The cathedral of the city of Verny from 1871 to the present time

The article attempts to clearly present the authentic history of the cathedral of Turkestan diocese in the city of Verny. The interest was raised by the fact of confusion of the dates and places of the construction of several churches under the same name in the territory of the central Cossack settle-ment - the Verny Fortress. At first, the settlement established around the fortification was a Cos-sack village, which later received the status of a city, and was the actual residence of the bishop of Tashkent and Turkestan since 1872 for more than forty five years. During this time, the church was rebuilt several times, and in addition, churches were often consecrated in hohour of Sts. Sofia, Vera (Faith), Nadezhda (Hope) and Lubov (Love) in its vicinity, because the Verny Fortress was blessed on September 17th (old style), these saints’ remembrance day. Thus, in historical documents, various studies and on public sites, there is some confusion about the history of St. Sophia Cathedral: the construction dates, location and purpose of the churches with the same name are controversial. The situation is aggravated because of the poor historical studies of Orthodoxy in Kazakhstan in general, as well as by the difficulties of access to local archives. Drawing on comparison of available archival data (including photographic ones) and scattered accounts of researchers, the article presents the most probable version of the history of the Cathedral in Verny.