The year 1652 was a trying one for the St. Sabbas Monastery in Zvenigorod, an institution that had enjoyed the tsar’s diligent patronage. Members of the monastic brotherhood had incurred the wrath of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and a governmental investigating team was scrutinizing the community. The trouble had started when the monk Nikita expelled a group of musketeers stationed at the monastery, an act that cost him his rank as steward. He responded defi antly by spreading (unspecifi ed) rumors about the tsar. In his report to the tsar, court offi cial (stol’nik, lit. “table attendant”) A. B. Musin-Pushkin, relayed that during his investigation into Nikita’s insubordinate conduct, two monastics, the priest Aleksei and the elder (starets) Vassian, were caught smoking (lit. “drinking”) tobacco. They were immediately arrested and interrogated by Musin-Pushkin. The priest Aleksei acknowledged smoking tobacco and confi rmed that Vassian did the same. Vassian, in turn, denied doing so and claimed that he only held the “paper with the tobacco,” thus helping Aleksei “drink it.”2 Musin-Pushkin further interrogated the musketeers, who confi rmed that both arrestees were smoking. He also reported that Vassian bought the tobacco from a market policeman, but that he did not know what his name was, nor would he be able to recognize him if he saw him. Finally, Musin-Pushkin informed the tsar that he kept the two in chains under guard until further instructions from the monarch.3 The tsar did order that the two smokers be sent to Moscow in chains, and commanded that monastic offi cials go to the capital to deal with the Nikita issue. In this letter, the tsar disapprovingly emphasized that the monastic brotherhood drank both wine and tobacco.4