Despite officially repenting, he continued to lead the movement until his death in 1732. From 1733 to 1739, a specially-formed government commission arrested hundreds of suspected Khlyst members, charging them with participation in sexual orgies and ritual infanticide.
Despite officially repenting, he continued to lead the movement until his death in 1732. From 1733 to 1739, a specially-formed government commission arrested hundreds of suspected Khlyst members, charging them with participation in sexual orgies and ritual infanticide.
Despite officially repenting, he continued to lead the movement until his death in 1732. From 1733 to 1739, a specially-formed government commission arrested hundreds of suspected Khlyst members, charging them with participation in sexual orgies and ritual infanticide.
In 1745, therefore, a new commission was formed, this time using "far crueler methods of interrogation".
This commission, although eliciting false confessions of sexual deviation and cannibalistic communion, and sending another 200 people into exile, likewise failed to stamp out the movement. ==Later history== Around 1750, some doctrinal changes took place within the sect, and they became known as the Postniki ("Fasters").
It was no longer considered possible for ordinary members to receive the Holy Spirit during radenie, although the ritual still held a central position in their worship. In 1840, a new splinter sect broke away from the Postniki.
Connected with this mortification of the flesh was the practice of self-flagellation which often accompanied the radenie rite. Russian author Edvard Radzinsky has described a radenie ritual which he witnessed on the island of Chechen in 1964: Radzinsky says that they referred to the whirling dance as "spiritual beer", on account of its intoxicating effect.
"Situational Religiosity: Everyday Strategies of the Moscow Christ-Faith Believers and of the St Petersburg Mystics Attracted by This Faith in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century," in Thomas Bremer (ed), Religion and the Conceptual Boundary in Central and Eastern Europe: Encounters of Faiths (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) (Studies in Central and Eastern Europe), 98-120. Panchenko, Aleksandr.
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