Ivan Boltov (1868-?) 

Psalmist, postmaster, murder suspect 

A woman’s body lies askew by the Alajõe church walls, her face clumsily covered by a blue-grey woollen scarf. A pool of scarlet blood is still spreading into the snow, its brightness only somewhat dimmed by the gloom of the cold night of 1 December 1911. In a nearby tavern, the sounds of lively conversation can just be caught through doors and windows firmly barred to keep out the chill. It is to this tavern that psalmist Ivan Boltov is walking, hoping to catch the latest news from a nearby market: on the compacted frost, the thud of his walking stick, a sturdy shard of wood topped with a heavy iron orb, stands out in the general quiet. And then he sees the body. He quickly rushes back to his nearby home, coming through the door his wife has not yet had enough time to lock. Tremulously stuttering that the body of some woman is lying outside the church, Boltov, his wife Anna, the teacher Mariia Domina, and the priest’s servant Anna Tverskaia now risk approaching the dark shape in the mounds of snow. Her identity becomes apparent from her clothes: she is Zinaida Troitskaia, wife of the local Orthodox priest Father Aleksandr. And she is most assuredly dead.

The road that Ivan Grigorevich Boltov took to this scene, possibly the most dramatic of his life, begins in Mustvee (Сhernyi), some 38 kilometres to the south of Alajõe (Oleshnitsa) on the coast of Lake Peipus/Chudskoe. Both communities bore the same social make-up, poor fishing communities mostly consisting of Russians whose families had arrived untold centuries beforehand. The area was notorious in those days for the large concentration of Old Believers, Orthodox Christians who had entered into schism with the official church in the mid-seventeenth when they rejected ritual reforms. In Mustvee itself, the Old Believer prayer house competed with two official Orthodox churches, the Nikol’skaia and Troitskaia parishes [1]. The former had come out about in 1830, initially housed in the home of one of Boltov’s relatives until a proper wooden building was created in 1839.

It was into this parish that the future sacristan was born, and it was in the parish school where this peasant’s son received his education, graduating in 1884 with the right to teach in similar such institutions. Evidently, he was deemed impressive enough by the church authorities to be given a plum position as teacher in one of the schools of the Pühtitsa convent, a pet project of the local government in its drive to support both Orthodoxy and ‘the Russian cause’ in the Baltic provinces. Teaching there from 1887 to 1894, he rose to the position of psalmist, the lowest rank of the Orthodox clergy. It was now that he was moved to a vacant slot in the Alajõe church, itself a brand-new temple constructed in 1889. A quiet community often cut off from its neighbours by treacherous swamps and impassable roads, Alajõe was best reached by boat, docking on the lake shores.

Psalmists in the imperial Orthodox Church quite frequently found themselves in an unenviable position, especially in isolated villages. Their pay, privileges, and social rank were considerably lower than those of their ordained superiors, priests and deacons, even though their duties were no less numerous: they had to sing, read, and chant in churches, teach in parish schools, perform rites for prayerful parishioners, help maintain the temple building, do secretarial work, and otherwise assist the parish priest in whatever was required. And on their meagre wages, they had to support large families: by 1910, Boltov had a wife, three sons, and two daughters, all of whom had to be housed, fed, and educated on 300 roubles a year.

Career advancement within the Church could also be extremely difficult for these men, since they generally lacked the seminary education required for promotion to the priesthood. Poverty and lack of educational opportunities often conspired to create psalmist dynasties, each father passing to his son the onerous choice of either penurious servitude in the Church or the risk of seeking employment in the secular world. It is thus little wonder that in the reform period between 1905 and 1917, psalmists constituted one of the angriest and most discontented groups within imperial Orthodoxy. Some of this fury was directed towards their immediate superiors, the parish priests, to whom church ordinances demanded psalmists’ absolute obedience and maximum respect. Such attitudes were understandably hard to maintain in the cloyingly confined atmospheres of secluded rural communities.

It was this aspect of a psalmist’s burden that was to prove Boltov’s downfall, and not once but twice. By December 1911, he had spent seventeen years in Alajõe under several different priests; as yet, his official record was unblotted. But the murder of Zinaida Troitskaia was to reveal the deep problems of parish life that had escaped the notice of both church and secular authorities.

Arriving on the scene on the morning of 2 December, the police investigators got to work. Upon autopsy, the coroner found that Zinaida had been killed by two blows to the head, the first weak, the second very heavy. So heavy in fact that it had completely shattered her skull: part of the woman’s brain matter had oozed out onto the snow when the corpse was moved from the church wall to a table in her husband’s apartment. Through interviews, interrogations, and searches, the chief detective Conrad von Rengarten assembled a picture of the day of the murder.

On the morning of 1 December, Zinaida told her husband, Father Aleksandr Alekseevich Troitskii, that during his absence on the previous day, she had caught psalmist Ivan Boltov peeping through the window at her. Boltov was summoned: after initially denying the charges, he confessed to watching the priest’s wife, since he knew his fellow psalmist Semen Karpin often paid long visits to Zinaida (she called him by the pet name ‘Senichka’). Far from denying marital infidelity, Zinaida declared directly that she loved Karpin: her husband remained entirely passive. He had long known about his wife’s affairs not only with Karpin, but also with the previous psalmist Laskeev and one of his own relatives. Apparently, the priest was so unconcerned about his wife’s cheating that he joked about it with his brother.

Zinaida then accused Boltov of possessing a number of ‘compromising’ letters and photographs that had once belonged to Father Aleksandr: as the police evidence inventory attests, these photos showed two naked women in various poses and the priest, fully disrobed, on his bed with one of these ladies. Boltov did not deny it: most of the pictures he had obtained from an Estonian repairman, who had stolen them during renovations to the parochial five years previously. Another he had gotten from psalmist Laskeev, who in turn had received it from his lover, Zinaida. Boltov had these materials, he said, as ‘weapons against the priest’. While he had cordial relations with Father Aleksandr, Boltov had apparently seen such a situation before with Troitskii’s predecessor: when their good rapport had soured, Boltov had been left powerless. So, he had decided to arm himself should a similar scenario with Troitskii occur.

Zinaida now let fly the allegation that Boltov was only angry because she had spurned his own advances. At this point, the psalmist furiously left the priest’s house, spluttering insults at Zinaida as he went. Returning home to his wife and her friend, he proceeded to spend the next several hours complaining and raging. Father Aleksandr, meanwhile, summoned Karpin and got him to confess the adultery. Throughout, the priest remained entirely calm: he even had tea with his wife before going out. He returned at six o’clock and found the door locked: his servant told him that Zinaida had gone to Karpin, ‘whom she loves and intends to see without limitations’. Meeting this news with ‘indifference’, he proceeded to a tavern, where he spent several hours playing backgammon surrounded by witnesses. It was here that news of his dead wife reached him.

Zinaida Troitskaia was last seen alive leaving a village shop with the intention of returning to Karpin’s place, where she had spent the last few hours (they had quarrelled about the preceding events but had then made up). Detective von Rengarten now had to turn to the physical evidence, which he found in the form of a birch log propped up in the parochial house’s yard, standing suspiciously separate from its brothers. Upon inspection, he found one end of the log to be covered in a reddish substance and blue-grey tufts of cotton, very similar in colour to Zinaida’s head scarf. Several strands of long blonde hair were also caught on the piece of wood. Right at this point, von Rengarten saw Boltov watching him.

It seems that from this moment on, Boltov became the main suspect in the case, damned by his own curiosity, discovery of the murder scene, and intent to blackmail. He was arrested and sent to the Jõhvi jail to await trial, which occurred in Narva on 31 May 1912. However, none of the witnesses questioned believed he had the motive or the character to act in this way. Indeed, numerous Alajõe villagers petitioned the court system to grant Boltov bail: he was ‘a god-fearing man without reproachable behaviour, he has never insulted even the smallest child and is also not a drunk or some kind of dragon.’ The jury agreed, delivering a unanimous ‘not guilty’ verdict.

Whoever killed Zinaida was never identified or caught. In the aftermath of the scandal, Father Aleksandr was sent to the island parish of Piirissaare (partially because some of his parishioners petitioned the bishop to replace him very soon after the murder), while Boltov was dispatched to be a sacristan in Kurland province. The case is noteworthy for the insight we gain into the intimate lives of the clergy in this particular community. The priest’s wife had cheated on him with several men, including two of his own psalmists, Laskeev and Karpin: she had been propositioned by a third, Boltov. The priest himself had been unfaithful with at least two women (named only as ‘Shura’ and ‘Vera’) and had decided to take erotic photographs of them and with them: his wife shared one such image with a lover. The married clerical couple had, apparently, decided to ignore each other’s infidelity, living with each other only for the sake of appearances (and, very probably, due to the Russian Empire’s extremely strict divorce laws). Ultimately, this situation had exploded into tragedy, with Zinaida lying murdered on the snow: one of the men involved may very well have been the killer.  

As for Boltov himself, he obtained Father Aleksandr’s illicit pictures and hoped to use them as blackmail, apparently guided by his experience of powerlessness under an earlier priest. The fact that Boltov thought blackmail was an appropriate action may speak not only to a less-than-savoury disposition, but also to the scale of the power imbalance between a priest and his psalmist.  

Boltov was not to remain in Kurland. No longer a psalmist, he returned to teach at the Lohusuu parish school (25.5 kilometres from Alajõe) in 1914, remaining here throughout the tumultuous war years and the establishment of the independent Estonian republic in 1918. With the separation of church and state, the new Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church, first autonomous and then independent of Moscow, was deprived of the government funding that had supported the clergy under the Russian Empire. From now on, priests and psalmists would need their parish’s support for both their positions (which were dependent on parishioner votes) and their wages: in the crushing economic depressions of the 1920s and 1930s, this meant deeply troubled conditions for the clergy. It also added yet another woe for psalmists: parish regulations still demanded their unquestioning obedience to the priest, their wages were still low (perhaps lower), and they were now responsible to a series of parish-level institutions full of potentially querulous believers in control of their housing and salary.

Having lost his teaching job in 1919, Boltov received help from his old friends in Alajõe in 1924 (indeed, the parish council contained several people who had spoken in his favour during the murder investigation and trial in 1912). Unanimously voted into the position of psalmist, he was allocated the salary of 15,000 Estonian marks per year and the use of an unheated apartment in the parochial house. This sum was tiny, as indeed was the parochial house, within which lived the priest’s family, Boltov’s family, and a customs official who monitored trade on Lake Peipus. Furthermore, the parish was quite large, around 1,200 people scattered in several surrounding villages: Boltov would have to undertake long and potentially expensive trips to perform rituals for distant parishioners. Thus, he had no choice but to take on other jobs to make ends meet: he served simultaneously as the church’s choirmaster, its caretaker, the parish council’s secretary, and Alajõe’s postmaster. Anna Boltova, meanwhile, became the church’s prosphora bread baker and his oldest son, Vladimir, a singer in the church choir: both jobs paid very small gratuities. Efforts to improve Boltov’s lot through promotion within the Church proved fruitless: a request for ordination as a deacon was ignored. However, Boltov was luckier than some psalmists and out-of-work Russian priests in this period, who had to do factory labour to feed themselves.

From 1925, Alajõe’s parish priest was Father Grigorii Gorskii. A refugee from Russia, he had spent most of his early career as a teacher, becoming a priest only in 1917. Now essentially a bachelor (his wife had remained in the Soviet Union), he lived alone and had a local reputation for asceticism, with his only major weakness being a preference for strong tea. While the relations between Boltov and Gorskii were initially good, things deteriorated within a few years. This decline Anna Boltova improbably attests to Gorskii living with a Soviet nun, who allegedly despised the Boltovs. It is more likely that Gorskii objected to the illegal moonshining business being conducted by Boltov out of the parochial house, along with the psalmist’s surly attitude in church.

This all came to a head in 1929, when Gorskii persuaded the parish council to dismiss Boltov. Aware, however, that Boltov had some support in the parish, the council convened the vote at the beginning of August, when many parishioners were absent, labouring away in some other part of the country. The vote came down decisively against Boltov (41 against, 3 in favour). For the firing to become official, however, it still needed the stamp of the Narva Diocesan Council. The dispatched petition stipulated fifteen complaints against Boltov, ranging from the aforementioned alcohol trade to sexually assaulting a female teacher during the Easter liturgy, forcibly kissing her and grabbing her rear.

The diocesan authorities responded quickly, sending a neighbouring priest, Father Nikolai Tsvetaev, to investigate the allegations. After numerous interviews, Tsvetaev found that Boltov was innocent of most of the charges against him: the teacher involved in the sexual assault claim, for instance, categorically denied that Boltov had done anything to her. Tsvetaev believed that many of the accusations were cooked up by Gorskii in an effort to remove his rival. However, some things were confirmed: Boltov was indeed selling bootleg vodka from the parochial house and had said some rude things to Gorskii in the presence of parishioners. He was also repeatedly drunk during holy day celebrations. Finally, Boltov’s age (he was 61) was rendering both his voice and eyes deficient: he could no longer read the service books or properly chant, with his son Vladimir often filling in for him as choirmaster. This was enough for the diocesan council to confirm his dismissal.  

Boltov was not yet done, however. Both he and his wife penned petitions (barely literate, in her case) to various church figures, threatening a legal suit if the decision was not reversed. Boltov also refused to vacate the parochial house until the spring (one can only imagine how he and Gorskii lived, confined together in a small space over the long winter months). Finally, a large group of his supporters wrote a petition in his favour, suggesting that conversions to the Baptists might be the result of Boltov’s departure. Father Tsvetaev, apparently also receiving legal threats and angry parishioner missives for his report, asked the diocesan council how they had come to their decision when his investigation had cleared Boltov of most charges. The parish council, anxious that Boltov’s supporters would attempt to use the election of his replacement to reinstate him, requested that the bishop of Narva simply appoint a new psalmist of his preference, thus avoiding the need for a public vote.

This marks the end of what we know about Boltov’s story: although some reports continue to mention the ‘agitation’ of his supporters into 1931, he no longer lived in the parish at this point. Gorskii died not long after his victory in 1930, suffering a fatal heart attack as he collected the potatoes that made up part of his salary. Vladimir Boltov, Ivan’s eldest son, seems to have remained for a few more years in the capacity of Alajõe’s choirmaster: his singing proficiency suggests that he was also trained for a career as a psalmist. But nothing more is heard of the old psalmist himself: as of writing, when and where he died are unknown.

Blackmailer and teacher, murder suspect and choirmaster, moonshiner and post official, Boltov’s career was characterised, if in an extreme form, by the odd mixture of the sacred and the profane with which the Baltic Orthodox clergy always struggled. Psalmists in particular endured an acutely difficult position. Lacking money, career prospects, and even a modicum of authority, they found themselves stuck between potentially capricious priests and the sometimes unreasonable expectations of parishioners. In 1912, Boltov tried to empower himself with blackmail, but instead became entangled in a brutal killing. In the late 1920s, he sought to keep himself afloat by selling alcohol, but incurred the combined wrath of the parish council, the priest, and the church authorities. In the former case, he may have been saved from a guilty verdict by the favourable testimonies of respectable believers; in the latter, he was condemned when those same respectable believers sided with the priest. The psalmist’s lot was indeed an unhappy one.  

NOTES

[1] The Troitskaia church was a edinoverie one: for its foundation in 1848, see https://www.balticorthodoxy.com/dorofei-emelianov

AUTHOR

James M. White

SOURCES

EAA.105.1.11294 (investigation into Ivan Boltov for the murder of Zinaida Troitskaia)

EAA.1655.2.2738 (papers of the Narva Diocesan Council on the Alajõe Orthodox church, 1924-1927)

EAA.1655.2.2739 (papers of the Narva Diocesan Council on the Alajõe Orthodox church, 1927-1929)

EAA.1898.1.70 (papers of the Alajõe Orthodox church, 1925-29)

http://pskoviana.ru/istoriya/istoriya-pskovskoj-oblasti/1335-otets-grigorij-gorskij-sluzhenie-na-blago-otechestvu

https://www.eoc.ee/vaimulik/troitski-aleksander-2/?v=a57b8491d1d8