Formation of the System of Financial Control and Economic Management of the Church Economy in the 18th Century

The article examines the measures taken by the Russian government, the monastic order, and the Holy Synod to form a system of financial control over the income and expenses of church institutions and the economic management of the church economy in the 18th century. The factors of formation of the system of state and church financial control are considered. These factors included the desire of the state to direct part of the church’s income to military and other state needs, as well as to free the monastic and bishops’ peasants from archaic forms of feudal dependence. The article demonstrates that the secularization of church estates in 1764 was only the final stage in a series of measures taken by the Russian government to establish control over church estates.