Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale
By Laura Engelstein (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) Of the many sects that broke from the official Russian Orthodox church in the eighteenth century, one was universally despised. Its members were peasants from the Russian heartland skilled in the arts of animal husbandry who turned their knives on themselves to become "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's … Continued