ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
party when Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary in 1985. Ligachev was soon embroiled in policy and personnel disputes with both Gorbachev and the then first secretary of the Moscow Party apparatus, Boris Yeltsin. As second secretary, Ligachev remained a key figure in the regime down to the demise of communist and Soviet rule in Russia in late 1991. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; GENERAL SECRETARY; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH
Reshetar, John S. (1971). The Soviet Polity Government and Politics in the USSR. New York: Dodd, Mead. Towster, Julian. (1948). Political Power in the USSR, 1917-1947: The Theory and Structure of Government in the Soviet State. New York: Oxford University Press. Weeks, Albert L. (1987). The Soviet Nomenklatura: A Comprehensive Roster of Soviet Civilian and Military Officials. Washington, DC: Washington Institute Press.
The Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the administrative arm of the Communist Party. Initially a handful of party workers, the Secretariat evolved into a powerful bureaucracy with oversight of the entire Soviet political system and economy. Although the size of the Secretariat was modest in comparison to the giant governmental bureaucracy, its power was not. It was the apparat and those who worked in the Secretariat were the apparatchiki. Headed by the General (or First) Secretary and the other Secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Secretariat became the body that ensured that Soviet political and economic organs followed party policy. Josef Stalin was responsible for building the Secretariat, and Nikita Khrushchev was responsible for reaffirming and renewing its power. Its influence diminished only under Mikail Gorbachev, who in his final years, turned to the power of the Presidency and a Presidential Cabinet of Ministers, which was created in 1990.
At the height of its power, the Secretariat headed by its powerful General Secretary determined the agenda of the Politburo and the Central Committee. Attention usually focused on the General Secretary, and to a lesser degree, the dozen or so Secretaries who worked with him, rather than the larger bureaucracy that constituted the Secretariat. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Huskey, Eugene. (1992). Executive Power and Soviet Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Soviet State. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Nogee, Joseph L., ed. (1985). Soviet Politics: Russia after Brezhnev. New York: Praeger. Smith, Gordon B. (1992). Soviet Politics: Struggling with Change, 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Religious dissent from the Russian Orthodox Church.
The word sect entered the Russian language in the eighteenth century from the Latin word secta. Long used in the Catholic Church to indicate groups or parties that had separated themselves from orthodox teaching, the word was adopted by the Russian Orthodox Church during the reign of Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725) to label the increasing numbers of religious dissenters.
The first substantial movement of Christian dissent occurred only in the seventeenth century in response to the liturgical and bureaucratic innovations of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow (r. 1652-1658). By the 1680s, those who opposed these new reforms called themselves “Old Believers”; many of them withdrew from the Church and society to create their own purified communities on the outskirts of the Muscovite state. Although Old Believers were sometimes tarred with the label “sect,” by the late nineteenth century Russian Orthodox here-siology began to reserve the word sectarian for the growing numbers of religious dissenters who had separated themselves from the state church for reasons other than Nikon’s reforms. In accordance with this usage, this article deals only with those sectarians who were not Old Believers. It also does not deal with the fourteenth-century Judaizers and its predecessors.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
1359
The Faith of Christ (khristovshchina) arose in the seventeenth century. Its members continued to visit the Orthodox state church, but also met in secret assemblies where they repeated the Jesus prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner) until the Holy Spirit descended upon them and they danced, prophesied, and spoke in tongues. In their secret assemblies, they believed that they had recovered the original faith and practice of Christ. Following a realized eschatology, they also believed that Christ had returned spiritually to dwell in their leaders whom they called Christs and Mothers of God. They composed a rich repertoire of spiritual songs celebrating these leaders and their faith. The adherents of the Faith of Christ practiced an intense asceticism that included celibacy, restricted diet, long periods of prayer, and fasting. Over time, some of them flagellated themselves, and so they became known as flagellants. This label was applied indiscriminately to many different sectarians, most of whom did not practice flagellation.
The Faith of Christ established broad religious, social, and economic networks across the Russian Empire. The grave of the monastery peasant Danilo Filippov (d. c. 1700), one of the early leaders of the sect, was located in a small village near Kostroma; it attracted pilgrims from cities and towns all over central Russia for at least two centuries. The members of the Faith of Christ used money earned in the textile trade to support their co-religionists who entered Orthodox monasteries.
In 1733 and again in 1745, extensive state investigations sought to eliminate the movement by arresting and sentencing hundreds of suspects. By forcing the defendants to confess falsely to horrible crimes of secret mass orgies, infanticide, and cannibalism, the inquisitors of the second commission helped to create a powerful myth that envisioned the flagellants as a dangerous, homicidal, sexually perverted fifth column within Russian society.
By the 1760s, some members of the Faith of Christ, not satisfied with vows of celibacy, began castrating themselves. Under the leadership of the fugitive peasant Kondraty Selivanov (d. 1832), these castrates broke away from the Faith of Christ and created their own peculiar rituals and eschatology. In its rich tradition of spiritual songs, the Castrates claimed that their leader Selivanov was actually Emperor Peter III (r. 1762)-the unfortunate husband of Catherine the Great (r. 1762-1796).
1360
Though the real Peter III was killed in Catherine’s 1762 coup, the Castrates held that he actually escaped to Orel province where, as the peasant Kon-dratii Selivanov, he was arrested and exiled to Siberia. After Catherine’s death, the legend claims that Emperor Paul (r. 1796-1801) recalled Selivanov to St. Petersburg, where he recognized him as his father.
Although Selivanov lived and taught freely in St. Petersburg from 1802 to 1820, he spent the last twelve years of his life in a monastery prison in Suzdal. Thanks in part to their severe asceticism, many of the Castrates became wealthy merchants. Because they were severely persecuted, the Castrates outwardly adhered to the Orthodox Church and often proved to be generous patrons.
Spiritual Christianity, another powerful strain of sectarianism, arose as an apocalyptic movement in the 1760s in the black-earth region of Tambov province. Preaching that the day of the Lord was imminent, Ilarion Pobirokhin (fl. 1762-1785) called on true Christians to stop venerating icons and to reject the Orthodox sacraments and priesthood. Instead of kissing icons, they kissed one another, and especially their leader, as the image of God. They met together regularly to read the Bible, sing spiritual psalms of their own composition, and listen to their teachers’ sermons.
