The greatest poet of the English Renaissance is. General characteristics of the English Renaissance

Re-Odization of Church History:

1. The ancient period of the indivisible Church extends to the middle of the 11th century. (1054).

The first chapter of the history of the Christian Church should be about Jesus Christ, i.e. its Founder. Not all church historians agree with this view. They attribute this period to biblical history based on the study of the Bible, which for believers is a divinely inspired book, and not a source of church history. Moreover, the Christian Church, as an institution, emerged only in the 2nd century.

2. medieval period - from the middle of the XI century. until the fall of Constantinople in the East in 1453, and in the West until the speech of Luther (1516).

Some see the edge at the end of the 6th century. - the death of Pope Gregory (in 604), others - at the end of the 7th century, - after the 6th Ecumenical Council. Many believe that the end of the ancient period should be recognized as the XI century, i.e. time (1054 g). division of churches. This long period is divided into two parts: before and after Constantine the Great. Then the middle of the 5th c. - this is the end, the conclusion of the Greek classical period in the history of the Church and the transition to the Byzantine one - an event of great importance not only in church, but also in state life, b) then the VIII century - the time of the end of ecumenical councils. Since that time, relations between the Eastern and Western Churches have changed dramatically. The Patriarch of Constantinople, feeling the strength, began to fight with the popes for recognition of him as the "Byzantine pope" in the East, so that the popes would no longer interfere in the affairs of the Eastern Church. Popes could not agree with this. Then the Patriarch of Constantinople preferred a break with the popes. The crisis dragged on until the middle of the 11th century; before 1054

3. A new period begins - in the East from 1453, and in the West from 1517 and continues to the present day.

Periodization of the Russian Orthodox Church

The traditional division of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church:

1. Kiev, or pre-Mongolian period (988-1237)

2. Moscow period before the division of the Russian metropolis (1237-1469)

3. Moscow period before the establishment of the patriarchate (1469-1587)

4.History of the Russian southwestern Church from the year of separation in 1469 to the Union of Brest in 1596 (1469-1596).

5. The patriarchal period (1589-1700) and in parallel the Kyiv Metropolitanate during the same time.

6. Synodal period (1700-1917)7. Post-revolutionary period (1917-1941)

7. War and post-war periods (1941 - 1991)

8.Post-Soviet era (1991 -)

Some clarifications to the chronology are made by A.V. Kartashev: 1. Kiev, or the pre-Mongolian period (beginning in 988) 2. Kiev-Vladimir-Moscow period (1037-1469) further - the same.

By dates: 988 (989) - Baptism of Russia book. Vladimir the Holy; 1237 - The beginning of the Mongol conquest of Russia; 1469 - the division of a single Russian metropolis into Moscow and South; 1588 - the establishment of the Patriarchate (the first patriarch Job); 1700 - Peter I abolished the Patriarchate (the last patriarch Adrian) and established the Holy Synod; 1917 - Revolution in Russian Empire. A total change in attitude towards religion and the Church; 1941 - The beginning of the Second World War, the Church again gains weight, some cooperation with the government begins; 1991 - The collapse of the USSR. The Church is becoming stronger and more authoritative. The first patriarch in the new Russia Alexy II

Freed from the invaders, the Russian state gained strength, and with it the strength of the Russian Orthodox Church grew. In the year shortly before the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the Russian Church became independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Metropolitan Jonah, appointed by the Council of Russian Bishops in the year, received the title of Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia.

In the future, the growing power of the Russian state also contributed to the growth of the authority of the Autocephalous Russian Church. In the same year, Metropolitan Job of Moscow became the first Russian Patriarch. The Eastern Patriarchs recognized the Russian Patriarch as the fifth place in honor.

During the period that followed the expulsion of the interventionists from Russia, the Russian Church dealt with one of its very important internal problems - the correction of liturgical books and rites. Great merit in this belonged to Patriarch Nikon. At the same time, shortcomings in the preparation of the reform and its forcible imposition inflicted on the Russian Church a grave wound, the consequences of which have not been overcome to this day - the split of the Old Believers.

Synodal period

Saint Tikhon made every effort to calm the destructive passions fanned by the revolution. The Message of the Holy Council of November 11 said: "Instead of the new social structure promised by the false teachers, there is a bloody strife of builders; instead of peace and the brotherhood of peoples, there is a confusion of languages ​​and fierce hatred of brothers. People who have forgotten God, like hungry wolves, rush at each other ... Leave the crazy and impious dream of the false teachers who call for the realization of the universal brotherhood through worldwide civil strife! Return to the path of Christ!"

For the Bolsheviks, who came to power in 2009, the Russian Orthodox Church was a priori an ideological adversary. That is why many bishops, thousands of priests, monks, nuns and laity were subjected to repression up to and including execution by firing squad and murders that were shocking in their cruelty.

After the death of Patriarch Tikhon, a complex, government-directed struggle for the hierarchical leadership of the Church unfolded. Ultimately, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) stood at the head of the church administration. The obligations to the authorities, which he was forced to accept at the same time, provoked a protest from some part of the clergy and people who had gone into the so-called. "right schism" and created the "catacomb church".

At the Council of Bishops of the city of Metropolitan. Sergius was elected Patriarch, and at the Local Council Mr. - Metropolitan Alexy. After that, most of the so-called. "Catacomb Church" at the call of Bishop. Athanasius (Sakharova), whom many catacombists considered their spiritual leader, reunited with the Moscow Patriarchate.

From this historical moment, a short period of “thaw” began in relations between the Church and the state, however, the Church was constantly under state control, and any attempts to expand its activities outside the walls of the temple met with a relentless rebuff, including administrative sanctions.

In Moscow, a large-scale Pan-Orthodox Conference was convened, after which the Russian Church was involved in an active participation in the international movement "struggle for peace and disarmament" launched at the initiative of Stalin.

The position of the Russian Orthodox Church became difficult at the end of the so-called "Khrushchev thaw", when thousands of churches throughout the Soviet Union were closed for the sake of ideological guidelines. During the "Brezhnev" period, the active persecution of the Church ceased, but there was also no improvement in relations with the state. The church remained under strict control of the authorities and believers were treated as "second-class citizens".

Modern history

The celebration of the Millennium of the Baptism of Russia in the year marked the decline of the state-atheistic system, gave a positive impetus to church-state relations, forced those in power to start a dialogue with the Church and build relationships with her on the principles of recognizing her huge historical role in the fate of the Fatherland and her contribution to the formation of moral foundations nation.

However, the consequences of persecution were very, very serious. It was necessary not only to restore thousands of temples and hundreds of monasteries from the ruins, but also to revive the traditions of educational, educational, charitable, missionary, church and public service.

Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad and Novgorod was destined to lead the church revival in these difficult conditions, who was elected by the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church to the primatial see, widowed after the death of His Holiness Patriarch Pimen. On June 10, the enthronement of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia took place.

see also

• Russian Orthodox Church

Used materials

• Official website of the Russian Orthodox Church

History of the Russian Church- the history of the Orthodox Church on the territory of historical Russia.

Modern both ecclesiastical and secular historiography of the Russian Church usually has as its starting point the year 988; more traditional ecclesiastical historiography traced the history of the Church within Russia to the apostolic epoch. Reliable information about the existence of Christian communities in Kyiv dates back to the second half of the 9th century.

An autocephalous church organization with a center in Moscow with a regulated canonical status arose in 1589, when the Moscow Metropolitan was recognized in the dignity of a patriarch as an independent primate of the Moscow Church, that is, the Church in the northeastern part of historical Russia.

The history presented in this article is the history of the modern Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate); also, up to this or that historical milestone, it is the history of other religious associations and movements, from the point of view of the historiography adopted in them, for example, the Old Believers, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and others.

As part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople

The spread of Christianity in Russia was facilitated by its proximity to the Christian power - the Byzantine Empire. It is known that a Christian community existed in Kyiv already in the second half of the 9th century. Its appearance is usually associated with the so-called Photius baptism of Russia in the first half of the 860s. A number of historians suggest that the first Russian baptizers could be the brothers Cyril and Methodius, sent by Photius on a mission to Khazaria. According to Byzantine sources, from 862/863 there was the "eparchy of Russia", later the "metropolis of Russia". According to some sources, in the same year 862, an episcopal see was established in Kyiv: the first bishop, with reference to Byzantine sources, is called “Archbishop Alexy, sent by Patriarch Photius”; there are no reliable data about the Kyiv bishops up to the end of the 10th century.

According to hagiographic literature, in 983 Theodore and John, revered by the Russian Church as the first martyrs of Russia, were martyred at the hands of the Kyiv pagans.

The Kyiv Grand Duchess Olga in 957 (or 954/5) was baptized in Constantinople. Her grandson, Prince (Kagan) Vladimir of Kyiv, according to chronicle stories, was baptized in Chersonese Tauride, receiving the name Vasiliy, in honor of St. Basil the Great, and also in honor of his successor, Roman Emperor Basil. Traditional historiography places the Baptism of Russia in 988, although, according to some church historians, there is reason to believe 987 is a more probable date.

For the first five centuries, the Russian Church was one of the metropolises of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Russia, who headed the Russian hierarchy, was appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople from the Greeks, but in 1051 the Kyiv prince Yaroslav the Wise managed to achieve the placement of the first Russian, Metropolitan Hilarion, one of the most educated people of that time, on the primatial throne.

Other dioceses were formed: in Belgorod (now the village of Belogorodka near Kyiv), Veliky Novgorod, Rostov, Chernigov, Vladimir-Volynsky, Polotsk, Turov. Diocesan bishops were elected locally by the respective specific princes or veche (in Veliky Novgorod since the middle of the 12th century) - as a rule, Russians.

Evgeny Golubinsky, speaking about the attempts of Prince Vladimir to establish enlightenment among his boyars at the level of Byzantine standards of that time, wrote: “Vladimir wanted and tried to introduce enlightenment to us, but his attempt was unsuccessful. After him, we no longer made any attempts and were left without education, with only literacy, with only the ability to read.

From the very beginning of the official spread of Christianity, monasteries began to be established: in 1051, the Monk Anthony of the Caves brought the tradition of Athos monasticism to Kyiv, founding the famous Kiev-Caves Monastery, which became the center of the spiritual life of the ancient Russian state in the pre-Mongolian period. Monasteries played the role of religious and cultural centers. In particular, chronicles were kept in them, which brought information about significant historical events to our days; iconography and the art of book writing flourished.

In view of the decline in the importance of Kyiv as a political center after its defeat by the Tatar-Mongols (1240), in 1299 the Kyiv Metropolitan Maxim moved his residence to Vladimir-on-Klyazma; at the end of 1325, Moscow became the seat of the Kyiv metropolitans. During the period of the Horde domination, the Russian clergy enjoyed significant property and immunity privileges.

The last metropolitan in Moscow, installed in Constantinople, was the Bulgarian Isidore (1437-1441). Representing the Russian Church, as well as Patriarch Dorotheos I of Antioch (1435-1452) at the Ferrara-Florence Council (1438-1445), on July 5, 1439, he signed the Council Determination on the Unia, which adopted all the new dogmas of the Roman Church. In Constantinople, the Unia suffered a complete collapse already in 1440, due to the general rejection of it by the population: only the court of the emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople himself adhered to the Unia. The Council of Constantinople in 1484, with the participation of all the Eastern Patriarchs, recognized the Latins as "heretics of the second category", who were subject to joining Orthodoxy through chrismation.

Break with Constantinople. The beginning of the autocephaly of the Russian Church

In 1441, Metropolitan Isidore, upon his arrival in Moscow from the Florentine Cathedral, served a liturgy at which he commemorated Pope Eugene IV, and also read out a document on the Unia. Immediately after that, on the orders of Grand Duke Vasily II (Dark), he was taken into custody, but subsequently fled. The Grand Duke ordered not to pursue Isidore.

Convened on this occasion in 1441 in Moscow, the Council of Bishops of Eastern Russia (the Grand Duchy of Moscow), condemned Metropolitan Isidore as a heretic and apostate and rejected the Union. The Moscow Council of 1448, convened by Grand Duke Vasily, placed Bishop Jonah of Ryazan on the Russian Metropolis on December 15 without the consent of the Uniate Patriarch of Constantinople (the Patriarch and Emperor of Constantinople were in Unia until the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, until May 29, 1453), with the title " Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Russia.

On December 15, 1448, the Russian Church becomes autocephalous. After the capture of Constantinople by the Turks and the destruction of the Union in it, communication between the Russians and the Greeks was restored. In 1458, under the pressure of the Pope Callixtus III, the Polish king Casimir IV took away the Russian dioceses located in Lithuania from the Moscow Metropolitan Jonah, and put Uniate Metropolitan Gregory at their head. Gregory left the union in 1470 and was received into communion by the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople. Two metropolises were formed. One of them is Moscow, which was an autocephalous church; and the second - Kyiv, which was part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Beginning with the reign of John III, a religious-historiosophical and political ideology began to form in the Russian state, according to which, due to the political fall of Byzantium, Moscow became the only state stronghold of universal Orthodoxy, which received the dignity of the Third Rome. In a somewhat modified form, this idea was formally enshrined in Laid Diploma 1589 on behalf of Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople. In the Russian Church during this period, a view was formed of Russian piety as the only intact and saving teaching of Christ in the whole world. Christians of other confessions were not considered as such and were subject to re-baptism upon joining Orthodoxy (q. v. in the article Latinism). As a result, a specifically Moscow religiosity was formed with a special emphasis on external ritual, the absolute immutability of liturgical forms, as well as what some researchers call "everyday confession"

The Moscow principality and its clergy in 1478 liquidated the jurisdictional autonomy of the Novgorod diocese.

After gaining independence, the Russian Church experienced a long period of isolation: in 1458, the Kievan (Kyiv-Lithuanian) Metropolis returned to the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Moscow Metropolis from 1470 to 1504 was shaken by the heresy of the Judaizers, from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 16th century, the struggle between non-possessors and Josephites. The victory of the latter was finally fixed by the acts of the Stoglavy Cathedral in 1551. A number of doctrinal definitions of the Council are of a frivolous nature for the Council, elevating to the level of dogma the opinion about “unshaven beard” and “not cutting the mustache”, about double-fingering, a special (double) hallelujah, etc.

First patriarchal period

In 1589-1593, the Moscow Metropolitans received the dignity of Patriarchs and the formal recognition of autocephaly from the Eastern Patriarchs. A distinctive feature of the governance of the Moscow Church in comparison with other patriarchates was the absence under the Patriarch of a permanent council of bishops - the Synod, which by that time had already taken shape as one of the authorities in other local Churches.

The main business of the first Patriarch of Moscow Job (1589-1605) was the implementation of transformations in the Russian Church, outlined by the Council Code of 1589. Almost all episcopal sees were raised in rank, and several new ones were opened. Job elevated four metropolitans, five archbishops (out of six), and one bishop for the seven planned new dioceses. Established general church holidays for some previously recognized saints, canonized a number of new ones. The patriarch contributed to the spread of Christianity among the aliens of Siberia, the Kazan Territory, and the Korelskaya Oblast (Karelia). In Moscow, in order to establish greater deanery in the lower clergy, eight priestly elders were established. For refusing to recognize False Dmitry I, he was deprived of his chair and exiled to the Staritsky Assumption Monastery. The patriarchal throne was occupied by the henchman of False Dmitry Ignatius (1605-1606), but immediately after the murder of False Dmitry, he was deprived not only of the patriarchal, but also of the hierarchal rank.

Patriarch Hermogenes (1606-1612) was an outstanding church writer and preacher, one of the most educated people of his time. Under him, a new printing house building was erected in Moscow, a printing press was installed, books were printed. He was an active opponent of the Poles, for which he was imprisoned in the Miracle Monastery, where he died of starvation.

The Moscow Patriarchs reached their highest power under Patriarch Filaret (1619-1634), the father of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. In 1625 the king issued Non-conviction letter, according to which the court over all churches, monasteries and peasants on church and monastic lands was transferred to the Patriarch, which turned the Patriarchate into status in status. Under Filaret, two Zemsky Sobors were convened (in 1619 and 1632), the Tobolsk and Siberian archdioceses were established, a Greek school for children was opened, and book printing developed. In 1619-1630, the publication of a major work was prepared - a 12-volume Menaia of the Months.

Tsar Michael and his inner circle, and Filaret himself, who chose Archimandrite Ioasaph as his successor, would like to see a person who is less bright and less prone to political activity as the successor of Patriarch Filaret. Under Patriarch Joseph (1642-1652), the largest (compared with the previous patriarchates) number of books was published - 38 titles (some of which lasted up to eight editions). The patriarch supported rapprochement with the Greek East and Kiev.

In the middle of the 17th century, under Patriarch Nikon, liturgical books were corrected and other measures were taken to unify Moscow liturgical practice with Greek. The reform of Patriarch Nikon was not accepted by part of the Church, as a result of which a split occurred, and the Old Believers arose. The last years of Nikon's patriarchate were marked by a conflict with the tsar, which led to the deposition of the patriarch in December 1666.

During the patriarchate of Joasaph II (1667-1672), the Great Moscow Council of the Russian and Eastern clergy took place, cursing the Old Believers, at the same time betraying them to state criminal prosecution. Joasaph II made efforts to enforce the prohibitions imposed by the Moscow Cathedral. At the same time, Ioasaph II did not have enough energy to carry out a number of important decisions of the Moscow court: the recommendation of the cathedral on the widespread establishment of schools (schools) and the establishment of new dioceses in Russia remained unfulfilled (only one was approved - Belgorod). Struggling with the penetration of the Western European manner into Russian icon painting, the patriarch sought to legitimize the Byzantine style. Under Joasaph II, sermons were resumed in churches. On his initiative, Orthodox missionaries operated in the Far North (up to the islands of Novaya Zemlya), the Far East (up to Dauria). On the Amur, not far from the border with the Qing Empire (China).

The content of the activity of Patriarch Joachim (1674-1690) was the upholding of antiquity, the prestige of the church in the clergy. The most important event of his patriarchate was the reassignment in November 1685 to the Moscow Patriarchate of a part of the autonomous Kyiv Metropolis (Kyiv and Chernigov dioceses), which had previously been under the jurisdiction of the Throne of Constantinople: in 1686, Patriarch Dionysius of Constantinople, with the consent of other Eastern Patriarchs, sent a letter approving the Metropolitan’s decree Gideon Chetvertinsky at the head of the Kyiv Metropolis, attached to the Moscow Patriarchate; the successors of Gideon Chetvertinsky, who was de facto elected to the Kyiv Metropolis by the Cossack foreman, headed by Hetman Samoylovich, canonically submitted to the Moscow Patriarchate. Patriarch Dositheos II (Notara) of Jerusalem, who took an active part in Russian affairs, was a staunch opponent of the resubordination of the Kyiv Metropolis, who considered such resubordination to be contrary to the canons. Metropolitan Gideon was awarded the title of Patriarch Joachim of Moscow Lesser Russia, Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia, as well as the right to present the Cross in his diocese; The Kyiv Department was recognized initial in Russia. Soon, Metropolitan Gideon began to lose the privileges given to him in Moscow: in January 1688, he was deprived of the right to be called Metropolitan "Little Russia", and in July the Chernigov diocese and the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra were removed from his jurisdiction, which undermined his prestige. During the synodal period, the Kyiv metropolitans became diocesan bishops, retaining their metropolitan title.

Another important event during the patriarchate of Joachim was the establishment of the Moscow Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy.

Under Joachim, the repeated attempt of the tsar at the Council of 1682 to increase the number of dioceses and introduce metropolitan districts ended in failure.

The last patriarch of the pre-Synodal period Adrian (1690-1700) was a conservative and opponent of the reforms of Tsar Peter I; his relationship with the young king was strained. Under him, two councils were held: in 1697 and in 1698.

Synodal period 1700-1917

After the death of Patriarch Adrian in 1700, Peter I forbade the election of a new patriarch and, after 20 years, established the Theological College, soon renamed the Holy Synod, which, being a state body, performed the functions of general church administration from 1721 to January 1918, with the emperor (until March 2, 1917) as "extreme Judge of this College".

Until the time of the All-Russian Local Council of 1917-1918, the main external (state-legal) regulatory document for the Church was the Spiritual Regulations of 1721, and later also the Charter of Spiritual Consistories.

Under Peter I, the clergy turned into a closed class, access to which for persons from other classes in the interests of public service and tax was very difficult. The system of theological schools that arose under Peter (the seminary and theological schools) also had an estate character. Education was arranged according to the Little Russian model: Latin dominated (both as a subject and as the language of instruction) and scholasticism. The introduction of school education for the children of the clergy proceeded with extreme difficulty and met with massive resistance.

In 1763 and 1764, a series of decrees abolished the monastic estates and introduced states. As a result, the Church ceased to play the role of the most important subject of the socio-economic life of the country. The clergy lost their financial independence and found themselves on the payroll of the state treasury, turning into a special category of bureaucracy. Four-fifths of the monasteries in Great Russia were abolished as a result of the secularization of monastic estates. The response of the church to this was the revival and spread in some monasteries of such a phenomenon as eldership.

In the 19th century, the most significant figures in church politics were the Moscow Metropolitan (1821-1867) Filaret (Drozdov) and the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod (1880-1905) Konstantin Pobedonostsev. The first, being a brilliant preacher, dogmatist and administrator, played a significant role in the development of the Russian theological school, free from Latin scholasticism. The second, pursuing a protective policy and using significant influence on Alexander III, contributed to the further social isolation of the clergy and the decline in the prestige of the Church in society. In the 19th century, an almost complete secularization and departure from the Church of a significant part of the educated layer of the Russian people took place. At the same time, at the end of the century, there was a noticeable awakening of interest in religion among the creative intelligentsia, a movement arose for the renewal of church life and the restoration of the conciliar principle in governance, the forerunners of which were Aleksey Khomyakov, Vladimir Solovyov, Lev Tikhomirov and others. Vladimir Solovyov wrote in 1881: “ The Council of the Russian Church must solemnly confess that the truth of Christ and His Church do not need forced unity of form and forcible protection.<…>Having thus renounced external police power, the church will acquire internal moral authority, true power over souls and minds. No longer needing the material protection of the secular government, she will be freed from his guardianship and will become in her proper worthy relationship with the state.

In 1901-1903, "religious and philosophical meetings" of representatives of the secular intelligentsia and clergy were held in St. Petersburg under the chairmanship of Bishop Sergius (Stragorodsky) of Yamburg; the idea of ​​the need to convene a local council and reorganize the highest church administration finally matures. By the Highest Decree, the government headed by Count Sergei Witte in December 1904 began the development of a bill On strengthening the principles of religious tolerance, published by the Supreme Manifesto on April 17, 1905.

The result of the changed legislation was a situation where the Orthodox Church, having lost its former state-legal privileges, actually found itself in the role of a discriminated confession, as it continued to be under direct state control. The attempts of the leading member of the Synod Anthony (Vadkovsky) to find ways to correct the abnormal situation were torpedoed by Pobedonostsev.

Nevertheless, in response to the discussion that began among the episcopate about the canonical structure of church administration, on January 16, 1906, Nicholas II approved the composition of the “Pre-Council Presence” - the commission for preparing for the Council, which opened on March 8, 1906. But in the conditions of reaction after the turmoil of 1905, the Court considered the demands for the convening of the Council as revolutionary sentiments in the "department of the Orthodox confession." By the highest command of February 28, 1912, “at the Holy Synod, a permanent pre-council meeting was established, until the convocation of the council” (in a more limited composition than Presence, - for "all kinds of preparatory work for the council, which may be necessary"), the chairman of which on March 1 of the same year, the emperor approved, at the suggestion of the Synod, Archbishop of Finland Sergius (Stragorodsky). After the death of Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky) of St. Petersburg on November 2, 1912, an editorial in the right-wing newspaper Moskovskiye Vedomosti, under the heading "Conciliar election of the primordial metropolitan," called for "this is the smallest of small restorations of the canonical order," explaining that this is not about the Local Council, but the “episcopal council” (the successor of Anthony was appointed by the usual procedure for the synodal era).

At the end of this period, a number of radical nationalist and monarchist, so-called "Black Hundred" organizations emerged, based in their ideology on Russian Orthodoxy: "Russian Assembly", "Union of the Russian People", "Russian Monarchist Party", "Union of Michael the Archangel" and others . Representatives of the black and white clergy participated in the monarchical movement, holding leadership positions in some organizations until 1913, when the Holy Synod issued a decree prohibiting the clergy from engaging in party political activities.

The majority of the church hierarchy met the fall of the monarchy in Russia on March 2, 1917, either indifferently or sympathetically. On March 6, the Holy Synod at its meeting issued Determination No. 1207 On the publication in Orthodox churches of the acts of March 2 and 3, 1917., which read, in particular: “The aforementioned acts should be taken into account and executed and announced in all Orthodox churches, in urban ones on the first day after receiving the text of these acts, and in rural areas on the first Sunday or holiday, after the Divine Liturgy, with the celebration prayers to the Lord God for the calming of passions, with the proclamation of many years to the God-protected Power of the Russian and its Blessed Provisional Government. Prince N. D. Zhevakhova, who was then a comrade of the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod, later in exile in the 1920s, recalled the “memorable” meeting of the Holy Synod on February 26, 1917, when Petrograd was completely paralyzed by turmoil: the leading member of the Synod, Metropolitan of Kyiv Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) rejected the prince’s proposal to address the population with an appeal, which, according to the prince, should have become “a formidable warning to the Church, entailing, in case of disobedience, church punishment”, telling him: “It is always so. When we are not needed, then they do not notice us: and at the moment of danger, they are the first to turn to us for help. It is noteworthy that Zhevakhov explained this behavior of the members of the Synod not as "the refusal of the highest church hierarchy to help the state at the moment of danger, but as the most ordinary manifestation of the opposition of the Synod to the Chief Prosecutor's Office." Characteristic is the leading article in the official publication "The Church Bulletin" (April 1917), written by the editor, a member of the State Council, a member of the Council of the Russian Assembly, Professor-Archpriest Timofei Butkevich: "<…>But if the behavior of the former tsar was not the result of a mental abnormality, then it is inevitable to come to the conclusion that no one has ever discredited the principle of autocracy as Nicholas II.<…>After all, it's no secret to anyone that instead of Nicholas II, Russia was ruled by the depraved, ignorant, greedy whip-horse thief Rasputin!<…>The influence of Rasputin on the tsar in the life of the Orthodox Church was especially hard. Like a whip, Rasputin was the most implacable enemy of the Church. Therefore, all the orders of the king on church affairs were of a hostile nature - the nature of Julian's persecution. Dominance in the church was given to the Khlysts. And the church was managed, in fact, by Rasputin.<…>". Such a leader of Russian Orthodoxy, who has a reputation as an extreme nationalist and monarchist, as Archpriest John Vostorgov, immediately after the February Revolution, wrote about the "slavery" of bishops and the Synod "in the old system."

On April 29, 1917, the Synod, reorganized by the new chief prosecutor V.N. Lvov, appealed to Epistle to the archpastors, pastors and all the faithful children of the Russian Orthodox Church, which announced the introduction of an elective principle in church administration and announced the convening of a Local Council. The definition of the Holy Synod of May 5 (O.S.), 1917, No. 2668 “On attracting the clergy and flock to a more active participation in church administration”, in particular, decided: “<…>Take care to convene emergency diocesan congresses of the clergy in the coming days with the participation of representatives from parishes endowed with the trust of parishioners and representatives from local theological educational institutions to discuss at these congresses not only issues related to this diocese, but also general questions about the position of the Orthodox Church in the Russian state, in connection with the changes that have taken place in the structure of state administration and the forthcoming convening of the Church Council and the Constituent Assembly, as well as questions about desirable transformations in church administration and church and public life, so that about the decisions adopted by the congresses and about the expressed wishes on general issues were reported to the Holy Synod, in view of the forthcoming convocation of the Pre-Council Council<…>»

In the summer of 1917, elections were held for bishops in the dioceses, a phenomenon unprecedented in the synodal period: Tikhon (Bellavin) in Moscow, Veniamin (Kazansky) in Petrograd, Sergius (Stragorodsky) in Vladimir were elected to the corresponding sees.

Second patriarchal period

In the early 1900s, despite the resistance of Konstantin Pobedonostsev, preparations began for the convocation of the All-Russian Local Council, which opened with a liturgy service on August 15 (O.S.), 1917, in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin. His biggest decision was the restoration on October 28 of the same year of the patriarchal leadership of the Russian Church, which remains to this day. The Pre-Council Council, which worked earlier, in the summer of 1917, in Petrograd, under the influence of a number of professors from the Theological Academies (the Council consisted of 40 laity, 10 priests and 12 bishops), passed a decision against the restoration of the patriarchate, finding it incompatible with the idea of ​​catholicity. At the meetings of the Cathedral Department on the Higher Church Administration (one of the 22 departments formed at the Council), most of the reports were directed against the patriarchate. At the Council itself, which began debate on the issue on October 11 (O.S.), the positive resolution of the issue on October 28 was largely due to the sharp radicalization of the political situation in connection with the seizure of power in Petrograd by the Bolsheviks three days before and the armed clashes in Moscow that day between supporters of the Bolsheviks and the Junkers.

The act of the Council was not a mechanical restoration of the patriarchate in the form in which it existed before the synodal period: along with the institution of the patriarchate, the Council established 2 permanent collegiate bodies (the Holy Synod and the Supreme Church Council). The jurisdiction of the Synod included matters of a hierarchical-pastoral, doctrinal, canonical and liturgical nature, and the jurisdiction of the Supreme Church Council - matters of church and public order: administrative, economic, school and educational. Particularly important church-wide issues related to the protection of the rights of the Church, preparations for the upcoming Council, the opening of new dioceses, were subject to decision by the joint presence of the Synod and the Supreme Church Council. The new bodies of supreme power assumed the powers of the abolished Holy Synod on February 1 (14), 1918, in accordance with the decision of the Council of January 31.

In addition to its Chairman, the Patriarch, the Synod included 12 more members: the Metropolitan of Kyiv ex officio, 6 bishops elected by the Council for three years, and 5 bishops called in turn for a period of one year. Of the 15 members of the Supreme Church Council, headed, like the Synod, by the Patriarch, 3 bishops were delegated by the Synod, and one monk, 5 clergy from the white clergy and 6 laity were elected by the Council.

Before 1941

Already in December 1917, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (the Bolshevik government) adopted a number of acts that abolished the functions of the Orthodox Church as a state institution enjoying state patronage.

On January 23 (old style), 1918, the Decree approved on January 20 by the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR was published by which the Church was separated from the state and from the public school, deprived of the rights of a legal entity and property; Religion has become an exclusively private matter of citizens. The Bolsheviks, who took power in Russia (the RSFSR, later the USSR), openly proclaimed as their task to promote the "withering away of religious prejudices"; The political messages of Patriarch Tikhon, which were distributed in 1918 in the form of printed leaflets, were taken by the authorities as calls for sabotage.

Patriarch Tikhon, condemning the fratricidal civil war, after 1919 sought to take a neutral position in the conflict of parties, but such a position was unacceptable for the Bolsheviks. In addition, most of the hierarchy and clergy, who were in the territory controlled by the "whites", emigrated in connection with their defeat and created their own church structure abroad - the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

A sharp conflict between the structures headed by Patriarch Tikhon and the authorities flared up in the spring of 1922 during a campaign to seize church valuables for the purchase of food abroad. Violent confiscation sometimes led to bloody excesses. Patriarch Tikhon was prosecuted for publishing his appeal of February 28. In Moscow, Petrograd and other cities, trials were held against "churchmen" with severe sentences, including the highest measure of "social protection" - execution.

The authorities also sought to weaken the Church by encouraging controversy and schismatic groups. Supported by government authorities renovationism (q.v.), which was officially recognized by state authorities as the Russian Orthodox Church. At their council in April 1923, the Renovationists adopted a resolution in support of the Soviet socialist system, condemned the "counter-revolutionary clergy", and declared Patriarch Tikhon deposed.

According to the testamentary order of Patriarch Tikhon, after his death (March 25 (April 7), 1925), the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Krutitsy Peter (Polyansky) became the helm of the Russian church administration of the Patriarchal Church. From December 10, 1925, the actual head of the church administration with the title of Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens was Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) of Nizhny Novgorod, who, like his predecessors, made attempts to normalize the position of the Russian Church in the new state.

On July 29, 1927, under pressure from the authorities, Metropolitan Sergius issued a message known as the "Declaration". The reaction to the statement of Metropolitan Sergius in church circles was extremely controversial. The foreign (Karlovatsk) synod rejected and condemned it. Some of the hierarchs within the country, regarding the act of the Metropolitan as a betrayal of the interests of the Church, openly announced their departure from him, some stopped the commemoration of Metropolitan Sergius. Part, not being in solidarity with a number of provisions of the Declaration, assessed its nature as forced, retained confidence in Sergius as the leader of the Church. However, the hopes of the metropolitan and his supporters regarding the authorities were not justified. The synod, headed by Sergius, did not receive legal recognition and in May 1935 was forced to “self-liquidate”, the arrests of the clergy and the administrative closure of churches resumed with renewed vigor from 1929. So, in 1937, more than 8 thousand churches were closed, 70 dioceses and vicariates were liquidated. During 1937-1938, the NKVD carried out mass operations everywhere to arrest and shoot the clergy. At the end of this special operation on April 16, 1938, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to liquidate the Commission of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR on cults. The repressions of 1937-1938 also affected the renovationists. If at the beginning of 1938 they had 49 ruling bishops and 11 retired ones, by the summer of 1941 there were only 2 ruling Renovationist bishops, the rest of the survivors were either retired or imprisoned.

By 1939 the church structure throughout the country had been virtually destroyed; dioceses as administrative units actually disappeared, most of the clergy were exterminated physically or were in camps. Nevertheless, by the same 1939, it became clear to Stalin that attempts to solve the task of completely eradicating religion in the USSR had failed. Some researchers believe that the existence of the Catacomb Church in the USSR was one of the important, if not the main, reasons why the Patriarchal Locum Tenens managed to save several hundred parishes by 1939 and reduced church administration to a minimum. The situation seriously changed in September 1939, when, as a result of the annexation by the USSR of the eastern territories of Poland, and in 1940 of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, more than 7,500 thousand Orthodox believers of Western Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic countries, organized in dioceses, found themselves on the territory of the USSR and parishes, functioning monasteries, educational institutions, editorial offices of church newspapers, etc. At this time, there was a temporary curtailment of anti-church actions. The government turned out to need the activity of the Moscow Patriarchate: “For the first time since he headed the Church, Sergius found himself in such a position that he could demand concessions from the government.” There are no exact and reliable statistics on the churches operating on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, but, according to some sources, their number before the start of the war was 3,732 churches of all “orientations” (that is, including Renovationist and Uniate, and Catholic), of which about 3,350 were to the western recently annexed republics, and the number of clergymen, according to TASS, is 5,665, of which about 90% fell to Western Ukraine and Belarus, Moldova and the Baltic states.

1941-1991

On June 22, 1941, Metropolitan Sergius, returning to the office of the Patriarchate from the Sunday liturgy in the Cathedral of the Epiphany, printed with his own hand Epistle to the shepherds and flocks of Christ's Orthodox Church, in which he called on everyone to stand up for the defense of the Motherland. The appeal was sent to all dioceses. On June 26, Metropolitan Sergius served a prayer service at the Epiphany Cathedral in Moscow About giving victory, after which such prayers began to be performed in all the churches of the Russian Church. An extensive campaign was organized to raise funds, which were used to build and transfer to the army a tank column named after Dmitry Donskoy and a squadron named after Alexander Nevsky.

In the conditions of a forced military-political alliance with Great Britain and the USA, JV Stalin faced the need to stop the anti-religious and anti-church campaigns in the USSR, which had an extremely negative impact on the public opinion of the allied powers; Roosevelt directly conditioned the provision of assistance on the weakening of repressions against religion in the USSR. “Already at the end of October 1941, his [F. D. Roosevelt] personal representative A. Harriman informed Stalin about the concern of the American public about the fate of the Russian Church, conveyed the president's request to improve its legal and political situation in Russia.

Another serious factor in the weakening of repressions against religion was the church revival in the territories of the USSR that were under the control of Germany: the Armed Forces and punitive bodies of the USSR, which went on a strategic offensive, for reasons of political expediency, could not immediately resume the former repressive practice in the occupied territories. On January 25, 1944, the psalm-reader of the Nikolo-Konetsky parish of the Gdov district, S. D. Pleskach, wrote to Metropolitan Alexy: “I can report that the Russian people completely changed as soon as the Germans appeared. Destroyed temples were erected, church utensils were made, vestments were delivered from where it was preserved. Peasant women hung clean, self-embroidered towels on the icons. There was only joy and consolation. When everything was ready, then a priest was invited and the temple was consecrated. At that time there were such joyful events that I cannot describe.

On June 5, 1943, I. V. Stalin signed a secret decree of the State Defense Committee On the approval of measures to improve the foreign work of the intelligence agencies of the USSR, in which religious organizations were for the first time classified as objects of interest to the foreign intelligence agencies of the USSR.

In the run-up to the Tehran Conference, held at the end of 1943, “his [Stalin's] intention was to push again to open a second front, and also to seek more aid. He decided that the time had come to make a public gesture and demonstrate his loyalty to the Church. He believed that the West would appreciate such a signal and this would entail the desired response.

On August 30, NKGB officer G. G. Karpov (the future Chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church) urgently delivered Patriarchal Locum Tenens Sergius and his staff from Ulyanovsk, where the church leadership of the Patriarchate had been evacuated since October 1941, to Moscow.

While in evacuation, Metropolitan Sergius used every opportunity to recreate the church-administrative structure of the Moscow Patriarchy: as a result of his efforts, the number of "registered" bishops in the Russian Federation increased from 7 (in mid-October 1941) to 18.

On September 4, 1943, I. V. Stalin met with Patriarchal Locum Tenens Sergius (Stragorodsky) and Metropolitans: Alexy (Simansky) of Leningrad and Nikolai (Yarushevich) of Kyiv, who was constantly in Moscow. (The actual church authority in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, created on August 20, 1941, then belonged to the "Administrator of the Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church" Archbishop Polycarp (Sikorsky), appointed in December 1941 by Metropolitan Dionisy (Valedinsky) of Warsaw on the basis of instructions from Patriarch Benjamin of Constantinople and in agreement with the authorities of the Reichskommissariat) . At the meeting, on behalf of the government of the USSR, according to the notes of G. G. Karpov, Stalin stated: “that the church can count on the full support of the Government in all matters related to its organizational strengthening and development within the USSR”; It was decided to create a special government body - Council for the Russian Orthodox Church, headed by G. G. Karpov.

On September 8, 1943, at the residence of the former German ambassador in Chisty Lane, a Council of Bishops was held, electing Sergius Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia; on the same day, the Holy Synod "under the Patriarch" was formed, which included 3 permanent members: Metropolitan Alexy (Simansky) of Leningrad, Nikolai (Yarushevich) of Kyiv and Sergius (Grishin), Archbishop of Gorky and Arzamas. The Patriarchal Church was legalized de facto and received its current official name - Russian Orthodox Church instead of the one used before: the Local Russian Orthodox Church, which also meant the actual non-recognition of the renovationist structures by the state. The patriarchate was recreated without the Supreme Church Council provided for by the Council of 1917-1918, but the Holy Synod as a body was preserved and its existence was enshrined in the Regulations on the management of the Russian Orthodox Church, adopted at the Council of 1945. The New Synod differed from the Provisional Synod under the Deputy Locum Tenens in that it became an organ of power, and was not only an advisory body under the First Hierarch.

On October 12, 1943, I. V. Stalin decided to liquidate the renovationist church structures. Since that time, on the initiative of the authorities, the process of accelerated admission of Renovationist clerics and bishops to the Patriarchal Church began, and the Council for Orthodox Church Affairs began to impose former Renovationists for appointment to the cathedra.

From September 19 to September 28, 1943, at the invitation of the Patriarchate, the second oldest hierarch of the Church of England, Archbishop Cyril Garbett of York, was in Moscow ( Cyril Forster Garbett), which meant the resumption of foreign policy activities of the leadership of the Patriarchate. On September 21, Cyril Garbett, in liturgical vestments, was present at the altar during the celebration of the liturgy by Patriarch Sergius in the Cathedral of the Epiphany. September 24 The New York Times quoted Archbishop Garbett as saying that "he is convinced that there is complete freedom of religion in the Soviet Union."

Temples opened by the German authorities, as a rule, were not closed; a number of previously closed churches, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, spiritual educational institutions were opened; under the Holy Synod, the Publishing Department (1945), the Educational Committee and the Department for External Church Relations (1946) were organized. In 1948, in its explanatory note to the Politburo, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church provided the following data on the number of churches and prayer houses in the USSR:

According to a note from the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1948: “As of January 1, 1948, there were 14,329 active churches and prayer houses in the USSR (11,897 churches and 2,432 prayer houses, which is 18.4% of the number of churches, prayer houses and chapels in 1914, when there were 77,767). The number of churches in the Ukrainian SSR is 78.3% of their number in 1914, and in the RSFSR - 5.4% ... The increase in the number of active churches and prayer houses occurred for the following reasons: a) during the war in the territory subjected to German occupation, 7,547 churches were opened (in fact, even more, since a significant number of churches ceased to function after the war due to the departure of the clergy along with the Germans and as a result of our seizure of school, club, etc. buildings from religious communities, occupied by them during the occupation for prayer houses) ; b) in 1946, 2491 parishes of the Uniate (Greek Catholic) Church in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR converted to Orthodoxy; c) for 1944-1947. reopened with the permission of the Council of 1270 churches, mainly in the RSFSR, from where there were numerous and persistent requests from believers.

The initial intentions of the Soviet authorities to hold an ecumenical council in Moscow in 1948 “to resolve the issue of conferring the title of Ecumenical on the Moscow Patriarchate” were rebuffed by the Eastern Patriarchates; in July 1948, a Conference of the Heads and Representatives of the Local Orthodox Churches was held in Moscow, at which there were no primates of the leading Greek patriarchal sees.

Some change in the policy of the authorities towards the Russian Orthodox Church and its hierarchy takes place in the second half of July - August 1948: repressions against individual active bishops take place, the interference of the Council in the personnel policy of the Patriarchate intensifies. Not a single church was opened from 1948 until Stalin's death. From February 1949 to March 1953, consecrations ceased, with the exception of a small number for Ukraine and foreign dioceses.

As of January 1, 1952, there were 13,786 churches in the country, of which 120 were not in operation, as they were used to store grain. The number of priests and deacons decreased to 12,254, leaving 62 monasteries, only in 1951 8 monasteries were closed.

In 1955-1956, some bishops and priests returned from camps and exile. The number of registered Orthodox societies (parishes) as of January 1, 1957 was 13,477.

However, despite the “thaw” in relations between the Church and the state, the Church was constantly under state control, and any attempts to expand its activities outside the walls of churches were rebuffed, up to administrative sanctions. Since the late 1950s, there has been a new wave of pressure on the church. The justification was no longer political accusations, but the struggle against "religious survivals" in the minds of people. During 1958-1965 the number of registered Orthodox societies dropped to 7,551. Since the late 1950s, a targeted personnel policy began to be implemented to qualitatively change the composition of the clergy (preparation for the "show of the last priest"), since the authorities were afraid of comprehensively trained clergy.

The number of registered clergy was not only sharply reduced, but it was removed from direct control over the financial and economic activities of the parishes: the Bishops' Council on July 18, 1961, made a corresponding amendment to the Regulations on the Administration of the ROC. 40 monasteries were closed (in particular, in Moldova, out of 15, 1 survived), 5 theological seminaries out of 8, and admission to each of the remaining ones was limited. The network of operating churches has been reduced everywhere, especially in the eastern regions of Ukraine, where there are no more than 20-25% of the post-war level left (for example, in the Dnepropetrovsk region, after the liquidation of 85 parishes of functioning churches in 1958-1963, only 25 remained). At the same time, the authorities sought to use the authority of the Church to strengthen the positions of the USSR in the international community, with the aim of which in 1961 the entry of the Russian Orthodox Church (and a number of other Christian religious organizations) into the World Council of Churches was initiated.

The period 1965-1985 was a time of relative stability in relations between the state and the church, with some signs of its internal strengthening and growth appearing. The rejuvenation of the cadres of the clergy began, the growth of their educational level and theological training; in connection with the migration of the population from rural areas to cities, the proportion of urban communities increased.

Of great importance in the development of the human rights movement in the USSR and the revival of interest in the Church among the intelligentsia was the "Open Letter" of dissident priests Nikolai Ashliman and Gleb Yakunin in November 1965.

According to the Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR K. M. Kharchev, the personnel decisions of the party and state leadership of the USSR in relation to the hierarchy of the ROC in the late 1980s were made as follows: “Then the opinion of the Central Committee on the episcopate of the ROC was formed based on information as KGB, and the council. And if the two points of view coincided, then a decision was made. Particular attention was paid by the KGB organs to the international activities of the Moscow Patriarchate: the selection of clergy candidates for work abroad became the main direction of the joint activity of the KGB and the Council for Religious Affairs. In 1993, retired KGB general and defector Oleg Kalugin testified: “<…>In addition, people were recruited on "compromising evidence". This was especially often practiced in relation to the hierarchs and priests of the Orthodox Church.

Starting in 1987, as part of the policy of glasnost and perestroika pursued under Mikhail Gorbachev, a gradual process began to transfer buildings and property that were previously under church jurisdiction to the use of the Patriarchate, dioceses and communities of believers; there was a liberalization of the regime of control over religious life and restrictions on the activities of religious associations.

On January 28, 1988, the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR abolished the regulations that restricted the activities of church parishes. The turning point in the relationship of the life of the Church was the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Russia in 1988. The ban on television coverage of religious life in the USSR was lifted: for the first time in the history of the Soviet Union, people were able to watch live broadcasts of worship services on television. Confirmation of a fundamental change in the religious policy of the state in the conditions perestroika was the election in 1989 of about 300 ministers of various religions, including 192 Orthodox, people's deputies of the Soviets of various levels.

The full status of a legal entity was acquired by the Russian Orthodox Church on May 30, 1991, when the Ministry of Justice of the RSFSR registered Civil Charter of the Russian Orthodox Church, approved by the Holy Synod on January 31 of the same year, which became possible with a change in the legislation on freedom of conscience and religious organizations in the USSR. Prior to that, the legal status of the ROC was regulated by the Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR on religious associations of April 8, 1929, issued on the basis of the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of January 20, 1918 On the separation of church from state and school from church.

The collapse of the USSR caused centrifugal tendencies in the church as well. Church structures independent of the Russian Orthodox Church began to be created on the territory of the former Soviet republics (often with the support of the authorities). In conflict conditions, a certain number of parishes in Ukraine were actually separated from the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate) was formed on their basis. In Moldova, part of the parishes passed into the jurisdiction of the Romanian Patriarchate (Metropolis of Bessarabia). In Estonia, part of the parishes also left the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, accepting the patronage of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The peculiarity of the position of the ROC that arose after the collapse of the USSR (end of December 1991) is the transnational nature of its exclusive jurisdiction within the former USSR (excluding Georgia): for the first time in its history, the Moscow Patriarchate began to consider its “canonical territory” (the term was introduced into circulation in 1989) the territory of many sovereign and independent states. As a result, its administrative and canonical divisions (dioceses, metropolitan districts and a number of self-governing churches), located in different countries, operate in very different state-legal, socio-political, confessional and cultural conditions.

In the early 1990s, there were statements in the press about the connections of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Soviet bodies of political investigation and espionage; it was stated that the archives reveal the degree of active involvement of the hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate in the activities of the KGB abroad.

The Patriarchate of Patriarch Alexy II was characterized by a significant quantitative growth of parishes, monasteries and dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church, the preservation of the schism in Ukraine, and the growing role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the socio-political life of Russia and some other countries of the former USSR.

On May 17, 2007, the Act of Canonical Communion between ROCOR and ROC was signed, according to which the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia became "an integral self-governing part of the Local Russian Orthodox Church."

On January 27, 2009, the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church elected Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev) of Smolensk and Kaliningrad to the Moscow Patriarchal throne, on whose initiative the administrative structure of the Moscow Patriarchate was reformed, in particular, a number of new synodal institutions (departments) were created, and the Church became more actively present in the life of society.

In 2011, a reform of the diocesan structure began, consisting in the creation of new dioceses, the Russian Orthodox Church, as a result of which a three-stage system will operate in the Russian Orthodox Church, as in a number of other local churches: Patriarchate - metropolia - diocese.

On April 3, 2012, the Supreme Church Council of the Russian Orthodox Church issued an Appeal in which 4 cases of “desecration” of churches and a number of “loud accusations and statements by enemies of the faith”, i.e. individual actions of private “anti-church” persons that have always taken place, are compared with the events of the "beginning of the twentieth century"

Period of the Kievan
metropolia.
AT 988 Prince Vladimir of Kyiv concluded an agreement of friendship and mutual assistance with Byzantium. One of his conditions was the adoption of Christianity by Vladimir, which was fulfilled. In August 988(according to some historians - August 1, 990.) a mass baptism of the people of Kiev - pagans in the river waters took place. Baptism was performed by Byzantine (Greek) priests. After that, Christianity began to take root in Novgorod, Rostov, Suzdal, Murom and other centers of the Kievan state. During the reign of Prince Vladimir (died in 1015), the vast majority of the population of Russia converted to Christianity. This process did not go smoothly, the researchers are aware of the facts of resistance to the new faith.

The Christianization of Russia was accompanied by active temple building. At the same time, it was drawn up church organization: worshiped in temples priests and deacons, in large cities - Novgorod, Vladimir-Volynsky, Chernigov, Pereyaslavl, Belgorod, Rostov the Great - there were residences bishops, and in Kyiv was metropolitan, dedicated to the Constantinople patriarch. Thus, in the first centuries of its existence The Russian Church was a metropolis under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople, although it had a wide autonomy.

Kyiv princes attracted the metropolitan and bishops to participation in public affairs.
The Church participated in the creation of all-Russian legislation, contributed to the mitigation of the system of punishments, and developed the desire for mercy. Thanks to her, magnificent monuments of architecture and painting were erected, among which the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod have survived to this day. Written language spread.
In the XII century, Kievan Rus broke up into specific principalities. The united Russian Church has become the personification of all-Russian unity.
Having suffered cruelly with all the people during the Mongol-Tatar invasion, The Church still received some benefits from the Horde. This gave its hierarchs the opportunity to strengthen the awareness of the unity of the torn and fragmented country. Yes, in 1274 In the same year, a Church Council was held in Vladimir-on-Klyazma, in which the clergy of Suzdal Russia, Veliky Novgorod and Pskov participated. Life also raised the question of the new residence of the metropolitan, since the devastated and unprotected Kyiv could not play the role of a spiritual center.
Moscow is the center of the Russian Church. At the beginning of the XIV century, the metropolitans moved their residence to Vladimir, and from 1326- to Moscow. The Metropolitan of Moscow became an outstanding ecclesiastical and political figure of that era. Alexy (1354-1378), due to historical circumstances, who for a long time became the first statesman - the head of the Boyar Duma and the regent of the young prince Dmitry (the future Donskoy). He greatly contributed to the unification of the lands around Moscow: he excommunicated the Russian princes who were guilty of disobedience to the Grand Duke of Moscow and violated the peace, blessed the pupils and tonsurers of Moscow monasteries to found monasteries in various principalities, and strengthened the position of the Moscow prince with his high spiritual authority. Metropolitan Alexy spiritually prepared Grand Duke Dmitry for the beginning of the confrontation with the Horde. Two years after his death, the Russian army under the leadership of the prince won a historic victory on the Kulikovo field.
A huge role in the spiritual life of Russia had the activity Sergius of Radonezh(died in 1392), Abbot of the Trinity Monastery near Radonezh. He was able to breathe new strength into church life, to open to the people of that era the still unknown depths of Orthodoxy. So, he began to affirm the veneration of the Trinity as the Beginning and Source of life, as a symbol of catholicity and fraternal unity. Through the teaching of Sergius on the Trinity, the Orthodox people were called to see in Orthodoxy the only spiritual force that gathers everyone together, to one Shepherd (God), while not destroying national and linguistic differences. The school of Sergius was closely connected with the flourishing of books, architecture, and icon painting. In praise of Sergius, the monk Andrey Rublev(d. in 1430 year) painted the famous icon of the Life-Giving Trinity, which became the greatest achievement of medieval Russian spiritual culture. With the doctrine of the Trinity, Sergius also answered the most important question of that era - the unity of the Russian lands. He blessed Prince Dmitry, who was setting off for Kulikovo Field, giving him two schemers, Alexander (Peresvet) and Andrei (Oslyabya), for spiritual support.
It is also important that Sergius gave impetus to the wave monastery foundations of the late XIV - early XV centuries. Almost a quarter of the monasteries then formed were founded by his disciples. All of them were established on the basis of community life: common property and a meal, obedience to the will of the hegumen, common good, humility and brotherly love. His students were Kirill Belozersky, Dmitry Prilutsky, Pavel Obnorsky, who founded monasteries in the Vologda region.
Period of autocephaly
(1448 - 1589)
Having become independent, the Russian Orthodox Church, more than ever, had to rely on its own strength, its own spiritual experience and theological heritage.
In the XV-XVI centuries, continued active monastic foundation: about 600 monasteries and deserts were founded, by the end of the 16th century their total number reached 770. Some of them were located on outlying or sparsely populated lands, thereby contributing to attracting new people there, and hence to further economic development of Russian territory. Many monasteries on the outskirts carried out important political and diplomatic assignments of the Moscow princes, in fact, they were military outposts on distant and unprotected borders. Some of the monasteries acquired, through purchases, seizures, princely and boyar donations, and also thanks to the contributions of wealthy pilgrims, considerable possessions - land, peasants, fishing grounds, works of church art, etc. The accumulation of corporate property of monasteries caused lively disputes in society, in the center which turned out to be the question of acquisitiveness (hoarding).
In Orthodox theology, it is not customary to exaggerate the depth and sharpness of differences nonpossessors and josephites. Both leaders agreed that the monastic (monastic) tradition is based on Faith, embodied in good deeds (and for this you need to have economic independence and solid incomes of monasteries), carried out through prayer (and this requires a spiritual rebirth of each monk). The monasteries more and more confidently declared themselves in the social, cultural and spiritual life of the country.
Church councils of 1547, 1549 and 1551 convened on the initiative Metropolitan Macarius (1542-1563). Stoglavy Cathedral of 1551 unified all aspects of church life: worship, church administration, monastic and parish dispensation, the fight against heresies, the piety of the laity, etc. canonization 39 Russian saints. Each of them, representing a different type of holiness - saints, martyrs, saints, blessed, confessors, etc.- personified the various ideals of a righteous life and the variety of paths to salvation.
The period of the first patriarchate
(1589 - 1721)
As early as the 15th century, the idea of ​​establishing patriarchate, i.e. about the heading of the Russian Church patriarch- the highest spiritual rank in Orthodoxy. From the ecclesiastical point of view, this would not only give the Russian Church a complete dispensation, but would also correspond to its position in the world of Orthodox Churches as the largest, most numerous and influential.

Conditions for the commission of this act in full compliance with the norms canonical(Church) law developed by the end of the 16th century. AT 1589 the first Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia was elected Job (1589 - 1605). Of the nine subsequent patriarchs, the most famous Hermogenes (1606 - 1612), ardently calling on the people during the Time of Troubles to fight against the Poles and died a martyr; Filaret (1619 - 1633), the father of the first tsar from the Romanov dynasty, who did a lot to stabilize the country after the Time of Troubles; Nikon (1652 - 1658) who initiated reforms in the Church.
The establishment of the patriarchate had a beneficial effect on the course of church affairs and significantly strengthened the rights and authority of the head of the Church, incl. and before secular authorities. In the 17th century, the patriarchs paid special attention to the development of church printing, education, and the strengthening of deanery.
The Old Believers became a deep national tragedy. split, caused, as many researchers believe, mainly by the correction of liturgical books, rites and icons. The reform started Nikon for the good purpose of bringing books and liturgical practices in line with Greek (they were considered the only true ones), was carried out hastily and was accompanied by rude attacks against those who doubted its expediency. The Orthodox consciousness of the mass of believers did not have time to understand and be convinced of the validity of the proposed changes: to make the sign of the cross not with two, but with three fingers; perform ritual circular actions counterclockwise, and not along it; do not worship icons painted with deviations from established canons, etc. Many Russian people of that time saw in these ritual changes a departure from the true Orthodox faith. However Great Moscow Cathedral 1666-1667 approved Nikon's reforms and condemned adherents of the old rites.
Synodal period
(1721 -1917)
1721 established a Spiritual College to govern the Church, or Holy Governing Synod, consisting of the highest hierarchs. Synod took a place in the row government institutions. A secular official, the chief prosecutor of the Synod, appointed by the emperor, had a significant influence on the activities of the Synod.
In 1764, Catherine II seized most of the land from the Church, along with the peasants ( secularization). States were introduced in the Church - a fixed number of vacancies with the subsequent introduction of their guaranteed content from the state budget. In church literature, these reforms are extremely negatively assessed, they are viewed as gross and inappropriate interference of the state in the affairs of the Church.
At the same time, by the beginning of the 20th century, problems of church social activity: the well-known social inertia of the clergy, unpreparedness for an active confrontation with the advancing nihilism and atheism, as well as socialism, excessive stateization of the church organization itself, etc. There were signs of a fall in the faith and authority of the Church among the younger generations. Some Russian hierarchs and church leaders saw a way out of this situation in a radical transformation of the entire structure of church life, including the restoration of the patriarchate, the democratization of church institutions, and active social service.
Period of the second patriarchate
In August 1917, the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church opened in Moscow for the first time since the 17th century. On October 28, 1917, he decided to restore the patriarchate. November 5, 1917 Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia was elected Tikhon(Belavin). He happened to lead the Church in a period of difficult historical trials. The course towards the independence of the Church and opposition to the 'Red Terror' of Soviet power, as well as the principled rejection of the civil war, more than once brought Patriarch Tikhon to the dock and to the cells of the Lubyanka. Continuous physical and moral impact did not break his spirit, but led in April 1925 to an untimely death.
Ever since the first arrest of Patriarch Tikhon in 1922, church administration has been seized renovationists, those. supporters of reforms that grossly destroyed Orthodox traditions and are ready to combine Christian teaching with the ideology of socialism. After the death of Tikhon, the disintegration of the church organism intensified, since the Church was not allowed to choose a new patriarch in accordance with the canons. Simultaneously, several hierarchs declared themselves locum tenens patriarchal throne.
AT 1927 metropolitan Sergius(Starogorodsky), in the most difficult conditions of persecution and for the sake of saving the Church, considered it possible to compromise and, heading the church administration, issued a Declaration in which he proclaimed loyalty to the Soviet government. This Declaration caused very controversial assessments in church circles: part of the Church went underground (the Catacomb Church), part turned away from Sergius. Almost all of them were repressed.
Meanwhile Soviet state policy led to massive closures of churches, all monasteries, educational institutions of the Church. Millions of believers could not receive spiritual comfort and perform Orthodox rites. Their feelings and views were ridiculed and punished. By 1940, Metropolitan Sergius was at the head of a Church that, organizationally, was only a faint shadow of the former Russian Orthodox Church. In many areas there were not a single functioning temple.
During the Great Patriotic War Stalin and his entourage, proceeding from political considerations and for the sake of strengthening the unity of the people and the confidence of the Western allies, took a course towards weakening the persecution of the Church, which, moreover, took a bright patriotic position. In September 1943 was allowed to hold a Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, at which Metropolitan Sergius was elected Patriarch. However, he soon died at the Local Council 1945 was elected to the patriarchal throne Alexy I(Simansky). In the first decade of his patriarchate, there were relatively favorable social and political conditions for the revival of the Church. Thousands of parishes were reopened, dozens of monasteries were revived, theological seminaries and academies were opened, a church magazine began to appear, calendars and liturgical books were printed. Patriarch Alexy I visited dozens of countries, once again strengthening the authority of the Russian Church in the world. The church joined the peace movement.
Time of Khrushchev's thaw'' turned into new 'frosts' for the Church. The course towards building communism, officially proclaimed by the CPSU, assumed the final and speedy eradication of religion. Mass persecution and discrimination of believers resumed, and all manifestations of social activity of the clergy were excluded. The number of parishes, monasteries and educational institutions was sharply reduced. The church was put under the tacit control of the KGB. There is information that in 1961-1964 1234 people were convicted on religious grounds in the USSR. The efforts of Patriarch Alexy I to meet with the leaders of the state and stop the tough anti-church course were unsuccessful. And all this - with outward benevolence towards the Church and its patriarch: Alexy I was awarded orders of the Soviet state four times. He died in 1970 at the age of 93.
Despite this situation, the number of people who observed religious rites grew in the country in the 1950s: in 1959, every third child in the RSFSR was baptized; during the 1950s, Church revenues increased 4 times; visited a few temples on the days of great holidays, published Bibles were sold out instantly, the number of pilgrims to the Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra grew.
With 1971 . By that time, the extreme manifestations of a hard line towards the Church were noticeably weakened, its organizational position had stabilized. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the Church has used the unfolding preparations for 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Russia to expand the forms of activity and more significant participation in the social and spiritual processes that took place in the USSR on the eve of the beginning ''perestroika''. As the crisis of communist ideology and its institutions grew, interest in Orthodoxy grew in society. Anniversary celebrations in 1988 resembled a nationwide celebration.

Beginning of Russian Christianity.

So, continuing the thought of Chapter I, it should be said that the Slavs in the 7th and 8th centuries. were in a state of ever-increasing social decay. The military union formed between them in the Carpathians broke up into its constituent parts (tribes), the tribes decomposed into clans, even clans began to split into small households or family farms, as these Slavs began to live in the Dnieper housewarming. But here, under the influence of new conditions, a reverse process of gradual mutual cohesion began among them; only the linking element in the new social constructions was no longer a feeling of consanguinity, but an economic interest, called to action by the properties of the country and higher circumstances. The southern rivers and plains and the yoke imposed from the side drew the Eastern Slavs into a lively foreign trade. This trade drew scattered lonely yards into rural trading centers, graveyards, then into large trading cities with their regions. New external dangers from the beginning of the 9th century. triggered a new series of upheavals. The trading cities were armed, then they turned from the main trading depots into political centers, and their trading districts became their state territories, urban areas; some of these regions became Varangian principalities, and from the combination of both, the great principality of Kiev, the most ancient form of the Russian state, was formed. Such is the connection between economic and political facts in our history.

So, the first dynasty of "Russian" princes in Russia were the Rurikovichs. Let us turn to the history of this kind. Very few legends about the reign of Rurik have come down to us. This was the eldest of the Rurik brothers, and his power already extended to many peoples: to the Krivichi, i.e. Polochan in the south, on Merya and Muroma. There is news about the wars that the called princes began to fight everywhere.

Judging by the government measures that Rurik carried out, one can judge that it was with him that the important activity of the Russian princes began - the building of peoples, the concentration of population. A legend has been preserved that after the death of the brothers, Rurik left Ladoga and came to Ilmen, cut down the city above the Magus, called it Novgorod and sat down to reign here. This passage in the chronicle directly shows that Novgorod proper was founded by Rurik; and since he remained to live, and after him the princely posadniks and princes lived here, it is easy to explain from this why Novgorod overshadowed the old city, no matter what it was called.

Mid-ninth century. Having killed Askold and Dir, Oleg established himself in Kyiv, made it his capital city, as the chronicler testifies. Oleg's first business in Ukraine was the construction of cities, prisons, to assert his power in new areas and for protection from the steppes. Having built cities and established tribute from the northern tribes, Oleg, according to legend, begins to subjugate other Slavic tribes who lived to the east and west of the Dnieper.

Oleg ruled the state at a time when his successor Igor was already old enough. Accustomed to obedience from childhood, Igor did not dare to demand his heritage from the power-hungry ruler, surrounded by the brilliance of victories, the glory of conquests and brave comrades who considered his power legitimate, since he "knew how to glorify the state." In 903, Oleg chose a wife for Igor, Olga. She was brought to Kyiv from Pleskov or present-day Pskov, writes Nestor. In other historical books, it was said that she, of a simple Varangian family, lived in a village called Vybushskaya, near Pskov. It is also said that young Igor, having arrived from Kyiv, noticed Olga. He preferred her modesty and intelligence to all other brides. Here is what N.M. Karamzin writes: “The customs and mores of those times, of course, allowed the prince to seek spouses for himself in the lowest state of people, that beauty was respected by a more famous kind ... Olga took her name, it seems, on behalf of Oleg, as a sign his friendship for this worthy princess and as a sign of Igor's love for him ”It is likely that relations between Constantinople and Kyiv have not been interrupted since the time of Askold and Dir; it is likely that the Greek kings and patriarchs tried to increase the number of Christians in Kyiv and "bring the prince himself out of the darkness of idolatry." But Oleg, accepting gifts from the emperor and inviting priests and patriarchs, believed more in the sword and was content with a peaceful alliance with the Greeks and the tolerance of Christianity.

Oleg reigned for 33 years, died at a ripe old age, although he came to Novgorod with Rurik. Igor in adulthood took power. He was in a hurry to prove that Oleg's sword was in his hand, humbled the Drevlyans and added tribute to them. But soon a strong enemy appeared - the Pechenegs. They are mentioned in Russian, Byzantine and Hungarian chroniclers from the 10th to the 12th centuries. Igor made an alliance with the Pechenegs and, according to Nestor, they did not come to Russia for five years.

The reign of Igor did not leave a deep trace of any significant incidents in the annals until 941, when Nestor describes, in accordance with Byzantine historians, Igor's war with the Greeks. It was one of the unsuccessful campaigns of the Russian prince.

Igor's second campaign against the Greeks ended more successfully than the first. The ruler, unsure of victory and wishing to save the empire from the disasters of war, sent ambassadors to Igor. Having met him at the mouth of the Danube, they offered him a tribute for Igor to leave in peace. Igor agreed to this and returned to Kyiv.

Igor died at the hands of the Drevlyans, dissatisfied with the amount of the tribute that Igor imposed on them. Thus began the reign of Princess Olga.

The Drevlyans had to wait for revenge from Igor's relatives, from Russia from Kyiv; Igor left a son - a baby and his wife Olga. Svyatoslav's tutor was Asmud, the voevoda was Svineld. Olga began to wait for her son to come of age and took revenge on the Drevlyans herself, as the law required. The revenge of Slga is described in great detail in the annals of Nestor: "about the revenges and tricks of the Olgins." This was a very important step in asserting his power for Olga and authority. It seems to me that it is not worth repeating what everyone knows from the history of the school curriculum, let's turn directly to the personality of the princess, to her innovations and charters.

The character of Olga, as he appears in the legend, is important for us in other respects: not only in some names can one find the resemblance of the Grand Duchess to the famous successor of Rurik. Both Oleg and Olga are distinguished by wisdom (according to legend), that is, according to those concepts, cunning and dexterity.

Olga takes revenge on the Drevlyans by cunning and takes Corncrake by cunning.

(We are not surprised at the cruelty of Olga: the faith and civil laws of the pagans justified the inexorable revenge). But not for this trick alone Oleg was known as prophetic, Olga - the wisest of people. Oleg established tribute, built cities. Olga traveled all over the Russian land, the legend says that immediately after revenge on the Drevlyans, Olga, together with her son and squad, went through their land, establishing charters and lessons: to her “camps” and “traps”, that is, to the places where she stopped and hunted, pointed out even in the time of the chronicler. The charter was the definition of how to do something, and the lesson was the obligation to do something by a certain date.

Although the chronicler mentions Olga's orders only in the Drevlyansk land and in the remote limits of the Novgorod region, however, as you can see, her travels for economic purposes covered all Russian possessions and the graveyards established by her were visible everywhere. Having established the internal order of the state, Olga returned to the young Svyatoslav in Kyiv. “Here, according to Nester, the affairs of her state government end; but here begins the era of her glory in our church history,” said N.M. Karamzin (N.M. Karamzin, “Tradition of the Ages”).

Olga was a pagan, but the name of God Almighty was already famous in Kyiv. She could see the solemnity of the rites of Christianity; out of curiosity, she could talk with church pastors and, being gifted with an extraordinary mind, be convinced of the holiness of their teaching. “As a woman, Olga was more capable of internal order and economic activity; as a woman she was more capable of accepting Christianity.”

According to the account of the chronicler, in 955 Olga went to Constantinople and was baptized there under the emperors Constantine Porphyrogenitus and Roman and Patriarch Polievka. At baptism, Olga was named Elena. About the motives that forced Olga to accept Christianity and accept it precisely in Constantinople, we do not find anything either in the known lists of our annals or in foreign sources. It could be that Olga went to Tsar-grad as a pagan, still without a firm intention to accept a new faith, was struck in Constantinople by the greatness of the Greek religion and returned home as a Christian.

Not only the hope of self-interest could attract Russia to Constantinople, but also the curiosity to see the wonders of the educated world. Those who came from Constantinople brought with them a lot of impressions and stories, while others flared up with a desire to visit there. After that, it would be strange if Olga, who was considered the wisest of people, did not go there. First of all, in Constantinople, her attention was attracted by what most sharply marked the Greeks from Russia - religion.

There is news that even in Kyiv Olga was disposed towards Christianity. There she saw the virtuous life of the confessors of this religion, even entered into a close relationship with them and wanted to be baptized in Kyiv, but she did not fulfill her intention, being afraid of the pagans. The danger from the pagans did not decrease for Olga, and in the case when she was baptized in Constantinople, it was very difficult to conceal her conversion upon arrival in Kyiv. Upon her return, Olga began to persuade her son Svyatoslav to accept Christianity, but he did not want to hear about it. They began to laugh at those who accepted Christianity in Kyiv, therefore, although there was no obvious persecution, however, ridicule was already a sign of its beginning and a sign of the strengthening of Christianity, which Olga's conversion could be both a cause and a consequence. It can be seen that the new religion began to assume a prominent position, attracted the attention of the ancient religion, and this hostile attention was expressed in ridicule. “The struggle began: Slavic paganism, accepted by the Russians, could oppose little positive and therefore had to soon bow before him, but Christianity itself, without regard to Slavic paganism, met strong resistance in the character of Svyatoslav, who could not accept Christianity due to his inclinations, not out of attachment to an ancient religion."

Svyatoslav fought a lot, he started with the Vyatichi, defeated the barracks. Further, Svyatoslav was on a campaign along the Volga, and on the way back from the east, Svyatoslav, the chronicle says, defeated the Vyatichi and imposed tribute on them. From this time, the exploits of Svyatoslav begin, which have little to do with our history.

After the death of his mother, Svyatoslav entrusted Kyiv to his son Yaropolk, and to another son, Oleg, the Drevlyansk land, where her own princes had previously ruled. At the same time, the Novgorodians sent a messenger to the prince with a request that Svyatoslav give them his son as ruler. Yaropolk and Oleg did not want to take power over them, but Svyatoslav had a third son, from Olga's housekeeper Malusha, daughter of Lyubanich Malk. So Vladimir was given power over Novgorod.

Later, Vladimir, with the help of cunning, betrayal and the Varangians, took possession of the state. Vladimir, having established his power, expressed excellent zeal for the pagan gods. He built a new idol of Perun and placed it near the "terem yard" on the sacred hill, along with other idols. Human sacrifices were often made here and other ceremonies were performed. It can be assumed that Vladimir thus wanted to beg forgiveness for fratricide, since the pagan faith itself did not accept such atrocities. Dobrynya, sent from his nephew to govern Novgorod, also placed on the banks of the Volkhva, the rich idol of Perun.

We see that the triumph of Vladimir over Yaropolk was accompanied by the triumph of paganism over Christianity, but this triumph could not last long: Russian paganism was so poor, so colorless, that it could not successfully argue with any of the religions that took place in the South-Eastern areas of Europe, especially with Christianity; the jealousy of Vladimir and Dobrynya at the beginning of their power, the establishment of adorned idols, frequent sacrifices stemmed from a desire to elevate paganism, to give it the means to oppose other religions that suppress it with their greatness; but these very attempts, this very zeal, led directly to the fall of paganism, because it showed its failure best of all. In Russia, in Kyiv, the same thing happened that happened on a larger scale in the Empire under Julian: the zeal of this emperor for paganism most of all contributed to the final fall of the latter, because Julian exhausted all the means of paganism, extracted from it everything that it could give for the mental and moral life of a person, and thus its inconsistency, its poverty in comparison with Christianity, most sharply showed itself. so it usually happens both in the life of individual people and in the life of entire societies, as sometimes the most passionate zealots suddenly suddenly leave the object of their worship and go over to the enemy side, which they defend with redoubled zeal, this happens because in their minds all the means of the former object of worship.

Chapter III.

Official Christianization.

Vladimir tried to prevent the spread of Christianity in Russia by creating an international pagan pantheon headed by Perun, who personified the new social relations of the early feudal society. But this attempt was unsuccessful. She was followed by:

the destruction of the created pantheon and the official Christianization. This event was accelerated by the course of political relations between Russia and Byzantium. To fight another rebel Varda Foka, who was sent to sit on the imperial throne and had great strength, Emperor Vasily II turned to Prince Vladimir for great help, without stinting on promises. According to the Arab Christian historian of the 11th century of Antioch, the marriage of the “Tsar of the Russes” Vladimir to Vasily’s sister Anna and the adoption of Christianity by Vladimir and his country were an important condition of the agreement, according to which a six thousandth Russian detachment was sent at the disposal of the emperor. This agreement could have been made in the winter of 987/88.

After defeating the rebel, the emperor had to fulfill the contract and give his sister, the princess, for the Grand Duke of Kyiv, in order to achieve the fulfillment of the terms of the contract, Prince Vladimir had to besiege and take in 989 the city of Korsun (Chersonesos), which belonged to Byzantium in the Crimea, with an episcopal chair. The Tale of Bygone Years says that Vladimir decided to be baptized if he managed to take Korsun, and demanded the extradition of the princess after this success, otherwise he threatened Constantinople. However, this is contradicted by the evidence of "Memory and Praise" by Jacob Mnich, the author of the 11th century. He said that Vladimir was baptized "in the tenth year according to the teachings of his brother Yaropolk", which took place in 978, and after baptism he lived for another 28 years. This points, therefore, to 987-988, which is also confirmed by the reference to the fact that in the third year after baptism (ie, in 989/90) he took Korsun.

At baptism, Vladimir received the Christian name Vasily in honor of the patron of Emperor Vasily II - Basil the Great. As for the baptism of the people of Kiev, the sources also give conflicting information about its time. Along with the traditional date of 988. researchers substantiate both earlier and later dates, in particular 990.

(O. M. Rapov “On the date of the adoption of Christianity by Prince Vladimir and the people of Kiev”). According to the "Tale of Bygone Years", the baptism of the people of Kiev took place in the Dnieper, according to the "Life of Vladimir" - in the Pogaina River, a tributary of the Dnieper. After the return of Vladimir from Korsun, a lot of Korsun and Constantinopolitan priests appeared in Kyiv.

The change of religious cults was accompanied by the destruction of the images of the once revered gods, their public desecration by the princely servants, the construction of churches on the sites where pagan idols and temples stood. So, on a hill in Kyiv, where the idol of Perun stood, the Church of Basil, dedicated to Basil the Great, was erected. Near Novgorod, In Peryn, where the pagan temple was located, the Church of the Nativity was built. According to The Tale of Bygone Years, Vladimir began to build churches in the cities, appoint clergy "and people began to be baptized in all cities and villages."

According to the historian Ya. N. Shchapov: “the spread of Christianity was carried out by the princely power and the emerging church organization by force, with the resistance not only of the priests, but also of various segments of the population” (Ya. N. Shchapov “The Church in Ancient Russia”, political publishing house 1989) .

Metropolitan Hilarion of Kyiv acknowledged that baptism in Kyiv took place under duress: “No one resisted the princely order, pleasing to God, and they were baptized, if not of their own free will, then out of fear of those who ordered, for their religion was connected with power.” In other cities, the replacement of the traditional cult by a new one met with open resistance. In Novgorod, a legend has been preserved about the introduction of Christianity there by Bishop Iakim Korsunyanin and the princely governors Dobrynya and Putyata, when "He baptized Putyata with a sword, and Dobrynya with fire."

Christianity under Vladimir was spread mainly along a narrow strip adjacent to the great waterway from Novgorod to Kyiv; east of the Dnieper, along the Oka and the Upper Volga, even in Rostov, despite the fact that the sermon reached these places, Christianity spread very weakly. In the annals there is news that in 992 Prince Vladimir with bishops to the southwest, taught, baptized people and built a city in the Cherven land, called it Vladimir and a wooden church of the Virgin.

Chapter 4

The main stages in the development of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Shortly after official Christianity in Russia, the initial organization of the Russian Orthodox Church was established in the form of the metropolis of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It was headed by a metropolitan who was sent from Constantinople and had his residence in the Cathedral of St. Sofia in Kyiv. In addition to the metropolitan, bishops were also sent from Tsargrad, in addition, Vladimir brought priests from Korsul with him, and Anna brought her priests with her. But all this number was not enough for the baptism and education of people in Kyiv and other places, there is news that the clergy were called from Bulgaria, many bishops and even metropolitan Michael were Bulgarians. However, even a larger number of called priests could not satisfy the need for them, it was necessary to increase the number of Russian priests, and this could not happen otherwise than through special training. Such training was introduced immediately after the nationwide baptism in Kyiv. For this, according to the testimony of the chronicler, on the orders of Vladimir, children were taken away from the best citizens and distributed to study with priests at churches.

From the annals one can also learn about the strong influence the clergy began to have on the social system. Vladimir consulted with the bishops not only on what means to accelerate the spread of Christianity, but also on how to punish criminals, together with the elders, the bishops suggest to the prince where to use vira - and he agrees with them.

In parallel with these events, the formation of a church organization is taking place. The time of the establishment of the Kyiv Metropolis is determined indirectly, since this is mainly spoken about by foreign sources. It can be assumed that it was founded between 995/997. Probably, St. Sophia Cathedral was originally wooden, and in 1037 - early 1040s a temple was built, which has been preserved to this day.

Local church administration, in important political and administrative centers, was carried out by bishops subordinate to the metropolitan.

Already from the time of Vladimir and the first decades of the Principality of Yaroslav, one can attribute the creation of bishoprics in Belgorod, Novgorod, Polotsk, Chernigov, Turov and in some other cities. This is the time of Christianization and inclusion in the orbit of church power of the main territory of the state, inhabited by the ancient Russian people. All bishoprics were created in the most important centers of the feudalizing state.

The new Russian church on the Dnieper and Volkhov became a new and abundant source of income for its "spiritual mother", the Church of Constantinople, and a new instrument of exploitation in the hands of the leaders of Kyiv society. It was possible to pay for these material benefits by adapting the Christian ideology to the folk religion of the Dnieper, especially since this payment was not regarded in a material way - simply speaking, it was worth nothing. The "costs of production" were reduced to only a few suppression of popular riots, during which, again, mainly the blood of the smerds was shed and their economy suffered. In the 10th - 11th centuries, monasteries were economic enterprises of an exploitative nature.

To a lesser extent, but the same features can be caught in the history of the founding of some churches. Churches were erected almost exclusively by princes and boyars, either as official state churches, or as family tombs, or to serve the cults of their favorite saints. This phenomenon is clearly reflected in the iconography.

The church occupied a different position in the next period - specific feudalism, when, after the defeat of Kievan Rus by the Tatars and its desolation, the center of Russian life moved to the Novgorod and Rostov-Suzdal regions.

The period from the 13th to the middle of the 15th century is characterized by typical features of the feudal system: feudalization covered all aspects of Russian life, including the sphere of religion and the church. The growth of the money economy and the crisis of the peasantry and the collision of urban and feudal society usually accompanying it were still a matter of the future. The establishment of the feudal system had an important impact on the church organization, which underwent significant changes compared to the forms it took on the Dnieper. There, Byzantine ecclesiastical law, brought by the Greek clergy, prevailed; here the Byzantine ecclesiastical norms were preserved only nominally, the form of ecclesiastical domination acquired a feudal character and was completely soldered into one organic whole with the forms of secular feudal domination. Society of the 13th and 14th centuries generally retains the old view of religion.

On the other hand, elementary knowledge of the Christian doctrine and cult was alien not only to the laity and the lower clergy, but also to monasticism and representatives of the higher hierarchy. In this regard, the reports of foreign travelers are very curious, referring, however, to the 15th - 17th centuries, but even more valid for the era under consideration. Foreigners claim that ordinary laity did not know either the gospel history, or the creed, or the most important prayers, including even the Our Father and the Virgin Mother of God, and naively explained their ignorance by the fact that “this is a very high science, suitable only for kings and the patriarch, and generally gentlemen and clerics who have no work.

Theological knowledge was not widespread among the clergy even at the end of the 17th century; only a very small part of Russian literate monasticism had a real understanding of Christian scripture and dogma, and other monk scribes of the 14th-16th centuries replaced the Christian theological system with a peculiar system of their own, which is usually not quite correctly called dogmatism.

There is information that priests and clerks often come to serve drunk, sometimes start quarrels among themselves, swearing and fights, even “to the point of bloodshed.”

Other Orthodox “people of all ranks sometimes didn’t go to church and never fasted, although they claimed to be buried at the church, complaints about such a careless attitude towards fulfilling the basic requirement of Christian piety go right up to the decrees of Peter 1.

In the simplicity of their souls, the Russians of that time did not hide the significance they ascribed to icons. The icon is their closest, domestic god, it is their personal fetish, they called the icon a god. That custom, which is now preserved only among a few backward peasants and gray monastics, the custom of bowing first of all to God at the entrance to the house, was then universal, and if the guest, entering did not see the icon, his first question was: where is God? This god lives and feels, sees and hears.

In the 13th-15th centuries, as a general rule, a saint was usually revered only in the area where he was born, lived and created a reputation for himself as a saint.

From the second half of the XV century. an economic revolution sets in - a constant and every decade expanding market for the sale of agricultural products appears, cities grow and the Russian burgher class arises, and at the same time monetary relations penetrate into the village and transform relations between masters and peasants. The old self-sufficient feudal worlds are losing their independence, centrifugal forces are weakening, centripetal forces are gaining strength, and in the 16th century. the Muscovite state is being built on the ruins of the former specific principalities and large boyar estates. The feudal church worlds give way to the Moscow centralized metropolis, and then to the patriarchy. During the second half of the 15th and the entire 16th century. a fierce social struggle simmers on this soil, in which church groups and leaders take a lively part. The crisis of the feudal church is accompanied by the emergence of various heretical movements.

Thus, the church moved into the orbit of new socio-political relations, shaking off the weights of feudalism in time, which were dragging it to ruin. However, the matter did not end with the settlement of the economic base. Having broken with specific feudalism and passed into submission to the Moscow "power", the church had to carry out centralization in cults and organizations.

The transformation of the church from an instrument of feudal domination into an instrument of domination by the noble state was completed in the 17th century.

All church cathedrals of the 16th and 17th centuries. were convened by royal decrees, their members were personally invited by royal letters, the order of the day was determined by the king, and the very draft reports and resolutions were drawn up in advance by pre-conciliar commissions, usually consisting of boyars and duma nobles. At the meetings of the councils, either the tsar or his authorized boyar was always present, who vigilantly monitored the exact implementation of the predetermined program.

Official reform and defeat of church opposition.

The essence of the official reform was the establishment of uniformity in the liturgical ranks. The United Russian Church, a sister of the Eastern Churches, did not have a uniform liturgical rite and differed in this from its Eastern brethren, which the Eastern Patriarchs constantly pointed out to both Nikon and his predecessors. In a single church there was to be a single cult. The cathedrals of the 16th century, having elevated local patron saints to the rank of all-Russian saints, did not complete the work of uniting the cult. It was necessary to introduce uniformity also in the liturgical order, to replace the specific liturgical diversity with Moscow uniformity. The question of carrying out this fundamental reform arose even before Nikon in connection with the victory of technology in the book business. As long as there were handwritten books produced locally by local scribes and from local originals, there could be no question of reform; but when in the second half of the XVI century. a Printing Yard appeared in Moscow and it was decided to supply all churches with printed liturgical books, spravschiki, i.e., editors of printed publications, discovered an extraordinary variety in handwritten books both from the side of individual words to expressions, and from the side of liturgical rites. Errors and omissions were not difficult to correct; but the matter was more complicated - it was necessary to choose one, the most correct, rank and fix it in printed books, thereby destroying all other ritual options. The main difficulty was in choosing a sample for correction. For the tsar and Nikon, these were the then Greek ranks; for the vast majority of clergy - the ancient Russian ranks, enshrined in "charate" (manuscript) books.

The intra-church movement ended in the victory of the official reform. The nobility-Moscow church found its credo and with its help began to assert its dominance. The condemned ministers of the old faith, however, did not obey and went "into schism", i.e. deviated from the established church and continued to fight it in various ways.

Since the end of the 60s of the 17th century, the Muscovite state has been repeatedly shaken by uprisings that arise in different places, both in the center, in Moscow itself, and on the outskirts, in the far north and on the Don. Almost all of these movements are religious in color.

In the practical life of the peasant, the remnants of ancient magical manipulations were of great importance than the rites of the new Christian cult.

In the XVIII century. in the various layers of the schism, internal differentiation began, which led the single course of the schism to opposites, setting the various elements of the schism against each other. In this development of opposites and extremes, in the development of the struggle between separate currents within the schism, the very term "schism" was lost and depersonalized. New forms of life brought with them new forces, new organizations and new nicknames. If the 17th century was heroic, then the XVIII was the century of epigones.

The end of the 17th century, the entire 18th and the first 60 years of the 19th century. Russian history pass under the sign of serfdom. On the basis of the serf economy, the commodity agricultural production of the landowner passes the first stage of its development, commercial capital grows and industrial capital sprouts its first shoots. The phenomena of church life, however, are closely intertwined with political phenomena, for the church, starting from

20s of the XVIII century. From an actual servant of the state, it formally turns into an instrument of state administration. Changes in the church are always the result of changes in political life. The Church completely loses the ability to act independently and acts only as one of the institutions of the autocracy.

Control was entrusted to the chief procurator of the synod, a secular official, named in the official instruction of 1722 "the eye of the sovereign and the attorney for state affairs." He, like the Chief Procurator of the Senate, was obliged to “watch firmly so that the synod keeps its position and in all matters truly, zealously and decently sends according to regulations and decrees without loss of time”, “he must also look firmly so that the synod in its rank righteously and acted dishonestly." In case of omission or violation of decrees and regulations, the chief prosecutor had to propose to the synod, "in order to correct"; “and if they don’t listen, then he must protest at that hour and stop something else, and immediately report to us (the emperor).

The "care" of the synod for church estates led not only to a decrease in the income of the treasury, but also to such consequences that began to threaten the security of the noble state. The exploitation of the peasants of the hierarchical and monastic estates assumed unheard-of cruelty and robbery proportions; extra fees and duties, "all sorts of insults and ruin" rained down on the peasants as if from a cornucopia.

The government reaped the fruits of the reform at the beginning of the 19th century, when the old collegiums, which no longer met the new requirements, were replaced by ministries in which the principle of one-man management was strictly implemented.

In 1718, all house churches were closed, except for churches belonging to members of the imperial family, “for this is superfluous and it comes from a single arrogance, and reproachful to the spiritual order: the gentlemen would go to parish churches and would not be ashamed to be brothers, although their peasants in a Christian society,” the Spiritual Regulation motivates this measure retrospectively. Thus, the private cult was banned, and instead of home confessors, their servants, parishioners had to turn to parish confessors, ministers of the state church.

The aspirations of the government to reduce the number of persons of the clergy go in the 18th century. in two directions. The first, seemingly rational, way to solve the problem was to establish normal parish clergy staff.

The state church had to first of all and mainly fulfill the duties that the state assigned to it.

The question of ideology was a sore point in the 18th century. The 17th century did not yet know him; while the "old faith" stood inviolable, the practice of ritual worship was at the same time the most important work of the faith. Nikon's reform destroyed the old faith, but did not give anything in return for it, in the end, Nikon himself doubted the correctness of the "new faith" that the service books corrected according to Greek models brought with them. The new rite could not acquire the same authority as the old one. And already under Nikon, the idea was expressed that the matter was not in the rite, but in religious theory, that is, in what was always in the background in the pre-Nikonian church.

Until the end of the 19th century, the new "theology" was hard to take root in the spiritual environment.

Cases about “superstitions”, that is, about the appearance of new icons from which miracles occur, about the appearance of holy fools and pious healers by praying various diseases, did not leave the consistory tables during the 17th and 19th centuries. The attitude towards such cases was almost always the strictest, even if the perpetrators of them were the most orthodox people. But the proclamation of new saints and new relics, which took place in an official way, was always arranged in the most solemn way, with the indispensable participation of high-ranking persons. In these cases, the church has always been able to shine as a "leader" of the masses. The emperors themselves, ending with Nicholas II, often took an active part here, and these festivities for an objective observer always received a curious and very instructive meaning.

In the first half of the XVIII century. the government, together with the synod, waged a fierce struggle against the schismatic communities that had formed at the end of the 17th century. on various outskirts of the Moscow state. Therefore, since the XVIII century. new communities of schismatics are formed mainly abroad. It was the same lively emigration and for the same motives as the emigration of the Puritans from England in the 16th century. and Independents in the 16th and 17th centuries. This emigration proceeded with particular force during the Bironovshchina, in the 30s of the 18th century, when the bacchanalia of the authorities over the schismatics reached terrifying proportions. By the end of the XVIII century. There were up to 46,000 registered schismatics along the banks of the Oka and the Volga only within the Nizhny Novgorod region.

In the middle of the XVIII century. the Old Believer bourgeoisie, Russian and foreign, already possessed "great trades and trades." The government of Catherine II took this circumstance into account as a financial opportunity and abolished a number of restrictions, but heaped on the shoulders of the Old Believers a tax on a common basis. At the end of 1762, Catherine's manifesto was published, calling for people of all "nations", "except for the Jews," to settle in Russia, and also inviting all Russian fugitives to return to Russia, promising them forgiveness of crimes and other "obscene generosity." Under the fugitives in the first place, as the Senate explained, they meant schismatics; in addition to the right to return, they were promised other benefits: permission not to shave their beards, wear whatever dress they want, six years of freedom from all taxes and work; everyone had the right either to return to the former landowner (!) or to enroll in the state peasants or in the merchant class.

In the XVIII century. in essence, there were no changes in the position of the peasantry; there were only moments of a special aggravation of serfdom, but there were no such moments that would open up prospects for a better future for the peasant. 19th century began with a decree on free cultivators, then the agony of serfdom began in the form of Arakcheevism and the vice of the Nikolaev era; after that came emancipation, which, for all its half-heartedness, nevertheless deeply affected the peasant life and made the peasant thought stir a little faster than before. Therefore, the religious life of the peasantry in the XIX century. immeasurably richer than in the 17th or 18th century: sects appear one after another in countless numbers.

The peasantry, by its very essence, placed face to face with the elemental forces of nature, mysterious and unknown to it, is unable to leave the sphere of religious thinking. Even a simple escape from the unbearable conditions of life it clothed in a religious form, elevated it to a religious principle of life. Escape and wandering, natural everyday phenomena of the 18th century, which served for the peasantry as almost the only way out of the clutches of the then life, received a religious sanction and were easily fulfilled commandments.

By the last quarter of the 17th century. dates back to the beginning of two other major currents of sectarianism that arose among the peasantry, Dukhoborism and Molokanism. Sects of “spiritual Christians,” as both of them called themselves, formed in the last quarter of the 18th century… Dukhobors appeared in the Yekaterinoslav province, among the Cossack population, which during the reign of Catherine was extremely constrained and devastated by distributions of Ukrainian Cossack lands to landowners; Molokans at the same time made themselves felt in the Tambov province - partly among the peasants, partly among the small urban philistinism and handicrafts. There is much in common between the one and the other sect, and at first the spiritual and secular authorities confused them; however, there are also differences between them, which are explained by not quite the same social composition and different conditions of their life.

Molokanism and Dukhoborism of the dairy period were typical manifestations of communist sectarianism during the period of the disintegration of serfdom, when the peasantry lived between the yoke of serfdom and liberation without land. Any such religious organization inevitably turned into an instrument of accumulation for a part of its members and in this way became especially quickly an organization of domination and exploitation. On illusions one can never build either freedom, or equality, or the material well-being of the working masses.

Commercial and industrial Rogozhsky union in the first 30 years of the XIX century. performed in a new, still almost unheard-of role in Russia. The peasants had a direct calculation to go over to the Old Believers, because they faced the prospect of a quick exit from serfdom and deliverance from recruitment.

The government of Nicholas I was poorly versed in various schismatic directions and rumors, but it set itself a definite and quite understandable task from its point of view: to destroy the basis of the schism by expropriating its property and destroying its organizations, both charitable and liturgical.

Meanwhile, with the fall of serfdom, the circumstances for the Old Believers were unusually favorable. Since the 60s, the split has been growing so rapidly that the entire population by the end

The 70s are divided almost equally between Orthodoxy and schism.

While the Old Believer priestly church was steadily moving along a clear and unchanging line of its development, the non-priestly organizations, as in the 18th century, continued to experience significant fluctuations, going through changes of revival and decline, and could not become as firmly established as the priesthood, partly due to government repression, partly because of the internal contradictions that torn them apart and the weakness of the ground on which they stood. The priestly church organized the masses, spreading its communities throughout Russia and linking them first with the unity of the cult, and then with the unity of both the cult and the hierarchy. Bespopovschinskie organizations were autonomous communities, little connected with one another; each of them had its own customs and its own ideology.

Like priestlessness, the role of organizing the initial accumulation of forces was played at the beginning of the 19th century. and economic organizations, operating in an environment of first commercial and industrial, and then loan capital investment. A specific feature of the skokstvo was its ability to promote the fastest process of differentiation of the peasantry and to draw from the countryside into the city the most malleable and suitable for capital elements.

The golden time for hoarding ended in the 20s of the 19th century.

After 1861, sectarianism became extremely widespread and revealed a number of new forms and modifications due to the post-reform economy and the life of the city and countryside. Numerous sects of the post-reform period are sharply divided into two groups - into sects of a purely peasant character, which arose in connection with the reform of 1861, and into petty-bourgeois sects, of a mixed composition, which absorbed petty-bourgeois and semi-capitalist elements of the countryside and city and arose in connection with the rapid the growth of capitalism after 1861, which split the countryside into opposite poles and fed at first the petty bourgeoisie of the city - handicraftsmen, shopkeepers, small proprietors of handicraft workshops and small factories and factories. While the sects of the first category were distinguished by well-known individual traits associated with the topic of the day, the sects of the second category show some common features, especially the weakening of communist and mystical tendencies, often replaced by the most frank defense of private property and rationalism in dogma and ritualism. If the sects of the first category were still organizations of the struggle of the working people, then the sects of the second category were already undisguised organizations of exploitation, and if they fought, then only with their worst competitor in this area, the Synodal Church.

In the early 70s, in some villages of the Yekaterinburg district, a general flight of peasants into the forests with all their belongings and children was discovered. The investigation found out that the peasants are leaving for the forest from the Antichrist, who supposedly now reigns in the world; anyone who does not want to accept his seal must go into the wilderness. Antichrist's seal is money; it spreads everywhere in sales and purchases, and anyone who buys or sells anything receives the seal of the Antichrist. Simultaneously with these quite clear sects, another sect appeared in the northern part of the Vyatka province, which some correspondents of Prugavin considered not even a sect, but rather a political group.

The Ural sects of the era of emancipation still revolve in the environment of old ideas and formulas, depending on the economic backwardness of the Urals, for which emancipation was a difficult, painful turning point. In inner Russia, emancipation gave rise to new forms of sectarianism. She put an end to the old primitive forms of messianism and the mysticism associated with them, putting forward practical tasks dictated by the new conditions of life. This change in the nature of sectarianism was due to the historical course of events, which overturned eschatological expectations. Instead of the end of the world came emancipation. It remained either to discard eschatology completely and look for new religious paths, or to keep eschatology in the official church setting, agreeing to reconciliation with the church. As a result, the development of sectarianism on the old basis after the reform of 1861 was suspended. But already in the 1960s, the consequences of the partial expropriation of the peasantry became apparent. It was those sects that were viable and widely developed that were connected with the processes of accumulation, firmly adhered to the principle of private property and set themselves the task of promoting the enrichment of their members. Such sects also appeared in the Kherson region, from where they spread to the neighboring Ukrainian provinces.

In the 90s, a rapid process of leveling the differences between all the petty-bourgeois Stundist sects and their gradual merging into one organization began. This process takes place under the banner of the so-called Baptism. The latter penetrated into Russia from abroad in the 70s, first into the German colonies. Preserving for the most part the character of an evangelical sect, Baptism differed from other sects of this kind in that it did not recognize baptism over infants, requiring a conscious attitude of the person being baptized to this rite, and therefore established rebaptism for newcomers to the sect. The congregations were organized into the "Union of Baptists of Russia", with central congresses, a central council, and a central mutual benefit fund that had its own local branches.

This brilliant success of Baptism is explained by the fact that the strength of international capital already stood behind Baptism. Baptist organizations in Europe, and especially in America, were seized back in the 90s by capitalists, industrial and financial, who managed to turn their mentors into their agents by financing Baptist communities. The point was directed, of course, to the working-class quarters; By recruiting workers into Baptism, they sought to distract the proletarians from their class struggle and create a cadre of scabs. Baptism in the hands of capital proved to be an extremely flexible and fruitful tool, and in 1905 it acquired an international character: the World Baptist Union was organized. The intensified propaganda of Baptism in Russia, which was conducted under the guidance and with the liveliest participation of preachers from abroad, coincides with the penetration of foreign industrial and financial capital into Russia.

These are the main directions of Russian sectarianism after 1861. There were many other sects, many of which still exist, but all of them adjoin those described.

The revolution of 1905 produced a new shift in the field of religious quest. At first, her influence in this area was purely destructive: the deity temporarily disappeared from the scene as a director of the tragicomedy of life, even in the minds of the inert peasantry. But when the revolutionary wave subsided, sectarian searches resumed with renewed vigor.

The six and a half decades during which the noble autocratic state existed after the liquidation of its feudal base were, in essence, the epoch of its last convulsive efforts in the struggle for existence. Undermined by the rapid growth of industrial and banking capital and shaken by the periodically flaring up and ever growing revolutionary movements of the proletariat and peasantry.

All church monetary capital, both the already mentioned hierarchical and monastic ones, as well as the capital of some large city churches, had to be placed in state interest-bearing papers and kept in the State Bank.

After almost five years of preparation, on June 13, 1884, the rules on parochial schools were finally published. According to the official explanation, the purpose of their establishment, in addition to spreading elementary literacy, was to “educate the fear of God in children, teach them the meaning of faith, instill in their hearts love for the holy church and devotion to the king and fatherland.”

The blow inflicted by the revolution of 1905 on the autocratic system was also a painful blow to the church. Moreover, seeking salvation and looking out for that ballast that could be thrown from a sinking ship, the tsarist government did not hesitate to sacrifice in the first place precisely the privileged position of the Orthodox Church, as if no longer hoping for the effectiveness of those means by which it could help and helped it church. The Manifesto of April 17, 1905 declared religious tolerance, legitimized the freedom of transition from Orthodoxy to other Christian confessions, granted legal rights for the existence of Old Believer and sectarian organizations, except for the “fiendish” (eunuchs and whips), and recognized the title of clergy for the Old Believer and sectarian clergy.

The Synod Church was shaken to its foundations by October, which crushed and completely destroyed its class and state support. The next decade was a period of rapid decay and decline. The Old Believer Church also turned out to be broken, since its owners, industrial and banking bigwigs, turned out to be either physically destroyed and expropriated, or on the other side of the border of the Soviet Union, in exile. Only sectarianism in some places has found vitality and even expanded its base at the expense of the decline of Orthodoxy.

In the early nineties, Christianity is in decline in the West, even in the United States, where the largest number of people go to church. Public opinion polls conducted in 1991 showed that only 58% of Americans believe that religion plays an important role in their lives, and in 1952 they were 75%.

We cannot find out what public opinion was like in the Middle Ages, but pre-Reformation Christianity is striking in its unity. In the 16th century, the Reformation shifted the focus to the relationship of the individual with God, opening the door to the fragmentation of Christianity. Since then, many sects have arisen and disintegrated, and the conviction of believers, members of the sect, that it is their faith that is true, turned out to be unfounded. The loss of confidence undermined religious faith itself.

At the same time, religion continues to struggle with progress in the natural sciences. It's not even that Darwin's theory of evolution or the "Big Bang" that explains creation cannot be reconciled with biblical ideas. More importantly, science has taught people to make strict demands on evidence, and religion is not able to meet them.

Organized Christian churches are losing credibility in the modern world; and many people turn to a wide variety of beliefs: astrology, scientology, various forms of oriental mysticism, a whole range of currents that are commonly called "new age". The future will show whether these new religious movements will stand the test of time and whether they can be placed side by side with Christianity.

But in my opinion, recently the religious situation in Russia is not as unambiguous as described above, and even on the contrary - there is a "Second Baptism of Russia." This is evidenced by the restoration of old and the construction of new churches, the number of people visiting charitable institutions, the reorientation of Russian politicians towards a religious way, etc. I think that this change of mood was caused by the collapse of the USSR with its atheistic policy and a number of less significant reasons.

CONCLUSION.

According to many scientists, the baptism of Russia at the end of the 10th century was not the result of a special “God-chosenness” of her and the Old Russians, the illumination of Prince Vladimir by the Almighty and the enlightenment by God of the “Russian people with the light of Christ,” as theologians say.

The adoption of Christianity by Russia as the state religion was a natural consequence of the long and far from simple socio-economic and cultural development of ancient Russian society.

The introduction of Christianity in Russia was a major event that marked an important stage in the development of feudal relations that replaced the tribal system with its paganism. It helped to strengthen the Old Russian state, consolidate it and increase its international prestige. At the same time, it testified to a great shift in the ideology of Kievan Rus. For the new religion was adapted to a class society, while the pagan one did not know classes, did not require the subordination of one person to another, did not consecrate the relationship of domination and subordination.

The adoption of Christianity played an important role in the further development of the material and spiritual culture of ancient Russian society. It would be wrong to deny that the church played a very definite positive role in the development of writing, architecture and painting in Russia, the rise of Moscow, the development of patriotic and national self-consciousness and the moral rise of the Russian and other peoples of Russia and Russia. Not without reason, theologians of the Evangelical Church of Germany, as well as Orthodox theologians, believe that Russian Christianity has also enriched "European culture with its contribution: theology, philosophy, literature, church architecture, iconography, church music."

But, sharing these judgments, we must not forget about the role of the church, which she played as a servant of the autocracy and the ruling classes, which she affirmed the worldview.

. “The Church is always being renewed,” Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokolamsk and Yuryev stated relatively recently. This is one of its properties. And that is why he believes that "the church lived under the slave-owning system, under feudalism, it will live under a different state system." How? This Pitirim does not know. Pitirim's appeal to history to predict the future of the church is evidence that the center of confrontation between scientific and religious worldview is now focused on assessing the role of Russian Orthodoxy in the history of Russia and Russia, the development of our statehood and culture.

The shifts that have taken place in the theological interpretation of our history testify that Orthodox ideologists are making great efforts to present the past of the Russian Church in a way that is more consonant with our time, the socio-political views and interests of contemporary believers. This is also done in order to present Russian Orthodoxy as a positive factor only in the life of society and thereby increase its attractiveness and prolong its existence. With all the changes in theological views on the role and place of Russian Orthodoxy in history, the irreconcilability of the scientific and religious worldview remains unchanged. The evolution of the theological interpretation of the history of our Motherland may give rise to erroneous ideas in certain segments of the population about the real role of religion in the socio-political life of society. In view of this, it is necessary to pay more attention to criticism of the Orthodox Christian doctrine as the starting point for Orthodox ideologists to cover the events of the past and present, to reveal the real role of religion and the church in the history of our country, and not to allow its exaggeration and idealization. Only under this condition will education in history fully serve the cause of the formation of a scientific-materialistic worldview and morality among all working people, the formation of a person free from religious prejudices.