Statistical accounting of religious groups: some data on the history of Old Believer statistics in the Olonets and Arkhangelsk provinces

Kuznetsova Natalya Yurevna PhD in History Associate Professor; Department of Tourism; Petrozavodsk State University 185910, Russia, Republic of Karelia, Petrozavodsk, Lenin, 33 foliage.07@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The research was carried out at the expense of the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 23-28-10260, https://rscf.ru/project/23-28-10260 /, conducted jointly with the Republic of Karelia with financing from the Venture Capital Investment Fund of the Republic of Karelia (FVI RK).

Officials in the Russian province formed a significant part of the state apparatus of the Russian Empire. And in each region, officials faced special challenges. For example, there was an urgent question about the organization of statistical accounting of various categories of believers, including such a special category as Old Believers. This issue was primarily faced by a number of provinces, which were traditionally considered places of concentration of the Old Believer population. Such territories in the European North of Russia at the end of the XVIII – XIX centuries included, in particular, the Olonets and Arkhangelsk provinces.

Olonets province was a fairly large (for the European part of the country) administrative unit, divided into a number of counties. Since the 1670s, this territory, as a frontier far from the center, was actively used by adherents of the "old faith" and supporters of Archpriest Avvakum, later referred to in official correspondence by the collective term "Old Believers", to hide from the authorities.

Research shows that it was problematic for the Russian Empire to provide accurate statistics on this religious group, since persecution and arrests, and the beliefs of missionaries from the very beginning contributed to the fact that the Old Believers preferred to hide their faith from society.

The first attempts to accurately account for the number of Old Believers in the state were made by Peter I, who introduced the law on registration of "schismatics" in 1716 and created the category of "registered schismatics." But both under Peter the Great and under subsequent rulers, up to the 1830s, these registrations proved to be unsuccessful. Only a small part of the Old Believer population openly declared themselves at the beginning of the 18th century, and then most of those whose ancestors had already been recorded as "schismatics" were subject to re-registration. Most of the Old Believers found themselves outside the statistics, including due to the desire for territorial remoteness from the center of the country.

The history of the emergence and development of Russian state statistics was determined by the development of the state. So, at the end of the XVIII century, which became an era of profound changes in the state, statistical activity arose in Russia. The organization and structure for carrying out statistical activities in the Empire officially began in 1802. In the first years of the 19th century, Ministries were created that began collecting accounting data for their subordinate industries ^[1]. And in 1811, the first official center of government statistics of the empire was established - the Statistical Department under the Ministry of Police. However, as S.V. Levin notes, there was no clear structure and regulations until the mid-1830s, and the situation changed with the advent of the first legislative act, which "marked the beginning of the centralization of statistical business in the country" ^{[2, p. 117]}.

This legislative act became the "Highly approved Rules for the Statistical Department under the Council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Statistical Committees in the Provinces." This document regulated the activities of the statistical service itself, and also established and regulated its representative offices in the regions – provincial statistical committees chaired by civilian governors. The latter collected information, checked it, put it in a uniform order, entered it in timesheets and sent it to the central committee. In the late 1850s, the central body responsible for state statistical accounting was named the Central Statistical Committee.

Researchers define the period of the second half of the 19th century or the post-Reform period (1861-1917) as the "period of zemstvo statistics", because it was zemstvo statisticians who became the authors of regional studies on the economy of the Russian countryside. The culmination of the statistical work of the state was carried out in 1897. The general population census of the Russian Empire.

Figure 1 shows a diagram drawn up by the author, which gives an idea of the specifics of statistical accounting in Russia.

Thus, it can be seen that the 19th century became a period of final and clear formalization for state statistics. This, with the initial approach, suggests that accounting for such a community as the Old Believers should have been finally adjusted. In fact, the situation with this religious group and its size remained difficult.

The bibliography of the issue is presented in the study by a number of thematic works on generalized statistics in the empire ^{[2, 3]}, as well as works that reflect the accounting of numerical data for individual territories ^{[4, 5]}. This shows both the relevance of the topic and its complexity, since the uniform accounting system for the number of Old Believers, developed by the middle of the 19th century, demonstrated differences and inaccuracies when the question arose of counting believers in a particular territory.

Of course, the first date that can be given to account for and study such a phenomenon as the church schism in the Moscow state is 1665, because the study of this phenomenon began almost immediately. The statistics were collected primarily by representatives of the clergy. Later, they were joined by representatives of the authorities (officials and the police), and last but not least, people of science began to pay attention to the accounting of this population group. Nevertheless, the official records of the Old Believers were considered to be a complete and reliable source, as much as these data could be reliable. All this was relevant for the northern provinces of Olonets and Arkhangelsk.

Information on the numerical composition of the Old Believers and sectarianism of the Olonets province is contained in the National Archives of the Republic of Karelia. First of all, this is F.1 Office of the Governor of Olonets (1780-1917) and, of course, F.27 Olonets Provincial Statistical Committee (1765-1925). However, relevant information can also be found in the materials of the Olonets Spiritual Consistory. This is explained by the logic of collecting data and presenting it to the governor, who requested and secured information from various sources. As for the Arkhangelsk province, the information is also contained in the relevant funds of the State Archive of the Arkhangelsk Region. These are F.1 Office of the Arkhangelsk Governor (1710-1917) and F.6 Arkhangelsk Provincial Statistical Committee (1728-1919).

Speaking about the official provincial statistics concerning the accounting of the Old Believers, it is impossible not to note a number of features and difficulties that were encountered not only in these provinces, but also throughout the empire ^[5]. Firstly, the data collected was not complete, reliable, and often even comparable with each other. And this was already their second feature, when the Old Believers themselves, hiding their religion for fear of persecution, could enroll in the Orthodox. Let's look at these features using specific statistical examples.

Table 1 presents a table compiled on the basis of a study of archival sources and reflecting the situation with the Old Believer population in the administrative center of the province of Petrozavodsk and Petrozavodsk district.

Studying these figures, we see that Old Believers were not often found among the population of the central uyezd, they made up 2.5% of the total population, which, according to the List of populated places in the Olonets province, according to information from 1873, was 67,630 people of both sexes ^[7]. But the interest in this table is the gradation by which the accounting of the Old Believers was divided. It can be seen that both explicit and secret representatives of this religious group were taken into account. The question immediately arises as to how fully and accurately the records of those Old Believers who were included in the "secret" category were carried out. As the name implies, they did not seek to advertise their membership in the Old Believers, which means that their records were based on data from church priests and the police. However, the data in Fig. 2, which reveal the accounting of the Old Believer population in the city of Pinega and the Pinezhsky district of the Arkhangelsk province, indicate difficulties in this case.

We see a difference in accounting in both cases, both at the church clergy and at the police. This difference was reflected in statistical reports at various levels up to the governor. In this case, the official's hand in the accounting table indicates where the information was obtained from ("according to the accounts of the clergy" and "according to the police"), since the difference in numbers is quite significant.

But if information was provided in the Pinezhsky district, even if it differed by sources, then representatives of the Old Believers were not found in the Shenkursky district (Fig. 3).

The table in Figure 4 shows that there are "no publicly open prayer houses of the Old Believers in the Shenkursky district," but the question arises, why is the number of secret such houses not indicated? After all, according to information from the Pinezhsky district, both explicit and secret adherents of the "schism" were taken into account. In addition, other documents show that in Shenkursky district in 1883, that is, only 3 years ago, there were 10 schismatic prayer houses ^[10]. Of course, this issue requires further detailed research.

Thus, focusing on some particular examples from the Old Believer accounting in the territory of the Olonets and Arkhangelsk provinces in the 19th century, we can conclude that the situation with the accurate calculation of the number of this group of believers remained difficult. It was difficult, first of all, for the official authorities, since statistical accounting, which was one of the tools of the provincial officials' work, was conducted relatively accurately in everything, if it did not concern the religious issue. In the same topic, there were still problems that arose already at the data collection stage (how exactly to take into account such a category as "secret") and continued at the data collection stage (who to believe and who gave the figures more precisely). At the same time, statistical information on this religious group was of interest to both provincial authorities and officials in the capital, that is, it was one of the most significant information sources.