Gurianova Natalia S.,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
How the Old Believers of the Vyg Community Attemped to Implement a Project for Writing Historical Works
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2020-2-9
In this article the Preface and the table of contents for the essay “The Mirror of Antiquity, showing the entire history in summary...” from the manuscript of the BAN, collection of Druzhinin, No. 114 (145) is published. The collection was compiled and partially written at the end of 1744–1759 by the leader of Old Believers community Manuil Petrov. In this collection the text of “Mirror of Antiquity...” is included, which is an unimplemented project for writing a historical work. In addition to the Preface and the table of contents, fragments of some chapters are published. The introduction to the publication gives a brief description of the contents of the collection and the author’s intention to create a historical work. The traditional aspect of the historical-eschatological concept is characterized, due to which the Old Believers included the history of their community in the general stream of Christian history. An assumption is made about the intention of the author of “Mirrors of Antiquity...” to limit the presentation of the history of Russia to 1666, because this year was regarded by the Old Believers as a chronological boundary separating Holy Russia from the time when the power of the Antichrist spread to the country. After that, according to the Old Believers, Russia continued to exist in historical time only thanks to the defenders of the Old Belief, so the history of the community was in the spotlight. In the Preface and in the table of contents, not only the traditionalism of the Old Believers is especially noticeable, but also the attitude to history and historical knowledge, which is quite appropriate for the time, when the knowledge of the past began to acquire social and political significance.
Publishing: 29/04/2020
How to cite: Gurianova N.S. How the Old Believers of the Vyg Community Attemped to Implement a Project for Writing Historical Works // Historical Courier, 2020, No. 2 (10), pp. 124–130. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2020/ISTKURIER-2020-2-09.pdf
Links: Issue 2 2020
Keywords: Old Believers; Vygovsky community; historical narrative