Abstract
The state and religious confessions are the most important institutions of socio-political development of society, and the nature of the interaction of these institutions to a certain extent is an indicator of the civilization of society. The study and substantiation of the methodology for studying the interaction of the state and religious organizations in historical retrospect is relevant from the point of view of the need to generalize practical experience and extract lessons from the past. The theoretical and methodological basis for the study of state-religious relations in historical retrospect can be the principles of civilizational, institutional and interdisciplinary approaches. Each of them allows us to objectively and dynamically consider the evolution of interaction between the state and faiths in Kazakhstan in 1940-1990, to understand the cause-and-effect conditionality of the transformation of state religious policy, to identify and characterize regional specifics in the context of country-wide modernization processes, to summarize the regional historical experience of interaction between the state and religious organizations. The concept of cultural adaptation explains the mechanisms of habilitation of believers to changing political and legal realities.