Battling for legitimacy: Russian Old Believer priests on the frontlines of the First World War, 1914–1917

Abstract

In the First World War, Russian Old Believer priests of the Belokrinitsa hierarchy served their coreligionists as military chaplains on the various fronts of the conflict. However, Old Belief, a series of schismatic groups which had broken away from the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-seventeenth century, had only been fully legitimized by the imperial state in 1905: prior to this, they had been subjected to legal disabilities and persecution. This was particularly true of the Belokrinitsa hierarchy, whose foundation in 1846 had required the support of a foreign power. In this article, I offer a brief narrative of the hierarchy’s long road to social and political legitimacy and place the establishment of a military chaplaincy in this context. The Russian Orthodox Church successfully managed to prevent the Old Believers achieving an official chaplaincy before 1914, questioning their loyalty and the nature of their religious beliefs. However, the hierarchy was able to use the crises caused by the First World War to persuade the government that their frontline priests deserved official inclusion in the structures that oversaw the religious needs of non-Orthodox soldiers. Finally, I consider the duties and experiences of these priests and whether they led to the development of professional consciousness. In sum, this article shows how a marginalized religious minority was able to use the context of war to gain a greater degree of inclusion within imperial Russian society and the state.