In the Soviet Union, sects were the rarest phenomenon and were under the strictest ban. They fought with them, imprisoning leaders and recruiting active supporters.
Who are they
Skoptsy (self-names - "white doves", "lambs of God") - a religious sect in tsarist Russia. It appeared at the end of the 18th century. It was founded by the fugitive peasant of the Oryol province Kondraty Selivanov. He drew a parallel between the concepts of "redeemer" and "casterer." The basis of the doctrine - to save the soul is possible only through castration, castration, thereby expelling the flesh. There were many women among the eunuchs. The head of the sect, the helmsman, was assisted by the helmsman, whom the adepts called the Mother of God. During initiation into eunuchs, women had their external genitals removed, their breasts dried out and their nipples cut off.
Selivanov declared himself the Son of God, and at the end of the 18th century he was able to gather an impressive number of like-minded people. When castrated, barbaric methods were used, for example, cauterization with a red-hot rod. Often, initiates died from painful shock or infection.
The teachings of the newly minted messiah spread at an alarming rate. At the insistence of Prince Golitsyn, Selivanov was arrested and exiled to a monastery, where he lived until his death. But the teaching of eunuchs did not disappear, and even in the Soviet Union existed until the 30s. The eunuchs also reminded of themselves in 1967. The details of that eerie story have become known only recently.
Leningrad trial over "white doves"
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In 1930, 15 members of the eunuchs sect, which operated in the early years of Soviet power, were tried in Leningrad. The leader of the sect Lomonosov was given 10 years of strict isolation with confiscation of property and deportation to Siberia for 5 years. The rest received from 4 to 8 years, all eunuchs were expelled from the Leningrad region.
Skoptsov, as it was reported in the press at that time, was tried not for his faith, but for inflicting grievous injuries on the neophytes of the sect. A separate line mentioned the financial solvency of the "white doves" - many of them found a large amount of jewelry and money during searches.
Crime drama in Staritsa
The old story, where the eunuchs appear, is more like a criminal detective with spies, pursuits and murders. By order of the party and investigative bodies, all information about the incident that occurred in the winter of 1967 in the town of Staritsa, Kalinin region, was classified.
… One winter day, an ambulance picked up a bloody man on the road. At the hospital, it turned out that the victim was castrated - the man's genitals were completely removed. The eunuch soon died of great blood loss. It was Yevgeniy Stashuk, a resident of Staritsa.
At first, the police believed that such a brutal method of reprisal was evidence of revenge or murder motivated by jealousy. The search in the house of the deceased gave nothing. Except for one detail: in the bedroom at the head of the bed there was a large sheet of paper with a symbol - the letter "C" in the form of a sickle. The murder of Stashuk was investigated by detectives from the regional center. The new husband of the former wife of the deceased, Nikolai Alekseevnin, was suspected of committing a crime. They found a knife with caked blood on him, its group matched the blood group of the victim. True, it was similar for Alekseevnin. After a frank confession, written under pressure from investigators, Alekseevnin received 7 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit.
Soon the police found the corpse of a local resident, a young guy Volodya Ivanov, eaten by dogs, with his genitals cut off long before his death. The examination showed that the deceased froze to death due to drunkenness.
The policeman who looked after Ivanov's sister, a neighbor of the late Stashuk, began to conduct an independent investigation of the incident and it led him to the limestone caves under Staritsa, stretching for tens of kilometers. As it turned out later, it was in them that the eunuchs performed their terrible rituals. Moreover, among the adherents of the sect was the beloved of the same policeman.
The police and the KGB set up an ambush in the limestone caves, and one evening they witnessed the ritual (zeal) of the eunuchs. In the cave, they managed to detain one of the participants in the zeal, the famous old local historian Afanasyev, the rest fled. With the help of an extraordinary medical examination, carried out in Staritsa, several sectarians-eunuchs were calculated. The leader of the sect was a previously twice convicted unemployed resident of Kalinin, 39-year-old Sergei Savchenko, who had a penchant for pedophilia. Once Savchenko raped an underage girl, and her four-time convicted father did not report to the police - he himself dealt with the rapist by cutting off his genitals.
Savchenko, who was striving for power, accidentally read about the 1930 trial of the eunuchs and decided to revive this sect in Staritsa. He knew how to convince people and influence them. For 4 years, the criminal-feeder brought the number of his charges to 12 people, three of the eunuchs lived in Staritsa. It was Savchenko who invented the symbolism of the sect - the letter "C" stylized as a sickle. Allegedly in honor of Kondraty Selivanov. Savchenko invented a "small throne" with a hole in the seat, on which people sat during the castration procedure.
The first blunder of the sectarians was an operation that was unsuccessfully performed by one of the neophytes - Evgeny Stashuk. Distraught with pain, Stashuk managed to escape from his comrades-in-arms. The last of the recruited eunuchs was Volodya Ivanov. When a policeman began to follow Volodya, Savchenko ordered to remove Ivanov, having made him drunk with alcohol.
Skoptsov was tried in secret on the territory of one of the military garrisons. The sect leader and two of his henchmen were sentenced to death. The rest received from 8 to 12 years in prison.