Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia

Church History, 2005

Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2018

The Ecumenical Review, 2017

It would be of little exaggeration to say that much of Russian discourse in the imperial and early émigré periods (circa 1721-1927) was informed by the lexicon, liturgy, and theology of Russian Orthodoxy. The Church's extensive educational system, whatever its many failings, trained thousands of clergy and hundreds of theologians who spoke to the faithful in various Russian Orthodox idioms that were then refracted in the conversations and cultural production of educated society (obrazovannoe obshchestvo). As members of that society began to engage contemporary European thought, they often did so from a selfconsciously Orthodox perspective cultivated at home, learned at church, and articulated in Orthodox print culture. Differences between the Russian people (narod) and the peoples of Europe and Asia were frequently cast as spiritual distinctions between true believers (pravoslavnye) and apostates or pagans, especially during periods of military conflict, which in turn were often experienced through an Orthodox matrix of biblical narrative, Church history, and liturgical commemoration. Imperial decrees, like the Emancipation Manifesto of 1861, were invested with the "Grace of God, " structured by the necessity of "Divine Providence, " and guided by "Divine assistance. " Sacraments of the Church, such as baptism and confession, generated specific notions of belonging among Orthodox believers and helped to shape their individual and collective psychologies. Orthodox liturgy, hesychastic piety, and monastic eldership (starchestvo) were imagined by some of Russia's most important authors, including N. V. Gogol' and F. M. Dostoevsky, to engender a type of religious disposition that could heal the fractured mind in an age thought to be marked by anomie. Even 3 k 4 m i c h e l s o n and k o r n b l at t of practice and institution shaped by time, place, culture, and personality that accurately reflects the historical reality of that confession. 1 Nearly a decade before this shift toward the study of Russian Orthodoxy and its institutions, scholars of Russian literature and intellectual history began to focus their attention on another aspect of religion in modern Russia, namely the religious philosophy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of the earliest developments in this regard in post-Soviet, English-language scholarship was the international Conference on Russian Religious Thought hosted by the University of Wisconsin in 1993. 2 That event brought together more than thirty historians, Slavists, theologians, and philosophers to discuss the spiritual categories, philosophical systems, literary heritages, and cultural influences of V. S. Solov' ev, S. N. Bulgakov, N. F. Fedorov, S. L. Frank, and P. A. Florenskii. The principal result of that conference was the publication of Russian Religious Thought, coedited by Judith Kornblatt and Richard Gustafson, in 1996. 3 That volume, which in many ways constitutes the foundation of and impetus behind this collection of essays, broadly applied a textual hermeneutics to the study of religious ideas and thinkers. The intent of Russian Religious Thought and similar studies that followed was to analyze representative texts for an array of largely extra-historical purposes: to illuminate how Russian religious philosophy engaged and can still address epistemological and ontological questions; to familiarize non-specialists with the seemingly alien content of Russia's religious culture; to put Russian religious thinkers in cross-confessional dialogue with some of the leading theologians of Western Christendom, while simultaneously complicating the basic categories of Protestant and Catholic thought; to demonstrate the universality of Russian religious terminology in the philosophical quest to express the absolute; and to identify currents in Russian thought that might help construct a usable past for contemporary Russia. 4 Despite this enthusiasm for Russian religious thought in the post-Soviet era, which has seen the publication of important monographs, articles, source collections, and English-language translations, 5 its impact on broader trends in the study of Russian history and culture has been minimal. This is especially true in regards to the turn in scholarship toward religious practice and institutions, which has almost entirely, and sometimes explicitly, disregarded Russian Orthodox theology, as well as the broader subject of Russian religious thought, as retrograde, elitist, or well-worn. 6 As such, our knowledge of how the theological tenets of Russian Orthodoxy informed the discursive patterns and ideological structures of Russian literary culture and intellectual history has not kept pace with advancements in studies about lived Orthodoxy or the Russian Church. 7

One of the most important aspects of the recent revival of studies of religion in Russia is a renewed interest in Orthodoxy. Freed from the constraints of Marxian reductionism, armed with comparative and interdisciplinary methodologies, and benefiting from an unprecedented freedom of intellectual and academic exchange, Russian and Western historians have done much to reverse the effects of the decades of academic neglect and made invaluable contributions to social, local, gender, and religious history of Russian Orthodoxy. 1

2011

2005

This study attempts to answer the question as to `how and what type of authority was developed within Russian Orthodox Church during its turbulent and controversial history and how does this affect its operation today? This objective required the investigation of the historical contexts and events, which led to a particular concept of authority being formulated in the Russian Orthodox Church within the wider framework of time, geography, theology and philosophy. The thesis is organised chronologically. Since Russian Orthodoxy derived from Byzantium and from the beginning shared its spiritual and ecclesiological outlook, the first two chapters discuss the ecclesiological and ideological principles that held sway within the Byzantine Church and became the modus operandi for the Russian Church. This in turn was set against the wider historical, theological and ideological setting of Roman and Hellenistic civilization. Whilst the Russian Church reflected Byzantine's ecclesiological structures, the actual exercise and development of this authority took place in reaction to different historical and theological controversies and events such as the union of Florence, the collapse of the Byzantine empire and the ascendancy of the Muscovite kingdom between fourteenth and sixteenth century. In this regard the Muscovite period with its ecclesiastical conflicts and the autocratic State proved determinative. The subsequent three chapters discuss different controversies and developments, which took place in time and space between Kievan Rus' and post-Soviet Russia. The actual development of the authority within Russian Orthodox Church was formulated and shaped by Church's relationship with the autocratic Muscovite State, the handling of the Judaizers' and the Strigol'niki's controversies, Possessors' and Non-Possessors' movements. Further, it was affected by Nikon's raskol, the reforms of Peter the Great and the events of the twentieth century with its historical 1917-18 Sobor and the changes in the political system and its ideological orientation at the beginning and the end of the twentieth century. The uniqueness and the significance of Russian developments in relation to mystical authority is noted and discussed in its appearance of the Third Rome formula. It will be argued that within Russian Orthodoxy mystical and apocalyptic perceptions of authority came to play and to exercise a much greater role than in Byzantium, leading to the appearance of the notion of Moscow as Third Rome and a neo-messianic self-consciousness of Russian people. I conclude that the twentieth century did not bring about a finalisation of the development and the actual perception of the authority. It rather emerges as a period of transition during which the actual type of authority within Russian church was largely hijacked by the State and affected by the tragic events of a wider Russian history.