Koyda

Koyda and its surroundings on the White Sea's Winter Coast became an important centre of Old Believer book culture. In the 1710s the Anufriev hermitage was established near the village. Also known as the Koyda cells, this religious settlement connected an apparently remote coastal district with wider networks of Russian religious dissent.

The hermitage was devastated in the 1770s, but its communities continued in dispersed settlements along Lake Koyd and the Koyda River. These cells served villages of the lower Mezen and White Sea coast, offering spiritual guidance and helping transmit literacy. Their residents maintained close relationships with Old Believers in the Kerzhenets and Starodub regions. The precise affiliation of Koyda's believers remains uncertain, although the hermitage probably accepted priests. The area's early modern history therefore includes the persistence of religious communities after the destruction of their institutional centre, sustained through books, worship and connections between distant settlements.