Thematic and problematic evolution of the journal “Rukovodstvo dlya sel’skih pastyrej” in the late 19th - early 20th century

The article analyzes thematic and problematic evolution during the late 19th - early 20th century of the first and most famous domestic periodicals for parish clergy - the journal «Rukovodstvo dlya sel’skih pastyrej» (RDSP), late history of which has not yet been studied. As a result of researching journal materials of the late 1890s - 1917 and appealing to the literature on pre-Soviet church journalism history, it was determined that general trends in church press development of that time generally coincided with RDSP development, including its content evolution. In the second half of the 1890s the number of pastoral theology and edifying articles markedly reduced, while attention to pastoral mission and sectarian movement increased. At the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries RDSP, as well as a number of other church periodicals, gradually intensified the discussion of urgent church transformations and growing crisis of the Russian traditional pastoral service model. Since the mid-1900s due to socio-political processes in the country, the abolition of pre-censorship for church press and politicization of it in RDSP, as in the most Orthodox periodicals, publicism “in the heat of the day” began to dominate, and Editorial Board took up until 1917 monarchist positions.