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.
Between 1770 and 1772, Moscow saw a virulent outbreak of the Black Death, one of the most feared diseases in European history: Dr Afanasii...
The 1804/1818 song collection of Kirsha Danilov introduced the Russian reading public, in many ways for the first time, to the people's immensely rich...
As is well known, Grigorii Rasputin wielded a considerable and scandalous level of influence over Tsar Nicholas II. What is less well known is...