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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Witnessing the widespread internal discord plaguing the new Russian regime after the abdication of Nicholas II in March of 1917, one contemporary activist expressed fear that centrifugal forces.from within constituted the greatest challenge to the democratic revolution. Signs of disharmony quickly appeared among the revolutionary leaders themselves. The liberals in the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and the moderate socialists in the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet found themselves at swords' points even before the first Provisional Government was officially established, and as months passed the animosity grew. Not long after the establishment of the new government the bickering spread beyond the ruling circles, disrupting orderly working relations between the new regime and the institutions surviving from the old. It appeared as though the collapse of the monarchy encouraged divisiveness precisely when survival depended on cooperative action.
1. Potresov, Alexander N., “Organizatsiia vlasti,” Den' 104 (07 8, 1917).Google Scholar Both Potresov and Plekhanov consistently warned that centrifugal forces could destroy the revolution.
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19. Many liberals in the Provisional Government shared these hostile attitudes toward the church and Orthodoxy, although certainly not all of them. Miliukov, the chief figure in the Kadet party and Foreign Minister in the cabinet of the first Provisional Government, was an enthusiastic agnostic who remained convinced that the church would not exercise a strong positive influence on mankind in the future. Miliukov, Paul, Outlines of Russian Culture; part I Religion and the Church, trans., Ughet, Valentine and Davis, Eleanor (Philadelphia, 1948).Google Scholar Miliukov's work was not polemical, but his attitude toward Orthodoxy as a strong force in society was not sympathetic.
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24. Contemporary Soviet historians of Russian ecclesiastical history are critical of the Ministry of Cults, maintaining that it represented nothing less than the restoration of the old “feudal” arrangement between state and church; Persits, M. M., Otdelenie tserkvi ot gosudarstva i shkoly ot tserkvi v SSSR (1917–1919 gg.) (Moscow, 1958), pp. 94–97.Google Scholar Gerhard Simon concluded that the etablishment of the Ministry of Cults was a “false concession” to the Church because it changed only the name of the old ministry. Unfortunately, this conclusion leaves unexplained why “the purely secular” Provisional Government described by the author in an earlier paragraph was reluctant to grant freedoms to the Church. Simon, Gerhard, Die Kirchen in Russland: Berichte Dokumente (Munich, 1970), pp. 34–35.Google Scholar
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27. The arguments presented to the Sobor were summarized by Wuyts, A., “Le patriarcat russe au concile de moscou de 1917–1918,” Orientalia Christiana Analecta 129 (Rome, 1941): 33–120.Google Scholar
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29. Dobronravov, Leonid, Tserkov' i respublika (Petrograd, 1917), p. 2.Google Scholar
30. Even the question of the relations between the Church and the state consumed little time at the early sessions. It became an important issue in the Sobor only after Lenin's edicts against the Church forced the matter into the forefront. Sobor, 1, 2, 3.
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33. Vvedenskii, Alexandr I., Tserkov' i gosudarstvo (Moscow, 1923), p. 92.Google Scholar According to Titlinov, a secret meeting of pro-Kornilov clergy took place just prior to the revolt, and it ended in a decision not to support Kornilov ( Tserkov', p. 70). No record of this meeting has survived, but its results could indicate a lack of enthusiasm for the counterrevolutionary cause rather than sympathy for it.
34. Velikaia oktiabr'skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia: dokumenty i materialy: Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v avguste 1917 g. razgrom Kornilovskogo miatezha (Moscow, 1959).Google Scholar
35. An alternative conclusion was reached by Curtiss, John Shelton, The Russian Church and the Soviet State 1917–1950 (Boston, 1953), pp. 30–31.Google Scholar Because he relied on the interpretations of Titlinov throughout his work, Curtiss naturally assumed that the Sobor placed great hope in the success of Kornilov's action. He then cited as supporting evidence an account of the incident written by Fr. Shavelsky, a military chaplain and elected delegate to the Sobor. (Shavel'sky, , “Tserkov',” 112–113.Google Scholar) The passage written by Shavelsky was designed, however, to free the Sobor from culpability in the Kornilov affair, and Curtiss was obliged to delete those sections that conveyed Shavelsky's motives to the reader.
36. Chrysostomus, Johannes, Kirchengeschichte Russlands der neuesten Zeit (Munich, 1965) 1: 70.Google Scholar In the western hemisphere, only St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary makes the printed records of the 1917–1918 Sobor meetings available to scholars.
37. Kandidov, Boris, Tserkov' i fevral'skaia revoliutsiia (Moscow, 1934), p. 95.Google Scholar