The article analyses the objective reasons of the failure of the missionary policy of Russian Tsarism on the territory of the Kazakh Steppe In order to determine the activities of missionary policy in the steppe region, methodological methods are used, such as historical-genetic, historical comparative, concrete-historical, which have been widely used in historical science. This paper identifies factors that influenced the implementation of missionary policy tasks in the region.  The use of imperial documents, such as reports of the heads of dioceses, allows us to study the degree of government`s support for the confessional policy. In the paper, attention is also paid to the position of the highest authorities and the intelligentsia regarding the policy in question. It is concluded that the reason for the adoption of a foreign religion by the poor Kazakhs was the aggravation of the agrarian problem. However, the missionary policy didn’t achieve what it want. The lack of sufficient land plots for the neophytes and the extent of government measures to prevent problems of adaptation to the new environment reduced the motivation for orthodoxy.