Russian ravines are deep and formidable: splitting not into two, but into dozens and hundreds of parts, the hilly areas of the Russian Orthodox plateau are getting further apart, separated from each other, the spring water is falling down more rapidly into the dark depths, digging and undermining the bottom, and the ravines are growing in depth and in width and in length.
These words marked the opening of the Russian lawyer Alexander Bobrishchev-Pushkin’s 1902 book on the legal problems of persecuting religious dissidents in the Russian Empire. Bobrishchev-Pushkin, who was equally distant from advocating for those he called sectarians (from Shtundists to Skoptsy) as he was from favoring their systematic persecution, chose his metaphor very precisely. The volatile and precarious religious landscape of the Russian Empire created multiple dangers for the imperial lawyers and jurists, who tended to rationalize and categorize the surrounding space. This article focuses on these specific r...


