Reports of the ober-procurator of the most Holy Governing Synod during the reign of emperor Nikolai Pavlovich as a source on the history of the Orthodox Russian Church

The article is devoted to the analysis of the reports of the heads of the department of the Orthodox confession of the Orthodox Russian Church - Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod - of the era of Emperor Nicholas I. The article examines the main statistical data on the state of the Church, starting from the time when the reports of the Ober-Procurator began to be officially published by the ecclesiastical department for public viewing. Thanks to these reports, one can understand how (in organizational terms) the Orthodox Russian Church developed, what the apparatus of its administration and the Synodal Ober-Procutrator’s Office represented, how effective the activities of the Ober-Procurator were and met church interests. The reports give a clear idea of the reasons for the emergence of new dioceses, the fight against schism, the episcopal corps, the displacement of bishops and their educational qualifications, and much more. In general, an analysis of the reports allows us to understand how legitimate it is to say that the era of Emperor Nicholas I, called by historians the “apogee of autocracy”, was favorable for strengthening the Orthodox Russian Church, which was the main confession of the empire. The author tried to prove that the “form” of church building at that time overshadowed the “content” of church activity, and the reason for this was the nature of the autocratic state of Nicholas I, which did not tolerate dual power, in the tsar’s desire to unify the political life of the country, subordinating this desire to the Orthodox Church.