ABSTRACT
Russian historians have grappled with the origins of the Russian Schism or Raskol for the last two centuries and few topics of Muscovite history have generated as large a body of secondary literature. Interpretations fall into two basic camps following models set by the pre-revolutionary scholar Pavel S.Smirnov and the Soviet scholar Vladimir G.Kartsov. Smirnov, a specialist in seventeenth-century polemic literature, attributed the schism entirely to the writings of a few men, the so-called Old Believers who rejected the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon. To Smirnov, apocalyptic and anti-Western ideas contained in letters and treatises written by Old Believers such as Archpriest Avvakum Petrov, Deacon Fedor Ivanov, and Abbot Spiridon Potemkin strongly influenced general societal moods and caused a massive refusal to accept the reforms by the deeply religious and xenophobic Russian masses.1 Kartsov agreed with Smirnov on the centrality of Old Believer texts, but he argued that these texts used the language of religion only as a propagandistic device to inspire a broad movement of protest against the prevailing socio-economic order. In particular, Kartsov argued that the Old Believers provided the ideology for large popular revolts such as the Don Cossack revolt of the late 1660s.2
