Religious Dissent in the Frontier Zone: Ways and Means of Dissemination (The Kuban Region and the Black Sea Province in the Pre-Soviet Period as a Case Stude)

Abstract

The attention of the author is focused on the problems associated with the penetration of a variety of trends to the territory of the frontier region that are opposed to the dominant religious denomination. Using the example of the Kuban Region and the Black Sea Governorate, the ways and means of the emergence and spread of religious dissent in the inherent sociocultural conditions are investigated. In this aspect, various groups of religious dissidents operating in the territory of the Kuban are considered: Dukhobors, Molokans, Christ-believers, Judaists, Baptists, Evangelical Christians, Adventists. It is noted that the position of the region under study as a frontier territory has left its mark on the spread of religious dissidence in it. This process took place against the background of constant interethnic and interfaith contacts, naturally increased migration flows, and a complicated system of social relations. The peculiarities of the region, which is a frontier between many cultural spaces, have prepared fertile ground for the spread of religious dissent here.

The doctrines of the Russian religious dissidence that extended to the Kuban during the studied period are divided into three groups depending on the time, ways and means of their appearance in the region in question. The followers of the religious teachings of the first group (Judaizers and Dukhobors) penetrated the Kuban in the 1830-1860s. from Central Russia and from the neighboring southern regions only through administrative relocation.

Adherents of religious movements belonging to the second group (Molokans, Christovans, Katasonians and eunuchs) settle in the region mainly in the post-reform period and often through voluntary migration. In the future, these doctrines are spread due to the active preaching of their followers, the sources of which were the neighboring Stavropol gubernia and the Transcaucasus.

Religious communities belonging to the third group were spread in the region mainly under the influence of religious agitation carried out by the most active adherents, often professionally engaged in preaching work (Lubkivtsy, Baptists, Adventists).