Russian Believers Research Articles

The Old Rite Orthodox Community at the Lower Danube, between Tradition, Modernity, and Globalization

Written history has recorded communities unique in their origin and structural mode of survival. One such community is that of the Old Russian believers, Staroveri, spread across the globe for religious reasons, like many other faiths, and still retaining their identity. What is the state of preservation of this identity, how long will it survive over time, and in what geographical area - these are all general questions. These questions, when put into concrete terms in Romania, are the object of investigation and meditation for what we imagine the old believers to be. However, we must be realistic and note that beyond the conservative spirit of the founding fathers of the community, there is a spirit of the times that erodes the principles of the founders. We will try to highlight some of the coordinates that have marked the evolution of a theocratic community in the two historical paradigms known to human society, at the crossroads of which we now find ourselves: the ethnocratic one, exhausted, with the prospect of dissolution, and the technocratic one, in full swing and in the process of establishing a new way of life. We are looking at the national community paradigm and the globalization paradigm.

Mission of Foreign Protestants in Russia on the Eve and during the Great Russian Revolution and the Civil War

Based on the study of a wide range of sources (published and unpublished), the article explores the activities of foreign Protestant missions in Russia on the eve and during the years of the revolution, the Civil War and foreign intervention (1917—1922). The intensification of the bilateral process of interaction between Russian and foreign Protestantism during the years of the revolution, the Civil War and the intervention in Russia under the conditions of the proclaimed freedom of conscience and the absence of legislative restrictions on missionary activity, was associated, both with the global missionary designs of foreign, primarily American missionary and Christian humanitarian organizations, and with the internal trends in the development of the domestic Evangelical-Baptist community, which has set as its goal the large-scale evangelization of Russia. Using the example of the largest denominations — Evangelical Christianity and Baptism, the impact of foreign missionaries and missionary organizations on domestic Protestantism is studied, the main countries-“importers” of the mission, its goals, methods and forms of missionary work, the main directions of interaction with Russian believers are identified.