The policy of territorial reorganization of church parishes in the Olonets region in the second half of the 18th – early 19th century

The article presents the results of the study of the reasons and the realization of the policy of territorial reorganization of parishes in Olonets uyezd, the goals and basic principles of which were formulated at the legislative level in the XVIII century. The effort to support the clergy of the tiny “monastic” parishes that emerged after the secularization reform of 1764 prompted the diocesan authorities to closure small parishes and reorganize parishes with large number of households. The reorganization of parishes that had taken in the late 1760s and 1810s were not systematic, however had ambivalent effects. On the one hand, the bishops began to solve ongoing problems on the delimitation of a group of vast parishes boundaries. On the other hand, they could not attain improvements in the welfare of the clergy and the maintenance of churches at the proper level. Furthermore the liquidation of economically incapable parishes without proper attention to the spiritual life of local communities resulted in the flourishing of the popular orthodoxy and the strengthening of the Old Believers positions.