Skoptsy

The Skoptsy (Russian: скопцы, lit. 'eunuch', Russian pronunciation: [skɐpˈtsɨ]) were a Spiritual Christian sect of Eastern Orthodoxy. They were best known for practising emasculation of men, the mastectomy and female genital mutilation of women in accordance with their teachings against sexual lust. The descriptive term "Skoptsy" was coined by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Skoptsy woman having undergone a mastectomy

The sect emerged in the late 18th century. It reached the peak of its popularity in the early 20th century but was essentially wiped out by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.

Beliefs and practices

Genitals of Skoptsy men, "lesser seal" (left) and "greater seal" (right).

Skoptsy is a plural of skopets, at the time the Russian term for "castrate" (in contemporary Russian, the term has become restricted to referring to the sect, in its generic meaning replaced by the loanwords yévnukh е́внух, i.e. eunuch, and kastrat кастрат).

Besides castration, the Skoptsy inherited all their beliefs and practices from the Khlysty, such as an abstinence from pleasures such as alcohol, profanity, and sex. They also adopted the ritual of radenie, an ecstatic practice of singing and dancing, though it was not considered sacramental as it was among the Khlysty. It is unclear what originally inspired the practice of self-castration, though it may have been derived from the circumcision practiced by Jews and Muslims. Ecclesiastical historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, believes that the practice originated in a mistranslation by founder Kondraty Selivanov of a biblical command in Genesis 1:28 as плотитесь ("castrate yourselves") rather than плодитесь ("be fruitful"). The Skoptsy themselves supported the practice with biblical passages such as Matthew 19:12, Matthew 18:8–9, and Luke 23:29. They also cited the purported self-castration of Origen, whose reading of Matthew had been rejected by the Orthodox Church. However, it is unknown if these passages and examples inspired the original Skoptsy, or were only referenced post hoc.

The Skoptsy believed that human genitals were a mark of original sin, and that after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had the halves of the forbidden fruit grafted onto their bodies, forming testicles and breasts. Thus, the removal of these sexual organs restored the Skoptsy to the pristine state before the original sin.

The Skoptsy's aim was to perfect the individual by eradicating original sin, which they believed had come into the world by the first coitus between Adam and Eve. They believed that human genitals were the true mark of Cain, and that the true message of Jesus Christ included the practice of castration, that Jesus himself had been a castrate, and that his example had been followed by the apostles and the early Christian saints.

Tools commonly used for castration

Skoptsy men could undergo two kinds of castration, the "lesser seal", which involved the removal of the testicles, and the "greater seal", removal of both penis and testicles. The castrations and emasculations were originally performed with a red-hot iron, called the 'fiery baptism'. However, the Skoptsy later transitioned to using knives or razors, with the iron serving only to stop the bloodflow. Castration was also occasionally performed by twisting the scrotum, destroying the seminal vesicles to stop the flow of semen. Skoptsy women had their nipples or their entire breasts removed, or scarred the sides of their breasts. They also removed the labia majora, and often the labia minora and clitoris. The operations were generally performed in isolated areas by elders in a ceremony, though some opted to perform on themselves. During the operation, they said the phrase "Christ is risen!"

History

Kondratii Selivanov, founder of Skoptsy-movement. Drawing from early 19th century.

The initial leader of the Skoptsy was Andrei Ivanov Blokhin, a peasant who fled the estate he had been born on. He was converted to the Khlysty sect by the preacher Mikhail Nikulin, who informed him that, alongside the other abstinences practiced by the Khlysty, he must castrate himself. Around the late 1760s, he and his friend Kondratii Selivanov castrated themselves, and began preaching the practice of castration to peasants in the Oryol region. Akulina Ivanovna, the successor to Nikulin's teacher and a popular Khlysty prophet around Oryol, was also a leading figure in the early Skoptsy movement. By 1772, the core of the Skoptsy movement was thirty-nine men and four women, a large majority of the men having undergone castration. Several members of this core group were identified to have come from Ivanovna's following. The sect would be discovered by Russian authorities in 1772, with varying claims on how they were identified. While clerical investigators used religious decrees against Old Believers and heretics who attempted to hide to prosecute the Skoptsy, Catherine the Great approached the case from a more secular angle, seeking to end the sect before it grew through the means of civil court rather than religious law. Almost all those found to be Skoptsy were pardoned, and only Blokhin, Nikulin, and Aleksei Sidorov, identified as the movement's leaders, were punished. Selivanov was convicted of having persuaded thirteen peasants to castrate themselves. He initially escaped, but was apprehended in 1775 and exiled to Nerchinsk, Siberia.

His followers organized to locate and free him. He was found living in Irkutsk, and managed to escape and move to Moscow in 1795. In 1797, he moved to Saint Petersburg where, according to Skoptsy accounts, he was interviewed by Tsar Paul I. He claimed to be the Tsar's father, Peter III (who had been assassinated in 1762), following which Paul I had him confined to the madhouse at Obukhov hospital.

He was released in 1802. For the next eighteen years, until 1820, he lived in Saint Petersburg, in the house of one of his disciples. He received double homage as Christ and tsar, identifying himself as both Tsar Peter III and as Christ Returned. Peter had been popular among the Raskolniks (dissidents) because he granted them liberty of conscience, and among the peasants because when pillaging the convents he divided their lands among the labourers. Selivanov claimed the title "God of Gods and King of Kings", and proclaimed salvation of believers through castration.

Selivanov succeeded in gaining followers even among the upper classes of Saint Petersburg. When the Governor General of Saint Petersburg, Mikhail Miloradovich, learned that two of his nephews, as well as several members of the guards regiments and sailors, were members of the sect, he asked the imperial government to intervene. Eventually, in June 1820, it was decided to arrest Selivanov again and confine him to Spaso-Evfimiev monastery (Monastery of Saint Euthymius) in Suzdal, where he remained until his death in 1832, allegedly his hundredth year. During his stay in Suzdal, his followers continued to plead for his release. Although this was denied, Selivanov was free to receive visitors in the monastery, and his followers worshipped him there. He also left writings, known under the title The Message (Послание) and Harvest (Страды), as well as nine letters addressed to the priest Sergeyev.

Despite the furious investigations of the Third Department (the tsar's secret police), Skoptisism did not disappear after Selivanov's death, and scandals continued to arise. The sect established a presence in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Morshansk and Odessa, and later in Bukarest and Iași in Romania, where members of the sect had fled due to the persecution by Russian authorities. By 1866, the sect was reported as having 5,444 members (3,979 men and 1,465 women). Although Skoptisism prescribed castration as a precondition for entering paradise, only a minority of members (703 men and 100 women) had undergone bodily mutilation. Alexandre Dumas, père, writes about the sect, calling them scopsis, towards the end of his account of his journey through Caucasia, "Le Caucase, Memoires d'un Voyage", 1858, where he met them in Georgia. In the book The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky mentions that the home of Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin is rented to Skoptsy tenants. Dostoevsky also mentions Skoptsy in the 1872 novel Demons and the 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov.

Map of the Skoptsy population in Russia from 1860–1870

Repressive measures were tried along with ridicule: male Skoptsy were dressed in women's clothes and paraded wearing fools' caps through the villages. In 1876, 130 Skoptsy were deported. To escape prosecution some of the sect emigrated, mostly to Romania, where some of them mixed with old-believer exiles known as Lipovans. Romanian writer I.L. Caragiale acknowledges that toward the end of the 19th century all the horse-powered cabs in Bucharest were driven by Russian Skoptsy (Scopiți in Romanian). Though the law was strict in Russia—every eunuch was compelled to register—Skoptsism did not abate in its popularity. The Skoptsy became known as moneylenders, and a bench known as the "Skoptsy's Bench" stood in Saint Petersburg for many years.

The Skoptsy may have had as many as 100,000 followers in the early 20th century, although repression continued and members of the sect were put on trial. Increased repression and collectivization under the Soviet Union reduced the numbers to a reported few thousand in 1929, when the authorities staged a widely publicized mass trial against the sect.

Leon Trotsky, in a report from Romania in 1913, wrote about the Skoptsy in the Dobruja region who worked as horse-cab drivers and played a predominant role in the local horse trade. Patrick Leigh Fermor in The Broken Road describes his encounters (in 1933/4) with two "Skapetz" (sic) in a Bucharest tavern and as a passenger in their horse-drawn cabs: "They conversed in oddly high-pitched voices in a language that sounded at first like Bulgarian but soon turned out to be—judging by its shifting vowels and liquid sounds—Russian."

Olivia Manning in The Great Fortune (1960) describes the Skoptsy carriage drivers of Bucharest based on her visit in 1939.

After the October Revolution

After the Bolsheviks seized power during the October Revolution, they focused on weakening the Russian Orthodox Church and the influence of religion, as they posed threats to the authority of the new government. Many early Bolshevik decrees, such as stripping the Orthodox Church of its privileges and asserting the equality of different religions indirectly strengthened the Russian minority sects, including the Skoptsy, by removing the tools previously used to suppress them. Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, a power broker within the emerging state used this freedom from previous repression to court the Skoptsy and other minority sects. Posing these groups as proto-Communists victimized by the Tsarist government, Bonch-Bruevich also gained favor for the sects among the Soviet government. The Skoptsy were broadly receptive to these appeals. The Skoptsy writer Gavriil Men'shenin celebrated the revolution as a "new dawn of life", and Kuz'ma Lisin's followers claimed that the revolution was predicted by Christ, who said that they should welcome it.

Photos of Skoptsy taken by ethnographer Nikolai Volkov to be used against them in the 1929 trials.

The treatment of the Skoptsy in the Soviet Union worsened as time progressed. While the Skoptsy's wealth could be seen as aspirational during the free market years of the New Economic Policy, the political landscape strongly shifted as Joseph Stalin replaced the economically liberal NEP with pro-collectivization policies that opposed the accumulation of wealth. In the context of this change, the Skoptsy began to be seen as exploiters of labor. Bonch-Bruevich, once a staunch supporter of the Skoptsy, began to adopt the anti-religious party line. Writing to prominent Skoptsy who complained of the repression, he stated that the Skoptsy arrested must have been fanatics or harming people's welfare. He also began to oppose the practice of castration, especially of children. In 1927 a propaganda play was put on in Moscow denigrating the Skoptsy, and the Soviet secret police arrested a Leningrad Skoptsy community of 158 people. Two other groups of Skoptsy in Saratov and Moscow were also be arrested, and the three communities were put on trial from 1929 to 1931. Prosecutors and the party portrayed the Skoptsy as exploitative NEPmen perpetuating the old religious order. The ruling of the 1929 trial of the Leningrad Skoptsy stated that the sect was a formal, organized conspiracy with anti-Soviet aims, and the Skoptsy were convicted of both inflicting physical injury and counter-revolutionary activities.

The Skoptsy population rapidly declined during Soviet collectivization, numbering only about 2,000 people by 1929. The remaining Skoptsy were driven into seclusion, with little record of their activities after the trials. Unsubstantiated reports from the 1970s placed several dozen Skoptsy in Tambov Oblast, and several hundred in Oryol Oblast. These surviving groups no longer self-castrated, and maintained their population by adopting orphans of the Second World War.

See also

• Antisexualism
• Coitophobia
• Self-mutilation
• Shakers

Bibliography

• Buss, Andreas (2010). The Russian-Orthodox Tradition and Modernity. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-13324-2.
• Engelstein, Laura (1997). "From Heresy to Harm: Self-castrators in the Civic Discourse of Late Tsarist Russia" (PDF). In Hara, Teruyuki; Matsuzato, Kimitaka (eds.). Empire and Society: New Approaches to Russian History. Hokkaido University: Slavic Research Center. pp. 1–22. ISBN 978-4-938637-11-8.
• ——— (1999). Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-3676-1.
• ——— (2000). "Personal Testimony and the Defense of Faith: Skoptsy Telling Tales". In Engelstein, Laura; Sandler, Stephanie (eds.). Self and Story in Russian History. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-3791-1.
• Etkind, Alexander (1998). Хлыст: Секты, литература и революция [Khlysty: Sects, Literature, and Revolution] (in Russian). Moscow: University of Helsinki. ISBN 978-5-86793-030-1.
• Frick, Karl R. H. (2005). Licht und Finsternis [Light and Darkness] (in German). Vol. 2. Wiesbaden: Marix Verlag. ISBN 3-86539-044-7.
• Gentes, Andrew Armand (2010). Exile, Murder and Madness in Siberia, 1823-61. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-27326-9.
• Grass, Karl Konrad (1904). Die geheime heilige Schrift der Skopzen [The Secret Holy Scripture of the Skoptsy] (in German). Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung.
• ——— (1907). Die russischen Sekten [The Russian Sects] (in German). Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung.
• Lane, Christel (1978). Christian Religion in the Soviet Union: a Sociological Study. Albany: SUNY Press. ISBN 0-87395-327-4.
• Maltsev, Vladimir (2022). "Economic Effects of Voluntary Religious Castration on the Informal Provision of Cooperation: The Case of the Russian Skoptsy Sect". European Economic Review. 145 104109. doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104109. ISSN 0014-2921.
• Pelikan, Evgenij Venceslavovic̆ (1876). Geschichtlich-medizinische Untersuchungen über das Skopzentum in Rußland [Forensic Medical Investigations into the Skoptsy of Russia] (in German). Translated by Iwanoff, Nicolaus. Munich: J. Ricker'sche Buchhandlung.
• Perrie, Maureen (2023). "The Castrates, the Specter of Pugachev, and Religious Policy under Nicholas I". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 24 (2): 299–320. doi:10.1353/kri.2023.0017. ISSN 1538-5000.

Further reading

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Skoptsi". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

• A History of Secret Societies by Arkon Daraul [1]
• Tulpe, Irina; Torchinov, Evgeny (2000-01-01). "The Castrati ("Skoptsy") Sect in Russia History, Teaching, and Religious Practice". International Journal of Transpersonal Studies. 19 (1 pp. 77–87). doi:10.24972/ijts.2000.19.1.77. ISSN 1321-0122.