Russian Mass Suicides Reconsidered

Abstract

Mass suicides in late seventeenth-century Russia have typically been seen as desperate responses to Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical reforms. Convinced of the imminent end of times ordinary men and women took their own lives rather than to succumb to the world of Antichrist. Michels argues that mass suicides can only be understood by probing into the specific religious, social, and administrative environments in which they occurred. He offers a comparative microhistory of self-immolations on both sides of the Russo-Swedish border with very different populations, one Finnish-Lutheran, the other Russian-Orthodox. Both scenarios had several features in common: apocalyptical preachers demonizing official church and religion; flight from village communities and isolation in remote locations; the preponderance of women and children; almost complete illiteracy; and a remarkable heterogeneity of motivations (ranging from enthusiastic embrace to passive obedience). The suicides occurred exclusively in peasant milieux traumatized by radical changes: the horror of the Swedish-Russian War (1656–1658); the fortification of the border (conscription, forced labor, and exorbitant taxes); church-led campaigns against paganism and traditional religious autonomies; and sudden integration into new administrative structures. Few of those who perished in the fires knew anything about Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical reforms; as in the mass suicide of American cult members in Jonestown, Guyana (1978) many of the victims died involuntarily.