Bibliographic record
Abstract
Christine D. Worobec. Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001. 288 pp. Tables. Bibliography. Index. $36.00, cloth. An historian of the Russian peasantry, Christine Worobec delves into the world of Russian popular Orthodoxy in order to shed light on cultural perceptions of the Russian peasant woman in Imperial Russia. The scholar focuses her attention on female demoniacs, or klikushy (plural of klikusha), who were allegedly possessed by implanted by witches. It is a noteworthy-and revealing-fact that the Russian term klikusha does not have any English equivalent, yet it can be rendered as 'shrieker' or `hysteric.' While linguistically such a rendition almost works-it identifies the afflicted subjects by their behavioural characteristics-it by no means has the same resonance in the perception of the foreigner as klikusha does for natives of Russian culture. Klikushestvo is a truly complex phenomenon that readily defies one's attempts to fit it into any succinct definition. Yet Worobec handles this challenge with ease as she begins her study with a detailed description of a well-documented legal case, which took place in 1895-1897 in the Smolensk province village of Ashchepkovo. As the author introduces its participants, she illustrates the phenomenology of klikushestvo through their behaviour, testimonies, and attitudes. Gradually, Worobec unfolds a panoramic picture of the peculiar religious drama of Russian klikushestvo with its numerous primary and secondary participants. The scholar meticulously discusses the complex of the klikushy's behaviours and perceptions of them among subscribers and non-subscribers to the possession myth. The former are represented by the peasant community and Russian Orthodox Church, while among the latter are the Imperial judicial system and the Russian intelligentsia, including literati, ethnographers, and psychiatrists. In the course of her discussion, Worobec addresses questions that intrigued them all: is this phenomenon genuine or false? are its practitioners malingerers or victims? and what are the underlying causes of this peculiar condition? Four chapters of the book show different approaches to these issues, bridging popular Orthodoxy and secular rationalism and offering a truly versatile reading of the phenomenology of klikushestvo. The first chapter concentrates on the official state and church attitudes towards and dealings with klikushestvo. Beginning with the eighteenth century, the state started putting in place legislation which targeted klikushestvo as one of the popular superstitions and persecuted klikushy on a par with those allegedly responsible for their condition: sorcerers and witches. Above all, eighteenth-century thought advocated reason, casting doubt at the very possibility of possession. Klikushy were pronounced frauds and malingers and feigning possession became a punishable crime. The Church, on the other hand, was reluctant to participate actively in dismantling the myth of possession, miraculous healings of the possessed being one of the major topoi in saints' vite and one of the most important prerequisites for canonization. Yet another outlook on the phenomenology of klikushestvo and witchcraft is discussed in the chapter Peasant Views, which is devoted to popular Orthodoxy. Here Worobec scrutinizes the system of popular beliefs regarding demonology and demonic possession, paying particular attention to the views of all the participants in the klikushestvo drama-the afflicted, her family, the alleged wrong-doer, the community, and the healers. The author concludes that accusations of witchcraft and of implanting demons were often directed against women who were misfits in their community and that such charges testified to social tensions in the countryside. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".