РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИИ «СОБСТВЕННОГО ВОСТОКА РОССИИ» В ЕПАРХИАЛЬНОЙ ПЕРИОДИЧЕСКОЙ ПЕЧАТИ ЗАПАДНОЙ СИБИРИ И СТЕПНОГО КРАЯ (ВТОРАЯ ПОЛОВИНА ХIХ - НАЧАЛО ХХ В.)
Authors: М.К. ЧУРКИН 
Published: November 2024

В статье выявляются основные «площадки» репрезентации дискурса азиатской периферии России как «собственного Востока», обосновываются факторы и условия формирования и трансляции собственнических представлений о восточных фронтирных территориях в публикациях епархиальной журнальной прессы. Утверждается, что в ситуации колонизационной экспансии окраин империи государство передоверяло церкви полномочия, связанные с реализацией своих коммуникативных функций в сфере культуртрегерства и допускало возможность прямого контакта РПЦ с различными группами населения Западной Сибири и Степного края. В этой системе координат священник являлся не только носителем религиозного знания, но и духовным пастырем для людей, оказавшихся в трудной жизненной ситуации. Констатируется, что в дискурсе епархиальной прессы отражено усиление влияния церкви на российское общество в условиях продвижения русской оседлости к восточным окраинам империи, а также функциональная готовность РПЦ к реализации сценариев культурной адаптации сибирского социума и участию в решении имперских задач, направленных на включение азиатской периферии в общеимперское пространство.

In the late 19th and early 21st centuries, there was a tendency to reveal socio-cultural components in the organization of Russia’s imperial space in theoretical and methodological renewal of humanitarian knowledge and historical science. It redirected researchers from describing iconic subjects of Russian history to assessing their internal structure and states, and turned them to the comprehension of discourses of power and society, in which the Russian Orthodox Church occupied a prominent place. It is significant that in the system of coordinates of the colonization process, agrarian development of the suburbs and the spread of Russian sedentarization in Western Siberia and the Steppe region, the Russian Orthodox Church was an important actor of social stability. In ensuring the comfort and security of existence of the society of the Asian periphery, the church, unlike the state, had great opportunities for direct contact with the flock, as a significant part of society in respect of which active religious-educational and missionary work was carried out. At the same time, the formation of perception in various strata of society of Western Siberia and the Steppe region, or the territories that were part of the area of agrarian and industrial development, as the lands that historically belonged to Russia was an important component of this activity. It manifested in discursive practices of representing the Asian periphery as “own East” in the pages of the regional diocesan press, which acquired a powerful ideological tension in jubilee years or in periods of increased military activity of the empire in the immediate area. It is established in the study that the intensive advancement of the Russian sedentarization deep into the so-called “own East” in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, as well as the agrarian and industrial development of Western Siberia and the Steppe region put the Russian Orthodox Church in a privileged position of an agent of influence. While the main sphere of activity of the secular authorities was the material sphere, including settling the population and organizing the administrative and political space, the functional duties of the church included cultural adaptation of Russians to the complex and mosaic in ethnic and confessional terms regional environment. In the process of these communications, the eastern suburbs formed and acquired distinct features of reception as Russia’s own territories, the possession of which legitimized the power of the autocrat and the triumph of Orthodoxy in pagan and non-Christian environments. In this regard, the involvement of the church in the discourse of “own East” provided the conservative segment of the Russian public movement and the authorities with a certain advantage in identifying the peripheral lands not as an object of colonization, but as native Russian territories that needed to be settled and incorporated into the all-imperial space.