<P> Peter the Great (1682--1725) had an agenda of radical modernization of Russian government, army, dress and manners . He made Russia a formidable political power . Peter was not religious and had a low regard for the Church, so he put it under tight governmental control . He replaced the Patriarch with a Holy Synod, which he controlled . The Tsar appointed all bishops . A clerical career was not a route chosen by upper - class society . Most parish priests were sons of priests, were very poorly educated, and very poorly paid . The monks in the monasteries had a slightly higher status; they were not allowed to marry . Politically, the church was impotent . Catherine the Great later in the 18th century seized most of the church lands, and put the priests on a small salary supplemented by fees for services such as baptism and marriage . </P> <P> In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the Russian Orthodox Church experienced a vast geographic expansion . Numerous financial and political incentives (as well as immunity from military service) were offered local political leaders who would convert to Orthodoxy, and bring their people with them . </P> <P> In the following two centuries, missionary efforts stretched out across Siberia into Alaska . Eminent people on that missionary effort included St. Innocent of Irkutsk and St. Herman of Alaska . In emulation of Stephen of Perm, they learned local languages and translated gospels and hymns . Sometimes those translations required the invention of new systems of transcription . </P> <P> In the aftermath of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, the Ottomans (supposedly acting on behalf of the Russian regent Sophia Alekseyevna) pressured the Patriarch of Constantinople into transferring the Metropoly of Kiev from the jurisdiction of Constantinople to that of Moscow . The controversial transfer brought millions of faithful and half a dozen dioceses under the pastoral and administrative care of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', leading to the significant Ukrainian domination of the Russian Orthodox Church, which continued well into the 18th century, with Theophanes Prokopovich, Epiphanius Slavinetsky, Stephen Yavorsky and Demetrius of Rostov being among the most notable representatives of this trend . </P>

What russian city decided to follow the eastern orthodox version of christianity