A considerable number of our compatriots have Old Believer roots. Supporters of this faith were among the first among those who explored the richest expanses of the Far East. So in Primorye they founded dozens of settlements that still exist today under the most difficult conditions. Local agriculture began from the first hectares of forests uprooted by the Old Believers. My ancestors also professed the canons of the ancient faith. Grandmother Ganna Nikiforovna often told me about the active and difficult life of her co-religionists. As a little girl, together with her large family, who were looking for a better life, she walked on foot from the Alei steppes to the Pacific Ocean. From her I first heard about the cruel persecution of Old Believers by the church and the tsarist government. After the revolution of 1917, life did not become easier for the schismatics. The authorities that replaced the tsarist regime brought down new repressions on them: dispossession, sending to camps, deportations, and executions became their bitter lot. For a long time I have wanted to write a book about these freedom-loving, hard-working people. The desire intensified even more when I worked in gold deposits in the north of the Primorsky Territory, in the taiga, densely populated by Old Believers. Some of them worked at our mine. More than once I had to visit those villages and stop there for the night. I often heard from fellow geologists about the mysterious lost Old Belief map - the key to the richest deposits of gold, platinum, and diamonds. Everyone believed in its existence, because among the Old Believers there were educated people who could draw up such a map and bury it...