The Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church was the dominant religious institution of the Russian Empire, and it played a central role in the life of the Russian state and the Russian people. Across the nine centuries between the Christianization of Kievan Rus in 988 and the restoration of the patriarchate in 1917, it lent the autocracy legitimacy, served it as an instrument of social control, and acted as a great patron of the arts and education. The Church was also the largest landowner in Russia until the secularization of Church lands in the eighteenth century, and it remained an important institution throughout the imperial period.

The history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the imperial period is a complex story of continuity and change, of cooperation and conflict with the state, and of developments in theology, liturgy, and religious life. The Church faced considerable challenges during the period, including the schism of the Old Believers, the reforms of Peter the Great, the growth of secularism and atheism in the late imperial period, and the eventual collapse of the imperial system in 1917.

The Christianization of Rus and the early church

The Russian Orthodox Church traces its origins to 988, when Prince Vladimir the Great of Kievan Rus was baptized and commanded his subjects to follow him into the new faith — a conversion that bound the region culturally and spiritually to the Byzantine world for centuries to come. The Russian Church, at first a metropolitanate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, grew over the following centuries into an extensive institution with its own hierarchy, its own monasteries, and its own distinctive liturgical and spiritual traditions.

In this early period the Church and the princes of Rus were intimately linked, and the metropolitan of Kiev frequently wielded real political influence. Churchmen brought the Slavic alphabet and founded the first schools in Rus, laying the basis of Russian literacy, while ecclesiastical patronage fostered a national tradition of church architecture and icon painting.

The Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century shattered the Kievan state, and the metropolitan of the Russian Church eventually moved to Moscow, which was becoming the new center of Russian political life. By 1326 the metropolitan’s seat had settled permanently in Moscow, and the fortunes of the Church became bound up with the rise of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. In 1448, the Russian Church became effectively autocephalous, with the election of its own metropolitan without the approval of the Patriarch of Constantinople. In 1589, the Russian Church was further elevated when the metropolitan of Moscow was raised to the rank of patriarch.

The Old Believers and the Raskol

The gravest crisis of the Russian Church in the seventeenth century was the Raskol, the schism provoked by Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical reforms. Nikon’s revisions of the service books and rituals, intended to align Russian usage with that of the contemporary Greek Church, met fierce resistance from traditionalists who saw them as a betrayal of the true faith. These dissenters, known as the Old Believers, broke with the official Church and endured harsh persecution at the hands of both Church and state.

Over the following centuries the Old Believer communities built up their own devotional literature and distinctive way of life, and their merchant dynasties made them a significant force in Russian commerce, above all in Moscow and along the Volga. Legal toleration came only in 1905, and Old Believer congregations survive in Russia to this day.

The Petrine reforms and the Holy Synod

In 1721 Peter the Great carried out the most radical restructuring of Church governance in Russian history: he abolished the office of patriarch outright and put in its place the Holy Synod, a board headed by a layman appointed by the tsar, the Chief Procurator. One element of Peter’s wider drive for modernization, the synodal system was intended to turn the Church into an instrument under state control.

Resistance was considerable. Senior hierarchs protested that doing away with the patriarchate violated the Church’s canonical order, and the bishops obstructed the new system in whatever ways they could. Their objections changed nothing: the synodal arrangement endured as a pillar of the imperial order until 1917.

State control of the Church’s governance soon extended to its wealth. For centuries the Church had ranked among Russia’s greatest landowners, holding extensive urban and rural properties that sustained monasteries, churches, and other religious institutions in great numbers. Peter tightened state supervision of ecclesiastical revenues, but it was Catherine II’s secularization manifesto of 1764 that delivered the decisive blow, transferring most of the Church’s lands and serfs to the state and transforming its economic position. Parish priests, who had lived off the income of the Church estates, were thrown back on the support of their parishioners, and many sank into poverty.

The Church and the state in the 18th and 19th centuries

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Church and state lived in an uneasy partnership that combined collaboration with friction. Bishops and senior churchmen, bound closely to the autocracy, were expected as a matter of course to uphold government policy. At the same time the Church remained at the heart of the spiritual life of the Russian people, above all in the villages, where the parish priest was frequently the only educated man to be found.

Within the Church itself, divisions ran deep. A hierarchy drawn largely from noble families with connections at court had little in common with the parish clergy, who lived in poverty and counted for little politically. The intelligentsia, for its part, attacked the hierarchy as a servant of the autocratic state and increasingly demanded that Church and state be separated.

The Church played an important role in the cultural life of the empire. The parish priests were often the only people in the countryside with any education, and they played an important role in the development of Russian rural education. The Church was also a major patron of the arts, supporting the construction of churches, the production of icons, and the development of religious music. The great Russian composers, including Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Bortniansky, drew heavily on the Russian Orthodox liturgical tradition, and the great Russian writers, including Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, engaged deeply with religious themes.

The empire’s final decades confronted the Church with rising secularism, a growing revolutionary movement, and an increasingly critical public opinion. Educated society faulted it on several counts: its alliance with the autocracy, its complicity in silencing dissent, and its failure to speak to the great social questions of the age. Challenges came from the religious side as well — from the Old Believers and from dissident movements such as the Doukhobors, the Molokans, and the Khlysts, all of whom sought a Christianity more spiritual or less hierarchical than the official Church offered.

The Church’s efforts to respond culminated, on the very eve of revolution, in the recovery of its ancient form of government. The Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, meeting in 1917-1918, restored the patriarchate and elected Tikhon to fill it. Coming far too late to shore up the imperial system, the restoration nevertheless gave the Church a structure of leadership that helped it survive the Soviet decades.

The Church and the imperial court

The Russian Orthodox Church played an important role in the life of the imperial court and the imperial family. The members of the imperial family were required to be members of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the events of the imperial family, including births, marriages, and deaths, were marked by elaborate religious ceremonies. The imperial family was also a major patron of the Church, supporting the construction of churches, the establishment of monasteries, and the work of various religious and charitable institutions.

The imperial court was also a centre of religious life, with the various palaces and residences of the imperial family containing their own churches and chapels. The most important of these was the Grand Church of the Saviour in the Winter Palace, where the major ceremonies of the court were held; the Peterhof Palace and the Catherine Palace likewise had their own palace churches. The imperial family also patronized the great monasteries, such as the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, and the various charitable organizations that operated under imperial patronage.

The Church and the non-Russian nationalities

The Russian Orthodox Church was closely identified with the Russian state, and the conversion of non-Russian peoples to Russian Orthodoxy was an important part of the policy of Russification. The Church was active in missionary work among the various non-Russian peoples of the empire, including the Tatars, the Bashkirs, the Buryats, the Yakuts, and various other groups. The most successful missionary efforts were among the Siberian peoples, where the Russian Orthodox missionaries established a network of missions, schools, and churches.

The Church’s missionary work was often controversial. The non-Russian peoples, particularly the Muslims, often resisted the efforts of the Russian Orthodox missionaries, and the conversion of the indigenous peoples was sometimes accompanied by coercion. The Church was also criticized by some Russian intellectuals, who argued that the missionary work was motivated by political rather than religious considerations.

The Church also had an important relationship with the Orthodox and Eastern Christian minorities of the empire, including the Georgian Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the various other Orthodox and Eastern Christian communities. The Georgian Orthodox Church was closely tied to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the two churches cooperated on various matters. The Armenian Apostolic Church, however, maintained a more independent position, and the relationship between the two churches was sometimes strained.

The legacy of the Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church was one of the central institutions of the Russian Empire, and it played an important role in the life of the Russian state and the Russian people. The Church was closely tied to the autocratic state, and it served as an important source of legitimacy, an instrument of social control, and a significant patron of the arts and education. The Church also faced considerable challenges during the period, including the schism of the Old Believers, the reforms of Peter the Great, the growth of secularism, and the eventual collapse of the imperial system in 1917.

The legacy of the Russian Orthodox Church in the imperial period is complex. The Church was a support of the autocratic system, and it was often criticized for its role in the suppression of dissent. At the same time, the Church was a significant patron of Russian culture, and it played an important role in the development of Russian religious life, Russian literature, and Russian music. The Church was also an important source of social services, with its network of parish schools, hospitals, and charitable organizations.

The Russian Orthodox Church survived the collapse of the imperial system and the establishment of the Soviet state, although it was severely persecuted by the Soviet authorities. The Church was revived after the fall of the Soviet Union, and it remains an important institution in the post-Soviet states. The imperial-era church politics have had direct post-Soviet consequences: the dispute over the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church — granted by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019 and contested by the Moscow Patriarchate — traces directly to the absorption of the Kyivan metropolitanate under Russian patriarchal authority in 1686, itself an episode of imperial church-building under Peter I’s predecessor Alexis. (See Freeze, Russian Levites: The Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century, 1977; and on the Soviet and post-Soviet period, see Payne, The Revival of Russian Orthodoxy in the Twentieth Century, 2008.)