No 1917 events. Russia stays a monarchy, with varying degrees of democratic input, generally at peace with its neighbours, but with its internal politics easily manipulated by outside forces, sometimes violently.

And if that sounds like OTL Iran, that's intentional. Some time in the mid-to-late 20th Century, the Czars and their foreign backers are ousted, in favour of an eloquent but somewhat unstable old writer who flies in from exile in Vermont to take power.

(Okay, so THAT guy probably wouldn't exist in a non-Communist timeline, and anyway wouldn't qualify as a priest as per the definition of a theocracy, but you get the idea.)
 
No 1917 events. Russia stays a monarchy, with varying degrees of democratic input, generally at peace with its neighbours, but with its internal politics easily manipulated by outside forces, sometimes violently.

And if that sounds like OTL Iran, that's intentional. Some time in the mid-to-late 20th Century, the Czars and their foreign backers are ousted, in favour of an eloquent but somewhat unstable old writer who flies in from exile in Vermont to take power.

(Okay, so THAT guy probably wouldn't exist in a non-Communist timeline, and anyway wouldn't qualify as a priest as per the definition of a theocracy, but you get the idea.)

I'm guessing the guy you're referencing is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?
 
World War I doesn't happen and the Tsar restores the Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, only to declare himself Patriarch, and instead of the Duma, installs the Holy Synod as Russia's sole legislative body, writing the Church's canon law into a new Constitution.
 
The thing about the relationship between Tsarism and the Orthodox church is that the church was long before 1900 subordinated to the Tsarist autocracy. All the leaders of the church worshipped the Tsar as much as they worshipped God.
 
The thing about the relationship between Tsarism and the Orthodox church is that the church was long before 1900 subordinated to the Tsarist autocracy. All the leaders of the church worshipped the Tsar as much as they worshipped God.

kupka.jpg


("Russian God" by the Czech artist František Kupka, 1904)
 
The thing about the relationship between Tsarism and the Orthodox church is that the church was long before 1900 subordinated to the Tsarist autocracy. All the leaders of the church worshipped the Tsar as much as they worshipped God.

I seem to recall hearing somewhere that, in imperial days, there was even a taboo against PRAISING the Tsar, because praising him for doing good things would imply that he had the potential to do bad things.
 
Top