Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom

by Engelstein, Laura

• ISBN13: 9780801488795
• ISBN10: 0801488796
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

Of the many sects that broke from the official Russian Orthodox church in the eighteenth century, one was universally despised. Its members were peasants from the Russian heartland skilled in the arts of animal husbandry who turned their knives on themselves to become "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.' Convinced that salvation came only with the literal excision of the instruments of sin, they were known as Skoptsy (the self-castrated). Their community thrived well into the twentieth century, when it was destroyed in the Stalinist Terror.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Terms and Abbreviations	xvii
Introduction: The Archives of Eternity	1	(10)
Myths and Mysteries	11	(13)
Orel	24	(6)
Facts and Figurations	30	(10)
The Golden Age	40	(5)
Reports and Revelations	45	(44)
Decrees and Definitions	45	(11)
Image in the Glass	56	(12)
Excited Indignation	68	(4)
Populist Revulsion	72	(7)
Renegade Realism	79	(10)
Boundaries and Betrayals	89	(60)
Sheep in Goats' Clothing	93	(17)
Telling Tales	110	(8)
Voice in the Wilderness	118	(15)
Inside Stories from the Outer Edge	133	(16)
Testimony of Faith	149	(46)
Heresy in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction	149	(9)
The Data Project	158	(4)
Renewal and Rebirth	162	(12)
Sheep from the Goats: A Writer's Calling	174	(7)
Sheep among Themselves	181	(8)
The Skoptsy Vision	189	(6)
Light and Shadow	195	(42)
Light Dawns	196	(4)
Seeing the Light	200	(6)
The Shadow Falls	206	(12)
The Kingdom of Heaven	218	(19)
Notes	237	(40)
Index	277