Spiritual state of the people and the Orthodox Church before the beginning of the revolution of 1905–1907. Comparing characteristics of the opinions of the Christian Brotherhood of Fight and of the group of the 32 St. Petersburg priests

The article is aimed to show the comparing analysis of the points of view of the Christian Brotherhood of Fight and the Brotherhood of adherents of the church renewal on the problem of revolutionary and antireligious consciousness strengthening in the Russian society of 1905–1907. The public documents, articles and personal correspondence of Sventsitskii, Eltchaninov, Florenskii, priest Aggeev, priest Petrov, who were the leaders of these two public institutions, are the ground for the research. The educated part of the intelligentsia and orthodox priesthood were searching for the spiritual and historical reasons of the revolutionary situation as well as for the ways out of it. The main spiritual church and societal crisis factors were acknowledged to be the absence of the freedom of the church in its self-reigning apart from the state, as well as detachment of people’s faith from the evangelical word. The opinions of these two institutions during the first Russian revolution were free from censorship in its most part. Addressing this historical material is of great importance for understanding the reasons and the consequences of the political and spiritual catastrophe that hit the Russian Empire in 1917. The comparing characteristic of the points of views of these institutions concludes that there was a unity of opinions among the orthodox church and the Russian intelligentsia as well as the opportunity for consolidation of spiritual efforts in resisting anticlerical and antichristian tendencies that were strengthening at that time in the country.