Old Believers

Old Believers or Old Ritualists (Russian: староверы, romanized: starovery or старообрядцы, staroobryadtsy) is the common term for numerous religious communities that maintain the old liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian Orthodox Church, as they were before the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow between 1653 and 1656. The old rite and its followers were anathematized in 1667, and Old Belief gradually emerged from the resulting schism.

The antecedents of the movement regarded the reform as heralding the End of Days, and the Russian church and state as servants of the Antichrist. Fleeing persecution by the government, they settled in remote areas or escaped to the neighboring countries. Their communities were marked by strict morals and religious devotion, including various taboos meant to separate them from the outer world. They rejected the Westernization measures of Peter the Great, preserving traditional Russian culture, like long beards for men.

Lacking a central organization, the main division within Old Belief is between the relatively conservative popovtsy, or "priestly", who were willing to employ renegade priests from the state church, maintaining the liturgy and sacraments; and the more radical bezpopovtsy, or "priestless", who rejected the validity of "Nikonite" ordination, and had to dispense with priests and all sacraments performed by them, appointing lay leaders instead. Various polemics produced numerous subdivisions, known as "accords". Old Belief covers a spectrum ranging from the established and hierarchic "priestly" Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church, to the anarchistic "priestless" Fugitives.

From the mid-18th century, under Catherine the Great, Old Believers gained nearly complete tolerance, and large urban centers emerged, the members of which had a leading role in Russian economy and society.