Pulkin Maxim V.,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of Language, Literature and History, Federal Research Center, Karelian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Petrozavodsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Law Enforcement Agencies and the Clergy in the 19th – early 20th Centuries: Coordination Problems (Based on Materials from the Olonets Province)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2020-2-13
The article is devoted to the problems of interaction between the clergy and the police. The source base includes judicial investigation records from the fonds of the Consistory and the police department, as well as Russian legislation. It was revealed that in the daily cooperation of the officers of the law and clergy, a number of significant directions were formed along which coordination of efforts took place. These included maintaining public order during worship services, religious processions to prevent the sale of alcohol and other types of violation of decent behavior during church events in the streets of settlements and in the premises of churches. While ensuring continuous supervision of the sale of icons, the clergy acted as experts identifying deviations from church canons. Priests who knew the Karelian language became mediators during police investigations and in court proceedings. An important area of interaction between the police and the clergy was an active opposition to the Old Believers. At the same time, the capabilities of law enforcement agencies were used to identify the Old Believers’ meeting houses, confiscate property belonging to the Old Believer communities, and arrest the most active preachers of the Old Believers. Repressive measures continued until the beginning of the 20th century, when the introduction of religious tolerance in the country significantly changed the established course of action. The system of everyday cooperation between the clergy and the police firmly fixed in the minds of contemporaries the fact of the subordination of the church to the state apparatus.
Publishing: 29/04/2020
How to cite: Pulkin M.V. Law Enforcement Agencies and the Clergy in the 19th – early 20th Centuries: Coordination Problems (Based on Materials from the Olonets Province) // Historical Courier, 2020, No. 2 (10), pp. 169–178. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2020/ISTKURIER-2020-2-13.pdf
Links: Issue 2 2020
Keywords: police; clergy; church; priests; peasantry; veneration of icons; Old Belief; law