sisters accepted Avvakum’s views and in 1675 suffered martyrdom rather than recant.
In August 1664 Avvakum and his family once again were dispatched into exile in Siberia, arriving in Mezen at the end of the year. A year later, Av-vakum was recalled to Moscow to appear before a church council (1666). At this important council Nikon officially was removed as patriarch, but the reform program itself was affirmed. Those who actively opposed the reforms, including the revised service books, were tried. Some, such as Ivan Neronov, recanted. Others, led by Avvakum, stood firm. Following the council, Avvakum was defrocked, placed under church ban, and imprisoned in chains in a monastery. Subsequent attempts to persuade him to repent failed. In August 1667, Av-vakum and his supporters were sentenced to exile in Pustozersk in the remote north. Two of Av-vakum’s friends and supporters, Lazar and Epifany, also exiled, had their tongues cut out; Avvakum was spared this punishment. By the end of the year the prisoners reached their destination.
Exile and prison did not deter Avvakum from indefatigably petitioning the tsar and communicating with his followers. In the 1670s repression of religious dissidents increased. Avvakum, his family, and the small band of prisoner-exiles in Pustozersk were subjected to new afflictions. Moreover, the colony increased with the addition of those seized after the suppression in 1676 of a rebellion at the Solovetsky monastery, ostensibly against the new service books. In the meantime, religious dissenters incited disturbances in Moscow and other towns and villages. Frustrated in all attempts to silence the dissidents, in 1682 the church council transferred jurisdiction to the secular authorities. An investigation was ordered, and on April 14, 1682, Avvakum was burned at the stake, “for great slander against the tsar’s household.” Avvakum is remembered primarily as a founding father of the movement known in English as Old Belief, a schismatic movement that assumed a coherent shape and a growing following from the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Avvakum’s lifetime, however, he was engaged in a relatively esoteric dispute with other educated members of the clerical and lay elites. He attracted a circle of devoted disciples and supporters, but not a mass following. His position as one of the founding fathers of Old Belief rests on the lasting influence of his writings, which were collected, copied, and disseminated. Avvakum was a prolific writer of petitions to the tsar, letters of advice and exhortation to his acquaintances, sermons, polemical tracts, and pamphlets. All contributed to the shape of Old Belief as an evolving movement. An important example of Avvakum’s dogmatic and polemical work is The Book of Denunciation, or the Eternal Gospels (c. 1676). Written by Avvakum as part of a dispute with one of his disciples, this tract clarified his position on several dogmatic issues. This work continued to be a focal point of criticism for spokesmen of the official church into the early eighteenth century.
In addition to their religious significance, Av-vakum’s writings are of considerable interest to linguists and literary historians. His writing style was forceful and dramatic. He juxtaposed great erudition with penetrating direct observation and mixed the tonalities and phraseology of the popular spoken Russian of his day with the traditional ornate and formal rhetorical style. Perhaps Avvakum’s best-known work is his autobiographical Life. Three versions were written between 1672 and 1676. Of the two later versions, the copies written by Avvakum himself, along with numerous others, are preserved. Building on traditional genres such as hagiography, sermons, chronicles, folktales, and others, Avvakum created not only a new genre, but a new mentality that, according to some scholars, manifests the seeds of modern individual self-consciousness. See also: NIKON, PATRIARCH; OLD BELIEVERS; ORTHODOXY; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Avvakum Petrovich. (1979). Archpriest Avvakum: The Life Written by Himself, with the Study of V. V. Vinogradov, tr. Kenneth N. Brostrom (Michigan Slavic Publications). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Lupinin, Nickolas. (1984). Religious revolt in the Eighteenth century: The Schism of the Russian Church. Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press.
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Michels, Georg B. (1999). At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Zenkovski, S. A. (1956). “The Old Believer Avvakum: His Role in Russian Literature,” Indiana Slavic Studies, 5:1-51. Ziolkowski, Margaret, comp., tr. (2000). Tale of Boiary-nia Morozova: A Seventeenth-Century Religious Life. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
The Republic of Azerbaijan is a country located in the Caucasus region of west Asia. Azerbaijan has a total area of 86,600 square kilometers and shares borders with the Russian Federation in the north (284 kilometers), Georgia to the northwest (322 kilometers), Armenia on the west (566 kilometers), Iran to the south (432 kilometers), and the Caspian Sea on the east (800 kilometers). Geographically, Azerbaijan is considered part of the Middle East. However, it is a border country and not part of the heartland. This borderland quality has had a profound impact on the country’s history.
From the time of ancient Media (eighth to seventh century B.C.E.) and the Achaemenid (Persian) period, Azerbaijan has mainly shared its history with Iran. In 300 B.C.E., Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Kingdom, retaining Persian satraps to govern as his forces advanced eastward. According to one account, the name Azerbaijan is derived from the name of Alexander’s original satrap, Atropatanes. Another explanation traces the origin of the name to the Persian word for fire keepers, “Azerbaycan.” This is in reference to the fires burning in local Zoroastrian temples, fed by abundant sources of crude oil.
Azerbaijan maintained its Iranian character even after its subjugation by the Arabs in the mid-seventh century and the conversion to Islam. During the eleventh century, the migrations of Oghuz tribes under the Seljuk Turks settled into the region. These Turkic-speaking newcomers merged with the original population so that over time, the Persian language was supplanted by a Turkic dialect that eventually developed into a distinct Azeri- Turkish language.
Under Shah Ismail (1501-1524), first among the Safavid line of rule, the Shiasect of Islam became the “official and compulsory religion of the state ”(Cleveland, p. 58), and remains the majority faith in Azerbaijan in the early twenty-first century. When the two hundred-year Safavid Dynasty ended in 1722, indigenous tribal chieftains filled the void. Their independent territories took the form of khanates (principalities). The tribal nature of these khanates brought political fragmentation and eventually facilitated conquest by Russia. Russia’s interest in the region was primarily driven by the strategic value of the Caucasian isthmus. Russian military activities have been recorded as early as Peter the Great’s abortive Persian expedition to secure a route to the Indian Ocean (1722). However, penetrations into Persian territory were more successful under Catherine II (1763-1796).
Russo-Iranian warfare continued into the nineteenth century, ending with the Treaty of Turk-manchai (February 10, 1828). As a result, Azerbaijan was split along the Araxes (Aras) River with the majority of the population remaining in Iran. This frontier across Iran was laid for strategic purposes, providing Russia with a military avenue of approach into Iran while outflanking rival Ottoman Turkey.
The Turkmanchai settlement also had far-reaching economic consequences. With Russia as the established hegemon, exploitation of Azerbaijan’s substantial petroleum resources increased rapidly after 1859.
Over time, haphazard drilling and extraction led to a decline in oil production. By 1905 Azerbaijan ceased to be a major supplier to world energy markets. In 1918, with the great powers preoccupied by World War I and Russia in the throes of revolution, Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on May 28, 1918. However, the independent Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan lasted only two years before Bolshevik forces invaded and overthrew the nascent government.
With its new status as a Soviet republic, Azerbaijan experienced the same transition as other parts of the Soviet Union that included an industrialization process focused on the needs of the state, collectivization of agriculture, political repression, and the Great Purges.
During World War II, Azerbaijan’s strategic importance was again underscored when the Trans-caucasian isthmus became an objective of Nazi Germany’s offensive. Hitler hoped to cut Allied supply lines from their sources in the Persian Gulf.
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Caspian Sea Azerbaijan was also coveted as a valuable fuel source for the German military. This operation was thwarted by the battle of Stalingrad.
