The Russian Orthodox Church in the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR in 1945-1953

Based on archival documents from the State Archive of the Russian Federation, this article examines the process of state regulation of Orthodox communities in the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR during the implementation of the Soviet religious policy known as the "New Course" and its subsequent transformation (mid-1940s — 1950s). The study demonstrates that Orthodoxy in the multi-confessional Buryat region occupied a peripheral position within the system of state-religious relations. The absence of a plenipotentiary of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in the region, the limited number of registered parishes (Ulan-Ude, Kyakhta), and their unstable financial and economic situation testified to the secondary importance of the Orthodox issue on the agenda of the republican authorities. The activities of the legalized parishes illustrate their existence under conditions of permanent external control and internal conflict. The constant increase in the tax burden on clergy after 1948 served as another economic lever of pressure and a constraint on their activities. The "New Course" regarding Orthodoxy in the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR did not signify a genuine liberalization of state-religious relations or an abandonment of the strategic goal of building an atheistic society. The Orthodox tradition in the region, deprived in previous decades of most of its infrastructure and social base, received extremely narrow and unstable opportunities for legal existence

Abandonment (legal) · Christianity · Institution · Liberalization · Mercantilism · Orthodoxy · Position (finance) · State (computer science) · Psycholinguistics and Behavioral Studies · Social and Behavioral Studies · Soviet and Russian History