This collection is a welcome addition to the burgeoning number of works on religious history, philosophy, and experiences in modern Russia. It is the outcome of what began as a forum on “Religious Freedom and Problem of Tolerance in Russian History” in the summer 2012 issue of the journal Kritika. It presents two of the three original articles, written by G. M. Hamburg and Victoria Frede, in addition to five new essays and a broader introduction. Together, they investigate the multiple understandings of religious freedom and problematize the concept of freedom of conscience as it evolved in various settings in new and refreshing ways. The emphasis here is not on the state and its regulation of multiple confessions in which one—the Russian Orthodox Church—was more equal than the others, but rather on individuals and groups within and without the societies of the multi-confessional establishment which attempted to reform the religious status quo.
A tour de force, Randall A. Poole's introductory essay should be mandatory reading for all historians of modern Russia. Here Poole sets out his goal as “mak[ing] a case for the experiential basis of Russian religious freedom,” whereby nonstate actors ascribed varying meanings to religious freedom, toleration, and freedom of conscience (3). They did so, he argues, in reaction to the Petrine Orthodox Church's subordination to the state. As is well known, atheism emerged in the nineteenth century as the most extreme reaction to the Russian autocracy's manipulation of religion to serve its own needs. But it was not the only response. A significant Russian Orthodox religious revival arose as well. That revival constitutes the subject of much of Poole's interpretative essay as he masterfully summarizes the cumulative findings of the new historiography on Russian Orthodoxy. He persuasively demonstrates how the Synodal Church was unable “to monopolize Russian Orthodoxy” (12). He begins with the rise of hesychastic spirituality and contemplative monasticism in the early nineteenth century in opposition to Peter's Spiritual Regulation and ends with the turn-of-the-twentieth-century religious-philosophical renaissance which denounced positivism in favor of freedom of conscience. In between he charts, among other things, the importance of Slavophilism in championing “conscience as inner truth and freedom,” the transformation of monastic institutions into sites of vibrant religious experiences that attracted pilgrims, the laity's agency in icon worship, the Orthodox pastoral movement, the rise of a church reform movement, and the development of a liberal theology touting freedom of conscience, and the progress of humankind (15). Ultimately, the religious revival posed a threat to the autocracy by supporting an autonomous Orthodox church, which became a reality only after February 1917.
Parallel to Poole's essay is Hamburg's stimulating speculative chapter. It focuses broadly on the history of religious toleration in Russia, beginning in the sixteenth century with Muscovy's expansion into Muslim territories and the political necessity of toleration. Hamburg argues that this toleration was not guaranteed as exemplified during the Time of Troubles with regard to the First False Dimitrii or in policies against Old Believers. Noting Peter I's limited toleration of major Christian confessions and struggles with religious traditionalism in general, Hamburg characterizes Catherine's much-touted Enlightened toleration policies as being either temporary or contradictory, “hedged” as they were “with restrictions” (63). Interspersed with the discussion of state toleration are analyses of the ideas of religious toleration developed by intellectuals such as Vasilii Tatishchev, Artemii Volynskoi, Aleksandr Radishchev, Mikhail Shcherbatov, Nikolai Karamzin, and the Decembrists. Given the political reality of autocracy, however, Hamburg concludes that “a national discourse or sustained, diachronic dialogue on the subject” never materialized (77).
The remaining chapters concentrate on more specific aspects of religious toleration, religious revival, and notions of freedom of conscience. Thus, Patrick Lally Michelson examines the early nineteenth-century seeds for the idea of freedom of conscience, which came from minority religious groups. Together with Russia's defeat in the Crimean War and a relaxation in censorship, expressions of freedom of conscience stimulated a Russian Orthodox ecclesiastical response to showcase its relevance in a modernizing age. Michelson presents Archimandrite Ioann (Sokolov) as the Church's first proponent of a limited freedom of conscience. Ioann decried the Constantinian Church and by implication the Synodal Church as being politically coerced, advocating instead the revealed truth of the Christian faith, “which alone determined whether or not conscience could be free” (97). In a provocative chapter, Daniel Scarborough argues that the encouragement after emancipation of voluntary Orthodox parish brotherhoods to promote education, charity, and missionary work led parishioners in Tver΄ and Moscow dioceses to welcome coexistence and sometimes cooperation with members of other faiths. However, this religious toleration and growth of a civil society, which need to be further studied, were stymied by diocesan missionaries who, from 1886 onward, enforced an intolerant nationalist Orthodoxy.
The four remaining chapters engage with non-Orthodox groups in Russia. In Frede's and Heather Coleman's chapters, lower-class religious minorities are the subjects of external forces. In Frede's case, these are the atheist Land and Freedom revolutionaries who sought alliances with Old Believer communities of peasants as potential revolutionary groups with their instrumental promise of religious freedom, only to find Old Believers wedded to an understanding of salvation as being tied to their particular religious truths. Coleman's external actors are both international evangelicals and proponents of western liberalism, who described in their writings what they perceived to be the martyrdom of shtundist evangelicals within late imperial Russia so as to influence western public opinion and government policies regarding Russia. In a revisionist vein, Norihiro Naganawa reconstructs the development of a vibrant and diverse Muslim civil society in the Volga-Urals region around the issue of Muslim religious reforms in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution and promise of toleration. Finally, Eugene Clay upends the traditional bleak assessment of the 1997 Russian law to limit religious proselytization by demonstrating the ability of groups representing such divergent religions as Buddhism and Presbyterianism to negotiate successful niches in the religious marketplace.
Providing excellent examples of religious, intellectual, and social history, this volume's chapters present a dynamic religious landscape in modern Russia. They answer the question raised in the Kritika forum by demonstrating that unbelief and indifference to religion were not essential for ideas of toleration and freedom of conscience to develop.
