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Old Believers
Russian religious dissenters From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Old Believers or Old Ritualists (Russian: староверы, starovery or старообрядцы, staroobryadtsy) is the common term for several religious groups, which maintain the old liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian Orthodox Church, as they were before the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow between 1652 and 1657. The old rite and its followers were anathematized in 1667, and Old Belief gradually emerged from the resulting schism.
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The antecedents of the movement regarded the reform as heralding the End of Days, and the Russian church and state as servants of the Antichrist. Fleeing persecution by the government, they settled in remote areas or escaped to the neighboring countries. Their communities were marked by strict morals and religious devotion, including various taboos meant to separate them from the outer world. They rejected the Westernization measures of Peter the Great, preserving traditional Russian culture, like long beards for men.
Lacking a central organization, the main division within Old Belief is between the relatively conservative popovtsy, or "priestly", who were willing to employ renegade priests from the state church, maintaining the liturgy and sacraments; and the more radical bezpopovtsy, or "priestless", who rejected the validity of "Nikonite" ordination, and had to dispense with priests and all sacraments performed by them, appointing lay leaders instead. Various polemics produced numerous subdivisions, known as "accords". Old Belief covers a spectrum ranging from the established and hierarchic "priestly" Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church, to the anarchistic "priestless" Fugitives.
From the mid-18th century, under Catherine the Great, Old Believers gained nearly complete tolerance, and large urban centers emerged, the members of which had a leading role in Russian economy and society. Persecution and discrimination were renewed under Nicholas I from 1825 onward. Total freedom of religion and equal rights were granted only in 1905, followed by a brief golden age. In the beginning of the 20th century, demographers estimated the number of Old Believers to have been between 10 million and 20 million. The destruction wrought during the Stalin era decimated the communities, leaving few who adhered to their traditions, and a wave of refugees established new centers in the West. The movement enjoys a renewal in the post-Soviet states, and in the dawn of the 21th century, there are over 1 million Old Believers who reside mostly in Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia and the United States.
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Belief and practice
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Old Rite
While Old Belief is highly diverse, all its branches are defined above all else by the rejection of the liturgical and ritual reforms, enacted in the Russian Orthodox Church between 1652 and 1657, and by strict adherence to the Russian rite and traditions which preceded them. Instituted by Patriarch Nikon, the reforms were intended to eliminate all differences between the Russian use and that of the Greek Orthodox Churches: wherever a certain detail in local custom was found to diverge, it was corrected to resemble the parallel Greek one. The reform was not concerned with theology, and in this respect, there is no real difference between the Old Believers and the official Orthodox Church. They did touch upon numerous matters of form, totaling hundreds of pages in details.
Some of these changes are discernible, and easily distinguish Old Believers from the "Nikonian" rite, as they term it. The best known, which became a symbol of contention, is the manner of crossing oneself: pre-reform Russian custom, retained by Old Believers, is to fold together the thumb, ring and little fingers, while holding the index and middle fingers upright, known as "crossing with two fingers"; the "new" rite is to fold the thumb, index and ring fingers together , in "three fingers". Old Believers recognize only baptism by triple full immersion, and eschew baptism by pouring, which is acceptable in the new rite; the symbol of the cross is always the eight-pointed Orthodox cross, not any other variant; the Alleluia after the psalmody is recited twice, not thrice; and during the Divine Liturgy, seven prosphora are served rather than five. The procession around the church is directed clockwise, not counter-clockwise. Old Believers perform numerous bows and prostrations, using a prayer mat called podruchik, mostly abandoned in the new rite.
Old Believers spell the name of Christ in Russian with a single I and not two, as Isus and not Iisus. The phrase "ages of ages" is rendered in the dative, veki vekom, and not in the genitive veki vekov, as in the new rite. In the creed, the title "True", istinnago, precedes the words "Lord and Giver of Life", and the Kingdom "has no" (nest') rather than "shall have no (ne budet) end". Apart from those, there are countless liturgical and ritual differences, including the names of the saints and rulers mentioned during the Liturgy of Preparation, the wording of the Ektenia for the Dead, and so forth.
Breaking with the official Church over the reform, the movement ignores all the innovations and decisions of Russian Orthodoxy since the mid-17th century. New saints canonized since, like St. Seraphim of Sarov, are not venerated by Old Believers, who have adopted new saints of their own, like Archpriest Avvakum. In the field of religious music, Old Believers retain the monophonic, unison Znamenny chant, which has its own distinct notation style, and do not employ the Part song imported to Russia from the Greek churches. In the field of icon painting, Old Believer artists carefully preserved the otherworldly style of the medieval Orthodox icon, and eschewed Western-influenced realistic perspective or natural colours. Animalistic representations of certain saints, or certain styles of depicting Jesus, banned by the established church, continued to appear in the movement's icons. Old Believer clerical vestments do not include items of clothing that became fashionable since Nikon's time, like the Greek klobuk and kamilavka.
Traditionalism
The idealization and sanctification of the Russian past is an important pillar of Old Belief thought, buttressing their rejection of the reform. Old Muscovite culture was deeply religious and highly xenophobic, considering foreigners and foreign customs as barbarous and spiritually defiling. It was commonly believed that Russia was the sole bearer of authentic Christianity, after both Catholics and foreign Orthodox have fallen into heresy, Moscow being the Third and Last Rome. The 17th century Schism marked the gradual opening of Russia to European influence, the secularization of society and acceptance of foreign customs, with the state dismissing the notion of "Third Rome". Old Believer polemics tend to portray the Czars, church and people of pre-Schism Russia as living saintly lives of innocent devotion and simplicity, corrupted since and preserved only by themselves. The old rite, used by such illustrious figures, is therefore imbued with special holiness and nostalgia.
The movement rejected the westernization promoted since the time of Peter the Great. Old Believers cling to the Byzantine calendar, which he replaced by the Julian calendar. European clothing and hairstyles were frowned upon, and the old Russian garb was kept much more than in surrounding society. Old Believer men continued to wear untrimmed beards, embroidered shirts and knee-long kaftan coats, and women kept the sleeveless sarafan dresses and the kokoshnik head covering, wearing their hair in a single braid before marriage and covering it afterwards. Though there is great regional divergence, the basics are the same. Even when modern clothing became more widespread among the adherents, traditional dress was obligatory at least during church services. Today, old garments are worn daily mostly in the rural and isolated settlements in Eastern Europe, and in the immigrant, highly traditional communities in the West.
All communities abjure men shaving their beards and the smoking of tobacco, two old Russian taboos which ceased to observed widely during Peter's time. Many Old Believers also avoided potatoes, black tea, coffee and other foodstuffs imported in his reign, regarding them as "diabolical plants". Old Russian customs surrounding marriage, sex separation and other aspects of domestic life may be seen among rural Old Believers today. Suspicious of all new influences, the stricter sects of often avoided modern technology, and accommodated slowly to it. In the 1990s, an anthropologist who visited a community in Udmurtia noted that at first, it was not allowed to pray in a house that had electricity, later on electrical appliances had to be taken out and covered with cloth, and eventually the leader had a television set in his house. This traditionalism earned them both the reputation of primitive, backward obscurantists, and of authentic Russians preserving the essence of the nation's heritage.
Apocalypticism
The 17th century opponents of Nikon's reform, considered as founding fathers by Old Believers, were convinced that the new ritual was Satan's machination, heralding the Final Judgement, and they were living in the End Times. Those accepting the "Nikonian" rite were deprived of true Christianity, and the Russian church and state, and the world at large, were ruled by Antichrist.
This eschatological current is deeply ingrained in Old Belief thought. There are two strains concerning the nature of the Antichrist: the "material" doctrine, more in line with conventional Christian theology, held him to be a specific person, who will appear in a determined moment and will fulfill the criteria set by scripture. The "spiritual" doctrine understood him to be an allegory for an evil presence permeating the world. These two concepts were not necessarily exclusive, and communities and thinkers could be flexible in applying them. The "spiritual" Antichrist is associated with the more radical sects, enabling them to justify extreme religious positions, explained as emergency measures for Armageddon, without a time limit. The "material" theory allowed the moderates to conduct themselves pragmatically in the present, as no person could be identified as Antichrist; but during the most zealous phases in the movement's history, the title was indeed applied to a specific individual, mostly Nikon, Czar Alexis or Peter the Great.
The apocalyptic strain flowed in times of persecution, and ebbed at times of tolerance, but never perished. A willingness, or eagerness, to confront the corrupt world led to explosions of radicalism from time to time, most prominently to mass suicide, especially by self-immolation (quite often charismatic leaders murdered hesitant followers), conceived as martyrdom in the face of the Antichrist's dominion. A general distrust of the authorities permeates Old Belief, and the more radical sects forbade their members to serve in the army, carry official documents or even touch money, considered marked by the Antichrist's seal. In 1820, after half a century of official tolerance, a police search conducted in the respectable Old Believer merchants' quarter in Moscow, found a portrait of Czar Alexander I with horns, a tail and the number 666 on his forehead. In the 1980s, an anthropologist visiting a small Old Believer settlement in Canada, noted that residents were engaged in daily speculations concerning the identity of the Antichrist
Piety
Old Believers understood themselves to be God's elect, chosen to preserve true Christianity in a fallen world. They separated from society, often living in secluded settlement, and practiced a regimen of strict morals and devout religiosity. Some radical sects adopted convoluted monastic-like codes, and promoted celibacy and asceticism. Old Believer services are long and involve meticulous preparation, and the many feasts and fasts of the liturgical calendar are carefully observed. Religious education and involvement were far more intense among Old Believers than in the average official Church parish: children were schooled to be proficient in Church Slavonic, making them able to read scripture and the prayer books, and the laity had a more active and developed role.
Old Believer communities had developed sets of ethics, emphasizing moderation, abstinence, sobriety, hard work and mutual help. Secular entertainment and other worldly distractions were frowned upon if not forbidden. The relatively tight-knit community, even in the urban centers, and the experience of being a persecuted minority fostered a strong sense of internal solidarity, and of alienation from society. Community rules were enforced by the elders, and those failing to obey were subjected to penance, sanctions and finally excommunication. In the stricter sects, marriage to an outsider entailed excommunication, and outsiders wishing to join had to be re-baptized, as their first baptism was considered invalid. Those returning from sojourns in the outside world had to purify themselves by fasting and praying, before being fully re-admitted. Separate dishes were kept for the use of visiting "pagans".
Old Believers possessed a vast array of prohibitions, with many variations from sect to sect, which reinforced their separateness from ordinary Russians and other outsiders. Some were rooted in tradition or deduced from scripture, others appeared spontaneously. Adherents usually practiced strict hygiene and bathed often, and avoided vodka – in many rural communities, it was customary to display a full bottle of vodka at home, to signal it was left untouched (milder alcoholic beverages, like Kvass and Bragha, are permitted). The stricter sects see liquids as particularly prone to defilement. In some, a drop from the baptismal font may require a chapel to be reconsecrated. They prohibit the eating of certain animals, and consider blood and bloodied meat as revolting and forbidden. These taboos ceased to be widely observed in Soviet times, and are maintained sparingly. In 1990s Udmurtia, in an otherwise flexible community, a person was excommunicated for watering a garden with a hose.
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Subdivisions
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Accords
Disavowing the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church's hierarchy, Old Belief never possessed a centralized organization of its own. The movement was a loose network of disparate communities, which held to a certain sense of solidarity and common identity as a minority within a hostile environment, but cooperated only sporadically, and had little contact with each other.
The basic unit within Old Belief is known as the "accord", soglasie, referring to any number of communities which recognize the same spiritual authority and accept its decrees. The unique identities, histories and practices of many accords complicate any description of Old Belief as a movement, leading some historians to concentrate on separate treatments for each. Some accords had hundreds of thousands of members across all Russia, while others were confined to a single village. The lack of hierarchy, and the extreme seriousness with which Old Believers handled religious polemics, led to countless internal rifts, creating new subdivisions, or to the emergence of moderate and radical wings within the same accord, which adopted differing practices while maintaining strenuous relations. Many accords disappeared altogether, especially during the Stalin era, and others barely survive: of 30 that existed in the early 20th century, only 10 were still extant in the Soviet Union by the 1960s. Some consolidated into officially registered churches, which operate at the present. The chief division within Old Belief, hearkening to the dawn of the movement, is between the popovtsy, "priestly", who employ priests; and the bezpopovtsy, "priestless", who do not.
The division of priestly and priestless was not necessarily definitive. The Chasovennye (Chapelers), the largest accord in Siberia and the Urals, were originally priestly, but failed to recruit clerics for a prolonged time during the early 19th century. Faced with no choice, they began conducting services like the priestless, though they do not consider themselves as such. The Luzhkovites, a priestly sect that was adamant in its isolationism and hostility to government and society (refusing to register births and carry documents), did principally adopt a priestless orientation. Old Believers communities in the West emerged from a mixture of refugees that lost their pre-Soviet affiliations, and were neither popovtsy nor bezpopovtsy in any strict sense. Among the Old Believers in Oregon and Alaska in the 1980s, many of the priestless' leaders decided to join a priestly denomination and to be ordained, leading to a local schism when some of their followers formed new communities.
Priestly
The priestly (popovtsy) were generally the more conservative and moderate Old Believers. While regarding Nikon's reforms as a grave heresy, they did not believe the official church lost all divine grace or that its sacraments were null and void. No bishops supported their cause – priestly lore, seeking legitimacy, claimed that their movement was originally founded by Bishop Paul of Kolomna, an obscure figure who was supposedly executed by Nikon, and aggrandized in Old Believer hagiography. Lacking the means to ordain new priests, the popovtsy were content to accept unemployed or banished clerics from the official church, on condition that they abjure the reforms, undergo some form of "correction", mostly chrismation, and adopt the old rite. The priestly were thus able to maintain the full liturgy and much of the structure of pre-Schism church life. They were careful in applying the Antichrist doctrine to the present, and were seen by the authorities as less threatening. Their communities were relatively hierarchic, though the laity was nonetheless assertive and involved, often treating the "runaway" priests as mere employees.
Historical priestly accords include the Onufrites, who accepted some controversial letters written by Avvakum, containing unconventional theological statements, as legitimate; the Deaconites, who did not require their "runaway" priests to be chrismated (as preparing chrism without episcopal consecration is contrary to church canons), and accepted the four-pointed cross as legitimate, therefore swinging the thurible once horizontally and once vertically during services, and not twice horizontally as other sects; and the Sophontites, who chrismated priests, recognized only the eight-pointed cross, censing accordingly, and rejected Avvakum's controversial writings.
Since the mid-19th century, the priestly succeeded in recruiting bishops of their own, forming two separate Old Believer established hierarchies: the Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy in 1846, and the Novozybkov Hierarchy in 1923. Another settlement for some of the priestly was provided in the form of edinoverie, "uniate faith": since 1800, the state church allowed Old Believer to rejoin it while keeping their rites, with various conditions. The edinoverie, that served mainly as a tool of the state to control Old Believers, never consisted of more than a small minority of them.
Bezpopovtsy
The priestless, or bezpopovtsy, were the radical wing of Old Belief. Having a stark and grim view of the world after the Schism, they regarded the official church as hopelessly corrupted by the Antichrist, losing any access to divine grace. Only those bishops and priests that were ordained prior to the reform, according to the old rite, were legitimate. Condemned to live without a priesthood, the priestless had to forgo five of the seven commonly recognized sacraments, remaining only with Baptism and Penance, that the canons allowed the laity to conduct. Marriage and even Eucharist were thus considered by the priestless as some of the "Old Things Passed Away" in the End Times; polemics about marriage, celibacy and sex caused much uproar in future generations. The priestly never principally endorsed the loss of the sacraments and the priesthood, yearning for their restoration. Leadership was granted to lay leaders, known as nastavnik or nastoyatel. The priestless were especially prone to internal division and to radical religious creativity, and the role of the laity was exceptionally developed. Embracing the "spiritual" Antichrist doctrine, they were more hostile to the authorities and more distrustful of the outside world, re-baptizing converts who wished to join, and adopting harsh taboos concerning purity.
The major accords among the priestless included the Pomorians and the Theodosians. Both originated as monastic communities with strict codes which combined intense spirituality, hard labour and communal ownership of all property under abbot-like leaders. They preached isolation from the world of the Antichrist, distrust of the authorities, and celibacy, disagreeing originally on some finer points regarding couples who were married before joining. An ever-growing laity moderated their stances, allowing for non-sacramental marriage, family life and private property in most non-monastic communities. The Spasovites argued that Baptism and Confession, like the other sacraments, were bereft of grace under the Antichrist, and only God's mercy could provide salvation. They split into several offshoots based on their exact practices following that conclusion: the Self-Baptizers insisted that all members perform non-sacramental baptism for themselves, and the Unbaptized avoided the ceremony altogether, in any form.
There were numerous other smaller priestless accords, some barely documented. The Phillipian sect broke with the Pomorians as they became too lenient for their taste, rigidly preserving the anti-societal attitudes of the priestless, endorsing self-immolation, refusing to pray for the Emperor, and condemning European clothing. The Beguny (Fugitives, Runaways) were the most radical priestless in their estrangement from society: a minority of fully initiated Fugitives lived as itinerant hermits, not touching money or possessing official documents, supported by lay believers. Rather than unrealistic celibacy or non-sacramnetal marriage, they allowed loose sexual morals, performing deathbed baptism that absolved of all sins. The Melchizedekites allowed for their members to perform lay Eucharist, claiming that Melchizedek's offering of bread and wine to Abraham demonstrated that it was permitted. The sredniki ("Wednsday-ers") claimed that Wednsday was the correct and rightful Sunday, due to an error in the calendar supposedly made during Peter the Great's reign, observing the Lord's Day and other festivals on Wednsday. The vozdykhantsi ("Sighers") sighed loudly and frequently during prayer meetings, to invoke the Holy Spirit.
Present-day
At the early 21th century, the largest Old Believer organization is the priestly Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church (ROORC), which claims a million parishioners. It has 200 parishes in Russia, and a few more more abroad, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Belarus, and two recent missionary endeavors in Uganda and Pakistan. Established in the 1850, when bishops of the Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy took posts in Russia, its headquarters is the Cathedral of the Intercession in Rogozhskoye Cemetery, Moscow, and its primate since 2005 is Metropolitan Cornelius Titov.
In 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian diocese of the ROORC seceded and requested autocephaly, forming the Ukrainian Orthodox Old-Rite Church, which has 55 parishes and is headed by Archbishop Nikodim. Sharing the same hierarchy, the Lipovan Orthodox Old-Rite Church in Romania, headquartered in Brăila with Metropolitan Leontie as its primate, claims 35,000 members in 49 parishes.
The second branch of priestly Old Belief is the Russian Old-Orthodox Church, the separate hierarchy of which was formed in 1923, when Bishop Nikola (who was a member of the regime-sponsored opposition to Patriarch Tikhon) seceded from the Russian Orthodox Church. It had 100 registered parishes in Russia in 2018. The primate is Patriarch Alexander.
The edinoverie was revived by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. As of 2021, there were 40 Old Believer parishes within the ROC. The Chair of the ROC commission for Old Believer parishes is Metropolitan Anthony.
The largest and oldest priestless denomination is the Pomorian Old-Orthodox Church (POOC), formally established in 1909, as a direct continuation of the old Pomorian accord which arose in the 1690s. Claiming 400,000 members, the POOC comprises seven national councils, with 200 parishes in Russia (less than half formally registered), 60 in Latvia, 27 in Lithuania, 15 in Estonia, 45 in Ukraine, 19 in Belarus and 4 in Poland. There are more in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Sweden and Finland. The chair of the united international council of the POOC since 2022 is Grigory Boyarov, the former nastavnik of the Pomorians in Vlinuis.
The small Old-Orthodox Theodosian Church, which united several established Theodosian communities, was formally registered in 2014. It had just 8 parishes in 2018, and is chaired by Konstantin Kozhev. Apart from that, there were scattered small communities of a few other priestless accords which surfaced in Russia in the 1990s, including the Phillipians, the Spasovites and the Fugitives.
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Distribution
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Old Believer communities often appeared in remote or inaccesible areas of Russia, as far as possible from the reach of the church and secular authorities, and from an early stage they tended to flee abroad. The original great centres were in the Kerzhenets basin near Nizhny Novgorod, the cities of Starodub on the Polish-Lithuanian border and Vetka just beyond it, the Don Cossacks' lands, and the harsh and frozen northern province of Karelia.
Flights from persecution, organized expulsions or government concessions, granting relative freedom in areas the Czars were keen to develop, led the Old Believers even farther. New concentrations arose in the industrial hubs of the Urals, Siberia, southern Russia, and outside of it in the modern-day Baltic states and Romania. Since the latter half of the 18th century, a time of tolerance for Old Belivers, large urban communities emerged in all major cities of the Russian Empire. In Moscow, tens of thousands of priestly congregants were concentrated around the Rogozhskoye Cemetery compound, which virtually became the national headquarters of their movement, and an equally large priestless hub arose in the form of the Theodosian-led Preobrazhenskoye Cemetery. The Guslitsa region near Moscow was densely populated by priestly believers. The Grebenstchikov House of Prayer, Riga is the largest continuously-operating Old Rite chapel in the world.
In the 1897 Russian Empire census, the regions with the highest concentration of Old Believers were the Bogorodsky Uyezd (Guslitsa) of Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, the Perm in the Urals, Saratov and the Samara governorates and the Don Host Oblast in the south, the Pskov and Novgorod in northern Russia, the northern Vitebsk area (Daugavpils county, Ludza county and Rēzekne county) in modern-day Latvia, and the Amur and Transbaikal in Siberia.
Some Old Believer communities, especially among non-Russian people, developed distinct ethnic features, with their own unique folklore, culture and traditions. The Lipovans of Romania and Moldova, whose ancestors fled Russia in the mid-18th century and settled in the Danube delta, are a recognized national minority. The Kerzhaks, the Kamenschiks of the Altai Mountains, and the Semeiskie of Transbaikal, several ethnic groups from among the veteran settlers of Siberia, are all descended from Old Believers who either escaped or were expelled to the Russian Far East. The Nekrasov Cossacks, an Old Rite community of Don cossacks, fled Russia and settled first in Bulgaria and then in Turkey, maintaining the traditions of their people. They were repatriated to Russia or immigrated to the West in the 20th century. During the Soviet period, a wave of immigrants escaping from Siberia and the Urals moved to Northern and Southern America and to Australia, forming highly traditional settlements in the West.
There are no reliable statistics concerning Old Believer population. Numbers, derived from Old Believer leaders' estimates, surveys and censues, may vary greatly, and there far less regular churchgoers than total members, who maintain some ties to the community. The Metropolinate of the ROORC claimed in 2018 that there are 2 million Old Believers of all accords worldwide.[1] Estimates made in the 2010s cite 55,000 Old Believers in Latvia, 45,000 in Lithuania, and 15,000 (but only 3,000 regularly attending services) in Estonia. In Romania, the local leadership stated it had some 35,000 members. There are tens of thousands of Old Believers in Ukraine and Belarus. In Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan there several thousands in numerous small settlements. In Poland and Bulgaria there are several hundreds each. In Canada there are several small settlements in Alberta, and in the United States, Old Believers reside mainly in Oregon (one estimate was that there were more than 10,000 around Woodburn), Alaska and in Erie, Pennsylvania. Some 3,000 Old Believers reside in Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Argentina. Small communities are also present in Sydney, Australia, and in South Island, New Zealand.
In Russia, a 2012 survey determined that there were about 400,000 self-professed Old Believers, with the highest concentrations being in the Smolensk Oblast, Perm Krai, Altai, Mari El, Komi Republic, Udmurtia and Mordovia, as well as the central Leningrad and Moscow districts. In 2017, the vice-chair of the Pomorian Church deduced that based on the average size of communities and the total number of parishes in Russia (about 800), a reasonable estimate concerning the number of Old Believers who maintain some ties to the faith in the country would be between 800,000 and 1,300,000.[2]
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History
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Nikon's reforms and the Schism
In the aftermath of the turbulent Time of Troubles, which ended in 1612, the Russian people's belief that their nation was the sole bearer of true Orthodoxy and God's elect, was shaken. Since the 1453 Fall of Constantinople, perceived as divine punishment for the Byzantine church's reunion with the Catholic Pope in 1439, the Russians deemed all foreign Orthodox as contaminated by heresy. In 1551, the Stoglav Synod even enshrined local practices like Crossing oneself with two fingers or reciting a double Alleluia, condemning the foreign parallel customs of three fingers and a triple Alleluia.
In the 1610s, mass printing appeared in Russia, enabling the church to print produce standard service books – but also raising awareness to the immense variance between the liturgical manuscripts. Learned churchmen were assigned with identifying the "correct" versions. Woefully aware of the intellectual backwardness of the Russian church when compared to the Greek or Ruthenian Orthodox scholars, they also printed some "western" works produced in Ukraine. Some of these were apocalyptic miscellanies, written in response to the 1596 Union of Brest, under which most Ruthenian Orthodox bishops accepted the supremacy of the Pope. The Union was interpreted as the Great Apostasy, heralding the End of Days which was to come in 1666. As these works proved extremely popular, an apocalyptic fever gripped Russia. A radical sect headed by Elder Kapiton preached strict fasting habits, if not self-starvation, in preparation for the Eschaton.
In the 1640, a party advocating religious reform arose within the Russian church. Posthumously named the "Zealots of Piety", they deplored the ignorant and lax parish priesthood, and the wanton and quasi-paganic folkways of the common people, demanding educated clerics who will promote Christian devotion and morals. They sharply differentiated between the idyllic church of the true believers, composed of those who embraced their strict ways, and the nominal church in reality. While the "Zealots" enjoyed support from the court, they were deeply unpopular. Those of them who served as secular priests, like Avvakum, and attempted to ban drinking, pagan festivals and fornication, were often lynched by crowds.
The young and deeply devout Czar Alexis, crowned in 1645, harbored an ambition of spreading Russian dominion over all the Orthodox in the world, especially in nearby Polish-ruled Ukraine. Religious unity with them became desirable, after two centuries of relative isolationism. Alexis and his courtiers admired the intellectual prowess and ritual splendour of the Greek church, inviting Greek and Ruthenian scholars to Moscow. In 1652, Alexis appointed his confidant Nikon, a "Zealot", to serve as Patriarch of Moscow. Nikon was to implement the Czar's wish to restore unity between the Russians and the foreign Orthodox, especially the Greeks.
Nikon set out shortly after his accession, ordering foreign scholars to rewrite the local prayer books "according to the ancient Slavonic and Greek manuscripts" (in fact they used a 1602 edition of the Euchologion printed in Venice), introducing Greek clerical vestments, changing the manner of Crossing oneself from two to three fingers, and making numerous other amendments. Nikon also proved authoritarian and capricious, alienating most of the "Zealots" to the point of bitter hatred.
At first, the reforms drew hardly any opposition, and contemporary records are quite bereft of any mention of mass protest. Some "Zealots", like Avvakum and the obscure Loggin of Murom, Daniil of Kostroma and Bishop Paul of Kolomna were later described as opponents from the very beginning, who suffered exile or execution for their stance. Yet there is no evidence of this: their persecution by the establishment was apparently motivated by local conflicts. Only prominent "Zealot" Ivan Neronov is conclusively recorded as attacking the reform in the very early years. In 1658, Nikon's relationship with the maturer Alexis deteriorated, as the Czar became weary of his claim for Papal-like power. Without the sovereign's support, he largely abandoned the reform; Alexis, however, continued to promote it. On 10 July, after one of his retainers was beaten by a nobleman whom the ruler refused to punish, Nikon retired to a monastery. He ceased to perform the functions of his office, but likewise refused the appointment of a successor. The church experienced a crisis.
Sometime before 1660, a circle of high-ranking churchmen coalesced around Archbishop Alexander of Vyatka, in opposition to the new rite and the "corrected" service books. The motives of Alexander and his associates are not entirely clear. It seems that virtually all of them supported the reform to some degree at first, and the institutions they headed or served in purchased the new books. Many were confindants of Nikon in the past, and seem to have turned against the reform only after quarrelling with their former benefactor. Archimandrite Spiridon of the Pokrovskii Monastery served as this group's chief scholar and theologian, and was assisted by several other learned clerics recruited by Alexander. They produced a prolific set of writings; 87 manuscripts were later found in the archbishop's library. Apart from thoroughly criticizing the new rite and arguing for the old one, based on patristic and conciliar literature, Spiridon and his fellow dissenters formulated a radical theology which buttressed their opposition. They combined the Zealots' notion of a true church of the elect, the apocalypticism of the Ukrainian miscellanies, and the sanctification of Russian customs, and argued that Nikon's reform was inspired by Satan, destroying the last vestige of true Christianity. The supporters of the new rite were committing the Great Apostasy under the Antichrist's influence, and the Day of Judgement was to take place in 1666. The elect who will be saved were those who shall remain loyal to the authentic faith, that is the old rite, and reject the Antichrist. The anti-reform circle gained considerable following and influence among the church hierarchy and the Moscow nobility.
At first, preoccupied in another war with Poland, the Czar adopted a policy of placating the religious opposition, leading them to hope that new rite will be abolished. By 1664 it became evident that Alexis was determined to implement it, and anti-reform authors produced a series of polemics, such as Nikita Dobrynin's "Great Petition". Seeking to end both the Nikon crisis and the controversy surrounding the new rite, Alexis convened a general synod in Moscow in 1666, to which numerous known opponents were brought. At first, the Czar and his councilors sought consensus. The first sitting of Russian clerics, after deposing Nikon and demoting him to a simple monk, voted to accept the new rite without any reference to the old one. The continued intransigence of the opposition angered Alexis, and the second sitting, which was attended by foreign Eastern hierarchs, anathemized the old rite and its followers. The members of the opposition, facing the sovereign's wrath, now buckled. Alexander himself, Neronov, Dobrynin, the late Spiridon's brother Efrem and most of their circle accepted the resolutions, denounced their former views and asked forgiveness. Only four anti-reform attendants remained steadfast: Avvakum (who began to study the service books in 1664), Fyodor Ivanov, Epifany and Lazar. The latter three's tongues were cut out, and they were all exiled to Pustozersk, a penal colony in the Arctic circle.
After the new rite was formally enshrined, the church hierarchy and the state set out to enforce the synod's resolutions throughout Russia. The imposition of the reform was but a part of a regimentation of popular religion by the official church; and this, in turn, was merely one aspect of the extension of the authority of the state's centralized beureaucracy over regions and spheres of life which enjoyed relative autonomy (in 1649, a new code of law, the Sobornoye Ulozheniye, virtually enserfed the peasants). The church closed domestic chapels, forced the often-hereditary parish priests to receive costly permits, persecuted local saints and miracle-workers, and dispersed unauthorized monastic communities. The immense social tensions ignited by the state and the church erupted in countless acts of resistance, from the acts of individuals to full-blown armed revolts. The ecclesiastical authorities, led by the Czar's councilor Symeon of Polotsk, were certain that they faced an organized opposition movement, akin to the Protestant Reformation (Symeon believed that Dobrinyn was equivalent to Martin Luther), which they termed as "the Schism", or raskol in Russian. They conflated principled opposition to the new rite itself with general rejection of the authority of the church, which often arrived at the doorsteps of oblivious Muscovites for the first time, and set out to suppress them by military force. The raskol was an era of dynamic religious fermentation, which gave rise not only to Old Belief, but also to the Khlysts and other sects. The religious element was inextricably intertwined with popular unrest, involving all elements "deprived and dispossesed" by the new social order: renegade monks or deposed priests joined marauding bands of runaway peasants, fleeing taxation and enserfment, serving as chaplains and ideologues of sorts. The bitterness, anger and despair inflamed the apocalyptic fervor so popular in previous decades.
After the schism
After 1685, a period of persecutions began, including both torture and executions. Government oppression could vary from relatively moderate, as under Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725) (Old Believers had to pay double taxation and a separate tax for wearing a beard)—to intense, as under Tsar Nicholas I (reigned 1825–1855). The Russian synodal state church and the state authorities often saw Old Believers as dangerous elements and as a threat to the Russian state.
There were Old Believers who chose death rather than give up their faith. Collective suicides by fire continued from the 17th century into the 19th century. The Old Believers considered such self-immolations not as a suicide but as a martyr’s death and an act of protest. In 1678, in the Paleostrov self-immolation, one of the largest, on an island in Lake Onega over 2,700 people perished at the sight of soldiers and officials who were sent to stop the burnings. In total, there were over 100 officially registered self-immolations of the Old Believers.[3]
Old Believers were driven by persecutions to the fringes of Russia and became the dominant denomination in many regions, including the Pomors of the Russian Far North, in the Kursk region, in the Ural Mountains, in Siberia, and the Russian Far East. Many Old Believers fled Russia altogether, particularly for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where the community exists to this day. The 40,000-strong community of Lipovans still lives in Izmail Raion (Vylkove) of Ukraine and Tulcea County of Romania in the Danube Delta. In the Imperial Russian census of 1897, 2,204,596 people, about 1.75% of the population of the Russian Empire self-declared as Old Believers or other denominations split from the Russian Orthodox Church.[4] By the 1910s, in the last Imperial Russian census just before the October Revolution, approximately ten percent of the population of the Russian Empire said that they belonged to one of the Old Believer branches (census data).[citation needed]
Some Old Believers evaded state persecution by fleeing to the Altai Mountains, a mountainous region near the Russian border with Mongolia. The convents of the Pomorskii group were built there at the beginning of the 20th century with the financial support of Savva Morozov, a rich textile mill owner and a member of the Pomorskii community himself.[5]
In 1762, Catherine the Great passed an act that allowed Old Believers to practise their faith openly without interference.[6] In 1905, Tsar Nicholas II signed an act of religious freedom that ended the persecution of all religious minorities in Russia. The Old Believers gained the right to build churches, to ring church bells, to hold processions and to organize themselves. It became prohibited to refer to Old Believers as raskolniki (schismatics), as they were under Catherine the Great—reigned 1762–1796, a name they consider insulting.[7]
People often refer to the period from 1905 until 1917 as "the Golden Age of the Old Faith". One can regard the Act of 1905 as emancipating the Old Believers, who had until then occupied an almost illegal position in Russian society. Some restrictions for Old Believers continued: for example, they were forbidden from joining the civil service.
Soviet period
The first Soviet government, appointed on 26 October 1917, included several prominent figures with the Old Believers background: Aleksei Rykov, the first Commissar on Internal Affairs, Vladimir Milyutin, Commissar for Agriculture, Alexander Shliapnikov, Commissar for Labor, and Viktor Nogin, Commissar for Trade and Industry. The Cabinet secretary was Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, a top Russian expert on the Old Believers and various sects. Bolsheviks regarded the Old Believers and sectarians as a kind of social protest, the opposition against the Tsarist regime.[8]
Nevertheless, the October Revolution in 1917 and the Russian Civil War encouraged many Old Believers to flee military conscription and starvation. Many of them traveled to China and settled in Manchuria, others settled in Xinjiang. However, when the Communists came to power in China in 1948-49, both these groups of Old Believers were forced to emigrate again. Most families moved to Brazil and Argentina, some moved to the USA and Australia.[9][10]
Religion in the Soviet Union was never officially outlawed, but religious property was confiscated, believers were harassed, and religion was ridiculed while atheism was propagated in schools. Persecution of religion intensified in the Stalin era. Between 1937 and 1940 the remnants of a few noteworthy Ural Old Believer monasteries secretly relocated to the remote lower Yenisei River area in Siberia, including the area of the Dubches River and its tributaries in Turukhansky District. However, in 1951 the Dubches secret Old Believer monasteries were spotted from the air by Soviet authorities and subsequently demolished. The Old Believers living there were arrested and all the buildings, icons, and books were burned. Thirty-three persons were convicted under Article 58-10, Part 2 and Article 58-11 of the Soviet Criminal Code and sentenced to terms of imprisonment in Gulag camps ranging from ten to twenty-five years. Two of them perished in imprisonment. After Stalin's death, the others were granted amnesty in 1954.[5]
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