Kuznetsova N.Yu., Ruzhinskaya I.N. The Religious Life of Russian Society in the Dialogue of “Mentor-Student” (Based on the Material from the Private Correspondence of the Populist A. S. Prugavin and E. V. Molostvova)

Abstract: The article investigates the mentoring experience of the famous populist and expert of Russian people’s religious life Aleksandr Stepanovich Prugavin on the example of an analysis of his correspondence with Elizaveta Vladimirovna Molostvova. The authors present and examine the letters discovered by them in the private collection of A. S. Prugavin in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RSALA). The letters reflect A. S. Prugavin’s aim to learn and use the characteristic for Old Ritualists phenomenon of mentorship as a new ideal relationship between a mentor and his student. Particular attention is paid to the scrutiny of the letters’ texts and the interrelations between A. S. Prugavin and E. V. Molostvova are clarified. The authors come to the conclusion that A. S. Prugavin, who during the course of his whole life undertook numerous attempts at understanding the multiformity of religious movements in the Russian Empire, assumed that the one effective idea that could be adopted by the Russian intelligensia from the Old Ritualist is the practice of mentorship. The correspondence between A. S. Prugavin and the young researcher of sectarianism E. V. Molostvova allows to reconstruct his own similar experience.

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