Translated material
Orthodox education in Russia
Fifteen years ago, all educational structures of the Russian Orthodox Church (hereinafter referred to as the Russian Orthodox Church) were represented by three theological schools - the Moscow and Leningrad academies and seminaries and the Odessa Seminary. In the vast country there was no other opportunity to receive a systematic Orthodox religious education other than studying in these very sparsely populated institutions. All other forms of it were prohibited. Private initiatives were suppressed by the authorities - it was forbidden to teach religious rites (let alone theology) even to your own children.
Currently, the number of educational institutions created by various divisions of the Russian Orthodox Church cannot be counted. Their status and the form of education they provide are very diverse. The Russian Orthodox Church and government agencies have moved from confrontation to cooperation, including in the educational sphere. All this forces us to analyze the educational activities of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Sunday schools
The most common type of church educational institutions and the basis for the entire Orthodox educational system are Sunday schools. These schools should reveal to children and adolescents the basics of religious doctrine, help them master the Bible, and give an idea about the main church holidays and saints. This work can be called catechetical, or doctrinal. In modern Russian practice, the programs of such schools are designed, as a rule, for a year or two of study (or three years for very young children). Mostly children of parishioners study in these schools; about a quarter of the total number of students are adults. Children learn like a school, sitting at their desks and listening to the teachings of the teacher. In adult groups, training is structured more like a “club” - with tea parties and long conversations.
The Sunday school system is currently in decline. Most of them were created by priests or Orthodox enthusiasts in the first half of the 1990s, during the “religious boom.” However, after two or three years, religious fervor waned, and the number of children and adults in Sunday schools fell sharply [1] . Another reason for the decline in student numbers was the lack of qualified teachers. Although various dioceses have tried to establish a system for their training since 1992, these projects have largely failed. The big problem turned out to be finding people who have the strength, time and interest to teach for a meager salary or for free. Not all Orthodox enthusiasts or priests burdened with a lot of work could engage in difficult teaching work for a long time. In 1997, at the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, church authorities, who noticed this trend, obliged local bishops to streamline catechetical work. Departments for religious education were created in almost all dioceses, and many provincial bishops issued orders for the mandatory opening of Sunday schools in all parishes.
According to official data of the Russian Orthodox Church for 2000, in 53 dioceses that submitted reports (and there are more than 70 in total), the total number of Sunday schools exceeded 2,600, with more than 80 thousand children and about 30 thousand adults studying there [2] . However, the secretaries of the diocesan departments that submit these reports to Moscow admit in personal communications that, as a rule, they put the number of Sunday schools out of thin air, since they do not have the opportunity or desire to check how many of them actually work.
Now approximately only one parish out of six has a really functioning Sunday school. As a rule, they are created at large city churches. The number of students in such a school rarely exceeds thirty.
The future of Sunday schools looks rather bleak. According to our observations, in an average diocese (100–120 parishes) there are, as a rule, no more than five to seven active priests, around whom “life is in full swing” and there are various Orthodox initiatives. A natural part of such a parish is Sunday school. In other cases, if there is a school, it is mainly “for formality”. According to the head of the Missionary Department of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop John (Popov), Sunday schools have generally “outlived their usefulness” and in the future they will need to be transformed into Orthodox educational centers (in secular terms, “clubs of interests”), designed not so much for children, how much for adults [3] . It is difficult to say how fair such a sentence is. Other Christian denominations have successfully used the form of Sunday schools to train a new generation of parishioners. The author does not have the necessary data for comparison in Russia, but in Ukraine the indicators are as follows: in terms of the ratio of the number of Sunday schools to the number of parishes, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) is inferior to Greek Catholics by a quarter, and to Roman Catholics, Baptists and Adventists by half [4] .
Shelters
In the last three to four years, orphanages that are created at large monasteries and some churches have become very popular. Currently in Russia (according to official data from the dioceses) there are more than ten of them, and approximately the same number operate unofficially. As a rule, these are small establishments designed for 10–30 people. It is believed that homeless children gather there and are fed and educated there. About the first such shelter (it is combined with a nursing home) in the village. Saraktash of the Orenburg region has been written a lot, he enjoys well-deserved fame in the Church. However, its copies seem less successful.
These establishments have an uncertain legal status. Often it is not street children who end up there, but children from poor religious families, which causes frequent conflicts with relatives: not all parents agree with the monks’ intentions to “educate the young generation,” many do not want their children to be used in agricultural or repair and restoration work. Often the clergy is also critical of monastic shelters, at least in their current state. One of the leaders of the Kazan diocese, for example, indignantly told the author about a large local monastery, “which does not educate children, but turns them into little bandits. The monks take advantage of the boys, don’t teach them anything, but from time to time they take them to Disneyland Paris.” At the same time, the idea of setting up shelters is attractive to sponsors, for whom monastery leaders paint idyllic pictures. The last and largest of these institutions was a shelter opened in October 2000 for 200 people at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, created for some reason with funds from the Ministry of Railways.
Theological schools and pastoral courses
The rapid growth in the number of parishes in the late 1980s - the first half of the 1990s (up to 40% per year) revealed an acute shortage of people skilled in church specialties. There was a chronic shortage of educated clergy - even before perestroika, only a third of them had a seminary education. The situation was even worse with competent psalm-readers, regents, and Sunday school teachers. At the same time, thousands of Orthodox enthusiasts sought to help the church. As a result, many dioceses began to open one- and two-year theological schools and various courses - pastoral, psalm-reading, regency or regency icon painting. They were taught, as a rule, by priests of the diocese who had an academic education (often the bishop himself), as well as invited teachers from local universities. One of the main considerations when creating theological schools was that training a priest locally (albeit in an accelerated manner) is much cheaper than sending him hundreds of kilometers to a seminary and paying for his education there.
In the mid-1990s, as the educational and material base of theological schools and courses strengthened, some of them began to turn into seminaries. Of the 25 seminaries that opened after 1988, 16 were converted from theological schools. However, 35 schools continue to exist even now. Some of them conduct training in a three- and even four-year program, which involves their further transformation into a seminary. In addition, there are at least two dozen courses and schools that are intended for the laity to acquire church specialties. In general, these courses cope with their mission - to close the gap in the training system for church officials, but the level of education they offer is still quite low, which does not suit either the diocesan leadership or serious applicants.
Seminaries
Seminaries are the main link in the Orthodox education system. All other elements of its system may be absent, but it cannot do without seminaries, where future priests receive their basic education. At the beginning of 1988 in the USSR, for more than eight thousand parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church, there were only three very small seminaries. Now there are 28 of them. In most of them, the course of study takes four years, although since 1999 a reform has been launched with the aim of switching to a five-year duration of study. The process of studying in seminaries itself is not unified. In addition to the standard curriculum approved by the Curriculum Committee, most seminaries teach something different. The inner spirit of the seminaries varies greatly. Back in Soviet times, there was a saying: “They work in Odessa, they pray in Moscow, and they study in Leningrad.” Currently, the picture is much more varied: there are openly liberal seminaries (Kostroma, St. Petersburg), strongholds of fundamentalists (Ekaterinburg, Sretenskaya), and a special seminary for missionaries (Belgorod). In Ukraine, at a distance of one hundred kilometers, there are educational institutions as different in ideology as the Lutsk Seminary, imbued with the spirit of Ukrainian statehood and educating white (married) rural clergy, and the Pochaev Seminary, cultivating a Russified version of monasticism.
The selection of students for the seminary is carried out on a competitive basis. Although the competition is currently lower than in the early 1990s, it ranges from two and a half people per place at the St. Petersburg Seminary to four people per place at Lutsk. True, the preservation of the competition is to a large extent due to the fact that seminaries, suffering due to a chronic lack of funds, are slowly reducing the number of students. In addition, the growth rate of parishes dropped sharply compared to the previous five years, and by the end of the 1990s, the personnel shortage in the dioceses had been largely eliminated. This, of course, does not mean that all the clergy have received the proper professional training (30–40% of priests do not have it), but only a few bishops are able to force an already serving priest with a family burden to go to study. At the same time, not all seminary graduates become priests. A significant part of them (20-30%) choose a different path in life - by their own free will or by the decision of the diocesan authorities, who refused to ordain the graduate. Only a small part of them will work in diocesan and parish structures - the rest, it turns out, simply received an education at church expense. Many of them go to seminary to avoid military service. Seminary leaders do not yet have the ability to combat this phenomenon. There are few applicants with military experience. In addition, as the rector of one of the provincial seminaries explained to the author, it is preferable to take young people immediately after school - “before they have time to learn all the sins at once in the army.”
Discipline in seminaries is a serious issue. Oddly enough, the “Bursat” traditions have largely been transferred to our time. According to the most conservative estimates, more than 10% of students are expelled for various offenses. The reason for this is the strict, almost barracks-like discipline that reigns in seminaries. On the other hand, perhaps it is necessary, since mainly “ordinary guys” from working and peasant families enter the seminary (children of the clergy among them are 10-15%, intellectuals - no more than 20%). They bring rather wild morals into the church educational institution, with which teachers preparing future priests have to vigorously fight. Thus, the teaching staff of the seminary is constantly balancing between two dangers - “loosening the reins” and “going too far”, and students find themselves highly dependent on the mood and character of their teachers. In the event of a conflict, the diocesan authorities, as a rule, take the side of the seminary leadership. For example, in the Stavropol seminary in 1992–94, students starved and froze for months without complaint in an unheated room until the rector was replaced, and in St. Petersburg, seminarians who protested in 1999–2000 against the ordination of an informer and grabber as a priest were expelled. At the same time, some of the teachers who supported them were fired.
Academy
The highest level of church education is the academy. During the Soviet era, there were two academies - in Moscow and Leningrad, now there are five - in Kyiv, Chisinau and Minsk. The main task of the academy is to train teaching staff for seminaries and religious schools. In addition, teachers and graduate students of the academy are engaged in church-scientific and theological activities. Currently, training at the academy is four years, but in the coming years, due to the reform of church education, it should become three years.
The academies are attended by graduates of seminaries or secular universities who are inclined towards teaching and scientific activities or who intend to occupy administrative positions in the Church in the future. An academic diploma gives its holder enormous advantages over other priests in any diocese. In fact, the academies cultivate the elite of the church. 4/5 of the representatives of the episcopate have academic diplomas, and those of them who did not have time to do this before their consecration strive to obtain them for reasons of prestige in the correspondence department (although sometimes this drags on for many years). In general, the number of students at academies is very small and depends on the position of Church leaders. In total, no more than 200 people study in the two Russian Academies, and in the Kiev Academy of the UOC MP (comparable to the Russian one in terms of the number of parishes) - 360. In the Minsk Academy of the Belarusian Exarchate - 21 people, and in the Chisinau Academy of the Orthodox Church in Moldova (and in Belarus , and in Moldova there are slightly more than a thousand parishes) - 137.
All academy graduates receive a diploma. Those who defend a dissertation also receive a candidate of theology degree. And only a few continue their studies in two-year graduate school at the academy.
Orthodox St. Tikhon's Theological Institute
An educational institution of a new type is the St. Tikhon's Theological Institute in Moscow, which since 1996 has the status of a church-wide educational institution. It was created in 1991 by a group of priests from the Church of St. Nicholas in Kuznetsy to train secular people in the professions necessary for the church. Gradually, one of the many initiatives of the Orthodox community developed into the largest church educational institution (about 3 thousand students, 13 branches in various cities of Russia). Since November 1998, STBI has been state accredited and issues state diplomas, and full-time students have the right to a deferment from the army. Six faculties have been opened: theological and pastoral, missionary and catechetical, historical and philological, pedagogical, church singing, church arts. Duration of training is 5 years. For the last three years, STBI teachers have been part of the Moscow diocesan administration, and in general, STBI has been a trendsetter in Orthodox education for secular people.
In the provinces (Armavir, Volgograd, Novosibirsk) similar STBI universities were created in 1992–1995. They have several faculties, a four-year duration of study and number up to 500 students.
Church bodies governing education
In the Russian Orthodox Church, two church-wide bodies deal with educational issues. The oldest of them is the Educational Committee of the Holy Synod (chaired by Archbishop Evgeniy (Reshetnikov) of Verei), which previously supervised the training of future priests in academies, seminaries and theological schools, and now coordinates it. But it should be noted that the diocesan bishops, who finance their seminaries from their own funds, do not really like interference from Moscow. In reality, the same two theological schools (Moscow and St. Petersburg) as in Soviet times, as well as the St. Tikhon Institute, are now subordinate to the committee on the territory of Russia. Part of their funding comes through the Curriculum Committee, so they are more likely to listen to its recommendations. The main activity of the committee in the second half of the 1990s was the reform of seminary education, which consisted in the transition to a five-year term of study. Despite repeated meetings that the committee held with the rectors of the seminaries, so far things are going slowly. It is difficult for seminaries to increase their budget by another 20% to improve the quality of education.
The second church-wide body is the Department for Religious Education and Catechesis (chaired by Hegumen John (Ekonomtsev)), which coordinates the activities of dioceses to create a system of Orthodox religious education for children and their parents, organizes the training of catechists capable of providing primary religious education, and supervises the training process in Orthodox universities (except STBI). It operates the Information and Coordination Center for Orthodox Education in Russia, which collects statistical data and information on dioceses and publishes the newsletter “Orthodox Education in Russia,” and the Russian Orthodox University of St. Apostle John the Theologian, opened in December 1992, with eight faculties, 500 students and a state educational license. However, the main activity of the department was the holding of annual Educational Christmas readings in Moscow, which bring together the entire church educational “beau monde” and government officials and teachers who are inclined to cooperate with the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2001, approximately 6,500 people representing 87 dioceses took part in the readings.
In general, the church education system is in the same uncertain position as the entire infrastructure of the Russian Orthodox Church. Taking advantage of the freedom gained in the last decade, the Russian Orthodox Church opened dozens of educational institutions (not counting thousands of Sunday schools), without thinking about how they would exist. As a result, they were left without adequate funding, qualified teachers, educational and methodological literature. It is now obvious that some Orthodox educational institutions will be forced to close in the near future.
Another problem is even more significant: what is taught in educational institutions of the Russian Orthodox Church? Many authoritative critics of the church educational system, including from the Russian Orthodox Church itself, argue that the existing system reproduces “magism” and “demand-fulfillment” [5] . That is, instead of instilling a theological understanding of the fundamentals of the faith and developing the skills of missionary and catechetical work, future priests are trained to beautifully perform rituals. Many (if not most) bishops and priests of the Russian Orthodox Church agree with such criticism of the educational system, but the adoption and implementation of decisions in this area is clearly a matter of the distant future.
Church-state institutions
The main and most widespread form of church-state educational institutions is designed for preschool children and schoolchildren. These are Orthodox kindergartens (there are about a dozen of them in Russia) and various Orthodox schools, gymnasiums, lyceums, of which there are currently about a hundred in Russia, according to official data [6] . Two dozen of them are in Moscow.
Their history dates back to the first half of the 1980s, when a network of informal home schools developed in the circles of the Orthodox intelligentsia, where believing parents tried to treat their offspring from the consequences of Soviet atheistic education. With perestroika, some of these home schools came out of hiding and, after the adoption of the Russian Federation Law “On Education” in 1992, along with other non-state educational institutions, received a license for teaching activities (as an example, we can cite the Moscow gymnasiums “Yasenevo”, “Kovcheg”, Novosibirsk Sergius of Radonezh). In the provinces, some schools of this kind arose on the initiative of Orthodox enthusiasts, as a rule, parishioners of one church. In 1994, most of these projects received (if they did not have before) support at the level of local church authorities - by decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, each diocese was ordered to have a model gymnasium. Currently there are fifty-five Orthodox gymnasiums [7] .
Financing of such educational institutions, as the Orthodox side usually says, is carried out “on a parity basis.” That is, those subjects that are included in the state general education standard, or the “basic component,” are paid for by the state (more precisely, local authorities) in accordance with the available number of students in the school. Everything else is put together by the founders, parents and sponsors. In some cases, Orthodox gymnasiums are prestigious educational institutions (Smolensk, Kursk), in others they are “small-format” educational institutions, which sometimes cannot even provide the teaching of the entire cycle of subjects. However, in both schools, a significant (if not most) part of the staff consists mainly not of professional teachers, but of parents.
The degree of “Orthodox burden” on students varies in each specific educational institution. As a rule, morning prayer, study of the Law of God, and participation in various events with Orthodox overtones (matinees, holidays, prayer services on major church holidays) are required. Singing in the choir and drawing also have corresponding religious themes. For high school students, subjects such as church history, detailed study of the Bible and the lives of saints, Church Slavonic and classical languages may be introduced. The school must have a confessor - a priest who serves in the school church, takes confession and often teaches some subjects.
The effect of Orthodox pedagogy remains doubtful. Parents very often come to the conclusion that, contrary to expectations, studying in these schools, especially in high school, actually turns out to be an “inoculation of atheism” (which, by the way, is why the vast majority of the clergy teach their children in a regular school). Orthodox teachers, in turn, complain that exorbitant demands are placed on them - they want them to turn their students into “little angels,” and this is impossible, if only because, for example, the situation in the family must also be Orthodox, and this happens rarely. Both parents and teachers agree that children who willingly accept Orthodox dogma in the elementary grades, after 12–13 years of age, are critical of Orthodox education. It must be taken into account that beyond the threshold of school, children find themselves in a modern teenage environment, which teaches them about life in its own way. As a result, a significant number of gymnasium students (10–20%) are transferred to other schools at their own request or at the insistence of their parents.
The influence of the church on public educational institutions
The system of church and church-state education we described above is not designed for the bulk of the Russian population. It creates the skeleton of the church management system, forms clergy personnel and increases the level of theological knowledge of the active part of the parishioners. In order to ensure its influence on society as a whole, to educate it in the Orthodox spirit, to increase the “meat” of the church body, the modern Russian Orthodox Church has neither the strength, nor the means, nor the ability.
Since the number of people who systematically attend churches (“churched”) remains very small (according to various estimates, from 1–2% to 6–8% of the total number of Russian citizens), the Church attributes this to the remnants of atheistic education and hopes that the new generation Russians will be able to be educated “in the faith.” As mentioned above, the Russian Orthodox Church does not have the strength to do this, and the only way out of this situation was the Church’s appeal to the state. It is through its funds and capabilities that the Russian Orthodox Church hopes to receive young parishioners. According to activists of church education, the first serious step on this path should be the mandatory introduction of the “Law of God” in secondary schools. However, due to the obvious unpreparedness of most of society and government officials for this, they prefer to move towards this goal in stages.
Priests and Orthodox activists came to regular schools in the early 1990s. Where they managed to come to an agreement with the directors, they began to teach the “Law of God” - as a rule, using pre-revolutionary textbooks. In 1994, the Ministry of Education, having discovered this practice, issued an order banning all religious lessons, citing a violation of the Constitution. The priests left the schools without much protest, since it was obvious that the experience was unsuccessful. Children refused to listen to boring sermons, parents and some teachers protested against the very idea, and representatives of other faiths worked much more effectively in schools.
By 1997, the situation had changed dramatically. The reserves for growth of the Orthodox infrastructure ran out, but then in September 1997 a new version of the law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” was adopted, the preamble of which emphasized the role of “traditional religions” (Orthodoxy, Islam and Buddhism). At the federal level, the Russian Orthodox Church failed to achieve special privileges, although lavish but meaningless framework agreements on cooperation were signed with many ministries and departments. But at the regional level the situation is different. Depending on their relations with local authorities, dioceses negotiated for themselves certain special rights, including in the educational sphere.
In 1997–1999, in several regions of Russia, at the expense of local regional administrations, a course in teaching the Orthodox faith began to be introduced in secondary schools. It was called differently: “Fundamentals and values of Orthodoxy” (Belgorod), “Fundamentals of Orthodox culture” (Kursk), elective on the Law of God (Voronezh, Kaliningrad), “Fundamentals of Orthodox culture and morality” (Novosibirsk, Smolensk), history of the Church (Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don), an elective on the fundamentals of Orthodoxy (Kemerovo), etc. The experience of the Kursk diocese, which, as stated, introduced teaching in almost half (300 out of 800) of the schools in the region, received the greatest fame and scale.
Although the results of the Kursk experiment turned out to be a fiction and for four years did not even lead to the creation of a methodological base, not to mention the greatly inflated number of schools participating in it (which the author managed to find out in April 2001 during the preparation of material for the Itogi magazine). The Moscow Patriarchate was inspired by the idea that was so passionately promoted by representatives of the Kursk diocese at the annual Christmas readings. In 1999, the Patriarch sent a letter to provincial bishops with instructions to introduce the teaching of the fundamentals of Orthodox doctrine in schools in all regions of Russia. The last paragraph of this document is especially interesting: “If difficulties are encountered in teaching the fundamentals of Orthodox dogma, calling the course “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture,” this will not raise objections among teachers and directors of secular educational institutions brought up on an atheistic basis” [8] .
A year later, the bishops reported that in thirty-five regions close cooperation had been established with local authorities and agreements on cooperation in the educational sphere had been signed. Then the Patriarch, as well as the head of the Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev), began to publicly lobby for the idea of the course at the federal level. They insist not only on the mandatory existence of such an elective at school, but also on the fact that it should be included in the main grid [9] .
Teacher training
The introduction of the church into educational institutions is impossible without the assistance of religiously motivated representatives of teaching staff. As a rule, in each school there are one or two teachers who believe in the usefulness of Orthodox education, although they do not always regularly attend church. In each region there are one or two school directors with similar ideas, who are ready to use their school as an experimental platform for testing the methods of Orthodox pedagogy. Initially, the diocesan administrations of the Russian Orthodox Church had enough of such enthusiasts to convince themselves and report to the top about cooperation with the education system. However, it gradually became clear that for large-scale penetration into schools and the implementation of the task of introducing the “Law of God” in one form or another, trained, qualified personnel are needed.
In 1996, the Church made an attempt, little noticed by the public, to identify and consolidate these cadres. A series of “scientific and practical” conferences, organized by diocesan departments together with local educational institutions and regional administrations, took place almost simultaneously throughout the country [10] . As a rule, they were called “readings” and were dedicated to the memory of a local saint. Although the readings were intended to be annual, only a few places repeated them after a year, and the initiative largely died out. The readings helped to finally determine the circle of Orthodox teachers, but at the same time revealed its limitations.
The further path of the church into the pedagogical community lay, firstly, through close cooperation with local authorities (which we wrote about above), and secondly, through penetration into the forges of personnel - pedagogical universities and universities.
To develop methodological recommendations for the courses “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture,” departments (laboratories) of Orthodox pedagogy were created at local pedagogical institutes (universities). Their exact number is unknown. However, there is no doubt that in each region where the “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture” will be introduced, their own departments will be created to adapt the general course to local conditions. The existing departments are already teaching relevant courses not only for teachers of “Fundamentals”, but also for some students, and are recruiting graduate students. The next logical step will be the introduction of the specialization “Orthodox pedagogy” and full-scale training of such teachers at state expense, as well as the incidental introduction to the “Fundamentals” of student teachers of all other specialties.
So far, this whole process is being held back by the complete uncertainty of the authorities (especially at the federal level) regarding the initiatives of the church and the outright marginality of enthusiasts of Orthodox education, who often do not enjoy special respect in the teaching community.
conclusions
The church education system is weak, stagnating and suffering from chronic lack of money, lack of qualified personnel and modern educational and methodological literature, as well as contradictions between various ideological groups of the clergy. Even according to the most optimistic estimates of church apparatchiks, it currently covers no more than 200 thousand people, three quarters of whom are Sunday school students.
The only way for the Church to expand its zone of influence is to educate a new generation of parishioners. Since the Russian Orthodox Church cannot find the strength to do this on its own, it is trying to shift this task onto the shoulders of the state. At the same time, “patriotic” “statist” slogans about the need for “the revival of Russia through the revival of spiritual life,” etc. are actively used. At the federal level, this kind of rhetoric has become familiar over the last decade and has already begun to cause slight irritation. At the local level, it often meets with understanding, especially in the border regions of the “red belt” of Russia.
In the educational sphere, the Russian Orthodox Church exploits the desire of some teachers to serve the interests of the state. At the same time, service to the state is replaced by obedience to the Church, which supposedly forms the “spiritual basis of the state.” Although it is obvious that the social and state structure of Russia in its current form (separation of powers, “dictatorship of law”, the existence of civil society, a free press, the ideas of humanism and tolerance underlying this entire structure) has nothing to do with what it promotes and even more so in practice by the modern Russian Orthodox Church.
[1] This trend was first noted by the author in 1996-1997 using the example of the dioceses of the North Caucasus. For more details, see: Mitrokhin N. Orthodoxy in the North Caucasus // Factors of ethno-confessional identity in post-Soviet society: Collection. articles. Moscow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1998, or http://pubs.carnegie.ru/books/1998/07am/toc.asp .
[2] See: John (Ekonomtsev), abbot. Decade of the revival of Orthodox education in Russia. http://rel.org.ru/cgi-bin/script.cgi?action=show&file=10115 .
[3] Author’s interview with Archbishop John (Popov). Belgorod, April 2001 (author's archive).
[4] For more details, see: Mitrokhin N. Some aspects of the religious situation in Ukraine // Russian Thought, 1999, No. 4276–4277.
[5] Mikhail (Mudyugin), archbishop. Russian Orthodox Church. Second half of the 20th century. M.: Biblical Theological Institute, 1995.
[6] John (Ekonomtsev), abbot. Decade of the revival of Orthodox education in Russia. Speech at the anniversary dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the Department of Religious Education and Catechesis of the Russian Orthodox Church. http://rel.org.ru/cgi-bin/script.cgi?action=show&file=10115 .
[8] A copy of the letter is posted on the website of the Ufa Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church: http://www.bashnet.ru/~orthodox-ufa/ .
[9] “There should be no room for conflicts between faiths”: Interview with Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev) // Kommersant, 2001, March 14.
[10] We know of more than a dozen places where they were held: Vladivostok, Vologda, Vyatka, Kemerovo, Michurinsk, Perm, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, Smolensk, Togliatti, Alma-Ata, but, in all likelihood, there were such places more. In 1997–1999, similar readings were held in at least five more regions.