Old believers in the territory of the Russian empire

Abstract

The Old Believer schism was the most significant split in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. We are aware of earlier, minor, breakaway movements such as the cloth shearers (strigolnikt) in 14th century Novgorod and Pskov or the ludaisers in Novgorod and Moscow a century later. Of course many important sects developed as protest movements from within Russian Orthodoxy, mainly from the 18th century onwards (e.g. the Khlysty who led to the Skoptsy; the Dukhobors who led to the Molokans through to the Tolstoyans in the 20th century, and many others besides).Seen in the long term however, none of these gained importance or· persisted to the same extent as the Old Believer movement, which in spite of countless schisms remains to this day a force to be reckoned with by the Moscow Patriarchate. The efforts of the patriarchate since 1971 to establish good relations with the Old Believers speak for themselves. Unlike other divisions within Orthodoxy, the roots of the Old Believer movement lay not in a protest against the doctrine or life of the Orthodox Church, but rather in a rejection of formal innovations in'> rites, church practice and written tradition, which seem unimportant today. In the 17th century the borders of the Russian Empire were extended to the south west (e.g. by the subjection of eastern Ukraine to Moscow in 1663). This development, which had in . fact begun decades earlier, strengthened church links with Constantinople and resulted in a reconsideration of the Greek roots of Russian Orthodoxy. It had already been noted in Russian church circles that the centuries of isolation following Tatar rule (1240 to approximately 1440) had led to a considerable alienation from the Greek mother