Edinoverie was an alternative compromise confession which was meant to provide smooth incorporation of the Old Believers into the official church structure of Russia in late 18th – 19th centuries. The concept of edinoverie was a product of using the European confessional experience, particularly the experience of the church unions in Eastern Europe (specificallym in Poland-Lithuania). However, it was also heavily influenced by European administrative patterns, for the primary proponent of edinoverie was Russian government rather than Russian church.
Several important documents, starting with metropolitan Plato’s theses on edinoverie, could be studied as a part of European tradition in a broad sense. Thus, a unique Russian kind of a toleration program was developed through the re-thinking the European experience. With time passing, the Old Believer elites started to get involved into the dialogue, with the extensive borrowings from the European experience (for instance, some of the religious defense of the Old Believers in 19th century was based upon ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ by Jonathan Swift – a distinctly European source of argumentation!) So one could specify three kinds of European borrowings: in the writings of Russian church hierarchs; in the administrative practives of Russian state officials (including the ober-procuror of the Holy Synode); in the writings and practices of the local Old Believer and the followers of edinoverie.
Through the 19th century edinoverie remained the basic tool used by the government to operate with the Old Believers. By the end of 19th century, that led to a development of a peculiar identity of the followers of edinoverie, but the whole development was interrupted by the revolutionary drama of the 20th century.