1st Edition

Social History of the True Orthodox Christians Wandering in Russia Capitalism, Communism, and Apocalypse, 1900-1930

By Igor Kuziner Copyright 2026
222 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

222 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book explores the social history of the radical religious community of Old Believer-Wanderers during the period of rapid Late Imperial, Early Soviet, and Stalinist modernization. The self-titled True Orthodox Christians believed the 17th-century reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church ushered in the reign of an invisible Antichrist. Rejecting the corrupted world, they advocated extreme... Read more

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Wanderers in the World of Antichrist

Chapter 2. The saints traded too

Chapter 3: Apocalypse in Vyatka

Chapter 4. Three lives of Maksim Zalesskii

Chapter 5. Wanderers in the labyrinth of Russian modernities

Biography

Igor Kuziner is a historian specializing in religious minorities, nationalisms, and social history in Russia. He holds a PhD in history and serves as an Associate Professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (St. Petersburg), where he leads the Research Group on Social Studies of Religion. His work explores Old Believers, church-state relations, and the intersection of religion and identity across the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods.

 

"This original study breaks new grounds in studies of Old Believers and particularly the Wanderers. An obscure group in imperial Russian and Soviet society, the Wanderers were more involved in the real world, dealing with the vicissitudes of the lands in which they lived, than had previously been realized. Igor Kuziner gives us a beautifully written story of three particular people -- Ryabinin, Zyryanov, and Zalesskii  -- as guides to a much larger picture of a movement that managed to survive, apparently to the present day."

-- Ronald Grigor Suny, William H. Sewell, Jr. Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of History, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, The University of Michigan, USA.