"Russian Graves": I. A. Sikosky and V. V. Rosanov on the Psychology of "Sectarianism"
This article presents a comparative analysis of approaches to the study of “sectarianism” that were developed at the end of the 19th - early 20th centuries within the framework of Russian psychiatry on the one hand and within Russian religious thought on the other. The psychiatrist line was represented by I.A. Sikosky (1842-1919), one of the main ﬁ gures in Russian psychology and psychiatry of that time. The representative of the religious and philosophical lines was the famous journalist and thinker V. V. Rosanov (1856-1919). The ﬁrst part of the article deals with the studies of marginal religiosity carried out by Sikorsky, namely the group of малеванцы and cases of self-burials near Tiraspol. We analyse the background and results of the studies, their general approach, the role of such metaphors as “suggestion”, “contagion”, “psychological epidemic” in Sikorsky’s explanatory pattern, hidden references to Tarde’s and Le Bon’s ideas, Sikorsky’s criteria of distinguishing between standard and marginal religiousness, the role of his ideas in the development of the psychiatric approach on the whole. We also consider discussions that took place after Sikorsky’s publications. The second part of the article deals with V.V. Rosanov’s texts on the same topic. We trace general principles of his approach to the analysis of religious problems, particularly marginal religiosity. We take into account the inﬂuence of the polemical context on speciﬁc evaluations and opinions of the thinker. We focus on the text “Russian Graves”, Rosanov’s answer to Silorsky’s essay on Tiraspol tragedy. The object of our analysis is the speciﬁc form and style of Rosanov’s text, the application of his methodological principles, the use of the case in question in his anti-Christian polemic. Rosanov’s approach and his criticism of “psychiatry” is quite typical of the context in which the humanities developed in the early 20th century. In the ﬁnal part of the article we try to demonstrate the role of the described approaches in Russian psychology of religion.