Modern Historiography of the Study of Confessional Libraries in the Context of Their Interaction with the State

The issue of relations between the state authorities and religious associations is relevant in the conditions of Russian polyconfessionalism. In our country the state not only interacts with religious organizations, but also contributes to the establishment of interfaith dialogue, remaining a neutral party. In modern library science much attention is paid to communication between the state and libraries of religious associations. The general term for the libraries of all religious structures in Russia is “confessional libraries”. At the same time, the scientific literature uses other term — “Orthodox libraries”, “Old Believer libraries”, “Islamic libraries” and others. The study of the topic is complicated by the issues of unsettled terminology and poorly developed conceptual apparatus. The best studied in the historiography are Orthodox libraries, followed by Old Believer libraries. Thematically, most of the articles are published on the history of libraries, but there are also works on the formation of collections, the peculiarities of work methods, educational and missionary activities of libraries, etc. All publications necessarily consider the difficult relationship between libraries of religious denominations and the state. The Centers for the study of confessional libraries have been identified. As a rule, the historiography of the study of the topic is tied to the regions of study. Three main centers have been identified: the Volga region, Siberia and the Black Earth region. The direction of studying the interaction between Islamic libraries and the state in different periods of Russian history is singled out separately.