Avvakum Petrov (Russian: Аввакум Петров; 20 November 1620/1621 – 14 April 1682; also spelled Awakum) was a Russian Old Believer and protopope of the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square who led the opposition to Patriarch Nikon's reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church. His autobiography and letters to the tsar and other Old Believers such as Feodosia Morozova are considered masterpieces of 17th-century Russian literature.
He was born in Grigorovo, in present-day Nizhny Novgorod. Starting in 1652 Nikon, as the patriarch of the Russian Church, initiated a wide range of reforms in Russian liturgy and theology. These reforms were intended mostly to bring the Russian Church into line with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Avvakum and others strongly rejected these changes. They saw them as a corruption of the Russian Church, which they considered to be the true Church of God. The other churches were more closely related to Constantinople in their liturgies. Avvakum argued that Constantinople fell to the Turks because of these heretical beliefs and practices.
For his opposition to the reforms, Avvakum was repeatedly imprisoned. First he was exiled to Siberia, to the city of Tobolsk, and partook in an exploration expedition under Afanasii Pashkov to the Chinese border. In 1664, after Nikon was no longer patriarch, Avvakum was allowed to return to Moscow, and was then exiled again to Mezen. He was then allowed to return to Moscow again for the Church Council of 1666–67, but due to his continued opposition to the reforms, he was exiled to Pustozyorsk, above the Arctic Circle, in 1667. For the last fourteen years of his life, he was imprisoned there in a pit or dugout (a sunken, log-framed hut). He and his accomplices were finally executed by being burned in a log house. The spot where he was burned has been commemorated by an ornate wooden cross.
Avvakum's autobiography recounts hardships of his imprisonment and exile to the Russian Far East, the story of his friendship and fallout with Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, his practice of exorcising demons and devils, and his boundless admiration for nature and other works of God. Numerous manuscript copies of the text circulated for nearly two centuries before it was first printed in 1861.
The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum
The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, originally titled The Life Written By Himself (Russian: Житие́ протопопа́ Авваку́ма, им сами́м напи́санное) is a hagiography and autobiography written by the Old Believer and protopope (archpriest) Avvakum Petrovich. The text discusses Avvakum's struggle against Patriarch Nikon's reforms during the Schism of the Russian Church and extensively details the trials he experienced during various exiles in Siberia. The text is remarkable for its style, which blends high Old Church Slavonic with low Russian vernacular and profanity. The Life is considered "one of medieval Russia's finest literary works" and was regarded highly by both Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
In the 17th century, the Russian Church underwent significant reforms spearheaded by Patriarch Nikon and supported by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The resulting split in the Russian Church between supporters of the reforms and their opponents, who came to be known as the Old Believers, is known as the Schism of the Russian Church.
Historian Georg Bernhard Michels writes that "the Russian Orthodox Church became a significant target of popular hostility during the second half of the seventeenth century." Having survived the destabilizing Time of Troubles, the Church had become a "powerful bureaucracy" by the 1630s. As the Time of Troubles was seen as a punishment for impiety, the Church was "intensely conservative" and "aspired to restore the 'ancient piety' in its fullness."
This drive for strengthening and purification was further influenced by the Ruthenian Orthodox revival led by Petro Mohyla in Kiev in the 1630s to 1640s, who likewise sought to strengthen Orthodox religiosity and spirituality in Ruthenia. In Kiev and Lviv, "Orthodox brotherhoods set up schools under the direct patronage of the patriarch of Constantinople."
In the late 1640s, Nikon and Avvakum were members of the Zealots of Piety (known also as bogolyubtsy, i.e. "lovers of God"), a circle of ecclesiastical and secular figures who aimed to improve religious and civilian life and to purify and strengthen the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church. Gradually, a split appeared in this circle: while certain Zealots echoed the sentiments of the Ruthenian revival, others, most notably Avvakum, "felt that homespun truths were sufficient and suspected foreigners of [cunning], which would adulterate the simple, strong native faith." When Nikon became the patriarch of Moscow and all Russia in 1652, he initiated ambitious reforms, entrusting "Jesuit-trained scholars from Ukraine and White Russia with a critical review of the forms of Russian worship." This exacerbated tensions with and among the Zealots, who "wanted to create a church which was morally pure and close to the ordinary Russian people".
Tsar Alexei and Patriarch Nikon, by contrast, had imperial aspirations. Nikon's vision of ecclesiastical restoration assumed the "continued dominance of the church over state" and stretched beyond Muscovy to the "entire Eastern Christian ecumene." Nikon's ambitions were further strengthened by his "contact with Greek and Ukrainian churchmen" and by Russian territorial gains in the Russo-Polish War of 1654–1667. After the Ruthenian revival, western Slavic Orthodox practices became closer to those of Greek Orthodoxy than to the Russian tradition, which had been increasingly isolated from the Greek Orthodox Church over the past several centuries. Nikon sought, likewise, to bring Russian church practice into line with Greek Orthodoxy. Russian linguist Alexander Komchatnov further emphasizes that that goal was in line with Muscovy's newly developed imperial aims, allowing Russia to position itself at the center of the whole Orthodox world instead of remaining a marginal religious entity.
From 1653 to 1656, Nikon's reforms changed the manner of making the sign of the cross (from the dvoeperstie, the two-fingered cross, to the troeperstie, the three-fingered cross), introduced new liturgical vestments modeled in the Greek style, and imposed a normalized revision of liturgical books.
Those opposing Nikon's reforms came to be known as the Old Believers. Their texts painted the Schism as an apocalyptic contest between good and evil, with Nikon as the Antichrist. They were continually repressed, arrested, and exiled from the onset of Nikon's reforms.
Nikon and Tsar Alexei soon fell out, and Nikon was placed in confinement, but the tsar continued to enforce his reforms. In 1666, the Great Moscow Synod summoned by Tsar Alexei anathematized all who refused to abide by Nikon's changes. A trial of the Zealots was held and leading Old Believers, Avvakum among them, were exiled beyond the Arctic Circle to Pustozersk on the Pechora River, in today's Nenets-Autonomous Okrug, 27 km from Naryan-Mar. The reforms and their enforcement prompted outright rebellions that continued over the next several decades.
Persecution of Avvakum and the Old Believers
In 1653, Avvakum and his family were exiled to Tobolsk, Siberia. In 1655, they were moved to Yeniseysk, from which Avvakum departed with A.F. Pashkov's expedition to Dauria on the Chinese border, traveling past Lake Baikal to Nerchinsk. In 1664, Avvakum returned to Tobolsk, remaining for two years before being permitted to return to Moscow in 1664. Several months later he was once more exiled with his family to Mezen. He was permitted to return to Moscow for the Great Moscow Synod of 1666-1667, but was finally exiled to Pustozersk alongside his fellow Old Believers Lazar, Fyodor, and Epifany. From 1670 onward, they were condemned to life "on bread and water" in a dugout, where they lived until they were burned alive on 14 April 1682. During his imprisonment, Avvakum wrote his autobiography; the first version of The Life was drafted in 1669–1672, and the subsequent three redactions from 1672 to 1675. The trials he suffered in his numerous exiles are largely the subject of this text.