Talk:Old Believers/Archive 2

C class
Article fails pt. 1 of B-Class criteria. It lacks ciations needed for B and is a solid C class article. It is on its way though. -- Secisek (talk) 17:47, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Vladimir vs. Volodimer or Volodymyr
First of all, I am not Russian or even Slavic. As it happens, I'm from Western Europe. I do not have any chauvinistic feelings towards Russians, Ukrainians, etc. Secondly, Wikipedia should, in my opinion, not take into account any existing nationalist or chauvinist sentiments.

It as a fact that nowadays in Ukraine efforts are being taken by certain elements to "purify" Ukrainian history and culture from anything Russian and to erase any traces of what could be regarded as Russian or linked with Russia. Historical names are being replaced by Ukrainian ones, even if those names are widely known and accepted and used throughout the world and in historiographic tradition and practice (as show all non-Ukrianian WP articles). Personally I don't mind Ukrainian chauvinists being Ukrainian chauvisnists, but still they have no right to impose their POV to the rest of the world or to Wikipedia, replacing names in season and out season. This is what one finds at the Discussion Page of Vladimir I of Kiev:

Quote: The sentence "Volodymyr Svyatoslavych the Great, often mistakenly spelled Vladimir" is incorrect as "Volodymyr" being a modern Ukrainian spelling is no more correct than "Vladimir" (modern Russian spelling). The old East Slavic was either "Володимеръ"(according to the Hypatian codex) or "Володимѣръ"(Vasmer). Note the different vowels in the two last syllables. The reason of this is that the root "mer" derives from the gothic "-mērs"("great") —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.47.185.171 (talk) 05:56, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, didn't notice this, thanks - that were edits by an anonymous Ukrainian nationalist (note the typical Kiev to Kyiv change). Reverted. --Illythr (talk) 13:37, 2 April 2009 (UTC) Unquote

Knyaz Vladimir was called Volodimer in the 10th century. For many centuries international historiography knows him as Vladimir, whether some Ukrainians regard this as an insult or not. Starting to call him anno 2009 Volodimer (or Volodymyr in Ukrainian) looks highly artificial and in some respects even anachronistic. Please stop reverting, stop rewriting established historiography. If not, an Administrator will be notified. Vasilij (talk) 16:36, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree about better English spelling the knyaz's name as Volodimir than modern Ukrainian Volodymyr. Concerning Kiev-Russian, please understand that name Russia and Russian appeared in Moskovian (later Russian) tsar Peter the Great's era. Before there was only original name of nation and country Rus (which is traced from the name of the river Ros (Rus) to the south of Kyiv city) which meant to be modern central Ukraine and other lands within Ukraine and Belorus (like Chervona Rus, White Rus, Black Rus). This name Rus, or Rusinia, or Rusiya was spelled in western countries as Ruthenia. In accordance to country's name name of people was Rus, or Rusyn, or Rusich. This is why Kiev-Ruthenian is historicaly correct despite Kiev-Russian (as I told that begun to use in 18th century). Best regards Vasilij.--Hrystiv 06:11, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Once again: NPOV Discussion
This article seems to make a point at rehabilitating the Old Believers based on the research of two authors. Is this the mainstream view? What do the other Eastern Orthodox churches say about this? The official Russian one? --Illythr (talk) 22:43, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

First of all, the article is not aiming at rehabilitate the Old Believers. The article is making a point, though, at refuting widespread misconceptions and prejudices which have existed for a very long time (due to the fact the Russian Orthodox State Church until 1905 controlled and censored all information about the Schism and the Old Believers) and which, unfortunately, continue to exist until this very day. It is not true that only the research of two authors (to be precisely, not just authors, but renowned scholars) has thrown a different light on the matter: there have been many scholars who have occupied themselves with this issue and who came to more or less identical conclusions. It would be superfluous to quote all those scholars, who have investigated on the matter.

You don’t seem to have read all what has been written on this Discussion page; I think many of your doubts wouldn’t have risen at all. Those sections of the article which refute traditional misconceptions about the schism and the Old Believers (for these are usually the sections some may find lacking credibility and therefore needing citations, etc.) are entirely based on scientific research, carried out by well-known scholars whose reputation and integrity is beyond any doubt. Their names and their standard works on the subject are listed in the “References and Selected Biography” section at the end of the article. Either one recognizes the authority and integrity of these scholars, or one doesn’t. In fact, there is only one guarantee for NPOV: the stainless reputation of the above-mentioned ecclesiastical historians and experts on byzantology which has continued to be stainless for the last hundred years or so. Their books are still being published, their authority and expertise have remained unquestioned until this very day. Science continues to develop, yet the main results of their scientific research have never been refuted ever since. Given these facts, doubts about the NPOV of this article seems – putting it bluntly - somewhat inappropriate and even strange. So, yes, this view is very much mainstream indeed.

As to what the other Eastern Orthodox churches say about this, I would like to point out that the Russian Orthodox churches (both Abroad and the Moscow Patriarchate) have lifted the anathema on the old Russian rites and books. The Moscow Patriarchate is communicating with the Russian Orthodox Old-ritualist church on a regular basis.

Since you're Russian, try to catch hold of this book: Зеньковский С.А. "Русское старообрядчество", Mосква 2006, Институт ДИ-ДИК, (1 и 2 томы) ISBN 5-93311-012-4

Vasilij (talk) 16:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The article is making a point, though, at refuting widespread misconceptions and prejudices - this is the problem. A Wikipedia article should not make a point at anything - its goal is supposed to be a neutral referenced description of the mainstream scientific view on the issue. That NPOV problems were raised before does not quell doubts, but indeed deepens them - those sections currently cite only those two researchers and, I understand, it is their view that is presented as fact here. Note that I am commenting on the general tone of the article, not on the content, which may well be true. Instead of the book itself, might you have an article on the critical appraisal of one of these researchers' work, or the theory in general, that is, to use your words, proof that the reputation of these scholars is indeed stainless? --Illythr (talk) 21:36, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I don’t see what’s so objectionable about refuting misconceptions and stereotypes about Old Believers, as long as such assertions can be backed with scientific research by generally acknowledged experts on Russian church history and byzantology. At any rate, refuting misconceptions and being POV are most definitely not the same things, as you seem to suggest; not refuting misconceptions and biasses is certainly not NPOV. I already added names of other scholars in the section, who, according to Zenkovsky (he made an interesting review of the research history of the Schism and the Old Believers), have also carried out some significant research. The circumstance that only Zenkovsky and Kapterev are being cited does not at all mean they are the only two who reached the conclusions about the origin of the Old Russian rite, but why cite them all? Does that make the article more objective or convincing? The other scholars are either mentioned in the section or in the biography section.

As to the scholars, Kapterev, Kartaschev, Golubinskij and Dmitrievskij were all members of the Imperial Academy of Sciences - that is verifiable (http://www.ras.ru/hisfotoarchive/about.aspx). Their membership alone confirms that these scholars were acknowledged by the scientific community. Being elected a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences is the highest esteem and the greatest honour a Russian scholar can get; among its members are Nobel prize winners Pavlov and Sakharov. This membership alone is a solid guarantee for solid scientific research and a high reputation. As far as I know, any one with profound knowledge of Russian church history, byzantology knows these scholars and has most likely read at least some of their books. The schism of the Russian church and the Old Believers’ movement are an extremely complicated issue. Also, it is a primarily Russian issue, which has been seriously investigated mainly in Russia and mainly by Russian scientists. In order to investigate and analyze this entangled material, one has to be highly competent in many scientific disciplines: church history, ecclesiastical paleography, theology, byzantology, liturgistics, one has to know Greek, Latin and Church Slavonic, one needs to be a specialist on Russian history and culture. Few scientists combine all these rare disciplines and are interested in the origins of the Russian schism. Therefore it’s not at all surprising that scholars like Kapterev, Dmitrievskij, Golubinskij and Zenkovskij are not known to a wider audience (investigating the Russian schism comes down to many years of stiff reading). Hence few who were (or are) interested in this and the same goes for most of the audience. The results of their scientific research have been published in Russia, in Russian and to my knowledge, have never been translated into any other language. This is a most unfortunate circumstance, since it is their scientific research that has refuted the misinformation redundantly spread by the Russian State Church and its missionaries to discredit the Old Believers. Still it can’t be stressed enough that these scholars were primarily interested in the origins of the Russian schism and they had no aim as to exculpate the Old Believers (although ludicrous accusations in such a direction have been made to them in the past and even now).

It really starts to amaze me that the integrity of such eminent, acknowledged scholars is suddenly being questioned – out of a concern with objectivity (the very objectivity they strove to establish!). Aslo I think it highly unjustified to consequently refer to their scientific research as “views presented as facts.”

May I suggest you first make some own inquiries instead of demanding evidence about the integrity of the research of these scientists?

If you so much disagree on what the above-mentioned scientists have to say about the origins of the Old Russian rites and traditions as you seem you do, you should start reading and gathering information, not asking others to provide evidence for the integrity of these scholars - that is the world turned upside down. User Ouital77 has recommended a series of articles on Byzantine typica by Aleksei Pentkovsky in Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkhii a couple of years ago. His book on the Typicon of Alexius the Studite and Studiisko-Aleksievskij Ustav would be also helpful.

This is what user ouital77, holder of a degree in theology and having done many of the editing of the section about the validity of Reformists' theories. He wrote:
 * I am familiar with the work of Kapterev and Zenkovsky. AFAIK, Kapterev's conclusions regarding the sources for Nikon's reform have been accepted by the mainstream scholarship, so there's no problem there, (...).
 * Additionally, my citation of JMP has nothing to do with this journal being the "official organ" of MP (...). Aleksei Pentkovskij is the foremost authority in the field of Slavic liturgics today, and his work should be read, no matter where it appears, (…). (ouital77 16:17, 12 April 2006 (UTC))

The bottom line is: one may disagree on what scholars have concluded, but no one has the right to put in question or contest research activity or even the integrity of the scientists involved, simply because one disagrees. That really it pushing it a bit far. I see no point in continuing this discussion; the risk exists it soon will turn into an endless polemic that won’t get us anywhere. I do hope we are not heading for an edit war, though. Vasilij (talk) 12:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You seem to be misreading my posts and jumping to conclusions because of that. I do not disagree with those scholars' research. I address strictly the tone of the article (that is, the sections that deal with this research), that, instead of simply describing what they have determined, make a point of praising them for this. Instead of refuting the previous misconceptions, the article should simply give due weight to the the way it really was, citing sources as it goes. --Illythr (talk) 16:41, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I disagree about me misreading your posts. It was you who said "That NPOV problems were raised before does not quell doubts, but indeed deepens them - those sections currently cite only those two researchers and, I understand, it is their view that is presented as fact here." Now you declare that you "(...) do not disagree with those scholars' research," but that you're only concerned with the tone of the section. Vasilij (talk) 17:01, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Eh, why would you want to revive this discussion after almost two years? --illythr (talk) 19:36, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Removal edits by anonymous User 64.134.17.213
I trust the anonymous User 64.134.17.213 had the best intensions, but his efforts have rather spoiled the article than improved it. One cannot just load huge amounts of text (no matter how interesting) into an article without any consideration for the effectiveness of one's edits and for how the aricle will look like as a result.

The inserts i.e. edits of this anonymous user are too large and far too detailed. The article has started to repeat itself endlessly. It should be obvious that contributing to an article requires editing; one can’t just insert one’s own thing without any consideration for the existing text and for the result. That’s not the way to contribute to an article!

The article should give information on the subject to the general public, rather than give all kinds of most specific details which probably are of interest only to a very limited number of specialists. More over, the article is technically detailed and complicated enough as it is!

I have removed the edits of the anonymous user for the following reasons:


 * The logical structure of the article has been violated


 * The entire chronological structure of the article has been violated


 * As a result of this, the article has become a chaos and is, at its present state, almost unintelligible.


 * The inserts contain extremely detailed information which at one point is simply counter-productive for the comprehension of the subject and which, at another point, can be found down below in other sections, i.e. the old version of the article, where facts and information are displayed in a more chronological and logical manner.


 * The inserts contain much information the article already gives; therefore the article has started to repeat itself endlessly.

In short, the edits as they are now just don’t fit in into the article. Either one has to thoroughly rewrite the article, or these edits should be made undone. Since the subject is complicated enough as it is, I take the liberty to delete the edits of the anonymous user.

Please do not regard my actions as vandalism. It’s the structure and the intelligibleness of the article about which I’m concerned. Vasilij (talk) 14:01, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Two words misused
One baptismal rite is referred as "peculiar" which would seem to violate Wikipedia's goal of neutrality.

The word "principle" is used when "principal" is probably meant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.83.186.248 (talk) 03:16, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Merger Proposal
I remove the tag and redirecting the page to Old Believers. If you look at the article history of Old Orthodox Movement, the page was created by Ak36962 -- examining of his/her talk page indicates that numerous other pages of similar content were deleted for copyright infringement. Due to the lengthy nature of this article, with no citations inserted, I suspect the same may be the case here. So the merger was completed on the basis of a copyright violation. WTF? (talk) 20:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

The page Old Orthodox Movement was recently created and appears to be describing the same thing as this article. However, there may be some new and useful material in the Old Orthodox Movement article, for it is rather lengthy. If someone could take the time to mine any new material from the article and incorporate it here, and then do the redirect, that would be great. -Twinkie eater91 (talk) 02:12, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * No one seems to have put any effort in mergering for the last six months; therefore I took the liberty of removing the merger tag. Vasilij (talk) 21:23, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I added the merge tag to generate more discussion. --KarlB (talk) 02:46, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations
Congratulations on making it to today's listing on the "Did You Know..." section of Wikipedia Main Page. The process of making it the listing takes a bit of effort and involves the quick cooperation of many editors. All involved deserve recognition, appreciation, thanks and applause.
 * Best Regards,
 *  Bfpage &#124;leave a message 13:57, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Where is the neutrality discussion?
A neutrality-disputed tag was added to the article recently, but there seems to be no discussion of it here. I thought the rules required posting an explanation on the talk page when adding that tag. The same anonymous user, when posting the tag, made some minor edits to improve neutrality, and I don't disagree with those edits; but the points they edited don't seem to have been big enough to warrant flagging the entire article as disputed. 2607:FEA8:13E0:7AD:0:0:0:2 (talk) 10:43, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You are right. The tag was added in a WP:DRIVEBY and no talk discussion was ever initiated. I have removed it as stale. Elizium23 (talk) 11:42, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Paganism
Are the Old Believers or the reformed Russian Orthodox Church more sympathetic to pagan religious practices and customs? Paganism is mentioned in the article, but only in reference to the 16th century. Can this be clarified? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 05:51, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Confusing paragraph
I'm confused by this paragraph in the "after the schism" section:

"In 1905, Tsar Nicholas II signed an act of religious freedom that ended the persecution of all religious minorities in Russia. The Old Believers gained the right to build churches, to ring church bells, to hold processions and to organize themselves. In 1762, Catherine the Great passed an act that allowed Old Believers to practise their faith openly without interference. It became prohibited (as under Catherine the Great—reigned 1762–1796) to refer to Old Believers as raskolniki (schismatics), a name they consider insulting."

So they got religious freedom in 1905, but they also got the right to "practise their faith openly without interference" in 1762. So which is it? Did they get partial rights granted under Catherine, and fuller ones under Nicholas, or was there a loss of rights after Catherine's death when less open-minded Tsars came to the throne? I think it would be clearer to re-arrange the paragraph into chronological order (by somebody who knows something of the subject) to make it clear how they were treated, when, and by whom. Chuntuk (talk) 21:42, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Old Believers under Bolshevism
The article could use some information about the relations of the Old Believers and the Bolsheviks (later Soviet Union). The history ends in 1917 and picks up again in 1971. Someone Not Awful (talk) 13:35, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

How many are there?
The info box says 5.5 million with no source linked, but the numbers below don't even add up to 1 million. The "Current situation" mentions 1 to 2 million, again with no source.

When are vespers? 2603:6080:CE00:AE:F0F7:E18D:8E41:9536 (talk) 01:42, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Outside Russia
A town called Beryozovka is listed as being in Alaska. I can't find anything online saying there's a place in Alaska with this name. Now, there IS a place in Russia with that name, but can't find one in Alaska. And, if you click the name, it takes you to the page for Willow, Alaska. 2600:1700:BC01:9B0:E414:A677:3871:4939 (talk) 18:06, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

"Schismatics" (Russian: раскольники, raskol'niki)
It is probably worth explaining for the readers why this is an odd choice of term. When the Orthodox faith broke from the original church they became schismatic, enacted a schism. However they to this day teach their kids that actually the Christian religion 'schismed' from them, that they are the one true faith eternal. So it is interesting that they schismed twice, yet then accuse the rest of the world of being schismatic. This is common in face cultures, societies where being honest is not as important as saving face, and is very intrinsic to understanding the context of this article. 2001:8003:2961:AD00:50FD:2CD8:8930:2A5B (talk) 01:37, 24 September 2023 (UTC)