OLD BELIEVERS STUDIES IN THE CULTURAL CREATION PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The article describes the urgency of creating a scientific anthology dedicated to the Russian Old Believers. Russian Old Believers is one of the most important spiritual, social, economic and cultural phenomena in the history of Russia. Attention to the Old Believer intellectual heritage is relevant for clarifying the course of Russia's development in the world community of civilizations. Over the centuries of coexistence with the Russian Empire, the Old Believers developed their own counteractions to the Western path. Nowadays the Old Believers are an arsenal of spiritual, intellectual and cultural methods of resistance to Westernization, information capitalism and one-dimensional globalization. The Old Believers developed mental mechanisms for sustainable development in the context of multipolar globalization, for the construction of a social state based on sovereign democracy. The anthology should include both basic Old Believer texts and significant research and philosophical works about the Old Believers. A selection of Old Believer texts should illustrate the various trends of Old Believer thought in different epochs, to see the Old Believers as ideology, as a world view, as a mentality, as a way of life. The collection of texts on the Old Believership should give an objective picture of the place of the Ancient Orthodoxy in the history and present time of Russia. Editorial work should be based on a special methodology, so as not to perceive the Old Believers in an ethnographic or historical-museum format. Old Believer should be presented to the reader in the light of his current opportunities for building a new great culture.