Church history topics on the pages of the diocesan press based on the example of the newspaper Permskie eparkhial'nye vedomosti (perm diocesan news)

The article discusses the problem of the emergence and development of the diocesan church press in Russia in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. The author’s attention is focused on the newspaper “Perm Diocesan News”, published in the Perm Diocese in the period from 1867 to 1918. The article describes the newspaper’s history and its relationship to the administration of the Perm Diocese and Perm Theological Seminary. It also provides a list of editors of its official and unofficial departments. This article engages an analysis of the newspaper publications with a church-historical content. As a result of this study, the author provides a spectrum of the main topics and genres that were most actively developed by correspondents. The article has list of authors - clergymen and laity - who made the greatest contribution to the study of the Western and Middle Urals church history and their main published works. The author came to the conclusion that a large number of publications in the provincial church press tackle church history, church archaeology and ethnography, Biblical history, and the history of Christianity. This is explained by the increased interest of the educated clergy and secular society in the historical past of their country and the Orthodox Church. Such publications aroused genuine interest in church periodicals and helped to consolidate the local clergy and intelligentsia around the Perm diocesan press.