The Old Believers and Praying for the Tsar in Seventeenth-Century Russia

The article argues that for many Old Believers in seventeenth-century Russia ‘non-praying’ (nemolenie) for the tsar took the form of omitting the commemoration of the royal family at the ‘Great Entrance’ in the liturgy of the eucharist that had been introduced in the new (Nikonian) service-books of the 1650s. This was a protest against the liturgical reforms, and also a symbolic criticism of the tsars and the policies of their governments. It is only from the late eighteenth century that we find evidence of Old Believers who did not pray for the tsar because they regarded him as the Antichrist.