State-Church Relations in Tula Province in the Early Soviet Period (1917–1924): to the History of the Implementation of State Anti-Church Policy in the Tula Province

Abstract

The article is aimed at establishing the relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state while the form of the government in Russia was being changed due to two coups in February and October 1917. The consequences of these coups and their impact on the focal point of the policy developed by the government regarding religion are considered. The article discusses the forms of organizing the church life in Russia with reference to the Tula diocese regarding neutrally suspicious attitude towards the Church on the part of the Provisional Government and official harassment on the part of the Council of People’s Comissars. The study concluded that a number of mistakes had been made both by supreme and local ecclesiastical authorities while forecasting and evaluating the policy of the state towards the Church and religion. Moreover, contradictions were revealed among groups of clergy and laity within the Church itself that, on the one hand, were ready to cooperate with the new authorities and, on the other hand, were fiercely opposed to them. Their presence lead later to the developing of schism and other divisions of the Russian Orthodox Church that lasted until the end of the Soviet Period (1991).