Self-Immolation of Peasants in Topsa of 1746 in Light of New Data

Introduction. The article is devoted to one of the tragic episodes in the history of the Old Believers in the Russian North in the 18th century – the Topetskaya fire of 1746, during which about a hundred peasants of the Topetskaya, Kurgomenskaya, Konetsgorskaya, and Zaretskaya volosts of the Vazhsky district self-immolated. Method and materials. The author introduces new archival data into academic circulation and analyzes them and also uses for comparison information about the burnt peasants contained in the materials of the third revision of 1762. The article provides a comparative analysis of investigative documents and materials from state descriptions of the Podvinskaya chetvert’ of the Vazhsky district for different years. The analysis conducted with materials previously unused for this purpose revealed new, important details concerning this tragic event. Analysis. Previously, it was only possible to write about the total number of peasants involved in the tragedy. Only two peasants of the Kurgominskaya volost and one peasant of the Konetsgorskaya volost were known by name (and the family connections between them were not established); now the data of the third revision made it possible to identify the participation of peasants of the Zaretskaya boyarshchina in the events and, in relation to the peasants of the Kurgominskaya volost, who were the main subject of the study, to analyze the personal composition of the burnt peasant families and to trace the family connections of the participants in the fire. Results. Peasants perished in families, several generations at once. Entire branches of once large peasant families were at one moment destroyed; meanwhile, their related families, who did not take part in the burning, continued to develop. Women played an active role in leaving to burn. Children usually went with their parents or older brothers. But the self-immolation of a brother did not automatically entail the death of another brother if they were adults (not children). Taking these circumstances into account allows us to reach a deeper level of understanding of peasant life in the Russian North in the mid-18th century.