scholarly journals The Economy of the Temples of God in the Turmoil of Changing Russia

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detelina Tocheva

AbstractThe liberalisation of religious practice after the fall of the Soviet regime and the support by the Russian state to the Russian Orthodox Church have contributed to the enormous growth of the church economy. Controversies within and without the Church interrogate commercial and gifting practices. The relationship between the expansion of church commerce and the operation of moral boundaries, underlined by critical stances, has been determined by culture and history, with the post-Soviet transformation having played a key role in shaping popular notions of selflessness and profit-seeking. Moreover, as people participate in the church economy they mobilise perceptions of the differential moral valence of gift and commerce in order to communicate concerning the power of the Church, its controversial image, Russia’s social stratification, and to deploy ethics of equity and honesty.

2020 ◽  
pp. 227-238
Author(s):  
A. A. Valitov ◽  
D. Yu. Fedotova

The events of February 1917, presented on the pages of the church periodicals of Western Siberia, is examined in the article. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that for the first time in Russian historiography the political upheavals of this period have been analyzed on the basis of materials from regional diocesan records. The authors note that the diocesan records are an important historical source. A detailed analysis of the content of articles of Omsk, Tobolsk, Tomsk periodicals (“Diocesan Gazette”) on the presentation of the political events of February 1917 in them is carried out. The novelty of the research lies in identifying the attitude of the regional clergy to the revolutionary events in the period from February to April 1917. The presented results of the comparative analysis can be grouped according to the chronology and significance of the events that took place. The article concludes that it was during this period that one could hear the opinion of the Russian Orthodox Church on political changes in the country. It is noted that of particular interest were the issues of the relationship between the Church and the Provisional Government, this topic remained the most acute after the fall of the monarchy. It is shown that the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church wanted to restore historical justice and receive autonomous government and independence from the secular authorities.


Author(s):  
Ростислав Ярема ◽  

This article reveals the contribution of the Kingdom to the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra through the prism of personal relations between the Orthodox Church and the highest state authorities, and thus reveals the role of the Emperors and the Church in the history of Russian art, as well as in the preservation of Russian national culture and identity. Russian monarchs’ pilgrimage and contribution to the monastery of St. Sergius of Radonezh is considered an important factor in strengthening ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Monarchy, as well as the entire Russian society, supporting its national idea. Russian art was formed in the spiritual paradigm of Christianity, immediately after the adoption of the unified faith (unity of faith) up to the seventeenth century. The analysis of gifts and contributions, as well as their artistic value, allows to conclude that the contributions of the sovereigns constitute the summit of achievements of modern Russian art culture. From this point of view, the Church, in particular the Holy Trinity St. Sergius Lavra, against the background of known political upheavals in the country in the twentieth century, became the keeper of an invaluable cultural and artistic treasury and spiritual core of Great Russia, showing not only a model of serving the Orthodoxy, its people and country, but also a saving perspective for the Russian State of historical survival in the new epoch.


Author(s):  
Aleksandr R. Pavlushkov ◽  

Based on various sources, this article attempts to determine the scope and nature of the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Secret Chancellery during the reforms of Peter I. The chronological framework of the period under study is limited to 1718–1725. It should be noted that the number of works on this topic is rather small. The article dwells on the various aspects and forms of the relationship between the penal body and the Church as a whole. The starting point is the case of Tsarevich Alexei, which exposed the dissatisfaction of the clergy with the reforms of Peter I and initiated the strengthening of punitive policies, involving the tools of the Church. According to the author, the established relationship between the Church and the Secret Chancellery cannot be called sporadic, since there had been a certain unity of mutual interests between the parties. It is emphasized that contradictions had been accumulating between them, related to the violation of the secrecy of confession, lack of legal regulation of official relations, and structural vagueness of the institutions of the Most Holy Synod that had contacts with the Secret Chancellery. Nevertheless, in practice there had been developed a certain procedure for coordinating various issues, which both sides refrained from violating. Further, the author analyses the case of Tsarevich Alexei and the role of the first chief procurators of the Most Holy Synod in the context of the development of the relationship between the Church and the Secret Chancellery. Further, the article indicates the reasons for not only mutual interest, but also the subsequent crisis in their relationship that occurred in 1725. The author concludes that the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Secret Chancellery was in line with the policy of forming a police state.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 569-584
Author(s):  
Evgeny Krinko ◽  
Alexander Skorik ◽  
Alla Shadrina

AbstractThis article studies the famine of 1921–1922 and 1932–1933 in the Southern Russian regions. Famine as a socio-historical phenomenon is considered in the context of the relationship of state power, the Cossacks, and the Church. The authors reveal the general and special features of the famine emergence and analyze the differences in the state policies of 1921–1922 and 1932–1933. Considerable attention is paid to the survival strategies of the Don, Kuban and Terek populations. Slaughtering and eating draft animals, transfer from the state places of work to the private campaigns and cooperatives, moving to shores and banks, and eating river and sea food became widespread methods of overcoming famine. Asocial survival strategies included cannibalism, abuse of powers, bribery, and more. In 1921–1922, the Russian Orthodox Church fought actively against the famine. In 1932–1933, the Church was weakened and could not provide significant assistance to the starving population. The article was written based on declassified documents from the state and departmental archives, including criminal investigations and analytical materials of the Obedinjonnoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie [Joint State Political Directorate] (OGPU) recording the attitudes of minds. Also used are personal stories—namely, interviews with eyewitnesses of the famine of 1932–1933, recorded by the Kuban folklorists in the territory of the Krasnodar and Stavropol Krai.


Author(s):  
Yana Yu. Guseva ◽  

The article reveals the relationship between the Soviet state and the Russian Orthodox Church (the ROC) in the late 1940s on the territory of the Saratov Volga region. After several years of a forced truce, the state began to tighten its religious policy again and resumed an active anti-religious campaign. One of the reasons was the scandal in the Saratov region in 1949, connected with the mass bathing on the Epiphany holiday and the subsequent publication of I. Ryabov’s feuilleton called “Saratov font” in the Pravda newspaper. The anti-religious campaign that followed these events revealed multiple manifestations of religiousness in the Saratov region of both the ordinary population and representatives of the authorities. It turned out that many people participated in the sacraments of the Church, wore crosses and provided all possible assistance to the Church. As a result, a wave of administrative punishments started again: believers were expelled from the party, fired from their jobs. But a complete rupture of relations between the state and the church did not happen, which was associated with the intense foreign policy activities of the ROC and its participation in the struggle for peace.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-129
Author(s):  
N. Maryukhno ◽  

The article examines the socio-political theology of Ivan Prokhanov as a prominent Russian religious and social figure of the early twentieth century, chairman of the All-Russian Union of Evangelical Christians. His critique of the сaesaropapism as structure in the Russian state-church relations of the imperial period is studied. It is proved that Ivan Prokhanov sharply denounced the negative manifestations of caesaropapism, and above all the resistance of the Russian Orthodox Church to constructive reform in accordance with Christian evangelical values. The positions on the church-religious life of the evangelical theologian Ivan Prokhanov and the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the leader of the reactionary resistance to any changes, the ideologue of the counter-reforms Alexander III, were compared. In his sharp critique of caesaropapism, he relied on the Christian doctrine of man and society, believing that the legal precondition for overcoming its negative consequences was the separation of church and state, and the need for evangelical awakening of the Russian Orthodox people to gain spiritual freedom.


Author(s):  
Aleksandr R. Pavlushkov ◽  

This article studies the mechanism of interaction of the Synod, its institutions and bodies of the central church administration with the Secret Chancellery during the first half of the 1720s. The analysis is based on the documents of the Synod containing correspondence with the Secret Chancellery. This study is a continuation of the research on the relationship between the Secret Chancellery and the Russian Orthodox Church, whose resluts had been published earlier. A deeper immersion in the topic provided greater insights into the joint activities of the synodal institutions and Russia’s main penal body at the time, as well as revealed the details of the most important contacts and pertinent problems. Of particular importance is the activity of the Chancellery of the Most Holy Synod, through which official correspondence with the Secret Chancellery and control over the implementation of its decisions as well as defrocking of priests before the start of investigation were carried out. Further, the paper describes the categories of convicts who were sent to the Synod from the Secret Chancellery and looks into the differences in their position. Contrary to the prevailing opinion about the absence of relations between the Synod and the Secret Chancellery, the author concludes that in practice there was a certain mechanism of interaction, which concerned investigations regarding the accused from among the clergy and their commital, as well as granting official requests from both parties, sending ecclesiastical experts, and enforcing sentences of the Secret Chancellery. In addition, facts are considered that testify to extremely complex and contradictory relations between the Synod and the Secret Chancellery. The author concludes that the relationship between these institutions was not systemic, but developed in the context of the state’s general advance on the church and subordination of the latter and the clergy to state interests. The mechanism of interaction between the Synod and the Secret Chancellery was formed in line with this trend as well.


Slavic Review ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-662
Author(s):  
Gregory L. Freeze

The eighteenth century marked a crucial new period in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. In Muscovy the church had been an institution of paramount importance: it possessed enormous wealth, exercised considerable influence on the theocratic politics of Muscovy, and held a virtual monopoly over culture and art. During the eighteenth century, however, this awesome power and wealth all but vanished. The secularized state wrought fundamental changes in the church: it replaced the patriarch with a more tractable Synod, gradually exploited and finally sequestered the church's lands and peasants, and in general transformed the church into an “integral part of the Russian state structure and administration.” The church's ascendancy was correspondingly weakened in both society and culture. The ecclesiastical leadership made little headway against the abiding problems of superstition and paganism, and it failed to stem the spread of the Old Belief and of secular culture throughout the population.


Author(s):  
Oksana Babenko ◽  

The review examines the works of Polish researches in which the problems of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church are analyzed. The relationship along the lines of «church-state» and «church-intelligentsia» is presented. The conclusions of Polish historians boil down to the fact that the church and the state in Russia interacted in order to turn Orthodoxy into the state religion.


Author(s):  
A. A. Gorina

This paper as illustrated by Nizhny Novgorod province in the first half of the twenties of the XX century presents one of the most tragic pages of the relationship between church and state. The purpose of the Soviet government, which declared the creation of the first-ever atheistic state, was a complete elimination of church and religion as cultural, social and world outlook phenomenon. Hunger in 1921-1922 was an initial stage and constituted a ground for all further hardline policy of the Soviet state in its stance toward a church. In consequence of which a huge number of different objects of our Motherland’s historical and cultural heritage were done away with, also during repressions, a large number of believers and priests died. Many years in the Soviet historiography, there was a dominant statement that the Russian Orthodox Church opposed transferring the church values, which was intended for the relief aid. All actions of the church and appeals of the Patriarch Tikhon were subjected to obfuscation. A wide variety of sources, which earlier were strictly confidential, and nowadays they become available for researchers, allow objectively analyzing the charity of Russian Orthodox Church for the relief aid in 1921-1922. On the basis of regional archive documents, which contain statistical data, clergies and lay members records of meetings. The article provides more insight on through the campaign for a seizure of churches’ values in the Nizhny Novgorod province, also outlines the quantity of the seizure values: how many from them went for the relief aid. The clergies and lay members’ records of meetings of the Nizhny Novgorod province make it clear that their desire for relief aid was the optional choice. Printed copies have allowed to establish specific aspects of the campaign for a seizure of a church property, to fully consider the process of transition from the donation of values for the relief aid before the forced seizure of churches’ values in the region, and also to determine a problem of the collaboration of the government and the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese.


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