St. Petersburg priestless old believers between the 1720s and 1941

The article is devoted to the history of Old Believer communities that did not accept the priesthood in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region - regions of significant spread of this confession, where its traditions have always been strongly represented. The work covers an extensive period of time - from the 1720s to 1941, but attention is principally paid to the least studied Soviet period. In the capital of the Russian Empire and its environs there lived mainly representatives of the three groups of Priestless Old Believers: the Pomortsy, Fedoseevtsy and Filippovtsy. The active development of the Old Believer communities in the Petrograd province continued until 1917. After the October Revolution, their situation began to deteriorate. Despite the concessions of the Soviet authorities in the 1920s, mass anti-religious persecutions gradually engulfed Old Believers. By the summer of 1941, all of their prayer houses were closed, and the remnants of the communities temporarily went underground until a partial revival following World War Two. The article was prepared on the basis of a significant set of archival documents that were not previously introduced into scientific circulation, primarily for the first post-revolutionary decades. The work is intended for scholars, believers, as well as all readers interested in church history.