Orthodoxy in the Russian prerevolution
The revolution of 1905-7 had a profound impact on Russian Orthodoxy. Most dramatically, it unleashed the pent-up discontent long percolating among the parish clergy, who, individually and collectively, embraced a range of liberal and even radical movements. To the horror of state officials, priests all across the empire proved receptive to the calls ofthe 'Liberation Movement' and used the occasion to press their own demands - for better material support, for the right of self-organisation, for a reduction in 'episcopal rule' and a greater role in diocesan administration. But others took up the needs of the disprivileged. Thus the clergy of one deanship in Viatka diocese, for example, urged the State Duma (parliament) to resolve 'the agrarian question according to the wishes of the people'.[140] And in numerous cases the local priest, whether from fear or conviction, became embroiled in the revolution itself, delivered incendiary sermons, performed requiems for fallen revolutionaries, and in sundry other ways supported his rebellious parishioners.[141]
It was not only a matter of radical priests: conservative prelates found themselves locked in a struggle with a regime fighting for survival. The decisive trigger to Church-State conflict was the emperor's Manifesto on the Freedom of Conscience (17 April 1905), an attempt to mollify disaffected religious and ethnic minorities by decriminalising apostasy and legalising conversion from Orthodoxy. The result, as the prelates feared, was a tidal wave of declarations to leave the Church.62 The manifesto did not reconcile minorities, of course, but it did enrage churchmen - who saw it as a crass betrayal of the Church's vital interests.
Like the rest of Russian society, the clergy responded to the revolutionary crisis by pressing for reform. Their principal goal was to convene a church council - the first in more than two centuries - to address the Church's many problems and needs. And such seemed a realisable dream, as the regime acquiesced and authorised preparations for a church council. After first collecting the opinions of diocesan authorities, the Synod created a special pre-conciliar commission to analyse the opinions and draft proposals which bore the liberal stamp of these revolutionary ears. All that, however, came to naught: as the revolution receded, the emperor decided to defer the church council until more 'propitious' times.
The 'Duma Monarchy' of the inter-revolutionary years - that marked by the Third (i907-i2) and Fourth (i9i2-i7) Dumas - did nothing to solve problems or reduce tensions. At the very minimum, church authorities were aghast at the prospect of the multi-confessional Duma intervening in church affairs, as indeed soon became the case (with respect to salaries for the clergy, parish schools and a host of other issues).63 Apart from seeking to influence from within (by promotingthe election of clerical deputies),64 the Church adamantly rejected the Duma's competence in most ecclesiastical affairs. Thus, in i908, the chief procurator conveyed the Synod's rejection of attempts by the Duma (as a 'non-confessional legislative institution') to meddle in church business and to sponsor new laws on religious tolerance.65 Similar sentiments were later voiced at a conference of prelates from central Russian dioceses, who
Church and Clerical Political Dissent in Late Imperial Russia, 1905-14', unpublished PhD dissertation, Georgetown University (2000).
62 For data on 1905-9, see RGIA, Fond 797, op. 79, otd. 2, st. 3, d. 494, ll. 36-8.
63 For the fullest account, though based only on printed sources, see Vladimir Rozhkov Tserkovnye voprosy v Gosudarstvennoi Dume (Rome: Pontificium inst. orient. Studiorum,
i975).
64 See, for example, the Synod decree of 14 July 1912 urging active clerical involvement in elections to the Fourth Duma, in RGIA, Fond 796, op. 194, g. 1912, d. 1207,1.10-10 ob.
65 See the chief procurator's memorandum to the Council of Ministers (dated 10.9.1908) in RGIA, Fond 797, op. 78, otd. 2, st. 3, d. 122/b, l. 53.
demanded the 'complete removal of church legislation from the purview of a non-confessional State Duma'.[142] Archbishop Stefan of Kursk expressed prevailing sentiment in the episcopate when he wrote that 'it is an empty and idle dream to count on the bureaucrats renouncing their coercion of the Church. It is a vain, futile hope to count on the Duma giving us the opportunity to free ourselves from the enslavement and to build the Church on "conciliar principles" as the canons require.'[143]
All this unfolded against the backdrop of growing anxiety about the moral- religious state of the Church. Among the folk themselves, piety seemed to be recovering, with high rates of religious observance, but it was clear that the 'simple folk' were no longer so simple: patterns of religious observance were complex, driven not so much by dissent and apostasy as by broader patterns of social and cultural change (migrant labour, the rebellion of youth and the like).[144] Publicly, the Church suffered enormously from the infamous 'Rasputinshchina', as Grigorii Rasputin, the self-appointed lay 'elder' (starets), gained extraordinary influence and compromised crown and altar in the process. Although public perception greatly exaggerated Rasputin's role, he nonetheless elicited fierce enmity among the ranking churchmen, especially after Rasputin's influence became public in 1912. As a police report from 1912 attested: According to public opinion, the ecclesiastical domain experienced a kind of revolutionary movement in 1912.'[145] Even extreme conservatives like Archbishop Antonii (Khrapovitskii) waxed indignant about the cancerous influences on the Church.[146]
The First World War inspired the Church, like most of Russia, to respond with patriotic support for what would quickly prove an unmitigated military catastrophe. The Church itself mobilised substantial resources to assist in the war, converted facilities to serve as military hospitals, raised funds for the war victims and campaigned to sustain the fighting morale of the troops and the home front. In that respect, it differed little from churches of the other combatants. But the context was different: far sooner than elsewhere, the Russian Empire was swept by an intense tide of anti-war sentiment. Hence the Church's identification with the 'imperialist war' did much to create a young generation of anti-religious veterans, the future Red Army men who would be particularly hostile to the Church. But the Church itself had grievances,[147] suffered mightily from the inflation and dislocation of war and had grown increasingly alienated from a crown irreparably besmirched by Rasputinism. Indeed, amidst the military crisis of 1915, with the country reeling from defeat, the Church suffered yet another scandal associated with Rasputin, as his protege, the bishop of Tobolsk, conducted a hasty canonisation against the express orders of the Synod. The public resonance could hardly have been greater, and the damage to the Synod more ruinous. Little wonder that, when the autocracy appealed to the Church for support on 27 February 1917, in its critical hour, even the conservative Synod summarily refused.[148]
Russian Orthodoxy did not vanish after the Petrine reforms, but it certainly changed. Most striking was the resilience of popular faith; while the prerevolution brought and accelerated undeniable anti-religious tendencies, the vast majority remained faithful and, indeed, demanded a greater role for the Church and for themselves in the Church. But Orthodoxy was no longer part of the infamous 'Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality' trilogy of official politics; it had excised the middle term and, increasingly, identified with the people, not with a secular state that had plundered its assets and failed to protect its vital interests.Women, the family and public life
141
See G. L. Freeze, 'Church and Politics in Late Imperial Russia', in Anna Geifman (ed.),
144
See G. L. Freeze, 'A Pious Folk? Religious Observance in Vladimir Diocese i900-i4',
147
See, for example, the collective statement of clerical deputies to the State Duma in August 1915 (at the very height of a political crisis), detailing all the Church's woes and how so little had been resolved, in 'Pechat' i dukhovenstvo',
148
A. V Kartashev, 'Revoliutsiia i sobor 1917-1918 gg.',