“Reading” Urban Religious Landscape in the Late 19th–Early 20

Abstract

This article presents preliminary results from the project “Religious diversity in a Eurasian city: statistical and cartographic analyses”. The project focuses on the evolution of the religious landscape in the late 19th – early 20th century Ekaterinburg. The research is based on documents extracted from state and private archives, statistics, and visual materials. We have reconstructed how different religious denominations formed their institutions in the late 19th century Ekaterinburg and how this diversity increased due to mass migration and a relatively tolerant religious policy in the early 20th century. The paper argues that religious institutions played important roles in evolving civil society in Russia, for most of them promoted non-governmental forms of socialisation, education, and charity activities. The decade after the Revolution, often called “the Golden Age” of Protestantism in Russia, ended with the Soviet state's socialist modernization and Atheist policy. That resulted in the destruction of the city's religious landscape. All the changes manifested in this religious landscape can be presented as a text, which can be “read” and interpreted.