The sect of Khristovovery in the Ukrainian SSR

The article is devoted to the history of the oldest Russian sect of Hristovovery or Khlysty on the territory of Ukraine during Soviet times. The purpose of the work is to explore the existence of the Khlysty sect in the Ukrainian SSR, to consider some of the features of the spread of the sect and the details of its rituals. The source base of the research was unpublished operational documents of Ukrainian archives. Special studies devoted to the sect of Christ-believers in Ukraine during the Soviet period were not found. The article applies a materialistic understanding of history, which requires consideration of historical phenomena in development, in the unity of the logical and historical, i.e. in the unity of material and spiritual factors. In the course of the work, it was established that the Khlysty sect was recorded on the territory of the future Ukraine from the first half of the 18th century and spreads across those regions where the Great Russian population lived compactly: in Old Believer settlements in Starodubye (the future Chernigov region), in the Azov region. West of the Dnieper, the sect of Christian believers is not fixed. In Soviet times, state security agencies regularly reported the existence of Christian believers in the same areas where they existed in the pre-revolutionary period. A feature of the Christian faith in Soviet times was the merger of the sect with Orthodox movements that were in opposition to both the Soviet regime and the official Russian Orthodox Church.