The Old Believers in the 20th Century as the Middle Ages Alive: the heritage of Pre-Petrine Russia in the religious doctrine of the Siberian denomination “Third Israel”
Andrey Korenevskiy1; 1 Southern Federal University, Russian Federation
Discussion
The paper examines the content of the typewritten text under the date of 1964 from the collection of papers that belonged to the famous mentor of the Latvian Old Believers Fedoseyevts, folklorist, and manuscript collector Ivan N. Zavoloko in the Archive of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Pushkin House). This unpublished text is dedicated to the explanation of debate between Zavoloko and the representatives of the Old Believer the denomination “The Third Israel” from Novosibirsk, which took place on Easter week 1962. Analysis of the theological views of Zavoloko’s opponents allows the conclusion about maintaining the traditions of medieval historiosophy among Old Ritualists even in the second half of the 20th century despite the gradual extinction of the Pre-Petrine heritage in the religious thought of the Old Believers in the Modernity. The concept of “Third Israel” is the most radical expression of Bezpopovtsy’s ecclesiology and the historiosophy of the “graceless” world, based on the creatively transformed and developed heritage of such outstanding Russian medieval religious thinkers as Hilarion of Kiev and Filofey of Pskov. It is a dialectical synthesis through negation of the negation of “New Israel” and “Third Rome” concepts.
