“Not by Word Alone”: Missionary Policies and Religious Conversion in Early Modern Russia

In 1821 the newly appointed director and rector of the Imperial Kazan University received the following instructions from the government in St. Petersburg: “It is of utmost importance for the government that the education of its people be based on a firm foundation of the Christian religion, that the evil spirit of our time, the all-destructive spirit of free thinking, does not penetrate the sacred temples, where the happiness of the future generations must be secured by teaching the contemporary youths.” The fact that Orthodox Christianity was at the heart of Russian imperial identity is not surprising, but the fact that such an identity was to be uncompromisingly forged in the Kazan region, where most of the residents were non-Russians of different faiths, is noteworthy.