Religiosity of the orthodox Estonians of St. Petersburg at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries

Today, Estonia belongs to the least religiously active countries in Europe. The purpose of the article is to find the roots of the low religiosity of Estonians, based on the level of religiosity of the Estonian diaspora in St. Petersburg in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The historiography of estimating the number of people from Estonia in St. Petersburg at the end of the 19th century is considered, as well as the number of Orthodox Estonians. The opinion of the priest of the Estonian Orthodox parish in the capital, Pavel Kulbush, who deliberately overestimated these figures, draws attention to himself, but the correction of the data leads to numbers more than is customary in historiography. It is surprising that the city administration did not control the process of immigration of foreigners to St. Petersburg, and also did not have information about this, which is confirmed by the documents from the governor office in the Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg about the number of Orthodox Estonians, initiated by the appeal of priest Pavel to the governor with a request to help determine the potential circle of parishioners of the newly established Estonian parish. The low level of religiosity, as shown in the article, peculiar to Estonians and more than a century ago, was compensated by the appearance of a large number of public associations that were secular in nature.