Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905-1946, by EDWARD E. ROSLOF. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003, 288 pp.; $45.00 USD (cloth).
In the heady last days of Tsar Nicolas II, when the coming revolutionary situation became palpable throughout Russia, tumultuous change was in the air for all of Russian society's institutions, not only the State. We know a great deal about the Bolshevik overthrow of the Russian monarch and the subsequent consolidation of power in the hands of the revolution's vanguard, the Soviets' New Economic Policies, and Stalin's industrial policies and purges. Political and military historians have constructed the narratives of counter insurgencies by Western powers in the aftermath of WWI. Even Hollywood embodied these histories in films such as "Reds" and "Doctor Zhivago." How odd it was then to read Edward Roslof's Red Priests and realize that, despite my knowledge of this period, I had never heard addressed the central institution in Russian society alongside the State: The Orthodox Church.
Roslof's study opens with the state of Russian Orthodoxy in 1905. Already Orthodoxy showed signs of polarization and fracturing with those in episcopal positions (black clergy) enjoying the privileges of power structurally out of the reach of married and local clergy (white clergy) serving parishes in the countryside. This split set the stage for reform calls from the white clergy, drawing on Western ideas of a more open and participatory church structure. In the years leading up to the Revolution of 1917, readers follow Orthodox reformers, called renovationists, from their initial concern with internal reform of Orthodoxy to their emergence as a group trying to align themselves and Orthodoxy with the Bolshevik revolution and the new State. What we see in this development is a strategy to achieve their desired internal reforms but also to make the Church relevant to the changes that were taking place in Russian society.
This strategy, however well intentioned, resulted in an almost thirty-year struggle over what the role of the Orthodox Church should be in the new Soviet State. On one side of this struggle were the renovationist clergy, desiring for broad internal reforms without becoming another arm of the Soviet State bureaucracy, as the Church hierarchy had in the last days of the Tsar. Clergy cooperated, naively at times, with the Bolsheviks, adopting the language of class conflict, framing their battles for control of Orthodoxy as parallel to the fight of the proletariat (the renovationist clergy) over the bourgeoisie (the Orthodox patriarch Tikhon and his episcopal supporters), and to a socialist future. For the Bolsheviks' part, cooperation with the renovationists was at best a pragmatic gesture to ensure some control over the Russian people through the only universal channel to do so. At no point did the new leaders of the Soviet Union grant legitimacy to religion as a desirable feature of their new society nor did they believe it was possible to construct a Christian socialism that merged the "true" belief of atheistic Marxist-Leninism with the "heresy" of Orthodox Christianity. In addition to these contending forces loomed the continued presence of traditional, anti-revolutionary Orthodoxy with its leaders who refused to cooperate with the Soviet system and its followers and who resisted attempts to change and remove their historic beliefs and practices, even in favor of the renovationists' reforms. Roslof recounts the many ways these struggles were full of pragmatic moves on all sides. Renovationists worked tirelessly, compromising as needed in the hope of being seen as legitimate leaders of a new Soviet Orthodox Church. The Party continued to use the renovationists as their need for money and public support required without ever conceding that a Soviet Orthodox Church was necessary or possible.
As a history of the period and as religious history, Roslof's book makes a tremendous contribution to our knowledge of Orthodoxy's role in the Russian revolution. Historians will especially appreciate this. As a sociologist of religion however, I finished Roslof's book in need of more. The historic content is plenty in this book. However, there were threads of this history that seemed to cry out for more sociological reflection. For instance, I wanted to know more about how an Orthodox priest, Fr. Gapon, came to organize and lead the factory workers that marched on the Winter Palace in 1905, only to be gunned down by the Tsar's troops. Why did Gapon do this? What parts of Orthodox beliefs and practices made this consistent with the expected work of Orthodox clergy? There clearly was no complete consensus among the Russian people on the renovationist positions. Despite vocal opposition to widespread changes to Orthodoxy, renovationists could not survive completely without some modicum of popular support. I wanted to know more about how the ecclesiastical civil war looked from the vantage point of the people. Realizing that documenting percents of the laity on both sides would be extremely difficult, although Roslof does provide numbers of parishes in each ecclesiastical camp, I still wonder what a best guess of actual numbers of Russian people supporting church reform be? And for those among the Russian people who supported renovationism, why did they do so? Surely buried in this narrative is a sociological story about power, leadership, and how people of faith consent to follow the lead of church leaders.
Despite the several references to sociological analysis, I read Red Priests as church history, not as a contribution to sociological theories of religion and political change. Nevertheless, for those of us who engage this question in sociology, Roslof's work will make a contribution to continue our exploration of the muddy and complex ways in which religious groups and leaders actively recreate their faith when facing new political opportunities and social change. Likewise, Roslof's narrative sheds light on the inner thought processes and negotiations of members of the secular political elite who confront an extensive religious sector that must be dealt with as both an obstacle and facilitator to the consolidation of power within the apparatus of the State.
William A. Mirola
Marian College