How did the Russian Orthodox Church split affect Church Slavonic traditions?

The 17th-century schism, or Raskol, within the Russian Orthodox Church fundamentally altered the trajectory of Church Slavonic traditions by creating a linguistic divide between the official church and traditionalist dissenters.12

In the mid-17th century, Patriarch Nikon initiated reforms to align liturgical texts and practices with contemporary Greek models, replacing the existing Great Russian variant of Church Slavonic with a new version derived from the southwestern East Slavic tradition. This new variant incorporated Ukrainian and Belarusian elements, which included West Slavic influences, marking a significant step toward the Westernization of the Russian language.23

Conversely, the Old Believers—those who rejected Nikon’s reforms—continued to use the archaic Great Russian variant of Church Slavonic. While the official church adopted and maintained the new, reformed variant, the Old Believers preserved the older linguistic tradition as a core component of their religious identity. This split effectively bifurcated the development of Church Slavonic within Russia, with the official church’s version eventually influencing the modern Russian literary language, while the traditionalist variant remained a symbol of resistance to religious and cultural change.234