In the RUSSIAN Empire, from the end of the 17th century until 1917, all Orthodox Christians were required to confess. Parishioners ' compliance with this standard of pious behavior was monitored both by the secular authorities and, in fact, by the Church itself, mainly through its priests, who were required to make detailed records of confessions held in their parishes and submit these records annually to the diocesan consistories. Consistory documentation, police reports, church and liturgical publications, memoirs, paintings, elements of church interiors, stories for children, works of classical literature - all these sources agree on one thing: govenie - a week - long preparation for confession and communion-was an important marker of the religious life of all strata of Russian society. In pre-revolutionary Russia, confessing one's sins to a priest was not only a deeply personal matter for a parishioner, but also a clear confirmation of loyalty to the autocratic state. What happened after such a symbiosis of confession as individual participation in the church sacrament and demonstrative public and political action ceased to exist? Although it is extremely difficult to determine the exact time of termination of this symbiosis, an example recorded in the documents of the Kazan Ecclesiastical Academy can be cited as a kind of marker indicating a cardinal change in the situation. page 10consistories. One worker was convicted of murder in a drunken brawl. Information about him was entered in a special police file, which contained information about convicts and their crimes. This case was usually automatically referred to the consistory, so that in addition to the punishment imposed by the court, the criminals were also subjected to penance. Of course, the Kazan police also knew about the reverse standard procedure - halving the term of penance if a civil court imposed a prison sentence or any other punishment. There was a well-developed practice of coordinating the t ... Читать далее