Национальный вопрос на страницах «Литовских епархиальных ведомостей»: 1860–1880-е годы

Abstract

In 1893 polemics unfolded on the pages of “Russkoe Obozrenie” (“Russian Review”) conservative journal related to the problem of russification of the North-West territories of the Russian Empire. Committed to clerical traditionalism, Father Joseph (Fudel) condemned the politics of administrative russification of the region, comparing the priests of “militant” type to Father John of Kronstadt. Meanwhile, when one refers to the history of “russification” of the Western territory of in the 1860s, it becomes obvious that the process didn’t have exclusively the bureaucratic nature. The “Vilno Consensus” was part of the post-reform social upsurge, and the clergy could not stay away from it. The complexity of church-public issues in the region was reflected on the pages of regional periodicals, including church ones. Founded in Vilno in 1863, the “Litovskie Eparchialniye Vedomosti” bulletin in the early years strictly adhered to the “system” of M.N. Muraviev and fully complied with the nationalist discourse of the time. Still later they published materials condemning the “extremes” of Vilno “russification group”. In the early 1880s the national pathos of the bulletin intensified - and acquired bureaucratic nuances.