“EXPLANATION OF THE CATHEDRAL’S STATEMENTS” IS A NEW SOURCE ON THE NORMATIVE CREATIVITY OF THE TITOVITES

Nikolay A. Starukhin¹

¹ Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia.
nikolaystaruhin2015@gmail.com, orcid.org/0000-0003-2135-0424

Abstract. A previously unpublished source, “Explanation of the Cathedral Statements,” created by one of the
relatively few Old Believer sects in Siberia, the Titovites, is being introduced into scientific circulation, and obtained during recent years of field archaeographic research. The agreement, which was formed as a result of several cathedral “conversations” at the very beginning of the last century in one of the remote taiga settlements in Siberia, was named after its founder, the former Old Believer and chaplain T. T. Vygvintsev. The document is adjacent to a group of normative monuments, the publication of some of which was initiated by the staff of the Archaeography and Source Studies Sector at the Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Clarification of the Cathedral Statements” allows us to trace in more detail both the peculiarities of the ideological postulates of the agreement and the internal polemics at a new stage in its history, when the desire to follow the precepts of the founding fathers of this Old Believer movement inevitably clashes with the realities of the day, giving rise to new disputes and tragic divisions. An analysis of the Explanation, based on research methods that have been widely used in historical and philological studies since the late 19th century, has shown that it is based on all the sources available to the leaders of the agreement, from their own regulations from the early 20th century to the cathedral decrees of the 21st century, as well as the authoritative monuments of the Old Believers, which are determined by the common literary preferences of the Old Believers and the doctrinal features of the Titovites themselves. It is not typical to expand this circle at the expense of books published by the civil press. However, this can be partly explained by the purpose of creating the Explanation and its polemical nature. Although this can be partly explained by the purpose of the Explanation and its polemical nature. The published document confirms the previously expressed view that the ideology of consent was strongly influenced by the ideological attitudes of the early Vyga and the wandering Old Believers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Keywords: Old Believers, Pomor Agreement, controversy, T. T. Vygvintsev, titovtsy, chapel consent, sources.