Mimetic Acts Across Cultural Mediums

Palm Tree Reflection via Scott Kinmartin

Because I refuse to let myself get too wrapped up in this subject, I want to briefly talk three things I came across today that have a central theme- mimesis.

Those three things were:

1. The White Album project
2. Daniel Joseph's reaction to Leigh Alexander's post on clones of Threes
3. 1966 New York Times Article on Old Believers

Rutherford Chang collects copies of The White Album; original pressings to be exact, though the condition can be of any quality.  He delights in the variance of the same, seeing within every aged copy a different story or set of circumstances behind its appearance.  His collection, now numbering 944 as of writing, is the embodiment of mimesis and some of the deep delights- but also insecurities-  mimetic objects given form present for modern society.  For Chang, the idea of the White Album collection is to document the collected experience of each individual pressing from 1968, and the variance between the copies, raw differences creating mimetic fuzz around the original form of the copy, complete for him the experience of that mimetic object in total.

Daniel Joseph's piece, reacting to Leigh Alexander's post about Threes and game 'cloning', hint at the insecurity mimesis produces for the cultural medium of games.  Using Marx's concept of the 'general intellect'', Joseph suggests that the ease of cloning casual games, like Threes, is becoming more apparent simply because this form of the larger game medium is no longer resistant to such causal cloning via the traditional safeguards of "sophisticated platforms, rigorous copyright laws, and a high capital investment."  He concludes, "As it happens games belong to everyone while so many still are scrambling for the scraps of this knowledge to survive."

Threes, as a mimetic object on multiple levels (not only as a source of inspiration for clones, but also  considering its digital distribution method via the Apple app store), reveals how the perceived notion of the copy, in this case the games 2048 and 1024, highlights what Plato articulated long ago as the flaw of the mimetic act.  Here I'm quoting Marcus Boon from his work, "In Praise of Copying":

"…Plato's mistrust of mimesis, and of the artist- the mirrored image, and event the craftsman's object, [was because he believed these forms] confuse the ignorant as to what is essential.  At the same time, it is the Platonic belief that the outward appearance of something indicates its essence which continues to generate much of our confusion about what a copy is.  When we say 'an original,' we usually mean something in which the idea and the outward appearance correspond to each other.  There is no distortion in the relation of appearance to essence, to "what a thing is."  Copies, then, for Plato and for us, most of the time are distortions of this relationship.  The mirror produces the sun, yet it is not the sun.  Basicreplica.com produces a Louis Vuitton bag, yet the article is not a real Louis Vuitton bag." (20)

The mimetic potential available to casual games reveals not only the unsettling distortion between idea and outward appearance (found in the example of Threes and its 'clones'), but also that the essence of the casual game, by the very fact that it is *so* open to the mimetic act, allows it to escape arbitrary and imposed restrictions on its form and enter what Joseph calls the 'general intellect.'

With Chang we see the delight mimesis summons; yet with Joseph, and by extension Alexander, we also see the insecurities mimesis brings into cultural forms.  For the final example under consideration, we will see how the emergence of Old Belief into American culture combined both the delight and insecurity of mimesis as exemplified in the question of assimilation.

What strikes me about this two-paneled, front page photograph is that it manages to create a visualized tableau capable of being interpreted though the lens of mimesis.  On the left, we have an Old Believer family set against the backdrop of what appears to be a modest, middle-class house.  The caption juxtaposes the 'traditional beard' of the man with the fact that he currently works in an assumed modern soft-drink factory.  On the right, we have a photo of Old Believers, clad in flannel shirts and mesh-style baseball hats, assembling furniture for the Excelwood Products Company.  Again, their beards mark them as conspicuous even though their boss, unseen but heard in the caption underneath, praises their behavior.  

While the scene would indicate the success of the Old Believers in assimilating into their new American culture, the headline and subsequent sub-title hint at 'distortions' between the assumed original, a bona fide American citizen, and the copy, an Old Believer immigrant from Turkey.  In particular the phrase 'leaning to new ways' suggests that some residual dissonance still exists between the traditional composition of Old Believer lives and the values/mores of the modern as grounded in the space of domestic and factory settings.  There is delight in the copy act itself, as American culture via the house and factory appear to be converting the Old Believers, yet there is also insecurity about what these 'copies' will bring into American culture and whether or not the Old Believers will allow the mimetic act to so completely remake their lives.

Obviously these are loosely connected threads of thought, but it appears to me that viewing the interaction and transformation of a cultural space through the lens of mimesis provides deeper insight into the fundamental nature of said cultural space.

Ladders, Builders, and the AHA

'Ladder to Somewhere' by Corey Templeton

If you've ever watched Chappelle Show, then you probably know the series of skits titled, 'When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong'. If you're an academic historian, or a graduate student in history, then you've probably read the recent AHA recommendation to have institutions embargo completed dissertations from digital release for up to six years. There's been a lot of responses, both pro and con, about the issue, but for me all I can think is that the AHA might be the most recent candidate for another episode of 'When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong'.

Why do I feel this way? A few reasons below:

1. I have no doubt that the AHA, in its own mind, has the best interest of junior scholars in focus when they grapple with and think about policies to pursue in protecting nascent scholar's interests. Junior scholars represent the future of the profession, and it makes absolute sense for the AHA to deal with professional issues in a way that makes life for junior scholars better, not worse.
2. That being said, I also have no doubt that the committee behind the 'Embargo' policy tried to 'Keep it Real' by framing their appeal as a means to protect future junior scholars' access to monograph publishing. But in many ways, trying to equate protection of junior scholars through tacit support of a notion that accessibility is detrimental to their career is where 'Keeping it Real Goes Wrong'. 
3. One word never mentioned in either the AHA proposal, or William Cronon's recent support of this proposal, is prestige- and if you are talking about monograph publishing being related to tenure or advancement in the profession without also acknowledging the linkage this process has to prestige, then you're missing a very crucial part of the entire process. 

I've seen the responses, on Twitter and in the comments field for both the AHA announcement and Cronon's support piece, and they essentially fall into two camps. The first camp, what I would term the 'Ladder' group, may feel that the entire publishing system is misguided or essentially enforcing a protectionist scheme on academic work, but they are on the ladder of either a tenure track job or current book deal. (Or they are of a group that hopes to one day be on the ladder) A lot of them sympathize with issues in the system, but for them to get ahead they have to follow the current system's rules- they have to climb the ladder. Why? Because in order to get promotion at a Division I school or seek recognition by their older, tenured peers who often sit on Tenure and Promotion Committees, they feel they have to publish a book.

The second camp, what I would term the 'Builder' group, feel that new digital paradigms are providing increased opportunities for scholars to share their works with wider audiences and this means that several cherished notions of 'scholarly work' need to be rebuilt, or remodeled, in order to accommodate the profession to changing standards. Some of the 'builders' have tenure, while others do not. Some of them are in the academy, others are not. Many of them have personal academic blogs, or perform work that is very public in its outreach and scope. Why? Because for them, the idea that one's work should be hidden behind paywalls, or made to be consumed by only a small subset of the academy, is anathema to their desire to build new structures. For the builders, publishing a book is okay- but so is sharing your work online. They see OA ideals as a blueprint for what their building should look like, what the future of a digital profession could look like.

But- and this alters what I said above- there is also an amorphous third camp, those who are feeling out whether they should be on the ladder or helping the builders. Some of them want to be in the academy, and that means they need to start climbing the ladder. Some of them want to build a new academy, and that means eschewing the ladder not because it is bad but because it takes energy away from building. There's even a fourth camp, those with tenure- but they are largely immune to the direct implications of this debate, even though their voices carry weight for how those implications play out.

What every camp is concerned about, except for those who already have it, is prestige. The ladder folks want to climb towards it. The builder folks want to build new conceptions of it. The rest of us are wondering if we can ever have it at all.

My sympathies lie with the builder group, because I come from a niche area of history that the ladder does not often reach. I study Russian history, and my dissertation focuses on Old Believers. In my department, many, many students enter to study American history. A smaller subset come to study Western European history. An even smaller subset, far smaller than the other groups, come to study East Europe/Russian/African/Asian history. Although I have not made efforts to shop it, I'm under no illusions that publishers are clamoring to take my dissertation manuscript and shepherd it through to monograph form. I'm not Robert Crummey, or Roy Robson. I'm just Jeremy Antley, a guy who is tackling a small portion of the work those two, comparative giants also discuss. (If you don't know who I'm talking about, then I've sort of made my point already) What publisher wants to invest 20k or more in a book that, literally, a few dozen will find serious interest, with the added possibility that a few hundred more might have casual interest, in reading?

I don't have a track record. I don't have enough prestige to get noticed by large publishers right off the bat. I'm not attending Yale, or Columbia, or Harvard, or Princeton. I'm a product of a less prestigious state school, which I think is a fine institutions with good quality professors in a variety of fields. While I have no doubt that I can climb the tenure ladder of academia if given the chance, I also know that those kind of opportunities, especially in my chosen field of Russian history, are few and far between- especially if I'm competing against other candidates from top flight institutions. If I don't have sufficient personal prestige when applying for jobs, those jobs will default to looking at the prestige of my institution or the prestige of those under which I've studied. There's a little joke I tell folks who ask me what I study- I tell them it's 'Russia+', as in 'Russia + American History' or 'Russia + Women's Studies' or 'Russia + Insert Field Here'. For me to have a realistic chance of getting a tenure track job, I can't just be a Russia guy. I have to build a broader base. As Kurtis Blow once said, 'these are the breaks.'

Here's another rub; I also tackle the subject of games in an academic way. While some have given me praise for the work I do, I've also had some measure of scorn applied as well. Trust me, I would love to write a paper concerned with the intersection of history and games like Twilight Struggle, 1989, and Andean Abyss. But the momentum isn't there yet- the ladder just does not extend that far.

So, for me, any policy that endorses a view of hiding my work just so it will be more attractive to publishers feels a bit absurd. If I had a firm grasp on the ladder, perhaps I would feel differently. But I don't, and I don't see many willing to extend that ladder for someone they don't know who researches in fields not widely accessible or even considered legitimate at all. That's why I sympathize with the builders, because I've achieved a modicum of success in following their path. My two published articles, one on History embracing games and the other on Textual Dualism in Russian history, both came about because I was willing to publish early versions of my thoughts in blog form. I received feedback from these public outings that, in turn, helped shape my larger, revised arguments that were peer reviewed and published in journals embracing an open access ethic. I've been able to attend conferences outside the strict purview of History because others read my publicly shared work and thought it worth supporting. I've been given the opportunity to write for Play the Past and have essays published on The New Inquiry website because my work was open and accessible.

I built my reputation in public view, because to do so in private would have given me none of the opportunities above. I'm a builder because that's the only way someone like me can gain an audience and, subsequently, gain prestige.

I could have hidden my work, could have silently chipped away at it until it was fully baked and ready to be consumed. I could have done all of this in the hopes that the final unveiling would grant me the prestige I rightfully believe should be awarded. I could have outstretched my hands in the hopes that when I opened my eyes the ladder would be there for the climbing. Maybe that's the best way to keep it real. But my gut tells me that if I did those things, my keeping it real would go wrong.

As a final note, in what has been an already rambling post, I want to say that just because I'm for the builders doesn't mean I'm against those who climb the ladder. I don't want to force my ideas on anybody. To be fair, this is an extremely tough time for academics and it's hard to tell someone to suffer for principles I believe in that may cost them a job, especially if that person has a family or other obligations they need to support. Everything I've said above is, in the words of Royal Tenenbaum, 'just one man's opinion'.

I think Dan Cohen is right in that what people are reacting to is the fact that the AHA made their policy with little discussion involved. Now we are discussing it, and that's definitely when keeping it real can't go wrong.

Pin the Modern on Old Belief

Consider the image above.

I discovered this image while reading the recent Smithsonian.com article, widely circulated on Twitter and Facebook, about a Russian family that fled deep into the Siberian wilderness in the late-1930's, only to be 'discovered' by Soviet geologists in the 1970's conducting aerial surveys in the remote, Soviet hinterland.  It's a fascinating story, and what especially appealed to me was that the family discussed were Old Believers, a religious group that split off from Russian Orthodoxy in the 17th century over doctrinal and ritual changes made by, then, Patriarch Nikon.  Old Believers are often marked by their sometimes strict adherence to the traditional means, rituals, and accouterments of Orthodox worship.

Yet even that description of Old Belief is rather cursory, as the raskol (translated into English as 'schism') of the Russian Orthodox church was about more than making a three-fingered sign of the cross or changing the religious books used for the services; it was about the changing nature of the state, the increasingly centralized trend of concentrating power under the Tsar and the corresponding decline of local authority that steadily occurred after rule by the Golden Horde had been forcibly cast off by the Grand Princes of Moscow.  Old Belief is a tough subject for many to comprehend, its incarnation in historical and contemporary sources alike often relying on cliched or simplistic understandings in order to convey meaning about this religious group to modern audiences.  The Smithsonian article is no exception, and that's why the image above struck me with such poignancy.

It's not so much that the image, or the caption contained underneath, is wrong or misleading.  If you read the article, you understand that 40 years in the wilderness left this Old Believer family with little more than handmade hemp cloth for use in making clothes.  What is striking about the image is that you, the reader, can choose to 'Pin It', or add it to your Pintrest wall of images.  In a subtle way, the Smithsonian's use of the 'Pin it' button on these images helps reinforce the notion that Old Believers are stuck in time and full of a sort of noble backwardness that both grotesquely fascinates and reinforces the primacy of the modern viewer.  As is so often the case with documentary sources on Old Belief, there is a tendency of the contemporary viewpoint to see these religious practitioners as a sort of distant mirror of the modern, a distance whose measurement soothes the modern psyche in affirmation that the progress of life is truly that- progress.  The very fact these religious practitioners appear to be outside the modern makes them an intense focus of the modern.

For Imperial, and later Soviet, authorities and functionaries, this sort of intense focus is nothing new.  Douglas Rodgers in his excellent book, The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals, describes two groups of Old Believer communities in the town of Sepych that maintained their religious traditions even as they consistently updated their ethics and interpretations of belief in the face of changes brought about through Soviet and post-Soviet rule.  While his in-depth study provides many points that would fit the theme discussed here, I want to focus on one particular historical episode described by Rodgers- that being the emergence of a textual community in the 1960's between the Old Believers of Sepych and Soviet archaeographers (those who study the practice of publishing written sources) seeking out traditional religious books and manuscripts.

While discussion of religion was generally considered taboo for Soviet scholars, archaeographers claimed that analysis of traditional religious texts, often found in Old Believer communities due to their reverence for pre-Nikonian sources, could be used to uncover a "nation-based critique of of the visions of socialist modernity." (166) Rogers notes that,

"Finding these original manuscripts, scholars hypothesized, could revolutionize the study of Russian history, language, and literature in the post-war, post-Stalin years, when it was becoming politically possible to talk about Russian national history and traditions." (166)

Scholars would pour into Old Believer communities like Sepych every spring, looking for and sending back to their home institutions any sufficiently old religious texts or books various families or elders in a community willingly handed over.  Some elders, initially wary of the Soviet scholar invasion into their often private and secluded lives, turned this relationship to their advantage, collecting names, calling cards, and patronage with a zeal equal to that of the book collecting Scholars that sought their texts in the first place.  

Yet, as Rogers notes, "the textual community that grew up between archaeographers and Old Believer elders was laced with inequality and power relations." (169) Some elders told Rogers of their purposeful avoidance of the scholars, hiding in their houses and refusing to answer the door when they knocked.  One woman even produced for Rogers a shrill impersonation of the scholars and their constant demands of 'Give us the book!  Give us the Book!'  Ultimately Rogers concludes,

"…early field archaeography's focus on finding and preserving national tradition- born of a particular moment int eh Soviet academy, crystalized in unexpectedly close relationships with Old Believer elders, and exemplified in the material durability of 'book culture' (knizhnost')- does not capture central aspects of the Old Belief as lived practice in the twentieth century." (172, emphasis mine)

Roy Robson, one of America's top Old Belief scholars, sounds a similar note in his book, Old Believers in Modern Russia:

"Consequently, we can understand the Old Belief as an ongoing relationship between the symbols of pre-Nikonian Orthodoxy and the lives of the old ritualist faithful." (9)

Even though the tendency for outside observers is to see Old Belief as essentially trapped in a bygone era, the real crux of Old Belief is reconciling the needs of the ever-contemporary community with that of the rituals and beliefs that form the core of their religious expression.  Old Belief is constantly adaptive, even as it holds dear those elements that mark it as antiquated and distinctly anti-modern to those looking from the outside in.

Keeping this point in mind, let's return to the Smithsonian article introduced above.

In framing the setting of this tale of rediscovery, the article opens with a depiction of the Siberian forest as "the last and greatest of Earth's wildernesses."  This puts the reader in a mindset to accept that what they will read occurs beyond the frontier of modernity, in a place untouched by roads, factories, and electricity.  When the Soviet geologists initially encounter the 'lost' family, the focus of the narrative centers on their disheveled appearance and clothes made of patches and sacking material.  Here the family in question is revealed to be Old Believers, members "of a fundamentalist Russian Orthodox sect, worshiping in a style unchanged since the 17th century."  Already, the family in question acquires a patina of backwardness not solely dictated by their impoverished homestead.

For entertainment, they would recount for each other their dreams.  Having long ago lost their only metal kettles to rust, the family was forced to utilize birch-bark baskets that could not be placed on a fire thus severely limiting their ability to cook food.  One member of the family, a son named Dmitry, is hailed as the workhorse of the family, possessing "astonishing endurance" and the ability to "hunt barefoot in the Winter, sometimes returning to the hut after several days, having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost, a young elk across his shoulders."  For American audiences, parallels to the noble savage ideal of Native Americans is easy to grasp and, indeed, the article implicitly makes this connection through its depiction of the primordial forrest and the family that struggled mightily against the forces of nature, all the while maintaining surprising ability to survive and even keep track of complicated phenomena like time despite the lack of modern technology.

This last point is especially important, as the American cultural context heavily pervades the Smithsonian article.  Philip Deloria has a fascinating introduction in his book, Indians in Unexpected Places, about the 'Expectation and Anomaly' photographic depictions of Native Americans possessed in American cultural identity construction.  Opening with a picture of 'Red Cloud Woman in Beauty Shop', Deloria notes, "even in the wake of decades of stereotype busting, a beaded buckskin dress and a pair of braids continues to evoke a broad set of cultural expectations about Indian people." (3)  He later adds, "broad cultural expectations are both the products and tools of domination and…they are an inheritance that haunts each and every one of us." (4)

Indeed, later in the Smithsonian article, the Old Believer family is described as being marveled by modern artifacts such as television and cellophane wrapping.  Yet despite the introduction of the modern into these 'timeless' Old Believer's lives, three of the four children succumb to kidney failure (a consequence of their primitive diet) while Dmitry, having possessed 'astonishing endurance', falls prey to pneumonia "which might have begun as an infection he acquired from his new friends."  The amazing discovery of this lost family ends on a discordant note about the dangers of such anti-modern behavior, and the reader is left with a sense of security in knowing they won't fall prey to such calamity given their safe proximity to modern life.

We could stop here, declaring that this article is simply a 'one-off' occurrence of the American audience being introduced to such a strange and foreign group.  However, my own research into the immigration of Old Believers from Turkey to Oregon in the 1960's suggests this viewing of Old Belief as a distant mirror of the modern possesses a lasting and enduring legacy, albeit one with an interesting twist.

On 3 September 1959, the famous Icon painter Pimen Sofronov sent a letter to Tatiana Alexeevna, then a member of the Tolstoy Foundation, regarding the plight of Old Believers living in Turkey and seeking relocation to the West.  The Tolstoy Foundation was known for it's dedication in helping groups of Russian emigres receive safe passage to Western nations in order to escape the clutches and propaganda efforts then being waged by the Soviet government.  During the late 50's and early 60's, the Soviets put increasing pressure on the Turkish Old Believers (a group that originally immigrated to Turkey during the 17th century) to 'Return to the Homeland' with lavish promises of land and the freedom to worship as they chose.

The Turkish Old Believers reached out to Sofronov mainly because the pressure to return to Soviet Russia was compounded by their need for additional marriage partners.  With their numbers dwindling, the Turkish Old Believers could no longer find suitable candidates for marriage, their beliefs having severe restrictions on the blood relation of potential couples.  In his letter, Sofronov states, "They are the oldest emigrants. …Their "stanitsa" is like a small island of ancient Russia which remained unchanged since the days preceding the era of Peter the Great.  Nothing similar to this group of people can be found anywhere else, neither in Russia, nor abroad."

He ends his letter with a curious statement regarding the gullibility of the Old Believers: [They] are completely unaware of the Soviet reality and therefore can be deceived more easily than others."  Quite literally, they are so distant from the modern forces embodied in Soviet propaganda that they will easily fall prey to their machinations.  It is no longer a question of measuring modernity through the distant presence of Old Belief- it is now a battle between two nations in the assertion of the modern on this "small island of ancient Russia."

Made aware of this situation, the Tolstoy Foundation began petitioning US authorities for a special allowance to let these Turkish Old Believers immigrate to the United States, despite the fact their total numbers exceeded the, then, established quotas of allowable immigrants from Turkey.  In a 21 March 1963 memo to Abba Schwartz, senior administrator for the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs in the State Department, the Tolstoy Foundation framed the Old Believers as "an ideologically strong and firm group of 250 persons in their rejection of any Communist offers and promises continued to await assistance from the West," before ending with a 'throwing down of the gauntlet' to American authorities:

"It seems in the U.S. interest- if only in counteracting Soviet propaganda and one of the USSR strong cold war weapons that 'the West does nothing to help effectively human beings in distress'- to authorize the admission of this group of 250 persons…"

Photo of Document taken by Me, found at the Tolstoy Foundation Archive

Here we have a subtle twisting of the 'distant mirror' portrayal found in both the Smithsonian article and Soviet archaeographers quest for Old Believer religious texts.  The Turkish Old Believers are definitely 'pre-modern' in their way of life, even to the point of being incapable of seeing through Soviet deceptions targeted towards them, yet the West can act as a modernizing force for this timeless group through demonstrating their willingness to assist them in immigration and placement into the 'correct' modern setting.  In the face of impending Soviet repatriation, on 12 April 1963 Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorized the admission of the Turkish Old Believers into the United States under 'parolee' status.

Photo taken by Me, found at the Tolstoy Foundation Archive

The New York Times ran a front page story on 27 April 1966 about the Old Believers with a focus on their adjustment to American life in New Jersey.  (While the Turkish Old Believers were initially settled in New Jersey, later that year most of the group would immigrate to the Woodburn area of Oregon in order to live a more secluded life, away from the Westernizing influence of the heavily populated East Coast)  Compared to the images found in the Smithsonian article above, these Old Believers look to be well-adjusted to the modern lifestyle, even as they still possess beards 'in accordance with Old Believers' tradition.'  With the subtitle 'Old Believers Leaning to New Ways', one can tell that the acculturation process is far from complete, even as the article would have the reader believe that the modern influence of America is pulling this distant group from the past and into the present.

Whereas the Smithsonian 'Pin it' photo acts as an assuaging force depicting the modern lifestyle as truly progressive, the New York Times photos represent the other end, or result of this assuagement, depicting the distant Old Belief as catching up, even though their distinctive qualities remain.  Despite these differences, both sets of photos present the same 'Expectation and Anomaly' discussed by Deloria with his 'Red Cloud Woman in Beauty Shop'.  We see the Old Believer as modernizing, yet the expectation of their backwardness makes their acculturation process all the more strange, all the more anomalous.  Even with the distance removed, the Old Believer still acts as a measuring stick by which the modern can judge itself.  The gaze may soften in a modern setting, but the intense focus remains.

Obviously, the depiction of Old Belief through outsider accounts is a complicated matter that could take up far more space than afforded here.  Yet it is worth noting that American cultural attitudes, despite their seeming modernity, possess powerful influence over our conception of the other in relation to ourselves.

Old Believer Games (1976 Edition)

Today I would like to continue with my series looking at archival evidence I've uncovered in my ongoing dissertation research project centered on Old Believer migration to Oregon in the mid 60's.  (See my previous post, Fragments of the Gaze, for the first installment.)  Up for examination: "A Manual for Educators of Russian Old Believer Children in Oregon", produced by the Marion Intermediate Education District in November 1976.

(Editors Note: A reader kindly pointed out to me that there exists an online viewable copy of the document I examine in this post- view it here.)

The document totals 49 pages and covers a diverse range of topics.  Marion county teachers could read about Old Believer history, marriage practices, holy days and additional summaries of cultural information that would not have been widespread knowledge at the time.  Since my topic is primarily concerned with how Americans 'viewed' the Old Believer immigrants, this education manual makes for very interesting analysis.  While I found only the 1976 edition, evidence in other documents suggest that the manual went through several earlier revisions and I would be most interested in charting the change occurring between the various editions.  For this post, I want to look at one particular portion of the education manual: games.

Among the various sections covering cultural awareness, the games section is perhaps the most informative as to the ability of the Old Believer populations to integrate cultural elements from their previous homesteads outside of the United States.  Beyond the more standard games of 'Marbles' and 'Football' (Soccer), more esoteric titles are discussed- 'Lopta', 'Nitochka, Igolochka, and Uzelochek', 'Gusi', 'Krug', and 'Djonza'.  Of all the games noted, only 'Djonza' is identified as distinctly foreign to Old Believer culture as its origin, noted by the manual, hailed from Central Asia.

This brings up some questions I have with the text- there is no indication as to who or what group provided the cultural information contained within the manual.  I can distinctly attribute parts of the manual to a Catholic monk, trained in the old rites, named Brother Ambrose, who was a noted personality in the documentary evidence.  (Ambrose was a staunch advocate of the Old Believers, although his true motivations for assistance and his general presence among the community is still unknown to me- hope to remedy this when I visit the abbey where he served.)  Yet the larger question of who put together the manual- who decided what should be included and the veracity of the information contained- begs answering, as that would be very key to my larger dissertation thesis.

Even with those concerns in mind, the manual section on games provides tantalizing evidence.  I want to focus on one particular game explained- 'Gusi', or Geese.  This game involves a group of children who divide themselves into distinct groups- one boy/girl becomes the shepherd, one girl becomes the 'farmers wife', two boys become 'wolves' and the rest of the children are designated as 'sheep'.  The game begins when the shepherd chases the 'geese' into the field, whereupon the shepherd and wife engage in a dialog:

At this point the shepherd attempts to chase the geese back 'home', while the two wolves also chase the geese and take them back to their 'den'.  Once the geese have returned home, another dialog ensues:

This process is repeated over and over until all the geese are caught by the wolves, at which point the final dialog is voiced:

Now the geese decide, via raised hands, who they want to stay with- the farmer's wife or the wolves.  Then the farmer's wife and wolves face each other and the geese are asked again what side they have chosen to remain.  Standing on one leg, each goose individually goes between the farmer's wife and the wolves and faces the side they desire to join.  Having gone through two rounds of sorting, the geese who sided with the farmer's wife form two rows, while the geese who sided with the wolves are made to walk between the rows, one by one, three times in succession.  As walk between the two rows, the farmers geese chastise the other geese's decision to side with the wolves- all while slapping them on the back as they pass.

Of all the games described in this portion of the education manual, 'Gusi' contains the most curious mix of traditional Russian cultural elements and foreign influence.  Some aspects of the game immediately tie themselves to traditional Russian folk culture.  The relationship between the 'lazy' shepherd and the more active, diligent wife is a motif found often in peasant folklore.  Of broader note, the use of the Shepherd as a main character possessed a deeper meaning than what is, on a surface level, immediately evident.  Traditionally, the Shepherd occupation was seen to possess a closer connection to the spirit world as they held the responsibility of keeping the herds and flocks safe from threats, both natural and supernatural, that lie outside the defined borders of the village.  It was often assumed that the Shepherd maintained the safety of the animals they kept via agreements or contracts with forrest (Leshii) or water (Vodyanoi) spirits who, if displeased, could either lead their animals into danger or kill them.

Yet there are some elements of the game that indicate integration and assimilation of cultural elements outside the traditional Russian experience.  The reference to the geese desiring 'Toosie Rolls' and the wolves response to the clapping noise as 'Old ladies making tortillas' are immediately recognizable as foreign to the larger 'geese-wolf' themed background.  While the source of the Toosie Rolls comment is more difficult to define, as the candy was widely and perhaps globally distributed, the tortillas reference most likely came from the years the Old Believers spent in Brazil.  Since I know that the two colonies of Old Believers came from wildly divergent sources- one lived in Turkey for a few hundred years, the other bounced from Hong-Kong to Brazil to the United States- I can make the statement that this game most likely originated from the Brazilian group.  

If this is true, it could have impact on my larger analysis of the manual as a whole.  Did this mean that the Brazilian group possessed special access to the writers of the manual?  What were some of the other cultural differences between the two Old Believer colonies?  From the reports I've read there is a tendency by observers to lump the two groups together, despite their largely separate experiences and settlement patterns.  Clearly there are tantalizing clues in a subject most would completely overlook.  


(Note- I realized, after thinking about this document a bit more, that the tortilla reference discussed above could have originated from the Woodburn area itself, as there was a large hispanic population centered there, and that the manual, dated 1976, was published years after the arrival of the Old Believer colonies.  Thus, until I can look at previous editions of the manual published, I cannot make assertive claims on the possible knowledge origin of the game and its influences.)

Fragments of the Gaze

Earlier I posted about my ongoing research into the settlement of Russian Old Believers in Woodburn, Oregon.  The Oregon Historical Society provided me with some very interesting material related to the Old Believers, although from a source base I would not have originally thought to investigate- the records of the now defunct Valley Migrant League.  Part of the much larger 'War on Poverty' initiative begun under President Johnson, the Valley Migrant League (VML) was one of the first projects of its kind to be funded through an Office for Economic Opportunity grant.  The VML initially sought to provide migrant laborers, then streaming into Oregon during the spring and summer months, a means by which they could improve themselves via adult education, health information, and establishment of child care facilities to take care of the migrant's children.

While the primary ethnic group the VML concerned itself with was the growing Hispanic migrants, curiously the Russian Old Believers also came into the new bureaucratic organization's gaze- this despite the fact that the Old Believers were certainly not a migrant population and their numbers paled in comparison to the Hispanic 'majority-minority' group.  Mostly they were farmers, who practiced their craft in some of the poorest conditions in Brazil and Turkey, and had no tradition of engaging in migrant labor patterns as found, then,  in the United States.  Nevertheless, the Old Believer immigrants shared some common characteristics with Hispanic migrant workers that made them visible to the eyes of the VML; few spoke english, few possessed skills (at least in the appraisal of the VML) that would lift them out of subsistence farming, and they almost all practiced an insular lifestyle that would keep them (again in the estimation of the VML) from truly integrating into American culture.

Often in the VML documents I surveyed, there is the expressed desire to provide all needy populations in the Woodburn area with opportunities to advance themselves, but often these desires were tempered around a belief that economic empowerment would transform these populations into good 'tax-paying' citizens and speed along their acculturation process.  Yet transformation of a group from one set of cultural norms to another is an especially difficult process, particularly if the assimilating group has little to no knowledge of the culture with whom they are attempting to transform.  The VML, to this end, commissioned a few reports on the Hispanic and Russian groups then living in their intended work area.

For today's post I would like to look at some fragments from one particular report drafted in 1966 by Paul F. Griffin PhD and Ronald L. Chatham PhD, entitled "Comparative Analysis of the Mexican-American and Russo-American Migrant in the Willamette Valley, Oregon".  It is a hybrid sociological/anthropological report, focusing on the cultural traditions of the populations surveyed.  It is 216 pages long, with the Russian component of the report containing 70 of those pages.  Again, it is interesting to note that the Russian immigrants took up one-third of the report despite being a very small group as compared to the Hispanic presence.  Forty-five of these pages are devoted to three areas: case histories of two specific Russian immigrant families, some perceptions of the American citizens in the area of the Russians and a listing of known Russian immigrant families.  While the two case histories and the listing of Russian immigrant families are invaluable sources for my continuing research, the responses by American citizens really piqued my interest.

Take this response, given by a 23 year-old clerk at the U.S. National Bank branch in Woodburn:

This type of complaint was common among citizens quoted in this report.  What strikes me in this comment, easily one of the more virulent, is that the 23 year-old clerk assumes that learning American culture is 'even more simple' than engaging in monetary transactions.  

Not everyone was so quick to judge, or assume that the Russians immigrants would remain ensconced in their isolation.  This next response, from a 26 year-old teacher, was one fragment among many I found in educational materials that indicated the teaching profession was much better informed as to the history and tradition of the Russian Old Believers- indeed, this teachers acknowledgement that the Russians practiced a different form of Christianity was one of the first instances I came across in which the distinction was even made:

Note how the teacher states that Russian children are picking up english with greater rapidity than 'Spanish background children'- other sources I came across made similar comments in that the Russian immigrants were quick to pick up some aspects of American culture, such as the language and acquisition of material goods, while still managing to hold on to their religious beliefs.  The 'flexibility' in cultural practices of the Old Believer's, a characteristic noted in their history but largely missing from the early 60's assessments, came to the fore in Woodburn over time.

The first two fragments presented above were from the Urban standpoint- if you could call the small town of Woodburn in the 60's urban- while this last selection comes from a member of the community who probably had the most in common, in terms of work and lifestyle, with the Russian immigrants:

This was one of the few responses found in the report that actually engages in some empathy.  Many responses centered on the 'unclean' nature of the Russian immigrants- that they 'stank' or did not manage to keep their property in tidy order.  Few actually concentrated on seeing the issue for what it was- this was a new group of immigrants whose experiences beforehand differed greatly from that encountered in the United States.  The farmers last comment, that "we would maybe look bad in Russia", was certainly not indicative of many respondents attitudes.  

What makes these observations so interesting is that this kind of information is what the VML would base its 'engagement' policy upon towards Russian immigrants.  Since the perception was that the Russian immigrants were 'dirty', programs that targeted distributing health information were emphasized.  Adult education classes, held at night, attempted to get Russian adults to enroll in order to learn english.  This report, and several others commissioned by the VML and the local government, not only helped fix the gaze of the bureaucracy on the Russian immigrants but they also gave indicators towards directions where the gaze could shift.  However, like many of these early reports, little attempt was made to reconcile the larger questions regarding the practice of Old Belief and the assimilation of these practitioners into American culture.  In failing to do so, acculturation  programs would be met with little enthusiasm and, in some areas like education, outright conflicts developed.  

Next time I would like to take a look at an education source- the 'Manual for Educators of Old Believer Children', drafted by the Marion County (where Woodburn is located) Independent Education District.    

Old Belief, Sex and the Modern Divergence

One of the sublime (hint- massive sarcasm here) joys of working on a graduate portfolio lies with the painstaking production, in around 250 words or less, of individual entries into the master annotated bibliography.  It would definitely border on busy work were it not for the curious fact that it sometimes takes the tedium of summation in order to see the linkages between seemingly disparate works.  Such was the case as I prepared to take Roy Robson's Old Believers in Modern Russia and Eve Levin's Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 and condense their cogent and well argued points into a paragraph.  

As some may know, I'm currently conducting research on Old Believer communities that immigrated to Oregon in the 1960's.  Even though I spent several evenings in the Fall semester of 2007 learning about Russian Orthodox history, Old Belief is sufficiently varied and highly dependent on the experiences of the local that I knew I would need to 'remind' myself as to the origin and nature of these asynchronous Orthodox beliefs.  Roy Robson's work, specifically addressing Old Believer groups at the turn of the twentieth century, provided a well-informed foundation of knowledge from which my initial inquires could take form.  

Two observations made by Robson in his first chapter are particularly enlightening.  The first:

Because symbols and rituals are experienced (emphasis in text) by the faithful, not simply understood in an intellectual way, scholars need to break down the distinction between symbolic and concrete structures, between the 'signs' of the old ritual and the 'real' issues at stake in the Old Belief. (7)

and the second:

Consequently, we can understand the Old Belief as an ongoing relationship between the symbols of pre-Nikonian Orthodoxy and the lives of the old ritualist faithful. (9)

The key observation in both statements is that one cannot analyze Old Belief solely on the basis of ritual practice, as the faiths very makeup and execution is directly tied to the circumstances and experiences of the practicing community.  A scholar must look to the community itself for deeper understanding, recognizing that the rituals encountered do not tie their practitioners to the past but rather grounds the practice of Old Believers in the lived presence of today.  This especially strong linkage between Old Belief and and the community not only helps explain the ability of the faith to endure under various forms of persecution but also why the Nikonian reforms of the mid-17th century provoked the Russian religious schism in the first place.

How so?  Interestingly enough, the answer lies with sex.  And this is where summation becomes suddenly less tedious.

Enter the work of Eve Levin (who, in all candor, is my advisor).  Sex and Society of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 is her exhaustive and well-informed work utilizing ecclesiastical and other documentary sources from the various the slavic populations in Eastern Europe and Russia.  Her main argument is that sexual behavioral norms and attitudes espoused by the Orthodox Church largely correlated to the norms and attitudes of the people themselves.  Looking at the issues and debates surrounding topics of marriage, illicit sex, rape, incest, as well as sex and the clergy, Levin asserts that because the Church held such close contact with Orthodox believers in the period surveyed, 900-1700, regulation of their sexual behavior was largely free from acrimony and actually enforced by the community itself.  (There are other, larger points made in the work, but the community aspect is what interests me here.)

Yet towards the end of the 17th century, the traditional medieval relationship and cooperation between the people and the church, at least in the area of sexual behavior regulation, underwent a reconfiguration.  Two points will help illustrate the nature of this reconfiguration; the Nikonian reforms and the rise of the centralized, secular state.  

As the power of the tsar began to grow into a more modernist form, shedding the aging ancient regime skin, it sought to extend its influence in areas previously reserved for the ecclesiastical.  As Levin points out, regulation of sexual behavior was one such area increasingly transferred to the purview of the state at the end of the 17th century.  Suddenly, the close relationship between community and church was replaced by a bureaucratically distant relationship between community and state.  Whereas the community members once had a greater roll in the determination and enforcement of behavioral norms, under the new arrangement their voice increasingly diminished until it was hardly considered at all.  The reform of the secular promised radical change in the way society and the state interacted.  This alone would have been disconcerting to those who cherished the community centered aspect of their lives- yet the 17th century would also see reform of the sacred, and this transformation provoked an intense reaction.

I briefly discussed the Nikonian reforms here- essentially, Patriarch Nikon sought standardization of both text and ritual used in the practice of Russian Orthodoxy.  He modeled his standardizations on Greek Orthodox forms, believing that such efforts would help to strengthen the faith by eliminating the inconsistancy that crept in over the past six centuries.  During the same period, the Church also sought to improve the standing of their parish clergymen thought minimal education requirements and cultivating a more dignified, elitist position in the society they served.  It was a quest never completed- but the undertaking produced unintended consequences.  The combined effect of both movements described above was that the Church effectively took itself out of the close contact it possessed with the community faithful, instead preferring to create a far more formalized and structured relationship that placed the tsar and the church hierarchy before that of the community.  

As Robson point out in his analysis of the differences between the liturgy and rituals of Old Belief and Russian Orthodoxy, the former made little room for the role of secular power but contained a diverse set of interactions between clergy and faithful, while the latter de-emphasized the community in favor of promoting the health and well-being of the tsar and church clergy, eliminating much of the interaction elements between clergy and faithful.  This would prove to be the main grievance stemming from the progenitors of Old Belief, namely that the Russian Orthodox reforms abandoned the established and stabilizing relationship between community and church that existed for centuries during the medieval era in favor of a more modern form that used dictation instead of cooperation in establishing and enforcing norms.  Hence, the Russian Orthodox schism.

In effect, Old Believers faced a changing relationship with their authorities in the sacred and secular realms in which both significantly modified existence of traditional ties and commitments to the community faithful.  To see the Russian Orthodox schism as a religious issue alone misses the point- changes in the configuration of the state no doubt provided an additional source of unease among those who saw value in the more traditional methods of governance.  

Robson informs us that the community and the lived experience of Orthodoxy is what characterizes Old Belief, while Levin states that, at least in the arena of sex, the 17th century saw the divergence of medieval models of synchronicity with the community in favor of modern forms influenced by the West.  Probing deeper, one can distinguish the link between the two scholar's works and provide greater depth and meaning to larger cultural trends within Russian history.  At least, that's what I attempted to roughly outline above.
  
And I owe it all to the bibliography.  Thanks.

Looking For Old Believer Primary Sources

Today I visited the Oregon Historical Society to search their archives for holdings related to Old Believers.  Thanks to a little homework searching the online catalog beforehand, I knew the OHS Research Library had several files under the heading of 'Ethnographic Materials'.  I made sure to send the research librarian an email ahead of time, as I wanted to ensure the materials I wanted to view would be there and it allowed me to establish a first contact with someone who knows the OHS holdings far better than I do.  Within minutes of arriving and signing in, I met with the librarian who received my email and he suggested that I look in the card catalog to find sources not yet indexed in the online version.  Help like this is invaluable when undertaking a large research project, as local experts can often point to sources that might otherwise go unnoticed.  

Even though I had only a couple of hours to survey the materials, I was not disappointed with what I found.  At Portland State University, I found some dissertations written in the late 60's and mid 70's about the (then) recently immigrated Old Believer populations around Woodburn and Hopton here in Oregon.  Within these secondary sources, I found some potential leads on archival source bases (like the now defunct Mt. Angel College and Valley Migrant League) as well as names of leaders in the Old Believer community.  Thanks to the holdings at OHS I surveyed today, many of the names and institutions I read about in the dissertations are not taking greater shape and form in my mind.  This may only be the start of my research, but I already have several leads to follow up and a much better idea of what exactly I want to pursue in my historical inquiry.

As I learn more and visit more archives, I will update my findings here. 

Russian History: Old Believers

Having just finished a rather lengthy post on Board Games, I decided it might be time to update the Muse with something, well, Russian related.  I've been busy working on my portfolio and dissertation project over the past few weeks, and my posting here has suffered accordingly.  Part of the reason I don't post more is that I tend to write rather long pieces, and these take time to produce.  Yet Russian history is a very big part of my life, so I've decided to spend a little more time here at Peasant Muse describing what exactly I'm studying now- first up, Old Believers.

Old Believer Church in Tomsk
via Vladimir Pletenev

If you are not a student of Russian history or culture, you may be asking yourself, "What is Old Belief?"  It is a question not easily answered due mainly to the sheer variety of movements found under the large umbrella heading of Old Believers.  Yet we can begin to understand the movement by looking at the time and milieu from which it sprang- the mid seventeenth century of Muscovite Russia.

In order to comprehend the foundations of Russian culture, you must first acknowledge the immense presence the Orthodox Church possessed in the period before the ascension of Muscovy.  Prior to the rise of the Russian state as we know it today there existed Kievian Rus, a territory that centered around the present-day Ukrainian town of Kiev with extensions as far as the Novgorodian territories in the north and eventually stretching to the shores of the Black Sea in the south.  Reaching the height of its power and territory during the early 12th century, Kievian Rus' became the primary progenitor for many aspects of Russian culture that developed in later periods.  One major contribution was the Orthodox religious belief, brought by missionaries from Constantinople to the Slavic peoples beginning in the 10th century.  While the invasion of the Mongols in the 13th century brought an end to the rule of Kievian Rus', the legacy of Orthodoxy remained, its cause taken up later by a new power in the North that emerged free from Mongol rule in the 14th century- the Muscovite state.  

Following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century, religious leaders in Muscovy began to articulate the new idea of Moscow being the 'Third Rome' and last bastion of true, Orthodox belief.  Aligning itself with the rise of the Grand Princes, and later Tsars, of Moscow, the Russian Orthodox Church became a major pillar of state power and helped to solidify a presence of rule among the various peoples then being incorporated, generally via conquest, into the Muscovite state.  (If you haven't guessed, this is quite the short summary- a reading list for further information will follow)

Zoom forward to the middle of the 17th century and the arrival on the scene of a rather charismatic and forceful personality of the Orthodox Church- Patriarch Nikon.  His emergence came at a time when traditional Russian institutions and cultural beliefs were being questioned against the backdrop of rationalistic and scholastic influences emanating from the Western European nations, then engaged in the bloody process of Reformation and Counter-Reformation.  While Nikon did not want to embrace Western ideals and traditions outright, he did seek to use the power of Western innovations- like the printing press- to help solidify changes to Russian Orthodoxy that would tip the balance of power from the state towards that of the ecclesiastical.  This was a period in which the absolute power of the Tsar was not yet assured, and while Nikon never succeeded in establishing theocratic rule many of the changes he implemented brought dramatic changes to the Russian religious landscape.  

What did Nikon change?  Here is a summary from James Billington's seminal work on Russian culture, The Icon and the Axe:

Between his deletions from a new psalter in October, 1652, and the appearance of new service books in 1655-6, Nikon sponsored an extensive and detailed series of reforms.  He changed time-honored forms of worship: substituting three fingers for two in the sign of the cross; three hallelujahs for two; five consecrated loaves for seven at the offertory; one loaf rather than many on the altar; processions against rather than with the direction of the sun.  Nikon eliminated some practices altogether (the twelve prostrations accompanying the prayer of Ephrem the Syrian during Lent, the blessing of the waters on Epiphany eve); introduced textual changes affecting all three persons of the Holy Trinity.  He altered the form of addressing God in the Lord's prayer, the description of the Holy Spirit in the creed, and the spelling of Jesus' name (from Isus to Iisus) in all sacred writings. 

At the same time, Nikon tried to impose a new, more austere artistic style, ordering the elimination of florid, northern motifs from Russian architecture (tent roofs, onion domes, seven- and eight-pointed crosses, and so on).  In their place he introduced a neo-Byzantine emphasis on spherical domes, classical lines, and the use of the plain, four-pointed Greek cross. (133)  

Needless to say, these changes provoked responses from the far-flung and varied populations of Russian Orthodox believers.  Many saw Nikon's reforms as an affront to true Orthodox belief, an invading force from the West that would corrupt and destroy the sacred mission of the church.  It is this period and these changes that prompted the 'schism' of Russian Orthodox belief- while the Russian state largely acknowledged and accepted the Nikonian reforms, those who resisted and continued to use the previous rites and traditions of the church came to be known as 'Old Believers'.  Despite the singularity of terminology, Old Belief encompasses a diverse set of views; some embraced a 'priestless' way of practicing their belief, while others sought to bring in 'fugitive' priests from the 'official' Church in order to continue taking the sacraments using the old rites.  Others engaged in a quasi-mix of accepting some rites from the established church while keeping other beliefs separate.  Yet, no matter what form of religious practice 'Old Believers' engaged in, their presence, until the 1905 edict on Religious Toleration, alternated between quasi-acceptance and impermissibility.  

Old Belief is a fascinating aspect of Russian culture.  While my summary above is strictly that- a very quick and dirty surface level look at a complex movement- if you want to know more here are some authors to check out:

Books:

Robert Crummey- The Old Believers and the World of the Antichrist

Roy Robson- Old Believers in Modern Russia

Journal Articles:
         
Irina Paert- "Preparing God's Harvest: Maksim Zalesski, Millenarianism, and the Wanderers in Soviet Russia" Russian Review 64 (2005): 44-61

John Sullivan- "'Dukhovnye Stikhi' among Twentieth-Century Old Believers: Song Books of the Kilin Family" The Slavonic and East European Review 75 (3): 422-438