The Russian Imperial Acculturation Policy Targeting “Foreigners” and the Participation of the Russian Orthodox Church in It at the Turn of the 19th — 20th Centuries (Based on the Materials of the Orenburg Diocese)

Abstract

The article is aimed at solving a following significant problem of modern historical science: determination of the content and use by the imperial authorities of the Church as a mechanism for implementing this policy. The authors analyze the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church as part of the state system of the Russian Empire, which undertook the task of not only spreading Christianity among non-Russian and non-Orthodox peoples, but also the task of involving them in the all-Russian cultural, civil, economic and political space. Based on the analysis of materials on the Orenburg diocese history, we suppose an attempt to reconstruct the mechanisms of economic and social development of the “foreigners” population of the Southern Urals, used by the Russian Orthodox Church with the support of the state. The methodological basis of the study is the modernization theory, which examines “acculturation” as a methodology of research into the interaction and mutual influence of “foreign cultures”. At present, historiography lacks special works that consider the Russian Orthodox Church as a necessary institution contributing to the acculturation of the subjects of the empire living on its outskirts. The main result of this study is the identification of the nature of the Russian Orthodox Church's activities targeting “foreigners” and their involvement in Russian cultural space. These activities include traditional missionary mechanisms on the example of the Orenburg Diocese, which at the turn of the 19th — 20th centuries included the Turgai and Ural regions with a significant number of nomadic and semi-nomadic auls. We generalized acculturation as Missions, established the degree of their effectiveness in terms of the formation of loyal layers of the autochthonous population of the Kyrgyz (Kazakh) Steppe.