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Popular Religion in Russia This book dispels the widely held view that paganism survived in Russia along- side Orthodox Christianity, demonstrating that ‘double belief’, dvoeverie, is in fact an academic myth. Scholars, citing the medieval origins of the term, have often portrayed Russian Christianity as uniquely muddied by paganism, with ‘double-believing’ Christians consciously or unconsciously preserving pagan traditions even into the twentieth century. It shows how the concept of dvoeverie arose with nineteenth-century scholars obsessed with the Russian ‘folk’ and was perpetuated as a propaganda tool in the Soviet period, colouring our percep- tion of both popular faith in Russia and medieval Russian culture for over a century. It surveys the wide variety of uses of the term from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, and contrasts them to its use in modern historiography, concluding that our modern interpretation of dvoeverie would not have been recognized by medieval clerics, and that ‘double belief’ is a modern academic construct. Furthermore, it offers a brief foray into medieval Orthodoxy via the mind of the believer, through the language and literature of the period. If clerics didn’t use the word dvoeverie to identify acts as unorthodox, which words did they use, and what can these words tell us about popular faith? Was the populace of Rus really more resistant to Christianization than its European counterparts? What was it about popular culture that alarmed the clergy of medieval Rus, and were their concerns so very different from those of Western European clergymen, or the clergy of other neophyte peoples? Stella Rock is Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Sussex. Her publications on Russian Orthodoxy span the medieval and post-Soviet periods, and her research interests focus on popular faith (in the broadest sense) and the relationship between religious and national identity. 99780415317719_1_pre.indd780415317719_1_pre.indd i 88/15/2007/15/2007 77:14:05:14:05 PPMM Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe Modernizing Muscovy Reform and social change in seventeenth-century Russia Edited by Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe The USA in the Making of the USSR The Washington Conference, 1921–1922, and ‘Uninvited Russia’ Paul Dukes Tiny Revolutions in Russia Twentieth-century Soviet and Russian history in anecdotes Bruce Adams The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1800 –1917 Alex Marshall Soviet Eastern Policy and Turkey, 1920 –1991 Soviet foreign policy, Turkey and communism Bülent Gökay The History of Siberia Igor V. Naumov (edited by David N. Collins) Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan, 1904 – 05 Secret operations on land and at sea Evgeny Sergeev Cossacks and the Russian Empire, 1598 –1725 Manipulation, rebellion and expansion into Siberia Christoph Witzenrath The Many Deaths of Tsar Nicholas II Relics, remains and the Romanovs Wendy Slater Popular Religion in Russia ‘Double belief’ and the making of an academic myth Stella Rock 99780415317719_1_pre.indd780415317719_1_pre.indd iiii 88/15/2007/15/2007 77:14:06:14:06 PPMM Popular Religion in Russia ‘Double belief’ and the making of an academic myth Stella Rock 99780415317719_1_pre.indd780415317719_1_pre.indd iiiiii 88/15/2007/15/2007 77:14:06:14:06 PPMM First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2007 Stella Rock All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Popular religion in Russia : double belief and the making of an academic myth / Stella Rock. p. cm. — (Routledge studies in the history of Russia and eastern Europe series; 10) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0- 415 - 31771- 9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Russia— Religion. I. Rock, Stella. BL980.R8P67 2007 200.947—dc22 2007007861 ISBN 0-203-59228-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 10: 0 - 415 -31771-1 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0 - 203- 59228-X (ebk) ISBN 13: 978-0- 415 - 31771-9 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0 -203 - 59228 -1 (ebk) 99780415317719_1_pre.indd780415317719_1_pre.indd iivv 88/15/2007/15/2007 77:14:06:14:06 PPMM In memory of Thomas 99780415317719_1_pre.indd780415317719_1_pre.indd v 88/15/2007/15/2007 77:14:06:14:06 PPMM 99780415317719_1_pre.indd780415317719_1_pre.indd vvii 88/15/2007/15/2007 77:14:06:14:06 PPMM Contents List of abbreviations viii Acknowledgements ix Preface xi Introduction 1 1 Christian idol-worshippers and ‘pagan survivals’ 16 2 Heretics, doubters and ‘wrong-believing’ 46 3 A history of historians 87 4 How Russian is ‘double-belief’? 118 Conclusion 158 Notes 161 Bibliography 199 Index 227 99780415317719_1_pre.indd780415317719_1_pre.indd vviiii 88/15/2007/15/2007 77:14:07:14:07 PPMM List of abbreviations BLDR Biblioteka literatury Drevnei Rusi CUP Cambridge University Press GBL Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka (formerly Lenin Library) GIM Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzei HLEUL Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature HUS Harvard Ukrainian Studies KJV King James Version MERSH Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History OED Oxford English Dictionary OUP Oxford University Press PLDR Pamiatniki literatury Drevnei Rusi PSRL Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei RAN Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk RFV Russkii filologicheskii vestnik RGADA Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov RIB Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka TODRL Trudy otdela Drevnerusskoi literatury TsGALI Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva 99780415317719_1_pre.indd780415317719_1_pre.indd vviiiiii 88/15/2007/15/2007 77:14:07:14:07 PPMM Acknowledgements It is thanks to a three-year studentship from the British Academy that my DPhil thesis, which forms the basis of this book, was written. I was also supported by travel grants from the British Academy and the University of Sussex, and a scholarship to attend the Medieval Slavic Summer Institute at the Hilandar Research Library, Ohio State University, which proved invaluable. I am deeply grateful to all the staff there – in particular to Mary Allen Johnson (‘Pasha’) – for constant support and encouragement. I should like to express my thanks to those specialists who have helped in general or in specific matters during the research for and writing of this book, in particular Robin Milner-Gulland, Eve Levin, Simon Franklin, William Ryan, Bernadette Filotas and Peter Burke, who all read and commented on the book manuscript in its entirety or in part. Eve Levin’s help in reshaping a dry thesis into a book deserves a special mention – she is a truly generous scholar – as does the erudition and encouragement of Daniel Collins, which saved me from despair when tackling many a convoluted text. Vladimir Bersenev, Iuri Lesman and Irina Levinskaia were unstinting in their support, and I am also grateful to Maria Korogodina, Aleksei V. Chernetsov, Gregory Freeze, Dmitrii Bulanin, Daniel Kaiser, Ia. N. Shchapov, Oleg Panchenko, Anatolii A. Turilov, Francis J. Thomson, Muriel Heppell, Beryl Williams and the late Fr Sergei Hackel. Jonathan Mitchell and Jeffrey Pratt offered useful insights from the field of anthropology. My editor at Routledge, Peter Sowden, deserves special thanks for his unfailing patience and kindness while awaiting the final manuscript. Thanks are also due to the resourceful staff of Interlibrary Requests at the University of Sussex; Kit Condill and the wonder- ful Slavic Reference Service at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; David Howells at the Taylor Institution Library, Oxford; Denis Reidy at the British Library and the librarians at the St Petersburg Spiritual Academy. I also found the help of the staff at the archives of the State Historical Museum (especially Elena Serebriakova) and the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library archive in St Petersburg invaluable. My thanks to the staff at the Institute of Russian Language, Moscow; to Liudmila Kozlova of the DAR Language School, St Petersburg; to the Association for Women in Slavic Studies mentoring service and Christine Worobec in particular, and to the various correspondents of 99780415317719_1_pre.indd780415317719_1_pre.indd iixx 88/15/2007/15/2007 77:14:07:14:07 PPMM x Introduction H-Russia Net, the Medieval Religion mailing list and Medieval Slavic Mailing List who responded to queries about individual books, texts and authors. Special thanks to Daniel Collins, Persephone Liulio, Vassiliki Dimitropoulou, Vassiliki Roupa and Gavin Ashenden for help with the Greek originals. Needless to say, I take full responsibility for any errors or other failings of this book. Finally, my thanks to friends and family who helped in innumerable ways; especially Matthew Platts, Maureen Radford, Susan Vaughan, Natalia Tronenko and Olga Soboleva. Thanks are also due to Bettina