All About Latvia

The prayer house of the First Congregation of the Old Believers in Daugavpils, where there are more Old Believer churches than anywhere in the world. Photo courtesy of Marginalia.

RIGA – Wearing head scarfs and skirts, women flock to a church on a cold and lazy Saturday morning, hours before the winter sun shows its rare face in the Latvian capital.

The rain varies from a drizzle to a downpour as one by one the women cross themselves and bow down, looking at an icon on the wall of an unkempt, yet still beautiful Grebenschikova prayer house in Riga.

They do so three times before quickly run inside the building where the service celebrating Christ’s baptism has been going on for several hours in a packed grand hall of the largest Old Believer congregation in the Baltics.

I ended up there that morning to pick up a cross to carry.

A day earlier my family buried my last living grandfather, who had died after suffering several strokes which made him an invalid for the last 15 years of his life. He died early morning, hours after I arrived from the United States as if he had waited for me to come. His condition had suddenly worsened causing some concern to my 74-year-old grandmother, his primary care-giver.

My grandparents are Old Believers who came to Riga from Latgale in eastern Latvia in the 1950s when many country folk flooded large cities in a reversal of the trends of the inter-war Latvia. He served in a local police, reaching the rank of a captain. Because he didn’t want to join the communist party, his career basically stalled until he was forced to completely retire because of his first stroke episode

My grandmother called the church after we found my grandfather dead in his bed. In Western countries, traditionally funeral arrangements can be pre-paid and funeral services are generally quick, taking less than two hours. In the Old Believer tradition, the church takes care of everything and naturally steeps up the price of a funeral to the point that you don’t realize how much money went to bury someone until you calculate the expenses after the fact.

Perhaps, it’s a typical Russian way of doing business – hidden costs. The cost of the funeral is this much and this is what is included. However, any little thing – such as moving of a coffin – cost extra. Old Believers have always been shrewed businessmen.

An old woman who works at the church told a family member on the way to the graveside that the people in charge ought to thank priests, by giving them some money. She nearly died from excitement when she heard me called out the priest’s name to give him an expression of our gratitude for the God’s service he had provided.

“Father Mikhail,” she yelled – her voice ringing with some bizarre excitement – when she realized that father Mikhail couldn’t hear me. I remembered my grandmother’s sister-in-law – a devout Old Believer herself – who called these people “church rats.”

A van with two men – one of them old with a typical Old Believer beard – arrived to pick up the body. They brought in the stretches and asked me and my father to do the work. We loaded the body up into the van, climbed inside and took a journey through the city to the church, where it was prepared for the ongoing service.

I’ve been to many funerals in the West. I attended a funeral once when a coffin stood right outside the doorway of a south Michigan church. Every time someone walked in, the door would hit the coffin making a noise. I attended a funeral which ended in cremation, when a coffin moves on the belt into a firy furnace to be buried. Another graveside service ended with people leaving the coffin above the ground – some in the West apparently believe that seeing the body of a loved one lowered into the 6-foot deep hole is too distressing, so they avoid it all together not realizing that this constitutes a normal grieving process.

The Old Believer funerals, as I found out, are long and therapeutic. The two days of singing and reading psalms concludes with a service that lasts over an hour. The priest burns the incense, while a man and a woman sing prayers interchangeably. The body is covered in fresh living flowers and white linen, so that the only thing you see is his face. The priest lights up candles and places them along the perimeter edge of the open casket, making it seem like it’s lit on fire.

By the end of the service, the coffin is moved onto a base, and women form a line to say good-bye to the diseased. Some just look at the diseased, while others pinch his cheek, kiss him to bid adieu to the life well-lived.

When the time comes, two men place the lid on the coffin. When that happened, my grandmother’s sister-in-law spoke up.

“You didn’t uncover his feet,” she said.

“We most certainly did,” said the church rat.

“No, you didn’t.”

They opened the lid and my grandfather’s feet were not exposed. This small detail was quickly corrected and the lid was placed back on the coffin.

It was getting dark when my grandfather’s coffin was buried at the new Bolderaja cemetery in northern Riga. His became one of more than a dozen fresh graves – quite a sight to behold – all covered in green wreaths and flowers with crosses making a Christian denomination they once belonged to.

Apparently, we forgot to bring the traditional cross for the grave, which is why I ended up going back the church the following morning, meeting women in head scarfs on their way to the Saturday service.

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In 1600s, Russian patriarch Nikon wanted to reform the Russian Orthodox Church. In his attempt to turn the Russian church into a center of the world orthodoxy — as the Third Rome — powerful patriarch Nikon commenced the reform of unification of the church’s customs and instituting a single order of a church service, based largely on the Greek customs. Nikon was an impatient man who ignored the stubbornness of the Russian Orthodox Church. Nikon also wanted to see church’s authority above the czar’s. Because of the conflict with the czar, Nikon had to resign as the patriarch in 1658.

Tsar of all Russia, Alexei Romanov created a church council — the Synod — in 1666 to evaluate such a church reform. The church council supported the czar and patriarch Nikon was condemned and sent into a monastery as far from Moscow as possible. However, all Nikon’s reforms have been accepted: New orthodoxy required to say “Hallelujah” thrice, cross oneself with three fingers of the right hand and others. At first, most of the opponents of the church reform were sent to harsh exile. Tongues were cut. People were killed. Families ruined.

Peter the Great’s decision of 1685 ordered public burning of the opponents of the reform, punishment by death of those who re-baptized people into the old faith, and exile for secret supporters of the old way of life. Those who refused to change and adopt new practices became known as the Old Believers, or “splitters,” or raskol’niki

Government oppression could vary from relatively moderate – Old Believers had to pay double taxation and a separate tax for wearing a beard under Peter the Great — to intense, under czar Nicholas I. The Russian state church and the state authorities often saw Old Believers as dangerous elements and as a threat to the Russian state.

Some “splitters” ran away from the persecution mostly to the northern Russia, which at that time, was barely populated. Novgorod and Northern lands became a shelter in the time of storm.

What is today’s Latvia was also a shelter where Russian Old Believers found a new home. In a way, as the Pilgrims came to the New World in search of freedom from persecution, so did the Old Believers fled to Latvia.

At the time of the religious reforms in Russia, Latvia was partially Polish, partially Swedish. But both parts needed a strong new labor force pretty badly. It is said that Jan Sobesski, the Polish king, who at that time, ruled over the eastern Latvia, issued an order to allow the Old Believers freely live in the Polish domain.

It is safe to assume that at that time in history my own ancestors settled in Latgale, in eastern Latvia, running away from the persecution in Russia. At times, uneducated and severely conservative, Old Believers lived in a tight community, close together, offering support to each other in a new found home.

In many towns and settlements, Old Believers erected their temples, some of which no longer have a priest assigned nor the people attend. The first organized group of Old Believers in Latvia was formed in 1660 in Courtland Duchy in the village of Liginishki. There, a temple was built. The temple became the first temple of the Old Orthodoxy. The village is now a part of the city of Daugavpils in Latgale. The city still has a street named after the village.

The second wave of new settlers came to Latvia during the reign of Peter the Great, who imposed some drastic sanctions on Old Believers. Old Believers were double taxed. Men had to pay a beard tax, the money for a permit to wear a beard. Old Believers were also required to wear special clothing. So it’s no surprise that the church equated Peter the Great with the Antichrist in its literature.

In Riga, Latvia’s capital, the Old Believers worshiped in various buildings. It is assumed that Old Believers gathered in businesses or in people’s homes until a temple was built in the capital city. The wooden temple of Trinity appeared only in 1760s. It was appropriately built in the Moscow District, which is south of the Riga downtown center and Open Air Market. A rich businessman, a member of the predominantly German Big Guild, S. Diakonov erected the temple.

The Grebenschikova Old Believers church in Riga in 1860

In 1796 avoiding the legality of the process, the Old Believers raised a new building. The Temple was not built according to the plans and documents, but with the oral permission of the general-governor.

What set apart the Temple was that unlike other buildings in the vicinity, the Temple was made out of stone. It seems Old Believers had some power in the city. Then, a school, a hospital, a men’s monastery, and a library have been added to the structure.

During the fire of 1812 in Riga, all three temples of the Old Believers in Riga were destroyed. Usually stingy Old Believers found the needed means and two years later, they erected a new Temple, much more glorious than its predecessor. In 1823, a Jelgava tradesman Alexei Grebenschikov donated enough money which affected the name of the congregation and the temple. Russian writer Nikolai Leskov whom Russian government commissioned the study of Old Believers, said, “The Strength and prosperity of the Russian congregation of Old Believers was surprise for all. Its hospital, factories, schools at the time when none of those were in Moscow are nothing short of amazement.”

At the time of the First Independence in 1918, Old Believers received a right to worship God freely and even were allowed to teach God’s Law in primary schools where Old Believer families were dominant, such as in the city of Rezekne. In the 1930s, there were several magazines printed for and by Old Believers.

Today the Grebenschikov congregation whose temple now fits more than 5,000 believers is considered one of the largest congregations among the Old Believers. The congregation owns the land — from Krasta iela on the shores of Daugava to Purvciems — whose cost is estimated at 5.235 million lats (USD 13 million) and is by far the largest private landowner in Riga.

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