Memory about the past and the problem of social identity

The article is devoted to studying the unique manuscript heritage of the Old-Believers, taken with an attempt for solving significant scientific problem of memory about the past. The analysis of text of the historical writing named «Narration about the world-being history», composed by one of the Pomorian concorde’s members in the 1st half of the 19th century, gives the author an opportunity to show how the Old-Believers represented their concorde’s history in a common stream of Christian history. The Christian history itself consisted of both world and Russian history and was determined to end with the Antichrist’s rule, Doom’s Day and Apocalypse, according to the Christian doctrine for them. The contents of «Narration about the world-being history» have a clearly distinct structure: the text itself is divided into 7 sections consisting of 60 chapters. The narrator managed to present Russian history as a part of Christian history. The retelling of some Bible stories is combined with the narration of real historical events, which were filled with providentialist meanings by narrator, who made didactic conclusions for his readers. In accordance to the Christian doctrine, the narrator concluded his composition by description of «the Last Time», which, in his opinion, had come, starting with realization of the reform of the church in Russia. The historical events were used by the Old-Believers to prove their positions’ righteousness against the innovations introduced to rituals and practice of the Russian church as a result of this reform. The narrator must have expected that his readers would already know about the Old-Believers eschatological schemes which had declared Russia as a place of Antichrist’s rule, and the times endured as «the Last Time» before the Apocalypse. The «Narration…» might be interpreted as the narrator’s urge to convince his readers that Russia in such «evil times» still had been saved as a state only because of the Old-Believers, who were favoured by the Supreme power. This, in the author’s opinion, gives an explanation for the narrator’s loyal attitude to Russian emperors, although their ruling times were characterized in the section, devoted to the description of «the Last Time». As a result, the author comes to a conclusion that memory about the past played really important role in the process of argumentation for the Old-Believers concordes’ ideology. This ideology formed the feeling of every member’s belonging to specific religious commune and the hostility to outer world, defined as Antichrist’s reign.