Orthodox piety and praxis in the decades leading to the Bolshevik Revolution is an area of research that continues to provide opportunities to understand the complexities of social relationships that brought together and alienated the faithful and their parish clergy. Daniel Scarborough uses the framework of the pastoral movement—“the parish clergy's collective efforts to recruit the support and participation of the laity in the church's social missions” (7)—to provide a nuanced picture of the Church's response to famine, war, revolution, and other “dislocations of the modern world” (190). Two provinces form the centerpiece of the book: Moscow, with its theological academy and two seminaries, and Tver΄, whose seminary was the largest in the empire.
Scarborough is particularly strong in providing contextual background on the history of mutual aid organizations, seminaries, parish social welfare efforts, primary schooling, and influences of secular ideas and developments. Chaps. 1–2 concisely describe the main themes of the pastoral movement beginning with the 1823 imperial edict establishing the diocesan trusteeship (popechitel΄svo) for impoverished clergy under the authority of local bishops. Over time and with adjustments to diocesan administrative structures, the clergy gained experience in providing mutual aid beyond their ranks and developed skills in other areas such as the material support of church property and religious education. New institutions including brotherhoods (bratstva) and clerical congresses that were introduced as part of the larger reforms of the 1860s, combined with improvements in communication through diocesan assemblies and publications, were critical to the emergence of a new type of pastor engaged in the most pressing social problems of the time (alcoholism, illiteracy, poverty). The experience gained by this new type of pastor helped to prepare ordinary clergymen to provide more effective famine relief in 1891 and to take leading roles in parish reform that included calls for greater lay control over finances and clerical selection.
A fascinating part of this story is the role of seminary education. Unrest in the seminaries beginning in the 1870s and continuing well past 1905 might have led to a more radical clergy motivated by populist and revolutionary ideas. After all, the squalid and repressive circumstances these young men faced might have brought them into open revolt against the conservatism of Chief Prosecutor Konstantin Pobedonostsev, whose dark shadow loomed over every aspect of church life. After the seminary, life may have been less physically restricting but it proved full of economic hardship as graduates waited years to be ordained. Once that happened, their role as spiritual father was strained by financial dependence on their parishioners.
Despite these challenges, the parish clergy invested themselves in helping the faithful adapt to the new realities of a rapidly changing society. The clergy's most important new role was in the establishment of primary education and their important contribution to increasing literacy rates. Parish schools also provided new employment opportunities to clerical daughters whose history has yet to be written. Beyond the schools, clergy conducted a type of adult education through “conversations” (besedy) that were more accessible to parishioners than officially provided sermons written in stiff, educated prose.
With growing social and political challenges after 1905, the pastoral movement faced new critiques from parishioners who questioned the need to pray for the military and war efforts rather than to care for wounded soldiers and their families. The introduction of the Duma brought with it new political ideas that infiltrated the clerical ranks and ordinary believers. As both groups began to assert their interests in more control over parish affairs and spiritual life, political divisions brought new divisions to parish life. These tensions added to longstanding discontent with required financial support of the parish clergy and contributed to an increase in attacks on clerical land and refusal to pay emoluments. After 1905, parishioner demands included greater lay control over parish finances through parish councils that might even include women and selection of the parish priest.
Built upon deep archival research, Scarborough's book occasionally overlooks important contributions that have been made over the last thirty years to our knowledge of Russian Orthodoxy in the waning decades of autocracy, such as ways that the faithful refashioned traditional practice while remaining spiritually committed to their faith. Overall, through the framework of the “pastoral movement,” Daniel Scarborough provides a nuanced picture of the parish clergy's responses to the multifarious social, political, and economic changes that is accessible to audiences less knowledgeable of the intricacies of church structures and parish life.
