The church schism of the middle of the 17th century gave rise to many savage sects, and one of the most terrible and powerful was the sect of eunuchs, whose adherents emasculated themselves, hoping to avoid sin.
Fanaticism
They started talking about the sect in Russia at the end of the 18th century, when the eunuchs became famous in Orel, where Catherine the Great sent Colonel Volkov to find out what was true and what was not.
The empress immediately took measures to eradicate this phenomenon: the instigators were carved out and exiled to Nerchinsk, but the sect survived, and in 1800 it was revealed again.
As the historian V. N. Ryapolov writes in his work "The World of" White Doves "(Skopstvo)", the sectarians practiced emasculation of men, cutting off or annealing the testicles with iron, and the most fanatical practiced cutting off the penis and even the nipples. Skoptsy cut off the labia, clitoris and breasts of women, which, however, did not deprive women of the ability to bear children. Fanatics castrated themselves, their relatives and children, thereby harming their health. They believed that if you deprive yourself of the organs that are the "source" of lust, then you can supposedly conquer sins and enter heaven.
Many died immediately after the "procedure" due to infections and bleeding, others lost interest in life, grew fat. Men lost their capacity for work, endurance, desire for novelty, risk.
Redeemer Selivanov
In 1800, the eunuchs were imprisoned in the Dinamünde fortress. It turned out that their leader was a certain Kondraty Selivanov, who called himself a "redeemer", who came to the Khlyst sect, got into the trust and led the sectarians. He interpreted the Gospel in his own way and agreed to what he called castration the main condition for salvation.
In the end, the sectarians themselves handed him over to the authorities. In 1774 Selivanov was flogged and exiled to Irkutsk to hard labor, but fled, returned to Moscow and declared himself Emperor Peter III.
Selivanov was arrested and taken to Emperor Pavel, who wanted to look at the impostor, after which he was imprisoned in the Obukhov hospital for the insane. But Selivanov three months later - after Paul's death - came out from there: among others, Alexander I freed him.
As a result, the crowd blossomed, embracing all the new estates. The sect included peasants and landowners, merchants and beggars. The emperor was forced to take a subscription from Selivanov that he would no longer involve men in the sect, but this did not help. The "Redeemer" lived first with the merchants Nenastyevs, then with the Kostrovs, then with the Solodovnikovs, and gathered up to 300 people for joy. The eunuchs called joyful chants combined with collective body movements and whirling, from which the adepts fell into a trance. "The Holy Spirit is sneaking!" They boasted, unaware that they were actually possessed by demons. The Skoptsy believed that when their number reached 144 thousand, the Last Judgment would come, and they would all find paradise.
They enjoyed such high patronage that even the police could not disturb them. The only thing that was forbidden to them was fiery baptism, that is, the removal of testicles from men by burning them with a red-hot iron.
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Flog and exile
Soon the eunuchs appeared even in the army, and one of the sectarian girls declared herself the wife of the Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich. Even young courtiers began to emasculate themselves, and then Alexander I decided to end it.
In 1820, Selivanov was secretly imprisoned at the Spaso-Efimiev Monastery and did so with other leaders of the eunuchs, after which the sect went underground, but did not become less dangerous. With their outward kindness, insinuity, the promise of wealth (they had no heirs), the eunuchs drew new adepts into their ranks. Bequeathing property to each other, they accumulated huge fortunes, which also served as a kind of propaganda. The sectarians included the millionaire merchants Sadovnikov, Kobychev, Vasiliev, Antonov.
Nicholas I, in turn, intensified the persecution of the sect.
According to the code of 1845, the eunuchs were deprived of their civil rights and were subject to exile to the most remote places of Siberia, and for emasculation of others they were sentenced to whip, stigma and 6 years in hard labor.
But as Ilya Andreevich Alexandrov points out in his work "Responsibility of eunuchs in accordance with the Code of Punishments of 1845", this was not always fulfilled, and in 1867 at least 7 thousand eunuchs were present in central Russia.
A brisk step into the 21st century?
Despite the persecution, the sect survived the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1901, 16 eunuchs were discovered in Ryazan. All of them claimed to have castrated themselves. Ober-Prosecutor Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev complained that the eunuchs are secretive, and this deprives the authorities of the opportunity to track them. He noted that fortunately, almost all of them are childless, but warned that they are quite adept at propaganda.
In 1905, Emperor Nicholas II allowed the eunuchs to choose their place of residence, and several thousand sectarians returned from Siberia. This caused a new burst of castrations. As a result, 142 eunuchs were tried in Kharkiv in 1910, 22 in Kursk, in 1912 in Voronezh, 80 eunuchs were arrested, in Ufa - 26.
1913 was marked by trials of eunuchs in Yekaterinburg, Ryazan and Vyshny Volochok.
And only the revolution and the Civil War scattered the sectarians so that they were forgotten. True, during the NEP times, the sectarians tried to revive the communities, but the Bolsheviks did not tolerate them. In 1929, a law "On Religious Cults" appeared: communities were closed forcibly, and in some places demonstrative criminal trials were conducted. For example, in December 1929 in Saratov, and in 1930 in Leningrad. The skoptsy were declared kulaks and exploiters; they were blamed for the disfigurement of people, the propaganda of the monarchy, religion and anti-Sovietism.
In Leningrad, 15 sectarians received sentences ranging from 2 to 4 years with the confiscation of half of their property. In 1930, the leader of the sectarians, Lomonosov, received 10 years in prison, and the activists - from 2 to 8 years. Obviously, most of the eunuchs perished in the Gulag, and their ideology simply disappeared.
However, has it disappeared? The last eunuchs were met by journalist Alexander Kolpakov in 1999 in the Moscow region. A member of the sect Anatoly said that he, an orphan, was emasculated by an old relative in the mid-1950s in the village where he was sent to be raised. He was castrated in a bathhouse, promising that they would write off the house and give him a box of gold ducats. Two more eunuchs told Kolpakov that their father had emasculated them. In total, in 1999, the journalist managed to find 7 eunuchs and even be delighted.
Maya Novik