Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 36, No. 1, Jan. ig8ij
Handmaiden of the State ?
The Church in Imperial Russia
Reconsidered
byG. L. FREEZE
T
he history of the Russian Orthodox Church, especially in the
modern imperial period (1700-1917), has been a woefully neglected
field of scholarly research.1 That neglect antedates the collapse of
the ancien regime in 1917, for pre-revolutionary historiography on the
Church was neither abundant nor sophisticated; rarely did it produce
more than myopic diocesan histories, fatuous accounts of the local
seminary, or hagiographic paeans devoted to some prominent clergyman.2
The reasons for this neglect of so fundamental an institution in 'Holy Rus'
are many - restricted access to ecclesiastical archives, difficulties in
publication because of vigilant censors, but above all the intelligentsia's
indifference to an apparently moribund and state-controlled institution.
Paradoxically enough, Catholic polemicists, Orthodox Slavophiles, anticlerical intellectuals and reform-minded clergy all concurred - from
different motives, for different reasons - in believing that the Church had
become a mere instrument of the secular state, and that this change
derived from 'revolutionary' and 'Westernizing' reforms in the Church
imposed by Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century. 3 Postrevolutionary scholarship has been even less attentive to the Church, at
least until very recently, and has tended to accept uncritically the
1
This essay, part of a broader project on 'Church and society in Imperial Russia', has
been prepared with the support of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, the International
Research and Exchanges Board and the American Council of Learned Societies.
2
Thus, apart from superficial textbooks, pre-revolutionary scholarship produced no
standard history of the Russian Church after Peter the Great; monographic work, with
few exceptions, likewise remained in its infancy at the time of the 1917 Revolution. That
stands in sharp contrast to the valuable research on the Church in medieval Russia and
the rich pre-revolutionary production in Russian secular history.
3
Foreign, chiefly Catholic, publications played an important role in shaping this
conception of the Petrine church reforms. See, for example, the discussion and references
in G. L. Freeze, 'Introduction', in Jean Gagarin, The Russian Clergy, Newtonville,
Massachusetts 1978 (reprint), pp. i-viii.
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THE CHURCH IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
traditional view of the Petrine reforms and the subsequent fate of the
Orthodox Church.4 Characteristically, when Igor Smolitsch published his
encyclopaedic history of the Russian Church in 1964, he relied almost
exclusively upon pre-revolutionary source publications and monographs.5
As a result, both Soviet and Western scholarship has perpetuated the
earlier, essentially negative picture of the Church and clergy in imperial
Russia.
This historiographical tradition is most starkly apparent in Richard
Pipes's Russia under the Old Regime (1974), a general interpretation which,
for all its deficiencies, at least attempts to address the role of the Church
in modern Russian history. Pipes's principal thesis is that the Orthodox
Church was 'the servant of the state', which — in his view — ultimately
derives from the Orthodox 'theology of resignation and submissiveness'.
That theological orientation, he argues, impelled the Russian Church to
place itself 'more than any other church at the disposal of the state,
helping it to exploit and repress. In the end it lost its identity and allowed
itself to be turned into an ordinary branch of the state bureaucracy'. The
decisive turning point, in this interpretation, was the Petrine church
reform of 1721 - t h e promulgation of the Ecclesiastical Regulation and
replacement of the patriarchate with a collegial board of prelates called
the Holy Synod. The net effect of this reform was to secularise the Church:
'The Holy Synod was nothing more nor less than a ministry of religious
affairs; its head, called the chief procurator, need not have been a cleric
and indeed in the course of the eighteenth century he was usually a
military man.' No less important than the reform itself was the Orthodox
clergy's mute acquiescence in so radical a change: 'The striking feature
of the Ecclesiastical Regulation is not only that it should have been issued
but that it met with no resistance.' This fatal submissiveness, it is argued,
became characteristic of the Church in imperial Russia, even when - as
in the sequestration of church properties in 1764 - vital interests were at
stake. Such became the role of Orthodoxy: to uphold without question
or integrity an old regime and old order, even in contravention of clear
religious duty. 'No branch of Christianity', argues Pipes, 'has shown such
callous indifference to social and political injustice. ' 6
That harsh judgement, typical of the prevailing historiography,7 stands
4
Most general histories, in fact, hardly mention the Church after the Petrine reform
in 1721. See, for example, such typical Western accounts as M. T. Florinsky, Russia: a
history and an interpretation, 2 vols., New York 1955, and even the more sympathetically
inclined N. V. Riasanovsky, History of Russia, Oxford 1969. This stricture applies no less
to Soviet scholarship; typical is the treatment accorded in Akademiia Nauk SSSR, Istoriia
SSSR s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei, i-aia seriia (6 vols.), Moscow 1966-8.
5
Igor Smolitsch, Geschichte der russischen Kirche, Leiden 1964.
8
Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, London 1974, 221-45.
7
To quote the chief conclusion of the classic study of the Petrine reforms: 'The essence
of the Petrine reform consisted... in the fact that Peter deprived the Russian Church of
its unique and independent existence as a distinct juridical institution, and brought it into
the body of the Russian state structure and administration as an integral component. . . The
83
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G. L. FREEZE
in need of drastic revision. Recent research, as yet little reflected in the
general literature, has fundamentally challenged the traditional view of
the Church as a mere 'servant of the state' in tsarist Russia. This essay
argues that the Petrine reform in fact did not transform the Church into
a government bureau, that the Synod's autonomy varied considerably
from reign to reign, but that the Church never became - in law, in
practice, in spirit - a mere ministry of religious affairs. Not that the secular
state, especially at various points in the nineteenth century, did not strive
to achieve such integration and incorporation. But it was precisely these
assaults that impelled the clergy - both the bishops and parish clergy - to
dissociate themselves from the existing order, to reaffirm ecclesiastical
interests and needs vis-ti-vis the state, and to press more firmly their own
political and social ambitions. The explanation for the state's failure to
incorporate and assimilate the Church, it will be argued, rests partly in
the specific ecclesiastical structure established by Peter the Great, partly
in the development of the episcopal elite and parish clergy into distinct
social groups. The result, apparent by the early twentieth century, was
a congeries of dynamic reform movements in the Church - episcopal
conciliarism, renovationism, radical Christian socialism, none of which
was an accidental or opportunistic response to the revolutionary crisis in
contemporary society, but which rather mark the culmination of processes
long at work in the Church.
The church reform of Peter the Great (1689-1725) was not simply a
single act in 1721 but rather a host of measures that spanned his entire
reign, from his early attempts to siphon off ecclesiastical revenues to the
establishment of the Synod in 1721. Not surprisingly, Peter's reforms have
long been a principal focus of attention, not only for their own sake, but
also because they constitute an important dimension of Peter's attempt to
reconstruct Muscovite autocracy into a more modern absolutist state.8
Pre-revolutionary research on the Petrine reforms was massive, probing
virtually every dimension of the tsar's efforts to reconstruct the Church,
and culminated in a monumental study by P. V. Verkhovskoi, who made
an exhaustive archival study of the Ecclesiastical Regulation and
establishment of the Synod in 1721.9 Given the traditional assumptions
about Peter's fundamental, even revolutionary, impact upon the Church,
his ecclesiastical reforms have remained a principal focus of attention. It
reform made the Church a servant of the state.' P. V. Verkhovskoi, Uchrezhdenie Dukhovnoi
kolltgii i dukhovnyi reglament, 2 vols., Rostov-on-6onu 1916, i. 684-5. That view is echoed
in subsequent Western literature; see, for example, J. Clarkson, A History of Russia, New
York 1961, 368; Riasanovsky, op. cit., 257; and P. Miliukov, C. Seignobos, L. Eisenmann,
eds., History of Russia, 3 vols., New York 1968, i. 322. The same interpretation pervades
Soviet works; see, for example, the account in N. A. Smirnov (ed.), Tserkov' v istorii Rossii
(IX v.-igij g.), Moscow 1967, 162-82.
8
The standard account of the Petrine era is R. Wittram, Peter I, Czar und Kaiser, 2 vols.,
Gottingen 1964.
9
Verkhovskoi, op. cit.
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THE CHURCH IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
is fair to say, however, that most of these works have added little, in
information or analysis, to what Verkhovskoi produced on the eve of the
1917 Revolution.10 For the most part they have reaffirmed the traditional
view - that Peter broke dramatically with Orthodox and Russian
tradition, that his reform reflected profound Western and especially
Protestant influences, that the Synod represented nothing more than a
docile department of state. That conclusion, for example, pervades the
recent monograph on the subject by James Cracraft, who concluded that
' the supreme administration of the Russian Orthodox Church had been
transformed, in other words, into an agency of the Tsar's will, into a
department of his government, into a major cog of the administrative
machine'. As Cracraft rightly notes, that conclusion 'will not be new to
students of modern Russian history'. 11
This traditional interpretation, however, can no longer be sustained. As
with Peter's other reforms, it is clear that his treatment of the Church had
deep roots in Muscovite history, with fundamental continuity in policy on
such matters as Church landholding, judicial authority and relationship
to state administration.12 By the same token, it is misleading to treat the
reform as a westernisation or 'protestantisation' of Russian Orthodoxy,
an accusation circulated by adversaries of the reform and perpetuated in
subsequent historiography.13 In large measure that older view rested upon
the notion that Feofan Prokopovich - a bishop and Petrine collaborator
who in fact drafted the Ecclesiastical Regulation of 1721-was 'really a
Protestant'. 14 Recent studies, however, have effectively overturned that
view and demonstrated that Prokopovich's theology was unqualifiedly
Orthodox and that his political thought was more traditional than
Western.15
But more significant than intention or inspiration is the actual result
of Peter's synodal reform: it manifestly did not transform the Church into
10
G. L. Bissonnette,' Pufendorf and the church reforms of Peter the Great', unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University 1962; H. Fink,' Die Auswirkungen der Reformen Peters
des Grossen auf das Kirchenrecht der russischen orthodoxen Kirche', Jurist. Dissertation,
Erlangen 1963; James Cracraft, The Church Reforms of Peter the Great, Stanford 1971; O. F.
Kozlov, 'Tserkovnaia reforma pervoi chetverti XVIII v.', Kandidatskaia dissertatsiia,
Moscow 1970.
" Cracraft, op. cit., ix.
12
A. V. Muller, 'The historical antecedents of the Petrine Ecclesiastical Reform',
unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington 1973; K. Appel, Die Auseinandersetzung
urn die kirchliche Gerichtsbarkeit in Moskauer Rutland 1640-1701, Berlin 1966 (Phil. Disserta-
tion). See, especially, the critique of traditional views in R. Stupperich,' Ursprung, Motive
und Beurteilung der Kirchenreform unter Peter dem GrolJen', Kirche im Osten, xvii (1974),
42-61.
13
See, in particular, the accounts in G. V. Florovskij, Puti russkogo bogosloviia, Paris 1937,
and James Cracraft, 'Feofan Prokopovich', in J. G. Garrard fed.), The Eighteenth Century
in Russia, Oxford 1973, 75-105.
14
See A. V. Kartashev, 'K voprosu o pravoslavii Feofana Prokopovicha', Sbornik statei
v chest' D. F. Kobeko, St Petersburg 1913, 225-37.
16
P. H a u p t m a n n , Die Katechismen der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche. Entstehungsgeschichte
und Lehrgchalt, Gottingen 1971; Hans-Joachim Hartel, Byzantinische Erbe und Orthodoxie bei
Feofan Prokopovich, Wiirzburg 1970.
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G. L. FREEZE
an 'ordinary branch of the state bureaucracy'. 16 That was evident from
the new organ's first session, when - with Peter's approval - the new
collegial body changed its name from 'Ecclesiastical College' {Dukhovnaia
Kollegiia), parallel to Peter's other administrative colleges, to 'Most Holy
Governing Synod' {Sviateishii Pravitel 'stvuiushchii Sinocf). It was a significant
change, not a mere terminological refinement, for it raised the Synod from
the rank of administrative college to that of peership with the Governing
Senate, the supreme administrative organ in the secular domain and a
body of paramount authority for much of the eighteenth century.17 Nor
did the Synod hesitate to exercise its authority, as it aggressively defended
its own institutional interests - for example, by asserting the Church's
traditional judicial prerogatives, by shielding parish clergy from government taxation and conscription and even by regaining administrative
control over monastic lands and properties.18 Significantly enough, Peter
did not even establish the office of chief procurator until 1722, not as an
afterthought, but in emulation of the Senate's general procurator and in
cognisance of the Synod's enhanced status and authority. Pipe's assertion
that the chief procurator was the Synod's' head' and ' need not be a cleric'
is muddled and erroneous; the chief procurator was never its head and he
was always a layman, that being the whole purpose of his appointment as
overseer and 'the sovereign's eye'. More important, chief procurators in
the eighteenth century (and, with more qualification, even in the nineteenth
century) played only a minor role in ecclesiastical administration, where
they lacked the expertise in canon law, supportive apparatus and sheer
incentive to meddle in purely religious matters. 19 The occasional procurator
who aspired to do more - such as la. P. Shakhovskoi (1741-53) or S. D.
Nechaev (1833-6) - soon foundered on the shoals of episcopal wrath and
eventually lost imperial favour as well. At no time, even in the darkest
days of the mid-nineteenth century, was the chief procurator the chief
prelate, as sometimes depicted in the secondary literature. Clarkson, for
example, writes: 'Like the other kollegii, the Synod was in 1722 put under
the more direct control of the monarch by the appointment of a lay
16
17
Pipes, The Old Regime 222.
Polnoe sobraniepostanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po vedomstvupravoslavnogo ispovedaniia, 10 vols.,
St Petersburg 1869-1916, i. no. 1.
18
Apart from the abundant materials in Polnoe sobranie postanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po
vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia, see G. L. Freeze, The Russian Levites: parish clergy in the
eighteenth century, Cambridge, Mass. 1977, 37—41.
19
Significantly, the chief procurator's archive for the eighteenth century is indexed in
a single volume; in the mid-nineteenth century, when he had a separate chancellery at
his disposal, each year his apparatus generated a thick volume to register archival materials
(opisi for Kantseliariia Oberprokurora in Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii archiv
SSSR [hereafter cited as TsGIA SSSR], fond 797). For the personal difficulties encountered
by a conscientious chief procurator, who had to study long and hard to make sense of church
law and practice, see the memoirs of la. P. Shakhovskoi, Zapiski, St Petersburg 1872, 40-1.
For a superficial overview, with references to the literature and limited use of archival
materials, see the traditional account in F. V. Blagovidov, Ober-prokurory Sv. Sinoda v XVIII
i pervoi polovine XIX St., 2nd edn, Kazan 1900.
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THE CHURCH IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
Ober-Prokuror [chief procurator], assisted by a staff of "inquisitors", who
controlled appointments of prelates, decided points of dogma, combated
heresies, and exercised judicial authority in all cases involving faith and
morals.' 20 With the partial exception of the reference to episcopal
appointments, this statement is wholly erroneous, even for those periods
in the mid-nineteenth century when synodal power stood at its nadir.21
Interestingly enough, even Soviet research - by no means disposed to
give the Synod a more positive assessment - has recently broken with the
traditional interpretation and come to recognise the persistence of synodal
autonomy, at least until the secularisation of Church lands and peasants
in 1764." This has been an important, if inadvertent, finding in recent
studies on ecclesiastical landholding,23 Old Believers24 and the parish
clergy,25 all of which were areas of vital interest to the state, but areas in
which the Church put up a spirited defence of its policy and privilege. It was
only the sequestration of church lands and peasants in 1764, argue Soviet
historians, that shattered the Synod's capacity and will for independent
action. That hypothetical terminal point, however consistent with a
materialistic interpretation of history, is sheer hypothesis, since the new
Soviet research essentially terminates with the 1760s and can only
speculate about subsequent developments.26
20
C l a r k s o n , History of Russia, 214.
Quite apart from the fact that the 'inquisitors' were a short-lived experiment, it was
the Synod- not the chief procurator - who made all these decisions: for the actual tenor
of relations in the nineteenth century, sec G. L. Freeze, The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century
Russia: crisis, reform, counter-reform, Princeton 1983, esp. 12-22, 195-200, 298-301, 308-47,
398-448.
21
See, especially, I. A. Bulygin, 'Tserkovnaia reforma Petra I', Voprosy istorii, 1974, no.
5. 79-9323
I. A . Bulygin, Monastyrskie krest'iane v periodpervoi chetverti XVIII v., M o s c o w 1977.
24
N . N . Pokrovskii, Antifeodat'nyiprotest
uralo-sibirskikh krest'ian-staroobriadtsev v XVIII D.,
Novosibirsk 1974, esp. 8-10.
25
N . D . Z o l ' n i k o v a , Soslovnye problemy vo vzaimootnosheniiakh tserkui i gosudarstva v Sibiri
{XVIII v.), Novosibirsk 1981, ch. 1.
26
With few exceptions (such as Kozlov's dissertation on the Petrine church reforms),
virtually all Soviet research on the Church has focused upon its landholding and economic
relations to ecclesiastical peasants; only rarely and tangentially do such works consider
the Church itself. Typical of such research are the following: G. I. Slesarchuk,' Khoziaistvo
i krest'iane suzdal'skogo Spaso-Evfimieva Monastyria v pervoi chetverti XVIII v.',
Kandidatskaia dissertatsiia, Moscow 1955; A. I. Shabanova, 'Klassovaia bor'ba krest'ian
v votchine Aleksandro-Svirskogo monastyria nakanune sekuliarizatsii (50-e-nachalo 60-kh
godov XVIII v.)', Vestnik Leningradskogo Cosudarstvennogo Universiteta, Seriia: istoriia, 1966,
no. 3; I. A. Bulygin, 'Krest'iane vologodskogo Spaso-Prilutskogo monastyria v pervoi
polovine XVIII v.', Agrarnaia istoriia Evropeiskogo Severa SSSR, Vologda 1976; and A. E.
Cheukonova, ' Votchinnoe khoziastvo i krest'iane v kontse XVII-pervoi chetverti XVIII
v. (Po materialam Donskogo monastyria)', Kandidatskaia dissertatsiia, Moscow 1979. For
the period between 1764 and 1900 Soviet scholarship has produced virtually nothing, at
least of serious intent, on the history of the Russian Church; the backward state of research
in this field is painfully evident in the collection of essays published in 1967 (Smirnov,
Tserkov'v Rossii). Only with the onset of the twentieth century is more attention given to
the Church; see the discussion and references in G. L. Freeze, 'A case of stunted anticlericalism: clergy and society in imperial Russia", European Studies Review, xiii (1983),
177-200.
21
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G. L. FREEZE
Synodal authority, in fact, vanished no more in 1764 than in 1721.
Secularisation of church properties and peasants was doubtlessly significant, for it restricted the Church's financial discretion, impeded the
acquisition of new wealth and had a devastating impact upon the status
and numbers of monastic clergy.27 It by no means follows, however, that
the Church and clergy suddenly became an integral part of the secular
state. On the contrary, secularisation did not alter the formal administrative
structure of the Church, its Ecclesiastical Regulation, the status and
functions of the chief procurator, or the fundamental juxtaposition of the
'ecclesiastical' and 'secular' domains (dukhovnaia komanda and svetskaia
komanda). Nor should the financial impact of secularisation be exaggerated.
Even before 1764 the Church had long suffered secular incursions upon
its revenues; in this sense secularisation in 1764 was not a radical change
but the culmination of a process in train even before Peter ascended the
throne in 1689.28 In lieu of the sequestered wealth the state granted a
regular budget, which, though niggardly, was not without its advantages
for the Church: hereafter the Church was no longer vulnerable to the
vagaries of harvests or to peasant intransigence, and it could more
rationally plan and allocate its resources.29 More important still is the fact
that the state did not establish direct control over church finances: actual
disbursement remained in the clergy's hands, giving them ample
opportunity to exercise discretion in expenditures and even to achieve
substantial capital savings in the first half of the nineteenth century.30
Wholly untouched by secularisation was the great mass of secular clergy,
who manned the parish churches and seldom had ecclesiastical peasants
at their disposal. After 1764, as before, the parish clergy had to depend
upon their traditional - and inadequate - forms of support, composed
mostly of collections in kind and money from parishioners and whatever
harvest they could extract from parish land they tilled themselves.31
Finally, it might be suggested that, at least potentially, secularisation
27
Regrettably, the secularization of Church lands and peasants in 1764 has not been
the subject of specialized research even by Soviet historians, who should find the topic
compatible with their traditional lines of inquiry. The only monograph is the dated,
unsatisfactory study by A. A. Zav'ialov, Vopros 0 Iserkovnykh imeniiakhpri Imp. Ekaterine a, St
Petersburg 1900.
28
M . G o r c h a k o v , Monastyrskii prikaz, St P e t e r s b u r g 1 8 6 8 ; Bulygin, Monastyrskie krest'iane,
ch. 1.
29
The unsatisfactory state of monastery incomes prior to 1764 had particularly serious
repercussions for-the seminaries, which lacked secure and regular support. See, for example,
N. Malitskii, Istoriia Vladimirskoidukhovnoiseminarii, 3 vols., Vladimir 1900-2, i. 9-24,66-77,
106-8, and D. Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi dukhovnoi seminarii, 1724-1840 gg., Riazan 1889,
60-1. By mid-century, moreover, the Church encountered increasing difficulty in its
relationship to subordinate peasants; the increasing incidence of peasant disorders on
ecclesiastical properties became in fact one of the major motives behind secularisation in
1764. See P. K. Alefirenko, Krest'ianskoe dvizhcnie i krest'ianskii vopros v Rossii v 30-50-kh godakh
XVIII v., Moscow 1958.
30
For references to published a n d archival materials on this issue, in which the Synod's
will ultimately prevailed, see Freeze, Parish Clergy, 195, 197, 235.
31
See Freeze, Russian Levites, 120-36.
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THE CHURCH IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
served to weaken the Church's vested interest in the existing order of lord
and serf. If bishops in medieval Russia had been wont to act like ' feudal
lords', that was no longer possible after 1764. On the contrary, bishops
and their subordinates were now free to assume an independent posture
toward the agrarian question which, in one form or another, would bedevil
the ancien regime until its collapse in 1917-32
Most important of all, the Church preserved until 1917 its special
status - as an institution parallel to, not inside, the state apparatus.
Although the Church's political clout and specific sphere of authority
declined in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it
retained its basic structural separateness as a special 'ecclesiastical'
domain. Above all, that meant a monopoly over the spiritual affairs of
Orthodox citizens, a realm of activity that embraced liturgy, missions,
education and religious thought. The Church also held significant powers
over the daily lives of the laity; in particular, it had exclusive authority
in marital affairs, effectively blocked all attempts to liberalise divorce and
imposed public penance (epitimiia) - often with extended incarceration in
monasteries - for 'serious sins' (adultery, homicide, blasphemy and the
like).33 It is important to recognise how parallel the Church was, its
various organs literally duplicating and formally separating it from similar
offices of the state. Thus, the Church had its own censorship apparatus
(empowered to supervise all writings on the faith, Church or clergy), its
own ecclesiastical schools (to serve the needs of the clergy alone), its own
ecclesiastical courts (responsible for most affairs of the clergy and for the
religious affairs of Orthodox laymen), and its own lay bureaucracy (to
assist the bishops and various administrative organs). At bottom this
institutional model of' parallelism' derived from the dynamics of secularisation, the increasingly conscious attempt to separate the sacred and
profane. Although the Russian state sometimes assigned the Church
worldly tasks to augment its underdeveloped bureaucracy, in the main it
strove to compartmentalise religion, to delimit the Church's involvement
32
Conversely, the clergy were spared - in contrast to pre-secularisation times - conflicts
with the laity over feudal dues and land ownership. As a result, anticlerical conflicts
remained a great rarity in pre-revolutionary Russia. Thus, a study of eight provinces in
south-west Russia demonstrated that incidents involving clergy constituted only one per
cent of all peasant disorders for the period 1860-90 (N. N. Leshchenko, 'Osnovnye etapy,
napravlennost' i formy klassovoi bor'by v Ukrainskoi derevne v epokhu domonopolisticheskogo kapitalizma', Ezhtgodnik po agrarnoi istorii Vostochnoi Evropy za 1971 god, Vilnius
1974, 223-40). Even in the revolutionary year, 1905, only 350 of the 38,188 parishes in
the empire adopted anticlerical resolutions (L. I. Emeliakh, Antiklerikarnoe dvizhenie kresfian
v pervoi russkoi revoliutsii, Moscow and Leningrad 1965, 19; Vscpoddanneishii otchet OberProkrurora Sv. Sinoda po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia (a 1903-04, St Petersburg 1904,
appendix 6). Similarly, only 0.5 per cent of all agrarian disorders (33 of 7,165 reported
incidents) in 1905 were directed against the clergy (S. Dubrovskii, Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie
v revoliutsii 1905-07 gg., Moscow 1956, 65).
3S
See G. L. Freeze,' Die Kirche, Sittlichkeit und Sozialstruktur in RuBland in der ersten
Halftedes ig.Jahrhunderts', unpublished paper presented to the colloquium of the Institut
fur osteuropaische Geschichte und Landeskunde, Universitat Tubingen, 7 December 1983.
89
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G. L. FREEZE
in strictly secular affairs. That notion informed the official term,
'ecclesiastical domain'. Although the term later connoted primarily the
Church and its service class, it is important to underscore the original
Petrine conception: the 'ecclesiastical'- literally, the 'spiritual' (dukkovnaia) - college was to satisfy the spiritual needs of the Orthodox population.
Its worldly functions and competence, conversely, were drastically
diminished. Although this process has been conventionally described as
'secularisation of the Church', it would be far more aptly termed
'spiritualisation', a systematic and conscious exclusion of the Church from
secular matters and confinement to strictly 'spiritual' affairs.34
The principal limitation on ecclesiastical autonomy within this spiritual
domain was the chief procurator, the lay overseer appointed by the
emperor. Although the procurator certainly could influence synodal
decisions, especially when armed with imperial support, his authority and
actual role in daily church administration must not be exaggerated - as
it has been in the traditional historiography. Organisationally, he remained
outside the Synod: he himself was not a voting member or presiding
chairman of the Synod, his own chancellery existed separately from the
Synod's staff, and - symbolically enough - his offices were at some remove
from the Synod, literally in a different part of St Petersburg. Not that he
was powerless; the chief procurator potentially (if only sporadically) could
profoundly affect church affairs, primarily because of his access to the
emperor, sometimes because of his supervisory functions in Synodal
administration and decisions. Though that status permitted him to
influence, and sometimes to obstruct, Synodal decisions, the chief procurator had no power to issue decrees in the name of the Church — as, by
contrast, ministers did in the name of their ministries. Rather, authoritative
decrees and resolutions had to emanate from the Synod's clerical members
or, if the secular domain was involved, from a corresponding state organ
as well.35 Most important, and characteristic of the personalised politics
of Russian autocracy, real power relations at any given time depended less
upon laws than personalities: a determined metropolitan of St Petersburg
(presiding member of the Synod) or, conversely, a weak one, profoundly
34
The Church's legal status had a profound impact upon its social teachings, which
remained singularly underdeveloped until the second half of the nineteenth century. For
the crucial change in attitudes at that time, see Julia Oswalt, Kirchliche Gemeinde und
Bauernbefreiung, Gottingen 1975, and G. L. Freeze, 'Theologie und Politik in RuBland in
der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts: Die Laisierung von Archimandrit Feodor (Bucharev)',
forthcoming in Kirche im Osten xxviii (1985). For a substantially different process, involving
earlier and more far-reaching secularisation of the Church's theology and functions, see
P. M . Zulehner, Sdkularisierung von Gesellschaft, Person und Religion. Religion und Kirche in
Ostcrreich, V i e n n a 1973.
35
This restriction applied both to implementation of existing law (requiring concerted
action by the Synod and pertinent ministry) and to modification of existing statutes
(requiring approval from the emperor or, in most cases, the State Council). For specific
cases of such interaction in the first half of the nineteenth century, see Freeze, Parish Clergy,
73-5. 9°90
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THE CHURCH IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
affected the independence and authority of the Synod vis-&-vis the chief
procurator. Hence a change of emperor, chief procurator, or especially
metropolitan in St Petersburg had an immediate and profound effect upon
power and politics in the central church administration. On the whole,
however, the ranking prelates - the metropolitans of St Petersburg,
Moscow and Kiev - were men of advanced age and personal prestige,
confident in their vision of Orthodoxy and jealously protective of their
precedence over the 'mere layman' occupying the chair of chief
procurator.
The prelates' high standing did not, however, guarantee them immunity
from periodic encroachment by aggressive procurators. By far the most
daring and successful of the latter was Count N. A. Protasov, chief
procurator for nearly twenty years in the 'apogee of autocracy', the reign
of Nicholas i. Although others had tried before, Protasov was the first to
construct a separate institutional base of power by establishing his own
chancellery and staff, and by the 1840s he had achieved an unprecedented
influence over church affairs. Principally because of publicity through
clerical criticism and especially through the popular writings of N. A.
Leskov, Protasov's unique success has unfortunately become the prototype
for the usual - and greatly exaggerated - assessment of the chief procurator's authority.38 But Protasov's power had limits and, most important,
derived not from structural or legislative changes but primarily from the
emperor's confidence and the lassitude of the current metropolitan in St
Petersburg. Subsequent procurators, with the partial exception of D. A.
Tolstoi (1865-80), enjoyed no similar panoply of power, as the Synod once free of Protasov's tight grip - fiercely guarded its powers and
prerogatives.37
It is especially important to stress that the chief procurator had only
minimal power to supervise diocesan affairs. Although Peter did make
some reforms to improve diocesan administration and established a
short-lived system of' ecclesiastical inquisitors' to oversee diocesan affairs,
that control disappeared - mainly for fiscal reasons - shortly after his
death. 38 As a result, diocesan administration remained the sole provenance
of the local bishop, who was virtually free from outside supervision and
control. The Synod and chief procurator had to rely upon written reports
from the bishop and lacked a system of regular, on-the-spot inspection;
this remoteness set the Church dramatically apart from the secular
administration, where the inspectors-general, real as well as Gogolian, cast
36
Leskov's analysis, based chiefly u p o n t h e memoirs of F . F . Ismailov, underlie the
treatment in such works as D. W. Edwards, 'Orthodoxy during the reign of Nicholas 1:
a study in Church-State relations', unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Kansas State University,
1967, and idem., 'The system of Nicholas I in Church-State relations', in T. Stavrou
and R. L. Nichols (eds.), Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, Minneapolis 1978, 154-69.
37
F o r details, see Freeze, Parish Clergy, ch. 7 a n d 9.
38
For a summary account, see A. V. Muller, 'The inquisitorial network of Peter the
Great', in Stavrou and Nichols, op. cit., 141-53-
91
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G. L. FREEZE
terror into the hearts of local authorities.39 The chief procurator remained
essentially a general with a staff of officers in St Petersburg. He had no
soldiers in the field, no diocesan procurators to supervise diocesan bishops
in the way he was supposed to oversee Synodal administration. As one chief
procurator complained in 1803: 'These posts in the consistory and
diocesan chancellery are composed of clerical people appointed and
dismissed solely at the discretion of the bishop, and indeed only the
diocesan bishops supervise the order and flow of consistory business'.40
Subsequently, some chief procurators attempted to establish their own
organ in diocesan administration, as in D. A. Tolstoi's scheme for
'diocesan procurators' in the 1870s, but such efforts invariably foundered
on adamant opposition from the episcopate.41 The most that the chief
procurator could achieve was to assert the right to appoint diocesan
secretaries in the mid-nineteenth century, yet this sort of influence had
serious limitations and hardly provided a substitute for the procurator's
own local organ. As a result, the chief procurator had to rely mainly upon
anonymous denunciations, not on regular apparatus and periodic reports,
to supervise diocesan affairs and uncover malfeasance and maladministration.42
Set apart structurally and organisationally from the state, the Synod
retained considerable operational autonomy and, especially, the capacity
to defend ecclesiastical interests, to function more like an interest group
than a mere department of the state bureaucracy. However loyal the
bishops might be to the autocrat, they nevertheless had compelling reasons
to protest against state policies and to rise in defence of the Church, even
in the teeth of governmental pressure and imperial will. Their resolve was
particularly apparent in the case of traditional church prerogatives, which
bishops defended not just for their own sake, but in order to preserve
custom and canon and to shield the Church from polemical denunciations
of Russian Orthodoxy as a mere 'state church'. 43 At stake too were
substantive issues of vital importance to the Church, such as religious
tolerance, which - whether from Realpolitik or enlightened conviction *• Although the Synod periodically discussed the need for regular inspection (chiefly
by another prelate), nothing ever came of such proposals. The single major reform
concerned ecclesiastical schools, which in 1808-14 were subjected to a system of regular
outside inspection and supervision. See Freeze, Parish Clergy, 105-6, for discussion and
references.
40
TsGIA SSSR, f. 796, op. 84, g. 1803, d. 799, 1. 6 ob. (Zapiska Iakovleva, 1803).
41
Proekt prcobrazovaniia dukhovno-sudebnoi chasti: ob'iasniufnaia zapiska, St Petersburg
1873; TsGIA SSSR, f. 796, op. 445, d. 409.
48
Anonymous denunciations reached all the chief procurators, yet they were relatively
few in number and form a modest part of the official archive. Under K. P. Pobedonostsev
denunciations sharply proliferated and form a substantial part of his personal archive in
TsGIA SSSR, f. 1574, op. 2.
43
Such sensitivity was especially apparent among Orthodox publicists like A. N.
Murav'ev, who tried to rebut Catholic propagandists but admitted that it was sometimes
difficult, especially with regard to the question of domination by the state. See, for example,
his letter to M. P. Pogodin in 1859 in TsGIA SSSR, f. 796, op. 205, d. 603, 11. 1-15.
92
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THE CHURCH IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
many ranking bureaucrats were inclined to favour by the mid-nineteenth
century.44 Most bishops vehemently opposed excessive leniency, fearing
a surge of uncontrolled sectarian and schismatic movements, and insisted
that the state vigorously prosecute apostates and illegal proselytisers.
Likewise the bishops contested the government's recurring attempts to
exploit the parish clergy, the class of married priests and sacristans who
provided the Church with its only source of manpower. Ever since Peter
the Great the government had sought to limit this 'unproductive class'
to a bare minimum and to divert the surplus to satisfy secular needs
through periodic conscription (the educated into civil service and professions, the remainder into the army as mere recruits). The Church
vigorously resisted such incursions, seeking to moderate the terms of
conscription and to blunt implementation.45 It was, interestingly enough,
especially successful at this in the first half of the nineteenth century, even
though its customary line of defence - a dire shortage of qualified
ordinands - had lost all claim to validity or credibility.46
The Church's behaviour in non-ecclesiastical matters, relating to secular
issues of politics and society, was far less daring. The reason, no doubt,
rested in the fact that it had neither institutional need nor legal right to
act: its own vested interests were not directly involved, and such secular
questions lay outside the prescribed competence of the 'spiritual' domain.
When the Church did issue pronouncements on secular matters, these were
to comply with an express imperial order - for example, to anathematise
the rebel Pugachev or the invader Napoleon, or to celebrate a coronation
decree or emancipation manifesto.47 Most circumscribed of all were the
parish clergy, who had become sufficiently entangled in peasant disorders
in the late eighteenth century to cause the state to exclude them completely
from lord-serf affairs. Indeed, their only r o l e - a s decrees in 1797 and
repeatedly thereafter stressed - was to 'exhort the peasants' to obey their
masters and to assist authorities in restoring order on rebellious estates.
This categorical legal exclusion, not a theology of submission, was the
principal reason for the clergy's failure to play a more active role in secular
affairs. It should be added that in this respect the Orthodox Church in
Russia was hardly unique: Western Churches, whether Catholic or
Protestant, were hardly less committed to the defence of the existing social
44
See, for example, 'Zapiski Kn. N. A. Orlova', Russkaia slarina, xxxi (1881), 77-93,
and various memoranda by the influential P. A. Valuev, such as that in TsGIA SSSR,
f. 908, op. 1, d. 112, n . 1-4.
46
Freeze, Russian Levitts, 37-41, 182-90.
46
F r e e z e , Parish Clergy, 1 6 4 - 7 1 .
47
For the resolution on Pugachev, see TsGIA SSSR, f. 796, op. 205, d. 74, 1. 7; for the
characterisation of Napoleon Bonaparte as foe of peace and apostate, see the Synodal
resolution of 1806 in TsGIA SSSR, f. 796, op. 87, g. 1806, d. 677. For the Church's role
in preparing the emancipation manifesto of 1861, see: TsGIA SSSR, f. 797, op. 30, otd.
1, st. 2, d. 278; I. Gurskaia, 'Tserkov' inreforma 1861 g.', Krasnyiarkhiv, lii (1935), 182-90:
R. Stupperich, 'Die russische Kirche bei der Verkiindigung der Bauernbefreiung',
Jahrbiicher Jur die Geschichte Osteuropas, xiii (1965), 321-30.
93
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G. L. FREEZE
and political order. It was only after the middle of the nineteenth century,
chiefly in response to dynamic social-economic change and the attendant
processes of dechristianisation, that Western Churches reconsidered their
role in society and sought to address social and political issues. These
modernising processes appeared later in Russia, only toward the end of
the nineteenth century, and it is hardly surprising that the Russian
Church's reorientation - theological, political, social - came correspondingly later than had been the case in the West.
Yet even before then the Church did attempt - within limits - to temper
social evils and injustice. It did so partly to defend its own interests and
to perform its religious mission. Thus it took steps against over-exploitative
squires, who forced their serfs to toil on Sunday and the numerous church
holidays, thereby impeding the Church in its religious mission to the folk.
As a result, the Synod and bishops protested against such exploitation,
attempted to define legal church holidays as broadly as possible, and
encouraged parish clergy to report violators.48 Furthermore, in certain
kinds of matters the Church had a legal obligation to take action,
especially in marital questions, where some squires were inclined to
arrange marriages (under-aged; potentially bigamous; contrary to
Orthodox kinship rules) to multiply their subjects.49 Such coercion was
strictly illegal, however, and the Church proved exceedingly vigorous in
prosecuting violators. Norshould the Church's purely religious exhortations
be completely disregarded; clergy sermonised not only for serfs to obey,
but also exhorted squires to care properly for those in their charge.50
Finally, beyond these legal activities, some clergy dared go further,
reporting nobles for sexual licence or physical abuse, sometimes even
assisting the peasants' demand for justice.51 Despite the severe and sure
retribution that inevitably came, each year a handful of clergy acceded
to popular pressure - penning petitions, administering oaths of unity 'on
the cross', or even representing the peasants' case before local authorities.
48
In 1818 the emperor authorised the C h u r c h to report landlords w h o coerced their
serfs to work on Sundays and church holidays; evidently because so m a n y reports and
conflicts ensued, the order was soon rescinded ( T s G I A SSSR, f. 796, o p . 99, g. 1818, d.
56). Although Church authorities thereafter were more circumspect, they did not cease
to complain - especially in their annual reports - that such practices were highly detrimental to the religious wellbeing of the people. O n l y in the case of squires in the western
provinces, w h o were Catholic, did the bishops act more aggressively, attributing not only
economic b u t religious motives to such exploitation of the peasantry.
49
For examples of church determination to punish the perpetrators of coerced
marriages, see the files on Nizhnii-Novogord in 1797, Riazan in 1843, and Tomsk in 1850
(TsGIA SSSR, f. 796, op. 78, g. 1797, d. 363; ibid., f. 796, op. 124, g. 1843, d - ' ' 5 ° ; ' bid ->
f. 796, op. 131, g. 1850, d. 571).
60
See, for example, the three-volume set of sermons published by the Synod in 1776
for the clergy to read on Sundays and feastdays: Gavriil (Petrov) and Platon (Levshin),
Sobranie raznykh pouchenii na vse voskresnye i prazdnichnye dni, Moscow 1776.
51
For particularly striking examples, see the archival files on Vladimir diocese in 1827
and Velikii Ustiug in 1848 (TsGIA SSSR, f. 796, op. 108, g. 1827, d. 345; ibid., op. 129,
g. 1848, d. 243).
94
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THE CHURCH IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
Such incidents were relatively rare, representing only a small proportion
of reported peasant disorders, but occurred with sufficient frequency to
be a persistent cause of concern for the government and police authorities.52
In addition to the parallel organisational structure and sharp divergence
in interests, a still more powerful source of the Church's separateness was
a key social dynamic: the segregation of the clergy from lay society, their
transformation into two isolated and distinct groups - the monastic
episcopal elite at the top, the married parish clergy at the bottom. Both
these groups, emerging as separate social groups in the second half of the
eighteenth century, became increasingly distinct and alien to the rest of
Russian society, set apart by an extraordinary set of social, educational,
cultural and service barriers. Although the Russian clergy have often been
described as mere chinovniki or bureaucrats, 53 that they most certainly were
not. Like the various organs of church administration, the clergy formed
a parallel service order, explicitly outside the all-important Table of Ranks
that governed civil and military service. Although some clergy wished to
be co-opted into the Table of Ranks (with an eye to the various benefits,
in salary and status, that this entailed),54 the government consistently
spurned such requests for a variety of fiscal and social considerations. Far
from being integrated into the secular service classes, both the bishops and
parish clergy grew increasingly apart, even from each other, but especially
from the bureaucracy of which they allegedly formed an integral part.
The episcopal elite came into existence in the second half of the
eighteenth century. Not as a hereditary class, to be sure: Russian Church
tradition required that bishops be chosen only from monastic orders, not
from the married parish clergy. Instead, this new episcopate derived its
unity not from ties of blood, but from a complex of institutions and norms
that were introduced in the eighteenth century to select, train and promote
candidates for the church hierarchy. In pre-Petrine Russia such institutions
(above all, educational) had been wanting, so that men of diverse rank,
62
For an exhaustive account of the clergy's role in the Pugachev Rebellion of 1773-5,
with abundant evidence culled from archival sources on the parish clergy's support of the
insurgents, see I. Z. Kadson,' Krest'ianskaia voina 1773-75 gg. i tserkov", Kandidatskaia
dissertatsiia, Leningrad 1963; for a brief analysis based on published sources, see Dorothea
Peters, 'Politische und gesellschaftliche Vorstellungen in der Aufstandsbewegung unter
Pugacev (1773-1775)', Forsckungen zur osteuropdischen Gcschichte, xvii (1973), 129-32. For the
clergy's role in peasant disorders at the outset of Paul's reign, see the pertinent documents
(in Polnoe sobranie postanovknii i rasporiazhenii po dukhovnomu vedomstvu: Tsarstvovanie Pavla
Petrovicha, St Petersburg 1915, nos. 53, 91, 103, 167, 363) and discussion in Freeze, Russian
Levitts, 181-2. For a similar eruption at the outset of Nicholas's reign in 1826, see: TsGIA
SSSR, f. 797, op. 3, d. 10043; 'b'd., f. 796, op. 107, g. 1826, d. 460; and Polnoe sobranie
postanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po dukhovnomu vedomstvu: Tsarstvovanie Imp. JVikolaia Pavlovicha, St
Petersburg 1915, no. 56.
53
See, for instance, Pipes's statement that the clergy were' transformed in the eighteenth
century into something very close to chinovniki' (Pipes, The Old Regime, 243).
54
I. S. Belliustin, Opisanie sel'skogo dukhovenstva, Leipzig 1858, 154-5; TsGIA SSSR, fond
804 (Osoboe prisutstvie po delam pravoslavnogo dukhovenstva), op. 1, razd. 1, d. 31, 11.
16-17; d. 55, I. 20 ob.; d. 59, 11. 53-7; razd. 3, d. 325, 1. 116 (reform commentaries from
diocesan authorities in Nizhnii-Novgorod, Mogilev, Kiev and Riga).
95
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G. L. FREEZE
of diverse education managed to attain episcopal rank. This social and
cultural diversity temporarily increased in the first half of the eighteenth
century, mainly because the autocrats' preference for educated bishops led
to a large influx of non-Great Russians: 67 per cent of those consecrated
as bishops in the period 1700-62 were Ukrainians, White Russians, or even
foreigners.55 After mid-century, however, that diversity vanished as a new
episcopal elite took shape - Russian in nationality, clerical in social origin,
elite in its advanced theological training. The main dynamic behind this
process was the development of ecclesiastical seminaries and academies in
central Russia, which from the mid-eighteenth century became capable of
producing the kind of educated prelate that the Church's administration
required and the state's rulers preferred. Catherine's secularisation of
monastic lands in 1764 sharply accelerated this process, for it made the
impoverished monastery an object of little allure for ambitious aristocratic
sons. Amidst the declining significance of the monastery, in numbers,
wealth and influence, it was now education and administrative skills-not
a reputation for traditional monastic asceticism - that determined success
for aspirants to the episcopate.
The result, clearly evident by the late eighteenth century, was a
distinctive episcopal elite, coming almost exclusively from the clerical
estate and educated wholly in ecclesiastical schools. With rare exceptions,
their careers followed a uniform pattern: advanced studies in the theological
academy, early tonsure as monk, brief service as a seminary teacher and
administrator, promotion to professor and administrator in an ecclesiastical academy, concurrent appointment as archimandrite in a prominent
monastery, consecration as bishop while still relatively young and frequent
translation every few years from one diocese to the next. Although one
or another stage in this career pattern might be omitted, or the order
slightly varied, the new order admitted few significant deviations from its
high priority upon educational and administrative service. Even in the
nineteenth century this career profile changed little, the main modifications
being an increase in the number of possible positions (due to the creation
of more dioceses), in the transitional posts of vicar-bishops (to provide
greater experience under senior prelates), and in the number of ex-priests
(who, as widowers, took monastic vows and had the academic credentials
for later elevation to the episcopate).56
This career pattern meant, above all, the recruitment of men with
undivided loyalty to the institutional Church, with which their entire
education, experience, careers and status were intimately bound. Of
singular importance was their social background, as sons of parish clergy:
that set them apart from the nobility and civil service (their ostensible peers
66
See the recent analysis by Erich Bryner, Der geistliche Stand in Rujjland. Sozidgeschichtliche
Unlersuchungen zu Episkopat und Gemeindegeistlickkeit der russischen orthodoxen Kirche im 18.
Jahrhundert, Gottingen 1982, 30-1, and the older study by K. V. Kharlampovich,
Malorossiiskoe vliianie na velikorusskuiu tserkovnuiu zhizn', K a z a n 1914, 459 a n d passim.
6S
Bryner, op. cit., 26-66; Freeze, Parish Clergy, 24-7, 393, 442-3.
96
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THE CHURCH IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
in the social hierarchy) and no doubt predisposed them to favour the parish
clergy's special class interests. Yet even here their primary loyalty
belonged to the Church, not their original class: when the interests of
Church and clergy diverged, it was the former that bishops tended to
favour.57 The bishop's prolonged education in ecclesiastical schools provided another basic component of their social identity. Specifically, it
provided the main rationale for their predominance in the Church, set
them apart from educated laymen (who attended secular schools, not the
seminary), and forged strong bonds among those permitted to study in the
four elite academies.
The career structure for bishops also served to reinforce their social
cohesion. In particular, it implanted a common achievement ethic, denned
in terms of effective administration - not liturgical skills or, still less,
other-worldly spiritual and mystical preoccupations. This new ethic,
fundamental to the episcopate's status claims and collective identity, was
inculcated by various devices, such as transfer to better (or inferior)
dioceses58 and the bestowal of various titles and honours.59 Together with
their special education in the elite academies, the new service norm gave
the bishops a common 'enlightened' outlook; most bishops were neither
hidebound reactionaries nor tyrannical oppressors of the parish clergy.
Rather, they were conscientious and progressive-minded administrators,
seeking not to keep the folk in blind superstition and ignorance, but to
instill 'conscious' Christianity - by opening parish schools, establishing
regular instruction in catechism, disseminating popular religious literature,
and transforming the parish clergy into more effective servitors of the
Church. The career system, distinguished by frequent (though essentially
uncanonical) transfers,60 also gave the bishops a common 'imperial'
perspective, bound less to the needs of a particular area and attuned more
to the broader empire-wide needs of the Church. Finally, the bishops
57
Indicative was the bishops' a t t i t u d e toward ecclesiastical schools a n d seminaries:
although since their inception they were supposed to educate all the clergy's sons, it became
increasingly clear that the Church thereby sacrificed quality and standards - it simply
lacked the resources to maintain good schools for the entire clerical estate. For the prelates'
reluctant shift of opinion and their decision to seek smaller but better seminaries, see the
candid reform discussions of the 1860s in B. V. Titlinov, Dukhovnaia shkola v Rossii v XIX
st., a vols., Vil'na, 1908-9, ii. 300-420.
58
For d a t a o n the extremely high frequency of transfer, see Freeze, Parish Clergy, 443n;
for service lists of bishops showing such frequent transfers, see Spisok arkhiereev i ierarkhov
vserossiiskikh i arkheograficheskikh kafedr sq vremeni uchrezhdeniia Sv. Sinoda, S t P e t e r s b u r g 1896.
59
Apart from the various medals and honours that the emperor began to confer from
the late eighteenth century, the most significant reward was promotion from bishop
(episkop) to the higher, more prestigious ranks of archbishop (arkhiepiskop) and metropolitan
(mitropolit), which were personal titles and only loosely correlated with the status of a
particular diocese.
60
See, for example, 'Zapiska A. N. Murav'eva o sostoianii pravoslavnoi tserkvi v
Rossii', Russkii arkhiv, 1883, no. 3, book 2, 175-203, and an anonymous memorandum,
' O peremeshchenii episkopov', in Otdel rukopisei, Gosudarstvennaia biblioteka im. V. I.
Lenina, f. 214, d. 63, 11. 12-19.
4
97
ECH
36
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G. L. FREEZE
shared a common service system, wholly unconnected with the rules of the
civil service. In particular, the episcopal system meant a relatively secure
status: the Synod could not demote or cashier a bishop, invested with the
holy rites of consecration, in the way a minister treated subordinates in
his domain. It was possible to transfer unpopular or refractory bishops to
an inferior diocese or, in extreme cases, to insist upon 'voluntary'
retirement, but as a rule members of the Synod had neither the means
nor the inclination to take vigorous measures against their fellow prelates.
Short of outright incapacitation or demonstrable malfeasance, it was
well-nigh impossible to depose a consecrated bishop - much to the
chagrin, certainly, of some chief procurators. 61
Nor were the parish clergy simply petty bureaucrats clad in holy
vestments. The state, to be sure, at times laboured to turn them into
auxiliary officials - demanding, for example, that the priest disseminate
modern agricultural information, assist in land surveying, provide medical
assistance to their parishioners (even innoculate against diphtheria),
communicate state decrees from the pulpit and violate the confidence of
confession if intended crimes against the emperor and state had been
disclosed.62 It bears noting, however, that such state attempts to utilise
the clergy were scarcely peculiar to Russia, for virtually all European
states, especially during the Enlightenment and long thereafter, sought to
increase the clergy's practical usefulness to state and society.63 Such
notions were especially attractive to Russian bureaucrats, who were
painfully aware of their weak bureaucratic infrastructure and constantly
in search of new ways to buttress their control over the village and its
inhabitants.
Nevertheless, the parish clergy did not become autocracy's lowest
echelon of servitors. In large measure, they simply demonstrated themselves unfit for this role, for they lacked the time and training to be at once
priests, paramedics, agronomists, geodesies and political police. Despite
the regime's repeated attempts to provide the requisite training, the
seminary curriculum - already overloaded with a classical Latin education
and religious subjects - left no time for whatever 'practical subjects' the
state might wish to tack on.64 More important, the government sought only
to exploit the parish clergy, not to incorporate them into its formal
administrative structure, for it simply had no desire to assume the
enormous costs, in salaries, pensions and perquisites, that this would have
entailed. In some measure as well it nurtured a residual distrust of the
parish clergy, who seemed too close to the peasant to be implicitly reliable.
" See, for example, the difficulties encountered by even so imperious a chief procurator
as K. P. Pobedonostsev, described in Freeze, Parish Clergy, 440-4.
61
Freeze, Russian Levitts, 26-34; Freeze, Parish Clergy, 5-10.
M
For an instructive case study, see John M. Stroup, 'The struggle for identity in the
clerical estate: Northwest German Protestant opposition to absolutist policy in the
eighteenth century', unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Yale University 1980.
84
For discussion and references, see Freeze, Parish Clergy, 125-33, I9cT"2oo, 220-4,
2
3«9~ 9-
98
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THE CHURCH IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
As a result, the state assigned various secular tasks to the clergy, but refused
to give them the status, salaries and other benefits accorded the regular
civil service.65
The principal consequence of this policy was to leave the priest
profoundly dependent upon the local community, for it was the parish - not
the Church, not the state - which provided his material support. Although
the state did begin in the 1840s to provide small salary incomes to rural
clergy in some selected dioceses, these grants were exceedingly small and
in no sense ended the clergy's economic dependence upon the parish. As
a result, right to the end of the ancien regime, the clergy remained utterly
beholden to their 'spiritual children' for basic support - principally
through gratuities for various religious rites, supplemented by collections
on major feastdays and sometimes by assistance in the cultivation of
parish-church land.66 Most important here was the voluntary nature of
this support: it was, under Russian custom and canon law, not a tithe but
a freely willed gift, meaning that it could be curtailed or even withheld
at will. The consequence, as authorities ever since Peter the Great
complained, was to weaken the parish clergy's willingness to violate
community wish, to chastise sinners, to attack superstition, to enforce
canonical rules on such matters as marriage, or to tame unruly peasants.67
This economic dependence - so deleterious for the clergy's spiritual
effectiveness and their social status - became an acute source of disaffection
among rank-and-file parish clergy. Though such sentiment was of long
gestation, it became particularly intense in the course of the nineteenth
century. The principal dynamic here was the radical improvement in the
clergy's educational standards, especially in the first half of the nineteenth
century, when virtually all parish priests could boast ten years of formal
education, sometimes even an advanced degree from the elite ecclesiastical
academies.68 As a result, the priest felt outraged by the great discrepancy
between his educational qualifications and service status: his education
had improved, his status and income had not. This injustice was most
apparent to younger seminary graduates, who found clerical positions ever
more difficult to obtain (especially from the 1820s) and could expect no
more than a penurious existence in some poor, rural hamlet.69 Not a few,
• 5 See, for example, the government's negative response to plans to bestow various
medals and honours in the early 1870s (TsGIA SSSR, f. 804, op. 1, razd. 3, d. 473, 11.
i-5)" For the clergy's persisting economic difficulties, see the declaration of clerical
deputies to the State Duma in 1915 in 'Pechat' in dukhovenstvo', Missionerskoe obozrenie,
1915, no. 11, 286-96, and an official report prepared under the auspices of the Synod [E.
Petrovskii], Istorichcskaia zapiska kasatel'no sposobov obespecheniia soderzhaniem pravoslavnogo
prikhodskogo dukhovenstva v Rossiiza sinodaVnyiperiodupravleniia russkoiu tserkov'iu, St Petersburg
1910.
67
F o r analysis a n d references, see Freeze, Parish Clergy, 5 1 - 1 0 1 .
Thus by i860 Church records show that 8 3 % of all priests in the empire held a
seminary degree; in most central dioceses the proportion was still higher, approaching
100% in some dioceses (TsGIA SSSR, f. 796, op. 142, g. 1861, d. 2379).
98
For the surfeit of candidates by the mid-nineteenth century, see Freeze, Parish Clergy,
164-71.
68
99
4-*
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G. L. FREEZE
with good cause, felt profound terror when faced with the prospect of life
in the village, where, deprived of books and surrounded by vodka and
boorish peasants, they risked the all-too-common descent into rural
darkness and drunkenness. In some measure, too, the seminary exposed
future clergymen to radical secular movements, especially after midcentury, when virtually all Russian schools - the seminary included became hotbeds of youthful radicalism, whether nihilist, populist, or
Marxist in philosophy. Finally, educational improvement in the parish
clergy served as well to erode the authority of their ecclesiastical superiors,
whose high station - at least in part - derived from their once superior
education, not their spiritual superiority as monastic ascetics. The result,
in brief, was rising dissatisfaction among parish clergy - over their meagre
incomes, humiliating dependence upon parishioners and total subordination to the whims of' tyrannical' bishops.70
The epoch of Great Reforms under Alexander n (1855-81) was a
decisive watershed in the history of the Church, less because of the reform
itself than because of its impact upon the bishops and parish clergy: it
transformed both from latent into conscious social groups. For both priest
and bishop, the Great Reforms proved a formative experience, remoulding
their political attitudes and sharpening their sense of collective social
identity.
Though at first favourable in their response to reform plans in the
Church, the bishops eventually grew suspicious of the entire process. In
part that change of attitudes derived from the broader shift of public
opinion in the sixties, as the Great Reforms appeared to malfunction and
as radical nihilism seemed to threaten the very foundations of the State
and Church. But the bishops' disenchantment with reform derived
principally from the course of church reform, especially its effort to vitiate
episcopal authority, even at the price of violating canon law. By the early
1870s episcopal opinion had coalesced to block further reform, obstructing
prompt implementation of laws previously enacted, resisting proposals for
further changes in the Church. 71
A major outcome of the bishops' disgruntlement was their adherence
to a programme for episcopal conciliarism (sobornosf). Though the notion
had gained much currency among Slavophiles in the 1840s, it acquired
a distinctly different connotation for the bishops, referring not to the
spiritual unity of the faithful but specifically to the medieval system of
episcopal councils {pomestnye sobory), empowered to address the Church's
problems and needs. The overriding aim here was to circumvent St
Petersburg, to shift power from the Synod (and chief procurator) to the
diocese by creating regional councils. Little came of such demands, at most
70
For a good example of this anti-episcopal spirit, see the case of I. S. Belliustin treated
in G. L. Freeze, 'Revolt from below: a priest's manifesto on the crisis in Russian
orthodoxy', in Stavrou and Nichols, Russian Orthodoxy, 90-124.
71
Most indicative was the bishops' concerted - and successful - effort to defeat D. A.
Tolstoi's plans for reform of ecclesiastical justice; see Freeze, Parish Clergy, 401-4.
IOO
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THE CHURCH IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
occasional meetings in the mid-i88os, principally because state authorities
recognised the underlying purpose - to undercut the state's influence, to
free the Church from secular supervision and tutelage. Especially as
tensions between the Synod and procurator mounted in the last decades
of the century, the call for regional councils gained increasing support
among the episcopate.72
The attitudinal change among parish clergy was no less far-reaching.
In part imbued with wild fantasies about the establishment of regular
salaries, in part freed from their traditional inhibitions, in part filled with
the general euphoria of the new Great-Reform era, the parish clergy
showed a keen interest in secular issues, and for the first time they
became — on a significant scale — involved in the establishment of parish
schools, charitable institutions and organs of secular government.73 The
most important change concerned their attitude toward the state: disillusioned in their hopes for government salaries (to replace entirely the
traditional gratuities), deprived of traditional privileges through reforms
seeking to 'professionalise' the clergy, the parish clergy became acutely
conscious of their common interests and needs. That new mentality found
fullest expression in' clerical liberalism', a movement critical ofecclesiastical
and state authorities, more sympathetic to popular needs, but primarily
devoted to the pursuit of the clergy's own social and economic interests.
Though driven underground by repressive censorship in the 1880s and
1890s, this clerical liberalism had - by all indicators - acquired a substantial following among the rank-and-file parish clergy.74
Both new currents - episcopal conciliarism and clerical liberalism emerged with full force in 1900-17, amidst the cataclysm of revolution and
turmoil then besetting the whole social and political order. Neither in 1905
nor in 1917 did the Church act as the pillar of autocracy that authorities
expected and demanded. The prelates, for their part, seized upon the
vulnerability of autocracy in 1905 to press their demands for reform,
focused chiefly upon the re-establishment of the patriarchate but seeking
other changes as well in the Church. 75 More radical were the aspirations
72
F o r the experiment in episcopal councils in 1884-5, see ibid., 4 4 4 - 7 .
Pipes's assertions - that the clergy 'showed little interest in educating its flock', a n d
t h a t it did so in the 1860s only ' o n orders of the s t a t e ' {The Old Regime, 243) - are quite
erroneous. I n fact, the clergy spontaneously developed a broad network of parish schools
in t h e late 1850s a n d over the next d e c a d e began to lose interest, precisely because the
state refused to provide the necessary economic s u p p o r t . O n l y in the 1880s, not the 1860s,
did t h e regime finally commit itself to t h e s u p p o r t of parish schools. F o r a thorough
discussion, see the older m o n o g r a p h by F. V . Blagovidov, Deiatefnosi' russkogo dukhovenstva
v otnosshenii k narodnomu obrazovaniiu v tsarstvovanie imp. Aleksandra II, K a z a n 1891.
74
See, a b o v e all, t h e ' o r g a n of t h e parish c l e r g y ' , Tserkovno-obshcheslvennyi vestnik,
published inSt Petersburg from 1874 to 1886 and distinguished by its enormous popularity
among the rank-and-file clergy.
75
The status of episcopal opinion is recorded in documents compiled for a pre-sobor
council in 1905-6. These materials have been analysed in a large number of recent studies:
J. Meyendorff, 'Russian bishops and church reform in 1905', in Stavrou and Nichols,
Russian Orthodoxy, 170-82; James Cunningham, A Vanquished Hope: The movement for church
73
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G. L. FREEZE
of the parish clergy, substantial segments ofwhom supported the movement
for' church renewal' (tserkovnoeobnovlenie) - primarily through fundamental
religious and ecclesiastical reform, but also through 'a general renewal of
the social system in the spirit of the Gospels'.76 An important leader of
the radical clergy was G. S. Petrov, a Petersburg priest who sought to
construct the Kingdom of God on earth and dedicated his journal Pravda
Bozh'ia to ' publicizing the needs of the peasants, factory workers and all
those who perform heavy or dirty work'. 77 That spirit found its fullest
expression in the programme of the Russian Christian Socialists, which
convened in 1906 and resolved: ' The basic aim of the Russian Christian
Socialist Party is the organization of the toiling masses in a wide cultural
struggle for the realization of Christian socialism on earth. . . and to
support every peaceful oppositionist movement which aims to transform
the existing economic and political system.' 78 Although relatively few
clergy went that far, they were generally oppositionist, disposed to support
the liberal Kadets, only rarely joining the ranks of reactionary 'BlackHundredists'. Both 1905 and 1917 brought out unequivocally what in fact
was already apparent earlier: given the Church's specific organisational
structure, the divergence between its interests and those of the state and
the formation of the clergy into isolated, distinct social groups, Russian
Orthodoxy could n o t - a n d in 1905 and 1917 did not-serve as 'the
handmaiden of the state'.
renewal in Russia, igo$-igo6, Crestwood, New York 1981; P. E. Immekus, Die RussischOrthodoxe Landpfarrei zu Beginn des XX. Jahrhunderts nach den GutachUn dcr Dib'zesanbischbfe,
Wiirzburg 1978. For the episcopal role in 1917, see: A. V. Kartashev,' Revoliutsiia i sobor
1917-1918 gg.', Bogoslovskaia mysV (1942), 75-101; R. Rossler, Kirche und Revolution in
Rufiland, Koln 1969.
" For the best recent account, see John H. M. Geekie, 'The church and politics in
Russia, 1905-1917; a study of the political behaviour of the Russian Orthodox clergy in
the reign of Nicholas 11', unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of East Anglia, 1976, esp.
pp. 53-174- Also of value are the following: N. S. Gordienko and P. K. Kurochkin,
'Liberal 'no-obnovlencheskoe dvizhenie v russkom pravoslavii nachala XX v.', Voprosy
nauchnogo ateizma, vii (1969), and the older but still useful monograph by John S. Curtiss,
Church and State in Russia: the last years of the empire, igoo-igij,
N e w Y o r k 1940.
77
Pravda Bozh'ia, 1906, n o . I, p . 2.
78
Tserkovno-obshchestvennaia zhizn', 1906, no. 31 (21 J u l y ) , 1054.
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