SUICIDAL FANATICISM IN RUSSIA. 447 



Great interest attaches to Theodore Kovaleff. He was the most re- 

 sponsible person in the whole party. He never assented to or believed 

 in any of the ideas and plans. He was the agent of the whole trans- 

 action. By his hands his wife, children, sister, mother and brother 

 died. He did what he was told to do. Vitalia's final orders to Mm 

 were not to eat or drink, but to await the end of the world which would 

 come in a day or two. He held out four days; then as there was no 

 war, as no one came to take him to prison, and the world did not end, 

 he began to eat. When the facts became known and he was questioned, 

 he said that they did not thinlv they could go wrong in obeying Vitalia, 

 because she fasted, prayed, read good books, etc., and he repeated the 

 question: 'Why was there no one to set us right?' His portraits, 

 which are here reproduced, show that he is a stupid and ignorant but 

 harmless peasant. The face portrait shows an expression of anxiety 

 and distress, as of a man who finds himself in a situation which he 

 can not understand. In the full-length picture which represents him 

 in the costume of a monk of the Old Believers, his face shows more of 

 the mild melancholy which, as Sigorski tells us, was one of the traits of 

 his character. 



The reports of the existence of a sect, one of whose religious prin- 

 ciples is suicide, prove to be unfounded. The religious element in the 

 affair was small and remote. The Old Believers have fallen into an 

 attitude towards society and the state which is traditional and false, 

 although not without some historical explanation and excuse. They 

 are under the dominion of fixed ideas and live in a seclusion and igno- 

 rance which cause them to take a false position towards all their sur- 

 roundings. They fear imaginary enemies and unreal dangers. Their 

 extreme ignorance of the world causes them to adopt crazy projects for 

 meeting enemies and dangers. All this nourishes fanaticism and 

 bigotry up to the stage of insanity. Then there are traditions of the 

 extravagant behavior of their ancestors in the sect to suggest for imita- 

 tion models of right and noble action. When a man is at hand of 

 feeble character and stupid submissiveness to act as the agent of the 

 half-insane fanatics all the elements and conditions of the tragedy are 

 provided. 



