Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Svâto-Tihonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta: Seriâ III. Filologiâ (Apr 2015)
The missionary service of Ja.D. Koblov
Abstract
Based on the previously unpublished documents of the National Archives of the Republic of Tatarstan for the first time in the national historiography the article examines the activities of the outstanding Russian church- and public figure and teacher Jacob Dmitrievich Koblov as Kazan diocesan anti — Muslim and anti-heathen missionary (1901–1907). The missionary service of Ja.D. Koblov was going on during the deep crisis of the Orthodox mission, which was the echo of the destructive phenomena occurring within the Russian Orthodox Church and the entire Russian society. During this period the state institutions, the church-community organizations are trying to develop new principles of ethnic and confessional and educational policy, of conducting interfaith dialogue. The announcement of religious freedom in 1905 complicated the implementation of the missionary work in multinational Kazan diocese with a signifi cant percentage of the Muslim population; it required a change in the nature and methods of missionary work, the development of new measures for the protection of Christian converts from the Tatar-Muslim influence. The cultural and educational measures come first, in particular, the increasing the number of schools of Kazan Orthodox missionary brotherhood of St. Gury, involvement of local non-Russian peoples in missionary and spiritual and educational activities. Thanks to the selfless activity of Orthodox missionaries, parish priests, teachers of fraternal schools in the Volga-Kama region they managed to reduce the rate of Islamization of the local non-Russian population (Kryashens, Chuvash, Mari, Udmurt) and save them from the real threat to the gradual dissolution of the Tatar-Muslim environment. It is concluded that Ja.D. Koblov made the signifi cant contribution in the development of the spiritual, educational and missionary work among the non-Russian peoples of the Volga-Kama region in the early twentieth century.
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