From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the First World War's eastern front massacred men by the thousand. Father Dimitrii Smirnov, along with hundreds of other religious officials, tried to offer spiritual solace to the fighting and the dying, all while suffering hardships himself and witnessing the horrors of modern warfare. Father Dimitrii's experiences were made all the more arduous by the fact that he was an Old Believer, a religious group that had only recently been granted full legal standing.
Further reading: James M. White: ‘Battling for Legitimacy: Russian Old Believer Priests in the First World War,’ First World War Studies, vol. 7, no. 2-3 (2017), 93-113.
E. M. Iukhimenko, “Pis’ma staroobriadcheskogo sviashchennika Dimitriia Smirnova s Russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904-1905 gg.” in Starobriadchestvo Sibiri i Dal’nego Vostoka. Materialy chetvertoi mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii 14-17 sentiabria 2004 goda g. Vladivostok (Vladivostok, 2004), 46-59.
In the 1890s, the tiny village of Ashchepkovo in western Russia was struck by an epidemic of demonic possession. This episode attempts to understand...
The colour photographs of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii fascinated the imperial public of the early 20th century, persuading Emperor Nicholas II to sponsor expeditions across the...
In August 1702, the serving girl Marta came into the possession of a Russian general following a siege. Some twenty-two years later, she was...