THE «BELONOGAYA VERA» IN ALTAI: HISTORICAL AND RELIGIOUS ANALYSIS

Abstract

New religious movements (NRM) do not lose attention from the world scientific community until these days. The study of the NRM phenomenon served to develop new methodologies and approaches, in connection with which the term NRM itself began to raise doubts about the accuracy of the designation of non-traditional religious movements. Thus, different researchers give different meanings to the word “new”. In this connection, a lot of terms began to appear in one field. The term «non-traditional religion» or «non-traditional religious movement» allows not only to take a broader look at the NRM phenomenon but also to consider its context of historical processes of the past using modern methods of NRM research in our opinion. In the XIX century in the Russian Empire, groups of mystical and rationalistic sectarianism and the movement of the Old Believers were mainly attributed to non-traditional religious movements, especially such as «beguny», «non-moles», «self-baptized», etc. Such movements include the «belonogaya vera», considered in our research, which was widespread on the territory of Altai in the second half of the XIX century.