“The Army of the Heavenly King” in Imereti Bay: an Old Believer Preaching in the Space of a Religious Market and Modern Infrastructure

Abstract

The article demonstrates the processes of integrating traditional confessional communities into the modern Russian religious market using large-scale infrastructural transformations on the example of a small ethno-confessional group of descendants of the Nekrasov Cossacks of Imereti Bay, who migrated here from Turkey in the early 20th century. The main sources used are field observations and interviews conducted by the author among parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church (Belokrinitskoe Congregation), as well as residents of the Sirius Federal Territory and the town of Primorsko-Akhtarsk in the Krasnodar Region in 2020, 2023-2024. The article attempts to show how the radical intervention of the construction of the 2014 Olympic Games facilities led to a reassembly of social ties in the community, focusing it on establishing contacts with government structures, finding its place in state socio-political projects and financial support from the government, and intensifying microeconomic activities related to the leap in the tourism business. Special attention is paid to the role of the influence of the new infrastructure on the rethinking of proselytizing activity by the Old Believers and the use of newly opened opportunities to attract neophytes, including at the cost of some concessions and the weakening of ritual practices significant to the Old Believers. This process, according to the author, testifies to the actual acceptance by the local community and its leaders of the fact of rational choice of religion and the inclusion of the Old Believer Church in the religious market, partially regulated by the state.