Skoptzy

The Skoptzy (the Castrates) are a Russian religious sect whose members practice self-castration as a form of spiritual purification. In Tolstoy's Resurrection, the sect appears only briefly, yet their treatment by the legal system exposes the cynical manipulation of justice by the state and the established church. The Skoptzy are not tried on their own terms; they are used as pawns in a procedural game that reveals the deep corruption of the institutions meant to judge them.

The Sect and the Legal System

The Skoptzy are first mentioned during the trial of Maslova, when the secretary of the court asks the public prosecutor, Breve, about the case. Breve refuses to proceed, claiming that a witness is absent. The secretary, who is a liberal and a radical, knows the real reason: Breve is deliberately putting off the trial because he fears that an educated jury might acquit the sectarians. Breve has already made a private agreement with the president of the court to move the case to a provincial town, where the jury will be composed of peasants, who are considered more likely to convict. This backroom deal, made before any evidence is heard, demonstrates that the outcome of the trial is predetermined not by the facts of the case but by the prosecutor's strategic calculation of the jury's social composition.

The Easter Service and the Mockery of Faith

The Skoptzy are also evoked indirectly through the novel's critique of institutional religion. During the Easter service in the prison church, the priest performs a liturgy that is a hollow, mechanical ritual. The service is filled with incomprehensible Slavonic prayers, the chanting of the choir, and the repeated blessing of the people. The priest, dressed in a gold cloth vestment, cuts bread and puts it into wine, repeating names and prayers. The essence of the service, according to the narrator, is the supposition that the bits of bread, when manipulated and prayed over in a certain way, turn into the flesh and blood of God. The prisoners bow and cross themselves, but the narrator makes clear that none of them—from the inspector down to Maslova—seems conscious that this Jesus, whose name the priest repeats, had forbidden the very things being done there: the meaningless much-speaking, the blasphemous incantation over bread and wine, and the building of temples. The service is a supreme mockery of Christ, who came to give freedom to the captives, while the prison itself is a place of captivity. This critique of the state church's hypocrisy provides the theological backdrop against which the Skoptzy's persecution must be understood: the same institution that performs this empty ritual is the one that persecutes those who seek a more direct, radical form of faith.

The Skoptzy as a Symbol of Persecuted Conscience

The Skoptzy's fate is a concrete example of the novel's central argument: that the legal system exists not to find truth or deliver justice, but to protect the interests of the ruling class and the established church. The prosecutor's deliberate delay is not an anomaly but a systemic feature. The sectarians are not dangerous criminals; they are believers whose practices offend the religious orthodoxy that the state is committed to enforcing. Their case is a mirror to that of the other sectarians Nekhludoff later encounters, such as the group of peasants who read and discuss the Gospels and are consequently exiled to the Caucasus. The Skoptzy, like these other believers, are punished not for any crime against society but for their refusal to conform to the state-sponsored religion. Their persecution illustrates the novel's broader indictment of a society that uses the law to crush any form of conscience that deviates from the official norm.