Furious Archpriest

On April 14, 1682, an outstanding Russian writer, one of the ideologists and leaders of the 17th century Old Believer movement, Archpriest Avvakum was burned in Pustozersk by royal decree “for great blasphemy against the royal house.”

Avvakum is known primarily as the creator of the famous autobiographical “Life” (1672 – 1675), written by him in custody, in the earthen prison of the northern Pustozersky prison. The epistles and letters of Avvakum are a peculiar and striking phenomenon in Russian literature of the 17th century.

“A living, peasant, full-blooded voice burst into dead literature like a storm,” wrote Alexei Tolstoy. – These were the brilliant “Life” and “Messages” of the rebel, the frantic archpriest Avvakum, who ended his literary activity with terrible torture and execution in Pustozersk. Avvakum’s speech is all about gesture, the canon is shattered, you physically feel the presence of the narrator, his gestures, his voice. He speaks in a “peasant”, “mean” language ”(Tolstoy A.N. Sobr. soch. M., 1961. Vol. 10).

Avvakum’s letters and epistles reflect many of the circumstances of his tragic life, the first descriptions were made, which later became part of the Life.

Since 1653, when the reform of the Russian Church, carried out by Patriarch Nikon, began, Avvakum was among its active opponents, defenders of the old rites. Avvakum accuses the Nikonians of apostasy from the foundations of Orthodoxy. The pestilence (plague) that occurred shortly after the introduction of new church institutions in July 1654 in Moscow and other cities of Russia was perceived by Avvakum as God’s obvious punishment for apostasy from the faith and violation of church laws.

The growing movement of the Old Believers caused serious concern to the government and the church, and cruel repressions began. Avvakum, like many other opponents of the reform, was exiled to Siberia (1653 – 1664). He went there with his wife and children: sons – 9-year-old Ivan, 5-year-old Procopius, Cornelius, who was only 8 days old, and 8-year-old daughter Agrippina. Avvakum’s wife was taken in a cart: she had not yet recovered from the birth. Having overcome “three thousand miles”, the family arrived in Tobolsk at the end of December 1653. And on July 27, 1655, an order was received for a new exile of Avvakum to Lena, to the Yakut prison. In Siberia, 2 sons of the archpriest died: Cornelius and a baby who was born there.

In the spring of 1664 Avvakum arrived in Moscow. However, soon, due to his refusal to compromise and accept Nikon’s reform, he and his family were sent to Mezen, to a settlement at the mouth of the Mezen River, which flows into the Arctic Ocean (now it is a city in the Arkhangelsk region). Avvakum arrived there with his wife, 6 children and household members, 12 people in total. The archpriest lived on Mezen for more than a year, and his family (in different composition) until 1693.

On March 1, 1666, Avvakum was brought to Moscow for trial at a church council. After a debate on May 13, Avvakum was taken to the Assumption Cathedral, stripped (deprived of his priesthood) and anathematized.

On August 26, 1667, a decree was issued on the exile of Avvakum to the Pustozersky prison (1667 – 1682). Together with him, other polemists dangerous for the authorities, opponents of Nikon’s reforms, were exiled there. In Pustozersk, Avvakum began intensive literary work, he wrote here the Life, the Book of Conversations, the Book of Interpretations, the Book of Reproofs, more than 50 epistles, etc.

Avvakum builds a story about his own life as a chain of memories, mostly chronologically arranged and addressed to his spiritual father, the monk Epiphanius (the Solovki monk Epiphanius was in the Pustozero earthen prison together with Avvakum and was burnt with him). “Life” was the forerunner of the discovery of new artistic principles of depicting a person, mastered by Russian literature much later – during the development and formation of realistic prose. Hence the high marks given to the Life by the classics of Russian and Soviet literature. Vsevolod Garshin, for example, knew the “Life” of Avvakum “almost by heart”, highly appreciated the literary merits of the “Life” Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Leskov, Alexei Remizov, Maximilian Voloshin, Alexei Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky and others.

For almost 200 years, Habakkuk’s writings remained banned. “Life” was published only in 1861. Then began the publication of the messages of the archpriest and his polemical “books”, found in the composition of large literary and journalistic handwritten collections of the 17th – 20th centuries. and separately – in original scrolls-autographs and copies – in the files of the Secret Order and the Synodal Library.

If at first in his messages Avvakum called Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to repentance, then later, after a new wave of cruel repressions against the Old Believers, the death of the noblewoman Theodosia Morozova (Archpriest Avvakum became her spiritual father and mentor in matters of faith; Morozova, widely known and revered in the Old Believer world an ascetic who fought against the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, died of starvation in 1675 in the Borovskaya earthen prison), the death of the rebellious Solovetsky monks, Avvakum writes about the hellish torments to which Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, “poor, insane king”, “tormentor”, punished like the first Roman persecutors of Christianity.

In his fifth petition to the tsar, which Avvakum wrote in Pustozersk, he tries for the last time to convince the autocrat to save his soul by returning to “the first piety.”

After the death of Alexei Mikhailovich on January 29, 1676, and the accession to the throne of his eldest son Fyodor Avvakum, in his petition, he asks the new tsar for mercy, for a change in attitude towards the supporters of the old rite, for salvation, he asks emotionally, hysterically. However, it is unlikely that Avvakum can count on royal mercy, because further on the archpriest writes in his message to the new lord that his father, Tsar Alexei, is “sitting” in hell. Apparently, it was this message that was the reason for the sharp tightening of the confinement regime in the Pustozero prison in 1676.

On April 14, 1682, together with his fellow prisoners, Avvakum was burned, which gave the archpriest even greater glory. Behind were 14 years of harsh imprisonment.

Avvakum’s wife, Anastasia Markovna, was his true friend and like-minded person. In March 1670, after the executions of the Old Believers on the Mezen, the wife of the archpriest, together with her two eldest sons, was imprisoned in an earthen prison and was in it for at least 12 years. Only in 1693, almost 11 years after the execution of Avvakum, Anastasia Markovna was allowed to leave Mezen for Moscow.

In his letter to the “flock of the faithful” (1673), Habakkuk urged them to be patient and steadfast: “Let us not be afraid, brethren, from those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.”

On the eve of his execution, he strengthened his fellow prisoners spiritually. In the poem “Where is Enamel Paradise and Sirin”, the fate of Avvakum prophetically tried on himself even before the atheists came to power, before the revolution, the poet Nikolai Klyuev:

When I fold my bundle
Pine words, bear thoughts?
“Get ready for the fire early in the morning”
Thundered my great-grandfather Avvakum.

Burn in the blizzard Pustozersk
Or drown in ink?
devout word worshiper,
I don’t know where the eagle’s way is.

Avvakum, in his “Life”, epistles, letters, sought to convey the main thing: all troubles are bearable if you have unshakable faith.

Sergei Ishkov.

Photo from the site https://ru.wikipedia.org/