04:47, 13 May 2003

Nekrasovtsy

Old Believers (without a priest), descendants of the Don cossacks, led by ataman Ignat Nekras (Nekrasov) who ran from prosecutions of the government to Turkey. There they have partly settled in Dobrudja, partly in Asia Minor. In conditions of more than 250-years of an ethnic environment alient to them the community of Nekrasovtsy turned into a special ethno-confessional group. Nekrasovtsy had not given in to process of assimilation. In 1962 the most part of Nekrasovtsy re-emigrated back home and settled in Stavropol territory. In conditions of new economic and social-cultural system an evolution of Nekrasovs' spiritual shape occured. Researchers fix democratization of a family patriarchal structure and of traditional family relations.