Eine altgläubige Interpretation der Johannesapokalypse aus jüngster Zeit.

The paper focuses on the analysis of the creative work and the reconstruction of the biography of the Ural Old Believer writer Vladimir Georgievich Tokmenin (born in 1932, died after 2003). He worked under pen name of Irodion Ural'skii. The main work of Irodion is an interpretation of the Apocalypse according to the comments by Andreas of Caesarea. The writer made many efforts to 'alert' humankind about the plots of the devil. He spread his works in the form of manuscripts spread among the Old Believers of Russia. Some of them are kept in the Depository of the Laboratory for Archaeographic Studies of the Ural Federal University (Ekaterinburg, Russia). The most complete reflection of Irodion's views is in the book he gave the Laboratory in 2001. Appearance and spreading of communist and socialist ideas were signs of the strengthening of the Antichrist's power for Irodion. The main point of his theory is an explanation of Chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation by John the Apostle, where the latter writes about a 7-headed and 10-horned beast appearing from the water. Irodion considered that the beast was the Soviet power, its horns were the leaders of the communist party and government. Irodion interpreted the Antichrist as an evil divided into parts. Patriarch Nikon was the first Antichrist and the last one was Gorbachev. The most detailed description of political figures considered as heads of the beast was made for the following persons: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Gorbachev. Irodion believed that Russia was the only preserver of the true faith. So he thought that events in Russia connected with deviation from the true faith initiated the end of the world. Irodion saw signs of the forthcoming end of the world in many realities of the present. Great influence on the formation of the views of the writer had the works by the English poet of the 17th century J. Milton, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Most part of the Old Believers' history passed under the sign of persecutions, including the period of the formation of Soviet power in Russia. The Old Believers, mostly quite wealthy people, were declared kulaki, their property' was confiscated, many of them were imprisoned or exiled. The author of the paper believes that this circumstance connected with large Soviet atheistic propaganda became the reason for the creation of such an essays as the Explanatory Apocalypse by Irodion Uralskii, where traditional Medieval forms of self-expression were used for speaking about the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]