AtDtDA23: Stranniki

Sat Dec 1 17:08:06 CST 2007

   "'In Russia, when I was a small child,' Yashmeen continued after a
while, 'I should not remember it now, but I do, wanderers,
wild-looking men, came to our doors seeking shelter as if they were
entitled to it,  They were the stranniki--" (AtD, Pt. III, pp. 662-3)

stranniki

Russian, literally: pilgrims, wanderers. Dissenters from the Russian
Orthodox Church; a sect of Old Believers who rejected the Orthodox
priesthood and sacraments. cf. The Way of the Pilgrim.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677#Page_663

The Stranniki

A hundred years after the founding of the Vygovsky communities, Yefim
Pereyaslavsky, a convert from Poltava decided the Old Believers there8
had grown too comfortable. Taking on the rule of the Rechabites and
John the Baptist, he called for a total forsaking of houses and lands.
This began an exciting movement. All over Russia Stranniki (wanderers)
began to appear, carrying nothing but bread, salt, and water.

When they entered the Strannitchestvo (the wandering life) men and
women gave up everything, including their family names. Even selling
one's Bible to give the money to the poor was not considered extreme.

For practical reasons the Stranniki divided themselves between "house
Christians," those who took care of houses and crops, and "road
Christians," those who went about warning the unbelievers. The house
Christians did not own their houses. At any point they would get up
and leave them behind. Even while they lived in them, they lived
without locks and anyone "from the road" was free to enter and go as
they pleased. In some places, hidden in the forest, the Stranniki kept
communities for the road Christians' children.

In many ways the Stranniki kept themselves even further from the world
than the rest of the Old Believers. Because of the Antichrist's image
(the tsar's likeness) on money, most of them refused to touch or
carry it. They believed that praying for the Tsar, as required by
Russian law, was the worst form of blasphemy (asking God to save the
Antichrist) and worthy of excommunication. Before they read from a
Bible or sang from a hymnal they tore out the title page with the
imprimatur carrying the tsar's name.

Thanks to their constant missionary activity the Stranniki gained
followers all over Russia. Entire villages got converted and became
communal hiding places. Secret entrances led to cellars, attics,
closets, and compartments under staircases, in cupboards, behind the
walls, among the eaves, or under the stove. In some "house Christian"
villages, all buildings were connected by tunnels with hidden escape
routes.

No less amazing than their hiding places was the communication system
invented by the persecuted Stranniki. Moscow authorities knew that no
matter what law they passed or pronouncement they made in the
capital, news of it spread through all Russia by the "Stranniki
grapevine" long before it arrived through official sources.

One of the Stranniki's most carefully guarded rules was not to die
under a roof. All "home Christians" promised to take up the
Strannitchestvo at some point and to die on the road was an honour.

http://allgodsword.com/Trs/Trs08.htm

In preceding chapters I have mentioned the name of Rasputin, that
strange and ill-starred being about whom almost nothing is known to
the multitude but against whom such horrible accusations have been
made that he is universally classed with such monsters of iniquity as
Cain, Nero, and Judas Iscariot....

I will first explain the exact status of the man, for this does not
appear to be generally understood. He has been called a priest, more
often still a monk, but the truth is he was not in holy orders at all.
He belonged to a curious species of roving religious peasant which in
Russia were called Stranniki, the nearest English translation of the
word being pilgrims. These wandering peasants, common sights in the
old Russia, were accustomed to travel from one end of the Empire to
the other, often walking with heavy chains on their bodies to make
their progress more painful and difficult. They went from church to
church, shrine to shrine, monastery to monastery, praying, fasting,
mortifying the flesh, and their prayers were, by a very con. siderable
population, eagerly sought and devoutly believed in. Once in a while a
Strannik appeared who, by virtue of his extreme piety, gift of speech,
or strong personality, acquired more than local reputation. Churchmen
of high rank, estate owners, and even members of the nobility invited
these men to their houses, listened with interest to their discourses,
and asked for their prayers. Such a Strannik was Gregori Rasputin, who
from the humblest beginnings in a remote Siberian village became known
all over the Empire as a man of almost superhuman endowment.

Of the type of Russians to whom the Stranniki made a genuine appeal
the Emperor and Empress undoubtedly belonged. The Emperor, like
several of his near ancestors, was a born mystic ...

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/russiancourt/XI.html

Wanderers (Странники - pronounced: "stranniki") are a fictional alien
race from the Noon Universe created by Strugatsky brothers...

[...]

Wanderers and humans from the Earth have one thing in common: they are
both "progressing" the Universe, since they are the only two actively
spacefaring and exploring sentient races. Despite this, Wanderers
somehow manage to keep their secrets and Earth knows only what they
forget to hide or want it to know about them....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderers_(Noon_Universe)

Social Democrats

V.I. Lenin, "The Tasks of the Social-Democrats" (1897)

http://marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1897/dec/31b.htm

The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, or RSDLP (Росси́йская
Социа́л-Демократи́ческая Рабо́чая Па́ртия = РСДРП), also known as the
Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party and the Russian
Social-Democratic Party, was a revolutionary socialist Russian
political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various
revolutionary organizations into one party. The RSDLP later split into
Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, with the Bolsheviks eventually
becoming the Communist Party of the Soviet Union....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Social_Democratic_Labour_Party

"'Very dangerous'"

Playing cat and mouse with the police, believers met in basements, in
barns, and in the woods by night. They gathered like their
grandparents, in small houses in rural areas. The "Stranniki
grapevine" revived and top secrets flashed—no one said how—from one
end of the Soviet Union to the other....

http://www.allgodsword.com/Trs/Trs20.htm

In these villages there appeared mysterious wanderers (stranniki),
informants (informatory), soothsayers (predskazateli) spouting the
most unimaginable nonsense (nesusvetnaia chepukha), spreading wild
rumours, gossip (spletni) that women and children would be
socialized....

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-79151296.html

Millenarianism in the Soviet Revolution

http://ideashistory.org.ru/pdfs/33Sarkisyanz.pdf

Paert, Irinia.  "Preparing God's Harvest: Maksim Zalesskii, Millenarianism,
   and the Wanderers in Soviet Russia."  Russian Review 64 (1) (3005): 44–61.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9434.2005.00346.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=russ

"the way back was hidden"

Cf. ...

"There are ways for getting back, but so complicated, so at the mercy
of language ..." (GR, Pt. IV, p. 723)

"ambassadors from some mysterious country"

E.g., Vheiisu ...

"podpol'niki, underground men"

They are pod pole, literally under the floor. Allusion to that
religious Russian, Dostoevsky and his Notes from Underground (Zapiski
iz podpol'ya). Interestingly in that work, Dostoyevsky uses a Palace
of Crystal as a metaphor for a functionalist utopia where everything
works like clockwork and life is a complete bore. The narrator abhors
and fears such a state and is obsessed with its destuction. Compare
this to the train crash, and the roof and camponile collapse of the
section above. Not to mention 9/11. "Shades" of Ted Kaczynnski here.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677#Page_663

Cf. ...

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (1864)

http://ilibrary.ru/text/9/p.1/
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/600
http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/dostoe.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_from_Underground
http://community.middlebury.edu/~beyer/courses/previous/ru351/novels/UGMan/ugman.html

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

http://www.levity.com/corduroy/ellison.htm
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50shttp
http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/GR3465.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Man/ellison-main.html
http://www.randomhouse.com/highschool/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679732761&view=tg

"veils over another world"

Cf., e.g., ...

"On the floor, 24 hours a day, pull back the rug sure enough there's
that damn movie!" (GR, Pt. IV, p 745)

Interface

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/interface.html

"It was not the day we knew"

Thematic re day.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677#Page_663

Cf. ...

"Our Iron is not attracted by the magnet and our Gold is not vulgar Gold."

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/warofkni.html