Ioshkin M.V. The True Orthodox Christians in Tambov Oblast: influence on the youth at the brink of the 1950’s – o 1960’s

Abstract: The fight for the youth has always been very important for the political and religious unions, being in essence the fight for their future. Due to this fact, the study of the influence of the True Orthodox Christians on the youth during the “Khrushchev’s attack” on the church is quite interesting, particularly because namely the activity of the True Orthodox Christians was most noticeable among the unregistered religious unions at this point in time. Even though the territorial frameworks of the research are limited by the region of Tambov Oblast, its typicality allows extrapolating the majority of the results onto the history of almost entire Central Russia. At the same time, the regional localization lets us to clarify many conclusions by thoroughly examining the processes and phenomena. The author also tried to consider the fact that Tambov Krai traditionally is referred as one of the main forms of the Russian religious sectarianism. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that this article is a first special research dedicated to the comprehensive examination based on the materials of Tambov Oblast of how the True Orthodox Christians, the True Orthodox Church, and the hesychasts affected the youth during the period of 1958-1964.

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