From peasants to «protestants» and «psychopaths»: semiotic transformations of peasant religious movements in the orthodox discourse of the late 19th-early 20th century

The purpose of this study is to examine the semiotic transformations of peasant religious movements in thesouthern Russian Empire during the late 19th and early 20th centuries within the official Orthodox discourse, where thesemovements were categorized as manifestations of «Protestantism» or «psychopathology.» The research focuses on the discursivemechanisms through which the Synodal Church adapted non-systemic religious practices to the conditions of modernization,influenced by scientistic trends and institutional shifts. It explores how Orthodox theologians, missionaries, and sectarianscholars constructed the image of peasant sectarians by drawing on Western intellectual constructs, such as Protestantism, andby pathologizing ecstatic religious practices through a medical lens.The scientific novelty lies in a systematic analysis of Orthodox discursive practices, with an emphasis on the semioticdimensions of categorizing local religious movements, including shtundism, malyovantstvo, and pashkovism. The study establishesa connection between the academic formation of sectarian studies and the construction of Protestantism as a generalizedmodel of sectarianism, alongside a correlation between the positivist ideals of the era and the tendency to interpret religiousecstasy as psychopathology, reinforced by collaboration between the Church and psychiatric institutions.The findings demonstrate that interpreting peasant religious movements as Protestant or pathological was part of abroader strategy by the Synodal Church to unify the diversity of religious beliefs within the imperial society. These interpretativemodels not only simplified the complex landscape of peasant faith but also provided a theoretical foundation for missionaryactivities, reflecting the broader modernization processes that encompassed the social, intellectual, and religious spheres ofthe time.