Newly found documents on the history of the old believers in Kushereka village of Onega uyezd

The article uses newly found archival documents to examine the history of one of the little-known centers of Ancient Orthodoxy in the Russian North - the village of Kushereka in the Onega Uyezd (canton) of the Arkhangelsk Province. Investigating this understudied topic is very relevant because of its practical importance for the confessional history of Russia within the Old Believers’ community. The article introduces new archival materials covering the situation of the Old Believers in this northern village and its surroundings. Documentary corpus used by the author of the research comprised a group of sources from the funds of the Russian State Historical Archive: the “Schism” cases of the Department of General Affairs of the Ministry of the Interior and the Office of the Minister of Agriculture. Using published and unpublished sources, as well as historiographical materials the author examines the history of the village of Kushereka from a historical prospective and makes an attempt to identify the real role of the Old Believers in the life and worldview of its inhabitants, who formally belonged to the official church. The author raises important questions about the existence of secret Old Believers’ sketes in the north, about the government policy towards the Old Believers and their activities, and about the repressions of the mid-XIX century. One of the main conclusions of the article is that the authority of the Old Believers among the population of Pomorian north, despite the persecution by the official administration, was consistently high between the XVII and the XX centuries.