THE IMAGE OF THE RITUALIST IN THE DOCUMENTS OF THE AUTHORITIES AND DESCRIP-TIONS OF RESEARCHERS OF THE OLD BELIEVERS OF BURYATIA (late 19th – early 20th century)

For the Old-Rite population of Buryatia, since its appearance in the region, the task of preserving the old Orthodox faith and religious unity – in their opinion, the key to the salvation of the soul and eternal life – became an urgent necessity. In the absence (or status non-recognition) of priests, guides in the faith and intermediaries between the laity and the God, the main ceremonial functions were performed by ritualists chosen by the population and not recognized as clergy by the official Church. As tasks, the article examines the issue of assessments made by researchers of the 19th – 20th centuries concerning the role of a ritualist in the life of an ordinary Old Believer, which would give the opportunity to better identify its relevance to the community. Also, analyzing the documents of the tsarist and Soviet rule, the article raises the question about the differences between them within the boundaries of permissible control and admissible jurisdiction of ritualists, which will give more information about the different vision of their potential or obvious threats to the events, which certainly was dictated by a particular policy. Hence, the aim of this work is to analyze the image of a ritualist in the studies of the Russian Orthodox Church missionaries and scientists of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, as well as in the documents of the authorities, which will enable to better understand the relationship of his status with the integrity of the community specifics and its protection from external influence. The object of the study is the status of a ritualist in the Old Believer villages of Buryatia; the subject is assessments of its activities by scientists and government agencies. As the main conclusions, it is possible to say that, taking into account the authority and significance in the settlements, the ritualists’ field of activity was much wider than the practice of worship and interpretation of the Holy books. The ritualists had a fundamental influence on the daily life of a person, in the absence of an alternative opinion, they imposed their own one in matters of medicine, as well as education and moral education of young people. It is not surprising that they were the subject of special interest of researchers who visited the villages of Old Believers of Buryatia at the turn of 19th – 20th centuries and saw ritualists as the main custodians of not only religious but cultural identity of the Old Believers as well. For the same reason, they attracted negative attention of the official authorities, who wanted to weaken their authority (the tsarist government justified this by returning schismatics to the bosom of the Orthodox Church, the revolutionary government – by the need to build a unified Soviet society).