DIVERSITY AND UNITY IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE’S “FOREIGN FAITHS”

Abstract

In this article, which is an abridged version of the monograph’s chapter [Paul W. Werth, The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia (Oxford, 2014)], the author examines the history of the organization of the system of administration of “foreign confessions” — non-Orthodox religious communities in Russia in the last third of the 18th — mid 19th century. According to the author, this system, which he calls “the multi-confessional establishment”, was flexible and included significant elements of compromise. On the one hand, with the undoubted primacy of the Orthodox Church, most of the non-Orthodox confessions were granted, in one way or another, the status of state institutions. This strengthened their position, enabled their clergy to be involved in the processes of government and, at the same time, strengthened the internal unity of the Empire. On the other hand, as the imperial state apparatus developed and a tendency towards unification became more prominent, from the second half of the 19th century onwards the supreme authorities began to worry that the integration of different groups through religious institutions might threaten state cohesion. Nevertheless, until the collapse of the Russian monarchy the autocracy never succeeded in developing an alternative model for the administration of religious affairs.