Lipovans Erotic

The Lipovans are the Russians of the Danube Delta: descendants of Old Believers who rejected the reforms Patriarch Nikon imposed on the Russian church in the 1650s and 1660s, and who moved beyond the Tsar's reach rather than change the way they crossed themselves. From the late 17th century they settled in Ottoman and Moldavian land along the lower Danube, and the delta became their stronghold. Villages such as Sarichioi, Jurilovca, Carcaliu, Slava Rusă and Mila 23 in Romania's Tulcea County remain recognizably Lipovan, as does Vylkove across the border in Ukraine, a town of canals where boats do the work of streets. Smaller communities live in Brăila, Iași, Constanța and Bucharest, in a few villages of Bukovina, and in two Bulgarian villages, Kazashko near Varna and Tataritsa near Silistra. The name itself is disputed: some trace it to the Filippovtsy, a priestless Old Believer branch, others to lipa, the linden whose wood they carved into icons.

The faith holds them together. Lipovans keep the pre-Nikonian rite: the two-finger sign of the cross, the Julian calendar, monophonic chant from the old service books, full prostrations on a small prayer mat, the leather lestovka counted through the fingers in place of beads. Men grow beards because the face is God's image and not to be edited. Women cover their hair in church and wear long skirts; men come in belted shirts worn untucked. Tobacco is still frowned on by the devout. The community splits along an old fault line. The priested branch answers to the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy, founded in 1846 at Fântâna Albă in Bukovina when a Greek metropolitan named Ambrose agreed to consecrate bishops for the Old Believers; its Romanian metropolitan now sits in Brăila. A smaller priestless branch manages without clergy. Monasteries at Slava Rusă anchor religious life.

Off the church calendar, Lipovans are fishermen and boatmen first. The reed channels, the flat-bottomed lotca and the sour fish soup that every household makes its own way define the working year, and it is no accident that Ivan Patzaichin, Romania's most decorated canoeist, was a Lipovan from Mila 23. They speak Russian, but an archaic dialect layered with Romanian borrowings and church vocabulary; younger Lipovans are fully bilingual and the language is losing ground in the towns. Since 1990 the Community of Lipovan Russians in Romania has held the minority's guaranteed seat in parliament and worked to keep the schools, the choirs and the fasts alive.