Novye Issledovaniâ Tuvy (Mar 2019)
Siberian Old Believer Sketes and their Laymen between the 1920s and 1930s
Abstract
The article deals with the issue of maintenance of the Old Belief skete as a spiritual and administrative center under aggressive external pressure, with a focus on the example of the history of interactions between sketes and rural communities of taiga regions in Ob-Yenisei Siberia (Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk oblasts and Tuva) in 1920-1930s. For its sources, our study used both original works and compilations written in taiga monasteries (including those remaining in possession of skete communities and transferred to state institutions), as well as forensic and clerical documentation which reveals the outcomes of inspections of the Siberian taiga monasteries. Our final group of sources include publications by researchers of Old Belief in Tuva and Ob-Yenisei region. The cases of “priestly” and “non-priestly” Old Believer communities helped us examine the variants of the “skete-village” model of interaction. The sources provided ground for a classification of communicative strategies of taiga monasteries, allowing us to explain why for some skete communities collectivization came as a time of internal fracture, while others were able to meet external challenges and respond with appropriate adaptation practices, continuing as a channel for preserving ethnic and religious identity of dependent peasant communities. We have traced a direct correlation between the lifespan of Old Believers' sketes and the ability of their inhabitants to convincingly explain the new political and economic reality to their peasant flock. The downsizing of the lay ktetors did not affect the content of the professed creeds or ethnic and religious traits of their social environment. It was the accumulation of the features of a textual community that proved to be most destructive for the dual system of “skete-village”.
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