Crisis of Religious Toleration in Imperial Russia
Subtitle: Bibikov's System for the Old Believers, 1841-1855
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
ISBN-13: 9780198746362
Subjects: Nicholas i, emperor of russia, 1796-1855; Old believers; Dissenters, religious; Russia (federation), politics and government
Description: "This book is about an unprecedented attempt by the government of Russia's Tsar Nicholas I (1825-1855) to eradicate what was seen as one of the greatest threats to its political security: the religious dissent of the Old Believers. The Old Believers had long been reviled by the ruling Orthodox Church, for they were the largest group of Russian dissenters and claimed to be the guardians of true Orthodoxy; however, their industrious communities and strict morality meant that the civil authorities often regarded them favourably. This changed in the 1840s and 1850s when a series of remarkable cases demonstrated that the existing restrictions upon the dissenters' religious freedoms could not suppress their capacity for independent organisation. Finding itself at a crossroads between granting full toleration, or returning to the fierce persecution of earlier centuries, the tsarist government increasingly inclined towards the latter course, culminating in a top secret 'system' introduced in 1853 by the Minister of Internal Affairs Dmitrii Bibikov."--Back cover.