Komarovsky Skete is one of the oldest Old Believers of the Nizhny Novgorod Land, located on the Kerzhenets River in the Kerzhenets and Chernoramenye forests of Nizhny Novgorod Province. The skete is believed to have operated from the 17th century and was finally abolished in the 1930s.
History
The skete stood in the forest tract along the Kerzhenets River — a historical stronghold of Nizhny Novgorod Old Belief. In the early 18th century the Kerzhenets sketes underwent the so-called Pitirim's Devastation), and in the 1850s, under Nicholas I, a new wave of persecution. Komarovsky Skete survived both campaigns and continued to exist into the Soviet era, when it was finally abolished in the 1930s.
In literature
Komarovsky Skete became one of the central spatial images of the dilogy by Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky, "In the Forests" and "On the Hills." Together with the other Kerzhenets sketes, it shapes the fictional world of the novels, whose action unfolds Trans-Volga Region — a land of Old Believer merchants, trades, and forest hermitages.