Materials on the History of the Orthodox Church in Siberia and the Far East in 1986

Abstract

The article provides various statistical data on the history of Orthodoxy in Siberia and the Far East in 1986. The information presented in the documents of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (SARF) is interesting from the point of view of Orthodox history. On the one hand, this is a time of perestroika and glasnost, when information on religious teachings, among other things, was widely covered; on the other hand, not all statistics on religious processes were reflected in available scientific publications. The research is based on the fundamental principles of historical science (objectivity and historicism), general scientific and special scientific methods of cognition. We draw a conclusion that the documents in question are the richest statistical source on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROCh) in Siberia and the Far East. The analyzed statistics complement the information available today. The data presented indicate the uneven development of Orthodoxy in different regions at the time under consideration. In some subjects of the RSFSR in Siberia and the Far East, there were quite a lot of active religious buildings of the Orthodox Church and clergy, in some there were few of them. From our point of view, this is due to the presence or absence of diocesan leadership in the regions, the number of the population, and the peculiarities of the development of Orthodox religiosity in the Soviet post-war period. The importance of further work with sources within the subject field of the study is noted. We focus on the necessity of comparative research in order to reconstruct the most comprehensive history of Orthodoxy in Siberia and the Far East.