Orthodox patriotism and the Church in Russia, 1888--1914

This dissertation is a study of the influence of nationalism within the Russian Orthodox Church before the Russian Revolution of 1917. It is especially interested in the paradox that nationalistic feeling created among clergy and other Church leaders who were primarily dedicated to the universal faith of Christianity. The argument focuses especially upon the missionary movement of the late imperial period and the way that it fostered the rise of nationalism. Missionaries were eager primarily to address an increasingly secular Russia and employed the secular ideology of nationalism to strengthen their appeal. At the same time, they sought to Christianize nationalism and to subordinate it to the spiritual goals of evangelical work. To achieve the former goal they appealed to several features of the medieval Russian past and to the example of Old Testament Israel. To achieve the latter goal they wrote prolifically, organized public festivals, and addressed nationalistic organizations with the claim that true Russian nationality was rooted in the Orthodox faith. To give expression to their movement, they used the term "Orthodox patriotism" and distinguished it from the "ethnic nationalism" that was beginning to transform Europe from a Christian into a secular civilization. While influential during much of the final decades of the tsarist period, they ultimately failed to define a religious alternative to this secular civilization. Their attachment to the disintegrating tsarist system and the ultimately unsolvable paradox of Orthodox patriotism undermined their efforts to complete a spiritual renewal of modern Russia.