Everyday interactions of Old Believers with adherents of different faiths: current prohibitions and prescriptions in texts and practices

Abstract

The article analyzes verbal rules regulating everyday communication of the Old Believers with adherents of new-style Orthodoxy (often called Nikonians) and Jews as well as the way these rules are being put into practice. The author pays attention to personal interpretations of motivating prescriptions and explanations of the necessity to violate the norms in different situations. The empirical basis of the research includes interviews recorded in 2010–2017 in the communities of the Old Believers in the Republic of Moldova, including Transnistria. Field materials demonstrate that a lot of instructions only function in the form of knowledge about the rules, not necessarily followed by real practice. At the same time communities constantly elaborate ways of mitigating the rules, eliminating the consequences of their violation up to changing the rules, adapting them to the sociocultural context.