PALESTINIAN READINGS ON THE NORTH-WESTERN MULTI-ETHNIC PERIPHERY OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN THE POLITICS OF STATE AND CHURCH IN THE LATE 1890s - EARLY 1910s

Abstract

The article investigates the role of the Palestinian readings in the politics of state and church in the Olonets diocese over the first fifteen years of the Olonets branch of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society’s activity. The identification of settlements, where readings were organized, allows us to conclude that all seven districts of the Olonets diocese became the object of religious and educational work of the Olonets branch of the Society, however the readings were mainly arranged in cities and some villages, located not very far from highroads and waterways. The Council of the Society was satisfied with the achieved successes, but the Olonets branch of the Society pursued the idea of a widespread expansion of Palestinian readings, taking into account traits of the settlement structure of the region and its social structure as well as the formation of the school system, completed by 1909-1913. The language barrier, which was an obstacle for communication of the Karelians and the Vepsians with priests and teachers, did not become a problem for organizers of readings on the Holy Land. The branch failed to achieve an all-round spread of Palestinian readings due to weakening of ties with the Council of the Society during the First Russian Revolution. Faced with the necessity to expand missionary work on the multi-ethnic periphery, the church and the state incorporated Palestinian Readings into the religious and moral ones, performed general management of them, and solving problems on its expansion and popularization with the assistance of the zemstvo. Palestinian readings became a tool not so much to achieve a goal that was too remote for the Olonets diocese and concerned to the formation of the favorable for the elite public opinion around the policy of creating of the «Russian Palestine», but to give stability of donations collecting in favor of the Society, and to keep the multi-ethnic periphery in the orbit of the Russian Empire by establishing the Orthodoxy, awakening of religious and patriotic feelings among the laity.