As part of a series of lectures on the current situation of the Old Believers abroad and in the regions of Russia, organized by the Cultural Pilgrimage Center named after Archpriest Avvakum, at the end of April in the parish (ROC) took place lecture by S. A. Beloborodov “History of the Old Believers of the Chapel Concord in the Urals in the 18th-20th centuries.”. Feedback about the lecture was sent A.A. Andreeva, head of the Publishing Department of the Church of St. Nikola on Bersenevka.

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The other day I listened to a lecture by S.A. Beloborodov, who came to Moscow for several days from Yekaterinburg, about the history of Old Belief in the Urals. Usually, when I hear the word “lecture,” my brain turns on. conditioned reflex- the body begins to prepare for sleep, and it depends only on the lecturer whether I should remain in this state, or whether there will be room for another reflex - attention, unclouded consciousness, the desire to perceive everything, remember and subsequently share this information with others will turn on. This was just the second case - the lecturer presented information with high professionalism and constantly kept us on our toes. When at the end he thanked the audience for their genuine attention to this, I must say, specific topic, I just wanted to answer Alaverdi - a lot depends on who reveals any information to us and how he does it.

Instead of a preface

Hot on the heels, I shared my impressions with one friend and said that it was very interesting and I would like to write something about it. What did you get for " cold shower»:

Why do you need this, these are schismatics, and in general, this is of no interest to anyone!

And the trouble is that, I think, he is not the only one in this assessment. Therefore, before talking about the lecture itself, I wanted to first answer my friend (and those who also think) - as a small preface. Nowadays they have begun to talk a lot about the fact that it would be good to know your history; in political shows, opponents often say to each other: “ Learn materiel!”, - calling to turn to historical facts. Indeed, many of the events happening to us today, the root of them, the origin of the problem must be looked for much earlier, and sometimes not even rewind decades ago, but sometimes even centuries. This can be seen very clearly in the example of the schism of the 17th century (it is called “church”, but, rather, it is more global - the schism of the Russian people). The 17th century gave birth to the 17th year. A.I. Solzhenitsyn clearly draws a connecting thread between the events of the 17th century and the 17th year, calling it “ three hundred years of sin", which entailed the tragic year 17 for Russia and subsequent events.

From the position and understanding of faith, isn’t this a punishment from God, isn’t it the cause of the troubles that befell us, isn’t it a punishment for the Old Believers?

We trampled the best part of our tribe, doomed the best part of the people to persecution, quite equal to what the atheists gave us in return in Lenin-Stalin times. We were given 250 years to repent, but all we found in our hearts was to forgive the persecuted, to forgive them for how we destroyed them. But this was also the year, let me remind you, 1905 - its numbers, without explanation, themselves glow, like Balshazzar’s inscription on the wall...

Here's a small quote from Solovyova B.S.:

Before the Petrine government forced people into assemblies for entertainment according to the new fashion, the pre-Petrine government, at the initiative of church authority, forced people into churches for worship according to new books; before several people were exiled for Russian dress, they were exiled, tortured and burned for the Russian cross, for the Russian pronunciation of the name of Christ.
(« When was the Russian path abandoned and how to return to it?» ).

Now we can observe a certain wave of interest in the problem of the split. Senior politicians meet with representatives of the Old Believers (recently the Metropolitan (Titov) with the President of Russia); Divine services according to the old rite have become not uncommon, incl. headed by Vl. Illarion (Alfeev). It seems that archaeological curiosity is not to blame. They begin to look at the split as an event that can repeat itself. This may happen in other forms, under other slogans, but, as I said Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin, « on similar grounds, close to what the Old Believers in relation to themselves called “the remnants of paternal piety».

History is the treasury of our deeds, a witness to the past, an example and teaching for the present, a warning for the future (Cervantes).

You can’t just close your eyes to your history, say that we won’t read it, we won’t publish it, because they are schismatics, and we don’t want to know anything about them and don’t want to understand anything - they don’t deserve our attention. The label is hung and sealed. But, in my opinion, it is obvious that the schism of the 17th century is an event that requires careful study and understanding.

Until we ask the Old Believers for forgiveness and unite again - oh, Russia will not be good (A.I. Solzhenitsyn).

This was my preface, and now, actually, about the lecture.

Three personalities from whom the Old Belief in the Urals originates

The conversation began with how the Old Believers appeared in the Urals. There is an opinion that the first schism teachers there were the fireman and the monk Joseph Istomin, but that's not true. They passed through Verkhoturye, being sent into exile, but, of course, during the week they stayed there they wouldn’t have managed to convert anyone in particular. Who are they, the leaders of the Siberian Old Believers, the “best” people? According to the lecturer, the very ancestors from whom the Old Belief in the Urals originated are at least three individuals.

Elder Abraham of Hungary. A boyar's son, he took monastic vows at the Trinity Monastery (now in the Khanty-Mansiysk District), and repeatedly traveled to Moscow to “beat with his forehead” about the monastic needs. It so happened that his next trip coincided with the landmark Council of 1666. He returned to the Urals as a zealous Old Believer. He didn’t stay at the monastery for long; he had to go to the monastery’s retreat, which soon gained a reputation as a nest of schism throughout the Trans-Urals. The royal authorities sent their people there, but the elder had to go even further into the swamps. Now this place in the Siberian taiga - Avraamiev Island - is considered holy. It takes six hours to get there through the swamps. Midges, midges, black vipers, basking in the sun, disturbed by uninvited walkers, scatter in different directions. The swamp kilometers are endless! Such pilgrimages to holy places among the Old Believers - completely different from our comfortable journeys - only the most persistent will dare. From the time of Elder Abraham, remarkable monuments remained: a source with absolutely pure spring water; a grandiose huge pine tree with icon windows. (A small incision was made on the bark of the tree, and an icon was inserted into it. The tree continued to grow, the bark tightened and covered the edges of this icon, like an icon case. The result was a natural iconostasis). In the middle of the swamp lies a flat prayer stone the size of a two-story house. At the top of this stone there is a huge depression; for local Old Believers, this is the trace of the Virgin Mary. Water accumulates there and is consumed like holy water. In 1702, on this island, the elderly Abraham was nevertheless arrested - the elder’s “connector”, under torture, showed him a hidden place. He was transported to Tobolsk, but after a while he “disappeared to God knows where” - pious admirers helped him escape. Abraham bequeathed to bury himself on this island, next to his closest friend and ally, black priest Ivan - Ivanishch, whom the lecturer called the second person in the Ural Old Belief. In the monastery he had the obedience of a steward, but as soon as Elder Abraham left there, Ivanishche went after him, first to the farm, then to the taiga, to the island. In the midst of a huge swamp, issues were resolved that determined the fate of hundreds of thousands of people for several centuries.

The third character, in the lecturer’s opinion, is one of the most charismatic personalities of that era, this priest Domentian, who served in the Znamenskaya Church in Tyumen. He became friends with the Romanov priest exiled to Siberia Lazarus and patriarchal subdeacon Fedor Trofimov. As a result, priest Domentian turned into a very zealous Old Believer. Soon all three were sent into exile, to Pustozersk. The fate of clerk Fyodor and priest Lazar ended tragically - their tongues were cut out and burned.

Russian Inquisition: suppression and defeat of established ancient piety, oppression and reprisal of 12 million of our compatriots, cruel torture for them, tearing out tongues, pincers, racks, fire and death, deprivation of temples, exile thousands of miles and far into a foreign land - their , who never rebelled, never raised weapons in response, staunch, faithful Old Orthodox Christians, whom I not only will not call schismatics, but even Old Believers, I will be wary of, because we, the rest, will immediately be exposed as just New Believers (A.I. Solzhenitsyn).

The strongest, strong-willed and energetic part of the Russian people remained with the old ritual; the Old Believer movement united millions of Russian people of the highest standard. Despite the most severe persecution and discrimination... (T.D. Solovey, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Faculty of History, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov).

Pop Domentian expressed feigned submission to Nikon's reforms, was forgiven and released. A few years later he was ordained a monk with the name Daniel in the very desert where Elder Abraham settled. Pop Domentian organized deserts on the Berezovka River in 1678. People began to flock there, attracted by his passionate preaching. And a year later the famous Berezovskaya Gar took place. According to various sources, from 1000 to 1700 people were burned in the fire. After Berezovskaya Gari, self-immolations flared up throughout the Urals. Over the 10 years from 1679 to 1689, according to various estimates, from 3 to 5 thousand people burned in the Urals - a tenth of the total population (the entire population of the region then amounted to approximately 50 thousand people). The authorities were very worried. But not because they wanted to save the Old Believers, but because the Old Believers were important to them as taxpayers. The authorities tried to be proactive and capture the leaders. But they did not always succeed. Some leaders managed to commit several self-immolations, but in the end they all ended their lives, usually in fire.

People completely sincerely believed that this was how they could save their souls. But there is still a moment that is not usually paid attention to, because it is not spiritual. The fact is that the burning people were peasants. And the authorities put merciless pressure on the peasantry, squeezing all the juice out of them - there was nothing left for life. Therefore, self-immolations can also be considered a protest of people who had nothing to lose. But there were those who had something to lose, and they recoiled from the old faith. Among them there were many clergymen. It’s one thing to sit in a cushy parish, and another to lose your social position, or even your life itself. Therefore, the Old Believers of the Urals and Trans-Urals had few priests in the seventeenth century. In a territory comparable in size to Great Britain, the adherents of the old faith (and there were tens of thousands of them) did not have a single priest.

Old Believers-Pomeranians in the Urals

The Pomeranians, the Old Believers of the Pomeranian Consent, began to move to the Urals. Gavrila Semenov Ukrainians moved from Vyga, where he was one of the leaders of the Vygov hostel. In the Urals, he rose to the position of clerk of the Demidovs, and was their confidant. But this did not stop him from actively promoting the Old Believers. It was he who founded a Pomeranian hostel for 200 people in the small town of Nevyansk. In addition to Nevyansk, several more Pomeranian centers arose. Pomeranians in the 20s of the 18th century occupied a dominant position in the Old Belief in the Urals. And then events happened that changed the situation.

In the 1710s, church authorities intensified the search for Old Believer hermitages in the Volga region (Kerzhenets, Vetluga). This was led by Bishop Pitirim of Nizhny Novgorod. Several serious blows were dealt to the Old Believers. Trying to defend themselves, tens of thousands of Old Believers fled. A grandiose but empty territory is the Urals: for many tens and hundreds of kilometers one could not meet a single person. In a territory of 2.5 thousand square kilometers (like Luxembourg) there was not a single temple, there was not a single Nikonian priest, there was not a single administrative chief. And the Old Believers began to actively move, thoroughly settling these empty territories.

The lecturer tells a story that reflects the scale of settlement. In 1732, a census taker was sent to places along the Visim River. At every turn of the river he found villages. According to his calculations, in a small area there were 360 ​​houses (the scale of the settlement can be calculated, even taking the minimum if 4 people lived in each house), flour mills, and tannery mills. But for some reason he didn’t find people there. Of course, they were warned and went into the forest during the census. Our family library has " Stone belt» Fedorov. As a child, interested in the strange title, I asked my grandmother what the book was about. Because Since I was still young, I didn’t receive a particularly detailed answer, I only understood that something was connected with iron in the Urals, but I still remember such an exhaustive grandmother’s emotional description of the main characters: “ The Demidovs were the owners! Wow, what! I must say that my ancestors are Old Believers. To preserve their faith, in the 17th century they were forced to flee into the depths of the deep, swampy Guslitsky forests. In the diary of the abbot of the monastery " Joseph on the stone" was written:

The family of gusliaks is ancient and famous; it descended from the rebellious boyars and archers.

« Guslitsy is the only region in Russia where the population is completely literate and is not a typical Russian remote province." In the 70s of the 18th century, Demidov bought a third of Guslitsa and resettled 635 guslyaks to the Urals. The Demidovs, Nikita and his son Akinfiy, the founders of the dynasty, who did a tremendous amount for the development of mining in the Urals, were both secret Old Believers. There's not much to say about this, but judge for yourself. The Demidovs actively sponsored the Vygov hostel; whole convoys went there from the Urals (money, bells). Before her death, Sister Demidova went to the Vygo-Leksinsky Monastery. For those 22 years that the Demidov empire ruled Akinfiy, at 16 factories not a single church (the so-called official) was built, but at each there was an Old Believer chapel for 1-2 thousand people. When asked what was the matter, he made excuses by saying that either he had no funds, or he had no people, or he had no time. At the Demidov factories, more than 50% of key positions were occupied by Old Believers. When asked why, he referred to the fact that they were literate.

Old Believers-Beglopopovtsy in the Urals

The Old Believers built their Church according to the canons. Because the only bishop who did not accept the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, Bishop Kolomna, had been killed by that time, and the Old Believers did not have a three-rank hierarchy, then instead of the institution of bishops they introduced the institution of eldership: monastic and priestly. Of the equals, the first was appointed, the eldest over all the fugitive priests who fled from the ruling Church. The lecturer told an interesting story about a fugitive priest Sebastians, who lived in Nizhny Tagil. When a grandiose search for Old Believer priests took place, initiated by the Tobolsk Metropolitan, the black priest Sevastyan was captured. He was accused of witchcraft:

Priest Sevastyan bewitched the girl Nastasya in such a way that when she sees him, she is amazed.

As soon as the population of Nizhny Tagil learned about the arrest, a revolution almost broke out there. The priest was forced away from the authorities and hidden. Hermitages played the most important role. They were always created near some settlement. The Old Believers who lived in the settlement gave the hermits everything they needed to live. And the hermitages prayed for them.

The lecture was accompanied by a presentation. On the screen there is a leaning tower, but not the Leaning Tower of Pisa. During its construction, the soil began to float, it began to tilt, and workers corrected its tilt along the way. This tower can be used to identify Nevyansk, the residence of the Demidovs. In Nevyansk there was a manor house, 100 meters from it there was a Pomeranian hostel for 200 people, an Old Believer monastery. Nevyansk was one of the three most important centers of the Ural Old Belief. In the 30-40s of the 18th century, 5 thousand people lived in Nevyansk, 4 thousand of whom were Old Believers. There were 15-17 communities around the city that considered Nevyansk their spiritual center. Until Akinfiy Demidov was in power, the authorities did not meddle in Nevyansk at all. But in 1750, after the death of Akinfiy, the Old Believer monastery was dispersed, destroyed and completely destroyed. The second center of Beglopopov's Old Belief in the Urals is Nizhny Tagil. Nizhny Tagil was significantly larger in size than Nevyansk. The lecturer shows a photograph of a Tagil Old Believer “chapel” that accommodated more than 2.5 thousand people - in scale it is comparable to St. Isaac’s Cathedral.

The third center is the capital, the large city of Yekaterinburg, the only one in our country that has received mountain status. During times Vasily Tatishchev there were no Old Believers there. But near Yekaterinburg there was a small settlement on the shores of Lake Shartash. Old Believers lived there. Shartash was located at the crossroads of trade routes, grew rich and soon began to compete with the merchants of Yekaterinburg. At the beginning of the 19th century, out of 56 merchants in Yekaterinburg, 40 were already Old Believers - they moved to Yekaterinburg from Shartash. Soon, many important administrative posts were occupied by Old Believers. They were also Old Believer elders.

General state of Old Belief in the Urals

The lecturer shows several photographs of houses in which this or that foreman lived. “Shanties,” as he called them, “huts.” The photographs show huge, 3-4 storey houses of exquisite architecture. The mansion of Lev Ivanovich Rastorguev on Voznesenskaya Gorka; still stands; for many years it was the Palace of Pioneers. The house church has been preserved. Next to it is a photo of himself Rastorgueva- eagle. Lev Ivanovich amassed his considerable fortune through wine farming, declared himself merchant of the first guild(for this it was necessary to have a capital of at least 50 thousand in gold), but he did not engage in wine trading, but in 4 years he bought up an entire mining metallurgical district. His father was burgomaster of Volsk near Saratov; all monasteries on Irgiz were under his supervision. The following information is very interesting. In Irgiz there were large Old Believer hermitages and monasteries, which welcomed fugitive priests from all over Rus' with open arms. As the lecturer said, “ You can’t erase the words from the song - the monasteries went into business, trading in fugitive priests" Next to the Nikolsky Monastery there was an entire Slobodka, inhabited by fugitive Old Believer priests. They waited there for their time - “buyers” came for them, paid the monastery elders a certain bribe, took the priest and took him to their own region. Lev Ivanovich Rastorguev was directly involved in this: quite a lot of fugitive priests appeared in the Urals; in Yekaterinburg, for example, at that time there were up to six of them at a time. In the 40s of the 19th century, Irgiz ceased to exist as an Old Believer. The monasteries were forcibly converted to the same faith. But they didn’t last long - people left them. You won't be nice by force.

Next photo - Grigory Zotov, another Old Believer foreman, and next to it is a photo of his 4-story mansion, “a pretty little house,” as the lecturer called it. Zotov was from a low class, but reached unprecedented heights because he was very talented in many ways. He married Rastorguev’s daughter and after his death began to lead his mountain district. Zotov was personally acquainted with the emperor Alexander the First who said this about him:

If I had at least a dozen administrators like this guy, I would turn Russia upside down.

After the death of Alexander I, Zotov was accused of being involved in the murder of two workers at the factory (the case was supervised by Nicholas I himself) and was exiled to Kexholm (now Priozersk), which, however, he did not reach, and, according to rumors, he was subsequently seen in his St. Petersburg palace , where he sipped tea on the balcony. A few more photos of the elders and their mansions. These people led the Old Believer society in the Urals until the forties of the 19th century. The elders invited this or that priest; they decided which Old Believer monastery should develop and which should not; gave money for temples. Several photographs of Old Believer churches in Yekaterinburg, a chapel in Visim (the writer Mamin-Sibiryak was born in this city). The photo was taken in winter, and even then the chapel is almost invisible. What will happen in the summer, when everything is dressed in foliage? The forester will walk three meters away and not see you.

In the 18th century, many communities began to have their own holy places (after the schism, the dominant Church considered all holy places to be its own), and pilgrimages began to take place there. These were mainly the graves of the righteous, schema-monks. There are many such hidden places, graves, and worship crosses in the Siberian taiga. Monk's grave Pavel, Mother Platonides, Efrem Sibiryak, schemanik Maxima... There are local holy places, and there are holy places of general Ural significance. Going to holy places is not a necessary element of the Old Believers, but it greatly united the community and made them feel like members huge world with its own laws, rules, ethnic norms. At these holy places people met, became acquainted, and communicated.

But in the 19th century everything looked completely different. There are no longer large chapels, no fugitive priests, no more influential merchants. Why? In 1838, by imperial decree (Nicholas I), it was stated that if any of the Old Believers began to enroll in the guild, they would be refused. For many people this turned out to be a serious blow. From January 1, 1839, a line of merchants lined up near the Yekaterinburg City Hall who wanted to enroll in Edinoverie, because Edinoverie members were allowed to be merchants, but Old Believers were not. The second blow to the Ural Old Belief was dealt in 1845, when Old Believers were officially prohibited from holding administrative positions. All clerks, factory managers, etc. were forced to convert to the same faith. The first generations who converted to Edinoverie essentially remained Old Believers. But their descendants were already co-religionists in the usual sense.

In Yekaterinburg in the middle of the 19th century there were two communities of co-religionists. They did not communicate with each other at all, they even openly quarreled. Edinoverie appeared in 1799; In 1803, a Edinoverie church was built in Yekaterinburg, and a community was formed under it. And the second community consisted precisely of Old Believers who were forced to convert to the same faith. These communities even had different cemeteries. Now that there are no elders (the level of elder has now dropped to the level of a church warden), there are no more fugitive priests, spiritual fathers and mentors began to play a great role. The mentors, I must say, appeared earlier. Priests, due to their small numbers, could not provide care for the entire Urals, and therefore, in remote communities, people appeared who took on the responsibilities of a priest both in the service and could talk about spiritual things. When there were no priests at all, the mentors came to the fore. They began to lead the spiritual life of the community. They went to their spiritual fathers to confess; often a spiritual father was not the same thing as a mentor. Until the middle of the 19th century, these positions were exclusively for men. But since the second half of the 19th century, there have been more female mentors than male mentors. Matryona Popova from Visim - people called her “Father Matrenty”. A two-meter tall woman, very energetic, created a cathedral in Visim, conducted a lively debate with the missionaries of the official Church, and attracted many sponsors to her cathedral.

The current situation of the priestless Old Believers in the Urals is deplorable. The largest Old Believer chapel community gathers about 200 people on major holidays. In the once mighty, largest centers the situation is even worse. In Nevyansk there is no community at all anymore, somewhere they are on the verge of complete collapse; They are still trying to live somehow in Yekaterinburg. Ekaterinburg Pomeranians came to the authorities to ask for a building for a house of worship. They were invited to stay in one of the chapels of the Nikonian church. You can imagine what this means for the Pomeranians!

During Soviet times, there was a serious loss of historical memory. The descendants of the Old Believers do not quite understand their roots and sources. There is a gentleman in Yekaterinburg Kozitsyn, head of a metallurgical company, philanthropist. He built many temples for the official Church. The Kozitsyn family is a powerful Old Believer family of chapel-less priests, and if the ancestors had known that their descendant would help the Nikonian Church, they, according to the lecturer, would not have given the opportunity to Mr. Kozitsyn to be born at all.

Wonderful lecturer, Beloborodov Sergey Anatolievich, graduated from the Faculty of History of USU with a degree in historian-archivist. Since 2003, teacher at the Department of Archeology, Ethnology and Special Historical Disciplines. Author of more than 150 scientific and popular science works on the history of the Urals, book literature, the history of the Old Believers, and icon painting. Sergey Anatolyevich shares his memories: “ When we first started research, there were doubts: is there anything left at all? But already the first trips, the first conversations, the first contacts with the Old Believers showed that not only something, but entire treasures were preserved by them. Currently, at the Ural University there is a laboratory for archaeographic research, and with it an ancient repository, which contains about 6 thousand monuments of ancient literature, ranging from the 15th to the 21st centuries. All of them were obtained from the Old Believers. It was the Old Believers who preserved the traditions. When they moved to the Urals, they took with them the most valuable things: wives, children, books and icons. All. They threw the rest».

Amazingly talented people! We could do everything. And the icons flowed. And the books were rewritten and printed. They have preserved the ancient art of single-voice singing with hooks. That's something for TV people to remember! If only there was something to show, and not who this or that star is sleeping with or is still planning to sleep with... And the Old Believers have something to show the people. And we can learn a lot from them - at least how to defend both our faith and our dignity in spite of everything ( V.V. Zhirinovsky).

In the Old Believers, there are from 70 to 100 agreements and interpretations, and each of them has its own name. For example, there are seats. House of worship, benches, table. People sit down, and a more or less literate old woman reads the Gospel. And that’s it, they don’t know any other books for worship. This is exactly the moment when historical traditions were interrupted. They remember that they are Old Believers, but they cannot do anything. The main agreements are Fedoseevites, Pomeranians, Chasovennye, Spasovtsy. The Bezpopovites always had a critical attitude towards the Belokrinitsky and Novozybkov hierarchy. Novozybkovskaya church is the youngest, younger than all the others. In 1923, Bishop (Pozdnev) decided to lead one of the movements along the line of the Old Believers. Soon another bishop joined him, realizing the error of the Nikonian Church, and voluntarily joined in his existing rank. But the chapels do not recognize Nikola as a bishop, because... They baptized him with dousing. The chapels have always held true baptism by threefold immersion very highly. Now the most powerful and significant structure in the Old Believers is Belokrinitsa Metropolis. It is she who, as it happens, is now the calling card of the Old Believers in Russia, and in the world.

I would like to end the article with the following words of our Russian writer V.G. Rasputina:

Russia has begun, thank God, to understand that the fight against the split has cost it more than all the wars since “ Patriotic War» 1812, Crimean, and ending Turkish, that in the war against the split, Russia lost not five or ten million people, but “thousands of them.” I also want to note that the Truth cannot be found by a majority of voices that consider themselves right. Let us remember that Christ was crucified by the majority of the Jews, and the revolution of 1917 was also accepted by the Bolsheviks - the majority of the Congress of Workers' Deputies. We see that this schism continues to this day, but Orthodox Russians are already crying about the former glory of Holy Rus' not on the battlefields, but in the peaceful, holy dispensation of the Russian Land. Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, before he was “removed” from television, loudly repeated throughout the country: “ Take care of the example of the Old Believers, in it lies the truth, strength and salvation of Rus'.

P. S. Many thanks Maxim Borisovich Pashinin, the head of the Cultural and Pilgrimage Center named after Archpriest Avvakum, who periodically introduces us to the best experts on Old Believer history, and who organized (with the assistance of the Publishing Department of the Church of St. Nicholas on Bersenevka, where, in fact, the lecture took place) a meeting with Beloborodov S.A.

Andreeva A.A., rHead of the Publishing Department of the Church of St. Nikola on Bersenevka

In the turbulent year of the vicious dog, one involuntarily recalls the “number of the beast” and the year 1666, when a church council opened, which a year later anathematized the schismatics.

Despite the fact that it is long ago the 21st century, and not the 17th century, the name of the Old Believers still frightens the respectable public. In the latest domestic blockbuster, “Piranha Hunt,” it is the Old Believers who act as the forces of evil. This is understandable given how little we know about them, and the unknown is always scary. It is interesting that the ideological scheme proposed by the authors of the film has not changed much in three hundred years. As before, the smart and fair servants of the sovereign are saving Rus' (even if not with the word of God, but by force of arms), and the evil and narrow-minded Old Believers are preventing them from doing this.

The Old Believers did not accept and shunned the poisoned, corrupted world of the Antichrist, by which they understood Patriarch Nikon and many Russian tsars, starting with Alexei Mikhailovich. They believed that the Antichrist, having come into the world, poisoned the water, earth and air, so for many adherents of the old faith it became impossible to breathe this air and drink this water, and the best way out was to leave for another world. In addition, according to the decrees of Alexei Mikhailovich, those exposed in the Old Belief were subject to merciless physical destruction, including by burning. This is exactly how Archpriest Avvakum was executed in Pustozersk. Boyarina Feodosia Prokofyevna Morozova was imprisoned for her beliefs in a five-seated earthen pit, where she soon died of starvation. Therefore there was little choice. Hence the numerous cases of mass suicide.

The Russian state did not like them either for their freethinking and stubbornness. It is no coincidence that the level of literacy has always been high among the Old Believers. Meanwhile, the most irreconcilable were either destroyed by the state or died in numerous “burnings”, and the rest, to one degree or another, came to terms with reality. And already within the framework of the “sinful” state they became the most important part of its history and culture. When the average Russian hears the word “Old Believers,” his memory will most likely come to mind of the taiga recluse Agafya Lykova, the noblewoman Morozova from Surikov’s painting, and the famous self-immolations. Meanwhile, the Ural Old Believers did much of what surrounds us now, although we may not notice it. By the way, Surikov painted the face of noblewoman Morozova from a Ural Old Believers who happened to meet him in Moscow.

Character of the Old Believers

Over the centuries of persecution among the Old Believers, a unique attitude to life and an original philosophy was formed, which made it possible, over many years of persecution, to achieve the fact that in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, about 60% of industrial capital was concentrated in the hands of the Old Believers.

They, as a rule, do not drink, although, as a last resort, they are allowed to drink no more than three glasses of wine, but only on Sundays. Getting drunk “to the point of losing the image of God” is considered undignified and shameful. Also among them there is a ban on smoking tobacco, since it is believed that it is a weed that grew from the blood of the unclean. It is interesting that in the 18th century among the Old Believers there were even bans on tea and samovars. Although gradually the attitude towards this drink changed, since tea is still better than alcohol.

The swearing is denied as blasphemy. It is believed that a woman who swears makes the future of her children unhappy. The Old Believers call their children according to the Saints, and therefore with rare names (Parigory, Eustathius, Lukerya), although there are also quite familiar names. Men are required to wear a beard, and girls a braid. In addition, each person must be belted; it is necessary to constantly wear a strap without removing it. Observance of rituals, holidays and daily prayers are also an integral part of life. The Old Believers have a calm attitude towards death. It is customary to prepare in advance the “shell” (clothes in which they will be placed in the coffin): a shirt, a sundress, linden bast shoes, a shroud. The mother should prepare the shell for her son and give it to him when he joins the army. It was also necessary to prepare a coffin, preferably hollowed out from a single piece of wood.

Abortion is considered a sin even more serious than murder, because the baby in the womb is unbaptized.

“Demand more from yourself, consider yourself worse than everyone else” is another principle of the Old Believers, encouraging hard work and activity. Having a “tough economy” has always been important for these people, because it allowed them to have support in difficult times. Leaving their homes for the Urals and Siberia, they had to work a lot and hard, which created a habit of hard work. Asceticism, conditioned by religious tradition, did not allow wasting money and living in idleness. For an Old Believer, not working at all is a sin; however, working poorly is also a sin.

An important feature their worldview is love for their small homeland as the home of their body and soul, which must be preserved in beauty and purity.

The success of Old Believers in business often carries with it the temptation to draw a parallel with the Protestant capitalist spirit of individualism and competition. In reality, if the Old Believers entered into a competitive struggle, it was a struggle with the world of dark forces that surrounded them. They believed that the pious Old Believers were chosen by the Lord for eternal life, therefore, at all costs, it was necessary to preserve their own peace. Old Believers entrepreneurs were collectivists. They believed that all members of the community should treat each other as brothers. Therefore, any workshop or factory carried family traits. This is also where the Old Believers’ penchant for charity stems. Old Believer traditionalism in this sense is closer to the Japanese work ethic with their “quality circles” and the cult of their company.

Demidovs

The first Demidov factories were, in fact, created by Old Believers. It was rumored that Nikita and Akinfiy themselves were secret schismatics. They ordered the best Old Believers craftsmen from the Olonets factories, accepted runaways, and hid them from the census. Akinfiy Demidov even built an Old Believer monastery on the outskirts of Nevyansk. The talents of the Old Believers later bore rich fruit. Beglopopovites Efim and Miron Cherepanov built it in 1833-34. the first railway in Russia and the first steam locomotive.

Probably, the Ural Old Believers were also involved in the invention of the Russian samovar. Since the 17th century, tea began to come to the Urals from China. It was the combination of Chinese tea and Ural copper that led to the appearance of the samovar, which was born here, and not in Tula. The first mention of a samovar is contained in a list of items seized at Yekaterinburg customs and dates back to 1740. And that samovar was from the Irginsky plant, which consisted almost entirely of fugitive schismatics. It was the craftsmen brought by N. Demidov from the Urals to Tula who opened the first samovar workshops in the mid-18th century.

In the Nevyansk possessions of the Demidovs, a unique school of icon painting developed. This original cultural phenomenon was called the “Nevyansk Icon”. It preserved the traditions of ancient Rus', and at the same time included the trends of the New Age in the form of features of Baroque and Classicism. The popularity of Nevyansk Old Believer icon painters was so great that in the 19th century they no longer worked only for communities of chapel harmony or co-religionists, but also for the official church. Since 1999, there has been a unique free private museum “Nevyansk Icon” in Yekaterinburg. In March 2006 at the Central Museum ancient Russian culture and art named after Andrei Rublev, for the first time in Moscow, an exhibition of the collections of the Yekaterinburg Museum “Nevyansk Icon: Ural Mining Icon Painting of the 18th - 19th Centuries” was successfully held in Moscow.

General V.I. de Gennin also appreciated the hard work of the Old Believers and did not subject them to serious persecution, although from time to time they were caught, their nostrils were torn out and they were flogged. Another founder of our city, V.N. Tatishchev, fulfilling the sovereign's will, did not give in to the schismatics. In 1736, on his orders, 72 nuns and 12 monks were captured and imprisoned for 30 years in a specially built prison in Yekaterinburg.

It was the residents of the ancient Old Believer village of Shartash who became the first builders of the Yekaterinburg plant - the future capital of the mining Urals. In the 17th century, when there was no trace of Yekaterinburg, Shartash was a rich village with more than ten hermitages and about four hundred inhabitants.

In 1745, a resident of the same village of Shartash, Old Believer Erofei Markov, discovered grains of native gold while walking through the forest, and laid the foundation for mass gold mining in Russia. The first gold mine in Russia appeared at the site of the discovery in 1748.

Catherine II abolished the double per capita salary of the Old Believers and stopped their persecution. They were given the opportunity to join the merchant class. After this, the number of Old Believers among the Ural merchants began to grow rapidly and approach one hundred percent.

The owners of tallow factories and gold mines, the merchants Ryazanovs, played a large role in the religious life of the Urals. Ya.M. Ryazanov, considered the head of all Ural Old Believers, founded a large prayer house in Yekaterinburg in 1814. However, the authorities did not allow construction to continue at that time. Only after Ryazanov and many of his supporters converted to the same faith in 1838 were they allowed to complete the construction of the temple. So, in 1852, the Holy Trinity Cathedral appeared, which is now a cathedral and belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church.

IN Soviet years The temple lost its domes and bell tower and was transferred to Sverdlovskavtodor. Somewhat later, the building housed the Avtomobilistov House of Culture, a place known among the city’s intelligentsia for the fact that during the years of perestroika various intellectual films were shown here and there was even a discussion club. In the 1990s, the building was transferred to the Yekaterinburg Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church and was restored. The domes and bell tower had to be rebuilt, but already in 2000 the temple was illuminated by Patriarch Alexy II who personally came here.

The godless Soviet government hit the old faith hard. To reduce the influence of the Old Believers, strong pressure was put on community leaders. They were either liquidated, or expelled, or forced to abandon the outward manifestations of religious life.

Although strong and thrifty men were valued even under the new government. True, now we had to abandon the icons and join the party, but the traditions and way of life were largely preserved. In this regard, I remember the life or fate of the famous Kurgan field farmer Terenty Semenovich Maltsev. He, being a representative of one of the Old Believers, never drank, never studied for a day at school, but at the same time he was literate, had beautiful handwriting, could read Old Church Slavonic and, due to his literacy and prudence, at one time performed the duties of an “old man” in the village house of worship.

In 1916, Terenty Maltsev was drafted into the army. The First World War was going on. Quite quickly he is captured and from 1917 to 1921 he is in the German city of Quedlinburg.

After the end of the Civil War, Terenty Semenovich returned to Russia. Here he is passionately engaged in agricultural technology and eventually becomes a twice Hero Socialist Labor, honorary academician of VASKhNIL. The Old Believer's concern for the environment apparently manifested itself in the fact that Terenty Maltsev developed a gentle, no-moldboard method of cultivating the land, for which he received the USSR State Prize in 1946. His books “A Word about the Earth-Nurse”, “Thoughts about the Harvest”, “Thoughts about the Land, About Bread” are imbued with reflections on the relationship between man and nature.

Having been born at the beginning of the reign of Emperor Nicholas II in 1895, having passed all the trials that befell his native country, Terenty Semenovich passed away already in the first years of the reign of President Yeltsin, in 1994. Thus, for 99 years, Old Believer humility and hard work helped Terenty Maltsev to endure all the hardships and hardships that befell the common Russian man.

Places of residence

The Urals became the largest place of residence for Old Believers, who fled here from all over Russia. The first settlements of Old Believers in the Urals appeared on the Neiva River and its tributaries. The Beglopopovites settled in the area of ​​Nevyansk, Nizhny Tagil and Yekaterinburg. Representatives of the chapel consensus (starikovshchina) live compactly in the village of Zakharov (near Lysva, Perm region), Nevyansk, village. Bolshaya Laya (Sverdlovsk region), Tugulym region, Revda and Polevskoy. A large number of Old Believers in the Sverdlovsk region live in the village of Shamary, the village of Pristan and other villages of the Artinsky district, in the Krasnoufimsky district (village of Russkaya Tavra), Nevyansky and Baranchinsky districts. These are largely adherents of the Belokrinitsky consent.

Within the Perm region, parishes are officially registered in Perm, Ocher, Vereshchagin, Tchaikovsky, Kudymkar, at the Mendeleevo station, in the villages of Borodulino, Sepych, Putino.

In the 1990s, active construction of Old Believer churches began. In 1990, a temple was consecrated in the city of Omutninsk, Kirov region. On the basis of this project, a temple was built in 1993 in the city of Vereshchagino. In 1994, the old church building, which had previously served as a museum, was transferred to the Old Believer community of Yekaterinburg. Since 1996, there has been a temple in the village of Shamary. The temple in the city of Miass was built in four years and consecrated in 1999.

In Yekaterinburg, in the area of ​​Tveritin, Belinsky and Rosa Luxemburg streets, in a few years another Old Believer church in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker should appear. Representatives of the Pomeranian consensus who reject priests (bespopovtsy) are going to build it. The Ekaterinburg VIZ Church belongs to the Belokrinitsky Concord, which ordains its own priests. In general, there are a lot of different agreements in the Old Believers. Fedoseevites and Filippovites, for example, reject marriage. Beglopopovtsy accept priests - “runaways” - from other communities and directions. One of the most democratic agreements is the Netovites. They have nothing: no priests, no temples. They believe that only individual contact with God through prayer can be saving. The most mysterious group is considered to be runners or True Orthodox Christians Wandering (ITPS). They preach leaving the world of the Antichrist, so they break all ties with society. Dont Have real estate, passports, do not pay taxes, do not participate in censuses, do not accept modern chronology, do not have a name and therefore are called servants of God. They have connections only with a small group of people who support them financially. During the years of Soviet power, they went underground and became close to the Catacomb Church, and therefore, due to their anti-state position, they were under the close attention of the security officers.

Andrey LYAMZIN,
Candidate of Historical Sciences.
Ural geographical magazine “Podorozhnik”, summer 2006.

We visited the descendants of Russian Old Believers in the village of Pristan

Enter the house only after the third invitation. After the first one, do not enter the hut. They will be offended and will not understand, our acquaintances admonish us before our trip to the Old Believers community. - Don't count on tea or water. Take water or at least a mug with you. They won’t let you drink or eat from their dishes, it’s like desecrating you. They keep a special “filthy” one, that is, a pagan one, for strangers.

Tour guides in museums also provide this information. They also write on the Internet: the constant persecution of the Old Believers (they were persecuted until 1905) strengthened their spirit, but made them suspicious and gloomy. They deny progress and wear traditional clothes.

Old Believers, or Old Believers, are the followers of the old faith. In short: in the 17th century Orthodox Church a split occurred. It was led to by protests against the reforms that the new Patriarch Nikon, supported by the state, began to impose. His reforms concerned many ritual things and church books. The Old Believers fled to the Urals and settled Siberia. It is believed that Old Believers are closed and avoid contact with other believers or worldly people.

An example of an Old Believer family is the Lykovs, who in the 30s fled from the new government to the remote taiga. So they lived for 40 years in their own world, in seclusion, leading a subsistence economy. In the late 70s, geologists stumbled upon them.

To find out how the descendants of Russian Old Believers live now, we went to the Old Believer community in the Sverdlovsk region - to a village with the beautiful name Pristan.

The pier stands on the banks of the Ufa River near the working village of Arti, 200 kilometers from Yekaterinburg. The village was founded in 1789; barges once moored here. But there is another meaning to its name: Old Believers from all over the Urals found shelter here. The temple, built here a hundred years ago, was not closed even during the years of Soviet power.

“I would also travel around the world, but I need to look after my grandfather.”

The Pier is quiet and deserted. Only near one of the houses near the temple does someone in a light green reflective vest loom, resembling a traffic cop.

It turned out that this was a grandfather dressed in a vest: outwardly - a true Old Believer with a lush and gray beard. An elderly woman came out of the house to meet us:

Don’t be alarmed, not the traffic police, I put the vest on my husband so that drivers can see it from a distance. He is not careful about cars when he walks around the village. And he doesn’t hear well, so he doesn’t answer you.

The woman's name is Nina Alekseevna Bulatova. She invites us into the house, and we hesitate: we are waiting for the third invitation, as we were taught. But then we still decide to come in - Nina Alekseevna seems sincerely friendly.

You shouldn’t have thought about us that we were unsociable,” says Nina Alekseevna. - In our village, the Old Believers are hospitable, open, and friendly. I don't need three invitations. Yes, there are also closed-minded people among us who completely refuse some modern things. They believe that this way they can better preserve the faith. For example, a woman lived here - she had neither a passport nor received a pension. Already dead. But the majority have modernized, where can you go? You see, we have our own newspapers. They write about us on the Internet. But I haven’t mastered it; I only use a cell phone for now.

In one of the newspapers in the house we see photos of black boys. We immediately read that these black kids from Uganda are also Old Believers! This hot African country has its own Old Believer parish.

In the Ural Pristan, out of a hundred parishioners, most of them are elderly. There are no jobs here for young people; they leave to study and stay in Yekaterinburg and Krasnoufimsk. Young people come to church on holidays to baptize their children.

Nina Alekseevna is 87 years old, she is a former teacher of Russian language and literature. Her mother once came to Pristan - herself an Old Believers. I came here because there was a temple here. And Nina Alekseevna asked to be assigned here after the pedagogical institute.

I was constantly reproached that my mother was a churchwoman,” recalls Nina Alekseevna. “I was a Komsomol member, and a pioneer, and I had to carry out atheistic work, while remaining an Old Believer at heart. I'm like between two fires. My mother wanted me to be a believer, but the authorities wanted me to forget about it. I went to church secretly. And my grandfather ( husband of Nina Alekseevna. - Approx. ed.), local. His great-grandfathers also lived in Pristan. Father, grandfather, great-grandfather - all were priests.

Nina Alekseevna has three children, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

All my children have higher education and graduated from college. They are completely modern, they live in Yekaterinburg and Artyakh. Unfortunately, people don't go to church very often. Although everyone is baptized in our church: both children and grandchildren.

...and magnets from distant countries, brought by children and grandchildren

Nina Alekseevna shows magnets on the refrigerator, brought by children and grandchildren from distant countries and cities: Jerusalem, Prague, Paris. She says that she would like to see the world herself, but “somehow it doesn’t work out anymore: there are things to do, I need to look after my grandfather, the house.”

“Parishioners have repeatedly asked the question: is it possible to use the Internet?”

Tea? - Father John, the rector of the marina church, offers us. He lives in a house next door to Nina Alekseevna’s house. We were received here just as kindly. Only the huge shaggy dog, the Caucasian Shepherd, was suspicious and stern. Locked in an enclosure, he barked ferociously at strangers.

We remind you about “foreign”, pagan dishes. Father John nods, smiles and explains:

In our community and in general in the official Old Believer church, there is no such thing as keeping separate dishes for guests. Because the Lord ate and drank with sinners and tax collectors. Let’s say a person comes to me and asks for a drink. And I told him: “Here’s a special mug for you.” What will he think of the Old Believers? He'll be offended. On the contrary, we need to show people that we are open and friendly. Educated. My neighbor is Pyotr Uvarovich Kuznetsov. He is a scientist, professor, doctor of legal sciences. It’s a pity, he’s not at home now, at work in Yekaterinburg, teaching at the Law Academy.

- Where do all these stories about unsociability, dislike for strangers come from?

This really exists among priestless people. Bespopovtsy are Old Believers who do not accept the priesthood. When the schism occurred, some people believed that the old priesthood was dead, destroyed, and there was no new one. They went into the forests and founded communities and monasteries. I once lived in Minusinsk, there are purely Old Believer villages, made up of Bespopovites. Children study only up to the 4th grade, girls in long sundresses, men with beards. Everything is saved.

- Whose Lykovs are they?

They were from the chapels (one of the branches of non-priesthood). But now Agafya Lykova has come to us, to the official Old Believer church.

Father John dreamed of being a clergyman since childhood. He says he didn’t play a pilot or a driver, but a deacon, during church services, and used jam instead of communion. He was born into a family of Old Believers in Siberia. Father is a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, a radio engineering teacher. At the front he joined the party (there was no time for arguments on the front line, they simply handed him a party card), and after the war he refused to pay his dues. We started to figure it out. They arrested and took everything away military awards, was sentenced to death, then the execution was replaced by 25 years in the camps. Released two years later under an amnesty after Stalin's death.

I was neither a pioneer nor an Octobrist. They didn’t interfere with us; at school they knew that the family was a believer. My father was literate; if anything, he referred to the Constitution, which back in 1936 guaranteed freedom of speech.

Father John's secular profession is a welder. I managed to work for a short time and served in the army. Then he went into the clergy.

His wife, Mother Natalya, was an accountant in the world. They have six children, seven grandchildren.

At school, the children studied well, there were plenty of letters of praise and certificates. We are not dark. Now the children have graduated from institutes: law, one is still studying in economics, USUE SYNCH. Three children work in the church with me, one is married to a priest. The youngest son has now taken an academic course at the Railway Institute (UrGUPS) and joined the army,” says Father John.

- Are Old Believers allowed to serve?

Among my parishioners, everyone serves as expected. It is allowed and even encouraged. Every person and citizen must defend their homeland. During the war, Old Believers went to the front.

He leads us to show his temple of the Life-Giving Trinity. Over the bridge at the other end of the village you can see the domes of the Orthodox Church. Many villagers are her parishioners.

We never quarrel with our Orthodox neighbors ( although the Old Believers are also Orthodox, we mean those who accepted the reforms in the 17th century. - Approx. edit.). The priests came to visit me more than once. Once upon a time, Archbishop Melchizedek (from 1984 to 1994 he headed the Ekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan diocese) ordered that children in churches be baptized by full three-time immersion. Orthodox priests came to me for advice. With us, among the Old Believers, we always full immersion into an ice bath.

- This is not dangerous? A baby's head in ice water?

Of course not. The cold water is breathtaking, and also: when you cross your nose, you cover your mouth. This has been tested for centuries. In my practice, I have never had anyone feel bad. On the contrary, I remember that they brought a girl from a neighboring village. Everything is covered with scabs. Baptized, dipped. Then they brought the girl for communion - she was already all clean. The mother says that after baptism, all the scabs fell off immediately.

- Do you use the Internet?

Yes, we have it in our house. I have been asked more than once by parishioners: is it possible to use a computer or the Internet? Why not? After all, what is a computer for? For work. Please: print, print out, read useful information. When you try a lot, hold on to what is good, as the Apostle Paul said.

“Do not drink from shared containers - infectious diseases doctors would approve of this”

Alexander Alexandrovich Smokvin is a former employee of the government of the Sverdlovsk region. Once upon a time he accepted the Old Believer faith and was baptized in the Pier Church. We met with him in the editorial office of E1.RU. He still refused to drink from shared utensils and asked for a disposable cup.

Former employee of the Government of the Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Smokvin went to all meetings with a colorful “Old Believer” beard. Everyone's used to it

“Don’t take it into account,” he said evasively, so as not to offend. - This is the wisdom of my grandfather speaking to me. Probably, among the Old Believers this tradition is associated with completely understandable reasons. Old Believers had settlements in Altai and Siberia. If a stranger came to the settlement, they would put a jug of milk outside the threshold and a piece of bread. This was a wise decision to avoid infections and epidemics. There were no doctors in the area for a thousand kilometers; villages were dying out from epidemics. I think this is a necessary measure, and that’s where the tradition came from. Infectious diseases doctors would approve of me.

Alexander Alexandrovich is now a pensioner; in the 90s he worked in the State Property Management Committee. It was he who helped the Old Believers get the church given to them on a visa.

He went to all meetings and conferences in the government with a colorful “Old Believer” beard. He says that at first they looked askance, then they got used to it.

His grandmother was one of the Old Believers.

She prayed quietly and calmly; I didn’t hear any sermons from her. I remember telling her as a child: “There is no God.” And she calmly said: “No, Sasha, there is...” She is a worker at the Verkh-Isetsky plant, and among the visa workers there are many Old Believers. All the steels and alloys that were developed there went through prayer. Old Believers are generally hardworking. Tatishchev and de Gennin also liked to hire Old Believers. They knew: they wouldn’t let you down, they wouldn’t drink.

- Do you have a ban on alcohol?

No, according to the rules of the holy apostles, up to three cups are allowed. But the size of the bowls is not specified.

“We need to debunk myths about unsociable Old Believers”

We also met with the younger generation of Old Believers. We invited the editor of the newspaper of the Old Believer Church “Community” Maxim Gusev to our editorial office. He has a secular education - the Faculty of Journalism of the USU. And modern, non-patriarchal views.

It is necessary to debunk the myths about unsociable, unsociable Old Believers, large patriarchal families, sundresses, and kokoshniks,” he says.

Everyone chooses the number of children themselves; this is a personal question. Among the young Old Believers there are many ambitious ones, those who choose a career.

But, I think, of course, there should be something in common - some kind of internal core: hard work, inability to be mean, to trip up, to be rude... But for the rest, outwardly the young Old Believers (those who belong to the official Old Believers Church) have assimilated. Outwardly, they are no different from modern young people. Among the Bespopovites, of course, everything is stricter. They are uncommunicative and do not make contact. But even they began to go out into public, began to communicate with us, and participate in our common holidays.

Text: Elena PANKRATIEVA
Photo: Igor DO, Artem USTYUZHANIN / E1.RU, priest Alexey LOPATIN, personal archive of Maxim GUSEV

reform church ural old believer

Introduction

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

The phenomenon of the Church schism in general, and the Old Believers in particular, began to interest researchers almost from the 17th century. This interest was caused by the fact that the schism, as such, was not a purely religious phenomenon, but was a nationwide phenomenon and covered almost all social strata of the Moscow state. The country was divided into two irreconcilable camps - adherents of the old faith and followers of the modernization reforms of Patriarch Nikon. For quite objective reasons, the Old Believers could not influence the course of reforms and were forced to flee to remote and sparsely populated corners of the country. One of these regions was the Urals. Since it was just beginning to settle in, it is quite obvious why the Old Believers chose it as their refuge. The sufficient weakness of state power and the small development of the territory were the main factors in the formation of the Urals as one of the main centers of the Old Believers.

Degree of knowledge. The topic of the Old Believers has been studied quite thoroughly in both historical and ethnographic aspects. The history of the Old Believers in the Urals is well reflected in documents, although this is only some part of the material, associated primarily with the official activities of the Old Believers (merchant, factory and religious). In this regard, this work is not so much scientific as educational, historical and local history in nature.

Relevance of the topic. Despite the sufficient study of the chosen topic, it does not lose its relevance to this day. At the moment, the history of the Old Believers and its influence on the formation of the region, its contribution to the history of the Urals is beginning to become increasingly popular. This is partly due to interest in their region, and on the other hand, with all-Russian trends in the search for their identity and spiritual self-awareness of the population. Therefore, today you can often find representatives of the “old faith” appealing to ideas and values, both among ordinary people and among representatives of various sects, nationalist organizations, etc. Accordingly, the theme of the Old Believers is relevant to this day. In addition, tourist interest in the culture and life of the Ural Old Believers is becoming increasingly popular.

The purpose of the work is a historical and local history review of the Old Believers in the Urals.

The objectives of the work are to consider the general political situation in the country on the eve of the reforms of Patriarch Nikon; consideration of the history of the Old Believer Urals through the prism of the main trends.

Geographical framework. The geography of work covers the entire Urals, but mainly the territories of the Perm and Sverdlovsk regions. Such a geographical framework is explained by the localization of the main Old Believer communities, which have been sufficiently studied to date. Although individual hermitages were scattered throughout the Urals, information about them is very vague.

Chronological framework. The main chronology of the work covers the framework from the 18th century to the present day. The lower date is explained by the fact that it was from the 18th century that stable and reliable documentary sources on the activities of the Ural Old Believers reach us.

Chapter I. Nikon's reforms and the Church schism

The church schism in Russia had long roots. Back in the 16th century, the first disagreements emerged between apologists for ancient, sanctified traditions and rituals and those who were not so zealous about the letter of church laws and dogmas. At first, these disagreements had not yet resulted in open struggle.

In the 16th century, the Moscow state was formed on the ruins of former appanage principalities and large boyar estates. It is already based on small local land ownership and the merchant elite. The Church is also being transformed both from the point of view of organization and from the side of ideology, and from the side of attitude towards the state. The feudal church worlds give way to the Moscow centralized metropolis, and then to the patriarchate. During the second half and the entire 16th century, a fierce social struggle simmered on this basis, in which church groups and figures took an active part. The crisis of the feudal church was accompanied by the emergence of various heretical movements. But this was a crisis of religious ideology, and not of the church as an organizational structure. The latter, on the contrary, in 16th centuries strengthened: in 1448 the Russian Orthodox Church gained autocephaly (self-proclamation), and in 1589 its head received the title of Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' and in the pan-Orthodox “table of ranks” took an honorable fifth place - directly behind the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem (Platonov S.F., M. 1993. P. 117-119).

The first heretical movement against the feudal church organization and feudal piety began in Pskov. Then it migrated to Tver and Novgorod. It migrated from Novgorod to Moscow, and, despite all the measures against it, it continued to nest in Moscow and other cities for a century and a half, changing its forms and content, but invariably maintaining the same tendency: to criticize the feudal church and fight against it .

Currently, we do not have any documentary information about the beginning of the Strigolniki heresy, as the first Russian heresy was dubbed by official representatives of the Russian Church. It is only known that this name was given in accordance with the craft of one of the founders of the Karp sect, “the art of the strigolnik,” i.e. according to the most likely interpretation, a “cloth shearer,” an artisan clothier. The starting point of the heresy lay in local Pskov church relations, which hardly coexisted next to the feudal organization of the Novgorod archbishopric see, to which Pskov was subordinated in church terms. From this clash between the city church organization established in Pskov and the Novgorod archbishop, the Strigolnik sect was born. Almost a hundred years later, in the middle of the century, circles of zealots of piety formed among the city clergy who wanted to cleanse the church of filth. The most influential of all was the Moscow circle, organized by the royal confessor, Archpriest Stefan Vonifatiev. He was joined by the future Patriarch Nikon, who was then the archimandrite of the Novospassky Monastery, some cathedral archpriests and several laymen. The members of the circle were well aware of the “ills” of the Russian Church. The vices of the church are depicted from the point of view of zealots in the famous anonymous letter, found in Moscow in December 1660, which denounced the higher clergy and alarmed the Moscow bishops. Its composition was attributed to the priest Herodion. The message of the letter for the zealots was clear: if the lower clergy is corrupt, it is not through their own fault. The fault lies with those who “install priests and then turn them into wolves with their bribery and connivance.” How can the lower clergy be non-covetous when all the bishops are acquiring money, and, first of all, they are acquiring it from themselves? How can a priest avoid “drunkenness” when the “holy legislators of power” have “bellies as thick as cows”? How can a priest preach against the remnants of paganism when the bishops themselves host “buffoon games”? Urban zealots wanted to fight all these vices with the help of reform from above. Through Vonifatiev, they gained influence on the young Tsar Alexei, and on their advice, the Tsar issued several decrees to correct church shortcomings. They tried to act through purely church reforms, but they met with strong opposition from the then Patriarch Joseph and partly from the parishioners, who were dissatisfied with the significant lengthening of services. It became obvious to the zealots that the healing of the church must begin from above, by fighting the episcopate, and for this it is necessary, first of all, to take the most important episcopal positions into the hands of the circle. Through Vonifatiev, the Moscow circle found access to the tsar and received the opportunity to place their own people in the vacant episcopal sees. And when Patriarch Joseph died, the same circle hastened to elevate their “friend” Nikon, who by that time had become the Archbishop of Novgorod, to the patriarchal throne, and hoped to ensure that, with the assistance of the latter, church reform. However, Nikon completely deceived the calculations of the zealots. Nikon really began reforms, but not those and not in the spirit that the zealots desired. Only then did the zealots realize their mistake, speak a completely different language and switch to different tactics. At the same time, the rural clergy accepted the reforms as an open declaration of war - the situation immediately became decisive.

From the point of view of the zealots, the reform of the church should have affected only church organization and morality. In place of the princes of the church, who exploited the parish clergy, the zealots wanted to install hierarchs obedient to themselves, dreaming, perhaps, of subsequently holding the election of the episcopate, as was established in the 19th century. in the Old Believer Church. The correction of church morality again served the purpose of internal strengthening of the church: on the one hand, it was also supposed to reduce the exploitative habits of the “wolves”, on the other hand, to reconcile the laity with the church. But the reform, in the minds of the zealots, should not at all concern the essence of faith and cult (Melnikov F.E., 1999, pp. 72-81). Nikon had completely different ideas about reform. He had nothing against the correction of church morality, but this was the end of the points of contact between him and his former friends. On the organizational side, he wanted to correct the church, but not by establishing a conciliar principle in it, but by implementing in it the strict autocracy of the patriarch, independent of the tsar, and by elevating the priesthood over the kingdom. The Patriarch of All Rus' should stand next to the Tsar of All Rus'. He should not share income, honor, or power with the king. Nikon came up with a whole thoughtful and developed theory. He formulated it fully in his responses to the church council of 1667, before which he had to appear as an accused. But this theory was formulated by him even before accepting the patriarchate, for his entire policy as patriarch was the implementation of this theory in practice.

Two swords rule over the world, spiritual and worldly. The first is owned by the bishop, the second by the king. Which of the two is higher? Contrary to those who claim that the king is superior, Nikon proves that this is wrong and that the bishop is superior. Christ gave the apostles the right to bind and decide, but the bishops are the successors of the apostles. The bishop crowns the king with the kingdom; he can “bind” the king through the royal confessor, subordinate to the bishop, he can “forbid” the king. The tsar cannot interfere in church affairs except at the invitation of the patriarch, but the patriarch has the right and must lead the tsar. Thus, Nikon wanted to reform the organizational unification of the Russian church by freeing it from subordination to the state, which sought to gird itself with two swords at once. Spiritual and material, to use, according to need, either one or the other. By creating a parallel church organization to the state and its governing body. But Nikon’s dreams were not destined to come true - he was convicted and exiled (Kostomarov N.I., M. 1995. P. 15-17). But even before the disgrace, according to the king’s thoughts and with his full approval, he undertook and carried out another reform, which also had a unifying character. This last reform was completely opposite to the plans of the zealots and, as we said, marked the beginning of a fierce internal church struggle, which led to a church schism and found a response in all opposition layers of the then society. We must pay close attention to this.

The essence of the official reform was to establish uniformity in liturgical rites. The United Russian Church, the sister of the Eastern churches, did not have a uniform liturgical order and differed in this from its Eastern brethren. The Eastern patriarchs constantly pointed this out to Nikon and his predecessors. In a single church there should have been a single cult. The councils of the 16th century, having elevated local patrons to the rank of All-Russian saints, did not complete the task of unifying the cult. It was also necessary to introduce uniformity in the liturgical rite, to replace the specific liturgical diversity with Moscow uniformity. The question of carrying out this fundamental reform arose even before Nikon in connection with the victory of technology in the book business. As long as there were handwritten books produced locally by local scribes and based on local originals, there could be no question of reform. But when in the second half of the 16th century. A Printing House appeared in Moscow and it was decided to supply all churches with printed liturgical books, reference books, i.e. editors of printed publications discovered extraordinary diversity in handwritten books, both from the side of individual words and expressions, and from the side of the rites of liturgical rites. Errors and typos were easy to correct. But the matter was more complicated - it was necessary to choose one, the most correct, rite and record it in printed books, thereby destroying all other ritual options. The main difficulty turned out to be in choosing a sample for correction. For the Tsar and Nikon, these were the Greek ranks of that time. For the vast majority of the clergy - ancient Russian ranks, enshrined in “charatean” (handwritten) books (Kostomarov N.I., M. 1995. P. 25-30).

So, the reform had to concern rituals. They are surprised how such a reform, the correction of the details of the liturgical rite, could arouse such fierce disputes. They refuse to understand why Nikon and his opponents attached such importance to the “single letter “az”. But behind this “az” were hidden two real opposites of the old independent parish clergy with its diverse cults and ranks and the new noble church, which had destroyed every shadow of independence everywhere and strived to uniformity.

The very process of “correction” further contributed to the gap between the new uniformity and the old faith. We will not present it in detail, but it is necessary to outline the main points. Officially, the need for correction was motivated at the council of 1654 by the fact that there were many errors and insertions in the old printed books, and by the fact that the Russian liturgical rite differed very significantly from the Greek. They wanted to base the correction on the ancient harathein, i.e. handwritten, Slavic and Greek books. This, at least, was Nikon's original intention. But when we began to implement this task in practice, enormous difficulties emerged. There were few ancient manuscripts, and those that were available diverged from one another. The inquiry officers did not know how to understand them, and this path was abandoned and replaced by another. The Tsar and Nikon decided to recognize as the norm the then printed Greek books printed in Venice, as well as Slavic missals for the Lithuanian-Russian Uniates, printed there. Use them to edit Russian books. Following this directive, the reference workers first made a translation from the Greek Venetian editions. Not particularly relying on their knowledge of the Greek language, they constantly checked it with the Slavic Uniate text. This translation was the main edition of the new Russian liturgical books. The final edition was established by making individual amendments based on some ancient manuscripts, Slavic and Greek. This final edition was approved by Nikon and went to the Printing House for reproduction.

The result of this correction was completely unexpected. The fact is that over the seven centuries that have passed since the religious reform of Vladimir, the entire Greek liturgical rite has changed in a very significant way. Double-fingering (which became a custom to replace the former single-fingering), which the first Greek priests taught to the Russian and Balkan Slavs and which until the middle of the 17th century. also held in Kyiv and Serbian Church, in Byzantium was replaced under the influence of the fight against the Nestorians by triplicate (late 12th century). The finger shape during blessing has also changed. All liturgical rites became much shorter, some important chants were replaced by others (Melnikov F.E., 1999, pp. 93-94).

As a result, when Nikon replaced old books and rituals with new ones, it was like the introduction of a “new faith.” The dogmas of the Stoglavy Cathedral, two fingers and walking in the direction of the sun, were destroyed. While Stoglav proclaimed: “Whoever is not marked with two fingers, like Christ, is cursed.” Patriarch Macarius, at the request of Nikon, during the week of Orthodoxy in the Assumption Cathedral publicly showed how to cross with three fingers, and proclaimed: “And whoever, according to Theodorite’s scripture and false tradition, does (two fingers), he is cursed.” Following Macarius, the same curse on the two-fingered people was proclaimed by two other Eastern patriarchs. The entire liturgical rite was redone and shortened so much that the question of polyphony no longer existed. Previous formulas and actions had to be replaced with completely new ones. The new church brought with it a new faith (History of the Old Believer Church: A Brief Essay. - M. 1991. pp. 9-12).

The priests Lazar and Nikita (Pustosvyat), from the city zealots, had the patience to do a huge job of detailed comparison of new books with old ones and presented the results of their research in petitions to the king. It turned out that the rites of baptism and confirmation were changed and shortened, in which the “sacramental invitations” that followed the words “seal of the gift of the holy spirit” and explained what gift was given were excluded, i.e. the most magical formulas were destroyed. Further, the rite of repentance, consecration of oil and marriage was changed. Among the public services, the rites of the ninth hour and Vespers have also been changed, now combined and significantly reduced compared to the previous ones, as well as the rite of Matins. The biggest changes were in the liturgy. First of all, the rite of the progskomidia has been completely redone: instead of seven prosviras there are five, for the repose of the dead, not one part is taken out for everyone, but a particle for each person commemorated. Then, instead of the image on the provira of the usually used eight-pointed cross, the image of a four-pointed cross was introduced, which was commonly used among the Greeks and Catholics of that time. Further, Nikita and Lazar indicate a whole series of changes and abbreviations in the liturgy from the very beginning to the end: one is subtracted, another is changed, a third is inserted, so that “the whole order is broken.” The second and eighth members of the creed have been changed: in the first, “az” (born, but created) has been destroyed. In the latter the word “true” is missing. Finally, in those prayers and psalms that remained untouched, new figures of speech and new terms were introduced instead of the old ones, and without any need! The listing of examples of these discrepancies in Nikita’s petition takes up six pages of the text of Subbotin’s “Materials”. In conclusion, Nikita makes another discovery that completely undermines the good quality of the correction: in different books “official actions and litanies are printed inconsistently, in one book it is printed this way, and in another differently, and the first verses are placed last, and the last ones in front or in the middle.” Obviously, the editors of the new books did not agree with each other or did not monitor the printing and thus greatly damaged the introduction of Nikon’s uniformity (Melnikov F.E., 1999. pp. 99-102).

One can imagine what a storm arose among the parish clergy when the new books were sent to churches. The rural clergy, illiterate, learning services by ear, had to either refuse new books or give way to new priests. For it was unthinkable for him to relearn. The majority of the city clergy and even the monasteries were in the same position. The monks of the Solovetsky Monastery expressed this directly in their verdict, without any reservations: “We have become accustomed to serving divine liturgies according to the old service books, according to which we first learned and got used to, and now, even according to those service books, we, the old priests, will not be able to hold our weekly queues, and we won’t be able to learn from the new service books for our old age... and we priests and deacons are weak in strength and unaccustomed to reading and writing, and are stuck in inertia, according to which we studied the old service books for many years, but served with great need... and from the new service books For us, as inert and unyielding monks, no matter how much we learn, it will be better for us to be with our brothers in our monastic labors.”

In 1668, the famous Solovetsky riot began and only in 1676, thanks to the betrayal of one of the defector monks, Theoktistus, the siege came to an end. Theokist led the royal archers at night through a hole in the wall blocked with stones, and the monastery was taken after an eight-year siege. Thus the last stronghold of monastic feudalism perished. The Old Believer legend about the Solovetsky siege, decorated with all sorts of miracles, and Old Believer folk songs dedicated to the Solovetsky sitting still retain a special charm and special interest. After all, this was the first battle in the open struggle of all forces hostile to the Moscow state and united by the banner of the old faith. The rural and city priests did not have such a choice. The new faith obviously required new ministers! The old ones had to fight until the last opportunity, and then either submit, which was virtually impossible, or finally break with the noble church and give up their place to the obedient proteges of the Nikonians. And the partisan struggle, which had hitherto been waged from time to time, immediately flared up along the entire line, capturing the entire professional parish clergy. In the foreground of the struggle of the parish clergy he put an apology for the old faith. The authors of petitions to the Tsar defend the “former Christian faith,” proclaiming Nikon’s innovations as a “new unfamiliar faith.” For them, this former faith consisted precisely in knowledge and observance of the right ways to please the deity. In general, the entire apology is based on the ideology of the XIV-XVI centuries. (Milovidov V.F., “Thought”. 1969. P. 49-62).

But one should not think that “correction” comes from other, more developed religious ideas. In response to the apology, the Tsar, Nikon and Eastern Patriarchs First of all, they pointed to the authority, antiquity and purity of the Greek faith, taken as the norm for correction, but did not at all go into explaining and exposing the “misconceptions” of the apologists, their perverted concepts of faith. They put the later apologists of Synod Orthodoxy in the greatest difficulty: we have to admit that Nikon was as ignorant of the faith as his opponents. But against the reference to the authority of the Greek Church, the apologists had an irresistible argument ready: the famous “Book of Faith,” the official publication of the Moscow patriarchal see, shortly before Nikon, had already declared the Greek faith “perverted.” “The violence of the Turkish Mahmet, the crafty Florence Council and the embarrassment of Roman sciences” destroyed the frequency of Greek Orthodoxy, and “since the summer of 6947 (1439), the Greeks adopted three Papage laws: dousing, three-fingered, do not wear crosses on yourself,” and instead of “honest tripartite cross" - Latin "two-part cross". The Greek and Slavic books, from which Nikon ruled, were printed in Rome, “Vinecy” and “Paryzhe” with a fierce heretical potion introduced by the Latins and Lutherans. The heresy does not lie in the fact that the prayers were translated anew, but in the conversion to the Latin model of the sign of the cross, walking with salt, tripling the hallelujah, the cross, etc., in changing the entire church rite. “All the heretics from the age of ephemeral times have been collected in new books,” declares Habakkuk. Nikon undertook such a thing that no heretic had dared to do before him. “There have never been heretics before who would transform holy books and introduce disgusting dogmas into them,” says Deacon Fedor. Under the pretext of church corrections, Nikon wants to eradicate pure Orthodoxy in Rus', taking advantage of the tsar’s connivance and with the help of such obvious heretics as the Greek Arseny or the Kyiv scientists. The “new unknown faith” turned out to be the most evil heresy (Bogdanov N.S., “Science and Religion.” 1994. pp. 115-118).

The petitions have already given all the premises for the subsequent assessment of the Nikonian Church, when the schism has already become an accomplished fact: “its teaching is harmful to the soul, its services are not services, its sacraments are not sacraments, its shepherds are wolves.” The petitions, however, turned out to be too weak a weapon in the fight against the combined forces of the tsar, Nikon and the episcopate. The most prominent opposition leaders were exiled and damned. In response to the apology of the old faith, the “Tablet” was published, declaring the old rituals to be heresy. Some time later, due to cooling and then a break between the Tsar and Nikon, the situation remained uncertain. But in 1666 it was finally and officially recognized that Nikon’s reform was not his personal business, but the business of the tsar and the church. A council of ten bishops, assembled this year, first of all, decided to recognize the Greek patriarchs as Orthodox, although they live under the Turkish yoke, and to recognize as Orthodox the books used by the Greek Church. After this, the council condemned to eternal damnation "with Judas the traitor and with the Jews who crucified Christ, and with Arius, and with other damned heretics" all who do not listen to those commanded from us and do not submit to the holy Eastern Church and this consecrated cathedral." The Tsar and his The parties undertook to draw the material sword: by virtue of the decrees of 1666-1667, heretics were to be subjected to “royal executions, that is, according to city laws." The search for heretics and the execution of the city trial were entrusted to the governors. The struggle on the peaceful basis of religious polemics was over. There remained armed resistance, of which, however, the clergy alone, by themselves, were not capable. The professional opposition of the parish clergy gradually fades away. The opposition of the city clergy, very small in number, quickly disappears as soon as the circle of zealots was finally defeated. The opposition of the rural clergy is drowning in the great peasant religious movement, which began in the 60s, and loses its professional individuality: the village priest, who did not want to accept new books or did not know how to use them, could only leave after the peasantry who fled from serf bondage, giving his place to the protege of the Nikonian landowner. The new rural priests, who served according to the Nikon rite, were already faithful servants of the local nobility. The intra-church movement ended with the victory of the official reform (History of the Old Believer Church: A Brief Essay. - M. 1991, pp. 84-105).

The convicted ministers of the old faith, however, did not submit and went “into schism,” that is, they broke away from the official church and continued to fight it in various ways. They found support in the struggle among the most diverse elements. On the one hand, these were elements condemned by the course of history to disappear - the last remnants of the boyars and the old streltsy service class. On the other hand, these were elements that stood in opposition to the noble state due to the fact that they were the object of its cruelest exploitation - the townspeople and especially the peasantry. Groups from these social strata that did not accept Nikon’s reform also fell into schism. Thus, this original social-religious movement began, multifaceted in its social composition and diverse in its ideology (Kostomarov N.I., M. 1995. pp. 212-223).

So, there were three main directions of the split: boyar, townsman and peasant. The clergy, who did not accept the “new faith,” divided, and its various elements joined the main three directions, without forming any separate unique movement of the old faith. Of these three main directions, the boyar movement soon disappeared completely from the scene along with the end of the boyars. On the contrary, among the townspeople and peasants the old faith received further and extremely interesting development. At the same time, in the form of the “Old Russian” faith, the Old Believers survived among the townspeople and bore their most mature and genuine fruits there.

The posad opposition was the opposition of future participants in political domination. In the social sphere, the townsman merchants already in the 18th century brought under their dependence almost all the “vile” elements of the townsman world. Therefore, religious development among the posad opposition was directed not so much towards the development of a new religious ideology, but towards the development of a church organization. An organization of domination that operated with the old, “ancient Russian”, “true Orthodox” ideology. The development of the townsman schism was based during the 18th century on the growth of merchant capital, which was looking for all sorts of ways to accumulate, and it was most straightforward in the so-called priestly schism, which by the middle of the 19th century had developed a complete Old Believer church.

Development among the peasant opposition took a different path. As the original peasant schismatic organizations formed at the end of the seventeenth century decayed under the influence of social differentiation, they disintegrated into sectarian peasant communities. In addition, tormented on all sides by the feudal state, the peasantry during the 18th and 19th centuries created more and more new sects, rumors and agreements (Kulpin E.S. 1997, pp. 77-78).

Until the 18th century, the dominant church did not divide schismatics into categories, rumors, and agreements. All Russian people who disagreed with the ruling church were called by the common name “schismatics.” From the very beginning, the split was divided into two parts: clericalism and lack of priesthood. When, over time, the schismatics lost their priests of the old order (i.e., those ordained before Nikon corrected the church books), then one part of the opponents of Nikon’s reform, recognizing the need for priests to perform the sacraments, began to accept priests of the new order, i.e. .e. ordained after Nikon. The other part completely rejected the priesthood, declaring that the sacred rank had been abolished everywhere. Therefore there are no more sacraments. In addition to baptism and confession, which, on the basis of canonical rules, in case of extreme need, are also allowed to be performed by the laity. The first, who lived mainly in inner Russia and southern Ukraine, formed a sect of priesthood. The latter, living mainly in the deserts of northern Pomerania and Siberia, formed a priestless community. This priestlessness rejected the entire hierarchy, but not in principle, but only in fact, i.e., recognizing the need for the priesthood and sacraments, it claims that there are no correct priests. Their restoration is impossible forever, and therefore the performance of the five sacraments (except baptism and repentance) is forever impossible. Neither in the priesthood, nor in the non-priesthood, during their very formation, was there a person who, using the authority of all his like-minded people scattered across the vast expanses of Russia, gave only unchangeable statutes to the sect and organized it correctly. This is why, from time to time, different views on this or that subject of church structure arose in schismatic communities. This is where divisions arose (Milovidov V.F., M.: "Mysl". 1969. P. 51-54).

At the end of the 17th century, when the persecuted schismatics retreated into forests and deserts, many monasteries were formed every year. And almost every founder of the skete, adhering to the schism in its main features, had personally his own views on one or another particular of the schismatic charter. The difference between different flavors of the same category, i.e. clericalism and lack of priesthood were not important. Some differed from others in the number of bows during penance for the same sin, in the techniques used when censing with censers, in the use of a leather or canvas ladder (rosary), in the use of one or another inscription on the cross, etc. Each branch of schism, each interpretation, each monastery, or sect, was named after the creator of the monastery, teacher, abbot. He was dying and someone else took his place. And the monastery, managed by him, took a new name, after the name of its abbot. This new name was, for some authors, like a new branch of schism.

We examined the main provisions concerning the general political situation in the country, which led to the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, and with the consequences thereof, the result of which was the Schism. Now let us turn directly to the topic that interests us, namely, the Old Believers in the Urals.

Chapter II. Old Believers in the Urals

1 "Austrians" in the Urals and Western Siberia

From persecution and executions, the Old Believers fled to the outskirts of Russia and abroad. From the Volga along the Kama, the schismatic colonization of the townspeople went to the Urals. One of their habitat areas was the Middle Urals, where they settled in Nizhny Tagil and Nevyansk, on the shores of lakes Tavatuy and Shartash, in the village of Stanovaya and many other places. Some of the settlers arrived in the Urals from the outskirts of Nizhny Novgorod, from the Kerzhenets River. This area was considered a hotbed of schism, and therefore the Old Believers there were persecuted especially zealously (Preobrazhensky A.A., M. 1956. P. 8). Already in 1736, Privy Councilor Tatishchev reported to St. Petersburg about the Old Believers in the Ural factories, “that the schismatics had multiplied in those places, and most importantly, that at the particular factories of the Demidovs and Osokins, almost all the clerks, and some of the industrialists themselves, were schismatics, and if send them out, then, of course, they have no one to maintain factories, and in the factories of Her Imperial Majesty there will be some harm, for there, in many factories, such as tin, wire, steel, iron, almost all grub and needs are traded by Olonchan, Tulyan and Kerzhentsy - all schismatics." All these Volga and Ural organizations supported the Kerzhenets monasteries, from where they were sent teachers and priests who received “correction” in the monasteries (Pavlovsky N.G., Ekaterinburg, 1994. pp. 15-18).

The fugitive zealots of the “ancient” piety were allowed to live at the factories until the decree, because the need for labor was enormous. One after another, new state-owned and private factories opened in the Urals, and old ones expanded. And when the Yekaterinburg fortress factory appeared near the village of Shartash, the Chief Commander, Major General Vilim Ivanovich Gennin (Georg Willem de-Hennin), began to provide special patronage to the Kerzhaks. Dutch by birth, he, in principle, did not recognize religious intolerance, but he assessed people only by business qualities. In this regard, V.I. Gennin could not help but single out the Old Believers from the general mass of settlers, among whom there were many “walking people” - vagabonds and real robbers. The “Two Fingers” were distinguished by their hard work, neatness, honesty, and thorough approach to any business. The Old Believers were also responsible for the supply of all kinds of supplies for state-owned factories, to which entire villages were assigned to them. In a similar way, the interests of the Old Believers and the largest Ural factory owners, the Demidovs, coincided, who went even further and at one time even clearly condoned prominent dissenters, providing material support to their communities. Many of the Demidov factories were run by Old Believers, who helped settlers persecuted for their faith in settling down in a new place. So the Urals became a haven for dissidents. Between V.I. Gennin and the Old Believers have developed something like an unspoken agreement: I give you the opportunity to live here peacefully, and you, please, do not stir up trouble among the people, live in harmony with those who profess official Orthodoxy and do not attract others “in your stupid way of thinking” into your superstitious custom “For those who acted differently, the most severe punishments were provided. But most of the Old Believers behaved peacefully, worked regularly, did not conflict with secular authorities, and even prayed for the Tsar (Industry and the working class of the mining Urals in the 18th - early 20th centuries. Sverdlovsk. 1982. pp. 121-129).

Relations between the Old Believers and the diocesan priests have always been, to put it mildly, difficult, and even the intercession of the mountain authorities did not always guarantee them a quiet life. 1736-1737, when the Ural mining industry was controlled by V.N. Tatishchev, are remembered by many residents of the region for their massive raids in the surrounding forests in search of monasteries, elders and old women. At the same time, on the shore of a pond in Yekaterinburg, a special prison was built for stubborn dissenters (the so-called Zarechny Tyn), from which they were not supposed to leave alive. A cemetery was also built there for them. But over time, the attitude of the Yekaterinburg mountain authorities towards the schismatics again became neutral (Essays on the history of the Urals. Ekaterinburg. 1996. pp. 40-42).

In 1735, a census of Old Believers living in Yekaterinburg and its environs was carried out. A total of 2,797 people were included in the lists, including at the Demidov factories - 1,905 (1,127 men and 778 women), in Yekaterinburg - 196 (123 and 73), in the village of Shartash - 180 (101 and 79), in the village of Stanovoy 16 ( 11 and 5), “near Lake Tavatuy” - 134 (85 and 49). Much larger number The Old Believers did not catch the eye of the census takers, fortunately there were plenty of opportunities to hide. But there is no doubt that then the census managed to cover the majority of those who had a farm or a trade and wanted to legalize their activities. Decrees from above ordered the Ural mining authorities to identify during the census those who introduced new settlers into the schism. It was impossible to avoid this, but the mining authorities also did not want to scare away good workers with inquiries. Then someone came up with a simple answer to this very tricky question, which suited everyone and was neatly entered into the journal by the officials: “he fell into schism with his brothers and sisters and with his wives and according to the teaching of his parents, and their parents were in this schism from an early age.” years available." According to the majority of Old Believers included in the census, their appearance in Yekaterinburg and the outskirts of the city dates back to the 20s - early 30s. XVIII century(Milovidov V.F., M.: "Thought". - 1969. P. 84-87).

In the last quarter of the 18th century. Catherine II equalized the rights of the Old Believers with other Russians: she abolished the double salary that they paid according to the decrees of Peter I. She granted the right of judicial testimony and allowed them to take public office. It is no coincidence that Ekaterinburg adherents of ancient rituals always remembered Catherine II with gratitude, calling her “worthy of eternal glory” (Baidin V.I., Sverdlovsk. 1983. P. 34). It was then that the most energetic “double-talkers” showed their commercial talents. And many Shartash peasants moved to the urban class - the Yekaterinburg merchants. In 1788, by decree of Catherine II, she was sent to Yekaterinburg special mission"for the conversion of stubborn Ural schismatics." But very few of the city merchants, led by Tolstikov, then accepted the admonitions of the mission. Together with the Tolstikovs, the merchants Cherepanovs and Verkhodanovs joined the Edinoverie. In 1803, the first Edinoverie parish opened in Yekaterinburg, and in 1806 the Edinoverie Church in the name of the All-Merciful Savior began to operate. The Tolstikovs invested a lot of money in it. In terms of wealth, the Spasskaya Church was considered the first among Edinoverie churches in the entire Perm province. The name “Tolstikovskaya” was assigned to it. Why did the bulk of the Ekaterinburg “schismatics” persist and not convert to the same faith? After all, after reunification through common faith with the official Orthodox Church, many problems were immediately removed - baptisms, weddings, funeral services for the dead could be performed not with the help of fugitive, so-called “corrected” priests, but quite legally and according to ancient rites. With corresponding entries in metric books. Previously concluded marriages immediately became legal, and the children of Old Believers became legitimate. The fact is that at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Yekaterinburg Old Believer community felt very confident and did not feel the need to formalize the family relationships of its members through church metrics. Everyone knew that Ural merchants and managers of private factories formalized their marriages with the help of Old Believers priests. This was quite enough; it never occurred to anyone to challenge the legality of weddings and baptisms of children. In addition, the Old Believers saw that Edinoverie does not always guarantee exact compliance of church services with ancient rites. In the same Spasskaya Church, diocesan clergy often violated them. The bulk of the Old Believers did not want to hear about any agreements with the official Orthodox Church, associating with it cruel persecution in the past and numerous current humiliations. And finally, from the very beginning, the Ekaterinburg Old Believer community was supported in all matters by the very influential Rogozhskoe cemetery in Moscow, helping to resolve conflicts with local and central authorities (Mikityuk V.P., Ekaterinburg, 2000, pp. 15-18).

Beginning in 1827, the Old Believers gradually lost, one after another, the rights they received under Catherine II, Paul I and Alexander I. A real hunt began for the fugitive priests who were supported by the communities. Clergymen were defrocked and expelled from the clergy. And community leaders were punished for “holding court.” In 1829, the Perm governor notified the mountain authorities that the emperor “deigned to give the highest command to instill in the Ekaterinburg schismatic elders so that they should not intensify their influence... for fear of responsibility for disturbing public peace.” From that time on, the decline of Yekaterinburg began as a spiritual center of the Old Believers (Essays on the history of the Urals. Yekaterinburg, 1996, p. 51).

The Old Believers in the Urals were not a single entity. And, although in the XVII-XVIII centuries. It never occurred to anyone to divide the Old Believers according to any criteria; such a division is present in modern historiography. Therefore, in this work we will adhere to the modern understanding of this problem. Let us consider the two most influential and numerous groups of Ural Old Believers - the “Austrians” and the “chapels”.

From the very beginning of the schism in the Russian Orthodox Church, the Old Believers did not abandon the idea of ​​“getting” a bishop to join them. The attempts they made in the 18th century were unsuccessful. This problem became especially acute in the first half of the 19th century, when the government issued a number of legislative acts prohibiting the admission of “runaway” priests. The question of the need to restore the three-tier hierarchy in the Old Believer Church was discussed in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Starodubye, Kerzhenets, Vetka, Irgiz and other centers of Old Belief. It was decided to send trusted monks Pavel (Velikodvorsky) and Alimpiy (Miloradov (aka Zverev)) to the East in search of the bishop. The expedition of the Old Believer delegates was crowned with success: in Constantinople they met the former Metropolitan of Bosno-Sarajevo Ambrose (Popovich). He agreed to join Old Orthodoxy and moved to the territory of Austria to a monastery located near the town of Belaya Krinitsa. On October 28, 1846, the “widowhood” of the Old Believer Church ended: the Metropolitan was annexed to the Old Believer. The new agreement was called the Belokrinitsky hierarchy (“Austrians”). As soon as the Russian government learned about the events in Belaya Krinitsa, a diplomatic scandal broke out. The Austrian authorities were forced to expel Ambrose to the city of Ziel (where he died in 1863). But by this time in the Old Believers, in addition to the metropolitan, there were already two bishops - Kirill (Timofeev) of Mainos and Arkady (Dorofeev) of Slavia. Since 1849, Ambrose’s successor at the metropolitan see was Kirill (World of Old Believers., M.: ROSSPEN. 1998. P. 69-72). In Russia, the bishops of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy, for various reasons, were able to appear no earlier than 1849. The first to arrive, in the rank of Bishop of Simbirsk, was Sophrony (Moscow tradesman Stepan Trofimovich Zhirov; installed as bishop on January 3, 1849 by Metropolitan Kirill). Soon after arriving from Austria, Sophrony toured the country (illegally, of course). This fact was also recorded by the Ural Orthodox priests. Nevyansk dean Fr. P. Shishev on February 15, 1850 reported to the Ekaterinburg Eminence Jonah (Kapustin) that “very recently a rumor spread in the most secret way among the Nevyansk Old Believers that an Old Believer bishop had appeared in Kazan, whom they lovingly call the groom of their Church, that this bishop came from Austrian Slavs, that he is already doing his job - supplying priests for the Old Believers, and that in order to hide his rank, he is posing as a merchant. Such seductive news for the Old Believers was released by the Yekaterinburg merchant Polievkt Korobkov, who allegedly saw this bishop himself in Kazan, talked with him and received a blessing from him." In 1852, Sophrony went on another trip around the country. Along the way, he was engaged in "recruiting personnel "to lead the communities of the new consent. Thus, in Samara, he elevated Vitaly (Buzuluk merchant Vasily Mikheevich Myatlev) to the rank of Bishop of the Urals, with whom Sophrony reached the Southern Urals. It was then that the “Austrian faith” began to spread in the Orenburg region. According to official statistics , in 1853, within the Orenburg province there were over 46.6 thousand Old Believers, and more than 32 thousand of them lived in the Ural region. It is no coincidence that Sophrony was the first to visit the “main points of schism” - the Sergievsky and Budarinsky monasteries, known far beyond the region The hermits, however, greeted the Old Believer bishop rather coolly, and Fr. Israel (the fugitive Cossack Yakov Vasilyevich Brednev) was not accepted at all at first, he was removed from his post and expelled from the monastery. Sophrony visited the Urals and the Southern Urals several more times. In a very short time, communities and secret monasteries of the “Austrians” were organized here (in particular, the Zlatoust monastery near Lake Turgoyak). According to the report of the Perm governor, in 1850 about 72 thousand “schismatics of various sects and persuasions” lived in the Perm province. According to missionary reports, in the 1850s. At least 100 thousand Old Believers were converted to Orthodoxy, and yet in 1860, according to the official report, the number of Ural Old Believers exceeded 64.3 thousand people. In fact, there is reason to believe that in reality there were 10 times more of them (Pavlovsky N.G., Ekaterinburg, 1994. pp. 20-28).

Followers of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy appeared in the Middle Urals in the middle of the 19th century, which was greatly facilitated by the energetic activity of the “Austrian” monks Aaron (caught in 1854 and transported to his place of residence in Yekaterinburg), Seraphim (arrested in 1854, sent to Belebey) and Gennady and the priests of the new installation. On December 23, 1855, Perm Archbishop Neophyte (Sosnin) received an anonymous note “via mail,” which stated that “the root of the vegetative evil has finally reached our Urals. Last November, an Austrian-born priest was here and corrected the needs among the Old Believers. They say that this newcomer married two or three step-marriages and baptized several children. There is reason to assume that he is now almost in the local district..." Meanwhile, Archbishop Anthony (Andrei Illarionovich Shutov; installed in Belaya Krinitsa on February 3, 1853 as Bishop of Vladimir) arrived in Moscow. According to the plans of the leaders of the Belokrinitsky consent, it was Anthony who was to become the head of the “Austrians” of Russia. However, Sophrony was also not averse to leading the Old Believer Church. In open conflict, the advantage was on the side of Anthony and his comrades. Sophrony again retired to the Urals and decided to establish an independent “patriarchy” here. For this purpose, on January 16, 1854, Hieromonk Israel was consecrated as a bishop, and the next day - as “Patriarch of All Rus'” under the name Joseph. On January 18 and 19, Sophrony and Vitaly mutually elevated each other to the rank of metropolitan (Kazan and Novgorod). These events seriously alarmed the leadership of the “Austrians”. Sophrony was summoned to Moscow, but ignored this “invitation”. More drastic measures had to be taken: in 1856, Metropolitan Kirill overthrew the “rebel” from the episcopal see, which forced Sophrony to humble himself and repent, although, as it soon became clear, only temporarily. The Moscow Council of the Belokrinitsky Church in 1859 appointed Sophrony as a supernumerary bishop. The Ural diocese was assigned to Vitaly, who also brought repentance (Preobrazhensky A.A., M. 1956. P. 128-139).

While the fight against Sophronius was going on, the “Austrians” seriously strengthened their positions in Russia. New Old Believer dioceses and new bishops appeared: Afanasy (peasant of the Vyatka province. Abram Abramovich Telitsyn, aka Kulibin; in 1855 he was consecrated Bishop of Saratov), ​​Konon (Don Cossack Kozma Trofimovich Smirnov; from 1855 Bishop of Chernigov (Novozybkov), in 1859 he was arrested and exiled to Suzdal), Pafnutiy (Potap Maksimovich Shikin; since 1856 Bishop of Kazan; “one of the best in mind Old Believers”), Gennady (Grigory Vasilyevich Belyaev since 1857 Bishop of Perm), with whose name associated with a significant increase in the activities of representatives of the Belokrinitsky Church in the Urals and Siberia.

The true leaders of the “Austrian” movement in the Urals, as well as everywhere else in Russia, were rich merchants (Punilova M.V., Krasnoyarsk. 1986. pp. 215-226).

One of the most important tasks facing the representatives of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy in the Urals was to attract new followers to their side, not only from among the large merchants, but also from the peasants. It was previously said that already in the 1850s. The leaders of the Belokrinitskys conducted active propaganda among the Old Believers. They did not abandon this activity at a later time. A feature of the period that began back in the 1880s. and lasting until 1905, there was an increase in “ideological” pressure on the “Austrians” from the Orthodox Church. If earlier the main method of combating the Belokrinitsky consent was predominantly repressive measures, then from the end of the 19th century. the method of persuasion was increasingly used. It is characteristic that if in the 1860-1870s. The "Austrian sect" was not mentioned among the most dangerous, but at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. Orthodox missionaries unanimously declared that “the most harmful part of the schism should be considered, undoubtedly, the Austrian consent. -172).

It is noteworthy that many of the missionaries who spoke out in the Urals as opponents of the “Austrians” in various debates about faith were themselves Old Believers in the recent past.

Among the most famous names one can name, for example, the Edinoverie priest Mikhail Sushkov (former Nizhny Tagil mentor of the chapels); the famous polemicist, "synodal missionary" Fr. Xenophon Kryuchkov, who accepted the Edinoverie in 1878, and before that also led the Bespopovites in the village. Poem Penza province; missionary priest Lev Ershov, who before his conversion to Orthodoxy in 1894 was one of the most literate and active members of the Fedoseyevsk community in Krasnoufimsk; the former head of the “Austrians” of the South-Knauf plant, Vasily Efimovich Konoplev, who took monastic vows with the name of Varlaam and in 1894 became the rector of the Orthodox missionary Belogorsk monastery; soon after his conversion to the Edinoverie (1903), Daniil Semenovich Kolegov (formerly a priest of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy in Nizhny Tagil) began missionary work among former parishioners.

The “Austrian” scribblers had to endure a lot of troubles during public conversations with the priestless Old Believers. In the Middle Urals, for example, the famous blind man A.A. was a frequent guest in the Middle Urals. Konovalov (save agreement). At the beginning of the 20th century. The Belokrinitskys were actively opposed by the defender of the chapels A.T. Kuznetsov.

As in most other regions, in the Urals and Western Siberia the main source of replenishment of the ranks of the “Austrians” were the Old Believers of the Chapel Consent (former Beglopopovites). Therefore, the main attention of the leadership of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy was traditionally directed to preaching among the chapels. Another important element of their missionary activity was a lively polemic with representatives of non-priest accords (in the Urals these are primarily Pomeranians and Spasovites), who sought to prove the “untruth and gracelessness” of the “Austrian” priesthood. And finally, the Ural Old Believers attached great importance to working against the missionaries of the official Church. A feature of the missionary activity of the “Austrians” in the Urals at the end of the 19th century. there was a lack of highly qualified scribes capable of speaking “on an equal footing” with both Orthodox “academic” priests and non-priest literati (Pokrovsky N.N., M., 1998, pp. 78-82).

The revolutionary events of 1917 found the most lively response in the leadership of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy. At the All-Russian Congress in May 1917, a resolution was adopted to support the Provisional Government. In a telegram addressed to the Prime Minister, Prince. Lvov said: “...the congress of Old Believers, welcoming the Provisional Government in your person, expresses complete trust and confidence in it that, under its wise leadership, God will save Russia from the coming anarchy and the external enemy.”

The leadership of the white movement understood perfectly well the power of the Old Belief. In 1919, the Youth Union of Old Believers of Belokrinitsky Consent was organized in Tomsk, cells of which soon appeared in the Urals (in Yekaterinburg, Miass and other cities).

In Kolchak’s army, along with representatives of the official Church, the institute of Old Believer priests was introduced, the activities of which were controlled by Bishop Filaret of Kazan, who temporarily headed the Tomsk diocese. However, this cooperation between the civil authorities and the Belokrinitsky Church was short-lived and ended with the defeat of Kolchak’s troops.

Soviet administration in the 1920s. She also allowed the “Austrians” some “liberties.” Until 1927, Consecrated Councils were convened and diocesan congresses were organized (albeit irregularly).

According to the authoritative opinion of V.P. Ryabushinsky, in 1926 there were at least 20 bishops of the Belokrinitsky Church in Russia. However, at the same time, the authorities began a gradual offensive against the Old Belief in general and the Belokrinitsky hierarchy in particular. In the second half of the 1930s. Repressions against the Old Believers of the Belokrinitsky consent reached their peak. By 1939, there were only no more than 5 bishops in the country. Arrests and trials of Old Believer priests took place everywhere, including in the Urals. A large number of temples, monasteries and hermitages were destroyed. The consequence of this was a significant reduction in the number of followers of the “Austrians”. The situation was very reminiscent of the situation in the Belokrinitsa Church in the 1850s, only in a much more tragic version. Of the several dozen communities in the Perm-Tobolsk diocese, only a few have survived, for example in Miass or in the village. Pier (Artinsky district, Sverdlovsk region).

Currently, in the territory that used to be part of the Perm-Tobolsk Old Believer diocese, there are about 10 “Austrian” communities. We can identify a number of the most significant centers of agreement in the Urals, for example in the city of Vereshchagino (120 km from Perm). At the beginning of the 20th century. there was an “Austrian” deanery here, uniting 17 parishes. The temple, destroyed after the revolution, was restored in 1947. The community is led by Archpriest Valery Shabashov.

Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist in the village. Shamary (in the east of the Sverdlovsk region) was built again in 1996, and the surviving drawings of the old church were taken as the basis for the project. According to our information, the Shamar community is the largest in our region. Hundreds of pilgrims come to Shamary every year who want to venerate the graves of the Old Believer monks Constantine and Arkady, buried near the village of 100.

The rector of the temple is Fr. Mikhail Tataurov. The “Austrian” community in Yekaterinburg resumed its activities not so long ago, but now there is already a prayer house and the issue of appointing a permanent priest is being decided. Local communities are directly subordinate to Metropolitan Alimpiy, who has repeatedly visited the Ural soil. However, the question of creating the Perm-Ekaterinburg diocese and appointing a bishop to the Urals has already been raised (Milovidov V.F., M.: “Mysl.” - 1969. P. 119-136).

2 Old Believers-chapels of the Urals at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

We have already mentioned the Old Believers-chapels in the context of their contacts with the “Austrians”. Let us dwell on adherents of this persuasion in more detail.

More than two centuries, starting from late XVII century, the Ural region was one of the largest centers of the Old Believers, without losing this significance even by the beginning of the 20th century. Despite all the efforts of the missionaries of the official Orthodox Church, the Perm province, as before, occupied one of the first places in the Russian Empire in terms of the number of Old Believers. According to the census of 1897, 95,174 Old Believers lived on the territory of the Perm province, while in the Tobolsk province - 31,986, and in the Orenburg and Ufa provinces adjacent to the Perm province from the west - 22,219 and 158,501, respectively. The adherents of "ancient piety" were, according to According to this census, about 3% of the total population of the provinces, but since the distribution of Old Believers throughout the region was uneven, in some areas the proportion of the Old Believers population was higher, and in others it was significantly lower. Historically, the main Old Believer centers were mining villages, as well as settlements, lying on the way from the European part of the country to Siberia and Far East.

The 1897 census showed how far from reality the data collected by the official church was, which, however, was recognized not only by researchers of the Old Believers, but also by missionaries. This circumstance was noted by Vrutsevich, who served until 1881 as secretary of the Perm Spiritual Consistory. He cited minimal, in his words, figures obtained based on a review of metric books of the late 1870-1880s. (in Verkhoturye district - 85,000 Old Believers, Shadrinsky and Kamyshlovsky, combined - 166,880), accompanying them with a comment: in three districts there are 4.5 times more schismatics than their number indicated in official reports for the entire Perm province. As the main reason for the significant increase in the number of Old Believers in the first decade of the 20th century. Representatives of the Orthodox Church most often referred to the policy of religious tolerance proclaimed by the Manifesto on April 17, 1905, declaring that with “such freedom” their missionary work would not be successful in the future. Pointing to the growth in the number of “referred to as Old Believers,” local church authorities no longer hid or downplayed these data, as before, but, on the contrary, for a more impressive illustration of how favorable conditions“the schism is consuming the Orthodox population more and more,” they probably could have somewhat “rounded” the data on the number of the Old Believer population, as was done in the report of the Perm diocesan missionary for 1913. Missionaries in 1913 noted an increase in the Old Believer population in Osinsky and Kungursky , Krasnoufimsky, Yekaterinburg, Verkhotursky, Kamyshlovsky districts by 2-4 times compared with the data of the statistical committees that conducted the census in 1897.

The increase in the size of the Old Believers population after 1905 occurs to a large extent due to the legalization of that part of the Old Believers who, before the announcement of freedom of religion, were considered to formally belong to the official Orthodox Church. According to the requirements established in 1905, everyone had to submit a petition to convert to the Old Believers separately. However, in exceptional cases, collective petitions were also granted. Very unusual, for example, was the petition filed in 1908 by 137 peasants from the village. Katarach, Shadrinsky district, Perm province. These peasants, considered Orthodox, petitioned to be allowed to return to the “faith of their fathers,” that is, to the Old Believers. In the process of admonishing them, it turned out that the parents of many of them “deviated into schism” in 1887, accompanying their decision with a petition to the Ekaterinburg Spiritual Consistory with a request to consider them officially Old Believers. The case was transferred from the consistory to the Synod, and there its consideration was delayed. The peasants, without waiting for official permission, began to baptize their children “according to the priestless rite” and subsequently turned not to the church, but to the mentor, but the local priest still considered them to be part of his church, and not without some benefit: after all, all parishioners, and therefore, they, too, were obliged to fulfill the position of church watchmen. It was this circumstance - the desire to get rid of the guard service - that became the main reason for the initiation in 1908 of that very petition for exclusion from Orthodoxy. After conversations with the missionary, the peasants confirmed their desire to convert to the Old Believers, citing the Decree on Tolerance. As a result, in the reports of the local dean for 1913, of all the residents of the village. Only 92 Qatari people attending the official Orthodox Church were listed; all the rest were classified as Old Believers-bespopovtsy (Industry and the working class of the mining Urals in the 18th - early 20th centuries. Sverdlovsk. 1982. pp. 72-78).

The circle of Old Believer agreements in the five central districts of the mining Urals, which make up the Yekaterinburg diocese, was quite wide. However, the chapels were considered the largest agreement among the Ural Old Believers at that time. The transformation of the Beglopopovsky consensus (Sofontievites) into the bespopovsky one (or as the chapel missionaries also called it - “old man’s sense”) occurred in the context of the struggle against the “schism” that the government of Nicholas I launched from the beginning of the 30s. XIX century Under the threat of deprivation of social and economic rights, most of the Yekaterinburg merchants and leaders of the Beglopopov society of Old Believers of the Siberian Territory in 1838 joined the Edinoverie. However, hopes that ordinary Old Believers would follow the example of the leaders did not materialize. Due to the persecution by the authorities of the fugitive priesthood and the collapse of the organization of the fugitive priests, they switched to non-priestly practice. Thus, Nikolaev’s repressive policy towards the Ural Old Believers was not successful, since it only led to a change in its organization: the Beglopopov society was replaced by a decentralized world of non-priest chapel communities. Part of the Trans-Ural peasant communities, under the influence of M.I. Galanin and his like-minded people, switched to non-popovian practice at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries.

Let us highlight a set of reasons why the Old Believers of the Urals and Trans-Urals switched to priestless practice. Firstly, there was always a shortage of fugitive priests. Old Believer parishes were very large; often the priest was not around at the right moment, and some liturgical functions were assumed by the laity. A sustainable practice was created to do without a priest. In addition, the priests who converted from Orthodoxy to the Old Believers were not, as a rule, distinguished by high moral qualities, and in conditions of an acute shortage of personnel, moral shortcomings usually worsened. Exacting the moral character of their shepherds, the peasants were increasingly inclined to abandon such priests.

Secondly, the merchants, who were the top of the Ural fugitive priests, who determined the life of harmony and led the fugitive priests, sought a compromise with the government. During the reigns of Catherine and Alexander there was a gradual softening of government policy and a compromise became possible. The bulk of the Old Believers - peasants - did not support the conciliatory policy of the elite and were radical. Internal contradictions in the Beglopopov consensus intensified. The consequence of this was the transition of the Old Believers peasants to priestless practice, which took place in the Trans-Urals earlier than in the mining Urals.

Thirdly, at this time there is a social stratification of the village. The emerging rural petty bourgeoisie seeks to take control of the internal life of the religious community, and this is easier to do when the community is self-governing and independent (Pokrovsky N.N., M., 1998, pp. 94-98).

The final decision to refuse further admission of “Nikonian” priests was made at the Tyumen Council on November 13, 1840, since “... and to this day they are strictly persecuted, we leave them. And for this purpose we elect rulers-abbots who are allowed by this council "to fulfill the demands and needs of the laity; just as our ancestors had abbots among us, but they were subordinate to the ruling priests. But now we completely deny them." Thus, the correction of requirements passed to the elders and charter teachers elected by the community. The old people acted as laymen; they did not have the right to read the prayers that the priest was supposed to say during worship and when performing the sacraments. But even having switched to non-priestly practice, the doctrine of the consent of the chapels continued to deny the dogma of the complete suppression of the true priesthood after the reforms of Patriarch Nikon. To resolve the most important issues, the chapels, like their Beglopopov predecessors, convened a council, to which representatives from the communities, both mentors and other laymen, were delegated. Typically, wealthy Old Believers took care of organizing such meetings; delegates held their meetings in their spacious city houses. The role of chairman of the meeting was often performed by mentors or trustees of lay communities, but the most influential was the opinion of the skete elders (as in previous times, in the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries), who were necessarily invited to the council. This continued, presumably, until the 1880s, when differences in views between the radical peasant communities (mainly trans-Ural) and the moderate urban commercial and industrial circles of the chapels again made themselves felt. In 1884, at the cathedral, the residents of Yekaterinburg were able to achieve the resolution they needed on a new search for the priesthood, despite the fact that it contradicted the arguments of the supporter of priestlessness, the most authoritative of the monk priests - Fr. Nifont, with whose opinion the peasant delegates also agreed. The fact that the role of the hermits invited to the Ural cathedrals has decreased is also evidenced by the further practice of holding such meetings: the monk hermits were present at the cathedral of 1908 and at the congress of 1911, but no longer participated in the discussions, ceding the leading role to representatives of lay communities. Nevertheless, despite the diminishing ideological role, forest desert dwellings retain their social and cult significance. Ural "factory dachas" in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. are still a refuge for many hermitage settlements. The proximity of some monasteries to settlements ensured, if necessary, the help of local lay chapels, but this proximity contained danger: from time to time the monasteries were subject to robberies (Pokrovsky N.N., //http//cclib.nsn/ru/win/projekts /siberia/religion/pokrov_ros/html).

At the beginning of the 20th century. The most literate people in secular communities, the scribes, had great authority among the chapels of the mining and processing Urals. They knew the texts relatively deeply Holy Scripture, works of St. fathers and church rules, mastered the techniques of conducting polemical conversations, defending the doctrine of their consent was a professional activity for them. During the disputes surrounding strict adherence to the rules of true Orthodox life in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Within the chapel consensus, insignificant rumors emerged: “Klimentovtsy”, “Mikhailovtsy” and “Porfiriyev” - the name of which came from the names of their founders. The “Klimentites” (followers of the monk Clement (Klimont) from a monastery near the village of Bolshie Galashki, Verkhoturye district, Perm province) were few in number - no more than two dozen people. The division occurred due to Clement’s ban on keeping samovars, lamps, and wearing colorful clothes in houses. According to the missionaries, Clement’s teaching also differed from the chapels in eschatological views: according to him, the Antichrist had already reigned in the world in the form of the idol of Zamora, that is, a samovar. Therefore, in such recent times, one should not be recorded in any civil books and pay taxes. In 1902, the “Mikhailovites”, supporters of Mikhail Illarionovich Deryabinnikov, separated from the “Klimentites.” Reproaching the “Clementists” for the fact that in their monasteries many old women have personal belongings and money, Mikhail called such a life a “robber” meeting and declared that he was separating from it. Deryabinnikov was a supporter of removing himself from the world as much as possible. At the already mentioned Galashkin Cathedral, it was he who initiated the decision not to accept parents whose children study in zemstvo schools to prayer.

The “Porfirievs,” of whom there were even fewer than the “Clementites,” separated from the chapels because of a special opinion about the rite of baptism: they believed that true baptism could only be performed in running river or spring water and that all those baptized in any other way should be baptized. Obviously, the “disciples of Porphyria” had doubts regarding the need to rebaptize the chapels. To clarify the situation, in 1909 they invited an active figure in the consensus of the “Pokreshchevanites” from the village to Nizhny Tagil. Tolstoys of the Nizhny Novgorod province Alexander Mikheevich Zapyantsev. Having gotten up to speed with the matter, Zapyantsev answered the question “on what basis should those coming from the chapels be baptized?” a detailed message. From his reasoning it followed that baptism in this case was necessary because of the previous practice of accepting fugitive priests, “because their priests were appointed by the servants of the Antichrist and were accepted illegally, and did not act according to the rules of the holy fathers.” It is not known whether the “Porfirians” accepted his arguments, but such views did not receive support or widespread dissemination in the Urals. In some Siberian cathedral decrees there is mention of the “Zavyalovsky heresy” of the late XIX-first quarter of the XX centuries, whose supporters introduced elements of the rejected “priestly” practice during marriage (Pokrovsky N.N., M., 1998. P. 99-105) .

The problem of unifying the rites of baptism, communion, marriage, and repentance, without solving which it was impossible to prevent divisions in societies, was discussed by chapels in 1911 at the First All-Russian Congress, held in Yekaterinburg. Many of its participants came only to consider the issue of these sacraments. It was possible to immediately reach a consensus on only one issue: it was recognized that the sacrament of repentance does not require a priest, it can be performed by monks and simpletons, that is, “any worthy person chosen for this purpose.” The consideration of all other issues was not easy: the participants in the discussion, referring to Holy Scripture, often drew exactly the opposite conclusions. After many hours of debate, they established how the rites of baptism and marriage should be performed. The question of communion turned out to be the most difficult; it was generally decided on the plane of “to be or not to be.” The fact is that for more than half a century the chapels had no priests from whom they could receive spare Gifts for communion. In many societies, the holy Gifts left over from former priests had run out, but even those who had not yet run out of them, for example, the chapels of the Kyshtym plant, doubted their truth and the legality of receiving such Gifts from simpletons. Counters D.K. Serebryannikov (from Nevyansk) and A.E. Arapov (from the Verkhneyvinsky plant) insisted on the right to accept the preserved Gifts, as well as on the possibility of allowing communion with Epiphany water instead. The exchange of views led nowhere, and the decision on this issue was postponed until the next council.

Disagreements among chapels also arose in relation to the “Regulations on Old Believer Communities” published on October 17, 1906. Many doubted the benefit of the opportunity provided by the “Regulations” to register a community with the provincial administration (and thus obtain the rights of a legal entity), expecting that information about the existence of a community could subsequently serve a disservice, for example, it would not allow one to avoid harassment from the authorities if the policy attitude towards the Old Believers will become tougher. Controversy between supporters legal status communities and the so-called “anti-community” was carried out seriously, but both sides invariably remained unconvinced. The already mentioned Afanasy Trofimovich Kuznetsov spoke out in defense of registration. In the magazine "Ural Old Believer" he published a number of articles denouncing the errors of the "anti-community people." Emphasizing the great importance of the right to the official organization of communities and “thus obtaining legal and church rights by the Old Believers,” which was guaranteed by the “Regulations,” he nevertheless noted that “there were, however, people who see in the community nothing more than sin and apostasy from the faith of the fathers." The “anti-communists” substantiated their position in several points of the resolution of the council, which was held in the village. Gorbunov of Verkhoturye district January 13-15, 1912 A.T. Kuznetsov mentions that among the “inspirers” of the rejection of the registration of communities at the cathedral were the hermits Sergius, Varlaam, Efrosin and Clement. In the mining Urals, the decision of the Gorbunovsky Council was completely in tune with the sentiments in the Nizhny Tagil community. In the Tomsk province, “anti-communal” tendencies were even stronger.

The problem of literacy and education was perceived ambiguously among the Ural chapels. A group of the most active figures (self-named “intellectuals-Old Believers”), which included teachers and the most literate parishioners of large factory and city communities, advocated for the establishment of separate Old Believers educational institutions and specialized teacher training. The idea of ​​“raising literacy among children, setting up and equipping Old Believer schools for this purpose” was also discussed at the All-Russian Congress of Chapelists and was generally supported. Among school supporters, the main stumbling block was different understandings of the content educational program. It seemed to many that the traditional course of teaching writing, reading, and divine literacy, which in former times was assigned to the “craftswoman,” was sufficient. Of course, Old Believers sometimes sent their children to zemstvo schools to acquire some professional skills, but still such education was considered unsatisfactory (“they don’t teach psalms, canons, or hook singing”) and was not welcomed everywhere. Dissatisfaction with zemstvo schools remained even when some subjects (most often the Law of God) were taught by Old Believers teachers. Thus, the rector of the village of Yar, Kamyshlovsky district, Vasily Andreevich Laskin, expressed his concerns at the congress: “Our zemstvo has built a ten-thousandth school building. Our teacher is now one of our own Old Believers. Things are going well. Only here’s the problem: they tell the children that the earth turns, and the sun is standing. We don’t like it.” And one of the community representatives from the Shadrinsky district stated: “We don’t want a brotherhood, a community, or a school. We doubt all this” (Pokrovsky N.N., M., 1998. P. 105-108).

To the question of the relationship between the Old Believers-chapels and the “Austrians” (respectively, priests and non-priests), it should be added that, given the fundamental incompleteness of the discussion among the former Beglopopovites about the suppression of the priesthood, the heads of the “Austrian” (Belokrinitsky) hierarchy addressed the chapels with calls to accept them “again the acquired true priesthood ... and unite your believing souls into the one Church of God." This issue has been raised with varying intensity up to the present time.

Conclusion

In this work, we gave a historical and local history overview of the Old Believers in the Urals. We examined the general political situation in the Moscow state, which led to the reforms of Patriarch Nikon. They gave a brief description of these reforms and the church schism that followed.

We have shown that the Urals became one of the main centers of the Old Believers due to completely objective reasons, namely, its remoteness from the center, the comparative weakness of state power and low development. Old Believers of various persuasions and movements flocked here. The main centers of localization of Old Believers in the region were the Perm and Sverdlovsk regions, although individual monasteries are found throughout the Urals. In modern historiography, it is customary to divide the Old Believers into many movements. This division dates back to the 17th century, when the first lists of “rebels” began to appear. Although, as can be seen from the example of the Ural Old Believers, there were mainly two movements - priests and bespopovtsy.

As shown above, the Old Believers made an invaluable contribution to the development of the region. These include factory activities, trade, cultural, and religious activities. Gennin also noted the exceptional hard work, honesty and conscientiousness of the adherents of the “old faith.” Almost the entire color of the Ural merchants were Old Believers.

Today, “Old Orthodoxy” has not been forgotten. In the absence of persecution and oppression, it is on fertile soil. Churches are opening, and the topic of Old Believers is widely discussed in the press and television. There is a growing interest in the ethnographic aspects of the life and everyday life of the Old Believers. Tourism is also beginning to enter the sphere of the Old Believers. In addition to all of the above, many ideas of the old faith are used by various sects and nationalist organizations. Thus, we see that the Old Believers not only made a huge contribution to the development of the Urals, both industrial and cultural, but also continues to actively participate in the modern life of the region. We can say that it has become an integral part of the Urals.

Bibliography

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In the post, I raised the topic of underestimation by the authorities of the historical and tourist features of the Middle Urals. They are developing weekend tourist routes as a panacea for entry and domestic tourism. There are tours dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, tourists are asked to remember that Berezovsky of the Sverdlovsk region is called the Motherland of Russian gold, this list of places to visit includes Nizhny Tagil, Verkhnyaya Pyshma, Nevyansk, Verkhoturye (about the presentation of tourism products created at the expense of the budget of the Sverdlovsk region area I talked about in the post)...

Since I often visit different parts of the Sverdlovsk region, the stories of local residents revealed to me an important part of its past. If Verkhoturye, during the period of development of Siberia and the Urals in the 17th century, was an outpost of Orthodoxy and Russian statehood, then the emerging Ural industry represented a completely different cultural structure. With the beginning of the construction of the Demidov factories, centers of Old Believers appeared in the Urals. Almost all the factories that the Old Believer Demidov built were full of Old Believers. Traces of this cultural feature are borne by the capital of the Old Believers of the Urals, Nevyansk, such cities as Nizhny Tagil, Verkhniy Tagil, all of which were part of the industrial empire of the Demidovs.

The schism in the Russian Orthodox Church began in 1653 year under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Patriarch Nikon, a tough character, introduces new rules. The Tsar cherished the dream of uniting the entire Orthodox world around Moscow and liberating Byzantium. The first step should be to bring rituals and symbols of faith to a single model so that all Orthodox Christians pray and believe the same. Thus, the Greek Church, which essentially gave Orthodoxy to Rus', had a number of differences by the 17th century. Nikon invites Greek scientists to Moscow. They should compare Russian Orthodox books with ancient Greek ones. The conclusion was made that the Russian Church over the course of several centuries moved away from the true Old Byzantine canons.

Old Believers were ready to die, but not betray their faith. Furious, cruel eradication, suppression, destruction of the old faith by the authorities and Nikon’s church. There must be some ideological principle, extremely important, for which people went to the stake and to torture. And this, of course, the main thing was not whether to cross yourself with two or three fingers and how many bows to make.

One of the ideological sources of the Old Believers was the belief in the truth of the teachings of the Fathers of the Russian Church and its Saints. The great Russian saint Sergius of Radonezh reformatted Western Christianity into Vedic Orthodoxy. Father Sergius was a highly dedicated sorcerer. His Orthodoxy is the triumph of the laws of the Rule. He subtly incorporated Slavic Vedic laws into Christianity. The Christian teaching of Sergius of Radonezh was sunny, life-affirming, no different from the ancient Hyperborean worldview. The Old Believers perceived the reforms of Nikon and the Tsar as a process of destruction of the Church of Sergius of Radonezh, the enslavement of the Russian people, the imposition of the Greek religion with its servility and submission to power, which had not previously happened in Rus'...

The Church of Sergius denied the conversion "servant of God". Under him, the Rus were the children and grandchildren of God, just as before in Vedic times. Under Ivan the Terrible, all this continued. In the middle of the 17th century, Nikon and the Romanovs began to cleanse their usual way of life.

There was a murmur among the people that these scientists were crooks pursuing self-interest. And changes are taking place according to Latin books. The monks of the Solovetsky Monastery were the first to refuse to obey Nikon. They are ready to give armed resistance. The murmur turns into confusion.

June 22, 1666 A solar eclipse that horrifies many occurs, foretelling the end of the world. The Council takes place in the same year. The Council decides to observe all Nikon’s innovations as true. Defenders of the old faith are cursed and called schismatics. The Solovetsky Monastery is taken by storm. The main rebels are hanged and burned to intimidate them. The most ardent preacher of the Old Believers, Archpriest Avvakum, is executed by fire. In an earthen prison, the nun Theodora, known to us more as the noblewoman Morozova, dies of hunger. Ordinary people, frightened by the executions, ran across the expanses of Russia. First to the Kostroma and Bryansk forests, and then further to the Urals, to Siberia.

The first report about Old Believers appearing in the Urals dates back to 1684 year. About 50 people appeared in Porechye in Usolsky district. Especially many Old Believers accepted the Ural forests after the famous Streltsy revolt. The suppression of the rebellion by Tsar Peter was brutal. Those who fled are buried in the most remote corners - forests, mountains, caves. The chronicle writes: “During the resettlement, they started monastic hermitages. And they lived like monasteries, crowded with about a hundred people.” One of the settlements of the Old Believers was on the site of the present village of Kulisei. According to legend, it was from this graveyard that the Old Believers began to settle in the Urals. The forest surrounded the churchyard with such a dense wall that the narrow clearing leading out into the world was called a hole by the Old Believers. The Old Believers were divided into two factions: priests and non-priests. The name itself speaks for itself. Both of them pray only to icons painted before Patriarch Nikon. Contacts with the outside world were kept to a minimum. Those who were caught spreading the old faith were ordered to be tortured and burned in a log house. And those who maintain the faith are supposed to be mercilessly whipped and exiled. It was ordered to beat with a whip and batogs even those who provide little help to the Old Believers, give them something to eat or just drink water.

Tsar Peter I allows registered Old Believers to live openly in villages, but imposes double taxes on them, and this is ruinous. And the majority of Old Believers live unregistered, that is, illegally, for which they are tried and exiled. They are prohibited from holding any state or public position, or from being witnesses in court against Orthodox Christians, even if the latter are convicted of murder or theft. But despite everything, the Old Believers are indestructible.

Old Believers are becoming especially widespread in the Urals with the development of industry here. The Demidovs and other breeders, contrary to the supreme royal authority, encourage the Old Believers in every possible way and hide them from the authorities. They are even given high positions. After all, breeders only want profit, they don’t care about church dogma, and all Old Believers are conscientious workers. What is difficult for others is observed without difficulty. Their faith does not allow them to ruin themselves with vodka or smoke. Old Believers, in modern terms, quickly make a career, becoming craftsmen and managers. The Ural factories are becoming a stronghold of the Old Believers.

Not far from Nevyansk, the capital of the Demidovs, there is an ancient Old Believer village, Byngi (emphasis on the “and”). There is a very beautiful, even unique in its architecture, St. Nicholas Church ( 1789 ). The end of each century was marked by a thaw in relation to the Old Believers. There are heavy huts around. Yes, what kind! Just 19th century. Many huts could decorate any museum of wooden architecture. By the way, the film “Gloomy River” was filmed here.

The persecution sometimes weakens, sometimes intensifies, but never stops. During the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, a new wave of repression and persecution fell on the Old Believers. Dissenters are prohibited from building monasteries and calling themselves desert dwellers and monasteries. Another trap is the introduction of Edinoverie. Dilapidated Old Believer churches close, new ones cross. In Edinoverie churches, services are conducted in the old way. However, they are subordinate to the official Orthodox Church. If you cannot get rid of schismatics by destroying churches, then you can try to overcome the faith with a new schism. In the village of Byngi, near Nikolskaya, there is the Kazan Church of the same faith (1853) with rather primitive architecture.

In Nizhny Tagil they decide to convert the Trinity Chapel into a church of the same faith. Old Believers surround the chapel, blocking access to it. “We’ll die, but we won’t give it up,” they say. The angry governor comes to see the conflict. And he gives the command to storm the chapel. The chapel has been taken. The monasteries are going bankrupt: Kasli, Kyshtym, Cherdyn. A permanent mission begins to operate in the Urals. Its members, Orthodox priests, travel to villages, talk with Old Believers, assuring them that their faith is nothing more than heresy. In words, the peasants agree with the missionaries, but after leaving they are often asked by the council to impose penance on them in order to atone for the sin that happened. In general, the fight against the Old Believers was waged almost throughout the entire time the Romanovs were on the throne. One can count only 60-70 years when the struggle subsided.

Settlements of Old Believers and Edinoverie churches are scattered throughout the Middle Urals. This is the village of Shartash (near Yekaterinburg), Verkhniy Tagil, where ancient buildings and way of life have been preserved, but there is not a single cultural heritage site, the village of Tavatuy (Sverdlovsk region) and many others...

There are government statistics on the number of Old Believers and Pomeranians in the Ural region in 1826.

Province	Total number of Old Believers	Number of Pomeranians	Share of Pomeranians from the total number of Old Believers, %
Orenburgskaya	23198	10410	44,0
Perm	112354	10509	8,9
Tobolskaya	33084	7810	24,0

The Sverdlovsk region, at that time, belonged to the Perm province, which in terms of the number of Old Believers differs significantly from its neighbors. And the point is not only in their numbers, but in the influence they had on the development of the Middle Urals, its culture and history...

This is a historical and cultural feature of the Sverdlovsk region, which can rightfully become one of the tourist routes...

Simply, about this feature in Government of the Sverdlovsk region And State Budgetary Institution SO "Tourism Development Center of the Sverdlovsk Region" Apparently they don't know...

Materials used in this post.