"To the last minute"

Old Believers in Russia: to be or not to be

38 years ago, on June 2, 1971, an extraordinary event occurred in the history of Russian Orthodoxy - by the act of the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, the anathemas against the Old Believers, imposed on them back in 1667, were lifted. But there was no sensation - no one in the atheistic USSR simply noticed what had happened...

This is natural if we remember that news of church life extremely rarely became the property of the “progressive” public of the Soviet Union. But, on the other hand, it seems unfair that three whole centuries of hostility and humiliation, inhuman executions, exile and other cruel oppression to which the followers of Old Orthodoxy were subjected ended with an official resolution of the council of the New Believers Church, which was immediately archived.

About 40 years have passed since then. Almost half a century. And today, even more so, few people not only remember that long-ago conciliar action, but also generally know at least something about the Old Believers themselves, which was and remains an important and inalienable part of not only Russian history, but also of universal Orthodoxy.

The tragedy of the schism in the Russian Orthodox Church began with the innovations of Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei (Mikhailovich) Romanov. The non-canonical nature and destructive nature of their “reforms” were fully and convincingly proven by researchers of church history more than a hundred years ago. The crazy dreams of Tsar Alexei about conquering Constantinople and Constantinople and the equally unbridled dreams of his “brother” Nikon about the universal patriarchate are somewhat reminiscent of the fantasies of the stupid old woman from Pushkin’s fairy tale “About the Goldfish”. At least, the result turned out to be even more terrible - Nikon, expelled from the patriarchate, died in obscurity and exile; Alexey Mikhailovich ended his days in severe torment of the flesh. They were not destined to be consoled even by the “broken trough” - to reverse the reform.

The result of the activities of the sovereign “two” - the tsar and the former patriarch - was the church schism of Russia. Since then, patriarchs and tsars have been replaced, but all of them have steadily and cruelly persecuted the popular opposition to the New Believer reforms. And this is where the amazing begins. Despite the severe pressure from the authorities, royal and church, millions of ordinary people were ready to sacrifice their lives for the pious behests of their ancestors. The more fierce the government became (and it could be very fierce!), the firmer the Old Believers were in defending the Ancient Orthodox faith.

Neither the fires, nor the scaffold, nor the rack could stop their sacrificial feat in the name of Orthodoxy.

Vasily Rozanov wrote about the schism: “This is a formidable phenomenon, an amazing phenomenon in our history. If at the world court the Russians are ever asked: “What did you believe in, what did you never renounce, what did you sacrifice everything for?” - perhaps, very embarrassed, having tried to point to Peter’s reform, to “enlightenment”, and this and that, they will eventually find themselves forced to point to the schism: “Here, some part of us believed, did not betray, sacrificed”...

However, behind the admiration for the steadfastness of the Old Believers in the faith, they often lose sight of the main thing, namely, that the Old Believers are a visible and obvious refutation of the established view of the people as a passive, lazy mass, almost a herd. For centuries, the Old Believers, not only deprived of the support of the “higher” educated and wealthy strata, but directly persecuted by the authorities, left to their own devices, not only survived, but managed to defend and preserve all the Old Orthodox rituals, right down to the “single basics”!

That the Old Believers really preserved intact the pre-reform rites of the Orthodox Church - the very ones professed by the Fathers of the first seven Ecumenical Councils, and Vladimir the Holy, and Alexander Nevsky, and Sergius of Radonezh - we are convinced not by the preachers of the Old Belief, but by the testimony of the state official for “schism” affairs and part-time famous writer Melnikov (Pechersky). This is what he wrote in his memorandum presented to Emperor Alexander II: “The followers of the Old Belief perform services strictly according to the statutes contained by the Church, but since the statutory service is long, the New Believer Church allowed some reductions in it... According to Orthodox traditions, holy icons should be written according to the so-called originals, compiled back in Byzantium; the saints depicted on them are presented with stern features, without the slightest expression of earthly passions on their faces, and in the New Believer church they venerate icons of the Italian school...” Comments are clearly unnecessary on this official testimony of an imperial official.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the total number of followers of the old faith amounted to almost a quarter of the entire population of the Russian Empire. A quarter of the population, in whose ranks all the strong peasantry, Cossacks and merchants were concentrated! It was a non-drinker, a non-smoker, with many children, self-sufficient - the same “middle class” that we are still trying in vain to grow today in the scorched field of post-Sovietism.

The Old Believers irritated the secular and ecclesiastical authorities with their independence. In fact, they threatened their undivided dominance in the country. Almost a hundred years since the beginning of the church schism were marked by government attempts to drown the “schism” in blood or suffocate it with an unbearable tax burden. Desperate efforts brought the opposite result - entire villages, towns and villages went into the “schism”. Finding itself powerless to defeat the popular movement, the government makes an attempt to lead it.

In 1800, Moscow Metropolitan Platon established the so-called Edinoverie - Old Believer parishes as part of the official New Believer Church. Fellow believers are allowed to serve “according to the old books,” provided they recognize the authority of the Synod and the head of the Synod, the Russian emperor, over themselves. Being an obvious forced measure, surrounded by many humiliating conditions for Old Orthodox Christians, Edinoverie did not achieve its goals and remained a religious compromise, which was treated with distrust by both the “new believers” and the Old Believers.

The 20th century judged both of them strictly!

Feeling his strength and believing in the future power of his New Believer confession, Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) in his famous 1912 “Message to all Old Believers who are separating from the church” still missionaries and teaches “schismatics,” not knowing that in a few years he himself will find himself in schism with the “red” Sergian Church triumphing in the abandoned homeland...

Revolutions, Civil War, collectivization, industrialization, millions of victims - it is worthy of surprise that against the backdrop of this nationwide apocalypse, suddenly, in 1929, just two years after his so-called “declaration of loyalty,” Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) of Nizhny Novgorod finds time to consider such a seemingly irrelevant issue as the removal of oaths and anathemas from the Old Believers! Nevertheless, the issue was presented for decision by the Synod in a positive sense. But the result of that consideration is unknown...

However, in 1971, at the Local Council, it was raised again by Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) of Leningrad and Novgorod. Accordingly, on June 2, 1971, the council members unanimously supported the initiative “from above” - the curses of the old council of 1667 on “those who adhere to the old rituals” were canceled.

Since then, there have been many decrees and decisions of various councils and the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, aimed at reconciliation with the followers of ancient Orthodoxy. Metropolitan of Smolensk, and now Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill (Gundyaev), turned out to be especially active in this field. Some are inclined to see in this process the natural desire of the archpastors to heal the tragic church schism. Others are convinced that behind all the magnanimous gestures of the patriarchy lies the same long-standing intention of the New Believer Church to absorb the Old Believers.

At the very least, one cannot help but be concerned about the distorted view of the old faith, which has recently been persistently being introduced into the public consciousness. They are trying to present the Old Believers as an ethnographic reservation, almost a society of lovers of historical reconstruction. Too much importance is attached to the preservation of the Old Believers' national traditions and peculiarities of folk life - and at the same time, the true significance of the Old Believers as the guardian of intact Orthodoxy is often kept silent.

All this is all the more dangerous because often some of the Old Believer pastors seem to agree with false views on Old Orthodoxy and do not oppose them openly and publicly.

According to the canons of the church, unjustly imposed curses have no force. The Old Believers never considered themselves anathematized, confident in the correctness of their beliefs. The Council of the New Believer Church confirmed this correctness, canceling the unreasonable anathemas “as if they had not been” and opening their arms to the previously persecuted “brothers”. But won't friendship with the Patriarchate become a more difficult test for the Old Believers than previous persecution and enmity? Will Old Orthodoxy withstand the strong “brotherly” embrace and will it not itself disappear in the depths of the Russian Orthodox Church “as if it had never been”?!

Boris Tarasov, Candidate of Historical Sciences