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Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev: An Argument for a Russian State Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John D. Basil
John D. Basil
Affiliation:
Mr. Basil is professor of history at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.
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Extract

In any overall assessment of the changing relationship between the church and the state in late imperial Russia it is important to include an account of the thought and activity of Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev. Although not a clergyman, he was probably the most visible of all Orthodox Church figures of the period, both in the empire and in Western Europe. As the emperor's Ober Procurator of the Most Holy Governing Synod, a post he occupied between 1880 and 1905, he was the perfectly placed official to represent the power of the Romanov government in church affairs and, in its turn, the will and needs of the church to the emperor and his chief councilors of state. Nor, in this case, was it merely the office that made the man. Pobedonostsev himself was a thoughtful and critical student of Western and Russian culture who used his authority in a way that fulfilled his own visions and not the whims of the tsar. He was not a Count Protasov, the loyal Ober Procurator of Nicholas I, and he insisted that the office of Ober Procurator stand equally in the high councils of the tsar along with all other government ministries. Finally, it must be added that Pobedonostsev revealed in his thought and in his public acts a consistent body of religious and political opinion that enjoyed a respectable following among the so-called conservatives of the educated classes, and he was known and admired in this company both for the views he espoused and for the enemies he made.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 44 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1995

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References

1. Pobedonostsev has been the subject of a number of very good biographies, all of which have been helpful in my study. The best known of these books include: Byrnes, Robert F., Pobedonostsev: His Life and Thought, (Bloomington, Indiana, 1968);Google ScholarGiusti, Wolfo, L'ultimo controrivoluzionario russo: Konstantin Pobedonoscev (Rome, 1974);Google ScholarSimon, Gerhard, Konstantin Petrovic Pobedonoscev und die Kirchenpolitik des Heiligen Sinod (1880–1905) (Göttingen, 1969);Google Scholarand Sorenson, Thomas Calnan, The Thought and Policies of Konstantin P. Pobedonostsev (Ann Arbor, 1977). None of these works, however, consider in depth Pobedonostsev's defense of a state church.Google Scholar

2. Pobedonostsev, Konstantin Petrovich, in Pis'ma Pobedonostseva k Aleksandru III, ed. Pokrovskii, M. N., (Moscow, 1925), 1:48–51, 55.Google ScholarGiusti, , pp. 42 43, and Byrnes, p. 265. One reason why Pobedonostsev remained aloof toward the Panslavs was due to his alarm about their spontaneity in public affairs.Google Scholar

3. Kuznetsov, N. D., Preobrazovanüa v russkoi tserkvi: razsmotrenie voprosa po ofitsial'nym dokumentam i v sviazi c potrebnostiami zhizni (Moscow, 1906), p. 39.Google Scholar

4. Simon, pp. 29 31, andAdams, Arthur E., “Pobedonostsev's Religious Politics,” Church History 22 (12. 1953): 325.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPokrovsky's account was typical of Soviet work on Pobedonostsev. He wrote that Pobedonostsev represented politicized Orthodoxy, the force that burned Avvakum at the stake in the seventeenth century, jailed clerical opposition to the government during the reforms of the eighteenth century, and badgered Vladimir Soloviev in the nineteenth century.Google ScholarSee Pis'ma l:viii, x. Pokrovsky's colorful imagination presented the reader with a one-sided view of the Ober Procurator and of official Orthodoxy. Moreover, his assertion that Pobedonostsev used religion to advance his own career is simply not supported by the evidence.Google Scholar

5. A typical example of Pobedonostsev's standards of quality for clergymen can be found in Pis'ma 1:348, and 2:300.Google Scholar

6. Pobedonostsev, , Moskovskü sbornik (Moscow, 1896), p. 225.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 219.

8. Ibid., pp. 211,212.

9. Ibid., p. 207, 208; Pis'ma 1:29.

10. Masaryk also recognized the limits of Pobedonostsev's nationalism and populism. See Masaryk, Thomas Garrigue, The Spirit of Russia, 3 vols., trans. Eden, and Paul, Cedar (London, 1955), 2:201.Google Scholar

11. Pobiedonostseff, Constantin, “Russia and Popular Education,” The North American Review 173 (09. 1901): 350. “It is impossible to judge Russia, according to the criterion yielded by another race,” Pobedonostsev stated in his criticism of Peter Kropotkin.Google Scholar

12. Pobedonostsev, , K. P.Pobedonostsev i ego korrespondenty, pis'ma i zapiski, ed. Pokrovskii, M. N., (Moscow, 1924), 1:485.Google ScholarThe reader may also wish to consult Sorenson's interesting discussion of Pobedonostsev's “O reformakh v grazhdanskom sudoproizvodstve,” which was originally published in Russkü vestnik 21 (1859): 541–580, and 22 (1860): 534, 153–190. Sorenson, pp. 57–64, Giusti, pp. 57–62, and Simon, p. 25.Google Scholar

13. Florovsky's, Georges essay on Pobedonostsev was severely critical of the Ober Procurator on this point. See Puti russkago bogoslovüa (Paris, 1937), pp. 410–424.Google Scholar

14. It is possible that Pobedonostsev carried some of the influences of what Treadgold, Donald W. called the Pietist Revolution, the religion of sentimentalism and mysticism that swept through the Russian ruling circles during the reign of Alexander I. See Treadgold, The West in Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times, Vol. 1 of Russia, 1472–1917, (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 140–145.Google Scholar

15. Sorenson, , pp. 240–242.Google Scholar

16. Pobedonostsev, , Moskovskü, pp. 175–182. One can readily see in Pobedonostsev's little collection of essays on education that his emphasis in school matters was placed on children's good behavior, as though the training of a disciplined intellect and good character were somehow unrelated.Google ScholarSee Uchen'e i uchitel': pedagogicheskiia zametki (Moscow, 1900).Google Scholar

17. Rozanov, V., “Skepticheskii um,” in Okolo tserkovnykh sten, 2 vols., (St. Petersburg, 1906; rept. Westmead, UK, 1972), 1:243–251.Google Scholar

18. Pobedonostsev, , Russkü arkhiv, (Moscow, 1915), p. 369. See also a letter written 30 July 1884 by Pobedonostsev to Nikanor, then bishop of Kherson and Odessa, in Simon, p. 68.Google Scholar

19. Pobedonostsev, , “Iz chernovykh bumag K. P. Pobedonostseva,” Krasnyi arkhiv, (Moscow, 1926), p. 205.Google Scholar

20. Pobedonostsev, , Kurs grazhdanskago prava (St. Petersburg, 1896), 2:9799.Google ScholarSome of his criticism of Orthodox leadership without tsarist support can be found in A. P., Istoricheskaia perepiska o sud'bakh pravoslavnoi tserkvi (Moscow, 1912), pp. 32–35.Google Scholar

21. Pobedonostsev, , Moskovskii, pp. 10, 22–23.Google Scholar

22. Byrnes, Robert F., “ ‘Between Two Fires’;: Kliuchevskii on Religion and the Russian Orthodox Church,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, ed. Stavrou, Theofanis G. (Minneapolis, 1990), 6:160.Google Scholar

23. Pobedonostsev, , Moskovskii, p. 15, and Giusti, p. 63.Google Scholar

24. Pobedonostsev, , Moskovskii, p. 23.Google Scholar

25. Pobedonostsev, , Pis'ma, 1:67.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., 1:113., for example.

27. Ibid., 1:355–356, and Sorenson, pp. 258–259.

28. Pobedonostsev, , Pis'ma, 1:67.Google Scholar

29. Pobedonostsev, , Istoricheskaia, p. 32.Google Scholar

30. Byrnes, , p. 290, relates this incident, but uses it in a quite different context; see also Pobedonostsev, Pis'ma, 1:4–5.Google Scholar

31. Pobedonostsev, , Pis'ma, 1:23. Pobedonostsev opposed the government's Parish Reform Act of 1869 on these same grounds. See Simon, p. 107.Google Scholar

32. In his discussion of this issue, Sorenson found secular, “modern” roots at the base of Pobedonostsev's criticism of democracy, and he was correct to the extent that the Ober Procurator obviously read and fully agreed with the hypotheses put forth in many political tracts attacking Western government.Google ScholarPobedonostsev's reliance on his own religious standards, however, runs throughout almost all his essays, and this style is evident in Pobedonostsev, , Voprosy zhizni (Moscow, 1904), esp. pp. 31–32, 44–45,50–51. See also Sorenson, pp. 221–225.Google Scholar

33. Markov, V. S., K istorii raskola staroobriadchestva vloroi poloviny XIX stoletiia: perepiska prof. N. I. Subbotina preimushchestvenno neiezdanniia kak material dlia istorii raskola i otnoshenii k nemu pravitel'stva (1865–1904 gg.), in Chteniia v imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri rnoskovskom universitete—1915 (Moscow, 1915), pp. 191–194, 261, 590, 662–663.Google Scholar

34. Pobedonostsev, , Kurs, 2:72–82.Google Scholar

35. Pobedonostsev, , Istoricheskaia, pp. 44–45.Google Scholar

36. Vitte, Sergei Iul'evich, The Memoirs of Count Witte, ed. and trans. Harcave, Sidney, (London, 1990), 1:302.Google Scholar

37. Pobedonostsev, , Kurs, 1:23.Google Scholar

38. See, for example, Pobedonostsev, , Prazdniki gospodni (Moscow, 1905), pp. 3–4, 22, 25.Google Scholar

39. See, for example, Pobedonostsev, , Pis'ma, 1:64–65.Google Scholar

40. Basil, John D., “Alexander Kireev: Turn-of-the-Century Slavophile and the Russian Orthodox Church, 1890–1910,” Cahiers du Monde russe et sovietique 32 (July-September 1991): 337–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar