Travel Notes of the Priest of the Ugulyat Annunciation Church. Preparation of the text for publication, introductory article and comments by Inna Yurganova

This study directs the reader’s attention to the publication of travel notes made by a Russian Priest in the Yakutsk Region at the end of the 19th c., which are published here for the first time. The document is considered in the context of the practice of the Russian Orthodox Church on the outskirts of the Russian empire. In far-reaching stretches of the empire, the Church acted as a unifying force in terms of the overall culture of the empire. Priests themselves were the conduit for Christian principles and, as such, became the initiators of intercultural dialogue. The document under consideration is a description of the trips that one priest undertook in Yakutia and the Tungusk region. Here we find evidence of the number of parishioners, the way in which locals related to Christian rites, and their degree of accedence to Orthodox Christianity. The notes bear witness to the presence of paganism in everyday life and to the cautious relationship of parishioners to Christian norms. The publication of these travel notes inaugurates the potential for furthering developing research into the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church on the periphery of the empire in historical retrospective vis-à-vis interaction with various ethnicities and cultures