Journal archive

Abstract: The article describes the policy of the Soviet Union aimed at enacting legislation in order to separate church from the state and to stop teaching religious subjects at secondary comprehensive schools in Ekaterinburg schools in 1918-1919. Governmental financial support of religion teachers was cancelled and they were dismissed. However, in 1918 most of the citizens considered religion an important subject in the curriculum and the Bolsheviks decided to allow schools teach this subject, but the teachers were to be paid by the parents. In Ekaterinburg in 1917-1918 it was not forbiddent to teach religious subjects at school and to employ churchmen for this purpose. The article also analyzes the attempts of Provisional and White Government to reform the study of the Law of God as an academic subject in school curriculum due to democratic restructuring of the educational sphere. The article underlines that churchmen supported reforms of religious education in the country and in Ekaterinburg in particular. But at the same time the ideas of the church on the content and methods of teaching the Law of God were not adjusted to the political situation in the country. As the Urals was one of the parts of the country struck by Civil War, the anti-church policy of the Soviet Union and the support of the Orthodox church by the White caused violence and confrontation in the society.