The Skoptsy were Russian Christians who split in the 18^th century to form a group called the “People of God”.

They believed that after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had the halves of the forbidden fruit grafted onto their bodies forming testicles and breasts. Thus, the removal of these sexual organs restored the Skoptsy to the pristine state before the Original Sin.

First came the “lesser seal” which was the removal of the testicles for men and the amputation of the nipples for women. The second stage of the initiation, or “great seal”, followed two years later and involved the removal of the male penis and for women the total removal of the breast and labia minora, and sometimes removal of the labia majora and clitoris. Once followers had the second seal they would be able to mount “the white horse of the Apocalypse” and escape the flames of hell.

The Christian gender ideology understands women’s nature as weakness and vice and consequently some women were subjected to a third, and extremely painful, purification which involved cutting a triangle of flesh in the chest muscle.

All of these mutilations represented the five wounds of Christ.

Men who did the “greater seal” used a cow-horn when urinating. The castrations were done without anaesthetic and using primitive tools such as a hatchet or scissors.

The Skoptsy maintained that they were fulfilling Christ’s counsel of perfection in Matthew 19:12 and 18:8-9.

The Skoptsy were millenarians, and believed that the Messiah would not come until the Skoptsy numbered 144,000 (Rev. 14:1-4). The Skoptsy may have had as many as 100,000 followers in the early 20th century. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 genital mutilation was suppressed under the new penal code. Communism did not tolerate superstition and by the 1950’s they had faded into obscurity.