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offspring. In the post-emancipation era, parishioners increasingly sought to assert their rights over both the local clergy and the local revenues, an aspiration that erupted into full view as revolution shattered authority and emboldened parishioners to reclaim their rights.49

Worldly teachings: from ‘reciprocity’ to social Orthodoxy

Parallel with the ‘re-christianisation’ of the folk, the Church began to develop and articulate its social and political teachings. To be sure, it reaffirmed the traditional teaching that the existing order was divinely ordained (applying that principle even to the Mongol suzerainty in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries) and that ‘subordinates’ should obey their superiors – a paradigm that applied to ruler and ruled, masters and serfs, husbands and wives. But, under the influence of Western thought, the ‘enlightened prelates’ of Catherinean Russia added an important theme of ‘reciprocity’: duties and responsibilities were bilateral, not reducible to a mere commandment to ‘obey and submit’. Power and wealth conveyed responsibilities, not merely the right to demand obedience; the superior had a moral obligation to care for those in his charge. In turn, subordinates were not only to obey, but to perform their duties faithfully and energetically. Hence the existing order was a kind of divinely ordained social contract, entailing hierarchy but also reciprocity in social relationships.50

The Church also applied that precept to serfdom.51 Although formally excluded from ‘meddling’ in matters of the secular domain, prelates and priests none the less sought to apply the reciprocity principle, both to protect sacraments like marriage from violation and to uphold the Ten Commandments (broadly construed). Such injunctions were explicit in sermons and other writings that admonished squires to fulfil their responsibilities and, specifically, to attend to the spiritual needs of their serfs.52 Some turned to deeds, not words,

49See G. L. Freeze, ‘“All Power to the Parish”? The Problem and Politics of Church Reform in Late Imperial Russia’, in Madhavan Palat (ed.), Social Identities in Revolutionary Russia (London: Macmillan, 2001), pp. 174–208.

50For a classic statement, see the discussion of the ‘fifth commandment’ (and its extrapolation to masters and slaves, husbands and wives in the ‘Short Catechism’ (Sokrashchennyi katekhizis) appended to the three-volume Synodal collection of sermons distributed to clergy throughout the empire: Gavriil and Platon, Sobranie raznykh poucheneniia, vol. III, folio 147–47 verso.

51For a discussion of the clerical attitudes and role with respect to serfdom, see G. L. Freeze, ‘The Orthodox Church and Serfdom in Pre-Reform Russia’, SR 48 (1989): 361–87.

52See, for example, the work of a prelate later canonised: Tikhon (Zadonskii), Nastavlenie o sobstvennykh vsiakogo khristianina dolzhnostiakh (St Petersburg: Sinodal’naia tip., 1789), pp. 10–12. By 1870, this work had been reprinted forty-eight times.

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and became embroiled in social unrest – most dramatically in the Pugachev rebellion of 1773–5,53 but on a regular basis in villages in the first half of the nineteenth century.54

Significantly, by the 1840s and 1850s even some prelates, more accountable and conservative, came to disparage serfdom not only for its abuses, but for the harm it dealt to the serfs’ spiritual needs. Whereas bishops had earlier counted on nobles to provide parish churches and ensure peasant religious observance, some prelates began to send reports chastising the squires for neglecting this duty. Indeed, in the Western Provinces, where the squire was non-Orthodox, bishops suspected the non-Orthodox squires of deliberately subverting religious practice: ‘The chief cause [of the serfs’ unsatisfactory religious condition] is the indifference of the Roman Catholic squires, who, because of their hostility toward Orthodoxy, are unconcerned about the spiritual benefit of the peasants and even try to disseminate religious indifference among them.’55 That accusation gained momentum and even began to penetrate the reports from central dioceses. The bishop of Penza, for example, attributed the serfs’ religious ignorance to the ‘excessive use of serf labour during fasts and sometimes holidays’.56

By the 1850s, the clergy openly came to espouse the need to engage temporal questions. In part, that derived from the impending emancipation of serfs – who would need the active assistance and guidance of their parish priest in navigating the rights and perils of citizenship. Theology helped legitimise the engagement, as new currents in Christology counselled the Church to ‘enter into the world’, just as Christ had done, and underlined the connection between Orthodoxy and contemporaneity.57 The profusion of new clerical periodicals, with their close attention to secular issues, reinforced the new engagement. Drawing on earlier practices (which encouraged priests to disseminate ‘useful’

53For the large complex of files on clerical involvement in the Pugachev rebellion, see the ‘secret section’ of the Synodal archive (RGIA, Fond 796, op. 205, dd. 76–99); for a Soviet summary of these files, see I. Z. Kadson, ‘Krest’ianskaia voina 1773–5 gg. i tserkov’’, unpublished candidate dissertation, Leningradskoe otdelenie instituta istorii (1963).

54See Freeze, ‘Orthodox Church and Serfdom’, 375–8.

55RGIA, Fond 796, op. 127, g. 1846, d. 1881, l. 15 ob. (1847 annual report from the bishop of Polotsk). For the famous case of the Baltic provinces in the 1840s, when diocesan authorities battled Lutheran squires over the serfs’ religious needs, see G. L. Freeze, ‘Lutheranism and Orthodoxy in Russia: A Critical Reassessment’, in Hans Medick and P. Schmidt (eds.), Luther zwischen Kulturen (Gottingen:¨ Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,

2004), pp. 297–317.

56RGIA, Fond 796, op. 137, g. 1856, d. 2398, l. 68 ob. (annual report for 1855).

57G. L. Freeze, ‘Die Laisierung des Archimandriten Feodor (Buchaev) und ihre kirchenpolitischen Hintergrunde’,¨ Kirche im Osten 38 (1985): 26–52; G. L. Freeze, ‘A Social Mission for Russian Orthodoxy’ in Marshall Shatz and Ezra Mendelsohn (eds.) Imperial Russia, 1 7 00–1 91 7 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1988), pp. 115–35.

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knowledge about agriculture and medicine),58 liberal clergy now redoubled and diversified such efforts. The seminary also played an important role; it not only produced a disproportionate number of radicals59 but also had a significant impact on younger clergy.

The result was a ‘social Orthodoxy’ which emphasised the Church’s responsibility to address key social ills. Sermons not only became a regular feature of parish services, but came to address a broad range of worldly problems, from spouse abuse to alcoholism. The religious press, similarly, gave growing attention to temporal issues. In practical terms too, post-reform clergy sought to tackle social problems like poverty and prostitution, encouraged parishes and monasteries to open almshouses and medical clinics, and generally endeavoured to bring the Church into the world.

Orthodoxy in the Russian prerevolution

The revolution of 1905–7 had a profound impact on Russian Orthodoxy. Most dramatically, it unleashed the pent-up discontent long percolating among the parish clergy, who, individually and collectively, embraced a range of liberal and even radical movements. To the horror of state officials, priests all across the empire proved receptive to the calls of the ‘Liberation Movement’ and used the occasion to press their own demands – for better material support, for the right of self-organisation, for a reduction in ‘episcopal rule’ and a greater role in diocesan administration. But others took up the needs of the disprivileged. Thus the clergy of one deanship in Viatka diocese, for example, urged the State Duma (parliament) to resolve ‘the agrarian question according to the wishes of the people’.60 And in numerous cases the local priest, whether from fear or conviction, became embroiled in the revolution itself, delivered incendiary sermons, performed requiems for fallen revolutionaries, and in sundry other ways supported his rebellious parishioners.61

58For a typical statement, praising the parish clergy for ‘endeavoring to give [the peasants] agricultural instruction’ and encouraging ‘the simple people, in case of dangerous diseases, to seek the assistance of doctors’ (and eschew the traditional fatalism), see the 1851 annual report by the bishop of Riazan in RGIA, Fond 796, op. 132, g. 1851, d. 2363, l. 200.

59See the overview in B. V. Titlinov, Molodezh’ i revoliutsiia (Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1924). For typical reports on seminary disorders, which proliferate from the 1880s, see the cases from 1904 in RGIA, Fond 796, op. 185, g. 1904, dd. 225, 247–9, 382, 543, 553, 557.

60Telegram of 21 June 1906 in RGIA, Fond 796, op. 187, g. 1906, d. 6809, l. 16.

61See G. L. Freeze, ‘Church and Politics in Late Imperial Russia’, in Anna Geifman (ed.), Russia under the Last Tsar (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 269–97; John H. M. Geekie, ‘The Church and Politics in Russia, 1905–17’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of East Anglia (1976); Argyrios Pisiotis, ‘Orthodoxy versus Autocracy: The Orthodox

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It was not only a matter of radical priests: conservative prelates found themselves locked in a struggle with a regime fighting for survival. The decisive trigger to Church–State conflict was the emperor’s Manifesto on the Freedom of Conscience (17 April 1905), an attempt to mollify disaffected religious and ethnic minorities by decriminalising apostasy and legalising conversion from Orthodoxy. The result, as the prelates feared, was a tidal wave of declarations to leave the Church.62 The manifesto did not reconcile minorities, of course, but it did enrage churchmen – who saw it as a crass betrayal of the Church’s vital interests.

Like the rest of Russian society, the clergy responded to the revolutionary crisis by pressing for reform. Their principal goal was to convene a church council – the first in more than two centuries – to address the Church’s many problems and needs. And such seemed a realisable dream, as the regime acquiesced and authorised preparations for a church council. After first collecting the opinions of diocesan authorities, the Synod created a special pre-conciliar commission to analyse the opinions and draft proposals which bore the liberal stamp of these revolutionary ears. All that, however, came to naught: as the revolution receded, the emperor decided to defer the church council until more ‘propitious’ times.

The ‘Duma Monarchy’ of the inter-revolutionary years – that marked by the Third (1907–12) and Fourth (1912–17) Dumas – did nothing to solve problems or reduce tensions. At the very minimum, church authorities were aghast at the prospect of the multi-confessional Duma intervening in church affairs, as indeed soon became the case (with respect to salaries for the clergy, parish schools and a host of other issues).63 Apart from seeking to influence from within (by promoting the election of clerical deputies),64 the Church adamantly rejected the Duma’s competence in most ecclesiastical affairs. Thus, in 1908, the chief procurator conveyed the Synod’s rejection of attempts by the Duma (as a ‘non-confessional legislative institution‘) to meddle in church business and to sponsor new laws on religious tolerance.65 Similar sentiments were later voiced at a conference of prelates from central Russian dioceses, who

Church and Clerical Political Dissent in Late Imperial Russia, 1905–14’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Georgetown University (2000).

62For data on 1905–9, see RGIA, Fond 797, op. 79, otd. 2, st. 3, d. 494, ll. 36–8.

63For the fullest account, though based only on printed sources, see Vladimir Rozhkov, Tserkovnye voprosy v Gosudarstvennoi Dume (Rome: Pontificium inst. orient. Studiorum,

1975).

64See, for example, the Synod decree of 14 July 1912 urging active clerical involvement in elections to the Fourth Duma, in RGIA, Fond 796, op. 194, g. 1912, d. 1207, l. 10–10 ob.

65See the chief procurator’s memorandum to the Council of Ministers (dated 10.9.1908) in RGIA, Fond 797, op. 78, otd. 2, st. 3, d. 122/b, l. 53.

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demanded the ‘complete removal of church legislation from the purview of a non-confessional State Duma’.66 Archbishop Stefan of Kursk expressed prevailing sentiment in the episcopate when he wrote that ‘it is an empty and idle dream to count on the bureaucrats renouncing their coercion of the Church. It is a vain, futile hope to count on the Duma giving us the opportunity to free ourselves from the enslavement and to build the Church on “conciliar principles” as the canons require.’67

All this unfolded against the backdrop of growing anxiety about the moralreligious state of the Church. Among the folk themselves, piety seemed to be recovering, with high rates of religious observance, but it was clear that the ‘simple folk’ were no longer so simple: patterns of religious observance were complex, driven not so much by dissent and apostasy as by broader patterns of social and cultural change (migrant labour, the rebellion of youth and the like).68 Publicly, the Church suffered enormously from the infamous ‘Rasputinshchina’, as Grigorii Rasputin, the self-appointed lay ‘elder’ (starets), gained extraordinary influence and compromised crown and altar in the process. Although public perception greatly exaggerated Rasputin’s role, he nonetheless elicited fierce enmity among the ranking churchmen, especially after Rasputin’s influence became public in 1912. As a police report from 1912 attested: ‘According to public opinion, the ecclesiastical domain experienced a kind of revolutionary movement in 1912.’69 Even extreme conservatives like Archbishop Antonii (Khrapovitskii) waxed indignant about the cancerous influences on the Church.70

The First World War inspired the Church, like most of Russia, to respond with patriotic support for what would quickly prove an unmitigated military catastrophe. The Church itself mobilised substantial resources to assist in the war, converted facilities to serve as military hospitals, raised funds for the war victims and campaigned to sustain the fighting morale of the troops and the home front. In that respect, it differed little from churches of the other combatants. But the context was different: far sooner than elsewhere, the Russian Empire was swept by an intense tide of anti-war sentiment. Hence the Church’s identification with the ‘imperialist war’ did much to create a young generation of anti-religious veterans, the future Red Army men who would

66RGIA, Fond 796, op. 189, d. 2229/b, l. 271.

67RGIA, Fond 1101, op. 1, d. 1111, l. 3.

68See G. L. Freeze, ‘A Pious Folk? Religious Observance in Vladimir Diocese 1900–14’,

JfGO, 52 (2004): 323–40.

69RGIA, Fond 1101, op. 1, d. 1111, l. 1.

70‘V tserkovnykh krugakh’, KA 31 (1928): 204–13.

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be particularly hostile to the Church. But the Church itself had grievances,71 suffered mightily from the inflation and dislocation of war and had grown increasingly alienated from a crown irreparably besmirched by Rasputinism. Indeed, amidst the military crisis of 1915, with the country reeling from defeat, the Church suffered yet another scandal associated with Rasputin, as his proteg´e,´ the bishop of Tobolsk, conducted a hasty canonisation against the express orders of the Synod. The public resonance could hardly have been greater, and the damage to the Synod more ruinous. Little wonder that, when the autocracy appealed to the Church for support on 27 February 1917, in its critical hour, even the conservative Synod summarily refused.72

Russian Orthodoxy did not vanish after the Petrine reforms, but it certainly changed. Most striking was the resilience of popular faith; while the prerevolution brought and accelerated undeniable anti-religious tendencies, the vast majority remained faithful and, indeed, demanded a greater role for the Church and for themselves in the Church. But Orthodoxy was no longer part of the infamous ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality’ trilogy of official politics; it had excised the middle term and, increasingly, identified with the people, not with a secular state that had plundered its assets and failed to protect its vital interests.

71 See, for example, the collective statement of clerical deputies to the State Duma in August 1915 (at the very height of a political crisis), detailing all the Church’s woes and how so little had been resolved, in ‘Pechat’ i dukhovenstvo’, Missionerskoe obozrenie 11 (November 1915): 286–90.

72 A. V. Kartashev, ‘Revoliutsiia i sobor 1917–1918 gg.’, Bogoslovskaia mysl’ 4 (1942): 75–101.

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