The article analyzes the pedagogical views, and the practice of implementing them through the experience of the Ukrainian-Russian social and religious reformer, Nikolay Neplyuev (1851-1908). His social experiments were a unique attempt at solving the social and economic problems of the peasant classes within the Russian Empire by means of providing them with an organized economically communal life coupled with a religious education. Neplyuev's views on the problems faced by peasant societies in the Russian Empire in forming and developing their human personality, and the activities organized by him, in an attempt to find solutions to the problems he perceived, such as the founding of the Khrestovosdyzhensk Labor Brotherhood and the establishment of religious-agricultural schools, have a special place in the history of education.