Isaeva V.B. Religious Conversion as a Criterion for the Efficiency of Management Strategies in Late Imperial Russia. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. History, 2019, vol. 64, iss. 4, ðð. 1257–1271. https: ...

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Abstract

The article considers forms, methods and factors of religious conversion as the criteria for the efficiency of the management strategies used by the tsarist authorities in late Imperial Russia. Religious conversion is interpreted within the framework of the legal regulation system of religions which was adopted in the 1830–1850s, and its empirical forms are identified. Religious conversion is defined as a transition from the “foreign religions” to Orthodox Christianity and a withdrawal from Orthodox Christianity to the “foreign religions”. Two forms of conversion are revealed: orthodoxization and apostasy. In the research the following factors of religious conversion are brought out: a) loyalty to the central government; b) cultural affinity of the ethnic group to the Russians; c) methods of religious conversion. Five types of methods are classified: 1) forced (the elimination of the church organization, repressions of believers and/ or clergy); 2) economic (material incentives); 3) educational (conversion through the native language of the believers, the development of their culture); 4) recruitment (the use of special social and communication strategies); 5) natural (population mixing, inter-ethnic marriages). Based on the reports of the Chief Procurator of the Synod, data from the census of 1897, and other sources the dynamics of religious conversion for 54 years (1860–1914) are analyzed, and its examination by denominations by decades is done. The author concludes that religious conversion indicates certain management strategies — forced integration, gradual acculturation, or preservation of the status quo; their efficiency, existence or absence of the inter-ethnic tensions.

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