Sound Bite
The events, people and politics that forged the earliest traditions of Russian Christianity are presented objectively and intensively, describing the rise and dominance of the Russian Orthodox Church, the many dissenters and sectarian groups that evolved over the centuries (and their persecution), the presence of Catholicism and the influx of Protestantism and Judaism and other religious denominations into Russia. Derived from primary resources in Church Slavonic and Russian languages, the history covers the higher levels of ecclesiastical activity including the involvement of tsars and princes, as well as saints and serfs, and monks and mystics.
About the Book
Few institutions have endured more dramatic reversals of fortune than the Russian Orthodox Church during the twentieth century — moving from state-sanctioned privilege under the tsars to systematic persecution under Soviet rule, and finally toward a cautious resurgence under Gorbachev. This fourth volume of Daniel H. Shubin's A History of Russian Christianity traces that turbulent arc with clarity and depth, drawing on Russian-language sources rarely accessible to English-speaking readers.
The story begins with Tsar Nicholas II's ascension in 1894 and the twilight years of Synodal governance, when the church's fate was entangled with figures as colorful as the mystic Grigori Rasputin, whose manipulation of the royal family destabilized both throne and altar. Shubin details how a succession of ten Attorneys-General cycled through the Holy Synod in just twelve years, leaving the church institutionally hollowed out on the eve of revolution.
The Soviet chapters form the heart of the book, covering Lenin's ideological war against institutional religion, the brutal confiscation of church valuables during the 1921 famine, and the show trial of Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd. Readers encounter the cynically engineered Renovationist movement, in which Soviet secret police manipulated ambitious clergy to fracture the church from within, and follow the agonizing efforts of Patriarchs Tikhon and Sergei to keep the institution alive under impossible conditions. The forced labor camp established at Solovetski Monastery — once one of Russia's wealthiest religious foundations — stands as a particularly stark symbol of the era.
The narrative continues through Stalin's surprising wartime rapprochement with the church, the Khrushchev-era crackdowns, and the slow institutional rebuilding that culminated in Gorbachev's 1990 Edict on Freedom of Conscience, which formally ended seven decades of state-sanctioned religious suppression.
Shubin writes with the authority of someone who has worked through the primary documents, yet keeps the narrative accessible and human. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how one of the world's great Christian traditions survived — battered but intact — one of history's most sustained campaigns against religious faith.
Information
Also see:Vol. I: From the Earliest Years through Ivan IVVol. II: The Patriarchal Age Through Tsar Peter The Great, 1586 to 1725 Vol. III: The Synodal Era and the Sectarians, 1725 to 1894
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