ASTRAKHAN’S ARMENIAN COMMUNITIES IN THE MID-18TH CENTURY: THE ANATOMY OF URBAN RELIGIOUS CONFLICT

The article concentrates on the religious policy of the Russian Empire in the Early Modern Time. It considers the conflict between Armenian Gregorian and Catholic communities in the town of Astrakhan, 1755–1760. The author traces the objective prerequisites of the conflict (confessional hostility, economic contradictions, and the desire of the community leaders to take a prominent place in relation to the Russian authorities in the center and in the region). Further, the study indicates the areas in which this conflict manifested itself most often — family relations, the choice of confession of children born in mixed marriages, inheritance of property. Finally, the typological nature of such conflicts is revealed, precisely their conditionality by ambiguous, tangled inter-confessional relations in the urban surrounding. The author concludes that the analyzed conflict was a particular case of urban social competition in the light of the complication of religious life noted in Astrakhan.