initiated the movement. She lived in celibacy, but had a vision of an angel
who predicted that Chernosvitova would bear a son. However, the son the
angel referred to was not a natural baby, but Avakum Kopylov, who was spiritually
born through Chernosvitova's preaching. Seliansky draws an analogy between
that story and the Gospel account of Christ's birth, saying: “Do you
comprehend? You see, it was such a spiritual matter! Sometimes they get
confused – he (Christ) was born. Perhaps, Jesus Christ was not born of
Virgin Mary, maybe she begot him spiritually.”
In 1834, about 20 years after the movement began, the local government
became aware of the activity and influence of Avakum and Tat’iana
Chernosvitova, and arrested both of them and one of their followers. They
were mistakenly charged with spreading of the Molokan heresy, which was a
mass dissent movement and a real dilemma for the local administration at
that time. None of the arrested betrayed any of their friends, and no
more arrests followed. All three were found guilty in 1838. Avakum was
sentenced to imprisonment in one of the Orthodox monasteries "till he
repents", but, being an old man of 82 years, died before the sentence could
be fulfilled.
Avakum Kopylov was followed by his son Filipp who changed the teachings of
his father by adding sacred dances in the spirit as an expression of joy that
the worshipers felt at their meetings. Those dances were called by Fasters
themselves khozhdenie v Dukhe ("walking in the Spirit"), and explained as
an
imitation of King David who danced before the Lord, which might have been borrowed
from ecstatic practices of other religious movements of the Russian
peasantry. Aleksii Kaninsky, who was a parish priest in Perevoz
village, the birthplace of the Fasters, wrote in his article on the
religious situation in the village, that Filipp Kopylov visited a number of
Orthodox holy sites throughout Russia, and on his way back stayed for a long
time in another village in Tambov province, Sosnovka. Sosnovka at that
time was a stronghold of the Skoptsy (Castrates) sect, that practiced
ecstatic dances (radeniia) at the meetings, so upon return to his native
village, Perevoz, Filipp introduced certain customs of the Skoptsy into the
teaching of his group . Bondar' and Aivazov are in agreement that the
“walking in Spirit” was an innovation brought about by Filipp after his
father's death.
Another interesting feature of the Faster worship meetings were the so called
deistviia, or "actions". Eugene Clay defines them as “a sermon or prophesy in
action” similar to those employed by the Biblical prophets Isaiah and
Ezekiel. Those symbolical actions might include crowning a member with a
wreath, which meant that he/she lived a pious life, or tying up another
member's eyes which revealed his/her spiritual blindness.
Katasonov and the
Israel Sect
Filipp Kopylov’s hired worker and co-religionist, Porfirii (also known as
Parfentii or Perfil) Petrovich Katasonov, was at first a member of Filipp’s group, but later on, he split off and founded a separate
organization that came to be called Israel. The formal pretext for the
separation was, apparently, the introduction of the dances by Filipp, which
Katasonov disapproved of as a deviation from Avakum's tradition.
Nevertheless, Kaninsky, Kutepov, Aivazov and Butkevich assert that the real
reason was most likely the struggle for the power within the group and the
outgoing and energetic personality of Katasonov, who thought he would ascend
as a leader on his own. Filipp’s followers remained in the Tambov area, but
their movement never grew to be as strong and wide-spread as the clandestine
church of the Katasonovites.
Katasonov, who apparently was not nearly as strict an ascetic as Avakum or
Filipp, relaxed the dietary rules and let his followers eat and drink
anything except meat and alcohol. He also changed the meaning of the
institution of spiritual wives, admitting the possibility of sexual
intercourse between spiritual spouses under the guidance of the spirit,
while sex within official marriage remained formally prohibited. The real
innovation brought about by Katasonov was the creation of the regular
organizational structure of his church. Because of the mass migration of
peasantry from Tambov, Samara and Voronezh provinces to the fertile North
Caucasus caused by economical reasons, as well as due to the missionary
activities of Katasonov and his followers, the new movement spread rapidly,
especially throughout Southern Russia and by the time of Katasonov's death
in 1885 it had up to 2000 local groups. Communities were organized into
okruga, districts with "apostles" and "archangels" as their heads. Bondar'
indicates that there was a certain shift towards more critical and even
hostile attitude towards the official Orthodoxy. Numerous trials of the
members of the Israel sect on the charges of blasphemy took place in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the Israelites continued to attend
the Orthodox church, follow church rituals and worship icons. Many of the Katasonovites, including their leader, didn’t consider it wrong to "repent"
and "convert" to Orthodoxy when arrested and put on trial in order to get
released.
Symbolical actions, or sodeistviia, continued to be an important part of the
meetings. A number of sources (Bondar', Butkevich, Bishop Alexii Dorodnitsyn)
mention that “walkings in the Spirit” were as frequent among the
Katasonovites as among the Fasters, which may mean that the disagreement
between Katasonov and Filipp Kopylov was essentially not of doctrinal
nature, even if the dispute about sacred dances was brought up as a formal
pretext for the separation.
 |
| The New Israel
congregation in San Javier, c. 1930. Museo de Los Inmigrantes, San Javier,
Uruguay. |
The Orthodox clergy and people often referred to both Fasters and
Katasonovites as khlysty. The latter term can be interpreted either
as "flagellants" or as a distorted word Khristy, that is "Christs". Khlysty was
a derogatory name of one of the earliest movements of religious sectarianism
in Russia. It appeared in the middle of the seventeenth century and spread throughout
the North and central part of the country. Members of that group called
themselves God’s People. They believed in the multiple incarnations of
Christ, Virgin Mary, apostles and other Biblical figures in living people,
practiced asceticism and gathered in secrecy calling on the spirit to
descend upon them and move them to dance and prophesy. The Khristovshchina
did not recognize any sacred texts and had a very elaborate mythology
pertaining to their leaders and their miraculous deeds. Khristovshchina was a
secret society and there were quite a few myths and legends associated with
their clandestine meetings that circulated within Russian society. They
were accused of participating in sexual orgies, flagellating themselves,
using flesh and blood of killed babies in their rituals etc. In reality all
of those accusations appear to be quite groundless, but the word khlysty
came to be used as a strong pejorative and derogatory qualifier to define
any religious dissenting group of a secret or ecstatic nature. It was a
general tendency among many Russian and Soviet scholars of religious
sectarianism to link khlysty with the Fasters and the Katasonovites by
default. This view is shared by A. I. Klibanov. However, in spite of the
long tradition and certain similarities between the two groups, such a view
is very hard to substantiate with provable facts. Most of the sources and
literature on the Faster and Israel movements treated khlysty as well. In
fact, in some cases (eg. Kutepov) khlysty were the main object of the
investigation, while Fasters or Katasonovites were mentioned in the context
of the greater discourse devoted to khlysty.
In spite of efforts to give regular structure and doctrinal unity to the
denomination, the human factor contributed to the partition and
disintegration of the Israelite movement that occurred immediately after
Katasonov died in 1885. The enormous emphasis placed upon a person led
to the lack of the internal balance and as soon as the gravitational center ceased
to exist, the structure could no longer be preserved.
A number of Katasonov's collaborators assumed power and christhood in
different parts of the country. The most prominent among them were Roman
Likhachev, who governed the Israel communities in Ekaterinodar (now
Krasnodar) region, Petr Danilovich Lordugin of Georgievsk , the leader of the
Terek communities (now parts of Stavropol' krai, North Ossetia and
Kabardino-Balkaria), Vasily Fedorovich Mokshin and Ivan Markov in Voronezh,
Iakov Kliushin in Stavropol' and others. Those leaders did not recognize
each other as legitimate heirs of Katasonov, although, according to Bondar',
their worship and doctrine remained unchanged.
The Birth of the
New Israel Movement
The New Israel movement appeared around 1890 in the Voronezh district in
Russia as a branch of Israel or Old Israel, as New Israelites began to call
the Katasonovites. Certain aspects of the ideology and practices of New Israel
proved to be more appealing to a broader range of people and Vasily Lubkov,
who soon became an outstanding leader of the denomination, was by far a more
gifted and skilled organizer than the rest of his competitors in other
branches of the Israel sect.
The first head of New Israel was Vasily Fedorovich Mokshin, a peasant of
Dankovo village in the Voronezh district, who converted to the Israel sect during
his stay in the town of Taganrog. Mokshin was charged with spreading the
khlysty heresy in 1880 and exiled to the Caucasus. He allegedly repented and
returned to his native land in 1883 where he died in 1894. Mokshin, in all
probability, did not enjoy a wide recognition as the heir of Porfirii
Katasonov, according to Bonch-Bruevich, who cited Lubkov: “elders...
did not want to recognize him and did not let people come to him under the
threat of damnation, proclaimed him an anti-christ... He rejected the whole
Israel, condemned them for the unbelief and began to plant a New Israel”. Mokshin, apparently, understood his mission as uniting the "remnants of
Israel" everywhere and first used the term New Israel referring to his
followers as opposite to the Old, and unworthy, Israel. Nevertheless, he was
never accepted as a leader by the Katasonovites other than in the Voronezh
area.
The future leader of New Israel, Vasily Semënovich Lubkov, was born in the
town of Bobrov in 1869 into an Orthodox family. By his own account, Lubkov
experienced a conversion in 1886 when he was 17 and became an active member
of Mokshin’s sect. He was first arrested at the young age of 18 and
then exiled to Elizavetinka (sometimes called Akstafa, by the name of the
adjacent railway station) in Elisavetopol'
province (now Azerbaijan). An energetic and enthusiastic proselyte, he got to know many
people of many faiths, perhaps taking advantage of his job, for he worked as
a train conductor and traveled extensively throughout Transcaucasia. It
should be noted that Akstafa was a station halfway between the largest
cities of the Russian Transcaucasia, Tiflis and Baku.
Vasily Lubkov had a difficult time trying to find a spiritual haven in the land
of his exile. He called this land a “desert”, for there was no “fullness of
God” there. At first he was welcomed by another exiled Katsonovite, Fedor
Kirillovich Poslenichenko, who considered himself a spiritual christ (as
well as Adam, Abraham and a number of other Biblical figures) and whom
Lubkov eventually condemned as a pretender and a false teacher. The Old
Israel group of Poslenichenko is described by Bondar' and a few original
materials pertaining to the group were published by Aivazov. At last, Lubkov
met a man who later came to be called “the first-born of Israel”, Andriusha,
or Andrei Poiarkov, and a group of people who recognized Vasily as their
spiritual guide, was formed.
Finally, Lubkov was summoned to Tiflis, but suspected he would probably be
arrested again, so he preferred to flee and hide himself in Doukhobor
villages in one of the least accessible parts of Transcaucasia .
Other sources says Lubkov also lived in Ardagan, Kars province, that is,
precisely in the area settled by the Doukhobors, although it is hard to
define whether Lubkov’s stay at Ardagan refers to the period of his exile or
hiding. There is a good reason to believe that Lubkov’s contact with the
Doukhobors during his stay in Transcaucasia and the ideas he was exposed to
there played an important role in the changes New Israel was to undergo,
both doctrinally and organizationally, which will be discussed further on.
Lubkov was still in exile in 1894 when he heard of Mokshin’s death. In order
to come back to Central Russia he had to leave the province where he was
obligated to reside according to court sentence. Nevertheless, he came
back to Voronezh soon thereafter and was acknowledged as the new leader and
christ. From then on, Lubkov had to live under constant threat of arrest
until the Manifesto of 1905 was published. The Manifesto permitted many
groups of religious dissenters to legalize their existence.
The Living 'Christ'
Before Lubkov was accepted as christ by the communities in Voronezh, he had
to withstand his rivals. Two cases of unsuccessful competition with Lubkov
within Mokshin’s group refer to the attempts of Ivan Kir’ianov, Mokshin’s
"Apostle John" and Gerasim Chernykh, Mokshin’s "Moses", both of whom had
limited success among Mokshin’s sheep in Voronezh district. A researcher of
Russian sectarianism, S. D. Bondar’ says about those who followed Lubkov’s competitors: "These were people who were looking for a new
"incarnated christ" and could not find one". As soon as Lubkov learned of
these "christs", he came from Caucasus and "spiritually defeated" both of
them, that is, convinced the sectarians that he was the real "christ". The
cases of competition and rivalry within the group were not limited to those
two cases, however. Lubkov mentions more opponents in his autobiography. From
then on, Lubkov saw his primary tasks as 1) absorbing whatever worthy
elements were left of Old Israel; 2) reforming and updating teachings, practices
and the structure of his community; and 3) propagating New Israel among
the general population in a systematic and regular form.
Contemporary testimonies help us see in detail how communities of Old
Israel, deprived of any adequate leadership and often referred by New
Israelites as "in ruins", were shaken and absorbed by the impact of
Lubkovites.
The growth of New Israel took place mostly by swallowing up scattered Old
Israel groups. The Orthodox missionary and priest Simeon Nikol’sky says:
"What is remarkable, "New Israel" spreads only among
the khlysty. At least, it is so in Stavropol province. ... But even among
the khlysty there are doubts about recognition of the "New Israel" heresy.
Some of the khlysty in a given village accept the "newlywed christ", others
remain faithful to the belief of their fathers..." . The changes the
followers of Old Israel had to accept were too radical for many, who
saw Lubkov as literally eliminating the most basic tenets of their faith.
An article by A. Anan'ev published in Missionerskoe Obozrenie ("The
Missionary Review") in 1915, tells a story of a group of Katasonovite
communities in Samara province. Ivan Koroviadsky, a follower of the deceased Katasonov, made a considerable and quite successful effort trying to spread
the teachings of his admired christ as he understood them. However, one of
the basic beliefs of Israel is the doctrine of the living christ, that is, a
chief, who is supposed to lead his followers at all times in a very tangible
and material manner. Anan'ev writes, describing the preaching of
Koroviadsky: “The whole truth consists in the Source of Wisdom, the living
God-Christ... The living Christ is always on earth”. That was the point
where Koroviadsky ultimately got into an inconsistency. He was not aware of
any available and worthy candidate for christhood nor he was quite sure of
himself as a christ to step forward and claim it as did the "Apostle John" and
"Moses" of Mokshin. He communicated to his fellow-believers the idea of a
living christ, but failed at the attempt to show them one. Therefore, his
unsatisfied followers started to look elsewhere and when somebody by
occasion told them of new sectarians living some 60 kilometers away, they
immediately rushed there in their pursuit of a living christ. The attempt
was successful; they learned about Lubkov, went to see him, and, finally,
left poor Koroviadsky who was unable to show them a real christ. At a joint
meeting all the communities established by Koroviadsky condemned their former
teacher and joined New Israel.
Lubkov was trying to rethink the history of his movement to present himself
as a rightful heir of past leaders. In addition to the portraits of
Katasonov found, according to Bonch-Bruevich, in almost any house of the
members of Israel , the sectarian iconography was enriched by a triple
portrait representing Vasily Lubkov in the center surrounded by Katasonov
and Mokshin. Lubkov was also aware of Avakum Kopylov as the initiator of
the movement and held him in high esteem , although the personality of
Katasonov, the leader of a much larger organization, apparently overshadowed
the memory of Kopylov, who remained a figure of local importance.
 |
| New Israel farmers
harvesting in Uruguay, 1940. Museo de Los Inmigrantes, San Javier,
Uruguay. |
Lubkov's Reforms
In spite of opposition, Lubkov succeeded in unifying a considerable
portion of the Old Israel communities. Lubkov’s followers came to call him
Papa or Papasha, meaning Daddy. At first the New Israelites continued to
attend Orthodox churches and kept icons in their homes. They met secretly or
semi-secretly and had to use priests’ services to maintain the legality of their
births and marriages. The essence of Lubkov’s reform that will be discussed
at more length in the next section, was the rationalization of traditional Israel teachings. Reason seemed to occupy a central place in Lubkov’s theological discourse, dietary limitations (except alcohol and
tobacco) were lifted, ecstatic manifestations almost disappeared. Bondar’,
however, argues, that when there were no Orthodox visitors at the meetings,
New Israelites did dance and jump in the traditional ecstatic manner as late
as in 1912. Bonch-Bruevich’s book also contains an Epistle written by
Lubkov, probably, in 1906. In this epistle, Lubkov gives recommendations and
orders mostly pertaining to the family life of his followers and the
internal order of the meetings. Among other things, article 11 states: "The
meeting must be orderly, with joy, burning love, powerful preaching. Walking
in joy (a euphemism for ecstatic dancing - S. P.) is not permitted except at
a marriage" . Bonch-Bruevich’s footnote, however, seriously amends the
meaning of the cited advice: "In the original this paragraph reads as
follows: 11. The meeting must be orderly, with joy, burning love, powerful
preaching. Walking in joy is permitted when there are no worldly people and
at a marriage." The paragraph, corrected by Lubkov, demonstrates the
ambiguity of the sectarians in this matter. To what extent the sacred dances
continued to be practiced among New Israelites, remains disputable, but the
fact that the ecstatic component was greatly reduced and marginalized by
Lubkov, cannot be doubted.
Another innovation brought about by Lubkov were so called sodeistviia,
dramatizations of gospel themes presented publicly. Eugene Clay believes
that “these ceremonies were extensions of the symbolic prophetic actions (deistvie),
the “sermons in deeds” which originally were spontaneously performed by a
prophet before a small congregation”. The sodeistviia were indeed in many
ways the hallmarks of Lubkov’s reform. The first sodeistvie, dramatizing the
Last Supper of Christ, took place in 1895. Around 800 of Lubkov’s
followers gathered to watch and participate. Naturally, Lubkov personified
Christ. During that sodeistvie, evangelists, apostles and other members of
the New Israel hierarchy were appointed. The second dramatization, The
Sermon on the Mount, was arranged in 1900. Lubkov addressed the crowd of his
followers with a 5-hour-long speech on God, the soul, life and death and other
important matters. The third sodeistvie, called Transfiguration, and the
first one after legalization, was presented in 1905 in the town of Piatigorsk
in Stavropol province. An eyewitness and a participant of the event, New
Israelite N. I. Talalaev wrote: "There were more than 5 thousand people.
There was a colonel and with him a squadron of 40 Cossacks with rifles to
protect us so that nobody would bother us... Then many of the worldly men
believed. All those days Cossacks and gendarmes were protecting us and a
huge crowd looked at our assembly which was in the street, in the middle of
the day, (of) our open Christian faith called New Israel." There Lubkov
abolished all the marriages the sectarians had entered into according to the
Orthodox ritual. Instead, he ordered everyone to find a new spouse from
among the members to enter into a new, spiritual marital union.
Bonch-Bruevich depicts this "family reform" in a very sympathetic way,
emphasizing the idea of the woman’s emancipation and liberation from
oppression and mistreatment common in the marriages where the spouses did
not love each other, but had to live together because of the legal status of
their marriage. Often, when only one of the married couple belonged to New
Israel, the other took advantage of the opportunity to have a "spiritual
spouse" from among the co-religionists. Thus, many such marriages had
been de facto broken by the time Lubkov proclaimed them of no validity.
Other authors, like Bondar’, say that this reform was a complete disaster
and mention "destroyed households" and "abandoned wives". The new form of
marriage promoted by Lubkov was based upon love alone. For Lubkov and his
faithful, such a radical reform was a way of strengthening families, and soon
thereafter he announced that divorce was permitted in the sect only once and
that it would not be tolerated any longer unless under exceptional
circumstances. In 1905 according to the Manifesto on Religious Toleration
New Israelites received the right to conduct the registry of civil statistics of their
members independently from the Orthodox church and in 1906 Lubkov permitted
his followers to remain in marriages that were performed according to the
Orthodox rite.
At that time New Israelites returned the icons and other objects of the
Orthodox faith to the priests. Lubkov and other New Israelites always pointed out the fact that they returned the icons to the church and not destroyed
them.
In 1907 the fourth and the last sodeistvie called "Zion" took place, where a
new (and third) concubine of Lubkov (commonly called Mamasha, or Mommy) was
presented to the people as the “daughter of Zion”. It should be said that
Lubkov's concubines (he had at least three of them) played an important
role in the sect and were revered by the members, although, apparently they did
not influence the decision-making in any way. Lubkov's first Mamasha had a
title of Mount Sinai, the second – Mount Tabor, and the third – Mount Zion.
The consecutive replacement of Mamashas was considered a symbolical action of
great spiritual significance in itself. It meant the progress of Lubkov from
one stage to another, even more glorious stage.
The concept of spiritual progress which Lubkov expressed through the exchange
of concubines may shed some light on the significance of the new, spiritual
marriage that New Israelites were to enter. This spiritual marriage might
have been a sodeistvie of a sort, signifying a new phase of spiritual
development of the members of the denomination, although this matter
certainly requires further research.
The days of the sodeistviia became feast days for New Israel. In addition to the
“great feast” celebrated for three days in a row (May 30, 31 and June 1) in
the memory of Lubkov's exile and return, the dates of the three first public
actions (February 3, October 20 and October 1) were celebrated respectively
as the coming down of Jerusalem, Sermon on the Mount for the 21st century, and
the Transfiguration day.
In May, 1905 the first legal Conference of the New Israel communities was
convened in the city of Rostov. The Conference adopted the first published
document in which the doctrine of New Israel was systematized as required by
the law for the purposes of the legalization of the denomination. This
document was entitled "The Brief Catechism of the Basic Principles of the
Faith of the New Israelite Community" (Kratkii katekhizis osnovnykh nachal
very Novoizrail’skoi obshchiny). It was published with the permission of the
official censor in 1906 in Rostov.
Building God's
Kingdom
The first attempt to gather New Israelites in one place to live
according to their faith dates back to the first years of the twentieth century. Lubkov called them to move to a distant and sparsely populated region of
Russian Central Asia, Golodnaia Step’ (the "Hungry Steppe"), but the
place apparently justified its sinister name and the experiment soon failed
leaving many New Israelites impoverished. The second try of this kind took
place in 1908 and the location of the future community chosen by Lubkov
appears quite traditional for Russian sectarians; this time his followers
moved to Transcaucasia, very close to the former place of Lubkov’s
exile, the town of Akstafa. The second attempt was more of a success, and Lubkov
himself moved to Akstafa. A New Israelite wrote: "Formerly our brethren were
exiled to Transcaucasia, and now, on the contrary, hundreds and thousands of
people go (there) voluntarily...". A total of about 5,000 people followed
their leader to build the God’s Kingdom on earth. In 1912 Bonch-Bruevich
visited their colonies and was impressed by the relatively high living
standards of the colonists and the above average level of their
technological advancement. However, Bondar’ mentions bad climate in the new
land, and states that some of the colonists preferred to go back home.
In spite of the newly found religious liberty, although rather unstable and
fragile, and a tentatively successful colonization effort, Lubkov did not
feel he was obtaining exactly what he sought. By 1910 he already thought about
leaving Russia altogether and building his Zion in a brand new land. He felt
their freedom was not going to last for too long. He wrote to a group of New Israel elders: "...inform all the churches... so that the people would
be ready for any incident. The matter is as follows: dark clouds are
approaching Israel, the priests and the administration decided to work
energetically toward the uprooting of the new sect in Northern Caucasus." In
October, 1910 the Governor of the Caucasus issued a circular letter concerning
the activity of the New Israel sect. As a result, in 1910 and 1911 a number
of the New Israelite communities were closed down. Most of the Orthodox
churchmen and missionaries regarded New Israel as an offspring of khlysty
and, as such, not eligible for legalization and not deserving of toleration; an
opinion that they vigorously defended and promoted. Occasional arrests of
the sectarians resumed. In those circumstances Lubkov decided to move his flock
elsewhere and departed for the United States in 1910 or 1911. A group of New Israelites
wrote to their friends imprisoned in Voronezh in May, 1911: " if the
freedom given by our Ruler will not be returned, we will have to leave our
native Holy Russia for a free country where there is no persecution or
oppression on the account of faith."
According to M. V. Muratov, a journalist who investigated the background,
conditions and circumstances of the New Israel immigration, Lubkov who left for
North America together with a prominent New Israelite Stepan Matveevich
Mishin, could not find anything suitable in Canada or California, the lands
in which they took special interest in because the Doukhobors and Molokans,
respectively, settled there. Soon Mishin got utterly disappointed with the
idea of emigration and left for Russia. Upon return he conveyed his
unfavorable opinion to their fellow believers and advised them to stay home. Lubkov, however, was in no mood to give up. He finally reached an agreement
with the government of Uruguay that was seeking colonists at that time. The
future colony was allotted 25.000 hectares of land and was officially
founded on July, 27 1913. The New Israelite immigration continued until
August, 1914 when the First World War broke up and put an end to the mass
migration. Muratov says the total of about 2000 sectarians moved to Uruguay,
which, according to Klibanov, accounted for approximately 10% of the sect
membership.
The colony known under the name of San Javier and inhabited mostly by the
descendants of the Russian immigrants exists in Uruguay up to this day, but
its history knew two waves of re-emigration. A number of the colonists
desired to go back for a variety of reasons, from homesickness to
dissatisfaction with new conditions to disappointment with Lubkov’s
religion. The main engine of the repatriation, though, was the growing
disillusionment of Lubkov himself with the new country and the perspectives
of building God’s Kingdom in the isolated far-away land. Apparently, the
energetic and anxious personality of Lubkov could not put up with the
tranquility of a sleepy place where nothing was ever going on.
 |
| New Israel
congregation in San Javier, c. 1950. Museo de Los Inmigrantes, San
Javier, Uruguay. |
The great experiment that was taking shape in Soviet Russia following the
First World War and the Revolution, could not leave Vasily Lubkov indifferent and, when
he learnt (apparently through his old friend Bonch-Bruevich who became
Vladimir Lenin’s personal secretary) about the favorable treatment of
formerly oppressed sects by the new Communist government, he made up his
mind to go back. A prominent figure among the San Javier New Israelites,
Trofim Efremovich Zhidkov, arrived in the USSR in 1923 on a special mission
for Lubkov. In 1925 a Conference of New Israel communities in Kropotkin (Krasnodar
krai) decided to found a co-operative of fellow-believers and invited the
Uruguayan New Israelites to join. At first the Soviet government saw the
sectarian co-operatives as similar to state-promoted collective farms and
permitted their operation. The district of Sal’sk in Rostov province, a very
sparsely populated area, was suggested by the government as a site for
sectarian colonies. According to Soviet authors Golosovsky and Krul’, who
published a critical book on New Israelite communitarian efforts in the
1920s, about 50% of the population of Sal’sk district (17,500 out of 35,000)
were sectarians - Molokans, Doukhobors, Baptists, New Israelites, Adventists
and others. In 1925 Lubkov and a group of over 300 re-emigrants went to the
USSR. The new colony consisted of a few thousand people from across the USSR
and Uruguay and operated as the share-holding company "New Israel". However,
as the political preferences of the authorities changed in the 1930s,
the sectarians turned into "enemies of socialism", their co-operative became a
collective farm and was renamed "Red October", and Lubkov, then a man in his
early sixties, was arrested and his further destiny is unknown. Probably, he
was exterminated or died in prison. Other sectarian co-operatives and
communes shared the same fate. The religion of New Israel continued both in
the USSR, semi-legally or illegally, and Uruguay, but the modern history of
the sect lies beyond the focus of the present paper.
New Israel and the Doukhobors
Shared Similarities
Although Lubkov was concerned with the task of substantiating and defending
his position as a legitimate heir of the past christs, he changed his
organization so much that it came to resemble Doukhobors and even
Protestants much more than Old Israel. There is considerable disagreement
in the sources regarding the alleged ties or shared origin of Israel and the
Doukhobors. It should be taken into account that Lubkov himself promoted the
idea of a common source that both his denomination and the Doukhobory came from.
Bonch-Bruevich upheld this view. Bonch Briuevich says: "Israel and
Doukhoborism... are so close to each other, that a person who is not aware
of the details of the sectarian opinions, would never tell them apart".
Bonch-Bruevich went as far as to arrange for a meeting of the
representatives of New Israel with the Doukhobory in Transcaucasia and
noticed that both parties expressed virtually identical opinions on a wide
variety of important subjects.
So, it appears that Bonch-Bruevich explained the similarities between the
two denominations mostly by their common origin from a hypothetical united
church of Spiritual Christians. Klibanov, a Soviet scholar of religion, also
could not but affirm those similarities, although his explanation of them
differs radically from that of Bonch-Bruevich. Klibanov, following the old
tradition of mainstream Orthodox sect classification, linked Lubkov’s
followers along with the Katasonovites and the Fasters, with the old Russian
Khristovshchina. For him as a Marxist, the main force behind all social
changes was economics. In conformity with this view, the Israel sect was
viewed as a version of the Khristovshchina, but transformed and changed in order
to serve the new capitalist forms of economy better. Klibanov’s opinion of
the New Israel/Dukhobor relationship was shaped in accordance with the same
logic. Lubkov’s emphasis on "reason" and "free thought” instead of the
ecstasy of his predecessors was seen by Klibanov as a reflection of the
worldview shared by "small and middle bourgeoisie" that comprised a major
segment of the New Israelites, especially their hierarchy. Klibanov, who
frequently cites Bonch-Bruevich’s book, gives the following explanation
of the similarities with the Doukhobors: "For as much as the masses of New
Israelites were getting rid of the ascetic prohibitions of the old
Khristovshchina, and the various forms of the mystical ecstasy were being
pushed out of their worship, they were approaching the Doukhobors in their
religious views". A real insight into the core of the problem is given
in another
document cited by Klibanov, a Report sent to the Holy Synod of the Orthodox
Church by a group of New Israelites in 1909. In that Report the
representatives of the sect argued that their denomination had nothing in
common with the khlysty, but "in all probability, had a close brotherly
kinship with the Doukhobors". Klibanov stated that the New Israelites so
emphatically rejected the idea of their affinity with the Khristovshchina,
it was as if they were defending their relation to Adam and Eve against the
evolutionary theory with its ape ancestor.
Bondar’, the official who wrote a review of sectarianism, noted, that the
matter of the essence and origins of New Israel was "an object of
controversy" in the literature on sectarianism. He argued, however, that New
Israel as well as other sects of Israel and Fasters were a branch of the khlysty.
The missionaries Aivazov and Nikol’sky unanimously supported the idea of the
khlysty character and genesis of the Israel sect, their argument being
based primarily on the ecstatic manifestations at the Israel meetings and
the idea of the incarnation of Christ in living men.
Butkevich in his Review upheld a view of the Israelites, who he called by a
derogatory popular term shaloputy throughout his book, as a separate entity,
although sharing many features with the Khristovshchina. Nevertheless, a few
pages later, in a chapter about New Israel, Butkevich affirmed that the
latter were just a variety of the khlysty, which demonstrates either the
force of the mental inertia, or an inaccurate handling of facts.
Eugene Clay of Arizona State University sees the Israel sect as an
independent religious movement that grew out of Orthodoxy rather than an
offshoot of any other sect of Spiritual Christians. The issue of the New
Israel/Dukhobory relationship is not discussed in the article on the
Israel sect. However, Clay calls Lubkov a "sincere admirer of the Dukhobors", which
in a way points out to the clue and names the true reason of the New Israel
reformation.
History of the
Doukhobors
It is appropriate to give a brief account of the Doukhobor history, doctrine
and practice in order to evaluate the nature of the changes made by Lubkov.
The genesis of the Doukhobors who were among the most prominent and
widely-known branches of the Spiritual Christians seems somewhat obscure.
There was some speculation on the foreign roots of the sect. Particularly,
Quakers were named as the possible originators of the Doukhobors. Fry also believes
that certain shared history with the khlysty is possible, although far from
being proved.
The birthplace of the Doukhobors was the southern part of Tambov province.
According to P. G. Ryndziunsky, a Soviet researcher of anticlerical
movements among the Russian peasantry, the emergence of the movement dates back
to 1760s. The movement faced considerable persecution and the first trial of
proto-Doukhobor sectarians occurred in 1768. However, oppression did not
stop the movement and the exiled sectarians spread their views outside their
native province, including Ekaterinoslav (now Khar'kov, Ukraine) province,
the territory Fry considers the second focus of the movement.
In 1802 the Doukhobors’ plea to be settled in a separate colony was granted
by Tsar Alexander. They remained there until 1842 when they were moved to
the provinces of Transcaucasia by order of Nicholas I. There they
established a quasi-theocratic autonomous entity referred by them Doukhoboria.
By the 1890s the Doukhobor sect split into a few fractions, with so-called
Bol’shaia Partiia (the "Large Party") being the most radical. Partly under the
influence of Leo Tolstoy and under the charismatic leadership of Petr
Verigin, they adapted strict pacifism, vegetarianism, and community of goods
that led them to a serious opposition to civil authorities. Finally, in 1899
the majority of the Transcaucasian Doukhobors left Russia for Canada where
they still live in the provinces of Saskatchewan and British Columbia. The
initial period of their life in Canada was marked by a deep disappointment
with Western capitalism and occasional clashes and mutual misunderstanding
with Canadian authorities. The first generation of Doukhobors more than once
thought about returning to Russia, and tried to reach an agreement on this
matter with the Russian state, but the First World War, civil unrest and lack of
genuine interest and involvement from the side of Tsarist officials made
repatriation impossible. As we saw, the same kind of feeling played out in
the case of the New Israelites and their immigration to Uruguay.
So, how and in what sense was New Israel related to the Doukhobors? There
hardly was any shared origin: by the time the proto-Israel movement, the Fasters,
emerged, the bulk of the Doukhobor community was already far away on the
Milky Waters. Besides, which is even more important, the Fasters and Kopylov
began as "improved Orthodox", recognized the Church sacraments, read
Orthodox spiritual literature and even sought the ecclesiastic approval
while Doukhoborism was a protest movement from the very first days of its
existence, fiercely rejecting every form and outward symbol of the official
Church. Ryndziunsky cites numerous testimonies of the earliest participants
of the movement to this effect, for example: “you should not go to the
church, made by hands of men, there is no salvation in it, also you should
not worship icons, for those are also painted by the hands of men, nor should
you confess your sins and take communion from the priests.”
The Fasters and Old Israel were based upon mysticism and ecstatic worship,
while the Doukhobors earned the fame of a rationalistic sect. The Fasters
and Old Israel were clandestine movements during the time of oppression and
never tried to get legalized even after the policy of religious toleration
was proclaimed. The Doukhobors, on the contrary, never made a secret of
their convictions, living their faith even under very unfortunate
circumstances. The followers of Kopylov and Katasonov had no explicit
communitarian aspirations or millenarian ideas of the Kingdom of God.
Instead, they understood the Kingdom in strictly spiritual terms. The
Doukhobors, in their turn, always emphasized the community and their
self-identification as the chosen people led them to a desire to be
separate from the world in a literal way. This is not to say that the Israel
movement did not have anything in common with other branches of Spiritual
Christians. All of them share the ideas of worshipping God in spirit and
truth, of primacy of the spiritual content over material form, and either
reject Scripture or understand it allegorically. However, the differences
are too serious to admit the speculation on some genetic kinship between the
two movements.
 |
| The New Israel
prayer home in San Javier as it appears today. Museo de Los Inmigrantes,
San Javier, Uruguay. |
Lubkov's
"Neo-Doukhoborism"
How is it, then, that the New Israel sect of Vasily Lubkov managed in a short
time to rid itself of practically all those features that separated the
Israel sect and the Doukhobors so that his denomination earned the name of "neo-Doukhoborism"?
There are a number of considerations that allow for an opinion that Lubkov
might have consciously attempted to change the doctrine and practice of the
sect he governed in order to make it resemble the Doukhobors whom he admired
and that he was exposed to such a strong influence during his exile. Of
course, this assumption requires separate and thorough research in order
to assess the degree and the mechanisms of such an influence, but certain
observations concerning the matter will fit the purpose of this paper.
Klibanov believed that New Israel was approaching Doukhoborism gradually in
the process of dropping the old ecstatic forms of worship and placing more
emphasis on rationalism. Being a Marxist, Klibanov thought that
rationalization was necessitated by the development of capitalism which
favored rational faith. However, the new capitalist type of economy was no
obstacle to the emergence and rapid spread of ecstatic Pentecostalism
in exactly the same time period. Besides, the kind of organization New
Israel was did not leave much space for natural development, sorting things
out etc. It was an authoritarian organization where the word of the "Papa"
was the law. Bonch-Bruevich said: “The leader, Christ – that's who the chief
of the organization is. His power is unlimited and absolute”.
The Israel sect takes a peculiar and ambiguous place among other
sects of Spiritual Christians. In comparison with their "elder brothers", Molokans and Doukhobors, the Israelites look weaker and less wholesome for a
number of reasons. Lack of a fixed or written doctrine led to disunity,
feeble organization created internal disorders, secrecy gave way to rumors
and false accusations, absence of positive publicity aggravated the
situation and, finally, the association with the "baby-eaters" khlysty stigmatized
the sect and deprived it of all opportunities. Vasily Lubkov realized all
these things too well and he had to deal with the problem.
Members of the Israel sect, due to the secrecy of their faith and outward
Orthodoxy were rarely exiled to Transcaucasia. Even when they were, it was
usually done on a case by case basis, rather than en masse. The exiles
usually came back to their native lands, as did Katasonov, Mokshin and
Poslenichenko. Whereas other sectarians, Molokans and Doukhobors, lived in
Transcaucasian provinces as permanent settlers, considering that land their
earthly homeland and enjoyed a considerable freedom of worship. Lubkov, who
was exiled to Transcaucasia when he was 19 and where he spent a number of
years, should have felt quite lonesome spiritually in a place where his
co-religionists were not at all numerous, not very well known, and even if
known, probably under the shameful name of khlysty. It was difficult for
Lubkov to find spiritual companions in Transcaucasia, in spite of the
variety of faiths and denominations existing there. Moreover, Lubkov
mentions representatives of a number of other branches of Russian religious
dissent as people he tried to make friends with, but without any success. “I
have been to many meetings, where gather people who look for bliss, all
of them are haughty and bad people, as Molokans, Baptists, Pashkovites,
Sabbath-keepers, Jehovists, Brethren of Universal Community , Stundists,
Jumpers and others.” A rather negative characteristic of Molokans and
Baptists that Lubkov met on his way to the place of exile is reiterated
elsewhere in his autobiography. Interestingly, the Doukhobors who were quite
numerous and prominent in the Caucasus, did not appear on Lubkov's black
list.
According to Bonch-Bruevich, after having been summoned to Tiflis, Lubkov
was hiding in the mountainous villages of the Doukhobors with whom he might
have established a close relationship. There is also the testimony of the Vladikavkaz missionary I. Kormilin (not supported by any other evidence,
though) that Lubkov at some point was a resident of the town of Ardagan in
Kars province, that is, right in the area where thousands of the Doukhobors
resided. The future leader of New Israel might feel something of an
inferiority complex comparing the sad circumstances of the fragmented Israel
with the vibrant faith of the surrounding Doukhobors. Besides, the time of
Lubkov’s sojourn in Kars province coincided with a rise of the radical
movement among the latter of which Lubkov must have been an eyewitness.
Luker’ia Kalmykova, the female leader of Dukhoboria, died in 1886 without
having left any direct heir. The matter of leadership and continuity of
leadership was crucial for the Doukhobors since their colonies were a state
within a state with their own internal rules, security forces, social
protection mechanisms, and, last but not least, a communal treasury that was
traditionally entrusted to the chief. Petr Verigin, a favorite of the
deceased leader, claimed his rights to the throne. At the same time, the closest
relatives of Kalmykova, wealthy men with good connections to the regional
government, did the same. The majority (generally the poorer people) led by Verigin formed the
Large Party, while better off Doukhobors joined ether
Middle, or Small, Parties.
Verigin lost the case in the court and the Large Party separated from the rest
under the banner of revival and religious radicalism. The Large Party
Doukhobors adopted communism and denounced any exploitation, proclaimed
vegetarianism and non-resistance. In 1895 the Doukhobor radicals publicly
burned all the guns they possessed as a sign of their non-violent stand
which provoked brutal repression. In 1896 Verigin asked the Royal family to
let his followers settle elsewhere in Russia as a compact group or else
permit them to emigrate. In 1899 the Large Party Doukhobors left for Cyprus
and then for Canada.
The Doukhobor
Influence
Such was the background of Lubkov’s sojourn in Transcaucasia. In his
writings, he repeatedly reflected upon those events and brought parallels
between the two sects. Lubkov compared Kalmykova with Mokshin, and the
situation within Old Israel after Katasonov’s death with the power
crisis of the Doukhobors after Luker’ia Kalmykova died. Interestingly
enough, he calls Luker’ia by the diminutive Lushechka. To understand what
Lubkov really meant by that, we must know that the members of the Israel
sect were
known for calling their own brethren by diminutive names, a practice unknown
among other sects of Spiritual Christians (except Doukhobors). The controversial claims to the
leadership among the Doukhobors by Verigin were used to explain the way the christhood was transferred to Lubkov himself, that is, "orally, to a
(spiritually) close person".
The Doukhobor theology was likewise employed by Lubkov. Some of the early
accounts of the Doukhobor doctrine found in the "The Book of Life" (Zhivotnaia
Kniga) had a form of Questions and Answers. Lubkov quotes almost verbatim
from the Doukhobor original, a fact noted by Bonch-Bruevich. In "The New
Sermon and the Prophecy of the Holy Israel" written by Lubkov and published
by Bonch-Bruevich, the New Israel "Papa" recommended such an answer to a
question about the sectarians’ attitude to the church:
"Question: Why don’t you respect the (Orthodox) Church? Answer: We respect
the holy church... the assembly of the faithful, and your temples and rites
are alien to us, we do not expect them to bring salvation."
The Doukhobor "Book of Life" has almost identical answer to the same
question. A piece in the form of Questions and Answers written by Stepan
Mishin, a prominent sectarian who traveled with Lubkov to North America,
also has a few allusions to the Doukhobor views on the essence of church and
the spiritual understanding of baptism. At that, we should remember, that
before Lubkov the Israelites never proclaimed the emphatic denial of the
Orthodox Church with all its rules, rites and teachings a part of their own
worldview.
 |
| Matryoshka doll
figurines line the streets of San Javier, Uruguay, symbols of Russian culture
brought by the New Israel sect. Museo de Los Inmigrantes, San Javier,
Uruguay. |
Frequent references to God as "reason" and "mind" and emphasizing the role
of reason, reasoning and common sense in Lubkov’s writings surprisingly
resemble the highly rationalistic theological opinions of the Doukhobors, who
even understood the Holy Trinity as the unity of memory, reason and will. In
his short pamphlet "About God", Lubkov stated that God is a "reasonable
Spirit" who chose to dwell in "reasonable souls", to move humans toward
"spiritual growth and consciousness" and let them develop a "reasonable
faith". In the "Handbook of the New Israel Community", Lubkov stated that the
New Israelites recognize only one God, namely "the doctrine of sound
reason, which is the spirit of life". This emphasis on reason, hardly
typical of the Old Israel sect, might have been adopted from the Doukhobors,
especially from Verigin’s radical branch.
Contemporary observers noticed that the personalities of Verigin and Lubkov
had a lot in common. Muratov openly compares both sectarian leaders,
characterizing Lubkov as a "man of unusual energy and strong will, never
giving up in spite of any obstacles and, like Verigin, taking into account
only his own desires".
The obsession with the idea of community-building also seems to be imported
from Transcaucasia. The mystical and otherworldly perspective of the Fasters
and Old Israel sect never gave any space to communitarian or millenarian
ideas. For them, the Kingdom of God was an otherworldly, although highly
desired, spiritual condition of ecstatic joy; something immaterial, rather
than literal and tangible, whereas Lubkovites were taught that the Kingdom of
God is the "righteous, moral, perfect life of men on Earth" that they were
supposed to build.
Finally, the idea of emigration may be regarded as a reflection, probably to
a certain degree unconscious, of Lubkov’s wish to be in all aspects
equal to the Doukhobors, although apparently the New Israelites were in an
incomparably better off position than the Doukhobors at the time they left
Russia as it was noted by Muratov.
Summarizing this paper, it should be said that the religious history of
humankind knows quite a few examples of amazing and unexpected interference
and intersection of ideas and personalities, at times resulting in very
remarkable phenomena of the religious thought and practice. However, it is
not always easy to uncover and reveal the true nature of such influences,
especially when the available historical material appears to be inadequate.
This paper is an attempt to shed some more light on the genesis and
development of a small Russian religious movement that has hardly ever
enjoyed a noticeable amount of scholarly attention. But, being as small as
it is, the sect of New Israel and its uncommon history occupies a unique place
in the annals of the Russian religious dissent and serves as a good illustration
of the hidden force of chance and the great role of personality.
About the Author
A native of Russia, Sergey Petrov has a strong personal and scholarly interest in
Russian sectarian religious studies. He earned a Masters Degree at the
University of Calgary and his thesis, Nikolai Il'in and his Jehovists Followers:
Crossroads of German Pietistic Chiliasm and Russian Religious Dissent dealt
with a Russian millenarian movement of Jehovists, which emerged in 1840s under
the direct influence of German Pietistic Chiliasm and, particularly, writings by
Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the
Department of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary. His current
work focuses on Russian and Ukrainian Evangelical Christians in Western Canada
as a distinct group of religiously motivated settlers, similar to the
Doukhobors, Hutterites, and Mennonites.
|
|
