Valeriya Anatolievna Esipova,
Doctor of Historical Science, Senior Researcher, Laboratory of Library and Communication Research, Scientific Library of Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Ekaterina Viktorovna Ivanovskaya,
Candidate of Historical Science, Senior Researcher, Laboratory of Library and Communication Research, Scientific Library of Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Anna Maksimovna Kalabina,
Junior Researcher, Laboratory of Library and Communication Research, Scientific Library of Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Aleksandra Andreevna Shcherbinina,
Junior Researcher, Laboratory of Library and Communication Research, Scientific Library of Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Archive of the Kungur Townsman Old Believer Semyon Sharapov
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2026-2-18
The article examines a set of documents that existed in the collection owned by Semyon Sharapov, a Kungur townsman and confiscated from him in 1873 in Tomsk. Sharapov belonged to the community of Old Believers, wanderers, which was headed by Nikita Vikhlyaev, who was arrested at the same time. Vikhlyaev was the head of th community, while Sharapov was a harborer of the wanderers − a member of the community living in the world and providing a link between the community of wanderers and the secular world. The purpose of the work was to identify the specifics of the texts that were part of the wanderers’ repertoire of reading. The selection of the research source was determined by the fact that the studied complex contains both traditional texts for wanderers and atypical ones. It has been established that the analyzed documents characterize their owner as an Old Believer wanderer who supported the protivostateyniki. At the same time, the owner was very interested not only in matters of faith, but also in the problem of relations with the authorities, as well as new books on the history of the Schism. This is not to say that the owner was completely detached from the world − on the contrary, he was keenly interested in what was happening in the world. A selection of newspapers kept by Sharapov was also studied. It has been established that they all were dated 1863 and contained materials on the Polish Revolt. They could be used as evidence of the positive interaction between Old Believers and the authorities. This could help in attracting new adherents. In general, the paper shows that the composition of the book collections of the head of the community (Vikhlyaev) and the host of the wanderers (Sharapov) differed from each other. The former was related to liturgy, while the latter demonstrated connections with the secular world.
Publishing: 28/04/2026
The article has been received by the editor on 24/11/2025
How to cite: Esipova V.A., Ivanovskaya E.V., Kalabina A.M., Shcherbinina A.A. Archive of the Kungur Townsman Old Believer Semyon Sharapov // Historical Courier, 2026, No. 2 (46), pp. 246−259. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2026/ISTKURIER-2026-2-18.pdf]
The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 25-78-20009.
Links: Issue 2 2026
Keywords: Old Believers-wanderers; book collections; periodicals; paleography; Siberia