Documents on construction of rural churches as a historical source (Tomsk Province data)

The article is devoted to a small episode from the history of Church building in the Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century, namely, the history of construction of a temple in a distant taiga village of Tomsk Province, Mitrofanovka. Narrower, its subject relates to the problem of the cognitive potential of a specific type of sources, documents on the construction of orthodox temples-, preserved in the funds of spiritual consistories. Mass migration from European Russia, the policy of government in the “support of the spiritual needs” of settlers, complicated ethno-confessional geography of the region caused very rich and versatile composition of these documents. So one can talk not only about the extent to which such sources reflect the objective side of Church building and Russian peasants’ participation in it, but also about these documents and peasants’ appeals they include as a specific product of specific social relations. At the practical level, such an approach also contributes something new to the understanding of the “religious landscape” of Russia and Siberia in particular: the complex and productive social network that emerged around the sacral places of official and popular Orthodoxy. The construction of the temple in the village of Mitrofanovka caused the collision of interests of many parties: settlers and old residents, taiga peasants and Tomsk officials, the Consistory and the Synod. All of them demonstrated different behavior strategies; common, however, was the use of the argument associated with the Old Believers’ threat. But if for officials this argument was central, not every peasant appeals, despite their dramatic character, even mentioned the old believers, which should highlight the contradictory nature of the coexistence of the two denominations. The case of Mitrofanovka can be adequately evaluated only as a single whole, by involving additional materials from periodicals and legislation as a context. A coherent group of documents creates a picture of a dense social interaction and Church building seems to be a key factor in the formation of a particular social network, where information and financial resources circulated. The success of its functioning depended on many factors, among which the potential of communication was one of the most important. But at the same time (and in exchange for) this network reshaped the traditional structure of peasant society establishing vertical communication and intensifying horizontal communication, making confessional behavior of some peasants more conscious and revealing indifference to the official Church of others.

Keywords

Authors

References