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Old Believers in modern Russia

1996; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 34; Issue: 01 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5860/choice.34-0471

1943-5975

Tony Smith,

Religion and Society Interactions

Roy R. Robson. Old Believers in Modern Russia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995. xiii, 187 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Cloth. In his informative and insightful study of the Old Believer traditions in Russia at the turn of the century, Roy R. Robson brings to light a little-studied aspect of Russian church and social history that will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students. Robson examines the interaction of religion and on the basis of the Old Believers' experiences in the first decade of twentieth-century Russia. He demonstrates their successful creation of a distinctive culture of and their efforts to adjust themselves to various modernizing influences in secular society. Using the rich archival sources available to scholars, Robson makes some astute reinterpretations of the religious of Old Belief that will have repercussions in many fields. In chapter one, Robson provides an overview of the historiography of Old Belief. He suggests that cultural anthropology is particularly useful for the study of Old Believers because they define themselves through ritual and symbol. In this same chapter he advocates the iconic principle elaborated by David Z. Scheffel as a productive interpretive tool. Chapter two surveys the history, legal status, population and organizational structures of the Old Belief. This is particularly illuminating because it reveals the variety of expressions of Old Believer existence and laid the foundation for his contention that community is a key feature in Old Believer culture. Robson succinctly describes the three main communities of Old Belief, namely the Priestly Old Believers, the Half-Old Believers and the Priestless Old Believers and alerts the reader to the latitude of experience within each. The next chapter examines how the Old Believer system of ritual and symbol aimed to fashion its adherents into Christians of an altogether different type from their Russian Orthodox counterparts. Specifically, he demonstrates on the basis of liturgical texts and practice that the Old Belief maintained a more authentic relationship between God and the Christian people than was the case in the official state church of the Russian empire. There, the laity were frequently ignored in certain prayers altogether or relegated to the lowest rung on the hierarchical ladder headed by the Tsar and his family; in Old Believer liturgical practice the people, which included believers of all ranks, formed a single community before God. The rite of mutual forgiveness performed by clergy and laity is cited to support this argument. …