Robert O. Crummey,Old Believers in a Changing World

Reviewed by: James White, European University Institute, Italy

On 12 January 2013, the Orthodox liturgy was performed according to the old rituals in the ancient Uspenskii cathedral in the Kremlin for the first time in over three hundred and fifty years. The significance of such an event is no doubt lost not only on many Western observers but also some Russian Orthodox believers themselves. Why was it so important that, in this particular liturgy, the assembled hierarchs and clergymen crossed themselves and others with two fingers rather than the habitual three? The answer lies in one of the most troubling aspects of Russian Orthodoxy’s past: the matter of Old Belief.

In the mid-seventeenth century, a schism occurred in the Russian Orthodox Church. In response to liturgical reforms imposed by Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, a significant number of churchmen and laity broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church. The changes themselves seemed small: using a different spelling of the name of Jesus or amending the number of fingers used to perform the sign of the cross for example. However, the resistance to the reforms was mingled in with a number of other problems, including widespread social discontent, famine and dislike of the centralizing tendencies of the early modern Muscovite state. However, it was their adherence to the old rituals that gave these rebels against the Church their name: Old Believers.

This break was officially turned into a schism by a number of anathemas that were proclaimed by the Great Moscow Church Council of 1666–67. From this point on, both the secular and ecclesiastical authorities maintained campaigns of persecution that only came to an end with the edict of religious toleration in 1905. This often manifested itself in dramatic displays of suppression and resistance, most famously in the acts of self-immolation carried out by Old Believers throughout the eighteenth century. Old Belief was no minor matter: it has been estimated that no less than 10 per cent of the Russian population belonged to Old Belief throughout the imperial period. Old Belief, which rapidly splintered into numerous different groupings, was fertile ground for the development of numerous eschatological theologies and different approaches to the sacraments of marriage and baptism. Equally, by the end of the nineteenth century, Old Believers had developed sophisticated systems of self-organization and mutual aid.

Of all the historians to attempt to unravel the thorny issue of Old Belief, few are as notable as Robert Crummey: since the publication of his pioneering study of the Vyg community in 1970, he has been the doyen of Old Believer studies in the English-speaking world. This latest publication is a much-needed collection of his widely dispersed essays: whilst most of them are available elsewhere, this book also features two articles that have not been published before. As such there is something new here even for the most hardened scholars of Russian religious history.

Given that the book represents a life’s work, it is no surprise that the essays within are diverse both in their content and approach. Thus we find a review of the Novosibirsk school of Old Believer studies sitting side by side with a discussion on the earliest manifestations of Old Believer hagiography and an examination of the suppression of Old Believer communities in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, despite this understandable disparity, there are many concerns that underwrite all of the essays, particularly Crummey’s deep interest in the historiography of Old Belief both in Russia and in the West.

Indeed, his essays on this subject will be of great interest not only to Russian specialists but also to scholars working in the general field of religious history. In the second chapter, for instance, Crummey makes a persuasive argument that Old Belief needs to be seen in the context of the history of European religious dissent and also that the study of Old Belief can shed much light on the widely contested general paradigms of ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion that were developed in the historiographies of Western religions. This is certainly a refreshing change from the almost stereotypical insistence by some scholars that Old Belief was and is a phenomenon of purely Russian significance, an insistence that has on occasion led to unproductive introspection.

The service that Crummey’s book provides is invaluable. For students of Russian Orthodoxy and its various manifestations, the collected studies must be one of the first ports of call: for those examining Old Belief in the context of general European religious dissent, the work is a splendid and readable introduction into an issue that has often been clouded by misunderstandings, both deliberate and accidental. The next generation of Old Believer scholars owes Crummey a great debt.