The role of the Black Hundreds in exacerbating interethnic and interconfessional relationships in Volhynia in 1906-1916

Abstract

The article analyzes the role of the Black Hundreds in complicating interethnic and interconfessional relationships in the Volyn province at the beginning of the 20th century. On the basis of impartial research of materials of periodicals, the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the development of the Black-Hundred movement in the studied period was determined. After all, the growth of the number of Protestants and Roman Catholics negatively affected the image of the Orthodox Church, which was supported by the authorities of imperial power, therefore, and she was actively involved and discriminated against. It was clarified that such activities of the Black Hundreds were carried out in the context of the imperial government's policy of that time, and was aimed at outright discrimination against representatives of other ethnic groups and denominations, which, in turn, contributed to the complication of the so-far not simple interethnic relations in the region. Despite the squall of groundless accusations that were published on the pages of the Black-Hundred publications, neither the imperial authorities nor the Black Hundreds at that time failed to provoke a clear ethnic-political confrontation in Volhynia, but these processes found their expression in the future, but their activities negatively affected the socio- the political situation in the region and contributed to the exacerbation of the interethnic confrontation that was deliberately provoked by the authorities of the imperial authorities. These far-sighted plans of the Russian government had a very specific aim to carry out a series of measures aimed at Russification of the region, and those ethnic groups that opposed it and preserved their national identity to discredit in the eyes of the general population. As a result, this contributed to the intensification of interethnic and interdenominational relations in the region, which adversely affected the socio-political development of the region.