Redefining Conservatism Spatially: Pavel Mel’nikov’s Novel 'In the Forests' and the Question of the Austrian Hierarchy

• In Event: Pavel Mel’nikov’s Epic Novels as a Window to the Economic, Creative, Political, and Sexual World of Volga Sectarians

Abstract

Within their attempts to describe and summarize Pavel Mel’nikov’s first full-length novel about Trans-Volga Old Believers in the early to mid-nineteenth century, Western scholars generally ignore the detailed portrayals of the sectarians’ political and ecclesial struggles, though these form a significant part of the novel and drive its plot. Among the issues faced by the Old Believer sketes in Mel’nikov’s epic was whether to accept the so-called “Austrian Hierarchy” (so named because its location in Austria), that is, the attempt by their Moscow-based co-religionists to install the former bishop of Sarajevo as the Metropolitan of the Old Rite. I will demonstrate how Mel’nikov masterfully problematizes this issue, widening the focus from an official Church – Old Believer opposition to revealing fissures within the latter camp and showing its conflicts, not just with the Russian imperial Church-State alliance, but with modernity itself.

Author

• Charles H. Arndt, Vassar College