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Handmaiden of the State? The Church in Imperial Russia Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

G. L. Freeze
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Extract

The history of the Russian Orthodox Church, especially in the modern imperial period (1700–1917), has been a woefully neglected field of scholarly research. 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. 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.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 82 - 102
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

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 Gagarin, Jean, The Russian Clergy, Newtonville, Massachusetts 1978 (reprint), pp. i–viiiGoogle Scholar.

4 Most general histories, in fact, hardly mention the Church after the Petrine reform in 1721. See, for example, such typical Western accounts as Florinsky, M. T., Russia: a history and an interpretation, 2 vols., New York 1955Google Scholar, and even the more sympathetically inclined Riasanovsky, N. V., History of Russia, Oxford 1969Google Scholar. 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 Smolitsch, Igor, Geschichte der russischen Kirche, Leiden 1964Google Scholar.

6 Pipes, Richard, Russia under the Old Regime, London 1974, 221–45Google Scholar.

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 reform made the Church a servant of the state.’ P. V. Verkhovskoi, Uchrezhdenie Dukhovnoi kolltgii i dukhovnyi reglament, 2 vols., Rostov-on-Donu 1916, i. 684–5. That view is echoed in subsequent Western literature; see, for example, Clarkson, J., A History of Russia, New York 1961, 368Google Scholar; Riasanovsky, op. cit., 257; and Miliukov, P., Seignobos, C., Eisenmann, L., eds., History of Russia, 3 vols., New York 1968, i. 322Google Scholar. The same interpretation pervades Soviet works; see, for example, the account in Smirnov, N. A. (ed.), Tserkov’ v istorii Rossii (IX v.-1917 g.), Moscow 1967, 162–82Google Scholar.

8 The standard account of the Petrine era is Wittram, R., Peter I, Czar und Kaiser, 2 vols., Göttingen 1964Google Scholar.

9 Verkhovskoi, op. cit.

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; Cracraft, James, The Church Reforms of Peter the Great, Stanford 1971Google Scholar; O. F. Kozlov, ‘Tserkovnaia reforma pervoi chetverti XVIII v.’, Kandidatskaia dissertatsiia, Moscow 1970.

11 Cracraft, op. cit., ix.

12 A. V. Muller, ‘The historical antecedents of the Petrine Ecclesiastical Reform’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington 1973; Appel, K., Die Auseinandersetzung urn die kirchliche Gerichtsbarkeit in Moskauer Rußland 1640–1701, Berlin 1966Google Scholar (Phil. Dissertation). See, especially, the critique of traditional views in Stupperich, R., ‘Ursprung, Motive und Beurteilung der Kirchenreform unter Peter dem GrolJen’, Kirche im Osten, xvii (1974), 42–61Google Scholar.

13 See, in particular, the accounts in Florovskij, G. V., Puti russkogo bogosloviia, Paris 1937Google Scholar, and Cracraft, James, ‘Feofan Prokopovich’, in Garrard, J. G. ed., The Eighteenth Century in Russia, Oxford 1973, 75–105Google Scholar.

14 See Kartashev, A. V., ‘K voprosu o pravoslavii Feofana Prokopovicha’, Sbornik statei v chest’ D. F. Kobeko, St Petersburg 1913, 225–37Google Scholar.

15 Hauptmann, P., Die Katechismen der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche. Entstehungsgeschichte und Lehrgchalt, Göttingen 1971Google Scholar; Hartel, Hans-Joachim, Byzantinische Erbe und Orthodoxie bei Feofan Prokopovich, Würzburg 1970Google Scholar.

16 Pipes, The Old Regime 222.

17 Polnoe sobraniepostanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po vedomstvupravoslavnogo ispovedaniia, 10 vols., St Petersburg 1869–1916, i. no. 1Google Scholar.

18 Apart from the abundant materials in Polnoe sobranie postanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia, see Freeze, G. L., The Russian Levites: parish clergy in the eighteenth century, Cambridge, Mass. 1977, 37—41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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. Shakhovskoi, P., Zapiski, St Petersburg 1872, 40–1Google Scholar. For a superficial overview, with references to the literature and limited use of archival materials, see the traditional account in Blagovidov, F. V., Ober-prokurory Sv. Sinoda v XVIII i pervoi polovine XIX St., 2nd edn, Kazan 1900Google Scholar.

20 Clarkson, History of Russia, 214.

21 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 Freeze, G. L., The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: crisis, reform, counter-reform, Princeton 1983, esp. 12–22, 195–200, 298–301, 308–47, 398–448Google Scholar.

22 See, especially, I. A. Bulygin, ‘Tserkovnaia reforma Petra I’, Voprosy istorii, 1974, no. 5. 79–93-

23 Bulygin, I. A., Monastyrskie krest’iane v periodpervoi chetverti XVIII v., Moscow 1977Google Scholar.

24 Pokrovskii, N. N., Antifeodat’nyiprotest uralo-sibirskikh krest’ian-staroobriadtsev v XVIII D., Novosibirsk 1974, esp. 8–10Google Scholar.

25 Zol’nikova, N. D., Soslovnye problemy vo vzaimootnosheniiakh tserkui i gosudarstva v Sibiri (XVIII v.), Novosibirsk 1981, ch. 1Google Scholar.

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. Bulygin, A., ‘Krest’iane vologodskogo Spaso-Prilutskogo monastyria v pervoi polovine XVIII v.’, Agrarnaia istoriia Evropeiskogo Severa SSSR, Vologda 1976Google Scholar; 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 Freeze, G. L., ‘A case of stunted anticlericalism: clergy and society in imperial Russia”, European Studies Review, xiii (1983), 177–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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 Zav’ialov, A. A., Vopros O Iserkovnykh imeniiakhpri Imp. Ekaterine a, St Petersburg 1900Google Scholar.

28 Gorchakov, M., Monastyrskii prikaz, St Petersburg 1868Google Scholar; 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, Malitskii, N., Istoriia Vladimirskoi dukhovnoi seminarii, 3 vols., Vladimir 1900–2Google Scholar, 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 Alefirenko, P. K., Krest’ianskoe dvizhcnie i krest’ianskii vopros v Rossii v 30–50-kh godakh XVIII v., Moscow 1958Google Scholar.

30 For references to published and 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.

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 (Leshchenko, N. N., ‘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)Google Scholar. Even in the revolutionary year, 1905, only 350 of the 38,188 parishes in the empire adopted anticlerical resolutions (Emeliakh, L. I., Antiklerikarnoe dvizhenie kresfian v pervoi russkoi revoliutsii, Moscow and Leningrad 1965, 19Google Scholar; Vscpoddanneishii otchet Ober- Prokrurora Sv. Sinoda po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia (a 1903–04, St Petersburg 1904, appendix 6)Google Scholar. Similarly, only 0.5 per cent of all agrarian disorders (33 of 7,165 reported incidents) in 1905 were directed against the clergy (Dubrovskii, S., Krest’ianskoe dvizhenie v revoliutsii 1905–07 gg., Moscow 1956, 65Google Scholar).

33 See G. L. Freeze, ‘Die Kirche, Sittlichkeit und Sozialstruktur in Rußland in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, unpublished paper presented to the colloquium of the Institut Für osteuropäische Geschichte und Landeskunde, Universität Tübingen, 7 December 1983.

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 Oswalt, Julia, Kirchliche Gemeinde und Bauernbefreiung, Gottingen 1975Google Scholar, and Freeze, G. L., ‘Theologie und Politik in RuBland in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts: Die Laisierung von Archimandrit Feodor (Bucharev)’, forthcoming in Kirche im Osten xxviii (1985)Google Scholar. For a substantially different process, involving earlier and more far-reaching secularisation of the Church’s theology and functions, see Zulehner, P. M., Sdkularisierung von Gesellschaft, Person und Religion. Religion und Kirche in Ostcrreich, Vienna 1973Google Scholar.

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. 90.

36 Leskov’s analysis, based chiefly upon the 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 Stavrou, T. and Nichols, R. L. (eds.), Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, Minneapolis 1978, 154–69Google Scholar.

37 For details, see Freeze, Parish Clergy, ch. 7 and 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.

39 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 1873Google Scholar; TsGIA SSSR, f. 796, op. 445, d. 409.

42 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.

44 See, for example, ‘Zapiski Kn. N. A. Orlova’, Russkaia slarina, xxxi (1881), 77–93Google Scholar, and various memoranda by the influential P. A. Valuev, such as that in TsGIA SSSR, f. 908, op. 1, d. 112, n. 1–4.

45 Freeze, Russian Levitts, 37–41, 182–90.

46 Freeze, Parish Clergy, 164–71.

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; Gurskaia, I., ‘Tserkov’ inreforma 1861 g.’, Krasnyiarkhiv, lii (1935), 182–90Google Scholar: Stupperich, R., ‘Die russische Kirche bei der Verkündigung der Bauernbefreiung’, Jahrbücher für die Geschichte Osteuropas, xiii (1965), 321–30Google Scholar.

48 In 1818 the emperor authorised the Church to report landlords who coerced their serfs to work on Sundays and church holidays; evidently because so many reports and conflicts ensued, the order was soon rescinded (TsGIA SSSR, f. 796, op. 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. Only in the case of squires in the western provinces, who were Catholic, did the bishops act more aggressively, attributing not only economic but 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.1150; ibid., f. 796, op. 131, g. 1850, d. 571).

50 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 1776Google Scholar.

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).

52 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 Peters, Dorothea, ‘Politische und gesellschaftliche Vorstellungen in der Aufstandsbewegung unter Pugaĉev (1773–1775)’, Forsckungen zur osteuropäischen Gcschichte, xvii (1973), 129–32Google Scholar. 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 1915Google Scholar, 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. Nikolaia Pavlovicha, St Petersburg 1915, no. 56Google Scholar.

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 Belliustin, I. S., Opisanie sel’skogo dukhovenstva, Leipzig 1858, 154–5Google Scholar; 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).

55 See the recent analysis by Bryner, Erich, Der geistliche Stand in Rujjland. Sozidgeschichtliche Unlersuchungen zu Episkopat und Gemeindegeistlickkeit der russischen orthodoxen Kirche im 18. Jahrhundert, Göttingen 1982, 30–1Google Scholar, and the older study by Kharlampovich, K. V., Malorossiiskoe vliianie na velikorusskuiu tserkovnuiu zhizn’, Kazan 1914, 459Google Scholar and passim.

56 Bryner, op. cit., 26–66; Freeze, Parish Clergy, 24–7, 393, 442–3.

57 Indicative was the bishops’ attitude toward ecclesiastical schools and 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 data on 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, St Petersburg 1896Google Scholar.

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.

61 See, for example, the difficulties encountered by even so imperious a chief procurator as K. P. Pobedonostsev, described in Freeze, Parish Clergy, 440–4.

62 Freeze, Russian Levites, 26–34; Freeze, Parish Clergy, 5–10.

63 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.

64 For discussion and references, see Freeze, Parish Clergy, 125–33, 199–200, 220–4, 319–29.

65 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. 1–5).

66 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 [Petrovskii, E.], Istorichcskaia zapiska kasatel’no sposobov obespecheniia soderzhaniem pravoslavnogo prikhodskogo dukhovenstva v Rossiiza sinodaVnyiperiodupravleniia russkoiu tserkov’iu, St Petersburg 1910Google Scholar.

67 For analysis and references, see Freeze, Parish Clergy, 51–101.

68 Thus by 1860 Church records show that 83% 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).

69 For the surfeit of candidates by the mid-nineteenth century, see Freeze, Parish Clergy, 164–71.

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

72 For the experiment in episcopal councils in 1884–5, see ibid., 444–7.

73 Pipes’s assertions - that the clergy ‘showed little interest in educating its flock’, and that it did so in the 1860s only ‘on orders of the state’ (The Old Regime, 243) - are quite erroneous. In fact, the clergy spontaneously developed a broad network of parish schools in the late 1850s and over the next decade began to lose interest, precisely because the state refused to provide the necessary economic support. Only in the 1880s, not the 1860s, did the regime finally commit itself to the support of parish schools. For a thorough discussion, see the older monograph by Blagovidov, F. V., Deiatefnosi’ russkogo dukhovenstva v otnosshenii k narodnomu obrazovaniiu v tsarstvovanie imp. Aleksandra II, Kazan 1891Google Scholar.

74 See, above all, the ‘organ of the parish clergy’, Tserkovno-obshcheslvennyi vestnik, published in St 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; Cunningham, James, A Vanquished Hope: The movement for church renewal in Russia, 1905–1906, Crestwood, New York 1981Google Scholar; Immekus, P. E., Die Russisch- Orthodoxe Landpfarrei zu Beginn des XX. Jahrhunderts nach den GutachUn dcr Diözesanbischöfe, Würzburg 1978Google Scholar. For the episcopal role in 1917, see: A. V. Kartashev,’ Revoliutsiia i sobor 1917–1918 gg.’, Bogoslovskaia mysl’ (1942), 75–101; Rössler, R., Kirche und Revolution in Rußland, Köln 1969Google Scholar.

76 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: Gordienko, N. S. and Kurochkin, P. K., ‘Liberal ‘no-obnovlencheskoe dvizhenie v russkom pravoslavii nachala XX v.’, Voprosy nauchnogo ateizma, vii (1969)Google Scholar, and the older but still useful monograph by Curtiss, John S., Church and State in Russia: the last years of the empire, 1900–1917, New York 1940Google Scholar.

77 Pravda Bozh’ia, 1906, no. I, p. 2.

78 Tserkovno-obshchestvennaia zhizn’, 1906, no. 31 (21 July), 1054.