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Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale. By Laura Engelstein. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999. xx + 283 pp. $35.00 cloth.
Laura Engelstein has written a masterful and engaging history of the Skoptsy, the strangest Russian sectarian group in the modern era. The Skoptsy, whose name means "self-castrated" or "the castrated ones," have been a source of puzzlement for nearly 250 years. Engelstein lifts the mystery surrounding this group by taking her readers inside the minds of believers who mutilated their bodies for the sake of eternal salvation. She fulfills the promise made in the preface "to make these puzzling believers comprehensible in relation to the culture from which they emerged but of which they are not the ultimate expression" (xii). Earlier historical accounts written by outside observers emphasized revulsion at the destructiveness of Skoptsy actions. Engelstein's research enables the reader to understand the forces-- theological, familial, personal and social-that shaped their religious beliefs.
This book gives a detailed history of the Skoptsy from their initial discovery by tsarist officials in the 1770s until their disappearance during the Stalinist revolution of the 1930s. Using a wide array of archival and published sources, Engelstein traces the various stages of Skoptsy history. In the beginning, they were a secret sect that distrusted the outside world of Imperial Russia. They...