Vladimir Ryabushinsky: An Old Believer on Old Belief

For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. Matthew 25:14–18 (corrected reference to align with the quoted text; the original cites Mt. 25:14–23, but the passage ends at verse 18 in the quote)

“If a person is talented, then they are talented in everything”—it is with this well-known saying, attributed to the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger, that we are accustomed to describing the character, activities, and lifestyle of a versatile and gifted individual.

A person to whom God has granted talent is, to a certain degree, a divinely chosen person, for any manifestation of talent as a gift from the Lord must be revealed by a Christian in the name of the Lord, for the glorification of His deeds, His infinite wisdom, mercy, and love as the highest spiritual state.

Throughout all of pre-Christian Old Testament and properly Christian history, God has granted various talents to certain people so that the gifted might be the Gospel Light to the world.

A striking example of this is the prophet David, whom the Lord endowed with the talent of playing the musical instrument of that time—the “psaltery”—and with mastery of artistic word. As a result, the book that entered the canon of the Old Testament—the Psalter—serves us, Orthodox Christians, as a model of prayer, spiritual disposition, and the foundation of divine services. The example of the prophet David is one of the brightest in Sacred History. New Testament Christianity has also produced a multitude of holy saints of God endowed with various talents: singing, writing, courage, intellect, and so on.

The renowned Roman the Melodist dedicated his vocal talent to giving beauty to divine services. John of Damascus distinguished himself with musical refinements in the development of the eight-tone system (osmoglasie), while Andrei Rublev devoted his artistic talent entirely to the development of the great traditions of Orthodox icon painting.

One of the outstanding and well-known talented representatives of Old Belief can be named the historian, theologian, art historian, writer, and philanthropist Vladimir Pavlovich Ryabushinsky, whose life and activities provided a worthy example of how one can simultaneously remain not alien to Christian spiritual experience, possess a deep penetrating mind, analytical abilities, mastery of artistic word, and enjoy material well-being. It was precisely these talents that Vladimir Ryabushinsky combined in himself.

The Ryabushinskys were a pre-revolutionary dynasty of Old Believer merchants, originating from peasants of Kaluga Governorate, who, thanks to diligence, tireless work ethic, intelligence, and skill, quickly rose from the peasant estate to hereditary honorary citizens. It was with this title—“hereditary honorary citizen”—that Vladimir Ryabushinsky’s father, Pavel Mikhailovich Ryabushinsky, was honored.

A worthy successor of the Ryabushinsky family, Vladimir Pavlovich, among the prominent Old Believer figures, occupies a worthy place not only in philanthropy but also in the written heritage of Old Belief.

In addition to volunteering for the front in the First World War, organizing a mobile automobile detachment, being severely wounded, and receiving the St. George Cross of the IV degree, his name will forever enter the history of Russian religious-philosophical thought.

Vladimir Pavlovich Ryabushinsky’s literary and humanitarian-scientific talent manifested itself already in the 1920s, during emigration. Several works belong to Vladimir Ryabushinsky’s pen, on whose pages are reflected the fundamental worldview positions of Russian Old Belief, its doctrinal stance, religious psychology, and the cultural features of the bearers of pre-schism Russian Orthodoxy. The reader’s attention is offered a very interesting and quite apt quote: “The history of Old Believer literature is almost as old as the history of the schism itself. Ryabushinsky remained in this faith despite his European education and became one of the first Old Believers capable of speaking about the principles of their faith as European intellectuals do, well-versed not only in the Church Fathers but also in European philosophy and Russian literature” [2]. Thus, through the example of Vladimir Ryabushinsky’s intellectual activity, we find a worthy model of how one can organically combine in oneself “the pleasant with the useful.” In this case, we consider “the useful” to be the pursuit of knowledge, education, and enlightenment. “The pleasant,” however, is spiritual experience, prayer, humility, repentance—the basic virtues of Christianity. Therefore, on the one hand, one must be a worthy example of the faith of the fathers in word and deed, while on the other hand, provide a well-argued defense to anyone who questions it in protection of one’s faith.

The writer Andrei Polonsky writes about the character of Vladimir’s father—Pavel Pavlovich Ryabushinsky: “A sharp, almost painful self-awareness, a sense of responsibility for the inherited enterprise and for the country. He was perhaps the first to declare openly: entrepreneurs are people capable of ensuring prosperity and abundance, and they are the true masters of the future Russia. But it was not entrepreneurship itself, but rather politics that became the focus of P.P. Ryabushinsky’s active passion. He formulated the code of his convictions as early as the beginning of the century. He combined consistent patriotism with an equally consistent transformation of the country, proceeding from national interests—specifically from concrete interests, not from some abstract principles. At the same time, the experience of his family and his Old Belief coexisted remarkably with an inquisitive curiosity and an open view of modernity. Thus, while insisting on the development of civil society and the strengthening of political freedoms, he at the same time proposed separating from the West with an ‘iron curtain’ (Pavel Pavlovich was the first to introduce this remarkable expression into use), fighting for markets, and seeking partners and rivals not in Europe, ‘where no one loves or awaits us,’ but in the East, ‘where there is an untouched expanse of work’ [2].

One can conclude that his son Vladimir Pavlovich worthily inherited his father’s character and the spirit of the dynasty.

To the pen and mind of Vladimir Pavlovich Ryabushinsky belong a number of works of historical, dogmatic, and cultural character. The most important among them are “Old Belief and the Russian Religious Feeling,” “The Russian World,” “The Russian Icon,” and other letters and messages.

In 2010, the Moscow publishing house “Mosty Kultury” released a fundamental work by Vladimir Ryabushinsky under the general title “Old Belief and the Russian Religious Feeling,” which included the author’s main intellectual creations [1].

Vladimir Ryabushinsky’s style is distinguished by simplicity, naturalness, and lightness combined with profound semantic depth. In this regard, Vladimir Pavlovich is similar in style and spirit to the Russian religious philosopher and thinker Georgy Petrovich Fedotov, who, on the one hand, did not hide his sympathies for pre-schism Holy Orthodox Rus’, and on the other hand, expressed the depth of his thoughts and ideas in a light, airy language.

One of the fundamental religious-philosophical works of Vladimir Ryabushinsky is undoubtedly the epochal work in its significance, “Old Belief and the Russian Religious Feeling.”

Literally from the first lines, the author decisively debunks the myth of the entrenched stereotype of Old Belief as a phenomenon primitive in religious terms, almost pagan. Ryabushinsky immediately sets the tone and characterizes the essence of Old Belief:

“These principles embrace the area of contact and mutual penetration of spirit and matter” [1, 33].

In this way, the author sets the tone of the book from the outset, proclaiming to the reader that the present work will speak of a completely different Old Belief—one more spiritual and viable, far removed from the image created in various stereotypical pre-revolutionary official missionary publications. Thus, Ryabushinsky ventures a bold and at the same time brilliant move—literally right away knocking out of the reader’s head all confessional and informational prejudices, and step by step, gradually presenting Old Belief in all its beauty.

Ryabushinsky begins with a subtle historical analysis of the book correction (knizhnaya sprava). He reminds the reader that, it turns out, book correction in Rus’ is not a new matter but a traditional one, and the presence of errors in the process of copying books is a human and natural occurrence. “The correction of books was carried out very often” [1, 34]. Pavel Ryabushinsky sharply criticizes the totality of religious communities contemporary to him, in whose prayer life the harmony of the material and the ideal has been destroyed:

“All this diverse mass is united only in one thing: in the opposition of spirit to rite, in the diminution of the latter, in emphasizing those cases when the rite was observed but the presence of spirit was not felt. From this comes the conclusion that the rite destroys the spirit or, at best, is unnecessary to it” [1, 39].

However, the author places considerable emphasis on the significance of liturgics and liturgical symbols for the religious self-consciousness of Eastern Orthodox Christians. The work clearly draws a connection between negligence in carrying out the reform, its unnecessary nature, absurdity, and the distortion of the symbol—which, in essence, is equated with the distortion of faith and the beginning of a spiritual experience developing outside the Church. The Holy Fathers, known not only for their spiritual striving for perfection but also for advocating the purity of Christian divine service, Ryabushinsky calls nothing other than “creators of the Orthodox rite” [1, 39], emphasizing the fact of the establishment of external forms of worship in the era of the greatest Christian charisma—spirituality.

The totality of historical facts combined with the prayer experience of the ancient Orthodox Christians allowed Vladimir Ryabushinsky to derive and rationally, almost scientifically, formulate the eternal philosophical principle of the relationship between the material and the ideal, form and content, being and thinking. In the context of the Old Believer worldview, Vladimir Pavlovich arrives at an ontological postulate in the spirit of Plato:

“The rite is not indifferent and not hostile to the spirit; on the contrary—between them there exists a great inner connection and dependence… Greatly mistaken is he who contents himself with the rite alone, but those who, having attained heights, begin to despise the rite, subject themselves to great danger” [1, 39].

Ryabushinsky formulates the ascetic-moral necessity of defending the religious phenomenon later termed “rite” in a postulate affirming the following thought:

“A great strength of spirit is needed, especially in present conditions, to preserve the rite: its fulfillment is a test of the spirit” [1, 40], while the author calls the dogma “the spirit and the intellectual part of the soul” [1, 42].

According to Ryabushinsky, the “rite” is a category not only symbolic-doctrinal but also protective. As an example, the author cites the religious phenomenon of priestless Old Belief (bespopovstvo). Priestless Old Belief can be called a religious phenomenon in a figurative sense. For while preaching an idea openly contrary to Christianity—the cessation of Christ’s priesthood and the Holy Eucharist—the priestless Old Believers, by their inner feeling, remain true Orthodox. And when a priestly Old Believer (popovets) transitions to another religious community, the latter, as a rule, more often chooses priestless Old Belief than Nikonians’ priesthood. Vladimir Ryabushinsky gives the following justification for this.

“Priestless Old Believers, theoretically, formally, and externally often professing very unorthodox teachings, but not erring in the rite, thanks to this do not depart far inwardly, in spirit (more precisely, do not depart at all.—Author) from true ancient Orthodoxy and remain very close to it” [1, 50].