Geographically speaking, the ancient metropolis, Moscow, is the religious centre of the Raskol, from whence its missions, or colonies, went forth, either voluntarily or driven out by persecution.
The Old Believers could cross no ocean, like the English Puritans, to bar pursuit, but they could find refuge against oppression in the vast solitudes of their native land, or over the borders among the neighboring people. As exiles, or as emigrants, they carried their doctrines and their nationality beyond the great lakes, over the Ural Mountains, and into the Caucasus; they sought safety and peace among the Protestants of the Baltic provinces, the Catholics of Poland, and the Mussulmans of the East. Vetka, a village of ancient Poland, in the province of Mogilev, became, at an early day, the headquarters of the Popovtsi; there, rapid increase in their numbers and in their wealth, activity in the propagation of their doctrines, aroused the suspicions and the jealousy of the Russian government. Twice, in 1735, under Anna Ivanovna, and in 1764, under Catherine II., Russian troops violated Polish territory to attack and suppress them. On the first occasion Vetka was destroyed, and its 40,000 inhabitants, forced back into Russia, were distributed through the southern provinces. They obtained permission to settle among their co-religionists of Russian Ukraine, near Staradoub,[1] and gathered there, within a few years, over fifty thousand adherents around the new sanctuary. Vetka also soon regained nearly its former importance, and was, a second time, destroyed by Catherine II.
Many colonies of Raskolniks were established just beyond what were then the boundaries of the empire; some
- ↑ Staradoub means the old oak.
