It seems enough, in Russia, when a single individual is obsessed by some more or less ridiculous idea, for his whole environment to become infected by it also. The ease with which suggestions make their way into the popular mind is amazing, and this reveals its strong bias towards the inner life, the life of dreams. The actual content of the dreams is of small importance, provided that they facilitate the soul's flight to a better world, and supply some link in a chain which shall attach it more firmly to the things of eternity. Consequently, those who have any supernatural experience to relate are almost sure to find followers.

An illiterate woman named Klipikoff one day proclaimed the good news of the divinity of Father Ivan of Cronstadt. The incredulous smiles of her fellow-citizens were gradually transformed into enthusiastic expressions of belief, and Madame Klipikoff proceeded to found a school. About twenty women began to proclaim openly throughout Cronstadt that Father Ivan, the miracle-worker, was divine, and he had difficulty in repudiating the honours that the infatuated women tried to thrust upon him. According to the priestesses of this "unrecognised" cult, Father Ivan was the Saviour Himself, though he hid the fact on account of the "Anti-Christians"—that is to say, the priests and the church authorities. Those who were converted to the new doctrine placed his portrait beside that of the Divine Mother, and prayed before it. They even fell on their knees before his garments, or any articles belonging to him, and though the old man expressed horror at such idolatry, he nevertheless permitted it. One of the local papers described a ceremony that took place in one of the houses where the pilgrims, who journeyed to Cronstadt from all parts of Russia, were lodged. Father Ivan deigned to give his benediction to the three glasses of tea that the hostess proffered him, and after his departure she divided their contents among the assembled company, in return for various offerings.

There were, however, cases in which, instead of kneeling before the garments of miracle-workers or committing suicide, the visionaries strove to reach heaven by offering up the lives of their fellow-men in sacrifice.

In the law-courts of Kazan a terrible instance of one of these religious murders was brought to light. It was revealed that the inhabitants of a neighbouring village had suspended by the feet a beggar named Matiounin, and then, opening one of his veins, had drunk his blood.

There are throughout Russia many records of proceedings brought against such murderers—for instance, the tragic case of Anna Kloukin, who threw her only daughter into an oven, and offered her charred body to God; and that of a woman named Kourtin, who killed her seven-year-old son that his mortal sins might be forgiven.

The vague remembrance of Abraham, who offered up his only son, and the conviction that Anti-Christ, "born of a depraved woman, a Jewess," travels the earth in search of Christian souls—these are the most obvious motives for murders such as we have described. Their real cause sprang, however, from the misery of the people and their weariness of life.

By a kind of reaction these murders—whose perpetrators often could not be found—frequently gave rise to even stranger crimes and disturbances. Suspicion was apt to fall upon any Jews dwelling in the district, and there resulted trials, such as that of Beilis, or Jewish pogroms which filled the civilised world with horror.