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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
In 1846, the Orenburg Provincial Gazette carried a brief account of the recent baptism of over 800 Mari pagans in a “distant corner” of Birsk district. As the newspaper reported, District Chief N. Bludarov, accompanied by his assistants and a priest, “by gradually gaining the trust of the Cheremis [Maris], finally succeeded in shaking their obdurate superstition by means of persuasion. At first only a few, then a large number, and finally by whole villages, [Cheremis] decided to accept the Christian faith, and in 1845, on the clergy’s lists, there appeared up to 900 new Christians.“ Since the mid-eighteenth century, baptisms on such a scale had been rare in the Volga-Kama region, and virtually none had occurred in northwestern Orenburg province, where the population was predominantly Muslim and “pagan.“ On the surface, therefore, these baptisms appeared to be a “happy beginning” of the Christianization of local Maris and a foothold for Orthodoxy in a heavily non-Christian area.3 In fact, matters were not quite so simple.
The research and writing of this article were made possible by grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board, the American Council of Teachers of Russian, and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Midwest Russian History Workshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1996. For their many insightful recommendations, I wish to thank the participants of that workshop (especially Nicholas Breyfogle), as well as Hugo Lane, Lynda Park, Maud Mandel, Warren Rosenblum, Rafe Blaufarb, Jennifer Jenkins, and two anonymous readers for Slavic Review.
1 “O kreshchenii cheremis Birskago uezda,” Orenburgskiia gubernskiia vedomosti 43 (1846): 518.
2 While recognizing the loaded character of the term pagan, I use it in this article out of convenience, in order to refer to people who were officially considered “pagans“ (iazychniki) by the Russian government.
3 The phrase “happy beginning” appears in Cheremshanskii, V. M., Opisanie Orenburgskoi gubernii v khoziaistvenno-statisticheskom, etnograficheskom i promyshlennom otnosheniiakh (Ufa, 1859), 182–83.Google Scholar
4 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA), f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 11. 1, 23-24 (Complaint of Cheremis of Orenburg province about their forcible baptism).
5 A partial list of the most recent works includes Slezkine, Yuri, “Savage Christians or Unorthodox Russians? The Missionary Dilemma in Siberia,” in Slezkine, Yuri and Diment, Galya, eds., Between Heaven and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in Russian Culture (New York, 1993), 15–31;Google Scholar Robert Paul Geraci, “Window on the East: Ethnography, Orthodoxy, and Russian Nationality in Kazan', 1870-1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1995); Dowler, Wayne, “The Politics of Language in Non-Russian Elementary Schools in the Eastern Empire, 1865-1914,” Russian Review 54, no. 4 (1995): 516–38;Google Scholar Khodarkovsky, Michael, “‘Not by Word Alone’: Missionary Policies and Religious Conversion in Early Modern Russia,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38, no. 2 (1996): 267–93.Google Scholar
6 I refer in this article to “baptism” rather than to “conversion,” since my concern here is with the formal induction of these Maris into Christianity, rather than their religious consciousness, about which available sources give us only limited insight.
7 Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (1842), vol. 14, arts. 28, 46-49, 51-53.
8 Svod zakonov (1842), vol. 14, art. 92.
9 Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1st ser., vol. 13, no. 9825.
10 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 1. 54-54ob. (On baptism and apostasy of Cheremis). For a full description of the sacrament of baptism, see Amvrosii, “Tainstvo kreshcheniia po chinu pravoslavnoi tserkvi,” Strannik, 1864, no. 1:1-50.
11 RGIA, f. 796, op. 129, d. 1542, 1. 172ob. (Measures for the conversion of idolators in Viatka, Kazan', Perm', and Orenburg provinces).
12 For more information on these material benefits, see Paul W. Werth, “Subjects for Empire: Orthodox Mission and Imperial Governance in the Volga-Kama Region, 1825-1881” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1996).
13 M. A. Reisner notes the relative freedom that pagan status entailed, since there was no codified religious discipline upheld by the state. See his Gosudarstvo i veruiushchaia lichnost': Sbornik statei (St. Petersburg, 1905), 217-20.
14 For background on Maris, see Kozlova, K. I., Ocherki etnicheskoi istorii mariiskogo naroda (Moscow, 1978).Google Scholar
15 On the eighteenth-century baptisms, see Khodarkovsky, ‘“Not by Word Alone,'” 283-87; Malov, E. A., O novokreshchenskoi kontore (Kazan', 1878).Google Scholar On the eastward migrations, see Sepeev, G. A., Vostochnye Mariitsy: Istoriko-etnograficheskoe issledovanie material'noi kul'tury (seredina XlX-nachala XX vv.) (Ioshkar-Ola, 1975), 35–41;Google Scholar Rakhmatullin, U. Kh., Naselenie Bashkirii v XVII-XVIII vv: Voprosy formirovaniia nebashkirskogo naseleniia (Moscow, 1988), 80–90.Google Scholar
16 The other pagans in the Birsk district were predominantly Udmurt. See Cheremshanskii, Opisanie Orenburgskoi gubernii, 194.
17 The numbers and proportions of the rural population of Birsk district in 1863 were as follows: Orthodox Christians: 66,296 (23.8 percent); Muslims: 157,700 (56.6 percent); “other non-Christians” (almost exclusively pagans): 54,647 (19.6 percent). Source: “O chisle zhitelei Orenburgskoi gubernii po veroispovedaniiam za 1863 g.,” Pamiatnaia knizhka Orenburgskoi gubernii za 1865 g. (Ufa, 1865).
18 The church had published just a few basic Mari texts (none of them in the eastern dialect), which were intended to be read aloud by local clergy to their Mari parishioners. See Ivanov, I. G., Istoriia mariiskogo literaturnogo iazyka (Ioshkar-Ola, 1975).Google Scholar
19 Cheremshanskii, Opisanie Orenburgskoi gubernii, 183; Nurminskii, S., “Ocherk religioznykh verovanii cheremis,” Pravoslavnyi sobesednik, vol. 3 (1862): 284–85;Google Scholar Alonzov, F., “O religioznykh verovaniiakh cheremis Birskago uezda,” in Pamiatnaia knizhka Orenburgskoi gubernii za 1865 god (Ufa, 1865), 1–3.Google Scholar
20 See “Imena bogov Cheremiskikh,” Zavolzhskii muravei, 1833, no. 16:924-25; and Sebeok, Thomas A. and Ingemann, Frances J., Studies in Cheremis: The Supernatural (New York, 1956).Google Scholar
21 The keremet cult was widespread among the peoples of the Volga-Kama region. See Sofiiskii, Il'ia, “O keremetiakh kreshchennykh tatar Kazanskago kraia,” vestiiapo Kazanskoi eparkhii, 1877, no. 24:674–89;Google Scholar Magnitskii, V. K., Materialy k ob“iasneniiu staroi chuvashskoi very (Kazan', 1881), 1–11;Google Scholar Akhmet'ianov, R. G., Obshchaia leksika dukhovnoi kul'tury narodov srednego Povolzh'ia (Moscow, 1981), 31–33.Google Scholar
22 Vasil'ev, V. M., Materialy dlia izucheniia verovanii i obriadov naroda Marii (Krasnokokshaisk, 1927), 21–28.Google Scholar
23 Alonzov, “O religioznykh verovaniiakh cheremis Birskago uezda,” 3; Cheremshanskii, Opisanie Orenburgskoi gubernii, 184.
24 For example, F. Zemliatnitskii, “Neskol'ko slov po povodu iazycheskikh sueverii cheremis Tsarevokokshaiskago uezda,” Izvestiia po Kazanskoi eparkhii, 1871, no. 8:244-45.
25 See the discussion of this issue with respect to the Inner Asian religious environment more broadly in Devin DeWeese, hlamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tiikles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, Pa., 1994), 29-39.
26 For an example of a large Mari gathering in Viatka province, see Werth, “Subjects for Empire,” chap. 4.
27 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 11. 92, 95ob.; “O kreshchenii,” 518. The term kalmash itself signified a sacred place for such sacrifices deep in the forest. Unfortunately, I have no further information on the significance of this site.
28 Alonzov, “O religioznykh verovaniiakh cheremis Birskago uezda,” 8; V. P. Vishnevskij, “O religii nekreshchennykh cheremis Kazanskoi gubernii,” Etnograficheskii sbornik, 1858, no. 4:209-14; RGIA, f. 797, op. 3, d. 12654, 1. 22ob. (Gatherings of baptized and unbaptized Cheremis for sacrifices). The term kart (elder) is a borrowing from the Tatar language.
29 RGIA, f. 797, op. 3, d. 12654, 1. 4; RGIA, f. 808, op. 1, d. 134, 1. 43 (Letters of Russian Bible Society).
30 Even in 1896 Petr Eruslanov contended that Maris in Birsk district were less subject to Muslim influence than their counterparts in Belebei and Menzelinsk districts. See Eruslanov, “Kratkii ocherk o poezdke k cheremisam Ufimskoi gubernii letom 1896 g.,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (1896): 324-29.
31 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 1. 15. We unfortunately have no details on these earlier conversions.
32 A. F. Komov, “Cheremisy i votiaki serediny severnoi poloviny (vtoroi stan) Birskago uezda,” Ufimskiia gubernskiia vedomosti, 1889, nos. 38 and 42.
33 For more information on interethnic contacts, see N. I. Isanbaev, “Mezhetnicheskie sviazi vostochnykh mariitsev,” in Etnogenez i etnicheskaia istoriia mariitsev (Ioshkar-Ola, 1988), 87-98; and Petr Eruslanov, “Magometanskaia propaganda sredi cheremis Ufimskoi gubernii,” Pravoslavnyi blagovestnik, 1895, nos. 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, and 22.
34 In 1837, close to three-quarters of Birsk district was forest. See Iosif Debu, Topograficheskoe i statisticheskoe opisanie Orenburgshoi gubernii v nyneshnem eia sostoianii (Moscow, 1837), 148.
35 Sepeev, Vostochnye Mariitsy, 108-22; Sepeev, G. A., “Osobennosti tipologii i planirovki mariiskikh poselenii,” in Arkhipov, G. A. and Sepeev, G. A., eds., Poseleniia i zhilishcha Mariishogo kraia (Ioshkar-Ola, 1982), 159–89;Google Scholar Zlatoverkhovnikov, Ivan, Ufimskaia eparkhiia: Geograficheskii, administrativno-istoricheskii i statisticheskii ocherk (Ufa, 1899), 27;Google Scholar and Kharuzin, N., “Ocherk istorii razvitiia zhilishcha u finnov,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 24, no. 1 (1895): 35–78, and 24, no. 2 (1895): 50-104.Google Scholar
36 “O kreshchenii,” 517.
37 Teptiars were a multiethnic soslovie with a status somewhere between state peasants and Bashkirs. For details on their origins and ethnic composition, see Rakhmatullin, Naselenie Bashkirii, 127-82, and Iskhakov, D. M., “Teptiari: Opyt etnostatisticheskogo izucheniia,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1979, no. 4:29–42.Google Scholar
38 Rakhmatullin, Naselenie Bashkirii, 130-39; and Rodnov, M. I., “Chislennost' tiurkskogo krest'ianstva Ufimskoi gubernii v nachale XX v.,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 6 (1996): 121–31.Google Scholar
39 Cheremshanskii, Opisanie Orenburgskoi gubernii, 130-43; Ocherki istorii BashkirskoiASSR, 2 vols. (Ufa, 1959), vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 37-48.
40 Before 1838, state peasants came under the fiscal jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, but local police officials principally oversaw their administration. See George Bolotenko, “Administration of State Peasants in Russia before the Reforms of 1838” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1979).
41 Druzhinin, N. M., Gosudarstvennye krest'iane i reforma P. D. Kiseleva, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1946 and 1958), vol. 1;Google Scholar Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, A. P., Graf P. D. Kiselev i ego vremia, 5 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1882), vol. 2;Google Scholar Kniaz'kov, S. A., “Graf P. D. Kiselev i reforma gosudarstvennykh krestian,” Velikaia reforma (St. Petersburg, 1911), 2:209–34.Google Scholar
42 See Svod zakonov (1842), vol. 2, esp. arts. 1117, 1118, 1119, 1122, 1142, 1148, 2932, and 2954.
43 On official nationality, see Riasanovsky, Nicholas, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855 (Berkeley, 1969),Google Scholar and Whittaker, Cynthia H., The Origins of Modern Russian Education: An Intellectual Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov, 1786-1855 (DeKalb, 1984).Google Scholar
44 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 1. 4-4ob.
45 Ibid., 1. 3. Emphasis in the original.
46 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 1. 26.
47 Ibid., 1. 64.
48 Ibid., 11. 25ob., 29.
49 RGIA, f. 796, op. 145, d. 213, 11. 34-36.
50 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 11. 42-43ob.
51 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 1. 91ob. Emphasis added.
52 Teptiars’ duties included assisting local officials in maintaining order. Though the source does not specify, these Teptiars were probably themselves ethnically Mari.
53 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 11. 95-95ob., 96-97.
54 Ibid., 11. 25ob.-28. Emphasis added.
55 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 1. 94.
56 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 1. 77ob.
57 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 1. 35ob.
58 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 1. 178ob.
59 This denial of agency, along with the idea that resistance is the result of instigation, was typical of the reaction of nineteenth-century colonial administrators to movements inspired by non-Christian doctrines. See Guha, Ranajit, “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” in Guha, Ranajit and Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (New York, 1988), 45–86.Google Scholar
60 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213,11. 93, 125ob.; RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977,11. 16, 148-49.
61 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 11. 134-35.
62 Sources show that in 1853, twenty Mari children were attending a school established in the parish and that the new priest, F. Alonzov (the author of the article cited above), had succeeded in baptizing fourteen more Maris. RGIA, f. 796, op. 129, d. 1542, 11. 168-69, 197-232.
63 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213,11. 45-62; Nikol’skii, N. V., K istorii khristianskago prosveshcheniia cheremis v XIX veke (Kazan', 1915), 32–39.Google Scholar Priests were expected merely to inform the bishop of all baptisms performed.
64 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 1. Mob.
65 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 11. 40, 124-25. This was from the testimony of the new converts themselves.
66 Figures provided by the Orenburg military governor in RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 1. 178ob.
67 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 1. 15ob.
68 Ibid., 1. 179.
69 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 11. 132-132ob., 16ob.-17, 124ob.-126.
70 Ibid., 1. 17.
71 Ibid., 1. 24.
72 Ibid., 11. 132-132ob. Baptism was supposed to include the full immersion, which presupposed the removal of all clothing.
73 Ibid., 1. 133.
74 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 1. 34ob.
75 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 11. 25, 96. This notion was repeated in a case involving “idolators” in neighboring Belebei district at about the same time. RGIA, f. 796, op. 129, d. 1542, 1. 169.
76 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 11. 19, 42ob. Emphasis added.
77 Ibid., 1. 25ob. Emphasis in the original. The bulk of this petition was originally written in Tatar, but the italicized portion was written in Russian using “Tatar letters“ (the Arabic script). The petition was apparently addressed to the minister of justice, who sent a translated version on to the MGI.
78 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 11. 132, 23-24.
79 Ibid., 11. 24-24ob.
80 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 11. 39-42.
81 Ibid., 1. 115. The synod likewise expressed distinct dissatisfaction when, in the midst of this crisis, reports arrived concerning eighty-seven more baptisms elsewhere in the diocese.
82 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 11. 43-43ob., 180.
83 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 213, 1. 92ob.
84 All the citations here are from Strokovskii’s report, ibid., 11. 91-97.
85 Ibid., 1. 94.
86 Ibid., 11. 96ob.-97.
87 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 1. 81. This decision was based in part on the military governor’s opinion that “decisive action in this regard among the population of the Orenburg region, consisting as it does of over one-half non-Christians, could easily produce significant disorder.” Ibid., 1. 62.
88 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977, 11. 61ob.-62.
89 Cited in Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye krest'iane i reforma P. D. Kiseleva, 2:522.
90 For more on the “apostasy” of baptized Tatars in Kazan’ province, see Werth, “Subjects for Empire,” chaps. 4, 7, and 8.
91 On the “enlightened bureaucrats,” see Lincoln, W. Bruce, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1861 (DeKalb, 1982).Google Scholar
92 In most provinces, fully operational Chambers of State Domains were established only in 1842, after the new administrative structure had been tested in a number of central provinces. See Istoricheskoe obozrenie piatidesiatiletnei deiatel'nosti Ministerstva gosudarstvennykh imushchestv, 1837-1887, pt. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1888), 46.
93 See Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye krest'iane i reforma P. D. Kiseleva, 2:470-88; “Volneniia chuvashskogo krest'ianstva 1842 g.,” Krasnyi arkhiv 87, no. 2 (1938): 89-128; A. Andrievskii, “Kartofel'nyi bunt v Viatskoi gubernii v 1842 godu,” Istoricheskii vestnik, 1881, no. 5:556-65. Crown peasants (udel'nye krest'iane) were serfs of the imperial family and came under the jurisdiction of a special administration known as the Udel. In contrast, state peasants, often referred to as “free rural inhabitants” (svobodnyia sel’skiia obyvateli), were not enserfed.
94 Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye krest'iane i reforma P. D. Kiseleva, 1:224-44; Ocherki istorii Bashkirskoi ASSR, 93-110. Close to 300,000 state peasants were indeed transferred to the Udel in the 1830s, principally in Simbirsk province. See V. A. Bogoliubov, “Udel'nye krest'iane,” Velikaia reforma, 2:236.
95 By 1845 there were over half a million state peasants in Orenburg province.
96 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977,11. 117-18; “O kreshchenii,” 519.
97 RGIA, f. 383, op. 8, d. 6977,1. 133-133ob.
98 Following baptism, converts were supposed to wear clean white clothes for a certain period. Thus without the linen, the ritual could not take place.
99 RGIA, f. 796, op. 122, d. 1014, 11. 1-4 (Conversion of pagans and schismatics in Orenburg province). Emphasis added.
100 Ibid., 1. 4ob. The Orenburg Consistory and Bishop Ioannikii both fully approved of these methods.
101 In Ufa diocese in 1899, of 88,800 Maris only 6,425 (6.7 percent) were officially Christian, and many of these “factually remain pagans.” See Zlatoverkhovnikov, Ufimskaia eparkhiia, 17, 28, and 206.
102 I am aware of only two other cases of baptism on such a scale. In 1830 estate bailiffs instigated the baptism of around 2,000 Chuvash on Prince Orlov’s estate in Simbirsk province. RGIA, f. 796, op. 110, d. 767, esp. 11. 1-2 and 67-68 (Report of Kazan’ Archbishop on baptism of Chuvash). The Department of Crown Lands initiated its own baptism drive of close to 1,000 Chuvash in 1857-58, after a survey of its holdings revealed large numbers of pagans. RGIA, f. 821, op. 133, d. 428,11. 1-4, 13-50 (Baptism of Chuvash).
103 For these assessments generally, see Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye krest'iane i reforma P. D. Kiseleva, 2:517-23. Kiselev increasingly saw the district administrations (and district chiefs) as ineffective, and they were finally eliminated in 1860. See Istoricheskoe obozrenie, 48-50.
104 The tensions in these respective visions of baptism and governance can be understood as manifestations of the broader tensions in Russia between judicial routes and administrative measures. See Wortman, Richard S., The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (Chicago, 1976);Google Scholar Engelstein, Laura, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia (Ithaca, 1992), esp. 17–127;Google Scholar and Zelnik, Reginald E., Law and Disorder on the Narova River: The Kreenholm Strike of 1872 (Berkeley, 1995), esp. 148–76.Google Scholar
