For many, the Old Believers today seem to be something obviously backward, belonging to a long-gone era. Terrible forest “burnings” - voluntary burnings of tens and hundreds of people in the past; some illiterate old women who continue, for some unknown reason, to cross themselves with two fingers and lock their wells; fanatics who have fenced themselves off from the world... But this idea, formed under the influence of official propaganda (first missionary, then Soviet), is far from the truth. Few people know that only thanks to the Old Believers it was possible to preserve such wonders of Russian culture as ancient Russian icon painting and Znamenny singing, and many traditional folk crafts; that the most outstanding Russian entrepreneurs of the 19th and early 20th centuries were precisely those who came from the Old Believers - the famous dynasties of the Morozovs and Ryabushinskys, the Guchkovs and the Soldatenkovs. The Old Believers took especially deep roots in the Russian North, which for many years served as a “reserve” of traditional culture, now experiencing its revival. This book tells about the past and present of “true Orthodoxy”, about the daily life of the Old Believers of the 18th–19th centuries and the coming 21st century. And the main conclusion of its author could not be more relevant: the invaluable spiritual experience that the Old Believers learned from their “departure” should become the property of all humanity - perhaps this is the last chance not only for Russia, which is in a deep spiritual crisis, but also for the agonizing The West, which has completely forgotten about its Christian origin.