The Confessional Policy of the Russian Authorities in Relation to the Old Believer Books in the Second Half of the 19th - Early 20th Centuries (On the Materials of Vyatka Province)

The article considers the perception by the Old Believers of the essence of the book and its role in the preservation and transmission of accumulated spiritual experience. The study is based on documents from the funds of the central and regional archives. The used sources allowed us to reach the main aim of the study - to analyze the policy of the authorities in relation to the Old Believer books and to consider its implementation in Vyatka Province. The Old Believers accepted neither the correction of religious books based on “Greek newly printed” samples nor changes in rituals, and this became one of the most important reasons for the split in the Russian Orthodox Church. The book culture of the Old Believers is inextricably linked with religion. Books stored both in the homes of individual Old Believers and those in public use are religious, mainly liturgical, texts in content. They were also used in teaching literacy, which for objective reasons was of a domestic nature. They considered their moral duty to be respectful of the book heritage, which embodied spiritual values and facilitated their inheritance. Such an understanding of the essence and role of the book led to the active spread of literacy in the Old Believer environment. Despite the opinion expressed by representatives of the official church, who perceived the Old Believers as ignorant people differing only in their true commitment to “ancient piety”, it must be recognized that the literacy level of the Old Believers was either comparable to that among adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church, or significantly exceeded it. The Old Believers realized their responsibility for the preservation of the book, which led to the struggle for the return of books seized during searches of their homes and chapels by officials. The archival documents make it possible to trace both the actions taken by the Old Believers in order to preserve the book heritage and the fate of the literature seized from them. Thus, when considering books in the Vyatka Spiritual Consistory, the most dangerous of them, from the point of view of the church, were sent to the sacristy of the cathedral for secret storage or to the second department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Liturgical books were sent to the local single-faith church. Finally, books that could be used in the preparation of missionaries and in their further work were transferred to the diocesan library or the library of the fraternal “anti-Old Believers” school. As a result of the study, the authors conclude that, despite the general liberalization of confessional policies towards the Old Believers in the second half of the 19th century, the authorities conducted a very tough course in the sphere of the Old Believer culture, which affected houses of worship as centers of spiritual culture of adherents of “ancient piety”, monuments of book writing and iconography. Particular attention was paid to curbing the spread of the Old Believer literature and icons, which the authorities regarded as a way of propagating the Old Belief.

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