Old Believers in a Changing World (review)

For nearly four decades Robert O. Crummey has written about the history of Russia’s Old Believers in studies ranging from his classic monograph The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: The Vyg Community and the Russian State (Madison, WI, 1970) to essays in the Cambridge History of Russia and the Cambridge History of Christianity. Unlike other scholars, who tend to specialize in one time period, Crummey has done groundbreaking research about both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has made significant contributions to the study of Old Belief’s legendary founding fathers, the religious and intellectual underpinnings of Old Belief high culture, and the complex relations between this high culture and popular religion. He also has published a number of thought-provoking essays on the historiography of Old Belief. This volume presents a selection of twelve articles and book chapters from Crummey’s œuvre.

The volume highlights Crummey’s distinctive approach to the study of Old Belief: his careful analysis of the manuscripts and miscellanies that guaranteed Old Belief’s long-term survival. Crummey’s principal interest is in “the intellectual leaders of Old Belief” (XIII) and “the theological, liturgical, and moral issues that preoccupied” (XII) them. This focus is illustrated, for example, in four essays on the spirituality and historical philosophy of the founders (e.g., Andrei Denisov) of the famous Vyg Community during the early-eighteenth century and another essay on Old Believer hagiography (“The Miracle of Martyrdom”). Crummey’s preference for textual analysis is reflected in two historiographic essays (expressing, for example, great admiration for the Novosibirsk scholar Nikolai N. Pokrovskii, who pioneered the study of old manuscripts surviving in Soviet- and post-Soviet Old Believer communities).

One of Crummey’s lasting contributions is his emphasis on lesser-known leadership figures (who were eclipsed by the iconic Archpriest Avvakum). For example, he identified the Monk Avraamii as one of Old Belief’s principal founding fathers (pp. 68–84). Avraamii articulated for the first time the apocalyptic worldview that “provided concepts, images, and rallying cries with which ordinary men and women could comprehend the rapidly changing . . . world around them. . .” (p. 84). Similarly, he resurrects the long-forgotten Andrei Borisov, leader of the Vyg Community from 1780 to 1791, who was inspired by both Eastern Christian tradition and the European Enlightenment (pp. 136–56). Fascinated by Rousseau and Western science (e.g., the physics of electricity) Borisov prefigured later intellectuals trying to make sense of Old Belief’s place in the modern world.

Crummey also explores the social contexts of Old Belief. An essay on popular culture (pp. 17–27) argues that Old Belief “was clearly not a religion of the illiterate” (p. 25) because “leaders struggled unceasingly to enforce the most rigorous standards of Orthodox worship” (p. 26). This confessionalization process sharply distinguished Old Belief from official Orthodoxy. An essay on religious radicalism (pp. 52–67) seeks to understand the apocalyptic mind-set of peasants who committed suicide in the face of persecution during the late 1660s. It is a fascinating account of women and men who “extended their rigorous asceticism to its ultimate end—they stopped eating altogether” (p. 59). Crummey’s findings suggest that preachers on the fringes of Old Belief advocated suicide to escape the world of Antichrist.

Without Crummey’s contributions, the study of Old Belief would not be as alive as it is today. One might call Crummey a “founding father” himself (comparable in stature to Denisov) of Old Believer studies. Crummey has continued and deepened earlier traditions of learning (that is, the scholarship of Pierre Pascal, Sergei Zenkovsky, and Michael Cherniavsky) and thus contributed greatly to all future scholarship on Old Belief. This volume is a tribute to Crummey’s scholarly erudition and offers readers a uniquely thoughtful introduction to the current state of research in Old Believer studies.