Belokrinitsk Hierarchy

(also called the Austrian Hierarchy), which led the Old Believer tendency known as the Popovshchina. It was supported mainly by bourgeois elements.

The Belokrinitsk Hierarchy arose in the 1840’s in the Belokrinitsk Monastery (near Chernovtsy). A class struggle took place within it, becoming especially acute at the time of the peasant reform and leading to a schism in 1862. The Belokrinitsk Hierarchy attained its greatest development between 1905 and 1917, when it united major industrialists and merchants. Its second center was the church at the Rogozhskoe cemetery in Moscow. The Belokrinitsk Hierarchy still exists.