Pareizticīgo misionāru darbība vecticībnieku vidū Vitebskas guberņas Režicas, Dvinskas un Ļucinas apriņķos (1894-1901)
The Activities of the Orthodox Missionaries among the Old Believers in Rezhica, Dvinsk, and Lucin Counties (1894-1901)

Summary/Abstract: At the end of the 19th century Russian Orthodoxy was not the only religion on the territory of the Russian Empire, but it served as a serious instrument of providing unification of the population using the ideals of Christianity. The Old Believers occupied a special place in this process, because they were not treated as ordinary citizens, but as rivals of the Orthodoxy and a source of troubles for the Monarchy because of their independent and closed way of living. To protect the interests of the Orthodoxy and to persuade the Old Believers to abandon their faith, all over the Empire special organisations - brotherhoods of missionaries - were established that bacame responsible for working among the non-Orthodox inhabitants. The Vitebsk province was inhabited by a relatively large number of Old Believers; this fact in 1894 motivated the local Vitebsk Saint Vladimir's Brotherhood to establish an Anti-Split Committee that would fight against the "splitters" (raskolniki) - the o:fficial name of Old Believers. The reports of the missionaries, priests and Orthodox church parish schools, who worked under the Committee on the territory of Dvinsk, Rezhica and Lucin counties from 1894 till 1901, are in the focus of the present paper. Although the reports are markedly dependent on the Orthodox Church ideology, they are valuable resources to study the local history of the Orthodox mission and the Old Belief on the territory of modern Eastern Latvia.

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