The purpose of this article is to give a general overview of narrative sources of internal origin on the history of the religious movement of spiritual Christians of Molokans for 1905-1917, to establish the main types of these sources. The relevance of the article is due to the lack of source studies on the history of Molokanism, with the exception of brief reviews in dissertation research and monographs.

Russian Orthodox Diocese of Finland, taking advantage of the church and international policy, illegally transferred to the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1923 and its relations with the Russian Church were interrupted for two decades. At the end of the Great Patriotic War, a movement for the reunification of the two churches began, but there was no unity within the Finnish Church on this issue, and the efforts of the Moscow Patriarchate’s hierarchy led to limited results. The article reveals the history of the participation of Petter Nortamo, a Finnish pastor who converted to Orthodoxy and tried to speed up the process of the return of the Finnish Archdiocese to the Russian Orthodox Church, unknown to Russian scientists. One of the characteristic features of his activity was the active involvement in this process of political parties and associations of socialist orientation, as well as the press (in particular, the Democratic Union of the People of Finland). The article disputes the reading of this story by the Finnish historian Juha  Riikonen,  who  sees  this  primarily  as  a  political  background.  Nortamo’s  active  contacts  with  Metropolitan Grigory (Chukov) and Patriarch Alexy I, his ordination to holy orders in Leningrad indicate that the church component was decisive in his activities. However, Nortamo’s efforts were not enough to solve the problem of the relationship between the Finnish and Russian Orthodox Churches, and his death coincided with the end of such attempts. The Patriarchate of Constantinople played a significant role in freezing the process of church reunification. To this day, the figure of Nortamo remains unknown in Russian historical science.

The present article analyses Pope Pius XI’s encyclics against Italian Fascism and German National Socialism, as well as encyclics on social issues in general that touch upon the said ideologies. Among them are, respectively, Non  abbiamo  bisogno  and  Mit  brennender  Sorge,  and  Quadragesimo  anno  and  Divini  illius  Magistri.  Analysing their  contents  reveals  two  major  avenues  of  criticism  levelled  against  Italian  Fascism:  one,  that  a state  cannot supersede the family in matters of the raising of children and position itself as the source of morals and an object of unconditional obedience; and two, that a state constantly projecting its authority into the private life of an individual runs contrary to freedom of association and freedom of contract inherent to it. With regards to German National Socialism, this is complemented by a third avenue expounding on the unacceptability of racism.

Historically, the Joseph Volokolamsk Monastery in all periods of its existence played a significant role not only in the spiritual, political, ideological, and economic life of Russia, but was also an important educational center. The monastery  continues  development  of  these  traditions,  founded  by  venerable  Joseph  Volotsky,  to  this  day.  The article examines a new phenomenon for Russia, social orphanhood, as a problem of modern society. Legislative acts defining the status of a social orphan and his relationship with society are given. Based on archival documents, a retrospective of the activities of the Joseph Volokolamsk Monastery in working with youth and helping orphans and the suffering is given. The historical aspects of Orthodox rehabilitation pedagogy in relation to orphans are indicated. Statistics of these activities and a historical retrospective of the relationship between the church and the state in the pre-revolutionary years and the years of Soviet power are given. The works of a number of Orthodox authors — teachers, ascetics, philosophers and educators, providing the basis for the development of Orthodox rehabilitation pedagogy — are examined in retrospective. The patristic foundations of the spiritual and moral education of modern teenagers — social orphans in Russia are indicated. The historical foundations and principles of modern educational, spiritual and moral rehabilitation mission of the brethren of the monastery in collaboration with the teams of social rehabilitation centers for minors are given. Individual programs for spiritual and moral rehabilitation of social orphans are offered.

The article analyzes the content of the handwritten Synodic, which has belonged to one of the most important Serbian monasteries — Studenica — since the middle of the XVII century. Such manuscripts are known in single copies in the repositories of the Balkan Peninsula and Greece, all of them reflect the history of Russia’s relations with the South Slavic and other Orthodox peoples of southern Europe during the reign, mainly, of the Romanov dynasty.

The value of this manuscript is that it marks the beginning of the establishment of the regular practice of the clergy of the Studenitsa for alms in Russia, which lasted a century. Synodic contains a wealth of material on the genealogy of many Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian and other families that played a historical role in the events of Southern and Eastern Europe in the second half of the XVII-XVIII centuries.

The publication introduces documents from the internal records of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church related to the preparation and implementation of the visit of the delegation of the Russian Church headed by Patriarch Alexy I (Simansky) of Moscow and All Russia to the Middle East and Egypt in May-June 1945. One of the published documents is the notes of the Chairman of the Council G. G. Karpov on the preparation and progress of the visit. In fact, it is a diary of the trip, which reflects previously unknown episodes. Another document contains translations of all foreign press notes on the visit, which were provided to the Council by TASS. What attracts particular attention in these documents is the resonance that the visit had in the Middle East, as well as the way in which church and political figures interpreted the prospects for the Moscow Patriarchate’s international activity, in particular its possible claim to be the Centre of universal Orthodoxy. The documents are published for the first time.