"РУЖНЫЙ" ВОПРОС В СЕЛЬСКИХ ПРИХОДАХ ЕПАРХИЙ АЗИАТСКОЙ РОССИИ В НАЧАЛЕ XX В
Authors: Д.Н. БЕЛЯНИН 
Published: November 2024

В статье рассматривается проблема обеспечения приходского сельского духовенства натуральным довольствием - ругой. Автор проанализировал и использовал широкий массив опубликованных и неопубликованных материалов, на основе которых можно говорить о наличии конфликта на материальной почве между приходским духовенством и крестьянством во многих сельских приходах за Уралом. Нередко сельские общества выплачивали ружный хлеб сельскому приходскому духовенству нерегулярно или же отказывались делать это совсем. Хотя такие отказы крестьян содержать причты за счет руги были отмечены еще во второй половине XIX в., именно в начале XX в. они стали массовым явлением. Такое поведение крестьян не приводило к каким-либо санкциям со стороны властей против них. Катализатором этого процесса можно считать революционное движение в 1905-1907 гг. Хотя нет оснований полагать, что в большинстве приходов за Уралом крестьянство не желало содержать причты, однако автор делает вывод, что отказы крестьян платить ругу были тенденцией, отражавшей конфликт крестьянства и приходского духовенства.

The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of church periodicals - diocesan bulletins, the analysis of which made it possible to form an objective view of the problem of providing parish clergy with the payment of ruga in the dioceses of Asian Russia in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Documents from the archives of Western and Eastern Siberia served as an additional source of information. Ruga was an annual payment by the peasants to the clergy, mostly in grain, but sometimes by agreement - in money. It was one of the sources of support for the rural clergy beyond the Urals in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. As a rule, when opening a new parish, the peasants drew up a verdict, according to which they undertook to support the clergy, including the annual payment of the ruga in grain. By the beginning of the 20th century, cases of peasants refusing to pay the ruga to the parish priests became more frequent. These refusals were not uncommon, although, obviously, they did not cover the majority of villages beyond the Urals. It should be noted that refusals to pay the ruga in the vast majority of cases did not lead to any sanctions from the authorities against the peasants. It was not uncommon for peasants to pay the ruga not in full or irregularly. Also, peasants often allocated lands of little use for agriculture to the clergy instead of ruga, and then either refused to pay the ruga at all or began to pay it irregularly. The reluctance of peasants to pay the ruga could be due to a number of reasons: the peasants’ belonging to the schism, the desire of peasants to reduce the costs of maintaining clergy, crop failures, in some cases, the economic weakness of peasants, or some specific accidental circumstances. There were many cases when peasants paid the ruga properly and in full, but there were also frequent cases when the ruga was poorly paid or not paid at all. The facts of peasants’ refusal to pay the ruga were evidence of the emerging conflict between the peasantry and rural clergy in the early 20th century in the dioceses beyond the Urals.