|
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese
English
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Malay
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese|
Lecture notes, cheat sheets
History of religion. Russian Orthodoxy (lecture notes)
Directory / Lecture notes, cheat sheets Table of contents (expand) Topic 9. Russian Orthodoxy 9.1. Features of the adoption of Christianity in Russia The first news of the penetration of Christianity into the territory of settlement of Slavic tribes is associated with the name of the Apostle Andrew the First-Called. According to the legend preserved by the Acts of the Apostles, he preached on the northern coast of the Black Sea, so that hypothetically he could communicate with the Slavs who settled there, however, reliable information about this communication has not been preserved, and it is unlikely that there could have been any. Nevertheless, the author of “The Tale of Bygone Years” wrote with absolute confidence that Andrei not only climbed the Dnieper, but also erected a cross at the site of the birth of Kyiv. The legendary nature of this news was established by the famous historian of the Orthodox Church E. Golubinsky on the basis of another chronicle testimony, according to which not a single apostle preached on the territory of Rus'. [43] More reliable facts that make it possible to record the appearance of Christianity on the territory of the Slavic tribes long before the date of official baptism refer to 867, when Patriarch Photius of Constantinople (d. 891/97) mentions in the "District Message" to church hierarchs subordinate to Constantinople about the baptism of the Rus. Other sources of the same era, mentioning this event, attribute the leading role in it to the brothers Cyril (826-869) and Methodius (815-885) - the creators of the Slavic alphabet. Given the frequent attacks of the Rus (meaning the Eastern Slavs) on the territory of Byzantium throughout the XNUMXth century, it can be assumed that not the East Slavic tribes themselves were baptized, but the squads of one or more military leaders who wished to accept Christianity within Byzantine borders. Other researchers see in the news of Patriarch Photius evidence of the baptism of that part of the Rus that inhabited the Crimean peninsula. In favor of the latter assumption is also the fact of the establishment of the Chersonese bishopric, which was founded in the second half of the XNUMXth century. From that moment on, Christianity began to penetrate into the territory of the East Slavic tribes, along with merchants who served along the way as religious preachers; with soldiers returning from campaigns who converted to Orthodoxy on the territory of Byzantium. All these factors gradually prepared the perception of Christianity as "their" religion, no longer by individual representatives, but by society as a whole. Of course, Christianity did not spread in all segments of the population, but among the nobility and the princely administration. The surviving sources testify that Christians were not subjected to infringement of their rights in comparison with pagans. In favor of the initially loyal attitude of the Eastern Slavs to the Orthodox religion is the fact that Princess Olga (d. 969), the widow of Prince Igor (d. 945), who converted to Orthodoxy during her trip to Constantinople in 952, did not lose the opportunity to govern country (later she was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church with the rank of a saint). Nevertheless, the adoption of the Christian faith by Princess Olga remained her private choice, which did not impose any obligations on the rest of the population of the Russian state. The next step towards introducing the Slavs to the Christian religion was taken by Olga's grandson, Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavovich (d. 1015), who remained in people's memory under the nickname "Red Sun", while church tradition attributed to him another nickname - "Saint". In the mid-980s. he adopted the Christian religion in its Byzantine version, and in 988 he made Christianity the new official religion of the nascent Russian state. This step was preceded by an attempt to create a single pantheon of East Slavic deities led by Perun (the thunder god, patron of warriors), dictated by the internal political interests of Prince Vladimir. The creation of a new state, composed of various tribes that had cultural and religious originality within the framework of linguistic and national unity, was to be accompanied by the establishment of a state religion, but the mechanical union of the supreme gods of various tribes turned out to be unviable due to the impossibility of reconciling the contradictions that arose. [44] The adoption of Christianity, which was not a completely unfamiliar religion, had another obvious advantage - it became possible to establish international contacts on the basis of a religious community, which would have been difficult if paganism had persisted. The first act of baptism of the inhabitants of Rus' was performed in 988 on the Pochayna River (a tributary of the Dnieper), after which a diverging wave of obligatory baptism rites swept across the bounds of the endless East Slavic plain. However, baptism did not always proceed peacefully. The conversion of Novgorod to Christianity in 990 became a symbol of the struggle that the Christian religion had to wage for complete establishment in the new territory. Only with the help of military force Dobrynya, the uncle and governor of Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavovich, managed to force the Novgorodians to throw idols (statues of pagan deities) into the river and accept Christianity. According to E. Golubinsky, “the complete submission of Russians in changing their faith to the will of the prince and the so-called peaceful spread of Christianity in Rus' is nothing more than an impossible invention of our immoderate patriots... There is no doubt that the introduction of a new faith was accompanied by considerable excitement among the people "that there were open resistances and riots, although we do not know any details about them." [45] Some indirect information about how difficult the baptism of Russia went in the north and northeast, where this process was hampered by the belonging of the main part of the population to the Finno-Ugric community, is brought to us by chronicles. Already in 1024 an uprising against Christianity was raised in Suzdal. The unrest of 1071, which broke out in Novgorod, soon spread throughout northern Russia, resulting in such large-scale riots that it was possible to suppress them only with the help of the prince's squad. The instigators of all unrest against the new religion were, according to the chronicles, the Magi - the priests of pagan cults, the preservation of which, although in a hidden form, indicates that the process of Christianization of Russia dragged on for several hundred years. So, even in 1113, the Vyatichi (an East Slavic tribe living in the upper reaches of the Volga and Vyatka rivers) killed the missionary Kuksha, who was sent to this forest region on the orders of the Kyiv prince himself. But even in those cases when there was no external hostility, and the inhabitants obediently agreed to accept Christianity and throw away the old idols, it was difficult to talk about the undoubted successes of the new religion. The ostentatious Christianization was combined with the preservation of faith in the former tribal deities, ancestors and spirits, hidden from prying eyes. Thus arose a peculiar phenomenon of Russian religious culture, called dual faith. The two religious systems did not exist independently of each other, but were closely intertwined: the new Christian realities found analogies in the usual pagan cults. The coexistence of Christianity with pagan polytheism was facilitated by the external signs of the new religion, which could easily be perceived as evidence of the existence of cults of individual deities. God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, as well as the Mother of God, the apostles and numerous saints and saints - all of them were endowed with pagan functions. The ordinary consciousness of an ancient Russian person easily identified the worship of the Mother of God with the cult of the pagan goddess Mokosha, transferring numerous attributes of paganism into Christian rituals. Christian saints underwent the same metamorphosis: St. Blaise was identified with the traditional god Beles, and in this new capacity began to be perceived as the patron of cattle. Now it is already difficult to establish which East Slavic gods were replaced by Saint Barbara, Saints Nicholas, Kosma, George the Victorious, who in the new Christian pantheon became responsible for fertility, blacksmithing, medicine, etc. It is interesting that the main deities of the East Slavic tribes, including Perun, were never perceived by the ancient Russian chroniclers, mostly related to the clergy, as dead. Even in the XIV century. these gods were mentioned as existing, but "losing" in importance to the Christian god. The intertwining of paganism and Christianity was also reflected in the cult sphere: new churches were often built on the same places where the temples of pagan gods were located, in order to attract ordinary people who had not yet had time to be imbued with the spirit of the new religion. The church organization of the Russian Orthodox Church was created much later than the date of the adoption of Christianity: only in 1037 did the Patriarch of Constantinople appoint the first Metropolitan Theopemptus, a Greek by birth, to Kyiv. The next step towards achieving at least relative ecclesiastical independence was taken in 1047, when Prince Yaroslav the Wise managed to install the first Russian Metropolitan Hilarion in Russia, who became a famous Russian scribe and author of the treatise "The Word of Law and Grace", which was one of the obligatory for reading books of medieval Russian man. 9.2. Development of the Russian Church in the XIII-XVII centuries During the years of the Golden Horde yoke, the church managed to maintain its well-being thanks to the condescending attitude towards it on the part of the Mongol khans. The customs of the Mongols forbade them to be derogatory to a foreign religion, therefore, among the dead in 1237-1240. there were extremely few priests, especially in comparison with the number of representatives of other groups of the population. After the yoke was secured by the consent of the Russian princes to pay tribute to the Mongol khan, the Russian Orthodox Church with all its possessions was exempted from paying mandatory tax, which allowed it to become a significant economic and political force. In 1299, the Metropolitan of Kyiv Maxim moved his residence from the devastated and devastated Kyiv to the safer Vladimir, and a few more years later the metropolitan throne found a new home in Moscow (1324). This circumstance became a strong trump card in the hands of Ivan Kalita, since Metropolitan Peter thereby sanctioned the claims of the Moscow princes to primacy among all Russian rulers. The spiritual dominion of the metropolitan and the political weight that he had - all this could not be ignored both by the princes fighting each other and by the common people, in whose eyes the place of residence of the metropolitan was the religious center of Russia, its heart. From that moment on, the Russian metropolitans acted as faithful assistants and spiritual mentors of the Russian princes in the process of unification of the Russian state. Another priority task of the church as a whole and of individual ascetics was the spread of Orthodoxy among non-Christian peoples (northern Russia and the Urals), as well as a significant increase in the number of monasteries and monks. Especially revered both among the nobility and among ordinary people was the Trinity-Sergius Hermitage, founded by Sergius of Radonezh (1321-1391), who came from a noble family, but renounced earthly power for the sake of spiritual achievement. While taking an active part in political and social processes, the Russian Orthodox Church was not able to avoid the consequences of this participation, which appeared rather soon. Already in 1377, after the death of Metropolitan Alexy (1353-1377), who enjoyed tremendous spiritual authority, the place of metropolitan became the subject of an active struggle between various ecclesiastical and secular groups. Pimen, who received the rank of metropolitan in Constantinople, was deposed by Dmitry Donskoy, who appointed his confessor Mityai in his place, and after his death - Cyprian, whom he himself drove away. Such a frequent change of metropolitans and their obvious dependence on secular authorities turned out to be a strong destabilizing factor, the influence of which was overcome only in the first half of the 1453th century, when Orthodox Christianity faced a different task: to preserve the sacred Christian faith in the face of a new and very dangerous enemy - the Turks. Ottomans. The threat of the capture of Constantinople by them, which was realized in 1439, led to the fact that part of the Eastern churches, trying to avoid their final destruction, went to the conclusion of the Union of Florence with the Catholics. This union, signed in XNUMX, including by a delegate from the Russian Orthodox Church, meant recognition of the primacy of the pope and the loss of ecclesiastical independence. But Metropolitan Isidore, who signed this union, was taken into custody immediately after his return to Moscow, and the council of church hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church refused to recognize this union. Thus, the Russian Church not only refused the possible assistance of Western Europe upon the return of Constantinople, but also automatically opposed itself to the rest of the Orthodox Churches. The changed political conditions compelled Russian theologians to formulate a new idea that expressed the essence of Russian Orthodoxy and became known as the "Moscow - Third Rome" doctrine. This doctrine was formulated in the writings of the Pskov monk Philotheus, who claimed that the reason for the death of Rome, and then Constantinople, was the heresies in which these cities were mired. Moscow, which inherited the spiritual supremacy of these cities, is freed from the vices that ate them, and therefore it is she who will have to embody the idea of realizing a truly Orthodox state on earth. End of the XNUMXth century for the Russian Orthodox Church took place in the struggle between the two main directions - the Josephites and non-possessors. The first, named after their spiritual leader, hegumen of the Volotsk Monastery Joseph, argued that the church serves as the vicar of God on earth, therefore all the lands belonging to it are the property of the Lord and are inviolable for worldly power. Their opponents (Vassian Patrikeev, Nil Sorsky) proclaimed the early Christian ideal of a monk, not burdened by earthly concerns, but rising in his thoughts to the spiritual world and, accordingly, not in need of any worldly blessings. The struggle of these two currents ended in the defeat of the non-possessors, who were condemned by the church council and sent to distant monasteries. 1551th century period became the time of the final registration of the Russian Orthodox Church as an official institution in the new centralized state. The Stoglavy Council, which took place in 100 (so named because its decisions amounted to exactly 22 chapters) unified the observance of church rules and norms throughout the territory of the Russian state, and also regulated the degree of inclusion of church norms in secular life. Laity, regardless of their social status, were forbidden to play chess (however, Ivan the Terrible successfully neglected this rule), shave their beards, watch theatrical performances and performances of buffoons. Another decision of this council consolidated the practice of canonization of saints. Such by the middle of the XVI century. there were 45 on a national scale and another 1589 on a regional scale. For several decades of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the number of saints increased several times. In almost every monastery, the relics of local saints turned out to be "acquired", and for a long time the main work of the monastic scribes was writing lives, which described the spiritual exploits of the deceased righteous, allowing them to be canonized as saints. The apotheosis of building the building of the Russian Orthodox Church was the establishment in XNUMX of the title of patriarch, which was awarded to Metropolitan Job of Moscow. Representatives of other Orthodox patriarchates, who at first prevented the Moscow metropolia from acquiring a higher status, were forced to agree to this step for fear of losing that powerful ally and patron, which the Russian tsar was for them. 9.3. Church schism in Russia. Old Believers The prerequisites for a church schism were ripening in the Russian state for a long time. In the middle of the XV century. The Pskov abbot Euphrosynus undertook a journey to Constantinople, still under the rule of the Byzantine emperor, in order to find out how many times the exclamation "Hallelujah" should be pronounced during worship - two or three. In Russia, a triple form of pronouncing this exclamation was adopted, respectively, and the sign of the cross was made with three fingers folded into a pinch, which symbolized the dogma of the three divine hypostases. In the churches of Constantinople, as Euphrosynus found out, the exclamation was doubled, and the sign was performed with two fingers, therefore, returning to his native monastery, he began to introduce new orders, sanctioning their application by the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople. Many priests supported the established order of the triple sign, which resulted in long disputes, the end of which was put by the decision of the Stoglavy Cathedral, which approved the double sign and the doubling of the exclamation "Hallelujah" as the official form. Patriarch Nikon, who occupied the patriarchal throne in 1652, made it one of his main tasks to eliminate the errors and contradictions contained in the old church books, with the aim that the unified state, which claimed to be the sole inheritance of the true Orthodox religion, would correspond to an equally unified church. Similar reforms were conceived as early as the 1653th century, but the Stoglavy Cathedral failed to eliminate all the contradictions that arose, to which new ones have been added over the years since its convocation, for example, the question of what church hymns should be - polyphonic or unanimous. Nikon was a member of the circle, which included the closest associates of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. It was within the framework of this circle that ideas arose that were to determine the further development of the Russian kingdom and the Orthodox religion, therefore the sanction of the monarch to carry out the corresponding changes was received by the patriarch without much effort. Already in XNUMX, Nikon single-handedly, without convening a church council, banned the double sign of the cross and the doubling of the exclamation "Hallelujah", replacing them with three; polyphony was also prohibited. Archpriests Avvakum and Daniel prepared a petition to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, in which they referred to the fact that the rejected elements of the cult had a long history and were consecrated by centuries of practice, but the petition was ignored, and its authors paid for their disobedience with freedom. Archpriest Avvakum, who continued to actively oppose Nikon's innovations even while in Siberian exile, was later burned (1682). Nikon also assembled a commission of monks who were immigrants from Ukraine and were fluent in Latin and Greek, in order to identify all the distorted places in church books and their subsequent correction. This work took several years, during which the new rules were actively introduced by the supporters of the patriarch, while the opponents of the corrections were anathematized in 1656 and proclaimed heretics - apostates from the Orthodox faith. After such actions of Nikon, the church schism, which resulted in the division of the whole society into supporters and opponents of innovations, was inevitable. Despite the fact that the patriarch himself soon fell out of favor with the tsar and was exiled into exile, the reforms he had begun were continued and brought to their logical conclusion. A few years later, the corrected church books were officially recognized as the only true ones, and the old ones were ordered to be destroyed. But not everyone agreed with the church reforms. Opponents of innovations - they began to be called Old Believers - grouped around the Solovetsky Monastery, the abbot of which did not recognize the corrected books. The government had to use armed force to force the monks to accept the reforms, which was only possible after several years of siege of the monastery. The Old Believers, who did not want to put up with the new order, were forced to leave the central part of Russia and flee to its outskirts (the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, the Don), where the absence of tsarist troops left them the opportunity to observe rituals according to the old model. But even there the authorities did not leave the adherents of the old faith alone. Their villages were surrounded by regular troops, after which adults and children were forcibly forced to convert to a new faith. Those who did not consider it possible to sacrifice their own religious principles preferred to burn rather than renounce their faith. According to modern researchers, the number of Old Believers who voluntarily committed self-immolation in the last decades of the 20th century exceeds 10 thousand people, and the total number of opponents of church reforms who left Russia is XNUMX% of the total population at that time. From time to time, the Old Believers tried to change the situation that had developed in the religious system of the country, but such attempts, as a rule, ended in failure. The famous Streltsy rebellion (1682) was perhaps the most striking event in the active confrontation between supporters and opponents of the new faith. In the Faceted Chamber of the Kremlin, a theological dispute was even arranged between supporters of each of the points of view, but this dispute ended only with mutual threats, and in the meantime the rebellion of the archers was suppressed, after which the Old Believers could only keep their faith in deep secret, not pretending to open fight. It should be clarified that the Old Believers, opposing themselves to the supporters of the new faith, were not a holistic formation: within them there were groups that differed in the interpretation of certain provisions, as a rule, of a cult rather than a dogmatic nature. The key moment for the split within the Old Believers themselves was the end of the XNUMXth century, when those priests who had been ordained according to the old rules gradually passed away. Some groups of Old Believers introduced the practice of ordination as a priest of their future successor, which made it possible to maintain an unbroken line of custodians of the true faith - such Old Believers were called priests. Those Old Believers who ruled out the possibility of the unauthorized appointment of priests began to be called non-priests. Another controversial issue, regarding which the zealots of the old faith could not come to an unambiguous decision, was the permission or prohibition of a priest to marry. Representatives of the Old Orthodox Pomeranian Church, grouped around the Solovetsky Monastery, allowed their priests to marry and have children. An active supporter of such an interpretation of the Old Believer faith was the preacher Vasily Yemelyanov. From the Pomeranian Church at the very end of the XNUMXth century. the so-called Fedoseyevites (after the founder of the community, Theodosius Vasiliev), who considered it unacceptable for a priest to marry, separated. 9.4. Church under state control (1700-1917) In 1700, a significant event in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church took place. After the death of the elderly Patriarch Adrian, Tsar Peter I decided not to appoint a new patriarch, but to appoint Metropolitan Stefan Yavorsky (1658-1722), who became one of the prominent church figures of the early 1700th century, as the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne. The peak of his career came just in XNUMX, when Yavorsky became the metropolitan of Ryazan and Murom. In the same year he received the title of locum tenens. This event itself marked an important change in the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical authorities. Throughout the 1612th century the church repeatedly claimed a certain independence from the king. This was especially evident under Patriarch Filaret (1633-1651), the father of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, and Patriarch Nikon (1666-20), who openly advocated the priority of spiritual authority. From an economic point of view, the church was one of the richest landowners: only the Trinity-Sergius Lavra owned 1721 thousand peasant households (although for the sake of justice it should be noted that most of the monasteries located in remote places and not marked by high patronage had a much more modest income) . 1724th century ruthlessly dispelled political and economic illusions. The interests of the church were completely subordinated to the state, and after the death of Stefan Yavorsky, this subordination also acquired an administrative character. In XNUMX, by decree of Tsar Peter, the Most Holy Governing Synod was created, which was the state governing body of the church. The Synod was headed by the Chief Procurator. Another decree issued by Peter I in XNUMX significantly restricted the rights of monasticism: from now on, some of the monasteries were assigned to hospitals for sick and crippled soldiers. The position of the Old Believers has changed. In 1716, Peter replaced the persecution and legal responsibility to which the representatives of the old faith were subject, with the possibility of freeing themselves from oppression by paying a significant fine. However, not so many Old Believers took advantage of this permission, since most of them perceived the decrees of the secular authorities as manifestations of the devil's skill and therefore did not want to listen to them. Further restrictions on religious power were associated with the decree of Catherine II of 1764, according to which all land holdings of churches passed into the jurisdiction of the state - the secularization of church lands took place. From now on, all possessions of the Russian Orthodox Church became state property, and state benefits were issued for the maintenance of monasteries and churches. Only the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius stood apart, which was under the special patronage of the empress, thanks to which its annual maintenance was several times higher than the amounts allocated for the maintenance of any other monastery; In addition, most of the Lavra's income came from donations from members of the imperial family. The church hierarchy was also adjusted to the state administrative structure. By the end of the 1797th century. The number of dioceses increased significantly, and their borders themselves began to coincide with the provinces of the Russian Empire. Theological education is becoming widespread: semi-literate rural sextons who learn basic church texts by heart are being replaced by seminary graduates, the number of whom is steadily increasing. At the same time, the role and number of the clergy as a state class are being reduced. For a long time, priests automatically included their children, who did not perform religious duties, but were at the same time exempt from almost all taxes (except for the poll tax). In XNUMX, Paul I ordered that those priests who did not have their own parish (and their number in Moscow alone amounted to several hundred people), as well as the children of priests who were not studying at the seminary, were enlisted for military service. The Orthodox Church, forced to submit to state necessity, took a more loyal position in relation to the Gentiles. Numerous Uniates (supporters of an agreement with the Catholic Church - the Union of Florence of 1439), who lived on the territory of Poland annexed to the Russian Empire, were delivered from oppression on the basis of religious affiliation. The Old Believers also received another indulgence: the government used to prefer to look "through its fingers" at the activities of the richest merchant families adhering to the old religion, but now belonging to the Old Believer faith has ceased to be a source of state persecution. The official formula of Minister S.S. Uvarova - "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality" - legitimized the position of the Russian Orthodox Church in the sphere of state ideology. In the absence of the patriarch, the Russian emperor was considered the head of the church, and therefore his official, the chief prosecutor of the Synod, ran the church. Missionary activity for the Christianization of the lands annexed to the Russian Empire acted as an important element of domestic political activity, since it made it possible to reduce tension in relations between the annexed population and the Russian administration. The conquest of the Caucasus, which was officially completed by 1856, was the beginning of the process of transition to the Orthodox faith of certain Caucasian peoples, who had been Muslims until that moment. A significant increase in the number of adherents of the Orthodox faith among the peoples of the Caucasus and Eastern Siberia was also due to the fact that the change of religion provided significant tax benefits. At the same time, the position of the Russian Orthodox Church subordinate to the state could not satisfy many church hierarchs, who actively advocated the return of the church to its independence and the election of a new patriarch. Such views became especially popular among ordinary clergy and higher church officials at the end of the 1903th century, when the Russian Empire was going through difficult moments of its existence. On the one hand, the process of active canonization was going on (in 1906, Seraphim of Sarov was canonized), the position of the Old Believers was improving (in 1916, the anathema proclaimed in the 1917th century to adherents of the old faith was finally canceled). However, there were also negative phenomena. The royal family, which surrounded itself with religious charlatans, but at the same time continued to be considered the main example of Orthodox piety, discredited the Orthodox religion itself. One of the largest religious thinkers of the early XX century. Archbishop John of Kronstadt already in XNUMX took the initiative to convene a church council, at which the issue of electing a patriarch was to be decided, but the implementation of this initiative was possible only after the October Revolution of XNUMX. 9.5. Revolution and a new split in Orthodoxy The revolution, which marked the end of the existence of the Russian Empire, also brought drastic changes in the fate of the Russian Orthodox Church. The elimination of the Synod gave hope that under the new government the dominant position of Orthodoxy would be restored, and at first this hope seemed to come true. In 1917-1918. the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church was in operation, the main achievement of which was the election, after a two-hundred-year break, of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, which was the Moscow Metropolitan Tikhon (Belavin). At the same time, bewilderment and disappointment in the church environment was caused by the appearance on January 23, 1918 of the decree of the Soviet government on the separation of church and state. Having got rid of the pressure of state power, the church itself was eliminated from the possibility of influencing society. In addition, the first months of the existence of the new government demonstrated rampant anarchy, which also manifested itself in relation to representatives of the clergy. Many monasteries were plundered, hundreds of monks died, trying to stop the robbers and murderers. All this forced Patriarch Tikhon to deliver a message on January 19, 1918, in which he demanded that the new government stop robberies and robberies, calling on the parishioners of Orthodox churches to defend their faith even with weapons in their hands. Many church leaders who participated in the work of the Local Council (Antony Khrapovitsky, Andrei Ukhtomsky) took a more radical position, refusing to obey the decree and joining the White Guard troops in southern Russia and Siberia. The inconsistency of their position was that, recognizing their secular subordination to such figures of the White movement as General A.I. Denikin or Admiral A.V. Kolchak, these church hierarchs emphasized the primacy of Tikhon, who formally recognized Soviet power as the spiritual head of the entire Russian Orthodox Church. This decision was enshrined at the Stavropol Cathedral in 1919, in which all the highest representatives of the church hierarchy, who were at that moment in the territory controlled by the White movement, took part. Along with the gradual establishment of Soviet power in almost the entire former territory of the Russian Empire (with the exception of the lands annexed to Germany and Poland and Finland, on whose territory independent Polish and Finnish Orthodox churches were founded), the opposition clergy were forced to leave Russia. The main centers of Russian emigration in the first half of the 1920s. became Germany and the Czech Republic, where the color of the intelligentsia was gathered, including the most progressive religious thinkers - Anthony Khrapovitsky, Evlogii and others. Thus, the 1920s marked a new split in the Orthodox Church, provoked by the consequences of the October Revolution and the establishment of a new order, which was not recognized by many groups of believers. Already in 1917, the Georgian Orthodox Church emerged from the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church and proclaimed its complete independence in church affairs. In 1921, at the Karlovac Cathedral, Russian emigrants announced the creation of the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile, which declared its disobedience to the Russian Orthodox Church and accused the church hierarchs who remained in Russia of apostasy from the true faith. The clergy who remained in Russia were forced to put up with the decisions of the new government or enter into open confrontation with it, which, as a rule, did not end in favor of the priests. Following the systematic deprivation of monasteries of their property and widespread anti-religious agitation (1921-1929), followed by a government decree "On Cults" (1929), which equated the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church with sectarianism. After this decision, the authorities had a formal reason for filing charges and arrests. In the 1930s a wave of arrests swept across the country, followed by sending to the Gulag or execution. The peak of these repressions came in 1937-1938. The total number of clergymen subjected to repressions during these years exceeds 600 thousand people, most of whom died in the camps or were shot. Some indulgence of the Orthodox Church was made in 1942. This was due to the need to consolidate Soviet society in the face of an external enemy, which was Nazi Germany. Religious faith continued to be a powerful internal force, it was to it that the Soviet leaders turned, making some concessions of an administrative nature: the restoration of churches began, the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate was founded, which became the official printed organ of the Moscow Patriarchate. The schism was partly overcome under Patriarch Alexy I, who assumed the patriarchal throne in 1944. The so-called "renovationists" joined the Russian Orthodox Church, proclaiming in the 1920s reforming the Orthodox dogma (transition to the Gregorian calendar, approval of the Russian language as the language of worship, etc.). The patriarchate demanded from them public repentance and the return of all hierarchs to those official ranks that they had at the time of falling away from the true church. Both of these conditions were met, after which the reunification was completed. In 1946, Uniates living on the territory of Ukraine and previously subordinate to the Roman Catholic Church officially joined the Russian Orthodox Church. At the 1971 council, an agreement was worked out on the official reconciliation of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Old Believers. 9.6. Renaissance of Orthodoxy in modern Russia By the beginning of the 1990s. The Russian Orthodox Church was a religious entity undergoing a gradual revival. In 1988, the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus' was celebrated at the state level, churches began to be restored, the total number of dioceses was increased to 76, and there were 18 permanently operating monasteries. After in the mid-1980s. The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad received the opportunity to carry out missionary activities on the territory of Russia, and some of the parishes belonging primarily to the Moscow diocese recognized the primacy of the foreign church over themselves. This led to the emergence in 1989 of the Russian Orthodox Free Church, whose activities take place in Russia, but under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. The rapid rise of religious self-consciousness in Russia began in 1991, but it was initially connected with the return of religious consciousness as such, and not with the revival of Orthodoxy. Along with the increase in the number of parishioners in Orthodox churches, there was a numerical increase in adherents of Catholicism and Protestantism, which was not slow to take advantage of the missionaries of these religions. A large number of people, not finding a religion worthy of their expectations among traditional confessions, turned to various sects and cults, the number of which in Russia has increased exponentially over several years. Public opinion readily recognized that every religion is a positive phenomenon and that no one dares interfere with the inalienable right of a citizen to profess any of them and become a member of any religious organization. Thus, the fact that religiosity can be not only positive, but also negative, that there are a huge number of dangerous sects in the world and that many of them can be destructive, was denied, or rather, no attention was focused on it. In the mid 1990s. the desire for religion was transformed into a craving for Orthodoxy, in which the active position of the Russian Orthodox Church played its role. According to the 1993 Constitution, which proclaimed freedom of conscience in Russia, the absence of a single state religion and established the equality of all world religions on the territory of the Russian Federation, Orthodoxy failed to acquire the status of uniqueness that distinguished it from other religious denominations for hundreds of years, until 1917 d. Nevertheless, very soon the Russian Orthodox Church managed to become "first among equals" thanks to the active support of the political authorities, seeking to legitimize their rule through appeal to the traditional dominants of the Russian consciousness, including Orthodoxy. At the same time, a number of decrees and laws were adopted at the federal level, limiting the activities of destructive sects and religious organizations in Russia as much as possible, which served as an additional incentive to attract people to traditional religion. The Church managed not only to strengthen its economic base by returning property taken away during the years of Soviet power, but also to gain a foothold in such social institutions as the army and education. In 2004, a law was adopted on teaching the basics of Orthodox culture in secondary and higher educational institutions. Another significant step on the part of the Russian Orthodox Church was the signing in 2006 of an agreement with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad on the latter's gradual entry into the Russian Orthodox Church. Of course, this process will take several years, but even now it can be stated that after a long period of church schism, Orthodoxy is gradually entering a phase of reunification, consolidating in the face of other world confessions, primarily Islam. Speaking about the specifics of the modern religious situation in Russia, researchers tend to go to two extremes, either considering the increase in the quantitative indicators of believers as a characteristic of the rise of a religious culture that had long been forgotten, or paying attention to the qualitative characteristics of the so-called “new believers” and leaning towards an ideologized assessment existing trends. Many facts speak in favor of the latter opinion, for example, data from sociological surveys, according to which 52% of the population consider themselves believers, while only 6% regularly attend church, from which it is concluded that the growth of religious self-awareness is associated primarily with the awareness of attributive affiliation Orthodoxy to the complex of identification features that make up the portrait of a modern Russian citizen. The fact is that the return of Orthodoxy is taking place in a society where, for several generations, the overwhelming majority of people had no connections with institutional church life and Orthodox dogma. The gap that has arisen in the cultural memory of Russian society remains unbridged to this day. Modern Russian religiosity is dominated by external features - wearing a cross, irregularly attending divine services, while familiarity with the doctrine and basic tenets of the Orthodox faith is still at an extremely low level. The reconstruction of the system of religious education serves to restore the lost religious culture. In recent years in Russia the number of seminaries and departments of religious studies in the philosophical faculties of leading universities, such as Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov, Saratov State University. N.G. Chernyshevsky and others. << Back: Contemporary Western Christianity (Counter-Reformation. The period of religious wars (XVII-XVIII centuries). The crisis of Catholicism in the 19th century. Modern Catholicism: traditions and innovations. Directions of Protestantism, their emergence and development. Mormons) >> Forward: Islam (Muhammad, the main sources of Islam. Sacred texts and laws of Islam. Early history of Islam. Shiites and Sunnis. History of Islam in the 9th-19th centuries. Islamic sects (Ismailism, Sufism, Wahhabism, Bahaism). Modern Islam: paths of modernization and fundamentalism) Author: Anikin D.A.
▪ General hygiene. Lecture notes ▪ Enterprise economy. Lecture notes
The existence of an entropy rule for quantum entanglement has been proven
09.05.2024 Mini air conditioner Sony Reon Pocket 5
09.05.2024 Energy from space for Starship
08.05.2024
▪ Repair satellite to be launched into orbit ▪ The roof of the world starts to leak ▪ The main reason for being overweight
▪ section of the site Security and safety. Article selection ▪ article For the construction of track car models. Tips for a modeller ▪ article The leaves of which plant can withstand a weight of up to 30 kg? Detailed answer ▪ article Siberian apple tree. Legends, cultivation, methods of application ▪ article Means for removing corns. Simple recipes and tips
Home page | Library | Articles | Website map | Site Reviews
www.diagram.com.ua |
We recommend interesting articles Section 
See other articles Section 
Latest news of science and technology, new electronics:
All languages of this page