Gregory L. Freeze

Recent Scholarship on Russian Orthodoxy: A Critique

Prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, scholars had devoted little attention to the modern history of Russian Orthodoxy and, implicitly, regarded it as of little significance.1 Such neglect dates back to pre-revolutionary historiography, which essentially ignored the Orthodox Church – partly because of the anti-religious bias broadly shared in the intelligentsia, and partly because of the restrictions on access to ecclesiastical archives (then still under tight church control). Even a modicum of scholarly interest vanished after 1917; apart from antireligious tracts,2 Soviet historiography on modern Russia ignored the church or at most made derisive passing remarks. Not until the 1970s did Soviet scholars evince interest in modern religious history. To be sure, they were principally concerned with the dissenting Old Believers, but they also took into consideration the church itself.3 Although that research slowly expanded in the 1980s, even before perestroika, it remained a marginal element when compared with the massive research on other problems. Not that Western scholarship had much reason to boast of greater productivity; rather, it either cloned the research of pre-revolutionary scholars or (in the spirit of the Cold War) battled distortions in Soviet historiography. Only in the last decade has Russian Orthodoxy finally become a major focus of research. If nothing else, that research has posed a challenge to antireligious assumptions and encouraged historians to give more attention to the role of the church and religion – in politics, social relations, and culture. Although the quantity has increased exponentially, the quality is less impressive. To be sure, given the past neglect, even sheer quantity – when it unearths and disseminates new data, when it demolishes conventional stereotypes about Orthodoxy – is useful. Still, despite the archival access and the suspension of

Church and State in Late Imperial Russia. Critics of the Synodal System of Church Government (1861-1914) (review)

and a great admirer of the selfless work of the priest Father Godlewski. Luckily he was able to escape just before the deportation Aktion of July-August 1942, when the remaining members of this parish were transported to their deaths in Treblinka. In her post war novel Hana Krall recalled, “When the Germans cleared the church of all the Christian Jews, there was only one Jew left in the church: the crucified Jesus above the altar.”

A Case of Stunted Anticlericalism: Clergy and Society in Imperial Russia:

Matters stand no better in Russian historiography. Although the subject has received only perfunctory treatment, anticlericalism has been fecklessly ascribed to eighteenth-century peasants, nineteenthcentury intellectuals, and twentieth-century workers.2 Rarely have specialists distinguished between types of anticlerical behaviour or considered differences in the treatment of various sub-groups in the clergy.3 If anticlericalism is to be a useful category of comparative analysis, it should be recast as a dynamic model, taking into account the social mainsprings, doctrinal content, and specific behavioural patterns. This essay utilizes a rudimentary, but useful model that posits two types (or stages) of anticlericalism. The first is inchoate anticlericalism, marked by a kind of diffuse hostility and directed mainly at clerical foibles or individual clerics. Whether expressed in satire or violent assault, its object is the concrete or particular, not the clergy as a social class or order. The second type is aggressive doctrinal anticlericalism, where the ’ism’ has real meaning as explicit theory, organized political action, and mass appeal. In other

The Disintegration of Traditional Communities: The Parish in Eighteenth-Century Russia

The eighteenth century brought fundamental changes in Russian society and culture, and perhaps no institution was affected more profoundly than the Russian Orthodox Church. Most dramatically, the Church came under a direct assault by the secular state, which replaced the patriarchate with a more tractable Synod in 1721 and sequestered church lands and peasants in 1764. But even more significantly, the church suffered a silent erosion of its essential substructure-the parish, its key institutional link to lay society. In medieval Russia, the parish had been much more than simply an administrative unit of the Church; it was also identical with an autonomous local community, thus fusing secular society and religious organization into a single unit. But this traditional parish community changed markedly in the eighteenth century, acquiring a different structure and set of functions. The consequences of this change were far reaching: just when the church needed to adapt to a modern secular society, it lost the traditional parish community that had been its strongest bond to the laity. Not surprisingly, ecclesiastical reformers of the 1860s (and later) made parish reconstitution a primary objective. This change has been construed in the existing historiography as a simple disappearance of the parish. In this view, the parish ceased to have any importance, for its traditional autonomy and powers were surrendered to an ever-expanding state and church bureaucracy. The most striking indicator of the parishs demise is alleged to be its loss of control over the local clergy, who became appointees of the bishop rather than elected representatives of the parish.1 This

From dechristianization to laicization: state, Church, and believers in Russia

The history of twentieth-century Russian Orthodoxy has been written largely in terms of the Church and state, martyr and oppressor, all within the traditional paradigm of ineluctable, ubiquitous secularization. This article shifts the focus from Bolshevik and bishop to believer, framed within the more recent model that emphasizes “believing without belonging”. While that new paradigm fits the Russian case, the latter certainly had unique specifics: it was precisely the coercive disestablishment of the Church that empowered parishioners and inadvertently laid the foundations for the post-Soviet religious revival. While the depth and meaning of that revival is open to dispute and calibration, it has unquestionably posed a dramatic contrast to contemporary Europe.

Final Report of the Joint Task Force on Archives American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and The American Historical Association 1 April 1995

The following Report on Archives has been submitted to the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and the Council of the American Historical Association. The Task Force urges those who wish to comment on the report to forward their remarks to the Board of AAASS, cdo Dr. Carol Saivetz, Russian Research Center, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138, and/or to Lynne Lee, Research Division of the AHA, 400A Street SE, Washington D.C. 20003.

Christianizing Crimea: Shaping Sacred Space in the Russian Empire and Beyond (review)

This fine monograph examines the “Christianizing” of the Crimea—from the annexation in the late-eighteenth century to the Crimean War and its aftermath.After first mapping the myriad ethnic and confessional groups that populated the area, Mara Kozelsky examines how the Russian state and church came to grips with this complex, rapidly developing region. She shows that state and church authorities did not always agree (especially on the matter of converting Muslims), but that praxis varied considerably (with local officials subverting the general-governor’s opposition, for example). This study also shows how public opinion, steeped in images of a glorious Greek and Christian past, helped shape attitudes even before the region was predominantly Russian and Orthodox. The turning point came under Archbishop Innokentii (Borisov) at mid-century, a zealot for buttressing the Christian identity of the region, most dramatically through the establishment of new monasteries based on the model of Mount Athos.The Crimean War completed this process, linking the Crimea with a national identity that was at once Russian and Orthodox.The author has mined an impressive array of sources, not only printed materials neglected by previous historians but also central and local archival materials, and places her findings within the larger context of current scholarship.

At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia (review)

raphy of Tycho, The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe (New York) in 1990. Christianson’s book complements Thoren’s by delving into the social and political forces involved in establishing and maintaining Uraniborg, and then in causing its ultimate demise. To mention a few, because Tycho’s wife was a commoner, their children were barred from receiving his titles and privileges without an edict from the throne, which was rarely granted, making his efforts to this end controversial. In addition to the usual political conoicts within the royal court, competition and resentment between Uraniborg and the University of Copenhagen over funds introduced the nastiness of academic politics. Complicating all of these matters was a conoict within Lutheranism in Denmark, between the Philippist and the Gnesio-Lutheran schools of theology, with Tycho tied to the former and the latter gaining ascendancy under King Christian. Exacerbating all of this turmoil was Tycho’s difacult personality, which put him into constant conoict with many of those working with him, as well as with the original inhabitants of Hven—not to mention a scandalous jilting of Tycho’s daughter Magdalene in the early 1690s and the redress that he sought for it. The arst 248 pages of Christianson’s book offer a social and political history of Uraniborg and its aftermath, chronicling Tycho’s initial success in keeping all these forces from undermining his efforts and his subsequent loss of control. This portion of the book is a joy to read; the scholarly treatment is almost as engaging as a romance novel. The remaining 131 pages give biographical sketches of each of the individuals associated with Uraniborg about whom Christianson managed to acquire information during the years he worked on this project. These sketches will be a starting point for future research on Uraniborg and the dissemination of the work carried out there. One need not have interest in the history of science to and this book a pleasure.

The Cross & the Sickle: Sergei Bulgakov and the Fate of Russian Religious Philosophy by Catherine Evtuhov (review)

Protestant camp, by contrast, the beginnings of a confessionaUy-determined modern nationalism were already discernible. As Protestants beUeved their denomination to be an expression of German essence, they welcomed Prussia as the Protestant power fated to unify the nation. CathoUcs, for theU part, stiU saw the glory of the nation in the old Empire and were, as such, backwards-looking. If Dietrich is right, it also means that religion, more than South-German particularism, structured ideas of German nationalism inWürttemberg in 1848.

Review Article : New Scholarship on the Russian Peasantry

David Christian, Living Water: Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990; x + 447 pp. ; £45.00. George Grantham and Carol S. Leonard, eds, Agrarian Organization in the Century of Industrialization: Europe, Russia, and North America (Research in Economic History Supplement 5, Parts A and B), Greenwich CN and London, JAI Press, 1989; xiii + 542 pp.; £88.75. Esther Kingston-Mann and Timothy Mixter, eds, Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1880-1921, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991; xviii + 443 pp.; US