Religion in Russia 1917-1920s
If OTL’s contemporaries of 1917 had not spoken of a „religious revival“, I would probably not, either. Because it might be misleading – if it is understood to mean that religion in Russia had somehow been „dead“ before.
Because it certainly had not been. This update is going to concentrate on Russian Orthodoxy and religious groups which have splintered from it, and it is going to tell a bit of a background story – those who already know it may skip the parts that are purely OTL, but, as so often, because_I_had not known ANYTHING about most of what I’m writing about in this update until, say, two years ago, I thought maybe the short historical sketch may be useful to others, too. – When I focus this update on Russian Orthodoxy and its environs, there must not be an implicit message that Russian Orthodoxy is a very different, strange planet, far away from all other Christian confessions. In fact, many of the trends that we can observe in Russian Orthodoxy and its environs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries IOTL as well as ITTL’s 1920s (when IOTL all religious groups in the Soviet Union found themselves under surveillance by secret police, politically marginalised by an openly antireligious state) exist in similar forms within Catholicism and Protestantism, too, and other updates will deal specifically with the very different development Catholic culture is going to take ITTL, for example, or with divergences in the Islamic sphere. Today, for coherence’s sake, we’re looking at Russian Orthodoxy and those who broke with it.
Russian Orthodoxy may never have had its Magisterial Reformation. But it certainly had radical reformers galore. From the medieval Strigolniki over the various groups of „Old Believers“, who immediately appeared when the Russian Orthodox Church became more hierarchically organised and attempted even the most insignificant top-down reforms, and the Doukhobors, Molokans and Subbotniks of the 18th and early 19th century to a host of new groups emerging at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries following charismatic leaders like Alexander Dobrulyov, Andrey Cherkassov or John of Kronstadt.
What distinguished the development of reformist and dissenting Christian groups in Russia from that in, say, the US or (in a broad sense) Germany, is that under the Czar, such groups could never establish themselves in the midst of normal society, they could never publish their views through the mass media of their times, they were severely restricted in their missionary efforts, and sometimes outright persecuted. Most of the time, such dissenting groups were sent off to some marginal land (of which the Russian Empire thought it had quite enough of), which fulfilled a double function: the quarrelsome sect was removed from the core of Russian society, its elites and religious discourse, and more Russian colonists were settled in marginal lands of the empire populated mostly by non-Russians. (At least the latter point should not sound utterly unfamiliar from a British/North American perspective – well, the first one actually, neither...)
But religious innovation and diverging, new views were not only held by „schismatics“. In the midst of Russian Orthodoxy, new voices asserted themselves when the lid of autocracy came off. Not only did laymen attempt to assert greater influence – the clergy itself was not at all obedient and harmonious, it turned out when freedom allowed it. Even in the short interlude of religious freedom of OTL, there were calls for deep-reaching reforms. Socially, the conservative rejection of the Revolution shared by the upper echelons of ecclesiastical hierarchy was not endorsed at all by many groups who looked back e.g. to the Brotherhood of Christian Struggle and other Christian socialist groups from the first decade of the century for inspiration. And even theologically, heated debates were going on: even after the Czarist imperial attack on Mount Athos, people like Sergey Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky still upheld „Sophiologist“ views which were officially declared heretical, and they found many supporters among the educated urban classes.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the Russian Orthodox Church called together a „local council“ in the Moscow Kremlin in 1917 – the first one in over 300 years. In it, all these and many more questions were vividly discussed. The majority of its members had been elected at the diocesan level (clergy and laity separately) in accordance with new rules set up by a Pre-Council in early July 1917.
So far, this is all OTL.
IOTL, the „Local Council“ came together in mid-August 1917 and was presided over by Kerensky’s Provisional Government. ITTL, things are moving faster because the Constituent Assembly elections are also taking place much earlier – but not by much, since the PoD is too close. Thus, let us say that the Pre-Council convenes at some point in time during the soviet interlude (i.e. in May), so that church elections and state elections take place more or less in parallel in early June 1917. Thus, the Local Council probably convenes in July, only shortly after the Constituent Assembly has convened, too, and elected the People’s Commission chaired by Victor Chernov.
The Council is going to be very divided. Some divisions and debates are the same as IOTL: some (e.g. Bishop Mitrofan, Archbishop Anthony of Kharkov and Archimandrite Hilarion) will argue for the restoration of the Patriarchy; others (Archpriest Nikolai Tsvetkov and many professors of theology: Alexander Brilliantov, Ilya Gromoglasov, Boris Titlinov, Nikolai Kuznetsov) will argue against it. Liberal and reformist laymen and members of the lower („white“) clergy will argue in favour of allowing priests to marry, while conservatives and almost the entire higher clergy will oppose this.
Then, there are divisions and debates which did not take place IOTL, or were not as prominent as they are ITTL. One of them is the question of „unity vs. many autocephalies“, which will initially probably be labelled as the „Ukrainian Question“: Should there be one Orthodox Church for „all the lands of the Rus“, or should the church in the Ukrainian (and maybe even Belarussian) Federative Republic, as it will soon come to be called, establish its own national Council and elect its own Metropolitan (or even Patriarch)? The most fervent supporters of Ukrainian autocephaly, like Vasil Lypkivsky and Volodimir Chekhivsky, will not have even participated in this Council, and instead organised the election and convention of a separate Ukrainian Sobor in Kiev. (They did IOTL, too, but IOTL the Moscow Council had more pressing matters at hand and ignored the issue outright.) Even then, not everyone at the Moscow Council is going to side with Archbishop Anthony Khrapovitsky (of Kharkov/Kharkiv) in his insistence that the unity of the orthodoxy in all the Rus must be preserved under all circumstances and that the separate Ukrainian Sobor has no legitimacy whatsoever. Others, seeing the signs of the time when the Constituent Assembly and the Centralna Rada sign their Concordance / Statute of Autonomy, will prefer not to fight this pointless battle which can only divide the ranks of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine and elsewhere. (In the Balkans, the principle that every independent Orthodox nation state has a co-territorial autocephalous orthodox church has found its precedent. Quite a few among the laity and bishops in Russia could probably live with this. Fiercest resistance probably comes from Russian speakers living in Ukraine...) Since the whole process of decentralisation / federalisation is a peacemeal and unpredictable process, too, the Council will be occupied with this question for quite a long time, though. It certainly changes Anthony’s position, who IOTL was so widely popular that he received more votes than anyone else in the complicated procedure by which the new Patriarch was selected (even though he wasn’t ultimately chosen). ITTL, he is going to be perceived as the leader of a specific, vocal group, and only that.
Another deep division is going to be along (secular) political lines. The Revolution, especially after Vikhliaev’s land reform law, has expropriated a considerable amount of church lands. For the higher clergy, this means a huge loss of power. For many monasteries, it means an existential threat. The vast majority of the clergy and a good portion of the lay delegates will, therefore, have a very hostile general stance towards where the Revolution is drifting. I expect some sort of resolution, of the content that the Council considers the expropriations illegal and illegitimate, emphasises the importance of the institution of property, and demands the restitution of all repartitioned lands, to be adopted by a large majority against a vocal but not very large pro-socialist minority. Will the Council go further in its anti-Revolutionary positioning? I am not sure. Subservience to the political authorities has a long tradition for the Russian Orthodox Church’s higher echelons of hierarchy. If the Council lasts into November, when the realignment and change from Chernov to Kamkov takes place, then any political group on whom the conservatives in the Church might lean in the secular sphere is going to be dissolving, and they might decide to tone down their open criticism so as not to invite VeCheKists looking for „saboteurs“ and „counter-revolutionary terrorists“.
While the Council may not do something as extreme as rejecting the political authority of the Constituent Assembly or excommunicating the People’s Commission, or incite the pious to ignore the order of the „godless administration“, it will still position itself as skeptical towards the socialist revolution, to say the least. The land question is going to be the main bone of contention, but if conservatives and moderate liberals alike feel threatened by the whole direction things are taking in the secular sphere – which I think they will – then I think they will react by closing the ranks, pushing divisive reforms like the marriage of priests off into an undetermined future, and electing a Patriarch in order to have one visible leader to rally behind and unite. (This is what the Council did IOTL, too.)
The eventual choice of one Patriarch from three candidates with the most votes was, according to protocols, by lot-drawing. One can always question whether that process was somehow tampered with or not – but one can also simply assume that a different clergyman gets drawn by lot. Either way, I think I’ll stick with OTL’s candidates: Anthony the Archbishop of Kharkov, Arseny the Metropolitan of Novgorod, and Tikhon the Metropolitan of Moscow. A source I found (but forgot where) said Anthony was the cleverest of all, Arseny the strictest, and Tikhon the most compassionate. It should have become clear at this point that Anthony is not going to be the candidate I am going for because he is too divisive. Whether some backchamber deal or truly the lot – I decide that ITTL, the new Patriarch is not going to be Tikhon, but allegedly strictest Arseny Stadnitsky of Novgorod. Dogmatically, this would fit well with an overall trend towards conservative decisions in the later months of the Council. I’m going with this variant. Apart from the restoration of an independent hierarchy with a self-chosen head and all that comes with that, the Council is not going to pass any significant reforms.
That, of course, is going to leave a plethora of Christian grassroots movements within, at the fringes and outside of the Orthodox Church very dissatisfied, or convinced that the Orthodox Church is unable to reform and must be abandoned for something else. The People’s Commission, and both Marxist and Narodnik parties who support it (this is Kamkov’s Coalition Commission), are going to view this unreformed, hostile and quarrelsome Orthodox Church with equal hostility. The VeCheKa has targeted anti-revolutionary clergymen throughout 1918. The repartitionings have become constitutionally safeguarded. The Constitution of 1918 guarantees the “right to freely enter, adhere to and leave existing religious groups, found new ones, to express one’s views concerning religion freely. Cult, religious service, expression, and practice are free, they only find their limits in the inviolable rights of others and in general laws consistent with this Constitution.” This was far from what the Orthodox Church would have liked – as it turned out, it would not provide any autonomy for church-run schools from state regulations of education, and it would protect the most offensive and “blasphemous” attacks on religious sentiments just as much as it protected religious proselytising.
Among the Marxist Social Democrats, all of this was utterly uncontroversial. At least to those firm in their dogmas, religion was the opium of the people anyway.
In the Socialist Revolutionary Party, there was no open sympathy for the conservative clergy, either, and the confrontational course of the Local Council which aimed to reverse one of the foundational principles and achievements of Russia’s Revolution, certainly left the various governments led by SRs with no incentive to become reconciliatory. But beyond this unanimous rejection of a conservative high clergy, things were not so homogeneous within the SRs. Russian Narodnichestvo had absorbed important antireligious philosophical influences, from Marxism to Neo-Kantianism. But there has always been a different stream of Narodnik tradition, too: from its roots in the Slavophiles’ exaltation of the
obshchina as an incarnation of
Sobornost, over the entire Tolstoyan tradition to newer tendencies which I shall address in the paragraphs below. And even beyond those who truly harboured Christian thoughts and feelings, not all other SRs thought it was a good idea to copy the stance of some Western Radical governments of the late 19th century and leave the entire political appeal of “Christianity” to the parties of the Right, from the many disorganised conservative and extremist splinter groups to an increasingly church-friendly KD party under the leadership of Tyrkova-Williams, who knew a political opportunity when she saw it.
In this latter camp, a leading figure would emerge in the early 1920s:
Vadim Rudnev, the Socialist Revolutionary Mayor of Moscow. He used his persisting influence over the newspaper
Trud to provide a forum for a great number of religious reformers from within and outside of the official Orthodox Church like Antonin Granovsky and Boris Titlinov, , and by hosting “Dialogues of a Revolutionary Society”, Rudnev managed to bring together prominent and inspiring voices in public discussions attended by large crowds in Moscow. Atheists like Lunacharsky and mystics like Alexander Dobrulyov, prohibitionist asketics like John Tchurikov and Sophiologist intellectuals like Pavel Florensky, and many others met here. Matters of spirituality and morality in the context of the post-revolutionary society were discussed here as well as views on the future course of Russian and world history, Christianity, philosophy, society, the sciences and technologies. While controversies were heated, the overall atmosphere was one of rapprochement: Many wanted to seize the opportunity for “re-union” (the Russian term
vseedinstvo had been coined by Solovyov decades before, but the longing had only grown stronger in the meantime).
And this was only the tip of the iceberg. Everywhere across the Orthodox-dominated regions of the UoE, politically and religiously “moved” people often came together, exchanged ideas and, as often as not, ended up agreeing on more than one thing, sometimes even fusing their various utopian ideas and practices.
The sect that has been described by TTL’s Hemingway is one such group – probably fusing an activist egalitarian political utopianism like that of the God-Builders with asketicism, enthusiastic expectations towards self-deliverance, and some form of spiritualism. Other sects will probably disconnect from the rest of society due to their emphasis on pacifism of various sources. Etc.
Both sides strengthen each other: religious Revolutionaries provide new impulses for the reform movement, which further destabilises the position of the conservative Orthodox clergy and loosens their grip over Russian Christianity somewhat. In turn, the support of such groups strengthens Vadim Rudnev’s right wing in the intra-party rivalries among the SRs.
And the (in a wides sense) progressive camp is not the only one where things are moving in new directions. Among those who are opposed to the Revolution, not everyone is content with sticking to the tame and toothless Orthodox Church, or calm enough to hope that things will move in other directions, too, one day. Apocalyptic and millenarian sects had not been rare in Russia’s Silver Age, and the OTL revolution brought forth new such groups, necessarily small, dispersed and often short-lived in nature. ITTL, state persecution is much less intense and practically ends with 1919, so groups waiting for a very near Judgment Day are probably not few.
And it's not only seclusive sects. The less the Orthodox Church reforms itself, the more "low church" congregations will appear, seek and find recognition, and spread.
The Orthodox Church is going to react to all of this, in the course of the 1920s. It will not be quick in reacting because the resistances which need to be overcome are massive. But orthodox churches everywhere have proven themselves extremely capable at adapting to all sorts of political changes – often preferring to keep their dogma and rite unaltered, but publicly bowing to worldly powers who, in turn, reaffirm their position. Which is why I don’t expect any theological reform of Russian Orthodoxy in the 1920s at all – but at some point, the Holy Synod probably decides to bury its hope to regain its lost possessions and to stop mentioning it, in exchange for some sort of settlement by which the Russian Federative Republic establishes new legal ways for the Church to finance itself, maybe along the lines of Germany’s
Kirchensteuer, maybe less statist.... I'm not settled yet.
Over all of this, we ought not forget that the Great War has not made everyone more pious. It has shattered quite a few people’s faith, too, and the ranks of the non-religious are certainly swelling, too, throughout the 1920s. They will find their political home both within the IRSDLP and the left wing of the SRP. Between them, the “new progressive religious reformers”, and the traditional Orthodoxy, there are bound to be intense political and cultural clashes. Unlike IOTL, religion is certainly going to be a major factor and topic in TTL’s post-revolutionary Russia...!
