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==History==
During the latter part of the eighteenth century a movement of reconciliation developed between [[hierarch]]s of the Russian Orthodox Church and some communities of Old Believers who had not accepted the changes to the church rituals and translations of the Scripture begun under the leadership of Patr. [[Nikon of Moscow|Nikon]] during the 1660s. Edinoverie arrangements began during the time when Abp. Nikifor (Nikiphoros)[[Nikephoros Theotokis]], Archbishop first of Slovansk and Kherson and later of Astrakhan and Stavropol, began to reach out to Old Believers in 1780. At the time Metr. [[Platon II of Moscow|Platon II]], who as [[metropolitan]] of Moscow, was the first hierarch of the Church of Russia,
Nikifor, whose [[see]] was in Poltava the seat of the then [[Diocese]] of Sloviansk and Kherson in eastern Ukraine, visited a [[chapel]] of [[Popovtsy]] Old Believers in Elisavetgrad in July of that year. He offered the local Old Believers, who had [[priest]]s of their own that were not recognized by the official church, the possibility of legalizing their chapel as an official [[church]] and integrating it into the established Church with a priest selected by the Old Believers themselves and using the pre-Nikonian service books and rites. The Old Believers of Elisavetgrad rejected the offer, but later that month, many Old Believers of the village of Bolshaya Znamenka accepted a similar offer. In February 1781, a letter was issued by the [[archbishop]], authorizing them to set up a church legally and carry out their services in accordance with their traditional rites. That was done by consecrating as a church the wooden chapel that the Old Believers of Znamenka had built in 1776.