STATE RELIGIOUS POLICY AND PROPERTY OF THE MONASTERIES OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH (LATE XVIII - EARLY XX CENTURY)

Abstract

The article examines the state policy on the monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church in the late XVIII - early XX centuries. It was also examined the Russian government’s secularization policy on church property, especially monastic landownership and peasants, leading to the liquidation of many monasteries, and the remaining ones were deprived of their main sources of income and placed in economic dependence on the state. The monasteries that continued to exist were divided into three classes, the size of their funding and the staffing norms of the monks were set. All other monasteries that did not receive funding from the state became “regular” and could only exist at their own expense. During this period, the number of monasteries almost halved. The size of their land also decreased.

It was found out that in the post-reform period the financial situation of the monasteries improved significantly, their sources of income were analyzed. They started becoming large landowners again, thanks to which they could significantly expand economic activity, the financial and economic position of the monasteries became quite strong. In particular, attention is focused on the economic activities of the Kyiv-Brotherhood Epiphany Monastery of the Kyiv Diocese.

With the change of authorities in 1917, there were changes in the attitude of the state to Orthodox monasteries. The first decrees of the Soviet government concerning the issues of confiscation of monastic land holdings and property, their nationalization are analyzed. Monasteries and church communities were deprived of property rights and legal personality. All property of religious institutions, including monasteries, was transferred to the People’s Commissariat of Social Security. In the vast majority of Orthodox monasteries, the Soviet authorities turned them into economic objects or subjected them to complete destruction.