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accentuated their disunion and diminished the dangerof concerted action against the state, though they weredangerous allies of the discontent endemic along thelower Volga and Don.The Old Believers originally held that eitherOrthodoxy, i.e. their Orthodoxy, the living church, wouldwin through and Nikon's reforms be obliterated, or thatit was a case of the end of the world, preceded by thereign of Antichrist. Since the reforms were not sweptaway and since, despite the coming of Antichrist, theworld did not come to an end, they were faced with aseries of new problems. The right wing, who clung tothe priesthood and Orthodoxy, slowly evolved into aposition of more or less compromise with the officialchurch and the state, and, after varying fortunes, waseventually in 1905 allowed almost complete liberty. Theleft wing developed on quite new lines, without a priesthood,into sectarian groups mainly of a very individualistickind, which became divorced from any pre-Schism basisand abandoned ritualism and tradition for independenceof mind and extreme emphasis on the religion of theinner man. Thus the Schism introduced a phenomenonforeign to the old Russia, and to any other modernOrthodox country—a whole series of experiments inspiritual life entirely divorced from the official church.At the same time other sects, especially in the South,came into being, or emerged from very doubtful origins,unconnected with the Old Believers. By the end ofthe eighteenth century there was a great multiplicityof Russian sects of evangelical, rationalist, mystical, oradoptionist colourings; and they were powerfully reinforcedby German Protestant, and later Baptist,influences. Some of the dissenters held very extremeviews on questions of vital importance to the state, suchas payment of taxes and military service, and nearly allof them favoured some brand of new social order inopposition to autocracy, and in part to any government.Persecution and intolerance drove most of the sectsunderground and made migration frequent, so thatinformation on them is difficult to check and opinion onthem very diverse. In any case their fluidity and variety192