“The Don Old Believers […] are predominantly Cossacks; few are peasants. The total number of Old Believers of both sexes is 160,000; of these, 113,600 are Cossacks who have priests, and about 37,300 are priestless, that is, without priests, making up one-tenth of the entire Cossack population. The Old Belief is more widespread in the Second Don District, where more than 70,000 Cossack dissenters live, and in the Ust-Medveditsky District, where there are about 30,000; a large number of Old Believers from the middle and lower stanitsas have moved to distant farmsteads, some of them beyond the Don” [1]. This is the statistical picture of the Don Old Believers in 1918, on the eve of the Civil War. It raises doubts, since, according to figures from 1912, just over 145,000 Old Believers lived in the Don Host Oblast. It is hardly likely that the Don’s Old Believer population could have grown by 15,000 in just six years, given that a considerable number of Don Cossack Old Believers had died on the fronts of World War I.

After the February Revolution of 1917 and the freedoms proclaimed by the Provisional Government, Old Believers began to take a more active part in the social and political life of Novocherkassk and the Don region. Thus, on April 30, 1917, Bishop Gennady sent a telegram to Prime Minister Prince Lvov, adopted at a joint meeting of representatives of the Intercession-Dimitri and St. Nicholas communities of Novocherkassk. It read: “In this troubled time, under the impact of events in Petrograd and Lenin’s hostile propaganda, the Old Believers of Novocherkassk, led by their bishop, at a general meeting… considered it their Christian duty, on the basis of chapter three, verse one of the Epistle of the holy Apostle Paul to Titus, to express their full confidence in the new Provisional Government for its open and vigorous struggle against the internal and external enemy to a victorious end, and to wish it wise leadership and strength to secure the principles of freedom in a renewed Russia” [2].

On May 14, 1917, a large moleben (prayer service) of Old Believers was held in Cathedral Square (now Yermak Square), led by Bishop Gennady and served by 11 Old Believer priests and two deacons. The Old Believers sent a telegram in their name to the Provisional Government and to Rodzianko, Chairman of the State Duma, offering prayers for the victorious conclusion of World War I [3].

In July 1917, the provincial Russian Democratic Party of Christian Old Believers was founded in Saratov. The Saratov Provincial Committee’s newspaper was The Voice of the Old Believers of the Volga Region, published with donations from the faithful. On August 29, 1917, a congress of all Old Believer concords opened in Saratov, attended, among others, by representatives of Don Old Believer communities. The Old Believers’ political program was close to that of the Kadets, though they intended to put forward their own candidates for the Constituent Assembly. Old Believers in the Don Host Oblast also submitted independent lists of candidates for the Constituent Assembly elections [4]. For example, in the 1917 Constituent Assembly elections in Atamanskaya stanitsa, 2,037 people voted for the Cossack list and 413 for the Old Believer list [5].

Russian Old Believers viewed the October coup with apprehension and, on the whole, disapproval. They considered the creation of their own all-Russian organization the only way to defend their interests. However, the decree of January 23, 1918, “On the Separation of Church from State and School from Church,” and the instructions issued on August 24 to implement it not only deprived Old Believer communities of the property they had accumulated and of their legal-entity status, but also prohibited all political, cultural, and educational activity by religious organizations [6]. In 1918, in his “Pastoral Epistle,” Archbishop Meletiy (Kartushin), Primate of the Ancient Orthodox Church, which accepts the Belaya Krinitsa hierarchy, described the revolution as an unrestrained outbreak of savage passions.

The 1918 Don diocesan council adopted a resolution rejecting Soviet rule. Subsequently, almost all those who attended the meeting were persecuted [7].

In April 1918, the Don Cossacks split: some less prosperous Cossacks, influenced by Communist propaganda, joined the Reds, while some of the more prosperous Cossacks, predominantly Old Believers, continued to defend their independence. Almost all the Cossacks of the Khoper District, half of those in the Ust-Medveditsky District, and a small number of those in the Upper Don District joined the Reds [8]. At the same time, Cossacks in the lower districts significantly pushed the Reds back from the lands of the Don Host [9]. The stanitsas populated by Old Believers put up the strongest resistance to the Reds: along the Tsutskan River, and in the stanitsas of Yelanskaya and Bakhmutkina. In the stanitsas of Ust-Khopyorskaya, Kumylzhenskaya, and Glazunovskaya, Old Believers made up a third of the population. They did not understand, and did not wish to understand, the events taking place, and had not sworn allegiance to the Provisional Government [10].

Like Old Believers in other provinces, Don Old Believers held differing views of Soviet rule. Most Cossack Old Believers either openly fought the Bolsheviks or tried to remain neutral; a small number of Old Believer Cossack families left their historic homeland, the Don region. Today, the descendants of these Cossacks live not only in other regions of Russia but also abroad. There were also Old Believers who shared Communist ideas and voluntarily joined the Red Army. It should be understood, however, that people could be forcibly mobilized into both the Red Army and the Volunteer Army.

In the Volunteer Army in southern Russia, the Cossack Old Believers received pastoral care from the army’s Old Believer priest, Father Iakov Nikulin [11].

On November 21, 1919, Archbishop Meletiy, having visited Tsaritsyn, which was occupied by the Whites, anathematized “the power of the Antichrist.” On the Don, Cossack Old Believers continued their determined struggle against Bolshevik rule. In the autumn of 1920, the Cossacks’ final phase of resistance to the grain requisitioning began. Because grain deliveries were poor, the Bolsheviks formed food requisition detachments to extract grain from the local population. New unrest broke out among the Don Cossacks. Armed Cossack detachments appeared in the upper stanitsas of the Don Oblast—Shumilinskaya, Kazanskaya, Migulinskaya, Meshkovskaya, Vyoshenskaya, Slashchevskaya, and Yelanskaya—which were also populated by Old Believers. They attacked “food requisition detachments,” killed militiamen and Communists, and returned grain-laden wagons to their place of origin [12]. At first, the Red Army soldiers struggled to fight the armed Cossack detachments because they had firm support from the local population. Gradually, however, the Bolsheviks seized the strategic initiative. They severely punished those who supported the Cossack detachments, thereby depriving the defenders of the Cossacks of material support, turning them into armed gangs and setting them against the local population [13].

The Civil War inflicted enormous losses on the Old Believers. Many members of the merchant class, clergy, and Cossacks died in the “Red Terror.” Those who remained had to gradually establish relations with the Bolsheviks.

In the autumn of 1920, the regional commission charged with implementing the Decree on the Separation of Church and State and of School from Church stepped up its activities. It registered all the religious communities in the Don Region and nationalized their property. Thus, in 1920, the Old Believer St. Nicholas community in Novocherkassk was disbanded. All its property was transferred to the Protection Cathedral, where a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas was established. Similar events unfolded in Rostov-on-Don, which was home to two large communities: the Protection (Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple) community of the Belokrinitsa priestly Old Believers (popovtsy) and the Protection community of the beglopopovtsy. As early as March 1918, N. A. Panin, trustee of the Protection community, drew up a will dividing his property between his wife and children. He bequeathed to the Old Believer community that accepted the priesthood from the established Church the Church of the Protection of the Mother of God, the House of Clergy, the almshouse, and 300 000 rubles held in an account at the State Bank office, all of which he owned. In the autumn of that same year, N. A. Panin reposed. That year, the will was carried out: all the real estate listed above became the property of the Protection community [14]. In 1922, all the Protection community’s real estate was nationalized; later, the Rostov-Nakhichevan Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies “returned” the church building and House of Clergy for use, but only under a free, perpetual-use arrangement. Communal apartments for residents of the municipal services department were set up in the almshouse and later in the House of Clergy; the community dwindled to 25 people. In these difficult circumstances, the rector, Father Nikola Mikulshin, left the community. That same year, the Rostov Old Believer communities were affected by the Bolshevik campaign to confiscate church valuables, during which several poods of silver were taken from the communities. Despite severe persecution, the Belokrinitsa Entry community managed to survive and remained numerous. In 1922, representatives of the Soviet authorities looted the Old Believer Church of the Protection on Pochtovaya Street in Novocherkassk. Bishop Gennadiy was arrested for “concealing church valuables” after he attempted to oppose this lawlessness. He was arrested as an opponent of the Bolsheviks’ campaign to confiscate church valuables, which was being conducted at the time. On this occasion, he was acquitted.

During the first half of the 1920s, the widely established traditional concords and religious movements largely remained in place. Old Believers were dissatisfied with the taxation of houses of prayer and the allocation, for a fee, of premises for religious gatherings [15]. In 1921, a questionnaire was distributed among the clergy, asking them to state their views on the Soviet government and the decree of January 23, 1918. A.I. Baryshnikov, a lay minister at the Old Believer house of prayer in the village of Archeda, declared his acceptance of the new order [16]. Old Believers displayed a particularly high level of religious observance in the Second Don District, where the population was “religious to the point of fanaticism” [17].

In January 1923, the Law of God was taught in schools and homes in the villages and farmsteads of the Second Don District, whose population was predominantly Old Believer. The situation was similar in the Ust-Medveditsky District. The population did not want to maintain ordinary Soviet schools and established private ones, where children were taught the Catechism; local departments of public education immediately shut them down [18]. In the Khoper District, in the second half of 1923, not a single Old Believer community, priest, or lay minister was registered [19].

It should be noted that during the first half of the 1920s, up to 1927, there was no large-scale persecution of Old Believers on the Don. There are no reports of either mass arrests of Old Believer clergy or the widespread closure of churches. Although Old Believer clergy were not spared repression during these years, it was unsystematic. The Bolsheviks’ approach to former church property was also relatively moderate during this period. After nationalizing churches, Houses of Clergy, and parish schools, the Bolsheviks acted in different ways: in some places they returned the former properties to communities for their use, while elsewhere they converted church buildings into grain stores, village schools, libraries, and the like. This variation was apparently determined not only by their antireligious policies and the practical need for new buildings, but also by the relations between local authorities and the Old Believers. The relatively tolerant treatment of Old Believers can be explained by the fact that the Bolsheviks regarded them as among those who had suffered under tsarist rule in the Russian Empire.

Bibliography

1. V. Bogachev. Essays on the Geography of the Great Don Host. Novocherkassk: VVDA Artillery Administration Printing House, 1919.
2. Novocherkassk // The Church’s Word. 1917. No. 24. P. 456.
3. “Free Don,” May 17, 1917.
4. O. Yu. Redkina. Old Believers of the Lower Volga and the Don in the Late 19th and 20th Centuries // Russian History. 2012. No. 4.
5.  V. A. Dronov. Old Believers in the Eastern Districts of the Don Host Region. http://elan-kazak.com/  
6. O. Yu. Redkina. Old Believers of the Lower Volga and the Don in the Late 19th and 20th Centuries // Russian History. 2012. No. 4.
7.  www.izdrevle.ru/izdrewle// Bishop Gennadiy Lakomkin.
8. S. V. Taranets. The Old Belief in the Russian Empire. Vol. 2. — Kyiv, 2012. P. 340.
9.  Ibid.
10.  Ibid.
11.  O. Yu. Redkina. Old Believers of the Lower Volga and the Don in the Late 19th and 20th Centuries // Russian History. 2012. No. 4.
12.  S. V. Taranets. The Old Belief in the Russian Empire. Vol. 2. — Kyiv, 2012. P. 341.
13. Ibid.
14.  www.izdrevle.ru/izdrewle//Church//history.
15.  O. Yu. Redkina. Old Believers of the Lower Volga and the Don in the Late 19th and 20th Centuries // Russian History. 2012. No. 4.
16.  P. 18.
17.  Ibid.
18.  Ibid.
19.  Ibid.
20.  Ibid.

Translated from the original article in Russian.