OLD RITUAL IN NEW FORMAT
Russian presidential administration leads Old Orthodoxy to common denominator
by Pavel Skrylnikov
The visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Rogozh Sloboda and his meeting with the metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church (Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Staroobriadcheskaia Tserkov—RPSTs), Kornily, launched new processes in the environment of Old Belief. On 8 March of this year, a working conference in the Moscow metropolitinate of the RPSTs was held for preparation for the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the birth of Protopop Avvakum in 2020. On 1 June of this year a conference was held on problems of Old Believer resettlers, returning to Russia from abroad. The website of the Protopop Avvakum Cultural Pilgrimage Center reports that on 1-2 October of this year a World Old Believer Forum will be held. Finally, on 9 January the philanthropic foundation "Russian Truth" was founded, which deals with "preservation, development, and dissemination of Old Orthodox spiritual and moral values and traditions." It was jointly created by the RPSTs, the Russian Old Orthodox Church (Russkaia Drevlepravoslavnaia Tserkov—RDTs), the Old Orthodox Pomorie Church (Drevlepravoslavnaia Pomorskaia Tserkov—DPTs), and the Old Orthodox Old Pomorie Church of the Fedoseev Accord (Fedoseevites), and the deputy director general of financial matters "Rostekh," Igor Zavyalov, was made chairman of the council of trustees.
According to the coordinator of the Working Group of Inter-Old Believer Cooperation, Mikhail Shakhov, communication among the associations is conducted by several agencies. In the first place there is the governmental working group for facilitating resettlement of Old Believers from abroad to the historical motherland which is headed by the deputy director of the presidential administration, Vladimir Ostrovenko. Shakhov told NGR that in April there will be an expedition to Old Believers of South America whose goal will be establishing communication with communities considering the prospect of the move. But these plans may remain unrealized. Demographers insist that the governmental program of resettlement of compatriots needs serious changes, in particular, in matters of the resettlers receiving Russian citizenship, which is often refused to them for insignificant reasons.
The inter-community working group on cooperation with society and state at the present time is dealing with basic questions of the organization of the World Old Believer Forum. "On the religious score there is not any convergence and ecumenism here. This was clearly indicated from the very beginning, but it seems that Old Believer churches will not celebrate the jubilee separately but will accomplish joint projects within the context of the cultural and historical part," Shakhov says.
"We have already invited representatives of the churches of the Baltic countries. There exist the Central Council of the Pomorie of Latvia, the Supreme Council of Old Believers of Lithuania, and also representatives of Belorussia. The Central Council of the Pomorie Church is in Latvia; there is a Supreme Council in Lithuania, Poland, and Belorussia. An agreement on cooperation was signed long ago with a society of Lipovans of Romania (a group of Old Believers of the priestly variety—NGR). We also have individual relations with representatives of Moldavia and Ukraine, but because of a difficult situation we still do not know whether Ukrainian organizations will be invited or only individual persons. Matters are approximately the same with the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Protopop Avvakum," the chairman of the board of the Protopop Avvakum Cultural Pilgrimage Center, Maksim Pashinin, who is a member of the working group, said. Finally, preparations for the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the birth of Protopop Avvakum in 2020 are being conducted by a separate organizational committee, following from structures with diverse status and intersecting functions.
Nevertheless, by no means does everybody share the enthusiasm with regard to integrated initiatives. "Of course, Old Believers of Estonia do not isolate themselves from their Russian brethren and their problems, news, and events. I can say for myself personally that I am very grateful to the Russian council of the DPTs for help and support of many of our initiatives. We have cooperation and contacts with Russian Old Believers not only on the official level but also the personal," the chairman of the Union of Old Believer Communities of Estonia, Pavel Varunin, told NGR. "But as regards questions of the working group for inter-Old Believer cooperation, here the situation is the opposite. Nobody from Estonia was invited to any of the sessions and informed about events being planned. As far as I know, at one of the first sessions of the round table, the question of the participation of Estonia was raised by a representative of the "related" Old Believers, Sergei Petrov, but the organizers considered our participation to be undesirable." Varunin has difficulty identifying the reason for this: "It is possible that someone of the organizers, when it comes to the topic of inter-Old Believer cooperation, has a personal dislike for the leadership of the Union of Old Believer Communities of Estonia or there is an 'order' from some other direction, but at the present moment in all events the existence of Old Believers of Estonia is not even mentioned. Moreover, last summer in Tallin, within the context of events of inter-Old Believer cooperation a conference about iconography was held in a private museum. The organizer was the Protopop Avvakum Cultural Pilgrimage Center. Nobody from the leadership of the union nor any of the clergy was invited to this event. In response to our inquiry to the museum about the event, the answer given was that the organizers expressed displeasure about the presence of these persons."
Interest of the elite in Old Belief is a product of spiritual quests and not political calculation, the leading expert of the Center of Political Technology, Aleksei Makarkin, thinks. "The president's interests in monasteries is obvous. We recall the very same phenomenon on the part of Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov), who has positioned himself as the successor to the tradition of the monks of the Pskov caves. Attention toward Old Belief is of the same kind. There is a desire to communicate not with hierarchs, who may be political and administrative, but with people who, from the point of view of representatives of the government, have connections with the historical religious tradition," he told NGR. From the expert's point of view, this shows the difference between the contemporary elite from the pre-soviet one. In tsarist Russia, Old Belief was separated from the state church, but the contemporary "reconstruction tradition" equates them. In his opinion, one cannot call this good news for the RPTs: "government people" are drawn to the tradition whose representatives are less like bureaucrats. Old Believers do not have great possibilities in the sphere of "church diplomacy," Makarkin thinks: "There are not so many Old Believers, and they cannot exert influence on political processes, and indeed they do not wish to. They consciously strive to be distant from politics. There are many possibilities for conflicts among Old Believers, and not only old ones but also the rather new ones—from disagreements about theological questions to the permissible format for dialogue with the RPTs. For them there is no lack of purely internal political conflicts." (tr. by PDS, posted 24 March 2018)
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