Missionary activity in the Yenisei diocese at the end of the 19th early XX centuries: difficulties and achievements

The article analyzes missionary activity in aboriginal (native) parishes of the Yenisei diocese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The conducted study is based on the materials of the Minusinsk and Achinsk districts of the Yenisei province. In late nineteenth early twentieth centuries mainly baptized aborigens lived here, and missionary activity was aimed primarily at establishing in them faith and the foundations of the Christian life. Activities of missionaries in foreign parishes of Minusinsk and Achinsk districts did not always give positive results. An obstacle to success was the lack of education and cultural level of local priests, ignorance of the language of the foreign flock.Considerable difficulties in missionary activity were caused by geographical and natural-climatic features of the parishes, their dispersion over large spaces, the paucity or absence of temples in places inhabited by aborigens, their commitment to pagan rituals and shamanism. However, the missionary activity of individual priests of aborigen native parishes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was pretty successful. Priests who graduated from special spiritual institutions and those who owned the methodology and methods of missionary activity, achieved success in spreading Orthodoxy among aborigens. A significant role in missionary activity was assigned to the development of primary school education among the indigenous population of the Minusinsk and Achinsk districts. Some students who graduated from the parochial school continued their studies at the Biysk catechetical and Krasnoyarsk religious schools. Diocesan missionary congresses were devoted to the problems of the institution of missionaries. It is concluded that missionary activity was the main component of the Christianization of the indigenous population of Minusinsk and Achinsk districts. At the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th centuries it was aimed mainly at affirming the faith and the foundations of Christian life among the non-native population. This was in line with the policy of the Russian Empire, aimed at the development and consolidation of the Siberian region on the basis of a single Orthodox faith.

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