Circumstances of granting spiritual-censorship powers to the “Society for the restoration of orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus”

The article focuses on the activities of the Society for the Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus at the initial stage of its existence in the 1860s. One of the main tasks facing the Society was educational activities among the peoples of the Caucasus. To implement this, it was necessary to actively engage in translations and publication of relevant literature, but, according to the current laws, all this had to be done by obtaining permission from the spiritual censorship for each publication in St. Petersburg or Moscow. This kind of red tape led exclusively to the delay of the process without any benefit to the cause. As a result, the Holy Synod supported the initiative of the Viceroy of the Caucasus, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, and allowed the Society to have its own printing house and publish books under its own censorship. This reform became an important step in the decentralization of spiritual censorship in the second half of the 19th century.