Interpretation of the Religious Policy of Autocracy in the XIX – Early XX Senturies under Paradigm Change

Abstract

The article is written on the basis of scientific researches of the Soviet and modern historians both from the CIS-countries and abroad. The problem attracts attention and is of scientific interest due to the fact that modern approaches of scientists of the post-Soviet countries in the study of the religious policy of the Russian empire in the national regions differ from those of the preceding period. The current researchers, while writing their works, use and introduce into scientific circulation documentary materials from archives and rare libraries’ collections, which in the Soviet times were “unnoticed”. Pressing of the Soviet ideological machine did not allow scientists to give an objective assessment of individual historical events. Works of scientists of the capitalist camp were not available as “the bourgeois methodology” could cause great harm to the scientific researches of the Soviet historians whose “methodological basis was the Marxist-Leninist doctrine and the documents of the Party and government”. The object is the research on the colonial policy of autocracy in the religious life of the non-Russian peoples. The purpose of the article is to highlight the impact of changes at the turn of the XX –XXI centuries associated with the collapse of the Soviet empire and the formation of independent states on the process and the results of historical researches in the postSoviet republics.