Demidova Larisa D.,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Independent Researcher, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Plagiarism as a Way of Preserving a Scientific Result: an Unexpected Case from the History of Pre-Revolutionary Study of the Russian Old Believers
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2019-6-11
A small story discovered while studying historiography of the 17th century Russian church schism and of the Old Believers appeared strikingly vital in the epoch of hunt for scientific citations and fight against “improper borrowings” of scientific texts. It is on the article published at 1914 that the currently circulating information is largely based that concerns biography of the monk Avraamii (burned in 1672) – the former holy fool Athanasius, an Old Believer polemic writer, contemporary and follower of Archpriest Avvakum. At the closer examination this artilce, the most extensive and detailed of all ever written biographies of Avraamii, appeared to be a plagiary. Its author, a student of the Kiev Theological Academy, N. Demin, borrowed the text from the work of 1895 written by P. Dobromyslov, editor of the journal “Missionary Collection”. It seems to be a matter of chance that researchers who revived the tradition of the Old Belief studies at the second half of the 20th century became acquainted to the plagiary while the robbed text was left unnoticed aside from the scientific discussion. The case has been complicated additionally by the two decades' chronological gap between the original work and the plagiary, during which researchers found some new documents concerning Avraamii. Taking into consideration these documents, the plagiary author N. Demin offered several hypotheses that laid foundation for a later hypothesis concerning motives of the Avraamii's taking monastic vows. However, the dishonest deed of the Kiev student was not the only cause for the original article of P. Dobromyslov being forgotten. Rather, the main reason for that was ignoring Dobromyslov’s article by a recognized pre-revolutionary classic of the Old Belief studies P.S. Smirnov. This circumstance is hard to explain, since Smirnov, the author of the fundamental work “Internal Issues in the Schism in the 17th Century” (1898), and of a biographical article about Avraamii, very probably was personally acquainted with P. Dobromyslov. To sum up, the investigation of this case discovered a paradoxical story of a research that did not enter the scientific canon, but its result, thanks to the improper borrowing, was not lost for science.
Publishing: 30/12/2019
How to cite: Demidova L.D. Plagiarism as a Way of Preserving a Scientific Result: an Unexpected Case from the History of Pre-Revolutionary Study of the Russian Old Believers // Historical Courier, 2019, No 6 (8). P. 129–136. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2019/ISTKURIER-2019-6-11.pdf
Links: Issue 6 2019
Keywords: 17th century Russian church schism; Old Believers; monk Avraamii; improper borrowing in science