THE QUANTITATIVE COMPOSITION OF RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONSAND CHURCHES OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCHIN THE EASTERN AND WESTERN SIBERIA IN 1960-1970S

Abstract

The article is devoted to the comparative analysis of the quantitative composition of the Orthodox religious organizations, as well as to the unregistered religious communities, the clergy of the Eastern and Western Siberia. The study allows the identification of common and peculiar features of development of Orthodoxy in different regions of Siberia. The possibility to create a shared "picture of the Siberian Orthodox" in Soviet time appears. The documents of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, which collected the reports of the commissioners of the Council for religious Affairs under the USSR Council of Ministers on the subjects of the RSFSR, are used. The author tells about different levels of development of Orthodoxy in different regions. Causes folding such a situation are allocated. They are both objective - such as the presence or absence of a diocesan center, and subjective ones -poor attention to remote, peripheral areas from the diocesan bishops, the lack of desire on the part of some of the orthodox clergyman to active missionary work, etc.