The Pereiaslav treaty of 1654 brought into the Russian state a new element in the form of the Ukrainian Hetmanate. The originally democratic Cossack host quickly turned into a society ruled by a hereditary elite of Cossack officers. Under the Pereiaslav agreement the Cossacks continued to elect the hetman who in turn appointed the officers, administered justice (according to the old Polish laws), managed his own treasury, and commanded the Cossack army, all this without consulting the tsar. The tsar maintained garrisons in Kiev and other principal towns, whose commanders also exercised control over the towns, though those retained their elected urban governments. The Ukrainian church was more complicated, as the Metropolitan of Kiev was not under the jurisdiction of Moscow but rather of the Greek patriarchate of Constantinople, which accepted the Moscow Patriarch as its head only in 1687.
The inclusion of the Ukrainian hetmanate in Russia had such profound effects because it strengthened the ties between Kiev and Moscow at a time when changes were taking place in the Russian Orthodox church. These changes led the elite of the Russian clergy to turn to Ukrainian models of piety, but also sparked a religious upheaval that ultimately led to schism. Even in the time of Tsar Michael there had been symptoms of renewal in the church. Voices arose among the clergy complaining that Russian priests did not do enough to bring Orthodox teaching to their congregations. No one challenged the centrality of the liturgy, but the reformers called for more systematic preaching and that meant a more learned clergy and a more varied religious literature. By the accession of Tsar Aleksei to the throne, the leader of the new trend was his spiritual father Stefan Vonifat’ev, and the group included Nikon, the Metropolitan of Novgorod, and Avvakum, a village priest from the Volga area who had risen to become archpriest in one of the main Moscow churches. They had the favor of the tsar, but until 1652 they made little headway.
Increased contract with the Orthodox in the Ukrainian lands had given the Russians new ideas, as the Ukrainians were engaged in a continuous battle to defend Orthodoxy by reinforcing it in the minds and hearts of the believers. In the Kiev Academy the Ukrainian clergy had a new type of education, unknown in Russia, derived from Jesuit models. It emphasized language and rhetoric, the arts of persuasion, as well as philosophy. The Kiev Academy taught its pupils not just Slavonic but also Latin, which was still the language of scholarship in both Catholic and Protestant Europe. In 1649 Tsar Aleksei brought the first group of Ukrainian monks to Moscow to teach and also to help with the editing and publication of liturgical and devotional texts. Then Patriarch Iosif died in 1652, and with prompting from the tsar, the clergy elected Nikon to be his replacement. Patriarch Nikon took with particular fervor to the examination of the service books, and in 1653 he began to issue service books with corrected texts. These corrections were made so as to bring the Russian texts in line with the Greek (and Ukrainian) versions, which he considered more authoritative. The new versions also mandated a few changes in daily devotional practices, such as the manner of making the sign of the cross. For some centuries Russians had done this holding straight the index and middle finger (symbolizing the dual nature of Christ) and folding the other three, while the Greeks held folded together the first two fingers and the thumb (for the Trinity). Nikon, however, commanded the Greek practice, arguing that the Russian version slighted the Trinity. As the Russian (and older Greek) tradition asserted that the entire liturgy and all associated practices recreated the sacrifice of Christ rather than merely reminding one of it, these small actions were of critical importance. Some of Nikon’s former allies in the reform movement under the leadership of the archpriest Avvakum, however, refused to conform. Avvakum recounted later that he heard of the changes during Easter week in 1653 and “we saw that winter was on the way – hearts froze and legs began to shake”. Since Avvakum persisted in his refusal to conform and began to preach against the new books, Nikon and the tsar sent him and his followers into exile, as far away as possible into Siberia to the east of Lake Baikal.
The exile in 1655 of Avvakum and his few followers among the clergy seemed to put an end to the controversy. Nikon’s reforms of the liturgy and his sponsorship of the Ukrainian teachers and scholars in Moscow continued. Nikon was a powerful figure and a personality who brooked no opposition or perceived slight. In 1658 one of the tsar’s favorites insulted Nikon’s servant at a reception for a visiting Georgian prince, and Nikon announced that he was leaving the patriarchal throne. Perhaps he expected an apology from the tsar and the boyar in question, but they were not forthcoming. Nikon retired to his newly founded Monastery of the New Jerusalem to the west of Moscow and remained there. His actions produced a crisis, for he had not abdicated the office of patriarch, he had merely left its duties. Tsar Aleksei sent emissaries to persuade him to return, but he refused.
While Nikon sulked, the remaining church authorities continued to produce new versions of the texts with the help of the Ukrainians. They published new translations of the Greek fathers of the church, this time working from Western printed editions of the Greek texts rather than Byzantine manuscripts. The Ukrainians preached at major court occasions and the principal holidays of the Orthodox calendar, and taught a few Russian clergy their skills. All of this innovative activity took place in and around the court, while at the opposite end of Russian society a storm was brewing. In the provinces the new books began to produce discontent, and local priests and monks remembered Avvakum and his protest. The dissidents began to pick up wider support among the groups of ascetics that had arisen since the 1640s in the upper Volga towns and villages. Aleksei and the bishops were forced to take action. In 1666–1667, just as the Polish war was coming to a close, they called a council of the Russian church, which two of the Greek Orthodox patriarchs and other Greek clergy also attended. The council formally deposed Nikon and selected a successor, though Nikon refused to acknowledge its its authority. The Greek patriarchs also tried to convince Avvakum of his errors, reminding him that in the whole world the Orthodox crossed themselves with three fingers. This argument had no effect, for Avvakum replied that the faith of the other Orthodox peoples was impure: only the Russians had kept the true faith. The council condemned him and approved the changes in the texts. Nikon went into exile in the northern Ferapontov Monastery, but his cause of reform had triumphed. The new books became the standard texts, and most Russians adopted the new rituals. That is, most people – those among the bishops, the clergy, and the population of central Russia – but the dissidents did not disappear. Avvakum went into exile to Pustozersk, a small fort north of the Arctic Circle, but he did not stop writing until his execution in 1680. His teaching began to spread in the northern villages, in the Urals and Siberia as well as the Don and the southern frontier. Tsar Aleksei and his successors sent soldiers to try to force them back to Orthodoxy, and in 1678 in remotest Siberia some of the Old Believers, as they came to be known, tried a new tactic. When the soldiers approached, the entire community assembled in a wooden church and set it on fire, burning themselves to death. This tactic made persecution extremely difficult, for church and state could declare victory only if the Old Believers came back to Orthodoxy. Their deaths, while still unreconciled, signified failure. The result was a standstill, and the Old Belief continued to spread. Its followers already numbered in the tens of thousands and the movement continued to find new adherents. As they grew in numbers they also disagreed among themselves on many issues, some condemning the mass suicides, others not. The more radical groups formed entire dissident churches with no priests or bishops and held simple services led only by an “instructor.” Some Old Believer communities resembled Orthodox monasteries; others were indistinguishable in all but ritual from their Orthodox neighbors. All the Old Believers rejected the authority of church and state, some proclaiming that the Romanov dynasty was the visible Antichrist. Pacific rather than rebellious, the Old Belief nevertheless struck fear into the hearts of tsars and bishops alike for the next two hundred years. An undeniably native tradition of dissent and resistance had been born.