Old Believers and Jews. Three Hundred Years Together

Jews and Old Believers are two communities that played an important role in the domestic history and simultaneously experienced repressive pressure from both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The book by Mikhail Kizilov and Grigory Bondarenko is one of the first attempts at a comprehensive analysis of interfaith and intercultural dialogue between these two groups in the XVIII-XXI centuries. How did Jews convert to Old Belief? How were mixed marriages conducted? How did Old Believers help Jews escape during the Holocaust? And what were the conflicts between representatives of these two communities like? The authors find answers to these questions in published and archival written sources, as well as numerous interviews conducted in Jewish and Old Believer communities in the territories of the former Russian Empire and the USSR (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Transnistria, Latvia). Mikhail Kizilov is a historian, orientalist, specialist in the history and culture of Jews, Doctor of Philosophy (Oxford), and a staff member of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (Germany). Grigory Bondarenko is a candidate of historical sciences, Master of Philosophy (Oxford), a lecturer at Beijing Normal University (China), and a parishioner of the Tver Old Believer community of the Church in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Moscow.