St. Tikhon’s University Review . Series II: History. Russian Church History

The article deals with the projects of the arranging of the supreme church management. The author makes the analysis of the projects on the base of a sources study. Some of them were introduced to a scientific historiography for the first time. The author investigates the projects’ creators’ estimates of the synod’s management and their proposals of its reorganization.

church-state relation, supreme church authority, the Holy Synod, the chief procurator of the Holy Synod, the Local Council, st. hierarch Filaret of Moscow

Bezhanidze Georgii

The article is devoted to the scientifically-theological activity of Russian scientists connected with the Sacred Earth, to bible, liturgical and church historical researches. In the attention center - teachers and graduates of the Russian ecclesiastical higher school from four Ecclesiastical academies of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev and Kazan. The Sacred Earth has the special significance for the life of each Christian. In Russia since the first centuries of Christianity the link with Palestine was inseparable from the Russian belief and the piety of our ancestors and appertained to government questions. For the XlX-th century when cultural, spiritual and intellectual collisions between Russia and the western civilization had led to the comprehension of its continuous historical kindred with the Orthodox East, the Sacred Earth was taking the special significance for Russian Orthodoxy. Teachers and graduates of the ecclesiastical higher school, representatives of «professional» theology, felt a special responsibility and tried to comprehend this relation at the actual scientifically-theological level.

Palestine, Russian ecclesiastical academies, Bible, liturgical and church historical researches

Sukhova Nataliia

The article covers one of little-investigated episodes of the preparation of an orthodox parish’s reform in Russian Empire on the eve of the revolution of 1917. In the center of an author’s attention - the work of the Special conference for the project’s development of an orthodox parish. The Special conference was established at the St. Synod in 1907 and continued the works of the Preceding the Local council Office on a parish question. The author studies the circumstances of a conference’s establishment, its structure, the mechanism of functioning and the basic features of the generated project of an orthodox parish, guardianships and brotherhoods.

the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, pre-council discussions, the reform of an orthodox parish, special conference at the Synod, bodies of a parish management, parish property, I. S. Berdnikov, A. A. Papkov

Beglov Aleksandr

The article covers the study’s periods of the social service of the Russian Orthodox Church from the end ofXIX century to the beginning ofXX century, the discussion about the history’s research of the social service of the Orthodox Church in the historiography of the XX century, the general levels of the social service in the same period. The author stresses that the social service of The Orthodox Church in that period got realized in unselfish and unpaid social activity.

phases of social service of the Russian Orthodox Church, establishment of charity communities, parish charity, charity

Hegumen Luka (Stepanov I.)

The article covers various aspects of the Stalin’s attitude to the religious policy for the period of the Soviet state’s establishment in 1917-1923. The author investigates the Stalin’s views as the people’s commissar of nationalities’ affairs on the religious problem in 1917-1921; his role in the campaign of a church property’s expropriation in 1922, in «The Patriarch Tikhon’s Case» and in the moving to the «religious New Economic Policy» in 1923.

J.V. Stalin, new economic policy, the Political bureau, central committee rkp (b), the Russian Orthodox Church, confessions of faith, clergy, Patriarch Tikhon, antichurch campaign, the expropriation of a church property, «religious new economic policy»

Kurliandskii Igor'

The author introduces for the first time into a scientific turnover three documents of known church and public figure P.V Verhovskiy. The documents have a personal origin and inform about the little studied period of his life and activity and about some origins of his acts and views after the revolution in 1917. The publication of Yu. A. Birjukov.

P. V. Verhovskiy, the Russian Orthodox Church, state-church relations, clergy, repressions, «the counterrevolutionary organisation of Prince Ukhtomsky», the sources of a personal origin, archival investigative case

Biriukova Iuliia

The author publishes the documents of 1926-1927 from the Central archive of FSB RF illustrating the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church towards Lubenskiy and Grigorianskiy Divisions, internal contradictions between the dissenters and their dependence on the GPU-OGPU organs.

The Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, lubenskiy division, grigorianskiy division, WCS, a bishops’ council, autocephaly, GPU USSR, the secret department of the OGPU

Mazyrin Aleksandr, priest