“DIARY OF AN INORODTSY MISSIONARY”: LIFE OF THE KASLI BASHKIR ORPHANAGE INMATES IN THE NOTES OF AN ORTHODOX CLERGYMAN

Abstract

The article analyzes educational activities of the Kasli Bashkir Orphanage, established in 1891 by the Ekaterinburg Committee of the Orthodox Missionary Society. The source for the analysis was the “Diary of an inorodtsy missionary”, published in 1911–1913 in the diocesan newspaper. The diary’s author is Archpriest Alexander Stepanovich Miropolsky, who was educated at the missionary department of the Kazan Theological Academy. On the basis of the priest’s diary, the strategy of his educational and missionary activity is determined. Miropolsky, like many other missionaries, was confident in the beneficial power of Christian ideas, the truth of which he tried to convey to the Orphanage inmates. In polemical conversations with Bashkir children, he tried to refute the notion that had developed in the Muslim environment about Christianity as superstition and polytheism and to prove the inconsistency of Islam. The results of Miropolsky’s polemical missionary work among the pupils were minor. His diary tells of only one case of the conversion of a Bashkir teenager to Christianity. It is revealed that the Orthodox clergy of the Ekaterinburg diocese pursued a very cautious policy towards the Muslims of the region. Despite the general line of Russification and Christianization of non-Russian peoples and the sharpness of polemical rhetoric, no coercive actions were allowed to convert Bashkir children to Orthodoxy. The Kasli Bashkir Orphanage can be attributed to the acculturation model of an educational institution. Its inmates were introduced to Russian culture, preserving the identity and faith of their fathers.