442 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SUICIDAL FANATICISM IN EUSSIA. 



By Professor W. G. SUMNER, 



YALE UNIVERSITY. 



IN 1897 reports ran through the newspapers of the civilized world 

 that a religious sect in southern Eussia had begun to practise 

 suicide from religious motives. In June of that year Mr. I. A. 

 Sigorski, professor of psychiatry and nerve diseases in the university at 

 Kieff, visited the scene of the transactions in order to make a psy- 

 chological investigation of them. The following account is derived 

 from his book.* 



The scene was in the rich valley of the Dniester, in a cluster of 

 farmsteads near the village of Ternova, three or three and a half 

 English miles from Tiraspol. The family of KovalefO and its connec- 

 tions owned several of these farmsteads. The one at which the events 

 occurred was a valuable estate which belonged to a family of that 

 name who were Old Believers (Easkolniks^schismatics) . On the estate 

 was a building which presented, on the outside, the appearance of a 

 carriage shed with large doors. In fact there was no opening at all on 

 that side. On the inside a pile of straw and reeds masked the entire 

 exterior of the building and joined the roof, so that it looked like a 

 solid store of those commodities, but behind this pile was a corridor 

 which gave entrance to the building. There was another corridor 

 inside by .which connection was established with the main residence. 

 This building was a refuge and more or less permanent residence for 

 Old Believers of both sexes when on a journey, or old, or ill or perse- 

 cuted. The name of it is a 'skeet.' It had been so used for a century, 

 and the construction shows that the inmates lived in gloom and 

 secrecy, apprehending danger and violence, and prepared to flee 

 through the concealed passages in one direction or the other. They 

 went oiit only by night, or singly, and as secretly as possible. Their 

 favorite occupations were prayer, reading the books of their sect and 

 religious conversation. In these observances the Kovaleff family 

 joined with great interest. 



In the autumn of 1896, for some reason which is not definitely 

 known, the inmates of the skeet were thrown into excitement. lielics 



* ' The Epidemic of Voluntary Death and Suicide in the Farmsteads of 

 Ternova'; republished from the journal 'Problems of Nervo-Psyehic Medicine.' 

 Kieff, 1897. 99 pp. (In Puss.) 



