Peter the Great and St Petersburg in the works of the old believer writers of the Vyg community

The article analyzes the images of Peter the Great and the capital founded by him in the Vyg Old Believer writers' oeuvre of the XVIII and the first third of the XIX centuries. These works are indicative of an exceptionally positive perception of Peter the Great by the Vyg Old Believers, who saw him as a merciful and wise ruler, because the Tsar's policy was religiously tolerant. Some of these works throw light on particular facts from the history of Peter the Great's visit to the Olonets Province. The article examines narratives based on a plot, popular in the works about the Tsar, known as “the Tsar's trial”. As a literary context, anecdotes about Peter the Great are drawn from I. I. Golikov's and A. K. Nartov's collections. One of the Vyg writers' works about the flood that happened in St. Petersburg in 1824 is analyzed and presented to the scientific community for the first time.