Christianization of Siberian Inhabitants as Part of the Russian Empire's Peripheral Policy (Between the 18th and the Early 20th Century)
Authors:   Irkutsk State University, Dameshek L. M. 
Published: December 2023

An important historical feature of Russia was the Europe-Asia divide factor. The two parts of the country differed considerably in terms of geography, climate, infrastructure, distance from borders and from the center, ethnic composition and population denomination. The recognition of the imperial heterogeneity requires historiographers to take a differentiated approach to studying and evaluating imperial peripheral policy. This notion covers the important areas of regional politics, from the imperial ideology and practices in the regional dimension to the establishment of the internal and external boundaries of a region and the dynamics of administrative organization as well as administrative activities within a given territorial space. In addition to administrative and judicial institutions, a unified monetary system, communications, taxes, the state language and the Russian Orthodox Church played a huge role in the development of authority in the region. All the religious activities of the government in the eastern part of the Empire were marked by the great importance of the Russian Orthodox Church, especially its missionary work. The latter, according to the official authorities, “revived” only in the nineteenth century, with the appearance of new figures of inorodic education and a number of “public” organizations patronized by the authorities (the Russian Bible Society, the Society for the Distribution of Holy Scripture in Russia, the Orthodox Missionary Society). The Orthodox Missionary Society was headed by the famous Aleutian-Kamchatian missionary and, from 1868, Metropolitan Innocent Veniaminov of Moscow and Kolomna. The Empress was proclaimed the Society's patroness. Diocesan bishops headed the society’s local branches, established in all 11 Siberian dioceses. About 50 % of the Society's funds went to support the Siberian missions each year. Much attention was paid to the training of missionaries of local nationalities in seminaries and at the universities of Kazan and St Petersburg, while the Synod officially allowed worship in local languages in Siberian dioceses. Conventions of Orthodox missionaries played an important role in spreading Orthodoxy as a means of integrating the aboriginal people in the east of the empire. By the end of the 19th century, the number of dioceses in the region had risen to 12, and the number of churches in the Irkutsk diocese had increased by 46 %, in the Tobolsk diocese by 52 % and in the Tomsk diocese by 45 %. 88 new parishes had been opened in the churches of the Siberian dioceses, 33 of which were financed entirely by the state’s treasury. At the same time, eight Orthodox missions were permanently active in the vast territory of Siberia and the Far East. The number of missionary priests had increased rapidly. A small number of missions are found only in the northern territories of Siberia – Berezovsky and Turukhansky districts. Meanwhile, missions like those in Altai, Irkutsk and Trans-Baikal are stepping up their activities. The Russian state's confessional policy towards the Siberian "indigenous peoples" was an inseparable part of the imperial policy in Siberia as a whole.