The "Spiritual Proletariat" and the Popular Legitimacy of the All-Russian Church Council of 1917-1918

Abstract

After the February Revolution of 1917, self-described “spiritual proletarians” of church deacons and readers actively advocated for increased material support and improved legal status in the Russian Orthodox Church. During the fourteen months following the fall of the imperial regime, the actions of these “lower clergy” prompted responses from the Holy Synod and the All-Russian Church Council, as the Church sought to address clergy grievances, resist the introduction of revolutionary political language into the ethos of Church decision-making, and maintain the popular trust and legitimacy of its institutions. Drawing on letters and petitions, official diocesan journals with reformed editorial boards, Council documents, as well as memoirs and diaries, this paper examines the issue of the “spiritual proletarians.” Their grievances encompassed one element of the “church revolution” of 1917, whose main motive was the redistribution of power within the church. They also revealed the pre-revolutionary clerical estate’s internal contradictions, which had made reform of parishes’financial, legal, and governance structures so intractable.