Marriage Strategies of the Yekaterinburg Edinoverie Community in the Early 20th Century

Abstract

Explaining the main quantitative characteristics of a particular socio-confessional group is necessary for understanding its place and role in society. Edinoverie joined converts from Old Belief to the official Orthodox Church by maintaining the pre-reform liturgical books and rituals whilst also being subordinated to Synodal bishops. The rules of edinoverie were formulated by the joint effort of Old Believers and Platon (Levshin), the metropolitan of Moscow: these were later approved by Emperor Paul I in a decree from 27 October 1880. In practice, however, contradictions appeared rather quickly as a result of the fact that edinoverie was a compromise between two sides that found it difficult to reconcile their differences. The Synodal Church regarded edinoverie as a missionary instrument for converting “schismatics”, while Old Believer organisations strove to receive legalisation and their own independent episcopal hierarchy. The evolution of the composition of parishioners in edinoverie churches took an unexpected turn: at the beginning of the twentieth century, going to edinoverie parishes for the sacraments became attractive to flocks officially counted within the ‘predominant Orthodox confession’. This became possible due to the support edinoverie received from the authorities and the state church: it was gradually becoming recognised as an independent variant of Russian Orthodoxy. In this article, the authors present the results of an analysis of nominative data from marriage registries created between 1901 and 1918 in the Holy Trinity Church of Yekaterinburg, the largest urban edinoverie centre in the Urals. Materials analysed in the paper demonstrate that confessional boundaries between edinoverie and official Orthodoxy in everyday life were becoming blurred, and not only for religious reasons.