“Churching” 1917: The Church Crisis and the Parish Revolution

Abstract

In recent decades scholars have done much to correct the previous neglect of the Russian Orthodox Church, but secular historians have virtually ignored this massive volume of dissertations, books, and articles on the Church. That also applies to the role of the Church in 1917. Although that neglect is largely due to the secularist bias in the traditional historiography, it is at least partly attributable to the new scholarship on the Church - which has tended to have a narrow focus: the internal history of the Church. That is, it has concentrated on the “history of the Church”, not on the “Church in history”. To shift that focus to the latter (and make the research more meaningful for secular historians), it is essential to redirect attention from the “Church” and clergy (especially elites) to the “church” (parish) and lay believers. This study seeks to encourage that new direction in scholarship and explores how the Church reforms in the spring turned into a parish revolution in the summer. It draws upon a number of archival repositories (central and local) as well as the Orthodox press (especially the diocesan gazettes). It shows how the crisis at the top (in central and diocesan administration) undermined the capacity of the “Church” to govern the “church,” how the laity asserted their authority over parish finances and the local clerical staff, and how the parish clergy responded (most dramatically, by forming unions to defend their rights and interests).