THE RELIGIOUS POLICY OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE GOVERNMENT
FROM THE 1860S TILL THE EARLY 1880S

Plotkin Vitaly Anatolyevich, Candidate of historical sciences, associate professor, director of Kuznetsk Institute of Information technologies and Administration (affiliated branch of Penza State University), VIT69@bk.ru

94(4/9).03.29.

The article analyses the liberalization of religious policy of the governmental authorities of the Russian Empire in the 60s and early 80s of the nineteenth century. It examines the gradual vesting of civil and religious rights in the Old Believers. For example, the Senate repealed all proceedings in which the dissenters, wedded according to the rites of the Orthodox Eastern Church, but raising children in the Old Belief, were sentenced to prison, with their children to be given to members of the Orthodox Church. Dissenters’ children were admitted to public schools. Along with the liberalization of religious policy in 1870s there were passed a number of decrees which augmented the degree of responsibility of local authorities for letting the Schism spread. The Government paid particular attention to considering the poor living conditions of parish priests, which made them unable to resist the further spreading of sects. An important step in the religious policy of the state was the Law on "Granting dissenters civil rights." As a result of its adoption the position of the most of the old Russian sects was improved quite substantially. Thus, the
reign of Alexander II is characterized by deviation from the punitive and prohibitory policy, though in relation to the Old Believers the new emperor’s policy remained half-hearted and not quite liberal.

religious rights, dissenters, Old Believers, classification of sects and heresies, tempting into schism, parish priests (clergy), legislation on dissenters, sectarianism, liberalization of religious policy.