The modern notion of peace is no such thing: it is a world without borders; a world without culture. Religion, ethnic pride and community have no place in this new order. Here today, we stand in favor of the rediscovery of the tradition of the Russian people and its ancient faith. Historical boundaries are necessary to this. Boundaries permit the culture to flourish. My discussion here deals with the diaspora: Russians, due to various political upheavals, live outside of the Russian Federation.

. Live in foreign lands is nothing new to the Russian. Nearly everywhere have Old Believers fled, and preserved their identity and faith successfully in Europe, North and South America and Australia. Such lengthy stays is important to study in respect to the preservation o the Old Rite and culture. To us it would be useful to study this unique experience of the prolonged stay of our compatriots beyond the limits of Russia.

Who are these people. Many here realize that the history of the reformed, Nikonian church, which disturbed the life of Russia and its ancient faith, beginning with the tsar and ending up with the simple peasant and Cossack. Even today are such consequences shown. Alexander Solzhenitsyn says that this rupture is “ a great church crime from which began the loss of Russia.”

For a very long time in our “educated” society the reformers ruled it in confidence. Almost everyone supported the reform, and only a small group of “ignorant hicks” and “fanatics” rejected it. However, a contemporary historian has this to say: “ in the opposition to the new policy of government proved to be not at all the enemies of education, but simply most integral people of Moscow Russia, almost all it “book people,” intelligentsia, the intellectual and spiritual elite of that time". (S.A. Iszen'kovskiy “The Russian Old Faith” M 2006 p. 633).

There is really nothing surprising in the fact that the Old Rite preserved the tradition in the face of the enforced destruction of the old books, and mastered the historical, philosophical and canonical knowledge that these old books contained. In the wretched cabins of the Old faith fanatics, these books helped contribute to the general literacy of the Old Faith. Prior to the revolution, the fanatics were to number almost 15 million people.

This truly speaks to our high literacy rate. In 1908, a survey was conducted concerning the Old Faith in Russia, that the Old Believers spent about 61 kopeks a year on books, while the Nikonian spent 1 or 1.5 kopecks a year. Once the old books began to wear, the Old rite developed printing houses, and helped to preserve the old style of writing. This was largely done abroad. In fact this literacy and strong focus on books created a great degree of economic prosperity, and those peasants who were able to buy themselves out of debt and serfdom in the old days were disproportionately Old Believers.

All of this created a people who were holy and law abiding, a people capable of adjusting to any milieu. Old Ritualists lived all over the world in peace, considered hard workers and loyal citizens. In Australia, for example, contracts concerning labor for ship-building made a point to prefer Old Believers for labor.

This sort of integrity found in the ancient legends and traditions I always a part of the Old Rite. Their love of tradition is able to adjust to the different aspects of life in other countries that never developed to the detriment of the faith itself.

This should tell us something.

Strictly speaking, the Old Faith is itself a history of the ancient Russian customs, and has preserved itself for centuries. It is the Russian mind in ecclesial form.

Here are a few things that recent writers have pointed to that manifest themselves in the preservation of the Old Faith abroad:

1. The traditionalism of their ethic, morals, and education;

2. a strong mystical feeling about one’s place in the world;

3. Strong historical memory;

4. A strong emphasis on literacy, strong families, a reverential relation to the printed word, the icon and singing, all creating a strong discipline;

5. business acumen and moral honesty; the Old Belief proved that these virtues are competitive in the market;

6. The principle of sobornost’ and the maintenance of a legitimate hierarchy, though retaining an equality within the body, the parish, the council and the community itself;

At the present time, the pan-European and global world order, along with control over the media, has aggravated ideological, cultural and social contradictions. The media itself has now taken to itself the manipulation of mass consciousness with the ability to rapidly mold public opinion. Today, the search is on for newer forms of historical survival. The value of the diaspora of the Old Faith has made it possible to create global connections with a global consciousness of the significance of the old faith.

The purity of the Russian language is absolutely necessary for the survival of the diaspora. It is the primary condition of its existence. It is important for it must function within an alien medium. This is important for the language helps the diaspora think and act as one social force. Some recently developed national states have made it clear that firm, solid and morally pure Russian Orthodox peoples are not welcome in their lives. Many of the Russians in the diaspora are part of divided and schismatic Orthodox groups who are forced to look to the fatherland for support. They are arrogantly dismissed as “national minorities.” They are continually, weak, separated, and dependent.

The other side of this question of the survival of the diaspora is the fact that many well financed sects are actively attempting to disrupt and attack Old Faith communities. Without the protection of comrades of the faith, many of our propel are struggling with this phenomena.

By the middle of the 20th century, a second wave of immigrants were steadily assimilated to alien cultures. The barriers, ideally, against assimilation are the language, and most importantly, the faith itself. To be firm in faith is to be guarded against assimilation. At first, the groups of the old faith abroad were marked by an ability to selectively use aspects of the new alien life, while at the same time preserving what was essential to survival. Ultimately, withdrawal was a form of self defense. For them, the fatherland was celestial, not terrestrial.

At the present time, there is a new way to conceive of the community, that of a more open style of existence, or at the very least, a co-existence of cultures at the local level. There is a sense that the connection between open communities and a tendency to form united Old Faith churches. At home, there is no longer the reign of the “evil empire” but the step-mother Russia, the true sucessor to Holy Russia. Isolation and withdrawal, as there is presently nowhere to run, but an active confrontation with the new sects and cults; a process of a deeper understanding of the Word of God.

Politics, largely occupied with concepts of globalization, indicate that the modern “peace” is a powerful subject of internal law. It is far more than the national state, but the state including a strong foreign diaspora, a diaspora united under a spiritual movement of national renewal. Recently, I learned of our communities in Ukraine and Modolva, which are extraordinary examples of survival in an alien and hostile western environment. For the purposes of the maintenance of the Russian language and culture in the former republics of the USSR, the delegation of our metropolia, together with the fund organized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, received as a generous gift many books of the Russian language of interest to the Old Faith. Still, interest in the old books still remain. . .

Our brothers, the Old Believers living abroad, have daily dealt with discrimination and hostility. In turn, they arrive at their temples, listening to the liturgy and the singing, participating it in themselves, move away with souls restored, faith and enlightenment of the soul filled by the Holy Ghost. Because of this we are irritated at the condition of some of our temples, and the general condition of the fatherland, their spiritual spring, the center, the nexus of our common cause, the meeting of the spirit that Holy Russia represents for every Orthodox person on earth.

Men are not just organisms, but spirits as well. A true spirit must be free and critical. Only here can he preserve for force for creation, self development, and critical engagement. He becomes personality, capable of freedom and the judgement of God.

Today, what is needed is an integral personality; the sincere, believing struggler, the living mind and spirit. By his nature the Russian man is Orthodox, something found in the world of Dostoyevskii; it is a powerful energy, the Russian spirit, and it is predetermined in him by God Himself. Among the Old Believers, there is a natural bond of community and solidarity with his own Russian people, to support them at critical moments in their history. The Old Believer leads by example, as the highest ideal of Russian manhood. It is the spiritualizing of ideals both in Russia and in the broader global culture.

The Old Believer is in possession of its national idea. This idea for which our ancestors were sent to the bonfire and rack. It is the blessed combination of orthodoxy, rightly divided, and nationalism, or the love of our people. This is our national nature. It is from this that Russia will be rebuilt. Before, Old Believers lived in isolation, today, we are called to lead, to bear the weight of leadership for this generation, bear the leadership for national unity and Orthodox integrism. We are ready to serve our native land, we serve for the purposes of peace.