Missionary historical narrative and the circumstances of its formation (based on materials from the Far Eastern diocesan press at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries)

The object of this research period is the Far Eastern church press. The subject of the research is the missionary historical narrative. The purpose of the study is to reconstruct the main structural elements of the Far Eastern missionary historical narrative and to investigate the circumstances of its formation. The research is based on historical articles and notes published on the pages of the Kamchatka’s and Blagoveshchensk’s diocesan seal in 1894-1901. According to the author, the texts considered in the study are united by a common historical memory, which crystallizes in three important themes for the Russian population of the region. The first of them contains a story about the first expansion of the Russians to the Amur in the middle of the 17th century. He substantiates the historical justice and predetermination of the annexation of the Amur Region to Russia in the middle of the 19th century, and also forms the image of the lost Russian Orthodox territory, which was taken away by force from the Chinese Empire. The second plot concerns the annexation of the Amur Region to Russia in 1858 and logically complements the first. Thus, an explanatory system is being built in which the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church exercise their historical right to return the lost Christian territories. This process looks like the implementation of some divine plan and is inevitable. The third plot tells about the participation of the Russian Empire in the suppression of Yihetuan Movement. According to this part of the narrative, progress towards China is historically justified, obligatory, and religiously necessary. In addition, this interpretation model contains an optimistic view of the possibility of further expansion to the east, an integral part of which is the spread of Christianity. The author comes to the conclusion that the process of the formation of a historical narrative actively fits into the historical context and foreign policy environment. The publications of 1894-1897 (the first and second plots) contain only the justification of the historical legitimacy of the Russian presence in the Amur region. But then, after the suppression of the Yihetuan Movement of 1901 (the third plot) we find the justification for the possible further expansion of the territory of the Russian Empire, on which the Orthodox Church is far from the last. Taking into account the above, the author comes to the conclusion that the activity of the Russian Orthodox Church should be studied not from the point of view of its complete subordination to the state apparatus, but as a separate social institution, whose representatives are active. and equal participants in the processes of building an imperial state. This thesis is confirmed by the analysis of diocesan periodicals.

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