The Postniki (постники "fasters") were a millennial sect of 19th century Southern

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

, a branch of the

Khlysty The Khlysts or Khlysty ( rus, Хлысты, p=xlɨˈstɨ, "whips") were an underground Spiritual Christian sect, which split from the Russian Orthodox Church and existed from the 1600s until the late 20th century. The New Israel sect that des ...

(flagellants) movement, founded by Abbakum (or Avvakum) Ivanov Kopylov (Аббакум / Аввакум Копылов, 1756–1838), a peasant of the

Tambov Oblast Tambov Oblast (russian: Тамбо́вская о́бласть, ''Tambovskaya oblast'') is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Tambov. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,091,994. Ge ...

. Kopylov declared himself the living

Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, names and titles), was ...

and gathered a considerable following in the 1820s. After Kopylov's death in 1838, the sect disintegrated in various schisms, giving rise to follow-up groups such as the

Staroizrail Old Israel (''Staroizrail'') was a 19th-century sect founded in the 1830s by Perfil Katasonov, a disciple of Abbakum Kopylov, the founder of the Postniki (Fasters) sect, as the result of a schism. Its adherents considered themselves to be the Chose ...

(Old Israel) sect led by Kopylov's disciple Perfil Katasonov. Soviet scholar A.I. Klibanov still encountered several postniki in Rasskazovo in 1959.

External links

*https://web.archive.org/web/20080416165643/http://www.doukhobor.org/New-Israel.htm *http://www.molokane.org/molokan/Religion/Dekhtevich_Khlysty.html Khlysts