The Social Mission of Contemporary Old Belief

The article studies the relationship between the history and the current state of the social mission of Old Orthodoxy based on an analysis of a corpus of Old Believer online publications and the authors’ field research. Old Belief not only preserved Old Russian culture as an integrated system but also sought to transmit its heritage to new generations. In this context, Old Believer entrepreneurship rapidly developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries, while merchant-philanthropists consistently engaged in charitable activities for the benefit of society by building hospitals and schools, pub-lishing books for the public, and undertaking other initiatives. The authors demon-strate that in the early twenty-first century Old Belief is experiencing a revival while preserving its traditions of social mission. Today, this social mission is being significantly enhanced in technical and technological terms, yet it does not lose its core purpose – educating people, es-pecially the younger generation, in the spirit of traditional spiritual and moral values. The social mission of Old Orthodoxy, having begun with the restoration of church infrastructure, spiritual centers, and symbolic and historically significant sites, also encompasses educational and catechetical activities, including those carried out through new online media. Among the descendants of Old Believers, benefactors are emerging who are sympathetic to or actively support the development of Old Believer culture. Un-doubtedly, the contemporary social mission of Old Belief attests to the high adaptive potential of Old Orthodoxy and to its emergence as a significant traditional religious subcultural phenomenon within the modern cultural landscape.