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The Heresy of “Bolshevik” Christianity: Orthodox Rejection of Religious Reform during NEP
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
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The complex interaction between religion and atheism in the former Soviet Union continues to attract scholarly interest. Recent studies of Russian Orthodox Church history during the early Soviet era have broken new ground, yet institutional and political concerns continue to dominate the discussion. Exceptions to this trend place religion in a broader social framework, thereby yielding new insights into religion as a cultural system that the Bolsheviks attacked.
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- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1996
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I wish to thank Nina Tumarkin, William R. Hutchison, Margaret Gillespie, the members of Harvard Divinity School's American Religious History Colloquium, and the two anonymous Slavic Review referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Financial support for this research came from the International Research and Exchanges Board (with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Department of State [Title VIII]), the Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad Program, and the history department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
1. Alekseev, V. A., Illiuzii i dogmy (Moscow, 1991)Google Scholar; Vasil'eva, O. Iu., “Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ i sovetskaia vlast’ v 1917–1927 godakh,” Voprosy istorii, 1993, no. 8: 40–54 Google Scholar; Odintsov, M. I., Gosudarstvo i tserkov': htoriia vzaimootnoshenii, 1917–1938 (Moscow, 1991)Google Scholar; Glennys Young, “Rural Religion and Soviet Power, 1921–1932” (Ph.D. diss, University of California at Berkeley, 1989); Shkarovskii, Mikhail V., “The Russian Orthodox Church versus the State: The Josephite Movement, 1927–1940,” Slavic Review 54, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 365–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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3. Dimitry Pospielovsky makes this accusation against John Curtiss in The Russian Church and the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982, 2 vols. (Crestwood, N.Y., 1984), 2: 509.Google Scholar
4. Only recently has a popular approach to Russian religious history been possible thanks to newly available published and archival texts that report the attitudes of ordinary believers and clergy. This article draws upon primary documents written by contemporary sources, both secular and ecclesiastical, from the following Russian archives: Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Moscow (GARF); Rossiiskii tsentr dlia khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii, Moscow (RTsKh-IDNI); Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv dlia izucheniia politicheskikh dokumentov, St. Petersburg (TsGAIPD); Saratovskii oblastnoi tsentr dlia dokumentov noveishei istorii, Saratov (SOTsDNI); Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv goroda Moskvy, Moscow (RGIAgM); and Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, St. Petersburg (RGIA).
5. A detailed history of the movement's prerevolutionary origins can be found in Edward E. Roslof, “The Renovationist Movement in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1922–1946” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994), 21–45.
6. RTsKhlDNI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 120, 11. 12, 13 (Telegram from Lunacharskii to Lenin, 9 May 1921).
7. This church conspiracy existed only in the minds of Bolshevik leaders who were projecting their own tactics onto their opponents. See Roslof, “Renovationist Movement,” 73–89.
8. TsGAIPD, f. 16, op. 6, d. 6919, 1. 283 (GPl) summary report for 23–31 July 1925).
9. TsGAIPD, f. 16, op. 6, d. 6920, 1. 121 (GPU summary report for August 1925).
10. GARF, f. 353, op. 6, d. 21, 11. 208–11, 214–15, 216–20, and d. 27, 11. 4–5, 27–29, 33 (Petitions and complaints from church councils in Kaluga to the Commissariat of Justice [NKIu], 1923).
11. RTsKhlDNI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 2643, 1. 18 (GPU summary report on nationwide politics and economics for 16–21 September 1922).
12. “Revoliutsiia i tserkov',” Sobornyi razum, Petrograd, 1922, no. 1 (26 November): 2–3.
13. Titlinov, B. V., Novaia tserkov’ (Petrograd-Moscow, 1923), 51.Google Scholar
14. Quoted in A. I. Klibanov, “Sovremennoe sektantstvo v lipetskoi oblasti,” Voprosy istorii religii i ateizma 10 (1962): 159.
15. GARF, f. 353, op. 6, d. 20, 11. 35–36 (Petition from parishioners of the Valaam Monastery to the NKIu, January 1923).
16. “O ‘Zhivoi Tserkvi’ v derevne,” Zhizn’ i religiia, Kazan', 1922, no. 4 (15 December): 15.
17. Drug pravoslavnogo naroda, Saratov, 1922, no. 3 (October): 3–6.
18. Zito, George V., “Toward a Sociology of Heresy,” Sociological Analysis 44, no. 2 (1983): 123–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. Popular opposition to specific aspects of renovationism, particularly to changes in the calendar and liturgy, is eloquently presented by Freeze, “Counter-Reformation in Russian Orthodoxy. “
20. Durkheim, Emile, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: A Study in Religious Sociology, trans. Swain, Joseph W. (New York, 1915), 47, 427.Google Scholar
21. Swanson, Guy E., The Birth of the Gods: The Origin of Primitive Beliefs (Ann Arbor, 1960), 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22. Swanson, Guy E., Religion and Regime: A Sociological Account of the Reformation (Ann Arbor, 1967), vii–viii Google Scholar. For an approach to this issue similar to Swanson's in connecting theology, society, religion, and politics, see Jacobs, James R. and Jacobs, Margaret C., “Anglican Origins in Modern Science,” his 71 (1980): 251–67.Google Scholar
23. As described by Altrichter, Helmut, “Insoluble Conflicts: Village Life between Revolution and Collectivization?,” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Rabinowitch, Alexander, and Stites, Richard, eds., Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture (Bloomington, 1991), 195–202 Google Scholar. Altrichter's assessment is supported by RTsKhlDNI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 775, 1. 44, and op. 113, d. 353, 11. 17, 24 (Protocols of the Central Committee's Antireligious Commission meetings for 9 December 1925 and for 6 June and 11 December 1926).
24. “Tikhonovskii krizis,” Piatigorskii eparkhial'nyi vestnik, 1923, no. 1 (1 February): 18.
25. Altrichter, “Insoluble Conflicts,” 192–209. See also the discussion of popular religion in Soviet Russia by Lewin, Moshe, Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York, 1985), 57–71.Google Scholar
26. For example, the GPU reported that Orthodox peasants present at a meeting in Penza province on 22 September 1922, said they would be against renovationism if it changed the church service. RTsKhlDNI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 2644, 1. 14.
27. In Orthodox theological circles, immanence has been explained as the incarnation of divine energies following the example of Christ. This line of thought has mystical connotations developed by Simeon the New Theologian (d. 1022) and Gregory Palamas (d. 1359), whose theology influenced Russian monasticism through the hesychastic movement. See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christianity (600–1700) (Chicago, 1974), 252–70. Accounts that illustrate popular Russian Orthodox understandings of this concept can be found in the biography of Anastasiia Logacheva (1809–75) by Meehan, Brenda, Holy Women of Russia (New York, 1993), 41–60 Google Scholar, and in devotional accounts, such as Ellis, Jane, trans., An Early Soviet Saint: The Life of Father Zachariah (London, 1976).Google Scholar
28. “Soobshcheniia s mest,” Zhizn’ i religiia, 1922, no. 1 (1 September): 8, 12–13.
29. “Khronika,” Zhizn’ i religiia, 1922, no. 3 (15 November): 11–12. The financial pressure on renovationism was reflected in the appeal, at the end of this issue, for money to enable the magazine to survive.
30. “Otzvuki zhizni,” Zhizn’ i religiia, 1922, no. 4 (15 December): 5. The level of education among parish priests declined dramatically in the last twenty-five years of the imperial era. See Freeze, Gregory L., The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform (Princeton, 1983), 454–55.Google Scholar
31. These themes occur repeatedly in correspondence for 1923–24 to Tikhon from believers and clergy. Their petitions, reports, and other documents are in the archives of the patriarchal chancery. RGIA, f. 831, op. 1, dd. 194, 196, 200, and 247.
32. Vestnik Sviashchennogo Sinoda pravoslavnoi rossiiskoi tserkvi, Moscow (hereafter Vestnik Sv. Sinoda), 1927, no. 2 (15): 17.
33. Historians connected with the Russian Orthodox Church continue to justify the modus vivendi chosen by Sergii for dealing with the Soviet government. A particularly vigorous defense was made on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the 1927 declaration by Hegumen Innokentii (Pavlov), “Metropolitan Sergii's Declaration and Today's Church,” Russian Studies in History 32 (Fall 1993): 82–88. The degree to which a desire for self-preservation and personal advancement influenced Sergii's choices is still a subject of debate and deserves further investigation. For an account of high church politics in the 1920s, see Pospielovsky, Russian Church, 1: 113–62.
34. The development and codification of these instructions can be traced in RTsKhlDNI, f. 89, op. 4, d. 115, 1. 50 (Protocol of the Central Committee's Antireligious Commission meeting, 2 January 1924), and GARF, f. 353, op. 7, d. 6, 11. 17–18 (Instructions from Krasikov to police in the Buriat Republic, January-February 1924), and d. 17, 1. 86 (NKIu circular to local officials on division of church property).
35. Described in Roslof, “Renovationist Movement,” 217–19.
36. Stites, Richard, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York, 1989), 121–22.Google Scholar
37. Ibid., 101. See also Curtiss, Russian Church, 218.
38. Alekseev, Illiuzii i dogmy, 264–68. The Central Committee investigated the party organizations in twenty-nine provinces of central Russia and was alarmed to discover religious beliefs were still strong among party members. RTsKhlDNI, f. 17, op. 60, d. 52, 11. 1–4.
39. See the 1923 report for the Fifth Department of the Commissariat of Justice in Revoliutsiia i tserkov', 1924, nos. 1–2, cited in Regel'son, Lev, Tragediia russkoi tserkvi (Paris, 1977), 349–50.Google Scholar
40. Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “The Problem of Class Identity in NEP Society,” in Fitzpatrick, , Rabinowitch, , and Stites, , eds., Russia in the Era of NEP, 22, 26–27.Google Scholar
41. E. Iaroslavskii noted the synod's organizational advantage in a presentation to the Orgburo in December 1924. RTsKhlDNI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 620, 11. 16–17.
42. TsGAIPD, f. 16, op. 6, d. 6924, 1. 148 (GPU summary report for 2–9 November 1925).
43. SOTsDNI, f. 27, op. 3, d. 146, 11. 71, 73ob., and d. 148, 11. 86, 88, 90, 92 (Provincial GPU political reports to Moscow for 1923). Archbishop Kornilii was a monastic with a long history of church service prior to the schism, which may have explained his charisma. See Archbishop Manuil (Lemeshevskii), “Katalog ‘Russkikh Arkhiereev Obnovlentsev, '” 3 vols. (Typescript, 1957), 1: 239–41.
44. Vestnik Sv. Sinoda, 1928, nos. 3–4 (26–27): 20. Nazarii subsequently joined the Gregorian schism. Manuil, “Katalog,” 2: 33.
45. The archbishop's personal charisma is evident in the periodical Arkhangel'skii tserkovnyi golos, 1925, no. 1 (21 December): 1–5, 15; 1926, nos. 2–3 (11 February): 14, and nos. 4–5 (11 June): 1. The periodical apparently ceased publication after his departure. Between 1925 and 1936, Mikhail served in ten different episcopal sees, despite a two-year return to the patriarchal church in 1929–31. Manuil, “Katalog,” 2: 28–29.
46. These issues were addressed by the 16–21 April 1926 plenum of the Holy Synod. Vestnik Sv. Sinoda, 1926, no. 10 (6): 2–10.
47. RGIAgM, f. 2303, op. 1, d. 21, 11. 74, 342, 381, 405, 599, 664 (Protocols from meetings of the renovationist diocesan council in Moscow, 1928).
48. On 13 February 1925, the Financial Department of the RSFSR refused a request by the Holy Synod to exempt its parishes from church taxes. The ruling indicated that such an exemption would be illegal because it would give the synod “a privileged position.” RGIAgM, f. 2303, op. 1, d. 15, 1. 106.
49. SOTsDNI, f. 27, op. 3, d. 147, 1. 128 (Secret letter to the Saratov provincial party secretary from the corresponding secretary of the Kuznetskii region, July 1923). This situation continued through the fall and winter, according to later reports in d. 148, II. 88, 92 (Saratov provincial GPU summary reports).
50. Pravoslavnyi tserkovnyi vestnik, 1925, no. 6 (1 December): 24.
51. RGIAgM, f. 2303, op. 1, d. 15, 1. 108 (Petition to the renovationist Holy Synod from Bogoliubskii Cathedral, February 1925).
52. Bishop Innokentii wrote to Tikhon in February 1924 with news of the effects of his having assumed his post in Stavropol. The believers in that city refused to attend churches controlled by synodal clergy and only relented after local clergy returned to the patriarchal fold. RGIA, f. 831, op. 1, d. 247, 11. 8–9.
53. Quoted in Levitin, A. and Shavrov, V., Ocherki po istorii russkoi tserkovnoi smuti, 3 vols. (Kuesnacht, Switz., 1977), 3: 48–49.Google Scholar
54. RGIAgM, f. 2303, op. 1, d. 15, 1. 277 (Petition to renovationist diocesan council, February 1925).
55. RGIAgM, f. 2303, op. 1, d. 14, 1. 5 (Petition to renovationist diocesan council, 15 June 1925).
56. See the analysis by Douglas R. Weiner, “'Razmychka?’ Urban Unemployment and Peasant In-Migration as Sources of Social Conflict” in Fitzpatrick, Rabinowitch, and Stites, eds., Russia in the Era of NEP, 144–55.
57. A vicious struggle for control of St. Nicholas Church in Moscow occurred when the former parish priest returned to his post after being unable to find secular work. RGIAgM, f. 2303, op. 1, d. 14, 11. 6–9 (Request by Archpriest Leonid Bagretsov for a transfer to a new parish, 15 June 1925). Some renovationists voluntarily defrocked themselves and took positions as antireligious activists. See Peris, “Commissars in Red Cassocks,” 350–51.
58. RGIAgM, f. 2303, op. 1, d. 14, 11. 111–15 (Report from the parish council of Semenov Cemetery, 22 August 1925).
59. Vse ispytyvaite khoroshego derzhites’ (Likvidatsiia Kubanskoi Tikhonovshchiny) (Krasnodar, 1926), 12.
60. TsGAIPD, f. 16, op. 6, d. 6917, 1. 78 (GPU summary report for 1–15 May 1925).
61. Pravoslavnyi tserkovnyi vestnik, 1925, no. 6 (December 1): 22. The renovationists responded by caustically asking what would happen if they performed the liturgy together outside—would the Tikhonites need to douse the heavens with holy water?
62. Vse ispytyvaite, 5.
63. The four reports that follow were published in Vestnik Sv. Sinoda, 1926, no. 11 (7): 20–22.