The first church in Chelyabinsk fortress in the context of the sacralisation of space during the Russian colonisation of the Urals and Siberia

The first temple in the Chelyabinsk fortress in the context of the sacralization of space during the Russian colonization of the Urals and Siberia. The article, on the basis of the sources involved, deals in general terms with the main problems of temple building in the frontier zone in the process of Russian colonization of the Urals and Siberia from the late XVI to the 1730s. Sources are acts of record documentation: decrees, orders, reports. The purpose of the article is to analyze the relationship between state and church structures in temple building. The work is done within the framework of cultural history. The main institutions of the colonization process were the structures of the state and the church, the direct actors were peasants, merchants and servicemen of various categories, and the Posad population. The consolidation of Russia in new territories was carried out through the sacralization of space. The starting point in this process was the construction of the first Orthodox church. Initially, the question of building a temple was raised by both the secular authorities and parishioners, depending on the specific situation. Then the functions of establishing the ecclesiastical and administrative structure were delegated by the center to the field. If earlier the chain looked like this: Orthodox first settlers - the center in Moscow - the royal decree in place of the voivode - implementation, execution of the decision on the spot; then a new link appears at the diocesan level in the person of the bishop. This was caused, first of all, by the increasing scale of colonization, the complication of the secular and ecclesiastical-administrative structure. In the record correspondence, the idea of the impossibility of the existence of an Orthodox person without a temple can be traced. To find out the initiators of the nomination of the first temple in the Chelyabinsk fortress, an analysis of the names of the bishops of the Siberian Metropolis, in charge of which the fortress was located, was undertaken; monks of the Assumption Dalmatian Monastery in 1735, whose archimandrite was instructed to lay the church; the heads of the families of the fortress, recorded in the census of 1739 – 1740. From this it was concluded that the "symphony" of the initiative "from above" and the initiative "from below" was made.