CULTURAL DIFFUSION MECHANISM IN THE CONTEXT OF FORMING PREREQUISITES FOR THE PETRINE MODERNIZATION IN RUSSIA: THE CASE OF RELIGIOUS PRACTICE

The article investigates mechanisms of cultural diffusion by which the European patterns of interaction between the religious and political spheres influenced the structures of the Russian state and society of the 16th – early 18th centuries. Relying upon the instances of concrete situations, the author displays how these borrowed patterns transformed traditional basis of the Russian life, preparing the implementation of the ecclesiastical reform by Peter the Great in 1721–24. Meanwhile, it is argued that the adoption of the European patterns on the Russian soil had been going by a more complicated way than it is supposed by the theory of cultural diffusion: the success of cultural borrowings depended on how organic and actual were they to be embedded into the framework of the Russian tradition.