State policy towards the old believers during the reign of Alexander I and Nicholas II

Yagudina Oksana Valentinovna, Tomina Elena Fedorovna

In modern Russian society, the issues of interaction of religious cultures, tolerance and the rule of law are touched upon. The article studies and analyzes in detail the state policy towards the Old Believers in the XIX century, its results and consequences. In the course of the study, it was determined that after M. M. Speransky codified the legislative material accumulated over a couple of centuries and formalized it in the form of a Complete collection of laws and a Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, six religious torts are mentioned in the section on crimes and on faith. During the reign of Nicholas I, large monasteries were destroyed, and that part of the schismatics who refused to join the same faith will begin searching for their own Belokrinitsky hierarchy.

Keywords:politics, church, Cossacks, Orthodoxy, schismatics, Old Believers, legislation.