“A tree grows from its root”: Ivan Nikiforovich Zavoloko and his correspondents in Karelia

The article analyzes the correspondence between a prominent figure among the XX-century Old Believers, Ivan Nikiforovich Zavoloko (1897-1984), and the staff of the State Museum of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Social Republic, as well as local historians, poets and scholars of Karelia V. P. Yershov, I. A. Kostin, Yu. V. Linnik and E. G. Soini. The research materials were more than 30 letters written between the 1960s and the 1980s and stored in the National Museum of the Republic of Karelia, the Archive of the Riga Grebenshchikov Old Believers’ Community, the Depository named after V. I. Malyshev at the Institute of Russian literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in the personal archive of E. G. Soini. The subjects discussed in the letters are the history and culture of the Vyg Community and the Old Belief in general, issues of collecting and studying antiquities, museum work, literary activity, and scientific and cultural life. The article also covers the history of I. A. Kostin’s poem dedicated to the Archpriest Avvakum. The correspondence provides new valuable materials for the study of the personality, activities, and range of interests of I. N. Zavoloko. The conclusion is made about the influence of I. N. Zavoloko on the representatives of the Karelian intelligentsia in their understanding of the Old Belief and other phenomena of Russian culture.