Real alignments in the struggle between paganism and Christianity. The Lessons of Hunger 1891-1893

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The catastrophes of hunger demolish in the minds of people, first of all, everything superficial and artificial. On the so-called "world religions" hunger strikes directly and painfully. No, the "old gods" do not replace Christ, Allah or Buddha, and druids with magi do not come out of the forests - no one remembers them. Everything that we know, for example, about Slavic pagan deities and beliefs, is the painstaking work of historians, and not "people's memory" (it really "remembers", but something else, about which below).

The "hungry" renaissance, or, if you like, the reconquista of paganism, is happening at the same time simply, stupidly and scary for the "state" religion and the authorities. The terrible hunger catastrophe of 1892 provided a huge amount of factual material and analytics on the topic. This is due to the fact that, firstly, thanks to the public and personally to Leo Tolstoy, a large number of educated and observant people worked "on hunger", and secondly, the Church itself intensively monitored the situation - the Synod through the dioceses of hungry provinces received massive reports and reports of village priests and church commissions. The most efficient analysis was in the magazine "Peace of God", where in the issues of 1892-94 they regularly analyzed and analyzed various messages from the field. Many analysts are found in medical reports of those years, as well as in police investigations of rumors and rumors that led to riots, pogroms and disobedience to the authorities.

Such lumps of national science as professors Vyacheslam Mikhailovich Naidysh and Sergei Nikolayevich Azbelev were engaged in the study and generalization of the collected materials. And the first and mighty groundwork was made on the analysis of fragmentary information from the nightmare famine of 1872-74. Academician Alexander Afanasevich Potebnya (Word and Myth. M.: Pravda, 1989).

From a medical point of view, A. V. Pogozhaev (Apathy and starvation // Russian wealth. 1892. No. 4-5). Harsh and real folk from native speakers was posted by the Ethnographic Review magazine.

Even Pal Nikolaich Milyukov wrote that for the Church the pagan threat was absolutely real ("Essays on the History of Russian Culture," Vol. 2, Part 1).

In our time, in addition to Naydysh, philosophers I. N. Losev write on the topic. and Sinelnikov S. P., whose articles in the journals "Voprosy filosofii" and "Volga" poked the author of the post into this topic.

What was real paganism in 1892-94, what were the mechanisms and forms of its manifestation, and what consequences did it all lead to?

1. The mechanism for triggering a return to paganism.

1.1. At the first signs of a catastrophe, everyone in the villages prayed hard, tied up with vices (bukhach), went to all church services and religious processions. The priests wrote sweet reports. At the same time, they noted the emergence of all kinds of incredible rumors and gossip, which at first did not attach much importance (in 1898-99, 1906, 1911, the church and secular authorities, taught by bitter experience, tried to react as quickly as possible at this first stage, but when they did not have time, then they received what is beautifully described by Vikentiy Veresaev and Mikhail Bulgakov

1.2. When the catastrophe was approaching close, the priests began to ask sharp and unexpected fantastic questions (such as "is it true that the Emperor had a vision of the End of the World and in his palace the icons were crying in blood, and the horse spoke in a human voice?"). Fantastic questions were gradually replaced by completely everyday ones: "why did the bread go badly", "why does the cattle get sick", "why does Kasyan's stomach swell up and he carries garbage?"And here the priest was rescued either by steel eggs (they came across such), or by special knowledge (there were only a few of them). The answer "So God pleases" did not roll and could instantly blow up the situation (for example, everyone could get dumped right from the service). If the priest fumbled for something or began to press with charisma, then the second question came: how is this particular pi * dec connected with rumors and conversations? Can they tell the truth?

It was a fork: the answer "yes, connected" was unacceptable by default, the answer "no, not connected" immediately gave rise to distrust of the priest's competence (at best, at worst, the priest began to be considered a participant in some kind of "conspiracy").

1.3. Further, as Potebnya convincingly warned everyone even before the famine, the following happens: “[Christianity], which excludes nature altogether, did not provide an explanation for many miraculous natural phenomena, which the pagan explained by associating with his faith. Christianity could only somewhat restrict, but could not completely eliminate that part of paganism, which is directed to nature. Further, Christianity left a lot of empty space around the events of family life, birth, marriage, death, around occupations, for example - hunting, farming, cattle breeding, spinning "and, as Sinelnikov rightly adds," around drought, crop failure, hunger."

Many people completely ceased to arrange the explanation of the hungry fuck with the stable formulas "it is so pleasing to God", "A bad event is God's punishment, a good one is the grace coming from God." These formulas, with proper religious education, work when, for example, you are raped, but fed. As soon as they stop feeding, the mechanism breaks down. Potebnya poked everyone in the eyes of the famine of 1872-74: “Such a simplified scheme, explaining the disaster in its own way, did not satisfy a considerable part of the peasantry: the people, in his opinion, were looking for deep explanations of what had happened and found them in the old, not completely forgotten paganism. and that paganism places the gods within nature, closer to man."

The problem was formulated even more clearly by Soviet philosophers, who also closely studied it: the Christian God is higher and further and is not obliged to explain in detail the action of the forces of nature, and the pagan gods are these very forces.

Everything, paganism burst out. But, I repeat once again, no Veles and Peruns come out - no one remembers them. Nobody builds temples either (I’m lying - the Chuvash and Mari fell into the forest, and with them the Russians and Tatars, but this was a local phenomenon and paganism among the Chuvash and Mari was not exterminated by anyone at the root).

2. Manifestation of paganism.

2.1. It, at first, begins to manifest itself by indirect signs in rumors and rumors. You would not recognize now for anything, and the Church then clearly defined - this is the appearance in the stories of rumors of fantastic details, to which Christian explanations and names are still attached (Samara "Zoya's Standing" would then be unambiguously identified as paganism, and would have broken sickly people Samara diocese).

In addition, folk legends about various biblical characters, very well known to the Church, are beginning to climb with renewed vigor (here I strongly hope they will correct me terminologically, if anything, or add

anrike). The most popular characters in them are the "sisters of Herod", who are usually defined by the number from 12 to 40. The people give them more than characteristic names: Golodeya, Plump, Yellow, Shaking, Fire, Ledey, Gnetey, Wheeze, Deaf, Lomley, Korikot, All over the place, etc. Each sister has 300 lovers. Hunger is not ruled by Hunger, but another dangerous creature from the list - Varogush. Hunger proverb: "The belly of hunger will take away, pain and varogush will come." Varogush is represented in the form of a white moth that sits on the lips of a sleeping person, as a result of which fever, anemia, loss of strength, stuntedness and, as a result, death are struck.

Psychiatrists already then noted that in addition to the fact that white flies really exist, those who went with a roof on the basis of hunger begin to see them in marketable quantities - this is one of the massive glitches (deliric drunks, by the way, are often observed by white flies too). Since malaria and various fevers really intensify during hunger and people around you naturally die in batches, then hello - Varogush becomes a perfect reality, since no one really knows how to recognize psychos and everyone around you sees It. That is, the myth can no longer be debunked in any way, and such attempts will lead to a heated situation.

But Varogush and other similar legends are just flowers. The church harshly condemned them, but for the time being it was reconciled.

2.2. With the growth of suspense, the population becomes more and more nervous and aggressive: crime statistics begin to creep up, passions and showdowns blaze everywhere from scratch. There are cases of open disobedience to the authorities. Disease and epidemics continue to develop exponentially. Nobody understands complicated explanations of the current processes and does not want to understand, and the old simple formulas do not work. But consciousness insistently demands an explanation of what is happening. And here they come - gods, demons, spirits of the lower pagan pantheon. No one remembers their ancient names, they call them names in different places in different ways, or in a Christian way - demons (they remember only water and wood goblin). Witches are one of the first to appear. And this whole company appears for a reason - "grandma said" - the phenomenon is somewhat more complicated. Professor Naydysh found a very suitable term for him - bull. You can read the definitions of a bylichka in quantity on the Internet. We will take the one that Naydysh found specifically for hunger: a bylichka is an oral folk story with an installation for complete reliability, but with elements of fantastic, unreal and supernatural events, accompanied, as a rule, by creatures - "lower" gods of pagan beliefs or dealing with people with superhuman strength (devils, witches, sorcerers) and such characters as ghosts, werewolves, ghouls.

Those. Bylichka has a real geographic reference, in its plot there may be real people, exact dates and times. An advanced version of the story is its link with the Christian apocalypse, which is increasingly endowed with pagan features.

Examples.

Simple bylichka. Recorded among the peasants of the Chernsky district of the Chernigov province in 1893.

"The culprit of the crop failure was one witch. At night she rode around the villages on an aspen beam (an arched stick) (it is listed in detail which) and pulled feathers from the tails and wings of the roosters - about five from each rooster (rooster - paganism). In the summer of 1891 and 1892 years at night they often heard the cry of a frightened bird in the courtyards. bunches and, flying on a beam through the skies (the already deceased witnesses are listed in detail) over Mother Russia, THEM DISCERNED THE RAIN CLOUDS and thus prevented the fruitful rain from falling on the dry ground. witches - a trillion) ".

Apocalyptic bylich. Recorded also in the Chernigov province.

"In one of the villages of Novosilsky district, a church watchman, walking around the church at night, heard that the roosters were crowing in the church. So it was up to three times in the night." What is it? What cock could end up in the church? "- the watchman wondered. The next night the cocks crowed again. Then the watchman ran to the priest, woke him up and told about the roosters. The priest got dressed and went with the watchman to the church, and both of them heard that there were two The next morning the priest called a gathering, told the parishioners about all the parishioners, and at the end asked them: "Who of you Orthodox is looking for someone who would agree to spend the night in a church in order to find out what the crowing of a cock means?" One guy from the same village says, "I agree to this."

They locked that guy in the church for the night /

Here he took the Gospel and began to read. Read, he read; it is already midnight, the roosters are singing in the village; Lo and behold, the royal gates dissolve by themselves and a WHITE COCK comes out of them: he shouted from the pulpit: "Ku-ka-re-ku!" and went to the altar. The royal gates were closed behind the cock. The roosters sang for the second time in the village - again a rooster came out of the open gates onto the pulpit, but only RED. The cock crowed and also disappeared into the altar. When the roosters sang for the third time in the village, a BLACK rooster stepped out onto the pulpit. After him, a monk in black clothes came out to the pulpit and asks the guy: "Do you understand what these roosters portend?" “I don’t understand,” the guy replies. "Well, listen: a WHITE rooster means a bountiful harvest in the near future, RED - a terrible bloodshed, BLACK - deaths, coffins, and many graves, so there will be no one to eat bread."

The pagan roosters here echo the horses from the Apocalypse.

They believed the bullies unquestioningly.

2.3. Wild rumors were especially fertile on the prepared soil - booze. Most of all, the peasants were afraid not of the famine itself, but of cholera, which invariably came with it. Among the peasantry, there was an unshakable conviction that one could not be saved from cholera and that Christianity did not protect against it in any way. And what does a normal Russian person do when he gets a hell of a shot? That's right - it thumps. Can you imagine how you have to get drunk to surprise a standard police officer? From the report of a police officer from the Pokrovskoe settlement of the Novouzensky district of the Samara province, where he was sent to monitor the mood of the peasants when he received news of cholera coming from the lower reaches of the Volga:

"I've seen so many drunk people as never before. We drank so that it was easier to die in a drunken state, we drank just like that and God knows why - just to be drunk."

Tons of literature have been written about cholera riots and rumors. We are interested in rumors related to paganism and affecting the vertical of power. Cholera 1892-93 gave them to us.

In the same county, there were standard rumors that for every poisoned Russian doctor they received from the British 30 rubles, and for the Ukrainians 40. The people smashed the hospitals in the county and nearly killed the staff. When the promptly sent troops put the piston on everyone, a story was born that began to decompose the troops themselves and the provincial gendarmes had to work very hard. Here it is:

"During the winter, when famine befell all our Volga provinces, the tsar sent a lot of bread and money to distribute to the people, but this aid did not reach the destination, remaining in the hands of officials who robbed both the treasury and the people. The heir came, found out and for a long time persuaded the officials to give the loot to the people, but, not settling with them, “went after my father.” The officials, having learned about this and being afraid of reprisals, bribed the doctors so that they let cholera out and would not allow But the heir (now in the form of a bear, now a rooster, now a horse, now a knight, now a crow) returned to the Samara province and participated with the people in the riots and destruction of hospitals. another county), he three times with a bang raised the portrait of the Emperor, which hung on the wall in the zemstvo hospital."

The gendarmes noted cases that, under the influence of the story, some soldiers threw stones at doctors.

("All the stories are taken from the issues of" The World of God ").

As a result of such rumors, glitches, ridiculous confirmation of various superstitions, forgotten pagan beliefs begin to return. The peasants are increasingly beginning to look at the world through the prism of paganism, although they still use Christian mythology and terminology. And here there is only one step left to practical paganism.

3. Practical paganism.

3.1. The basis of paganism is not ancient Greek myths, not an ancient Roman strict hierarchy of deities, not disputes over who is more important: Perun or Veles. The basis of paganism is primitive beliefs associated with the things and processes most necessary for survival.

Since the harvest has already been * banned, the most important thing for the peasant is the cattle - without it he cannot survive and sow in the spring. And cattle are mowed down by diseases. Livestock disease epidemics also intensify during lean years. There is a case. Prayers do not help, observations, such as "if you baptize a cow for a long time, she will die anyway," also minus the position of Christianity. But something must be done, the peasants are in a fever and they cannot find a place for themselves because of the cattle. And here comes the scattered ritual side of paganism. This is when the official God does not help, and the forbidden deities are here, next to them. You just need to ask. How to ask - no one really knows (all sorts of conflicting "experts" appear, who take a fee for knowledge and dump them out of the village until they are burned). Begin to look for ways intuitively. And what is interesting - in rituals related to the health of cattle, almost everyone comes to the same actions. At the same time, just in case, they are not yet finally breaking with the Christian God. The rituals are most clearly described by the report of the priest of the Nicholas Church of the village of Ilovaty Yerik of the Novouzensky district of the Samara province:

"Superstitions in houses are supported by the fact that after Matins of the Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord, the owner of the house, putting a few pieces of simple incense in a homemade incense with hot coals, goes to the barnyard and there, collecting the scraps of straw in one heap, puts the coals and incense on a heap of straw and lights it, observing how not to make a fire. This is what they call "PURNY" and is done so that their livestock is healthy."

Straw is a completely pagan material. Bunches of straw are present in almost all pagan rituals associated with cattle.

Then the "do like everyone else" mechanism is activated.

3.2. It comes to ceremonies when hunger is already at its peak. And after the peak there is a decline. The strongest brute survives or which had immunity. Or doctors have coped with the epidemic. Or she herself faded away. But it is clear to everyone that when we began to burn the straw, the cattle stopped falling. And when we cut the throats of the last chickens and threw them into the swamp (or where "these" live there), the fever stopped.

And in the spring, "gentlemen" came from the capitals and brought bread - it was the Heir who returned to the capital.

3.3. When the famine was suppressed, the Church predictably turned on the repressive mechanism. The instigators of rumors, the "distributors of paganism" were arrested. The population made an unequivocal conclusion - that is who our enemies are.

Many peasants, unable to break with Christianity, but having "tasted the forbidden fruit", went to the sectarians - not without reason sectarianism was especially widespread in the zone of risky farming.

Many, having eaten and repented of their "paganism", went to the Old Believers (this blog has already cited observations from 1892-94 that the Old Believers did not suffer from scurvy and anemia and that the peasants of the surrounding villages were drawn to them. faith, and in the brine, which the Old Believers had huge reserves, no one suspected).

After the famines, the Church had to pinch the sectarians and Old Believers, snatching oath assurances from those that they would not accept any of the Orthodox.

And it became clear to many more that the final transition to paganism in many villages did not happen only because of the help that finally arrived - if the famine had stretched out for another two years and there would have been no return.

If someone suddenly decides to fantasize about religions and beliefs in the post folders, then immediately keep in mind: these will be primitive pagan beliefs related to harvesting, livestock, hunting, fertility and luck. And the spirits will live in the most "bad" places.

Well, the promised bonus.

During that famine, a large-scale resettlement (refugee) movement began from the lean provinces of the Volga region back to the central ones. The authorities tried to suppress spontaneous relocations. Among the peasants, the most incredible rumors were born in connection with the resettlement.

No kidding right now: in one of the volosts of the Saratov province, the peasants tied up all their belongings in bales, boarded up their houses, went out to the central squares and in an organized manner began to expect resettlement to JUPITER. "Peace of God", number 7-8, 1894, quotes the "Saratov leaf":

“Rumors about the resettlement of peasants to the planet Jupiter reached Saratov. The bailiff was instructed to gather the officers, centurions and foremen and find out the root of this evil. The land, they say, is good, forests, meadows - plenty of fish in the rivers, as much as you want, beast and birds, darkness, that if a whole army comes, they will not be eradicated, because there are no railways (sic!), And wheat is born - gold.

The peasants' desire to move to Jupiter was fully revealed. One of the instigators was found - a Cossack from the village of Kukovichi Overka Skoda. He showed that he himself is illiterate, but people say that the earths on Jupiter are good. A protocol has been drawn up for Overka Skoda.