Microhistory of the Failed Apocalypse: The Village of Podavikha and Its Inhabitants in August–December 1932

This article provides a phenomenological interpretation of the eschatological experience of the participants in the movement that captured the Kungur and Ordinsky districts of what is now Perm Territory in the second half of 1932. Its center was the small village of Podavikha. During the movement’s liquidation by the the OGPU, the leadership and parish clergy of Kungur eparchy were unsure of their position in relation to what had happened. Someone put the name “Ivanovskaya secta” into circulation, after the movement’s spiritual leader, Protopriest Ivan Kotelnikov. Others assert that the participants of the movement remained within the church, and “there is no division”. Based on sources stored in the Perm State Archives of Social and Political History (PermGASPI), this article shows that the nucleus of the eschatological attitude of the inhabitants of Podavikha was formed from two elements: the experience of a victorious struggle against the “renewal schism” in 1924 and the trauma caused by the process of collectivization.