“Your words will only hurt public opinion...” the letter of Aleksandr Muravyev to Mikhail Pogodin on the issue of openness in church policy

This letter is being published with the intent of drawing the attention of scholars of the history of the Rusisan Orthodox Church during the Synodal Period to the personal opinions of one of the outspoken apologists for Orthodoxy in church policy during the 1840’s, Aleksandr Murav?yev. The letter is also an important source for the study of church publicism in the second half of the 19th century, and sheds light on the relations between critics and apologists for the established role of the Russian Church. The letter is published without abbreviations, unlike the previous edition of this source, published in 1915.