The community and the church in the North of Russia on the eve of the Peter's reforms

The aim of the presented article is broadening and deepening regional and chronological aspects of the initial phase of the church reform of Peter the Great, main lines of the North-Russian communities with episcopal power and church-state relations at the level of the Ustuzhskaya diocese. To achieve this aim, the task is to trace the restrictions in the foundations of the church and of the provincial government and self-government by the ecclesiastical authorities. Research methodology is based on the integration of objective and subjective factors of social evolution, the ratio of macro- and micro-history, institutional (State, Church, and Community in the town and village), and historical and anthropological approaches to the study of the past, showing mentality of the people of that era. Problem field of the study is accounting the analysis of the all spectrum of the Church-State and Church-Country relations in 1680-1690-ies - early 1700-ies. It required to articulate more clearly the person and basic directions of activity of the first Ustug's archbishops - Gelasija (1682) and Alexander (1684-1699), that for a long time remained in the shadow of majestic shapes of the most famous church hierarch of the Russian North - Athanasios Kholmogory. The material basis of the research were both published and archives sources from the regional and federal funds: the acts of the Church hierarchy, "chelobytni" of the urban and rural residents, income-expense book, elective and instruction "memories" (pamyti). The analysis of the extensive census books of the Ustjug's diocese of the 1696/97, stored in the Russian State archive of ancient documents (RGADA) in Moscow is of great importance. In the course of the study, the author came to the conclusions that the Russian North has long been the practice of the control of the parish community (represented by the elected chiefs) over their temples: secular elections priests ('popov'), giving out land and clergymen for their sector, identifying other sources of their material status, control over the trade and fishing, and credit activity of the parish clergy. This experience was used by the first Ustjug's bishops, and soon by the State against itself. Conducted in 1697 a massive description of Ustuzhskaya diocese was based on experience of the similar revision (auditing) in 1686-1688. The article revealed not only the nature of the Church and Government confiscation of parish churches, but also compromise the State regulation of the church-country conflicts on Ustug in 1680-1690.

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