(ca. 1621-1682) nonfiction writer
Avvakum was born into a peasant family in the Nizhnii Novgorod region of Muscovy. Raised by a devout mother, Avvakum married and entered the church at a young age, and by age 30, he was an archpriest.
Beginning in 1653, Avvakum spent nine years in exile in Siberia because he opposed recent changes to Russian Orthodox church books and services. Upon his return to Moscow, he continued to agitate against the reforms. A 1667 church council condemned opponents of the reforms as heretics, and Avvakum found himself and his family exiled to the far north. There he wrote his autobiography, polemical works attacking the reforms, and letters to followers. These followers deemed him a martyr when he was burned at the stake for his religious views.
Avvakum is best known for his autobiography Zhitie (Life; publication date unknown). It is a multifaceted work that combines simple, vernacular prose with formal religious language. Drawing inspiration from hagiographies (written stories of saint’s lives), Avvakum depicts himself as a pious man who suffers for his defense of the true faith.
N. K. Gudzy notes the “boldness” inherent in Avvakum’s writing, his “extremely high opinion of himself and his consciousness of enormous spiritual superiority over ordinary people.” Unlike most hagiographies, however, Life makes its protagonist seem human. At one point, for example, Avvakum is “lying on the stove, naked, under a covering made from birch bark,” and he has to retrieve his priestly clothing from “mess and dirt.”
Avvakum is remembered for having written one of Russia’s earliest autobiographies, and his simple yet graphic portrayal of his life’s events, beliefs, and emotions has given him a place in world literature.
English Versions of a Work by Avvakum
The Life of Archpriest Avvakum by Himself. In Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, rev. ed. Edited by Serge A. Zenkovsky. New York: E.P. Dut-ton 1974.
The Life of Archpriest Avvakum by Himself. Translated by Kenneth N. Brostrom. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, University of Michigan, 1979.
Works about Avvakum
Gudzy, N. K. “Archpriest Avvakum and His Works.” Translated by Susan Wilbur Jones. In History of Early Russian Literature. New York: Octagon Books, 1970.
Michels, Georg Michels. At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999.
