The Ioannites and Tolstoy: Two Defining Conflicts

Two conflicts that mark the limits and the asperities of Father John of Kronstadt’s public life, handled through the documents per the methodology. The Ioannites: the sect that venerated him as Christ incarnate, his repeated and documented repudiations of them, their persistence, and the Synod’s condemnations of 1908 and 1912. And Tolstoy: Father John’s harsh published attacks, the verified diary prayer for Tolstoy’s death, Tolstoy’s milder side, the 1901 excommunication context, and assessments offered both ways with no whitewash.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (glorified ROCOR 1964, Moscow Patriarchate 1990)

The Ioannites

Who They Were

The Ioannites (ioannity) were a popular apocalyptic lay movement — overwhelmingly peasant, its inner circle “almost all women” — that emerged in the 1880s–1890s and crystallized around the turn of the century. They venerated Father John not merely as a saint but as divine. Their publications, according to the Orthodox Encyclopedia and Russian-language scholarship, called him “the Lord himself,” “God-man” (Bogochelovek), and “the dwelling of the Holy Trinity,” teaching that Christ had incarnated in him for the last time before the Last Judgment (pravenc.ru, “Ioannity”; ru.wikipedia.org). The English summary records the same: some held that John was “the incarnation of Christ, or as some believed, Prophet Elijah or God of Sabaoth,” and even “a god himself, a home for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at the same time” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Kronstadt). They commercialized the cult, selling “holy water” and objects associated with him, and propagated it through a journal, Kronshtadtsky Mayak (“Kronstadt Lighthouse”).

Their leaders are named in the Russian record: Porfiriia Kiseleva (Matryona Ivanovna Kiseleva, 1855–1905), a former spiritual daughter of Father John venerated as the “Mother of God”; Nazary Dmitriev, venerated as “St. John the Theologian”; Vasily Pustoshkin, proclaimed “Prophet Elijah”; and Nikolai Bolshakov, editor of Kronshtadtsky Mayak, under whom, by the end of 1908, some 618 booksellers distributed sectarian literature across forty-five provinces (pravenc.ru; ru.wikipedia.org).

His Repudiations, and Their Persistence

Father John repudiated the sect explicitly and repeatedly, and this is documented in his own words. In January 1897 he recorded that he had “strictly rebuked Pustoshkin for his fanaticism,” wrote “I have no connection with these scoundrels,” and denied ever requesting collections or material support. In December 1907 he wrote: “I have no solidarity or communion with those charlatans… abusing my name,” urging the authorities “to proceed according to law against these scoundrels” (pravenc.ru, “Ioannity”). The English record concurs that he “sharply condemned the actions of the sect, declaring them anathema, calling them ‘uneducated, mindless and crazy,’” and refusing them Communion (en.wikipedia.org).

The honest picture preserves a tension. Father John had had earlier pastoral contact with Kiseleva and Dmitriev, and Kizenko’s central thesis — that he “collaborated in the formation of his own cult and… was influenced by the expectations and desires of his audience” (psupress.org) — means he is not best understood as the wholly passive victim of the Ioannites. He genuinely and publicly denounced the deification and the commercial fraud; yet his own charismatic self-presentation and acceptance of intense veneration helped create the conditions the sect exploited. The sect, for its part, persisted despite his denunciations — feeding on his name and image among a largely illiterate following whom his disavowals never fully reached — and outlived him, surviving into the Soviet period, where “Ioannite” became an official byword for counterrevolutionary religious fanaticism (Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint; en.wikipedia.org).

The Synod’s Condemnations

There were two Synod actions, and both should be named. The first came in his lifetime: by Determination No. 8814 of 4–11 December 1908, the Holy Synod declared the teaching of the “so-called Ioannites, who recognize Father John of Kronstadt as God,” to be heretical, blasphemous, and sacrilegious, akin to the Khlysty, and ordered measures against the sect and the censorship of Kronshtadtsky Mayak (pravenc.ru; ru.wikipedia.org). Father John died days later, on 20 December 1908 (O.S.). The fuller condemnation came after his death, on 13 April 1912, when the Synod formally classified the movement as a “Khlysty sect of the Kiselev type,” named Kiseleva as its chief foundress, and excommunicated its principal leaders. The 1908 date is correct for the first heresy-determination linking the sect to the Khlysty; the formal naming and full condemnation belong to 1912.

What the Phenomenon Shows

For Kizenko the Ioannites are the sharpest illustration of her central argument about the danger inherent in mass charismatic veneration when a “living saint” is co-produced by his audience. Built in part on police reports on the sect — which establish that Church and state alike regarded it as a genuine social danger — her account frames the Ioannites not as an alien aberration but as the extreme, heretical end of a continuum of veneration that Father John’s own ministry helped generate (Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint; the precise wording of her conclusions on the sect should be checked against her Ioannite chapter).

Tolstoy

The Public Antagonism

Father John’s antagonism with Leo Tolstoy was public, sustained, and venomous on his side. He is reported to have written more than twenty articles and pamphlets against Tolstoy, among them “Answer of a Church Pastor to Leo Tolstoy” (1903), “On the Soul-Destroying Heresy of Count L. N. Tolstoy” (1907), and a published collection of anti-Tolstoy diary extracts (1910) (ru.wikipedia.org; primary text at az.lib.ru). The invective was extreme: he called Tolstoy “a heretic who surpassed all heretics,” “Satan,” a “deceitful fox” and a “roaring lion” seeking to devour Russian youth, and wrote that “according to the Scriptures, you should be lowered into the depths of the sea with a stone hung around your neck” (attributed via Basinsky and Russian-language sources; the English wordings derive from journalism summarizing the Russian originals, which should be quoted from the 1910 collection for a scholarly citation).

The Prayer for Tolstoy’s Death

The notorious claim that Father John prayed for Tolstoy’s death is not legend; it is documented in his own deathbed diary (Predsmertny dnevnik, 1908) and was verified against the primary text. The entry, dated 6 September 1908 (O.S.) — about three months before his own death, while the ailing 80-year-old Tolstoy was being celebrated for his jubilee — reads in the original: “Господи, не допусти Льву Толстому, еретику, превзошедшему всех еретиков, достигнуть до праздника Рождества Пресвятой Богородицы… Возьми его с земли — этот труп зловонный, гордостию своею посмрадивший всю землю. Аминь.” In English: “Lord, do not permit Lev Tolstoy, the heretic who has surpassed all heretics, to reach the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, whom he has blasphemed terribly and blasphemes still. Take him from the earth — this stinking corpse, who by his pride has befouled the whole earth. Amen.” (St. John of Kronstadt, Predsmertny dnevnik, 6 September 1908, text reproduced at biography.wikireading.ru and in ru.wikipedia.org; verified.) The widely circulated paraphrase that he “prayed for Tolstoy’s death” is therefore accurate, not exaggerated. The irony the sources note: Tolstoy survived; Father John himself died first, on 20 December 1908 (O.S.), while Tolstoy lived until November 1910. The single fullest scholarly-popular treatment of the enmity is Pavel Basinsky’s Sviatoi protiv L’va (“The Saint Against Leo,” 2013), which reproduces and analyzes the diary.

Tolstoy’s Side

The asymmetry is striking. Tolstoy never attacked Father John with comparable venom. By Basinsky’s account, in his diaries, letters, and an unfinished article Tolstoy referred to him only ironically, as a “good old man,” and wrote dismissively of the campaign for his canonization. On the question of satire: Tolstoy’s novel Resurrection (1899) contains a deliberately estranging, blasphemous-by-design description of the Orthodox Liturgy and Eucharist (Book 1, ch. 39–40), widely credited as one trigger that intensified the conflict and contributed to his excommunication. But there is no reliable evidence that the priest in that scene is a caricature of Father John specifically; the satire targets the institutional liturgy and clergy in general. The claim that Father John “is portrayed in Resurrection” should be treated as unverified and likely false; the accurate statement is that the novel satirizes the Church he defended.

The 1901 Excommunication and Assessments

The Holy Synod’s edict against Tolstoy was Determination No. 557 of 20–22 February 1901, published 24 February 1901, declaring that Tolstoy had “fallen away” (otpal) from the Church — technically a recognition of self-separation rather than a formal anathema; Tolstoy replied in his Answer to the Synod (April 1901). Father John was not a member of the Synod and was not the author of the edict (drafted under Metropolitan Antony Vadkovsky), but he was its loudest clerical amplifier, denouncing Tolstoy as an atheist threat both before and after. No source indicates he drafted or signed the decree.

Assessments run both ways, and neither is suppressed here. The critical reading treats the September 1908 death-prayer as the low point of Father John’s record — overtly un-Christian in praying for a man’s death rather than his repentance — and notes the asymmetry between his vitriol and Tolstoy’s mild irony to his discredit; Basinsky presents the whole as a tragedy of two great contemporaries and does not spare him. The defensive reading frames his hostility as zeal against a teaching he saw as soul-destroying (Tolstoy denied Christ’s divinity, the sacraments, miracles, and the Church) and rests on the standard formula that “Tolstoy excommunicated himself” — that the Church only recognized an existing breach; even sympathizers generally concede the death-prayer is difficult to defend. Scholars across the spectrum observe that the excommunication backfired, popularizing Tolstoy’s ideas as truth the state and Church had tried to suppress.

References

Kizenko, Nadieszda. A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. (Chapters on the Ioannites; built in part on police reports on the sect.)
St. John of Kronstadt. Predsmertny dnevnik (Deathbed Diary). 1908. (Entry of 6 September 1908 on Tolstoy; text at biography.wikireading.ru.)
St. John of Kronstadt. Iz dnevnika o. Ioanna Kronshtadtskogo… protiv lzheucheniia grafa L. Tolstogo. 1910. az.lib.ru/i/ioann_k/.
Basinsky, Pavel. Sviatoi protiv L’va. Ioann Kronshtadtskii i Lev Tolstoi: istoriia odnoi vrazhdy. Moscow, 2013.
“Ioannity.” Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopediia (Orthodox Encyclopedia). pravenc.ru/text/578020.html. (Sect’s beliefs, leaders, and the 1908 and 1912 Synod condemnations.)
“Иоанниты (секта)” and “Иоанн Кронштадтский.” Wikipedia (Russian); “John of Kronstadt.” Wikipedia (English) — used to locate sect leaders, Synod dates, and the excommunication details, cross-checked against the Orthodox Encyclopedia.
Decree of Excommunication of Leo Tolstoy (Synod Determination No. 557, 20–24 February 1901). en.wikisource.org/wiki/Decree_of_Excommunication_of_Leo_Tolstoy.