Missionaries of Official Orthodoxy:
State Regulation of Inter-Confessional Interaction in Late Imperial Russia
Daniel Scarborough
Miami University
0
On April 17th of 1905, Emperor Nicholas II issued an “Edict of Toleration,” which
legalized conversion away from Orthodox Christianity, and guaranteed all subjects of the
Russian Empire “freedom of belief and prayer according to the dictates of his conscience.”1
Many among the Orthodox clergy welcomed this relaxation of state control over religious
practice, and hoped that it would create some distance between their Church and the increasingly
unpopular regime. An article published in Moscow’s diocesan press in September of 1905
declared:
Remember that the time has passed when we could rely on the strength of police
enforcement, and thank God for that. Remember instead the words of the Savior: My
grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in my weakness. (2 Cor. 12:9).
We need not fanaticism, but toleration.”2
Nevertheless, a significant portion of the Orthodox clergy continued to call upon police
protection of their privileged status after 1905. Due, in large part, to the collaboration of the
Orthodox clergy, the imperial government continued to restrict the religious freedom of its
subjects after the edict, and Russian society remained fragmented by confessional boundaries in
the early 20th century. Some historians have attributed protracted religious tensions to Orthodox
Christianity itself. Orthodox chauvinism and exclusivity, as the official religion of the Russian
Empire, has been identified as the root of the “mass ethnophobias” that arose in the 19th century.3
Walter Lacquer suggests that the tendency of extreme right-wing groups to demonize minorities
was attributable to pervasive superstition and preoccupation with the forces of evil among the
1
Laura Engelstein, Slavophile Empire: Imperial Russia’s Illiberal Path (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 9596.
2
“Pastyrskoe sluzhenie,” Moskovskie tserkovnye vedomosti, no. 36 (Sept. 4, 1905), 374.
3
Liudmila Gatagova “Orthodoxy, Ethnicity, and Ethnophobias in the Late Tsarist Era,” in Juliet Johnson, Marietta
Stepaniants and Benjamin Forest, eds. Religion and Identity in Modern Russia: the Revival of Orthodoxy and Islam
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 39-51.
1
Orthodox.4 The present work argues that Orthodox Christians were not predisposed toward
religious intolerance. Rather, direct state intervention into Church administration in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries usurped the task of interacting with other religious associations from
Orthodox Christians, rendering them more dependent on the regime for protection from religious
competition. The creation of the office of the diocesan missionary in 1888 to combat apostasy
from Orthodoxy was an important factor in perpetuating Orthodox reliance on state protection.
The sociologists Brian Grim and Roger Finke have utilized extensive research on both
governmental and social restrictions of religious freedom across the contemporary globe to argue
for an inverse relationship between religious freedom and religious conflict. They have found
that when states reduce regulations on the interaction of various religious groups within their
borders, allowing them to compete and interact freely, religiously motivated social conflict tends
to decline. Conversely, when governments intervene in interfaith relations, often with the
intention of preventing conflict among different sects or protecting the privileged status of an
official religion, religious conflict tends to increase.5 This model helps to shed light on the social
impact of the religious regulations of the tsarist regime in the early 20th century. State
intervention into interfaith relations manufactured conflict. Consequently, social and
entrepreneurial networks remained largely confined to coreligionists during Russia’s industrial
expansion, inhibiting cooperation across ethnic and confessional boundaries.6 Historians of late
Imperial Russia have identified religious segregation as an important factor behind the inability
4
Walter Laqueur Black Hundred: The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 54.
Brian J. Grim and Roger Finke The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the TwentyFirst Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
6
Henning Hillmann and Brandy L. Aven, “Fragmented Networks and Entrepreneurship in Late Imperial Russia” in
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 117, No. 2 (September 2011), 522.
5
2
of the middle classes to collaborate for political self-assertion in the Duma era.7 The present
study presents archival evidence from the Orthodox dioceses of Moscow and Tver to argue that
Orthodox associations had developed extensive local autonomy from the regime by the early 20th
century as a result of the relaxation of religious regulations, and were poised to develop closer
ties with other communities and associations in Russia’s rapidly changing society. State
intervention disrupted these ties and played a major role in perpetuating confessional barriers. By
insulating the Orthodox from interfaith competition, the imperial government greatly hindered
the Church, as a major social and institutional network, from participating in the nascent civil
society of late imperial Russia.
Prior to Imperial Russia’s experiment with religious toleration, state protection of
“official Orthodoxy” was a draconian form of social control that the regime imposed on all its
subjects, including Orthodox Christians. Atheism was illegal for all subjects of the Empire.
Conversion away from Orthodoxy was illegal for those born into the Church. Children of mixed
Orthodox and non-Orthodox marriages were automatically considered Orthodox. Landowning
apostates from Orthodoxy could have their property seized if it contained an Orthodox
population. In some cases, apostates were deprived of their own children.8 For the Orthodox
clergy, this protected status of their church came at a price. The state viewed the Orthodox
7
Galina Ulianova, “Old Believers and New Entrepreneurs: Religious Belief and Ritual in Merchant Moscow,” in
James L. West and Iurii A. Petrov, eds. Merchant Moscow: Images of Russia’s Vanished Bourgeoisie (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1998), 61-71; Thomas C. Owen, “Impediments to a Bourgeois Consciousness in Russia,
1880-1905: The Estate Structure, Ethnic Diversity, and Economic Reglionalism,” in Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D.
Kassow, and James L. West, eds. Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in
Late Imperial Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 75-89; Alfred Reiber Merchants and
Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 415.
8
Vladimir Rozhkov, Tserkovnye voprosy v gosudarstvennoi Dume (Moscow, 2004), 17-19.
3
Church as its promoter of loyalty and social support among the general population, and it
reserved the right to enforce conformity to this role. This prerogative was stated explicitly in the
Law Code of the Russian Empire: “Autocratic power acts in Church administration through the
Holy Governing Synod, which it established.”9 As representatives of the official church,
Orthodox priests were deprived of the freedom to preach sermons contrary to government policy.
As prescribed in an 1885 digest of clerical regulations, the Orthodox priest was to preach, “about
submission to authority, and especially to the authority of the Tsar, and about the obligations of
every rank. . .”10 To prevent deviation from these guidelines, all priests were required to submit
their sermons in written form to their local superintendent (blagochinnyi) for approval prior to
delivering them.11 Even proselytism was regulated among the Orthodox clergy, as missionary
work among the non-Orthodox required permission. Ironically, the clergy of no other religion
endured such tight regulation of their sermons as did the pastors of the official Orthodox Church.
Despite the extensive demands that the regime imposed on them, Orthodox clergymen
were often disinclined to call upon state power in return. Unlike the clergy of most state churches
throughout Europe, the Orthodox pastorate enjoyed neither significant financial support from the
government, nor legal enforcement of tithe payments.12 By the beginning of the 20th century, the
Synod was providing state salaries to priests in some urban parishes, and supplementary aid to
priests in impoverished, rural parishes. Yet, most parish clergymen derived the majority of their
livelihood from the voluntary tithes of their parishioners. The parish clergy was, therefore, more
9
Quoted in: M. A. Babkin, Dukhovenstvo russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi i sverzhenie monarkhii (nachalo XXv. konets
1917 g.) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia istoricheskaia biblioteka Rossii, 2007), 88.
10
T. Barsov, Sbornik deistvuiushchikh i rukovodstvennykh tserkovnykh i tserkovno-grazhdanskikh postanovlenii po
vedomstvu pravoslavnago ispovedaniia (St. Petersburg, 1885), 259.
11
T. G. Leont’eva, Vera i progress: Pravoslavnoe sel’skoe dukhovenstvo Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX – nachale
XX veka (Moskva: Novyi Khronograf, 2002), 22.
12
On state support for official churches, see: Robert Lee, Rural Society and the Anglican Clergy, 1815-1914:
Encountering and Managing the Poor (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2006); and William D. Bowman,
Priest and Parish in Vienna, 1780 to 1880 (Boston: Humanities Press, Inc., 1999).
4
directly beholden to the Orthodox population than to the authorities. Priests did not report
incriminating confessions to the police as they were legally required to do.13 Many clergymen
even concealed the number of apostates and religious dissenters residing in their parishes from
the authorities to avoid alienating the communities that supported them.14 The privileged status
of the Orthodox Church, thus, was more of a burden than a boon to most parish clergymen.
The mid-19th century saw a relaxation of the imperial government’s control over religious
expression and interaction. As part of a series of “Great Reforms,” which included the abolition
of serfdom and the establishment of local representative government in Russia, Orthodox
Christians were authorized to participate in voluntary associations known as “brotherhoods.”
This institution was a revival of the 17th century Orthodox brotherhoods of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. They were originally established by Orthodox laypeople within the
Commonwealth to organize mutual aid for the protection of church property and the support of
religious schools after six of their bishops entered into union with the Roman Catholic Church in
1596.15 The brotherhoods were first recreated in 1862 in their place of origin, Ukraine, where the
Eastern Rite Catholic Church still competed with the Orthodox, and they soon spread to other
dioceses throughout the Russian Empire. In keeping with the reformist mood of the era, state
authorities endorsed the participation of “society” in officially sponsored enterprises, such as the
promotion of Orthodox Christianity. In 1864, the Minister of Internal Affairs promulgated the
“Fundamental Rules” for the establishment of brotherhoods. These rules granted retroactive state
recognition to existing brotherhoods, and authorized the establishment of future institutions for
13
Babkin, Dukhovenstvo, 63.
Gregory Freeze, The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1977), 31.
15
Mikhail Koialovich, Litovskaia tserkovnaia uniia, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Strannik, 1861), 2: 84.
14
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the support of missionary work, church building and renovation, education, and charity.16 An
Empire-wide survey of brotherhoods in 1893 reported their total number to be 159 with 37,642
members in possession of an estimated 1,629,707 rubles.17 At the same time that Orthodox
Christians were being invited to participate in voluntary associations, the cruel persecution of
religious nonconformists was being tempered. In 1874, for example, the marriages of Old
Believers were officially recognized and their children were accepted into educational
institutions.18 The modest liberalization of the regime’s regulation of religion facilitated greater
interaction between the Orthodox and those religious communities living in close proximity with
them. This interaction often took place in the form of debates and conversion attempts.
Occasionally, it resulted in cooperation.
Primary education provided a particularly rich opportunity for interfaith collaboration.
Education was a universal concern, especially with the appearance of new employment
opportunities for literate peasants that came with industrialization at the end of the 19th century.19
Moreover, the provision of education to “schismatics and sectarians” was considered a step in
the process of their conversion back to Orthodoxy. Beginning in the early nineteenth century,
Orthodox priests began establishing small schools in their parishes to provide basic education
and religious instruction to the children of their parishioners for no obligatory fee. Brotherhoods
and other voluntary associations provided the main source of support for parish schools, even
after the state allocated funds for their support in 1884. In 1902, one Moscow priest described the
process thus: “The clergy create schools from what? Well, from nothing. We have neither funds
16
O. V. Kravchenko, “Tserkovnye bratstva: istoriia i istoriografiia,” in T. G. Leont’eva. ed. Provintsial’noe
dukhovenstvo dorevoliutsionoi rossii: sbornik nauchnykh trudov vserossiiskoi zaochnoi konferentsii (Tver:
Slaviaskii Mir, 2006), 248-249.
17
A. Papkov, Tserkovnyia bratstva. Kratkii statisticheskii ocherk o polozhenii tserkovnykh bratstv k nachalu 1893
goda (St. Petersburg: Sinodal’naia Timpografiia, 1893), 11-12, 44-45.
18
Rozhkov, Tserkovnye voprosy, 23.
19
Leont’eva, Vera i progress, 110.
6
nor material. The priest goes from door to door, bows, and asks his parishioners to help him
build the school in which their children must learn.”20 Some of these “parishioners” were Old
Believers. Brotherhoods sometimes published reports on parish schools they supported in which
only a minority of the students adhered to the official, Orthodox Church.21 In some cases, the
“schismatics” themselves provided important support for these schools. Moscow’s parish school
inspector published a report in 1903 in which he recounted the visit of one Old Believer to a
parish school. The man was reportedly so impressed with the Russian language lesson and the
children’s singing that he donated twenty kopeks on the spot, before turning around and donating
thirty more.22 In such reports, the ultimate goal of conversion was not always mentioned.
In addition to the embryonic realm of interfaith collaboration, simple interaction with
other confessions was becoming unavoidable for the Orthodox in Russia’s rapidly changing
society at the turn of the century. Heather Coleman has documented the outbreaks of violence
within Orthodox villages in reaction to Baptist conversions in the early 20th century.23 It is not
clear, however, that most Orthodox laypeople were eager to enter into conflict with other
religious communities. The large number of petitions and complaints that the increasingly
literate parishioners of Moscow and Tver dioceses sent to their consistories do not reflect the
preoccupation of ecclesiastical officialdom with the suppression and conversion of schismatics
20
Sviashchennik V. O. “Tserkovno-prikhodskaia shkola i zemstvo,” Moskovskie tserkovnye vedomosti, no. 4
(January 27, 1902), 48.
21
For example, see the following brotherhood report from 1901 describing two parish schools. In one school, 18 out
of 29 students were Old Believers. In the other, 28 out of 30 students were Old Believers: “Otchet po Bratstvu sv.
Petra mitropolita za 1901 god,” Moskovskie tserkovnye vedomosti, no. 29 (May 26, 1902), 350-351.
22
“Otchet eparkh. nabliudatelia o sostoianii tserkovnykh shkol moskovskoi eparkhii v uchebno-vospitatel’nom
otnoshenii za 1901-1902 uchebnyi god,” Moskovskie tserkovnye vedomosti. Offitsial’nyi otdel, no. 3 (January 19th,
1903), 12.
23
Heather Coleman, “Tales of Violence against Religious Dissidents in the Orthodox Village,” in Mark D. Steinberg
and Healther J. Coleman, eds. Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2007), 200-221.
7
and sectarians.24 In letters written in praise of their priest, if parishioners mentioned other
religious groups, it was usually to commend their pastor for maintaining amicable relations with
them. In 1909, for example, parishioners from a church in the Lefortovo district of Moscow
wrote to the consistory requesting that their priest be honored with a pectoral cross. Among his
qualities and accomplishments, they noted that, “sectarians living among us, as well as members
of other faiths such as Catholics and Lutherans, with whom he has dealings in connection with
the German cemetery, regard him with the same deep respect as do we.”25 When parishioners did
commend the missionary work of their priest, they described this work as a component of
education and community-building rather than confrontation. In 1909, parishioners from the
Volokolamsk district of Moscow province wrote to the consistory that: “The kindness and
morals of our priest have earned him love and respect even from the Old Believers, from whom
five families have left the schism for Orthodoxy thanks to his authoritative and edifying
Christian persuasion.”26 It seems unlikely that many parish priests felt pressured by the
parishioners who supported them to initiate hostile confrontations with religious dissenters. It is
still less likely that many peasant parishioners would have approved of their clergyman bringing
police into their communities to enforce religious conformity.
By the turn of the century, the parish clergy and Orthodox laity in most dioceses had
developed substantial networks of voluntary associations including brotherhoods, parish schools,
charitable organizations, and mutual aid societies that were largely self-funded and self-directed,
24
For an example of the official policy of surveillance, prosecution, and conversion of Orthodox apostates, see the
reports of the Over-procurator of the Synod to the Emperor: Vsepoddanneishii otchet Ober-prokurora Sviateishago
Sinoda po vedomstvu Pravoslavnago ispovedaniia za 1903-1904 gody (Saint Petersburg, 1909), 134-144.
25
TsIAM, f. 203, op. 551, d. 18, l. 47 (Predstavleniia raznykh lits Moskovskomu i Kolomenskomu Mitropolitu
Vladimiru o nagrazhdenii sviashchennotserkovnosluzhitelei tserkvei Moskovskoi eparkhii).
26
TsIAM, f. 203, op. 551, d. 71, l. 4 (Delo o nagrazhdenii dukhovnykh lits za zaslugi po eparkhial’nomu
vedomstvu. 1909). For more letters of parishioners to the consistories of Moscow and Tver, see: TsIAM, f. 203, op.
550, d. 267, l. 1-l.o. 35 (Delo o sostavlenii spiskov lits dukhovnago zvaniia, predstavlennykh k nagradam. 1908), f.
203, op. 550, d. 267, l. 24 (Delo o sostablenii spiskov). GATO, f. 160, op. 1, d. 34475, l. 8 (Khodataistva o
nagrazhdenii dukhovnykh lits).
8
with the approval of the diocesan bishop.27 These social networks were more representative of
the communities that supported them than of “official Orthodoxy,” and they shared priorities
with other religious communities. The anti-religious intimidation and violence that erupted
during the 1905 revolution affected both Orthodox and non-Orthodox communities.28 The
archpriest-superintendent (blagochinnyi) of Rzhev, a city in Tver province dominated by Old
Belief, noted in his 1906 report to the consistory that the “schismatics” had served as allies
against revolutionary violence over the previous months. “The city is characterized by hostility
toward and condemnation of all strikers. The Schism, in my personal opinion, as a source of
strict conservatism, has done Rzhev an important service by opposing the harmful trends of
recent years.”29 With the restoration of order, and the initiation of Russia’s experiment with
representative democracy, the Orthodox encountered other religious communities in the new
forum of parliamentary politics. As a representative of the Orthodox Church to the Second
Duma, Metropolitan Evlogii described his feelings of sympathy and admiration for Muslim
deputies who experienced the same anti-religious scorn from liberal and radical politicians as did
the Orthodox.
I was able to observe how Muslim deputies, at their appointed times, left the assembly
and prayed in the Catherine Hall. They squatted in corners and prayed with rhythmic
27
For discussions of these associations, see: E. Iu. Apkarimova, “Tserkovno-prikhodskaia blagotvoritel’nost’ na
srednem urale vo vtoroi polovine XIX – nachale XX v.” in L. A. Bulgakova, M. F. Florinskii, V. G. Chernukha, eds.
Blagotvoritel’nost’ v istorii Rossii. Novye dokumenty i issledovaniia (St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2008), 279-287;
N. Ul’ianova, “Tserkovnoprikhodskie popechitel’stva kak strukturnaia edinitsa blagotvoritel’nosti vnutri mestnogo
soobshchestva v pozdneimperskoi Rossii,” in: B.V. Anan’ich, S. A. Basov, V. M. Voronkov, eds.
Blagotvoritel’nost’ v Rossii: istoricheskie i sotsial’noe-ekonomicheskie issledovaniia (St. Petersburg: Izd. Novikova,
2004), 166-176
28
For example, revolutionaries in the Baltic provinces, staged demonstrations outside the Lutheran Churches, which
they associated with the German nobility. See: James D. White, “The 1905 Revolution in Russia’s Baltic
Provinces,” in Jonathan D. Smele and Anthony Heywood, eds. The Russian Revolution of 1905: Centenary
Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2005), 65.
29
GATO, f. 160, op. 1, d. 34398, l. 103 (Svedeniia o sostoianii tserkvei i blagochinnikh okrugov Tverskoi Gub.
1906).
9
motions of their bodies. Journalists and deputies laughed at them while they smoked, but
I was moved to respect them for bearing witness to their religious convictions.30
The Orthodox were capable of perceiving the potential for collaboration with other religious
communities in the Russian Empire of the Duma era. Their ultimate failure to engage in
interfaith cooperation was not simply a function of ingrained chauvinism. Rather, it was the
result of the Church’s inability to escape the role of representing “official Orthodoxy.”
The progressive expansion of local autonomy within the Orthodox Church in the second
half of the 19th century was dealt a critical setback during the “counter-reform” era. The 1880s
witnessed a resurgence of state harassment of “schismatics” as one component of Alexander III’s
Russification policies, and in reaction to the spread of Protestantism among the Russian
population. In 1888, the Holy Synod promulgated the “Rules for the organization of missions
and for the work of missionaries and church pastors among schismatics and sectarians,”31 which
established a new state-supported position within the Orthodox pastorate. According to this
decree, specially appointed missionaries were to be employed in each diocese to conduct and
supervise missionary work among religious dissenters deemed to be apostate from Orthodoxy.
This work consisted of conducting surveillance on apostates, prosecuting those among them
guilty of proselytizing to the Orthodox, and attempting to convert the rest.32 These missionaries
were paid generous salaries so as to free them from any other obligations. Some of them were
30
Mitropolit Evlogii, Put’ moei zhiznii (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1994), 160.
This decree is cited in a letter from a Moscow brotherhood to Metropolitan Vladimir in: Tsentral’nyi istoricheskii
arkhiv Moskvy (TsIAM), f. 203, op. 544, d. 35, l. 43. (Delo o naznachenii na dolzhnost’ eparkhial’nogo
protivoraskol’nicheskogo missionera prepodavatelia Moskovskoi dukhovnoi seminarii Polianskogo).
32
See: Heather Coleman. Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 1905-1929. (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2005), 21; Sergei Zhuk. Russia’s Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern
Russia and Ukraine, 1830-1917. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 326.
31
10
recruited from among the pastorate, while others were laymen.33 The office itself created a new
point of overlap between the Orthodox clergy and the state. These professional missionaries were
unlike other officials who strove to regulate pastoral work in that they worked alongside the
parish clergy. Rather than restricting the parish clergy’s ability to interact with other confessions,
they usurped this responsibility from within the diocesan networks.
Although they were not accountable to the laity in the same way as the regular parish
clergy, the diocesan missionaries acquired influence over diocesan resources derived from the
voluntary contributions of parishioners. For example, at Tver’s diocesan congress of 1902, the
bishop blocked the motion by clerical representatives to allocate a parish taxation surplus of
12,472.92 rubles from the consistory’s savings to local educational expenses on the grounds that
the salary of the diocesan missionary was derived from the interest that these invested funds
generated.34 Official missionaries also occupied prominent positions in the largest Orthodox
brotherhoods in the dioceses.35 In this capacity, and with the support of the bishops, missionaries
were able to siphon off time and money from the brotherhoods’ normal agendas to support “antisectarian” work. Unlike the missionary work of the regular parish clergy, that of the diocesan
missionaries focused less on education and more on the gathering of information on apostates
and “sectarian propagandists.” The missionaries often employed the local police to help them
33
On one prominent lay missionary, Varzhanskii, see: A. N. Kazakevich, ed. Pravoslavnaia Moskva v 1917-1921
godakh: sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Moscow: izd. Glavarkhiva Moskvy, 2004), 308.
34
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Tverskoi oblasti (GATO), f. 160, op. 1, d. 34382, l. 5 (Delo s predstavleniiem protokolov
s’ezda Tverskago eparkhial’nogo dukhovenstva. 1901-2).
35
See, for example: GATO, f. 644, op. 1, d. 409, l. 1 (Zhurnaly soveta bratstva kniazia mikhaila Iaroslavicha
Tverskogo za 1900). TsIAM, f. 203, op. 544, d. 35, l. 1-l.3 (Delo o naznachenii na dolzhnost’ eparkhial’nogo
protivoraskol’nicheskogo missionera prepodavatelia Moskovskoi dukhovnoi seminarii Polianskogo).
11
with this surveillance.36 The institution of the diocesan mission grew into an influential interest
group that perpetuated itself within the ecclesiastical structure.
In May of 1908, the Synod approved plans to establish missionary councils in each
diocese. Headed by a diocesan missionary, each of these councils would oversee a network of
district missionaries throughout the diocese.37 While theoretically intended to promote
missionary work by parish clergy and parishioners, these official missionaries actually retained
firm control over missionary activity and the funds allocated to support it. Upon his appointment
as chairman of Moscow’s missionary council in 1917, the Vicar Bishop of Dmitrovskii, Aleksii,
expressed his concerns to Metropolitan Makarii of Moscow regarding the possibility of conflicts
of interest within the council’s decision making structure. “Hitherto, missionary concerns and
material concerns have both been resolved in the missionary council. Individuals with vested
interests in the designation of funds have taken part, as voting members, in decisions regarding
the allocation of those funds.”38 In this process of inserting themselves into the ecclesiastical
structure with official backing and extracting resources from the diocesan networks, the diocesan
missionaries gradually became the main representatives of the Orthodox Church to other
religious communities.
Official missionaries held special licenses that authorized them to confront apostates
through debate and proselytism. The text of the following license, issued in 1898 to an assistant
missionary of peasant extraction demonstrates that this authority extended into the very churches
of the regular parish clergy.
36
For an example of police involvement in the surveillance of sectarians, see: TsIAM, f. 1381, op. 1, d. 9, l. 14 – l.o.
16 (Doklad i pis’ma dukhovenstva Moskovskoi oblasti v eparkhial’noi missionerskoi sovete o sobranniiakh
religioznykh sekt).
37
Heather Coleman, Russian Baptists, 81-82.
38
TsIAM, f. 1381, op. 1, d. 9, l.1-l.o.1 (Doklady i pis’ma dukhovenstva Moskovskoi oblasti v eparkhial’noi
missionerskoi sovete o sobranniiakh religioznykh sekt).
12
By order of His Imperial Majesty, Autocrat of all Russia, through the Moscow
Consistory, this license is issued to the peasant Afanasii Vasilev Kuznetsov, assistant
missionary of Luzhitsk okrug, Moscow province, to be presented at the appropriate times
to the civil authorities in both cities and settlements, and asserts that he, Kuznetsov, has
been authorized by the Diocesan Authorities to conduct public and private discussions
with schismatic Old Believers and other sectarians in churches, monasteries, public
buildings, factories . . . in private homes, and under the open sky.39
While the parish clergy were not explicitly forbidden from engaging in religious discussions with
the non-Orthodox, they were required to obtain permission to hold such public and private events
that the bearer of the above license could organize at will. By exacerbating the pastorate’s
insulation from non-Orthodox communities, the diocesan missionaries rendered them illprepared for the challenges that 1905 presented.
The Edict of Toleration focused attention on the disadvantage at which state regulation
had placed the Orthodox clergy. In addition to decriminalizing apostasy from Orthodoxy, the
edict cancelled restrictions on the freedom of protestant converts to associate in prayer houses
and in private homes.40 The Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, Antonii (Vadkovskii), immediately
called for a corresponding relaxation of regulations on the speech and association of the
Orthodox clergy. He argued before the Committee of Ministers that state tutelage, “renders the
voice of the Church inaudible in both private and public life,” and that the continuation of such
tutelage in an openly multi-confessional society would place the Church in an untenable
position.41 While hopes for the reform of Church administration were never fulfilled, neither was
39
TsIAM, f. 203, op. 544, d. 35, l. 4.
Coleman, Russian Baptists, 75.
41
Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkago bogosloviia (Paris: YMCA Press, 1983), 476.
40
13
the “freedom of conscience” that the edict proclaimed entirely realized. On August 18th of the
same year, the Synod clarified the legal procedure for conversion. “Toleration” entailed the
freedom to convert away from Orthodoxy, but only to another Christian faith. Those who wished
to do so were required to declare their intentions to the provincial governor via the police
administration. Proselytizing among Orthodox Christians remained illegal. 42 It became clear that
the Church was to retain a reduced version of its privileged status over other confessions. Yet,
the decision of whether to utilize state enforcement of this status at the local level now rested
largely on individual parish clergymen. Continued restrictions on their own freedom of speech
made the decision to use police force far more tempting, even for those clergymen who longed
for greater freedom from “official Orthodoxy.” After 1905, diocesan missionaries assumed the
new function of facilitating the parish clergy’s recourse to the legal protection from religious
competition that remained available to them.
One Fr. Polianskii, a diocesan missionary in Moscow, published a series of articles in the
diocesan press in which he delineated and clarified the legal restrictions that remained in place
against the non-Orthodox after the Edict of Toleration.
. . . it would be completely incorrect to presume that because the edict does not forbid
something, that it therefore permits it. The edict permits only that which is written in it,
and it is not written that members of other religions, Old Believers, and sectarians have
the right to conduct propaganda among the Orthodox. . . . In the journal of the Committee
42
“Opredeleniia Sviateishago Sinoda,” Moskovskie tserkovnye vedomosti. Offitsial’nyi otdel, no. 4 (January 29th,
1906), 13.
14
of Ministers, it is clearly stated that propagandistic activity by various sects and
ideologies, if such should occur, should be investigated and prevented.43
Polianskii had left his position as instructor at Moscow Seminary in 1903 to work as a full-time
missionary, and was compensated with an apartment with heating and a salary of 3,000 rubles a
year.44 This was quite an improvement over the 700 to 900 rubles a year that he would have
received as a seminary teacher.45 It was in these missionaries’ interest that the parish clergy
continue to appeal to them for assistance after the Edict of Toleration. By acting as legal advisors
to rank and file clergymen, assisting and encouraging them to utilize legal restrictions against
their religious competitors, official missionaries were protecting their own professional
relevance. Many pastors obliged them.
Letters between Moscow’s parish clergymen and diocesan missionaries illustrate the
relationship that developed between the two groups, and the tactics that they developed. In 1912,
one priest from the town of Mytishch, Fr. Protopopov, addressed two letters to the diocesan
missionary, Varzhanskii, in which he recounted the attempts by local Baptists to win converts
from among the Orthodox. “Regarding the Most Holy Mother of God, they claimed that She was
a simple woman. . . . they said that one should not kiss the Gospels.”46 Fr. Protopopov also
expressed fear that his parishioners might be won over by Baptist “propaganda.” “One young
woman, who is very religious but uneducated, has had her Orthodox beliefs shattered by the
shameless arguments of these sectarians. She has been left with no foundation and is suffering
43
“Po povodu Vysochaishago ukaza Pravitel’stvuiushchemu Senatu ot 17 aprelia 1905 g. v otnoshenii k
staroobriadtsam.(Prodolzhenie),” Moskovskie tserkovnye vedomosti, no. 3 (January 22nd, 1906), 30.
44
TsIAM, f. 203, op. 544, d. 35, l.o. 45.
45
“Ustav Pravoslavnykh Dukhovnykh Seminarii 1884 g.” Printed in full in: A. I. Mramornov. Dukhovnaia
seminariia v Rossii nachala XX veka: krizis i vozmozhnosti ego preodoleniia (Saratov: Nauchnaia kniga, 2007), 209.
46
TsIAM, f. 1381, op. 1, d. 9, l. 6 (Doklady i pis’ma v eparkhial’noi missionerskoi sovete).
15
from internal strife.”47 What would seem to have been an important occasion for pastoral action,
Fr. Protopopov viewed as cause for police intervention. He repeatedly pointed out that these
meetings were illegal and asked Varzhanskii to have them shut down.
Because the law on sectarian meetings has obviously been broken, I humbly implore
Your Excellency to petition for their immediate closure in Mytishch, and for the complete
prohibition of local sectarians, of whom there are only seven, to hold any meetings
whatsoever in the future, including prayer meetings.48
These letters reveal an acute lack of confidence on the part of this priest in his ability to resist the
influence of just seven Baptist evangelists without police support. Such timidity is not entirely
surprising considering the fact that the priest himself could not legally have held large, extraliturgical meetings of his own without a permit. The diocesan mission offered the priest an easy
alternative to confronting both state restrictions and religious competition.
In response to these letters, Varzhanskii dispatched a subordinate missionary to observe
the situation in that town. That missionary, Aleksei Tsvetkov, reported his subsequent
confrontation with the Baptists, and seemed to think that he had gained the upper hand. He
attended their sermon in a private home along with “fifty to sixty people.” The preacher, about
twenty years old, reportedly proclaimed that, “of the Church of Christ, that is the Orthodox
Church . . . there remain only scraps [rozhki da nozhki]. Those who claim to follow the teachings
of the Apostles lead dissolute lives. If they carry the keys to the Kingdom of God they use them
neither for themselves nor to admit others.” Several spectators, Tsvetkov reported, were offended
and left. After the talk he approached the preacher and asked, “How can there remain only scraps
of the Church of Christ when Christ himself promised Her eternal life?” Instead of an answer,
47
48
Ibid., l. 7.
TsIAM, f. 1381, op. 1, d. 9, l. 7.
16
they forcibly led him out. He was met on the street by some of the spectators who thanked him.49
This apparent victory for the missionary, however, was deemed insufficient. Varzhanskii
complained to the governor of Moscow. In April of the following year, the district police
inspector was dispatched to Mytishch to warn all registered Baptists not to hold meetings for
Orthodox Christians. The local police were also warned to enforce compliance with laws against
proselytism.50 Despite their generally high academic qualifications, often from a Theological
Academy, professional missionaries utilized police force as a matter of course, even when
peaceful and “rational” debate seemed to have been sufficient to deflect competition from other
confessions.
Not only apostates, but also Orthodox believers were exposed to police enforcement of
religious conformity after 1905. As missionaries repeatedly pointed out, many spectators of the
religious meetings they broke up were merely curious, Orthodox Christians. With the help of
these missionaries, some priests censored their parishioners’ access to literature as well. In
March of 1914, for example, a district missionary wrote to Varzhanskii regarding the illegal
circulation of Lev Tolstoy’s religious writings by a local zemstvo library.
Respected Nikolai Iurevich! I present the enclosed report that I wrote at the request of the
priest of Borisov, Fr. Vasilii Bogoiavlenskii, who learned from you that the essays of L.
Tolstoy, indicated in the report, are forbidden for distribution among the people. . . .
Believing that these essays were permitted in public libraries, I was forced to be
reconciled with this evil. Now, since I have learned that these essays by Tolstoy are not
allowed in such places, but circulate among the people anyway, I happily accepted Fr.
49
50
TsIAM, f. 1381, op. 1, d. 9, l. 8-l.o. 8.
TsIAM, f. 1381, op. 1, d. 9, l. 11.
17
Vasilii’s assignment to write you this report, and ask you to put a stop to this harm
inflicted upon simple people.51
Thus, the parish priest seems only to have learned of this prohibition against Tolstoy’s work
from the diocesan missionary, who encouraged him to request the seizure of this material from
the library. The missionary handled even that chore at the priest’s request.
The diocesan missionaries exacerbated interfaith tensions not only by promoting police
enforcement of religious conformity, but also by encouraging Orthodox hostility toward other
communities. An example of this activity is provided by a 1912 court case in Moscow involving
seventeen teenage boys. According to the testimony of a Lutheran pastor, the boys had attended
a prayer meeting for German evangelical Christians and shouted, “Anathema to the sectarians!”
That this attack was motivated more by general xenophobia than any specific religious animosity
is suggested by the fact that one of the boys was also accused of directing the slur, “yid,” at one
of the congregants.52 In his capacity as an attorney, the diocesan missionary Varzhanskii
represented the boys. His defense exhibited general xenophobia as well. “. . . the witnessaccuser, the German sectarian named Pochkat, a foreign subject and sectarian propagandist from
Riga, has merely indicated that an anathema is offensive to sectarians, amounting in his opinion
to a curse.”53 In the boys’ defense, Varzhanskii employed the standard missionary appeal to laws
against proselytizing to the Orthodox. He argued that they could not be accused of breaking the
law against “disturbing the religious services of the Orthodox and other faiths [inovertsev],”
because this law “cannot protect all manner of gatherings of innumerable Russian sects when it
remains unclear if the gathering took place for purposes of propaganda, religious service, or
51
TsIAM, f. 1381, op. 1, d. 11, l.o. 2. (Donesenie Moskovskago uezdnago missionera Alekseia Zvereva
Moskovskomu eparkhial’nomu protivosektantskomu missioneru).
52
TsIAM, f. 1381, op. 1, d. 7, l. 1 – l.o. 3 (Vypiska iz sledstvennogo dela Moskovskogo mirovogo sud’i).
53
TsIAM, f. 1381, op. 1, d. 9, l. 13 (Doklad i pis’ma).
18
prayer.” Otherwise, he argued, the Orthodox would be unable to protest against sectarian
propaganda.54 Thus, Varzhanskii essentially argued that the law against proselytizing to the
Orthodox necessarily sanctioned the verbal abuse of those deemed to be sectarians. Two of the
older boys were sentenced to two-weeks’ imprisonment, but Varzhanskii was given “personal
supervision” over the others so as to influence their future behavior.55 Coleman also notes the
diocesan missionaries’ encouragement of Orthodox Christians to disrupt sectarian meetings.56 It
is not difficult to draw a connection between this organizational activity, and the inter-religious
violence that plagued late imperial Russia.
With the political and financial support of the state, missionaries not only insinuated
themselves into the diocesan consistories, but also into semi-autonomous associations such as the
brotherhoods, and even parish communities. They played a central role in facilitating continued
state mediation of Orthodox interaction with other communities after the Edict of Toleration.
While it is difficult to estimate the relative proportion of the parish clergy that continued to
appeal for state protection, it is clear that police enforcement of religious conformity was assisted
by the local knowledge of parish priests and other Orthodox community leaders. This partial
reversion to the role of village police informants compromised the ability of the pastorate, the
brotherhoods, and other Church organizations to represent Orthodox Christianity independently
of the regime. The work of the diocesan missionaries contributed to the social fragmentation of
late Imperial Russia by manufacturing hostility among the Orthodox and non-Orthodox. By
giving in to the seduction of continued state protection, Orthodox clergymen squandered
opportunities for much-needed interfaith collaboration on the eve of massive social breakdown
and religious persecution.
54
Ibid.
Ibid.
56
Coleman, Russian Baptists, 83.
55
19
Proselytism was not the only form of social interaction that the imperial government
regulated for the Orthodox Church. Before 1906, Orthodox clergymen were explicitly forbidden
from voting or holding office in local government bodies.57 This restriction was lifted with the
establishment of Russia’s first national representative body, and most of the sixteen priests
elected to the First and Second Dumas affiliated themselves with dissident parties including the
Kadets, Trudoviks, and Socialist Revolutionaries. In response, the regime altered voting laws
such that the Orthodox clergy were confined to a separate electoral curia from which the Synod
could exclude politically independent individuals.58 Clergymen deemed politically disloyal were
simply defrocked and barred from public office.59 This suppression of political dissent within the
Church effectively prevented the emergence of a “clerical party” in response to the advent of
mass politics in Russia.60 Yet, the regime’s direct intervention into interfaith relations may have
restricted the autonomy of the Orthodox community even more severely than did its intervention
into the Church’s participation in politics after 1905.
It was the fear of engaging other religious organizations unofficially, without the
protection of the favored status of their church that motivated Orthodox complicity in
government regulation of interfaith relations, especially after the Edict of Toleration. Yet, it was
recognition of the need for the Orthodox community to meet the challenge of religious
competition independently that had secured freedom of association within the Church in the late
57
James Cunningham, A Vanquished Hope (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981), 183. See
also: Babkin, Dukhovenstvo, 70.
58
For a detailed account of this process, see: Argyrios Pisiotis, Orthodoxy Versus Autocracy (PhD Dissertation,
Georgetown University, 2000), 391-420, 604-605.
59
Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Authority Restored (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 2: 333334.
60
For discussions of clerical parties in Italy, Germany, and Austria, see: Richard Webster, The Cross and the
Fasces: Christian Democracy in Italy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960); Margaret Lavinia Anderson,
Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); Bowman, Priest and Parish in Vienna.
20
19th century. State sanction for the formation of Orthodox brotherhoods was initially justified by
their performance of missionary activity. Subsequent extensions to this freedom of association
were partially motivated by the perception, in the Synod, of the need to compete with the
successful mutual aid activities of evangelicals, Catholics, Volga-German Lutherans, and Old
Believers.61 Orthodox associations facilitated interaction not only with other religious
communities, but also with secular organizations that cooperated with the Church in the support
of education, charity, and disaster relief.62 The establishment of unofficial ties with institutions
and associations, both religious and secular, allowed the Church to influence Russian society
independently of the Imperial government. Thus, the intervention of the diocesan missionaries
into religious competition effected far more than interfaith relations for the Orthodox Church.
It was only through the collaboration of clergymen that these minor officials were capable of
limiting the capacity of Orthodox communities to associate freely, both within and outside of
their Church.
The history of the Orthodox Church in late Imperial Russia provides a striking example
of the oppressive influence of state protection of an official religion on that religion itself.
Orthodox Christians would do well to consider that history in evaluating the relationship of their
Church with the government of the Russian Federation. After the fall of the Soviet Union,
Russia’s leadership pledged to help the Orthodox Church recover from decades of persecution.
This policy has resulted in the partial restoration of the Church’s privileged status in the form of
61
Concern over Protestant mutual-aid and proselytism among the Orthodox is expressed in:
Vsepoddaneishii otchet Ober-prokurora Sviateishago Sinoda po vedomstvu Pravoslavnago Ispovedaniia za 19081909 gody (St. Petersburg: Sinodal’naia tipografiia, 1910), 117. For a study of mutual-aid among German Lutherans
in Russia, see: Karl Eduardovich Lindeman, Von den deutschen Kolonisten in Russland: ergebnisse einer
studienreise, 1919-1921. (Stuttgart: Ausland und heimat verlagsaktiengesellschaft, 1924).
62
For example, see: Daniel Scarborough, “The Pastoral Dilemma: Clerical Mutual-Aid and Famine Relief during
Russia’s Crop Failure of 1905,” Russian History 41 (2014), 68-83; Richard G. Robbins Jr. Famine in Russia, 18911892: The Imperial Government Responds to a Crisis. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 96-103.
21
special tax concessions, influence over public education, and the right to preview and comment
on legislation under consideration in the Duma.63 Yet, the Soviet collapse also permitted the
revival of many other forms of religious practice in Russia. Church leaders, including Patriarch
Kirill, have criticized the proselytism of other religious associations among Russians as
predatory and harmful for the Church’s recovery from Soviet oppression. This criticism has
resulted in legislation to shield the Orthodox from religious competition. The 1997 Law on
Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations discourages proselytism by new religious
groups in the Russian Federation, and allows for the forcible liquidation of associations deemed
harmful.64 This law was amended in response to the February 2012 demonstration by “Pussy
Riot” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to explicitly criminalize the insulting of the religious
feelings of believers.65 As far stronger legislation against proselytism and blasphemy socially
enervated the Church before the anti-religious onslaught of 1917, Orthodox Christians today
should meet these challenges without the interference of the state.
63
Katja Richters, The Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church: Politics, Culture and Greater Russia (New York:
Routledge, 2013), 38.
64
Richters, 43.
65
For a discussion of the ideology of Pussy Riot, see: Masha Gessen, Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of
Pussy Riot (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014); on the June 29 th, 2013 amendment to the Law on Freedom of
Conscience, see: Mikhail Markelov, “Zakon o nakazanii za oskorblenie chuvstv veruiushchikh podpisan
presidentom” June 30, 2013 on the website RIA Novosti, http://ria.ru/politics/20130630/946661112.html (accessed
March 30, 2014).
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