Church and Society in Modern Russia: Essays in Honor of Gregory L. Freeze 3447104147, 9783447104142

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Church and Society in Modern Russia

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

Gregory L. Freeze (b. 9 May 1945)

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

Church and Society in Modern Russia Essays in Honor of Gregory L. Freeze

Edited by Manfred Hildermeier and Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter

2015

Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

Cover Illustration: General view of the Kremlin, from the bell tower of the Church of All Saints, Rostov Velikii, 1911. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-DIG-prokc-21241].

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

For further information about our publishing program consult our website http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de © Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden 2015 This work, including all of its parts, is protected by copyright. Any use beyond the limits of copyright law without the permission of the publisher is forbidden and subject to penalty. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. Printed on permanent/durable paper. Printing and binding: Hubert & Co., Göttingen Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-447-10414-2 e-ISBN PDF 978-3-447-19403-7

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

Contents From the Editors .. .................................................................................. VII I The Russian Orthodox Church in Historical Context Manfred Hildermeier Beharrliche Rückständigkeit: Über den Umgang mit einer notwendigen Kategorie . . ...................................... 1 Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter Church Intellectuals in Enlightenment Russia: The Theotokos Sermons of Metropolitan Platon (Levshin) ................................. 17 Tat’ iana Leont’eva Сельский православный приход в пореформенной России: проблемы адаптации к новым реалиям .................................................... 35 II The Church and Russian Society Boris N. Mironov Уровень жизни российского православного духовенства в XVIII-начале XX века . ........................................................................ 51 Mikhail A. Babkin Вопрос об отмене у монашествующих духовных властей права завещания: по материалам Предсоборного совета, Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей и Поместного собора Русской православной церкви (1917 г.) ... 77 Marlyn L. Miller “Like a Hen Who Gathers Her Chicks”: Female Leadership in Russian Orthodox Monasticism, 1700–1917 . ..................... 95 Page Herrlinger The Pious Women of an “Unsimple Folk”: Female Perspectives on Faith and Authority Among the Orthodox Laity of St. Petersburg, 1895–1917 ............... 113 III The Church and the Russian Empire Jonathan Dekel-Chen Liberal Answers to the “Jewish Question”: Then and Now ................................. 133

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Contents

ChaeRan Y. Freeze Fallen from the Faith: Jewish Converts in Imperial Russia . ................................ 157 Roy R. Robson Of Duma or Antichrist: Old Believers and Russian Politics, 1905–14 ................... 173 Jan M. Surer The Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Village, and Religious Identity in Kyiv Province, 1870–1913 ........................................ 185 IV The Scholarship of Gregory L. Freeze Scott M. Kenworthy Gregory L. Freeze: Historian of the Orthodox Church in Modern Russia .............. 211 Bibliography of Works by Gregory L. Freeze .................................................. 231

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037



From the Editors Eastward from the coast of California to the shores of New England, across the Atlantic Ocean to venerable German universities, and on to historic cities in Russia and Israel, the scholarship and pedagogical talents of Gregory L. Freeze are strikingly visible. This volume, produced to honor Professor Freeze on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, is the work of students who studied with him at Brandeis University (Waltham, Massachusetts) and close associates who have been his collaborators or mentees in research and teaching.1 Gregory L. Freeze is without a doubt the preeminent non-Russian historian of the Orthodox Church in modern Russia. No scholar outside of Russia has done more to establish church history on firm archival foundations, and none has provided more sustained and critical guidance to the graduate students and younger colleagues who have built upon his work. Beginning in the 1960s and continuing with seemingly limitless energy to the present day, Professor Freeze’s commitment to teaching, research, and the general progress of Russian historical studies has been deep and far-reaching. Gregory Freeze’s knowledge of historiography, contemporary theory, archives, and printed sources is probably unequalled in the profession. This is evident from the content of this collection, which includes a bibliography of his works and articles written by his students and colleagues. The essays published here encompass concrete questions of Russian church history since the late eighteenth century, as well as broader historical problems that cannot be understood without reference to the Church. All illustrate the rigorous technical training and document-driven knowledge base that characterize Professor Freeze’s professional impact on the field in the United States, Europe, and Russia. While the contributors to this volume cannot presume to have matched our friend and teacher’s mastery of church history, we hope that these studies encourage him to pause and enjoy the fruits of his Herculean labors. Manfred Hildermeier begins the collection with analysis of the perennial problem of Russian “backwardness.” Although in recent years the language of backwardness and/or modernization has been replaced by concepts such as “multiple modernities” and “entangled histories,” students of Russia generally remain committed to a European historical framework even as they try to avoid Eurocentric judgments about the country and its people. This is because, ever since the late seventeenth century, Russian elites have defined themselves, their society, and most importantly their aspirations for the future with refer1 Contributors who studied with Gregory Freeze at Brandeis University include: Elise Wirtschafter (BA 1977), Jonathan Dekel-Chen (PhD 2002), Scott Kenworthy (PhD 2002), Marlyn Miller (PhD 2009), and Jan Surer (PhD 2012). Professor Freeze also served as dissertation advisor to Roy Robson (PhD, Boston College, 1992) and as informal advisor to ChaeRan Freeze and Page Herrlinger.

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

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From the Editors

ence to European models and patterns of development. The Christian and Greek cultural foundations that Russia shares with Europe, the participation of Russian intellectuals in all the major philosophical and artistic movements of modern Europe, and the eighteenth-century emergence of Russia as a great power, initially in the Baltic region but soon thereafter in the entire European state system, explain this orientation. It is telling that despite the contributors’ attention to a traditionalist church and religious culture, none of the essays adopts the Eurasianist perspective of a separate and totally unique Russian civilization. A key issue highlighted in these articles is how the Russian Church responded to concrete historical change, both intellectually and institutionally. In this vein, Elise Wirtschafter considers the compatibility between eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideas and Orthodox religious teachings, while Tat’iana Leont’eva discusses efforts in the 1860s and 1870s to transform the local parish into a source of primary education and social philanthropy. Ongoing obstacles to reform of the Russian Church, a major theme in the scholarship of Gregory Freeze, are further treated in the contributions of Boris Mironov and Mikhail Babkin, both of whom provide detailed information on the economic rights and status of Russian clergy. Once again questions of adaptation, in this instance the Church’s ability to adapt to economic facts on the ground, illustrate the close connection between the institutional development of the Russian Church, the social condition of the clergy, and the material realities (or limitations) of Russian life. Indicative of the broad range of Gregory Freeze’s scholarship and of his ability to incorporate innovative theoretical and historiographical perspectives (without chasing ephemeral intellectual fashions) are studies that represent the “new histories” of recent decades: Marlyn Miller tackles the understudied role of female religious in positions of authority within the Church; Page Herrlinger sheds light on the spiritual lives of humble women who relied on religious belief to cope with everyday struggles; and ChaeRan Freeze contributes to both gender studies and the history of religious minorities with her research on Jewish converts to Orthodoxy. The significance of the “Jewish Question” in Russian political and church history is also evident from Jonathan Dekel-Chen’s essay, and the equally omnipresent issues of Old Believer and Ukrainian identities within the context of a multi-confessional, multinational empire are explored by Roy Robson and Jan Surer. Finally, the editors are pleased to include critical analysis of Gregory Freeze’s scholarly oeuvre as understood by Scott Kenworthy, who brings to the table knowledge not only of the Russian Church as institution but also of Orthodox ritual and theology. The studies published here speak for themselves in the sense that each represents a personal tribute to a treasured teacher and colleague. The authors address broad patterns of Russian historical development from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and all touch upon how the Russian Orthodox Church adapted (or failed to adapt) to the socioeconomic, cultural, and political pluralism that gave birth to, and continues to define, the modern world. The collective result is a glimpse into the rich variety and daunting significance of a church history embedded in Russia’s relationship to Europe, defined by multiple layers and dimensions of historical experience, and enriched by evolving methodological perspectives. The editors would like to thank Brandeis University and California State Polytechnic University in Pomona for financial support, Marlyn Miller for expert editing of the

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

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From the Editors

English-language contributions, Barbara Krauß and the editorial staff at Harrassowitz for bringing the project to concrete fruition, and ChaeRan Freeze for serving as official bibliographer and liaison with Brandeis University. Most of all we thank our colleague, friend, and Elise’s first teacher, Gregory, for his professional integrity and generosity, for his irrepressible humor and ever-wise counsel, and for his unsurpassed commitment to the progress of knowledge about Russian history. Manfred Hildermeier (Göttingen, Germany) Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter (Beverly Hills, California, USA)

January 2, 2015

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037



I The Russian Orthodox Church in Historical Context

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

Beharrliche Rückständigkeit: Über den Umgang mit einer notwendigen Kategorie Manfred Hildermeier (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

Wer sich mit Begriff und Konzept russischer Rückständigkeit befasst, betritt kein Neuland. Beide gehören im Gegenteil zu den ältesten Interpretationsfiguren der einheimischen Geschichtsschreibung und reichen in jene Frühphase zurück, in der sie Teil heftiger weltanschaulicher, sozial- und geschichtsphilosophischer Debatten über den Standort der russischen Zivilisation in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart samt der daraus abzuleitenden Zukunftsstrategie waren. Propagandisten eines eigenen, aus langer Tradition und autochthonen Sozialformen begründeten Weges standen gegen diejenigen, die neidvoll nach Europa blickten und Russlands Zukunft in der europäischen Gegenwart erblickten. Genau besehen, ist dieser uralte Konflikt zwischen „Slavophilen“ und „Westlern“ immer nur abgebrochen worden.1 Er loderte auf, um sich wieder zu beruhigen, erlebte Konjunkturen, wurde aber nie beigelegt. Zumindest schwelte er in dem Sinne weiter, dass er historische Untersuchungen ebenso wie gegenwartsbezogene politisch-philosophische Kommentare inspirierte. Davon zeugte die sog. liberale Geschichtswissenschaft des ausgehenden Zarenreichs, die Europa in vielen ihrer Werke2 nachgerade zum Maßstab erhob, in gleicher Weise wie nach der Oktoberrevolution die sowjetmarxistische. Gerade in deren Debatten war die komparative Dimension beinahe ausnahmslos präsent. Ob man über russischen Feudalismus, die Entstehung des Kapitalismus, den Charakter des Absolutismus, die Datierung der „industriellen Revolution“ oder die wirtschaftliche Struktur zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts stritt3 – der ubiquitäre Monopolanspruch des Historischen Materialismus gab verbind1 Vgl. aus einer umfangreichen Literatur: A. Walicki, A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism. Oxford 1980, S. 92ff; ders., The Slavophile Controversy. History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought. Oxford 1975; P. Scheibert, Von Bakunin zu Lenin. Zur Geschichte der russischen revolutionären Ideologien 1840–1895. Leiden 1956; E. Müller, Russischer Intellekt in europäischer Krise. Ivan V. Kireevskij 1806–1856. Köln 1966; M. Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism 1812–1855. Cambridge/ Mass. 1961. 2 Vgl. bes. P. N. Miljukov, Skizzen russischer Kulturgeschichte, Bd. 1–2, Leipzig 1898–1901; I. I. Ditjatin, Ustrojstvo i upravlenie gorodov Rossii. St.Peterburg, Jaroslavl’ 1875, 1877; A. A. Kizevetter, Gorodovoe položenie Ekateriny II. Opyt istoričeskogo kommentarija, Moskva 1909. 3 Vgl. u. a.: C. Goehrke, Zum gegenwärtigen Stand der Feudalismusdiskussion in der Sowjetunion, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 22, 1974, S. 214–247; C. Scharf, Strategien marxistischer Absolutismusforschung. Der Absolutismus in Rußland und die Sowjethistoriker, in: Annali dell’Instituto storico italo-germanico in Trento/Jahrbuch des italienisch-deutschen historischen Instituts in Trient  5, 1979, S. 457–506; Perechod ot feodalizma k kapitalizmu v Rossii : Materialy

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

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Manfred Hildermeier

lich vor, die Existenz der postulierten sozioökonomischen Formationsphasen auch für die russische Geschichte zu belegen, mithin zu vergleichen. Auf ihre Weise kann die gesamte ideologische Konfrontation zwischen Sozialismus und Kapitalismus einschließlich ihrer Varianten während des frühen Kalten Kriegs als Fortsetzung der Kontroverse zwischen einem eigenen und einem ‚westlichen‘ Weg gelten. Wenn Demokratie gegen die totalitäre Diktatur, die den Stalinismus einschloss, wenn die „offene Gesellschaft“ gegen „historizistisch“ begründete Ordnungen verteidigt wurde4, evozierte dies immer auch die alte Alternative zwischen einem eigenen russischen und einem westlichen herauf. Auch der Dissens seit den 1960er Jahren bewegte sich sowohl in seinen eigenen Reihen, in denen es slavophile wie westlich orientierte Strömungen gab5, als auch natürlich in seiner Konfrontation gegen die „sozialistische“ Parteidiktatur als russisch-sowjetischer „Sonderweg“ stand implizit in der Tradition eines solchen Gegensatzes. Es war daher nicht nur zu erwarten, sondern beinahe zwangsläufig, dass eben diese Debatte nach dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion 1991 mit neuer Heftigkeit ausbrach. Wer Russland einen Weg in die Zukunft weisen wollte, musste sich über seine historisch-kulturelle Identität im Klaren sein. Nur aus der Kenntnis der großenteils verschütteten Vergangenheit ergaben sich Handlungsempfehlungen für die Gegenwart. Die Beharrungskraft teleologischschematischer Denkschablonen und monokausaler Erklärungen brachte dabei zum Teil bizarre geschichtsphilosophische Konstrukte hervor.6 Auch die anachronistische Wiedergeburt kaum veränderter slavophiler Positionen des 19. Jahrhunderts blieb nicht aus. Wenn etwa ein Solženicyn eine beratende Duma nach Art eines zemskij sobor vorschlug und die Vorzüge des ‚organischen‘, aus dem Kollektiv erwachsenden Führertums‘ vor der seelenlosen, anonym-mechanischen demokratischen Wahl7 pries, illustrierte eben dies die erneuerte Aktualität eines uralten Entscheidungszwangs, den das wahrlich säkulare Geschehen gänzlich unerwartet auf die Tagesordnung gesetzt hatte. Spekulativ, aber nicht ohne belastbare Anhaltspunkte mag man schließlich auch die „koordinierte“ bzw. „gelenkte Demokratie“ Vladimir Putins8 und seine neue Idee eines „eurasischen Bundes“ jenen Handlungsoptionen zuordnen, die auf seiner Grundlage erwachsen. Solche seit Jahrhunderten andauernde Prominenz der Alternative zwischen bodenständigen technisch-ökonomischen Verfahrensweisen bzw. politisch-sozialen Organisationsformen und dem Import geeigneter westlicher Äquivalente kommt nicht von ungefähr.

4 5 6 7 8

vsesojuznoj diskussii. Otv. red. V. I. Šunkov. Moskva 1969; B. Bonwetsch, Oktoberrevolution. Legi­ ti­ma­tions­probleme der sowjetischen Geschichtswissenschaft, in: Politische Vierteljahresschrift 17, 1976, S. 150–185. Vgl. K. R. Popper, Die offene Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde. 7. Aufl. mit weitgehenden Verb. und neuen Anh. Tübingen 1992. Vgl: J. Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents: Their Struggle For Human Rights, Boston 1980, bes. S. 97ff; Vlast' i dissidenty. Iz dokumentov KGB i CK KPSS, Moskva 2006; L. Alekseeva, Istorjaja inakomyslija v SSSR. Novejżsij period, Moskva 2006. Vgl. J. Scherrer, Kulturologie. Rußland auf der Suche nach einer zivilisatorischen Identität, Göttingen 2003, zur Identitätssuche, 127ff. Vgl. A. Solschenizyn, Rußlands Weg aus der Krise. Ein Manifest, München 1990, S. 67ff. Vgl. M. Mommsen; A. Nußberger, Das System Putin. Gelenkte Demokratie und politische Justiz in Russland, München 2007; R. J. Hill, Putin and Putinism, Abingdon, New York 2010.

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

Beharrliche Rückständigkeit: Über den Umgang mit einer notwendigen Kategorie

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Sie hat eine tiefe Ursache darin, dass die Notwendigkeit der Wahl gleichsam zur Grundausstattung des Landes, seiner Geschichte und Kultur, in geographischer Hinsicht sogar zu seinem genetischen Code gehört. Wenn der Raum das historische Geschehen und seine strukturell-institutionellen Formen zumindest als ein prägender Faktor mitbestimmt – und diese heuristische Funktion darf man ihm auch aus der gebotenen Distanz zu jeglichem geohistorischen Determinismus zubilligen –, ergibt sich die Bedeutung der russischen Randlage zu Europa von selbst. Spätestens seit dem Wiedereintritt in den Horizont der lateinisch-christlich geprägten Welt im 16. Jahrhundert stellte sich das elementare Problem, wie man sich zu ihr verhalten sollte. Und je näher diese Region, die aus der eigenen Sicht als „Westen“ erschien, im Laufe des 17. Jahrhunderts kommerziell, politisch, kulturell sowie nicht zuletzt – wenn man die polnisch-litauische Adelsrepublik hinzurechnet – militärisch heranrückte, desto deutlicher verwandelte es sich in einen Vergleich und ein Maßnehmen, vor allem in (militär)technisch-wirtschaftlicher und wissenschaftlich-medizinischer Hinsicht sowie mit Blick auf die materielle Kultur. Das Verhältnis zu Europa wurde zur „Gretchenfrage“ zunächst der zarischen Politik samt der sie tragenden administrativen Elite, sodann einer wachsenden, wenn auch noch lange sehr schmalen, überwiegend, aber seit dem zweiten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts nicht mehr nur adeligen Öffentlichkeit in Salons und der entstehenden Publizistik. Ihre erste offene Formulierung fand sie bekanntlich in den Reformen Peters des Großen, der auch – ungeachtet von Weichenstellungen in der Herrschaftszeit seines Halbbruders Fedor Alekseevič9 – das erste klare Bekenntnis zum Vorbildcharakter Westeuropas abgab. Es war kein Zufall, dass die Anhänger einer eigenen, autochthonen Zukunft Russlands nicht zuletzt an seinem Werk Anstoß nahmen.10 Dank seiner enormen Tatkraft beging vor allem er die Kardinalsünde, die der romantische Nationalstolz der entstehenden Ge­schichtsschreibung ein Jahrhundert später nicht zu verzeihen vermochte. Seit Peter wurde, anders gesagt, die Differenz zu Europa, die man als Rückständigkeit verstand, zu einem Quellenbegriff. Weder seine Reformen noch die seiner ebenbürtigen Nachfolgerin Katharina der Großen, die sich – bekanntlich als Fürstentochter von Anhalt-Zerbst geboren – der Westorientierung ein halbes Jahrhundert später anschloss, lassen sich ohne die Vor­aussetzung, dass Russland den Abstand aufzuholen habe, verstehen. Das gesamte Pro­ gramm des frühen und späten „Reformabsolutismus“ – um das erläuterungsbedürftige Adjektiv „aufgeklärt“ außen vor zu lassen – bleibt ohne Motiv und Begründung, wenn diese Prämisse nicht ergänzt wird. Insofern kann man noch weitergehen und die Rück­ständig­ keit über ihren Charakter als historische Quellenkategorie hinaus zu einem Grundbe­g riff erklären. Ihm wuchs die Funktion zu, so die einleuchtende Definition Kosellecks, prägende „Strukturen“ und „Ereigniszusammenhänge“ seiner Zeit zusammenzufassen und in bestimmter Weise zu interpretieren; ohne seine Verwendung war eine Verständigung über solche Zusammenhänge nicht mehr möglich.11 9 Vgl., wenn auch mit vorsichtiger Wertung: P. V. Sedov, Zakat moskovskogo carstva, carskij dvor konca XVII veka, Sankt Petersburg 2006, S. 350ff, 551ff. 10 Vgl. N. V. Riasanovsky, The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought, Oxford 1985. 11 Vgl. R. Koselleck, Einleitung, in: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur poli­­tischso­­zialen Sprache in Deutschland. Bd. 1, Stuttgart 1972, S. XIIIf.

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

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Manfred Hildermeier

Diese Sachlage dauerte nicht nur bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg an, da sich das Zarenreich gerade in seiner Spätphase immer weiter – besonders ökonomisch wie kulturell, bei bleibendem Abstand im politischen System – an Europa annäherte. Genau besehen, galt sie auch für die frühe Sowjetunion. Zwar ist inzwischen unbestritten, dass ideologische Motive und nicht etwa ökonomische Zwänge den Ausschlag für die Forcierung der Planwirtschaft ebenso wie für die Zwangskollektivierung gaben.12 Dessenungeachtet ist gleichfalls evident, dass die Stalinsche Brachialindustrialisierung und der gesamte – weitgehend darauf reduzierte – „Aufbau des Sozialismus“ ohne die Vorannahme, dass gerade die Sowjetunion als Pionier einer neuen historischen Formation den Westen nicht nur ein-, sondern auch zu überholen habe, nicht zu verstehen war. Stalins bekannte Worte gegenüber Wirtschaftsfunktionären von 1931, Russland müsse in zehn Jahren nachholen, wofür Europa fünfzig Jahre gebraucht habe,13 illustrieren auch dies in aller Deutlichkeit: Die Idee der Rückständigkeit blieb unentbehrlich, um zu begreifen, was vor sich ging. Von hier aus ist der gedankliche Weg nicht weit zur Diskussion der letzten Jahrzehnte in unserem Fach. Es gehört zur Definition der Wissenschaft, dass sie Neues entdecken muss. Dabei vollzieht sich der geisteswissenschaftliche Erkenntnisprozess aber bekanntlich nicht linear in dem Sinne, dass Altes zumindest überholt, wenn nicht falsifiziert wird. Arbeitsfelder werden gleichsam nicht abgegrast und Bücher nicht magaziniert. Vielmehr bewegt sich der Fortschritt gleichsam spiralförmig, so dass von wechselnden Standpunkten aus Licht nicht nur auf neue, sondern auch bekannte historische Prozesse und Strukturen fällt. Davon profitieren nicht zuletzt Kernprobleme und Weichenstellungen. Gerade die elementaren Optionen und Entwicklungen können Anspruch darauf erheben, nicht ad acta gelegt zu werden. Eben weil geisteswissenschaftliche Problemstellungen zu keiner Lösung im mathematischen Sinne führen, bleiben sie präsent. Sie mögen aus dem Focus der aktuellen Aufmerksamkeit geraten und nicht zu den jeweils bevorzugten Methoden und Arbeitsfeldern passen. Aber sie werden dadurch nur verdrängt. Gerade wenn eine Einsicht und die Programme zu ihrer Umsetzung zu den treibenden Kräften des historischen Geschehens gehören, gilt, dass ihr Beschweigen nur eine Lücke hinterlässt, aber die Sache selber nicht beseitigt. Grundprobleme müssen nicht immer im Vordergrund stehen, aber sie sollten nicht vergessen werden. Ihre Behandlung kann nicht „unzeitgemäß“ sein14; eher ist die Forschung, die das behauptet, einseitig und defizitär. ***

12 Vgl. u. a. S. Merl, Die Anfänge der Kollektivierung in der Sowjetunion. Der Übergang zur staatlichen Reglementierung der Produktions- und Marktbeziehungen im Dorf (1928–1930), Wiesbaden 1985, S. 401; R. W. Davies, The Industrialization of Soviet Russia. Bd.1: The Socialist Offensive. The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture, 1929–1930, London, Basingstoke 1980, S. 398ff; Gregory, P. R.: The political economy of Stalinism. Evidence from the Soviet secret archives. Cambridge 2004, S. 45. 13 Vgl. J. W. Stalin, Werke Bd. 13, Frankfurt 1972, S. 36. 14 So M. Schulze Wessel in einer Rezension (Süddeutsche Zeitung v. 1. 7. 2013).

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

Beharrliche Rückständigkeit: Über den Umgang mit einer notwendigen Kategorie

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Um dies zu verdeutlichen, seien im Folgenden einige Gedanken in vier Schritten knapp skizziert: I. zum Rückständigkeitsbegriff und möglichen Gründen für seine Tabuisierung; II. zu den wichtigsten Einwänden gegen die Rückständigkeit; III. Vorschläge zu einer „Taxonomie“ von Rezeptionsformen nach Maßgabe von Fallbeispielen aus der neuen russischen Geschichte; und IV. einigen Überlegungen zu ihrer Sortierung, i.e.: zur Frage, wie man so mit der Rückständigkeit umgehen kann, dass sie einerseits weder geleugnet noch einfach gegen den Strich gebürstet wird und andererseits das Kernproblem, die normative Belastung, weit­gehend neutralisiert wird. I. Wenn man die neuere Literatur anschaut, scheint es die Rückständigkeit in all ihren Dimensionen: von der ökonomischen, die seit der frühen Neuzeit zu den stereotypen Charakterisierungen Osteuropas gehörte, über die soziale, die institutionell-administrative bis zur kulturell-zivilisatorischen, nicht mehr zu geben. Sie fiel seit Ende der siebziger Jahre selbst aus dem Nachdenken über jene Region heraus, in der sie hauptsächlich lokalisiert wurde: der Geschichte Russlands. Zunächst wurden Begriff und Konzept noch kritisiert, dann einfach ignoriert. Sie gerieten ebenso ins Abseits wie andere Themen der Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, wie Konjunkturen, demographische Entwicklungen, Industrialisierung, Imperialismus und anderes mehr. In diesem Sinn war sie vor allem (1) ein Opfer des vielzitierten cultural turn. Hinzu kam (2) eine weitere, verstärkende Kritik durch die parallele Entdeckung der global history, die gegenwärtig in aller Munde ist. Denn die universale Perspektive relativierte den Eurozentrismus, der die Geschichtsschreibung bis an die Schwelle der Gegenwart zweifellos geprägt hat. Von der Aufwertung der Peripherie und ihrer eigenen Geschichte samt der eigentlichen ‚Formationen‘ und Werte profitierte auch Russland. Was vorher gleichsam nur durch die westeuropäische Brille gesehen wurde, erhielt eine eigene Wertigkeit. Vermeintlich bloß „passive“ Weltregionen und Entwicklungen wurden schon deshalb mit einem größeren Eigengewicht ausgestattet, weil die postcolonial studies ihnen die Funktion zuwiesen, auf die Geschichte der Akteure, der Zentren und Mutterländer, zurückgewirkt zu haben. Analog zur „Unteilbarkeit“ moralischer Werte und Normen, verkörpert in den Menschen- und bürgerlichen Grundrechten, entdeckte man gleichsam die Unteilbarkeit der Geschichte. Modellfall für diese entangled oder shared history15 war natürlich das englische Kolonialreich; aber es bot sich an, die Grundidee auch auf ‚asymmetrische‘ Beziehungen zwischen anderen Regionen und Kulturen zu übertragen. Die neue Imperienforschung bezieht folgerichtig konsequent auch das Zarenreich ein.16 15 Vgl. u. a.: Conrad, Sebastian; Randeria, Shalini (Hg.), Jenseits des Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Per­ spek­tiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, Frankfurt/Main 2002, bes. S. 50ff; M. Werner; B. Zimmermann, Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen, in: GG 28, 2002, S. 607–636. 16 Vgl. J. Leonhard; U. von Hirschhausen, Empires und Nationalstaaten im 19. Jahrhundert, Göttingen 2011 sowie dies. (Hg.), Comparing Empires. Encounters and Transfers in the Long Nineteenth Century, Göttingen 2010.

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Schließlich wird man (3) auch Auswirkungen Foucaultscher Gedanken zu bedenken haben. Wenn Begriffe und Diskurse keine bloßen Epiphänomene, keine Spiegelungen der Realität sind, sondern selber Herrschaft ausüben und Realität schaffen – dann ließ sich dieser Ur-Gedanke der neuen Wahrnehmungs, Erfahrungs- und Mentalitätsgeschichte, der in die neue Kulturgeschichte einfloss, auch auf die Beziehungen zwischen Ost- und Westeuropa übertragen. „Rückständige“ Regionen wurden auch gemacht, indem man sie bei ihrer Aufnahme in die geistige Landkarte gleich mit einer solchen Wertung bzw. Abwertung versah.17 Rückständigkeit wurde zu einer Zuschreibung, die schon deshalb nicht mit einem realgeschichtlichen Substrat zu verwechseln war, weil es ein solches unabhängig von der subjektiven Wahrnehmung in dieser Sehweise gar nicht gibt. Rückständigkeit ist damit nur mehr jenes vom entwerfenden Ich erdachte „Andere“, das das eigene Selbst bestätigt – ist Konstruktion und Produktion, keine Realität, weil der grundlegende erkenntnistheoretische Nominalismus, der dieser Sehweise meistens zugrunde liegt, die Existenz einer Wirklichkeit jenseits der Wahrnehmung ohnehin leugnet. *** II. Konkret nahmen solche Einwände implizit – „implizit“ sei betont, weil die ältere Literatur oft gar nicht mehr präsent zu sein scheint – vor allem folgende Gestalt an: 1. Rückständigkeit ist die Kehrseite der Modernisierung und als solche normativ. Ihr inhärenter Maßstab ist Modernität, in welcher Bedeutung auch immer. Sehr früh richtete sich die Kritik daher sowohl gegen ihren teleologischen Grundzug als auch gegen die eingewirkte Wertung. Beide Züge prägten die sog. Theorie der relativen Rückständigkeit Alexander Gerschenkrons in besonderem Maße. Vor allem seine Überlegungen sind daher schon früh zur Zielscheibe von Einwänden geworden. Dem hat die empirische Schwäche der von ihm postulierten Substitutionsprozesse Vorschub geleistet: So haben sich etwa – dies einige seiner inzwischen weitgehend vergessenen Kernthesen − die wachsende Bedeutung staatlicher Intervention, die Zunahme der Fabrikgröße und des Industrialisierungstempos mit zunehmender Rückständigkeit ebensowenig bestätigen lassen wie der Zusammenhang von Rückständigkeit und steigender fiskalischer Ausbeutung der Bauern. Paul Gregory hat dies 1994 noch einmal statistisch bestätigt, so dass die meisten Thesen Gerschenkrons definitiv als empirisch widerlegt gelten können.18 Nur ist fraglich, ob man mit dieser Widerlegung auch gleich das gesamte Konzept der „Rückständigkeit“ als negativer Modernisierung entsorgt hat. Denn es bleibt natürlich der Befund, dass die russische Wirtschaft in vieler Hinsicht hinter der des Deutschen Reichs, Großbritanniens oder Frankreichs herhinkte. Zwar wuchs sie den korrigierten Berechnungen Gregorys zufolge deutlich ‚breiter‘, solider und weniger sektoral als bis dahin gemeint. Vor allem die Entwicklung der Landwirtschaft stellt sich in neuem Licht dar. Statt der 17 Vgl. H. Lemberg, Zur Entstehung des Osteuropabegriffs im 19. Jahrhundert. Vom „Norden“ zum „Osten“ Europas, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 33, 1985, S. 48–91; L. Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford 1994 18 Vgl. P. R. Gregory, Before Command. An Economic History of Russia from Emancipation to the First Five-Year Plan, Princeton 1994; zusammenfassend: M. Hildermeier, Geschichte Russlands. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Oktoberrevolution, München 2013, S. 1154ff.

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chronischen Krise, die seit den einschlägigen Darstellungen der liberalen Wirtschaftshistoriker19 zur Standarderklärung der Revolutionen von 1905 und 1917 gehört, ergibt sich nach den neuen Erkenntnissen20 nun ein relativ positives Bild. Offensichtlich war die Landwirtschaft in deutlich höherem Maße als gedacht in der Lage, die Industrialisierung zu finanzieren und den Bauern dennoch einen größeren Anteil der Ernte zum Eigenkonsum übrig zu lassen als zuvor. Allerdings folgt daraus nicht, dass sie sich nun auf einem ähnlichen technologischen Niveau befunden hätte wie die westeuropäische. Kunstdünger war nach wie vor kaum verbreitet und die Dreifelderwirtschaft mit Brache war immer noch üblich. Nichts spricht daher dafür, die Landwirtschaft gesund zu beten. Ähnlich ist es sicher richtig, dass die russische Industrie im internationalen Vergleich deutlich besser abschnitt als das Etikett der Rückständigkeit nahelegte. Dessenungeachtet blieb aber, von wenigen, sehr modernen, meist von ausländischem Kapital und Management geprägten Sektoren abgesehen, ein nicht unerheblicher Abstand bestehen. Die Frage ist daher nur, wie man ihn bezeichnet und wie man mit ihm umgeht. 2. Auch eine weitere Kritik, die vor allem am Beispiel der Stadt vorgebracht worden ist, vermag nicht wirklich zu überzeugen. Sie sei erwähnt, weil sie ein methodisches Problem illustriert, das die Einwände gegen die Rückständigkeit aufwerfen. Man dürfe die russischen Zustände, so lautete der Vorwurf vor allem gegen die vorrevolutionäre liberale Geschichtswissenschaft (Miljukov, Ditjatin, Kizevetter), nicht über den westeuropäischen Leisten schlagen. Angemessener sei der Vergleich mit verwandten Zuständen, in Südosteuropa etwa oder in Asien21. Dem wäre entgegenzuhalten, dass sich die Art des gewählten Vergleichs nach dem Erkenntnisziel richten sollte. Natürlich führt der Nahvergleich zu anderen Ergebnissen als der Fernvergleich. Beide sind aber – mit manchen weiteren Varianten – gleich legitim. Über ihre Angemessenheit entscheidet nicht der Gegenstand, sondern der Betrachter. Wer nach Eigenarten und Typen sucht, wird – wie Marc Bloch in einem klassischen Aufsatz von 1928 – den Kontrast über Zivilisationen hinweg favorisieren; wer nach verschiedenen Ausprägungen einer Grundform fragt, wird eher verwandte Ereignissen und Strukturen betrachten. Beide Hauptformen des Vergleichs existieren nebeneinander und können natürlich auch in ein und derselben Untersuchung zugleich benutzt werden. Insofern läuft die Methodenkritik auf eine perspektivische Verengung hinaus. Wer nur Ähnliches betrachtet, sieht keine Unterschiede mehr − und schadet jenem Erkenntnisgewinn, der ein Hauptziel historischer Forschung sein sollte.22 19 Vgl. z. B. B. Brutzkus, Agrarentwicklung und Agrarrevolution in Rußland, Berlin 1925. 20 Vgl. neben Gregory, Before Command, S. 37ff vor allem: S. G. Wheatcroft, Crises and the Conditions of the Peasantry in Late Imperial Russia, in: E. Kingston-Mann, T. Mixter (Hg.), Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800−1921, Princeton 1991, S. 128−172. 21 Vgl. G. Rozman, Urban Networks in Russia, 1750–1800, and Premodern Periodization, Princeton 1976. 22 Vgl. H. Kaelble, Der historische Vergleich. Eine Einführung zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt a. M. 1999, S. 35ff; M. Bloch, Für eine vergleichende Geschichte der europäischen Gesellschaften, in: Ders., Aus der Werkstatt des Historikers. Zur Theorie und Praxis der Geschichtswissenschaft, hg. v. P. Schöttler, Frankfurt a. M. 2000, S. 122–159, bes. S. 125f; Osterhammel, J.: Geschichtswissenschaft

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3. Eine dritte Kritik am Rückständigkeitskonzept schließlich dreht den Spieß einfach um. Zwar macht sie aus der Rückständigkeit keine Tugend wie die Naturschwärmerei des 18. Jahrhunderts oder die Zivilisationskritik zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts, die das „Licht“ des Glaubens als tieferes, vorrationales Wissen aus dem Osten kommen sah (ex oriente lux). Aber sie bestreitet die Berechtigung von Begriff und Zuschreibung der Rückständigkeit, erkennt deren Ursache in der Anmaßung selbsternannter Vernunft – und definiert auf diese Weise das Problem einfach weg. Wenn Rückständigkeit eine Ausgeburt aufklärerischer Phantasien war und mehr über deren Hybris als über das Beschriebene aussagt, entfällt die Sache als solche. Es gab dann keine Rückständigkeit, sondern – wie gern formuliert wird − nur noch „Anderes“. Diese begriffliche Aufhebung durch Rückholung in ein Allgemeineres ist nun im logischen Sinn nicht falsch. Aber sie führt keinen Schritt weiter, sondern zunächst nur einen zurück, weil das Rückständige nun zum „weißen Flecken“ wird. Das wird sich erst dann ändern, wenn das recht beliebige „Andere“ konkrete Gestalt erhält, und zwar nicht isoliert, sondern in Bezug auf andere Kontexte. Solange man sich im Fahrwasser der Kritik an Denkstil, Begriffen und Diskurs der Aufklärung bewegt, geschieht dies nicht. So lange bleibt es beim negativen Gestus der Kritik an jenem Geist oder Ungeist, der Begriff und Konzept der Rückständigkeit erfand. Ein vorbeugender Satz aus einer vielzitierten diskursgeschichtlichen Untersuchung, aus Larry Wolff’s „Inventing Eastern Europe“, trifft den Nagel auf den Kopf: „Eastern Europe, heißt es da,“ is not the subject of this book“.23 In der Tat: Es geht um die deutsche bzw. in diesem Fall eher um die französische Aufklärung, nicht um historische Zustände in Polen oder Russland. Dennoch: Obwohl die begriffliche Entsorgung der Rückständigkeit im Negativen, gleichsam in geschützter Reserve, verharrt, wird die Art des anvisierten Ersatzes in der Argumentation deutlich. Dabei ist eine starke Neigung zu höchst konservativen Positionen im Sinne der Höhergewichtung bestehender Zustände zu erkennen. Das ist nicht weiter verwunderlich, sondern setzt nur den Fortschrittsskeptizismus wohl der meisten postmodernen Theorien um. Wenn Wissen und Vernunft von Macht nicht zu trennen waren und sie oft genug legitmierten, geraten auch Planung und Utopie unter den Generalverdacht der Vergewaltigung bewährter Traditionen, verborgen hinter dem bloßen Vorwand der Verbesserung. Prinzipiell macht dieser Vorwurf auch vor jenen liberalen Ideen nicht Halt, die seit der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts das Konzept der Rückständigkeit inspiriert haben. Auch das ´bürgerliche Projekt´ der Aufklärung war die machtbesessene Utopie einer kleinen Gruppe gegen das Herkommen und das Ancien Regime, war die Erklärung des „Weltbürgerkriegs“, wie Carl-Schmitt-Schüler schon oder noch in den 1950er Jahren argumentierten.24 Es nimmt daher nicht wunder, dass liberale Reformer im Zarenreich ebenso auf die Anklagebank gesetzt werden wie der Staat, der alles uniformieren will und dabei – dies eine beliebte Metapher der letzten Jahre −, einem „Gärtner“ gleich, Fremdes ausradiert und jenseits des Nationalstaats. Studien zu Beziehungsgeschichte und Zivilisationsvergleich. Göttingen 2001, S. 11ff, 46ff. 23 Vgl. Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, S. 358. 24 Vgl. H. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie und Weltbürgerkrieg. Deutungen der Geschichte von der Fran­zösischen Revolution bis zum Ost-West-Konflikt, Heidelberg 1959, S. 5ff.

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sich Autochthones, Gewachsenes einverleibt.25 Gelegentlich führt dieser Gedanke sogar zu einer Verbindung zwischen aufklärerischer Utopie und bolschewistischem Regime, aber nicht – wofür manches spräche – zwischen Robespierre und Lenin als charismatischen Massenführern, sondern zwischen Hegel oder sogar Kant und Lenin – der Gedanke, der sich nach Hegels bekanntem Diktum über die Französische Revolution auf den Kopf stellt, ist das Übel, nicht seine verabsolutierende und mit unkontrollierter politischer Gewalt ausgestattete Radikalisierung. Diese Argumentation geht über eine Kritik an Begriff und Gedanke der Rückständigkeit weit hinaus: Sie wird zu einer faktischen Umkehrung mit deutlich konservativer, gelegentlich antiliberaler weltanschaulicher Stoßrichtung. Die Sowjetuion, um die es ihr im wesentlichen geht, wird zum Exempel der Moderne, wenn auch einer „ambivalenten“, negativen Moderne.26 Aus meiner Präsentation dürfte schon deutlich geworden sein, dass ich diesen Ausweg aus dem Dilemma der Rückständigkeit für einen Holzweg halte. Er endet in der Sackgasse der bloßen Umkehrung des Zeigefingers. Ein solches Vorgehen hilft aber nicht weiter, weil es eine Einseitigkeit nur durch eine andere ersetzt. Das Problem besteht ja eben darin, ein Konzept zu finden, das nicht schwarz und auch nicht weiß, weder rückständig noch einfach das Gegenteil ist, sondern die verschiedensten Mischungen und Verbindungen aufnehmen kann. *** III. Als Grundlage für einige abschließende Überlegungen darüber, wie ein besserer Weg zu finden sein könnte, seien einige Fallbeispiele genannt; sie geben zugleich Anlass, sie etwas abstrakter bestimmten Formen der Rezeption zuzuordnen.27 (1) Am Anfang stand die einfachste Form, die bloße Rezeption. Russland bemühte sich schlicht darum, von westeuropäischen Errungenschaften zu profitieren. Was man dabei begehrte, war für knapp zwei Jahrhunderte primär technischer Art; militärische Nutzbarkeit spielte eine wesentliche Rolle, ließ aber Raum für andere Verwendungen, etwa zur Repräsentation in weltlichen und kirchlichen Bauten sowie der materiellen Kultur generell. Um das Begehrte heimisch zu machen, brauchte man in aller Regel Personen, die über entsprechende Kenntnisse und Fertigkeiten verfügten. 25 Vgl. u. a. A. Weiner, (Hg.), Landscaping the Human Garden. 20th-Century Population Management in a Comparative Framework, Stanford, Calif 2003; P. Holquist, “Information is the Alpha and Omega of Our Work”: Bolshevik Surveillance in Its Pan-European Context, in: Journal of Modern History 69, 1997, S. 415–450; Z. Bauman, Moderne und Ambivalenz. Das Ende der Eindeutigkeit, Hamburg 1992, S. 43ff. 26 Vgl. neben Holquist, Information, vor allem: D. L. Hoffmann, Y. Kotsonis (Hg.), Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices, New York 2000; D. L. Hoffmann, Stalinist values. The cultural norms of Soviet modernity, 1917–1941, Ithaca 2003; ders., Cultivating the Masses: The Modern Social State in Russia, 1914–1941, Ithaca, London 2011. 27 Vgl. ausführlicher: Hildermeier, Geschichte Russlands, S. 1340ff unter Rückgriff auf: Ders., Osteuropa als Gegenstand vergleichender Geschichte, in: G. Budde; S. Conrad; O. Janz (Hg.): Transnationale Geschichte. Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien. Festschrift für Jürgen Kocka. Göttingen 2006, S. 117–136 und: Ders., Das Privileg der Rückständigkeit. Anmerkungen zum Wandel einer Interpretationsfigur der neueren russischen Geschichte, in: Historische Zeitschrft 244, 1987, S. 557–603.

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Das erste Beispiel eines solchen Imports dürfte die Entscheidung Ivans III. vom Sommer 1474 gewesen sein, den Architekten Aristoteles Fioravanti aus Bologna zu holen, um einen Steinbau an die Stelle der hölzernen Himmelfahrtskathedrale (Uspenskij sobor) im Kreml’ zu setzen, nachdem seinen russischen Baumeistern das Gewölbe zusammengebrochen war. Andere italienische Architekten folgten, die dem Kreml’ das bekannte Gesicht der italienischen Renaissance gaben. Großes Interesse an europäischem Know how und Handelsverbindungen mit Europa zeigte ein Dreivierteljahrhundert später Ivan IV. In seinem Namen warb schon 1548 der Kaufmann Hans Schlitte auf dem Reichstag in Augsburg „Glockengießer, Bergleute, Brunnenmeister, Wundärzte“ und andere Spezialisten an, von denen einige, obwohl ihnen Lübeck die Weiterreise verwehrte, in Moskau ankamen und halfen, die zarische Artillerie aufzubauen. Besonders aufgeschlossen war auch Boris Godunov, der für seine „Apothekerbehörde“ (Aptekarskij prikaz) Ärzte aus England und Holland holte und Handwerker in der (von Vasilij III. für seine Leibwache) eingerichteten deutschen Vorstadt (Nemeckaja sloboda) ansiedelte; vom guten Dutzend Adeliger, die er zum Studium ins Ausland schickte, kehrte allerdings kein einziger zurück. Der erste Romanov Michail Fedorov ließ 1620 einen schottischen Ingenieur kommen, um eine Uhr in einen der Kreml’-Türme (Spasskaja bašnja) einzubauen und heuerte 1631 deutsche Meister für den Aufbau einer Kanonenmanufaktur an. Die erste Glashütte gründete 1630 der Wallone J. Coyet und 1632 der Holländer Andreas Vinius eine Eisenhütte, die zum Fundament der einheimischen Eisenindustrie wurde. Und die Textilverarbeitung in Ivanovo, dem späteren „russischen Manchester“ entstand um die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts nach dem Vorbild einer Leinenmanufaktur des Holländers John Tames, den Peter der Große ins Land geholt hatte. Viele weitere Beispiele solcher Art, die bis tief ins 19. Jahrhundert hinein reichen, ließen sich anführen.28 Seit Aleksej Michajlovič wuchs auch das russische Interesse an kulturellen Errungenschaften Europas. 1672 fand im Moskauer Kreml’ die erste Theateraufführung statt, eine Innovation, die Peter der Große nach Kräften förderte. Gegen Ende des Jahrhunderts verbreitete sich ein architektonischer Stil, den man mit einem Begriff, der die Herkunft gleich anzeigte, als „Moskauer Barock“ bezeichnet. Und als der Hof nach seinem Tod begann, der barocken Prachtentfaltung westlicher Monarchien nachzueifern, holte man 1735 einen Komponisten samt Operntruppe aus Italien, der das Publikum erstmals „mit professioneller weltlicher Musik“ bekannt machte.29 (2) Der Übergang von der Rezeption zur Assimilation war stets fließend. In welchem Ausmaß Letztere nötig war, hing vom Umfang des Kontextes ab, den ein Import benötigte, um seine Funktionsfähigkeit zu bewahren. Ein Kanonengießer musste nur einige Gehilfen anlernen, der Aufbau einer großen Manufaktur verlangte schon viele hinreichend qualifizierte Ingenieure und oft Hunderte oder im 18. Jahrhundert sogar Tausende von Arbeitern. Um sie in einem Land bereitzustellen, in dem es kein entsprechendes Reservoir 28 Nachweise bei Hildermeier, Geschichte Russlands, 403 u. 1340f. 29 Vgl. W. Brumfield, A history of Russian architecture. Cambridge 1997, 184ff; F. Ph. Ingold, Russische Wege. Geschichte - Kultur - Weltbild. Paderborn 2007, S. 423; Hildermeier, Geschichte Russlands, 395f, 403.

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gab, nutzte der Zar sehr ‚landespezifische‘, autokratische Methoden – indem er den Manufakturen Hunderttausende seiner eigenen, staatlichen Leibeigenen einfach „zuschrieb“. Auch dies mag ein Grund dafür gewesen sein, dass die Großbetriebe aus dieser Epoche noch Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts ein Inseldasein führten, das die erhofften Multiplikationseffekte stark reduzierte. Die erwähnte bloße Kopie technischer Prozeduren, des Färbens und Druckens, durch Bauern in Ivanovo, die für die langen Wintermonate nach einer Nebenbeschäftigung suchten, mithin die gleichsam kontextlose Übernahme, erwies sich als entschieden wirkungsvoller. Auch der literarische „Kulturimport“ kann ganz überwiegend als Form der ‚Anverwandlung‘ gelten. In den nachpetrinischen Jahrzehnten entstand im Zeichen des Klassizismus eine eigene säkulare Dichtung. Die Sprache war jenes Russisch, das Peter vom Makel mangelnder Würde befreit hatte, aber Stil und Poetik, die von Inhalten nicht zu trennen waren, folgten sichtbar westeuropäischen, besonders französischen Vorbildern. Ähnliches galt erst recht ein halbes Jahrhundert später, als Katharina II. „moralische Wochenschriften“ (englischer Prägung), satirische Komödien und überhaupt ein literarisches Leben nach Art der europäischen Aufklärung in ihrem Reich zu installieren suchte.30 Besonders schwierig gestaltete sich die Übernahme administrativer bzw. sozialrechtlicher Organisationsformen, wie sie für das 18. Jahrhundert typisch war. Die Versuche der beiden großen Herrscher, ständische Korporationen in Russland zu installieren, brachten in ihrer Zeit nicht die gewünschte Wirkung hervor. Peters Gilden blieben leblose Hohlkörper, die ihre Existenz obrigkeitlicher Anordnung verdankten, und seine Zünfte degenerierten nachgerade zu Arbeitsbrigaden des Staates. Beiden Korporationen, die er von den baltischen Städten abgeschaut hatte, fehlte, was er ihnen nicht geben konnte oder wollte – Tradition, Selbstbestimmung und darauf gegründete eigene Antriebe. (3) Insofern wären sie systematisch eher als Absorption, als fehlgeschlagene, weil funktionsberaubte, gleichsam ‚entkernte‘ Anleihen zu bezeichnen. Auch Katharina stellte in einem zweiten, ehrgeizigen Anlauf zu einer annähernd homogenen entsprechenden Umgestaltung der gesamten Sozialverfassung zunächst primär die rechtlichen Hohlformen bereit. Der erhoffte Effekt trat, von den Hauptstädten am ehesten abgesehen, erst ein halbes Jahrhundert später in dem Maße ein, wie die neuen Institutionen zur Tradition wurden und sowohl in den Städten als auch in den Gouvernements ein hinreichendes Eigenbewusstsein, verbunden mit wachsendem regional-lokalen Regelungsbedarf, entstand.31Ursache und Wirkung waren dabei immer weniger voneinander zu trennen. (4) Im Licht der Debatten der letzten Jahrzehnte fällt es schwer, noch von Substitution zu sprechen, weil allein der Begriff die Anerkennung eines ‚eigentlichen‘ Prozesses einschließt. Und auch der Umstand, dass die allermeisten der von Gerschenkron postulierten Ersetzungen im Vergleich zu originären Vorgängen in Europa widerlegt worden sind, muss zur Vorsicht Anlass geben. Nur gilt auch hier: Die Idee ist älter und lässt sich ohne weiteres 30 Vgl. J. Klein, Russische Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert. Köln u. a. 2008, S. 3ff, 167ff. 31 Vgl. A. I. Kuprijanov, Kul’tura gorodskogo samoupravlenija russkoj provincii 1780–1860 – e gody. Moskva 2009, bes. S. 50ff, 125ff; auch schon: B. Mironov, Bureaucratic or Self-Government: The Early Nineteenth Century Russian City, in: Slavic Review 52, 1993, S. 233–256.

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von einem normativen Modell lösen. Übrig bleibt dann – und das wäre hier gemeint – eine bestimmte, durch ungefähre Äquivalenz des Ziels unter Einsatz autochthoner Mittel gekennzeichnete Beziehung als rein deskriptive Kategorie des Vergleichs zwischen zwei (oder mehreren) Prozessen. In diesem Sinn kann es als Substitution gelten, wenn Peter der Große in Ermangelung freier Arbeitskräfte für die von ihm begründeten riesigen Manufakturen und Hüttenwerke Leibeigene des Staates zur Verfügung stellte. Und auch die auffallende Bedeutung ausländischen Kapitals in der ersten Phase der russischen Industrialisierung seit den späten 1880er Jahren kann als ‚Ersatz‘ für das fehlende inländische, auf dem Binnenmarkt erzeugte Kapital gelten, zumal sich diese These Gerschenkrons beinahe als einzige bestätigt hat.32 Dagegen wird man gut daran tun, bei der Rückbindung politischer Haltungen an bestimmte soziale Gruppen große Zurückhaltung zu üben. Zwar fällt die prominente Rolle des Adels in der russischen liberalen Bewegung vor 1905 ebenso ins Auge wie seine konservative Wende nach der Plünderung seiner Herrenhäuser durch aufständische Bauern im Herbst 1905. Nur besagt dies eben lediglich, dass konstitutionalistische Ideen in Russland andere Trägerschichten fanden als in den meisten Regionen Mitteleuropas (vergleichbar aber durchaus mit Polen33), weil seine gesamte Sozialstruktur eine andere war und sich politische Präferenzen anders verteilten. Insofern beschritt das Zarenreich keinen besonderen, sondern – wie letztlich jede national-regionale Einheit – nur seinen eigenen Weg. (5) Solche Überlegungen sprechen dafür, viele weitere Anleihen aus Europa, die sich im Laufe zwar wechselhafter, aber zugleich bemerkenswert kontinuierlicher Beziehungen zwischen Russland und Europa ergaben, unter dem Gesamtbegriff der produktiven Integration zu bündeln. Die Übergänge zur bloßen Einpassung oder objektiven Ersetzung waren dabei offensichtlich fließend. Der Akzent verschob sich jedoch zunehmend zu den kreativen und planvollen Veränderungen, die über die funktionsnotwendige Assimilation hinausgingen und – auch gegenüber dem Muster − ein deutlich innovatives Moment enthielten. Dieser Wandel hatte offenbar mit dem historischen Prozess, der zunehmenden Komplexität, den er in allen Bereichen der staatlich-administrativen, sozioökonomischen und kulturellen Wirklicheit mit sich brachte, und sicher auch mit dem gewachsenen Selbstbewusstsein des Zarenreichs zu tun. Russische Minister und hohe Beamte gingen im späteren 19. Jahrhundert nicht mehr beim Westen ‚in die Schule‘. Sie kopierten nicht einfach, was sie dort sahen, sondern wollten von Erfahrungen profitieren und aussuchen, was sie übernahmen. (a) Solche Auswahl, die man als Lerneffekt werten kann, da Nichtbewährtes von vornherein aussortiert wurde und ältere Organisationsformen ebensowenig in Frage kamen wie ältere Technik, lässt sich beinahe lehrbuchartig an einigen der „Großen Reformen“ Alexanders II. beobachten. So informierte sich der hauptsächliche Inspirator des Justizstatuts von 1864 (S. I. Zarudnyj) auf einer Europareise vor allem in Frankreich und Italien (um besonders am französischen System Gefallen zu finden). Ein einflussreicher Experte im Innenministerium (N. I. Vtorov) tat im Vorfeld der neuen Stadtverfassung von 1870 für seine 32 Vgl. Gregory, Before Command, S. 49 u.ö.; Hildermeier, Geschichte Russlands, S. 1145ff. 33 Vgl. M. G. Müller, Die Historisierung des bürgerlichen Projekts - Europa, Osteuropa und die Kategorie der Rückständigkeit, in: Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 20, 2000, S. 163–170.

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Aufgabe dasselbe in Preußen, Frankreich und anderen Staaten Westeuropas (mit der Folge einer deutlichen Ähnlichkeit des neuen Zensuswahlrechts zum preußischen Dreiklassenwahlrecht). Die besonders lange umstrittene Einführung der allgemeinen Wehrpflicht von 1874 wurde schließlich entscheidend von den scheinbar mühelosen preußischen Siegen über Österreich und Frankreich 1866 und 1870 beschleunigt. Und der Bildungsminister D. A. Tolstoj orientierte sich bei seiner Gymnasial- und Realschulreform Anfang der 1870er Jahre erkennbar am preußisch-deutschen Vorbild.34 (b) Noch eindeutiger sind in dieser Sicht verschiedene Wege inhaltlicher Indigenisierung externer geistiger Anstöße wie die Slavophilie35 oder Herzens „russischer Sozialismus“ als produktive Aneignung zu werten.36 Originäres und Hinzugefügtes verschmolzen hier in besonders intensiver Weise so, dass eigentlich nur der gleichsam pure Impuls übrig blieb. Auch für alle folgenden Varianten des Nationalismus oder des Imperialismus mit seiner „zivilisatorischen Mission“ galt, dass ihre ‚propositionalen‘ Gehalte bodenständig waren. Wenngleich bei anderen Ideologien, etwa dem Marxismus oder liberal-konstitutionalistischen Gedanken, die westliche Herkunft sichtbarer blieb, verweist solch eingehende ‚Vereinnahmung‘ doch auf eine neue Qualität des transnationalen Kontexts. Wenn Peter der Große noch nach Europa reisen musste, um Ideen und Wissen (samt ‚tragender‘ Personen) nach Russland zu holen, so drangen sie im folgenden Jahrhundert mehr und mehr von selber ein. Es mag offen bleiben, ob man schon von wachsender geistig-ideologischer Integration sprechen will, aber die Nähe wuchs zweifellos. In jedem Fall beschleunigte sich ein Vorgang, der dem Begriff der „Anleihe“ mehr und mehr die Grundlage entzog: Wer schon dazu gehört, wenn auch vielleicht nur sektoral und am Rande, importiert eigentlich nicht mehr, sondern nutzt seinen partizipatorischen Status. (c) Schließlich gehören auch verschiedene Formen der Hybridität, die in der jüngeren Globalgeschichte zu besonderer Prominenz gelangt sind, zur „produktiven Aneignung“. Was in (ehemaligen) Kolonialreichen an Rückwirkungen in die Mutterländer zu beobachten war, trat natürlich auch bei der Übernahme oder dem Eindringen von Ideen, Verfahrensweisen und Institutionen in Erscheinung. Mit wachsender Kontextabhängigkeit wurde die Fusion geradezu zum Normalfall. Als Beispiel mag auch hier der „russische Sozialismus“, der seine Komponenten schon im Namen zu erkennen gab, ebenso dienen wie die Verfassung von 1906, die dem Zaren dennoch die „oberste selbstherrschende Gewalt“ 34 Vgl. J. Baberowski, Autokratie und Justiz: zum Verhältnis von Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Rückständigkeit im ausgehenden Zahrenreich 1864–1914. Frankfurt/M. 1996, S. 50f; M. Hildermeier, Bürgertum und Stadt in Rußland 1760–1870. Rechtliche Lage und soziale Struktur. Köln 1986, S. 284; W. Benecke, Militär, Reform und Gesellschaft im Zarenreich. Die Wehrpflicht in Russland 1874– 1914. Paderborn 2006, S. 41f, A. A. Sinel, The Classroom and the Chancellery. State Educational Reform under Count Dmitrij Tolstoj. Cambridge 1973. Sinel, Classroom, 127, 159. Auch im Vorfeld der Einführung der Zemstva schaute man auf die Lokalverwaltung in England, Frankreich und Preußen. 35 Vgl. diese Deutung bei: N. V. Riasanovsky, Rußland und der Westen. Die Lehre der Slawophilen. München 1954; Übersicht: A. Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy. History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought. Oxford 1975. 36 Vgl. M. Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism 1812–1855. Cambridge/ Mass. 1961.

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beließ37, oder die allgemeine Wehrpflicht (von 1874), die nebenher noch Bildungsaufgaben erfüllte und deshalb mehr Ausnahmen zuließ, als mit ihrer eigentlichen Absicht vereinbar war38. Kaum der Erwähnung bedarf, dass in allen Fällen dieser Art die Trennlinie zur Assimilation, wenn man an dieser Unterscheidung festhalten will, stets besonders unscharf war. *** IV. In einem letzten Schritt bietet es sich schließlich an, nach Wegen zu suchen, um diese Formen des Transfers zu sortieren und einen neuen Zugang zum Problem der Rückständigkeit zu gewinnen. Dabei zeigt sich sehr schnell, dass es mindestens zwei Aspekte gibt, die als ‚Variablen‘ zum besseren Verständnis des Gesamtprozesses in Frage kommen. Zum einen tritt die Bedeutung des Grades an ‚Kontextgebundenheit‘ des Übernommenen zutage. Es war für dessen ‚Schicksal‘ offensichtlich entscheidend, welchem Bereich es jeweils angehörte und welcher Art es war: Technische Errungenschaften waren leichter implantierbar als administrative Organisationsformen, medizinisch-naturwissenschaftliche Entdeckungen und Methoden einfacher als ein funktionierendes Bildungssystem, einzelne kulturelle Neuerungen wie Theater oder Oper problemloser als ganze Ideengebäude. Zum anderen spielte offenbar die Epoche des Transfers eine wesentliche Rolle. Ungeachtet partiell-sektoraler Zerfallsprozesse (etwa des Staatswesens während der „Zeit der Wirren“ 1598–1613) zeichnete sich die historische Gesamtentwicklung auch Russlands zweifellos durch einen Zuwachs an Komplexität fast aller Institutionen, Verfahrensweisen und Strukturen in Staat, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft und Kultur aus. Mit fortschreitender Zeit und zugleich wachsender Nähe zu Europa übernahm es über relativ leicht separierbare Errungenschaften hinaus auch solche der staatlich-administrativen Organisation oder kulturelle Einrichtungen, die einen ganzen ‚Unterbau‘ nicht nur manueller Fertigkeiten, sondern auch geistiger Fähigkeiten samt einer entsprechenden mentalen ‚Zurichtung‘ (wie Disziplin oder Motivation) erforderten, um nicht bloße Vorschriften und leere Hülsen zu bleiben. Eine Manufaktur des 17. Jahrhunderts war relativ einfach ‚einzupflanzen‘; man brauchte nur Rohstoffe, technische Einrichtungen und Kenntnisse (die meist in Gestalt von Personen kamen) sowie gering qualifizierte Arbeitskräfte für die übrigen Tätigkeiten. Ein städtischer Stand und Gilden ließen sich weder importieren noch von oben verordnen und eine Selbstverwaltung oder ein funktionierendes Gerichtswesen erst recht nicht. Zu ihrer Verankerung bedurfte es des allmählichen Heranreifens entsprechender Voraussetzungen, die in einer anderen Umgebung natürlich nicht dieselben sein konnten wie in der originären, sondern bestenfalls annähernd hinreichende funktionale Äquivalente. Wenn die Kontextabhängigkeit auf diese Weise zunahm und zugleich die Einbindung Russlands in den politischen, kulturellen und ökonomischen Zusammenhang Europas (sichtbar seit Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts) enger wurde, liegt der Gedanke nahe, diese Entwicklung auch begrifflich zu spiegeln. Die Frage stellt sich, ob es über Jahrhunderte 37 Vgl. M. Szeftel, The Russian Constitution of April 23, 1906. Political Institutions of the Duma Monarchy. Brüssel 1976, S. 84; dt: A. Palme, Die russische Verfassung. Berlin 1910, S. 95 (Art. 4). 38 Vgl. Benecke, Militär, Reform und Gesellschaft, S. 44ff, 55.

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hinweg gleich sinnvoll ist, von Transfer und Import zu sprechen und der russischen Kultur eine meisterliche Fähigkeit zur Nachahmung zu attestieren. Zwar gibt es genügend Beispiele für solch ungewöhnliche „sekundäre Kreativität“, die in der Umerfindung japanischer „Mönchspuppen“ zur „Matrjoschka“ als prominentem Symbol russischer Kultur und heimatverbundener Handwerkstradition (in den 1890er Jahren) nachgerade, wie man sehr pointiert formuliert hat, die Qualität eines ‚genialen Parasitentums‘39 (F. Ph. Ingold) annahm. Dennoch bleiben solche Begriffe statisch. Um über die ‚bipolare‘, wenn auch veränderliche (relative) Rückständigkeit hinauszugelangen, wäre es sinnvoll, den Vorschlag – aus der soziologischen Debatte zum Kulturvergleich − aufzugreifen, stärker in Netzwerken und Funktionszusammenhängen zu denken als in abgeschotteten Einheiten. „Außenlagen“ werden dann zu „Binnenlagen“, ohne die keine ‚innere‘ Entwicklung denkbar ist. Gerade für die späte Neuzeit sollte die Vorstellung nicht nur mit Blick auf Europa eine Selbstverständlichkeit sein, dass sich Geschichte nicht als Entelechie von Teileinheiten vollzog, sondern stets im Kontext. So gesehen, sind Randbedingungen eigentlich keine Randbedingungen, sondern prägende Faktoren im Sinne wirksamer Voraussetzungen.40 Nicht zuletzt erlaubt es eine solche Denkfigur, Veränderungen der ‚Kontextualität‘ − von der einfachen, partiellen bis hin zur komplexen, multisektoralen Beziehung, vom einseitigen Transfer bis zur reziproken Interdependenz nach Art des gesamteuropäischen Marktes des späten 19. Jahrhunderts − und damit auch Unterschiede zwischen den Sektoren der historischen Wirklichkeit in eine allgemeinere Beschreibung zu integrieren. Rückständigkeit wäre dann, wie prominent sie auch jeweils gewesen sein mag, nur eine Ausprägung solcher Beziehungen, und Maßnahmen zu ihrem Abbau – fraglos prägende Merkmale der russischen Geschichte seit Peter dem Großen – würden zu Etappen fortschreitender Verflechtung. Sie verlöre einen Großteil ihrer normativ-teleologischen Belastung, bliebe aber eine unverzichtbare analytische Kategorie zum Verständnis der russischen Geschichte. Insofern sollte für die russische Geschichte dasselbe gelten, was man ganz analog für den Rückständigkeitsbegriff ebenso wie für verwandte, über Jahrzehnte gleichsam ‚naiv‘ benutzte und fraglos mit Wertungen durchtränkte prozessuale Großkonzepte in der Kolonial- und Globalgeschichte empfohlen hat – ihn schlicht „sensibel“ 41 und reflektiert zu verwenden, ihn aber nicht zu entsorgen, solange keine wirkliche Alternative in Sicht ist.

39 Ingold, Russische Wege, 457. 40 Vgl. Friedrich H. Tenbruck, Gesellschaftsgeschichte oder Weltgeschichte, in: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 41 (1989), S. 417–439, bes. S. 426ff; ders., Was war der Kulturvergleich, ehe es den Kulturvergleich gab?, in: J. Matthes (Hg.), Zwischen den Kulturen? Die Sozialwissenschaften vor dem Problem des Kulturvergleichs. Göttingen 1992, S. 13–35. 41 Vgl. F. Cooper, Colonialism in question. Theory, knowledge, history, Berkeley u. a. 2005, S. 149; dt. Übers. (leicht abweichend): Ders., Kolonialismus denken. Konzepte und Theorien in kritischer Perspektive, 1. Aufl, Frankfurt a. M. 2008.

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© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

Church Intellectuals in Enlightenment Russia: The Theotokos Sermons of Metropolitan Platon (Levshin) Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter (California State Polytechnic University in Pomona)

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and despite decades of suppression under communist rule, the Russian Orthodox Church has emerged to become the most powerful nongovernmental organization in Russia. According to a 2010 report presented by Patriarch Kirill to the Council of Bishops (Arkhiereiskoe soveshchanie), the Moscow Patriarchate encompasses 160 eparchies, 30,142 parishes, and 788 monasteries. The church’s personnel include 207 bishops, 28,434 priests, and 3,625 deacons.1 Adding to the reach of the Russian Orthodox Church is the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (also called the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia). Founded after the Bolshevik Revolution to preserve the teachings, rites, and traditions of Russian Orthodoxy, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad rejoined the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007. At no time in the history of modern Russia has the official church appeared more powerful or more relevant to the lives of Orthodox Christians. Given the decades of meager resources, strict supervision, and outright persecution characteristic of the Soviet period, the strength of today’s Russian Orthodox Church may seem surprising. But perhaps the church’s authority is not so surprising, when one considers its social, political, and cultural role in the history of modern Russia. Among living historians, none has done more to illuminate that role than Gregory L. Freeze, the teacher, colleague, and friend being honored with this Festschrift. Some thirty years ago, Freeze convincingly argued that while the reforms of Tsar Peter I (ruled 1682/1689–1725) had deprived the ecclesiastical domain of its canonical head, eliminating any political threat that might have emerged from the office or person of the patriarch, the Russian Orthodox Church had nonetheless retained its authority in the sacred sphere of religious education, liturgical practice, and canon law.2 Both before and after the Petrine reforms, Russian monarchs, like their Byzantine predecessors, intervened in ecclesiastical administration, decided high-level church appointments, and manipulated the interpretation of Christian dogma. The elimination of the patriarchate, a clear violation of canon law, surely represented a concrete loss of political power. Yet precisely because the Orthodox ruler occupied such a central place in the calculus of salvation, the administrative subordination of the 1 Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’, “Doklad Sviateishego Patriarkha Kirilla na Arkhiereiskom soveshchanii 2 fevralia 2010 goda,” Ofitsial’nyi sait Moskovskogo Patriarkhata, http://www. patriarchia.ru/db/print/1061651.html. 2 Gregory L. Freeze, “Handmaiden of the State? The Church in Imperial Russia Reconsidered,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985): 82–102.

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church to the tsar did not undermine the authority of the sacred sphere in Russian life. As one prerevolutionary service manual put the matter, “the Anointing of a Tsar is a sacred act by which the grace of the Holy Spirit is imparted to him, to fit him for the performance of the highest ministry on earth.”3 For decades Gregory Freeze’s recognition of the church’s historical importance made him a solitary figure in “Western” academic circles. By now, however, his pioneering scholarship has become foundational for several generations of historians working outside of Russia. In addition, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, growing cadres of Russian scholars (not to mention their prerevolutionary and émigré predecessors) also have produced a rich body of research that documents the ongoing power, influence, contributions, and struggles of churchmen and ecclesiastical institutions throughout the imperial and Soviet periods of Russian history.4 Not unlike the historical weight of the Russian Orthodox Church, the scholarly weight of Gregory L. Freeze has become paradigmatic in this process. The significance of the Orthodox religion in modern Russian history can be viewed from a variety of angles, not least of which is the devotional and scholarly oeuvre of eighteenth-century church intellectuals. Thanks to ongoing study of religious thought, longstanding images of the church’s spiritual sterility and intellectual stagnation in the aftermath of the Petrine reforms—or as a consequence of cultural Europeanization, socioeconomic modernization, and/or the Bolshevik Revolution—are at last disappearing from scholarly discourse.5 The reassessment is also attributable to a broader historiographic challenge to post-Enlightenment philosophical traditions that posit a linear and all but inevitable process of receding religious belief and advancing secularity, both of which are deemed essential to becoming “modern.” Scholars such as Charles Taylor have effectively replaced the so-called “secularization thesis” with an analysis of religious identification that highlights the plurality of spiritual paths and paradigms available to modern believers.6 Although Taylor sees in the multiplication of religious identities and practices, including materialism and atheism, a “fragilization” of belief (and unbelief for that matter), it is the purpose of this essay, and Taylor himself suggests as much, to show how challenges to faith traditions can also become a source of creativity, regeneration, and strength. In the case of eighteenth-century Russia, the appeal of European cultural models and the emergence of a secular Russian literature challenged church intellectuals to develop a 3 D. Sokolof, A Manual of the Orthodox Church’s Divine Services, Originally translated and printed before the Russian Revolution (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 2001), 131. 4 These works are far too numerous to cite here, but they are fully acknowledged in the publications of Gregory L. Freeze. My own perspective is based on the scholarship cited in Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia: The Teachings of Metropolitan Platon (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013). 5 This is elaborated in Wirtschafter, Religion and Enlightenment, chapter 1. Although highly critical of eighteenth-century churchmen, Father Georgii Florovskii documents the significance of religious thought across several centuries of Russian history. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937; repr., Minsk: Izdatel’stvo Belorusskogo Ekzarkhata, 2006). For recent appraisals, see also Patrick Lally Michelson and Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, eds., Thinking Orthodox in Modern Russia (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014). 6 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

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devotional language that could effectively instruct Europeanized educated classes in Orthodox teachings.7 As I have argued elsewhere, the sermons, catechisms, autobiography, and church history of Metropolitan of Moscow Platon (Levshin, 1737–1812) illustrate the ability of eighteenth-century churchmen to accommodate both unprecedented state power and educated classes that had begun to identify themselves as enlightened and European. To summarize, the metropolitan (and other church intellectuals) provided eighteenth-century listeners and readers with Orthodox Christian answers to modern philosophical questions.8 In addition, their ability to blend Enlightenment ideas into Orthodox religious teachings established a vibrant intellectual bridge that helped educated Russians come to terms with the challenge and allure of European modernity without, however, becoming alienated from their own cultural and religious traditions. As a result, Russia’s educated classes rapidly assimilated and made their own the European ideas and cultural models that began to pour into the empire in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.9 This essay continues the discussion of Russian religious enlighteners but pays closer attention to Metropolitan Platon’s explication of church dogma and ritual. Once again the churchman’s sermons reveal an ability to explain Christian teachings in a language that spoke to eighteenth-century concerns, both clerical and lay, and that even today remains appealing to a modern (or post-modern) reader. In the materialist, scientist, and positivist intellectual environment that has dominated Europe since the age of Darwin, the enduring power of religious teachings cannot be attributed solely to the isolation and guarding of tradition, dogma, and ritual, though these patterns are of course significant. Equally important, and perhaps of more interest to historians, are the ongoing development and regeneration of pastoral communication capable of moving the hearts and minds of modern believers and converts.10 While Orthodox Christianity teaches that spiritual or divine truths are complete, perfect, and eternal, the ability of churchmen to apply these truths to human life inevitably changes and remains perpetually in need of improvement. Thus, from a human or earthly perspective, it is the church’s ability to define and explicate Chris 7 For linguistic analysis of this question, see Viktor M. Zhivov, Iazyk i kul’tura v Rossii XVIII veka (Moscow: Shkola “Iazyki russkoi kul’tury,” 1996). 8 Jonathan Israel defines “philosophical modernity” as an interconnected cluster of principles that includes: (1) recognition of mathematical-historical reason as the sole criterion of truth; (2) rejection of all supernatural agency, magic, and divine providence; (3) belief in the equality of all humankind, including racial and sexual equality; (4) belief in a secular, universalistic ethics, grounded in equality and concerned with equity, justice, and charity; (5) full religious toleration, freedom of conscience, and freedom of thought; (6) freedom of expression, political criticism, and the press; (7) acceptance of democratic republicanism as the most legitimate form of politics; and (8) personal liberty of lifestyle and sexual orientation. Jonathan Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 866. 9 Wirtschafter, Religion and Enlightenment. 10 On the Enlightenment as a communications breakthrough that created new forms of mediation, see Clifford Siskin and William Warner, eds., This Is Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). Note also that as early as 1744 Mikhail Lomonosov classified sermons as a form of public speech. See E. I. Kislova and E. M. Matveev, eds., Khronologicheskii katalog slov i rechei XVIII veka (St. Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2011), 6.

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tian dogma with greater precision—to convey the eternal spiritual message with saliency and immediacy—that ensures belief in divine truth.11 Within the context of philosophical modernity, the persistent meaningfulness of Judeo-Christian traditions can be described as one of the great “mysteries” and outstanding achievements of European history.12 While historical events such as the French Revolution and philosophical developments such as materialism and positivism might indicate that Enlightenment ideas inevitably challenged and eventually eroded religious authority, there is another side to the story of Christian belief in modern times. Across Europe, beginning in the late seventeenth century and continuing throughout the eighteenth, religious enlighteners found ways to “reinvent” Judeo-Christian teachings—ways to reconcile reason and revelation, scientific learning and Christian dogma, human freedom and divine providence, the promise of salvation in heaven and the expectation of human flourishing here on earth.13 Like the larger pan-European Enlightenment, the religious Enlightenment assumed multiple forms, produced multiple outcomes, and followed multiple trajectories of development.14 Without recounting the complicated and variegated specifics, it should be said that throughout Europe religious enlighteners, Metropolitan Platon among them, 11 Orthodox theology rejects the possibility of new dogmatic revelations beyond “the teaching of faith handed down by the Apostles.” But Orthodoxy does recognize that in the history of the church dogmas can be explained and defined with greater precision. In addition, because “dogmatic theology does not pretend to satisfy on all points the curiosity of the human mind,” it can develop “as a branch of learning” that “studies the work of the Church and its dogmatic and other decrees.” Thus, while theological learning cannot develop or perfect church teachings about revealed truths, it can guide “the Church’s consciousness.” Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, trans. and ed. Seraphim Rose (Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1997), 357–62. See also N. P. Malinovskii, Ocherk pravoslavnogo dogmaticheskogo bogosloviia, reprint (Sergiev Posad, 1911; repr., Moscow: Pravoslavnyi Sviato-tikhonovskii bogoslovskii institut, 2003), 25–29. 12 On philosophical modernity, see note 8. 13 The phrase “human flourishing” comes from Taylor, Secular Age. 14 On the religious Enlightenment, see David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Joris Van Eijnatten, ed., Preaching, Sermon and Cultural Change in the Long Eighteenth Century (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009); James E. Bradley and Dale K. Van Kley, eds., Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001). On the Russian side, see Ioakhim Klein [Joachim Klein], Russkaia literatura v XVIII veke (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Indrik,” 2010); Gary Marker, Imperial Saint: The Cult of St. Catherine and the Dawn of Female Rule in Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007); O. M. Goncharova, Vlast’ traditsii i ‘novaia Rossiia’ v literaturnom soznanii vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka: Monografiia (St. Petersburg: RKhGI, 2004); Olga Aleksandrovna Tsapina, “Iz istorii obshchestvenno-politicheskoi mysli Rossii epokhi prosveshcheniia: Protoierei P. A. Alekseev (1727–1801)” (Kand. diss., Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet im. M. V. Lomonosova, 1998); Gregory L. Bruess, Religion, Identity, and Empire: A Greek Archbishop in the Russia of Catherine the Great (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1997); Marcus C. Levitt, ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 150, Early Modern Russian Writers, Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1995); Zhivov, Iazyk i kul’tura; Stephen K. Batalden, Catherine II’s Greek Prelate Eugenios Voulgaris in Russia, 1771–1806 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1982); Lennart Kjellberg, La langue de Gedeon Krinovskij, predicateur russe du XVIII siècle (Uppsala: A.-B. Lundequistska bokhandeln, 1957).

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deployed rationalist argumentation with a tone of moderation in order to explain why Christian teachings remained superior to human learning and the scientific method both as a guide for achieving earthly progress and as a measure of human happiness. While enlightened policymakers and Enlightenment thinkers hoped to reform human behavior and build societies that would progress toward universal human flourishing, religious enlighteners forcefully and sincerely argued that only with the help of Christian teachings could these goals be achieved. Among the Russian religious teachings that showed the way to human happiness, those devoted to the Theotokos or Mother of God (Bogoroditsa) stand out for their broad popular appeal. Although there is little concrete evidence of how eighteenth-century believers internalized church teachings, veneration of the Virgin and belief in the miracle-working power of Marian icons remained widespread throughout the imperial period.15 This is not surprising given the prominence accorded the life of Mary in Orthodox liturgy and teachings. Precisely because Mary is “the first among saints,” “the prototype of all Christians,” and “the model of what we are to become in Christ,” her life embodies the possibility of “human holiness” and illuminates the spiritual path leading to communion with God that is available to any individual.16 After Easter, the “feast of feasts,” twelve Great Feasts define the Orthodox religious calendar. Of these, five are devoted to the Mother of God and seven to Christ.17 The Virgin’s role in the economy of salvation is paramount, and in celebrating Mary, the Orthodox lit15 Close to half (41.9 %) of all icons mentioned in the wills, dowries, and property divisions of townspeople in eighteenth-century Moscow depict the Mother of God, a pattern confirmed by official inventories of icons confiscated due to unpaid debts, tax arrears, and other offenses. Daniel H. Kaiser, “Icons and Private Devotion among Eighteenth-Century Moscow Townsfolk,” Journal of Social History 45 (2011): 125–47. On veneration of icons more generally, see Oleg Tarasov, Icon and Devotion: Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia, trans. and ed. Robin Milner-Gulland (London: Reaktion Books, 2002); Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, trans. Steven Bigham (Redondo Beach, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1990). On the centrality of Mary to Russian religious culture, see Vera Shevzov, “Scripting the Gaze: Liturgy, Homilies, and the Kazan Mother of God in Late Imperial Russia,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, ed. Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), 61–92; idem, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Andreas Ebbinghaus, Die altrussischen Marienikonen-Legenden (Berlin: Kommission bei Otto Harrassowitz, 1990); A. S. Lavrov, Koldovstvo i religiia v Rossii 1700–1740 gg. (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2000), 167–202, 227–43. For the eighteenth century, historical study of deviations from church teachings has received more attention than the positive content of popular belief. See E. B. Smilianskaia, Volshebniki, Bogokhul’niki, Eretiki: Narodnaia religioznost’ i “ dukhovnye prestupleniia” v Rossii XVIII v. (Moscow: Indrik, 2003). 16 The Orthodox Study Bible [hereafter OSB (2008)] (St. Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology, 2008), 1361. Throughout this essay I rely on the OSB for English translation of biblical quotes. The New Testament text is the New King James Version (Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1982), and the Old Testament text is the St. Athanasius Septuagint (St. Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology, 2008). 17 The Great Feasts devoted to Mary include the Nativity of the Theotokos (8 September), the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple (21 November), the Meeting of Our Lord (2 February), the Annunciation (25 March), and the Dormition of the Theotokos (15 August). The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1998), 41–66. On Mary as the personalization of “human holiness,” see Evdokimov, Art of the Icon, 259.

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urgy highlights her humanity, “unique love for God,” and “maternal protection” for every creature and “every human being.” Emblematic of Mary’s relationship to human beings is the belief that her position as the Mother of God and the embodiment of human perfectibility does not exempt her from original sin. To the contrary, it is precisely the humanity in Mary that allowed Jesus “to take flesh.” Thus the Incarnation is seen not only as the work of the Father and the Holy Spirit, but also as “‘the work of the will and faith of the Virgin.’” As Orthodoxy teaches, every person “is given the grace of identifying himself with the Theotokos,” and thereby “of giving birth to Christ in his soul.”18 The sermons of Metropolitan Platon, like so many other devotional and archival sources, illustrate the unique and powerful presence of the Theotokos in Russian religious culture. The metropolitan’s collected works, published between 1779 and 1806, contain sixty sermons devoted to the five Great Feasts that celebrate Mary and twenty-four devoted to feasts that celebrate Marian icons.19 Among these writings, the sermons celebrating the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple (November 21) describe Mary’s voluntary decision to accept “the will of God” and to become “an active participant …in God’s scheme of salvation” in a manner that highlights the necessity of freedom in the human struggle for perfection.20 Human free will is a primary theme in all celebrations of the Mother of God, and in eighteenth-century Russia this theme spoke to Enlightenment concerns about the freedom, dignity, and moral perfectibility of the individual human being. Thus when Metropolitan Platon celebrated the life of Mary, he did more than fulfill the pastoral obligation to guide believers along the path to salvation and communion with God; he also articulated an understanding of the church and life in the church that made sense with reference to the social and cultural conditions of eighteenth-century Russia.21 Orthodox celebration of Mary’s Entry into the Temple is based on the apocryphal Book of James or Protevangelion, which tells the story of the Virgin’s nativity, her education in 18 Evdokimov, Art of the Icon, 259–62. 19 The sermons are published in Platon (Levshin), Pouchitel’nyia slova pri vysochaishem dvore e. i. v…. gosudaryni Ekateriny Alekseevny …i drugikh mestakh s 1763 goda po 1778 god skazyvannyia …(hereafter PS), 20 vols. (Moscow: Senatskaia tipografiia, 1779–1806). Titles and publishers of individual volumes vary. 20 For the sermons devoted to the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple, see PS, 1:228–37 (21 November 1764), 4:160–67 (21 November 1777), 15:704–13 (21 November 1790), 15:884–92 (21 November 1791), 16:336–43 (21 November 1793), 17:130–39 (21 November 1794), 17:361–71 (21 November 1795). 21 Platon’s collected sermons (PS) also include homilies for other Great Feasts celebrating the Mother of God: Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos on 8 September (8 sermons), Meeting of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple on 2 February (21 sermons), Annunciation to the Most Holy Theotokos on 25 March (15 sermons), Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos on 15 August (9 sermons). In addition, Platon preached on feast days celebrating icons of the Mother of God: Kazan Mother of God (15 sermons), Vladimir Mother of God (3 sermons), Smolensk Mother of God (4 sermons), Don Mother of God (2 sermons). For discussion of Platon’s Mother of God sermons, see the articles published in Platonovskie chteniia: Sbornik materialov, 8 vols. to date (Moscow: Perervinskaia dukhovnaia seminariia, 2005–11); A. Nadezhin, “Mitropolit Moskovskii Platon Levshin, kak propovednik,” Pravoslavnyi sobesednik (April 1882): 338–61; (July–August 1882): 266–311; (October 1882): 115–48; (December 1882): 407–34; (April 1883): 372–94; (May 1883): 3–42; (June 1883): 136–68.

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the temple and marriage to Joseph, and her role as mother of the baby Jesus.22 The story of the Entry into the Temple continues the narrative of Mary’s life that begins with the Feast of the Nativity (September 8). According to the Protevangelion, Mary’s future parents, the pious Joachim and Ann, were because of childlessness living in a state of despair when they were visited by an angel who told them that God would give them a child. This child was the Virgin Mary, the divinely chosen Mother of God, and her birth opened “the door to salvation for all humanity.”23 Filled with joy and gratitude, Joachim and Ann vowed to dedicate their child to God, and when Mary reached the age of three they took her to the Temple. Accompanied by virgins with lamps, the young girl happily entered the Temple and by her own volition ascended the stairway leading to the altar and the Holy of Holies. Fed by an angel, Mary remained in the Temple until age twelve, when High Priest Zacharias, who would become the father of John the Baptist, gave her in marriage to Joseph.24 Orthodox Christians see in the Entry into the Temple “a portent of the reconciliation of man to God through the power of Christ.” In the words of the Troparion for the feast: Today is the prelude of God’s goodwill and the heralding of the salvation of mankind. In the temple of God, the Virgin is presented openly, and she proclaimeth Christ unto all. To her then with a great voice let us cry aloud: Rejoice, O thou fulfillment of the Creator’s dispensation.25 The church teaches that while the Holy Spirit dwelled in Mary from the time of her birth, and even before, the Entry into the Temple signified her total and voluntary dedication to God. Both the grace of the Holy Spirit, which prepared the Virgin to become “a living Temple,” and her own free choice indicated “readiness for her future vocation as Mother of the Incarnate Lord.”26 The Entry into the Temple is a “feast of anticipation”—the anticipation of eternal blessedness—and as such it gave to Metropolitan Platon an occasion for discussing the spiritual meaning of a Christian life, the significance of divine truth for human activities, and the relationship between God and humanity. From Platon’s perspective, this discussion would have been nowhere more needed than at the court of Empress Catherine II (ruled 1762–1796), where the brilliance and glitter of Enlightenment culture held sway, and where European-style sociability and cultural products such as theater, literature, music, and dance were supposed to be pleasurable, enlightening, and morally edifying. In late eighteenth-century Russia, as in the rest of Europe, Enlightenment themes of happiness and “human flourishing” occupied the thoughts of policymakers and intellectuals. Although happiness could be understood as sensual satisfaction and the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure, Russian elites tended to embrace a broader understanding—one consistent with Christian teachings—that also associated happiness with good fortune, moral goodness, 22 M. R. James, ed., The New Testament Apocrypha (Oxford, 1924; repr., Berkeley, CA: Apocryphile Press, 2004), 38–49. 23 Sokolof, Manual, 85. 24 Festal Menaion, 47–49; Sokolof, Manual, 85, 88. 25 Sokolof, Manual, 88; Festal Menaion, 172. 26 Festal Menaion, 52, 60–61.

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and tranquility of spirit.27 As Metropolitan Platon repeatedly proclaimed, without spiritual development, there could be no human happiness. In the sermon of November 21, 1764, commemorating the Entry into the Temple, Platon explains the meaning of happiness and its relationship to goodness. Preaching at court in the presence of the empress, the metropolitan equates human happiness with “the highest good (verkhovnoe dobro),” which he then defines by contrasting Christian teachings to the understandings of “pagan philosophers.”28 Although Platon structures his sermon as a rebuttal to antique philosophy, he clearly also has in mind the culture and thought of his enlightened eighteenth-century listeners.29 Thus, after acknowledging the natural human desire to attain the highest good, a condition in which “we will be completely calm and all our wishes will be satisfied,” Platon criticizes pagan philosophers and inadequately enlightened Christians, whose diverse opinions about what constitutes blessedness illustrate the poor reasoning of minds (razum) that are not “supported by the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit.” What, Platon asks, does it mean for a person to reach the “highest good,” the “height of blessedness”? To answer this question, the metropolitan first describes what he regards as the base judgments of unenlightened and pagan minds. For some pagan philosophers, the preacher explains, blessedness consisted of material wealth and honors (chesti), privileges “that because of their decay and inconstancy are unworthy of being the reward for eternal virtue.” Indeed, because material wealth is vulnerable to climatic and environmental conditions, disasters such as fire, and even death, pagan philosophers made a big mistake when they associated blessedness with the things that a person can possess, even if he or she “lacks the wealth of a pure conscience and the worthiness of true virtue.” In the words of the psalmist (Psalm 48:17–18): “‘Do not be afraid when a man becomes rich, / And when the glory of his house is increased; / For when he dies, he shall carry nothing away; / Neither will his glory descend with him.’”30 In critiquing pagan philosophers, Platon does not intend to condemn all wealth and honors.31 He is mindful of the riches that accrue to his august audience. Thus he adds that if wealth is used honorably, and if honors are used for the benefit of one’s neighbor, they can become the means for achieving true blessedness. In other words, wealth and honors are not necessarily impediments to blessedness, though they should never be equated with the whole of the highest good. There were in fact pagan philosophers who recognized this 27 Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006); Andrew Kahn, “‘Blazhenstvo ne v luchakh porfira’: Histoire et fonction de la tranquillité (spokojstvie) dans la pensée et la poésie russes du XVIIIe siècle, de Kantemir au sentimentalism,” Revue des Études slaves 74 (2002–2003): 669–88. 28 Platon, PS, 1:228–37 (21 November 1764). 29 Modern scholarship likewise recognizes an association between Enlightenment and pagan ideas. See Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. Vol. 1, The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1966). 30 I use single quotation marks within double quotation marks to indicate biblical passages quoted by Platon. Double quotation marks are used when I quote a biblical passage paraphrased or partially quoted by Platon. 31 During the course of his career, the metropolitan himself acquired many precious objects and awards.

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truth, including an ancient sect that in addition to seeking a measure of wealth and honor also embraced their “bodily inclinations.” Platon admits that it can be difficult to reject the principles of these philosophers, the Epicureans, who consciously pursued merry-making, peaceful sleep, and new ways to enjoy life. But, he reminds his listeners, the Gospel teaches a different lesson. To counter the ideas of the Epicureans, Platon discusses a teaching from Luke (6:20– 26), where Jesus says: Blessed are you poor, / For yours is the kingdom of God. / Blessed are you who hunger now, / For you shall be filled. / Blessed are you who weep now, / For you shall laugh. / Blessed are you when men hate you, / And when they exclude you, / And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, / For the Son of Man’s sake. / Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! / For indeed your reward is great in heaven, / For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets. / But woe to you who are rich, / For you have received your consolation. / Woe to you who are full, / For you shall hunger. / Woe to you who laugh now, / For you shall mourn and weep. / Woe to you when all men speak well of you, / For so did their fathers to the false prophets. In Platon’s mind, the realities of human life confirm the biblical teaching. It is simply impossible for a person to experience nothing but happiness in his or her life. It is likewise impossible to eliminate from life the conditions that cause sadness: sickness, disease, slander, scarcity, and abuse of power. Like other representatives of the Russian Enlightenment, Platon understood the fragility of earthly happiness in the face of harsh physical reality and unbridled human ambition. Indeed, the preacher continues, even if it were possible to expect a quiet and secure life, fear of death would remain. Recalling the gaiety of Job’s children, Platon reminds his listeners of how suddenly misfortune and destruction can strike. The churchman’s goal here is not to repudiate “innocent entertainment” or to advise people to choose “a melancholy condition of life”; rather, he is warning against the sense of physical security that is found in people who do not feel within themselves an “immortal spirit.” Having explained the most obvious errors of the pagan philosophers, Platon admits that not all of them understood the highest good in the manner he has just described. Some among them based human blessedness on the more solid and just grounds of virtue. But while these philosophers came closer to the truth, they too made a critical mistake. Again, Platon asks, what is the relationship between goodness and blessedness? What does blessedness mean when virtue and honesty (chestnost’) are persecuted? Was, for example, the apostle Paul fully blessed, when, despite his virtue, he suffered repeated calamities? Responding to these questions, Platon notes that although blessedness does not consist of virtue, virtue is an important means for attaining “true blessedness.” Pagan philosophers recognized this relationship when they defined human blessedness not as virtue per se but as “the tranquility of conscience” that results from virtue. This understanding is closer to the truth, and we might accept it, Platon adds, if it were possible to hope that in earthly life we could ever attain “compete tranquility of conscience.” Such an assumption is unfounded, however, for who “among mortals can rise to this height of perfection”?

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Irrespective of the myriad and diverse conditions that can disturb human conscience, Platon insists that deep inside all people remain at war with their passions. Paraphrasing 2 Corinthians, the metropolitan points out that as long as we live in our physical bodies, we groan, feel burdened, and wish for the heavenly home. Here Platon invokes the Christian belief in resurrection and defines the highest good as complete unification with God, brought about through perfect love for him and clear knowledge of him. During our earthly lives, the preacher continues, we cannot experience union with God: as long as we fear death and divine judgment, our love for God remains incomplete. As the apostle John teaches, and Platon quotes in part, “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love” (1 John 4:17–18). Only when we are free of the burden of the body, only when the door to eternity opens before us, will our mind/reason (razum) shine with “full knowledge of God.”32 Drawing upon 1 Corinthians (13:12), Platon affirms that only then will we see God face-to-face, only then will we see all other things in their perfection, and only then will our hearts be filled with “the sweetness of uncreated goodness.” In the words of the apostle Paul, God will “‘be all in all’” (1 Corinthians 15:28). God, Platon adds, “will be light to the mind/ reason (razum), gaiety and quiet to the heart, joy (radost’) to the eyes, sweetness to the taste, pleasantness to the ears.” This, the preacher tells his listeners, is the state that we call perfect human blessedness. This is the highest good, which the pagans did not know and which we would not know if the star of the east had not shined upon us. “‘For what is there in heaven for me but You, / And what do I desire on earth besides You? / My heart and my flesh fail, / O God of my heart: and God is my / portion forever’” (Psalm 72:25–26). At the end of the sermon Platon returns to the subject of the blessed Mother of God who now rejoices in heaven. Although on earth celebration of the Theotokos takes place within the embattled church, in heaven the “righteous spirits” rejoice in her presence: the purest angels, the godly prophets, the most glorified apostolic saints, the celebrated martyrs, and the crowned holy men (prepodobnye). As guardian, protectress, and intercessor, Mary connects Christians on earth to God in heaven. “As the human being who was most intimate with Christ on earth,” Christians pray to the Virgin “to intercede with her Son” on their behalf. Mary’s “spiritual purity” and “wholehearted devotion to God” likewise make her a figure to be emulated.33 For this reason, in later homilies devoted to the Entry

32 Orthodox Christianity distinguishes reason or mind (dianoia), the human being’s “logical faculty,” from intellect (nous), which represents superior “spiritual perception” and the capacity to access divine truth. See The Philokalia: The Complete Text compiled by St. Nikodimus of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, trans. and ed. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, 4 vols. (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), 4:431–4. 33 OSB (2008), 1361.

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into the Temple, Metropolitan Platon addresses questions of education within the life of the church.34 Among the reform efforts undertaken by governments and cultural elites across eighteenth-century Europe, the education of children, particularly their moral development, occupied a central place. In Russia educational reform, or more precisely the building of educational infrastructure, began as early as the late seventeenth century and reached a critical stage in the reign of Catherine II, who ordered the earliest sustained effort to establish an empire-wide network of public primary schools open to all social classes.35 Beginning in the 1750s, Metropolitan Platon played a visible role in ecclesiastical and civil education. As an academy instructor; public catechist; court preacher; teacher of catechism to Tsesarevich Paul; and author of literary sermons, a history of the Russian church, and catechisms distributed throughout the empire and translated into multiple foreign languages, Platon remains to this day an admired figure in the history of Russian religious education.36 In the administration of ecclesiastical schools and in sermons devoted to educational themes, Metropolitan Platon consistently promoted spiritual wisdom and the cognitive understanding of religious teachings. In his mind, spiritual enlightenment represented the only real foundation for human dignity, goodness, and happiness, including eternal happiness in heaven. Throughout his career, Platon remained attentive to the appeal and the necessity of human learning, an iconic concern of religious enlighteners and Enlightenment thinkers across eighteenth-century Europe. At the same time, however, he also forcefully and consistently insisted on the superiority of spiritual wisdom grounded in fear of God and acquired through membership in the Orthodox Church.37 The theme of spiritual enlightenment is critical to the life of the Virgin as explicated in Platon’s sermons celebrating the Entry into the Temple.38 It was Mary’s enlightenment— begun by her righteous parents, continued during her education in the temple in Jerusalem, and guided even before her birth by the grace of the Holy Spirit—that served as the basis for her absolute devotion to God and for her willingness to accept her unique role in the salvation of humanity. Mary’s upbringing in the temple symbolized her preparation to become the Mother of God, and so in addition to promoting the moral education of children, 34 For sermons that emphasize the responsibility of parents to educate their children in the church, see Platon, PS, 4:160–67 (21 November 1777); 15:704–13 (21 November 1790); 16:336–43 (21 November 1793). 35 Jan Kusber, Eliten- und Volksbildung im Zarenreich während des 18. und in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts: Studien zu Diskurs, Gesetzgebung und Umsetzung (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004). See also Anna Kuxhausen, From the Womb to the Body Politic: Raising the Nation in Enlightenment Russia (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). 36 Numerous scholars who document this activity are cited in Wirtschafter, Religion and Enlightenment. For immediate reference, see the articles published in Platonovskie chteniia; I. M. Snegirev, Zhizn’ Moskovskago Metropolita Platona, 2 vols. (Moscow: Tipografiia Vedomostei Moskovskoi Gorodskoi Politsii, 1856); P. V. Znamenskii, Dukhovnye shkoly v Rossii do reformy 1808 goda (Kazan, 1881; repr., St. Petersburg: Letnii Sad, ID “Kolo,” 2001. 37 For further discussion, see Wirtschafter, Religion and Enlightenment, chapter 2. 38 Platon, PS, 15:884–92 (21 November 1791); 17:130–39 (21 November 1794); 17:361–71 (21 November 1795).

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the Feast of the Entry into the Temple also drew attention to the spiritual meaning of the church and sacraments in the everyday life of Christian believers. In a sermon delivered at the Chudov Monastery on November 21, 1791, close to two decades after Metropolitan Platon completed his formal duties at the Catherinian court, the preacher invoked the life of the Theotokos in order to discuss what it means to be a true member of the church.39 Just as Mary had entered the Lord’s temple, so too might every Christian receive this right (pravo) through the sacrament of baptism. That said, simple entry into the temple is not necessarily an indication of true membership in the church. To explain this distinction, Platon offers a detailed definition of the difference between the temple (khram) and the church (tserkov’). The metropolitan’s word choice is not absolutely consistent, but his meaning is clear. The temple is a building constructed by human hands out of a particular material and only later is it consecrated to God’s service. The temple is not sacred (sviat) in itself, but due to the holiness (sviatost’) of the divine services conducted within it. The Christians, presumably clergy, who perform services in the temple are endowed with wisdom (razum) and are therefore worthy of membership in Christ’s church. Citing Ephesians (2:22), Platon notes that when a Christian enters the temple, his or her person also should be a temple ready to serve as “‘a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.’” Not only does the temple built by human hands sanctify those who enter into it, but Christians also sanctify the temple when they live in holiness and revere God with prayers and offerings of thanksgiving. Contrasted to the temple is the church, which Platon defines as “an assembly (sobor) of holy Christians who piously complete service to God.” The church, moreover, is built by the hands of God: “‘on this rock I will build My church’” (Matthew 16:18). Indeed, the church can only be built by the one “who is able to convert (obratit’), justify, and save the human soul.” Its foundation stone is the teachings of the prophets and apostles, and its primary cornerstone is Jesus Christ, who connects and strengthens “ancient Prophetic and Apostolic teachings.”40 Unlike the temple, which is decorated with gold, silver, and precious stones, the adornments of the church are faith, love, and priceless good deeds. Indeed, if good deeds are to be pleasing to God, they must be built on “the foundation of Christ” and carried out according to the rule (pravilo) that he has given to humanity. Although hypocrisy, foolhardiness (bezrasudnost’), and malicious anger (zlost’) can make it difficult to distinguish good from bad deeds, the essential nature of these deeds will ultimately become visible. As stated in 1 Corinthians (3:12–13, 15), the day of the future divine judgment will reveal good deeds and reward them with glory. Platon’s discussion of good and bad deeds brings him to a crucial point about the spiritual path leading to Christian salvation. Mere entry into the temple through the sacrament of baptism is not equivalent to true membership in the church. Simply put, bad Christians do not really belong to the church: they are Christians in name only. There are of course sinners within the church, but they are sinners who repent, and when they do so, when they abandon their evil ways, they actually adorn the church. Moreover, in contrast to the 39 Platon, PS, 15:884–92 (21 November 1791). 40 Here Platon is paraphrasing Ephesians 2:20.

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temple, which can be destroyed, the church is indestructible: “‘the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it’” (Matthew 16:18). Similarly, although a good Christian can be deprived of everything he possesses, no one can take away the holiness and honesty (chestnost’) of his soul. Platon continues to differentiate between the temple and the church by stressing the church’s position as a wanderer in the world. This means that while the church is not confined within the walls of the temple, it is nonetheless present in the services conducted within the temple. For this reason, a true member of the church will visit the Lord’s temple willingly and frequently. Mere visitation is not enough, however: to stand in the temple does not indicate that a person possesses true faith or a good conscience. A depraved person can come into the temple without actually being in the church. When you enter the church, Platon tells his listeners, you must consider whether or not your soul is “ready to be a temple for the Holy Spirit.” This is the critical question. If your soul is not pure, then you are required to enter the temple in order to repent before God. If, by contrast, you are burdened with sin yet feel no repentance, Platon offers a warning: you should not dare to enter the temple, as this will only increase your sin. This is because the assembled church (sobrannaia tserkov’) stands in the temple, and such an assembly (sobor) belongs to heaven rather than earth. At this point in the discussion Platon turns from the moral condition of the individual temple-goer to that of the collective church community. His goal is to define the basis for determining which temple is “rich” and which is poor. It is, Platon insists, the people gathered in the temple who adorn it, though only if they possess a pure and tranquil conscience. Indeed, the first good Christians served God in caves and huts that glowed with piety and holiness. The Jews, on the other hand, adorned the temple in Jerusalem with precious decorations, yet just as the prophets proclaimed, the assembled people remained impious and corrupt. For this reason, Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24:2 that the temple would be destroyed, which is in fact what happened. In Platon’s understanding, the spiritual condition of the Jews contrasted sharply with the holiness of the Virgin, who adorned the temple with pure morals and a soul worthy of serving as a dwelling place for God. Predictably, Platon calls upon his listeners to imitate the Virgin, to purify their souls, and in so doing to adorn the temple: “Oh that we, standing in these holy temples, possessed a pure and holy inner temple. Then these temples, whichever they are, would receive from us the most magnificent adornment. Amen.” In distinguishing the temple from the church, and in contrasting the inner temple of genuine faith with the external observance of religious ritual, Metropolitan Platon highlights the centrality of the Christian believer’s moral condition in the spiritual feat (podvig) leading to salvation. While the metaphor of the inner temple might seem to echo Pietist and Masonic ideas circulating in eighteenth-century Russia, there is no evidence that these intellectual currents influenced Platon’s thinking. The preacher’s attention to the individual’s spiritual development in no way lessened the importance of collective worship or fulfillment of the sacraments in the sacred space of an earthly temple.41 Simply put, Platon’s 41 See the sermon dedicated to the Entry into the Temple in Platon, PS, 17:361–71 (21 November 1795).

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concept of the inner temple cannot be understood without reference to the larger collective church created by God and identified with the entire assembly of good Christians. Platon further explains his conception of the church in the 1794 sermon dedicated to the Entry into the Temple, though in this case with an eye to the relationship between the church on earth and the church in heaven.42 Preaching at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, Platon begins his homily with a reminder that while the Theotokos is now celebrated in heaven— surrounded by the angels, taken in by the Father, kissed by the Son, and crowned by the Holy Spirit—she first entered the temple in Jerusalem “as a pure and most holy offering.” Of course, the preacher continues, when we humans celebrate the Virgin’s entry into the earthly temple, we do nothing to augment her “heavenly joy and blessedness.” This she enjoys by virtue of divine grace and her own spiritual purity. Still, through our devotion we are able to increase our own “benefit” (pol’za) and participate in her blessedness. Indeed, “the blessed Mother” wishes for nothing more than to see all of us enjoying the same happiness that now is hers. Again, we cannot augment Mary’s glory when we try to fulfill her wish, but we can further our own salvation, which is precisely what she wants for us. As the narrative of the Entry into the Temple teaches, the Virgin’s life in the earthly temple served as the ladder upon which she ascended to the heavenly temple. Similarly, based on her example, Christians must enter the earthly temple and live there in a worthy manner before they will be able to enter the heavenly temple. Although the life of Mary shows very clearly that the path to heaven lies within the church, Platon nevertheless acknowledges the difficulty of the individual’s spiritual journey. The path to heaven is filled with obstacles, and as the preacher explains elsewhere, to live a Christian life is indeed a spiritual feat. Still, as Platon also repeatedly asserts, this difficulty should not disturb us; it does not exceed our God-given capacity for goodness. Precisely because we Christians already have entered the Lord’s temple, our only duty (dolg) is to be able to enjoy its beauty and live in it as the Lord’s holiness demands. But what does it mean to live in holiness in the temple of the Lord? “The first temple of God,” Platon continues, “is the entire world, the visible and the invisible.” The world is holy not only because it was created by “God’s Most Holy hands,” but also because it is governed “by His wise and holy providence.” There is more to God’s providence, Platon adds, than guiding the movements, actions, and intentions of all creatures (tvari) toward his ends. We enter “this magnificent temple” (that is, the world) as soon as we are born. Whether or not we understand what we see, we are everywhere met by God’s divine miracles. In the words of the prophet (Psalm 62:3): “‘So in the holy place I appear before You, / To see Your power and Your glory.’” Everywhere in this world human beings see evidence of God’s wisdom and goodness (blagost’). The sky, earth, air, and water—and the human beings who live in these elements—represent so many miracles that it is impossible to understand or even to admire them adequately. “‘Lord, our Lord, how wondrous is Your / name in all this earth, / For Your splendor is exalted far beyond the heavens’” (Psalm 8:1). To marvel at and bow down 42 Platon, PS, 17:130–39 (21 November 1794). In this sermon Platon uses the word khram without any distinction between temple and church.

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before God’s wisdom is, to be sure, both worthy and pious. But, Platon exhorts his listeners, you were brought into this splendid world not only to admire and contemplate God’s power and glory. You were brought into the world, God’s temple, to be part of “the holy union of all creatures” (sviashchennyi soiuz vsekh tvarei); therefore, you must think about how to live in the world. In other words, you must learn to live in the world “in accordance with the order (poriadok) and beauty that you see in all creatures (tvari).” It may seem, Platon continues, that the perpetual and wondrous good order of the heavenly bodies is beyond your capacity for emulation. Yet you are surrounded by creatures/creations (tvari) that preserve this same good order in everything they do. The earth provides you with grain, herbs, and livestock. Trees shield you with their leaves and give you fruits to eat. Springs flow for your use, and animals use the power of their nature to serve you and feed you. Like so many scientists, philosophers, and theologians in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, Metropolitan Platon saw in the regular workings of nature proof of God’s beneficence, omnipotence, and design. Noting, however, that he neither has the time nor sees the need to describe all of the well-ordered creatures and creations found in the world, the preacher asks his listeners: is it possible to think that in a world where all creatures preserve their order, you alone disrupt the beauty of this order for yourself and for others? Is it possible, in other words, that human beings represent an aberration in the good order of God’s creation? Platon’s answer to this question is simple and unequivocal. God created human beings to preserve their assigned or natural place (poriadok) in the world, and in this way to contribute to its beauty. The metropolitan then explains what is meant by the good order of humanity. To ensure good order you must be hard-working, not lazy or idle; temperate, so as not to disturb the order established by God; kind and benevolent to other human beings and to animals; and finally, pious and grateful to God for all that he gives you, including the creatures that serve you. If you live in this manner in “the sanctified temple of this world,” you glorify your creator, and you show by your own life that “the beauty of God’s wisdom shines within you.” If, by contrast, you live an evil life, you not only upset the God-created order, you revile your creator. With evil deeds you act as if God created you to be a deranged creature unfit for the world. Once again Platon urges his listeners to live in the temple of this world in a manner that conforms to God’s purpose. The final section of Platon’s sermon recalls yet another temple, “the Church of Christ,” which is the most magnificent and superior of all the temples. Reminding the assembled congregation of what it means to be a member of the church, Platon emphasizes the mystery of baptism. Because you lived in the temple of the world in a confused and disordered manner, God in his goodness renewed, regenerated, and refashioned you: he brought you back into good order while also making you better. Through the sacrament of baptism, God brought you into the temple, the Church of Christ, which in magnificence, grandeur, fineness, and beauty, exceeds the temple of this world. Thus, once you have entered the church, you are obligated to preserve your newfound beauty, so that you do not discredit yourself or disgrace the church. Through baptism you become a member of the Church of Christ, an heir (naslednik) to God, and a co-heir to Christ.

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Platon is reluctant to describe in concrete terms the purity and chastity that are required in order for a person to be a worthy dweller in the Holy Church of Christ. In other sermons he repeatedly states that only God can know what is truly in a person’s heart. Human eyes, in other words, cannot necessarily see or recognize spiritual purity. Platon again reminds his listeners of the mysteries/sacraments (tainy) that are carried out within the church. Equally important, he insists that regardless of the type of purity that makes a Christian worthy of membership in the church, there remains “‘a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’” (2 Corinthians 5:1). This is the heavenly temple, and no one is rewarded with entry into this temple, if in the sacred temple of the church that is here on earth, he or she does not live in accordance with the holiness of the church. Metropolitan Platon’s language of well-ordered living in a well-ordered world created by a benevolent and all-powerful God would have been familiar to the educated and governing classes of Catherinian Russia. Regular government and social order were key principles in the empress’s institutional reforms and in the Petrine reforms that had preceded them. The sense of purposeful regularity and design also complemented Enlightenment ideas about the existence of an interlocking harmonious universe. Perhaps it is Platon’s Christian understanding of the well-ordered society, polity, and church—an understanding derived from belief in the unity and beneficence of God’s creation—that explains why Father Georgii Florovskii characterized the metropolitan as a Protestant-oriented catechist and “enthusiast of enlightenment” who placed too much emphasis on moral instruction (nravouchenie) and emotional humanism and too little on faith (vera) and the sacramental meaning of the church community (tserkovnost’).43 More recent scholarship that ascribes to Platon (and others) a rationalist philosophical orientation suggests a similar judgment.44 Such characterizations can of course be justified, but they remain incomplete. They remove Platon from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment context of his life, and they tend to read his writings with reference to later intellectual developments such as the romantic nationalism and contemplative spirituality of the nineteenth century. It is well known among scholars that already in the eighteenth century mystical prayer (hesychasm) and spiritual eldership, directly supported by Platon and other prelates, had once again become significant aspects of a multifaceted Russian monasticism.45 At the same time, the spiritual creativity of the eighteenth century also included the work of religious enlighteners who encouraged a reasonable and cognitive faith, neither excessively enthusiast nor rigidly doctrinaire, that could be reconciled with the advances in human learning 43 Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia, 109–15. See also Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). 44 A. I. Esiukov, Filosofskie aspekty russkoi bogoslovskoi mysli (vtoraia polovina XVIII–nachalo XIX  v.): Monografiia (Arkhangel’sk: Permskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2003); idem, Chelovek i mir v pravoslavnoi prosvetitel’skoi mysle Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka: Istoriko-filosofskie ocherki (Arkhangel’sk: Izdatel’stvo Permskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni M. V. Lomonosova, 1998). 45 Irina Paert, Spiritual Elders: Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 18–70; Scott M. Kenworthy, The Heart of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism, and Society after 1825 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 145–52.

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associated with Copernican, Cartesian, Baconian, and Newtonian “science.” Metropolitan Platon at once supported the revival of monastic spirituality and became a leading representative of the Russian religious Enlightenment. In his mind, theology and science (the latter still understood as natural philosophy) had not yet become separate bodies of inquiry and knowledge. Human learning, including knowledge of the laws of nature and ongoing discoveries based on scientific experimentation, represented only a small part of the much greater transcendent whole that Platon equated with spiritual wisdom and divine truth. However measured, reasonable, and accommodating Platon’s devotional language might appear—however Protestant, philosophical, or bureaucratic his vocabulary might sometimes sound—the sum of his writings (and actions) suggests that his willingness and ability to speak in the idiom of the surrounding Enlightenment culture resulted from a firmness of Christian faith and a depth of religious conviction that remained undisturbed despite the spread of empiricism, skepticism, materialism, deism, and even atheism.46 While none of these “isms” constituted a serious or overt threat in eighteenth-century Russia, Platon was keenly aware of the power of European ideas, especially in the aftermath of the French revolution.47 Not surprisingly, his sermons occasionally include explicit responses to so-called “freethinkers” (vol’nodumtsy) and “freethinking.” In these statements, the metropolitan affirms Christian doctrine with rationalist argumentation while also celebrating the great mysteries embodied in the sacraments, the immortality of the soul, eternal happiness in communion with God, and the entire life of the church on earth and in heaven.48 In contrast to the freethinker who, according to Platon, believes that human reason can effectively distinguish between truth and falsehood, the metropolitan insists that proof of the mysteries comes from God’s word, from divine revelation, and from the holiness and teachings of truly enlightened persons who have lived across the ages.49 Clearly, Platon’s firmness of faith and the strength of the Orthodox religious tradition he represents allowed him to take seriously the Enlightenment concerns of educated Russians—to show them, moreover, through accessible and eloquent devotional writings, that they could find in Christian teachings all the necessary answers to their “modern” questions. Concepts of law and justice; the ideology and practice of Russian monarchy; war, diplomacy, and empire building across vast multi-confessional territories and geographical spaces; education and the development of a literary language; social, political, and economic thought; art, architecture, and theater; social structures and relationships; the peasant commune and the functioning of local communities: it is virtually impossible to identify a single area of Russian life where religious teachings and beliefs did not play a meaningful 46 Victoria Frede, Doubt, Atheism, and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011). 47 A classic statement regarding “the advent of the isms” after 1815 can be found in R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World, 6th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 435–45. 48 Orthodoxy teaches that the mysteries are not limited to the seven sacraments (baptism, chrismation, eucharist, confession, ordination, marriage, and healing or unction): “the entire life of the church is mystical and sacramental.” OSB (2008), 1786. 49 Platon, “Slovo na den’ Vozneseniia Gospodnia,” PS 20:19–27 (14 May 1803).

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role. The eighteenth-century religious Enlightenment, represented by church intellectuals such as Metropolitan Platon, is just one trajectory of development that illuminates the power of religious tradition in modern Russian culture. The Russian Enlightenment was an amorphous, eclectic phenomenon that by blending innovation into tradition helped to cushion Russia’s ongoing encounters with European modernity.50 Based on the assumption that modern ideas and scientific discoveries could be reconciled with established Orthodox belief, religious enlighteners also facilitated the Europeanization of Russia’s educated classes. Although Platon’s Christian responses to Enlightenment questions are not likely to satisfy a post-Darwin positivist mind, in eighteenth-century Russia most people continued to believe in miracles, mysteries, and providence. In this environment, the metropolitan’s measured, non-doctrinaire, and eminently reasonable religious discourse rang true and in no way contradicted either modern learning or more mystical forms of Orthodox spirituality. Like the Russian Enlightenment writ large, the religious Enlightenment valued harmony and reconciliation within a sociocultural order committed to human freedom and dignity. The result was a language of moral humanism and eternal justice that carried over into nineteenth-century literature, philosophy, and spirituality. If in the twenty-first century belief in an enchanted universe no longer constitutes a viable spiritual option—if Platon’s teachings no longer speak to a critical, scientifically informed mind—the honesty, sincerity, and even modernity of his effort can nonetheless still be appreciated.51

50 Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Tradition,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobs­­ bawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–14. 51 On the disenchanted world, see Taylor, Secular Age.

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Сельский православный приход в пореформенной России: проблемы адаптации к новым реалиям Татьяна Леонтьева (Тверской государственный университет)

Великие реформы 1860–1870-х гг. в России среди прочего актуализировали проблему адаптации традиционалистского большинства к жизни в условиях радикальных перемен (модернизации). Общая логика реформаторского процесса определялась тем, что государству объективно требовались «трансляторы», способные направить в нужное русло общественную энергию, и, что особенно важно, контролировать ее разнородные потоки. Главным партнером государства могла стать только «титульная» православная церковь и ее служители, имевшие устойчивый канал контактов с народом – приход. Именно здесь на основании священных канонов, церковных законов и по «благословению» светской власти священник получал широкие полномочия и возможности для воздействия на людские умы. Между тем, всякий модернизационный процесс эксплицитно и имплицитно отторгает старые институты и привычные методы трансляции «новых» идей. Он склонен опираться либо на радикально реформированную церковь, либо на «светскую» веру. Как же повели себя в этой ситуации православные священники? Как изменился их статус, функции, образ мысли, настроения – все то, что сказывалось на их взаимоотношениях с паствой? Каким сложившимся ресурсом воздействия на умы располагал православный приход? Какими новыми возможностями наделило его государство? Выводы данной статьи базируются на анализе процессов, протекавших в сельских местностях центральной России1. Что представлял собой православный приход к середине XIX в.? В специальном Положении, утвержденном Св. Синодом в 1905 г., юридически закреплялось простое, но апробированное всеми предшествующими практиками, определение: «православным приходом именуется союз православных христиан, объединенных в общину при своем храме и находящихся под пастырским руководством од-

1 Основные положения статьи были изложены автором в публикациях: Леонтьева Т.Г. Вера и прогресс. Православное сельское духовенство России во второй половине XIX – начале ХХ вв. М., 2002. С. 94–130; Вера и реформы в России: истоки и причины инновационных провалов // Вестник Тверского государственного университета. Серия «История». 2007. № 23. С. 18–56; Леонтьева Т.Г. Вера, народ, власть: истоки провалов российских реформ (вторая половина XIX – начало ХХ в.) // Интеллектуальная элита в контексте русской истории XIX–ХХ вв. М., 2012. С. 167–188.

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ного или нескольких священников»2 . Факторами, структурирующими сообщество верующих, признавались храм, церковная служба и проповедничество. Так виделась церковь с вершины светской власти. Между тем, православная церковь – это особый религиозный мир, объединяющий верующих на сакрально-нравственной основе. В России церковь объективно была призвана не столько служить государству, сколько формировать и воспроизводить незримо подпирающее его крестьянское традиционное мировоззрение, наполняя его этикой и эстетикой благочестия. Вместе с тем, приход был и оставался своеобразной общественной организацией, где, так или иначе, находили свое выражение социальные потребности прихожан. Будучи сообществом верующих, приход был изначально «обмирщен», хотели этого духовные и светские власти или нет. Являясь структурной частью епархии, приход в центральной сельской России обычно объединял 300–400 дворов и территориально совпадал с границами крестьянской общины. По существу, приход являлся моносословной единицей (состоял преимущественно из крестьян, помещики и представители сельской интеллигенции все больше его игнорировали). Это открывало уникальный канал естественной духовной связи многомиллионного российского крестьянства и духовенства. Между тем, на одного православного пастыря в среднем приходилось более 1 тыс. прихожан – это примерно в 1,5 раза больше чем у католиков, но несколько ниже нагрузки протестантского пастора 3 . Надо учитывать и разницу в подготовке: европейский священник часто имел за плечами университетскую подготовку. В любом случае в эпоху интенсивных социально-экономических перемен семинарского православного образования было уже недостаточно. Положение менялось не в лучшую сторону: «пастырское стадо» росло быстрее, чем духовное сословие – в 1860 г. на одного священника приходилось уже почти 1,4 тыс. прихожан – вдвое больше, чем у католиков и примерно столько же, что у протестантов. В период с 1875 до 1880 г. количество священников в империи уменьшилось на 1,1 % (при этом прирост в 0,7 % только по Тверской губернии смотрится труднообъяснимым исключением)4. Приход функционировал как самостоятельная структура, обладающая элементами самоуправления. Де-юре во главе его стоял причт, руководимый священником, де-факто существенную роль здесь могли сыграть выборный церковный староста и прихожане, входящие в приходской совет. Нельзя исключать и «об­ щест­венное мнение», которое в приходе формировали «крестьянские авторитеты» или сельский сход. Права и обязанности причта и паствы регламентировались специальными постановлениями Св. Синода. Священнику во всем этом отводилась весьма специ2 Цит. по: Чичагов С. О возрождении приходских общин. Тверь, 1914. С. 27. 3 См.: Freeze G. L. The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform. Princeton, 1983. P. 64. 4 Idid. P. 379.

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фичная роль. Его функции (кроме профессиональных) включали в себя также контроль за прихожанами. Попросту говоря, священник собирал своеобразные досье на прихожан, отмечая не только каждую исповедь и причастие, но и перемещения крестьян, их настроения и т.п. В случае переселения в другой приход (общину) он выдавал переходное свидетельство с указанием накопившихся сведений. Совмещение духовных и «полицейских» функций для патерналистской системы было делом обычным. При этом контролирующие функции настоятеля не могли оспариваться прихожанами. Кроме того, священник возглавлял приходское собрание и его выборный орган – приходской совет. Но был ли пастырь полновластным «хозяином» в приходе? Обладал ли он институционно-юридическими возможностями для того, чтобы реально контролировать его жизнь? Обычно священник, отягощенный добыванием хлеба насущного, тяготел к формальному исполнению своих обязанностей. В дореформенный период основная масса священников ограничивалась обрядовой стороной пастырского служения: вовремя крестила, венчала, отпевала своих прихожан, а при случае – доносила власти о «сомнительном» направлении их мыслей. Но в пореформенный период этого было уже недостаточно. «Эмансипированный» после реформы 1861 г. крестьянин не соответствовал тем естественным требованиям к производителю, которые предполагала рыночная система хозяйствования. Неграмотные, бедные, социально пассивные крестьяне, к тому же, были «склонны к порокам», наиболее опасным из них признавалось злоупотребление алкоголем. Под влиянием урбанизации деформировалась патриархальная семья, размывались традиционные ценности, уходил в прошлое прежний тип верующего. Следовало разрушить консервативные социально-психологические стереотипы, перекрыть при этом каналы социально девиантного воздействия и «открыть» крестьянству новые ценности. Общественно востребованной становилась просветительская деятельность священников. Строго говоря, государство вольно или невольно ориентировало духовенство на решение взаимоисключающих задач: образование способствовало формированию рационалистически мыслящей личности, а сохранение «народной веры и нравст­ венности» поддерживало синкретичный, а не рациональный тип ментальности. Последняя по определению не вписывалась в задачи тотальной модернизации. Можно предположить, что в этом таилась главная причина неудач как приходской деятельности священников, так и российского дореволюционного церковного реформаторства в целом. В свою очередь, это оказывало деструктивное – пусть внешне не особенно заметное –воздействие на всю государственную систему. В идеале священник, как транслятор новых идей, должен был стать «своим» для паствы в социокультурном отношении. В принципе, организация церковного бытия предусматривала, что священник всю жизнь должен был прослужить в одном приходе, отлучаясь только с разрешения епархиального начальства. Случайно или нет, но в пореформенное время российская государственность, особо озабоченная задачей превращения российских пространств в «пространство власти», прочнее всего привязывала к месту службы ту часть подданных, которые призваны были внушать незыблемость ее сакрального начала. В этом таился социокуль-

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турный парадокс: динамику развития России должен был обеспечить наименее мобильный во всех отношениях социальный слой – это изначально ставило под сомнение результативность деятельности приходских настоятелей. «Изъяны» в статусе священника особенно заметными оказывались за пределами храма в ходе взаимодействия в приходских советах и собраниях. Через общее приходское собрание сельский мир мог отстаивать свои собственные – отнюдь не конфессиональные – интересы. Правда, «общим» собрание было лишь по названию – существовал целый ряд ограничений для участия в нем. Неправоспособными прихожанами считались лица, не исполняющие свой христианский долг (исповедь и причастие) в течение 3-х лет, а также осужденные или находящиеся под следствием. При этом большинством голосов можно было не допустить односельчан к участию в собрании, установить персональные запреты на участие в выборах и т.п. Причины дискриминации определялись расплывчато: не только неуплата приходских взносов, но и нарушение сельского «благочиния»5. Ограничения до определенной степени дисциплинировали крестьян – оказаться за пределами религиозного сообщества было столь же рискованно, как стать изгоем поземельной общины. Очевидно, что такое мощное вторжение традиций общинного самоуправления в приходскую жизнь можно было уравновесить только одним – повышением авторитета священника. Регулярность проведения и повестка дня собраний определялась приходским советом, в состав которого входили настоятель храма и представители сельской общественности (от 6 до 12 человек), избранные на 3 года. Основные функции совета – контроль над имуществом церкви, подготовка собраний и исполнение их решений. На обсуждение обычно выносились финансовые вопросы: ремонт и содержание храмов, приобретение новой церковной утвари и богослужебных книг, страхование зданий, содержания причта. В компетенцию совета входило также обеспечение деятельности попечительских обществ и приходских школ, учреждение стипендий для учащихся духовной школы, охрана приходского храма. Здесь же определялись размеры сборов, принимались пожертвования, распределялись пособия от казны и т.п. Если судить по документации, поступавшей к благочинным, приходская жизнь в пореформенный период основательно менялась. Однако это никак не относилось к ситуации в «медвежьих углах» России, где царила атмосфера застоя. К тому же и информация о жизнедеятельности более развитых приходов обычно подавалась в приукрашенном виде. Внедрение приходских советов встретило немалые трудности – крестьяне не особенно жаждали участия в богоугодном, но хозяйственно малополезном, на их взгляд, деле. К 1870 г. из общего количества православных храмов империи (свыше 38 тыс.) только 21,9 % имели при себе приходские советы. Статистические данные

5 Чичагов С. Указ. соч. С. 30–34.

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дают основание предположить, что интенсивность образования советов, помимо административного давления, зависела от наличия в епархии денежных средств 6. Как бы то ни было, изменения в сельском быту сказались и на деятельности пока немногих приходских собраний – устройство школ и больниц, библиотек и хлебных магазинов требовало согласованных решений. Обычно два-три прихода с разрешения епархиального начальства не только содержали культурно-просветительские учреждения, но и брались за строительство новых храмов. И здесь надо отметить важную деталь: например, в Тверской губернии с ее многочисленными храмами (1126) и малочисленными средствами весьма заметную статью расходов составили траты на благотворительность и школы7. Скорее всего, это объясняется тем, что деятельность приходских советов, так или иначе, пересекалась с земской активностью. Характеризуя возможности приходских советов в пореформенное время, следует иметь в виду, что вся сельская жизнь находилась в состоянии брожения. Система межсословных взаимосвязей не устоялась, взаимные отношения социумов определялись скорее обычаем, нежели законами. Учитывая особенности сознания и политической культуры крестьян, можно усомниться в том, что они ощущали себя полноценным субъектом внутриприходских отношений. Некоторые исследователи даже отрицают наличие «самостоятельной приходской жизни»8. Основным выразителем приходских мнений становился выборный церковный староста из числа мирян, избираемый сроком на 3 года. Утверждение его в должности было ступенчатым – вплоть до епархиального архиерея. Должность церковного старосты была неоплачиваемой, но по понятиям сельского мира статусно высокой9. Формально сельский церковный староста обладал теми же правами, что и городской. При вступлении в должность старостам торжественно вручалась инструкция, где была зафиксирована его главная обязанность: выступать гарантом сохранности церковного имущества (без права самостоятельного распоряжения), вести финансовую документацию. На попечении старост в сельских находился весь причт (лишенный, как правило, материальной поддержки со стороны государства). Такие вопросы, как строительство жилья для его членов, их материальная поддержка и даже благорасположенность к ним сельского общества зависели от сельского старосты10. Последний же обыкновенно беспокоился о внешнем благолепии храмов 6 Freeze G. L. The Parish Clergy… P. 293–294. 7 См.: Тверской епархиальный статистический сборник. Тверь. 1901. С. XXII–XXIII; Freeze G. L. The Parish Clergy… P. 293–294. 8 См.: Luchterhandt O. Staat und Kirche in Ruβland und der UdSSR. 1887-1987. Eine Gegenüberstellung // Tausend Jahre Russische Orthodoxe Kirche. Beiträge von Geistlichen der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche im Ausland und Wissenschaftlern verschiedener Disziplinen. München-Sagner, 1988. S. 116; Оswalt J. Kirchliche Gemeinde und Bauernbefreiung: soziales Reformdenken in der orthodoxen Gemeindegeistlichkeit Rußlands in der Ära Alexanders II. Göttingen 1975. S. 85–101. 9 Сборник действующих и руководственных церковных и церковно-гражданских постановлений по ведомству православного исповедания (далее – Сборник действующих… постановлений). Составитель Т.В. Барсов. Т. 1. Спб., 1885. С. 367–368. 10 Сборник действующих… постановлений. 373–380.

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и церковной утвари – это соответствовало особенностям народной «обрядовой» религиозности. Соответственно отношения старост с настоятелями обычно пребывали в состоянии ненадежного равновесия – всякий понимал служение Господу на свой лад. Староста, как полномочный представитель религиозного сообщества, обладал рядом привилегий: освобождался от всех дополнительных работ и повинностей, а с 1868 г. и от телесных наказаний11. Если приходилось судиться он мог обращаться в Уголовную Палату. За усердную службу предусматривались награды – похвальные листы, медали. Амбициозность старост и их авторитет в сельском мире значительно возрос после выхода в свет распоряжения Св. Синода о форменной одежде. Сельским старостам полагался кафтан, по образу и подобию мундира хоругвеносцев Московских соборов и фуражка. Облачаться в эти парадные одежды полагалось во время престольных праздников, крестных ходов, приезда епархиального начальства. Особо отличившиеся сохраняли право носить форменную одежду и после «отставки»12 . Вместе с тем, оказываясь в сфере ведения церковного начальства, старосты расставались с некоторыми сословно-гражданскими правами. Так, ограничивалась их мобильность. Как и священники, они не могли надолго отлучаться без разрешения благочинного или духовной консистории. С другой стороны, деятельность старост корректировалась местными нуждами: одни делали крупные взносы на сооружение новых церквей, другие предполагали завести больницу или богадельню. Реже всего старосты раскошеливались на просветительские нужды. Редкий причт, особенно сельский, не конфликтовал с церковным старостой из-за денег: выпросить некую сумму на выписку газет или приобретение книг для приходской библиотеки было, как правило, непросто13. Вряд ли подобное поведение мотивировалось злокозненностью зазнавшегося старосты или его культурной неразвитостью: как правило, он находился под влиянием прижимистых односельчан. С другой стороны, он, как и настоятель, был под наблюдением епархиального начальства, благорасположенностью которого, конечно, дорожил. При этом важна была скрупулезность в использовании церковных средств. Внутреннее благолепие храма, наличие богослужебных книг и утвари, миро и святых даров – забота не только настоятеля, но и старосты. Без поддержки последнего настоятель не смел обращаться с соответствующими просьбами к благочинному14. Таких рачительных старост нередко отмечали наградами и от имени епархиального, и синодального начальства. Небрежность старосты также нельзя было не заметить – в наказание его смещали с должности15.

11 Полный православный богословский энциклопедический словарь (далее – ППБЭС). М., 1992.Т.2. Ст. 2114. 12 Сборник действующих… постановлений. С. 374–376. 13 Российский государственный исторический архив (далее – РГИА). Ф. 796. Оп. 442. Д. 2793. Л.15. 14 Сборник действующих… постановлений. С. 448. 15 См.: Государственный архив Тверской области (далее – ГАТО). Ф.160. Оп. 1. Д. 34393.

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Понятно, что по разумению старосты важнее было сохранить достойную репутацию в глазах высокого начальства, нежели священника. Возможно, неспешный диалог настоятеля, старосты и прихожан принес бы свои плоды, но в жизнь прихода вмешивались факторы непредсказуемого порядка. Несмотря на то, что формально приход оставался общностью духовной, отношения мирян со священником изменялись. Порой все подавлялось общинным интересом. На сей счет есть один показательный пример. Строительные работы на причтовых землях (чаще всего это был ремонт дорог и мостов) являлись обязанностью прихожан. В одном из приходов Тверской губернии крестьяне постановили проводить такие работы непременно при участии членов причта – им попросту хотелось, чтобы священнослужители почувствовали себя в шкуре общинников. Сей выдающийся акт «уравнительно-демократического» законотворчества пришлось аннулировать самому губернатору. Прецедент оказался столь впечатляющим, что впредь такие инициативы были пресечены специальным постановлением Синода16. В глазах вчерашних крепостных священник не мог оставаться просто служителем церкви. Ему следовало быть немножко «барином» – в противном случае он рисковал превратиться в заурядного «попа». Для выхода из положения требовалась мощная материальная поддержка священника, да и причта в целом со стороны государства или земств. Средств на это ни у кого по разным причинам не находилось. Следует отметить, что прихожане располагали разнообразными, вполне легальными средствами манипуляции священником. В первую очередь это было связано с проблемой домовладения. Пытаясь разрешить вопрос, Св.Синод Определением от 10 августа 1866 г. дозволил использование части кошельковых сборов, свечных доходов и добровольных пожертвований для постройки жилья для членов причта. Указом 11 февраля 1870 г. ведомство Государственных имуществ обязывалось выделять для этого «безденежный лес». Но решающей инстанцией, как ни парадоксально, оказался приходской попечительский совет. Именно он решал, стоит ли поддержать своего настоятеля. Только заручившись поддержкой прихода, священник мог обратиться с ходатайством к епархиальному начальству. Впрочем, это правило распространялось лишь на приходы, открытые до 1863 г., новые открывались только при условии гарантий содержания храма и причта прихожанами. Стоит заметить, что на «территории раскола» и священники, и прихожане могли рассчитывать на государственную дотацию17. Подтверждалась печальная истина: власти нужна была церковь для укрепления собственного – отнюдь не духовного – влияния. Патерналистская государственность забывала, что ее стабильность зависит от внутренней сбалансированности элементарных социумов, внутреннюю структуру власти-подчинения которых она вольно или невольно воспроизводит. Идеально поддерживать исходный баланс духовных и материальных интересов мог именно сельский священник. Но для этого было мало, чтобы он выступал перед прихожа16 Сборник действующих… постановлений. С. 429. 17 Сборник действующих… постановлений. С. 431.

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нами от имени Бога или власти – требовались весомые доказательства его материальной независимости от паствы. Между тем в пореформенный период жизнь ставила новые задачи, существенно усложнявшие деятельность прихода, требуя создания структур, выполняющих культурно-просветительские и попечительские функции. В ходе Великих реформ стало очевидным, что невежество основного производителя – крестьянина – становится угрожающим для системы и только распространение духовно-откорректированных знаний в народной среде может привести к хозяйственным успехам, развитию общественной инициативы при сохранении основ нравственности и правопорядка. В стране с многомиллионным населением (61 175 923 человек по данным 1863 г.) начальным обучением было охвачено всего 1 024 308 человек18. Не удивительно, что в этих условиях широкое распространение получают просветительские идеи, вдохновляемые по преимуществу соображениями защиты интересов крестьян. При этом каждое из направлений общественной мысли, пыталось навязать власти собственные взгляды на перспективы развития народного образования. Либеральный настрой реформаторов 1860-х гг. отразился на содержании одного из первых нормативных документов в сфере образования – Положении о начальных народных училищах 1864 г. Оставляя за собой контролирующие функции, власть призывала общество к сотрудничеству в финансировании этого мероприятия – иной формы самодеятельности, как всегда, боялись. В результате появились школы различного типа и принадлежности: земские, министерские, ведомственные (железнодорожные, казачьи и т.п.). Но населению оказывалось не под силу их содержание – тем более, что люди еще не увязывали перспективы своего благополучия с уровнем образованности. Совершенно естественно, что духовенству было предписано создать «совершенный» образец учебного заведения для народа. Между тем, в тогдашней общественной атмосфере семинаристу – будущему священнику – трудно было решить кому и как служить: Богу, власти, людям – соблазн позитивистского знания, пронизывающий всю пореформенную эпоху, коснулся и их. Теперь людям, целостность мировоззрения которых была сомнительна, предстояло пробить брешь в примитивно-синкретических воззрениях крестьян на «большой» мир. В 1860-е гг. открылось 9 тыс. школ, обучавших 159 тыс. крестьянских детей «элементарным знаниям»19. К 1870-м гг. численность церковных школ была сокращена вдвое (4521), и они по существу вырождались в учебные заведения, готовящие церковнослужителей – причетников, псаломщиков20. Но в 1879 г. министры вдруг единодушно заявили, что интересы морального развития народа требуют доминирования духовенства в народном образовании21. Результат оказался парадоксаль18 Статистический временник Российской империи. Спб., 1866. С. 4–5. 19 Чехов Н.В. Народное образование в России с 60-х гг. XIX в. М., 1912. С. 94. 20 Прибавления к «Церковным ведомостям». 1905. № 1. Ст.1. 21 Извлечение из Всеподданейшего отчета обер-прокурора Св. Синода по ведомству православного исповедания. Спб., 1883. С. 57–58.

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ным: в 1880-е гг. церковная школа становится частью светской общеобразовательной системы. Согласно § 1 «Правил о церковно-приходских школах», утвержденных 13 июня 1884 г., приходская школа – это «начальные училища, открываемые православным духовенством, имеющие целью утверждение в народе православного учения, веры и нравственности христианской и способной сообщать полезные знания»22 . Но содержать такие школы следовало прихожанам-общинникам. Такой подход по существу навязывал сельскому миру еще одну «добровольную повинность». Для открытия школы следовало лишь поставить в известность благочинного и епархиального архиерея, после чего все хлопоты ложились на плечи организатора-священника и прихожан. Власть фактически самоустранилась от просвещения народа. Это дало основание П.Н. Милюкову заявить позднее, что русскую начальную школу создало не правительство, а общественность23. Однако вряд ли без представителей духовенства общественность не смогла бы сдвинуть дело с мертвой точки. В сельской местности процент грамотных к середине ХIХ в. был ничтожно мал. Даже в 1897 г. по всей России было 21 % грамотного населения; применительно к деревне в 1860–1870-е гг. этот показатель был еще ниже24. В церковной среде идея ликвидации неграмотности всегда находила поддержку. «Реформы застали нашего крестьянина совершенно неподготовленным… Чтобы правильно воспользоваться свободою необходима более или менее высокая степень умственно-нравст­ венного развития», – такие высказывания иереев отражали настроения всего духовенства 25. Однако приходская школа мыслилась ее светским создателям, прежде всего, в виде барьера против «гангрены атеизма», которой, якобы, были поражены земские школы. Одновременно решались другие задачи: контроль над стихией «самодеятельного образования» в деревне; ускорение русификации нерусских окраин. Предполагалось сделать упор на школы особого типа на основе так называемой теории церковности, связанной с именем Сергея Александровича Рачинского. Именно этот европейски образованный профессор естествознания, заведующий кафедрой ботаники Московского университета стал проповедником церковного образования. В своем родовом имении Татево Бельского уезда Смоленской (ныне Тверской) губернии Рачинский построил новое школьное здание. Приступив к созданию новой образовательной теории, он трудился над ней до последних дней жизни. Его поступок по-своему символичен. Этот интеллектуал словно почувствовал, насколько опасным становился разрыв между «высокой» культурой российской элиты и крестьянским традиционализмом. Не менее многозначительно и то, что 22 Сборник действующих… постановлений. С. 399. 23 Милюков П.Н. Очерки по истории русской культуры. Т. 2. Часть 2. М., 1994. С. 322. 24 Первая Всеобщая перепись населения Российской империи (далее – ПВПН РИ). 1897. СПб., 1904. 43. Спб., 1904. 25 ГАТО. Ф. 160. Оп. 1. Д. 7530. Л. 4, 11.

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Рачинский постарался заручиться поддержкой обер-прокурора Св. Синода К.П. Победоносцева, убеждая его в том, что будущее всей системы образования в России зависит от распространения правильно поставленных приходских школ 26. Рачинский исходил из того, что рационалистическая задача школы 1860-х гг. – «сделать из ребенка человека» – непонятна его родителям, а потому заведомо обречена на провал. «Родители полагают, – утверждал он, что “сделаться человеком” можно и без азбуки, стремление же сделать из детей добрых христиан, напротив, всякому хорошо понятно»27. Рачинский стремился создать школу христианского учения и добрых нравов на основе гуманного подхода к учащимся. Возглавить ее должен был священник. Крестьянские дети должны были при этом естественно приобщиться ко всем ценностям мировой культуры. Рачинский стремился к тому, чтобы они не только писали без ошибок, но и научились восхищаться искусством, художественной литературой, музыкой. Он полагал, что для приведения в гармоничное соответствие чувств и знаний, потребуется один – два года. Утопия Рачинского нашла горячую поддержку К.П. Победоносцева, связывавшего с церковной школой надежду на преодоление таких «разрушительных» последствий просвещения, как индивидуализм. В российской историографии деятельность этих людей изображалась как поход мракобесов против светской школы. Это было справедливо лишь в той мере, в какой сельский священник по своей подготовке отвечал поставленным модернизаторским задачам. Последнее было сомнительным. По мере развития церковно-приходского образования расширялся круг изучаемых предметов: чтение, письмо, счет, Закон Божий дополнялись математическими, гуманитарными и естествоведческими дисциплинами. По Положению от 25 мая 1874 г. школы становятся многоразрядными – одноклассные, двухклассные (два года обучения), второклассные (четырехгодичная подготовка)28. Церковные школы прививали также некоторые не лишние для деревни навыки: девочек обучали рукоделию, мальчиков – сапожному, переплетному, иконописному ремеслу. Ко всему давались начальные знания по сельскому хозяйству и медицине29. Прихожане фактически сами определяли продолжительность учебного процесса в зависимости от сроков сельскохозяйственных работ. По мере надобности им позволялось вводить дополнительные классы и новые предметы, создавать воскресные школы для взрослых, открывать библиотеки30. Поддержка школ крестьянами способствовала утверждению их в качестве необходимого звена обновляющейся структуры приходской общины, консолидировала ее внутренние связи. Власти не случайно рассчитывали, что церковные школы помогут оживить всю приходскую жизнь. Каждая школьная ступень открывала 26 Мироносицкий П.П. С.А. Рачинский и церковная школа. Спб., 1910. С. 24. 27 Цит. по : Мироносицкий П.П. Указ. соч. С. 24; См.: Рачинский С.А. Сельская школа. М., 1991. С. 14–15. 28 Сборник действующих… постановлений. С. 392. 29 Народное образование. 1896. № 4. С. 195–196. 30 Сборник действующих… постановлений. С. 393.

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перед крестьянскими детьми новые возможности. Одноклассные и двухклассные давали юношам призывного возраста право на получение льготы по воинской повинности, выпускники второклассных могли стать учителями в школах грамоты31, продолжить обучение в церковно-учительской школе, светской учительской семинарии, на бухгалтерских курсах. В принципе церковно-приходская школа позволяла естественно, без излишних социокультурных коллизий раздвинуть границы сельского мира. В крестьянском мире социальная значимость обучения оценивалась своеобразно. Поначалу крестьян умилял вид своих чад, поющих в церковном хоре или читающих во время воскресной службы Евангелие, со временем стала привлекать льгота по воинской повинности, получаемая после дополнительных испытаний. Однако обнаружились и иные плоды церковно-приходского просвещения. С.А. Рачинский подметил, что крестьянский парень, прошедшего курс обучения, менялся даже внешне, а в сельском сообществе его имплицитно переводили в разряд «господ». В результате он духовно отпадал от крестьянской массы, даже если формально не порывал с ней32 . Получение такого образования до известной степени защищало человека от произвола властей, но оно же влекло за собой отчуждение его от крестьянского мира. Ставшие «чужими», крестьянские дети начинали пренебрежительно относиться к сельскому труду и стремились изменить свое социальное положение. Не удивительно, что в школе со временем стали усматривать орудие разрушения традиционной крестьянской культуры. «Нива просвещения» стала тем пространством, где пересеклись интересы церкви и земства. «Народ рвется к знаниям», – не без оснований заявляли земцы, но помочь ему своими силами не могли. Не преувеличивая значения церковно-приходских школ, следует отметить, что они сыграли весьма существенную роль в распространении грамотности. Гражданские и церковные власти верили в высокую миссию таких школ, полагая, что помимо грамотности они укрепляют веру в Бога и способствуют воспитанию патриотизма. Подтверждением стала серия награждений священников-учителей «за оказанные важные услуги народному образованию в духе православной церкви»33. Споры о преимуществах и недостатках церковной и светской школы в контексте особенностей исторического развития России лишены смысла: начинать нужно было (много раньше) с приходских школ, а затем трансформировать их в светские. Между тем параллельное их существование имело своим побочным результатом дискредитацию фигуры священника, вольно или невольно отдавшего немало сил делу народного образования. Одним из побочных последствий спонтанной модернизации России стала пауперизация масс, порождавшая босячество, пьянство, преступность. Обнищание 31 Там же. С. 394. 32 Рачинский С. Сельская школа. СПб., 1891. С. 29. 33 ГАТО. Ф. 643. Оп. 1. Д. 339. Л. 26, 32, 34; Д. 436. Л. 3–4.

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коснулось и деревни. Государство пробовало использовать для смягчения ситуации православный приход. Филантропические функции духовенство выполняло исстари и кроме солидного опыта располагало доверием мирян. Однако, если ранее помощь обездоленным исходила по преимуществу от монашествующих, то со второй половины XIX в. забота о бедных, больных и престарелых прихожанах была возложена на приходы и их настоятелей34. Поскольку народные низы после 1861 г. чувствовали себя обобранными государством и помещиками, они принимали подобную заботу как должное. Так гарантом благотворительного вспомоществования становится не патерналистское государство, а приход. Содержание и ремонт церквей, поддержка бедствующего духовенства, устройство школ и больниц, богаделен и приютов, помощь бедным, погребение умерших – все это находилось теперь в его ведении. Формально расширялось поле деятельности прихода в направлении «демократизации», фактически же увеличивалось бремя забот священника. Уже в пореформенный период формировался механизм функционирования попечительств: общее собрание прихожан избирало попечительский совет, в который, как правило, попадали местный священник, церковный староста, волостной старшина, депутаты от прихожан. Совет получал право собирать пожертвования, устанавливать специальные сборы, ходатайствовать перед казной о выделении средств. Председательствовал главный пайщик – попечитель прихода, обычно им становился священник. Средства поступали от различных сборов, вплоть до штрафов с причтов за нарушения правил коммерческой деятельности35. Отчеты о богоугодных делах и использовании средств регулярно появлялись на страницах епархиальной прессы. Приходские попечительства имели ряд преимуществ перед аналогичными светскими структурами, что признавали даже земские деятели36, которым приходилось для тех же целей набирать специальный штат сотрудников. В приходе, особенно сельском, священник-организатор, хорошо зная нужды прихожан, мог справедливо и быстро распорядиться имеющимися средствами. Надежный контроль над ним поддерживался «общественным мнением» – приходская община, церковные старосты неустанно наблюдали за движением денежных сумм. Деятельность православных филантропов началась на оптимистичной ноте: некоторые из них поспешили заявить, что искоренили в своих приходах нищенство37. Но столь эффективное попечительство было скорее исключением, чем правилом. Не обладая статусом юридического лица, приходские попечительства не 34 Узаконили эту деятельность в 1884 г., обязав священников учреждать «Попечительства о благоустройстве и благосостоянии приходских церквей и причта» // Полное собрание законов Российской империи (далее ПСЗ) Спб., 1884. 2 авг. № 41144. 35 Сборник действующих… постановлений. С. 446. 36 Веселовский Б.Б. Исторический очерк деятельности земских учреждений (1864–1913). Тверь, 1914. С. 400. 37 Тверской вестник. 1878. № 15. С.17. О перипетиях деятельности приходских попечительств см.: ГАТО. Ф. 160. Оп. 1. Д. 34393.

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могли свободно распоряжаться средствами. Им то и дело приходилось переводить деньги прихожан на епархиальные нужды – устройство епархиальных школ, содержание беднейших причтов, строительство новых храмов38. Приходская социально-каритативная деятельность развивалась с переменным успехом. Как правило, нововведения прививались там, где крестьяне уже узнали кое-что о преимуществах «городской» жизни. Но на деле положение было сложнее. На развитие ситуации повлияло и то, что в 1860-е годы некоторые либералы, мечтавшие о превращении церковно-приходских попечительств в мелкую земскую единицу, поддержали благотворительные инициативы священников39. Нельзя не заметить, что сельские священники куда раньше государства взяли на себя труд по преодолению культурной отчужденности деревни. Приходские общины, в сущности, работали, на государство: опекали сирот, открывали богадельни, похоронные кассы. Постепенно происходило своеобразное разделение на «внутреннюю» (по отношению к лицам духовного сословия) благотворительность и «внешнюю», направленную на прихожан иной сословной принадлежности. Вместе с тем, среди самого духовенства, не говоря уже о светской общественности, наличествовало также скептическое отношение к внутрицерковным каритативным начинаниям. Мнение священников-практиков было единодушным: роль прихода в религиозной жизни снижается, не все миряне христиански активны. Требовались кардинальные меры для оживления приходской деятельности. Попытки реформирования прихода как снизу, так и сверху предпринимались неоднократно. Еще в конце 1860-х годов часть духовенства и мирян высказывались за выборность членов причта, рассчитывая, что это поможет им получить доступ к управлению делами церкви. Но им было дозволено применять этот принцип только по усмотрению архиереев в отдельных епархиях. По Положению от 16 апреля 1869 г. была сокращена численность приходов и введены новые штатные расписания причтов. Предполагалось, что эти меры позволят качественно укрепить причты за счет людей с семинарским образованием, а также увеличить доходы за счет возрастания численности прихожан. На деле этот закон, проводимый в жизнь с многочисленными оговорками, нанес серьезный урон церкви и вере, особенно в сельской местности: расстояние между церквами и населенными пунктами увеличивалось настолько, что часть мирян либо пассивно отпадала от русской православной церкви, либо уходила в раскол; нагрузки на священников основательно возросли; доходы причтов практически не увеличились – народ был раздражен новшествами40. Итак, несмотря на отчетливое понимание государством и общественностью необходимости обновления церковной жизни, прежде всего, на низовом ее уровне, реформа прихода в пореформенное время так и не состоялась. Это повлекло за собой поистине катастрофические последствия. Выросли противоречия вну38 ГАТО. Ф. 160. Оп. 1. Д. 7414. Л. 160 об., 161. 39 Римский С.В. Российская церковь в эпоху Великих реформ. М., 1999. С. 438–439. 40 Freeze G. L. The Parish Clergy… P. 318, 363–369; Римский С.В. Указ. соч. 462–464; 519–528.

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три прихода, усилилось взаимное непонимание между духовной и светской общественностью на всех уровнях, а бюрократия сочла церковную среду не способной к инновациям. Отсюда в историографии утвердилась недооценка роли прихода как социально-консолидационной микроячейки, призванной качественно изменить старый общинный строй жизни деревенского населения. На деле неудачу адаптации прихода к новым реалиям можно свести к одной единственной причине: патерналистская государственность, скованная «рационально мыслящей», бюрократией, «пожертвовала» духовным просвещением народного большинства. Традиционную патерналистскую систему нельзя преобразовать в гражданское общество росчерком начальственного пера. Для этого требуется серия продуманных системных преобразований, понятных «непросвещенному» народному большинству. Но этого в России в ходе Великих реформ явно не доставало.

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II The Church and Russian Society

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Уровень жизни российского православного духовенства в XVIII–начале ХХ века Борис Н. Миронов (С.-Петербургский государственный университет)

В последние 15 лет история Русской православной церкви (РПЦ) и духовенства стала изучаться намного интенсивнее, чем в советское время. Число опубликованных работ перевалило за сотню; защищено более трех десятков диссертаций1. Причем, в основной своей массе исследования выполнены на региональных материалах – и это очень ценно. Религиозная жизнь в огромной империи, отдельные части которой обладали существенной автономией, обусловленной слабостью административной, транспортной и информационной структуры, своеобразием местных условий и слабым контролем со стороны центра, имели большую специфику. Законы 1 Кроме тех работ, которые будут использоваться дальше, укажу некоторые наиболее заметные работы и диссертации по социальной истории РПЦ, в каждой из которых имеется историография: Адаменко A. M. Приходы Русской православной церкви на юге Тобольской епархии в XVII–XIX вв.: Дисс. …канд. ист. наук. Кемерово, 1998; Асочакова В. Н. Русская православная церковь в истории Хакасско-Минусинского края в XVIII–первой четверти XIX в. (структура, личный состав, политико-идеологические функции): Дисс. … канд. ист. наук. Красноярск, 1999; Зольникова Н. Д. Сибирская приходская община в XVIII веке. Новосибирск, 1990; Зубанова С. Г. Социальное служение Русской Православной Церкви в XIX веке. 2-е изд. М., 2009 (историографический обзор, с. 215–267); Камкин А. В. Православная церковь на севере России: Очерки истории до 1917 года. Вологда, 1992; Конюченко А. И. Тона и полутона православного белого духовенства России (вторая половина XIX – начало XX века). Челябинск, 2006; Кучумова Л. И. Православный приход в концепции церкви и государства и общественная мысль в России на рубеже 1850–1860 годов // Православие и русская народная культура / М. М. Громыко (ред.). М., 1993. Кн. 2. С. 158–199; Николаев А. П. Приходская община новокрещенных Северо-Западной Сибири: Дис. … канд. ист. наук. Новосибирск. 1996; Пулькин М. В. Сельские приходы Олонецкой епархии во второй половине XVIII в.: Дис. … канд. ист. наук. СПб, 1995; Пушкарев С. Г. Историография Русской православной церкви // Журнал Московской Патриархии. 1998. № 5. С. 67–79; № 6. С. 46–61; Римский С. В. 1) Русская Православная Церковь в XIX в. Ростов-на-Дону, 1997; 2) Православная Церковь и государство в XIX в. Ростов-на-Дону, 1998; Русское православие: вехи истории / А. И. Клибанов (ред.). М., 1989; Федоров В. А. Русская православная церковь и государство. Синодальный период 1700–1917. М., 2003; Фирсов С. Л. Православная Церковь и Российское государство в конце XIX начале XX века: Проблема взаимоотношений духовной и светской власти. СПб., 1994; Фриз Г. Церковь, религия и политическая культура на закате старой России // История СССР. 1991. № 2. С. 107–118; Шмелев Г. М. Русская православная церковь, ее деятельность и экономика до и после 1917 года // Вопросы истории. 2003. № 11. С. 36–51; Юрганова И. И. История Якутской епархии. 1870–1919 гг. (деятельность духовной консистории) / Д. А. Ширина (ред.). Якутск, 2003.

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и указы приходили в провинцию (и особенно в отдаленные части империи) позже, воплощались в жизнь с некоторым опозданием и отклонениями. Региональные исследования создали насыщенную деталями картину развития церкви, духовенства и приходской жизни в различных по своим характеристикам епархиях. В результате оказалось: выводы советской историографии пересмотрены или подверглись ревизии, а выводы дореволюционной и зарубежной историографии подтвердились или уточнились. Исследования «буржуазного» американского историка Г. Фриза приобрели большую известность и стали самыми референтными: практически в любой работе по истории духовенства периода империи на них есть ссылки, особенно популярны две его монографии «The Russian Levities» и «The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth Century Russia», вышедшие в 1977 г. и 1982 г. соответственно2 За прошедшие 33–38 лет его книги не только не устарели, а, наоборот, приобрели вторую молодость. Завидная судьба! Обычно научные монографии морально стареют через 10–15 лет. Это говорит о том, что, с одной стороны, в момент публикации они на много лет обгоняли советскую историографию, с другой – об очень высоком уровне исполнения. Да, и сам поворот к региональным исследованиям является своего рода ответом на настойчивый призыв Г. Фриза обратить на них особое внимание, так как именно они, по его мнению, позволяют глубоко и всесторонне изучить жизнь церкви, духовенства и паствы. В региональных исследованиях затронуты вопросы, которые прежде в советской историографии не ставились и не рассматривались, благодаря чему сделаны новые интересные наблюдения. Большим вниманием, как и прежде, пользовались государственная сословная политика, развитие законодательства по сословным вопросам, формы привлечения духовенства к выполнению государственных задач. Однако интерес сместился в другое исследовательское поле: повседневная жизнь прихода, материальное положение духовенства, его взаимоотношения с населением и органами церковной и государственной власти, выполнение им своих обязанностей, духовно-нравственное состояние, девиантное поведение, восприятие своего положения, священнического служения, социальная мобильность, отношение населения к вере и храму, – благодаря чему реальное положение белого духовенства и состояние веры получили отражение на материале отдельных епархий. Региональные исследования создают возможность и вводят в соблазн проводить сравнения – это, безусловно, благо. С другой стороны, появилась методологическая трудность – как объяснить противоречия в выводах, касающиеся отдельных епархий, и в выводах, основанных на общероссийских и региональных материалах. Например, в одних епархиях приходская жизнь проходила самодеятельно и свободно, в других – при большом давлении коронных и епархиальных властей; в одних регионах уровень жизни духовенства очень низок, в других – более или менее удовлетворителен, и т. п. По общероссийским данным благосостояние 2 Freeze G. L. 1) The Russian Levities: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1977. P. 13–45; 2) The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

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духовенства повышалось, а в некоторых епархиях – понижалось. Общероссийское законодательство ввело новые нормы, регулирующие приходскую жизнь, права и обязанности духовенства, а в конкретной епархии они никак не проявляются. Вариативность в процессах и явлениях церковной жизни не отменяет наличие общероссийских тенденций и закономерностей и, наоборот, тенденции и закономерности не отменяют вариативности их регионального воплощения. 67 епархий РПЦ (в границах империи по состоянию на начало 1917 г.), расположенных на территории 101 губернии и области, должны были и на самом деле отличались друг от друга по качеству и интенсивности церковной жизни. Я уже не говорю о десятках тысяч православных приходов. «Условия существования и функционирования приходов не только в одной отдельно взятой епархии, но и нередко в границах одного уезда настолько существенно различались, что любые средние показатели, встречающиеся как в официальных изданиях высших церковных инстанций, так и в некоторых исследованиях, не отражают специфики реальной жизни на местах и могут привести к неверным выводам и обобщениям», – справедливо констатирует исследователь приходской жизни Егорьевского уезда Рязанской епархии3. Можно предложить следующий выход из этой апории. Общероссийские данные являются результирующими, но, разумеется, не как средняя температура по больнице, а как отражение вариантов, чаще всего встречающихся в реальной действительности и создающих тенденцию или закономерность. Исследовательская задача принципиальной важности состоит в том, чтобы определить общее и особенное в жизни отдельных епархий и объяснить происхождение и источники своеобразия. Речь, таким образом, идет о том, что обнаруженные региональные особенности не отменяют выявленные другими исследователями общероссийские тенденции, а обнаруживают многообразность религиозной жизни. В настоящей статье я остановлюсь лишь на одном вопросе – уровне жизни духовенства. В течение всего периода империи материальное положение белого, или приходского, духовенства, казалось самим клирикам недостаточным и считалось самым болезненным вопросом. По мнению одних исследователей, уровень жизни

3 Мухин И. Н. Приходское духовенство в конце XVIII–начале XX в.: По материалам Егорьевского уезда Рязанской епархии: Дис. … канд. ист. наук. Рязань, 2006. С. 29–30.

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клириков со временем повышался4, по мнению других, – понижался5, большинство говорит о его неудовлетворительности, избегая оценок росло или падало 6 (в двух последних случаях имеется в виду главным образом сельское духовенство). Весьма часто исследователи отмечают, что положение городского духовенства было лучше или даже удовлетворительным, а сельского – плохим7. По мнению известного исследователя истории русской церкви И. К. Смолича (1898–1970), в XVIII–первой половине XIX в. благосостояние приходского духовенства понижалось, а в пореформенное время повышалось8. Попытаюсь, опираясь на статистические расчеты, более четко ответить на вопрос: как изменялся уровень жизни белого духовенства в период империи. 4 Бабушкина О. Ю. Приходское духовенство Южного Зауралья в 60-е годы XIX–начале XX вв.: Дис. … канд. ист. наук. Курган, 2002; Белова Н. В. Провинциальное духовенство в конце XVIII начале XX в.: Быт и нравы сословия (на материалах Ярославской епархии): Дис. … канд. ист. наук. Иваново, 2008; Белоногова Ю. И. Приходское духовенство и крестьянский мир в начале ХХ века (по материалам Московской епархии). М., 2010; Гончаров Ю. М. Материальное положение городского духовенства Сибири во второй половине XIX–начале XX вв. // Исторический опыт хозяйственного и культурного освоения Западной Сибири: Четвертые научные чтения памяти профессора А. П. Бородавкина. Барнаул, 2003. Кн. 2. С. 184–188; Дрибас Л. К. Образ жизни духовенства губернских и областных центров Восточной Сибири во второй половине XIX века: Дис. … канд ист наук. Иркутск, 2005. С. 162–188; Макарчева Е. Б. Макарчева Е. Б. Сословные проблемы духовенства Сибири и церковное образование в конце XVIII–первой половине XIX в.: По материалам Тобольской епархии: Дис. … канд. ист. наук. Новосибирск, 2001; Морозан В. В. Экономическое положение Русской Православной Церкви в конце XIX–начале XX вв. // Нестор. 2000 г. № 1. С. С. 330; Рогачев М. Б. Приходское духовенство Коми края в конце XIX – начале ХХ вв. // Вестник культуры. 2000. №1. С.9–17; Скутнев А. В. Православное духовенство на закате Империи. Киров, 2009. С. 143; Фирсов C. Л. Российская Церковь накануне перемен (конец 1890-х 1918 г.) М., 2002. См. также: Кильчевский В. Богатства и доходы духовенства. СПб., 1908; Curtiss J. S. Church and State in Russia: The Last Years of the Empire: 1900–1917. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940. 5 Есипова В. А. Приходское духовенство Западной Сибири в период реформ и контрреформ второй половины XIX века (На материалах Томской епархии): Дис… канд. ист. наук. Томск, 1996; Леонтьева Т. Г. Вера и прогресс: Православное сельское духовенство России во второй половине XIX в. М., 2002; Сушко А.В. Духовные семинарии в пореформенной России (1861–1884 гг.). СПб., 2010. С. 91–99, 178–188. См также классические работы: Беллюстин И. С. Описание сельского духовенства. Paris; Berlin; London: A. Franck: A. Asher et C°, 1858; Ростиславов Д. И. О православном белом и черном духовенстве в России: В 2 т. Лейпциг, 1866 6 Белова Н. В. Провинциальное духовенство…; Белоногова Ю.И. Приходское духовенство…; Болонкина Е. В., Катцина Т. А., Федорченко В. И. Материальное положение православного приходского духовенства Енисейской губернии (1820–1861 гг.) // Тамбов: Грамота. Тамбов. 2012. № 9 (23): в 2 ч. Ч. I. C. 44–47; Ершова H.A. Приходское духовенство…; Мухин И. Н. Приходское духовенство в конце XVIII–начале XX вв.: По материалам Егорьевского уезда Рязанской епархии: Автореф.. … канд. ист. наук. Рязань, 2006. С. 30–31; Макарчева Е. Б. Сословные проблемы... 7 См. например: Ключарева А. В. Жизнедеятельность православного прихода в русской провинции в 1881–1917 гг. (по материалам Тульской епархии): Автореф. … канд. ист. наук. Орел, 2009. С. 19. 8 Смолич И. К. История Русской церкви: [В 9 кн.]. Кн. 8, ч. 2: 1700–1917. М., 1997. On line: http://www.plam.ru/hist/istorija_russkoi_cerkvi_1700_1917_gg/p5.php#metkadoc5 (последнее посещение 9.09.2013).

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Содержание причта имели несколько источников: 1) требоисполнение: плата за совершение ряд специальных священнодействий, обрядов и молитвословий, получивших название треб, так как совершаются «по требованию» верующих; сюда входят семь таинств (крещение, миропомазание, причащение, покаяние, священство, брак и елеосвящение, или соборование), а также отпевание умерших, водоосвящение и освящение плодов труда человека и предметов (дома, оружия и т.п.); 2) церковная земля и угодья, отведенные на содержанье всего причта; годичное содержанье причту от прихода, деньгами, хлебом и припасами, по уговору или по положенью; 3) обеспечение жилищем от прихода; 4) государственное жалованье; 5) проценты с предназначенных в пользу причтов вечных вкладов, доходы с церковных оброчных статей, предназначенных в пользу причтов (дома, лавки, мельницы, рыбные ловли, пустоши и земельные угодья и т. п.)9. Рассмотрим каждый источник благосостояния в отдельности. Среднее число прихожан в приходе со временем постепенно увеличивалось, несмотря на более высокий, сравнительно с остальным населением естественный прирост клириков (табл. 1). Таблица 1. Изменение численности духовенства и паствы в приходах в XVIII–начале ХХ в. 1760-е гг.

1800-е гг.

1860-е гг.

1904 г.

Число причтов, тыс.

18,5

26,4

31,0

38,2

Число клириков, тыс.

72,7

104,6

117,0

106,6

Число священников, тыс.

22,9

30,3

37,6

47,7

Число прихожан, млн

17,9

29,4

54,0

97,9

Прихожан на причт

968

1114

1742

2563

Прихожан на клирика

246

281

462

918

Прихожан на священника

782

970

1436

2052

Рост числа прихожан на 100 причт, 1760-е гг.=100

115

180

265

Рост числа прихожан на 100 клирика, 1760-е гг.=100

114

188

373

Рост числа прихожан на свя100 щенника, 1760-е гг.=100

124

184

262

9 Полное собрание законов Российской империи. Собрание 2-е (далее ПСЗ-II). T. 48, ч. 1. С. 366–372. № 52048 от 24.03.1873.

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Источники: ПСЗ-I. Т. XXX. С. 374. № 23122 от 26 июня 1808 г.; Григорович Н. Обзор общих законоположений о содержании православного приходского духовенства в России со времени введения штатов по духовному ведомству (1764–1863). СПб., 1867. С. 28; Миронов Б. Н. Русский город в 1740–1860–е годы: демографическое, социальное и экономическое развитие. Л., 1990. С. 143–147; Freeze G. L. 1) The Russian Levities: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1977. P. 115; 2) The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. P. 54, 99, 460.

С 1760-е гг. по 1904 г. число прихожан на причт увеличилось в 2,7 раза, на священника – в 2,6 раза. Значит, доходы за требы могли возрасти примерно в 2–3 раза за счет увеличения численности прихожан, если бы цены на товары и услуги духовенства не изменялись или изменялись синхронно. Это стало следствием намеренно проводимой духовными и светскими властями политики, направленной на повышение доходов духовенства. В государственной казне средств для улучшения быта духовенства не было, и оно избрало единственно возможную тактику для его решения без привлечения дополнительных фондов из государственного бюджета – увеличить численность паствы в приходе и соответственно число треб и величину доходов от них. Доходы за требоисполнение составляли важнейшую статью доходов духовенства в течение всего периода империи. Но росла и плата за требы10, динамику которой точно оценить затруднительно, поскольку она взималась, как правило, сверх рекомендованной властями величины и сильно отличалась по размерам в различных приходах11. По мнению П. В. Знаменского, в первой половине XVIII в. стихийно сформировались устойчивые цены за требы и службы в целом по Российской империи12 . В 1765 г. власти впервые попытались ввести таксу, значит, обязательную минимальную плату за требы, которая была ниже существовавшей на практике13. Установленные цены «объявлялись во всенародное известие» и должны были вывешиваться в каждой церкви. Но поскольку такса была низкой, духовенство сопротивлялось, и ввести ее на местах оказалось весьма затруднительным. Распоряжения, направленные в епархии, приобрело лишь рекомендательный характер и в практической деятельности не применялось даже в Москве, не говоря уже об окраинах14. В связи с ростом цен, 10 Васина С. М. Приходское духовенство Марийского края в XIX–XX вв.: Дис. … канд. ист. наук. Йошкар-Ола, 2003. С. 182–208. 11 Freeze G. L. 1) The Russian Levities… P. 166; 2) The Parish Clergy… P. 55–56. 12 Знаменский П. В. Духовенство в России... С. 673. 13 ПСЗ-I. Т. XVII. С. 117. № 12378 от 18.04.1765; Полное собрание постановлений и распоряжений по ведомству православного вероисповедания Российской империи: Царствование государыни императрицы Екатерины Второй: В 3 т. СПб., 1910–1915. Т. 1. № 225. 14 Наумова O. E. Иркутская епархия в XVIII–первой половине XIX в. Иркутск, 1996. С.141; Римский С. В. Российская церковь в эпоху Великих реформ: (Церковные реформы в России 1860–1870-х гг.). М., 1999. С. 115, 212; Розанов Н. П. История... Т. 2. Кн. 1. С. 337; Freeze G. L. The Russian Levities… P. 166, 266.

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такса неоднократно возвышалась: в 1801 г. – удвоена; в два приема, 1828 г. и 1859 г., повышена еще почти в два раза15. Чтобы получить представление о доходах за требоисполнение необходимо знать число треб, реальную их оплату и индекс потребительских цен. Я оценил доходы, получаемые причтом от треб, следующим образом: 1) составил список треб, которые верующие обязательно выполняли, на четыре даты, по которым имеются сведения о фактической плате – на 1740–1760-е, 1800-е ,1860-е гг. и 1905–1907 гг.; 2) определил численность людей, которые их исполняли и заказывали, 3) подсчитал суммы, уплачиваемые за них населением; 4) вычислил, какой доход давали требы на один причт, клирика, священника; 5) пересчитал эти расходы, учитывая изменения цен потребительских товаров, и оценил динамику доходов от треб в ценах 1913 г. В табл. 2 (столбец 1) содержится список обязательных треб, которые оплачивали почти все верующие. На самом деле они совершали большее число треб, поэтому плата за них в моем расчете отражает минимум (табл. 2). Таблица 2. Обязательные обряды, число их участников и плата за требоисполнение в XVIII– начале ХХ в. (в коп.)

Обязательные требы

1765 г. Участники

1801 г.

1740– 1841 1760 г. -е гг.

По закону сер. коп.

1800 -е гг.

1860 -е гг.

1904 г.

На практике

асс. коп.

сер. коп.

сер. коп.

сер. коп.

кред. коп.

зол. коп.

Крещение

Родив­шиеся 3

6

15

15

30

40

50

Венчание

Брачу­ющие­ 10 ся

20

60

25

50

100

300

Погребение младенца

Умершие младенцы

3

6

8

10

20

40

50

Погребение взрослого

Умершие взрослые

10

20

30

30

60

80

108

15 ПСЗ-I. Т. XXVI. № 19816. См. также: Григорович Н. Обзор общих законоположений... С. 50; Полное собрание постановлений и распоряжений по ведомству православного вероисповедания Российской империи. Т. 1. Царствование государя имп. Николая I. 1825 (дек. 12)–1835 г. Т. 1. Пг., 1915. № 184.

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Обязательные требы

Борис Н. Миронов

1765 г. Участники

1801 г.

1740– 1841 1760 г. -е гг.

По закону

1800 -е гг.

1860 -е гг.

1904 г.

На практике

сер. коп.

асс. коп.

сер. коп.

сер. коп.

сер. коп.

кред. коп.

зол. коп.

0

0

0

2

4

8

15

Молитва об Число семей – урожае

–

3

3

6

12

20

Молитва на Число семей – пасху

–

3

3

6

12

20

Соборование

–

–

25

50

100

120

Причастие

­Причастившиеся

Число семей –

Источники: Знаменский П. В. Духовенство в России со времени Петра Великого. Казань, 1873. С. 673; ПСЗ-I. Т. XVII. С. 117. № 12378 от 18.04.1765; Полное собрание постановлений и распоряжений по ведомству православного вероисповедания Российской империи: Царствование государыни императрицы Екатерины Второй: В 3 т. СПб.; Пг., 1910–1915. Т. 1. № 225; Полное собрание постановлений и распоряжений по ведомству православного вероисповедания Российской империи. Т. 1. Царствование государя имп. Николая I. Пг., 1915. № 184; Морозан В. В. Экономическое положение... С. 329; Семевский В. И. Сельский священник во второй половине ХVIII в. // Русская старина. 1877. Т. XIX. С. 503–520; Розанов Н. П. История Московского епархиального управления со времени учреждения Св. Синода (1721–1821): В 3 т. М., 1866–1871. Т. 2. Кн. 2. С. 337; Т. 3, кн. 1. С. 148.

2-й столбец табл. 2 показывает, как учитывалось число совершавшихся треб. Например, число крещений и число молитв над роженицей принимается равным числу родившихся, число погребений младенцев – числу детей, умерших до 5 лет. Число молитв о хорошем урожае и на пасху равно числу семей, поскольку эти требы совершаются семьей/хозяйством. Принимается, что в каждой семье в течение года хотя бы один раз серьезно заболевает какой-нибудь член семьи и в связи с этим в дом приглашался священник для совершения соборования. Фактическая оплата за требы (3-й столбец табл. 2) за 1740–1760-е гг. приведена по сведениям П. В. Знаменского, Н. П. Розанова и В. И. Семевского, а за 1800-е гг. и 1860-е гг. увеличена по сравнению с 1740–1760-ми гг. пропорционально повышению таксы по закону16. Сведения на 1904 г. получены в ходе официального обследо16 ПСЗ-I. T. 26. С. 605–606. № 19816 от 3.04.1801; Полное собрание постановлений и распоряжений по ведомству православного вероисповедания Российской империи. Т. 1. Царствование государя имп. Николая I. № 184; Вопрос об обеспечении духовенства в России казенным жалованием // Приходская жизнь. 1916. № 10. С. 596.

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вания экономического положения 17 средних приходов одной из восточных (небогатых) епархий (в архивном источнике не указаны названия приходов и епархии)17. Сведения о численности белого духовенства, количестве причтов и числе демографических событий, сопровождавшихся частными молитвами и церковными обрядами приведены в табл. 3. Они получены по официальным данным клирового, исповедного и метрического учета, а также из годовых отчетов обер-прокуроров Св. Синода. На их основе и получены ориентировочные и, скорее всего, заниженные данные о расходах населения на требы (табл. 4, 5). Таблица 3. Исходные данные для расчета сумм, уплачиваемых православным населением России за требоисполнение в XVIII–начале ХХ в. 1740-е гг. 1760-е гг. 1800-е гг. 1860-е гг. 1904 г. Число вступивших в брак, 126,0 тыс.

164,0

303,0

570,0

744,4

Число родившихся, тыс.

761,0

894,6

1469,4

2918,0

4760,3

Число умерших, тыс.

608,8

715,6

1175,5

2204,0

2928,7

Процент умерших до 5 56 лет, %

56

56

55

50

Число умерших детей до 5 340,9 лет, тыс.

400,8

658,3

1212,2

1464,3

Число умерших взрослых 267,9 (старше 5 лет), тыс.

314,9

517,2

991,8

1464,3

Число прихожан, млн

17,9

29,4

54,0

97,9

Среднее число человек в 7,6 крестьянской семье

15,2

8

8,3

8

5,9

Число семей, тыс.

2236

3541

6751

16601

Процент прихожан, про2 пустивших исповедь

2

3

10

7

Процент детей в возрасте 18 до 7 лет

18

18

19

20

Число исповедовавшихся и причастившихся в воз- 12,2 расте 7 лет и старше, млн

14,3

23,2

38,3

71,5

2003

17 Морозан В. В. Экономическое положение... С. 329. По результатам обследования плата за первое венчание составляла 6 руб. Но в других губерниях плата была ниже – 2–3 руб.: Щербинин Ф. А. Крестьянские бюджеты: В 2 ч. Воронеж, 1900. Ч. 2. С. 461. Во избежание преувеличения доходов духовенства, расчеты сделаны, исходя из платы по 3 руб.

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1740-е гг. 1760-е гг. 1800-е гг. 1860-е гг. 1904 г. Число причтов, тыс.

–

18,5

26,4

31,0

38,2

Число клириков, тыс.

–

72,7

104,6

117,0

106,6

Число священников, тыс.

–

22,9

32,8

37,6

47,7

Источники: Кроме указанных в примечании к табл.1, см.: Буняковский В. Я. Опыт о законах смертности… СПб., 1865. С. 181–183; Миронов Б. Н. 1) Русский город. С. 146–147; 2) Социальная история России периода империи (XVIII–начало XX в.): Генезис личности, демократической семьи, гражданского общества и правового государства. 3–е изд. СПб., 2003. Т. 2. С. 327; Новосельский С.А. Обзор главнейших данных… С. 36–37; Общий свод по империи… 1897 г. Т. 1. С. 56–59; Т. 2. С. 92, 256.

Таблица 4. Суммы, уплачиваемые православным населением России в XVIII–начале ХХ в. за требоисполнение, тысяч номинальных руб. Обязательные требы 1740-е гг.

1760-е гг.

1800-е гг.

1860-е гг.

1904 г.

Крещение

134,2

440,8

1167,2

2380,1

114,2

Венчание

31,5

41,0

151,5

570,0

2233,2

Исповедь

243,5

286,3

928,7

3067,5

10725,3

Причастие

243,5

286,3

928,7

3067,5

10725,3

Погребение младенца

34,1

40,1

131,7

484,9

732,2

Погребение взрослого

80,4

94,5

310,3

793,4

1581,5

Молитва над роженицей

22,8

26,8

88,2

350,2

952,1

Молитва об урожае

60,1

67,1

212,4

810,1

3320,3

Молитва на пасху

60,1

67,1

212,4

810,1

3320,3

Соборование

500,7

559,1

1770,4

6750,8

19921,7

Итого

1390,8

1602,3

5175,0

17871,7

55891,9

Подсчитано по данным табл. 1–3.

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Таблица 5. Доходы духовенства за требоисполнение во второй половине XVIII–начале ХХ в. 1760-е гг.

1800-е гг.

1860-е гг.

1904 г.

Доход в текущих (номинальных) ценах На один причт

87

196

577

1463

На одного клирика

22

49

153

524

На одного священника

70

158

475

1172

На одного прихожанина

9

18

33

57

На одну семью/двор

72

146

265

337

Индекс потребительских цен, 1913 г.=100

28,0

40,9

52,9

66,0

Доход в ценах 1913 г., с учетом изменения в оплате треб На один причт

299

351

873

1729

На одного клирика

76

89

231

620

На одного священника

241

283

720

1385

На одного прихожанина

31

32

50

67

На одну семью/двор

247

262

401

398

Изменение реального дохода в %, 1740-е гг. =100 На один причт

100

117

292

578

На одного клирика

100

117

305

815

На одного священника

100

117

299

575

На одного прихожанина

100

102

162

218

На одну семью/двор

100

106

162

161

Общий прирост доходов от 100 треб (на одного клирика)

117

305

815

в том числе за счет роста числа прихожан на клирика

100

114

188

373

в том числе за счет изменения структуры треб

100

98

97

110

в том числе за счет изменения оплаты за требы

100

104

166

198

Источники: Подсчитано по данным табл. 1–4. Индекс цен: Миронов Б. Н. Благосостояние и революции в имперской России: XVIII–начало ХХ века. 2-е изд. М., 2012. С. 416.

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Итак, доходы духовенства за счет требоисполнения постоянно росли. По сравнению с 1760-ми гг. на одного клирика в постоянных ценах они увеличились в 1800-е гг. – примерно на 17 %, в 1860-е гг. – в 3 раза, в 1904 г. – более чем в 8 раз. Главный фактор повышения доходов от треб – увеличение числа прихожан, другими словами, – увеличение интенсивности труда причта в 3,7 раза за 160 лет. Второй фактор – увеличение оплаты за требы примерно в 2 раза. Это являлось естественным следствием значительного повышения уровня уровень жизни крестьянства и всего населения в империи в 1795–1913 гг.18 Жалованье от прихода – второй источник увеличения доходов причта, со временем также росло за счет увеличения жалованья (денежного и натурального) от общины и количества земли, предоставляемой общинами клирикам. Массовые сведения об изменении жалованья мне неизвестны. Больше сведений о земельном обеспечении причта. В XVII–первой половине XVIII в. каждому причту по обычаю и традиции отводилось от 15 до 30 десятин (далее – дес.) земли (дес. равна 1,09 гектара) в зависимости от числа прихожан и величины из наделов. Обязательный минимум наделения духовенства землей в основном соблюдался. Это следует из того, что в 1735–1740 гг. в густонаселенных центральных епархиях на причт приходилось в среднем 17 дес. земли, на самом деле около 15 дес., поскольку данные, кроме Ярославской епархии, включают только те приходы, которые владели землей, между тем как 10–23 % ее не имели19. В 1764–1765 гг. Екатерина II отменила практически все налоги, которые клирики платили архиерею, ввела фиксированную плату за требы и повысила минимальную норму отвода земли сельским церквам до 33 дес., что существенно превышало наделы, полученные после секуляризации монастырской собственности. Постановление выполнялось медленно20, и в 1801 г. в 25 губерниях 1016 или 3 % всех причтов еще оставались без земли21. Отдельные безземельные городские храмы стали получать пособие от государства. В 1829 г. норма наделения землей была увеличена для приходов в государственной деревне: если у крестьян имелось более 15 дес., то церквам следовало отвести тройную пропорцию земли (99 дес.), если от 12 до 15 дес. – двойную (66 дес.), а где от 8 до 12 дес. – полуторную (49 дес.)22 . В 1842 г. эта норма была распространена на все крестьянство и во второй половине XIX в. вошла в жизнь. Вывод основывается на том, что в 1909 г. в тех же самых епархиях, о которых мы имеем сведения на 1735–1740 гг., земельные наделы причта увеличились в 2,7 раза (с 17 дес. до 46 дес.), а по 65 епархиям империи (из 66, без Калужской), включавших 93 % всех приходов, до 59 дес.23 (табл. 6).

18 Миронов Б. Н. Благосостояние населения… С. 515–522. 19 Freeze G. L. The Russian Levities… P. 127–128. 20 ПСЗ-I. Т. 26. С. 415–417. № 19674 от 30.11.1800 г. 21 Григорович Н. Обзор общих законоположений… С. 53–54. 22 Григорович Н. Обзор общих законоположений… С.69–70. 23 Данные о землепользовании причтов за 1909 г. доставлены в Хозяйственное управление Св. Синода епархиями в 1910 г. Они охватили 65 епархий из 66, и примерно 93 % приходов:

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Таблица 6. Обеспечение православных причтов землей в 1909 г. Число церквей

Епархии

Десятин На земли причт

1735–1740 гг.

Число церквей

Десятин На земли причт

1909 г.

Владимирская 661

9658

15

1109

53155

48

Коломенская/ Тульская

691

10911

16

1213

47322

39

Рязанская

935

19926

21

889

44199

50

Ярославская

826

12358

15

879

44706

51

Итого по 4 епархиям

3113

52853

17

4090

189383

46

21*

38580

2264052 59

Итого по 65 епархиям

* Экстраполяция по соотношению причтового надела в четырех и во всех епархиях в 1909 г. Источники: Российский государственный исторический архив (далее – РГИА). Ф. 799. Оп. 15. Д. 1005. Л. 309–310 (по данным, приведенным в: Морозан В. В. Экономическое положение... С. 324–328; Freeze G. L. 1) The Russian Levities… P. 129.

В 47 епархиях Европейской России в среднем приходилось по 57 дес. на причт, в том числе в 35 епархиях земля была отведена по норме (49 дес.) или выше и лишь в 12 епархиях ниже нормы – в среднем по 41 дес. В 9 сибирских и дальневосточных епархиях в среднем причт имел больше земли – по 101 дес. В результате величина земельного надела на одного клирика (или на семью/хозяйство, так как все они были мужчинами и главами семей)24 с 1860 г. по 1909 г. возросла с 8,7 дес. до 22,8 дес. – в 2,6 раза, в то время как у крестьянства на двор/хозяйство пола земельный надел уменьшился с 19,2 дес. до 10,4 дес. – в 1,8 раза 25. Если в 1860 г. средний земельный надел на клирика уступал среднему крестьянскому наделу в 2,2 раза, то в 1909 г., наоборот, стал превышать его в 2,2 раза. Причтовая земля находилась главным образом в деревне, из чего следует: сельское духовенство в 1860 г. было обеспечено землей как самые бедные крестьяне, а в 1909 г. как зажиточные и богатые, по меркам крестьянства. РГИА. Ф. 799 (Хозяйственное управление Св. Синода). Оп. 15. Д. 1203. См.: Морозан В. В. Экономическое положение... С. 324–328. 24 Обязанности просфирни, занимающаяся выпечкой просфоры, выполняли женщины, но они не являлись церковнослужителями. 25 Материалы высочайше учрежденной 16 ноября 1901 г. Комиссии по исследованию вопроса о движении с 1861 г. по 1901 г. благосостояния сельского населения среднеземледельческих губерний сравнительно с другими местностями Европейской России: В 3 ч. СПб., 1903. Ч. 1. С. 79 (далее: Материалы комиссии 1901 г.).

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Клирики чаще всего отдавали землю в аренду. В 1901 г. аренда дес. земли стоила в среднем по 21 губернии Европейской России 4,79 руб., но ее величина сильно варьировала по губерниям26. За сдачу в аренду 2,264 млн дес. клирики могли получить 10,8 млн. руб. по 101 руб. на человека или по 285 руб. на причт. Те, кто обрабатывал землю самостоятельно, получал больший доход: валовая доходность дес. земли в 3–4 раза превышала арендную плату27, а чистая доходность составляла 56–60 % в 1850-е гг. и 42 % в конце XIX в. от валовой доходности28. В табл. 7 приведены результаты приблизительной оценки дохода причта от земли в двух вариантах: если земля обрабатывалась самими клириками и если она сдавалась в аренду. Валовая доходность земли определена как цена собранного урожая. Поскольку урожаи и цены ржи – главной озимой культуры, и овса – главной яровой культуры, различались несущественно, то расчеты основываются на урожае и ценах ржи. Таблица 7. Доход от причтовой земли при самостоятельной ее обработке и при сдаче в аренду в 1760–1902-е гг. 1760-е гг.

1800-е гг.

1850– 1860-е гг.

1895–1902 гг.

Урожайность, сам

3,5

3,5

3,5

4,9

Норма посева, пуд. на дес.

8,5

8,5

8,5

8,5

Валовой сбор, пуд с дес.

29,8

29,8

29,8

41,7

Чистый сбор, пуд. с дес.

21,3

21,3

21,3

33,2

Причтовая земля, дес.

21

33

40

59

Цена за пуд ржи, коп.

16,6

38,0

49,0

53,0

Цена урожая (без семян), руб.

74

266

417

1037

Индекс потребительских цен

29

37

66

80

Валовой доход от земли в ценах 1913 г., руб.*

255

722

632

1298

26 Материалы комиссии 1901 г. Ч. 1. С. 153. 27 Материалы комиссии 1901 г. Ч. 1. С. 147. 28 Материалы для статистики России, собираемые по ведомству Министерства государственных имуществ. Вып. 1. СПб., 1858. С. 16, 30; Вып. 2. СПб., 1859. С. 189; То же. Вып. 4. СПб., 1861. С. 88; То же. Вып 4. СПб., 1861. С. 86; То же. Вып. 5. СПб., 1871. Отдел В. С. 25, 30; Материалы комиссии 1901 г. Ч. 1. С. 199; Хозяйственно-статистические материалы, собираемые комиссиями и отрядами уравнения денежных сборов с государственных крестьян. Вып. 2. СПб., 1857. С. 30, 68, 73.

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1800-е гг.

1850– 1860-е гг.

1895–1902 гг.

Чистая доходность от вало60 вой доходности в %

60

60

42

Чистый доход от земли в ценах 1913 г., руб.*

153

432

379

545

Доход от аренды в ценах 1913 г., руб.

64

180

158

324

1760-е гг.

* Если земля обрабатывается самим причтом. Подсчитано по: Материалы для статистики России, собираемые по ведомству Министерства государственных имуществ. Вып. 5. СПб., 1871. С. 86; Материалы комиссии 1901 г. Ч. 1. С. 147, 199; Миронов Б. Н. Хлебные цены… С. 68–69; Михайловский В. Г. Урожаи в России: 1801–19124 гг. // Бюллетень ЦСУ. 1921. № 50. С. 4; Свод статистических сведений по сельскому хозяйству России к концу XIX века: В 3 вып. СПб., 1902. С. 144–149.

Обеспечение причта жилищем со временем улучшалось, особенно существенно в пореформенное время, когда закон в 1863 г. обязал приходскую общину обеспечить причт домами под угрозой закрытия своей церкви. Например, к 1863 г. лишь около 5 % приходов Ярославской епархии имели помещения для проживания причта, в 1869 г. – 10 %, к началу XX в. – большинство священником имели дом при церкви, остальные собственный дом. Улучшались жилищные условия и в Рязанской епархии29. С жильем для псаломщиков дела обстояли несколько хуже, но они также заметно улучшились по сравнению с дореформенным временем. То же произошло и в сибирских приходах, которые были обеспечены жильем лучше, чем большинство городских жителей и чем духовенство Европейской России: многие из них имели свои собственные дома, другие жили в церковных домах, строительство которых началось в 1860-х гг.30 Наконец, государственная поддержка духовенства тоже постоянно увеличивалась. После взятия под контроль доходов с монастырских земель в 1701 г. и окончательной секуляризации в 1764 г. весьма незначительное число городских причтов при крупных кафедральных соборах, числом 136– менее 1 % всех церквей стали получать от государства жалованье31. Но сильное желание перейти на государственное обеспечение имели все клирики. К их сожалению, казна не располагала для этого средствами. С 1830 г. самым бедным приходам, которые по тем или иным причина нельзя было закрыть, назначалось от государства жалование, на которое отпускалось в общей сумме около 500 тыс. руб. ассигнациями (137 тыс. серебром) в год. Его стали 29 Белова Н. В. Провинциальное духовенство…; Мухин И. Н. Приходское духовенство… С. 199–202. 30 Дрибас Л. К. Образ жизни духовенства… 31 Григорович Н. Обзор общих законоположений… С. 28; Freeze G. L. The Russian Levities… P. 120–125.

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получать лишь 5 % приходов Российской империи, преимущественно в западных областях. В 1842 г. началась выплата жалования приходскому духовенству пяти западных епархий в соответствии с так называемыми «нормальными штатами»: священ­нику – от 100 до 180 руб. сер., дьякону – 80 руб., псаломщику – 40 руб. сер. в год. Для этого государственная дотация на казенное жалованье возросла в 3 раза – до 415 тыс. руб. сер. в год. Взамен власти потребовали от причтов бесплатного совершения всех обязательных треб. Однако духовенство оказало столь сильное сопротивление правительственной инициативе, что светская власть отказалась от предложения отменить плату за требоисполнения. Дотации пошли на пополнение доходов клириков. В 1843 г. она увеличилась на 1 млн. руб., в 1844–1845 гг. – еще на 250 тыс. руб., в 1846–1855 гг. – на 100 тыс. руб. и составила 1765 тыс. руб. ежегодно. В результате, в 1855 г. 49 % духовенства в 45 % приходов стали получать «нормальное» казенное жалование: священник в зависимости от класса (их было семь) прихода – от 100 до 180 руб., другие клирики одинаково – дьякон 80, дьячок 40, пономарь 32 и просвирня 24 руб.32 В 1862 г. дотация увеличилась до 3,7 млн. руб., в 1909–1912 гг. – до 16,5 млн в год. Доля причтов, получавших пособие, к 1904 г. возросла до 71 %33, в 1910 г. – 73 %, в 1912 г. – до 74 %34, величина пособия – номинально с 209 руб. до 550 руб., в ценах 1913 г. с 308 до 589 золотых руб. (табл. 8). Таблица 8. Государственная поддержка приходского духовенства Русской православной церкви в 1764–1916 гг. 1764 г.

1842 г.

1862 г.

1909– 1912 гг.

1916 г.

В текущих ценах Общая сумма пособия, млн 0,014 руб.

0,415

3,7

16,5

18,8

Число причтов, получивших пособие, тыс.

136

–

17,7

29,9

31,3

То же, в %

0,7

–

47,9

73,4

75,8

Пособие на 1 причт из его получивших, руб.

103

–

209

550

600

Всего причтов, тыс.

18,5

32,2

37,0

40,8

41,3*

Среднее пособие на все причты, руб.

0,75

13

100

404

455

32 ПСЗ-II. Т. II. № 1081; Т. III.3. № 1697, 2034, 2245; Т. IV. № 3323. От 6 декабря 1829 г. 33 Freeze G. L. The Parish Clergy…P. 453. 34 Смолич И. К. История русской церкви...

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Уровень жизни российского православного духовенства в XVIII–начале ХХ века

1764 г.

1842 г.

1862 г.

1909– 1912 гг.

1916 г.

68

93

199

67

В текущих ценах Индекс потребительских цен, 1913 г.=100

29

52

В ценах 1913 г. Общая сумма казенного пособия, млн руб.

0,05

0,8

5,5

17,6

9,4

Пособие на 1 причт из его получивших, руб.

355

–

308

589

301

Среднее пособие на все причты

3

31

147

433

228

1033

4900

14433

7600

Реальная ценность пособия 100 на 1 причт, 1913 г.=100 * В 1914 г.

Источники: РГИА. Ф. 1278 (Государственная Дума). Оп. 5. Д. 684. Л. 51 (по данным, приведенным в: Морозан В. В. Экономическое положение… С. 328); Никольский Н. М. История русской церкви. 3-е изд. М., 1983. С. 406. Индекс цен: Миронов Б. Н. Благосостояние… С. 416; Струмилин С. Г. Очерки экономической истории России и СССР. М., 1966. С. 82,

90, 380.

В постоянных ценах 1913 г., с 1764 г. к 1913 г. общая реальная сумма пособия возросла почти в 188 раз, на один причт – в 144 раза. Пособие превратилось в настоящее жалованье35. Представленный в 1913 г. в IV Государственную думу законопроект «Об обеспечении православного духовенства» предусматривал для священников годовой доход в 2400, для диаконов – в 1200 и для псаломщиков – в 600 руб. Начавшаяся война помешала принятию и реализации этого законопроекта. Первая мировая война из-за роста цен уменьшила реальную ценность дотации в 2 раза, но, несмотря на это, она оставалась весьма существенной36. Можно вполне согласиться с И. К. Смоличем: «Надо признать, что во 2–й половине XIX и в первые два десятилетия XX в. материальное положение духовенства значительно улучшилось. Введение налога с приходов могло бы в перспективе вполне удовлетворительно разрешить проблему, причем, возможно, даже вообще без участия казны»37. Оценить поступления из пятого источник доходов приходского духовенства – проценты с предназначенных в пользу причтов вечных вкладов, доходы с цер35 О дотировании приходского духовенства см.: Смолич И. К. История русской церкви...; Дашковская О. Д. Ярославская епархия…. С. 66–91; Мухин И. Н. Приходское духовенство… С. 177–181. 36 Теодорович Т. П. К сорокалетию пастырства (1895–1935): В 2 т. Варшава, 1935. Т. 2. С. 109. 37 Смолич И. К. История русской церкви...

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ковных оброчных статей, предназначенных в пользу причтов, – во всероссийском масштабе затруднительно: они являлись индивидуальными для каждого причта. Однако историки, изучающие церковную экономику, отмечают, что с конца XVIII в. доходы из этого источника возрастали38. Итак, реальные доходы духовенства за 1760–1904 гг. из всех источников сущест­ венно возросли: за требоисполнение в 5,8 раза на причт, от земли – в 5 раз, госу­ дарст­венная дотация – в 14 раз за 1842–1913 г. В 1904 г. гг. общий доход на причт составил около 2,5 тыс. золотых руб.: за требы – 1729 руб., за причтовую землю – 324 руб., дотация – 433 руб. Но существовали и неучтенные моим расчетом доходы за требоисполнения, за выписки из метрических книг и исповедных ведомостей и др. Резюмирую результаты расчета доходов причта, а также священника, дьякона и причетника, которые распределялись как 3:2:139 (табл. 9). Таблица 9. Изменение доходов православного российского приходского духовенства в 1740–1904 гг. Доход в год, руб. в ценах 1913 г. 1760-е гг. 1800-е гг. 1860-е гг. 1904 г. Доход причта за требоисполнение, руб.

299

351

873

1729

Доход причта за сдачу в аренду земли, руб.

64

180

158

324

Казенное пособие причту, руб.

–

–

147

433

Итого доход причта, руб.

363

531

1178

2486

Доход священника, руб.

180

267

588

1242

Доход дьякона, руб.

120

178

392

828

Доход причетника, руб.

60

89

196

414

Индекс доходов на один причт

100

146

325

685

в том числе за счет роста числа прихожан

100

115

180

265

за счет других факторов и источников

100

127

181

258

Подсчитано по данным табл. 5, 7, 8.

38 Дашковская О. Д. Ярославская епархия... С. 231–236. См. также: Белова Н. В. Провинциальное духовенство…; Мухин И. Н. Приходское духовенство… С. 184–188. 39 Нормативное различие в доходах между протоиереем, священником, дьяконом и псаломщиком находилось в пропорции 4:3:2:1: Отчет обер-прокурора Синода за 1913. СПб., 1915. С. 179.

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69

Главный фактор повышения доходов – увеличение числа прихожан, которое вело к увеличению пастырской нагрузки на клир в 2,7 раза за 140 лет. Все другие факторы вместе взятые – увеличение оплаты за требы, руги и государственной поддержки имели примерно такое же значение. Возможность повысить плату за требоисполнение обусловливалась значительным ростом уровня уровень жизни крестьянства и всего населения в империи в 1795–1913 гг. В годы Первой мировой войны группа депутатов Государственной Думы провела исследование доходов духовенства и пришла к выводу: в 1913 г. 86 млн. прихожан уплатили приходскому духовенству за обязательные требы и доходы с земли не менее 42 млн. руб., по 50 коп. на человека. Кроме того, клирики получили за свои услуги продукты на сумму до 745 руб. в 1908 г. и 1212 руб. в 1913 г. на причт (при очень большом колебании по отдельным приходам)40. В целом по России нижнесредний урожай 1908 г. равнялся 5,04 «сам», вышесредний урожай в 1913 году 6,75 «сам»41, т.е. на треть выше. Поэтому и натуральный доход в 1913 г. оказался на 63 % выше, чем в 1908 г. Всего доход без дотации достигал в 1913 г. примерно 73 млн. руб.42 Чтобы обеспечить такой доход причту, каждая семья должна была платить по 5,9 руб. в год, а прихожанин (включая детей) – 0,7 руб. Эта цифра может показаться запредельной. Однако давайте посмотрим на бюджеты крестьян. В конце XIX в., согласно земским бюджетным обследованиям, охвативших 1787 хозяйств в 13 европейских губерниях, семья расходовала на религиозные и духовные потребности около 7 руб. в год, на душу – 1,6 руб.43 В Воронежской губернии, по результатам обследования 176,8 тыс. хозяйств в 1896 г., семья тратила на религиозные потребности (без расходов на венчание и похороны) в среднем 3,6 руб., на душу населения – 54 коп. в год44. Данные бюджетов подтверждают правдоподобность моих расчетов, которые тем не менее следует рассматривать как сугубо ориентировочные. Многие исследователи, даже признающие факт роста доходов духовенства, полагают: доходы причтов были низкими и недостаточными, как и размер назначенного им казенного жалования. Но это зависит от того, с кем сравнивать. В 1767 г. в Наказе депутату в Комиссию для сочинения Уложения от Синода в 1767 г. и в протесте Синода 1769 г. против проекта о правах среднего рода людей, в котором законодатели объединили духовенство в одно сословие с купцами и ремесленниками45, духовенство высказало претензию на привилегированность и благородство и потребовало законодательного оформления своих сословных прав. Оно предложило верховной власти утвердить иерархию духовных чинов наподобие иерархии военных чинов, в которой архиепископ приравнивался генерал-ан40 Морозан В. В. Экономическое положение… С. 329. 41 Михайловский В. Г. Урожаи... С. 4. 42 Натуральный доход рассчитан по нижнесреднему по урожайности 1908 году. 43 Материалы Комиссии 1901 г. Ч. 1. С. 37. 44 Щербина Ф. А. Крестьянские бюджеты. Воронеж, 1900. С. 275, 283. 45 Наказ Святейшего Синода в Комиссию о сочинении проекта нового Уложения // Сб. РИО. 1885. Т. 43. С. 42–62; From Supplication to Revolution: A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia / G. L. Freeze (ed.). New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. P. 37–44.

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шефу (II-й класс в Табели о рангах), епископ – генерал-поручику (III-й класс), настоятель монастыря – генерал-майору (IV-й класс), священник – поручику (XII-й класс), дьякон и монах – прапорщику (XIV-й класс), церковнослужителям (дьячок, пономарь и т.п.) – сержанту. Поскольку любой офицерский чин давал потомственное дворянство, духовенство претендовало на дворянство для монахов и священнослужителей. В юридическом смысле требования духовенства, по крайней мере для священнослужителей, были в значительной степени удовлетворены: по своим правам к началу XIX в. они сравнялись с личными дворянами в большом и малом. Итак, в XVIII в. священники претендовали на статус, равноценный поручику в армии или чиновнику XII-го класса на гражданской службе, дьякон – прапорщику или чиновнику XIV-го класса, церковнослужители – сержанту или канцеляристу на гражданской службе46. Сравним жалованье офицеров с доходами белого духовенства. Содержание офицера складывалось из основного денежного жалованья и различных доплат – столовых, квартирных, рационных для лошадей и других менее важных. Содержание духовенства включало приношения прихожан и богомольцев, результаты самостоятельной экономической деятельности (на земле, предоставляемой общиной клиру), обеспечение жилищем, помощь светской и церковной властей (табл. 10, 11). Таблица 10. Размеры годового офицерского содержания в армейской пехоте в1760–1909 гг. (в номинальных серебряных/золотых руб.)* 1760 г.

1796– 1859 1800 гг. г.**

1899 г.***

1909 г.

Зол.

1884– 1913 гг., класс

Сер.

Сер.

Зол.

Зол.

4188

4188

4972

II

10595

10595

Генерал-лейтеIII нант

2555

2555

3980

III

6756

6756

Генерал-майор IV

2116

2116

2989

IV

4717

4717

Полковник

Чин Полный генерал

1720– 1883 гг., класс II

763

763

2864

VI

4511

4511

Подполковник VII

VI

467

467

973

VII

1880

2540

Майор

VIII

396

396

780

–

–

–

Капитан

IX

231

231

605

VIII

1626

2106

46 В 1884 г. система офицерских чинов несколько изменилась – поручик был приравнен Х-му классу, прапорщик – XIII-му классу Волков С. В. Русский офицерский корпус. С. 44–45.

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Уровень жизни российского православного духовенства в XVIII–начале ХХ века

1720– 1883 гг., класс

Чин

1760 г.

1796– 1859 1800 гг. г.**

1899 г.***

1909 г.

Зол.

1884– 1913 гг., класс

Сер.

Сер.

Зол.

Зол.

556

IX

1512

1992

Штабс-капитан

X

Поручик

XII

154

154

375

X

1011

1191

Подпоручик

XIII

148

148

353

XII

937

1117

Прапорщик

XIV

112

112

330

XIII

878

1058

29,0

46,8

63,4

80,1

90,5

Индекс цен, 1913 г.=100

* Включены все виды выплат. ** Денежное довольствие без квартирных увеличено на 33 %. *** По всем родам войск. Источник: Военная энциклопедия. Т. 9. СПб., 1912. С. 147; Волков С. В. Русский офицерский корпус. М., 1993. С. 54–64.

Таблица 11. Размеры годового офицерского содержания в армейской пехоте, канцеляристов на гражданской службе и доходов приходского духовенства в 1760–1909 гг. (руб., в ценах 1913 г.) Чин

1796– 1760 г. 1800 1859 г. 1909 г. гг.

1760 г.

1796– 1909 1800 1859 г. г. гг.

Годовое содержание в ценах 1913 г.

Индекс, 1760 г. = 100

Полный генерал 14441 8949

7842

11707

100

62

54

81

Генерал-лейтенант

8810

5459

6278

7465

100

62

71

85

Генерал-майор

7297

4521

4715

5212

100

62

65

71

Полковник

2631

1630

4517

4985

100

62

172

189

Подполковник

1610

998

1535

2807

100

62

95

174

Майор

1366

846

1230

100

62

90

0

Капитан

797

494

954

2327

100

62

120

292

Штабс-капитан

–

–

877

2327

–

–

Поручик

531

329

591

1316

100

62

111

248

Подпоручик

510

316

557

1234

100

62

109

242

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Борис Н. Миронов

1796– 1760 г. 1800 1859 г. 1909 г. гг.

1760 г.

Годовое содержание в ценах 1913 г.

Индекс, 1760 г. = 100

386

100

62

135

303

В среднем у всех

100

62

102

169

В среднем у обер-офицеров

100

62

119

271

–

–

–

Чин

Прапорщик

239

Канцелярист

521

1169

276*

466**

1796– 1909 1800 1859 г. г. гг.

Священник

180

267*

588**

1242***

100

148

327

690

Дьякон

120

178*

392**

828***

100

148

327

690

Причетник

60

89*

196**

414***

100

148

327

690

Отношение доходов поручика и священника

3,0

1,2

1,0

1,1

Отношение доходов прапор- 3,2 щика и дьякона

1,3

1,3

1,4

* 1800-е гг. ** 1860-е гг. *** 1904 г. Подсчитано по данным табл. 9–10. Жалованье канцеляриста: Дрыгина Н. Н. Астраханские чиновники: жалованье и материальное положение (2-я половина XIX-начало XX вв.) // Новый исторический вестник. 2010. № 25. С. 21.

В 1760-е гг. поручик получал ежегодное жалованье 531 руб. сер., а средний годовой доход священника составлял около 180 руб. – в 3 раза меньше; жалованье прапорщика равнялось 386 руб., доход дьякона – 120 руб. – в 3,2 раза ниже (жалованье и доходы в постоянных ценах 1913 г. и с учетом изменения цен). Со второй половины XVIII в. различие в доходах стало уменьшаться и в середине XIX в. доходы у поручика и священника сравнялись, а разница в доходах прапорщика и дьякона сократились до 30 %. До 1908 г. это различие сохранялось. Сближение доходов произошло благодаря тому, что доходы духовенства за полтора столетия выросли почти в 7 раз, а офицеров в целом – лишь в 1,7 раза. Причем жалованье генералов в начале ХХ в. было примерно на четверть ниже уровня 1760-х гг. и на треть ниже уровня 1720-х гг., а у младших офицеров с 1760-х гг. повысилось в 2,7 раза. Материальное положение причетников повысилось за 150 лет почти в 7 раз: их доход уступал жалованью канцеляриста (основного плюс квартирные деньги) в 1860-е гг. в 1,4 раза, а в 1900-е гг. – лишь в 1,1 раза47, т. е. практически с ним сравнял47 Дрыгина Н. Н. Астраханские чиновники... С. 21.

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ся. У духовенства доходы росли систематически: во второй половине XVIII в. – в 1,5 раза, в первой половине XIX в. – 2,2 раза, во второй половине XIX в. – еще в 2,1 раза. А у офицеров во второй половине XVIII–начале XIX в. реальная ценность жалованья упала в 1,6 раза, в первой половине XIX в. вернулась к уровню 1760-х гг. Во второй половине XIX в. жалованье выросло еще в 1,7 раза, и только благодаря этому материальное положение офицерского корпуса в целом в начале ХХ в. улучшилось на 69 % по сравнению с 1760-ми гг. При этом жалованье генералов оставалось примерно на 20 % ниже уровня середины XVIII в.48 На рубеже XIX–XX вв. жалованье земских врачей и учителей гимназий составляло от 1200 до 1500 руб. на рубеже XIX–XX вв.49 – примерно столько же зарабатывал и священник – 1,2 тыс. руб. В начале ХХ в. жалованье учителей российских земских школ равнялось 390 руб., начальных церковных школ – 174 руб. в год50 и было меньше, чем доходы дьякона и причетника, даже если учесть получаемое ими от школы квартиру с отоплением. Таким образом, материальное положение духовенства в период империи сущест­ венно возросло. К началу ХХ в. священнослужители по своему доходу сравнялись с младшими офицерами и классными чиновниками; священники зарабатывали как люди высокоинтеллектуального труда, причетники – как канцеляристы. Дискриминация была устранена. Это особенно бросается в глаза, если сравнить доходы духовенства и рабочих. Средняя годовая заработная плата промышленного рабочего в России в 1900 г. составляла 203 руб., в 1913 г. – 264 руб.51, сельскохозяйственного в 1890–1900 г. – 62 руб., в 1911–1913 гг. – 100 руб. (в год на хозяйских харчах)52 . Сельские старосты получали от общины жалованье в среднем в год в 1880 г. – 31 руб., в начале XX в. – около 50 руб.53 Как видим, доход причетника превышал заработок батрака в 2–3 раза, а жалованье старосты – в 8 раз. Доходы духовенства не являлись секретом для крестьян – в деревне или маленьком городе, каковых было большинство, тайн почти не существовало – и они казались им большими или даже чрезмерными. Церковнослужители имели более скромный достаток, но все же, как минимум, выше среднего уровня сельского и городского населения. Поэтому, большинству крестьян и мещан жалобы духовенства на тяжелое материальное положение не казались основательными. 48 Мой сравнительный расчет реальных доходов офицерства и духовенства в период империи полностью подтвердил вывод Волкова – известного эксперта по истории русского офицерства: Волков С. В. Русский офицерский корпус. С. 228. 49 Миронов Б. Н. Благосостояние…. С. 601, 624. 50 Всеподданнейший отчет обер-прокурора Святейшего Синода по ведомству православного исповедания за 1905–1906 годы. СПб., 1910. Таблицы. С. 238. 51 Кирьянов Ю. И. Жизненный уровень рабочих России (конец ХIХ–начало ХХ в.). М., 1979. С. 425. 52 Миронов Б. Н. Благосостояние… С. 426.. 53 Статистические материалы по волостному и сельскому управлению 34 губерний, в коих введены земские установления: (Составлено в канцелярии высочайше учрежденной Особой комиссии для составления проектов местного управления). СПб., 1885. Табл. 3а.

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Почему же приходское духовенство было недовольно своим материальным положением в течение всего имперского периода, причем со временем неудовлетворение росло? Первая и важнейшая причина недовольства духовенства и прежде всего главной его фигуры – священника, состояла в способе добывания средств – неблагодарном, тяжелом физически и морально. При этом государство, возлагая на духовенство огромные обязанности, не имело средств содержать его на должном материальном уровне. Основные доходы – свыше двух третей – вплоть до 1917 г. клирики получали за требоисполнение (табл. 12). Таблица 12. Значение источников дохода православного российского приходского духовенства в 1760–1904 гг., в % 1760-е гг.

1800-е гг.

1860-е гг.

1904 г.

82

66

74

70

Доход причта за сдачу в аренду 18 земли, руб.

34

13

13

Казенное пособие причту, руб. 0

0

13

17

Итого доход причта, руб.

100

100

100

Доход причта за требоисполнение, руб.

100

Подсчитано по данным табл. 9.

Паства в своем большинстве, особенно в деревне, недооценивала тяжкий труд священника и клириков вообще, как вообще неграмотные или малограмотные люди физического труда мало ценили интеллектуальный труд, и платилa черной неблагодарностью. В случае возникновения конфликта любой прихожанин мог подать донос, который епархия обязана была проверять в ходе следствия и положение священника оказывалось двусмысленным. Любого священника прихожане могли заставить бедствовать, дискредитировать и в конечном итоге выжить из прихода54. Зависимость от прихожан унижала и травмировала служителей церкви, вводила их в состояние морально-психологической фрустрации. Вторая причина неудовлетворенности духовенства состояло в том, что его материальное положение в течение долгого времени, до конца ХIХ в., не соответствовало его социальному положению и образованию. По формальным признакам, по характеру труда и образованию священник принадлежал к привилегированному сословию. В то же время материально его труд вознаграждался хуже, чем равных 54 Мухортова Н. А. Городская приходская община в Западной Сибири во второй половине XVIII в.–60-х гг. XIX в.: Дис. … канд. ист. наук. Новосибирск, 2000.

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ему по статусу профессионалов, но главное – унизительными способами, не без основания напоминавших некоторым попрошайничество и вымогательство. Духовенство, особенно сельское, менее обеспеченное, но более, как ему казалось, униженное, особенно остро ощущало депривацию – и абсолютную (недовольство качеством своей жизни), и относительную (недовольство своим положением относительно других социальных групп), и по этой причине находилось в состоянии стресса и фрустрации. В качестве третьей причины растущего недовольства духовенства следует, на мой взгляд, указать на увеличение потребностей, которые обгоняли весьма значительный – почти шестикратный за полтора столетия – рост его доходов. В 1829 г. и 1840 г. церковные власти и само духовенство считали нормальным доходом для священника 500 руб., для дьякона – 300 руб., для причетника – 150 руб.55 Желаемого дохода духовенство достигло уже в 1860-е гг., но теперь священникам захотелось дохода в 1000 руб., а причетнику 300 руб.56 И это желание было исполнено в 1904 г. Но удовлетворение не наступило, более того недовольство возросло, о чем говорит увеличение числа жалоб со стороны духовенства на тяжелое положение, которое принималось и до сих пор нередко принимается за объективный показатель понижения его благосостояния. Между тем, больше половины всего дохода семей духовенства тратилось на образование. В пореформенное время на обучение одного ребенка клирик вынужден был расходовать 150–250 рублей ежегодно, при этом образование стремились дать не только мальчикам, но и девочкам, а в семье, как правило, имелось 4–5 детей. Для священника, в отличие от крестьян, дать образование детям являлось не роскошью, насущной необходимостью. Без него сыновья могли остаться без работы и хлеба насущного, а дочерям было трудно выйти замуж и найти работу57. Да и положение обязывало. Традиционный тезис о бедственном материальном положении приходского духовенства отчасти соответствовал реалиям XVIII в., но в течение XIX–начала ХХ в. ситуация коренным образом изменилась. Под влиянием постоянных требований самого приходского духовенства и стараний церковных иерархов, принимавших близко к сердцу его чаяния, под влиянием растущего понимания светскими властями идеологической значимости приходского духовенства, правительство много делало для повышения уровня жизни клириков и почти удовлетворило их основную материальную претензию – обеспечить приличным (по стандартам того времени) государственным жалованьем, на уровне равных им по социальному статусу профессиональных групп. Эта возможность появилась у государства благодаря успешному экономическому развитию страны и повышению благосостояния населения. Я далек от мысли утверждать, что материальное положение в отдельных епархиях, благочиниях и приходах изменялось именно так, как говорят результаты 55 Freeze G. L. The Parish Clergy…P. 84, 86. 56 Freeze G. L. The Parish Clergy…P. 267, 407. 57 Белоногова Ю.И. Приходское духовенство…; Скутнев А. В. Приходское духовенство в условиях кризиса Русской православной церкви во второй половине XIX в.–1917 г.: На материалах Вятской епархии: Дис. … канд. ист. наук. Киров, 2005. С. 81–104.

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расчета. Например, что доход всех или большинства священников в 1760-е гг. составлял именно 180 руб., а в 1904 г. – 1242 руб. или что с 1760-е гг. по 1904 г. доходы всех причтов (соответственно 18,5 тыс. и 38,2 тыс.) увеличились в 6,85 раза. Проведенный макроанализ отражает основные тенденции в изменении уровня жизни в большинстве приходов и для большинства приходского духовенства. Историки найдут много священников, чьи доходы были выше или ниже, чем 180 или 1242 руб. Однако примерно для двух третей из них доходы за полтора столетия возросли примерно в 6–7 раз или, по крайней мере, значительно возросли, а не упали или остались без изменения.

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Вопрос об отмене у монашествующих духовных властей права завещания: по материалам Предсоборного совета, Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей и Поместного собора Русской православной церкви (1917 г.) М.А. Бабкин (Российский государственный гуманитарный университет) Среди граждан России в настоящее время довольно распространено мнение, что чёрное (монашествующее) духовенство Русской православной церкви (РПЦ)1 в соответствии с монашескими уставами и обетом нестяжания всегда по закону было лишено прав приобретения, владения и наследования личного имущества. Однако на различных этапах исторического развития России этот вопрос решался по-разному, что уже отмечалось отечественными учёными. Так, В. Ивановский осветил его в русле развития российского законодательства о монашестве и монастырях за период с середины XVII по XIX вв. 2 . Автор настоящих строк значительно расширил хронологические рамки исследования Ивановского, уточнив на основании новых источников ряд его тезисов3. Одним из ключевых, неизменных положений норм российского права, которым до 1917 г. определялся порядок наследования личного имущества монашествующих православного духовенства было то, что все без исключения монашествующие (включая архиереев) были лишены прав приобретения, владения и наследования недвижимости. Эта норма, впервые прозвучавшая в Соборном уложении 1649 года 1 В законодательстве Российской империи и в других официальных как светских, так и церковных документах (вплоть до 1942 г.) использовалось название «Православная Российская Церковь». Однако зачастую употреблялись и названия «Российская Православная», «Всероссийская Православная», «Православная Кафолическая Грекороссийская», «Православная Греко-Российская» и «Русская Православная» церковь. По причине того, что 8 сентября 1943 г. решением Собора епископов титулатура патриарха московского была изменена (вместо «…и всея России» стала «…и всея Руси»), то и Православная церковь стала называться «Русской» (РПЦ). Соответственно, и в историографии установилось использование аббревиатуры «РПЦ», а не «ПРЦ». 2 Ивановский В. Русское законодательство XVIII и XIX вв. в своих постановлениях относительно монашествующих лиц и монастырей. (Опыт историко-канонического исследования). Харьков, 1905. 3 Бабкин М.А. Регулирование имущественных прав православного монашествующего духовенства в «Своде законов Российской империи» (изд. 1876–1917 гг.) // Право и государство: теория и практика. 2012. № 11 (95). С. 96–105.

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(гл. XVII, ст. 42–44)4, на протяжении двух с половиной веков по различным поводам была неоднократно повторена в высочайших актах, решениях Сената и определениях высших органов церковного управления5. Законодательство же, регламентирующее права монашествующих завещать своё личное движимое имущество, не было неизменным. Первоначально оно было полностью ориентировано на церковную норму – на монашеский обет нестяжания, согласно которому принимающий постриг не должен, строго говоря, иметь никакой собственности. Так, в мае 1722 г. император Пётр I подписал «Прибавление к Духовному регламенту. Прибавление о правилах причта церковного и чина монашеского», в котором звучало (ст. 61): «По смерти архиереев, архимандритов и игуменов и прочего монашеского чина, собственного их имения родственником и свойственником ничего не давать; но таковые, вышних чинов присылать в Правительствующий Духовный Синод, а нижних чинов обирать в монастырскую казну»6. Данная норма, в которой было введено монашеско-имущественное «равноправие», в период 1736–1765 гг. была повторена в ряде высочайших актов и постановлений Кабинета министров7. Однако 20 февраля 1766 г. увидел свет указ императрицы Екатерины II – «О дозволении архиереям, игуменам и прочим монашествующим располагать при жизни своей имением в пользу сродников, свойственников и ближних своих». В нём говорилось: «…повелеваем: по смерти архиереев, архимандритов, игуменов и прочих монашеских властей (курсив наш. – М.Б.), никуда не отбирать оставшегося по них имения, какого бы оное звания не было, в деньгах, золоте, серебре или ином чём, кроме тех вещей, которые к ризницам их принадлежат, и которые они по набожности своей к Церкви святой, из собственного их имения построили; но архиереи, архимандриты и игумены и прочие монашествующие власти8 могут при жизни своей тем оставляемым по себе имением располагать так, как им принадлежащим по собственным своим завещаниям в пользу сродников, свойственников и 4 Полное собрание законов Российской империи с 1649 года (далее – ПСЗ-1). СПб., 1830. Т. I. Ст. 1. С. 96–98. 5 См., например: ПСЗ-1. 1830. Т. VII. Ст. 4450. С. 230, Т. XIV. Ст. 10237. С. 148, Т. XXIII. Ст. 17488. С. 916–917, Т. XXXI. Ст. 24246. С. 200, Т. XXXII. Ст. 25162. С. 373; Полное собрание законов Российской империи. Собр. 2-е (далее – ПСЗ-2). 1832. Т. VI. Отд. второе. Ст. 4844 (§ 9). С. 98; Полное собрание законов Российской империи. Собр. 3-е (далее – ПСЗ3). 1886. Т. III. Ст. 1495. С. 126–128. 6 ПСЗ-1. 1830. Т. VI. Ст. 4022. С. 715. 7 ПСЗ-1. 1830. Т. X. Ст. 7287. С. 183, Ст.7551. С. 452–453, Т. XVI. Ст. 11844. С. 276, Т. XVII. Ст. 12389. С. 128. 8 В законодательстве позднеимперской России монашествующие стали упоминаться двумя группами: «1) духовные власти: митрополиты, архиепископы, епископы, архимандриты, игумены, строители, игуменьи и настоятельницы монастырей женских и ризничий Московского синодального дома; 2) прочие монашествующие братия» (Свод законов Российской империи (далее – СЗРИ) [изд. 1876–1917 гг.]. СПб., 1899. Т. IX. Ст. 406. С. 83). (17 сентября 1862 г. настоятели и настоятельницы общежительных монастырей фактически были исключены из перечня тех, кому дозволялось передавать своё личное имущество по наследству. Об этом ещё будет сказано ниже.)

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ближних своих, или употреблять оное на богоугодные дела по их изобретению, не давая в том более никому отчёту»9. Появление процитированного указа, по-видимому, было обусловлено желанием императрицы сделать патерналистский подарок духовным властям: порядок наследования личного имущества тех был отделён от «общемонашеского» порядка, определённого в ст. 61 «Прибавления к Духовному регламенту». Тем самым Екатерина II de jure разделила монашествующих на две группы: одни получили право завещать своё личное имущество (кроме вещей ризницы), а другие – нет. 17 сентября 1862 г. настоятели и настоятельницы общежительных монастырей были лишены права завещания, чем они были приравнены к монашествующим низших степеней. Данная норма (она не касалась игуменов и игумений необщежительных монастырей) вошла в новую редакцию «Устава духовных консисторий» (ст. 123), введённую в действие 9 апреля 1883 г.10. На рубеже 1856/1857 гг. на уровне Собственной Его Императорского Величества канцелярии и Госсовета обсуждался вопрос о желательности отмены права монашествующих властей завещать своё личное имущество. Тем не менее вышеупомянутая екатерининская норма отменена не была11. 17 сентября 1862 г. императором Александром II было утверждено «мнение» общего собрания Государственного совета: «О том, что всякое имущество, остающееся по смерти настоятеля или настоятельницы общежительного монастыря12 , 9 ПСЗ-1. 1830. Т. XVII. Ст. 12577. С. 587. 10 ПСЗ-2. 1865. Т. XXXVII. Отд. второе. Ст. 38687. С. 88; ПСЗ-3. 1886. Т. III. Ст. 1495. С. 128. 11 Собрание мнений и отзывов Филарета, митрополита Московского и Коломенского по учебным и церковно-государственным вопросам. М., 1886. Т. IV. (№ 457.) С. 191–192. 12 Помимо деления российских монастырей на штатные и заштатные (с 26 февраля 1764 г.), существовало их разделение на общежительные (или киновийные) и им «противоположные» – необщежительные (или идиоритмические, особножительные). В общежительных монастырях насельники имели общее богослужение, общий распорядок дня, общую трапезу, общее имущество. Монашествующие в таких обителях не могли ничем распоряжаться на правах собственности, поскольку всё имущество принадлежало монастырю как юридическому лицу. Иначе говоря, насельники общежительных монастырей всё необходимое (еду, одежду, обувь и прочее) получали от монастыря, за что безвозмездно трудились в пользу своей обители: например, священнодействуя и/или исполняя различные послушания. Как правило, общежительные монастыри существовали только на собственные доходы. В необщежительных же обителях монашествующие, имея от монастыря лишь жилище и общее богослужение (иногда – общую трапезу), всё прочее необходимое для жизни приобретали сами: или на даваемое им жалование (согласно установленным «штатам»), или на доходы от богослужений, или от изготовления и продажи разного вида изделий. Т. е. в необщежительных монастырях (например, в штатных) монахи могли приобретать вещи в пожизненную личную собственность. Кроме того, в общежительных монастырях настоятели избирались самой братией и только утверждались в должности Св. синодом по представлению местного архиерея. Настоятели же необщежительных, или штатных монастырей, прямо назначались епархиальным начальством. (См. подробно: Обозрение церковно-гражданских узаконений по Духовному ведомству. С. 11–20; Ивановский В. Русское законодательство … Указ. соч. С. 45–47, 66–70, 113–119.)

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признаётся собственностью монастыря»13. Формулировка самого решения была следующей: «В изменение подлежащих статей Свода законов, постановить: всякое имущество, остающееся по смерти настоятеля или настоятельницы общежительного монастыря, хотя бы оно и не значилось по монастырским документам, признаётся собственностью монастыря»14. И данная норма (она не касалась игуменов и игумений необщежительных монастырей) вошла в новую редакцию «Устава духовных консисторий» (ст. 123), введённую в действие 9 апреля 1883 г.15. В начале XX в. делались конкретные шаги для реанимирования петровского монашеско-имущественного «равноправия». Впервые вопрос об этом прозвучал 13 декабря 1906 г. в Предсоборном присутствии16 – особой церковной комиссии, цель которой состояла в предварительном рассмотрении вопросов церковной реформы, намеченных к обсуждению на планировавшемся Поместном соборе. Проходивший в Свято-Троицкой Сергиевой лавре с 5 по 13 июля 1909 г. I Всероссийский съезд монашествующих высказался о желательности лишить духовные власти права завещать своё личное имущество. Было постановлено, «чтобы настоятели не имели права оставлять наследство и в этом смысле […] ходатайствовать об изменении законодательства»17. Данное постановление было передано в Святейший синод, в недрах которого в 1911 г. был создан проект соответствующего законодательного акта18. Далее тот документ был направлен в III Государственную думу, в которой рассматривался Комиссией по судебным реформам. Законопроект назывался: «Об изменении постановлений действующих законов о праве иерархов Православной церкви и прочих монашествующих властей делать духовные завещания о своём имуществе». Однако общее собрание Думы документ принять не успело19, поэтому он перешёл на рассмотрение IV Думы, где не смог преодолеть Понятно, что уклад жизни в необщежительных (в большинстве случаев – штатных) монастырях был менее строг, чем в общежительных (в основном – заштатных). Впрочем, строгой грани между названными видами монастырей всё же не существовало. Например, во 2-й половине XIX в. одни штатные монастыри жили по общежительному, а другие – по особножительному уставу, многие монастыри вообще не имели ни определённого устава, ни богослужебного уклада; не была урегулирована и процедура назначения настоятелей (см.: Смолич И.К. Русское монашество: 988–1917 гг. Жизнь и учение старцев. Приложение к «Истории Русской Церкви». М., 1999. С. 69, 286–290). 13 Законодательство стало разделять общежительные и необщежительные монастыри лишь с 20 марта 1862 г. (см. подробно: Ивановский В. Русское законодательство … Указ. соч. С. 113–119). 14 ПСЗ-2. 1865. Т. XXXVII. Отделение второе. Ст. 38687. С. 88. 15 ПСЗ-3. 1886. Т. III. Ст. 1495. С. 128. 16 Журналы и протоколы заседаний Высочайше учреждённого Предсоборного Присутствия. 1907. Т. IV. [Протокол] № 23. С. 103–115. 17 Московские ведомости. 1909. № 159. 12 июля. С. 4. 18 Государственный архив Российской Федерации (далее – ГАРФ). Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 372. Л. 308об.–309, 385об.–386; Деяния Священного Собора Православной Российской Церкви 1917–1918 гг. М., 1996. Т. 5. Деяние 57. С. 215, 221. 19 Обзор деятельности Государственной думы третьего созыва. 1907–1912 гг. Ч. 2. СПб., 1912. С. 643.

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уровень обсуждения думских комиссий20. Соответственно, восстановление ориентированной на монашеский обет нестяжания нормы 1722 г. не состоялось. В целом, в императорской России все без исключения монашествующие были лишены прав наследования, а также приобретения и владения недвижимостью. Созданный с 1649 г. корпус «имущественно-монашеских» законов в общем соответствовал содержанию монашеского обета нестяжания, согласно которому принимающий постриг, не должен, строго говоря, иметь никакой собственности. Вместе с тем принцип нестяжательности монашествующих проводился в российском законодательстве не безусловно, а только в применении к недвижимому имуществу. Что касается права завещания – его были лишены лишь монашествующие низших степеней, а также настоятели и настоятельницы общежительных монастырей. Духовные же власти (т. е. архиереи, архимандриты, игумены, строители, ризничий Московского синодального дома, игуменьи и настоятельницы женских монастырей, исключая в данном случае игуменов и игумений общежительных монастырей) были лишены права завещания не безусловно, поскольку они могли передавать по наследству своё движимое имущество: кроме вещей, принадлежащих к ризнице, а также книг духовного, нравственного и учёного содержания. Последние две категории имущества духовным властям разрешалось завещать лишь в пользу монашествующих. Все упомянутые «имущественно-монашеские» нормы церковно-государственного права были систематизированы в «Своде законов гражданских» и «Своде законов о состояниях», вошедших в общий «Свод законов Российской империи»21. Вопрос о необходимости отмены у монашествующих духовных властей права завещания вновь в различных церковных инстанциях вновь начал обсуждаться после Февральской революции. В тот период Русская церковь оказалась в новых социально-политических реалиях и правовой обстановке22 . Высший орган церковного управления – Св. синод 29 апреля 1917 г. констатировал, что «при изменившемся государственном строе русская православная Церковь не может уже оставаться при тех порядках, которые отжили своё время»23, взял курс на «отдаление» церкви от государства. На этом пути главной целью высшего духовенства стал созыв Поместного собора, подготовка к которому шла (с перерывами) ещё с 1905 г., и который должен был стать высшим органом церковной власти24. В тот же 20 Государственная Дума. Созыв четвёртый. [СПб., 1912.] Сессия I. Журнал № 10. Заседание 10 декабря 1912 г. С. 2, 23; Государственная Дума. Обзор деятельности комиссий и отделов. Четвёртый созыв. СПб., 1913. Сессия I. С. 251. 21 См. подробно: Бабкин М.А. Регулирование имущественных прав … Указ. соч. 22 См. подробно: Российское духовенство и свержение монархии в 1917 году. (Материалы и архивные документы по истории Русской православной церкви) /Сост., авт. предисловия и комментариев М.А.Бабкин. М., 2008. –632 с.; Бабкин М.А. Священство и Царство (Россия, начало XX в. – 1918 г.). Исследования и материалы. М., 2011. С. 197–559. 23 Церковные ведомости. 1917. № 18–19. С. 101. 24 О предыстории созыва Поместного собора см., например: Смолич И.К. Предсоборное присутствие 1906 г.: к предыстории Московского Поместного Собора 1917–1918 гг. // История Русской Церкви. 1700–1917 гг. М., 1997. Кн. 8. Ч. II. С. 693–719; Фирсов С.Л. Русская Церковь накануне перемен. (Конец 1890-х – 1918 гг.) М., 2002. С. 216–250, 391–425; Ореханов Геор-

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день Св. синод принял решение о сформировании Предсоборного совета – особой церковной комиссии, задачей которой являлась подготовка вопросов, подлежащих рассмотрению на Поместном соборе. Спустя месяц, в ходе подготовки внутрицерковных преобразований и с целью «поднятия духовной жизни в монастырях и развития религиозно-просветительской их деятельности», а также выработки программы совершенствования жизни монашествующих Св. синод выпустил специальное определение (от 26-30 мая 1917 г.). В нём, среди прочего, содержалось распоряжение созвать с 16 по 23 июля 1917 г. в Свято-Троицкой Сергиевой лавре Всероссийский съезд представителей от монастырей. Высшим органом церковного управления были определены программа съезда и порядок выборности делегатов25. И на Предсоборном совете, и на Всероссийском съезде представителей от монастырей были подняты вопросы, связанные с личным имуществом монашествующих. Рассмотрим эти дискуссии, выработанные в ходе них для готовящегося Поместного собора 26 проекты положений, а также «судьбы» тех. Первый из названных церковных форумов – Предсоборный совет начал свою работу 12 июня27. Тогда же было принято решение образовать в его рамках 10 отделов, одним из которых (IX-м) был «О монастырях и монашестве»28. Заседания это отдела начали проходить с 14 июня. 21 числа того же месяца председателем отдела был назначен Св. синодом епископ Минский Георгий (Ярошевский)29. 7 и 10 июля состоялось 6-е (двухдневное) заседание IX-го отдела. На нём присутствовало 7 человек, в том числе 1 архиерей. Рассматривался проект («Тезисы») положения о правовом положении монастырей в государстве. Тот документ был подготовлен и озвучен приглашённым на заседание архимандритом Никанором (Кудрявцевым) – настоятелем Московского Никольского единоверческого монастыря, являвшимся также членом состоящей при Св. синоде Комиссии по делам монастырей и монашества. В начале своего выступления докладчик отметил, что в основу представленного им проекта положено допущение, «что отделение церкви от государства не будет гий, иерей. На пути к Собору. Церковные реформы и первая русская революция. М., 2002. С. 143–198; Бабкин М.А. Священство и Царство … Указ. соч. С. 68–82, 91–107. 25 Церковные ведомости. 1917. № 22–23. С. 146–148. Программа состояла из 14 пунктов. Имущественно-хозяйственная «тема» затрагивалась в двух из них: «2. Устройство местного, областного и центрального управления по делам хозяйственным и делам духовным. […] 7. Монастырское хозяйство» (Церковные ведомости. 1917. № 22–23. С. 148). 26 5 июля 1917 г. по докладу Предсоборного совета Св. синодом было вынесено определение о созыве в Москве Поместного собора (Церковные ведомости. 1917. № 29. С. 207–211; Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 1. Документы и материалы. С. 11–20). 27 Церковные ведомости. 1917. № 18–19. С. 117, № 20–21. С. 133; Всероссийский церковно-общественный вестник. 1917. № 17. С. 3; Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 1. Документы и материалы. С. 5. 28 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 577. Л. 2об.–3. 29 Там же. Л. 12–13об.; Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 1. Документы и материалы. С. 5–6, 9.

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осуществлено, и что нынешние взаимоотношения их останутся по существу теми же»30. Вопросы о личном имуществе монашествующих затрагивались в § 9 и § 11 (п. «б») «Тезисов» о. Никанора. Формулировка § 9 на заседании 7 июля была принята отделом без к.-л. изменений31. Обсуждение же § 11 (состоявшего из п. «а» и «б») шло 7 и 10 числа. При этом в представляющий для нас интерес пункт «б» было внесено лишь незначительное дополнение: были добавлены слова «избирательных /активных и пассивных/». И в итоге два названных (весьма пространных) параграфа стали содержать, среди прочего, следующие положения о личном имуществе и праве завещания монашествующих: «9. Содействие Православной Церкви, в отношении монастырей, со стороны государства выражается, сверх предоставления монастырям преимуществ, общих всей Православной Русской Церкви, в сохранении за монастырями […] наследственных прав на вымороченное32 , всех видов, имущество насельников своего монастыря». «11. Остаются в силе действовавшие доселе постановления: […] б) лишающие монашествующих прав – пенсионных, а также на другие виды общественного призрения, имущественных, торговых, промышленных, векселе и залогодательных, завещательных, с распространением на настоятелей штатных монастырей, экономов архиерейских домов и Синодального Ризничего, избирательных /активных и пассивных/»33. Таким образом, отдел фактически предлагал ходатайствовать перед государством об уравнивании в названных гражданских правах всех представителей духовных монашествующих властей (кроме епископов). Об архиереях же в том документе умалчивалось, по-видимому, по причине того, что члены IX-го отдела вряд ли считали в своей компетенции рассматривать вопросы о правах епископов, хотя те и являются монашествующими. Выработанный отделом «О монастырях и монашестве» проект Положения о государственно-правовом положении монастырей Общее собрание Предсоборного совета рассматривало 27 июля, на своём 10-м заседании. Присутствовало 15 человек, в том числе 4 архиерея; председательствовал архиепископ Финляндский Сергий (Страгородский). По поводу интересующего нас вопроса в журнале того собрания совета приводится следующее решение: «Так как пункты относительно хозяйства монастырей оказались несогласованными с работами VII Отдела о церковном хозяйстве, то Собрание постановило: положение о государственно правовом положении монастырей передать на обсуждение в VII отдел Предсоборного Совета»34. .

30 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 582. Л. 56–56об., 190–190об. 31 Там же. Д. 582. Л. 56об., 59–60. 32 Вымороченное имущество – имущество, которое осталось после умершего лица и на которое никто не заявляет или не может заявить претензий ни по завещанию, ни по праву наследования по закону. (См. подробно: Энциклопедический словарь /Изд. Ф.А. Брокгауз, И.А. Ефрон. СПб., 1892. Т. 14. С. 524–525). 33 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 582. Л. 63–64об., 196 а–196 б об. 34 Там же. Д. 577. Л. 54.

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Таким образом, те пункты проекта положения IX-го отдела, в которых затрагивались вопросы о хозяйства монастырей, 27 июля Общее собрание передало на согласование в VII-й отдел – «О церковном хозяйстве», председателем которого был архиепископ Тамбовский Кирилл (Смирнов). И хотя в хранящихся в фондах ГА РФ материалах VII-го отдела Предсоборного совета и отсутствуют журналы заседаний, состоявшихся после 1 июля (вероятно они и не проводились), тем не менее ход дальнейшего обсуждения рассматриваемого нами документа известен. 30 и 31 июля на 13-14 заседании Общего собрания Предсоборного совета, проходившем под председательством архиепископа Сергия (Страгородского), вопрос о монастырском хозяйстве рассматривался вновь. Об этом в делопроизводственной документации Совета сказано следующее: «Положения о монастырском хозяйстве по заявлению VII Отдела перенесены в Положения о церковном имуществе»35. Однако выработанные VII-м отделом «Общие положения о церковном имуществе и церковном хозяйстве» Общее собрание рассматривало и приняло ещё на своём 7-м заседании – 22 июля, и больше к ним не возвращалось. При этом в тексте тех положений лишь в общих чертах говорилось об имуществе и хозяйстве или «отдельных», или «всех церковных установлений»; при этом ни слова об имуществе монастырей и монашествующих 36. Следующей инстанцией, где «Общие положения о церковном имуществе и церковном хозяйстве» рассматривались, был XVI-й отдел Поместного собора 37 «О церковном имуществе и хозяйстве»38, председателем которого был архиепископ 35 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 577. Л. 58об.–59. 36 Там же. Д. 577. Л. 31об.–33об. Текст принятых «Общих положений о церковном имуществе и церковном хозяйстве» см.: Там же. Л. 32 а об.–33об. 37 Поместный собор отрылся 15 августа 1917 г. В его состав было избрано и назначено по должности 564 человека: 80 архиереев (т. е. примерно каждый второй из общего количества «штатных» в тот момент иерархов РПЦ), 129 лиц пресвитерского сана, 10 дьяконов из белого (женатого) духовенства, 26 псаломщиков, 20 монашествующих (архимандритов, игуменов и иеромонахов) и 299 мирян. (См.: Определение и послание Св. синода см.: Церковные ведомости. 1917. № 29. С. 207–211; Деяния Священного Собора Православной Российской Церкви 1917–1918 гг. М., 1994. Т. 1. С. 11–20, 60–133.) Подробнее о том Соборе см., например: Одинцов М.И. Всероссийский Поместный Собор 1917–1918 гг.: споры о церковных реформах, основные решения, взаимоотношения с властью // Церковно-исторический вестник. 2001. № 8. С. 121–138; Фирсов С.Л. Указ. соч. С. 535–565; Иакинф (Дестивель), священник, монах. Поместный Собор Российской православной Церкви 1917–1918 гг. и принцип соборности /Пер. с франц. иеромонаха Александра (Синякова). М., 2008. –307 с.; Бабкин М.А. Священство и Царство … Указ. соч. С. 453–461, 471–496. 38 30 августа в составе Поместного собора были сформированы 19 отделов (позже было образовано ещё 3). Их ведению которых подлежало предварительное рассмотрение и подготовка широкого круга соборных законопроектов. Если обсуждаемые вопросы требовали рассмотрения различных отделов, то предполагались и совместные заседания отделов. В каждый отдел входили епископы, клирики и миряне. Без поручения или разрешения отдела никакие обсуждавшиеся вопросы не могли быть доложены на соборном заседании. Для принятия соборного постановления, из соответствующего отдела должны были поступить в письменном виде доклад, а также (по желанию участников его заседаний) особые мнения. Заключение отдела следовало излагать в виде предполагаемого соборного постановления. О заседаниях

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Кишинёвский и Хотинский Анастасий (Грибановский)39. Постатейное обсуждение названного документа шло в течение месяца: с 12 сентября по 13 октября 1917 г. (с 3-го по 11-е заседание отдела)40. Однако несколько пунктов (в том числе §§ 9 и 11) проекта Положения о государственно-правовом положении монастырей на заседаниях XVI-го отдела не прозвучали. Более того, «следы» тех параграфов, ставших по решению Общего собрания Предсоборного совета фактически дополнением к «Общим положениям о церковном имуществе и церковном хозяйстве», после 31 июля в материалах какие-либо церковных инстанций вообще не значатся. Возможно, те параграфы были кем-то изъяты из делопроизводственной документации ещё Предсоборного совета, работа которого проходила под председательством архиепископов Финляндского Сергия (Страгородского) (заседания №№  1, 3, 6–14-е) и Тифлисского Платона (Рождественского) (заседания №№ 2, 4-е)41. Возможно, их «положил под сукно» председатель XVI-го отдела Поместного собора – архиепископ Кишинёвский Анастасий (Грибановский)42 . Но также может быть, что они исчезли в ходе передачи документов из Предсоборного совета в инстанции Поместного собора. Вопросы, связанные с личным имуществом монашествующих, IX-й отдел Предсоборного совета рассматривал и при обсуждении проекта положения о хозяйстве монастырей. 14 июля состоялось два заседания того отдела – «№ 10» и «№ 10а». В них принимало участие 7 человек, в том числе 1 епископ. «Тезисы» проекта положения о хозяйстве монастырей, состоящие из 15 параграфов, были составлены членом

отделов составлялись письменные протоколы, в которых фиксировались время заседания, имена присутствовавших, рассматривавшиеся вопросы, сделанные предложения, постановления и заключения. (Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 1. С. 43–44. Список отделов Поместного собора, их председателей, заместителей председателей, секретарей и делопроизводителей см.: Там же. С. 134–138.) 39 Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 1. Документы и материалы. С. 136. 40 См.: ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 406. Л. 12–73. 41 См.: Там же. Д. 577. Л. 1–65. При этом журнал заседания № 5, состоявшегося между 13 и 20 июля 1917 г., нам обнаружить не удалось. 42 По крайней мере летом 1918 гг. архиепископ Кишинёвский Анастасий (Грибановский) считал вопрос о личном имуществе архиереев достаточно актуальным. Свидетельствует об этом содержание доклада архиепископа Анастасия, прозвучавшего 8 (21) августа 1918 г. при представлении Поместному собору выработанного XVI-м соборным отделом проекта «Основные положения о церковном имуществе и хозяйстве Русской Православной Церкви». В том докладе значительное внимание было уделено вопросу о личном имуществе архиереев. Однако на следующем заседании, 10 (23) числа, при постатейном рассмотрении представленного отделом проекта «Основных положений…», тезисы о личном имуществе монашествующих не прозвучали. Последнее понятно: ведь те тезисы не рассматривались на заседаниях XVIго отдела и, соответственно, не были внесены в выработанный отделом проект «Основных положений…». Хотя те тезисы, как уже говорилось, должны были поступить в отдел из Предсоборного совета. Или всё же они поступили в отдел, но были его председателем «положены под сукно»?

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Петроградского духовно-цензурного комитета архимандритом Христофором43. В § 12 значилось: «б) Всё имущество, оставшееся после смерти настоятеля, должно переходить в собственность монастыря во всех монастырях»44. Т. е. автор предлагал для настоятелей монашеских обителей фактически вернуть норму 1722 г., содержавшуюся в процитированной выше ст. 61 «Прибавления к Духовному регламенту». На заседании «№ 10» практически без обсуждений § 12 проекта (как и §§ 5–11) был принят в своей первоначальной редакции. Однако на состоявшемся практически сразу же заседании «№ 10а» «Тезисы» архимандрита Христофора по какой-то причине были рассмотрены повторно. И в ходе прений IX-м отделом были приняты лишь их §§ 1–10, 13 и 15: одни с редакционными правками, а другие без них. А о §§ 11, 12 и 14 в протоколе того заседания отдела значится следующее: «остальные (параграфы. – М.Б.), в виду не принципиального характера содержащихся в них указаний по разным сторонам хозяйственной жизни монастырей, частью входящих в область вопросов, которые должны иметь место в монастырском Уставе, исключаются»45. Таким образом, в ходе работы над проектом положения о хозяйстве монастырей IX-й отдел Предсоборного совета 14 июля 1917 г. вычеркнул пункт (наряду с другими двумя) о безоговорочном переходе в собственность монастыря личного имущества, остающегося после смерти настоятелей всех монастырей. Вместе с тем если сравнить § 12 (п. «б») проекта положения о хозяйстве монастырей с § 11 (п. «б») вышеупомянутого проекта положения о правовом положении монастырей в государстве, то можно увидеть, что первый является почти частным случаем второго, а в вопросе о завещательных правах монашествующих они, по существу, тождественны. Судя по всему, именно по причине близости по содержанию названных пунктов члены IX-го отдела, приняв 7 и 10 июля проект положения о правовом положении монастырей в государстве, включавшем процитированный выше § 11 (п. «б»), 14 числа того же месяца при рассмотрении проекта положения о хозяйстве монастырей сочли нужным исключить его § 12 (п. «б»). Ведь тот § 12 (п. «б») фактически дублировал § 11 (п. «б») предыдущего документа, принятого тем же отделом 10 числа. Иначе говоря, IX-й отдел, по-видимому, во избежание повторов в проектах двух своих документов убрал из второго из них интересующий нас § 12. Важно, что это было сделано до того, как 27 июля Общее собрание Предсоборного совета рассмотрело выработанный IX-м отделом проект положения о правовом положении монастырей в государстве с описанным выше для его § 11 финалом. Вероятно, если бы членам IX-го отдела был бы известен результат обсуждения в Общем собрании § 11 (п. «б») проекта положения о правовом положении монастырей в государстве (а именно – передача его на обсуждение в VII-й отдел с по43 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 582. Л. 80–82об., 89–91об., 212–213 б об., 217–218 б об., 219–224. 44 Там же. Л. 87–87об., 223–223об. 45 Там же. Л. 82об., 91об., 213 б об.218 б об.

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следующим исчезновением каких-либо его следов), они по другому отнеслись бы к дублирующему его § 12 (п. «б») проекта положения о хозяйстве монастырей. В целом, практические результаты проходивших на Предсоборном совете обсуждений вопросов, связанных с личным имуществом насельников монастырей, свелись к нулю. Разрабатывавшиеся в Предсоборном совете соответствующие предложения не дошли до рассмотрения Поместного собора, начавшего свою работу 15 августа 1917 г. Рассмотрим соответствующие материалы второй из ранее названных церковных инстанций, работавшей в июле 1917 г. – Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей. В его работе принимало участие 137 чел. с правом решающего голоса (из них 10 архиереев) и 13 с правом совещательного. Председательствовал викарий Московской епархии епископ Волоколамский Феодор (Поздеевский) (с 1 мая 1917 г. – настоятель Данилова монастыря, до того же, с 1909 г. – ректор Московской духовной семинарии46). Почётным председателем съезда был избран архиепископ Московский и Коломенский Тихон (Беллавин)47 (с ноября 1917 г. – патриарх Московский и всея России). В последний день заседаний съезда, 23 июля, делегат от Пензенской епархии – иеромонах Евфимий выступил с «внеочередным заявлением». Он выразил своё «недоумение», что епископы и настоятели монастырей, в отличие от остальных монашествующих, имеют право оставлять завещания о наследстве 48. Заявление о. Евфимия было встречено пониманием со стороны присутствовавших. Руководивший заседанием епископ Елисаветградский Прокопий (Титов) (викарий Херсонской епархии, временно управляющий Александро-Невской лаврой) указал присутствующим, во-первых, что «право оставлять завещания о наследстве предоставлено епископам и настоятелям монастырей гражданским, а не церковным 46 Церковные ведомости. 1917. № 18-19. С. 117. 47 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 372. Л. 318–319, 409об.–414об. 48 Как известно, принимающие монашеский постриг дают несколько обетов, один из которых – нестяжания. Каноническое основание этого обета – в 6-м правиле Поместного Константинопольского (Двукратного) собора (861 г.), которое гласит: «Монахи не должны имети ничего собственного, но все им принадлежащее да утверждается за монастырем. Ибо блаженный Лука о верующих во Христа, и представляющих собою образ монашеского общежития, глаголет, яко ни един что от имений своих глаголаше свое быти, но бяху им вся обща [Деян. 4, 32]. Посему желающим монашествовати предоставляется свобода завещавати о имении своем прежде, и передавати оное, каким восхотят лицам, которым, то есть, закон не возбраняет. Ибо по вступлении в монашество, монастырь имеет власть над всем их имуществом, и им не предоставлено распоряжати ничем собственным, ни завещавати. Аще же кто обрящется усвояющий себе некое стяжание, не предоставив оного монастырю, и порабощенный страсти любостяжания: у такового игумен, или епископ да возмет оное стяжание, и, в присутствии многих продав, да раздаст нищим и нуждающимся. А того, кто положил в сердце своем, подобно древнему оному Анании, утаити сие стяжание, святый Собор определил вразумити приличною епитимией. Явно же есть, яко постановленные святым Собором правила о монахах, праведным признал он соблюдати и о женах монашествующих.» (Каноны, или книга правил святых апостол, святых соборов вселенских и поместных и святых отец. Канада, Монреаль, 1974. С. 198.)

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законодательством»49; во-вторых, что «Св. Синод вносил на рассмотрение Государственной Думы законопроект о том, чтобы оставшееся после смерти епископов и настоятелей монастырей имущества поступали в собственность того монастыря или архиерейского дома, которые были под управлением покойных в момент их кончины и где они жили последнее время пред кончиной». Продолжил мысль епископа Прокопия «напокойный» (т. е. находящийся на покое, заштатный) архиепископ Никон (Рождественский), бывший Вологодский и Тотемский50. Он напомнил участникам съезда, что тот законопроект не стал законом, поскольку не получил санкции Государственной думы. При этом владыка Никон высказал своё мнение, что остающееся после смерти епископов и настоятелей монастырей имущество целесообразней передавать не в монастыри или архиерейские дома, в которых те представители духовных властей жили перед своей кончиной или которыми они управляли в момент кончины, а передавать то имущество в специальный общемонастырский фонд. А тот фонд, в свою очередь, направлял бы те вещи «на удовле­ творение нужд менее обеспеченных обителей по усмотрению центрального монастырского управления»51. После выступления названных архиереев съездом было постановлено: «Разделяя взгляд Святейшего Синода о том, что имеющиеся в Российском гражданском законодательстве некоторые исключения в области наследственного права для епископов и настоятелей монастырей, по которым они имеют право оставлять завещания о своём имуществе, являются противоречием основному принципу иноческого жития – связи инока с его обителью и иночеством, и принимая во внимание представлявшийся в Государственную Думу, но не получивший законодательной санкции законопроект Св. Синода о том, чтобы оставшиеся после смерти епископов и настоятелей монастырей имущества их поступали в собственность того монастыря или архиерейского дома, которыми управляли покойные в момент кончины и в котором они жили в последнее время пред кончиной, – выразить пожелание, чтобы таковые имущества поступали в общемонастырский при Всероссийском Монашеском Совете52 фонд – для выдачи пособий

49 Из слов епископа Прокопия следует, что, по его мнению, церковное законодательство такого права епископам и настоятелям не предоставляло. 50 Никон (Рождественский) в июле 1909 г. председательствовал на I Всероссийском съезде монашествующих, принявшем резолюцию с ходатайством перед властями об отмене права настоятелей монастырей оставлять наследство своим родственникам (Московские ведомости. 1909. № 159. 12 июля. С. 4). 51 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 372. Л. 385об.–386. 52 Всероссийский монашеский совет при Св. синоде – предполагаемый в «Постановлении» Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей вспомогательный и совещательный орган по высшему церковному управлению и наблюдению за монастырями. Ему надлежало обсуждать общие вопросы о монастырях и монашествующих, делать экспертные заключения по конкретным вопросам, готовить материалы для Всероссийских монашеских соборов и прочее. (См. о нём подробнее: Там же. Л. 296об., 346об.–348.)

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и поддержки нуждающимся монастырям по усмотрению Всероссийского Монашеского Собора53»54 . Практически дословно это определение было повторено в общем своде постановлений того съезда (в разделе «VIII. Монастырское хозяйство», в качестве § 153), представленном архиепископом Московским Тихоном Св. синоду 12 августа того года55. Причём в «Заключении» общего свода постановлений рассматриваемого съезда говорилось, что принятые им резолюции, «касающиеся внутренней жизни обителей, богослужения и монастырской дисциплины, желательно ввести в жизнь, с утверждения их Поместным Церковным Собором, в самом непродолжительном времени»56. Т. е. последнее слово в придании рассмотренному постановлению (об отмене у архиереев и настоятелей права завещания) статуса обязательного общецерковного установления оставалось за Поместным собором – высшим органом управления РПЦ, обладавшим полнотой церковной власти. Важно подчеркнуть, что обсуждение на Всероссийском съезде представителей от монастырей вопроса об отмене права архиереев и настоятелей монастырей завещать своё личное имущество состоялось не в рамках определённой Св. синодом программы съезда, а по инициативе «снизу». Решения Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей поступили на рассмотрение в XI-й отдел Поместного собора – «О монастырях и монашествующих». Главной задачей этого отдела была выработка Положения об устройстве мужских и женских монастырей, о монастырском управлении и об учёном монашестве. В основу того документа и должны были лечь, помимо прочего, постановления названного всероссийского съезда. В состав XI-го соборного отдела входило 67 человек, из которых было 19 архиереев, 14 лиц в иных священных санах (из которых 12 монашествующих) и 34 мирянина. Отдел начал работать 31 августа 1917 г. Его председателем был избран архиепископ Тверской и Кашинский Серафим (Чичагов)57.

53 Всероссийский монашеский собор – предполагаемый Всероссийским съездом представителей от монастырей орган консолидации всех монашествующих, которому надлежало обсуждать насущные проблемы монашествующих и монастырей. Его предполагалось собирать в Свято-Троицкой Сергиевой лавре раз каждые три года. В состав этого Собора должны были входить епископы (по желанию), выборные представители от каждой епархии, настоятели или наместники лавр и известных монастырей и особо приглашённые лица. У Всероссийского монашеского собора планировалось назначать двух почётных председателей: «перво­иер­ арха Российской Церкви и Московского Архипастыря». Председателем съезда должен был являться председатель Всероссийского монашеского совета при Св. синоде. (См. подробнее: Там же. Л. 295об.–296, 348). 54 Там же. Л. 386. 55 Там же. Л. 308об.–309. 56 Там же. Л. 315об. 57 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 370. Л. 1, 198; Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 1. С. 136, Деяние 11. С. 151.

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С 13 сентября, со своего 3-го заседания XI-й отдел начал последовательно (по параграфам) рассматривать собрание постановлений Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей58. 15 ноября, на 19 заседании очередь дошла и до вопроса «О монастырском имуществе и хозяйстве»59. И в журнале заседания соборного отдела60 говорится: «IV. Рассматриваются следующие составленные Председателем на основании постановлений (курсив наш. – М.Б.) съезда представителей от монастырей положения о монастырском имуществе и хозяйстве: […]»61. Данная формулировка свидетельствует, что тексты рассматривавшихся в тот день отделом «постановлений» не были аутентичны соответствующему комплексу постановлений Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей. Подтверждает это и сопоставление материалов журналов заседаний названного монашеского съезда и XI-го отдела Поместного собора62. В самом деле: архиепископ Серафим на 19 заседании приводил постановления съезда не по порядку первоисточника (т. е. не по параграфам)63, а по своей нумерации, меняя порядок цитируемых постановлений и редактируя по своему усмотрению их формулировки. При этом он вообще не упомянул постановление Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей, значившееся как «§ 153». Соответственно, то постановление с ходатайством перед Поместным собором об отмене права архиереев и настоятелей монастырей завещать своё личное имущество XI-м соборным отделом «О монастырях и монашествующих» не было рассмотрено. Не упоминалось о нём и 28 ноября на соединённом заседании того же отдела с профильным подотделом «О монастырском хозяйстве» XVI-го соборного отдела «О церковном имуществе и хо18 октября 1917 г. составы членов соборных отделов были расширены. В XI-м отделе стало числиться 75 человек (Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 2. Деяние 26. С. 275). 58 Журналы заседаний соборного отдела «О монастырях и монашествующих» см.: ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 370. Л. 1–194. 59 В тот день присутствовали 24 из 67 членов отдела (ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 370. Л. 100, 106). 60 Журналы заседаний отделов велись согласно «Наказу делопроизводителям отделов Поместного собора». (Текст «Наказа» см., например: ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 370. Л. 64а–64б). В п. 10 того документа говорилось, что протокол составляется по каждому заседанию, что протокол «должен быть по возможности краток и представлять, главным образом, перечень постановлений Отдела». Там же указывалось, что протокол, помимо прочего, должен содержать «указание вопросов, обсуждавшихся на заседании» и вносившиеся предложения и поправки к основному тексту законопроектов. При этом в п. 12 указывалось, что протоколы каждого заседания отдела надлежало утверждать или на ближайшем заседании того же отдела, или же на следующим за ним. Более кратко порядок делопроизводства соборных отделов регламентировался в «Уставе» Поместного собора (гл. VII, п. 85) (Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 1. С. 44). 61 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 370. Л. 101. 62 Ср., с одной стороны, VIII-й раздел постановлений «Монастырское хозяйство» Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей (§§ 136–153): ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 372. Л. 306об.– 309. С другой – тот же комплекс постановлений (о монастырском имуществе и хозяйстве) из 22 пунктов в изложении архиепископа Тверского Серафима: Там же. Д. 370. Л. 101–104об. 63 Судя по содержанию журналов заседаний XI-го соборного отдела, до его предыдущего (18го) заседания рассмотрение постановлений Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей делалось, во-первых, по параграфам тех и, во-вторых, в подавляющем большинстве случаев (за единственным исключением, см.: Там же. Л. 80об.), в редакции названного съезда. Начиная же с 19-го заседания постановления съезда по параграфам не рассматривались.

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зяйстве»64. На том заседании рассматривались постановления о монастырском хозяйстве, принятые 15 ноября XI-м отделом «О монастырях и монашествующих»65. Вследствие «умолчания» в соборном отделе о постановлении Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей (§ 153), то не было доведено и до пленарного заседания Поместного собора. Таким образом, Серафим (Чичагов) вышеназванное постановление всероссийского съезда, «вменив ни во что», фактически «положил под сукно»66. Имел ли архиепископ Серафим полномочия, с позволения сказать, столь вольно обращаться с постановлениями Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей? В «Уставе» Поместного собора (например, в гл. VII «Отделы Собора»)67, а также в журналах заседаний XI-го отдела об этом ничего не сказано. Получал ли тверской архипастырь на свои действия соответствующую санкцию руководства Поместного собора или Св. синода? Нам это установить не удалось. По-видимому, двигавшие архиепископом Серафимом мотивы были обусловлены или его личными имущественно-финансовыми интересами, или, что вероятнее, интересами архиерейской корпорации в целом68. Ведь появление нормы церковного права, запре64 На состоявшемся 17 октября 1917 г. 12-м заседании XVI-го отдела было принято решение о сформировании десяти подотделов (ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 406. Л. 80–81об.). Восьмым из них был «О монастырском хозяйстве» (Там же. Л. 81об.). Задача этого подотдела была в разработке вопроса об упорядочении монастырского имущества и хозяйства в рамках создаваемого XVI-м отделом положения о приходском хозяйстве (Там же. Л. 80–81об., 84). На 13-м заседании XVI-го отдела Поместного собора «О церковном имуществе и хозяйстве», состоявшемся 24 октября 1917 г., архиепископ Тверской Серафим (Чичагов), являвшийся членом XVI-го отдела, поднял вопрос о целесообразности образования в том отделе подотдела «О монастырском хозяйстве». Однако после указания председателя XVI-го отдела – архиепископа Кишинёвского Анастасия (Грибановского), что «выработка положения об имуществе монастырском входит в прямую задачу Отдела о церковном имуществе и хозяйстве», предложение архиепископа Серафима было отклонено. (См.: ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 406. Л. 84, Д. 425. Л. 22.) 65 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 370. Л. 118–119. Кроме XI-го отдела «О монастырях и монашествующих» комплексы вопросов, так или иначе связанных с церковным имуществом, рассматривали и отделы Поместного собора «О правовом положении Православной Церкви в России» (VI-й), «О церковном имуществе и хозяйстве» (XVI-й), а также «О правовом и имущественном положении православного духовенства» (XVII-й). Их председателями были, соответственно, архиепископы Новгородский и Старорусский Арсений (Стадницкий), Кишинёвский и Хотинский Анастасий (Грибановский), епископ Пермский и Кунгурский Андроник (Никольский) (Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 1. С. 135–137). Однако в тех отделах не рассматривались ни резолюции Всероссийского съезда представителей от монастырей, ни вопросы, связанные с личным имуществом монашествующих. 66 Через три дня, с 22 ноября (с 21-го заседания) XI-й отдел перешёл к рассмотрению иных вопросов. 67 Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 1. С. 43–45. 68 Необходимо отметить, что в структуре Поместного собора имелся такой орган, как Совещание епископов, в который входили все архиереи – члены собора. Лица не епископского сана на заседания этого органа не допускались. Каждое постановление собора подлежало рассмотрению на Совещании епископов, где оно проверялось на «соответствие Слову Божию, догматам, канонам и преданию Церкви». Фактически, Совещание епископов могло наложить veto на любое постановление Поместного собора. Т. е. решающий голос в высшем органе цер-

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щающей духовным властям завещать кому-либо их личное имущество, напрямую ограничивало бы личные материальные интересы архиереев. Таким образом, «судьбы» выработанных в июле 1917 г. Предсоборным советом и Всероссийским съездом представителей от монастырей положений об отмене у монашествующих духовных властей права завещания оказались практически идентичны. В силу различных причин они не дошли до рассмотрения на Поместном соборе, и по прошествии времени оказались преданными забвению. Вместе с тем в декабре 1917 г. в РПЦ была фактически восстановлена, хотя и для одного-единственного иерарха, петровская норма 1722 г., ориентированная на монашеский обет нестяжания. 4 ноября 1917 г. Поместным собором было принято решение о восстановлении в Русской церкви патриаршества, упразднённого в 1721 г. царём Петром I. Не последнюю роль в принятии этого решения сыграли мечтательно-романтические настроения значительного числа соборян69. Приверженцами патриаршества считалось, как само собой разумеющееся, что российские патриархи будут людьми высокой духовной жизни, монахами-«нестяжателями». Полагалось, что если в период своего патриаршего служения те какое-то имущество и приобретут, но не передадут его никому, включая ближайших родственников. А всё их имущество по их смерти останется Святой Матери-Церкви. 5 ноября состоялось избрание в патриархи митрополита Московского и Коломенского Тихона (Беллавина). А 21 ноября была проведена его интронизация (настолование, или посаждение на патриарший престол)70. Хотя с 21 ноября 1917 г. Тихон и возглавил список «духовных властей», тем не менее с момента поставления его патриархом буква основных российских законов о нём, строго говоря, умалчивала. Ведь лица патриаршего сана, по причине отсутствия патриаршества, не назывались в перечне монашествующих духовных властей. (Напомним, что в те власти входили «митрополиты, архиепископы, епископы, архимандриты, игумены, строители, игуменьи и настоятельницы монастырей женских и ризничий Московского синодального дома»71.) Соответственно, патриарх Тихон оказался как бы в «правовом вакууме»: de facto возглавляя духовные власти, он с 21 ноября de jure перестал к ним относиться. ковной власти принадлежал архиереям. (См.: Священный собор Православной российской церкви. Деяния. М., 1918. Кн. 1. Вып. 1. С. 42–43; Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 1. С. 42–43.) И если вопрос о запрете архиереям завещать своё личное имущество и дошёл бы до рассмотрения пленарным заседанием Поместного собора, и если по тому вопросу даже было бы вынесло положительное определение (в смысле констатации запрета завещаний), то с большой степенью вероятности то соборное постановление могло было быть заблокировано «незаинтересованной» стороной – самими архиереями на Совещании епископов. 69 См. подробно: Андреева Л.А. Свержение монархии в 1917 году: крушение Трона и Алтаря // Общественные науки и современность. 2009. № 3. С. 90–99; Бабкин М.А. Священство и Царство … Указ. соч. С. 70, 113–114, 323, 478. 70 Деяния Священного Собора … 1994. Т. 3. Деяние 36. С. 105–111; То же. 1996. Т. 4. Деяние 47. С. 36–75. 71 СЗРИ. 1899. Т. IX. Ст. 406. С. 83.

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Впрочем, несмотря на парадоксальность данного положения, оно было, можно сказать, вполне естественно: ведь в то время не были очерчены полномочия Патриарха даже в области церковного управления. 22 ноября 1917 г., на следующий день после возведения на патриаршество Тихона (Беллавина), на своём 29-м заседании II-й отдел Поместного собора «О высшем церковном управлении» (известном также как «Высшее церковное управление»; председатель – епископ Астраханский и Енотаевский Митрофан (Краснопольский)) начал постатейно рассматривать проект положения «О правах и обязанностях патриарха Московского и всея России». Тот проект был выработал специальной комиссией отдела, результат работы которой представлял её участник – профессор Казанской духовной академии П.Д. Лапин. 23 ноября (на 30-м заседании отдела, в присутствии 66 из 260 из его членов) очередь дошла до рассмотрения вопроса об имуществе, остающимся по смерти патриарха. После небольших прений его текст соответствующего пункта был принят отделом без каких-либо изменений: «Единственным наследником имущества Патриарха после его кончины является Патриарший Престол»72 . Эта формулировка была оставлена и после того, как 8 декабря по докладу своего XXII-го («Редакционного») отдела Поместный собор принял окончательный текст определения «О правах и обязанностях патриарха Московского и всея России». Формулировка его 13-го пункта осталась. созданный ещё комиссией II-го соборного отдела: «Единственным наследником имущества Патриарха после его кончины является Патриарший Престол». Не стало ничего в том пункте менять и следующая инстанция – Совещание епископов Поместного собора73. Назвав «единственного наследника» патриаршего имущества, высший орган церковной власти тем самым дал однозначно отрицательный ответ на вопрос: имеет ли патриарх Московский и всея России право завещать по смерти своё личное имущество? Важно, что данное положение было принято в условиях отсутствия какого-либо давления со стороны государственной власти, а также в период непосредственной подготовки Учредительного Собрания – конституанты, которой надлежало «установить образ правления и новые основные законы Государства Российского»74. Таким образом, 8 декабря 1917 г. патриарх Тихон de jure был лишён права завещания своего личного имущества – того права, которое он имел со времени его вхождения в состав духовных властей, т. е. с 1892 г. В тот год Тихон с назначением на должность ректора Холмской духовной семинарии был возведён в сан архимандрита; с 1897 г. он – епископ.

72 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-3431. Оп. 1. Д. 220. Л. 435. 73 Там же. Д. 228. Л. 23, 24, 34, 35; Деяния Священного Собора … 1996. Т. 5. Деяние 63. С. 356– 358; Собрание определений и постановлений … Вып. 1. С. 6. Следует отметить, что в определениях того Поместного собора о наследовании личного имущества прочих архиереев и настоятелей монастырей ничего не говорилось. 74 Данная цитата – из «Акта об отказе великого князя Михаила Александровича от восприятия верховной власти» от 3 марта 1917 г., которым, в частности, легитимировалось идея созыва Учредительного собрания. (См.: ГАРФ. Ф. 601. Оп. 1. Д. 2101а. Л. 6, Д. 2104. Л. 4.)

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На фоне идущего в Русской церкви с 1917 г. по настоящее время процесса возрастания и абсолютизации власти московских патриархов прецедент лишения Поместным собором патриарха Московского и всея России Тихона права завещания имущества представляется уникальным. Он тем более уникален, если учесть, что Собор работал под председательством самого Тихона. Тем не менее екатерининская норма, разделившая монашествующих по праву завещания на «верхи» и «низы», Поместным собором 1917–1918 гг. отменена не была. Новые же реалии, в которых духовенство РПЦ оказалось после появления 20 января 1918 г. советского декрета «Об отделении церкви от государства и школы от церкви»75, отодвинули обсуждение вопроса о праве завещания монашествующими своего личного имущества на семь десятилетий. Собравшийся же в июне 1988 г. по случаю 1000-летия Крещения Руси Поместный собор РПЦ принял фактически противоположное по смыслу рассмотренным выше решениям церковных инстанций постановление. Оно касалось епископов. А именно, в принятом Собором «Уставе об управлении Русской Православной Церкви» было сказано (гл. VII, п. 22): «Личное имущество скончавшегося архиерея наследуется в соответствии с действующим государственным законом о наследстве»76. Это же положение значится и в новом, действующем с 2000 г. «Уставе Русской Православной Церкви» (гл. XV, п. 22)77. Т. о. с 1988 г. всё личное имущество архиереев (без какаих-либо оговорок, т. е. и движимое, и недвижимое) de jure стало переходить родственникам почивших78. В целом, обсуждавшийся в 1917 г. на Предсоборном совете, Всероссийском съезде представителей от монастырей и Поместном соборе вопрос об отмене у монашествующих духовных властей права завещания не привёл к выработке соответствующей церковно-правовой нормы. Однако наработки, сделанные названными церковными инстанциями, могут быть востребоваными в наши дни: в ходе выработки «Положения о монастырях и монашествующих»79, обсуждение проекта которого началось в РПЦ 30 мая 2012 г. 80.

75 Известия Центрального исполнительного комитета Советов крестьянских, рабочих и солдатских депутатов и Петроградского Совета рабочих и солдатских депутатов. Пг., 1918. № 16 (280). 21 января. С. 2; Прибавления к Церковным ведомостям. 1918. № 2. С. 98–99. 76 Устав об управлении Русской Православной Церкви. М., 1989. С. 17. 77 Устав Русской Православной Церкви. М., 2000. С. 33. 78 При этом в тех же Уставах РПЦ отсутствует пункт о наследовании личного имущества рядового монашеского духовенства и монахов без священного сана. 79 «Положение…» должно было появиться примерно четверть века назад, поскольку о нём, как о реально существующем, в настоящем времени говорилось ещё в Уставе РПЦ 1988 г. (гл. IX, п. 9), а также в ныне действующем с 2000 г. аналогичном Уставе (гл. XVII, п. 8). Более того, Архиерейский собор, 16 августа 2000 г. приняв новый Устав, «поручил» Священному синоду разработать «Положение о монастырях и монашествующих» (Устав Русской Православной Церкви. М., 2000. С. 61; Журнал Московской патриархии. 2000. № 10. С. 21; http://www. patriarchia.ru/db/text/133143.html ). 80 См., например, публикацию на официальном сайте РПЦ: http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/ 2255384.html

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“Like a Hen Who Gathers Her Chicks”: Female Leadership in Russian Orthodox Monasticism, 1700–1917 Marlyn L. Miller (Newburyport, Massachusetts) In late 1863, ten nuns and eight novices from the Vologda Convent of the Dormition submitted a complaint to the Holy Synod against their abbess (igumen’ ia), Smaragda.1 They alleged that “all her thoughts, all her desires strive to be like those of a worldly lady, for her domestic circumstances to have brilliance,” and that she expects the nuns and novices around her to “guess even the smallest of her desires and fulfill them in the most refined and perfect manner.” Because they were “almost all of the humblest background and have not received any kind of worldly education, but have come to the convent either as orphans or at the suggestion of our devout parents, and all for the most opportune saving of our souls,” they made frequent mistakes, for which Smaragda beat them severely, leaving them “in fear for each other.” In this and subsequent complaints, they and others accused Smaragda of neglecting the physical well-being of the convent (including failure to cultivate large patches of land, and dismantling ten cells for use as firewood), of abusing the sisters (both physically and mentally—by transferring them from their own to other cells as punishment), of sending them into the secular world to collect money (which she kept for her own use), and of leaving the convent open at night to receive male visitors (including Iuvenal, archimandrite of a neighboring monastery, and Khristofor, bishop of Vologda, with whom she was alleged to be having illicit relations).2 While this was an unusual and sensational case, it is useful as a negative example: this denunciation attacked the very bases of an abbess’s authority, which were financial probity, responsible management of the convent’s property, material care for the sisters, and most important, personal and exemplary spiritual and moral virtue. After a long and undoubtedly painful investigation, Smaragda and the bishop resigned; Archimandrite Iuvenal had earlier transferred to another position. Smaragda’s alleged malfeasance had stimulated the collaboration of the two bodies capable of limiting her authority: the central Church authorities and the local community of sisters. Her case suggests that within Russian Orthodox monasticism, sisters and hierarchs placed constraints upon the authority and au1 I translate igumen’ ia interchangeably as abbess or mother superior. Specialists may argue that one or both are inapplicable in an Orthodox context, but I find the alternatives—the use of the awkward “hegumenissa,” for example—to be unpalatable. Likewise, I at times use “convent” to render zhenskii monastyr’. Again, while it might not be an exact rendering, I put it forward as a functional equivalent. 2 Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (hereafter RGIA), f. 796, op. 145, d. 834, ll. 1–7ob., October 1863; ll. 8–11, November 1863; and ll. 178–90, June 1867.

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tonomous actions of mothers superior. And yet the exhaustive investigation, consuming almost four years and generating more than three hundred pages of documentation, and the eventual outcome (Smaragda’s pensioned retirement to another monastery) show that it was difficult to contest an abbess’s authority over her convent and sisters. Such authority placed abbesses in a unique position in Russian society. Although religious women rarely sought such power, and often expressed fears that they were unequal to a task that required such heavy responsibilities,3 and although the work of an abbess or the head of a women’s religious community was carried out by women with deep religious commitment and in an environment of pervasive spirituality, the fact remains that women from any social strata who reached the level of mother superior could wield a measure not only of spiritual leadership, but also of administrative and economic power that was rare for women of any estate but the nobility. While scholarship on female monasticism has gradually expanded in recent years, work on the importance of the figure of the mother superior for both Orthodox monastic life and the degree to which women in general enjoyed autonomy and authority in the Russian empire has thus far been nearly non-existent. This lacuna is particularly unfortunate due to the fact that scholarship does exist on similar questions, at various times and places, for Western female monasticism.4 Using archival records from individual dioceses and the empire at large, this article is an initial attempt to investigate the abbess’s role in female monastic communities and in the Orthodox Church. The mother superior’s role was not static, but rather changed with the attitudes and fortunes of Russian monasticism during the Imperial period. Under Peter and his heirs, monasticism was forced into a period of decline, as religious houses were reduced in number and asked to bear increased state burdens. Catherine’s secularization of monastic lands in 1764 further regulated and substantially reduced the number of monasteries, monks, and nuns in the empire. Consequently, these decades witnessed a substantial contraction of the autonomy of monastic heads: many monasteries began the century with large, landed estates populated by serfs, and ended it, if they existed at all, struggling to get by on small stipends. The nineteenth century, however, saw a flowering and expansion of Russian monasticism, energized by a reemphasis on hesychasm that began in the late eighteenth century, a growth in the tradition of starchestvo (elderhood), a flood of donations and the founding of new communities, and a turn toward communalization and increased philanthropy. As a result, new avenues were opened for female spiritual authority and leadership.5 3 See, for example, Taisiia of Leushino’s concerns on being called to lead a zhenskaia obshchina (women’s religious community) in Zapiski i pisma igumenii Taisii, nastoiatel’nitsy Leushinskogo monastyria (Moscow: Palomnik, 2000), 179–80. 4 See, for example, Jennifer Edwards, ‘Man Can Be Subject to Woman’: Female Monastic Authority in Fifteenth-Century Poitiers,” Gender & History 25, no. 1 (April 2013): 86–106; Sarah Mulhall Adelman, “Empowerment and Submission: The Political Culture of Catholic Women’s Religious Communities in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Women’s History 23, no. 3 (Fall 2011): 138–61. 5 For an overview of these changes, see I. K. Smolich, Russkoe Monashestvo, 988–1917 (Moscow, 1997), 257–359; P. N. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri i monashestvo v XIX i nachale XX veka (Moscow: Russkoe slovo, 1999); Scott Kenworthy, The Heart of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism, and Society after 1825 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). For female monasticism in particular, see William G. Wagner, “Paradoxes of Piety: The Nizhegorod Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross, 1807–1935,”

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At the same time, an increasingly democratizing trend in the social profile of abbesses offered more non-noble women opportunities for advancement in the monastic hierarchy.6 The office of abbess was not only the most important position in the administration of the convent, but also the highest position a woman could attain in either the spiritual or the administrative life of the Russian Orthodox Church. During the 1875 elevation of the nun Evgeniia to the office of abbess, after prayers and blessings, the archbishop of Vladimir invested her with the staff of office, and described the responsibilities it carried: By accepting this staff you also accept the right to rule and govern the body of sisters entrusted to you, your flock. Of course, you know what Christian rule means. … In accepting this staff you receive the right to possess greater liberty and independence than others. But of course you know that Christian liberty consists precisely of self-sacrifice and voluntary subjugation of the self to the rule of the law of Christ. … In accepting this staff you receive the right, as well, to use the considerable possessions of the convent to satisfy your life needs. But of course you know that your present position is one of a compassionate mother among her children who often forgets about herself and her own needs. … Accept then, this staff, and use it for your own salvation and that of your subordinates [dlia spaseniia sebia i svoikh podchinennykh]. … Our Savior Jesus Christ. … will fortify your strength in your service, with His all-powerful grace.7 The office of abbess clearly carried heavy responsibilities and considerable expectations, but also offered, in different periods, spheres of action and opportunities for financial, spiritual, or personal enrichment that remained unavailable to the vast majority of women in the Russian empire. The social profile of abbesses, like that of the sisters in her care, saw a significant democratization over the course of the nineteenth century, but abbesses, unlike other women religious, required not only the highest spiritual commitment, but also cer-

in Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars, ed. Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003): 211–38, and “The Transformation of Female Orthodox Monasticism in Nizhnii Novgorod Diocese, 1764–1929, in Comparative Perspective,” The Journal of Modern History 78, no. 4 (December 2006): 793–845. See also Marlyn Miller, “Under the Protection of the Virgin: The Feminization of Monasticism in Imperial Russia, 1700– 1923” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2009); Olga Bukova, Zhenskie obiteli prepodobnogo Serafima Sarovskogo: Istoriia desiati nizhegorodskikh zhenskikh monastyrei (Nizhnii Novgorod: Knigi, 2003); and E. B. Emchenko, “Zhenskie monastyri v Rossii,” in Monashestvo i monastyri v Rossii XI–XX veka: Istoricheskie ocherki, ed. N. V. Sinitsyna (Moscow: Nauka, 2002). For more on nineteenth-century attempts to transform idiorrythmic monasteries into communal (cenobitic) ones, see Brenda Meehan-Waters, “Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) and the Reform of Russian Women’s Monastic Communities,” Russian Review 50, no. 3 (July 1991): 310–23. 6 This democratizing trend was evident throughout monasticism, both male and female, during the nineteenth century. See Miller, “Under the Protection,” and Scott Kenworthy, “The Revival of Monasticism in Modern Russia: The Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1825–1921” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2002). 7 Vladimirskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti, no. 16 (15 August 1875), 781–84.

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tain skills, abilities, and talents. The acquisition of these skills allowed women of all classes to achieve respect, prominence, and a significant amount of power. The profile of mothers superior changed markedly over the course of the Synodal period (1721–1917). Evidence suggests that in the eighteenth century, most abbesses came from the nobility, although talented women of any class had some access to positions within the convent hierarchy.8 By the mid-nineteenth century, the social profile of abbesses had begun to change, mainly through an increase in the semi-privileged clerical and urban estates. In the middle of the century, about a third of mothers superior continued to hail from the nobility, but there was significant growth in the proportion of women from the towns and the clerical estate.9 Although data for the second half of the nineteenth century are incomplete, relatively full data do exist for ten dioceses (mostly in outlying areas) in 1894. These numbers reveal a “democratizing” change in social profile as women of the nobility and the peasantry held the position of abbess in equal measure (22 % of the total each).10 By 1914, the social profile of mothers superior had changed profoundly. Data reported by thirty-seven dioceses showed that only 7 percent were of noble origin, slightly more came from civil-service families, 13 percent came from the clerical estate, and 26 percent from the urban classes. However, the most overwhelming gain belonged to the peasant class, whose women headed 40 percent of convents or religious communities. One might be tempted to attribute the shift to the growth in semi-official women’s communities (zhenskie obshchiny), but in fact peasant women headed only sixteen of these communities.11 Nor does there appear to be a specific geographic dynamic: although the growth of female mo 8 While central data are not available for the eighteenth century, it is likely that the typical mother superior resembled her sisters of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when most mothers superior came from the noble class. In 1823, for example, of forty-eight abbesses in fourteen dioceses (the only abbesses with their estate recorded), twenty-three (48 %) were from the nobility, and another seven from daughters of high-ranking military and civil servants. The rest consisted of women of the priestly or merchant class (six each), as well as two field serfs and two house serfs. RGIA, f. 796, op. 105, d. 1339, ll. 24ob.–688, 1824. 9 Of the seventy-four mothers superior listed for thirty-two dioceses in 1847, twenty-seven (36 %) were classed as nobility, with an additional fourteen from the ranks of state and military service. Twelve daughters of the clerical estate (15 %) and eight of the merchant class were joined by several of miscellaneous background. As before, only a few came from the lower social orders, including three peasants and two from the relatively free group of state peasants called “single homesteaders.” RGIA, f. 796, op. 175, d. 3414, ll. 1–83, 1894. 10 Of the forty-one women included in this sample, nine (22 %) hailed from the nobility, seven from the ranks of military and civil servants, ten (25 %) were from urban families, four from clerical families, and nine (another 22 %) from peasant families. Because of the thinness of the data, these results would be of limited value, were it not for their indication of trends confirmed by the nearly comprehensive data available for the last years of the empire. RGIA, f. 796, op. 175, d. 3414, ll. 1–83, 1894. 11 RGIA, f. 796, op. 195, otd. 1 st. 5, d. 5, ll. 2ob.–267ob., 1914. Zhenskie obshchiny were women’s religious communities founded during the nineteenth century by groups of pious women, often with the help of male or female spiritual elders (startsy). Over time, many of them became monasteries. For more on the development of zhenskie obshchiny, see Brenda Meehan-Waters, “Popular Piety, Local Initiative, and the Founding of Women’s Religious Communities in Russia,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 25 (1986): 117–42.

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nastic communities in outlying dioceses does account in large measure for the increase in peasant women, central Russian dioceses saw significant numbers of peasant abbesses toward the end of the imperial period as well. It seems more likely that the key factors in the growth of abbesses from the peasant estate were attractive alternatives for privileged women (in the emerging new professions) and the enhanced qualification of lower-class women (with the growth of literacy and female education), as well as their increasing numbers in the monastic estate overall. Information from Vladimir diocese in the nineteenth century shows that democratization was also at work in older, more established dioceses. Records from 1804 show women of various backgrounds, including nobles, priests’ daughters, townspeople, and peasants, serving as abbesses. Toward the middle of the century, clerical daughters would be in the majority, while by 1912, nearly half of all mothers superior in Vladimir diocese would be drawn from the peasantry, followed by women of the clerical estate and then townswomen.12 Although this peasantization can partly be accounted for by peasant women heading obshchiny—for example three of the six peasant women in 1903 headed this type of community—they also administered more traditional monasteries as well. Most abbesses’ careers followed a distinct path: they typically engaged in the types of service during their novitiate that required higher levels of both literacy and responsibility. They served as choristers or assisted in the sacristy, attended and cared for the graves of saints, read aloud the monastic rule or holy writings, taught in convent schools for girls, assisted the abbess in her cell, or possessed special skills that enabled them to embroider ecclesiastical vestments in fragile gold and silver thread.13 Some women, especially in the latter part of the period, also engaged in weaving, icon painting, baking of consecrated bread, candle-making, or the study of more elevated subjects, such as practical medicine and Latin. Administrative experience was another common trait: once they had been tonsured,14 they worked closely with the mother superior in positions such as convent treasurer (kaz­nacheia), assistant treasurer, or superintendent (blagochinnaia), whose task was to help oversee the spiritual and moral health of the sisters. The convent heads, virtually without exception, had some education and vocational training. Given their administrative responsibilities, literacy was nearly universal. The admittedly incomplete records indicate no case of illiteracy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the data from 1914 show only two illiterate mothers superior (a source of Synodal displeasure) among the thirty-seven dioceses surveyed. Most women, whether peasant or noble, were educated “in their parents’ home,” although examples of women educated in the new schools for noble girls after the end of the eighteenth century continued to rise, 12 These numbers tally with William Wagner’s for Nizhnii Novgorod diocese: “Transformation of Female Orthodox Monasticism,” 813 and passim. 13 On the importance of embroidery as a skill, see Christine Ruane, The Empire’s New Clothes: A History of the Russian Fashion Industry, 1700–1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). 14 The period of the novitiate could be quite long. In Vladimir diocese, over the course of the nineteenth century, it ranged from an average of 16.47 to 20.55 years. In the Convent of the Intercession in Suzdal’, ­­ during the same period, it lasted an average of between 13.34 and 16.05 years. See Miller, “Under the Protection,” 137–38.

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and toward the turn of the twentieth, the statistics record increasing evidence of education in village, city, or monastery schools. The career of one noblewoman is fairly typical of the abbesses of the late nineteenth century. Sister Ruffina (b. 1826), who had been educated at home, was tonsured at thirty-five in Nizhnii Novgorod Exaltation of the Holy Cross Convent, and occupied herself with needlework under the leadership of the older nuns. At forty-seven she was appointed supervisor of a monastery school for girls of the clerical estate, but soon thereafter the bishop chose her to head a women’s community and transferred her to Perm. At aged fifty-eight, when the community became a convent, she was appointed its mother superior. She received numerous honors, including the blessing of the Holy Synod, as well as a gold cross for her role in establishing a church-parish school in her monastery. She later received the blessing of the diocesan authorities and the Holy Synod for “particular labors in the governance of the convent” and her “pious monastic life.”15 One thing that set the mother superior apart from the women in her care was her “right …to use the considerable possessions of the convent to satisfy [her] life needs.” Since the financial health of convents varied widely, depending on period and location, her situation might actually be dire, although in all cases it was far better than those in her flock. Very little evidence remains of the financial position of mothers superior in the period before 1764, but we can assume that it depended largely on the wealth of the convent she administered. At the Convent of the Intercession in Suzdal’ in the early 1760s, for example, she received the same yearly stipend as her nuns—five rubles forty kopeks and five chetverti (approximately 30 bushels) of grain. It is likely, however, that the convent provided her with other sources of income: she certainly had access to provisions and materials from the convent’s lands and properties, and in some cases, particular rights, such as a monopoly on the produce of a particular fish pond.16 After Catherine’s secularization of monasteries in 1764, mothers superior received an annual legislated sum. In all cases this sum far exceeded that of the nuns in their care, although it was usually half what a male superior (either archimandrite or hegumen) received. For example, the table of organization for 1839 typically awarded the abbess of a first-class convent (with fifty to one hundred nuns) three hundred rubles a year, with an additional hundred “for her table.” By contrast, a nun received twenty rubles, a treasurer fifty. For a second- or third-class convent, a mother superior earned between one hundred and 160 rubles a year, with no additional allowance. While this amount was a significant improvement on the nuns’ income, the abbess had a great many more expenses, including the support of inhabitants in her larger cell, as well as substantial entertaining in the convent’s interests. In general, the stipendiary support was woefully inadequate in providing for the needs of monastic institutions, as evidenced by the deterioration of convent buildings and frequent complaints about privation in the early nineteenth century. For the abbesses of second- and third-class convents, it is unlikely that the remunerations provided a very good living. Unlike the common sisters, mothers superior could, however, 15 RGIA, f. 796, op. 175, d. 3414, ll. 123ob.–129. 16 Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Vladimirskoi Oblasti (hereafter GAVO), f. 560, op. 1, d. 264, ll. 1–3ob., 26 January 1761.

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expect a pension when they became too sick or aged to carry out their duties. This stipend was legislated by the Commission on Church Lands during secularization in 1764. Abbess Marfa of the Convent of the Intercession, for example, was allocated twenty-five rubles a year for life upon her retirement in 1775. In 1845, Smaragda of the Vladimir Dormition Convent was drawing a pension of one hundred rubles a year, although it is not known whether pensions continued to increase in the nineteenth century.17 One of the multiple sources of authority that the abbess of a well-to-do monastery might command was economic power—not surprisingly, this source of authority was much stronger in the period before 1764, when abbesses of communities such as the Convent of the Intercession headed vast estates. More important in the period after secularization was a mother superior’s spiritual authority, whether within the convent in relationship to her nuns, or through charitable acts in the world at large. For most of the eighteenth century, the mother superior of a large, landed convent, such as the Convent of the Intercession in Suzdal’, did not act alone, but had several sisters who assisted her. These included her deputy (namestnitsa), treasurer (kaznacheia), and a committee of elder nuns, known as council sisters (sobornye monakhini). She also commanded a staff of lay employees to assist in managing the convent’s properties; these included the striapchii18 and a large group of clerks and stewards to collect peasant dues and satisfy various obligations due the secular state (e.g., supplying horses, recruits, taxes, and sundry levies).19 Working with seventeenth-century sources, Marie Thomas has previously asserted that the chief female administrators, namely the abbess, namestnitsa, and treasurer, were not involved in estate management, that they dealt only with internal convent affairs, and that the abbess, in particular, acted instead in the role of “publicist” for the convent. 20 The decision by the Council of 1681 not to allow nuns to participate in the management of their estates seems to support this contention, but documentary evidence attests to the fact that the female hierarchy did influence and sometimes intervene in estate management before 1764. While publicity, in the sense of promoting the interests of the convent in the outside world, was an important aspect of the mother superior’s duties, since in order to flourish monasteries required patrons and other supporters, it was clearly not the only one. The abbess did have to appease parties ranging from the local priests to the provincial governor with her hospitality. Not only the abbess, but also the namestnitsa and treasurer opened their purses and their cells, typically on holidays, to provide wine or beer, and sometimes feasts of fish or offerings of money, for local authority figures, as well as for monks and priests from neighboring monasteries and parishes. On Easter Day in 1744, for example, the abbess of the Intercession Convent offered one ruble and the namestnitsa fifty kopeks to visitors to their cells from “their priest and brothers and those of the monasteries of the 17 GAVO, f. 556, op. 2, d. 222, l. 5, 23 December 1775; f. 556, op. 107, d. 389, ll. 309–325ob., 1845. 18 See Marie A. Thomas, “Managerial Roles in the Suzdal’skii Pokrovskii Convent during the Seventeenth Century,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 7, nos. 1–2 (1980), 92–112. 19 For example, in 1757 this convent supported not only nuns, but also fourteen commissioned and eight noncommissioned officers, twenty-four corporals, three hussars, and twenty-three regulars, as well as five female criminals and nine raskol’nitsy (female schismatics). 20 Thomas, “Managerial Roles,” 92–112.

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city of Suzdal’, and priests and deacons of parish churches.”21 The payment of bribes to local and central government personnel was also a key aspect of an abbess’s duties and those of the striapchii, as was meeting with potential donors. But it is equally clear that female convent administrators were fully aware of the progress of the estate, affirmed management decisions, and heard and responded to complaints. The Synod exhorted mothers superior to “administer both the monastery and estate by pious rules,” including secular matters such as the treasury and crops. They were also enjoined to “oversee monastery servants and estate peasants for the improvement of those things relating to monastery affairs.”22 Indeed, abbesses had to pass judgment on sundry secular matters involving monastery peasants, such as unfair collection of recruits, excessive amounts of quitrent (obrok), and abuses perpetrated by the monastery’s administrative personnel.23 Often in consort with the council sisters, they heard reports about quantities of grain collected, reviewed written instructions to monastery servants, and confirmed lay servitors of the monastery in their positions. 24 Additionally, of course, all requests from either the state or ecclesiastical hierarchy were directed toward the mother superior, from orders from the Provincial Chancellery to flog a convent serf for “utmost drunkenness,” to proposals to include their monastery in an upcoming icon procession.25 Abbesses also made arrangements for borrowing and lending serfs to other estates for particular projects. 26 While professionals attended to the day-to-day running of the estate, the convent administration was cognizant of and influential in estate affairs, much as any eighteenth-century landowner with a large estate governed mostly by professional managers might have been. After a number of lean years following Catherine’s secularization, the financial position of convents generally and of mothers superior in particular improved markedly with the flood of private donations beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although abbesses, as persons who had taken monastic vows, could not own land, they could acquire it in the monastery’s name. Donations of land from philanthropists of all classes increased substantially in the second half of the century, with abbesses acting as the legal representatives of the convents in their care.27 In addition, mothers superior signed contracts for rentals of the convents’ property, and for the acquisition of new rental properties, particularly buildings.28 The positive changes in the convent’s economic position certainly enhanced a mother superior’s financial authority, but more importantly it allowed her to expand her spiritual authority through the exercise of charity. Isolde Thyrêt argues in the case of Muscovite women that Orthodoxy maintained a gender-specific spirituality, which for women was 21 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 646, l. 70, 21 March 1744. 22 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 662, l. 1–1ob. 23 Ibid., d. 393, ll. 58–59, 1729. 24 Ibid., d. 391, ll. 9, 31–32; d. 647, l. 54. 25 Ibid., d. 647, l. 25, 1744; d. 646, l. 30, 1744. 26 Ibid., d. 644, ll. 5–7ob., 15 October 1751. 27 GAVO, f. 556, op. 1, d. 3384, ll. 2, 23–24ob., 13 December 1890; RGIA, f. 796, op. 85, d. 6167, ll. 7–8; op. 155, d. 139, l. 1, 7 August 1874. 28 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1783, ll. 7–8ob., 6 June 1824.

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“characterized by a commitment to service and charity”—a “piety of action.”29 Although charity of various types must have been an important expression of piety in eighteenth-century religious houses as well, little specific evidence remains. In the late nineteenth century, with the renewal of financial solvency, charity again became the focus of abbesses’ activity: Melitina, mother superior of the Intercession Convent in Suzdal’, for example, revealed that she had “always had the desire and intention to offer help” to the sick in her care “with the construction of a special sick ward.” She finally achieved her goal in 1904.30 The late nineteenth century saw an overwhelming growth in these sorts of enterprises: convent hospitals, some of which served the public; internal almshouses for the aged and infirm; general refectories for the sisters; and external almshouses for visitors and pilgrims. These institutions, often organized, founded, and led by abbesses, fulfilled the late-nineteenth century Orthodox mission of expanding charity and education. Mothers superior also used their financial and spiritual authority to engage in frequent acts of personal charity. They ranged from the mother superior who contributed 700 rubles of her own money to support the monastery’s mill to the countless others who contributed time and money to produce vestments for churches or support societies such as the Red Cross or the Orthodox Missionary Society.31 The late nineteenth century, with its expanding levels of education and mushrooming print culture, also offered mothers superior the chance to exercise more widespread spiritual influence by writing and publishing saints’ lives or, in some cases, their own spiritual autobiographies. While these publications tended to be both didactic and formulaic, in their very creation they nevertheless designated their authors as spiritual “experts,” a rare role for religious women.32 An abbess’s spiritual authority was most evident in the relationships she had with her nuns and novices, however. Mothers superior commonly offered spiritual advice, as was the case when a novice came to the abbess of the Intercession in tears to repent of her sins.33 They also watched over the spiritual and moral lives of the sisters, and acted as a spiritual model. A report from Arkadii, bishop of Perm, in 1848, expressed a mother superior’s guiding roles. She should, of course, choose a treasurer and superintendent to oversee the finances and maintain good order, but she herself should keep watch over her sisters’ lessons and morals. She should choose elders for each sister to instruct them appropriately in cleanliness and order, and to “correct their evil propensities privately in the spirit of gentle-

29 Isolde Thyrêt, “Women and the Orthodox Faith in Muscovite Russia,” in Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars, ed. Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 166. 30 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 4389, l. 1, 3 January 1904. 31 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1843, l. 24, 7 May 1884. 32 See, for example, Abbess Melitina, Blagovernaia velikaia kniaginia Solomoniia (Saburova) vo inochestve Sofiia (Kiev, 1905); Monakhinia Taisiia, Russkoe zhenskoe monashchestvo XVIII–XX vv. (Moscow: Izd. Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry, 1992); Monakhinia Taisiia, Zapiski igumenii Taisii, nastoiatel’nitsy pervoklassnogo Leushinskogo zhenskogo monastyria (1916; repr., Moscow: Novyi Khronograf, 1994). 33 RGIA, f. 796, op. 155, d. 656, ll. 1–2, 4 November 1875.

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ness.”34 The abbess was ultimately responsible for her nuns’ spiritual life, particularly their attendance at prayer and their observance of the monastic rule. Critically important in this regard was the spiritual example that the abbess herself set. A mother superior from Poltava, for example, was awarded a gold cross in 1844 for her “vigilance over the sisters …and particularly strict exemplary integrity,” which transformed the convent into a place of good morals and mutual love and agreement. As a result of these efforts, she “enjoy[ed] in full measure from everyone the general and perfect respect which befits her.”35 An 1874 eulogy for Maximilla of the Pereslavl’ Fedorov Convent suggests not only the worldly good that a mother superior might do, but also the spiritual example that she set for her sisters. Her life was a continuous righteous feat…. When she entered the governance of this convent, she found it poor and unsettled; even God’s temples lacked comforts for lengthy prayer. In her time, under her unceasing care and oversight, this abode fully renewed itself, and the sacred temples became orderly and decorous. Through her care and oversight a hospital for the poor and ailing was opened, and charitable shelters for many seeking a roof. The time of her oversight, one can say without exaggeration, was a time of thriving for the convent in all respects. Shall we speak of her righteous feats of prayer? These are matters of the soul and conscience, like treasure hidden in a sacred place …but even that small part that we know resembles a beautiful tree, blossoming with Christian charity. Her fasting, in all its severity, aroused righteous surprise…. And her prayer, her daily presence in God’s temple … provided the daily nourishment without which she could not subsist.36 The emphasis on fasting and prayer in this eulogy suggests that while all mothers superior were ultimately responsible for setting a spiritual example in the convent, this could take different forms. Some women, while maintaining a robust spiritual practice, were more comfortable concentrating on administration or fundraising; others were particularly gifted spiritual advisors. Women such as Mariia Protas’eva or Evdokiia Tiutcheva, both of whom led monastic communities, might achieve the identity of staritsa (elder), or acknowledged spiritual director, and attain an “authority of holiness” that spread beyond the walls of their religious community.37 While it was her spiritual example that contributed to her authority within the convent, her office also commanded the respect of her nuns and the world at large. Outstanding 34 RGIA, f. 796, op. 129, d. 541, ll. 1ob.–3, 1848. 35 Ibid., d. 1832, ll. 1–116, 1847. 36 Vladimirskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti, no. 16 (5 August 1874), 797–800. 37 On Mariia Protas’eva and starchestvo (elderhood) in general, see Irina Paert’s Spiritual Elders: Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010). On Evdokiia Tiutcheva, see Brenda Meehan-Waters, “The Authority of Holiness: Women Ascetics and Spiritual Elders in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” in Church, Nation, and State in Russia and Ukraine, ed. Geoffrey Hosking (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991): 43–46. For more on charismatic women, see also her Holy Women of Russia: The Lives of Five Orthodox Women Offer Spiritual Guidance for Today (San Francisco: Harper, 1993).

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abbesses frequently earned marks of respect and social esteem from the church and court hierarchy, religious brotherhoods, or local institutions for achievements that might include instituting a school, renewing an abandoned monastery, or performing their duties zealously. In such instances, they might receive the personal blessing of the bishop or Synod, crosses, sometimes of gold or with decoration, and bibles. These were not only affirmation and appreciation of their efforts, but visible marks of status. That this status demanded respect is tellingly revealed in a case from Vladimir diocese in 1805. Abbess Aleksandra of the Dormition Convent in Aleksandrov was returning from the monastery mill when a former customs secretary began to swear at her “without any provocation.” The abbess brought the case to court, where she complained of an affront to her dignity (san). The secretary was ultimately convicted of causing her a “personal affront,” and for satisfaction “against the dishonor which she received,” she was awarded a yearly stipend.38 The abbess of a convent, then, wielded authority gained from multiple sources. One source of this authority was financial: her ability to control and direct the sometimes vast resources of the convent. This form of authority should be, and in the nineteenth century was increasingly, directed toward spiritual ends, and abbesses combined their financial and spiritual authority in the physical and spiritual renewal of convents, and in the extension of educational and charitable activities. In relation to their nuns and novices, mothers superior gained and enhanced their authority by setting an example of spiritual righteousness, which increased their claim to obedience. In the world at large, the position of mother superior, particularly when her duties were admirably performed, demanded respect as well. However, the authority of abbesses was not uncontested, but was constrained both by the bishop and consistory above, and by the sisters below. In the former case, however, the constraints were much more significant. Prior to the eighteenth century, interference by the bishop in convent affairs was minimal. This was partially due to the fact that notable monasteries in earlier centuries were typically under the protection of the tsar or one or another prince, which meant that the diocesan bishop had little or no say in matters relating to these institutions. In places where bishops were nominally in control, oversight was slight, since “many bishops, residing in Moscow, did not personally govern the diocese; even those who did reside in the diocese took little interest in routine administration, preferring spiritual duties to dry paperwork.”39 In fact most surviving records from this period suggest that the bishop interfered only in the appointment of new administrators or cases of gross violations of monastic order. From the beginning of the Synodal period, however, abbesses were increasingly answerable to local bishops or metropolitans, and this remained true through the end of the empire. In most ways, however, the hierarchy of bishop and consistory interfered little in the life of the convent until after Catherine’s secularization. In the early years of the Synodal period, peasants addressed their petitions to the “lady” of the estate, and convents continued to issue decrees in their own names, establishing themselves as autonomous entities. This self-sufficiency changed as the century progressed and 38 GAVO, f. 556, op. 1, d. 1041, l. 14–14ob., 30 May 1805. 39 Gregory L. Freeze, The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 49.

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episcopal and consistorial oversight began to penetrate more deeply. In the early eighteenth century the bishop and consistory did, generally, handle investigations, such as those involving runaway nuns, suicides, or illegitimate births, or disciplinary measures, such as the transfer of a mother superior to another convent “for several of her faults.” Likewise, the bishop and his diocesan officials confirmed new abbesses, and in cases where no suitable sister was available within the convent, searched elsewhere for a candidate.40 They also acted as intermediaries in the placement of criminals, the insane, penitents, and schismatics in local convents.41 Occasionally they even supported convents against the exactions of the state, as when Margarita, head of a hermitage in Pereslavl’, protested a 1744 central order to build a wooden house in St. Petersburg, which her community could not afford.42 Over time, episcopal and consistorial oversight increased, limiting abbesses’ freedom. A decree of the Synod in 1774 castigated “monastery heads …[for] absenting themselves …even to distant places for a long period,” because they left their brothers and sisters without guidance. Henceforth, superiors were not allowed to leave without their bishop’s permission.43 Abbesses required authorization of the bishop and consistory to remove troublesome nuns, to obtain passports for nuns or superiors traveling “to purchase monastery necessities,” to initiate tonsures, and to approve the selection of convent officers.44 Additionally, bishops and consistories acted as a clearing-house for complaints in complex convent relationships, intervening in quarrels between superiors and sisters, confirming priests and deacons, and investigating allegations of wrongdoing, as in the case of Abbess Smaragda, which opened this essay. Oversight increased partially thanks to the institution of a new diocesan official in 1797, the monastery superintendent (blagochinnyi). While the official title was new, in many cases it simply confirmed and extended a relationship of long-standing. Superintendents were typically chosen from the archimandrites or abbots of nearby monasteries, and in the case of the Convent of the Intercession in Suzdal’, the new superintendent was the abbot of neighboring Spaso-Evfimiev monastery. This abbot had already, throughout the eighteenth century, served the convent by assisting with the tonsuring of nuns, witnessing elections, and certifying the completeness of vestry property. The formal institution of this position, however, meant that superintendents were required to submit annual reports on the condition of monasteries under their supervision, which provided bishop and consistory with further information and a greater capacity to control events at monasteries. Although a Synodal decree from 1778, in keeping with the new spirit of oversight, had asserted that “for the supervision of each kind of order and decency, skillful and judicious nuns should without fail be appointed in female monasteries,” some mothers superior were, in fact, not up to the task of administering their flock, and it fell to the diocesan authorities 40 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 398, l. 28, 26 February 1757; l. 37, 4 November 1755; d. 482, l. 1, 21 February 1734; f. 560, op. 1, d. 10, l. 1, 4 January 1748. 41 RGIA, f. 796, op. 25, d. 304, ll. 7–9, 4 June 1747; op. 16, d. 241, ll. 1–5, 3 September–22 October 1735; op. 16, d. 157, l. 1–1ob., 29 April 1735. 42 RGIA, f. 796, op. 25, d. 110, l. 1, 1 March 1744. 43 RGIA, f. 796, op. 55, d. 354, l. 1, 20 August 1774. 44 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1269, ll. 1, 33, 13 February 1792.

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to admonish them.45 Depending on the nature of their offence, they could face censure or removal, although in fact, abbesses were rarely removed from office. Smaragda, from the Convent of the Dormition in Vologda, who had been accused of improper relations with the bishop and a local archimandrite, as well as cruel treatment of the sisters, chose to retire rather than face the ensuing humiliation. Others likely chose the same path.46 Censure or removal typically resulted from mistreatment of nuns or questionable financial practices. Porfiria from the Convent of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Viatka retained her post, although between 1814 and 1823 she had been cited for shoving her treasurer in church, removing a sexton from his post for questionable reasons, and retaining the allowances of some of her nuns and novices, as well as being under investigation for failing to deposit collected sums. Her bishop described her as “poorly suited” to her post “due to obstinacy and a quarrelsome character.”47 Other abbesses were accused of allowing nuns to leave the convent without the permission of diocesan authorities, offending nuns and novices with unfair reports (including falsely accusing one nun of visiting eating houses in the city), or calling her deacon a “mutineer” (buntovshchik) and causing his daughter offense with defamatory and indecent words. One mother superior was eventually removed from her post because she, “by her own capriciousness and unpeaceableness in her treatment of the sisters often reduced them to despondency and deprived them of the means of sustenance.”48 In order to acquire and maintain her position, a mother superior was also answerable to the sisters of the convent that she managed. Abundant documentation attests that in the eighteenth century, in most cases the personnel for the position of abbess (and the higher positions in the convent hierarchy) were chosen by unanimous vote in a meeting of the entire body of convent sisters, witnessed by priests, hieromonks, or sometimes non-clerical males. Candidates from within the monastery were preferred, but if none were available, the sisters would ask the bishop to find someone from outside.49 Attributes such as a good or honest character and an ability to govern are frequently cited in requests to the bishop for their appointment.50 If the bishop chose a candidate whom the sisters did not find suitable, they could refuse to accept her, as in the case of Bishop Ioakim’s choice of former abbess Iraida as namestnitsa of the Intercession Convent in 1730. During her time as abbess, not only had she demanded bribes of the sisters, refused to hand out their stipends, sworn at them, failed to attend church services, and allegedly birthed an out-of-wedlock child on one of her numerous trips to the villages, but the sisters also viewed her authority as illegitimate: she had been approved as cellaress, then as abbess, without a vote of the sisters. In this instance, the monastery servitors joined in the complaints, offering personal testimony about the long

45 T. Barsov, Sbornik deistvuiushchikh i rukovodstvennykh tserkovnykh i tserkovno-grazhdanskikh postanovlenii po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia (St. Petersburg, 1885), 166. 46 RGIA, f. 796, op. 145, d. 834, ll. 176–77ob., 3 April 1867; ll. 178–90, 26 July 1867. 47 Ibid., op. 106, d. 1339, ll. 45ob.–688, 1824. 48 Ibid., op. 129, d. 1832, ll. 1–116, 1847. 49 GAVO, f. 560, op. 2, d. 222, l. 4–4ob., 20 November 1775. 50 For example, see GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1278, ll. 6–7, 19 May 1769.

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list of bribes she had demanded.51 While in the nineteenth century, after secularization, abbesses were typically appointed by bishops or metropolitans, this did not entirely remove the sisters’ agency: they could still complain about ill-treatment, as in the case of Smaragda, above, and expect to be heard by the Church hierarchy.52 The question of authority relationships between clerical men and women of the convent hierarchy is a difficult one to resolve with certainty. Certainly, an abbess’s spiritual obedience to the bishop was undisputable, while her relationship to consistory members was more administrative in nature. In the case of the Convent of the Intercession in Suzdal’, the archimandrite of the neighboring Spaso-Evfimiev monastery, even before his official appointment as superintendent of the convent in 1797, had always served as an advisor of sorts for the population of the convent. He had acted as the “spiritual father” of the sisters, although the specifics of their relationships are not known. The relationship between the male population of priests and the female members of the community is even more obscure. Priests who served the convent churches hailed from the so-called white clergy. In 1764, for example, one archpriest, four priests, two deacons, and six sextons (ponomar’) carried out liturgical functions for the four churches of the Intercession convent. While the appointment of these men ultimately rested on the bishop’s approval, the process began with a petition by the cleric himself to be appointed to a vacant place. Whether or not the convent’s hierarchy had any say in the matter is unknown. Once a priest was appointed, however, the mother superior had a fair amount of influence on the course of his duties. For one thing, the convent’s hierarchy controlled the priest’s salary, and in cases where this was not forthcoming, satisfaction had to be obtained from the bishop or Synod. An abbess could also alter clerical duties. For example, when the long-standing tradition of having nuns and novices carry out church reading, singing, bell-ringing, and the heating of stoves in the churches of the Convent of the Intercession in Suzdal’ was abrogated due to a lack of novices, the monastery’s clergy were forced to take up these duties until more sisters became available in the 1770s. In cases of disputes, however, such as the division of the proceedings from church collections, the priests turned to the bishop. In some instances, the priests, who typically served for very long terms, developed close relationships with the abbesses. In 1803, for example, Father Aleksandr petitioned his “benefactress” Abbess Elisaveta, whom he recognized as though she were his own mother (rodnoi mat’), requesting financial help. Despite the hyperbolic nature of his terms of address, it is clear that his relationship with her was close.53 Male monastic clergy were also part of the convent community. It appears that their presence was directly requested by the abbess, as in the case of Hieromonk Feodor of Spaso-Evfiemiev, who was approved as priest for the Convent of the Intercession in 1792. Sim51 Rossiiski Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Drevnykh Aktov (hereafter RGADA), f. 1439, op. 1, d. 197, ll. 1, 26, August 1730; 4–6ob., 11 September 1730; l. 41, 8 December 1730. 52 For some examples of contention between appointed abbesses and their bishops, see Brenda Meehan-Waters, “Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) and the Reform of Russian Women’s Monastic Communities,” Russian Review 50, no. 3 (July 1991): 310–23. 53 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1198, l. 7, 11 March 1776; l. 27–27ob., 10 June 1776; f. 575, op. 1, d. 488, l. 35, 18 February 1803.

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ilar petitions cover a wide range of time periods, and suggest that male monastic clergy were frequently assigned to convents. In 1799, so-called “learned” monks began to be assigned to the cathedral churches of rich monasteries and were allowed to use the income from the offertory. Signatures of hieromonks in their capacity as “spiritual fathers” to the sisters appear in documentation both before and after this time, and they likely served as confessors to the nuns and novices, as stipulated in the Supplement to the Spiritual Regulation: “there shall be in a monastery a single common confessor, a hieromonk certified by the bishop.”54 While abbesses carried out multiple duties, depending on the period and the financial and social health of the convent, perhaps the most important aspect of their position entailed maintaining harmony and a godly and worshipful environment inside the monastery. Obedience was the foundation of monastic life, and the mechanism for keeping order within the community. With large numbers of women of different social and educational backgrounds, of diverse temperament and distinct motives for joining the monastic community, however, obedience could be difficult to maintain. Mothers superior were enjoined to “watch over the monastics in the strength of the Holy Apostles and the Holy Fathers,” and to make sure that the sisters (as well as the peasants and church servitors) were “obedient to her in everything.”55 Disobedience could take many forms, and might be involuntary or voluntary, significant or trivial. Not surprisingly, it was typically the larger infractions brought to the attention of higher authorities that made it into the record. For a time in the nineteenth century, shtrafnye vedomosti (fine registers) were kept, detailing infractions for which the nuns or novices had been punished, but this practice apparently died out in the mid-nineteenth century. After this time, only the most significant incidents of disobedience were recorded. That smaller infractions continued to occur is attested by the fact that in 1884 the abbess of the Intercession Convent recorded that “those who violated the rules of service [poslushaniia] and are obstinate, besides a verbal reproof by the abbess, are instructed with prostrations in church or in their cells, and those who sin greatly against the morals of a novice are sent away from the monastery.” By 1916 the same institution reported that “measures of punishment, for the instruction of those who sin, those who are obstinate or those who are disobedient are as follows: prostrations or a reprimand in the presence of the elder nuns.”56 For greater transgressions, the bishop, consistory, or at times even the Synod became involved. These crimes typically included leaving the monastery without permission, walking about the town in monastic dress, frequenting public houses, quarreling with the other sisters, swearing, engaging in “drunken deeds,” brawling, behaving in a “wild” or “ungovernable” manner, or entertaining men in suspicious circumstances. Punishments varied widely, but when at all possible, nuns and novices either remained in the monastery and were kept under close observation, or were sent to nearby religious houses. At times they were given additional punishments, such as assignment to “black work” or being deprived 54 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1269, l. 53, 12 April 1792; Muller, Spiritual Regulation, Supplement, 83; Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (St. Petersburg, 1896), s. v. “Monashestvo,” 728. 55 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1278, ll. 8–9, 22 May 1769; RGADA, f. 1439, op. 1, d. 257, ll. 1–2, 9 March 1740. 56 GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1844, l. 3, 1884; f. 556, op. 1, d. 4993, ll. 33–37ob., 1916.

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of the right to wear monastic dress. Two nuns at the Intercession Convent in Suzdal’ were punished in this way for fighting after Sunday services, which included swearing at the abbess and several other sisters. Another nun, however, who had been accused of “various offenses,” including bearing a child out of wedlock, was sentenced only to serving under the particular oversight of the abbess, since there was no hard evidence.57 In instances where the testimony was contradictory, the bishop and consistory were likely to side with the abbess. Such was the case, for example, in 1804, when a nun left the Pereslavl’ Fedorov Convent without written permission to pray in Moscow and visit her sister. Upon her return she argued that the abbess had in fact given her verbal permission, and was simply attempting to punish her for requesting a lighter obedience due to weakness in her legs. She was sentenced to fifty full prostrations in the church in the presence of the priests and sisters.58 As was the case for abbesses, only in extreme circumstances were sisters actually expelled. For example, even for suspected sectarianism, which included night meetings with unusual chanting and disconcerting noises, a sister of the Convent of the Intercession was only transferred to another convent under close oversight. In 1804 the abbess of Moscow’s Ascension monastery attempted to remove the widow of a second lieutenant and her minor ward for “starting a quarrel and giving offense to all the sisters.” The metropolitan had initially allowed her to remain, but even after he had admonished her to live “quietly, meekly, and obediently,” she persisted in her “rebelliousness and unruliness.” The metropolitan asserted that even though “I have used all my strength and means to bring her to a consecration of her life,” she continued to carry on cruel and dangerous quarrels, give offense to the sisters, and create “shamefulness in the house of God.” This time he requested that the Synod expel her.59 A woman was typically removed only if she was a clear danger to herself or others. A young novice in the early eighteenth century, for example, was ultimately ejected after it was discovered that she had given birth to a stillborn child (the product of a rape that occurred before her entry into the convent) in one of the sheds and hidden it under a bush on the road to her father’s house. This offence had involved the complicity of a number of other sisters. In the late nineteenth century, a novice from Samara in a condition of “delirium and raving” ran to the altar, placed her coat upon it, and taking the ciborium in her hand began to sing “Christ is Risen.” She was permanently exiled to the home of her parents.60 Although such cases received a great amount of attention at the time, they were in fact very rare. Transgressions of such magnitude might happen at a monastery two or three times in a century. In the Convent of the Intercession, from 1815 to 1849 only eight nuns were brought before higher authorities for punishment, most often for swearing, starting quarrels, or acting in a manner not corresponding to their profession. Far more common, certainly, although undocumented, must have been even slighter transgressions. 57 GAVO, f. 556, op. 107, d. 289, ll. 415–436ob., 1845. 58 GAVO, f. 556, op. 1, d. 992, ll. 3–5, 8 March 1804. 59 Ibid., op. 108, d. 480, l. 38, 26 June 1812; RGIA, f. 796, op. 85, d. 182, ll. 1–2ob., undated 1804. 60 RGADA, f. 143, op. 1, d. 207, ll. 3–5ob., 3 August 1730; RGIA, f. 796, op. 155, d. 656, ll. 1–2, 4 November 1875.

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The majority of nuns and novices maintained obedience to their mother superior. In fact, numerous sources attest that, at least by the late nineteenth century, the relationship of the mother superior to her charges often resembled a maternal one. By 1848, the bishop of Perm was suggesting that while “all sisters should have unquestioning obedience toward the superior,” they should relate to her “sincerely in gentleness of heart, as toward a mother—to respect her reverentially and to love her.” 61 Another writer eulogized an abbess in 1874 to her sisters thus: she was “the best mother, who …like a hen who gathers her chicks under her wings, gathered you in this convent, comforted you, became privy to your needs and worries …governed you all in your spiritual life.”62 In 1914, the sisters of the Kashir Nicetas Convent described their “great grief and sorrow at the death …of our dear mother,” near to the convent’s heart. Without its mother, they complained, the monastery was orphaned. They requested of the bishop that he “not leave us as orphans but …help us in the choice of a new abbess.”63 While clearly not all communities could achieve such love and devotion to the maternal figure of their abbess, by the late nineteenth century that familial relationship of a mother lovingly guiding and correcting her obedient and caring children was being voiced as the desirable model for female monasteries. The model of a woman’s role as mother, who acts outside of the “family” through Christian charity in duties of social support, was widely articulated in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Many Orthodox men expected that Christian women, among them women religious, should use their educational position and spiritual purity to help return what they saw as a corrupt and chaotic world to a state of stability and “perfection.”64 Antonii, archbishop of Vladimir, exhorted the sisters of the Iuriev Convent of the Presentation in 1874 as follows: “Sisters in Christ! Upon you and your mother superior lies the responsibility not only to care for the running of the convent, but also to be the paragon of behavior in your perfection.” Since the world, with its science and vice, “aims to shake the foundation of convent life,” the spiritual example set by superiors and nuns is necessary to “inspire others to Christian feats.” Convent life offered a necessary corrective to the world at large, because “it has always reminded the world of the higher spiritual perfection to which the world has been called.”65 This vision, while it acknowledges the influence that convents might have had spiritually, and thus recognizes the important spiritual function of the mother superior, ignores the very real worldly power that an abbess possessed over her sisterhood and within her community. Within the convent’s administrative hierarchy, the abbess was at all times the central figure. Although this office was open to non-noble women throughout the Imperial period, increasing democratization over the course of the nineteenth century meant that ever more women from the lower estates had access to the status and authority it could 61 RGIA, f. 796, op. 129, d. 541, ll. 1–3ob., 1848. 62 Vladimirskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti, no. 13 (1 July 1874), 698–99. 63 RGIA, f. 796, op. 198, otd. 1 st. 5, d. 114, ll. 3–4, 27 February 1914. 64 See William G. Wagner, “‘Orthodox Domesticity’: Creating a Social Role for Women,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, ed. Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 65 Vladimirskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti, no. 16 (5 August 1874), 797–800.

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provide. Abbesses could acquire a high level of education and material comfort. They could use multiple channels of authority, whether financial, spiritual, or social, to influence the convent’s sisterhood and priesthood, as well as the laypeople of the community. Although this authority was increasingly circumscribed by bishop and consistory, abbesses nevertheless expected obedience from the sisters and respect and esteem from those outside the convent as well. While their economic authority was temporarily curtailed by secularization, if anything their spiritual and social authority grew as the nineteenth century progressed and superiors projected their influence further afield through charitable and educational initiatives and publications. Despite certain constraints, the Church, through the position of mother superior, offered women of even the lowest estates ways to exercise independence and authority long before Russian society at large provided such women with a means to do so.

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The Pious Women of an “Unsimple Folk”: Female Perspectives on Faith and Authority Among the Orthodox Laity of St. Petersburg, 1895–1917 Page Herrlinger (Bowdoin College) Pious women occupied an important place in the Orthodox clerical imagination in early twentieth-century Russia. In April of 1917, an Orthodox priest, Father A. Boiarskii, hailed women as both “the soul of the Christian family,” and the “primary vital nerve of the great Christian church.”1 Even as men preoccupied themselves with the secular affairs of war and revolution, he observed, women faithfully attended church, turning to God to pray for their families and the future of Russia. Thus he urged his fellow clergymen to make the most of women’s “great reserve of spiritual strength” by giving them a voice in Church elections. In this way, the Church would continue to be nurtured in the future by faithful women, even more than it had been in the past. Although the context was new, Father Boiarskii’s positive characterization of female believers was not, nor was his hope that women’s faith might serve to regenerate the Church, and by extension, Russian society as a whole. While Orthodox men and women were seen as equal in terms of their capacity for faith, women were thought to possess traits and virtues that made them especially good believers, as well as naturally complementary to men. To be sure, clerical images of women in the nineteenth century were far from consistent, and sometimes quite negative. On the one hand, women continued to be associated with the body and emotions, and thus a source of inconstancy and sexual temptation, and peasant women were frequently described as “ignorant,” a word signifying both a lack of education and a tendency towards superstitious belief and magic. On the other hand, however, women—again, especially peasants—were praised for their ability to nurture, their capacity for suffering, and qualities such “kindness, purity, honesty, and modesty.”2 In spite of these mixed images, by late in the nineteenth century, as fears about a deepening moral crisis in Russian society intensified, the clergy looked more to Orthodox women’s “allegedly

1 Research for this paper was conducted with the generous support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any view, findings, and conclusions expressed here are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the NEH. Sv. A. Boiarskii, “Zhenshchina v tserkvi,” Vserossiiskii Tserkovnyi Obshchestvennyi Viestnik 8 (16 April 1917): 2 2 Laurie Manchester, “Gender and Social Estate as National Identity: The Wives and Daughters of Orthodox Clergymen in Imperial Russia,” Journal of Modern History 83, no. 1 (March 2011): 65.

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superior moral virtues and more intense and steadfast religiosity” as a source of salvation.3 Even as they continued to debate women’s proper social roles, Bill Wagner has observed, Orthodox writers portrayed women as “a critical antidote to the dangers of modernity and as important agents of Christianization as well as defenders of the Church and the faith.”4 Yet, for all the promise associated with Orthodox female piety at this time, many questions remain about women’s “lived” religious experience, as well as women’s own perspectives on faith and Orthodox identity. In the practice of their everyday lives, how and to what extent did Orthodox feminine ideals shape laywomen’s identities as wives, mothers, and believers? What did women themselves need most of all from their faith and from religious leaders? How much agency did they exercise with respect to their religious identity? To what extent did they express their faith in gender-specific ways? With these questions in mind, this paper draws on a unique source base to explore the experiences of the so-called trezvennitsy,5 the Orthodox women who became devout followers of the lay preacher and healer known as “Brother Ioann” Churikov. As Father Boiarskii likely knew, Churikov and his philosophy of “holy sobriety” had a massive following in Petrograd by 1917—by some counts, as high as 100,000.6 Most were working-class women, striving to cultivate a life of faith in an increasingly secular urban culture dominated by poverty, addiction, and illness. While it is true that the Church’s 1914 excommunication of Churikov for sectarian and “self-willed” behaviors put the trezvennitsy on the margins of official Orthodoxy, it is also the case that the majority of his followers nonetheless saw themselves as “good” Orthodox believers, both before and after the Church’s decision. Indeed, they believed that their relationship with Brother Ioann was not only complementary to their relations with the official clergy, but also essential to their ability to live fully Orthodox lives. As part of an increasingly “unsimple folk,” 7 the trezvennitsy challenged the Church from within by repeatedly testifying (often in written form) to Brother Ioann’s goodness and grace, and to the positive moral and spiritual influence he had had on them. In so doing, they left behind an unusually rich record of their religious experiences and beliefs, from which we can gain both balance and depth to the picture we now have of Orthodox female piety—that is, one sketched mostly by and for men. Drawing on their testimonies, letters, and petitions, as well as recent scholarship on Orthodox identity in tsarist Russia, the first part of the paper examines women’s relationships with Brother Ioann and what they reveal about their religious needs, behaviors, and sensibilities. The second part discusses the evolv3 William R. Wagner, “‘Orthodox Domesticity’: Creating a Social Role for Women,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, ed. Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 123. 4 Ibid., 130. 5 Literally, “sober women,” or “women committed to sobriety” (in both a spiritual and physical sense). Throughout the paper, I will use the term trezvennitsa (plural: trezvennitsy) to indicate a female follower of Brother Ioann and his teachings (trezvennichestvo); trezvennik refers to a male follower, and trezvenniki to a group. 6 N. Abramov, “Eshche o Churikove,” Petrogradskii listok, no. 181 (2 July 1916): 2. 7 Gregory Freeze, “A Pious Folk? Religious Observance in Vladimir Diocese, 1900–1914,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 52 (2004): 323–40.

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ing “conversation” between the clergy and the trezvenniki over their “un-Orthodox” devotion to Churikov. It argues that long before the Church made a determination in the case, the clergy responded to trezvennik claims in ways that were both repressive and gendered, precluding the possibility of effective dialogue. In this way, the discussion sheds additional light on the trezvenniki’s understanding of spiritual authority, as well as on the Church’s struggles to maintain its influence over members of the urban working-class population after 1905—not only those indifferent or hostile to Orthodoxy, but even those committed to the faith and hungry for moral and spiritual guidance. The Case of the Trezvennitsa Mariia Kuz’mina Mariia Vasil’evna Kuz’mina first met Churikov in 1895 and became one of his earliest followers. Like many urban migrants Mariia had lived for years in a cycle of hard work, poverty, and ill health, made all the more difficult by her own poor decisions and tragic circumstances beyond her control. That her testimony only hints at the spiritual crisis that led her to Brother Ioann is perhaps not surprising; as Nadia Kizenko has noted, in their written confessions to Father Ioann of Kronstadt less educated believers tended to “concentrate less on their inner lives and more on their actions.”8 So it is with Mariia’s testimony, which focuses far more on narrating than discussing motivation or intent, or engaging in self-reflection.9 Nonetheless, her great and prolonged suffering, as an individual, and as a mother and wife, bleeds through her attempt at a straightforward factual narrative of her life. Born in 1865 in the village of Gushchino in Pskov province to tavern-keepers, Mariia arrived in Petersburg when she was only seventeen years old. After several years as a domestic servant in the city, followed by three years back in the village, Mariia returned to St. Petersburg in 1888 and married Evlampiia, then a porter and already suffering from a severe drinking problem. Raised in a foundling home, Evlampiia’s descent into chronic drunkenness began at age fourteen. By the time he married, he was in the habit of drinking through his wages, so Mariia had to keep working as a laundress and maid to support them, even as she took on the burdens of motherhood. Although circumstances often forced her to live apart from her husband, she bore him eight children and then buried five of them as infants. The cause of her children’s deaths is not clear, but Mariia suffered from serious “female problems,” for which she was hospitalized twice. Though she did not speak directly of grief over losing her children, she claimed that after she lost the fourth baby, she fell into a serious depression (sil’no toskovat’). At some point thereafter, she was unfaithful to her husband. Out of shame, she confessed her adultery to him, and he kicked her out. Eventually the couple reconciled, but Evlampiia could not stop reminding Mariia of her “act,” so their marriage remained in crisis. Exercising what little authority he had left as the head of his family, he ordered his wife to repent for her sin. She obeyed, and on a Sunday in the winter of 1895, she made a confession to a local priest and then received communion. 8 Nadieszda Kizenko, “Written Confessions and the Construction of Sacred Narrative,” in Steinberg and Coleman, Sacred Stories, 105. 9 Mariia’s testimony has been reproduced in Sergei Iurevich Palamodov, Imia moe greshnoe pomianite (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2011), 188–90.

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Whether or not her repentance had any affect on her own state of mind or soul is unfortunately unclear. She noted only that shortly after going to the priest, “I turned to Brother Ioann, primarily because of my husband, hoping that [Brother Ioann] would pray [for him] so that he would stop drinking.”10 Mariia first encountered Churikov in her neighbor’s apartment, where he was offering a spiritual lecture (beseda) to a small group of people. He clearly made a positive impression, because she immediately invited him to her own home, still intent on securing help for her husband. As she overheard the advice he was dispensing to her landlady, however, she quickly found herself drawn in for needs more directly her own. “One needs to reduce the cargo on a small ship. When the load is too much, it sinks.” Brother Ioann counseled, “if we don’t abandon our bad habits, then we will always be sick.” His beseda had an even stronger influence on Mariia, reinforcing a theme common to his preaching: illness comes from sin, and thus healing comes only from faith and living by the Word. “Listening to [Brother Ioann’s beseda],” Mariia later recalled, “I began to realize why I was sick and I asked Brother to pray for me so that I wouldn’t do those sins I had been doing.”11 Following his instructions, she began to fast and to apply oil that he had given her as a healing balm. Before long, her health improved, and she believed herself healed by his prayers. Although she took comfort in Churikov’s prayers and advice, Mariia knew that getting her own spiritual house in order would not be enough to bring peace to her family, or to end the abuse that she suffered in her marriage. For years, Evlampiia had tried in vain to be cured of his excessive drinking, and he suffered deep shame for having kept his family in poverty. Like Mariia, his first approach had been to seek out medical attention rather than spiritual help for his addiction. But his stay at the Obukhov hospital in 1894 had failed to help, and after Mariia’s adultery, he remained distraught, and refused her pleas to seek out Brother Ioann, telling her that “it’ll be worse for you, since if I stop drinking, I won’t be able to look at you [if I’m] sober.”12 As Bill Wagner has observed, traditionally, “the ideal of patriarchy led Orthodox writers to extol the virtues of obedience, submissiveness, and patience in women, even to the point of enduring an abusive relationship ‘as a trial from God.’”13 In the late nineteenth century, however, more liberal Church thinkers began to stress women’s role as their husband’s “helpmeet,” based on their view of marriage as a partnership in which “each spouse assisted the other to develop morally and spiritually, and to achieve self-realization and salvation.”14 To what extent Mariia was aware of such expectations is impossible to say, although it is likely that Brother Ioann would have encouraged her to devote herself completely to her husband’s wishes and needs, as he did other women.15 Whatever the case, it is clear that in

10 Ibid., 188. 11 Ibid., 189. 12 Ibid., 190. 13 Wagner, “Orthodox Domesticity,” 123. 14 Ibid., 126. 15 Gosudarstvennyi Muzei Istorii Religii (hereafter, GMIR), koll. I, op. 4, d. 19, l. 335; Palamodov, Imia moe greshnoe pomianite, 127.

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spite of her husband’s abuse, Mariia did not abandon him or the hope that she might find help for him through Brother Ioann. The fact that Mariia had difficulty convincing her husband to ask for Churikov’s help was not uncommon; men, especially alcoholics, tended to be far less open to the idea of seeking him out. She persisted, however, and on her invitation, Brother Ioann visited their home a second time and confronted Evlampiia about his drinking, using a combination of “admonition,” counsel, and prayer. To Evlampiia’s complaints that he suffered chronic pain from an arm injury, Churikov replied confidently: “Change your way of life, and pledge to the Lord that you will not do what you have been doing, and the Lord will heal your arm.” Then he knelt down before the couple’s icons and began to pray to the Lord to heal Evlampiia of his need to drink; husband and wife joined him. To mark the sacredness of the vow he was about to make, Brother Ioann held out a piece of prosfora (blessed bread), which Evlampiia had brought home with him from his parish church. “Take this prosphora,” Brother Ioann instructed, “and promise God that you will never drink wine again.”16 Evlampiia complied, and in spite of his initial skepticism, his pain disappeared within days, and he never had the urge to drink again. He and Mariia stayed together, and their family life improved. As suggested, Mariia’s decision to consult Brother Ioann was motivated initially less by spiritual need or searching per se, than by a desperate hope that his prayers and counsel could help her navigate the ongoing challenges in her life (first her illness, then her husband’s drunkenness). In this sense, there was a basic pragmatism, even utilitarianism, to her decision to solicit Brother Ioann’s help. After consulting with her doctors and priest, she found both lacking in their ability to help in any meaningful way. At the same time, however, Mariia was clearly open to Brother Ioann’s suggestion that her problem lay not in her body but with her soul, and that her physical ailments were not only a sign of, but also a punishment for her sins (an assumption in line with the Church’s teaching). Importantly, Brother Ioann offered her not only an explanation for her suffering but also a clear path towards a better life: if you live by scripture and have faith, then God will take care of you; if you free yourself from your sins, you will no longer be punished because of them; if you become better yourself, then everything around you will also become better.17 By following Brother Ioann’s counsel, Mariia’s life was soon transformed: she found relief not only from her physical problems, but also from the emotional burdens associated with her abusive marriage. She moved beyond the shame of her adultery and became a better wife and mother, responsible for bringing peace to her long-suffering husband and a lasting degree of stability and harmony to her family. Thousands of women walked a similar path to Brother Ioann’s door, usually in their capacity as caregivers, seeking prayers for a sick relative or an alcoholic spouse. Others sought him out more directly on their own behalf, as alcoholics, prostitutes, or sufferers of chronic illness. Whatever brought them to Churikov, however, it was the experience of being 16 Palamodov, Imia moe greshnoe pomianite, 190. 17 K. E. Lindeman, Sbornik rechei o trezvennicheskom dvizhenii, proiznosennykh v sobraniiakh Tsentral’nago Komiteta Soiuza 17-go Oktiabria v Moskve i Peterburge 5, 6, 13, 14 maia 1913 (Moscow, 1913), 19.

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healed by his prayers—or witnessing the healing of a loved one—that pushed them over the threshold, and onto a new spiritual journey that would have a lasting impact on their identity not only as wives, mothers, or daughters, but also as believers. Seeing in Brother Ioann’s ability to heal powerful evidence of God’s grace, many women (and men) were inspired to identify actively as his followers, and to embrace his philosophy of “holy sobriety” as a framework for their lives. Thus they gave up many of the behaviors common to working-class life, both the “unhealthy” (such as smoking and drinking) and the secular (such as dancing and playing cards). Instead, they filled their free time with activities designed to bring life and faith more closely in line, such as singing hymns, prayer, and most importantly, engaging with scripture. Some trezvenniki, like Evlampiia, committed to holy sobriety because of a solemn pledge to change their ways if freed from their suffering; others did so more out of gratitude, and still others, like Mariia, found strength in his powerfully simple message: “those who live by the Gospel will receive God’s grace, and those who do not will be punished by God.”18 Whatever the case, no one understood better than Brother Ioann the need to cultivate and reaffirm his followers’ commitment to sobriety on a regular basis. To this end, he offered besedy every Sunday afternoon. By 1905, the intimate gatherings in private apartments experienced by Mariia had become mass prayer meetings, with as many as two thousand people standing shoulder-to-shoulder for hours in a rented hall. But Churikov’s goal was the same: to elaborate on the Gospels and the lives of the saints in language they could understand, and in ways that spoke directly to their lives—their fears and temptations, as well as their hopes. Periodically, he would interrupt his sermon to call on them not only to sing and to pray together, but also to repent their sinful pasts, and to reconfirm their decision to change their ways. By all accounts, the response was an intensely emotional, cathartic mix of pain and joy.19 As he intended, Churikov’s followers appreciated his besedy as an opportunity to reimagine their lives and selves with scriptural guidance. Observers were often struck by their “sincere” desire to “master the teaching of Christ,”20 and many testified that attending Brother Ioann’s “holy lectures” brought them spiritual peace. As one woman explained, the clear “rules” he laid out for her life helped to calm the anxiety she experienced in the big city.21 At the same time, the regular meetings provided a place where trezvenniki could connect and identify with individuals who believed and felt as they did, as well as spend time in Brother Ioann’s presence. As the number of Churikov’s active followers grew into the thousands, the kind of personal contact enjoyed by Mariia and Evlampiia naturally became impossible. Still, many of his followers—and women especially—craved the opportunity to be physically near him. In a scene similar to that regularly experienced by the celebrity-priest Father Ioann of Kronstadt, 22 crowds of women would rush to the front of 18 Ibid., 50. 19 P. G. Terekhovich, “Kratkii biograficheskii ocherk” (Leningrad: self-published manuscript, 1980), 34. 20 Lindeman, Sbornik rechei, 45. 21 Palamodov, Imia moe greshnoe pomianite, 65. 22 Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 155.

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the room at the end of the beseda to kiss Brother Ioann’s hand, to ask for his blessing and to draw on his spiritual strength, as they might when visiting a saint’s shrine.23 As one woman remembered, Brother Ioann’s energy, “power [sila] and greatness of Spirit” were so remarkable that in his presence, “even the bravest and most resourceful person became flustered.”24 With equal anticipation, hundreds of Churikov’s followers lined up weekly to petition him for prayers, suggesting that their need for protection against life’s uncertainties was every bit as strong as their desire for moral instruction or scriptural enlightenment. 25 Not unlike the petitions directed toward Orthodox saints in the modern era, those sent to Brother Ioann focused primarily on daily concerns related to the challenges of poverty and physical illness.26 While a handful asked for help with spiritual issues or money matters, most female petitions reflected a need for help dealing with the challenges women encountered as care-givers—from life-threatening (their husband’s chronic drinking, unemployment, or heart troubles) to more everyday troubles (a bad cold or toothache) that caused as much anxiety as physical pain. Poverty sometimes reinforced their need to seek alternatives to medical care, which could be prohibitively expensive.27 While men had equal access to Brother Ioann and petitioned frequently, women were more likely to set aside their own concerns to ask for help on behalf of loved ones. When they did petition for themselves, they spoke often of personal relationships, and not infrequently domestic abuse and abandonment. For example, a woman “completely exhausted” by her husband’s excessive drinking, rage, and incessant criticisms, wrote to Brother Ioann as she contemplated leaving her husband. Another asked him to protect her and her children from her husband’s abusive behavior, and to “bring peace to their hearts.”28 In both cases, the women expressed their trust that he was the only person in the world who would be there for them unconditionally. Another problem routinely voiced in female petitions was illness associated with sins of the flesh. In contrast to most petitions, which were short and to the point, those dealing with sexual transgressions stood apart as longer, more emotionally fraught, and confession-like. For example, a woman identified herself only as “a great sinner,” a “harlot,” and a “whore,” as she begged for Brother Ioann’s forgiveness and asked him to pray for her. As Nadia Kizenko has found with respect to the written confessions sent to Father Ioann of Kronstadt, self-deprecating language was fairly typical for women from the lower classes, as was the tendency to acknowledge departures from prescribed Orthodox norms frankly and 23 Robert H. Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 8. 24 Nina Maslova, “Povest’” (Leningrad: self-published manuscript, 196–), 21. 25 For a sample of petitions in English, see Page Herrlinger, “Petitions to ‘Brother Ioann’ Churikov,” in Orthodox Christianity in Imperial Russia: A Source Book on Lived Religion, ed. Heather Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 262–68. 26 Nadieszda Kizenko, “Protectors of Women and the Lower Orders: Constructing Sainthood in Modern Russia,” in Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars, ed. Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 115. 27 See, for example, the case of Evdokiia Kuzminovna Ivanovskaia. GMIR, f. 13, op. 1, d. 349, ll. 28–29. 28 Palamodov, Imia moe greshnoe pomianite, 147.

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without making excuses for themselves as sinners.29 Indeed, their letters were often harsh, dripping in shame, remorse, and fear of the consequences of their unworthiness. “I am soaked in filth like a stinking dog; to the church bells I danced and sang street songs that mention the Lord and the Blessed Virgin Mary,” the same woman confessed, on the hopeful assumption that he would grant her request in spite of her egregious behaviors. “Dear Brother, please don’t turn your face from me. I am a great sinner,” another woman wrote (in what appears to be her first petition to Churikov), “I have deceived my husband, broken the law, I have stolen, and judged, and been envious.”30 Although “ashamed” to acknowledge all the sins she had committed, she feared that her husband and daughters were also suffering punishment because of her actions, and thus she asked Brother Ioann to protect her and her family from her own sinful self: “Dear Brother pray for my sins, so that I won’t do them anymore.” She pointed to the rash on her body as a visible sign of her shame. “As religious consumers,” Robert Greene has observed, “Orthodox believers valued miracles first and foremost in their saints.”31 The same could be said with respect to Brother Ioann’s popularity: the more healings he performed, the more goodness his followers attributed to him, and the greater the size of his following. Nonetheless, as his reputation grew, clergy and secular observers alike continued to speculate as to what his popularity revealed about the laity who flocked to him. More than a few characterized him as a starets (or spiritual elder) for the modern masses32—that is, someone with unique insight into ordinary people’s insecurities and anxieties, to whom they would turn “not only [for] spiritual healing, but also practical advice, approval of their choices, and encouragement.”33 In this spirit, the clergyman E. Kesarev observed that Churikov’s followers saw him as someone sent from above, “as a person more experienced, in their opinion, more skilled in spiritual life, as a living example of faith and patience [terpenie].”34 Yet, other observers focused less on Churikov’s various “strengths” than on his humility and compassion, and his willingness to give of himself to each individual, even complete strangers, regardless of their state of degradation, anger, or shame. The religious scholar A. S. Prugavin found him a man of “complete sincerity and conviction,” who “won people over” by his “unusually gentle and loving attitude toward all of those around him.”35 The journalist Kondurushkin similarly observed that people were devoted to Brother Ioann because he lifted them up through kindness, respect, and hope; although his message was firm and uncompromising, his approach was not. “With his tender, quiet, endearing, and softly feminine voice,” he demonstrated his love for each individual and shared with them his deep “faith in humanity’s likeness to God.”36 29 Kizenko, “Written Confessions,” 104–7. 30 GMIR, koll. I, op. 4, d. 19, l. 171. 31 Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, 44. 32 Lindeman, Sbornik rechei, 29–30. 33 Irina Paert, Spiritual Elders: Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 124. 34 E. Kesarev, Besednichestvo kak sekta (Samara, 1905), 104. 35 A. S. Prugavin, “Brattsy” i trezvenniki (Moscow: Zlatotsvet, 1912), 40. 36 Ibid., 33.

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Personal testimonies confirm these impressions. While Churikov’s reputation as a man of God was rooted in his capacity for healing, his followers’ devotion to him was based more on his ability to meet their needs—as a spiritual advisor with insight into life’s challenges, who could engage scripture in terms they could understand, and as someone they could trust unconditionally to both advise and protect them. Although male and female followers expressed an equal measure of emotional attachment to Brother Ioann, there was a subtle but important difference in the way that men and women characterized what he meant to them. While men tended to describe him as a “savior,” emphasizing how he had rescued them from a life apart from God and helped them to improve themselves through sobriety and scripture, women were more likely to portray him as their beloved protector, who understood the weight of their familial responsibilities and offered them reassurance in an unpredictable and often hostile world. Significantly, this pattern of identification was not new. According to Isolde Thyrêt, Orthodox interactions with the saints had been similarly gendered in Muscovite Russia: “While men’s cures tended to restore their position in society at large, women’s healings revolved around problems and restrictions specific to their gender.”37 Nevertheless, men and women alike emphasized the moral dimensions of Brother Ioann’s influence, and expressed unlimited gratitude for both the help and the hope he had given them as they (or their loved ones) struggled to become better versions of themselves—as spouses, parents, and workers. At the same time, many stressed the impact that their relationship with Churikov had had on their religious selves. By encouraging them to confront their sinful pasts and to appreciate God’s Word, they explained, Brother Ioann had assisted them in their desire to become better Orthodox as well. Indeed, as a group of trezvenniki testified in 1903, before they had met Churikov, they had gone to mass only out of obligation, and had been afraid to participate in sacramental life because of the weight of their sins.38 Because of his prayers and teachings, however, everything had changed: “the only difference between us and the rest of the Orthodox is that we celebrate [the sacraments and holidays] with the singing of psalms and church prayers, instead of with drunkenness and dancing.”39 Brother Ioann’s “Sisters” Even as they made their relationship to Brother Ioann an important, even critical, part of their spiritual and moral lives, most of Churikov’s female followers were like Mariia in that they continued to work and live with their families as they had before. However, a small circle of women, known as sestritsy (“little sisters,” the female complement to brattsy), expressed a much higher level of devotion to Brother Ioann. Withdrawing from secular society, and foregoing the traditional roles of wife and mother, they committed themselves 37 Isolde Thyrêt, “Women and the Orthodox Faith in Muscovite Russia: Spiritual Experience and Practice,” in Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice, 170–71. 38 Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga (hereafter, TsGIA SPb), f. 680, op. 5, d. 18, l. 14 ob. 39 Davydov and Frolov, Dukhovnyi partizan protiv razvrata i p’ ianstva (zashchitnik khristianstva) (St. Petersburg, 1912), 29. A copy can also be found at http://www.trezvograd.3dn.ru/partizan.htm.

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fully to serving his needs, to helping to heal the spiritually and physically ill, and to spreading the cause of holy sobriety. Although the idea of service to others as a form of active piety had deep roots in Russian culture, each woman had very personal reasons for devoting their lives to Brother Ioann. For example, Agrippina Smirnova (“Grusha”) was the daughter of one of Churikov’s most devoted followers, and the biological sisters Anna and Mariia (Semenovna) Grigor’eva became trezvennitsy because they believed that Brother Ioann’s prayers and fasting had cured their mother of debilitating headaches, just as doctors were preparing to cut into her skull.40 In 1907, Mariia Alekseevna Kartasheva joined the sisters, believing both that her full recovery from near blindness and almost total paralysis was due to Brother Ioann’s “miraculous” healing prayers, and that her illness had been punishment for her formerly secularized lifestyle.41 In their daily lives, the sisters followed Brother Ioann both figuratively and literally, working by his side as he preached in St. Petersburg, in the sober colony he founded in Vyritsa (south of the city), and finally, on the agricultural commune he later established under Soviet rule. Most of their duties were unremarkable, falling in line with traditional expectations of domesticity and femininity.42 They included preparing food and tea, gardening, sewing, laundering, cleaning his living space, and caring for him when he was sick. The women also assumed greater responsibilities, such as recording his sermons and tending to his accounts, helping to tend to the sick and dying, and assisting him as he received his petitioners. This last task took on special importance after 1905, when Church authorities prohibited Brother Ioann from meeting personally with his petitioners. Out of necessity, the sisters carried written petitions back and forth between Churikov and his followers, becoming in effect the vital link between them; as such, they became privy to people’s confessions, and were responsible for conveying Brother Ioann’s responses faithfully as well as for controlling public access to him. When necessary, they protected him from those who stepped out of line or did not show Brother Ioann sufficient respect. In short, they were both his caregivers and his “gatekeepers.” To the extent that they worked tirelessly to support Brother Ioann and his community through myriad forms of service, the sisters acted much in the spirit of the biblical Martha, whose practical virtues were often extolled in clerical writings on Orthodox womanhood at the turn of the century.43 At the same time, however, they displayed the qualities of Mariia (or Mary), who served Christ not through hard work but through faith and love. This was especially true of Grusha, who became Brother Ioann’s close confidante and spiritual interlocutor from a very young age.44 But the comparison holds true for other sisters as well, reflected in the prayerful spirit by which they lived, their full embrace of his teachings, and their unwavering loyalty to him. Like Brother Ioann, the sisters lived very modestly, and committed themselves to an ascetic lifestyle. At a far younger age than most women who chose to enter a convent, they rejected motherhood and family life for celibacy, fasted regu40 Palamodov, Imia moe greshnoe pomianite, 53–54. 41 GMIR, f. 2, op. 17, d. 363, ll. 17 ob–18 ob. 42 Wagner, “Orthodox Domesticity,” 127. 43 Manchester, “Gender and Social Estate,” 64. 44 Ioann Samarskii, Pis’ma Brattsa Ioanna Samarskogo (Churikova) (St. Petersburg: Glagol, 1995): 22, 55.

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larly to maintain their bodies as a worthy house of the Lord, and devoted what little leisure time they had to spiritual pursuits. They spent hours every day in prayer, singing hymns, and most of all, reading and discussing scripture, both on their own and with Brother Ioann. In the words of one sister, his sermons quenched their souls like “a stream of living water,” and “awaken[ed their] striving for truth and a pure life.”45 Confident in Brother Ioann’s goodness and the truth of his teachings, the sestritsy accepted patriarchy without question, surrendering full authority to him on everyday decisions, and encouraging others to do the same. Their trust in him, like their commitment to sober living, was in fact so extreme that it might be interpreted as a surrendering of the self for a higher cause. And indeed, according to one woman, the first lesson she learned from Brother Ioann was that it is better to strive for “self-abasement” and to “consider others higher than oneself.”46 But the sisters’ relationship with Brother Ioann was also based on mutual admiration, support, protection, and love. Moreover, their roles within the trezvennik community were complementary in ways that mirrored Orthodox gender expectations: while the women appreciated Churikov’s strength, wisdom, and protection, he valued them for their deep faith, humility, and modesty.47 In this sense, the relationship functioned as a “marriage” of sorts, with each spouse helping the other to develop morally and spiritually, not only in the interest of the individual self, but also that of their “family” (in this case, the trezvennik community as a whole). As Brenda Meehan once observed, it could be difficult for pious women of the lower classes—challenged by both their poverty (and thus lack of control) and their gender (and thus lack of authority)—to live a life of prayer, since institutionalized communities were often closed to them. Traditionally constrained to a life of piety “within the interstices of village life,” for example, as chernichki (wearing black and reading the Psalter for the dead), or spasennitsy (devoting themselves to matters of salvation), over the course of the nineteenth century women began to found unofficial religious communities on their own.48 For Churikov’s sisters, most of whom were poor, poorly educated, and new to urban life, the community of trezvenniki offered another alternative, a kind of spiritual and social space in which they could lead religiously meaningful lives, and feel that they were participating in the building of the kingdom of God on earth. As the sister Nina Maslova explained, the sober colony in Vyritsa in particular was conceived by Churikov and his followers as “an earthly paradise,” a place of this world but also apart from it, where the ubiquitous immoral and ungodly habits of the city were replaced by the singing of prayers and psalms.49 Given that the sisters were empowered within the trezvennik community by their close relationship with Brother Ioann, their reputation as models of sober living, and their unusually deep familiarity with scripture, it might have been possible for them to cultivate 45 GMIR, f. 2, op. 17, d. 363, l. 1. 46 GMIR, koll. I, op. 4, d. 61, l. 28. 47 Samarskii, Pis’ma Brattsa Ioanna, 276. 48 Brenda Meehan, “To Save Oneself: Russian Peasant Women and the Development of Women’s Religious Communities in Pre-Revolutionary Russia,” in Russian Peasant Women, ed. Beatrice Farnsworth and Lynne Viola (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 123–24. 49 Maslova, “Povest’,” 6.

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their own following, as in the case of the Ioannite spiritual figure Porfiriia Kiseleva,50 or Anastasiia Kerova, a peasant besednitsa from Samara, who was known to possess extraordinary spiritual insight and the ability to heal.51 And indeed, several of Brother Ioann’s male followers—the so-called “Moscow Brattsy,” Ivan Koloskov and Dmitrii Grigor’ev—broke away from Churikov to proselytize holy sobriety on their own. But Brother Ioann’s sisters never aspired to attract attention to themselves—or more importantly—away from Brother Ioann. On the contrary, other members of the trezvennik community admired them first and foremost as models of self-sacrifice and dedication to the cause of holy sobriety.52 Even after their arrest by Soviet authorities tore them away from their lives and Brother Ioann in 1927,53 they bore exile in the spirit with which they had served him and the cause of holy sobriety up to that point—with humility and faith. More than this, they actively embraced suffering on behalf of Brother Ioann, and composed their letters—which they likely knew would be read by Soviet officials—as testimonies, so as to promote his goodness, and to protect him from further suspicion.54 The Trezvennitsy and the Church Clerical attitudes toward Brother Ioann were mixed from the start. Some parish priests, seeing both promise and opportunity in his work among the spiritually impoverished, welcomed Churikov’s followers into their churches for confession and communion, especially in the early years of his preaching. For example, the collaboration between Brother Ioann and Father Vasilii Lebedev, at the Spaso-Preobrazhenskaia (Koltovskaia) church on Vasilevskii Island, a very poor, primarily working-class parish, led not only to the successful sobering up of many local believers, but also to the invigoration of parish life.55 In this context, some Church hierarchs, including the Petersburg Metropolitan Antonii (Vadkovskii), supported Brother Ioann’s preaching as well. As late as 1911, the former Synod missionary Igumen Arsenii publically praised Churikov’s sermons as “permeated by a deep religiosity, Christian simplicity and compassion,” and called on others to “rejoice at the emergence of such an evangelist during a time corrupted by unbelief, atheism, and immorality.” He advised only that Brother Ioann’s followers stay in close contact with their parish priests, and seek their guidance regularly.56 While far from unconditional, this kind of clerical support for Brother Ioann was based on a more inclusive notion of Orthodox community, and in this way, can be seen as the continuation of the trend begun in the early nineteenth centu-

50 Kizenko, Prodigal Saint, 201. 51 J. Eugene Clay, “Orthodox Missionaries and ‘Orthodox Heretics’ in Russia, 1886–1917,” in Of Religion and Empire, ed. Robert Geraci and Michael Khodarkovsky (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 45. 52 TsGIA SPb, f. 680, op. 5, d. 35, ll. 3–3 ob. 53 GMIR f. 13, op. 1, d. 278, ll. 37–38 ob. 54 TsGIA SPb, f. 680, op. 2, d. 49, l. 14. 55 Petrogradskii spaso-preobrazhenskii koltovskoi prikhod v 1915 godu (Petrograd, 1916). 56 Igumen Arsenii, “‘O Bratste Ioann’ Churikove,” Groza, no. 277 (3 December 1911): 3.

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ry, “to coopt popular Orthodoxy, to bring the worldly—and believers—into the Church rather than to drive them away.”57 But more conservative clergy both at the parish level and within the Church hierarchy focused far more on the trezvenniki’s potential for deviance from Orthodoxy than reconciliation with it. Of the myriad concerns they voiced about Brother Ioann’s influence on his followers,58 three stand out, each in its own way challenging the heart of Churikov’s mission to bring scripture to bear on everyday life, for the salvation of each individual believer, and the good of society as a whole. The first issue concerned his preaching, which was labeled overly “utilitarian” because of its exclusive focus on “the organization of earthly life and earthly contentment.”59 The second concern was that he was cultivating in his followers a false sense of salvation, by leading them to believe that they could be saved through scripture, and thus rendering the sacraments (and by extension, the clergy as instruments of divine grace) unnecessary to salvation.60 The third, and perhaps most serious charge, was that Churikov was “exploiting” the religious feelings of his followers and allowing them to deify him as their “savior.”61 Of course, even as the Church became more tolerant of lay initiatives, the leadership reserved the right to determine which “popular” practices it found acceptable and which it did not. Whatever the merit of the Church’s concerns in the Churikov case, however, it is clear that the authorities’ handling (or mishandling) of it precluded the possibility of constructive dialogue with Churikov’s followers long before any final determination had been made as to his “Orthodoxy.” Indeed, in spite of the emphasis on pastoral work in the late nineteenth century, Church authorities relied primarily on heavy-handed methods of control, even from Brother Ioann’s earliest days of preaching in the 1890s. These included his repeated arrest and incarceration, the denial of rites to some of his followers, surveillance of his meetings, the periodic shutting down of his besedy, and after 1905, prohibition of all physical contact with his followers. In at least one highly publicized case, a parish priest (Kolesnikov) openly challenged Brother Ioann’s right to speak during a Sunday beseda, and successfully incited a violent clash between the trezvenniki and other Orthodox workers in the parish.62

57 Gregory L. Freeze, “Institutionalizing Piety: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850,” in Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, ed. Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 231. 58 For more on the Church’s position, see Page Herrlinger, “Trials of the Unorthodox Orthodox: The Followers of Brother Ioann Churikov and Their Critics in Modern Russia, 1894–1914,” Russian History 40 (2013): 244–63; and N. G. Zarembo, “Ecclesiastical Authorities of St. Petersburg and the Popular Abstainers Movement (1907–1914) Izvestiia Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo universiteta im. A. I. Gertsena, no. 126 (2010): 30–35. 59 Ieromonakh Veniamin, Podmena Khristianstva (St. Petersburg: V. M. Skvortsova, 1911), 16. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 12. See also the comments by Father N. V. Pokrovskii at the meeting of Petersburg clergy in 1908, recorded in Izvestiia po S.-Peterburgskoi eparkhii, nos. 8–9 (1908): 50–55. 62 Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (hereafter, RGIA), f. 821, op. 133, d. 212, ll. 108 ob, 174–75, 224.

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Another tactic was to use the religious press both to raise questions about Churikov’s teachings and to cast doubt on his spiritual integrity, as well as on that of his followers. Given the high proportion of women among Churikov’s followers, it is perhaps not surprising that some clergy sought to undermine Brother Ioann’s reputation by playing on gender expectations, especially the association of women with ignorance, sexual temptation, and emotional vulnerability. Accusations of sexual deviance were particularly widespread in the case of the “Moscow brattsy,” as in the anonymous testimony by one of Ivan Koloskov’s former “sisters” in 1911. In some detail, the woman explained how, on a neighbor’s advice, she had sought out Koloskov as her husband lay dying. He agreed to help her, but only on the condition that she attend his besedy. When the man died in spite of his “incantations,” Koloskov allegedly “congratulated” the wife on the fact that God had chosen her to be one of his special followers, having freed her from her marital ties. He then started paying her a lot of unwanted attention, and assigned her the special role of receiving his petitioners. Even as she became increasingly unsettled by his “disgusting” [bol’no protivno] advances, and deeply disturbed by his various claims (including, allegedly, comparing himself to God), the woman did not sever her relationship with him, explaining that she continued to attend his besedy both “out of habit,” and because she “considered him a holy person [sviatnyi chelovek].”63 She found the courage to end the relationship only when he asked her to live with him “as her husband,” proclaiming the virtues of “free love.” In her refusal, she claimed, she was unique among the other sestritsy, who actively competed for Koloskov’s sexual attention. The woman’s testimony was never verified, and in fact, the other sisters were later found to be innocent of any sexual misconduct, although only after being arrested and subjected to invasive medical examinations.64 Nevertheless, it was publicized in 1911 by a religious press anxious to justify the Church’s anathema against the Moscow brattsy, no doubt feeding into—and off of—the common assumption that women were likely to develop passionate attachments to the confessors they idolized, as well as the culture of anxiety around the issue of sexual deviance evident after 1905.65 In this way, the sister’s account—and others like it—had the dual effect of calling into question Koloskov’s image as a pious man sent from God, while also characterizing his female followers as exceptionally vulnerable to his false claims. After all, the woman confessed that she had continued to believe in his spiritual gifts even as he behaved blasphemously. In other words, she was in danger of being seduced away from Orthodoxy in three gender-specific ways: physically (on account of her sexuality), spiritually (on account of her inability to recognize un-Orthodox belief and behavior), and emotionally (because of her devotion to Koloskov). Although Churikov was spared the more egregious accusations directed against Koloskov, he was not wholly immune to them—nor were the women close to him. In fact, instead of being celebrated for renouncing their sexuality in the interest of faith, the sisters 63 K voprosu o “Brattsakh”: Spravedlivo li postupilo Tserkov’ otluchit’ot obshcheniia s soboiu “ brattsev” Dm. Grigor’ev i Ioanna Koloskova? (Moscow: Vernost, 1911), 39–40. 64 M. Vasil’ev, “Trezvenniki,” Bogorodskaia rech’, no. 12 (17 March 1913): 2–3. 65 Christine Worobec, “Cross-Dressing in a Russian Monastery: The Case of Mariia Zakharova,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, no. 2 (May 2011): 341.

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remained vulnerable in ways specific to their sex. The most extensive published denunciation of Churikov, written by the priest-monk Veniamin (Fedchenkov) of the St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy in 1911, is a case in point. Although he confessed that he had no evidence to support his charge, Veniamin insinuated that the brother’s relations with the sestritsy were not strictly platonic, pointing to the fact that the women were “young and pretty” (photographs suggest this was a great exaggeration), and by suggesting that it was only natural that men and women living in close quarters would struggle with (if not succumb to) sexual temptation.66 True or not, Veniamin’s speculations were evidently shared by others; under the pretext that the state was trying to protect her, Grusha was put through the humiliation of physical examinations six times, only to be declared a virgin.67 In the same denunciation, Veniamin portrayed Churikov’s female followers as emotional to the point of hysteria, making them (and by extension their belief in Brother Ioann) appear both irrational and untrustworthy. To this end, he recounted a meeting with Brother Ioann’s closest female followers after a beseda, during which they allegedly sent him “evil looks” (as only women could do). Evidently, the women had listened at the door as Veniamin confronted Brother Ioann on multiple issues, including his claims to “holiness” by means of healing. In a highly emotional state, the women defended Churikov to the priest by sharing their personal stories of how he had saved them. Clearly unmoved, the priest claimed that he “let them have their say,” and then (calmly, rationally) insisted that their devotion to Brother Ioann was excessive and “not Orthodox.” This made the women even more upset. He then castigated them, “if you were of a truly Christian mind, would you speak to me in such a tone?” Although the women calmed down when he reminded them of his priestly status, their confrontation ended abruptly, and he concluded, “in their souls, they need Churikov and nothing else.”68 The fact that Veniamin never named the women or shared their stories left his readers unable to appreciate their perspectives. This form of silencing was not uncommon; as Christine Worobec has remarked, male publicists and Church bureaucrats tended not to “respect women’s voices,” and instead “privileged the male gaze.”69 Moreover, by leaving the women unnamed, Veniamin turned them into an abstraction or a “type,” whose behaviors could be more easily generalized to Churikov’s other female followers. Thus the reader was left with little to contradict Veniamin’s own interpretation of them as overly emotional women who were both deeply attached to Brother Ioann and openly hostile and disrespectful toward the clergy (and by extension, the Church). However, given that the trezvennitsy tended to consider Brother Ioann their protector, as well as a teacher and healer, it is likely that fear, as much as hostility, motivated the women’s animated response to Veniamin. As even the priest implied, they cared very much about his approval, at least to the extent that they passionately defended Churikov to him, and they quickly composed themselves out of respect for him as a member of the clergy. 66 Veniamin, Podmena khristianstva, 8. 67 Lindeman, Sbornik rechei, 114. 68 Veniamin, Podmena khristianstva, 12–15. 69 Worobec, “Cross-Dressing in a Russian Monastery,” 338.

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Because the trezvennitsy did not write about their experience with Veniamin, it is difficult to know exactly what they were thinking and feeling at the time. But a lengthy response to Veniamin written in 1911 by two male followers on behalf of the whole trezvennik community echoes earlier collective testimonies (including those signed by women), and thus provides valuable context to their actions. Like the women, the trezvenniki were careful not to contest the Church’s authority to question their beliefs and behaviors, or the grounds on which they judged them. On the contrary, their comments expressed a desire to conform to Orthodox expectations, as well as their respect for the Church and knowledge of its traditions. In defending Churikov as a miracle-worker, for example, they emphasized their duty as Orthodox to acknowledge evidence of the miraculous as a vital expression of their faith.70 At the same time, however, the men were every bit as insistent in their hope that the clergy would acknowledge their need for the kind of spiritual nurturing and moral support that Brother Ioann provided. Not seeking to offend, they admitted that they found the official clergy lacking in many of Churikov’s qualities, but made it clear that their problem was not with priests in general, just bad ones—especially those who did not acknowledge their need for worldly as well as eternal salvation. “If only [the Orthodox clergy] could be of help to the common people [narod] as Brother Ioann has been, then the people would love them just as much.” 71 As the confrontation between Veniamin and the trezvennitsy suggests, even before his excommunication in 1914 dialogue between the Orthodox clergy and Churikov’s followers had become hampered by a lack of trust and understanding on both sides. Although trezvenniki continued to voice respect for the Church’s authority, the clergy had failed to convince them of the legitimacy of their concerns, and vice versa. Moreover, the clergy’s repressive tactics—some of which fell especially hard on trezvennitsy—had the unintended consequence of putting Churikov’s image as a uniquely compassionate spiritual leader into even sharper relief, while also contributing to the unification of the community of trezvenniki in his defense.72 Indeed, this was the context in which Mariia Kuz’mina and her husband, along with others, would decide to testify to Brother Ioann’s positive influence on their lives in 1913. The Church’s decision to excommunicate him the following year would alter the situation little. Many of Churikov’s followers, including his sestritsy, remained devoted to him not only through the 1920s, when they suffered new forms of persecution on account of their faith, but long after his death in 1933. As it unfolded, the Churikov case highlighted a contradiction within the clerical imagination, which idealized women for their faith but not for their conviction. Yet, as much as women were praised for their capacity for humility and modesty, they time and again demonstrated their need to defend the sacred, even (sometimes especially) against tradition and authority—especially in the making of saints, and in protecting their icons and parishes.73 Indeed, it would be this same passionate defense of the sacred that would lead 70 Davydov and Frolov, Dukhovnyi partizan, 9. 71 Ibid., 9. 72 Vasil’ev, “Trezvenniki,” 2–3. 73 See, for example, Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, especially chapter 3.

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lay women to confront the Bolshevik state repeatedly over issues of faith. In this sense, the trezvennitsy’s behavior in defending Churikov was very much in line with “lived” (if not prescribed) religious tradition. Moreover, as time would tell, the trezvenniki’s alienation from the Church would not prove permanent. While the conversation between the clergy and Churikov’s followers was temporarily halted—first by the excommunication, and then by the revolution—it was resumed in the 1980s, and in 1995, a partial reconciliation occurred between the St. Petersburg Metropolitan Ioann (Synchev) and the “Society of Orthodox Christian Followers of Brother Ioann.” Although the reconciliation has been far from complete, today, some eighty years after Brother Ioann’s death, trezvennitsy—some direct descendants of his followers before the revolution—regularly worship, attend besedy, and offer outreach to addicts in an Orthodox church (Khram Novomuchenikov i Ispovednikov Rossiiskikh), with the support of a local priest. Finally, it would seem, they are acknowledged for expressing their piety in ways that nurture and strengthen the Church.

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III The Church and the Russian Empire

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Liberal Answers to the “Jewish Question”: Then and Now Jonathan Dekel-Chen (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) This paper began its journey in 1998 as my master’s thesis under the guidance of Gregory Freeze.1 This celebratory volume for our teacher, mentor, and friend allows me an opportunity to reconsider the issues explored those many years ago, now in light of events that transpired during the intervening seventeen years. Back in the late 1990s, post-Soviet states were in transition. The Russian Federation—despite bouts of political and economic volatility—appeared to be on a winding path toward economic and political liberalism. My thesis, which explored the “Jewish question” in high-circulation newspapers in late Imperial Russia, resonated with an emergent national narrative: in parallel to intolerant legacies, Russia also had liberal traditions, even with regard to Jews. Much of this looks different in 2015. Some post-Soviet countries have successfully privatized their economies and the fall of communism has created possibilities for social and physical mobility that would have been unthinkable for most citizens in Soviet times. It is no less true, however, that authoritarianism has returned to parts of the former Soviet Union. In some of these nations, shadows abound from darker political times and old ethnic antagonisms have reignited, alongside relative social and economic stability. 2 In light of these complex conditions, it seems fitting to reassess Russia’s liberal past through a kind of window offered by the “Jewish question.” Questions and Answers in Late Imperial Russia The “Jewish question” still generates interest among historians. Although the “question” first surfaced in intellectual discourses during the second half of the nineteenth century, it remains a troublesome concept to define.3 While the radical Right and the Left before 1914 1 My thanks to Natalya Goykhman for assistance with translation of material from Gazeta kopeika. All other translations are mine. See Jonathan Dekel-Chen, “Back from Eternal Damnation: The Public Discourse on the ‘Jewish Question’ in the Liberal Russian Press, 1906–1914” (master’s thesis, Brandeis University, 1998). 2 For an overview of these tensions, see Robert Service, Russia: Experiment with a People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 3 Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, The Tsars and the Jews: Reform, Reaction and Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia (Chur, Switz.: Harwood, 1993); Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn, eds., The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Jonathan Dekel-Chen, David Gaunt, Natan Meir, and Israel Bartal, eds., Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010); John Doyle Klier, Russians, Jews and the Pogroms of 1881–1882 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Perhaps most remarkable among all recent works is Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s controversial 2-volume work, Dvesti let vmeste (Moscow: Russkii put’, 2009–2010).

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developed ideas about the nature of Jews and how they should be treated, there was no consensus in Russian society on what precisely the “question” meant, much less a clear solution to it.4 Even an otherwise decisive prime minister such as P. A. Stolypin (1906–1911) hesitated on this subject, given the trouble it could create for Russia; he noted, “Naturally—is it not abnormal to arouse and embitter a race of 5 million people? Clearly this is wrong and the Jewish Question must be diagnosed.”5 Added to the ambivalence expressed about the “Jewish question” by prominent individuals like Stolypin, scholarly literature has not yet tracked how the “question” changed over time in the late imperial period. Instead, existing works focus on specific topics: government policy, the antisemitic press, the cause and effect of pogroms, and the internal history of the Jews, usually fixing pogroms or political movements as an axis of investigation.6 By drawing chiefly on government records, right-wing propaganda, and the writings of elites, these studies unintentionally create a distorted impression about the totality of the “Jewish question.” 7 A few studies point out that, in fact, officials in late Imperial Russia usually tried to ignore the nationalities issue, facing it only when forced to by extreme events like pogroms and assassinations.8 Other studies are more speculative and try to discern the public mood at the time, including how liberal Russia “could/might/should have done more” for Russia’s Jews.9 This essay does not dispute these approaches. Rather, I hope to use the “Jewish question” among liberals as a means to gauge the parameters of wider discourses at the time “from above” and “from below.”10 Perhaps surprising to some, the “Jewish question” was among the most frequently debated topics in the First Duma (national parliament), even if little concrete action resulted.11 But because elections were weighted toward elites (and females could not vote), its deliberations did not reflect the public mood. Con4 For example, see John D. Klier, “The Jewish Question in the Reform-Era Russian Press, 1855–1865,” Russian Review 39, no. 3 (1980): 310, 307; and Eli Weinerman, “Racism, Racial Prejudice and Jews in Late Imperial Russia,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17, no. 13 (1994): 470. 5 Abraham Ascher, “Prime Minister Stolypin and his ‘Jewish Advisor,’” Journal of Contemporary History 30 (1995): 521. 6 In Hans Rogger’s works on the Union of the Russian People, the Beilis Case and Russia’s ministers were foundational. For example, see “The Beilis Case: Antisemitism and Politics in the Reign of Nicholas II,” Slavic Review 25, no. 4 (1966): 615–29. More recently, see Robert Weinberg, Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia: The Ritual Murder Trial of Mendel Beilis (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013). 7 Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), 41. Weeks cites Weinerman (“Racism, Racial Prejudice”) as proof that the average Russian had an inherent distrust, if not hatred, for Jews, especially among those Russians living in the Pale of Settlement. Weinerman used government-generated sources. 8 For example, see Weeks, Nation and State, 47. 9 For example, Yitzhak Maor, Sha’alat ha-yedudim b’tnuah ha-liberalit veha-mapkhanit b’Rusyah, 1890–1914 (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1964), 96–97, 100–101, 183–84, 256, 258. 10 Samuel Kassow raised this possibility in “Russia’s Unrealized Society,” in Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow, and James L. West (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 367–71. 11 Shmuel Galai, “The Jewish Question as a Russian Problem: The Debates in the First State Duma,” Revolutionary Russia 17, no. 1 (2004): 32.

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sequently, this essay seeks the public discourse on the “Jewish question” in mass-circulation dailies, not in Duma debates or on the pages of government documents. This is not the first time that the Russian press has been used to uncover wider discourses about Jews. John Klier, for example, found that the “question” was actually a collection of issues. Although newspapers of the 1880s became disillusioned with the prospects for reforming Jews, they did introduce the “Jewish question” to the elite reading public. From the 1860s until the 1890s journalistic and intellectual approaches to the “question” vacillated. Liberals, no less than conservatives, often expressed racist views and manipulated the issue for political, or even business, purposes. Almost all of these early newspapers agreed, however, that pogroms signaled the worst features of Russia: a weak state, dismal leadership, and an ignorant populace.12 The Kishinev pogrom in 1903 caused a significant shift; for the first time, educated society in the empire began to voice its distaste for anti-Jewish violence.13 There were limits, however. No sane publisher would yet dare to confront the regime on behalf of the Jews. This sort of audacity appeared only after 1905. Discourse on the “Jewish question” proliferated substantially between 1906 and 1914 as a result of the post-revolutionary reforms, as well as the rapid rise in popular literacy and, in turn, newspaper readership. From 1905 to 1914, therefore, newspapers had an impact on, and were influenced by, a literate body politic. Russian officials understood the dangers of racism for their volatile, multi-ethnic empire. But most of them preferred “Russification” or neglect to repression when dealing with minorities, including Jews.14 Nationalists and antisemites, however, acted differently. Recent studies only confirm the intensification of anti-Jewish imagery in publications emanating from the Russian Right and the Judeophobia of Tsar Nicholas II and his court after 1905.15 I will not argue here against the persistent antisemitism, its freedom of expression and, at times, considerable influence at the tsar’s court and in the bureaucracy. Writers of the time often contrasted the “Russian”—a child of emotions—with the “Jew,” represented as greedy and calculating, 16 while nationalistic ideologues used the Jews and other non-Orthodox minorities (inorodtsy) to highlight the traits of a good istinno-Russki (true-Russian).

12 John D. Klier, “The Russian Press and the Anti-Jewish Pogroms of 1881,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 17, no. 2 (1983): 202, 208–9, 220–21; Klier, “The Jewish Question,” 303, 313, 319. 13 John D. Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 130, 383; Galai, “The Jewish Question,” 34–36. 14 Weinerman, “Racism, Racial Prejudice,” 442. 15 Robert Weinberg, “The Russian Right Responds to 1905: Visual Depictions of Jews in Postrevolutionary Russia,” in The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews, ed. Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 55–69; Richard Wortman, “Nicholas II and the Revolution,” in Hoffman and Mendelsohn, The Revolution of 1905, 31–45; Galai, “The Jewish Question,” passim. 16 Service, Russia, 64.

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This chapter bypasses these stereotypes, looking instead at the still poorly understood liberal images of Jews, their sources, and how they were used.17 Russia probably was never closer to achieving a civil society than during the Duma period (1906–1914). Given the freedom of the press during these years, the era is a particularly good one for exploring popular attitudes toward high-voltage issues. Anyone interested in the precedents for and future viability of civil society among successor states to the Soviet Union might want to look to these years, a time when the outline of a marginally democratic, ostensibly liberal society first seemed possible in Russia. The Press in Late Imperial Russia Dynamism characterized the Russian press during the Duma era. All three newspapers examined in this article (Gazeta kopeika, Rech’, and Russkie vedomosti) were privately owned and, therefore, survived from subscriptions, advertising space and daily street sales. This contrasted with newspapers published by the radical Right or Left, which typically had small circulations and, in the case of the radical Right, existed thanks in part to government subsidies.18 Novoe vremia, Russkoe slovo, and Russkie vedomosti were late Imperial Russia’s only truly national dailies, distributed by rail throughout the empire.19 Other Russian-language newspapers, whatever their sales, catered to geographically, and often socio-politically, limited audiences. This was also true of the hugely popular kopeika (penny) press, which sold mainly to workers in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The market shrank for Russia’s elite-oriented “thick” periodicals (for example, Moskovskii vestnik or Sovremennik) toward the end of the nineteenth century. Shortly thereafter demand rose among masses of recently literate peasants and workingmen—as well as among middle-class intellectuals—for inexpensive dailies.20 This public expressed its satisfaction with newspapers via purchases; subscriptions to the conservative daily Novoe vremia dropped by 25 percent in 1913–1914 as a result of its antisemitic position during the Beilis Affair (discussed below).21 In response to this appetite for “the news,” entrepreneurs began publishing dailies, ranging from the serious to the sensationalist. The journalistic profession increased with the rise in popular literacy. Sudden demand and relatively 17 For an interpretation of Russian liberalism during the Duma period, see Victor Leontovitsch, The History of Liberalism in Russia, trans. Parmen Leontovitsch (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). 18 David R. Costello, “Novoe vremia and the Conservative Duma,” Russian Review 37, no. 1 (1978): 32– 33; Louise McReynolds, “Imperial Russia’s Newspaper Reporters: Profile of a Society in Transition, 1865–1914,” The Slavonic and East European Review 68, no. 2 (1990): 278. 19 Costello, “Novoe vremia,” 30. 20 Total sales of newspapers in the late 1860s was less than 70,000 copies, in 1880 the figure did not exceed 150,000. By 1914, daily street sales were over 210,000. See Louise McReynolds, The News under Russia’s Old Regime (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 7, tables 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, appendix A. See also Richard Ware, “Some Aspects of the Russian Reading Public in the 1880s,” Renaissance and Modern Studies 24 (1980): 21, 26, 35; Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 31, 111. 21 Costello, “Novoe vremia,” 38; McReynolds, The News, table 5, appendix A. For a recent study of the Affair, see Weinberg, Blood Libel.

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high salaries meant that mass-circulation newspapers attracted owners, employees, and contributors from diverse backgrounds.22 Although no accurate method exists to gauge the impact of the press on the reading public during this period, it did expose growing numbers of Russians to a variety of views on subjects of the day, including the “Jewish question.” The autocracy recognized the growth of the mass-circulation press and tried to exercise control through indirect censorship, criminal prosecutions, and fines. But these efforts did little to curb the dailies’ popularity or variety.23 Many of Russia’s decision-makers read liberal newspapers—particularly Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti—even if they agreed with little of what they read.24 Conservatives appreciated the problematic potential of the press, going as far as to suggest imposing heavy taxes on newspapers to deter mass purchasing.25 The government also attempted to penetrate urban and rural reading audiences through official newspapers and information pamphlets, but poor circulation and low budgets limited their effectiveness.26 Locating Public Opinion in Mass-Circulation Dailies Russkie vedomosti appeared in 1863. Printed in Moscow, it aimed for both the city’s readership and the provinces. White-collar Muscovites, members of the intelligentsia, or professionals employed by rural autonomous governments (zemstvos) constituted the bulk of its contributors. While most of them belonged to liberal parties, Russkie vedomosti had a reputation for non-political, thorough and reliable reporting.27 Published in St. Petersburg from February 1905, Rech’ was closely associated with the Constitutional Democratic Party but was not an official organ of any political party. Nonetheless, the failure of earlier attempts to establish such newspapers made Rech’, almost by default, very popular among politically active liberals. That being said, it had little daily circulation outside the city. Unlike Russkie vedomosti, the publishers of Rech’ were Jews or recent converts from Judaism.28 But like Russkie vedomosti, journalists, scholars, and 22 McReynolds, “Imperial Russia’s Newspaper Reporters,” 281, 293. An average reporter earned 3000 rubles per year at this time, whereas a professor earned 1500 to 5000 rubles, a doctor 900 to 3000, a school teacher 200 to 900, and a skilled worker about 300 rubles. An unskilled worker could expect no more than 100 rubles. 23 McReynolds, The News, 221, 222; Charles Ruud, “The Printing Press as an Agent of Political Change in Early 20th Century Russia,” Russian Review 4, no. 4 (1981): 385; Dmitrii El’iashevich, “Evreiskaia pechat’, politika i tsenzura v Rossii, 1797–1917,” Evrei v Rossii 5 (1998): 31–100. 24 Vladimir I. Gurko, Features and Figures of the Past (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1939), 423, 432, 433, 533; McReynolds, The News, 240. 25 Shortly before his death, former interior minister Sviatopolk-Mirksii proposed this from the Duma rostrum. See “Gosudarstvennaia Duma,” Gazeta kopeika [henceforth “GK”], 21 May 1914, no. 2099, 2–3. 26 James H. Krukones, “To the People: The Russian Government and the Newspaper Sel’skii vestnik, 1881–1917” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1983), 266, 293, 348; McReynolds, The News, 221. 27 Costello, “Novoe vremia,” 34. Contributors on the “Jewish question” were a mix of correspondents, lawyers, scholars, and grassroots political activists. Biographical information for contributors to Russkie vedomosti was taken from Ivan F. Masanov, Slovar’ pseudonimov (Moscow: Izdatelstvo vse’ soiuznoi knizhnoi palate’, 1957–1960); and Michael L. Florinsky, ed., McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Russia & the Soviet Union (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961). 28 Thomas Riha, “Rech’: A Portrait,” Slavic Review 22, no. 4 (1963): 665.

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rank-and-file activists tended to write its articles dealing with the “Jewish question.” Jewish advocacy organizations from England and the United States provided subsidies to the paper until 1908; they hoped that Rech’ would spread liberal messages about Jews and other issues.29 During the period of study (1906–1914), Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti had a combined daily circulation of between 117,000 and 150,000 copies, equaling or surpassing the conservative stalwart, Novoe vremia.30 Any attempt to gauge the public mood in Imperial Russia at this time must take into account the kopeika newspapers. Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti are no doubt crucial resources for studying educated discourse among the professional classes. While important in terms of their content, the distribution of these two newspapers paled in comparison to the kopeika press, perhaps better described as tabloids. Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti enjoyed daily circulations in the tens of thousands each. By contrast, hundreds of thousands of copies of kopeika newspapers sold daily in the empire’s major cities and in many cases were also read aloud to others, thereby multiplying even further their readership.31 No less important than circulation levels, the kopeika press targeted the “lower” classes as potential clientele. Gazeta kopeika, published in St. Petersburg from 1908 to 1917, cannot be classified as liberal in a strict political sense, nor was it connected to any movement or party.32 It seems reasonable, however, to categorize Gazeta kopeika as liberal in essence; the paper survived only because it sold in large numbers to urban, working-class readers.33 Because the paper had to maintain at least a measure of profitability in order to survive, and its publishers were themselves liberal, Gazeta kopeika disseminated information and opinions that more often than not contradicted conservative messages “from above.” In sum, when drawing conclusions from these three dailies about the “Jewish question,” I refer to a large, growing, literate (and listening) sector of society, not just a small, educated class. While this journalistic chorus and its audience may have been relatively large, they are also notable for who remained “outside.” As we shall see, the liberal press gravitated during these years toward a uniform solution for the “Jewish question.” On the whole, their coverage of the issue promoted the inclusion of Jews into an egalitarian society under the rule of law. Actual Jews, however, were mostly absent from their articles until 1914. Rather, the journalists focused on the misdeeds of authorities or the impact of the “Jewish question” on Russia. The three dailies vacillated between valuing and pitying Jews. But the victimization of Jews was, overall, less important than the lessons to be learned from these injustices. Moreover, all of them ignored the Jewish press in Russia. This was not an oversight or “blind 29 Gary Dean Best, To Free a People: American Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Problem in Eastern Europe, 1890-–1914 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 167–68. 30 Riha, “Rech’,” 663; McReynolds, The News, tables 5–6 in appendix A. 31 Solomon Volkov, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Free Press, 1995), 152–53. 32 Mikhail B. Gorodetskii (a liberal Jew) and V. Anzimirov published Gazeta kopeika from 1908 until 1917. For this reason, material for the year 1906 could not be accessed. Individual copies of the daily sold for 1 kopek; a yearly subscription cost 3 rubles. For an advertisement of the extraordinarily varied subscription packages for the year 1912, see Gazeta kopeika, 18 November 1911, no. 1198, 2. A separate daily under the same title appeared in Moscow from 1909 to 1910. 33 This is clear from the topics and advertisements appearing in every issue.

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spot”; many of their writers, especially in Rech’ and Gazeta kopeika, knew Yiddish (and perhaps Hebrew). More likely, they tended to see the “Jewish question” as a Russian problem, to be solved by non-Jewish society. For them, the Jewish press and politicians could contribute little to the discussion. The newspapers explored here, therefore, for the most part put forth ideas and details about Jews, but did not include them in the conversation. A Debate Begins, 1906 The October 1905 Manifesto ushered in a new era for Russia, climaxing with the convening in early 1906 of the First Duma. Although not representative of the masses and invested with only marginal powers, the Duma did offer an unprecedented platform for political expression. An atmosphere of lawlessness—comprised of residual revolutionary mass violence, pogroms, and youth hooliganism—still plagued the country when the Duma convened.34 The regime restored civil order only late in the year. Trends of politicization increased during these months among almost all sectors of society, including Jews and the radical Right.35 This awakening forced the issue of Russia’s nationalities onto a public, and a regime, that preferred to ignore it.36 Throughout this tumultuous year, Russkie vedomosti identified repeated smears in the antisemitic press and responded to them. The paper decried exaggerations of the Jewish role in revolutionary movements and baseless claims of foreign intervention in Russian politics. Its editors saw these slanders as a political diversionary tactic from the Right.37 The paper also castigated maltreatment of Jews by Russian courts and drew attention to legitimate Jewish demands for equal civil rights.38 In reply to Finance Minister V. N. Kokovstev’s claim that equal treatment of Jews did not accord with the Russian way of life, Russkie vedomosti criticized restrictions against any law-abiding people.39 Meanwhile, it bemoaned recent pogroms through empathetic tales about the plight of individual, good-hearted Jews, allowing its readers to identify with the suffering among the victims.40 Throughout 1906, the paper addressed the “Jewish question” not just in terms of straightforward humanitarianism, but also as a vehicle to promote a better, more civil society. 34 Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: Crime, Culture and Power in St. Petersburg, 1900–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 128. 35 For more on this process among Jews, see Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Erich Haberer, Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Christoph Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1900–1914 (London: New York University Press, 1995). 36 Hans Rogger, “Was There a Russian Fascism? The U.R.P.,” Journal of Modern History 36, no. 4 (1964): 398; Weeks, Nation and State, 50; Ascher, “Prime Minister Stolypin,” 521; Dominic Lieven, et al., eds., British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, part 1, series A, vol. 4 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1983), 115, 244–45, 266. 37 For example, see Russkie vedomosti [henceforth “RV ”], 18 July 1906, no. 182, 1. 38 “Uchastie evreev v revoliutsionnom dvizhenii,” RV, 18 July 1906, no. 182, 2; RV, 12 December 1906, no. 300, 3. 39 RV, 1 October 1906, no. 241, 2. 40 “Posle pogromov,” RV, 1 September 1906, no. 217, 3; “Posle pogromov,” RV, 7 September 1906, no. 222, 4.

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Defense of Jews also had a distinctly political side. Russkie vedomosti (and Rech’) responded regularly to antisemitic articles in other newspapers. The two papers directed much of their venom toward Novoe vremia and its publisher, A. S. Suvorin, as well as its editor (later publisher), M. O. Menshikov. Russkie vedomosti (and Rech’) accused both of sheltering thugs and of collusion in the pogroms.41 Given Novoe vremia’s reputed semi-official status, this journalistic back-and-forth represented a debate with the government itself. Russkie vedomosti directly attacked the regime’s toleration, if not tacit support, of the radical Right and antisemitic (or incompetent) local officials. It demanded that the government reject these groups and individuals—whose anti-Jewish hatreds inevitably stirred anarchy—in favor of educating the population to embrace the rule of law. Moreover, the government should reject the radical Right in order to deflect the intense international outcry against Russia sparked by recent pogroms.42 Russkie vedomosti went so far as to support the use of field courts-martial against the guilty parties in order to protect the nation’s citizens; severe methods were needed to protect Jews no less than the person of the prime minister.43 These articles did not focus on the Jews’ suffering, but rather, linked the “Jewish question” to national well-being. While sharing Russkie vedomosti’s concerns, Rech’ preferred to use the “Jewish question” to bludgeon the regime. It focused on suspicions that the government, clergy, and gendarmes encouraged, or ignored, anti-Jewish violence. In one of its inaugural issues, Rech’ criticized a government proclamation that dismissed Jewish fears of impending attacks. Given the provocations from the radical Right, the paper went even farther, demanding that the government do more to preempt future pogroms.44 In a fascinating intersection of antisemitism with Russia’s embryonic electoral system, Rech’ assailed government innuendos about inevitable outbreaks of violence if Jews translated their demographic weight in certain locales into electoral victories.45 It sent secondary barbs toward provincial and local officials, accusing them and police as co-conspirators in the pogroms, which were harmful to the national interest, humiliating for the nation, and antithetical to overall progress.46 41 RV, 12 December 1906, no. 300, 3; “Uchastie evreev v revoliutsionnom dvizhenii,” RV, 18 July 1906, no. 182, 2; “Ob antisemiticheskoi pechati,” Rech’, 6 June 1906, no. 92, 1; “Po povodu pogromnogo nastroeniia vcherte oseldlosti,” Rech’, 18 June 1906, no. 103, 2; “Iudofil’ svoei redaktsii,” Rech’, 11 June 1906, no. 97, 2. 42 “Chernosotennaia demagogia,” RV, 16 September 1906, no. 228, 2; RV, 31 August 1906, no. 216, 2. 43 “Chto tvoritsia v Odesse,” RV, 11 November 1906, no. 276, 3. In July 1906 Prime Minister Stolypin instituted field courts-martial for political crimes following the first attempt to assassinate him. Military governors presided, often leading to summary executions (5000 were recorded from July 1906 until 1909). 44 “Mery priniaty,” Rech’, 28 February 1906, no. 6, 2; “Milost’ evreiam,” Rech’, 4 March 1906, no. 10; “K russkomu obshchestvu,” Rech’, 17 March 1906, no. 23, 3; “Bialistokskii pogrom,” Rech’, 11 June 1906, no. 97, 2; “Eshche o Bialistoke,” Rech’, 8 July 1906, no. 120, 2. 45 “Preduprezhdenie pogromov,” Rech’, 15 March 1906, no. 21, 2. 46 “Neidgardt opravdan!” Rech’, 18 March 1906, no. 24, 1; “O chernosotennom dvizhenii,” Rech’, 1 April 1906, no. 37, 2; “Bialistokskii urok,” Rech’, 4 June 1906, no. 91, 2. The animosity expressed in Rech’ toward local officials may have been an inescapable characteristic for a paper whose readership and staff were almost entirely urban.

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The paper also castigated local newspapers and clergies, whose incitements had, it claimed, contributed to anti-Jewish violence.47 Rech’ also proposed solutions to the “Jewish question.” This began in earnest after the 1906 pogroms in Bialystok (the first to erupt during the Duma era).48 One article claimed that the only solution to the violence against Jews was to find viable, stable income for the urban masses, while another declared that old confusion and stereotypes about Jews must be remedied by objective analysis.49 Rech’ tried to educate its readers by enumerating Jewish contributions to Russia’s economic vitality, the fears of everyday life for Jews in the empire living under the “Sword of Damocles,” and the realities of their growing political activism.50 In what was perhaps its boldest linkage of the “Jewish question” with wider politics, Rech’ argued that only the replacement of officials responsible for the pogroms could remedy the ills of society.51 Linkage between national politics and the “Jewish question” continued with the paper’s claim that the radical Right had the benefit of government funds when fomenting anti-Jewish incitement and propagating myths of a Jewish international conspiracy against Russia. By polarizing society with such slanders, the Right hoped to bring “the people” closer to an otherwise dysfunctional regime.52 Rech’ highlighted this antisemitic propaganda from the radical Right as particularly dangerous for Russia’s fledgling electoral politics.53 The government demonized Jews in the public consciousness—with the aid of the rightwing press—as a means to distract the masses from the truly pressing problems of the day. According to Rech’, the Russian people were not naturally antisemitic; rather, they were victims of political manipulation.54 Rech’ invoked “lessons” from abroad both to suggest solutions to the “Jewish question” and to embarrass the regime. Russia could learn from Germany, where the rule of law protected all citizens from the fears of incitement that plagued Russia’s Jews.55 The country could even learn something from the otherwise suspect Poles, whose respect for alternative

47 “Ni’chto o pogromakh,” Rech’, 1 April 1906, no. 37, 2; “Bialistokskii pogrom,” Rech’, 11 June 1906, no. 97, 2. 48 For more on debates in the Duma on this issue, see Galai, “The Jewish Question,” 54–61. 49 “Bialistokskii urok,” Rech’, 4 June 1906, no. 91, 2; “K evreiskomu voprosu,” Rech’, 23 June 1906, no. 107, 1. 50 “K postanovke evreiskogo voprosa,” Rech’, 27 June 1906, no. 99, 1; “Eshche o Bialistoke,” Rech’, 8 July 1906, no. 120, 2; “Bialistokskii pogrom,” Rech’, 11 June 1906, no. 97, 2; “Bezpravnye na zhitel’stvo,” Rech’, 14 April 1906, no. 48, 2. 51 Bialistokskii pogrom,” Rech’, 11 June 1906, no. 97, 2. 52 “Iapansko-evreiskie i istinno-russkie liudi,” Rech’, 22 August 1906, no. 144, 1. 53 “Preduprezhdenie pogromov,” Rech’, 15 March 1906, no. 21, 2; “Eshche ob agenstvo,” Rech’, 8 April 1906, no. 42, 1; “Ni’chto o pogromakh,” Rech’, 1 April 1906, no. 37, 2. 54 “Po povodu pogromnogo nastroeniia vcherte osedlosti,” Rech’, 18 June 1906, no. 103, 2; “Ni’chto o pogromakh,” Rech’, 1 April 1906, no. 37, 2. 55 “Ob antisemiticheskoi pechati,” Rech’, 6 June 1906, no. 92, 1.

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national identities and prevention of pogroms was repaid with Jewish loyalty and sacrifice for Poland’s national interest.56 Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti saw the “Jewish question” as a linchpin for the wider nationalities question.57 Both battled the conservative mantra, “Russia for Russians,” arguing that it could not apply like “France for the French,” “Italy for Italians,” or even “Austria for the Germans.” Because Russia was a multi-ethnic empire (not a nation-state), loyalty among its minorities could be assured only by protecting their rights, not with brute force. No less important, only social peace could avert Russia’s slide toward political bankruptcy.58 This orientation distinguished both papers from publications coming from the Right, which tended to separate the “Jewish question” from nationalities policy. Lastly, Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti provided a platform for expression on these issues to professional groups unaffiliated with the Jewish community. For example, the Writers’ Union published “An Appeal to Russian Society” condemning the government for permitting the publication of antisemitic literature. The Union demanded that official censors stop these presses; defeat of the Jews was the defeat of all Russia, while the struggle for Jewish rights was everyone’s fight.59 Once it entered the scene later in the decade, Gazeta kopeika expanded still further the chorus of opinions. Its open-ended character gave voice to groups ranging from political émigrés raging against the radical Right, to writers protesting injustices against Jews, and to local Jewish communities seeking relief from repressive policies.60 While it tended toward the sensational, the paper also devoted significant space to reports from the Duma and formal gatherings of significance to its readers such as the Second All-Russian Artisans’ Convention; here, delegates to the Convention spoke to Gazeta kopeika’s role in disseminating their liberal message to workers throughout Russia.61 1911: The “Jewish Question” amid Turmoil Crises threatened the empire throughout this year. At home, the Third Duma unraveled, widespread hooliganism resurfaced, and Prime Minister Stolypin’s authority declined, punctuated by his assassination in September.62 Added to these, famine struck, raising doubts about national stability. The discovery in March of the body of a murdered Chris56 “Ni’chto o pogromakh,” Rech’, 1 April 1906, no. 37, 2; “Eshche o Bialistoke,” Rech’, 8 July 1906, no. 120, 2. 57 For more on Jews and the wider nationalities question of the period, see Mattityahu Mintz, “National Aspirations of the Jews and Other Minorities in a Multinational State,” Shvut 9 (2000): 1–31. 58 RV, 3 December 1906, no. 294, 2; “Russkaia zemlia i russkii narod,” Rech’, 4 May 1906, no. 64, 1. 59 “K russkomu obshchestvu,” Rech’, 17 March 1906, no. 23, 3; Russkie vedomosti printed a similar article several days later. See RV, 21 March 1906, no. 78, 3. 60 “Perepiska mezhdu Burtsevym i dep. Purishkevichem’,” GK, 13 January 1911, no. 892, 3; “O chem pishut: Protest evreev,” GK, 8 April 1911, no. 977, 3; “Russkie pisateli i obshchestvennye deiateli o dele Iushchinskago,” GK, 30 November 1911, no. 1210, 3. 61 “2-oi vserossiiskii remeslennyi c”ezd,” GK, 30 January 1911, no. 909, 5. 62 The failure of the western zemstvo draft bill to pass the Duma badly damaged Stolypin’s prestige. See Neil B. Weissman, Reform in Tsarist Russia: The State Bureaucracy and Local Government, 1900–1914 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1981), 198; Löwe, Tsars, 260; Neuberger, Hooliganism, 277.

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tian boy named Andrei Iushchinskii in Kiev opened what became known as the Beilis Affair; the ensuing months witnessed stormy discourses across the empire’s political spectrum around the charge of ritual murder brought against the defendant, Mendel Beilis.63 Looking abroad, a volatile diplomatic landscape troubled Russia’s leaders and reading public. To keep up with the spiraling arms race, Russia increased its dependence on foreign loans. Given these developments, Rech’ dealt with the international ramifications of the “Jewish question” no less than actual events involving Jews. The paper expressed distress when England labeled Russia an “Asiatic” nation because of its arbitrariness and lawlessness toward minorities.64 Rech’ also worried that the complacency of Prime Minister Kokovtsev (Stolypin’s successor) toward the “Jewish question”—and controversies around it between the Finance and Internal Affairs Ministries—would bear negative economic consequences if Russia could not secure new loans abroad.65 As time passed, economic considerations increased in Rech’s discussion of the “Jewish question.” The liberal daily prioritized the dispelling of a theory, promoted by Novoe vremia, that a Jewish economic conspiracy fed ethnic conflicts. Here, Rech’ countered that Jews simply engaged in the modern economy.66 In fact, they had constructive economic functions in the provinces, whereas the newspaper presented antisemitic, arbitrary actions by local officials and envious non-Jewish merchants as hostile to the welfare of the nation.67 As in 1906, Rech’ invoked solutions from abroad. It asked how, in the midst of militarization throughout Europe, Russia’s nobles and military commanders continued to reject the conscription of Jews into the imperial army while the arch-conservative Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Junkers acquiesced to his policy of universal military service.68 Discussion of the “Jewish question” within the nationalities issue also grew from 1906. Now Rech’ promoted a vision of a multi-national empire where Tatars, Poles, and other minorities (but not Jews) were already de facto partners in the Russian state, notwithstanding ravings from the Right. The paper joked that Stolypin’s “zoological” definition of nationality would have prevented Catherine the Great from leading the radical Right.69 Rech’ continued its assault on the radical Right, accusing them of poisoning the spirit of Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Turgenev with “Tatar, Prusso-Petersburg nationalism.” 70 Moving beyond its earlier identification of envy as a source of antisemitism among commercial elites, in 1911 Rech’ became even more conscious of class and religion. In response to one Shmakov, an eminent Muscovite who was quoted calling Jews “deceitful from the time of Adam,” Rech’ criticized his “typical” gentry attitude and declared that the Jews did 63 In parallel, Russia’s Jews were politicizing at rates unequalled among the empire’s minorities. By 1910, at least eight Jewish political parties had formed. See Weeks, Nation and State, 121. 64 “Rokovyia nedorazumeniia,” Rech’, 22 January 1911, no. 21, 3. 65 “K voprosu o natsionalizatsii ekonomicheskoi oblasti,” Rech’, 6 August 1911, no. 213, 2. 66 “Po povodu kravovago naveta,” Rech’, 7 December 1911, no. 336, 3. 67 “K priezdu evreev v Tiumen,” Rech’, 18 June 1911, no. 164, 4; “Vyselenie evreev iz selo Bezsonovki,” Rech’, 23 February 1911, no. 52, 7; “Evreiskoe zasil’e,” Rech’, 9 November 1911, no. 308, 4. 68 “Russkaia armiia i natsional’nyi vopros,” Rech’, 31 March 1911, no. 88, 2; “Evreiskii vopros v voennykh sferakh,” Rech’, 4 October 1911, no. 272, 2. 69 “V. M. Purishkevich o natsionalistakh,” Rech’, 24 April 1911, no. 110, 5. 70 “V chem iad natsionalizma?,” Rech’, 23 October 1911, no. 291, 3.

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not need noble approval.71 The paper also refuted a contention in Novoe vremia that the high proportion of Jews in the empire threatened the Orthodox Church. It made an analogy to New York City: 1.5 million Jews lived in a city of 5 million, yet no one in the United States considered them a threat to America’s national character.72 Perhaps the most intriguing article of the year assessed the influence of Judaism on Russian national identity. By attacking Judaism and condemning Jews since the Creation, the conservative press and high-ranking clerics were, in fact, calling into question the very legitimacy of Russian Orthodoxy, given Jesus’s Jewish roots. Moreover, persistent calls among nationalists for elimination of those they considered “beasts” and “subhuman” was tantamount to genocide. Accordingly, if Russia wanted to prove itself “the new Israel,” then it must destroy not the Jews, but the “unnatural Jewish spirit” in Russia’s national character. This “Jewish spirit” had been manifest since the times of the Old Testament in an inhuman and ungodly nationalism. Ancient Jewish tradition showed that when a smaller people did not resign itself to a unified God, then that people (not their God) were liable to destruction by the sword. This tradition should be rejected by the “new Israelites” (the Russians), and the “original Israelites” should be spared.73 Albeit in an odd way, here was a liberal voice suggesting that nationalists learn from the Jewish past. Rech’ continued in 1911 to use the “Jewish question” as a platform to criticize the state. This meant drawing attention to everyday transgressions, including violations of personal property and privacy, unwarranted police harassment of Jewish travelers, illegal interference of local governors in the election of state rabbis, the unlawful exclusion of Jewish girls from provincial high schools, and the replacement of Jewish merchants with Germans at provincial markets.74 This underscoring of arbitrariness toward Jews served as a warning to the wider society about the true nature of governance. Rech’ saw the regime’s inaction against these injustices as another sign, together with the tsar’s tacit acceptance of rabid antisemitism in the conservative press, as proof of the state’s inability to protect all of its subjects—Russia’s most elementary obligation.75 The year 1911 began optimistically for Russkie vedomosti on the issue of national character. The body politic had developed a more healthy circumspection toward the “Jewish question” and approached with caution nationalist propaganda and the rants of irresponsible Duma deputies following Stolypin’s assassination.76 The paper implied that antisem-

71 “Malenki feitelion—evreiskii vopros,” Rech’, 14 February 1911, no. 44, 3. 72 Rech’, 17 July 1911, no. 193, 2. 73 “Natsionalizm i religiia,” Rech’, 21 October 1911, no. 289, 2. 74 “Proverka evreiskikh kvartir,” Rech’, 26 May 1911, no. 142, 3; “Mystarstva privilegirovannoga evreiia,” Rech’, 2 July 1911, no. 178, 2; “Sionizm pred sudom senata,” Rech’, 8 July 1911, no. 184, 3; “Proizvol s protsentnoi normoi,” Rech’, 9 August 1911, no. 216, 3; “Nemtsy vmesto evreev,” Rech’, 9 November 1911, no. 308, 4. 75 “Zhelezo,” Rech’, 8 September 1911, no. 246, 2; “Teoriia pogromov,” Rech’, 13 September 1911, no. 251,  2; “Po povodu kravovago naveta,” Rech’, 7 December 1911, no. 336, 3; “Professor, Novoe vremia i ubistvo Iushchinskago,” Rech’, 18 December 1911, no. 347, 3. 76 RV, 5 January 1911, no. 3, 2; RV, 1 May 1911, no. 99, 2; RV, 4 November 1911, no. 254, 1.

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itism was a crutch on which nationalists stood, now fearing the loss of the predominance they had enjoyed in the past.77 Similarly to Rech’, a major theme for Russkie vedomosti in 1911 was the implications for the national economy rising from the “Jewish question.” As before, Russia could learn much from abroad, where integration of Jews invariably yielded positive economic outcomes. Russia needed her Jews even more because non-Jews in Russia showed less vitality than non-Jewish Germans, for example.78 Whereas conservatives in Western Europe had embraced the modern economy, Russian nobles lived off state stipends, rejected modernization, filled comfortable administrative posts, and benefitted from inexpensive bank credit.79 The “Jewish question” thus supplied Russkie vedomosti with a tool to critique gentry privilege. Washington’s cancellation of the 1832 Trade Agreement between Russia and the United States elicited a strong response. The paper immediately cautioned against reflexive reactions among Russia’s militaristic and antisemitic nationalists.80 In light of the cancellation of the agreement, Russia’s violation of Jewish rights and the growing superiority of the conservative Ministry of Internal Affairs over the reform-minded Finance Ministry seemed to be imperiling the nation’s industrial growth.81 The intersection between the “Jewish question” and the rule of law remained another consistent concern for Russkie vedomosti. Overall, the rectification of injustices against Jews would move Russia toward conduct becoming a respectable country. The paper illustrated this formula in two cases: elimination of quotas and lotteries for acceptance of Jews into state schools and a demand for swift government action against a bizarre, lawless mini-kingdom in Tsaritsyn (created by a monk named Illiodor) that had victimized local Jews and “rich folks.”82 In both cases, the paper presented improved treatment of a repressed minority as a kind of signpost for the rest of the country. By probing the nature of antisemitism, Russkie vedomosti sought to provide information to the public that would promote realistic discussion of the “Jewish question.” One area of examination was the Right’s claim that Jews played an outsized part in Russia’s revolutionary movements.83 The intensity of debate with Novoe vremia and other antisemitic outlets about this might be attributable, in part, to normal polemics among journalists or even the realities of free-market competition. Nevertheless, this issue set the liberal press drastically apart. Russkie vedomosti placed the onus for proliferation of antisemitism on politicians and parts of the press, not on society. Together with Rech’, by 1911 Russkie vedomosti was creating an impression that small, non-representative groups manipulated common, honest Russians toward anti-Jewish violence. 77 RV, 22 September 1911, no. 217, 2. 78 “Zakonproekt ob otmene …,” RV, 11 February 1911, no. 32, 5. 79 RV, 31 July 1911, no. 176, 2. 80 RV, 7 December 1911, no. 281, 1; RV, 10 August 1911, no. 183, 1; RV, 31 July 1911, no. 176, 2. 81 “Zakonproekt ob otmene …,” RV, 11 February 1911, no. 32, 5; RV, 10 August 1911, no. 183, 1; RV, 31 July 1911, no. 176, 2. 82 “Priem detei lits iudeiskago …,” RV, 20 May 1911, no. 114, 5; RV, 1 September 1911, no. 201, 2. 83 “Uchastie evreev v revoliutsionnom dvizhenii,” RV, 8 March 1911, no. 54, 2.

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How did Gazeta kopeika approach these questions? In some ways, its coverage was comparable. For example, it reported on what might be called everyday antisemitism “from above” and “from below.”84 But the paper paid less attention to international and economic complications arising from antisemitism. Instead, it focused on discussions about Jews in the Duma and at forums of professional and class-based organizations. In reports on parliamentary debates, its correspondents treated antisemitic deputies with disdain, showing that parties from the radical Right (or even the Center) attempted to deflect attention from major national issues with absurd claims about Jews. These reports also positioned Jews as wholly within discussions of rights for Russia’s nationalities and the rule of law.85 In its coverage of Duma debates, the paper introduced the “Jewish question” to workers and suggested that their plight exemplified injustices throughout the empire. While its correspondents may not have identified with Jews, Gazeta kopeika suggested to its readers that the good of Russia would be served by relieving their collective suffering.86 In more-or-less objective reporting from the Second All-Russian Artisans’ Convention, the newspaper pointed out those speakers who identified Jewish laborers with the workers of other nationalities; all deserved equal respect from the regime.87 Conversely, subtle delegitimization characterized the paper’s coverage of the arch-conservative All-Russian Convention of the United Nobility in February.88 Perhaps most remarkable about Gazeta kopeika in 1911 were the number of items that presented Jews and Judaism as normalized fixtures in the national landscape. The paper depicted them as rational, legitimate, loyal, and deserving of equal treatment (and occasional condemnation for bad behavior), whereas the Right, the government, and the tsar deserved scorn for oppressing Jews.89 Whatever the humanizing effect of Gazeta kopeika’s reports 84 “Reorganizatsiia advokatskago sosloviia,” GK, 9 August 1911, no. 1097, 2; “Antievreiskie bezporiadki v Ferganskoi oblasti,” GK, 27 September 1911, no. 1146, 2; “Telegrammy [from Odessa],” 16 October 1911, no. 1165, 2. 85 “Gosudarstvennaia Duma,” GK, 25 March 1911, no. 963, 3; “Gosudarstvennaia Duma,” GK, 1 April 1911, no. 970, 3; Gosudarstvennaia Duma,” GK, 30 April 1911, no. 997, 2–3; “Zaprosami ob ubiistv P.A. Stolypina: Zapros’ oktiabristov,” GK, 16 October 1911, no. 1165, 4; “Zapros ob ubiistve Iushchinskago v komissii g. Dumy,” GK, 3 November 1911, no. 1184, 3; “Gosudarstvennaia Duma,” GK, 8 November 1911, no. 1174, 4–5; “Okolo g. Dumy,” GK, 18 November 1911, no. 1198, 2. 86 “Gosudarstvennaia Duma,” GK, 10 February 1911, no. 920, 2–3; “Okolo g. Dumy: zakonoproekt ob otmene cherty osedlosti,” GK, 3 March 1911, no. 1941, 2. 87 “2-oi vserossiiskii remeslennyi c”ezd,” GK, 20 January 1911, no. 899, 5; 21 January 1911, no. 900, 3; 24 January 1911, no. 903, 3; 26 January 1911, no. 905, 3; 27 January 1911, no. 906, 4; 29 January 1911, no. 908, 3; 30 January 1911, no. 909, 5. “Za den’,” GK, 31 January 1911, no. 910, 3; “Rezul’taty remeslennago c”ezda,” GK, 8 March 1911, no. 946, 4; “Sredi natsionalistov i monarkhistov,” GK, 14 September 1911, no. 1133, 4. 88 “Vserossiiskii c”ezd ob edinennago dvorianstva,” GK, 12 February 1911, no. 923, 4–5; “15 February 1911, no. 925, 4; 16 February 1911, no. 926, 5. 89 “O chem pishut: Protest evreev,” GK, 8 April 1911, no. 977, 3; “Soveshchanie o prosveshchenii sredi evreev,” GK, 16 April 1911, no. 983, 3; “Raz”iasneniia k zakonu o svobode ispovedaniia,” GK, 12 May 1911, no. 1009, 3; “Pochemu?,” GK, 19 August 1911, no. 1107, 3; “Deputatsiia ot evreiskago naseleniia g. Kieva,” GK, 4 September 1911, no. 1123, 6; “Sud: Eshche o evreiskikh imenakh,” GK, 20 November 1911, no. 1200, 5.

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about Jews at the time, a historian today can be uncomfortable reading its explicit stories of reprehensible conduct among Jews and “normal” misdeeds vis-à-vis their non-Jewish neighbors.90 The Beilis Affair and the Liberal Press Following the arrest of Mendel Beilis for the murder of the Iushchinskii boy, Rech’ delved into what it interpreted as the sources of antisemitism. It simultaneously applauded the relative restraint shown by the local conservative daily (Kievlianin) while attacking the rest of the conservative press for its promotion of the ritual murder myth.91 Rech’ considered the reappearance of this slander a threat to civil society but showed less concern about what might now happen to Jews. Russkie vedomosti took a similar approach; the Beilis Affair constituted not just a criminal case, but a moral litmus test for Russia. The paper added accusations against specific leaders of the radical Right (and unnamed others) who promoted the ritual murder myth, “to kindle dark instincts and tribal passions” for their own political gain. Moreover, it charged that Novoe vremia had attempted to influence the investigation of the murder that had led to the arrest and prosecution of Beilis. In addition, Russkie vedomosti charged that anti-Jewish slanders showed how Russia remained an “eastern” nation. It emphasized that earlier tsars had rejected the ritual murder myth whereas Nicholas II supported it.92 The re-imaging of Jews discussed above was only one of the bold steps taken by Gazeta kopeika in 1911. Its coverage of the Beilis Affair provides another example of the liberal service performed by what otherwise might be considered an apolitical, populist daily. What did it say to its millions of readers about this lightning-rod issue? Coverage began in mid-April with brief items noting that Kiev newspapers were spreading misinformation about the possible ritual murder of a young boy.93 From the moment the Beilis Affair entered the public eye, the newspaper placed itself on the side of those who considered the antisemitic barrage from the radical Right an affront to Russia’s honor and Christian legacy; the myth had no legitimacy and the case should be investigated like an everyday felony.94 From midyear, Gazeta kopeika departed from Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti by proposing alternative explanations for the murder: its conjectures about the possible identities of the 90 “Rabyki v dvadtsatom vek,” GK, 22 May 1911, no. 1019, 5–6; “Delo d-ra Ravvicha,” GK, 9 September 1911, no. 1128, 1; “Sud: Semeinaia drama,” GK, 14 September 1911, no. 1133, 4. 91 “Prestupniki,” Rech’, 19 April 1911, no. 105, 1; “Skazki o ritual’nykh ubiistvakh,” Rech’, 24 April 1911, no. 110, 2; “Vozzvanie o dele Iushchinskago,” Rech’, 9 December 1911, no. 338, 2; 18 December 1911, no. 347, 3; “Professor, Novoe vremia i ubiistvo Iushchinskago,” Rech’, 18 December 1911, no. 347, 3. 92 RV, 1 May 1911, no. 99, 2; RV, 15 October 1911, no. 237, 2; “Legenda ritual’nykh ubiistv,” RV, 15 December 1911, no. 288, 2. 93 “K zagodochnomu ubiistvu mal’chika v Kieve,” GK, 19 April 1911, no. 986, 2; “K zagodochnomu ubiistvu v Kieve,” GK, 21 April 1911, no. 988, 2. 94 “Gosudarstvennaia Duma,” GK, 30 April 1911, no. 997, 2–3. See also “Zapros ob ubiistve Iushchinskago v komissii g. Dumy,” GK, 3 November 1911, no. 1184, 3; “K delu ob ubiistve Iushchinskago,” GK, 20 November 1911, no. 1200, 4; “K delu ob ubiistve Iushchinskago,” GK, 27 November 1911, no. 1207, 2; “Russkie pisateli i obshchestvennye deiateli o dele Iushchinskago,” GK, 30 November 1911, no. 1210, 3.

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guilty parties ranged from members of Iushchinskii’s own family to hardened criminals seeking to incite pogroms as a means to loot Jewish property.95 1914: War, Imagery, and Echoes of Beilis War already seemed imminent at the start of the year. Russia tried to prepare but interlocking crises had nearly paralyzed the country. Following Stolypin’s assassination in 1911, the regime intensified “Russification” in response to its suspicions against inorodtsy. Part of this campaign required masses of Jews to return to residence in the Pale of Settlement, thereby generating even greater socioeconomic friction with their non-Jewish neighbors.96 The outbreak of war in the summer only made matters worse and forced the regime to reevaluate the situation on the western borderlands, including its discriminatory policies toward Jews. Russkie vedomosti’s first issue of 1914 addressed the recently concluded Beilis trial. By this time its legal importance had faded. Rather, the paper identified an alliance between the Right and members of the royal family around the ritual murder myth that had dragged Russia back into the Middle Ages. The paper believed that in the current environment only a truly independent court system could save the nation.97 The shadows of the Beilis trial led Rech’ to extend its earlier investigations about the roots of antisemitism into officialdom, the press, and Russian culture. The paper also bridled against the regime’s prosecution of public figures who had dared dispute the state’s evidence in the Beilis trial.98 Because Beilis himself had only been acquitted (not exonerated) upon appeal, Rech’ warned that the ritual murder libel had not been dispelled in Russia.99 It therefore demanded that the government find the real culprit and that “flabby, spoiled society” mobilize for the advancement of civil, accountable, participatory governance.100 As in 1911, in 1914 Gazeta kopeika devoted more space than the other two newspapers to the Beilis Affair. It gleefully reported on the trials of the unsavory Vera Cheberiak, suspected among other things of being a conspirator in the murder of the Iushchinskii boy.101 In a less sensationalist direction, the paper went farther than Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti in its coverage of the (subsequent) trials of V. V. Shul’gin (editor of the newspaper Kievlianin) and a group of twenty-five lawyers from St. Petersburg and Moscow, all charged with libel for accusing the authorities of antisemitic activities related to the Beilis Affair. 95 “Kto ubil Iushchinskago,” GK, 29 June 1911, no. 1056, 3; “O chem pishut: Delo Iushchinskago,” GK, 25 October 1911, no. 1174, 2–3. 96 Löwe, Tsars, 291; “V Polshe,” RV, 21 March 1914, no. 67, 5. 97 RV, 1 January 1914, no. 1, 24. 98 “Koshmarnaia zagadka,” Rech’, 10 January 1914, no. 9, 4; “Vendetta synov Iakova,” Rech’, 6 February 1914, no. 36, 2; “Delo advokatov,” Rech’, 8 June 1914, no. 153, 2. 99 Around the same time, Gazeta kopeika reported on an attempt to blackmail Jews in Vilna under the guise of defense against ritual murder. See “Po Rusi: Ritual’nyi shantazh,” GK, 13 May 1914, no. 2091, 5. 100 “Kievskie prizraki,” Rech’, 19 January 1914, no. 18, 2; “Nabroski,” Rech’, 3 April 1914, no. 91, 2. 101 She was charged with selling stolen property. She later charged several journalists with libel. See “Delo Very Cheberiak,” GK, 17 January 1914, no. 1977, 2; “Telegrammy,” GK, 22 January 1914, no. 1982, 2; “Delo Very Cheberiak i Aleksandra Iablonovskago,” GK, 20 May 1914, no. 2098, 2; “Poslednee delo Very Cheberiak,” GK, 24 May 1914, no. 2012, 2.

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In both the Shul’gin and the lawyers’ cases, Gazeta kopeika praised the patriotism of the defendants who had acted on behalf of Russia’s honor to expose misdeeds by the state; the paper equally condemned the verdicts and prison sentences imposed on some of the accused.102 This pattern repeated in the coverage of a new, spectacular murder case. Ominous reports emerged in January about the brutal killing of a young boy in the town of Fastov. Coming on the heels of Beilis’s acquittal, tensions rose quickly around what seemed to be, at first glance, another ritual murder. It quickly became known, however, that the victim (Iosil’ Pashkov) was Jewish. All three papers noted with irony the relief among Jews that “only” a Jewish boy had perished, thereby avoiding a renewal of ritual murder slanders. Gazeta kopeika displayed particular aggressiveness when suggesting that the radical Right had orchestrated the murder (to ignite pogroms).103 During the next weeks, the liberal press, especially Gazeta kopeika, urged its readers to remain calm and circumspect. In this way, it seems that the papers helped to prevent a new round of blood libel hysteria by demonizing antisemitism “from above” and “from below,” while emphasizing the importance of the rule of law.104 Reorienting Public Opinion for the War Effort Discourse abounded on the “Jewish question” from the start of 1914. Russkie vedomosti preached unity among all of Russia’s constituent peoples, instead of the hateful “zoological” nationalism spread by Novoe vremia.105 Inorodtsy should be respected whereas the country should beware of the regime’s permissiveness toward truly suspect foreigners (especially “Germans”) who held disproportionate power in military industries. Moreover, Russia’s political elites, not Jews, were anathema to the state’s interests. The persecution of Jews by such elites, and not the Jews themselves, harmed all Russians.106 The paper increasingly tied the fate of the empire to that of Jews and other minorities. Reports from the western provinces and Poland warned of dire consequences likely to re-

102 “Delo V. V. Shul’gina,” GK, 21 January 1914, no. 1981, 2–3; “Posle prigovora po delu Shul’gina,” GK, 22 January 1914, no. 1982, 2; “K delu advokatov,” GK, 30 January 1914, no. 1990, 3; “Otkliki dela Beilisa,” GK, 4 June 1914, no. 2112, 3; 5 June 1914, no. 2113, 3; 6 June 1914, no. 2114, 3; 7 June 1914, no. 2115, 3. 103 “Koshmarnoe prestuplenie,” GK, 11 January 1914, 1914, no. 1971, 3–4; “Ubiistvo v Fastove,” GK, 31 January 1914, no. 1991, 1–2; “Ubiistvo v Fastove,” GK, 1 February 1914, no. 1992, 2; “Fastovskoe ubiistvo,” GK, 2 February 1914, no. 1993, 2; “Fastovskoe ubiistvo,” GK, 4 February 1914, no. 1995, 1–2; “Fastovskoe delo,” GK, 5 February 1914, no. 1996, 2; “Fastovskoe ubiistvo,” GK, 6 February 1914, no. 1997, 1. According to Gazeta kopeika, the second-rate criminal chosen by agents of the radical Right had botched the conspiracy by mistaking Iosil’ Pashkov for a Christian boy. See also, “Pod ritual,” RV, 12 January 1914, no. 9, 3; “Final Fastovskago dela,” RV, 18 July 1914, no. 139, 2. 104 For example, see “Zaiavlenie zashchitnikov Beilisa,” GK, 23 January 1914, no. 1983, 2; “Fastovskoe delo,” GK, 7 February 1914, no. 1998, 2. 105 RV, 26 January 1914, no. 21, 2. 106 “Inorodtsy i inostrantsy,” RV, 1 February 1914, no. 26, 3; “Voprosy dnia i zhizni,” RV, 29 January 1914, no. 28, 2.

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sult from the embitterment of millions of ethnically diverse peoples.107 With the coming of war, only nationalists did not understand that, “[i]n the face of the foreign enemy there are no ancient Greeks, nor Jews—only Russian citizens.”108 Russian nationalism was therefore no better than the ideology of the hated German Junkers and the sick Hapsburg empire.109 Russkie vedomosti’s interest in the “Jewish question” deepened as war drew closer. This ranged from ethnographic reports, to rates of intermarriage, levels of emigration, the Jews’ positive role in the economies of Western Europe, the bureaucratic obstacles facing Jews who returned to Russia after the declaration of war, and amazement that, until now, Jews had heroically fulfilled their civil obligations, despite the absence of elementary rights.110 Once fighting erupted, the paper offered stark portrayals of suffering among Jewish refugees and called for the government to provide relief without regard to their religion.111 Gazeta kopeika did not wait for the war; from January it reported repeatedly on daily injustices faced by Jews throughout the empire (and elsewhere in Eastern Europe) and their restrained responses to prejudice.112 The war had an evolutionary, not revolutionary, impact on Russkie vedomosti. Even before July 1914 it had sought solutions to the “Jewish question.” The war delivered fresh justifications. A new era of equality was being forged on the battlefields and in the rear, where the bravery and contributions of Jews and other non-Orthodox minorities warranted equalization of civil rights once the guns fell silent.113 This would be an inclusive empire that welcomed Jews and other minorities. There were, to be sure, limits to Judeophilia compared to sympathy for other minorities. Whereas liberals might now portray Jews as valued stepchildren of the empire, the war led liberal Russia fully to embrace the Poles, despite the “family conflict” that had historically split them.114 It is important to note, however, that

107 “Na zapadnoi okraine,” RV, 7 March 1914, no. 55, 5. 108 RV, 10 September 1914, no. 207, 2. 109 “Tsennoe priznanie,” RV, 5 October 1914, no. 229, 2; RV, 14 December 1914, no. 288. As in previous years, Novoe vremia bore the brunt of Russkie vedomosti’s anti-nationalist criticism. See “Izo dnia v den’,” RV, 8 May 1914, no. 105, 2. 110 “Antropologicheskii tip evreev,” RV, 9 January 1914, no. 6, 4; “Voprosy dnia i zhizni,” RV, 29 January 1914, no. 28, 2; “Rol evreev v khoziaistvennoi zhizni,” RV, 11 March 1914, no. 58, 6; RV, 13 March 1914, no. 60, 2; “Tragediia evreiskago naroda,” RV, 3 August 1914, no. 178, 6; RV, 12 August 1914, no. 184, 2; “Pomoshch’ poliakam i evreiam,” RV, 11 October 1914, no. 234, 2. 111 “Pomoshch’ poliakam i evreiam,” RV, 11 October 1914, no. 234, 2. 112 “Prikaz’ gradonachal’nika o evreiakh,” GK, 5 January 1914, no. 1965, 4; “Telegrammy,” GK, 17 January 1914, no. 1977, 2; “Telegrammy,” GK, 22 January 1914, no. 1982, 2 (see reports from Kiev and Zhitomir’); “Okolo ros. Dumy,” GK, 23 January 1914, no. 1983, 2; “Okolo ros. Dumy,” GK, 24 January 1914, no. 1984, 3; “Telegrammy,” GK, 4 February 1914, no. 1995, 2; “Partinaia konferentsiia K-D,” GK, 25 March 1914, no. 2044, 3; “Telegrammy,” GK, 20 May 1914, no. 2098, 2. 113 “Tragediia evreiskago naroda,” RV, 3 August 1914, no. 178, 6; RV, 3 August, 1914, no. 178, 2; “Za chertoi,” RV, 10 August 1914, no. 183, 3; RV, 12 August 1914, no. 184, 2; RV, 10 September 1914, no. 207, 2; “Pomoshch’ poliakam i evreiam,” RV, 11 October 1914, no. 234, 2. 114 RV, 3 August 1914, no. 178, 2. Prince E. N. Trubetskoi introduced the term “stepson” into the dialogue; it appeared in “Pomoshch’ poliakam i evreiam,” RV, 11 October 1914, no. 234, 2.

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this newfound affinity for the Polish people did not deter Russkie vedomosti from criticizing them later in the year for discrimination against Jews.115 Rech’ and Gazeta kopeika cudgeled the regime with the “Jewish question” throughout the year. The former suggested that restrictions on Jews benefitted, above all, local administrators who thereby derived inexhaustible income by extorting disenfranchised Jews. Moreover, their repression deprived normal Russians of qualified professionals who would otherwise provide valuable services to the state.116 In early 1914, Gazeta kopeika used its reports from Duma debates (in part dealing with the Beilis Affair), the Assembly of the Nobility, as well as correspondence from the periphery to demonize the radical Right because of its anti-Jewish polemics.117 Rech’ increased its reportage on the “Jewish question” at this time, mixing informative pieces with satire meant to admonish antisemitic officials and clerics.118 Starting on January 1, Rech’ added a weekly column (appearing on page 3 or 4) titled “The Jewish Question,” which included detailed reports about repression, arrests, closings, and evictions. The paper lauded the opening of a Jewish Ethnographic Museum in Kiev and expressed the wish that similar museums open elsewhere in the empire.119 In all of these articles, the subject mattered less to the authors than the opportunity to embarrass government officials, from whom little could be expected. Early in the war Rech’ showed a different orientation toward Poland than Russkie vedomosti. Whereas the latter promoted a kind of wartime rapprochement, Rech’ claimed that the Poles—whose loyalty to Russia always had been suspect—redirected that suspicion onto the Jews through incendiary articles printed in Poland and Russia. The paper considered this practice particularly heinous given the loyalty of Jews.120 Rech’ worried that if nationalist Poles were allowed to create a single ethnic-national entity by repressing their Jewish minority, an alarming precedent would be set for the rest of the empire. While Polish concern for its demographic and economic fate was understandable, Rech’ demanded that Poles consider the wider implications of anti-Jewish repression. Russia, therefore, had a right and obligation to intervene in discussions of the “Jewish question” in Poland.121

115 “Gordiev uzel,” RV, 29 November 1914, no. 275, 2. 116 “Naivnost’,” Rech’, 9 February 1914, no. 39, 1; “Evreiskie anekdoty,” Rech’, 6 April 1914, no. 94, 7; “Evreiskiia dela,” Rech’, 6 May 1914, no. 121, 4; “Evreiskii vopros,” Rech’, 14 June 1914, no. 159, 2; “Evreiskie anekdoty,” Rech’, 18 August 1914, no. 225, 4. 117 “Gosudarstvennaia Duma,” GK, 23 January 1914, no. 1983, 2; “Zabotlivye soiuzniki,” GK, 7 February 1914, no. 1998, 2; “Dvorianskii c”ezd,” GK, 6 March 1914, no. 2023, 3; “Gosudarstvennaia Duma,” GK, 14 May 1914, no. 2092, 2–3; 21 May 1914, no. 2099, 2–3. 118 For satirical material, see “Tsar Iudeiskii,” Rech’, 23 February 1914, no. 52, 4; and “Fariseiskaia borba s pianstvom,” Rech’, 3 May 1914, no. 118, 3. 119 Rech’, 19 April 1914, no. 105, 3. Later in the year, the paper followed with a similar column, “The Jewish Question in Romania.” 120 “Politicheskaia naglost’ i anti-evreiskaia ideia,” Rech’, 24 August 1914, no. 226, 5; Rech’, 13 December 1914, no. 337, 1; “Beseda s M. M. Vinaverom,” Rech’, 17 December 1914, no. 341, 3. 121 Rech’, 22 November 1914, no. 316, 1. Gazeta kopeika repeated this in the early weeks of the war. See “O chem pishut: Russkie o evreiakh,” GK, 8 September 1914, no. 2208, 3.

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Little changed in Rech’s caustic relationships with Novoe vremia and with the bureaucracy. It repeatedly accused the latter of slander, electoral manipulation, libel, and other wrongdoings.122 The paper also returned to the economic consequences of repressing Jews. Specifically, it attacked restrictions imposed by the Council of Ministers on Jewish membership in joint-stock companies; these had been created precisely to include non-Russians in the nation’s economic life. Rejecting the Council’s claims that Jews tried to take over these companies, the paper accused the hardline ministers of endangering the nation’s industrial health.123 Moreover, Rech’ argued that Jews were a positive economic force everywhere, including in the Pale of Settlement. Therefore, their cooperative welfare and trade organizations should be adopted as models rather than made the objects of antisemitic agitation.124 The war intensified warnings on Rech’s pages about the long-term economic damage that would result from anti-Jewish repression. It published a petition to the Council of Ministers from the Council of Representatives of Commerce and Industry to allow Jewish students returning from abroad to enroll in Russian universities. This was not a humanitarian gesture. Rather, the war effort and (victorious) postwar economic challenges made it a necessity. If sufficient professional cadres were not trained by then, foreign specialists would be invited to help, as had been commonplace before 1914.125 This petition attests to new perspectives. Jews were no longer just inorodtsy to be pitied or subdued; rather they had become a flywheel for Russia’s economic growth. The petition, of course, did not sway the Council of Ministers.126 Combativeness toward nationalists and the antisemitic press, coupled with support for Russia’s Jews, characterized Rech’ during the first months of the war. This began with an ominous warning to Ukrainians, not Jews, that Russia would never surrender its cultural unity.127 Shortly thereafter, Rech’ condemned Novoe vremia for its incitement against ino­ rodtsy, suggesting that aggression toward “foreigners” should be directed against Wilhelm II’s troops, not Russia’s minorities.128 It then renewed the call for national unity and an inclusive “Russianness” in the name of the war effort, this time confronting the radical Right and the otherwise liberal politician, Petr Struve.129

122 “Pogromshchiki,” Rech’, 3 March 1914, no. 60, 3; “Novovremenskiia sensatsii,” Rech’, 30 April 1914, no. 116, 2; “Pisma v redaktsiiu,” Rech’, 28 December 1914, no. 351, 7. 123 Rech’, 1 May 1914, no. 117, 1. 124 “Idei kooperatsii v evreiskikh trudovykh krugakh,” Rech’, 20 May 1914, no. 135, 7; “Vrednaia agitatsiia,” Rech’, 24 September 1914, no. 257, 2. 125 “Ob uchashchikhsia evreiakh,” Rech’, 3 October 1914, no. 266, 5. 126 “Otklonenie khodataistva o prieme evreev,” Rech’, 10 October 1914, no. 273, 5. 127 Rech’, 6 August 1914, no. 208, 2. 128 Rech’, 8 November 1914, no. 302, 1. 129 “Vnutrennii mir,” Rech’, 14 December 1914, no. 338, 1; Rech’, 5 December 1914, no. 329, 1. Rech’ responded here to Struve’s article published in Birzhevye vedomosti, a liberal, mass-circulation journal. Rech’ condemned Birzhevye vedomosti for following Struve into the “pseudo-liberalism” of Novoe vremia. This article reflected an ongoing conflict between Struve and liberal Russia on the nationalities issue. The polemic included Rech’, Birzhevye vedomosti, and the daily Den’. The conflict is

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After July the most pressing task for Rech’ in the context of the “Jewish question” was the formulation, consciously or not, of a new image for Russia’s Jews.130 Multiple articles lauded the commitment among Jews to the war effort, both in Russia and abroad.131 The paper tried to enhance this positive image with nostalgia about Jewish villages in prewar Moldavia, the defense of Jewish pharmacists against incitement on the pages of Novoe vremia, and descriptions of heroic suffering.132 Rech’ believed that the whole nation would emerge victorious if it united in brotherhood, thereby eliminating the “deep-rooted evil among the [Russian] masses” concerning Jews.133 This reflected a bigger departure from previous imagery than it may seem at first glance. Both Russkie vedomosti and Rech’ had argued that the government and radical Right ignited latent, pathological urges. Until late 1914, both papers insisted that these elites bore responsibility for stopping this cycle. Rech’ now suggested that the common man needed to do more to control his own impulses. As was often the case, Gazeta kopeika went farthest in promoting a positive image of Jews. Behind the front, the paper portrayed Jews as proud, loyal, likeable citizens. Added to that, for the first time it joined the other liberal papers in encouraging full Jewish integration into the national economy.134 Once the war began, it underscored Jewish patriotism, heroism, sacrifice, and unique vulnerability to the horrors of the war.135 Reports described in Richard Pipes, Struve: Liberal on the Right, 1905–1914 (Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 210–14. 130 Although outside the scope of this paper, it bears mentioning that Jews themselves participated in the formation of a more positive image among the Russian reading public. See Vladimir Levin, “Preventing Pogroms: Patterns in Jewish Politics in Early Twentieth-Century Russia,” in Dekel-Chen et al., Anti-Jewish Violence, 95–110; and Benjamin Nathans, “The Other Modern Jewish Politics: Integration and Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia,” in The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe, ed. Zvi Gitelman (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 20–34; Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 7–8, 14. The early Soviet regime invested disproportionate resources into the promotion of a new, highly positive image. See Jonathan Dekel-Chen, “‘New’ Jews of the Agricultural Kind: A Case of Soviet Interwar Propaganda,” Russian Review 66 (July 2007): 424–50. 131 “Evreiskaia manifestatsiia v Lodzi,” Rech’, 30 July 1914, no. 201, 4; “Angliiskie evrei i voina,” Rech’, 3 September 1914, no. 236, 3; “Vozzvanie varshavskago rabbinate pered Sudnym dnem,” Rech’, 20 September 1914, no. 253, 6; “Ot evreiskago komiteta dlia povsemestnoi pomoshchi,” Rech’, 15 October 1914, no. 278, 4; “K russkim liudiam o pomoshchi evreiam,” Rech’, 11 November 1914, no. 305, 2; “V obshchestve evreiskago remeslennago truda,” Rech’, 24 December 1914, no. 348, 4. 132 “Iz avstriskikh vospominanii,” Rech’, 7 October 1914, no. 270, 2; “Pisma v redaktsiiu,” Rech’, 28 December 1914, no. 351, 7; “Otkrytoe pismo Shakhovu,” Rech’, 13 November 1914, no. 307, 2; “K russkim liudiam o pomoshchi evreiam,” Rech’, 11 November 1914, no. 305, 2. 133 Rech’, 1 November 1914, no. 295, 1. 134 “Evreiskii universitet,” GK, 2 March 1914, no. 2021, 4; “O chem pishut: Otgoloski kievskago protsessa,” GK, 26 June 1914, no. 2134, 2; “Gosudarstvennaia Duma,” GK, 9 May 1914, no. 2087, 2; “O chem pishut: Kn. Meshcherskii o evreiakh,” GK, 30 June 1914, no. 2138, 2. 135 “Patrioticheskiia manifestatsii evreev,” GK, 22 July 1914, no. 2160, 2; “Priem’ evreev v Kr. Kresta,” “Germanskie varvary v Kalishe,” “V germanskikh lapakh,” GK, 3 August 1914, no. 2172, 3–4; “Evreiskii vopros,” GK, 7 September 1914, no. 2207, 3; “O chem pishut: Russkie o evreiakh,” GK, 8 September 1914, no. 2208, 3; “Boevoe naputstvie evreiam”, GK, 18 September 1914, no. 2218, 2; “V L’vove,” GK, 1 October 1914, no. 2231, 5; “O chem pishut: Anglichanin’ v Grodne,” GK, 23

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of appreciative declarations from military commanders about Jewish soldiers and civilians reinforced this image.136 During 1914 the liberal newspapers projected a provocative image of a fighting, productive, patriotic Jew, very different from what an average non-Jew would have encountered in the press until then. Admittedly, we do not know its effect on public opinion at the time. The intent here is to reveal its pervasiveness and thereby suggest that the “Jewish question” in late Imperial Russia was not merely a discourse among angry antisemites. The literate public had significant access in the press to more balanced viewpoints. Never was this truer than in 1914. This public awareness, of course, did not deter the regime several months later from conducting a brutal deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the western borderlands. It should be remembered that this paper explores the popularization of liberal ideas, not their inculcation among Russia’s rulers. Conclusions In the case of the “Jewish question,” it seems that the proliferation of journalism brought disproportionate attention to what otherwise would have been an insignificant issue for anyone residing outside the Pale of Settlement or the capitals.137 While we should avoid exaggeration, the frequency of items dealing with the “Jewish question” in these three newspapers—second only to discussion of the Poles—points to its weight among liberal Russians. That being said, liberals did not all agree on anything connected to the nationalities issue. As we have seen, some called for toleration and inclusion. But others espoused Russian chauvinism on the pages of “thick” journals and brochures.138 Nonetheless, from 1906 an observable shift occurred in the liberal press, which argued with increasing force that inclusiveness must be a building block of a more civil society. The cataclysmic events of 1905 (revolution, mass violence, pogroms), therefore, had a watershed effect not only on conservatives and the peasantry, but also on liberal ideas and their reach into the public. With every passing session, the Duma became less representative. Liberals responded, among other ways, in the mass-circulation press, a relatively free venue for expression. The newspapers studied here contributed to the politicization and polarization of society, while Novoe vremia (and a handful of well-known figures on the radical Right) assumed the role of conservative foe and government surrogate. The liberal newspapers probably targeted Novoe vremia because it was the most legitimate of the right-wing, mass-circulation pa-

October 1914, no. 2253, 3; “Dep. Savenko o galiskikh poliakakh i evreiakh,” GK, 31 October 1914, no. 2261, 2; “Russkie bel’giitsy,” GK, 12 November 1914, no. 2273, 3. 136 “Blagodarnost’ verkhovnago glavno-komanduiushchago,” GK, 8 September 1914, no. 2208, 3; “Ob”iavlenie komendanta grodnenskoi kreposti,” GK, 23 September 1914, no. 2223, 2; “Nashi geroi: Bezrukii Iosif ’ Trumpel’men’,” GK, 25 September 1914, no. 2225, 2–3; “Za den’,” GK, 1 December 1914, no. 2292, 3. 137 It should be noted, however, that disproportionate attention has accompanied the “Jewish question” before and after the period of study. John Klier pointed to this in earlier decades. For the 1990s, see Vladislav G. Krasnov, Russia beyond Communism (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991), 24. 138 For example, see Weeks, Nation and State, 26.

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pers; it usually expressed a range of views, except regarding nationalities and the “Jewish question.”139 The shift in orientation on Polish-Jewish relations is highly instructive. Rech’ and Rus­ skie vedomosti exuded optimism in 1906 and 1911. Both viewed Poland as a model of coexistence, with pogroms there rare and Polish national autonomy worthy of some respect. While we cannot know whether these reports reflected ignorance of conditions on the ground for Poland’s Jews or a desire among Russia’s liberals to enlist the cooperation of Polish nationalists against tsardom, by August 1914 Polish treatment of local Jews signaled to the newspapers that they were disloyal, repressive hyper-nationalists. Attitudes about the “Jewish question” in Russia changed from 1906 to 1914. At the outset of this period, Rech’ viewed the issue through a lens of national empowerment; better treatment of Jews promised increased economic success and reduced international criticism for Russia. For both Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti, the Jews were a unique entity, but the violence of 1905 had shown that Russia must substantively reform its behavior toward all national and religious minorities, with Jews representing one of the most urgent cases. Russkie vedomosti added that familiarization with the Jews could remedy old hatreds. The intensity of discourse cooled considerably in 1911 but—in accord with the soul-searching in liberal culture at the time—the paper inserted ideas about the inclusion of Jews into the multi-national empire.140 In parallel, Rech’ developed a class-conscious approach to the roots of antisemitism, wherein merchants and gentry, not the common man, bore the brunt of the blame. To be sure, ownership and market orientation made a difference. For example, Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti rarely used reports from “locals,” preferring to dispatch correspondents from the “center” to cover important developments in the periphery. This, it would seem, was an upshot of the relatively elitist roots of their editors. Gazeta kopeika’s more populist character allowed it, on the other hand, to use “local” correspondents. Also, the focus of the papers often differed. In 1911 and 1914, for example, Gazeta kopeika dedicated more coverage to the sensational Beilis and Fastov affairs. Perhaps these touched the sensitivities of the paper’s (Jewish) publisher. Or perhaps such stories appealed more to a newspaper that bordered on a tabloid. Whatever the cause, its working-class readership received a flood of liberal perspectives on these events. The gathering clouds of war brought more change. Overall, the papers showed that the national interest demanded equal treatment for Jews (as well as other nationalities) and their full incorporation into the war effort. One might assume that preoccupation with events on the front would decrease interest in the “Jewish question,” but the war actually intensified it. The forward-looking zemstvo and urban professionals writing for Russkie vedomosti went farthest when declaring that wartime sacrifices by Jews and other minorities would usher in an era of solidarity and equality. 139 Costello, “Novoe vremia,” 38. 140 An obvious example in this direction would be the publication of the short book, Vekhi, in 1909. This collection of seven provocative essays from Russian liberals sparked dynamic debates among Russian intellectuals and activists.

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Several characteristics and themes remained consistent in Rech’ and Russkie vedomosti from 1906 to 1914. First, Jews were a focal point of journalistic competition with the rightwing press. Second, the empire would be shackled by its autocratic, “Asian” inheritance as long as organized, government-condoned antisemitism persisted. Russia would progress into modernity only after abandoning this legacy. Third, national economic development would lag as long as the “Jewish question” remained unresolved. Liberals demanded an equitable resolution of the “Jewish question” not to save the Jews, but to ensure Russia’s greatness. Gazeta kopeika showed less concern with the right-wing press, investing more energy in the construction of a positive image of Jews among its readers, while simultaneously delegitimizing antisemites and assorted figures on the radical Right. Hence, this newspaper, directed toward the daily concerns of the working class, was responsible for bringing the “Jewish question” to the urban laborer and presented him or her with a humanized, if imperfect, vision of Jews. As had been true for decades, these types of publications adroitly criticized the state but proved weaker in proposing actionable reforms. Given that the liberal Russian intelligentsia of the time did not have—nor would it ever gain—substantial experience in national office, this unfortunate imbalance remained mostly unchanged. Judging from the pages of all three newspapers, the prewar liberal discourse did not produce a stable picture of Jews or their place in society. The debate on the “Jewish question” was complex, pursued by many parts of society and disseminated widely through the mass-circulation press. The Russian Federation today hovers somewhere between a kind of economic liberalism, a return to political authoritarianism, and antagonistic nationalism toward some of its minorities. Russia’s friends and others may want to consider echoes from the liberal past to comprehend the present and formulate a more hopeful future; the history of the “Jewish question” in the years before the First World War might be a good place to start.

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Fallen from the Faith: Jewish Converts in Imperial Russia ChaeRan Y. Freeze (Brandeis University) “I have the honor to report Your Reverence that on 3 and 9 April [1875], according to your instructions, I was at the home of Stefan Spevak, a converted [Jew] who has fallen away from faith,” wrote Pavel Dzagiler to Father Nikandr Briantsev, the head of the Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter for baptized Jewish children in St. Petersburg.1 Dzagiler, who had worked as a Jewish schoolteacher in Minsk, was not simply a convert to Russian Orthodoxy but also a graduate of the St. Petersburg Ecclesiastical Seminary. A self-professed missionary to the Jews, he belonged to a small group of seminary-educated converts who ministered specifically to the needs of their baptized coreligionists. Highlighting their activities, an anonymous author in the journal Strannik2 praised them for filling a role that the Church had neglected: to proselytize to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” shepherd converts through the conversion process, and guide them through the difficult life that followed the baptismal font.3 Dzagiler’s spiritual mentor Fr. Briantsev shared a similar mission: “I was predestined to stand as an intermediary between good Christians and those seeking holy baptism, as well as newly baptized Jews in the Orthodox faith.”4 As the head of the Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter for Jewish Children in St. Petersburg, the archpriest sought to provide a transitional space for Jewish converts as they journeyed into a new Christian faith and Russian way of life. This chapter will show how a small group of Jewish converts associated with Fr. Briantsev pressed for greater compassion toward baptized coreligionists who experienced a 1 Derzhavnyi archiv mista Kyïeva (State Archive of the City of Kiev, hereafter DAmK), f. 253, op. 1, d. 10, l. 95. See ChaeRan Y. Freeze, “The Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter for Converted Jewish Children in St. Petersburg,” in Jews in the East European Borderlands: Essays in the Honor of John D. Klier, ed. Eugene Avrutin and Harriet Murav (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 27–49. The official name of the shelter was the Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter for Jewish Children Who Are Preparing for or Have Converted to the Russian Orthodox Faith. 2 “Chastnyi priiut v S. Peterburg dlia prisoediniamykh v pravoslavnoi Tserkvi evreev,” Strannik 4, no. 434 (July 1870): 70. The Sistematicheskii ukazatel’ literatury o evreiiakh na russkom iazyke so vremeni vvedeniia grazhdanskogo shrifta (1708) po Dekabr’ 1889 (St. Petersburg: Tipo-lit A. E. Landau, 1893) lists Aleksandr A. Alekseev as the author; however, there is no attribution to him in the journal; moreover, the article describes him in the third person (whereas Alekseev almost always wrote in first person in his other writings). The sympathetic tone of the article was also at variance with Alekseev’s harsher tone toward Jewish Christians who had fallen away from their Russian Orthodox faith; more importantly, the article did not support his belief in the supersession of Christianity over Judaism. See below for further elaboration for his biography and teachings. 3 “Chastnyi priiut,” 70. 4 Ibid.

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deep longing for Judaism, the pain of separation from their families, material need, and a sense of belonging neither to the Jewish nor Russian Orthodox world. They argued that Jewish converts came with a certain conditioning—what they called “fanaticism” imbibed through “their mother’s milk,” Talmudic education, and general Jewish surroundings.5 It was impossible for them to abandon their practice of Jewish daily life, ingrained habits, and beliefs overnight. Rather, newborn Christians needed to learn how to repudiate the old rituals that ordered their daily existence and to embrace the new “Christian rites, language, and life.”6 This all required a “Jewish” understanding of the problem (expert knowledge of former Jews), solutions that addressed the specific needs of Jewish converts, and greater understanding on the part of “native-born” Christians about the difficulties inherent in the transition process. The Practice of Judaism among Jewish Converts “To our great sorrow it has been rumored that in both capitals [St. Petersburg and Moscow] Jewish propaganda has had an effect not only on baptized Jews but also native Christians7 so that there are over a thousand new Christians who have been led astray [from the Orthodox faith] and perform the rituals of zhidovstvo [Judaism, pejorative] secretly or publically, voluntarily or involuntarily,” wrote Dzagiler in 1875.8 There were three fundamental problems in his view: the tenacity of Jewish ritual observance among converts, the unfamiliarity of Russian Orthodox rites, and the inability of converts to find a livelihood once they left the Jewish economic structures, forcing them to return to the Jewish family and community for assistance.9 Observation of Jewish Laws In the first instance, Dzagiler observed that converted Jews were unable to abandon their daily practices such as eating habits (kashrut or Jewish dietary laws) and longing for Jewish holidays, rituals, and prayers. When he entered Stefan Spevak’s apartment to confront him about his apostasy, he could hardly get a word in edgewise because of “the bustling and noise in the small, damp, and filthy apartment in which his Jewish family members were preparing for Passover.”10 He succeeded in explaining to the Judaizing convert only a few misconceptions that the latter held of the Christian faith that “troubled his religious conscience.”11 At Fr. Briantsev’s request, Aleksandr Shkopel, a Jewish convert studying to 5 DAmK, f. 253, op. 1, d. 10, l. 95 ob. 6 Ibid., l. 98 ob. 7 He specifies in the following sentence that these were the subbotniki (Sabbatarians). They were ethnic Russians who adopted Jewish tenants and practices according to the Mosaic tradition. For more on the subbotniki, see Nicholas Breyfogle, “The Religious World of Russian Sabbatarianism,” in Holy Dissent: Jewish and Christian Mystics in Eastern Europe (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2011), 359–92; idem, Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia’s Empire in the South Caucasus (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 8 DAmK, f. 253, op. 1, d. 10, l. 97 ob. 9 Ibid., ll. 96 ob.–97 ob. 10 Ibid., l. 96 ob. 11 Ibid., l. 96.

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be a priest at the Lithuanian Ecclesiastical Seminary, also sought to “converse” with Spevak about the superiority of Christianity over Judaism. Unsuccessful in his mission, Shkopel similarly observed that “Spevak became a Christian only in name …. [T]o this day he has not ceased to adhere to Judaism, its customs, and rituals, which he can perform, albeit not with complete precision and intricacy, but with enough knowledge acquired already in childhood from his surrounding milieu.”12 Shkopel remarked, however, that the tenacity of Judaism among converts did not surprise him because “[when] I was still a Jew, I saw that many Jews who had long been baptized, who were officially regarded as Christians, fulfilled all the Jewish rites and customs to the minutest detail.” Such practices among Russian Jewish converts was not unique, argued the seminary student: “I know for a fact from the history of Jewish conversion to Christianity, not only the converts but their offspring return to Judaism even a hundred years later or more.” He was probably referring here to the early modern Jewish conversos on the Iberian Peninsula who reconverted to Judaism in new areas of settlement such as Venice, Amsterdam, and other cities, more than a century after their families had converted to Christianity.13 Indeed, converts who petitioned to return to Judaism described their continued observance of Jewish law even in the face of criminal prosecution for apostasy before 1905. For example, Anatolii Kholodnii of Zhitomir, informed the Volhynian Orthodox Consistory: “In April 1893, I converted from Judaism to Russian Orthodoxy in the town of Rol’ through holy baptism. However, I was practically unable to relate to Russian Orthodoxy due to the manner of thought and childhood education that I had received. I remained a Jew all this time in spirit.”14 Involuntary converts in the military were especially problematic for the Church.15 For instance, Sergei Kotliar (formerly Leizer Khaimov Kniaiev) who was baptized as a cantonist in 1854, begged the Volhynian Orthodox Consistory for permission to return to the faith of his fathers. According to the local priest, “Kotliar declared that he adhered, adheres, and will adhere to the faith of his birth, no matter what kinds of reprimands, treatment, or punishment he would receive from the commanding officer.”16 Similarly, Konstantin Grigor’ev of Simbirsk, who was drafted into the cantonist battalion at the age of twelve, sent a petition to His Imperial Majesty [Alexander III] in 1882: “At that time [1855], I was forcibly converted by the authorities; however, I never took part in 12 Ibid., l. 93. 13 See Marion Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000). 14 Derzhavnyi arkhiv Zhytomyrskoï oblasti (State Archive of Zhitomir Oblast, hereafter DAZhO), f. 1, op. 35, d. 1786, l. 1. 15 On forced conversion of cantonists in the military, see ChaeRan Freeze and Jay Harris, Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia: Selected Documents, 1772–1914 (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2013), 15–16; Yohanan Petrovsky Shtern, Jews in the Russian Army, 1827–1917: Drafted into Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 90–128. For a description of pressures on Jewish cantonists to convert to Russian Orthodoxy, see M. Shpigel’, “Iz zapisok kantonista,” Evreiskaia starina, no. 4 (1911): 249–59. 16 DAZhO, f. 24, op. 13, d. 380, ll. 1–30, 1884.

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the Russian Orthodox faith and did not take holy communion. If I went to church, it was at the order of the authorities.” When he retired from the military, the consistory in Orel summoned Grigor’ev for exhortations to reaffirm his Orthodox faith but “their exhortations were unsuccessful, and I remained in my Jewish faith.” Despite his desperate pleas for permission to “remain in the faith of [my] forefathers,” the Synod rejected Grigor’ev’s petition because it was “contrary to the existing laws regarding individuals who have fallen away from Russian Orthodoxy.”17 Following the passing of the Law on Religious Freedom on April 17, 1905, which allowed Christians to reconvert to non-Christian confessions, Jewish converts admitted to their Judaizing practices more openly.18 Raisa Levovna, who converted to marry her Russian Orthodox lover (who subsequently reneged on his promise of marriage) confessed: “This [marriage] was the sole motive that had induced me to betray the religion of my parents, which I continue to practice to this day. Raised in the Jewish tradition …. I could not have become acquainted with the Orthodox Church and developed a heartfelt conviction for its teachings. I decided to take a fatal step which tore me away from my family …. I do not have any desire to practice this religion, in which I don’t and won’t believe.”19 Others, such as Gavrill Gofman, admitted that they had converted “out of stupidity,” never abandoning their religious practices.20 Like the previous generation of Jewish converts such as Iakov Brafman21 and Aleksandr A. Alekseev, 22 whose works they often cited, Briantsev’s assistants blamed “the Talmud” for the tenacity of such “fanatical” behavior. However, they placed less emphasis on its harmful 17 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (Russian State Historical Archive, hereafter RGIA), f. 796, op. 163, d. 1414, ll. 2–3 ob., 7, 1882. 18 See Eugene M. Avrutin, “Returning to Judaism after the 1905 Law on Religious Freedom in Tsarist Russia,” Slavic Review 65, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 90–110. The law also permitted “the transfer from one Christian faith to another” and recognized the status of Old Believers. Jewish converts took advantage of this law to reconvert back to Judaism. 19 RGIA, f. 796, op. 186, d. 5932 as quoted in Avrutin, “Returning to Judaism,” 103. For another example of a “Judaizing” mother and daughter who wanted to return to Judaism in Astrakhan, see RGIA, f. 796, op. 115, d. 1664, ll. 1–8, 1884. 20 Derzhavenyi arkhiv Odes’koï oblasti (State Archive of Odessa Oblast, hereafter DAOO), f. 37, op. 1, d. 3235, ll. 1–2. 21 Yakov Brafman (1825–1879) was best known for his notorious writings about the plot of the Jewish kahal (community council) to control the Jews and instill in them a hatred for Russian society. His writings about the harmful nature of the Talmud and Jewish communal institutions included Evreiskiia bratstva mestnyia i vsemirnyia (Vil’na: V. tip gubernskago pravleniia, 1869) and Kniga kagala: Materialy dlia izucheniia evreiskago byta (Vil’na: Pechatnaia Vilenskago gubernskago pravleniia, 1869). These writings influenced anti-Semitic writings such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 22 Aleksandr A. Alekseev, born Vul’f Nakhlas came from a Hasidic family in the town of Nezarinets. With another convert, Daniel Chvolson, he refuted the accusation of Jewish ritual murder in Saratov before a special judicial committee in 1854. He later wrote about the innocence of the accused in his brochure, Upotrebliaiut-li evrei khristianskuiu krov s religioznoi tsel’ iu? (Novgorod: Tipografiia gubernskago pravleniia, 1886). Alekseev wrote numerous books for Jewish converts to instruct them about Russian Orthodoxy such as Besedy pravoslavnogo khristianina iz evreev s novoobrashchennymi iz svoikh sobratii ob istinakh sviatoi very i zabluzhdeniiakh talmudicheskikh (Novgorod: Parovaia tip. I. I. Ignatovskogo, 1897). To acquaint Christians about Jewish life and the harmful elements (especially

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content with respect to Christianity and non-Jews23 and focused instead on the Talmud’s delineation of a strict, daily regimen of observance. 24 In reality, a significant portion of Jewish converts who were female or impoverished males could hardly have been as immersed in the Talmud as they claimed. Shkopel himself even noted that Spevak observed Jewish rituals “albeit not with complete precision and intricacy” (suggesting that the former was more learned in Jewish law). Indeed, Shaul Stampfer has shown that although most Jewish men had an opportunity to study in a heder (a traditional Jewish school) only the elites actually acquired proficient knowledge of Hebrew and rabbinic literature (including the Talmud). By contrast, the children of ordinary Jews learned just enough about the “mechanics of reading Hebrew” to participate in religious life; hence most Jewish men lacked basic literacy skills to comprehend Hebrew texts beyond the rudimentary prayer book, let alone Aramaic to study the Talmud. 25 Moreover, in terms of daily religious practices, Russian Jews followed the Sbulhan Arukh (the established code of Jewish law) with the glosses of Moshe Isserles that reflected Ashkenazi customs, often relying on simplified abridgements or restatements of the laws.26 In this sense, “the Talmud” served more as a trope than a real threat; the actual critique was about the punctilious observance of the laws among the Jews and converts alike. Russian Orthodox Rites and Services The irresistible attraction to the familiarity of old traditions experienced by Jewish converts was compounded by the strangeness of their newly adopted Russian Orthodox faith in two respects. First, Dzagiler contended that some theological concepts were totally alien to baptized Jews, especially notions about “the mother of God, the second face of the Holy

the Talmud and kahal) that prevented Jews from converting, he published works such as Ocherki domashnei i obshchestvennoi zhizni evreev (Novgorod: Tipografiia M.A. Klasson, 1882). 23 For instance, Alekseev argued that the Talmud and commentaries of Rashi prevented Jews from integrating with the “goyim” (Russians) and promoted Jewish “fanatical behavior” by which he meant isolation from Russian society. He also engaged with Talmudic fragments about the illegitimate birth of Jesus who was fathered by the trickster Pandera. This earliest compilation of a coherent tale circulated in the early medieval period as the tract Toledot Yeshu (The History of Jesus). See Obshchestvennaia zhizn’ evreev, ikh nravy, obychai i predrassudki (Novgorod: Tipografiia gubernskago pravleniia, 1868), 24–27. For more on Toledot Yeshu, see Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). 24 DAmK, f. 253, op. 1, d .10, l. 95 ob. 25 Shaul Stampfer, “What Did Knowing Hebrew Mean in Eastern Europe?,” in Hebrew in Ashkenaz: A Language in Exile, ed. Lewis Gilbert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Iris Parush, Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in East European Jewish Society (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 23–34. 26 Jay Harris, “Rabbinic Literature after 1800,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Gershon Hundert, 2 vol. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 2:1502–3. Summaries of Jewish practices could be found, for example, in Shnuer Zalman of Liady’s Shulhan arukh ha-rav, 4 vols. (Zhitomir: Tip. A. Shadova, 1869); Avraham Danzig’s Haye adam: Im nishmat adam al Shulhan Arukh, Orah hayim (Vil’na: Rom, 1810); and Hokhmat adam (Vil’na: Rom, 1815). The most popular and accessible summary was Shelomah Ganzfried’s Kitsur Shulhan arukh (Ungvar, 1864).

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Trinity, and holy icons.”27 Shkopel concurred but pressed for greater patience and understanding: “No truth, no matter how simple it may be in and of itself, can be communicated all at once or without elucidation; rather, it is assimilated through long meditation and exposition.” The “higher doctrines of Christianity, especially the trinity and incarnation of Christ in particular,” the latter pointed out, “served and serves as objects of doubt for every Jew who wishes to convert to Christianity.”28 Indeed, even sincere converts like Vera Astaf ’eva, who moved to the Serafimova Women’s Monastery in Arzamas (Vladimir province), honestly confessed moments of doubt to Fr. Briantsev in 1869: “Little by little, I have become accustomed to labor and monastery life. I am learning to sew and knit garments: I do not shun any kind of labor within my strength. I sometimes experience despair because of doubts, and sometimes for want of means.” Feeling out of place at times, Astaf ’eva added, “How difficult it still is for me to get used to monastery life!”29 Not just converts but the Church hierarchy expressed doubts about the ability of baptized Jews to grasp Christian doctrines. For example, in 1803, Archbishop Anastasii of Mogilev informed the Synod that many Jewish converts had petitioned to enter the clergy following their baptism, but there were no laws to govern the process. The Synod firmly rejected the petitions citing the shortcomings of Jewish converts in the sphere of Russian Orthodox dogmas: Inform the Bishop of Mogilev of the decree: such Jews, who have accepted holy baptism, but still have not confirmed their belief in the Russian Orthodox confession—since they cannot completely understand the faith and still less the dogmas of the Orthodox faith—are not in an appropriate position to carry out the corresponding service.30 In addition, their ignorance would cause temptation to the parishioners who are living in the region.31 Jewish convert missionaries like Aleksandr Alekseev, however, disagreed about such assumptions. Drawing on his own Hasidic upbringing in Nezarinets (Podolia province), he argued instead that Jewish converts instinctively recoiled from certain Russian Orthodox rites and practices because they had viewed them as idolatrous (avodah zerah) in the past. In his Conversations of a Baptized Jewish Russian Orthodox Christian with His Newly Converted Coreligionists (1897), Alekseev sought to wean the Jewish converts from their troubled feelings toward reverence for holy icons, processions of the cross, and the veneration of saints’ relics.32 With respect to the first, he conceded that some converts such as a certain 27 DAmK, f. 253, op. 1, d .10, l. 93 ob. 28 Ibid., l. 93 ob. 29 Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, Sankt-Peterburga (Central State Historical Archive St. Petersburg, hereafter TsGIA SPb), f. 542, op. 1, d. 16, l. 1. 30 My emphasis. 31 RGIA, f. 786, op. 84, d. 692, ll. 1, 5 ob. 32 Alekseev, Besedy pravoslavnogo khristianina iz evreev, 90–129. Interestingly, some Jews were not averse to selling gold and silver religious objects such as crosses to the Christians. For example, in 1843, Archbishop Anatolii of Minsk informed his superiors that it was unseemly (neprilichno) for Jews to be engaging in the sale of sacred objects. Various state officials responded to the problem in different ways. The governor general of Kiev defended the existing policy: “Regarding the position of

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Tim. Il—cha of Vol’sk prayed fervently before the holy icons; however, others admitted feeling “awkward and embarrassed in the presence [of the holy images].”33 For example, one convert confessed to him: “What do you expect? The idea, which occurs [to me], that is borrowed from the Scriptures and inspired in each of us by our parents, is against the icons: ‘Do not tolerate human images or graven images in the places where you reside.’”34 Another Jewish convert acknowledged: “I am more willing to pray before such an icon painted on canvas than before an image adorned by fancy decorations [i.e., icons framed in elaborate gold, silver, or bejeweled cases].”35 To calm the conscience of the novices, Alekseev reassured them that the second commandment could not have applied to Christian icons, which did not exist in ancient Israel. Besides, he admonished the new flock: “What similarity can there possibly be between [heathen] idols and holy icons?” Moreover, he reminded them that pious Jews also kept “portraits of Moses, Aaron, or simply some unkempt rabbi” in their homes and synagogues.36 In this way he drew a parallel between expressions of visual piety in both religions, seeking to make the icons less foreign.37 Attitudes toward rabbinic portraiture, which Jews deemed as idol worship and emulation of the Christians, had changed dramatically since the seventeenth century. By the nineteenth century, portraits of venerable Ashkenazi rabbis could be found not only on lithographs and broadsides, but also on mizrachim (parchment or paper drawings that hung on the Eastern wall to indicate the direction of prayer) in private homes and synagogues.38 The Hasidim, especially the Habad in Belorussia, became avid producers, collectors, distributors, and preservers of portraits of their leaders, the rebbes or tsaddikim.39 Such portraits converted “personality, charisma, and reputation into material reality” and offered “a stable visual experience of a teacher whose accessibility would have the administration of my district at the present time—when all the business here, especially in the sale of gold and silver objects, lies almost exclusively in the hands of the Jews—I would propose that the hitherto existing custom, remain without change; that is, Jews will sell any objects, among which are symbolic Christian images, until that time when Christians can acquire such objects….” In contrast, the governor general of Vil’na military province opposed any sales, arguing that it was unseemly for Jews to trade in objects with symbolic Christian images. RGIA, f. 796, op. 124, d. 755, l. 1–2, 5, 6–6 ob, 1843; see also, f. 797, op. 3, d. 32716, ll. 1–9 ob. Jews were also willing to serve as contractors for church renovations for various parishes in Volyn’, which raised a storm of criticism. “Po voprosu o remontirovke tserkvei evreiami,” Volyn’, 27 March 1892, 4. 33 Alekseev, Besedy pravoslavnogo khristianina iz evreev, 100. 34 The reference is to the second commandment (Exodus 20:4–5): “You shall not make for yourselves a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Jewish Publication Society translation). 35 Alekseev, Besedy pravoslavnogo khristianina iz evreev, 100. 36 Ibid., 102. 37 On visual piety, see David Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998). 38 Richard Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 117. 39 Maya Balakirsky Katz, “On the Master-Disciple Relationship in Hasidic Visual Culture: The Life and Afterlife of Rebbe Portraits in Habad, 1798–2006,” Images 1 (2007): 44–79.

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been otherwise limited.”40 By drawing on the Jewish experience, Alekseev sought to recast the Russian Orthodox icons into a more familiar and palatable framework. According to Alekseev, processions of the cross evoked similar feelings of aversion and anxiety among Jewish converts—emotions that he himself experienced firsthand: “I confess that I myself was struck by some unexplainable fear when I first saw a procession of the cross when they carried holy icons, accompanied by crosses and banners, in the town of Vol’sk.”41 Notably, he deliberately neglected to mention that his “unexplainable fear” of the cross might have been connected to Jewish collective memories of forced conversions and violent deaths in history. Instead, Alekseev sought to elucidate the mundane, practical reason for the ritual—namely that the peasants were praying to God for rain to water their parched fields. In his narrative, no sooner had the procession passed the square, than the clouds miraculously appeared, and within ten minutes the rain poured down on the supplicants. “Thank God,” allegedly remarked the man next to him in the procession who recognized Alekseev as a Jewish convert, “that you came to believe in our Savior. You must now believe in all that is established by the Russian Orthodox Church and must honor the processions of the cross.”42 Another obstacle for Jewish converts was the veneration of saints’ relics. Cognizant of their doubts, Alekseev narrated a story (whether a real account or parable) about his own questions to a priest when he was a young cantonist: “Tell me, Father, why there are holy relics only in the New Testament Church? Is it not true that people honored God in the Old Testament? However, we do not see their relics.” The priest responded that there were certainly righteous men in the Old Testament but “because of the bonds that connected them to the sins of their fathers, they were not able to display the divine strength that the New Testament saints were able to manifest at all times.”43 To make the veneration of saints more acceptable, Alekseev reminded them about the healing powers of the holy relics, recounting the restoration of his digestive abilities after just one prayer before the holy relics of Saint Sergei.44 Apart from their difficulties with Russian Orthodox sacred objects, converts also expressed a sense of alienation and strangeness during Church services. Dzagiler observed that converts like Spevak deliberately avoided Christian services, “feeling unfamiliar with the Church and Christian piety, as though they were strangers.” Not only were they unaccustomed to the sounds of Church Slavonic employed in sacred readings and choir music, they also felt uncomfortable at the stares of other parishioners due to their Jewish “physiognomy and manners.”45 Dzagiler admitted, “I even experienced this when I was [already] fluent in Russian.” Baptism had not washed away his Jewish appearance, which made him stand out among the Russian parishioners. Most of all, standing in Church “without participating, yawning, suffering pain in the legs, counting the minutes left in this agonizing 40 Alekseev, Besedy pravoslavnogo khristianina iz evreev, 56. 41 Ibid., 103. 42 Ibid., 103–4. 43 Ibid., 114–15. 44 Ibid., 124. 45 DAmK, f. 253, op. 1, d. 10, l. 98 ob.

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standing [before the] exit from Church,” the new converts missed their old Jewish prayers. Dzagiler compared the emotional quality of Jewish prayer to the more formal liturgy in the Church: Actually, Jews love to pray. They pray with feeling, observing the fasts strictly. They weep and sob during prayer: they bewail their fall; they mourn the loss of Israel’s dignity, glory, and crown, [the loss] of a king, Zion, the Holy of Holies.”46 Indeed, Jewish converts who petitioned to return to Judaism often declared that they never attended Church or practiced any of the rites of the faith. As Raisa Levovna, whose case has been mentioned above, declared: I have never frequented the Orthodox Church and have never fulfilled any Orthodox rites …. In my soul, by my beliefs and convictions, I have remained a Jew. In this fashion, I am only nominally a member of the Russian Orthodox Church.”47 For his part, Alekseev observed that the reluctance to attend Church services was not due to “lack of zeal or laziness,” as was often the case among “native-born Christians.” Rather, it was due to a “previous prejudice against the Church instilled in us [when we lived] in our parental home.” The source of this prejudice, he explained, lay in a rabbinic interpretation or midrash48 (Genesis Rabbah 63) of Genesis 25:22–23—a text that parents reiterated to their children: “And the sons struggled within her. Two nations are in your womb, two separate peoples shall issue from your body; one people will be mightier than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.”49 According to the midrash, Alekseev claimed, the two brothers were antagonistic toward each other even in their mother’s womb: when the matriarch “Rebecca went past a church of Christ, Esau wanted to leap out”; in contrast, when she “walked past a synagogue, Jacob made haste to [to come out] to the house of God.” Mocking the rabbis, Alekseev explained that neither scenario was credible because “Rebecca could not have walked past either a synagogue or a church of Christ because neither existed at the time.” He suggested that this narrative instilled a strong Jewish animus against the church from early childhood: “They [our parents] advised us to try to avoid churches as much as possible,” to imitate the patriarch Jacob who “turned away when his mother passed a church.” Not only did Jews shun churches, Alekseev added, but even uttered this curse: “Shakets teshaktsenu . . .” (“You shall utterly detest it [and you shall utterly abhor it, for it is a cursed thing, Deuteronomy 7:26]).50 In fact, the original midrash described Rebecca passing by “houses of idolatry” rather than the “church of Christ”; the two nations referred to Rome (“the Hadrian of the nations of the world) and Israel (the Solomon of Israel).” Gwynn Kessler suggests that this text sought to counter the efforts by the apostle Paul (Romans 9) and Church father Origen to recast Jacob as the Christian church and Esau as Israel. By casting “prenatal Esau as 46 Ibid., l. 99. 47 RGIA, f. 796, op. 186, d. 5932 as quoted in Avrutin, “Returning to Judaism,” 103. 48 Midrash refers to a body of rabbinic literature that focused on the interpretation of the Bible. 49 Jewish Publication Society translation. Alekseev only provided a fragment, confident that his audience knew the text: “Two nations are in your womb . . .” 50 Alekseev, Besedy pravoslavnogo khristianina iz evreev, 62–63.

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(Christian) Rome in the flesh,” Kessler observes, the rabbis engaged in constructing rabbinic Jewish identity in opposition to the “Other” or non-Jew.51 Notably, there was no mention of the Christian reversal of character roles in Alekseev’s text, which aimed to highlight the enmity toward the Church instilled in Jewish children from a young age. One might argue that visceral responses of revulsion among Jewish converts toward Orthodox sacred objects and the physical space of the Church reflected the powerful workings of their habitus, which Bourdieu (citing Durkheim) posited is “internalized as a second nature,” acting as an “active presence” of the past: “In each of us, in differing degrees, is contained the person we were yesterday, and indeed, in the nature of things it is even true that our past personae predominate in us …. It is just that we do [not] directly feel the influence of these past selves precisely because they are so deeply rooted within us. They constitute the unconscious part of ourselves.”52 Though Alekseev purportedly wrote his “conversation” for newly baptized Jews, it was as much an apologetic explanation to native Christians about the underlying “unconscious” that prevented some from integrating more fully into a new spiritual life. Economic Straits Finally, Dzagiler observed that even when Jewish converts accepted baptism out of true sincerity, they were forced to return to their former communities due to lack of means and inability to support themselves: After accepting holy baptism, Jewish converts are deprived of their sources of livelihood in a Jewish environment; they must immediately search for a source of income (and how difficult it is!) otherwise [they face the following consequence]: if they have not put aside resources, they must either die from starvation, live with the Jews, pandering to them, painstakingly fulfilling all their loathsome rituals, or hide from them. [In the latter case], however, they succeed only for a short time; often those seeking to convert are subjected to the danger of perishing at the hands of their coreligionists.53 51 Gwynn Kessler, “‘Famous Fetuses in Rabbinic Literature,” in Imagining the Fetus: The Unborn in Myth, Religion, and Culture, ed. Vanessa R. Sasson and Jane Marie Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 189–90; idem, Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2009), 53. 52 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 56. 53 DAmK, f. 253, op. 1, d. 10, l. 97. To a large degree, Jewish converts themselves exploited suspicions about their safety after baptism with hair-raising tales of violent persecution at the hands of their coreligionists. Casting themselves as Christian martyrs, they related narratives of abduction, attempted murders, heroic escapes, and resolute faith throughout these trials and tribulations. See ChaeRan Freeze, “When Chava Left Home: Gender, Conversion, and the Jewish Family,” in Jewish Women in Eastern Europe, ed. ChaeRan Freeze, Paula Hyman, and Antony Polonsky, Polin Studies in Polish Jewry 18 (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2005): 169–71. For a poignant example of how a female convert accused her parents of trying to poison her to prevent her conversion, see Lietuvos Valstybes Istorijos Archyvas, Vilnius, f. 447, op. 1, d. 3079, ll. 1–70, 1869. The Vil’na court ruled that the claims were groundless.

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The anonymous author of Strannik mentioned above argued that although the state provided some “negligible aid,” after using up this meager sum, converts had to endure “hunger, starvation, persecution, and all kinds of deprivation.”54 State support came in the form of a one-time payment of thirty silver rubles, a fixed sum throughout the nineteenth century, which clearly was worth more in the 1840s than in the late nineteenth century.55 The problem of indigent Jewish converts was a recurring theme in Church reports. For instance, Bishop Evsei of Podol’sk informed the Synod in 1857 that converts without means who were “unaccustomed to the current way of Christian life” were “often in danger of returning to their former lack of faith, disappearing to some unknown place.” More troubling, he added, was the fate of female converts who resorted to “depravity,” exposing the Church to censure. “Having separated the Jews from their former society, [the Church] does not give them residency or a means to an honest way of life in Christian society.” When Bishop Evsei proposed to build an agricultural colony for new Jewish converts, the Synod responded: “It will hardly be to their benefit because Jews in general are little inclined toward agricultural life and thus remain among their former coreligionists, having dealings with them; they would not be free from their influence.”56 Fr. Briantsev was only too familiar with stories about impoverished Jewish converts. He discovered that even those who managed to succeed in securing a livelihood struggled to make ends meet. This was the case for the Rybakov family in St. Petersburg, which suffered from deprivation due to the father’s alcoholism and mother’s illness. According to one report that reached the Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter: The Rybakov family lives in a tiny wretched shack that affords protection from neither the cold nor the rain. The young children, aged 1.5 to 14, barefoot and almost naked, frequently sit hungry because the eternally drunk father hauls off everything to the tavern, even the last shirt from the shoulders of his own children. The oldest daughter (age 19), who suffers from an eye [disease], and the ailing mother, burdened with five minor children, are in no condition to feed the staving family by their own toil. In general, hunger, cold, and filth are the conditions in which the family lives.57 54 “Chastnyi priut v S. Peterburg,” Strannik, July 1870, 58. 55 The sum of thirty silver rubles, which remained fixed, was the standard amount listed in files of the Lithuanian Russian Orthodox consistory throughout the nineteenth century. For example, see: Lietuvos Valstybes Istorijos Archyvas, Vilnius, f. 605, op. 2, d. 1571, l. 1, 1848–1852; Lietuvos Valstybes Istorijos Archyvas (Lithuanian State Historical Archives), Vilnius, f. 605, op. 4, d. 722, l. 6, 1867. Boris Mironov has observed that the poll tax for the peasants, for example, also remained largely unchanged with minor increases throughout the nineteenth century; since it did not increase with the rate of inflation, the actual value of the tax did not rise that much. See Boris Mironov, The Standard of Living and Revolutions in Imperial Russia, 1700–1917, ed. Gregory Freeze (New York: Routledge, 2012), 149–52. In the same way, the one-time payments remained unchanged, leaving converts with very few resources to establish their livelihoods as Christians. 56 RGIA, f. 796, op. 138, d. 439, ll. 1–8, 1857. 57 TsGIA SPb, f. 542, op. 3, d. 9, ll. 1–9, 1884–1886. For another example of an indigent shoemaker, Mikhail Glauberman, who desired to convert his brother (who was still living with their Jewish parents), see DAmK, f. 253, op. 1, d. 7, ll. 1–40, 1875. The Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter not only had to

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Another report filed by the Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter in 1875 described the dire circumstances of Mikhail Nikonov Glauberman, who did not have “a permanent occupation in the shoemaking trade” and suffered from “extreme need.” To make matters worse, he had been called up for military service in Shlissel’burg, leaving his family without a provider.58 Such tales of poverty and suffering among Jewish converts troubled some Church clergy such as Bishop Evsei who were concerned about the impact on the reputation of the Church. The Shelter and the Special Status of Jewish Christians The Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter for Baptized Jewish Children promised to solve all the problems that plagued new converts by providing a new home, spiritual education, and vocational training for the future. Originally founded by English missionary Mariia Noevna Birch in 1864, the Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter was intended to serve as a “parental home [roditel’skii dom] where converted Jewish children could receive a proper upbringing “in the spirit of Russian Orthodoxy and Russian life.”59 Under the solicitous guidance of Fr. Briantsev, it also provided a temporary sanctuary for adult converts (especially soldiers, artisans, and university students), which helped them transition into their new life.60 According to Fr. Briantsev’s assistants, the convert’s lack of spatial distance from the Jews was the worst stumbling block to integration into Russian life.61 In the case of Spevak, Dzagiler complained that his living arrangements made it impossible to isolate him from Jewish influences: What can a priest do with him? [It is not as though he could] travel to his apartment daily during the course of a year where the synagogue and its attendants [are nearby], where he, Spevak, is surrounded by kahalniki (communal leaders)—in a word, where the filthy and stinking Jewish den of thieves devotes itself to the salvation of the deluded sheep daily for a few hours through systematic teaching necessary for purposes of understanding.62 The only practical solution was to “place him in the [Mariinsko Sergievskii] Shelter at least for six months, corresponding to the period designated for the proclamations of impending conversions.” Dzagiler explained that this measure was a form of “exhortation,” which the Church had a right to impose on an erring member. Most important, “Stefan [Spevak] will be separated from the influence of his Jewish milieu; additionally, he will constantly be resolve the problem of taking a child under fourteen years old away from his Jewish parents (which it did by securing a temporary separate passport for him), but also to provide material support because the shoemaker was completely impoverished due to lack of regular work. 58 DAmK, f. 253, op. 1, d. 7, l. 3 ob. 59 RGIA, f. 768, op. 3, d. 46, l. 2. 60 On the shelter as a site to remake Jewish converts into useful Russian citizens, see ChaeRan Freeze, “The Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter,” 27–49. 61 Regarding the problem of converted children who remained with their Jewish parents until they came of age and converts who chose to remain married to their Jewish spouses, see ChaeRan Freeze, “When Chava Left Home,” 182–84, 185–87. 62 DAmK, f. 253, op. 1, d. 10, l. 98.

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under the guidance of individuals whom you have appointed to teach him systematically the Holy Scriptures, catechism, and related subjects; [they will also instruct him] through oral conversations and explanations of the prayers, liturgy, and other Church matters.”63 In fact, Dzagiler contended, the Shelter must establish a school for Jewish Christians just like Spivak, to strengthen their commitment to the faith. Inspired by the Church fathers, he envisioned an institution modeled on the Catechetical School established by St. Clement of Alexandria, which had been staffed by the “most gifted teachers,” including St. Pantaenus. To address the special needs of Jewish converts, he suggested employing works such as St. Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, which could serve as an excellent textbook. The text’s anti-Jewish polemic, which self-consciously constructed differences between the two religions, may have been particularly appealing to Dzagiler, who often employed strict binaries to define Christianity and Judaism.64 His call for a special catechetical school contained a subtle reproach of the Church’s failure to engage more actively with its new, still very lost flock. The Strannik article on the Mariinsko Sergievskii Shelter was even more critical about the reception of Jewish converts in Christian society: “Even sadder, meeting with cold indifference on the part of Christians, instead of with love, which constitutes the essence of Christianity, they again return to the faith of their fathers.”65 While he lauded the kindness of Mariia Birch of the St. Petersburg Missionary Society and the generosity of donors “from the highest circles of Russian society,” who first funded the Shelter, he criticized their apathy when funds ran out. Citing Psalms, the author declared faith in God’s unwavering commitment even when others abandoned the Christian mission: “However, if my father and mother forsake me [Psalms 27:10]. God said to his true firstborn Israel, I will not leave you. God did not abandon these innocent children, the true new Israelites and others like them who have come to Christ.”66 In his eyes, the establishment of a permanent shelter was a sign of God’s solicitous care of his true children. The author’s deliberate use of the words “true” and “firstborn” contested the triumphalist Christian claim to have superseded the Jews as the chosen people. Doubly chosen, Jewish converts had no reason to feel ashamed, even in the face of cold rejection by their new Christian brethren. The anonymous author writing in Strannik also criticized the failure of the Church to devote resources to missionize among the Jews, despite the exhortation of the Gospels, “The words of the Lord to his disciples and apostles: ‘Go instead to the lost sheep of the house 63 Ibid., l. 99 ob. 64 Ibid., l. 100. Recently scholars have argued that Dialogue with Trypho was less concerned about the conversion of the Jews than with creating Christian orthodoxy and heresy. At a time when the borderlines between Christianity and Judaism were still indeterminate, Justin’s text sought to create sharper distinctions. As Daniel Boyarin has observed: “I suggest that an important motivation for Justin’s expenditure of discursive energy is not so much to convince the Jews to accept the Logos, but rather to deny the Logos to the Jews, to take it away from them in order for it to be the major theological center of Christianity with the goal of establishing a religious identity for the believers in Christ that would precisely mark them off as religiously different from Jews.” Borderlines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 38. 65 “Chastnyi priut v S. Peterburge,” Strannik (September 1870), 189. 66 Ibid., 72.

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of Israel’” (Matthew 10:6). Despite the fact that the Jews “are found in need of urgent material and moral assistance,” he argued, “we have done practically nothing to facilitate the conversion of the Jews to Russian Orthodoxy. We have had neither missionaries nor literature …to enlighten the Jews.” The author conceded that it was “even harder for Jews than for heathens” to leave their religion, but he dismissed critics who claimed that attempts to convert the Jews were in vain. He pointed to famous converts such as Yaakov Brafman and Aleksandr Alekseev, who had paved the way for their former coreligionists to join the Christian faith.67 If he and other Jewish converts looked to the Shelter for hope, they were bound to be disappointed. While Fr. Briantsev was still alive, the Shelter gave special preference to Jewish converts; following his death in 1887, however, the new statutes included both “Jews and Russians …especially the children of fallen and injured soldiers.”68 A brochure published in 1892 completely omitted any ethnic distinctions: “The purpose of the Shelter is to provide charity and education for children of both sexes from ages 7 to 12, with preference for orphans and children of poor parents of the Russian Orthodox confession without distinction of rank or status.”69 There was no mention of rooms for adult converts to stay temporarily while they transitioned into Christian society. Conclusion In his letter to Fr. Briantsev about Stefan Spevak, who had fallen away from the Christian faith, Aleksandr Shkopel pressed for greater compassion. After all, he argued, Spevak was a simple and “honest person, who was not led to the faith for worldly gain.” Indeed, he supported himself through honest labor. Shkopel admitted that Spevak was slightly delusional but certainly not harmful: “Standing firm for his old faith, he thinks he has acquired for himself the glory of being a martyr among the Jews.” To save him from eternal damnation, Shkopel urged the Church to act not with “severe but with gentle measures, not with denunciations but with exhortations, not with haste but with gradual [acts], not with official but with domestic means.” 70 Positioning themselves as more experienced converts, Briantsev’s assistants sought to explain to native-born Christians why their coreligionists found it so difficult to adapt to a Russian-Orthodox way of life. It was not easy for them to abandon old customs and habits overnight, especially when the new rituals such as the veneration of the saints or praying before holy icons were not only foreign but also evoked a sense of revulsion instilled in them from childhood. Above all, these older Christians expressed a sense of deep emotional kinship to their converted coreligionists, which went beyond their spiritual ties. As one ordained monk and Jewish convert, O. Veniamin, recalled when he performed daily services at the Shelter with Fr. Briantsev: “I was moved to tears upon seeing the wards of the shelter perform and hear the psalms and prayers with such emotion, with such sincere feeling …I could not hold back the tears as I gazed upon these fortunate ones, who were radiant.” He added 67 Ibid., 55–56, 58, 61–81. 68 TsGIA SPb, f. 542, op. 1, d. 833, l. 1, 1892. 69 Ibid., d. 835, ll. 100–101 ob., 1893–1894. 70 DAmK, f. 253, op. 1, d. 10, l. 94.

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that it gave him hope for his lost coreligionists: “I have always grieved on finding my fellow brothers, who are so dear to my heart by nature and habit, but who are lost and ignorant of the truth. Thus, it is with great emotion that I rejoiced at last upon seeing that the path [to salvation] is now before them, and the gates of salvation are open. I shed tears of happiness with them and prayed together for the further success of the shelter.” Sympathetic yet firm in their approach, Fr. Briantsev’s assistants sought to help bring the fallen back into the fold, reminding them of their uniqueness as the “lost sheep of Israel.

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Of Duma or Antichrist: Old Believers and Russian Politics, 1905–1914 Roy R. Robson (University of the Sciences in Philadelphia)

With the promulgation of religious tolerance in 1905, Old Believers quickly took advantage of their new legal status to meet, publish, and build new temples. They became vocal and public proponents of their traditions. Even so, Old Believers had no unified voice in Russian politics. In response, prominent Old Believers began a quixotic campaign to unite Old Believers into a single political movement. In June 1908, elite Old Believers approached their bishops from Moscow and Nizhnii Novgorod, asking for help in influencing the Third Duma’s Old Believer Bill. The bishops demurred, observing that the men “shaved their beards and did not keep the fasts.”1 This exchange, reported in the monthly magazine Staroobriadtsy, encapsulated the dynamics of Old Belief and politics in the late imperial period. Some characteristics of the Old Belief seemed well suited to fostering a political movement. These included a shared identity (based in part on beards and fasting), established community structures, and a vibrant national dialogue. Other facets of the Old Belief, however, undermined attempts to forge a mass movement: apocalyptic theology, mistrust of central authority, and a tendency toward limiting contact with society. Ultimately, conservative forces in the Fourth Duma quashed both the Old Believer bill and its sponsors’ broader ambitions. Shortly after the 1905 revolution, a small group of “Neo-Old Believers” had hatched a plan to transform the Old Belief from a minority dissident group into a modern political force. Four members hailed from fabulously wealthy industrialist families: P. P. Riabushinskii, D. V. Sorotkin, M. I. Brilliantov, and F. I. Mel’nikov. They formed the kernel of an “All-Russian Congress of Old Believers,” which Sorotkin had first organized in 1900, and which had experienced some success lobbying for religious freedom.2 Each man took on different tasks: Riabushinskii published both Old Believer and secular newspapers and 1 F. A. Seleznëv, “Sud’ba zakonoproekta o staroobriadcheskikh obshchinakh (1905–14),” Istoriia, no. 1 (2008): 132–33. 2 James L. West, “The Neo-Old Believers of Moscow: Religious Revival and Nationalist Myth in Late Imperial Russia,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 26, no. 4 (1992): 4, 7. See also James L. West, “The Riabushinskij Circle: Russian Industrialists in Search of a Bourgeoisie,” Jahrbucher für Ge­schich­ te Osteuropas 32 (1984) 3:358–77; and James L. West, “The Riabushinskii Circle,” in Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Edith W. Clowes, et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 53. More recently, West has established a link between Riabushinskii and the editors of the journal Vekhi. See James L. West, “Philosophical Idealism and Utopian Capitalism: The Vekhi Authors and the Riabushinskii Circle,” Russian History 38 (2011): 493–513.

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magazines; Sorotkin and Brilliantov hoped to write the Duma’s Old Believer Bill; and Mel’nikov pursued Old Believer unification. Together, they planned nothing less than “to transform the Ancient Piety into a civic religion through which the emerging nation could find its cultural identity, its political ethos, its economic skills, and its religious morality.”3 In 1905, the All-Russian Congress met openly for the first time, though there had been five previous meetings. The proceedings of the 1905 “Sixth All-Russian Congress of Old Believers” illustrated the political plans for the organization. From speeches by bishops to legislative proposals, the meeting focused on changing the legal situation for Old Believers.4 Riabushinskii produced a number of publications to sway public opinion. His magazine Tserkov’ and its successor, Slovo tserkvi, wielded more influence than any other Old Believer periodical (there were about twenty total), finding their way from Moscow all the way to the Russian Far East.5 From his modern Shekhtel-designed building, Riabushinskii also published Narodnaia gazeta, a short-lived broadsheet that the government closed down for its stridently anti-monarchist and pro-Old Believer views.6 With his first newspaper closed, Riabushinskii turned to Tserkov’ and his other newspaper, Utro Rossii, to agitate for a united political front. These publications spelled out Riabushinskii’s vision of a Russia freed of bureaucratic backwardness and liberated by its own “indigenous way of life,” making the Old Belief “a living, popular cause.” 7 By 1913, the Riabushinskii Printing House had grown to be one of the largest in Russia. By then, Riabushinskii had also begun publishing the pan–Old Believer magazine Zlatostrui, and Drug zemli, which catered to the needs of Old Believer farmers. D. V. Sorotkin and M. I. Brilliantov had mixed success in developing support for the Old Belief or a unified Old Believer voice in parliament. In the first two dumas, Old Believers found friends among Octobrist and, to a lesser extent, Kadet parliamentarians. Unfortunately for the Old Believers, though, both dumas were disbanded before fully considering legislation related to the rights of Old Believer communities. During the Third Duma, however, the matter finally came under consideration, with Sorotkin lobbying for the strongest possible pro-Old Believer language.8 In doing so, he could count on encouragement from the editors of Tserkov’ and Zlatostrui, who opined that the All-Russian Congress eschewed partisan politics, and instead “stood on the side of progressive” politics in

3 West, “Neo-Old Believers,” 14. 4 Trudy shestogo vserossiiskogo s”ezda staroobriadtsev v Nizhnem-Novgorode, 2–5 avgusta 1905 g. (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1905). 5 Roy R. Robson, “The Old Believer Press, 1905–17,” in Russia’s Dissident Old Believers: 1650–1950, ed. George B. Michels and Robert L. Nichols (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2009), 282–83. 6 Quoted in West, “Neo-Old Believers,” 13. 7 West, “Neo-Old Believers,” 17. See also West, “The Riabushinskii Circle,” 54. 8 Only a few Old Believers served in the Duma—four in the First Duma, two in the Second Duma, six in the Third Duma, and two in the Fourth Duma. Even in the Third Duma, however, Old Believers constituted only 1.6 % of all deputies. M. A. Babkin, Sviashchenstvo i tsarstvo (Rossiia, nachalo xx v.–1918 g.) (Moscow: Izd-vo “Indrik,” 2011), table 11.

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the “true spirit of the manifesto of October 17th.”9 From the election of a Duma Commission on December 4, 1907, to the bill’s passage by the lower house in May 1909, Sorotkin advocated for changes that broadened Old Believer rights, surpassing the Act of Toleration of April 17, 1906, the definition of Old Believer rights in the Act of October 17, 1906, and the original text of the bill. Sorotkin and Brilliantov’s own bishops, as noted in the introduction to this essay, often wavered in their support, perceiving a threat to their authority. Previously, fights had erupted over maintaining parish registers, long avoided by Old Believers during centuries of persecution by the Russian state. Sorotkin had negotiated the terms of parish registration with representatives of the government, but it fell afoul of the bespopovtsy (those Old Believer groups without priests). The issue scuttled movement on the Old Believer Bill until Sorotkin’s trip to the Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery (Moscow headquarters of the priestless Old Believers), to broker an agreement. Sorotkin’s overture toward another branch of the Old Belief, however, served only to intensify the bishops’ opposition to him, which did not fully abate until 1913.10 Notwithstanding his problems with other Old Believers, Sorotkin and his allies argued vehemently for the bill in the Duma committee. He had two lines of argument. First was a general principle of religious freedom. Sorotkin’s second argument focused on the Old Believers’ service to the motherland and tsar.11 Conservatives, however, countered with the examples of “extreme” Old Believers, questioning legalization of “the right of propaganda” to Old Believers “who see the Antichrist in the face of the Orthodox tsar, and evade military service.”12 As we will see later in this essay, the conservatives had a point: many Old Believers harbored real concerns about the power of Antichrist as embodied in the Russian church and state. By late May 1909, the Duma passed the Old Believer Bill, a sufficiently important milestone to be noted in newspapers across the globe. While the New York Times simply related that the Duma had started discussion on the bill, the Times (London) accurately predicted that “the reform will probably be wrecked in the Upper House if it gets there.”13 The Adelaide Advertiser (!), however, breathlessly reported that Old Believers had “repudiated the orthodox ritual and the sacrament, recognized no priests, avoided all contact with the State, and allowed no prayer for the Czar, who is regarded as antichrist. They represent the wealthy population, numbering 15,000,000.”14 Using some of the same arguments, the Russian Orthodox Church vigorously opposed the bill, noting that it gave broader rights to Old Believer communities than to their own parishes, and also claimed that Old Believers should not have the right to use clerical titles. The State Council did 9 “Staroobriadtsy i vybory,” Zlatostrui, no. 8 (1910–1911): 24. Riabushinskii also published a compendium of material related to the bill: Zakonoproekt o staroobriadcheskikh obshinakh v gosudarstvennoi dume (Moscow, 1909). 10 Seleznëv, “Sud’ba zakonoproekta,” 132. 11 Ibid., 134. 12 Ibid., 137. 13 “Religious Liberty in Russia,” New York Times, 26 May 1909, 2(N); and “Russia: The Bill on Religious Disabilities (From Our Own Correspondent),” The Times (London), 29 May 1909, 5(N). 14 “Religious Liberty in Russia: Freedom for Old Believers,” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 2 June 1909, 2.

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not take up the measure until 1913, and the outbreak of war doomed its passage before the revolutions of 1917.15 In their desire to fashion the Old Belief into a political movement, the “Neo-Old Believers” could rely on some important characteristics of the Ancient Piety, as it was often called. Chief among these was a shared sense of identity, both as members of a religious tradition and also as a persecuted minority. In fact, Old Believers preserved many habits, assumptions, and ideas that provided crucial links across geography and generation. As Robert Crummey has argued, various Old Believer systems “had synchronic and diachronic connections and Old Believer cultures shared a devotion to pre-Nikonian Orthodoxy symbolized by such usages as the two-finger sign of the cross and a complex and shifting corpus of sacred writings and oral traditions which summarized their understandings of theology, liturgy, devotional life and their own sacred history.”16 Of course, a bearded man or woman with braid tucked under a kerchief looked like most any Russian peasant. Rather, it was the zealous keeping of fasts, disciplined behavior during church services, preservation of old iconographic and musical traditions, and a commitment to local governance that set Old Believers apart from their neighbors. In a related way, Laura Engelstein has argued that “[m]anifestations of Christian piety that evoked an earlier age were thus not confined to the nation which itself seemed anachronistic. Russian sectarians were, moreover, a curious amalgam of pious primitivism and worldly savoir-faire. Old Believers clung to their beards and succeeded at commerce.”17 Robert Crummey has concluded that Old Believers established a “counter-society, a fully developed social order that stood in opposition to the officially sanctioned society of imperial Russia.”18 Even with a developed identity as a minority “counter-society,” the Old Belief was anything but monolithic. In fact, Old Believers subscribed to a dizzying number of different soglasiia (concords) and tolky (trends).19 In addition, regional variations abounded. In 1888, for example, Old Believers in the Upper Kama River region divided between the Maksimovskie and Dëminskie, distinctions that held no meaning outside of a few villages, but that continued into the twenty-first century.20 Generally, popovtsy argued that although the seventeenth-century schism had devastating effects, the Russian Orthodox Church’s apostolic succession remained intact. As a result, Christians could live a full sacramental life, so long as they could find ordained priests. Before the mid-nineteenth century, most popovtsy relied on clergy who fled the Russian Or15 For a good overview, see Alexandra S. Korros, A Reluctant Parliament: Stolypin, Nationalism, and the Politics of the Russian Imperial State Council 1906–11 (Lanham, NY: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 166–69. 16 Robert O. Crummey, “Old Belief as Popular Religion: New Approaches,” Slavic Review 52, no. 4 (1993): 707. 17 Laura Engelstein, “Holy Russia in Modern Times: An Essay on Orthodoxy and Cultural Change,” Past and Present 173 (November 2001): 155. 18 Crummey, “Old Belief as Popular Religion,” 711. 19 For a more detailed description of these issues, see Roy R. Robson, Old Believers in Modern Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995), 14–40. 20 See Douglas Rogers, The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 71–103.

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thodox Church to serve Old Believers. For this reason, the group was also known as beglopopovtsy, as they received priests who had fled their dioceses and cut all ties with the church. The Russian Orthodox Church prohibited such behavior, of course, so the process was rife with legal and practical problems. A related group, the Chashnye, or “Chalicers,” received the Eucharist from Orthodox priests, but then celebrated other services in the home. 21 In 1846, a bishop from Belaia Krinitsa, Bukovina, agreed to join the Old Belief and to consecrate bishops and priests in extremis (since church law prescribed two bishops attending the consecration of a new one). This group, often known by its nickname, Belokrinitsy, became the biggest group of popovtsy.22 The Belokrinitsy suffered regular church closures and discrimination, culminating in the 1883 shuttering of the Rogozhskoe Cemetery, its Moscow headquarters. The popovtsy also struggled with a paradox: while condemning the Russian church, they also accepted priests from among its ranks. To rectify this ideological difficulty, in 1862 a Belokrinitsy bishop promulgated an encyclical (okruzhnoe poslaniie) that withdrew many Old Believer objections to the “Nikonian” church. More importantly, the encyclical concluded that neither the tsar nor the Holy Synod were tools of the Antichrist. Most Belokrinitsy (grudgingly) accepted the encyclical’s views and thus became known as okruzhniki. Those who refused took the name protiv-okruzhniki or ne-okruzhniki. 23 After 1905, okruzhniki predominated among all Old Believers in wealth and public profile. As we have seen, the Belokrinitsy counted among its members some of the wealthiest and most influential capitalists in Russia, including members of the Morozov, Riabushinskii, and other prominent clans. In contrast to the priestly Old Believers, the bespopovtsy argued that Nikon severed the apostolic succession by his dastardly reforms, leaving Christians to live in a spiritual desert, void of the Eucharist. Various bespopovtsy, however, disagreed on how to navigate a world bereft of holy mysteries. They agreed that the Eucharist, ordination, and commutation of sin could no longer be practiced, but differed in their views regarding marriage and the presence of the Antichrist. Some bespopovtsy argued that the church recognized baptism, confession, and marriages celebrated by laymen. They took their name, Pomortsy, from a northern Russian region on the shores of the White Sea. In the eighteenth century, however, some Pomortsy concluded that Old Believers should not marry. Instead, the faithful had to live celibately or in immoral cohabitation, knowing that eventually they would have to renounce their partners and confess their sins. This group, called the Fedoseevtsy, created a novel financial system to help insure their future. Since they were never truly married, Fedoseevtsy regularly bequeathed their estates to the local Old Believer community, rather 21 Robson, Old Believers, 24. 22 The population of Old Believers in Russia has never been firmly established. In 1905, it was probably about 10 % of the total population of the empire. See Robson, Old Believers, 19–25. One contemporary source claimed that two-thirds of all Old Believers adhered to the Belokrinitsy concord: Obzor deiatel’nosti vedomstva pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia za vremiatsarstvovaniia Imperator Alexandra III (St. Petersburg, 1901), 238–39. 23 V. V. Katkova, “Pravovye vzaimootnosheniia v staroobriadcheskoi srede: Istoriia konflikta mezhdu posledovateliami i protivnikami ‘okruzhnogo poslaniia,’” Vestnik vladimirskogo iurdicheskogo instituta, no. 2 (2011): 159–62.

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than giving money to spouses or children. In return for the inheritance, the community took care of the deceased’s family and also offered low-interest loans to other community members, with the knowledge that the money would someday return to its coffers.24 This practice provided substantial capital for investment, and also attracted the ire of their opponents, who saw unfair advantage. Russian Orthodox authorities argued that Old Believers could simply cast off a spouse whenever they wished, and that the Old Believer communities were clearly wealthier and more comfortable than their Orthodox equivalents: “Thanks to the support of the wealthy,” wrote the Synod’s chief procurator, “and the strong development of old ritualist mutual aid, [Old Believers] live, in material terms, incomparably better than the Orthodox.”25 Although those “lost in the taiga”26 have received notoriety for living alone in the wilderness, most Old Believers did interact regularly with “Nikonians,” as they called the Russian Orthodox. In general, however, bespopovtsy fretted about this issue far more than priestly Old Believers.27 Could an Old Believer share the table with an Orthodox believer? What about the bania? Could eating potatoes lead toward worldliness?28 In general terms, this self-imposed apartheid correlated better to geography than concord. Pomortsy in Moscow or Vilnius, for example, might dine with non-Old Believers, but then ask forgiveness for their sins. Pomortsy living in the Far East, however, were less likely to share a table with Nikonians. Even in rural areas, though, by the early 1900s all Old Believers increasingly worked, shared a table, and even married those “of the world.”29 Priestless Old Believers tended to link worldliness with the power of Antichrist, whose power had descended upon Russia. This had many practical implications: was the 24 A number of recent scholars have studied the link between Old Belief and economic success. For complementary overviews, see E. A. Arkhipova, “Iz istorii izuchaniia roli staroobriadtsev v razvitii ekonomiki rossii (konets xix–nachalo xx v.),” Vestnik rossisskogo gosudarstvennogo gumanitarnogo universiteta, no. 4 (2012): 240–47; and Manfred Hildermeier, “Old Belief and Worldly Performance: Socioeconomic and Sociocultural Aspects of the Raskol in Early Industrial Russia,” in Michels and Nichols, Russia’s Dissident Old Believers, 121–38; for a nuanced and focused study, see Linda Bowman, “Seeking Salvation: Moral Economies and Management at the Morozov Mills, 1885–1905,” Social History 28, no. 3 (2003): 322–45. The broadest study of the topic is D. E. Raskov, Ekonomicheskie instituty staroobriadchestva (St. Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 2012). 25 Vsepoddanneishii otchet ober-prokurora Sviateishego sinoda po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia za 1910 god (St. Petersburg, 1913), 159. 26 Vasily Peskov, Lost in the Taiga: One Russian Family’s Fifty-Year Struggle for Survival and Religious Freedom in the Siberian Wilderness (New York: Doubleday, 1994). 27 Robson, Old Believers, 96–115. 28 Old Believers tended to use the terms or zamirshchenie or obmirshchenie (colloquially mirshchenie) to connote “worldliness” rather than “secularization,” as it is often translated. See, for example, “Zapis’ zasedanii sobora,” in Pervyi vserossiiskii sobor khristian-pomortsev, priemliushchikh brak (Moscow, 1909), 64. 29 A. V. Apanasenok, “Staroobriadtsy i ‘mirskie’ v sel’skom sotsiume tsentral’nogo chernozem’ia v xix– nachale xx veka: Evoliutsiia mezhkonfessional’nykh otnoshenii,” Vestnik severnogo (Arkticheskogo) Federal’nogo Universiteta, no. 4 (2008): 5–10. See also K. M. Tovbin, “Staroverie kak reaktsiia na sekuliarizatsiiu rossii,” Politematicheskii setevoi elektronnyi nauchnyi zhurnal Kubanskogo gosudarstvennogo agrarnogo universiteta, no 21 (2006): 401–37.

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tsar an agent of the Antichrist? Were census and church record books actually enrollment in the Book of the Antichrist?30 What about passports, or money with a picture of the tsar? The First All-Russian Council of the Pomortsy instructed their followers to pray with the words “May the Lord save and have mercy on our sovereign Tsar.”31 Though hardly an endorsement, any such prayer raised the ire of Filipovtsy, Beguny, Stranniki, and Spasovtsy who defined their existence in opposition to the secular government and its instruments. Indeed, many bespopovtsy sympathized with this latter position and aided their more radical brothers and sisters with food, shelter, and clothing.32 The Edict of Toleration in 1905 allowed a number of little-known Old Believer groups to publicize their causes. Many Old Believers had never heard of the Chashnye or the Spasovtsy, who represented the extreme of bespopovshchina by refusing nearly all contact with the outside world and relying only on Christ as the “Great Pastor Archbishop.”33 The most numerous of the little-known groups were the Chasovenniki—Old Believers who previously had taken in fugitive Russian Orthodox priests, but had recently found themselves to be de facto bespopovtsy. Situated mostly in the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East, the Chasovenniki illustrated the tension between “moderate” concords (especially the beglopopovtsy) and more “extreme” ones (like the Spasovtsy). Some Chasovenniki, for example, argued that the “antichrist has not arrived and does not rule,” while others countered that “if the antichrist does not now rule, we have been mistaken in all our beliefs.”34 Leaders of the “All-Russian Congress” set out to combine these disparate groups into a unified political voice. With the help of P. P. Riabushinskii’s publications, F. E. Mel’nikov first focused on developing the internal structure of Belokrinitsy communities and clarifying the relationship between clergy and laity. Mel’nikov concentrated on these issues because he hoped the Belokrinitsy would eventually revive the Patriarchate, attracting millions of converts and precipitating the need for clear organization. That being said, Mel’nikov consistently sided with the laity in struggles for authority with the clergy, incurring the wrath of bishops but developing support among both elite and common Old Believers.35 Next, Mel’nikov used his considerable education as a dogmatist to engage other Old Believers. The result of these consultations, he hoped, would be the unification of all Old Believers under the All-Russian Congress, which would have greatly expanded the group’s ability to create a political movement. He credited Riabushinskii for aiding in this 30 See A. V. Kostrov, “Konfessional’naia reforma nachala xx v. i staroobriadchesvo baikal’skoi Sibiri,” Vestnik dal’nevostochnogo otdeleniia rossiiskoi akademii nauk, no. 1 (2009): 33–39. 31 Pervyi vserossiiskii sobor, folio 15 reverse. 32 For an idiosyncratic study of the Old Believer millennialism in a broad context, see Leonid Heretz, Russia on the Eve of Modernity: Popular Religion and Traditional Culture under the Last Tsars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), especially 42–75. 33 Robson, Old Believers, 38–39. 34 Robson, Old Believers, 33. 35 In a memoir/history (written in exile around 1939), Mel’nikov took pains to set out principles of organization and the structure of authority. A remarkable book in many ways, Mel’nikov’s memoir combined a traditional apologia for the Old Belief with detailed descriptions of the Belokrinitsy’s structure and internal processes, including education and finance. F. E. Mel’nikov, Kratkaia istoriia drevlepravoslavnoi (staroobriadcheskoi) tserkvi (Barnaul: Izd-vo BGPU, 1999).

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task. “As the leading organ of the Council of the of the All-Russian Congress,” Mel’nikov wrote, “the Old Believer magazine Tserkov’ very energetically insisted and worked with the Old Orthodox arch-pastorate, on measures to unite the Old Believers.”36 The All-Russian Congress first approached the protiv-okruzhniki, fellow Belokrinitsy who needed prodding to rejoin their brethren in a single church. Progress came quickly, with a grand celebration of unification in 1906. (Though far reduced in number, the anti-encyclical group continued to exist at least into the 1930s, “like crumbs under the table, left after a large meal.”)37 Flush with success, the Congress then turned its attention to the beglopopovtsy, where they met with more resistance and found only a few converts. According to Mel’nikov—and he was likely right—any beglopopovtsy who had not yet joined the Belokrinitsy were unlikely to be swayed.38 Mel’nikov led a Belokrinitsy delegation in meetings with Pomortsy leaders regarding unification. Apparently, the Pomortsy initiated contact, and Mel’nikov quickly responded with a list of issues for discussion. Specifically, he asked the Pomortsy to discuss the following issues: 1. The contemporary bespopovtsy position in regard to the antichrist. 2. The duration of the antichrist’s reign. 3. If it was possible to acknowledge the Orthodox Church as the Church of Christ, even if clergy and communion had been destroyed by the antichrist. 4. Why, according to the bespopovtsy, the antichrist has destroyed only two holy mysteries (clergy and the Eucharist), while others were not to be destroyed until the second coming of Christ?39 If he could successfully rebut the Pomortsy, Mel’nikov hoped that they would stop believing that the Antichrist ruled the earth, leaving the door open for final unification with the Belokrinitsy. Equally important, any Pomortsy retreat would help the All-Russian Congress convince the Duma that Old Believers really no longer called the government a tool of the Antichrist. Old Believers had enjoyed a long-established custom of public debates, usually between a learned Old Believer and an Orthodox missionary priest. In this case, though, two Old Believers were going to debate—an event sure to draw a crowd. Over four days in the beginning of May 1909, Mel’nikov and his colleague met with the famous Pomortsy apologist L. F. Pichugin in the auditorium of the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow. M. I. Brilliantov presided over the debate, and both sides signed a stenographic report to be jointly

36 Ibid., 515. 37 Ibid., 508. 38 Ibid., 508–11. See also “K voprosu o priiskanii episkopa,” Zlatostrui, no. 4 (1911–1912): 49–51 and no. 11 (1911–1912): 40–45. 39 “Predlozhenie staroobr. Bratstva pomortsam, priemliushchim brak,” Zlatostrui, no. 1 (1912–1913): 39–40. For a contemporary view from Siberia, see V. A. Laskin, “O proporkakh i o antikhriste,” in Dukhovnaia literatura staroverov vostoka Rossii xviii–xx vv., N. S. Gurianova, et al., eds. (Novosibirsk: SO RAN, 2005), 229–87.

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published.40 Writing thirty years later, Mel’nikov was still struck by the vehemence with which the Pomortsy went on the attack: “It [was] remarkable that Mr. Pichugin, president of the Pomortsy, said not a single word about the unification of Old Believers, but simply tried to discredit the Belokrinitsy hierarchy.”41 For his part, Mel’nikov made it clear that the only real path to unification lay in joining the Belokrinitsy hierarchy, and would entertain no other options. Perhaps surprisingly, given the lack of progress, the same men met again in 1913 for another round of debates. They too produced little of substance. Mel’nikov followed up with a brochure on the matter, but the Pomortsy responded that the two groups were simply too far apart ever to unify.42 When Tserkov’ trumpeted the Old Belief as Russia’s “indigenous form of life,” it was referring in part to the form of self-governance predominant in all of the Old Believer concords. At the local level, each community stood largely independent of any other; members of the community elected both the governing council and the clergy. In fact, a bishop from the state church wryly observed that every Old Believer held a “rightful voice in discussion of religious activities,” in contrast to their Orthodox neighbors, who had little say in the affairs of their parish.43 Not just part of the general mania for conferences in those years, the Old Believer tradition dated back at least to the Polish Conference of Pomortsy in 1752.44 After 1905, however, it seemed that every issue of Old Believer magazines reported on one regional or national meeting or another. Even the Spasovtsy, among the most reticent of all Old Believers, had begun meeting in secret in the late nineteenth century.45 The minutes and reports of these meetings illustrated the important issues of the day as seen from the vantage of each group. For the Belokrinitsy, conferences tended to focus outwardly, discussing the political situation, the Old Believer Bill, and outreach to other concords. These meetings also highlighted tension developing between lay “dogmatists” (nachetchiki) and bishops. (The role of a dogmatist was similar to that of a “reader” in the Russian Orthodox Church.) During the years of persecution, rich laymen had helped to shelter the clergy from persecution and provided a conduit for information between Belaia Krinitsa and Russia. After 1905, however, bishops began to flex their institutional muscles, as happened in the 1908 rivalry between the “Neo-Old Believers” and the hierarchy. Lay leaders argued for broad inclusion (including women) in all decision-making bodies. Bishops, to the contrary, tried to limit lay participation to “widows and well-known philanthropists.”46 40 L. F. Prichugin, et al., Besedy staroobriadtsev (Moscow, 1909), text available on the Internet at http:// starajavera.narod.ru/polemika1909.html. 41 Mel’nikov, Kratkaia istoriia, 514. 42 Petrovskii, “Vozmozhno-li ob”edinenie staroobriadchestva v odnu tserkov’?,” Shchit very, no. 8 (1913): 819–24. 43 Ibid., 26. 44 “Materialy dlia izsledovaniia voprosa o bezsviashchennoslovom brake,” Shchit very, no. 8 (1912): 670–80. 45 Roy R. Robson, et al., “Staroobriadtsy Spasovtsy: Puti narodnogo bogosloviia i formy samosokhra­ neniia traditsionnykh obshchestv v Rossii xx veka,” Revue des études slaves 69, nos. 1–2 (1997): 101–17. 46 Seleznëv, “Sud’ba zakonoproekta,” 131. Representation varied in these meetings, but an average of half-clergy, half-laity seemed typical. N. N., “Glavneishie tsentry sovremennago raskola,” Khris-

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In contrast to their priestly co-religionists, priestless Old Believer conferences focused more narrowly on internal structures. The conference of Pomortsy carefully defined the role of their lay leaders, which they called “Father” even though they were not actually priests. On occasion, though, the bespopovtsy did discuss Sorotkin’s All-Russian Congress, and reported on the debates between the Pomortsy and Belokrinitsy.47 Even when they did make decisions, it is instructive that the priestless congresses had few ways to impose their will. For example, the 1906 law instructed all Old Believer communities to register with the state. While the Belokrinitsy almost unanimously “accepted the community,” the priestless Old Believers were far more divided in regard to state registration. Pomortsy congresses recommended that their communities register with the state, but had no way to enforce compliance. In their congresses, bespopovtsy also tended to discuss liturgical rites, holy mysteries, publishing of religious books, and peculiarly Old Believer sins such as beard-cutting or tobacco-smoking. The proceedings of the first Pomortsy congress provide an apt example. Members of the congress painstakingly debated the role of “spiritual fathers,” marriage, baptism, confession, holy books, and beard-cutting before finally getting around to a quick discussion of external issues. In 1911, a delegate to a Chasovennik conference blurted out that he had questions about baptism, the Eucharist, confession, marriage, about prayers with women recently confined, on the blessing of preceptors (nastavniki), about prayers for the Sovereign Tsar, eating with non-believers, on wearing foreign clothes, about tea and samovars, about drinking wine and sikera vodka, about railways, about suicide, about sudden death, about burials, about domes with eagles and four-edged crosses that they tread under their feet, about tobacco-smoking and snuff, about the cutting of hair on the head and beard, about kerosene lamps, about potatoes, about the community, about brotherhoods, about pictorial portraits, about icon painting or the painting of non-believers, about books written by non-believers, about agricultural machines, and many others.48 What was a Neo-Old Believer to do with a Chasovennik who cared more about snuff than looming legal battles? To be sure, Riabushinskii and Mel’nikov shared many views with their less-cosmopolitan brothers and sisters. Like Old Believers anywhere in Russia, elite Old Believers treasured ancient icons, sang according to the old style, made the sign of the cross with two fingers, and guarded the rights of the laity. They even sported beards, but not the unkempt-prophet style preferred by traditionalists. In the end, however, shared traditions could not overcome many Old Believers’ tendency toward isolation, unease with rapid change, and distrust of central authority. When the editors of Tserkov’ wrote that tianskoe chtenie, nos. 1–2 (1890): 159–73; “Eparkhialnii s”ezd donskoi eparkhii,” Zlatostrui, no. 11 (1911–1912): 50–52; “Staroobriadcheskii sobor,” Zlatostrui, no. 2 (1912–1913): 7–12. See also “Bor’ba za vlast’,” Zlatostrui, no. 2 (1910–1911): 52–56. 47 “Vtoroi vserossiiskii sobor khristian-pomortsev,” Shchit very, no. 3 (1912): 272–77. 48 “S”ezd staroobriadtsev Chassovennykh (ne imeiushchikh sviashchenstva) v Ekaterinburge,” Zlatostrui, no. 6 (1911–1912): 5.

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Old Believers “never fought against steamships or railroads, against electricity or gas,” they surely had not considered the Chasovenniki who agonized over kerosene lamps and rubber boots with “four-edged crosses which they tread under their feet.” Some general trends emerged. The largest Old Believer groups tended to integrate themselves into Russian society and recognize the legitimacy of secular authority. These Old Believers also tended to support a national Old Believer movement. As we have seen, the Belokrinitsy proposed that all Old Believers should eventually unite with them. Indeed, the Belokrinitsy showed real audacity by using the term All-Russian Old Believer, avoiding the customary denominational adjectives of “Belokrinitsy,” “Pomortsy,” “Chasovenniki,” or “Spasovtsy,” for example. Those Old Believers who rejected secular authority and segregated themselves, however, tended to reject the creation of a united Old Believer movement, and certainly not under the leadership of the Belokrinitsy. While they found willing debate partners and magazine readers, neither Mel’nikov nor Tserkov’ could overcome centuries of jealously guarded independence and social separation. Finally, even many socially integrated Old Believers harbored deep sympathy for their more radical co-religionists. A wandering Strannik nun, for example, might find food and warmth near a Pomortsy stove. The Pomortsy might allow their children to marry Filipovtsy, but looked askance at the Belokrinitsy. In this way, extremist Old Believers reminded their more numerous (and integrated) brothers and sisters that the Old Belief survived village by village, not through a mass political movement.

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The Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Village, and Religious Identity in Kyiv Province, 1870–1913 Jan M. Surer (Brandeis University)

Many of the writings of the Orthodox clergy of Kyiv diocese at the end of the ancien régime reveal their anxiety about their flock’s loyalty to the Church. Much of this unease stemmed from competition from the Protestant-influenced evangelical movement known as Stundism, which was then taking root among the Ukrainian peasantry in the empire’s southwestern provinces.1 Furthermore, the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church had been ascendant only from the turn of the nineteenth century in the multiethnic, multiconfessional western borderlands. Even under Russian rule Polish Catholicism, Russian Orthodoxy’s historical rival in the region, retained considerable cultural power through the region’s Polish upper classes. The quality and fidelity of lay piety alarmed the Orthodox clergy not only in the western borderlands but throughout the empire. In the central Russian diocese of Vladimir, for example, although there was much to reassure the clergy, such as high observance of the annual confession and communion obligation, priests worried increasingly about such matters as youthful irreligion and the corrupting influence of seasonal work migration.2 Indeed, Orthodoxy in the late imperial period experienced both “religious indifference” and “an intensification of belief.”3 Furthermore, the zealously pious sought greater control of parish life, resulting in a struggle for authority in the parish between the Church (bishops and clergy) and the laity.4 Much recent research on the Orthodox laity has focused primarily on

1 Stundism took its name from its origins in pietist meetings for Bible reading, singing, and prayer at certain hours (Stunde) conducted by German colonists in the Russian empire’s southern Ukrainian provinces. Religious nonconformity in Russia, other than the Old Belief but including such groups as the Dukhobors, the Molokans, the Skoptsy and the Khlysty, was often called sectarianism. 2 Gregory L. Freeze, “A Pious Folk? Religious Observance in Vladimir Diocese, 1900–1914,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 52 (2004): 325–26, 330, 333–35. 3 Paul W. Werth, “Lived Orthodoxy and Confessional Diversity: The Last Decade on Religion in Modern Russia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12 (Fall 2011): 854. 4 Chris J. Chulos, Converging Worlds: Religion and Community in Peasant Russia, 1861–1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 55. For a portrait of the laity as fully contributing members of the Orthodox community, see Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). On dechurching in tsarist Russia, that is, disaffection with institutional religion but not with piety itself, see Gregory L. Freeze, “Pravoslavie, vlast’ i sekuliarizatsiia v Rossii, 1860–1940,” DHI Moskau: Vorträge zum 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, no. 19 (2013): 7–9, http:// www.perspectivia.net/content/publikationen/vortraege-moskau/freeze_september.

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the empire’s Russian regions, however, while the complexities of lay religious identity are just beginning to be investigated in the Ukrainian lands.5 Drawing upon Church and state archival documents and published primary sources, this article investigates the dynamics of religious identity in the villages of Kyiv province, an influential center of Russian Orthodoxy and one of the three so-called southwest provinces6 that Russia acquired in the late eighteenth-century partitions of Poland. Religious differentiation and tension with the official Church were characteristic of Orthodox piety here as elsewhere in the empire. This study, however, focuses on how the specific regional context shaped developments in Orthodox piety in the Ukrainian village. After surveying briefly both the clergy’s standard of lay piety and the reality as it was often practiced, the article draws attention to the fluid religious identity of the former gentry (szlachta), a social group unique to the western borderlands and one of the sources of social and religious differentiation in the otherwise Orthodox Ukrainian peasant village. The article then considers village Orthodoxy’s encounter with Stundist dissent. The Orthodox community’s often hostile response to evangelical sectarianism has attracted study,7 but it is equally important to examine instances of toleration, as they reveal Orthodoxy’s changing social role and lay discontent with the institutional Church. Peasant Orthodoxy The Orthodox clergy shared in the Russian state’s project of “claim[ing] the confessionally heterogeneous borderlands as a primordially Orthodox locale,”8 but the historical reality of that claim was far from certain. The contested religious identity of the borderlands, the site of what Barbara Skinner has called the “fault line” between Eastern and Western Christianity, contributed to the clergy’s unease. The creation of the Uniate Church in 1596, which fused the Eastern rite and Orthodoxy’s married clergy with Catholic doctrine and submission to the pope, presented a new competitor to Orthodox identity, which was already embattled under Polish-Lithuanian rule. After the tumultuous wars of the mid-1600s and renewed Polish supremacy in the Right Bank in the eighteenth century, the Uniate Church attained the peak of its influence in the Commonwealth’s eastern lands, with the Orthodox a small minority by 1750.9 5 Barbara Skinner, The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009). 6 The other two provinces were Podolia and Volhynia. Located west of the Dnieper River, the three were also known as the Right Bank provinces. In the Russian empire, Orthodox dioceses were congruent with the administrative provinces of the same name. 7 Heather J. Coleman, “Tales of Violence against Religious Dissidents in the Orthodox Village,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, ed. Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 200–21. 8 Faith Hillis, Children of Rus’: Right-Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Russian Nation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 36. 9 In 1772 in the Commonwealth there were 4.7 million Uniates and only 400,000 Orthodox. See Barbara Skinner, “The Irreparable Church Schism: Russian Orthodox Identity and Its Historical Encounter with Catholicism,” in Polish Encounters, Russian Identity, ed. David L. Ransel and Bozena

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Despite this apparent success, both contemporary and modern accounts minimize the depth of Uniate influence among the laity in the southeastern portion of the Right Bank, including much that would become Kyiv province. Pro-Orthodox and anti-Polish sentiment had been evident in the peasant and Cossack uprisings of the mid-1700s, the most violent and well-known of which was the Koliivshchyna uprising of 1768.10 Also, religious practice here remained largely Orthodox with a Uniate veneer.11 The diocesan gazette’s description of Nenadykha village (Tarashcha district) in 1868 strove to reassure readers that the “former local order” (meaning presumably serfdom under Polish Catholic landowners, as well as the spread of the Uniate faith) influenced religious life only externally, for example, through ceremonies involving the landowner and some aspects of cross processions related to agricultural work, but had not transformed the “people’s soul.”12 The account’s author reported that the parish’s first priest (circa 1747), although ordained by a Uniate bishop and serving in a Uniate church, used Orthodox liturgical books published in Kyiv.13 Furthermore, when Russia acquired much of the Right Bank with the second partition of Poland in 1793, Catherine II initiated the conversion of Uniate parishes to Orthodoxy (to assure political reliability) and achieved considerable success by 1796, with little resistance. Yet even in this more readily Orthodox area, some Uniate clergy refused conversion and continued to offer Uniate rites.14 Nenadykha’s sixth parish priest, for example, converted to Orthodoxy as late as 1842.15 In the Belarusian territory and the more western lands Russia acquired (Volhynia), Uniate parishes persisted until 1839, when Nicholas I, in response to the first Polish uprising, ordered the “reunion” of remaining Uniates with Orthodoxy in an effort to eradicate Polish influence from the region.16 As a result of these conversion efforts, Orthodox identity by legal ascription applied to the vast majority of Kyiv province (83.4 % in 1870), with far smaller shares of Jews (12.8 %) Shallcross (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 25. For good overviews of Orthodoxy’s fate in Poland-Lithuania, the creation of the Uniate Church, the conflicts of the mid-1600s, and Polish rule in the eighteenth century, see Paul R. Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 151–59, 164–69, 187–92, 290–94. On the three-way religious struggle and the turbulent seventeenth century in the Commonwealth, see also Adam Zamoyski, The Polish Way: A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and Their Culture (1987; New York: Hippocrene Books, 2004), 158–73. 10 Magocsi, Ukraine, 294–300. 11 Skinner, Western Front, 44–45. 12 I. Maksimovich, “S. Nenadykha, Tarashchanskogo uezda,” Kievskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti (hereafter KEV), no. 8 (1868): 318–22. 13 Ibid., no. 11: 429–33. 14 Skinner, Western Front, 196–225. See also Skinner, “Irreparable Church Schism,” 24–28. 15 Maksimovich, “Nenadykha,” KEV, no. 11 (1868): 438. 16 On the territories more resistant to Orthodoxy, see Skinner, Western Front, 209, 212–216, 219, 225. After the 1839 conversion effort, open Uniate adherence persisted only in the Congress Kingdom of Poland; there in 1875, after the Kingdom had lost its autonomy within the empire, the Russian state again carried out forcible conversions to Orthodoxy. On the 1839 and 1875 conversions, see Theodore R. Weeks, “Between Rome and Tsargrad: The Uniate Church in Imperial Russia,” in Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, ed. Robert P. Geraci and Michael Khodarkovsky (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 70–91.

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and Catholics (3.4 %) and tiny contingents of Old Believers (0.33 %) and Protestants (0.15 %).17 There was also significant evidence of ardent religiosity among the Orthodox laity, composed mainly of ethnically Ukrainian peasants. The flock demonstrated high observance of the annual confession and communion obligation at Easter.18 The diocesan authorities described avid peasant piety, noting church attendance, keeping of fasts, pilgrimages, and respect for the clergy.19 The Church simultaneously admitted areas in which the flock fell short. For example, in the first decades after emancipation there were hints of the feminization of piety (women observed more of the major annual fasts than men) and of the decline of religious practice among the middle classes of the towns, with weak observance of the fasts and holidays. 20 The hierarchy also recognized the need to instill “conscious, cognitive Orthodoxy,” so as to confessionalize its flock more effectively, especially by improving the provision of catechesis, preaching, and other forms of education.21 After a priest and his wife opened a school for peasant girls in Bila Tserkva in 1860, an old peasant woman asked the priest’s wife to teach her the Ten Commandments. “My parents did not know them, yes and my grandfather scarcely knew them. And now, you see, it’s somehow awkward, yes, and sinful perhaps, that I do not understand what young children already know.”22 Because of the bleak assessment of the rural laity’s religious knowledge, compounded by a dim view of the peasant’s unenlightened mental state, the clergy believed that Orthodox peasants were helpless to refute other confessions’ ideas and practices, encountered when working for Polish, Jewish, or German employers. Work on religious holidays, for example, threatened Orthodox observance.23 The clergy also readily blamed the peasantry’s vices on 17 Pamiatnaia knizhka Kievskoi gubernii na 1892 god (Kyiv, 1892), part 3, 79. These figures are only an approximation, as the source admits (80). 18 In 1873, less than 0.2 percent (3,308 people) of the Orthodox population failed to complete this requirement “for absence and other [presumably excused] reasons.” Figures for those who simply neglected the sacrament were not given. In 1883, again only 0.2 percent omitted their obligation. Fifteen years later, in 1898, while omissions increased to 0.6 percent (a far higher growth rate than that of the population), presumably because of increased out-migration, the absolute number of unexcused absences actually fell from its 1883 level. See Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrainy, m. Kyiv (hereafter TsDIAUK), f. 127, op. 699, d. 389, l. 2 ob., 1873; op. 685, d. 73, l. 45, 1883; op. 1047, d. 1241, l. 57, 1898. 19 See, for example, TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 389, ll. 2 ob.–3, 5–5 ob., 1873. 20 Ibid., l. 2 ob., 1873; d. 471, l. 4–4 ob. 1880; Instytut rukopysu Natsional’noi biblioteky Ukraini imeni V. I. Vernads’koho (hereafter IRNBUV), f. 160, no. 1440, l. 68–68 ob., 1869. 21 Gregory L. Freeze, “The Rechristianization of Russia: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850,” Studia slavica finlandensia 7 (1990): 104; Ute Lotz-Heumann, “Imposing Church and Social Discipline,” in Reform and Expansion 1500–1660, The Cambridge History of Christianity 6, ed. R. PoChia Hsia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 246; Skinner, Western Front, 13–14. 22 “Dvizhenie gramotnosti v. g. Kieve i kievskoi gubernii,” Rukovodstvo dlia sel’skikh pastyrei (hereafter RSP), no. 44 (1860): 240. 23 On Russian officials’ view of the masses as “basically reactive and passive” and susceptible to Catholic propaganda, see Weeks, “Between Rome and Tsargrad,” 87–89. For a later example of the clergy’s perennial stock concern regarding non-Orthodox traders and employers, see TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 1074, d. 572, ll. 68–69, 1913.

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foreigners and external circumstances, such as Jewish tavern-keepers purveying alcohol and the unsupervised mixing of the sexes in workers’ barracks on the sugar beet plantations.24 Piety broadly defined, however, that is “as practiced and experienced,”25 infused rural life. A portrait of the village of Nenadykha (Tarashcha district) in the diocesan gazette in the late 1860s described fervent participation in a parish religious service, with the sounds of prayer filling the church, as well as almsgiving and local pilgrimages.26 Secular observers of the peasantry noted peasants’ emphasis on religious instruction for their children in village schools.27 Concepts of Orthodox derivation filled the peasants’ world, even if inaccuracy and invention sometimes colored the laity’s understanding of them.28 To protect a new home from evil spirits, the owner would have a neighbor insert pieces of paper with inscriptions and drawings of crucifixion implements on them into holes, one in each of the hut’s four walls.29 Priests regarded many lay practices as “superstitions” that enlightenment would eradicate, such as those surrounding burial (for example, throwing money in a grave).30 Despite the laity’s broader vision of right practice, Orthodox influence along with deep piety characterized rural parishioners to a significant extent in the 1860s and 1870s. As we shall see, the laity’s sense of Orthodoxy as a “separate, delineated identity”31 was not always as strong as the clergy desired. Orthodox identification was even less certain for a particular segment of the rural population, the petty gentry. This social estate, a legacy of Polish rule, added indeterminacy to village piety through its Catholic past and dubiously Orthodox present.

24 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 389, ll. 5 ob.–6, 1873; d. 471, l. 4 ob., 1880. 25 Natalie Zemon Davis, “From ‘Popular Religion’ to Religious Cultures,” in Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research, ed. Steven E. Ozment (St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1982), 322. For a good brief statement of the historiographical transition from popular religion to lived Orthodoxy, see Werth, “Lived Orthodoxy,” 851–52. 26 Maksimovich, “Nenadykha,” KEV, no. 8 (1868): 322, 328–29. 27 A. Iakovenko, “Narod i narodnye shkoly (iz zapisok sel’skogo uchitelia),” Kievlianin, no. 14 (1864), 58; no. 15 (1864), 62; no. 16 (1864), 65–66. 28 On the shift in scholarship away from considering Russian lay Orthodoxy as a fusion of paganism and Christianity, see Eve Levin, “Dvoeverie and Popular Religion,” in Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia, ed. Stephen K. Batalden (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993), 31–52. On peasants’ appropriation and embellishment of biblical characters and Orthodox religious concepts as revealed in rural tales, see Christine Worobec, “Temptress or Virgin? The Precarious Sexual Position of Women in Postemancipation Ukrainian Peasant Society,” Slavic Review 49 (Summer 1990): 230–31. Leonid Heretz has argued that the Old Belief and many forms of Russian peasant sectarianism simply took to extremes key Orthodox principles, such as asceticism and the dualism of good and evil. See Leonid Heretz, Russia on the Eve of Modernity: Popular Religion and Traditional Culture under the Last Tsars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 29 Maksimovich, “Nenadykha,” KEV, no. 8 (1868): 330. 30 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 1005, d. 19, l. 31–31 ob., 1905; Maksimovich, “Nenadykha,” KEV, no. 8 (1868): 331. 31 Skinner, Western Front, 14.

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Fluid Identity and the Petty Gentry To be sure, in Kyiv province the religious consequences of Polish rule were less evident than elsewhere in the western borderlands. According to ethnographer Pavlo Chubyns’kyi’s 1872 study, Catholics represented 3.4 percent of the province’s population, whereas they constituted 7.9 percent in Volhynia and 10.3 percent in Podolia.32 Nevertheless, Kyiv’s small Catholic percentage hinted at the legacy of Polish rule embodied in one segment of the rural population: the petty gentry (szlachta). Primarily of Polish and Polonized Ukrainian extraction, the gentry had enjoyed the legal status of nobles under the Polish Commonwealth, although many lived essentially as peasants. The Russian imperial regime initially maintained their status after the partitions of Poland, but after the Polish uprising of 1830–1831 the state demoted the landless gentry to the status of single householders (odnodvortsy) and other tax-paying estates such as townsmen (meshchan’e).33 The déclassé and other impoverished petty gentry typically farmed land for which they paid dues to Polish magnates or filled administrative positions on large estates; these latter gentry were known as ofitsialisty.34 It is difficult to determine the exact number of petty gentry engaged in agriculture. According to the provincial governor, in 1877 in the province there were 19,495 odnodvortsy “attached to village communities.”35 An early 1878 survey undertaken by the Gotovchev Commission on Tenure on the (apparently) broader category of chinsheviki (those who paid rent, chinsh, to private landowners) in the southwest provinces in 1877–1878 reported 88,313 tenants of both sexes in Kyiv province. Aside from the inclusion of a small number 32 Pavlo P. Chubyns’kyi, Trudy etnografichesko-statisticheskoi ekspeditsii v zapadno-russkii krai snaria­ z­hen­­noi Imp. Russkim geograficheskim obshchestvom (Iugo-Zapadnyi otdel) 7, part 1 (St. Petersburg, 1872), 276–77. Chubyns’kyi also calculated the number of Catholics as a percentage of Orthodox inhabitants: 4 percent (Kyiv), 10.3 percent (Volhynia), and 13.4 percent (Podolia). In two of the northwestern provinces, Vilna and Kovno, Catholicism was dominant. See Theodore Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), 85. Chubyns’kyi’s populist Ukrainophile stance placed him in opposition to Polish and Jewish elements in the region. See Magocsi, Ukraine, 367; Hillis, Children of Rus’, 64, 79. 33 Magocsi, Ukraine, 317, 335, 365; Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 225. Catherine II had earlier reduced many Ukrainian nobles to the status of single householders. See Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, The Tsars and the Jews: Reform, Reaction, and Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia, 1772–1917 (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1993), 36. On the demotion of the szlachta who worked as petty servicemen, see also Elise K. Wirtschafter, Structures of Society: Imperial Russia’s “People of Various Ranks” (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994), 174n44. In Russian history, the term odnodvortsy more commonly refers to military settlers and their descendants who populated the southern frontiers of the Muscovite state. See S. G. Pushkarev, comp., Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms from the Eleventh Century to 1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 73; Judith Pallot and Denis J. B. Shaw, Landscape and Settlement in Romanov Russia 1613–1917 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 33–54. 34 Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 232; Daniel Beauvois, La bataille de la terre en Ukraine, 1863–1914 (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1993), 327; TsDIAUK, f. 442, op. 57, d. 183, ll. 61–62, 1878. 35 TsDIAUK, f. 442, op. 57, d. 183, l. 61, 1878. The governor distinguished the single householder category from other agriculturalist social estates (state peasants, former privately owned serfs, and “southern settlers”).

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of nobles, the vast majority of these tenants were likely former gentry and their descendants.36 According to regional historian L. I. Pokhilevich’s 1864 study, the gentry in some villages in Tarashcha district sometimes amounted to more than half the population.37 In the early nineteenth century, virtually all the gentry (97 %) were “Catholic and Polish-speaking,”38 but by the period of this study that had changed significantly. The 1878 commission report found that 51.5 percent of the southwest region’s tenants were Orthodox and 45.5 percent Catholic. In Kyiv province, however, the Orthodox share was likely higher, although the picture remains unclear. The szlachta population noted by Pokhilevich in certain Tarashcha district villages was usually Orthodox, with a small minority of Catholics or none at all.39 Chubyns’kyi’s 1872 study claimed there were over 23,000 Catholic single householders in Kyiv province (and just over 16,000 Catholic townsmen), but in 1878 the provincial governor described the single householders as “completely homogeneous with the mass of the native population in confession, language, and political loyalty [blagonadezhnost’].”40 Several factors influenced the religious identity of the former gentry. First, Russian state actions against Catholic institutions and Polish rebels may have brought many into the Orthodox fold after the first Polish uprising of 1830–1831.41 Subsequently, because of penalties against Catholics after the 1863 Polish insurrection, such as their virtual exclusion

36 Beauvois, Bataille, 188–90. The commission report gives the tenants’ social estate only for the southwest region as a whole. Well over half were peasants, with a second sizeable group classified as townsmen, and a third, much smaller category of (most likely) poor nobles. As Beauvois explains, after 1868 the use of the terms szlachta and odnodvortsy officially ended, and members of those categories had to choose the status of either peasant or townsmen. There was little practical difference between the living conditions of the two estates; provincial towns were essentially rural. The term odnodvortsy continued to appear, however (199). 37 L. I. Pokhilevich, Skazaniia o naselennykh mestnostiakh Kievskoi gubernii (1864; repr., Bila Tserkva, Ukraine: Vydavets’ Oleksandr Pshonkivs’kyi, 2009), 342–45. Pokhilevich did not consistently record the social estates of every village’s inhabitants. The entry for the Tarashcha district village of Chaplinka does not report any szlachta residents, for example, but does note twelve Catholics amid a population of just over 800 Orthodox; so it is possible that the Catholic presence signals the szlachta origins of part of the local population. 38 Hillis, Children of Rus’, 32. 39 Pokhilevich, Skazaniia, 336–51. A few districts in the north and west of the province (out of the total of twelve) had a higher Catholic proportion than others such as Tarashcha. As of the early 1870s, Catholics were just over 18 percent of the Orthodox population in Berdichev district, for example, and 10 percent in Skvira district, according to Chubyns’kyi. See Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 276. 40 TsDIAUK, f. 442, op. 57, d. 183, l. 61, 1878. 41 On Russian actions taken after suppressing the rebellion, see Zamoyski, Polish Way, 275; Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 225 (a quotation from an untitled 1862 manuscript by one Voronin). Daniel Beauvois surmises that Orthodox tenants had converted from the Uniate Church. See Beauvois, Bataille, 190. If true for petty gentry in Kyiv province, this primarily would have occurred before 1800 amid the general pattern of mass conversion of Uniates to Orthodoxy there at that time, although there were those who resisted this change. It seems probable, though, that the petty gentry were mainly of the Catholic faith because of their Polish or Polonized status. The presence of rural Catholics, at least some of whom were szlachta, reported by Pokhilevich also supports this picture. See Pokhilevich, Skazaniia, 336–51.

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from civil service positions, many Catholics also converted;42 this source of pressure to convert would likely have been less relevant for the peasant-like single householders, however. Second, the single householders’ material circumstances, similar to or even worse than those of the peasantry, facilitated the assimilation process. As Polish magnates increased their land rents, especially once the commercial value of land rose after the 1861 emancipation, tenants found themselves increasingly impoverished. This process and particularly the landowners’ efforts to expel their longstanding tenants severed the social bond the gentry had shared with the upper nobility.43 The tenants’ bitter experience weakened their ties to the faith of the landowning nobles (pany), according to Chubyns’kyi. Furthermore, for many Ukrainianized Catholics Latin and Polish-language Catholic services had become less accessible; Chubyns’kyi imagined that such services would induce drowsiness.44 Third, because of the sparse Catholic infrastructure under Russian rule, provincial Catholics often had little choice but to convert. There were only fifty Roman Catholic churches and fewer than one hundred chapels in 1867 in Kyiv province but 1,285 Orthodox parishes, each with presumably at least one church, in 1868.45 Both Chubyns’kyi and draft versions of annual diocesan reports claimed that rural lower-estate Catholics often looked to Orthodox priests for prayer, attending the dying, or baptism because of the distance from any Catholic church. They might also attend Orthodox services.46 Those with weak nationalist sentiment (the petty gentry were not strong supporters of the uprisings against the imperial regime)47 and rather uninformed Catholicism seemed relatively indifferent to confessional boundaries. This disregard may well have been true for the Orthodox population as well. According to an annual report written in the mid-1880s by the chief procurator of the Holy Synod, the Catholic and Orthodox lower classes in neighboring Podolia province were ignorant of the “essential difference” between the faiths, apart from their “external ritual acts,” and visited each others’ churches interchangeably.48 Certainly, friction between Catholic and Orthodox townsmen and villagers seems generally to have been absent. According to Chubyns’kyi, when sizeable numbers lived in the same settlement there were “mutual gibes.” But the sense of difference did not arouse antagonism. Instead, in the ethnographer’s view, the two faiths’ co-existence fostered general “coldness” toward religion.49 Furthermore, in Kyiv province, with Catholicism’s small numbers and the straitened circumstances of many single householders, lower-class Catholics represented little threat. While one might expect the land shortage to have sparked conflict between peasants and tenant gentry, dispos42 Theodore R. Weeks, “Russification: Word and Practice 1863–1914,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 148 (December 2004): 474. 43 TsDIAUK, f. 442, op. 57, d. 183, ll. 61 ob.–62 ob., 1878; Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 233; Beauvois, Bataille, 327. 44 Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 233. 45 IRNBUV, f. 160, no. 1440, l. 41 ob., 1867, and l. 51, 1868. 46 Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 233, 236; IRNBUV, f. 160, no. 1440, l. 108 ob., 1873; l. 120 (draft of report covering 1874, dated 1875). 47 Beauvois, Bataille, 167 and 169; Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 250. 48 KEV, no. 4 (1886): 168. 49 Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 236.

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sessed tenants directed their actions against the landowners. At the end of the decade, amid peasant unrest, the Kyiv governor noted solidarity between the szlachta and the peasants in one instance that involved an attempt to prevent land surveying.50 The social proximity of single householders and peasants meant that marriage trumped confessional identities, too, although because of the relatively small size of the officially Catholic population, the incidence of such marriages must have been low. By law, interfaith couples had to raise their children Orthodox; but the Russian Church feared that this prescription would not be followed and that de facto conversion of the Orthodox partner to Catholicism would occur. A draft version of the 1869 diocesan annual report to the Holy Synod noted the need for vigilance in guarding the flock: “To this end, the parish priest is obliged to visit attentively the homes of parishioners …during Phillip’s fast and Lent, and also at the holidays of Christmas and Easter …, observing the religious-moral situation of his parishioners, turning especial attention to mixed-marriage couples and their children, noting whether they know Orthodox prayers, attend the Orthodox church and partake in her sacraments.”51 Marriage to the far more numerous nominally Orthodox presumably exerted an equally dangerous influence. In addition to state pressure, impoverishment, and the scarcity of Catholic churches, a fourth factor influenced gentry religious identity, but in opposite fashion, for consciousness of the gentry’s erstwhile status influenced some to remain Catholic. Those who worked in estate administration, the ofitsialisty, could enjoy quite comfortable circumstances when they were fortunate enough to find positions;52 this entailed some social distance between them and the peasantry. According to Chubyns’kyi, these estate employees, seeking to emulate the landowners, were especially conscious of their Polish identity and devoted to the religion of the pany.53 The tenant gentry’s consciousness of their past social status and Polish heritage is less definitive. Chubyns’kyi claimed that their “gentry pride” set them apart from the peasantry, and that this pride motivated those who retained their Catholic affiliation, whereas in all other respects they shared “the very same worldview as the Ukrainian peasants [and] had the same superstitions, mores [nravy], and rituals, such as …courtship [svat’by] and others, and the same songs, the same amusements [zabavy] as well.”54 Even Orthodox tenants seemingly perceived themselves as different from former serfs. There were distinctions in dress, such as the use of higher quality fabrics.55 Their memory of their unique form of land tenure as long-term renters within the latifundia, “unknown in Russia and foreign to the Ukrainian peasant,” also fostered a sense of difference, according to Daniel Beauvois.56 50 Beauvois, Bataille, 165–66, 168, 193–96. Beauvois gives some evidence of state peasants resenting the petty gentry (165–66). 51 IRNBUV, f. 160, no. 1440, l. 66–66 ob., 1869. 52 Beauvois, Bataille, 327. 53 Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 233, 236–37, 286. More recently, Beauvois, too, surmised that only the gentry who remained Catholic likely were conscious of their Polish origins. See Beauvois, Bataille, 190. 54 Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 233, 236, 249. 55 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 300, l. 3 ob., 1868; Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 250. 56 Beauvois, Bataille, 169–70, 325–26.

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Lingering social pride may have influenced Orthodox single householders’ relationship with Orthodoxy, which was generally considered a “peasant faith” compared to the nobles’ Catholicism.57 To be sure, after emancipation former serfs’ sense of dignity had risen, too,58 but it is interesting to note the single householder heritage of the laity involved in the following example. Two parishioners with Polish or Polonized surnames (Krasovskii and Ronskii), questioned in 1873 for their attendance at a small Bible-reading in Plosskoe (Tarashcha district), site of one of Stundism’s earliest appearances in Kyiv province, were designated alternately as single householders and peasants. The two took offense when the priest rudely considered them unworthy to carry religious items, one the cross at a relative’s funeral, the other an item in a Trinity holiday procession. In the first case, the parishioner lost respect for the priest. In the latter, the peasant viewed the priest’s action as an “offense [against] honor”; the priest’s behavior “killed in him any desire to attend church, so as not to encounter new unpleasantness.” The parish priest in question was unpopular, for the two householders described these incidents during an investigation of the priest’s conflict with the township clerk, in a village with “up to 250” single householders. The priest evidently managed to offend another householder, too. According to this same investigation, when one of the province’s first reported Stundists, Pavel Tsybul’skii, returned to the Church (having been convinced or pressured by a police official), the priest allegedly called him a heretic and demanded that he bring a donation to church. “Tsybul’skii refused …and remained a determined Stundist.”59 The priest seems to have had an especially abrasive manner, yet it is also likely that a parish with such a large gentry contingent proved an alien, inhospitable environment for an Orthodox priest. When some single householders were among the first involved in Stundist meetings in the province, the clergy readily attributed their participation to the gentry’s Catholic past and the exigencies of their social position. In 1870, an earlier priest in Plosskoe found himself under fire for the Stundism in his parish and sought to explain the circumstances to the diocesan metropolitan: The dominant element in the villages of Plosskoe and Rozhki …is the szlachta, consisting for the most part of single householders and partly of nobles, who by their [nature] are distinguished for their lightmindedness [legkomyslie] and being 57 Chubyn’skyi, Trudy, 231, 233. 58 Fr. Arsenii Rozhdestvenskii, Iuzhnorusskii Shtundizm (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Departamenta Udelov, 1889), 36. This edition was consulted on the CD-ROM Evangel’skoe dvizhenie v Evrazii 1.1 in the series Elektronnaia Khristianskaia Biblioteka (Odessa: Evro-Asiatskaia Akkreditatsionnaia Assotsiatsiia, 2004). On the liberated serfs’ new sense of individuality, new social role, and new interests see Pavel Petrushevskii, “O shtundizme: Usloviia ego proiskhozhdeniia i razvitiia, i mery potrebnyia pravoslavnoi Tserkvi dlia bor’by s nim,” Trudy Kievskoi Dukhovnoi Akademii (hereafter TKDA), no. 1 (1884): 61–62. 59 Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kyivskoi oblasti (hereafter DAKO), f. 2, op. 188, d. 315, ll. 2–5, 12 ob., 18, 1873. Tsybul’skii signed his name as a nobleman (dvorianin), and fellow Stundists also used that status to refer to him in a petition. See DAKO, f. 2, op. 10, d. 232, ll. 1, 33, 1874 and 1875. He may well have retained his noble status, while officials mistakenly described him as a householder because of poverty. The discrepancy also reflects the slipperiness of these designations concerning the gentry.

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in earlier times of the Roman Catholic confession—I converted [number illegible] to Orthodoxy—are capable of being carried away by any new teaching. In addition, he noted, their legal freedom and economic need had permitted migration for work to Kherson province, where they had encountered the new beliefs.60 In 1884, a priest’s son and theological academy graduate, Pavel Petrushevskii, linked the szlachta’s social position to that of others outside the emancipation land settlement—retired soldiers and townsmen—and associated these groups with weak devotion to faith and fatherland, employment by non-Russians out of economic need, and reasons for discontent with the status quo.61 Clearly, for the clergy as for the state, these mobile, fluid social populations aroused distrust.62 The gentry embodied murky confessional boundaries, sometimes nominal Orthodoxy, and Catholic influence amid the peasantry. Their religious, social, and economic history facilitated their involvement in religious dissent, but they and those in similar “outsider” positions were far from the only village estates attracted to Stundism. Stundism: A New Challenge to the Orthodox Church Stundism in Kyiv province first came to the attention of the diocesan authorities early in 1870, when word reached them that Pavel Tsybul’skii of Plosskoe, a single householder, held meetings in his home at which he read religious works.63 Other channels of Stundist influence soon emerged in the diocese. In 1870, Ivan Liasotskii, a township clerk and former parish schoolteacher, turned to Stundism while listening to discussions between Gerasim Balaban, a Stundist peasant who had worked in Kherson province, and the local priest in Chaplinka (Tarashcha district).64 Liasotskii became a leading figure in one of the first Stundist contingents in the province. Timofei Zaiats, a former serf from Skvira district, attributed the start of severe friction between himself and the local priest and community to “an argument about books, what is written in them, which the priest did not explain to us, and finally he [the priest] began to take these books and destroy them.”65

60 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 368, l. 62–62 ob., 1870; the number of converts was questionably legible. 61 Petrushevskii, “O shtundizme,” TKDA, no. 1 (1884): 43–52. Petrushevskii had carefully observed his father’s struggle with the dissenters in Kerdany (near the district town Tarashcha). See A. D., “P. P. Petrushevskii (Nekrolog),” KEV, no. 11 (1914): 254. 62 For an example of official concern regarding control of the gentry with their frequent changes of employment, see Beauvois, Bataille, 163–64. 63 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 368, ll. 1–1 ob., 23–23 ob., 1870. 64 S. I. Golovashchenko, ed., Istoriia evangel’sko-baptistskogo dvizheniia v Ukraine: Materialy i dokumenty (Odessa: Bogomyslie, 1998), 47–48. Petrushevskii considered both Liasotskii and Balaban to be from the petty gentry; a petition by fellow Stundists also referred to Liasotskii as a single householder. See Petrushevskii, “O shtundizme,” TKDA, no. 1(1884): 43; DAKO, f. 2, op. 10, d. 232, l. 1, 1874. Liasotskii was also described as a soldier’s son. See TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 399, l. 25 ob., 1873. 65 DAKO, f. 2, op. 190, d. 12, ll. 38, 41 ob., 1876. An official investigating his case said that he had sought an explanation of certain parts of the Book of Revelation. See l. 38.

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Stundists did not necessarily see their actions initially as a step away from Orthodox piety. They read whatever religious works came to hand, including Orthodox materials.66 Pavel Tsybul’skii allegedly interpreted an article in a periodical published by the Kyiv diocesan seminary, Handbook for Village Pastors, as supporting the Stundist teaching against icon veneration.67 Works confiscated from several Sagunovka village (Cherkassy district) Stundists in 1885 included an informal sermon (beseda) called “Guidance on the Way to the Kingdom of Heaven,” by Bishop Innokentii, published by the Holy Synod press in 1880; a Guide to Good Reading and Hearing of God’s Word, compiled by a priest and published in 1861; and a prayerbook in Church Slavonic, as well as Russian-language Old and New Testaments, a Vladimir Solov’ev essay, and other materials.68 Orthodox observers readily acknowledged that inadequate provision of spiritual instruction by the Church prompted lay interest in Stundist practice.69 Hieromonk Vladimir Terletskii, sent to try to dissuade the early Stundists in Tarashcha district, reported in April 1873 that Stundists told him, “‘No one taught us anything; until the Holy Spirit enlightened us we knew nothing, not even the commandments.’” 70 In 1882, Petr Luk’ianenko, a peasant from Sagunovka, informed an investigator that he had been present at a Stundist gathering in a neighboring village, during which they read the Gospel and apostles’ letters, and sang psalms, “which he liked very much, and especially the explanation of what was read, which allegedly priests in the churches do not do.” 71 Structural factors contributed to the dearth of instruction, including populous parishes and the recordkeeping and other tasks imposed by the priest’s quasi-official role in the rural community, which made the assumption of any extra-liturgical teaching duties difficult.72 Many Stundists encountered religious ideas that put them on a collision course with the Orthodox Church. A diocesan consistory file from Stundism’s early years contains a Russian version of a thoroughly Protestant doctrinal statement concerning God, repen66 On peasants’ avid reading and cultural change in Voronezh province, see Chulos, Converging Worlds, 83–86. 67 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 368, l. 23 ob., 1870. The Russian periodical title is Rukovodstvo dlia sel’skikh pastyrei. 68 DAKO, f. 2, op. 200, d. 538, ll. 23–23 ob., 25–25 ob., 1885. The Kyivan Diocesan Consistory judged that Bishop Innokentii’s beseda should be “removed from use,” along with the Bibles, the Solov’ev essay, and other works, “for their mystical spirit and their tendency not fully consonant with the spirit of the Orthodox Church.” See l. 27 ob. A Russian-language New Testament was published in 1862 and the whole Bible in 1876. See Chulos, Converging Worlds, 85, 161n14. 69 Rozhdestvenskii, Iuzhnorusskii shtundizm, 20–22; Z., “Svedeniia o dvizhenii iuzhno-russkogo sektantstva v poslednie gody,” TKDA, no. 10 (1886): 280–81. The author was discussing incidents of Stundism in another Ukrainian province, Ekaterinoslav, based on materials from that diocese’s gazette. 70 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 399, ll. 42 ob.–43, 1873. 71 DAKO, f. 2, op. 198, d. 952, ll. 1–1 ob., 1882. Three years later officials considered Luk’ianenko the leader of the Stundists in Sagunovka; he was among those whose books were confiscated. See DAKO, f. 2, op. 200, d. 538, ll. 14 ob., 23–23 ob., 25–25 ob., 1885. 72 Rozhdestvenskii, Iuzhnorusskii shtundizm, 20–22; V. S. Pererva, “Status eparkhial’nykh organiv vlady ta parafiial’noho sviashchenstva v Kyivs’kii mytropolii kintsia XVIII–XIX stolittia” (Kand. diss., Kyivs’kyi national’nyi universytet imeni Tarasa Shevchenka, 2002), avtoreferat, 11–13.

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tance, the new birth, the significance of baptism and communion (the only two sacraments endorsed), marriage, and church structure. Apparently, Stundists under investigation in Tarashcha district had provided the document, most likely in 1872.73 At least as early as November 1876, according to Kosiakovka’s newly installed priest, Liasotskii began to practice immersion baptism of adults in a hole cut in the ice in the Tikich River and administered communion to the newly baptized.74 Tracts with an evangelical salvation message appeared in the area, published by prominent Russian evangelical convert Colonel V. A. Pashkov of St. Petersburg. As described by one clerical commentator, the tracts exhorted the reader to “‘believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, as our one Mediator, and you without fail will be saved.’” 75 One cannot be certain of the early Stundists’ reception of these Protestant ideas, but amid the reading, discussion, singing, and praying, some villagers came to adopt what the clergy regarded as a new, distinctly separate religious identity. That is, some of those engaged in religious meetings rejected Orthodox ritual observances and saints, although one must allow that Orthodox mediation in the sources may have stressed those aspects most in conflict with observable Orthodox piety. In early 1870, the cathedral priest from Tarashcha (a district town), reported the statements of two single householders arrested for Stundist activities in Plosskoe, Tsybul’skii and Osip Tyshkevich. They considered the Virgin and the saints as “ordinary people …unable to intercede for them before God” and instead of “external worship” believed it necessary to worship God “only in spirit and in truth.” They viewed icon veneration as idolatry, rejected veneration of saints’ relics, eschewed attendance at weddings and other celebrations, and forbade consumption of alcohol.76 Stundists questioned publicly by the superintendent priest (blagochinnyi) in Luchin in 1882 said that they had been blind before but that “God’s Spirit revealed the true teaching to us”: the Gospel said they must serve the Spirit alone, whereas before they had served idols. Regarding fasting, they replied that it was of no help for salvation.77 The avoidance of celebrations and alcohol consumption, also demonstrated in Timofei Zaiats’s beliefs, reflected in part Stundists’ desire to separate themselves from unsavory aspects of village culture.78 The radical rejection of these customary religious and social observances is striking and suggests a reserve of anti-church or anticlerical feeling and deep discontent with the village life they had known, as well as exposure to a powerful new spiritual message. 73 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 388a, ll. 284 ob.–290 ob. A letter from the Kyiv provincial prosecutor (prokuror) to Metropolitan Arsenii, evidently written in 1872 and seeking guidance on the legal classification of Stundism, contains the doctrinal statement. 74 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 420, l. 104–104 ob., 1877. The governor-general of the southwest region wrote in 1876 that Stundism “differed little from the teaching of the Baptists.” See TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 421, l. 2. Liasotskii met with a German Baptist leader in Volhynia in the mid-1870s, although this was not necessarily his first contact with Baptist ideas. See DAKO, f. 2, op. 192, d. 574, 1876–1877. 75 Petrushevskii, “O shtundizme,” TKDA, no. 4 (1884): 592–95. 76 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 368, ll. 4 ob.–5, 1870. 77 DAKO, f. 2, op. 198, d. 643, ll. 14 ob., 15 ob., 1882. 78 DAKO, f. 2, op. 190, d. 212, ll. 38, 39, 40 ob.–42, 1876; Rozhdestvenskii, Iuzhnorusskii shtundizm, 33–34.

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Dissenters did not necessarily sever ties with the Orthodox Church immediately. Some early Stundists in Kherson province had continued to marry, baptize, and bury in the Orthodox Church to escape investigation and likely also to ensure the legitimacy of their children.79 Within a few years, though, visible signs of a definitive break from the Church appeared in Kyiv province. A draft version of the annual diocesan report for 1874 stated that Stundist leaders in two neighboring villages (Kosiakovka and Chaplinka) had “broken off any relation with the Orthodox priest.”80 Indeed, in May 1875 a superintendent priest reported several marriages conducted by Stundist leaders without Orthodox Church sanction.81 Partly from these beginnings, the Baptist movement in the Russian empire emerged, as well as other, less structured forms of nonconformism.82 A reserve of anticlerical sentiment encouraged receptivity to dissent. The necessity of supplementing state stipends by charging fees for rites such as marriages, baptisms, burials, and prayer services was a constant source of friction with the laity. From 1842 to 1867, in the southwestern provinces, the tradition of parishioners aiding the priest through voluntary labor on parish land had been replaced by mandatory labor, a development unpopular with parishioners and priests alike.83 Parishioners also often resented the priest’s reproof of drunken godparents, illicit relationships, and the like. To those dissatisfied with the local clergy, Stundism offered a thoroughly laicized religious community. Some have suggested that the tradition of lay influence in parish life, such as the election of priests, was very strong in Ukrainian historical experience. Sergei Zhuk argues that peasants’ rising expectations of their new freedom after 1861 resulted in fierce disappointment as lay involvement in the Orthodox parish remained largely closed to them.84 Lay initiative in church life was still visible in practices associated with confraternities active in the early modern period in the Ukrainian lands. Parishioners held candles of their own provision during the Gospel reading and singing (of the Cherubikon), a tradition 79 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 368, l. 22–22 ob., 1870. 80 IRNBUV, f. 160, no. 1440, l. 121, 1875. 81 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 403, l. 261–261 ob., 1875. 82 See, for example, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (St. Petersburg, 1903), s. v. “Shtundizm,” 937–39; O.  V.  Beznosova, “Pizne protestants’ke sektantstvo pivdnia Ukrainy (1850–1905)” (Kand. diss., Dnipropetrovs’kyi derzhavnyi universytet, 1998), avtoreferat, 11–13. Beznosova notes the influence of Orthodox sectarian tendencies as well as that of German Protestants. See also Sergei Zhuk, Russia’s Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830–1917 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004), 1–2, 7–8, 17–18, 398–99 on the Shalaputs as combining Central Russian dissent with “Anabaptist influences.” 83 Chubyns’kyi, Trudy, 228–29 (quoting an untitled 1862 manuscript by one Voronin); Gregory L. Freeze, The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 273, 307. 84 Zhuk, Lost Reformation, 57–59; Rozhdestvenskii, Iuzhnorusskii shtundizm, 28; O. P. Kryzhanivs’kyi and S. M. Plokhii, Istoriia tserkvy ta relihiinoi dumky v ukraini (Kyiv: Lybid’, 1994), 3:239. On the decline of parish election of clergy in central Russian provinces in the eighteenth century, see Gregory L. Freeze, “The Disintegration of Traditional Communities: The Parish in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” The Journal of Modern History 48 (March 1976): 36, 45–50.

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known as the “keeping of the light.”85 These brotherhoods and sisterhoods also had particular icons, according to an 1893 description.86 As Ricarda Vulpius posits, the state of the Russian Church played a far greater role in the spread of Stundism than the absence of Ukrainian from Orthodox services.87 But this does not mean that language issues had no effect on the laity’s relationship to the institutional Church. The liturgical language of Church Slavonic, while more comprehensible to Russian and Ukrainian parishioners than Latin was in the West, contributed to what some Stundists called the “incomprehensibility” of church services.88 And, as Christine Worobec has suggested, priests’ inability or unwillingness to speak Ukrainian may have strained parishioners’ sense of closeness to the clergy.89 Many priests spoke Ukrainian with the flock in informal encounters and at confession and even delivered some sermons in Ukrainian, but especially for new priests coming out of years of Russian-language schooling, this did not necessarily come easily.90 There was also social prejudice against using the language, according to a priest in 1906 who sought ways to regain the rural laity’s devotion and trust: We fear, rather, we are ashamed to acknowledge that we ourselves are of the very same people as our parishioners. We punish our children for any use of the people’s speech and for playing with peasant children. We are afraid to send our children even for one day to the village school, and we teach our servants to speak the literary

85 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 302, l. 2, 1868; Maksimovich, “Nenadykha,” KEV, no. 8 (1868): 328; Iaroslav Isaievych, Voluntary Brotherhood: Confraternities of Laymen in Early Modern Ukraine (Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2006), 264. At least in the past, the tradition also included the provision of candles for funerals. 86 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 1017, ll. 11 ob.–12, 1893. 87 Ricarda Vulpius, “Relihiia ta natsional’nyi rukh u skhidnii ukraini: Rol’ pravoslavnoho dukhovenstva u ‘natsiotvorenni’ (kinets’ XIX–pochatok XX stolittia),” Kovcheh: Naukovyi zbirnyk z tserkovnoi istorii 3 (2001): 328. As Coleman notes, Stundists “mixed Russian-language prayers and songs with preaching and singing in Ukrainian.” See Heather J. Coleman, Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 1905–1929 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 9. 88 Heretz, Russia on the Eve, 23–24; Rozhdestvenskii, Iuzhnorusskii shtundizm, 22n. Rozhdestvenskii based this Stundist claim on information from the Kherson province diocesan gazette and from an Orthodox missionary in Mogilev. Rozhdestvenskii himself judged that it would be possible “to a weak degree” to gain some knowledge of the faith from the services (20). Emigré historian Ivan Vlasovs’kyi minimizes the laity’s difficulty with Church Slavonic. See Ivan Vlasovs’kyi, Narys Istorii Ukrains’ koi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvy (Kyiv: Lybid’, 1998), 3:263–264. For the claim that Slavonic would have hindered comprehension of Bible stories, see “Spravedliby-li setovaniia na slabost’ u nas tserkovnoi propovedi,” KEV, no. 33 (1879): 4. 89 Christine Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001), 18, 69. Worobec reports that by the time of the 1897 census, “about 50 percent of clerics in Ukraine were native Russian speakers” (69). 90 “Vopros o malorusskom narechii v otnoshenii k shtundizmu,” KEV, no. 4 (1881): 2. Some clergy delivered Ukrainian sermons and instructive discussions, but the language’s use was prohibited for sermons for major holidays, a ban enforced through preliminary censorship. It is also true that the laity sometimes thought Ukrainian unworthy of conveying the Word of God. See, for example, Vulpius, “Relihiia,” 327.

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language [Russian]…. We must not drive the people’s speech out of our homes as something low and despised.91 When priests used Russian instead of Ukrainian, they implicitly distanced the flock from the Church. Again, though, the laity’s spiritual quest and numerous causes for criticism of the clergy proved far more influential in attracting people to sectarian practices. Villagers’ response to religious nonconformity demonstrated that village Orthodoxy consisted of more than the laity’s relations to the parish church and its clergy, however; and not all parishioners welcomed Stundism’s religious innovations. The Orthodox Village Responds As Heather Coleman has noted, village Orthodoxy’s response to dissent can prove revealing of villagers’ “values and the place of religious identity and ritual in their definition of community.”92 Indeed, another aspect of Orthodoxy was its role in “social linkage and exclusion,”93 as religion was closely intertwined with local customs. The dissenters’ departure from the highly visible signs of proper piety, such as icon veneration and making the sign of the cross, often attracted observers’ notice (whether parishioners, clergy, or civil officials).94 But villagers’ response showed that the sectarians’ offense was not only against religion but against the community.95 Parishioners saw the sect as a dangerous heresy, one that could bring material harm to all. Timofei Zaiats complained that villagers blamed a drought on him and took his wife to the river to pour water on her to bring rain, a custom known as the “swimming of witches.”96 To the villagers, the dissenters offended piety and also threatened the religious integrity of the young, family unity, and patriarchal authority. In 1881 in Luchin (Skvira district), a peasant turned to Stundism while away for work in Kherson province and then converted three of his fellow villagers upon his return home. The next year when the superintendent priest visited to investigate the matter, the villagers sought advice from him regarding how to proceed against the stubborn Stundists: “We do not want them in our parish. Could we not banish them? [They are] only a shame and a disgrace to us. We vouch for ourselves, but our young children—[the Stundists] will cast a spell over them, reading to them some books (the Gospel in Russian and selected psalms) and luring them with [the idea] that they will live well [chto im bude dobre zhit’].” More than one hundred villagers subsequently petitioned for banishment of the dissenters. The petitioners charged that the sectarians 91 Fr. P. A., “Chto chuvstvuet derevnia i o chem dolzhny podumat’ sel’skie pastyri,” Otkliki Sel’skikh Pastyrei (April 1906): 269–71. 92 Coleman, “Tales of Violence,” 216. 93 Davis, “Religious Cultures,” 325. 94 See, for example, DAKO, f. 2, op. 10, d. 232, ll. 23 ob.–25 ob., 1874. 95 Coleman, “Tales of Violence,” 201–2, 209. 96 DAKO, f. 2, op. 190, d. 212, ll. 41–41 ob., 1876; Stephen P. Frank, “Popular Justice, Community and Culture among the Russian Peasantry, 1870–1900,” Russian Review 46 (July 1987): 261; idem, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 273.

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“had left our Orthodox faith” while away in Kherson, and had then insulted the Church, icons, Orthodox worshippers, and the sacraments once they returned home. The Stundists had also allegedly threatened that they would convert all to their new way by force if they could.97 The superintendent’s visit may well have crystallized opposition to the dissenters, and the petition most likely exaggerated Stundist statements to gain the desired banishment; nonetheless, the sense of righteous indignation and vulnerability come through.98 Similarly, in an 1889 investigation in the town of Korsun, a witness noted the beating a crowd gave to an allegedly Stundist carpenter and joiner after some remarks one of them made at a bazaar, remarks evidently perceived as insulting to religion. According to a Korsun village elder, however, it was the conversions of “homeowners’ children, and there were even young unmarried fellows who yielded to the threats [of the Stundists and] turned to Stundism, while their parents remained in Orthodoxy. Because of all this the population was extremely stirred up against [them]” and wanted their banishment.99 Religious propriety was offended, but so too were family unity and the marriage prospects essential to village continuity.100 Furthermore, Stundism, as John Walsh writes of early Methodism in England, “outraged traditionalism” and “threatened many accepted norms of behavior by raising drastically the standards of morality.”101 Zaiats reported being brutally beaten by villagers and forced to drink vodka and eat cured pork fat (salo), customs he had repudiated so as to avoid drunkenness, gluttony, and the killing of living things, according to an investigator.102 A newspaper reported that when some Stundists in Rebedailovka (Chigirin district) “did not want to spend the Christmas holidays according to the Orthodox ritual” but visited their co-religionists in another village, the village policeman (sotskii) arrested many of them. One was severely flogged until a candidate for village elder (starosta) intervened. The next day the participants bound the Stundists and took them to the market, jokingly offering them for sale to those they met.103 Burial conflicts also demonstrated the intertwining of religious and civic identity. Villagers feared violating the sanctity of the Orthodox cemetery with the burial of heretics and Stundists’ unbaptized children. At the same time, that cemetery was a continuation

97 DAKO, f. 2, op. 198, d. 643, ll. 9–10 ob., 13–16 ob., 1882. 98 On the interpretation of accounts of sectarian-Orthodox conflicts and on the possibility of clerical influence, see also Coleman, “Tales of Violence,” 200–202 and 212. 99 DAKO, f. 2, op. 205, d. 183, ll.8–9 ob., 1889. 100 Pietistic Orthodox communities also threatened village marriage by encouraging young women to embark on celibate religious life. See J. Eugene Clay, “Orthodox Missionaries and ‘Orthodox Heretics’ in Russia, 1886–1917,” in Geraci and Khodarkovsky, Of Religion and Empire, 46, 50–51. 101 John Walsh, “Methodism and the Mob in the Eighteenth Century,” in Popular Belief and Practice, ed. G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker, Studies in Church History 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 222–23. 102 DAKO, f. 2, op. 190, d. 212, ll. 39, 40 ob.–42, 1876. 103 “Sud nad vragami shtundistov. Chigirin, 5 marta 1889 g.,” Kievskoe slovo, no. 626 (1889), 3, found at DAKO, f. 2, op. 205, d. 235, ll. 11, 12 ob.

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of their living community, and Stundists disturbed the unity of that community.104 Burial conflicts revealed that Stundists challenged Orthodoxy’s civic preeminence at the local level, as it concerned “the allocation of space and resources in the village” and the waning ability of the Orthodox to enforce their claim to what had previously been an “exclusively Orthodox space.”105 The Stundist-Orthodox encounter had become a competition over the nature of the community, a competition in which the Orthodox sometimes felt very vulnerable. In this context, the frequent accusations that Stundists “mocked” Orthodox rites suggest a sense of inferiority, in addition to purely religious affront at Stundists’ shocking statements. Stundist arguments, drawing heavily on scriptural texts, proved difficult to refute, especially by a laity ill-equipped for theological disputation. Fierce opposition was not surprising, for unlike Catholicism’s dwindling presence among the déclassé petty gentry, Stundism’s radically different religious culture entered right into the heart of the peasant village and challenged all its accustomed rites. Furthermore, another side to the village response to dissent signaled that Orthodoxy was indeed losing its exclusive role in social identity in the Ukrainian village. The Meaning of Toleration Had all villagers consistently resisted Stundism, the clergy would have been far less concerned. An unusual investigation in 1889 in Turbovka (Skvira district) revealed a degree of acceptance of sectarians as members of the community, as well as of movement in and out of the Stundist camp. The investigation in Turbovka centered on the alleged procurement and distribution by local Stundists of a newspaper article detailing the verdict delivered against alleged abusers of sectarians (the Rebedailovka incident described above). Seven peasants self-identified during the investigation as “followers of Stundism.” Another peasant reported that he “once [kak-to] had been tempted” by Stundism, but the priest’s dissuasion had convinced him to repent and to return to Orthodoxy. The Turbovka village elder identified himself as an “Orthodox Christian” and averred, no doubt defensively, that he “zealously” maintained surveillance over Stundist activities in the village. Twenty-three other peasant witnesses testified that they themselves “all remain[ed] in our Orthodox faith, and we know all our Stundists[,] their gatherings and their doings very well”; and they professed no knowledge of any Stundists having obtained or read newspapers.106 Perhaps the Orthodox peasants wanted to quell unwelcome police attention, but whatever the reason, they certainly did not cast the dissenters in their midst in a negative light. 104 Christine Worobec, “Death Ritual among Russian and Ukrainian Peasants: Linkages between the Living and the Dead,” in Cultures in Flux: Lower-Class Values, Practices, and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Stephen P. Frank and Mark D. Steinberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 17, 25–28; Coleman, “Tales of Violence,” 208, 219n42. The Orthodox also feared giving those who had been baptized Orthodox and then were considered Stundist, such as Stundist children, an improper (that is, Stundist) funeral, in part for fear of wandering spirits. See Worobec, “Death Ritual,” 17. 105 Coleman, Russian Baptists, 85–87. 106 DAKO, f. 2, op. 205, d. 235, ll. 2, 6–9, 1889.

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Friction with the parish priest was also at work here, which may partly explain the apparent acceptance of the dissenters. According to the priest, Fr. Vasilii Luzanov, Turbovka was a “nest of Stundism” but since his appointment there in 1886, “several tens” of the parishioners had left their errors. Stundism gained several followers again in 1889, however, because of alleged lack of payment for work on clergy housing, which aroused “indignation toward all authority.” The priest added that the son of one of the long-term Stundists had been exiled to Siberia as a Stundist leader and for causing a “revolt” (bunt) in the church in 1885. One can reasonably speculate that this punishment and the appointment of a new priest were the real catalysts behind so many subsequent returns to the Church. Fr. Luzanov also blamed Stundism on drunkenness and the ensuing poverty, “the main cause of all vices and crimes,” and claimed that it was “thieves and drunks” who became Stundists. In other words, in his view Stundism attracted the least upstanding parishioners.107 In this case, while “Stundism” entailed separation from the parish church, we know nothing of its alternative religious content except for brief references to gatherings and secret nighttime meetings. Stundist participation had become a ready outlet for grievances against the clergy, while the label “Stundist” served as a convenient denunciation of wayward parishioners. In Kerdany, too, Stundism proved revealing of the state of piety, and particularly the flock’s relations to the official Church. First, instead of viewing Stundism as heretical, villagers adopted it as a supplement to the existing religious offering (or seemingly abandoned religion altogether). Pavel Petrushevskii, the parish priest’s son, wrote, “At the present time here it is not rare to [find] people to whom it is all the same, whether Stundism or Orthodoxy. Hence frequently we see a man attend church, carry holy banners, kiss the cross, bow to the icons, and at the same time visit Stundist meetings, sing there, read, and talk with Stundists as if with his own brothers. Then, too, there are those among us who go to neither the one nor the other and conduct themselves as pure atheists.”108 Second, Petrushevskii perceived a party of Orthodox villagers as happy to accept the diminution of clerical authority Stundism fostered. Among this party were those “who set themselves the task of contradicting the majority of the parish together with the priest in everything. For example, the priest opposes the Jewish leaseholder, but this party defends the Jew; the priest works to build a parish school, to adorn and build the church, to establish the charitable activity of a trusteeship, and this party always denigrates these concerns and submits to them with great unwillingness.” Petrushevskii did not find likely the wholesale loss of the flock to the heretics (“The foundations of the people’s life are still strong”), but he believed the Stundists found a receptive audience, leaving the priest isolated and with reduced authority.109 107 Ibid., ll. 15 ob.–17 ob., 1889. 108 Pavel Petrushevskii, “Dopolnitel’naia zametka k istorii Kerdanskago shtundizma,” TKDA, no. 10 (1884): 282. A Ukrainian professor, some of whose deceased relatives had been sectarians, downplayed friction between the Orthodox and sectarian communities, saying that when people wanted fellowship or support they would attend sectarian gatherings and at other times might participate in Orthodox ones. Presumably her depiction refers to a period in the twentieth century (personal conversation with Nataliia V. Shevchenko, Mykolais’kyi Derzhavnyi Humanitarnyi Universytet imeni P. Mohyly, May 2008). 109 Petrushevskii, “O shtundizme,” TKDA, no. 3 (1884): 414–15.

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Indeed, Stundism had unleashed a “ferment of rural discussion”110 as this new way of salvation, whose proponents brought biblical quotations in support, irrevocably opened the door to the questioning of religious truth and Church structure. In Kerdany, one woman’s husband had joined the Stundists while she herself lamented her husband’s apostasy. At the same time, she paid attention to Stundist gatherings in her home. After a scuffle with villagers prevented the Stundist funeral her husband wanted for their child (a desire she opposed), she asked Petrushevskii and the priest whether she should follow her husband into Stundism, since “they tell me, that the man is the head of the wife” (Ephesians 5:23) or whether she should leave her husband. She was plainly pondering the biblical readings she had heard. Petrushevskii later heard that she had become a Stundist, that is, she did not attend divine liturgy, fast, or confess, and she left two children unbaptized. He wondered whether she had dissembled when she professed allegiance to the Church or had changed her mind under her husband’s influence.111 It is important to recognize this alternate aspect of the Orthodox village’s response to Stundism, as accommodation of dissent in the village demonstrated Orthodoxy’s changing role in communal identity as well as some parishioners’ dissatisfaction with the institutional church. While some who turned to Stundism in their spiritual quest left Orthodoxy altogether, for those who saw no need to make one or the other their exclusive faith, Orthodox customs remained viable.112 The interplay of sectarianism, discontent with the Church, and enduring Orthodox identity continued to shape the province’s religious situation. Identity in the Last Imperial Years In 1893, the draft annual report acknowledged that completely uprooting the sect would be extremely difficult. Furthermore, while most parishes remained untouched by the new beliefs, Stundism existed “more or less open[ly]” where it had long been present.113 State policy hardened toward Stundism in the 1890s,114 but this was a temporary obstacle to the continuing growth of sectarianism at Orthodoxy’s expense. Statistics concerning dissenters remain extremely problematic, but available figures suggest trends. For 1899, the provincial almanac reported 354 apostates to Stundism and 143 returnees to the Church, with a total of well over 4,300 Stundists.115 In the revolutionary era, and especially after the legalization of apostasy in 1905, sectarian numbers increased rapidly: 6,077 (1903); 8,664 (end of 1906); 14,581 (1910); and 16,291 (1913).116 110 Davis, “Religious Cultures,” 326. Davis applied the phrase to the effect lower-class religious speculation had in communities in early modern Europe. 111 P. Petrushevskii, “O shtundizme,” TKDA, no. 4 (1884): 561–65. 112 Werth, “Lived Orthodoxy,” 854. 113 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 825, ll. 12 ob.–13, 27–27 ob., 1893. 114 DAKO, f. 2, op. 209, d. 334; Coleman, Russian Baptists, 22–23; S. Potekhin, “Sostoianie shtundizma v Kievskoi eparkhii za 1898 g., deiatel’nost’ missii i uezdnye missionerskie s”ezdy,” KEV, no. 23 (1899): 957. For Kyiv Provincial Prison Inspection records concerning several cases of sectarians exiled to the Caucasus in the first half of the 1890s, see DAKO, f. 7, op. 3, d. 26, 27, 37, 59. 115 Pamiatnaia knizhka Kievskoi gubernii na 1901 (Kyiv, 1900), 112. 116 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op.  1005, d.  195, ll.  1–2, 1903–1904. This document was taken from Golovashchenko, Istoriia evangel’sko-baptistskogo dvizheniia, 134. The data are “for 1903” but at what

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The toleration decree of 1905 enabled nominal Orthodox converts from Catholicism to return openly to the Catholic faith. The number returning to Catholicism was at its highest—over one hundred thousand—in Kholm diocese in the Russian empire’s Polish provinces, the site of the forced Orthodox conversions of thousands of Uniates in 1875.117 The toleration decree also renewed the clergy’s alarm over mixed marriages. A superintendent priest in Radomysl’ district, one of the province’s districts with higher Catholic numbers, reported in March 1907 that three women married to Catholics had themselves converted to Catholicism; he also noted the problem of former Catholics who had converted to Orthodoxy “for various political and economic reasons.”118 Orthodox hierarchs lamented the lure of conversion to a non-Orthodox creed to gain the ability to marry within degrees of consanguinity not permitted in the Orthodox church.119 Indeed, as stated in the draft version of the 1913 annual diocesan report, “marriage considerations” remained virtually the exclusive reason for conversions to Catholicism.120 The choice to turn to sectarianism did not always prove permanent, as various factors prompted reconversions to Orthodoxy. In many cases, social or official pressure achieved the return. A diocesan missionary in 1898 judged that disabilities experienced by Stundists, including the loss of their land allotment, the inability to rent land, and the illegitimacy of their children (because of the parents’ marriage outside the Orthodox Church), drove many sectarians to make insincere returns to the Church.121 Orthodox sources, however, also credited the efforts of clergy and missionaries, such as meetings held in 1886 by Hieromonk Arsenii (from the Mt. Athos monastery) that featured group singing and his scripture-based teaching.122 Another example noted the “heart-to-heart discussions” a new priest conducted and his “affectionate manner with his parishioners,” which produced new interest in church attendance and rites among the local Stundists.123 One Stundist who reconverted recalled how he had loved participating in the Holy Saturday vigil service in the past and was cut to the quick at his Orthodox wife’s reproach upon her return from church point in the year the tally was made is not clear. For the 1906 figure, see N. Belogorskii, “Missionerstvo, sekty i raskol,” Missionerskoe obozrenie (December 1907): 1782. Belogorskii based his figures on superintendent priests’ reports. For 1910 and 1913, see Pamiatnaia knizhka Kievskoi gubernii na 1912 (Kyiv, 1911), statistical section, 87; Pamiatnaia knizhka Kievskoi gubernii na 1915 (Kyiv, 1915), statistical section, 87. For these years, the almanac attributes the figures to the statistical committee. 117 Weeks, “Between Rome and Tsargrad,” 89. 118 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 1003 (1906g.), d. 121, l. 21–21 ob. This inventory (opis’ ) numbers files consecutively only within each year, hence the internal notation of the relevant year. The superintendent’s 1907 report is contained in a file of reports presumably intended as sources for the 1906 annual statement to the Synod. For district confessional numbers in 1898, see Pamiatnaia knizhka Kievskoi gubernii na 1900 (Kyiv, 1899), information section, 110–11. 119 Gregory L. Freeze, “Profane Narratives about a Holy Sacrament: Marriage and Divorce in Late Imperial Russia,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, ed. Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 163–64. 120 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 1074, d. 572, l. 54, 1913. 121 Potekhin, “Sostoianie shtundizma,” KEV, no. 24 (1899): 1016–17. 122 “Obrashchenie 35 shtundistov v pravoslavie,” KEV, no. 18 (1886): 860–62. The article appeared originally in the Kyiv newspaper Kievlianin. 123 “Izvestiia i zametki,” KEV, no. 14 (1886): 657.

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after the nighttime service.124 For a long-time Stundist in Kherson, Orthodox missionary efforts, his own discomfort when conducting Stundist baptism and weddings, his ability to find scriptural justification for infant baptism, and a new understanding of icon veneration facilitated his return.125 If these accounts are accurate, some dissenters’ past experience of Orthodox worship remained powerfully attractive. Much as the Church wanted to arouse informed, avid faith, the activities of zealous parishioners threatened the Church’s accustomed authority. After a renewed effort beginning in 1901 to establish parish trusteeships as a means of fundraising for the needs of the local church and clergy, diocesan authorities complained that sometimes parishioners sought to use these bodies as a means to oversee parish finances or to petition to replace a clergy member. Such behavior took the trusteeships in “an undesirable direction.” The donation patterns of these trusteeships conveyed the laity’s priorities, with by far the largest sums going to the church structure itself (in Kyiv diocese, over 25,000 rubles in 1903), a lesser amount to the parish school (over 6,700 rubles that year), and the smallest share to clergy support (483 rubles in 1903).126 Churchmen such as Petrushevskii attributed to Stundism the decline in material support of the Church, though the reluctance to give was a widespread phenomenon resulting in part from the laity’s “reluctance to relinquish economic control over the priest.”127 Even though in 1913 open sectarians amounted only to a minuscule 0.4 percent of the province’s Orthodox population,128 the competition continued to concern the Church. To be sure, clergy considered virtually all disaffection to be sectarianism, as they “interpreted [religious activists’] behavior in terms of dissent.”129 Missionary reports from 1913 gave glimpses of alienation but also devotion: unpopular priests; sectarians who had left religious questions aside in favor of “exclusively political-economic questions,” sowing “religious indifference” among the population; and yet instances of well-attended services and cross processions, and a parish in which “it would be very easy to set up a circle of zealots for Orthodoxy.”130 Indeed, “traditional popular Orthodoxy” retained its “potency and vitality,” but only once revolution had shattered Church administration would this vitality become even more fully apparent.131 124 “Torzhestvo pravoslaviia (v 1908 g.),” in Priest-missionary T. Leshchenetskii, “Oblichenie sektantstva v pastyrskikh poucheniiakh po voprosam naibolee volnuiushchim pravoslavnykh khristian,” KEV, no. 48 (1909): 76–S77. 125 “Obrashchenie shtundistov k edineniiu s pravoslavn. tserkov’iu v Khersonskoi eparkhii,” KEV, no. 30 (1890): 753–60. 126 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 699, d. 1017, ll. 59–62, 1903. On activist church elders and parish councils see also Freeze, “Pravoslavie,” 8–9. Freeze, Parish Clergy, 461. 127 Freeze, Parish Clergy, 461; Petrushevskii, “Dopolnitel’naia zametka,” 281–82. 128 This calculation is based on Orthodox population figures given in Pamiatnaia knizhka Kievskoi gubernii na 1915 (Kyiv, 1915), statistical section, 96, and the sectarian figure for 1913 cited immediately above. 129 Chulos, Converging Worlds, 83. 130 TsDIAUK, f. 127, op. 1074, d. 666, ll. 2–7 ob., 16–16 ob., 19–22 ob., 1913. 131 Gregory L. Freeze, “Subversive Atheism: Soviet Antireligious Campaigns and the Religious Revival in Ukraine in the 1920s,” in State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine, ed. Catherine Wanner (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012), 41.

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Conclusion During the Russian empire’s last decades, Orthodox identity—at least if defined as alignment with the authority and prescriptions of the institutional Church—faced serious challenges in the Ukrainian province of Kyiv. The peasantry was deeply pious but sometimes strayed from the clergy’s vision of correct Orthodox practice. The Church had to absorb the petty gentry of Polish descent, whose fate under Russian rule had pushed many into the Ukrainian world and the faith of that world, the Orthodox confession, although some remained Catholic. It is difficult to determine the meaning of Orthodox status for those who converted to the Russian Church, but the discouragement of Catholic ties in the empire and little evidence of concern among the villagers for Catholic-Orthodox confessional differences meant that for many converts Orthodox affiliation was simply a matter of expedience. The Orthodox peasantry, for their part, did not exhibit the militant anti-Catholicism of their religious superiors, at least not toward Catholics close to their own social station. Stundism was another matter. It shocked villagers with the dissenters’ devaluation of visible observance and challenged the connection between Orthodoxy and communal belonging. Curiosity about the new faith at times gave way to militant opposition to perceived slights against Orthodoxy, familial unity and authority, and social custom. But Stundist dissent, in part the product of the laity’s spiritual discontent with the status quo of institutional Orthodoxy, also exposed the religious differentiation at work in the village. Especially as Stundism became a lasting village presence, at least some villagers seemed to accept this new element in their midst. Furthermore, once again confessional boundaries proved far more elastic than the clergy desired. Stundism provided a supplement to Orthodox practice and a means of expressing dissatisfaction with the local clergy. Orthodoxy had not lost its cultural power, though, for while sectarian numbers grew, some dissenters chose to return to the Orthodox fold. Sectarianism continued to gain adherents beyond the 1917 revolution, but the Orthodox Church, forced by the revolution and its Soviet aftermath in the early 1920s to grant autonomy to the parish, retained the allegiance of the majority.132 Zealous laity vigorously defended their churches against Bolshevik interference.133 But the debate over parish authority in the Ukrainian context had divided the Church in a new way. Those who favored the reduction of episcopal power and who partook of the rising awareness of Ukrainian identity added a new avenue for Orthodox worship and community, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which attracted increasing numbers of the flock.134

132 Ibid., 29–31, 48. 133 Ibid., 31. 134 Ibid., 46. On the ideology of the Ukrainian autocephalous movement (separation of church and state, autocephaly, the use of the Ukrainian language, conciliarism, and the “Christianization of life”), see Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, “The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, 1920–1930: A Case Study in Religious Modernization,” in Religion and Modernization in the Soviet Union, ed. Dennis J. Dunn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977), 325–31.

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IV The Scholarship of Gregory L. Freeze

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Gregory L. Freeze: Historian of the Orthodox Church in Modern Russia Scott M. Kenworthy (Miami University)

It is no exaggeration to state that Gregory Freeze has pioneered the study of the Orthodox Church in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union for the past four decades. In two monographs, several translations, and some fifty articles and book chapters, he has transformed the study of Orthodoxy in Western scholarship with unparalleled archival research and incisive arguments. If before Freeze’s work, historians of Russia either completely ignored or dismissively repeated standard tropes about the Orthodox Church in modern Russia, today this is no longer the case. Moreover, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Freeze’s work has paved the way for a whole generation of younger scholars who have followed his lead in one way or another or benefitted from the fact that he established the study of religion as a valid aspect of modern Russian history. Prior to Freeze’s pioneering work, historians of modern Russia (since 1700) routinely ignored the Orthodox Church. This neglect dates back to prerevolutionary historiography, where a strict divide developed between ecclesiastical history written by church scholars and the works of secular historians. Even Vasilii Kliuchevskii, who taught secular Russian history simultaneously at the Moscow Theological Academy and Moscow University for most of his career, virtually ignored the Church in his history of Russia from the seventeenth century onward, setting a precedent that prevailed for much of the twentieth century.1 Negative attitudes toward both the clergy and popular religiosity prevailed among the Russian intelligentsia, having received classic articulation in Belinskii’s infamous “Letter to Gogol” and repeated up to the revolution and beyond. The image created by the intelligentsia of uneducated, drunken, and despised priests, despotic bishops, and peasant masses who might adhere to Orthodox ritual but who were essentially unchristianized, completely ignorant of the content of the Christian faith, and untouched by Christian morals, continued to shape both Soviet and Western historiography for most of the twentieth century. Soviet scholarship mostly ignored religious history for ideological reasons or subjected the Orthodox Church to anti-religious diatribes rather than historical analysis. Paradoxically, rather than challenging the Soviet view in this sphere, Western scholars simply repeated the same tropes inherited from the prerevolutionary intelligentsia or based their arguments on sources provided by Soviet scholars.

1 Gregory L. Freeze, “Church and Religion in Russian Historiography: The Case of V. O. Kliuchevskii,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 20 (Fall–Winter 1986): 399–416.

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The traditional historiography maintained that the Orthodox Church was already subordinate to the state in Muscovite Russia, and that Peter the Great completed the subordination by eliminating the patriarchate and transforming the Church into a “department of state” headed by a layman, the chief procurator of the Holy Synod. Having effectively been incorporated into the state apparatus, its clergy became state functionaries, and thus the Church was viewed as having no agency and therefore was not worthy of serious consideration. The Church merely served as a “handmaiden” of the state, supporting uncritically the state’s unjust policies such as serfdom; its clergy were characterized uniformly as reactionaries who upheld the autocracy. The Church in turn had to be propped up by the state through repressive policies because it continually lost popular support. Believers defected to schismatic and sectarian groups or became dechristianized through modern and revolutionary influences. Because the Church lacked popular support and was supported only by the state, according to the traditional view, it simply crumbled or was easily swept away once the Bolsheviks came to power; according to these tropes, religious belief completely ceased to be a factor in the Soviet Union and was ignored altogether by historians.2 Through his work, Freeze has overturned every single facet of the traditional historiographical view. His most seminal piece, which tackled this image head on, was the 1985 article “Handmaiden of the State? The Orthodox Church in Imperial Russia Reconsidered,”3 which continues to maintain its significance. In this article, Freeze argues that rather than trying to “secularize” the Church, as was frequently asserted, Peter the Great sought to “spiritualize” it. To be sure, he sought to remove it from entanglement with (and interference in) secular affairs, but in its own “spiritual” sphere Peter sought to strengthen the Church, not weaken it. Freeze argues “that the Petrine reform in fact did not transform the Church into a government bureau, that the Synod’s autonomy varied considerably from reign to reign, but that the Church never became—in law, in practice, in spirit—a mere ministry of religious affairs.”4 Rather than being a department of state, the Holy Synod was equal and parallel to the state Senate—both, to be sure, under the tsar, but one at the pinnacle of the state apparatus and the other at the pinnacle of the “spiritual domain” (dukhovnoe vedomstvo). The parish clergy, though tasked with some civil duties such as announcing imperial decrees from the pulpit and registering births, deaths, and marriages (duties that Roman Catholic clergy also shared in Western Europe), were not civil servants: most importantly, they did not receive state salaries, and they had their own separate and distinct system of administration, education, censorship, and even courts. Rather than weakening the Church, as the traditional historiography maintained, Freeze asserts that the Petrine reforms left the Church fully in charge of “spiritual” affairs and strengthened its ability to fulfill its mission in institutional terms. Thus the Church not only operated as a separate domain with regard to its “own” (i.e., the clergy and their families), but also maintained significant authority in spheres that affected the daily lives 2 A classic statement is made by Richard Pipes in Russia under the Old Regime (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), 221–45, which is distinguished by the fact that Pipes devoted a full chapter to the Church rather than dismiss it in a paragraph or few sentences, as most other similar works did. 3 Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985): 82–102. 4 Freeze, “Handmaiden,” 84.

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of the laity—above all in the realm of marriage and divorce. Moreover, as a result of the Petrine reforms, the Church developed an institutional infrastructure (from the Synod to diocesan consistories to the deaneries) that allowed the hierarchy to exercise its authority and enforce uniformity of faith and practice in a way that was unparalleled in the Muscovite period. The Church also developed a distinct educational system for its servitors, so that by the middle of the nineteenth century virtually all candidates to the priesthood had seminary degrees. Peter the Great created the office of the chief procurator to be the tsar’s “eyes and ears,” his liaison with the Holy Synod. The chief procurator was never the “head” of the Synod, however, whose chairman was Russia’s senior churchman, the metropolitan of St. Petersburg. In the eighteenth century the chief procurators remained insignificant.5 Although from the mid-nineteenth century some procurators did wield enormous power over the Church, this was always circumstantial, dependent upon the personality of the chief procurator and the confidence the tsar had in him, as well as the composition of the Synod and the personality of leading hierarchs. While some of the early nineteenth-century procurators such as A. N. Golitsyn were influential, the first procurator to assert significant authority over the Church was N. A. Protasov (1836–1855). Protasov built his own chancellery parallel to that of the Synod and also controlled the Synod’s lay chancellery; he effectively directed the business of the Synod after excluding from its meetings the two most powerful members, Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) of Moscow and Metropolitan Filaret (Amfiteatrov) of Kiev. But such a situation of extreme control by the chief procurator was reversed after the deaths of Protasov and that of Nicholas I in 1855. Protasov’s successors were far from able to do what they wanted in church affairs, especially before the death in 1867 of Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov), who enjoyed the confidence and respect of Alexander II. Moreover, churchmen such as Filaret, though certainly loyal to the monarchy, were devoted first and foremost to the interests of the Church, rather than the interests of the state.6 Even later powerful chief procurators, most notoriously K. P. Pobedonostsev (1880–1905), were not able simply to assert their will over the Church. Their efforts to control the Church were not accepted passively but often resisted—and always resented—by the church hierarchy.7 By the end of the old regime, Freeze argues, even conservative hierarchs were so disenchanted with the state’s meddling in ecclesiastical affairs that they refused to come to the monarchy’s defense in its final hour. Freeze’s voluminous work has substantiated these insights as well as challenged other dimensions of the old historiographical image of the Russian Church. As his scholarship has evolved and matured, he has come to emphasize two methodological points, the first 5 Gregory L. Freeze, “Church, State and Society in Catherinean Russia: The Synodal Instruction to the Legislative Commission,” in ‘Aus der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeit’: Tübinger Studien zum 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Eberhard Müller (Tübingen: Attempto Verlag, 1988), 155–68. 6 Gregory L. Freeze, “Skeptical Reformer, Staunch Tserkovnik: Metropolitan Philaret and the Great Reforms,” in Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, 1782–1867: Perspectives on the Man, His Works, and His Times, ed. Vladimir Tsurikov (Jordanville, NY: Variable Press, 2003), 151–91. 7 On Pobedonostsev’s procuracy, see Gregory L. Freeze, Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), chap. 9.

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of which is the need for original research to be based on new, previously untapped sources. This means especially archival sources, though Freeze acknowledges the richness of printed sources such as diocesan journals and other religious periodicals, sermons, and the like. In addition, he has stressed that scholars must get beyond the central archives, particularly the archive of the Holy Synod and its general reports (such as the annual otchety provided by each diocese). In order to understand the multifaceted complexities of Orthodoxy it is necessary to conduct research in local archives, utilizing, for example, reports submitted to the bishops by the superintendents (blagochinnye, who oversaw ten to fifteen parishes each), which therefore contain data about very localized practices and problems.8 Second, Freeze asserts the need for original and pioneering research rather than treading over traditional themes such as church-state relations. Here Freeze emphasizes religious culture and popular practice, though he also acknowledges the dearth of original research even on “official Orthodoxy,” namely the institution and theology of the prerevolutionary Russian Church. With regard to the Soviet period, he has similarly pressed the need to get beyond state policy and repression to get at the impact on believers and their responses.9 Freeze’s scholarship is indeed wide-ranging, but it nonetheless tends to focus on several major themes: his two monographs (and a few articles) concern the social history of the parish clergy; his many essays examine a variety of issues concerning the relationship of religion and society, including themes such as popular religiosity and the attempts of the Church hierarchy to manage it; marriage and divorce; the Church and politics in the two decades before the revolutions of 1917; and finally Orthodoxy after the Bolshevik Revolution.10 The Parish Clergy Freeze’s two monographs, together with several articles, focused on the parish clergy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.11 Indeed, Freeze began as a social historian investigating the parish clergy as a social group previously neglected by historians, and from that 8 See Gregory L. Freeze, “Otkryvaia zanovo pravoslavnoe proshloe: Mikroistoricheskii podkhod k religioznoi praktike v Rossii perioda imperii,” Smena Paradigm: Sovremennaia rusistika; Istochniki, issledovaniia, istoriografiia, ed. B. N. Mironov (St. Petersburg: Izd. Nestor-Istoriia, 2007), 369–95; for an example that utilizes the superintendents’ reports, see Gregory L. Freeze, “Russian Orthodoxy on the Periphery: Decoding the Raporty Blagochinnykh in Lithuania Diocese,” in Problemy vsemirnoi istorii: Sbornik statei v chest’ Aleksandra Aleksandrovicha Fursenko, ed. B. V. Anan’ich (St. Petersburg: D. Bulanin, 2000), 124–31. 9 Gregory L. Freeze, “Recent Scholarship on Russian Orthodoxy: A Critique,” Kritika 2 (2001): 269–78. 10 Excellent syntheses of his scholarship include Gregory L. Freeze, “Eastern Orthodoxy,” Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350 to 2000, ed. Peter N. Stearns (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2001), 5:313–26; “Russian Orthodoxy: Church, People, and Politics in Imperial Russia,” in Cambridge History of Russia, ed. Dominic Lieven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2:284–305; “Von Entkirchlichung zu Laisierung: Staat, Kirche, und Gläubige in Rußland,” in Politik und Religion zur Diagnose der Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, Heinrich Meier, and Giorgio Agamben (Munich: Beck, 2013), 79–120. 11 For an overview, see Gregory L. Freeze, “Between Estate and Profession: The Clergy in Imperial Russia,” in Social Orders and Social Classes in Europe since 1500: Studies in Social Stratification, ed. M. L. Bush (London: Longman, 1992), 47–65.

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vantage has drawn conclusions with broader implications for Russian social history.12 His first book, The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (1977), investigates how the Orthodox clergy in Russia were transformed in the course of the eighteenth century into a closed estate, virtually a caste, in which new clergy were drawn exclusively from the sons of clergy. The book explores the changing status of clergy who were saddled with duties to the state, but were not included in the Petrine Table of Ranks that defined civil service. The administration of the Church was also transformed by Peter’s reforms: in the medieval period, bishops had unchallenged authority in their dioceses, but frequently lived in Moscow, did not make parish visitations, and generally interacted with their diocese only through collecting taxes. During the eighteenth century, the Church developed a fullfledged bureaucracy that allowed it to manage and standardize practice. The bishop exercised greater supervision than ever before, but at the same time his authority in his diocese was no longer absolute, but rather tempered in many ways by the Holy Synod.13 Part of “modernization” within the Church entailed having a well-trained, professional clergy. Medieval Russia had no formal system of education for the clergy, rather they were trained through apprenticeship. The seminary curriculum that the Church adopted in the eighteenth century was modeled on the Latin grammar school, regarded as the norm in contemporary Europe. The aim was to create a new ecclesiastical elite, though this conflicted with the need to have mass education for all clergy and hardly served the needs of preparing ordinary pastors. For much of the eighteenth century the seminaries were resisted by clergy (and even bishops) who did not understand the need for such an education; the seminaries were also beset by financial problems, and their militaristic discipline was hardly conducive to spiritual cultivation. By the century’s end, however, seminaries were functioning in virtually every diocese, and it became requisite for candidates to the priesthood to have at least some seminary education.14 Natural demographic processes meant that there were quickly more clergy sons than positions in the Church. State authorities were concerned to prevent an excess of clergy so that the state could gain more servitors for its purposes, while the Church hierarchy was primarily concerned with economic viability (more clergy meant less income for each). Together they sought to control the number and type of churches, creating a kind of table of organization (shtat) that fixed the number of households in a parish in relation to a corresponding number of clergy. However, the shtat did not consider the socio-economic conditions of the parish, so in fact the number of clergy that a parish ostensibly “needed” did not correspond with how many it could actually afford to support. Financial support for the clergy was universally recognized as inadequate: they often had a plot of land, usually too little and of poor quality, that they were to work themselves, thus distracting them from their pastoral duties. A second major source of income was gratuities that parishioners gave for particular services performed by the priest (baptisms, weddings, funerals). These payments 12 See especially Gregory L. Freeze, “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 11–36. 13 Gregory L. Freeze, The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), chaps. 1–3. 14 Ibid., chap. 4.

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became a source of ongoing tension between clergy and parishioners and left the former completely dependent upon the latter. Inadequate support would be a persistent problem, despite repeated reform efforts, right up until 1917. Finally, the parish clergy evolved into two distinct subgroups: priests and sacristans. Previously, the sacristan was the priest’s son who served as an apprentice before he was old enough to take over the parish. But by the end of the century sacristans had become a separate self-perpetuating group distinguished by lower income and education. The clergy, though juridically belonging to one social category, in fact differed tremendously according to their income.15 There were several reasons why the clergy became a closed, hereditary estate. First, the government effectively prevented members of the poll-tax population from entering the clergy. Second, it became necessary to have a seminary education to get ordained, yet for financial reasons only sons of clergy were allowed into the seminaries. Finally, clergy themselves were motivated to exclude outsiders, particularly for reasons of social security: because there were no pensions, the primary way for retired clergy to be supported was to pass on their parish to their sons or sons-in-law.16 Freeze’s second monograph, The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform (1983), is a tour de force, based on a remarkable depth of sources not previously utilized by Western or Russian scholars. The book looks at the consequences of the eighteenth-century developments examined in Parish Levites. It focuses on the problems that beset the clergy, the politics surrounding efforts for reform, and the problems that the reforms themselves generated, including subsequent efforts to modify them. Thus the analysis moves from the precursors of reform under Nicholas I to the Great Reforms in the 1860s and 1870s to the so-called “counter-reforms” in the 1880s, with less attention to the beginning and end of the century. Through his thorough investigation of a previously unexplored facet of the Great Reforms, Freeze has drawn conclusions about the interpretation of the period more broadly. Thus Freeze argues that the so-called “counter-reforms” under Alexander III were not simply a conservative reaction to liberal reforms, but rather were necessitated by the failures or unintended consequences of those reforms. Part 1 of the book treats the period of Nicholas I (1825–1855), the issues that affected the Church in this period, and the discussions of possible reform. The first problem concerned the Church’s administration: though the eighteenth century created a bureaucratic infrastructure to enable the hierarchy to administer more effectively, by the nineteenth century this system had generated its own problems. Administration was too centralized, so that too many decisions had to be referred to higher levels (local decisions to the bishop or diocesan consistory, diocesan-level decisions to the Holy Synod), which meant that resolutions to problems took far too long. Diocesan consistories were administered by a group of parish priests (who did not receive extra remuneration for this service) together with lay employees who were vastly underpaid; as a result the consistories were overburdened and susceptible to bribes and corruption. Finally, there were increasing tensions between the bishops and the chief procurators (who began to assert more authority), on the one 15 Ibid., chap. 5. 16 Ibid., chap. 7.

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hand, and between prelates and parish clergy on the other.17 A second problem consisted of the structure of parish service: the table of organization created in the eighteenth century resulted in a great clergy-to-parishioner ratio but failed to solve the problem of financial support. After much discussion, reforms were enacted in the 1840s to reduce the number of parishes and clergy. These reforms, however, not only served to alienate both parishioners and clergy but also failed to solve the problem.18 A third issue concerned the seminaries, which suffered from financial and administrative shortcomings as well as an inadequate curriculum. The reform of 1814 created a multitiered system of preparatory clerical schools (uchilishcha), seminaries, and the academies, the Church’s equivalent to the university. Clergy were required to send their sons to the schools, and consequently the growth was spectacular. Finances did not expand, however, so living conditions for students were intolerable and pay for faculty highly inadequate. A second reform in 1840 made some improvements in curriculum—finally replacing Latin with Russian as the language of instruction and adapting the curriculum more to the needs of future clergy, but also adding courses in agriculture and medicine at the insistence of Chief Procurator Protasov. Freeze argues that the reform was largely a failure, because although the curriculum was improved, the moral education of future priests and the administration of seminaries were not.19 The final issue in need of reform was the clerical estate itself, which proved so successful at preparing candidates for the clergy that by mid-century there was an excess of candidates. The closed hereditary estate (soslovie), which had been created to serve the needs of the Church, was now becoming a burden. The Church had to educate and support more people than it needed. Because its needs and those of the Church became mutually contradictory, the clerical order became an obstacle to further reform.20 Part 2 of the book concerns the attempts to address the above problems during the Great Reforms in the 1860s and 1870s. The deaths of Protasov and Nicholas I in 1855 allowed the Synod to reassert itself, and it set to work addressing several issues. The publication abroad of I. S. Belliustin’s sensational Description of the Rural Clergy in 1858 exposed the problems that beset the parish clergy to the public. The “clerical question” was the subject of intense public debate, raising expectations that conditions for the clergy would be improved (especially by the government).21 When reform stalled, in part due to diverging goals between prelates and state bureaucrats, P. A. Valuev, minister of the interior, stepped in with a set of ideas for reform. He persuaded Emperor Alexander II of the need to form a special com-

17 Freeze, Parish Clergy, chap. 1. 18 Ibid., chap. 2. 19 Ibid., chap. 3. 20 Ibid., chap. 4. 21 Gregory L. Freeze, “Revolt from Below: A Priest’s Manifesto on the Crisis in Russian Orthodoxy (1858–59),” in Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, ed. Robert L. Nichols and Theofanis George Stavrou (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978), 90–124; I. S. Belliustin, Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia, trans. Gregory L. Freeze (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985).

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mission for “improving the clergy’s material condition,” and secured the publication of news about the commission, thus raising expectations still further.22 Valuev’s plan corresponded to the broader approach of the Great Reforms by seeking to mobilize society to solve problems, in this case by forming parish councils that would care for the clergy as well as raise funds for church schools, charity, and support of the parish church. The parish councils (named popechitel’stvo) were instituted in 1864, but in Freeze’s analysis they were a failure. He argues that many parishes never even formed such councils, and when they did, they tended to concentrate their energies and finances on beautifying churches and not in bettering the economic condition of the clergy. At the same time, Valuev’s commission sent out questionnaires to all clergy in the empire to assess their material well-being, which confirmed their difficult circumstances but offered no solutions. Bishops also proposed various solutions at the same time as these issues were debated in the press. The one point upon which all agreed was the need to abolish the clerical estate, so that the priesthood could recruit devoted pastors from any social group rather than only from sons of clergy who had no other career options.23 After a decade of reform commissions and discussions, D. A. Tolstoi became chief procurator in 1865 and in a brief period passed sweeping reform. Tolstoi’s reforms ultimately aimed to dismantle the clerical estate; they opened the way for sons of clergy to leave the clerical estate and abrogated family claims to clerical positions (though without solving the problem of clergy retirement and pensions). Places in seminaries were capped at the number needed to fulfill the Church’s needs, and clergy who wanted their sons to get an education had to add supplementary classes at their own expense. Tolstoi also enacted parish reform (1869) that sought to improve the clergy’s material condition by (once again) merging smaller parishes into larger ones and eliminating clerical positions. Nevertheless, according to Freeze, Tolstoi’s reforms caused more problems than they solved: opening the door for sons of clergy to enter the university or secular professions succeeded far beyond expectations, resulting in the flight of a great number of qualified individuals. This led to a shortage of candidates for the priesthood and a decline in educational standards rather than their improvement. At the same time, the changes did not result in new recruits coming in from outside the clerical estate. The reduction of parishes and clerical staff only created resentment both on the part of parishioners, who in some cases lost their parish, and the clergy, who were frequently deemed “superfluous” or forced to relocate to vacancies. Moreover, the reform failed entirely to secure any new resources for the clergy and therefore to improve the their material condition, especially as many were now burdened by even higher expenses to educate their sons. Finally, the reform reduced the number of parish churches and clergy at a time of rapid population growth, thereby reducing the Church’s presence precisely when it needed to expand it and simultaneously increasing the burden on individual clergy.24

22 Freeze, Parish Clergy, chap. 5. 23 Ibid., chap. 6. 24 Ibid., chaps. 7–8.

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Based on the example of the Church, Freeze argues that the “counter-reforms” of Alexander III and K. P. Pobedonostsev were not a mere “reactionary” effort to undo the liberal reforms of the Great Reform era, but in fact were modifications to the Great Reforms necessitated by the failures of the reforms themselves. As much as he disliked the reforms, Pobedonostsev could not simply revoke them without the consent of the bishops. With regard to the parish reform of 1869, for example, he simply allowed each individual bishop or diocese to reestablish parishes and clerical positions rather than directly revoking the statute. Ultimately one consequence of trying to dismantle the clerical soslovie—without, however, resolving the main problems that plagued the clergy—was to reinforce the parish clergy’s sense of soslovnost’, that is, their defense of their special interests. A “clerical liberalism” developed which, Freeze argues, was more “clerical” than it was liberal. That is, it was focused more on the issues of the clergy itself, such as criticism of the bishops’ despotic authority and the corruption of diocesan administration, and less on social issues more broadly. Competing visions of reform between bureaucrats, bishops, and priests prevented further reform from succeeding.25 Unlike the old historiography, which frequently dismissed Orthodoxy in a derogatory fashion, Freeze acknowledges the central importance of Orthodoxy in Russian politics, society, and culture. He also consistently treats his subjects with remarkable objectivity and fairness, including even an arch-reactionary such as Pobedonostsev or conservative bishops opposed to reform—something subsequent scholarship, sympathetic to the parish clergy or popular religiosity, has not always matched. Indeed, in a very important but overlooked article, Freeze gives the bishops their due, characterizing them not as reactionaries but as men with extensive education and experience who, aware of the problems the Church faced, were willing to take measures to address these, and who also became increasingly convinced that the state was not protecting their interests and thus were willing to resist the state in defense of the Church.26 Since the publication of Freeze’s first monographs, Western scholars have primarily turned to other topics, so that these two books remain unsurpassed.27 Only Daniel Scarborough has investigated the parish clergy by focusing in detail on the clergy in Tver and

25 Ibid., chaps. 8–9. 26 Gregory L. Freeze, “L’Episcopato nella chiesa ortodossa russa: Crisi politica e religiosa all fine dell’ancien regime,” in La Grande Vigilia, ed. Adalberto Mainardi (Magnano: Comunita Monastica di Bose, 1998), 21–55. 27 Recent Russian scholarship has tackled many issues connected to theological education, for example, V. A. Tarasova, Vysshaia dukhovnaia shkola v Rossii v kontse XIX–nachale XX veka: Istoriia imperatorskikh pravoslavnykh dukhovnykh akademii (Moscow: Novyi khronograph, 2005); A. I. Mramornov, Dukhovnaia seminariia v Rossii nachala XX veka: Krizis i vozmozhnost’ preodoleniia (na Saratovskikh materialakh) (Saratov: Nauchnaia kniga, 2007); and three monographs by N. Iu. Sukhova, including Vysshaia dukhovnaia shkola: Problemy i reformy (vtoraia polovina XIX veka) (Moscow: PSTGU, 2006). T. G. Leont’eva has contributed significant research on rural parish clergy: Vera i progress: Pravoslavnoe sel’skoe dukhovenstvo Rossii v vtoroi polovine XIX–nachale XX vv. (Moscow: Novyi khronograph, 2002).

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Moscow in the decades before 1917. 28 Freeze’s two monographs on the parish clergy demonstrate that the efforts of Church and state to create a modern church institution with professional servitors were in many ways successful, but never managed to solve the existential problems of those servitors themselves. Freeze’s arguments in both of these monographs (and in many of his articles) tend to be deeply pessimistic. Indeed, each chapter proceeds along a similar trajectory, stating a problem or challenge the Church faced, analyzing the methods employed to address that challenge, and ending with the failures or new problems resulting from those efforts. Freeze’s reading of Russian history seems to echo A. K. Tolstoi’s view of “Russian history as a series of futile attempts at reform.”29 But while Freeze tends to highlight the negative consequences of reform, more recent scholarship suggests that some of these efforts were more successful than Freeze allows.30 Religion and Society Freeze has dealt with a broad range of issues concerning religion and society in Imperial and early Soviet Russia in a wide array of journal articles and book chapters, treating some topics in individual articles and other topics, such as lived religion or marriage and divorce, as arguments developed over several articles (these will be considered in separate subsections below). To begin with, he has challenged the view that the Church served simply as an instrument of the state. The hierarchy accepted Peter the Great’s separation of the secular and spiritual spheres and its duty to serve the spiritual needs of the flock. The Church therefore stayed out of political and social issues before the 1860s, neither justifying and defending, nor condemning, serfdom. The state continually instructed the clergy to assist it in suppressing peasant unrest, though actually it came to view the clergy as an unreliable ally in this regard. In its sermons and teaching, the Church emphasized mutual reciprocity between landowners and peasants rather than simply the obedience of the latter to the former, and it did seek to temper the abuse of serfs in the ways that were open to it (i.e., through confession and penance). Finally, in the first half of the nineteenth century Church leaders grew increasingly critical of serfdom, because they came to regard landlords as impediments rather than assistants in their spiritual mission to the peasantry.31 During the Reform era, in the 1850s and 1860s, a new theology developed in the Church that challenged the old assumptions of the Church’s merely spiritual and otherworldly role and sought to embrace an “incarnational” theology, according to which the Church must enter the world in order to transform it, rather than simply prepare the flock for the next world. This theology was first articulated by Archimandrite Fedor (Bukharev) at the Kazan 28 Daniel Scarborough, “The White Priest at Work: Orthodox Pastoral Activism and the Public Sphere in Late Imperial Russia,” PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2012. 29 Freeze, Parish Clergy, xxxn30. 30 See, particularly, Daniel Scarborough, “Faith without Works Is Dead: Sacred Space and Civil Society in Late Imperial Moscow and Tver,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (forthcoming); and Glennys Young, “‘Into Church Matters’: Lay Identity, Rural Parish Life, and Popular Politics in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia, 1864–1928,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 23 (1996): 367–84. 31 Gregory L. Freeze,“The Orthodox Church and Serfdom in Prereform Russia,” Slavic Review 48 (1989): 361–87.

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Theological Academy.32 These currents also played a role in the controversial requiem for the peasants killed during the Bezdna uprising in 1861.33 Although that particular episode led to a crackdown in the Kazan Academy, there was a decisive shift in the orientation of the post-Reform clergy with a much greater focus on the priest as pastor seeking to be involved in the lives of his flock rather than merely a liturgical functionary performing sacraments. In the post-Reform era, Church leaders also became more concerned with Orthodoxy’s presence in the cities and therefore developed an “inner mission” to the intelligentsia and to the workers.34 These developments have been the focus of subsequent fruitful studies, particularly Jennifer Hedda’s work on the new pastoral theology at the St. Petersburg Academy and its impact on clergy in the capital, together with Page Herrlinger’s work on the Church’s mission to workers in St. Petersburg.35 Freeze also has concentrated attention on the parish question. He argues that in prePetrine Russia, the parish and local community were coterminous. The parish church served as the center of community life: as administrative center (for village meetings), as economic center (for Sunday trading), and as cultural center (both for informal schools as well as for celebrations of weddings). Control of the parish lay primarily in the hands of the community, which selected their priests, built the church, and controlled local funds. After the Petrine reforms, the parish ceased to be a self-governing unit identical with the local community. Measures to separate the “sacred” from the “profane” led to the separation of trade and wedding celebrations from the parish church. The hierarchy, having more institutional ability to assert its authority, sought to gain more control over the parish— particularly in the appointment of priests, as bishops made it a priority to appoint seminary educated clergy (though this was a gradual process still incomplete by the end of the eighteenth century). Finally, the periodic efforts to solve the “clerical question” by amalgamating parishes and reducing the number of clergy resulted in the loss of parish cohesion.36 Having succeeded in establishing firm control over the parish by the first half of the nineteenth century, the “parish question”—ways to re-empower and revitalize the parish— 32 Gregory L. Freeze,“Die Laisierung des Archimandriten Feodor (Bucharev) und ihre kirchenpolitischen Hintergründe: Theologie und Politik im Rußland der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Kirche im Osten 28 (1985): 26–52. 33 Gregory L. Freeze, “A Social Mission for Russian Orthodoxy: The Kazan Requiem of 1861 for the Peasants in Bezdna,” in Imperial Russia 1700–1917: State, Society, Opposition, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn and Marshall S. Shatz (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1988), 115–35. 34 Gregory L. Freeze, “‘Going to the Intelligentsia’: The Church and Its Urban Mission in Post-Reform Russia,” in Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow, and James L. West (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 215–32. 35 For an overview, see Scott M. Kenworthy, “An Orthodox Social Gospel in Late Imperial Russia,” Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe 1 (2005): 1–29; Jennifer Hedda, His Kingdom Come: Orthodox Pastorship and Social Activism in Revolutionary Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008); Page Herrlinger, Working Souls: Russian Orthodoxy and Factory Labor in St. Petersburg, 1881–1917 (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2007). 36 Gregory L. Freeze, “The Disintegration of Traditional Communities: The Parish in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” Journal of Modern History 48 (1976): 32–50.

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became a major focus of concern and debate from the 1860s to 1917. The issue was first taken up during the Great Reforms, resulting in the 1864 formation of parish guardianships (popechitel’stvo). The issue was taken up again in the 1890s and became a central part of Church reform discussions after 1905. Parishioners wanted the right to control parish funds (a portion of which were siphoned off for supporting seminaries and the diocese) and to appoint their priests, both of which were opposed by the bishops, making all reform discussions very contentious. Liberal parish clergy, in principle, wished to mobilize the laity, but at the same time feared the consequences of handing over all power to the parishioners, uncertain whether that power would be responsibly exercised. In the end reform stalled until after the February Revolution, when diocesan congresses of clergy and laity made liberal statements about empowering the parish. It was to be a major issue on the agenda of the Church Council that convened in late 1917 (the first in over two centuries), but in effect, Freeze argues, the Bolshevik Revolution completed the “parish revolution.” The decree of January 1918 separating Church and state refused to recognize the Church as a juridical entity at all: the new government would deal only with local groups of believers (i.e., the parish) when it came to regulating the use of church buildings. In effect, therefore, it was the October Revolution that finally gave “all power to the parish,” actually fulfilling the demands of parishioners and providing a basis for religious revival in the 1920s.37 Lived Religion Several of Freeze’s articles concern “popular” or lived religion and the hierarchy’s attempts to assert control over it. Freeze’s argument here is that, under the influence of rationalism and the Enlightenment (particularly in its German rather than French expression), eighteenth-century Russian hierarchs sought to instill a consciously understood faith in the laity. Although the peasantry was acknowledged as pious, that piety was connected more to ritual than comprehension of the tenets of the faith and its moral application. In particular, the prelates were apprehensive about manifestations of popular piety that were perceived as “superstitious.” Armed with a new infrastructure of Church administration as it developed in the eighteenth century, therefore, the Church sought to assert greater uniformity of practice, to separate more clearly the lines of “sacred” and “profane,” and to battle “superstition.”38 Although to some degree the process of standardization was successful, the laity resisted the efforts to control or suppress such manifestations of popular piety as icon processions, miracle-working icons, and locally revered saints. Freeze argues that, in 37 Gregory L. Freeze, “All Power to the Parish? The Problems and Politics of Church Reform in Late Imperial Russia,” in Social Identities in Revolutionary Russia, ed. Madhavan K. Palat (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 174–208. 38 Although the Church had greater means of enforcing religious uniformity, it became clear it did not have the means to enforce public penance for grave sins through temporary incarceration in monasteries on the scale that it once did, and also concluded that such a practice contradicted a more conscious—rather than coercive—adherence to the faith; see Gregory L. Freeze, “The Wages of Sin: The Decline of Public Penance in Imperial Russia,” in Seeking God: The Recovery of Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia, ed. Stephen K. Batalden (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993), 53–82.

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order to encourage believers rather than antagonize them, by the 1830s and 1840s the Holy Synod began to relax its restrictions.39 Subsequent research by other scholars suggests that Freeze’s argument holds in a general way, but is too schematic and needs to be fleshed out with further case studies.40 The old historiography on the Church applied Western theories about secularization and accepted Soviet assertions about widespread dechristianization in Russia on the eve of the revolution. Based especially upon records of confession and communion, Freeze has demonstrated that, on the contrary, rates of religious observance remained extraordinarily high even up to the revolution. In order to more fully understand the dynamics of religious practice, he maintains, it is necessary to scrutinize local archives to assess differences not just between, but even within, dioceses. Moreover, there were significant differences in practice depending upon age, gender, and social group, and even sub-categories (peasants in one region might differ from those in another), or groups in different circumstances (peasants who remained in the village versus migrant laborers who worked in factories). Freeze has done such a study of Vladimir diocese (1900–1914), drawing on records of confession and communion as well as superintendents’ reports,41 and elsewhere has made comparative assessments based on confession and communion rates in different dioceses. He concludes that the faithful were becoming more differentiated rather than indifferent, ranging “between the ardent believers, passive conformists, apostates who converted to other beliefs, and a small (if fervent) corps of unbelievers.” Nevertheless, the “vast majority remained pious and unreceptive to the winds of cultural change.”42 Though they remained pious, they were becoming more assertive within (rather than against) the Church, which in part fueled the crisis in the Church on the eve of the revolution, but would also provide the basis for the revival of the 1920s. Marriage and Divorce Since the Petrine reforms confined the Church’s sphere of influence to the “spiritual domain,” Freeze argues that the Church asserted itself all the more in those spheres that remained. One area where the Church retained complete control was marriage and divorce. Here Freeze argues that the medieval Church had enforced certain canonical norms gov39 Gregory L. Freeze, “The Rechristianization of Russia: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850,” Studia Slavica Finlandensia 7 (1990): 101–36, and “Insitutionalizing Piety: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850,” in Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, ed. Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 210–49. 40 See the work of Vera Shevzov, especially “The Struggle for the Sacred: Russian Orthodox Thinking about Miracles in a Modern Age,” in Thinking Orthodox in Modern Russia: Culture, History, Context, ed. Patrick Lally Michelson and Judith Deutsch Kornblatt (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014); Scott M. Kenworthy, The Heart of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism, and Society after 1825 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), chap. 5. 41 Gregory L. Freeze, “A Pious Folk? Religious Observance in Vladimir Diocese, 1900–1914,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 52 (2004): 323–40. 42 Gregory L. Freeze, “Critical Dynamic of the Russian Revolution: Irreligion or Religion?” in Redefining the Sacred: Religion in the French and Russian Revolutions, ed. Daniel Schönpflug and Martin Schulze Wessel (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012), 59.

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erning who could marry whom (e.g., degrees of consanguinity) as well as norms for divorce, but in practice parishioners arranged and dissolved their marriages with the cooperation of their local parish priest but with very little oversight from the bishop. Russia followed the opposite path of Western Europe, where the state was asserting more control over marriage and divorce and, in most places, dissolving marriages was growing easier. The Orthodox Church, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, allowed divorce as well as annulment. But as the Church developed its own bureaucratic infrastructure during the eighteenth century and as the hierarchy more effectively asserted control over the laity, it also defined much more strictly the grounds for divorce and enforced the norms for marriage much more rigidly.43 The grounds for divorce were adultery, Siberian exile, sexual incapacity (before marriage), desertion, and in some cases if one of the spouses was not Orthodox. Although some, such as Siberian exile, were relatively easy to demonstrate and therefore constituted straightforward cases, others, such as adultery, had to be “proven” with two eyewitnesses. Divorce cases had to be thoroughly investigated by the diocesan consistory, which presented the evidence and its ruling to the bishop, who could then approve or deny the consistory’s ruling. If approved, the case moved up to the Holy Synod, which had to approve every single divorce case in the empire, and once again thoroughly considered the evidence and frequently overturned the ruling of the bishop and consistory. Although there were relatively few divorce cases in the mid-nineteenth century, by the eve of World War I the number had escalated to a few thousand a year. Indeed, because every case had to be investigated so thoroughly at both the diocesan and Synodal level, and because complicated cases were often turned back and had to be reviewed again, Freeze argues that the system of ecclesiastical administration was overstrained to the breaking point by this one issue. The Church made some concessions in 1904, but this only served to increase the number of applications for divorce. Freeze also takes into consideration gender, class, and other issues in his analysis of divorce cases. In addition to overburdening its administration, Freeze argues that the new rigidity on divorce was a major source of popular discontent with the Church in the final decades of the old regime.44 As a result, the Bolshevik decree of December 20, 1917, which secularized control over marriage and divorce, was popularly welcomed as the “most useful” Bolshevik decree. Indeed, Freeze argues, the Bolsheviks sought not only to undercut this important sphere of 43 Gregory L. Freeze, “Bringing Order to the Russian Family: Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, 1760–1860,” Journal of Modern History 62 (1990): 709–46. 44 Gregory L. Freeze, “Profane Narrives about a Holy Sacrament: Marriage and Divorce in Late Imperial Russia,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, ed. Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 146–78, and the Russian version, with more complete examples and references, Gregori Friz, “Mirskie narrativy o sviashchennom tainstve: Brak i razvod v pozdneimperskoi Rossii,” in Pravoslavie: Konfessiia, instituty, religioznost’ XVII–XX vv.; Sbornik nauchnykh rabot, ed. M. Dolbilov and M. D. Rogoznyi (St. Petersburg: Izd. Evropeiskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge, 2009), 122–75; for a ‘thick description’ of an individual case, see “Krylov vs. Krylova: ‘Sexual Incapacity’ and Divorce in Tsarist Russia,” in The Human Tradition in Modern Russia, ed. William B. Husband (Wilmingon, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000), 5–17.

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the Church’s authority, but also to capitalize on popular sentiment. Paradoxically for both Church and Soviet authorities, people wanted civil divorce (which was easy to obtain) but still also wanted to be remarried in the Church. When Clergy refused to remarry parishioners who had received a civil divorce they were accused of being “counter-revolutionary” for refusing to acknowledge Soviet authorities. Manipulating this state of affairs allowed parishioners who wanted to remarry to get their way. In the end, the Church still asserted its right to grant ecclesiastical divorce as a necessary precondition for remarriage, but the Church Council passed resolutions in 1918 substantially expanding the grounds for divorce. The Church strove to uphold these new policies, and though it did so with much greater flexibility than before, such cases still were processed and investigated by the diocesan consistories. Popular pressure led the Bolsheviks to exclude the consistories from the process of divorce in 1920, forcing Patriarch Tikhon to direct bishops alone to resolve cases; in essence, they were no longer granting divorces but rather removing their blessing from the prior marriage and bestowing it on the new one. Paradoxically, Freeze argues, the Bolshevik decree on marriage aimed to undermine the Church’s authority but in fact served to remove one of the main sources of conflict between the Church and believers and thus laid another foundation for religious revival in the 1920s.45 Religion and Politics on the Eve of Revolution Freeze has also tackled the issue of the Russian Church on the eve of the 1917 Revolution. In one of his more provocative pieces, he argues that Nicholas II sought to add legitimacy to the ailing autocracy by “resacralizing” the regime through the canonization of saints. According to Freeze, this attempt was made above all in the canonization of Serafim of Sarov, whom Freeze labels an “obscure hieromonk” canonized on the initiative of the royal family rather than the Church. This intrusion into the religious sphere only drove a further wedge between the Church and monarchy. Moreover, Freeze contends, the discovery that Serafim’s relics were not incorrupt caused deep scandal and “dampened the mood of ordinary believers.” Nevertheless, three hundred thousand pilgrims came out for the canonization, far exceeding all predictions. Even here, according to Freeze, the canonization itself “failed to transcend social differences and achieve the much-vaunted ‘spiritual union’ of tsar and people.” Further, he asserts that the canonization of Serafim did not “make Sarov a national shrine” and judges the whole process a “remarkable failure.”46 This and two other canonizations considered in the essay, according to Freeze, not only failed to resacralize the tsar, but worked to “desacralize” the Church. The Holy Synod’s legitimacy was undercut by various scandals surrounding renegade bishops, together with the meddling in Church affairs of the tsar and Grigorii Rasputin, the peasant and spiritual confidant of the royal family.47 45 Gregory L. Freeze, “L’ortodossia russe e la crisis delle famiglie: Il divorzio in Russia tra la rivoluzione e la guerre (1917–1921),” in L’Autunno della Santa Russia, 1917–1945, ed. Adalberto Mainardi (Magnano: Comunita di Bose, 1999), 79–117. 46 Gregory L. Freeze, “Subversive Piety: Religion and the Political Crisis in Late Imperial Russia,” Journal of Modern History 68 (1996): 323, 326–27. 47 Freeze substantially underestimates the veneration for Serafim that had begun quite early; within a decade of his death, one of his disciples published a biography that even attributed miracles to him,

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In another article, Freeze focuses on the clergy and politics. Critiquing the old historiography, which uncritically lumped all clergy together as reactionary supporters of autocracy and the Black Hundreds (ultra-nationalist, monarchist, and anti-Semitic groups), Freeze argues that it is necessary to examine different groups within the clergy, not only differentiating between bishops and priests but also between different tendencies within those groups. Bishops were indeed, on the whole, conservative, and supported the monarchy and opposed revolution. Nevertheless they resented the tsar’s meddling in Church affairs and felt that the manifesto of April 1905 granting religious tolerance was a betrayal of the Church’s interests. Finally, they also grew increasingly alienated from the Duma monarchy (1905–1917) because the Duma (the Russian parliament)—a secular institution with many non-Orthodox delegates—was legislating on issues pertaining to the Church. The parish clergy were a more diverse group, with some supporting radical right causes, others sympathetic to the revolution, and most remaining “cautious moderates,” working to help their flock through temperance movements and poor relief rather than political action. Virtually all of the clergy, however, hastened to express their support for the February Revolution and the Provisional Government.48 Freeze has argued against the notion of the Church as “handmaiden of the state” by asserting that it was neither in a position nor had the desire to support the state, resulting in the Synod’s refusal to issue a statement in defense of the monarchy when its collapse became imminent.49 These arguments have taken on a rather different character in Russian scholarship, however. M. A. Babkin has written extensively about the Church and the February Revolution, asserting that the Holy Synod, by refusing to defend the monarchy, was therefore substantially responsible for its fall.50 Babkin’s argument created a sensation in Russia and fed radical Orthodox monarchist groups that blame the prerevolutionary Church for betraying the tsar and “true” Orthodoxy even before the compromises with the Soviet state.

and this publication was supported by Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow (despite the Synod’s opposition) (Kenworthy, Heart of Russia, 43). Serafim’s influence had been extensive in part because of the numerous female monasteries he directed and inspired. Moreover, Serafim became—and remains— an enormously popular saint, and both Serafim and Sarov were sufficiently venerated to be targets in the Bolshevik anti-relic campaign. Therefore, though the canonization might not have functioned to “resacralize” the autocracy, Serafim’s veneration stemmed back much further in Church circles, and grew much more substantially after the canonization, than Freeze allows. 48 Gregory L. Freeze, “Church and Politics in Late Imperial Russia: Crisis and Radicalization of the Clergy,” in Russia under the Last Tsar: Opposition and Subversion, 1894–1917, ed. Anna Geifman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 269–97; “Priests and Revolution: The Parish Clergy of Vladimir in 1905,” in The Russian Revolution of 1905 in Transcultural Perspective: Identities, Peripheries, and the Flow of Ideas, ed. Felicitas Fischer von Weikersthal (Bloomington: Slavica, 2013), 1–20. 49 See also Freeze, “Critical Dynamic.” 50 M. A. Babkin, Dukhovenstvo Russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi i sverzhenie monarkhii, nachalo XX v.–konets 1917 g. (Moscow: Gos. Publichnaia istoricheskaia biblioteka Rossii, 2007).

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Orthodoxy in the 1920s and 1930s One of the major features of Freeze’s work is that many of his arguments chart developments that cross the revolutionary divide. Indeed, his analysis of several issues—such as divorce and the parish question—illuminates both the crisis of the Church on the eve of the revolution as well as the revival of Orthodoxy after the revolution. In addition, several articles are devoted specifically to developments in the 1920s and 1930s. Here he asserts the need to understand not just the Soviet state’s anti-religious policies, but the impact of those policies on believers and the believers’ responses. He demonstrates that Bolshevik policies against the Church, instead of undermining Orthodoxy, actually empowered believers. This failure of anti-religious policies in the 1920s, in turn, resulted in the Bolsheviks taking more radical measures in the 1930s against activist believers as well as clergy. During the first decade of rule, the Bolsheviks sought to suppress “counterrevolutionary” clergy and disestablish the Church. They did not aggressively attack popular piety, however, because they did not want to antagonize the ordinary mass of believers and because they believed that “superstition” would disappear once the people were freed from the grip of the priests. But in disestablishing the Church, the Bolsheviks fulfilled the aspirations of the ordinary faithful by granting the parish the autonomy that they had so long sought for. The Bolsheviks believed that resistance would come primarily from the clergy and that if they struck at the clergy they would succeed with their policies. What happened in fact, however, was that their policies empowered the ordinary believers who now had a new-found investment in the faith because the parish was fully “theirs.” Resistance to the confiscation of church valuables in the spring of 1922, for example, came primarily from activist believers rather than from the clergy. Precisely because they encountered such resistance, the Bolsheviks backed off from direct confrontation in a sort of religious counterpart to the “New Economic Policy,” hoping to gradually erode adherence to religion through propaganda. That effort was a resounding failure, however, and the empowering of parishioners only led to increasing religious revival throughout the 1920s. Consequently, Freeze argues, the Bolsheviks concluded that the “religious NEP” had failed.51 The Church hierarchy’s actions also had to accommodate the new power of believers. In 1922, after the arrest of Patriarch Tikhon, a group of liberal clergy took over the Church administration and embraced socialism and the revolutionary cause; they then sought to enact reforms such as a married episcopate, Russian-language liturgy, and adopting the Gregorian calendar.52 Freeze argues that the main reason for their ultimate failure was that the movement foundered on opposition from the laity. Moreover, the laity opposed it not so much for political reasons (that is, because the Renovationists cooperated with the Soviet state), nor for its ecclesiastical reforms (such as a married episcopate), but for its religious 51 Gregory L. Freeze, “Subversive Atheism: Soviet Antireligious Campaigns and the Religious Revival in Ukraine in the 1920s,” in State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine, ed. Catherine Wanner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 27–62. 52 Edward E. Roslof, Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905–1946 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); Scott M. Kenworthy, “Russian Reformation? The Program for Religious Renovation in the Orthodox Church, 1922–1925,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 16/17 (2000–2001): 89–130.

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reforms, namely in the sphere of liturgy and especially the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which believers resolutely rejected.53 The failure of the anti-religious campaigns and the religious revivals of the 1920s led leading Bolsheviks to support a much more aggressive policy aimed now at the parish and activist believers. The sense that the “religious NEP” had backfired dovetailed with the general sense among Stalin’s supporters that the NEP more broadly had failed and that more radical measures were needed to implement communism. Therefore the aggressive anti-religious program coincided with collectivization, when the parish church was frequently closed and the priest “dekulakized.” Debates surrounding the 1936 draft constitution and the 1937 elections to the Supreme Soviet, both of which resulted in agitation from believers, combined with the 1937 census, which revealed that half the Soviet population were still believers, alarmed the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which was responsible for extrajudicial executions and the Gulag) .In turn, the NKVD made clergy and religious believers a primary target during the Terror of 1937–1938, with enormous numbers executed or sent to the Gulag; Freeze touches on the latter only briefly and it still remains a largely untold story in Western historiography.54 Impact Gregory L. Freeze’s extensive scholarship has had a profound impact on the field of Russian history in the Anglo-American world. It is much less common now than it was only ten or twenty years ago for scholars writing even on secular topics to ignore religious dimension or the ways topics intersect the Orthodox Church. Indeed, one of Freeze’s major contributions has been overcoming the divide between “sacred” and “profane” history—that is, between Church and secular history—that has its roots in the nineteenth-century Russian tradition. To be sure, certain elements of the old historiographical stereotype of the Orthodox Church in Imperial Russia—such as uneducated and servile priests, “superstitious” peasants, the chief procurator as “head” of the Synod, the Church being “incorporated” into the state by Peter the Great—have a surprising longevity, at least in some surveys.55 Moreover, his impact on the field of the history of Christianity, which lags behind and still largely ignores the history of the Orthodox Churches, has not been felt the way it has for Russian historians. On the whole, however, it is no longer possible for responsible historians to ignore the Orthodox Church in treatments of Imperial Russia or to repeat the old 53 Gregory L. Freeze, “Counter-Reformation in Russian Orthodoxy: Popular Response to Religious Innovation, 1922–1925,” Slavic Review 54 (1995): 305–39. 54 Gregory L. Freeze, “The Stalinist Assault on the Parish, 1929–1941,” in Stalinismus vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Neue Wege der Forschung, ed. Manfred Hildermeier and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998), 209–32; see Kenworthy, Heart of Russia, chap. 9; V. Vorob’ev, Postradavshie za veru i tserkov’ khristovu, 1917–1937 (Moscow: Pravoslavnyi Sviato-Tikhonovskii gumanitarnyi universitet, 2012). 55 For example, Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1998), 61–69, incorporates some material (such as the rise of clerical liberalism after the Great Reforms), but generally repeats old tropes about church-state relations and superstitious peasantry.

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tropes in serious research.56 By establishing the study of the Orthodox Church as a valid field of research, Freeze paved the way for a new generation of scholars writing dissertations in the last two decades to focus on aspects of the Orthodox Church who therefore are, directly or indirectly, indebted to his work.57 A number of Freeze’s own doctoral students at Brandeis University have written dissertations on aspects of Orthodoxy.58 Others have written dissertations at other institutions, but with significant assistance from Freeze.59 Finally, several more established scholars have benefitted from National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars that Freeze ran in Moscow, which contributed to projects related to the Church.60 These studies have examined a wide variety of topics from popular religiosity to Old Believers, from religion and workers to the Church Council of 1917–1918. In general, these scholars have followed Freeze’s example in utilizing substantial archival material, and some have written microhistories on focused topics that permit a more comprehensive local study to illuminate broader trends. Because many of Freeze’s articles have appeared in disparate publications in several languages (German, Russian, and Italian), there is no doubt that his stature as historian of the Russian Church and his impact on the field of Russian history will only be enhanced with the publication of the long-awaited Bolsheviks and Believers that will appear in the Yale University Press series Annals of Communism, together with his longer study on religion and society in modern Russia.

56 The same cannot always be said about the Soviet period; though the first two volumes of the three-volume Cambridge History of Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), edited by Maureen Perry and Dominic Lieven respectively, contain chapters on the Orthodox Church, the third volume on the twentieth century, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, does not. 57 Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Chris J. Chulos, Converging Worlds: Religion and Community in Peasant Russia, 1861–1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003); Laurie Manchester, Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008); Roslof, Red Priests. 58 Scott M. Kenworthy, “The Revival of Monasticism in Modern Russia: The Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1825–1921,” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2002; George Kosar, “Russian Orthodoxy in Crisis and Revolution: The Church Council of 1917–1918,” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2004; Marlyn Miller, “Under the Protection of the Virgin: The Feminization of Monasticism in Imperial Russia, 1700– 1923,” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2009; Jan M. Surer, “Religion, Authority, and the Individual: The Russian Orthodox Church and Stundist Sectarianism in Kiev Province, 1870–1917,” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2012. Freeze’s students have also written dissertations on other religious groups, such as Jonathan Dekel-Chen, “Shopkeepers and Peddlers into Soviet Farmers: Jewish Agricultural Colonization in Crimea and Southern Ukraine,” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2001. 59 Roy Robson, Old Believers in Modern Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995); ­Herrlinger, Working Souls. 60 William Husband, ‘Godless Communists’: Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); William G. Wagner’s numerous articles, such as, “The Transformation of Female Orthodox Monasticism in Nizhnii Novgorod Diocese, 1764–1929, in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Modern History 78 (2006): 793–845.

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Bibliography of Works by Gregory L. Freeze Books The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century. Russian Research Center Series 78. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977. Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. A Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia: The Memoir of a Nineteenth-Century Parish Priest; I. S. Belliustin. Translator, annotator, and author of an interpretive essay. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. From Supplication to Revolution: A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Igor Smolitsch. Geschichte der russischen Kirche, Bd. 2. Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, Bd. 45. Editor and compiler. Wiesbaden: In Kommission bei Harrassowitz Verlag, 1991. Kratkii putevoditel’. Chief editor, with volume editors V. P. Kozlov and A. G. Getty. Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (bv. Tsentral’nyi partiinyi arkhiv). Moscow: Izd-vo Transakta, 1993. Arkhivnye dokumenty po istorii evreev v Rossii v XIX–nachale XX vv. Chief editor, with volume compilers Genrikh M. Deich and B. Nathans. Moscow: Blagovest, 1994. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii: Putevoditel’. Vol. 1, Dorevoliutsionnye materialy. Editor, with S. V. Mironenko. Moscow: Blagovest, 1994. “Osobaia papka” I. V. Stalina. Iz materialov Sekretariata NKVD-MVD SSSR 1944– 1953 gg. Katalog dokumentov. Chief editor, with volume editors V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko. Moscow: Blagovest, 1994. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (byvshii Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv narodnogo khoziaistva SSSR [TsGANKH]): Putevoditel’. Vol. 1, Kratkii spravochnik fondov. Chief editor, with volume editors W. Chase, J. Burds, S. V. Prasolova, A. K. Sokolov, and E. A. Tiurina. Moscow: Blagovest, 1994. “Osobaia papka” N. S. Khrushcheva. Iz materialov Sekretariata NKVD-MVD SSSR. Katalog dokumentov. Chief editor, with volume editors V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko. Moscow: Blagovest, 1995.

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Bibliography of Works by Gregory L. Freeze

“Osobaia papka” V. Molotova. Iz materialov Sekretariata NKVD-MVD SSSR 1944– 1956 gg. Katalog dokumentov. Chief editor, with volume editors V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko. Moscow: Blagovest, 1995. “Osobaia papka” L. P. Berii. Iz materialov Sekretariata NKVD-MVD SSSR 1946–1949 gg. Katalog dokumentov. Chief editor, with volume editors V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko. Moscow: Blagovest, 1996. Aleksandr N. Nekrich. Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German-Soviet Relations, 1922–1941. Editor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Russia: A History. Editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Russia: A History. Editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Russia: A History. Editor. 2nd edition, revised and expanded. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. I. S. Beljustin, Kuvaus venäläisestä maalaispapistosta: Seurakuntapapin selonteki 1800-luvulta. Translator, annotator, and author of an interpretive essay. Jyväskylä: Ortodoksisten Pappien Liitto ry, 2009. Russia: A History. Editor. 3rd edition, revised and expanded. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Boris N. Mironov. The Standard of Living and Revolutions in Imperial Russia, 1700–1917. Editor. London: Routledge, 2012. Pravoslavie i revoliutsiia: Sbornik statei. St. Petersburg: European University Press. Forthcoming. Bolsheviks and Believers: Popular Religion in the Soviet Union, 1917–1941. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Forthcoming. Articles – “The Shift in Russian Liberalism, 1901–1903.” Slavic Review 28 (March 1969): 81–91. – “Social Mobility and the Russian Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century.” Slavic Review 33 (December 1974): 641–62. – “The Disintegration of Traditional Communities: The Parish in Eighteenth-Century Russia.” Journal of Modern History 48 (March 1976): 32–50. – “N. P. Giliarov-Platonov: Perspectives on the Church and Clergy.” In Iz perezhitogo, by N. P. Giliarov-Platonov, i–xvi. Moscow: Izd. T-va M. G. Kuvshinova, 1886. Reprint, Newtonville, MA, 1976.

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– “Caste and Emancipation: The Changing Status of Clerical Families in Imperial Russia.” In The Family in Imperial Russia: New Lines of Historical Research, edited by David L. Ransel, 124–50. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978. – “Introduction.” In The Russian Clergy, by Jean Gagarin, i–viii. London: Burns and Oates, 1872. Reprint, Newtonville, MA, 1978. – “P. A. Valuyev and the Politics of Church Reform (1861–62).” Slavonic and East European Review 56 (January 1978): 68–87. – “Revolt from Below: A Priest’s Manifesto on the Crisis in Russian Orthodoxy.” In Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, edited by Theofanis G. Stavrou, 90–124. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978. – “A Case of Stunted Anticlericalism: Clergy and Society in Imperial Russia.” European Studies Review 13 (April 1983): 177–200. – „Die Läisierung des Archimandriten Feodor (Bucharev) und ihre kirchenpolitischen Hintergründe. Theologie und Politik in Russland der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts.“ Kirche im Osten 28 (1985): 26–52. – “Handmaiden of the State? The Orthodox Church in Imperial Russia Reconsidered.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985): 82–102. – “Church and Religion in Russian Historiography: The Case of V. O. Kliuchevskii.” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 20 (1986): 399–416. – “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History.” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 11–36. – “Church, State and Society in Catherinean Russia: The Synodal Instruction to the Legislative Commission of 1767–1768.” In „Aus der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeit.“ Tübinger Studien zum 18. Jahrhundert. Dietrich Geyer zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Eberhard Müller, 155–68. Tübingen: Attempto, 1988. – “Nuns, Jews and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Russia.” In Russia and the World of the Eighteenth Century, edited by R. P. Bartlett, A. G. Cross, and K. Rasmussen, 141– 46. Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1988. – “A Social Mission for Russian Orthodoxy: The Kazan Requiem of 1861.” In Imperial Russia, 1700–1917: State, Society, Opposition, edited by Marshall Shatz and Ezra Mendelsohn, 115–35. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1988. – “The Orthodox Church and Serfdom in Prereform Russia.” Slavic Review 48 (Fall 1989): 361–87. – “Bringing Order to the Russian Family: Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, 1760–1860.” Journal of Modern History 62 (December 1990): 709–48.

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– “Rechristianization of Russia: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850.” Studia Slavica Finlandensia 7 (1990): 101–36. – “‘Going to the Intelligentsia’: The Church and Its Urban Mission in Post-Reform Russia.” In Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, edited by James L. West, Edith W. Clowes, and Samuel L. Kassow, 215–32. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. – “Tserkov’ i vlast’: Politicheskaia spektakl’.” Znanie—sila 2 (1991): 40–45. – “Tserkov’, religiia i politicheskaia kul’tura na zakate starogo rezhima.” Istoriia SSSR 2 (1991): 107–19. – “Between Estate and Profession: Russian Clergy of the Ancien Régime in Comparative Perspective.” In Social Orders and Social Classes in Europe since 1500: Studies in Social Stratification, edited by Michael Bush, 47–65. London: Longman, 1992. – “New Perspectives on the Russian Peasant under the Old Régime.” European History Quarterly 22 (1992): 605–17. – “Public Penance in Imperial Russia: A Prosopography of Sinners.” In Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia, edited by Stephen K. Batalden, 53–82. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993. – “Counter-Reformation in Russian Orthodoxy: Popular Response to Religious Innovation, 1922–1925.” Slavic Review 54 (Summer 1995): 305–39. – “Final Report of the Joint Task Force on Archives” (with the AHA-AAASS Task Force). Slavic Review 54 (Summer 1995): 407–26. – “Subversive Piety: Religion and the Political Crisis in Late Imperial Russia.” Journal of Modern History 68 (June 1996): 308–50. – “From Great Reforms to Counter-Reforms, 1855–1895.” In Russia: A History, edited by Gregory L. Freeze, 170–99. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. – “From Stalinism to Stagnation, 1953–1985.” In Russia: A History, edited by Gregory L. Freeze, 347–82. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. – “Institutionalizing Piety: The Church and Popular Religion in Russia, 1750–1850.” In Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, edited by Jane Burbank and David Ransel, 210–49. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. – “L’Episcopato nella chiesa ortodossa russa: Crisi politica e religiosa alla fine dell’ancien régime.” La Grande Vigilia, edited by Adalberto Mainardi, 21–55. Magnano: Comunita Monastica di Bose, 1998. – “The Stalinist Assault on the Parish, 1929–1941.” In Stalinismus vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Neue Wege der Forschung. Schriften des Historischen Kollegs Kolloquien 43. Edited by Manfred Hildermeier, 209–32. Munich: Oldenburg Verlag, 1998.

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– “Church and Politics in Late Imperial Russia: Crisis and Radicalization of the Orthodox Clergy.” In Russia under the Last Tsar: Opposition and Subversion, 1894–1917, edited by Anna Geifman, 269–97. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. – “L’ortodossia russe e la crisi delle famiglie. Il divorzio tra la rivoluzione e la guerre (1917– 1921).” In L’Autunno della Santa Russia, 1917–1945. Atti del VI Convegno ecumenico internazionale di spiritualità in Russia, edited by Adalberto Mainardi, 79–117. Magnano: Qiqajon, 1999. – “Eastern Orthodoxy.” In Encyclopedia of European Social History, edited by Peter N. ­Stearns, 5:313–26. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2000. – “Krylov v. Krylova: ‘Sexual Incapacity’ and Divorce in Tsarist Russia.” In The Human Tradition in Modern Russia, edited by William Husband, 5–17. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2000. – “Russian Orthodoxy on the Periphery: Decoding the Raporty blagochinnykh in Lithuania Diocese.” In Problemy vsemirnoi istorii, edited by B. V. Anan’ich et al., 124–31. St. Petersburg: D. Bulanin, 2000. – “Soslovnaia paradigma i sotsial’naia istoriia Rossii.” In Russkaia istoriia v SShA. Vekhi istoriografii poslednikh let, 121–64. Samara: Samarskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2000. – “All Power to the Parish? The Problem and Politics of Church Reform in Late Imperial Russia.” In Social Identities in Revolutionary Russia, edited by Madhavan K. Palat, 174–208. London: Macmillan, 2001. – “F. F. Iusupov i velikii kniaz’ Dmitrii Pavlovich ob ubiistve Grigoriia Rasputina (1920  g.).” In Angliiskaia naberezhnaia. Ezhegodnik S-Peterburgskogo obshchestva istorikov i arkhivistov 4, with Boris V. Anan’ich, 343–46. St. Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskoe nauchnoe obshchestvo istorikov i arkhivistov, 2001. – “Recent Scholarship on Russian Orthodoxy: A Critique.” Kritika 2 (2001): 269–78. – “Meltdown, Rebuilding, Reform (1996–2001).” In Russia: A History. 2nd edition. Edited by Gregory L. Freeze, 422–55. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. – “Skeptical Reformer, Staunch Tserkovnik: Metropolitan Philaret and the Great Reforms.” In Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, 1782–1867, edited by Vladimir Tsurikov, 151–92. Jordanville, NY: Variable Press, 2003. – “Sotsial’naia istoriia kak metaistoriia,” with Peter Gatrell and David A. Macey. In Sotsial’naia istoriia Rossii. 3rd edition. Edited by Boris N. Mironov, i–xviii. St. Petersburg, 2003. – “Catholicism.” In Encyclopedia of Russian History, edited by J. Millar, 1:297–98. New York: Macmillan, 2004.

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– “The Church and the Tsar: A Confrontation over Divorce in Late Imperial Russia.” In Strannitsy Rossiiskoi istorii: Problemy, sobytiia, liudi; Sbornik statei v chest’ semidesiatiletiiu Borisa Vasil’evicha Anan’ icha, edited by V. M. Paneiakh, 195–203. St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2004. – “Gubitel’noe blagochestie: Religiia i politicheskii krizis v poslednie gody sushchestvovaniia imperskoi Rossii.” Stranitsy: Bogoslovie, kul’tura, obrazovanie 9, no. 2 (2004): 234–74; no. 3 (2004): 393–402. – “Icons.” In Encyclopedia of Russian History, edited by J. Millar, 2:649–51. New York: Macmillan, 2004. – “Lutheranism and Orthodoxy in Russia: A Critical Reassessment.” In Luther zwischen Kulturen, edited by Hans Medick, 297–317. Göttingen: Vanderhoek, 2004. – “A Pious Folk? Religious Observance in Vladimir Diocese, 1900–1914.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 52 (2004): 323–40. – “Prokopovich, Feofan.” In Encyclopedia of Russian History, edited by J. Millar, 3:1235. New York: Macmillan, 2004. – “Religion.” In Encyclopedia of Russian History, edited by J. Millar, 3:1282–84. New York: Macmillan, 2004. – “Russian Orthodox Church.” In Encyclopedia of Russian History, edited by J. Millar, 3:1319–21. New York: Macmillan, 2004. – “Saints.” In Encyclopedia of Russian History, edited by J. Millar, 4:1343–44. New York: Macmillan, 2004. – “Soslovie (estate).” In Encyclopedia of Russian History, edited by J. Millar, 4:1430–32. New York: Macmillan, 2004. – “Profane Narratives about a Holy Sacrament: Marriage and Divorce in Late Imperial Russia.” In Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, edited by Mark Steinberg and Heather Coleman, 146–78. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. – “Russian Orthodoxy: Church, People, and Politics in Imperial Russia.” In Cambridge History of Russia, edited by Dominic Lieven, 2:284–305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. – “Otkryvaia zanovo pravoslavnoe proshloe: Mikroistoricheskii podkhod k religioznoi praktike v imperatorskoi Rossii.” In Smena paradigm: Sovremennaia rusistika; Istochniki, issledovaniia, istoriografiia, edited by Boris Mironov, 369–95. St. Petersburg: Izd-vo “Nestor Istoriia,” 2007.

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

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– “Mentalitet prikhodskogo sviashchennika: ‘Mneniia’ ob uluchshenii byta dukhovenstva.” In Provintsional’noe dukhovenstvo dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov, edited by T. G. Leont’eva, 3:128–43. Tver: Tverskoi gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2008. – “Pastyr’ i tserkovnyi deiatel’: Sviatitel’ Filaret Moskovskii i staroobriadcheskii raskol.” Filaretovskii al’manakh 4 (2008): 122–46. – “Mirskie narrativy o sviashchennom tainstve: Brak i razvod v pozneimperskoi Rossii.” In Pravoslavie: Konfessiia, instituty, religioznost’ (XVII–XX vv.), edited by Mikhail Dolbilov and Pavel Rogoznyi, 122–75. St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii universitet v S-Peterburge, 2009. – “A Modern ‘Time of Troubles’: From Reform to Disintegration, 1985–1999.” In Russia: A History. 3rd edition. Edited by Gregory L. Freeze, 451–88. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. – “Rebuilding Russia.” In Russia: A History. 3rd edition. Edited by Gregory L. Freeze, 489–527. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. – “Critical Dynamic of the Russian Revolution: Irreligion or Religion?” In Redefining the Sacred: Religion in the French and Russian Revolutions, edited by Martin Schulz Wessel and Daniel Schönpflug, 51–82. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012. – “Subversive Atheism: From Antireligious Campaign to Religious Revival in Ukraine in the 1920s.” In State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine, edited by Catherine Wanner, 27–62. Washington and York: Woodrow Wilson Center and Oxford University Press, 2012. – “Vsia vlast’ prikhodam: Vozrozhdenie pravoslaviia v 1920-e gody.” Gosudarstvo i tserkov’, nos. 3–4 (2012): 86–105. – An American View of Russian Church History: An Interview with Gregory Freeze.” http://sreda.org/en/2013/intervyu-s-gregori-frizom/31145. – “Priests and Revolution: The Parish Clergy of Vladimir in 1905.” In The Russian Revolution of 1905 in Transcultural Perspective: Identities, Peripheries, and the Flow of Ideas, edited by Felicitas Fischer von Weikersthal, Frank Grüner, Susanne Hohler, Franziska Schedewie, Ralph Tuchtenhagen, Raphael Utz, Katja Wezel, with the assistance of Gregory L. Freeze, 19–38. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2013. – „Von Entkirchlichung zu Laisierung: Staat, Kirche, und Gläubige in Rußland.“ In Politik und Religion, edited by Heinrich Meier, 79–120. Munich: Beck, 2013. – “Amerikano-sovetskie obmeny v oblasti nauki i kul’tury: Vliianie na istoricheskuiu nauku.” In Stanovlenie i razvitie instituta amerikanskikh stazhernov v Sankt-Peterburge, edited by Albina S. Krymskaia, 241–55. St. Petersburg: Izd-vo SPbGUKI, 2014.

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037

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– “Dechristianization in Holy Rus’? Reports from Vladimir Diocese on Popular Piety, 1900–1913.” In Faith and Story: Orthodox Narratives in Imperial Russia, edited by Heather Coleman, 208–28. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014. – „Orthodoxie, Herrschaft und Säkularisierung in Russland, 1860–1940.“ http://www. perspectivia.net/content/publikationen/vortraege-moskau/freeze_september. Also as podcast (in Russian): http://vimeo.com/67191041. – „Die Lutherisch-Evangelische Kirche in Russland, 1800–1914.“ In Handbuch der baltischen Geschichte. Bd. 2. Edited by Konrad Maier, Karsten Brüggemann, Ralph Tuchtenhagen. 3 Bde. Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann. Forthcoming. – “From Dechristianization to Laicization: State, Church, and Believers in Russia.” Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, 2015. Forthcoming. – “Religion and Revolution: The Russian Orthodox Church Transformed.” In Companion to the Russian Revolution, edited by Daniel T. Orlovsky. New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. Forthcoming. – “Voina i reforma: Rossiiskaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny, 1914– 1917 gg.” Vestnik Tverskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriia: Istoriia, vyp. 1, 2015. Forthcoming.

© 2015, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 9783447104142 # ISBN E-Book: 9783447194037