Against this propaganda the Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities do little or nothing.

Though the criminal code contains severe enactments against those who fall away from the Orthodox Church, and still more against those who produce apostasy,* the enactments are rarely put in force.

Both clergy and laity in the Russian Church are, as a rule, very tolerant where no political questions are involved.

The parish priest pays attention to apostasy only when it diminishes his annual revenues, and this can be easily avoided by the apostate's paying a small yearly sum.

If this precaution be taken, whole villages may be converted to Islam without the higher ecclesiastical authorities knowing anything of the matter.
* A person convicted of converting a Christian to Islamism is sentenced, according to the criminal code (Sec.184), to the loss of all civil rights, and to imprisonment with hard labour for a term varying from eight to ten years.
Whether the barrier that separates Christians and Mussulmans in Russia, as elsewhere, will ever be broken down by education, I do not know; but I may remark that hitherto the spread of education among the Tartars has tended rather to imbue them with fanaticism.