https://doi.org/10.21697/ucs.2021.28.2.06
This work’s goal is an analysis of the relation of the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian Empire and then USSR with yurodivye, Russian holy fools. In the Orthodox tradition those holy fools were people praising God by acting foolishly or like madmen. Their doings were often unaccepted as they broke taboos, like nudity. In the case of yurodivye, two alienation impulses took place: one being the raskol, split in the Russian Orthodox Church, which led a divide between those loyal to the church and a group of so called Old-Believers, with whom the yurodivye were associated. Next was an absorption impulse, which was brought about by romantism, which led to a rehabilitation of certain forms of holy foolery (like, for example, in Zagoskin’s and Pushkin’s works). The quarantine period would be, in this case, the Russian religious renaissance with writers like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky or philosophers like Berdyaev, who described, as Ewa Thompson claims, ‘well mannered’ holy fools. The quarantine’s goal was then to make functional society members of the yurods. The next alienation impulse took place with works of authors like Gorki or Bunin that interpreter holy foolery as outdated and superstitious. The enemization of holy fools came about in the USSR, followed by an absorption impulse which happened with the fall of communism in Russia. The absorption happened quite suddenly, as holy fools then were being canonized for the first time in hundreds of years.
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