GERALDINE FAGAN
In his introduction to The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths, Paul Werth is almost apologetic for selecting a topic of such enormous chronological and geographical scope. His study–16 years in the making–charts state policy towards non-Orthodox faiths throughout Imperial Russia, spanning Armenian Apostolic, Catholic (including Eastern Rite), and Protestant Christians, as well as Buddhists, Jews, and Muslims.
While some academic specialists may raise eyebrows, the more general observer is treated to a refreshingly readable tour of the challenges faced by tsarist administrators dealing with burgeoning religious diversity in an expanding empire. Maps and tables detailing population size and confessional distribution by region augment the narrative.
Werth argues convincingly that a rudimentary notion of religious toleration existed in Russia even before 1700. This saw faiths initially regarded as “foreign” in Muscovy–such as Protestantism and Islam–go on to become accepted features of the imperial landscape. Yet their special treatment (by contrast with dissenters from state-sanctioned Orthodoxy, such as Old Believers) rested squarely upon pragmatic considerations. A still-skeletal government apparatus sought to enlist non-Orthodox elites as conduits of imperial authority over newly acquired territories.
While partially successful, the administrative framework devised for these “foreign” creeds drew on the dubious understanding that each ethnic community had a particular “natural” faith (Germans=Lutheran, Tatars=Muslim, and so on). Such an arrangement was soon put under strain by real-life phenomena like conversion and intermarriage. Growing awareness of freedom of conscience as an individual right in the late 19th century further pressed the regime into recalibrating its religious policy. The ensuing debate saw some question support for Orthodoxy as the “ruling and predominant” faith of the Empire; others argued it should be boosted as a counterweight to the “politicized” religion of emerging nationalist movements. Affairs thus reached an impasse, only to be swept aside by a radically different Bolshevik agenda in 1917.
The particular richness of Werth’s account comes from vivid archival glimpses into rulers’ deliberations, with sources ranging from the Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg to regional collections held in Riga and Tbilisi. In the 1840s, for example, Education Minister Sergei Uvarov struggled to administer “foreign” faiths along the lines of the Orthodox Church–namely, by upholding an officially sanctioned version of each–remarking with evident exasperation, “Protestant orthodoxy, in truth, does not exist anywhere.” By the 1860s Baltic Governor-General Petr Shuvalov had hit upon political loyalty as a simpler condition for toleration: “The spread of Baptists who recognize the civil authorities is in no contradiction to the interests of the empire.”
We also hear from humbler folk on the receiving end of tsarist religious policy. In the 1860s descendants of Tatars who had been forcibly converted to Orthodoxy submitted a mass petition citing the recent abolition of serfdom as grounds why the tsar should “Condescend to us as well… and give us the freedom to live according to the Mohammedan faith.” By the 1880s such appeals were more likely to be individual: a Jew declaring “with a true heart I wish to be a Catholic,” a Catholic officer explaining that, “having become acquainted with the truths of the Episcopal-Reformed religion, I found in them answers in complete accord with my convictions.” Indeterminate beliefs also emerge: In 1902, for example, a nominal Lutheran from Riga appealed (unsuccessfully) for the space indicating religious affiliation in his passport to be left blank, as he no longer identified with a religion “that has any particular name.”
The authorities were not always indifferent to such demands; as early as 1865, Interior Minister Petr Valuev confided that he was “fighting for freedom of conscience.” Following the 1863 Uprising in the Kingdom of Poland, however–and especially the 1881 accession to the throne of Alexander III–russification efforts were stepped up in a bid to consolidate imperial rule through cultural assimilation. Ultimately though, even the Orthodox Synod’s chief procurator Konstantin Pobedonostsev–“among those most adamant about upholding the Orthodox Church’s prerogatives,” as Werth notes–came to admit the unsatisfactory nature of a subject remaining “in the empty space of the Orthodox Church, which he does not attend, and the Lutheran pastor, to whom he does not dare go and who by law cannot receive him.”
For scholars of religion in today’s Russia, Werth’s study elucidates the distant origins of numerous reflexes in current public discourse, notwithstanding the long Soviet interlude. Ripples of imperial attitudes may be found in key features of the post-Soviet era outlined in my own book, Believing in Russia–Religious Policy after Communism: Patriarch Kirill’s insistence on the priority of communal over individual religious rights; the Kremlin’s preference for “traditional” religious organizations, a status contingent upon political loyalty rather than doctrine; fear of threats to the nation’s “spiritual security.” The 142-year-old sentiments of an imperial governor of Minsk, who feared converts to Anglicanism would become “spies for England,” are sadly all too familiar.
Remarkably, some imperial developments identified by Werth compare favorably with the Putin era: Long before the uproar in Russia over the Vatican’s re-organization of its local structures into dioceses in 2002, the first diocese for Russia’s Catholic subjects, we learn, was set up in 1773, and by none other than Catherine the Great. Werth has done a great service by recalling the truncated pro-freedom vectors in Russia’s religious past. The vast canvas of his work offers a wealth of insight to anyone interested in religion in Russia.
Geraldine Fagan is editor of the East-West Church Report.
