Legal Experience of Labeling “Invisible” Religious Stigmatizations (Based on the Materials of the PSRI)

This work is a religious studies analysis of a number of texts in the first volume of the first collection of the “Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire” (hereinafter – the PSRI), focused on the phenomenon of “invisibility” of religious communities, which is viewed through the prism of regulatory regulations and stigmatization. The purpose of the study is to study several key concepts in the field of religious studies, namely the concept of “invisibility” introduced by Niklas Luhmann, with an emphasis on its two main aspects: 1) the impossibility of simultaneously observing phenomena and conducting self-observation, and 2) monitoring sacred reality. An analysis of a number of documents from the 17th century demonstrates how “religious stigmatization” was formed, which manifested itself in legal regulations regarding punishments for “deviations from the norm”. Thus, the PSRI acted not only as a legal body, but also as a tool visualizing religious minorities that were previously “invisible” to the authorities.