This article is devoted to the main trends in the development of the science of religion in Russia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Unlike in other European countries, Russian universities lacked theological departments, and the study of religion was concentrated exclusively within the Church schools. This was one reason for the late development of the science of religion in Russia.

This article is devoted to the study of the academic careers and public activities of three Russian female scholars, Nadejda Brullova- Shaskolskaya, Sara Ratner-Shternberg and Vera Kharuzina, in the context of the history of Russian religious studies in the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. Theirs was some of the first research work in Russia that highlighted the new science of religion.

This article is devoted to an analysis of the emergence of Islamic studies in Russia in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The Faculty of Oriental Languages at St. Petersburg University opened in 1855, and the so-called Anti-Muslim Branch in Kazan Theological Academy opened in 1854. The two schools were usually called the “academic” and the “Kazan missionary” school, respectively. The key figures in the academic school were A. Kazem-bek, V. Rozen, V. Barthold, A. Schmidt, and I. Krachkovsky.

This article reveals the character of the responsibilities held by officials of the Department for the Spiritual Affairs of Foreign Confessions concerning the control of the religious life of the country and its legal regulation, using early, unpublished documentary materials from the Russian State Historical Archive, specifically those concerning the departmental duties of officials V.V. Vashkevich (1865–1902) and S.D. Bondarʹ (1902–1917).