The Old Faith and the Russian Land

The Old Faith and the Russian Land is a historical ethnography that charts the ebbs and flows of ethical practice in a small Russian town, Sepych, over three centuries.

Douglas Rogers is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Yale University. He is the author of The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals and The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power, and Culture after Socialism, both published by Cornell.

Douglas Rogers has written a pathbreaking work of historical anthropology that should become standard reading for historians and other social scientists. Sensitive to religious and economic contexts, he charts the history of the town of Sepych in the western Perm region over the longue durée, beginning with the creation of the priestless Old Believer settlement in the late seventeenth century and ending in the post-Soviet era. Without ignoring the peculiar circumstances that serfdom and ownership by the Stroganov family imposed on the community, Rogers analyzes three major turning points brought about by shifting economic relationships and, in two cases, political change: capitalist modernization after emancipation, which created a schism in the Old Believer community; the imposition of socialism and central planning in the Soviet era; and finally the introduction of global capitalism upon the Soviet Union's demise.... In its goal of moving beyond generalizations about peasant societies as tradition bound, backward, collective, isolated, and centers of resistance, the monograph succeeds brilliantly.

Sonja Luehrmann:

This is a beautiful book that asks large questions of multiple sources on one small community. It deserves a readership far beyond scholars of Russia or socialism.

Alexander King:

Rogers's narrative includes useful connections of his discussion to larger problems of scholarship on Old Believers and the anthropology of Russia more generally. His prose is engaging, accessible, and a pleasure to read, so the book should be appropriate for a wide range of undergraduate teaching as well as more specialized audiences.

Catherine Wanner, author of Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism:

This beautifully written and highly original historical ethnography moves with extraordinary acumen across disciplines and prompts us to rethink ethics, moral personhood, and historical experience in rural Russia. Douglas Rogers's sensitive analysis of the twists and turns of Russian history offers a critique of many theories of transition and breaks new ground in offering fresh perspectives and theoretical tools that are guaranteed to stimulate debate. The Old Faith and the Russian Land is a must-read for anyone interested in the region.

David L. Ransel, Robert F. Byrnes Professor of History, Indiana University:

Douglas Rogers has produced an incisive analysis of the formation and reconstitution under changing circumstances of moral community among the priestless Old Believers of the Urals. This extraordinarily skillful and instructive account of a community's creation of ethical practices and subjectivities uses ethnography to illuminate history and historical study to elucidate current efforts to define community standards. Rogers's work also speaks powerfully to the role of religion and community in the post-Soviet world more broadly.