“1 Sergey Taranets (Kyiv, Ukraine) Old Believers in the socio-cultural space of the Russian Empire at the end of the 17th – beginning of the 20th centuries The problem of reform and church schism...”

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Sergey Taranets (Kyiv, Ukraine)

Old Believers in the sociocultural space

Russian Empire

late 17th - early 20th century

The problem of reform and church schism in the middle of the 17th century, history and

culture of the Russian Old Believers is one of the most studied

issues of national history. However, by the beginning of the nineteenth century. in Russia it was

extremely few books and articles have been published (with the exception of the Old Believers

studies and polemical literature of the ruling Church),

dedicated to this issue. The question of a systematic study of the history of the Old Believers was raised by the Russian public only in the first half of the 19th century. Unlike state repositories, the Old Believers themselves began to collect and study their written heritage quite early.

In the 40s of the nineteenth century. interest in the Old Believers is emerging among the Russian intelligentsia. In the 1950s and 1960s, Russian historiography was replenished with extensive literature on various problems of the Old Believers. A significant number of works on the subject of the Old Believers appear on the pages of the Russian liberal press. In the 1970s, there was a significant weakening of interest in the problems of the Old Believers in secular literature, but in the early 1980s it revived noticeably again. Before the October Revolution of 1917, the number of books and articles on the problems of the Old Believers exceeded tens of thousands of units.

In the XIX - early XX centuries. the most outstanding were the works of A. P. Shchapov, N. Ya. Aristov, V. V. Andreev, P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky, N. Popov, M. Monastyrev, I. I. Yuzov, A. S. Prugavin, M. I. Lileeva, N. I. Subbotina, P. S. Smirnova, I. A. Kirillova, N. F. Kaptereva, V. G. Druzhinina, F. E. Melnikova and many others. others

However, the first decades Soviet power(up to the Great Patriotic War), are characterized by a low interest in the history of the Old Believers. For a long time in Soviet historical science there was an erroneous opinion about the irrelevance of studying this problem, since Soviet ideologists qualified the Old Believers not only as a religious, but also as a reactionary movement. The Institute of Russian Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR became the successor of the academic traditions of that time.

The rapid growth of interest in the study of books and the literary heritage of the Old Believers was marked by the 60s of the twentieth century. First of all, the collectors of the Old Believer cultural heritage became the Institute of Russian Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov, who supported the initiative of the Archaeographic Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences, created special groups and began a systematic survey of the territory Soviet Union.

At that time, the works of V. I. Malyshev, A. D. Dmitriev, E. F. Grekulov, A. E. Katunsky, N. M. Nikolsky, A. S. Dolotov, V. G. Kartsov, N. N. Pokrovsky, N. S. Guryanova, N. Yu. Bubnov, I. V. Pozdeeva and many others. others

A new stage in the study of the Old Believers was marked by the 90s of the twentieth century, when scientists got the opportunity to study the phenomenon of the Old Believers from a cultural, economic and religious point of view without forbidden topics. First of all, the research of N. V. Ponyrko, E. M. Yukhimenko, E. B. Smilyanskaya, E. A. Ageeva, V. V. Kerov, V. A. Lipinskaya, O. P. Ershova, M. O. Shakhova, E. M. Smorgunova, V. P. Pushkova, F. F. Boloneva, O. M. Fishman, N. G. Denisova, D. E. Raskova, K. Ya. Kozhurina, A. V. Apanasenka, E. V. Prokuratova, A. V. Morokhina, V. V. Bochenkova, E. S. Danilko, E. E. Dutchak, A. V. Kostrova, A. A. Prigarina, Yu. V. Voloshina, G. Potashenko, Yu. V. Argudyaeva, A. A. Chuvyurov, A. A. Garbatsky, V. I. Osipov.

For several centuries of the existence of the Old Believers in Russia, a huge layer of documents has been deposited, stored in state, Old Believer church and private archives. These documents shed light on various areas of the Old Believers' activities, from their persecution and resettlement to the culture and everyday life of the Old Believers.

The paper uses materials and archival documents introduced into scientific circulation in the last two decades by the collections "The World of the Old Believers", "The Fate of the Old Believers in the 20th - early 21st centuries: history and modernity", as well as published in the proceedings of V. I. Osipov's conferences: "Old Believers: history, culture and modernity".

Sources significantly fill in the gaps formed due to the inability to explore the archives of the European part of Russia, Siberia and the Far East, Belarus, and the Baltic states.

During his work in the archives and manuscript departments of libraries in Russia, Ukraine and Moldova, the author of this book examined more than 20 archives. He worked in the Russian State Historical Archives (St. Petersburg), the State Archives Russian Federation(Moscow), Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library, Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts of the Scientific Library of Moscow state university them. M. V. Lomonosov, the National Archives of the Republic of Moldova, the Institute of Manuscripts of the National Library of Ukraine. V. I. Vernadsky, Central State Archive of the Supreme Authorities and Administration of Ukraine, Central State Film and Photo Archive of Ukraine. G. S. Pshenichny, the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Kyiv, the state archives of Vinnitsa, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Kirovograd, Odessa, Khmelnytsky, Cherkasy, Chernihiv regions, as well as the State Archive of St. Petersburg, the State Archive of Kyiv , Kamyanets-Podilsky city state archive, Izmail regional archive and some others.

Thousands of documents relating to the history and culture of the Old Believers were revealed, among them: concerning the legal status and statistics of the Old Believers, the Old Believer clergy and their persecution, persecution of the Old Believers in general and their resettlement, Old Believer churches, prayer houses, chapels, monasteries, hermitages, deserts, the transition of the Old Believers from the "schism" to "Orthodoxy", common faith, offenses, economy, training and education, manuscripts, books and printing activities of the Old Believers.

It should be recognized that far from all archival funds have been examined, in particular the former provincial and regional centers Russian Empire.

First of all, this is due to the lack of financial support from Ukrainian, Russian and other scientific centers. And here it is important not how difficult it was for us to implement this project, but what kind of disrespect modern society to the memory of the Old Believers, who made a huge contribution to the development of a network of charitable, educational, medical, scientific and other social institutions that people continue to use to this day. At the same time, the inclusion of alternative published sources made it possible to fill information gaps in many regions.

By origin, sources on the history of the Old Believers can be divided into four groups. These are documents: 1) public authorities; 2) the official Church; 3) Old Believer origin and

4) narrative sources.

The first group includes documents found in the funds of the highest and central authorities, civil and military governors, provincial governments, etc. The second group of sources includes documents from the funds of the Holy Synod, spiritual consistories and spiritual boards, as well as materials from the periodicals Churches.

The third group includes documents of Old Believer origin, in particular the archive of the Rogozhsky cemetery, private archives of Old Believers, as well as Old Believer publications. The fourth group consists of works of art and narrative sources.

A huge layer of documents has been deposited in state, Old Believer church and private archives. AT recent times a significant number of documents were introduced into scientific circulation by the collections "The World of the Old Believers", "Old Believers: History, Culture and Modernity", "The Fate of the Old Believers in the 20th - early 21st centuries: history and modernity".

Important sources on the problem turned out to be the materials of the First All-Russian Census of 1897, the journals Tserkovny Vestnik, Tserkov, and the newspaper Old Believer. The Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire and other collections that shed light on the legal status of the Old Believers in the Russian Empire were studied.

Significantly supplemented archival material diocesan statements, "Chronicles of the events taking place in the schism", notes about the Old Believers by I. S. Aksakov and M. S. Tchaikovsky, as well as the novel by M. A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don".

It would be a mistake to link the great Schism Russian society exclusively with the division of the Russian Church. The schism began with the church reform of the 50-60s of the 17th century, which did not so much imply the correction of liturgical books, rites and rites in accordance with the Greek models of that time, but recognized the centuries-old Russian church tradition as incorrect and distorted. The desire to unify the church rite was largely due to the claims of the Moscow court for primacy in the Orthodox world. The reform reflected a new line of foreign and domestic policy Russian government, aimed at expanding the territory of the Muscovite state, its transformation into an empire.

Significant attention to the reasons for the spread of the "old faith"

V. Bylinskiy, N. Kapterev, F. Melnikov, I. Kirillov, P. Milyukov, V. Kartsov, E. Ovsyannikov, and others paid attention, but A. Shchapov studied this problem in most detail.

Church reform of the 50-60s of the 17th century. proceeded from the recognition of the centuries-old Russian church tradition as incorrect and distorted. At the same time, its holding was explained by the claims of the Moscow court for primacy in the Orthodox world, for the expansion of the territories of the Muscovite state, its transformation into the All-Russian Empire. Nikon's and Peter's reforms marked the beginning of the separation of power and people.

The new domestic and foreign policy of the Russian government formed a number of factors that contributed to the spread of the so-called. "old faith". But the main reason for the successful development of the Old Believers lay in the very essence of this phenomenon. Thanks to internal forces and abilities, “the schism developed by itself, grew and spread” 1.

Among the main external factors, one should single out the sharp and rapid transition of Russian society from the traditional way of life to the European, secular way of life; the final enslavement of the peasants, the introduction of a per capita census and an increase in taxes;

a catastrophic decline in living standards; strict observance by the Old Believers On the causes of the origin and spread of the schism, known as the Old Believers, in the second half of the 17th and in the first half of the 18th centuries // Annunciation or Interpretation of Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Bulgaria on the Holy Gospel. - Kazan, 1857. - Part 2. - S. 635.

external church rites; the small number of temples of the official Church, the lack of a sufficient number of clergy, their greed;

non-proliferation of secondary and higher secular education;

the inconsistency of the policy and legislation of the Russian government, the resettlement of the Old Believers in the Transcaucasus, Siberia, etc.

regions of the state. The successful spread of the Old Believers was facilitated by the autonomous administration of the Russian regions, in particular the Don, the position of the stanitsa and farm chieftains, and the absence of a firm local diocesan authority. The missionary activity of the Old Believers was restrained and suppressed by the official secular and spiritual authorities.

The most important factor in the spread of the "old faith" was the high level of well-being of the Old Believers, whose main centers were monasteries and sketes, factories and factories, fairs and bazaars. An equally important factor was the spiritual and moral state of ancient Orthodoxy.

An important role in the spread of the Old Believers was played by the founders of the Old Believer movement, ofeni and hodebshchiki, owners of textile and other enterprises.

All this contributed to the mass exodus of the population from the traditional places of residence of the Old Believers in industrial centers, deaf, remote regions of Russia and abroad. The Old Believers turned out to be the strongest opposition force in Russia. It rebelled against the fundamental principles of the new structure of the state. The Old Believers were more concerned about increasing the people's wealth and well-being: “In which kingdom people are rich, then that kingdom is rich; in which kingdom people are poor, then that kingdom cannot be considered rich.

Despite the fact that in the last two decades there have been many works on the history of the settlement of the Old Believers in the territory of Russia and neighboring states, there are practically no generalizing studies on this topic. The study is based on the materials of the First General Census of the Russian Empire in 1897.

On such a scale, this problem is posed for the first time, despite the fact that I. Ordynsky (Moscow province), S. Zenkovsky (a significant part of the Russian regions), A. Apanasenok (Central Black Earth), G. Potashenko (Baltic) touched on the problems of resettlement and resettlement of the Old Believers , S. Taranets (Right-bank Ukraine), I. Antsupov and N. Abakumova-Zabunova (Bessarabia), D. Sen (Don and North-Western Caucasus), F. Boloniev (Transbaikalia), Yu. Argudyaeva and M. Serdyuk (Far East), N. Yoshikazu (South Sakhalin), L. Burdina and I. Nagradov (Kostroma province), V. Chichkina (Tver province), A. Bezgodov (Tula province), A. Morokhin (Nizhny Novgorod province) and many others.

Shchapov A.P. The Russian split of the Old Believers, considered in connection with the internal state of the Russian Church and citizenship in the 17th century and in the first half of the 18th century // Works in 3 volumes - St. Petersburg, 1906. - T. 1. - P. 435.

It is important to note that when studying the problem posed, we focused on those places of compact residence of the Old Believers in a particular region of the Russian Empire, where their number exceeded 500 or more people. And these are all the provinces of central Russia, the Russian North, the Urals, Kazakhstan, Siberia, with the exception of several administrative-territorial entities in Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova, in the South of Russia, the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia.

The Old Believers became widespread in the central regions of Russia, in the Russian North, in Belarus, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Moldova, in the south of Russia, the North Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia and Far East. Relatively few Old Believers lived in Transcaucasia, even fewer in Poland and Central Asia, including such autonomous and semi-autonomous entities as Bukhara and Khiva.

In connection with the beginning of the persecution of faith, adherents of the old faith left Russia, not only individually or in families, but also entire villages.

By the will of fate, the Old Believers became pioneers in the development of many hard-to-reach places. The favorite directions of the Old Believer migration in Russia were the Russian North, the Don, North Caucasus, the Urals, the Far East and, of course, Siberia with its vast expanses. Living in the Russian backwoods made it possible to freely practice the "old faith". In addition, in such regions of the country as the Russian North, the Don, Siberia, the Old Believers were also freed from serfdom.

The mass of settlers settled within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth, the Crimean Khanate, Sweden, Prussia, the Ottoman Empire, Austria, and the states of the Caucasian highlanders. After the establishment of Soviet power, significant groups of Old Believers emigrated to China, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, the USA, Canada and other states. Abroad attracted followers of the "old faith" not only with freedom of religion, but also with the absence of serfdom, recruitment duty, and border status. As a rule, the governments of other states were very loyal to the presence of Russian Old Believers on their territory.

The accession of some lands to the Russian Empire made it possible to maintain the former legal, economic and social status population, which was received, including the Old Believers. On the territory of the Right-Bank Ukraine and Bessarabia, the practice of assigning urban and rural residents-Old Believers to the urban communities of regions in which the Old Believers not only did not live permanently, but also did not go there, became widespread. Often, residents of the same locality could be citizens of not just different cities, but different states. In the nineteenth century An important place of registration for the Old Believers of the Bessarabian, Podolsk and Volyn provinces was the city of Khotyn. Fugitive people were attributed under the guise of missed persons during revision censuses. They enrolled in Old Believer societies as foreign subjects who returned from abroad. We have established that Old Believers, citizens of other states, lived on the territory of Bessarabia.

A significant role in the resettlement of the Old Believers was played by the domestic and foreign policy of the Russian government, which was aimed not only at resolving the issue in the legal field, but was also accompanied by the forced resettlement of representatives of the old faith, sometimes involving an invasion of the territory of neighboring states. From Belarus and Right-Bank Ukraine, troops under escort took out or evicted Old Believers to new places of residence, in particular, to the south of Ukraine, the Urals, Altai and Transbaikalia. In the nineteenth century the practice of using military force was no longer used, and the Old Believers were escorted by stage as criminals.

With the hands of the Don Cossacks who went over to the side of Moscow, the government successfully suppressed the centers of Old Believer resistance on the Don, which caused the resettlement of the Old Believers to the North Caucasus, the Kuban, to the Crimean Khanate, and then to Turkey itself.

A new impetus to the migration movement of the Old Believers was given by the abolition of serfdom. The spirit of capitalist times contributed to a significant expansion of the geography of the colonization of the Old Believers. At the same time, migration is no longer of a mass nature, but becomes more individual and is usually accompanied by relocations in connection with the acquisition or lease of land, the formation of farms and the search for work. Along the trade routes, new Old Believer communities arose, which were connected not only confessionally, but also by trade and industrial relations.

An important role in the formation of the migration routes of the Old Believers was played by such spiritual centers as the Vygovskaya Pomor desert, Vetka, Starodubye, Kurenevskoye Trimonastery, Belaya Krinitsa, Guslitsy, Rogozhskoye and Preobrazhenskoye cemeteries in Moscow, Irgiz, Kerzhenets, Cheremshan and many smaller centers.

The problem of the number of Old Believers in the Russian Empire is one of the least developed. AT last years I. V. Pozdeeva, I. N. Yurkin, N. Yu. Bubnov, M. V. Kochergina, Yu. V. Klyukin, N. V. Kozlova, M. I. Lukina, I. Yu. Makarov , V. N. Nepomnyashchaya, V. I. Osipov, A. A. Prigarin and others. The difficulty lies also in the fact that official data (of state authorities and the official Church) are fundamentally different from unofficial statistics.

At this stage, to determine the exact number of the Old Believer population in Russia for the period from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th century. does not seem possible.

Among the main factors influencing the inaccuracy of information about the number of Old Believers are: the unnatural social and legal status of adherents of the "old faith" in the state, the repression of the Russian government and the official Church, changes in the system and methods of accounting for Old Believers, the desire of the parish priests of the dominant Church to retain source of income, sympathy for the Old Believers among the clergy of the ruling Church, the departure of the Old Believers for seasonal work, the venality of Russian officials, the right of rural residents to be assigned to cities in other border regions (for Right-Bank Ukraine and Bessarabia), the refusal of the Old Believers to be recorded in registers of births.

A decrease in the number of Old Believers in a particular Russian region was observed in the case of an outflow of adherents of ancient piety:

flight to other regions. If in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Belarus, Poland, the Baltic and Caucasian states, the spread of Old Believers among the indigenous population practically did not occur, then in the central regions of the state, in addition to the mass of Russians, Veps, Karelians, Udmurts, Bashkirs, Permyaks and other Russian nationalities.

Demonstrating their successes in the fight against the Old Believers, officials reduced the real numbers of the number of Old Believers. When the government's policy towards the Old Believers softened, the statistics recorded a new increase in the number of Old Believers. Under pressure from the authorities, many Old Believers joined the dominant religion, but only outwardly.

The average figure for Russia, showing the number of Old Believers, was introduced on the basis of the results of statistical expeditions in the mid-nineteenth century. Now this number does not stand up to scrutiny. Firstly, the members of the expeditions visited only certain Russian provinces, and secondly, they visited the most densely populated regions of the Old Believers, excluding the places of compact residence of the Old Believers in the provinces and regions with a small number.

A significant part of the Don and Kuban Cossacks, all of the Yelets, Yaik, Nekrasov, Greben, Mazdok and an insignificant part of the Orenburg Cossacks, as well as at least half of the Orthodox population in the north and east of the Volga, a significant part of the inhabitants of the Russian North, the Urals and Siberia belonged to the Old Believers. In some regions, the population of the Old Believers has grown so much that these processes caused concern among the local authorities.

Significantly exaggerated is the Old Believer migration to the Baltic countries, Belarus, Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and other states. The statements of eyewitnesses of that time are based on their subjective opinion and do not take into account the available archival documents. Travelers and senior government officials did not conduct special studies on this issue. More modest results of the Old Believer migration abroad are evidenced by the activities of the Russian government, later statistics and research. Thus, no more than a few hundred thousand Old Believers emigrated to the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth, the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire, which is 2-3 times less than the previously estimated figures.

After the abolition of serfdom, the transition of peasants from the dominant religion to the Old Believers became widespread due to the natural growth of the population. At the same time, the number of small places of residence of the Old Believers in non-traditional regions increased.

The first general census actually concealed, rather than made public, the results of the number of Old Believers in the Russian Empire. In the vast majority of administrative-territorial formations of Russia, the number of Old Believers is represented at the level of 1-3% of the total Orthodox population, which, of course, suggests the intention of the authorities to limit themselves to a certain (small) figure, according to ingrained stereotypes, as well as advance planning for this campaigns.

Applying comparative analysis data, which is based on the logic of natural population growth, we found that in many provinces and regions of the empire, the information of eyewitnesses, civil servants, members of expeditions and the 1897 census differ significantly from each other: 14 times (Arkhangelsk province), 29 times (Yaroslavl province), 1.7 times, excluding natural population growth over 50 years (Moscow province), 1.7 times (Chernigov province), 2 times (Kyiv province), 2 times (Volyn province) , 2–3 times (Vologda province), 10 times (Vyatka province), 6.2 times, excluding natural population growth over 50 years (Olonets province), 20%, not 7.8% (Perm province) , at least 25%, not 5.3% (Saratov province).

The main reason for the deliberate decrease in the number of Old Believers in the 1897 census should be recognized as the desire of the authorities and especially the ruling Church to reduce the missionary opportunities of the Old Believers.

At the same time, in many regions of the Russian Empire, the statistics of the Old Believers presented in the census does not raise any particular doubts.

Having divided the administrative-territorial formations of the empire into 4 groups, from 1 thousand to 100 or more thousand people, we were able to determine the regions most populated by the Old Believers. These are the Perm and Saratov provinces and the Region of the Don Cossacks, where officially there were from more than 100 to more than 200 thousand Old Believers.

Taking into account all the above arguments and conclusions, we believe that by the end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th centuries. the number of Old Believers in the Russian Empire did not exceed 5 million people.

There were quite complex inter-confessional relations between the Old Believers and representatives of other faiths.

Paradoxically, this relationship with the dominant Church had two opposite sides: positive and negative. In a number of cases, the Old Believers collaborated with the official Church. This manifested itself in the most different forms: in visiting bishops, decreeing bishops, recognizing spiritual dignity, accepting a blessing, entering into marriages (albeit with the obligatory transition of one of the spouses to the Old Believers), donations by Old Believers for the construction of churches, etc.

However, complete reconciliation between the Old Believers and the New Believers was far away.

Representatives of the ruling Church prevented the Old Believers from gathering for worship, forcibly joined them to their religion, which caused a sharply negative reaction among the zealots of antiquity. The Old Believers not only got out of the omophorion of the bishops of the ruling Church, but also destroyed their places of worship, spoiled property, and threatened the personal safety of the official clergy.

The Old Believers were more loyal to the New Believers in places where they lived in small groups. To achieve the solution of religious problems, the Old Believers used a variety of means: from money to appeals to authorities, including other states.

The main reasons for the transition of the clergy of the dominant Church to the Old Believers were the following: their low standard of living, especially in those places where the Old Believers dominated, the small number of priests among the Old Believers and the high payment for performing spiritual services. Cases of transition of Old Believers to other religions were extremely rare. The Old Believers considered it their duty to add to the number of zealots of ancient piety at least one person who had previously professed other religions.

religion. Brotherly relations existed in the Old Believer denominations, which helped them maintain business ties. This was influenced by the remoteness of the Old Believer communities from each other. At the same time, rather complex and contradictory relations have been established between the various Old Believer agreements. This could be observed both among the main Old Believer denominations (the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy, Beglopopovtsy, Bespopovtsy), and within the concords themselves.

In the second half of the nineteenth century. thanks to the Russian liberal press, relations between the Old Believers, society and the dominant Church acquired a positive dynamic. In the 1980s, theological disputes between representatives of the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy and the ruling Church were increasingly being held in different parts of the country. However, a significant improvement in relations between both sides occurred only after the promulgation of the decree on the granting of the principles of religious tolerance in Russia. At the beginning of the twentieth century.

the legitimacy of the Belokrinitsky church hierarchy was recognized by the Catholic Church.

The relations between the Old Believers and other ethnic groups were strongly influenced by interfaith disagreements. Despite their relative isolation, the Old Believers contributed to the “Russification” of the Russian outskirts and non-Russian territories abroad. At the same time, their religious life, for various reasons, proceeded in isolation from the beliefs of the local population and did not have a significant impact on them. As a rule, local ethnic groups did not share the religious beliefs of the Old Believers. The isolation of the Old Believer communities was largely influenced by the policy of the Russian government and the dominant Church, as well as prohibitions on marriages with New Believers. Nevertheless, the Old Believers very quickly mastered the languages ​​of the peoples among whom they lived. To a greater extent, this was dictated by the need to establish labor relations. AT different states and regions of Russia, certain names were assigned to the Old Believers, which indicated their origin.

The followers of ancient Orthodoxy enjoyed a special favor with local landowners who valued the new settlers.

They endowed the Old Believers with vast lands, provided benefits, because they considered them hardworking people and leading a sober lifestyle. The landlords not only tried to give them the best land, but also helped with the arrangement of farms. However, the local population did not always meet the newly arrived settlers in a friendly manner, seeing in such a position of landowners an infringement of their own rights.

Despite the fact that the Old Believers considered the Ukrainian Orthodox population to be heretical, the establishment of labor relations forced them to communicate quite closely with it. Ukrainians, Moldovans, Romanians, etc.

peoples were not particularly interested in the religious life of the Old Believers. Nevertheless, they borrowed quite a lot from the ancient Orthodox practice of the Russians into their life, this was most clearly observed in those places where the influence of the Old Believers was extremely great.

Various kinds of social contacts existed between the Nekrasov Old Believers and the Cossacks. If in the Crimean Khanate they interacted constructively with each other, then on the Danube they were in conflict, which led to confrontation. However, subsequently, the existing contradictions did not prevent the Cossacks from joining the ranks of the Old Believers. The relations of the Grebensky Cossacks and Chechens, the Baltic bespopets, Catholics and Lutherans can be called benevolent.

The population of Finland did not sympathize with the Old Believers. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, cases of conversion to Old Orthodoxy of representatives of non-Russian peoples, including the Buryats, Udmurts, and others, became more frequent in Russia.

Specific were the relations of the Poles and representatives of some non-priests in Belarus and the Baltic states, Nekrasovites with Jews, Greeks, Circassians, Armenians in Turkey. After 1876, relations between the Nekrasovites and the Turks deteriorated significantly. This was caused by the refusal of the Cossacks to serve in the Turkish army and their reorientation towards Russia.

Relations between the Bukovinian Lipovans and the Austrian government changed radically at the beginning of the 20th century. If during the establishment of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy, the Old Believers did not reject prayer for the Austrian emperor, then later the situation changed, since during the First World War the Lipovans were severely persecuted by the Austrian court for helping the Russian troops.

The representatives of the Polish emigration, in particular M. Tchaikovsky, contributed to the establishment of relations between the Nekrasovites and the Turkish government. The Cossacks took special care of the Poles, entered into profitable marriages with them. In Turkey, the Poles played one of key roles in the creation of the Belokrinitsky church hierarchy, however, after the suppression of the January uprising of 1863, the Old Believers had to refuse secret cooperation with them.

During the reign of Nicholas I, a new stage in the development of Russian national identity began. Conducted ideology of the second half of the nineteenth century.

significantly spoiled relations between Russian and non-Russian peoples, and at the beginning of the twentieth century. nationalist tendencies in Russian society only intensified, but the Old Believers did not take a massive part in pursuing such a policy.

As for the Jews, they appeared in Russia after the introduction of the Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish and Baltic lands into the empire.

Here, they retained the status of free people. This position, combined with a passion for wealth, has become a major factor in the commercial success of the Jewish population. The nature of the Jews was distinguished by great optimism, based on their unshakable conviction that the Jews are the chosen people.

Unlike the governments of other European states, the Russian authorities were more loyal to the Jews. However, the successes of Jewish capital at the beginning of the 19th century, which undermined the social status of the indigenous people, forced the Russian government to define the so-called. the strip of settlement, which was limited to the regions of settlement traditional for them. The transition of the Jews to the Old Believers was considered by the authorities as a political crime, at the same time, the Jews themselves severely punished their fellow tribesmen for apostasy. In general, anti-Semite phobia was not supported by the Russian government until the beginning of the revolutions.

However, a number of prohibitive measures did not affect the level of well-being of the Jews, the preservation of their national, religious isolation, solidarity with fellow tribesmen abroad.

By the end of the nineteenth century. Jews monopolized almost all trade and credit in western regions empire. They took over the most profitable industries, in particular, manufacturing and sugar production. Until the 60s of the nineteenth century. Old Believers, along with some other ethnic groups, were the main competitors of the Jews in the settled area, but then, thanks to the policy of the government of Nicholas I, the share of Russian capital in these sectors of the economy was slightly more than 3%. In Austria and some other countries, the Old Believers were subjected to economic exploitation by the Jews. They almost completely ousted the Old Believers from the textile industry in the Baltic States, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. At the same time, the employment of Jews in agricultural labor was extremely low, since they considered physical work to be humiliating.

As with the Old Believers, religion significantly influenced the preservation of Jewish culture. Jews were traditionally organized into qahal communities that exercised self-government. The rabbis played a leading role in them.

social structure. Clergy. Belonging to the clergy of the Old Believer, not dressed in the clothes of a priest, could be determined by appearance, speech, manners. Despite the fact that an Old Believer priest among the priests or a mentor among the Bespopovtsy did not receive special education in a theological seminary or academy, by the time of his blessing into the priesthood, he had the necessary knowledge and moral qualities. Living in an Old Believer environment, he, as a rule, was brought up at a monastery or skete under the supervision of an authoritative mentor, led a lifestyle appropriate for a Christian. All this in a complex formed in him a special view of the world and a way of thinking. The Old Believer clergy, unlike the priests of the ruling Church, did not belong from birth to the clergy. They were from a peasant, philistine or merchant environment, which left a certain imprint on them.

Many Old Believer priests, after ordination to the priestly dignity, continued to conduct the same affairs that they had been engaged in before their consecration to the priesthood. Thanks to this, they did without remuneration for the fulfilled requirements, which was "a huge advantage of the Old Believer priests over the Orthodox clergy" 3.

Before the establishment of the Belokrinitskaya church hierarchy, the main supplier of "cadres" for the Old Believers-priests was the official Orthodox Church. The small number of Old Believer priests and the high religiosity of the Old Believers were the main factors in the large incomes of the Old Believer clergy. In general, the abbots of many Old Believer parishes were infected with the spirit of profit. There is no doubt that the Old Believer priests made a lot of money. They took money for fulfilling the requirements in advance, often setting their own fee for this.

Prugavin A.S. Old Believers in the second half of the 19th century. Essays from recent history split. - M., 1904. - S. 277.

Protivookruzhnichesky priests, who were not content with priestly incomes, were especially wealthy. Borrowing large sums, they opened weaving factories, often quarreled with the parishioners who lent them, excommunicated them from the Church, and then did not consider it obligatory to repay the "heretics" debts 4.

However, the Old Believers were strict in the selection of applicants for vacancies. In addition to the traditional list of requirements, they wanted to see a strict, ascetic lifestyle in candidates 5. The Old Believers valued spiritual mentors who possessed moral impeccability. Due to high morality, they had a strong influence on the resolution of many conflicts. In turn, the fathers liked that "under them was the whole village." However, other cases are also known. Priests who often lost their authority took advantage of intra-confessional contradictions.

The candidacy of each person wishing to become a priest was discussed and put forward for approval by the assembly of the community, which by no means always approved the applicant.

However, not all Old Believers, after the split of the Church, retained the institution of the priesthood. Among the bespriests, mentors were in charge of spiritual affairs, who were blessed by an authoritative and older rector of one or another Pomor, Fedoseevsky, or some other consent 6.

The Bespopovites looked at the priests of the ruling Church as “at the servants of the Antichrist” 7.

Merchants. One of the reasons for the emergence of merchants in the Old Believer environment should be recognized as the prohibition of the Russian government to hold public office for the Old Believers. The nobility almost did not take part in the Russian Old Believers movement. Merchants, on the contrary, from the very beginning stood up for the defense of ancient Orthodoxy, and in many respects determined the path of its development. hallmark Old Believer merchants was their high religiosity. Very often, the wealthy and almost all the thousands of Trans-Volga region had home prayer rooms with a three-row iconostasis, where the Kerzhen canon read “Inextinguishable” according to the parents of the owner and mistress of the house. On holidays and Sundays, all the workers who lived at the thousand's house gathered for prayer. The specificity of the Old Believer capital was also the fact that the Old Believer merchants concentrated in their hands the full spiritual power of the communities.

Contrary to church canons, the institution of guardianship was not only at the head of the economic management of many Old Believer communities, not only Newspaper news and rumors about the split // Church Bulletin. - St. Petersburg, 1875. - No. 3. - P. 14.

Prugavin A.S. Old Believers in the second half of the 19th century. Essays from the recent history of the split. - M., 1904. - S. 263.

Nilsky V. On the current situation of the schism in St. Petersburg // Church Bulletin. - St. Petersburg, 1888. - No. 31.

The Patriotic Church in 1883. Extracts from the Most Submissive Report of the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod for the Office of the Orthodox Confession for 1883. Measures of educational influence on schismatics // Church Bulletin. - St. Petersburg, 1886. - No. 1. - P. 3.

concentrated in his hands most of the spiritual power, but actually subjugated the Old Believer clergy. If the first generation of Old Believer merchants focused mainly on increasing capital, developing trade and industry, then their descendants began to be interested in art. In the second half of the nineteenth century.

a young merchant generation is being formed, who were passionately interested in painting, literature, theater, it was completely different from their fathers and grandfathers. First of all, the changes took place at the mental level.

Peasantry. In the Old Believer environment, the peasantry had a specific social status. It differed from the bulk of the population in that it enjoyed special rights and privileges.

A number of factors contributed to the strengthening of the position of Old Believer peasants, among which should be distinguished resettlement in other states, in remote remote places and on the outskirts Russian state, the choice of occupations with a capitalist orientation, where intensive Agriculture connected with trade; execution of contracts by artels, etc.

Peasantry in more Bespopovtsy represented, priests were townspeople or philistines. After the split of the Church, almost all non-priest communities were peasant 8.

A significant part of the indigenous peasant population of the Russian North belonged to the Old Believers. Runaway peasants settled in the empty lands of the Russian outskirts and remote places. Here they brought not only the peasant psychology and worldview, but also the traditional economy, family patriarchal foundations. Old Belief consecrated housekeeping, thrift, morality, it condemned fornication, drunkenness, secular entertainment. Bespopovtsy also strove to have less contact with outside world closing in its own circle. A distinctive feature of the Russian Old Believer peasants was their industriousness, especially in the field of agriculture, which they considered sacred. Farming in the Russian Church was equated with the exploits of piety.

The lay meeting made decisions about the old or new religion of the community. With the Old Believers, she held court. The guilty were demanded public repentance, imprisoned in a strait cell, put on a chain, subjected to corporal punishment and, in extreme cases, expelled from the community, especially criminals. However, in the rural community there was mutual responsibility.

At the beginning of the twentieth century. in the village there is a change in the system of values.

The policy of the Russian government contributed to the destruction of rural foundations. The second article of the law adopted on October 5, 1906, abolished the need for the consent of the peasant community for the admission of its member to the state service or to a higher educational institution. Article 5 of the same law allowed peasants to have unlimited passports with the right to

Nikolsky N. History of the Russian Church. - M., 2004. - S. 293.

choice of place of residence 9. The peasants themselves increasingly began to give preference to the volost court, rather than the communal one.

At the same time, Old Believer peasants did not consider it shameful to deceive an official or landowner, although it was considered a great sin to mislead one's fellow believers, especially in cases where a relative or neighbor got into trouble. It was considered immoral to give money on interest, to steal from a neighbor, to refuse food and lodging for a traveler, etc. Village life gave rise to a special way of thinking.

The Old Believer peasant was distinguished by his belief in the onset of the “anti-Christ” era. This received its written form after the council of 1666. For the first time such a position was promulgated by the archimandrite of the Novospassky monastery Spyridon 10. The Old Believers, not without reason, believed that their own state had rebelled against the Russian people in alliance with the Church. At the same time, the non-Old Believer mass of peasants continued to believe in the “good king”.

Serfdom could not have a significant impact on the formation of the character of the Russian Old Believers. In many places of their compact residence, serfdom was simply not observed, in particular - in the Russian North, on the Don, on the Right-Bank and Left-Bank Ukraine, in Bessarabia, in the west and south of Russia, in the Urals, Siberia, Transbaikalia and the Far East.

Philistines. The townspeople of the time of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich had a negative attitude towards foreigners, in particular, they accused the British of taking bread and food out of Russia, and the Russian government was criticized for allowing it to be traded on their land. Already in the middle of the seventeenth century. the townspeople turned into extreme nationalists. Therefore, it is not surprising that when the Muscovite state took the side of the “new faith”, the choice of the townspeople in this matter was obvious. The philistines explained their adherence to the ancient rite not only by anti-feudal sentiments, but also by the rejection of “Latin customs” and “German deeds” in Everyday life and church practice 11.

Dissatisfied burghers considered " new faith through the prism of the relations of the foreigners who ripped them off, peremptory worship of the Western European value system, wearing a German suit, shaving the beard, marrying foreigners, hiring soldiers from foreigners. Thus, the spiritual teachers of the Old Believers found their most sincere supporters among the townspeople. The inhabitants of the cities became the main distributors of the "old faith" supported among the merchants and archers. In the archery regiments, the Old Believers made up a significant majority. Dissatisfaction of the country's population with a foreigner Tsygankov D. A. Old Believer students at Moscow University // World of Old Believers: history and modernity / Ed. ed. I. V. Pozdeeva. - M., 1999. - Issue. 5. - S. 103.

Nikolsky N. History of the Russian Church. - M., 2004. - S. 178.

Nikolsky N. History of the Russian Church. - M., 2004. - S. 165.

influence was so significant that it forced the Moscow government to restrict British trade with Arkhangelsk.

The old faith was further developed in the township and industrial-peasant environment. It was the inhabitants of the cities, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, and others that became the basis for the growth of the trading capital of the Old Believers. Throughout the eighteenth century. adherents of the ancient rite who fled from the cities were looking for new ways to accumulate capital.

The Old Believers had an extraordinary ability to settle in new places, quickly turn them into trading posts and cultural centers, which acquired importance not only for the Old Believers, but for the whole of Russia. As F. E. Melnikov noted, “Old Believers are strong in their well-developed organization, moral authority, superiority of mental development, because almost everyone here is literate, which always makes it possible to occupy an influential position among the peasantry” 12.

The split of the Russian Church for a century has accelerated the mobility of the population of Russia, which is necessary condition for the development of capitalism. He reduced the proportion of the country's population employed in agriculture. Capitalism drew the regions inhabited by the Old Believers into trade relations, leveled local features and ancient patriarchal isolation.

Many well-known Old Believer centers, such as Kerzhenets, Starodubye, Vetka, were founded by immigrants from the cities. For example, Muscovites were the first settlers of Starodubye, they significantly strengthened Kerzhenets during the plague of 1771 that broke out in Moscow.

The Old Believers of the Podolsk province were assigned to the cities not only of their own, but also to the settlements of the neighboring Kherson and Bessarabia provinces, and sometimes Turkey and Austria. It turned out that the inhabitants of one village could be citizens of different cities, while they often did not know where their home city was located. Registration was carried out by intermediaries who fulfilled the orders of their co-religionists 13. In the 19th century. Podolsk Old Believers were philistines of Chernigov, Volyn, Kherson, Mogilev and even Tambov provinces. The most popular ascribed city among the local Old Believers was the city of Khotyn in the Bessarabian province. A similar situation has developed in the Right-bank Ukraine, Bessarabia, Belarus, Poland and other regions.

Cossacks. Significant place in social structure The Old Believers were occupied by the Cossacks, and this was most clearly manifested in the regions inhabited by the Old Believers in an earlier period, in particular in the Don, the North Caucasus, the Kuban and Yaik (Urals).

In the 70-80s of the XVII century. there were practically no temples and prayer houses on the Don that recognized the power of the patriarch, they were all Melnikov F.E. What is the Old Believers / Collected Works. - Barnaul, 2007. - S. 103.

Vitkovsky. About schismatics in the Podolsk province // Otechestvennye zapiski [B.m. and Mr.]. - S. 335.

Old Believers 14. At that time, Old Believer priests on the Don were widely represented. They not only fulfilled spiritual requirements, but also preached the old faith among the Cossacks, formed a community of their strong followers. In turn, the Cossacks were sympathetic to the missionary activities of the Old Believers, visiting their centers, closely perceiving the teachings of the Old Believers, making acquaintances with them. In kurens, literate Cossacks read manuscripts and books received from spiritual leaders to their comrades. Thanks to such constant contacts, the Old Believers moved freely throughout the territory of the Don Cossacks. It is no coincidence that ataman Frol Minaev complained to Moscow that because of the Old Believers he had lost his former influence on the Cossacks. A strong Old Believer party refused to extradite persons objectionable to Moscow. An important role in promoting the old faith was played by Stenka Razin's contacts with the Solovetsky Monastery.

The Russian government sought to limit the independence of the Don Cossacks. It forbade them to attack the Crimeans, Azovians, Kalmyks, Nogais, since they managed to recognize the power of the Moscow sovereign.

However, the Cossacks each time violated various restrictions and prohibitions.

In the 90s of the XVII century. repression forced adherents of ancient piety to move to the Kuban, Kuma, Terek, Domyzla - territories subject to rulers hostile to Moscow 16. Attempts to forcibly return the Old Believers to the Russian state were unsuccessful. At the beginning of the XVIII century. the Old Believers remained a formidable force in the south of Russia, the North Caucasus and the Kuban. Social and religious contradictions provoked a mass protest of the people. The Old Believers played an important role in them, in particular, in 1705–1706 during the Astrakhan uprising, in 1707–1708 during the Bulavin uprising. The suppression of popular riots strengthened forces abroad unfriendly to Russia, in particular, contributed to the release of the detachment of Ignat Nekrasov and the formation of the Kuban Great Army in the Kuban, which for almost a century and a half acted as an ardent opponent of the Russian foreign policy and took part in hostilities on the side of the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire.

During the Bulavin uprising, the leader K.A. Bulavin prepared a plan for the retreat of his army to the Kuban. His main adviser in this matter was Ignat Fedorovich Nekrasov (1660–1737). However, the unexpected death of the chieftain for some time disrupted the implementation of the plans of the Don Cossacks.

Since the uprising of K. A. Bulavin threatened the existence of Russian statehood, the tsar sent Druzhinin V. G. Schism on the Don at the end of the 17th century to pacify the rebels. - St. Petersburg, 1889. - S. 60.

Druzhinin V.G. The split on the Don at the end of the 17th century. - St. Petersburg, 1889. - S. 34.

Tolstoy L. N. Sevastopol stories. Cossacks. Polikushka // Cossacks. The Caucasian story of 1852. - M., 1986. - S. 154.

1000th army that successfully coped with the task 17. The support detachment of I.F. Nekrasov managed to reach only the Nizhny Chir. The Cossacks surrendered the town of Esaulov, well fortified by the Old Believers, but, despite their compliance, the reprisal turned out to be very cruel. Over 200 resistance members were destroyed by the tsarist army. Trying to avoid defeat, I. F. Nekrasov decides to leave for the Kuban 18. At the same time, about 1.5 thousand people left. In addition to I. Nekrasov, such associates of K. Bulavin as I. Pavlov, I. Loskut and S. Bespaly escaped execution.

Since that time, a separate ethno-confessional group of Nekrasov Cossacks has been formed in the Kuban. The autoethnonym "Nekrasovtsy" comes from the name of the ataman of the Kuban Cossacks Ignat Nekrasov. For wearing blue caftans, the Nogais called these Cossacks "Karaignats" or "Black Ignats", Turks and Crimean Tatars- "Ignat-Cossacks". The good living conditions of the Nekrasovites in the possessions of the Crimean Khan contributed to the rapid formation of a new socio-cultural community, which entered the history of the Cossacks under the name "Kuban Cossacks", or "Nekrasov Cossacks". Its official self-name was "The Army of the Kuban Ignatovo Caucasian", as well as the "Great Army of the Kuban". In the Kuban, the Nekrasovites settled in the yurt of Murza Allavat, next to the existing Old Believer Cossack villages. The town of Achuev becomes their main center.

Most of The Kuban Cossack army, including the foreman headed by I. Nekrasov, adhered to the Old Believers. This fact contributed to the resettlement of clergy who professed ancient Orthodoxy to the Kuban.

At the end of the XVII century. the first Old Believer chapel appeared in the Kuban, and in the middle of the 18th century. Old Believer churches and chapels existed in every Cossack town. Freedom of religion contributed to the resettlement of the Volga and Yaik Cossacks to the Kuban. At this time, not only the Ural, Don and Greben Cossacks flee here, but also people from other Russian provinces. In the Kuban, the Nekrasovites became vigilant guardians of the khan's power, restraints on the centrifugal tendencies of the influential Crimean Tatar and Nogai nobility.

During the Russian-Turkish campaign of 1710–1711, the Nekrasovites helped the Ottoman troops, supplementing the Turkish fleet near Azov with five dozen boats. Throughout the history of coexistence on the same territory, the Nekrasov Cossacks have shown exceptional loyalty to the Crimean khans.

After the death of ataman I. Nekrasov in the 40-50s of the XVIII century.

the first mass migration of Cossacks to the Danube took place. In 1778

there was a second mass migration of Nekrasovites to the Danube and Turkey. At the end of the XVIII - beginning of the XIX century. resettlement of Nekrasovites Farmakovsky V. On the anti-state element in the split // Otechestvennye zapiski. - St. Petersburg, 1866.

- T. 169. - No. 23. - S. 510.

Sen DV Cossacks of the Don and the North-Western Caucasus in relations with the Muslim states of the Black Sea region (the second half of the 18th - early 18th centuries). - Rostov-on-Don, 2009. - P. 230.

continued, in particular, in 1783 - to Bukovina, in 1811-1835 - to Bessarabia, in 1814 - to Mainos, in 1814-1815 - to Maritsa. In 1814

a group of Cossacks moved deep into the Ottoman Empire (Bondorma, Binevle, Kazak-Kioi). The main reason for their resettlement on the coast of the Marmara Sea was constant conflicts with the Cossacks.

An important role was played by the Old Believers in the Peasants' War of 1773–1775, begun by E. I. Pugachev, in particular, the monk of the Irgiz Middle Nikolsky Monastery Filaret (Semenov), an active participant in the Yaitsky uprising of 1772, the merchant A. P. Perfilyev and the Rzhev merchant E. T. Dolgopolov. By participating in armed protests, the Yaik Cossack army only confirmed its opposition, which was formed by the Old Believers they professed. The old rite contributed to the isolation of the Ural Cossacks from the authorities and the official Church. The Old Believers in the Ural army acted, first of all, as a bulwark in the struggle of the Cossacks for autonomy from Moscow, against the innovations of Moscow, which directly or indirectly violated the foundations of the life of the Cossack community, the form of its self-government. The suppression of the Peasants' War contributed to the forced churching of the Ural Cossacks, inclined them towards the gradual adoption of the common faith.

Right. In relation to the Russian Old Believers, each region of the Russian Empire applied a specific law. This practice has developed due to the cultural traditions of this or that region, which was part of the country after the split of the Church in the middle of the 17th century. By pushing the Old Believers out of the existing law, the government created the conditions for the flourishing of virtually unpunished bribery.

Since the Old Believers were rich and prosperous people, money flowed into the hands of self-serving officials in a wide river, despite the fact that the Department of General Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs regularly focused on abuses of power in the field of Old Believer law and punished the perpetrators, but such instructions could not change the established practice 19 .

Back in 1667, the government subjected the defenders of the old rite not only to ecclesiastical, but also to civil punishment. The authorities considered the activities of the Old Believers a violation of the existing law and a criminal offense. From 1684, people were punished for the "split", in particular, the Old Believer party on the Don, which opposed Moscow, did not obey the tsar's decrees, and generally resisted the authorities, was persecuted 20.

By the end of the XVII century. open propaganda of the old faith in Russia was prohibited. The mass flight of the taxable population from the country forced the government of Peter I to make some concessions to the Old Believers in the field of fiscal policy. The authorities introduced for them an extremely heavy double CGIAC of Ukraine. F. 442. - Op. 1. - D. 1802b. - L. 109.

Varadinov N. History of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. - SPb., 1863. - Prince. 8: The history of the split orders. – P. 11.

taxation, which partially affected Old Believer women, also introduced a tax for wearing a beard. The Old Believers were freed from such a tax burden only in 1782. In addition to heavy taxes, adherents of the old faith experienced moral humiliation: they were forced to wear clothes of the established pattern with special signs. The Old Believers were searched for and persecuted by special military teams.

The liberalization of religious policy occurred with the accession to the throne of Empress Catherine II. Adherents of ancient piety who fled abroad were forgiven of their former guilt, they were called to resettle in Russia. The open persecution of the old rite ceased, but the question of the declaration of freedom of conscience was still not raised. In 1763, for the first time on a common basis, the Old Believers were subordinated to the central and local authorities. In 1785, the government found a compromise and established a common faith. Emperor Alexander I continued the religious policy of Catherine II. After the end of the Patriotic War of 1812, he declared an amnesty for fugitives and deserters and made concessions in matters of faith. However, with the coming to power of Nicholas I in Russia, the loyal attitude towards the Old Believers came to an end. The authorities established special committees that dealt with the problems of the split. In Russia, the Old Believers were again regarded as an anti-state force, they were again limited in civil rights. The state stubbornly drove them underground.

After the death of Nicholas I, the repressive policy towards the followers of the old faith was revised. Alexander II made some concessions to the Old Believers. In 1863 they received his personal audience at the Winter Palace. In addition to the negative aspects associated with the Old Believers, the government saw a lot of positive things in it.

The January Uprising in Poland served as a catalyst for changing the government's course.

Further liberalization of Russian legislation regarding the rights and freedoms of the Old Believers was continued in the 80s of the 19th century. In 1905, in Russia, the Old Believers were granted the foundations of religious freedom. In the State Duma, a Commission on Old Believer Issues was formed, but in 1910 the State Council, under pressure from the official Church, cut the benefits granted to the Old Believers.

The pursuit. The issue of the persecution of the Old Believers is one of the key issues in the history of the Old Believers. To a greater or lesser extent, P. Melnikov, N. Ivanovsky, M. Monastyrev, I. Aksakov, A. Prugavin, I. Yuzov, P. Smirnov, M. Dobrogaev, V. Kartsov, S. Zenkovsky, I. Pozdeeva , A. Morokhin, K. Kozhurin, A. Prigarin and many others.

Representatives of the secular and spiritual authorities of Russia considered the Old Believers to be a dead element, harmful to the state 21.

From observations of the Old Believers // Chisinau Diocesan Gazette. 1889. - No. 16. - S. 687.

The lack of religious freedom in the country gave rise to the arbitrariness of many officials, while its recognition could soften the attitude of the Old Believers towards the institution of the state apparatus. For their part, the Old Believers considered the tsar a schismatic who had departed from the true faith, did not recognize the monarch as a Christian and did not consider it necessary to submit to his authority 22. During the period of the Schism, civil society was defeated.

Not a single religious minority in Russia was subjected to such persecution as the Old Believers, and representatives of the official Church participated in them no less than the secular authorities. It was in the era of Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich that the formation of the Russian "police state" took place.

The reason for the hostile attitude of the Old Believers to the authorities lies in the difference in views on religious issues. The Old Believers were extremely dissatisfied with the fact that Peter I began to be called the emperor.

According to the regulations of the Theological College on the liquidation of the patriarchate, which was developed by Feofan Prokopovich (1681-1736), the Russian sovereign also became the first priest 23. In principle, the Old Believers were faithful to the king, but they did not want to recognize him as the head of the Church, guided by the gospel truth: “Caesar's - to Caesar God, God." Dissatisfaction with the order of the government gave rise to a mass exodus of the population to the deaf, remote places of the country and abroad.

The persecution of adherents of ancient piety began immediately after the schism of the Church. The punishment of prominent representatives of the Moscow aristocracy made a strong impression on the entire Russian people.

The persecution of the defenders of the old faith became one of the main factors in attracting new supporters to the Old Believers, but after the fall of the Solovetsky Monastery and the suppression of the streltsy riots, the resistance movement was finally defeated. The absence of believers at confession and communion was equated in Russia with a criminal offense, the priests of the state Church were obliged to report on believers who adhered to the old rite. The harboring of zealots of ancient piety became the main reason for the repressions against the Old Believers.

Peter I, Catherine I, Anna Ioannovna and Elizaveta Petrovna combined the persecution of the Old Believers with a pragmatic fiscal policy, despite the fact that the Old Believers were unable to pay the double salary assigned to them and demanded a change in legislation.

Under Peter III, there is some adjustment of policy, the government was instructed to keep the Old Believers from self-immolation. Orthodox Old Believers were for the first time equalized in religious rights with non-believers. Catherine II acted in a spirit of greater religious tolerance and facilitated her return to Russia. How can one explain the longevity of the schism? // Christian reading, published at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. - St. Petersburg, 1871. - Part 1. - S. 517.

Kartsov V. G. Religious schism as a form of anti-feudal protest in the history of Russia. - Kalinin. 1971.

- Part 1. - S. 153.

Old Believers who fled abroad. Alexander I continued the liberal course of his grandmother. The years of the reign of Nicholas I distinguished themselves with particular cruelty towards the Old Believers. His repressions led to the rapid growth of radical non-priestly accords, contributed to an increase in parishes of the same faith in the regions of the empire.

The forcible joining of the Old Believers to the ruling Church intensified the negative attitude of the adherents of the ancient rite towards the authorities. The persecution set up a more radical Old Believer emigration abroad, intensified religious and anti-feudal protest within the state. During the reign of Nicholas I, the Old Believers massively left Russia. Contacts with the Old Believers abroad became stronger after the establishment of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy. They created a whole system for delivering fugitives abroad, including developed routes, a secret language, etc. The mass departure of the Old Believers abroad intensified the repressive actions of the Russian government. The arrests and imprisonment of prominent Old Believers attracted the attention of the Russian liberal press, which came out in defense of the rights of the Old Believers.

The policy of the Russian government towards the Old Believers changes after the January Uprising in Poland. In 1863, Minister of the Interior P. A. Valuev for the first time proposed building a policy towards the Old Believers on new principles and subordinating it exclusively to civil power. The gradual change in the attitude of the state towards the Old Believers led to a warming of their relationship with the authorities. At the beginning of the twentieth century. The Old Believers welcomed the liberal reforms of the government and the foundation of the parliamentary institution in Russia. An important contribution to the establishment of relations was made by Prime Minister S. Yu. Witte. In 1905, the Old Believers were granted freedom of religion for the first time, though not for long. In 1906, their rights were again significantly curtailed. However, despite discrimination, the Old Believers continued to support the Russian monarchy.

After October revolution they launched a struggle against the Soviet regime and the atheism propagated by it. In the years civil war the Old Believers took the side of the White Guard army, because of which they fell under the moloch of the communist system of the USSR.

Bribes as a compromise of survival. Bribery in the Russian Empire had a long history, but despite this, there are practically no special studies on this topic. Few addressed the problem of corruption in the system of the state apparatus and the official Church of the Russian Empire. Indirectly, this topic was touched upon in scientific research, as well as in fiction. Among a significant set of works, it is worth highlighting the research and works of A.P. Shchapov 24, N.V. Gogol 25, P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky 26, A.I. , BN Mironov 30, V. Molchanov 31, a number of prominent representatives of Russian culture. Nevertheless, these public figures, historians and writers never created a negative image of the corrupt Russian bureaucracy, but rather reflected the actual state of affairs in the state and the Church. Until now, the authors seem to be embarrassed to touch on the topic of corruption, meanwhile, it is one of the most pressing problems of our time.

The “culture” of bribery in Russia has a number of reasons, among which we should highlight the insufficient amount of salaries of officials, and sometimes its non-payment (until 1763); the unwillingness of the highest state power to legalize the position of the Old Believers; the unwillingness of the majority of the country's population to consider a bribe a crime; the absence of a harsh system of punishments for those guilty of corruption.

For the Old Believers, giving bribes has become regular. They were taken by: members of the imperial family, officials of the second echelon of the highest bodies of state power, governors, city police chiefs, district police officers, heads of volost departments, clerks, elders.

The Old Believers generously paid for the unofficial existence of churches, prayer houses, chapels, monasteries, sketes, worship services, religious processions, etc. At the same time, it is important to note that they were not subjected to total widespread oppression, since they skillfully used the power of conflict situations within their communities.

Bribes took the form of open requisitions, gifts, gifts, gifts, offerings, promises, honors, gifts, etc. "mighty". They were given for the impossibility of living a full-fledged life as a citizen, for an illegal deed, for avoiding foreseeable embarrassments, for speeding up various kinds of office work. The opinion that in Russia the law was not violated in relation to 99% of the population of the state, that it was not executed only, to persons disloyal to the authorities, is not fair. The bribe was that See: Shchapov A.P. The Russian split of the Old Believers, considered in connection with the internal state of the Russian Church and citizenship in the 17th century and in the first half of the 18th century // Works in 3 volumes - St. Petersburg, 1906. - T 1. - S. 173-449.

See: Gogol N.V. Collected works in 9 volumes. - M, 1994. - T. 4.

See: Melnikov-Pechersky P. I. On the mountains / Collected works in six volumes. - M., 1963. - T. 2. - Book. one.

- 614 p.; - T. 3. - Book. 2. - 582 p.; - T. 4. - Book. 1. - 627 p.; - T. 5. - Book. 2. - 535 p.

See: A. I. Herzen. Collected works in 5 volumes. - M., 2009. - T. 1. - 512 p.; - T. 2. - 384 p.; - T. 3. - 384 p.; - T. 4. - 592 p.; - T. 5. - 512 p.

See: Mirniy P. Heed the roar of the will, how is the manger more? - K., 1986. - 445 p.

See: Zenkovsky S. A. Russian Old Believers. Spiritual movements of the seventeenth century. - M., 2009. - T.

See: Mironov B.N. social history Russia in the period of the empire (XVIII - early XX century). Genesis of personality, democratic family, civil society and the rule of law. - T. 2. - St. Petersburg, 2003. - 583 p.

See: Molchanov V. Life of officials of law enforcement agencies in Ukraine in the 19th century - on the cob of the 20th century. - K., 2007. - 114 p.

compromise, thanks to which the Russian Old Believers could exist within the Russian Empire.

At the same time, it is important to note that corruption in Russia is not a purely imperial product; it was characteristic not only of the Russian court. The bribes of the Old Believers worked quite effectively in the Habsburg Empire, and in the middle of the nineteenth century. the money paid on time and the calculations of big politics did little to help the strict demands of the Russian government in the liquidation of the Old Believer church hierarchy and the monastery in Bukovina Belaya Krinitsa.

The ruling Church was subject to the vice of bribery.

The requisitions of her clergy were of a legal nature, and the altars of her temples turned into quitrent articles for most of the Old Believers. A special item in replenishing the budget of the ruling clergy was the so-called.

"Unrecorded" Old Believers. Thanks to bribes, officials and clergy covered the activities of the Old Believer communities.

The Old Believers had their own channels for obtaining confidential information, through which they were able to prepare in advance for any test. The metropolitan Old Believer communities had their own informants among local officials, who were appointed by the Old Believers on a permanent unofficial salary. In St. Petersburg, S. T. Ovsyannikov and S. G. Gromov were the main link in the contacts of the Old Believers with the highest bodies of state power. Having millions, the Moscow and St. Petersburg Old Believers opened the doors for themselves to the government institutions of Russia, Austria and Turkey. Such prominent statesmen as Prince K. Metternich, Count A. Kh. Benckendorff, Prince A. A. Suvorov, Count Franz Karl Kolovrat, and many others collaborated with the Old Believers.

Nevertheless, bribery did not always go unpunished, especially in matters of principle for the Russian state or people's lives, in particular, when it concerned the will of the emperor or large-scale epidemic measures. In 1699, to fight corruption, the government created a Special Burgomaster's Chamber, and special zemstvo huts were established in all cities. By the end of the XVIII century.

public servants were forbidden to take various kinds of offerings under the threat of fines, confiscation of property, and in some cases even the death penalty.

Faith. Among all the Old Believer denominations, the history of the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy is one of the most developed topics.

Many domestic and foreign scientists dealt with the study of this problem, in particular P. Melnikov-Pechersky, M. Monastyrev, N. Subbotin, K. Popov, N. Nikolsky, P. Smirnov, A. Katunsky, S. Zenkovsky I. Ushakov, S. Vurgaft, and many others. other.

Raised in 1831, the question of establishing an Old Believer church hierarchy abroad was successfully resolved in 1846 in the village of Belaya Krinitsa, which was part of the Austrian Empire. The newly established Church was headed by the former Bosno-Sarajevo Metropolitan Ambrose (Popovich), who was accepted into the Old Believers through chrismation.

A significant role in the search for a suitable bishop for the Old Believers was played by the leader of the Polish emigration in Turkey, M. Tchaikovsky. Despite the diplomatic successes of the Old Believers, under pressure from the Russian court, in July 1848, Metropolitan Ambrose was summoned to Vienna, removed from his post and sent to Zilli. Nevertheless, the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy did not cease to exist; since January 1849, the throne of the metropolitan in Belaya Krinitsa has been occupied by Kirill (Timofeev).

In the second half of the nineteenth century. Belokrinitskaya hierarchy abroad consisted of 7 dioceses, among which the most stable were Belokrinitskaya in Austria, Tulchinskaya and Slavskaya in Romania. Since 1849, an intensive process of opening Old Believer dioceses has been going on in Russia.

During the period from 1849 to 1917, 23 Old Believer dioceses were opened in Russia, among which the most stable were:

Moscow and Vladimir, Novozybkovskaya (aka Klintsovskaya and Novozybkovskaya, Baltskaya and Novozybkovskaya, Novozybkovskaya and Chernigovskaya, Novozybkovskaya and Gomelskaya), Caucasian (aka Caucasian and Donskaya, Terek and Caucasian), Samara and Simbirskaya (aka Samara and Ufimskaya), Saratovskaya (aka Saratov and Astrakhan), Ural and Orenburg, Tomsk (aka Tomsk and Altai), Perm (aka Perm and Tobolsk, Tobolsk and all Siberia) and Kazan and Vyatka.

The Belokrinitskaya hierarchy in Russia became the main and largest in the Old Believers. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, it received powerful support from large Russian capital. During its existence (1846 - the beginning of the 21st century), this hierarchy consisted of about 160 bishops, including about 30 non-district bishops. The first generally recognized head of the Old Believer Church in Russia was Archbishop Anthony (Shutov) of Vladimir. Bodies of church government of the Belokrinitsky church hierarchy were concentrated in Moscow, outstanding Old Believers and capitalists lived, who were "arbiters of the destinies of the schism." Old Believer Moscow was the main supplier of personnel for the entire Old Orthodox Church.

An important role in the path of reconciliation between the dominant and Old Believer Churches was played by the publication of the Okrug Epistle in Moscow on February 24, 1862, which marked the beginning of a whole era in the history of the Belokrinitsky church hierarchy, splitting it into district and anti-okrugnicheskoy parts. The impetus for writing the District Epistle was the renewal of the three-fold hierarchy, the rethinking of the conceptual foundations of the past, and the desire to unite all Old Believer denominations in the bosom of one Church. The district epistle was an analysis of ten non-priest writings that were quite widespread among the Old Believers. The ambiguous position of Metropolitan Kirill Belokrinitsky, who on July 24, 1864, appointed Bishop Anthony II (Klimov) especially for the non-circumstances, contributed to the aggravation of the contradictions around the epistle and thus established the neo-circus branch of the episcopate.

At first, the District Message was supported by a minority of the Old Believers.

The events in the Kurenevsky Nikolsky Monastery in the Podolsk province received a wide response in the Old Believer world. The side of the protivookruzhnikov was occupied by the Old Believers of Podolia, Bessarabia, Starodubye, Kherson, Guslits, the Volga region, and the Urals. The controversy around the epistle actually doubled the number of Old Believer communities of the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy throughout the empire, dividing them into district and anti-okrugnichestvo. Despite the fact that the Old Believers anathematized the District Epistle several times, the debate could not be stopped. In the late 60s - early 70s of the nineteenth century. the internal dissatisfaction of some well-known Old Believers led to their break with the Old Believers and the transition to the bosom of the dominant Church. In the 70s of the nineteenth century. the number of supporters of the District Message reached a minimum.

However, since the 1990s, the reverse process has begun in the Old Believer environment.

More and more believers are going over to the side of the circles, although it was still too early to talk about the weakening of the opposition. In the middle of the 30s of the XX century. neo-district episcopate consisted of 7 dioceses, including

- Moscow, Rzhev, Bogorodsk, Baltic (or Southern), Kazan, Don and Ural. Since the official residences of the neo-okrugists were destroyed by the Soviet authorities, the neo-okrugniy bishops became elusive for her. That is why initially the repressions affected the non-okrugs to a lesser extent than the circles (in any case, this can be argued on the basis of the sources discovered at this stage).

A decisive blow to neo-circleness was dealt, firstly, by internal turmoil among the neo-circumcision bishops themselves (self-love, greed, vanity), and secondly, by the policy of the Soviet state. These reasons, in the end, led to the extermination of the neo-okrugniy episcopate and the annexation of the anti-okrugists to the Moscow Archdiocese in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In 1906, a current of so-called non-communists appeared among the neo-okrugs, that is, that part of the believers who did not adopt the law of October 17, 1906 on the registration of religious communities by state authorities and considered it a heresy. After the death of Bishop Job of Moscow in 1912, all non-okrugs became non-communists.

The Old Believer Church Abroad was recognized by the governments of Austria, Turkey, and Romania. The only Old Believer bishop recognized by the Russian government was Archbishop Vissarion of Izmail. Until the October Revolution, the dominant Church in Russia did not recognize the legitimacy of the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy. At the same time, in the 70-90s of the nineteenth century. The Patriarchate of Constantinople created several special commissions dealing with the issues of the Russian schism, which confirmed the canonical legal capacity of Metropolitan Ambrose.

The persecution of the Old Believer episcopate by the Russian government began immediately after the establishment of the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy and continued until 1905. In the 1950s-90s. autocratic authorities carried out a series of arrests of Old Believer bishops, most of whom were kept in monasteries. In the 1990s, the state began to directly persecute the Moscow Patriarchal Bishops, insisting on their expulsion from Moscow and renunciation of accepted titles. Despite the cruelty towards the Old Believers, the persecution of the autocratic government against the Old Believer episcopate was fundamentally different from the persecution of the Soviet era. royal power she never allowed herself to control the life of the Old Believer bishops, their imprisonment, although it was long, was never for life.

Under the pressure of the Bolsheviks in the 20-40s of the twentieth century. the episcopate of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy was significantly reduced. It was found that this was due to two factors. First, the natural decline of bishops and the impossibility of placing bishops in vacancies. Secondly, the repressive policy of the Soviet state, aimed at the physical destruction of believers. Arrests and imprisonment of Old Believer bishops began in 1930 and continued until the end of the 1930s.

As a result of the repressions of the Bolsheviks, 25% of the Old Believer bishops died. The position of the primate see in Moscow turned out to be critical. Under pressure from the Soviet authorities, from 1934 to 1940, the head of the Old Believers of the USSR, the Archbishop of Moscow, was not elected. The situation became especially acute in 1938-1940, when the district hierarchy was patronized by only one bishop - Savva of Kaluga. At this time, the number of the Old Believer episcopate of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy decreased by 20 times! Already in the 20-30s of the twentieth century. the number of parishioners of the Siberian and Far Eastern dioceses decreased by 3 times 32.

During the decades of communist persecution, 15 dioceses of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy (okruzhniki) ceased to exist, including: the Baltic (Baltic and Novozybkovskaya, Baltic and Odessa) eparchies, the Ryazan and Yegoryevsk, Kazan (Kazan and Vyatka) eparchies, the Kaluga (Kaluga and Smolensk , Borovsk and Kaluga) diocese, Petrograd and Tver diocese, Nizhny Novgorod (Nizhny Novgorod-Kostroma) diocese, Caucasian (Caucasian and Don, Terek and Caucasian) diocese, Samara and Simbirsk (Samara and Ufa) diocese, Saratov (Saratov and Astrakhan) diocese, Ural and Orenburg diocese, Perm diocese, Irkutsk and Amur (Irkutsk and all Eastern Siberia) diocese, Tomsk (Tomsk and Altai) diocese,

Kostenko N.A. Protestant churches in Siberia. - Novosibirsk, 1967. - S. 10.

Perm and Tobolsk (Tobolsk and all Siberia) diocese, Semipalatinsk and Miass diocese, Izmail diocese.

Unable to withstand the persecution, Bishop Clement (Loginov), who converted to the Old Belief, went deep underground and created the so-called Catacomb Old Orthodox Church. Only a small part of the Old Believer episcopate left the USSR.

AT national historiography bezpopovskim consent is given much less attention than, for example, priests. However, this topic was studied by P. Melnikov-Pechersky, N. Popov, V. Bonch-Bruevich, G. Potashenko, K. Kozhurin, S. Rudakov and others.

After the final split of the Russian Church into the Old Believer and New Believer branches, the Bespriests rejected the institution of the clergy and the Orthodox church hierarchy, arguing that there was no grace on earth, since it was taken to heaven, that “at the present time there are no right priests” and “their restoration is forever impossible” 33. According to the non-priests, the Orthodox Church deprived of the priesthood is a widowed Church. Citing the words of John Chrysostom, they said that "the church is not walls and cover, but faith and life."

The Bespopovites rejected the institution of the clergy and the Orthodox church hierarchy, considering them to be devoid of grace. A complete formulation of the principles of priestlessness was developed in 1694 at the Second Novgorod Council, which proclaimed the accession to the primatial throne of the ruling Church of the spiritual Antichrist, the termination of hierarchal grace, the clergy, and the impossibility of fulfilling most of the sacraments established in the Church by Christ himself.

With the abolition of the priestly rank, the Bespriests spoke in favor of the performance of certain sacraments by “blessed” laity, elected by communities, thus introducing the institution of mentoring. In connection with the cessation of offering a bloodless sacrifice, there were no altars and other cult objects necessary for this in the prayer houses of the Bespriests. Conversion to each of the priestless confessions was carried out through repeated baptism. Nevertheless, we can confidently call most of the priestless denominations Orthodox, since they basically professed the order, rite and liturgical practice provided for in the Orthodox Church for exceptional cases.

A wide range of understanding by the bespopovtsy of the doctrine of the Orthodox Church, its grace led to the division of the Old Believers into different agreements.

If among the priests the differences of agreement were conditional, then among the bespopovtsy each creed differed significantly from each other.

The Bespopovites expressed their views on the state, condemning its militaristic policy, wars and the spread of foreign culture in Russia. They condemned wealth and luxury, while not Melnikov-Pechersky P. I. Letters about the split // Collected works in 6 volumes - M., 1963. - T. 6. - P. 239.

rejected the principles of private property, collective labor, personal initiative and mutual assistance. Religious asceticism became widespread among them, requiring spiritual and bodily purity, in connection with which some non-priestly consents, especially the Fedoseyevites, preached celibacy, which was contrary to the natural way of life of a person, and therefore was often violated.

The Old Believer environment formed a number of extraordinary personalities who became leaders of non-priestly agreements. So, it is customary to consider the founder of the Pomeranian consent the usher Daniil Vikulov, the founder of Fedoseevism - Theodosius Vasiliev, the ideologist of the Filippovites - the former cell-attendant Andrey Denisov Philip, the founder of the netovshchina - the peasant Kosma, the founder of wandering - the tradesman Evfimiy.

Monasteries. It is difficult to imagine the history of the Old Believers without monasteries, hermitages, hermitages and monasteries. Therefore, it is no coincidence that this topic was touched upon by many historians, in particular V. Malyshev, P. Melnikov, A. Fedorova, S. Sirotkin, I. Ruzhinskaya, N. Okladnikov, V. Baranovsky, G. Potashenko, P. Kititsyn, S. Rudakov, S. Antonov, E. Melekhov, Yu. Labyntsev, L. Shchavinskaya, F. Volovei, A. Prigarin, S. Margaritov, P. Markovsky, F. Guslyakov, L. Pokhilevich, D. Skvortsov, K. Kozhurin, M. Monastyrev, V. Druzhinin, E. Ovsyannikov, K. Popov, E. Danilko, S. Mikhailov and many others. other.

Despite the persecution by the state authorities and the official Church, the inclination of the Old Believers to the monastic life has always been significant. If some monasteries were closed by the authorities, others arose instead. As a rule, a more or less large Old Believer settlement, if it did not have a monastery, then necessarily had monastic cells at the church of the community, where fellow villagers lived. First of all, the Old Believer monasteries and sketes performed "soul-saving"

function: every day, early in the morning and throughout the day, regular services were held there, provided for by the church charter.

Let's make an attempt to determine what, in fact, is invested in the concept of "Old Believer monastery". As studies show, the Old Believer monastery is a harsh, mostly ascetic place of stay for hermits, where fasting and prayer were constantly held, all kinds of medical care were excluded, and treatment was carried out in the traditional way. Old Believer monasteries had specifics in the organization of life. Firstly, baths traditionally existed in some of them, the monks liked to take a steam bath with a broom, which was not typical for the Eastern Orthodox Church at all. Secondly, despite the observance of fasting, in some monasteries they were well fed. This was due to the high standard of living of the Old Believers, which also left an imprint on their cloisters.

Among the All-Russian centers of the Old Believers, one should single out the Vygovsky Pomor desert (late 17th - second half of the 18th centuries), Vetka (late 17th - 60s of the 18th centuries), Kerzhenets (late 18th - 40s of the 19th centuries), Starodubye ( 60s of the XVIII - mid-XIX centuries), Irgiz (60s of the XVIII - 40s of the XIX centuries), Rogozhskoye cemetery (70s of the XVIII - 30s of the XX centuries), Transfiguration cemetery ( 70s of the XVIII - 30s of the XX centuries), Belaya Krinitsa (mid-XIX - mid-XX centuries), Kurenevskoe trimonastery (60s of the XIX - 30s of the XX centuries), Cheremshan (80s years of the 19th - 30s of the 20th centuries) 34. During the patronal feasts, these centers gathered thousands of pilgrims from different parts of Russia.

For example, in 1900, at the summer Nikola in the Kurenevsky Nikolsky Monastery, several thousand worshipers were present at the service (no more than 300 Old Believers lived in Kurenevka itself). Services were performed by 2 Old Believer bishops (Peter of Bessarabsky and Kirill of Baltsky) and 18 clergymen. The service was attended by Old Believers from the cities of Gaisin, Balta, p. Shura-Kopievskaya, the settlements of Piliponovka-Bershad, Podolsk province, the cities of Bendery, Chisinau, with. Kunich of the Bessarabian province, Austria, about 20 officials and representatives of the local intelligentsia from the county town of Olgopol, about 200 Orthodox peasants from nearby villages. The celebration continued for whole week 35.

Besides the fact that these monasteries were the most important spiritual centers of the Russian Old Believers, they were also the leading centers of Russian national culture. Superiority in this regard should be given to the Vygo-Leksinsky Pomor community and the priestly Vetka and Starodub.

Common Old Believer shrines were located in the Kurenevsky Monastery (the ancient image of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker), in the Spaso-Guslitsky Monastery (the image of the Savior Not Made by Hands, which was revered by the Old Believers even after the liquidation of this monastery). Special reverence in the Semzhensky skete on the Mezen was given to the icon of the Kazan Mother of God brought from Kerzhenets 37. The Filaretovsky skete was a holy place for the Pomors of Kargopol. On the grave of its founder, believers installed a chapel. It was believed that a three-time visit to the grave of Filaret was equivalent to visiting the Solovetsky Monastery 38. On the site of the ancient Guslitsky monastery destroyed by the authorities, prayers were annually performed over the grave of the hermit Leonty. His memory was honored from June 23 until Peter's day. At the grave of the founder The history of these Old Believer centers is considered in a separate chapter.

–  –  –

Mikhailiv S.S. The Old Believer Church of St. Nicholas in the Guslitsky village of Tsaplino // Old Believers: history, culture, modernity. - M., 2007. - T. 1. - S. 159.

Okladnikov N. A. The history of the Old Believer skete Semzhensky cells on the Mezen (XVIII - early XX centuries) // Old Believers: history, culture, modernity. - M., 2007. - T. 1. - S. 86.

Ruzhinskaya I. N. Filaretova Pustyn // Old Believers: history, culture, modernity. - M., 2007.

- T. 1. - S. 97.

the skete gathered up to 15 thousand pilgrims. Orthodox pilgrims often met among the pilgrims, who had heard about the miracles and healing of this ancient Orthodox saint. Russia on the Transfiguration of the Lord in the Gorodishchensky Monastery of the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. The revered place of the Don and North Caucasian Cossacks was the Nikolo-Obvalsky Monastery, which during the days of its patronal feast, celebrated on May 9, gathered several thousand pilgrims. The holy monk Job enjoyed great respect among the Old Believers at the Demidov factories. He died in the middle of the eighteenth century. and was buried in the cemetery of the Nizhny Tagil plant.

Up to 5,000 pilgrims gathered to venerate his grave every year on the day of his angel (May 29) and the day of his death (September 4). Dada, Gaveddyaya and their sisters Kazdoi, whose memory day is honored by the Old Believer Church on April 28 43. It is important to note that after the split of the Orthodox Church, the Old Believers extremely little canonized their saints, as well as those Old Believer leaders who suffered during the years of Soviet repression. This was due to high moral requirements for their ascetics.

The Old Believer monasteries experienced pressure from the autocratic authorities and the dominant Church throughout their history, but the years of the reign of Emperor Nicholas I turned out to be the most difficult. The peak of the liquidation of the Old Believer monasteries and sketes falls on the 40s of the 19th century, that is, the period of the establishment of the Belokrinitskaya church hierarchy.

Thus, in Russia and abroad, there were more than 200 Old Believer monasteries, sketes and hermitages, including 122 belonging to the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy (this includes priests, which later adopted the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy, district and anti-okruzhniye), 13 - Beglopopov, 33 - Pomeranian, 12 - Filippovsky, 11 - Fedoseevsky, 3 - Aaron's consent, 3 - Starik's consent, 3 - Spasov's consent. (With further calculations, this figure will only increase.) According to our calculations, in Russia there was one representative of the monastic rank for every thousand Old Believers. We believe that no other religious denomination in the country knew such a high concentration of monks per capita.

Schismatic saint // Church Bulletin. - St. Petersburg, 1883. - No. 29. - P. 11.

"The newly appeared schismatic ascetics" // Church Bulletin. - St. Petersburg, 1911. - No. 33. - S. 1030.

Melnikov P. Historical essays on priesthood. - M., 1864. - Part 1. - S. 154.

Extraction of relics by schismatics // Church Bulletin. - St. Petersburg, 1886. - No. 29. - P. 468.

Popov K. Striking blasphemy of schismatic rulers // Church Bulletin. - St. Petersburg, 1895. - No. 25. - S. 790.

Old Believer monasteries and sketes were located in all regions of the Russian Empire, including the European North, Central Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, the Don, the Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia, the Baltic States, Prussia, Austria, Romania and Turkey. All-Russian fame gained such major centers Old Believers, such as the Vygovsky Pomeranian Hermitage, Vetka, Kerzhenets, Starodubye, Irgiz, Rogozhskoe Cemetery, Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery, Belaya Krinitsa, Kurenevskoe Trimonastery, Cheremshan. Some of them became the leading centers for the development of Russian national culture in the 18th - early 20th centuries.

Old Believer monasteries and sketes performed an important social function of spiritual education and spreading literacy among the younger generation. Common Old Believer shrines were located in the Kurenevsky Nikolsky Monastery in Podillia, the Guslitsky Spaso-Non-Made-by-Hands Monastery in the Moscow region, the Gorodishchensky Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery on the Don, the Nikolo-Obvalsky Monastery in the North Caucasus, the Vygo-Leksinsky hostel in Karelia, the Filaret Skete in Kargopol, Belokrinitsky monasteries in Bukovina, etc. .

Despite the traditional character of Orthodox monasteries, Old Believer monasteries and sketes had their own specifics, which were determined by the influence of Russian national culture. Most of the Old Believer monasteries and sketes had a high standard of living, which was ensured by the work of numerous brothers and sisters, and the wide charitable help of the Old Believer merchants. The status and prosperity of the monastery was determined by its spiritual influence on the flock.

The peak of the liquidation of Old Believer monasteries and sketes falls on the reign of Emperor Nicholas I. Especially many monasteries were closed in the 40-50s of the 19th century. According to our calculations, about 50 Old Believer monasteries and sketes were liquidated in the Nikolaev era. Still persecution imperial period cannot stand any comparison with the repressions of the Soviet regime. If during the autocracy the 5th part of all the monasteries known to us was liquidated, then in Soviet time all Old Believer monasteries on the territory of the USSR were destroyed without exception. During the years of communist persecution of the monastic life of the Old Believers, a crushing blow was dealt, from which the Old Believers of various denominations cannot recover to this day.

mentality. Each estate, whether it be the nobility, the clergy, the merchants or the peasantry, has a specific mentality. However, each of them, according to the Russian historian B.N. Mironov, is not some kind of static substance, but has the ability to change not only in social, but also in historical space 44.

Mentality should be understood as socio-psychological stereotypes and forms of consciousness transmitted to a person or a group of people Mironov B. N. Social history of Russia in the period of the empire (XVIII - early XX century) Genesis of personality, democratic family, civil society and the rule of law. - St. Petersburg, 2003. - T. 1. - S. 327.

through education, tradition, value orientation belonging to a particular socio-cultural community.

It is important to note that until the middle of the XVII century. The mentality of the urban and rural population was practically the same. At that time, the city and the village were not separated from each other and represented a single administrative, economic, social and cultural space.

The Old Russian tradition preserved by the Old Believers continued to carry its values. The process of delimitation of the city and the countryside began in the second half of the 17th century, and was legally completed in 1785.

the publication of the Charter of Letters to the cities. The formation of a new mentality was greatly influenced by the split of the Russian Orthodox Church into the Old Believer and New Believer branches.

The mentality of this or that people is not predetermined by nature. It is formed according to natural environment, cultural and historical reality. The mentality has the ability to change, and over several generations, while maintaining stability and stability in customs, norms and traditions.

The change in the mentality of a particular people or sub-ethnic group is significantly influenced by state power:

government regulations and laws. The Old Believers, as a part of the country's population persecuted for many centuries, have developed a special type of thinking.

Until the middle of the XVII century. The mentality of the urban and rural population was practically the same. The most important socio-political, economic, cultural and religious events influenced the change in the mental characteristics of Russians. Based on this, we believe that in the formation of the mentality of the Russian Old Believers, four stages can be conventionally distinguished, chronologically correlated with historical events: 1) from the schism of the Russian Church to the period of the beginning of the great reforms of the 60s of the 19th century; 2) from the great reforms to the October Revolution of 1917; 3) from the October Revolution to the collapse of the USSR; 4) from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present day.

The schism of the Russian Orthodox Church significantly influenced the formation of a new way of thinking. During the transformation of the Moscow kingdom into the Russian Empire, the old government system begins to collapse, the orders formed by the centuries-old life of the people are violated. The Old Believers continued to preserve the old Russian system of values. Despite their progressiveness, the reforms of Peter I were anti-national in nature. In Russia, by the beginning of the reforms among the upper class, there were significant changes in the way of thinking. After the split, the basis for the formation of the Old Believer worldview became the church charter, liturgical literature, the actual worship, government orders that created a special legal field for the Old Believers. If for the priests the new state system was generally tolerable, then for the non-priests it was perceived as an instrument of the Antichrist. Since the split of the Church, the Old Believers have become the main oppositional and hostile force of the official church and state authorities.

An important frontier on the way to the emergence of new features of the mentality was the era of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, which led to the secularization of religious consciousness not only in Western Europe but also in Russia.

Changes in the way of thinking lead to the formation of three major post-Christian ideologies:

nationalism, individualism and socialism. In the middle of the nineteenth century. Europeans regarded religion as a relic of an irrevocably passing time. These processes influenced Russia, where the ideas of liberalism, nihilism and socialism became extremely popular. This can be seen especially clearly in the 60-90s of the nineteenth century, when the Russian intelligentsia preferred personal freedom to religious life. Atheism removed the moral barrier to committing crimes. In the system of universal values, pity and kindness did not occupy the first places, and the theory of nihilism generally rejected virtue. She emphasized material benefits.

Nihilists renounced everything national and Orthodox, which ran counter to the priorities of the Old Believers. A feature of the second period is the spread of socialist ideas among the general population.

Socialism not only rejected the afterlife, but also called for more pleasures and earthly blessings from life.

Changes in the mentality are influenced by the changing economic relations of the time of the great reforms of the 60-70s of the 19th century. After the abolition of serfdom, the peasants become more rationalistic and pragmatic. New economic relations move the family to the fore, which becomes the basis for the formation of individualism. In turn, it is accompanied by disunity of people and a decline in the religiosity of the population. In an effort to change the traditional worldview of the peasants, the Russian government took a number of drastic measures, the reassessment of the world around was rather slow.

With the transition of capitalist production from manufactory to factory, the process of degradation of the Old Believer merchant class began among the Old Believers. However, it happened rather slowly, which allowed the millionaire Old Believers to set a new tone in spiritual affairs and business relations. The introduction of capitalist relations in Russia at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. accompanied by a transformation of the consciousness of the population.

The Old Believer merchants increasingly abandoned the traditional way of life. Ordinary Old Believers reasonably regarded this as a rejection of traditional religion, since life, customs and rituals were deterrents for changing the value system.

The younger generation of merchants rarely attended church services. It gave preference to theaters, European fashion, secular etiquette, etc.

The outdated rite was criticized and denied by the Old Believer youth, who mercilessly broke stereotypes and destroyed the beliefs of their fathers. The new worldview led the ritualism of the Old Believers to second place. Within a few decades, due to the destruction of solid moral foundations, this generation lost faith in God. However, changes in the way of thinking did not occur equally quickly in all regions of the country. The individualization of consciousness, characteristic of that period for the population of the country as a whole, turned out to be less characteristic of the Old Believer environment. Despite the fact that Europe was spreading its own culture, the merchant class, in principle, continued to adhere to a conservative worldview.

The third stage is characterized by the mass withdrawal of the country's population from religion. The communist doctrine contradicted the Christian one, it propagated the philosophy of extreme materialism, which craved the pleasures of life. Nevertheless, total changes in the way of thinking of the Old Believers in the 20-30s of the twentieth century. are not noted, especially among those living in remote areas of the USSR and abroad. On changes in everyday life, and, accordingly, the value system, in the 70s of the twentieth century. significantly influenced the policy of the Soviet government aimed at the enlargement of rural settlements and the promotion of atheism. The resettlement of the Old Believers was the main reason for the rapid destruction traditional culture.

The fourth stage of the change in the mentality of the Old Believers is characterized by a balance between the almost complete disappearance of traditional culture and attempts to revive the essential foundation of religion.

At the mental level, the similarity of the Old Believers with the Jews can be traced. For both groups, communal life, mutual assistance, and faith in one's chosenness before God were equally important. Both those and others were limited in religious, civil and economic rights.

The Old Believers belonged to a strong psychological type, “not prone to depression and ready for severe trials.”45 asceticism, specific education of the flock and the younger generation, extraordinary development of willpower. All these advantages determined the peculiarities of the mentality. Among the neutral and negative qualities of the character of the Old Believers, secrecy, caution, isolation, suspicion, distrust, fearfulness, arrogance, arrogance, contempt, passion for honor, cunning and duplicity should be mentioned.

Morality and ethics. The morality and morality of the Old Believers is based on the ideas of Christian morality. Moral Myalo KG Social aspects of a comprehensive study of the traditional culture of the Pomor community of Verkhokamye (tradition and modernization) // Traditional culture of the Perm land. To the 180th anniversary of field archeography at Moscow University, the 30th anniversary of the comprehensive research of the Verkhokamye (The World of the Old Believers. - Issue 6) / Ed. ed. I. V. Pozdeeva. - Yaroslavl, 2005. - P. 24.

The religious principles of the Old Believers are very strict. The specificity of the Old Believer morality was predetermined by their ambivalent attitude to the world around them, especially to secular power and the official Church. The main moral task of the Old Believers was the daily concern for saving the soul, reading prayers, observing fasts and doing alms.

The most important moral issue for the Old Believers was the question of marriage and sexual relations. The vast majority of non-priest confessions actually recognized marriage. The principle of celibacy was rather rigidly enforced by Fedoseevsky and other radical non-priests. They had an established system of abortion, childbirth, feeding and raising illegitimate children. The Don Cossacks were distinguished by liberality in marital relations, which was explained by the frequent death of men in wars. Nevertheless, the bespopovtsy did not condone the free life of their parishioners. Fedoseev's mentors regularly demanded promises from their parishioners "to abstinence" from sexual intercourse. The Old Believers forbade marriages with consanguinity. Mutual non-recognition of marriages by the ruling Church and Old Believer agreements led to a general decline in morality. An important role in shaping the position of the Old Believers on this issue was played by the policy of the Russian government.

The main moral obligations of the Old Believers were honoring the older generation of people, conscientious performance of labor duties, developed charity and mutual assistance, service in the army and navy, and the spread of Russian national culture.

The Old Believers were not alien to the addiction to alcoholic beverages, but they severely suppressed the “free” life, especially members of the church clergy.

Old Believers and the Intelligentsia. In the nineteenth century the Russian intelligentsia was also "schismatic" in spirit. She, like the Old Believers, was characterized by "asceticism, service and martyrdom." Old Believers and intellectuals were united by a negative attitude towards the official Church and state. At the same time, the view of the Old Believers on life was significantly different from the views of the intelligentsia, and the main difference was the deep faith in God among the Old Believers and its absence among the intelligentsia, especially nihilists.

The intelligentsia of the 18th - the first half of the 19th centuries. characterized by an orientation towards the pro-Western system of values, contempt for the traditions and culture of their own people. In the 30s-40s of the nineteenth century. the broad cultural strata of Russian society knew very little about the life and spiritual world of the Old Believers. In Russia, there was an extremely limited range of studies devoted to this issue. A breakthrough in this regard was made by the work of A.P. Shchapov “The Russian Schism of the Old Believers”, which for the first time forced us to take a different look at the role of the split in Russian history. From that moment, the growth of mutual sympathy between the Old Believers and the intelligentsia became noticeable, and Westerners and liberals to some extent began to idealize the Old Believers, comparing it with Western Protestantism.

The liberal press demanded that the Old Believers be given religious freedom. It publishes more and more materials on the Old Believers. Thanks to the support of periodicals in the field of fiction, painting, architecture, etc., the Old Believers take an active part in the return of Russian culture to the national path of development. At the beginning of the twentieth century. the ideological foundations of the Russian intelligentsia are subjected to harsh criticism from the Russian society, but the Old Believers do not stop their cooperation with patriotic intellectuals. They maintain relations both with individual institutions and directly with scientists, writers, cultural and artistic figures. Outstanding Old Believers become the prototypes of many literary and pictorial works.

Economy. According to some estimates, before the October Revolution of 1917, the Old Believers played the same role in the Russian economy as Protestantism did in Western Europe: it had a huge impact on the formation of the Russian capitalist economy. The economic successes of the Old Believers have long attracted the attention of both Russian and foreign researchers, in particular, V. Kerov, D. Raskov, G. Balakerskaya, W. Blackwell, A. Gershenkron and many others.

Modern scientists identify at least three ethical models in the field of work: the classical Protestant one, described by M. Weber and vividly represented in the American economy ( character traits: individualism, focus on achieving success and the so-called spirit of entrepreneurship); Scandinavian, the most socially oriented and based on the idea of ​​social partnership, the balance of equality and freedom of each individual, and Japanese, with its highly developed collective psychology, understanding of work as a matter of honor. But none of these models represents the labor activity of the Russian Old Believers.

The Old Believers successfully formed their own, Russian national model of work ethics. According to G.G.

Balakerskaya, “the ethical system that was formed in the Old Believers was distinguished by:

personalistic motivation of life behavior; labor asceticism, catholicity, the spirit of free civic initiative” 46. The “Old Faith” proclaimed labor to be the highest divine grace. The development of Old Believer capital in the empire had significant differences from the formation of non-Old Believer commercial and industrial capital. Basically, Old Believer capital arose in spite of many obstacles:

trade and industrial activity of the Old Believers did not have a serious Balakerskaya GG Labor Ethics in the Old Believers // Old Believers. Newspaper for the Old Believers of all consents. - No. 10. October 1998

support of the Russian government, and the state did not initiate the development of trade and industry. That is why the formation of Old Believer capital was spontaneous.

The success of Old Believer entrepreneurship was based on a number of reasons that are not typical for other ethno-confessional groups in the country: the understanding of labor as a religious duty, the ascetic lifestyle of entrepreneurs of the first generation of merchants, mentality, increased religiosity and faith in God, responsibility before God for doing business, Christian brotherhood, the ability to choose profitable areas of economic activity, focus on the production and sale of products that are in mass demand, the organization of credit business on favorable terms, bribes to officials as a means of collective protection, skillful personnel policy, registration and liquidation of acts of civil status by secular authorities, the maintenance of their own agents and communication channels in many regions of the empire, the introduction of new technical equipment into production, which made it possible to oust Western European competitors from Russia.

The basis of the Old Believer industry was specific civilian labor, and initially the bulk of the workers were the Old Believers themselves. At the enterprises of the Old Believers, there are no classic examples of exploitation. The Old Believer community was hostile to serfdom. Mass entrepreneurship originated not in the city, but in the countryside. The Old Believers from the wilderness moved to the emerging commercial and industrial centers, which allowed many to leave the peasantry and found many famous merchant dynasties. Moscow commercial and industrial capital was almost entirely of not only peasant, but also Old Believer origin. A feature of the Russian manufactory was that it began to use the peasants as a labor force.

In their factories, the Old Believers provided work for peasants from nearby villages, who massively converted to the Old Believers. Before people from the village, the prospect of a quick liberation from serfdom and recruitment opened up. The factory owners not only provided jobs, but also sheltered the fugitives, provided them with passports, provided free housing, etc. At the same time, the Old Believer "civilian"

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Taranets S.V. Old Believers in the Russian Empire (the end of the 17th - the beginning of the 20th century) / Edited by Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine G. V. Boryak. - K., 2012. - T. 1. - 704 p.

In this paper, we will try to identify the most important factors in the spread of the "old faith" that contributed to the mass exodus of the population from traditional places of residence to remote regions of Russia and abroad. We study the geography of the Old Believer colonization, its distribution in the central regions of Russia, in the Russian North, in Belarus, the Baltic states, Ukraine, Moldova, in the south of Russia, the North Caucasus, the Urals, in Siberia and the Far East, in the Transcaucasus, Poland, Central Asia (including semi-autonomous entities of Bukhara and Khiva). We will try to determine the most popular directions of Old Believer migration (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth, the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, the states of the Caucasian highlanders, China, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, the USA, Canada, etc.), calculate the approximate number Old Believers in the Russian Empire, point out the factors affecting the inaccuracy of statistics on the number of Old Believers; to determine the main reasons for the deliberate decrease in the number of Old Believers and the regions most populated by Old Believers, the national and social composition of the Old Believer communities (peasantry, bourgeoisie, merchants, Cossacks, clergy), the nature and reasons for the growth of places of compact residence of Old Believers after the abolition of serfdom.

In 2004-2005 texts from the old printed Book of Hours of 1652 in *pdf format were posted on the Samara Old Belief. They were prepared for publication by S.P. Korablev (RDC) and kindly provided for posting on the website. This material turned out to be in great demand - over the past years there have been about 5,000 downloads of the text.

Today the full text of the Book of Hours in *pdf (3.71 Mb) and *docx (*Word 2007 text editor) (1.42 Mb) formats with the font required for the correct display of the text in Word 2007 has been published in the "Divine Service" section of our Book. For ease of downloading The Book of Hours is also placed there in *pdf formats and in *Word 2007 text editor, compressed in *zip archive (3.89 Mb)

The texts were typed by Alexander Ivanovich Samsonov (ROC), thanks to whom a large number of liturgical books have already been placed on our website.

The texts were typed by Alexander Ivanovich Samsonov.

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A significant share in the news feeds of information agencies today is occupied by the revolutionary upheavals taking place in Ukraine. However, in the heat of these events, many people forget about the historical closeness of the fraternal peoples. One of the interesting pages of history connecting Russians and Ukrainians is the existence of Old Believer communities on the territory of Little Russia and Ukraine in the 18th-20th centuries.

Today we are talking about this and many other things with the author of the monumental two-volume work "Old Believers in the Russian Empire", Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ukrainian Archaeography and Source Studies. M. S. Hrushevsky NAS of Ukraine Sergei Vasilievich Taranets.

Sergey Vasilyevich, how did you come to the topic of the Old Believers in your scientific path?

I came to the topic of the Old Believers through local history. In the third year of the Faculty of History of Odessa University, he began to study the history of local history. It has long been known that in Kurenivka, Vinnitsa region, there were three Old Believer monasteries.

I picked up a huge layer of material, as I was, of course, not indifferent to all this. First I wrote a term paper, then a thesis, which became one of the best at the Faculty of History of my 1997 graduation.

Then I was charged with the idea of ​​​​creating Museum of the History of the Old Believers, but I realized that in the position in which I am, this is impossible to do.

Immediately after graduating from the university in 1997, he decided to enter graduate school at the Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Studies, completed it in 2000, and in 2003 defended his Ph.D. "Sources on the history of the Old Believers of the Right-Bank Ukraine late XVIII- early XX century".

What era, what territories does your recently published two-volume work cover?

The idea of ​​creating a monograph, not a two-volume, but one volume, arose 7 years ago. Of course, the range of questions that are now being raised in the monograph was not foreseen then. The very study of the sources suggested what else could be written on this topic, especially since there were no general works until that time.

I think that my work can be a claim for fundamental research. But of course, it is natural to evaluate the critics.

The monograph deals with such problems as resettlement, the number of Old Believers in the Russian Empire, the legal status and persecution of the Old Believers by the authorities, the topic of bribery (bribery of representatives of the official church, for the sake of preserving the Old Believer communities-approx. ed. "")

This problem is generally raised for the first time, I think, not only in the Old Believer historiography, but in general in Russian historiography, because historians do not like to write about the negative aspects that were in Russian history. Attention is also drawn to the Old Believer monasteries. The monograph provides information on more than two hundred Old Believer monasteries.

What little-known monasteries are you writing about?

There are quite a lot of them, so it is difficult to list them all. I think there are more than a hundred such monasteries. Naturally, there is information in the sources, but it was not included in historiography. These are monasteries that were located in the Old Believer dioceses: the Don and the Caucasus and the Urals.

Also monasteries of the North of Russia, Pomeranian sketes. There were quite a lot of them, of course, that not all of these cloisters existed at the same time. Some closed, others, on the contrary, opened. By the way, the largest number of monasteries were closed during the reign of Nicholas I.

The monograph also examines in detail the history of well-known Old Believer spiritual centers. There is a well-known Belaya Krinitsa. It can be said that the process of creation, existence, flourishing, and sometimes even the decline of the Old Believer spiritual centers becomes clear to the reader. The chronology of various historical processes is given. The book presents this briefly but clearly.

This is a traditional question asked by Moscow Old Believers. At one time, Irina Vasilievna Pozdeeva said that you play along with the nationalist feeling of the Ukrainians. I think the problem is elsewhere.

In fact, first of all, the landowners of such foreign lands (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Right-Bank Ukraine, which was part of Poland, and also the lands that were part of both the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire) were more loyal to the Old Believers who fled Russia, not from point of view of faith, but from an economic calculation.

For the owners of the land, the Old Believers were new, very good taxpayers. Moreover, over the decades, the Old Believers have shown themselves to be excellent workers who knew how to farm even on inconvenient lands (for example, Starodubye, Left-Bank Ukraine are actually sands).

But the Old Believers turned this land into a flourishing one and one of the leading in industrial and commercial terms in Ukraine.

In general, is it possible to talk about any significant role of the Old Believers in the history of Ukraine?

In a certain period - yes. If we take the 60s of the XIX century, then in fact we can talk about the commercial and industrial development of Ukraine only thanks to the Old Believers. They raised the economy to a fairly high level. For example, the same Starodubye was the leader among Ukrainian regions in industrial and trade relations.

In the Elizabethan province of New Serbia, whose lands were annexed at that time by Catherine II, the first merchant society also consisted exclusively of Old Believers. They set the tone, they were given benefits. These are all immigrants from Poland, Lithuania, who moved to this region.

Also, a significant part moved to Odessa, and there arose a whole group, a colony, then the already well-known Old Believer Dubinin dynasty. Now there are descendants with whom I am in correspondence. After 1917, they emigrated to Yugoslavia, and now they live in the Netherlands, so they remember where and whose, and most importantly, they are very interested in the Old Believers.

In your opinion, if the October Revolution had not happened and there had been no dekulakization-decossackization, the seizure of factories, churches, and so on, could our history have taken the alternative path proposed by the Old Believers?

Definitely. This is stated in the book. I think that other authors have already spoken about this, but I may be going even further in some matters.

So, for example, we know four classical models of the work ethic: Protestant, Western European, American and Japanese. And I think that if the revolution of 1917 had not happened, the fifth model of work ethics, namely the Old Believer, which was affirmed on the principles of Christian Orthodox morality, would have successfully developed in Russia.

When you consider the issue as a whole, you pay attention to charity. It was simply huge in the Old Believers, especially social, ecclesiastical. This is also discussed a lot in my monograph.

That is, we can say that a serious chance was missed in the history of our country?

I will say even more. When we studied about the Right-Bank Ukraine, we learned that the Jews also lived within the framework of the Old Believer Orthodox ethics. They did what the Orthodox did. That is, even at the social level there have been certain positive shifts.

I think if the 1917 revolution had not happened, we would have had a completely different situation in our countries. And I do not agree with those researchers who say that capitalism in the Russian Empire had an exceptionally hard face. In my opinion, America's capitalism was tougher, and if a revolution had happened there, it would have had more grounds than in Russia.

But still, this great tragedy happened in the Russian Empire, which led to great loss of life and its reasons were not only economic.

A spiritual crisis and the rejection of God in the 19th century led, among other things, to a revolution, rampant atheism and godlessness. The Russian intelligentsia had a lot to do with this, and then the political parties picked it up...

In general, could we live in another country if the Old Believers won peacefully, with their ethics, their principles?

I think yes. There would have been another Russia and, perhaps, there would have been a different world, because, of course, there would not have been these huge millions of victims during the famine, repressions and losses of the Great Patriotic War, since, in my opinion, this war was partly a consequence of the October Revolution .

Taranets S. V. Old Believers in the Russian Empire (late 17th - early 20th century) / Edited by Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine G. V. Boryak. - K., 2013. - T. 2. - 688 p.

In the second volume of the study, the author tried to define the concept of the Old Believer mentality, the influence of the natural environment, cultural and historical reality on it, the property and ability of the mentality to change over several generations, and at the same time maintain stability and stability in customs, norms and traditions.

The change in the mentality of the Old Believers as a sub-ethnic group of Russians was significantly influenced by the state power, government orders and laws issued by it. The stages of changing the way of thinking of the Old Believers are singled out, they are correlated chronologically with historical events: 1) from the split of the Russian Church to the period of the beginning of the great reforms of the 60s of the 19th century; 2) from the great reforms to the October Revolution of 1917; 3) from the October Revolution to the collapse of the USSR; 4) from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present day.

The morality and morality of the Old Believers is based on the ideas of Christian morality, and their religious principles are very strict. Attention is drawn to the specifics of the Old Believer morality, its ambivalent attitude to the outside world, especially to the secular authorities and the official Church, attention is focused on the issue of marriage and sexual relations, the foundations of the moral obligations of the Old Believers.

In the nineteenth century the Russian intelligentsia, along with the Old Believers, was also "schismatic" in its spirit. The Old Believers and intellectuals were united by a negative attitude towards the official Church and state, but at the same time, the view of the Old Believers on life differed significantly from the views of the intellectuals, and the main difference was the deep faith in God among the Old Believers and its absence among the intellectuals, especially nihilists. Nevertheless, through the liberal press, the intelligentsia demanded that the Old Believers be given religious freedom. The Old Believers take an active part in the return of Russian culture to the national path of development, thanks to periodicals, fiction, painting, architecture, etc.

The author developed the idea of ​​the success of the formation in Russia of the Russian national model of work ethics, the proclamation by the "old faith" of labor as the highest divine grace, the differences in the development of the Old Believer "business" from the formation of non-Old Believer commercial and industrial capital, identified the reasons for the success of the Old Believer entrepreneurship, which were not characteristic of other ethno-confessional groups, the specifics of civilian labor as the basis of the Old Believer industry, the absence of classical patterns of exploitation, the hostility of the Old Believer community to serfdom, the emergence of entrepreneurship not in the city, but in the countryside, about the origin of Moscow commercial and industrial capital from the peasant Old Believer environment. He dwelled on the methods of freeing the peasants from serfdom by the factory owners and falling into economic and confessional dependence on the Old Believer capitalists, on the half-hearted nature of the Old Believer "freelance" labor, on the problem of the church schism in the middle of the 17th century, which stimulated the mobility of the population, thanks to which for several decades ahead of the general pace of the bourgeois development of Russia.

The paper investigates the concentration in the middle of the XVIII century. the Old Believer bourgeoisie of a significant part of domestic and border trade and crafts, setting prices for goods in the central regions of the state, in Siberia and Central Asia. Attention is drawn to the economic power of the Old Believer merchants, which led to a change in the policy of the government of Catherine II in relation to the Old Believers. At the end of the XVIII - beginning of the XIX century. a significant part of Russian capital ended up in the hands of the Old Believers, especially the most profitable industry of the 19th century. - manufacturing industry, in the 40-60s of the nineteenth century. The commercial and industrial activity of the Old Believers reached its highest development in the Russian economy. The reasons for the active transition of the Moscow merchants to the Old Believers are determined and it is established that the formation of a non-Old Believer commercial and industrial business after the abolition of serfdom became the basis for reducing the proportion of Old Believer capital.

In historiography, the opinion was established that the Russian market was oversaturated with Old Believer capital, but the measures of the mid-nineteenth century directed against the activities of the Old Believers by the Nikolaev government led to a significant deterioration in the position of Old Believer merchants to the point of impossibility to restore their dominant position in the Russian economy. In the second half of the nineteenth century. in Russia, Old Believer capital is giving way to foreign and Jewish capital, which is developing in the zone of Jewish settlement. At the end of the nineteenth century. Old Believers ceased to play a dominant role in the country's economy. We have drawn attention to the factors that influenced the reduction in the share of Old Believer capital in the Russian economy in the second half of the 19th century. At this stage in the development of historical science, special studies on the problem do not allow determining the share of Old Believer capital in the Russian economy.

The Old Believers were able to fruitfully combine tradition and innovation, create the most technologically advanced Russian industry, became pioneers in the introduction of new methods of economic development, inventors of technical innovations.

Despite the support of the government and focusing on special system values, the Old Believers managed to achieve a high standard of living, significantly increased it in the so-called. non-Russian regions of the empire. High level The life of the Old Believers did not depend on the region of their residence, it was one of the reasons for the spread of the "old faith". The most important factors in the prosperity of the Old Believers were collectivism, family cohesion, developed mutual assistance, diligence, and the market orientation of individual farms.

Considering the Old Believer charitable activities, we identified its main areas: 1) church charity, 2) social charity and 3) charity in the field of culture and art. We paid attention to the scale of charitable activity, its religious and moral nature, the specifics of the charity of the Western European and American commercial and industrial class, the spread of the so-called. "secret alms", its focus on solving important social problems. At the same time, it was established that the support of the unprotected layers of Russian society served as one of the powerful means of "schismatic propaganda".

Old Believer entrepreneurs allocated huge funds for the construction and purchase of the latest equipment for hospital buildings, hospitals, sanatoriums, the construction of almshouses, orphanages, the organization of free canteens for the poor, the construction and maintenance of kindergartens, secondary schools, gymnasiums and higher educational institutions.

The Old Believers provided significant selfless support to the sphere of culture and art. Great were the donations of the Old Believers for the organization of primary, secondary, secondary specialized and higher educational institutions. The followers of the "old faith" were innovators in various fields of domestic science. Unlike the dominant religion, the development of the Old Believer confessional, social and public education was carried out not at the expense of the state, but at the expense of voluntary donations of the Old Believers for the needs of education. The Old Believers paid considerable attention to obtaining a higher specialized education. They received their primary education at monastic centers and communities, where there were literacy schools that were engaged in the upbringing and education of children. The upbringing of young people took place within the framework of traditional culture, during the formation of a religious, moral personality, honoring and protecting the traditions of their ancestors. It is noted that at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, the so-called. "classical" Old Believer education fell into decay. Due to the prohibition of power, it could not realize the tasks of education, start studying the exact and natural sciences. The mass opening of Old Believer educational institutions took place after the promulgation of a decree granting freedom of religion in Russia and a law on the development of universal education.

A noticeable phenomenon in the national culture is the Old Believer literature. In the second half of the XVII century. the Old Believers formed bookishness, which became an effective ideological weapon of active fighters against church reform, that they were able to oppose their culture first to the “court” and then to the noble culture, to create a parallel culture of the people’s democratic direction. Old Believer Literature of the Second Half of the 17th–18th Centuries. arose and developed in the context of an ongoing struggle against the dominant ideology, it constituted an important part of the Russian cultural heritage and had a noticeable impact on the many millions of Russian readers. Many Old Believer writings were included in the "golden fund" of Old Russian literature. During this period, eight ideological and literary centers of the Old Believers were formed in Russia: Solovetsky, Moscow, Pustozersky, Vygovsky, Kerzhensky, Vetka, Don and Ural-Siberian.

For the first time, we have comprehensively studied the Old Believer literature of the 19th - early 20th centuries, identified the literary centers of the Old Believers, among which the most famous are Belokrinitsky, Starodubsky, Manuilovsky-Moscow, Izmailsky, Kurenevsky, Moscow, Vygovsky, Molookhtinsky and Voinovsky.

Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Old Believer manuscripts were in the hands of the direct readers of the Old Believers, and significant book and manuscript collections functioned at Old Believer monasteries, sketes and deserts, so that the Old Believers themselves began to collect and study their own written heritage quite early. The first representative collections belonged to the professors of higher educational institutions of the country.

In the second half of the nineteenth - early twentieth century. interest in the book and manuscripts began to manifest itself in the Old Believer merchant environment. We have established the reason for the absence of Old Believer manuscripts in accessible state libraries until the last quarter of the 19th century.

In the twentieth century in the Russian Empire and the USSR, scientists launched large-scale archeographic work, thanks to which, in many regions of the country, large collections of early printed books and manuscripts were formed in state archives and libraries, significant collections of which are now owned by Old Believer communities. The paper identifies the largest collections of Old Believer manuscripts and early printed books in Russia, draws attention to the archaeographic research of the leading scientific centers of the USSR, as well as private collections. At present, the concentration of the Old Believer book heritage in state depositories has been basically completed.

The Old Believer handwritten book is a special type of book that has developed under the conditions of a forced return to the old practice of handwritten "replication" of books in the era of book printing. In the empire, this book had a significant impact on written culture and contributed to the extension of the life of the handwritten book. We singled out the Vygovskaya, Vetka-Starodubskaya, Guslitskaya, Pechora, Severodvinskaya, Latgalskaya, Verkhnekamskaya, Ukrainian, Moldavian schools as the most important manuscript centers, indicated the time and reasons for the decline of manuscript centers, spoke about the publishing activities of the Old Believers in the 18th - early 20th centuries. in Russia and abroad, the reasons for the decline and revival of the Old Believer book publishing.

The Old Believer themes found wide coverage in Russian fiction of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Russian writers and poets paid great attention to the topic of church and social schism, everyday scenes and individual representatives of concords. Significant influence on the development of Russian literature had creative heritage leaders of the Old Believer movement in the middle - the second half of the 17th century, and the first works of art relating to the Old Believer themes appeared in historical novels in the 30s of the 19th century. In the 70s-90s of the same century, under the influence of new scientific works of the democratic trend in fiction, there was a change in the point of view on the Old Believers - from negative to positive images.

In icon painting after the church reform, the ancient depiction of saints in the ruling Church was gradually banned and forced out, and the Old Believer icon became the most characteristic external sign of ancient Orthodoxy. At the same time, the Old Believer icon did not become the own invention of the adherents of the old faith; it was closely connected with the Old Russian Orthodox tradition. We defined characteristics of the Old Believer icon, its strict adherence to old models, the development of new iconographic plots, the stylization by the Old Believers of their works under the Stroganov, Solovetsky and other art schools, drew attention to their copper casting plastic, identified the main centers of the Old Believer icon painting.

The collecting activity of the Old Believers has acquired enormous proportions. They concentrated the rarest monuments of ancient Russian handwriting, book printing, icon painting, and other, mainly ecclesiastical, monuments of antiquity. The collections of the Old Believers have become real research centers in the study of ancient Russian culture. The museum collections of the Old Believers had a huge educational impact on the younger generation of their followers. In the middle - in the second half of the nineteenth century. Old Believer collections became the basis for the formation of private and state museums of Russian antiquities. With their acquisitions and tastes, the Old Believers stimulated the development of national painting and its trends, and the Old Believers themselves deservedly became images of the paintings of outstanding Russian artists.

Attention is drawn to the factors and features that influenced the development of the Old Believer architecture in church architecture, the cautious attitude of the Old Believers in relation to theatrical activities. After the split of Russian society, the Old Believers became the saviors of Russian national culture.