1. Lavrent' evskaia letopis' (Die Nestor-Chronik), ed. Dmitrij Tschižewskij (Wiesbaden, 1969), pp. 169-76; in translation, The Russian Primary Chronicle : Laurentian Text, ed. S. H. Cross and O. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), pp. 150-54. The volkhvy have not as yet been subjected to any systematic analysis by Russian scholars. E. E. Golubinsky describes them briefly in his Istoriia russkoi tserkvi, vol. 1, pt. 1 (2nd ed.; Moscow, 1901), pp. 177, 211-14. Fedotov, G. P., The Russian Religious Mind : Kievan Christianity, the Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries (New York, 1960), pp. 344–47 Google Scholar, and George, Vernadsky, The Origins of Russia (Oxford, 1959), pp. 124–25 Google Scholar and passim, have also made an attempt to examine the pagan priesthood as an institution in Kievan Rus'.

2. A similar popular reaction to Christianity took place in Poland several years after its conversion. Upon the death of Mieszko II in 1034 many of the people rose up against their spiritual leaders and even killed one of their bishops. See Monumenta Poloniae Historica, vol. 1 (Warsaw, 1960), pp. 415-17.

3. Lavrent'evskaia letopis', p. 170; Russian Primary Chronicle, pp. 150-51. The so-called Radzivil Chronicle, dating from the fifteenth century, contains several illustrations depicting the activities of the volkhvy in 1071. One of the miniatures shows the two pagan priests from Iaroslavl actually stabbing a woman in the back and removing what appears to be fish, furs, and bread from inside her. Several onlookers are shown standing nearby. Radzivilovskaia ili kenigsbergskaia letopis' (photocopy ed.; St. Petersburg, 1902).

4. S. H. Cross, in his otherwise copious notes to the translation of the Primary Chronicle, offers no comment on this passage. Fedotov (p. 344) interprets the passage in its literal sense and says that the volkhvy murdered the Rostov women because they blamed them for the famine.

5. Soviet scholars by and large interpret this particular incident of the stabbing of the distinguished women of Rostov by the two volkhvy as a vivid manifestation of serious and violent class conflict in the Suzdalian lands in 1071. According to this interpretation the “distinguished women of Rostov” represent the upper-class element of Suzdalian society, while the two volkhvy are regarded as the leaders of the smerdy in their open revolt against the authorities. Mavrodin, V. V., “Ocherk istorii drevnei Rusi do mongol'-skogo zavoevaniia,” in Istoriia kul'tury drevnei Rusi, vol. 1 (Moscow and Leningrad, 1948), p. Leningrad, and illus. p. 23 Google Scholar; Artsikhovsky, A. V., Drevnerusskie miniatury kak istoricheskii istochnik (Moscow, 1944), pp. 36–37 Google Scholar. A more detailed account of events in Rostov connected with the famine of 1071 appears in Tikhomirov’, M. N.s Krest'ianskie i gorodskie vosstaniia na Rusi XI-XIII vv.. (Moscow, 1955), pp. 114–24.Google Scholar

6. The Mordvinians or Mordvins are a Finno-Ugric people who live on the Volga east and southeast of Moscow.

7. In Mordvinian the term velen'-molian literally means the “village sacrifice.” In his detailed study of the babii prazdnik in its various surviving forms Loorits shows that this ancient festival was until recently quite common in the Caucasus, in a Ukrainian colony in Saratov, in Setumaa (Estonia), in Latvia, and in other areas of Great Russia. Among the basic characteristics of the babii prazdnik, wherever it has survived, are the collection of money and other provisions (in some instances by special “elders” or “leaders”) as a preparation for the feast and the exclusion of men from the festival. The rites associated with this festival have a strong sexual overtone, an allusion no doubt to the main purpose of the babii prazdnik, the promotion of fertility both in the family and among domestic animals. Loorits traces the roots of the women’s festival to the earliest period of Russian history. He feels that it may originally have come into southern Russia from Byzantium and then gradually spread northward. What, if any, was the relation between the Russian babii prasdnik and the Mordvinian velen'-molian is difficult to say without a thorough comparative analysis of the two, which is beyond the scope of this essay. See “Das sog. Weiberfest bei den Russen und Setukesen in Estland, ” Sitzungsberichte der Gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft (Tartu, 1938), pp. 259-330.

8. Mel'nikov, P. I., “Ocherki Mordvy,” Russkii vestnik, 71 (September 1867) : 243–58.Google Scholar

9. McGrew, R. E., Russia and the Cholera, 1823-1832 (Madison, 1965), p. 5.Google Scholar

10. In the eyes of the Russian authorities the Mordvinians were still regarded as “unreliable” Christians even in the mid-nineteenth century, since they had been formally converted and baptized only in the 1740s. Paasonen, H, “Mordvins,” Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 8 (New York, 1961), p. 842b.Google Scholar

11. Mel'nikov, “Ocherki Mordvy, ” p. 244.

12. The following description of the ceremonies connected with the preparations for velen'-molian is taken from ibid., pp. 244-47.

13. This mock stabbing of the women in the back and neck is a unique feature of the Mordvinian women’s festival and is practiced quite widely. U., Harva, Die religiösen Vorstellungen der Mordwinen (Folklore Fellows Communications, no. 142) (Helsinki, 1952), pp. 375, 377, 380.Google Scholar

14. Paasonen, “Mordvins, ” p. 847a.

15. Mel'nikov states categorically that they must have been Finnish. V. J. Mansikka likewise describes them as Finnish “warlocks.” See his book, Die Religion der Ostslaven (Folklore Fellows Communications, no. 43) (Helsinki, 1922), p. 102.

16. In the Primary Chronicle (Laurent'evskaia letopis', p. 170) the place where the women were to be brought is referred to as a pogost', which Cross (p. 150) translates rather loosely as “trading-post.”

17. Paasonen, “Mordvins, ” p. 847a.

18. It is possible that under the circumstances only a ritual mock stabbing of the women may have taken place and that this was subsequently interpreted, largely through rumor, as actual human sacrifice. This would account, for example, for the passive acquiescence and lack of concern for the women’s well-being on the part of the relatives who stood by and witnessed the whole ceremony.

19. Lavrent'evskaia letopis', pp. 170-73; Russian Primary Chronicle, pp. 151-52.

20. Paasonen, “Mordvins, ” p. 847a. For a more detailed discussion of human sacrifice among the Mordvinians see Smirnov, I. N.'s “Mordva : Istoriko-etnograficheskii ocherk,” Izvestiia obshchestva arkheologii, istorii i etnografii pri Imperatorskom Kazanskom Universitete, 12, no. 4 (1895) : 308–12.Google Scholar

21. The quotation refers to the early 980s after Vladimir had consolidated his authority in Kiev. In 983 there was even a case in which a foreigner who was a Christian, refusing to give his son up for sacrifice, perished together with him at the hands of a raging mob in Kiev. Lavrent'evskaia letopis', pp. 77, 80-81; Russian Primary Chronicle, pp. 93 and 95-96. Mansikka, Religion der Ostslaven (pp. 40 ff.), among others, has expressed some doubt regarding the chronicle account of human sacrifice among the Kievan Slavs. He interprets this particular passage as probably being of literary provenience.

22. Mel'nikov, “Ocherki Mordvy, ” p. 249.

23. Ibid., pp. 250-58.

24. A. A. Shakhmatov maintains that the story about the appearance of the two volkhvy in Rostov during the famine of 1071 was originally narrated to Nestor in Kiev shortly after the event by an eyewitness or perhaps even a participant. It was included by Nestor in the 1073 edition of the Drevneishii kievskii svod 1039 goda and subsequently found its way into other early chronicles as well. See Razyskaniia o drevneishikh russkikh letopisnykh svodakh (St. Petersburg, 1908), pp. 455-57.

25. Lavrent'evskaia letopis', p. 78; Russian Primary Chronicle, p. 94.