Sex, Celibacy, and Religious Dissent in P. I. Mel'nikov's Epic Novels

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

Abstract

After a career of brutally persecuting religious dissenters in the 1840s and 1850s, Pavel Ivanovich Mel'nikov made them into the protagonists of his epic novels In the Forests and On the Hills. In these works, which he began in the late 1860s, Mel'nikov imaginatively reconstructed communities that he had helped to destroy. While lionizing those religious dissenters whom he regarded as truly Russian, Mel'nikov tendentiously attacked those that he believed to have Western origins, accusing them of sexual depravity. Mel'nikov's depictions of sex and sexuality, from the passionate tryst of an Old Believer nun and her merchant lover to the indiscriminate orgies of the degenerate flagellant sect, not only make entertaining reading but also help to illuminate his vision of the appropriate role for religion in Russian society.

Author

• J. Eugene Clay, Arizona State U