"I Can’t Offend My Unhappy Sister": On the Question of the Family Relationship of the Orenburg Orthodox Parish Clergy in the Second Half of the 19th Century
The article deals with one of the aspects of the everyday life of the Orthodox parish clergy - behavior in the area of kinship relationship. The archive documents from the facilities of Orenburg ecclesiastical consistory and Orenburg diocesan poor clergymen care organization provide insight into drama that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century in the family of the Chelyabinsk archpriest Nikolay Vassilyevich Krechetov. The author traces the benchmarks of the private life and career of the family head, highlights the causes of the strained relationship with his son and reviews the conflict between the brother and the sister about the paternal inheritance. Analizing the sources the author arrives at the conclusion that the history of Krechetovs’ family is an evidence of aspiration of the parish clergy representatives to instill in children a sense of responsibility for the least for the least protected family members and readiness to help them in case of need. The clergymen tried to secure the future of their offsprings: to leave to their children an inheritance and to marry their daughters. The girls that did not create their own families were dependent on other relatives. If they succeeded in attaining self-reliance, they tried not to ask their relatives for help even in difficult straits. In the clergy milieu there were conflicts because of the sons’ aspiration to choose their own course of life, different from what was expected by their fathers. That resulted in miscommunication between the older and the younger generations and caused the chidren’s disregard of the essentials of education. These circumstances could be the root source of the longtime conflict between family members followed by the complete rupture of relations between relatives.