Church, Nation and State in Russia and Ukraine PDF
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CHURCH, NATION AND STATE IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE Church, Nation and State in Russia and Ukraine Edited by Geoffrey A. Hosking Professor of Russian History School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-21568-3 ISBN 978-1-349-21566-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21566-9 © School of Slavonic and East European Studies 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991 978-0-333-52445-9 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1991 ISBN 978-0-312-06092-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Church, nation and state in Russia and Ukraine / edited by Geoffrey A. Hosking. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-06092-3 1. Church and state-Soviet Union-History-Congresses. 2'. Church and state-Ukraine-History-Congresses. 3. Soviet Union-Church -Congresses. 4. Ukraine-Church-Congresses. I. Hosking, Geoffrey A. BR932.C43 1991 274.7'08-dc20 91-6751 CIP Contents Acknowledgements Vll Preface viii Notes on the Contributors xii 1 The Formation of Modern Ukrainian Religious Cul- 1 ture: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Frank E. Sysyn 2 The Spirituality of the Vyg Fathers 23 Robert O. Crummey 3 The Authority of Holiness: Women Ascetics and 38 Spiritual Elders in Nineteenth-century Russia Brenda Meehan-Waters 4 The Greek Catholic Church in Nineteenth-century 52 Galicia John-Paul Himka 5 Printing the Bible in the Reign of Alexander I: 65 Toward a Reinterpretation of the Imperial Russian Bible Society Stephen K. Batalden 6 Christianity, the Service Ethic and Decembrist 79 Thought Franklin A . Walker 7 The Role of the Orthodox Missionary in the Altai: 96 Archimandrite Makary and V. I. Verbitsky David N. Collins 8 Theological Liberalism and Church Reform in Impe- 108 rial Russia Paul Valliere 9 Alexander Kireev and Theological Controversy in the 131 Russian Orthodox Church, 1890-1910 John D. Basil 10 Leo Tolstoy, a Church Critic Influenced by Orthodox 148 Thought Pdl Kolstr/J v VI Contents 11 The Church's Social Role in St Petersburg, 1880-1914 167 Simon Dixon 12 The Church Schools and Seminaries in the Russian 193 Revolution of 1905-06 John D. Morison 13 The Political Philosophy of the Russian Orthodox 210 Episcopate in the Soviet Period Michael A. Meerson 14 The Rise of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox 228 Church, 1919-22 Bohdan R. Bociurkiw 15 The Renovationist Coup: Personalities and Prog- 250 rammes Philip Walters 16 The Survival of the Russian Orthodox Church in her 271 Millennial Century: Faith as Martyria in an Atheistic State Dimitry V. Pospielovsky 17 Are the Furov Reports Authentic? 291 Raymond Oppenheim 18 Orthodoxy and Russian Nationalism in the USSR, 312 1917-88 Peter J. S. Duncan 19 Religious Currents in Contemporary Soviet Litera- 333 ture and Film John B. Dunlop Index 349 Acknowledgements Keston College and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies wish to record their gratitude to Gresham College, the Ford Foundation, the Economic and Social Science Research Council, the British Academy and Stichting getuigenis van Gods Liefde for financial support in the mounting of the conference which led to this publication. vii Preface The papers published here are the product of a conference organised in July 1988 by Keston College and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London. The conference marked the millennium of Christianity in Rus', but it was not held just because of the date. Jane Ellis and I both felt that the time was ripe to try to begin correcting an imbalance which seemed to have crept into the western (and even more Soviet) writing of Russian history, that is an increasing neglect of the role of religion. This neglect derives partly from the anti-religious bias of the revolutionary movement and the Soviet state, and western scholars have often taken it on unthinkingly from their Soviet colleagues, especially as they too live in what are now largely secularised societies (though this background has not prevented historians of Britain, Germany or the USA from being sensitive to the importance of religion in the evolution of their nations). It is not that there is a shortage of specialist books on individual aspects of religion among the East Slavonic peoples. There are a fair number of specialists around the world who have produced valuable studies. What we felt was needed was to begin the work of integrating these studies into an account of the way Tsarist Russian and Soviet society has developed. Without such integration, we are poorly equipped to understand what may be the consequences of the religious revival now taking place. With this aim in mind, Keston College and the School of Slavonic Studies began in 1985 trying to identify those scholars in the west who would be best qualified to bring together their insights into the interaction of religion with political, social, ethnic and cultural factors. There was a ready and abundant response to our requests for papers, which seemed to confirm that our concerns were widely shared. The nature of the responses strengthened our initial inclina tion not to spread the collection chronologically too thinly, but to concentrate on the modern period, and primarily on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where the prevailing neglect of religion was most marked. Meanwhile, inside the Soviet Union itself, even as we planned the conference, the first signs of a rapprochement between state and churches made our enterprise seem more topical and urgent. Of the various branches of Christianity, Orthodoxy is distinguished viii Preface ix by its close identification with both the nation and the state. Over the centuries this has often been a source of strength and stability, since it has meant support both from the secular arm and from the mass of the people. Yet that same dual identification has also not infrequently generated conflict and weakness in ways which are clearly brought out in our papers. All too often the state has been peremptory and disdainful, imposing on the church functions and demanding from it tributes which accorded ill with its spiritual calling. Novgorodian church-state relations-where the Archbishop played a conciliatory role, standing above factions and symbolising national unity-were replaced, according to Mikhail Meerson, in the Grand Duchy of Moscow by a Caesaropapism initially preached by Joseph of Voloko lamsk at the beginning of the sixteenth century. After Patriarch Nikon's abortive challenge to it, this state domination of the church then led smoothly into the secular utilitarianism of Feofan Prokopo vich and Peter I. Opposition to state supremacy created its own dilemmas, as Robert Crummey reveals in his study of the Old Belief. Conserva tives were forced to innovate, and believers in established ritual to improvise. Nostalgic for a settled community, the Vyg Fathers had to adopt a way of life more like the desert hermits of the early Christian centuries. A church organised, for reasons of state, on bureaucratic and hierarchical lines found difficulty in getting its own message across and in maintaining secure, healthy links with the mass of the people. Thus, despite the initial support of the Emperor himself, the rather egalitarian, evangelical Bible movement of the early nineteenth century was unable to take root, as Stephen Batalden demonstrates. The ethic of moral transformation and service to the people, inherent in the Gospel, tended gradually to be extruded from the church and to become the preserve of the secular opposition and then of the revolutionary movement: Franklin Walker describes the first stages of this process in his account of the Decembrists. The grip of bureaucratic ecclesiastical institutions undermined the work of parish revival, necessary for contact with the people, an unrewarding enterprise, and impeded the mission of instilling toler ance in the church and of opening it to the diversity of modern secular thought. Paul Valliere recounts some revealing episodes in this unavailing struggle, while Pal Kolst0 portrays in the figure of Lev Tolstoy a man whose intense and humane religious fervour was constantly at odds with the church and, lacking the discipline of give and take within a congregation, tended to dissipate into secular x Preface rationalism. Similarly, Simon Dixon indicates that, although the Orthodox Church (contrary to received wisdom) was concerned about the social question in the late nineteenth century, its efforts to do something effective through brotherhoods and charitable associa tions tended to run into the sands because of bureaucratic sclerosis: other faiths, more flexible and responsive to popular need, moved in to fill the gap. The Orthodox Church was thus in an unstable condition at the end of the nineteenth century, its messianic pretensions undermined by a sense of haunting inner weakness and by lack of confidence in its ability to hold its own in the intellectual battles of the modern world. These contradictory currents and forebodings seem to underlie the doctrinal disagreements over relations with the Old Catholics ex pounded by John Basil, as well as the unrest in the seminaries described by John Morison. They also gave rise to a fervent and widely supported reform movement, which was however thwarted by the tsarist regime in its final years. Yet worse was to come after the revolution of 1917, under a state which inscribed atheism on its banner. A ruthless and skilful Com munist regime was able to exploit the tensions inside the church, and especially the idealism of the reformers, to split it from within and submit it to a humiliating and destructive tutelage. Philip Walters outlines the programmes and personalities involved in the schism of the 1920s, while Dmitry Pospielovsky evokes the martyrdom which resulted. The continuing humiliation and manipulation of the church till very recent times is vividly presented in Raymond Oppenheim's personal analysis of the Furov reports. But the Orthodox Church has never simply been the tool and victim of the secular state. It has always had its own inner sources of strength, its own alternative tradition, even (perhaps especially) in times of secular oppression and apparent institutional aridity. Among both clergy and laity, some individuals have always derived special inspiration and spiritual fortitude from the church's doctrine, its liturgical tradition and its communal life. This latent resilience was manifested in the expansive but practical piety of men like Arkhi mandrit Makary and V. 1. Verbitsky, missionaries whose work is outlined by David Collins, and in the self-sacrificing, visionary devotion to duty of women ascetics and elders who created enduring monastic centres, as evoked by Brenda Meehan-Waters. Most re markably of all, this spiritual strength is revealed in the martyrs of the Soviet period, and in the clandestine lay brotherhoods mentioned by
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