Pitirim's Devastation was an early 18th-century punitive campaign against Old Believer hermitages on the Kerzhenets River in the Kerzhenets and Chernoramen forests of Semyonov Uyezd in Nizhny Novgorod Province, carried out on the initiative of Bishop Pitirim of Nizhny Novgorod and Alatyr. The event became one of the key episodes in the history of Old Believers of the Nizhny Novgorod Land.
Course of the campaign
In the early 18th century, the Kerzhenets hermitages, which had long been the historical center of Nizhny Novgorod Old Belief, came under large-scale persecution that entered local historical memory under the name "Pitirim's Devastation." The campaign was directed against an extensive network of hermitages situated in hard-to-reach forest tracts along the Kerzhenets.
Fate of the hermitages
Despite the severity of the repressions, a number of hermitages survived. In particular, the Komarovsky Hermitage — one of the oldest Nizhny Novgorod Old Believer hermitages — outlasted Pitirim's Devastation, then withstood a new wave of persecution in the 1850s under Nicholas I, and was finally abolished only in the 1930s, in Soviet times. A similar fate befell other Kerzhenets and Chernoramen hermitages of Semyonov Uyezd.
In literature and memory
Pitirim's Devastation entered the historical memory of Nizhny Novgorod Old Belief and was reflected in fiction. The dilogy by Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky, "In the Forests" and "On the Hills," recreates the life of the Kerzhenets hermitages against the backdrop of centuries of persecution, including the events of the early 18th century.
Sources
Materials from articles used (3)
In the Forests and On the Hills, Semenovsky Uyezd, Komarovsky Skete)