RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH. We focus our attention on the Russian Church in the 19th and 20th c. since the medieval and early imperial history can be found under Kievan Rus’, Novgorodian Tradition, Muscovite Tradition, Unia, and the Spiritual Regulation (qq.v.). The difficulties caused by the Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great in the 18th c. continued into the 19th c. and developed further: The government interfered increasingly in the intellectual and administrative life of the Church; not only was there no patriarch, but the Holy Synod was controlled by the government; and the social status and economic situation of the clergy continued to deteriorate.

The ober-procurator’s power, influencing the Holy Synod and leading it, grew until the office became an official Ministry of State. Under Tsar Alexander I the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs and Education was formed, but had a brief existence (1817–1824). This so alarmed the hierarchy that it complained of persecution of the Church. Nevertheless, Count Nikolai Protasov (1799–1855) became ober-procurator of the Holy Synod from 1836 to 1855 and continued the trend of strengthening the office. During his tenure he successfully transformed the Russian Church into an organ of the state, “The Department of the Orthodox Confession.” His political methodology may be described as attempting to reduce the Russian Church and clergy to civil religion in the worst sense-bureaucratic functionaries of the state’s “confession.” With this goal, true higher education and ecclesiastical freedom became irrelevant. All that was needed was supplied by the tsar, who was “the supreme defender and guardian of the dogmas of the ruling faith, and observer of orthodoxy and all good order in the Holy Church. In this sense the Emperor, in the law of succession to the throne (5 April 1797), is called the Head of the Church” (Fundamental Laws, articles 42, 43, 1832 edition). Under Protasov, church finances and clergy employment became the sole domain of the ober-procurator. Of those who opposed him, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, renowned for his work on the Russian Bible (q.v.) translation project, distinguished himself by attempting to keep Protasov in check.

After the dissolution of the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs and Education (1824), Philaret proposed organizing the Russian Church into nine metropolitan districts to correspond to Alexander I’s organization of provinces into nine large administrative districts. These metropolitan districts, as in the ancient church, would be self-governing and outside governmental control, limiting the sphere of influence of the Holy Synod. Philaret hoped to create an institution from these metropolitan districts that would have authority over the (Regulation’s) Synod. Under Tsar Nicholas I, Protasov’s power grew and the question of the decentralization of ecclesiastical administration could not be raised. But with the passage of the liberal reforms of Tsar Alexander II (1855–1881) the proposal was revived.

Although in the second half of the 19th c. none of the proposals for the reform of the Spiritual Regulation’s Holy Synod got beyond the point of theoretical discussion, an impressive assortment of supporters came forward. Aside from Philaret, these included an aide to the ober-procurator, A. N. Muraviev, who engaged in extensive correspondence encouraging reform. The Slavophiles (q.v.) championed the cause of sobornost or conciliarity, and saw a parallel between freedom (q.v.) of the human spirit and freedom of Church life-both without government interference. The secular press also entered the fray and published articles-and even a short novel-wherein the question of freedom within the Church was broached. Other principal voices of the time, Vladimir Soloviev, Feodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Nikolai Gogol (qq.v.), were not actively involved in the resolution of this particular problem, though all involved themselves in contemporary questions regarding the Church.

Near the end of the 19th c. the necessity for changes in the Church’s relationship to the state was better recognized. Tsar Alexander III and Ober-Procurator C. Pobedonostsev entrusted elementary education to parish schools (1884), and the number of schools grew rapidly, though the quality of education was inferior. But Pobedonostsev was the chief architect of ultraconservative reactionary policy in the administrations of Alexander III and Nicholas II and proved himself no friend of Church freedom (q.v.). He began persecutions of Doukhobors (q.v.), Jews, Christian denominations, and sectarians, along with a forced Russification policy. The favored “state Church” was supposed to fare better-but it did not. The next round of reforms in 1905 were accomplished in spite of Pobedonostsev’s strong opposition. From clergy who favored labor unions and religious toleration to those who tried to implement Orthodox Church reforms, which had been discussed for almost a century-all had to do business with the censorship of Pobedonostsev’s reactionary philosophy and policies.

To oppose the ober-procurator the Church had a champion in S. Witte, the president of the Committee of Ministers. An imperial ukaz was issued for religious toleration on 12 December 1904, and the “state Church” found itself in the unenviable position of being in more difficult circumstances than the heterodox: There was freedom of conscience and rights of self-determination for all the major religious communities except the Orthodox. The president of the Holy Synod, Metropolitan Antony (Vladkovsky) of St. Petersburg, took leadership of the movement for ecclesiastical reform with Witte’s assistance.

The Orthodox “reform movement” lasted from 1905 to 1918 and spelled the end of the Spiritual Regulation. Ironically, the following “Memorandum” items that Vladkovsky and Witte acted on is much the same list of requests made by the Russian Patriarchate in 1990 to the post-Communist government: granting of the rights of a legal person to the parish; inclusion of clergy and the parish in local (zemstvo) governments; granting to the hierarchy the right to take part in the highest state institutions; revival and renewal of the parish; decentralization of ecclesiastical administration; broadening of the powers of the diocesan assemblies with lay delegates; and reform of the ecclesiastical courts. Most of these measures took effect in the Russian Orthodox Churches in North America and Western Europe because of the 1905 to 1918 reform movements, but were never fully implemented in Russia because of the revolutions in 1905 and 1917.

In the midst of international conflict, internal national rebellion, and a period of ecclesiastical reforms, the Church presented a vision of and reaped benefits from the least likely of sources. First, Seraphim of Sarov (q.v.), a traditional Orthodox monastic and ascetic, was recognized as a saint (q.v.) over the loud protests of Pobedonostsev and the Russian intelligentsia who claimed this was “a canonization of peasant ignorance.” Seraphim proceeded to become the most influential spiritual force in Russia and the emigration over succeeding decades. Second, a group of young Marxists including Nicholas Berdiaev, Sergius Bulgakov (qq.v.) and Peter Struve converted and proceeded to pen the most damning indictment of the Russian intelligentsia and Marxism-Leninism ever to be written. The indictment was convincing and prophetic, but less known in the West than among the Slavs. Third, the outpost of Orthodoxy in Russian America helped to produce the next Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Tikhon Belavin (qq.v.), elected in 1918 as the first patriarch since Peter the Great.

The reforms of the Church were legislated contemporaneously with Lenin’s abolition of the judicial system in December 1917-just in time to have church properties confiscated and religious education halted. All this was to be enforced by a new organization of political police created that same month, the “Cheka.” In fact some of the reforms were instituted in Russia, but under the guise of the Living Church (q.v.), which was short-lived (1922–26). Due to this and the murder and persecution of tens of thousands of clergy and church members in a programmatic fashion in the early years of Communism, and in a less organized way after Khrushchev, the reforms never became a reality. Mere survival was challenge enough in these years. Sadly, the Russian Church under the Soviets again became an agent of the state, however unwilling and coerced. It officially supported every regime and was used to advance national and international policies. Active churchmen who declared themselves publicly like Fr. Pavel Florensky (q.v.) could be found, but by the 1950s almost all of them had “disappeared.”

Circumstances changed radically with glasnost and perestroika in that the perception of the status of the Church by the people and the leaders improved-even if the Church was just one option among the many mainstream and fringe organizations to crop up in the rarefied atmosphere of Russian freedoms. The transformation occurred at the same time as the celebration of the millennium of the Christianization of Kievan Rus’ in 1988. Little that the people valued in their culture had come from Communism, and the tourists confirmed that evaluation of Russian culture. Shortly thereafter a new patriarch, Alexis Ridiger (q.v.), was elected, and this free election in an exciting new era was acknowledged as judiciously choosing the right person-possibly even the best person-for the job. The Church retains its credibility in the political exigencies of the new democratic processes when it continues its witness-even the witness of its most recent martyrs (q.v.), succeeds provisionally in charitable works, and manifests the best of Russia’s cultural heritage.