The Heart of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism, and Society After 1825 0199736138, 9780199736133

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Tables and Figures
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction: Reviving Monasticism in Modern Russia
2 Trinity-Sergius: The Heart of Russia
3 Gethsemane: The Cradle of Monasticism
4 Monks: Social History and Spiritual Life
5 Pilgrims: Pilgrimage, Relics, and Miracles
6 Reform: Revered Elders and Monastic Congresses
7 Politics: Monasticism on the Eve of Revolution
8 Revolution: Trinity-Sergius and the Bolsheviks, 1917–1921
9 Golgotha: Revival and Terror, 1921–1938
10 Epilogue: Resurrection
Notes
Glossary
Names
A
D
F
G
I
K
L
N
P
T
V
Terms
A
B
C
D
E
G
H
I
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Bibliography
Index
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B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
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Citation preview

The Heart of Russia

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The Heart of Russia Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism, and Society after 1825

scott m. kenworthy

Woodrow Wilson Center Press Washington, D.C.

1 New York

Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press Woodrow Wilson Center Press Editorial Offices Woodrow Wilson Center Press One Woodrow Wilson Plaza 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.D. 20004-3027 Telephone: 202-691-4029 www.wilsoncenter.org Copyright © 2010 by Scott Kenworthy All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kenworthy, Scott M. The heart of Russia : Trinity-Sergius, monasticism, and society after 1825 / Scott M. Kenworthy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-19-973613-3 (hardcover) 1. Troitse-Sergieva lavra—History—19th century. 2. Sergiev Posad (Russia)—Church history— 19th century. 3. Christian sociology—Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’—History—19th century. 4. Troitse-Sergieva lavra—History—20th century. 5. Sergiev Posad (Russia)—Church history—20th century. 6. Christian sociology—Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’—History—20th century. I. Title. BX583.T7K46 2010 271a.8194731—dc22 2010027616

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars is the national, living U.S. memorial honoring President Woodrow Wilson. In providing an essential link between the worlds of ideas and public policy, the Center addresses current and emerging challenges confronting the United States and the world. The Center promotes policy-relevant research and dialogue to increase understanding and enhance the capabilities and knowledge of leaders, citizens, and institutions worldwide. Created by an Act of Congress in 1968, the Center is a nonpartisan institution headquartered in Washington, D.C., and supported by both public and private funds. Conclusions or opinions expressed in Center publications and programs are those of the authors and speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center’s staff, fellows, trustees, or advisory groups, or any individuals or organizations that provide financial support to the Center. The Center is the publisher of The Wilson Quarterly and home of Woodrow Wilson Center Press and dialogue television and radio. For more information about the Center’s activities and publications, including the monthly newsletter Centerpoint, please visit us on the web at www.wilsoncenter.org. Lee H. Hamilton, President and Director Board of Trustees Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chair Sander R. Gerber, Vice Chair Public members: James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress; Hillary R. Clinton, Secretary of State; G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education; David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States; James Leach, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services Private citizen members: Charles E. Cobb Jr., Robin Cook, Charles L. Glazer, Carlos M. Gutierrez, Susan Hutchison, Barry S. Jackson, Ignacio E. Sanchez

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To my parents, Joseph H. Kenworthy and Nevenka Panjkovic Kenworthy

The House of the Life-Creating Trinity is and was always recognized as the heart of Russia, and the builder of this house, Venerable Sergius of Radonezh, as . . . the Guardian Angel of Russia. . . . In order to understand Russia, one has to understand the Lavra. —Pavel Florenskii, The Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra and Russia, 1919

Contents

Tables and Figures Acknowledgments

xi xiii

1 Introduction: Reviving Monasticism in Modern Russia 2 Trinity-Sergius: The Heart of Russia 3 Gethsemane: The Cradle of Monasticism 4 Monks: Social History and Spiritual Life 5 Pilgrims: Pilgrimage, Relics, and Miracles 6 Reform: Revered Elders and Monastic Congresses 7 Politics: Monasticism on the Eve of Revolution 8 Revolution: Trinity-Sergius and the Bolsheviks, 1917–1921 9 Golgotha: Revival and Terror, 1921–1938 10 Epilogue: Resurrection

1 33 73 111 169 221 254 292 329 368

Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

389 475 483 511

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Tables and Figures

Tables 2.1 2.2 2.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 5.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

The Trinity-Sergius Lavra’s Income and Expenditures, 1781–1912 The Trinity-Sergius Lavra’s Income, 1834–1912 The Trinity-Sergius Lavra’s Expenditures, 1835–1910 Social Profile of Monastic Recruits, Trinity-Sergius Collective, 1846–55, 1860–65, 1877–86, and 1905–14 Tonsures by Monastic Community, 1846–1914 Geographical Origins of Recruits, Trinity-Sergius Collective, 1846–1914 Monastic Recruits from Central European Russia, by Community Age of Monastic Candidates on Entering the Novitiate, Trinity-Sergius Collective, 1846–1914 Age of Monastic Candidates at Tonsure, Trinity-Sergius Collective, 1846–1914 “Church” Income, 1834–1912 The Trinity-Sergius Lavra’s Charity Expenses, 1906 Infirmaries of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and Gethsemane Skete, 1915–16 Amounts Spent by the Monasteries on Refugees and Donated in Support of War Needs, 1915 Amounts Spent by Trinity-Sergius and Gethsemane on Refugees and Donated in Support of War Needs, 1916

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46 46 50 119 122 124 125 126 127 185 261 276 276 277

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tables and figures

Figures 1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

Bethany Monastery Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) Archimandrite Antonii (Medvedev) The Shed Row The Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, with the Saint Filaret attachment 2.5 A view of Trinity-Sergius in the late 19th century 2.6 The new Trade Row 3.1 Gethsemane Skete 3.2 The Paraclete Hermitage 3.3 The Chernigov Skete 3.4 The Church of the Chernigov Icon of the Mother of God 4.1 Archimandrite Toviia (Tsymbal) in 1913 5.1 Trinity-Sergius Lavra at the turn of the 20th century 5.2 A View of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in 1892 5.3 The Refectory Church 5.4 Trinity Cathedral, showing the front entrance 5.5 Trinity Cathedral from the southwest side 5.6 The entrance gates of Trinity-Sergius 5.7 The reliquary of Saint Sergius 5.8 The pilgrimage route from Moscow to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra 10.1 The Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra 10.2 The Butovo Cross 10.3 Visitors at Butovo 10.4 The memorial site at Butovo 10.5 The Icon of the New Martyrs at Butovo 10.6 The Inner Square of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra

29 36 41 47 62 68 70 79 89 104 105 153 175 176 177 178 179 179 180 181 378 381 382 383 384 386

Acknowledgments

A project such as this is impossible without the assistance of a great many people. Without the help of two people, who contributed from beginning to end, I could not have done what I did. The first is my doctoral adviser, Gregory Freeze, whose knowledge of the Orthodox Church in modern Russia and its archives is incomparable. He provided direction from the earliest stages of conceptualizing the project to the last stages of writing the manuscript. Without his guidance through the archives and libraries of Russia, painstaking editorial work, and answers to myriads of questions, this research would not have been possible. Greg’s high standards of scholarship provide an outstanding model for his students. The second person is Leonid Weintraub, Moscow archivist extraordinaire, who, on my very first exploratory predissertation trip to Moscow, suggested that I look at the archive of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra when I told him I wanted to work on monasticism. From there, Lenia was a constant source of help and support in finding and obtaining materials from archives, and in making the most valuable contacts in every sphere, from the Church to the Sergiev Posad museum. I am also grateful for permission to use the superb photographs of Archimandrite Toviia. He and his wife, Lena Drozdova, provided invaluable assistance in daily concerns, from finding apartments to registering visas on virtually every trip to Russia. And above all, I am grateful for their friendship. This project entailed working at a great number of libraries and archives in Russia and in the United States. I am deeply indebted to the archivists at the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in Moscow, especially Aleksandr Gamaiunov and Aleksandr Ilizarov, not only for their help in the archives but also for their enjoyable company after hours. I am also grateful to the staff at the Russian State Historical Archive in Saint Petersburg, Serafima I. Varekhova and Tamara Iagorova. Serafima Igor’evna’s knowledge of the archive was incomparable. The staff at the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of the xiii

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City of Moscow, and the Russian State Archive of the Moscow Region, as well as the Russian State Library (particularly the Manuscript Division) in Moscow and the Russian National Library in Saint Petersburg, have also been very helpful. Further, I would like to thank Archimandrite Makarii (Veterennikov) for enabling me to work in the library at the Moscow Theological Academy, and Hegumen Stefan (Sado), the librarian of the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, for his help. On this side of things, I am particularly grateful to Janet Spikes of the Woodrow Wilson Center Library, Edward Kasinec of the New York Public Library, and Harold Leich and Angela Cannon of the European Reading Room at the Library of Congress. Others in Russia assisted in numerous ways. I am extremely grateful to Igor Korovin for sharing his remarkable collection of photographs with me and allowing me to use them. I thank the staff at the Sergiev Posad Historical Museum for their help, especially Konstantin Filimonov, who gave me my first tour of the Lavra, as well as G. P. Cherkashina and V. A. Tkachenko, whom I often found pouring over fond 1204 at the Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, and S. V. Nikolaeva, for inviting me to the conference at Trinity-Sergius in 2000. I am also grateful to Reverend Krill Kaleda at Butovo for his hospitality and generosity. A great number of colleagues have read parts of the book and provided invaluable feedback. First of all, I thank Rudolph Binion and Patricia Herlihy, as dissertation readers, for their careful reading and many helpful suggestions. William Wagner and Christine Worobec both read the dissertation and provided great recommendations for turning it into a book. Robert Nichols and Vera Shevzov both made detailed suggestions for improving the text. James Billington gave comments on the proposal and scope of the book. I am also very grateful to the reading group at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, above all David Brandenberger, Eric Lohr, and Randall Poole, as well as the reading group at Georgetown University, again with Eric Lohr and also Harvey Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Catherine Evtuhov, Bob Geraci, David Goldfrank, and Richard Stites. Richard also helped on the title, and it is a great sadness that he will not see this book published. My colleagues at Miami University’s Havighurst Center also provided support and feedback, especially Karen Dawisha, and also Vitaly Chernitsky, Neringa Klumbyte, Gulnaz Sherafutdinova, Ben Sutcliffe, and Bob Thurston. Andrew Cayton and Steven Norris both read the entire manuscript and gave great suggestions. Colleagues at the Kennan Institute gave critical direction as I was rethinking the structure of the book—especially Doug Rogers, as well as Irina Papkova, Maggie Paxson, and Blair Ruble. The staff at Kennan was wonderful, and special mention also goes to my two research assistants, Andrei Dukhovskoi and Katherine Preuss, who tracked down resources for me of all kinds. Other friends

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and colleagues helped along in various ways: Carolyn Fisher and George Kosar at Brandeis University, as well as Allison Miller and Steve Streufert. Financial support for various stages of this project was provided by the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Social Science Research Council, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the American Council for the Teachers of Russian, the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University, the College of Arts and Sciences at Miami University, Brandeis University, and the Louis, Frances, and Jeffrey Sachar Fund, and the Sachar International Fellowship. Two people taken from this world too soon deserve special attention: my teacher at Saint Vladimir’s Seminary, Father John Meyendorff, whose work in many ways inspired the direction I took; and Dimitrii L. Pokrovskii, for showing me Russian life the first two summers I lived in Moscow. I wish to thank my parents for all their love and support. Above all, I thank my wife Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, for reading innumerable drafts and always helping me to find the broader significance of the stories I was telling, as well as for putting up with all the hours I was unavailable because I was absorbed in working on the book; and my son Paul, whose arrival into this world gave me the incentive to finish.

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The Heart of Russia

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1 Introduction: Reviving Monasticism in Modern Russia As Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov opens, the novel’s hero, Alyosha, is living in a monastery as a novice. He believes the monastery is a path to serve humanity because he has seen truth and love embodied in one of the monks he has met, the elder Zosima, who serves as spiritual guide to Alyosha as well as the monastery’s brotherhood and the throngs of pilgrims who come to visit him. Thus, in one of the greatest of novels, a Russian monastery and its elder figure very prominently. Yet such a role for a monastery would have been unthinkable in Russian literature half a century earlier; a dramatic shift had taken place in Russian culture, and that transformation is the subject of this book. Dostoevsky’s portrayal of Zosima contrasts sharply with rising notions both of political freedom and modern conceptions of the self as autonomous—arguing, paradoxically, that true freedom is found through obedience and self-surrender. Indeed, in the novel Zosima envisions monasticism as the potential source of Russia’s redemption and the solution to its modern crisis. For Dostoevsky, the fruits of Western modernity, with its material and scientific progress and its secular ideologies, were not improving the human condition but only increased people’s sense of their material needs and wants along with their anxiety and isolation. Monasticism is presented in The Brothers Karamazov as an alternative; according to Zosima: “Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet they alone constitute the way to real and true freedom: I cut away my superfluous and unnecessary needs, through obedience I humble and chasten my vain and proud will, and thereby, with God’s help, attain freedom of spirit, and with that, spiritual rejoicing!”1 The monk’s life is not an escape from the world into isolation. Rather, because the monk has surrendered his selfishness, he is capable of truly 1

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loving and serving others. Dostoevsky sought a different path for Russia than that of Western Europe, and from this alternative path he believed Russia’s “salvation” would come. From where did Dostoevsky derive such ideas? There has, of course, been much debate about the “orthodoxy” of Dostoevsky’s Russian Orthodoxy.2 Were these ideals of the “Russian monk” and the “elder” products of Dostoevsky’s own creative imagination? Scholars have addressed some of these questions in the past. The revival of the institution of the elders from Paisii Velichkovskii and its flourishing at the Optina Hermitage are generally well known. In particular, scholars have also treated the ways in which the Optina elders have had an impact on Russian culture, from Gogol and the Slavophile thinker Ivan Kireevskii in the 1840s to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky’s philosopher-friend Vladimir Soloviev, and Dostoevsky himself, in the 1870s and 1880s.3 But what of Optina and its elders—was this a unique manifestation in nineteenth-century Russia? What was the impact of “the Russian monk” not only on these cultural elites—as profoundly important as that was—but also on Russian Orthodoxy, and on Russian society and culture, before the cataclysms of 1917? Although the centrality of monasticism in medieval Russia is generally acknowledged, was this institution—and even more, this way of life—more than just a remnant of the past in the nineteenth century? What could be its significance, given its apparent contradictions vis-à-vis modernity, even in Zosima’s own depiction? Dostoevsky portrays the monastery as a locus of the people’s lived religion; yet, though he claims that this was so “from time immemorial,”4 in fact Russian monasticism deepened its ties with “the people” to an unprecedented degree precisely during his lifetime. Few scholars of Russian history and culture are even aware that what is depicted in The Brothers Karamazov was in fact part of a much broader and very significant phenomenon in prerevolutionary Russia. Despite its partial suppression in the eighteenth century, monasticism experienced a remarkable resurgence in the nineteenth. Catherine the Great’s secularization reform in 1764 confiscated monastery estates and also closed 60 percent of the monasteries themselves (the number was reduced from 954 to 387), and the number of monks and nuns was also dramatically curtailed. For the next half century, monasticism stagnated, suggesting that it would survive only as a vestige of its past glories. But beginning in the era of Tsar Nicholas I (1825–55)—though without official encouragement—Russian monasticism began a steady revival, which was cut short only by World War I and the Revolution of 1917. The number of monasteries equaled presecularization levels (to 1,025), while the number of monks, nuns, and novices, which had been fewer than 6,000 at the end of the eighteenth century, officially swelled to nearly 95,000 by the eve of World War I.5 The ratio of monks, nuns, and novices to the Russian Orthodox population nearly tripled between 1840 and 1914 (there was 1 monastic per 2,882 Russian Or-

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thodox believers in 1840, and 1 per 1,111 believers in 1914), despite the rapid population growth.6 In terms of sheer numbers, the monastic revival experienced a significant “feminization” during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the number of female monastics far surpassed that of males. This notable feminization of monasticism in Russian parallels that of Western European Catholic countries such as France, where a much more complete suppression of monasticism was followed by an explosion of female religious orders—especially those involved in teaching, care for the poor and the sick, and other social ministries, something that was also a dimension of the phenomenon in Russia.7 What was distinctive to Russia, however, was precisely the revival of traditional, contemplative monasticism. The flowering of female religious life directed toward social service was more justifiable in a modern world that valued utility and tangible, this-worldly benefits. In Western Europe, such outcomes were expected even among Catholic believers, and male religious also tended toward active orders. After the suppression of Catholic monasticism throughout Europe in the Napoleonic Era, for the most part the old orders that represented traditional, contemplative monasticism did not recover in the nineteenth century.8 Though less impressive in sheer numbers than female monasticism, male monasticism in Russia, focused on the contemplative, experienced a growth rate that outstripped the increase in population during the nineteenth century (from 358 monasteries in 1810 to 550 by 1914; and from 5,742 monks and novices in 1825 to 24,444 in 1907—a more-thanfourfold increase). More important than the numbers, however, is the reality that men’s monasteries in particular played a hugely important role in Russian society and culture in the nineteenth century; monasticism reshaped the Russian Orthodox Church and contributed to the popularity and vitality of Russian Orthodoxy up to the Revolution of 1917. Monasteries became the destination for the massive upsurge of pilgrimage in the nineteenth century, as millions of believers from all social backgrounds were annually drawn to the relics of famous saints, the solemn liturgies, and the living holy men who were the real-life Zosimas. Moreover, the revival of contemplative monasticism would transform Russian Orthodoxy itself; if, when Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov (1878–80), the institution of elders was still the subject of controversy, by the time of the Revolution it was almost universally accepted as normative. Indeed, by the end of the twentieth century, elders would be regarded as the quintessence of Orthodox spirituality not only in Russia but throughout the Orthodox world. Perhaps paradoxically, contemplative monasticism was not a mere anachronism in modernizing Russia but was itself transformed by modernity and thus remained relevant. No longer was it an institution dominated by social elites who had

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the luxury to devote themselves to worship, study, and the production of books and liturgical art, supported by sometimes vast landed estates and church peasants, as in the medieval and early modern periods. In this respect, Catherine the Great’s reform had actually served as the catalyst for the nineteenth-century monastic revival. By confiscating their estates and depriving the monasteries of their wealth, and by curtailing the number of monks, Catherine had ensured that those who were drawn to the monastery came for different reasons than in the past. If the monasteries had remained feudal landowners into the nineteenth century, they would likely have been as much the objects of popular resentment as of veneration, but they were largely free of popular anticlericalism because of Catherine’s reforms. Monasteries drew their support and their recruits mostly from commoners, and these changes helped to reinvent monasticism as an institution in the social and economic landscape of the nineteenth century by foregrounding its withdrawal from the world and primarily spiritual nature. For much of the twentieth century, scholars assumed a conflict between religion and modernity, with religion losing the struggle as societies modernize. But the old model of “secularization,” which proposed an inevitable decline of religion, or at least its “privatization” and marginalization from the public sphere, now looks like a story unique to Western Europe’s path to modernization rather than a universal one, as scholars believed until late in the twentieth century.9 Russia’s path to modernity has certainly been different. Although Russia began its modernization later than many Western European nations, during the second half of the nineteenth century Russia experienced the rapid social change, industrialization, urbanization, greater social mobility, spread of literacy, and changing notions of the self that are all part of modernity. Yet in Russia, these were accompanied by an incredible diversity of religious responses, among which disaffection from or the rejection of religion was only one—and despite all the attention it has been given, hardly the most widespread or popular response. On the contrary, in the half century or more before the Revolution, Russia experienced great religious ferment that found expression both within and outside the bounds of its traditional religion. Scholars also now recognize that secularization is not the whole story even in the West—particularly in the United States, where religion played a very important role in the nineteenth century and continues to do so in the early twenty-first—and not even in Western Europe. Certainly the Enlightenment did much to challenge traditional Christian authorities. Moreover, the rise of the nation-state resulted in secular nationalism and the idea of the ethnos becoming central to the idea of the nation and displacing religion in the process, as Anderson and Gellner have argued.10 But in the West, there were also movements of religious revival in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Pietism, Methodism, the Great Awakening in America, and revivals of Catholic devotion. One of the characteristic features of

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these movements, such as Methodism, is that they drew their leadership not from the ranks of the old elites but from the middle and working classes, and expressed forms of religious devotion that were meaningful to them. According to the anthropologist Robert Hefner, “In Western countries as a whole, organized religion has done best where its primary social carriers have chosen not to attempt to reimpose an organic union of religion and state on the unsettled modern landscape, and have instead moved down-market to develop organizations closer in ethos and organization to mass society’s working and middle classes.”11 Prerevolutionary Russia presents an interesting case for Hefner’s thesis. The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church certainly did try to maintain the “organic union of religion and state,” and indeed, this may have contributed to the rise of sectarian movements along with the antagonism toward the Orthodox Church that did exist in early-twentieth-century Russia. Until recently, Russian historians have always portrayed the Orthodox Church as moribund, corrupt, and lacking in popular support, and even since recent scholarship has rendered these judgments untenable, some who only look at the hierarchy’s attempt to maintain Orthodoxy’s exclusive role still persist in asserting that the Church was “inflexible” and unable to “respond to the spiritual needs of its flock.”12 But this is far from the whole story. The revival of monasticism was driven from below and it, together with pilgrimage and starchestvo (spiritual eldership), moved from the realm of elite phenomenon to that of the popular. Indeed, precisely because monasticism and other manifestations of Orthodoxy developed in Russia in ways that were “closer in ethos and organization” to mass society—in this case, the peasantry—Orthodoxy was able to respond to the spiritual needs of its flock, and therefore Russia did not experience the same degree of secularization as the countries of Northern Europe. Moreover, Russia followed a path different from the rest of Europe because Russian nationalism was not divorced from religion; if anything, Russian Orthodoxy has been strengthened by being seen as inseparable from Russian identity. Nor should the Russian revivals of religion be regarded as a reaction against modernity. “Not a reaction against but a response to the modern world,” Hefner writes of religion as a force in the modern world generally, “the most successful religious refigurations thrive by drawing themselves down into mass society and away from exclusive elites, if and when the latter lose their hold on popular allegiances.”13 Although Russia ended up lurching violently from a thriving, religiously modernizing space to the most vehemently and militantly secular of states and ultimately chose a very different path to modernity, before 1917 it appeared to be a very successful case of such “refiguration.” Monasticism played a decisive role in this process of transforming the religious landscape of modern Russia precisely by becoming a mass phenomenon; the recruitment of monks and nuns was democratized, so that it drew overwhelmingly

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from common people, who often worked their way up to positions of leadership and great responsibility. Moreover, not only was the monastic community itself popularized, but so too was the role it played in the faith of ordinary believers. The monastery became the locus par excellence of encounter with the divine, above all through its solemn liturgies, the relics of revered saints, and miraculous icons—all of which drew believers by the millions. Moreover, the role of the elder was transformed from a monastic relationship of spiritual guidance to a mass phenomenon, as Dostoevsky depicted in the Brothers Karamazov. Even Hesychasm, the elite form of contemplative prayer and spirituality, moved out of isolated hermitages and became a popular practice seen as epitomizing Orthodox spirituality even in the West through works such as The Way of a Pilgrim (and J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey). Thus the revival of monasticism transformed Russian Orthodoxy in the nineteenth century and did much to ensure levels of religious practice that were far higher than in Western Europe. Indeed, rather than conflicting with monasticism and pilgrimage, the greater social mobility, transportation, and literacy brought by modernity fed their resurgence. Despite its manifest significance, the modern revival of Russian monasticism has largely escaped the notice of scholars.14 This is due, on the one hand, to the almost complete neglect of Eastern Orthodoxy by historians of Christianity, and on the other, to the almost exclusive interest in the social and political dimensions of modern Russia among its historians. Since the collapse of communism, however, historians have begun asking new questions, and there has been an upsurge of interest in Russian religious history. A number of these books have focused on religious manifestations other than the Russian Orthodox Church.15 The pioneering studies of the last generation focused on the social history of Orthodox clergy and other aspects of the institutional church.16 And most recent books have moved away from traditional “church history” and its consideration of the church’s institutions, hierarchy, clergy, and ideas, and favored the study of “lived religion,” the beliefs and practices of ordinary people.17 Monasticism occupies a unique position in that it was simultaneously part of the institutional church, and yet—unlike the parish clergy in the nineteenth century, who had become a veritable caste of clergy sons—monasticism drew its constituents from all social classes. It therefore represents a unique bridge between the institutional church and the religion of the common people. This book approaches Russian Orthodox monasticism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the lens of Russia’s most important shrine, the Holy Trinity–Saint Sergius Lavra. The fate of this monastery, which was founded in the fourteenth century in the proximity of Moscow, was intimately tied to that of Moscow itself, and its founder, Saint Sergius of Radonezh, became one of Russia’s most venerated saints. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra presents a window on the history of monasticism first of all because of the abundance of sources; this study is based

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on the incomparably rich archive of the monastery itself as well as a plethora of other sources produced by those who lived in or visited it. In particular, this book examines monastic life through the lens of one participant, Archimandrite Toviia (Tsymbal), who became the prior of Trinity-Sergius in the early twentieth century and who left exceptional unpublished memoirs that provide a unique firsthand account of a life that is, by its very nature, “cloistered” and inaccessible to outsiders. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra is also crucial to the story of monasticism because it enjoyed greater veneration, and attracted more pilgrims, than any other monastery in Russia. This study examines not only the Lavra itself—a large and populous monastery—but also its satellite communities, most of which were founded in the nineteenth century and were devoted specifically to the pursuit of contemplative spirituality. This Trinity-Sergius “collective” provides a plentiful variety of forms of monastic experience. At the same time, of course, it must be stressed that Russian monasticism was characterized by great diversity, and both regional and institutional differences should not be underestimated, as a comparison with Solovetskii Monastery in the Far North illustrates;18 therefore, a complete picture of Russian monasticism demands further study. Because the Trinity-Sergius Lavra was blessed with excellent leadership, as chapter 2 shows, it flowered in the nineteenth century both as a community and as an institution. At the same time, as a large monastery that received great numbers of pilgrims, the Lavra was not an ideal location for the quiet needed to pursue contemplative prayer—the force that fundamentally drove the revival of male monasticism in nineteenth-century Russia. Instead, smaller hermitages founded in the vicinity of Trinity-Sergius became the locus of the contemplative revival, as described in chapter 3. Monasticism literally became “popular” because it underwent a fundamental transformation of its composition in the nineteenth century, drawing its recruits from the common people as well as popularizing its spiritual ideals, as analyzed in chapter 4. The resurgence of monasticism was also driven by an upsurge of pilgrimage; chapter 5 examines the interaction with the world outside the cloister by focusing on what drew these pilgrims. As chapter 6 explains, by the early twentieth century, monasticism’s own success brought in an overwhelming number of new recruits, and this generated a sense of crisis and calls for reform. The early twentieth century was also a time of tremendous social and political upheaval in Russia, from which the monastery could not remain unaffected; chapter 7 examines the impact of these transformations on the monastery and the ways in which the monastery responded. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 fundamentally altered the situation of the Orthodox Church in Russia. Chapter 8 tells the story of the closure of Trinity-Sergius during the Revolution. Although Trinity-Sergius was closed, the hermitages transformed themselves into agricultural collectives, some of which not only survived

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but even thrived in the 1920s; chapter 9 looks both at this story, and at how, after the rise of Stalin, the Soviet government eliminated all remaining monastic communities at the end of the 1920s and then systematically repressed the monks themselves in the 1930s. An epilogue considers the dramatic revival of Orthodoxy in the postwar Soviet Union, which resulted in the reopening and resurgence of Trinity-Sergius and the even greater resurgence of Russian Orthodoxy and monasticism after the Soviet Union’s collapse. In short, as Derek Beales writes of monasticism in eighteenthand nineteenth-century Western Europe, a study of Russian Orthodox monasticism is likewise “not a question of drawing attention to a quaint survival” but rather “bringing to the surface a ‘submerged Continent.’” Russian Orthodox monks and nuns “really mattered in the life of society,” and monasticism was “the object of continuous interest and fierce controversy. It is a distortion of history to leave them out of it.”19

The Development of Russian Monasticism The monastic way of obedience, fasting, and prayer, described by Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, is deeply rooted in the Eastern Orthodox approach to spiritual life. The purpose of the Christian life, according to Eastern Orthodoxy, is communion with God. The Orthodox approach is concerned not only with salvation, meaning going to heaven after death, but also with transforming the person into the likeness of God, a process that is to begin in this temporal life. Each person is called to grow more godlike through a synergy of divine grace and human effort—a process the Eastern Christian writers refer to as theosis, deification. This is accomplished through turning one’s energies and consciousness away from sin and selfishness and directing them toward God (the literal meaning of metanoia, “repentance,” is this turning of consciousness). Yet because the things of this world are more tangible and are immediate sources of satisfaction, they continue to have power over the Christian. As long as an individual remains self-centered rather than God-centered, and tries to satisfy his or her longings through the things of this world—wealth, power, status, sex—then so long is the person distracted from pursuing God, the source of ultimate fulfillment. The early Christians understood monasticism as the path of repentance par excellence, in which the individual vows to renounce the things of this world to turn one’s entire being toward God. This is the purpose of asceticism, which derives from the Greek askesis, meaning “exercise” or “training.” Ascetic disciplines such as fasting train the individual in denying his or her desire for the things of this world. The meaning of the monastic vows is also to be understood in this context—in the vow of poverty, one renounces the pursuit of wealth and status; through celibacy, one

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gives up the attempt to satisfy oneself through sexual relations and family; and through obedience, one surrenders the pursuit of power and ultimately one’s own self-centered will in order to fulfill God’s will, which the early Christians understood to be the fulfillment of the human person’s true meaning and purpose. The role of monasticism and the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in modern Russia can only be understood in light of the development of Eastern Orthodox and Russian monasticism in earlier centuries.

Monasticism in the Early Church and Byzantium Christian monasticism began in Egypt and other regions of the Eastern Mediterranean in the third century. Early monasticism developed in a variety of forms, generally tending toward two poles: the solitary and the communal. The first exemplar of solitary, or eremitical, monasticism was Antony (c. 251–356); a wealthy young man, he heard the Gospel read in church on Sunday: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mt. 19: 21). Antony felt compelled to follow this direction literally, sold his possessions, and devoted his entire life to prayer in solitude in the desert, becoming what is known as an anchorite. The founder of communal monasticism, Pachomius (292–346), also lived in the Egyptian desert. A former soldier, Pachomius emphasized communal discipline and strict obedience to the head of the community. These two forms of monastic life were considered complementary and have coexisted throughout the history of the Eastern Church.20 Communal, or cenobitic, monasticism received further development in subsequent centuries in the Eastern Church. In this form of monasticism, the life of the monk or nun—including prayer, manual labor, eating, and sleeping—was strictly defined. The individual monk or nun owned no personal property; rather, the fruits of his or her labor went to benefit the community. Although fasting and other forms of asceticism remained important, cenobitic monasticism preferred moderation to the ascetic extremes often encountered among anchorites in the Egyptian or Syrian deserts. Rather, more emphasis was placed on collective worship and obedience to the superior (head) of the monastery. Theodore (759–826), abbot of the Studios Monastery in Constantinople, developed the most influential cenobitic rule in Byzantium, known as the Studite Rule. In contrast to the West, where monasticism is organized into orders where groups of monasteries follow a particular rule (Benedictines, Cistercians, et al.), Eastern monasticism followed general patterns, but each monastery received a charter (in Russian, typikon) on its foundation that regulated its daily life and liturgical observances. Byzantine monasteries therefore had a common basis combined with individual particularities.

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From its inception, monasticism was regarded as one of the ideals of living the Christian life. After the end of iconoclasm in the ninth century, which monks helped to defeat, it had even greater authority and influence in the Byzantine world. Monasticism attracted men and women from different social backgrounds and at various stages of life. Wealthy landowners and members of the imperial family endowed land or founded new monasteries in return for perpetual prayers for their families. Rather than being isolated from worldly affairs, monasteries became substantial landowners and influential institutions of the Church; they also provided social services as hospitals, almshouses, and hostels; served as centers of pilgrimage; and offered spiritual guidance and prayers for ordinary Christians. Monastic spirituality centered on prayer, fasting, and other ascetic disciplines. The highest goal of Byzantine spirituality was hesychia, “stillness.” Beginning in the eleventh century, Byzantine monasticism witnessed a spiritual and cultural revival that was inspired by Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022), who emphasized the direct, mystical encounter with God and the possibility of deification. By the fourteenth century, a particular form of monastic spirituality known as Hesychasm developed and became systematized on Mount Athos, a hilly peninsula in northern Greece where monasticism was established in the tenth century. The Hesychast method involved concentrating the attention “in the heart,” retaining each breath, and repeating the “Jesus Prayer”: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.” Although the theologian Barlaam attacked this psychosomatic form of prayer as well as the Hesychasts’ claim to have direct, immediate knowledge and experience of God, the Athonite monk Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) defended the Hesychasts. His theological formulations received conciliar endorsement from the Eastern Church in the mid–fourteenth century, and thereafter Hesychasm was a major force in Eastern monasticism. The threat to and ultimate victory of Hesychasm led to a resurgence of monastic spirituality, which spread from Mount Athos throughout the Orthodox world, and particularly to the Slavic lands—including Russia—in the second half of the fourteenth century, although it declined in later centuries.21 The revival and transformation of Hesychasm in the eighteenth and nineteenth century is a central part of the story of this book. Monasticism in Russia came together with the introduction of Christianity; the first monasteries appear to have been founded in the early eleventh century.22 The most important monastery of the Kievan Rus’ period (988–1240) was the Monastery of the Caves, founded in the mid–eleventh century. The two founders of the monastery, Antonii and Feodosii, exemplified the two approaches to monasticism; Antonii settled as a hermit in a cave overlooking the River Dnepr (the cave representing the ultimate renunciation of the world), while Feodosii organized the growing community into a cenobitic monastery and adopted the Studite Rule. Moreover,

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the Caves Monastery was actively involved in the world; it provided social services for the poor and sick and played an independent and influential role in politics.23 Most monasteries of the period, however, were “princely monasteries,” founded by and dependent upon princely families. They drew their recruits from the highborn, and one could not join without making a substantial donation. Most were located in or near cities, and they were intimately tied to their political and cultural life, serving as centers of literary culture. In all, information survives on nearly one hundred monasteries in Rus’ founded before 1240, the time of the Mongol invasion, although many of these were destroyed during the invasions.24

Saint Sergius and the Expansion of Monasticism in Muscovy The period from the mid–fourteenth century to the mid–fifteenth century witnessed a dramatic expansion of monasticism, which took a significantly new form. The authoritative Russian scholar B. M. Kloss has argued that a new spiritual vision— one that aspired to a much higher level of asceticism, poverty, and obedience—was needed to correspond to the new social realities during the era of Muscovy’s centralization and expansion.25 In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, monks, rather than princes, founded monasteries; they most often founded these monasteries according to the cenobitic rule; and they founded monasteries in the wilderness, far from human habitation, rather than in or near cities. As with the first Christian monks, who sought solitude in the deserts of Egypt in the fourth century, the impulse of Russian monasticism that began a millennium later sought greater isolation in the northern Russian wilderness (pustynia).26 The central figure in this new movement was Saint Sergius of Radonezh.27 He was born in about 1314, the son of a Rostov boyar, and was named Bartholomew; his family later moved to the village of Radonezh, in the territory of Moscow. After his parents died, Bartholomew and his elder brother ventured into the forest to find an isolated place to pursue the spiritual life. They built a chapel dedicated to the Holy Trinity; Bartholomew was tonsured (i.e., participated in the rite of taking monastic vows), receiving the name Sergius, at the age of twenty-three. Sergius lived in the forest alone for several years after his brother, who could not withstand the hardships of the forest, returned to Moscow. Sergius’ reputation for holiness spread and others joined him, forming the nucleus of a new community for which he became the abbot. His life was characterized by his humility and physical labor, even after he became abbot. After about fifteen years, peasant pioneers began to settle in the surrounding areas, clearing the forest and planting fields, ending the monastery’s period of extreme poverty and isolation. Eventually, with the encouragement of Patriarch Philotheos of Constantinople and the Russian metropolitan, Alexis, Sergius introduced the cenobitic Studite Rule,

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which resulted in the imposition of a stricter regime for the monks, some of whom evidently resisted the change. In the end, however, the Holy Trinity Monastery became an exemplar of spiritual life in a dark age for Russia, which was still under Mongol domination. Although Sergius began by retreating from the world, in the end he exerted a powerful influence over it. Several times, he acted as an emissary from the prince of Moscow to convince other princes to recognize Moscow’s authority and not engage in fratricidal warfare. According to his contemporary biographer, Sergius had a decisive role in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. Prince Dmitrii of Moscow went to the Trinity Monastery to obtain the blessing of Sergius, who encouraged the prince to undertake what would be the first successful attempt by the Russians to resist the Tatars. Though this episode is disputed by modern historians, Sergius’ name became associated with the unification of Rus’ under Moscow and with its emergence from Tatar domination.28 In the words of Pavel Kapterev, writing in the midst of the Russian Revolution, “the moral significance of this event was great: Moscow openly and with glory emerged as the center of the unification of all Rus’, and the name of Saint Sergius, with his exclusive authority that overshadowed this glorious act, became famous through all of Rus’ as the name of ‘protector of the Russian land.’”29 This unique status of Sergius, according to church historian Evgenii Golubinskii, not only made the monastery he founded the “first” monastery of Muscovite Russia but also gave it a wholly distinct status.30 Saint Sergius died on September 25, 1392, and in the century after his death his veneration became universal in the Russian Church. Part of developing the veneration of Saint Sergius and the monastery included constructing a stone church dedicated to the Trinity (1422), the architectural gem of the monastery that houses Saint Sergius’ relics and was decorated by the famed iconographer Andrei Rublev. The monastery was regarded as a sacred center not only within monastic circles and by Church authorities but also by the descendants of Grand Prince Dmitrii Donskoi. According to the historian David Miller, Saint Sergius was regarded as possessing a unique combination of humility and love with an uncompromising moral strength: “In death Sergius became a powerful intercessor whose relics were a symbol of a divine favor, previously lacking in Rus’.” The veneration of Sergius “gave the monastery that housed his relics a moral ascendancy greater than that possessed by any secular court in Rus’. . . . The universality of respect for the monastery was incomparable.”31 Thus princes sought to identify themselves with the monastery, thereby obtaining some of its prestige and an aura of sanctity for themselves. Many donated land to the monastery, which began to emerge as a significant landowner. The grand princes of Moscow began to make regular official pilgrimages to the monastery starting in 1430, and later in the century they began to baptize their

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successors there. In short, during the fifteenth century the veneration of Sergius became a kind of state cult, and the status of his monastery was transformed as a result.32 Sergius’ impact on monasticism was immense. Sergius, his disciples, and his “interlocutors” (sobesedniki) founded numerous monasteries and inspired the formation of many more. Indeed, more monasteries were founded from the mid–fifteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century than in the entire previous period. As the great Russian historian Vasilii Kliuchevskii has argued, the Russian North was settled largely through the influence of the expansion of Russian monasticism. Monks, following Sergius’ example, would set off into the uninhabited forest in search of greater solitude and spiritual feats; others would join them, and a monastic community would be established. The monastery, serving as an outpost of civilization, drew peasants to settle in its vicinity. Once the monastery was no longer isolated, some of the monks would then set out further into the wilderness, to repeat the cycle.33 The majority of these new monasteries were established on the basis of the cenobitic rule, also following Sergius’ example. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, at least, the demands of higher asceticism and obedience required cenobitic monasteries, in contrast to the princely monasteries, which were idiorhythmic (i.e., whose brothers had to purchase their cells and other necessities from their own sources of income). These new monasteries played a crucial role in medieval Russian culture as centers of Christianization as well as artistic and literary culture. And because aristocrats donated land and other resources, these monasteries became economic centers and, in time, great landowners.34 By the end of the fifteenth century, the very success of monasticism that Sergius propelled—both in terms of the growth of monastic brotherhoods and the expansion of their landholdings—resulted in the erosion of monastic discipline that inspired this flowering. In response, two reform movements emerged. One, led by Nil Sorskii, prized above all the path of contemplative, or “mental,” prayer performed in silence by the Hesychast. Nil maintained that cenobitic, landowning monasteries were too involved in the world, which distracted the monk from prayer. He therefore advocated the “skete” form of monasticism, which he termed a “middle way” between the solitary and communal approaches, in which the monks would form a loose community and come together periodically for common worship, but with an emphasis on private prayer. These communities as such should be removed from involvement in the world, and therefore should not own land. In contrast, the other reform movement, led by Iosif (Joseph) Volotskii, emphasized the obedience and liturgical prayer that were part of the cenobitic rule. According to Iosif, the monk fulfilled his calling with his personal poverty. It was legitimate for

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the community to own land, however, for this supported the monks in the spiritual and cultural activities (liturgical worship, book production) and also enabled the monastery to provide charity to the needy. There is contradictory evidence regarding the relationship between Nil and Iosif—some of which portrays them in conflict with one another, some suggesting that they saw their reform efforts as mutually complementary; indeed, both were later canonized by the Church. Their followers came into conflict when the state became involved in the dispute over monastic landholding; the state ultimately sided with the Josephites, or “possessors,” because they proved more supportive of an active alliance between church and state. As a result of this victory, the Josephites came to dominate the Church hierarchy, whereas the “nonpossessors” became more marginalized.35 Despite the reform efforts of both Iosif and Nil, the trends of increased monastic landholding and decreased monastic discipline appear to have continued in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as evidenced by Church councils. Although monastic landholding was significant, more than half the monasteries did not own land, and only seventeen of the most powerful monasteries—led by TrinitySergius—owned more than half the Church’s serf households.36 The state also became involved in trying to restrict monastic landowning. The Law Code of 1649 established the Monastery Chancellery (Prikaz) so that the government could administer monastic estates and restrict their further growth. Although it was abolished a few decades later, it was the state’s first attempt to gain control over monastic estates. These efforts would serve as important precedents in the eighteenth century.

The Eighteenth Century The eighteenth century was a paradoxical age for Russian monasticism, one that evidenced a decline in monastic discipline and included secularizing tendencies and state persecution; but it also contained the seeds of revival. Although there has been only scant research on Russian monasticism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the evidence suggests that, as in Catholic countries, monastic discipline had severely declined. The Church Council of 1667 pointed out a host of abuses and in general depicts monasteries as having grown too wealthy.37 Indeed, although the expansion of monasticism inspired by Saint Sergius of Radonezh had been built upon the cenobitic rule, a tendency reinforced by Iosif Volotskii, it is evident that by the seventeenth century the idiorhythmic rule had come to dominate. The idiorhythmic rule seems to have devolved from a skete rule, except that it no longer applied to a semi-eremitical form of monastic life but to large monasteries; according to this way of life, the monks could keep some personal property and sometimes

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owned their own cells and provided their own meals. Because of their relative independence, strict discipline became difficult to enforce. Despite repeated efforts to tackle this problem, it persisted not only throughout the eighteenth century but even until the Revolution. Because, evidently, the Church Council of 1667 did not succeed in adequately reforming monasticism, this burden was assumed by the state in the eighteenth century. As N. N. Lisovoi argues, eighteenth-century rulers, beginning with Peter the Great, were motivated in part by a real need for monastic reform but also by an outlook that lacked sympathy for the very purpose of monasticism.38 Because Peter’s primary measure of the worth of a person or an institution was its utility or productivity, he regarded monks as parasites who contributed nothing useful to society but, on the contrary, simply diverted significant resources—on their vast landed estates—to their own support. Russian historians debate whether Peter represented a major break with the past or was in continuity with it. With regard to monasticism, his measures were unprecedented in their degree but not in their nature. Seventeenth-century Russian society, often idealized by the Slavophiles, was undergoing profound changes that made Peter’s secularizing efforts possible. Peter attempted to gain greater control over monastic wealth by temporarily reestablishing the Monastery Chancellery in 1701, which he ordered to carry out a complete inventory of monastic estates and determine the number of monastic clergy necessary for administering them and for conducting liturgical services. In a decree of 1701, he stated that “ancient monks were industrious, produced their food with their own hands . . . and fed many poor from their own hands. Today’s monks not only do not feed the poor from their own labors,” but they themselves were dependent on the labor of others. Peter tried to control monastic wealth by decreeing that monks and nuns be given a fixed amount of money and provisions for their support; the rest of the income from the monastic estates was to go to the Monastery Chancellery and be used to feed the poor in almshouses.39 Toward the end of his reign, Peter embarked on a major reform of the Church, including the replacement of the singular rule of the patriarch with a conciliar body called the Holy Synod; the new charter for the Church, the Ecclesiastical Regulation (1722), included specific regulations on monastic life, recruitment, and communities. Peter further sought to reduce the number of monastic clergy by establishing highminimum-age requirements for tonsure of thirty years for men and forty or fifty for women. The “Supplement” to the Ecclesiastical Regulation, in addition to giving general guidelines on monasticism, imposed the cenobitic rule and recommended that smaller monasteries be combined with larger ones, so that none should have fewer than thirty monks. It also sought to eliminate anchoritic monasticism altogether, decreeing that monks “shall not be allowed to build hermitages in the wilderness,” claiming that though anchoritic monasticism may have been appropriate in

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the early Church, “it is impossible for a true hermitage to exist in Russia.”40 This assault on the hermitages was motivated in part by the fear that they were less controlled by the Church hierarchy or even that they supported the Old Believer schismatics. Wealthy monasteries were to be rendered more useful by establishing hospitals or almshouses on their grounds, supported by the monasteries, whereas monks and nuns were not to be idle but engaged in crafts. Wounded or retired soldiers were also frequently sent to monasteries for support. Finally, no new monasteries were to be founded without the permission of the Holy Synod.41 Peter’s restrictive policies were continued by some of his successors. The reign of Empress Anna I (1730–40) was particularly difficult, because the government forbade monasteries from acquiring new land and virtually prohibited the tonsure of new monks. Monastics who had been tonsured in violation of the rules established by Peter I were expelled from the monasteries and drafted into the army or sent to Siberia for forced labor. The number of monastic clergy was drastically reduced (by 40 percent) in the years between 1724 (when there were about 25,000 monks and nuns) and 1738. The Synod even reported to the empress that monasticism was in danger of extinction because only elderly monks—who were already incapable of fulfilling necessary duties—remained, and some monasteries were practically empty. In 1700, there were 1,201 monasteries (965 men’s and 236 women’s) in Russia, and by 1764 there were 138 fewer communities.42 Only the rule of Elizabeth (1741–61) temporarily softened the assault on monasticism. She ceased the investigations of monasteries, members of all estates were permitted to be tonsured in 1761, land that had been taken away from monasteries by her predecessors was returned, and monasteries were freed from having to support invalids and retired soldiers.43 One major focus of the eighteenth-century rulers was to reduce monastic landholding. At the time Peter abolished the Patriarchate, he returned the Monastery Chancellery to the control of the newly formed Holy Synod. Peter III first attempted to secularize Church lands in 1762, but his decree did not take effect before his death.44 Catherine the Great prepared for the secularization more tactfully and carefully, establishing a special commission on ecclesiastical estates consisting of members from the Synod as well as government officials, who worked out the basis for the land reform. Although she was certainly motivated in part by the state’s financial needs, she defended her action on disorders that had broken out on some monastery estates along with the intent to liberate the monasteries from worldly involvements, a problem the Church itself admitted. The reform was in many ways the culmination of centuries of efforts to control monastery landholding. Although there was opposition to the reform—notably from Metropolitan Arsenii (Matseevich) of Rostov, who was harshly punished as a result—many of the bishops evidently trusted the government and preferred to receive a fixed state salary. In 1764, Catherine issued the decree on the secularization of ecclesiastical estates, which

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transferred about 9 million hectares of land and 910,866 “souls” to the state, to be administered by the College of Economy. Catherine’s reform gave some compensation in exchange for the confiscated estates. Monasteries were left with small plots of land, none of which was to have serfs. In return for the church peasants who had served the monasteries, the state allowed a certain number of state peasants to work for the monasteries for terms of twentyfive years (shtatnye sluzhiteli). The state further compensated for the loss of estates by giving a set sum of money to certain monasteries (called shtatnye monasteries); the reform divided these monasteries into classes, each of which was to have a table of organization (shtat) with a specific number of monks or nuns. In addition to the Aleksander-Nevskii Lavra and the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, which were allowed to have 100 monks each, the 272 shtatnye monasteries (190 monasteries for men, and 82 convents for women) consisted of three classes, each with a fixed income, according to their numbers.45 An additional 195 monasteries designated as “unfunded” (zashtatnye) were to support themselves by their own labors (through crafts, because they had little land) and donations. In the Great Russian provinces alone, the income from quitrent (a feudal rent) paid by former monastic peasants brought the government an income of 1.5 million rubles, whereas the government paid only 208,000 rubles for the support of the state-funded monasteries. To minimize the cost of the state allocation to monasteries, Catherine drastically reduced the number of monastic clergy and institutions. The number of monasteries was slashed from 1,052 to 479.46 Similarly, the number of monastic clergy, already severely reduced from the time of Peter the Great, was also halved; in the Great Russian provinces, 11,000 monks and nuns on the eve of secularization shrank to a mere 5,450.47 Although at one level Catherine’s action was drastic, at another level she was no pioneer—rather, Russian rulers had been working in the direction of controlling monastic wealth since at least the seventeenth century, and the secularization of Russian society during the eighteenth century meant not only that there was widespread support for Catherine’s actions, but also that many in fact advocated a virtual elimination of monasticism altogether. Many ancient monasteries were closed, and their churches were transformed into parish churches or simply left to decay.48 For the remainder of the century, the situation was relatively static as the founding of new monasteries was severely restricted and there were few incentives or resources for monasteries to bring in new recruits. Nor was the devastation of Catherine’s assault temporary; sixty years later, in 1825, the numbers were almost exactly the same at 476 monasteries and 5,600 monks and nuns.49 Although the eighteenth century was catastrophic for monasticism in Russia, by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there were signs of monasticism’s renewal. In Russia itself, figures such as Tikhon of Zadonsk and Serafim of Sarov were searching for a renewed monastic life.50 More important still was a kind

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of monasticism in exile that developed outside the bounds of the Russian empire, particularly in Moldavia and on Mount Athos. The pivotal figure here was Paisii Velichkovskii, a Ukrainian who went to Athos to learn ancient contemplative spirituality and to gather early Greek texts on prayer.51 He later became abbot in Moldavia, where he attracted a pan-Orthodox group of Russian, Ukrainian, and Romanian monks, and engaged in translating the texts of the Philokalia, an anthology of Greek and Syriac spiritual writers, into Slavonic.52 Paisii’s translations and his disciples would play a decisive role in the revival of contemplative monasticism in Russia during the nineteenth century. Thus, though the efforts of Russia’s eighteenthcentury rulers proved devastating for monasticism in Russia, perhaps this very repression and reduction in numbers purified monasticism and led to a raising of the spiritual quality of those who remained. There are many parallels between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries in Russia, and in both cases repression served to release the spiritual energies of the Church.53

Monasticism in the Nineteenth Century Despite the devastating effect of Catherine’s reforms, monasticism underwent a remarkable revival in the nineteenth century. From fewer than 450 monasteries at the beginning of the century, the number more than doubled to 1,025 by 1914. Similarly, though we do not have exact information, there were evidently some 5,000 monks and nuns at the beginning of the century; in 1825, a point at which we have more exact information, there were 5,609 tonsured monks and nuns and another 5,471 novices, bringing the total to 11,080. By 1914, those figures had risen sharply, to 29,128 tonsured monks and nuns and 65,111 novices, bringing the total to 95,629—nearly a tenfold increase over the course of the century.54 The number of monasteries increased despite the fact that the process of founding new communities was greatly hampered by official regulations. Until 1881, Imperial permission was required for the establishment of every new monastery, and even after that point—when the number of requests must have been cumbersome for the emperor—new monasteries still had to be confirmed by the Holy Synod in Saint Petersburg, a very long and bureaucratic process. During the course of the nineteenth century, restrictions put in place by Catherine the Great were gradually eased; monasteries were once again allowed to own land, though they had to receive Imperial permission for each donation of land and could not own landed estates. Both men’s and women’s monasteries proliferated throughout the century, although their respective patterns were quite distinctive.55 The number of men’s monasteries increased dramatically in the 1830s and 1840s in particular, and it rose again starting at the end of the 1870s, reaching its peak on

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the eve of World War I. The number of convents, by contrast, increased gradually throughout the century, but it rose most dramatically from the 1880s to 1914. Thus, in the 1830s there were roughly 3.5 monasteries for every convent; by 1914 they were virtually equal in number. From 1825 to 1914, the number of men’s and women’s monasteries increased by an average of 6 per year; starting in 1880, the growth was particularly striking, and new monasteries increased by an average of 12 per year. The total number of men’s monasteries increased one and a half times from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, while the number of convents increased by nearly five times.56

Types of Monasteries In the nineteenth century, there were a variety of types of monasteries. At the apex were the four lavras: Trinity-Sergius, Aleksander-Nevskii, Kievan Caves, and Pochaev. They served as spiritual centers of the Church, having their own publishing houses for religious literature and housing three of the four theological academies (Kiev, Moscow, and Saint Petersburg). Further, there were the stavropegial (stavropigial’nye) monasteries—monasteries that were traditionally under the direct administration of the patriarch, but in the Synodal period were under the Holy Synod or the Moscow Synodal office. The number of stavropegial monasteries—which included Novospasskii, Donskoi, Simonov, New Jerusalem, and Solovetskii—varied in the course of the century, but in 1914 numbered six communities. The remaining monasteries were subordinated to the diocesan bishop and were divided into the state-funded and unfunded monasteries (shtatnye and zashtatnye). There were also more specialized types of monasteries, such as the hermitage (pustyn’), which consisted of a small monastic community or a collection of hermits’ cells, usually in isolated locations. In some cases, they developed into full-scale monasteries, such as the famous hermitages of Optina and Sarov. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were seventy-four men’s and twelve women’s hermitages, which were governed by a strict monastic rule. Moreover, there were smaller monasteries attached (pripisnye) to larger monasteries. These were the sketes (skit, the Russian singular), which were usually smaller communities of monks seeking greater solitude and a stricter monastic life who came from the larger monastery to which the skete was attached. At the beginning of the twentieth century there were sixty-eight sketes (fifty-five men’s and thirteen women’s). Another form of monastic community was the coenobium (kinoviia), which was founded on the basis of a strict cenobitic rule. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were four coenobia in the Russian Empire.57 One final and very important form of monastic community was the women’s religious community (zhenskaia obshchina), unofficial or semiofficial religious

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communities that proliferated because convents were difficult to establish. Two hundred and seventeen such communities were established between 1764 and 1907, and they were usually formed on the basis of a cenobitic rule, were self-sufficient, and directed their activities to social and charitable work.58 Finally, in addition to conventional monasteries, some monasteries were founded to fulfill specific purposes. Thus missionary monasteries existed in the dioceses of Kazan and Tomsk, or regions such as the Altai. In some cases, monasteries also fulfilled additional functions, such as the incarceration of individuals under public penance.59 In nineteenth-century Russia, the distinction between cenobitic (obshchezhitel’nyi) and idiorhythmic (neobshchezhitel’nyi, or osobnozhitel’nyi) monasteries persisted. In the cenobitic monasteries, the monks could not own personal property of any kind, and they received the necessities from the monastery, such as their cell, clothing, shoes, and food. Moreover, all the income from their labors— handicrafts, icons, and the like—went to the collective income of the monastery. The brothers in cenobitic monasteries, in principle, chose the abbot from among themselves. Finally, they were generally distinguished by a stricter monastic life. In idiorhythmic monasteries, by contrast, monks usually received their cells and sometimes had a collective refectory, but they had to provide all other necessities for themselves. Although some of the monastery’s income went to general monastery needs, income from donations and from the state were divided among the monks, who received individual stipends according to their position in the monastery (the abbot and others in governing positions received the most, then ordained priests and deacons, then ordinary monks). Also, income from the monks’ own labors (e.g., handicrafts) was considered personal income. They could own personal property and maintain cash, though after their deaths their property went to the monastery. As a general rule, the state-funded monasteries were idiorhythmic, whereas unfunded monasteries tended to be cenobitic.60 In actual practice, however, most monasteries tended to have their own local peculiarities, with a mixture of the two types of monastic rule. This variety of rules and relative independence of each monastery in establishing its own rule gave rise to the Russian proverb “Don’t bring your monastery rule to another monastery.” Many church leaders in the nineteenth century, beginning with Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov, 1782–1867) of Moscow, came to believe that the cenobitic rule was truer to the spirit of obedience and poverty that monastic vows demanded. Despite Filaret’s own attempts to transform monasteries in the Moscow Diocese to the cenobitic rule, and despite Synodal proposals to introduce the cenobitic rule in all monasteries, most of the older, established monasteries remained idiorhythmic. The majority of new monasteries, however, were founded on the cenobitic rule. In 1914, some two-thirds of the monasteries in the empire were cenobitic, the majority of which were convents for women.61

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Monastery Administration Monasteries and convents in Russia were subject to the authority of the diocesan bishops, with the exception of the stavropegial monasteries and the four lavras. In principle, the patriarch was the abbot of the lavras and the stavropegial monasteries; during the Synodal period (1721–1917), this meant that the local hierarchs acted as bishops of the lavras (the metropolitan of Kiev, for example, was the abbot of the Kievan Caves Lavra). The Holy Synod, particularly through its Moscow office, administered the stavropegial monasteries. Otherwise, the local bishop supervised monasteries, with the assistance of particular abbots who served as superintendents (blagochinnye) to oversee a group of monasteries.62 The abbot (nastoiatel’) of firstand second-class state-funded monasteries bore the title of archimandrite (arkhimandrit); the abbot of third-class monasteries was a hegumen (igumen, Greek hegoumenos).63 The abbots of some, particularly the unfunded, monasteries bore the title of stroitel’ and retained the status of a hieromonk (ieromonakh), which was the title given to any monk ordained to the priesthood. A monk ordained to the diaconate was called a hierodeacon (ierodiakon). As a rule, hieromonks and hierodeacons received certain privileges (e.g., higher stipends in state-funded monasteries) but were not necessarily part of the monastery hierarchy. Unlike in Western monasticism, however, the majority of monks were not ordained to holy orders. In the case of convents, the abbess bore the title igumen’ia.64 According to a Synodal decree of 1723, the Holy Synod chose the abbots of first- and second-class monasteries, whereas the diocesan bishop appointed the hegumens and stroiteli for thirdclass and unfunded monasteries.65 Abbots in the more prominent state-funded monasteries frequently came from the ranks of the “learned monks.” These learned monks, unique to Imperial Russia, constituted the majority of the episcopate and dominated important posts in the Church, such as rectorships and professorships at theological academies and seminaries. They tended to follow a similar career pattern, which involved taking monastic vows while studying at one of the elite theological academies without the otherwise required period of the novitiate; they were also frequently tonsured before reaching the age of thirty and immediately ordained to the priesthood. Typically, they went on to become professor, then rector, at a theological school or seminary, and simultaneously abbot of a monastery, with the title of archimandrite. They received significant income and enjoyed relative freedom with their personal property.66 Their service as abbot was nominal (most of their energy being devoted to their seminary or academy duties), and rarely, if at all, did they even visit the monasteries to which they were appointed as abbots. The next step was elevation to the episcopate, followed by frequent “promotions” from one diocese to another. Thus many “learned monks” were only nominally monks, very few

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having actually lived in a monastery or undergone the novitiate before monastic tonsure.67 As yet, historians have not assembled or analyzed the most basic data on the social profile of abbots in Imperial Russia. Data on ninety abbots for the period 1859–62 yield the following picture.68 The average age was about fifty-five years, but ranged from thirty-five to eighty. Of the forty-four abbots of state-supported monasteries, the majority (thirty-one) came from the clerical estate; twelve of them were “learned monks” with a theological academy education, whereas almost all the others had at least a seminary education. By contrast, in the forty-six unfunded monasteries, fewer than half (twenty-two abbots) were from the clerical estate; although most of these were seminary-trained, only one had an academy education. Moreover, of the fifty-three abbots from both types of monasteries who were from the clerical estate, sixteen were widowed priests or deacons. Of the thirty-seven others not from the clerical estate, six were nobles, eight were merchants, eleven were petty townsmen (including one artisan), five were peasants, two were military (one retired officer and one officer’s son), one was a state official, and a few had other backgrounds. Perhaps the most striking statistic is the average term of service for all these abbots: only 5.5 years in their current post. Although some served longer (two for twenty-five years or more, and another seven for between ten and twenty-four years in their present monastery), the vast majority had been in their posts for less than ten years. Even those who were not “learned monks” transferred frequently, serving relatively short terms (as abbot, treasurer, or in a lesser post) before their current appointment.69 This high rate of movement was true of both state-supported and unfunded monasteries. Only ten abbots were in monasteries where they had spent their entire monastic careers.70 The learned monks thus constituted a minority of abbots, but a significant minority in state-supported monasteries. Moreover, they tended to be the abbots of the largest, most prominent monasteries. This fact is particularly striking for the stavropegial monasteries; of the six abbots of stavropegial monasteries in 1862, all were from the clerical estate and four (including one bishop) were academy trained. Moreover, their average term of service was only five years.71 Hence service as abbot in a prominent monastery was only a stepping-stone in an ecclesiastical career, not an end in itself. The system of learned monks as abbots was hardly likely to benefit the monasteries—because such abbots had little monastic experience and little interest in the monasteries themselves. The frequent transfer of all those who ended up as abbots, however, no doubt had both benefits and drawbacks; it enabled bishops to find the most suitable candidates for particular positions and could bring in fresh ideas and energy, but at the same time outsiders might have little understanding of the needs or problems of the community to which they were appointed.

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Although the brothers in cenobitic monasteries theoretically were supposed to choose their abbot from their own midst, the profile given just above shows that very few abbots actually came from the monastery they administered. In 1861, Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow proposed that the Holy Synod issue rules for choosing abbots in cenobitic monasteries. He noted that abbots of cenobitic monasteries frequently came from a different community and, because the monastic rule in each community was unique, could not “know the particular decrees and rules of that monastery, or are in general unfamiliar with the organization of cenobitic monasteries, or even have no experience in monastic life, having just been tonsured from the white clergy [i.e., the married parish clergy, so called because they wore white robes under their vestments, in contrast to the monastic “black clergy,” who wore black robes]. With difficulty do such [abbots] become a part of the local brotherhood with respect to the love and unanimity of the brotherhood; they do not always faithfully uphold the local order (which is unfamiliar to them), and sometimes do not refrain from innovations that disturb the brothers.”72 Following Filaret’s proposal, the Synod issued a decree directing that the abbot of a cenobitic monastery be selected primarily from the brotherhood of that monastery, and that he be chosen by the brothers themselves. Only in extraordinary cases should he come from a different monastery, and in such cases the monastery should also be cenobitic and located within the same diocese—though no research has been conducted to know whether this effort was successful.73

Economy and Landownership Not only was there an increase in the number of monastic institutions and recruits during the nineteenth century, but there was also a growth in monastic wealth and landowning—which became the central focus for controversy and vociferous attacks against monasticism. In 1797, Paul I granted 30 hectares of land for every monastery—so that, in effect, the state itself began to undo the secularization of 1764. In 1805, Alexander I decreed that monasteries could receive donations of land, and in 1810 he permitted them to purchase land (with, however, the emperor’s permission in each case). Nicholas I, in 1838, granted all monasteries between 50 and 150 hectares of woodland, but some monasteries received far more (e.g., TrinitySergius, which received more than 1,350 hectares), for a total of 27,000 hectares. In the second half of the nineteenth century, monasteries acquired land primarily through private donations or their own purchases. By 1890, total monastic landholdings amounted to 530,000 hectares.74 By 1905, monastic landholdings in European Russia amounted to 800,000 hectares (less than half the Church’s total landholdings of 2 million hectares). Although this represented a 35 percent growth

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since 1890, it was still a tiny fraction of land in comparison with the 86 million hectares owned by the aristocracy and the 135 million hectares controlled by the peasantry. Although monasteries sometimes purchased land (as a rule, however, they preferred to purchase urban land, which brought in greater income), they received most land as donations from the aristocracy, merchants, or even peasants. In the postreform era, the aristocracy frequently donated land that the peasants had previously worked and therefore considered their own—which became a source of conflict between monasteries and local peasants.75 About 90 percent of monastery land was in European Russia; of this land, 45.6 percent was forest, 27.6 percent was arable, and 17.3 percent was meadow. Income depended upon the type of land; the northern monasteries, especially Solovetskii, owned primarily forest, which brought in the least income, partly because they did not receive the right to sell forest products and could use the woodland only for their own needs (for construction or firewood). Arable lands and meadows were rented out, worked by hired laborers, or worked by the monastics themselves; by early 1917, monasteries rented out 300,000 hectares of arable lands and meadowlands. State subsidies were of little significance. For example, in 1864 the Treasury gave monasteries 303,089 rubles (only 5.6 percent of the Synod’s budget); and although the Synod periodically increased this sum, it was a shrinking percentage of the Synod’s budget. Pavel Zyrianov thus concludes that the development of monasticism in the nineteenth century depended very little on the state’s money. By 1910, the state subsidies had actually decreased to a mere 1.1 percent of the Synod’s budget (less than 400,000 rubles).76 Far more important than land or state subsidies, especially for the most revered monasteries, was the income from donations and from pilgrims. From these sources, monasteries gradually recovered after the early nineteenth century. Despite all the polemic about monastic wealth, only some monasteries were very wealthy—the majority had modest means. Monasteries that lacked revered relics or icons, or sufficient land, were relatively poor; convents, in particular, either had to dispatch nuns with collection books throughout their dioceses to gain enough income or subsist on their own handicrafts. Thus Zyrianov concluded that, despite all the fantasies about monastic wealth, monastic poverty “leaves a greater impression.”77

The Trinity-Sergius Lavra from the Fifteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries In the fifteenth century, the Trinity-Sergius Monastery spearheaded the massive expansion of monasticism; in subsequent periods, although it remained the premier monastery in Muscovy, it reflected as much as led broader trends. The growth of monastic wealth and landholding, the growing political involvement of the mon-

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astery, and the changing social composition of the monastic brotherhood (a greater “aristocratization”) all led to a relaxation of discipline and the cenobitic rule by the sixteenth century. The development of monastic landholding and the consequent intense involvement of monasteries in worldly activities also had a direct impact on monastic discipline. As the strict observance of the cenobitic rule began to break down, distinctions emerged within the Trinity-Sergius brotherhood, so that wealthy individuals who joined the monastery retained control over their personal wealth in their lifetime and received preferential treatment.78 Trinity-Sergius also emerged as the official abbey of Muscovy.79 Although Trinity-Sergius had long been regarded as the leading monastery, this status was made official in 1561, when the abbot, previously called a hegumen, was elevated to the status of an archimandrite and ranked as the first among all archimandrites.80 The monastery—which consisted of some 300 monks at the beginning of the sixteenth century and 700 by its end81—was built up during this period and the territory itself was expanded, including the great fortress walls and the monumental Dormition Cathedral (Uspenskii Sobor), begun by Ivan the Terrible and completed in 1585.82 By the mid–sixteenth century, the monastery owned about 200 villages in forty districts, far more than any other monastery. Trinity-Sergius played an important economic and sociopolitical role in the process of the centralization of Muscovy because of the extent of its landholdings and its proximity to Moscow.83 This geographical diversity of the monastery’s landholdings, together with the universal acceptance of the cult (or veneration) of Saint Sergius, ensured that the monastery became a both a spiritual and a national symbol with universal significance that could be identified throughout Muscovy. The monastery’s role in events of the seventeenth century further secured its position as a national shrine in both spiritual and national terms. During the Time of Troubles (1598–1613), centralized Muscovite rule collapsed after the deaths of Ivan the Terrible (1584) and his son Fedor (1598), who left no heir. In October 1608, when Polish troops were marching toward Moscow, they attempted to sack the monastery, to avail themselves of its riches and desecrate Russia’s most sacred place; though it did not fall, Trinity-Sergius remained under siege for fifteen months, until January 1610. After its liberation, its abbot, Archimandrite Dionisii, helped rally the forces that would free Moscow and reestablish Russian rule, and he also used the monastery’s resources to assist those who had suffered during the war. As a result of the monastery’s pivotal role in the defense of Muscovy, its popular veneration increased all the more.84 Paul of Aleppo, who visited the monastery from Antioch in the mid– seventeenth century, heard even in his own land the saying that “for everyone who has performed the pilgrimage hither, his sins are forgiven.”85 He also noted that the monastery’s churches were more splendorous than those of the Kremlin itself, while its fortress walls surpassed even those of the city of Antioch.

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Despite Trinity-Sergius’ preeminence, it suffered dramatically from secularization. In the first half of the eighteenth century, it was an enormously powerful and wealthy monastery. In 1744, it received the status of lavra, or highest class of monastery.86 It owned more than 200,000 hectares of land and more than 100,000 male serfs in forty-three districts (about one-ninth of all ecclesiastical peasants), and it exercised jurisdiction over a large number of monasteries.87 Much like the wealthy Catholic monasteries of the age, Trinity-Sergius’ authorities imitated the court aristocracy and its luxury, including the construction of a summer palace at Korbukha, 3 kilometers from the Lavra, which had French-style gardens and parks.88 As a result of secularization, Trinity-Sergius lost its jurisdiction over virtually all other monasteries and also lost its land and peasants. The only land left to the Lavra was its summer palace at Korbukha, a plot on the Ershov Pond, and the land immediately around the monastery—all of which would play very important roles in the subsequent period.89 The settlements that surrounded the Lavra passed under the control of the state treasury, and its inhabitants (numbering 3,300 males) became state peasants, including 564 people who served as its lay servants (shtatnye sluzhiteli), working in its workshops and paid by the monastery (a number that subsequently dropped substantially). In the wake of Catherine’s provincial reform of 1775 and the formation of the Moscow Province in 1782, the settlements around the Lavra received the status of a town (gorod), with the name Sergievskii Posad (later shortened to Sergiev Posad). With the formation of the Posad, the state peasants were assigned to various estates (sosloviia), so the majority of the town’s inhabitants became city dwellers, except for the Lavra’s servants, who retained the status of peasants. From the end of the eighteenth century until 1917, the town’s economy centered both on crafts (in particular, toys), which were sold to the pilgrims who came to the Lavra, and also on providing food and lodging services for these pilgrims.90 Secularization deprived Trinity-Sergius of its landed estates and serfs, forcing it to completely transform its economic base. Although it received donations, before 1764 the income from its estates was by far the most important source of revenues. Catherine’s reform therefore fundamentally deprived the monastery of its primary source of income. After secularization, however, it did retain a privileged status compared with other monasteries; according to its rank, it received about 10,000 rubles a year from the state (about five times that of first-class monasteries). The state also allotted Trinity-Sergius 100 state peasants (shtatnye sluzhiteli), and 30 hectares of good land not further than 20 kilometers from the monastery (three times more than ordinary monasteries). The state subsidies were divided among stipends for the monks, salaries for the state peasants, sums for church needs and construction, and funds to purchase provisions for guests. Moreover, the decree of 1764 designated part of the income from ecclesiastical estates for philanthropic

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work. The state periodically augmented the monastery’s budget, which was vitiated by inflation, reaching 20,000 rubles by the 1830s and remaining stable thereafter.91 From secularization to the end of the century, the Lavra derived a substantial proportion of its total income from state subsidies, but it also gradually developed revenue from other sources. It continued to obtain land (380 hectares by 1776); this land consisted of forest, gardens, and meadows, which provided for some of the monastery’s needs but little income. In the center of Sergiev Posad (immediately surrounding the monastery), the Lavra also owned property that it rented to shopkeepers for a small but growing income; revenues from properties in Moscow and Saint Petersburg (owned by the Lavra’s compounds, or podvor’ia, in the two capitals) yielded more significant income.92 The other principal source of revenue derived from contributions, donations to fund memorial services for those buried in the Lavra, and profits from the sale of candles, prosphora (small loaves of blessed bread purchased by pilgrims93), religious literature, and the like. Income from these sources steadily increased throughout the eighteenth century and was roughly equal to state subsidies.94 Expenditures also increased, but they remained significantly less than income, so the monastery had an annual surplus that steadily accumulated.95 In the 1790s, the Lavra began to invest this capital in savings accounts and bonds, which in turn provided a modest yield in annual interest. Moreover, the Lavra increasingly received many donations from wealthy laity in the form of bonds, which similarly accrued annual interest.96 In short, the secularization of 1764, in depriving Trinity-Sergius of its estates and principal income, forced it to seek new means for its support. Although it did begin to accumulate landed property again, the income from the land remained minimal. The state subsidy was very important, but there was a gradual shift to other sources as well. In the early nineteenth century, the income from the monastery’s own sources began to outstrip the state subsides.97 Of the numerous monasteries that were attached to and administered by Trinity-Sergius before 1764, only one remained after secularization—the StefanoMakhrishchskii Monastery (frequently referred to simply as “Makhra” in the documents). This monastery had been founded in the mid–fourteenth century by Saint Stefan Makhrishchskii, a contemporary of Saint Sergius of Radonezh. It had a much more checkered history than Trinity-Sergius; though it flowered under Saint Stefan and his successors, it was destroyed, built up, and destroyed again over the centuries. After the Time of Troubles, it was placed under the jurisdiction of Trinity-Sergius, but it remained a very poor monastery even into the early twentieth century—and for this reason, it serves as an important contrast to Trinity-Sergius itself.98 The abbot (archimandrite) of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery served as a member of the Holy Synod from the Synod’s inception in 1721. Membership in the Synod required extended residence in Saint Petersburg, thereby leaving the monastery

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without its head. To deal with this problem, a government decree of 1738 established a conciliar administration, comprising twelve elder monks and the abbot, to govern the monastery and its estates. It also created the post of the namestnik (hereafter translated as “prior”), who was to administer the monastery in place of an absent abbot.99 For most of the eighteenth century, the post of abbot served as a steppingstone in an ecclesiastical career. Between 1700 and 1766, only one of Trinity-Sergius’ fourteen abbots was in office for more than a decade. These abbots were typical “learned monks” (see above), and many subsequently became bishops.100 The position of prior also served as a temporary position in an ecclesiastical career; in the century after the establishment of the post in 1739, the Lavra had twenty-four different priors, serving an average three and a half years each, and they were typical learned monks, many of whom also became bishops.101 After 1764, the administration of the Lavra assumed the shape it would have until its closure in 1919–20.102 It was governed nominally by the abbot, together with the “Governing Council” (Uchrezhdennyi Sobor).103 The council included the prior, who administered the daily affairs of the monastery. Second in command was the treasurer (kaznachei), who managed the Lavra’s treasury and administered its capital. After the treasurer came the sacristan (riznichii), who guarded the valuables of the Lavra’s immense sacristy with its priceless utensils, icons, and vestments. The fourth post was the steward (ekonom), who managed the Lavra’s extensive economy (khoziaistvo), such as its workshops. The final post was that of the spiritual supervisor (blagochinnyi), who acted as the “eyes” of the abbot or the prior, made regular visits to the brothers’ cells, ensured that the monks attended church services, and generally supervised their behavior. The administrative council also included senior monks (sobornye startsy), who participated in the meetings and decisions of the council.104

Platon (Levshin), Trinity-Sergius’ Archimandrite, 1766–1812 From the late eighteenth century, the metropolitan of Moscow served as abbot of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. This tradition began with Platon (Levshin, 1737–1812), who became the archimandrite of Trinity-Sergius in 1766 and retained that title even after becoming archbishop of Tver in 1770 and archbishop of Moscow in 1775 (with elevation to metropolitan in 1787). Platon remained archimandrite of the Lavra until his death in 1812. He himself had been prior of the Lavra in 1763 before advancing to his illustrious career in the hierarchy. He had been tonsured a monk while studying at the Moscow Theological Academy at the age of twenty-one, and within a few years he was ordained to the priesthood and teaching theology at the seminary located at Trinity-Sergius; shortly after becoming prior, he moved to Saint Petersburg to serve as the tutor to Catherine the Great’s son and successor Paul.

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figure 1.1. Bethany Monastery Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission.

Being made archimandrite of Trinity-Sergius (and a member of the Holy Synod), he was at the monastery only a year before he returned to Saint Petersburg, where he was essentially the court preacher.105 Platon grew dissatisfied with his career when, after becoming archbishop of Moscow, he fell out of favor with Catherine and was caught up in court and Church intrigues. Seeking a place of refuge, he began what would be his most lasting contribution to Trinity-Sergius: the foundation of a new monastery nearby and subordinate to Trinity-Sergius, the Bethany Monastery (Spaso-Vifanskii monastyr’) in 1783.106 Platon selected a picturesque location several kilometers from the Lavra on the Konchura River, close to the large Ershov (later Bethany) Pond (figure 1.1). He later wrote in his autobiographical sketch (in which he speaks of himself in the third person) that, “having always been a lover of solitude, he decided to build up this place that pleased him so that, having still to continue administering the diocese and approaching old age, he could give up [the administration of the diocese] and withdraw to this hermitage and there end his last days.”107 Bethany was, therefore, intended as a retreat for him away from the burdens of administration. Although Platon spoke of his desire for solitude, this did not have the same significance for him that it would sixty years later for his pupil Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov). Platon had never lived as a monk; he loved solitude because it granted him the

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opportunity for intellectual pursuits, not for asceticism and contemplative prayer. As his trials and frustrations increased during his later career, however, he longed more and more for a romanticized notion of monastic withdrawal, which he sought particularly at Bethany.108 The Bethany Monastery was initially founded not as a separate, full-fledged monastic community but as a cemetery division of the Lavra.109 The name of the monastery was associated with Bethany of Judea, where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead; the monks who would be buried in the cemetery similarly hoped for their own resurrection. The main construction of the monastery was completed between 1783 and 1786. It was surrounded by fortress walls, and included a two-story bell tower, cells for the brothers, horse stables, a small pond, planned gardens, and the cemetery; Platon also had a special home built for himself. The Church of the Transfiguration, which was consecrated in 1786, had a highly unusual interior; in place of a traditional iconostasis (the screen separating the nave filled with worshippers from the altar), the altar area was meant to replicate Mount Tabor, the location of Christ’s transfiguration. Two sets of stairs ascended to the altar, and the iconostasis itself was rounded. At the base of the stairs, Platon placed Saint Sergius’ original wooden coffin (Sergius’ relics had been transferred to a new, silver tomb in 1585 and remained in Trinity Cathedral), which he had transferred from the Lavra in 1786.110 Near the monastery, he had a home built for elderly poor (bogadelennyi dom). Platon oversaw and directed the construction of the entire architectural ensemble, which was noted for its beauty and harmony; he also donated significant sums of money for the building and support of the monastery.111 In 1792, Platon retired from actively administering the Moscow Diocese, but he remained the abbot of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. In the winter he lived in the Lavra, and he spent the summer at Bethany. Emperor Paul I visited the Lavra after his coronation, and on April 23, 1797, he visited Bethany. He liked the new monastery, and on May 1, 1797, he issued a decree that raised the community to the status of a fullfledged second-class monastery and granted it 580 hectares of land; the monastery also had a mill on the Ershov Pond, which it rented out.112 Paul’s decree confirmed that Bethany was under the jurisdiction of the Lavra and, further, that the prior of the Lavra would always be the abbot of Bethany. Finally, the decree also ordered that a seminary be founded at the monastery for 100 students, supported by the state Treasury.113 Platon evidently had no intention of building a seminary at Bethany and did not see a particular need for it, because there was already a seminary at the Lavra, but the emperor insisted upon it. Platon also oversaw the construction and operation of the seminary (which opened in 1800), and he attempted to ensure that it provided a high level of education. Platon remained the abbot of the Bethany Monastery and overseer of the seminary until his death in 1812, and his body was placed in the Church of the Transfiguration, next to the wooden coffin of Saint

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Sergius.114 Because of the beauty of the location and the monastery itself, as well as the great reverence for Metropolitan Platon, pilgrims to Trinity-Sergius also customarily visited Bethany in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the community remained a small, but elite, state-funded monastery.115 Toward the end of his life, Platon became more involved in building and renovation projects, both at Trinity-Sergius and at the Makhrishchskii Monastery. His last official act was to give a report to the Holy Synod after Napoleon’s invasion, in which he credited Divine Providence and the intercession of Saint Sergius “with saving the Lavra from the enemy who, according to all human calculations, should have taken it with little effort.”116 Indeed, the authorities were so afraid that the French were going to attack the monastery that the governor of Moscow, Rastopchin, gave a secret order for the treasures of its sacristy to be removed to Vologda on September 2, 1812, and for the first time in its history these valuables were taken away from the monastery. Although it is unclear why Napoleon did not attack Trinity-Sergius, the fact that he did not gave rise to legends and speculations invoking divine intervention.117 Indeed, the rise of Russian nationhood after 1812 was intimately connected with the rise of the Russian Orthodoxy. Two years later, the Moscow Theological Academy relocated to Trinity-Sergius, reinforcing its role as one of the leading centers of religious culture in nineteenth-century Russia. The academy was one of the Church’s most important intellectual centers; yet despite sharing the same grounds with the monastery, the two did not interact much. The academy is an extremely important topic that deserves its own study, but will not be considered here. Catherine the Great’s secularization of monastic lands can be compared with similar efforts in Western Europe. In the Austrian monarchy, Maria Theresa began reforms virtually at the same time as Catherine, although these were much less ambitious. In the 1780s, Joseph II embarked upon a more ambitious reform. In particular, he suppressed the contemplative orders, which he regarded as “useless,” and more than a third of the monasteries were closed. The proceeds from property of the closed monasteries went to a fund that supported the parish clergy and other ministries of the Church—a very significant difference from Catherine’s measures, which benefited the state and not the Church. In contrast, a far more radical approach was taken by France during its Revolution, which found monastic vows to be contrary to its proclaimed liberty and the rights of man and refused to recognize them. Moreover, it suppressed all monasteries and appropriated all their property, allowing many buildings to be pillaged and destroyed, and subjecting many intransigent monastic clergy to the guillotine. This solution was enforced not only in France but also in virtually all the territories conquered by the French armies, including much of Germany and even Italy

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itself.118 Therefore, if the Austrian approach was one that favored the Church more than Catherine’s by closing fewer monasteries (less, rather than more, than half), and retaining the wealth for the disposal of the Church, the French solution was far more radical—indeed, it resembled the approach the Bolsheviks would take after 1917. In any event, the effect of Catherine’s reforms on Russian monasticism was mixed; certainly, the suppression of so many monasteries was unnecessary, and the system of state funding for monasteries, with what amounted to salaries for individual monks, only deepened the problems of the idiorhythmic houses. At the same time, the spiritual revival of Russian monasticism as well as the popular support and veneration for the monasteries would have been virtually inconceivable if the monasteries had remained feudal landlords into the nineteenth century, and it is entirely likely that some elites would have advocated more radical solutions than Catherine in subsequent years.

2 Trinity-Sergius: The Heart of Russia In 1852, a young peasant named Trofim Tsymbal, who had dreamed of becoming a monk since childhood, joined the Holy Mountain Monastery in the Kharkov region of Ukraine. He showed promise as a monk and had a good voice, and in due time he took monastic vows, received the name Toviia (Tobias), and was ordained a deacon. One year, the monastery was visited by a novice who regaled Toviia with stories of other monasteries—Sarov, Optina, and above all the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Trinity-Sergius, the novice told him from his own experience, had the most beautiful liturgical services of all. The monastery was so grand and so important that it was frequently visited by the most prominent people in society—including members of the Imperial family itself. These stories left a deep impression on the young Hierodeacon Toviia, he later wrote in his memoirs, but to him it was nothing more than a distant dream, because he was a humble monk who thought of going no further than his local monastery.1 A few years passed, however, and Toviia’s life at the Monastery of the Holy Mountain took a turn for the worse because the abbot of the monastery took a disliking to him and made him feel unwanted. After services one day, an aristocratic woman approached Toviia and complemented his singing abilities and made an unexpected proposal—that Toviia should transfer to Trinity-Sergius, “our” Lavra. There, the lady assured him, he would be valued. The following day, a relative of the woman came to Toviia’s cell and explained to him that the woman was a regular pilgrim to Trinity-Sergius; that she was well acquainted both with the abbot of the monastery, Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow, and its prior, Archimandrite Antonii; and that, in fact, the latter was her spiritual father-confessor, and she visited him and spoke with him regularly, 33

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consulting him on all major decisions in her life. The relative also assured Toviia that if this lady were to suggest to Archimandrite Antonii that Toviia should be received at Trinity-Sergius, most certainly Antonii would listen.2 In 1862, after the woman’s intervention, Toviia did transfer to Trinity-Sergius, and there he was indeed valued. Archimandrite Antonii eventually made him archdeacon—the senior deacon of the monastery, who regularly serves together with the prior himself or in hierarchical services with the metropolitan or other visiting bishops. The archdeacon has a very special role in a monastery as one of the most visible—and audible—clergy, usually chosen for his deep and booming bass voices that are unmistakable in Russian Orthodox liturgies. Toviia would serve in this capacity for twenty-five years, first under Antonii and then under his successor, Archimandrite Leonid. Finally, at the age of fifty-two, when Toviia began to lose his voice, he was ordained to the priesthood and quickly promoted through the hierarchy of the monastery to become treasurer, the second in command after the prior. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed prior of the Chudov Monastery, located in the heart of the Kremlin itself. Then, in 1904, Toviia would return to his beloved Trinity-Sergius after his appointment there as prior. As Toviia’s story illustrates, Trinity-Sergius’ fame and magnificence attracted both capable monks and committed laity, which was part of the key to its success. Trofim’s story would have been far less possible only half a century earlier because of the dire circumstances of monasticism. One particularly profound impact that the secularization reform had on Russian monasteries was to induce a sense of conservatism that was rooted in insecurity from the loss of their financial base. As a result, monastery leadership felt unable to encourage the recruitment of new monks beyond the number stipulated by the state and provided for by the subsidies as defined by Catherine the Great’s reform; indeed, there was every incentive to keep the numbers down because the state subsidy remained the same either way. Monastery authorities felt unable to promote the establishment of new monastic communities, because of both the lack of resources and the bureaucratic difficulties. And they felt discouraged from promoting the active engagement of their monasteries in social work and philanthropy, again because of the lack of resources and because of the perception, fostered since the time of Peter the Great, that the Church’s concerns were “otherworldly.” All the aspects of this conservatism could be seen at Trinity-Sergius in the early nineteenth century—half a century after secularization—as elsewhere. Indeed, the monastery’s resources remained small, with an income of about 30,000 rubles, of which half came from the state subsidies. The monastery maintained the brotherhood at the state-dictated level of 100 monks, and it operated two modest almshouses that served a total of 50 people. Trinity-Sergius was still the first monastery of Russia, but its glory rested on its past, not its present.

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A century later, a revolutionary transformation had taken place. The brotherhood of the monastery had quadrupled. Four new monastic communities had been formed under its auspices, each with its own rapidly growing brotherhood. The income of the monastery rose to a remarkable 460,000 rubles and had grown completely independent of state subsidies. Pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius skyrocketed to half a million pilgrims a year. The monastery’s array of philanthropic institutions and activities had dramatically expanded to include feeding hundreds or thousands of ordinary pilgrims two meals a day every day of the year, as well as hostels, schools, orphanages, almshouses, and hospitals. What happened at Trinity-Sergius that brought about such momentous changes? Where did these resources come from? Who took the initiative to establish new monastic communities and new charitable institutions? Aspects of the answer can be gleamed from Toviia’s story: the beautification of the monastery’s liturgical services, which drew pilgrims; the relationship the monastery cultivated with influential and supportive laity; the draw of promising new recruits; and a leadership that knew how to manage the different aspects of the monastery’s life and promote promising young monks who would become the next generation of leaders.

The Recovery of Trinity-Sergius, 1822–77: Metropolitan Filaret and Archimandrite Antonii Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov, 1782–1867; see figure 2.1), like his mentor Metropolitan Platon, was intimately involved in the life of Trinity-Sergius and had a major impact on the monastery.3 Also like Platon, early signs of Filaret’s brilliance and ability led to his rapid rise in the Church, and he became by far the most influential hierarch of nineteenth-century Russia. He had been born in 1782 as Vasilii Drozdov into a clerical family in Kolomna, and he first came to Trinity-Sergius to study at the seminary in 1799, at which point he came to Platon’s attention. After graduating, he stayed as a teacher at the seminary. He was tonsured a monk in 1808 and shortly after was promoted to inspector of the Saint Petersburg Seminary. In Saint Petersburg, Filaret made powerful connections with leading figures in the Church and the state and even Tsar Alexander I himself. After he was consecrated auxiliary bishop in 1817 at the young age of thirty-six years, he was quickly transferred to Tver, Iaroslavl, and then Moscow in 1821, at which point he became Archimandrite of Trinity-Sergius as well. Although at times working closely with the state (he was the author of the Emancipation Proclamation for the serfs), he also came to oppose the growing encroachments of the state bureaucracy, particularly by the lay chief procurator of the Holy Synod, on the life of the Church.4 As a young man, he was influenced by the general atmosphere of pietism and mysticism at the Petersburg

figure 2.1. Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) Source: Filaret (Drozdov), Pis’ma Mitropolita Moskovskogo Filareta k namestniku sviatotroitskiia Sergievy lavry arkhimandritu Antoniiu, 1831–1867 gg. (Moscow, 1877–84), vol. 1, frontispiece.

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court, particularly the emphasis on Scripture and the “return to the sources” that challenged the dominance of scholastic theology, and under those influences he became involved in the project to translate the Bible into contemporary Russian. In time, however, this “return to the sources” and attraction to mysticism led Filaret to a rediscovery of the early Church Fathers and Orthodox traditions of contemplative prayer, which had been mostly forgotten in Russia during the eighteenth century.5 He saw his life’s work as a reawakening of Orthodoxy, to revitalize the Church intellectually in the face of Western influences and the various currents of Scholasticism, Pietism, Deism, and Freemasonry that were current in Russia in the early nineteenth century. Filaret became intimately involved in the administration of Trinity-Sergius and in its decisionmaking processes. Perhaps the most significant change was in the administration itself and in his relationship with the prior, who ran the daily affairs of the monastery. When Filaret became archbishop in 1821, Archimandrite Afanasii (Fedorov, namestnik 1818–31) was prior. A priest’s son, Afanasii had joined TrinitySergius at the age of thirty. He was a deeply pious monk who tried to lead the brothers by providing an example of monastic life, but he was a weak administrator, who attended to the spiritual life of the community yet tended to neglect his managerial role. Moreover, according to Count M. V. Tolstoi, a devout aristocrat who frequented the Lavra, he was too lenient in enforcing discipline in the monastery.6 The administration devolved mainly on the Governing Council, especially Hieromonk Arsenii (Koziorov), who served as treasurer from 1809 to 1829. Metropolitan Filaret did not favor collegial administration, but preferred to concentrate authority in one individual who was responsible and accountable. As a result, the significance of the position of prior changed under Filaret. In contrast to the frequency with which Trinity-Sergius had gone through priors in the previous century, only six priors administered the Lavra in the subsequent century, beginning with Afanasii (until the Lavra’s closure in 1919–20).7 Not one followed the career pattern of a learned monk; all died or retired in office (with the exception of the last, whose office was abolished by the Bolsheviks). Thus the position of namestnik of Trinity-Sergius was no longer a stepping-stone in an ecclesiastical career, but became a permanent position of great responsibility and authority, given to those who had proven themselves in truly monastic careers. Upon Afanasii’s death, Filaret chose Antonii (Medvedev, 1792–1833; see figure 2.2), whom he had met several years before and who had made a deep impression on him. Filaret did not err in his decision; Antonii’s leadership was primarily responsible for revitalizing Trinity-Sergius after the devastation of the secularization reform, and for transforming the Lavra from a monastery revered for its glorious past into one of Russia’s foremost spiritual centers in the nineteenth century. He brought together an activist approach with a contemplative one; he was simultaneously a

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capable administrator who saw to the flowering of the monastery’s economy and charitable institutions, and a spiritual leader who guided the revival of contemplative monasticism. Antonii was born Andrei Medvedev on October 6, 1792. His father, who died when Andrei was five, was a freed serf of Countess E. I. Golovina and worked as a cook for Prince Gruzinskii in the Nizhegorod region. The orphan Andrei received an elementary education, and then became an apprentice with the pharmacist of the local hospital. The doctor there took Andrei under his special care and, as Russia prepared for the War of 1812, Andrei received medical training. This training would serve him later, when he frequently gave medical advice to Metropolitan Filaret. Eventually, Prince Gruzinskii released him from service; he and his mother registered as townspeople in Arzamas. As a youth, Andrei had encountered Old Believers (religious dissenters who rejected the official Church after reforms in the seventeenth century), who actively preached their cause and left Andrei troubled with doubts about the Church. But a formative influence was his acquaintance with Olimpiada, the mother superior of the Arzamas Alekseevskaia Women’s Community (Zhenskaia Obshchina), whom he first visited as a physician. After long and repeated discussions with Olimpiada, Andrei decided to become a monk.8 Andrei joined the Sarov Hermitage in 1818, but he also continued to seek out Olimpiada for spiritual guidance; in 1820, he transferred to the Vysokogorsk Hermitage to be closer to Arzamas. Two years later, he took monastic vows and received the name Antonii; the same year, he was ordained to the diaconate and then the priesthood. In 1824, he went on a pilgrimage to holy places in Russia, including Kiev and Trinity-Sergius Lavra, acquainting himself with different types of monastic life. In Moscow, he had a fateful meeting with Metropolitan Filaret. In 1826, he became abbot of the Vysokogorsk Hermitage, which flourished under his administration. He visited the Sarov Hermitage several times a year (especially after Olimpiada’s death in 1828) to consult with its spiritual elders, in particular Serafim of Sarov (1759–1833), one of the foremost pioneers in the revival of Orthodox spirituality.9 Serafim had a profound impact on his monastic life and outlook. According to Antonii, Serafim foretold his appointment as prior of the Lavra. Antonii went to Serafim because of a premonition that he was seeing his monastery for the last time and was going to die. Serafim assured him that he was not going to die but would be “entrusted with a vast Lavra.” Serafim commanded Antonii not to “abandon my orphans, when the time comes,” referring to the female communities that Serafim guided spiritually, and instructed him to be merciful and lenient with the brothers under his care: “Be a mother, and not a father, to the brothers.”10 Perhaps Antonii’s relationship with Olimpiada provided a model. On February 26, 1831, Filaret wrote to Antonii, inviting him to become the prior of the Lavra, telling Antonii that he was being called to service by Saint Sergius him-

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self.11 Filaret later wrote on the occasion of Antonii’s twenty-fifth anniversary as prior that, “knowing you only by a chance meeting, I conceived a desire to choose you in this service in such a situation when the matter demanded speed and you were located far away, in the jurisdiction of another authority. Doubts about the success of the venture did not stop my determination,” but instead cast it upon Saint Sergius to make it work out as suited him.12 Filaret must have been very confident in his choice, because it was unusual for the bishop of such a large diocese to reach outside it to find an abbot for one of his monasteries. Filaret wanted someone who would carry out his will and would consult him on every important decision regarding the Lavra, and the two worked very closely together for more than thirty-five years. After Filaret’s death, four volumes of Filaret’s letters to Antonii—1,680 letters totaling 1,900 printed pages—were published, with Antonii’s assistance; although, sadly, Filaret evidently destroyed most of Antonii’s letters (as with most letters he received), Filaret’s letters are very revealing about their relationship with each other as well as every aspect of the life of the monastery and even the Church more broadly.13 Antonii, who was ten years younger than Filaret, was thirty-nine at the time of his appointment; he was young enough to work with Filaret for decades to come, yet old enough to have already demonstrated his abilities. Clearly, there were tensions in the early years, as their relationship developed and they built their mutual trust.14 Filaret reminded Antonii that “a deputy” (the primary meaning of the term namestnik) “should do what, as much and how much the local superior assigns him to do.”15 Within a few years, however, Filaret could appeal as much to friendship as to obedience.16 By 1840, when Antonii expressed his desire to withdraw from administration to pursue contemplation, Filaret’s reply was both revealing and touching. He wrote that Antonii’s desire to withdraw “brought me such thoughts of sadness,” and continued: You might guess that it is not easy for me to let you go. First because, by the great goodness of God, I see that you are very beneficial for the community; and second because, having complete trust in you and believing that you trust me, I find in this much relief and tranquillity in administering. Aside from this, my soul finds good in association with you. Remember that you asked for my friendship, when I already felt it toward you, and accepted your request as a pledge and promise on your part to be completely open with me. With your sudden intention to leave me and deprive me of your help, I cannot grumble, and I respect your intention, and recognize my unworthiness; but I cannot but feel deep sadness.17 The threat of losing Antonii brought out how much Filaret valued their friendship; the historian Sergei Soloviev—who famously wrote that Filaret ate “two

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minnows and two priests” every day for lunch—clearly had not seen this side of his personality.18 As their relationship developed, Filaret came to trust Antonii so completely that he chose Antonii as his confessor, consulted him on diocesan administration, and sent him his sermons and other works for critiquing. In Antonii, he had found someone who shared his great respect for contemplative spirituality. Even much later, there were times when Antonii feared that Filaret did not have full confidence in him and questioned his judgment too frequently; Filaret replied that, even if he disagreed with him on certain things, “to the question in whom I have particular trust, everyone who knows my circle would point to you.”19 Ultimately, he fully entrusted Antonii with the daily affairs of the Lavra.20 Indeed, Archimandrite Antonii became the undisputed master of TrinitySergius, in all aspects and even in the minute details of the monastery’s life. Toviia wrote about Antonii’s leadership of the community in his memoirs, which provide a clear picture of the monastery under Antonii’s administration. Toviia wrote that Antonii’s authority was unlimited. The Governing Council was hardly noticeable and did not even meet regularly. Rather, its members would simply sign off on paperwork that came to them from Antonii, without meeting to discuss it. Official work followed Antonii’s direction, and no one opposed his instructions. But for this reason, Antonii bore complete responsibility before Metropolitan Filaret and the Church authorities.21 It is clear that this was how Filaret wanted it; very early on, he advised Antonii to have people take matters directly to him (Antonii) rather than to the Governing Council. Moreover, Filaret clearly liked to avoid taking issues through “official” channels (which the council represented) when they could simply be dealt with personally (or more discretely) between the two of them. When matters did go through the council, Filaret more often than not expressed his dissatisfaction with either the process or the decisions made by the council. Clearly, Antonii must have learned relatively early not to rely on the council in administering the monastery.22 At the same time, Antonii started so many new initiatives (e.g., new philanthropic institutions, considered below), for which he took primary responsibility and leadership, that Filaret had to encourage him repeatedly to delegate some of these responsibilities to others.23 Only in later decades would Filaret change his approach and insist more on following “official procedure”—evidently because Filaret did not want to be personally overburdened with monastery affairs that could be handled by others. It is also likely that the rigidity of the era of Nicholas I frequently demanded bypassing bureaucracy, but the chaotic era of the Great Reforms in the 1860s necessitated precisely the opposite—stricter adherence to the official order.24 Antonii balanced attention to the material and the spiritual in his administration of the monastery. M. V. Tolstoi observed that when Antonii became prior, the

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figure 2.2. Archimandrite Antonii (Medvedev) Source: Filaret (Drozdov), Pis’ma Mitropolita Moskovskogo Filareta k namestniku sviatotroitskiia Sergievy lavry arkhimandritu Antoniiu, 1831–1867 gg. (Moscow, 1877–84), vol. 2, frontispiece.

brotherhood consisted of fewer than 100 monks and novices, the income was less than 100,000 rubles a year, and the monastery’s great fortress walls, living quarters, and even the churches themselves had become dilapidated and neglected and “demanded immediate repair.” Further, the monastery only had one modest philanthropic institution, and its icon workshop consisted of only a few people.25 Antonii would bring about dramatic changes in all these areas: the economy, the physical condition of the monastery, the number of brothers, and the monastery’s involvement in philanthropy. On the material side, in addition to improving the monastery’s economic condition (see below), he expended enormous energy renovating its churches and buildings, both inside and out.26 Tolstoi himself was impressed with how quickly and noticeably Antonii improved even the appearance of the monastery and reported that Emperor Nicholas I, who visited in 1834, told Filaret that he found the Lavra “incomparably better” in appearance than before.27 On the spiritual side, Antonii laid great emphasis on ensuring the discipline of the community, on the performance of liturgical services, and on cultivating

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contemplative spirituality. The brotherhood itself dramatically increased from 100 brothers, according to the stipulations of 1764 (with perhaps an additional 20 novices), at the beginning of the century, to 370 monks and novices by 1870—that is, the brotherhood more than tripled during Antonii’s administration of the monastery, despite fears that the monastery could not sustain such growth.28 Toviia also described the relationship of Antonii to the brotherhood of the monastery: “The brothers all loved him as children their father, but they feared him as the authority [vlast’]. The power of his authority (in relationship to them) they put almost higher than the Metropolitan, whose complete trust he had, and for this reason his authority in the Lavra was categorical.” But, Toviia continued, it was agreeable to be under his authority because, though strict, he was just; moreover, Antonii defended the brothers from the interference of any outside authority. He could be more understanding of other shortcomings, except that he would not tolerate drunkenness, “against which he struggled his entire life,” although with limited success.29 The dramatic increase in the number of monks made supervision a difficult task, and the efforts frequently frustrated Antonii. According to P. S. Kazanskii, a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, Antonii said, “I do not demand particular ascetic feats, for that is a matter of choice—I demand only decent behavior.”30 Moreover, Antonii’s strict way of managing manifested itself in every aspect of the monastery’s life. According to Toviia, “He loved economic management and understood it well.” Because he had such “versatile knowledge and practice in everything,” including the economy and construction, “he had the full right to demand from the brotherhood the fulfillment of their duties,” and they were willing to obey. Finally, Antonii was absolute master of the monastery because, at least by the time Toviia joined the brotherhood, Antonii carried greater personal authority than any of the other monks, was older than most, and in fact had actually received most of them into the monastery and tonsured them himself.31 M. V. Tolstoi observed that from the very beginning, Antonii strove to raise the decorum of the church services.32 Toviia also described Antonii’s strictness in this regard, saying that Antonii himself knew the order of the complex services perfectly and did not let a single mistake go without a reprimand—and therefore the clergy and sacristans who served were particularly terrified of him. He himself presided at the main liturgies on Sundays and feast days, and he loved to celebrate slowly and with great solemnity. The effect was magnified by the fact that he was relatively tall and solidly built, with a strong baritone voice—altogether an imposing presence.33 Antonii’s efforts to increase the grandeur of the services had a great impact on visitors. In addition to assuring that the services were conducted properly, he also organized four-part choral singing and created a boy’s choir. The magnificent services, together with his own powerful presence in presiding at the liturgy, made a deep impression on pilgrims and attracted them in ever-growing numbers. Many

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of the laity also sought his spiritual advice through conversations in his cell. Count S. D. Sheremetev, like Count M. V. Tolstoi, was an aristocrat close to Church circles who frequented Trinity-Sergius; both noted that Antonii enjoyed great respect in society, even among members of the Royal Family (particularly Empress Maria Aleksandrovna).34 Sheremetev observed that Antonii had both “enthusiastic admirers” and enemies. Especially in aristocratic circles, some of his strongest admirers would even live in the monastery’s hotel for long periods, while others would come from Saint Petersburg to escape its vanities and enjoy enlightening conversation with their favorite “père Antoine.” He became the spiritual father-confessor to many aristocratic women, such as the one Toviia met before coming to the Lavra. Curiously, both Sheremetev and Tolstoi comment on how kindly Antonii treated them at earlier stages in their relationship, and how he cooled toward them later on for various reasons, but that later still he received them with the former sincerity. Despite any tensions, however, both clearly regarded him with great respect, as did many others.35 Indeed, according to the prominent church historian E. E. Golubinskii, Antonii “was very famous and enjoyed great respect in society, having, among other things, the gift of absorbing conversation.”36 Antonii’s aspiration to contemplative spirituality reflected Serafim of Sarov’s strong influence, and Antonii did much to further the respect and veneration for Serafim in the Church. Antonii frequently recounted to Filaret his own experiences and the stories he had heard concerning Serafim and the Sarov elders, which won Filaret’s respect for them.37 Between 1839 and 1852, Hieromonk Sergii, one of Serafim’s disciples who was famed for his own ascetic life, was the treasurer of the Lavra. Antonii, together with Filaret, supported the publication (in 1841) of Sergii’s biography of Serafim, notwithstanding Synodal opposition because of the miracles attributed to the uncanonized Serafim.38 Antonii’s aspirations for contemplative spirituality were also expressed in his study of the early Church Fathers and his connections with other elders.39 His deep knowledge of the ascetic writings by the early Church Fathers even won him the respect of professors at the Moscow Theological Academy.40 Antonii’s attraction to contemplative spirituality was more than intellectual; throughout his life he desired greater stillness (in Greek, hesychia; in Russian, bezmolvie), and periodically expressed to Filaret his desire to withdraw from administration of the monastery to pursue contemplation. Quite early in his career, he asked Filaret to allow him to take periodic retreats for quietude; Filaret replied that “it is desirable that the path of complete stillness is not neglected, but that it has those who follow it and labor at it for the sake of us who are caught in the sea of this world. Only it would be better if those who pursue stillness were not called to social activity”; for, he continued somewhat ironically, if “they are called to social activity, leaving the seclusion where they pursued their stillness, how can social stillness be

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guarded?” He therefore permitted Antonii one twenty-four-hour period a month for a retreat to Bethany monastery.41 In 1840, Antonii asked for the first time to actually retire as prior, which elicited Filaret’s personal appeal, which was quoted above. Filaret continued in the same letter that he had to put his own feelings aside and judge the situation objectively, and here he found that he was obliged to deny Antonii’s release because “the need for your service is obvious.” Antonii was too young and too healthy to be permitted to retire. He asked Antonii to accept this with patience “for the sake of obedience” (poslushanie). “God will accept the sacrifice of your good intention and grant you blessing and grace, and not allow you to suffer privation from the fact that you deferred the fulfillment of your intention for the sake of obedience. Do not run from Saint Sergius; his grace for you exists, and his prayers are powerful, to reward you, for bearing your service, with what you seek in withdrawal.”42 Although Filaret would not allow him to retire, Antonii contemplated building a skete near the Lavra for the pursuit of quietude. These ruminations led him to establish Gethsemane Skete (considered in chapter 3), which flourished under his guidance.43 Even with this, he repeated the request several times throughout his career, so Filaret had to instruct Antonii not to “envy the monk of the Skete who enjoys peace and freedom,” because “deprivation of inner consolation in the service of one’s neighbor is no loss.”44 Filaret always insisted that he needed Antonii too much, and that there was no one else as competent to take his place.45 On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Antonii’s service as prior, Filaret claimed that he took a risk in choosing Antonii for the post because he did not know him well, but that the results of those twenty-five years had shown that Saint Sergius had blessed the choice. Over the course of Antonii’s career, Filaret noted, the brotherhood of the community had grown significantly, which Filaret ascribed to Antonii’s edifying leadership; he had raised the good order of the church services, the spiritual life of the community, and its economy. In addition, Antonii had developed the Lavra’s charitable activities and established Gethsemane Skete.46 Indeed, Filaret found in Antonii an excellent leader who was uniquely capable of balancing the monastery’s spiritual and material needs, of addressing the needs of both the monks and of society more broadly.

Economic Development and Philanthropy Archimandrite Antonii fundamentally challenged assumptions that the TrinitySergius Lavra could not support an enlarged brotherhood or expanded charitable activities; in doing so, he allowed the monastery to grow as a community and also expand its contribution to society, while at the same time he developed its economy

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to support these endeavors. During Antonii’s tenure, the monastery’s budget grew, became less dependent upon state subsidies, drawing more upon pilgrims who came in increasing numbers, and developed its own resources independent of both the state and the laity. Trinity-Sergius’ economy increasingly diversified during the period of Antonii’s administration. As noted above, the Lavra had acquired 380 hectares of land by 1776—far more than the original 30 hectares allowed by the decree of 1764. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the monastery received more land, primarily as grants from the state. The emperor granted the monastery a particularly large donation in 1838 (of 1,360 hectares).47 Thereafter, however, the monastery obtained land primarily through gifts and purchases; by 1874 it owned 2,225 hectares, though in later years it virtually ceased to acquire new land.48 On paper at least, Trinity-Sergius appeared to be a large landowner—owning the most land of any monastery in the Moscow Diocese. But it was not one of the main landowning monasteries in the empire; the top ten owned more than 10,000 hectares each.49 More important, only a very tiny proportion of the land was arable. Because the Synod restricted forest husbandry to the monastery’s own use (for firewood and construction), the Lavra derived little income from most of its land, and even the meadows and gardens were used for its own needs. Far more significant was the income from urban property in Sergiev Posad and the capitals, which generated substantial revenues from shops, apartments, and the like. In short, though Trinity-Sergius owned a significant amount of land, most of its support came from other sources. Although the Lavra’s holdings of woodland and meadow probably elicited some envy from land-hungry peasants, it did not have the huge fields of arable land that elsewhere fueled peasant demands for expropriation, especially in the early twentieth century. State subsidies were a significant proportion of the budget in the era before Antonii. These subsidies had risen to a high of around 20,000 rubles at the time Antonii became prior. In subsequent years, however, the state sharply reduced the subsidies.50 After the Emancipation of the Serfs, when Trinity-Sergius (like other monasteries) lost the free labor of state peasants, the government granted additional money for hired labor—for a total of 9,259 rubles per year until the end of the nineteenth century.51 Even before subsidies were reduced, however, they had ceased to be a significant percentage of the budget. The total annual income of the monastery increased dramatically from the time of Platon to that of Antonii, roughly increasing threefold. Whereas the income averaged about 50,000 rubles in the 1810s, by the mid-1830s it averaged 160,000 rubles (or 140,000 without subsidies) (see table 2.1). By the time Antonii passed away, it had continued to increase, to about 230,000 rubles (not including state subsidies).52 The monastery’s own account books divided these revenues into two categories.

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table 2.1. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra’s Income and Expenditures, 1781–1912 (rubles)

Year or Period 1781 1810–12 (average) 1834-35 (average) 1860–62/63 (average) 1884–87 (average) 1909–12 (average)

State Stipend 8,762 17,239 20,712 5,925 9,259

Income (State Subsidy Not Included)

Total Income

Expenditures

11,306 36,431 141,071 162,844 333,329 433,984

20,068 53,670 161,783 168,769 342,588 433,984

5,440 61,089 123,544 172,830 333,858 434,290

Source: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, dd. 1007, 3004, 3083, 4972, 9274, 9771, 9968, 13715, 13979, 17761, 18142.

One was church income, which included donations for prayer services, collections, and the sale of religious items such as candles, prosphora, images, and books. The second category, called monastery income, comprised rent from properties and interest from bonds. Both increased during Antonii’s administration, but the church income increased more rapidly and became a larger proportion of the budget than the monastery income, though the latter would become increasingly important later in the century (see table 2.2).53 Monastery income consisted primarily of revenues from the monastery’s property and capital. Like church income, it increased dramatically during the course of the nineteenth century, but in this case not from the increasing number of pilgrims but from the wise investments of the monastery, which brought greater returns. table 2.2. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra’s Income, 1834–1912 (rubles) Source of Income Candle sales Images Prosphora Books Donations Photographs and lithographs Miscellaneous church income Total “church” income Rents from hotels, apartments, and shops Rents from property in Moscow Interest from bonds From Petersburg compound Miscellaneous Total “monastery” income Total income

1834

1860

1885

1912

32,000 5,941 13,861 1,277 23,393 0 938 77,410 12,588 26,220 11,467 0 3,263 53,538 130,948

34,269 14,664 22,890 1,632 18,463 0 5,323 97,241 14,621 13,452 5,643 5,000 13,987 52,703 149,944

56,199 25,879 41,368 2,730 26,982 4,816 9,881 167,855 41,999 86,803 7,438 12,600 11,146 159,986 327,841

73,419 46,529 39,850 5,166 18,397 1,490 13,056 197,907 66,394 110,073 27,079 22,000 17,587 243,133 441,040

Source: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, dd. 1007, 3004, 3083, 4972, 9274, 9771, 9968, 13715, 13979, 17761, 18142.

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The property that Trinity-Sergius owned in the center of Sergiev Posad constituted the core of its propertied income. This real estate included the “Old Hotel,” located on the north end of Krasnogorsk Square, which was a row of shops built in the 1820s, to which were later added two stories that were rented out as hotel rooms. The “New Hotel,” across the road from the square, was a three-story building constructed in the 1860s; the top two floors here were also rented as hotel rooms. The first floor, in addition to shops, housed a bank, a buffet, a cafeteria, and a bakery. In addition to the shops in the two hotels, the monastery leased space for a row of seventy-seven stone shops (constructed between 1858 and 1873) on Krasnogorsk Square along the wall of the monastery. Parallel to these shops on the opposite side of the square, along the roadway, was a row of thirty-seven wooden shops known as the Shed Row (see figure 2.3). These shops sold everything from groceries to clothing to furniture; the majority of shops, which were of greatest interest to the pilgrims, sold the toys for which Sergiev Posad was famed. During the great monastery holidays, when thousands of pilgrims and visitors would come, Krasnogorsk Square became a major fair, selling a great variety of goods.54 The monastery’s income from rentals and the hotels rose dramatically during the nineteenth century. In the early part of the century, income from rent amounted to less than 800 rubles; by 1835, because of the addition of the hotel and the shops with it, income rose to about 14,000 rubles.55 By 1870, after the addition of the New

figure 2.3. The Shed Row Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission.

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Hotel and the shops on Krasnogorsk Square, that income had more than doubled.56 Although the most valuable property was in Sergiev Posad, Trinity-Sergius also owned land in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The Petersburg compound (podvor’e) on the Fontanka and the Sukharev compound in Moscow served primarily as residences of the metropolitan of Moscow (as abbot of Trinity-Sergius) in the two capital cities. For much of the nineteenth century, the two compounds yielded little income for the Lavra but instead used their income primarily to support themselves. A second compound in Moscow, the Striapcheskoe podvor’e, by contrast, consisted primarily of a building that rented space for shops on the first floor and an eating establishment on the second, which brought in a handsome income (about 14,500 rubles in 1870). The monastery developed these compounds, particularly by constructing a large new building on the site of the Striapcheskoe podvor’e in the 1870s, which brought in enormous revenues within a decade, becoming one of its largest sources of income (almost 87,000 rubles).57 The monastery authorities exercised great foresight in developing these properties, which would become increasingly significant sources of support over time. After rental income, interest from capital was a second major source of “monastery income.” The Lavra began to invest capital in interest-earning accounts at the end of the eighteenth century. Benefactors frequently gave capital as an endowment to fund memorial services, or simply to support the monastery or its philanthropic institutions. According to Archimandrite Antonii, in 1870 the Lavra had capital of 171,358 rubles invested in bonds. He explained that the capital had “accumulated in part from the surplus sums of the community, in part from donations to the philanthropic institutions of the Lavra by Miss Lunina, Countess Tatishcheva, and Countess Orlova. The interest from this capital is used according to its designation, with its addition to the income of the Lavra.”58 Countess Anna Orlova-Chesmenskaia was one of the most generous benefactors of monasticism in the 1840s; not only did she donate substantial capital to Trinity-Sergius, she also gave 5,000 rubles in capital to every monastery in the Russian Empire.59 Trinity-Sergius did not invest a significant amount of its own surplus cash in savings and bonds until after the time of Antonii. Until the 1830s, the Lavra apparently retained much of its surplus residual funds in cash, whereas under Antonii the monastery spent large amounts on development projects (the New Hotel, the shops in Sergiev Posad, new philanthropic institutions) and therefore had little left over to invest. Such investments only became more important later in the century. In addition to the so-called monastery income, the church income—again, revenues derived from pilgrims who purchased religious items—also rose tremendously during the nineteenth century. These sources of income (considered in more detail in chapter 4) were substantially greater than revenues from rentals and interest at midcentury (about 97,000 and 53,000 rubles, respectively, in 1860), although

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within a few decades they were nearly equal (168,000 and 160,000 rubles, respectively, in 1885). In short, the monastery’s economy was devastated by secularization, which effectively stifled its development for more than half a century. Under Antonii’s management, Trinity-Sergius’ economy underwent a substantial diversification, which included careful investments that allowed it to greatly expand its operations in other spheres.

Expenditures As Antonii put the Lavra’s rising income to work in expanding the monastery’s activities, its expenses also rose steeply. The monastery’s expenses (excluding what was spent from the state subsidies, which were regularly used to pay salaries) more than doubled between the 1780s and the 1810s, and doubled again by the mid-1830s to more than 140,000 rubles. They continued to rise under Antonii at an even faster pace than income, so that in the early 1860s the average annual expenses were greater than the income, and the monastery had to draw on its reserves.60 This alone demonstrates that Antonii’s expansion of every aspect of the monastery’s life—from the brotherhood to its charitable institutions—stretched the budget to its maximum. Indeed, Antonii even overextended the budget at points. In the 1860s he embarked upon the construction of the “New Hotel” and a new church for Bethany that incurred costs exceeding the Lavra’s income during a period when its income was not continuing to increase (the Lavra’s income did not rise in the 1850s). To cover these costs, Antonii proposed taking out a 13,000-ruble loan, something that Filaret opposed. Filaret did not want to saddle his successor with debts in the same way that he had inherited debts for Trinity-Sergius when he became its abbot, in particular because he felt these construction projects were not absolutely necessary.61 As the costs of constructing the New Hotel rose above original estimates, Filaret still opposed taking out a loan and instead proposed curtailing the construction and not adding the projected third floor. Antonii was evidently offended by Filaret’s refusal to the point of requesting retirement.62 In the end, they did complete the third story of the hotel, which in the long run proved to be a good investment with lucrative returns. But the financial difficulties continued into the mid-1860s, when Filaret complained that expenses pushed the limits of income so that they had no cushion.63 Income began to rise substantially again in the 1870s, but it is clear that Antonii regularly pushed the monastery’s budget as much as he could for his expansion projects. The monastery’s expenses are difficult to characterize because they were far less regular than income; in any particular year, the Lavra might spend an enormous amount on one particular project. Nevertheless, some generalizations can be made (see table 2.3). If one divides expenditures into outlays on people (provisions,

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table 2.3. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra’s Expenditures, 1835–1910 (rubles) Expenditures

1835

1860

1887

1910

Church needs, sacristy, candles, etc. Workshops Construction materials and labor Heating and lighting For the compounds On gardens and stables Salaries, awards, etc. For the choir Provisions for brothers and pilgrims Philanthropic institutions For hotels Taxes Police, prison, etc. Miscellaneous Deposited Total expenses

13,087 31,998 4,158 17,085 6,109 5,044

31,901 741 44,151 4,626 1,405 12,718 10,736

8,925 5,543 (Not separate)

38,040 10,968 1,174

8,595 23,000 123,544

5,782

43,815 1,165 27,243 6,894 23,327 11,763 33,476 2,926 54,411 118,821 6,268 7,474 432 1,625

75,259 25,054 41,297 14,675 23,015 16,573 29,989 6,020 77,858 41,836 6,631 25,813 3,197 6,384

162,242

339,640

393,601

Source: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, dd. 1007, 3004, 3083, 4972, 9274, 9771, 9968, 13715, 13979, 17761, 18142.

salaries), on buildings and maintenance, on charity, and on church expenses, the following patterns emerge. One major expenditure was to provide for church needs, which collectively constituted about 20 percent of total expenses in 1860. The smallest proportion of these funds went for strictly liturgical expenses—that is, for incense, church wine, and other items used in services. The principal costs involved the production of candles, prosphora, images, and the like, which also constituted the largest source of income for the monastery. Most of the expenses on candles, for example, came from the purchase of wax, and the primary expense in producing prosphora was the purchase of wheat.64 The largest collective expenses involved people, mainly provisions and bread, which consumed about 30 percent of the budget in 1860. The expenses on provisions increased to feed the growing number of individuals who were dependent on the monastery. Calculating the number of individuals dependent upon the Lavra is difficult, because the data for any particular year do not include all the categories of people living in the monastery (monks, officially received novices, postulants living “on trial,” people living in almshouses, and employees), aside from the pilgrims whom they fed on a daily basis. According to the regulations of 1764, the monastery was to have 100 monks and 100 servants; including those in the almshouses (founded in the 1780s) and novices, there were probably about 270 people living in the Lavra at the end of the eighteenth century.65 By the mid–nineteenth century, the numbers of both brothers and servants had doubled.66 In 1870, Archimandrite Antonii reported that the Lavra had 370 brothers (including novices),

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200 students in its various elementary schools, 120 people in the hospital, and 150 people in the Home for the Poor, giving a total of 840 people (the monastery lost its state servants after Emancipation).67 In 1860, the monastery spent some 38,000 rubles on provisions for the brothers and in buying bread for the pilgrims, plus another 11,000 rubles in support of the charitable institutions it operated, also mostly on provisions.68 In short, the monastery was supporting an ever-increasing number of people, and for this reason provisions constituted a significant portion of its budget. A third major expense was the cost of the upkeep, heating, and lighting of the buildings, along with the maintenance of the grounds, gardens, and stables. These expenses varied the most widely depending on particular building projects, but they represented more than a quarter of expenses in 1860. Construction materials— including wood, glass, metals, and paint—together with the labor (salaries for contractors), constituted the largest expense. The Lavra had hayfields and gardens, which required both supplies and labor, and also stables with some fifty horses and other livestock. Expenses for heating and lighting were not insignificant; nor were expenses for salaries and materials for operating the hotels.69 Finally, the monastery gave money to support the local police and postal service as well as the Sergiev Posad prison. In the postreform era, it was required to pay both state and local taxes, and the state and the Synod ruled that monasteries must pay taxes on property that generated rental income.70 These expenses on civic concerns were not sizable during Antonii’s time, but they would become much more significant by the early twentieth century. A final expense to the monastery was the salaries it paid to both the monks and the employees. Because Trinity-Sergius was no longer cenobitic, the monks received their cells and food from the monastery, but they needed to purchase their own clothing, shoes, and such “luxuries” as tea and sugar, so in effect they received a “salary” from the monastery. Most of the state subsidies went directly to paying salaries, both to the state peasants assigned the monastery and to the monks themselves (somewhat paradoxically, because most parish clergy never received a state salary in nineteenth-century Russia). According to the decree of 1764, the abbot (the metropolitan of Moscow) received a salary of 2,000 rubles a year, the prior (namestnik) and treasurer received 300 rubles each, 30 hieromonks and 20 hierodeacons received 13 rubles each, 20 monks received 20 rubles each, and 100 state peasants received 10 rubles each.71 During the second half of the nineteenth century, as the number of monks increased, the subsidies were divided proportionally, so that hieromonks and hierodeacons apparently received about 7 rubles per year from the state, and ordinary monks received about 5.75 rubles a year. After Emancipation, the state allocated 4,000 rubles for 100 employees, who thus received an average of 40 rubles a year.72

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Apart from the state salaries, the monks derived their income from the collection plates passed around during the services and the collection boxes placed near icons and reliquaries (what the monks called the “kruzhka”).73 The treasury gathered these funds and divided them among the brothers three times a year. As abbot of the monastery, the metropolitan of Moscow always received one-third of the total, the balance being shared by the brothers. In 1860, for example, Metropolitan Filaret received 3,817 rubles, Archimandrite Antonii received 207 rubles, the hieromonks received 69 rubles each, and the hierodeacons received 62 rubles each, whereas ordinary monks received 17 rubles each and novices received half that.74 There were additional incomes that the clergy received (as people gave the priest a list of names of people to be prayed for at the beginning of the liturgy) that were immediately divided among them, with no record being kept. Altogether, the ordained monks could received more than 100 (even 200–300) rubles a year, but novices, who received their clothing from the monastery, received “2 or 3 rubles a month” for tea and sugar.75 The ordinary monk evidently received twice that (probably 50–70 rubles a year); though this was less than what the average artisan earned in Sergiev Posad, the monks also had fewer needs—so it must have been a comfortable income. There was, however, quite a substantial difference within the monastery between the ordained clergy—who did have sizable incomes— ordinary monks, and particularly novices, and this was one of the characteristic features of idiorhythmic monasteries. By the end of the century, Trinity-Sergius had gained a reputation even in monastic circles as providing substantial stipends to its brothers, so that it “attracts people to itself from all ends of Russia by its wealth,” and the monastery authorities sometimes struggled against the monks’ greed.76 But only the prior received a substantial income comparable to that of other well-paid individuals in the town.77 A century after the secularization reform of 1764, therefore, Trinity-Sergius had not only recovered financially but had completely transformed its economy and was flourishing. The subsidies given by the state in exchange for the confiscation of the monastery’s estates were increasingly becoming a less significant proportion of its budget. Rather, it had transformed itself into a center of pilgrimage, and it drew the most substantial percentage of its income from items purchased by those pilgrims— above all, candles. Moreover, though the majority of land owned by it was not lucrative, the monastery had invested wisely in its urban properties—in Sergiev Posad, as well as in Moscow and Saint Petersburg—so that rental income was emerging as a major part of its budget. Trinity-Sergius was exemplary in its economic success, although it was not unique; indeed, many monasteries, especially those that were major centers of pilgrimage, also had large budgets. It is important to remember, however, that large, famous monasteries like the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and the Kievan Caves Lavra were the exceptions rather than

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the norm in nineteenth-century Russia. The vast majority of monasteries had much more modest budgets, and a great number were simply poor. Even monasteries in Trinity-Sergius’ orbit—like Bethany and Makhrishchskii monasteries, which had completely separate economies from the Lavra—could have minuscule budgets. Indeed, in 1870, when Trinity-Sergius had an income of some 220,000 rubles, Bethany received 1,250 rubles in state subsidies and less than 12,000 rubles of its own income, whereas Makhra had an income half that size.78 Makhra, which was not a statefunded monastery, was not famous, and had no relics to draw pilgrims, was much closer to poverty. In fact, in 1845 the Governing Council of Trinity-Sergius heard rumors that Makhra’s brotherhood was disgruntled. The investigation revealed that a combination of the monastery’s poverty and the abbot’s mismanagement had resulted in the brothers not having enough food, clothing, and firewood to stay warm in the winter. Poverty prohibited a community’s growth; indeed, one of the Governing Council’s recommendations was to limit the brotherhood of Makhra to thirty. If even novices received “2 or 3 rubles a month” at Trinity-Sergius, as members of a cenobitic monastery, the brothers of Makhra evidently did not receive any cash; rather, ordained clergy were given a monthly portion of “half a pound of tea and two pounds of sugar, and monks and novices a quarter pound of tea and half a pound of sugar,” and otherwise a steady diet of shchi and kasha.79 Clearly, there were different degrees of “renouncing the world” even within monasticism.

Polemics about Monastic Wealth Because prominent monasteries were once again growing wealthy, a century after the reform of 1764 some critics were already calling for a “second secularization.” An anonymous article in The Herald of Europe (Vestnik Evropy) in 1873 claimed that many in society regarded contemporary monasteries as completely contradictory to their ideals. Monasticism, “as is known to all,” was defined by the strict life of asceticism and rejection of the world. In their current state, declared this critic, monasteries did not provide monks with a life consistent with their own rules—for the very reason that many monasteries “possess such wealthy means, which cannot be reconciled with the monastic rule.” Indeed, the author averred that the average monk received about 975 rubles a year—an income much more than, for example, that of a provincial bureaucrat—and that this wealth was the main cause for a decline of monastic discipline. Although monasteries continued to enjoy great reverence with the common people, the article continued, the contradiction between current monastic life and the ideal would inevitably alienate the common folk and even undermine their faith in the Church. The author therefore urged ecclesiastical authorities to “secularize” monastic wealth and use the proceeds for schools, philanthropy, and assistance to the parish clergy, while forcing monasteries to live up

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to their ascetic ideals.80 Although the incomes of monks given in this article and other articles in the press were grossly exaggerated, the article did still make a legitimate point about a place like Trinity-Sergius. Such arguments were widespread in the press, particularly in the postreform era of the 1860s and 1870s, when censorship was relaxed. The image of monks as wealthy and lazy can be seen in art as well, such as Vasilii Perov’s painting The Monastery Refectory (Trapeza, 1865–76), which portrays a room full of obese monks gorging themselves on food and wine, obsequiously catering to the rich and wellborn while ignoring the poor beggars.81 Moreover, not only the secular intelligentsia entertained such criticisms; so did many within the Church itself, especially those among the parish clergy who perpetually struggled with poverty and therefore envied the supposed wealth of the monasteries.82 Monasteries such as TrinitySergius frequently tried to defend themselves from such attacks—Archimandrite Antonii, for example, published a defense of Trinity-Sergius in response to one attack in The St. Petersburg Bulletin (S.-Peterburgskie vedomosti) in 1871, in which he discussed aspects of the monastery’s budget quite openly—but critics did not trust that the monasteries were completely forthcoming, and such defenses had little impact.83 A comparison of the data revealed by Antonii and other monastic leaders with the archival records demonstrates that they were in fact being transparent. Certainly the most influential and extensive critique of monastic wealth in the nineteenth century was that of D. I. Rostislavov, published in 1876.84 Rostislavov began by posing the question of why monasteries had grown wealthy, and in particular why the faithful donated land and money to them. He argued that the laity had great reverence for the monk as someone who had rejected the world to pursue a more perfect Christian life. The monastery also attracted the laity because of their belief that prayers said by a holy person in a holy place were more efficacious. Although monasteries had ceased to have “true” monks, Rostislavov argued, their authority was still great among the people, who showed their respect and gratitude in material ways.85 Rostislavov continued by analyzing the different sources of monastery income. He admitted that state subsidies were not enormous, but he argued that they were significant and either should suffice to support the monks or should be used for other purposes. Turning to revenues derived from pilgrims, such as the sale of candles and prosphora, and from collections and other donations, he acknowledged that the large number of pilgrims attested to the piety of the Russian people; he also estimated that each of these sources brought in thousands or tens of thousands of rubles each year, particularly to revered monasteries such as the Kievan Caves Lavra and the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Rostislavov frequently cited Archimandrite Antonii’s 1871 article to cast doubt on its veracity and insisted that monasteries underreported their own income. He doubted that Trinity-Sergius could have sold such a low num-

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ber of candles as Antonii reported, and he suggested that the number of candles— and thus the income—was greater.86 Beyond the income brought by pilgrims, Rostislavov contended that much larger revenues came from what he termed “economic enterprises,” such as hotels, workshops, and rental properties. Although it could be argued that income from pilgrims at least derived from the religious role of the monastery, Rostislavov continued, these economic enterprises, which brought in “enormous” sums, were purely commercial activities and inexcusable for monks who had supposedly rejected the world.87 Alleging that monasteries had fabulous incomes—and paying virtually no attention to monastery expenses—he contended that the laity received nothing from the monasteries in return and that monastic efforts at philanthropy were insignificant.88 He concluded that monasteries, with very few exceptions, “are richer than they need for their material security and fully decent support.” Indeed, this wealth was not only useless but “positively harmful,” in a religious and moral sense. For those who had rejected the world and taken a vow of poverty, all this wealth had no place and only served to attract people who were primarily in search of a comfortable place to live for which they did not have to labor. He therefore concluded with a proposal—similar to the one made by the earlier article in The Herald of Europe—that the ecclesiastical authorities should limit monastery finances to the essentials and that the rest should be used to aid the poor, support the parish clergy, fund ecclesiastical educational institutions, and open schools for the common people.89 Because he had no direct access to monasteries’ financial records, Rostislavov based his figures on what was published in the press or officially released by the Church, and on a great deal of supposition and inference. As a result, he often came up with extremely exaggerated figures—for example, claiming that Trinity-Sergius had an annual income of 800,000 rubles and that the individual monks received from 500 to 1,000 rubles a year. He further suggested that monks received 90 to 140 rubles a year even in the poorest monasteries—which, as we have seen in the case of Makhrishchskii Monastery, was completely baseless.90 The negative attention raised by Rostislavov’s book caused Filaret’s successor, Metropolitan Innokentii (Veniaminov, 1797–1879), to demand a report from TrinitySergius about its income. The report, which was prepared with the participation of the former professor of the Moscow Theological Academy, P. S. Kazanskii, was presented to Innokentii and subsequently published. The booklet mostly disputed Rostislavov’s exaggerated figures and provided actual ones (down to the kopek), but it also critiqued Rostislavov’s penchant for highlighting negative aspects of monastic life. Thus Rostislavov argued that monasteries wasted enormous sums on themselves by beautifying their churches rather than doing something socially useful, to which this booklet countered that this was part of the monastery’s religious mission

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that was very important to pilgrims.91 Like Antonii’s earlier article, critiques of Rostislavov did little to change the minds of monasticism’s opponents; indeed, although monasticism drew significant support from one segment of Russian elites, another segment of the secular intelligentsia became more critical of monasticism the more it expanded. Allegations of excessive monastic wealth were a continuous refrain in the secular press and formed the fundamental focus of its attack on monasticism. Before 1917, an accurate analysis of monastery economies remained impossible because, as Rostislavov bitterly complained, the monastery archives were “more secret than those of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”92 Monasteries denied access to their archives not only to outsiders but even to those within the Church.93 Secrecy gave full license to speculation about excessive monastic wealth. What is perhaps most ironic, however, was not the influence that Rostislavov had at the time but the fact that modern historians still continue to rely on his book, despite the fact that monastery records have long since been located in state archives and are freely accessible to researchers who have the patience to use them.94 In a way comparable to criticisms leveled against the Russian Church in the post-Soviet period, the otherworldly image of monasteries meant that, for some, the monastery was not supposed to be sullied by involvement in such worldly activities as moneymaking.95 Trinity-Sergius invested its resources to develop the property that it owned in Sergiev Posad, and it garnered lucrative returns for these investments. Such entrepreneurship opened the Lavra to the accusation by critics like Rostislavov that it had violated the monastic ideal of poverty by engaging in purely mercantile enterprises. The polemics about monastic wealth became one of the most common refrains of monasticism’s opponents; although ordained clergy in a monastery like Trinity-Sergius truly did make handsome incomes, for the most part the critics exaggerated monastic wealth, ignoring the rather modest budgets of the majority of communities as well as monasticism’s charitable contributions.

Philanthropy Critics of monasticism, including Rostislavov, attacked monasteries not only for their wealth but also for their “social uselessness”—and especially for the “insignificance” of their philanthropic efforts. In reality, many monasteries such as TrinitySergius made important contributions in operating charitable institutions. In medieval Russia, charity was viewed as a duty of the Church—or the wealthy who operated through the Church—and therefore the state did not develop institutions for poor relief. Peter I and Catherine II tried to institutionalize poor relief while criminalizing begging; Catherine, through secularization, destroyed the Church’s means of providing charity. In the end, the state did not develop such institutions;

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rather, it relied on the system of serfdom, in which everyone was considered someone else’s responsibility (e.g., the serfs were to be cared for by the landowners). Even before Emancipation, however, this system was breaking down, and there were people left without care. Nor were provisions provided for poor relief during the Great Reforms; rather, it was left to each estate to care for its own (e.g., the peasant commune) or for local organs of government (e.g., the zemstvo), though neither of these was very efficient. Over the course of the nineteenth century, private charitable associations developed and became widespread during and after the Great Reforms, especially by the end of the century. Here the Church played an important role at the parish level, both as a means of mobilizing society and by providing mechanisms for assistance.96 Monasteries also played their role. Trinity-Sergius founded its first charitable institutions soon after secularization —an almshouse (bogadel’nia) inside the monastery for twenty-five men, and another outside its walls for twenty-five women. These almshouses primarily served elderly poor individuals with no family or home; they were frequently state peasants who worked at the monastery, but also retired soldiers or widows of parish clergy. The impetus for the almshouses came from a personal decree by Catherine the Great, with the active participation of the Lavra’s abbot, Platon (Levshin).97 Support for the houses came partly from state subsidies and partly from the Lavra. These were, however, relatively small-scale operations. Archimandrite Antonii revolutionized Trinity-Sergius’ philanthropic activity. He began to take the initiative in this area almost immediately after becoming prior —and in the face of Metropolitan Filaret’s reluctance. From the beginning, Antonii endeavored to help those in need, but he felt hampered by the disorder of the Lavra’s economy. He recognized that the monastery failed to fulfill Saint Sergius’ commandment to feed pilgrims but came to doubt what the monastery’s authorities, and even Metropolitan Filaret, believed: that the Lavra’s means were insufficient. Better management, not more means, was the answer. As a result, starting in 1831 he began to organize provisions for poor pilgrims on special occasions, and he eventually established a permanent refectory for them. On several instances, amid harvest failures and rising prices, he distributed food to hungry local inhabitants as well. In January 1833, he wanted to help feed those in need, and Filaret responded: “God bless your care for the poor people of God, Father Prior. It is good that you even awaken my laziness to zeal.” But Filaret also expressed his doubt, repeating “what I have always said”—that “the government takes care, acts, and uses much money. Therefore it thinks what is necessary to do and what is not possible to do further.” He added that “others will say that there is bread, and that everything will pass of its own, just like the cholera passed.” He concluded that “our means in relationship to the social situation is only prayer.”98 This letter is extremely revealing of how Church leaders in the period after Peter the Great felt that it was not the

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Church’s place to take social action in the world—which was the area of the state’s action—but rather that its realm of action was only prayer.99 Antonii was truly going against the tide, in “awakening” both Filaret and the Trinity-Sergius Monastery to social action and setting an example for the Church. Despite Filaret’s discouragement or doubts about his course of action, at the end of the year Antonii was asking permission to buy extra flour to be able to provide bread in the upcoming spring when it ran out for the poor and especially for the state peasants who worked for the monastery; indeed, he wrote that he was “thinking about feeding the workers with the remainder of the brother’s trapeza [refectory] together with the pilgrims and the poor.”100 Evidently Antonii had succeeded in changing Filaret’s attitudes, because Filaret responded that he had been thinking along the same lines and wondered if they should not buy even more flour than Antonii proposed.101 These letters point to one of Antonii’s important initiatives that would have a lasting impact on the life of the monastery. Saint Sergius himself had commanded the monks to care for the poor, particularly poor pilgrims visiting the monastery, but the Lavra’s authorities felt it could no longer do this after secularization. Antonii established a separate trapeza for the poor pilgrims that, after a few years, provided daily meals. After Antonii established the tradition, Filaret wrote that it gladdened him that feeding the pilgrims brought them consolation: “May the Saint bless this, and may he not leave us without brotherly love.”102 In times of need, the monastery continued to feed local poor people as well.103 By the 1870s, the monastery was providing free meals for up to several thousand pilgrims a day and 200,000 to 300,000 people a year. Antonii reported in 1876 that “every day after the late Liturgy and the evening service there is established an afternoon and evening trapeza, and the greater part of the pilgrims take advantage of this”; he further stated that “an estimated 220,000 people” made use of this offer.104 From modest beginnings, Antonii had built up a major service. In the late 1830s, the Lavra also opened its first public school. In 1836–37 Nicholas I, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Holy Synod were discussing ways to combat the Old Belief, including the possibility of opening Church schools. The Holy Synod proposed that monasteries establish elementary schools, at a minimum for the children of their own state-peasant servants, and ideally for the general public.105 Antonii had already proposed to Filaret that they establish a school at Trinity-Sergius. Filaret was not initially enthusiastic, anticipating that they would have problems with the Ministry of Education, which would try to regulate their teaching.106 In response to queries from Saint Petersburg, Trinity-Sergius informed Metropolitan Filaret that a school for its servants and local residents was well within the means of the monastery. The Lavra opened the school, together with an orphanage,

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in the fall of 1838. As teachers, it appointed monks who had graduated from the seminary. The monastery also provided the textbooks and other supplies. It originally planned to have one hundred students and offer a two-year course of study, but in response to local demand, it quickly expanded the school to a three-year course with twice as many pupils.107 The first-year curriculum included the study of prayers, the Creed, and reading; the second year focused on the basic catechism, learning to read the Bible and saints’ lives, and basic mathematics and writing. In the third year, the students studied the full catechism as well as Russian grammar and history, arithmetic, and geography. In addition to classroom studies, the school provided practical instruction in the Lavra’s various workshops, including painting, handicrafts, metalworking, and woodworking.108 By 1861, the school consisted of 5 teachers and 231 students, of whom 185 lived in the Lavra (at its expense), whereas 46 lived at home but received a free education from school.109 In the 1840s, Antonii embarked on an even more ambitious project. In the 1830s, a large fire had destroyed the Lavra’s original hotel, across the roadway from the monastery, together with the neighboring home of Countess Tatishcheva. Because the Lavra had recently built a hotel (later referred to as the “Old” Hotel), Antonii decided to reconstruct the building as a women’s almshouse with a chapel, and a hostel for poor female pilgrims. Countess Tatishcheva decided to devote her property to this purpose as well. Anna Lunina, the daughter of a state councillor, donated 85,735 rubles in capital for construction and support, and Countess Orlova also donated significant capital for the new institution.110 Thus in 1840 the Home for the Poor (Dom Prizreniia) opened, which included an almshouse (bogadel’nia) for elderly women, a hostel for female pilgrims (strannopriimnaia), and a hospital for women. In 1861, the monastery relocated the boys’ school and orphanage, which had become large and intrusive, to the courtyard of the Home for the Poor.111 A few years later, Antonii turned his attention to the needs of poor girls as well. He explained that “women who come on pilgrimage, falling ill, enter the hospital of the Home for the Poor built and supported by the Community of Saint Sergius. Some of the poor who arrive with young children also die from [their] illnesses, leaving orphaned poor and homeless children. By order of the supervisor of the Home for the Poor, some—after contact with relatives—return to their families, but others have no one to turn to and hence, for humanitarian reasons, must remain in the Home.”112 In addition, Metropolitan Filaret was distressed by the sight of small children begging inside the Lavra; if, Antonii thought, these children begged because of poverty, the Lavra could send them to the Home for the Poor, feed them lunch and teach them, and send them home in the evenings. Thus, with Filaret’s permission, blessing, and personal donation of 1,000 rubles, the Lavra established an orphanage and a school for girls in the Home for the Poor (and, after Filaret’s death, renamed it the Filaret Girls’ School). Soon local residents of Sergiev Posad asked to

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enroll their daughters in the school, because there was no other school for girls in the town. As a result, when the school opened in 1867, seventeen girls lived at the Home for the Poor entirely at the Lavra’s expense, and another sixteen girls lived at home but studied at the school. The girls were taught reading and writing, catechism and other religious subjects, basic mathematics, as well as needlework.113 Trinity-Sergius was therefore ahead of its time in providing education not only for boys but also for girls. Trinity-Sergius continued to expand this Home for the Poor, adding new buildings and its own stone church. By 1875, it had 175 women and children living there on a regular basis, including 32 girls in the orphanage as well as elderly and widows of peasants, clergy, and petty townswomen from Sergiev Posad and the surrounding regions. The hospital had twenty-five beds and had served more than 200 women that year.114 The hostel offered free, temporary lodging for pilgrims and housed up to 2,000 people a day.115 During his lifetime, Archimandrite Antonii personally supervised the Home for the Poor with the assistance of an aristocratic woman. As his health declined, Antonii expressed a desire to place the Home for the Poor under the care of Empress Maria Aleksandrovna in 1876.116 After his death, the entire institution passed from the Lavra to the guardianship of the empress, and it became the Aleksandro-Mariinskii Home for the Poor. Nevertheless, the Lavra continued to provide the principal financial support (about 23,000 rubles annually).117 The monastery had other charitable operations as well. In 1834, when it was renovating a hospital for the monks, it added a section to serve 100 pilgrims and local residents (there being no hospital in Sergiev Posad).118 In 1846, after a youth died in the hospital, Filaret wrote to Antonii that he was consoled because the monastery had cared for him; otherwise, the youth probably “would have died on the street without help.”119 Trinity-Sergius also had a hostel that sheltered 100 to 2,000 pilgrims a day and an almshouse for men.120 In the 1860s, it organized a boys’ choir; it subsequently sheltered and supported many orphaned boys who became part of the choir. The boys in the choir were taken from the boys’ school; many of the boys also learned crafts. Antonii organized a school to teach icon painting at the Lavra’s iconography workshop as well. He also raised funds to reconstruct the dark, damp, squalid prison in Sergiev Posad. Finally, he personally assisted individuals in need who came to him.121 Nor was Trinity-Sergius the only monastery to operate charitable institutions. Women’s religious communities and monasteries in particular were actively involved in charity, operating schools, hospitals, and almshouses. Although TrinitySergius was a pioneer, and not many other monasteries were operating charitable institutions in the first half of the nineteenth century, other monasteries played a growing role in the postreform era. Whereas earlier some authorities, both monastic and diocesan, regarded charitable institutions as an undue burden, after mid-

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century both the government and the Holy Synod encouraged monastic charitable activities. If in the mid–nineteenth century Trinity-Sergius was the only monastery to operate a school in the Moscow Diocese, this would change dramatically by the early twentieth century.122 In short, at least with regard to Trinity-Sergius, the venomous critique by Rostislavov and others was increasingly wide of the mark. Although the monastery’s income did rise, Filaret acknowledged in a personal letter that Antonii had increased the means of the community in order to “multiply the deeds of charity.”123 Although Trinity-Sergius was early in developing its philanthropic work under the visionary leadership of Archimandrite Antonii, monasteries played an increasingly important role in society in the postreform era. Filaret himself recognized that, due to Antonii’s efforts, Saint Sergius’ commandment of philanthropy (chelovekoliubie) “is extending its spirit and its activity.”124 The Lavra’s philanthropic activities reached the pilgrims who came to the monastery from great distances, providing them with food, shelter, and medical help. It also significantly contributed to the local community by offering refuge for orphans and the elderly, education for the young by opening the first schools (including one for girls as early as the 1860s), hospital care, and extraordinary help in particular times of need. Antonii thus fused the charitable and the contemplative, the activist and the ascetic—something that monastic circles later saw as antinomies.

Coda Metropolitan Filaret and Archimandrite Antonii both administered the TrinitySergius Lavra for forty-six years, working closely together for thirty-six of those years. Filaret died on November 19, 1867. Toviia recollected concelebrating the memorial service immediately after the news arrived at the Lavra, to the “universal wailing of the people.”125 Filaret was buried in a chapel of Saint Filaret the Generous, which had been erected for that purpose as an attachment to the Lavra’s Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit (later destroyed during “restoration” work in the Soviet period) (see figure 2.4). Metropolitan Filaret’s death devastated Antonii, who felt that he had been “orphaned” and who thereafter no longer had the same vigor. In February 1872, he fell ill, and after that suffered from chronic illness, and though he requested from Metropolitan Innokentii (Veniaminov) to be allowed to retire, Innokentii wanted him to remain as prior. In 1873, a stroke left him bedridden.126 The administration of the Lavra fell to the Governing Council, which consulted Antonii only for important matters. He died on May 12, 1877, and was buried in the Chapel of Saint Filaret, next to Metropolitan Filaret; his funeral attracted a huge throng of common pilgrims and notable laymen. Toviia said that after fifteen years of serving with

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figure 2.4. The Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, with the Saint Filaret attachment Source: New York Public Library Digital Collection. Used with permission.

Antonii, he felt Antonii’s death as the loss “of a Father and benefactor” that “severely shook” him.127 The rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, Archimandrite Mikhail (Luzin), delivered the funeral eulogy, declaring that Antonii was “the image of the true monk.”128 In sum, Archimandrite Antonii’s leadership transformed Trinity-Sergius in virtually every aspect. As Filaret wrote in a report to the Holy Synod in 1863, in the first

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thirty-three years of Antonii’s service as prior, the number of monks more than doubled. The dramatic increase in brothers demanded greater means for their support; Filaret stated that Antonii’s care for the Lavra resulted in a “significant strengthening of the material means for the maintenance of the Lavra and the support of the brothers.” Moreover, under his care were founded, and by his care are maintained in the Lavra, a populous school for children of the common people (of whom more than 180 enjoy the support of the Lavra) [and] a school of iconography, which has demonstrated significant success. . . . Apart from the usual hospital for elderly brothers, two hospitals have been built and receive support—in the Lavra, a men’s; . . . and outside the Lavra, in the Home for the Poor, a women’s [hospital] for the poor and for visitors. Under the leadership of Archimandrite Antonii, a significant number of monastics formed, some of whom have become abbots of monasteries in various dioceses, and some of whom have, with [great] merit, entered missionary service in the domain of the archbishop of Kamchatka.129 The Holy Synod indeed recognized Antonii’s contributions. He enjoyed the respect of high society and drew common pilgrims, beautifying the buildings of Trinity-Sergius and its liturgical services, thereby increasing its visibility; and he changed attitudes within the monastery and in the Church itself toward the Church’s philanthropic engagements. Finally, he furthered the work of his spiritual mentor, Serafim of Sarov, in the revival of contemplative spirituality.

The Late Nineteenth Century The successful collaboration of Metropolitan Filaret and Archimandrite Antonii transformed the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and expanded its range of activities. Although none of Filaret’s successors would be nearly as involved in the affairs of the Lavra as he was, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century the priors continued to develop the monastery in the directions set by Antonii.

Archimandrite Leonid (Kavelin), Prior, 1877–91 Antonii’s successor was Archimandrite Leonid (Kavelin), a man of very different background and character who proved a far less successful “match” for the monastery. Born Lev A. Kavelin in 1822, he came from a prominent aristocratic family in the Diocese of Kaluga; on the paternal side, he had blood ties to the well-known

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publicist Konstantin Kavelin, and his maternal relations included Admiral Nakhimov. Starting in 1835, he attended the elite Corps of Pages School in Moscow, from which he graduated with distinction in 1840. He then served as an officer in the Imperial Guard and, by the time he left the service in 1852, had risen to the rank of captain. His family estate was close to Optina Hermitage, which he visited frequently both as a child and as an adult, when he engaged in conversations with the elders of Optina, Leonid (Nagolkin) and Makarii (Ivanov), as well as the Slavophile Ivan Kireevskii. In 1852, Lev Kavelin entered Optina Hermitage as a novice. He had always been religiously inclined, according to those who knew him, but the reasons for his decision to abandon a brilliant military career and enter the monastery remain obscure.130 He underwent the novitiate under the elder Makarii’s direction and worked closely with Makarii, Kireevskii, and others to translate early ascetic texts and the writings of Paisii Velichkovskii into Russian. Throughout his life, Leonid remained a prolific author of works in church history. In 1853, he published the first edition of his Historical Description of the Kozel’sk Vvedensk Optina Hermitage and, while at Optina, also published histories of other monasteries in the Diocese of Kaluga as well as a biography of Starets Makarii.131 After his tonsure and ordination to the priesthood in 1857, he went to Jerusalem as a member of the Russian mission. Two years later, he requested to be released from the mission (for reasons of health) and returned to Optina, visiting Mount Athos on the return journey. At the end of 1863, he was elevated to the status of archimandrite and appointed head of the mission in Jerusalem, but personal conflicts and intrigues led him to transfer to Constantinople as head of the embassy church in 1865. During this time, he published histories of the Bulgarian and Serbian churches as well as of Russian pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Athens. In 1869, he was appointed abbot of the New Jerusalem Monastery in the Moscow Diocese, a well-known institution founded by Patriarch Nikon in the seventeenth century. This was perhaps the happiest period of his life, during which he engaged in restoration work and also reordered and researched the monastery’s sacristy and archive. He discovered the belongings of Patriarch Nikon and established a museum of Nikon’s personal collection in the monastery; Nikon, indeed, became Leonid’s historical hero.132 After Archimandrite Antonii’s death in 1877, Metropolitan Innokentii appointed Leonid prior of Trinity-Sergius; after such a distinguished career, he was probably one of the few monks who had the stature to follow in Antonii’s footsteps. Leonid, however, was evidently very reluctant to assume that post. During Antonii’s last years, the Lavra had been without strict authority, and discipline in the community had declined. Leonid, who retained the spirit of military discipline, attempted to restore strict order in the monastery, but he soon aroused much discontent. One

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monk wrote that Leonid was “good to those who were good, [but] to the weak (i.e., the lazy and disobedient) he was a strict father, punishing and, when he saw correction in the guilty, forgiving and forgetting the past. Almost all our brothers resented the batiushka [little father]. Many, very many, did not understand the late batiushka.”133 Other contemporary accounts attest to the change in atmosphere and the discontent of the monks. Thus one visitor wrote: Much has changed in the Lavra and for the worse, not for the better. . . . [The death of Antonii] set the limit on all that was good and amiable and served as the beginning of the establishment of mercilessly strict and severe rules in the Lavra, of some sort of military subordination of each and every one in everything, without any necessity or use in the sense of improving the monastery. This same visitor asked one monk, “Where is Father Veniamin?” The monk replied, “At Makhra,” where delinquent monks from Trinity-Sergius were frequently sent “for correction.” He asked what had happened to various other monks, and received the reply that one had left, a second had been expelled, and a third was at Makhra. “That’s the way it is with us,” the monk explained. “Some are driven out, and if you are not driven out, they send you to Makhra.”134 Toviia painted a similar picture. He wrote that Leonid was extremely intelligent and a sincere lover of monasticism. He himself was a very strict monk, and “he constantly demanded the same from the brothers.” He was hot-tempered, though he did not bear grudges. He loved those brothers who would admit their faults and ask forgiveness, but he could not bear those who would try to excuse and justify themselves. Toviia continued that, on his transfer to Trinity-Sergius, Leonid was somehow instigated against the brotherhood and therefore treated everyone with suspicion. Toviia himself felt as though he had to be extremely cautious around the new prior and very patient with him, and that this situation persisted for several years.135 Leonid was unpopular not only with the brothers but also with pilgrims. He purportedly expelled beggars from the monastery.136 He also did not like superfluous ceremony or splendor. Thus, after presiding at the liturgy, he would quietly escape out the back door rather than process solemnly through the middle of the church as the pilgrims expected. Because of physical weakness and personal style, he presided at the liturgy less frequently and less expressively than his predecessor. Whereas Antonii frequently received visitors in his cell and earned the respect of high society as an engaging conversationalist, Leonid was reserved; he disliked “idle chatter” and avoided contact with visitors.137 According to one observer, wealthy women especially disliked him and gossiped about his capriciousness, his “impossible” character, and his neglect of the monastery’s needs and liturgical services.138 Also, unlike Antonii and despite his own scholarly interests, Leonid had

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poor relations with the Theological Academy.139 He found refuge, however, in a small circle of aristocratic men who shared his love of history and his interests in Russian culture, and among such individuals he enjoyed love and respect.140 Eventually, however, Leonid’s efforts bore fruit. He succeeded in restoring discipline at the monastery, carried out restoration work in the Lavra, and continued his own scholarly activities (publishing the fruits of his research in the Lavra’s archives). Perhaps his greatest legacy was in promoting individuals who would be future leaders of Trinity-Sergius. Thus, in 1879, he supported the novice Nikolai Rozhdestvenskii, the monastery’s future treasurer Archimandrite Nikon (later archbishop of Vologda), in his foundation of the Lavra’s first popular periodical, the Trinity Leaflets (Troitskie listki). After the initial strained years, Leonid came to appreciate Toviia and put him forth to the Holy Synod for recognition. After twentyfive years of service as archdeacon, fifteen under Antonii and another ten under Leonid, Toviia began to lose his voice and experience rheumatism in his legs. As soon as Leonid found out, recognizing that Toviia’s service as archdeacon was drawing to a close, he put him forward for ordination to the priesthood. After Toviia’s ordination to the priesthood in 1888, Leonid affectionately congratulated him and said to him: “I know that as an archdeacon you would have stayed in one position of service, but now the road is open; do not take pride in this, but ask God for help, labor honestly and sincerely. You have great prospects ahead of you.” And indeed the following year Leonid promoted Toviia to the position of steward (ekonom).141 Like Toviia, Leonid’s own cell attendant (keleinik), Kronid, would also serve as prior in the early twentieth century. Leonid died on October 22, 1891, after a short illness, at the age of seventy. Although he had been an unpopular leader of the monastery, he had restored discipline and prepared the future leadership of the community.

Archimandrite Pavel (Glebov), Prior, 1891–1904 On December 23, 1891, in response to the recommendation by Metropolitan Leontii (Lebedenskii) of Moscow, the Synod appointed Pavel as namestnik of TrinitySergius and abbot of Bethany Monastery.142 Having been born Petr Glebov on June 12, 1827, the future archimandrite was the son of a village sacristan from the Province of Riazan. He began his studies in the local seminary but failed to finish because of his family’s poverty. At the age of eighteen, he entered the Savvino-Storozhevskii Monastery in the Moscow region, where his uncle, Nikolai, was abbot. His uncle was a very strict ascetic; Petr, who shared his cell, followed his example. He took monastic vows, and received the name Pavel, in 1854; was ordained to the diaconate the following year; and became a hieromonk in 1858. After Pavel’s uncle was transferred to a different monastery in 1856, the new abbot of the Savvino-Storozhevskii Monastery paid little attention to the internal

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life of the monastery and concentrated most of his attention on building projects. Although Pavel assumed the post of treasurer in 1861, he devoted himself to caring for the internal life of the community. He proved very capable; not only did the brothers of the monastery look to him as their spiritual guide, but Bishop Leonid of Dmitrov also valued Pavel’s reliability and attentiveness and chose him for his confessor. When Leonid became archbishop in Iaroslavl, he took Pavel along and appointed him the steward (ekonom) of the episcopal residence and relied heavily upon his help in administering the diocese. Although Leonid died soon after, his successor recognized Pavel’s abilities and, in 1878, appointed him the prior of the Tolgskii Monastery—an ancient and respected first-class monastery that had fallen into disorder through decades of weak administration. In twelve years under Pavel’s administration, the Tolgskii Monastery flowered both externally and in its internal, monastic life. The Synod recognized his success and raised him to the status of an archimandrite in 1879 and bestowed several awards on him.143 Metropolitan Leontii, who had heard of Pavel’s achievements in the Tolgskii Monastery, chose him to succeed Archimandrite Leonid as prior of Trinity-Sergius. The Lavra was planning an elaborate celebration for the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint Sergius and needed an effective administrator to organize this important event—in less than a year. In contrast to Leonid, Pavel appreciated the aesthetics of magnificent liturgical services and enjoyed interacting with lay visitors.144 Indeed, Toviia described Pavel as having “completely the opposite” type of character as his predecessor. He was a person who, “in every respect,” represented “the embodiment of goodness”—humility, simplicity, patience, love, and tolerance toward everyone. He loved to beautify the churches and preside at the liturgy. (Toviia noted that, although Pavel loved part-singing, he did not understand it well and tended to favor those singers who “shouted the loudest.”) “The distinguishing feature of his natural gifts,” according to Toviia, “was his love for building,” which was so strong as to be a passion for him, which he understood well and at which he excelled.145 Indeed, Pavel set to work building immediately after assuming his post in January 1892, only nine months before the planned celebration of the five-hundredyear memorial of Saint Sergius. Archimandrite Leonid had first promoted the idea of celebrating the anniversary of Saint Sergius in an article in 1885. In 1890, the Governing Council of the Lavra drew up an initial program for the celebration, which was far more modest than the celebration would eventually become, focusing on liturgical services in the monastery itself. After Archimandrite Leonid died in October 1891 and the metropolitan of Moscow, Ioannikii, was transferred to the See of Kiev in November of the same year, the monastery was deprived of its leadership at a crucial stage in the planning. The new metropolitan, Leontii (Lebedenskii) met with Archimandrite Pavel after the latter assumed office and together they began to

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plan for the celebration.146 Because both were new, however, most of the planning for the actual celebration fell to Toviia, who was elevated to the status of archimandrite and promoted to treasurer of the Lavra (the second position in the monastery hierarchy after the prior) in May 1892.147 While Toviia was planning the celebration, Archimandrite Pavel was building. Because the number of pilgrims increased exponentially during the nineteenth century, there was a chronic problem with providing shelter for common pilgrims who could not afford to stay in one of the hotels. In 1878, the monastery converted a home donated by G. Rumiantsev into a hostel for pilgrims.148 To address the continued need, Pavel decided to construct another, larger hostel (strannopriimnyi dom) in honor of Saint Sergius. Pavel submitted a plan to Metropolitan Leontii in March for a three-story stone building on the southeastern side of the monastery, designed by the architect A. A. Latkov in the “Russian style” (see figure 2.5). The monastery spent large sums of its own money on the construction and also received donations both from individual monks and from laypeople; the total cost of the building was 79,000 rubles.149 The top floor was not finished by the time of the celebration, but the hostel opened its doors for the feast anyway, and despite Toviia’s attempt to prevent them from going into the unfinished portions because he regarded them as unsafe, the building gave shelter to masses of pilgrims, who literally covered the floors.150

figure 2.5. A view of Trinity-Sergius in the late 19th century. The Pilgrims’ Hostel built in 1892 is the building on the left side of the photograph, above the head of the man in the street. Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission.

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Although Trinity-Sergius originally planned its own celebration of the feast, public discussion of the upcoming event drew the interest and participation of diverse groups of laity, which transformed it into a far more massive occasion. In the end, the feast was celebrated as a national holiday (a three-day holiday for Moscow), and it was preceded by a three-day pilgrimage on foot from Moscow to Sergiev Posad that began with tens of thousands of people and, picking more up from villages along the way, surpassed a hundred thousand people by the time it reached Sergiev Posad. The celebration on the feast day itself, September 25, 1892, included members of the royal family as well as leading hierarchs of the Church. On the following day, the Moscow Theological Academy marked the event with a symposium that included speeches from the academy’s rector, Archimandrite Antonii (Khrapovitskii); the academy’s leading Church historian, E. E. Golubinskii; and Moscow University’s leading historian of Russia, Vasilii Kliuchevskii.151 Archimandrite Pavel’s building projects did not end with the pilgrim’s hostel. The following year, the monastery began construction on an even larger three-story stone complex that included a hospital and an almshouse (bol’nitsa-bogadel’ia) for the poor of Sergiev Posad in the Pafnut’ev Garden on the west side of the monastery, also designed by Latkov; connecting this building to the monastery, Pavel also constructed a building for the Lavra’s printing house and the editorial office of Trinity Leaflets. The project took several years to complete and cost 333,000 rubles.152 In 1901, some local traders who had rented the wooden sheds in the Shed Row asked the Lavra to build new accommodations that would be safe from fire and more attractive. The Lavra decided to build a new stone building for shops along the roadway (above the Krasnogorsk Chapel, further up the road from the Shed Row); the construction of this Trade Row was finished in 1903 at a cost of 61,000 rubles (see figure 2.6). The new building consisted of twenty-eight shops that carried an annual rent of 300 rubles, with a tearoom in the center that paid 1,800 rubles a year in rent.153 In addition to constructing buildings, Pavel poured his energies into developing the fledgling Zosimova Hermitage as a community under TrinitySergius, which will be considered in chapter 3. In short, it is clear that Toviia’s characterization of Archimandrite Pavel as having a “passion” for building was accurate, because he was engaged in projects throughout his tenure as prior. Moreover, these projects were very diverse; although the new trading complex was certainly very lucrative for the monastery in the long run, the monastery spent far more on philanthropic projects that served both pilgrims and the local community. The construction of the printing house was a major contribution, and Trinity-Sergius would serve as one of the Church’s major publishers in late Imperial Russia. Finally, his building also encouraged the development of monastic life itself, for the Zosimova Hermitage would emerge as a leading spiritual center in the early twentieth century. In his final years, the ailing Pavel

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figure 2.6. The new Trade Row. Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission. rarely left his cell. During his last week, when he was bedridden and close to death, the brothers of the Zosimova Hermitage wrote to him, requesting that he be buried there.154 After a solemn funeral service conducted by three bishops together with Archimandrite Nikon and Archimandrite Toviia, Pavel was buried in the Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God at the Zosimova Hermitage.155

Conclusions Trinity-Sergius underwent dramatic transformations during the nineteenth century. The brotherhood quadrupled in size, the monastery’s budget dramatically expanded, its philanthropic engagements proliferated, pilgrimage skyrocketed. To what can these changes be attributed? The revival of monasticism, and the revival of Orthodoxy more broadly, of which it was a part, must be understood in the context of the rise of the Russian nation after 1812 and the crisis of identity caused by Napoleon’s invasion, followed by renewed interest in things “Russian” after Russia’s victory. Indeed, Metropolitan Filaret was a key player in the “awakening of Orthodoxy” in the first half of the nineteenth century. Just as Russian elites were exploring what it meant to be Russian (which, for many, was exemplified by the common folk or narod), so Church leaders such as Filaret were questioning the Western in-

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fluences that had shaped Russian Orthodoxy and the Enlightenment influences that had shaped Russian elite culture in the eighteenth century, and were trying to rediscover what was distinctively Orthodox.156 Another factor of the revival emerges from this chapter: Talented and visionary leadership led to the transformation of Trinity-Sergius. The credit first goes to Metropolitan Filaret for having a vision of renewed monastic life that he wished to see manifest at Trinity-Sergius, as elsewhere. Moreover, Filaret transformed the office of prior—the person most responsible for the management and leadership of the monastery—from a temporary position held by “learned monks” on an ecclesiastical career path toward greater promotions into a position that was the culmination of a truly monastic vocation. The significance of this change should not be underestimated, but it alone was clearly not enough; the office could be held by a true monk such as Afanasii who, nevertheless, did not have the leadership ability to transform the monastery. The appropriate person was also needed for the position —and here Filaret made the right decision in selecting Antonii. The primary credit for transforming Trinity-Sergius in the nineteenth century must therefore belong to Archimandrite Antonii. He exercised visionary leadership that challenged the status quo of Church and monastic life in the first half of the nineteenth century on many levels. He expanded the brotherhood in the face of the perception that the monastery lacked sufficient resources. He increased the monastery’s philanthropic involvements not only against the perceived lack of sources but, even more important, also against the prevailing presuppositions that the Church was “otherworldly” and that it was not the Church’s place to engage in social action; here Antonii had to persist even against Filaret’s own reluctance. He increased the monastery’s economic potential, again in the face of social perceptions that the monastery’s “otherworldliness” should preclude it from moneymaking activities. Yet here, too, Antonii was stretching the limits, because the higher income was not being used to increase the luxury of the monks themselves but to broaden the sphere of activity of the monastery—and the monastery was frequently spending as much as or even more than it was making in his time. He paid attention to the monastery’s appearance, to the beautification of its buildings, and to ensuring that its liturgical services were conducted with great solemnity and grandeur, including his own expressive style as celebrant. For Archimandrite Antonii, the monastic renunciation of the world did not necessarily mean withdrawal from the world. Although he felt drawn to contemplation and would foster others in its pursuit, he also recognized that this was not the role of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Rather, the Lavra remained intimately connected with the world and functioned to serve people’s spiritual, religious, and material needs—the last of which it served by offering an increasingly expanded array of charitable institutions and activities that were directed at the needy from the

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surrounding areas as well as poor pilgrims who traveled great distances to visit the monastery. The monastery served the spiritual and religious needs not only of those drawn to join it but also of the myriads of pilgrims who were drawn by its relics of Saint Sergius, its magnificent liturgical services, and the spiritual guidance provided by its confessors. The massive increase of pilgrimage demonstrates that the monastery was truly satisfying such religious needs. In other words, the revival of monasticism was inseparable from the intimate connection it forged with Russian people of all classes. This served to draw increasing numbers of pilgrims—both common pilgrims, whose purchase of hundreds of thousands of candles fueled the monastery’s economy; and aristocratic ones, whose greater wealth and influence could be drawn upon in support of founding new philanthropic organizations or monastic communities. As is shown in the next chapter, such communities were also the result of Antonii’s determined vision to create opportunities for contemplative spirituality, again in the face of official policy and even Filaret’s own doubts.

3 Gethsemane: The Cradle of Monasticism Late in life, Archimandrite Toviia (Trofim Tsymbal) recounted how as a youth, after reading the lives of the saints, he desired to become a monk himself. These saints’ lives inspired a romanticized ideal of monastic life in his youthful imagination: “In my mind I pictured a monk, living alone in a narrow cell, carrying on a life of prayer and reading the word of God. In general, I imagined the ideal monk leading the spiritual, ascetic life. With such imaginings and spiritual longings of monasticism, I began my monastic life.”1 Trofim, who took monastic vows and received the name Toviia, soon discovered that the contemplative life of solitude was beyond the reach of a young novice or monk, and was to be attained only by a few after long years of a more active obedience to monastic authorities: “The very first experiences of monastic obedience convinced me that the life I had imagined was a long way from me as a new novice. Experienced elders explained to me that such a life could be led only by those monks who had lived in a monastery for decades, above all those who had meekly borne their monastic obediences their whole life. Beyond that, the life of stillness comes only to people who are advanced in years, and even then only under the strict supervision of other, more experienced elders.”2 He himself became convinced that “it is necessary to hold to [the path of] carrying out one’s obedience sincerely and humbly, and that stillness would come of its own, according to God’s direction.”3 Toviia threw himself into a life of obedience, one that led him to positions of authority rather than to the quiet withdrawal of a hermit. Nevertheless, he never lost the attraction to that form of life: “Through my whole life I loved solitude and quiet, and therefore (living in the Lavra) I often went to Gethsemane Skete to the elders there.”4 He was not alone in his attraction to a spiritual, ascetic life characterized by solitude and 73

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silence; rather, this was one of the driving forces of the nineteenth-century monastic revival. At Trinity-Sergius, this way of life was manifested at the community Toviia himself loved to visit, Gethsemane Skete. The path of Orthodox spirituality referred to as “mental prayer” or the “prayer of the heart” emphasized continual private prayer in silence and solitude, through which a person can open himself up to experience God’s presence and be transformed, deified. The pursuit of hesychia, or stillness (in Russian, bezmolvie),5 was marginalized in Russian monasticism after the defeat of the nonpossessors and continued to exist only in remote hermitages; in the eighteenth century, Peter the Great tried to eliminate even these because he equated contemplation with laziness and eremiticism with a flight from service. It was revived by Paisii Velichkovskii in eighteenth-century Moldavia and transmitted to Russia in the early nineteenth century. One of those who revived its practice in Russia at the beginning of the century was Serafim of Sarov, from whom Archimandrite Antonii received his inspiration. Serafim was a pivotal figure for another feature of the revival of contemplative spirituality in nineteenth-century Russia: the revival and transformation of starchestvo, or spiritual eldership. Although the term starets in medieval Russian monasticism generally referred to those in the monastic hierarchy or administration, the practice of spiritual guidance under an elder existed since the early centuries of Christian monasticism. The elder was an individual of deep spiritual knowledge and insight, something achieved by years of intense efforts in prayer, discipline, and asceticism. In turn, he attracted disciples from monastic circles, who placed themselves under his spiritual direction. This spiritual direction included complete obedience to the elder’s will, which served as means for the disciple to learn to his surrender self-will. In nineteenth-century monastic practice, it could also entail daily confessions, in which the disciple opened to the starets not only his actions and sins but also his every thought and desire as a means of purifying his heart. Traditionally, spiritual eldership was restricted primarily to monastic practice; the starets provided guidance in the spiritual life for other monks. The unique development in nineteenth-century Russia came when Serafim of Sarov and the elders of Optina Hermitage opened their doors to give spiritual guidance to all who came in search of it, including the laity and ordinary pilgrims. From the circle of monastic disciples, the elder’s fame spread to the laity, who then came in enormous numbers to visit him in search of guidance and consolation. The fame of a few such elders spread throughout Russia, and they drew thousands seeking guidance. As such, the very term starchestvo, referring to this phenomenon, is specific to nineteenthcentury Russia. It was located in specific communities known for their high spiritual life. As in The Brothers Karamazov, it also found its opponents—even within monasteries—as an innovation.6

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Like Toviia, Archimandrite Antonii was also drawn to a life of contemplative withdrawal. Metropolitan Filaret, however, would not allow him to fulfill this desire, because Filaret needed him too much to administer Trinity-Sergius. Antonii sought at least to provide the opportunity for others to pursue contemplation, which was not possible in a large monastery like Trinity-Sergius; therefore, in the early 1840s he and Filaret conceived the idea of constructing a new, small community close to Trinity-Sergius that would provide for the possibility for contemplation, both for their own occasional retreat and for others to pursue it full time. This was the beginning of Gethsemane Skete. Initially, they were uncertain whether they would even be able to find individuals interested in a stricter monastic rule with more emphasis on solitude and stillness. Yet they did find people—and in the subsequent decades, Gethsemane grew at an incredible and totally unanticipated rate, and even generated more communities. Later, a miracle-working icon and famed elders served to draw a great number of pilgrims. Gethsemane was a success story in the nineteenth century, and many aspects of its development highlight central features of the monastic revival in nineteenth-century Russia.

In Search of the Desert Archimandrite Antonii repeatedly sought opportunities to pursue stillness. In 1837, Filaret permitted him one day a month for his own retreat at Bethany, but not more, because Trinity-Sergius could not do without him even for three days in a row. At a later point, Antonii built himself a cell at Makhrishchskii Monastery for the same purpose, perhaps because Bethany—with its seminary—was not quiet enough.7 The first mention of an idea of building a skete comes in a letter Filaret wrote in September 1841, clearly in response to a suggestion Antonii had raised: “The thought of a skete is very desired, but it requires more than a little reflection.” Antonii also suggested the former summerhouse at Korbukha as the location, but Filaret expressed his reservations that Korbukha would be sufficiently remote and undisturbed because of the proximity of a road; Bethany would have been better if it had not been for the seminary. Filaret concluded that the matter required further discussion.8 It is clear that the idea of contemplation and stillness attracted Filaret, as it did Antonii. In a sermon he delivered in one of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra’s churches in September 1842, he revealed aspects of his concerns that led to founding Gethsemane Skete. In speaking of the greatness of the Lavra, he begged the forgiveness of the community, stating that his thoughts tended toward the foundation of the monastery, with its first wooden church and wooden cells built by Saint Sergius with

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his own hands, when the community was small, isolated, poor, and devoted to solitude and prayer. Filaret continued: All that is certainly still here, only it has been closed by time, or locked up in these grand buildings, as jewels of great value are locked in a splendid safe. Open for me this safe; show me these jewels; . . . from it, without detriment, can be borrowed the blessed necessities, for example, the stillness [bezmolvie] of prayer, simplicity of life, the humility of wisdom. . . . Brothers of this community! You have come here, when this hermitage has already assumed the form, in many respects, of something like a cloistered city. But you did not come here in search of a city; it follows that you came in search of the desert [pustynia].9 The characteristics of the anchoritic life, Filaret continued, were the desire for a life of solitude, the complete rejection of and withdrawal from the world, and, having given up everything else, placing all one’s hope only in God. One renounces the world and flees to the wilderness in the same way that Christ entered the desert or sought solitude in the Garden of Gethsemane: “It is beneficial and salvific to run to the desert from the condemned world.” Filaret thus encouraged the monks of Trinity-Sergius to withdraw at least into the “inner desert,” and stated that he himself—who had to spend much of his time involved in the affairs of the world— also needed to find relief in solitude and silence.10 In short, for Filaret, true renunciation of the world meant withdrawal into solitude and stillness, the way Christ did in Gethsemane and Saint Sergius did when the monastery was originally founded. The notion of Gethsemane as a place for withdrawal, solitude, and prayer— together with the fact that it complemented Bethany, forming a sort of Holy Land in the heart of Russia—provided the name for the new community.11 Filaret potentially had a further motivation for founding the Skete: his conflicts with “official Orthodoxy” under Tsar Nicholas I (1825–55). In the 1820s and 1830s, the Church administration was brought under greater control by the government and its appointed bureaucrat in the Holy Synod, the chief procurator. Filaret’s criticisms of Chief Procurator N. A. Protasov (1836–55) and the fallout over the translation of the Bible into Russian resulted in Filaret’s exclusion from the Holy Synod until the emperor’s death in 1855; in the early 1840s, he was even afraid of being forced out of his post as metropolitan of Moscow. It was precisely at this time that Filaret supported Antonii in founding Gethsemane Skete, which could serve as a place of retreat— or even retirement—for himself.12 The foundations for the Skete were laid when the opportunity arose to preserve an ancient wooden church. The Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos in the village of Podsosen’e was built in 1616 by Archimandrite Dionisii, a famous abbot of Trinity-Sergius Lavra, but in the early nineteenth century a stone church was built

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in the village and the ancient wooden church had fallen into disrepair. The parish priest wrote to Metropolitan Filaret, requesting that they be allowed to tear down the church and use it for firewood. Filaret, desiring to preserve the church, sent Antonii, who held that the church should be saved because of its antiquity and connection with historically significant churchmen of the Lavra; he further suggested that it be transferred to Korbukha “for the reading of the Psalter for the deceased brothers and philanthropists” of the Lavra.13 Filaret was not certain that Antonii intended this to be the foundation of the Skete, about which he was evidently still hesitant anyway. In a letter, he asked Antonii what was the purpose of moving the church to Korbukha and wondered “whether two or three people can be found” who would pursue stillness there.14 Filaret (Drozdov) was still not confirmed that Korbukha was the right location, and it took the support of another Filaret (Amfiteatrov), the metropolitan of Kiev, to convince Filaret (Drozdov) that Antonii was right.15 By September 1843, they had clearly decided to found a skete named Gethsemane at Korbukha around the wooden Dormition Church; Filaret wrote to Antonii that “it would be for the good if the Mother of God blessed” the Skete, and the work began. Filaret wondered whether they should go through official channels in seeking permission to relocate the church, and—though he recognized this was the proper course—decided it was better to risk a reprimand later than raise too many questions at the beginning of the process.16 Indeed, as they continued to establish the new community, Filaret wanted to keep it a secret from all, including—or especially—the Holy Synod. “The less said the better,” he wrote to Antonii; “if God blesses the matter, it will speak for itself.” When asked, he told others he was simply trying to preserve an ancient church. He also suggested closing off Korbukha from those who had no reason to be there, and he instructed Antonii not to bring guests: “The Skete is for solitude, not for show.”17 When someone made a picture of the Skete and wanted to write about it in an art review, Filaret tried to prevent it by telling the censor that “there is no information about the existence of the Skete, and what it is called, which he could legally lean on.” The Skete, he emphasized to Antonii again, “is not for curiosity and talk.”18 Filaret took a particularly bold move in hiding the establishment of Gethsemane Skete from the Holy Synod, which needed to confirm every new monastery and even should have known about the building of new churches. When a wellwisher of the Skete, Semen Lepeshkin, wanted to donate land specifically for its support, Filaret was reluctant to do this formally because that would require going through official channels.19 Three years later, Antonii was ready to inform the Synod about it, but Filaret still opposed the move; he told Antonii that the existence of the Skete was known, but the Synod did not say anything to him about it. At the time, Antonii had plans for a cemetery church in the Skete; Filaret wrote that this would require submitting the plans for official approval, which he strongly opposed because

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the Synod and even the emperor would need to approve the architectural plans. Filaret had seen many instances where architectural plans submitted by monasteries to the Synod had been completely changed—and not for the better. Moreover, he was apprehensive about submitting plans for a monastery the very existence of which was “officially unknown,” and which therefore would require “various information and explanations.”20 Years later, Filaret would admit to Antonii that he acted without authorization and heard that the Synod thought to “demand an explanation” from him; but, he concluded, “it was pleasing to God and to Saint Sergius to bless the matter and to shield our violation of the new letter of the law, although according to the ancient rules I acted blamelessly.”21 Filaret’s reluctance to go through official channels was very characteristic of his personal style of administering (see chapter 2), but it was also very telling about the bureaucratic rigidity of the Nicolaevan age, in which good endeavors were heavily scrutinized and hampered. Six years after Gethsemane Skete’s beginning, at the end of 1850, Lepeshkin wanted to donate land and shops in Moscow for the support of the Skete to secure an income for it independent of the Lavra, and thus ensure its survival under Filaret’s successor; only then did Filaret finally come around to feeling the necessity of officially informing the Synod about the Skete’s existence.22 He still had great apprehension about the move, and he did not know how to go about it; he wrote to Antonii a very revealing letter in which he wondered whether to write the chief procurator, Protasov, or directly to the emperor. Filaret was not certain that the chief procurator would take the issue to the emperor in due time, and that beginning by going through official channels “can easily spoil” such a process: “To write directly to the Sovereign would not have been a question earlier; but now it is possible to doubt whether such a free movement outside the official order will be accepted with lenience.”23 Only a few months later did Filaret decide to both submit an official declaration about the land donation and at the same time write to Protasov personally to explain the whole affair, urging a “favorable decision.”24 If Trinity-Sergius itself had become a “cloistered city” and was no longer the simple hermitage that Saint Sergius had founded, as Filaret said in his sermon, then he and Antonii could at least ensure that Gethsemane Skete followed that example. They allowed no gold or silver in the church, and all the ecclesiastical utensils such as the chalice were made of wood.25 In 1844, they continued the construction, building apartments for Filaret and Antonii that were attached to the church itself, followed by a building for the brothers’ cells (see figure 3.1).26 By June 1844, the first inhabitants were evidently settling there.27 Filaret—who was wearing some of Saint Sergius’ original vestments during the service—consecrated the church on September 28, 1844. In his sermon on the occasion, Filaret cited the example of those who loved solitude and stillness and therefore retreated to the desert and there found

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figure 3.1. Gethsemane Skete Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission. spiritual strength, such as the Prophet Elijah, John the Baptist, and Antony the Great. The love of stillness was transferred to Russia as well, and such figures as Saint Sergius retreated to the forests far from human habitation. However, particularly in Russia, those who sought solitude attracted to themselves disciples and admirers, so that the very places of retreat eventually lost their isolation. In the contemporary world, filled with so much bustle, Filaret asked, where was the individual in search of stillness to go? “Would it not, perhaps, be agreeable to settle in a small, simple, secluded community, guarded as much as possible from the chatter of the world, under the shadow of a great monastery?”28 Hence his desire to keep the community a secret was in part motivated by a wish to protect it from the invasive curiosity of outsiders. As the new community was forming, Filaret and Antonii also worked on a rule to govern its life and worship. Antonii discussed the structure with the first inhabitants, and then sent the results of their discussion to Filaret for his commentary and approval. They discussed everything from the order of services and the rule of prayer to what kind of food was to be served in the refectory. On the whole, the early inhabitants of the Skete wanted to set rigorous standards that included fasting three days a week (i.e., no animal or dairy products), two days a week with dairy, and two days with fish—in contrast to the normal two days a week of fasting according to the Orthodox calendar. Similarly, they proposed a rigorous rule of prayer. Antonii

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generally supported their aspirations, but Filaret was more cautious, recommending a more moderate path both in fasting and in prayer. He wondered whether such zeal could be maintained, and recommended instead a more reasonable rule for communal prayer that everyone could fulfill, and those who were eager to do more could have a more rigorous individual rule of private prayer in their cells.29 The community was also strictly cenobitic, and the Skete provided the brothers with everything they needed; the brothers did not receive any cash allowances and could not maintain any personal possessions. Women were prohibited from entering the Skete—a practice not unusual in the Orthodox monastic world (most famously at Mount Athos) as a way of reducing temptation and distraction from the presence of the opposite sex; this also reduced the number of male visitors (because pilgrims often traveled as families), thus ensuring its isolation and quiet. Women were allowed into the Skete only once a year, on the patronal feast of the community, the third day of the Feast of the Dormition, August 17, on which day, according to tradition, the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven from the Garden of Gethsemane. Because the first day of the Feast of the Dormition, August 15, was the patronal feast of the main cathedral in the Lavra, in later years large numbers of pilgrims would come each year for that feast and then also visit the Skete.30 The first inhabitants that Filaret chose to send to Gethsemane were a group of former Old Believers from Moldavia who had converted to Orthodoxy. These monks were Lipovans, Russian Old Believers who had gone to Moldavia in the early eighteenth century to flee discrimination in Russia.31 This particular group consisted of disciples gathered around a respected elder, where their practice included reading Paisii Velichkovskii’s Philokalia (something unusual for Old Believers) and the Church Fathers. One of the disciples, Makarii, read an anthology of the Church Fathers selected to demonstrate to Old Believers that the four ancient patriarchates (Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem), together with the Russian Orthodox Church, were in fact the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” confessed in the creed. Makarii became persuaded and succeeded in convincing his fellow disciples and ultimately the elder himself, and the entire group came to an Orthodox monastery through the mediation of Ioann, another former Old Believer who had converted to Orthodoxy. After being received into the Orthodox Church by the metropolitan of Ias˛ i (Jassy) in 1839, some went to Russia and settled in a “common-faith” (edinovercheskii) monastery32 on the Irgiz River in the Saratov region, whereas others, including Makarii and their original elder, joined the monastery of Vorona in Moldavia.33 In 1843, Makarii and a fellow disciple, Aleksandr, decided to come to Russia and contacted Metropolitan Filaret, who was active in trying to bring Old Believers into the Orthodox Church. Filaret sent them to Gethsemane as its first inhabitants in 1844.34 Because Makarii and Aleksandr had been tonsured monks in the Moldavian

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monastery, there was a question as to whether they should be tonsured again, because the Synod did not accept those tonsured outside Russia. Filaret initially accepted them, informing Antonii that they were to be allowed to wear the clothing of tonsured monks (mantiia), but a few months later he reversed his decision to ensure that the Synod’s regulations were followed, and they were tonsured again in March 1845.35 They were both ordained a few weeks later, and Makarii became the first superior of the Skete, with the title blagochinnyi (spiritual supervisor).36 During the last months of 1844 and the first months of 1845, there were numerous monks who, after careful consideration by Filaret and Antonii, were transferring to the Skete.37 Although the community was growing rapidly, there were problems with leadership in the community until Filaret and Antonii found the right person for the job. Dissension arose almost immediately after Makarii was appointed superior of the Skete. Not only were there tensions between the former Old Believers and others, but Makarii also balked at administrative duties and instead sought solitude in the wilderness—something that Filaret opposed for several years.38 By 1848, however, Filaret allowed Makarii to retreat into solitude and also take the great schema (i.e., take a second set of vows that involved a more intense level of fasting and silence, so called because of the distinctive habit, the schema), at which point he also received a new name, Ilarion. Makarii-Ilarion spent the next ten years living as a hermit in the forest, the following ten years moving back and forth between the Skete and a hermitage, and the final ten years of his life (he died in 1878) living in the Skete. Although a respected elder, he was not a popular one—he had a reputation (euphemistically) for “straightforwardness” and for being as likely to expose a person for his sins as instruct him.39 His co-disciple and friend Aleksandr was also a very respected elder at Gethsemane, though of very different character than the strict and severe Makarii-Ilarion; he did not strive for extraordinary ascetic feats or solitude, but rather stayed in the Skete, faithfully went to all church services and fulfilled his obediences, ate only what was provided at the refectory, and wore only what the Skete provided—in other words, exemplified a kind of middle path by faithfully adhering to the community’s norm of life for all, and thereby he gained wide respect among the brothers, who frequently turned to him for advice.40 In mid-1849, the Skete received another one of the original group of Lipovan monks from Moldavia, Anatolii, who had gone to live at a common-faith monastery in the Saratov region, where he eventually became the treasurer and proved his administrative abilities. Archimandrite Antonii was aware of this, and by the end of the year Antonii appointed Anatolii as the new superior of Gethsemane. Finally they had found the right man—Anatolii proved to be a very successful superior of the community, a post he would hold for the next thirty years.41 Anatolii, like Archimandrite Antonii, was an excellent administrator who equally fostered both the

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community’s external life and its internal life. Anatolii developed a diverse economic foundation for the Skete. Together with Antonii and Filaret, he also worked to build up the Skete, adding new buildings; between 1847 and 1853, a refectory was built as well as a large bell tower, a hospital for the monks, and a hostel for pilgrims.42 At the same time, Anatolii strove to uphold a strict cenobitic order and to ensure that the community fulfilled its rule in church and in the refectory, as well as individual monks fulfilling their prayer rules and their obediences. He was reportedly capable of motivating the brotherhood to labor selflessly for the good of the community.43 Thus the Skete encountered some difficulties in its early stages, and Filaret was periodically plagued by doubts about the project. Although Filaret was trying to keep the very existence of the Skete a secret, there were rumors about its existence— and such rumors often were not very flattering to him. He wrote to Antonii that some were saying that he built the Skete “as a reproach to someone,” while others were saying that Filaret built it, but that his successor would “turn it into stables.”44 In another letter to Antonii, he was ruminating as to whether “the Skete, with its wooden churches, will be consolidated and long-lasting,” and he hoped it would last based on the worthiness of the ascetics who labored there rather than his own unworthiness. He also explicitly compared his establishment of Gethsemane with Platon founding Bethany.45 There was not only negative talk about the skete, however; indeed, many hierarchs wished to see it during their visits to the Lavra, and at least one even wanted his own cell there.46 Despite Filaret’s doubts and his fears that they would not be able to find “two or three” willing to live in the new community, Gethsemane proved remarkably successful—so much so that, two years after its founding, Filaret could write that “it is good that the Skete has become the cradle of monasticism even for several of the Lavra’s [brothers].” The Skete was particularly well suited for this because—like early monastic communities—it consisted of “like-minded and like-praying brothers” and was also removed from the curious eyes of worldly people.47 In 1850, Filaret was particularly gratified to receive relics and a letter from the patriarch of Jerusalem in which he congratulated them on “new Gethsemane”—when “we,” Filaret wrote to Antonii, “were afraid to dare call it Gethsemane.” 48 Two years after it opened, Filaret was pleased with the Skete’s success and was happy at the rapid growth of its brotherhood.49 Before long, however, it began to appear too successful, and he began to worry that the community was growing too large. It had been originally designed for fifteen people, but Antonii doubled that number, and Filaret supported the change; “now,” Filaret wrote to Antonii in April 1847, “you say that there are more than forty,” and Filaret expressed his doubts that there was enough room for them physically and whether such a large number would not endanger its quiet.50 He continued to express this concern in subsequent years, especially when he heard unpleasant stories from visitors, such as one case when a novice asked for

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a tip after giving the visitors a tour. Filaret was concerned that the community had grown so large that people such as this who were not the “Skete’s kind of people” could fall between the cracks.51 By 1850, Filaret was happy that there seemed to be fewer people than before trying to get into the Skete, but at the same time he was still concerned that it was becoming “as full as the world.”52 The Skete grew with remarkable speed, and in less than a decade it had grown to 120 brothers.53 What is remarkable is precisely how quickly the community grew. When Antonii and Filaret began the project, they did not know if others would respond to their desire to foster contemplative monasticism. They were nervous that people would not be found who desired such a strict monastic rule, which included complete cenobiticism and therefore complete nonpossession for individual monks, together with a rigorous rule of both communal liturgical prayer and individual prayer in one’s cell, and a single refectory for all that permitted no deviation. But over and over, Antonii and Filaret kept receiving requests from monks all over Russia who wished to join precisely a community where they could pursue stillness (hesychia), which they were not finding in the larger, populous, and less strict statefunded idiorhythmic monasteries. Contrary to critics who alleged that the growth of monasticism was fueled by those who were seeking an “easy” life in supposedly rich monasteries, Gethsemane demonstrates that many were drawn to just the kind of stricter form of monastic life that Filaret and Antonii labored to revive—that they were seeking precisely a more complete withdrawal from the world. Filaret and Antonii clearly had begun something that resonated in Russian society.

Holy Fools and Cave Dwellers One of those who joined Gethsemane Skete seeking stillness was the holy fool known as “Filippushka.” Born Filipp Khorev in November 1802, he was a serf in Vladimir Province who married and had several children before being widowed; though he remarried, after the death of his first wife he began to devote himself to spiritual pursuits to such an extreme that his neighbors were struck by his strange behavior. In 1837, he abandoned his family and his home and became a homeless pilgrim (strannik), wandering throughout Russia, and becoming widely known, particularly in Moscow, as a “holy fool.” He was considered a holy fool because he spoke in aphorisms, went barefoot and bareheaded all year long, wore chains under his clothing, and always carried with him a thirty-seven-pound steel staff with a bronze dove on the top. He was continually being harassed by officials and arrested by the police as a “passport-less vagrant.” He was also regarded as being very wise and very perceptive in understanding other people.54 During visits to Moscow, Filippushka became acquainted with Metropolitan Filaret, and they had a long and complex relationship. In 1847, Filaret sent him to

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Trinity-Sergius as a shelter from harassment by officials. His strange behavior and attractiveness for pilgrims, who came to him seeking advice, did not endear him to the brotherhood of the Lavra, however, and soon Filaret transferred him to Gethsemane. Yet even in the Skete, Filippushka could cause problems—Filaret was concerned that the novice who was sharing his cell was becoming “amused and carried away” by the holy fool, and that Filipp’s solitude would be compromised.55 So Filipp settled across the pond from Gethsemane and dug himself a cave, following the example of Antonii of the Kievan Caves in the eleventh century. Filaret gave his blessing, though he worried that Filippushka might run into problems with the authorities because he was not located in one of the official communities and did not have a passport. Filaret also approved as more joined Filippushka and the Caves community developed, though he cautioned that this activity should not become publicly known.56 Others were attracted to this new ascetic endeavor led by Filipp, and they constructed an entire network of crypts connected by corridors centering on an underground chapel. Although Filipp initially planned to have a few people join him, within a year and a half he was beginning to feel that the Caves were becoming too crowded and he contemplated leaving to a new place or simply returning to his life as a wandering pilgrim. But Filaret encouraged him to stay in a place where he could live without being hassled by officials and where he could be of benefit to others, although he suggested to Archimandrite Antonii that he not allow the Caves community to become too large.57 In March 1850, Archimandrite Antonii suggested to Filaret that they make Filipp an official novice, for this would make him a formal member of the community and he would no longer have to worry about problems with the authorities. Metropolitan Filaret was hesitant, uncertain that Filipp’s wanderlust would come to an end and that he would be satisfied with his “bronze bird” being “put in a cage.” And if they were to make him an official member of the community, they would become responsible for him.58 Filipp himself expressed his desire to become an official novice, and Hegumen Anatolii affirmed his sincerity toward the monastic life, so he was enrolled as a novice in April 1850.59 That autumn Filipp became very ill, and Antonii evidently tonsured him with the name of his protector—Filaret—though without official approval; he was officially tonsured in early 1851.60 Filaret wrote a letter to Antonii in January 1851 indicating some of the changes that joining the monastery entailed for the former holy fool; Filipp “answered for himself ” when he was a wandering pilgrim, but now “we must answer for him.” Before, he was governed by his own desires, even—Filaret wrote—if they were spiritual, but now he must be governed by obedience, that he had taken a holy vow and was obliged to fulfill it.61 Metropolitan Filaret’s apprehensions were justified; only a few months later, monk Filipp-Filaret told the metropolitan that he “did not find himself satisfactory

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for the cave brothers,” and that he was thinking of leaving the Caves or even departing altogether, to go somewhere were he was not known. Metropolitan Filaret responded that he was no longer “free as a bird” to do as he liked, that now he had a “nest” where he must remain.62 Filipp-Filaret clearly had difficulty giving up his life of wandering and adjusting to the new demands of obedience. The following year, Metropolitan Filaret wrote to Antonii that if Filipp-Filaret “wanted to begin and end with being a holy fool, then why was something else introduced in the middle?” The metropolitan was also worried that if Filipp-Filaret left the Caves community, he would cause others to vacillate as well—a great number of whom he had attracted there to begin with.63 In the end, Filipp-Filaret did leave the Caves; the Caves society, meanwhile, continued to flourish even without its founder.64 After Filipp-Filaret left the Caves, he eventually built a cell for himself in an isolated forest. He continued to be regarded as a holy person by many laity who came to visit him. By 1856, he asked to build a church in the new location; Metropolitan Filaret opposed this venture in part, he explained to Antonii, because “we have already built many churches without authorization, without higher permission. Is it not time to stop,” he queried, before they were brought to “justice?” Moreover, Filaret felt that it was not right to build yet another church when there was no evident need.65 A few months later, Filipp-Filaret was complaining again about his new location and expressed the desire to transfer to a new monastery—in part, he said, because it was so difficult for him to get to church during the winter months.66 Finally, Metropolitan Filaret relented, and the Moscow merchant Matrona Loginova provided funds for a church in honor of the Icon of the God-Loving Theotokos, which was built in 1859. Filipp-Filaret’s three sons also joined him and also eventually took monastic vows, though here, too, Filaret was not eager to fulfill these demands.67 In 1861, Antonii decided to form a small community around the church, with Filipp-Filaret as its head, and in particular to make the area a cemetery for the monks of the Lavra and the deceased of the Lavra’s hospitals and pilgrim’s hostels. They reasoned that space in the Bethany cemetery was running out, as was the cemetery in Sergiev Posad, where the laity who died in the hospitals and hostels were buried: “The opportunity has arisen for the Lavra to have its own separate coenobium for deceased brothers and pilgrims at the Church of the Icon of the God-Loving Theotokos.”68 A further report stated that “several pilgrims, who are received in the pilgrim’s hospital in the Lavra, having no hope of recovering from their illness, have become depressed on drawing near to death because they will die on another’s land and have no one to remember them and pray for them. Saint Sergius came to their comfort, and said that all who meet their end in his community, living as pilgrims in its hospitals, are included in the number of its brothers.”69 The new community that had formed around Filipp-Filaret was thus named the Coenobium of the God-Loving Theotokos (Kinoviia Bogoliubivoi Bogomateri, or

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Bogoliubskaia kinoviia), which had a small number of monks and served the new cemetery, praying for those who died. The Coenobium grew extremely rapidly, so that by 1867 there were eleven monks together with seven registered novices and a large number of nonregistered novices, together with choral singers, totaling seventy-one individuals.70 In 1863, Filipp-Filaret fell gravely ill and, fearing death, took the great schema with the name Filipp, though he recovered from the illness. He also put his sons forward to be ordained to the priesthood, although because of their lack of education, Metropolitan Filaret was reluctant to ordain them as quickly as Filipp wanted.71 Conflict arose between Schemamonk Filipp and the Lavra’s authorities in 1867, because Filipp forbade memorial services from being conducted on Saturdays despite direct orders from the Lavra’s Governing Council. The council’s investigation concluded that having the seventy-one individuals living in the Coenobium “exceeds the needs of a cemetery church,” and that the church had been practically transformed into a “squirish dacha” for Filipp, who, together with his sons, did not go to the general refectory but had a separate kitchen (which is forbidden in a strict cenobitic community). The report characterized the community as having an “attitude of greed, a nonmonastic order, and disobedience to the authorities.” The report thus concluded that the nonregistered novices and the singers should be expelled from the community, which should be left only with the number of monks and novices necessary to serve the church, and that the community should be more directly subordinate to the abbot of Gethsemane Skete.72 Even Metropolitan Filaret lost patience, declaring that “much leniency has been shown to Schemamonk Filipp, but he has not used this to his benefit.”73 As the investigation continued, more “disorder” was uncovered, including, evidently, some shady moneylending.74 Indeed, Filipp’s troubles preoccupied Metropolitan Filaret’s last days and constituted the main subject of his last letters to Archimandrite Antonii.75 In the end, Filipp was released from governing the community; he and his sons left the community for half a year, but they returned to the Coenobium, where Filipp died in May 1869. After Schemamonk Filipp’s death, his son Hieromonk Galaktion became its abbot. The community continued to be dominated by the sons of Filipp for several decades. Yet the Lavra’s hierarchy, to ensure that the community remained subject to its authority, purposely limited the number of monks who were permitted to join. In 1875, the Coenobium consisted of forty-three monks and novices.76 Thus the Lavra’s authorities prevented the Coenobium from becoming a full-fledged monastic community, and it was evidently never recognized by the Holy Synod. Despite his wanderlust, controversial character, and reluctance to obey monastery authorities, Filipp enjoyed a popular reputation among the laity as a holy figure.77 S. D. Sheremetev wrote of Filipp in his memoirs that “people spoke in various ways about him: some considered him a great ascetic and remarkable person;

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others laughed at him. His clothes were always dirty, he bore all sorts of deprivations and humiliations. . . . They did not love him in the monastery and even drove him out.” When he visited Sheremetev’s grandmother in Moscow (presumably while he was still in his “wandering” phase), he “spoke in allegories like a holy fool.” Sheremetev, who visited Filipp at the Coenobium in the 1860s, continued that “before his death he was suspected in some sort of shady business, but was acquitted and freed from investigation and finished his endeavors peacefully in his own Skete, leaving a good memory of himself.”78 Particularly intriguing was his relationship with Metropolitan Filaret, who properly guessed the difficulties Filipp would have in giving up his previous way of life and the freedoms that entailed for the life of community, stability, and obedience of the monastery—and as a result was frequently exasperated with Filipp. At the same time, Filaret protected him, respected him, and continued to visit him even later in life.79 Therefore, although Filipp was frequently a source of trouble for both Church and secular authorities and had his enemies in the Lavra and Gethsemane Skete, he must have been an extremely charismatic figure. He not only enjoyed wide veneration among the laity as a holy person, but he was also clearly able to attract a great number of individuals who wanted to pursue the spiritual life with him and under his direction; moreover, he inspired the establishment of Gethsemane’s cave division, the Coenobium, and also the Zosimova Hermitage (see below)—three monastic communities, two of which proved very successful and influential.

Anchorites and Hermitages From the earliest stages of Gethsemane Skete, there were individuals who were not only attracted to the strict communal life and greater emphasis on stillness fostered in the Skete but also sought greater seclusion to pursue contemplative prayer than even the Skete could provide. Such individuals settled in the forests surrounding the Skete, which Metropolitan Filaret and Archimandrite Antonii supported from the beginning.80 In 1847, Filaret encountered an aristocratic lady who had ventured out to the “hermitage” where these anchorites were living, and for violating their stillness Filaret laid on her a penance of not being able to go to the Skete for its patronal feast, the one time of year when women were allowed in. The woman informed Filaret that one of the monks told her it was permissible and that others also go out there, and that there was a path to the hermits’ cells. Filaret told Antonii to ensure that an “open road” to the hermits did not become established.81 This episode is revealing on many levels; it indicates that, by the mid-1840s, not only were numerous individuals seeking greater solitude but also many of the laity were seeking them out for spiritual advice. And it suggests that Gethsemane had already gained a reputation among the laity as a holy place—so much so that forbidding someone

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to go that year could serve as penance. Filaret continued to be concerned that the existence of these hermits, as of the cave dwellers, be kept secret to preserve their solitude and stillness.82 Because Gethsemane Skete grew very rapidly in the first decade of its existence, individuals continued to seek greater solitude in the wilderness around it. A new road was built to Gethsemane in the late 1850s that disturbed the huts of the hermits living in the forest. Archimandrite Antonii therefore recommended that, to preserve their seclusion, they move to the uninhabited forests that Tsar Alexander II had recently donated to the Lavra. The hermits searched the forests and found a suitable location, where the Skete’s first superior, the priest-schemamonk MakariiIlarion, was joined by another schemamonk and one hieromonk, Agapit; the three built cells for themselves, forming the nucleus of a new hermitage. Soon several other monks joined them, and a chapel was built for them.83 The hermits gathered together in the chapel on Sundays and for the great feasts, and the remaining time the elder monks observed their prayer rule separately in their cells, together with their disciples. In other words, more than in Gethsemane, private contemplative prayer took precedence over corporate liturgical prayer. To participate in the liturgy and the Eucharist, because they only had a chapel but not a church, several monks would go to Gethsemane Skete and after the liturgy bring back with them consecrated gifts for the rest of the monks. However, the extremities of the weather, especially in winter, made the journey to the Skete arduous. Thus the Moscow merchant Ivan Korolev, who spent time at the hermitage and greatly respected the hermits, proposed to Archimandrite Antonii that they build a church for them. Antonii initially opposed the idea, because he felt that the goal of the community presupposed complete isolation, and he was afraid that a church would attract visitors to the community. Nevertheless, Antonii went to the hermits, who numbered seven by this point, and told them of Korolev’s proposal. They greeted it enthusiastically.84 The brothers decided to name the community Paraclete, the Greek for the Holy Spirit–Comforter, because “the inhabitants of this place—being deprived of any external comforts that are usually afforded a community of people —have with them the Comforter, the Holy Spirit–Paraclete.”85 Antonii in turn wrote to Metropolitan Filaret, expressing his own initial concern about building a church, but told Filaret that the elders of the hermitage felt this was the work of God’s Providence and that they wished to have their own church. Filaret, in his reply, also expressed doubt, stating that “it is true that the fortress of stillness is the church; but it must be ensured that [the church] does not become the cause for the sacrifice of stillness.” Nevertheless, he approved so long as the church was small and the fence strong to preserve the stillness.86 A proposal was drawn up for the church in March 1860, and it was built over the next year (see figure 3.2).87 Korolev not only funded its construction; he also donated 300

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figure 3.2. The Paraclete Hermitage Source: Photograph by the author.

rubles each year for the hermitage’s support. Later, he also donated shops that he owned in Moscow, which, by the beginning of the twentieth century, brought in 3,600 rubles a year in rents to support the community.88 After the construction of the church, the number of monks who sought the seclusion offered by the hermitage quickly grew, and a small community was formed. The Governing Council of the Lavra established the rule of the community in June 1862. It detailed the governance of the community and fixed the number of brothers at twelve, which was regarded as necessary for the performance of the liturgical services and caring for the community. The liturgy was to be performed in the church on Saturdays and Sundays, and all were obliged to attend. The rest of the time, the elder brothers were to continue the observance of their prayer rule in their cells, whereas the younger monks were to carry out the obediences of household and necessary economic duties for the community. As in the Skete, women were forbidden from entering the community.89 Like Gethsemane, Paraclete Hermitage struggled with some initial instability, but in the long run it flourished. The community had some early turnover, including its first superior, the priest-schemamonk Feodot (Kol’tsov), who transferred to Gethsemane from Optina in 1851 and was one of the first to settle in the area that

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became Paraclete. After only a couple of years as superior of the hermitage, however, he returned to Optina, and this particularly disappointed Filaret.90 Despite the initial stipulation that the community would consist of twelve monks, by the end of the nineteenth century the hermitage had grown to fifty. However, the community continued to observe the strict cenobitic rule, and the brothers themselves carried out all the work of the community (including heavy labor, in contrast to idiorhythmic state-funded monasteries, which often hired laborers). The cells were separate wooden cottages that housed two to four brothers.91 Because of the rule forbidding women, because there were no roads built to the hermitage from Sergiev Posad, and because the community did not have any particularly revered holy objects, Paraclete Hermitage did not attract large numbers of visitors and remained a “quiet refuge of prayerful isolation and spiritual life.”92 By the turn of the century, the great number of pilgrims to the Lavra usually visited the surrounding communities, which brought more visitors to Paraclete; they often pressured the community to allow in whole families, including women. The brothers thus requested the Lavra’s Governing Council to confirm its complete exclusion of women, to release them from this pressure and preserve the isolation of the hermitage, which the council granted.93 (Indeed, it is still relatively isolated; when I last visited in 2006, the local residents who gave me a ride from Gethsemane Skete had never heard of the place and I had to show them how to find it.) The hermitage subsisted on the income of the Moscow shops donated by Korolev together with an annual contribution of 1,000 rubles from Gethsemane Skete. Like the Skete, it was built without the permission of the authorities, and only in 1902 did the Trinity-Sergius Lavra request the Holy Synod to confirm it as a cenobitic monastery.94 Hieromonk Agapit (Strygin), one of the first inhabitants of Paraclete Hermitage, later became one of the most respected elders at Gethsemane (known as Aleksandr the Recluse). He was born in 1810 in the town of Kozel’sk into a Cossack family. In contrast to many would-be elders, who were pious and churchgoing from an early age, he worked in a tavern as a young man and led a wild life (he later recounted regular fistfights and drinking bouts). He was married for four years before losing his wife. His father, after a visit to nearby Optina Hermitage, had taught him the Jesus Prayer when he was a teen; in the midst of his temptations and distractions a decade later, he remembered the peace that this prayer had brought him and returned to its practice. This transformed his life and led him to enter Optina Hermitage at the age of twenty-seven. He was under the spiritual guidance of the famous elder Leonid until the latter’s death in 1841; a few years later, he transferred to another monastery, where he took monastic vows as Agapit. In 1849, he relocated to the episcopal residence in Khar’kov, where he was ordained a priest and served as a steward in the bishop’s administration. But he increasingly felt that these duties involved him too much in worldly activity—bringing him back to what he re-

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nounced when he had joined the monastery to begin with—so, like so many others seeking a purer monastic life, he transferred to Gethsemane Skete in 1851.95 When the possibility arose to build a hermitage in an isolated place for “those who desired to learn stillness and a life of prayer,” as he later wrote, Agapit joined the elders to establish Paraclete. Two years later, he himself took a higher level of vows as a schemamonk to devote himself more to prayer and solitude, and he received the name Aleksandr.96 In 1861, Archimandrite Antonii asked him to return to Gethsemane to “support the spirit of monasticism” among the new monks. Many indeed went to him for spiritual guidance—so many that Aleksandr felt that he was violating the vows of the great schema and, with the permission of Antonii and Metropolitan Filaret, lived in complete reclusion in the Caves for more than three years. Living in the damp cave, however, left him seriously ill, and in 1865, Antonii ordered him to return to the Skete. In 1871, he built a cell for himself in the Skete and assumed the life of a complete recluse. He only emerged in 1877, when the new prior, Archimandrite Leonid—evidently prompted by Aleksandr’s opponents within the Skete—ordered him to come to church services on weekends. Like Filipp and Makarii-Ilarion before him, it is evident that relations between such charismatic figures and those around them was not always easy and could generate jealousy or misunderstanding. Starets Aleksandr the Recluse died on February 9, 1878; despite ten years as a recluse, he had enjoyed profound respect, especially among the monks of Gethsemane, as a wise and holy man and teacher of prayer (see chapter 4).97 During Metropolitan Filaret’s last years, he spent more and more time at Gethsemane, usually staying there the entire summer. He curtailed the amount of work he did and devoted himself more to prayer and quiet. Knowing that his end was nearing, he expressed his desire to be buried at Gethsemane, which he loved so much. Antonii, however, understood that the popular veneration for Filaret would result in many visitors to his tomb, and given Gethsemane’s restricted access (particularly for women), he appealed to Filaret to change his mind. Indeed, Filaret replied, “Let the stillness of Gethsemane Skete be preserved, and let me not be cause for violating it.”98 Instead, Filaret was buried in the Lavra itself. The strict communal brotherhood of Gethsemane resonated with many seekers in mid-nineteenth-century Russia, which led to its flowering as a filial of TrinitySergius. Not only did the community succeed in terms of the sheer number of monks it attracted, but it also became a center of spiritual power where, more than the Lavra itself, the rigorous pursuit of stillness and contemplative prayer was to be found. Moreover, despite Filaret’s initial efforts to keep the community a secret, Gethsemane radiated an expensive spiritual influence that resulted in the establishment of new communities for those who sought a more solitary path of spiritual pursuit. Thus Paraclete succeeded in remaining an authentic, isolated hermitage. Gethsemane, its elders, and its daughter communities represent the vibrancy and

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rich diversity of spirituality that characterized the best of this spiritual renaissance. Gethsemane indeed became a “cradle” of true monasticism for the Moscow region.

Miraculous Icons and Renowned Elders The first two decades of Gethsemane Skete’s existence were critical to the development of its rich and diverse spiritual life, and although it was not as secret from the outside world as Filaret desired, its energies nevertheless were focused inward as he intended. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, however, the combination of a miracle-working icon and a renowned elder transformed the Skete into one of the foremost spiritual centers of the Moscow region, one that was visited by nearly as many pilgrims as the famous Trinity-Sergius Lavra itself.

The Chernigov Icon Medieval Russian religious literature is replete with miracle stories associated with the saints, their relics, and icons. After Peter the Great, however, the Church sought to regulate popular piety and was suspicious of potential superstition. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment-influenced hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church attempted to bring popular piety in line with official Orthodoxy. This effort manifested itself in an extreme reluctance to recognize the appearance of new saints and new miracle-working icons. Indeed, the Church repeatedly confiscated such icons in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in its battle against potential superstition, even if these icons appeared in churches or monasteries. In the course of the nineteenth century, however, the Church leadership began to embrace and even encourage expressions of popular piety, simultaneously trying to capitalize on these manifestations of piety while trying to educate the laity and direct them along official lines.99 Miraculous healings from the relics of Saint Sergius of Radonezh—though extraordinary—were expected and accepted by ecclesiastical authorities. After all, Saint Sergius had already been healing people for centuries. But accepting the appearance of a new “miracle-working” icon was an entirely different matter. The first miracle attributed to the Chernigov Icon of the Mother of God, in the Caves Church of Gethsemane Skete, was not only extraordinary but also transformed Gethsemane and its relationship to the faithful. On September 1, 1869, Fekla Adrianova, a young peasant woman from the Diocese of Tula, was healed while praying before the so-called Chernigovskaia-Il’inskaia Icon of the Mother of God in the Crypt Church of the Archangel Michael of Gethsemane Skete, which had been dug by Filippushka and his disciples—and where, unlike the Skete proper, women were not prohibited from visiting.100 According to

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the report submitted to the Lavra’s Governing Council by the superior of the Skete, Hieromonk Anatolii, Adrianova was twenty-eight years old when she was carried, completely paralyzed, into the Caves Church at the Skete on the morning of September 1. When brought to the Chernigov Icon, she began to kiss it, and suddenly she cried out, from unbearable pain throughout her body, “let me go,” striking fear in all those present. She began to feel some unusual movement in her limbs, and those who were holding her felt as though someone were pulling her from their hands, that she was coming free from their grasp. They began to put her down, but she stood on her own. She felt her illness dissipating, and she cried with joy at the miraculous event and prayed, expressing her thanksgiving to the Mother of God. After that, she was able to walk with support, and soon she was able to walk on her own though her legs were still weak, and the use of her arms returned. Anatolii ended the report by listing those who were witnesses to the event—primarily those who had accompanied Adrianova, other pilgrims, and one novice who helped carry her.101 Fekla Adrianova had fallen ill nine years before, evidently, beginning on her wedding day. The illness was gradual, and for the previous six years she had had no control over her arms and legs. Doctors had treated her, but to no avail. Her relatives frequently took her to holy places in Russia—in 1866 she visited Trinity-Sergius, and later Kiev and the Zadonsk Monastery in Voronezh, and had spent two years in a convent in Voronezh. On her return journey, she visited Trinity-Sergius again, and on this occasion the miraculous event occurred. After Hieromonk Anatolii’s report, the Governing Council investigated the circumstances around the alleged healing. It contacted the local government of Adrianova’s district, informing it about what happened to her and requesting information about her illness. The district government replied that it did not have accurate information, and recommended that the Lavra contact the convent where Adrianova had recently lived. A complex process of exchange between various ecclesiastical bureaucracies followed.102 Metropolitan Innokentii of Moscow went to the Lavra—after being encouraged by his daughter, who was a nun and had met the woman a few years before—and met with Adrianova himself and inquired about her life. Subsequently, on September 26, he performed a prayer service before the icon, in effect affirming its miraculous status, at least unofficially.103 The Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory received information from the convent in Voronezh where Adrianova had lived for two years, confirming her illness, as well as testimony from other sources.104 In the meantime, word of the miraculous healing spread and people began to flock to the icon in the hope of receiving healing. Two weeks after Adrianova’s healing, a forty-year-old peasant was healed from a “frenzy of the mind,” and the day after that two young daughters of a civil servant, one on the verge of death, were

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cured. More healings were reported in the coming months. Soon a brochure was published in 1870 that described, in addition to Adrianova’s healing, eleven other people who were healed by the icon.105 In 1871, the Moscow Consistory finally wrote back to the Governing Council that Adrianova’s healing, attested by the council itself, had confirmation from other sources. Despite the published accounts of additional healings, these were not properly confirmed by examining the witnesses and gathering the necessary testimony. Moreover, the recognition of an icon as miracle working had to be confirmed by the Holy Synod. Therefore, the consistory declared that the miracles received from this icon were “recognized as the blessing of God,” and that more—and clearer—demonstrations were to be expected; it also instructed the Governing Council that, in the case of further miracles, it should investigate them “with precision and accuracy” and report them to the diocesan authorities.106 Despite the ecclesiastical authority’s reluctance to declare the icon to be miracle working, the popular recognition continued unabated, as did the reports of miracles. Indeed, by the end of the century, more than a hundred persons had reported being healed of various illnesses and ailments by the icon. The priest Ioann Milovidov gathered the cases in a book, and he periodically published new editions with information about further miracles. Such publications served to popularize the cult of the icon and draw more pilgrims in search of cures, and this in turn increased the number of miracle stories.107 The people who received healing were of all ages and social standing. Indeed, some healings were reportedly received not by praying before the Chernigov Icon itself but from its copies. The fame of the icon resulted in nearly as many pilgrims visiting the Caves division of Gethsemane as visited the Lavra itself. The upsurge of pilgrimage in nineteenth-century Russia both fueled, and was fueled by, the revival of monasticism with which it coincided.

The People’s Elder: Varnava (Merkulov, 1831–1906) As thousands of pilgrims came to Gethsemane’s Caves to pray before the Chernigov Icon, they would also turn to the monks for spiritual advice. One of these monks, Hieromonk Varnava, who was appointed confessor for the pilgrims who came to the Caves, gained a great reputation as a remarkable confessor; his renown spread throughout Russia, and thousands came specifically to see him for spiritual guidance. He had been born a serf with the name Vasilii Merkulov in a village in Tula Province on January 24, 1831.108 When he was still a teen, his family moved to the village of Nara-Fominskaia in Moscow Province after another landowner purchased his family. The new squire ordered that Vasilii learn the trade of a metalworker. The hagiography stresses the piety of his parents (in particular his mother, later a nun at the community that Varnava founded) and also his own early religious inclina-

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tions. Much like Antonii (Medvedev), he visited a local convent on a regular basis as a youth, not only devoting his free time to attending church services but also lending the convent use of his skills as metalworker. At this time, he also became acquainted with a local hermit, Starets Gerontii.109 In 1850, Vasilii and his mother made a pilgrimage to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. It was at this point that the idea of becoming a monk came to the young man. The following year, at the age of twenty, he informed his parents of his intention of becoming a monk; they were evidently unhappy about losing their son, but gave their permission. In that year, Vasilii, together with his spiritual director, the hermit Gerontii, entered the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. As a novice at the Lavra, Vasilii performed various obediences and volunteered to become the cell attendant (keleinik) of Gerontii, now Schemamonk Grigorii. The populated monastery, however, did not give Vasilii the sense of solitude for which he longed. With the blessing of Starets Grigorii and the permission of Archimandrite Antonii, he transferred to Gethsemane.110 There Vasilii came under the spiritual guidance of elder Daniil, another hermit in the forest around the Skete well known as a strict ascetic. Vasilii became very close to Daniil and served as his cell attendant. Beyond his voluntary duties as Daniil’s attendant, Vasilii also fulfilled his obedience in the Skete’s metalworking shop. In 1856, Vasilii received permission from his landowner, Princess Shcherbatova, to join the monastery, and in December 1857 he was officially received into the novitiate. In 1862, Starets Grigorii died; on his deathbed, according to Varnava’s hagiographers, he “opened the will of God” to Vasilii, namely, that he was to build a women’s community that was some distance from the Skete; Grigorii also evidently revealed to him that he would suffer much grief and unpleasantness, but that he must bear these sufferings willingly, “and you will be God’s helper.” Three years later, Starets Daniil also died, and before his death adjured Vasilii to take upon himself the podvig (feat, ascetic endeavor) of starchestvo. According to the accounts of Varnava’s life, when Vasilii asked Daniil to take from him this podvig, blood rose from the starets’ throat and he died.111 Thus, hagiographical accounts of Varnava’s life stress that his own calling as an elder was presaged by the elders who preceded him. Varnava’s formation as a spiritual guide had its beginning even before the death of Daniil, however. The monastery authorities transferred Vasilii from the metalworking shop to guide the pilgrims through the Skete’s Caves dug by Filippushka. This new post enabled pilgrims to get to know him—although he himself was not too happy about exchanging the solitude and quiet of Gethsemane for the constant interaction with numerous pilgrims. In the last years before his death, Daniil received fewer and fewer people, who increasingly turned instead to his cell attendant for spiritual guidance. The novice Vasilii thus became well known to pilgrims coming to the Skete.112

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In November 1866, Vasilii was tonsured with the name Varnava.113 He had lived fifteen years in the monastery as a novice, and was thirty-five years old. Five years later, in August 1871, he was ordained to the diaconate, and in January 1872 to the priesthood. Because Varnava was already fairly well known to the pilgrims, in January 1873 the Governing Council of the Lavra appointed him the pilgrims’ confessor for the Crypt Church of the Archangel Michael—where the Chernigov Icon had begun working its miracles only a few years before. His career as spiritual guide to throngs of pilgrims now began in earnest.114 It was fairly common for pilgrims who came to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra—one of the greatest centers of pilgrimage in the Russian Empire, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors each year—to also visit the surrounding communities, such as Bethany Monastery and Gethsemane Skete.115 As the fame of the miraculous Chernigov Icon spread, the Caves Church of the Skete drew ever-larger numbers of pilgrims, most of whom would also see Varnava. His fame spread rapidly. According to D. I. Vvedenskii, a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, “from early in the morning until late in the evening, especially during Great Lent and the summer, people of all ranks, estates, and conditions—dignitaries and scholars, clergy and simple pilgrims—came and came to the starets in his humble cell, sometimes treading with their bast sandals [i.e., sandals made from strips of bark] thousandkilometer paths, coming to the great Saint Sergius, from him to the ‘Caves,’ and there also to the ‘uncommon’ starets.”116 Varnava spent virtually all his time, aside from church services, seeing people—often he hardly had time to eat and sleep—people who came to him to receive his blessing, counsel, or consolation. He greeted visitors with a smile, called them his “children,” and dealt supportively and sympathetically with those who came to him. In 1890, Varnava became the confessor of the brothers as well as the visitors of the Skete.117 The monks came to him in the evening, though he urged them to come to him at any time, day or night. Nevertheless, some brothers opposed the requirement that they come to him for daily Confession—a practice specifically connected with starchestvo that was not universally practiced in all monasteries.118 Finally, Varnava also carried on a wide correspondence with people seeking spiritual direction. Some people claimed to be healed by his prayers; others attested to his prescience (prozorlivost’), including predictions of their future.119 These visitors even included Nicholas II, who came to Varnava in repentance soon after Bloody Sunday in January 1905.120 People came to Varnava because he had a way of touching their souls, of speaking to their sorrows or their aspirations. Thirty years after Varnava’s death, the émigré novelist Ivan Shmelev (1873–1950) wrote an account of his encounters with Varnava on the anniversary of the elder’s death. He referred to Varnava as an extraordinary spiritual figure “known and revered by millions of people in Russia—the

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‘consoler and benefactor.’” Shmelev described how, from childhood, he heard many times in his family that whenever someone had to decide something particularly important, that person should go to see “what the little father Varnava would say.” Shmelev first visited Varnava as a boy during his first pilgrimage to TrinitySergius, which he fictionalized in his novella Pilgrimage (see chapter 5). As a boy, he approached Varnava as someone holy, but also terrifying, because he had heard stories of Varnava’s prescience and ability to see into a person’s future. He returned as a student, just married, for a blessing before setting off on his honeymoon. He recounts that he, like most Russian students of the age, was no longer a churchgoer, but rather a “half-atheist,” reading Darwin and other critical literature of the day. Therefore he took his young wife partially with a sense of shame (as a modern student going to an elder for a blessing), but also with the sense that it was just something that had to be done. He recounted how the same crowds of people were there to speak with Varnava as on his visit fifteen years earlier. Varnava specifically called Shmelev and his wife out of the crowd and after a short exchange of questions and, giving them his blessing, holding Shmelev’s head, told him to “excel in your talent.” Although he had only just begun to write and did not yet have confidence in his writings or foresee himself as a writer, he felt as though Varnava blessed that path for him.121 Whether or not Varnava could see into his soul and foretell the future, as Shmelev and many others believed, he certainly had a way of affecting people’s lives that drew them to him by the thousands. Varnava’s first elder, Schemamonk Grigorii, gave him the charge to found a women’s monastery. According to Varnava’s own account, some benefactors from the village of Vyksa in Nizhnii Novgorod Diocese had come to Starets Daniil for advice on founding a community shortly before his death. After Daniil’s death, they turned to Vasilii for counsel, but the latter, a mere novice, was reluctant, doubting his own lack of experience. These philanthropists received the blessing of Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow and Archimandrite Antonii for Vasilii to act as the spiritual guide in the construction of the community.122 In 1864, a house for widows and orphans was built; originally, it had a capacity to serve 12 women, but in less than a decade it had more than 100 sisters. In 1874, the Synod raised it to the status of a women’s religious community named in honor of the Iverskaia Icon of the Mother of God; it observed a strict monastic rule devised by Varnava. The community provided the sisters with full support, so that prayer and liturgical life could come first—in contrast to many communities, where the women had to engage in making handicrafts to support themselves. Although Varnava was primarily responsible for establishing the community, conflicts developed between his authority, the community’s own leadership, and the local Nizhnii Novgorod diocesan authorities where the community was located— a story that has parallels to Serafim of Sarov and Diveevo. After being elevated to

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the status of a women’s community, the sisters selected a new abbess who attempted to curtail Varnava’s influence. The local diocesan authorities stepped in and took the side of the new abbess against a hieromonk from a different diocese who had no formal charge over the community. The authorities of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra likewise came to oppose Varnava’s role in the community, even though they clearly understood the roots of his involvement. Archimandrite Leonid, recently appointed prior of the Lavra, even considered so severe a reproof to Varnava as dismissing him as confessor of the Caves Church, but ultimately retreated—cognizant of the storm of protest it surely would arouse, so great was the popular reverence for Varnava. Leonid reported that he “refrained from that extreme measure only in view of the fact that, of all the confessors of the Lavra and the Skete, Hieromonk Varnava, as is well known to the Governing Council and all the brothers of the Lavra, enjoys the preferential attention and love of the visitors of the Lavra and the Caves. Therefore, to remove him from the confessorship would inevitably cause a murmur of discontent among the people and put a stop to that spiritual usefulness that they doubtless receive from this hieromonk, as is witnessed by the general respect of the middle classes and the simple folk for him.”123 Both the Holy Synod and Metropolitan Makarii judged Varnava’s involvement in the community as improper and upheld the decision of the diocesan authorities in Nizhnii Novgorod. Varnava affirmed his obedience and vowed not to interfere in the community.124 Ultimately, however, the Synod reversed its decision after Vladimir Sabler, supervisor of the Synodal chancellery, visited Hieromonk Varnava to discuss the matter and was so impressed that he became one of Varnava’s spiritual children (and remained devoted until Varnava’s death).125 After that, Varnava continued to guide the community until his death. In 1887, the Holy Synod raised the community to the status of a third-class monastery. By the early twentieth century, the community had grown to nearly five hundred sisters and had a significant influence on the surrounding locale through missionary activities (especially among the large numbers of Old Believers and sectarians in the area), as well as offering educational activities and solemn liturgical services.126 The entire conflict over Varnava’s involvement in the women’s community centered on the issue of starchestvo and the powers and prerogatives of charismatic authority. As with Filippushka or Dostoevsky’s Zosima, elders frequently became the source of tension or conflict in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These tensions sometimes originated within a monastic community, when some regarded starchestvo—or specific manifestations of it—as innovations. Conflicts such as those surrounding Filippushka and Varnava stemmed from the tensions between the charismatic authority of the elders and the institutional authority of the monastery (or Church) hierarchy. Archimandrite Leonid’s hostility toward Varnava is somewhat surprising, given Leonid’s own beginnings at Optina, unless it reflects the persist-

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ence of Leonid’s aristocratic prejudice against a former serf, as suggested in the class references to his admirers. As for the conflict between Varnava and the Nizhnii Novgorod diocesan authorities, the latter could not allow such a holy man to violate its territory until a high-ranking figure recognized the spiritual authority of the starets. Although the upholders of ecclesiastical authority may have recognized that Varnava was universally respected as a starets and a holy man, they probably felt that he had transgressed the lines of institutional authority. By contrast, those who made themselves disciples or spiritual children of Varnava chose to obey him above all other institutional authorities. Despite these tensions, each side (the institutional and the charismatic) recognized and respected the authority of the other, so that conflicts rarely erupted into schisms in the nineteenth century, in contrast to the twentieth. Varnava died in February 1906 while hearing confessions at the Home for the Poor. As with Metropolitan Filaret, at Varnava’s death the question arose as to where he would be buried, because the presence of the remains of a holy person (even one not yet canonized) was of great significance.127 Thus the sisters of the VyksunskiiIverskii Convent repeatedly requested to have his body transferred there, although this move was naturally opposed by the brothers of Gethsemane Skete. They argued that Moscow and the Trinity Lavra were the heart of Russia and attracted people from all across Russia, and that these pilgrims came specifically to the coffin of the “people’s confessor” in search of consolation and spiritual strength, as indeed did the brothers of the Skete and other monasteries, who were also Varnava’s spiritual children.128 Metropolitan Vladimir of Moscow defended Gethsemane’s position in words that indicated just how much influence and veneration Varnava had; Vladimir maintained that Varnava “was the spiritual father and guide not only of 450 sisters of the Vyksunskii Convent and 250 brothers of the Gethsemane Skete, but many thousands of people of all ranks who inhabit the enormous capital near the Skete, and many high-ranking persons both lay and clerical. During his life all of them came to him with all sorts of sorrows and perplexities, and after his death find consolation in visiting his grave. Is it just to deprive them of this consolation?”129 The Holy Synod, which considered the matter, decreed that Varnava should be buried at Gethsemane: “The transfer of the body of Starets Varnava several hundred kilometers to a different diocese, and at that by Imperial decree, might serve as grounds for all sorts of rumor and even cause for temptation, particularly at the present time.”130 Presumably, the Synod was worried that the transfer of Varnava’s body would have amounted to a virtual canonization on the emperor’s request at a time when numerous other canonizations had been recently carried out or were being planned.131 Varnava’s body was placed in a chapel behind the altar of the Caves Church, where he had most frequently prayed.132 Thus, even in death, Starets Varnava continued to be important to the communities and individuals for whom he acted as spiritual guide.

100 gethsemane: the cradle of monasticism Varnava, as one of the most popular elders in central Russia, is emblematic of some of the most important features of the revival of monasticism in nineteenthcentury Russia. For one, elders such as Varnava, Serafim of Sarov, and Amvrosii of Optina contributed to the resurgence of monasticism itself not only by their example, guidance, and teaching, especially in the communities where they lived, but also particularly by their role in guiding women’s religious communities. But elders such as Varnava have an even broader significance as well, as was testified by the thousands of people from all walks of life who came to Varnava for confession and guidance. These people clearly believed that Varnava had a special gift of insight into their personal struggles, as well as a spiritual power of blessing and healing. Even a single, brief encounter, such as Shmelev’s, could prove decisive. Thus even if the official Church’s hierarchy might not have been particularly responsive to the spiritual needs of common believers, as modern historians frequently claim, it is clear that this did not leave the Russian Church bereft of means to satisfy those needs. Indeed, the revival of monasticism—and its associated phenomena, from the rise of pilgrimage to the popularization of starchestvo—all attest to the vitality of Russian Orthodoxy in the nineteenth century.

Gethsemane in the Late Nineteenth Century The solid foundations laid by Filaret, Antonii, Anatolii, and the various elders of Gethsemane Skete continued to bear fruit in the community’s development. Innokentii (Veniaminov), who became metropolitan of Moscow in 1868 after Metropolitan Filaret’s death, continued to have special regard for the Skete; as under Filaret, it was directly subordinate to him and the Lavra’s prior personally. Under Innokentii, the Skete continued to attract and produce elders who strengthened the pure monastic spirit of the community and transformed it into one of the most important spiritual centers in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century.133 In 1879, Makarii (Bulgakov, 1816–82) became metropolitan of Moscow, and his appointment brought about changes in Gethsemane and its relationship to the Lavra. Primarily as a result of the conflict brewing about elder Varnava and his relationship to the Vyksunskaia Women’s Community and the potential misuse of the Skete’s money, Makarii demanded an explanation from the Lavra’s Governing Council about the relationship between the Skete and the Lavra.134 In its response to Makarii’s request, the Governing Council explained that the Skete had a unique relationship to Metropolitan Filaret and Metropolitan Innokentii, who, on the whole, governed the community directly and not through the Lavra’s Governing Council. The explanation also provided a summary of the development of the Skete during the previous thirty-five years:

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Gethsemane Skete is a true cenobitic monastery according to its liturgical order, [monastic] rule, and number of brothers (170 persons, including the Caves division) . . . [and] which forbids the entrance of women. But in the Caves division of the Skete, particularly since the glorification of the icon of the Chernigov Mother of God (since 1869), the flow of people is as great as to the Lavra. The report thus pointed to the spiritual strength of Gethsemane that attracted so many monks and also the incredible fact that the Caves received as many pilgrims as the Lavra itself: From the relationship of [its] founder, Metropolitan Filaret, and his successor Metropolitan Innokentii, to the Skete, who gave the Skete preferential attention, it can be clearly seen that they looked upon the Skete as a place directly subordinate to them, as abbots of the Lavra, in all respects. This is shown by the fact that all of the instructions, both spiritual-moral and economic (for the erection of the buildings), issued directly from them personally and for the most part orally, without any formalities. Although Filaret was never in his lifetime called to account for his unauthorized projects, this report had to explain the “special relationship” that he had with Gethsemane, the way he avoided official channels, and the bureaucratic approval process for constructing new churches and monasteries. Evidently, Innokentii followed much of Filaret’s approach. Instructions were fulfilled, under the abbacy of Metropolitan Filaret, by his main coworker in the founding and building of the Skete, the deceased Prior Archimandrite Antonii, with the aid of the superior [now hegumen] Anatolii, who has governed the Skete since 1850. During the abbacy of Metropolitan Innokentii (in particular since 1869, from the time of the illness of Archimandrite Antonii), [the instructions were carried out] through Hegumen Anatolii alone, in whose economic experience, which was justified by many years of administration, Metropolitan Innokentii had complete confidence. Filaret not only avoided official procedure when it came to dealing with the Holy Synod, but also internally with regard to the Skete’s relationship to the Lavra’s authorities: Gethsemane Skete has exactly the same relationship to the Lavra’s Governing Council as the other monasteries under the Lavra’s jurisdiction:

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gethsemane: the cradle of monasticism administratively, the matters of accepting [monks into] the brotherhood, tonsuring new monks, ordinations to holy orders, are managed by the Governing Council; but economically, the relationship of the Skete to the Lavra was confined to the presentation of account books to the Governing Council for annual inspection. But the documents which justified the construction projects carried out in the Skete from the time of its founding to the present are not to be found in the archive of the Governing Council, . . . since the orders for the construction projects issued personally from the deceased hierarchs. . . . Traces of these orders during the abbacy of Metropolitan Filaret remain only in his letters to the deceased Archimandrite Antonii.135

Remarkably, the responsibility for finances and constructing new churches was held entirely by Filaret and Innokentii personally. Metropolitan Makarii replied that “the order, which was expounded in this report, was very natural during the initial construction of the Skete. But now when, by God’s Grace, the Skete has already been built and has expanded, it is necessary to establish rules that would define both the relationship of the Skete to the Lavra, and [the Skete’s] internal administration.”136 Makarii’s resolution seems to have resulted in the Lavra’s Governing Council having a greater degree of direct control over the Skete, thus ending the Skete’s privileged position in the Lavra’s collective. These changes also corresponded—perhaps not accidentally—with Hegumen Anatolii’s retirement after thirty years of very successful service.137 Hegumen Anatolii prepared the next generation of leadership. He was succeeded by Hegumen Daniil, who also provided excellent leadership for more than twenty years. He was born Dimitrii Sokolov in 1835 in the Klin District of Moscow Province to a family of household serfs. As a domestic serf, he frequently interacted with people of all social ranks. He also usually traveled with his masters to their home on Meshchanskaia Street in Moscow, which was near Trinity-Sergius’ Moscow compound, which served as Metropolitan Filaret’s residence during that time, where the young Dimitrii would often attend church services. He learned to read at home and often read religious books, particularly saints’ lives and stories of monks and ascetics, which inspired him with a desire to flee the world and give himself over to prayer and asceticism. Once his masters released him, he went to Metropolitan Filaret and told the bishop he wanted to become a monk, and thus Filaret sent him to Gethsemane in 1857. Gethsemane, as we have seen, was flourishing by this point, and the renown of its various elders was already attracting pilgrims. As Daniil’s biographer—Archimandrite Evdokim (Meshcherskii), then inspector of the Moscow Theological Academy—noted, it was precisely this “general popular sympathy [narodnye simpatii] to Gethsemane” and its ascetics, elders, and hermits,

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that “compelled Dimitrii to head precisely” to the Skete, “following the popular talk.”138 Clearly, Filaret’s efforts to keep Gethsemane secret did not prevail, and the community’s renown among the people—both elite and common—was serving to draw new recruits, a clear sign of the popular resonance of what was happening at Gethsemane. Dimitrii-Daniil joined Gethsemane at the age of twenty-three. During his years as a novice, he passed through various obediences and jobs in the Skete’s community, serving in workshops, baking prosphora, singing in the choir, serving in the church, and—like his contemporary Varnava—serving as guide to the Skete’s pilgrims. He used to visit the various elders of the community—the Skete’s earliest residents, Makarii-Ilarion and the other Moldavian elders, Filippushka, Aleksandr the Recluse, and others. Some of these elders focused on asceticism and fasting, others on humility, or seclusion and silence, or love and service of others, or on the inner prayer of the heart—altogether presenting a rich diversity of spiritual achievements that shaped the young Dimitrii. Later he served as cell attendant to Metropolitan Filaret when, during the 1860s, Filaret would often spend summers at Gethsemane; and he also served as cell attendant to Hegumen Anatolii. Filaret and Anatolii proved to be two of the most formative influences on Dimitrii.139 Dimitrii was tonsured in 1866, on the same day as Varnava, and received the name Daniil.140 He was ordained to the diaconate the following year, and to the priesthood in 1872. Three years later, he assumed the functions of the treasurer— the second-highest post in the monastery structure—and was officially appointed to the post in 1877. At the age of forty-six, he had proven his abilities and gained the experience that led to his appointment as superior of Gethsemane after Anatolii’s retirement.141 He governed the community until his death in 1902, at the age of sixty-seven. Daniil was equally as successful a choice to lead the community as Anatolii, and like his predecessor he saw to the Skete’s flowering and expansion structurally, economically, and spiritually. Hegumen Daniil developed Gethsemane’s economic activities such that the community was a largely self-sufficient agricultural unit. At the end of the 1870s, the Skete constructed a “farm” (ferma) half a kilometer from the community. The farm included sheds for cattle and horses, an annex for workers, and the Skete’s laundry.142 On the farm there were more than fifty head of livestock, which provided the community with its dairy products. The Skete also had an apiary, and gardens where its monks grew their own potatoes, cabbage, and cucumbers. Indeed, it was so successful and flourished with such model order that even secular people came to learn from it.143 Because the Chernigov Icon brought throngs of pilgrims to the Caves division of the Skete, Hegumen Daniil poured great energy and resources into building up the complex. The great monument he constructed between 1886 and 1897 in the

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figure 3.3. The Chernigov Skete Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission.

“Russian style” was the large stone Chernigov Church built to house the miraculous icon directly on top of the Caves originally dug by Filippushka and the Crypt Church where the Chernigov Icon was formerly located. Moreover, the Caves division was surrounded by a new stone wall with a monumental bell tower, and a new building for cells was added, all in the “Russian style.”144 Thus the Caves division itself virtually developed into a full-fledged monastery on its own, and by the end of the century was even frequently referred to as the “Chernigov Skete” or “Chernigov Monastery” (see figures 3.3 and 3.4).145 Hegumen Daniil was regarded as an excellent administrator and leader who attended to the monastery’s spiritual life as well as its material life. He ensured that the community remained strictly cenobitic, which meant that the brothers did not receive any cash allowances—in contrast to the Lavra itself. Moreover, he received new recruits with great care and kept a prudent watch over them to learn their strengths and weaknesses and their aptitude for living in the Skete. He corrected the disobedient by assigning them more difficult tasks within the monastery, and he did not regret those who left the community as a result. According to Evdokim, Daniil was able to separate the “wheat from the chaff,” and “thanks to this, only good monks remained in the Skete”—those who were “of a high spiritual life and great selflessness, industriousness, and obedience.”146 He also upheld the Skete’s rule of prayer, its monastic singing, and the strictness of the refectory, and protected its soli-

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figure 3.4. The Church of the Chernigov Icon of the Mother of God Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission.

tude and quiet. Despite his strictness, he related to the brothers with love like a father toward his children, according to Evdokim; once he determined that a novice or monk was sincere and capable of a strict monastic life, he could be supportive during struggles and failures. Indeed, the community was so successful that it grew to 220 brothers, and continued to have noted elders of the younger generation in addition to Varnava who appealed to members of the Theological Academy, including Pavel Florenskii’s spiritual father, Isiodore.147 Daniil also had good relations with lay visitors of various

106 gethsemane: the cradle of monasticism social classes (including emperors), many of whom came to visit him seeking advice, and students from the Theological Academy also frequently sought him out. Moreover, he clearly knew how to mobilize the resources of well-wishers who supported the great expansion of the Chernigov Caves.148 Gethsemane and the Chernigov Caves became virtually separate worlds, both under Daniil’s leadership. The Skete’s structures were mostly wooden (although Daniil built a stone wall around it at the end of the 1890s); women were still excluded except on the patronal feast, so the community was infrequently visited and remained very quiet. It retained the simplicity that Filaret had intended, without silver and gold even in the liturgical objects. By contrast, the Chernigov Caves even appeared different by the end of the century with its monumental stone church and bell tower; more important, it attracted hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually to pray before the miracle-working icon and visit Varnava, one of the most famous living elders in Russia. In short, at the turn of the century Gethsemane was a flourishing monastic community. Its two divisions provided a quiet, simple, strict monastic life devoted to the pursuit of stillness and a rigorous spiritual life, on the one hand, and that appealed to the spiritual needs of an enormous number of believers from all social classes who came in search of healing and spiritual direction, on the other.

The Zosimova Hermitage One final community was also established under the inspiration of Filippushka and his sons: the Smolensk-Zosimova Hermitage, located in the Aleksandrov District of Vladimir Province.149 Although its beginnings date from the 1860s, it was only seriously developed by Prior Archimandrite Pavel in the 1890s. From then, however, the hermitage grew rapidly and was to become particularly important in the early twentieth century. It was established where a hermitage had existed in the early eighteenth century and where the grave of its revered founder was still located. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the hermit-elder Zosima settled there and attracted disciples. Although little historical information about Starets Zosima survives, he was greatly respected by local inhabitants as well as by members of the Imperial family.150 In the early eighteenth century, after Zosima’s death, Peter the Great’s sister built a chapel over his grave. The small hermitage suffered the fate of many monastic communities in the eighteenth century, being reformed and dissolved several times. Although the chapel continued to attract the attention of local inhabitants and pilgrims in the eighteenth century, by the early nineteenth century, the place was largely forgotten, and the chapel had fallen into disrepair.151 In the late 1840s, however, the new landowners (local industrialists Baranov and Zubov) built a new

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wooden chapel. The chapel was built without the permission of the local ecclesiastical authorities, and the matter went to the Holy Synod, which resolved in 1854 that the chapel should be allowed to remain, and should be placed under the local parish church. Because of the new chapel (and the controversy surrounding it), the area grew in renown, and more pilgrims began coming to it, especially local peasants, who brought their sick children to be healed (Zosima’s grave was felt to have particular efficacy in healing children).152 In 1855, Henrietta Nettle, the widow of a lieutenant general, bought the land. Although a Lutheran, she did not prevent the veneration of Zosima by the local inhabitants. In 1866, she donated 3 hectares of land, which included the chapel, to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, stating that “having zeal for the Church of the GodLoving Theotokos, which is the Lavra’s cemetery Coenobium, I give for its perpetual support . . . a portion of land. . . . I am donating the stated 3 hectares to the perpetual possession of the Trinity Sergius Lavra . . . for the service by the brothers of the Coenobium of prayers and funeral rites [panikhida] for Schemamonk Zosima in the chapel above his tomb, as is desired by the residents of the surrounding villages.”153 Following Henrietta Nettle’s lead, her neighbor, the captain’s wife Ekaterina Barbasheva, likewise donated a portion of land near the chapel to the Lavra in support of the Coenobium.154 The bureaucratic procedures surrounding the donation of land to monasteries were complex in the nineteenth century, and it was not until 1872 that the Lavra received Imperial permission to own the land, and another two years before all the paperwork finally cleared and the Lavra could claim possession.155 Despite the fact that the Lavra did not officially own the land until 1874, the monks of the Coenobium began to serve the Chapel of Zosima beginning in 1866, when Nettle first expressed her wish to donate the land. The overseer of the Coenobium at that time was still Schemamonk Filipp (“Filippushka”), and he watched over Zosima’s Chapel until his own death in 1869. He had two cabins built, and seven monks from the Coenobium began to live there, serving the chapel and keeping bees (which, according to the legends, Starets Zosima also engaged in).156 In 1868, a stone chapel was built over Zosima’s tomb to replace the wooden one.157 After Filipp’s death, his son Hieromonk Galaktion governed the Coenobium, and he sent his younger brother Hieromonk Prokopii to care for Zosima’s Chapel. In 1874, to celebrate the final reception of the land, Hieromonk Prokopii celebrated liturgical services in the chapel, in the presence of Nettle and Barbasheva as well as a large number of pilgrims and local inhabitants. These developments did not take place without opposition; the dean of the local clergy sent in a complaint to the bishop of Vladimir (because the chapel was located in the Vladimir Diocese), stating that the celebration caused “powerful agitation amongst the local parishioners.”158 The bishop of Vladimir, in turn, sent in a complaint to Metropolitan Innokentii of

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Moscow, stating that “no clergy are allowed to conduct services in a different diocese without the permission of the local bishop.”159 Metropolitan Innokentii called on the Lavra’s council to explain the situation. The council reported that the chapel had not officially been transferred to the jurisdiction of the Lavra because the legal transfer of the land had only just been completed, but that Hieromonk Prokopii had conducted the services with the permission of Archimandrite Antonii, and that there had not been opposition to or agitation among the local population, but, on the contrary, the services were conducted according to their wish because of their great reverence for Starets Zosima. As a result, the chapel was officially brought under the jurisdiction of the Lavra (in particular the Coenobium), and Metropolitan Innokentii blessed the continuation of services in it.160 The small chapel was not enough to provide for the large numbers of pilgrims who came, together with the monks who served it, so Hieromonk Prokopii sought a philanthropist who would support the construction of a church. He found such a supporter in the Moscow merchant Dmitrii Shaposhnikov, though the church was finally built only in 1888–89.161 Together with the church, Shaposhnikov also funded the construction of a building with cells for sixteen monks. Thus a small community with its own church was finally taking shape. When Archimandrite Pavel became prior of Trinity-Sergius in 1892, he visited Zosimova Hermitage and particularly took a liking to community and its location; he therefore decided to develop it into a full-fledged monastery. However, he felt that the church built by Shaposhnikov was not big enough for such a monastery, and in 1893–94, following his passion for building, with the financial support of the Moscow merchant Ivan Efimov (and the agreement of Shaposhnikov), he tore down the first church and built the large Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God, together with a large bell tower and a wall around the monastery.162 By 1895, the Lavra petitioned the Holy Synod to confirm its establishment as a monastery, stating that “the uninhabited, quiet and humble environment, surrounded by forest, and the absence of any bustle, powerfully attracts those who love solitary monastic life. Many monastics even from more comfortable communities express their desire to relocate here; thus the number of those who live here already extends to thirty individuals. Keeping in mind the convenience of the location for a secluded monastic community, the deep veneration that starets-ascetic schemamonk Zosima, who is buried there, enjoys in the region, and the general desire to rebuild the community that previously existed,” the council requested its confirmation as an unfunded cenobitic community.163 Thus, in 1896 the Synod confirmed the establishment of the monastery under the jurisdiction of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra with the name Smolensk-Zosimova Hermitage, “with as many monks as the hermitage can support on its own means.”164

gethsemane: the cradle of monasticism 109 In 1897, Hieromonk German, confessor of Gethsemane Skete, was appointed abbot of the hermitage. German, who greatly respected the tradition of spiritual eldership (starchestvo), and was widely regarded as an elder himself, chose the rule of the Sarov Hermitage for Zosimova. The following year, the widowed priest of the Kremlin’s Dormition Cathedral, Feodor Solov’ev—the future Starets Aleksii— joined the community. Both German and Aleksii enjoyed enormous respect, and under their spiritual guidance the Zosimova Hermitage became widely known as the “Northern Optina” in the years before the Russian Revolution, as thousands of pilgrims seeking spiritual advice and consolation came there from all over Russia (see chapter 6).

Conclusions Although the resurgence of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra represented one pole of the monastic revival in nineteenth-century Russia, the foundation of Gethsemane Skete and proliferation of other communities under its orbit, the internal success of its monastic life, and its success as a source of spiritual nourishment for the faithful represented another pole. Metropolitan Filaret and Archimandrite Antonii took a risk in encouraging the revival of contemplative monasticism, something that had virtually disappeared in Russia since Peter the Great. When they began their experiment, they wondered whether or not they would even be able to find “two or three” others who sympathized with the project. Yet within a few short years, so many were joining that Filaret was worried that it was becoming too crowded, and by the end of the century Gethsemane itself included the Chernigov Caves and had spawned the communities of the Paraclete Hermitage, the Coenobium of the God-Loving Theotokos, and the Zosimova Hermitage, as well as the Vyksunskii-Iverskii Convent. Russian culture and society in the 1840s were undergoing a substantial shift from their path in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when elites had looked to the West for inspiration in both secular and religious culture. By contrast, the period of Nicholas I (1825–55)—officially defined by the motto “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality”—was characterized by a search for what was distinctive about Russian culture. Intellectually, this was the age of debates between “Slavophiles” and “Westernizers,” with the former arguing for the superiority—especially in spiritual terms—of Russia over the West. It was also the age when leading Church figures, above all Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) himself, were seeking the “reawakening” of Orthodoxy from distinctively Orthodox sources rather than drawing on Western Christian sources, as had been done since the seventeenth century. Moreover, the intellectual endeavors of Filaret and the Slavophiles paralleled a widespread popular mood, as massive numbers of individuals—from a variety of

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classes and social backgrounds—sought to pursue the most rigorous path of spiritual life. Just as Filaret and the Slavophiles were doing in the intellectual realm, individuals such as the early elders of Gethsemane, Filippushka, and Varnava were turning to distinctly Orthodox history to revive traditions that had all but disappeared, even if it was unlikely that they were consciously searching for a distinctively Russian or distinctively Orthodox identity vis-à-vis the West. At the same time, this was no simple rediscovery of older traditions, but an effort to adapt them to the radically changed circumstances of modernity. Gethsemane was very successful in establishing a high quality and rich diversity of monastic experience in the first quarter century of its existence, attracting the first generation of elders who would guide the monks in that direction. Moreover, the monks who were formed at that time—particularly in the 1850s and 1860s—would form the next generation of leadership, in particular Starets Varnava and Hegumen Daniil. Although in that first quarter century Gethsemane was mostly focused inward, after Fekla Adrianova’s healing before the Chernigov Icon and the emergence of Varnava as an exceptional confessor Gethsemane became a magnet not only for monks aspiring to the purest, most rigorous form of spiritual life but also for enormous numbers of laypeople coming to the monastery in search of physical and spiritual healing. No doubt it is not accidental that these transformations took place during the Reform Era, only years after the Emancipation of the Serfs (1861), when there was greater mobility, and greater uncertainty, in Russian society. Clearly, at least in extraordinary circumstances, the parish churches and their priests, part of the Synodal Church after Peter the Great, were unable to meet these spiritual needs. The elders, by contrast, did not receive their authority through institutional means (even if it was exercised in an institutional setting) but through their experience and, the people believed, a special grace or gift from God. As Gethsemane Skete and numerous other similar communities throughout Russia in the nineteenth century demonstrate, this alternative to (or rather within) the post–Petrine Synodal Church satisfied the spiritual longings of the tens of thousands who joined the communities and also the millions who visited them on an unprecedented scale. It was precisely this power to meet the spiritual needs of ordinary Russians, as well as provide a place for them in positions of authority, that fed monasticism and also contributed to Russian Orthodoxy’s ability to maintain its vitality and relevance in the nineteenth century.

4 Monks: Social History and Spiritual Life Trofim Tsymbal (Archimandrite Toviia) was born a serf on July 23, 1836, in the Province of Voronezh; his parents were serfs on the estate of Count D. N. Sheremetev. Even as a young child, according to the autobiography he wrote late in life, he loved to go to church; he remembered that services in their parish church were particularly beautiful. He loved to stand at the front of the church and watch the clergy perform the services, and was particularly attracted to the role of the deacon; in the Orthodox liturgical services, when a deacon is serving, he is often more visible than the priest, chanting the petitions in front of the iconostasis (the screen separating the nave from the altar area) and censing the church, the icons, and the congregation. At home, little Trofim used to “play deacon,” making himself a censer by suspending a board on some string, and he would cense the icon corner. Although he was a serf, his parents began to teach him to read at the age of seven; because there were no schools for peasant children at that time, his father and uncle taught him. He even noted that his parents owned quite a few books, although when he first learned to read he was given only Psalters and prayer books. After he learned to read, he used to take his homemade censer and the service book and “perform” entire services, doing all the parts himself (chanter, priest, and deacon)—although when he got caught, his parents would punish him, because they thought that this was somehow inappropriate; he got in particular trouble when he was swinging his censer too vigorously and the board went flying into a shelf and broke an earthenware pot.1 Eventually Trofim began to read with comprehension, and his first reading material consisted of the lives of the saints. He was particularly attracted to the stories of hermits, who became his boyhood heroes in 111

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much the same way a boy in the early twenty-first century might idealize and want to imitate the superheroes they see on television. When he was ten years old, his mother took him to Voronezh to venerate the relics of Saint Mitrofan, and there he saw for the first time monks conducting the liturgical services—and the idea of his becoming a monk himself was born. After another year or two and encounters with other monks, he came to a decision that he would definitely become a monk. But because he knew his parents would not like the idea of their eldest son joining a monastery, he kept the idea to himself.2 After he decided to become a monk, Trofim looked for ways to make his idea a reality. When he was fifteen years old, he went on pilgrimage to Kiev with his godfather. Along the way, they stopped at various other monasteries, and he examined each one with the question as to whether he could become a monk there—that is, both whether it was a place he would like to live in and whether it was possible for him to join. He was particularly taken by one monastery, both because he found its setting beautiful and because he met some monks who were from his district who encouraged him to enter their monastery, praising its cenobitic rule and good order. Other monasteries that they visited appealed to him less—one in Pereslavl, for example, served as the bishop’s seat and also housed a seminary, so Trofim concluded that this would not be a good place to pursue stillness (hesychia/bezmolvie). When he returned from his pilgrimage to Kiev, he discovered that another monk had visited the house and already convinced his parents to let him join the monastery. The monk convinced them by arguing that “God is calling your son to himself . . . for spiritual service, where he in time can become a monk and a man of prayer for himself, for you, and for all your kin.”3 The theme of parental opposition to losing a son to a monastery is a common one; but Trofim’s friend was in effect arguing that the monk prays not only for himself but also for his clan and thus in effect redeems the entire family, highlighting one of the ways in which the monastery was believed to fit into the larger salvation economy of society as a whole and bringing out a collective dimension of the monastic endeavor. In the end, Trofim was persuaded to join the Holy Mountain Monastery in Kharkhov Province, which he entered at the young age of sixteen. Although Trofim’s monastic career would hardly end in a typical fashion—he rose all the way to the position of prior of Russia’s most prominent monastery—its beginnings were much humbler and more typical. Although very few of the monks who lived in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries have left us with such autobiographical accounts, several features of Trofim’s story are worthy of note and must have been common to others. First, his experience in church and love of the liturgy were major factors in what drew him to the monastery. A decisive influence was his literacy, and in particular reading the lives of saints, which caught his youthful imagination and attracted him

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to the idea of pursuing the same type of life himself, a feature that is repeated in other accounts. Another element was actually visiting a monastery on pilgrimage with his mother, experiencing the monastic liturgical life, and also interacting with other monks; the rise of pilgrimage, discussed in the next chapter, was tied to the monastic revival in multiple ways, such as exposing potential recruits to monastic life. He was discerning in examining a potential place he could join, but another important influence was the monks he met who encouraged him to consider their monastery—particularly monks who were from his own locale.

A Social Profile of Monastic Recruits A remarkable number of individuals like Trofim were attracted to the monastic life, and this number particularly rose from about the mid-1840s—the time Trofim himself joined—until the outbreak of war and revolution in the early twentieth century. The rate of growth among male monastics was impressive; their number doubled between 1825 and 1860, and doubled again by 1914.4 The Trinity-Sergius Lavra was representative in this regard; not only did its own brotherhood quadruple during this period, but the new communities founded under its auspices also grew at an incredible and totally unanticipated pace. Who was joining the monastery in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries? What was life in the monastery like? What were the ideals presented by monastic leaders and teachers, and what were the realities of daily life? Historians have only begun to consider these questions.

The Monastic Profession in Russian Orthodoxy The process of monastic profession in the Orthodox churches is more complex than that of the Western churches and has never been completely standardized. As a rule, it includes three stages, each defined by the elements of the habit the monk wears: the rasophore, the manteinyi monk, and the schemamonk. After an unspecified period of probation, an individual formally entered the novitiate; the monastery authorities granted the novice the right to wear the riasa, or black cassock—hence the designation of rasophore—and the kamilavka, or tall, cylindrical headgear, but not the mantle (mantiia). Sometimes the rasophore novice (riasafornyi poslushnik) was tonsured and received a new name, but this practice was not universal. The rasophore did not take vows, but he had to obey the rules of the monastery; some monasteries regarded acceptance of the rasophore as an implicit vow to remain in the monastery for life, with penalties of penance or excommunication for those who left.5 But not all Russian monasteries in the nineteenth century used the terminology of “rasophore.”

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The documents of Trinity-Sergius speak of postulants variously as bel’tsy (“white ones,” in contrast with those who wear the black cassock), or those living in the monastery “on probation” (na ispytanii), or “unofficial novices” (neukaznye poslushniki), terms referring to individuals who were living in the monastery before formal acceptance into the novitiate. Once received into the novitiate, the individual had the right to wear the cassock and became an “official novice” (ukaznyi poslushnik), a designation equivalent to the rasophore, even though official novices apparently had not yet been tonsured or given new names.6 In 1873, in an attempt to control the misbehavior of novices and the bad image that errant novices gave to monasticism (because the laity often could not tell the difference between novices and tonsured monastics), the Holy Synod forbade novices from wearing monastic clothing and receiving new names.7 Despite the decree, however, official novices continued to wear cassocks. The Church did not stipulate the length of probation before enrollment in the novitiate. The novitiate itself was to last a minimum of three years, but that term could be shortened or eliminated in cases of life-threatening illness. Further, the Church exempted graduates of theological seminaries or academies from the novitiate; the same was true for widowed parish priests and deacons seeking to become monks. In actual practice, the probationary period and novitiate itself usually lasted for many years. Given the fact that unofficial and official novices outnumbered monks and nuns, it is evident that many (especially women) never took monastic vows. After the novitiate, the candidate filed a formal request to become a monk, and the monastery authorities had to confirm his suitability for the monastic life. If approved, the individual received tonsure (postrizhenie) and a new name, symbolizing the rejection of his former worldly identity and the beginning of a new life. During the rite, the candidate formally resolved to live in the monastery in perpetuity and took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The candidate took the vows orally, answering affirmatively the celebrant’s questions: “Wilt thou abide in the Monastery and in the ascetic life until thy last breath? . . . Wilt thou keep thyself in chastity, and soberness, and piety?. . . Wilt thou until death observe obedience to the Superior, and to the Brotherhood (Sisterhood) in Christ? . . . Wilt thou endure all the strain and poverty belonging to the monastic life, for the kingdom of heaven’s sake?”8 The candidate, now formally a monk (manteinyi monakh), received the right to wear the small habit (malaia skhima), which consisted of the mantle (mantiia), a sleeveless cloak worn over the cassock. The final stage of a monastic career was the great habit (velikaia skhima). The monk who received the great habit, a schemamonk (skhimonakh or skhimnik), was once again tonsured and given a new name. The great habit consisted of a distinctive cowl (kukol’), which had long bands that covered the chest and back. The schemamonk pledged himself to a stricter regimen of fasting together with greater

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solitude and silence; often schemamonks, such as Aleksandr the Recluse of Gethsemane Skete, lived in partial or complete seclusion. A monk could take the great habit only after a long monastic career (thirty years being the norm); in practice, however, few monks took the great habit.9 According to Orthodox canon law, anyone could become a monk or nun; no former occupation or other circumstances of life could serve as an impediment, because the monastic life was, by definition, a life of “continual repentance.”10 According to the Spiritual Regulation of 1721, the minimum age for monks was thirty years, whereas for nuns it was fifty or sixty.11 However, as with much of the Spiritual Regulation, these rules did not automatically become the norm, and practice certainly varied in the eighteenth century. In 1832, the civil law code fixed the rules for admission: A man must be a minimum of thirty years of age; exceptions were made for graduates of theological seminaries and academies, who could be tonsured at the age of twenty-five, and for widowed parish clergy, who could be tonsured at any age. Forty years was the minimum age for women.12 The 1832 law also fixed the three-year novitiate (and its exceptions).13 Candidates had to be free of any obligations contrary to the monastic life. Thus, a married person could be tonsured only if the spouse also became a monastic and only if the couple did not have any dependent children. Someone who was on trial or who had unpaid debts could not become a monk or nun. Those in military or state service needed a formal release from their superiors; commoners in the poll-tax population, such as peasants and townsmen, needed permission of their village or urban society; before the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, serfs needed manumission by their landowners. Before their tonsure, candidates had to present proof that there were no hindrances to their tonsure, together with testimony from the state treasury and the permission of the local governor. Nobles had to transfer their “family property” to their heirs, but they could dispose of “personal property” (i.e., that gained on their own) at their discretion—and such property or money was frequently donated to the monastery that they joined. In contrast to the medieval period, however, there was no mandatory “contribution” to join a monastic community.14 Procedures for authorizing tonsure changed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Until the 1860s, the Holy Synod itself had to approve virtually all tonsures.15 The Synod required that the monastery provide information about the social estate and marital status of each candidate, whether candidates were of sufficient age, and had fulfilled the three-year novitiate, together with testimony from the civil authorities that there were no hindrances to their tonsure, and whether there were vacancies in the particular monastery in which the candidate was to be tonsured.16 State-funded monasteries and episcopal residences were permitted to tonsure only as many new monks as there were vacancies according to the service structure (shtat); unfunded monasteries could accept as many as they could support.17

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These restrictions had a direct affect on hampering the growth of monasteries, as the evidence from Trinity-Sergius demonstrates. Restrictions were evidently particularly rigid under Nicholas I, and his death in 1855 brought tangible results. When permission for tonsures became more relaxed, Antonii sensed a window— and perhaps fearing it would be brief—put forward twenty-eight candidates for tonsure, an enormous number for a single year. Filaret, more cautious, suggested that they stagger the tonsures so as not to abuse the official “generosity.”18 Even years later, however, Filaret was reluctant to grant monks’ requests to take long leaves for pilgrimages, because the Lavra “needs serving people, not names of those who are absent.”19 One can only suppose that the monastic revival would have been much greater if the bureaucratic restrictions on tonsures, as on establishing new monasteries, had not been so rigid. The tonsure requests flowing into the Synod each year generated an enormous amount of paperwork, especially with the growing number of new recruits. In 1865, in the midst of a series of measures to reduce the volume of the Synod’s paperwork, the emperor authorized the Synod to allow diocesan bishops to permit tonsures; thereafter, bishops were to report the number of tonsures in their diocese each year to the Synod. The regulations concerning the required information on each candidate, and the number of monastics permitted for various types of monasteries, remained in force.20 Thus, to be tonsured, the candidate had to present proof of his release by the authorities or community to which he belonged as well as documentation on marital status. A typical report indicated that an individual—for example, a townsman —had received “a certificate from the city council (duma) that he was discharged forever to the monastery by the society (obshchestvo), that the payment of taxes and other obligations until the future census had been provided by a monetary deposit, and that he was single.”21 In the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the state and the Synod altered the regulations on the release of individuals to join monasteries. In 1844–45, the chief procurator asked the Synod if state peasants should be discharged to join a monastery if they had not yet reached the minimum age for tonsure. The Synod replied that insufficient age should not serve as a hindrance to their discharge, because they would have to spend years in the novitiate before tonsure in any event. When the Ministry of Internal Affairs, after discussing the issue with the Ministry of State Domains, inquired about the exact length of the novitiate, the Synod replied that the novitiate was not fixed, and therefore it was impossible to set a minimum age.22 In 1891, the Synod issued detailed procedures for receiving candidates from the army reserves.23 In 1904, the chief procurator, K. Pobedonostsev, simplified these procedures, allowing diocesan bishops to make requests directly to the local military authorities.24 Finally, the state and the Synod altered the regulations concerning the release of taxed populations (peasants

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and townspeople) to join monasteries in 1906, making the process simpler for the groups that then provided the vast majority of monastic candidates.25 Trinity-Sergius had to receive permission from the Holy Synod until 1865, and thereafter from the metropolitan of Moscow, for each tonsure. Not only was each candidate scrutinized for the proper documents and certificates, but also to ensure that he was of sufficient age and had passed through the requisite novitiate (or was exempt for justifiable reasons). Finally, the monastery itself had to justify the need to tonsure new monks. In 1855, for example, the abbot of Makhrishchskii Monastery submitted a request for the tonsure of seven novices, explaining that there were only two regular monks in the monastery, both of whom were elderly and unsuited for ordination, and therefore the monastery needed more monks.26 Similarly, in 1877 the Lavra reported to Metropolitan Innokentii that there had not been new tonsures in several years, and, during that time, a number of monks had died, transferred to other monasteries, or become incapacitated because of old age or illness and therefore been removed from the staff (shtat), so that it was necessary to “replenish” the staff with new monks. The Governing Council thus submitted the names and service records of thirty-four individuals for the Lavra and the other communities in the collective.27 Thus, even those monasteries that were not state funded, such as Gethsemane and Makhra, had to justify the need for new candidates. Two years later, the Governing Council again submitted a report to Metropolitan Innokentii that, in the preceding two years, seventeen monks had been removed from the staff (through death or transfer) and that the monastery had gained only three monks through transfers from other monasteries. Therefore, the Lavra wanted to tonsure twelve novices. The report stated: “If these novices are obliged to return to their societies and report for the upcoming census, this will throw them into extreme confusion and the community into a deficiency of people.”28 There was a continual tension, therefore, between monasteries and the societies from which their candidates came, for the latter were generally reluctant to surrender taxpayers.29

The Trinity Brotherhood From the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, the aristocracy dominated the brotherhood of Trinity-Sergius. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, about 10 percent came from the highest circles of society (i.e., they were appanage princes or from boyar families), who predictably held the leading positions in the monastery hierarchy. A significant proportion of the brotherhood came from the middle and small noble landowners with property in the vicinity of the monastery or its estates; for centuries, these families had had close connections with the monastery and had provided most of the donations. These families always had representatives in the brotherhood; as the number of princes and boyars declined,

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they increasingly occupied many of the key posts in the monastery’s administration, creating a kind of familial dynasty system with strong ties to the monastery. From the mid–seventeenth century to the first quarter of the eighteenth, an increasing number of the brothers (already about half in the mid–seventeenth century) were lower class, either peasants from the monastery’s own estates or various artisans and traders on settlements owned by or near the monastery. A donation was a prerequisite for joining the monastery, but most donations were small sums of money or livestock—donations of land were rare. Generous donors enjoyed better conditions (e.g., a private cell) and held more influential positions in the monastery.30 Once the Lavra lost its estates with the secularization of 1764, its ties with the landowning nobility were sundered; together with the secularizing tendency in elite culture, these changes precipitated a dramatic decline in the percentage of nobles, especially males, joining monasteries by the early nineteenth century. The Holy Synod provided some rough data on the social profile of all monastic recruits from the 1830s to the 1850s, from which we know that the greatest number of monastic recruits came from the clerical estate; beyond that, however, historians have not known what kind of people were joining monasteries in the nineteenth century.31 To explore the appeal of monasticism during its revival from the mid– nineteenth century to 1914, this chapter examines the social profile of new recruits— their social and geographical origins, age, career and marriage patterns, and education levels. The analysis draws upon the service records of candidates for monastic tonsure submitted for review by the Holy Synod (until 1865) and the Metropolitan of Moscow; the data have been sampled for distinct periods (1846–55, 1860–65, 1877– 86, and 1905–14). The data are essentially complete for 546 candidates from all the communities in the Trinity-Sergius collective. The service records include the social estate, age at the time of tonsure, age upon becoming a novice, the home diocese, the community where he was tonsured, and his marital status.32 The records for certain periods also contain more complete information.33

Social Origins An analysis of the estate origins of monastic recruits reveals dramatic change between the mid–nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see table 4.1). In the first period (1846–55), the parish clergy produced the majority of candidates. In the second period (1860–65), the number of clergy declined and the number of peasants increased. In the third period (1877–86), the proportion of recruits from the clergy dramatically declined, while most other groups increased; this period also exhibited the greatest diversity. Finally, in the fourth period (1905–14), the overwhelming majority of candidates came from the peasantry. The nobility, in dramatic contrast to the medieval period, provided few recruits, never exceeding 4 percent.34 For the

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table 4.1. Social Profile of Monastic Recruits, Trinity-Sergius Collective, 1846–55, 1860–65, 1877–86, and 1905–14 1846–55 Estate (Soslovie) Noble Clergy Civil servant Noncommissioned officer Merchant Townsman Soldier Peasant Total

1860–65

1877–86 Number

1905–14

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

3 46 2 2

2.4 36.5 1.6 1.6

3 32 3 2

2.6 27.4 2.6 1.7

5 18 0 5

Percent 3.7 13.4 0 3.7

Number 2 1 5 1

7 32 3 31 126

5.6 25.4 2.4 24.6 100.0

9 24 1 43 117

7.7 20.5 0.9 36.8 100.0

1 37 5 63 134

0.7 27.6 3.7 47.0 100.0

0 17 3 147 176

Percent 1.1 0.06 2.8 0.06 0.0 9.7 1.7 83.5 100.0

Sources: For 1846–55: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov (RGADA), f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6279, ll. 3–9, 13 (1846); d. 6436, ll. 4–6 (1847); d. 6614, ll. 13-16 (1848); d. 6777, ll. 7–10 (1849); d. 6922, ll. 3–5 (1850); d. 7125, ll. 2–4 (1851); d. 7288, ll. 5–7 (1852); d. 7472, ll. 6-12 (1853); d. 7653, ll. 2–3, 10–15 (1854); d. 7830, ll. 7–15 (1855). For 1860–65: RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 8917, ll. 3–15 (1860); d. 9378, ll. 5–15 (1862); d. 9629, ll. 8–13 (1863); d. 10248, ll. 12–15, 23–34, 39, 45 (1865); and Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, f. 796, op. 142, ch. 7, ll. 5–14. For 1877–86: RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12469, ll. 12–17 (1877); d. 12707, ll. 6–7, 9–10 (1879); d. 12870, l. 1 (1880); d. 13028, ll. 9–13 (1881); d. 13133, ll. 7–10, 15–16 (1882); d. 13282, ll. 2–10 (1883); d. 13385 (1884); d. 13535, ll. 5–10, 18–19 (1885). For 1905–14: RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16629, ll. 2, 17, 26 (1905); d. 17001, ll. 2–3, 36–37 (1907); d. 17211, ll. 2–3, 22 (1908); d. 17399 (1909); d. 17473 (1909); d. 17581, ll. 32–36, 39, 43 (1910); d. 17794, ll. 2, 18, 23 (1911); d. 17995, ll. 2–3, 11, 33, 39, 44 (1912); d. 18175, ll. 3, 20, 30, 34, 38 (1913); d. 18363, ll. 2, 6, 20 (1914).

Trinity-Sergius collective, the proportion of nobility did increase from the first to the third periods, but by the early twentieth century it had fallen to only 1.1 percent. The parish clergy, as noted, contributed the single largest group in the 1840s and 1850s; however, at 36.5 percent, that proportion was significantly below the national average—in excess of 50 percent of monastic recruits from the clerical estate. The candidates from clerical origins declined significantly in the third period, but they still constituted the third-largest group. By the early twentieth century, the parish clergy produced only one candidate (who joined the Zosimova Hermitage). The privileged merchant estate supplied a number of recruits in the first period, and still more in the early 1860s, but it declined in the 1870s and 1880s and disappeared by the early twentieth century. Candidates from other privileged or semiprivileged groups—such as civil servants, honored citizens (pochetnyi grazhdanin), officers, and noncommissioned officers—consistently amounted to 3 or 4 percent. For Trinity-Sergius, the disprivileged poll-tax population of petty townsmen (meshchane) and peasants contributed the majority of candidates. In the first period, these groups provided exactly half the candidates (one-quarter townsmen, one-quarter peasants). In the 1870s and 1880s, the quotient of townsmen remained about a quarter of all recruits, while that of the peasantry steadily increased. By the

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early twentieth century, recruits from townsmen had declined, but they still made up the second-largest group. Finally, retired soldiers represented a consistent, if small, percentage. This group may be underrepresented in the statistics, because it had a different process for obtaining permission for tonsure.35 In short, recruitment from the aristocracy and other privileged groups was consistently a small percentage in the nineteenth century. The most important groups remained the clerical estate and the tax-paying population of townsmen and peasants, but their relative proportions changed over time, with the most significant change coming in the overwhelming percentage of peasant recruits by the turn of the century. The transformations of Russian society, especially in the wake of the Great Reforms of the 1860s, partly explain the changes in social origins. The high number of monastic recruits from the sons of parish clergy in the 1840s and 1850s was partially the result of the circumstances of the clerical estate. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the clerical estate had become virtually a caste, in which only sons of parish clergy studied in seminaries and only seminary graduates became parish clergy. In the eighteenth century, the state fixed the rigid service structure, so that positions for the parish clergy did not increase; the clergy’s natural demographic growth far outstripped the number of positions, producing an overabundance of candidates. At the same time, sons of parish clergy did not leave the clerical estate in any significant numbers because of legal discrimination, fear of consignment to the poll-tax population, and other social and educational barriers. As a result, even seminary graduates, let alone the large number of dropouts, were unable to find clerical positions. It was precisely in the 1840s and 1850s that the Church’s hierarchy became acutely aware of the problem of clerical overpopulation. In 1862, Alexander II established a Special Commission on the Affairs of the Orthodox Clergy to investigate the reform of the clerical estate; one clerical committee submitted a report in 1863 that stated: “The number of those now studying in ecclesiastical schools has risen to the point where they surpass Church needs and form a kind of proletariat in the clergy. Of this proletariat only a few leave the clerical estate to enter other positions (mainly in the bureaucracy); the rest seek refuge in monasteries, rural schools, and the homes of parents and relatives.”36 Indeed, the accusation that seminary dropouts formed the largest contingent of monks became a standard trope of critics. The transformation in the status of the clerical estate by the Great Reforms dramatically decreased the number of monastic recruits from the clergy sons in the subsequent period. In 1867, a new law was enacted that in effect abolished the clerical estate, making it much easier for the sons of the parish clergy to obtain secular educations, leave the clerical estate, and enter the civil service or the professions.37 The reform in fact created the opposite problem for the Church; because seminarians left the clerical estate in droves, the Church soon had a shortage of qualified

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clerical candidates. The reform did, however, solve the problem of overpopulation, and consequently the number of monastic recruits from the clergy dramatically declined by the 1870s and virtually disappeared by the early twentieth century.38 At the same time, the abolition of serfdom in 1861 made it dramatically easier for peasants to join monasteries. Even in the period between 1846 and 1855, the number of peasant recruits, like Trofim Tsymbal, was substantial (roughly 25 percent).39 The absolute number of peasant recruits more than doubled during the decade between 1877 and 1886, but they still constituted less than half (47 percent) of total candidates. Thus Emancipation of the Serfs freed many peasants to leave the village for the monastery. The abolition of the poll tax in 1885, together with the simplification in the regulations for the taxed population to join monasteries in 1906, reduced governmental impediments to a monastic vocation. Both these changes also affected the townsmen, but their absolute numbers did not rise as the number of peasants dramatically increased, far surpassing any other group. Therefore the abolition of serfdom, while certainly granting peasants greater freedom of choice, cannot be the sole explanation for the eventual “peasantization” of monasticism in the early twentieth century. Examining the profiles of candidates for the different communities in the TrinitySergius collective reveals differences in the types of recruits that each community attracted. Between 1877 and 1886 (the period of the greatest diversity), Gethsemane Skete tonsured thirty-five candidates, of whom there were fifteen peasants, fifteen townsmen, two officers, and one each from the nobility, clergy, and merchants. In the Lavra itself, by contrast, the seventy-one candidates included thirty-three peasants, seventeen townsmen, thirteen from the clerical estate, three soldiers, three officers, and two nobles. Thus, though both attracted more than 40 percent of their recruits from the peasantry (42.9 percent for Gethsemane, 46.5 percent for the Lavra), Trinity-Sergius attracted a much higher proportion of candidates from the clerical estate (18.3 percent), whereas Gethsemane attracted a much higher proportion of candidates who were townsmen (42.9 percent for Gethsemane vs. 23.9 percent for Trinity-Sergius). The social profile of monastic recruits over the entire span of time from 1846 to 1914 also reveals clear patterns with regard to each separate community (see table 4.2). Some of the particularities reflect the nature of the data; the files on candidates for tonsure do not, for the most part, distinguish the candidates who were being tonsured for Gethsemane Skete in the 1840s and 1850s (when Metropolitan Filaret kept the existence of the Skete secret), but included these candidates together with those tonsured for the Lavra. Thus the particularly low percentage of recruits from the clergy may reflect the fact that few data come from Gethsemane precisely when the number of clerical recruits was at its peak. Nevertheless, Gethsemane shows a striking propensity to attract recruits from townsmen. Peasant recruits are

table 4.2. Tonsures by Monastic Community, 1846–1914 Estate

Nobles Clergy Civil servants and othersa Merchants Townsmen Soldiers Peasants Total

Lavra

Gethsemane

Bethany

Makhra

Paraclete

Zosimova

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

7 74 13 7 62 5 126 293

2.4 25.3 4.1 2.4 21.2 1.7 43.0 100

2 6 4 7 31 4 68 122

1.6 4.9 3.3 5.7 25.4 3.3 55.7 100

2 12 1 2 4 0 8 29

6.9 41.4 3.3 6.9 13.8 0.0 27.6 100

0 1 1 0 6 3 28 39

0.0 2.6 2.6 0.0 15.4 7.7 71.8 100

0 1 1 0 3 0 22 27

0.0 3.7 3.7 0.0 11.1 0.0 81.5 100

0 0 1 0 1 0 22 25

0.0 0.0 4.0 0.0 4.0 0.0 88.0 100

a This category includes honored citizens and retired officers. Sources: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6279, ll. 3–9, 13 (1846); d. 6436, ll. 4–6 (1847); d. 6614, ll. 13–16 (1848); d. 6777, ll. 7–10 (1849); d. 6922, ll. 3–5 (1850); d. 7125, ll. 2–4 (1851); d. 7288, ll. 5–7 (1852); d. 7472, ll. 6–12 (1853); d. 7653, ll. 2–3, 10–15 (1854); d. 7830, ll. 7–15 (1855); d. 8917, ll. 3–15 (1860); d. 9378, ll. 5–15 (1862); d. 9629, ll. 8–13 (1863); d. 10248, ll. 12–15, 23–34, 39, 45 (1865); d. 12469, ll. 12–17 (1877); d. 12707, ll. 6–7, 9–10 (1879); d. 12870, l. 1 (1880); d. 13028, ll. 9–13 (1881); d. 13133, ll. 7–10, 15–16 (1882); d. 13282, ll. 2–10 (1883); d. 13385 (1884); d. 13535, ll. 5–10, 18–19 (1885); d. 16629, ll. 2, 17, 26 (1905); d. 17001, ll. 2–3, 36–37 (1907); d. 17211, ll. 2–3, 22 (1908); d. 17399 (1909); d. 17473 (1909); d. 17581, ll. 32–36, 39, 43 (1910); d. 17794, ll. 2, 18, 23 (1911); d. 17995, ll. 2–3, 11, 33, 39, 44 (1912); d. 18175, ll. 3, 20, 30, 34, 38 (1913); d. 18363, ll. 2, 6, 20 (1914). Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, f. 796, op. 142, ch. 7, ll. 5–14 (1860).

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overrepresented in the statistics of the Zosimova Hermitage because the community only came into existence in the 1890s—precisely at the time of the massive “peasantization” of monasticism. For the Lavra itself, as for Bethany and Makhrishchskii monasteries, the data are clearer. Bethany, as a state-funded monastery that restricted its number of monastics to its service structure (shtat)—thus ensuring that each monk received the full and regular stipend—was the most elite monastery. It therefore had the highest percentage of recruits from the privileged or semiprivileged strata—namely, the nobility, merchants, and the parish clergy. The high percentage of recruits from the clerical estate is particularly striking, and may be connected with their seminary educations (because Bethany had a seminary attached). Makhrishchskii Monastery, by contrast, received neither state funding nor significant income from pilgrims or other sources; the poorest monastery in the collective, it was a “proletarian” establishment that expected its monks to support it with their labor. Not surprisingly, its recruits came almost exclusively from the ranks of retired soldiers, townsmen, and peasants, a fact that was consistently true even in the 1850s and the 1870s. Finally, the Lavra itself remained the most socially diverse of all the communities, attracting the largest total number of its candidates from the peasantry (43 percent) but also drawing a significant number of recruits from the clergy and townsmen. In short, the characteristics of different communities appealed to people of different social classes. Sons of clergy evidently were most attracted to the monasteries in which they could, as it were, pursue a celibate clerical career—particularly state-funded monasteries that catered to pilgrims (Trinity-Sergius itself and Bethany). Makhra, as a laboring community, drew its recruits from the laboring population. Gethsemane had particularly strong ties with urban areas, especially Moscow.

Geographical Origins The service records of candidates for tonsure utilized here for the span of time from 1846 to 1914 include data on the geographical origins of 492 candidates.40 The vast majority (68.9 percent) came from the central European Russian dioceses, namely Moscow itself and surrounding dioceses (see table 4.3). The dioceses of Moscow and Vladimir contributed more than a third (38.2 percent) of all recruits. The remaining dioceses contributed fewer candidates, but each gave a significant number.41 The second-largest group came from the central Black Earth region. Indeed, the dioceses of Orel, Penza, Kursk, and Tambov contributed about as many candidates as some central dioceses (Kaluga, Iaroslavl, Riazan, Kostroma, and Smolensk). Candidates from the northern Russian dioceses of Saint Petersburg, Novgorod, Vologda, and Viatka amounted to 6.1 percent, with the largest number (2.4 percent) coming from Saint Petersburg. The Volga region, led by Nizhnii Novgorod (2.2 percent),

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table 4.3. Geographical Origins of Recruits, Trinity-Sergius Collective, 1846–1914 Region Central European Russia Vladimir Moscow Tula Tver Kaluga Iaroslavl Riazan Kostroma Smolensk Central Black Earth Orel Penza Kursk Tambov Voronezh Northern Russia Volga Region Ukraine Western Russia Southern Steppes Urals Baltics Total

Percentage of Total in Selected Dioceses

Number of Recruits

Percent

339

68.9

65

13.2

30 28 19 4 3 2 2 492

6.1 5.7 3.9 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.4 100

19.3 18.9 8.5 6.5 3.9 3.5 3.3 2.8 2.2 4.1 3.5 2.4 2.2 1

Sources: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6279, ll. 3–9, 13 (1846); d. 6436, ll. 4–6 (1847); d. 6614, ll. 13–16 (1848); d. 6777, ll. 7–10 (1849); d. 6922, ll. 3–5 (1850); d. 7125, ll. 2–4 (1851); d. 7288, ll. 5–7 (1852); d. 7472, ll. 6–12 (1853); d. 7653, ll. 2–3, 10–15 (1854); d. 7830, ll. 7–15 (1855); d. 8917, ll. 3–15 (1860); d. 9378, ll. 5–15 (1862); d. 9629, ll. 8–13 (1863); d. 10248, ll. 12–15, 23–34, 39, 45 (1865); d. 12469, ll. 12–17 (1877); d. 12707, ll. 6–7, 9–10 (1879); d. 12870, l. 1 (1880); d. 13028, ll. 9–13 (1881); d. 13133, ll. 7–10, 15–16 (1882); d. 13282, ll. 2–10 (1883); d. 13385 (1884); d. 13535, ll. 5–10, 18–19 (1885); d. 16629, ll. 2, 17, 26 (1905); d. 17001, ll. 2–3, 36–37 (1907); d. 17211, ll. 2–3, 22 (1908); d. 17399 (1909); d. 17473 (1909); d. 17581, ll. 32–36, 39, 43 (1910); d. 17794, ll. 2, 18, 23 (1911); d. 17995, ll. 2–3, 11, 33, 39, 44 (1912); d. 18175, ll. 3, 20, 30, 34, 38 (1913); d. 18363, ll. 2, 6, 20 (1914). Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, f. 796, op. 142, ch. 7, ll. 5–14 (1860).

accounted for 5.7 percent of the new recruits. Each of the remaining regions (the Ukrainian dioceses, western Russia, the southern steppes, the Urals, and the Baltic Sea region) contributed less than 4 percent of the candidates.42 None came from Siberia. The pattern of change over time is paradoxical; the number of recruits from Vladimir and Moscow combined (as the two most important central regions) constituted roughly a third of all candidates in the first and fourth periods, a full 39 percent of candidates in the 1860s, but only 26.8 percent in the 1877–86 period. As with social profile, these patterns suggest that the greatest diversity came in the period 1877–86.

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Thus, the Trinity-Sergius collective attracted recruits from all across Russia, underscoring its significance as a national monastery. Its prominence, spiritual power, and inner diversity all helped to attract a broad range of novices from virtually every corner of Russia. Only Siberia, where the monastic tradition was noticeably weaker, failed to make its mark. At the same time, the majority of candidates came from dioceses in the Moscow region and, to a lesser degree, the central Black Earth region. That geographical weighting most likely reflects a natural tendency for recruits to join a monastery in their own region, as we saw with TrofimToviia, who initially joined a monastery in his region that he was able to visit and with which he had contacts. Moreover, each community exhibited its own patterns. The Lavra itself was the only community that attracted a lower number of candidates than the collective’s average from the central European Russian dioceses (at 65.5 percent). Moreover, of those who came from central Russian dioceses, fewer (28.5 percent) came from Moscow and Vladimir (table 4.4). The Paraclete Hermitage attracted nearly 80 percent of its candidates from central Russia, but half came from dioceses other than Moscow and Vladimir. By contrast, the Makhrishchskii Monastery was the most homogeneous, with an overwhelming majority from Moscow and Vladimir. The Bethany Monastery, Zosimova Hermitage, and Gethsemane Skete were all close to the general average, with about 70 percent of their recruits coming from central Russia. Roughly half the recruits in both Bethany and the Zosimova Hermitage came

table 4.4. Monastic Recruits from Central European Russia, by Community

Community Trinity-Sergius Gethsemane Bethany Makhra Paraclete Zosimova

Total from Central European Russia (including Moscow and Vladimir)

Total Number of Recruits

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

267 110 28 33 24 25

175 78 20 26 19 18

65.5 70.9 71.4 78.8 79.2 72

37 31 6 10 2 5

13.9 28.2 21.4 30.3 8.3 20

39 20 9 12 5 9

14.6 18.2 32.1 36.4 20.8 36

From Moscow

From Vladimir

Sources: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6279, ll. 3–9, 13 (1846); d. 6436, ll. 4–6 (1847); d. 6614, ll. 13–16 (1848); d. 6777, ll. 7–10 (1849); d. 6922, ll. 3–5 (1850); d. 7125, ll. 2–4 (1851); d. 7288, ll. 5–7 (1852); d. 7472, ll. 6–12 (1853); d. 7653, ll. 2–3, 10–15 (1854); d. 7830, ll. 7–15 (1855); d. 8917, ll. 3–15 (1860); d. 9378, ll. 5–15 (1862); d. 9629, ll. 8–13 (1863); d. 10248, ll. 12–15, 23–34, 39, 45 (1865); d. 12469, ll. 12–17 (1877); d. 12707, ll. 6–7, 9–10 (1879); d. 12870, l. 1 (1880); d. 13028, ll. 9–13 (1881); d. 13133, ll. 7–10, 15–16 (1882); d. 13282, ll. 2–10 (1883); d. 13385 (1884); d. 13535, ll. 5–10, 18–19 (1885); d. 16629, ll. 2, 17, 26 (1905); d. 17001, ll. 2–3, 36–37 (1907); d. 17211, ll. 2–3, 22 (1908); d. 17399 (1909); d. 17473 (1909); d. 17581, ll. 32–36, 39, 43 (1910); d. 17794, ll. 2, 18, 23 (1911); d. 17995, ll. 2–3, 11, 33, 39, 44 (1912); d. 18175, ll. 3, 20, 30, 34, 38 (1913); d. 18363, ll. 2, 6, 20 (1914). Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, f. 796, op. 142, ch. 7, ll. 5–14 (1860).

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from Moscow and especially Vladimir, whereas Gethsemane had an unusually high proportion from Moscow. In sum, Trinity-Sergius itself (as a “national” institution) had the most diverse population, whereas Makhrishchskii Monastery bore the character of a monastery with a primarily “local” appeal.

Length of Novitiate and Age Of the 507 candidates for whom information on their age at the beginning of the novitiate was given, the majority (47.3 percent) entered the novitiate in their twenties (see table 4.5). Thus about half the candidates began living in the monastery and entered the novitiate by the age of thirty, slightly more than one-quarter entered in their thirties, and the balance entered when above the age of forty. The majority of candidates (65 percent) were tonsured in their thirties, but many were older (table 4.6). Of the 538 candidates between 1846 and 1914 for whom data on age of tonsure were collected, the youngest was twenty-six and the oldest was eighty-five. The largest group, 98 candidates (18 percent), were tonsured at the age of thirty, and another 47 percent were tonsured between the ages of thirty-one and thirty-nine. Only 4 candidates (all seminary graduates) were tonsured before the age of thirty—in keeping with the law of 1832. In a few instances, candidates under thirty applied, but they met with rejection because they were too young.43 Indeed, in 1880, the

table 4.5. Age of Monastic Candidates on Entering the Novitiate, Trinity-Sergius Collective, 1846–1914 Age (years) 17–19 20–29 30–39 Over 40 Total

Number of Candidates

Percent

13 240 136 118 507

2.6 47.3 26.8 23.3 100.0

Sources: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6279, ll. 3–9, 13 (1846); d. 6436, ll. 4–6 (1847); d. 6614, ll. 13–16 (1848); d. 6777, ll. 7–10 (1849); d. 6922, ll. 3–5 (1850); d. 7125, ll. 2–4 (1851); d. 7288, ll. 5–7 (1852); d. 7472, ll. 6–12 (1853); d. 7653, ll. 2–3, 10–15 (1854); d. 7830, ll. 7–15 (1855); d. 8917, ll. 3–15 (1860); d. 9378, ll. 5–15 (1862); d. 9629, ll. 8–13 (1863); d. 10248, ll. 12–15, 23–34, 39, 45 (1865); d. 12469, ll. 12–17 (1877); d. 12707, ll. 6–7, 9–10 (1879); d. 12870, l. 1 (1880); d. 13028, ll. 9–13 (1881); d. 13133, ll. 7–10, 15–16 (1882); d. 13282, ll. 2–10 (1883); d. 13385 (1884); d. 13535, ll. 5–10, 18–19 (1885); d. 16629, ll. 2, 17, 26 (1905); d. 17001, ll. 2–3, 36–37 (1907); d. 17211, ll. 2–3, 22 (1908); d. 17399 (1909); d. 17473 (1909); d. 17581, ll. 32–36, 39, 43 (1910); d. 17794, ll. 2, 18, 23 (1911); d. 17995, ll. 2–3, 11, 33, 39, 44 (1912); d. 18175, ll. 3, 20, 30, 34, 38 (1913); d. 18363, ll. 2, 6, 20 (1914). Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, f. 796, op. 142, ch. 7, ll. 5–14 (1860).

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table 4.6. Age of Monastic Candidates at Tonsure, Trinity-Sergius Collective, 1846–1914 Age (years) 25–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60–69 70–85 Total

Number of Candidates

Percent

4 350 105 50 22 7 538

0.7 65.1 19.5 9.3 4.1 1.3 100.0

Sources: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6279, ll. 3–9, 13 (1846); d. 6436, ll. 4–6 (1847); d. 6614, ll. 13–16 (1848); d. 6777, ll. 7–10 (1849); d. 6922, ll. 3–5 (1850); d. 7125, ll. 2–4 (1851); d. 7288, ll. 5–7 (1852); d. 7472, ll. 6–12 (1853); d. 7653, ll. 2–3, 10–15 (1854); d. 7830, ll. 7–15 (1855); d. 8917, ll. 3–15 (1860); d. 9378, ll. 5–15 (1862); d. 9629, ll. 8–13 (1863); d. 10248, ll. 12–15, 23–34, 39, 45 (1865); d. 12469, ll. 12–17 (1877); d. 12707, ll. 6–7, 9–10 (1879); d. 12870, l. 1 (1880); d. 13028, ll. 9–13 (1881); d. 13133, ll. 7–10, 15–16 (1882); d. 13282, ll. 2–10 (1883); d. 13385 (1884); d. 13535, ll. 5–10, 18–19 (1885); d. 16629, ll. 2, 17, 26 (1905); d. 17001, ll. 2–3, 36–37 (1907); d. 17211, ll. 2–3, 22 (1908); d. 17399 (1909); d. 17473 (1909); d. 17581, ll. 32–36, 39, 43 (1910); d. 17794, ll. 2, 18, 23 (1911); d. 17995, ll. 2–3, 11, 33, 39, 44 (1912); d. 18175, ll. 3, 20, 30, 34, 38 (1913); d. 18363, ll. 2, 6, 20 (1914). Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, f. 796, op. 142, ch. 7, ll. 5–14 (1860).

monastery had to justify a tonsure before the age of thirty, even if the candidate was a seminary graduate. As the Governing Council of the Lavra explained, a twentynine-year-old novice (Nikolai Rozhdestvenskii, the future Archbishop Nikon of Vologda) was so gravely ill that the doctor concluded that he might not recover.44 The average age for entering the novitiate was 33.5 years (the median was 30). The average age of tonsure was 38.8 years, and the median was 35 (somewhat lower because of the few candidates who were tonsured in their seventies or eighties). These figures did not change significantly over time.45 The average time between entering the novitiate and tonsure was 5.25 years (median, 4 years); generally speaking, therefore, the novitiate lasted longer than the required 3 years. There were cases of those tonsured after shorter and much longer novitiates. A significant 17.9 percent of candidates (91 of 508 tonsures) had not fulfilled the threeyear novitiate. Sixty-two of those candidates, however, had spent two years in the novitiate; in all probability, by the time they were actually tonsured, the three-year novitiate was fulfilled or close to fulfilled. Of the 29 remaining candidates who had spent fewer than two years in the novitiate, 8 were widowed parish-clergymen who were exempt from the need to fulfill it. Several others were elderly and ill; in their case, the novitiate was abbreviated so that they could be tonsured before death. One ill forty-nine-year-old novice was tonsured in 1911 after having enrolled in the

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novitiate earlier that same year; he had, however, lived in the monastery since 1900.46 In a number of cases, however, the file provides no explanation for the early tonsure.47 At the other extreme, 93 individuals (18.3 percent) spent more than ten years in the novitiate before tonsure, with three candidates having spent more than twenty years as novices. One such candidate, A. Malov, spent twenty-two years as a novice in the Lavra; he had been, according to the Lavra authorities, “overlooked through an inadvertent error.”48 The longest novitiate was twenty-eight years; this candidate, P. Krasnopol’skii, joined the Spaso-Preobrazhenskii (Holy Transfiguration) Monastery at the age of sixteen after leaving the district ecclesiastical school and enrolled in the novitiate the following year. He was tonsured at the age of fortyfive, within four years of his transfer to Makhra.49 In short, a significant number of candidates had very long novitiates, although the reasons for these delays are not usually known. Not only did the novitiate tend to last longer than three years, but also most candidates lived in the monastery for a number of years before entering the novitiate. Between 1905 and 1914, the service records consistently include information on both the year when candidates began living in the monastery and the year when they entered the novitiate; for this period, it is possible to determine the amount of time spent in the monastery before taking formal vows. The average time spent living in the monastery before entering the novitiate was 4.3 years; thus candidates typically spent between 8 and 9 years living in the monastery “on trial” and formally as novices before becoming monks. Twenty-two candidates began living in the monastery before the age of twenty (about 9.5 percent of recruits for whom this information was provided), the youngest of whom was twelve; slightly more than half (53 percent) began living in the monastery in their twenties. The most typical pattern, therefore, was for an individual to enter the monastery as a postulant in his twenties, spend four or five years before entering the novitiate, and spend another five or so years as a novice before being tonsured in his thirties.

Marital Status Most monastic candidates entered the monastery in their twenties and thirties, and the vast majority of them were single. Of 496 candidates from 1846 to 1914 for whom the records indicate previous marital status, 415 (83.7 percent) had never been married before entering the monastery. The number of widowers was 75 (15.1 percent), thus far fewer than those who had never been married, but still significant. Finally, 6 candidates (1.2 percent) were divorced. Among the widowers were 21 parish clergymen, who varied in age from twenty-six to sixty-three. In prerevolutionary Russia, parish clergy (deacons and priests) were required to be married, but canon law forbade widowers from remarrying and remaining priests. Many volun-

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tarily defrocked and left the clerical estate, but they faced severe disabilities in finding an alternative career. The Church hierarchy particularly encouraged widowed parish clergy to enter monasteries, as long as they did not have dependent children. It was not unusual for such individuals, with their seminary education and pastoral experience, to rise to positions of authority in monasteries, even abbot. The total number of such individuals who joined the Trinity-Sergius collective, however, was not great; most joined between the 1840s and the 1860s, and none between 1905 and 1914. Although widowers came from all estates, some groups were more likely to join after being widowed. The highest proportion came from the nobility (30 percent), followed by officers and noncommissioned officers (22 percent). Peasant widowers were significantly higher than the remaining groups, with 40 widowers out of 257 peasant candidates (15.6 percent); only 5 to 6 percent of merchants and townsmen were widowers. The average age of widowers at the time of tonsure, at 50 years, was naturally higher (the average age at entering the novitiate was 46.5; the average age for bachelors at the time of tonsure was 35.8, the median 33). Thus there was a significant, if minority, pattern of individuals joining monasteries at an older age after already having had a family and career. The predominant pattern, however, was that of younger bachelors entering the monastery predominantly in their twenties and being tonsured in their thirties. The smallest group consisted of those who were divorced. Of these candidates, three were separated by mutual agreement with their wives, becoming monks at the same time as their wives became nuns. Indeed, the monastery authorities went to great lengths to uphold a tradition by which the husband and the wife were tonsured on the same day. Thus a fifty-nine-year-old peasant from Kostroma, Ivan Chelyshev, who had been living in the Paraclete Hermitage for nine years, had a difficult time obtaining permission to be tonsured because the abbess of his wife’s community was reluctant to tonsure her; the Governing Council of the Lavra therefore requested that she be tonsured at the Khot’kovo Convent (near Trinity-Sergius) instead.50 The other two candidates, both tonsured in 1862, were also peasants.51 In the early twentieth century, a new circumstance appeared, in which two candidates were tonsured after divorces resulting from infidelity. I. Kuznetsov, for example, was a sixty-five-year-old peasant from the Moscow Diocese who was divorced from his second wife after her infidelity; he began living in Gethsemane Skete in 1891, entered the novitiate in 1911, and was tonsured in 1912.52 The divorce rate, indeed, had risen dramatically in the early twentieth century, especially after a slight relaxation of the Church law governing divorce in 1904.53 Thus the practice of mutual separation for the purpose of both spouses entering monasteries was rare, but was followed; the impact of modernization was also being felt, with the appearance of divorced men in the monastery.

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Previous Career The service records rarely give the previous careers of monastic recruits, largely because most candidates were simple townsmen or peasants who had begun living in the monastery in their twenties. In the vast majority of instances, therefore, monastic recruits probably lived at home and contributed to their family’s economy before entering the monastery. Even with older candidates from the peasantry, their work in the fields was no doubt simply assumed. Former careers were generally indicated only for privileged or semiprivileged groups, such as nobility, civil servants, or clergy. The widowed parish clergy had, of course, served in parish churches before losing their wives. The majority of unmarried recruits from the clerical estate entered the monastery after leaving the district ecclesiastical school or the seminary; they usually entered the monastery in their late teens or twenties, with their average age of tonsure (thirty-two) being lower than the overall average. There were some who left the clerical estate and worked as clerks or civil servants before entering the monastery. One candidate, Ivan Tsvetkov, the son of a protodeacon, left the clerical estate after the district ecclesiastical school and worked as a clerk for the Holy Synod for three years; he first entered a monastery in Novgorod at the age of twenty-four and, four years later, was transferred to Bethany, where he was tonsured in 1855 at the age of thirty. Aleksandr Sakharov, after completing his studies at the Tula Seminary, worked for five years as a teacher in a district ecclesiastical school; at the age of twenty-seven, he also left the ecclesiastical estate, working as a civil servant and receiving the rank of collegiate registrar. After only two years of such work, however, he entered the Lavra and, in 1855, also at the age of thirty, became a monk.54 Ivan Druzhinin, the son of a sacristan from the Diocese of Tula, himself became a sacristan after finishing the ecclesiastical school in 1829. He served in various parish churches as a sacristan until he was thirty-four, but never married; he joined the Lavra and, six years later at the age of forty, was tonsured a monk.55 There were a few other instances of recruits from the clerical estate who served as lower clergy (sacristans and psalmists) in parish churches before entering the monastery in their late twenties or early thirties. The nobles who became monks varied greatly in age and career patterns. Of the twelve for whom information is available, three joined the monastery in their early twenties and appear to have had no prior service.56 Another three entered the monastery in their mid-thirties after working as civil servants, such as N. Aladin, age thirty-six from the Diocese of Riazan, who joined the monastery after obtaining the rank of collegiate secretary.57 Three others were tonsured in their mid-forties: one was a retired cadet, a second a retired collegiate assessor, and a third a retired captain.58 The remaining two were widowed and retired civil servants; one was tonsured at the age of forty-nine, the other at the age of sixty-eight.59 In short, nobles,

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though few in number, joined the monastery at varying ages, some in their early twenties directly after finishing their education, others after having lost their spouses and served full careers. Recruits from other privileged groups demonstrate great variety in age and career patterns. Of nine noncommissioned officers, all became monks after their careers of military service; they were tonsured between the ages of forty-one and sixty-eight. The soldiers, like the officers, became monks after their careers of service; of the seven for whom information was provided, only one joined at the young age of thirty-two; the rest ranged from forty-three to seventy-six. Recruits who were honored citizens and civil servants, like recruits from the nobility, entered the monastery equally in their youth and in retirement; recruits from the military, both ordinary soldiers and noncommissioned officers, by contrast, joined the monastery as a rule only upon retirement from service.

Education Education levels varied according to social class, but the vast majority of monastic recruits had at least basic literacy. The service records, as a rule, consistently provide information about the education of candidates from the clerical estate, the nobility, and a few other privileged groups such as civil servants and officers. Educational information for commoners (peasants and townsmen) was provided consistently in the 1870s and 1880s and, to a lesser extent, in the early twentieth century; because of this incomplete information, it is difficult to determine the change over time in education and literacy levels. Of eighty-nine clerical candidates, the majority (63 percent) had at least some seminary education, whereas the minority (37 percent) studied only in the district ecclesiastical schools. Unfortunately, the precise percentage of those who finished seminary versus those who left before completing cannot be determined, though it is likely that many did not finish. Of eight noble recruits, four studied in the gymnasium, one in a lyceum, and three in military schools or colleges; one officer’s son studied in military college, while the recruits from the noncommissioned officers had a home education or were simply stated to be “literate.” The retired soldiers also mostly received their educations at home, though one studied in a military school. The most highly educated monastic recruits were, naturally, from the most educated classes in society. The majority of townsmen and peasants for whom educational information was provided were literate, but most had only informal education. Of eighty-seven peasant candidates for whom information was provided, sixty-eight (78 percent) had learned to read and write at home. Another ten were simply identified as “literate” (gramoten). Two peasant recruits had studied in parish schools, two in village schools, and two in higher elementary schools. Only three were illiterate. The statistics for thirty townsmen were similar; twenty-four (80 percent) were educated at

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home and were “literate,” two studied in primary schools, and one was illiterate. It is difficult to assess the quality of this “home” education for peasants and lower townsmen; generally, historians tend to assume that it provided only a bare minimum of literacy, but the case of Trofim-Toviia points to the fact that even serfs educated at home by their family could achieve a high degree of writing as well as reading facility—and this literacy was a decisive factor in their journey to the monastery. Although the educational level of most commoners was low, the vast majority were at least literate, and the significance of their literacy and the role of religious literature should not be underestimated.60 On the whole, the general educational level of monks dropped at the end of the ancien régime as the number of recruits from the clerical estate declined and the percentage of commoners increased, although the level of commoners’ literacy more than doubled between 1850 and 1913; moreover, it appears that the literacy levels of monastic recruits were higher than those of Russian society in general, where only 19 percent were literate in 1850 and 54 percent in 1913.61 That cultural regression became a growing concern for Church and monastic leaders, and a point of polemic from secular critics. Although the majority of monastic recruits had basic literacy, the Lavra itself sought to educate monastic recruits in the fundamentals of the Orthodox faith and the monastic life, particularly starting in the late nineteenth century. In the 1860s, Metropolitan Filaret would question monks put forward for ordination to holy orders and refuse to ordain them if he found their understanding of Christianity lacking.62 In 1892, as Metropolitan Leontii of Moscow reported, “Hieromonk Nikon, at my suggestion, expressed his agreement to assume the labor of teaching necessary subjects to the Lavra’s novices.”63 Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) established a course of education for novices that included catechism, Scripture (“sacred history”), liturgics, reading Church Slavonic, and singing. All novices had to master these subjects to qualify for tonsure. In 1905, for example, the Lavra presented ten candidates for tonsure; an “examining commission” tested each for his understanding of the required subjects and entered into their service record the level of their knowledge (three were “satisfactory,” three were “good,” three were “very good,” and one was “extremely good”).64 The Lavra did not permit tonsure for those with inadequate understanding. The course of instruction assumed basic literacy; hence the Lavra disqualified the illiterate from tonsure, except in special circumstances. In 1907, for example, the Governing Council reported: Novices from the Skete and Bethany were subject to examination, during which one of them, Il’ia Razumov, demonstrated weak understanding, and therefore was not included in this report among those presented for tonsure. The novices of both the hermitages [i.e., Paraclete and Zosi-

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mova], as is well known, are very well-read [imeiut khoroshuiu nachitannost’]. One of them, Nikifor Samotokhin, is only semiliterate; however, in view of his advanced age (fifty-seven), his pious attitude, and his particular zeal for labor, the Governing Council proposes not to refuse him for tonsure; the same is also true for Makhrishchskii novice Luk’ianov, age sixty-eight.65 Thus, at least in the early twentieth century, the Lavra’s collective accepted illiterate or semiliterate candidates for tonsure only in special circumstances—namely, when the candidates were older, had long novitiates, and were distinguished by their piety and sincerity. The monastery not only expected its novices to be literate but also to have a foundation of religious knowledge by the time of their tonsure. The anticlerical stereotype of the “illiterate peasant-monks” of the early twentieth century certainly did not accurately describe the Trinity-Sergius collective. Although literacy was the norm, the Lavra did experience a decline in formal education, a natural accompaniment to its democratization and decline in clerical recruits, but it countered this with its own educational efforts.

Rejections The Trinity-Sergius collective did not accept all candidates who requested to join. Indeed, it rejected a fairly large number, for a variety of reasons. There were many that the monastery was willing to accept, but the candidate’s superior or communities refused to release them. For example, in 1850 Ivan Nikitin, a peasant from Vladimir Province, submitted a formal request to enter the novitiate in Gethsemane Skete. He had already been living in the Skete for some time, and its superior, Hieromonk Anatolii, noted that he had conducted himself well, was “zealous for the Church of God,” and seemed suitable for the monastic life. The Governing Council thus decided to accept his request, but it was informed by the Vladimir Office of State Domains that Nikitin was not free to join the monastery because he was subject to conscription into the army.66 Similarly, the Governing Council agreed to accept Vasilii Timofeev, a peasant from Vladimir living in Gethsemane Skete, but the same office declined to release Timofeev because it lacked confirmation of his unmarried status and on who would pay his tax dues until the next census.67 In other cases, however, the Lavra rejected candidates because of evidence that they were unfit for monastic life. For example, they refused to accept the discharged sacristan Egor Nikolaev from the Diocese of Tula because of his drunken behavior.68 The Lavra’s archive contains annual files on those rejected, showing that it refused to accept a very large number of unqualified individuals.

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The “Typical” Monk The data given above on candidates tonsured in the Trinity-Sergius collective from 1846 to 1914 suggest several types of monastic recruits. The “typical” monastic recruit was a bachelor from central European Russia, particularly the dioceses of Vladimir or Moscow; he began living in the monastery in his twenties, enrolled in the novitiate four to five years later, and was tonsured in his thirties after residing in the monastery for nine or ten years. In the 1840s and 1850s, he was most likely the son of a parish clergyman; in the 1870s and 1880s, a townsman or a peasant; and in the early twentieth century, a peasant. In 1848, for example, P. Murav’ev was tonsured at the age of thirty; from a clerical family in the diocese of Kostroma, he studied at the Kostroma seminary and, without finishing, entered the Lavra in 1841 at the age of twenty-three and the novitiate four years later. 69 Aleksei Liubimov followed almost the exact same course five years later; also from a Kostroma clerical family, he studied at the seminary until the philosophical course, when he left; he entered the Lavra in 1843 at the age of twenty-one, entered the novitiate two years later, and from 1848 to 1853 his obedience as a novice was teaching in the Lavra’s school for boys. In 1853, he was tonsured at the age of thirty-one, after having lived in the monastery for a decade.70 Gavriil Gomzin was a relatively typical example of a monastic recruit for Gethsemane in the 1870s; born in 1844 in the provincial town of Zvenigorod (Moscow Diocese), he belonged to the estate of townsmen, and his father was a glazier. The young Gavriil was an apprentice in a painter’s workshop in Moscow until he began living in Gethsemane Skete at the age of twenty-three. He entered the novitiate in 1870, and, in his obedience as a novice, worked in the monastery’s painting workshop. In 1877, at the age of thirty-three, he took monastic vows.71 In the early twentieth century, F. Kudashkin followed a typical pattern; a peasant from the Black Earth diocese of Penza, he began living in the Lavra in 1896 at the age of twenty-five, entered the novitiate four years later, and was tonsured a monk in 1907 at the age of thirty-six.72

Motivations for Entering the Monastery Although the preceding statistical analysis presents typical patterns of monastic recruits, it does not reveal the motivation for joining a monastery. Monastic recruits generally submitted a formal written request to the monastery when they wished to enter the novitiate. In 1897, for example, the peasant Zakhar Uvkin from the Diocese of Tambov wrote to the Governing Council of the Lavra: “Having lived in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra since 1894 and, desiring to dedicate myself to the monastic life in it, I ask the Governing Council to enter me in the ranks of the official novices of the Lavra, for which I present testimony of my discharge from the Tambov revenue

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department from December 11, 1896, . . . and military testimony given by the Kirsanovskii District conscription office on November 14, 1889.”73 Such requests, however, were formulaic, and do not provide insight into personal motivation; such sources are extremely rare. Indeed, as will be seen below, Zakhar Uvkin became the epitome of the troublesome monk after he was tonsured. The composition of monastic recruits in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the subject of much discourse and polemic in the ecclesiastical and secular press. The Synodal statistics, which were published until the 1850s, left many in the nineteenth century with the impression that the majority of monks were from the clerical estate. Many critics speculated that most of these were seminary dropouts who were unable to find clerical positions—people who were attracted to the monastery not out of a sense of calling but because they had nowhere else to go. For example, Rostislavov expressed a typical sentiment: With the riches of monasteries, those who enter them will not be those devout people who would desire to obtain the kingdom of heaven by mortifying the flesh, prayer, and various forms of deprivations, but more those who desire, without any labor, to have a comfortable apartment, good food, and in general to lead a secure, carefree life that does not demand the exertion of physical, mental, or moral strength. It is well known that the majority of the present members of monasteries are persons who belong, by birth, to the clerical estate, and primarily those students of ecclesiastical educational institutions who were excluded from them for some deficiency, and in general of people who did not succeed in finding any place for themselves.74 Although Rostislavov expressed these opinions with his typical exaggeration and onesidedness, the opinions he expressed were shared by many. By the early twentieth century, the stereotype of the seminary dropout was replaced by that of the ignorant peasant in search of a carefree life. Such negative images tended to dominate representations of monasticism in the press and among the secular intelligentsia. On the one hand, the secular critics exploited the stereotype to disparage it; on the other hand, the Church hierarchy (especially the “learned monks”) took exception to such monks, reflecting their anxiety over contemporary criticism and their own disdain for their unlettered lower-class “brothers.” Yet there was another side to the picture: Individuals such as Trofim-Toviia were certainly not unique in their sincere zeal for the pursuit of the monastic life. Having come from a serf family, he demonstrates that stereotypes of poorly educated peasants who did not really understand the meaning of monastic life were not the norm. For him, and for many others, it was a combination of reading saints’ lives and visiting monasteries that evoked the desire to enter the monastery.75

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Moreover, it was not only the brotherhood of the Lavra—with its idiorhythmic rule, state salaries, and kruzhka (see below)—that grew. It was precisely those communities like Gethsemane Skete, the Paraclete Hermitage, and the Zosimova Hermitage, which were cenobitic and governed by a strict monastic rule, that grew the most rapidly—both in the 1840s and the 1890s. A monastery like Trinity-Sergius was strict in admitting postulants, established courses of study for novices, and avoided tonsuring candidates who were illiterate or had insufficient understanding of the faith and monastic life. It would be presumptuous to assume that the Trinity-Sergius Lavra was “typical”; more isolated monasteries in provincial regions were no doubt less selective in their choice of recruits. Both extremes were possible; it is dangerous to make broad generalizations about the quality and motivations of monastic recruits and to ignore the immense variation from monastery to monastery, or even within any particular monastery. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence that the negative stereotype perpetuated by the critics was not representative.

Conclusions From the 1840s until the eve of World War I, the number of monastic recruits in Russia—both men and women—increased dramatically. The state and Church authorities rigorously enforced legal requirements with respect to minimum age, fulfillment of the three-year novitiate, and the proper release from candidates’ secular estates and obligations. Moreover, after the secularization reform of 1764, statefunded monasteries strictly limited the number of monastics, which were not to accept more monks than the shtat allowed. Even unfunded monasteries had to justify the need for more monastic recruits in order to tonsure more monks. At the same time, town and peasant communities were disinclined to assume the obligation of those seeking to become monks, and the state was not eager to lose potential military recruits and taxpayers. Despite these obstacles, the number of monastic recruits continued to increase, forcing certain modifications in the procedures of receiving new candidates—from the Synod granting diocesan bishops the right to authorize new tonsures in 1865 to the simplification of procedures for the tax-paying population and soldiers in the early twentieth century. The preceding statistical analysis of monastic recruits for the Trinity-Sergius collective reveals the changing appeal of monastic life in Russia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which was intimately connected with processes of social change. In contrast to the medieval period, the number of candidates from the aristocracy was small throughout the nineteenth century and further declined in the early twentieth century. Likewise, the number of recruits from other privileged groups, such as merchants, remained fairly small. At the same time, however, these groups were not entirely alienated from the monastic cause; the aristocracy and the

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merchant class were the main benefactors in the building and expansion of monastic communities. Nevertheless, these classes were more likely to support monasticism through a donation than tonsure, a pattern that reflected the lower (and democratizing) status of the monk along with the intrusion of this-worldly, secular, and Western values on some social elites. At mid-century, the majority of monastic candidates came from the clerical estate. The social pressures on the clerical estate, in particular the problems of clerical overpopulation and the difficulties of securing parish clergy positions, certainly encouraged many young sons of clergymen to join monasteries for lack of desirable alternatives. Not surprisingly, the reform of the clerical estate in 1867 led to a sharp decrease in the number of recruits from the clerical estate. At the same time, it is likely that many of these recruits were drawn to the monastic life because of their studies in ecclesiastical schools and seminaries; it was precisely in the 1840s and 1850s that monasticism experienced its first upsurge of growth, in particular with such communities of strict monastic life as the Gethsemane Skete. Despite the social pressures, the monastic resurgence described in the previous chapter was not fueled by Rostislavov’s stereotyped seminary dropout or the rich, fat monks of Perov’s paintings. In the 1870s and 1880s, the social profile of monastic recruits grew the most diverse. In many respects, this was a golden age of the monastic revival—the period of the famous elders such as Amvrosii of Optina Hermitage and Varnava of Gethsemane Skete, paralleled in elite society by the “rediscovery” of monasticism by leading cultural figures such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Vladimir Soloviev. At this point, monasticism had its broadest appeal in Russian society, still attracting a significant number of recruits from the clerical estate and an increasing number of candidates from townsmen and the peasantry. The Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861 was a decisive factor in enabling greater numbers of peasants to pursue other opportunities, including monasticism. Throughout the nineteenth century, the number of peasant recruits steadily rose, reflecting the piety and appeal of traditional Orthodoxy among the popular classes. The late nineteenth century was certainly a time of overpopulation in the villages and land shortage, and a time when many peasants were seeking alternatives such as working in the cities or factories. Although the proportional decrease of recruits from the towns may reflect a rising secularization of urban life and growing variety of attractive careers, the monastic vocation certainly did not lose its appeal in the countryside, where piety—and poverty—made the security and spirituality of a Trinity-Sergius Lavra or Gethsemane Skete highly attractive. The service records also reveal distinct patterns with respect to geography, age, marital status, education, and career. Trinity-Sergius, as a nationally revered monastery, attracted recruits from all across Russia. The overwhelming majority of

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recruits were from central European Russia, attesting to the natural tendency for monasteries to draw people to local communities. Regions like Ukraine, the Russian north, and the Volga produced relatively few recruits, because they had their own rich traditions of monasticism. The typical path was to begin living in the monastery in one’s twenties, without ever having been married; to enter the novitiate in one’s late twenties or early thirties; and to be tonsured in one’s mid-thirties. Thus the average candidate spent nine to ten years in the monastery before becoming a monk. The second pattern applied to a minority (roughly 15 percent of candidates), who entered the monastery later in life, after having fulfilled a career and having a family, most typically after having been widowed. These patterns varied, moreover, according to estate; recruits from the clergy tended to enter monasteries younger, whereas soldiers and civil servants joined after retirement; with other estates, however, from the nobility to the peasantry, both patterns existed. Education also varied by estate; whereas candidates from the clerical estate and the nobility were well educated, the majority of townsmen and peasants, though often without much or any formal education, were literate. As the proportion of clergy recruits decreased and peasants increased, the overall educational level of candidates correspondingly declined, but at the same time the educational level of commoners was rising. Trinity-Sergius ensured that the majority of its candidates were literate and had a basic comprehension of the Christian faith and the monastic life before tonsuring them. Trinity-Sergius was, of course, an exceptional monastery, which raises the question about conditions in more ordinary monasteries. The patterns also differed from community to community within the TrinitySergius collective. The Lavra itself consistently attracted the most diverse assortment of recruits, both geographically and socially, which was natural given its status and fame. Bethany, as a comparatively privileged state-funded monastery, attracted more of its recruits from the privileged or semiprivileged classes, particularly from the clerical estate. Gethsemane drew the highest percentage of candidates from the townsmen, and it had a particularly high number of candidates from Moscow. Makhrishchskii Monastery, conversely, as a more typical, poorer, unfunded monastery, attracted the vast majority of its recruits from the lower classes, and had a primarily local appeal. The most striking fact about the Trinity brotherhood in the nineteenth century was the dramatic “peasantization” that had taken place by the end of the century. This generated an intensive polemic from secular critics, and deep concern among Church leaders, that uneducated peasants were joining the monasteries for a “piece of bread” rather than out of a genuine spiritual calling. Although monasteries no doubt did attract such individuals, as monastic leaders themselves admitted, this was clearly not the whole, or even the main, story. Monasticism was no longer an

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elite phenomenon, as it had been throughout the medieval and early modern periods; rather, it more accurately reflected the composition of Russian society. In fact, precisely this ability of monasticism to adapt to the social transformations of Russia in the process of modernizing, and its ability to remain relevant to a broad cross-section of society, was the key to its success.

Spiritual Life: Ideals and Realities Describing the daily life of an “average” monk of the nineteenth century in TrinitySergius, or any other monastery for that matter, is virtually impossible due to the lack of appropriate sources. To be sure, prescriptive texts describing how the monk should live were abundant, but they hardly mirrored the quotidian. Other sources tend to record the extremes: the saintly and the degenerate. There was no shortage of biographies and memoirs about those who exuded holiness and earned veneration as spiritual elders. Contrariwise, the press and ecclesiastical archives immortalize those who transgressed the rules of monastic life. Both extremes were the exceptions; both constituted a relatively small minority. This section examines the abstract norms and ideals of monastic life on the one hand, and real-life examples of how those were both fulfilled and transgressed on the other hand.

Community Life A monastery is not just an institution but also a community in which people share their entire lives—their meals, labor, and living space together. It is an intentional community that an individual chooses to join, and in doing so agrees to live by its rules and ideals with the purpose of transforming oneself. Church leaders in the nineteenth century gave articulation to some of these norms for at least the external aspects of monastic life. In 1853, Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) prepared the “Rules for Improving Monastic Brotherhoods in Moscow,” which became the standard instructions for governing monastic communities.76 The rules stipulated that each new candidate must read its terms and sign his agreement to comply.77 When the Synod published the rules in 1868, Trinity-Sergius received several hundred copies for distribution to each of its monks.78 According to Filaret, the improvement in monastic brotherhoods required great care in accepting novices and a thorough examination of their suitability for monastic life. Candidates presented for tonsure were required to have fulfilled the three-year novitiate, having been carefully scrutinized for their worthiness by the monastery authorities during that time. Every member of the brotherhood was subject to the general supervision and regulations of the abbot and the monastery

140 monks: social history and spiritual life authorities. Moreover, each member, especially younger brothers and novices, was to have an elder monk as a spiritual guide, to whom the younger brother regularly revealed his activities, thoughts, feelings, doubts, struggles, sins, and conflicts with others; and from his spiritual guide, the monk received instruction and an example in the pursuit of the spiritual life. This elder could be the abbot himself, the monastery’s appointed confessor, or any other experienced monk. Monks were also to make confession and receive Communion during the four major fasts each year. The brothers were to fulfill whatever obedience the abbot assigned, except in cases of weakness (when they were to humbly inform the abbot of their inability to perform the obedience and willingness to accept whatever he assigned).79 Finally, the abbot and elder brothers were to ensure the peaceful relations between the brothers and take prompt measures to resolve conflicts. Filaret’s rules asserted that the most important object of the abbot’s attention should be the liturgical services, and that the abbot and other senior monks should set the example by regular attendance at the services. The monk assigned to awaken the brothers was to make his rounds a half hour before Matins, so that all the brothers were present at the beginning of the service; those who did not come or were late were to be reported to the abbot. Similarly, no one was to leave before the end of the service, except for those excused for special reason (e.g., cooking meals). The clergy, readers, and choir singers performing the service were to fulfill their parts with attention and without haste. Matins was to include readings of selections from the Church Fathers or lives of the saints, and the abbot was to give spiritual instruction during the liturgy and Vespers. All the brothers were to gather in the common refectory after the liturgy; during the meal, they were to be silent as spiritually useful books or lives of saints were read. No brother was to come to the refectory late or leave early; and, as a general rule, no one was to have food in his cell. Filaret’s rules instructed monks to spend free time (i.e., when not attending liturgical services or fulfilling obediences) in their cells observing their individual rule of prayer, engaging in handicrafts (such as iconography), or reading spiritual books. Filaret’s rules, in particular, recommended reading the Scriptures (above all), the lives of the saints, and the writings of the Holy Fathers on the ascetical life. Books of “worldly wisdom,” such as works of history or science, but not drama or fiction, were permitted for leisure. Cleanliness and simplicity were the rule for monks’ cells, their personal possessions, and their clothing; nothing luxurious was to be in either their cells or their clothing. The brothers were permitted to visit one another in their cells, especially for the purpose of reading spiritual books, which was particularly useful for the less literate brothers. Meanwhile, the abbot was to ensure that the brothers gathered for useful purposes. After the evening meal, the monks were to return to their cells alone. They could receive visitors in their cells at certain times,

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but they were not to receive outsiders often, nor should monks be allowed to receive female visitors except in certain rooms designated for that purpose. Filaret’s rules further stipulated that monks could leave the monastery with the abbot’s permission to perform necessary duties, but only during daylight hours. Monks were also allowed to leave for longer periods to visit relatives, but such leave should only be permitted four times a year, preferably accompanied by an elder monk. Finally, the abbot and elder monks were to set an example by their own sincere fulfillment of the monastic rules. When a monk transgressed the rules, the abbot was to administer his penance with justice and gentleness; the aim of penance was to heal, not punish. Exclusion from the refectory or confinement to the cell for one to three days was the proper means of correction; state-funded monasteries could also withhold a portion of a monk’s stipend. The abbot was also to apprise diocesan authorities of the transgressions and penance.80 In addition to Filaret’s general rules for all communities, Trinity-Sergius adopted particular rules for its own brotherhood, regulating matters such as leaves of absence.81 Because the Lavra was determined to ensure regular attendance at liturgical services and to oversee behavior in monks’ cells, it periodically issued regulations to deal with violations. In 1845, the Governing Council imposed a fine for those who were “indolent” in attending services; the fine for ordained monks was higher than that for ordinary monks.82 In 1847, the Governing Council instructed Supervisor Hieromonk Makarii to keep a strict watch over visitors to the brothers’ cells and warned them not to give these visitors “refuge, especially if their behavior is dubious.” Further, it ordered all brothers to be in their cells by 9 p.m.83 The problem of monks receiving guests in their cells remained an abiding concern; in 1899, the Governing Council once again issued a decision to all the subordinate monasteries, which stated that monks needed special permission to receive outsiders in their cells, “especially women.”84 Finally, Metropolitan Vladimir of Moscow objected to the fact that hired laborers, including women, were cleaning the floors in the cells and corridors where the brothers lived; he also ordered the council to forbid the reception of lay visitors “unknown to the Lavra’s authorities” in their cells, and that the monks receive relatives only with the knowledge of the supervisor and at specified times.85 The daily routine of the monastery consisted of liturgical services, fulfilling one’s obediences, and eating meals in the common refectory. In the Lavra itself, the day began with Matins at 3 a.m., which could last for four hours, and ended with Vespers (lasting about an hour), which began at 4 p.m., followed by the evening meal in the refectory. The Divine Liturgy was conducted at different times in different churches within the Lavra, with the early service beginning at 5 a.m. and the late service beginning at 9 a.m. On the eve of Sundays and major feasts, instead of the

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usual cycle of Matins and Vespers, the All-Night Vigil was observed, beginning at 5 p.m.86 The brothers gathered together twice daily for common meals in the refectory, usually around 11 a.m. and in the evening, after Vespers. The liturgical schedule differed in each community, but the general pattern was similar.87 The church in the Caves of Gethsemane Skete did have a rather unusual schedule; Matins began at 10 p.m. and lasted until 2 a.m.; the Divine Liturgy (ordinarily celebrated three days a week except in summer, when it was daily) began at 7 a.m.; the first meal began at 11 a.m., Vespers began at 2 p.m., and the evening meal began at 6 p.m.88 A typical day in the Lavra, therefore, began with Matins at 3 a.m., and after its conclusion at 7 a.m., the monk probably returned to his cell for a few hours of sleep or study, or could take a walk in the gardens, before the refectory at 11. After the meal, probably about 11:30, the monk performed his work assignments (depending on his obedience) until Vespers at 4 p.m. After Vespers and the evening refectory, at about 7 p.m., the monk could relax and visit with other monks until 9, when he was to retire to his cell for prayer, study, and sleep. As the heavy liturgical schedule makes clear, only five or so hours remained for labor—a common butt of criticism by anticlerical writers.89 The focus, clearly, was the liturgical life, which occupied six to eight hours a day; the daily schedule of services also offered a rich liturgical cycle for lay visitors. If monks followed the counsel of spiritual writers and only slept five to six hours a day, then several hours remained for individual reflection, prayer, and study.

Norms for the Novitiate In addition to such texts that acted as guidelines for community life, a number of texts were manuals for forming novices into members of the new community. Archimandrite Antonii contributed one such work, A Good Word to a Beginner Novice (Dobroe slovo novonachal’nomu poslushniku), which was published only much later but appears to have been used to guide novices in the Lavra’s communities.90 The prior of the Kievan Caves Lavra, Iuvenalii, produced another such work, titled Monastic Life, published in 1885; by the early twentieth century, it had become a standard introduction and was even recommended by the Holy Synod for all novices in Russian monasteries.91 According to Antonii, the first step was to live in the monastery of one’s choice essentially as a guest, during which time the postulant attended church services and worked around the monastery, testing himself to see if the monastic life was his calling. After the postulant decided to remain, he began the process of remaking himself from a layman into a monk, a difficult path that involved labor and effort. Not everyone was able to make the adjustment, and some despaired or left for another monastery in the hopes that life there would be easier. The novice was also to ex-

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amine himself, questioning his motive for leaving the world and taking refuge behind the walls of the cloister; thus the novice was to recognize that it was God who was calling him to leave the world with its sinful life and vanities and to devote himself to the salvation of his soul in the monastery. Once the postulant determined his calling for the monastic life, it was necessary for him to understand how to become a true monk. The monastery, according to Antonii, was like a “moral hospital,” in which one leaves behind the sinful “skills” acquired in worldly life and acquires new skills, the behavior of a true Christian. All one’s efforts were to be directed toward this goal. Just as in a hospital, one wore the clothing, ate, slept, and exercised according to the doctor’s orders in order to get well, so in a monastery the postulant had to follow the directions of his spiritual guide, the elder or confessor, to whom he must sincerely and completely expose his spiritual condition, doubts, difficulties, confusions, temptations, sins, and impulses.92 The most important foundation of monastic life, according to Archimandrite Antonii, was obedience: “The entire monastic life is contained in obedience.”93 Obedience was the fulfillment of whatever one was instructed to do; cutting off one’s own will leads to humility. Through obedience, the novice learned not to trust his own inclinations and reasoning. If the monk has obedience, then he can be united to others in love rather than be guided by his own selfish desires, and be ready for every good deed.94 As Iuvenalii explained, the purpose of monastic life was to seek salvation by purifying one’s heart, which was to be achieved above all by fulfilling the commandments of the Gospel. This meant overcoming the passions of the “old person.” The goal was to do God’s will; this required total submission to one more experienced and advanced in the spiritual life, not trusting in one’s own thoughts and designs but faithfully following the advice and instructions of one’s spiritual father. From obedience came humility, and from humility came spiritual insight.95 Antonii’s text also provided much basic, practical advice, supported by citations from Scripture, the Church Fathers (Ephrem the Syrian, John of the Ladder), saints’ lives, and more contemporary authorities such as Antonii’s own teacher, Serafim of Sarov. The novice should not judge other monks—how they work, pray, or eat—but pay attention only to himself. He should be satisfied with whatever the monastery gave him with regard to clothing. He should go to church a bit early to gather his scattered thoughts, stand still and attentively during the service, and not leave early. He should spend his time in useful activities such as prayer, reading, or work, and not engage in idle conversation. The novice ought to fulfill whatever task was given to him with sincerity; monastic virtues were gained by passing through the lower obediences given in a monastery.96 Ordinary monks should go to Confession and Communion six times a year. A monk should eat what was provided in the common refectory; a novice should eat enough (“almost to being full”) to enable him to work, for it was the physical labor that weakened his passions; more serious

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fasting would come later. After the evening meal, the novice should read and say his prayers. He should also not sleep too much—five or six hours a day, which might include a half hour or an hour after lunch, should suffice.97 According to Iuvenalii, fasting was useful for controlling the bodily passions. Although not a virtue in itself, fasting was a means to obtaining the virtues of purity and chastity. Abstinence should combine bodily fasting with internal selfcontrol, with restraint in conversation and sleep. Fasting required care and guidance; it should not be extreme but should correspond to the bodily strength of the individual. Hence a young, strong person must fast more strictly to vanquish his bodily passions, whereas an older or ailing person must not fast excessively because this would weaken him physically and make it impossible for him to observe internal abstinence. It was necessary to abstain in measure, taking enough food for the support of the body without overindulging. Nor was fasting a matter of giving up food entirely, but of withholding oneself from all sensual pleasures, to mortify the bodily passions and to cleanse oneself of sin. Finally, the monk should not be proud of his achievements in fasting, for only if combined with humility could fasting bring victory over the “unseen enemies.” In addition to fasting, the monk was to observe vigilance and wakefulness. Like fasting, keeping the vigil required moderation; Iuvenalii, however, suggested that the monk spend half the night in prayer and, like Antonii, sleep no more than five to six hours a day. This would be enough sleep to preserve bodily health and strength, but also to purify the mind, renew and strengthen the memory, and keep the monk from succumbing to sloth. It further allowed the monk to spend more time in prayer, and nighttime tranquillity was best for prayer.98 Prayer, ultimately, was the key to spiritual growth. To begin with, Iuvenalii emphasized that the collective prayer of the Church’s services was absolutely necessary. Prayer united bodily effort—standing in church, making prostrations—with the internal effort of concentration and attention, of guarding and purifying the heart. When the monk became distracted in his thoughts, he needed to refocus his attention and concentrate his mind on the prayers. If he could not properly hear the prayers, then he should repeat a short prayer to himself, such as the Jesus Prayer. The monk should also pray in his cell; he needed to set a rule (pravilo) of prayer that he observed each day. The spiritual father was to determine its content and length, in keeping with the person’s abilities. The monk was to observe precisely what the spiritual father ordered, neither more nor less. Iuvenalii outlined a typical plan, with many of the traditional prayers and many full prostrations; this plan, he wrote, kept human frailties in mind and could be observed by most. His rule took about an hour. In addition to the prayers, Iuvenalii urged monks to read daily from the New Testament as part of their rule. The prayers were necessary to defend the monk against the demonic powers that operated through the passions.

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However, because these invisible enemies utilized any opportunity to attack, prayer during specified times was not enough; the monk must be vigilant at all times and should therefore strive to engage in “ceaseless” prayer. Thus, whenever possible, he should mentally repeat a short prayer, especially the Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”). This prayer was very powerful, Iuvenalii wrote, precisely because it contained what was essential—namely, the confession of Jesus Christ as the God-man and the recognition of one’s own sinfulness. Thus prayer, combined with watchfulness over oneself, led to the cleansing of the heart from the passions and to the development of virtue. Such a life of prayer, Iuvenalii concluded, was suitable for the “active life,” if not the contemplative one, which was something that developed later in one’s spiritual journey.99 Antonii’s guidelines were intended to form good monks out of novices, and Iuvenalii’s text guided ordinary brothers in the basics of monastic life—not to gain the heights of mystical prayer, to be sure, but at least to achieve the kind of “decent behavior” that Antonii expected. It is important to note that many of these ideals— above all, the one that Antonii and others regarded as absolutely foundational, namely, obedience, together with cutting off one’s own will, impulses, and inclinations— are fundamentally opposed to many modern notions of self that emphasize individualism, “self-reliance,” and one’s own thoughts and inclinations as valued above all others. It is paradoxical that, precisely as modern notions of self were spreading in turn-of-the-century Russia, monasticism flourished so intensely. Yet it may also explain why many monastic leaders in the early twentieth century felt that new candidates brought more of this self-will with them than in the past, resulting in a sense of crisis.

Hesychasm: The Path of Mystical Prayer The fundamentals of monastic life as prescribed by Antonii and Iuvenalii were regarded as standard and universally accepted. At the same time, nineteenth-century Russia was a time of spiritual experimentation and in particular the revival of forms of contemplative prayer. These practices were inspired by earlier traditions of Eastern Christian spirituality that had found new expression in a modern context. As such, they were often being implemented in experimental ways. Hesychasm and starchestvo were not universally practiced in nineteenth-century Russian monasteries, nor even universally accepted—some, like the opponents of Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, regarded them as innovations. Trinity-Sergius was not known as a place of contemplative prayer, and those who joined it were pursuing other types of monastic life. Rather, it was the satellite communities—Gethsemane, Paraclete, and later Zosimova Hermitage—that excelled as centers of contemplative spirituality. These communities produced some elders, such as Aleksandr the Recluse,

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who were well known in monastic circles, and others, such as Varnava, who were popularly known throughout Russia. A letter from Archimandrite Antonii to Metropolitan Filaret in the mid– nineteenth century provides a rare glimpse into the inner life of two of Gethsemane’s hermits. One hermit, Father Khariton, struggled greatly because in his solitude he recalled his former life and habits of self-satisfaction and vanity; therefore, he was unable to calm himself in the quiet and solitude. As a result, he was open to demonic attacks (a classic way of describing the inner struggle in Orthodox spiritual literature) that disturbed his prayer and even prevented him from reading spiritual books, and Father Khariton was falling into despondency (unynie). Antonii told him that these struggles would pass—that he needed patience, humility, and faith—but Antonii also recognized that “this work is difficult for him: The moral dust is not to be cleared out quickly,” and this dirt opened access to dark forces.100 The experience of another hermit, Father Matfei, was very different. His earlier life was “simple, his disposition meek and quiet.” From the beginning of his spiritual life, he did not seek something for himself but sought only God, and seeking only to please God, he was being purified step by step. Antonii and another monk from the Skete went out to Matfei’s solitary cabin to visit him, and as they approached, they heard Matfei singing. When they told him they heard him singing, Matfei simply replied that he had felt joy in his heart and so he started to sing. On Antonii’s urging, he sang for them, and Antonii observed that joy was evident on his face. When Antonii asked him about how he spent his time, Matfei replied that, with God’s help, there did not appear to be any time without prayer except for sleep; he simply did not know anything better to do with his mind than present it before God, because this was his happiness and his joy. When asked if he suffered attacks from demonic forces, he replied that God seemed to protect him, that he easily dispelled temptations by singing spiritual songs or by calling on the name of God and crossing himself. When they asked him if he used to drink tea and whether he still sometimes desired it, Matfei replied explained that he ate only dried bread (sukhariki) and water and that this was, for him, “amazingly sweet and healthy,” although occasionally he would have cabbage as his body needed—but that he was satisfied with this, and that he had given up tea because the great ascetic saints did not drink tea. Antonii concluded that “his soul is in a very blessed condition, and this prayerful singing showed me that in contemplation he breathes the celestial.”101 Antonii interpreted these two examples as demonstrating that one’s prior life experience shaped one’s struggles in the monastery, and similarly one’s experiences in the monastery shaped one’s struggles in solitary prayer: “It is evident that one has to learn solitude long before [going into] solitude.”102 Few of the elders of the Trinity-Sergius collective were theoreticians and writers in the same way as some of the Optina elders, Ignatii Brianchaninov, or Feofan

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(Theophan) the Recluse. No doubt the most articulate of these elders was Aleksandr’s disciple, later hegumen of Zosimova Hermitage, German (Gomzin) (see chapter 6). His Precepts on Prayerful Activity is an excellent systematic presentation of the Hesychast approach.103 Yet even German’s own story reveals the degree to which nineteenth-century Russian monasticism was experimenting with various approaches to spiritual practice in the process of discovering and reinventing this lost tradition. The monk, according to German, was like a merchant in search of the priceless treasure. Such a one must “sell all one has,” to renounce everything of this world in pursuit of God alone, to love God with all one’s heart, soul, and mind. Only those with a pure heart can “see” God, can converse in their soul with God; the divine light shines through the pure heart. One purifies the heart through repentance; tears wash away one’s sins, which are replaced with the mercy of God. The key to following this path, according to German, is the Jesus Prayer—“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.” More important than any other virtue, according to German, is the attempt to purify the heart and protect it from any evil impulses, the best means for which is calling upon the name of God. If the heart is purified with the name of God, then thoughts that come from it are holy and spiritual, giving joy to the soul. A person who reaches this state can say, with Saint Paul, that it is “not I, but Christ in me” (2 Cor. 5:15); this person already begins to live in God.104 According to German, prayer alone does not lead to such a state of oneness with God—it is not a matter of praying much but rather praying with the mind and the heart “stuck” on God. One who turns away from the things that can be seen with the eyes of the flesh receives the eyes of the heart to see the invisible God. Such a marvelous condition comes only through the prayer of the heart and the mind.105 In this state of “sweet converse” with God, prayer becomes silence, without words. Ultimately, this state is achieved precisely through silence in the intellect—but, German cautioned, in guarding the mind from vain thoughts, one must try with all one’s strength not to leave the mind idle but to pray patiently and persistently. Such patience and persistence are only learned through humility and self-abasement. Only through a recognition of one’s own weakness and powerlessness can one cry out from the depth of one’s heart for God’s mercy, and this is the basis of sincere prayer.106 The Jesus Prayer, German argued, citing classic Hesychast writers, is the greatest prayer because it calls upon the name of God and simultaneously cries out for God’s mercy, which is both the desire to receive forgiveness of sins and also the expression of love that hopes for God’s grace. The Jesus Prayer is also the highest monastic activity: “The name of Jesus should always be in our heart, in our mind, and on our tongue.”107 German recommended praying in this way at all times; whether one was sitting, lying, or standing, whether one was eating or at work, one could always pray this simple prayer. But precisely because the prayer is so powerful, there

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are dangerous traps of spiritual delusion (prelest’). The only way to avoid these subtle traps is to give oneself entirely in obedience to a spiritual father, a starets experienced in this path: “The Jesus Prayer and the struggle with urges (pomysli) constitute the unseen warfare, which is the primary activity of the monastic.”108 German here focused on a key concept in Eastern Christian spiritual psychology, the struggle with one’s distracting thoughts, inclinations, and urges—pomysli (Greek logismoi).109 These thoughts attack one during prayer, giving rise to the urge or inclination to do or think about something that distracts one from prayer or from focusing the mind solely on God. German goes so far as to assert that the monk’s struggle with these urges is greater than any virtue of a layperson. The greatest weapon in the struggle with these urges is to expose them all to one’s elder. Only if one exposes completely and honestly every tempting thought and inclination can the monk be free of them.110 Precisely for this reason, German also argued elsewhere that the practice of starchestvo was vital in the spiritual life and the primary means for raising the level of monasticism in Russia in the early twentieth century.111 True prayer and attention free from delusion consist in the mind guarding the heart and “abiding continually within it and from there, that is from the depths of the heart, offering up prayer to God.”112 To attain this, a person must have a living situation characterized by stillness, free of cares and anxieties, and he must be at peace with others. Sitting in his cell, the monk should turn his attention within himself and collect his mind, forcing it to enter the heart, combined with breathing. The mind will grow restless, so one has to train it not to leave this state—because this is where God is encountered. One must continually pray the Jesus Prayer so that the mind is not idle. German continued by giving concrete suggestions with regard to saying the prayer (how many times to repeat it, whether one says it aloud or silently, with eyes open or shut, etc.). Most of all, however, he emphasizes one’s inner condition; in prayer, one must present the soul before God, standing with fear and reverence before God when calling on his name: “One needs to pray to God with complete attention, delving with the mind into every word of the prayer.”113 All the while, one must stand before God with a feeling of one’s own sinfulness, but also love toward God, who is merciful: “Simply speak with the Lord—after all, He is so close to us! One needs to say to Him everything that is in our soul,” the way little children do not hesitate to ask anything they want or need from their parents.114 Through frequent repetition, the prayer gradually gets established in the heart and becomes inseparable from it. The prayer will pray itself in the heart, becoming “self-moving.”115 If the mind wanders, one has to bring it back to prayer. If, when praying, thoughts come—whether they are good or bad—one needs to drive them off. One cannot stop the thoughts and urges from coming, but one can oppose them, especially by calling on the name of God, by returning the mind to the prayer. If one is incapable of keeping the mind from distraction, one should not get discouraged—

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complete freedom from distraction “is the property of angels”—but rather be persistent in bringing the mind back to the prayer every time it wanders. One cannot expect to be free of temptation either, but rather should expect “attacks from the enemy” at any moment, especially when praying. Therefore, one must vigilantly guard the heart to call on the name of God at the first sign of such attacks. Moreover, so as not to fall into spiritual delusion (prelest’), one must not judge or concern oneself with others but rather consider oneself worse than others. One should not trust visions or special feelings. One will pass through moments of doubt—either in one’s own prayer or in one’s spiritual guide—but one must persist. Finally, such prayer will bring one a sense of inner peace and communion with God. However, even this, German warns, is not mechanical but is a gift from God. One must do one’s part—to labor, to “seek and strive,” but the results are in God’s hands, on His time. Returning to the beginning, German concludes that, just as all a merchant’s cares and attention are directed toward the acquisition of wealth, so also the seeker after the heavenly treasure must direct all his energies to that one aim.116 In short, German’s method of prayer focuses on the person’s inner state and the struggle against thoughts and urges by means of the Jesus Prayer, which focuses the mind and heart exclusively on God to prepare the person for illumination from or communion with God. For those familiar with contemporary presentations of Hesychast practice, German’s presentation of this path may not appear particularly distinctive. But this apparent consensus is deceptive; the story of German’s own path to formulating his approach reveals the degree of experimentation and difference among Hesychast practitioners in nineteenth-century Russia. Indeed, German’s method may appear today as the norm because it follows that of his influential teacher, Feofan the Recluse. In the process of formulating his method, German was influenced by two very different approaches to prayer—on the one hand, his first teacher, Aleksandr the Recluse of Gethsemane Skete, and his rather antinomian approach that focused exclusively on one’s inner state; and on the other hand, Hesychast teachers from Valaam and Optina, who focused on external techniques. Between these two poles, Feofan the Recluse provided German with direction that balanced external practice with inner disposition. German’s biography of Aleksandr the Recluse reveals some of the diversity of practice in the middle of the century, including Aleksandr’s own particular approach. Thus, one of his disciples came to him saying that other startsy impose on their disciples a strict cell rule of prayer together with many prostrations, whereas “you [Aleksandr] give me freedom and do not establish any kind of rule.”117 The disciple was worried that he was not doing enough for his salvation. Another disciple, similarly, reported that other startsy taught that “quantity leads to quality” and for that reason assign their disciples a lengthy rule of prayer. Aleksandr responded that

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he did not want to lay on the disciple a burden he could not bear—that, if he gave him too much, he would cease doing anything. The most important thing, according to Aleksandr, was to guard the mind in humility and self-deprecation. Moreover, if he gave a specific rule of prayer with a specific number of prostrations, the disciple would then fulfill that external rule and expect a reward for it. Instead, it was more important to feel oneself undeserving and dependent upon God’s grace. Aleksandr gave rules of prayer to some of his disciples, but always very cautiously, according to the strengths of each one, so as not to overburden them. Aleksandr’s approach to the practice of the Jesus Prayer in particular focused on a person’s inner state, combined with continual repetition of the prayer, rather than the external forms such as posture or breathing. The Jesus Prayer, he said, was sufficient, more important than many prostrations or strict fasting, because externals do not save a person. Moreover, he said that it was better to keep the mind focused on the Jesus Prayer than “distract” it by all the various hymns of the liturgical services or dissipate it by reading books.118 It is clear that many who practiced Hesychasm expected a concrete result in visions or spiritual gifts; Aleksandr was very skeptical of these desires, saying that it was more important to see oneself as one truly is—to recognize one’s sinfulness and weakness—than to see angels.119 From these examples, it is evident that there were disagreements between different elders at Gethsemane, some placing much more emphasis on rules and externals, whereas Aleksandr was nearly willing to dispense with the externals—even staple practices of monastic life, such as the prayer rule, fasting, and prostrations—and to place all his emphasis on a person’s inner condition.120 As a result, he aroused indignation among other elders, who accused him of being too lax with his disciples. 121 Despite Aleksandr’s early influence, German later came under the influence of teachers who emphasized external techniques. German later wrote that he had been Aleksandr’s disciple for ten years from the time he joined Gethsemane until Aleksandr’s death; in that time, he became convinced of the benefits of Hesychast practice, seeing it embodied in Aleksandr himself.122 At the same time, Aleksandr died unexpectedly for German, and he had not succeeded in fully learning the Hesychast path from him. Once other brothers at the Skete began to turn to him for spiritual advice, German began to seek out others to teach him more about the Hesychast method. He turned to centers famous for this practice in Russia, namely Optina Hermitage and Valaam Monastery. These elders believed that it was impossible to control the mind from distraction and therefore taught artificial techniques as a way of controlling the mind. For example, they taught German to hold his attention on the end of his tongue or his lips, or to concentrate on fingers that were pressed to the left side of the chest (as a way of focusing the mind on the heart). Practicing the Jesus Prayer in these ways would produce certain pleasant feelings, or feelings of warmth, in the heart. Some would use the imagination to focus on some mental

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image, such as the crucifixion of Christ, while others would hold their breath to silence scattered thoughts.123 German practiced these artificial techniques, but he began to have doubts about them when he witnessed absurd results in others. Because of his doubts about these artificial techniques, German turned for advice to the well-known spiritual writer Feofan the Recluse, who would direct German to an approach that balanced the two extremes of Aleksandr’s emphasis on the inner state and of being supported by external disciplines. The correspondence between Feofan and German continued for five years, and over time Feofan made it clear that, in general, be believed these artificial techniques of prayer were unnecessary and potentially even dangerous. In particular, those who felt that they had actually accomplished something spiritual in their prayer because they had evoked certain physical feelings in their hearts by these practices had fallen into spiritual delusion (prelest’). Feofan taught German that he should concentrate his energy and strength not on external forms but on the thoughts and feelings behind the words of the prayer, to stand before God and cry out to Him through prayer—and that that would concentrate his thoughts, rather than physical techniques. He warned German that it would not be easy, but that nothing good came easily. He needed to take himself in hand and persist through the feelings of indifference or coldness that would inevitably come until he ignited the feeling of love for God. Although Feofan was skeptical of techniques in the practice of the Jesus Prayer, unlike Aleksandr he found traditional monastic practices such as fasting and prostrations important to disciplining the passions. Moreover, he taught that there were definable stages of prayer, from saying the Jesus Prayer aloud, to saying it only mentally, to the prayer of the heart, when the mind would be united with the heart and one’s feelings would be completely focused on God. But, ultimately, the practitioner had to recognize his own weakness and that all success came from God.124 It took some time before German was fully convinced by Feofan, but ultimately he was won over—and so, in turn, were some of those who taught German the artificial techniques.125 It is evident from his Precepts that Feofan left a deep impression on German’s teaching. It is equally clear that there was a great deal of diversity of Hesychast practice as well as a large degree of experimentation going on in these monasteries—experimentation that sometimes led to absurd or dangerous results without more balanced guidance. In short, Hesychasm and the practice of “mental prayer” entailed the endeavor to place one’s mind continually in a state of prayer through contemplation and the repeated use of the Jesus Prayer. In this context, a principal enemy to continual prayer was one’s own state of mind—distracted thought or reasoning that could lead one into temptation. For the Hesychast, not only sinful deeds were considered dangerous—so also were tempting thoughts or even thoughts that might seem harmless but could distract one from prayer. For the Hesychast, it was therefore

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imperative to have an elder to whom one could reveal and expose all such temptations, distractions, and thoughts—at least weekly, if not daily. Therefore, starchestvo was inseparably connected with this form of contemplative spirituality. In turn-ofthe-twentieth-century Russia, the practice of exposing one’s thoughts was not universally embraced or accepted; some regarded it as prying, an invasion of privacy, or as informing on others.126 But it was practiced in numerous communities, and those who regarded Hesychasm as the ideal of monastic practice believed starchestvo was indispensable.

Toviia’s Monastic Career Archimandrite Toviia’s autobiography and diaries provide a rare firsthand account of the processes involved in adapting to the monastic life, about the processes of being “initiated” into the monastery and the challenges of being transformed into a monk (see figure 4.1). When he arrived at the monastery to request entrance in January 1851, the abbot asked him if he desired to enter the monastery (i.e., that it was not his parents’ decision, because he was still a teen), if was he healthy, what sort of work could he do, and if he could read—which indicates something of what the monastery valued in a postulant. On acceptance into the monastery, he was assigned work in the hotel as his first obedience. On his first day, the supervisor of the hotel gathered him with the other monks and novices serving in the hotel and instructed them on the holiness of fulfilling one’s obediences, and that if they fulfilled them sincerely, God would reward them. His first tasks were to heat the rooms, shovel snow, and bring food for the pilgrims. By April, he was given a cassock to wear, which gave him joy even though it was old and coarse, because it indicated that “I was now already no longer a layman, but a novice of the monastery and a member of a divinely chosen brotherhood of those working out their salvation.”127 When spring came, and with it more pilgrims, Trofim was sent out to a makeshift kitchen on the riverbank, where he spent the entire summer cooking for the pilgrims. Indeed, he spent all his time there, so much that he was not even able to attend church services. When he complained about this in Confession, the priest showed him a line from the Church Fathers that “obedience is higher than fasting and prayer.” The priest explained to him that “the time of your prayerful exploits is still far in the future, but now in the beginning of your monasticism what is required is physical labors of obedience”; monastic life, like human life, has distinct stages of growth that must be passed through.128 Monasticism, he explained, grows in the soil of obedience; moreover, the church was praying for him, and the church’s prayers were more powerful than his personal prayers. Toviia noted that he was reassured by the priest’s explanation not only at the time but also for the rest of his life, and he frequently had the occasion to share the same advice with others. After the

figure 4.1. Archimandrite Toviia (Tsymbal) in 1913 Source: L. R. Vaintraub, Khram v chest’ Kazanskoi ikony Presviatoi Bogoroditsy v Podlipich’e v Dmitrove (Dmitrov, 2005), 71. Used with permission.

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summer passed, he was given a new cassock and new obediences: making kvass, working in the bakery, serving in the monastery refectory. With each new obedience, he was able to attend more church services. In all, he fulfilled these obediences over the course of his first twenty months in the monastery.129 No doubt, such a course of work in the monastery served the community both by fulfilling less desirable work and also by weeding out those who were not serious or were lazy. The monastery was a complex social space determined by its own set of rules, and becoming part of it was a challenging process. Particularly the initial stages of the monastic life required hard physical work—it was not a refuge for the lazy or a simple escape from the world into prayer. One had to learn to become a monk, and those who advanced in the monks’ life had to master the rules of the new social sphere that differed in profound ways from the world. In addition to the personal challenges of adapting to the new community, there were bureaucratic impediments to obtaining the freedom to do so. After his first twenty months, Trofim had to return home to secure release from his village and his serf-owner, Count Sheremetev. Trofim was forced to remain home from September 1853 until May 1854 to secure his freedom to enter the monastery, because he had to wait until it was clear he would not be drafted for military service, and to obtain the permission of the absent Count Sheremetev. When he returned to the monastery after this prolonged absence, the abbot received him coolly because he assumed that Trofim had been wandering about or considering other monasteries.130 In short, securing one’s freedom in Imperial Russia was not an easy process, and could be time consuming and disruptive to a monastic career. Although Russian Orthodox monasteries were certainly not as developed or focused on higher education as Roman Catholic monasteries in the West, they did offer opportunities to further one’s education. They also offered possibilities for creative expression, particularly in singing or iconography. Because Trofim was particularly attracted to singing and reading in church, he voluntarily sought every opportunity to do so. Because of his singing talent, the monastery authorities noticed him and made him part of the choir. One of the elder hieromonks took Trofim under his wing, appointed him as his cell attendant, and also guided his moral and spiritual development. After three years as the hieromonk’s cell attendant, Trofim was tonsured a rasophore novice; after a decade as a novice, he was presented for tonsure and given the name Toviia, and soon ordained to the diaconate—which opened up more avenues for service and advancement. Toviia was both resourceful and ambitious, and he clearly looked for opportunities to learn new skills that would serve him well later on. Thus he befriended a blind novice who came from the upper classes and was therefore cultivated; the blind novice had a sizable library, so Toviia would read these books to him, and in return he helped Toviia improve his grammar. Similarly, he befriended a widowed deacon who joined the monastery;

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this deacon was a seminary graduate, so Toviia talked the deacon into teaching him the seminary curriculum. The monastery authorities saw his capabilities and gave him more and more responsibilities, ultimately laying the entire responsibility for the monastery choir on his shoulders. This would have fulfilled Toviia had not the climate of the monastery’s locale resulted in his declining health; when the abbot would not allow him any breaks, he began to think about transferring to another monastery.131 The world of the monastery also offered possibilities for learning new skills and advancing in the monastery’s structure. After he transferred to Trinity-Sergius, Toviia made friends with those in positions of authority, such as Treasurer Hieromonk Meletii. He frequently concelebrated with Meletii as deacon and learned to complement Meletii’s manner of serving, so that Meletii came to appreciate and rely on Toviia; this, in turn, earned Archimandrite Antonii’s attention. After Meletii was transferred to serve as abbot of another monastery, Toviia grew close to his successor, Archimandrite Avdii, who also had a great library, and Toviia furthered his own education by reading to Avdii, whose eyesight was declining—from newspapers to spiritual books. Toviia spent his free time voluntarily assisting Avdii with office and paperwork and thereby learned a great deal about managing the monastery—skills that no doubt ultimately led to his own appointment as treasurer. Toviia not only befriended those who could assist his own advancement, however; like all serious monks at Trinity-Sergius, he went to the elders at Gethsemane for spiritual direction, and he also grew close to several of the brothers’ confessors who, evidently, were often the most beloved and spiritually respected members of the community.132 In short, the monastery community offered opportunities to learn from more experienced monks the practical, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of monastic life. Liturgy and music, central to monastic life and experience, served to attract new recruits. As recounted above, Toviia’s love for the beauty of the liturgy was something that first drew him to the monastery. Toward the end of his life, he would look forward to singing specific hymns in upcoming services, remembering how he had sung those hymns since he first entered the monastery and the feelings of tenderness they evoked, and even taking pride in his special abilities to express in his singing the depth of feeling in them. Naturally, with his high standards, he could be exacting toward those under him when he was prior of the Lavra. But when sung well and prayerfully, the hymns moved him to tears: “My God! What power of prayer in the moment of awareness of one’s sinfulness and what power of love to God, attracting the soul of a person to the endless expanse of the incomprehensible beauty of the Creator!”133 In one telling passage, Toviia described the Lavra’s choir director of fifty years, Archimandrite Aaron. According to Toviia, Aaron had a masterful command of his tenor voice: “I loved to listen to his heartfelt singing, especially during

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the canons of the forefeast of the Nativity of Christ and Theophany. . . . It happened that I, holding my breath, listened with great delight to his touching singing.” 134 Clearly, the beauty of the liturgy, with its singing and hymnography, had the power to move the spirit in inexpressible ways. Figures such as Hierodeacon Nikolai from Chekhov’s “Easter Eve” (Sviatoiu nochiu, 1886) were not merely the stuff of fiction—monastic singing, hymnography, and liturgy were like a form of art, a creative expression that evoked the love of God in oneself and others. For those who had such talents and inclinations, it was a clear draw to monastic life, and the beauty of the services was a major attraction for the millions of pilgrims who came to the monastery; it was an art form at which even a serf like Toviia could excel and, through it, touch not only myriads of commoners but even bishops, aristocrats, and emperors. There is evidently some truth to the analogy of Toviia’s first confessor that life in the monastery progresses through stages, and clearly there were different expectations for the brothers at each stage. The life of the novice was focused on physical labor rather than prayer. The typical novice progressed through various obediences or types of work in the monastery, including the kitchen, the bakery, and the refectory as well as various types of workshops; many novices passed through a wide array of such types of work, which was perhaps the way in which the monastery tested their talents and abilities. The expectations of the tonsured monk became more balanced between work—which might be more refined or skilled work in the monastery—and prayer (liturgical and private). For the relatively few who demonstrated abilities that led to ordination, the monk’s responsibilities shifted more toward specifically Church-related activities. For the very few who, like Toviia, demonstrated that they had administrative, economic, or management capabilities, the door was open to positions in the monastery hierarchy. For others still who labored to purify themselves through obedience, humility, and prayer, there were possibilities to pursue the contemplative path of the Hesychast.

Misconduct and Discipline The monastery was a community of individuals who had chosen to live there voluntarily and according to its rules, even if their motivations varied. Nevertheless, as with any community, some transgressed the rules. Although members of the community were to live in harmony, peace, and brotherly love, conflicts did inevitably arise. In what ways did the monks transgress the norms of monastic life? What were the nature and causes of conflict? How did the monastery authorities deal with these problems? For the most serious transgressions, or for repeated violations of the monastic life, the monastery could expel a monk and return him to his lay status. State law

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forbade such people to serve in the government, live in the capitals, and for a number of years, to reside in the same province as their former monastery. Because of the gravity of the monastic vows, the monastery was much quicker to expel novices than monks. In 1823, the state also recognized the voluntary renunciation of monastic vows; such individuals could regain their previous estate with its rights, but they could not recover their property or rank. Further, the monastery was to detain them for six months after their request to leave and administer regular “exhortations” to change their minds.135 One common violation was to leave the monastery without permission. Sometimes, a monk or novice left simply for the day.136 In one serious case, one year Hierodeacon Galaktion of the Zosimova Hermitage simply disappeared for three months; when he returned to the hermitage, his hair cut and dressed in civilian clothing, he explained that he had simply been roaming about Moscow Province. As penance, the Governing Council excluded him from liturgical service for a year, forbade him to don monastic clothing, and assigned him to manual labor in the stables. After a year of diligently performing the obediences, and having corrected his behavior, he was permitted to resume his position as a deacon.137 Another form of violation was to display disrespect for the monastery authorities. Hierodeacon Aaron, overseer of the choirboys, failed to report the drunken behavior of other monks. When summoned before the Governing Council to explain, he began to squabble with the supervisor, Hieromonk Serafim. The metropolitan found Aaron’s behavior before the council improper, and ordered that he be sent to Makhrishchskii Monastery for two weeks “for humility.” At Makhra, he was made to harvest hay and other heavy work; after the abbot of Makhra reported that his behavior was good, Aaron was allowed to return.138 Sending a Trinity monk to Makhra was a common form of disciplining, because the monk was deprived of his stipend and had to engage in heavy labor. One of the most egregious transgressions was violating the vow of celibacy. In one case, the investigation into the sudden death (due to an aneurysm) of a peasant woman, Anna Blokhina, in the cell of Hierodeacon Evgenii of Makhrishchskii Monastery revealed that Evgenii and Blokhina were having illicit relations. Indeed, Evgenii admitted that the relationship had begun three years earlier, when he met her while he was in an icon procession through local villages. Since that time, Blokhina had visited Evgenii several times a year. As a consequence of this incident, Evgenii was deprived of his status as a deacon but allowed to remain a monk. When he still failed to correct his behavior (according to reports that he was frequently intoxicated and proved a baneful influence on the other monks), he was transferred to the Zosimova Hermitage, placed under strict supervision, and given heavy labor in the kitchen. Hegumen German of the hermitage later reported that Evgenii’s behavior improved, and therefore he was not defrocked. Evgenii was not the only

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one to be disciplined for his offenses, however; the Governing Council removed the abbot of Makhra, Hegumen Olimpii, from his post because of the weakness of his moral supervision.139 In another case, an aristocratic woman, Anna Ogurtseva, accused the Trinity monk Nil of stealing from her. The investigation revealed that Nil had been having illicit relations with her and with a peasant woman, Praskov’ia Lekareva. The Governing Council, with the confirmation of Metropolitan Innokentii, sent Nil to Makhra, stripped him of his monastic clothing, and assigned him to heavy labor. However, the matter went to the Holy Synod (evidently because the case had gone to the civil courts), which ruled on the basis of Church canons and civil law that Nil must be expelled from the monastery and deprived of his monastic rank.140 Such cases of monks violating the vow of celibacy appear to have been quite rare. Although doubtless some escaped detection (as had Hierodeacon Evgenii, until Blokhina’s sudden death), the monastery authorities took such transgressions seriously, investigated them rigorously, and dealt with them severely.141 Nor was the truth clear in all cases. In one case, the peasant woman Nastas’ia Dmitrieva of Sergiev Posad accused the Trinity monk Savvatii of having illicit relations with her and other women. After Savvatii denied the accusation, Dmitrieva herself later retracted the accusation, explaining that she had been involved with Savvatii before—but not since—he entered the monastery, and that she had accused him out of spite. After that, the Governing Council dropped the matter. Later, however, Savvatii, in a drunken state, struck one of the corridor servants; as a result, the Governing Council assigned him to heavy labor in the bakery for a month and forbade him to wear monastic clothing. Savvatii denied his guilt, refused to obey the council’s decision, demanded that it transfer him to another monastery, and in the contrary case threatened to leave the monastery altogether. He added that he could not stay in the Lavra because he was having illicit relations with women in Sergiev Posad. When the council ordered that he to be sent to Makhra temporarily, Savvatii refused to go, cut his hair, and began to wear secular clothing. In view of his behavior and his refusal to obey, the council, with Metropolitan Vladimir’s approval, agreed that he should be defrocked immediately, without the requisite six-month period of admonition, a decision that was upheld by the Holy Synod.142

Alcohol Abuse: The Case of Zinovii The most persistent problem for the Lavra’s authorities was drunkenness. In October 1910, for example, local residents brought the monk Nafan back to the monastery after finding him unconscious in a ditch near the Home for the Poor. After he recovered in the hospital, the Governing Council assigned him to the kitchen for

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labor, denied him his portion of the kruzhka (income from donations divided among the brothers) and his stipend, and reduced his ration of tea and sugar.143 Certainly the most striking case, if not the most typical, was that of the monk Zinovii. Born Zakhar Uvkin, he was a semiliterate, widowed peasant from Tambov who began living in the Lavra at the age of twenty-eight in 1894; he became a novice in 1897 and was tonsured in 1900 with the name Zinovii.144 Zinovii first ran into trouble when the supervisor, Hieromonk Serafim, on coming out of Trinity Cathedral after Vespers on the evening of June 22, 1902, heard shouting coming from one of the Lavra’s towers (which contained monks’ cells). There he found one of the hired soldiers, who guarded the corridors of the monks’ cells, in a drunken state. When he took the soldier to the warden to have him thrown out of the monastery, he heard more shouting from a nearby cell, and there found a drunken layman in Zinovii’s cell. It turned out that the layman was the soldier’s brother, and that the two of them, together with Zinovii, had been drinking; the latter, seeing the supervisor coming, hid the one in his cell while he himself disappeared into the monastery garden. The next day, the Lavra’s authorities stripped Zinovii of his cassock and kamilavka (monk’s headgear) and sent him to the stables for hard labor. When the Governing Council met to consider Zinovii’s case, it decided to deprive him of the kruzhka and leave him in the stables until he corrected his behavior. In July, however, it decided to send him to the Paraclete Hermitage under the strict supervision of its superior, Hieromonk Nifont. Two months later, Nifont reported that Zinovii’s conduct was irreproachable and that he was diligently fulfilling all the heavy obediences given him; as a result, the Governing Council let him return to the Lavra.145 When Zinovii ran into trouble again in 1906, this time he was sent to the Zosimova Hermitage for correction of his drinking problem.146 He returned to the Lavra, allegedly because of illness, and was sent to the Lavra’s hospital. In December 1907, he had resumed his drunken behavior, coming and going as he pleased and disturbing the patients in the hospital. The Governing Council decided to send him to the Paraclete Hermitage for correction; however, he refused to go, promising to reform himself if allowed to stay in the Lavra. The council assigned him to heavy labor in the blacksmith workshop, but the very next day he was found completely intoxicated, strolling about Sergiev Posad and evoking laughter and scandal among the residents. When the Lavra finally caught him and locked him in his cell, he promptly broke down the door and left.147 When he was back in the Lavra’s hands, it sent him once again to Zosimova, but he soon returned because of “illness.”148 Afterward, Zinovii appeared to mend his ways for a few years, but then came another relapse. On the night of January 30, 1910, two town soldiers brought Zinovii, constrained and in a cab, back to the monastery. They had noticed him walking

160 monks: social history and spiritual life about drunk in the town, and when they tried to take him back to the monastery, he created a commotion and refused to go. As a crowd gathered, several people tried to put him in a cab but managed to subdue him only with the help of “a strong Tatar.” He was taken to the monastery’s hospital and locked up in an isolated room, where he remained for three weeks. After his release, the Lavra deprived him of monastic clothing and assigned him to work in the kvass brewery, where he patiently worked with hired employees for half a year. The monastery believed that he had reformed himself and allowed him to wear his cassock, but shortly afterward he was found drunk again while trying to force his way into a sacristan’s cell. The authorities decided to incarcerate him in the isolation room of the hospital, but it took six watchmen to subdue him—and even they were afraid that he would break out of his restraints and escape.149 After this last outbreak, the Governing Council decided to deprive Zinovii of his portion of the kruzhka and stipend permanently and warned him that, if his behavior did not improve, it would defrock him and expel him from the monastery. Called before the council to explain himself, Zinovii vowed to reform and agreed to sign a written statement swearing never to drink again. He later refused to sign the statement; however, when called back before the council to explain himself, he showed up on crutches (accusing a sacristan of having pushed him down the stairs) and said that he could not guarantee his behavior. The council then decided to dispatch him to Makhrishchskii Monastery permanently. For reasons unexplained, however, the council did not follow through with these decisions and left Zinovii in the Lavra.150 In 1912 and 1913, Zinovii repeatedly drank to excess, left the monastery without permission, imbibed in town, even in pubs, and invited his cronies to drink with him in his cell. The council resolved to place him “on full cenobitic conditions” within the Lavra (i.e., he would not receive any income), deprived him of his right to wear monastic clothing, and again threatened to defrock him.151 This clearly did not work, however; Zinovii had made friends with some “suspicious” characters living in the town who dressed like university students and drank with him both in his cell and in town. The Lavra’s Council was ready to defrock him, but because filing an official petition to defrock him with the Moscow Consistory would result in his temporary transfer to another monastery anyway, under the provision of allowing the individual to reform himself, it asked the Metropolitan to transfer him to another monastery in the Moscow Diocese. Metropolitan Makarii opposed this measure, so instead Zinovii was finally transferred permanently to Makhra.152 Finally, at the age of fifty, Zinovii volunteered to serve in the army at the outbreak of World War I—an unusual move for a tonsured monk, but perhaps the only way out of an impossible situation.153 The case of the monk Zinovii suggests several conclusions. First, his intractability was exceptional; though other monks received discipline, none reappeared

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with such frequency in the archival record. Second, despite his tempestuous character and the public scandal in Sergiev Posad, the Lavra was remarkably tolerant. It did not ignore his transgressions, but it accepted him back after three stints in the hermitages. Perhaps his temporary improvements, especially after the first few instances (e.g., he did not run into any trouble between 1902 and 1906), gave hope that he had reformed himself. The authorities routinely dealt more strictly with misconduct by the ordained clergy, who had greater responsibility and greater visibility. Finally, the monastery was very reluctant to take the extreme step of expelling and defrocking errant monks such as Zinovii, and thus it tolerated repeated misbehavior in the hope of reformation rather than being forced to defrock.

Conflicts between the Brothers By intent, the monastery is to be even more than a community—it is intended to be a brotherhood, and this is reflected in the particularities of monastic language. Indeed, monks and novices of the community refer to one another as “brother” or “father,” implying, ultimately, a familial intimacy. “I am grateful to God that there is brotherhood in the Lavra’s brotherhood. That is very valuable,” Filaret observed.154 Nevertheless, even within families, there are tensions and interpersonal conflicts; so also in the monastery, conflicts resulted from offenses, jealousy, rivalry, and power struggles. In one such case in 1850, discord between Hierodeacon Aaron and Hieromonk Manuil in one of the Lavra’s churches actually resulted in the disruption of a service. When the deacon failed to commemorate the priest in the prayers of the service, Manuil came out to ask him why. Aaron accused Manuil of handling the collection money improperly, while Manuil criticized Aaron for coming late and for making mistakes during the services. Later, Manuil tried to reconcile with Aaron, but the latter refused.155 In 1911, the novice Aleksei Lopnov filed a complaint that Hieromonk Ilarion stole money from the candle box, and that he was guilty of simony (having bought his ordination). The Governing Council’s investigation revealed that Lopnov was upset because he had been assigned to a new obedience that he disliked (guarding Trinity Cathedral). Lopnov had assumed that Ilarion, his supervisor in his previous obedience, had filed bad reports that led to his transfer to an undesirable obedience. As it turned out, Archimandrite Toviia, who was responsible for the transfer, regarded Lopnov as reliable (because Ilarion had, in fact, not reported anything bad about him) and precisely for this reason appointed Lopnov as a guard. Nevertheless, the Governing Council judged the novice Lopnov’s complaints as slanderous and expelled him from the monastery.156 Special tensions pervaded the relations between the monks and the supervisor (blagochinnyi) or those whom they regarded as his informants. Kazantsev’s memoirs of the Lavra under Archimandrite Antonii describe one such informant named

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Varnava. He would eavesdrop on people’s conversations and gossip; and if he heard anyone complain about the monastery’s authorities, he immediately reported it to the supervisor. There was, therefore, intense antipathy between this Varnava and other monks; Kazantsev’s supervisor, Hierodeacon Agafonik, exchanged bitter words with Varnava virtually on a daily basis.157 Half a century later, in 1917, Supervisor Hieromonk Panteleimon was going to talk with a monk, and from the nearby cell of Hierodeacon Vitalii, he heard the shout “The supervisor’s here.” Vitalii continued, calling Panteleimon “a scoundrel, an unconscionable slanderer, a litigious person, and a liar.” Vitalii’s animosity resulted from Panteleimon’s previous criticism of Vitalii’s habit of inviting student-boys into his cell and calling novices by women’s names.158 Because the supervisor was responsible for overseeing the brothers’ behavior and meting out disciplinary measures, he was an inevitable target of enmity. Naturally, the monastery leadership hoped that monks would find spiritual solutions to their conflicts. One elderly monk related a story of how, when he entered the monastery, Archimandrite Antonii gave him this advice: “Be patient, and if you happen to meet an insult from the brothers, then answer with silence and a bow.” If the insult becomes unbearable, he should take it to Saint Sergius and pray before the saint asking for help in bearing it and also pray for the brother who insulted him. “In extraordinary circumstances come to me, explain the offense and its cause.”159 The young novice shared a cell with another novice who was continually offending him, but he tried for more than two years to follow Antonii’s advice. Finally, the situation became unbearable, and he went to Antonii and explained it to the prior; when Antonii discovered that the novice had borne the offense for so long before coming to him, he said, “God grant many more such novices in the Lavra who are able to bear their grief to God and to Saint Sergius.”160 Antonii’s comments suggest that he heard more than a few complaints of brothers against one another. Nevertheless, though conflicts among the monks and between the monks and the authorities did occur, those serious enough to be dealt with by the Governing Council and thus leave an archival trail were rare.

Correctional Measures As in the secular world, the monastery gradually ameliorated its system of discipline. In the early nineteenth century, monasteries occasionally imposed harsh physical punishments: according to Kazantsev, the Piatnitskaia Tower was formerly known as “the dungeon” (temnitsa) and called by some as the “pre-Makhra” (predmakhrie) or “Savva’s inn,” after abbot Savva of Makhrishchskii Monastery, where errant monks were often sent from the Lavra.161 The Lavra ceased to imprison monks, evidently from the time of Archimandrite Antonii, but Makhrishchskii Monastery still continued such practices in the early twentieth century. Thus, in 1902, a novice

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complained to Metropolitan Vladimir that its abbot, Hieromonk Olimpii, had mismanaged the monastery; in particular, one complaint was that he had imprisoned monks in an unheated tower and deprived them of food for days. When the Lavra’s investigation confirmed these allegations, Olimpii justified himself by stating that those imprisoned “did not deserve better treatment.” The Governing Council ordered Olimpii to find more suitable accommodations “for temporarily incarcerating the intoxicated” (who must have constituted the main victims of Olimpii’s prison).162 Such harsh treatment was no longer regarded as acceptable. The Lavra’s authorities punished novices guilty of serious infractions, such as repeated drunkenness, first by sending them to Makhra and, if that failed, by expelling them from the monastery. In November 1842, the Lavra sent one such novice to Makhra for correction because of his dissolute life; in March 1843, the abbot of Makhra reported that he had tried various measures but had given up hope of correcting him. That assessment led the Lavra to expel him from the monastery.163 Similarly, in 1862, the Lavra dispatched two novices to Makhra after its own measures had failed to curtail their drunkenness and rudeness to elder monks. However, the abbot of Makhra reported that they went to a local tavern before arriving at the monastery, so that, by the time they appeared before him, they had command “neither of their tongues nor of their legs.” The Lavra therefore expelled them.164 Dealing with monks who had already been tonsured was more complex; as the case of Zinovii shows, the monastery authorities regarded laicization as a grave step. The most common disciplinary measures were to deprive the monk of his stipend or portion of the kruzhka and to require monks to sign a declaration that they reform themselves. The monk Evsignii, for example, after repeated excessive drinking, signed this declaration: “I, the monk of the Lavra Evsignii, give this declaration to the Governing Council to the effect that I promise henceforth not to drink alcoholic beverages and to conduct myself properly; in the contrary case I will unquestioningly submit myself to any punishment that the Governing Council will impose on me.”165 For more serious infractions, the Lavra deprived a monk of his monastic clothing and assigned him to heavy labor (chernaia rabota), such as working in the stables or the kitchen. If that failed, it next sent the culprit to Makhra (or one of the hermitages). This practice was not unique to Trinity-Sergius; typically, each diocese had one or two monasteries to which errant monks were sent.166 Makhra was cenobitic, which meant that the monks there did not receive their customary income; moreover, monks sent there would certainly be assigned to some undesirable obedience of heavy labor—which was difficult for monks accustomed to the Lavra, especially ordained clergy. Thus Hierodeacon Venedikt, who denied his guilt when sent to Makhra, complained vociferously that “only the guilty” were sent there, indeed, “for serious misdeeds.” Venedikt was so frustrated with being forced by the

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Governing Council to stay at Makhra that he requested a voluntary defrocking, but in reality he wanted to transfer from Trinity-Sergius.167 Indeed, monks occasionally requested defrocking as a ploy to leave a monastery with which they were dissatisfied, but the tactic was usually unsuccessful.168 The transfer to Makhra could last from two weeks, as with Hierodeacon Aaron, to a year; such transfers were sometimes permanent. One way for monks to avoid discipline was precisely to transfer to another monastery. In principle, one took vows in a particular community, which was an expression of the intent to remain there for one’s entire monastic life. In reality, monks did transfer; sometimes they were transferred by Church authorities, such as capable monks who were needed in another community (this was often the case with Trinity-Sergius, whose monks in senior positions became abbots of other monasteries). Other times, monks requested transfer if they were unhappy with their community. Metropolitan Filaret was reluctant to receive monks who left other monasteries under these latter conditions, and he was equally concerned that monks who fled discipline by transferring to another monastery were not becoming better monks. At the same time, he was also unhappy about capable monks being transferred from the Lavra.169 The ultimate measure was to defrock the monks and expel them from the monastery, but such cases were relatively rare. Although the monastery authorities’ reluctance to defrock a monk may have been motivated by fear of a public scandal— which they very consciously avoided—it is likely that such scenes as Zinovii caused in Sergiev Posad created even more scandal than his defrocking would have occasioned. The monastery authorities were loath to negate the rite of tonsure, which— like marriage—was intended to be lifelong, and which amounted to a violation of vows made to God. Archimandrite Toviia recounted one instance when the Governing Council defrocked a hierodeacon: Reflecting on it beforehand, this is what I imagined: how, with the laying on of the bishop’s hands, during the reading of prayers, and with gradual clothing of the sacred vestments, the grace of the Holy Spirit invisibly embraces the soul of the one being ordained, during which his guardian angel stands over him, protecting him from the power [vlast’] of the devil. So now with the defrocking it is exactly the opposite: with the casting off of the monastic garment, he is stripped of the blessed protection [pokrov] and deprived of the invisible power [sila] of the Holy Spirit that protected him. As I have had to see such scenes more than once in my life, in so doing tears weighed down my soul and burst forth, although I restrained them with great difficulty.170

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As this very revealing passage demonstrates, monastic authorities hoped to reform a person rather than take the risk of depriving him of divine blessing, for defrocking a monk meant removing not only his monastic cloak but also a layer of divine protection.

Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii): A Typology of Monks The misdeeds described above were a plague on monastic life, but hardly the norm. It is, however, difficult to distill an image of the “typical monk” from the idealized models of prescriptive literature and the miscreants who populate disciplinary records. Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), one of the most authoritative monastic voices in the early twentieth century, proposed a typology of monks. To be sure, the goal of monastic life should be the same for every monk: “the salvation of the soul by means of a decisive struggle with one’s passions, the purification of one’s heart of these passions by means of renouncing one’s will and even [one’s own] cleverness, and in the end of it all—‘possessing,’ in the words of Saint Serafim, ‘the Divine Holy Spirit.’”171 But the monks were a varied lot, and Nikon’s typology sought to portray this spectrum. The first type of monk was the true monk-ascetic, who constantly contemplated his vows and measured himself against God’s commandments. He always followed the Holy Fathers, the teachers of monasticism; but he relied not only on books but also on the elder. The main canon of his life was humility; his primary goal was to “empty himself ” so that he could be filled with God. He sought to fulfill the commandment to “love thy neighbor” by forgetting himself and his own rights, by thinking only of his obligations toward others. Such ideal monks, Nikon acknowledged, were few but always existed, from ancient times until the present, as the upholders of true monasticism and the Christian ideal.172 The second type was the “ordinary monk-toiler.” This type did not dream of great ascetic feats, but merely tried to fulfill the obediences that had been given to him. At times he fell prey to his weaknesses, but he raised himself again; falling and rising, he would “crawl on all fours to salvation.” His salvation lay in simplicity and humility. He did not impose on himself particular fasts or particular rules; his day consisted of church, his cell, and his obedience. Though such monks had their weaknesses, they were valued members of the community because they did not regard themselves too highly and sincerely tried to fulfill the will of the abbot. It was upon such people that the external side of monastery life depended. The monastery authorities often chose such monks for ordination, even though they did not always have a deep understanding of theological matters. Most entered the monastery with good intentions—to serve God, for the salvation of their souls—but often they were

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not able to preserve the intensity of their initial zeal. But God helped them, according to Nikon, in their humility and simplicity.173 The third type of monk entered the monastery “not for the sake of Christ Jesus but for a piece of bread.” Such individuals were unable to find a place for themselves in the world; perhaps they were not very skilled. In the monastery, they were given obediences in the choir, kitchen, or bakery. For some of these monks, on seeing the example of others, love for the spiritual life would be ignited. But the majority developed into “hirelings” (naemniki), who labored honestly but expected an earthly reward, whether it be payment (stipend, kruzhka) or advancement to the clergy. The monastery depended upon such people; for the monastery to survive in the world, the economy needed to be run and good choirs were necessary. From this type of monk, in Nikon’s analysis, came the fourth type: the “false monk” (lzhemonakh)—the careerist, the obedient servant of his passions. Such monks forgot their conscience and surrendered themselves to whatever sin governed them—drunkenness, licentiousness, greed, lust for power. It would be best to expel these from the monastery, Nikon ruminated, but weak abbots tolerated such monks. Sometimes, when the monastery authorities were firm with such monks, they reformed themselves. But other times, these monks gathered around them other, younger monks, and engaged in intrigues against the monastery authorities, violating the harmony of the community. The false monks were also in the minority. The majority, Nikon concluded, constituted shades in between the first and last types, with a leaning in one or the other direction.174 Nikon’s typology provides a relatively accurate picture of the diverse population in the cloister. Nikon wrote his article for a monastic audience; he was certainly critical of monasticism, no mere apologist of monasticism against its secular critics.175 Although some monks did violate their vows of celibacy, indulge in drunkenness, or defy their superiors, according to the archival record, they were the rare exception among the hundreds living in half a dozen different communities in the Lavra’s collective. Monks who resented consignment to Makhra, deprivation of their salaries, or a reduction in their share of donations fit the description of Nikon’s “hirelings.” Those guilty of occasional drunkenness or conflict with fellow monks were more numerous; most, however, appeared to reform themselves and, in Nikon’s words, “crawl” their way to salvation. And others, such as the elders of Gethsemane Skete, exemplified the ideals of the spiritual life. Finally, the differences in community were marked; the vast majority who had disciplinary problems came from Trinity-Sergius itself which, as a state-funded monastery, was more likely to attract Nikon’s “hirelings” and, as a large monastery, could supervise and guide individual monks less closely. Makhrishchskii Monastery, the opposite extreme, with the poorest, least-educated monks—and also the community most likely to receive delinquent monks from Trinity-Sergius—also had serious problems with discipline.

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Communities such as Gethsemane Skete and the Zosimova and Paraclete Hermitages, conversely, adhered to a stricter monastic rule and attracted fewer “hirelings” and “false monks”; smaller, and with numerous spiritually mature elders, they also exercised close supervision and guidance. Although these communities did have some disciplinary problems, they were less serious and less frequent than those of the Lavra itself or Makhra.

Conclusions In nineteenth-century Russia, the background of those who entered the monastery underwent a dramatic transformation. The proportion of commoners among the monastic recruits continually rose until it became the predominant factor by the early twentieth century. Unlike medieval Russia, when monks from aristocratic backgrounds had better conditions within the monastery and occupied positions of authority, in modern Russian Orthodox monasticism, the social hierarchies of the world were overturned in the world of the monastery. Of the five priors of Trinity-Sergius between 1831 and 1917, only one was an aristocrat; two were sons of clergymen; and two, Antonii and Toviia, were serfs—and the former serf Antonii was more successful, more popular, and more influential than Leonid the former aristocrat. The monastery, therefore, offered opportunities for those who embraced its vision, values, and ideals, and thus excelled at its norms and rules—opportunities for spiritual realization, and also access to spheres of power and influence, education, and creative expression that would have been virtually unthinkable for someone born a serf like Toviia in the “world.” Monasticism was thus able to develop in ways that were responsive to the ethos of mass society while retaining what was distinctive about its way of life that was very different from mass society. In the world of nineteenth-century Russia, most commoners would not have had opportunities to choose their community and career. One who joined the monastery left his former identity in the world to become, as Toviia put it, “a member of a divinely chosen brotherhood of those working out their salvation,” thereby voluntarily becoming part of a new community with a new set of rules and norms; nevertheless, the motivations of the people who made this decision varied. Those drawn by the ideals of the monastery—the path of obedience and humility, of inner struggle and purification—often excelled in one way or another within that new social world. Some, the “true monk-ascetics” like German and Starets Varnava (also born commoners), were fulfilled and rose to the top of the monastery’s spiritual hierarchy by becoming renowned elders and spiritual teachers of Hesychasm. Others, like Toviia, followed the path of obedience, and though they did not ascend the

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heights of contemplative spirituality (something Toviia openly admitted in his diaries), they nevertheless ascended the hierarchies of the monastery’s power structures and contributed to its success as a functioning community, while also being fulfilled in their monastic calling. By contrast, there were those who entered the monastery for other reasons— for a “piece of bread,” for a carefree life, for the kruzhka, or precisely for opportunities to gain powers that would be respected in the world but that would not be available to them if they remained in the world. Such individuals struggled to remake themselves in the new communities; some of these inevitably transgressed, or even rebelled against, monastic rules, and these populate the archival record with their transgressions, whether or not they succeeded in reforming themselves. Others probably learned how to imitate the rules of monastic life successfully and in some cases advance in the monastery hierarchy; indeed, this latter group was of even greater concern to monastic leaders like Nikon than those, like Zinovii, who seemed unable to do otherwise than succumb to temptation. Thus the monastery provided its members with a unique model of community, one governed by a different set of rules than the world outside its walls, that created different hierarchies and power structures, all of which were determined by a distinct set of values, a community whose ultimate goal was spiritual—or, as Nikon put it, the inner struggle to purify one’s heart in order to know God. This inner struggle was inevitably shaped by the background and motivation of each individual, and its outcome inevitably differed as a consequence.

5 Pilgrims: Pilgrimage, Relics, and Miracles In September 1851, when Trofim Tsymbal was fifteen, he went on pilgrimage to the Kievan Caves Lavra. The Kievan Lavra was considered the holiest place in the Black Earth region of the Russian Empire, where Trofim was from (Voronezh Province). The idea for the journey came when his godfather visited their house and announced that he and several other men from the village were planning to make the pilgrimage; Trofim, who had already decided to become a monk, thought this was a unique opportunity to pursue his dream. But first he had to secure permission from his parents to go on the pilgrimage (he had not yet told them of his plan to become a monk). They were not surprised at the idea of the pilgrimage, “because almost every adult member in our family without fail went to Kiev.” Nevertheless, they tried to dissuade him from going because he was so young. He was able to convince them to let him go because he was going with his godfather—“we were taught since childhood to consider our godfather on the same level as our parents.”1 Making a backpack for himself, he gathered a walking stick, two pairs of clean underwear, two towels, and a supply of sukhariki (dried bread or rusk) for the trip. Two days before the departure, he told his parents of his desire to “leave the world and enter a monastery.” This alarmed his parents, and they nearly did not let him leave for the pilgrimage—only allowing him to go with his firm promise that he would return, and giving his travel pass and money to his godfather.2 On the day of departure, the family gathered and prayed before the icons, and the elder family members blessed Trofim. Trofim and his fellow travelers then went to the village church to have offered a moleben, or special prayer service, for the travel. They traveled by foot through Belgorod, Akhtyrka, and Pereslavl to Kiev. Trofim brought with him a 169

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notebook and began to keep a travel diary—at first simply recording the names of the places they visited and how far they traveled, but later also describing events and people they met on their journey. Along the way, the pilgrims stopped off at each major monastery and church, particularly those that had holy objects such as miracle-working icons and relics of saints. Early in their journey, they stopped in Belgorod to venerate the uncorrupted relics of Saint Ioasaf, where the monks offered a moleben and a panikhida (memorial service) for them. After the service, they sat to eat their sukhariki and a watermelon, which they ate “like a delicacy.” A monk approached them and offered them soup (shchi) and kasha, but, thanking him, they refused, because they had made a promise to keep a strict fast and eat no hot food all the way to Kiev, where they would go to Confession and take Communion.3 After days of walking, they approached the Kiev Lavra through a forest that brought them suddenly right across the Dnepr River from the monastery. The bell tower and monumental churches topped with golden cupolas made a profound impression on the pilgrims, who “immediately stopped and in mute reverence fell to the earth,” tears streaming from their eyes in gratitude to God for having finally reached the “goal of our desires.”4 Making the sign of the cross, they silently crossed a footbridge to the monastery, settled in the monastery’s hotel, and after resting went to the evening Vigil service. They stayed at the Lavra for three days, visited the Caves and venerated the monastery’s famous saints, went to Confession and Communion. Trofim was particularly impressed by the magnificent hierarchical liturgies when the prior of the Lavra celebrated (much like the pilgrims at Trinity-Sergius were when Archimandrite Antonii officiated). His older fellow pilgrims spent the three days recuperating from their journey and their fast, but after a day Trofim was ready to explore Kiev, where he visited all the city’s monuments, both secular and religious. “Having walked around Kiev as much as possible, fulfilling our Christian duties with the mysteries of Confession and Communion, venerating the Friends of God who are reposed in the Caves, we departed on our return journey, carrying away spiritual joy and gratitude to God, who granted us worthy of such mercy and grace.”5 On the return journey, the pilgrims visited yet more monasteries and holy sites. Trofim mostly walked apart from his companions, preoccupied with prayers and thoughts of how he would convince his parents to let him enter a monastery. To his surprise, he returned home to find them much more open to the idea, which he regarded as nothing less than a “providential miracle” of God in response to his prayers and the intercession of the saints he had venerated on his pilgrimage.6 Trofim’s pilgrimage to Kiev clearly left a deep impression and a long-lasting impact on the young man. Millions of Russians, like Trofim, made pilgrimages to holy sites in the nineteenth century. Some went to a local holy site; others made a longer journey to a regional or national site such as the Kiev or Trinity-Sergius lavras, and some went even further to the Holy Land or Mount Athos. Some of these journeys,

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like Trofim’s, could be quite arduous, involving several weeks of long-distance travel on foot. In the second half of the nineteenth century, pilgrims were also increasingly traveling by train; indeed, the advent of the railroad combined with the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861 resulted in a veritable explosion of pilgrimage from that time until the outbreak of world war and revolution half a century later. The motivations for undertaking a pilgrimage varied greatly. Some, like Trofim, were contemplating a major decision in their life; others were suffering from a chronic illness and hoped for a miraculous cure. Some were fulfilling a vow; others went as a way to give thanks to God for some blessing in their life. The promise of adventure also appealed to many. No matter the motivation, the means of travel, and the destination, pilgrimage became a central expression of religious devotion in nineteenth-century Russia. Because Trinity-Sergius was one of the most important holy sites, the rise of pilgrimage had a transformative impact on it both internally, on the community itself, and externally, on its relationship with the “world” outside. This surge of pilgrimage has been the subject of recent interest by scholars who have begun to examine the phenomenon in relationship to popular piety, miraculous cures, and the veneration of relics.7 Pilgrimage has been a universal feature of Orthodox Christianity, but we have little idea of how widespread or common it was in the eighteenth century or even the first half of the nineteenth century. The evidence clearly suggests its increase on a massive scale from the 1860s onward, although it is hard to come by any hard data because monasteries did not keep such records. Only Solovetskii Monastery on the White Sea kept such statistics, because it had to ferry pilgrims to the monastery by boat. There pilgrimage grew from some 6,000 pilgrims in 1863 to 24,000 in 1900—a fourfold increase.8 As we will see below, Solovki was probably representative rather than exceptional in this regard. At the very time Russia was rapidly modernizing on multiple levels—increased social mobility after the abolition of serfdom, urbanization and industrialization, the spread of literacy—it also witnessed a massive religious upsurge, one manifestation of which was the rise of pilgrimage. Such developments are contrary to expectations that modernization necessarily entails secularization, suggesting that Russia’s path to modernity was distinct from that of Western Europe.9 A century earlier, when Catherine the Great was secularizing monastic properties, Russia seemed destined to follow a path similar to the West, if several steps behind. Certainly one of the most powerful draws for pilgrims was the promise of miraculous healing before a great saint’s relics or a miracle-working icon. Yet such expressions of piety—like contemplative withdrawal—came under the suspicion of Peter the Great’s churchmen. The Orthodox Church never underwent a reformation, and Russia modernized in ways substantially different than Western Europe. Peter the Great and his closest ecclesiastical coworkers (especially Feofan Prokopovich) shared an essentially rationalistic worldview influenced by the West,

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which regarded the miraculous with suspicion and had declared war on “superstition.” Yet belief in miracles, saints, relics, holy places, and miracle-working icons was far too ingrained in Orthodoxy—indeed, stemming from the earliest centuries of Christianity—for Peter and Prokopovich to reject it altogether. “Superstition” came to designate not only sorcery or magic but even elements of Orthodox tradition; thus “false” miracles, “false” saints, and “false” relics were regarded as “superstition.”10 Distinguishing between “true” and “false” relics or miracles was assumed to be the task of Church and state hierarchies, particularly the Holy Synod, the conciliar body that Peter the Great created to govern the Orthodox Church in place of the Patriarchate. Christine Worobec has suggestively stated that “the 18th century was Russia’s version of the Counter-Reformation.”11 Two centuries of tension and conflict in the struggle to define what was and what was not “Orthodox” followed Peter’s reforms —although, unlike the West, this conflict had little to do with doctrine. Although it is tempting to portray these tensions as a conflict between the laity (often thought of in terms of the peasantry) and elites or the “official church” (meaning the Church’s hierarchy), such a binary is too simplistic to make sense of much of the historical record;12 there were more than a few instances of tension and conflict between bishops—including the most senior members of the hierarchy—and other members of the Holy Synod. Nevertheless, the contestation was real; and, as part of the modernizing process initiated by Peter the Great, the Russian Orthodox Church in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries attempted to exert greater centralized control in the hands of the Holy Synod. The Holy Synod was very cautious about manifestations of the miraculous, confiscating alleged new miracle-working icons, virtually refusing to canonize new saints, and subjecting any alleged miracle even at recognized sites to rigorous investigation.13 Scholars frequently pose tension or conflict between the “official church” and “popular religion,” in which the Church institution is unsympathetic to and lacks an understanding of popular—particularly peasant—religiosity.14 Others, particularly Vera Shevzov, have argued that such binary models obscure that Orthodox laity included not just peasants but also merchants and aristocrats, and that the institutional Church included not just the Holy Synod and diocesan consistory bureaucracies but also village parish priests and ordinary monks. Moreover, though there certainly were tensions and areas of contestation between the clergy and the laity (or elites and peasants), this should not obscure the fact that they shared more than they differed.15 Although the Russian Orthodox hierarchy, particularly the Holy Synod, was wary of “superstition,” like the Catholic Church it did not reject the cult of saints or the miraculous altogether. Rather, it tried to ensure that the faithful did not venerate false saints or false relics and thus believe in false miracles, aiming to bring popular piety under its control—ever afraid that the faithful might be led

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astray by sectarians and schismatics. Many Russian Orthodox believers, by contrast, continued to believe in the miraculous power of the saints, of relics, and of miracleworking icons—and this included both the long-venerated saints who had a proven record of wonder-working, and more recent holy men or icons that manifested their powers for the first time. But where was the monastery situated on the spectrum between the Holy Synod at one end and ordinary believers at the other? As part of the “institutional Church,” did it side with the skeptical attitude of the Holy Synod, which sought to keep these manifestations of popular piety under control? How did the monastery respond to these claims of miraculous intervention—often dramatic and visible—by ordinary people happening within their own walls but not necessarily under their direct control or mediation? Did the monastery authorities at least try to impose a meaning upon the believers’ experiences and channel them in what they regarded as “proper” directions?

Trinity-Sergius as Sacred Center As part of the festivities celebrating the five-hundredth jubilee of Saint Sergius, the preeminent historian Vasilii Kliuchevskii delivered a speech at the Moscow Theological Academy titled “The Significance of Saint Sergius of Radonezh for the Russian People and State.” Kliuchevskii spoke of the unending flow, for five centuries, of pilgrims to the monastery to visit the tomb of its sainted founder. The social composition of this ceaseless stream of pilgrims, he said, remained unchanged; it continued to include, as before, all elements of Russian society, from princes to the common people. The feeling with which they came, he further claimed, was equally unchanging. They came to Sergius’ grave with the same thoughts, supplications, and hopes “in our day” as they had brought with them since the time of the great saint. Saint Sergius lived in the fourteenth century, precisely at the time of the unification of Rus’ under Moscow and its challenge to the Tatar domination—in both of which Sergius himself actively participated. “By the example of his life,” Kliuchevskii continued, “by the height of his spirit, Saint Sergius lifted the fallen spirit of the Russian people, aroused in them faith in themselves, in their own strength, breathed faith in their future.”16 This gift that Sergius gave to the Russian people has never been forgotten, and, remembering him, Kliuchevskii asserted, “we test ourselves, reexamining our moral reserve, which was bequeathed to us by the great builders of our moral order. . . . The gates of the Lavra of Saint Sergius will be closed and the lamps that burn over his tomb will be extinguished only when we have wasted that reserve without a vestige.”17 Pilgrimage was the most important way in which the monastery interacted with society. The monastery responded to the rise in pilgrimage in the nineteenth century in a variety of ways that served to promote

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further pilgrimage, which in turn had a dramatic effect on its life and reinforce its role as national center.

Pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius Monasteries enjoyed enormous influence on the common faithful in nineteenthcentury Russia. On this point, even the critics of monasticism agreed. The anonymous author of one critical article in Herald of Europe (Vestnik Evropy) in 1873 wrote: Our monasteries, as is well known, have an enormous influence even now on the common masses, serving as centers of its religious-social life. Our monasteries attract endless masses of pilgrim-worshippers, who number into the tens of thousands every year. These pilgrims, traveling almost all year round from one monastery to another, everywhere finding in monasteries relatively decent shelter, . . . receive a particular frame of mind, so that they are disposed to the monastery with love. In their turn these monastery pilgrims disperse throughout our fatherland the glory of monasteries and strongly influence not only the simple village folk but even the urban populations, with their stories of the monasteries they have visited. In a word, the social significance and influence of our monasteries is very broad, and has been established, thanks to historical tradition, too deeply in the life of our people.18 Pilgrimage was indeed a mass phenomenon in nineteenth-century Russia, and one that included not only commoners but also elites and even emperors. The pilgrims came to the monastery as a site made holy by being set apart from the world— usually, like Trinity-Sergius, physically cloistered and surrounded by walls—and devoted to prayer and the service of God. It offered a place not only for the monks to leave the world permanently but also for ordinary people to leave the world for a brief period of time, taste another rhythm of life, immerse themselves in solemn liturgies and, like Trofim, go to Confession to a monastery confessor and take Communion. The layout of monastery architectural ensembles had its own semiotics; the monastery was intended to be an image on Earth of the heavenly kingdom. It was a reflection of the heavenly city, the spiritual Jerusalem, and constituted a spiritual fortress. The buildings were arranged according to a strict hierarchical system, grouped by function; those buildings with a spiritual function were closer to the center, and those that served the material needs of the monastery were further from the center. One entered Trinity-Sergius through the massive gate (with the Church of Saint John the Baptist above the gate). The main church occupied the central place—though from the sixteenth century this was no longer the Trinity Cathe-

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dral (which housed the relics of Saint Sergius) but the monumental Dormition Cathedral (Uspenskii Sobor), built by the order of Ivan the Terrible, which dominates the monastery because of not only its central location but also its size. The central square of the monastery is connected to it on the west, surrounded by the other churches: Trinity Cathedral, the chapel over the well, the Church of the Holy Spirit, the Refectory with the Church of Saint Sergius to the south side, and other churches and the bell tower to the north. Beyond these buildings were located the hospital, the Treasury, the Sacristy, and the metropolitan’s chambers. The brothers’ cells were in buildings parallel to the fortress walls on the east and south sides of the monastery, as well as in the walls themselves—as the furthest concentric ring of buildings, pilgrims were not likely to venture there. In the nineteenth century, as today, the northern portion of the monastery was dominated by the Theological Academy, which was surrounded by a fence and generally not accessible to pilgrims. Buildings such as the stables were outside the monastery walls. Thus the square with the Dormition Cathedral on one end, Trinity Cathedral to the west, and Refectory to the south, was the nucleus of the composition that would have drawn the pilgrims’ attention. The hierarchical arrangement of the buildings reflected the ideal image of the world, where everything radiated around the spiritual center (see figures 5.1 through 5.8).19

figure 5.1. Trinity-Sergius Lavra at the turn of the 20th century. From left to right: Refectory Church, Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, bell tower, and Dormition Cathedral. Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission.

figure 5.2. A View of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in 1892. Source: E. E. Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii Radonezhskii i sozdannaia im Troitskaia lavra, 1st ed. (Moscow, 1892.)

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figure 5.3. The Refectory Church Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission.

Thus the monastery drew pilgrims because it represented heaven on earth. It was holy because of all the prayers that had been said and all the people in it who had engaged in spiritual struggles and worked out their salvation for centuries, many of them saints. Thus prayers said by the monks, or even by the pilgrims in the holy location, were considered more efficacious. The presence of miracle-working icons or the relics of revered saints amplified the spiritual power of a monastery as tangible manifestations of the sacred. Pilgrims came to offer thanksgiving for blessings received or to purify their hearts through repentance. The ill came in search of a miraculous cure. Still others came in search of a starets and his spiritual guidance, blessings, or consolation. The parish church offered the spiritual blessings of daily life: baptisms, marriages, funerals, the annual cycle of feasts and fasts. But for extraordinary blessings, people turned to special holy places. The folk also regarded the parish priest primarily as a liturgical functionary rather than a spiritual guide. They sought out the true exemplars of the Christian life, the men and women of living wisdom, in the monasteries. Many witnesses attest to the steady stream of pilgrims along the roads to TrinitySergius. As Rostislavov described, a vast number of pilgrims traveled the road from Moscow to Sergiev Posad, especially from the middle of the spring until the middle of the fall. Practically the entire road was filled with pilgrims from near and far. So

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figure 5.4. Trinity Cathedral, showing the front entrance Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission.

also the roads to Sergiev Posad from other directions—from Vladimir, Iaroslavl’, and Tver—were not empty, as the “people flocked in throngs” to the Lavra. “Even now,” Rostislavov wrote in 1877, “when the railway brings dozens or more wagons full of pilgrims on each train, there are still very many people coming on foot along the Iaroslavl’ highway from both directions, and along other roads.” Over the winter, there were fewer pilgrims, especially those coming on foot, “but there is hardly even a day in the year when there are not hundreds of devout visitors in the Lavra not from Sergiev Posad.”20 Although the introduction of the railway (the station in Sergiev Posad opened in 1862) increased the number of pilgrims, pious tradition still privileged travel on foot. The journey from Moscow to the Lavra took up to four days and included stops at other holy sites, such as the Khot’kov Convent (which was linked by tradition with

figure 5.5. Trinity Cathedral from the southwest side Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission.

figure 5.6. The entrance gates of Trinity-Sergius Source: Turn-of-the-20th-century postcard from the collection of Igor Korovin; used with permission.

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figure 5.7. The reliquary of Saint Sergius (late 19th century) Source: New York Public Library Digital Collection. Used with permission. Saint Sergius’ life). One pilgrim left a description of the journey from Moscow to the Lavra in the early twentieth century. As they left Khot’kovo on the last day of the journey at 9 a.m., the road through the forest was filled with pilgrims: Even earlier, . . . we had occasion to meet them, and the further [we went] the more [of them there were]; but from Khot’kovo to the Lavra these crowds moved in an almost unending band; they traveled in parties, . . .

figure 5.8. The pilgrimage route from Moscow to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra Source: E. E. Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii Radonezhskii i sozdannaia im Troitskaia lavra, 1st ed. (Moscow, 1892).

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pilgrims: pilgrimage, relics, and miracles for the most part in five, six, ten, and even twenty persons. The majority were common folk, . . . mostly women, in a great variety of costumes, evidently, from various distant provinces, but all, without fail, with knapsacks on their shoulders and staffs in their hands. But then, somehow completely unexpectedly for us, the forest ended, and we found ourselves on an open height, from which . . . the plain was clearly visible, . . . and in the middle of it, on a small hill, . . . the Holy Lavra in all its splendorous beauty, with the town surrounding it and beyond that, to the right, the Lavra’s sketes. . . . The pilgrims descended the slope of the completely open hillside in a long, continuous band from us in the direction of the Lavra, and we still stood on the very top of this height, named among the folk—and not without reason—“veneration hill.” . . . On the sides of the road, we began to come across some sort of peddlers with images, pictures, booklets, and the like laid out on oilcloth on the ground, and, in spots, poor cripples with wooden cups in their hands. . . . And, finally, the market square at the Lavra’s wall with seemingly unending rows of shops and tents and so on, right up to the Holy gates that entered the community.21

For the ease of making the pilgrimage, special guidebooks described the journey and the important sites for the pilgrim to see. One such book informed the pilgrim that the Lavra had two guest houses, the Old Hotel with sixty rooms, and the New Hotel with seventy-five rooms, which cost from 45 kopeks to 5 rubles per night. In addition, there was the hostel for common pilgrims, which was free of charge; the hostel had four wards that housed up to 1,000 people, and also provided meals for the pilgrims. The train went back and forth from Moscow a dozen times a day. The morning train arrived at 9:30 a.m., in time for the late liturgy; after the liturgy, pilgrims frequently requested a special prayer service (moleben) before the reliquary of Saint Sergius and paid reverences to the saint. After lunch, they could tour the Lavra or make a side trip to Bethany or Gethsemane. The guidebook also informed pilgrims when services began in each church, when the various churches were open, and which church offered the sacraments of Confession and Communion to the faithful; it described the holy objects in each church, gifts by various emperors or other persons of note, and the tombs of the Moscow metropolitans interred in the churches. The guidebook further apprised pilgrims of the special feast days at the Lavra, including which services had processions or the blessing of the waters. Believers particularly flocked to the Lavra during Great Lent and for Pascha (Easter), for the Feast of the Dormition, which was the patronal feast of the Lavra’s Dormition Cathedral (August 15) and was combined with a visit to Gethsemane for the one time a year when women were allowed in the Skete (August 17), and the Feast of Saint Sergius of Radonezh (September 25).22

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Certainly the most important pilgrims were members of the royal family. A visit to Trinity-Sergius after coronation had been a requisite act for the tsars since Muscovite times, and this tradition continued in the Imperial period.23 This very fact pointed to the unique status of Trinity-Sergius as a national monastery and a national symbol, indeed a symbol of Russian Orthodoxy. Paradoxically, although the motto “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality” originated under Nicholas I, Nicholas himself did not visit Trinity-Sergius frequently; perhaps this was in part the result of tense relations between himself and Metropolitan Filaret. Although scholars frequently point to Alexander III and Nicholas II as the two tsars who emphasized the Orthodox Church as the primary symbol of national monarchy, Alexander II was the most frequent visitor to the Lavra.24 On June 8, 1861, for example, he arrived at the monastery in the morning and was greeted at the gates by Metropolitan Filaret, who delivered a speech about the joy they received from the emperor’s attention. The emperor and other members of the Imperial family stayed through the liturgy and afterward visited Gethsemane Skete and its churches, including the Caves Church, visited Bethany, and after returning to the Lavra, the emperor was shown the iconography school and venerated the relics of Saint Sergius.25 After his coronation, Alexander III likewise visited not only the Lavra itself but also Gethsemane. The visit to the Lavra formed a part of Alexander III’s design to link the monarchy with the Church, and the visit to Gethsemane was interpreted as showing “the religious unity between the tsar and the people.”26 The impact of the increased number of pilgrims transformed the economy of Trinity-Sergius, as it did other monasteries like Solovki.27 The reason for this is that every pilgrim, no matter how humble, usually left some contribution. As Rostislavov wrote in 1877, The Russian person, coming to some monastery on pilgrimage, considers it his sacred duty to: (1) place one or several wax candles before icons or relics; (2) make a small contribution to the Church in the collection plates and cups, with which the church warden makes rounds in the church during the liturgies; (3) purchase prosphora for the proskomidiia, for his own health and that of his relatives, friends, and others; (4) have a special prayer service [moleben] performed before the locally revered miracle-working icon or local saint; and (5) place his contribution in one or several of the collection boxes, which are placed in virtually all monasteries close to holy relics and . . . icons. . . . In order to fulfill all these voluntarily assumed duties, pilgrims from the peasantry do not limit themselves to bowing before the collection plates and cups which pass before them, but pay, so to speak, for everything as their means permit.28

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Thus the monastery collected revenues derived from the sale of candles, prosphora, images, icons, lithographs and photographs of the monastery, books and pamphlets, oil used for icon lamps in one’s house, small bottles for collecting holy water, and other such items. Income also consisted of donations made for the performance of molebens (special services) of thanksgiving or intercession, which pilgrims would request (such services were usually performed before the relics of Saint Sergius or some revered icon), or memorial services for the deceased (panikhida). The single most important source of income for Trinity-Sergius was the sale of candles—even more important than income from property or investments. In the 1870s, the candles purchased by pilgrims cost between 2 and 10 kopeks, depending upon the size.29 Virtually every pilgrim, rich or poor, would place a candle during the liturgical services. Revenues from candle sales quadrupled between the 1780s and 1810 (from 2,500 to 10,000 rubles), and tripled by the 1860s (to about 35,000 rubles).30 The income from candle sales continued to rise steadily, reflecting the increase in the number of pilgrims; in the mid-1880s, it averaged 55,000 rubles, and it skyrocketed to almost 97,000 rubles by the turn of the century (table 5.1). The rate of increase took a significant downturn during the Revolution of 1905 and then returned to high levels, though less than the peak at the turn of the century.31 Only about one-third of this income was spent on candle production, so that candle sales were very profitable for the monastery.32 It is remarkable that the single largest source of income for such an enormous budget was the tiniest item, which in itself demonstrates the vast scale of pilgrimage. After candles, the sales of prosphora and images ranked as the next-largest sources of the church income (in contrast to the monastery income, which included rentals for property and interest income, as discussed in chapter 2). Archimandrite Antonii estimated that the Lavra distributed about 750,000 prosphora in 1870.33 Gross income from prosphora rose from 950 rubles in 1810 to nearly 25,000 rubles in the 1860s, and also yielded a good profit, because costs were less than half of the gross income.34 It also continued to rise dramatically, more than doubling by the end of the century.35 The sale of “images”—various souvenirs that pilgrims buy, such as small reproductions of icons, postcards of the monastery, and crosses—was also a reliable source of revenue. It generated small income in the early nineteenth century but rose noticeably in later decades to about 15,000 rubles in 1860 (with a 50 percent return).36 This figure quadrupled by 1900, surpassing even that of prosphora.37 Aside from the sale of these three items to pilgrims, the Lavra received collections, donations for services, and income from other religious items such as books and lithographs. Donations for services (prikladnaia summa) fluctuated from year to year and did not consistently rise.38 Income from the collection plate did increase more consistently, but it was still small compared with candles—evidently Russian pilgrims liked to receive something concrete in return for their money.39

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table 5.1. “Church” Income, 1834–1912 (rubles) Source of Income Candle sales Images Prosphora Books Donations Oil Photographs and lithographs Miscellaneous church income Total “church” income Total “monastery” income Total income

1834

1860

1885

1900

1912

32,000 5,941 13,861 1,277 23,393 0 0

34,269 14,664 22,890 1,632 18,463 0 0

56,199 25,879 41,368 2,730 26,982 0 4,816

96,920 60,342 55,100 5,739 30,908 14,996 3,530

73,419 46,529 39,850 5,166 18,397 0 1,490

938

5,323

9,881

3,401

13,056

77,410

97,241

167,855

270,935

197,907

53,538

52,703

159,986

190,680

243,133

130,948

149,946

327,841

461,615

441,040

Source: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, dd. 1007, 3004, 3083, 4972, 9274, 9771, 9968, 13715, 13979, 15,859, 17761, 18142.

Collectively, the sale of three items—candles, prosphora, and images—amounted to almost half the monastery’s total income (with candle sales about 20 percent), and this factor remained consistent throughout the nineteenth century.40 The monastery’s greatest support came from the myriads of common visitors who made pilgrimage there. Moreover, the dramatic rise in church income (including these three items plus others that brought in less money)—which rose from less than 100,000 rubles in the 1860s to more than 270,000 rubles by the century’s end—provides hard evidence of the massive surge of pilgrimage.41 Unfortunately, determining the number of pilgrims who came every year is not easy. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra rarely made estimates of the number of pilgrims, and indeed, only two such reports are extant—one for 1859 and one for 1915, that is, one shortly before Emancipation and one in the midst of world war. In 1859, the Governing Council estimated that the Lavra gave free meals to approximately 200,000 poor pilgrims and that it received roughly 30,000 pilgrims “of middle and higher ranks,” for a total of 230,000 pilgrims.42 In 1915, it estimated that more than 250,000 pilgrims partook of the free meals offered to them.43 Given that this figure only reflects the number of poor pilgrims, it is reasonable to assume that the monastery received 300,000 pilgrims in 1915. That, of course, was not a typical year, but one profoundly affected by the world war and its dislocations.44 Thus, these reports demonstrate the massive scale of pilgrimage, even in the prereform era and during the war. However, it does not allow us to judge the growth of pilgrimage between those two dates. Turning to the economic data, however, it is possible to estimate the increase in pilgrimage between these two intervals. Considering the income derived directly from pilgrims, the monastery received about 57,000 rubles from the sale of candles

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and prosphora in 1860, and in 1870 that figure increased by 11,000 rubles. If Rostislavov’s estimate of 300,000 pilgrims in the 1870s was accurate, then the average pilgrim spent 23 to 25 kopeks on candles and prosphora in 1860 (at 230,000 pilgrims) and 1870.45 The income from candle and prosphora sales rose to 98,000 rubles in 1885, and 152,000 rubles in 1900. If the amount each pilgrim spent for these items remained constant (which, of course, is not certain), then it is reasonable to estimate that the number of pilgrims reached approximately 400,000 in 1885 and more than 600,000 in 1900. The figure of 400,000 pilgrims a year for the 1880s is confirmed by Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), who, at that time, personally handed out the Trinity Leaflets to pilgrims who ate at the table the monastery offered to poor pilgrims.46 Although these are only rough estimates, such a rate of increase in the number of pilgrims corresponds to the figures from Solovetskii Monastery; indeed, if pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius quadrupled as it did for Solovki, as is possible, this means that there were nearly a million pilgrims annually.47 Pilgrims were not only a source of income for the monastery; the monastery also went to great lengths to provide especially for poor pilgrims. Indeed, Metropolitan Filaret was concerned with the idea of simply making money off the pilgrims, which led him in 1860 to question whether or not they should invest in the railroad that was to be built and that would primarily serve pilgrims.48 In the 1830s, Archimandrite Antonii established a free refectory that fed poor pilgrims lunch and dinner every day; the monastery was feeding about 200,000 such pilgrims in the 1860s and double that in the 1880s, at great expense to the monastery.49 The monastery also provided shelter and medical care for pilgrims. In the 1840s, Antonii built the Home for the Poor, which included a hostel and a hospital for female pilgrims. As the number of pilgrims skyrocketed after the 1860s, it enlarged these facilities in an attempt to keep pace. The Home for the Poor continued to expand, and by the 1870s it was giving temporary, free shelter to 2,000 pilgrims a day. In 1878, the Rumiantsev family donated a house to the monastery, which it turned into a hostel “to provide shelter to poor male lower-class pilgrims who come from everywhere to venerate the Holy relics of Saint Sergius.”50 Naturally, the monastery tried to regulate this free shelter. The monk in charge was to ensure that only true pilgrims stayed at the hostel, and not those simply looking for a free room—therefore, the pilgrims were expected to attend liturgical services at the monastery. They were permitted to stay for three days, in accord with tradition. Pilgrims were instructed to provide their documents (internal passport) if required by the administrator of the hostel, though the administrator himself was instructed not to ask for the documents for pilgrims who stayed only two days. Those who stayed in the hostel were prohibited from smoking and from bringing in alcohol and were not let into the hostel if they were drunk; moreover, pilgrims

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were to return to the hostel by 10 p.m., after the evening services. This hostel only provided tea for the pilgrims, because other food was provided by the monastery’s refectory.51 Archimandrite Pavel constructed an even larger hostel for male pilgrims to service the massive celebration of the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint Sergius in 1892, and the following year built an enormous hospital-almshouse complex (which served both pilgrims and local inhabitants), also for men, to complement the services provided for women in the Home for the Poor.52 The celebration of the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint Sergius (September 25, 1892) was certainly the most massive single pilgrimage event at Trinity-Sergius in the nineteenth century. The event mushroomed into both a nationwide holiday and a massive spectacle for Trinity-Sergius because of popular demand from below, not by design from either the monastery (which only planned for a celebration that would entail the monastery itself) or the central authorities. Articles in the press drew attention of various groups that also wished to participate —particularly the banner bearers (khorugvenostsy) of the Moscow Kremlin cathedrals and Christ the Savior Church. Indeed, they were the ones who proposed the idea of having a procession from Moscow to Trinity-Sergius, something the Holy Synod was initially reluctant to authorize (for health reasons—to prevent the spread of cholera). In the end, the feast became a three-day civic holiday for Muscovites and a one-day holiday for the rest of Russia. The procession began at the Kremlin on September 21, and all the senior clergy of the city accompanied the procession out of the city, as some 300,000 people came out to watch. Over the next several days, the procession proceeded through various villages on the road to Sergiev Posad, all along the way picking up more and more people—some 50,000 to 60,000 the first night and more than 100,000 by the time it reached Sergiev Posad on September 24. After the evening Vigil service, pilgrims came in to venerate the relics throughout the night until 4 a.m., when the gates were closed. On the day of the feast, September 25, liturgies were offered in all the churches, with Metropolitan Leontii of Moscow presiding at the liturgy in the presence of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, his wife, and many other dignitaries and notables. Indeed, because of the overwhelming number of people, entrance to the Lavra was restricted to those with tickets, thus excluding most ordinary pilgrims. After the liturgy, all the clergy and noted guests processed through the square in front of the monastery and around its entire walls, while the pilgrims looked on— a procession that lasted more than an hour. After the procession, the notable guests were served a meal in either in the metropolitan’s quarters or in the monastery refectory, while thousands of common pilgrims were served outside the new hostel. This celebration of Saint Sergius was interpreted by ecclesiastical and secular elites particularly in terms of the glorification of Muscovy’s past; but the very fact

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that the celebration was transformed into a national holiday because of pressure from below points to the degree to which Trinity-Sergius enjoyed a virtually unique status in the Russian Empire as a truly national shrine, one that provided a focal point for a common identity of all Russian Orthodox believers.53 Although there were class distinctions during this celebration, it is worthy of note that such cases were the exception rather than the rule—though lower-class pilgrims did not have the same access to the sacred on the morning of the feast, this is the only instance in the entire period covered when there was any class distinction in access to the relics of Saint Sergius. Naturally, at any time the overall experience of pilgrimage differed greatly according to class, as did every other aspect of life in prerevolutionary Russia—the means and comfort of travel, the comfort of staying in the hotel for which one had to pay rather than the free hostel, the free meals for common pilgrims rather than the restaurants affordable by those who had more means. But when it came to the experience of praying in the monastery itself and venerating the relics of Saint Sergius, social divisions were a very rare exception.54 Certainly the continual, enormous influx of pilgrims into the cloistered community must have had a great impact on the life of the monastery, depriving it of the quiet and solitude that many went to the monastery precisely to find.55 Metropolitan Filaret became aware of these tensions very early. As he wrote to Archimandrite Antonii, Great Lent was not the time for stillness for the monks, but rather for the pilgrims: “Separating from the city and from the family, they can practice prayer in greater quiet. What is there to do? We need to bear one another’s burdens.”56 Not only was the monastery fulfilling Saint Sergius’ command to care for the pilgrims; the monastery’s occupants firmly believed in what was revealed to one simple pilgrim who died in its hospital. On his deathbed, in a dream, this man saw Saint Sergius, who told him that all the pilgrims (strannye) who die in the monastery’s hospital were received by him “into the brotherhood of his community.” Indeed, after this instance, the monastery established a special list for the remembrance of the dead (sinodik), specifically for the pilgrims who died in its hospitals, to pray for them in perpetuity.57 In short, the remarkable upsurge of pilgrimage in the second half of the nineteenth century in Russia was a sign of momentous changes in Russian religious life. Moreover, receiving so many pilgrims—evidently, more than 600,000 annually— had a dramatic impact on the life of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra itself. The relationship between the monastery and the pilgrims was complex; the pilgrims were a vital source of support for the monastery, but also a burden and disturbance. Ultimately, the Lavra’s leadership tried to approach the relationship in spiritual terms, viewing the monastery as existing not only for the salvation of the monks but also for the Russian people as a whole. In this view, the monks were stewards and servitors for the veneration of Saint Sergius.

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Ivan Shmelev’s Pilgrimage One of the most remarkable descriptions of pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius in the nineteenth century is the fictionalized account in Ivan Shmelev’s Pilgrimage (1931). Shmelev (1873–1950) was a prominent émigré writer who has been sadly neglected in the English-speaking world, where little of his work has appeared in translation. Much of his mature work focuses on religious themes, giving expression to the ways in which ordinary Russians lived Orthodoxy before the Revolution. He came from a devout Moscow merchant family that regularly made pilgrimages to Trinity-Sergius. Pilgrimage is a fictionalized account of his own first pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius, narrated by the six-year-old Vanya and set in the late 1870s. Although it is a work of fiction written a half century after the events it purports to describe, Shmelev drew from pilgrimages made as an adult, and many details described in the story are corroborated from other sources.58 The variety of motivations for making a pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius is one dimension highlighted in Shmelev’s work. Pilgrimage centers on a small group of pilgrims connected to Vanya’s family who travel by foot to Trinity-Sergius. The character of the pilgrimage leader, Gorkin, is based upon a carpenter who worked for and lived with the Shmelev family. In the story, Gorkin decides to go on a pilgrimage to fulfill a vow he had made years before—a common motivation. Gorkin and Fedia, a neighbor traveling with them, both have very profound reasons for making the pilgrimage. Gorkin, having survived a construction accident, promised to give thanks in part to Saint Sergius by making a pilgrimage to the Lavra for having saved him. Further, he promised a dying friend to pray to Saint Sergius for him. Finally, and evidently most important, he is going because of the burden of guilt he feels for the accidental death of a young man who worked for him; although the man’s parents forgave him and he had even spent two months in a monastery for penance, he was still unable to forgive himself. Fedia, for his part, is making the pilgrimage because he is contemplating becoming a monk and wishes to pray about this, but also receive spiritual direction. Vanya’s group meets other pilgrims who are traveling for their own reasons. They encounter an old woman with her beautiful granddaughter who has been mute for a year since she smothered her first-born child in her sleep. They also meet an old woman with a young man who became paralyzed three years earlier after an accident. They were going to Saint Sergius because the young man had seen him in a dream; they had walked for two months, carrying the man on a cart from faraway Orel not only because the train fare would have been a financial hardship but, more important, also because “it is necessary to make an effort.” Shmelev’s characters present a wide range of reasons that also motivated actual pilgrims in the nineteenth century: a promise or vow to render thanksgiving, to resolve a burden of guilt, to

190 pilgrims: pilgrimage, relics, and miracles seek resolution on a major life decision, to receive physical healing and healing for an emotional trauma. In addition to these essentially spiritual reasons, pilgrims were drawn to make the journey by a sense of adventure. Gorkin even explains the decision to make the pilgrimage on foot not only in spiritual terms—the notion that one should “make an effort”—but also because of the greater number of sites one could see and people with whom one could interact. The sense of adventure is heightened by stories they hear of robbers falling upon pilgrims. Even here the spiritual and the touristic merge; part of the adventure is in the sites they see—especially the holy sites specific to the pilgrimage from Moscow to Trinity-Sergius, including the springs at Mytishchi, the springs and the caves at Talitsa, and the Khot’kov Convent, which had become fixed elements for those who made the pilgrimage on foot (see figure 5.8). Russian Orthodox believers often consider places with special natural phenomena such as springs to be holy, and often chapels (and sometimes even monasteries) are established near them. Indeed, there are several associated with Trinity-Sergius itself, and the springs such as Mytishchi and Talitsa were major draws for pilgrims on route to the Lavra. The Khot’kov Convent was particularly important as the burial place of Saint Sergius’ parents; indeed, a nun told Shmelev’s pilgrims that they should go and have a panikhida (memorial service) offered for the parents, and “the Saint will hear your prayer.”59 These various sites contributed to the buildup for the final destination of the Lavra itself. In Shmelev’s portrayal, the characters experience a sense of liminality during the pilgrimage. Vanya, who has never seen the monastery, is filled with anticipation as he tries to imagine what it is like, envisioning that “everything there is different, not like in the world.”60 Everything on the road, even the road itself, is somehow touched with a sense of holiness that sets it apart from the ordinary. Perhaps most important, this is true of the characters themselves: “Now we are different, [we are] pilgrims.”61 On the pilgrimage, the main characters behave in special ways characterized by the pilgrimage, including giving alms to poor beggars and fasting in preparation for Confession and Communion (like Trofim’s fellow pilgrims)—even though this requires them to refuse offers of food and drink (vodka) along the way. The liminal state of the pilgrimage also creates a sense of communitas, as complete strangers feel a sense of unity and connection in which they share their troubles and hopes with one another.62 Once Shmelev’s pilgrims reach Sergiev Posad, they did what most other pilgrims did in the second half of the nineteenth century. They stayed in town for several days, and after venerating the relics of Saint Sergius and attending church services, they visited the surrounding communities of Bethany and the Chernigov Caves of Gethsemane to venerate the holy things there. At the Lavra itself, they purchased

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souvenirs to bring home for themselves and others. Before departing Sergiev Posad, Shmelev’s pilgrims also observed two other important traditions in the town: shopping for toys, and gorging themselves at the pancake houses as a way of breaking the fast, both elements for which Sergiev Posad was famous. These secular activities had become inextricably linked to the pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius, and Shmelev’s story reveals how local economies all the way along the road to Sergiev Posad had grown up around the pilgrimage. All the central characters who embarked upon the pilgrimage received some sort of resolution to their problem, at least partially. The element of Shmelev’s story, however, that diverges from the standard pilgrim narratives is that the healings that take place in the story do not take place at the relics of Saint Sergius, which is also not the climax of the pilgrimage in his account. Both the mute young woman and the paralyzed young man were partially healed—the young woman at the springs in Talitsa, the young man while drinking holy water from the chapel over the well at the Lavra. But the culmination of the pilgrimage in Shmelev’s account—no doubt stemming from his own personal experience (see chapter 3)—was the visit to the elder Varnava, the living holy man. Gorkin goes to Varnava and is finally released from the burden of guilt that had hung over him for years, through Confession and through the comforting and encouraging words Varnava spoke to him. Fedia’s fate is decided in an unexpected way—Varnava instructs him not to become a monk but to stay in the world and start a family; Varnava is portrayed as seeing what Shmelev has allowed the reader to see through various hints that although Fedia is attracted to the monastic life, he is more fit for the world. Varnava also holds out promise to the mute young woman, instructing her to return in a year with her new child, and he tells the paralyzed young man to return to him on foot in a year. Although most of the pilgrims’ narratives that are preserved in the Lavra’s archive focus on the experience of Saint Sergius himself, in Shmelev’s account Varnava was the one who had the power to guide and to heal both spiritual and physical maladies. Certainly for Shmelev, writing Pilgrimage in 1930–31 was an attempt to capture or recapture a Russia that had been lost through the Revolution. By returning to his own childhood, he was also depicting an idealized Russian folk character, that, like Gorkin, believed with a childlike simplicity and trust, and returning to an age that was simultaneously before Shmelev’s own student years and attendant skepticism, and before Russia’s loss of innocence and faith resulting from the Revolution. Although Vanya as narrator certainly has no understanding of the purpose of monastic life, he perceives the holiness of the place and the movements of grace in people’s lives with a directness and simplicity that is communicated to the reader.63 Certainly Shmelev presents certain of his characters, especially Gorkin, in an idealized fashion (again reminiscent of the way a child perceives an adult he admires).

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But the very fact that Shmelev tried to recapture a lost Russia precisely by presenting a pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius is emblematic both of how profoundly the experience touched Shmelev himself and how profoundly important the experience was for many Russians.

Popular Religious Literature Although Trinity-Sergius attracted large and ever-growing numbers of pilgrims to its walls throughout the nineteenth century and served their spiritual needs with its solemn services and holy objects, it also sought to educate the pilgrims spiritually— to make their faith more conscious. Such instruction took the form of sermons and extraliturgical conversations (besedy).64 The most important means of religious education, however, was the popular religious literature produced by the Lavra. In particular, the Lavra’s Trinity Leaflets (Troitskie listki), which were purposely intended as religious reading for the common folk (subtitled Spiritual-Moral Reading for the People, Dukhovno-nravstvennoe chtenie dlia naroda), became one of the most popular and widely disseminated series of religious pamphlets throughout Russia. The Trinity novice Nikolai Rozhdestvenskii began publication of the Leaflets, with the blessing of Metropolitan Innokentii and the support of Archimandrite Leonid, in February 1879. Rozhdestvenskii, who was tonsured with the name Nikon in 1880, went on to become the most important figure in developing Trinity-Sergius’ publishing activities. He was born in 1851, the son of a lower Moscow clergyman. After graduating first in his class from the Moscow Theological Seminary, instead of entering the academy and following the path of “learned monasticism,” he entered the Trinity-Sergius Lavra as a novice. Nikon lived in the monastery for more than a quarter century, rising to the second position in the Trinity-Sergius hierarchy as treasurer, before being consecrated bishop (in 1904), and he would ultimately end his career as a member of the Holy Synod.65 The Leaflets were distributed free of charge to pilgrims who came to TrinitySergius. Nikon later wrote about how, for the first decade of its publication, he personally distributed the Leaflets at the table offering free lunches for poor pilgrims: “In the open air during the summer time, six long tables were arranged, which seated up to 600 people at once. During the great feasts, and even on ordinary Sundays, several shifts would eat; consequently there were several thousand people. In a year the Lavra fed up to 400,000 people. . . . One novice distributed plates of bread, and I—the Leaflets.”66 The Leaflets were printed serially, with roughly forty to fifty numbers coming out each year. Each Leaflet was devoted to a particular subject, and each was given a separate reprinting.67 The subjects ranged over a great variety of religious and moral topics. The most popular ones (based on the greatest number of reprints)

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were on the Fifth Commandment (to honor father and mother), one titled “You Have Nowhere to Run from Conscience,” and another on “The Truly Happy Person.”68 The largest number was devoted to saints’ lives or to the lives of more recent podvizhniki, ascetics or exemplars of the spiritual life. Some were devoted to particularly revered icons (e.g., the Chernigov Icon) or to explaining particular feast days. Others discussed such subjects as prayer, sin, faith, the commandments, or repentance. Of the first 800 numbers, published between 1879 and 1895, 16 concerned “drunkenness,” 26 discussed “schismatics,” and 172 were lives of various saints, with the largest number (25) about Saint Sergius.69 Numbers 801 to 1000, published between 1896 and 1899, were devoted to a running commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.70 In 1900, the series began again with number 1, labeled the “supplementary series.”71 The series spread rapidly and widely, and the Leaflets were not only given out to poor pilgrims who came to the Lavra; many clergy, missionaries, and ordinary believers also purchased them. By the end of the 1880s, the total number of Leaflets printed each year—new issues plus reprints—numbered 7 to 8 million. In 1887, Nikon, by that time a hieromonk, raised the issue of establishing a printing house in the Lavra itself to make the printing of the Leaflets easier and less expensive (until then, a private printing house in Moscow printed them). Nikon proposed that the printing house have the same relationship to the monastery as the editorial staff of the Leaflets, which, “from the opening of the edition of the Trinity Leaflets until the present time, . . . has used the name of the community, but remains in its activities completely independent of it, operating on its own discretion and budget.” However, the Governing Council regarded Nikon’s project as “incorrect and contrary to the monastery’s rule,” proposing instead that the editorial staff and printing house both be related to the monastery in the same way as candle or prosphora production and sales (i.e., completely subordinate administratively and integrated economically). Perhaps it was because of this disagreement that the printing house was not established for another seven years.72 Nikon eventually compromised, and in 1892, Nikon “transferred all of the Trinity editions to the ownership of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra as a donation, remaining himself as the editor of all the editions.”73 This move no doubt eased the objections of the Lavra’s authorities, and in 1894, the Governing Council finally sought permission from the Holy Synod to establish the printing house, stating that, “with the spread of literacy among the common people,” there was a vital need of good reading material. “The people seek healthy spiritual food in the spirit of the teaching of its native Orthodox Church and receive editions coming out in the name of monastic communities dear to them with love and trust.”74 The cost for constructing the printing house, which amounted to roughly 10,000 rubles, came from the accumulated income of the Leaflets. The Holy Synod granted permission for the construction of the printing house, and very quickly the Lavra was printing not only

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the Leaflets and other associated popular religious literature but also more scholarly historical and spiritual books.75 The establishment of the printing house allowed for the further expansion of the Leaflets and associated publications, such as the series Trinity Booklets (Troitskie knizhki), together with other books published by the Lavra. From September 1897 to January 1899, for example, the twenty-third and twenty-fourth volumes of the Leaflets (numbers 881–920 and 921–60, respectively) were published in the amount of 25,000 copies each.76 In 1904, after twenty-five years of publishing the Leaflets, more than 114 million Leaflets and related booklets had been distributed; in recognition of his labors, the Holy Synod granted Archimandrite Nikon the Award of Saint Vladimir (third degree).77 Even after Nikon was elevated to the episcopate later in 1904, he continued to be the editor of the Trinity Leaflets and many of the Lavra’s other publications.78 Not only did this literature have a great impact on those who actually came to the monastery; it was also in demand throughout the empire as a teaching tool. Nikon frequently received requests from Orthodox bishops, clergy, and brotherhoods to send them collections to help in missionary or educational work.79 Thus, the Trinity Leaflets were massively distributed throughout Russia and were widely influential in the religious education of the common people; they also reinforced the national significance of Trinity-Sergius.

Icon Processions to Local Villages In addition to pilgrims visiting Trinity-Sergius to pray before revered icons and relics, the holy things sometimes went out from the monastery to visit the people— particularly when revered icons were taken on procession through local villages.80 Thus in 1848, during the cholera epidemic, Trinity-Sergius sent out monks (usually a hieromonk with a hierodeacon and a few novice singers) with an “ancient image” of Saint Sergius. At that time, several villages in which the cholera was spreading “particularly strongly” requested these icon visitations. After the monks brought the icon to the village and offered a prayer service before the icon with the villagers gathered, many people were reportedly healed and the cholera itself stopped. In their gratitude, many of these villages resolved to mark the day of the icon’s visit with an annual feast, which entailed the return of the icon. Moreover, word of these miraculous events spread to other villages further away from the monastery, and these villagers expressed their wish to have the icon brought to their villages as well. Thus the tradition of sending out the icon to make the rounds of these villages each year developed, and each year the number of villages increased, so that the processions even crossed into the dioceses of Vladimir and Tver.81 In 1893, Hieromonk Olimpei reported to the Lavra’s Council about these visitations, which he led that year. The monks first took the icon of Saint Sergius to the

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Bethany Seminary in May, where a prayer service was conducted, and from there visited several nearby parishes in the Diocese of Vladimir. After that, they traveled to the Khot’kov Convent, the city of Dmitrov, and a nearby factory. From there, they visited several other towns and villages in the Moscow region, as well as a village in Tver Diocese, continued to the Moscow-region towns of Korcheva and Klin, and from there returned to the Lavra, arriving on October 29. The entire journey lasted six months, and they visited about 100 parishes and more villages. During that time, they distributed, free of charge, 40,000 religious booklets and the same number of crosses (with the image of Saint Sergius), 19,000 belts (poiaski) inscribed with the Prayer of Saint Sergius, and 1,300 photographic reproductions of the icon. The icon was accompanied by a collection box, in which the faithful voluntarily placed their contributions, as well as special donations for requested prayer services. Altogether, they collected 11,122 rubles in donations; peasants not only made contributions in cash, however, but also donated gifts in kind: 17,750 meters of cloth and 1,800 cloth towels.82 The fact that the monks distributed so many religious booklets suggests a fairly widespread interest and ability to read, though the photographic reproductions of the icons point to the use of technology in the service of piety—both signs that modernity and religion were not always in conflict. Conducting such travels with icons was not without its conflicts, however. The secular press sometimes utilized these processions to criticize the monks for their greed; thus one article in 1871 alleged that the Trinity monks went about demanding money for the prayers as they proceeded with the icons, and that they set a steep price for them.83 In response, the Governing Council called on the hieromonk who led the visitations to explain. He replied that the article’s allegations were unsubstantiated—that none of the villagers had heard “warnings” that they would have to pay for prayer services. The only conflicts arose when additional villagers requested that they stop off at their village for prayer services when they were already en route somewhere else and were expected at the next destination.84 Elements within the Church itself also opposed these icon visitations. Local clergy opposed them in their villages, because they threatened to divert financial resources from their own parish. Further, some monastic leaders were uneasy about monks spending such a large proportion of time outside the monastery, where they were subject to a great variety of temptations (including, no doubt, the food—and especially drink—offered to monks by the villagers).85 Finally, the ecclesiastical authorities opposed the uncontrolled nature of these activities, which often occurred without having been “properly” authorized. Thus the Holy Synod, by a decree in April 1893, attempted to curtail such processions from monasteries with revered icons, demanding from diocesan bishops “precise information” about which monasteries were conducting such processions and instructing the bishops to ensure that the processions were cleared through the proper channels.86

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This Synodal decree was not without effect. In 1898, for example, the Vladimir Ecclesiastical Consistory denied the Makhrishchskii Monastery the right of making rounds with two of its revered icons to local villages in the Vladimir Diocese.87 The matter did not end there, however; residents of the town of Kirzhach and its surrounding villages, “moved by their religious feelings for these specially revered” holy objects, sent a request to the Holy Synod in 1904 to permit the brothers from Makhra to bring to them these revered icons each year, which the Synod finally granted.88 Thus the demands of parishioners—combined, perhaps, with the religious responsibilities and financial needs of monasteries—resulted in the continued annual visitations with icons, despite the reservations of the ecclesiastical authorities.

“Saint Sergius Continues to Work Wonders” Clearly the greatest draw for pilgrims to Trinity-Sergius was the relics of the monastery’s founder-saint, Sergius of Radonezh. For Orthodox Christians, a saint is someone who, through submitting himself or herself to God, is rendered holy by God (in Greek and Russian, the generic word for saint is “holy,” hagios/sviatoi). Because the process of salvation in Orthodoxy is one of deification or theosis, saints are those recognized by the community of the Church as having been deified to some extent even in their lifetime. As such, they become vessels of the Holy Spirit and manifest divine power on Earth. Because Orthodox theology conceives of the human person as a psychosomatic whole, the process of deification affects the whole person—including his or her body. After death, saints are simultaneously in heaven before the throne of God and also connected with their bodies on Earth, awaiting the final resurrection. Thus, in the Orthodox worldview, the relics of saints become a meeting place or point of contact between heaven and Earth, almost a “theophany” or divine manifestation. Rather than disdaining the material world, Orthodox Christianity teaches that the material world can be sanctified and serve as a vessel for the transmission of divine grace—above all through the sacraments, and also through relics, icons, and other material objects. Orthodox believers regard the saints as the “Friends of God,” those who are already close to God; therefore, as sinners on Earth, ordinary believers can appeal to the saints to intercede with God on their behalf for the concerns of their lives, whether those pertain to spiritual struggles or physical illness. To receive a saint’s intercession, there is no more direct way than to pray at the site where the saint’s relics are located. Moreover, because the saint’s relics themselves are holy, the believer could receive the saint’s blessing precisely by physical contact—by kissing the relics themselves, or touching the shrines that house them, or by contact with some other associated physical object.89

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Nor did such faith appear to be in vain for prerevolutionary Russian believers, as reports of miraculous healings by the intercession of Saint Sergius persisted throughout the nineteenth century and indeed increased as the number of pilgrims increased. I have found some sixty cases of miraculous healings connected with the Trinity-Sergius Lavra over one century, from the 1810s to the 1910s; the majority of them are to be found in the monastery’s archive, which is complemented by stories that Archimandrite Antonii collected and published in the nineteenth century and those collected by Archimandrite Kronid; some stories were also published in the Church press.90 The majority of cases are simply letters from people who received healing that the monastery retained for its own records. Less frequently, if a miraculous occurrence was somehow more dramatic or publicly visible, there would be an investigation to confirm the nature of the illness and the cure, followed by publication of the story. These stories are most often in the words of those who were healed, and are therefore very revealing about their beliefs and concerns, their expectations, their relationship to the faith and to the saint. They convey the types of people who turned to the saints for help, the types of problems they faced, and how they sought help. Finally, the monastery’s involvement in and responses to these episodes are frequently contained in these files.

Those Who Turned to the Saints, and Their Problems Those who benefited from miracles represented a broad cross-section of society. Of the sixty cases I have examined, just over half (thirty-three) of those healed were female, and there is not any noticeable change in this regard during the period under consideration. This suggests that there was an equal proportion of male and female pilgrims, and corroborates Christine Worobec’s findings that miracle narratives do not “support a conclusion that religion was being feminized in the modern period” in Russia.91 The pilgrims were of various ages—ranging from infants and children, whose parents prayed for them or brought them to the monastery, to adults, with children constituting a quarter of those healed. Beneficiaries of the miraculous ranged across the entire social spectrum, from peasants and workers to priests or their families, from townsmen and merchants to aristocrats. Not surprisingly, peasants were the largest group of those whose social background is identifiable (which is not always the case), but not to an overwhelming degree; there was a significant number of clergy families (priests, and their wives or children) as well as aristocrats, as well as a number of merchants and workers. In the era before the Emancipation of the Serfs, there was a greater predominance of those from the privileged classes, though this may be a reflection of the fact that peasants were far less likely to have been able to write a letter to the monastery telling them of their experience in the first half of the century than they would have been in the second

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half. At the same time, the number of those from privileged classes remained substantial, even in the early twentieth century. This suggests that belief in the efficacy of pilgrimage and the miraculous power of saints was something shared by all levels of Russian society—it was not the preserve of the upper classes, who had some sort of privileged access to religious sites (e.g., the relics of Saint Sergius), or dismissed by the educated classes and relegated to a superstition of the “dark masses.”92 The geographical diversity of those who received miraculous healings attests to the national status of Saint Sergius’ cult, particularly by the end of the nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, the greatest number came from Moscow or the Moscow region, and these in particular dominate in the first part of the nineteenth century. The majority clearly come from central European Russia—places like Iaroslavl’, Kostroma, Serpukhov, Vladimir, Tver, and Smolensk—suggesting that Trinity-Sergius had a particular appeal to the region of Muscovy with which it was historically tied, in contrast to those from Ukraine, who might be more likely to identify with and seek out the help of saints from the Kievan Caves Lavra and make a pilgrimage there. At the same time, there were those who lived in more remote parts of the Russian Empire, from Saint Petersburg and Vilnius at one end to Siberia at the other, and a number from regions such as Tambov. Thus, though many saints were “local” and were regarded as transferring special blessing to their locale, the cult of Saint Sergius was one that increasingly transcended the local region, uniting the far reaches of the Russian Empire and serving as a focus of common identity. The range of problems for which believers turned to Saint Sergius for help was also very diverse. The overwhelming majority of those who reported a case of miraculous intervention suffered from physical illnesses. The range of illnesses was also broad; though many stories do not clearly define the nature of the illness, the greatest number—about one quarter—had to do with lame arms and legs or some other debilitating pain in their limbs, sometimes resulting in complete paralysis, and many were bedridden for years. At the turn of the century, there were several cases of pneumonia. There were also cases of muteness or blindness. Others suffered from demon possession, and a few struggled with moral problems. One of the most celebrated cases was that of Flor Psaev, a peasant in his late thirties with an arm withered since childhood (his disability was even noted in his passport) who was living at the monastery as a postulant and working as a watchman. The reputed miracle occurred on the night of September 24–25, 1867—that is, the Feast of Saint Sergius—during Metropolitan Filaret’s last visit to the monastery before his death. Flor described that he went to sleep after the Vigil service. He was awoken in the middle of the night by a bright light, which he thought might be a fire, so he went to the window; but the flash ended, so he went back to bed. These flashes repeated, until, the third time, a starets walked into the room who looked

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“very much like the image of Saint Sergius on the icon in the iconostasis of the Trinity Cathedral.” The elder came up to him and put his hands on Flor’s head, and then on his lame shoulder. Trembling, Flor stood up and raised his arm in rapture. Then, Flor reported, he “came to himself ” (suggesting that he was dreaming—though this is not clear) and saw that his lame arm, which had been that way for twenty-five years, was now healthy just like his other arm.93 This was a very striking case, precisely because Flor had lived in the monastery for years and everyone knew him and had seen his withered arm that suddenly looked normal and functioned normally. As such, Metropolitan Filaret instructed that Flor’s story be published in the Church press, and it was also published in Archimandrite Antonii’s miracle collection.94 Flor, for his part, lived out the rest of his life as a monk at the Lavra; a decade later, he was still telling his story to fellow monks, including a young novice who would later become the Lavra’s prior (Kronid Liubimov).95 Although the majority of cases dealt with various physical ailments, there were also cases where the problem was not strictly or exclusively physical in origin. Kronid told the story of a distant relative, also a member of priest’s family. One night, the mother sent her daughter into the cellar for goods to help her prepare dinner, and the girl came back completely terror-struck and unable to talk, and she remained mute for months. One day the father was visiting Metropolitan Filaret to give him a report, and Filaret noted that something was distressing the priest. The priest told Metropolitan Filaret what happened, and the bishop scolded the priest for sending the girl into the cellar at night but then, with great compassion, told the priest to take his daughter to Trinity-Sergius and that she would be made well. The priest and his wife fulfilled the metropolitan’s advice, and as the girl was venerating the relics, she turned to her parents and commented on the “remarkable fragrance” emanating from the saint’s relics—the first words she had spoken in months.96 As with the case of the mute young woman in Shmelev’s story, and in other cases, here again a miraculous healing was believed to cure a person who suffered as a result of a traumatic experience. This episode also emphasized the role played by Metropolitan Filaret, including his confidence that the girl would be healed. In most cases, there was no explanation for the cause of illness; rather, it was simply something that befell a person. But there were also cases when a person’s ailment was understood as a kind of punishment for their sins. Archimandrite Kronid told another story of a priest’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Mariia Muretova, who made fun of a mute boy who had asked her for alms, and then she herself was unable to speak afterward. Although the parents treated it as an illness and turned to doctors for help, they were unable to render any. Several months passed like this, until one night the girl was talking in her sleep. After she woke up, she explained to her parents that she had dreamt that a “light-bearing wondrous elder [divnyi starets]” had come to her and told her that she was being punished for laughing at the boy;

200 pilgrims: pilgrimage, relics, and miracles because of Saint Sergius’ intercession, she was being given back the ability to speak, but in gratitude she was to make a pilgrimage on foot to “his community.”97 In addition to physical ailments, there were several cases of individuals reportedly delivered from demonic possession. This possession often manifested itself in the phenomenon of “shriekers” (klikushestvo, klikushi), usually women who fell into fits of shouting, trances, and other such disturbing behavior, especially during church services. According to Christine Worobec, the number of such incidences remained constant or even increased during the nineteenth century. Possession was popularly believed to be the result either of one’s own spiritual failure, which let in the evil spirit, or of a curse or having been bewitched. Such shriekers would often gather in monasteries in the hope of a healing or exorcism, about which there are numerous stories throughout Russia.98 Several cases at Trinity-Sergius fit the classic pattern of klikushestvo, women deemed possessed who were reputedly healed before the relics of Saint Sergius, such as two cases reported by Archimandrite Antonii in 1850.99 In 1902, a weaver from Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Akulina Burova, wrote a letter to the monastery to tell her story. She described how she had suffered for two years—periodically falling into fits, cursing at icons, tearing out her hair, and particularly reviling the church and holy things on major feast days—but she claimed that she had been healed after venerating the relics of Saint Sergius. Burova’s description of herself contains many characteristic features of klikushestvo, including cursing or having fits during the Great Entrance.100 Accordingly, Saint Sergius’ relics were believed to have power over demonic forces. The most detailed case of demonic possession, of the boy Petr Stoliarov, comes from 1910; it is particularly striking for its departure from the “standard” types of cases of klikushestvo, and also because it is very revealing of dimensions of village life and popular piety that are paradoxically “modern” and premodern at the same time. The father himself, a peasant from a village in the Tver region, wrote an account that he submitted to the monastery. He says that his son was studying in the village’s two-class school, which burned down; so he, the father, had to teach the boy at home. One day he beat and cursed at the boy for not learning the lesson (from the Old Testament) that he had given him, and two days later he cursed at the boy again for the same reason. On the second occasion, Petr fell on the bench and began to scream terribly. “Following local traditions that exist” in their village, the father reported that he sent his wife to the village sorceress (vorozheia), evidently believing that the boy had been bewitched or cursed and had fallen ill to a “wasting disease” (porcha) as a result.101 The sorceress provided them with salt over which she said incantations, and they dissolved the salt in water and washed the boy’s face with it. When this did not work, they took him to the bathhouse and tried to sweat out the disease, also with the help of magical elements.

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But the boy kept getting worse, so the father turned to prayer, reading akathists before the home icons. When the boy still did not improve, the father tried reading a Gospel passage of Christ casting out demons, with the Gospel book placed on the boy’s head, at which point the boy said (allegedly in the demon’s voice) that if the father did not take him “60 kilometers beyond Moscow,” then the demon would break the boy’s arms and legs and tear off his head. When the father asked why the demon had entered the boy, he answered: “You yourself called me and I came, and not alone, there are many of us. You beat him and cursed obscenely, and I came.” When the father replied that he had called the angels to defend the boy, he answered that the “Most High gave me freedom for the correction of your life. In the whole village, there are practically no good people.”102 The following day, the father went to the parish church and took Communion, yet afterward drank some spirits that had a spell said over them. But then, he says, he recognized that he did not “act in a Christian way,” went back to the priest, confessed everything, and returned home and threw out all the substances prepared by the sorceress. Again the boy had a fit and said that they had to go 60 kilometers beyond Moscow—that is, to Trinity-Sergius. The father took him to Trinity-Sergius, and in Trinity Cathedral the boy fell and started having a fit. A hieromonk came, and as they brought the boy toward the relics, he cried out three times, “Oh saint, should I leave?” After they put the boy down, he cried out “I’m going,” after which the boy stood and seemed better; later, he said that he saw a “bright man” come to him and touch his head, after which “a spirit, like black smoke” departed, and he felt better. They immediately offered a moleben of thanksgiving to the saint for healing the boy.103 Because this exorcism took place in the presence of a number of other pilgrims, it naturally drew serious attention from the monastery authorities. The witnesses were interviewed, and the monastery produced its own account that synthesized the father’s story with those of the other witnesses. This account differed little in detail from the father’s story, mostly adding the impressions of the bystanders during the exorcism. In particular, it noted that there were “educated intelligent people who were there, who said: ‘Where are our heretics, our unbelievers? They ought to be brought here for experience.’”104 Prior Archimandrite Toviia asked the metropolitan for permission to publish the account because there was sufficient testimony confirming its truth for believers, which had even been validated by “educated” witnesses; it might not convince unbelievers, he wrote, but then “it is impossible to convince unbelievers with any kind of investigation.”105 This case is interesting at multiple levels. The boy became possessed because the father’s use of profanities and beating the boy “invited” the demon to enter him. The father initially assumed that the boy had a spell or was bewitched and turned

202 pilgrims: pilgrimage, relics, and miracles to the local sorcerer for a spell (not unlike the way physically ill patients turned first to medical doctors), but when this failed, he turned to prayer.106 Evidently it was standard practice to appeal to both magic and Christian prayer, although the father did feel that there was a contradiction between the Church and turning to village magic, for eventually he repented of this—together with repenting for mistreating his son as well as yelling at his wife and his mother-in-law. Supposedly, the demon itself, speaking through the boy, said that God was allowing him to possess the boy for the father’s punishment (something even Toviia noted was unusual, though he found parallels in the saints’ lives); the demon also told the father that only Saint Sergius could save the boy.107 Finally, far from questioning or being embarrassed by the peasant father’s story—especially in front of an educated audience—the monastery viewed it as validation of the veneration for Saint Sergius, and ultimately of the effective power of Orthodoxy itself, and wanted to publicize it.108 In addition to curing physical illnesses and demonic possession, pilgrims believed that the saints intervened in their lives in other miraculous ways. In one rather unusual case, a man’s vices led to his illness—namely, his womanizing led him to contract venereal disease. Aleksandr Miasnikov wrote that he worked in a factory in Iaroslavl until he was called into the army; although he promised to make a pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius if he survived the factory work, he neglected to fulfill that promise. After serving in the army for two years, he began to work in the army office, where he fell into a life of loose living with his colleagues, drinking heavily and chasing after women. It was during this time that he contracted venereal disease, from which he suffered for three years. He had several dreams of “an elder” who showed him a church to go to, but he did not recognize it or know where it was. In 1882, Miasnikov was released from service after five years, but he was suffering so much that he went to the hospital. There the medical assistants told him that if the doctors treated him in the hospital they would either “heal him to the other world or else make him a cripple, as has already happened to soldiers in such cases.”109 In desperation, he began to ask God, Saint Sergius, and the healer-saint Panteleimon for healing, and he promised before them that if he were healed, he would not touch women any more and in fact not marry; he further promised to go to Trinity-Sergius and have a moleben offered to Saint Sergius. When he awoke the next morning, he wrote, he was no longer suffering. A week later, he went to Trinity-Sergius and ordered the moleben as promised. Three months later, in a dream, he was again visited by the starets, who showed him a church again and told him to go there. During his visit to Trinity-Sergius for Pascha, he stopped off at the Khot’kov Convent, and there he finally recognized the church he had seen in the dream. He ended the letter by stating that he wanted to become a monk at TrinitySergius, so that he would not return to such a terrible life as he lived before.110 A common motif in miracle stories found here is the unfulfilled promise to make a

pilgrims: pilgrimage, relics, and miracles 203 pilgrimage and the negative consequences that follow. This case is distinctive because Miasnikov’s illness resulted directly from his sinful actions, and his healing was contingent upon his repentance and promise to change his way of life. Others credited Saint Sergius with helping them turn away from their lives of loose living. In 1902, a shop worker wrote to the monastery to say that he had been “miraculously delivered” from a passion for alcohol, to which he had given himself for many years. He realized that he needed to stop, and he went to Trinity-Sergius to pray before the relics of Saint Sergius, stating that from that moment four years earlier he no longer had the desire to drink.111 Archimandrite Kronid recounted the story of a visitor who described a life of debauchery followed by repentance and Saint Sergius’ assistance in turning his life around. This man, A. A. Firsov, described how he had started out as a factory worker but quickly risen to positions of responsibility. He was married and successful but was attracted to drinking and gambling. One day, he lost 15,000 rubles of the factory’s money while gambling and then also lost his job. At first he was taken in by his in-laws, but he could not stop gambling and his in-laws expelled him from the house. He moved from place to place for five years and fell “lower and lower,” until he did not have even a kopek to buy himself a piece of bread. In that state, he stopped a nicely dressed and kind-looking man walking to Khot’kovo and told him his story. The stranger agreed to give him a 25ruble note, saying he believed in Firsov’s sincerity and hoped it would help put him on the right path—but that if Firsov were deceiving him, then his handout would “serve for the most bitter fall.” Firsov headed for Trinity-Sergius, and though he struggled with extreme temptation to stop in a tavern he passed by on the way to the monastery, he made it to the monastery, and he poured out his grief and repentance before the relics of Saint Sergius, feeling comforted and relieved. A kindly monk, noticing his struggle, talked with him, fed him, and strengthened him spiritually. Feeling thus renewed, Firsov immediately bought himself new clothes with the money the man had given him, and went to his former factory to get his old job back. He was initially given a low-paying job, but by the time he told his story to Kronid some twenty-eight years later, he had paid back the money he lost gambling and had become the factory’s boss. He credited his new life to God’s help, which came because Saint Sergius was watching over him.112 In this case, there was no specific healing that Saint Sergius was to have performed; rather, the saint was the recipient of the man’s grief and prayers. But Firsov also believed that Saint Sergius had given him the power to turn his life around. The kindly monk’s intercession also played a crucial role. Although the majority of the problems about which people turned to the saints were timeless concerns of health or sin, some clearly reflect the impact of the social upheaval and political turmoil of Russia’s modernization. One trader had his business destroyed during the 1905 Revolution. He fell into despair and even contemplated

204 pilgrims: pilgrimage, relics, and miracles suicide. But because he trusted in Saint Sergius, he decided to make a pilgrimage on foot to the Lavra to ask for help at the saint’s relics. On the way, however, he was overwhelmed by thoughts of hopelessness and went into the woods to hang himself. As he was preparing to end his life, a “wondrous elder” came out of the woods and made a threatening gesture at him, then disappeared into the woods again. This was enough to shake him out of his thoughts of suicide, and he “flew” to the monastery and fell before the relics of Saint Sergius, crying and rejoicing in his salvation thanks to the saint (whom he identified as the elder in the woods). He went to Confession and Communion at the monastery, and he left feeling renewed and at peace.113 One Muscovite struggled with the uniquely modern problem of legal troubles in 1905. He lent money to a friend of a friend, receiving a receipt for his loan, but after he and the friend had a falling out, they refused to pay back the money and even took him to court and accused him of usury. Though innocent, he was very anxious about the outcome of the case. One night a starets appeared to him in a dream and told him that he would not be found guilty. He, in turn, asked the starets who he was, and the starets replied that he was Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow. Though not yet canonized, Filaret continued to be popularly venerated (he was canonized in 1994). Indeed, the man wrote this letter in order to be added to the “case” for Filaret’s canonization.114 In short, the cult of the saints did not decline as Russia was modernizing but was adapted to address the new difficulties that people encountered with social dislocation, economic strains, and political upheaval.115 As this last case indicates, there were several instances of people who claimed to be healed by figures who were venerated by the faithful but not yet canonized, in addition to the healings believed to have been performed by Saint Sergius. In another such case in 1899, a state counselor wrote to Archimandrite Pavel telling him that, when his four-year-old daughter contracted pneumonia and was not getting better, despite medical help, he appealed to Metropolitan Filaret, whom he had met years before. After three nights of praying in this way, his daughter began to recover. He later wrote a follow-up letter, in which he stated that he was not the only one who had had such experiences but that he had met many who had been helped by Filaret.116 Metropolitan Platon (Levshin), the eighteenth-century metropolitan of Moscow buried at Bethany, the monastery he founded, was popularly venerated in the nineteenth century. One man whose wife suffered from seizures overheard in the bazaar how people had gone to Bethany, prayed before Platon’s tomb, and been healed. He then took his wife, and she too was healed (in 1842). Around the same time, Platon appeared to others in dreams and healed them or instructed them to come to the monastery for healing.117 The push for the canonization of saints did not usually come from above but from expressions of popular piety and veneration from below, and it was this popular veneration that impelled the Church authorities to consider canonization.118

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Ways of Approaching the Saint Not only was there a variety of problems and illnesses for which believers sought assistance from the saints; there was also a great variety of ways in which they sought that help. The most traditional and frequent way of turning to the saint was to pray in the presence of his relics and venerate them, which involved prostrating before and kissing the reliquary or, on special occasions when the monks opened the reliquary, kissing the veil covering the saint’s head. In the cases under consideration, about a third of the people claimed to have been healed in this fashion. The relics themselves served as a conduit of grace; thus, many of the healed spoke not of approaching the relics but of approaching the saint himself—for they believed that he was truly present in his relics. This was the most direct, tangible way of contacting the saint’s healing power. Certain moments, such as when the lid of the reliquary was opened so one could touch the saint more directly (a veil covered his face), were particularly potent. There were cases, however, when it was not the ill people themselves praying before the relics; in one case, a man’s three-year-old son was extremely ill, so the man went and prayed at the relics, and by the time he returned home, his son had already begun to improve.119 In another case, a Moscow woman’s daughter was ill, and the doctors predicted that she would die, so the mother sent her niece to have a moleben said before the relics of Saint Sergius. At the time she calculated that the moleben was being performed in the monastery, the mother herself implored Saint Sergius before an icon at home. At that moment, she heard the daughter saying (in her sleep, evidently), “Look, Saint Sergius has come,” after which she recovered.120 Not only was the direct physical contact with the saint believed to be a means of transmitting grace; prayers said in his presence were also more likely to be heard, although icons in the home were also important. Dreams and visions form the second-most-common way in which people encountered the saint (about a quarter of the cases). Healings through dreams found a variety of manifestations. In some cases, like that of Flor Psaev with the withered arm, the saint simply came and touched the person, who awoke already healed. In the case of Mariia Muretova, the girl who could not speak after making fun of the mute boy, the saint healed her in the dream after explaining to her that her illness had been a punishment, but he also laid on her the obligation to make a pilgrimage to TrinitySergius in gratitude. There was more than one case in which a person dreamed that he or she was venerating the relics and saw the saint rise up from the reliquary.121 Sometimes dreams were combined with visits to the monastery. In one such case in the 1820s, a girl suffered from a variety of ailments that finally culminated in seizures. She saw Saint Sergius several times in dreams, ordering her to tell her father to take her to Trinity-Sergius, and assuring her that “you will be healthy, only

206 pilgrims: pilgrimage, relics, and miracles not soon; otherwise you will forget.”122 Her parents thought she was delirious and ignored her, and she was beset by a more extreme wave of convulsions and visions. Eventually, they brought her to the monastery and the relics and said prayers; her convulsions abated, but she continued to have periodic fits of diminishing severity for days, gradually improving with repeated visits to the shrine. In another case, a family took their ailing eleven-year-old son to the monastery. A fellow traveler had a dream in which an elder (who, she said, looked like Saint Sergius from the icons) came to her and told her that the parents had to come back with the boy to the monastery on foot. They returned to Moscow; ten days later, the mother had a dream in which the elder asked why they were taking so long—and so they finally departed the next day. As they were walking, on the last day of their journey from Khot’kovo to Trinity-Sergius, someone looking like a hermit (but evidently a local peasant) who was passing by in a cart stopped and came over, saying that the boy was possessed by an unclean spirit, and exorcised him as well as anointed his hurt leg with oil. The boy recovered, and they finished their journey to the monastery to give their thanks.123 In short, sometimes dreams commanded a journey to the monastery, and in other cases a visit to the monastery resulted in dreams that led to the healing. A third means of healing was for people to ask the saint for help and make a vow that, if healed, they would express their gratitude by visiting the monastery and venerating the relics. In a few cases, when it was more difficult for people to actually visit the monastery, they sent money as a donation to purchase oil for the relics or to have the monastery say a moleben for them.124 As with venerating the relics, parents could make vows to have their children healed. In 1899, a priest from Kaluga Province reported that his daughter was healed. The six-year-old girl caught pneumonia, and the doctors were unable to cure her; her condition reached the point where her parents were simply waiting for her to die, and the mother appealed to Saint Sergius and promised that, if the girl were healed, she and the girl would make a pilgrimage to the monastery and venerate the relics. Three days later, the girl was able to sit up and eat, and she gradually made a complete recovery. In July 1901, mother and daughter fulfilled the promise to visit the monastery, and the father followed up by writing a letter to the monastery to inform them of the saint’s help.125 Fulfilling such vows was sometimes difficult, especially if a person lived far away. In January 1910, Elisaveta, a priest’s wife from Orel Province, explained that after she gave birth, she did not recover, and indeed the doctors predicted that she would likely die. Then a nurse told her not to trust that the doctors would cure her but to turn instead to Saint Sergius, who had worked miracles in her own family. So Elisaveta turned to the saint to restore her health, and indeed her health began to improve from that day. Moreover, her husband fell ill with a serious case of pneu-

pilgrims: pilgrimage, relics, and miracles 207 monia and was also at death’s door when she again turned to Saint Sergius, this time making a promise that if her husband were healed, they would make a pilgrimage to the monastery and have a moleben offered in gratitude. Her husband began to recover from that day. However, they were unable to make the trip, so she wrote to the monastery to request that they offer a moleben for their health and to say that they hoped to get to the monastery later that year.126 There were also instances in which a person made a vow but neglected to keep it and fell ill again. This was the case with a peasant from Simbirsk Province, whose spine hurt so much that he could not even stand. He turned to Saint Sergius in prayer and made a vow to go to the monastery if he were healed, and his condition improved. However, he wrote that he “forgot” to fulfill his promise, and he fell ill again. He appealed to the saint, who again healed him, and this time he fulfilled his promise and visited the monastery to venerate the relics.127 Physical objects in close contact with the saint and his relics, such as the veil that covers his head or oil from the lamps that burn over the reliquary, resulted in many of the reported miraculous healings. In the late 1850s, the monastery sent a veil from the relics together with some oil and an icon to an aristocratic family in Astrakhan. The husbands of two sisters wrote that their wives had been healed, and one sent 3 rubles for prayers to be said for them at the monastery. Both women reported having been healed after placing the veil on their heads.128 Similarly, in the early twentieth century a woman wrote that her daughter had been healed from a chronic illness after they put the veil from Sergius’ relics on her head.129 There were also several instances involving oil from the lamps that burn over the reliquary. For example, one man wrote to the monastery that his wife fell seriously ill with an “inflamed heart” and fell unconscious, so he rubbed her chest with oil from Saint Sergius’ reliquary and after that she recovered; together with the letter, he sent a ruble, asking the monastery to say a moleben of thanksgiving for them.130 One peasant from Smolensk Province wrote that he had made a pilgrimage to the monastery in 1898 and brought back a flask with oil from the lamp. The following year, he offered the oil to a neighbor, whose two-year-old boy had been suffering for a year from an illness for which medical help had been ineffective. The boy was miraculously cured, and the parents promised to have a moleben of thanksgiving offered to Saint Sergius. But they did not fulfill their promise, so the boy fell ill again; this time, his eyes were suffering. They rubbed his eyes with the oil again, and he quickly recovered, so now they were sending (through the neighbor) 1 ruble and requesting that a moleben be offered before the saint’s relics for them.131 In the cases described above involving the veil and the oil, these physical objects provided the physical contact with the saint and transferred his blessings and miraculous power in ways that were similar to the relics themselves. But because these objects were more mobile, they therefore could affect people who were not

208 pilgrims: pilgrimage, relics, and miracles able to visit the monastery itself. In essence, they were secondary relics, what Robert Greene calls “proxy relics.” It is also worthy of note that the monastery readily sent the veil from the relics to those who asked and that it was evidently the practice to give out oil to pilgrims. As Worobec points out, the Church authorities were very cautious to ensure that there was no trade in relics, and the monastery did not profit (at least not directly) from providing these items, which would lay the Church open to accusations of greed from its detractors.132 Rather, the monastery encouraged this kind of piety and offered these objects free of charge. One celebrated case in 1833 of the peasant Sergei Ivanov from Tula Province involved dreams, prayers before the relics, and oil. Ivanov was nineteen years old at the time. According to his testimony, at the age of ten he started having convulsions and lost the ability to speak. Every month, these fits repeated themselves. He had traveled both to Trinity-Sergius and to the Kiev Lavra in search of help from the saints. After returning home from Kiev, he had a dream in which someone told him to go back to Saint Sergius. He stayed at the monastery for about two weeks, living in the kitchen, helping the cook prepare food for the brothers, and eating “like the other pilgrims from the leftovers of the brother’s refectory” (this was before Archimandrite Antonii had established the refectory for the pilgrims). However, he did not improve, and he had his monthly convulsions in the kitchen in the presence of the others. He was planning to go home, despite the fact that two of the monks urged him to stay, when he had another dream in which he was asked why he was in such a hurry and was encouraged to stay. One day during the service, he explained, he was standing near the relics of Saint Sergius when he heard a voice telling him that God would “give back [his] tongue,” although there was no one standing near him to say this. One of the hieromonks came to him and gave him some oil from the lamp to drink and brought him to the relics. He began to feel his tongue “untie,” and as he was leaving the church he heard himself saying “O Lord my God! Saint Sergius! Pray for us sinners.” He went immediately to tell the monks who had been encouraging him.133 Like Flor Psaev, Ivanov was someone who was staying at the monastery and therefore people knew him, and the miracle drew attention. As a result, the monastery authorities conducted an investigation, interviewing the monks who had been encouraging him as well as those living in the kitchen (in particular, they asked about whether he was really mute or not and about the seizures). After the investigation, the Lavra’s Governing Council concluded that the incident truly revealed the power of God and decided not to “spread doubt” by further investigation but be satisfied with the testimony they had received. The council duly reported to Metropolitan Filaret, who in turn reported it to the Holy Synod. The story was then printed up in a little brochure proclaiming the miracle.134

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The Role of Doctors and Medicine One particularly modern feature of miracle stories from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the relationship of people who were ill to doctors and medicine. In a majority of the cases under consideration, it was explicitly stated that the person sought medical help—and this naturally became more frequent by the early twentieth century. Indeed, it is a standard feature of the miracle stories that the person first turned to doctors, and only after the doctors failed to help did they turn to the saints as more powerful healers. In several cases, people consulted more than one doctor or, after their provincial doctor was unable to help, went to Moscow to find specialists. Only one individual, a parish priest in 1898, explicitly stated that he did not bother with doctors because he did not believe they would help.135 There was an alternative motif, however—that doctors were as likely to harm as to heal. In this vein, Archimandrite Kronid related a story told to him by a cab driver in Moscow. The man had been in the military, and one night—after sleeping in a damp, cold bed—he lost the use of his arms and legs. He lay in the infirmary for months, and the doctors were not able to do anything for him. Then one day the main doctor of the regional military hospitals, a general, showed up and after considering his case chastised the doctors for not yet having made the man better and ordered them to “take all measures available to medicine” to make him healthy. This made him particularly anxious, because “we already knew that when they gave the command to really cure, then these patients soon got better, only not for this life, but for the eternal [life].”136 We have already encountered this fear that doctors would “cure you to the other world” in Miasnikov’s story, and fear about what doctors would do also recurred in numerous other stories. Rather than evincing a religious prejudice against medicine, however, these stories portrayed realistic fears based on experience. In general, modern medicine was still developing in the nineteenth century, so skepticism about doctors was widespread. In Russia in particular, the network of doctors and health care was underdeveloped, particularly in the countryside. Only the zemstvo (local government) began to create a health care system that extended to rural areas, but it was still rudimentary, especially before 1900. In these miracle stories, however, it was expected that one would turn to medicine first. There was even a story in which the saint commanded parents from Vilnius to have their child operated upon. When the boy was only two months old, he fell very ill, and the doctors told the parents that they could only stop the illness by operating but that the boy was too young for them to operate. The mother, distraught over what seemed certain death for her infant, barely slept that night, and toward morning she dozed off and saw a “marvelous elder all in light who told me: ‘Take your son to the clinic tomorrow morning and

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persistently ask [them] to perform the operation and he will live.’”137 When she asked him who he was, the elder answered that he was Sergius of Radonezh. In the morning, she went back to the doctors and insisted that they perform the operation, despite their reluctance; the infant was healed—to the doctors’ surprise. In short, in this story the saint actually insisted on medical treatment. Thus Russian Orthodox believers, rather than seeing their saints as some sort of replacement for modern medicine or source of conflict between faith and medical science, turned to them in extraordinary circumstances when human aid was insufficient.

Punishment, Conversion, and Reciprocity Although, in most miracle cases, the saint was believed to render help to his devotees, some stories reported punishment for neglecting one’s proper reverence for the saint. Scholars have noted this strain of miracle stories but have emphasized their didactic purpose—reflecting what the clergy wanted the reader to glean from the story rather than what was important to ordinary believers.138 However, stories in the Trinity-Sergius archive—told by those who were healed themselves, and neither published nor intended for publication—reveal believers’ concern about transgression and punishment. A few instances described above concerned those who made vows and failed to keep them and then fell ill again. The Moscow trader who planned to kill himself recounted that the elder who approached him in the woods made a “threatening gesture” at him. Miasnikov, who was healed from venereal disease, wrote that he purchased a small Gospel book and started to read it, but that night a man came to him in a dream and told him to stop reading until he ceased his sinful behavior. Although Miasnikov never regarded the venereal disease as a divine punishment for his way of life, seeing it as a natural consequence of his actions, he was clearly as concerned with correcting his life as he was with receiving a physical cure.139 The young woman healed from convulsions was told that she would be healed, “only not soon; otherwise you will forget”—implying that suffering through an illness can reinforce one’s faith or sense of dependence upon God.140 Therefore, a significant number of stories were concerned not only with health and sickness but also with moral and spiritual issues; and even those that were focused primarily on the search for physical healing reflected a popular attitude that God granted such miraculous cures precisely because the people who sought them put their faith in God and trusted in the saint—here, as with other dimensions of the Orthodox worldview, the material and the spiritual were not easily separable. Indeed, the very belief that one could receive even a physical cure by spiritual means must have served as validation that spiritual power is effective in this world and attested to the spiritual assumptions of Russian believers, regardless of the class to which they belonged.

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Believers’ relationships with the saints were reciprocal; believers were not only the recipients of miraculous cures but also felt obliged to express their thanksgiving to the saint in some fashion.141 This is clearly a universal feature of virtually every miracle tale, as seen in many of the stories recounted above. An individual would not be healed to begin with unless he or she had faith in and trusted the saint. If a person was healed, the natural response was to express gratitude to the saint. The most common way of doing this was to ask for a moleben service to Saint Sergius—if possible, in person before the saint’s relics; and if that were not possible, by sending a donation to the monastery and requesting that the moleben service be conducted. Indeed, generally only in such circumstances was there a mention of anything about the believer donating money as a means of expressing his or her gratitude; even if pilgrims naturally made some sort of contribution to have a moleben said while at the monastery, the financial aspect did not appear significant enough to mention. It was also common for these believers to express their gratitude by making a pilgrimage to the monastery or venerating the relics.142 Others vowed to correct their lives. A few, like Psaev and Miasnikov, wanted to become monks. In one of the more unusual cases, the couple from Vilnius (mentioned above) came to Archimandrite Kronid in 1903, bringing with them their eight-year-old son. The couple was devoted to Saint Sergius and even named the boy after him; the boy had fallen deathly ill as an infant and, they claimed, was saved by the intervention of Saint Sergius. In response, the parents made a vow that they would devote his life to the service of God in Saint Sergius’ community, something that the boy himself also wanted—which was why they brought him to the monastery. Kronid, however, responded that one could not make a vow for someone else and that they could not know what his inclinations and desires would be when he came of age. Nor was it best for them to leave him in the monastery school, which provided only the most basic education, “and the boy cannot receive in [it] the solid education that is necessary these days even in the monastery.”143 So Kronid recommended that they send the boy to an ecclesiastical elementary school and then to the seminary. The boy, when he came of age, would decide his own way, perhaps to become a parish priest rather than a monk—which would be equally good in the sight of God. Indeed, Kronid concluded, “the monastery in and of itself does not save. I firmly believe that there are many lay people before the throne of God higher than some monks.”144 The parents accepted Kronid’s suggestions and returned to Vilnius with their son. In many of these stories, family members were viewed as intimately connected, and the prayers of parents were particularly regarded as efficacious for their children. But though one could pray for others, one could not make a vow or promise for them. Kronid’s response is worthy of note not only for its sensibleness but also because of its frank admission that monasticism was no automatic means of salvation.

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Another response to miraculous healing was conversion. There was one case of an Old Believer youth who, after his healing, converted to Orthodoxy.145 Two cases, though separated by nearly a century, involved German Lutherans who converted to Orthodoxy after being healed by Saint Sergius. Archimandrite Kronid, who included the second story in his collection, ended with a didactic note, wondering why the non-Orthodox became more zealous for the faith than did the Russians themselves.146 The experience of a Polish Roman Catholic did not end in conversion. This story was related by the religious writer Sergei Nilus and originally published in Moskovskie vedomosti on September 25, 1901. The man, an acquaintance of Nilus’, served in the Russian bureaucracy and had married a Russian. In the 1860s, he suffered from a painful and debilitating infection in his eyes. The doctors’ treatment did not help, and he feared losing his post. On the way to assume a new position in Kostroma, his wife suggested that they stop at Trinity-Sergius. He narrated how he tried to pray sincerely while in Trinity Cathedral before the relics of Saint Sergius but felt nothing in his heart. Then he noticed a massive door in the church in which there was an enormous hole, which piqued his curiosity. After the service, he went to inspect it, to discover that the Poles had shot a canon through it during the siege of the Lavra in the early seventeenth century. It was his ancestors who had attacked the monastery and thus, as a Pole and a Catholic, he ought to be an enemy of Orthodoxy and of Russia. With these thoughts, he turned to the relics and addressed Saint Sergius, saying that he was a descendant of those who had spilled the blood of Sergius’ brethren. But if he were truly holy, Sergius could have no enmity toward him but must accept him, forgive him, and heal him. Though nothing happened that night, the following morning he was able to open his eyes without his wife cleaning them. The effect of this miracle was that, although he remained a devoted Catholic, he recognized the holiness of the Russian saint and in general respected Russian Orthodoxy. Indeed, he said that the differences between the two churches was not so great that they should be divided into separate “enemy camps,” and that he believed the two churches would reunite in the not-too-distant future. Although a certain didactic purpose can be seen in this story—a confirmation of the truth of one’s own saints that even outsiders acknowledge—it is at the same time surprising to have such a sympathetic portrayal of a Catholic coming from the pen of Nilus, who is usually understood to be an ultra-Orthodox writer.147

The Role of the Monastery What drew most pilgrims to the monastery was Saint Sergius himself and the hope of receiving his intercession. But it is important to remember that pilgrims also interacted with the monastery as a community, and often with individual monks. Although the saint is clearly the main actor in these miracle tales, monks or priest-

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monks often play a supporting role. Every single story of those who actually came to the monastery mentioned attending liturgical services. The peasant Sergei Ivanov, who had fallen mute and was healed in 1833, spoke explicitly about how two of the hieromonks were supportive and encouraging.148 A monk who noticed Firsov (the gambler turned factory director) and his turmoil in front of the relics played an important role in encouraging him at a crucial moment in his process of repentance. Stoliarov, whose boy was exorcized of a demon, also described the crucial role that one of the hieromonks played in the whole process and how, once the boy started having one of his fits, the first thing he did was run off to find the priest, and the priest brought the boy into the church and before the relics. One woman, whose daughter was healed by the veil from Saint Sergius’ reliquary, explicitly thanked a hieromonk in her letter to the monastery about the healing. She and her daughter were extremely grateful, she wrote, for the priest’s “sincere participation in our grief; his prayers for us were like a healing electric current that raised the spirit and inspired deep faith in the help of Saint Sergius.”149 In short, miracle stories at TrinitySergius were not merely tales that involved the believers and their relationship with the saint; their search for healing brought them into the monastery, where they attended liturgical services, requested molebens, and frequently sought and received support from the inhabitants who participated in the process. How did the monastery’s leadership relate to the miraculous, particularly to cases of miracles occurring within its own walls? As with Trinity-Sergius’ involvement in philanthropy or in fostering contemplative prayer, Metropolitan Filaret was sympathetic to the miraculous but cautious, while Archimandrite Antonii embraced it more enthusiastically; in this case, however, it appears that Filaret’s caution prevailed for much longer, no doubt because of the lack of sympathy that prevailed in the Synod. A classic case relates to the publication of a new set of miracle tales of Saint Sergius. It is not clear on whose initiative this manuscript was first put together (Filaret calls it “our business” in a letter to Antonii); the manuscript proposed to be a continuation of the “life” (zhitie) of Saint Sergius after his death—namely, visions of him and miracles attributed to him through the centuries, which the monastery had collected in its archive. When Filaret presented this manuscript at the Synod in 1834, however, Metropolitan Serafim (Glagolevskii, 1757–1843) of Saint Petersburg did not approve of its publication. At this time, the Synod was extremely cautious about the miraculous and apprehensive about popular “superstition,” so much so that it did not even allow the publication of miracle accounts connected with Russia’s patron saint. Filaret sent Metropolitan Serafim’s rejection to Antonii, to see what Antonii thought of the matter, but for his part Filaret said that he was inclined to consider it a closed case because he did not want to follow his own opinion in contradiction to that of the senior bishop of the Church.150 Antonii wrote back and defended the manuscript

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against Metropolitan Serafim’s doubts, although, Filaret replied, Antonii had not cleared up Filaret’s own doubts—namely, about contradicting Metropolitan Serafim’s opinion.151 Filaret concluded that they needed to go back to the sources to doublecheck their manuscript against them so that they could approach Metropolitan Serafim and explain that it was based on reliable sources.152 Even validating the sources evidently was not sufficient, and Filaret had to try for two more years before Metropolitan Serafim finally dropped his opposition and allowed the manuscript to be published.153 Without Antonii’s persistence, Filaret would have given up—and without Filaret’s persistence, the Synod would not have allowed the manuscript to be published, despite the fact that it contained primarily medieval miracle stories of Russia’s most revered saint—which indicates how cautious the Synodal Church had become with regard to the miraculous. Archimandrite Antonii informed Filaret in personal letters of miraculous instances that occurred in the monastery.154 In some cases, the monastery submitted formal reports to the Synod about miraculous occurrences. For example, Antonii wrote to Filaret about the healing of the mute peasant teenager Sergei Ivanov in 1833, and Filaret rejoiced at the sign “of God’s grace that appeared through the prayers of our Father Saint Sergius.”155 After questioning witnesses, as we saw above, the monastery submitted a formal report to Filaret, who in turn reported it to the Synod, and a little brochure about this incident was published.156 Only a month later, however, Filaret severely chastised Antonii because the monastery had evidently given Ivanov some sort of certificate testifying to his miraculous healing, and Ivanov was roaming about Moscow using this certificate to beg for alms. This was precisely the kind of scandal that the Synod was no doubt trying to avoid in its restrictions on publicizing the supernatural, something that served as “food for unbelief.” Filaret was angry in part because the monastery had issued such a certificate without his permission, and in part because it had been issued at all—why, Filaret asked, did a formerly mute person need a certificate to show that he could now speak? Filaret assumed that Antonii would instruct the boy not to go about telling everyone, but only faithful people when necessary to strengthen their faith. Even Christ, Filaret concluded, was more careful about his miracles.157 The following year, when Antonii told Filaret about another incident, Filaret once again felt that it was the work of the saint, and he instructed Antonii to have the monk who witnessed the event write down his account—but this time to place the account in the archive of the sacristy “with other similar cases for future memory.” More than this, however, Filaret advised against, presumably, any official investigation or publication: “The glory of God’s acts proceeds on its own; but sometimes people make for themselves a temptation out of the very blessings of God.”158 In other words, both Filaret and Antonii accepted the reality of the miraculous occurrences, but because of the intolerant atmosphere chose not to report such

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episodes or publicize them. Again, the fact that they were so cautious even with regard to the miracles connected with Sergius as an established saint—and not an uncanonized figure or new miraculous icon—is particularly striking. Perhaps because of these episodes, there is little trace in the Lavra’s archives or publications of miraculous healings for much of the remainder of the 1830s and the 1840s.159 As Filaret’s letter cited above indicates, the monastery evidently kept its own record in the sacristy of miraculous occurrences connected with Saint Sergius or with the monastery. Such cases, like the one from 1834, were duly recorded by a witness or most often by the person who received the healing, but they were not investigated or publicized—the record was for the monastery’s benefit only. These accounts, if they were kept as Filaret instructed, are no longer to be found in the monastery’s archive, except for a much later period; two such books survive that contain stories of miracles—usually as letters received from the recipient of the miracle—from the 1880s to 1910, from which many of the stories related above have been drawn.160 As noted, two priors of the Lavra—Archimandrite Antonii in the nineteenth century and Archimandrite Kronid in the twentieth—kept their own records of the miracle stories they heard from the pilgrims and monks.161 It was not until near the end of Filaret’s life that the monastery again began to publicize accounts of miraculous healings—first, in the 1863 publication of Antonii’s Monastery Letters, which described many of these episodes; and second, in 1867, with the miraculous healing of Flor Psaev’s withered arm. Filaret had been under pressure from the state about the publication of miracle stories, so no doubt the greater openness (glasnost) under Alexander II made these publications possible. There is not sufficient evidence to conclude decisively what happened between 1833 and 1863; perhaps Filaret’s caution dampened Antonii’s initial enthusiasm for the miraculous, or at least led him to the conclusion that he should not encourage the investigation and publicity of such stories. Perhaps both Filaret and Antonii concluded that it was simply too difficult to satisfy the Synod’s demands for validation or the state’s cautiousness about miracle stories. Certainly Filaret himself was frustrated by the Synod’s restrictiveness. Filaret wrote in response that “it seems to me a sad sign that we not only do not try to move people toward God, but do not open the path even when God Himself stretches forth his grace-filled hand and manifests His power to attract them to Himself.”162 Such tensions even within the very Holy Synod itself ought to caution us against any facile dichotomies between “official” and “popular” religion. But starting in the 1860s, the situation dramatically changed and the monastery began to publicize miraculous healings more openly. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Church hierarchy began to embrace the miraculous more openly as a way of encouraging (and controlling) popular piety.163 Although the Church hierarchy, particularly the Holy Synod, was very cautious about the miraculous and tried in various ways to suppress it, control it, or use it

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for educational purposes, the monastery had a very different approach to pilgrims’ claims of healing. In most of the cases considered here, the monastery simply received the believers’ words. For those episodes that the monastery investigated more vigorously and publicized, its authorities produced their own account of events. These versions were synthetic—bringing together the account of the subject of the healing together those of the witnesses—and sometimes they left out significant details and added a didactic conclusion. But what is most striking is that the monastery did not impose its own meaning or interpretation on the episode, but rather remained faithful to the meaning expressed by the person who experienced the miracle. One celebrated case—of Irina Vasil’eva, a peasant woman from Tver Province— illustrates how the monastery handled very public miraculous occurrences and how it reinterpreted believers’ own experiences. Vasil’eva, who had long been paralyzed, was able to stand and walk again on March 20, 1909. People had seen her crawling into the church for days beforehand, so word about her miraculous healing quickly spread throughout Sergiev Posad and beyond. Because the case of Vasil’eva was so visible and attracted attention, the monastery investigated with particular rigor. In the end, the investigation concluded that it was indeed a miracle, and the story was subsequently published in its popular periodical, Trinity Leaflets, in an article titled “Saint Sergius Even Now Works Wonders.” According to the article, Vasil’eva was “stricken with paralysis of the legs” five years before, at the age of twenty. She could not walk for those five years; she could not even use crutches, and she had no control over her legs. She had turned to various doctors, but they told her that she was incurable. Then she turned to heaven for help. In 1908, despite all the obstacles, she made the trip to Trinity-Sergius. Her “hour had not yet come,” however, and she was not healed. Yet she did not lose hope or her faith in Sergius’ power. She overcame the difficulties again in the spring of 1909 and came to Trinity-Sergius, attending the All-Night Vigil on the evening of March 20, during Great Lent. At one point, she felt a great desire to venerate Sergius’ relics, and she used all her strength to crawl to the reliquary; a novice and a warden standing nearby helped her, lifting her up. She kissed the veil that covered Sergius’ head, and she felt “the bones crackling and sinews stretching” in her legs. She suddenly felt that she had gained her legs back, and she pushed back the two men who were holding her up and, without their help, approached the railings surrounding the candle stands. For several minutes, she held herself up by the railing, and at the end of the service, with difficulty and assistance, she managed to walk out of Trinity Cathedral. The following day, she returned, by now fully in control of her legs, to express her thanksgiving to the saint. Thus, the article concluded in a didactic fashion, Saint Sergius still works miracles. The anonymous author encouraged readers to bring to the saint all their needs, sorrows, and distress, to ask him for help because he would hear. If one did not receive what one asked for, the article continued, the reader should remember

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this woman, who was not healed the first time she came, and understand that the saint knew better than we what was beneficial for us, and gave us what we needed. Finally, the readers should pray not only for themselves but also for their brothers and sisters and for the Fatherland—because “Holy” Russia, “as it used to be called,” was threatened by the enemies of Orthodoxy.164 A comparison of the printed version with the archival file reveals some interesting differences. The general outline of the events is essentially the same, with the exception of one striking detail—when Vasil’eva was kissing the veil covering Saint Sergius’ head, the novice holding her up reported that he “felt, with terror, something like the strong activity of electricity, which ran throughout her whole body.” From Vasil’eva herself, they learned that she was struck with a paralytic attack shortly after her marriage, and that her husband, seeing that she was ill, initiated divorce proceedings on the grounds that she was incapable of conjugal relations. From official correspondence with the Tver Ecclesiastical Consistory, they learned that the Medical Department of the Tver provincial government attested to her illness in January 1908, stating that the “ability to move both her legs was completely lost, while the sensitivity to pain and the sense of temperature in her legs remained.” The doctors’ diagnosis was that she “suffered from hysteria,” which appeared long before her marriage but reached the highest degree of “hysterical paralysis” on the day following her wedding.165 The doctors therefore concluded that she was “incapable of conjugal relations” at the time of her marriage, and she still remained unfit at the time of the examination.166 Thus, in the autumn of 1908, the Tver consistory declared that she was unfit for marriage and that the marriage was annulled, which the Holy Synod confirmed on March 17, 1909. Her husband, by the time of the investigation, had already remarried, whereas Vasil’eva stated that she had made a vow to God that, if she were healed, she would not remarry.167 The fact that the illness and the marriage were essentially conterminous could hardly be accidental, and the whole question of the marriage and divorce figured prominently in the archival investigation of the incident—yet precisely this element was missing from the printed account. One can only speculate on the reasons for this—perhaps these elements were seen to be too personal or shameful (because divorce was highly discouraged) to be publicized. There are peculiarly modern elements in Vasil’eva’s case: the divorce proceedings, the diagnosis of “hysteria,” and the sensation of “electricity.” Yet at the same time, there is a timeless quality to the miraculous story itself. Indeed, the notion that somehow the revival of monasticism or the miraculous were a reaction against modernity does not work because, in this case as in so many others, the “modern” cannot be distinguishable from the “premodern.” Rather, the notion that a decline in religiosity or the supernatural is a corollary to modernity appears to be more specific to the West’s experience of modernity, if even that.

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In short, because this was a publicly visible occurrence, the monastery investigated it thoroughly and, convinced that it was a true miracle, publicized it through its own media. Although the published version left out important aspects of the story highlighted in the investigation, it did not cast doubt on the experience per se or change what the event meant to the recipient of the miracle itself. Indeed, it must be stressed that the monastery, though leaving out important personal details, did not reinterpret the meaning of the miracle from Vasil’eva’s own experience and account but on the contrary remained extremely faithful to it, and even in its published account added only little didactic instruction to the end of the story.

Conclusions Although the usually critical Kliuchevskii was waxing poetic in his 1892 anniversary speech on Saint Sergius quoted at the start of the chapter, he was for the most part on the mark. These pilgrims brought with them not only the same, age-old supplications and hopes but also some distinctly modern ones. At the same time, those who came on pilgrimage, as those who believed that they received healing at the hand of Saint Sergius, included equally men and women, young and old, and all social strata from the lowliest serf to the highest aristocrats. These practices of popular piety were certainly not the preserve of the peasantry alone, “ignorant and superstitious” or otherwise.168 The increased promotion of miracle stories in the 1860s coincided with a relaxation of censorship and greater openness during the Great Reforms. It also corresponded with the Emancipation of the Serfs (1861) and the development of the railroad, which dramatically increased the mobility and ease of long-distance travel for the majority of Russians. Altogether, these elements fostered the upsurge of pilgrimage. Indeed, the more pilgrims there were who came in search of miraculous cures, the more such stories there were; and the more such stories got publicized (in print or by word of mouth), the more this served to draw yet more pilgrims in search of miraculous cures. All the elements discussed in this chapter—pilgrimage, popular religious literature, miraculous cures—fed one another. Much like Lourdes at virtually the same time, Sergiev Posad was “modernized”—received railway lines and witnessed the proliferation of eating establishments, hotels, and hostels, together with hospitals and schools—largely because of pilgrimage. Unlike the organized national pilgrimages to Lourdes, however, pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius, as to other destinations in Russia, was mostly a spontaneous phenomenon in the nineteenth century. As Ruth Harris argues for the French case, the Russian believers’ faith in the miraculous likewise cannot be dismissed as superstition, as the secular intelligentsia then and scholars now are often wont to do.169

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In the Russian case, believers were adapting a traditional approach not only to age-old problems but also to very modern ones, including social dislocation, political turmoil, and economic pressures. This was neither a holdover of something premodern nor a reaction against modernity, but an outcome of it. Indeed, it was precisely those whom modern medicine had failed—especially the chronically ill— who received hope and, evidently, sometimes healing at the shrine of Saint Sergius; in his name, the Lavra championed precisely those who were marginalized and cast aside by society. This care came not only in the form of prayer and extraordinary occurrences but also in the more mundane service provided by the monks through their operation of hostels and hospitals; indeed, the monastery did not simply create and support the institutions for their care but—particularly in the case of male pilgrims—it was the brothers themselves who provided the care.170 Moreover, little in these stories betrays a conflict between modern science and miraculous healings; often they worked in tandem, and it was assumed that believers would turn to doctors first. Moreover, the monastery also turned to doctors to validate the cure during its investigations. Rather than religion being on the defensive in the face of science, it was faith that worked where medicine fell short. As the Orthodox Church began to feel more embattled in the early twentieth century, however, the monastery presented the miracles of Saint Sergius as confirmation of the truth and power of Orthodoxy in the face of skeptical critics. Tensions existed between the Church establishment and the Orthodox laity over the miraculous, as the enlightened hierarchy sought to curb superstitious excess and control manifestations of piety. At least in its early stages, the rise of pilgrimage was not engineered or even encouraged from above (Russian officials were nervous about too much free movement of people), although by the end of the nineteenth century, the authorities did encourage massive anniversary celebrations. The monastery, despite the fact that it was an institution of the Church, was in fact in a much closer symbiosis with the faithful. Indeed, in all the cases I have found relating to Trinity-Sergius, in not a single episode did the monastery authorities doubt the authenticity of a miracle or dispute the believer’s understanding of his or her experience. To be sure, the monastery often felt that it had to be cautious about claims of miraculous events, but that caution came not from a mistrust of believers’ experiences but from anxiety over the rigorous demands for verification by the Holy Synod. Trinity-Sergius did not become, like Lourdes, a battleground of competing interpretations between populist, rationalist, and hierarchical approaches. 171 The monastery certainly added its own didactic interpretation to those episodes that it publicized, but even here it presented the miracle more or less in the believer’s own words and only added its commentary as a conclusion; in no case did the monastery’s presentation of a miracle significantly differ from the believer’s own

220 pilgrims: pilgrimage, relics, and miracles interpretation. Although the mass explosion of pilgrimage may have originated “from below,” the monastery clearly encouraged and fostered its development, facilitated it, and played a key role not only as recipients but also as agents in the phenomenon. Indeed, pilgrimage was to the monastery’s benefit—contributing more than anything else to its glory and prosperity. If the monasteries and the saints’ shrines they housed represented for Orthodox believers a bridge or meeting point between heaven and Earth, then the monastery also served as a meeting point between “official” and “popular” Orthodoxy. Believers’ stories of miraculous healings, rather than threatening or challenging the monastery in any way, confirmed its own values and reason for being. The monastery, in turn, not only encouraged ever more believers to come in hopes of receiving healing or to render thanksgiving; it also defended the believers’ stories before the Holy Synod, investigated them, and validated them. Monastic leaders and hierarchs such as Metropolitan Filaret and Archimandrite Antonii played no small role in transforming the institutional Church itself. Indeed, by the end of the century, rather than rendering the faithful more “rationalistic” and skeptical about miracles, it was the hierarchy that had come to embrace the miraculous and encourage such manifestations of popular piety. The monastery, therefore, played a key part in the upsurge of popular piety and the revitalization of Russian Orthodoxy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The centrality of the monastery in popular piety was one thing the Bolsheviks understood correctly—and for precisely this reason, it became one of the first targets of the Revolution.

6 Reform: Revered Elders and Monastic Congresses Archimandrite Toviia wrote that the most remarkable turn in his life came when he was appointed prior of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, after the death of Archimandrite Pavel in 1904.1 After transferring to TrinitySergius in 1862 and serving as archdeacon for more than twenty-five years, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1888 and quickly moved up in the Lavra’s hierarchy. From there, as was frequently the case for those high in the Lavra’s administration (other than the prior), he was appointed to even more important posts—first, prior of the Chudov Monastery in the Kremlin, from 1893 to 1903; and in 1903, abbot of the Znamenskii Monastery in Moscow.2 On March 6, 1904, the Holy Synod appointed him prior of Trinity-Sergius, partly on the recommendation of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, Nicholas II’s brother, with whom Toviia had become acquainted while serving in the Kremlin.3 Toviia recounted that he spent the first several years as prior by focusing his attention on both the external and internal conditions of Trinity-Sergius. Externally, he focused on refurbishing the paintings in the Trinity Cathedral, where he ran into conflict with the Archeological Commission; it forbade the monastery to repaint the church, and instead ordered that the original frescoes by Andrei Rublev that were covered in the nineteenth century be restored. Toviia opposed such an endeavor, however, because that would necessitate closing the cathedral for years, which he considered impossible because that would prevent pilgrims from venerating the relics of Saint Sergius. Once again, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich intervened on Toviia’s behalf, granting the monastery permission to simply clean the existing paintings—not adding anything new, but not undertaking the laborious process of uncovering the original layer of painting either. As Toviia himself observed, the 221

222 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses monastery was criticized for the way they conducted the work.4 In addition to this project, Toviia felt that the monastery was engaged in “endless renovation.”5 With regard to the inner life of the monastery, Toviia focused his attention on the reception of new postulants and the first stages of their monastic life. Previously, he noted, new postulants were received and simply assigned an obedience right away, before their character and tendencies were revealed. Toviia changed procedures, so that postulants were to serve pilgrims (still wearing their secular clothing) and not allowed any privileges for several months. If they passed the first test, they were then allowed to wear a cassock, assigned to an elder monk who would instruct them in the monastic life, and given an obedience in keeping with their abilities. Toviia also instructed the supervisor (blagochinnyi) to maintain a strict observance of the life in the brothers’ cells, but that measure elicited a great deal of unpleasantness for both the supervisor and Toviia, and brought little success.6 In short, Toviia claimed that his main goal was to “care for the honor of the Holy community as for family home of his Father, Saint Sergius”—or at least not to dishonor it.7 Both of Toviia’s efforts reflected broader patterns that showed some of the fundamental new developments at work in early-twentieth-century Russia. For one, the monastery was no longer simply a place of worship; it had come to take on new significance as a repository of historical and artistic treasures, above all those of the great early-fifteenth-century iconographer Andrei Rublev, who was being rediscovered precisely at that time.8 As such, the monastery was no longer in full control of its buildings but had to receive government permission to renovate its own churches—which clearly resulted in conflicts of interest. These issues, though not at the forefront in the years before the Revolution, would take center stage after 1917. Of greater concern in the first decade of the twentieth century was a sense of crisis in monastic life itself.

Crisis and Reform In the fourteenth century, Saint Sergius had combined the pursuit of contemplation and Hesychasm with the cenobitic form of monasticism that remained involved in the world, and he had sparked the greatest monastic impulse in Russian history. A century later, however, monasticism’s very success resulted in a dramatic increase in monastic wealth, along with tensions over that wealth and calls for reform. Similarly, Metropolitan Filaret and Archimandrite Antonii helped inspire a great flowering of monasticism in the nineteenth century that combined contemplation and social engagement, but the very success of monasticism brought in such a flood of new recruits that the monastery was unable to “socialize” them all properly— particularly those who to begin with were attracted by the Lavra’s wealth and com-

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fort. Moreover, just as in the early sixteenth century, tensions emerged within the monastic fold itself between proponents of contemplation who advocated complete withdrawal from the world (nonpossessors) and proponents of cenobitic monasticism who advocated closer involvement in the world (possessors), so in the early twentieth century there were intense debates within the Church over the purpose of monasticism and its relationship to the world. In short, monastic life in earlytwentieth-century Russia was characterized by profound paradoxes, with some communities struggling to absorb the influx of new recruits and maintain discipline, while others flourished, producing elders who gained renown throughout Russia.

The Synodal Commission of 1901 In 1901, reports of several scandalous misdeeds by monastics made their way to Emperor Nicholas II, who saw a general “weakening of monastic discipline” and caused the Holy Synod to investigate the disorders.9 The Synod cited the problems and need for corrective measures and directed the dioceses to make a thorough review of male monasteries and report their findings.10 The problems cited in the Synod’s circular decree concerned monastic discipline. The points of greatest concern focused on the reception of novices and the ordination of monks, particularly to ensure that novices were carefully selected so that the wrong types of people were not populating the monasteries (i.e., people who came to the monastery for an easier life, not out of a sense of calling), and that candidates for ordination were worthy of the vocation. A second focus was on the proper conduct of liturgical services, not only that proper ordinances be fulfilled, but also that the brothers attend the entire services. Third, the Synod recommended stricter supervision of the brothers’ behavior to prevent (or at least catch) infractions of discipline. A fourth problem that the Synod was concerned about related to monks (and, with this issue, also nuns) who left the monastery for periods of time to make the rounds of their diocese or stay in local cities in order to make collections for their monastery, for this exposed them to temptations by being out of their communities for so long.11 After receiving the Synod’s September 1901 decree, the Lavra’s Governing Council sent copies of it to all the communities in the collective and instructed Supervisor Hieromonk Serafim to read the essence of the decree in the Lavra’s refectory for all the monks to hear.12 The metropolitan of Moscow established rules for the revision of the diocese’s monasteries, including Trinity-Sergius. The monastery superintendents were to examine the internal order, economy, and capital of all monasteries in the diocese. In particular, the superintendents were to inspect the performance of the liturgy, the conditions of the monks’ cells and clothing, the monastery churches and buildings, the registers of monastery property, and the account

224 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses books. They were to verify that major monastery expenditures were necessary and had prior diocesan authorization. Finally, the superintendents were to investigate if the brothers of the community were obedient to the abbot, and if the abbot’s authority was paternal and spiritual, that is, whether he was concerned not only with external order but also with the spiritual well-being of the brothers. The superintendents were to report their findings and suggestions to overcome shortcomings to the metropolitan.13 The review of Trinity-Sergius and its collective was, on the whole, positive, but it did include remarks critical of some communities. In the Lavra itself, the liturgical services were conducted with care and splendor, so that “even Old Believers sometimes express the opinion that if the liturgy was conducted in all churches everywhere with such precision as in the Lavra, then there would be no reason for their separation from the Church.”14 The brothers generally came to the services on time and behaved reverentially. The obediences assigned by the monastery authorities were to be fully obeyed; willfulness “is not tolerated in the Lavra.” Novices guilty of disobedience were expelled from the community, because obedience was the foundation of monastic life; various correctional measures were applied to disobedient monks, from transferring them to a less desirable work assignment or a worse cell to depriving them of a portion of the collections (kruzhka). The brothers’ clothing and cells were in keeping with the monastic calling, and the monastery authorities exhorted those who departed from this rule not to allow themselves any luxuries. The common refectory was obligatory for all the brothers in the afternoon, while the evening refectory was offered for the younger brothers and novices. On weekdays, spiritual books were read during the mealtime, whereas on Sundays and feast days a commentary on the Gospel reading of the day or a festal sermon by one of the Church Fathers was read.15 In the Lavra, the report continued, the behavior of the brothers during their free time was strictly supervised, so that they did not visit each other without good purpose; similarly, those taking leave from the community were strictly monitored. The supervisor frequently visited the monks’ cells in the evening, admonishing those who gathered in their cells for idle conversation to break up their gathering, and investigating those absent from their cells. The report further noted that recently, until the current supervisor, the moral condition of the brotherhood had significantly improved. The most significant difference lay in the composition of the novices who sang in the choir, in particular because the monastery received new recruits according to their moral qualities rather than their ability to sing and read music. The monastery no longer received novices a second time if their first stay ended because of bad behavior, whereas those admitted for the first time had to present documentation of their previous life or testimony to their character. The report concluded: “These measures, in connection with the continual vigilant obser-

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vation of the supervisor and the strict measures of correction sometimes taken by him as demanded by the occasion, have had a visibly beneficial effect on the moral condition of the brotherhood of the Lavra in general—not only on the younger, but even on those elder brothers who needed to submit, even if against their will, to the new regime.”16 Clearly Toviia’s efforts with regard to the reception of novices and supervision were a continuation and development of this “new regime” begun by his predecessor. The reports on Gethsemane Skete, the Paraclete Hermitage, the Zosimova Hermitage, and Bethany Monastery were even more positive than that for the Lavra itself. In all these communities, the brothers celebrated the liturgical services with requisite strictness and austerity and attended the services as they should. All the brothers attended the common refectory and heard spiritual readings during meals. They fulfilled their obediences with submission and humility. The brothers’ clothing and their cells, especially in the cenobitic skete and hermitages, were modest and in keeping with the monastic calling, completely lacking in luxury. The brothers spent free time in their cells fulfilling their prayer rule or reading spiritual books. The Paraclete Hermitage, even at the beginning of the twentieth century, still retained the character of a place for hermits (otshel’niki), with the brothers living in separate, small wooden homes (domniki). The hermitage was located far from roads and settlements and had few visitors, so quiet reigned in the community. The report noted that the Zosimova Hermitage, despite its brief existence (about ten years), had flowered both externally and in its internal, spiritual life, surpassing that of all the other communities with the exception of Gethsemane, on which it was modeled (see below).17 The two communities that received a more negative assessment were the Coenobium of the God-Loving Theotokos and the Makhrishchskii Monastery. Hieromonk Galaktion and Hieromonk Prokopii had administered the Coenobium since the death of its founder, their father Schemamonk Filaret (Filippushka). Prokopii had been recently replaced by a hieromonk from Gethsemane in order “to introduce into the Coenobium a stricter order in all spheres,” which Galaktion and Prokopii were not able to uphold “because of their lack of education and the weakness of their characters.”18 The new authorities paid particular attention to the performance of liturgical services and the behavior of the brothers, and improvements in these spheres were already evident. The brothers, for their part, were obedient to the new administration. The community was particularly poor, which showed even in the brothers’ clothing and cells, because it did not own any property and was visited by few pilgrims.19 The moral condition of Makhrishchskii Monastery was in the worst state because the monastery “has served, to a great extent, as a place of exile for novices and monastics from the Lavra who have committed some sort of offense . . . for their

226 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses correction or punishment.”20 It was not possible, therefore, to uphold any particularly strict rule of monastic life in the monastery. Despite these circumstances, the report concluded, because of the “special efforts and vigilant supervision” of its abbot, the conditions of the monastery were “relatively satisfactory.”21 This conclusion would prove far from the mark in a few years, when the sudden death of a woman in a hierodeacon’s cell revealed that he had been having illicit relations with her for several years. This circumstance, combined with his weak management of the economy, led to the removal of Makhra’s abbot.22 Moreover, the Governing Council felt it necessary to observe more strictly the prohibition against monks receiving outside visitors in their cells (especially women), together with prohibiting unnecessary leaves from the monastery (especially for visiting the homes of laypeople).23 The report about the conditions in the Trinity-Sergius collective, therefore, revealed a varied picture. Gethsemane Skete and the Zosimova Hermitage excelled in both external and internal order and well-being, and the Lavra itself had problems yet was improving through increased supervision and care in the reception of novices, but the Coenobium was characterized by poor leadership and Makhra by low standards of monastic life. Even with these reports, it is difficult to gain a more realistic picture of what life was like, particularly in the Lavra itself. Although the reports presented the Lavra as satisfactory—there were proper liturgical services, basic standards of order and discipline were maintained, and so on—such generalizations hardly reveal much about the inner life of the monastery, and other sources suggest that deeper spiritual life was missing in the Lavra itself. What is clear is that there was a great range in the quality of monastic life in early-twentieth-century Russia that varied from community to community. The reports from the dioceses present a similarly very varied and complex picture. Perhaps the most important, and a fairly widespread, problem centered on the reception of people with a real inclination for monastic life. Several reports commented that people entered monasteries “more prone to a wandering life” who, rather than submit to the monastery’s authorities, would simply move on to another monastery. The report from Vologda Diocese complained of “failures” who could find no place for themselves, who were received in monasteries simply because some abbots wanted to bolster their choirs. By contrast, the report from Novgorod recommended that monasteries require new postulants to have references and be recommended by elder brothers to join the novitiate, thus ensuring that only good people were received. A number of reports observed that the brothers had little inclination to read spiritual books—or were unable to read them, because of either a lack of education or a lack of books; again, however, monks in the Novgorod Diocese were reported to engage in spiritual reading.24 According to the reports on certain monasteries, such as Optina and Glinsk hermitages, the level of monastic life was very high; the report for Solovki, for example, stated: “God grant that the monasticism flour-

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ished in other monasteries in the same way as Solovetskii.”25 The dominant impression appears between the extremes, where the brothers, if not living at the highest levels of contemplative life, did behave “in keeping with the monastic vocation.”26 After all the diocesan reviews of monasteries were submitted, the Synod compiled its own general report. The overall impression that the Synod received from these reports was very pessimistic; it concluded that there had been a “decline of true monasticism” in many monasteries—though, indeed, the compilers of the report may have unduly focused on the negative aspects of the bishop’s reviews.27 The Synod’s report stated that many inhabitants of monasteries left their life in the world only in order to live in more comfortable conditions and have an easier means to gain their subsistence. Such inhabitants had no inclination for humility, but rather displayed self-will. They fulfilled their obediences with reluctance. Monastics spent their free time in idleness, which frequently led to episodes of drunkenness. They had no wish to read spiritual books; many, indeed, were poorly educated, and showed little desire to develop themselves further. As a result of this general decline of the monastic spirit, many communities did not have the influence they once had on the surrounding population. The influence that they still maintained tended to be due to the solemnity of their liturgical services and, where they existed, to the charitable and educational institutions that were operated or supported by the monasteries.28 Such a negative assessment is certainly not borne out by the report from the Trinity-Sergius collective, although it is unclear whether Trinity-Sergius was better than the norm, its report painted too rosy a picture, or the Synodal bureaucrats focused too much on the negative. As means of correcting these deficiencies, the Synod recommended the development of starchestvo in monasteries where it did not exist, so that such elders could act as spiritual guides for the brothers. Though starchestvo had been controversial only a few decades earlier, it was accepted as normative by this point. The Synodal report also recommended the establishment of the post of supervisor in those monasteries where it did not already exist. Further, it encouraged making physical labor obligatory for all as a beneficial way to spend time free from liturgical services. The abbot or another experienced elder monk should instruct monastics and novices in the catechism and the rules of monastic life.29 Finally, the Synod deemed it necessary that monasteries build schools, orphanages, or other charitable institutions, where this lay within the means of particular communities, because these would demonstrate the indisputable usefulness of monasteries to the surrounding population.30

The Debate on the Monastic Question, 1902–3 The perception of the Synodal bureaucrats that monastic discipline had declined, and that the development of social services provided by monasteries was a good

228 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses means of demonstrating their usefulness to society, was shared by many in the Church. In 1902, the religious publicist A. Kruglov published an article in which he argued precisely this point, and his article sparked an intense debate in ecclesiastical journals regarding the goal and purpose of monasticism. Kruglov’s article, “In the Service of the World—In the Service of God,” published in the journal Spiritually Beneficial Reading (Dushepoleznoe chtenie), argued that monasteries ought to demonstrate Christian love through service to others by operating charitable institutions. He stated that few devoted themselves to solitude and contemplation, and that, although the “exception” must be made for these few, the rest ought to be engaged in some socially useful service—though that this was in fact rarely the case. In particular, he urged monasteries to be engaged in education and in the operation of hospitals; without this active engagement in society, monasteries would eventually become obsolete for the narod, the common people, as indeed he asserted they were already obsolete for educated society. Finally, he stated that such service would not contradict the basic rules and aim of the monastic life. On the one hand, monks were already “active,” engaged in activities such as selling books and candles within monasteries; on the other, such charitable service would be an “ascetic endeavor” in itself, instructing monks in humility and patience.31 The editor of Spiritually Beneficial Reading, the Moscow Theological Academy professor A. I. Vvedenskii,32 stated in an editorial note to Kruglov’s article that he regarded it as a “typical expression of one of the widespread prejudices in contemporary society about monasticism and monasteries, their meaning and purpose.” Vvedenskii did not agree with many of its arguments and saw in them a “subtle substitution of Western ideals of monasticism for the Orthodox-Russian ideal.”33 Archimandrite Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), treasurer of Trinity-Sergius and founder of the popular Trinity Leaflets (see chapter 5), responded with an article, “The Orthodox Ideal of Monasticism,” published in the same issue of Spiritually Beneficial Reading. Nikon defended the ideal of contemplative monasticism against Kruglov’s plan to spread charitable institutions operated by monasteries. Although Nikon, echoing the findings of the Holy Synod, admitted that there had been a decline in monastic discipline, he argued that the goal should be to revitalize monasticism according to its ideal rather than replace it with a new, utilitarian ideal. Like Vvedenskii, Nikon saw Kruglov’s plan as an attempt to remake Russian monasticism according to the model of Roman Catholic religious orders inspired by humanitarian and utilitarian ideals.34 The goal of the monastic life, Nikon continued, was personal salvation through the purification of one’s heart and continual prayer. Critics might call this egotistical, but Nikon countered that it was “holy egotism.” The monastery should serve as a point of calm, where people could seek refuge from the turmoil of the world. The contem-

reform: revered elders and monastic congresses 229 plative ideal was not only the model of monasticism according to the Fathers and the Church’s tradition; it was also the “popular ideal”—it was precisely as otherworldly havens that the common people flocked to monasteries, not because they might be socially useful. Some monasteries operated hospitals to serve the needs of large numbers of pilgrims, but this should not be made a general rule for all monasteries. Thus, Nikon did not oppose the operation of schools and hospitals by monasteries, but he maintained that their primary task was prayer. He did not want to see these becoming obligatory for all monasteries, as Kruglov’s proposal seemed to imply, because the outcome would be the extinction of contemplative monasticism, which would then cease to produce startsy such as Serafim of Sarov and Amvrosii of Optina.35 Nikon continued his argument in a second article in which he responded to the allegation that monks had an enormous amount of free time and sufficient surplus money, and that they should do something useful with this time and money, such as fulfilling the commandment to “love thy neighbor” by operating charitable institutions. Nikon countered that the liturgical demands alone required monks to spend some seven hours a day in church, and in addition to this they had to fulfill the necessary duties to keep the community operational, and needed to have time left over for private study and devotions. Such demands simply did not leave monks with the time or energy to undertake the huge responsibilities and commitments involved in operating schools and hospitals.36 Nikon admitted that monks engaged in such “worldly” activities as selling candles and books; the difference was, first, that such activities were necessary for the community, and second, that they did not interfere with the monks’ liturgical obligations. If indeed monks were not going to all the services and had too much free time on their hands, then the goal should be to ensure that they fulfilled their primary tasks, not to introduce new ones. The obligation of monasteries to operate schools and hospitals would not bring them closer to the ideal; contrariwise, the renewal of monastic life according to the ideals proven by Church tradition was needed. Finally, Nikon objected to the critics’ assertion that efforts needed to be made to return society’s respect for monasticism; he argued that winning the respect of the liberal intelligentsia was a lost cause, whereas the way to ensure the respect of the narod was through true monastic life, not schools and hospitals.37 Archimandrite Nikon’s articles provoked heated responses from several other professors at the Moscow Theological Academy, who published a series of articles in the academy’s organ Theological Herald (Bogoslovskii Vestnik). They exaggerated Nikon’s position, assuming that his advocacy of contemplative monasticism implied that he opposed monks’ participation in any work and that his notion of “holy egotism” implied that he refuted the necessity for monks to “love thy neighbor.” The debate also focused much on interpreting Orthodox history and tradition.

230 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses The first such article, by the academy’s rector, Archimandrite Evdokim (Meshcherskii), and titled “Monks in the Service of the Neighbor,” argued that the founders of monasticism all taught that labor was an inseparable part of the monastic life, that monks were obligated to serve other people, and that such service as hospitals and schools did not contradict the monastic life. Evdokim did defend monasticism against those who advocated tearing down the walls of the monastery and sending monks out into the world to serve, and also against those who argued that celibacy and monasticism were contrary to nature and should be eliminated—ideas that were not uncommon at the time. He contended that in fact monasticism had grown more involved in social work in recent times, and it also served society through missionary activity and the efforts of “learned monasticism.” Although he never stated his own position clearly, Evdokim criticized Nikon’s notion of “holy egotism” as selfish and contrary to Christ’s commandment to “love thy neighbor.” Evdokim insisted that monasteries were no longer in isolated places but surrounded by people that they must help—and that this would be the fulfillment of the monastic calling, not its contradiction.38 He further maintained that contemplation and labor were not contradictory, an argument he supported by citing examples from the history of Eastern monasticism. In conclusion, he stated that the shortcomings of contemporary monasticism were rooted in the notion of “pure” contemplation and implied that if activity per se was not contrary to the monastic calling, then such activities as operating schools and hospitals were also not incompatible.39 Two church historians at the Moscow Theological Academy, N. Kapterev and S. Smirnov, criticized what they understood as Nikon’s position.40 Kapterev contended that monasteries were meant to serve as spiritual training grounds, in which individuals withdrew from the world to strengthen themselves and then return to the world to help others—but without returning to the world, monastic life remained “rudely egotistical” and ultimately contradicted the Gospel.41 Smirnov surveyed the history of Russian monasticism and argued that anchoritic monasticism with a contemplative withdrawal from the world was in fact rare in the Russian tradition— rather, cenobitic monasteries that remained involved in the world socially, politically, and culturally were the norm. Thus he supported Kruglov’s position by arguing that it was not contradictory for monasteries to operate charitable institutions.42 Nikon attempted to clarify and defend his position in a series of articles in response to his critics. He contended that his opponents had distorted his argument, as though he were against all forms of love or service to others. He asserted that he was opposed specifically to Kruglov’s suggestion that monasteries operate hospitals and schools as some “new obedience,” as a new obligation. When Nikon argued that the monk’s primary goal must be to seek his own salvation, this did not imply that he would not care for others; for his own salvation, he must fulfill the Gospel com-

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mandment to “love thy neighbor.”43 Nikon also agreed with Evdokim that the monk must labor, but all of Evdokim’s historical examples did not prove that monastic founders ever advocated the operation of schools and hospitals.44 When monasteries did operate hospitals in medieval Russia, Nikon wrote in response to Smirnov, these hospitals were precisely to serve the monastery’s needs, including pilgrims— but not society at large.45 Moreover, Nikon argued that monks actually understood the people’s needs very well because so many common people visited monasteries, but that their way of helping was not through bringing the monastery into the world or the world into the monastery. On the contrary, they served the world by creating, in the monastery itself, a haven where the people could come to have their spiritual needs met. Moreover, through their own spiritual efforts they could provide an embodiment of those spiritual truths for others. “Saving ourselves personally, we also save others,” Nikon stated. “Igniting in ourselves the fire of grace, we kindle it in those who surround us.”46 Nikon argued further that, though there were many great examples of monks serving the world, including such recent figures as Serafim of Sarov and Amvrosii of Optina, the monk should not join the monastery with the intention of serving the world in the way these great figures did, for the temptation of spiritual pride would be too great. Rather, the monk needed to concern himself first with his own salvation and his own ascetic efforts, and if God saw him worthy of greater service, then he would have to obey God’s call. Therefore no decrees or rules should regulate the monk’s service to the world, but the calling of God for each individual. Further, Nikon recognized that operating schools and hospitals was “a great act, a holy act”—but it was not the monastic calling.47 “You, people of the world, give [the narod] material bread, serve them especially in their physical weaknesses, help them teach their children literacy and honest labor. We, monks, will give them—mainly by the example of personal life—the spiritual bread, will show them . . . in what consists the ideal of higher Christian perfection, . . . and they will live, and die neither spiritually nor physically.”48 Thus Nikon argued that monasteries did indeed serve the world, but primarily by serving the people’s spiritual needs, not their material needs.49 The debate ended when Metropolitan Vladimir prohibited the publication of a final article Kapterev had written in response to Nikon that attacked him for contradicting his own ideals (because Nikon was indeed very active not only in publishing but even in founding schools) and also insinuated that monasticism itself was unnecessary.50 Much of the debate on the meaning and significance of monasticism was confused and one-sided, particularly because Nikon’s opponents misconstrued his position (which was partially due to his polemical style). They assumed that, in his emphasis on the monk’s search for personal salvation, Nikon was rejecting all

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service of the world on the part of monasteries. The central issue that divided the two sides, however, concerned a fundamental difference in approach; those who supported Kruglov were representatives of a growing trend in Russian Orthodoxy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which argued that the Church must not be concerned only with the “otherworldly,” with eternal salvation, but should also be involved in the world, in ameliorating social conditions.51 For them, as the title of Kruglov’s article implied, God was to be served through serving humanity. Although Nikon did not explicitly reject this position, he took the opposite stance regarding monasticism: The monk served the world by serving God. Through a life of prayer and ascetical effort, the true monk showed the ideal Christian life to others and contributed to the spiritual renewal of the world. As a result of the debates, Nikon, who was elevated to the episcopate in 1904, became widely regarded as the “defender of monasticism.” As bishop, Nikon encouraged the philanthropic activities of the Church in general, but he argued that the role of monasteries was different.52

The First All-Russian Congress of Monastic Clergy, 1909 Nikon’s admission that contemporary monasticism did not live up to its ideals and was in need of renewal—in his view, according to ancient Orthodox traditions of contemplative asceticism—led him to pursue the reform of monasticism after he became bishop of Vologda. In 1908, he called attention to the necessity of raising the spiritual level in monasteries during the all-Russian Missionary Congress in Kiev. As a result, the Synod summoned a congress of monastics to meet the following year, commissioning Nikon to organize the congress and draw up its program. The first All-Russian Congress of Monastics met at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in July 1909.53 Bishop Nikon was the chairman, and there were about a hundred participants, primarily abbots chosen by a Synodal commission from among the best monasteries in the Russian Empire. Only a few bishops, besides Nikon, participated in the congress.54 Skvortsov, editor of the conservative paper The Bell (Kolokol), stated that the Synod placed upon Nikon the responsibility for organizing and leading the congress “because he, justly, is considered the most authoritative and experienced of the hierarchs to judge in questions . . . of monastic life.”55 Unlike most bishops, who were “learned monks,”56 Nikon had spent twenty-five years as a monk at Trinity-Sergius. What is striking about the congress in contrast to earlier discussions of reform is that, previously, the discussion had always been generated from the central bureaucracy (whether ecclesiastical, secular, or, in the case of 1901, the emperor himself) and mainly consulted the diocesan bishops, not representatives of monasteries. In 1909, by contrast, monastic leaders, recognizing the need for reform, seized control of it, defining and shaping it according to their perceptions of

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the problems and needs. However, the participants were not broadly representative of the whole of monasticism, but rather a handpicked selection of the elite, from the four Lavras and monasteries known for their strict ascetical life and established traditions of starchestvo. The attention was focused on male monasticism; representatives from women’s monasteries did not participate in the congress.57 In the prologue to the program of the congress, Nikon reiterated his argument from 1902–3: The primary task of monasticism was prayer and asceticism; monasteries were not to be educational or charitable institutions, despite the fact that this notion had gained much popularity in the press and in society, such that it had even influenced the conceptions of new monastic recruits.58 From the start, therefore, the congress aimed to restore monasticism to the ancient Orthodox contemplative, ascetic ideal. Although many of the issues on the program were those discussed previously, a few key issues came to the fore that had been discussed little or not at all in 1901. The first of these issues was the proposal to introduce the cenobitic rule (obshchezhitie) into all monasteries. The congress considered the widespread statefunded (shtatnyi) idiorhythmic form of monasticism an aberration of monastic life. In the shtatnyi, or state-funded, monastery, each monk received a salary according to the duties he performed, and he also received income from the kruzhka, donations that were divided among the monks and novices in remuneration for their services to the monastery. State-funded monasteries were organized according to the idiorhythmic pattern, in which each monk received his cell, and sometimes food, from the monastery but was required to provide for himself all the other necessities from his own pocket. In contrast, in the cenobitic form of monastic life, everything was held in common and monks received all they needed from the monastery, but no cash. Although the idiorhythmic model of monastic life was originally intended to allow for greater individualized ascetic practice, along the lines of Nil Sorskii’s semieremitical skete model (see chapter 1), these principles were undermined in large communities, especially where monks received a cash salary (whether from the state subsidies or from donations). Proponents of a stricter, contemplative, ascetic model of monastic life—represented by the participants in the congress—thus believed that the cenobitic rule was closer to realizing the goals of monastic life and more in keeping with the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. One participant stated that “monks of state-funded monasteries can, with impunity, follow their self-willed way of life,” wearing what clothing and eating what food they wanted. The participants who presented reports on the issue argued that the state-funded monasteries served as a temptation for “weak” monks who would transfer to them from cenobitic communities, whereas novices who came to cenobitic monasteries from state-funded ones had a bad influence on its novices.59 Most of the participants voted in favor

234 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses of universally introducing the cenobitic rule—immediately, where possible, and in other communities with gradual preparation for the transformation to take place within a stated time frame.60 If most participants saw reforming the monastic rule as the first measure to revitalize monasticism, the second was the selection of abbots. Nikon himself stated in his opening report to the congress: “In essence, everything in a community depends on the abbot as elder, as everything in a beehive depends on the queen bee.”61 The whole tenor of community life depended on the abbot; the strict observance of the rules of monastic life, and the ardent pursuit of the ascetical ideals, depended on his example and guidance. In cenobitic monasteries, in principle, the brothers chose abbots from their own brotherhood. In state-funded monasteries, by contrast, the central Church authorities chose the abbots, frequently from the ranks of “learned monks.” These “learned monks” followed a distinctive career pattern, beginning with the taking of monastic vows while studying at the Theological Academy, going on to serve as a professor at a seminary, then “promoted” to the rector of a seminary and appointed abbot of a monastery, and finally consecrated to the episcopate. Typically, therefore, the abbot of a state-funded monastery, though technically a monk, would never have lived in a monastery at all, and he remained as abbot for only a few years. Nikon argued that “the one who does not live in a monastery and does not fulfill the trial of the novitiate does not have what is most important: humility and obedience.” 62 It was also common in wealthy and prominent monasteries that the diocesan bishop was the abbot. The majority of participants opposed having bishops as abbots because the duties of a bishop, such as making rounds of the diocese, were in opposition to the needs of an abbot, which required his constant presence with the brothers in the monastery.63 Although there was debate, the participants in the congress came to the conclusion that those who became abbots should have passed through monastic obedience. They also expressed the desire that abbots be chosen from the brotherhood of the same monastery. Bishop Nikon then proposed that diocesan bishops not be abbots of monasteries, with which the congress agreed (with the exception of the lavras).64 The third central issue on which the participants in the congress agreed was the development of starchestvo. For the leaders of Russia’s contemplative monasticism, starchestvo came to be seen as an essential element for the spiritual growth of the members of a monastic community. In those communities where there were no startsy, they proposed that the abbot pick suitable candidates to be sent to other monasteries that had established traditions of starchestvo. Such candidates would learn from an experienced starets and then return to their own community. The congress stated that it would be particularly beneficial for all novices to be put under the spiritual supervision of an elder.65 Starchestvo, according to Bishop Nikon,

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was also the most important way in which the monastery could serve society. The starets would act as the confessor and spiritual guide of the faithful who came to the monastery for guidance.66 The question of alcohol abuse, considered the most problematic sin for monks, was particularly important. The congress resolved that all monks should be strictly obliged to abstain from alcohol; novices who were intemperate should be discharged from the community, and priests and deacons should be forbidden from serving the liturgy. Another issue concerned the need to educate novices (and candidates for ordination) in the catechesis and rules of monastic life.67 The congress discussed the simplification of liturgical singing so as not to rely on hired choirs or choir directors and not to receive novices only for the sake of their singing abilities (which particularly contributed to the problem of vagrancy, among unreliable novices). Further, it considered cutting back the number of special liturgical services performed (in particular those performed to satisfy the donations of wealthy laypeople) so as not to have to ordain unprepared monks. Monks guilty of violating community rules should remain in the same monastery rather than be sent to another monastery for correction, because this had a detrimental effect on those monasteries to which errant monks were sent.68 The participants in the congress further discussed the creation of a union (soiuz) of monastics, whereby all abbots of monasteries would be in regular, direct contact with one another and render each other support. Nikon stated that “the further a monastery is from the central diocesan administration and the less it is dependent upon the influence of consistories and the control of bureaucrats, the more it flowers, both spiritually and materially.”69 Clearly, these monastic leaders felt that they could not rely on the ecclesiastical bureaucracy to serve their needs. Most participants were in favor of such a union, but they recognized that it would not happen right away. As a minimal measure, however, they supported the foundation of some sort of monastic printed organ.70 Indeed, two monastic journals were founded in 1910, both by participants in the congress: Trinity Word (Troitskoe slovo), edited by Nikon and published by the Trinity-Sergius Lavra; and The Russian Monk (Russkii inok), edited by Archimandrite Vitalii and published by the Pochaev Lavra. Although the representatives at the congress did not advocate the operation of charitable institutions, they discussed other ways in which monasteries could serve society. There was a great deal of attention devoted to missionary activities and to monasticism’s patriotic service to the nation during times of war or upheaval.71 Finally, it is worthy of note that the congress did not consider purely economic questions, which had formed an important part of the Synod’s efforts in 1901. On the whole, the Synod received the resolutions of the congress positively, and it issued a circular decree in July 1910 detailing measures for improving conditions

236 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses in monasteries based on the resolutions of the congress. There were, however, modifications, which demonstrate the interests of the bureaucracy as opposed to the monastic leaders. Such issues as ending the wandering of novices and forbidding collections received detailed attention and resulted in firm and clear resolutions. By contrast, key issues of the congress such as the cenobitic rule, starchestvo, and the selection of abbots received briefer elaboration in the Synod’s decree and were formulated more as recommendations than as requirements.72 Nikon remained disappointed with the reform effort, however, complaining that “we have too many monasteries, but monks—true monks—are there many [of them]?” “Much was spoken” about measures to renew monastic life “at our monastic congress, much was written and published, but little good has come of it.”73 Starets Aleksii of the Zosimova Hermitage, by contrast, contended that it was improper even to speak of a “decline” of monasticism. The ideal, he argued, remained pure, and if particular monks fell short of that ideal, this was not a sign of the “fall” of monasticism any more than the sinfulness of individual Christians indicated the decline of Christianity. Monasticism, by its nature, required struggle and presupposed that there would be failures. Sinful individuals came to monasteries seeking correction, so there should be nothing surprising that members act sinfully at times. Ultimately, even with external measures to correct their behavior, it depended on individuals to change themselves.74 Despite Nikon’s pessimism, the All-Russian Congress of Monastics did have direct results for Trinity-Sergius. The Lavra had enacted one of the proposals of the congress, that of educating novices in the monastic life as a requirement for tonsure, already at the end of the nineteenth century—indeed, under Nikon’s initiative. In November 1910, the Governing Council of the Lavra decided to change “the measures taken for the correction of weak brothers prone to alcoholic drinks and other weaknesses, which serve as a temptation for new novices and the laity.” Rather than send such monks to other monasteries in the collective (e.g., Makhrishchskii Monastery), where they were a burden on those communities, the council decided to transfer them to full cenobitic conditions within the Lavra itself, either temporarily or permanently. If such measures did not lead to their correction, the council was to report such incorrigible monks to the metropolitan as unsuited for the monastic life and request their defrocking. Hieromonks and hierodeacons transferred to cenobitic conditions were to be given whatever obedience for which they were suited, including liturgical service, and monks were to be maintained in the same obedience as previously.75 These monks no longer received financial compensation for their service in the monastery, but received their food, tea and sugar, clothing, and shoes from the monastery.76 Further, the Governing Council passed a resolution in 1910, following the Synodal decree that resulted from the congress, which

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forbade the use of alcohol not only in the monastery refectory but even in the entertainment of important lay guests.77 The Synodal decree of July 1910 recommended the development of starchestvo for the stricter supervision of the brothers and for guidance, especially of newly received novices, in the spiritual life. In response, the Lavra’s Governing Council transferred two hieromonks from the Paraclete Hermitage, who had been under the direction of Starets Schemamonk Onufrii, to the Lavra. Once in the Lavra, each of them was assigned several newly received novices to instruct in the spiritual life. The council was convinced that this experiment had worked successfully, and it extended the practice to all novices, selecting six experienced hieromonks and one hierodeacon from the Lavra, in addition to the two hieromonks from Paraclete, and assigned them the “obedience of starchestvo.”78 In addition, the congress recommended selecting candidates from monasteries that did not have a tradition of starchestvo and sending them to monasteries that did for the purpose of training. The Lavra’s hermitages did indeed receive such candidates for instruction; for example, in 1912 Hegumen Ardamon of the Lukianova Hermitage came to the Zosimova Hermitage to receive instruction in starchestvo from Hegumen German and Starets Aleksii.79 In short, in early-twentieth-century Russia, there was a sense that problems in monastic life had arisen mostly as a by-product of the expansion in the number of monastic recruits, especially less-educated peasant recruits. It is difficult to determine if there was an objective decline in monastic discipline or if the crisis was one of perception. In particular, heightened anticlerical criticism directed against monasteries made the Church particularly sensitive to potential shortcomings. It is also possible that the greater number of peasants joining in the second half of the nineteenth century, in contrast to the large percentage of those coming from clergy families at midcentury, meant that the former were less socialized in the Church than the latter, who were products of schools intended for the sons of clergy. Extending Aleksii’s argument that monasticism by its nature consisted of individuals struggling between sin and repentance, it is likely that the state of monasticism reflected that of society. Already in the period after the Emancipation of the Serfs, Metropolitan Filaret’s letters to Archimandrite Antonii reflected greater apprehension about a decline of discipline and a decline of the quality of candidates for monasticism or ordination. The greater freedoms in society evidently had an impact on problems of discipline and obedience within the monastery.80 It is likely, then, that the modern notions of self spreading in Russia at the turn of the century that emphasized individualism and freedom conflicted with the monastic ideals of obedience and humility and contributed to the sense of crisis, as Archimandrite Toviia complained in a letter to Kronid about the endless battle against “willfulness.”81 In

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society, there was a sense that this crisis could be rectified by redirecting monastic activity to philanthropy to make monasteries more socially useful. Monastic leaders disagreed with this approach, however, defending the primacy of the monastery’s “renunciation of the world” in the pursuit of prayer and asceticism. Though not ignoring the problems, monastic leaders such as Nikon sought to revitalize monasticism precisely in accord with the ideals that had inspired its revival in the nineteenth century, including contemplative prayer and starchestvo.

“Northern Optina”: The Elders of the Zosimova Hermitage That the Zosimova Hermitage was chosen as the place to teach starchestvo reflects the fact that it ranked as one of the most respected monastic communities in the early twentieth century. Paradoxically, at a time when there was so much discussion of the “decline” of monastic discipline, some communities excelled precisely in this regard. The Zosimova Hermitage was famed most of all because of its elders, in particular Hegumen German and Hieromonk Aleksii (Solov’ev). Zosimova was established in the second half of the nineteenth century on the site of a hermitage that had existed a century and a half earlier at the tomb the original hermit Zosima, who was locally revered as a saint (see chapter 3). Although initially associated with Filippushka and his sons, Zosimova developed very gradually until the prior of Trinity-Sergius, Archimandrite Pavel, decided to invest serious energy in developing the community in the 1890s. Yet the community still did not really begin to flourish until German was appointed superior in 1897. German was born Gavriil Gomzin in 1844 in the town of Zvenigorod in Moscow Province; his father was a glazier, and the family belonged to the estate of petty townspeople. His mother died when he was four years old, and he was raised in part by his aunt, who sent him to elementary school, but his father refused to pay the 5 rubles for textbooks that would have allowed him to further his education. When he was nine, his father entered Gethsemane Skete, and Gavriil went to live with his older brother. The brother ran a tavern, and Gavriil helped out around the business; this continued after they moved to Moscow a few years later. Much like his future elder, Aleksandr the Recluse of Gethsemane, Gavriil was subject to the unwholesome influences of tavern behavior. Once they moved to Moscow, however, Gavriil became an apprentice to a painter. As a young teen, he felt attracted to the monastic life, perhaps under the influence of his family (his uncle as well as his father had joined monasteries). When he was fifteen and his father was on his deathbed, he later recounted that he had secretly asked for his father’s blessing to “take his place” in the monastery, and he felt in his heart that his father had agreed to this. His parish priest, however, told him that he was still too young and would have to wait. There-

reform: revered elders and monastic congresses 239 fore, he continued to study painting until he moved in with an older brother living in Saint Petersburg; but he did not feel attracted to the worldly life his brothers led, and when he was old enough (twenty-three), he announced his intention to join the monastery. He went directly to the monastery that his father had joined— Gethsemane Skete.82 Gethsemane still had its renowned elders at this time, and Gavriil spent his novitiate under their direction. Given his training as a painter, as a novice he was assigned icon painting as his obedience. He painted icons both for the monastery (including restoring older icons) as well as for sale as income for the community. For spiritual direction, he turned first to one Father Tikhon, and after his death in 1871, became the disciple and cell attendant to Hieroschemamonk Aleksandr the Recluse. Gavriil spent seven years with Aleksandr, until the latter’s death in 1878, and afterward wrote his biography. After Aleksandr’s death, he turned to the famed spiritual writer Bishop Feofan the Recluse and entered into a lengthy correspondence with him (see chapters 3 and 4). Having entered as a postulant in 1868 and become an official novice and (tonsured as a rasophore) in 1870, he was tonsured a monk with the name German in 1877 (at thirty-three), and ordained a deacon in 1880 and priest in 1885.83 Other monks already began to seek him out for spiritual direction in the 1880s, including learned monks from the Theological Academy such as the rector of the academy Antonii (Khrapovitskii), and he was formally appointed the brothers’ confessor in 1892 as well as the confessor of the Skete’s hospital and hostel the following year.84 In 1894, after German had been in the Skete for more than twenty-five years, serving as its confessor and head of its icon-painting workshop, the Skete’s authorities officially recognized his contributions.85 With his training under a recognized starets and his appointment as confessor, he seemed destined for the path of starchestvo. Such was not to be the case, however—at least not the typical path of a starets. Prior Archimandrite Pavel began to seriously build up the Zosimova Hermitage in 1892. The first superior appointed, Hieromonk Ioann, turned out not to be a very capable administrator, and Pavel was unhappy with his ineffective use of the money he had donated to the community and wanted to appoint German to the post; German had not sought an administrative position and at first declined, but there were other proposals about appointing him to one or another post, so he finally decided to accept.86 In the process, he took with him twelve of his most faithful disciples from Gethsemane; in his request to have these disciples transferred, he reminded Metropolitan Sergii of his doubts about assuming the office and argued that he needed more people so the liturgy could be properly performed and to keep up the economy—and also because “my spiritual children [have] a sincere desire to labor together for the good of the restored community.”87

240 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses Indeed, some of German’s disciples wrote to the metropolitan themselves requesting the transfer, one stating that, going to German for Confession, he experienced “particular peacefulness of spirit and discovered the great benefit of purifying the conscience by means of confession and exposing one’s reasonings (pomysli),” but that without German, he felt as though he had been spiritually orphaned.88 Hegumen Daniil of Gethsemane was not happy with the loss, particularly of German but also of his disciples.89 Ultimately, however, it was to prove a very successful match; and from the time of German’s appointment, the hermitage began to flourish. German, as abbot, was guided by the principle that the external life of the monastery should be organized as to promote the spiritual development of the brotherhood. German sought to preserve the community’s isolation; he did not even have a road built to the monastery from the train station but left only a narrow path through the forest. Visitors, even later, were struck getting off at the train station by how the area was completely forested and devoid of human habitation, and the monastery was 5 kilometers from the station; it was, therefore, an extremely quiet and peaceful location.90 German required all to engage in physical labor, because he believed that physical labor helped a monk in the “struggle with the flesh”; this also helped the community be self-sufficient. He further ensured that all the brothers’ needs for adequate food, clothing, and heating were met, so that no one’s spiritual equanimity was disturbed by a feeling of deprivation. He further required that the brothers attend liturgical services. The services themselves strictly adhered to liturgical regulations, and the singing was done in a solemn monastic style. The services were sung so slowly that Veniamin (Fedchenkov),91 when he visited in 1910 as a young learned monk about to begin teaching at the Theological Academy, had a hard time handling the pace and tried to speed things up while singing in the choir, which resulted in a reprimand from German. While maintaining order and discipline in all aspects of the monastery’s life, from liturgy to work, German paid the greatest attention to the spiritual formation of the brothers and guiding them in a life of prayer.92 In a few years, German transformed the community. In 1902, he was elevated to the status of hegumen. In putting him forward for this honor, the Governing Council of the Lavra pointed out that, under his administration, “the brotherhood of the new hermitage significantly increased,” new stone buildings were constructed, “an exemplary order of church services was introduced,” and the large stone church was completed and beautifully decorated. Indeed, the community was put in such good order “that it attracts the attention of inhabitants of the capital, attracting a great number of pilgrims, and from them the income has noticeably increased.”93 In short, German combined in his leadership of the community the gifts of building up all sides of the monastery’s life.

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What made German unique of all the figures of the Trinity-Sergius collective during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, was that he combined in his person the role of abbot and that of starets or spiritual elder. Many figures, such as Prior Archimandrite Antonii or the abbots of Gethsemane, Anatolii and Daniil, succeeded in combining excellent administrative skills with serving as confessor and spiritual guide to some laity and promoting contemplative prayer in communities under their care. But being a starets in nineteenth- or early-twentieth-centuryRussia meant something different. The function of abbot was rarely combined with that of starets, for several reasons. To begin with, the abbot was an administrator, and most of his attention was directed toward ensuring discipline and the proper performance of liturgical services, constructing and maintaining buildings, and managing the monastery’s economy. Such a role was not compatible with stillness, as Archimandrite Antonii had discovered and complained about. They were also difficult to combine because the brothers were dependent upon the abbot for everything—for their obediences, for the reception of necessities, and so on—and this fact no doubt made some apprehensive about exposing all their weaknesses and failings to him. 94 German’s path was different from that of a typical abbot, however, as he was already a practitioner of Hesychasm, known through the publication of his correspondence with Feofan the Recluse on the Jesus Prayer.95 Moreover, by serving as confessor in Gethsemane, he was already serving as a starets for part of the brotherhood, many of whom, as we have seen, followed him to Zosimova precisely to be with their spiritual guide. He also regarded starchestvo as fundamental for organizing good monastic life, for the spiritual formation of the brotherhood—which he placed as first priority in his governance of the monastery. Nevertheless, it was not an easy path; as Arsenii (Zhadanovskii) noted, even among the brothers, “not everyone understood him; not everyone eagerly submitted to the order he established.”96 Furthermore, German’s prioritization of spiritual governance over typical monastic administration led to conflicts not only within the community but also with the Lavra’s authorities.

Starets Aleksii Hegumen German steadily gained a reputation as a spiritual guide, especially at the Moscow Theological Academy. What transformed the hermitage and gained it nationwide, popular recognition, however, was another elder—Aleksii. Aleksii, born Fedor Solov’ev in Moscow in 1846, was the son of a priest of an important Moscow parish. His father had studied at the Theological Academy and was, therefore, highly educated; he had even taught at the Bethany Seminary before taking his parish in Moscow, and while serving his parish, he taught at a local gymnasium and an

242 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses institute. The young Fedor began his own education with a local deacon, whose daughter he would later marry; he was particularly attracted to music, learned to play the piano, and sang well. He studied at the Moscow seminary, but unlike his father did not go on to the academy—he was not academically inclined, nor did he have great ambitions for a clerical career. Rather, he was content to remain a deacon at a relatively small parish in Moscow. The Parish of Saint Nicholas at Tolmachi, though small, included some important Moscow families, including that of Pavel Tretiakov, founder of the Tretiakov Gallery. Having married in 1867, Fedor and his wife Anna had a son, Mikhail, in 1868. In 1872, however, Anna fell ill and died, leaving Fedor devastated.97 Because he could not remarry and remain a deacon, he began to think of entering a monastery. The priest of his parish, Father Vasilii Nechaev (later consecrated Bishop Vissarion), was the founder and editor of the important religious journal Spiritually Beneficial Reading (Dushepoleznoe chtenie);98 in order to help Fedor cope with his grief, Father Nechaev encouraged him to become involved in editing and writing for the journal. Fedor also began teaching the catechism at an orphanage and a gymnasium. He sometimes visited the nearby house of Countess Sollogub, where he interacted with a circle that included the Slavophiles Iurii Samarin and Ivan Aksakov, as well as the young philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (or Solovyov). On the celebration of his twenty-fifth anniversary as deacon at the Saint Nicholas Parish, he was praised for his educational work, his philanthropic involvements, and his careful and beautiful offering of the liturgy. Fedor longed for the monastery but waited until his son finished his education. In the meantime, the newly appointed metropolitan of Moscow, Sergii, was seeking clergy with a reputation for singing and celebrating the liturgy for a project he had to introduce an older form of singing in the Kremlin’s Dormition Cathedral. He therefore transferred Fedor to the Dormition Cathedral and ordained him to the priesthood in 1895. The Dormition Cathedral had no parish attached to it, but rather served official functions for the government and the Royal Family. It was naturally a very prestigious position, but it also involved Father Fedor in many worldly concerns. Two years later, when his son finished engineering school and became engaged to marry, Father Fedor began his plan to enter the monastery.99 Aleksii later told one of his disciples the story of how he ended up at Zosimova. He said that he was drawn to a strict, solitary monastic life, and he envisioned joining the Paraclete Hermitage because it was secluded and did not receive many pilgrims. He visited Paraclete in the summer of 1897, and he was impressed by the quiet and by the devotion with which the monks conducted Vespers despite working in the fields all day—a place “where there could be true monastic life.”100 He spoke with the abbot, who said he was welcome there. He returned to Sergiev Posad a few months later to talk with the abbot more definitively, but before going to Paraclete

reform: revered elders and monastic congresses 243 stopped to venerate the relics of Saint Sergius. As he was buying some chetki (prayer rope), he ran into Toviia (who, at that time, was prior of the Chudov Monastery in the Kremlin—from where they probably knew each other), who asked Father Fedor if he was planning to become a monk. At first he answered evasively, but as Toviia persisted, Father Fedor finally revealed his intentions. Toviia responded that Paraclete would not be suitable—although it was an excellent place according to its monastic life (where Toviia himself would retire), it was located in a swampy area that would be bad for Father Fedor’s health. Fedor then asked Toviia for advice as to where else he might go, somewhere relatively close to Moscow, because he did not want to be completely cut off from his son. Toviia replied that a new hermitage had recently opened, which had a good climate and observed a strict monastic rule— named Zosimova. Father Fedor went to Zosimova straightaway, and the atmosphere made a deep impression on him. Hegumen German did not readily accept him in the community, however. “For you, Fr. Archpriest, and those like you, there is a completely different road. Our life is poor and modest, and you are not used to such a life in the capital.”101 When Father Fedor responded that he was searching precisely for solitude, German agreed to take him. In the fall of 1898, Fedor was released from his service at the Kremlin, and in November he was tonsured at Zosimova with the name Aleksii.102 Initially, German was apprehensive about taking an archpriest from the Kremlin’s Dormition Cathedral, fearing that an archpriest coming from so prestigious a position and with such a lifestyle would not easily fit into a monastic community like Zosimova—in particular, that he would not have sufficient humility. Therefore German “humbled” Aleksii by assigning him obediences such as singing in the choir, along with giving him worse clothing and placing him below other monks. Aleksii quickly demonstrated his aptitude for monastic life, however. Because of his age (he was already fifty-two years old when he joined the monastery), he was not required to do physical labor; German soon appointed him a confessor and assigned him to teach the catechism to the novices. Aleksii later admitted that the first couple of years were in fact challenging for him, and that it took him that long to understand “what monasticism really is.”103 In the early years after German and Aleksii’s arrival, Zosimova did not receive many visitors and focused its spiritual energies inward. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), a student at the Theological Academy, began visiting at that time. He later recalled how, visiting during Great Lent, the guesthouse was so quiet he assumed that no one was there, but then he would discover other people. These visitors who were so quiet were “seekers of stillness and solitude, . . . only people of various professions. Among them one might meet a doctor, a teacher, a merchant, a bishop, a general, or a young student just beginning to live. All those who came were believers. It is difficult for

244 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses them, however, to move amid this adulterous and sinful world . . . and firmly hold to the principles of the Gospel. Each of them needs spiritual support, the prayers of the holy elders and testing their conscience. Thus such people flowed to the holy community, this spiritual clinic and higher school of Christian life.”104 In the beginning, the community was known in smaller circles, especially among those connected with the Theological Academy, but its fame—and the fame of its elders— increased. Particularly after the death of Starets Varnava in early 1906, many of Varnava’s spiritual children started to come to Aleksii and word quickly spread about him.105 As more and more people began coming to Aleksii, German released him from all other duties in the hermitage. He moved into a small house on the hermitage grounds where he received people, and he would often spend the entire day hearing confessions or conversing with them. Those who came to him all told of how approachable he was and how he took his time in Confession, never rushed people, no matter how many others were waiting or how long it would take. Muscovites in particular were drawn to him, because he had lived most of his life in the city and understood its particular challenges more than most monks. One such visitor, Il’ia Chetverukhin, at the time a student at the Theological Academy, told his own story of how Aleksii became his spiritual father. Aleksii required a life confession the first time he came—that is, that Chetverukhin confess every sin he could remember from the age of seven. He also required obedience, and in turn promised that he would “answer for me [Chetverukhin] before the Lord and that he would take me in his care.”106 According to Chetverukhin, Aleksii felt the suffering of those who came to him to such an extent that it affected his health. Whatever the case, his health did suffer from the strain of receiving so many people, so that he himself felt he could not handle so many visitors. Therefore, beginning in 1908, he went into partial seclusion, in which he would hear the brothers’ confessions on Fridays and pilgrims’ confessions on the weekend, and spend the remainder of the week in solitude. Nevertheless, his fame continued to proliferate rapidly; he gained a reputation for having a profound understanding of the human psyche and of being able to relate to all who came to him, no matter what their struggles—with sin, doubt, depression, or indifference. People came to him from a variety of social classes, including some who were very prominent—beginning with Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, who would come to visit with sisters from the Martha-Mary Convent in Moscow. He also had ties with Moscow’s religious-philosophical circles; prominent intellectuals like Mikhail Novoselov, Sergei Bulgakov, and Pavel Florenskii also came to visit him. So many visitors would come on the weekends when he heard confessions that, to create a queue, the hermitage would issue tickets—110 of them per weekend. Aleksii would hear confessions virtually nonstop throughout the weekend.107

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Conflict at Zosimova Just as the Zosimova Hermitage was reaching the height of its prominence, a conflict erupted that threatened to tear it apart. The conflict grew out of tensions between Hegumen German and the hermitage’s treasurer, Hieromonk Iona (Firguf, 1868–1929?), until the latter denounced German to the Lavra’s authorities for financial mismanagement in 1909. The Lavra’s authorities sided with Iona and even removed German from his post as abbot of Zosimova, transferring him to Makhrishchskii Monastery. It was difficult for the Lavra’s authorities then, as it is for a researcher today, to determine the truth of the accusations, defenses, and counteraccusations between German and Iona. But the causes, consequences, and ramifications of the affair are extremely revealing on multiple levels. Archimandrite Pavel and Hegumen German worked together in building up the community, sometimes bypassing official channels in ways that are reminiscent of the early years of Gethsemane Skete. When German became abbot, the hermitage had only one stone building, the main cathedral, and even that was not yet finished. Between 1897 and 1904, Pavel and German worked together, supported by substantial donations from the community’s supporters, to construct a refectory with a church, a stone wall around the monastery with grand gates topped by another church, a bell tower, a chapel over the well of Starets Zosima, and two-story buildings with cells for the brothers. Outside the walls of the monastery, they built a wooden guesthouse.108 Evidently, with Pavel’s blessing the hermitage kept a separate account book with donations that were specifically intended for construction and the donations for memorial services that were also used for construction, and this account book was not presented to the Lavra’s Governing Council—unlike the ordinary account books that all the communities in the Lavra’s collective were required to submit every year. This practice of keeping two separate account books ended in 1905, and starting in 1906 the community kept only one, which was presented to the Lavra’s Governing Council.109 Iona’s denunciation of German in 1909 was the culmination of years of tension. When German was appointed abbot in 1897, one of the monks he brought with him from Gethsemane was Iona.110 Iona (Firguf), who came from a Russified Baltic German family, had finished cadet school and served as an officer before joining Gethsemane. Archimandrite Pavel appointed Iona to keep the hermitage’s account books, and in 1903 he was formally appointed its treasurer. He continued to perform this function throughout, with the exception of a period when he went to the Far East during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5).111 Each complained that the other was making decisions without mutual consultation. German had evidently complained to Prior Toviia on more than one occasion, although his complaints fell on deaf ears.112 Iona, aware of these complaints and fearing that German would try to

246 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses have him removed, preempted German by submitting a formal denunciation to Archimandrite Toviia and the Lavra’s Governing Council in March 1909.113 Iona accused German of incorrectly recording income, falsifying receipts for expenses, selling monastery property for his own benefit, appropriating interest income from savings, and simply taking the money that was donated, while recording in the account books only what it was spent on.114 Iona thus made very serious accusations, implying not simply mismanagement but even embezzlement. Iona had developed good relations with Archimandrite Toviia and the Lavra’s authorities, in contrast to tensions between Toviia and German; as a result, Toviia was predisposed to side with Iona over German after the formal denunciation. Iona had developed a close working relationship with Trinity-Sergius’ authorities; since 1907, he had been involved in establishing a new catalogue of the Lavra’s sacristy— an enormous task with significant responsibility, and one that no doubt brought him to the Lavra frequently; in fact, when the steward of the Lavra’s compound in Saint Petersburg, Archimandrite Kronid, fell ill and was unable to serve for a period of time in 1908, the Lavra sent Iona to fill in for him. Iona thus had developed the trust of the Lavra’s authorities, so that, when the conflict broke out, they were inclined to believe him.115 In contrast, Toviia was displeased about German’s predilection for construction projects that Toviia felt were unnecessary. Evidently the Lavra’s Governing Council had tried to restrain German through Iona, which was a main cause for the animosity between the two.116 In a long response to the Governing Council, German defended himself against Iona’s allegations. He explained the special way in which Archimandrite Pavel had them keep the donations and expenses on construction projects separate from the regular account books. German himself was busy with the tasks Archimandrite Pavel had given him—namely, building up the inner monastic life and also carrying out new construction—so he delegated all the paperwork and finances to Iona, and, trusting him, did not double-check him. Rather, German countered, it was Iona who disposed of the community’s money without properly consulting him as abbot.117 In his report to Metropolitan Vladimir in August 1909, Toviia pointed to the most convincing evidence in favor of Iona against German as the fact that the income for 1903 to 1905 was more than 20,000 rubles less than in the three following years. Toviia was skeptical that the income was greater after 1905 than before, because “in monasteries and churches everywhere income was much less than before” as a consequence of the 1905 Revolution, because the people “powerfully forsook the church.”118 Toviia completely missed—or ignored—German’s explanation that income for donations was set aside for building purposes and not included in the general income, as Pavel had directed, until 1905. Toviia concluded that the animosity between the two was not only harmful to the monastery’s economy but was also threatening to tear apart the commu-

reform: revered elders and monastic congresses 247 nity itself, because part of the brotherhood supported the abbot and part supported the treasurer; part of the latter group claimed they were being “oppressed” by German and his followers.119 Indeed, there is a letter from a group of brothers who reported that German’s followers were saying that one of his disciples would become abbot and that those who did not agree with this would be expelled from the community. This letter revealed that there were many rumors racing through the community causing confusion and anxiety; this particular group requested that the Lavra’s authorities step in to restore peace and remove both German and Iona.120 Toviia continued in his report to Metropolitan Vladimir that the conflict had reached the point where clearly German and Iona could not both stay at the hermitage. To remove Iona would, in Toviia’s view, “give full scope to Hegumen German’s rapacious instinct,” and therefore he concluded that German had to go.121 Although the most suitable replacement would be Iona himself, Toviia advised against this, because it would generate rumors that this was precisely the reason why Iona had denounced German in the first place. Toviia’s comment implied that indeed there might have been some truth to those rumors. As for German, Toviia acknowledged that he enjoyed “certain respect as an experienced spiritual guide” among the people and that to initiate an official prosecution against him for financial abuse would cause scandal and be harmful to his spiritual children. He therefore recommended that the truth be concealed and that German be transferred “because of health” to Gethsemane Skete. There, Toviia admitted, German could be very beneficial in his capacity as a confessor and starets, “particularly now when, after the death of Starets Father Varnava, an insufficiency of spiritual leadership is sensed there.”122 This would also be best for German himself, Toviia concluded, because it would free him from monetary calculations with which he had “obviously become carried away by to the point of neglecting the duties of conscience.”123 It is unclear whether Toviia was trying to protect German (by not allowing his spiritual children to know the “truth” about his transfer) or himself (against recriminations for treating German unjustly). Metropolitan Vladimir expressed concern that German could raise a great storm if he decided to protest his removal.124 Indeed, German’s spiritual children blamed the Lavra’s authorities. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), for example, tried to intercede on German’s behalf, arguing that the Zosimova Hermitage had become what it was precisely because of German’s labors, and even its income came as a result of his efforts at securing donations; but Arsenii’s appeal fell on deaf ears.125 In the end, the Governing Council decided to transfer German to Makhrishchskii Monastery, whose abbot had recently been deposed for the weakness of his moral leadership. Thus, although the council did not entirely entrust German with financial responsibilities, it did recognize his capacity to introduce strict discipline in the community under his charge and suggested that he

248 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses could direct his great energy and activity to bring about the moral renewal of the Makhrishchskii Monastery.126 Although German did not protest, as the Metropolitan feared, he certainly felt that he had been treated unjustly. As the Orthodox faithful often do, he interpreted significant events through the eyes of the Church calendar. Thus he found it significant that he was transferred from the Zosimova Hermitage to the Makhrishchskii Monastery on September 14, when the Church calendar commemorates Saint John Chrysostom—who had been unjustly driven out of his see as patriarch of Constantinople. Similarly, he interpreted his transfer to Makhra as symbolically parallel to the episode when Saint Sergius of Radonezh was driven out of the Trinity Monastery and received by Stefan Makhrishchskii, the founder of Makhra.127 At Makhra, German began restoring discipline to the community.128 Back at the Zosimova Hermitage, the brothers tried to reconcile themselves to the new situation. Aleksii and his disciples, according to one of them, tried to stay out of the conflict and to make peace with the new order after German was transferred. But the community lost its spirit; although Aleksii “supported the brotherhood,” his heart was not in the new order, and “he was like an outsider in the community.”129 Although German himself may not have raised a storm about his “exile” from the Zosimova Hermitage, his spiritual children certainly did—and with effect. Precisely when German was being investigated for Iona’s accusations, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna visited the hermitage, at the end of May 1909. She expressed her gratitude to German and her “satisfaction with the order that she found in the community.”130 She visited again for even longer on September 5–8, that is, in the week before German’s transfer—very likely to show her support for him.131 She also interceded directly with Metropolitan Vladimir, asking that German be returned to Zosimova. A group of German’s supporters submitted a letter to Metropolitan Vladimir in protest; the letter was signed by some of the most prominent religious intellectuals and priests in Russia, including Sergei Bulgakov; a leading figure in the Muscovite circle of religious intellectuals, Mikhail Novoselov; the editor of the newspaper Moscow Bulletin (Moskovskie Vedomosti), Lev Tikhomirov; a member of the State Senate, Dmitrii Olsuf ’ev; the prominent priests Sergei Chetverikov and Iosif Fudel’; and other teachers, doctors, and public figures—some thirty signatures in all.132 This letter from German’s supporters was a powerful testimony to the respect for and influence of German and the Zosimova Hermitage in society. The supporters stated that they were saddened and astonished at German’s transfer: “It is difficult to explain in a few words the significance acquired by Zosimova Hermitage in the last decade in the life of those Orthodox Russians who visit the community, especially from educated circles.” In a time of social, political, and spiritual upheaval,

reform: revered elders and monastic congresses 249 Zosimova “was and remains the brightest oasis in the desert, where all who thirst for spiritual direction and strengthening find indispensable comfort and satisfaction.” The community, the letter continued, was created both materially and spiritually by the untiring labors of German; his own strict ascetic life as well as his “sincere warmth” reverberated in the “spiritual atmosphere of all who surround his monastic community.” Many exemplary monks were formed under his direction—“it is sufficient to name such a famous and respected name of Starets Father Aleksii.” Ending with an ominous warning that if the shepherd were struck, the sheep would scatter—the letter appealed to the Metropolitan not to permit this to happen.133 These protests had their effect. On November 6, 1909, Metropolitan Vladimir instructed the Governing Council of the Lavra that German took his transfer to Makhra “although with grief, but also with submissiveness, which gives a basis for hope that he will not repeat those mistakes into which he fell in the matter of managing the economy of the Zosimova Hermitage and will not act on his own initiative in the future.” Given these considerations and also the “sincere request of Her Highness Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna and many other admirers and spiritual children of Fr. German,” Vladimir proposed that German be immediately returned to his former place. Although Vladimir was inclined to have Iona remain in the hermitage for the remainder of the year, Elizaveta Feodorovna intervened again, insisting on Iona’s “speedy transfer.”134 The episode of Hegumen German’s accusation of financial abuse, his removal, and his return to the abbacy of the Zosimova Hermitage reveals much about monasticism in early-twentieth-century Russia. Once again, monasticism’s very success brought in its wake certain problems. In this case, according to one of Zosimova’s monks, it was the fame of the hermitage’s elders that brought a sharp increase in the number of pilgrims, which in turn substantially increased the wealth of the community—and greater wealth aroused greed and jealousy: “Some people appeared who said that if they were in authority, they would do things better”—and this created division in the brotherhood.135 These strains in the community fed on the personal tensions between German and Iona, which clearly had been building for years. There are certain parallels between the way in which Metropolitan Filaret and Archimandrite Antonii worked together in establishing Gethsemane—making decisions personally between them, avoiding the institutional channels of the Lavra’s Governing Council (or the Holy Synod)—and the way in which Archimandrite Pavel and Hegumen German worked together in constructing the Zosimova Hermitage. Just as when Makarii became metropolitan of Moscow he demanded an explanation about the “special” place that Gethsemane Skete had in the Lavra’s collective and ended this distinctive status, so also Archimandrite Pavel’s successor, Archimandrite Toviia, did not tolerate German’s bypassing of the Lavra’s authorities.

250 reform: revered elders and monastic congresses Indeed, despite the mutual accusations and recriminations about financial abuse, what underlay the various levels of conflict were questions of authority. German was frustrated with Iona because Iona made decisions without consulting him, sometimes even without informing him, which appeared to undercut German’s authority as abbot. Similarly, German made decisions without consulting the Lavra’s Governing Council, a practice that had been established at the time of Archimandrite Pavel and with his express blessing and participation, but which German had attempted to continue after Pavel’s death. Clearly German did not develop a close relationship with Toviia, who trusted Iona more than him. Indeed, after the conflict, Iona was transferred to the Lavra, where he would work his way up the hierarchy to the position of steward (ekonom); in that capacity, he was to become the most hated monk of the Lavra by the local inhabitants in 1917, perhaps justifying German’s characterization of him as a difficult and quarrelsome character and also clearly demonstrating the tightfisted way in which he managed the monastery’s budget. The status of the Zosimova Hermitage as a subordinate community to TrinitySergius also played into the conflict. For Toviia, part of what made the stakes so high for Zosimova’s economy was the fact that the Lavra continued to give subsidies every year to Zosimova, again a practice begun under Pavel to help get the community established. This was never stated explicitly, but Toviia must have been particularly concerned about German wasting money on unnecessary building projects because it concerned not just Zosimova’s money but also the Lavra’s.136 Moreover, though all monasteries were subject to a bishop, most monasteries were not subject to other monasteries, and abbots were given a tremendous amount of authority in their own communities. Part of the conflict stemmed from German’s attempt to be the master of his monastery, while Toviia wanted him to realize that, ultimately, he still had to answer to Trinity-Sergius. A final noteworthy point about this episode is what it demonstrates about the relationship between respected elders and society. German’s treatment aroused to his defense some very prominent and influential people, above all Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, but also leading intellectuals such as Novoselov and Bulgakov. The grand duchess’s actions, together with the letter written by German’s supporters, reveal how highly esteemed and influential a spiritual leader he was in the highest circles of society, and how important the Zosimova Hermitage had become in little more than a decade since he had become abbot, a reminder that some of the intelligentsia were far from alienated from the Church. It is also significant that these individuals—many of them laity—felt it their place to come to German’s defense in an appeal to the metropolitan of Moscow, and equally significant is the fact that Metropolitan Vladimir listened to them and reversed his decision, suggesting the

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Church’s vulnerability to intervention by elites. Ultimately, this episode is another instance of the long-standing tensions between the institutional authority of monastic hierarchies and the charismatic authority of the elders—such as the problems Varnava encountered—with the added complication that German was both an abbot and an elder. The fact that many were ready to question Toviia’s judgment and side with German, who ultimately had more respect as a spiritual figure in society, was probably not lost on contemporaries.

Aleksii’s Seclusion Although the conflict between German, Iona, and the Lavra’s authorities threatened to tear Zosimova’s community asunder, pilgrimage to the hermitage continued unabated. When the widowed priest Fedor Solov’ev joined the monastery, he chose the Zosimova Hermitage precisely because its remoteness and quiet attracted him as one who sought solitude and contemplative prayer. Yet, as we have seen, Starets Aleksii’s fame continually grew, particularly after the death of Starets Varnava, and so he became Russia’s most famous elder of the early twentieth century; therefore he had anything but solitude and quiet. The continual flow of people coming to him for Confession and spiritual advice weighed so heavily upon him that he went into a partial seclusion several days a week. As he himself put it, “In the tenth year of my arrival in the community, in February 1908, in accord with my striving for stillness, I was permitted not to leave my cell five, then four days a week, the remaining days of the week were set aside for duties of confession and eldership [dukhovnicheskii i starcheskii trud] for my spiritual children and others who turn to me, both from the local monastery brotherhood and from the laity.”137 Even this degree of involvement took its toll on his health, and in mid-1915 he became severely ill, with an illness that lasted into 1916. “At present,” Aleksii wrote on May 24, 1916, having reached seventy years of age and having a dangerous heart condition, the “thought of intensifying my solitude does not stop, so as to make possible a more unhindered concentration and selfdeepening [samougublenie] for the remaining days of my life.”138 Therefore, in agreement with Hegumen German, he requested permission from the Lavra’s Governing Council and Metropolitan Vladimir not to leave his cell and not to receive laity (with the exception of his son, Mikhail); he would continue to guide his disciples in the monastery, setting aside two days a week to receive them in his cell. The Lavra’s Governing Council and Metropolitan Vladimir gave their consent on May 27 and 28, respectively, and on June 3 it was announced at the community that Aleksii would go into full seclusion beginning on June 5—giving his spiritual children only two days for a last visit and parting with their beloved elder. The Chetverukhins, like

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many others, rushed to the hermitage as soon as they heard the news, and Father Il’ia Chetverukhin described the touching scene of Aleksii parting with his flock before entering his seclusion.139 Starets Aleksii’s seclusion was an event that made an impression on society, and it was even discussed in the newspapers. An article in Moscow Bulletin wrote of how the elder “decisively ‘left the world,’ secluding himself forever in his cell”—this elder who attracted so many people, “from personalities of the first rank to the last pauper. His influence was unbounded.”140 Between Aleksii’s seclusion and the continuation of World War I, hardly any visitors came to the hermitage, which returned to the isolation and quiet of the early years, when German and Aleksii first arrived. Many of the brothers were happy with this situation, because it promoted an atmosphere of prayer and contemplation, but it also had a negative impact on the monastery’s income. Starets Aleksii’s seclusion, however, did not last long; in the summer of 1917, he was called to participate in a Congress of Monastics to prepare for the long-awaited All-Russian Church Council, the first in more than two centuries. Aleksii was elected as a delegate to the council itself, and in August 1917 he began staying at the Chudov Monastery in Moscow to participate in the sessions of the council. When the moment came for restoring the Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church (which had been abolished by Peter the Great), the Church Council held elections for the position; in order to allow for the hand of God, the names of the three candidates who received the most votes were placed in a chalice, and the person widely regarded as the holiest living member of the Church—Starets Aleksii—was chosen to pick the name. Aleksii chose the name of Tikhon (Belavin), a choice that would have great importance in the early years of conflict between the Bolsheviks and the Orthodox Church.141

Conclusions As Starets Aleksii wrote, monasteries were communities of sinful people seeking to live a life of repentance—and therefore the fact that jealousy, rivalry, envy, and greed were present in a monastic community should come as no surprise. Perhaps the question was rather how effective a monastery was in providing a community where individuals could confront these passions and overcome them successfully. The elements that worked at Zosimova included the combination of strict discipline, the cenobitic rule, education and guidance in the monastic life, prioritizing spiritual development and prayer, and starchestvo. Even though starchestvo did serve as a source of tension and conflict within monastic communities or with the Church authorities, its impact on both the brotherhood and the broader Church community was immense. Nikon’s argument that the contemplative and ascetic focus of a

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monastic community enabled it to serve as a spiritual oasis or haven for the laity to seek spiritual nourishment and guidance appears to have been vindicated by the example of the Zosimova Hermitage. Indeed, although Kruglov assumed that monasticism was already “obsolete” in the eyes of educated society, the support for Hegumen German that came from some of the leading lights of intellectual society demonstrated that this was far from the case.

7 Politics: Monasticism on the Eve of Revolution Archimandrite Toviia was prior of Trinity-Sergius from 1904 to 1915— years that were marked by war and revolution, years that were far more tumultuous for Russia than the preceding century. In 1904, Russia went to war with Japan, and though the scene of fighting was far away from the Russian heartland, the impact of the war on Russian society was great and helped to spark the revolutionary turmoil that engulfed Russia in 1905–7. In the years that followed, calm was restored, but the consequent political polarization of Russian society persisted. In 1914, Russia entered World War I, with disastrous consequences. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra did not remain unaffected by the turmoil of these years. Even before the outbreak of war, Toviia was contemplating the possibility of petitioning the metropolitan and the Holy Synod to let him retire—an unusual step, because in the previous century all the priors had died in office. Throughout his career, when he had been appointed to various administrative positions, he had felt conflicted—very much like Archimandrite Antonii—because these positions had led him on a path of active engagement with, rather than withdrawal from, the world: “When the path of obedience led to positions of authority, then I frequently lost hope of achieving solitude, for the bustle of administrative matters swallowed up free time, took away health, and the years departed, and I grew closer to death. It frequently happened that I came . . . to despair that I would have to die in the inconstancy of half-worldly bustle.”1 Toviia felt that his strength was leaving him, and that he could not be a good leader for the brotherhood if he was not actively present; moreover, sensing that he was approaching the end of his life, he wanted to withdraw and live in quiet to prepare for death.2 Toviia wrote that he felt as though he had become a monk “in clothing only,” because he was always engaged in worldly activities and did 254

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not have the time for the things a monk was supposed to do, such as fasting and prayer. According to another line of reasoning, however, he thought that he was fulfilling this important and holy position not by his own will or desires but according to obedience—and therefore it was the will of God. For him to decide on his own to step down from his position would amount to “sacrificing obedience for the sake of stillness with the aim of acquiring fasting and mental prayer.”3 He concluded at that time (in 1913) that he should stay in his post as long as he could fulfill his duties and wait for God to send him a sign that he should retire.4 A little over a year later, in December 1914, Toviia fell ill with influenza, which left him bedridden for two months. At all levels of the community’s life, he felt that the absence of leadership was detrimental; he feared that the services would no longer be conducted properly without his presence, and he was not able to provide proper leadership and oversight either in economic or spiritual matters. He finally concluded that his illness was the sign from God that he was waiting for, and in January 1915 he related his desire to retire to Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), who was an archbishop and member of the Holy Synod by this time.5 Nikon took the matter to the metropolitan of Moscow and the Holy Synod, and on January 9, 1915, the Synod allowed Toviia to retire, granting him a cell at Trinity-Sergius and a pension.6 He was replaced by Archimandrite Kronid, who came from the post of steward of the Saint Petersburg compound. Toviia spent most of his time in solitude in his cell at Trinity-Sergius, and from May to October 1915 he lived at the Paraclete Hermitage, where he had built himself a cell nearly twenty years before in the hope of retiring there one day.7 He received many letters asking him whether he had retired voluntarily or had been forced to retire, and indeed there was talk that he had done something that induced the Church authorities to force him into retirement, although there is no evidence of this in the archives.8 He spent the remainder of his days reflecting on his life and composing or editing his memoirs.9 On March 7, 1916, he died at Trinity-Sergius, having been tonsured a schemamonk the previous day; he was buried in the Paraclete Hermitage.10 One observer commented that his fame “lived in the hearts of the brothers and the Lavra’s regular pilgrims.”11 He had clearly felt embattled and exhausted by his duties as prior of Trinity-Sergius, and it is no wonder. In many ways, the monastery itself would be embattled by the turmoil taking place in Russian society, to which it reacted, perhaps inevitably, by trying to defend itself and the old order in the face of calls for radical change.

The Revolution of 1905–7 and Its Aftermath Although monasteries had been very active in politics in earlier eras of Russian history, they rarely became directly involved during the period of the monastic revival

256 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution in the nineteenth century. The Revolution of 1905–7, however, brought virtually all strata of Russian society into the political discourse to an unprecedented degree, and even cloisters such as Trinity-Sergius could not remain aloof.

Revolution A revolutionary crisis was sparked in Russia by the defeats in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), together with “Bloody Sunday” in January 1905—when troops fired upon a procession of workers carrying icons, led by the priest Father Gapon, who marched to the Winter Palace to deliver a petition to the tsar. This crisis directly threatened the social and political order far more deeply than any previous period of popular unrest or revolutionary action. Bloody Sunday initiated a year of unprecedented strikes, riots, and violence directed by students, peasants, and workers against the oppressive social system and regime. The Revolution of 1905–7 brought nearly all layers of Russian society into the political discourse; new groups, which previously had only marginally been involved in politics, formed unions and associations, held meetings and congresses, debated issues, passed resolutions, and published their own journals. Not only was there intense political activity in the cities; there was also great ferment in the villages, led primarily by the peasants themselves rather than by revolutionaries. For the first time in Russian history, voices that before had been silent became not only audible but insistent, demanding change. In February 1905, Tsar Nicholas II promised to convoke a consultative duma (parliament), and in August he issued the law for its election and convocation. However, the law for limited elections and a merely consultative assembly fell short of the rising democratic expectations and did nothing to restore tranquillity and order. In October, a national general strike paralyzed the country, brought the regime to its knees, and forced Nicholas to issue the October Manifesto, which promised to grant fundamental civil liberties, extend the franchise for the Duma, and establish the Duma with legislative powers. The turmoil also aroused monarchists and upholders of the old order to form right-wing political parties. Though supported mainly by Russian landowners, the right also mobilized those of anti-Polish and anti-Jewish sentiments in the western borderlands along with “black-hundredists” throughout Russia itself.12 Not surprisingly, the Holy Synod and many hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church condemned the “liberation movement”—a term used to embrace the far left as well as moderate liberals, all intent on some kind of fundamental political and social change. The announcement of the October Manifesto caused some bishops to react with dismay and uncertainty. Parish clergy, by contrast, reacted in various ways; the majority probably avoided taking sides so as not to incur the wrath of either the authorities or their own flocks. Some parish priests were actively engaged

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in trying to pacify social tensions. But a distinct, highly visible minority became actively involved in the opposition, whether through the clerical press, collective discussions at diocesan assemblies, or individual participation in social and political movements. Moreover, there was a great deal of radical unrest in the seminaries.13 And even those churchmen—including the bishops—who were politically conservative and who supported the government against the revolutionary opposition actively sought sweeping reforms within the Church itself. Almost all called for the convocation of a Church Council to address the problems of the Church.14 Monasteries could hardly remain neutral amid the political turmoil, all the more because many radicals demanded the confiscation of monastic lands along with all other forms of landholding. In isolated instances, peasants actually began to act on their own accord and directly seize such lands. Indeed, between 1905 and 1917, the number of robberies and attacks on monasteries increased dramatically, and the breakdown of social order led many monasteries to feel the need for direct protection from the state in the form of troops or police guards. Some monks supported the revolutionaries; in Georgia, for example, some joined revolutionaries in the struggle for greater national independence for their country. More often, however, they supported the right.15 The Trinity-Sergius Lavra, like other monasteries, was directly affected by the revolutionary upheaval. The monastic press, like most of the hierarchy, responded negatively to the outbreak of unrest. The Revolution transformed many previously apolitical churchmen, like Father John of Kronstadt, into vocal supporters of the radical right.16 Monastic publications condemned the revolutionary upheaval and social unrest, and insisted upon the Christian’s duty to obey the tsar. All, moreover, tended to be nationalistic, contrasting what was Orthodox and Russian with what was “alien” and godless. In response to the Manifesto of August 6, 1905, announcing a Duma with consultative powers, Trinity Leaflets published an article titled “The Voice from the Community of Saint Sergius on the occasion of the Manifest of August 6.” The article was called a “Trinity Manifesto” and widely distributed.17 The article affirmed that the tsar was God’s elect and that it was each Christian’s duty to obey his will. The manifesto, the article continued, expressed the sovereign’s desire that the “best” people of the empire come to him from far and wide to help him rule by consulting with him and telling him of the needs of the people. The article noted, however, that “everything rests on what kind of people are chosen.” It stated that the “Orthodox people” had to support the tsar by sending to the Duma “faithful, truly Russian, Orthodox people sincerely devoted to the faith, the Tsar, and the Fatherland.” 18 The article warned its readers that people “alien to us by faith and by blood” would seek their own interests if elected to the Duma.19 It also cautioned against people who were Russian by blood but not by spirit and who dreamed of limiting the power of the tsar. These people were dangerous because they influenced the simple folk and

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were able to disguise their schemes with noble-sounding words. “Many such people have appeared in recent times in Holy Rus’,” the article maintained, and they have stirred up a great deal of noise in their meetings and articles in newspapers, making unrealizable promises of various freedoms and of giving land to the peasants. Such godless people did not care for what was dear and holy to the heart of Russia, “as, for example, the tsar’s autocracy” and true Russian traditions, but instead praised what was foreign.20 Like Nicholas II, Trinity Leaflets did not regard the Duma as a limitation of the tsar’s autocracy and encouraged the faithful to vote for conservative parties. Thus the article was trying to make use of a modern and democratic process to uphold or defend traditional values and the absolute authority of the tsar. Moreover, as Orthodoxy came under the threat of Western and secular ideologies, the tie between Orthodoxy and Russian national identity became more important, and therefore more emphasized, than ever before. Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) was the founder and editor of Trinity Leaflets and its primary contributor (see chapter 5). Even after his elevation to the episcopate in 1904, he maintained close ties with Trinity-Sergius and continued to dominate its publications. In 1904–6, he served as the bishop of Serpukhov, an auxiliary bishopric in the Moscow Diocese.21 In 1905, he wrote a pamphlet for a monastic audience, “A Brotherly Word of a Trinity Monk to Monastics,” in which, revealingly, he continued to identify himself as a “Trinity monk.” The pamphlet decried the unrest and disorder in Russia and admonished the Church and monastics that they should not consider themselves guiltless in what was transpiring. Contemporary monasticism had grown weak; the common people who came to monasteries seeking holiness, guidance, and comfort did not find what they sought. Therefore, monastics needed to undergo a spiritual renewal, to live a truly monastic life, and to pray for Rus’— “holy, but also greatly sinful before God.” In this way, even if no one saw their labors, they would be serving their native land.22 Nikon therefore saw a connection between Russia’s turmoil and its spiritual condition, and he called on monks to help Russia through spiritual renewal. Monastic publications were, predictably, very conservative. The periodicals of the Pochaev Lavra in Western Russia—a much more socially and religiously diverse region, where Russian Orthodox believers felt embattled and threatened—were explicitly nationalist and anti-Semitic.23 Nikon and the Trinity-Sergius publications, though not discussing social problems or injustices, placed the blame for the upheaval on the revolutionaries for misleading the people with unrealizable promises. Nikon’s solution for the turmoil consisted of patriotism and obedience to the tsar, and above all repentance and a return to the path of Orthodoxy. Trinity-Sergius was not only actively engaged in the political dialogue during the Revolution through its publications; it was also directly affected by the upheaval. On October 19, 1905, a “massive demonstration” took place in Sergiev Posad. A great

politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution 259 crowd consisting mostly of students and “idle youth” gathered in the square in front of the monastery. The crowd, carrying red flags and singing “Memory Eternal” (an Orthodox memorial hymn), proceeded to march through the Lavra itself. Part of the crowd went to the Lavra’s workshops and the printing house and compelled the workers to cease their activities and join the demonstration. When the overseer of the printing house asked those who burst in “what was the celebration,” they replied, “freedom, Constitution—all Russia is celebrating.” Not wishing to provoke the demonstrators, the overseer closed up the printing house, though the workers, instead of joining the demonstration, either left to drink tea or went home. The main part of the crowd went into the garden of the Moscow Theological Academy and “held there something like a meeting.” Afterward, the crowd marched along the streets of the town, “everywhere closing shops.” In one part of town, fighting broke out between the demonstrators and local inhabitants, during which many of the demonstrators were injured. On the following day, however, the monastery’s workshops resumed work as usual.24 To quell the disorders, the governor of Moscow sent a regiment of fifty-six Cossacks to protect the Lavra.25 The monastery was grateful for this protection. As Archimandrite Toviia wrote to the military commander: “In the present unruliness, many look [upon the Lavra] with envy, thanks to absurd articles in several newspapers about 3 billion [rubles], supposedly kept by us, and thanks to exaggerated stories about the treasures of the Lavra’s sacristy.” Apart from robbery, the monastery’s authorities were afraid of potential disorders and the deliberate desecration of the holy place “by people who have lost the fear of God and the feeling of respect for human dignity and for the freedom of others’ convictions.” Finally, Toviia stated his belief that only the presence of the troops was curtailing the disorders, which would break out again if the troops were removed.26 Toviia was clearly appealing to the governor to keep the troops there, and it appears he feared simple banditry more than revolutionary anticlericalism. At the same time, he implied that this revolutionary anarchy was in fact a threat not only to order but also to religious freedom. Despite the pleas of the monastery authorities that large numbers of “idle and roving crowds” might cause disorders at any moment, the governor would not allow the troops to be permanently quartered in Sergiev Posad, and on November 3 he recalled them to cope with the needs of Moscow itself.27 In private correspondence in November and December, Toviia reflected the general sense of insecurity arising from the revolutionary turmoil while at the same time acknowledging that the situation in Sergiev Posad was calm.28 In mid-December, the Sergiev Posad authorities decided to increase the number of policemen upholding order in the town, and the monastery agreed to pay for half their upkeep and provide them with living quarters.29 In March 1906, a monk was murdered at Bethany Monastery. 30 Toviia

260 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution noted that this episode left everyone in a state of panic, in part because the murderer got away.31 By April 1906, as the disorders were spreading throughout the country, Sergiev Posad again received a regiment of Cossack troops, and the Lavra contributed money for its support. In October, when the Sergiev Posad chief of police proposed removing the troops, the monastery authorities repeated their view that the troops—some of whom were living in the treasurer’s cells, in which were “continually held more or less significant sums” of money—were still necessary.32 This revolutionary turmoil also affected the monastery in other curious ways. In March 1907, some of the adolescents in the Lavra’s boy’s choir staged a “strike” and refused to sing on the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation.33 Nor were the monastery’s fears of robbery and disorder unfounded. Even in the midst of the “hostile attitude toward the general order,” Toviia wrote, the monk’s job nevertheless remained the same—prayer and repentance—although he also noted that only in prayer did he find any comfort during such a time.34 By the time order was restored in the country in 1907, however, the situation again stabilized and returned to relative normalcy for several years.35 Other disorders occurred within the monastery’s own walls. Most serious was the murder of a hieromonk in his cell in August 1910. Initially, the investigation led to suspicion of the soldiers who were guarding the churches in the monastery; as a result of this incident, the Lavra felt that it could no longer trust these hired soldiers and charged reliable novices with the task of guarding the churches.36 Another murder near Gethsemane Skete a few months later led to the arrest of one of the Lavra’s own novices. After his arrest, he confessed that he had also participated in the hieromonk’s murder. Later, two more novices were arrested for having in their possession “incriminating evidence” of participation in both murders.37 Ultimately, the greater threat turned out not to be hostile elements from the outside but rather the acceptance of the wrong elements into the brotherhood itself. Trinity-Sergius, however, suffered not only from crimes and disorders during the revolutionary years; the monastery’s income also dramatically declined. Despite the fall in revenues, the Lavra donated significant sums of money to help those in need during the crisis. Thus in December 1905, the Sergiev Posad City Council met to discuss measures to help local artisans and cab drivers hurt by the railway strike (because of the decline in visitors and pilgrims to the monastery). Although several wealthy local merchants agreed to donate 100 rubles, the Lavra’s representative, treasurer Archimandrite Dosifei, declared that the Lavra would donate 1,000 rubles, which was received “with great enthusiasm and gratitude.” The meeting turned to the issue of feeding the indigent; when no place could be found for this purpose, Dosifei again announced that the Lavra would open pilgrims’ table to all the local inhabitants in need of food—a declaration that was again received with great gratitude by the City Council “and by the poor, who came to the meeting in great num-

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table 7.1. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra’s Charity Expenses, 1906 (rubles) Expense For the support of the Aleksandro-Mariinskii Home for the Poor For the same, from Gethsemane Skete For the assistance of poor students of the Moscow Theological Academy For the assistance of the Zosimova Hermitage For the assistance of the Coenobium For the assistance of the publication of the journal Faith and Church For the sake of those suffering from the strikes in Moscow (December 1905): From Trinity-Sergius, 1,500; from the Lavra’s collective, 1,500 For the Iconography School For the Iconography School from Gethsemane For the sake of those suffering from fire in the city of Syzran: From Trinity-Sergius, 600; from Gethsemane, 400 For the Trinity Monastery (Alatyr), which suffered from fire For other victims of fire For poor parish churches On individual requests for the poor and hungry For the Lavra’s parish schools For 50 orphans in the Lavra’s workshops For the Perevinskoe Parish School, from Gethsemane For the support of the Chudov Choir in Moscow For the Pre-Conciliar Commission For widows and orphans in Sergiev Posad For books, icons and religious pamphlets distributed for free For feeding poor pilgrims at Trinity-Sergius Total

Amount 21,337 3,000 2,347 2,000 1,200 1,000 3,000 3,638 2,400 1,000 300 1,100 830 222 5,066 5,000 5,000 2,500 5,000 1,237 8,529 6,303 81,810

Source: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25108, ll. 2–3.

bers.”38 Over the course of the next two months, the monastery provided 23,735 lunches and 14,350 dinners.39 The Lavra’s responsiveness to those in need during the 1905 Revolution (see table 7.1) would stand in sharp contrast to its miserliness in 1917, which would have evident consequences for its relations with the local population.

Between Revolution and War: The 1907–13 Period The turmoil, strikes, and violence gradually died down by the end of 1906. After the radical First Duma and Second Duma were dissolved and the electoral law was changed in June 1907, the Third Duma and Fourth Duma were more conservative and lasted longer. Nevertheless, even these Dumas gradually proved unable to operate, partly because of the tsar’s refusal to cooperate, and partly because of a renewed radicalization of both elite and lower levels of society. The Church hierarchy and the Synod continued to express their support for the regime and endorsed the election of pro-Orthodox conservatives and clergy to the Third and Fourth Dumas.

262 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution But the hierarchy also grew increasingly alienated from the new Duma monarchy. Part of this alienation was due to the Duma itself, a secular institution made up of many non-Orthodox delegates, which raised issues that threatened Church interests such as religious tolerance and control over schools. The Duma even attacked monasteries directly; in 1908, for example, some deputies objected even to the niggardly sum still given to monasteries by the state, denouncing the “unproductive absorption of resources by monasteries, collected from the starving people,” and castigating monastics as “deadly enemies of the people, who obscure the people’s consciousness.”40 Church leaders grew more critical of the Duma and its hostile attitude toward Church interests, and, in the end, they contributed to the failure of the Duma monarchy by stonewalling many reform proposals. Moreover, not just the Duma but also the bureaucracy itself—trying to fashion a new regime better suited to a multiethnic and multireligious empire—came into conflict with the Church. Church leaders were even dissatisfied with the monarchy, in large part because of the Rasputin scandals (see below). Although talk of the Church Council died down in the years following 1907, the Church hierarchy felt threatened by the growing influence of sectarianism and its own declining influence. In 1912, it renewed serious discussion of the need for the council, but found that the government had no intention of allowing it. The political activism of parish clergy also declined after 1906, as they were more inclined to express their concerns by working with temperance movements or poor relief, and in politics they remained cautiously moderate.41 Despite the fact that, by the beginning of World War I, the Church itself was growing disenchanted with the monarchy, nevertheless Russian liberals, Soviet scholars, and most Western scholars have stereotyped the Church as a whole, and monasteries in particular, as bastions of monarchism and even extreme right-wing parties.42 This depiction is true of some monasteries, such as the Pochaev Lavra, which established a branch of the Union of Russian People, an ultrareactionary group.43 But this was not universally the case with all monasteries. Trinity-Sergius, for example, played a much more complex role and did not ally itself directly with any monarchist groups. Indeed, in 1910 someone went to Metropolitan Vladimir without Toviia’s knowledge and against his will to ask permission for Toviia to become a member of the Monarchist Union as a way of entrapping him into the group, something that clearly outraged him.44 Rather, when patriotic groups themselves took the initiative, the Lavra rendered passive support. In September 1907, the members of the Sergiev Posad chapter of the Russian Monarchist Party wrote to the monastery authorities that a room they had been renting from the Lavra was so damp that they were falling ill. They therefore requested that the monastery provide them with better accommodations for their meetings, appealing to the notion that their work in defense of the Orthodox Church

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and the preservation of the legal absoluteness of the “Most-Gracious Autocratic Monarch” was necessary for the welfare of the Fatherland in “these troubled times.”45 The Lavra’s Governing Council agreed, in view of the “usefulness of the goals” of their meetings, to let them use one of the halls in the pilgrim’s hostel gratis.46 Similarly, in 1912 another monarchist group, the Russian People’s Union of Archangel Michael, asked to share the accommodation of the Monarchist Party for their meetings. The Lavra replied that it had no opposition to allowing the group to meet in the same hall as the other monarchists.47 Thus the Lavra’s authorities did not explicitly endorse the monarchist parties but passively supported them by providing them with free space. Perhaps too much should not be made of this, because the monastery routinely provided accommodations for local groups in Sergiev Posad. In 1913, for example, the members of the Sergiev Posad Club of Amateur Fishermen asked the Lavra for accommodations to hold their meetings. According to their charter, they sought to work toward the unification of amateur fishers and to establish a “lively exchange of thought between them,” to introduce correct fishing techniques, to protect fish from overfishing, and to study local species. The monastery authorities responded by allowing them to meet in the same hall that the Monarchist Party occupied, also evidently free of charge, stipulating only that the Fishermen’s Club should not schedule its meetings for the days when the Monarchists meet.48 Once World War I broke out in 1914, the Lavra informed the Monarchist Party that it must “immediately vacate” the hall that it had been using because the monastery intended to use the space as part of the infirmary for wounded soldiers.49 In the years between the Revolution of 1905–7 and the outbreak of World War I, Bishop Nikon continued to comment on the social, political, and religious issues of the day, especially in his regular contributions—collectively titled “My Diaries” (Moi Dnevniki)—in Trinity-Sergius’ weekly journal Trinity Word (Troitskoe slovo), which Nikon founded in 1910.50 In 1906, Nikon became bishop of Vologda, the next year a member of the State Council, and in 1912 a member of the Holy Synod. From 1913 to 1916 he was also chairman of the Holy Synod’s Publishing Council. He retired from actively serving the Vologda Diocese in 1912 and was elevated to the rank of archbishop in 1913. After his retirement as bishop of Vologda, he requested a cell in his “native community” of Trinity-Sergius, where he began to spend more and more time when he did not need to be in Saint Petersburg to serve in the Synod and the Senate.51 Thus Nikon’s ties with Trinity-Sergius grew stronger once again in these years, as he both lived in the monastery for part of the year and continued to act as the “voice” of the community, now primarily through his publications in the Lavra’s Trinity Word. Because he was the principal editor and author of many of TrinitySergius’ publications, he gave the public face of the monastery a rightist tinge; it is

264 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution difficult to assess the degree to which his ideas were shared by the brotherhood of the monastery. In the years 1910–13, he remained a staunch conservative and supported the monarchy. He denounced talk of a constitution as sacrilegious, for the tsar’s autocracy had a “religious character”; the tsar ruled the empire in the same way that God is all-powerful.52 Nikon expressed particular concern that “Holy Rus’” was ceasing to be truly Orthodox. He described what he termed a “hypnosis” that was clouding minds, especially those of the intelligentsia but also increasingly those of the common people (narod). This “hypnosis,” he believed, was leading people away from the Church, even into enmity with it. The hypnosis that clouded their minds was, above all, the various “freedoms” that permeated public discourse. At the time, of particular concern to Nikon—and most clergy—were three issues that in his view threatened to lead the people away from the Church: (1) freedom of conscience, in particular the right of Old Believers and sectarians to propagate their teachings actively; (2) the demand that the state secularize parish schools; and (3) freedom of the press.53 Nikon was critical of the proliferation of demands for “freedom” itself. In a 1911 article commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation of the Serfs, he argued that freedom was not good in and of itself. Rather, freedom allowed a person the choice of action, but it was those actions that were good or evil. All the cries for various freedoms were really just “high-sounding words covering up emptiness and sowing discord” among the youth, the workers, and the poluintelligetsiia (“semiintellectuals”). Real freedom, he continued, came from subjecting one’s will to God. In this regard, he concluded, there was little significance to all these political freedoms or civil rights.54 In 1909, the Ministry of Internal Affairs introduced a bill to regulate the changes in religious adherence in accordance with the Imperial decree on religious tolerance. The Duma commission on the question liberalized the bill, such that anyone over the age of twenty-one years could change religious adherence without any loss of rights. A second bill granted Old Believers the right to conduct “propaganda” and the right of their clergy to use clerical titles. After the State Council amended both laws, the Duma rejected the revised drafts, so both came to naught.55 Nikon, as a member of the State Council, worked hard to block these bills from passing into law, especially the second bill pertaining to the Old Believers. In 1910, he distributed an article titled “Freedom of Conscience Has Its Limits” to members of the State Council before they examined the proposed law. It argued that conscience was an internal law in the hearts of individuals; hence, people had the freedom to believe what they wanted. But the freedom to proselytize was not freedom of conscience; it was freedom of word and deed that violated the freedom of conscience of others. The state, in union with the Church, must distinguish between truth and falsehood in its laws and not expose its flock to heresy and false teachings. Because the Church

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was in union with the state, what hurt the Church, such as the spread of the Old Belief, was also harmful to the state. Ultimately, Nikon paternalistically assumed that the common people were not able to distinguish between truth and falsehood, or to tell the difference between the “saving teachings” of the Church and “pernicious deception.” Thus, in Nikon’s view, the Church and the state should protect the common faithful from the “deceptions” of “false teachers.”56 For much of his career, Nikon emphasized the importance of religious education for children—hence his active involvement in founding schools while a monk at the Lavra and his establishment of the parish school journal God’s Field (Bozhiia niva) in 1902.57 In keeping with his tendency to be generally critical of the intelligentsia for its lack of adherence to the Church, Nikon criticized secular teachers for spreading unbelief and hence ardently opposed all schemes for the Ministry of Education to secularize Church schools.58 He even questioned the benefit of immediately introducing general education. He admitted that such an attitude would expose him to the charge of being an “obscurantist” and an opponent of enlightening the people. But, he retorted, enlightenment and education were not the same thing; learning in and of itself, like freedom, was neither good nor bad, but a tool that could be used for good or bad. More important than learning (uchenie), he argued, was upbringing (vospitanie)—and the former without the latter would more likely result in education serving bad ends. Rather, he argued, it would be better first to spend those financial resources in programs to fight the scourge of alcohol. Further, he feared that universal secular education would fall in the hands of “Masons,” who would use the schools as a means to indoctrinate children, to root out their religious, moral, and patriotic feelings.59 Finally, the nature and content of the printed word since 1905—including the spread of “pornography” and anti-Christian teachings, from spiritualism to materialism—particularly alarmed Nikon. What most disturbed him was that, in his words, “Jewish newspapers” totally dominated the press. Most of these papers, he argued, were enemies of the Church and sought any pretext to attack it, spread scandal about it, and circulate “false teachings,” of which he cited numerous examples. Such publications, ranging from popular brochures to books claiming to be scientific, were “poisoning” both the common people and the intelligentsia. In an article in 1913, he mentioned how lawmakers were discussing a new law about the press. Citing the harmful effect of the press, he declared that “our censorship [i.e., before 1905] was good! And it [still] would be good to keep watch over the press!” But this was clearly not the direction the government was taking. In response, Nikon questioned whether “we all still believe as though the government is in union with the Church. Is it so?”60 Nikon’s allegations about the “Jewish newspapers” echoed the anti-Semitism that had become widespread in Russia at the time. Anti-Semitism does not appear

266 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution in documents or publications connected to Trinity-Sergius in the nineteenth century, but rather appears to be a distinctive feature of the post-1905 period. Moreover, Nikon’s thought reflected the widespread apocalypticism and conspiracy of the day. In a 1911 article titled “Something about the Secret of Lawlessness,” Nikon voiced his belief that the “end of the ages” was approaching and that the Devil was becoming “more daring” in spreading his kingdom of evil, such that “secret societies” hardly even needed to be secret anymore. For those who doubted the existence of these secret societies, he recommended a book about Freemasonry in Germany, which declared that Masons were the enemies of Christianity and monarchy. The author, according to Nikon, speculated where Masonry came from: “from England,” which wanted to spread disorder in the rest of the world for its own gain, or “from the Jews, . . . who have always dreamed of ruling over the world.” Nikon concluded that the Jews were “Satan’s armament in materializing the secret of lawlessness in any form, including the frightful Masonry.”61 Moreover, Nikon was a close associate of Sergei Nilus, a prolific religious author, and, in his capacity as editor, Nikon frequently published Nilus’ writings. No doubt Nilus’ most notorious publication was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which would become so important for Nazi propaganda. Indeed, though the Protocols was first published in 1905 in Tsarskoe Selo, it would be reprinted several times (as part of Nilus’ books) by the printing house of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Nikon even recommended the Protocols to his readers.62 Virulent anti-Semitism was very common in the parties of the right, and also manifested itself in some of the Church’s hierarchy.63 At the same time, Nikon could be critical of those who turned anti-Semitism into a political platform. In one article, he criticized anti-Semites for castigating even figures from the Hebrew Bible and concluded that if nationalists refused to be taught and led by the Church, then it did not need their “cooperation” in the struggle against the enemies of the Church and Orthodox Russia.64 Nikon did not simply equate Russia and Russians with Orthodoxy, but rather he could be as critical of Russians who turned away from Orthodoxy as he was of “others” he viewed as undermining its values. Although Nikon’s writings were very conservative, pro-monarchy, and antirevolutionary, there were limits to Trinity-Sergius’ embrace of the patriotic cause, as seen in the case of jubilee celebrations of historic events. To be sure, the Lavra participated in the commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty in 1913, which included a celebratory visit from the emperor himself— although Archimandrite Toviia remarked in his typical way that Nicholas II spent all of two hours during a visit for which the monastery had prepared for more than five months.65 A case in point was the celebration of the tercentenary of the liberation of the Lavra from the Polish siege during the Time of Troubles in January 1910. One General Glazov, who was a member of an Imperial Commission that planned

politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution 267 jubilee celebrations of important historical events, wrote Archimandrite Toviia in November 1909 with regard to this celebration. Glazov wrote that a meeting of the Imperial Military-Historical Society, with Bishop Nikon in attendance, proposed to create a museum in the Lavra to collect and exhibit weapons from the time as well as paintings depicting such historical moments as the Siege of the Lavra in 1610 and the Battle of Kulikovo Field. The museum would also set up displays along the monastery walls describing the feats of heroic fighters and other highlights of the siege.66 Such a museum was no doubt intended to demonstrate that Russia’s recovery from the seventeenth-century Time of Troubles was the product of the heroic patriotism of those who fought against the foreign forces—which also presented a clear message to contemporaries in 1910. It would also serve to reinforce the association between Orthodoxy and Russian national identity. The Lavra’s Governing Council rejected this proposal, however, precisely because the Military-Historical Society, as a secular institution, was interested in glorifying the heroic deeds of individuals. The Lavra, by contrast, interpreted historical events through spiritual eyes; thus the Time of Troubles was God’s punishment for Russia’s sins, whereas liberation from the siege was the result of the intercession of the true defender of the Lavra, Saint Sergius. “Therefore the Lavra considers it fully sufficient and in accordance with the spiritual side of the matter to celebrate the day, . . . with prayer and thanksgiving to the Lord for the mercy He showed.”67 In addition, the monastery published a booklet that recounted the history of the siege combined with a moral message: not to repeat the sins of one’s forebears.68 Moreover, the council specifically rejected the establishment of the museum because “the Lavra is a place of prayer, not of spectacle,” and a museum, as a secular establishment and place of spectacle, would only distract people from prayer.69 Glazov’s commission evidently conceded to the Lavra on the issue of the museum, and it recommended to the Holy Synod that the monastery mark the date with a spiritual celebration, to which the Synod agreed—although this only seemed to confirm what the monastery was already planning.70 On January 12, 1910, the monastery did indeed have a grand celebration, with two bishops and multiple archimandrites conducting a solemn liturgy in Trinity Cathedral, together with the governor of Moscow and a military deputation of more than 200 officers and soldiers. Nicholas II did not attend, but he sent a congratulatory letter that was read out in the cathedral; Metropolitan Vladimir also did not attend.71 In short, TrinitySergius had an excellent opportunity to assert its historical and patriotic role by emphasizing the event of the siege through its celebration, and through that to address contemporaries with a message about the path to victory over internal divisions and external enemies by means of faithfulness to the Fatherland. The monastery deliberately chose, however, to emphasize the spiritual dimensions over the political ones by the way in which it commemorated the past. It refused to be turned into

268 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution an object scripted in a narrative created by others, instead preferring to be the active agent in determining its meaning. It also resisted Orthodoxy’s appropriation by those who sought to use it to bolster national identity for secular ends.

Pilgrimage after 1905 The impact of the social upheaval and revolutionary turmoil could not but have an impact on religious life in Russia between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Scholars have long argued that early-twentieth-century Russia witnessed a dramatic growth of sectarianism and irreligion, with widespread defections from a “divided, inflexible” Orthodox Church that was unable to “respond to the spiritual needs of its flock.”72 There is much evidence, however, to suggest that the situation was far more complex.73 Far from disappearing, cases of the miraculous continued unabated, and actually incorporated elements of the social dislocation (see chapter 5). Indeed, some of the most visible cases of the entire period, such as the paralyzed Irina Vasil’eva and the demon-possessed boy Petr Stoliarov, occurred during this period (in 1909 and 1910, respectively). As in the earlier period, there are no estimates of the number of pilgrims, but accounts suggest that previous assumptions need to be completely revised. The focus of pilgrimage, as always, was above all the spiritual power contained in the miracle-working relics of Saint Sergius. In a way, the relics themselves had a life of their own—indeed, it was customary for lives of saints to continue a saint’s life postmortem through the stories of how the saint continued to work for those who venerate him or her, that is, through miracles.74 Although the relics were regarded by most faithful Russian Orthodox as among the holiest objects in all of Russia, the saint also had enemies. Indeed, in one bizarre case in 1897, a peasant actually attacked the relics with a blunt instrument, forcing the monastery to ensure that there were always clergy present when the church was open.75 On the more positive side, the early twentieth century witnessed the transfer of the relics from their traditional resting place in Trinity Cathedral to the Dormition Cathedral. Indeed, Saint Sergius had not moved from his resting place for centuries; during the 1892 celebration of the five-hundredth anniversary of his death, the Holy Synod refused the monastery’s request to allow the relics to be taken in procession around the monastery or even to be moved into the center of Trinity Cathedral.76 In 1905, however, Trinity Cathedral was closed for most of the year for restoration work, which necessitated the transfer of the relics to the Dormition Cathedral so that they could be accessible to pilgrims—a decision that was not made lightly. 77 The experiment proved successful, however, and from 1906 onward the monastery transferred the relics into the much larger Dormition Cathedral every year during the summer when the number of pilgrims was greatest, although the first time it

politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution 269 caused Archimandrite Toviia a great deal of anxiety.78 The number of pilgrims had grown so great that Saint Sergius’ traditional resting place, Trinity Cathedral, could no longer accommodate those who came in search of healing.79 In 1916, the relics of Saint Sergius were once again endangered—this time by fire. No one was able to determine exactly what happened, but the investigation concluded that a spark from a candle or lamp must have fallen into the reliquary as the monks were closing up the church for the night, before they closed the cover of the reliquary. The spark then fell among some padding at Saint Sergius’ legs, which began to smolder, and this spread to the coverings and eventually the clothing on the saint’s body. When the church was opened up at 2 a.m. for services, the monks smelled the smoke and stopped the smoldering. Later that day, August 31, the Governing Council made a report to Metropolitan Makarii of Moscow. The report described how the padding and the covers had smoldered, as had the part of the clothing on the saint’s legs and some of the lace with which the relics were wound, and the wax seal on the lace had melted. The ends of the saint’s legs were blackened from the smoldering, but beyond that none of the rest of his body had burned.80 Metropolitan Makarii ordered an official inspection of the relics, which was carried out that evening in the presence of Archbishop Nikon; of Bishop Feodor (Pozdeevskii), the rector of Moscow Theological Academy; and of the members of the Governing Council. The report from the official inspection described in even greater detail the condition of the relics. In addition to describing the burned padding, coverings, and clothing, the report also noted that “the very extremities of the legs above the feet (the relics have no feet, because these had been taken away earlier for churches) were covered with an insignificant amount of soot, while the other parts of the holy relics remained in the previous condition and only the clothing was saturated with smoke.”81 At the end of the inspection procedure, those conducting it replaced the burned clothing and all the padding as well as silk materials that covered the boards on which the relics lay, and the reliquary itself was cleaned and put in order. The monastery believed that the relics had been miraculously preserved, and it conducted special services in honor of Saint Sergius on September 2–3. Subsequent reports left out some of the detail, merely stating that the relics themselves were not harmed. The Governing Council and Metropolitan Makarii reported the whole affair to the Holy Synod, which then instructed the Lavra not to leave any of the padding, “which is usually distributed to pilgrims,” in the reliquary when it was closed for the night, as well as ensure that the relics were watched around the clock.82 The final reports simply concluded that the relics were “unharmed” but said nothing about their incorrupt state; Sergei Volkov, a student at the Theological Academy, remembered that this event became widely known in Sergiev Posad (“and was nearly published in the newspapers”) and that people understood that the relics were

270 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution whole (tselye) and undamaged (nepovrezhdennye).83 If the monastery was greatly concerned when it came simply to moving the relics, the prospect of having them destroyed would have been catastrophic—and such a “near miss” was viewed as the grace of God through Saint Sergius’ own intercession. Although this episode did not appear to affect popular veneration for the relics, Bolshevik antireligious activists would dredge it up only a few years later. Then the questions of whether Saint Sergius’ relics were incorrupt, what that even meant, and how important it was would become highly contested. One new development in the early twentieth century was the phenomenon of group pilgrimages. For the most part, these pilgrimages were organized by schools. Here the monastery actually recorded the number of pilgrims. Such school-group pilgrimages evidently began at the beginning of the century, and the monastery initially received only a handful of such visits;84 during 1903 and 1904, the number of children averaged 400 to 500. Schools, however, dramatically increased such pilgrimages after the 1905 Revolution, in part no doubt precisely to counter the moral chaos unleashed by the Revolution. Although such pilgrimages could be directed toward any local monastery, clearly Trinity-Sergius was the most desirable destination for such pilgrimages in central Russia. The Lavra itself noted that the number of children rose to more than 3,300 in 1907 and increased to more than 4,100 in 1908; in the first half of 1909, the number had already equaled that of the entire previous year.85 The monastery evidently became much more accommodating than it had been initially when such groups started to come;86 as it noted, “the community greets all of these pilgrims paternally, feeds them with food from the brothers’ table” rather than from the food offered to poor pilgrims (i.e., better food), and houses those who wish to stay the night—all free of charge.87 Thus for the first half of 1909, the monastery had fed 4,725 children together with their chaperones, and provided room for “as many as wanted” (about half, the rest presumably coming only for day trips).88 In 1910, the Holy Synod sought to officially encourage—but also gain greater central control over—such pilgrimages, which it viewed as cultivating religious feelings and love for the Orthodox Church and its holy places, as well as strengthening patriotism and faithfulness to the monarchy and the Fatherland.89 The number did indeed skyrocket in subsequent years, and in 1912 the Lavra received nearly 13,000 children and, together with their chaperones, a total of 14,450 people on such school-organized pilgrimages. Indeed, the monastery received hundreds of such requests every year, and it obliged by offering free food and shelter for each group.90 Moreover, the Lavra received visits not only from Moscow-area school groups but also from seminaries as far away as Orenburg and Volhynia, which often wrote after the trip to express their gratitude for the Lavra’s hospitality.91 By the spring of 1914, these visits reached such a peak that Toviia appeared simply overwhelmed by their

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number. “There’s nowhere to hide [devat’ nekuda] from these educational institutions,” which come by rail “from all ends of Russia,” he wrote to Kronid.92 Only the outbreak of World War I forced Trinity-Sergius to scale back its offer of food and cease offering accommodations, because the monastery also had to care for war refugees and wounded soldiers—but even then, group pilgrimages still continued to come.93 Thus Trinity-Sergius sought to support such school pilgrimages, at considerable expense to itself, in the hopes of having a beneficial impact on the children; but at the same time, it struggled to accommodate such large numbers. The impact that school-organized pilgrimages did have on the children who came is, of course, harder to measure. Although promoted by the Holy Synod, monastery authorities were more skeptical about them. Archimandrite Toviia hesitated to call these school children “true” pilgrims, because they came not out of their own desire but following a custom established in their schools. Nevertheless, he hoped that God would work a positive outcome—as he noted, even an unintended visit to a doctor can result in receiving a cure.94 The monastery also noted cases of “very undisciplined” children causing trouble with their pranks.95 Two firsthand accounts of such school-organized pilgrimages suggest that they could indeed have a very powerful impact. The two accounts are very different in their nature; one was written by a young woman, Ekaterina Il’inskaia, who graduated from a girls’ school in 1902, and the other is a recollection of a visit in 1915 by Mikhail Makarov written much later in life.96 Despite the differences in the nature of Il’inskaia’s and Makarov’s accounts, what they describe is remarkably similar. The journey for both began with a train ride departing from Moscow; for schoolchildren, the very act of the travel itself was no doubt an exciting adventure. Makarov’s group, like traditional pilgrims, stopped off at the Khot’kov Convent to venerate Saint Sergius’ parents and spent the night nearby, and it continued the pilgrimage on foot from there to Trinity-Sergius. Il’inskaia noted with regret that her group broke with the “holy custom” that had become an obligatory part of the pilgrimage (at least before the introduction of the railroad) and did not stop in Khot’kov.97 Upon arriving at the Lavra itself, the groups went first to Trinity Cathedral to venerate and pray before the relics of Saint Sergius. Both Il’inskaia and Makarov noted that they could not really remember what they prayed about, but they were overwhelmed by the feeling of being in the presence of the saint; as Makarov said, he felt an “inexpressible openness of the soul” when standing before the relics. Il’inskaia also felt confident that the saint heard their prayers and carried them to the throne of God.98 After venerating the relics of the saint, the groups then visited a similar series of holy sites. First, they were conducted on a tour of the Lavra’s rich sacristy, and the articles that left the deepest impression were Saint Sergius’ original vestments, wooden chalice, and liturgical vessels—all of which reminded visitors of the simplicity and

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isolation of the monastery in Saint Sergius’ time. After being served lunch in the brothers’ refectory, Il’inskaia’s group went to pay their respects before the tombs of Metropolitan Filaret and Metropolitan Innokentii. Both groups, after touring the Lavra, visited Gethsemane Skete, namely the Chernigov Caves division, where they venerated the miracle-working Chernigov Icon of the Mother of God and, in the case of Il’inskaia’s group, also received a tour of the Caves themselves. A final part of the tour was a visit to Bethany, where the notable attractions were the unusual altar of the Church of the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor, as well as Saint Sergius’ original wooden coffin. Both accounts also mentioned the deep impression left by the natural beauty of the area surrounding Sergiev Posad, as well as the element of purchasing various holy objects and souvenirs from the visit. Indeed, Makarov, like Vanya in Shmelev’s Pilgrimage, noted that a highlight of an earlier visit as a little boy with his parents was the purchase of toys in Sergiev Posad—toys that also served as reminders of the Lavra.99 In short, despite Toviia’s skepticism about school-group pilgrimages, these accounts demonstrate that such pilgrimages could leave a deep and positive impression that would no doubt attract such children to return to the monastery later in life as adults—or, in the case of Makarov, serve as a memory of a world that had disappeared, destroyed by revolution. In addition to school groups making pilgrimages to Trinity-Sergius, there were other visiting groups—some of a more political nature. In May 1907, 2,000 participants in a Monarchist Congress in Moscow made a group pilgrimage to the Lavra. Metropolitan Vladimir of Moscow gave the Lavra permission to receive them with a special ceremony and show them hospitality. Although some 2,000 monarchists came, the monastery explained that it could only host 500 of them in the brothers’ refectory, and that the rest would have to dine at the pilgrims’ hostel.100 Indeed, in private correspondence Prior Archimandrite Toviia did not appear to welcome this event (as we should have expected if the monastery was as supportive of monarchist groups, as usually alleged), but he was mostly concerned with how to feed and shelter such a large group.101 Evidently such pilgrimages by members of political parties also continued periodically.102 Aside from group pilgrimages, Trinity-Sergius continued to receive a great number of more traditional pilgrims as well. The 1905 Revolution certainly had a negative effect on pilgrimage during the turmoil itself. Toviia observed both in August 1905 (for the Feast of the Dormition) and during Great Lent in March 1906 that there were still “many pilgrims.”103 The decline became more noticeable thereafter; by the summer—the time when the flow of pilgrims was usually the greatest—Toviia noted that there were fewer pilgrims than in the past. The situation continued into the following year, for in February 1907 he commented again that there were fewer pilgrims.104 By the spring of 1907, however, the situation began to change; Toviia wrote that during the first week of Great Lent there were many pilgrims—more than

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in previous years, although the remaining weeks were “as usual.” Similarly, for Pascha (Easter), Toviia noted that there were more pilgrims than in the previous year.105 For the next few years, Toviia’s letters depict a situation in which pilgrimage had returned to pre-1905 levels; by late 1908, he stated that the number of pilgrims was “substantially much greater” than in previous years, and for several years thereafter he continued to observe that there were “many,” “enough,” or “sufficiently many” pilgrims.106 He observed a significant increase again in the spring of 1911: “Pilgrims, chiefly of the simple narod, were much more by comparison with the previous years, and the greater part went to Confession, which gives hope for turning the narod to God—by means of repentance.”107 A year later, not only the common folk were coming but also “the pious from Petersburg” and more prominent people, including high-ranking bureaucrats from the Holy Synod such as Vladimir Sabler.108 Finally, by 1914 Toviia again observed an upsurge of pilgrimage that, he wrote, surpassed previous years. The crown of the festal cycle for him, he wrote to Kronid after the Feast of the Holy Trinity, “was to see the extraordinary flow of Orthodox folk to the Lavra, who desire to venerate the holy relics of Saint Sergius and see the grandeur of the church services. Overall this year’s feast, the flow of people was extraordinary”—something that he noted during the whole year.109 If Toviia’s estimates can be relied upon, pilgrimage declined in 1905–7, but after the revolutionary turmoil ended in mid-1907 this decline was reversed. In subsequent years, pilgrimage returned to or surpassed pre-1905 levels, reaching new peaks in 1911–12 and again in 1914 before the outbreak of war—which runs counter to historians’ long-held assumptions that Orthodoxy was in decline in the last years of the old regime. Although monastery authorities like Toviia might look upon group pilgrimages with some ambivalence, they enthusiastically embraced the great flow of ordinary pilgrims as a vindication of Orthodoxy and their faith in Saint Sergius. Thus, on the eve of World War I, pilgrimage to Trinity-Sergius evidently reached a new peak. Although the continual rise in pilgrimage starting in the nineteenth century was only temporarily interrupted by the revolutionary years of 1905–7, the monastery experienced one dramatic shift: a drop in income from the pilgrims. The continual and dramatic rise of pilgrimage in the half century before 1905 had a direct correlation in the increase in income, particularly in connection with those items that pilgrims purchased, such as candles, prosphora, and other items and donations. With the substantial drop in pilgrimage during the Revolution, income also inevitably fell, as Toviia observed in February 1907.110 Later in the year, the number of pilgrims began to pick up, but income continued to decline. In late 1908, Toviia commented on the striking disconnect between the great flow of people and the ebb in the level of income.111

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By 1900, the church income (candles, prosphora, images, etc.) was more than 270,000 rubles, with candle sales reaching nearly 97,000 rubles.112 The total income (including the monastery income, which included rental and other property income) peaked in the years before 1905 at about 490,000 rubles but dropped by 12 percent to 432,170 rubles in 1905—with most of the losses affecting the church income, for the monastery income in fact continued to climb. The monastery blamed this decline (which was not unique to it, but also affected all monasteries) on the “intensified propaganda of socialism, atheism, and revolution.”113 In subsequent years, the total income level partially recovered.114 Church income, however, had declined by 30 percent; although it recovered from the immediate 1905 period, it was still significantly below the level before 1905.115 Most tellingly, candle sales in 1910 were 30 percent less than they were a decade earlier.116 Toviia’s observations indicate that the level of pilgrimage had not declined accordingly, but rather that the level of pilgrimage and the level of income were no longer correlated. Toviia himself struggled to explain this phenomenon—and his conclusion was that times had grown more difficult and that the people had become impoverished.117 In short, contrary to the assumptions of some observers at the time and historians since, the evidence from Trinity-Sergius demonstrates that, whatever disaffections there were with the Church, commitment to Orthodoxy remained high in early-twentieth-century Russia. Although the chaos of the 1905 Revolution did directly affect the level of pilgrimage during the revolutionary years, by the end of 1907 the situation began to return to normal and pilgrimage continued to increase thereafter, up to the very eve of World War I. Although this included ever-increasing numbers of group pilgrimages—reaching 15,000 people by 1912—this was still only a small percentage of the total number of pilgrims who came every year. Thus, although Nikon certainly observed developments in Russian society that greatly disturbed him and indicated substantial movements contrary to Orthodoxy, Archimandrite Toviia was comforted (if at times overwhelmed) by the throngs of pilgrims flowing into the Lavra between the Revolution of 1905 and World War I.

War and Revolution, 1914–17 The period from the beginning of World War I in 1914 to the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 was one of unprecedented challenges for Trinity-Sergius. The Lavra responded to the war patriotically, both in its publications and in its service to victims of the war. But the period in 1917 between the February Revolution and October Revolution found the monastery confronting conflicts with the new authorities as well as local inhabitants, and within its own brotherhood.

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The Great War The outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914 had a devastating impact on Russia, steadily eroding social and political stability. The Orthodox Church—like its European peers—responded with patriotism and prayer for the troops. Initially, news from the front dominated the ecclesiastical press, but by 1915 there was little talk of the war in most Church periodicals. Rather, it was the scandals involving Rasputin and his meddling in Church affairs—reaching to appointments and dismissals of bishops and chief procurators—that consumed Church publicists. The scandals eroded respect for the Holy Synod, which seemed powerless to prevent the unwanted interference. At the same time, the Church actively supported the war effort, from raising donations to constructing and supporting hospitals for wounded soldiers.118 Monasteries, like the rest of Russian society, were dramatically affected by the war. The war resulted in fewer pilgrims, which in turn hurt monasteries economically. Particular monasteries were also affected in unique ways; most dramatically, entire monastic communities in the western regions were forced to evacuate because they were in occupied territory. Monastics also contributed to the war effort; hieromonks served as pastors in regiments, many monks served in field hospitals, and women’s monasteries were particularly active in serving the war wounded as well as families of soldiers. Moreover, more than 200 monasteries in Russia opened hospitals for wounded soldiers, and many also supported war refugees.119 Trinity Sergius, together with Gethsemane Skete, supported the most war wounded of any monastery. As soon as the war broke out, in July 1914, the Lavra opened an infirmary in its own hospital for 100 wounded soldiers, and the Skete’s hospital accommodated 50 wounded.120 By 1915, the Lavra and the Skete doubled the number of wounded cared for in its infirmaries (to 230 and 70, respectively). All the communities under the Lavra’s jurisdiction took in or supported refugees from the front as well as donated enormous sums of money for the wounded and the war effort (see tables 7.2, 7.3, and 7.4).121 Finally, hieromonks from the Lavra visited the wounded, sang hymns, and conducted discussions (besedy) with them, discussing why Russia was at war, why they must defend their country, and how, even when the Russian army was losing, they must rely upon God. They also discussed issues in the newspapers and distributed Trinity Leaflets to the wounded soldiers.122 Trinity-Sergius came under new leadership in the midst of the war. Upon granting Toviia’s request to retire, the Synod appointed Archimandrite Kronid as prior in the same decree of January 9, 1915.123 Born Konstantin Liubimov on May 13, 1859, Kronid was the son of a poor sacristan in the Volokolamsk District of Moscow Province; he studied at the Volokolamsk elementary church school; but instead

276 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution table 7.2. Infirmaries of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and Gethsemane Skete, 1915–16 Trinity-Sergius in 1915 Infirmary with 230 beds Number of wounded: 1,511 Number of days spent by wounded in infirmary: 43,919 Amount spent on wounded: 32,165 rubles

Trinity-Sergius in 1916

Gethsemane Skete in 1915

Gethsemane Skete in 1916

Infirmary with 230 beds Number of wounded: 1,481 Number of days spent by wounded in infirmary: 50,274 Amount spent on wounded: 32,335 rubles

Infirmary with 70 beds Number of wounded: 700 Number of days spent by wounded in infirmary: 8,200 Amount spent on wounded: 5,000 rubles

Infirmary with 70 beds Number of wounded: 388 Number of days spent by wounded in infirmary: 10,734 Amount spent on wounded: 10,000 rubles

Source: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18469, l. 407, and d. 18470, l. 38.

of completing his seminary education, he entered Trinity Sergius Lavra in 1877. In 1883, he officially became a novice and the cell attendant of the prior, Archimandrite Leonid. He took monastic vows as Kronid in March 1888, and the following year was ordained to the diaconate. In 1892, he was ordained to the priesthood and appointed supervisor of the Lavra’s lithography and photography workshops; two years later, he became the supervisor of the iconography school on the grounds of the Lavra. He received special commendation from the Lavra’s Governing Council for his efforts in the school, “which has changed completely for the better” morally and acatable 7.3. Amounts Spent by the Monasteries on Refugees and Donated in Support of War Needs, 1915 Monastery and Type of Aid Trinity-Sergius Number of refugees supported Amount spent on refugees Amount donated to war needs Gethsemane Skete Number of refugees supported Amount spent on refugees Amount donated to war needs Bethany Monastery Number of refugees supported Amount spent on refugees Amount donated to war needs Others—Amount donated to war needs Makhrishchskii Coenobium Paraclete Hermitage Zosimova Hermitage

Amount 500 (provisions only) 5,000 rubles 25,000 rubles 168 2,000 rubles 15,000 rubles 9 900 rubles 1,000 rubles 5,000 rubles 1,000 rubles 1,000 rubles 2,000 rubles

Source: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18469, l. 407, and d. 18470, l. 38.

politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution 277 table 7.4. Amounts Spent by Trinity-Sergius and Gethsemane on Refugees and Donated in Support of War Needs, 1916 Monastery and Type of Aid Trinity-Sergius Number of refugees supported Amount spent on refugees Amount donated to war needs Gethsemane Skete Number of refugees supported Amount spent on refugees

Amount 500 5,500 rubles 6,642 rubles 140 18,000 rubles

Source: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18469, l. 407, and d. 18470, l. 38.

demically. Finally, in 1902, the Lavra’s council appointed him assistant to the treasurer, Archimandrite Nikon, and a member of the Governing Council.124 The Lavra’s council appointed Kronid as the steward of the Trinity-Sergius compound (podvor’e) in Saint Petersburg in January 1905. The compound was located on the Fontanka River near Nevskii Prospect.125 Kronid was extremely active in restoring the compound, which had been seriously neglected in previous years. Within the first year Kronid, by his own labor and energy, had renovated the entire compound (including the buildings it rented out—its main source of income) and engaged in new construction projects. In May 1908, he was elevated to the status of archimandrite, not only for improving the compound but also for establishing a proper order for liturgical services, as well as for his daily sermons in church and regular extraliturgical homilies that attracted large numbers of faithful even on weekdays. Among those upon whom Kronid had a decisive spiritual effect was Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, who lived in the palace that neighbored the compound.126 The Synod appointed Kronid prior both because he had proved himself capable in economic and administrative matters and because he was well known as a preacher in Saint Petersburg high society. One observer noted that he had great skill in relating to the laity and pilgrims from his experience in Saint Petersburg, but that he was “far from the brothers,” who blamed him for unnecessary lordliness.127 Despite the war, or even perhaps because of it, many pilgrims continued to come to Trinity-Sergius; indeed, it received more than 250,000 pilgrims in 1915. Kronid instructed these pilgrims who came to the Lavra through sermons and discussions. One announcement informed pilgrims that such discussions on themes connected to the particular season of the Church calendar would come after the evening Vigil, “following the example of previous years.”128 Many no doubt came to the monastery to pray before setting off for war, or for their sons and husbands who were at the front.

278 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution Trinity-Sergius not only supported the wounded and refugees but also addressed the war in its publications. Archbishop Nikon’s articles in Trinity Word responded to the outbreak of the war, not with triumphalist calls for victory over the enemy but with a prophetic message of repentance: “Every thought, every heart of the Russian people is now concentrated on that great trial, which it pleased the Lord to grant us in order to bring us to reason, to cleanse us from all the spiritual impurities that have permeated the spiritual and moral atmosphere of our life. In recent years, we have lived as though surrounded by some sort of venomous fog.” It was to clear away this fog, Nikon concluded, that God had sent this terrible war.129 He further argued that Russia was not the instigator of the war and was not pursuing nationalistic aims (unlike, in his view, the Germans) but had entered the war to defend Orthodoxy: “Our victory is a victory of love in the defense of Orthodoxy, in defense of our brethren by blood [i.e., the Serbs], in defense of our native land.”130 In 1915, Nikon noted the throngs of pilgrims to his beloved Trinity-Sergius Lavra and, responding to such expressions of popular piety, believed that the war was indeed awakening people from their “hypnosis” and that they were repenting and returning to the Church.131 By 1916, however, he had grown much more pessimistic: “Our once ‘holy’ but now sinful Rus’ has sinned much before God.”132 The war, he wrote, was bringing far more evil than good results; he pointed to disturbing phenomena such as the spread of greed as people tried to profit from the war. “They have all gone crazy,” he wrote. He feared for the future, but he also hoped that it was still possible for Russia to repent.133 In successive articles, Nikon drew his attention to the plight and sacrifice of all the mothers, wives, and sisters of those soldiers who were fighting at the front, and he called upon the people to do everything they could at home for all who were suffering in the war, from wounded soldiers returning from the front to orphaned children or elderly parents who had lost their fathers or sons.134 He also called upon the “toilers of the soil” to help out in any way they could the families that had sons or fathers in the war.135 Trinity Word also printed a message from the “Trinity Monks” to the soldiers at the front, reminding them of their forebears who had defended the homeland and the faith and calling them to stand for the truth. The message mentioned the many cruelties that the enemies had allegedly committed, and it called upon the soldiers not to respond in kind, not to harm either wounded soldiers or civilians in occupied territories. Finally, the message stated that it was a great “happiness” to give one’s life for the faith, the tsar, and the native land.136 Toviia reflected candidly in private correspondence to Kronid, however, that on rereading the message, he felt that such missives might be persuasive for those who were not severely wounded or who had not been left orphaned by the war; but for those who had, such simple words would hardly be comforting.137

politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution 279 Throughout 1915 and 1916, the war continued to figure prominently in Nikon’s Diaries, in contrast to the general ecclesiastical press. By 1915, he became overtly hostile toward the Germans. This hostility was equally directed to those of foreign faiths in Russia, especially sectarians such as Stundists and Baptists.138 Indeed, the government regarded sectarians as potential sympathizers with the enemy, and, like many others of German descent, it subjected them to repression and even relocation.139 Archbishop Nikon held that these sectarians, when they proselytized among Russians and converted them, worked to “re-form” the Russian people in a German spirit. Therefore the spread of these sects threatened not only the salvation of individual Russians but also the state itself. Nikon clearly hoped that the wartime suspicion of sectarians would finally end the push for their greater rights and demonstrate that they had a pernicious influence not only during wartime but all the time.140 Furthermore, Nikon increasingly portrayed the conflict as a religious war, an apocalyptic event: “In essence, the present war is a war of Satan against Christ, . . . a war of the forerunners of the Antichrist against the servants of Christ.”141 He interpreted the war as a battle to defend Orthodoxy. Nikon wrote less on directly internal political issues during the war years. At the end of 1915, he published an article, “The Right and the Left,” that advanced a final apocalyptic view of politics in Russia in the waning years of the monarchy. The article began by stating that the separation of political parties into “right” and “left” reminded him of the passage regarding the Last Judgment in the Gospel of Matthew, when Christ sits on his throne and gathers all the nations before him, “and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left” (Matt. 25:33). The right and the left, he argued, have “completely contradictory worldviews.” For the right, the main principles were those of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality.” The right, he continued, thought first of duty; the left, of “rights.” The right relied on Christian moral principles; the left, on juridical concepts. The right thought first of society; the left, of the individual. The left, as Nikon observed it, was growing stronger, in particular because it controlled the press and thereby influenced public opinion. The growing dominance of the left was “depriving Russia of God’s blessing.”142 In Nikon’s mind, as in those of many contemporaries, the lines that divided Russian society were firmly drawn and the possibilities of compromise were rapidly receding. Although Archbishop Nikon and the authorities of Trinity-Sergius supported the war effort as a patriotic duty, not all monks supported the war. One hieromonk, Smaragd, who served in the Riga border regiment as chaplain, ran into trouble in late 1916 for preaching “mutinous” sermons. According to eyewitnesses, Smaragd declared that “this bloody war” could have been avoided, and that it was only the result of the arrogance of emperors. He prophetically warned that the war would lead to rebellion and possibly even revolution within Russia, and that the authorities might send the soldiers (to whom he was preaching) to suppress the upheaval. He

280 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution told the soldiers, “You should understand whom you will be suppressing, and you may refuse, that is, our government might make a mistake.”143 The major-general of the regiment reported these incidents to the Lavra’s authorities, and requested not only that Hieromonk Smaragd be removed from his post and returned to the Lavra but also, because the sermons had undermined the discipline of the troops, that Smaragd be punished. When the authorities of the Lavra asked Smaragd to explain his actions, he did not deny their character but blamed them on a nervous disorder that had appeared even before his military service but had been exacerbated by his wartime experiences. The Governing Council allowed him to take leave to recover his health, but it felt that he might be a pernicious influence on the Lavra and sent him to the isolated Paraclete Hermitage, where he would be under the strict supervision of the hermitage’s abbot.144 The issue that most concerned Church leaders in 1915–16 was the scandal surrounding Grigorii Rasputin. Indeed, the popular—though incorrect—image of Rasputin as a monk or starets was particularly disturbing for monastic leaders. It is difficult to determine how Trinity-Sergius and Archbishop Nikon regarded the Rasputinshchina. Nikon himself refrained from discussing these issues in print; in several articles, he urged other clergymen (in particular, parish priests) not to engage publicly in the criticism of the Church authorities that was already so widespread in the press.145 Behind the scenes, however, he worked to oppose the corrupting influence of Rasputin on the Church, which evidently led to his “retirement” from the Synod in July 1916. That such a staunch supporter of the monarchy felt forced to defend the Church against encroachments of Rasputin, the royal family, and the state demonstrates the degree of tension that existed between Church and state by 1917.146 Ironically, Nikon’s apocalypticism and Hieromonk Smaragd’s criticism of the war reflected the deep crisis in the final years of the empire. Both those on the right and those on the left, within the Church as in society, were increasingly critical of the government. These two tendencies joined in the Rasputin scandals, which compromised both the state and the Church, but also deepened the gap between the Church and the monarchy. Even the traditional bastions of support for the monarchy —monasteries and hierarchs such as Archbishop Nikon—would not come to the monarchy’s support in its final hour.

The February Revolution By the end of 1916, lack of confidence in the Russian government was widespread, and liberals had succeeded in turning public opinion against the monarchy. World War I had left the economy in a shambles, and spiraling inflation together with the breakdown of supplies in the capital sparked a wave of demonstrations and strikes

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in early 1917. When the soldiers in Petrograd refused to put down the demonstrations and instead sided with the demonstrators, the end of the monarchy was inevitable. On March 2, 1917, Nicholas II abdicated the throne not only for himself but also for his son, passing the crown to his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail, who refused it. The leaders of the Duma formed a Provisional Government to oversee the country until a Constituent Assembly based on universal suffrage could be convened. As the Provisional Government deferred convoking the Constituent Assembly, a competing power—local soviets of workers, soldiers, and peasant deputies—cropped up throughout Russia and took much of the real power in its hands. The result was “dual power”; the local soviets held the actual power but refused to exercise it, whereas the Provisional Government claimed to have power but was incapable of wielding it. When the Provisional Government supported Russia’s participation in an increasingly unpopular war and refused to resolve such fundamental issues as the land question, the populace grew increasingly radical. At the end of October, the Bolshevik Party seized power with relatively little opposition. During the turmoil of February 1917, the Holy Synod refused to condemn the revolutionary movement or to come to the defense of the monarchy. After Nicholas’ abdication, the Church exuded a spirit of liberalism. Diocesan congresses of clergy and laity expressed liberal ideas, and in many cases deposed bishops deemed to be Rasputin’s protégés. By the summer, however, the Church felt assailed from both “above” and “below”; the Provisional Government finally attacked Church prerogatives (above all by secularizing parish schools), while many parishes, with newfound authority, cast out unpopular priests. As a result, even the parish clergy became more conservative.147 Archbishop Nikon—who for so many years had declared that as long as Russia was Orthodox, there would be autocracy—met the tsar’s abdication with remarkable equanimity: “We will submit under the strong hand of the King of Heaven! It is obvious that it is His will.” Further, he called upon Russia to end the strife and heal the wounds that had resulted from the tearing apart of Russian society: “Let us forget all the disagreement, all the arguments and dissention; let us unite with the hearts of all, as one person.”148 Although the Church did not oppose the new regime, 1917 proved a difficult year for most monasteries. While revolutionary groups aggressively demanded a second secularization, in many instances peasants simply seized monastery lands. Local authorities were of little assistance as soviets conducted searches of monasteries, confiscated “monarchist” literature, and requisitioned printing houses or provisions reserves.149 The year 1917 was also one of trials for Trinity-Sergius and its communities, which experienced conflicts with the local populace, peasants, its own workers, and the local authorities, along with a virtual schism in its own ranks over political questions.

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Conflict with the Revolutionary Authorities As soon as the monarchy collapsed, Trinity-Sergius appeared threatened by the revolutionary uncertainties. Evidently motivated by rumors of the Lavra’s great wealth, at 1 a.m. on the night of March 9–10, 1917, officers with fifty soldiers from the Twenty-Ninth Reserve Infantry Regiment assumed positions at the entrances of all the Lavra’s buildings and the corridors of the prior’s cells. Ten officers entered the prior’s cells and demanded that Archimandrite Kronid show them all the money and gold they had. Kronid had the treasurer show them the Lavra’s bonds as well as what little money they had in cash. The officers also interrogated treasurer Hegumen Iona about his origins, because they evidently knew that he had a German last name; anti-German attitudes were widespread in Russia during World War I.150 A few days later, Kronid wrote a very anxious letter to Metropolitan Makarii of Moscow: “The Lord be with them, let them search for what does not exist,” he wrote with reference to the gold and money. “But in such conditions there will be searches, and now we are defenseless; it is true that there are guards from the Twenty-Ninth Regiment, but they are subordinate to the Committee of Soviets of workers and they really could seize all of the historical valuables of the sacristy. My God, the Lavra is in such a terribly critical situation, it is without defense, the only hope is on the help and defense of Saint Sergius.” Kronid appealed to Makarii to report to the chief procurator and through him the Provisional Government about protecting the monastery.151 Kronid’s letter to Metropolitan Makarii revealed another threat to the monastery, indeed to Saint Sergius himself. Kronid had evidently heard rumors of certain “meetings” in Sergiev Posad, at which “unbelieving people begin to incite the people that the relics of Saint Sergius need to be examined: whether or not they are real or a forgery of the monks.” At the very moment Kronid was writing the letter, someone came in and informed him that there had been a meeting the previous day and that someone, “most likely some sort of sectarian,” had shouted that they should take the relics of Saint Sergius into the square and burn them. If Kronid was anxious earlier, by the last lines of the letter he was virtually in a panic, believing that only God could defend them now.152 By the end of the month, however, soldiers from the Twenty-Ninth Regiment were stationed at the Lavra to guard it, and the monastery was no longer in immediate danger. As with much else that took place after the February Revolution, these events foreshadowed what was to follow after the October Revolution; though the threat to the relics of Saint Sergius was not actualized in 1917, it would be two years later. Trinity-Sergius was not the only monastery under threat in March 1917, however. On March 20, the commissar in the town of Aleksandrov, together with one worker and one soldier deputy, conducted a search of the entire Makhrishchskii

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Monastery, including the brothers’ cells, cellars, and storehouses. They declared that they were looking for arms and a stock of leather that the monastery was rumored to have. They also demanded the passports of all those living in the monastery and smashed the locks or doors to the cells of brothers who happened to be absent. After the search, the commissar announced that he was requisitioning six of the monastery’s cows. Although the search revealed no great store of arms or leather, he added that he would return later to inspect the monastery’s account books.153 Such searches and requisitionings also foreshadowed events after the October Revolution. The immediate concern of the new revolutionary powers, both the Provisional Government and the local soviets, was to ensure that the loyalty of the populace— and of the Church—was to the new regime and no longer to the tsar. As regards the Church, this implied that, as it commemorated the government in its liturgical prayers, it ceased to commemorate the tsar but instead prayed for the new government. On April 4, the Council of Commissars of the Sergiev Posad Police demanded that the Lavra change its prayer services to correspond to the change in government, and that it read in its churches, after the liturgical services, Nicholas II’s abdication manifesto.154 More confrontation with the new regime followed in April. In March, the chief procurator of the Synod, V. N. L’vov, had removed Metropolitan Makarii as a Rasputinite bishop. Makarii went to Trinity-Sergius at the beginning of April to print, at the Lavra’s printing house, an appeal to other bishops against L’vov. As a result, the local authorities conducted a search of the printing house and the editorial offices of Trinity Leaflets.155 On April 28, 1917, the commissar of Sergiev Posad wrote to the Lavra that a prayer book “completely incompatible with the new order” was “discovered” in the monastery’s bookstore, and he demanded that the prayer book “immediately” be removed from sale, together with a book by Sergei Nilus.156 The local revolutionary authorities regarded the monastery as a “center [ochag] of counterrevolution” that, because of its enormous influence on the people, represented a great threat to “the cause of freedom.”157 Similarly, a group of “Moscow workers” submitted a petition to the chief procurator demanding that Archbishop Nikon and Archimandrite Kronid be expelled from the community as devoted to the “old order,” and they even threatened violence if their demands were not met.158 Further, the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies alleged, in telephone calls to the monastery, that the monastery was distributing monarchist literature to its visitors and that the monks were spreading monarchist ideas, and threatened it if it did not cease. The Lavra’s authorities wrote to the Sergiev Posad Soviet and its commissar, stating that since March 1, the Lavra had ceased giving out any literature that contained any reference to the “monarchist order” and that its monks were not spreading monarchist ideas.159 L’vov evidently visited the Lavra and warned it to stay out of politics.160

284 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution Even more serious was the confiscation of the Lavra’s printing house in May and June 1917. By 1917, the printing house had become a large-scale operation; since its founding in 1894, it had published 1,500 different titles of the Trinity Leaflets (with a total of 200 million copies), 100 brochures collectively titled “Trinity Flowers” (Troitskie tsvetki), another 100 titles of “Popular Talks of the Trinity” (Troitskaia narodnaia beseda), 20,000 copies of the Life of Saint Sergius, and its own journals Trinity Word and Bozhiia niva, in addition to printing various theological journals, such as Theological Herald (Bogoslovskii Vestnik), The Christian (Khristianin), and Popular Orthodox Leaflet (Pravoslavno-narodnyi listok). On May 26, 1917, the Moscow Soviet sent a telegram to place an order for Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus and other works.161 On May 29, Chairman Prokof ’ev of the Publishing Commission of the Moscow Soviet came to the printing house and told them to print, instead of Renan, some religious works of Leo Tolstoy and other Tolstoyans. The director of the print shop, Hieromonk Iraklii, replied that the printing house could not print antiChristian literature (Tolstoy had been excommunicated by the Orthodox Church for his heretical teachings). Prokof ’ev replied that if they refused to print the books of Tolstoy, the Moscow Soviet would requisition the printing house. On June 2, Prokof ’ev, together with the chairman of the Sergiev Posad Soviet, came to Archimandrite Kronid and announced that the Moscow Soviet had ordered the monastery to lease its printing house to the Soviets. When Kronid refused, Prokof ’ev announced that the Soviets were herewith requisitioning the printing house and that henceforth it belonged to the Moscow and Sergiev Posad soviets. After that, the printing house came under the control of the workers and soldiers; no one from the monastery was even allowed to enter the building. On May 30, Bishop Ioasaf (locum tenens of the Moscow Diocese) sent a telegram to the chief procurator of the Holy Synod, asking for defense. The chief procurator replied on June 5 that they should immediately contact the Ministry of Internal Affairs; in turn, the deputy to the minister telephoned the commissar of Moscow Province, A. A. Eiler, to explain that the soviet’s action was impermissible, and he directed Eiler to protect the Lavra from further such infringements. However, when Chief Procurator L’vov came to the Lavra (together with a pilgrimage of the participants of the All-Russian Congress of Clergy and Laity), he struck an agreement with the local soviet about renting the printing house. The monastery was thus forced to rent its printing house to the soviet, on the condition that it would not publish anti-Christian literature, and that the Lavra could continue to publish its own books. Because the soviet did not constitute a juridical entity, and because the notion of “anti-Christian” publications was subject to interpretation, the monastery authorities did not trust the agreement. Indeed, by early July the soviet had exhausted the printing house’s stock of paper (worth 60,000 rubles) and demanded

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that the Lavra pay exorbitant prices to print its own publications, thus making it increasingly difficult for the monastery to use its own printing house.162 On July 6, the Lavra’s authorities reported the matter to newly elected Archbishop Tikhon (Belavin) of Moscow and asked him to take legal action to force the soviet to return the printing house.163 On August 7, Archimandrite Kronid filed a complaint in the local courts;164 and on August 21, the issue of the confiscation of Trinity-Sergius’ printing house, together with those belonging to the Kiev and Pochaev Lavras along with the Moscow and Petrograd Synodal printing houses, came before the National Council of the Russian Orthodox Church (1917–18). The council appealed to the Provisional Government to rectify the situation.165 The monastery, together with Tikhon (now Metropolitan of Moscow), continued to pursue the matter in the courts, but they received no satisfaction before the Bolshevik Revolution made the whole matter moot.166 This episode illustrates the disorder of Russia after the February Revolution. The radicalized soviets were taking what amounted to illegal actions (simply seizing the printing house), which the weak Provisional Government was unable to stop. Thus the situation of “dual power” left the monastery vulnerable.

Schism within the Community Questions about Trinity-Sergius’ relationship with the new regime also threatened to cause a schism within the brotherhood of the Lavra itself. On May 9, when the brothers had gathered to elect candidates for the upcoming monastic Congress, Smaragd, the hieromonk who had preached “mutinous sermons” during the war, gave a speech. He had returned to the Lavra after requesting to be released from his “exile” at the Paraclete Hermitage in March because, under the new government, “all political prisoners were being set free.”167 In his speech, he alleged that the “agitation” to select certain monks as deputies to the Congress “opened our eyes,” that “there still exist in the Lavra supporters of the old order.” He declared that these elections had made it clear “who stands for the old regime and who for the new.” He promised to go himself to Petrograd and report to the Provisional Government and that “we will root out this nest” of the old order. He took down the names of those who sided with him, and walked out of the meeting.168 Even earlier, he held a meeting in which he and his supporters discussed economic and disciplinary questions as well as the rulings of the Lavra’s Governing Council. Afterward, he sent a protest to the bishop, in the name of all the brothers, against the privileges of the elder brothers (e.g., using horses for travel or taking food in their cells instead of in the refectory). The majority of the brothers were greatly disturbed by Smaragd’s actions and sent a statement to the monastery authorities denouncing them:

286 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution In recent times, under the influence of all that it is taking place in Rus’ and of all the talk about freedom, there have appeared signs of an unhealthy tendency in monastic life which contradicts the spirit and basic principles of monasticism. . . . We, the undersigned, are outraged by this arbitrary and unlawful interference by younger brothers in the governing of the community, and we vigorously protest such actions and ask the Spiritual Council to take measures to restrain such self-will, which is characteristic of a worldly spirit and not this holy community, where obedience is the basic principle of monastic life. . . . In view of the extraordinary circumstances of our troubled times (when the spirit of a worldly enmity toward the very idea of monasticism has appeared to such a high degree, and when monks—who are weak in their vows, infected with pride, and forgetful of the vow of renouncing their own will and thoughts—dream of worldly willfulness), we contemplate with dread the possibility of the elimination of monasticism itself in the Orthodox Church.169 The brothers also responded to Smaragd’s threats to report them to the Provisional Government, protesting against his attempt to transform the choice of deputies for the Congress into political elections and to intimidate the younger brothers into electing him and his supporters as deputies in opposition to the Lavra’s authorities. “In our own conscience we are at peace,” they continued, “for, from the first day of the Revolution, we recognized and continue to recognize the Provisional Government as the legal power.” They were afraid, however, that Smaragd’s allegations might arouse suspicion of the monks’ “political reliability” not only among the local population but also in the government itself. The brothers appealed to the Lavra’s Governing Council to defend them and to expel Smaragd and his followers from the monastery.170 Once Smaragd realized that the majority of monks opposed him, he and his supporters retracted their statements and asked forgiveness, which the monastery authorities granted.171

Conflicts with Local Populations Troubles also arose between the monastery and the residents of Sergiev Posad. On March 13, 1917, the commissar of Sergiev Posad wrote to the monastery authorities demanding that the steward, Hegumen Iona (Firguf ), be removed from his post. Iona, after being transferred from Zosimova Hermitage to the Lavra as a result of his conflict with Hegumen German, proceeded to be promoted in the Lavra’s hierarchy. The commissar wrote, “With the aim of calming the population, which is hostile toward the steward of the Lavra Hieromonk Iona, I consider it necessary to

politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution 287 dismiss him from the post immediately and require him with a written pledge not to leave his apartment and to cease any interaction with the laity.”172 Iona evidently opposed “squandering” the monastery’s resources, even if it meant helping the needy inhabitants of Sergiev Posad—unlike the monastery’s responses in 1905, which created goodwill in Sergiev Posad. In one of many such cases, the workers of the printing house wrote to the Lavra at the end of January, for example, stating that there was no buckwheat in town and requesting that the monastery sell some of its own reserve; but the monastery refused.173 The Governing Council discussed the commissar’s memorandum and resolved to replace Iona with Archimandrite Nil, and to remove Iona from the council and oblige him to stay in his cell.174 The commissar wrote back on March 28 that the local population was upset that Iona was still at the Lavra and, because he was unable to attend church services, suggested that he be transferred to Gethsemane Skete. Iona was transferred to the Skete, where he remained under virtual “house arrest” until October, when he was allowed to go to Moscow to serve as priest in a women’s religious community.175 In April 1917, the monastery’s employees formed the Society of Workers and Employees of the Lavra. According to the charter, it was to ameliorate working conditions, to secure all legal demands, to raise the moral and cultural level of its members, to build libraries and subscribe to newspapers, and to discuss political subjects.176 The society made general demands to the monastery authorities for better working conditions, including an eight-hour workday, double pay for overtime, full pay during illness (and treatment at the Lavra’s expense), and so forth, and specific workshops also submitted their own demands for pay raises.177 The Governing Council considered these demands and issued a statement declaring that the workshops of the Lavra existed to serve the needs of the monastic community and were not a capitalist enterprise to make profits; however, wishing to compromise with the workers in the “spirit of Christian love” during difficult times, it agreed to meet the general demands of the workers for better conditions.178 In response to the specific demands by the various workshops for pay raises, it stated that the Lavra’s income at present did not even cover its costs and therefore wage increases were impossible.179 In June, the matter went to the Central Conciliatory Chamber, which sided with the demands of the workers and required the Lavra to give various pay raises to workers in different workshops.180 The Lavra further came into conflict with local peasants, some of whom seized a portion of its lands. In the summer, the peasants of the village of Berezniki, through the local village committee, requested the monastery to rent its Tarbeevskie meadows. The monastery replied in June 1917, refusing because “the Lavra itself has great need to store up hay for horses and cows necessary for the Lavra not only for the brothers, but also for the support of the Lavra’s institutions which are given over to war needs, . . . such as the infirmary, a unit of convalescents, and the Twenty-Ninth

288 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution Infantry Reserves.”181 The district authorities wrote the Lavra and recommended that it find a “peaceful means” of resolving the conflict; a month later, the steward of the monastery, however, reported to the Governing Council that the peasants had simply seized the meadows.182 The monastery then asked the district authorities what kind of “peaceful means” they should use, because the peasants had already occupied the land and mown the meadows. The monastery refused to recognize the supposed “need” of the peasants, because these same peasants had been selling hay at the bazaars in Sergiev Posad.183 Archimandrite Kronid sent a telegram to the chief of police of Aleksandrov, who then wrote to the local chief of police that the peasants must cease their arbitrary action or they would be punished.184 Later in the month, however, the steward further reported that the Berezniki peasants had also mowed for their own use other meadows belonging to the monastery.185 Moreover, the local village committee replied that the peasants had mown the hay in the Lavra’s meadows “with the permission, and indication of the borders, of the Land Committee of the Rogachevskii Provisional Executive Committee,” and this message was sent through the various chiefs of police to Archimandrite Kronid.186 As with the confiscation of the printing house, different agencies of government gave conflicting instructions, but in the end the local authorities—which seemed to have the last word—sided against the monastery. Although this episode indicates conflict between the monastery and the local peasants who seized the land, we do not know how broad was the support among the peasantry for these seizures. Moreover, the peasants seized specific meadows, and it is likely that these meadows had been in the possession of the peasants until they were given to the monastery by the emperor in the late 1850s and over which there had been tensions at that time.187 In short, it was not that all peasants were turning on Church lands, but rather the situation seemed to stem from particular cases of contested ownership. As the Lavra’s justification for its need of the hay indicated, Russia was still at war, and in addition to all the other difficulties the monastery then faced, TrinitySergius still had to deal with the burdens of the war itself. A final conflict erupted in August 1917, when some of the war refugees, who were living in the hotel belonging to the Caves division of Gethsemane Skete, denounced its abbot, Hieromonk Izrail, for expelling them from their living quarters. The Lavra’s authorities called on Izrail to explain. He stated that all the refugees enjoyed free housing with heating, lighting, and firewood, that they shared the same food as the brothers of the Skete, and that the only exception was made for women, who were excluded from the Skete’s bathhouse. However, on June 1, the Sergiev Posad Provisions Committee had transferred the Skete to the rationing system and, at the same time, requisitioned its stores of provisions. The commissar of Sergiev Posad told the Skete that the refugees would receive salaries, apartments, and provisions, so that the Skete

politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution 289 would no longer have to support them—as, indeed, it no longer could. However, Izrail reported, though some refugee families were being cared for in this way by the local authorities, others were not, and therefore the Skete still gave out provisions for these families. Moreover, the Skete had made no move to evict the refugees. Nevertheless, the presence of the refugees was a great burden on the community, in particular because the “continual presence [for more than fifteen months] of such a large number of refugee women serves as a great temptation not only for the brothers of the community, but also for the numerous pilgrims.” Finally, Izrail explained that the particular families that had denounced him (the relatives of a priest, including two seminarian brothers) had begun to live in the Skete’s hotel without permission, had themselves behaved “disgracefully,” and even had relatives in Sergiev Posad with their own homes. That is why he sought to evict them.188 In sum, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, with its communities, greeted the Provisional Government as the legitimate power in March 1917. Indeed, they made every effort to prove their loyalty, even removing from distribution their own literature that might be construed as “monarchist propaganda.” However, the era ushered in by the February Revolution was, for the monastery, not one of newfound freedom but one of unprecedented trials. Although these trials and difficulties did not come from the Provisional Government itself—indeed, as in the case of the deputy minister of internal affairs, the Provisional Government attempted to defend the Lavra; but under the situation of “dual power,” the real power in the country lay not with the Provisional Government but with the local soviets. Moreover, the Provisional Government itself changed in May, with a coalition that moved leftward and became more hostile to the Church. This was clearly evident in the case of Trinity-Sergius. However, it was not only a question of power residing in the locality versus the center; indeed, the story of Trinity-Sergius reveals the extent to which chaos reigned in Russia in 1917. The peasants of the village of Berezniki mowed the meadows owned by the Lavra and took the hay for their own uses; the monastery appealed to the police chief of Aleksandrov, who took the monastery’s side and threatened the peasants with punishment—only to be told that the local land committee had “authorized” the peasants’ seizure of the meadows. A picture emerges in which not even local authorities were in complete control, but indeed were often in conflict with one another. The monastery itself responded to this series of crises in a variety of ways. When the crisis concerned the political “reliability” of the monastery, it made every effort to demonstrate its loyalty. Similarly, the monastery authorities were immediately compliant with the demands of the local inhabitants, together with the commissar, to remove Iona from his post as steward. When it came to meeting the demands of the Lavra’s own employees, the monastery tried to compromise, attempting to satisfy most of their demands for better working conditions but refusing to give them

290 politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution pay raises. But when it came to others seizing what belonged to the monastery—in the cases of both the printing house and the meadows—the Lavra was uncompromising, and it went to great lengths to get back what had been taken from it, even if its efforts were not successful.

Conclusions In 1930, a Soviet author wrote that “the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, along with the Pochaev Lavra—especially in the last ten years before the October Revolution—was one of the most visible centers of extreme black-hundredist and monarchist propaganda.”189 This position became a fundamental justification for the Bolshevik assault on monasteries. Because monasticism experienced a remarkable flowering in late Imperial Russia, certain monastic communities, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra foremost among them, indeed enjoyed significant influence on public opinion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there had been a great emphasis on monasticism’s withdrawal from involvement in worldly affairs. Once the revolutionary turmoil broke out after the 1905 Revolution, monasteries, together with all other levels of society, entered the fray. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra was led in this regard by Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), who, paradoxically, was one of the most ardent defenders of the contemplative withdrawal of monasticism from the world. During the 1905 Revolution, monasteries were clearly conservative, defending the regime and condemning the revolutionary movement—and not without reason. The revolutionary movement, aside from being dominated by avowed atheists and materialists, directly threatened monasteries, advocating a second secularization of monastery property. Moreover, monasteries had witnessed the negative consequences of revolutionary turmoil in direct ways, ranging from the impact of disorders and increased lawlessness to the detrimental effect that strikes had on local populations (which, as a result, the monastery needed to support). The main thrust of Trinity-Sergius’ publications, particularly those of Archbishop Nikon, were not, however, simplistic condemnations of the left. Rather, in the manner of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, Nikon called on all Russians to repent and return to the true path of Orthodox Christianity. Although Trinity-Sergius certainly opposed revolution, it was hardly a “visible center” of black-hundredist propaganda. Nevertheless, the contradictions of the Duma monarchy after 1905, together with the failures and scandals surrounding the government and the monarchy itself, drove some monastics such as Hieromonk Smaragd to criticize the government outright, and engendered in conservatives such as Nikon a mood of apocalypticism. Nikon’s apocalyptic vision predicted that the end was near. When it came in the form of the Provisional Government, however, it initially promised even greater freedom

politics: monasticism on the eve of revolution

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for the Church than the monarchy had provided—which meddled so directly in the affairs of the Church in its last few years and with such disastrous consequences. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the monks of Trinity-Sergius, rather than defending the monarchy, quickly accepted the legitimacy of the Provisional Government. The promise of greater freedom for the Church, however, was rapidly shown to be false, because the Provisional Government proved powerless to defend Trinity-Sergius against the encroachments of more hostile local authorities and peasants. The monastery soon found itself besieged, as even local inhabitants and its own employees seemed to turn against it; it attempted to compromise in certain domains, at the same time trying to defend its property against illegitimate seizures. Moreover, it was not only threatened by opponents from without; the political divisions affecting society also threatened to divide the brotherhood itself. The very situation of Trinity-Sergius in the spring and summer of 1917 demonstrated the inherent weaknesses of the Provisional Government and the sheer chaos of the contending voices of authority. Thus, the Revolution of 1905 proved temporarily disruptive but did not necessarily lead to widespread anticlerical attitudes directed against the monasteries or to disaffection from the Orthodox Church, as the continued upsurge of pilgrimage between 1907 and 1914 demonstrates. The February Revolution, though initially promising for the Church, quickly moved in a direction that threatened much greater disruption and instability. There were striking ways in which anticlerical actions, along with the sheer chaos and unpredictability, of the period between February and October 1917 anticipated what came after the October Revolution. At the same time, the tensions that appeared to exist between the monastery and the community, such as the peasants seizing some of the monastery’s meadows or locals demanding the exposure of the relics of Saint Sergius, disappeared after October 1917, when local inhabitants defended the monastery against the threat of revolutionaries who were outsiders.

8 Revolution: Trinity-Sergius and the Bolsheviks, 1917–1921 When Archimandrite Kronid (Liubimov) became prior of the TrinitySergius Lavra in 1915, he faced immense challenges heading the monastery in the midst of World War I. Those challenges, however, paled by comparison with those that followed the February Revolution, when the monastery was jeopardized by schism from within and from radical local authorities threatening to oust Kronid as a representative of the “old order,” and later confiscating the monastery’s printing house. In many ways, the trials the monastery faced in 1917 foreshadowed what would come after the Bolshevik Revolution. Although Kronid may not have been popular among the brothers before the Revolution because of his “lordliness,” after the Bolshevik Revolution he fought in every way he could to protect the brotherhood, the precious relics of Saint Sergius, and the monastery itself with its irreplaceable historical and artistic treasures. The fight came in stages, as the new regime stripped the monastery of its property, then assaulted the relics of Saint Sergius, later expelled the monks and closed the monastery, and ultimately closed its churches for use by local believers. With much the same fury as in the French Revolution, the new regime would not tolerate the existence of a monastery like Trinity-Sergius in the new world it was trying to construct. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 brought to power a group of revolutionaries who were guided by an adapted Marxist ideology designed to reshape the social and political face of Russia and ultimately the world. Their ideology represented a fundamental break with the culture and values that had dominated Russia for centuries, and this inevitably led to a “clash of civilizations” that was protracted and often punctuated by violence. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra, which had come to symbolize for 292

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 293 believers the essence of Orthodox Russian civilization, inevitably became a focal point in the battle for the hearts and minds of ordinary Russians. The hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church struggled to preserve the monastery, while intellectuals such as theologian Pavel Florenskii sought to turn it into a center for a renaissance of Russian culture. Antireligious activists of the Bolshevik Party aimed, through successive measures, to strip the monastery of its influence over the populace. The monks themselves, for their part, attempted to adapt to hostile conditions in order to preserve their way of life, while believers fought to defend their right to venerate their most revered saint. In the modern history of Christianity, church-state relations have rarely if ever been as antagonistic as in the Soviet Union. In the first decade of Soviet rule, many clerics and parishioners were killed or arrested, churches were destroyed, the assets of the Church sequestered. On the eve of World War I, church attendance rates in Russia were eight to ten times those of Western Europe; the very vitality of Orthodoxy—and its reputation, even if ill-deserved, as a bastion of reaction— impelled the Bolsheviks to perceive the Church as a principal ideological threat to the new regime. That was especially true of monasteries, which attracted the particular animosity of the Communist radicals. As a result, by the late 1920s they had closed all of the monasteries in the entire country. Despite the avowedly atheistic and antireligious orientation of the Bolshevik regime, one should not oversimplify church-state relations after the October Revolution. Both within the Soviet government and within the Church, there was a range of positions, from those who refused to tolerate even the existence of the other to those who were willing to cooperate and conciliate. Although the more intransigent antireligious Bolsheviks prevailed, their ascendancy was neither automatic nor immediate, because matters were complicated by internal conflicts within the government itself and also by concerns of unnecessarily provoking the hostility of believers. In the interim, the Church and its monasteries tried to adapt to the new situation and to negotiate its continued, if precarious, survival. The Bolsheviks who seized power at the end of 1917 were driven by a materialist philosophy that was overtly hostile to religion. Yet their writings before 1917, of a more ideological rather than practical nature, did not make it clear exactly how they would deal with religion concretely once they were in power. Would they attempt to establish a socialist society and let religion “wither away” on its own, once the social basis for it (according to Marxism) ceased to exist? Or would they take more direct efforts to eliminate religion? The history of the confrontation between the early Soviet regime and the Russian Orthodox Church has been a controversial one. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the majority of documents available to Western scholars were those provided by Soviet scholars, who had a clear agenda in casting the story in a particular way.

294 revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 John Shelton Curtiss’ The Russian Church and the Soviet State (1953) became the standard account of the story that is still influential. Curtiss argued that the Soviets at first sought to secularize society through legal means and were “slow to move directly against the Russian church,” while the Church called for “open war” against the Soviet authorities with the intent of provoking violence to mobilize the people. Although the Soviets did not accept this challenge and instead sought negotiations, by the end of 1918, the new regime was fighting for its very existence and therefore “its measures grew more drastic” against the Church and its other enemies.1 Church historians, by contrast, have frequently depicted the clash as one of overt, militant persecution of the Soviet state against the Church, which, despite its attempts to maintain political neutrality, was victimized by the new regime.2 Now that archival sources are more freely available, this story needs to be retold.3 Although the story is a complex one and there were differences of opinion and tactics among the Bolshevik leaders, the new governing regime ultimately expended great energy in the assault upon the Church and religious belief.

Nationalization The Soviets began the effort to weaken religion and secularize society through a series of decrees. The first, the “decree on land,” confiscated the land from the Church—including monasteries—together with aristocratic landowners. This decree authorized seizures of manorial and monastic lands that in many cases had already begun earlier and placed them under the authority of the local soviets of workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ deputies. Other decrees in December 1917 and January 1918 also affected the Church and its rights in Russian society (the secularization of marriage, the army, and schools). The decree that most directly affected the Church, however, was that which separated it from the state, which denied the juridical status of religious bodies, nationalized all property, and prohibited religious instruction in the schools (January 23 / February 5, 1918). In addition, through these decrees, the Church not only lost its property but was also deprived of state subsidies and of its entire savings held in banks. The decree of separation was not systematically implemented by the central authorities, and what resulted was a great deal of chaos at the local level—ranging from largely ignoring the decree to episodes of banditry or terror. The Soviet leadership therefore established the Eighth (later Fifth) Department of the People’s Commissariat of Justice (Narkomiust), generally known as the “Liquidation Commission,” in May 1918. It was only when the instructions were issued on August 24, 1918, however, that the central Soviet state began to enact the decree of separation

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 295 more systematically.4 The Church attempted to respond by declaring that only it had the right to dispose of its own property.5 These developments directly affected the fate of monasteries during the first year of the Bolshevik Revolution. A. V. Zhuravskii notes three general processes in the secularization of monasteries after the Bolshevik Revolution. First, in the earliest phase, disorganized measures were conducted by local authorities that often appeared more like robbery than a systematic state policy. Another characteristic of the early period is that not only representatives of the authorities participated in the confiscation of monastic property, but also local peasants and armed bandits or deserters from the front. A third feature, particularly during the Civil War, was the harshness by which the secularization was carried out, which included not only the expulsion of the monastics from their communities but often also arrest or execution. Within these general characteristics, there were particular local patterns.6 The fate of Trinity-Sergius shares many commonalities with these general tendencies, although its story was also unique in many ways.7

A Precarious “Breathing Space”: November 1917 to the Summer of 1918 The immediate effect of the Bolshevik Revolution on the Trinity-Sergius Lavra was a complete breakdown of civil authority, which left the monastery vulnerable. According to one Bolshevik leader from the nearby town of Aleksandrov, as the fighting was going on in Moscow, officers from a military electrical engineering school and local “White Guardists” in Sergiev Posad resisted the Bolsheviks and were preparing to participate in the struggle in Moscow. On November 1, the Revolutionary Committee in Aleksandrov sent a detachment of soldiers to Sergiev Posad, where they seized the post office, telegraph, and other government offices, along with the electrical engineering school. They held a meeting with local residents and organized a Military-Revolutionary Committee; leaving behind some soldiers and “political workers,” the detachment returned to Aleksandrov on the following day.8 Thus, by the beginning of November, the Bolsheviks had swept aside the previous government authority, though this left a power vacuum until Bolshevik rule was more firmly established. The local government in Sergiev Posad was only gradually “Bolshevized.” In March 1918, the Bolsheviks organized their own military electrical engineering school in place of the previous one, initially in the Lavra’s hotel, and later relocated to the buildings of the Moscow Theological Academy. This, together with the military engineering administration for troop supply (which was moved to Sergiev Posad from Petrograd), brought a higher number of Bolsheviks to Sergiev Posad. These Bolsheviks in turn dispersed what remained of the local government (the city

296 revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 council and old Soviet) and took control of the local Revolutionary Committee. Only in January 1919 were elections held for the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, to which twenty-seven Bolsheviks were elected (out of fifty deputies); Oskar Vanhanen, who was the director of the military engineering administration and a participant in the storming of the Winter Palace, was elected its chair. 9 Throughout Russia during November 1917, monasteries experienced threats, robbery, and pillage, or incursions by armed men or local villagers—and TrinitySergius was no exception.10 In the first half of November, several instances of theft occurred in Sergiev Posad and in the monastery itself. Then, on November 18 and 19, armed individuals in military uniform, claiming to be authorized agents of the Revolutionary Committee, carried out searches of the patriarch’s quarters and the sacristy of the monastery, promising to return on the following day to continue their searches. This incursion provoked great anxiety among monks, pilgrims, and local inhabitants, who regarded it as a threat that the valuables of the monastery would be stolen.11 On the following day (November 20), General Leonid Artamonov, a member of the Church Council, went to the Moscow Provincial Zemstvo Assembly to ascertain who constituted the legitimate authority for Moscow and its region. He was told that “at the present time there is no actual power, aside from the Moscow Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies, for the commissar of the provisional government, Eiler, does not have power, and the Bolshevik commissar who has been appointed for the Moscow region has not yet assumed his duties.”12 Artamonov then went to the Moscow Soviet and told it of the searches that had been carried out, ostensibly under the auspices of the local Revolutionary Committee. He informed them that the local inhabitants were greatly disturbed by the possibility of theft and the desecration of sacred objects. As a result of Artamonov’s efforts, the Moscow Soviet dispatched “reliable representatives to terminate the arbitrary actions of the local revolutionary committee,” and it promised to investigate the previous incidents of theft, to “find the guilty and even, apparently, to shoot them.”13 The following week, the Lavra asked the Military-Revolutionary Committee to provide protection, which it was willing to support financially; the latter replied that the Lavra would have to pay 1,410 rubles a month for seven soldiers (and an accompanying commissar), and that the monastery would have to pay for six months in advance. The Lavra replied that it did not have the means to pay such a price.14 Thus, as in earlier instances in 1917, the Lavra came into conflict with local authorities, which were taking matters into their own hands during the temporary absence of central authority, but in this case the Moscow Soviet came to its defense. Also, as earlier in the year, Trinity-Sergius experienced tensions from “within,” facing new demands from its employees and novices. Thus, in December 1917, a meeting of the “Society of Workers and Employees of the Lavra” submitted a de-

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 297 mand for a 50-percent pay raise, to which the monastery agreed.15 The monastery continued to employ a large number of workers in its various workshops and the stables.16 Following the employees’ lead, in January 1918 a group of the Lavra’s choir singers submitted demands through the commissar of labor. They stated that they were paid from the various collections several times a year, and they wanted instead to be paid a regular monthly salary as “temporarily residing lay hired singers”: “The majority of us, on entering the Lavra at a critical moment, did not ask about the conditions of life [in the monastery], and in their turn they used this and did not notify us about the conditions. In general they exploit us, holding us in oppression like the poor proletariat.”17 Clearly, even those who had entered the monastery were taking advantage of the new situation and of the new language to press for their own interests. Unlike the demands of the hired employees, however, the monastery flatly rejected the request of the singers. The Governing Council responded that it did not hire lay choristers and that novices had voluntarily chosen to live in the monastery, thereby subjecting themselves to whatever obedience the monastery required. The administration of the monastery “relies on the conscience of each supplicant that he enters the monastery not only temporarily in view of his critical situation, but according to a true calling to the monastic life.” If the choristers regarded themselves as temporary lay inhabitants of the monastery, “they are mistaken,” and they should leave.18 This conflict compelled the monastery to issue new rules on the acceptance of novices, which stated explicitly that those who joined did so by their own desire to “renounce the world for the salvation of their souls, and not out of any sort of expectation for a more comfortable or peaceful life or because of [their] desperate material situation.” Further, they were to accept unquestioningly the obedience that the monastery authorities placed on them and also to be satisfied with whatever support the monastery gave them according to its means.19 Clearly, the monastery was willing to compromise with the developing situation when it came to its contact with the outside world (employees), but it firmly sought to maintain its standards of monastic life against the encroachment of outside influences. Unlike the Alexander-Nevskaia Lavra in Petrograd, against which Alexandra Kollontai led a botched seizure attempt in January 1918, Trinity-Sergius initially faced mostly small-scale confrontations with the local authorities. The decrees that nationalized church property placed these in the charge of local Soviets without much instruction, and as a result there was a great deal of local variation and chaos.20 In December 1917, the Soviet of People’s Commissars appointed a member of the Sergiev Posad Revolutionary Committee, V. S. Seletskii, as the “commissar of all Moscow monasteries and in particular the Sergieva Lavra with adjoining monasteries.” Seletskii was to conduct a “full inspection” of the monasteries’ property, money, and food provisions (including agricultural goods and livestock); he was

298 revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 also to organize armed protection for all the valuables. Moreover, the monasteries were to be reorganized, so that there was a new monastic administration “reelected on a democratic basis,” a “consolidation of all monastics with a formation of a necessary cadre of clergy . . . and the formation of handicraft workshops and trade for monastics who wish to remain in the monasteries on the new laboring basis.” Seletskii also had the authority to give unlimited leave to the monks (presumably to encourage them to depart from the monastery). He was to form a commission of professors from the Theological Academy who knew canon law to work out a plan for the separation of church and state. “The liquidation of monasteries,” according to these instructions, “should be put into practice gradually.”21 It is very striking that, in December 1917, the Soviets were giving instructions on how the monastery was to operate and how it should be administered (democratically), but at the same time still ensuring there were sufficient clergy. It is not clear, however, to what extent Seletskii carried out these duties. In the spring, he wrote to Soviet of People’s Commissars member Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich22 that he had been away and only at the end of April did he begin to fulfill his duties, and he was writing for updated instructions.23 The Department of the People’s Commissariat of Justice formed to enact the Decree on the Separation of Church and State, known as the “Liquidation Commission,” was slow to gain control of the situation. Thus, according to one report in June 1918, each local soviet conducted the “liquidation of property rights” of churches and monasteries, including the “socialization” of land and the holdings of churches and monasteries in banks, “according to its own understanding.” Thus, “in some places church capital is confiscated, in others it is spent (completely illegally) by the church societies (though under the control of Soviet authorities), while in others still (as, according to some information, in Sergiev), the Sovdep gradually takes monastery capital, converting the monastery into a source of constant income.”24 Indeed, as will be seen below, local authorities extracted cash from the monastery throughout 1918. This last variant appears to have been a fairly accurate description of the relationship of the local authorities to Trinity-Sergius for the first half of 1918. The monastery’s lands were not confiscated right away; documents indicate that the brothers themselves were working the Tarbeevskie meadows in the summer of 1918—the very meadows that the local peasants had seized the previous year.25 Nevertheless, there was a gradual confiscation of buildings, together with taxations and other demands for the monastery’s money, throughout 1918. Already in November 1917, the local Revolutionary Committee asked the monastery for a 300ruble advance on a loan until it received funds from the central authorities. In January 1918, the Sergiev Posad Soviet announced to the monastery that it was forming a “Workers’ Club” on the lower floor of the new hotel.26 More important, in the

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 299 same month it demanded that the Lavra return the rents it had received from the private residences (attached to the buildings it owned, with various shops and offices) for the first half of 1918. Further, if the monastery did not return the rents in one week, the Soviet would take the money out of the monastery’s current funds in the branch of the Moscow Bank. The Governing Council wrote to Patriarch Tikhon on January 17, informing him of the demands made by the Soviet, and stating that they had already spent the 30,000 rubles that they had received in rents and would be unable to fulfill the Soviet’s demands; moreover, if the money was taken out of its bank account, the monastery would lack the funds to support the AleksandroMariinskii Home for the Poor. The council therefore requested that Tikhon intercede on its behalf to plead with the Soviet to overturn its decision.27 These protests, however, were in vain, and the Soviet continued to turn to the monastery for money throughout 1918.28 Trinity-Sergius continued, however, to rent buildings to various trading establishments. Then, in March, the Soviet demanded a list of all the premises that the monastery rented together with their renters. Later in the month, it informed the Governing Council that, as a result of the Decree on Separation of Church and State, all the monastery’s property now belonged to the Soviet. Therefore, it demanded that the monastery turn over two homes it owned in Sergiev Posad by April 1, and soon after Trinity-Sergius lost all income from rental properties.29 As the year continued, its savings were confiscated, while other local government agencies also took advantage of the monastery, including the Commissariat of Agriculture, the Unemployment Office, and the Commissariat of Social Security.30 The net effect of these various measures was to induce an acute financial crisis in the monastery. At the end of 1917, a congress of clergy and laity in Moscow decided that Trinity-Sergius, together with Gethsemane Skete, should donate 35,000 rubles a year from the income of its candle factory in support of the Church’s educational institutions, about which the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory notified the monastery in April 1918. In May, the Lavra’s Governing Council sent a report to the patriarch in which it protested against these demands, explaining that such an amount of income from the candle factory was unrealistic. In the past, the Lavra and the Skete had been spared such diocesan taxes because of the significant sums they spent in support of the Home for the Poor, the icon school, and other philanthropic institutions in Sergiev Posad. At present, the report continued, the Lavra and the Skete had been deprived of all rental incomes, so that their only sources of income remained the sale of candles and icons. This income, moreover, was insufficient for the monastery’s expenses, so that it had become impossible “to provide the brothers not only with sufficient provisions, but even clothing and shoes.” Several times they were forced to turn away produce brought to the station for lack of money. Moreover, the monastery lacked

300 revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 money to hire laborers to help with the fields and gardens, whereas the brothers themselves, while working the fields, were often complaining about their physical weakness due to undernourishment. As a result, the Lavra already had to close the icon school in April, and at present it lacked the money for the next payment in support of the Home for the Poor. Because of the seizure of its rental properties, the Lavra was “close to complete ruin” and already 400,000 rubles in debt. The monastery was thus forced to violate Saint Sergius’ commandment to care for the pilgrims, whom it had already ceased feeding. As a result, the Lavra said that it was unable to pay any new taxes or collections for the Church at large.31 Similarly, Gethsemane Skete claimed that it was unable to satisfy the requests of the clerical families still living in its hotel as war refugees for the same gratis food that the brothers received —because the Skete itself was squeezed for money and lacked provisions.32 In short, the gradual confiscation of the monastery’s rents and other sources of income, buildings, and money caused its virtual financial collapse in 1918.

The Church Council and Monasticism By the summer of 1918, there was also growing apprehension about the very survival of monasticism under the new regime. This apprehension was clearly in the background of the discussions on monasticism when the Church Council took them up in July and August 1918. The National Church Council held in 1917–18 was the first council the Church had convened in more than two centuries, since before Peter the Great, because of government restrictions. Discussions about holding a council became intense beginning in 1905, but Nicholas II did not allow one to take place because he feared the restoration of the Patriarchate and greater independence of the Church from the state. As soon as Nicholas abdicated, the Church began planning for the long-awaited council, which was to discuss a range of religious and administrative matters. The council convened on August 15, 1917, and it continued to meet for one year until the Bolsheviks prevented its continuation. The council’s most important act was the restoration of the Patriarchate in November 1917. Issues concerning monasticism were taken up in its third and last session in August 1918.33 Council delegates emphasized the centrality of monasticism for the Church as a whole and therefore the importance of maintaining its vitality. In the opening statement of the report presented by the Section on Monasteries and Monasticism, Archbishop Serafim (Chichagov) stated that the contemporary situation of monasticism had particular importance for the whole Church, that the strengthening of monasticism should have a preeminent place in the question of the spiritual renewal of Russia. Serafim blamed the decline in monastic discipline on the spiritual and moral decline in society: “No one flies into monasteries from heaven, but all come from the sinful world and bring with them bad morals, vices, [and] nasty habits.”

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 301 Eighty or a hundred years ago, he continued, people joined the monastery who were virgins, teetotalers, enlightened by the Scriptures, and accustomed to pious habits. They brought with them strict morality together with an inclination to labor, asceticism, and self-denial. But the contemporary decline in morality prepared and delivered weak monks, for whom it was very difficult to battle against their passions: “There is nothing surprising that the perverted world changed monastic life, that many communities have ceased to correspond to their purpose, [and] that bringing them to order and moral renewal are extremely necessary.”34 Serafim gave an overview of the section on monasticism’s proposals, which generally repeated those of previous reform efforts: the selection of abbots, candidates for tonsure and ordination, the composition of the novices, improvement of monastic administration, the internal structure of life (the question of the cenobitic rule), the strict performance of liturgical services, and the revival of starchestvo.35 At the same time, other delegates questioned whether it was possible to speak of normal issues of monastic life in conditions that were anything but normal. Bishop Tikhon (Obolenskii), for example, commented that it was difficult to speak about the organization of monasteries when they were being subjected to attack and ruin: “Is it possible to speak about what kind of door to put on the oven when the oven is already gone and the house itself is collapsing?”36 Similarly, when they began discussing legal issues concerning monasteries, Archbishop Serafim admitted that the proposals were drawn up before the decree of separation of Church and state. N. D. Kuznetsov stated: “In our days, when the whole government order has collapsed and when power has fallen in the hands of militant atheism, it is difficult to hope that the rights of juridical personhood will be surely preserved for monasteries.”37 Reports of Soviet attacks against particular monasteries sometimes interrupted the discussions.38 In the end, the council decided simply to drop the articles about the civil position of monasteries altogether. Although the council debated many traditional questions about monastic organization and reform—often in terms familiar from debates in 1909 and 1917—some issues reflected the concrete circumstances of the times. For example, when it came to selecting abbots, representatives recognized that the “electoral principle” was widely accepted in the Church and society and that monks should be allowed to elect their abbots.39 At the same time, the council reaffirmed the absolute authority of the abbot, once elected, as unquestionable.40 The council also debated the social role of monasteries. Some continued to maintain that monasteries should be obligated to operate schools and possibly also charitable institutions. Archimandrite Kronid and others argued that it was neither fair nor realistic to demand that monasteries construct philanthropic institutions under current conditions.41 Archimandrite Kronid’s objections no doubt stemmed from his own experience of what was taking place precisely at the same time, in the midsummer of 1918, at Trinity-Sergius.

302 revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 When it came to discussing monastery property (July 24 / August 6), the council took a firm line, affirming these propositions, which were clearly intended to contradict Soviet law and practice: “All movable and immovable property, as also capital, which belongs to a monastery, constitutes the property of the monastery as a juridical person. The alienation and exchange of real estate which belongs to a monastery is not permitted except with the permission of church authorities.”42 In other words, the council was trying to counter Soviet decrees with decrees of its own. The council resolved that all the labor within monasteries should, as much as possible, be fulfilled by its inhabitants rather than by hired laborers. Because monasteries were “not only praying but also laboring brotherhoods,” they had the right to possess land, even according to Soviet norms. Finally, those monasteries that possessed land were obligated to introduce improved agriculture and to serve not only of their own needs but also those of the local population, particularly by serving as model economies and cultural centers.43 At the same time as these discussions were taking place in the Church Council in July and August 1918, Archimandrite Kronid was defending the monastery against harmful rumors and fearing that the monastery itself would be closed. Thus, he wrote to a local commissar in July in response to these rumors in order to inform the inhabitants of the town that no one in the Lavra possessed weapons, and that the brothers had not yet been presented with any eviction notice.44 It is evident that rumors were spreading in the town that the authorities would evict the monks, who would, in turn, defend themselves by force. Kronid continued to fear the threat that the monastery would be closed, its treasures confiscated, and the monks evicted, and he even brought it up at the Church Council (July 21 / August 3). The patriarchal administration took no direct action against this threat, however, because the brothers had not been presented with any concrete demands. Nevertheless, it wanted to keep abreast of the situation, because it realized that such a move against the monastery by the authorities might incite the local inhabitants against them.45 Moreover, although the authorities had presented the monastery with no direct notice of eviction, monks who had taken temporary leaves of absence were already failing to return.46 In short, though Trinity-Sergius had not been attacked directly in the first half of 1918, its leadership (and most likely the brothers themselves) realized that the situation was precarious. From November 1917 until July 1918, at the highest levels the conflict between the Bolsheviks and the Orthodox Church was concentrated in a war of state decrees aimed at depriving the institutional Church of juridical status, land, and financial resources, and a public role, to which the Church responded with patriarchal messages and council decrees criticizing these actions. At local levels, the relationship varied from tolerance to murder and thievery. The relationship between TrinitySergius and the new state was mostly one-sided; Trinity-Sergius often attempted to

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 303 negotiate or cooperate with local authorities (e.g., in June the monastery offered to send representatives to the local Provisions Department) and was routinely refused.47 Rather, local authorities mostly made demands of the monastery. Thus, though there were instances of brutality (the murder of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev early in the year), the central authorities—who at any rate were not of one mind on how to deal with the Church—were preoccupied with consolidating power; the Church had what some scholars have called a “breathing space” until August 1918.48

Nationalization Toward the end of summer, the central Bolshevik authorities attempted to gain greater control over processes such as the nationalization of ecclesiastical and other properties. This coincided with an escalation of the Civil War and the intensification of “Red Terror” against potential class enemies—particularly after the attempted assassination of Lenin on August 30, 1918—which included the clergy and in particular monasteries. On August 11/24, Narkomiust issued what became known as the Narkomiust Instruction on carrying out the decree of separation of Church and state, published on August 17/30. This instruction reiterated that religious organizations were denied the rights of juridical personhood. All charitable and educational institutions operated by religious societies were to be closed. Church buildings and property used in religious ceremonies, as belonging to the state, were to be inventoried; they could then be used free of charge by local inhabitants, as long as twenty local (lay) people were willing to assume responsibility. Any churches that had particular historical or artistic value were subject to specific instructions. All homes, land, fields, candle and other factories, savings, and anything else that brought in income for religious organizations were to be confiscated immediately if they had not already been. Religious teaching was to cease in all schools, state or private, with the exception of specific theological schools; the buildings of these latter, as property “of the people,” were to pass into the hands of the local soviet or the Commissariat of Education.49 As Curtiss noted, the Narkomiust Instruction did not change legislation, but from that time the Soviet authorities vigorously began to enforce the legislation; and though parishes continued to function, the Church administration and monasteries were particularly hard hit.50 The effect of the intensified enforcement of antichurch legislation was felt immediately in Sergiev Posad. The Cheka, or the Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle against Speculation and Counterrevolution (the precursor to the KGB), ordered searches that were violently conducted by armed soldiers in the Lavra’s satellite communities the very same night the Narkomiust Instruction was published (and the attempt was made on Lenin’s life), of August 17–18/30–31, 1918. The report by Gethsemane’s abbot Hegumen Izrail described events in dramatic detail.

304 revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 At one o’clock on the morning, 100 Red Army soldiers came to Gethsemane Skete, where they divided into groups that searched Gethsemane itself, the Chernigov Caves division, the farm, and the hotel. The soldiers began breaking down the gates, and by the time Izrail had awakened, dressed, and arrived at the scene, the soldiers had already forced their way in. As he approached them, they told him that he was under arrest and took him to the refectory, and then the soldiers began to search inside the cells of the Skete. Izrail made use of the commotion to sneak out, wake several of the brothers, and then run over to the Chernigov side when he heard the bells sounding the alarm there.51 When he arrived, he found thirty Red Army soldiers headed by the local military commissar. Izrail let them in and gave them a tour of the renowned Caves, as he would any group of pilgrims: First of all they demanded to be shown the Chernigov cellar, and I understood that they demanded to be shown the Caves; as I did so, I told them that Russian people come from several thousand kilometers to these caves to venerate the Chernigov Mother of God and with great reverence pass through these Caves, and they consider themselves lucky if even once in their lives they visit them. Then with lighted candles I led them through the Caves. I first led them to the cell where Aleksandr the Recluse worked out his salvation. Leading them into the cell, I described to them the life of Father Aleksandr, his bidding for us to perform the Jesus Prayer, at which point I made the sign of the cross over myself and uttered the Jesus Prayer, to which they listened with particular attention. After some more discussion, they asked me to take them to the brothers’ cells.52 With that, Izrail ran back to Gethsemane. Izrail arrived at his cell to find it being searched. When he entered, the soldiers shouted furiously at him, told him he was “under arrest,” and while tearing apart his cell shouted that they would “slaughter” him in response to every one of his questions. They took from his cell whatever they wanted, including binoculars, things made of silver, tea, and sugar. After they finished searching his cell, Izrail went back to the Chernigov side, and there he encountered another commissar, who asked him where they kept their provisions. Leading the commissar back to Gethsemane, Izrail told him on the way with what “furious rage” the soldiers had searched his cell. When they arrived, they ran into those who had searched his cell, and the commissar ordered them to return everything (except the binoculars). The commissar intended to requisition the provisions of the Skete’s bakery and storehouses, but Izrail bargained with him and “treated” the soldiers to a certain amount of bread, butter, and other provisions, taking the commissar back to his cell—where he discovered that the commissar was a Lutheran Finn by the name of Zakst. About five o’clock in

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 305 the morning, they met the soldiers at the gate who had requisitioned coins, tea, sugar, gold objects, and many other things, both from the brothers and from those staying in the hotel, though the gold and silver objects were returned. After presenting Izrail with a report of the search, the soldiers departed, while five commissars stayed for tea, leaving at 8 o’clock.53 On the same night at the same time, about twenty soldiers came with a commissar to the Paraclete Hermitage and conducted a search there. They thoroughly searched the cell of the abbot, drew up an inventory of provisions, and searched all the brothers’ cells, though they only confiscated sugar. Similarly, a search was conducted in Bethany, including the hotel and hostel. Hegumen Iliodor noted in his report that the search did not yield anything to the discredit of the brothers, and that his telescope was missing. Hegumen Aleksii of the Coenobium reported that, in his absence, armed men had conducted a search of his cell and those of other brothers; his fireproof trunk was broken into and money was taken from it and from elsewhere in the community totaling about 760 rubles; silver liturgical objects were taken, along with binoculars and a revolver—which Aleksii would later request the Cheka to return as necessary for the protection of the community.54 Such surprise searches in the middle of the night may have been intended to terrorize. They were unique to that particular night, although in subsequent months the requisitioning intensified. Six weeks later, representatives of the Revolutionary Committee and a police officer came to Bethany and requisitioned all the monastery’s livestock.55 Shortly after, the Sergiev Posad Soviet seized from the Lavra the stockyard (including the hay the brothers had mown over the summer), the workshops, the sheds, and the carriages from the stables, and took over the second floor of the hospital-hostel, appropriating the medical instruments. The monastery bookshop, library, and editorial offices of the Trinity Leaflets were sealed off, and the Cheka also ordered a search of the treasurer’s cell and all the monastery’s stores of provisions.56 The monastery objected to the Cheka about its requisitioning of the tea, sugar, and flour, protesting that these were used for the brothers and guests. The Cheka, however, rejected these appeals on the grounds that, by being in the treasurer’s cell, they belonged to him personally, and it accused the brothers of having “no intention of contributing to the discovery of such abuses.”57 The satellite communities were similarly subject to such requisitions and confiscations. In October, someone from the Revolutionary Committee came to Gethsemane Skete’s farm and drove away all of the livestock that belonged to the Skete.58 The same month brothers from Makhrishchskii Monastery were going from village to village with revered icons as in the past, and while they were in one village, the local commissar came and arrested them. They remained in jail two days before being released, but the money they had raised during collections (715 rubles) was confiscated, and they were ordered to end the processions and return to the monastery.59

306 revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 In short, whereas the Narkomiust Instruction directed local authorities to confiscate any income-bearing property belonging to monasteries, it appears that in Sergiev Posad and its surroundings the Soviet, Revolutionary Committee, and Cheka were taking whatever they wanted, including livestock and provisions used for the support of the brothers. The end of this haphazard process came when the Commissariat of People’s Enlightenment officially “nationalized” Trinity-Sergius Lavra on November 1, 1918, bring the monastery under its jurisdiction and control and protecting it from being plundered.

The Commission for the Preservation of Trinity-Sergius After the decree nationalizing the Trinity-Sergius Lavra on November 1, the Department of Museum Affairs and Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquities was put in charge of the Lavra and all its property. The department, headed by Leon Trotsky’s wife, Natal’ia Sedova-Trotskaia (1882–1962), established a special “Commission for the Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquities at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.” The idea of forming a commission to make inventories of the Lavra’s possessions dates back to November 1917, when the Soviet of People’s Commissars issued instructions to Seletskii at the time it appointed him commissar of Moscow monasteries; these instructions also directed him to “co-opt” specialists for this work.60 So also in January 1918, the Commission for the Preservation of Monuments and Artistic Treasures of the Moscow Soviet, given the “interest of local social organizations” in the artistic and historical value of the monastery, directed the Soviet in Sergiev Posad to attract local specialists to the work of preserving its valuables and organize a commission “on broad foundations.” It was thus to include a representative from the monastery itself as well as other specialists and members of government bodies. Entrance to the “treasures” was to be forbidden to all except the commission. The Sergiev Posad Soviet, in turn, contacted the Governing Council of the Lavra to send a representative to be a member of this commission who was knowledgeable in the “religious, scientific, and artistic monuments” held in the sacristy and churches; in response, the council selected Hierodeacon Anfim as one who knew the sacristy well.61 This commission, however, never seems to have met. A new commission was formed on the eve of the “nationalization” decree. Thus, on October 22, the Commission for the Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquities at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra was formed under D. M. Gurevich, who was the Sergiev Posad commissar of education and a Revolutionary Committee member. This commission, initially headed by Gurevich, consisted of the architect and art historian Il’ia Bondarenko and N. D. Protasov (both members of the Department of Museum Affairs); the brilliant theologian and Moscow Theological Academy professor Pavel Florenskii (1882–1937); a geographer, biologist, and philosopher from

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 307 Moscow University, Pavel Kapterev (1889–1955); and Count Iurii Olsuf ’ev (1878– 1938) and N. V. Baskin, both of whom were well-known local specialists.62 On November 1, Bondarenko argued before the Commissariat of Education College of Museum Affairs that Trinity-Sergius held universal significance as a depository of artistic and historical treasures. He therefore proposed that the monastery be nationalized and that the commission (at that time under the local Commissariat of Education) be subordinated directly to the Moscow Department of Museum Affairs.63 Following Bondarenko’s proposal, the Soviet of People’s Commissars issued the decree that nationalized the Lavra, stating that the monastery, “as an integrated artistic-historical monument and [monument of] everyday life, has an exclusive universal-state significance in the matter of historical enlightenment and artistic development of the popular masses.” All the buildings and property of the monastery fell under the jurisdiction of the Department of Museum Affairs; all the churches and the historical and artistic monuments were the responsibility of the Commission for Preservation; and the workshops, living quarters, and other elements that did not have historical significance were allowed to be used by local authorities (with permission from the Department of Museum Affairs).64 The decree of nationalization was, therefore, clearly a move to take the monastery’s buildings and property out of the monks’ hands and place it into those of the commission; at the same time, it placed them more firmly under the control of the central authorities and within the jurisdiction of the Commissariat of Enlightenment rather than the Commissariat of Justice, which protected them from pillaging by local authorities. The Commission for Preservation, however, faced enormous challenges. Elements of the new regime who advocated “proletarian culture” welcomed the destruction of cultural monuments, especially churches and monasteries, as vestiges of the past. Therefore the commission’s task was not only to study and catalogue the Lavra’s treasures, and not only to protect them, but also to justify their preservation for cultural reasons. From the beginning, this commission—as established by the Department of Museum Affairs—consisted of religious intellectuals and specialists.65 Later, Sergei Mansurov and Tat’iana Rozanova66 also joined it. Its primary task was to protect objects of historical value, to engage in restoration work, and to research and catalogue the monastery’s vast collection of medieval manuscripts, ancient icons, and other objects of gold, silver, and embroidery. It regarded its work as serving the Church; Florenskii wrote to Patriarch Tikhon in November 1918, asking for his blessing and averring that the primary aim of the commission was “not to let anything pass beyond the boundaries of Lavra’s walls and, so far as possible, to protect the Lavra’s way of life.”67 In February 1919, Bondarenko wrote to Tikhon to report on the work of the commission, underlining that its primary aims were to preserve the monastery and restore its buildings.68

308 revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 The commission acted as a buffer between the monastery and the Soviet authorities as well as ensuring the monastery’s safety. To protect monastery property, it was immediately necessary to obtain armed guards, which Florenskii requested from the Revolutionary Committee in early November.69 In addition, the commission hired forty monks from the Lavra to serve as watchmen, with Archimandrite Kronid as their head. The monks referred to themselves in official correspondence as the “Lavra’s artel [worker’s collective] of guards,” and they drew state salaries for their services. Some monks also worked for the commission as specialists.70 When local police drafted all the monks between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to clean snow from the railways in December 1918, Archimandrite Kronid warned the commission that they could not guard the monastery if they had to clear the railway.71 The commission then complained to the police that, as a result of its action, the “entire system of guarding the Lavra’s valuables has been violated.”72 That same month the Governing Council of the Lavra informed the commission that the local authorities refused to deliver potatoes and other provisions and that all the provisions at the Lavra had run out. Because the monks were employed by the commission, the council requested that it intercede for them—which it did.73 More urgently, the Lavra also appealed to the commission to intercede when a number of monks were arrested.74 Although more than 200 brothers continued to live in the monastery and were offered some protection by the commission, there were still tensions with the local authorities.75 In November, the Cheka conducted a search of the monastery’s storehouse of publications and discovered a “great collection of anti-Soviet literature.” Therefore, the Cheka wrote to the Governing Council that, in addition to destroying this literature, it was fining the monastery 50,000 rubles for “storing and distributing” this anti-Soviet literature; if the fine were not paid, the sum would be confiscated from the monastery’s property. The Governing Council wrote back in protest that in the spring of 1917 the local Soviet had examined its publications and prohibited the sale of certain titles, though the rest were free to be sold. The forbidden publications remained in storage and had not been sold or distributed since that time. Moreover, because the Soviet had confiscated the Lavra’s printing house already in the middle of 1917, the Lavra had been unable to publish anything, let alone anti-Soviet literature, since then. Finally, they were not certain as to which of its previous editions were taken to be “anti-Soviet,” so they “humbly” asked the Cheka to defer the fine. In the draft of this reply, the council also noted that, in view of the nationalization of the monastery, it no longer had any property to confiscate— though this line was crossed out.76 In January 1918, the Soviet state existed mainly on paper and had few resources, so it relied on “contributions” to make ends meet and therefore often tried to fleece those from the old regime presumed to be rich. The Revolutionary Committee like-

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 309 wise attempted to extort money from the Trinity brotherhood. It levied a special “revolutionary tax” on the monastery, demanding an absurd 17,494,800 rubles from the brothers to be paid by mid-December 1918. The Governing Council replied on December 16 that they passed on the demand for tax to the Commission for Preservation because the monastery’s property had been nationalized. On December 23, the Revolutionary Committee demanded a tax assessment of 600,000 rubles, and it wrote three days later requesting full information on all the “wealth” of the Lavra, including bank accounts and cash. The council replied once again that “all the wealth of the monastery has been nationalized”; it is curious that the Revolutionary Committee appeared unaware of this fact. Nevertheless, it did pay 5,000 rubles in November and over 8,000 rubles in December as a special “revolutionary tax” on elder brothers (presumably as nonproductive members of society).77 Thus the first year of Bolshevik rule meant, for Trinity-Sergius, a steady process by which the monastery was “nationalized”—first in principle (through the Decrees on Land and on Separation of the Church from the State), and then in practice. The year was punctuated by the forceful surprise searches and requisitions of the Lavra itself in the midst of the Revolution in November 1917 and of the satellite communities in August 1918. The monastery remained open and functional, with nearly 250 inhabitants even late in 1918. But it was gradually stripped of its property and financial resources; the biggest blow came with the loss of rental income, but this was followed by the loss of the buildings themselves, along with bank accounts and capital investments. After the Narkomiust Instruction was issued in August, the local authorities not only terrorized monastic communities with searches in the middle of the night and threats of arrest but also confiscated what was left of their property in a more systematic way, including livestock and other property that had gone to the direct support of the brotherhoods. This process both culminated in, and was stopped by, the decree that nationalized Trinity-Sergius on November 1, 1918; after that, even religious objects and church buildings passed directly into the hands of a state agency. However, the specialists who staffed this state agency sympathized with the monastery, defended its treasures against the pilfering of the local authorities, and sought to preserve some role for a functioning monastery in the new environment.

Trinity-Sergius as a “Living Museum” In 1919, the Commission for the Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquities at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra published a very important collection of essays on the history, iconography, library, architecture, and other aspects of the Lavra.78 The commission’s ideological leader was Pavel Florenskii, who had been trained in

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mathematics and physics and matriculated at the Moscow Theological Academy, and after his graduation had become its professor of philosophy. He went on to be regarded as one of the most brilliant Russian theologians of the twentieth century, and he wrote important works on the philosophy of art, most notably Iconostasis, precisely during his term on the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra.79 “Trinity-Sergius Lavra and Russia,” Florenskii’s essay in the 1919 collection, provided a sweeping portrait of the cultural significance of the monastery as well as a programmatic statement of its role in the new Russia. Florenskii declared that Trinity-Sergius was the “heart” of Russian culture and that, to understand Russia, “it is necessary to understand the Lavra.”80 Saint Sergius acted as a transmitter of the best elements of the Byzantine cultural heritage in its final, fully developed form before its collapse. Sergius brought this cultural heritage into Russia, Florenskii argued, and in Russia it found a new incarnation and development. All that was good in Russia—in its art, architecture, learning, even in its government—was rooted in the “religious culture” inherited from Byzantium but developed in unique ways in Russia. All these elements of culture find their home in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, which, “as a microcosm and microhistory, [is] its own form of synopsis of the existence of our Russia,” for “here is more tangible than anywhere else the pulse of Russian history, . . . here Russia is sensed as whole.”81 The Lavra was the center for the development of Russia’s best cultural traditions in literature, architecture, and iconography (e.g., Andrei Rublev), and it thus formed a “microcosm” of Russian culture. “The Russian book, Russian literature, [and] general Russian enlightenment received their basic nourishment from the enlightening activities that were concentrated in the Lavra and around the Lavra.”82 Florenskii presented an interpretation of Russian history in which spiritual forces and ideals shaped society and thus served as a rebuttal to the Marxist-Leninist philosophy of history. Not only did Russian cultural development crystallize around the Lavra, Florenskii maintained, but Saint Sergius also left an indelible imprint on Russian social development itself: The ideal, upon which he founded his monastery, of the cenobitic common life “in complete love, like-mindedness, and economic unity, called . . . in Latin communism, has always been close to the Russian soul and beams in it as the guiding commandment of life.”83 Hence “the Lavra unifies in itself in living unity all aspects of Russian life” and was nothing less than a “living museum” of Russian culture.84 As a living whole, Florenskii argued, each element of the Lavra’s artistic treasures could only be understood in its total context. The guiding principle of the museum must therefore be to preserve each object in its concrete connection with its origin and life.85 Because the Lavra held the greatest concentration of architectural monuments, medieval manuscripts, ancient icons, and choral musical traditions, it was precisely here that scholars and artists should gather to study the

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development of Russian art and culture. He envisioned the establishment of schools of architecture and choral music, workshops of iconography, painting and other forms of art, and even new sciences and spheres of creativity at this “crossroads of world history.” He thus envisioned remaking the Lavra into a “Russian Athens,” where both scholarship and artistic creativity could flourish as it once had done in ancient Greece. Curiously, he was not referring to monastic life and its monks (who were its “servants” and “unquestionably necessary” as its custodians) so much as to cultural life and the “universal creativity” concentrated at the Lavra.86 Although he assumed that the Lavra would continue to function as a monastery, its main function was now to be a cultural center. Believing that the formation of such a “Russian Athens” was possible precisely at that historical moment, he made this the primary task of the Commission for Preservation. In another essay in the collection, Pavel Kapterev similarly called Trinity-Sergius the “heart” of Russian culture, one of the greatest centers of Russian culture and enlightenment. He spoke in particular about the role Saint Sergius played in unifying Russian society and inspiring it to throw off the Tatar yoke in the fourteenth century, as well as the central role the monastery played in art, architecture, and the production of books in the Middle Ages. Moreover, the Lavra played a pivotal role in restoring a stable, independent Russian government during the Time of Troubles. Kapterev offered a more critical historical picture than Florenskii, however, and noted that the “Petersburg period” of Russian history was not a very favorable one for the Lavra. In the eighteenth century, not only did the leading figures in society turn away from the ideals of Muscovite Rus’—for which the Lavra was so central— but the Lavra itself was affected by the “spirit of the times.” In the nineteenth century, however, the Lavra recovered its vitality and the spirit of its medieval greatness. This was due in part to the significance of the Moscow Theological Academy as an intellectual center in Russia, and in part this recovery could be witnessed in the founding of the hermitages around the Lavra and in the Lavra’s participation in the revival of starchestvo.87 Bolshevik leaders, however, were not in agreement with the plans and vision Florenskii and Kapterev had for Trinity-Sergius. Indeed, the religious sympathies of the Commission for Preservation aroused the distrust of antireligious activists. The publication of the book provoked a scathing response from Mikhail Galkin (Gorev), a former priest, an ardent antireligious Bolshevik, and a member of the Commissariat of Justice’s “Liquidation Committee.”88 Galkin castigated the publication of this book, “at state expense, on excellent quality paper” (at a time when paper was in dire shortage). He also attacked the commission, emphasizing that it included a priest-professor, a former count, and other “counterrevolutionary elements,” and he criticized Bondarenko for reporting the activities of the commission to the patriarch. He attacked the book as religious propaganda and was especially critical of

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Florenskii’s essay. Galkin declared that the commission was seeking not to create a “Russian Athens” but a “Russian Vatican”; the commission followed the leadership of the patriarch’s circles, “which is trying to form the Lavra into something like a Russian ‘Vatican,’ and this tendency is being forcefully propounded in turn by reactionary groups united under the banner of ‘religious communities of Sergiev Posad.’”89 As a result of Galkin’s attack, the government seized and destroyed most of the copies of the book, which then became a bibliographic rarity.90 As Florenskii’s nephew Hegumen Andronik (Trubachev) suggested, Florenskii’s idea of a “living museum” was completely contradictory to Bolshevik ideology, which sought either to destroy Russia’s religious culture or, if to preserve historical and artistic monuments, to “museumify” them as dead remnants of the past.91

“Exposing” the Relics of Saint Sergius Virtually at the same time that the Commission for Preservation was publishing its work, the Bolsheviks intensified their campaign by a direct strike at the Orthodox faith itself. On April 11, 1919, Soviet authorities ordered the shrine of Saint Sergius of Radonezh to be opened and his relics exposed and examined. This act was part of a wider Bolshevik campaign against the Orthodox cult of relics. According to Robert Greene, the Soviets regarded faith in the miraculous powers of relics as a central part of the ignorance and superstition of the “dark masses.” Moreover, they held that it was a hoax that the clergy perpetrated with the aim of keeping the people in ignorance and subjection and, more directly, to exploit them for money. They thought that the cornerstone of faith in relics was the incorruptibility of saints’ bodies; therefore, if they could prove “scientifically” that relics were false (that the saints’ bodies in fact decomposed), they would easily be able to destroy the peoples’ faith and turn them against the clergy who were supposedly manipulating them. The first exposure of a saint’s relics came “accidentally,” during a typical “inventory” of monastery property at the Aleksander-Svirskii Monastery. The soldiers who committed the act did so in a moment of drunken disrespect. They claimed that what they found was a wax figure in place of a body, however, and this sent shock waves through the surrounding region. Indeed, some believers felt they had been deceived and condemned the monastery, and all these events were widely publicized. As a result, other local authorities began to repeat the process in various regions around Russia. After six weeks, central state and party officials finally embraced the campaign as a good strategy for disabusing the common people of their superstition.92 The official endorsement came when the Commissariat of Justice issued guidelines for conducting the examination of relics on February 14, 1919. These guidelines (and those published later) directed that the initiative was to come (or appear to come) from the grassroots level of local government (ostensibly at the behest of the

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 313 local population). It was to be construed not as an attack on genuine religious devotion but as a justified measure to combat deception and fraud committed by the clergy. The exposure of relics was to be preceded by a propaganda campaign, and the inspection of the relics themselves was to be carried out by the clergy in the presence of local officials and doctors. The local authorities were also supposed to proceed with tact to avoid unnecessarily upsetting religious sensibilities.93 As the campaign to expose relics proceeded through different parts of the country, rumors began to circulate in Sergiev Posad that their turn was coming soon. Discussion was taking place almost immediately after the publication of the Commissariat of Justice’s circular. Kapterev and Florenskii appealed to Trotsky’s wife, who promised to intercede and prevent any action against the relics of Saint Sergius.94 When the monks of the Lavra heard about the proposal to exhume the relics of Saint Sergius that was being discussed in the press, they petitioned the central government to intercede. They argued that Sergius was of great historical and patriotic significance and warned that such a provocation would be greatly offensive to them and other believers. The action was also pointless, because it would not affect the faith of believers, for whom the blessedness of the relics was affirmed by the Church “independently of the physical preservation of the remains”—in other words, relics were not determined by their incorrupt state.95 So also parish churches in Moscow sent in protests, such as the Church of Saint Sergius (with more than sixty pages of signatures), declaring that the exposure of the relics of Saint Sergius would be an offense to their faith.96 Believers also sent petitions to Patriarch Tikhon, who in turn sent a letter to the central government (Soviet of People’s Commissars) in March.97 The commissar of the Lavra informed Archimandrite Kronid, however, that such rumors were unsubstantiated and in fact were ill-intentioned provocations spread by the monks themselves.98 Indeed, after Hegumen Varfolomei (Remov) of the Theological Academy preached, condemning the possible exposure of the relics and calling on people to defend the Church, he was arrested.99 Despite such assurances, however, it was clearly only a matter of time before the Bolsheviks turned their attention to Saint Sergius. As Galkin argued, Saint Sergius had, more than any other saint, a universal Russian rather than primarily local veneration. Around him had developed a “special religious cult,” which drew “hundreds” of pilgrims to Trinity Sergius every year from all over the country. The monks of the monastery furthered the “darkening of the consciousness of the narod” by means of its popular religious literature (the names of which Galkin gets wrong, but clearly he has in mind the Trinity Leaflets); and from it came the most reactionary “churchmen-monarchists,” such as the “notorious” archbishops Nikon and Feodor (Pozdeevskii). Galkin alleged that the monks themselves, living off the income brought by the simple peasants, had the most debauched lives, whereas local inhabitants—all of whom were merchants and traders rather than working

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proletariat (and hence bad in the Marxist-Leninist social categorization)—also lived on the backs of the common people. It was no surprise, according to Galkin, that both the townspeople and the monks should be afraid of the exposure of the relics of Saint Sergius, because this would supposedly destroy their deception and undermine their source of income. Thus, he wrote, the monks were mobilized and sent throughout the town to gather signatures from the “dark people” for a petition to stop the relics’ exhumation, while monastery preachers were warning the people they might have to stand in defense of the faith against profanation—which Galkin instructed his readers to understand as code for “the overthrow of the Soviet system.” Moreover, Archimandrite Kronid and Patriarch Tikhon were motivated to protest precisely because they knew the “secret” of the relics—namely, that they were not incorrupt; Galkin was aware of the near-burning of the relics and subsequent inspection a few years earlier (see chapter 7). Therefore, he argued that exposing these relics would have a “universal Russian significance” of tearing away the masses from their “religious and chauvinistic hypnosis.”100 Indeed, it was precisely in the hope of having such an effect that antireligious activists insisted on carrying out the exposure of Saint Sergius’ relics. Despite the possibilities of disturbances—or perhaps because of the mood— the Sergiev Posad Executive Committee took decisive steps. On April 1, the Communist fraction proposed this resolution during a session of the Sergiev Posad Soviet: “Considering that the relics of Sergius are a means of vulgar exploitation of the unconscious masses and the basis for deliberate agitation of the black clergy, the Plenum of the Soviet considers it necessary to expose the relics of Sergius.” Recognizing the importance of such an action (and the possibility of a violent reaction by the populace), the local soviet decided not to act on its own but first to obtain permission from the authorities in Moscow. In the interim, it decided to conduct an intense campaign of antireligious propaganda.101 Once the decision was official, even more protests came from various quarters. First was the huge petition gathered in Sergiev Posad that Galkin mentioned, which went from the parish churches of the town before being passed door to door, signed by thousands of local residents.102 Patriarch Tikhon wrote directly to Lenin, asking him to intervene and prevent the opening of Saint Sergius’ relics, saying that it was an offense to believers that would result not only in their indignation but even oblige them to defend their holy objects from desecration.103 Other parish churches in Moscow also sent in petitions.104 Even other Soviet bodies protested; the Department of Museum Affairs of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment sent in a petition on April 9 to the People’s Commissariat of Justice, arguing that the Lavra was under its jurisdiction. It complained that the impending opening of Saint Sergius’ relics caused such anxiety in Sergiev Posad that it was interfering with the work of the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra in restoration and study. The local population evi-

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 315 dently accused the commission, which was engaged in cleaning ancient icons, of wanting to open up the holy relics, and even threatened members of the commission. To preserve the Lavra itself as “the greatest monument of art,” as well as to allow the commission to do its valuable work, the petition requested that the opening of the relics of Saint Sergius be deferred.105 The opening of the relics itself took place on April 11, 1919, the Friday of the sixth week of Lent (the eve of Lazarus Saturday, which marks the beginning of Holy Week). Because of the large number of pilgrims that came for Confession that day, the local Executive Committee decided to postpone the event until evening so as not to interfere with the activities of the believers, and wait until the churches were empty. It also summoned certain peasants from nearby villages (without informing them of why they were summoned), along with clergy from Gethsemane Skete and Bethany Monastery.106 Before the opening of the relics began, the Soviet officials gathered these local peasants in the hall of the Moscow Theological Academy, and a student from the electrical engineering school gave a discourse to the peasants about what a “dangerous thing” religion was for them. The peasants were listening silently, and Galkin detected the “worm of doubt” gnawing at their religious convictions. Archimandrite Kronid entered the hall and began to tell the crowd that he and the other monks were witnesses of many miracles before the grave of the saint—mentioning specifically the healing of Irina Vasil’eva in 1909 as a famous incident in recent memory (chapter 5). According to Galkin, Kronid was trying to “hypnotize” the crowd, but he claimed that some of the peasants evidently reacted skeptically—for this was a “different crowd” with different points of view and a different mood.107 Kronid then informed the chairman of the Executive Committee that he refused to open the shrine of Saint Sergius out of moral objection and fear, but that he was ordering one Hieromonk Iona to do it. At that, the group moved into Trinity Cathedral.108 Two eyewitness accounts recall the events from rather different perspectives, though they agree on the main details. The Bolshevik Mikhail Galkin (Gorev) wrote his account for the journal Revolution and the Church (Revoliutsiia i tserkov’) with deliberately propagandistic intent. Sergei Volkov, a former student of the Moscow Academy, wrote of the events in his personal memoirs years later; though a theology student at the time, he was not uncritical of the Church when he was writing his memoirs and therefore is a less biased source.109 A detachment of Red Army soldiers (some on horseback) and students from the military electrical engineering school were stationed at the gates and around the monastery, while the churches and bell towers were sealed shut. About six in the evening, the gates of the monastery were closed to prevent pilgrims from entering and the monks from leaving. News of the gates closing shot through the town, according to Volkov, for this could only mean one thing: that the exhumation of the relics was about to take place. As a result,

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thousands of local inhabitants began to gather in the square before the monastery. Galkin recounted that “fanatical women” shouted abuses at the soldiers and guards, allegedly trying to provoke them into shedding “unnecessary blood.” Volkov stated that the women sought a way to break into the monastery, but were unable. Parish priests came to the square and began conducting prayer services to Saint Sergius. According to Volkov, the people joined in the singing and this calmed the scene. During the actual procedure of opening the relics, Volkov was unable either to attend (because it was open only to the monks) or to leave the grounds of the monastery—the soldiers told him that they would not let anyone leave for fear someone would incite the people to riot. Galkin described the scene of Trinity Cathedral, lit up by the candles and the lighting for the movie camera. Around the shrine were chairman Vanhanen of the Executive Committee, other local officials, doctors, Hieromonk Iona, and two deacons. Archimandrite Kronid and other monastic clergy were stationed in front of the iconostasis, while the rest of the cathedral was filled with Red Army soldiers, monks, and the invited peasants. Hieromonk Iona approached the shrine and made a prostration before it, then bowed to Kronid, while the monks began to sing hymns to Saint Sergius until the chairman of the Executive Committee cut them off. They opened up the shrine and removed the many layers of coverings. “As was to be expected,” Galkin noted victoriously, “incorrupt relics were not found.”110 What they did find was the skeleton of the saint, mostly intact, still with some hair, together with some dead moths and grubs, some cotton, and the remains of crude peasant cloth (evidently Saint Sergius’ original clothing).111 Galkin triumphantly recounted that the crowd in the cathedral murmured, “There are no relics!” Volkov, conversely, related how one of the monks, Father Ioasaf, returned and told them what was found; he explained that the appearance of a whole body was caused by the many layers of covers, but that there was no falsification, just a skeleton. “With this news,” Volkov writes, “we were unspeakably overjoyed.” Father Ioasaf also told them that there had been no unseemly actions or rudeness by the authorities during the procedure itself, which was also a great relief. But it was clear that for Volkov and his comrades, the discovery of a skeleton rather than an incorrupt body was not a threat to their faith or a great surprise.112 Both Volkov and Galkin left the monastery after the procedure, after midnight, and both described the scene in the square. According to Galkin, when he left he saw the crowd, but it “did not sing, it did not burn with religious enthusiasm. It already knew the results of the opening of the relics, which struck it like thunder.” They were waiting to get into the Lavra to see for themselves. On the square at one o’clock in the morning, small groups began to form among the people, arguing passionately. Galkin thought of it as a religious crisis or turning point (perelom). If the talk among the crowd before the examination of the relics was about the miracles of the saint, afterward, according to Galkin, it was about the dissipated lives the monks led. “On

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 317 April 11, 1919, religious superstition was dealt, in any event, a serious blow,” he concluded, for it was obvious to everyone that the “saint” was necessary for the monks “only to keep the dark masses in subjection and to exploit popular ignorance.”113 He was clearly exultant that the Bolsheviks had defeated, or at least seriously weakened, the Church and religious faith. Volkov described a more complex scene that was much noisier and more chaotic, with hysterical screams mixed with singing prayers, arguments, and galloping horses. He also observed, on coming out of the gates, that a line was forming—but he described it as a line to pay reverence to the saint who had become, “in the prophetic words of Florenskii, also now a ‘great martyr.’”114 Like Galkin, he noted that various groups were forming and discussing and arguing among themselves, groups that divided and joined with others. A group of women recognized him from services in the church and came up to him, asking if he had been in the cathedral and what he had seen. He admitted to them that he was not in the cathedral, but told them what Father Ioasaf had told him—that the relics were whole, but that only the bones of the saint were preserved. A man in a soldier’s uniform standing nearby interrupted and stated that they had found a board instead of relics. The women started shouting at him to be quiet, calling him an atheist. The soldier continued, until a woman “dressed like an intellectual” went after him with a cane and shouted, “Why are you listening to him?! Beat him!” As the women threw themselves at the man, hitting him with their fists, he ran away. Volkov stated that he found the whole scene so absurd that, despite the seriousness of the day’s events, he started laughing, and then went home.115 The scene that Volkov described from the following day is more striking, and is completely absent from Galkin’s account. The next morning Volkov was awakened by the sound of the monastery’s bells, ringing as they would on a major feast. He hurried to the square, where he found a long line of people stretching across the square lined up in a row to get into the monastery to see the relics “for the first time in their lives.” When he finally reached the cathedral, the line stopped moving and he feared he would not be able to get in, until two monks took him and brought him through another entrance, and placed him where the monk on duty usually stood and from where he could see everything. The candle stands were aglow with all the candles left by the continual flow of visitors. One of the priest monks spoke of the “martyrdom” of the saint, which elicited sobbing in the crowd. After he finished talking, the choir began to sing the prayer service to Saint Sergius, and the entire crowd— young and old, ordinary men and women (muzhiki i baby)—passionately joined in the singing. After the service, access to the relics was permitted again, and an “unending line” of people flowed in to see them. Many believers, Volkov noted, closed their eyes when they venerated the relics; when he asked them later why they did this, they explained to him that they did not want to offend the “nakedness of the

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saint.” As he approached the relics himself, Volkov recounts that he involuntarily thought of the Egyptian mummies he had seen in a museum in Moscow. When he had seen the mummies, he thought of these once-powerful rulers who lived virtually as gods on Earth but were now just historical curiosities for onlookers, weak and powerless as any other human being in death. By contrast, on seeing Saint Sergius, he said he did not think of Sergius’ era or the antiquity of his remains but that he felt the relics’ “inexpressible holiness,” which made them dear, even closer than one’s own deceased relatives. Touching the skull of the saint was like touching the saint himself, who “continued to live in me and in us all.”116 According to Galkin, the chairman of the regional soviet had become a more convinced atheist after this and expressed the desire to leave the relics exposed so that the peasants could come and see for themselves.117 The Sergiev Executive Committee met and agreed that the relics should remain open for a longer period of time; they were left open for three days, and after that the shrine was covered with a glass lid, leaving Sergius’ skeleton visible. It also prompted a propaganda campaign, consisting of a brochure about the opening of the relics (to be printed in 100,000 copies) as well as a film.118 With these measures, the antireligious activists and local authorities believed the “superstition” of the populace would be undermined once they saw the condition of the relics. By all accounts, the result was in fact the opposite. According to a declaration of the Sergiev Posad church communities, “by opening the relics, what they wanted to accomplish was that the narod ceased thronging to the Lavra and lost their trust in their religious guides. Their calculations proved erroneous. No sort of wax figure, no rags, and no sawdust were discovered at the opening, but rather the bones of Saint Sergius were found—the very object of veneration for the Orthodox Christian, as relics, preserved in the body. The first liturgy at the shrine of Saint Sergius after the opening of his relics was accompanied by the greatest religious upsurge, and the believers with their former piety came to the bare skull—for a rude handling of holy objects rouses faith.” By leaving his skeleton exposed, the declaration continued, the local authorities hoped to undermine the faith, but this too did not have the desired effect, for “faith in the Saint and visitation of the Lavra have not suffered at all.”119 It was not only believers who came to this conclusion, but Soviet authorities admitted it as well.120 Even some leading Bolsheviks thought the campaign against relics was a mistake that would only antagonize the populace against them and feed support for the counterrevolutionaries (in the midst of the Civil War). Thus, S. Mitskevich wrote to Lenin in the aftermath of the opening of Saint Sergius’ relics that the campaign not only was bad policy but also contradicted the principle of separation of church and state.121 Indeed, the religious upsurge that came as a response to the exposure of the relics was the opposite of what antireligious activists and local authorities expected. Their miscalculation lay in their misunder-

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 319 standing of Orthodoxy. They thought that relics were by definition incorrupt for Orthodox believers and that if they only exposed the remains as corrupted, the common people would cease to believe in them. Although the belief in the incorrupt nature of relics had grown in importance in popular piety in the decades before 1917, the Orthodox nevertheless regard the remains of a saint as holy, whatever their physical condition.122

The “Liquidation” of Trinity-Sergius, 1919–20 The failure to defeat the veneration of Saint Sergius compelled the antireligious activists in the Eighth Department of the Commissariat of Justice and the Sergiev Executive Committee, under the guidance of Galkin, to seek to cut off believers’ access to the saint. During this time, the antirelic campaign under the Eighth Department entered a new phase of removing the relics altogether from their churches, often placing them in Moscow museums. In August Galkin came to Sergiev Posad to instruct local authorities that Sergius’ bones had been on display long enough to convince the masses of the “deception” of the relics, and therefore it was time to raise the issue of sending the remains to a museum. Second, because the electrical engineering school and other Soviet institutions were now located in the buildings of the Lavra, it was an appropriate time to expel the “parasitical monastic elements” from the monastery and use these spaces for other purposes. Third, the groups of citizens who took responsibility for the churches were not to receive any kind of income for special liturgical services performed, and finally these latter groups were to be investigated to ensure that monks and other “parasitical elements” were excluded.123 The first step the local authorities took, in September 1919, was to announce that they were going to close the Lavra’s churches unless a parish community was formed to take responsibility for the church buildings and liturgical objects. Such a process was standard procedure according to the instructions on the separation of church and state, and clearly one intended for the Lavra’s churches for some time.124 What was peculiar in this circumstance was that the authorities announced that the Sergiev Posad believers had three days to complete the process, which involved a tremendous amount of bureaucracy and inventory of objects. In response, the population of the town formed “Church Communities” (Obshchiny) and succeeded in saving the monastery for a while longer.125 The first step of Galkin’s plan was complete; the Executive Committee decided in October 1919, however, that removing the relics would be unwise at that time because of the danger of social disturbances.126 On the night of November 3–4, 1919, following the orders of the Presidium of the local Executive Committee (themselves following the directions of Galkin and the Eighth Department), the monks were expelled from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. At 3 a.m., as the brothers were rising for services, they discovered that Red Army

320 revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 soldiers had blocked all the entrances to the buildings where the brothers lived; the soldiers then arrested all the monks and took them to a large hall in the monastery. Any laity who happened to be in the monastery were also detained. The brothers were taken under armed escort to the Gethsemane Skete, while the prior and a few other elder monks remained. All the churches were sealed off. Once at the Skete, the brothers were set free, with the admonition that they must not return to the Lavra.127 At 5 a.m., the brothers at the Skete were assembled, and officials from the local soviet took twenty monks who had the keys to the cells, brought them back to the Lavra, and, together with forty soldiers, conducted a thorough search of the brothers’ cells. The soldiers requisitioned all furnishings and valuables, money, books, tea, and sugar, leaving the monks with only necessary provisions, linens, and shoes. The brothers then returned to the Skete, and no one was allowed into the Lavra without permission from the Soviet.128 A week after the removal of the monks, the Sergiev (as the town was renamed) Executive Committee passed a resolution to fulfill Galkin’s August instructions, thus justifying after the fact what had already taken place. The Executive Committee stated that, “in view of the necessity of quartering the institutions and living space [obshchezhitie] of the Soviet and the military, the Lavra is to be liquidated as a monastery, the living space of the monks is to be closed, and the latter are to be sent to the Chernigov monastery and the Gethsemane Skete.” This ruling allowed parishioners of Sergiev to use the churches of the monastery, but endorsed the confiscation of the monks’ personal property.129 The Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra protested the expulsion of the monks on the grounds that they provided “the protection of the cultural valuables of the monastery” and that their removal deprived the commission of watchmen to guard it.130 A general session of the Sergiev Soviet on November 15 declared that the Executive Committee’s closure of the monastery was “correct” but made a concession to the commission, permitting some monks to return in the capacity as watchmen; it described their service as “temporary,” however, to be reduced over time to a minimum. The soviet also considered the other key issue raised by Galkin and the Eighth Department in August, namely, the removal of the relics of Saint Sergius from the monastery, but the vote was split (15–14) and a final decision was deferred.131 The expulsion of the monks, together with the threat of the relics’ removal (made public by the vote in the Soviet on November 15) resulted in explosive popular opposition. There were three “impressive” demonstrations in November. The first, following the Executive Committee’s decision to close the monastery, was on November 12. For the second (November 19) and third (on November 26), after the Soviet’s discussion of the removal of the relics, huge crowds from the town and the surrounding villages gathered at the building of the town Soviet, and the disturbances grew to such a degree that soldiers had to disperse the crowds by firing

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 321 blank shots.132 The threat of removing the relics also elicited protests from local church organizations, which submitted complaints to the Soviet of People’s Commissars that the actions of the local authorities in Sergiev Posad against the monastery violated the Decree on Separation of Church and State, according to which, they argued, the state had no right to interfere with the affairs of the Church.133 On November 25, a delegation which included former Moscow Theological Academy professor I. V. Popov delivered a petition to Mikhail Kalinin (1875–1946) at the All-Russian Central Committee, and one to the Soviet of People’s Commissars (through Bonch-Bruevich). Kalinin evidently agreed that the Sergiev Posad Executive Committee had interfered in the internal affairs of the Church, but said that he needed to speak about it with Bonch-Bruevich. When the delegation met with the latter, he said that the expulsion of the monks was necessary because their cells were needed for “educational aims” (as a dormitory for a local school or institute), but agreed that the removal of the relics of Saint Sergius was improper and that he would oppose it.134 The central authorities, however, did not make any final decision. Undeterred, Popov visited the head of the Eighth Department, Krasikov, who refused to help. His demands unmet, he submitted a complaint to the Bureau of Complaints that the decision of the local authorities to close the monastery and possibly to remove the relics violated the separation of church and state. As in his meetings with Bonch-Bruevich and Kalinin, he was well received. At the end of December, Popov returned again to Moscow, where he visited the Bureau of Complaints to discover that the main jurisconsult had given his case a favorable conclusion. He met with Bonch-Bruevich again and informed him of how the matter was progressing. When he complained to Bonch-Bruevich about the antagonistic treatment he had received at the hands of activists in the Eighth Department, Bonch-Bruevich replied that “everyone else complains against them too.” Bonch-Bruevich also suggested that Popov make a separate petition just about stopping the removal of the relics, rather than combining it with the question of reopening the monastery.135 All this petitioning and protest accomplished its goals, and by December 1919 Galkin informed local authorities that, given the “mood of the peasant masses,” it was necessary to defer the transfer of the relics because their removal would be tactically unwise.136 Moreover, in desperation over the closure of the monastery, Olsuf ’ev and Florenskii argued that the Lavra and all its treasures were now unprotected and that it only made sense to employ guards they knew they could trust not to steal from the Lavra—that is, the monks.137 As a result, forty-three monks, including Archimandrite Kronid, returned to the Lavra and continued to live there and work for the commission.138 Many Soviet leaders were unhappy with this “compromise” situation and pushed for the decisive closure of the monastery and its churches, the removal of the relics, and the transformation of the Commission for the Preservation

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of the Lavra. The Sergiev Executive Committee and the Moscow Revolutionary Committee established a special commission to prepare for the “liquidation” of the monastery, and this time included representatives from the central authorities. The commission met at the end of January 1920, and the Commissariat of Justice appointed Galkin as its chair; it included representatives from the Cheka, the Department for Museum Affairs, and regional and local organs of power. According to the minutes of this commission, the central Department of Museum Affairs clearly tolerated the religious sympathies of the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra, because its members were the best specialists available; indeed, the staff of the Museum Department asserted that it was a matter of indifference to them whether the monastery continued to exist as such. Its representative stated that they were serving scholarship, not propaganda.139 However, zealous antireligious activists like Galkin regarded as intolerable the coexistence of a “museum for the proletarian masses”—the ultimate purpose of the work of the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra—and the “religious cult” within the same walls. He argued that the church services and the presence of monks would cause the museum expositions to be regarded with veneration, especially in view of the “religious frame of mind of the backward masses.” Thus the Church would manipulate the museum to serve its counterrevolutionary aims; it would not serve as a school of Soviet culture for the laboring masses. Galkin therefore insisted that the monastery be “liquidated,” that all monks be expelled, and that religious services cease before the museum opened.140 Galkin also attacked the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra as a collection of religiously inclined aristocrats that “concentrated the ranks of class enemies of the proletariat.” Galkin was not the only one hostile to the commission and to the continued existence of the monastery; G. Ia. Rosenthal of the Cheka insisted “that the Trinity-Sergius Lavra is an abscess on the body of Soviet Russia, which must be cut off one way or another” and that “it is necessary to extinguish this nest of counterrevolutionaries.”141 Thus Galkin’s commission recommended the dismissal of Mansurov, Olsuf ’ev, and Rozanova (Bondarenko had already been dismissed). Curiously, however, it agreed that Florenskii should remain, though only as a temporary member. One local official stated that Florenskii was “completely loyal, [and is] occupied only with scholarship.” Even the Chekist Rosenthal, despite his inflammatory statements, agreed that Florenskii should stay.142 Such views are puzzling, because Florenskii was the only member of the commission who was a priest and a former professor of theology, and because Galkin’s 1919 article against the commission and its publication was directed above all against Florenskii and his vision for the Lavra.143 The Commission for the Liquidation of the Lavra adopted a resolution to close the churches in the monastery, to remove the relics of Saint Sergius, to eliminate the

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 323 presence of monks as watchmen (however, because there was no foreseeable alternative, they compromised and allowed ten to remain temporarily), and to carry out an active campaign of antireligious propaganda in the region.144 It also resolved to dismiss most of the members of the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra, who, because of their class composition and religious inclinations, were “incapable of understanding the tasks of proletarian culture”; it further suggested that the vacated cells be turned into a student dormitory. Perhaps most important, it resolved that the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra was to turn over to the local Executive Committee all buildings that did not have an indisputable historical or artistic value.145 The local authorities confirmed these resolutions in February and March 1920.146 The Museum Division, however, responded with its own resolutions that, among other things, kept Florenskii, Olsuf ’ev, and the religious intellectual Mikhail Shik as members.147 In the following months, a very complex struggle ensued among different Soviet bodies over the fate of Trinity-Sergius and the relics of its founder-saint. On February 19, Galkin wrote to the Sergiev Executive Committee urging the quick fulfillment of his commission’s resolutions, in particular the closing of the churches and preventing pilgrims from having access to Trinity Cathedral, which would then allow the relics to be removed with less opposition. He also suggested more arrests (evidently some had already been carried out), including of Popov, Mansurov, and Varfolomei (Remov).148 Each body made its own suggestion for what to do with the relics of Saint Sergius; the Commissariat of Justice wanted to bury them in Sergiev Posad, the Cheka wanted to take them away secretly in a car, and the Moscow Executive Committee wanted to place them in a Moscow museum. On March 24, Patriarch Tikhon appealed to Lenin to prevent the removal of the relics. But the patriarch’s appeal was ignored, and on March 26 the Moscow Regional Executive Committee resolved to remove the relics of Saint Sergius to a Moscow museum and carry out the transfer of the monastery’s property to local government bodies. Galkin went to Sergiev Posad the following day to prepare for the removal of the relics, which was to take place on the night of March 30–31. Evidently during this time, fearing that the relics might be destroyed, Florenskii and Olsuf ’ev exchanged Saint Sergius’ skull with that of one Prince Trubetskoi, who was also buried at the Lavra. Saint Sergius’ skull was buried at Olsuf ’ev’s house in the 1920s and kept by select people until it could be reunited with the rest of the relics when they were returned to the Church in 1946.149 After arriving, however, Galkin changed his mind; he found the situation in Sergiev so charged, and so full of pilgrims for the Lenten season, that he proposed deferring the closure of the churches and removal of the relics because these actions might ignite massive—even armed— resistance among the local peasants, “even greater than November’s unrest.” He therefore suggested waiting until after Pascha.150 The people won at least a temporary

324 revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 victory, demonstrating that historians’ assertion that Russian Orthodox believers were so disaffected with the Church that they did not come to its defense are inaccurate. Meanwhile, the infighting among different agencies continued. The central government, the Soviet of People’s Commissars, intervened on April 8 and suspended the Moscow Executive Committee’s decision to transfer the property. During April 8–20, various projects were carried out for the “nationalization” of the Lavra: The Commissariat of Enlightenment proposed placing all the buildings and other property under the control of the Museum Division and the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra, both its subordinate bodies. The Sergiev Executive Committee proposed placing all living quarters and buildings and materials of economic use under its control. Finally, the Soviet of People’s Commissars tried to find a compromise solution between the two, distinguishing nuances of buildings that might have historical or artistic value but could also be useful (e.g., the monastery’s walls, which could also be used as living quarters), ensuring that they could be used in a way that did not damage them. According to participants, Lenin himself took a particular interest and edited the last draft of the decree, strengthening clauses that protected the monastery as a historical monument, and Florenskii was apparently also called in to give his input.151 The result was the Decree of April 20, 1920, on “Transforming the Historical-Artistic Treasures of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra into a Museum.”152 Although the decree certainly did not honor Patriarch Tikhon’s wish to allow the monastery to reopen, and it did permit some goods and buildings for local use, Hegumen Andronik (Trubachev) concludes that the decree was “a victory” for the Church because it preserved the monastery from a far worse plundering that would have been very possible if the Commissariat of Justice and the various executive committees had had their way.153 The Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra was reformed, and Florenskii’s potential membership was so disputed by local authorities that he was only called in periodically as an “expert.” Most of the remaining monks who worked as watchmen were also expelled, although several continued to work for the commission throughout the 1920s. The commission continued to carry out extremely important work so that, during the Soviet campaign to confiscate church valuables, ostensibly to feed the starving (though in reality, more as an excuse to provoke and attack the Church), the commission had already studied the Lavra’s valuables and was able to preserve the oldest and most important treasures, handing over only items of later vintage (from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries).154 Although the fate of the monastery was sealed by the Decree of April 20, the decree said nothing of the relics of Saint Sergius. In May 1920, Patriarch Tikhon again appealed to Lenin to ensure that they remain in Trinity Cathedral and remain accessible to believers. At the same time, he also submitted his grievances against the Moscow Executive Committee’s decision to remove relics to the Bureau of Com-

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 325 plaints, as Popov had done earlier. His complaint resulted in a thorough investigation by one P. N. Mol’ver of the Bureau of Complaints, who found Tikhon’s grievances completely justified. During the time of Mol’ver’s investigation, the relics remained in place and Trinity Cathedral was allowed to remain open for particular services.155 Despite the Bureau of Complaints’ siding with Patriarch Tikhon, however, the story of the Lavra’s churches and the relics was not over. On May 7, ten Red Army soldiers entered Trinity Cathedral and demanded that the services be stopped. All the monastery’s churches were sealed off, and the local authorities proclaimed the Decree of April 20, stating further that “all the citizens of the city of Sergiev and its surroundings are ordered not to yield to provocative rumors and to refrain from any sort of public demonstrations.”156 Trinity Cathedral was allowed to open for particular feasts at the end of May,157 and again for the service on the Feast of the Holy Trinity. On the latter day, however, when the local authorities barged in and stopped the services by force, they provoked disorders—perhaps by intent.158 The Trinity-Sergius Lavra and its churches henceforth remained closed for religious services, and indeed all access to Trinity Cathedral was strictly monitored—so that Iurii Got’e, who was working for the Rumiantsev Library and its assumption of the Lavra’s medieval manuscript collection, felt fortunate to be able to venerate the relics.159 The closure of the monastery’s churches once again elicited a wave of protests from groups of believers, both in Moscow and in Sergiev Posad.160 At the same time, the Commissariat of Justice and the Sergiev Executive Committee were outraged by the results of Mol’ver’s investigation, and the issue once again made its way to the Soviet of People’s Commissars at the end of August, which this time resolved in favor of transferring the relics to a Moscow museum. Once again the patriarch protested, both to the government and in a powerful address on September 10, 1920, that recounted the drama of the previous two years: In recent times, the religious feelings of the Russian people repeatedly have been tormented, and blow after blow has been dealt to its holy places and sacred objects [sviatini]. Even our great holy place—the Trinity-Sergius Lavra—has not escaped this fate. It began with the opening of the relics of Saint Sergius. They thought that this would cause people to cease coming together in the Lavra and lose their trust in their spiritual leaders. The calculations, however, proved erroneous. Of course, during the opening [of the relics], they found no sort of falsification, but only the remains of the Saint—revered by all believers as his holy relics. But, as one should have expected, the offense to the relics of Saint Sergius provoked a great religious outburst, expressed in the strengthening of pilgrimage to his tomb that heals. Then [the authorities] started to expel the monks from the Lavra, close the churches (already given to the

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revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 community of believers by contract), and in the local Soviet persistently began to discuss the question of removing the Saint’s relics for burial or transfer to a Moscow museum.

Tikhon continued by recounting his appeals to Lenin and his critique that these actions were “contradictory to the Decree on Separation of the Church from the State [and] to the repeated announcements of the highest central authorities about the freedom of religious confessions.” Nevertheless, his appeals to Lenin, as well as those of believers to local authorities, were met with no reply. Tikhon continued by appealing to Kliuchevskii’s speech at the five-hundredth anniversary of Saint Sergius: Our famous historian Kliuchevskii, speaking of Saint Sergius and his significance together with that of the Lavra which he founded, prophesied: “The gates of the Lavra will be closed and the lamps over his tomb put out only when we have lost without a trace all the spiritual and moral reserves” bequeathed to us by Saint Sergius, the great builder of the Russian land. Now the gates of the Lavra are closing and the lamps are being extinguished. And so? Can we already have lost our inner worth, and all that remains for us is cold and hunger? We only appear to be alive, but in reality we are dead. The terrible time is already drawing near, and if we do not repent, we will be deprived of the vineyard of the Kingdom of God and be given over to something else that will bear its own fruit in time. Let it not be so with us. Let us purify our hearts with repentance and prayer, and we will pray to the Saint that he not abandon his Lavra but “remember his flock, . . . and not forget, just as he promised, to take care of his children,” and all will revere his memory.161 The relics of Saint Sergius never were removed from Trinity-Sergius. The relics, like Andrei Rublev’s famous icon of the Trinity, remained in Trinity Cathedral, which was closed most of the time; only after the rise of Stalin in 1928 would Rublev’s icon be transferred to the Tretiakov gallery in Moscow, while the relics of Saint Sergius remained in Trinity Cathedral but became part of an antireligious exhibit.162 Thus, in contrast to a multitude of other relics that the Soviet authorities removed to museums, believers’ protests and petitions succeeded in preventing the removal of their beloved saint.

Conclusions After the Bolsheviks swept away the facade of the Provisional Government’s power, their initial interests were less in antireligious activism and more in the survival of

revolution: trinity-sergius and the bolsheviks, 1917–1921 327 the regime. As such, local government agencies regarded Trinity-Sergius as an endless source of wealth that they could exploit and extort for their own needs. Ironically, the November 1918 decree that nationalized the monastery placed it under the jurisdiction of the Commissariat of Enlightenment, which protected it from plunder by other bodies. Even a year later, there were pitched battles between the Commissariat of Enlightenment with the Museum Division on the one hand, and the Commissariat of Justice and the local executive committees on the other. This struggle was only decided by Lenin’s Decree of April 20, 1920, which made concessions to the needs and demands of the latter but ultimately strengthened the position of the former and secured the preservation of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra at least as a historical and architectural monument, if not as a functioning monastery—a fate far better than what some of the most ancient and famous monasteries such as Cluny suffered during the French Revolution.163 Moreover, the heroic efforts of Florenskii and other members of the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra in sorting, dating, cataloging, and studying the Lavra’s treasures played an incalculable role in protecting some of Russia’s greatest monuments of art for posterity, even if they proved unable to transform the monastery into a “living museum” of classical Russian culture. When Bolshevik leaders began to turn their attention to the Lavra not only as a source of wealth to be plundered but also as the symbolic center of Russian Orthodoxy, their one great ideological opponent for the hearts and minds of ordinary Russians, the confrontation between the monastery and the new regime intensified dramatically. Antireligious activists such as Galkin knew that the source of TrinitySergius’ spiritual power was above all the relics of its founder-saint. The Bolsheviks believed that if they could expose Orthodox believers’ faith in relics as a fraud that this would do decisive damage to popular piety. According to leading antireligious activists, the Church taught that the relics of Saint Sergius (as all relics) were uncorrupted, and therefore their intent was to expose the “deception” perpetrated by the clergy to destroy the “superstition” of the masses. This act did not have its desired effect, however; in fact, the assault on Saint Sergius resulted in an outpouring of faith as Orthodox believers saw their saint as a “martyr” in death as well as a holy man in life, and regarded the Bolsheviks as those who violate all things holy. The popular faith in relics had much more to do with the power of the relics to work miracles than it did with their uncorrupt state, so believers came to Saint Sergius’ relics in even greater numbers after their “exposure,” not as to an antireligious exposition, as the Bolsheviks hoped, but to be even closer to the saint. As a result, antireligious Bolshevik leaders were driven to take more radical measures over the course of the subsequent year. To end the flow of pilgrims to the relics, a series of measures were necessary— first the removal of the monks and the closure of the monastery as a functioning

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community, next the closure of the churches for worship even after they had been taken over by local lay believers, and finally the removal of the relics themselves. At each successive stage, from the exposure of the relics to the closing of the monastery and finally to the threat of removing the relics altogether, the protests of the patriarch and particularly of local believers became more vociferous and more insistent, until serious unrest broke out in November 1919 when the local authorities decided to remove the relics. As a result, the Soviet authorities kept postponing the removal of the relics over the course of the next year, until finally they just gave up. Altogether, Galkin and others remained obsessed with the idea of removing the relics of Saint Sergius from the Lavra for almost two years—in the midst of Civil War and constant threats to the very existence of the new regime—and this in itself is a powerful testimony of what was at stake in this ideological battle. Perhaps Galkin understood that Florenskii was right, that the monastery was a living, organic whole, and that to divorce the relics from the monastery would deprive both of their meaning. It is ironic that, although the monastery and its churches were closed, the monks were expelled, and the composition of the museum workers was changed, the one thing the antireligious activists never succeeded in doing was precisely removing the relics of Saint Sergius. Nor, as it would turn out, was closing TrinitySergius enough to extinguish monasticism in Russia.

9 Golgotha: Revival and Terror, 1921–1938 1932. February 12. Warmth has returned again, a little blizzard, and the buildings of the Lavra and its famous bell tower with its destroyed bells were black against the whiteness. . . . “What are you looking at?” A little boy asked me. “What is that,” I asked, pointing at the buildings of the Lavra, “do you know?” “I know,” he answered quickly, “that’s where God used to be.” —Mikhail Prishvin, Diaries1 The fate of Prior Archimandrite Kronid reflected that of many of the former Trinity-Sergius brotherhood after the monastery’s closure. Although the Bolsheviks closed the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in 1919, the 1920s were tolerant enough that the satellite communities remained open as agricultural collectives; indeed, despite revolutionary changes in Soviet society, popular Orthodoxy and monasticism survived and even thrived in that period. Kronid himself lived at Gethsemane for the first half of the 1920s, and at Paraclete for the second half. Like many monastic elders, he continued to enjoy the respect and authority both of believers and of his former brotherhood. Because of his prominence, the Soviet authorities forbade him from serving or holding any actual authority in the remaining monastic brotherhoods. By 1928 and 1929, the Soviets had decisively eliminated all the former monastic communities as part of an intensified antireligious campaign; Stalin’s plan for “all-out secularization” left no room for organized religious communities, and the persistent Orthodox worldview was to be rooted out systematically. Kronid was forced to move to an apartment near Kukuevskoe Cemetery in the town of Sergiev; this cemetery, where 329

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Starets Aleksii was buried in 1928, became a magnet both for former monks and for pilgrims who sought blessing from the deceased elder. Remarkably, the cemetery church continued to serve believers even under Stalinism in the 1930s. Kronid, unlike many former monks, managed to evade arrest from 1928 until 1937. By the late 1930s, the only way for Stalinists to root out alternative worldviews seemed to be the wholesale destruction of the people who embodied them. Like most former monks in this instance, Kronid, at seventy-eight years of age and going blind, was arrested during the Great Terror at the end of 1937 and executed as an “enemy of the people.” This chapter follows the story of the Trinity-Sergius collective during the 1920s after the closure of the Lavra itself. Because the story of this book is not only one of institutions and communities but also of the people who made up those communities, the chapter also follows the fate of the last generation of Trinity monks until most of them met their end during the Terror. As the world of Russian monasticism was fundamentally changed after the Bolshevik Revolution, so inevitably the nature of the story changes, as does the nature of the sources. The monastery ceased to maintain archives, and the historian is forced to rely upon much sparser sources, combining memoir literature written much later with Soviet documents, both of which had their peculiar biases. Nevertheless, this period raises critical questions: If monasticism was a central expression of Russian Orthodoxy and Russian popular piety in the prerevolutionary era, how did it meet the revolutionary changes in Russian society after 1917? How committed were the monks to their vocation—did they abandon it and return to the world? Did monasticism experience the “rapid and devastating demise” some historians claim was the fate of the Orthodox Church after the Revolution?2 Did the immense popular devotion to monasteries and their elders survive the shock of the Revolution and the subsequent antireligious campaigns?

Survival or Revival? The 1920s During the Revolution and the Civil War, as the Bolsheviks seized and were trying to consolidate power, they struck at the institutions and public presence of the Orthodox Church because they believed it was one of the pillars of the old regime. Prominent monasteries such as Trinity-Sergius were closed in part because of the influence the Bolsheviks understood they held in popular piety, and in part because the Bolsheviks mistakenly feared them as a palpable counterrevolutionary threat. The Soviet 1920s are known as the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP), during which the Soviet government sought to ease restrictions on the economy so as to enable the country to recover from the devastation of seven years of war, revolution, civil war, and famine. The period also witnessed a certain amount of relaxation in other spheres, as the Bolsheviks sought to win over, or at least not to antagonize,

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the peasantry. At the same time, they rooted out any political plurality to secure their one-party state. This same dual approach was followed with regard to the Orthodox Church. On the one hand, the Bolsheviks continued to fear the counterrevolutionary threat of the Patriarchate and the Church hierarchy, and therefore they sought to neutralize this threat through persecution and arrests, together with a divide-and-conquer strategy directed at causing schisms within the Church. The first such schism occurred in 1922–23, after the arrest of the patriarch and the takeover of the Church administration by liberal, reformist clergy known as “Renovationists.” Subsequent schisms followed in the wake of the declaration of loyalty made by Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodskii) in 1927, which was unacceptable to many other hierarchs. On the other hand, while attempting to undermine the institutional Church, the Bolsheviks sought to avoid direct confrontation with the “laboring populations” (workers and peasants) over religion, seeking instead to gradually undermine their faith through propaganda. Their goal was to supplant religion, particularly Orthodoxy among the Russian population, with a Marxist-Leninist ideology; to “disenchant” the world by means of a scientific worldview; and thus to completely secularize Russian society. Toward the end of the 1920s, however, the Bolsheviks realized that they were fighting a losing battle—that religion persisted and even flourished not only among the peasantry (who were “backward” by Soviet standards) but even among the working class. By 1928, the failure of antireligious propaganda became one of many NEP-era compromises that hard-line Communists found unacceptable and that led them to throw their support behind Stalin in his efforts to revolutionize Soviet society.3 A similar dual approach was followed in relation to monasteries. The Bolsheviks regarded the large, famous, and wealthy monasteries that received many pilgrims as “nests of counterrevolution,” and closed them during the Civil War period (1919–21). The Soviets also closed urban monasteries that received their income primarily by conducting liturgical services and were therefore seen as exploitative and parasitical. At the same time, they tolerated rural monasteries in which the inhabitants worked the land and supported themselves. The fundamental law on the socialization of land, promulgated by the Soviet regime on February 19, 1918, made it possible for monasteries to preserve their communities by transforming themselves into agricultural collectives (arteli) or communes (sovkhozy or kolkhozy). Indeed, at least eighty-five did precisely this.4 The “Liquidation Department” of the Commissariat of Justice was dissatisfied with allowing monks to recast themselves as workers in an artel or commune while their establishments still retained all the features of a monastery. In a memorandum to the Commissariat of Land in June 1919, it reported receiving all sorts of questions from local authorities about the land and property of former monasteries: “In particular, the question of leaving all the

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property of monasteries in the hands of monks and nuns completely on the old bases (as is practiced in several locations of the Russian Republic by several Soviets), remains exceedingly acute and serious. In these localities, the exploitation of the religious vestiges of the dark mass of the population of the Republic continues as before.”5 In October 1919, the Commissariat of Justice and Commissariat of Land directed that all local land departments draw a clear distinction between those collectives with economic aims and those organized for religious purposes. The latter were not to be registered as labor collectives and were not to possess property and land; monastics were to be excluded from labor communes.6 In practice, however, local authorities did not make such distinctions clearly. There was a great deal of local variation in dealing with monasteries-turned-communes; whereas the majority did simply convert the same communities from monasteries into communes, the authorities attempted at least to exclude those members who did not perform manual work, along with promoting the inclusion of those who were not monastics or novices.7 Thus Trinity-Sergius, together with its satellite communities, reformed themselves as labor collectives. The monks of the Lavra called themselves the “Labor Artel of Trinity-Sergius Lavra” and included 224 individuals in 1919.8 The primary purpose of this “labor artel” was the protection of the Lavra itself, though this situation was not tolerated for long. The satellite communities, however, were more successful in surviving as communes. On October 9, 1918, the monks and the lay workers of Bethany Monastery held a meeting and decided to form an agricultural collective.9 The brothers elected the treasurer Hegumen Iliodor as the chairman of the artel, and one Il’ia Tomashevskii as his deputy (Tomashevskii’s status is not clear—perhaps he was a novice or an employee). Further, it was determined that inclusion in the artel would rest upon the sole criterion of an individual’s capacity to work. At the end of 1919, Gethsemane Skete transformed itself into the Gethsemane Agricultural Collective and officially registered as such with the state; the collective received the property of the former Skete (which was officially “public property”) by agreement with the state for “permanent use, free of charge.” The collective’s “soviet” consisted of Hegumen Izrail together with one monk and one novice; the artel consisted of 106 members of the Skete’s brotherhood with the Chernigov Caves division.10 The Paraclete Hermitage became the “Agricultural Collective ‘Paraclete.’”11 The Zosimova Hermitage also reconstituted itself as an agricultural collective—though evidently it did not register with the authorities. Makhrishchskii Monastery and the Coenobium also appear not to have registered themselves with the authorities as collectives, though the evidence on these communities is sparse. In short, all these communities reformed themselves as labor collectives, most recognized by the Soviet government.

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Many monasteries, however, did not survive, and even those that did faced a precarious existence—they were often forced to share their grounds with others and always faced potential closure. The Chernigov Caves division of Gethsemane, which was often thought of both popularly and by the Soviets as a separate monastery, was forced to take in invalids. Then, in 1919, blind and mute children were placed in the same building as the invalids.12 In November 1920, a special commission in Sergiev sought to establish a forced-labor camp. After considering the Paraclete Hermitage and the Chernigov and Gethsemane sketes, the commission concluded that the Chernigov Skete was the most suitable and that its monks should be relocated to Gethsemane. The commission debated the “desirability” of placing criminals in such close proximity with children; it is not clear how long the children stayed, but it was decided to place “less criminal elements” there.13 The Chernigov Skete was “liquidated” as a monastery in 1921, although the Church of the Chernigov Icon of the Mother of God remained open for over a year; a covered passageway for worshipers was built from the gate to the cathedral to keep the prisoners from escaping. After the cathedral was closed in the fall of 1922, workers from the Moscow “Hammer and Sickle” Factory, with permission of the authorities, transferred the miracle-working Chernigov Icon to the Rogozhskaia Church of Saint Sergius in Moscow, where it remained until the closure of the church in 1938.14 The transformation of monastic communities into labor collectives raised numerous questions of community structure. Would the prerevolutionary leadership of the brotherhood remain in place? Would the community continue to be centered on a life of liturgical prayer, subordination to the monastic authorities, and the fulfillment of obediences laid on monks and novices? Would they continue to tonsure new monks and ordain new clergy? What were they to do with elderly monks who were not capable of doing fieldwork and therefore not formally able to be part of the artel—would the communities allow them to remain? Although experiences differed throughout Russia, all the communities of Trinity-Sergius maintained the same leadership. They were able to preserve both the monastic lifestyle and communal order.

The End of Zosimova Hermitage After Zosimova Hermitage became an agricultural collective, “the monks no longer fulfilled obediences, but went to work.” Nevertheless, “even under the new name, our dear community continued its holy occupation: the rule [ustav] was strictly adhered to, the services were conducted with the same reverence.”15 The sixty-oneyear-old Zosimova monk Simon (Kozhukhov), a former aristocrat, wrote to his friend Father Il’ia Chetverukhin in May 1920 that he was dispirited because he felt himself superfluous. “Our little hermitage [pustyn’ka] has transformed itself into an

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agricultural laboring artel, transformed not de jure but de facto. If this had been the condition of the hermitage in 1912 [when he joined the community], of course I would not even have dared to think about joining the brotherhood, because I am completely incapable of bearing peasant physical labor. The obedience that I carry [selling candles] cannot be compared with the labor that the brothers bear. From this [comes] the observation: I am an extra mouth. It is necessary, however, to make peace with this, which I am trying to do with the help of God.”16 The elders of Zosimova Hermitage, German and Aleksii, continued to live in the community and have the respect of the brotherhood, and they were included without question—although perhaps it was precisely for this reason that the artel was not registered with the authorities. Aside from transforming into an agricultural commune, however, life changed little in a remote hermitage such as Zosimova. Brother Simon’s experiences provide a glimpse into the life of the hermitage in those years, demonstrating how little direct impact the Revolution had on the community. In April 1921, Simon wrote that “we Zosimovtsy still live as before.”17 Tonsures and ordinations continued: Simon himself had been tonsured a monk at the end of 1917.18 In the aftermath of the Revolution, the number of pilgrims was small (especially because Aleksii had returned to his seclusion), and in the spring of 1919 the community was beset by typhus and smallpox and warned pilgrims to stay away, while its hotel was being used as a hospital, with Simon tending the sick (both monks and local residents). He was busy in 1918 and early 1919 working on liturgical music and biblical translations. When he had finished these projects, he turned his attention to working on his memoirs and journals. He regularly asked the Chetverukhins to send him theological books, and this desire was magnified by his correspondence with an old friend in Petrograd who, in 1920, had embraced Orthodoxy and wrote to Simon with theological questions.19 Although many Russians turned away from or against the Church during the Revolution, some evidently were finding it anew. Aside from his care for the sick in the pilgrim’s hotel, Simon was devoted to the same pursuits as before the Revolution. Similarly, the life of monk Agafon (Aleksandr Lebedev) of Zosimova reveals a quiet existence of labor and prayer in the first years after the Revolution. He was ordained to the diaconate in 1918 and to the priesthood in 1920 in the hermitage. In 1921, Father Agafon was alternating fieldwork with the “inner work” of spiritual growth. He recorded notes in his farmer’s almanac that “we harrowed the field beyond the pond with a disc-harrow, . . . sowed oats, [and] . . . planted potatoes.” Elsewhere in the same almanac, he wrote reflections on the life of the elder Moisei of Optina about the monastic life.20 In short, despite the Revolution, the brothers of Zosimova Hermitage continued their monastic efforts as they had before.

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Because of health problems, Starets Aleksii returned from Moscow and the Church Council for the summer of 1918 and did not go back again when sessions resumed in the fall. He returned to his seclusion during 1918, and in February 1919, at the age of seventy-three, submitted a request to be tonsured into the great schema. Patriarch Tikhon gave his permission, and on February 28 / March 13, Archimandrite Kronid tonsured him.21 By the summer, the patriarch had released Aleksii from his seclusion, and he received visitors freely. Simon was worried that, as word spread, the elder would be overwhelmed.22 Indeed, Aleksii wrote to his son that since leaving his seclusion, there had been so many pilgrims that he was occupied with confessions and giving advice “day and night.” He continued that “God is evidently strengthening and helping,” as he himself helped others in his capacity as confessor with ordinary human sufferings that had only multiplied and intensified by the misfortunes of the time: “Our Zosimova chronicle is significantly filling with incoming news of the extraordinary signs of God. . . . This is a great consolation for the believers, who have not forgotten God in their hearts—particularly during these times when the situation of humanity is growing so coarse.”23 Aleksii therefore ministered to believers suffering from dislocations of the Revolution. By the summer of 1920, the hermitage was in possession of its hotel again and receiving many pilgrims. One such visitor, Mariia Golubtsova (1887–1925), the daughter of a former professor at the Theological Academy), left an account of her visit that reflected precisely the sufferings and consolation Aleksii alluded to in his letter. She described the hermitage as a place where “the spiritual world—which in life it is acceptable to think about as something distant, unreal, unimportant, unnecessary— becomes real and accessible.” The singing in particular called one’s spirit to turn away from worldly cares. She warmly depicted the hotel as reflecting the monastic atmosphere with its simplicity, its icons and spiritual literature, and spiritual fellowship; indeed, individual rooms were equipped with two beds but often forced to accommodate five or six people because of the great number of visitors. Golubtsova recounted that she had stopped at the monastery for the first time almost “by accident” on her way to visit a friend who lived nearby. Her mother, who had passed away recently, had often encouraged her to visit the hermitage, but she had avoided going to talk to Aleksii because she was “bound by one sin that I was afraid to reveal to the father and then not come to terms with after Confession.” When she visited, the elder received her and talked with her about her family and particularly her mother, and through the course of the conversation “by itself my soul opened up with the whole weight of its wandering, sins, spiritual needs, afflictions,” which painfully burdened her heart. She had suffered so much “grief, deprivation, illness, and death of people dear to me” during that year, and Aleksii was able to pull her back from falling into despair.24 Golubtsova’s story reflects the traumatic

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effect of revolutionary upheaval on people’s lives—but also the consolation and hope that elders and monasteries still offered those who remained believers, a great many of whom were drawn to the community. By the late summer of 1920, however, Patriarch Tikhon directed Aleksii to return to his seclusion, granting Archimandrite Kronid permission to determine who would have access to the elder. Kronid thought that either the elder should receive everyone and end the seclusion entirely or uphold the seclusion and receive no one but the brothers of the hermitage. The elder chose the latter, and returned to his seclusion, which he broke only on Fridays and Sundays to hear the confessions of the monks.25 Over time, exceptions were made, and the patriarch or Kronid allowed particular individuals to talk with Aleksii. A year later, a compromise was reached; on July 1, 1921, Aleksii wrote to Patriarch Tikhon that, in agreement with the patriarch’s proposal, he had chosen two days a week (Tuesday and Wednesday) for receiving those who came to him for spiritual counsel and Confession without prior permission from the patriarch or Archimandrite Kronid.26 Aleksii began receiving visitors at five in the morning, and sometimes he would see hundreds of people in a day despite his age and weak health.27 One pilgrim who visited Aleksii for the first time in 1921, Elena Mozharova, left an account of her conversations with him. Like Golubtsova, the hermitage made a strong impression on her; everything in it “enraptured me: the church, and the liturgy, and the monks, and their life. As if the quiet breath of grace was felt everywhere there.” Aleksii’s fatherly tenderness touched her deeply. As they talked over three hours, she recounted, Aleksii helped her to remember her own past and longforgotten sins—a sign of the famous perspicacity (prozorlivost’) that was considered the hallmark of a true elder. Repenting of her sins, she went away feeling liberated, with a “lightened conscience.”28 Thus the renown of Aleksii continued to draw many pilgrims to the hermitage, because many believers felt he was able to help them with their personal and spiritual struggles. Although Aleksii continued to receive many for spiritual direction, Hegumen German’s health declined steadily in the years after the Revolution. Bishop Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), who had been close to the hermitage before the Revolution and served as German’s confessor, described the last few years of German’s life in his memoirs. The hegumen, feeling his health and strength declining, began to prepare for death, examining his entire life and confessing every sin he could remember. He felt he was too weak even to continue to govern the community, though Arsenii told him that he should remain as abbot until his death and to choose the most faithful brothers to help govern the community, spending his own time in withdrawal.29 In April 1921, Simon had written that the monks of the hermitage lived as they had before, but at the same time he was anxious about the future: “Recently they have started to become very interested in us, and that is not a good thing.”30 Al-

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though he did not elaborate on who was becoming so interested, from a letter written a year later it is clear that the Soviet authorities were trying to weaken the community through propaganda, and Simon was worried about what would happen to the community after the elders passed away. He wrote to the Chetverukhins in April 1922 that “the Zosimova Hermitage is supported by such ascetics as Fr. German, Fr. Aleksii, Fr. Dionisii. . . . It can be guaranteed that after their death the Zosimova hermitage will also disintegrate. It is supported so far by their spirit, which already now, during their lives, they [i.e., the Soviets] are trying their hardest to eradicate— quietly, and sometimes even clearly—as antiquated, ridiculous. They even deride the elders themselves to their face and behind their backs, calling them obsolete. Such work is carried out, of course, not in view of the pilgrims, and therefore they know nothing about it; only the inhabitants themselves know about it, and some lament, but others rejoice and celebrate the victory.”31 Although there is no more evidence about the tactics local authorities used to undermine the community, it is particularly noteworthy that they were not so much trying to discredit the authority of the elders in front of the pilgrims as among the brotherhood itself—and evidently they were enjoying some success. The world had broken through the walls of the community and begun to divide the community itself, rendering its very survival precarious. Hegumen German died on the evening of January 17, 1923. Aleksii performed the first memorial service (panikhida) in German’s cell, followed by words of gratitude for German’s spiritual leadership of the community. Three days later, his body was taken into the church, where Archimandrite Kronid conducted a solemn vigil. The following morning, Sunday, January 21, Bishop Varfolomei (Remov) conducted the funeral service.32 Both Simon and Bishop Arsenii observed that the atmosphere was not somber but festal: “It was not a funeral,” Simon wrote that same day, “we had Pascha, . . . we foretasted the resurrection. I, a sinner, was worthy by God to be present in the last minutes of Fr. German’s life. . . . They bid him farewell with the Holy Mysteries an hour before his blessed, painless end.”33 The sense of joy and resurrection is particularly striking given the circumstances and the foreboding that hung over the community with the loss of its leader; evidently, their experience of life in the monastery provided a sense of something that transcended the trials of the times. The Zosimova brotherhood was deprived not only of their beloved father, however, but also of their beloved community. On the very day after German’s death, a distraught Simon wrote to the Chetverukhins that German was lucky to have “departed to the Lord in time, for calamity is drawing near.” In late 1922 and 1923, there was a wave of monastery closures throughout Soviet Russia; during this period, Makhrishchskii Monastery (like Zosimova, also in Vladimir Province) was also closed.34 Simon continued that “at any time Zosimova Hermitage will be closed

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along with the other monasteries of Aleksandrov District. This is not an empty rumor, but a reality. I don’t know what to do!” He desperately asked the Chetverukhins if they knew of any way he could receive some sort of appropriate work in Moscow. “I’m not chasing after much, . . . and I won’t insist on any conditions.” “I do not hide from you,” he continued, “my extreme anxiety,” which worsened after the loss of Father German.35 The very day after German’s funeral, the “liquidation commission” came to the monastery and, according to Simon, “declared that we are no longer monks, but citizens”—in striking similarity to the French Revolution authorities who nullified monastic vows—and that the church would be closed.36 The local peasants made a request to form a parish that would take charge of the church, thus attempting to preserve it and the community—something that was happening throughout Russia. The former monks—now “the citizens of Zosimova Hermitage”—announced the formation of a labor collective (from which, Simon noted, he was excluded because he was too old). Simon himself found shelter with a nearby family.37 In the spring, the authorities announced that the monastery would be eliminated; forty people could remain as workers, but the rest would be expelled. In May 1923, the monastery was finally closed, and its inhabitants were “thrown out on the street,” in Simon’s words. Aleksii and his cell attendant Makarii stayed a few nights in a hotel in Sergiev until a family offered them shelter. In July, Simon wrote of his desperate material situation; he also wrote how he could see from the balcony of the dacha where he was living how the hermitage was being desecrated, as valuable vestments and the shrine of elder Zosima were carried off.38 Thus, though the remote Zosimova Hermitage was shielded from the direct impact of the Revolution for several years and its brotherhood and devotees continued their activities much as before, the Revolution brought an end to the community’s existence shortly after the death of the spiritual leader responsible for its flowering.

Gethsemane The Trinity-Sergius collective faced a precarious existence in the 1920s, as communities were gradually closed and the inhabitants of those that remained open were subjected to sporadic arrests and harassment. At the same time, the possibility existed for some communities that reorganized as agricultural collectives to not only survive but flourish. By 1924, Trinity-Sergius itself was closed and all the monks had been expelled; the Chernigov Skete was closed because the buildings were needed for other purposes, and those communities located in other districts (Makhrishchskii Monastery and Zosimova Hermitage) were also shut down. There were also church closures; in November 1922, the Church of Chernigov Skete was closed, fol-

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lowed by the Coenobium’s church. Several communities in the Sergiev District, however, remained open: Gethsemane, Bethany, Paraclete, and the Coenobium.39 The guiding rule for the local authorities appears to have been balancing the need to use monastery complexes for other purposes versus the agricultural productivity of the monastic communities themselves. The monastic brotherhoods were forced to share their property with other institutions; in August 1923, the Presidium of the Sergiev Executive Committee decided to house retired teachers in parts of Gethsemane’s buildings.40 A school for children was established on the grounds of the former Bethany theological seminary. Altogether, there were 20 members of the collective farm (former monastery) and 400 children in the school.41 In August 1925, the local authorities “liquidated” the Bethany collective farm and gave all its property (land, buildings, and farming implements) to the “Lenin Orphanage,” though one of the churches remained open for several more years.42 The Department of Museum Affairs remained in control of portions of the former monastery, and the chambers of Metropolitan Platon were turned into a museum. The department also tried to protect buildings from damage inflicted on them by the children.43 As we saw with Trinity-Sergius, the Museum Department often served to defend and preserve former monasteries from potential destruction. These shifts for the various communities reflected both the tremendous fluctuations in the pattern of local Soviet rule in the 1920s and its irregularity and unpredictability. Thus two communities, Gethsemane and Paraclete, survived into the second half of the 1920s. Paraclete continued to uphold its prohibition on female visitors and therefore received no pilgrims; as a result, there are no memoir accounts of the community and virtually no information about it. There were fewer than twenty monks in 1922, but a few years later there were forty-two registered members of the agricultural collective (and likely more older monks who were not registered)—the increase in number came as monks from other closed communities relocated there.44 Gethsemane faced threats of closure in the mid-1920s, but it survived and became the primary monastic center of the region. The Executive Committee’s decision to house retired teachers there was accompanied by an order to expel all the monks who were not members of the artel and give the rooms they had occupied to a home for invalids.45 In 1923, the local authorities conducted an inspection of Gethsemane that evidently yielded positive conclusions about the collective’s contributions and granted a nine-year lease. A year later, however, the Moscow Provincial Soviet reversed its resolution to continue the artel and decided to close it. The community protested the threat to its closure and defended itself by pointing to the fact that the Moscow Provincial Soviet itself found it to be the best artel in the district. They stressed factors that would appeal to the Communists such as the peasant background of most of the monks and the community’s productivity, and their

340 golgotha: revival and terror, 1921–1938 appeal was successful.46 The authorities also arrested Hegumen Izrail and accused him of conducting “anti-Soviet agitation” among the members of the artel, allegedly saying that “Soviet power will soon end,” also accused him of “transforming” the artel into a monastic community. They further alleged that he was a “vehement black-hundredist” who was “influential among the population and the so-called brotherhood.” Izrail denied these accusations, and after a few months he was released and returned to functioning as abbot of the community.47 Thus communities were always under the threat of closure, but sometimes they could successfully appeal to Soviet values to preserve their existence. Although it won the battle to remain open, the struggle over the territory of the Skete itself continued between the monks’ artel and the authorities, which tried to find room for the retired teachers. At the beginning of May 1924, the Department of Social Security informed the Gethsemane artel that it would have to vacate the main corpus of the Skete in ten days. In response, the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra declared that the seventeenth-century wooden Church of the Dormition was “one of the most valuable architectural monuments.” The church was flanked on both sides by living quarters—including the chambers of Metropolitan Filaret, which fell under the Department of Museum Affairs’ jurisdiction—that were occupied by the monks. The authorities wanted to put the retirees in precisely these buildings; it is clear that the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra preferred that the buildings stay in the hands of the monks, and it supported the monks’ own proposal to give the retired teachers different buildings on the Skete’s grounds. The commission claimed that the absence of electricity meant that these wooden buildings would be under threat of fire if occupied by the retired teachers.48 Evidently a compromise was reached, because the retired teachers were housed elsewhere on the grounds of the Skete. Although the final resolution of the matter is not entirely clear, the documents indicate that two-thirds of the Skete’s living quarters were occupied by the monks of the collective farm, numbering about 130 to 140, while the other third was occupied by the retired teachers, bringing the total to approximately 190 people. Moreover, the chambers of Metropolitan Filaret were turned into a museum and not occupied by anyone. In September 1925, the Presidium of the Sergiev Executive Committee was still pursuing the matter, complaining that the museum of the chambers of Metropolitan Filaret had too few objects on display and too few visitors to warrant occupying such a large living space that was needed by the home for invalids—and thus the expositions should be transferred to the Lavra so that the invalids could take over the building.49 Despite the presence of the invalids and retirees, Gethsemane became a vibrant spiritual center as well as a successful collective farm under the capable leadership of Hegumen Izrail. Natal’ia Verkhovtseva, an active believer who lived in Sergiev with her mother, Vera, from 1916 to 1928, observed that the struggle for the com-

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munity’s survival lay on Hegumen Izrail’s shoulders. She described him as being very determined, full of energy, and of keen mind and foresightedness, as well as a being man of great self-sacrifice. Though he had little formal education, he was loved and respected by the most intelligent and educated people in Sergiev; “even ideological enemies,” she noted, “retreated and gave up their position.” He was particularly astute to transform the Skete into an official agricultural collective right away, and a model collective farm at that, continuing the tradition of excellent farming that had developed before the Revolution. As an artel, the Skete “continued to flourish, demonstrating a model of selfless labor: the best vegetables in the region, the richest apiary—it appeared that on everything which the tireless laboring hands of the Fr. Hegumen touched lay the imprint of God’s blessing.”50 K. P. Trubetskaia, who lived in Sergiev from 1923 to 1928, made similar observations about the Skete’s success as a collective farm: “The economy of the Skete was in excellent shape. Everything shined with cleanliness and order. At no other time have I seen such wellcared-for livestock and fields.”51 Evidently even the Soviet authorities came to the same conclusion, which signified that the economic contribution of the Skete outweighed its harmful ideological influence. The community dropped its ban on the entrance of women and attracted large numbers of pilgrims. Memoirs by local inhabitants emphasized the solemnity and beauty of its liturgical services and the great respect for Hieromonk Porfirii, the confessor and last elder of Gethsemane Skete. Porfirii had been the cell attendant of Starets Varnava, and he carried on an extensive correspondence with Varnava’s flock, with Vera Verkhovtseva acting as his secretary. In addition, the liturgical services also moved visitors. One pilgrim observed that “the monks came in coarse riasas, . . . the singing was simple but fervent, all praying with one spirit.”52 In short, Gethsemane Skete remained a vital community and a source of inspiration for believers. The spiritual life of Gethsemane continued to flower in the 1920s, which served as a refuge not only for monks expelled from other communities but also for believers who continued to revere the way of life it preserved.

Sergiev in the Mid-1920s The town of Sergiev had a particular concentration of people that the Soviets regarded as “formers” (byvshie), those deprived of civil rights because they belonged to the old elites and “exploiters”—Tsarist officials, aristocrats, merchants, clergy, and in general those who could not claim to be “workers” or “peasants.” Since 1917, a number of prominent aristocratic families with close ties to the Church had moved to the town; names such as Trubetskoi, Olsuf ’ev, Naryshkin, Mansurov, Lopukhin, Shakhovskoi, and Komarovskii were prominent. Although they played an important role in local culture, their lives were precarious, subject to the perpetual threat of

342 golgotha: revival and terror, 1921–1938 arrest or exile. Iurii Olsuf ’ev and his wife were among the first to move to Sergiev Posad, in early 1917. He continued to work for the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra well into the 1920s, and he became a leading specialist in museum affairs, restoration, and medieval art, publishing a number of important studies, and managing to avoid arrest in the 1920s only to perish in the Terror.53 Others, such as Sergei Mansurov and the artist Vladimir Komarovskii, were subject to arrest in the 1920s. On the whole, however, the 1920s were relatively peaceful, and these residents of Sergiev clearly had a strong sense of community with one another and a strong connection with the Church.54 Because of the types of people the town attracted, antireligious activists wanted to make Sergiev a focal point for atheist propaganda. In a 1926 article in Antireligioznik, M. I. Pokrovskii ironically depicted the great respect monasteries enjoyed among believers before the Revolution, as a place “where angelic monks lived, where rested incorrupt relics, where ‘health-bearing’ springs gushed from the earth, and other miracles were accomplished.”55 This legend of the monastery still existed in remote villages; former monks became the “most reactionary” of churchmen and active organizers for their cause. Moreover, for many, particularly “believing women,” monks were seen as persecuted confessors for the faith. Pokrovskii observed the continued existence of monasteries under the guise of collective farms and noted that although the former “parasitical” means of support had disappeared, these monks still perpetuated the peoples’ faith; perhaps even more dangerous were those monks who had been dispersed through the population after their monasteries were closed, living in towns or wandering the countryside. Antireligious propaganda, Pokrovskii continued, was inseparable from the struggle against the authority of the Church and monasteries; therefore, antireligious propaganda should take on the task of “unmasking” monasteries as fundamental enemies of the proletarian state. The best means for such propaganda was an antireligious excursion to a local monastery. The museums that already existed in former monasteries were inadequate, because they focused their work on the artistic and architectural treasures of the monastery, not on antireligious propaganda. Thus such excursions would have to be organized and led not by museum workers but by antireligious activists. To illustrate what such an antireligious monastery tour might look like, the author took as an example the Trinity-Sergius Lavra as “more illustrative in the antireligious sense than any other monastery.” The rest of the article led the reader through the monastery and its objects, pointing out how the monastery was closely tied to and supported by the autocratic state, how it exploited the laboring masses, and how the monks themselves lived in debauchery. From this, Pokrovskii concluded, the guide should draw the audience to a broader rejection of religion in general and Christianity in particular.56 Trinity-Sergius, as a center and

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symbol of Russian Orthodoxy before the Revolution, should now become a focal point for atheistic propaganda. As Pokrovskii observed, the closure of monasteries meant the dispersal of monks and nuns throughout the population. Many continued to adhere to a monastic lifestyle, whether they found new communities to join or were compelled to live “in the world.” The fate of the vast majority of such monks and nuns is unknown. After the closure of Zosimova Hermitage, some monks such as Father Innokentii settled in more remote villages, where they often offered spiritual guidance to local parishioners or unofficial monasteries.57 Several former monks from Zosimova relocated to the Vysoko-Petrovsk Monastery in Moscow, invited by Bishop Varfolomei (Remov), who had been a spiritual son of Hegumen German. Vysoko-Petrovsk was the one urban monastery that survived in Moscow during the 1920s and succeeded in maintaining a strict and traditional form of monastic life and in becoming a spiritual center in the capital. Father Agafon (Lebedev) was elevated to archimandrite and appointed prior in May 1924. He became confessor to the laity, and hundreds were under his spiritual direction.58 Even later in the 1920s, some of the former monks were exiled but still returned to the monastery in Moscow.59 Bishop Varfolomei, with his close ties to the hermitage before its closure, became a kind of patron for many of its former monks. The experience of Simon (Kozhukhov) after being expelled from his community was not unusual. Although he stayed with a local family immediately after the closure of Zosimova Hermitage, this situation lasted a few months until the family moved and it became clear that he was not terribly welcome. He then moved to a village in Tver Province with some relatives. There he helped his hosts by working their large garden, helping to raise extra vegetables that were sold or traded for other goods, as was typical of the NEP period. Despite his earlier protests that he was incapable of such labor, he wrote that he worked from early morning until evening every day and did not feel exhausted. Nevertheless, he longed to be in a monastery; “a monk in the world is like a fish out of water,” he wrote.60 His relatives lived near the Nilova Hermitage, which had also become an agricultural collective; he requested to join, but for half a year was refused because of his age and the reduced circumstances of the monastery. Once he finally did become part of the Nilova Hermitage, he was very content, only missing Starets Aleksii. The average day consisted of a full cycle of Vespers, Matins, and the Divine Liturgy. Comparing the communities, he observed that “pilgrims went there [to Zosimova] for the sake of the community, for the sake of the elders and the brotherhood. In our souls we were proud of this. They come here [to Nilova] not to us, but to the saint of God [Saint Nil Stolbenskii, whose relics were there]; we completely efface and humble ourselves. And for the monk this is necessary.”61 After Nilova Hermitage closed in 1926, Simon

344 golgotha: revival and terror, 1921–1938 moved to another town, where he rented a room and eked out a meager existence until his death in April 1928.62 A great number of former monks of Trinity-Sergius itself as well as other communities remained in Sergiev, living in apartments or finding shelter in the homes of devout laypeople. As an unintended consequence of the state’s closure of monasteries, the dispersal of monks and nuns from regions with heavy concentrations of monastic populations inevitably increased their presence in the nearby urban centers where they ended up. Such was the case with Kozel’sk (near the Optina Hermitage), as with Sergiev.63 When Starets Aleksii, at the age of seventy-seven, and his cell attendant Makarii were expelled from Zosimova and came to Sergiev, Vera and Natal’ia Verkhovtseva offered them shelter by giving them a portion of their home that consisted of two rooms, where Aleksii would spend the remaining five years of his life. Here he received monks, clergy, laity, and bishops—including Patriarch Tikhon—for spiritual guidance. Vera Verkhovtseva’s memoir depicts visitors who came to their house to see Aleksii, many of whom were former monks of TrinitySergius as well as Gethsemane. Archimandrite Kronid was one such regular visitor.64 Others also left accounts of the spiritual guidance Aleksii provided for them during these years, giving a picture of the same attentive and perceptive elder who had become so popular. The popular image of Aleksii was of a very strict elder who insisted on adherence to the norms and laws of the Church. Those who knew him better said that this image was misleading, that the main characteristic was his love for Christ and for people.65 Yet in one area, according to Sergii Sidorov (who was parish priest of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Sergiev from 1923 to 1925), Aleksii was very strict—with regard to obedience to the Church’s authorities. Because Aleksii was one of the most popular confessors in Russia and enjoyed such great respect, he weighed his position on the multiple schisms that tore the Church apart in the 1920s very seriously. His guiding principle was obedience to the bishops of the Church, as long as they did not violate its canons. The Renovationists, reformist priests who took over the Church administration after Patriarch Tikhon was arrested in 1922, were both extremely antimonastic and regarded as innovators who broke with tradition and violated the canons of Church order.66 Therefore it is not surprising that the Renovationists did not like Sergiev, nor were they liked there. Aleksii was no exception; he refused to receive a former disciple who had only served with a Renovationist bishop.67 At the same time, Aleksii supported Tikhon when the latter sought to adopt the Gregorian calendar, a very unpopular move among the faithful. He taught that nothing would destroy the unity of the Church so quickly as the tendency to self-will or to follow one’s own opinion, which is how he interpreted the formation of various factions within the Church; the only way to preserve unity, according to Aleksii, was through obedience.68

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Thus even when many bishops were breaking with Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodskii) after his declaration of loyalty to the Soviet Union in 1927, Aleksii stood firmly behind Sergii. He declared that Sergii was the legitimate head of the Church and that it was necessary to follow him; he told one spiritual daughter who was distraught by the divisions and confusion to “tell all those who know me in Moscow that the elder does not doubt for a minute and does not waver, and stands on the side of those who accept the authorities and follow Metropolitan Sergii.” When it came to relations with the Soviet authorities, Aleksii declared that it was not a sin to pray for them (as the Church always included prayers for the civil authorities in its petitions). Indeed, from this viewpoint, it was necessary to pray for them because only the grace of prayer could “break down the wall of enmity and hatred which stands between the Church and Soviet authorities. Pray—perhaps the grace of prayer will break through the wall.”69 According to Father Sidorov, Aleksii began to prepare his favorite disciple, Mikhail Shik (formerly of the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra), to take charge of those who came to him for Confession. When Aleksii asked Father Sidorov to take Shik on as a deacon in his parish, Sidorov hesitated because Shik was a Jewish convert. Sidorov stated that he knew Shik well and respected him greatly, but he feared that his parish would not accept Shik because of their “hatred of the Jews.” According to Sidorov, Aleksii replied, “Do not tell me this, . . . this is madness —to hate the Jews. Any hatred is a sin, and hatred for the People of God . . . is an unjustifiable sin.” The patriarch confirmed Aleksii’s support of Shik’s ordination, and Sidorov managed to convince his parish council to accept the new deacon— though only by threatening to leave.70 Aleksii passed away quietly on September 19, 1928. He had instructed that he was to be buried in a humble manner; however, his flock, finding out about his death, started gathering in large numbers to pay their respects. About forty clergy, most of whom regarded Aleksii as their spiritual father, conducted the funeral— including an archbishop, Bishop Varfolomei (Remov) and three other bishops, three archimandrites, and Hegumens Izrail and Vladimir, as well as a multitude of hieromonks, priests (including Il’ia Chetverukhin), and deacons. Archimandrite Kronid was present, but he was forbidden by the authorities to serve in Sergiev. Because of the great number of people, it took three hours for everyone to pay their last respects to Aleksii before his body was taken to Kukuevskoe Cemetery to be buried. Several of those present commented that the mood was festal rather than mournful.71 The paradoxical situation of monasticism in the 1920s mirrored the social and cultural contradictions of the NEP period as a whole. The center—the Trinity-Sergius Lavra itself—was closed as a monastic community and transformed into a museum, as which it remained contested territory between specialists in art and architecture, on the one hand, and antireligious activists, on the other. Comparatively, the town

346 golgotha: revival and terror, 1921–1938 had few Bolsheviks and little antireligious activity. The satellite communities of Trinity-Sergius continued a precarious existence, subject to the will of local authorities that might take buildings or close the whole monastery. Communities in other districts were closed by 1924, but several in the Sergiev District survived until the end of the 1920s. Local authorities were torn by competing interests: the demands of the antireligious campaign balanced by the desire not to alienate the peasantry, the need for buildings and structures to shelter those neglected by society (invalids, retirees, criminals, and orphans), balanced by the need for the productive agriculture that the monastic communities provided. Indeed, when threatened with potential closure, Gethsemane was successfully able to defend its existence primarily on the basis of its economic productivity. The fates of individual monks themselves were equally precarious, and were also subject to a variety of circumstances. Younger, able-bodied monks expelled from their communities were more easily received by other communities or could find other work, whereas those who were known to pilgrims—such as Starets Aleksii— were given shelter by devout laypeople. But a simple, elderly monk like Simon was left completely vulnerable. Paradoxically, in providing shelter for a marginalized population, the regime created new social outcasts—and they were defined as such by the regime because of their social origins and previous way of life, leading to deprivation of rights and means of living. Perhaps the greatest paradox of the period is that despite the persecutions and antireligious campaigns, monastic communities such as Gethsemane and monastic elders such as Aleksii continued to hold great authority among believers and to attract large numbers of pilgrims. Indeed, what was most striking about the antireligious propaganda were its sparseness and apparent ineffectiveness. Although the Soviets’ persecution of monasticism was certainly more coercive than Catherine the Great’s, the ultimate and unintended effect may have been similar—to purify monasticism, forcing the departure of those who had joined with mixed motives, and to strengthen the dedication of sincere monks. In the end, the continued spiritual authority that monastic communities and elders held among believers—still the majority of the population—meant that the Church continued to provide a formidable counterculture and alternative to Soviet ideology.

The Terror Descends: The Trinity-Sergius Brotherhood, 1928–38 The passing of Starets Aleksii was the end of an era. That same year, 1928, also signaled the beginning of dramatic changes in the Soviet Union—the consolidation of Stalin’s power, the acceleration of industrialization, and the drift toward collectivization. Many Communist activists—particularly a younger generation who came into

golgotha: revival and terror, 1921–1938 347 the Bolshevik Party after the formative experience of the Civil War and moved into positions of leadership—had grown impatient with the compromises of the NEP period of the 1920s and were pushing for more radical methods to bring about socialism. Similar processes were taking place in the religious sphere; the policy of disestablishing and undermining the institutional Church while leaving believers (especially peasants) more or less alone with the intention of gradually disabusing them of their religious convictions through propaganda had backfired. Indeed, the increased power and stake that believers had in their churches resulted in a heightened activism on their part, whereas antireligious propaganda had largely failed. Therefore, much as in the social, cultural, and economic spheres, Communist activists had become convinced that more radical measures—“storming the heavens”— were necessary. As a result, the decade between 1928 and 1938 began with the closure of all the remaining monastic communities and ended with the arrest or imprisonment of most of the remaining monks.

Nest of Black Hundreds In preparation for the First Five-Year Plan and collectivization, the security services (the Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie, GPU) were seeking out potential enemies who might stir up the common people against the state and the policies it sought to implement. “Experts” became targets in the early summer of 1928, exemplified by the famous “Shakhty” show trial of “bourgeois specialists” accused of wrecking and sabotage in May and June. At precisely the same time, the GPU was “discovering” various “counterrevolutionary” groups of religious leaders and other “former” peoples (byvshie, elites under the former regime, also called lishentsy, as they had been disenfranchised). There was also heightened use of the language of “class warfare,” and these “former” people were regarded as de facto hostile to socialism.72 From the fall of 1928, when the collectivization campaign began in earnest, clergy were often targeted along with “kulaks” (wealthier peasants) as obstacles to collectivization, and together with them often deprived of their property and sent to the Gulag or exiled. Moreover, an intensive campaign began to close churches, and all the remaining monastery-artels and collective farms were also eliminated. The turn came in Sergiev early, beginning in March 1928, with an attack on “formers.” The campaign began when the Moscow newspaper Atheist at the Press (Bezbozhnik u Stanka) published an article that listed the names of those who served on parish councils in Sergiev. It claimed that “formers” constituted 90 percent of the parish councils. The article alleged that there were also people who were highly placed under the Tsarist regime who, though not formally part of the parish councils, gave direction to church policy—and that all these people used the churches

348 golgotha: revival and terror, 1921–1938 for their anti-Soviet propaganda.73 In April, follow-up articles appeared in the local Sergiev newspaper Plow and Hammer (Plug i molot).74 The affair reached a new level when central newspapers focused their attention on the town and began to target the “specialists” in the museum of the former Lavra. On May 12, an article appeared in Worker’s Paper (Rabochaia gazeta) titled “Nest of Black Hundreds near Moscow.” It claimed that Trinity-Sergius itself was serving as a refuge for priests and monks, former princes, factory owners, and gendarmes, and in this way had become a religious center. In all, the article claimed, there were some 2,000 such people living in and around Sergiev. These “former” people were working in Soviet institutions and also serving on parish councils, and from these positions they were conducting religious propaganda. The museum that had been formed out of the Lavra was visited by excursions of workers and should serve the purposes of antireligious propaganda. Instead, staffed with former aristocrats, the museum was conducting religious propaganda for the Church and even publishing its propaganda on the state’s budget (the reference is evidently to the historical and artistic studies that Derviz, Florenskii, and Olsuf ’ev published in the 1920s). Moreover, the article continued, these class enemies were in charge of guarding the monastery’s rich treasures of gold and jewelry, as well as its archive—and a portion of the archive had allegedly “disappeared.” The article continued that, though monasteries (“nests of parasites”) had been closed after the October Revolution, the monks had adapted and were operating several secret monasteries near the town under the guise of agricultural communes and were officially recognized as such, one of which had 130 monks—no doubt a reference to Gethsemane. Thus, the article sounded an alarmist note that in Sergiev, a town so close to Moscow, religious propaganda was being conducted and was successful (the article noted that all the town’s churches were full on every feast day), whereas the work of atheistic propaganda was weak and imperceptible. The article ended with a call to action—that such a situation “cannot be tolerated any longer. The nest of Black Hundreds should be destroyed. The appropriate organs must pay special attention to Sergiev.”75 A similar article published several days later pointed to the “class enemies” that were teaching in the schools, such as the former theology professor D. I. Vvedenskii, who was serving as head of the local crafts museum and teaching courses on the subject. The result was palpable, the article concluded; a recent questionnaire revealed that 75 percent of the town’s children said they believed in God.76 The authorities indeed responded as the articles called them to do—unless, of course, the articles themselves were merely preparing the ground for what was to follow. On the night of May 11–12, 1928, someone shot through the window of G. Kostomarov, a Bolshevik who was deputy manager of the local Agitprop (the Propaganda Department). Kostomarov was working in the Lavra’s archive and publishing antireligious works about the monastery.77 The attempt on his life was blamed on

golgotha: revival and terror, 1921–1938 349 the “class enemies” connected with the museum. An investigation followed, and although no evidence was produced that anyone was guilty of having fired the shot at Kostomarov, at least eighty people were arrested in the second half of May.78 A large number of those arrested included people connected with the museum of the former Lavra, including Pavel Florenskii. In addition, many “class enemies”— former aristocrats and merchants—were also arrested. Most of these were also active in the Church as members of parish councils or church elders. Natal’ia and Vera Verkhovtseva, the mother and daughter who gave shelter to elder Aleksii in his last years, were among those arrested, together with two other former theology professors and several priests.79 Some seventeen or eighteen monks were also arrested, most of whom had continued to work for the museum until 1927 or 1928. These included Hieromonk Diomid (Egorov, 1875–?), the former sacristan who was employed because of his expert knowledge of the sacristy. The remaining, such as Hieromonk Maksimilian (Marchenko, 1871–1938), worked for the museum as watchmen.80 In short, those connected to the Church in some way or another were particularly targeted. In the end, no one was convicted or even accused of shooting at Kostomarov; instead, eighty people were convicted of “anti-Soviet activity,” according to statute 58.10 of the Soviet criminal code. No evidence was produced of their guilt; rather, their social origins or position before the Revolution were sufficient to establish their guilt. The verdict stated that “almost all of the convicted, owing to their origins [proiskhozhdenie] and the position they occupied in pre-revolutionary times, have been until now ideologically related to one another and constituted an entire group of Blackhundredist element, sharply hostile in relation to Soviet power.”81 The “evidence” gathered by the agents of the GPU was “confirmed” by what was published in Atheist at the Press and Worker’s Paper. In other words, their social origin— or, as in the case of former monks, their position—was enough to determine de facto that they were hostile to Soviet power, and if hostile, then inevitably guilty of anti-Soviet propaganda and activity. The convicted were either exiled or sent to forced labor camps for three years. Moreover, the particular focus on the museum of the former Lavra resulted in its temporary closure and “reorganization,” as all the “formers” were purged from its ranks and the museum was reorganized as a more explicitly antireligious one. The press brought pressure on the museum administration, and one article stated that not only should these workers be fired from the museums in Sergiev, but they should also be “expelled from all Soviet work” rather than be transferred to work in other museums.82 Together with the museum, a particular focus was placed on the Lavra’s archive; it was still in the hands of the museum, and its keys were in the hands of a former monk. Also, allegedly, a number of documents that would be incriminating to the monastery—particularly containing its reports of miraculous

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healings—had supposedly disappeared.83 Although archivists have recently established that documents had not disappeared, this was used as a pretext for the central archive administration to take control of the Lavra’s archive and relocate it to Moscow.84 The “Sergiev Affair” of May 1928 was a sign that the relatively relaxed atmosphere of the NEP period was over in Sergiev. The Soviet authorities focused their attention on what they viewed as an effort to re-create out of the former TrinitySergius Lavra a religious center and therefore also a center of agitation against the Soviet regime. The repressed monks consisted primarily of those who had continued to work for the museum of the former monastery, but a wide array of lay people who constituted the primary support for religious life in the town also fell victim. The fact that the social origins or former occupation of a person was enough to establish his or her guilt, without any proof of actual participation in “counterrevolutionary agitation” or “anti-Soviet propaganda,” foreshadowed events to come.

The Great Turn: “All-Out Secularization” Measures in 1929 and 1930 sought to accomplish “all-out secularization” through new legislation, assaults on religious artifacts, the closure of churches, and the repression of clergy. In April 1929, the Soviet government issued new laws on religious organizations that forbade them from gathering funds for aid or charity, and from organizing meetings or groups of any sort, for any purpose. The Church was to be reduced to liturgical services only. This crackdown was reinforced by another legal change; whereas the Constitution in 1918 allowed for the “freedom of religious and antireligious propaganda,” in 1929 a revised article permitted the “freedom of religious worship and antireligious propaganda.” Although open religious teaching was not tolerated even before 1929, this new wording implied that any sort of teaching, even sermons in church, could potentially be construed as breaking the law. Nor was this an idle threat; during the Terror of 1937–38, engaging in “religious propaganda” was punishable by death. Religion also became a victim of collectivization. In the process of collectivizing agriculture, the Soviet authorities sought to eliminate those elements in the village that they believed opposed it, and these included not only rich peasants (kulaks) but also the parish priest. Moreover, collectivization was accompanied by the most intense wave of church closures since the Revolution, particularly in the countryside.85 The Stalinist state further sought to eliminate communal monastic life altogether. Thus in June 1928, a Politburo meeting determined that the elimination of monastic life was vital for the success of antireligious propaganda. The buildings of former monasteries were to be put to good uses; and the Politburo was also concerned that displaced monastics did not become itinerants or resettle among peas-

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ants, where they could be more “harmful” than in their monasteries—though no systematic solution was found for this problem.86 Already, in May 1928, the Piatnitskaia and Vvedenskaia churches in Sergiev Posad were closed—that is, the churches where the Trinity-Sergius monks had conducted services after the Lavra’s closure; indeed, the Piatnitskaia church was sometimes referred to as a “Little Lavra” (Malaia Lavra). Later the monastic artels or agricultural collectives were closed—first, Gethsemane in 1928, followed by Paraclete and other communities in the region in 1929. The antireligious campaign was focused not only on clergy and churches but also on the symbolic and material dimensions of religion. In an effort to break the association between the town of Sergiev and the monastery, the town was renamed in 1930 as Zagorsk, after a Bolshevik hero. One material artifact of religion that had great symbolic value was the bell. Bells had once been a potent public presence of the Church in society; after 1917, they could also be used to sound the alarm to gather the faithful to protect a church or monastery under assault from the government. This form of ringing bells had long been outlawed. Now all bell ringing was to be stopped, and the very bells themselves were to be destroyed and melted down for the industrialization campaign. At Trinity-Sergius, they began taking down the bells in November 1929. Then, in January 1930, they began destroying the monumental bells. The writer Mikhail Prishvin, who was living in Sergiev during those years, witnessed the events and discussed them at length in his diaries. Though not evidently an Orthodox believer himself, he observed that “an unbaptized Rus’ was growing.” He asked one of the workers destroying the bells if he was Orthodox. “Orthodox,” the worker replied. “Wasn’t it difficult to break apart the bell the first time?” Prishvin asked. “No,” he answered, “I followed the older ones and did as they did, and it passed of its own.” The worker told how they pay him by the pud (16.36 kilograms) and he could make 8.5 rubles a day, as if that were all that mattered. Prishvin concluded that “bells, nevertheless, just as relics and all other ways of religious thinking, are being eliminated by the anger of deceived children.”87 Thus there were ordinary Russians who remain devoted to the Church and also those who were willing to participate in its destruction—even some, paradoxically, who considered themselves “Orthodox.” At the end of January 1930, workers pushed the “Tsar” and “Godunov” bells out of the bell tower to the earth below, and then demolished them with jackhammers. The ancient “Godunov” bell had been donated to the monastery in 1600, and the “Tsar” bell, weighing 65,500 kilograms, was the largest in Russia, having been donated by Empress Elizabeth in 1748. Prishvin himself lamented the senseless destruction of these irreplaceable, priceless historical and artistic objects, despite the “best energies” spent over the previous twelve years in the struggle to preserve them: “Suddenly the enemy is on top and all is lost; throughout the whole country, cultural treasures are being destroyed.” Although some may console themselves with

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the thought of a better future, Prishvin ruminated, “this is just the same as saying of the ancient bell, cast by Godunov, that from its melted pieces of bronze will be cast collective farm machines and beautiful statues of Lenin and Stalin.”88 The bells held value not only for religious believers but also as expressions of culture and as monuments of the past. Prishvin clearly perceived quite early the destructive potential of the Soviet “cultural revolution.” At the end of 1929 and especially during the first several months of 1930, clergy throughout the Soviet Union were subjected to an intensified repression and “dekulakization”—that is, they were deprived of their property and exiled along with kulaks during collectivization. Moreover, in the campaign to close churches and eliminate religion, believers themselves were subject to harsh treatment—a dramatic turn from the relative tolerance shown to believers during NEP. Former monks from Trinity-Sergius also suffered during this period, particularly those who had relocated and were serving as priests for other communities. Such priest-monks were arrested and usually sentenced to three years in the Gulag or exile.89 Believers were not subjected to such harsh treatment, but they could still suffer for minor offenses. Prishvin himself witnessed women on an excursion through the museum of the former Lavra stopping to discretely kiss the relics of Saint Sergius still on display, only to get reprimanded. One woman who was not so discrete, however, actually knelt before the relics and began to pray; her papers were confiscated and she was deprived of her housing and right of residence in Moscow.90 As with the collectivization campaign, the intensity of the antireligious struggle in late 1929 and early 1930 encountered popular opposition, and by mid-March the Central Committee passed a resolution decrying the “distortions of the party line” in the antireligious struggle, while the central authorities also sought to contain excessive measures against the clergy. Despite this apparent retreat, however, the campaign to close churches continued—as did periodic waves of arrests. Jennifer Wynot asserts that February 1932 was a turning point, when sporadic arrests became systematic and reached their peak.91 Evidence of former monks from Trinity-Sergius, however, suggests that as many were arrested both before and after that date. Indeed, one of the most intense mass arrests came in the spring of 1931, when many monks from Gethsemane and Zosimova were arrested. At that point, Hegumen Izrail (Andreev), the former superior of Gethsemane, was arrested, together with Hieromonk Makarii (Morzhov, 1872–1931), the former cell attendant of Starets Aleksii. After Aleksii’s death, Makarii was ordained to the priesthood in Moscow at the VysokoPetrovsk Monastery and then returned to Zagorsk. The two were accused of “antiSoviet agitation and belonging to a counterrevolutionary church organization.” Hieromonk Melkhisedek (Likhachev, 1867–1931) of Zosimova was another who was arrested in this group; after the hermitage’s closure, he moved to the village of Olisovo with Archimandrite Innokentii (Oreshkin), where they grew their own food

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and gave spiritual direction to nuns living nearby. Innokentii escaped arrest, but Melkhisedek was arrested in March 1931. These monks received the very harshest sentences; both Melkhisedek and Makarii were executed, while Izrail and numerous other monks arrested with them received five or ten years in the Gulag (Izrail was sentenced to ten years in the Gulag and died after the war, still in exile).92 The received picture of Soviet religious policy in the 1930s holds that there was a retreat in the intensity of the antireligious campaigns, as in other spheres, from 1933 until early 1937. According to this narrative, the Stalinists were somewhat confident in the successes of the First Five-Year Plan, collectivization, and the antireligious struggle. A series of events led to the turn toward the Terror; the Stalin Constitution of 1936 proposed to reenfranchise clergy along with other previously disenfranchised groups, based on the argument that the class struggle had been won. However, during the ensuing elections to the Supreme Soviet in 1937, there appeared to be a real possibility of religious influence in the elections, again raising the specter of the counterrevolutionary influence of the clergy. A final factor was the discovery that more than half the population answered in the affirmative to the question on the 1937 Census regarding belief in God (the results were suppressed). As a result of these events, the Stalinists felt threatened that in fact they had not succeeded in significantly weakening religion, but on the contrary religion was posing a real threat. As a result, religious leaders (including clergy and monks), along with activist believers, were one of the specific groups targeted during the Terror campaign of 1937–38.93 The evidence from the former monks of Trinity-Sergius suggests that this general picture is not entirely accurate. Certainly the most intensive periods of repression were 1928–31 and 1937–38, with the latter period sparked by the confluence of events discussed above. But the arrests never stopped, even between 1932 and 1936. For example, Hieromonk Innokentii (Oreshkin), formerly of the Zosimova Hermitage, eluded arrest in 1931 but was arrested in 1933. Archimandrite Agafon (Lebedev) was arrested in 1935. Formerly a Zosimova monk, he became one of the central spiritual figures at the Vysoko-Petrovsk Monastery in Moscow until its closing in 1929; hundreds of Muscovites came to him for confession and spiritual guidance. In 1930, he had taken the great schema, with the name Ignatii. After the closure of Vysoko-Petrovsk, he became the priest in the parish of Saint Sergius on Bol’shaia Dmitrovka Street in Moscow, and he was arrested in 1930 and spent two weeks in jail. The church authorities “retired” him in 1934 and even forbade him from hearing confessions, leaving him without income and entirely dependent upon supporters. The indictment in 1935 accused him of acting as a holy fool and spiritual elder in order to attract believers, and indeed he enjoyed great authority as a “blessed” and prescient elder who had an enormous number of spiritual children, both in Moscow and in the provinces.

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Moreover, Ignatii-Agafon received many visitors in the apartment where he was staying, and there he allegedly conducted “anti-Soviet agitation,” working believers into a “religious spirit,” inclining some to secret monasticism and secretly conducting services in the apartment. He was further accused of settling monks and nuns returned from exile in various areas around Moscow, and these monks and nuns maintained close connections with him and were under his spiritual direction, extolling him as a great man of prayer and contributing to the recruitment of more admirers. He denied that he was guilty of any anti-Soviet activities, but he was found guilty and sentenced to five years in the labor camp. His health declined to such an extent that he spent most of his remaining years in the infirmary, and he died in 1938 in an “invalid colony” in the Chuvash Republic.94 A major group of Trinity monks was arrested in October 1935. This group included Mavrikii (Poletaev, 1880–1937) and Maksimilian (Marchenko), both of whom were serving at the Kukuevskoe Cemetery church in Zagorsk.95 The NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) alleged the existence of a counterrevolutionary band of clergy and religious activists with Mavrikii and Maksimilian as their leaders. The two of them, returning from exile (Maksimilian was sent to Solovki after his arrest as part of the “Sergiev Affair” in 1928), allegedly gathered around themselves former monks and nuns as well as counterrevolutionary minded tserkovniki—a term that previously meant “churchmen” (i.e., clergy) but came during the Stalin period to signify lay “church activists.” In these circles, the monks were accused of spreading false rumors about the “supposed persecution of believers in the USSR,” calling on believers to unite and stand in defense of the Church, for the organization of a new church administration with people unconditionally devoted to the Church who would defend the interests of believers before the Soviet authorities.96 Further, Mavrikii, Maksimilian, and other monks were accused of glorifying the tomb of Starets Aleksii—who was buried at Kukuevskoe Cemetery— with “counterrevolutionary goals,” spreading “provocative rumors about supposed cases of healings” at his tomb, and organizing pilgrimages of believers to his grave and “on the way working them into an anti-Soviet spirit.” The monks were also accused of spreading rumors about the appearance of the antichrist, the coming of war, and the destruction of the Soviet regime or the imminent death of all atheists.97 They allegedly disseminated “counterrevolutionary anti-Semitic literature” because they were found in possession of the books of Sergei Nilus.98 Mavrikii was sent to a labor camp for three years in Kazakhstan (Karlag).99 Maksimilian was sentenced to three years of exile in Kazakhstan.100 Many interesting elements emerge from this case: the apocalyptic expectations (possibly fed by the reading of Nilus), the sense of impending war, the rumors of starvation in the collective farms. As Lynne Viola has shown, apocalyptic language was a common way of interpreting the traumatic changes wrought by collectiviza-

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tion in the Soviet countryside.101 Most important, it is clear that the veneration for Starets Aleksii began immediately after his death, and that groups of former monks gathered around the church of Kukuevskoe Cemetery where he was buried; even more remarkable, believers were making pilgrimages to his tomb throughout the 1930s, and there were already reports of miraculous healings. The counterrevolutionary activity that the security forces accused these monks of conducting was precisely promoting the cult of Starets Aleksii. In other words—and this is critical— they were not accused of any political activity. Rather, simply promoting Orthodoxy in the 1930s—engaging in activities not dramatically different from what they had done before the Revolution—was considered “counterrevolutionary” and therefore criminal. This case anticipates the Terror of 1937–38 in striking ways. Although the arrests targeted those who were perceived as the leaders and therefore were more limited, and the sentences tended to be three to five years of exile or the Gulag, the accusations were very similar to those that would come during the Terror. In other words, the Terror of 1937–38 differed in degree—the number of arrests and the harshness of the sentences—but not in kind; it was not a unique occurrence but the culmination of processes at play for the previous ten, if not twenty, years.

The Great Terror, 1937–38 From the middle of 1937 and into 1938, the Great Terror struck at the monks of Trinity-Sergius—and those connected to them—with a far greater ferocity than ever before, as indeed the Terror struck across social, religious, and ethnic lines throughout the Soviet Union. A tremendous amount of history has been written about the Terror and about the Stalinist 1930s in general.102 A primary focus of recent scholarship, however, has been on how the purges targeted Communist Party members themselves, along with the intelligentsia and national minorities. Western historians have paid scant attention, however, to Orthodox believers and clergy as victims of the Terror. Arch Getty commented, for example, that in the second half of 1937, “the terror spread beyond the bounds of the Communist Party.”103 On the contrary, as the evidence above demonstrates, terror had long before spread beyond those bounds and targeted the Church and believers. In 1936, the new Constitution of the USSR entailed elections for the Supreme Soviet as a new legislature. In June 1937, procedures for the elections promised to enfranchise the entire adult population, including groups such as the clergy that had been disenfranchised, and the elections would be held among multiple candidates for contested seats. This, in turn, generated fear among the Soviet leadership that the proposed elections were giving hope to anti-Soviet class enemies who would use the campaign to organize. Stalinists knew that there was opposition to the regime and many of its measures (e.g., collectivization) and feared that opposition.

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This insecurity was fueled by a fear of enemies (foreign and class enemies), combined with the inability to pinpoint exactly who those enemies were. Any time its policies did not match expectations or encountered resistance (e.g., collectivization or industrialization), the Soviets suspected sabotage by counterrevolutionary elements rather than the failure of their own policies. Therefore, in 1937–38, the regime simply lashed out wholesale, aiming to destroy any perceived or even potential threat. There was a particular focus on those who had already been “proven” to be antagonistic to the regime by previous conviction and sentencing to the Gulag or exile, especially if they had returned after serving their sentences to their former place of residence. In June 1937, Stalin called for the execution of any kulaks engaged in “insurrectionist organizations.” On July 3, the “troika” was reestablished—a three-man team to mete out expedited “justice” to enemies of the regime that bypassed normal judicial procedure. The troika had been utilized before in moments of crisis—such as the “Red Terror” during the Civil War and during collectivization. The troika would be the main agent of terror in the Soviet Union in 1937–38. It was reestablished at this time precisely to deal with the perceived threat of formerly deported kulaks and other “class enemies” who had returned and were the “instigators” of various “anti-Soviet crimes.” Regional authorities responded by proposing estimates of anti-Soviet elements in their regions. A decisive turn came when the central authorities issued an Order “Concerning the Punishment of Former Kulaks, Criminals, and Other Anti-Soviet Elements” on July 30. This order stated that there were “former kulaks” who had settled in the countryside, including “many tserkovniki” and sectarians, army officers, members of non-Bolshevik parties, and the like. They were blamed for “sabotage” in the collective farms and industry. “The organs of state security are faced with the task of mercilessly crushing this entire gang of anti-Soviet elements . . . and of putting an end, once and for all, to their undermining of the foundations of the Soviet state.” The order directed that on August 5 a “campaign of punitive measures” was to be launched against all “anti-Soviet elements.”104 Religious activists (tserkovniki) were explicitly mentioned as one of the groups subject to punitive measures in the order—including even those who were already in the Gulag “who continue to carry out in those places their active anti-Soviet sabotage.” These groups were to be divided into two categories: the “most active” elements were to be shot; and the “less active but nevertheless hostile elements” were to be sent to Gulag for eight to ten years. The order included quotas estimating the number of people in each region that should be subjected to these punitive measures, including 5,000 in the first category and 30,000 in the second for the Moscow region alone—clear evidence that the regime had little concrete idea of who the “enemy” was but rather was striking out indiscriminately. The whole operation was to be accomplished in four months. Finally, the order instructed that “the investigation shall be carried out in a swift and

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simplified manner. During the course of the trial, all criminal connections of persons arrested are to be disclosed.”105 In other words, the investigations were not held to the usual standards of rigor for evidence; moreover, after the arrest of the initial suspects, all their “associations” were to be uncovered and those people were also to be arrested. In short, the order was given and the mechanism was set in place for full-scale terror. The Terror quickly struck the monks of Trinity-Sergius. The case against Archimandrite Kronid was initiated on October 11, 1937. Oddly, Kronid had evidently not been previously arrested. Perhaps because he had ceased acting in any formal leadership role and even serving as a priest, and instead had lived as a simple monk since the Lavra’s closure, the regime had not targeted him. After the closure of Paraclete, he lived near Kukuevskoe Cemetery in Zagorsk and attended the cemetery’s church, singing in the choir but not officiating. He continued to provide spiritual guidance to a flock of laity as well as monks. By 1936, as he stated in personal letters, his health was weakening and his eyesight was failing, and he did not know how much longer he would live.106 The order for his arrest stated (evidently erroneously) that he had “returned from exile” and then reestablished connections with the monks and counterrevolutionary-minded tserkovniki of Moscow and the region, and that such people made pilgrimage to him. Moreover, the order stated that he was a religious activist, had personally received the tsar and former people of the court when he was prior of Trinity-Sergius, was hostile to Soviet power, and conducted counterrevolutionary monarchist agitation.107 Clearly, the fact of his former association with the tsar, together with his continuation of a monastic way of life and connections with former monks, was enough to categorize him as a “class enemy.” He was arrested on November 20, 1937.108 The allegation that he had previously been convicted and returned from exile served to fit him into the Order of July 30, even though it was apparently inaccurate. Kronid was, however, not the only center of attention in Zagorsk. The second was Hegumen Ippolit (Iakovlev), who had served as librarian at the Lavra as well as confessor for the brothers and the Theological Academy before its closure. In the 1930s, he was living in the home of a former merchant, Nikolai Sychev, together with several other monks and nuns. He went about barefoot all year long and was regarded as a holy fool, but also a great and prescient elder and a holy man. Therefore, many pilgrims came to see him throughout the 1930s. As a result, the NKVD also planned to arrest him; in his nineties, Ippolit passed away shortly before he was to be arrested in November 1937. Because the Order of July 30 instructed the security forces to include “criminal connections,” fourteen other people were arrested along with Kronid; they included monks, nuns, parish priests, and lay people (e.g., Sychev). The cases against several of them were begun roughly a week after that of Kronid (i.e., in October), whereas others were not initiated until later in November,

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just before they were actually arrested.109 All were arrested between November 20 and 27. The analysis that follows relies primarily on the NKVD file on the case from the KGB/FSB archive. This is indeed virtually our only source for what happened, not only after Kronid’s arrest but also in the years leading up to the arrests. At the same time, these sources have to be used with extreme caution. It is not clear exactly how these interrogations were conducted, and who recorded them. Those being interrogated signed the bottom of each page, and sometimes every answer, as accurately reflecting their words. In such cases, therefore, they are evidently not complete fabrications. Nevertheless, it is well known that coercion and torture were often used during these interrogations. The reader is particularly puzzled when the person being interrogated denies the charges on one page and admits them on the next—one can only wonder what had transpired in between. There were also reports of abuses in which the testimony of the accused was prepared by the interrogators beforehand, and the accused was simply forced to sign it. In short, these files have to be read very critically; some of what is recorded appears quite plausible, whereas other testimony may reflect the suspicions of the NKVD more than the attitudes and activities of the accused.110

Interrogations When Archimandrite Kronid was arrested, his cell attendant Georgii (Potapov) and Hegumen Ksenofont (Bondarenko) were arrested with him. The only thing the arresting agents took during the arrests was Kronid’s passport; evidently he had nothing else of interest. He was interrogated on the following day, November 21. The questioner asked him about his relations with the tsarist family, and he told them that he had received members of the Romanov Dynasty as well as other members of the court and elites. Next, the interrogator asked him how many monks from the former “Sergiev monastery” lived in or near Zagorsk and to name them. He replied that he knew of twenty-five to thirty such monks, and he listed about twenty people (most of whom were arrested at approximately the same time as he was). Then he was asked which of these monks visited him in his apartment; he gave half a dozen names of those who had visited him.111 The NKVD investigator then shifted into one of the main accusations against Kronid: that he continued to guide the monks, who in turn continued to recognize his authority—and, in effect, this constituted a “secret monastery” and made Kronid the leader of a counterrevolutionary organization. Kronid, for his part, admitted that monks visited him but denied that he continued to be their leader. The interrogation continued by directly asking about Kronid’s political views:

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Question: What is your relationship to the Soviet regime? Answer: By conviction I am a monarchist, a follower of the true Orthodox Church [istinno Pravoslavnoi tserkvi], and the existing Soviet regime I recognize, as a believer, as sent to the people as a trial of its faith in Divine Providence. Question: From your testimony, it is evident that you continue to lead the monks of the former Lavra, and therefore we demand from you truthful testimony. Answer: The monks indeed visited me, but I exercised no leadership over them. Question: You are accused of being a participant in a C/R [counterrevolutionary] grouping [gruppirovka] of tserkovniki, we demand [that you] give truthful testimony of your C/R activities. Answer: I repeat that by conviction I am a monarchist even now, and the monks of the former monastery were cultivated in the same spirit [by me],112 who are still followers of the true Orthodox Church. I confirm that monks of the former Lavra periodically visited me in Zagorsk, but I do not admit to being a part of a counterrevolutionary group. Question: Name your accomplice-followers of the “IPTs” [“true Orthodox Church”] from among the monks. Answer: I refuse to give testimony to the question that has been posed. . . . The interrogators continued by asking him if not only monks but also lay “followers” visited him and for what purpose, to which he replied that they mostly visited to help him out financially and check on his health. Question: The investigation demands [you] to name the persons who visited you in Zagorsk. Answer: Until recently, my admirers visited me in Zagorsk, but I refuse to name them. I quickly forget their [first and last] names. Written accurately from my words and read by me. Question: When and why did Bondarenko come? Answer: Bondarenko hieromonk “Ksenofont”113 came on November 20th of this year from Aleksandrov to stop by and see me and spend the night. I am aware that Bondarenko was convicted by the organs of the NKVD and served time in a concentration camp. Question: What does Bondarenko do? Answer: Bondarenko is now without any concrete activity. Bondarenko is a worthy monk, a follower of the true Orthodox Church.

360 golgotha: revival and terror, 1921–1938 Written accurately from my words and read by me. Liubimov [his signature]114 This is a remarkable transcript. To the extent that we can trust it—and the answers seem plausible—Kronid was willing to give the names of his fellow monks who were living in the Zagorsk area (information certainly well known to the NKVD, in any event), but he refused to name “accomplices” or laypeople who visited his apartment. He was quite open about his personal monarchist views, while at the same time denying he was part of any counterrevolutionary groups; he stated that he accepted the Soviet regime, even if he saw it as a trial for believers. He admitted that monks sometimes visited him to ask for his advice, but he denied that he continued to be their “leader” in any capacity. One problematic portion of this text is Kronid’s repeated assertion that he, Ksenofont, and other monks belonged to the “true Orthodox Church.” This appellation became the name for the catacomb Church that rejected Metropolitan Sergii’s 1927 declaration and his administration as compromised with the Soviet regime. It is possible that Archimandrite Kronid broke with Metropolitan Sergii; however, the evidence suggests another interpretation. For one, a close associate of Kronid’s in Zagorsk was Father Dmitrii Baianov, who was the dean of the churches of the region—appointed by Metropolitan Sergii. Kronid was also close to Starets Aleksii, who, as we have seen, refused to break with Sergii. Moreover, one of the other monks, during his interrogation, stated that he was a “follower of the true Orthodox Church of the Tikhonite trend [Tikhonovskogo napravleniia].”115 Therefore, it is probable that Kronid intended the phrase “true Orthodox Church” to distinguish himself and his fellow monks from the Renovationists rather than from Metropolitan Sergii. Unlike the others arrested with him, Kronid was only interrogated once, evidently because the NKVD interrogators felt they had gotten from him all they wanted or needed. Hegumen Ksenofont (Bondarenko, 1886–1937), who was arrested with Kronid, had served as the attendant of the prior’s residence in the Lavra before its closure. Born of a peasant family, he had joined Trinity-Sergius in 1910, was tonsured in 1916, and was ordained to the diaconate in 1918. He was a metalworker for the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra. From 1924 to 1926, he worked as a mechanic in factories in Petrograd. His social origins and even some of his work experience could have made him acceptable to the new regime, but he chose a different path. After his return to Moscow, he was ordained to the priesthood and served in various parishes in the Zagorsk region. Between 1932 and 1935, he moved about to various parishes in part to avoid arrest, but in 1935 he was finally arrested and convicted of agitating against collectivization and sentenced to three years

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in the Gulag, which he served in the Temnikovskie camps. When he was released in September 1937, he was forbidden from living near Moscow, but he settled in the city of Aleksandrov, not far from Zagorsk. He had traveled to Moscow and spent the night at Kronid’s apartment on his way home—only to be arrested with Kronid. Ksenofont was also interrogated on November 21. The investigator asked him to explain the purpose of his visit to Kronid, and also asked if he had visited with any of the other monks. Ksenofont answered that he had not visited other monks. He had stopped by to visit Kronid as a friend and kindred spirit, to ask his advice as to what he should do after his release. He also told Kronid about his experience of arrest and his life in the camp. “To this, Kranit116 began to console me and called me and urged me to patience, as many bear persecution from the authorities in the USSR.” Kronid recommended that Ksenofont not serve as a priest but rather return to manufacturing, because it would be more advantageous in all respects and he could better conceal his previous conviction for counterrevolutionary activity. Kronid also lamented—quite accurately, as history would show—that “heavy times of persecution both of believers and of servants of the cult” had begun, and that life would become even worse than it had been.117 This first interrogation focused primarily upon Ksenofont’s conversations with Kronid, not on Ksenofont’s own activities. Ksenofont was subject to a second interrogation on December 3, in which he himself was directly accused of counterrevolutionary activity. The interrogators were particularly interested in the contact he kept with Kronid during his time in the camp and also in how many times he had visited Kronid since his release. They accused him repeatedly of being an active participant in a counterrevolutionary monarchist group, which he denied each time. Then they accused him of anti-Soviet conversations with Kronid, in which the two allegedly spoke against the elections to the Supreme Soviet, which Ksenofont also denied, declaring that he was not involved in any kind of anti-Soviet activity.118 Ksenofont’s interrogation revealed a number of points of the Stalinist conspiracy theory—that those previously convicted of counterrevolutionary activity were establishing networks with other “class enemies,” and that they were agitating against the elections to the Supreme Soviet. That the NKVD felt it necessary to target such elderly and frail monks betrays the insecurity of the regime. In the face of these absurd allegations, Ksenofont conducted himself admirably. The words of this interrogation appear particularly plausible as coming from Ksenofont himself. Perhaps because he had already spent time in the prison camps, he was seasoned in dealing with the NKVD; he was therefore circumspect, stating the nature of his visit to Kronid in terms of their friendship and the spiritual connection, all the while denying any anti-Soviet activities and not even admitting to any anti-Soviet views. Not all those arrested were as strong as Kronid

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and Ksenofont, however, for several broke down during later interrogations and ostensibly confessed to the anti-Soviet crimes of being members of a secret monastery and of criticizing Soviet power.

Indictment Although the “guilt” of Kronid and his fellow monks was no doubt assured from the moment the NKVD targeted them during the Terror, the investigation nevertheless tried to demonstrate—or at least assert and extract—the existence of a “secret monastery.” This was the crux of their case, for if the monks of the former Lavra continued the existence of a secret monastery under the leadership of Archimandrite Kronid, then this de facto meant operating a counterrevolutionary organization (because monasteries were by definition counterrevolutionary in the eyes of Stalinists of the 1930s) and was therefore a crime punishable by death. One of the key “accomplices” in the NKVD case of establishing this secret monastery was Archpriest Dmitrii Baianov, who was the dean of the churches in the Zagorsk region. In the late 1920s, Baianov became priest at the Piatnitskaia Church, which had served as the main church for the monks since the closure of the churches of TrinitySergius itself. After the closure of the Piatnitskaia Church, he became priest of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul until it was taken over by the Renovationists, at which point he served at the Kukuevskoe Cemetery church where Kronid and many other monks gathered. The other “crime” committed by these monks and clergy was “anti-Soviet agitation,” or propagandizing against the Soviet regime. Although some of the witnesses reported that the monks were engaged in anti-Soviet political discourse, what the interrogators accused the monks directly of, and which some admitted to having engaged in, centered primarily on their discussions about the persecution of the Church. In other words, by simply talking among themselves, and among other believers, about what was actually happening—that the monasteries had been eliminated, that churches were being closed, that clergy and believers were being arrested and sent to the Gulag and exile, that there was persecution of religion—they had become guilty of “anti-Soviet agitation,” which was punishable by death. In short, speaking the truth was dangerous. In his capacity as dean, it was Father Baianov’s job to assign priests to parishes in the region. In this role, he had evidently placed a large number of former Trinity monks, now ordained to the priesthood, in parishes throughout the Zagorsk region. Through the investigation, he named more than twenty-five former Trinity monks living in the Zagorsk region, and though some had already been arrested in earlier waves during the mid-1930s, roughly half were serving as priests in surrounding villages. In the eyes of the NKVD, this had all the markings of a conspiracy; former

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monks gathered around their former monastery and its leader. Through the interrogation, the NKVD asserted that this grouping was not accidental, and, moreover, that the monks “preserved the conditions of the rule of the Lavra [ustavnoe Lavrskoe polozhenie],” with Kronid as prior.119 Just as the Soviets misunderstood relics as necessarily having to be incorrupt, so also they misunderstood the very nature of monasticism; a monastery is not an “organization” like a revolutionary cell, it is a community of people living and worshipping together, and there is no way for a monastery to actually exist if the monks are spread throughout an entire region. Moreover, though Kronid evidently enjoyed great respect among believers and monks alike as a spiritual guide, there is no evidence to suggest that he continued to exercise any formal authority over the former monks. But such facts hardly mattered to the NKVD. The indictment, passed on December 8, brought together the various accusations, which, predictably, the NKVD found to be substantiated. According to the indictment, information “was received” in the NKVD’s office that a significant number of monarchist monks of the former Trinity-Sergius Lavra had grouped themselves in the city of Zagorsk and its surroundings, that the “more reactionary part of the clergy” had joined them, and they gathered “various ‘prescient’ elders ‘of holy life.’” After investigation, the NKVD established that there was a significant group of former monks in the area, including a large number who had returned from exile. Its report continued: This [counterrevolutionary] monarchist grouping of monks and clergy preserved until recently the continuation of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra as an illegal monastery with the preservation of the order of the Lavra’s rule of relations between themselves and toward archimandrite Kronid, preserved the old particularly monastic order of church services the same as the former services in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in the Church of Peter and Paul, and after its closure in the church of Kukuevskoe Cemetery, opening branches of the illegal monastery in homes. . . . The former monks of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra were selected as the servants of the cult in almost all the parish churches of the district and a significant part of the city, and they . . . constituted a [counterrevolutionary] monarchist group, the fundamental backbone—fundamental cadres of an illegal monastery, and conducted among the population of their parishioners and believer-pilgrims counterrevolutionary monarchist agitation directed against the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, spreading counterrevolutionary slanderous rumors about the “persecution” of religion in the USSR, about the closure of churches, persecution, and arrest of supposedly innocent believers and servants of the cult,

364 golgotha: revival and terror, 1921–1938 discrediting members of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet regime, and also conducting agitation against the strengthening of the collective farms.120 The indictment concluded that many had admitted their guilt, and the guilt of those who had denied it was established by the testimony of the others, and therefore concluded they were guilty of article 58, points 10 and 11 (“anti-Soviet agitation” and “counterrevolutionary activity”) of the Soviet criminal code. The indictment passed the case on to the troika. The troika, in the meantime, had evidently already met on December 7 and sentenced Kronid and others to execution. In all, eleven of the accused, all of whom with the exception of Baianov were former Trinity monks, were sentenced to death: Kronid, Baianov, Ksenofont (Bondarenko), Nikodim (Monin), Gedeon (Cherkalov), Iakov (Marochkin), Georgii (Potapov), Serafim (Krest’ianinov), Lavrentii (Nosonov), Azarii (Pavlov), and Gedeon (Smirnov). Four others, a nun, the layman Sychev, and two parish priests, were sentenced to ten years in the Gulag. The eleven were executed on December 10, 1937, at the NKVD’s firing range at Butovo (near Moscow). Those executed with Kronid in December 1937 were not the only monks of Trinity-Sergius to suffer during the Terror. Several monks who had been serving as parish priests in the Vladimir Province were arrested in October 1937 and executed at Ivanovo on October 26.121 Others had dispersed to different regions and were not arrested as part of a group of monks.122 Moreover, the NKVD continued to pursue the former monks still in the Zagorsk area. Another group of fifteen (which also included some nuns) was arrested in January 1938; the investigation was carried out with particularly harsh methods.123 Most of this group was executed on February 17, 1938, a day when nearly 500 people were executed at Butovo, at least 70 of whom were executed as Orthodox clergy and believers. Clearly, it was not enough to eliminate those who were seen as the “leaders” of this supposed illegal underground monastic community, but every member, and even those who supported it or were connected to it, had to be done away with.

Conclusions At Butovo alone, more than 20,000 people were executed and buried in mass graves between August 1937 and October 1938, and at least 1,000 of these were executed as Orthodox believers (739 clergy and 219 faithful have been identified so far), along with activists of other faiths (Old Believers, Baptists, various sectarian groups, and a few non-Christians).124 If the statistics at Butovo are at all representative, this

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means that during the Terror of 1937–38, more than one in every twenty persons executed was put to death for religious reasons—a very significant proportion that has been completely overlooked by historians in the West thus far. The NKVD rounded up and executed every single member of the former Trinity-Sergius brotherhood still living in the Zagorsk region in 1937–38, and it also arrested parish clergy and lay supporters who were connected with them and gave these ten-year sentences in the Gulag. Virtually the only Trinity-Sergius monks who survived the Terror were those “lucky” enough to be in the Gulag or in exile in 1937–38 because they had been arrested earlier—although even here, there were cases of some, like Mavrikii (Poletaev), who were rearrested in the Gulag and executed. From the NKVD investigation, it is clear that about thirty monks of the TrinitySergius collective were living in the region of their former communities in the mid1930s. They also continued to come to their former prior, Archimandrite Kronid, for help, spiritual guidance, and advice. Moreover, many of them had been arrested between 1928 and 1935 and had returned to the region, no doubt because they had nowhere else to go for support other than where they had a network of friends and opportunities. Some of them, since the closure of all the monastic communities, had found other ways to make a living, such as working as craftsmen. At the dissolution of monasteries during the French Revolution, the majority of monks left the monastic life and returned to the world; many of these became secular (parish) clergy, although a great number were released from their vows, fully secularized, and married.125 There is no comparable study of what became of Russian monks after the closure of their monasteries. However, evidence from the Trinity brotherhood demonstrates that a striking number did not abandon their vocation but instead found new ways to serve the Church as priests in parishes or even while working “in the world” but remaining celibate. Because many parish clergy had either ceased serving as priests or been repressed by the 1930s—and certainly there was much less draw for new clergy (especially married priests who had families to worry about)—it was natural that many of these monks, who still lived a lifestyle devoted exclusively to the church, should be ordained. Because they were no longer living in monastic communities, it was also to be expected that they would fulfill a need by serving as parish priests—which many of them were doing in the Zagorsk region. Although many were serving as priests in outlying parishes, there were particular concentrations of these monks in the churches of Zagorsk itself, particularly the Church of Saints Peter and Paul (until 1935) and the Church of Kukuevskoe Cemetery. The liturgy in these churches was conducted according to the Lavra’s rule, whereas Starets Aleksii’s tomb at Kukuevskoe Cemetery drew the monks together and also drew pilgrims by its spiritual power. Perhaps they remained in the area because they lived in hope that the monastery would be restored,

366 golgotha: revival and terror, 1921–1938 and possibly that Soviet power itself might collapse (as some of the apocalyptic remarks in the interrogations suggest). In fact, the monastery itself was to be reopened in less than a decade—but none of these monks would survive the Terror to return. The fact that many monks of the former Trinity-Sergius collective lived near one another was already suspicious to the Soviet authorities. That those who had been exiled also returned and, moreover, were often assigned to nearby parishes; and the fact that they had already been convicted of “anti-Soviet activities” was proof that they were enemies of the state, and the Order of July 30 directed the NKVD specifically to look for such recidivists. Hence the fact that Archimandrite Kronid and others had maintained contact with those who had been exiled and also helped them return had all the makings of a conspiracy in the minds of the NKVD agents. The NKVD asserted that these monks and clergy were guilty, according to the law, of “anti-Soviet agitation” and “counterrevolutionary activity.” The monks were guilty of the latter by maintaining the existence of the “secret monastery” with Kronid as its “ideological leader” as well as by assisting former convicts in resettling in the area. These monks and clergy were guilty of “anti-Soviet agitation,” because they allegedly spoke critically about the elections to the Supreme Soviet and the collective farms. Moreover, in the words of the indictment, they had spread “counterrevolutionary slanderous rumors about the ‘persecution’ of religion in the USSR, about the closure of churches, persecution, and arrest of supposedly innocent believers and servants of the cult.”126 In other words, they were guilty of “anti-Soviet agitation” primarily because they spoke the truth about what was really going on. Although some tragically succumbed to what were no doubt the horrific strains through which the interrogators put them and “confessed” to “anti-Soviet” acts, others, such as Kronid and Ksenofont, were able to bear the coercion of their interrogations with great strength and bravery, openly stating their convictions without admitting to any absurd accusations. It is remarkable to discover that in the Soviet 1930s, even after all the holy places had been closed and desecrated, people were still making pilgrimages—but now to living holy people. Despite all the efforts to eradicate all competing ideologies, these feeble, aging monks not only kept the faith alive in themselves but also continued to strengthen it in others. And this constituted the second main form of “counterrevolutionary activity” of which the NKVD found them guilty—working to strengthen the Church and “raising the religious spirit” of the people. Because Orthodox “ideology” provided an alternate worldview to that of the Soviets, the Soviet authorities considered the very act of strengthening peoples’ faith to be “counterrevolutionary.” In short, the NKVD at no point accused the former Trinity monks of actually plotting to overthrow the government or even advocating its overthrow, nor of any

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actions such as “sabotage” or “wrecking” that were common accusations against other social elements. Consequently, we can assume that such actions were not what the Soviet authorities feared from the monks. The threat posed by the monks, evidently, was not directly political. At the same time, the NKVD clearly felt that the monks were dangerous, and it was not simply arresting them because they were easy targets for its officers trying to fulfill quotas—as is evident from the fact that it had been repressing monks on the same grounds since 1928. Certainly Archimandrite Kronid, who was nearly eighty years old, virtually blind, and in failing health— could not have directly threatened the regime. But because the Stalinists were trying to create a state with a single ideology that demanded complete adherence, even though Kronid as an individual was not a direct threat, he was a problem in that he represented an alternative worldview and an alternative source of authority. In the Soviet Union, ideology replaced lived realities; Stalin’s famous statement that “life is getting better” came in the midst of the Terror and after millions had starved to death. Hence the inexcusable crime that the monks committed was to speak the truth, to speak about what was actually happening—that the Soviets were persecuting religion, closing churches, and arresting clergy, and that life had gotten worse. The Soviets had attempted to eradicate Orthodoxy first through atheist propaganda, and when that failed, by closing churches and exiling clergy. When even that failed, they resorted to what must have appeared the only remaining alternative: the extermination of those who adhered to a faith that represented an alternative to communism. The interrogations themselves witness to the spiritual power of these individuals in the face of a murderous state determined to destroy them and everything they stood for—an effort that, notwithstanding its ruthlessness, ultimately failed.

10 Epilogue: Resurrection During Holy Week in April 1946, Archimandrite Gurii (Egorov) received the keys for the Dormition Cathedral of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. He opened the cathedral on Holy Wednesday and found it empty and covered in dust. He and a handful of helpers cleaned the great cathedral and prepared it for services. On Great and Holy Friday (as the Orthodox call Good Friday), Gurii came to the church accompanied by two young men to serve as the nucleus of a reconstituted Trinity brotherhood, and Gurii reconsecrated the altar. After a second priest arrived, they officiated at the first service, the “Lamentations.” On Holy Saturday, April 20, they received the reliquary with the relics of Saint Sergius and transferred them to the Dormition Cathedral; although the police had locked the gates after pilgrims had left, people nevertheless discovered what was taking place and found a way back in to be present for the transfer of Saint Sergius’ relics. People continued to gather to witness the revival of the Lavra, and the enormous cathedral and the square in front were full of worshippers for the Paschal Vigil that night. It was the first Pascha service celebrated at Trinity-Sergius in more than a quarter century, and those present felt the momentous nature of the occasion.1 For the Feast of the Holy Trinity forty days later, Patriarch Aleksii I himself celebrated the services and officially reopened the TrinitySergius Lavra as a monastery. This was a major event in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church, for it meant receiving back its most sacred site; it also signaled that fundamental changes had taken place in the Soviet Union itself. According to one of the first monks, “the spiritual upsurge, connected with the opening of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, was very great.”2 Trinity-Sergius was resuming its role as a potent religious center of Russia. Despite repeated historical attempts to suppress monasticism— beginning in the eighteenth century with Catherine the Great, followed 368

epilogue: resurrection 369 by Lenin’s Bolsheviks in 1918–20, and culminating with the most far-reaching and brutal effort to extinguish not only monastic communities but all remaining monks and nuns personally between 1928 and 1938—after each attempt at suppression, Russian monasticism regenerated. Perhaps the most remarkable revival of all was that which followed the Terror and World War II, both because the suppression had been so complete and because the circumstances for monasticism’s rebirth were hardly hospitable. World War II was a dramatic turning point in the situation of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. The head of the Church, Metropolitan Sergii, called on Orthodox believers to defend the Motherland at the very outbreak of war, and inside the Soviet Union they rose to the call. To mobilize all energies against the Nazis, the Soviet authorities turned a blind eye to the reopening of churches and other forms of religious revival during the war. The most decisive moment came in a meeting between Joseph Stalin and the Church’s leaders at the Kremlin on September 4, 1943, the first such meeting between the Church and Soviet leadership. The Church’s hierarchs presented a series of requests to Stalin, including the ability to hold a council to elect a patriarch and the opening of seminaries for training clergy. Stalin made great promises, not all of which he kept—but many of which he did. Historians have debated the causes of this dramatic reversal of Stalinist policy toward the Church; in part it regularized changes that had already taken place, in part it was a shift in the basis of legitimizing the nation to more traditional grounds, in part it was a concession to Allied pressure about religious persecution, and finally it was a means to extend Soviet influence in Eastern Europe.3 The Orthodox Church faced enormous challenges in reconstituting itself after the devastation of the previous quarter century. It held a council that elected Sergii as patriarch, a post he was to hold for less than a year before his death; a second council in 1945 elected Aleksii (Simanskii) as patriarch.4 Seminaries began to function, the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate began publication, and a great many churches reopened. Stalin also created the Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs to serve as an agency to implement the new policy, and he appointed Georgii Karpov as its head. Stalin instructed Karpov not to be a “chief procurator,” as in the nineteenth century, and not to interfere in the internal life of the Church. The Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs was under the direction of the Soviet of Ministers, thus making it an organ of executive power, and it was initially intended to serve as a link between the government and the patriarch. It was not long, however, before the council became the instrument for the implementation of the state’s policy toward the Church and therefore for controlling the Church.5 Of all the institutions restored to the Church in the 1940s, certainly the most symbolically important was the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. By the end of the war, 100

370 epilogue: resurrection Orthodox monasteries were open on Soviet territory. Most of these were on territories that had been acquired by the Soviet Union since 1939 (Moldova, Estonia, and parts of Ukraine), where the monasteries had never been closed, while a large number had also been opened by local clergy and believers under German occupation. Only Trinity-Sergius, however, was opened by order of the Soviet authorities and located in the heart of Russia. The reopening of the Lavra was a sign of the changed attitudes of the Stalinist state. The decisions to allow the monastery to reopen and to authorize the return of buildings were made at the highest level. Just as Lenin had personally edited and signed the decree that turned the Lavra into a museum in 1920, so Stalin personally directed that Trinity-Sergius be given back to the Church.6 The return of the relics of Saint Sergius of Radonezh, which had been so contested in the years after the Revolution, was exceptional, for very few relics were returned to the Church by the Soviet authorities.7 World War II witnessed a profound religious revival in the Russian Orthodox Church in general, which found expression in mass reopenings of churches, a great outpouring of faith, and pilgrimages to monasteries and sacred sites. The restoration of the Trinity-Sergius and the relics of Saint Sergius gave further impetus to the religious revival after the war, especially in central Russia, which had not experienced as much freedom during the war. Certainly, believers regarded the restitution of Trinity-Sergius and the return of Saint Sergius’ relics as a victory for Orthodoxy over atheism. The renewed life at Trinity-Sergius gave expression to the postwar revival of Orthodoxy both in its monastic life, as new recruits began to join, and as a center of pilgrimage for tens of thousands of worshippers. Patriarch Aleksii appointed Archimandrite Gurii (Egorov)—whom he knew from the 1920s—as prior to open the monastery; Gurii had studied at the Petersburg Theological Academy and was tonsured a monk before the Revolution, and was arrested in the 1920s and sent to the dreaded White Sea Canal. After serving (and surviving) his sentence, he settled in Uzbekistan, where he lived virtually as a hermit—and no doubt because of his isolation he survived the Terror. His long and profound monastic experience, combined with proven organizational skills, guided him in giving shape to the newly opened Lavra, and he played a key role at this crucial moment in reconstituting the monastery.8 Archimandrite Gurii faced almost insurmountable challenges in regenerating Trinity-Sergius. He had to start with nothing, working with a Church devastated by the Terror and a country devastated by war. Initially, the Soviet authorities only returned the Dormition Cathedral to the monastery, so that the brothers even had to live in rented apartments in Zagorsk. Most of the buildings were returned to the monastery’s control only over the course of the next decade. Before and during the war, only select buildings were in control of the museum, but the monastery and the grounds of the former theological academy hosted a great number of other in-

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stitutions, including a pedagogical institute, a bakery, and a theater, and had more than a thousand people living within its walls, all of whom had to be relocated. The monastery received the buildings back into its control in an extreme state of disrepair, and the Church had to expend enormous energy and money on their restoration.9 For years, the monastery shared its grounds with other institutions and people, and it continued to share the grounds with the museum—which retained control of the sacristy—through the 1990s. Perhaps even more challenging, Archimandrite Gurii had to reconstitute the brotherhood from nothing. Nevertheless, he succeeded in gathering experienced monks to form the initial brotherhood and laid a solid foundation for the flowering of monastic life. The first brothers of the revived Lavra constituted a remarkable collection of seasoned monks and clergy, together with a few young men who had served in the army. Gurii remained little more than a year before he was consecrated bishop and sent back to Tashkent. He was replaced by a former member of the Trinity-Sergius collective, Archimandrite Ioann (Razumov, 1898–1990), who had become a novice at the Zosimova Hermitage in 1916. He was tonsured a monk in the 1920s, and in the 1930s was Metropolitan Sergii’s cell attendant. He was the prior of Trinity-Sergius until November 1953, when he was consecrated bishop of Kostroma.10 Together with Ioann, a handful of other monks from the old Trinity-Sergius collective who survived the Terror returned in the years after the Lavra’s reopening, symbolizing some degree of continuity. These monks included Archimandrite Dorimedont (Chemodanov, 1873–1950), who had been a monk at Trinity-Sergius before the Revolution. Another was Filadel’f (Mishin, 1877–1959), who entered the Lavra in 1904, was tonsured a monk in 1912, was ordained at Gethsemane Skete in 1921, and served as a priest in a village in Moscow Province until he was arrested in 1931 and sent to the Gulag in Kazakhstan for five years. In the reopened Lavra, he became confessor to the pilgrims, and in this capacity was loved by many, some of whom regarded him as a prescient elder—which he himself dismissed as foolishness.11 Still another was Iosif (Evseenok, 1897?–1968), who came to Gethsemane at the time of the Revolution and served as the cell attendant of Hegumen Izrail of the Skete during the 1920s; he joined the Lavra directly from exile, as he had been arrested in 1937 and sentenced to ten years in a labor camp. The majority of other tonsured monks who came to the Lavra in the early years had been monks since at least the 1920s and came directly from exile.12 These monks brought with them the spirit of prerevolutionary monasticism. Many would not remain for long, however, because their experience was needed elsewhere in the Church; indeed, many later became bishops. Thus Archimandrite Gurii and Archimandrite Ioann succeeded in reviving prerevolutionary monastic traditions at Trinity-Sergius, which became what Nikolai Mitrokhin termed the “ideological and organizational” center of the postwar Russian Church.13

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The leadership of Trinity-Sergius succeeded in restoring authentic monastic life at the Lavra with a remarkable degree of autonomy from government interference in the early years. A glimpse of the uncompromising nature of the Lavra’s life can be seen in the sermons of one of its monks, Archimandrite Veniamin (Milov, 1887–1955). In his sermons, he spoke quite openly and critically about the state of postwar Soviet society with clear social and political connotations. He challenged believers not to be ashamed of or hide their faith, despite the possible consequences of being despised in society or suffering in their career—and as one who had spent many years in the Gulag, he could speak with authority.14 Trinity-Sergius was not only a refuge for older monks in the postwar years, however. It also succeeded in attracting new recruits. Many had been born after the Revolution and had fought in the war. The brotherhood grew steadily, despite much turnover, with about thirty-five brothers through most of the late 1940s. In the 1950s, the monastery brotherhood increased to between eighty-five and ninety brothers and continually received new recruits, who were increasingly younger. Contrary to the hopes of Soviet authorities, the religious revival was not merely a consequence of the horrors and dislocations of the war; the fact that many young men who were products of Soviet schools and indoctrination were entering Church service (whether as seminarians or as monks) throughout the 1950s is evidence of a substantial disillusionment with Soviet ideology—a fact that was not lost on Soviet officials.15 As in the nineteenth century, Trinity-Sergius was a center of religious revival not only for those who sought to dedicate their lives entirely to the Church but also for far greater numbers of pilgrims. Throughout 1946, 1,500 to 2,000 pilgrims came to the Lavra on Sundays, and 4,000 to 6,000 people a day on great feasts, and they came not only from the region and from Moscow but also from farther away. As with the recruitment of novices, the Soviet authorities hoped this would be a shortlived phenomenon; but throughout the 1950s, the number of pilgrims was much greater, with an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 visiting the monastery on each major feast day of the Orthodox calendar.16 The golden age for the Lavra was a relatively brief period between 1946 and 1948, during which the monastery was able to reconstitute the brotherhood and monastic life with relative freedom. By 1948, however, Stalin’s attitude toward the Orthodox Church had cooled as tensions with the West had heated up. This shift in policy was felt at Trinity-Sergius, as the Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs began to scrutinize the monastery and its influence on believers with more care. The most uncompromising and influential monks, such as Iosif (Evseenok) and Veniamin (Milov), were exiled in 1948–49. Nevertheless, although Soviet policy toward the Church became less tolerant and more controlling, Stalin’s rapprochement with the Church remained the policy until his death in 1953, and TrinitySergius continued to attract new recruits and pilgrims throughout those years.

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Although there was volatility and uncertainty in the state’s policy toward the Church in the year following Stalin’s death, by the end of 1954 the state had basically returned to Stalin’s postwar policy of relative tolerance.17 The mid-1950s were therefore relatively peaceful and prosperous for Trinity-Sergius under the leadership of Prior Archimandrite Pimen (Izvekov, 1910–90), who had been tonsured a monk at the Paraclete Hermitage in 1927 under the guidance of Archimandrite Kronid.18 By the 1950s, Trinity-Sergius became one of the requisite sites for foreign visitors, as the Soviets tried to show the West that there was freedom of religion—although such visitors also benefited the monastery. Pimen (Izvekov) would serve only a few years as prior, from 1954 to 1957, before he was consecrated bishop, and he would end his career as patriarch of the Russian Church from 1971 to his death in 1990. The most difficult period for the Orthodox Church and for Trinity-Sergius came with Nikita Khrushchev’s renewed antireligious campaign beginning in the late 1950s. Although Khrushchev is usually associated in West with the “Thaw”— the program of de-Stalinization and liberalization in the cultural sphere—with regard to religion, “de-Stalinization” meant the end of the postwar policy of toleration for the Church and a return to the policies closer to the prewar persecution of religion. The antireligious campaign between 1958 and 1964 did not proceed consistently, but the total effect of those years was devastating. The number of churches was cut nearly in half (from 13,414 in 1958 to 7,523 by 1966), and the number of clergy and seminaries was also drastically reduced. Although the persecution was certainly not as brutal as in the 1928–38 period, hundreds of clergy were removed from their posts, arrested, sent to camps, or exiled, and hundreds of believers were also exiled. Just as with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917–21, the Khrushchev antireligious campaign began with the monasteries. The role of monasteries as centers of pilgrimage and strengthening of popular piety made them particularly important targets to destroy or weaken if antireligious propaganda was to succeed. The overall effect of the campaign was devastating, as the sixty-three monasteries and sketes open in 1958 were cut to only eighteen by 1966.19 The effect of Khrushchev’s antireligious campaign was felt directly at TrinitySergius. Although it was too visible to be closed, the monastery’s period of relative freedom was brought to an end. Trushin, the Moscow commissioner for the Council of Russian Orthodox Church Affairs, kept a close eye on “activist” monks who preached to pilgrims and foreign visitors, and he had a number of them transferred out of Trinity-Sergius to more remote monasteries. Moreover, the Soviet authorities tried to curtail the monastery’s influence on ordinary people by discouraging pilgrimage; for example, on October 8, 1960, the Feast of Saint Sergius, the police detained all the believers and would not let them leave until they signed an agreement that they would never return.20 Even in these circumstances, however, the monastery’s leadership under Pimen (Khmelevskii, 1923–93), who served as the Lavra’s prior

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between 1957 and 1965, did its best to defend the monastery’s interests. In April 1961, Commissioner Trushin made a series of demands on Archimandrite Pimen, such as rejecting certain novices and prohibiting monks from giving foreigners tours of the monastery, to which Pimen skillfully replied with a mixture of promises, obfuscation, and moves to defer decisions to the patriarch. Trushin was so frustrated that he wanted to have Pimen replaced with someone who was more compliant, but Pimen remained in office until 1965—that is, longer than Khrushchev—until he was consecrated bishop.21 This episode illustrates that the inherited image in Western scholarship of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet period as completely compromised and controlled by the state and the KGB clearly needs revision. To be sure, there was no “freedom of religion” in the USSR; the Church was tightly monitored, clergy and believers were harassed, and the highest levels of the Church hierarchy were forced to make compromises. At the same time, there were lower levels of the Church that were able to pursue the interests of the Church and minister to the faithful to a limited degree within that framework. The evidence from Trinity-Sergius suggests that there was a degree of autonomy, at least until the Khrushchev antireligious campaign, although after that the Lavra’s monks who were too active in “working believers into a religious spirit” were likely to be relocated to a more remote monastery. Moreover, although the vigorous antireligious campaign came to an end with Khrushchev’s fall, the Brezhnev era maintained the status quo achieved by the end of that campaign and did not allow new churches or monasteries to open. Although Trinity-Sergius continued to operate, its ability to recruit new monks was much more restricted, and as a result the brotherhood shrank to fewer than sixty monks in the 1970s. Despite the restrictions of the Soviet authorities, elders such as Kirill (Pavlov) and Naum (Baiborodin) were revered throughout Russia as living embodiments of the prerevolutionary spirit of starchestvo and guided people even in the late Soviet period—and have continued to do so since the collapse of communism.22 Gorbachev’s perestroika ushered in a new and more permanent period of freedom for religion. The turning point came for Trinity-Sergius, as for the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole, with the celebration of the millennium of the baptism of Rus’ in 1988. Although it was initially planned to be relatively modest, in the spring of 1988 Gorbachev, trying to garner the support of believers for his reforms, agreed to permit a much larger commemoration. A major portion of the celebration itself took place at Trinity-Sergius, including a Church council held in June 1988, in which not only sixty-nine hierarchs of the Russian Church but also delegations from other Orthodox Churches, the Vatican, the Anglican Communion, and other foreign representatives participated. At the council, the Russian Church canonized some of the first saints since the Revolution, including two figures connected with the Lavra’s history (the iconographer Andrei Rublev and Maximos the Greek)

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as well as the foremost representatives of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century monastic revival (Paisii Velichkovskii, Ignatii Brianchaninov, Amvrosii of Optina, and Feofan the Recluse).23 The events were covered in the press, and glasnost began to extend to religion. Hundreds of churches and a hundred monasteries were opened in the short time between the millennial commemoration and the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, the Russian Orthodox Church began reclaiming churches and reopening monastic communities. This task was full of immense challenges, because former monasteries had been taken over by other institutions or people and their buildings were often in extreme disrepair, if they existed at all. Of the communities of the Trinity-Sergius collective, both Gethsemane Skete and the Zosimova Hermitage were in use by the military. Only the walls of the original Gethsemane remained, although the buildings of the Chernigov Caves division remained intact. In 1990, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra negotiated and received back the southern half of this territory, which included the Chernigov Cathedral, the bell tower, the cemetery, and Varnava’s house; monks settled in the monastery, which was named the Gethsemane-Chernigov Skete.24 There have been extensive renovations; the Caves, which remained completely flooded even when I first visited in the 1990s, were emptied of water, and it is now possible to visit the underground church and cells. As of my last visit, in July 2008, the bell tower had been renovated, while half the Chernigov Cathedral was closed off as new frescoes were being painted. In 1992, a group from Trinity-Sergius met with officers from the unit that occupied the Zosimova Hermitage, who agreed to allow the monks to begin holding services. The hermitage was opened the following year; the former buildings of the hermitage were occupied by military families, but one such family freed up a couple of rooms for the first monks to settle in. The monks gradually began the work of restoring the community, including locating the graves of Hegumen German and the original seventeenth-century founder, Zosima, who was canonized in 1994; that year witnessed another significant event in the life of the community, as the remains of Starets Aleksii were transferred from Sergiev Posad and placed in the Smolensk Cathedral. As of 1995, there were twelve monks, who had developed a harmonious relationship with the soldiers and were trying to provide an Orthodox influence on them; indeed, many of the soldiers sang in the monastery choir.25 When I visited the community in 2002, we entered a military zone and had to pass through a checkpoint; fortunately, the guard did not ask for my passport but only for that of my Russian friend who was driving—otherwise they might not have let me pass. It is still an isolated community, and few Russians I know have ever been there. Other communities of the former Trinity-Sergius collective were also opened in the 1990s. The territory of the Paraclete Hermitage had been turned into people’s

376 epilogue: resurrection dachas, and locals had used the bricks from the bell tower and walls to build their garages; the upper floor of the church was used as a club (with the stage in the altar space), while the lower floor was used for storing vegetables. Prior Archimandrite (now Bishop) Feognost secured the return of the hermitage to Trinity-Sergius, and it opened in 1992.26 A group of nuns settled in the ruins of the Makhrishchskii Monastery in 1993, and by 1995 it had gained recognition as a nunnery by the Church. This community is distinct from the others because it is no longer under the jurisdiction of Trinity-Sergius, and because it is now a convent instead of a men’s monastery.27 The most recent monastery to be reestablished is Bethany, although its main churches were destroyed or deformed in the Khrushchev period. Even in the 1990s, the former Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit was used for movies and dances. At the end of 2002, the Trinity-Sergius prior, Bishop Feognost, sent one hieromonk to begin the work of reviving the monastery, although by 2005 the community consisted only of the hieromonk and a few novices.28 In addition to the reopening of former sketes and hermitages of the TrinitySergius collective, the Lavra itself has undergone significant developments both in physical restoration and in its involvement with the community. It struggled for years with the State Historical Museum, which continued to occupy buildings in the monastery and retained possession of the Lavra’s enormous sacristy through the 1990s. A compromise solution was finally worked out, and the museum was relocated to the former stables of the monastery (which were completely renovated) outside the walls, while the museum and the monastery retain joint possession over the sacristy.29 The town erected a statue of Saint Sergius on Krasnogorsk Square in 2000—though ironically the statue of Lenin on the same square still stands.30 The Lavra has engaged in continuous renovation, culminating in the restoration of the bell tower in 2001, and two years later the great bells destroyed in 1930 were replaced, an event that drew attention in the press and society.31 Trinity-Sergius has also renewed its engagement in philanthropic activity, in particular by establishing a “club” for troubled teens that teaches them catechism. The club, named “Peresvet” after one of the monks sent by Saint Sergius to the Battle of Kulikovo, gives the teens military training, conducted by monks who had formerly been in the army; both this club and the activities of the Zosimova Hermitage point to the close relations the Church has forged with the army in post-Soviet Russia.32 Finally, there has been much talk both from the monastery and the city authorities of capitalizing on the monastery’s fame to transform Sergiev Posad into a world-class tourist destination.33 The story of the Trinity-Sergius collective has parallels throughout Russia. Indeed, as in the nineteenth century, there has been a phenomenal rebirth of monasticism since the collapse of communism. From the end of Khrushchev’s antireligious campaign to the beginning of perestroika, there were sixteen monasteries in the

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Soviet Union, with about a thousand monks and nuns. Within a decade of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Moscow Patriarchate claimed 600 monasteries (374 in the Russian Republic, 122 in Ukraine, and 44 in Moldova, as well as some in other former Soviet republics)—an astounding increase, one that far surpasses the reopening of new parish churches or ordination of parish clergy. Unlike the nineteenthcentury revival, however, much of the post-Soviet revival appears to be driven by the Church’s efforts to reclaim property that once belonged to it; thus, although some monasteries such as Trinity-Sergius are large (with more than 100 monks), many of these newly opened monasteries have few monks or nuns.34 The tasks of rebuilding and restoring are enormous, but the evidence from the former TrinitySergius communities demonstrates that, though slow, the efforts are bearing fruit.

The Canonization of the Monastic Revival The post-Soviet revival of the Trinity-Sergius collective is not only a matter of reclaiming buildings and reconstituting communities. It is also part of a larger effort by Russian Orthodoxy to recapture and reshape Russia after the collapse of communist ideology, as well as to revitalize Russian Orthodoxy itself after seventy years of communist suppression. A major part of this effort means recovering and reconnecting with the past. Although Orthodoxy on the eve of the Russian Revolution was characterized by very diverse trends and tendencies, one that is being asserted as normative in post-Soviet Russia is precisely the story of the monastic revival, Hesychasm, and starchestvo that has been recounted in part in this book. One sign of this recovery and of the normativization of the monastic revival is the canonization of leading figures as saints, which began with Ignatii Brianchaninov, Feofan the Recluse, and Amvrosii of Optina in 1988. Indeed, while researching this book, I saw one figure after another canonized by the Church. The first to be canonized was Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov), who was widely revered even in the nineteenth century. Reconnecting with the past turned out not to be easy, however, as the canonization of Filaret showed. Filaret, together with Archimandrite Antonii and Metropolitan Innokentii, had been buried in a chapel attached to the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit (figure 10.1), dedicated to Saint Filaret the Merciful and built expressly for that purpose shortly before Filaret’s death. But this chapel was pulled down during restoration work in 1938–40, and the area where Filaret was buried was leveled. An archeological investigation in October 1994 found the tombs empty, filled only with construction refuse. But as the archeologists continued to dig, they discovered a pit in which they found, amid more refuse and construction materials, human bones and wood from coffins. For the most part, the skeletons were completely dismantled and mixed together, and

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figure 10.1. The Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra Source: Photograph by the author. large rocks had been thrown on top in order to smash the bones; indeed, two of skulls discovered in the pit were shattered. At the very bottom of the pit, they found a third skull that was not crushed, and even still had hair on it; this was later identified as Filaret’s skull. All these bones constituted the remains of three skeletons— Filaret, Antonii, and Innokentii—but the challenge then became to identify which

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bones belonged to whom. After laborious efforts on behalf of some of the monks and academy students with prior medical training to put the three skeletons back together, a team of anthropologists came to check the work of the monks.35 These findings reveal that, in a bizarre and gruesome episode, someone had destroyed the tombs of Metropolitan Filaret, Metropolitan Innokentii, and Archimandrite Antonii; had mixed their bones together in a pit into which garbage was also thrown; and had even endeavored to smash the bones—particularly the skulls. Although photographs of the destruction of the tombs were later discovered, it still remains a mystery as to who was responsible or even when their desecration took place—though the evidence suggests that it was during the restoration work in 1938–40.36 Despite the fact that the perpetrators of this act, and their motivation, are unknown, it is a highly symbolic incident. Once again—just as twenty years earlier—the Soviet fury against Russian Orthodoxy was expressed in acts of desecration of the dead. As we have seen, the Bolsheviks did not understand the Orthodox veneration of relics and wrongly assumed that only incorrupt remains were to be regarded as relics. The campaign in 1919 to “expose” the relics of Saint Sergius was primarily a campaign of propaganda, designed to destroy the faith of those who had witnessed or heard about the event. But desecrating the remains of Filaret and the others twenty years later was very different; none had been canonized as saints, and the act was committed in secret, a secret that was never revealed in the Soviet period. Perhaps it was an act of rage against the Church. Perhaps it was an act of fear—preemptively destroying remains that could potentially be regarded as relics, and therefore hold power for believers. It was not only an attempt to erase the past (as, indeed, the Bolsheviks destroyed many graveyards) but also to shape the future— Filaret and the others, though widely revered, were not yet canonized, and destroying their relics was an effort to prevent their canonization from ever happening. As with the campaign against the relics in 1919, however, so also this act of violence against the saints proved futile. Innokentii was canonized in 1977; and within a short time of the excavation, Filaret was canonized a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church.37 Two years after Filaret’s canonization, his coworker Archimandrite Antonii was also canonized. The act of canonization for Antonii pointed to his ascetic monastic activities, his spiritual formation under Serafim of Sarov, his support for Metropolitan Filaret, his “many-sided fruitful activity” as prior of the Lavra, and his role as confessor for many laity.38 In a sermon delivered on the occasion at TrinitySergius, Patriarch Aleksii II said that “we believe that he is praying for everyone who today is here [i.e. at Trinity-Sergius] bearing his ascetic feat [podvig] of service to the Church, the Fatherland, and the people of our land in this difficult time we are suffering through.” Addressing both the monks and the students of the theological academy, who were training for the clergy, Aleksii said that the pastor’s task is not

380 epilogue: resurrection only to celebrate the liturgy, but that he must also “strengthen people who turn to him in the faith and help them in their difficulties,” and he pointed to Antonii as an example of one who “served God and [his] neighbor.”39 Aleksii was thus not only pointing to Antonii’s deeds in his own life, suggesting the sanctity of both his labors for monasticism and his contributions to philanthropy, but also reminding his contemporary listeners that Antonii’s life was one to emulate. Along with from Antonii and Filaret, who were great churchmen who contributed to a variety of fields, those more specifically associated with Hesychasm and starchestvo have also been canonized in post-Soviet Russia. The first of these from the Trinity collective was Starets Varnava of Gethsemane Skete, who was canonized in 1995. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra first raised the issue of his canonization in 1989 because of “numerous requests” from those who venerated the elder, and in subsequent years his life was thoroughly investigated. Patriarch Aleksii II pointed to his upright life and ascetic monastic labors, the miracles that occurred during his earthly life and afterward, and the continuation of popular veneration for him as evidence of Varnava’s holiness.40 Although Antonii and Varnava were canonized as “locally revered” saints, to be celebrated primarily by the Trinity-Sergius communities, Starets Aleksii of the Zosimova Hermitage was canonized for veneration by the entire Russian Church by the Jubilee Church Council in 2000. The remarks of the council’s canonization commission are particularly worthy of note: “In the 20th Century many fell away from the Church, but at this time many ascetics, men of prayer, and those of pious life also flourished; pastors of the Church of Christ, seeing the coming persecution, labored with special zeal and determination. There were pastors who were protected by God who, just as the new Russian martyrs and confessors, bore a heavy cross of service to God and the neighbor, acting for their spiritual children as beloved fathers. The love and spiritual care of such pastors for their flock was for the latter often their sole support in their sorrows.” Both Aleksii and Hegumen German were canonized at the same time, and both were put forward as pastors who, through their own intensely ascetical and prayerful lives, prepared the Church for its coming persecution. Aleksii was also noted not only for his “gifts of wisdom of an elder, humility, love, and prescience,” but also because it was his hand that picked the lot with Tikhon’s name on it, thereby choosing him as the patriarch.41 In addition to canonizing such elders, the Church has canonized as martyrs those who suffered directly at the hands of the Soviets.42 Archimandrite Kronid was included among many other “new martyrs” canonized at the 2000 Council. According to an article devoted to him in a recent journal of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, “the times demanded from Kronid” not weeping from the great sorrows so much as “endurance, discretion, and carefully thought out action.” Although the Lavra was closed, Kronid and the brothers, through their ascetic feat, “preserved its spirit—the

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figure 10.2. The Butovo Cross Source: Photograph by the author. spirit of Saint Sergius.”43 Indeed, every year on the anniversary of Kronid’s execution, the prior of the Lavra and a group of the brothers go to Butovo to celebrate the liturgy (see figure 10.2). Kronid, of course, was far from the only one of the Trinity monks who suffered or died at the hands of the Soviets, and a number of others have also been canonized, including Ksenofont (Bondarenko) in 2004.44 The new

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figure 10.3. Visitors at Butovo Source: Photograph by the author.

martyrs such as Kronid are held forth as having held fast to their faith, even at the cost of their lives. The Orthodox Church has also been the only social actor in post-Soviet Russia able to promote the remembrance of Soviet persecution and particularly Stalin’s Terror that has gained widespread attention in a context where both state and society seem more inclined to forget. Although human rights groups have tried over the years to bring to light the Soviet repression, their efforts have largely fallen on deaf ears, both in the government and among the people. The Russian Orthodox Church, by contrast, has the authority in Russian society today to accomplish what the human rights groups were unable to do, and in particular it has succeeded in establishing a memorial site at Butovo and brought it to public awareness (see figures 10.3 and 10.4).45 The Church certainly has a stake in remembering the Soviet repression, of which it was a primary target. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Orthodox Church has attempted to recover the past that the Bolsheviks tried to de-

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figure 10.4. The memorial site at Butovo Source: Photograph by the author.

stroy, together with attempting to recapture Russia’s present and shape its future. And remembering the Soviet campaign against the Church is a vital part of this process. The Church has already canonized over 300 of those executed at Butovo as “new martyrs” (see figure 10.5). The consecration of the new church at Butovo served as part of the celebration of the reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Church Abroad in a symbolically important move to heal the past over the blood of the martyrs.46

Envoi: Trinity-Sergius and the Regeneration of the Russian People The experience of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, though in many ways exceptional, is also representative of the story of monasticism’s revival in the nineteenth century, in all its diversity, as well as its tragedy in the twentieth century. It is a story full of paradoxes, of a revival of ancient spiritual practices in the modern age. It was a time of great social change in Russia, and this is reflected in the transformation of monasticism from an elite phenomenon to a popular one, when a man born as a serf, such as Archimandrite Toviia, could rise to become prior of the nation’s greatest monastery and enjoy the respect of society and receive emperors. It was also an age when the modern forces that brought an end to serfdom and resulted in the spread of literacy, combined with the technological advances of the railroad, all worked together to encourage such a traditional practice as making pilgrimage to the relics of a revered saint to ask for his intercession. And it was the revival, adaptation, and

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figure 10.5. The Icon of the New Martyrs at Butovo Source: Photograph by the author.

popularization of spiritual practices such as Hesychasm and starchestvo that, on the surface at least, seemed so contrary to modern notions of the self with their autonomy and individualism. For much of the nineteenth century, Hesychasm and starchestvo were anything but mainstream practices in Russian monasticism but, on the contrary, were highly

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contested. The pages of this book reveal many of the tensions that surrounded the institution of the elders that are also to be found in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, and many even within monasticism regarded it as an innovation. Just as, in the realm of theology, the effort that began with Metropolitan Filaret and others to rediscover what was distinctively Orthodox by turning to the ancient church fathers became normative in twentieth-century Orthodox theology through the work of theologians such as Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, and John Meyendorff; so also, in the realm of spirituality, the revival that began with Paisii Velichkovskii and also promoted by Metropolitan Filaret along with Archimandrite Antonii and a host of others was transformed from something contested in the nineteenth century to something synonymous with Orthodox spirituality in the twentieth. The notion of being under the spiritual direction and care of a starets has virtually become an essential element of popular Orthodoxy in contemporary Russia.47 The triumph of Hesychasm and starchestvo is certainly one of the most central accomplishments of the nineteenth-century monastic revival. The repeated pattern of monasticism’s revivals that follows each attempt to suppress it, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, suggests that monasticism was not merely a phenomenon peculiar to the Middle Ages but rather is something central, even intrinsic, to Russian Orthodoxy (and to Eastern Orthodoxy generally). In the modern era, monasticism’s ability to adapt to social changes and to become a popular phenomenon was central to the continued vitality of Russian Orthodoxy in prerevolutionary Russia, its survival in the Soviet period, and its resurgence after the Soviet collapse. And if, as some observers contend, Russian Orthodoxy appears to be reasserting its place as the dominant national idea in Russia, then it is essential to understand the recent history of monasticism and how it has reshaped Russian Orthodox practice and spirituality. The story of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra lives in the collective consciousness of Russians as representative of the nation’s history, both its moments of grief and its moments of triumph. A contemporary visitor today is likely to hear of TrinitySergius as a story of survival as the tour guide regales the visitor with stories of Saint Sergius and the Mongols, of Trinity-Sergius withstanding the siege by Polish invaders during the seventeenth century, and of its resurrection after Soviet persecution. According to one journalist in a far-from-uncritical article in a major newspaper, everywhere one turns at the Lavra, one senses some great age of Russia’s history and feels connected to people and events long past. In this way, even perhaps for those who are not religious, Trinity-Sergius bears meaning surpassing its significance as an architectural monument because it represents “the centuries of existence of the people’s spirit.”48 This sense of connection between the monastery, the people, and the nation’s history is being strengthened today by the central role that the Trinity-Sergius Lavra

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figure 10.6. The Inner Square of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra Source: Photograph by the author.

now plays in the Russian Orthodox Church and by the great number of visitors— pilgrims and tourists alike—who again visit the monastery every year (see figure 10.6). It is also being strengthened by the reestablishment of the Lavra’s satellite communities, and in particular by the recent canonizations of their saints. Through their canonizations, these people and their stories have now entered the Orthodox calendar and will be commemorated every year, keeping them alive in the people’s memory. The monastery’s brotherhood in this way is endeavoring to make this history part of the people’s living memory after the Soviets’ attempts to erase that history in the same way they tried preemptively to destroy Filaret’s and Antonii’s relics. On the occasion of the five-hundredth anniversary of Saint Sergius, the great historian Vasilii Kliuchevskii articulated this parallel between the fate of the monastery and the fate of the Russian people, whereby the devotees of Saint Sergius symbolically become the nation writ large. The memory of this saint continued to “rule in the people’s consciousness,” Kliuchevskii asserted,” because, “with the height of his spirit, Saint Sergius uplifted the fallen spirit of his native people, . . . breathed faith in their future.” The Russian people remember Saint Sergius, Kliuchevskii continued, because he is the measure of their moral regeneration: “The gates of the

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Lavra of Saint Sergius will be closed and the lamps that burn over his tomb will be extinguished only when we have wasted without a vestige” the moral and spiritual reserve he bequeathed. This narrative of memory and redemption that conflates the veneration of Saint Sergius with the moral revival of the nation as a whole survived well into the twentieth century. In 1920, after the monastery was closed, Patriarch Tikhon reminded the Russian people of Kliuchevskii’s words: “Now the gates of the Lavra are closing and the lamps are being extinguished. And so? Can we already have lost our inner worth, and all that remains for us is cold and hunger? . . . Let it not be so with us. Let us purify our hearts with repentance and prayer and we will pray to the saint that he not abandon his Lavra, but ‘remember his flock.’”49 And in a contemporary, post-Soviet Russia, ridden with internal strife, economic instability, and moral confusion, the association is as compelling as ever. As the brothers of today’s Trinity-Sergius brotherhood claim, Archimandrite Kronid and others succeeded in “preserving the spirit of Saint Sergius,” even when the lamps were extinguished, in the face of the harshest persecution, so that this spirit can once again contribute to the regeneration of the Russian people.

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Notes These abbreviations are used throughout the notes: GARF OR RGB PE Pis’ma

PSTBI Database

RGADA RGIA RGIAgM STSL TsGAMO ZhMP

Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Otdel rukopisei, Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopediia (Moscow, 2000–) Filaret (Drozdov), Pis’ma k Prepodobnomu Antoniiu namestniku Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry, 1831–1867, 3 vols. (Sergiev Posad: Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 2007) Database of New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Twentieth Century, collected by the Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University, http://www.pstbi.ccas.ru/cgi-bin/code.exe/martyrs.htm?ans Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv g. Moskvy Sergiev Posad: Trinity-Sergius Lavra Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Moskovskoi oblasti Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkhii

Archival notation follows the accepted form of abbreviation: f. op. otd. st. d., dd. l., ll. ob. ch. k.

fond (collection) opis’ (inventory) otdelenie (division) stol (department) delo, dela (file, files) list, listy (leaf, leaves) oborot (verso) chast’ (part) karton (box)

chapter 1 1. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 314. 2. For a recent critical example, though one that does not in fact take into account contemporary Russian Orthodoxy, see Steven Cassedy, Dostoevsky’s Religion (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005).

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390 notes to pages 2–6 3. E.g., Margaret Ziolkowski, Hagiography and Modern Russian Literature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988); and Laura Engelstein, “Orthodox Self-Reflection in a Modernizing Age: The Case of Ivan and Natalia Kireevskii,” in Slavophile Empire: Imperial Russia’s Illiberal Path, by Laura Engelstein (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009). 4. Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, 314. 5. P. N. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri i monashestvo v XIX i nachale XX veka (Moscow: Verbum-M., 2002), 18–21; I. K. Smolich, Russkoe monashestvo, 988–1917: Zhizn’ i uchenie startsev, (Moscow, 1997), 563. Because those living in monasteries as postulants were not counted in these figures, the numbers were actually far greater. 6. The figures can be determined with relative certainty in the nineteenth century according to data collected by the Holy Synod; thus in 1840 there were 15,251 monks, nuns, and novices and the Orthodox population was 44,005,833; in 1890 these figures were 40,286 and 72,066,750, respectively. See I. Preobrazhenskii, Otechestvennaia tserkov’ po statisticheskim dannym s 1840–41 po 1890–91 gg. (Saint Petersburg, 1897), 15, 38. It is more difficult to estimate the Orthodox population after that, but Vladislav Tsypin estimates the Orthodox population as 105 million in 1914; the number of monks, nuns, and novices in that year was 94,629. See Vladislav Tsypin, Istoriia Russkoi Pravoslavnoi tserkvi: Sinodal’nyi period, noveishii period (Moscow, 2004), 810. 7. See especially William Wagner, “The Transformation of Female Orthodox Monasticism in Nizhnii Novgorod Diocese, 1764–1929, in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Modern History 78 (2006): 793–845. 8. The European situation in the nineteenth century was highly complex and varied tremendously by country. Though there has been a flurry of recent scholarship on women religious, the history of male religious has been neglected in Europe as in Russia. See Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 591–99; and Jan De Maeyer, Sofie Leplae, and Joachim Schmiedl, eds., Religious Institutes in Western Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Historiography, Research, and Legal Position (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004). 9. See, e.g., Steve Bruce, ed., Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Grace Davie, “Patterns of Religion in Western Europe: An Exceptional Case,” in The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion, ed. Richard K. Fenn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 264–78. 10. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991); Ernst Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992). 11. Robert W. Hefner, “Multiple Modernities: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism in a Globalizing Age,” Annual Review of Anthropology 27 (1998): 89. 12. Simon Dixon, “The Russian Orthodox Church in Imperial Russia, 1721–1917,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 5: Eastern Christianity, ed. Michael Angold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 326, 347. 13. Hefner, “Multiple Modernities,” 98. 14. One of the few books that includes male monasticism is Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri. For a historiographical overview, see Scott M. Kenworthy, “Monasticism in Russian History,” Kritika 10 (2009): 307–31.

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15. Laura Engelstein, Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999); Heather Coleman, Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 1905–1929 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Sergei I. Zhuk, Russia’s Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830– 1917 (Washington, D.C., and Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). 16. Gregory L. Freeze, The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983); Robert Nichols and Theofanis G. Stavrou, eds., Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978). 17. Christine Worobec, “Lived Orthodoxy in Imperial Russia,” Kritika 7 (2006): 329–50; Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Chris J. Chulos, Converging Worlds: Religion and Community in Peasant Russia, 1861–1917 (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003); Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene, eds., Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003); Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); John-Paul Himka and Andriy Zayarnyuk, eds., Letters from Heaven: Popular Religion in Russia and Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006); Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman, Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). A notable exception to this trend, which focuses on the clergy, is Jennifer Hedda, His Kingdom Come: Orthodox Pastorship and Social Activism in Revolutionary Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008). 18. Roy R. Robson, Solovki: The Story of Russia Told through Its Most Remarkable Islands (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004). 19. Derek Beales, Prosperity and Plunder: European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 9. 20. On Byzantine monasticism, see David Knowles, Christian Monasticism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), 124–34; Mary Cunningham, Faith in the Byzantine World (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 75–93; and J. M. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 335–49. 21. John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979), 66–78; and John Meyendorff, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974); Michael Angold, ed., The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 5: Eastern Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 22. On the history of Russian monasticism generally, see N. V. Sinitsyna, ed., Monashestvo i monastyri v Rossii, XI–XX veka: Istoricheskie ocherki (Moscow: Nauka, 2005); Igor Smolitsch, Russisches Mönchtum: Entstehung, Entwicklung und Wesen, 988–1917 (Würzburg, 1953), Russian translation: I. K. Smolich, Russkoe monashestvo, 988–1917; Zhizn’ i uchenie startsev (Moscow, 1997); and relevant articles in Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia: Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ (Moscow, 2000), cited below. For a historiographical overview, see Kenworthy, “Monasticism in Russian History.” 23. See John Fennell, A History of the Russian Church to 1448 (London: Longman, 1995), 63–72. For the life of Feodosii of the Caves Monastery, see Pamiatniki literatury drevnei Rusi:

392 notes to pages 11–14 XI–nacahlo XII veka (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1978), 305–91, English translation in A Treasury of Russian Spirituality, ed. G. P. Fedotov (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1948), 11–49. 24. Smolich, Russkoe monashestvo; N. V. Sinitsyna, “Russkoe monashestvo i monastyri, X–XVII vv.,” in Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia: Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ (Moscow, 2000), 305–9; M. I. B”lkhova, “Monastyri na Rusi XI–serediny XIV veka,” in Monashestvo i monastyri, ed. Sinitsyna, 25–56. 25. B. M. Kloss, “Monashestvo v epokhu obrazovaniia tsentralizovannogo gosudarstvo,” in Monashestvo i monastyri, ed. Sinitsyna, 116–49. 26. In Russian, the word pustynia means both “desert” and “wilderness,” deriving from the same root as pustota, “emptiness,” and thus signifies an uninhabited or “empty” place. 27. The Life of Saint Sergius, written by a disciple, Epiphanius the Wise, can be found in Pamiatniki literatury drevnei Rusi: XIV–seredina XV veka (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1981), 256–429; see also B. M. Kloss, Zhitie Sergiia Radonezhskogo (Moscow, 1998), English translation in Treasury of Russian Spirituality, ed. Fedotov, 54–84. 28. See David Miller, “The Cult of Saint Sergius of Radonezh and Its Political Uses,” Slavic Review 52 (1993): 680-99. 29. P. Kapterev, “Iz istorii Troitskoi Lavry,” in Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, 32. 30. E. E. Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii Radonezhskii i sozdannaia im Troitskaia Lavra, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1909; reprinted Saint Petersburg: Trinity-Sergius Lavra and Voskresenie, 2007), 115. 31. Miller, “Cult,” 688. More broadly, also see David Miller, Saint Sergius of Radonezh, his Trinity Monastery, and the Formation of the Russian Identity, 1392–1605 (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, forthcoming). 32. Miller, “Cult” ; Kloss, “Monashestvo v epokhu”; Pierre Gonneau, “The Trinity-Sergius Brotherhood in State and Society,” in Culture and Identity in Muscovy, 1359–1584, UCLA Slavic Studies, Second Series, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1997). 33. V. O. Kliuchevskii, Kurs russkoi istorii (Moscow, 1988), vol. 2, 230–47, esp. 233ff; English translation: A History of Russia, trans. C. J. Hogarth, (London, 1912), vol. 2, 149-96. See also Kloss, “Monashestvo v epokhu,” 70–73; E. I. Kolycheva, “Pravoslavnye monastyri vtoroi poloviny XV–XVI veka,” in Monashestvo i monastyri, ed. Sinitsyna, 81–115, esp. 109–10. 34. Kloss, “Monashestvo v epokhu,”; Kolycheva, “Pravoslavnye monastyri,” 81–115. 35. See David Goldfrank, “Recentering Nil Sorskii: The Evidence from the Sources,” Russian Review 66 (2007): 359–76; David Goldfrank, ed. and trans., The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky, rev. and expanded ed. (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 2000), David Goldfrank, Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 2008); Donald Ostrowski, “Church Polemics and Monastic Land Acquisition in SixteenthCentury Muscovy,” Slavonic and East European Review 63 (1986): 355–79; Andrei Plizgunov, Polemika v russkoi tserkvi pervoi treti XVI stoletiia (Moscow: Indrik, 2002); N. V. Sinitsyna, “Tipy monastyrei i russkii asketicheskii ideal (XV–XVI vv.),” in Monashestvo i monastyri, ed. Sinitsyna, 116–49; E. V. Romanenko, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ russkogo srednevekovogo monastyria (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2002); E. V. Romanenko, Nil Sorskii i traditsii russkogo monashestva (Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli, 2003); Robert Romanchuk, Byzantine Pedagogy and Hermeneutics in the Rus’ North: Monks and Masters at the Kirillo-Belozerskii Mon-

notes to pages 14–17

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astery, 1397–1501 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007); and Tom E. Dykstra, Russian Monastic Culture: ‘Josephism’ and the Iosifo-Volokolamsk Monastery, 1479–1607 (Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2006). 36. See Sinitsyna, Monashestvo i monastyri, 163–85; 202–9. 37. V. V. Lisovoi, “Vosemnadtsatyi vek v istorii russkogo monashestva,” in Monashestvo i monastyri, ed. Sinitsyna, 202ff. On Catholic monasticism, see Beales, Prosperity and Plunder, e.g., 182. 38. Lisovoi, “Vosemnadtsatyi vek,” 204. 39. Decree of December 30, 1701, cited by Andronik (Trubachev), A. A. Bovkalo, and V. A. Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo, 1700–1998 gg.,” in Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia: Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’, 325. 40. The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great, trans. Alexander V. Muller (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), 77, 80–81. 41. Ibid., 76, 81–82. On Peter’s policies regarding monasticism, see also James Cracraft, The Church Reform of Peter the Great (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1971), 251-61. 42. Andronik (Trubachev), Bovkalo, and Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo,” 326–27; Smolitch, Russkoe monashestvo, 264–68. 43. Andronik (Trubachev), Bovkalo, and Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo,” 326–27. 44. See Carol S. Leonard, Reform and Regicide: The Reign of Peter III of Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 73–89. 45. First-class monasteries were permitted thirty-three monks; second-class ones, seventeen; and third-class ones, twelve. The Lavras were to receive 10,070 rubles each; first-class monasteries, about 2,000 rubles, second-class ones, 1,312 rubles for men’s monasteries and 476 rubles for convents; and third-class ones, 806 rubles for monasteries and 376 rubles for convents. 46. The state secularized monastic estates in the western provinces in the 1780s and 1790s. 47. Various sources give somewhat differing figures. See Andronik (Trubachev), Bovkalo, and Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo,” 327–28; Smolitsch, Russkoe monashestvo, 277–79; Aleksei Zav’ialov, Vopros o tserkovnykh imeniiakh pri imperatritse Ekaterine II (Saint Petersburg, 1900); A. I. Komissarenko, Russkii absoliutizm i dukhovenstvo v XVIII v. (Ocherki istorii sekuliarizatsionnoi reformy 1764 g.) (Moscow, 1990); V. V. Zverinskii, Pravoslavnye monastyri v Rossiiskoi Imperii (Saint Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2005), orig. pub. as 3 vols. (1890–97), xi; Lisovoi, “Vosemnadtsatyi vek,” 199–200. 48. Lisovoi, “Vosemnadtsatyi vek.” 49. Andronik (Trubachev), Bovkalo, and Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo,” 329. 50. See Nadejda Gorodetzky, Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk: Inspirer of Dostoevsky (London: SPCK, 1951); and Robert L. Nichols, “Orthodox Spirituality in Imperial Russia: Saint Serafim of Sarov and the Awakening of Orthodoxy,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 16/17 (2000– 2001): 19–42. 51. See The Life of Paisij Velyckovs’kyj, trans. J. M. E. Featherstone (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); Sergii Chetverikov, Moldavskii Starets Paisii Velichkovskii: ego zhizn’, uchenoe i vliianie na pravoslavnoe monashestvo (Paris: YMCA, 1976), trans.: Starets Paisii Velichkovskii: His Life, Teachings, and Influence on Orthodox Monasticism, trans. Vasily

394 notes to pages 18–21 Lickwar and Alexander Lisenko (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland Publishing, 1980); and Robert L. Nichols, “The Orthodox Elders (Startsy) of Imperial Russia,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 1 (1985): 1–30. 52. The Philokalia was compiled by Makarios of Corinth and Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and published in Venice in 1782; Paisii’s translation was published in Moscow in 1793. See The Philokalia: The Complete Text, 4 vols., trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1979–95). 53. Lisovoi, “Vosemnadtsatyi vek.” 54. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 15–18; Andronik (Trubachev), Bovkalo, and Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo,” 329. 55. In Russian, there is one term—monastyr’—that denotes both men’s and women’s monasteries, which is then qualified by the adjective muzhskoi or zhenskii (“male” or “female”). In general, I use the word “monastery” either to refer to both men’s and women’s communities collectively, or exclusive to refer to men’s communities in contrast to “convents” or if the context is clear that I am only discussing men’s monasteries. 56. See Andronik (Trubachev), Bovkalo, and Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo,” 329. These summaries come from my own calculations based on the published annual reports of the chief procurator of the Holy Synod; see also the chart given by Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 19. In 1835, there were 360 monasteries (not including the arkhiereiskie doma, or “bishops’ residences,” which also served as monastic communities) and 101 convents; in 1914, there were 478 monasteries and 475 convents. 57. Andronik (Trubachev), Bovkalo, and Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo,” 229–30. 58. Brenda Meehan, “Popular Piety, Local Initiative, and the Founding of Women’s Religious Communities in Russia, 1764–1907,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 30 (1986): 117–42. 59. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 91–111. On the practice of public penance, see Gregory L. Freeze, “The Wages of Sin: The Decline of Public Penance in Imperial Russia,” in Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, ed. Stephen K. Batalden (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993), 53–82. 60. This seems to have been almost universally the rule for men’s monasteries, though there were state-funded convents, such as the Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross in Nizhni-Novgorod, that adopted the cenobitic rule in the nineteenth century. See Wagner, “Transformation of Female Orthodox Monasticism.” 61. Andronik (Trubachev), Bovkalo, and Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo,” 331. 62. See T. Barsov, ed., Sbornik deistvuiushchikh i rukovodstvennykh tserkovnykh i tserkovnograzhdanskikh postanovlenii po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia (Saint Petersburg, 1885), 162; for the instructions to the superintendents of monasteries, see the appendix to article 643, xliii–xlviii. 63. There were instances when the abbot of a third-class monastery would be granted the status of an archimandrite, though without the receiving the same income. 64. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 13–14. 65. See the minutes of the Synodal session (October 23, 1861–February 28, 1862), RGIA, f. 796, op. 142, d. 524, l. 28. 66. Bishops, archimandrites, and other monastery authorities could bequeath property to relatives, which was prohibited for ordinary monks.

notes to pages 22–25

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67. Smolitsch, Russkoe monashestvo, 305–21. On the social profile of bishops, see Jan Plamper, “The Russian Orthodox Episcopate, 1721–1917: A Prosopography,” Journal of Social History 34 (2000): 5–34; unfortunately, Plamper does not give any details about the bishops’ earlier service as abbots. 68. These data come from the service records for the abbots of the dioceses of Arkhangel’sk (RGIA, f. 796, op. 142, d. 2380a, ll. 1–17) and Riazan’ (ll. 18–46) for 1859; and the dioceses of Pskov (op. 143, d. 2569a, ll. 2–18), Kaluga (ll. 48–63), Kursk (d. 2569b, ll. 2–25), Voronezh (ll. 27–40), Vladimir (ll. 61–93), Moscow (ll. 132–62), and Tambov (ll. 269–79) for 1862. 69. Many of the abbots had served some post, such as steward (ekonom), in the diocesan episcopal residence (arkhiereiskii dom), where the bishop became acquainted with their abilities. 70. Some of these included very notable examples, e.g., Archimandrite Moisii of Optina Hermitage (at eighty years of age, the oldest of the ninety abbots under consideration, and also with the longest service—thirty-seven years), and Archimandrite Pimen of the Nikolaevskii Ugreshskii Monastery. Others included monasteries noted for the strictness of their spiritual life, e.g., the Sarov Hermitage, the Nikolaev Peshnoshskii Monastery, and the Glinskaia Hermitage. Only the abbot of Molchanskaia Sofronieva Hermitage was explicitly noted as having been chosen by the brothers. 71. RGIA, f. 796, op. 143, d. 2569b, ll. 104–24. 72. Filaret’s project on the order of choosing abbots for cenobitic monasteries (February 12, 1861), RGIA, f. 796, op. 142, d. 524, ll. 3 ob–4. Filaret’s original draft of the proposal is RGIA, f. 832, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 22–24 ob. 73. Circular decree of the Holy Synod (March 20, 1862), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 22700, l. 13–13 ob. 74. This is excluding Finland, and thus Valaam. For a chart giving the details of monastic landholding, see Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 291–95. 75. Zyrianov states that the monasteries often received lands which were otrezki, or sections cut off from the peasant commune at the time of Emancipation; ibid., 84, 178. 76. According to the secularization statutes of 1764, selected state peasants (shtatnye sluzhiteli) had to serve monasteries for a term of twenty-five years. After the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, monasteries lost these servants; as compensation, in 1865 the state allocated an additional 168,200 rubles per annum to hire labor. By 1889, 476 monasteries had 26,000 hired laborers. 77. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 75–90; 173–95; for a chart with the income of Zyrianov’s 115 monasteries, see 296–300. Also see Andronik (Trubachev), Bovkalo, and Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo, 335–37. 78. Inna Grigor’evna Khanagova, “Troitse-Sergiev monastyr’ v obshchestvennopoliticheskoi zhizni Rusi XV–XVI vv.,” Avtoreferat Kandidatskoi dissertatsii, Moscow State University, 1993. 79. Gonneau, “Trinity-Sergius Brotherhood,” 136. 80. Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii, 117. 81. Sinitsyna, “Russkoe monashestvo i monastyri,” 314. 82. Konstantin Filimonov, Sergiev Posad: Stranitsy istorii, XIV–XX veka (Moscow: Podkova, 1997), 22–23; Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii, 107.

396 notes to pages 25–27 83. M. S. Cherkasova, Zemlevladenie Troitse-Sergieva monastyria v XV–XVI vv. (Moscow: Arkheograficheskii tsentr, 1996), 198–99. By comparison, other leading monasteries— e.g., the Simonov and the Kirillo-Belozerskii monasteries—owned around fifty villages; ibid., 198. 84. Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii, 112; Filimonov, Sergiev Posad, 25–35; A. V. Gorskii, Istoricheskoe opisanie Sviato-Troitskiia Sergievy lavry (STSL, 1910), 93–108. 85. Paul of Aleppo, The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, trans. F. C. Belfour (London: Oriental Translations Fund, 1828), pt. 6, 137. 86. The term lavra comes from the Greek laura and originally designated a community where the monks lived somewhat separately from each other in a semi-eremitical setting. Eventually, however, the term came to mean large populous monasteries among the Greeks. In Russia, the term came to designate the preeminent monasteries; see Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii, 118. 87. The next-wealthiest monasteries, by comparison, were the Kievan Caves Lavra, which owned about 56,000 serfs, and the Aleksandro-Nevskaia Lavra, which owned 25,000 serfs. Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii, 120–21; V. Baldin, Arkhitekturnyi ansambl’ TroitseSergievoi lavry (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1976), 59; M. S. Cherkasova, “Pripisnaia sistema Troitskoi dukhovnoi korporatsii v XV–XVII vv. (sostav, tipologiia, istochniki),” in Troitse-Sergieva Lavra v istorii, kul’ture i dukhovnoi zhizni Rossii (Sergiev Posad, 2000), 19–29. 88. Filimonov, Sergiev Posad, 48–51; Baldin, Arkhitekturnyi ansambl’ Troitse-Sergievoi lavry, 57–67. 89. Significantly, this land included Krasnogorsk Square, which brought huge rents from the shops in the nineteenth century. 90. On the social situation of the town, see Filimonov, Sergiev Posad, 51–74; N. A. Chetyrina, Sergievskii Posad v kontse XVIII–nachale XIX vv. (Posad kak tip gorodskogo poseleniia) (Moscow: AIRO, 2006). 91. See L. A. Shitova, “Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Troitse-Sergieva monastyria vo vtoroi polovine XVIII v.,” in Trudy po istorii Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry, ed. T. N. Manushina (Moscow: Podkova, 1998), 100–111. Also see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 3004, l. 64 (account book for 1810), and d. 19517 (account book for state subsidies, 1835); for a detailed breakdown of state subsidies, see d. 5375, ll. 9–13. 92. Shitova, “Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Troitse-Sergieva monastyria,” 107. 93. Prosphora are small loaves of bread purchased by pilgrims before the liturgy, which are accompanied by lists that the pilgrims fill out containing the names of individuals to be prayed for; the names are read out during the proskomidiia, a preparatory part of the liturgy when the clergy prepare the bread and the wine for the Eucharist. The faithful then receive the prosphora as blessed bread at the end of the service. 94. The total income of the Lavra was 20,068 rubles (8,762 from state subsidies, 11,306 from the monastery) in 1781; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 1007, l. 53. 95. Expenditures were 13,841 rubles in 1781 and 23,323 rubles in 1799. Thus, whereas the monastery began 1781 with a balance of 16,483 rubles, it began 1799 with 95,000 rubles left from the previous year. The data from 1781 come from RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 1007, l. 53; the data from 1799 come from Shitova, “Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Troitse-Sergieva monastyria,” 109.

notes to pages 27–31

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96. Shitova, “Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Troitse-Sergieva monastyria,” 108–9. 97. In 1810, total income was 45,006 rubles, of which 17,086 rubles were state subsidies and 27,920 rubles were from the monastery; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 3004, l. 64. In 1813, the total income was 62,332 rubles, of which 17,390 came from state subsidies and 44,942 from the monastery; d. 3083, l. 59. 98. On the Makhrishchskii Monastery, see Istoricheskoe opisanie Makhrishchskogo monastyria (Sergiev Posad, 1906); and S. Demidov, Troitskii Stefano-Makhrishchskii monastyr’ (Moscow, 1997). 99. Though there is no English equivalent for the term namestnik, in Western monasticism “prior” can refer to the abbot’s deputy. 100. For a list of abbots and short biographies, see Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii, 143–52; and Gorskii, Istoricheskoe opisanie, 125–29. 101. Letopis’ namestnikov, kelarei, kaznacheev, riznichikh, ekonomov i bibliotekarei TroitseSergievy lavry (Saint Petersburg, 1868). Similarly, those who held other administrative posts in the Lavra from the mid–eighteenth century until the mid–nineteenth century later became bishops or abbots of major monasteries. 102. The post of kelar’, who had been overseer of the estates and was second to the abbot until the introduction of the namestnik, was abolished in 1764. 103. It was renamed the “Spiritual Council” (Dukhovnyi Sobor) in 1897, but this change did not signify any change in function. For the sake of clarity, it is referred to as the “Governing Council” throughout. 104. Note that the term starets in the eighteenth century denoted an official function. Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii, 138–40; Letopis’ namestnikov. See also RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15957, ll. 27–28; the instructions for these various posts can be found in dd. 4304, 5769, and 25267. 105. K. A. Papmehl, Metropolitan Platon of Moscow (Peter Levshin, 1737–1812): The Enlightened Prelate, Scholar and Educator (Newtonville, Mass., 1983). 106. On Bethany Monastery, see S. Smirnov, Spaso-Vifanskii monastyr’ (Moscow, 1869); Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii, 325–30; Mitropolit Platon i osnovannaia im Vifanskaia obitel’ (Sergiev Posad, 1909); and N. V. Khrunova, Spaso-Vifanskii monastyr’ (Sergiev Posad, 1997). 107. Quoted by Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii, 326. 108. Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, trans. Robert L. Nichols (Belmont, Mass: Nordland Publishing, 1979), part I, 143; Papmehl, Metropolitan Platon, 40–43. 109. Smirnov, Spaso-Vifanskii monastyr’, 4–5. 110. Ibid., 21. For a description of the Church of the Transfiguration and pictures, see Khrunova, Spaso-Vifanskii monastyr’, 6–9. 111. Smirnov, Spaso-Vifanskii monastyr’, 6; Khrunova, Spaso-Vifanskii monastyr’, 9–12. 112. Smirnov, Spaso-Vifanskii monastyr’, 63–64, which lists the landholdings. 113. For the text of Paul’s decree, see Smirnov, Spaso-Vifanskii monastyr’, 65–66. 114. Khrunova, Spaso-Vifanskii monastyr’, 13–18; R. M. Korotkevich, “O printsipial’nykh osnovakh dukhovno-prosvetitel’skoi deiatel’nosti moskovskogo Mitropolita Platona (Levshina),” in Trudy po istorii, ed. Manushina, 87–97. 115. The monastery was allotted seventeen monks according to its shtat, but in 1860 it only had fifteen monks, plus an additional fourteen novices; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 8914,

398 notes to pages 31–38 l. 3. Typically for state-funded monasteries, the community consisted of a greater number of ordained monks (hieromonks and hierodeacons) than ordinary monks. In 1875, the community consisted of the treasurer (kaznachei), the sacristan (riznichii), five hieromonks, four hierodeacons, four monks, six registered novices, and six individuals living “on trial,” totaling twenty-seven individuals (d. 12114, l. 11). These figures changed little in the course of the century, and in 1910 there were sixteen monks and only two official novices at Bethany (d. 25168). 116. Papmehl, Metropolitan Platon, 87. 117. Filimonov, Sergiev Posad, 77–80. 118. Beales, Prosperity and Plunder, 176–290.

chapter 2 1. Toviia, “Vospominanie moego proshedshego,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, ll. 27 ob–28. 2. Ibid., ll. 30–33. 3. Filaret still awaits his biographer. For an excellent short introduction, see Robert L. Nichols, “Filaret,” in The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, ed. Joseph Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1979), vol. 11, 121–26. Also see Robert L. Nichols, “Metropolitan Filaret and the Awakening of Russian Orthodoxy, 1782– 1825,” PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 1972; Robert L. Nichols, “Orthodoxy and Russia’s Enlightenment, 1762–1825,” in Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, ed. Robert L. Nichols and Theofanis G. Stavrou (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978); and Vladimir Tsurikov, ed., Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, 1782–1867: Perspectives on the Man, His Works, and His Times (Jordanville, N.Y.: Variable Press, 2003). 4. See Gregory L. Freeze, “Skeptical Reformer, Staunch Tserkovnik: Metropolitan Philaret and the Great Reforms,” in Philaret, ed. Tsurikov, 151–91; and John D. Basil, Church and State in Late Imperial Russia: Critics of the Synodal System of Church Government (1861–1914) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 7–19. 5. For a stimulating account of the religious atmosphere under Alexander I, including the commonalities and divergences between Alexander’s circle and Filaret, see Elena Vishlenkova, Zabotias’ o dushakh poddannykh: religioznaia politika v Rossii pervoi chetverti XIX veka (Saratov: Saratov University, 2002). 6. M. V. Tolstoi, Khranilishche moei pamiati (Moscow, 1891; reprinted Moscow: Valaam Monastery, 1995), 44. 7. Tolstoi also notes that it was Filaret who suggested to then–archbishop Avgustin of Moscow to appoint Afanasii rather than the typical “learned monk”; ibid., 43. 8. The literature on Antonii is fairly extensive. The most recent, and most complete, biography was prepared by Archimandrite Georgii (Tertyshnikov) as part of the investigation of Antonii’s life for his canonization as a “locally revered” saint; see Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Arkhimandrit Antonii (Medvedev), namestnik Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry (STSL, 1996). See also P. S. Kazanskii, Ocherk zhizni arkhimandrita Antoniia, namestnika Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry (Moscow, 1878); Arkhimandrit Antonii, namestnik Sviato-Troitskiia Sergievy Lavry (STSL, 1907; reprinted STSL, 1990); F. Znamenskii, Arkhimandrit Antonii, namestnik Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi lavry (Saint Petersburg, 1897); Dmitrii N. Tolstoi, O. arkhimandrit

notes to pages 38–42 399 Antonii, namestnik Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi lavry: nekrolog (Moscow, 1877); and E. P. Novikov, Sluchai iz zhizni pokoinogo namestnika Troitse-Sergievoi lavry ottsa Antoniia (Moscow, 1884). 9. See Robert L. Nichols, “Orthodox Spirituality in Imperial Russia: Saint Serafim of Sarov and the Awakening of Orthodoxy,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 16–17 (2000–2001): 19–42. 10. Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Arkhimandrit Antonii, 23. 11. Letter of February 26, 1831, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 23. 12. Letter of March 11, 1856, ibid., vol. 2, 350. 13. The original publication is Pis’ma Mitropolita Moskovskogo Filareta k Namestniku Sviato-Troitskiia Sergievy Lavry Arkhimandritu Antoniiu (Moscow, 1877–84), 4 vols. There is a recent edition that includes extensive commentary and some previously unpublished letters: Pis’ma k Prepodobnomu Antoniiu namestniku Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry, 1831–1867 (STSL, 2007), 3 vols.; the citations follow the new edition, abbreviated throughout as Pis’ma. There is no personal collection for Antonii as there are for subsequent priors of Trinity Sergius in the Manuscript Division of the Russian State Library. Virtually none of Antonii’s letters are to be found in Filaret’s collections: OR RGB, f. 316; RGIA, f. 832; and RGIAgM, f. 1878. On Filaret’s destruction of the letters, see Pis’ma, vol. 1, 118, 417; and vol. 3, 307. 14. See, e.g., the letter of July 25, 1831, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 31, in which Filaret firmly rebuked Antonii for not informing him about a woman who had died of cholera in Sergiev Posad. Antonii explained that he had not told Filaret so as not to worry him, and Filaret replied that, knowing people were hiding bad things from him, he would worry more. 15. Letter of July 22, 1832, ibid., 43. 16. Letter of August 5, 1836, ibid., 135–36. 17. Letter of February 3, 1840, ibid., 206. 18. Quoted by Nichols, “Filaret,” 121. 19. Letter of September 2, 1847, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 33. 20. Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Arkhimandrit Antonii, 28–30, 81–97. 21. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 45–45 ob. 22. See Pis’ma, vol. 1, 27, 172, 282. There was an episode in 1834 when Antonii had a conflict with a woman who came to him for confession that was resulting in negative rumors, and the affair went to the Governing Council and continued to drag on. Filaret reprimanded Antonii for even informing the council about it and blamed the council for the matter taking so long to resolve. Ibid., 76–77, 81–83, 94–95. 23. Letter of February 24, 1846, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 384. 24. See letter of November 8, 1861, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 194; letter of February 2, 1862, ibid., 203; letters of January 7, 1864, and January 12, 1864, ibid., 256–57. 25. Tolstoi, Khranilishche, 74. 26. Filaret’s letters reveal how much Antonii was involved in such building and renovation projects. 27. Tolstoi, Khranilishche, 75. Tolstoi was later distressed by the way in which some of the old icons were restored, which caused somewhat of a rift between him and Antonii; ibid., 77. 28. For the earlier period, see, e.g., RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 1647; in 1850 there were 83 unofficial novices (d. 6916, ll. 130–72), which means that with the tonsured monks and

400 notes to pages 42–45 official novices the number must have well exceeded 200. On 1870, see Antonii’s article in S.-Peterburgskie vedomosti, no. 332 (December 2, 1871): 1–2. 29. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 45–45 ob. 30. Quoted by Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Arkhimandrit Antonii, 31. 31. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 45–45 ob. 32. Tolstoi, Khranilishche, 75. 33. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 45–45 ob. 34. S. D. Sheremetev (1844–1918) was an enlightened aristocrat who served as aidede-camp and was a personal friend of Alexander III. 35. Tolstoi, Khranilishche, 73–77; K. A. Vakha and L. I. Shokhina, eds., Memuary grafa S. D. Sheremeteva (Moscow: Indrik, 2005), vol. 2, 456–60. 36. E. E. Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii Radonezhskii i sozdannaia im Troitskaia lavra, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1909; reprinted Saint Petersburg: Trinity-Sergius Lavra and Voskresenie, 2007), 158; see also Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Arkhimandrit Antonii, 35–42; and Sergii Golubtsov, Troitse-Sergieva Lavra za poslednie sto let (Moscow, 1998), 12. 37. See, e.g., letter of January 7, 1834, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 72. Also see Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Arkhimandrit Antonii, 102–5; Antonii also fulfilled Serafim’s command not to abandon his “orphans” by his support of the Diveevo women’s community (105–9); for examples, see Pis’ma, vol. 1, 250–60. 38. Pis’ma, vol. 1, 175–76, 182, 185, 204, 225, 227, 231, 336–37; also see the original publication, vol. 1, 266–71, for two important letters evidently missing from the new edition. 39. E.g., while on a pilgrimage to the holy places in Russia in 1839, Antonii stayed at the Optina Hermitage for several days, visiting extensively with its abbot, Moisii, and Starets Makarii. 40. Though the relationship between the Lavra and the academy was frequently fraught with tension, Antonii generally had good relations with the academy and was even instrumental in supporting Filaret’s decision to appoint Aleksandr Gorskii, a married priest, as rector; see Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Arkhimandrit Antonii, 68–73; and Gorskii’s speech on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Antonii’s service as namestnik, ibid., 115. 41. Pis’ma, vol. 1, 158. 42. Ibid., 206; Filaret eagerly awaited Antonii’s response; see 209–10. 43. Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Arkhimandrit Antonii, 30–37, 51–68, 96. 44. Letter of August 27, 1855, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 321–22. 45. Pis’ma, vol. 2, 120, 219 (in 1849 and 1852 respectively), and letter of April 22, 1862, ibid., vol. 3, 214. 46. Letter of March 11, 1856, ibid., vol. 2, 350. 47. Filaret and Antonii worked for years for the donation that came in 1858; see Pis’ma, vol. 2, 245, 253 (in 1853); vol. 3, 22, 50–52. 48. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17913, l. 17. By 1910 its landholding had only grown to 2,314 hectares (2,118 desiatina). At that point, 6 desiatina of the land were arable; the rest consisted of 197 desiatina of meadows, 36 desiatina of gardens, 1,651 desiatina of forest, and 110 desiatina of waterways; ll. 24–25. (A desiatina equals 1.0925 hectares.) 49. Solovetskii Monastery was by far the largest landowner, with 66,000 desiatina. Zyrianov lists nine monasteries which own more than 10,000 desiatina, evidently from 1908; P. N.

notes to pages 45–49

401

Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri i monashestvo v XIX i nachale XX veka (Moscow: Verbum-M., 2002), 180. 50. By 1860, state subsidies amounted to less than 6,000 rubles. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 20166, ll. 2–3. 51. See, e.g., the account book for state subsidies from 1885, ibid., d. 21395. 52. In 1834, the income was 130,949 rubles; in 1835 it was 151,193 rubles (both without the state subsidy); ibid., d. 4972, ll. 58–59. In 1875, the income was 233,277 rubles; ibid., d. 12287, l. 76 ob. 53. In 1834–35, the church income averaged 83,053 rubles per year, while the monastery income averaged 58,008 rubles; ibid., d. 4972, ll. 58–59. Between 1860 and 1864, the church income averaged 104,575 rubles per year, and the monastery income averaged 52,066 rubles. The averages are derived from the income for 1860 (ibid., d. 9274, l.1), 1862 (d. 9771, ll. 1–2), and 1864 (d. 9968, ll. 1–2). 54. K. Filimonov, Sergiev Posad: Stranitsy istorii XVI–nachalo XX veka (Moscow: Podkova, 1997), 81–180. 55. Rental income was 781 rubles in 1810. In 1835 the income was 11,039 rubles for the hotel, plus another 2,983 rubles for other rentals. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 3004; d. 4972, ll. 58–59. 56. Income was 10,471 rubles for the Old Hotel, 13,290 rubles for the New Hotel, 1,300 rubles for the two-story building (traktir) on Krasnogorsk Square, 3,192 rubles for the shops on the square, and 470 rubles for shops in other locations, for a total of 29,323 rubles; S.-Peterburgskie vedomosti, no. 332 (December 2, 1871): 1–2. See also RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12325, l. 6, for the incomes from the two hotels, the traktir, and the shops for 1871–75. 57. In 1870, the podvor’e brought in an income of 14,445 rubles; in 1885, the income rose to 86,803 rubles. See S.-Peterburgskie vedomosti, no. 332 (December 2, 1871): 1–2; Kriticheskii obzor svedenii o Troitse-Sergievoi Lavre soobshchaemykh v knige “Opyt issledovaniia ob imushchestvakh i dokhodakh monastyrei” (Saint Petersburg, 1876), 23–24; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12325, l. 6, for the income from the Striapcheskoe podvor’e for 1871–75, and d. 13715 for 1885; and [D. I. Rostislavov], Opyt issledovaniia ob imushchestvakh i dokhodakh nashikh monastyrei (Saint Petersburg, 1876), 350. 58. S.-Peterburgskie vedomosti, no. 332 (December 2, 1871): 1–2. 59. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 78. In 1846, Countess Orlova contributed 97,150 silver rubles (340,025 in assignats) to Trinity-Sergius; the interest from the capital was to be used to feed poor pilgrims in the Lavra’s refectory, to support the Home for the Poor, and to pay for prayer and memorial services; the Governing Council’s report to Metropolitan Filaret (February 5, 1846), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6351, l. 2. She also donated 20,000 rubles for the support of Gethsemane (l. 9). 60. Expenses amounted to 22,720 rubles in 1781; a comparison of expenses in 1810 and 1812 highlights the difficulties in making generalizations about expenses based upon any particular year; in 1810, they were less than 9,000 rubles, while in 1812 they were 113,211 rubles (averaging 61,089 rubles). In 1835, expenses were 123,544 rubles, and in 1862–63 they averaged 178,125 rubles. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, dd. 1007, 3004, 3083, 4972, 9274, 9771. 61. Letter of December 31, 1861, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 196–97; see also 203, 208. 62. Letter of April 22, 1862, ibid., 213.

402 notes to pages 49–54 63. Letter of April 25, 1865, and the following letter, undated but clearly following on the previous, ibid., 286–87. 64. In 1860, the monastery made 22,890 rubles on prosphora and spent 8,964 rubles on its production, of which 7,838 rubles were spent purchasing 4,206 puds of wheat and the remainder was for the purchase of firewood and for workers’ salaries; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9274, l. 20. 65. The almshouses were built for fifty people, and there were about twenty novices; ibid., d. 1647. 66. See, e.g., the statistics gathered for the census in 1850; ibid., d. 6916, ll. 130–72. 67. S.-Peterburgskie vedomosti, no. 332 (December 2, 1871): 1–2. 68. They purchased 2477 puds of rye for 15,402 rubles and another 1893 puds of rye flower for 1391 rubles, which went to the feed the brothers and the pilgrims. Another 18,041 rubles were spent purchasing provisions for the brothers, plus 3,000 rubles for provisions for the following year. Of the 10,968 rubles spent on the charitable institutions, 3,180 rubles were spent on provisions for those in the hospital, 1,260 rubles for those in the House of the Poor, and smaller sums on medical supplies, textbooks and other items for the schools, and the like. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9274, ll. 44–56, 113–14, 201 ob–202. 69. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9274, l. 201 ob–202 for a synopsis; ll. 58–196 for a detailed breakdown. 70. See RGIA f. 796, op. 146, d. 85; op. 147, d. 764; and op. 149, d. 738. 71. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 5373. These salaries were increased in 1797 but were later reduced again. 72. See, e.g., RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 20166 (for 1860) and d. 21395 (for 1885). 73. This was formally termed koshel’kovye and kruzhechnye dokhody. 74. These calculations are based upon RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9063, ll. 1, 14, 26. 75. Kriticheskii obzor, 21. 76. Evdokim (Meshcherskii), O. Igumen Daniil, nastoiatel’ Gefsimanskogo skita i peshcher: Kratkii biograficheskii ocherk (Moscow, 1902), 40. For examples of conflicts over the monks’ greed, particularly those of the Trinity podvor’e in Saint Petersburg when Kronid was steward, see Toviia’s letters to Kronid, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, ll. 25 ob, 44–45, 95, 121. 77. By the late nineteenth century, the prior made an average of 2,000 to 2,500 rubles per year, about the same as professors at the Moscow Theological Academy. By comparison, the highest-paid individual in Sergiev Posad was the rector of the Academy, who made 4,200 rubles a year. The lead doctors of the hospitals made 1,000 rubles a year, while employees of the Lavra’s workshops made between 120 and 300 rubles a year. Filimonov calculates that 100 rubles was the minimum to support a family, and indeed many of the local artisans brought in about that much income; Filimonov, Sergiev Posad, 186–94. 78. Bethany’s income was 11,949 rubles (without the state subsidies), Makhra’s was 6,464 rubles. Kriticheskii obzor, 15. 79. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6239, l. 31. The general report is ll. 41–46. 80. D-v, “Vopros o reforme monastyrei,” Vestnik Evropy 4 (August 1873): 559–82. 81. See A. Lebedev, The Itinerants (Leningrad, 1974), plate 11. 82. I. S. Belliustin, Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia: The Memoir of a NineteenthCentury Parish Priest, trans. Gregory L. Freeze (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985). 83. Antonii’s article is in S.-Peterburgskie vedomosti, no. 332 (December 2, 1871): 1–2; it was in part a response to an article in the same paper from November 6, 1871.

notes to pages 54–58 403 84. Rostislavov, Opyt. Dimitrii I. Rostislavov (1809–77) was the son of a village parish priest who graduated from the Petersburg Theological Academy and taught mathematics and physics at the academy until 1862; see his memoirs, Provincial Russia in the Age of Enlightenment, trans. Alexander M. Martin (De Kalb: University of Northern Illinois Press, 2002). His other major work, O belom i chernom pravoslavnom dukhoventstve, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1866), was highly critical of the Church’s monastic hierarchy. 85. Rostislavov, Opyt, 12–23. 86. Ibid., 119; his estimate is not in fact dramatically different: Antonii reported a 39,528ruble income and Rostislavov’s estimate was 41,555 rubles. 87. Ibid., 196–231. 88. Ibid., 355–79. 89. Ibid., 380–96. 90. Ibid., 253, 264, 350–51. 91. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12295; Kriticheskii obzor. For another such critique, see Pimen (Blagovo), K zashchitu monashestva: Opyt otveta na knigu “Opyt issledovaniia o dokhodakh i imushchestvakh nashikh monastyrei” (Saint Petersburg, 1876). 92. Rostislavov, Opyt, 7–8. 93. In 1911, while preparing a dissertation titled “The Economics of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery Before and After Secularization,” a student at the Moscow Theological Academy requested permission to use the Lavra’s archive. Notwithstanding the support of the Academic Council of the academy, the Governing Council denied the request. Formally, the Lavra explained that the monastery had no archivist and that the archive itself was located in inaccessible and unheated rooms below the refectory, thus preventing their use in wintertime. Privately, however, the council also reasoned that, “keeping in mind that the archive also contains secret files . . . that could serve as material for literature about monastics in an unfavorable light,” it decided to deny the request for archival access. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17910, l. 3 ob. This text was the rough draft of the minutes; to conceal what was evidently the main motive, the council deleted the phrase “which could serve as material for literature about monastics in an unfavorable light.” 94. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 86–90, 296–300; this relies on Rostislavov, Opyt. 95. For the post-Soviet situation, see Melissa Caldwell, “The Russian Orthodox Church, the Provision of Social Welfare, and Changing Worlds,” in Eastern Christianities in Anthropological Perspective, ed. Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 96. Adele Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice: Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). 97. On the founding of the almshouses, see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 259; Platon’s report to Catherine, December 1767, l. 2–2 ob; and Catherine’s ukaz, February 9, 1768, l. 1–1 ob. For some of the requests of individuals to live in the houses, see ll. 82–105, 154–206, 212–23. 98. Letter of January 22, 1833, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 54. 99. See Scott M. Kenworthy, “To Save the World or to Renounce It: Modes of Moral Action in Russian Orthodoxy,” in Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies, ed. Mark Steinberg and Catherine Wanner (Washington, D.C., and Bloomington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Indiana University Press, 2008). 100. Antonii’s letter to Filaret (December 11, 1833), in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 420.

404 notes to pages 58–62 101. Pis’ma, vol. 1, 70. 102. Ibid., 148 (no date for the letter, but evidently written mid-1837). 103. As in 1840; ibid., 210; see also 212, 216, 219. In the last, Filaret was responding to some proposal by Antonii to institutionalize their efforts for the poor (uchredit’ upravlenie nishchikh), which Filaret opposed; evidently there were some who were causing problems. 104. See Antonii’s report on the Lavra’s charitable institutions, no date, probably 1876, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12735, l. 141 ob. Rostislavov reported 300,000; Rostislavov, Opyt, 105. 105. See the secret Synodal ukaz to Metropolitan Filaret, October 29, 1836, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 5108, ll. 21–23 ob; and the Synodal ukaz to Metropolitan Serafim of Saint Petersburg (May 12, 1837), ll. 2–3. 106. Pis’ma, vol. 1, 142–47. 107. Report of the Governing Council to Filaret, February 26, 1838, ibid., ll. 5–6 ob. See also regulations of the school, ibid., ll. 25–26 ob, and d. 5108a. Pis’ma, vol. 1, 168, 170, 182, 184. 108. Pervonachal’noe narodnoe uchilishche v Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavre (Moscow, 1850), 5–6. 109. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Filaret, January 17, 1862, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9372, l. 2–2 ob; ll. 7–19 give the students’ ages and social origins. 110. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Filaret, July 17, 1840, ibid., d. 5747, ll. 14–15. 111. Aleksandro-Mariinskii dom prizreniia pri Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi lavre: istoricheskii ocherk (Moscow, 1892), 3–4. 112. Report of Archimandrite Antonii to Metropolitan Innokentii, January 27, 1869, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10892, ll. 1–1 ob. 113. Ibid., ll. 1–3. 114. See the report from 1875, ibid., d. 12234, ll. 1–12; on the hospital, l. 19. See also the report for 1873, ibid., d. 11838, ll. 2–6. 115. Report of Archimandrite Antonii, March 16, 1876, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12735, l. 157. 116. Ibid., l. 157 ob. 117. See the various reports, ibid., esp. ll. 34–35, 93; see also d. 12283 and RGIA, f. 797, op. 96, d. 57. The chief procurator of the synod, D. A. Tolstoy, drew up the charter and regulations for the home. 118. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12735, l. 141 ob. 119. Letter of April 16, 1846, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 386. 120. See Antonii’s reports in RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12735, ll. 141–42, 156–58. 121. Golubinskii, Prepodobnyi Sergii, 297–98; Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Arkhimandrit Antonii, 45–51. 122. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 132–37; 208–10. 123. Letter of September 4, 1863, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 250. 124. Letter of April 16, 1846, ibid., vol. 1, 386. 125. Dnevnik, December 1, 1914, OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 95 ob. 126. For a description of Antonii in his last years, see S. D. Sheremetev, Memuary grafa S. D. Sheremeteva, ed. L. I. Shokhina (Moscow: Indrik, 2004), vol. 2, 457. 127. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 59.

notes to pages 62–67 405 128. Arkhimandrit Mikhail, Slovo pri pogrebenii namestnika Sviato-Troitskiia Sergievoi lavry, arkhim. Antoniia (Moscow, 1877), 5. 129. Report of Filaret to the Synod requesting an award for Archimandrite Antonii, March 15, 1863, RGIA, f. 786, op. 144, d. 452, l. 1–1 ob. See also Pis’ma, vol. 3, 238, 385–86. 130. D. Korsakov, “Arkhimandrit Leonid (Kavelin),” Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia, no. 12 (1891): 128–46. Korsakov stated that something “very serious” happened in Leonid’s personal life, though exactly what was unclear. 131. L. Kavelin, Istoricheskoe opisanie Kozel’skoi Vvedenskoi Optinoi pustyni, 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1876; reprinted by Optina Hermitage, n.d.); his biography of Makarii has been translated into English: Leonid Kavelin, Elder Macarius of Optina, trans. Valentina V. Lyovina (Platina, Calif.: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995); on his other works, see Korsakov, “Arkhimandrit Leonid,” 137ff. 132. On Leonid, see his service record for 1880 in RGIA, f. 796, op. 439, d. 539; Korsakov, “Arkhimandrit Leonid”; I. Korsunskii, Namestnik Sergievoi Lavry, Arkhimandrit Leonid: nekrolov (Moscow, 1892); G. A. Voskresenskii, Pamiati o. Arkhimandrita Leonida, namestnika Sv. Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry (Moscow, 1892); G. S. Sheremetev, Arkhimandrit Leonid (Kavelin) (Moscow, 1901); and Maksim Kravchenko, “Arkhimandrit Leonid (Kavelin): zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’,” kand. dissertation, Moscow Theological Academy, 1998. Leonid’s personal archive is OR RGB, f. 148, which contains the manuscripts of his works as well as personal letters. 133. Korsakov received this letter from one of the monks of Trinity and cited it; “Arkhimandrit Leonid,” 131 n. 1. 134. “Poezdka v Makhrishchskii monastyr’,” Sovremennye izvestiia, no. 170 (June 22, 1881): 1. 135. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 59 ob. 136. “Poezdka v Makhrishchskii monastyr’”; Sheremetev, Arkhimandrit Leonid, 10, however, claimed that “the hospitality of the Lavra regarding both pilgrims and the poor expanded” under Leonid. 137. Korsakov, “Arkhimandrit Leonid,” 130–31; Sheremetev, Arkhimandrit Leonid, 8. 138. Sheremetev, Arkhimandrit Leonid, 7–8. 139. Savva (Tikhomirov), in Khronika moei zhizni (Sergiev Posad, 1909), vol. 8, 456, recounts an incident in which Leonid even refused to serve the liturgy together with Khristofor (Smirnov), the rector of the academy, in 1888. 140. Sheremetev, Arkhimandrit Leonid, 9–11; Korsakov, “Arkhimandrit Leonid,” 130. 141. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 60. 142. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14434, l. 2. On Pavel, see ibid., d. 14905, ll. 4–7 (service record of Archim. Pavel, 1895); d. 16461, on Pavel’s death, also contains some personal papers, including his will and personal letters. See also Archimandrite Pimen, O. Arkhimandrit Pavel, namestnik Sviato-Troitskiia Sergievy lavry: biograficheskii ocherk (Moscow, 1892), which was written shortly after Pavel was appointed namestnik, and therefore contains material on his life up that point; and Dmitrii Vvedenskii, Dobryi “Avva”: Pamiati o. namestnika Sergievoi lavry arkhimandrita Pavla (Moscow, 1904). 143. He received the Order of Saint Anna, third degree, in 1882, and the Order of Saint Anna, second degree, in 1887; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14905, ll. 4–7. 144. Vvedenskii, Dobryi “Avva,” 8–14.

406 notes to pages 67–74 145. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 61 ob. 146. For a more detailed discussion, see Scott M. Kenworthy, “Memory Eternal: The Five Hundred Year Jubilee of St. Sergius of Radonezh, 1892,” in The Trinity-Sergius Lavra in Russian History and Culture, ed. Vladimir Tsurikov (Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2005), 24–55. 147. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, ll. 61–62 ob; also 81 ob–83 ob. 148. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Innokentii, December 4, 1878, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12621, l. 1; report, December 20, 1878, l. 12; see the rules for the shelter (priiut) for pilgrims, ll. 2–5. 149. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14259, ll. 6–7. The donations included 3,200 rubles in personal donations from various monks (Hieromonk Nikon [Rozdestvenskii] donated 1,000 rubles) and 10,000 rubles from Gethsemane Skete; report of Treasurer Toviia to the Governing Council [March 23, 1892], l. 10. On the Skete’s donation, see l. 18; and on donations from Moscow merchants, l. 4. On the total cost of the building, see ll. 117–28. Latkov was the Lavra’s chief architect at the turn of the century and designed many buildings in Sergiev Posad; see Filimonov, Sergiev Posad. 150. Svetlyi prazdnik Prepodobnogo Sergiia 25 sentiabria 1892 goda: 500-letie ego blazhennoi konchiny (Moscow, 1892), 27–28; Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 82. 151. See chapter 4 below; Kenworthy, “Memory Eternal.” 152. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14639, ll. 1–2, 17–20. On December 16, 1896, the steward reported to the Governing Council that 233,808 rubles had already been spent, and was estimating the total expense would come to 333,000 rubles, though I did not find a final sum; ibid., ll. 40–42. 153. Filimonov, Sergiev Posad, 160–80. The Lavra retained the Shed Row and collected an annual rental of 50 rubles per shop. 154. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16461, l. 10a. 155. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladmir, March 8, 1904, ibid., ll. 11–12. 156. On Russian national identity, see, e.g., Hubertus F. Jahn, “‘Us’: Russians on Russianness,” in National Identity in Russian Culture: An Introduction, ed. Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 53–73.

chapter 3 1. From Toviia’s recollections of March 7, 1915, Troitskoe slovo, no. 341 (1916): 651. 2. Ibid., 651–52. 3. Ibid. 4. Toviia’s recollections of May 28, 1915, Troitskoe slovo, no. 348 (1916): 758. 5. I use the word “stillness” to translate bezmolvie, which is the Russian equivalent of the Greek hesychia. See The Philokalia: The Complete Text, trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), vol. 1, 365; and David Goldfrank, “Recentering Nil Sorskii: The Evidence from the Sources,” Russian Review 66 (2007): 359–76. 6. See V. A. Kuchumov, “Russkoe starchestvo,” in Monashestvo i monastyri v Rossii, XI– XX veka: Istoricheski ocherki, ed. N. V. Sinitsyna (Moscow: Nauka, 2005), 223–44. Also see

notes to pages 74–78 407 Robert L. Nichols, “The Orthodox Elders (Startsy) of Imperial Russia,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 1 (1985): 1–30; I. K. Smolitsch, Leben und Lehre der Starzen (Cologne, 1952; Russian translation, Russkoe monashestvo, 988–1917; Zhizn’ i uchenie startsev, Moscow, 1997); John B. Dunlop, Staretz Amvrosy: Model for Dostoevsky’s Staretz Zossima (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland Publishing, 1972); Sergius Bolshakoff, Russian Mystics (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1980); Monakhinia Ignatiia, Starchestvo na Rusi (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo moskovskogo podvor’ia Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry, 1999); Brenda Meehan-Waters, “The Authority of Holiness: Women Ascetics and Spiritual Elders in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” in Church, State and Nation in Russia and Ukraine, ed. Geoffrey A. Hosking (London, 1990); Brenda Meehan, Holy Women of Russia (San Francisco, 1993); P. N. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri i monashestvo v XIX i nachale XX veka (Moscow: Verbum-M., 2002), 117–32, 203–8; and Laura Engelstein, “Orthodox Self-Reflection in a Modernizing Age: The Case of Ivan and Natalia Kireevskii,” in Slavophile Empire: Imperial Russia’s Illiberal Path, by Laura Engelstein (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009). 7. Pis’ma, vol. 1, 158, 300. 8. Letter of September 18, 1841, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 247. 9. Sermon of Metropolitan Filaret on the consecration of the Mikheevskaia Church (Trinity-Sergius Lavra), September 27, 1842, in Sochinenie Filareta Mitropolita Moskovskogo i Kolomenskogo: Slova i rechi (Moscow, 1882), vol. 4, 194–95. 10. Ibid., 193–99. 11. The name is first mentioned in a letter of September 3, 1843, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 303. 12. K. Filimonov, Novaia Gefsimaniia (Moscow, 2000), 13–15; Robert Nichols, “Filaret of Moscow as an Ascetic,” in The Legacy of St. Vladimir: Byzantium, Russia, America, ed. J. Breck, J. Meyendorff, and E. Silk (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 81–91. 13. Letter of August 12, 1843, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 302; Report of Archimandrite Antonii to Metropolitan Filaret (September 7, 1843), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 5935, ll. 2–3. There were actually two ancient wooden churches, but the second (Saint Nicholas Church) was in far worse condition. Both churches were dismantled, and wood from the church of Saint Nicholas was used in reconstructing the Church of the Dormition at Korbukha (see Pis’ma, vol. 1, 307); [I. M. Snegirev], Drevniaia dereviannaia tserkov’ v skitu Gefsimanskom bliz Trotse-Sergievoi Lavry (Moscow, 1853). 14. Letter of August 23, 1843, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 303. 15. Sergei (Vasilevskii), Vysokopreosviashchennyi Filaret v skhimonashestve Feodosii (Amfiteatrov) Metropolit Kievskii i Galitskii i ego vremia (Kazan’, 1888; reprinted Moscow: Sretenskii Monastyr’, 2000), vol. 1, 247–68. 16. Letter of September 3, 1843, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 303. The work evidently began over the winter, which Filaret was not very happy about; also see ibid., 305–7, 324. 17. Letter of October 8, 1844, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 340; also see 329. 18. Letter of October 13, 1844, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 345. 19. Letter of November 16, 1844, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 348. Lepeshkin had already been donating to the Skete; see ibid., 331. 20. Letter of April 20, 1847, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 17–19. 21. Letter of January 6, 1857, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 7; see also the letter of May 15, 1853, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 246. 22. Letter of December 4, 1850, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 156.

408 notes to pages 78–82 23. Letter of December 23, 1850, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 158. 24. Letter of April 27, 1851, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 174. 25. See Pis’ma, vol. 1, 324, 331. 26. Filimonov, Novaia Gefsimaniia, 15–18; see in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 307–9. 27. See Pis’ma, vol. 1, 330, 332, 335–36. 28. Sermon on the consecration of the Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos, September 28, 1844, in Sochinenie Filareta, vol. 4, 313–17. 29. Pis’ma, vol. 1, 340, 358; see also 335–36, 341–44, 388, 473–74. 30. August 15 is the Feast of the Dormition, and August 17 is, according to tradition, the date when the Virgin Mary ascended into heaven—from the Garden of Gethsemane, strengthening the symbolic connection with the Skete’s name. See Pis’ma, vol. 1, 335 and n. 292, 399 and n. 331; and Filimonov, Novaia Gefsimaniia, 22. 31. There are still Lipovan communities in remote villages of Romania, particularly on the Danube Delta. 32. The edinoverie was an attempt to reconcile the schism with the Old Believers, which recognized the official Church but were permitted the pre-Nikonian rituals of the Old Believers. 33. Pervonachal’nye startsy Gefsimanskogo skita: Igumen Anatolii (v skhime Aleksii), Ieroskhimonakhi Ilarion, Izrail’, i ieromonakh Aleksandr (Moscow, 1890), 3–25; Makarii’s name as an Old Believer monk was Gedeon. 34. Filaret’s letters reveal the process of trying to bring these Moldavians to Russia, against a certain amount of bureaucratic red-tape; see Pis’ma, vol. 1, 290 (and n. 244), 299, 302; Makarii was settled in Makhra or Bethany just before transferring to Gethsemane (326 and n. 286). A letter from Antonii mentions the first four inhabitants of the Skete: Makarii, Aleksandr, Matvei, and Georgii (340). On this Aleksandr (not to be confused with Aleksandr the Recluse), see PE 1: 522. 35. Pis’ma, vol. 1, 302, 344, 353. Makarii and Aleksandr were thus tonsured three times— once in the Old Believer skete, once in Moldavia, and again at Gethsemane; Pervonachal’nye startsy, 26–28. 36. Pis’ma, vol. 1, 358–59. Filaret wrote that Makarii and Aleksandr made the “sacrifice of humility” by being tonsured again, and now they were being called to the “sacrifice of obedience” by being ordained to serve the community (358). 37. Ibid., 345–46, 357, 361. 38. Ibid., 361–63, 371; Pis’ma, vol. 2, 41–42, 47–49, 558. 39. Pis’ma, vol. 2, 83, 85; Pervonachal’nye startsy, 32–33. 40. Pervonachal’nye startsy, 33; Evdokim, O. Igumen Daniil, nastoiatel’ Gefsimanskogo skita i peshcher (Moscow, 1902), 8–9. It seems he embodied Filaret’s own ideal; see Pis’ma, vol. 2, 47. Another of the Moldavians who had initially settled in the edinovercheskii monastery, Ioann, also joined Gethsemane in 1848, later became a schemamonk with the name Izrail’, and was also widely respected as a starets; he died in 1870. Pervonachal’nye startsy, 30–34. 41. Pis’ma, vol. 2, 83, 85, 108, 118; Pervonachal’nye startsy, 30–34. 42. Filimonov, Novaia Gefsimaniia, 26–30. There are also numerous letters in which Filaret and Antonii discuss the details of these new constructions; see especially Pis’ma, vol. 2, 15-22. Moscow merchants donated some 50,000 rubles for the construction of the refectory church.

notes to pages 82–85 409 43. Pervonachal’nye startsy, 35–36; Evdokim, O. Igumen Daniil, 11, 14. 44. Letter of November 16, 1844, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 348. 45. Letter of February 5, 1845, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 354. 46. Ibid., 387, 393. 47. Letter of December 19, 1846, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 407. 48. Letter of May 16, 1850, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 142 (see nn. 93–94). See RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 5935, l. 57, for the original translation of the gramota, in which Patriarch Kirill of Jerusalem gave relics of Saint Panteleimon as a blessing for the establishment of “the Holy Skete New Gethsemane.” See also ll. 43–44. 49. Pis’ma, vol. 1, 406. 50. Letter of April 26, 1847, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 20. 51. Letter of June 12, 1849, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 108; see also 59. 52. Letter of April 4, 1850, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 136. 53. This figure included 44 trudniki, who worked at the Skete as a trial before being accepted formally into the brotherhood. Report on the Skete’s brothers (December 30, 1863), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 7537, ll. 4–6 ob. 54. S. A. Kel’tsev, Skhimonakh Filipp, osnovatel’ Peshchernoi obiteli i Kinovii Bogoliubivoi Bogomateri, pri Gefsimanskom skite, bliz Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry (Moscow, 1882). 55. Letter of July 31, 1847, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 26. 56. Pis’ma, vol. 2, 37, 46. 57. Letter of June 12, 1849, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 108. In other letters, Filaret mentions Filipp’s desire to travel and his worries that Filipp would be arrested; ibid., 76, 82. 58. Letter of March 26, 1850, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 135. 59. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6977, ll. 1, 4. 60. See Filaret’s letter of October 2, 1850, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 149; see also the previous and the following letters, 149–50. All tonsures had to be approved by the Holy Synod, but it is possible that Antonii would have tonsured Filipp without that permission if he feared Filipp would die before they received it. Metropolitan Filaret was already referring to Filipp as “brother Filaret” in letters at the end of 1850, cited above, but in January 1851 Filaret instructed Antonii that Filipp-Filaret should wear only a riasa if he traveled to Moscow, rather than the mantiia, that officially he could only present himself as a riasofor novice and not as a monk; Pis’ma, vol. 2, 160. The following month, Filaret agreed to present Filipp-Filaret for tonsure (164). In March, Filaret wrote to Antonii about a conversation he had with Filipp-Filaret in which the latter did not express himself very clearly about his tonsure (a reference to his unofficial tonsure), “saying that it was proposed to him, and that it happened, as if by accident”; letter of March 6, 1851, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 167. Most likely, he was tonsured by Filaret in Moscow in the spring of 1851. Evidently, the editors of Filaret’s letters were also confused over the two tonsures, compare 149, n. 101, and 164, n. 112. 61. Letter of January 12, 1851, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 160. 62. Letter of July 25, 1851, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 176. 63. Letter of May 15, 1852, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 201. Metropolitan Filaret also expressed some dissatisfaction that many of those Filipp-Filaret attracted to the Caves came without proper documentation and suggested that he was acting more like an abbot than one in obedience. 64. Letter of November 5, 1852, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 220; earlier in the year, Filaret mentioned that there were rumors that Filipp-Filaret left the Skete with a lot of money (204–5).

410 notes to pages 85–88 65. Letter of December 18, 1856, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 371; see also vol. 3, 7. 66. Letter of March 3, 1857, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 20–21. 67. Pis’ma, vol. 3, 167–68. 68. Report of the Governing Council to the Treasurer Hieromonk Meletii, March 27, 1861, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9323, ll. 3a–3b. Filaret initially believed that Filipp-Filaret would oppose the idea of the cemetery, but Antonii persuaded him; Pis’ma, vol. 3, 174-75. 69. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9323, l. 8 ob. 70. This is from the list of brothers living in the Coenobium, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10536, ll. 18–24. 71. Pis’ma, vol. 3, 198, 247, 285 and n. 183. 72. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Filaret, October 17, 1867, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10536, ll. 25–26. 73. Resolution of Metropolitan Filaret, October 25, 1867, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10536, l. 25. 74. See Kel’tsev, Skhimonakh Filipp, 48; Pis’ma, vol. 3, 330–31; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10602. 75. Pis’ma, vol. 3, 327–31; the last is dated one week before Filaret passed away. 76. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12114, ll. 9–10; there were eight monks, fifteen registered novices, and twenty nonregistered novices. In 1910, there were thirteen monks and four registered novices (ibid., d. 25168); however, this report does not indicate the number of nonregistered novices, who always constituted the majority at the Coenobium. 77. See the comment of Serafim (Chichagov), “Severnaia Optina” K Svetu, no. 14 (1994): 5. 78. K. A. Vakha and L. I. Shokhina, eds., Memuary grafa S. D. Sheremeteva (Moscow: Indrik, 2005), vol. 2, 102. 79. On Filaret’s visits to Filipp, see Evdokim, O. Igumen Daniil, 21. 80. See, e.g., Filaret’s permission for one Gavriil to establish a separate isolated cell; Pis’ma, vol. 1, 367. 81. Letter of August 4, 1847, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 27. 82. See Pis’ma, vol. 2, 94–95, 105, 129–30. 83. On the Paraclete Hermitage, see Obshchezhitel’naia pustyn’ Sviatogo Paraklita, bliz Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry, 3rd ed. (Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1900); and Paraklitova pustyn’, chto pri Troitse-Sergievoi lavre (Paraclete pustyn’, 1998). The history of the community is also in the report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir (September 24, 1902), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16185, ll. 7–10. 84. See Antonii’s letter to Filaret, February 27, 1860, and his letter to Korolev, February 28, 1860, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 364–66. 85. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16185, l. 8; Pis’ma, vol. 3, 366. 86. Letter of March 2, 1860, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 136. 87. See Filaret’s letter to Antonii, March 17, 1860, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 139, in which Filaret comments on the plans; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9102, l. 1 (report of March 15, 1860); Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Filaret (June 25, 1861), ibid., l. 6. The church was consecrated by Metropolitan Filaret on July 2, 1861. The lower Church of John the Forerunner was consecrated on April 24, 1862, by Archimandrite Antonii; see the report of the Council

notes to pages 88–93

411

to Filaret, March 14, 1862, l. 14; and the report of April 27, 1862, l. 15. The cost of construction was 1,928 rubles (l. 8). 88. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16185, l. 8–8 ob. 89. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Filaret, June 16, 1862, ibid., d. 9102, ll. 17–18. 90. Filaret’s letter of May 2, 1863, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 241. It appears that Feodot had a conflict with Schemamonk Ilarion (Makarii, Gethsemane’s first superior); see also Pis’ma, vol. 3, 243–45. Another monk also left shortly after tonsure, which led Filaret to institute a policy that monks were not to leave the community for three years after tonsure, even for extended trips such as going on pilgrimage. See Pis’ma, vol. 3, 244–45, and RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9627. 91. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16185, l. 8 ob. 92. Report of the Treasurer Archimandrite Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) to the Governing Council of the Lavra, September 2, 1902, ibid., d. 16185, l. 14. 93. Ibid., l. 14–14 ob. 94. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, September 24, 1902, ibid., ll. 7–10. The Synod confirmed its establishment as a cenobitic monastery by a decree of January 17, 1903; ibid., ll. 16–17 ob. 95. Aleksandr’s biography was written by his cell attendant (keleinik), Hegumen German (Gomzin), later abbot of the Zosimova Hermitage: O zhizni i podvigakh startsa-zatvornika Gefsimanskogo skita, chto bliz Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry, ieroskhimonakh o. Aleksandra, sobrano ego keleinikom N. N. (Moscow, 1900; reprinted Moscow, 1994); reprinted, with identification of German as author: German (Gomzin), Starets Gefsimanskogo skita: Zhizneopisanie startsazatvornika Gefsimanskogo skita, ieroskhimonakha Aleksandra (Moscow, 2000); PE 1: 522–23. 96. Hieromonk Agapit’s request to the Governing Council, July 1860, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 8916, l. 1; see also ll. 3, 4 ob. 97. O zhizni i podvigakh, 13–22. 98. Filimonov, Novaia Gefsimaniia, 36; for a description of Filaret’s last visits to Gethsemane, see Evdokim, O. Igumen Daniil, 17–26. 99. Gregory L. Freeze, “Institutionalizing Piety: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850,” in Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, ed. Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 210–49; Robert H. Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010). On the phenomenon of miracle-working icons, see Vera Shevzov, “Icons, Miracles, and the Ecclesial Identity of Laity in Late Imperial Russia,” Church History 69 (2000): 610–31; and Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 171–213. 100. Ioann Milovidov, Skazaniia o chudotvornoi ikone Bozhiei Materi, imenuemoi Chernigovskoi (Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1896), reprinted as Skazaniia o chudotvornoi ikone Bozhiei Materi imenuemoi Chernigovskaia-Gefsimanskaia, nakhodiashcheisia v khrame Gefsimanskogo Chernigovskogo skita Sviato-Troitse-Sergievoi lavry (Gefsimanskii skit, 1998). The icon was painted in the eighteenth century, and in the 1820s it belonged to a parish priest in nearby Khot’kovo, Ioann Alekseev. After the death of her father, one Aleksandra Filippova’s mother left her and her two sisters at the home of this priest while she went to Moscow to take care of family business. The mother did not return for three months, and the children were

412

notes to pages 93–95

distraught with anxiety. Father Alekseev recommended that Filippova sincerely pray before the Chernigov icon; eventually, he himself went to Moscow in search of the mother. It turned out that she had fallen ill, but soon returned to her daughters, and in this Aleksandra saw the special help of the Mother of God. As the family was preparing to move to Moscow, Aleksandra asked Alekseev if she could have a copy of the icon made, but instead he gave her the icon itself. Because she honored the icon so deeply, she later wished to place it somewhere where it could be fittingly revered and preserved, so she donated the icon to the Skete in 1852. She frequently made pilgrimages to Trinity-Sergius and, discussing the matter with Archimandrite Antonii, decided to give the icon to the Caves Church of the Skete. Filippova thereafter was a frequent visitor to the Caves Church and was buried there after her death in 1862. 101. Report of Hieromonk Anatolii to the Governing Council, September 28, 1869, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10895, ll. 1–4. In some documents, the name is spelled “Andrianova.” 102. Memorandum of the Governing Council to the Dedilovskoe District government, October 6, 1869, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10895, ll. 5–6; memorandum from the Dedilovskoe District government to the Governing Council, October 20, 1869, ll. 7–8; report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Innokentii, October 28, 1869, ll. 9–10; Innokentii’s resolution (October 30, 1869), l. 9 top. The council had reported the matter to Metropolitan Innokentii, requesting permission to contact the Voronezh Ecclesiastical Consistory. Innokentii replied that the council should inform the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory, which should contact the Voronezh Consistory. 103. Milovidov, Skazaniia, 16. Innokentii had received a letter from his daughter, who was a nun at the Borisovskaia Hermitage, regarding Adrianova; the latter had evidently visited the hermitage in 1866, and Polikseniia, Innokentii’s daughter, had received her in her cell; ibid., 20–23. 104. See RGIAgM, f. 203, op. 337, d. 6. 105. This brochure was evidently the first edition of Milovidov’s book. 106. Memorandum from the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory to the Governing Council, February 25, 1871, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10895, ll. 15–16; see also RGIAgM, f. 203, op. 337, d. 6, ll. 24–25, 52–60 ob. 107. The last edition of Milovidov’s book was published in 1903. On publicizing holy sites, see Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, 42–47. 108. The most recent and fullest biography of Varnava is by Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Prepodobnyi Varnava, starets Gefsimanskogo skita (STSL, 1996); Archimandrite Georgii was part of the commission that prepared for Varnava’s recent canonization. See also Zhizn’ vo slavu Bozhiiu: trudy i podvigi startsa Gefsimanskogo skita Varnavy (1831–1906) (STSL, 1991); A. D. Arkhangel’skaia, Moi vospominaniia o batiuske Varnave (Moscow, 1912); D. I. Vvedenskii, Starets-uteshitel’ otets Varnava (Gefsimanskii skit, 1907); Mariia M. Gamel’, Pamiati startsa Varnavy (rasskaz frantsuzhenki) (STSL, 1910); Zhizn’ vo slavu Bozhiiu: Kratkoe skazanie o zhizni i deiianiiakh startsa peshcher Gefsimanksogo skita ieromonakha Varnavy—k 50-letiiu osnovannogo startsem Iverskogo Vyksunskogo monastyria, 1864–1914g (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1914); 50-let inochestva Gefsimanskogo startsa Varnavy (Moscow, 1905); and PE 6: 646–47. 109. Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Prepodobnyi Varnava, 4–9. 110. Ibid., 10–13. 111. Ibid., 14–26.

notes to pages 95–102

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112. Ibid., 22, 27. 113. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10248, ll. 26 ob–31. 114. Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Prepodobnyi Varnava, 27–32. 115. See, e.g., “Poezdka v Makhrishchskii monastyr’,” Sovremennye Izvestiia, no. 170 (June 22, 1881): 1; and [D. I. Rostislavov], Opyt issledovaniia ob imushchestvakh i dokhodakh nashikh monastyrei (Saint Petersburg, 1876), 120–21, who provided a typically cynical account of the Skete. 116. Vvedenskii, Starets-uteshitel’, quoted by Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Prepodobnyi Varnava, 35. 117. Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Prepodobnyi Varnava, 42. Monks from the Skete came to him for confession even before his appointment to the post; for a list of brothers from the Coenobium, several of whom went to Varnava for confession in 1877, see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12510, ll. 2–3. 118. Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Prepodobnyi Varnava, 45. 119. Ibid., 53–97. 120. Ibid., 96–97; Zhizn’ vo slavu Bozhiiu, 50. Varnava is supposed to have given his blessing for Nicholas to receive a martyr’s death. 121. Ivan Shmelev, “U startsa Varnavy,” in Istoriia Liubovnaia: Romany, rasskazy (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 1999), 280–84. 122. This explanation was given by Hieromonk Varnava to the Governing Council, August 3, 1879, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12754, l. 3. 123. Report of Archimandrite Leonid to Metropolitan Makarii, August 21, 1879, ibid., ll. 2 ob–3. 124. On the conflict, see RGIA, f. 796, op. 161, d. 1711 (1880g.); and RGADA, f. 1204, op.1, d. 12754. 125. Zhizn’ vo slavu Bozhiiu, 40. 126. On the Iverskaia Vyksunksaia obshchina, see Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Prepodobnyi Varnava, 96–125; Iverskii Vyksunskii zhenskii monastyr’, 4th ed. (STSL, 1900); and I. Milovidov, Iverskii Vyksunskii zhenskii monastyr’, nakhodiashchiisia v Ardatskom uezde Nizhegorodskoi gubernii, i osnovatel’ ego ieromonakh Varava, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1889). 127. See Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, 73–102. 128. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17139, ll. 17–18. 129. Metropolitan Vladimir to Chief Procurator Sabler, n.d., ibid., l. 19 ob. 130. Decree of the Synod to Metropolitan Vladimir, April 25, 1908, ibid., l. 9 ob. The abbess of the Iverskii convent had appealed to Empress Alexandra to intervene on their behalf; see the petition, ll. 3–4 ob. 131. Gregory L. Freeze, “Subversive Piety: Religion and the Political Crisis in Late Imperial Russia,” Journal of Modern History 68 (1996): 308–50; Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, 73–102. 132. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17139, ll. 2–9 ob. 133. Filimonov, Novaia Gefsimaniia, 37–43. 134. See Makarii’s resolution, August 25, 1879, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12767, l. 2. 135. Report of the Governing Council to Makarii, September 1, 1879, ibid., ll. 5–6. 136. Resolution of Makarii to the Governing Council, September 5, 1879, ibid., l. 5.

414

notes to pages 102–107

137. Filimonov, Novaia Gefsimaniia, 45. E.g., the Governing Council forbade Hegumen Anatolii from any more construction projects without its permission; possibly this loss of autonomy resulted in Anatolii’s desire to retire; see Anatolii’s request, November 29, 1879, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12788, l. 1. The reason that Anatolii gave for wishing to retire was his advanced age and declining health. 138. Evdokim, O. Igumen Daniil, 5. Evdokim (Meshcherskii, 1869–1935) was rector of the Moscow Academy from 1903 to 1909 before being consecrated bishop. He was archbishop in North America from 1914 to 1917 and in 1922 became part of the Renovationist Movement; PE 17: 115–17. 139. Evdokim, O. Igumen Daniil, 6–26. Daniil’s successor as superior, Hegumen Dosithei, also served as Anatolii’s cell attendant; see Toviia’s Dnevnik, Troitskoe Slovo, no. 353 (1917): 38–40. 140. See RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10248, ll. 26 ob–31. 141. Ibid., d. 12925, ll. 3–5. 142. For the plan of the “farm,” see ibid., d. 12767, l. 19–19 ob. 143. Evdokim, O. Igumen Daniil, 36–37. 144. See K. A. Filimonov, Chernigovskii skit: Istoriia arkhitektornogo ansamblia (Sergiev Posad, n.d.); and Evdokim, O. Igumen Daniil, 31–36. Evdokim states that the cathedral cost 400,000 rubles. 145. Indeed, in Metropolitan Makarii’s report to the Synod (January 14, 1880), he stated that, in addition to Gethsemane Skete, “three more small monasteries were founded near the Lavra” by Metropolitan Filaret: “the Caves [monastery] of the Archangel Michael,” the Coenobium, and the Paraclete Hermitage; RGIA, f. 796, op. 161, d. 792, l. 1. 146. Evdokim, O. Igumen Daniil, 42. 147. Pavel Florenskii, Salt of the Earth: A Narrative of the Life of the Elder of Gethsemane Skete Hieromonk Abba Isiodore, trans. Richard Betts (Platina, Calif.: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1987). 148. Evdokim, O. Igumen Daniil, 40–53. 149. On the Smolensk-Zosimova Hermitage, see N. Stromilov, Zosimina pustyn’ka (Vladimir, 1879); Leonid (Kavelin), Zosimina pustyn’ka i ee osnovatel’ blazhennyi starets Zosima (Moscow, 1888); I. Korsunskii, Zosimina pustyn’ (STSL, 1895); Zosimova pustyn’ v chest’ Smolenskoi ee ikony Bozhiei Materi (Moscow, 1913; reprinted with additions by the Zosimova pustyn, n.d.)—this latter text is primarily the same as Serafim (Chichagov), “Letopisnyi ocherk Zosimovoi Smolenskoi pustyni,” Da Budet Volia Tvoia: Zhitie i trudy sviashchennomuchenika Serafima (Chichagova) (Moscow, 2003), 513–80; and “Starets Aleksii i Zosimova pustyn’,” K Svetu 14 (1994); A., “Sviato-Smolensko-Zosimova pustyn’,” Danilovskii Blagovestnik 7 (1995): 97–115. 150. Some traditions state that it was Elizaveta Petrovna, the daughter of Peter the Great, though other evidence points to Natal’ia Alekseevna, his sister. See A., “Sviato-SmolenskoZosimova pustyn’,” 99, 115 n. 5. 151. The landowner may have even had it torn down to prevent local inhabitants from gathering on his land and holding a bazaar there; see Korsunskii, Zosimina pustyn’, 12. 152. On chapels, see Vera Shevzov, “Chapels and the Ecclesial World of Prerevolutionary Russian Peasants,” Slavic Review 55 (1996): 585–613; and Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy, 95–130.

notes to pages 107–113

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153. Request of Henrietta I. Nettle, August 1866, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10539, l. 1. Serafim (Chichagov), “Letopisnyi ocherk,” describes various miraculous events that induced Nettle to donate the land (547–57). One serves a panikhida to remember the deceased as well as to honor someone regarded as holy but not yet canonized by the Church. 154. Request of E. V. Barbasheva, 1866, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10539, l. 7. 155. Decree of the Holy Synod to Metropolitan Innokentii, August 31, 1872, ibid., l. 28. See also RGIA, f. 796, op. 153, d. 101; and Korsunskii, Zosimina pustyn’, 25. 156. Korsunskii, Zosimina pustyn’, 26–27; in Metropolitan Innokentii’s report to the Synod requesting that the Lavra be allowed to receive the donation of land from Nettle and Barbasheva, he specifically mentioned the usefulness of the apiary on this land as a source of wax for candles of the Coenobium; report of February 10, 1872, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10539, ll. 23–24. 157. The chapel was temporarily administered by abbot Hieromonk Anatolii of Gethsemane Skete when Filipp left the Coenobium, and he was responsible for building the stone chapel. See Anatolii’s report to the Governing Council, February 5, 1868, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10539, l. 11; and his report of March 23, 1872, d. 11755, l. 1; ll. 2–5, which includes a description of the chapel. 158. Korsunskii, Zosimina pustyn’, 34–35. 159. Memorandum from Archbishop Antonii of Vladimir to Metropolitan Innokentii, December 31, 1874, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12137, l. 1. 160. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Innokentii, March 7, 1875, ibid., ll. 6–8; Innokentii’s response is at the top of l. 6. 161. Report of Hieromonk Galaktion to the Governing Council, December 18, 1887, ibid., d. 13903, l. 1; letter from Shaposhnikov to the Governing Council, July 31, 1888, l. 3; report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Ioannikii, August 2, 1888, l. 7; and report of September 19, 1889, l. 9. 162. Ibid., d. 14687. 163. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Sergii, December 18, 1895, ibid., d. 14976, l. 3–3 ob. 164. Decree of the Synod to Metropolitan Sergii, April 22, 1896, ibid., l. 37–37 ob.

chapter 4 1. Toviia, “Vospominanie moego proshedshego,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, ll. 2–4. In this instance, his mother punished him by making him sit and read the Psalter; his godmother walked in and, seeing what he was doing, wondered aloud why “we poor people” needed to be literate at all. 2. Ibid., ll. 2–4; see also Toviia’s recollections of March 7, 1915, Troitskoe slovo, no. 341 (1916): 651. 3. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” l. 12 ob. 4. The number of male monastics rose between 1825 and 1860 from 5,742 to 11,202; between 1860 and 1880 the rate of increase slowed, but rose again after 1880 and reached 21,330 by 1914: P. N. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri i monashestvo v XIX i nachale XX veka (Moscow: Verbum-M., 2002), 18–21, 161.

416

notes to pages 113–116

5. See N. F. Robinson, Monasticism in the Orthodox Churches (London: Cope and Fenwick, 1916), 1–3, 25–27. 6. There are some references to rasophore novices in the documents of Trinity-Sergius, e.g., the request from Hegumen Antonii of Makhrishchskii Monastery to the Governing Council of the Lavra (November 1855), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 7830, l. 1. 7. Synodal decree of September 9, 1873; see A. Zav’ialov, Tsirkuliarnye ukazy Sviateishego Pravitel’stvuiushchego Sinoda, 1867–1900 gg. (Saint Petersburg, 1901), 148; and RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 11809. Zyrianov explains that the distinction between rasophore and nonrasophore novices faded after this decree, and was replaced by the distinction between those novices that received permission by a decree (ukaz) of the ecclesiastical consistory, hence ukaznye novices, and the neukaznye novices; Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 30. 8. Robinson, Monasticism, 77–78. 9. Ibid., 27–29. On the basis of the archival registers of Trinity-Sergius (RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1), I calculate some fourteen individuals who became schemamonks between 1892 and 1916 in all the monastic communities in the Lavra’s collective. 10. In 1875, the governor-general of Eastern Siberia questioned the Ministry of Internal Affairs as to whether those who had been exiled could become monks; when the government consulted the Holy Synod, the Synod replied that, from a canonical point of view, anyone, even an exile, could become a monk: RGIA, f. 796, op. 156, d. 1801. 11. The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great, trans. Alexander V. Muller (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), 72, 80. 12. Ages of twenty-five for men and forty for women are the norm in other Orthodox Churches (Robinson, Monasticism, 26); Peter the Great advocated higher ages in the hopes that people would live “productive lives” before joining monasteries, and that women would be beyond child-bearing age. 13. Law of May 29, 1832, Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii. Sobranie vtoroe, vol. 7, 1832 (Saint Petersburg, 1833), 339–41. The Law of 1832 gave preference to widowed clergy, together with widows and orphans of parish clergy, over other groups in society. 14. Ibid.; S. V. Kalashnikov, Alfavitnyi ukazatel’ deistvuiushchikh i rukovodstvennykh kanonicheskikh postanovlenii, ukazov, opredelenii i rasporiazhenii Sviateishego Pravitel’stvuiushego Sinoda (Saint Petersburg, 1902), 224; Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 16–17; Andronik (Trubachev), A. A. Bovkalo, and V. A. Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo, 1700–1998 gg.,” in Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia: Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ (Moscow, 2000), 330. 15. The Synod had to approve all tonsures until 1832; after 1832, the Moscow Synodal Office and the Georgian Exarchate could grant permission for those monasteries under their jurisdiction, but all other monasteries required Synodal permission. 16. See the Synodal decree of June 15, 1851, RGIA, f. 796, op. 132, d. 937, l. 6. 17. In 1893, diocesan bishops were given the right to accept monastics beyond the number stipulated in the shtat, if there were the need and the means to support them; Kalashnikov, Alfavitnyi ukazatel’, 223–25. 18. Letters of February 14, 1857, and March 18, 1857, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 18, 23. 19. Letter of January 12, 1864, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 256; see also 261, where Filaret again stresses how much the Lavra “needs people” and not “empty spaces.” See also RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9627.

notes to pages 116–118

417

20. Synodal decree, October 14, 1865, RGIA, f. 796, op. 146, d. 1099, ll. 16–17. See also the protocols of the Synodal session, ll. 54–56 ob, and l. 144. Until 1865, full service records of all the candidates for tonsure were sent to the Synod each year; after 1865, the dioceses sent in reports of how many candidates were tonsured, broken down by estate. 21. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6922, for 1850. 22. Protocols of the session of the Synod, April 14, 1844, RGIA, f. 796, op. 125, d. 499, l. 4; proposal of the chief procurator, October 24, 1845, l. 8; protocol of the Synod, November 5, 1845, ll. 11–12. 23. The diocesan bishop had to place the request for these individuals to the chief procurator of the Synod, who in turn passed the request on to the ministry of the army, who in turn passed the request on to the local military authorities to which the individual was assigned; before 1891, the procedure was even more complex, because it went through the Synod itself first. Circular decree, December 31, 1891, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14472; see also Kalashnikov, Alfavitnyi ukazatel’, 223. 24. Memorandum from Chief Procurator K. Pobedonostsev to Metropolitan Vladimir, September 2, 1904, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16556, l. 4–4 ob; see also d. 18200 for further modifications. 25. The main difference appears to be that the permission of the governor was no longer required. See the decree of October 5, 1906, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16937. 26. Request of Hegumen Antonii to the Governing Council of the Lavra, November 1855, ibid., d. 7830, l. 1. The Governing Council did not accept all of the candidates submitted by Hegumen Antonii, and it only permitted four tonsures for Makhra that year. 27. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Innokentii, October 24, 1877, ibid., d. 12469, l. 9. Of the thirty-four candidates, sixteen were for the Lavra, two for Makhra, three for Bethany, ten for Gethsemane, two for Paraclete, and one for the Coenobium. There were, however, forty-six people who were removed from the shtat (ll. 18–19). For a similar report from Metropolitan Filaret to the Synod, when Synodal permission was still required, see RGIA, f. 796, op. 142, d. 2402, chast’ 7 (1861), l. 2. 28. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Innokentii, March 15, 1879, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12707, l. 5. The list of monks removed from the staff is on l. 3. 29. There seemed to be recurring confusion as to whether novices still belonged to their previous estate or to the clerical estate, which was exacerbated by the existence of two types of novices. According to a Synodal decree of June 18, 1858, officially received novices were considered part of the clerical estate (see ibid., d. 8400, ll. 1, 5); nevertheless, the Governing Council was still clearly concerned nearly twenty years later that it might lose some of its novices because they would have to report back to the societies in which they were included as taxpayers. 30. Svetlana Viktorovna Nikolaeva, “Troitse-Sergiev monastyr’ v XVI–nachale XVIII veka: Sostav monasheskoi bratii i vkladchikov,” Kand. dissertation, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 2000; Nikolaeva, “Sostav monasheskoi bratii Troitse-Sergieva monastyria v XVII v. (Po Opisi 1641 g. i Opisi 1701 g.),” in Trudy po istorii Troitse-Sergievoi lavry, ed. T. N. Manushina (Moscow: Podkova, 1998), 34–55; David B. Miller, “Counting Monks: Toward an Estimation of the Size and Composition of the Monastic Community of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery in the First One Hundred Sixty Years of its Existence,” in Russische und Ukrainische Geschichte

418

notes to pages 118–120

von 16–18 Jahrhundert, ed. Robert O. Crummey, Holm Sundhaussen, and Ricarda Vulpis (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001), 175–84. 31. From the 1830s to the mid-1860s (when the Holy Synod still confirmed all new tonsures), the chief procurator annually collated the information on tonsures in each diocese, broken down by diocese and social estate. These data are in the unpublished version of the annual report of the chief procurator, in the appendices to the annual reports (from 1836 to 1866); e.g., RGIA f. 797, op. 97, d. 555, l. 11, d. 559, l. 14, etc., to d. 608, ll. 35–40. According to Jean Gagarin, who analyzed these statistics in the nineteenth century, 54.3 percent of male tonsures from 1841 to 1857 were from the clerical estate (i.e., sons of parish clergy), 22.3 percent were from various urban strata (merchants and townsmen), 16.3 percent were from the peasantry, 3.4 percent were from the military, and 3 percent were from the nobility; J. Gagarin, The Russian Clergy, trans. Ch. du Gard Makepeace (London, 1872; reprinted New York: AMS, 1970), 78. Zyrianov has recalculated the data for the 1840s and 1850s; his analysis shows a slight decline in the recruitment from the clergy (from 55.9 percent in the 1840s to 53 percent in the 1850s) and from retired soldiers (from 5.1 to 2.5 percent), with a corresponding rise in serfs (from 2.5 to 4 percent) and state peasants (9 to 15.3 percent); Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 25. 32. The files used as the basis of this chapter are RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6279, ll. 3–9, 13 (1846); d. 6436, ll. 4–6 (1847); d. 6614, ll. 13–16 (1848); d. 6777, ll. 7–10 (1849); d. 6922, ll. 3–5 (1850); d. 7125, ll. 2–4 (1851); d. 7288, ll. 5–7 (1852); d. 7472, ll. 6–12 (1853); d. 7653, ll. 2–3, 10–15 (1854); d. 7830, ll. 7–15 (1855); d. 8917, ll. 3–15 (1860); d. 9378, ll. 5–15 (1862); d. 9629, ll. 8–13 (1863); d. 10248, ll. 12–15, 23–34, 39, 45 (1865); d. 12469, ll. 12–17 (1877); d. 12707, ll. 6–7, 9–10 (1879); d. 12870, l. 1 (1880); d. 13028, ll. 9–13 (1881); d. 13133, ll. 7–10, 15–16 (1882); d. 13282, ll. 2–10 (1883); d. 13385 (1884); d. 13535, ll. 5–10, 18–19 (1885); d. 16629, ll. 2, 17, 26 (1905); d. 17001, ll. 2–3, 36–37 (1907); d. 17211, ll. 2–3, 22 (1908); d. 17399 (1909); d. 17473 (1909); d. 17581, ll. 32–36, 39, 43 (1910); d. 17794, ll. 2, 18, 23 (1911); d. 17995, ll. 2–3, 11, 33, 39, 44 (1912); d. 18175, ll. 3, 20, 30, 34, 38 (1913); d. 18363, ll. 2, 6, 20 (1914); and RGIA f. 796, op. 142, ch. 7, ll. 5–14, which contains the service records of those tonsured in 1860. This chapter uses statistics from the Synodal archive for an additional 48 candidates between 1886 and 1890, which includes only information about social origins, from RGIA f. 796, op. 167, d. 2673, l. 28 (1886); op. 168, d. 2530, l. 7 (1887); op. 170, d. 2678, l. 66 (1889); op. 171, d. 2746, l. 31 (1890). 33. As a rule, until the 1870s the records only reported the education of candidates from the clergy and nobility; records for the 1870s and 1880s, by contrast, provide information on the education of all candidates. Records for the early twentieth century give not only the date when the candidate became a novice but also the date when he began living in the monastery “on trial,” thus making it possible to determine how long candidates resided in the monastery before tonsure. 34. According to Zyrianov’s data, in the 1840s 3.9 percent of monastic recruits were from the nobility, and 3.5 percent in the 1850s; Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 25. 35. Between 1886 and 1890, e.g., retired soldiers constituted 25 percent of monastic tonsures (twelve of forty-eight). In the early twentieth century, it appears that the service records for retired soldiers were kept as separate files from the rest of the candidates: see, e.g., RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d.17581, l. 43, which only lists the names of three soldiers tonsured but does not provide their service records. 36. On the whole situation of the clerical estate, see Gregory L. Freeze, “Caste and Emancipation: The Changing Status of Clerical Families in the Great Reforms,” in The Family in

notes to pages 120–129

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Imperial Russia: New Lines of Historical Research, ed. David L. Ransel (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 124–50; the report of the Nizhnii Novgorod clerical committee is cited on 128. 37. On clergy sons, see Laurie Manchester, Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008). 38. On the reform and its failures, see Freeze, “Caste and Emancipation,” 136–50. 39. Of the thirty-one peasant recruits who joined the Trinity-Sergius collective in 1846– 55, the largest number (thirteen) were state peasants; twelve were household serfs, and six were field serfs. In 1860–65, forty-three peasants were tonsured: nine household serfs, two domestic servants, nineteen state peasants, ten field serfs, and three unidentified peasants. 40. The service records for candidates from the military routinely did not provide information on geographical origins; the data are also frequently missing for the honored citizens and nobles. 41. Smolensk is included as a central diocese because its pattern is closer to that of these dioceses than that of the western dioceses. 42. The Volga region includes the dioceses of Nizhnii Novgorod, Saratov, Kursk, and Tambov; Ukraine includes Chernigov, Poltava, Kar’kov, Podolsk, and the cities of Kiev and Odessa; Western Russia includes Mogilev, Vitebsk, and Minsk; the Southern Steppes includes the Don Cossacks and the Kuban; the Urals, the dioceses of Orenburg and Ufa; and the Baltics, the diocese of Grodno and the city of Riga. Ten candidates (2 percent) were from Saratov, but the remaining dioceses contributed 1 percent or less. 43. See, e.g., the decree to the abbot of Makhrishchskii Monastery (March 1910), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17581, l. 34, and the decree to the abbot of Zosimova Hermitage, l. 35. Again in 1912, the abbot of Makhra put forward one of the same candidates to be tonsured, one Georgii Sinitsyn, a peasant; ibid., d. 17995, l. 3. He was finally tonsured later that year; ibid., l. 62. 44. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Makarii (1880), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12870, l. 1. 45. The average age of tonsure was 38.5 years in the decade from 1846 to 1855, 38.2 years in 1875–85, and somewhat higher, at 40.5 years, in 1905–14; the pattern for entering the novitiate was roughly the same: 33.5 years in 1846–65, 32.6 years in 1877–85, and 34.4 years for 1905–14. 46. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17794, l. 23. 47. See, in particular, the large number of novices who were tonsured in 1912 who had only been enrolled in the novitiate in the previous year; ibid., d. 17995, l. 11. 48. Ibid., d. 13535, ll. 18–19. 49. Ibid., d. 13385, l. 19. If a novice transferred to another monastery, he typically had to begin the novitiate over again. 50. Ibid., d. 17473; Chelyshev was tonsured on October 11, 1910. 51. I. Filipov, a thirty-eight-year-old state peasant from Vladimir, was tonsured in Gethsemane Skete, and I. Kulikov, a forty-year-old state peasant from Moscow, was tonsured in the Bethany Monastery; ibid., d. 9378, esp. l. 24. 52. Ibid., d. 17995, l. 44. I. Molchanov, a forty-year-old peasant, was also divorced from his wife “because of infidelity”—though the service record does not indicate who was the guilty party; he was tonsured at Bethany in 1910; ibid., d. 17851, l. 36. The circumstances of the

420 notes to pages 129–135 sixth divorced candidate are not clear: M. Shishkov, a fifty-eight-year-old peasant, was tonsured in 1907 in Gethsemane Skete; ibid., d. 17001, l. 36. 53. See Gregory L. Freeze, “Krylov vs. Krylova: ‘Sexual Incapacity’ and Divorce in Tsarist Russia,” in The Human Tradition in Modern Russia, ed. W. Husband (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2000), 5–17; and Gregory L. Freeze, “Profane Narratives about a Holy Sacrament: Marriage and Divorce in Late Imperial Russia,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, ed. Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 146–78. 54. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 7830, ll. 7–15. 55. Ibid., d. 7472; Druzhinin was tonsured in 1853. 56. These include P. Zagoskin from the Diocese of Orel, who began living in a monastery at the age of twenty-three, and was tonsured in the Lavra at the age of thirty-one in 1848 (ibid., d. 6614); I. Morozov, who converted from Lutheranism at the age of nineteen, became a monk in 1849 at the age of thirty (ibid., d. 6777); and Leonid Gofman (Hoffman), who entered the Lavra at the age of twenty-two, directly after finishing the gymnasium, and was tonsured in Gethsemane at the age of thirty (in 1865; ibid., d. 10248). 57. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 13028. 58. Ibid., d. 10248, l. 33 ob (I. Rudnev), d. 13133 (Vasilii Sukhotin, tonsured in Gethsemane), and d. 17995, l. 11 (A. Kryzhanovskii). 59. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 13282 (S. Komarov, a Collegiate Secretary, tonsured in Bethany in 1883), and d. 17794, l. 23 (A. Rustitskii, a retired provincial secretary, tonsured in the Lavra in 1911). 60. On popular reading, see Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861–1917 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985). 61. Boris Mironov, The Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700–1917 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000), vol. 1, 176. 62. See letter of June 19, 1863, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 246. 63. Memorandum of Metropolitan Leontii to the Governing Council, January 13, 1892, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d 14467, l. 2. 64. Ibid., d. 16629, ll. 2, 15. 65. Ibid., d. 17001, ll. 2–3. Samotokhin, a widowed peasant from Tula, began living in the Paraclete Hermitage in 1897; Luk’ianov, a widowed peasant from the Diocese of Vladimir, had lived in Makhra since 1898. 66. Ibid., d. 7000, ll. 1–7. 67. Ibid., l. 47. 68. Ibid., ll. 54–63. 69. Ibid., d. 6614, ll. 13–16. 70. Ibid., d. 7472, l. 6. 71. Gavriil Gomzin (or Gamzin), the future Hegumen German of Zosimova Hermitage, was of course hardly a typical monk—see chapter 6 below; his service record at the time of tonsure is in ibid., d. 12469. 72. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17001, ll. 2–3. 73. Request of Zakhar Uvkin, ibid., d. 15209, l. 10. 74. [D. I. Rostislavov], Opyt issledovaniia ob imushchestvakh i dokhodakh nashikh monastyrei (Saint Petersburg, 1876), 381.

notes to pages 135–141

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75. For another example of someone drawn to the monastery after visiting one, see Mikhail Makarov, Iz zhizni pravoslavnoi Moskvy XX veka: Vospominaniia pravoslavnogo khristianinina (N.p.: Galaktika, 1996), 113. 76. On the preparation of the “Rules for Improving Monastic Brotherhoods in Moscow,” see Pis’ma, vol. 2, 192, 197–98, 227. 77. The Synod later recommended Filaret’s rules for all monasteries; see T. Barsov, Sbornik deistvuiushchikh i rukovodstvennykh tserkovnykh i tserkovno-grazhdanskikh postanovlenii po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia (Saint Petersburg, 1885), 290; the rules themselves are in the appendix to article 1082, cxiii–cxxv. 78. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10874, ll. 1, 3. 79. An “obedience” (poslushanie) was the task or regular duty that the abbot assigned to each monk or novice; one’s obedience could be anything from working in the kitchen or a monastery workshop, to selling candles or teaching in the monastery’s school, to performing liturgical services. 80. Pravila blagoustroistva monasheskikh bratstv v Moskve (Moscow: Gethsemane Skete, 1917), reprinted in Dobroe slovo novonachal’nomu poslushniku, zhelaiushchemu nelitsemerno prokhodit’ put’ Bozhii (Moscow, 1998), 54–70. For more detailed regulations on monastic life, see, e.g., Serafim (Kuznetsov), Muzhskoi obshchezhitel’nyi ustav (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1910; reprinted Moscow, 2000). 81. It permitted monks and novices to take leaves of absence to visit family or to make pilgrimages. E.g., in 1852 it authorized Hieromonk Venedikt to leave for three months to visit the Kievan Caves Lavra and to pray before the relics of Saint Mitrofan in Voronezh; Venedikt, in his request, explained that he had made a vow to pay reverence to these relics when he was ill; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 7347, l. 34. In 1860, the Lavra gave permission for Hieromonk Serafim to leave for a month and a half to visit his ill parents in Riazan; ibid., d. 9000, l. 6. The Lavra typically granted numerous such requests every year; e.g., in 1852 it received sixteen requests, only one of which did it appear to question. One novice requested six months leave to visit his family because of “great need,” but the Governing Council stated that he did not establish what this need was; ibid., d. 7347, l. 26. In 1860, there were fourteen requests, which varied in length from one to six months; ibid., d. 9000. In 1863 and 1864, however, Metropolitan Filaret tightened the rules; he prohibited a leave for monks during the first three years after tonsure, and for hierodeacons and hieromonks during the first three years after ordination. See the report from the Governing Council to Metropolitan Innokentii (June 4, 1868), ibid., d. 9627, l. 5, requesting Innokentii to reaffirm these rules; l. 2 is the report from the Council to Filaret (May 6, 1864), requesting that newly tonsured monks not be allowed to take leave, with Filaret’s decision at the top of the page. The regulation regarding clergy seems actually to have pertained more to transfers than to leave. 82. Journal of the Governing Council, October 8, 1845, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6245, l. 1–1 ob. Hierodeacons and hieromonks were fined 15 kopeks for daily services missed and 25 kopeks for festal services; regular monks were fined 5 kopeks for daily services and 10 kopeks for festal services that were missed. 83. Decree of the Governing Council to Hieromonk Makarii, September 3, 1847, ibid., d. 6576, l. 1. 84. Decree of the Governing Council to the Steward of the Petersburg compound, January 21, 1899, ibid., d. 15525, l. 1, and similar decrees to the other communities in this file. This

422 notes to pages 141–146 decree also reiterated that monks were required to obtain permission for leaving the monastery. 85. Memorandum of Metropolitan Vladimir to the Governing Council, June 6, 1899, ibid., d. 15559, l. 1. The council issued a decree to the supervisor that novices were to wash their own floors and that elder monks, if they were unable to wash their own floors, pay a novice to do it; the corridors were to be washed by a male servant (l. 3). 86. Sputnik bogomol’tsa pri obozrenii sviatyn’ i dostopamiatnostei Sviato-Troitskiia Sergievy lavry, s ukazaniem vremeni i osobennostei bogosluzhenii v onoi, 5th ed. (STSL, 1908), 9–10. The All-Night Vigil (vsenoshchnaia or vsenoshchnoe bdenie) is a service unique to Russian Orthodoxy, and consists of Great Vespers, festal Matins, and the First Hour. The name derives from the fact that in medieval Byzantine monasteries the service literally lasted all night, beginning with the evening vespers and continuing through until morning (matins) and leading into the Divine Liturgy. 87. E.g., in the Makhrishchskii Monastery, Matins began at 3 a.m. and Vespers began at 3 p.m.; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 6239, l. 30. 88. Ibid., d. 5935, ll. 45–49. In the main church of the Skete, Matins began at 2 a.m., the Liturgy at 5 a.m. or 8 a.m., and Vespers at 5 p.m. in summer, 4 p.m. in winter; Sputnik bogomol’tsa, 23–27. The services were scheduled in the Skete so that they were continually conducted, either in the Dormition Church in the Skete itself or in the church of the Caves; K. Filimonov, Novaia Gefsimaniia (Moscow, 2000), 24. 89. See the discussion about the monastic day given by Archimandrite Nikon, “Eshche ob ideale monashestvo,” Dushepoleznoe chtenie, January 1903, 109–11. 90. Dobroe slovo novonachal’nomu poslushniku, zhelaiushchemu nelitsemerno prohodit’ put’ Bozhii (STSL / Pustyn’ Sv. Paraklita, 1900; reprinted Moscow: Izd. Im. Svt. Ignatiia Stavropol’skogo, 1998); the text contains references to works that were published only after Antonii’s death, so was probably based on his original manuscript but later adapted, evidently specifically for use at Paraclete. 91. Iuvenalii (Polovtsev), Monasheskaia zhizn’ po izrecheniiam o nei Sv. Ottsev podvizhnikov (Kiev, 1885; reprinted Moscow: Pskovo-Pecherskii Monastery, 1994). The book, written while Iuvenalii (Polovtsev, 1826–1904) was an archimandrite and the prior of the Kievan Caves Lavra, went through many later editions; Iuvenalii later became archbishop of Lithuania. For the Synod’s recommendation, see RGIA, f. 797, op. 80, d. 337, l. 2 ob. 92. Dobroe slovo (1998 edition), 3–7. 93. Ibid., 14. 94. Ibid., 14–18. 95. Iuvenalii, Monasheskaia zhizn’, 7–51. 96. Dobroe slovo, 9–14, 18–20. 97. Ibid., 33–37. The text also focuses on external behavior, e.g., concretely what to do when entering a church (how to cross and bow, the prayers to say, etc.), as well as specific instructions to those fulfilling specific obediences. 98. Iuvenalii, Monasheskaia zhizn’, 52–99. 99. Ibid., 100–150. 100. Letter of November 7, 1850, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 396. 101. Pis’ma, vol. 2, 397.

notes to pages 146–151 423 102. Ibid., 396. 103. Skhiigumen German, Zavety o molitvennom delanii (Moscow: Palmonik, 1995; originally published in Berlin, 1923). 104. Ibid., 3–14. 105. German’s conjunction of the “prayer of the heart and the mind” is worth noting; Hesychasm brought together separate traditions (the prayer of the heart and the prayer of the mind). See John Meyendorff, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality, trans. Adele Fiske (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974); and John Anthony McGuckin, Standing in God’s Holy Fire: The Byzantine Tradition (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2001), 37–75. 106. German, Zavety, 14–20. 107. Ibid., 23. 108. Ibid., 25. 109. David Goldfrank writes of the concept of pomysl: “Occuping a privileged position in ascetic psychological analysis, some species of this thought-urge-intent-spirit-passionimage-temptation genus constantly attacks any believer from without or threatens to do so”; Goldfrank translates the term as “urge.” David Goldfrank, ed., Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 2008), 88. See also The Philokalia: The Complete Text, trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), vol. 1, 367. 110. German, Zavety, 25–26. 111. [German (Gomzin)], Starchestvo: Mysli sviatykh ottsov o neobkhodimosti i pol’ze starcheskogo rukovodstva v dukhovnoi zhizni (Moscow, 1910; reprinted Moscow, 1997). 112. German, Zavety, 26. 113. Ibid., 32. 114. Ibid., 33. 115. Ibid., 34, 38. 116. Ibid., 36–49. 117. [German (Gomzin)], O zhizni i podvigakh startsa-zatvornika Gefsimanskogo skita, chto bliz Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry, ieroskhimonakh o. Aleksandra, sobrano ego keleinikom N. N. (Moscow, 1900; reprinted Moscow, 1994), 35. 118. Ibid., 34, 44, 61–63. 119. Ibid., 46, 52–53. 120. It is worthy of note that, before German published his life of Aleksandr, he sent the manuscript to Feofan the Recluse, who for the most part approved of Aleksandr’s approach but in some cases thought he went too far and inserted comments or notes to correct Aleksandr’s antinomianism. 121. [German], O zhizni i podvigakh startsa-zatvornika Gefsimanskogo skita, 35–36. 122. Letter to Feofan, in Feofan Zatvornik, O molitve Iisusovoi, v pis’makh k skhiigumenu Germanu i skhimonakhu Agapiiu (Saint Petersburg, 1998), 8. 123. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1995), 73–74; German discussed this advice with Feofan; Feofan, O molitve Iisusovoi, 15–17. 124. The correspondence between German and Feofan was originally published as Otvety episkopa Feofana, zatvornika Vyshenskoi pustyni, na voprosy inoka otnositel’no razlichnykh

424 notes to pages 151–159 delanii monasheskoi zhizni (Tambov, 1894); and Otvety episkopa Feofana, zatvornika Vyshenskoi pustyni, na voprosy inoka o molitve, 2nd ed. (Moscow 1910). Feofan’s side of the correspondence, together with the letters to Agapii, were recently published as Feofan, O molitve Iisusovoi. A number of Feofan’s works have been translated into English; see in particular his classic Put’ k Spaseniiu: Theopan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation, trans. Seraphim Rose (Platina, Calif.: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1998); see also Igumen Chariton of Valamo, The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology, trans. E. Kadloubovsky and E. M. Palmer (London: Faber & Faber, 1966), which contains many selections from Feofan. 125. Arsenii, Vospominaniia, 74–77. 126. Ibid., 69. 127. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 17a. 128. Ibid., l. 17 ob. 129. Ibid., ll. 15–17a ob. 130. Ibid., ll. 22 ob–24 ob. 131. Ibid., ll. 24 ob–34. 132. Ibid., ll. 44 ob–58. 133. Journal for December 21, 1914, Troitskoe slovo, no. 339 (1916): 615. 134. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” l. 53 ob. 135. See Andronik (Trubachev), Bovkalo, and Fedorov, “Monastyri i monashestvo, 1700–1998 gg.,” 17–18. 136. E.g., RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17590, l. 2. 137. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Makarii, October 9, 1913, ibid., d. 18004, l. 10. 138. Ibid., d. 16135, ll. 2–7. 139. Report of Metropolitan Vladimir to the Holy Synod, May 5, 1907, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17052, ll. 5–6; see also ll. 45, 60–62 ob. 140. RGIA, f. 796, op. 154, d. 209, ll. 1–5. The rest of the file concerns Nil’s fate after being laicized. 141. For a few other cases that are unclear, see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25367 (1879), and d. 18804, l. 17. 142. Declaration of Metropolitan Vladimir to the Holy Synod, December 3, 1900, RGIA, f. 706, op. 181, d. 816, ll. 2–3. 143. See the report of Supervisor Hieromonk Manuil to the Governing Council, October 6, 1910, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17590, l. 11; and the decree to Manuil, October 14, 1910, l. 11 ob. 144. Ibid., d. 25168, ll. 94 ob–95. 145. Report of Hieromonk Serafim, June 28, 1902, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16135, ll. 2–4; decision of the Governing Council, l. 5; decree of the Governing Council to Hieromonk Nifont, l. 14; Report of Hieromonk Nifont, September 21, 1902, l. 17; decision of the Governing Council, l. 16. Hieromonk Serafim also noted in his report that he told the soldier’s replacement not to bring vodka into the corridors, and the latter replied, “In that case there is no advantage to being a corridor soldier.” Serafim immediately also dismissed that soldier, and suggested to the Governing Council that it should replace these hired corridor guards with

notes to pages 159–163 425 novices; the council, however, did not agree with this suggestion (ll. 2–5). Only in 1910 would the council decide to replace them with novices; see chapter 7 below. 146. Decree of the Governing Council to Hegumen German, February 22, 1906, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16823, l. 1. 147. Report of the overseer of the hospital-hostel Hieromonk Nifont to the supervisor of the Lavra, December 10, 1907, and the decision of the council, December 11, 1907, ibid., d. 17010, l. 4; report of Treasurer Hegumen Nil to the Council, December 19, 1907, l. 5. 148. Supervisor’s report, 1910, ibid., d. 17590, l. 19. 149. Report of the Supervisor Hieromonk Manuil, January 31, 1910, ibid., l. 1; report of the supervisor, l. 19; see also the doctor’s report, ll. 12, 22. 150. Supervisor’s report, 1910, l. 19. On the top of the page was a note, written in pencil, that the resolution of the council “did not take place” (ne sostoialos’). 151. See RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18004, ll. 3–5; d. 18184, l. 10. 152. One of the reasons they were particularly anxious to remove him from TrinitySergius was the scandal it might cause, given the emperor’s impending visit for anniversary celebrations. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Makarii (March 9, 1913), ibid., d. 18223, l. 3, together with subsequent reports, ll. 1–2; his “penalty log,” stating the entire history, is on ll. 4–5 ob. 153. Ibid., d. 25235, ll. 163 ob–164. 154. Letter of January 27, 1853, in Pis’ma, vol. 2, 232. 155. Supervisor’s report to the Governing Council, August 24, 1850, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 7017. Though the supervisor expressed his displeasure at such behavior during a service, it is unclear what was the final outcome of the conflict. 156. Report of Archimandrite Toviia to Metropolitan Vladimir, February 25, 1911, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17832, ll. 1–2 ob. The report also stated that the Lavra could take Lopnov to civil court for his slander, but that this would only bring negative attention to the monastery, so the Governing Council decided against such a move. Later, Lopnov wrote to the council requesting that it send him a letter of reference that he lived in the monastery and conducted his obediences well, which the monastery did (ll. 3–4 ob). 157. [V. S. Kazantsev], Sredi inokov: Vospominaniia o zhizni v Troitsko-Sergievoi lavre (Moscow, 1906), 20–21. 158. Report of Hieromonk Panteleimon to the Council, August 12, 1917, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18926, l. 1. Panteleimon requested that the Governing Council be lenient with Vitalii because he pitied him. 159. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 54 ob. 160. Ibid., l. 55. 161. Kazantsev, Sredi inokov, 14; see also Pervonachal’noe narodnoe uchilishche v SviatoTroitskoi Sergievoi lavre (Moscow, 1850), 9–10. Kazantsev also described a means of discipline termed “girding with fetters” (prepoiasyvaetsia zhelzom), in which the errant monk prostrated himself before the feet of the prior (evidently, Archimandrite Antonii) and was struck along the back with a cane; Kazantsev, Sredi inokov, 20. 162. On the novice Ivan Volkov’s complaint, see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16136, ll. 1–2; and the report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, July 4, 1902, ll. 14–16. 163. Ibid., d. 5832.

426 notes to pages 163–171 164. Ibid., d. 9464, ll. 1–3. 165. Ibid., d. 18184, l. 5 (signed January 10, 1913); see also l. 4. 166. E.g., in the Moscow Diocese, monks were most often sent to the Voznesenskaia Davidova Hermitage; files such as RGIAgM, f. 203, op. 415, d. 1, in which a hierodeacon from the Vysokopetrovskii Monastery was sent to the Davidova Hermitage, are abundant in the archive of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory. 167. Report of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory, June 25, 1881, RGIAgM, f. 203, op. 358, d. 3, ll. 27–29; see also Venedikt’s own request to Metropolitan Makarii, October 1880, l. 1. In the end, it became clear that he did not want to be laicized but wanted to be transferred to some other state-funded monastery; he was subsequently transferred to the Serpukhovskii Vysotskii Monastery (ll. 11, 25). 168. See, e.g., RGIAgM, f. 203, op. 331, d. 2; op. 358, d. 4; op. 372, d. 2; and op. 383, d. 3. In most of these cases, the monks were still laicized in the end. 169. Pis’ma, vol. 3, 5, 28, 256, 260, 279. 170. Toviia’s Dnevnik, December 30, 1914, Troitskoe Slovo, no. 340 (1916): 631. 171. Archbishop Nikon, “Vybornoe nacahalo i tipy sovremennogo monashestva,” Troitskoe slovo 375 (June 1917): 392–99; the citation is on 394. 172. Ibid., 394–96. 173. Ibid., 396. 174. Ibid., 396–97. 175. In the context of the article, Nikon was trying to argue against the democratic “electoral” principle, which gave everyone equal votes, with regard to the monastic congress that was about to take place in the summer of 1917.

chapter 5 1. Toviia, “Vospominanie moego proshedshego,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 4 ob; the first several chapters were printed in “Vospominaniia moego proshedshego,” by Skhiarkhimandrit Toviia, Troitskoe slovo, nos. 376–77 (1917): 408–12; nos. 381–83 (1917): 436–39; nos. 384– 86 (1917): 553–56. 2. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, ll. 4 ob–6. 3. Ibid., ll. 5–6 ob. 4. Ibid., l. 8. 5. Ibid., l. 9. 6. Ibid., l. 9 ob. 7. Chris J. Chulos, “Religious and Secular Aspects of Pilgrimage in Modern Russia,” Byzantium and the North/Act Byzantina Fennica 9 (1999): 21-58; Chris J. Chulos, Converging Worlds: Religion and Community in Peasant Russia, 1861–1917 (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003); Christine Worobec, “Miraculous Healings,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, ed. Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 22–43; Roy R. Robson, “Transforming Solovki: Pilgrim Narratives, Modernization, and Late Imperial Monastic Life,” in Sacred Stories, ed. Steinberg and Coleman, 44–60; Robert H. Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010).

notes to pages 171–183 427 8. Robson, “Transforming Solovki,” 49. 9. The secularization thesis, of course, has come under much scrutiny; e.g., see Steve Bruce, ed., Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Grace Davie, “Patterns of Religion in Western Europe: An Exceptional Case,” in The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion, ed. Richard K. Fenn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 264–78. 10. See Christine Worobec, “Lived Orthodoxy in Imperial Russia,” Kritika 7, no. 2 (2006): 335. 11. Ibid., 336. 12. On this point, see the cautionary comments by Paul Bushkovitch, “Popular Religion in the Time of Peter the Great,” in Letters from Heaven: Popular Religion in Russia and Ukraine, ed. John-Paul Himka and Andriy Zayarnyuk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 146–64. 13. See Gregory L. Freeze, “The Rechristianization of Russia: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850,” Studia Slavica Finlandensia 7 (1990): 101–36, and Gregory L. Freeze, “Institutionalizing Piety: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750-1850,” in Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, ed. Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 210–49. 14. See, e.g., Chulos, Converging Worlds. 15. See Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Bushkovitch, “Popular Religion.” 16. V. O. Kliuchevskii, “Znachenie Prepodobnogo Sergiia Radhonezhskogo dlia russkogo naroda i gosudarstva,” Bogoslovskii Vestnik, November 1892, 44. 17. Ibid., 24. 18. D-v, “Vopros o reforme monastyrei,” Vestnik Evropy 4 (1873): 559. 19. E. I. Kolycheva, “Pravoslavnye monastyri vtoroi poloviny XV–XVI veka,” in Monashestvo i monastyri v Rossii, XI–XX veka: Istoricheskie ocherki, ed. N. V. Sinitsyna (Moscow: Nauka, 2005), 95–99; N. A. Riabushina, “K voprosu o kompozitsii russkikh monastyrei XV– XVII vv,” Arkhitekturnoe nasledstvo 34 (1986): 132–200; I. L. Buseva-Davydova, “Nekotorye osobennosti prostranstvennoi organizatsii drevnerusskhikh monastyrei,” Arkhitekturnoe nasledstvo 34 (1986): 201–7; I. L. Buseva-Davydova, “Simvolika arkhitektury po drevnerusskim pis’mennym istochnikam XI-XVII vv.,” Germenevtika drevnerusskoi literatury (Moscow) Sb. 2 (1989): 279–308. 20. [D. I. Rostislavov], Opyt issledovaniia ob imushchestvakh i dokhodakh nashikh monastyrei (Saint Petersburg, 1876), 104–5. The Iaroslavl’ highway ran through Sergiev Posad from Moscow. 21. Protoierei I. Solov’ev, Ot Moskvy do Rostova Velikogo (Khar’kov, 1911), cited by K. Filimonov, Sergiev Posad: stranitsy istorii XIV–nachalo XX veka (Moscow, 1997), 91–92. 22. Sputnik bogomol’tsa pri obozrenii sviatyn’ i dostopamiatnostei Sviato-Troitskiia Sergievy lavry, s ukazaniem vremeni i osobennostei bogosluzhenii v onoi, 5th ed (STSL, 1908). 23. Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1: From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 105.

428 notes to pages 183–185 24. Alexander II evidently visited in 1855, 1856, 1858, 1861, 1862, 1867, and 1874; see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, dd. 7826, 7997, 8397, 9766, 9368, 10426, 11977. 25. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9766, ll. 18–20 ob. 26. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 231. For other imperial visits, see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, dd. 13061, 13303, 13718, 13990, 15739, 18050, 18468. 27. See Robson, “Transforming Solovki,” 48–50. 28. Rostislavov, Opyt issledovaniia, 114. 29. Ibid., 117. 30. Income from candle sales was 2,525 rubles in 1781, 10,397 rubles in 1810, 32,000 rubles in 1834, 34,094 rubles in 1859, 34,333 rubles in 1861, and 34,714 rubles in 1862. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 3004, d. 4972 (ll. 58–59), d.9274 (l. 196 ob), d. 9771 (ll. 156 ob, 157), d. 19298. 31. I took the average for the period 1884–87 to arrive at the figure of 55,000 rubles, based on RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 13715, ll. 54 ob–55; for 1900, d. 15859; the income was 67,844 rubles in 1910 and 73,419 rubles in 1912 (dd. 17761 and 18142). 32. E.g., in 1860 the Lavra spent 10,670 rubles on candle production, gross income was 34,269 rubles, and its net profit was 23,599 rubles. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9274. 33. S.-Peterburgskie vedomosti, no. 332 (December 2, 1871): 1–2. The Kriticheskii obzor svedenii o Troitse-Sergievoi Lavre soobshchaemykh v knige “Opyt issledovaniia ob imushchestvakh i dokhodakh monastyrei” (Saint Petersburg, 1876), 17, explained that pilgrims often bought several prosphora, which they took home with them. 34. In 1860, production cost 8,964 rubles, gross income was 22,890 rubles, with a net profit of 13,926 rubles (RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9274, ll. 197–201); gross income was 24,650 rubles in 1862 (RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9771, l.157), 35,150 rubles in 1875 (when expenses were 14,380 rubles), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12287, l. 77. The data for 1810 here and below come from RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 3004, l. 65. 35. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 13715, ll. 54 ob-55; d. 15859. 36. Income was 318 rubles in 1810, and 14,664 rubles in 1860; in that year, expenses were 7,221 rubles, and net income was 7,443 rubles. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9274, ll. 197–201. 37. Income from image sales was 60,342 rubles in 1900; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15859. 38. In 1810 and 1812, the average income was 13,914 rubles; for 1834–35, it was 21,098 rubles; for 1860–61, it was 13,710 rubles; and in 1884–85, it was 19,496 rubles. (Up through the 1860s, donations were classed separately as prikladnaia summa and sinodichnaia summa.) 39. Income was 1,201 rubles in 1810, an average of 3,130 rubles for 1834–35, and 4,393 rubles for 1860–61; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, dd. 3304, 3083, 4972, 9274, 9771, 13715. 40. I calculate that the income from candles, images, and prosphora totaled 71,824 rubles in 1860; total income was 149,944 rubles; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9274, ll. 1, 197. For the situation at the end of the century, see d. 15859 and V. A. Tkachenko, “Khoziaistvo TroitseSergievoi Lavry na rubezhe XIX–XX vv.,” in Trudy po istorii Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry, ed. T. N. Manushina (Moscow: Podkova, 1998), 119–28. 41. “Church income” was 257,432 rubles in 1899 and 270,935 rubles in 1900; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15859, l. 21. 42. Ibid., d. 9107, l. 1. A similar estimate of the number of pilgrims who venerated the relics of Saint Sergius during the same year yielded some 204,000 pilgrims; d. 24438, l. 1. 43. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18581, l. 7.

notes to pages 185–188 429 44. On pilgrimage during World War I, see chapter 7 below and Scott M. Kenworthy, “The Mobilization of Piety: Monasticism and the Great War in Russia, 1914–1916,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 52 (2004): 388–401. 45. Archimandrite Antonii reported that in 1870, the Lavra sold 322,245 candles for a gross income of 39,529 rubles; S.-Peterburgskie vedomosti, no. 332 (December 2, 1871): 1–2. Given Rostislavov’s estimate of 300,000 pilgrims (Rostislavov, Opyt, 106), each pilgrim probably bought at least one larger candle or several smaller ones. Rostislavov was skeptical that the number of candles was so low, believing that the monastery was underreporting. The author of the Kriticheskii obzor svedenii o Troitse-Sergievoi Lavre, 17–18, explained that often twenty pilgrims would gather their kopeks together and buy one large, “collective,” candle. Many pilgrims also probably bought candles outside the Lavra; hence the reason the number of candles sold seemed low. 46. Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), Chem zhiva nasha russkaia pravolsavnaia dusha (Saint Petersburg, 1909; reprinted Saint Petersburg, 1995), 11. 47. According to the Soviet antireligious propagandist G. Kostomarov, Trinity-Sergius reported distributing 344,000 Trinity Leaflets in 1916, and fed 400,000 pilgrims in 1917. Kostomarov also recognized that these were unusual years, and he asserted that the inhabitants of Sergiev Posad “confirm that in more favorable years the number of pilgrims reached 500,000.” It is, however, difficult to assess the accuracy of these statements, given that the book contains both accurate citations from the archives and distortions and fabrications. G. Kostomarov, Bog i ego podvizhniki (Moscow: Bezbozhnik, 1930), 41–42. 48. Letter of April 12, 1860, in Pis’ma, vol. 3, 143. 49. In 1866, the monastery spent 3570 rubles for provisions for the pilgrims, and this amount increased exponentially to nearly 25,000 rubles by the end of the century; compare RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 20420, d. 22105. 50. Rules for sheltering pilgrims, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12621, l. 2. 51. Ibid., ll. 2–4. 52. Ibid., dd. 14259, 14639. The hospital served more than 11,000 patients in 1899; see Filimonov, Sergiev Posad, 139. 53. For more details, see Scott M. Kenworthy, “Memory Eternal: The Five Hundred Year Jubilee of St. Sergius of Radonezh,” in The Trinity-Sergius Lavra in Russian History and Culture, ed. Vladimir Tsurikov (Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2005), 24–55. See also RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14259; and Svetlyi prazdnik Prepodobnogo Sergiia 25 sentiabria 1892 goda: 500-letie ego blazhennoi konchiny (Moscow, 1892). 54. Robson, “Transforming Solovki,” 51–53, emphasizes the class distinctions in the experience of pilgrimage; Worobec, “Miraculous Healings,” 32–33, argues for social divisions at sacred sites themselves, but based more on extraordinary events (canonizations) than ordinary pilgrimages. 55. Christine D. Worobec emphasizes the negative impact on the monastery of so many pilgrims in “The Unintended Consequences of a Surge in Orthodox Pilgrimages in Late Imperial Russia,” Russian History 36 (2009): 62–79. 56. Letter of March 2, 1832, in Pis’ma 2, 31. 57. Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1884; reprinted STSL, 1997), 42–43; see also Pis’ma, vol. 2, 88.

430 notes to pages 189–193 58. Ivan Shmelev, Bogomol’e: Romany, rasskazy—Sobranie sochinenie, t. 4 (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 1998), 391–520. On Shmelev, see Olga Sorokin, Moskoviana: The Life and Art of Ivan Shmelyov (Oakland: Barbary Coast Books, 1987); and A. M. Liubomudrov, “Pravoslavnoe monashestvo v tvorchestve i sud’be I. S. Shmeleva,” in Khristianstvo i Russkaia literatura: Sbornik statei (Saint Petersburg, 1994), 364–94. 59. Shmelev, Bogomol’e, 455. 60. Ibid., 411. 61. Ibid., 419. 62. On liminality and communitas, see Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977). 63. Liubomudrov, “Pravoslavnoe monashestvo,” 373–74. 64. On sermons, see, e.g., RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14466 (schedule of sermons for 1892) and d. 15811, l. 1–1 ob (appointing hierodeacons to give sermons during the morning liturgies in 1900). 65. Nikon’s service record, 1908, RGIA, f. 796, op. 439, d. 689; Metropolitan of Moscow’s presentation of Nikon to the Synod to be awarded, January 10, 1904, RGIA, f. 796, op. 185, d. 11 (1904g.), ll. 1–2; “Materialy k zhizneopisaniiu Arkhiepiskopa Nikona (Rozhdestvenskogo),” Danilovskii Blagovestnik 1 (1992): 60–71; 2–3 (part 2): 59–75; Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), Na strazhe dukha, ed. Nikon (Parimanchuk) (Moscow, 2008). 66. Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), Chem zhiva nasha russkaia pravoslavnaia dusha, 11. 67. By 1890, many of the early numbers were going into their seventh reprint, and some were being printed in their thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth reprint; see RGIA, f. 796, op. 168, d. 2284, ll. 6–11. 68. “Pomnite, deti, piatuiu zapoved’,” Troitskie listki, no.75, was in its fifteenth reprint in 1889; “Ot sovesti nikuda ne ubezhish’,” taken from the homilies of Ilia Miniatii, Troitskie listki, no. 84, was in its fourteenth reprinting; and “Istinnyi schastlivets,” Troitskie listki, no. 1, was in its thirteenth reprinting; RGIA, f. 796, op. 168, d. 2284, ll. 6–11. 69. See the Polnyi sistematicheskii ukazatel’ statei v “Troitskikh Listkakh” (NN 1–800) (STSL, 1896). 70. Numbers 801 through 1000 were subsequently published as a separate book: Troitskie listki: Dukhovno-nravstvennoe chtenie dlia naroda. Listki po evangeliiu ot Matfeiia (STSL, 1899), and reprinted as Troitskie listki: Tolkovanie na evangelie ot Matfeiia (Moscow, 1994) and Sviatoe Evangelie s tolkovaniem sviatykh ottsov (Pskov, 2008). 71. The date at which the Leaflets ceased publication is unclear; they began appearing less regularly after 1905, so that vypuski 1–6 appeared in 1900–1905, and the last volume I have been able to locate in any Russian library is vypusk 8, which came out in 1911. Reprints of earlier numbers continued until 1917. The Soviets vehemently opposed such influential, popular religious literature and went to great lengths to extinguish it. Thus no single library has a complete collection. The first 800 numbers were recently reprinted: Troitskie listki: polnoe sobranie (n.p., Pravoslavnyi prikhod Khrama Kazanskoi ikony Bozhiei Materi v Iasenovo, 2001), 4 vols. 72. See the draft report of the Governing Council, June 8, 1887, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25375, ll. 1–2. 73. Report of the Governing Council to the Office of the Holy Synod, December 5, 1907, ibid., d. 17136, l. 3; see also d. 14495.

notes to pages 193–196

431

74. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Sergii, March 23, 1894, ibid., d. 14786, ll. 1–2. 75. Decree of the Holy Synod to Metropolitan Sergii, October 5, 1894, ibid., d. 14786, ll. 6–7. The printing house, according to its rules of establishment, could take private orders, so long as they were for printing books of a religious nature. 76. RGIA, f. 796, op. 180, d. 3514, ll. 2–3 ob; the other books published by the printing house, including the number of copies, are also listed here; see ll. 6–11 ob for a similar report covering 1900; the first volume of the supplementary series of the Leaflets was published in 10,000 copies that year. For 1903–4, see op. 185, d. 5759, ll. 2–3, 7–8. 77. Proposal of Metropolitan Vladimir to the Synod, January 20, 1904, RGIA, f. 796, op. 185, d. 11, ll. 1–2; Synodal decree to Metropolitan Vladimir, January 29, 1904, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16450, ll. 2–3. The Synod also expressed recognition of Nikon’s work in publishing the Leaflets in 1891: Synodal decree to Metropolitan Ioannikii, April 8, 1891, d. 14355, l. 1. 78. See the contract between Bishop Nikon and the Governing Council, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16475, l. 3–3 ob. On the censorship of the Trinity Leaflets, see RGIA, f. 796, op. 168, d. 2284, ll. 1, 3; op. 176, d. 3549, ll. 1–4. 79. See, e.g., the request from Bishop Makarii of Iakutsk to Bishop Nikon, June 14, 1905, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16671, ll. 6–7; for what was sent, see l. 8; and the Vilenskoe Holy Spirit Orthodox brotherhood to Bishop Nikon, July 8, 1905, ibid., l. 9. 80. On icon visitations, see Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy, 183–90. 81. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Leontii, February 25, 1892, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14490, ll. 2–3; report of the Council to the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory, November 16, 1893, d. 14702, l. 3–3 ob; Opisanie krestnogo khozhdeniia iz Troitsko-Sergievoi lavry s ikonoiu prepodobnogo Sergiia, izobrazhennoiu na grobovoi ego doske, v Khot’kov monastyr’, v selo Radonezh i dr. okrestnye mesta po sluchaiu epidimicheskoi bolezni (Moscow, 1850). 82. Report of Hieromonk Olimpei, 1893, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14702, l. 20–20 ob. 83. Sovremennye izvestiia, no. 249 (September 10, 1871). 84. Testimony of Hieromonk Nikon, 1871, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 11589, ll. 2–3. 85. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 193. 86. A. Zav’ialov, Tsirkuliarnye ukazy Sviateishego Pravitel’stvuiushchego Sinoda, 1867– 1900 gg. (Saint Petersburg, 1901), 322. 87. Memorandum from the Vladimir Ecclesiastical Consistory to the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory, April 16, 1898, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15385, ll. 2–3. The abbot of Makhra, in turn, requested that the Governing Council of the Lavra ask permission of the Metropolitan of Moscow to resume the processions (l. 5), but his request was ignored (“ostavleny bez posledstviia”), despite the fact that he presented all the requests from the various villages (l. 12); see also d. 15604. Makhrishchskii Monastery was in a difficult position because it was located in Vladimir Diocese, but under the jurisdiction of the Lavra and therefore the Moscow Diocese. 88. Report of Hieromonk Serafim, abbot of Makhra, to the Governing Council, June 7, 1908, ibid., d. 17281, l. 3–3 ob. 89. On the role of saints in Orthodoxy, see, e.g., Sergius Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, trans. Lydia Kesich (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), 116–28; on the Russian veneration of saints in late Imperial Russia, see Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, 39–72.

432

notes to pages 196–201

90. These files are RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, dd. 3258, 3679, 4736, 7286, 8369, 9136, 10430, 11138, 15609, 16022, 17460, 24824, 25167. Archimandrite Antonii’s collection is Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1884; reprinted STSL, 1997). Archimandrite Kronid’s collection is “Premudrost’ Bozhiia bezpredel’na i sud’by eia neispovedimy,” OR RGB, f. 766, k. 2, d. 4. At some point, Archimandrite Veniamin (Milov), who was a monk at Trinity-Sergius after World War II, read Kronid’s manuscript and copied out extracts and systematized them; later, he wrote, the original manuscript had disappeared. Archimandrite Veniamin’s collection was published as Troitskie tsvetki s luga dukhovnogo (Moscow: Izdanie Sreteneskogo monastyria, 1996); see his preface, 3–4. Veniamin’s version has also been included in Kronid (Liubimov), Besedy, Propovedi, Rasskazy (STSL, 2004), 428–548. Whether the OR RGB manuscript is the same as the one Veniamin saw is unclear; many of the stories are the same, but not all of those given by Veniamin are found in Kronid’s manuscript, and there are also divergences in details of the stories. 91. Worobec, “Miraculous Healings,” 30. 92. Worobec, “Miraculous Healings,” also finds that miracles cut across status and class as well as sex and age, yet concludes that there was a decline of representations of peasants at some cults, suggesting that there was suspicion of peasant faith and greater privilege for the upper classes. The cult of Saint Sergius, however, suggests no such developments. 93. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 10430, l. 2–2 ob. 94. See ibid., d. 10430, l. 4, sending the story to Dushepoleznoe chtenie; it was also evidently printed in the paper Narodnyi golos (l. 8). See Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, letter 40, 70–72. 95. OR RGB, f. 766, k. 2, d. 4, ll. 73–75 (following the manuscript’s numbering). Although Kronid recounted a few more details about the incident—Flor described to him his mental state during the liturgical service that evening—it agrees on the details with the earlier accounts. Archimandrite Veniamin’s version, however, differs in significant details; Kronid, Besedy, 428–29. 96. OR RGB, f. 766, k. 2, d. 4, ll. 65–70; see also Kronid, Besedy, 435ff. 97. OR RGB, f. 766, k. 2, d. 4, ll. 88–91; see also Kronid, Besedy, 441ff. The girl tried to justify herself in the dream, arguing with Saint Sergius that she was acting out of childish naïveté and not evil. This episode took place in 1881; the family was from Riazan region. Kronid also noted that the story had a powerful effect on the girl’s brother, Professor Mitrofan Muretov of the Moscow Theological Academy. 98. Christine D. Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches and Demons in Imperial Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001). 99. Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, 50–52. 100. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 24824, ll. 20 ob–21. 101. This is from the father’s account, in RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25167, l. 4. 102. Ibid., ll. 4 ob–5. 103. Ibid., l. 5–5 ob. 104. Ibid., l. 3. At the end of this synthetic account, evidently put together by Toviia, there is a handwritten note by the family’s parish priest, who confirms the nature of the boy’s suffering but states that he had a relapse after returning home and had to be taken back to Trinity-Sergius, and a month later he was still healthy (l. 3).

notes to pages 201–207

433

105. Report of Toviia to Metropolitan Vladimir, February 18, 1910, ibid., l. 1. 106. For a similar case in which the boy was possessed after hearing the father curse, see Kronid, Besedy, 438–39. 107. Report of Toviia to Metropolitan Vladimir, February 18, 1910, l. 1 ob. 108. Worobec, “Miraculous Healings,” 36–37, argues that the Church became embarrassed by exorcisms by this point and tried to downplay them precisely for the “educated” audience—so it is significant that educated witnesses confirmed the validity of this miracle and that the monastery did not shy away from publicizing this event. 109. Miasnikov’s letter is undated, but it appears to come from 1884; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 24824, l. 3. 110. Ibid., ll. 3–4. 111. Letter of November 29, 1902, ibid., l. 21. 112. OR RGB, f. 766, k. 2, d. 4, ll. 152–59. Firsov told this story to Kronid in 1895. 113. Ibid., ll. 24–26; and see Kronid, Besedy, 440ff. The priest to whom the man went to confession related the story to Kronid. 114. Letter from Vasilii Grachev, April 9, 1907, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16022, ll. 2a–2b. 115. See Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, 60–64. 116. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15609, ll. 1–3. 117. Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, 22–23; for other cases, see also 18–21; Metropolitan Filaret found these stories “very comforting”; Pis’ma, vol. 1, 279. For another case of a woman who saw Platon in a dream and went to the monastery to serve a panikhida and was cured on two occasions in the 1840s and in 1852, see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 7286. Another figure was Maxim Grek (Maximos the Greek), a monk and theologian of the sixteenth century, who was canonized in 1988; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 9163, ll. 1–2; see also Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, 57–59. 118. See Freeze, “Subversive Piety”; Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars,73–102; Worobec, “Miraculous Healings”; and Nadieszda Kizenko, “Protectors of Women and Lower Orders: Constructing Sainthood in Modern Russia,” in Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars, ed. Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 105–24. 119. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 24824, ll. 9 ob–10. 120. OR RGB, f. 766, k. 2, d. 4, l. 72. 121. See RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 24824, l. 20. 122. This account appears to have been prepared by the monastery, December 22, 1822, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 3679, l. 2 ob. 123. Ibid., ll. 30–31 ob. 124. Ibid., d. 24824, ll. 7 ob–8, are a pair of cases of people from Kozel’sk and Elets respectively that sent money for the purchase of oil for the relics. 125. Letter from Father Beliaev to the Treasurer, September 22, 1901, ibid., ll. 15 ob–16 ob. For a comparable case, see d. 16022, l. 2, written by a young woman who had fallen ill eight years earlier as a child, and when her mother made a vow, the girl started to get better right away, they fulfilled the vow, and she had since been healthy. 126. Letter from Elisaveta Khorokhova, January 18, 1910, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16022, ll. 7–8 ob.

434 notes to pages 207–212 127. Letter from Mikhail Nazarov, September 20, 1902, ibid., 2 ob. 128. Ibid., d. 8396, contains the various correspondence between Gel’debrant, Anserov, and the monastery (1857–59); see esp. ll. 2–5, 11–15. 129. Letter from Mariia Chefronova of Kursk, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16022, ll. 6 ob–7. 130. Letter from T. Fedorov, August 19, 1907, ibid., ll. 2 ob–3. 131. Letter from Gerasim Gukov, n.d. (1900 or 1901), ibid., d. 24824, ll. 14 ob–15 ob. 132. Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, 52–54; Worobec, “Miraculous Healings,” 30–31. 133. From the report of Metropolitan Filaret to the Holy Synod, March 12, 1833, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 4736, ll. 42–45 ob; see also M. M. Gromyko and A. V. Buganov, O vozzreniiakh russkogo naroda (Moscow: Palomnik, 2000), 130–32, citing the file from the Holy Synod (RGIA, f. 796, op. 114, d. 247). 134. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 4736, l. 45 ob; ll. 5–11 and 16 are the investigation, l. 13 is Filaret’s report to the Synod (March 12, 1833). For Filaret’s initial reaction, see Pis’ma, vol. 1, 57. 135. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 24824, l. 12 ob. 136. OR RGB, f. 766, k. 2, d. 4, l. 61. 137. Ibid., l. 77. 138. Worobec, “Miracle Stories,” 38–39; Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, 28–33; 55–60. Indeed, Greene makes the explicit contrast between didactic stories told by the clergy, which included such cautionary tales, and those told by believers themselves, which emphasized healing, solace, and encouragement rather than discipline or punishment. 139. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 24824, l. 2 ob. 140. One woman from Riazan wrote that, when she was young, her family made a special trip to see the big city (Moscow); she related that she was so excited to get to Moscow that she had little patience with the rest of her family, who were even more eager to pay their respects to Saint Sergius, about whom she was indifferent. But then she fell very ill on the road, and her parents told her it was punishment for her indifference. She then promised to go the monastery on foot if she were cured, and she instantly began to feel relief and shortly recovered. Writing many years later, this letter suggests the episode was one that left a deep impression on the woman’s life. Ibid., ll. 10–11. 141. See also Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, 64–71. 142. The only significant donation in the cases I have examined was one man who donated 500 rubles to publish 500 copies of a booklet about Saint Sergius for free distribution to pilgrims at the monastery as a way of giving glory to the saint for healing his wife and telling others about the possibility of Sergius’ miraculous intervention. Letter of Smol’ianskii, May 7, 1816, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 3258, ll. 1–2. 143. OR RGB, f. 766, k. 2, d. 4, l. 78. 144. Ibid., l. 19. There was a similar case in 1848, when a father brought his son whom, he said, they had “promised to God.” Since he was eighteen and willing to join the monastery, Archimandrite Antonii accepted him; see Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, 38–40. 145. Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, 6–9; Pis’ma, vol. 1, 59. After the boy was healed, Archimandrite Antonii instructed him to go to Confession and Communion—not realizing that he was an Old Believer. 146. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 3258, l. 3–3 ob, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 2, d. 4, ll. 172–79.

notes to pages 212–215

435

147. “Odno iz sovremennykh chudes Prepodobnogo Sergiia,” reprinted in Sergei Nilus, Velikoe v malom: Zapiski pravoslavnogo 3rd ed. (STSL, 1911; reprinted Novosibirsk, 1994), 47– 55. This episode was also copied out by hand in the monastery’s collection of miracle stories; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 24824, ll. 16 ob–19 ob. On Nilus, see chapter 7 below. 148. See Pis’ma, vol. 1, 57. Filaret was particularly happy with the behavior of the monks who supported Ivanov. 149. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16022, l. 6 ob. 150. Letter of November 28, 1834, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 87. 151. Letter of December 15, 1834, ibid., 90. 152. Letter of December 30, 1834, ibid., 91. 153. Letter of March 30, 1836, ibid., 132. The manuscript was finally published as “Nekotorye cherty zhitiia Prepodobnogo i Bogonosnogo Ottsa nashego Sergiia Radonezhskogo posle smerti, to-est’ nekotorye skazaniia o ego iavleniiakh i chudodeistviiakh,” Khristianskoe Chtenie 2 (1836): 58–99, and included in the life of Saint Sergius: Zhitie Prepodobnogo i Bogonosnogo Ottsa nashego Sergiia, Radonezhskogo i vseia Rosiia Chudotvortsa, 3rd edition (Moscow, 1852). It was reprinted in the post-Soviet period as Skazanie o iavleniiakh i chudesakh prepodobnogo ottsa nashego Sergiia Radonezhskogo (Moscow, n.d.) and elsewhere. 154. Most of the letters published by Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, clearly originate as Antonii’s letters to Filaret about such incidents, and Filaret’s responses to them can usually be found in Pis’ma. 155. Letter of March 20, 1833, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 57. 156. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 4736, ll. 13, 42. 157. Letter of April 20, 1833, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 60. Perhaps it was because of this episode that Ivanov’s story is not included by Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma. 158. Letter of January 7, 1834, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 71. 159. Most of the episodes recorded by Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, for that time period have to do with the life of the monastery (a miraculous end to a fire that threatened the monastery) or the spiritual life of monks (visions, battles with demons, etc.), rather than with miraculous cures. Curiously, the next file in the Lavra’s archive after the Ivanov file—d. 7286, from 1852—has to do with Platon, as do virtually the only tales in Monastyrskie pis’ma relating to laity being healed until the end of the 1840s (18–23). 160. The explanation for this may be that these particular documents were kept in the Sacristy, whereas the archive that is now housed in RGADA, f. 1204, is that of the Governing Council. (For other examples, see d. 8396, l. 10, and d. 11138, ll. 3–4). On the instructions for keeping a bound (“sewn”) book with miraculous occurrences, see d. 9163. That book is evidently d. 24824, in which the first recorded miracle is the one from d. 9163 (in 1861), although the next miracles recorded in the book are from the 1880s and go up to 1902. Then d. 16022 picks up where the previous one left off and goes through 1910. Neither of these files contain the original letters, but rather their transcriptions. In 1928, antireligious activists alleged that some of these files were stolen from the archive by former monks, allegedly because they would incriminate the monastery, though there is no evidence that this in fact happened. See below, chapter 9, and O. N. Kopylova, “O sud’be arkhiva Troitse-Sergievoi lavry,” Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 4 (2001): 13–22. Kostomarov wrote about the miracle stories and quoted extant sources, although he calculated twice as many cases between 1899 and 1909 than I

436 notes to pages 215–222 found in the archive (Bog i ego podvizhniki, 64–66); it is not clear whether he had access to sources no longer in the archive, or whether he was simply exaggerating. 161. Antonii’s collection was published as Antonii (Medvedev), Monastyrskie pis’ma, first edition (Moscow, 1863), 2nd ed. (1864), and 3rd ed. (1884). 162. Letter of June 27, 1835, in Pis’ma, vol. 1, 110. In the episode that provoked this comment, the Synod refused to allow the Simonov monastery to take an icon on procession near the monastery (in 1835); the Synod had earlier confiscated another miraculous icon from the Simonov monastery (see vol. 1, 82 and n. 75). Metropolitan Serafim of Saint Petersburg told Filaret there was no way he would agree to it, despite Filaret’s efforts at persuasion. 163. Freeze, “Institutionalizing Piety.” 164. “Prepodobnyi Sergii i nyne chudodeistvuet,” Troitskie listki, Dop. schet vypusk 8, no. 306 (1911): 1269–72. 165. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17460, l. 3–3 ob. 166. In order to grant the divorce, it was necessary to demonstrate that she did not become “incapable of conjugal relations” after the wedding. 167. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16022, ll. 4–5 ob. See the correspondence with the Tver Consistory and other elements of the investigation in d. 17460. 168. Chulos, Converging Worlds, does a very nice job of challenging some of the condescending assumptions about the “backwardness” and superstition of Russian peasant religion, but he still treats “popular religion” as something primarily peasant in nature rather than something shared by all levels of society. For a fuller picture, see Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy. 169. Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999), 169–76, 246–87, 357–58. 170. Naturally, it was considered inappropriate for monks to minister to women except in their capacity as clergy, so the Home for the Poor was staffed by women. But this is in contrast to Lourdes, where all of the ill were tended by an order of nuns; see ibid., 236–45. 171. See ibid., 177–209.

chapter 6 1. Toviia, “Vospominanie moego proshedshego,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 74 ob. 2. Toviia’s service record for 1904, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16462, ll. 17–25. Before 1904, he also served as superintendent (blagochinnyi) of the Moscow city monasteries, as well as a member or chairman of various committees for collections for the Red Cross, for Siberia, and for the restoration of various churches. 3. Decree of the Holy Synod to Metropolitan Vladimir, June 6, 1904, in RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16462, l. 1; for Toviia’s own version of the grand duke’s intervention, see Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, ll. 75–76. According to Toviia, the grand duke virtually ordered Metropolitan Vladimir to appoint him, although Archbishop Nikon’s note at the bottom of the manuscript (l. 76) expresses doubt that the grand duke would have acted in such a way. 4. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” ll. 77 ob–79 ob. The walls of the Trinity Cathedral had been repainted during the time of Metropolitan Filaret, and perhaps many times before that as well. 5. Letter to Kronid, August 16, 1905, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 10 ob.

notes to pages 222–228

437

6. Toviia, “Vospominanie,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 77. 7. Letter to Kronid, May 29, 1907, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 63. 8. On Rublev, see Robert Bird, “Canonizing Andrei Rublev: Aesthetics, Ideology, and the Making of a Russian Saint,” in The Trinity-Sergius Lavra in Russian History and Culture, ed. Vladimir Tsurikov (Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2005), 122–40. 9. Proposal of the Office of the Chief Procurator to the Holy Synod, July 10, 1901, RGIA, f. 796, op. 182, d. 535, l. 1. 10. Decree of the Holy Synod, July 25, 1901, ibid., ll. 19–21; circular decree of September 25, 1901, ll. 42–44. 11. Circular decree, September 25, 1901, ibid., ll. 43–44. For similar concerns about parish collections, see Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 62–66. 12. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15957, ll. 1–22. 13. Rules for the revision of monasteries, ibid., ll. 24–25. 14. Information about the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and the monasteries under its jurisdiction, ibid., l. 29–29 ob. 15. Ibid., ll. 29–31. 16. Ibid., ll. 31 ob–32. 17. Ibid., ll. 34-36, 37 ob–39 ob, 41–42. 18. Ibid., l. 36. 19. Ibid., l. 36–36 ob. 20. Ibid., l. 39 ob. 21. Ibid., ll. 39 ob–40. 22. Ibid., dd. 16136, 17052; also see chapter 4 above. 23. The council sent out decrees to the effect that the rest of the communities in the collective were also required to observe these prohibitions more clearly; see the decree to Hegumen Ilarii of the Skete, June 2, 1907, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15957, ll. 68–69. 24. Report for Vologda, February 18, 1902, RGIA, f. 796, op. 182, d. 535, ll. 61–63; Novgorod, April 18, 1904, ll. 226–27. 25. Report of the Moscow Synodal Office on Solovki, ibid., l. 210; see also reports for Kaluga, September 5, 1902, ll. 155–57; Kursk, June 17, 1902, ll. 176–78. 26. Report for Nizhegorod Diocese, December 12, 1902, ibid., ll. 222 ob–23; also Kiev, February 14, 1903, ll. 170–75. 27. RGIA, f. 796, op. 182, d. 535, ll. 488–98 n.d. (probably sometime in 1904). 28. Ibid., ll. 488–91 ob. 29. Ibid., l. 493. 30. Ibid., l. 498. 31. A. Kruglov, “Na sluzhbe miru—na sluzhbe Bogu,” Dushepoleznoe chtenie, October 1902, 186–93. 32. A. I. Vvedenskii (1861–1913) taught philosophy at the Moscow Academy (1886–1913) and edited Dushepoleznoe chtenie from 1902 to 1907; PE 7: 352–53. 33. Editorial note, Dushepoleznoe chtenie, October 1902, 186 n. 1. 34. Archimandrite Nikon, “Pravoslavnyi ideal monashestva,” Dushepoleznoe chtenie, October 1902, 194–209.

438 notes to pages 229–232 35. Ibid. 36. Archimandrite Nikon, “Eshche ob ideale monashestva,” Dushepoleznoe chtenie, January 1903, 107–20. 37. Ibid. 38. Archimandrite Evdokim, “Inoki na sluzhbe blizhnim,” Bogoslovskii Vestnik, November 1902, 305–58. On Evdokim, see PE 17: 115–17. 39. Archimandrite Evdokim, “Inoki na sluzhbe blizhnim,” Bogoslovskii Vestnik, December 1902, 576–635. See Vvedenskii’s response, “Nedorazumenie po vazhnomu voprosu (Otvet o. arkhimandritu Evdokimu),” Dushepoleznoe chtenie, January 1903, 155–80. This provoked an exchange between A. Spasskii, editor of the academy’s journal, Bogoslovskii vestnik, and Vvedenskii, but it contained more personal vituperation than it contributed to the debate; A. Spasskii, “Iz tekushchei zhurnalistiki,” Bogoslovskii Vestnik, January 1903, 172–80; Vvedenskii, “Protiv ochevidnosti i mimo zaprosov zhizni,” Dushepoleznoe chtenie, May 1903, 119–39; A. Spasskii, “Chto napisano perom, togo ne vyrubish’ i toporom (Korotkii otvet na dva dlinnykh obvineniia),” Bogoslovskii Vestnik, May 1903, 188–95. 40. S. I. Smirnov (1870–1916) was the author of Drevnerusskii dukhovnik (Moscow, 1913; reprinted Moscow, Pravoslavnyi Sviato-Tikhonovskii Bogoslovskii institut, 2004). N. F. Kapterev (1847–1917) wrote a major book on Patriarch Nikon. 41. N. Kapterev, “V chem sostoit istinnoe monashestvo po vozzreniiam prepodobnogo Maksima Greka,” Bogoslovskii Vestnik, January 1903, 114–171. 42. S. Smirnov, “Kak sluzhili miru podvizhniki drevnei Rusi? (Istoricheskaia spravka k polemike o monashestve),” Bogoslovskii Vestnik, March 1903, 516–80, and April 1903, 716–88. 43. Archimandrite Nikon, “Nuzhno chitat’ kak napisano,” Dushepoleznoe chtenie, May 1903, 140–48. 44. Archimandrite Nikon, “Delanie inocheskoe i delo Bozhie,” Dushepoleznoe chtenie, February 1903, 330–55. 45. Archimandrite Nikon, “Za kogo govorit istoriia? (K voprosu o monashestve),” Dushepoleznoe chtenie, December 1903, 688–713. 46. Nikon, “Delanie inocheskoe i delo Bozhie,” 342. 47. Ibid., 339. 48. Nikon, “Nuzhno chitat’,” 146. 49. The priest Sergei Chetverikov came to Nikon’s defense, arguing exactly this point about the spiritual service of monasteries; Na sluzhbe Bogu—na sluzhbe blizhnim (Moscow, 1996), reprinted from Dushepoleznoe Chtenie in 1903. 50. Kapterev, “Sovremennyi monastyrskii monakh-publitsist (Otvet o. arkhimandritu Nikonu),” OR RGB, f. 765, k.13, d. 15, ll. 1–14 ob. See also Scott M. Kenworthy, “To Save the World or to Renounce It: Modes of Moral Action in Russian Orthodoxy,” in Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies, ed. Mark Steinberg and Catherine Wanner (Washington, D.C., and Bloomington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Indiana University Press, 2008), 35–42; and Sergii Golubtsov, “Polemika po monasheskomu voprosu v Moskovskoi Dukhovnoi Akademii (1902–1904 gg.),” Zhurnal istoriko-bogoslovskogo obshchestva (Moscow, 1992): 104–16. 51. See Scott M. Kenworthy, “An Orthodox Social Gospel in Late-Imperial Russia,” Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe 1 (May 2006): 1–29, http://rs.as.wvu.edu/

notes to pages 232–236 439 contents1.htm; and Jennifer Hedda, His Kingdom Come: Orthodox Pastorship and Social Activism in Revolutionary Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008). 52. See Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy, 70–71. 53. See Skott M. Kenvorti (Scott M. Kenworthy), “Pervyi Vserossiiskii s”ezd monashestvuiushchikh v 1909 g.,” in Troitse-Sergieva lavra v istorii, kul’ture i dukhovnoi zhizni Rossii. Materialy II Mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii 4–6 oktiabria 2000 g. (Sergiev Posad, 2002), 166–84. 54. One of the few other bishops, Mitrofan, bishop of Eletsk (auxiliary of Orlov Diocese)—who disagreed with the rest of the members of the Congress on many fundamental issues—was not among the representatives originally chosen, but was specifically requested to be made a participant by Aleksandr, bishop of Orlov. RGIA, f. 796, op. 190, 2a st., I otd., d. 375a, ll. 4–5. 55. V. M. Skvortsov, one of only two lay participants of the Congress, gave a brief history of how the Congress came together in an article in Kolokol (no. 1013, 1909), reproduced by Hieromonk Serafim, Pervyi vserossiiskii s”ezd monashestvuiushikh 1909 goda: Vospominaniia uchastnika (Kungur, 1912; reprinted Moscow, 1999), 7–16; the citation here is on 10. 56. See chapter 1. 57. The list of participants is given in RGADA, f.1204, op.1, d.17518, ll. 26 ob–28; and by Serafim, Pervyi vserossiiskii s”ezd, 22–24. The participants included several recognized startsy. On the reform of women’s monasticism, see Scott M. Kenworthy, “Abbess Taisiia of Leushino and the Reform of Women’s Monasticism in Early-Twentieth-Century Russia,” in Culture and Identity in Eastern Christian History, ed. Jennifer Spock and Russell Martin (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2009). 58. The Program of the Congress is RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17518, ll. 4–6 ob; the citation here is on l.4. The program is also reproduced by Serafim, Pervyi vserossiiskii s”ezd, 24–31. 59. Serafim, Pervyi vserossiiskii s”ezd, 139–47. 60. Ibid., 179–80. 61. Ibid., 64. 62. Ibid., 242. 63. RGIA, f. 796, op. 190, 2a st., I otd., d. 375a, ll. 103–4; Serafim, Pervyi vserossiiskii s”ezd, 229–31, 241–42. 64. Serafim, Pervyi vserossiiskii s”ezd, 243. 65. Ibid., 226–28. 66. Ibid., 86. 67. Ibid., 78–79, 201. 68. Ibid., 221–23, 265. 69. Ibid., 82. 70. Ibid., 180–97; 248–58; RGIA, f. 796, op. 190, 2a st., I otd., d. 375a, ll. 108–11. 71. Serafim, Pervyi vserossiiskii s”ezd, 255–58. 72. RGIA, f. 797, op. 80, d. 337, ll. 2–4. On the consequences of the prohibition of sborshchiki for women’s monasteries, see Kenworthy, “Abbess Taisiia.” 73. Quoted by P. N. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri i monashestvo v XIX i nachale XX veka (Moscow: Verbum-M., 2002), 237. 74. Hieromonk Aleksii, “K s”ezdu monashestvuiushchikh,” orig. pub. in the journal Monastyr’ and reproduced by Serafim, Pervyi vserossiiskii s”ezd, 336–49.

440 notes to pages 236–240 75. It is not clear if this implied that assigning errant monks to “hard labor” (chernaia rabota) thereby ceased. 76. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17729, l. 1 (December 2, 1910). The council’s decision explained that hieromonks and hierodeacons were responsible for purchasing their own clothing, so that, on transfer to cenobitic conditions, they received their clothing in the same way as monks and novices (once a year). 77. Decree to Archimandrite Kornilii, December 1910, ibid., d. 17713, l. 1. 78. Report from the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, January 8, 1911, ibid., d. 17814, l. 2. Curiously, Vladimir responded that the practice was a good idea, but that it would be better to carry out this program “unofficially”; ibid., l. 2, top. 79. Exchange between the Vladimir Consistory and the Governing Council, March 1912, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18030, ll. 2–3. 80. See Pis’ma, vol. 3, 238, 246, 250-51, 257, 279 (letters of April 1863–January 1865). 81. Letter to Kronid, December 22, 1911, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 140 ob; see also ll. 128, 130. 82. Metropolit Veniamin (Fedchenkov), Bozh’i Liudi: Moi dukhovnye vstrechi (Moscow, 1988), 62–71. This is the fullest biographical sketch of German, based on German’s own recollections as written down by his disciples Mel’khisedek and Innokentii (Oreshkin, 1870– 1949). The latter was one of the few inhabitants of Zosimova to survive the Terror, and he met Metropolitan Veniamin when the latter returned to the Soviet Union from abroad after World War II and gave him these manuscripts, from which Veniamin composed the biography. See A. K. Svetozarskii, “Materialy o Zosimovskom startse skhiigumene Germane v trudakh Mitropolita Veniamina (Fedchenkova),” in Trudy po istorii Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry, ed. T. N. Manushina (Moscow: Podkova, 1998), 97–100; and the footnotes to this edition of Veniamin, Bozh’i Liudi, also prepared by Svetozarskii. German’s last name is various spelled “Gomzin” and “Gamzin” in different documents. 83. Report on tonsures, 1877, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 12469; German’s service record, 1897, ibid., d. 15256, ll. 3–4. 84. Reports of Abbot Daniil to the Governing Council, February 26, 1892, and October 17, 1893, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14489, ll. 2, 6. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1995), 77; Veniamin (Fedchenkov), Bozh’i Liudi, 71–83. 85. Report of Abbot Hegumen Daniil to the Governing Council, 1894, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14833, l. 2. 86. Veniamin (Fedchenkov), Bozh’i Liudi, 83–87. Pavel’s report of September 26, 1897, stated that Ioann was unfit for heading the community because of age and illness; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15256, l. 2. 87. German’s letter, January 3, 1898, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15344, l. 3; see also d. 15256, ll. 9–10. 88. Request of the skete’s novice D. Likhachev to Metropolitan Sergii, January 2, 1898, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15344, l. 5; see also l. 4. 89. According to German’s own account, as recorded by Veniamin (Fedchenkov), Bozh’i Liudi, 85, Daniil refused to let German go until Pavel threatened to “pull out a letter of complaint against Daniil with regards to starets Varnava,” at which point Daniil desisted; it is not clear if this referred to the earlier conflict around Varnava.

notes to pages 240–245

441

90. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia, 77–79; Veniamin (Fedchenkov), Bozh’i Liudi, 52, give their impressions of their visits to the hermitage. 91. On Veniamin (Fedchenkov, 1880–1961), see PE 7: 652–54. 92. Veniamin (Fedchenkov), Bozh’i Liudi, 56–57; Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia, 79. For a plan of the community’s land usage, see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15823. 93. Report of the Governing Council, 1902, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16139, l. 2. 94. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia, 69. 95. Otvety episkopa Feofana, zatvornika Vyshenskoi pustyni, na voprosy unoka otnositel’no razlichnykh delanii monasheskoi zhizni (Tambov, 1894). 96. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia, 81. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii, 1874–1937) studied at the Moscow Academy 1899–1903 and served at the Chudov Monastery from 1903 until he was consecrated bishop of Serpukhov (auxiliary of the Moscow Diocese) in 1914. He was executed in 1937, a victim of the Terror; PE 3: 399–401. 97. Aleksii’s biography was written by his spiritual children, the priest Il’ia Chetverukhin (1886–1932) and his wife Evgeniia (d. 1974); they began collecting information about his life at the time of the Revolution. An abbreviated version of the book was published in Paris in the Soviet period: Starets Aleksii Zosimovoi Pustyni (Paris: YMCA Press, 1989); it was published in Russia as Ieroskhimonakh Aleksii, Starets Smolenskoi Zosimovoi Pustyni (STSL, 1995). After this publication, more information became available, particularly from Aleksii’s granddaughter, and a fuller version was published after his canonization: Prepodobnyi Aleksii, starets Smolenskoi Zosimovoi pustyni (STSL, 2003). Sergei Chetverukhin was also canonized as a confessor; his biography is Slava Bogu za vse . . .: Sviashchennomuchenik protoierei Iliia Chetverukhin: Zhizneopoisanie, Vospominaniia dukhovnykh chad, Propovedi, ed. O. S. Chetverukhina (STSL, 2004). 98. On Vissarion (Nechaev, 1822–1905), see PE 8: 548. 99. Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 30–46. 100. Ibid., 46. 101. Ibid., 52. 102. Request of Feodor Solov’ev to Metropolitan Vladimir, September 1898, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15427, l. 3; German’s report to the Governing Council, November 30, 1898, l. 12. 103. Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 69. 104. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia, 262. 105. Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 62–70. 106. Ibid., 72. 107. Ibid., 70–92. 108. For some of the construction under German, see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 14687, ll. 14–30; for descriptions of the hermitage, see Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 56–62; and I. Korsunskii, Zosimova pustyn’ (STSL, 1895), 68–86. 109. German’s report to Toviia, July 21, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, l. 39. 110. German’s report to the Governing Council, October 1897, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15256, l. 9. 111. See Sergei Fomin, ed., “Svete Tikhii”: Zhizneopisanie i trudy episkopa Serpukhovskogo Arseniia (Zhadanovskogo) (Moscow: Palomnik, 2002), vol. 3, 723; German’s report to Toviia, July 21, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, l. 35. According to German’s later recollections,

442 notes to pages 245–248 Iona was the one responsible for uncovering the money that German’s predecessor, Ioann, had wasted—and Ioann warned German that Iona “will do much evil to you too.” Veniamin (Fedchenkov), Bozh’i Liudi, 86. 112. German’s report to Toviia, July 21, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, l. 35 ob. 113. Iona’s report, March 10, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, l. 7 ob; protocols of the Governing Council, l. 30. 114. Iona’s report, March 10, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, ll. 7–29; Toviia’s report to Metropolitan Vladimir, August 13, 1909, l. 129 ob. 115. See Toviia’s report to Metropolitan Vladimir, August 13, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, ll. 130 ob–31 ob; and Toviia’s letter to Kronid, November 4, 1908, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 91. 116. See Toviia’s report to Metropolitan Vladimir, August 13, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, l. 129–29 ob; and Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia, 81. 117. German’s report to Toviia, July 21, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, ll. 34–37 ob, with the detailed explanations (ll. 39–71 ob; d. 25154, ll. 1–33 ob is a copy of the same). See Toviia’s note at the top of German’s report; Iona prepared a detailed response to German’s report; d. 17479, ll. 105–24, 133–91. 118. Toviia’s report, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, l. 130–30 ob. On the consequences of the 1905 Revolution, see chapter 7. Toviia cited another example that he alleged demonstrated German’s “infringement on the monastery’s property” and unjust blame of Iona, pertaining to Iona’s temporary departure to Petersburg: see ll. 130 ob–131, 36 ob. 119. Toviia’s report, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, l. 131. 120. Report of Zosimova brothers to Toviia, April 7, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, l. 100. The letter is difficult to make sense of because its authors appear to be barely literate. 121. Toviia’s report to Metropolitan Vladimir, August 13, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17479, l. 131. 122. Ibid., l. 131 ob. 123. Ibid. 124. Ibid., marginal note. 125. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia, 80. 126. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, September 3, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17480, ll. 5–6; see also d. 17479, ll. 129, 125. 127. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia, 80. 128. Two fires broke out at Makhra after German’s transfer. The investigation by the Lavra’s authorities concluded that two monks were responsible—two monks who had previously behaved “reprehensibly,” leaving whenever they felt like it for as long as they wanted to, even spending the night elsewhere, and who were frequently drunk. It is not clear whether they set the fires in protest against German’s strictness; but when the Lavra’s authorities considered expelling the two, it found that they were no longer leaving the monastery or getting drunk, and it seemed that they had reformed their behavior in response to German’s efforts to discipline them; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 22878, l. 106 ob. 129. These reminiscences come from the manuscript of Chetverukhin’s biography of Aleksii but were left out of the published versions. They are quoted from the manuscript in “Svete tikhii,” ed. Fomin, vol. 3, 726.

notes to pages 248–255 443 130. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, June 5, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17452, l. 2. 131. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, September 12, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17452, l. 4. 132. Letter of German’s spiritual children to Metropolitan Vladimir (n.d.), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17480, ll. 73–73 ob; Bulgakov and a few others did not physically sign but added their names by telegraph from Petersburg. 133. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17480, l. 72–72 ob. 134. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, November 5, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17480, l. 71; Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, November 30, 1909, d. 17511, l. 3 ob. 135. Fomin, “Svete Tikhii,” vol. 3, 725–26. 136. These subsidies ended in 1909; see RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17478. The discussion about money coming from Trinity-Sergius does appear in the documents; see, e.g., d. 17479, l. 131. 137. Request of Hieromonk Aleksii to the Governing Council, May 24, 1916, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18792, l. 4. He originally spent five days a week in seclusion, but he and German later decided this was too little time for receiving people and hearing confessions, so he cut it back to four. 138. Ibid., l. 4 ob. 139. Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 98–109. 140. Moskovskie Vedomosti, June 8, 1916, quoted by Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 110–11. 141. Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 112–25.

chapter 7 1. Toviia’s Journal for March 7, 1915, Troitskoe slovo, no. 341 (1916): 652. 2. Toviia’s Journal for January 9, 1916, Troitskoe slovo, no. 362 (1917): 185–86. 3. Toviia’s Journal for September 10, 1913, Troitskoe slovo, no. 362 (1917): 186. 4. Ibid., 187. 5. Toviia’s Journal for January 6, 1915, Troitskoe slovo, no. 340 (1916): 632–33. 6. See Toviia’s request to Metropolitan Makarii, January 2, 1915, OR RGB, f. 771, k. 3, d. 3, l. 1; Decree of the Synod to Metropolitan Makarii, January 9, 1915, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18594, l. 1. 7. See Pavel’s letter to Toviia, December 31, 1898, OR RGB, f. 771, k. 4, d. 10, l. 1; and Troitskoe slovo, no. 348 (1916): 758, and no. 362 (1917): 183. 8. Troitskoe slovo, no. 348 (1916): 650, and no. 362 (1917): 183; Hieromonk Zosima evidently later told his disciples that Toviia was forced to retire, and that “the monastery hated him so much that he could not live near it,” as an explanation for why he went to Paraclete; see Jane Ellis, trans., An Early Soviet Saint: The Life of Father Zachariah (Springfield, Ill.: Templegate, 1977), 42. This curious book, evidently written by the disciples of Zosima (Schemamonk Zakhariia), circulated as samizdat in the Soviet period that made its way to Jane Ellis. A somewhat fuller version was published in the post-Soviet period: Vladimir Gubanov, ed.,

444 notes to pages 255–257 Starets Zakhariia: Podvigi i chudesa (Moscow, 1998). Zosima evidently did not get along well at Trinity-Sergius and told his disciples a great deal of fantastic and scandalous things about the monastery—e.g., accusing Toviia of trying to murder him—which are unsubstantiated by any archival evidence. That he did not get along with the Lavra’s authorities, however, did leave a trace. See RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16823, l. 13; and Sergii Golubtsov, Troitse-Sergieva Lavra za poslednie sto let (Moscow, 1998), 55–57. 9. Toviia wrote that he kept notes on important events throughout his life, but that he had not preserved them systematically and had lost many of them, so was undertaking to put what remained in order; OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 85. 10. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Makarii, March 19, 1916, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18767, l. 1. He was buried next to his father, who had become a monk at the hermitage and died twenty years before. Curiously, Toviia stated in his will that none of his relatives should be invited to his funeral, “first of all because a monk has rejected the world and all relations, . . . and secondly because I have become convinced by my own bitter experience of life that monastic relatives hurry to the burial of a monk not out of a feeling of kinship and not with the goal of praying, but for the most part to receive the inheritance.” Toviia had already given away all of his money, and he left nothing for his relatives. He also did not want any female relatives coming to his burial, because this would violate Paraclete’s rule forbidding the entrance of women. Toviia’s will of October 9, 1914, ll. 8–11 ob. 11. Blagodariu Boga moego: Vospominaniia Very Timofeevny i Natal’i Aleksandrovny Verkhovtsevykh (Moscow: Pravilo Very, 2001), 75. 12. On the 1905 Revolution, see A. Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, 2 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988–92). 13. See Scott M. Kenworthy, “An Orthodox Social Gospel in Late-Imperial Russia,” Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe 1 (May 2006): 1–29, http://rs.as.wvu.edu/ contents1.htm; Gregory L. Freeze, “Church and Politics in Late Imperial Russia: Crisis and Radicalization of the Clergy,” in Russia under the Last Tsar: Opposition and Subversion, 1894– 1917, ed. Anna Geifman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 269–97, esp. 278ff; Gregory L. Freeze, “Subversive Piety: Religion and the Political Crisis in Late Imperial Russia,” Journal of Modern History 68 (1996): 308–50; Argyrios K. Pisiotis, “Orthodoxy versus Autocracy: The Orthodox Church and Clerical Political Dissent in Late Imperial Russia (1905–1914),” PhD dissertation, Georgetown University, 2000; and Jennifer Hedda, His Kingdom Come: Orthodox Pastorship and Social Activism in Revolutionary Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008). On the period generally, see John Shelton Curtiss, Church and State in Russia: The Last Years of the Empire, 1900–1917 (New York, 1940); and S. L. Firsov, Pravoslavnaia tserkov’ i gosudarstvo v poslednie desiatiletie sushchestvovaniia samoderzhaviia v Rossii (Saint Petersburg, 1996). 14. See John Meyendorff, “Russian Bishops and Church Reform in 1905,” in Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, ed. R. Nichols and T. Stavrou (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978), 170–82; Alexander Bogolepov, Church Reforms in Russia, 1905–1918 (Bridgeport, Conn.: Metropolitan Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of America, 1966); James W. Cunningham, A Vanquished Hope: The Movement for Church Renewal in Russia, 1905–1906 (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981); and N. Zernov, “The Reform of the Church and the Pre-Revolutionary Russian Episcopate,” St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly 6 (1962): 128–38.

notes to pages 257–260 445 15. P. N. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri i monashestvo v XIX i nachale XX veka (Moscow: Verbum-M., 2002), 222–25. 16. On John of Kronstadt’s politics, see Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 233–60. 17. Letter of Nikon to Kronid, September 2, 1905, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 6, l. 3 ob. 18. “Golos iz obiteli Prepodobnogo Sergiia po sluchaiu manifesta 6 avgusta,” Troitskie listki dop. schet vyp. 6, no. 232 (1905): 925–28. 19. In Nikon’s letter to Kronid of September 2, 1905, he said that they needed to insist on these points or else Russia would perish “from the zhids and their traitors.” OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 6, l. 3 ob. On Nikon’s anti-Semitism, see below. 20. “Golos iz obiteli Prepodobnogo Sergiia po sluchaiu manifesta 6 avgusta.” 21. On Nikon, see “Arkhiepiskop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) (1851–1918),” Danilovskii Blagovestnik 1, no. 2 (1992): 60–71, and nos. 2–3 (part 2): 59–75. 22. Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), Bratskoe slovo Troitskogo inoka k monashestvuiushchim (STSL, 1905), citation from 14. See also Nikon’s letter to various bishops to whom he sent this pamphlet. “The mournful events of recent times deeply stab the Russian people’s heart. The monks of Russian communities cannot be indifferent to what is taking place in Rus. The tormented heart thirsts with desire to unify in common, ardent prayer for the distressed native land, in prayer of tearful repentance of all for the sins of all”; March 1905, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16671, l. 1. He sent his book to all the bishops so that they would distribute it to monastic communities in their dioceses. 23. On the whole, the Pochaevskii listok contained many more articles of a political nature than Troitskie listki. See, e.g., “Narodnoe predstavitel’stvo,” Pochaevskii listok 28 (July 1905); “O vyborakh v Gosudarevu dumu,” Pochaevskii listok 36 (September 1905); and “O prekrashchenii zabastovok,” Pochaevskii listok 4 (January 1906). See Curtiss, Church and State, 255–65; Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 225–32. 24. Report of the Governing Council of the Lavra to Metropolitan Vladimir of Moscow, October 20, 1905, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16726, l. 2–2 ob. 25. Ibid., l. 3. 26. Draft of a letter from Archimandrite Toviia to the commander of the troops of the Moscow Military District, October 28, 1905, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16726, l. 4. 27. See the draft of the letter from the Governing Council to the Moscow governor, November 1905, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16726, l. 11; and the Memorandum from the Moscow Governor to Archimandrite Toviia, November 12, 1905, l. 9. 28. Letters to Hierom. Kronid of November 3, 1905, and December 26, 1905, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, ll. 15 ob, 16, 17 ob. The situation was similar the following year; see the letter of August 18, 1906, l. 40. 29. See the correspondence in RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16737, ll. 1–8. 30. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, March 13, 1906, ibid., d. 16844, l. 1. 31. Letter to Kronid, March 22, 1906, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 28 ob. 32. See the correspondence in RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16849, ll. 2, 49. In June, the commander of the Cossacks appealed to the Lavra to give the troops more provisions and in

446 notes to pages 260–262 general to better their living conditions; the monastery agreed; memorandum from the Governing Council to the commander of the Cossacks, June 23, 1906, l. 21. 33. Report of the director of the Lavra’s choral school, deacon Adrian, to Archimandrite Toviia, March 26, 1907, ibid., d. 17041, l. 1. Several adolescent boys—who were generally a “bad influence” on the others—evidently bullied the rest of the boys into refusing to sing; on these boys, see also d. 17124, ll. 5–7. 34. Toviia, letters to Kronid, June 2 and August 18, 1906, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, ll. 35 ob, 40–40 ob. 35. Aside from the instances mentioned, the archival registers also reveal several instances of theft against the Lavra and its other communities. See, e.g., RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17257 (on money stolen from the cell of the manager of the printing house on the night of Pascha in 1908); d. 17668 (about a possible theft of the Lavra’s treasures in 1910); d. 17873 (about the robbery of one V. V. Kiseleva on the road to Paraclete in 1911); and d. 22878, l. 3 (on Zosimova Hermitage’s fears about a potential robber in 1909). Theft was not something new; there are also numerous files about such incidents before 1905. 36. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, August 31, 1910, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17679, ll. 3–4; d. 28394. See also Toviia’s letter to Kronid, September 26, 1910, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, ll. 129–30. 37. Reports of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, October 22 and October 29, 1910, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17679, ll. 13–14. The interviews of witness and interrogations of suspects are in ll. 36–91. It is unclear whether the original suspect, the soldier, was in fact involved in the crime. 38. Report of Archimandrite Dosifei to the Governing Council, December 12, 1905, ibid., d. 16739, l. 1. 39. Ibid., l. 8 ob. The monastery also sent bread 940 times to people who were too ill to come to the Lavra’s kitchen for meals. It stated that, beginning on February 12, 1906, they would have to cease feeding the poor because the beginning of Lent would result in a large increase in the number of pilgrims coming to the monastery who would require food, though indeed, the numbers of local hungry that the monastery was feeding had peaked already in January. See the memorandum from the Governing Council to the Committee of the Sergiev Posad Philanthropic Society, ibid., l. 7. In other times of need in subsequent years, the monastery also donated significant sums of money for the help of the poor and hungry, such as in 1912, when Trinity-Sergius donated 10,000 rubles (Memorandum to the Economic Administration of the Holy Synod, January 4, 1912, d. 17928, l. 1; Trinity-Sergius donated 8,000 rubles, and Gethsemane Skete 2,000 rubles). 40. Quoted from an article by A. Volynets in Tserkovnye vedomosti, nos.18–19 (1909), reproduced by Serafim, Pervyi vserossiiskii s”ezd monashestvuiushikh 1909 goda: Vospominaniia uchastnika (Kungur, 1912; reprinted Moscow, 1999), 17–18. 41. See Freeze, “Church and Politics,” 274–78, 283–84; and John Basil, Church and State in Late Imperial Russia: Critics of the Synodal System of Church Government (1861–1914) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 113–44. See also Curtiss, Church and State, 287–362. 42. E.g., Curtiss, Church and State, 240–80.

notes to pages 262–265 447 43. See “V Pochaeve otkryt Soiuz Russkogo Naroda,” Pochaevskii listok 34 (August 1906). On Archimandrite Vitalii and the United Russian People in Volhynia, see RGIA, f. 796, op. 442, d.2380, l. 8–8 ob (Annual diocesan report for Volhynia, 1910). 44. Letter to Kronid, March 4, 1910, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, ll. 119–20. 45. Request from the chairman of the Sergiev Posad chapter of the Russian Monarchist Party V. A. Popov to the Governing Council, September 7, 1907, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17109, l. 1. 46. Reply from the Governing Council to Popov, September 7, 1907, ibid., l. 2. The Lavra made them responsible for heating, lighting, and cleaning the hall, stipulating that they were to have the room for one year and might renew the agreement each year. Thus they renewed the agreement in 1908 (ll. 3–4). In 1909, the well-known conservative priest Ioann Vostorgov was chairman of the group, now called the Sergiev Posad Russian Monarchist Union; it was he who asked the Lavra to renew the use of the hall (l. 5). 47. Request of the Russian People’s Union to Metropolitan Vladimir, May 28, 1912, ibid., d. 18053, l. 1, and reply of the Governing Council, June 15, 1912, l. 3. The group claimed to be organized in Sergiev Posad by a novice of the Lavra, V. V. Sobakinskii, although the latter denied this. 48. Request of the founder of the club of amateur fishermen, B. I. Boritskii, to the Governing Council, November 3, 1913, ibid., d. 18287, l. 10; and the reply, November 12, 1913, l. 9. 49. Memorandum from Archimandrite Toviia to the chairman of the Sergiev Posad chapter of the Monarchist Party, July 31, 1914, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17109, l. 7. 50. See RGIA, f. 796, op. 191, 6 otd., 1 st., d. 27. Nikon’s Dnevniki from 1910 to 1916 were collected and published as separate books: Moi Dnevniki, 7 vols. (STSL, 1914–16). The series, with the exception of parts of 1917, was reprinted as Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), “Kozni vragov nashikh sokrushi”: Dnevniki 1910–1917 (Minsk, 2004). 51. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18063. Curiously, Nikon stated, in his letter to Archimandrite Toviia requesting that the Lavra provide him with a cell, that “I know that my residence [in the Lavra] will be unpleasant for some of those living in my native community” (letter of Nikon to Toviia, May 5, 1912, ibid., l. 4), which would seem to indicate that Nikon was not universally supported even at Trinity-Sergius. 52. “Otchestvo tsarskoi vlasti,” Troitskoe slovo, nos. 131–32 (1912), in Kozni vragov, 418–22. 53. These issues concerned the episcopate in general; see Gregory L. Freeze, “L’Episcopata nella chiesa ortodossa russa: Crisi politica e religiosa alla fine dell’ancien régime,” in La Grande Vigilia, ed. Adalberto Mainardi (Magnano: Comunite Monastica di Bose, 1998), 21–55. 54. “Torzhestvo tsarskogo samoderzhaviia i istinnaia svoboda,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 57 (1911), in Kozni vragov, 177–82. 55. Curtiss, Church and State, 323–26; Basil, Church and State, 113–33. 56. “Svoboda sovesti imeet svoi granitsy,” Troitskoe slovo, nos. 18–19 (1910), in Kozni vragov, 56–62. 57. See the “Program” of the journal, Bozhiia Niva 1 (1902): 1–3; and RGIA, f. 796, op. 182, d. 4118 (on the Synod giving permission to Nikon to publish the journal, 1901).

448 notes to pages 265–267 58. “Soblazn idet ot intelligentsii,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 32 (1910), in Kozni vragov, 94–96. On his attitude toward the intelligentsia, see also “Chem bol’na nasha matushka Rossiia?” Troitskoe slovo, no. 102 (1912), in Kozni vragov, 322–25. 59. “Gipnoz vseobshchego obuchenie,” Troitskoe slovo, nos. 104–5 (1912), in Kozni vragov, 327–33. He cited an article in Russkoe znamia (the organ of the United Russian People) about the control of general education in France by “Masons,” with an anti-Christian aim, which had a devastating effect on religiosity in France, and asserted that they were attempting to do the same in Russia. 60. “Kuda my idem?” Troitskoe slovo, no. 199 (1913), in Kozni vragov, 648–53; the citation here is on 652. See also “O tom, kak iudei otravliaiut nashu Rus’ pravoslavnuiu,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 134 (1912), in Kozni vragov, 425–28. Other bishops were also concerned with the censorship issue; see Freeze, “L’Episcopata.” 61. “Nechto o taine bezzakoniia,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 76 (1911), in Kozni vragov, 247–50. 62. He did so in “Slovo pravdy nashim patriotam-antisemitam,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 277 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 910; see also “Masonskii zagovor protiv Tserkvi Khristovoi,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 358 (1917): 124–27; and “Dva slova o protokolakh sionskikh mudretsov,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 374 (1917): 381–83 (curiously, these articles are left out of Kozni vragov). The Protocols (Protokoly sobranii sionskikh mudretsov) were first published in S. Nilus, Velikoe v malom i antikhrist, kak blizkaia politicheskaia vozmozhnost’: Zapiski pravoslavnogo (Tsarskoe Selo: Typography of the Tsarskoe-selo Committee of the Red Cross, 1905). Reprinted by Nilus, Velikoe v malom (STSL, 1911); and again by Nilus, Bliz est’, pri dverekh (STSL 1917). Bliz est’, pri dverekh, with the Protocols, have been reprinted several times in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. On Nilus’ writings, see R. Bagdasarov and S. Fomin, eds., Neizvestnyi Nilus (Moscow, 1995), vol. 2, 550–56; on Nilus generally, see the same volume as well as Sergei Polovinkin, Sergei Aleksandrovich Nilus (1862–1929): Zhizneopisanie (Moscow, 1995). On the Protocols, see Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London, 1967). 63. See Hans Rogger, Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 64. “Slovo pravdy nashim patriotam-antisemitam,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 277 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 907–10. 65. See the letter to Kronid, May 26, 1913, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 164a. See also RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18201; and Nikon, “Dostoslavnoe trekhsotletie,” Troitskoe slovo No. 156 (1913), Kozni vragov, 498-503. 66. Journal of the Governing Council, December 2, 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17608, l. 19. 67. Ibid., l. 19 ob. 68. The booklet was written by the supervisor hieromonk Averkii (RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17608, l. 19 ob): Osada Sviato-Troitskiia Sergievy Lavry pol’skimi i litovskimi voiskami pod predvotitel’stvom Sapegi i Lisovskago (STSL, 1909; reprinted 2001). 69. Journal of the Governing Council, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17608, l. 20. 70. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17608, ll. 18, 21. 71. Ibid., ll. 23, 36, 43–46, 50, 70–74.

notes to pages 268–270 449 72. Simon Dixon, “The Russian Orthodox Church in Imperial Russia, 1721–1917,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 4: Eastern Christianity, ed. Michael Angold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 326, 347. 73. See Christine D. Worobec, “The Unintended Consequences of a Surge in Orthodox Pilgrimages in Late Imperial Russia,” Russian History 36 (2009): 65–66; and Page Herrlinger, “Raising Lazarus: Orthodoxy and the Factory Narod in St. Petersburg, 1905–1914,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 52 (2004): 341–54. 74. See, e.g., “Nekotorye cherty zhitiia Prepodobnogo i Bogonosnogo Ottsa nashego Sergiia Radonezhskogo posle smerti, to-est’ nekotorye skazaniia o ego iavleniiakh i chudodeistviiakh,” Khristianskoe Chtenie 2 (1836): 58. 75. Governing Council to supervisor hieromonk Olimpii, September 26, 1897, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15225, ll. 1–2. 76. See Scott M. Kenworthy, “Memory Eternal: The Five Hundred Year Jubilee of St. Sergius of Radonezh, 1892,” in The Trinity-Sergius Lavra in Russian History and Culture, ed. Vladimir Tsurikov (Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2005), 31–32; as well as Nadieszda Kizenko’s observation in the foreword to Trinity-Sergius Lavra, ed. Tsurikov, 14–15. 77. Toviia, “Vospominanie moego proshedshego,” OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 79–79 ob; see also RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 16679. 78. Letter to Kronid, May 4, 1906, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l.29; see also RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, dd. 16840, 19111. 79. See also Worobec, “Unintended Consequences.” 80. Governing Council report to Metropolitan Makarii, August 31, 1916, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18815, l. 5. The text reads: “Dal’she nog Prepodobnogo tlenie ne rasprostranilos’.” In this context, it is evident that the council was saying that the relics had not burned (istlet’), but tlenie can also mean decay or decompose—while netlennye moshchi refers to incorrupt relics that became an important part of Orthodox piety in late Imperial Russia; see Robert H. Greene, Making Saints: Canonization and Community in Late Imperial Russia, Carl Beck Paper 1801 (Pittsburgh: Center for Russian & East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 2006). 81. Inspection act, September 1, 1916, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18815, l. 4. Saint Sergius’ feet were evidently removed to be divided as bits of relics that were then distributed to churches named in his honor. 82. Synodal decree to Metropolitan Makarii, September 23, 1916, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18815, l. 1 ob. 83. Sergei Volkov, Vozle monastyrskikh sten: Memuary, dnevniki, pis’ma (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Gumanitarnoi literatury, 2000), 184–85. 84. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 15950 (for 1901). 85. Reports on schoolchildren fed and housed in the first half of 1909, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17524, ll. 105, 113. 86. See Worobec, “Unintended Consequences,” 67–68, for their less generous response in 1902, although Worobec does not note that the monastery became much more hospitable in later years.

450 notes to pages 270–273 87. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17524, l. 113. The Lavra was here defending itself against an article in a church periodical, which asserted that Trinity-Sergius’ hospitality had weakened and therefore the number of children who had gone there had declined in 1908; this decline was regrettable according to the article because the “enchanting impression” made by the Lavra was “the most powerful factor of church-school education.” “Otchet o sostoianii tserkovnykh shkol Moskovskoi eparkhii,” Moskovskie Tserkovnye Vedomosti, nos. 51–52 (July 20, 1908): 411. 88. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17524, l. 105. 89. Synodal circular, September 21, 1910, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17674, l. 1. 90. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18114, contains 300 pages of such requests; see l. 14 for a typical answer. For the total numbers of those visited, who were fed, and who received accommodation in 1912, see ll. 312–13. There is a file on such pilgrimages every year in the monastery archive; see also dd. 16120, 16287, 16573, 16655, 16581, 17251, 17734, 17807. 91. Correspondence from the Volhynia Seminary, May 31, 1912, and the Orenburg Seminary, December 7, 1912, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18114, ll. 207, 309. 92. Letter to Kronid, May 14, 1914, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 114. 93. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18581 (1915). 94. Journal entry for June 5, 1915, OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 87 ob. 95. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17524, l. 113. 96. Ek. Il’inskaia, Poezdka vospitannits Moskovskogo Mariinskogo eparkhial’nogo uchilishcha v Troitse-Sergievskuiu lavru, 1902 goda 11-go iiunia (Moscow, 1902); [Mikhail Makarov], Iz zhizni Pravoslavnoi Moskvy XX veka: Vospominaniia pravoslavnogo khristianina (N.p.: Galaktika, 1996), 113–33. 97. Il’inskaia, Poezdka, 6. 98. Makarov, Iz zhizni Pravoslavnoi Moskvy, 125; Il’inskaia, Poezdka, 8. 99. Makarov, Iz zhizni Pravoslavnoi Moskvy, 114–15. 100. The request from the United Russian People, March 28, 1907, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17037, l. 1; report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Vladimir, April 30, 1907, l. 2; the plans for the ceremony and instructions for the visitors, ll. 3–4. 101. Letter to Kronid, April 28, 1907, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 54 ob. 102. Toviia’s Journal entry, June 5, 1914, OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 87 ob. 103. Letters to Kronid, August 16, 1905, and March 22, 1906, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, ll. 10 ob, 28 ob. 104. Letters to Kronid, July 10, 1906, and February 9, 1907, ibid., ll. 37, 59. 105. Letters to Kronid, March 22 and April 28, 1907, ibid., ll. 51, 54. 106. Letter to Kronid, November 4, 1908, ibid., l. 92; see also l. 65 ob (June 1907), l. 94 (December 1908), l. 101 ob (February 1909), l. 106 ob (August 1909), l. 122 (May 1910), l. 129 (September 1910). 107. Letter to Kronid, April 15, 1911, ibid., l. 131; see also l. 132 (June 1911). 108. Letter to Kronid, April 26, 1912, ibid., l. 145 ob; see also l. 143 ob (March 1912). 109. Letter to Kronid, May 26, 1914, ibid., l. 176 ob; see also l. 173 ob (April 9, 1914) and Journal for June 5, 1914, OR RGB, f. 771, k. 2, d. 4, l. 87 ob. 110. Letter to Kronid, February 9, 1907, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 59. 111. Letter to Kronid, November 4, 1908, ibid., l. 92; see also l. 65 ob (June 1907), l. 94.

notes to pages 274–277

451

112. RGADA, f.1204, op. 1, d. 15859, l. 18. 113. Ibid., d. 25108, l. 4. 114. Total income averaged 445,000 rubles in 1911–12. The data on 1902 and 1905 come from RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25108, l. 4 (the calculations are my own, arrived at by subtracting the surplus from the total income with surplus). The data from 1911–12 come from d. 18142, ll. 32 ob–33. 115. Church income averaged less than 180,000 rubles in 1909–10, and less than 200,000 rubles in 1911–12. By contrast, the monastery income averaged 246,383 rubles in 1909–12; the proportions had essentially reversed from the period before 1905. Ibid., d. 17761, ll. 32, 40 (for 1909–10), and d. 18142, ll. 32 ob–33. 116. In 1910, it was 67,844 rubles; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 17761. 117. Letters to Kronid, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 101 ob (February 1909), l. 143 ob (March 1912). I am grateful to Christine Worobec for challenging my initial conclusion, based on the economic data, that pilgrimage never fully recovered after 1905; Toviia’s letters corroborate her findings as well as explain the disconnect between levels of pilgrimage and income. 118. Curtiss, Church and State, 377–409. 119. See Scott Kenworthy, “The Mobilization of Piety: Monasticism and the Great War in Russia, 1914–1916,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 52 (2004): 388–401. 120. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18469, l. 1 (Report of the Governing Council to Bishop Trifon of Dmitrovsk, July 26, 1914). By October 1914, the Lavra’s infirmary was already accommodating 150 wounded: Memorandum of the Governing Council to the Commander of the 56th Reserve Battalion, October 8, 1914, l. 14. 121. See also ibid., d. 18641, on donations of 55,000 rubles for refugees, in part for the Red Cross. 122. Ibid., d. 18469, ll. 115–27 (Hieromonk Iraklii’s notebooks of conversations with wounded soldiers, October 23, 1914–December 29, 1914), and ll. 128–29, report of Hieromonk Ioanaf (January 3, 1915). In 1916, Troitskie listki were sent to the soldiers at the front, at a cost of 3,971 rubles (d. 18470, l. 39). 123. Ibid., d. 18594, l. 1. 124. Sviashchennomuchenik arkhimadrit Kronid (Liubimov), namestnik Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry [hereafter Kronid] (STSL, 2000), 3–26. This is the most complete biography of Kronid, which is clearly based on the research of Archimandrite Georgii (Tertyshnikov, 1941–98). See also Georgii (Tertyshnikov), “Zhizneopisanie arkhimandrita Kronida (Liubimova), namestnika Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry,” Al’fa i omega 2, no. 16 (1998): 146–63. 125. The building’s appearance was changed during the Soviet period so that it is no longer recognizable as a church; in the 1990s, it was occupied by the Maiakovskii Library and the offices of the American Council for Teachers of Russian. 126. Kronid, 27–33. On Kronid’s service to the podvor’e, see Toviia’s letters to him, OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, esp. ll. 2, 10 ob, 13, 65 ob, 158–60 ob, 170–71, 175. Kronid’s sermons and conversations (together with his personal letters and other papers) are preserved in his personal collection, ibid., esp. k. 1, dd. 2–3. Many of the sermons and discussions were published in Kronid (Liubimov), Besedy, Propovedi, Rasskazi (STSL, 2004). 127. Blagodariu Boga moego, 76. 128. OR RGB, f. 766, k. 2, d. 9, l. 1. No date is indicated.

452

notes to pages 278–281

129. “Ugotovim sebia k podvigu!” Troitskoe slovo, no. 232 (1914), in Kozni vragov, 754–55. 130. “Vystuplnenie gordyni i podvig liubvi,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 233 (1914), in Kozni vragov, 755–59; the citation here is on 758. 131. “Rus’ pod krestom,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 280 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 914–16. 132. “Kakie est’ u nas voiny khristoliubye,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 339 (1916), in Kozni vragov, 1098. 133. “Velikoe ispytanie sovesti narodnoi,” Troitskoe slovo, nos. 340–41 (1916), in Kozni vragov, 1101–5. 134. “V uteshenie mnogoskorbnym podvizhnitsam liubvi,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 236 (1914), and “Gospod’ zovet nas k delam miloserdiia,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 237 (1914), in Kozni vragov, 768–73. 135. “Poslanie khristoliubivym zemledel’tsam,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 266 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 865–67. 136. “Poslanie Troitskikh inokov,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 238 (1914), in Kozni vragov, 773– 78; signed by Metropolitan Makarii of Moscow; Archbishop Nikon, “editor-censor of all Trinity editions”; Archimandrite Toviia, namestnik of the Lavra; and others “with all the brothers.” Compare this with “Paskhal’nyi privet Troitskikh inokov khristoliubivym voinam,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 364 (April 2, 1917): 222–24. 137. OR RGB, f. 766, k. 3, d. 16, l. 182 ob. 138. On the Baptists, see Heather Coleman, Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 1905–1929 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005). Curiously, the Old Believers seemed to have receded into the background, in terms of both the state and church concerns. 139. Curtiss, Church and State, 384–85; Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). 140. “Pochemu zhe ne navsegda?” Troitskoe slovo, no. 252 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 825–28. 141. See “Pravoslavie moguchii ustoi nashei gosudarstvennosti,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 268 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 872–76. See also “Mitropolit Filaret o voine i voinskom zvanii,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 273 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 893–97; and “O velikom ‘otstuplenii,’” Troitskoe slovo, no. 281 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 916–18. 142. “Pravye i levye,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 299 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 972–76. 143. See the copies of the officers’ reports to the commander of the Riga regiment, December 5–6, 1916, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18853, ll. 10–11. 144. Report of the Governing Council to Metropolitan Makarii of Moscow, January 5, 1917, ibid., l. 1–1 ob. 145. See “Slovo serebro, molchanie zoloto,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 258 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 843–47; and “Udushlivye gazy,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 288 (1915), in Kozni vragov, 936–40. 146. See Nikon, “Moe slovo skorbi,” Troitskoe slovo, nos. 387–89 (September 1917): 473– 80; and The Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar 1914–1916 (London, 1923), 151 (letter of September 9, 1915). 147. J. S. Curtiss, The Russian Church and the Soviet State 1917–1950 (Boston, 1953), 9–25. 148. “Moim chitateliam,” Troitskoe slovo, no. 361 (March 1917): 171. Nikon lived in retirement in the Lavra, and died on January 12, 1919 (N.S.); RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19142. 149. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri, 284–88.

notes to pages 282–286

453

150. O. N. Kopylova, “Istochniki po istorii Troitse-Sergievoi lavry i Moskovskoi Dukhovnoi akademii v fondakh GARF (XIX–XX vv.),” in Troitse-Sergieva lavra v istorii, kul’ture i dukhovnoi zhizni Rossii: Materialy II Mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii 4–6 oktiabria 2000 g. (Sergiev Posad, 2002). 151. Kronid’s letter to Metropolitan Makarii, March 13, 1917, GARF, f. 1800, op. 1, d. 262, ll. 3–4, cited by Kopylova, “Istochniki,” 108. 152. Kopylova, “Istochniki,” 108–9. 153. Report of Hieromonk Evgenii to the Governing Council, March 22, 1917, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18970, ll. 1–2. Hieromonk Evgenii stated that he turned over four revolvers, which had been kept in the monastery since 1905, as permitted by the local police. 154. Memorandum from the Council (Soviet) of Commissars of the Sergiev Posad police to Archimandrite Kronid, April 4, 1917, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19022, l. 17. See also the “urgent” telegram from Archimandrite Kronid to Metropolitan Makarii of Moscow as to how exactly they were to commemorate the tsar’s family during the liturgy (l. 18). 155. Kopylova, “Istochniki,” 110. 156. Memorandum from the commissar of Sergiev Posad, April 28, 1917, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19022, l. 19. The book in question was Sergei Nilus, Bliz est’, pri dverekh. 157. Kopylova, “Istochniki,” 110–11. 158. Ibid., 111; the petition was dated May 19, 1917. 159. See the draft letters to the Sergiev Posad Soviet, April 27, 1917, and Commissar, April 28, 1917, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19022, ll. 20–21. On April 13, 1917, the Governing Council instructed the manager of the printing house that any printed materials that were inconsistent with the new order should be destroyed, and sent similar instructions to the editorial office and the manager of the storehouse of Troitskie listki (ibid., d. 25243, l. 2). In fact, though the Lavra ceased distributing the literature in question, it was not destroyed; see the reply of the Governing Council to the Cheka, which accused the Lavra of having “anti-Soviet” literature, d. 25425, l. 3 (December 14, 1918). 160. Kopylova, “Istochniki,” 111. 161. On Renan in Russia, see Heather Bailey, Orthodoxy, Modernity and Authenticity: The Reception of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus in Russia (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). 162. Troitskoe slovo continued to be published, though less frequently, until September 1917, so the Lavra clearly continued to be able to print some of its own works in the printing house. 163. The story of the confiscation of the printing house is RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25243. See especially the report to Archbishop Tikhon (July 6, 1917), ll. 14–17. 164. Kronid’s complaint, ibid., ll. 23–24. 165. Deianiia Sviashchennogo sobora pravoslavnoi rossiiskoi tserkvi 1917–1918 gg., vol. 1, vyp. 3 (Petrograd, 1918; reprinted Moscow, 1994), 78–79. 166. See the draft report of Metropolitan Tikhon to the Synod (September 1917), RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25243, l. 34. 167. Smaragd’s letter of March 3, 1917, ibid., d. 18853, l. 12. 168. Journal of the Governing Council, May 23, 1917, ibid., d. 22918, l. 28–28 ob. 169. Ibid., l. 27–27 ob. The statement was signed by 110 monks.

454 notes to pages 286–288 170. Ibid., l. 28 ob. This statement was signed by 69 monks. This and the previous statement are included in the Journal of the Governing Council; these various meetings and statements evidently took place May 7–12, 1917. 171. Ibid., l. 29–29 ob. 172. Memorandum from the Commissar of Sergiev Posad, March 13, 1917, ibid., d. 18961, l. 1. 173. Request of the workers of the Lavra’s printing house, January 31, 1917, ibid., d. 18912, l. 10. Other examples of the monastery’s rejection of requests for help can be found in the same file. E.g., there were people who had worked for the Lavra and were requesting a place in its homes for the poor to retire in but were told that there were no vacancies and they would have to wait until there were (ll. 3–8). See also Sergii Golubtsov, Moskovskoe dukhovenstvo v preddverii i nachale gonenii 1917–1922 gg. (Moscow, 1999), 163; and Golubtsov, Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, 189–92. 174. Journal of the Governing Council, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 22918, l. 18 ob. 175. Memorandum of the Commissar of Sergiev Posad (March 28, 1917), ibid., d. 18961, l. 3, and the discussion on this memorandum in the Journal of the Governing Council, ibid., d. 22918, l. 23. The council wrote to the commissar in August that Iona remained in the Skete “under house arrest,” though the commissar replied that he did not consider it a house arrest because Iona was free to do what he wanted within the walls of the Skete; ibid., d. 18961, ll. 6–7. The abbess of the women’s community “Joy and Consolation” (Otrada i Uteshenie) requested that Iona be allowed to serve as their priest at the end of August; the Governing Council wrote to the commissar to get permission for this and, when he did not reply, wrote to the police chief; only at the end of October was Iona finally allowed to go. He served as the priest of the women’s community until August 1918, when he was appointed abbot of the Zvenigorod Monastery. He was arrested in January 1920, spent twenty months in prison, and returned to Gethsemane Skete in September 1921. See ibid., ll. 7–22; Golubtsov, Moskovskoe dukhovenstvo, 73–80, 163. 176. Charter of the Society of Workers of the Lavra, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25244, ll. 11–12. 177. Collective demands of the workers of the Lavra, April 16, 1917, ibid., l. 13. 178. Minutes of the session of the Governing Council, April 22, 1917, ibid., l. 15. 179. Minutes of the session of the Governing Council, April 29, 1917, ibid., l. 23. This session discussed at length the demands of the printing house workers in particular, because this was before the printing house was confiscated by the Soviet. 180. Conclusions of the central Conciliatory Chamber, June 30, 1917, ibid., l. 37. 181. Memorandum from the Governing Council to the village committee of Berezniki, June 16, 1917, ibid., d. 18969, l. 5. 182. Memorandum from the Aleksandrov District Land Committee to the Lavra, July 16, 1917, ibid., l. 1; report of the steward to the Governing Council (July 22, 1917), ibid., l. 13. 183. Reply from the Governing Council to the Aleksandrov District Land Committee, July 26, 1917, ibid., l. 14. 184. Note from the Aleksandrov chief of police to the Rogachevskii chief of police, September 7, 1917, ibid., l. 18. 185. Report of the steward to the Governing Council, September 24, 1917, ibid., l. 17. 186. Telegram, October 2, 1917, ibid., l. 17 ob.

notes to pages 288–296

455

187. See Pis’ma, vol. 3, 56, 64, 148, for signs of these tensions in 1858–60, although the specific meadows are not named. 188. Report of the stroitel’ of Gethsemane Skete Hieromonk Izrail, August 3, 1917, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18642, l. 83. 189. Sergei Ursynovich, “Neskol’ko zamechanii k istorii Troitse-sergievoi lavry,” introduction to Bog i ego podvizhniki, by G. Kostomarov (Moscow, 1930), 3.

chapter 8 1. John Shelton Curtiss, The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917—1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), 45, 54, 61. Curtiss’s general line of argument is still followed, even in recent works; see my critique: Scott M. Kenworthy, “Monasticism in Russian History,” Kritika 10 (2009): 326-27. 2. Dimitry Pospielovsky, The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982, 2 vols. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984). 3. William B. Husband, “Godless Communists”: Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); Arto Luukkanen, The Party of Unbelief: The Religious Policy of the Bolshevik Party, 1917–1929 (Helsinki: SHS, 1994). On monasticism, for a Soviet interpretation, see V. F. Zybkovets, Natsionalizatsiia monastyrskikh imushchestv v Sovetskoi Rossii (1917–1921 gg.) (Moscow, 1975); and for Western interpretations, see Charles Timberlake, The Fate of Russian Orthodox Monasteries and Convents since 1917, Donald Treadgold Papers 103 (Seattle: University of Washington, 1995); Jennifer Jean Wynot, Keeping the Faith: Russian Orthodox Monasticism in the Soviet Union, 1917–1939 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004). 4. O. Iu. Vasil’eva, “Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ i Sovietskaia vlast’ v 1917–1927,” Voprosy istorii, no. 8 (1993): 40–55; Curtiss, Russian Church, 44–70. 5. Sobranie opredelenii i postanovlenii Sviashchennogo sobora pravoslavnoi Rossiiskoi tserkvi 1917–1918 gg., vyp. 4 (Moscow, 1918; reprinted Moscow, 1994), 49–50. 6. A. V. Zhuravskii, “Nasil’stvennaia sekuliarizatsiia monastyrskikh khoziaistv v natsional’nykh respublikakh povolzh’ia v 1917–1919 godakh,” Istoricheskii vestnik, no. 1 (12) (2001): 149–50. 7. On the story of the closing of Trinity-Sergius, see Andronik (Trubachev), Zakrytie Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry i sud’ba moshchei prepodobnogo Sergiia Radonezhskogo v 1918–1946 gg. (Moscow: Izdatel’skii Soviet Russkoi Pravoslavnoi tserkvi, 2008), which interweaves analysis with archival documents. Although the book was published only after most of this chapter was written, it will certainly serve as an essential starting point for all future research. See also A. N. Kazakevich et al. (eds.), Pravoslavnaia Moskva v 1917–1921 godakh: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Moscow: Izd. Glavarkhika Moskvy, 2004), 493–540. 8. A. Bol’shakov, “Bol’shie sobytiia v malen’kom gorode,” in Rasskazyvaiut uchastniki Velikogo oktiabria (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1957), 318–19. 9. V. I. Baldin, Zagorsk: Istoriia goroda i ego planirovki (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1981), 73–74. 10. For examples, see Zhuravskii, “Nasil’stvennaia sekuliarizatsiia,” 150–51. 11. General Artamonov’s statement to the Revolutionary Committee, November 19, 1917, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18912, l. 48.

456 notes to pages 296–300 12. Statement of General Artamonov to Patriarch Tikhon, November 20, 1917, ibid., l. 70–70 ob. 13. Ibid., ll. 70–71. See also the memorandum from the Governing Council to the mayor of Sergiev Posad, November 20, 1917, l. 68. 14. Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Sergiev Posad Soviet to the Governing Council, November 30, 1917, and the reply, December 5, 1917, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 18912, ll. 43–44. 15. Ibid., d. 19104, the demands, December 20, 1917, l. 2; and the response, January 11, 1918, l. 3. 16. Ibid., d. 25427, l. 6. The number of employees even rose in December 1917 from 129 to 148, though by May 1918, it was reduced to 110. 17. Application of Trinity-Sergius singers to the commissar of labor, January 5, 1918, ibid., d. 19104, l. 1–1 ob. 18. Governing Council to Supervisor Hieromonk Ioann, January 8, 1918, ibid., d. 19091, l. 3. 19. Rules for those received as novices, February 8, 1918, ibid., l. 4. In their petition, the singers (perhaps anticipating the response) requested that the labor commissar ensure that, if they were let go, the monastery would provide them with six months room and board until they found other work; l. 1 ob. Thus in its instructions for novices, the monastery explicitly stated that, if a novice chose to leave or were asked to leave the monastery, he had no right to demand any provisions or quarters; l. 4 ob. 20. Wynot, Keeping the Faith, 39–47. 21. See the instructions of Narkomiust to Seletskii, December 7, 1917, GARF, f. A-353, op. 2, d. 696, ll. 23–24. 22. Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich (1873–1955) was an Old Bolshevik who had a particular interest in religious questions, particularly sectarian movements in Russia; see PE 6: 20–21. 23. Seletskii to Bonch-Bruevich, 1918, GARF, f. A-353, op. 2, d. 696, l. 25. 24. Report of Narkomiust “Liquidation Commission” to the Commissariat of Finance, June 27, 1918, ibid., l. 45. 25. See, e.g., the request from the Governing Council to the military commissar for the brothers working the field to be able to use horses, August [?] 1918, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25411, l. 16 (the previous document, a memorandum from the Military Commissar to the monastery’s stables [August 27, 1918], stipulated in response that no one was to use horses without his permission; l. 15). 26. Various correspondence between the Governing Council and the Sergiev Posad Sovdep, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19022, ll. 6, 10, 14. 27. Memorandum of the Sergiev Posad Sovdep to the Governing Council, January 13, 1918, ibid., l. 13. Report of the Governing Council to Patriarch Tikhon, January 17, 1918, ibid., d. 25421, l. 1. 28. See RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25411, l. 20. 29. Correspondence, ibid., ll. 9, 12. 30. See ibid., d. 22919, ll. 12 ob–13; and d. 25427, ll. 5–6, 9, 11–12. 31. Report to Patriarch Tikhon, May 7/20, 1918, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19102, l. 1–1 ob, 6. See also d. 19128, ll. 1–4.

notes to pages 300–305

457

32. Report of the Governing Council to Patriarch Tikhon, April 3/16, 1918, ibid., d. 18642, l. 84. 33. On the Council, see James W. Cunningham, The Gates of Hell: The Great Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1917–1918 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Iakinf Desvitel’, Pomestnyi sobor Rossiiskoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi 1917–1918 gg. i printsip sobornosti (Moscow: Izd. Krutitskoe podvor’ia, 2008); and George Kosar, “Russian Orthodoxy in Crisis and Revolution: The Church Council of 1917–1918,” PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 2004. 34. Gunther Schultz, ed., Sviashchennyi sobor pravoslavnoi Rossiiskoi tserkvi 1917–1918 gg.: Obzor deianii, tret’ia sessiia (Moscow, 2000), 84. 35. Deianiia sviashchennogo sobora pravoslavnoi Rossiiskoi tserkvi 1917–1918 gg. (Moscow, 2000), vol. 9, 214–18. 36. Schultz, Sviashchennyi sobor, 86. 37. Ibid., 90. 38. Ibid., 112. 39. Ibid., 95–97; the final resolutions of the council on monasticism are in Sobranie opredelenii i postanovlenii Sviashchennogo sobora pravoslavnoi Rossiiskoi tserkvi 1917–1918 gg., vyp. 4 (Moscow, 1918; reprinted Moscow, 1994), 31–43; resolution on the selection of abbots, 32. 40. Sobranie opredelenii, 35. 41. Deianiia, vol. 10, 59–65. 42. Ibid., 46. 43. Schultz, Sviashchennyi sobor, 121–22; Sobranie opredelenii, 35–36. 44. Notice from Archimandrite Kronid to the commissar of Sergiev Posad for civil matters, July 10/23, 1918, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25406, l. 1. 45. Ukaz from the Patriarchal administration to Archimandrite Kronid, August 27, 1918, ibid., d. 19128, l. 6. 46. See, e.g., the report from Abbot Izrail of Gethsemane Skete, ibid., d. 22919, l. 26. 47. For examples, see ibid., d. 25411, ll. 4, 6. 48. Luukkanen, Party of Unbelief, 60–79. 49. Gerd Shtrikker, ed., Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ v sovetskoe vremia (1917–1991) (Moscow: Propilei, 1995), vol. 1, 128–31. 50. Curtiss, Russian Church, 62–63. 51. Monastery bells were sometimes used as a warning to gather local brotherhoods of laity to come in defense of a monastery if it was threatened, and on July 30, 1918 Sovnarkom issued a decree forbidding this “anti-Soviet” use of monastery bells; Zybkovets, Natsionalizatsiia monastyrskikh imushchestv, 49–50. 52. Report of Hegumen Izrail to the Governing Council, September 7, 1918, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19022, l. 1 ob. This document, together with a selection of others from RGADA, f. 1204, regarding the Lavra during 1918–20, have been published by I. N. Zhiianova, “Kak byla natsionalizirovana Troitse-Sergieva Lavra: novye dokumenty po istorii monastyria,” in Otechestvo: Kraevedicheskii al’manakh, vyp. 12 (Moscow, 1997), 205–30. 53. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19022, ll. 1–2 ob; the reports given by the commissar are ll. 3, 4. Note the foreign names of many of the participants in these events: Zakst, Reinwald (the commissar he encountered at the Caves), Vanhanen.

458 notes to pages 305–308 54. Journal of the Governing Council, ibid., d. 22919, ll. 32 ob–34; Hegumen Aleksii to the Cheka, November 13, 1918, d. 25426, l. 9. 55. Report of Hegumen Iliodor to the Governing Council, September 26 / October 9, 1918, ibid., d. 25426, l. 10. 56. Report of the Governing Council to the Patriarch, September 30 / October 13, 1918, ibid., d. 19022, l. 23; Revkom to Archimandrite Kronid, September 17, 1918, d. 25426, l. 16. 57. Draft memorandum of the Governing Council to the Cheka, October 21, 1918, ibid., d. 25426, l. 8; and the Cheka’s response, l. 7. 58. Ibid., d. 22919, l. 34. 59. Ibid., d. 25426, l. 13. See also Andronik, Zakrytie, 114–15. 60. GARF, f. A-353, op. 2, d. 696, ll. 23–24. 61. RGADA, f. 1204, op.1, d. 25421, ll. 4–7. 62. Memorandum of the Department of Museum Affairs to Archimandrite Kronid, October 22, 1918, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25407, l. 5. In this memorandum, the Department of Museum Affairs was already instructing Kronid that all church property was to be turned over to the new commission. Both Kapterev and Olsuf ’ev came from families active in the Church; Kapterev’s father was professor at the Moscow Theological Academy and one of Nikon’s interlocutors in 1903, while Olsuf ’ev’s father was an active lay member of the Church Council. 63. Minutes of College of Museum Affairs meeting, November 1, 1918, TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 1, l. 1. 64. GARF, f. A-2306, op. 2, d. 591; Andronik, Zakrytie, 116. 65. On the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra, see M. S. Trubacheva, “Iz istorii okhrany pamiatnikov v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti: Komissia po okhrane pamiatnikov stariny i iskusstva Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry 1918–1925 godov,” Muzei (Moscow) 5 (1984): 152–64; and Troitse-Sergieva Lavra (Moscow: Indrik, 2007), 155–222. 66. Sergei Mansurov (1890–1929) was also the son of a participant in the Church Council and an active member of the “Orthodox Church Communities of Sergiev Posad.” Sergei Mansurov was later ordained as a priest. He was included in the commission at the end of November 1918; TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 2, l. 6. Tat’iana Rozanova (1895–1975) was the daughter of the religious philosopher Vasilii V. Rozanov, who is buried at Gethsemane Skete. 67. The letter is quoted by Andronik, Zakrytie, 11. 68. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19147, ll. 2–3. 69. TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 2. 70. See the note from the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra to Archimandrite Kronid, November 20, 1918, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25408, l. 1; the note from the commission to Kronid, February 11, 1918, l. 4; and the minutes of a session of the commission, November 9, 1918 (?), ibid., l. 8. On the salaries, see the minutes of the third session, January 26, 1920, of the “commission for the liquidation of the Lavra,” in TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 10, 139 ob–140; and Andronik, Zakrytie, 118. 71. Letter from the police to Archimandrite Kronid, December 23, 1918, TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 1, l. 68; and letter from the Governing Council to the commission, l. 69. See also RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25408, ll. 5–6.

notes to pages 308–313 459 72. TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 2, l. 27 ob. The commission had to send a similar request in February 1919; ibid., d. 9, l. 41. For a similar draft, see TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 9, l. 31; and RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19147, l. 4. 73. TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 1, l. 71 (December 24, 1918); the commission’s request for provisions (December 27, 1918), d. 2, l. 31. A year later, the local authorities would actually write the commissar of the Lavra to request that the monks who were guarding the monastery also keep watch over the store of potatoes, December 23, 1919, d. 9, l. 124. 74. Kronid to the commission, March 8/21, 1919, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19147, l. 9. 75. In October 1918, there were 243 monks; ibid., d. 25409, l. 3. 76. Ibid., d. 25425, ll. 1–3. 77. Ibid., d. 25424, ll. 4, 6, 7, 11, 14, 15–17; TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 37, 40. 78. Troitse-Sergieva Lavra (Sergiev Posad, 1919). The book became almost impossible to find except in a few Russian libraries until the recent republication: Troitse-Sergieva Lavra (Moscow: Indrik, 2007), which also includes a history of the commission and information about its members. The 1919 text is also included in Andronik (Trubachev), Zakrytie, 300– 412. Pagination in notes follows the original publication. 79. See the notes in Pavel Florenskii, Izbrannye trudy po iskusstvu (Moscow, 1996), 184– 86. For an English translation, see Iconostasis, trans. Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev (Crestwood, N.Y.: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996). See also Victor Bychkov, The Aesthetic Face of Being: Art in the Theology of Pavel Florenskii, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Crestwood, N.Y.: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993). 80. Pavel Florenskii, “Troitse-Sergieva Lavra i Rossiia,” in Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, 7. 81. Ibid., 4. 82. Florenskii, “Troitse-Sergieva Lavra,” 25. 83. Ibid., 24. 84. Ibid., 27–28. 85. “Proekt muzeiia Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry,” established by Florenskii and Kapterev (November 26, 1919), printed in Andronik, Zakrytie, 23–26. 86. Florenskii, “Troitse-Sergieva Lavra,” 27–29. 87. P. Kapterev, “Iz istorii Troitskoi Lavry,” in Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, 30–45. 88. On Galkin, see Daniel Peris, “Commissars in Red Cassocks: Former Priests in the League of the Militant Godless,” Slavic Review 54 (1995): 340–64. 89. Galkin’s article, which appeared in Revoliutsiia i tserkov’ (March–May 1919), is reproduced in Florenskii, Izbrannye trudy, 239–41. 90. Ibid., 239. 91. Andronik, Zakrytie, 19. 92. Robert H. Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 103–59. 93. Ibid., 138–44. 94. See the telegram from P. Kapterev to Archimandrite Kronid, February 17, 1919, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19146, l. 4; and Andronik, Zakrytie, 124–25. 95. Request of the monks of Trinity-Sergius to Lenin, March 4, 1919, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19146, ll. 1–3.

460 notes to pages 313–318 96. GARF, f. A-353, op. 3, d. 767, l. 14, with signatures to l. 77 (March 16, 1919). 97. Sledstvennoe delo Patriarkha Tikhona: Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 2000), 534–35. 98. See Patriarch Tikhon’s letter to Lenin (April 2, 1919), in Sledstvennoe delo, 536; Andronik, Zakrytie, 125–27. 99. Andronik, Zakrytie, 132. 100. M. Gorev, Troitskaia lavra i Sergii Radonezhskii (Moscow, 1920), 41–43. Galkin (who erroneously dated the event to 1917) asserted that Kronid claimed Sergius lay there “as if alive” (i.e., uncorrupted). 101. See the minutes of the general session of the Soviet, January 14, 1919, TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 12–13 (copy in f. 2609, op. 1, d. 6, l. 3). 102. Galkin, Troitskaia lavra, 43; he says the petition was thirty-five pages long. See also Sergei Volkov, Vozle monastyrskikh sten: Memuary, dnevniki, pis’ma (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Gumanitarnoi literatury, 2000), 182–83. 103. Sledstvennoe delo, 536–37. 104. See the petition of the Church of Saint Basil of Caesarea on Tverskaia Street, GARF, f. A-353, op. 3, d. 767, l. 4; with signatures, ll. 4–12. 105. Ibid., d. 767, l. 1. Narkomiust did not bother replying until August, and said that the opening of the relics had taken place without any difficulties, dismissed the seriousness of threats against members of the commission, and justified that action as necessary to expose the deception that the clergy perpetrated on the “dark elements of the narod” (l. 2). 106. Gorev, Troitskaia lavra, 44–45. 107. It is unclear who these peasants were, who selected them and why—because ordinary believers were deliberately excluded from the events; it is possible they were deliberately selected by the local Bolshevik authorities. The protocol of the examination mentions “members of labor unions” as well as “believers”; GARF, f. A-353, op. 3, d. 731, l. 28. 108. Gorev, Troitskaia lavra, 45–46. It is clearly a different Iona from Hegumen Iona of the previous chapters. 109. Ibid., 45–51; Sergei Volkov, Vozle monastyrskikh sten, 182–92; Volkov’s memoir was first published as Poslednie u Troitsy in 1995. He began writing his memoirs in the 1930s, and continued working on them until the 1960s; as a result, some of the details are inaccurate. 110. Gorev, Troitskaia lavra, 46–47. 111. GARF, f. A-353, op. 3, d. 736, ll. 14–16 ob. See also Gorev, Troitskaia lavra, 49-51; and Andronik, Zaktrytie, 142–43. 112. Gorev, Troitskaia lavra, 46–47; Volkov, Volze monastyrskikh sten, 184–85. 113. Gorev, Troitskaia lavra, 47–49. 114. Volkov, Volze monastyrskikh sten, 188. 115. Ibid., 185–86. 116. Ibid., 187–91. 117. Gorev, Troitskaia lavra, 48. 118. TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 6, l. 5; Andronik, Zakrytie, 150–51. 119. Declaration of November 1919, in Sledstvennoe delo, 543–44. For other accounts of the large number of pilgrims, see also Iu. V. Got’e, Time of Troubles: The Diary of Iurii Vladimirovich Got’e, ed. and trans. Terence Emmons (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 274; and Andronik, Zakrytie, 152–53.

notes to pages 318–322

461

120. Sledstvennoe delo, 606, 624. 121. Letter of Mitskevich to Lenin (April 22, 1919), in Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov i kommunisticheskoe gosudarstvo, 1917–1941: Dokumenty i fotomaterialy (Moscow: Bibleiskobogoslovskii institut sv. apostola Andreia, 1996), 40–41. Lenin wrote a note on top of the letter in which he dismissed the arguments, stating that Mitskevich was “in a panic”; ibid., 41. See also Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, 196–97. 122. See Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars, chap. 6. 123. GARF, f. A-353, op. 3, d. 759, ll. 101–2 ob (August 8, 1919), cited by M. A. Gaganova, “Sud’by moshchei prepodobnogo Sergiia (sobytiia 1919–1921 gg.),” in Troitse-Sergieva lavra v istorii, kul’ture i dukhovnoi zhizni Rossii (Sergiev Posad, 2004), 86. 124. The Eighth Department of Narkomiust evidently discussed the matter already in April with the Department of Museum Affairs. See TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 1, l. 24; and GARF, f. A-353, op. 3, d. 753, l. 90. 125. Sledstvennoe delo, 544, 606. The churches were handed over to the council of Sergiev Posad parishes on October 4; RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19147, l. 19. 126. Gaganova, “Sud’by moshchei,” 87. 127. Report of the Governing Council to Patriarch Tikhon, November 4, 1919, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19173, ll. 1–2. 128. Report of the Governing Council to Patriarch Tikhon, November 12, 1919, ibid., ll. 3–4. The brothers of the Lavra were, of course, received by the abbot of the Skete; part of them remained, living in the Skete’s hotel (intended for pilgrims), while others moved into various private apartments in Sergiev Posad; Report of Hegumen Izrail of Gethsemane Skete to the Governing Council of the Lavra, April 17, 1920, ibid., d. 19214, l. 1. 129. Meeting of the Executive Committee, November 10, 1919, TsGAMO, f. 3948, op. 1, d. 4, l. 106. 130. From the Commission to the Executive Committee, November 9, 1919, TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 1, d. 9, l. 75. 131. Minutes of the session of the General Meeting of the Sergiev Soviet, November 15, 1919, TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 3, l. 26 ob. 132. Sledstvennoe delo, 607, 625. 133. See the statement of members of Sergiev Posad church organizations to Sovnarkom of November 1919 in Sledstvennoe delo, 540–48. 134. See the resolution of Patriarch Tikhon of November 28, 1919, in Sledstvennoe delo, 548–49; and Popov’s complaint to Sovnarkom, as quoted by Andronik, Zakrytie, 173–76. 135. Popov’s letter to Mansurov, December 29, 1919, in Sledstvennoe delo, 552–54. 136. TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 10, l. 90. 137. Andronik, Zakrytie, 39–40. 138. TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 2, d. 3, l. 2, is a list of monks who were guarding various buildings on November 25, 1919; the lists continue until January 1920 (l. 111). For a list of monks who were still on the personnel list of the commission on March 25, 1920, see ibid., d. 5, ll. 62–63. 139. TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 134–36. 140. See especially the minutes of the second session of the commission for the liquidation of Trinity-Sergius as a monastery, January 26, 1920, TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 6–11.

462 notes to pages 322–325 Copies of the minutes of all the sessions as well as the resolutions of this committee were published in Sledstvennoe delo, 557–84 and Andronik, Zakrytie, 42–81. 141. TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 10, l. 139 ob. 142. See the protocols of the fourth session, January 28, 1920, ibid., ll. 16–18 ob. 143. Perhaps Florenskii’s scholarship was regarded as particularly valuable, or perhaps he had friends in high places. Indeed, Volkov states in his memoirs that Florenskii was on friendly terms with Trotsky and that the two frequently held long philosophical conversations; Volkov, Vozle monastyrskikh sten, 168–71. The Soviets recognized his brilliance in mathematics and physics, and in the 1920s he worked at various research institutes and taught at technical institutes—highly unusual for a priest at that time. In 1933, he was arrested; and in December 1937, he was executed by the NKVD. 144. Resolution No. 1, January 27, 1920, TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 10, l. 1–1 ob. 145. Resolution No. 2, January 27, 1920, ibid., ll. 2–3 ob. 146. See minutes of the session of the Presidium of the Moscow Gubispolkom, February 9, 1920, TsGAMO, f. 680, op. 3, d. 757, l. 18, which confirmed Resolution No. 1 of the commission for the liquidation of Trinity-Sergius Lavra, and the session of March 23, 1920, l. 45, which ruled that “liturgical services should cease immediately.” 147. Andronik, Zakrytie, 82. 148. Galkin to Sergiev Posad Raikom, February 19, 1920, TsGAMO, f. 680, op. 3, d. 757, l. 34. 149. Andronik, Zakrytie, 189–92; 198–226. 150. Secret report from M. Galkin to the College of Narkomiust, March 28, 1920, TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 10, l. 30–30 ob. 151. Andronik, Zakrytie, 87–99. 152. Sovnarkom decree, April 20, 1920, TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 10, l. 26; see also ll. 49, 113. 153. Andronik, Zakrytie, 98; for the details of what buildings fell into which category, see 100–101. 154. Ibid., 102–8. 155. Ibid., 227–84. 156. Report of the Governing Council to Patriarch Tikhon, May 11, 1920, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19213, l. 1–1 ob. 157. Order of the All-Russian Central Committee, May 29, 1920, TsGAMO, f. 2609, op. 2, d. 5, l. 136; also see Volkov, Vozle monastyrskikh sten, 192. 158. Memorandum from the Eighth Department of Narkomiust to the Sergiev Executive Committee, June 17, 1920, TsGAMO, f. 663, op.1, d. 10, l. 61. Galkin evidently protested against this act, and Narkomiust wanted to know who was responsible for this “tactless” move. 159. Got’e, Time of Troubles, 379. 160. See the petition of the Sergiev Posad community of Orthodox believers to the Commission for the Preservation of the Lavra with 129 signatures, May 18, 1920, TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 51–52 ob; and their petition to Sovnarkom with 290 signatures, August 25, 1920, GARF, f. A-353, op. 3, d. 766, l. 6. This group also protested that the closure of the churches violated the agreement they had made with the commission to be able to use the

notes to pages 325–332 463 churches, and volunteered to protect the valuables of the monastery. See also the petition of 228 “members of the Orthodox church” to Sovnarkom, May 25, 1920, ibid., l. 9; a separate petition of 100 “members of the Orthodox Church” to Sovnarkom, August 25, 1920 (?), ibid., l. 10; the petition of the parishioners of the Moscow Resurrection of Christ church to Sovnarkom, August 25, 1920 (?), ibid., l. 11; the petition of parishioners of the Kazan church (Moscow) to the Executive Committee, n.d., ll. 2–12; and a similar petition, ibid., ll. 13–14 ob. 161. Message of Patriarch Tikhon, September 10, 1920, in Akty Sviateishego Tikhona, Patriarkha Moskovskogo i vseia Rossii, pozdneishie dokumenty i perepiska o kanonicheskom preemstve vysshei tserkovnoi vlasti, 1917–1943, ed. M. E. Gubonin (Moscow: Tikhonovskii Bogoslovskii Institut, 1994), 167–68. 162. Andronik, Zakrytie, 285–91; T. V. Kuznetsova, “‘Troitsa’ Andreia Rubleva kak muzeinyi eksponat (1918–1929 gg.), in Troitse-Sergieva lavra v istorii, kul’ture i dukhovnoi zhizni Rossii (Sergiev Posad, 2004), 328–39. 163. Derek Beales, Prosperity and Plunder: European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 265–67.

chapter 9 1. M. M. Prishvin, “Kogda bili kolokola . . . (Iz dnevnikov 1926–1932 godov),” Prometei, no. 16 (1990): 422. 2. Chris Chulos, “Russian Piety and Culture from Peter the Great to 1917,” in Eastern Christianity, ed. Michael Angold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 366; also see Chris J. Chulos, Converging Worlds: Religion and Community in Peasant Russia, 1861–1917 (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 112. 3. William B. Husband, “Godless Communists”: Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); Arto Luukkanen, The Party of Unbelief: The Religious Policy of the Bolshevik Party, 1917–1929 (Helsinki, 1994); Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998); Glennys Young, Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); Edward E. Roslof, Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905–1946 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); Scott M. Kenworthy, “Russian Reformation? The Program for Religious Renovation in the Orthodox Church, 1922–1925,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 16/17 (2000–2001): 89–130. 4. V. F. Zybkovets, Natsionalizatsiia monastyrskikh imushchestv v Sovetskoi Rossii (1917– 1921 gg.) (Moscow, 1975), 48, 101. 5. Memorandum from the VIII Department of the Commissariat of Justice to the Commissariat of Land, June 2, 1919, GARF, f. A-353, op. 3, d. 775, l. 21. 6. Circular of the Commissariats of Justice and Land No. 13 to All Land Departments (Vsem Zemotdelam), October 30, 1919, ibid., l. 44–44 ob. See also the explanations of the Commissariat of Justice on the question of the separation of church and state, ibid., ll. 37–42 ob. 7. See Jennifer Jean Wynot, Keeping the Faith: Russian Orthodox Monasticism in the Soviet Union, 1917–1939 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 62–70; 101–3.

464 notes to pages 332–337 8. List of names of the labor artel of Trinity-Sergius Lavra, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19181, ll. 2–5 (the list indicates monks’ ages as well). 9. Minutes of the general meeting of brothers and laborers of the Bethany Monastery, October 9, 1918, ibid., d. 19022, l. 28–28 ob. 10. Report of Hegumen Izrail to the Governing Council, January 17, 1920, ibid., d. 19214, l. 1. 11. Pustyn’ Sviatogo Paraklita, chto pri Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavre (Paraclete Pustyn’, 1998), 34. 12. Iurii Kulikov, “Glavnoe u nikh—liubov’!” K Svetu 14, Starets Aleksii i Zosimova Pustyn’ (issue theme/title) (1993): 74. 13. Minutes of the session of the commission, November 27, 1920, TsGAMO, f. 663, op. 1d. 10, l. 130. 14. V. M. Eremina, Gefsimansko-Chernigovskii skit pri Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavre (Kratkii ocherk istorii 1844–1990) (STSL, 1992), 4; Kulikov, “Glavnoe u nikh,” 74. 15. Il’ia Chetverukhin and Evgeniia Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, Starets-Zatvornik Smolenskoi Zosimovoi pustyni (STSL, 2003), 141. 16. Letter dated May 18, 1920, in “Udalilsia ot mira . . .”: Vospominaniia o skhimonakhe Simone (Sergee Evgen’eviche Kozhukhove), Pis’ma ottsa Simona, by Evgeniia Chetverukhina (STSL, 1997), 243. This volume is a memoir about Simon and contains many letters he wrote to the Chetverukhin family. 17. Ibid., 248. 18. Ibid., 230. 19. Ibid., 230–44; see also Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 140; the hotel continued to be used as a hospital until the summer of 1919. 20. Monakhinia Ignatiia, Starchestvo v gody gonenii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo podvor’ia STSL, 2001), 57–58, 61–63. 21. Aleksii’s request, February 1919, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 19185, l. 3; Report of the Governing Council to Patriarch Tikhon, February 14/27, 1919), l. 1; and the report of Hegumen German to the Governing Council (March 4/17, 1919), l. 4. Aleksii was given the name of Saint Aleksii the “Man of God.” 22. Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 237. 23. Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 137. In the text, the letter is dated August 8, 1912, though from the context it is clear that it should be 1919. 24. Mariia Golubtsova, “Todga eshche ne zagasili lampady . . .,” K Svetu 14 (1993): 62–64. 25. Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 238, 244. 26. Aleksii’s letter to Patriarch Tikhon, July 1, 1921, RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25442, l. 1. 27. Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 147. 28. Ibid., 188–98. 29. Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), Vospominaniia (Moscow: Pravoslavnyi Sviato-Tikhonovskii Bogoslovskii Institut, 1995), 91–94. 30. Letter of April 10, 1921, in Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 248. 31. Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 252. 32. Varfolomei (Remov, 1888–1935) had been a student at the Moscow Theological Academy when he began going to the hermitage before the Revolution. In the 1920s, he be-

notes to pages 337–339 465 came bishop of Sergiev, a new see that was an auxiliary of the Moscow Diocese. At the end of the 1920s, he made an agreement with the secret police that he would cooperate in giving them information; in the early 1930s, he held secret meetings with Roman Catholics, leading some to speculate that he secretly became a Catholic himself. He was shot by the secret police in 1935 for failing to uphold his agreement to give information. See PE 6:716–17; the discussion by Sergei Fomin, ed., “Svete tikhii”: Zhizneopisanie i trudy episkopa Serpukhovskogo Arseniia (Zhadanovskogo), vol. 3 (Moscow: Palomnik, 2002), 728–30; and Monakhinia Ignatiia, Starchestvo na Rusi (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo podvor’ia STSL, 1999), 83–93. 33. Letter of January 21, 1923, in Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 254–55. 34. S. V. Demidov, Troitskii Stefano-Makhrishchskii monastyr’ (Moscow, 1997), 26. 35. Letter of January 18, 1923, in Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 254. 36. Derek Beales, Prosperity and Plunder: European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 37. Letter of February 1, 1923, quoted by Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 255–56. 38. Letter of July 12, 1923, quoted by Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 256–57; Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 150–51; G. A. Pyl’neva, Vospominaniia o startse Zosimovoi pustyni ieroskhimonakhe Innokentii (Moscow: Russkii Khronograf, 1998), 12–13; Ignatiia, Starchestvo v gody gonenii, 64; Sergii Boskin, “Poslednie gody,” K Svetu 14 (1993): 71. The sources give somewhat contradictory information as to exactly when the community was closed, though evidently it happened in stages. 39. There were also other monastic communities that had transformed into collectives that were not part of the Trinity-Sergius collective, such as the Khot’kov women’s monastery. See the lists of kolkhozy (collective farms) from 1921–22 (only Bethany and Gethsemane are mentioned from the Trinity-Sergius collective): TsGAMO, f. 3935, op. 1, d. 46, ll. 8, 28. After the closure of their church, the monks of the Coenobium went to Gethsemane for services. In 1919, Father Vladimir from Zosimova Hermitage became the Hegumen of the Coenobium; after 1923, he also served as elder Aleksii’s confessor. It is not clear when the Coenobium was closed, though it was open at the end of September, when Patriarch Tikhon visited it along with the other communities. Boskin, “Poslednie gody,” 72; according to U Boga vse zhivy: Vospominaniia o Danilovskom startse Arkhimandrite Georgii (Lavrove) (Moscow: Danilovskii blagovestnik, 1996), 35, the Coenobium was closed before Bethany, though this account is vague at best. 40. GARF, f.A-2307, op. 10, d. 172, l. 168. 41. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25461, l. 5. 42. Act of August 9, 1925, TsGAMO f. 3948, op. 1, d. 55, l. 2. See also ll. 1, 3–15, which list the property transferred, and also the amount of rent local authorities had received from the collective farm. 43. GARF, f. A-2307, op. 10, d. 172, l. 173. In 1929, the contents of the museum were transferred to the territory of the Lavra. In the 1930s, a poultry farm (ptitsekombinat) was established on the grounds of the monastery, and the area of Sergiev Posad previously known as Bethany became known (and still is) as “Bird town” (Ptitsegrad). N. V. Khrunova, SpasoVifanskii monastyr’ (Sergiev Posad, 1997), 25–27. 44. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 22922, and d. 25461, l. 5 ob (1925).

466 notes to pages 339–345 45. GARF, f. A-2307, op. 10, d. 172, l. 168 (August 24, 1923). 46. Wynot, Keeping the Faith, 102, citing GAMO, f. 66, op. 11, d. 864. 47. This information comes from the Database of New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Twentieth Century, collected by the Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University (hereafter, PSTBI Database), http://www.pstbi.ccas.ru/cgi-bin/code.exe/ martyrs.htm?ans. 48. GARF, f. A-2307, op. 9, d. 91, ll. 38, 41, 44; op. 10, d. 172, l. 167. 49. RGADA, f. 1204, op. 1, d. 25461, ll. 4, 6; GARF f. A-2307, op. 9, d. 91, ll. 129, 130 (the monks wrote to the commission requesting that Patriarch Tikhon be permitted to stay in Metropolitan Filaret’s chambers during his visit in early October 1924). GARF, f. A-2307, op. 10, d. 172, l. 164. 50. Blagodariu Boga moego: Vospominaniia Very Timofeevny i Natal’i Aleksandrovny Verkhovtsevykh (Moscow: Pravilo Very, 2001), 89. 51. Cited by K. A. Filimonov, Novaia Gefsimaniia (Moscow, 2000), 56; see also 54–58. 52. Memoirs of E. V. Chicherina, in U Boga vse zhivy, 35; see also Blagodariu Boga moego, 90. 53. He also worked for the Tret’iakov Gallery in the 1930s. For a recent collection of his work, see Iu. A. Olsuf ’ev, Ikona v muzeinom fonde: Issledovaniia i restavratsiia, ed. A. N. Strizhev (Moscow: Palomnik, 2006). 54. T. V. Smirnova, “Pod pokrov Prepodobnogo”: Ocherki o nekotorykh izvestnykh sem’iakh, zhivshikh v Sergievom Posade v 1920-e gody (STSL, 2007); M. F. Mansurova, E. A. Chernysheva-Samarina, and A. V. Komarovskaia, Samariny, Mansurovy: Vospominaniia rodnykh (Moscow: Pravoslavnyi Sviato-Tikhonovskii Bogoslovskii institut, 2001); GARF, f. A-2307, op. 10, d. 172, l. 137 (Glavnauka’s appeal to the OGPU to release Komarovskii from prison, June 1925). 55. M. I. Pokrovskii, “Troitse-Sergievskaia Lavra (Plan ekskursii),” Antireligioznik, no. 6 (June 1926): 40. 56. Ibid., 40–47. 57. Pyl’neva, Vospominaniia, 13–14. 58. Ignatiia, Starchestvo v gody gonenii, 65–78; Wynot, Keeping the Faith, 106–8. 59. See Simon’s letter from April 1927, in Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 276. 60. Letter of July 20, 1924, in Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 262. 61. Letter of February 1926, in Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 268. 62. Chetverukhina, Udalilsia ot mira, 271–92. 63. On Kozel’sk, see Wynot, Keeping the Faith, 103–4. 64. Blagodariu Boga moego, 73–74. 65. Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 193; Blagodariu Boga moego, 72; Sergii Sidorov, Zapiski sviashchennika Sergiia Sidorova, s prilozheniiem ego zhizneopisaniia, sostavlennogo docher’iu, V. S. Bobrinskoi (Moscow: Pravoslavnyi Sviato-Tikhonovskii Bogoslovskii Institut, 1999), 64. 66. Roslof, Red Priests; Kenworthy, “Russian Reformation?” 67. Sidorov, Zapiski, 67. 68. Ibid., 63–64. 69. Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 251.

notes to pages 345–350 467 70. Sidorov, Zapiski, 65–66. Curiously, Aleksii’s esteem for Shik is not mentioned in the Chetverukhin biography (at least not the published version). On Shik, see Smirnova, “Pod pokrov Prepodobnogo,” 129–48; he was executed in 1937. 71. Chetverukhin and Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, 165–84. 72. Arto Luukkanen, The Religious Policy of the Stalinist State: The Central Standing Commission on Religious Questions, 1929–1938 (Helsinki: Societas Historica, 2000), 50–60. 73. Grik, “Spiski lichnogo sostava Tserkovnykh Sovetov g. Sergieva,” Bezbozhnik u stanka, no. 3 (March 1928): 15. 74. On the whole affair and particularly the press, see Sergei Polovinkin, “‘Gnezdo chernosotentsev pod Moskvoi’ (Sergievoposadskoe delo 1928 goda),” Rossiia XXI, no. 6 (2004): 144–75. 75. A. Liass, “Gnezdo chernosotentsev pod Moskvoi,” Rabochaia gazeta, no. 109 (May 12, 1928): 3. 76. A. M., “Sergievskie shkoly v rukakh chernosotentsev,” Rabochaia gazeta, no. 113 (May 17, 1928). 77. See G. Kostomarov, Bog i ego podvizhniki (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Bezbozhnik, 1930). 78. See “Aresty chernosotentsev v Sergieve,” Rabochaia gazeta, no. 120 (May 25, 1920). 79. For a list of eighty people convicted, see Polovinkin, “Gnezdo,” 170–72. 80. Egorov claimed during interrogation that he had left the priesthood and worked as a scientific member of the museum, though there is conflicting information on him. Maksimilian was sent to Solovki camp for three years; Diomid was exiled to Arkhangel’sk for three years, and his exile was extended by another three years when that time was up (beyond that, his fate is unknown). This information comes from the PSTBI Database. Other Trinity monks found in the database of the Tikhon Institute who were arrested in 1928 include Varnava (Pokatov, 1877–?), Damian (Larichev, 1870–?), Miron (Semenchinskii, 1870–?), Mark (Basin, 1869–?), and Serafim (Kononenko, 1871–?), all exiled to Arkhangel’sk for three years and whose further fate is unknown; Ipatii (Maliutin, 1895–1937), also exiled to Arkhangel’sk for three years, after which he served as a parish priest, and was arrested and shot in 1937; Ilarii (Kalinov, 1867–?), Meletii (Glushenko, 1869–?), both exiled to Kazakhstan for three years; Ieronim (Potapov, 1876–?), exiled to Central Asia for three years, whose further fate unknown; and Nikodim (Smorchikov, 1869–?), Aristarkh (Dyrov, 1877–?), Arsenii (Vasil’ev, 1877–?), and Georgii (Snisarenko, 1878–?), all deprived of the right to live in the Moscow region for three years, who went to various other parts of Russia, and whose further fate is unknown. In addition to the monks who had worked for the museum, others were simply picked up off the street, such as two monks from the Coenobium who happened to be in Sergiev and were arrested: Iason (Poroshin, 1884-?) and Ipatii (Dichin, 1872-?), both of whom were exiled to Central Asia for three years and whose further fate is unknown. 81. Cited by Polovinkin, “Gnezdo,” 162; Polovinkin had published this earlier with Pavel Florenskii’s grandson, who was shown the file in the KGB archive: Den’, no. 5 (33) (February 28, 1992). 82. “Sergievskie kniaz’ia i barony budut ‘perebrosheny,’” Komsomol’skaia Pravda, no. 113 (May 1928): 6. 83. A. M., “Chelovek v riase—zaveduiushchii arkhivom lavry,” Rabochaia gazeta, no. 129 (June 6, 1928); A. Ol’shevskii, “Ob arkhivakh Troitse-Sergievskoi Lavry,” Arkhivnoe delo 2,

468 notes to pages 350–354 no. 15 (1928): 78–82. In the latter, Ol’shevskii noted that the archives of Gethsemane, Paraclete, and other communities should also be taken over by the central archive administration, but an investigation revealed that those archives had already perished. 84. O. N. Kopylova, “O sud’be arkhiva Troitse-Sergievoi lavry,” Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 4 (2001): 13–22. The archive in question is that of the Governing Council of the Lavra, 1764–1922; the “early archive” of the Lavra up to 1764 became part of the Rumiantsev, later Lenin, Library. 85. Gregory L. Freeze, “The Stalinist Assault on the Parish, 1929–1941,” in Stalinismus vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Neue Wege der Forschung, ed. Manfred Hildermeier (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1998), 209–32. 86. Wynot, Keeping the Faith, 119–20. 87. M. M. Prishvin, Dnevniki 1930–1931 (Saint Petersburg, 2006), 17–18. 88. Ibid., 24. 89. E.g., Hieromonk Neemiia (Belokozovich, 1875–?), who had become a priest in the village of Bakino in the Kirzhachskii District of Vladimir Province, was arrested in February 1930 and convicted of being antagonistic to Soviet power and conducting agitation to disrupt Soviet policies; he was exiled to the north for three years. A harsher fate befell Hieromonk Aaron (Koshkin, 1877–1937), who had served as a deacon in the Piatnitskaia church in the 1920s before becoming priest in a village in the Aleksandrov District (Vladimir Province) and was also arrested in February 1930; he was sentenced to three years in a concentration camp in the Komi Republic. This information comes from the PSTBI Database. 90. Diary for January 16, 1930, Prishvin, Dnevniki, 11. 91. Wynot, Keeping the Faith, 134–35. 92. This information comes from the PSTBI Database, citing “Delo Iniushina I. I. i dr. Moskva 1931g.,” GARF, f. 10035, op. 1, d. P-60406. The others arrested as part of this group include the following: Hegumen Vladimir (Terent’ev, 1872–1933) went to the Coenobium after the Zosimova Hermitage was closed; he was living in Zagorsk at the time of his arrest, and he was sentenced to five years in a labor camp in Kazakhstan. Hieromonk Ioannikii (Kashtanov, 1874–?) and Efrosin (Danilov), former monks of the Zosimova Hermitage, were arrested and sentenced to ten years in a labor camp; their further fates are unknown. Some TrinitySergius monks were arrested at this time also: Hegumen Mikhei (Vladimirskii, 1865–?) had served as the main priest in the Lavra’s hospital in 1914. He served as priest at the Piatnitskaia church until 1924 before going to Paraclete from 1924 to 1929. After Paraclete’s closure, he became priest in the church of the former Khot’kov Convent. He was arrested in April 1931 and sentenced to five years in a labor camp in Kazakhstan. Hierodeacon Avel (Negodin, 1879–?) was a monk of Trinity-Sergius and was also arrested in Zagorsk in March 1931 and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. 93. Freeze, “Stalinist Assault”; Wynot, Keeping the Faith, 104–69. 94. See Ignatiia, Starchestvo v Gody Gonenii, 79–124; and the PSTBI Database. 95. Archimandrite Mavrikii (Poletaev, 1880–1937) had never been a monk in any of the Trinity-Sergius communities. A married priest, he had served as a military chaplain in Turkestan after the war. He took monastic vows in 1927 and was also arrested in 1928 in Vladimir Province and sentenced to three years in exile. When he returned in 1931, he settled

notes to pages 354–358 469 in Zagorsk and served at the church of the Kukuevskoe cemetery. This information comes from the PSTBI Database. 96. It is unclear what exactly these monks were alleged to have advocated with regard to organizing a new church administration, if indeed they advocated anything of the sort. Perhaps they were dissatisfied with Metropolitan Sergii’s ability to defend the church, though they did not break with him as those in the catacomb church did (one of the group, Platon, had been elevated to the status of hegumen only the year before by Metropolitan Sergii). 97. This information comes from the PSTBI Database, on Maksimilian (Marchenko). 98. This information comes from the PSTBI Database, citing “Delo dukhovenstva i tserkovnikov vo glave s arkhimandritom Mavrikiem, Zagorsk, 1936g.,” GARF, f. 10035, op. 1, d. P-77092. 99. He was arrested in the Gulag in 1937 and accused of conducting religious services in the camp and spreading “religious attitudes” among the inmates, and shot in October after evidently being tortured. He was canonized in 2000. This information comes from the PSTBI Database. 100. He was arrested in exile in December 1937 and accused of continuing to conduct anti-Soviet activity and sentenced to ten years in the Chemolgan labor camp, where he died in 1938. He was canonized in 2000. Other monks in the group include Sergei Krestnikov, who received five years in a camp and was sent to the Uchpechlag in the Komi Republic, where he died in 1938, and was canonized in 2002. This information comes from the PSTBI Database. Hegumen Platon (Klimov, 1877–1966), formerly of Zosimova and Gethsemane, had served as a priest in the village of Sofrino (Zagorsk District); he returned from exile and became a parish priest in the Vladimir Province, one of the few to survive the Terror (PSTBI Database). 101. Lynne Viola, “The Peasant Nightmare: Visions of Apocalypse in the Soviet Countryside,” Journal of Modern History 62 (1990): 747–70. 102. For recent examples, see Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott, eds., Stalin’s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union (New York: Palgrave, 2003); and Wendy Z. Goldman, Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Repression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 103. J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), 468. 104. NKVD Operation Order of July 30, 1937, in Road to Terror, by Getty and Naumov, 474. Tserkovniki is narrowly translated here as “church officials,” although the term had much broader connotations by this point. 105. Ibid., 477. 106. Sviashchennomuchenik arkhimandrit Kronid (Liubimov), Namestnik Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry (STSL, 2000), 77–78. 107. GARF, f. 10035, op. 1, d. P-59458, l. 1. 108. Ibid., l. 31. 109. Ibid., ll. 5–16. 110. For a critical assessment of the reading of these files, see S. N. Romanova, “ ‘Dela po obvineniiu’ pravoslavnogo dukhvenstva i mirian, 1937–1938,” Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 4 (2001): 4–12.

470 notes to pages 358–364 111. GARF, f. 10035, op. 1, d. P-59458, ll. 105–6. 112. The statement is made in the passive voice, and the “by me” was inserted above the text (by the same hand). 113. Monastic names always appear in quotation marks in these documents. 114. GARF, f. 10035, op. 1, d. P-59458, ll. 106–7 ob. 115. Ibid., l. 141 ob. 116. These interrogation reports are filled with names that are misspelled as well as other errors of detail, such as mistaking the ecclesiastical rank of the accused (e.g., in one place, Kronid is referred to as a bishop). 117. GARF, f. 10035, op. 1, d. P-59458, l. 126–26 ob. 118. Ibid., l. 128–28 ob. 119. Ibid., l. 122. 120. Ibid., ll. 225–26. 121. These include Hieromonk Pakhomii (Sergeev, 1860–1937), Hieromonk Siluan (Krasnikov, 1863–1937), and Hieromonk Aaron (Koshkin, 1877–1937). 122. Hieromonk Vikentii (Sulenin, 1881–1938) was arrested in Zagorsk in 1932 and exiled to Kazakhstan for three years; he returned and served as a priest in the city of Mozhaisk, and was arrested in Moscow in February 1938 and executed on May 29, 1938, at Butovo. After the Lavra closed, Archimandrite Gavriil (Iatsik, 1880–1937) was in the Donskoi Monastery in Moscow until 1930; he was serving at a parish in Khimki, near Moscow, when he was arrested in September 1937; he was executed on September 23, 1937, at Butovo. Hieromonk Apollonii (Khlebnikov, 1874–1937) was arrested in the village of Makhra (Tver Province) in October 1937 and executed at Butovo on October 21. Other married priests in Zagorsk, such as Archpriest Nikolai Sokolov (1871–1937), also suffered. Father Sokolov had served as parish priest at the Church of the Ascension in Zagorsk; he had been arrested in 1924 and sent to Solovki for three years. He returned from exile after many of the other priests were arrested in 1928 and resumed his former position. He was arrested on September 21, 1937, and sentenced to death on November 11, but he died in prison on November 15 before the sentence was carried out. 123. The group included Hieromonk Nestor (Balashov, 1862–1938), who had been arrested in 1930 and sent to a concentration camp in Siberia for three years. After serving his sentence he returned to Zagorsk, where he worked in a designing workshop. Hieromonk Nifont (Mamaev, 1872–1938) was serving as a village priest in the Zagorsk region. Hieromonk Affonii (Vishniakov, 1870–1938) was working as a craftsman in Zagorsk. Hieromonk Savvatii (Grigor’ev, 1868–1938) was also arrested in Zagorsk, while Hegumen Epifanii (Avdeev, 1868– 1938) and hieromonk Mitrofan (Preobrazhenskii, 1879–1938) had served as parish priests in nearby villages. Hieromonk Ieronim (Kiselev, 1868–1938) became a monk on Mount Athos and was serving at the Athonite podvor’e in Moscow at the time of the Revolution; he was a parish priest in a village in the Zagorsk region and was arrested on suspicion of being connected to the Trinity monks. In addition to these monks, several women were arrested, including the schema-nun Rafaila (Vishniakova, 1887–1938), who had been close to Hegumen Ippolit, and Lidiia Ivanova (1875–1938), who worked as an instructor in an invalid’s artel, who had let hieromonk Nestor live in her house and therefore was accused of organizing an illegal church in her house. The information in this paragraph comes from the PSTBI Database. The archival file is GARF, f. 10035, op. 1, d. P-77438.

notes to pages 364–371

471

124. Butovskii poligon, 1937–1938 gg. Kniga Pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii (Moscow: Also, 2004). 125. Derek Beales, Prosperity and Plunder: European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 257ff; Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 591–92. 126. GARF, f. 10035, op. 1, d. P-59458, l. 226.

chapter 10 1. Sergei Boskin, “Paskha 1946 goda: Otkrytie Lavry Prepodobnogo Sergiia,” Russkii arkhiv, no. 1 (1990): 119–32; also printed, with the same title, in the reestablished Troitskoe slovo, no. 4 (1990): 16–30; G. A. Pyl’neva, V Lavre prepodobnogo Sergiia: iz dnevnika (1946– 1996) (Moscow: Podvor’e STSL, 2006), 11–12. On the relics of Saint Sergius, see Andronik (Trubachev), Zakrytie Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry i sud’ba moshchei prepodobnogo Sergiia Radonezhskogo v 1918–1946 gg. (Moscow: Izdatel’skii Soviet Russkoi Pravoslavnoi tserkvi, 2008), 297–99. 2. Ioann (Vendland), Kniaz’ Fedor (Chernyi), Mitropolit Gurii (Egorov): Istoricheskie ocherkii (Yaroslavl’: Izd-vo “DIA-press,” 1999), 129. 3. See M. V. Shkarovskii, “Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ v 1943–1957 godakh,” Voprosy istorii, no. 8 (1995): 36–37. 4. On Patriarch Aleksii I, see PE 1: 676–98. 5. On the council, see Tatiana A. Chumachenko, Church and State in Soviet Russia: Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the Khrushchev Years, trans. Edward E. Roslof (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2002); Edward E. Roslof, “‘Faces of the Faceless’: A. A. Trushin Communist Over-Procurator for Moscow, 1943–1984,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 18/19 (2002– 2003): 105–25. 6. Vladislav Tsypin, Istoriia Russkoi tserkvi, 1917–1997 (Moscow: Izd. Spaso-Preobrazhenskogo Valaamskogo monastyria, 1997), 329. 7. Chumachenko, Church and State, 81. 8. Makarii (Veretennikov), “Arkhimandrit Gurii—Pervyi namestnik vozrozhdennoi Troitse-Sergievoi lavry,” Troitskii sbornik, no. 2 (2002): 336–49; Ioann (Vendland), Kniaz’ Fedor (Chernyi), Mitropolit Gurii (Egorov); PE 13: 473–75. 9. See, e.g., TsGAMO, f. 7383, op. 1, d. 17. 10. He ended his career as Metropolitan of Pskov, where he served until his retirement in 1987 and death in 1990. 11. See Archimandrite Tikhon (Agrikov), U Troitsy okrylennye: Vospominaniia (STSL, 2000), parts 1–2, 60–70, 199–203. 12. On the first inhabitants, see Boskin, “Paskha 1946 goda,” 127–32; and Sergii Golubtsov, Troitse-Sergieva Lavra za poslednie sto let (Moscow, 1998), 97–100. 13. Nikolai Mitrokhin, “Arkhimandrit Naum i ‘naumovtsy’ kak kvintessentsiia sovremennogo starchestva,” in Religioznye praktiki v sovremennoi Rossii: Sbornik statei, ed. K. Russele and A. Agadjanian (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2006), 133. Mitrokhin also alleges, however, that Gurii reestablished the prerevolutionary intellectual—and political—traditions of the Lavra, including its nationalistic and xenophobic views.

472 notes to pages 372–376 14. Veniamin (Milov), Krupitsy slova Bozhiia (STSL, 1999), which contains sermons from 1946–49; Veniamin also wrote a memoir in 1928–33 that is a remarkable account of the years before and after the Revolution; see Episkop Veniamin (Milov), Dnevnik Inoka (STSL, 1999); and PE 7: 637–38. 15. Chumachenko, Church and State, 138. 16. TsGAMO, f. 7383, op. 1, d. 11, l. 9–9 ob (for 1946); d. 41, l. 32 (1956). 17. Shkarovskii, “Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ v 1943–1957 godakh”; Chumachenko, Church and State. 18. See Pimen’s recollections, “Na netlennuiu zhizn’ prikhodu dnes’,” ZhMP, no. 8 (1990): 9. 19. See Shkarovskii, “Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ v 1958–1964 godakh,” 44–46. See also Chumachenko, Church and State, 143–88; Nathaniel Davis, A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003), 33–45; and Michael Bourdeaux, Patriarch and Prophets: Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church Today (New York: Praeger, 1970), 85–116. 20. Shkarovskii, “Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ v 1958–1964 godakh,” 46. 21. TsGAMO, f. 7383, op. 3, d. 30, ll. 209–10, 220. 22. See Mitrokhin, “Arkhimandrit Naum.” A volume of Kirill’s sermons, stemming back to 1959, has been published: Kirill (Pavlov), Propovedi (STSL, 2003). 23. “Otkrytye pomestnogo sobora Russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi v Troitse-Sergievoi lavre,” Troitskii sbornik, no. 2 (2002): 369–71. 24. K. Filimonov, Novaia Gefsimaniia (Moscow, 2000), 58. 25. A., “Sviato-Smolensko-Zosimova Pustyn’,” Danilovskii blagovestnik 7 (1995): 111–15. The combined choirs of the hermitage and the soldiers even released a CD of religious and patriotic music, Za veru i otechestvo (1999). 26. G. P. Chiniakova, Paraklitova pustyn’, chto pri Troitse-Sergievoi lavre (Paraclete pustyn’, 1998), 35-41. 27. Mariia (Podkaminnaia), “Obitel’ prepodobnogo Stefana,” ZhMP, no. 8 (2004): 64–73. 28. Andrei Polynskii, “Negromkaia Data. Zaboty Ottsa Daniila,” Tribuna RT, September 10, 2005. 29. Gerol’d Vzdornov and Valentin Ianin, “Muzei prinadlezhit narodu, a ne patriarkhii,” Izvestiia (Rossiia), no. 10 (January 23, 1999); Sergei Bychkov, “Preobrazhenie lavry,” Moskovskii Komsomolets, April 29, 2000. 30. Sergei Blagodarov, “Pechal’nik zemli russkoi . . .,” Komsomol’skaia Pravda, March 27, 2000. 31. See Elena Ermicheva, “Nakanune Troitsy v Troitsevoi lavre,” Rossiisskaia gazeta, February 6, 2001; Aleksandra Loseva, “Sobytie: Blagovest—nasha obshchaia molitva,” Rossiia, September 12, 2002; Nataliia Savos’kina and Iurii Safronov, “Podrobnosti: Zvoni, esli chto . . .,” Novaia gazeta, April 19, 1004; and “Lavrskaia zvonnitsa vozrozhdaetsia,” Pravoslavnaia Moskva, May 1, 2004. See also Konstantin Filimonov et al., Kolokol’nia: Stroitel’stvo i restavratsiia, 1741–2001 (Sergiev Posad, 2001). 32. Sergei Prokopchuk, “Lavra na strazhe rodiny,” Krasnaia zvezda, November 26, 2003; Andrei Polynskii, “Sviatoe delo: Otriad monakhov osobogo naznacheniia,” Tribuna RT, July 27, 2005. Evgenii Strel’chik, “Lavra vstrechaet iubilei khristianstva,” NG Religii, 18, no. 41 (Sep-

notes to pages 376–381 473 tember 22, 1999), discusses other social initiatives. On the Church’s relations with the army, see John Garrard and Carol Garrard, Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), 207–41; this is one of the better chapters in an otherwise highly problematic book. 33. See Strel’chik, “Lavra vstrechaet iubilei khristianstva”; Sergei Bychkov, “Moskoviia: Nam takie dorogi,” Moskovskii komsomolets, September 9, 2002; and Mikhail Loginov, “Moskoviia: S Lavry—po nitke,” Moskovskii komsomolets, August 31, 2005. See also Svetlana Orlova, “Lampada: I nakormit’, i vozrodit’ dukhovno—Takuiu zadachu postavili pered soboi Sviato-Troitskaia Sergieva lavra i kompaniia po proizvodstvu produktov pitaniia,” Trud, May 23, 2002. 34. Davis, Long Walk to Church, 172–75. In 2001, there were some 3,500 monks, nuns, and novices in Ukraine, but there appear to be no comparable data for the Russian Federation. 35. S. Beliaev, “‘V pamiat’ vechnuiu budet pravednik . . .’: Obretenie moshchei sviatitelia Moskvskogo Filareta, sviatitelia Moskovskogo Innokentiia i arkhimandrita Antoniia,” ZhMP, no. 12 (1996). 36. Ibid. Most likely, it happened when the Church of Saint Filaret was dismantled in 1938–40, when there was no one in the Lavra who would have observed or cared about what was happening. The only other time the area was dug up was in 1956–57, when the central heating was installed, but by that time the monastery had reopened and was full of monks. 37. Filaret’s relics remained in Trinity-Sergius for a decade, but Patriarch Aleksii II transferred the relics to the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, ostensibly because the veneration for Filaret was “overshadowed” by that of Saint Sergius, and no doubt also to provide Christ the Savior with some venerable relics. See N. Stavitskaia, “‘Asket, smirennyi podvizhnik i vysokoobrazovannyi arkhiepastyr’’—tak otzyvalis’ o sviatiteli Filarete ego sovremenniki,” Pravoslavnaia Moskva, June 1, 2004; and “Iubilei predstoiatelia—prazdnik tserkvi,” Pravoslavnaia Moskva, July 1, 2004. 38. “Deianie o kanonizatsii namestnika Troitse-Sergievoi lavry arkhimandrita Antoniia [Medvedeva, 1892–77] v like mestnochtimykh prepodobnykh v sonme radonezhskhikh sviatykh,” Vyshenskii palomnik, no. 3 (1997): 3. No miracles were mentioned as being attributed to Antonii. 39. “Slovo Sviateishego Patriarkha Aleksiia v den’ proslavleniia v like mestnochtimykh Radonezhskikh sviatykh namestnika Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry arkhimandrita Antoniia (Medvedeva),” ZhMP, no. 12 (1998). 40. Georgii (Tertyshnikov), Prepodobnyi Varnava, starets Gefsimanskogo skita (STSL, 1996), 189–92. 41. Il’ia Chetverukhin and Evgeniia Chetverukhina, Prepodobnyi Aleksii, StaretsZatvornik Smolenskoi Zosimovoi pustyni (STSL, 2003), 184–86. 42. “Deianie iubileinogo osviashchennogo arkhiereiskogo soboro Russkoi Pravoslavonoi tserkvi o sobornom proslavlenii novomuchenikov i ispovednikov Rossiiskikh XX veka.” Others connected with the story have also been canonized, including Serafim (Krest’ianinov), who was executed with Kronid, although some from that group have not yet been canonized— in several cases, no doubt, because they evidently admitted “guilt” during their interrogations. 43. “Prepodobnomuchenik Kronid Radonezhskii,” Troitskii sbornik, no. 2 (2002): 156.

474 notes to pages 382–387 44. Among others, Mavrikii (Poletaev) was canonized in 2000. Zosimova Hermitage produced a number of canonized martyrs and confessors, including Makarii (Morzhov), Aleksii’s cell attendant, who was shot in 1931; Gerasim (Mochalov), who was executed at Butovo in 1937; Ignatii (Levedev), who died in the Gulag in 1938; and others. 45. The human rights group Memorial was also involved in establishing the site at Butovo, but the Church successfully took it over. See Sophia Kishkovsky, “Former Killing Ground Becomes Shrine to Stalin’s Victims,” New York Times, June 8, 2007. 46. Ibid. 47. Nikolai Mitrokhin, Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’: Sovremennoe sostoianie i aktual’nye problemy (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2004), 92; Mitrokhin, “Arkhimandrit Naum.” 48. Mikhail Bulanzhe, “Bytie i byt Lavry,” Novoe vremia, November 2, 2003. 49. Message of Patriarch Tikhon (September 10, 1920), in Akty Sviateishego Tikhona, Patriarkha Moskovskogo i vseia Rossii, pozdneishie dokumenty i perepiska o kanonicheskom preemstve vysshei tserkovnoi vlasti, 1917–1943, ed. M. E. Gubonin (Moscow: Tikhonovskii Bogoslovskii Institut, 1994), 167–68.

Glossary Names Aleksandr (Strygin, 1810–78), schemamonk. Known as “Aleksandr the Recluse”; elder of Gethsemane Skete. See chapters 3 and 4. Aleksii (Solov’ev, 1846–1928), schemamonk. Elder of the Zosimova Hermitage. See chapters 6 and 9. Anatolii (1804-1881), hegumen. Superior of Gethsemane Skete, 1849–1879. See chapter 3. Antonii (Medvedev, 1792–1877), archimandrite. Prior of the TrinitySergius Lavra, 1831–77. See chapters 2–5. Daniil (Sokolov, 1835–1902), hegumen. Superior of Gethsemane Skete, 1879–1902. See chapter 3. Filaret (Drozdov, 1782–1867), metropolitan of Moscow, 1821–67. See chapters 2–5. Filipp, Filippushka (Filipp Khorev, 1802–69), schemamonk. Holy fool and wandering pilgrim, joined Gethsemane Skete in 1847, tonsured a monk with the name Filaret in 1851; tonsured schemamonk Filipp in 1863; founded the Chernigov Caves and the Coenobium. See chapter 3. German (Gomzin, 1844–1923), hegumen. Superior of the Zosimova Hermitage, 1897–1923. See chapters 4, 6, and 9. Izrail (Andreev, 1870–1948/49?), hegumen. Superior of Gethsemane Skete, 1918–29. Arrested in 1931 and sentenced to ten years in the Gulag; died in exile. See chapters 8 and 9.

475

476 glossary Kronid (Liubimov, 1859–1937), archimandrite. Prior of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1915–20. Lived at Gethsemane Skete and the Paraclete Hermitages and in Sergiev/ Zagorsk after the closure of the Lavra. Executed by the NKVD on December 10, 1937. See chapters 7–9. Leonid (Kavelin, 1822–91), archimandrite. Prior of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1877–91. See chapter 2. Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii, 1851–1918), archbishop. Joined the Trinity-Sergius Lavra as a novice in 1877, tonsured a monk in 1880. Founder-editor of Trinity Leaflets (1879) and Trinity Word (1910), author of a popular life of Saint Sergius (1885). Raised to the rank of archimandrite in 1892, and appointed treasurer of TrinitySergius in 1893. Consecrated bishop in 1904, appointed bishop of Vologda in 1906, member of the State Council in 1907, and a member of the Holy Synod 1912–16. Retired from serving as bishop of Vologda in 1912, elevated to rank of archbishop in 1913. Died at Trinity-Sergius. See chapters 4–7. Pavel (Glebov, 1827–1904), archimandrite. Prior of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1891–1904. See chapter 2. Toviia (Tsymbal, 1836–1916), archimandrite. Prior of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1904–15. See chapters 2–7. Varnava (Merkulov, 1831–1906). Elder of Gethsemane Skete and founder of the Vyksunskii Convent in the Nizhegorod Diocese. See chapter 3.

Terms abbot (nastoiatel’, stroitel’). The head of a monastery; an abbot could bear the title of an archimandrite, hegumen, or hieromonk. archimandrite (arkhimandrit). Abbot of first- and second-class state-funded monasteries, though the title could be bestowed upon other monastic priests (e.g., rectors of seminaries and academies) as a sign of honor. bishop’s residence. See episcopal residence. blagochinnyi. Supervisory position in a monastery; the supervisor oversaw the behavior of the monks. Also superintendent in the diocesan administration who oversaw a subset of monasteries within a diocese and reported to the bishop.

glossary 477 bogadel’nia. Almshouse; usually a home for elderly poor people. cell attendant (keleinik). A novice or monk who lives with and attends to the needs of a bishop, the members of a monastery’s hierarchy, or a starets. cenobitic rule (obshchezhitie, obshchezhitel’nyi ustav). A type of monastic rule according to which the labor of the brothers goes toward the collective use of the monastery, and the monastery provides all necessities for the brothers. chief procurator (ober-prokuror). Head lay bureaucrat in the Holy Synod. coenobium (kinoviia). Monastic community founded on a strict cenobitic rule. compound (podvor’e). Small monastic house that serves as the representative of a large monastery, usually located in a major city. confessor (dukhovnik). Monastic priest who hears the confessions of other monks, or of pilgrims. convent (zhenskii monastyr’). See monastery. desiatina. Measure of land area equivalent to 1.0925 hectares or 2.7 acres. episcopal residence (arkhiereiskii dom). Small monastic community in which the bishop resided. Governing Council (Uchrezhdennyi Sobor, Dukhovnyi Sobor). An assembly of senior monks that governed some prominent monasteries, particularly lavras; at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, the Uchrezhdenyi Sobor was renamed Dukhovnyi Sobor (“Spiritual Council”) in 1897, though its functions and composition remained the same. great schema. See schemamonk. hegumen (igumen). Abbot of third-class state-funded monasteries, though the title was granted to other monastic priests as a sign of honor. hermitage (pustyn’). In principle, a smaller monastic community founded on a strict monastic rule in a remote, isolated location; often developed into large monastic communities. In contrast to a skete, a hermitage was often independent.

478 glossary Hesychasm. A contemplative spiritual practice—recognized as a venerable tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy—involving mental stillness, inner concentration, and unceasing prayer. hierodeacon (ierodiakon). A monk ordained to the diaconate. hieromonk (ieromonakh). A monk ordained to the priesthood. hieroskhimonakh (ieroskhimonakh). A hieromonk who is also a schemamonk. honored citizen (pochetnyi grazhdanin). A semiprivileged estate established by Tsar Nicholas I’s manifesto of April 10, 1832; comprised of nonnobles with higher education and the upper group of merchants and industrialists, this estate was exempt from the poll tax, military conscription, and corporal punishment. idiorhythmic rule (neobshchezhitel’nyi, or osobnozhitel’nyi ustav). A monastic rule according to which the brothers might receive some basic necessities but were required to purchase other necessities with the stipends they received from the monastery. intelligentsia (intelligentsiia). A term invented in the 1860s to describe the “educated class,” but increasingly used in prerevolutionary Russia to designate both an oppositionist and revolutionary elite. kruzhka. The donations received in a monastery from collection boxes near revered icons and relics, or from collection plates passed during services; they were divided among the brothers in idiorhythmic monasteries, each receiving a set amount according to his status and work. lavra. In ancient monasticism, a collection of hermits with a common chapel or church; in Russian Orthodoxy, the highest class of monastery. learned monasticism (uchenoe monashestvo). Refers to individuals who took monastic vows while obtaining a higher ecclesiastical education and subsequently dominated the Church’s hierarchy as professors and rectors in ecclesiastical educational institutions, abbots of prominent monasteries, and bishops. Although required to be celibate, few ever actually lived in a monastery. meshchanstvo, meshchane. Estate of petty townspeople.

glossary 479 monastery (monastyr’, muzhskoi monastyr’). In Russian, monastic communities (obiteli) are collectively termed monastyri, and further modified by the adjective muzhskoi or zhensii (men’s or women’s); in this book, “monastery” is used to indicate either men’s and women’s monasteries collectively or specifically men’s monasteries, while “convent” is used to designate women’s monasteries. namestnik. A post in the hierarchy of those monasteries in which the abbot was a bishop; the namestnik was the bishop-abbot’s deputy, who replaced him in his absence and governed the daily affairs of the monastery. Translated in this book as prior. narod. People, the common people, the “folk.” novice (poslushnik). An individual who entered a probationary period before taking monastic vows. obedience (poslushanie). One of the three vows taken by a monk; also a task or regular duty assigned by the abbot to each novice or monk. obshchezhitie, obshchezhitel’nyi ustav. See cenobitic rule. official novice (ukaznyi poslushnik). A novice who formally entered the three-year novitiate, as recognized by a decree (ukaz) of the ecclesiastical authorities. Pascha. Orthodox Easter. podvig. Exploit or feat, especially (in a religious context) an ascetic one. podvizhnik. An ascetic. postulant. A person living in a monastery on trial (na ispytanii) to determine his or her vocation before formally entering the novitiate. prior. See namestnik. prosphora (prosfora). Small loaf of liturgical bread purchased by worshippers before the beginning of the liturgy, accompanied by lists of individuals to be prayed for, which were read out during the preparatory part of the liturgy. The blessed loaf is returned to the worshipper after the liturgy. pud. Unit of measure for weight, equal to 11.38 kilograms or 36 pounds.

480 glossary rasophore (riasofor, riasofornyi poslushnik). A novice who, upon formally entering the novitiate, was permitted to wear the basic elements of monastic garments: the cassock (riasa) and headgear (kamilvka). In some, but not all, monasteries the rasophore was tonsured and received a new name. riznichii. A post in a monastery’s hierarchy; the individual who managed the sacristy (riznitsa). schemamonk (skhimonakh, skhimnik). The highest stage of monastic profession in Orthodox monasticism. The monk was tonsured a second time, received a new name, and wore the great habit or schema (velikaia skhima), which included a distinctive cowl. The schemamonk pledged himself to a stricter regimen of fasting, solitude, and silence. shtat. Registry of positions; a table of organization, fixing the number of hieromonks, hierodeacons, and monks in a monastery. shtatnye sluzhiteli. State peasants who worked for a monastery for a period of twenty-five years as part of the arrangement after the secularization of 1764, before the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861. Shtatnyi monastery. See state-funded monastery. skete (skit). A small monastic community founded on a strict monastic rule, always attached (and administratively subordinate) to a larger monastery. starchestvo. Spiritual eldership. starets (plural, startsy). Spiritual elder. state-funded monastery (shtatnyi monastyr’). A monastery that, after the secularization of 1764, received subsidies from the state; state-funded monasteries were divided into three classes, which determined the number of monks and the amount of state subsidies for each monastery. stavropegial monastery (stavropigial’nyi monastyr’). A monastery subject to the administration of the patriarch or the Holy Synod rather than the diocesan bishop.

glossary

481

steward (ekonom). A position in a monastery’s hierarchy; the steward managed the everyday economic operations of the monastery, such as the workshops, land, and candle production. strannopriimnyi dom. Hostel that offered free shelter for poor pilgrims. supervisor. See blagochinnyi. tonsure (postrizhenie). The act of cutting a portion of a person’s hair that is part of various Orthodox rites; in the monastic context, it most often referred to the rite of taking monastic vows. treasurer (kaznachei). A position in a monastery’s hierarchy; the treasurer kept the account books and managed the monastery’s investments and capital. ukaz. Decree. unfunded monastery (zashtathnyi monastyr’). A monastery that, after the secularization of 1764, did not receive state subsidies and supported itself on donations or its own means; it was permitted to receive as many monks as it could support. unofficial novice (neukaznyi poslushnik). An individual living in a monastery for a probationary period before being officially enrolled in the novitiate. verst. Unit of measure for distance equal to 1.06 kilometers. white clergy. The married parish clergy, so called because they wore white robes under their vestments, in contrast to the monastic “black clergy,” who wore black robes. women’s religious community (zhenskaia obshchina). A women’s monastic or semimonastic community that has not been officially recognized as a convent.

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Bibliography archival sources Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation): f. 3431, Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1917–18. f. A-353, People’s Commissariat of Justice. f. A-2306, People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment. f. A-2307, Glavnauka Narkomprosa. f. 6991, Council for Religious Affairs. Otdel rukopisei, Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka (Manuscript Division, Russian State Library): f. 148, Leonid (Kavelin). f. 303II, Trinity-Sergius Lavra (after 1764). f. 316, Filaret (Drozdov). f. 541, E. E. Golubinskii. f. 765, Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii). f. 766, Kronid (Liubimov). f. 771, Toviia (Tsymbalov). Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov (Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts): f. 1183, Moscow Synodal Office. f. 1204, Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (Russian State Historical Archive, Saint Petersburg): f. 796, Chancellery of the Holy Synod. f. 797, Chancellery of the Chief Procurator. f. 832, Filaret (Drozdov). f. 833, Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1917–18. f. 1574, K. P. Pobedonostsev. f. 1579, V. I. Iatskevich. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv g. Moskvy (Russian State Historical Archive of the city of Moscow): f. 203, Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory. f. 1176, Bogoiavlenskii Monastery. f. 1368, Blagochinnye monastyrei. f. 1790, Trinity-Sergius Lavra. f. 1878, Filaret (Drozdov).

483

484 bibliography Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Moskovskoi oblasti (Central State Archive of the Moscow Region): f. 663, Sergiev Executive Committee (uispolkom). f. 680, Moscow Provincial Soviet. f. 2609, Commission for the Preservation of Trinity-Sergius Lavra. f. 3934, Sergiev Police Administration. f. 3935, Sergiev District (uezdnoi) Control Commission (UKK). f. 3948, Sergiev District (volostnoi) Executive Committee. f. 5697, Revolutionary Committee, Dmitrovsk District. f. 7838, Moscow Council for Religious Affairs.

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Index Figures, notes, and tables are indicated by f, n, and t following the page numbers. Bold page numbers indicate general topics discussed at length. Aaron (Archimandrite), 155–56 Aaron (Hierodeacon), 157, 161, 164 abbots: Church Council discussion on, 301; in monastery administration, 21–23, 234, 236; and starchestvo, 241; at Trinity-Sergius, 27–28 Adrianova, Fekla, 92–94, 110 Afanasii, 37, 71, 398n7 Agafon-Ignatii (Lebedev), 334, 343, 353–54 Agapit. See Aleksandr (Strygin) age of monks, 115, 126–27t, 126–28, 136, 419n45 “Agricultural Collective ‘Paraclete’,” 332 Aksakov, Ivan, 242 Aladin, N., 130 alcohol abuse. See drunkenness Aleksander-Svirskii Monastery, 312 Aleksandr, 80–81 Aleksandr (Strygin): contemplative life of, 145–46; and German (Gomzin), 149–51, 239, 423n120; at Gethsemane Skete, 88, 90–91; memory of in 1918, 304; as schemamonk, 114–15 Aleksandr the Recluse. See Aleksandr (Strygin) Aleksii I (Simanskii, Patriarch), 368, 369, 370 Aleksii II (Patriarch), 379–80 Aleksii (Hegumen), 305 Aleksii (Solov’ev), 241–44, 248–52, 334–48, 434–46; canonization of, 380; career path of, 241–44; death of, 345; on monasticism, 236, 237; seclu-

511

sion of, 251–52, 443n137; veneration of, 354–55, 365; at Zosimova Hermitage, 109, 238, 242–43, 248, 249, 334, 335–38; Zosimova Hermitage, after closure of, 343–45, 346 Alexander I, 23, 35 Alexander II, 88, 120, 183, 215 Alexander III, 183 Alexander-Nevskaia Lavra, 297 Alexis, 11 All-Russian Congress of Monastic Clergy, 232–38, 252 almshouses, 50, 57, 59, 402n65 Amvrosii of Optina, 100, 137, 229, 231, 377 Anatolii (Superior of Gethsemane Skete), 81–82, 84, 93, 101, 102, 103 anchorites and anchoritic monasticism: in early Church, 9; elimination of, 15–16; Filaret (Drozdov) on, 76; at Gethsemane Skete, 87–92 Anderson, Benedict, 4 Andronik (Trubachev), 312, 324 Anfim, 306 Anna I, 16 Antireligioznik (journal), article on monasteries in, 342 anti-Semitism, 265–66 Antonii (Khrapovitskii), 69, 239 Antonii (Medvedev), 33–63, 75–92, 142–45, 213–15; and Aleksandr (Strygin), 91; canonization of, 379–80; contemplative life of, 75, 222; on dealing with insult, 162;

512

index

Antonii (Medvedev) (continued) death of, 61–62; and Filaret (Drozdov), 61, 62–63; and Filipp-Filaret, 84, 85, 86; and Gethsemane Skete, 75, 76–78, 79–83, 87–88, 91, 100–102, 109, 249; and hermits, 146; Leonid (Kavelin), compared to, 65; and miraculous healing, 197, 199, 200, 213–14, 215, 220; on novitiate norms, 142–43, 145; and pilgrims, 186; portrait of, 41f; on prosphora, 184; relics of, 377–79, 386; and tonsure of monks, 116; and Toviia, 33–34; and Trinity-Sergius, 35–46, 48–52, 54, 57–61, 71 Antonii of the Kievan Caves, 10, 84 Antony the Great, 9 Apollonii (Khlebnikov), 470n122 archimandrites: in monastery administration, 21; at Trinity-Sergius, 25, 28–32 Archive of Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 214, 215, 348–50, 403n93, 435n160, 467n83, 468n84 Ardamon (Hegumen), 237 aristocracy: joining monasteries, 130–31, 136, 167; land donations by, 24 Arsenii (Koziorov), 37 Arsenii (Zhadanovskii), 241, 243–44, 247, 336 Arsenii of Rostov, 16 Artamonov, Leonid, 296 arteli (workers’ cooperative): closure of, 347; Gethsemane Skete as, 334, 339–40, 341; monasteries’ transformations into, 331–32 Atheist at the Press (newspaper), attack on “formers” in, 347, 349 Athos. See Mount Athos Avdii (Archimandrite), 155 Avel (Negodin), 468n92 Award of Saint Vladimir, 194 Azarii (Pavlov), 364 Baianov, Dmitrii, 360, 362, 364 Barbasheva, Ekaterina, 107, 415n156 Barlaam the Calabrian, 10 Bashkin, N. V., 307

The Bell (newspaper), Skvortsov as editor of, 232 bells: destruction of, 351–52; outlawing ringing of, 457n51; replacement of, 376 Bethany Monastery, 29–31; Antonii (Medvedev) at, 44; budgets at, 53; founding of, 29–31, 29f, 82; liquidation of, 339; monastic candidates at, 123, 125–26; murder of monk at, 259–60; reopening of, 376 Black Earth region, monastic candidates from, 123, 125, 134 black hundreds, 256, 290, 340, 347–50 Blokhina, Anna, 157 Bloody Sunday (1905), 256 Bolsheviks, 7–8, 292–328; Church Council and monasticism, 300–303; exposing relics of Sergius, 312–19, 327–28, 379; French, compared to, 32; land confiscation by, 294–95, 298–99, 303, 306, 309; nationalization under, 294–309, 327; November 1917 to summer 1918, 295–300; and popular piety, 220; seizing of power by, 281, 330; Trinity-Sergius, Commission for the Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquities at, 306–10, 311, 320, 322–23, 324; Trinity-Sergius, liquidation of, 319–26, 327–28; Trinity-Sergius as “living museum,” 309–28 Bonch-Bruevich, Vladimir, 298, 321, 456n22 Bondarenko, Il’ia, 306–7, 311 bonds, 27, 46, 48 Brezhnev, Leonid, Church relations under, 374 Brianchaninov, Ignatii, 146–47, 377 “A Brotherly Word of a Trinity Monk to Monasteries” (Nikon [Rozhdestvenskii]), 258 The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky): elders in, 3; monasticism in, 1–2, 6, 8, 145; starchestvo in, 74, 385 Bulgakov, Sergei, 244, 248, 250 Burova, Akulina, 200 Butovo, execution grounds of, 364, 381–83, 381–84f

index byvshie (“formers”), 347–48 Byzantium: reviving monasticism in, 9–11; and Russian culture, 310 candles: expenditures for, 50; income from, 54–55, 184–86, 185t, 274, 428n30, 428n32; purchases by pilgrims of, 52, 72, 183–84 canonizations in monastic revival, 377–83, 386 Catherine II (Catherine the Great), 56; on almshouses, 57; monasticism, suppression of, 368; and Platon, 28–29; reforms of, 2, 4, 18, 26, 34; secularization by, 2, 16–17, 31–32, 171 cave dwellers, religious, 83–87, 88, 91 celibacy of monks, 157–58, 230 cenobitic monasticism: administration of, 23; All-Russian Congress of Monastic Clergy discussion of, 233–34, 236; crisis within, 223; in Ecclesiastical Regulation, 15; in fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 11, 13; at Gethsemane Skete, 80, 82, 83, 101, 104; and idiorhythmic monasticism, 20; origin of, 9; at Paraclete Hermitage, 90; relaxation of, 25; of Sergius of Radonezh, 13, 14 Central Conciliatory Chamber, 287 charity. See philanthropy Cheka (Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle against Speculation and Counterrevolution), 303, 305–6, 308, 322, 323 Chekhov, Anton, 156 Chernigov Caves, 106, 109, 190, 304, 375 Chernigov Church, 103–4 Chernigov Icon of the Mother of God: Chernigov Church, housed in, 103–4; history of, 411n100; as miraculous icon, 92–94, 96, 110; transfer of, 333; veneration of, 101, 272 Chernigov Skete, 104, 104–5f, 333, 338 Chetverikov, Sergei, 248 Chetverukhin, Il’ia, 244, 251–52, 333, 441n97 choirs: boys’, 60, 260; salary demands of, 297; Toviia’s involvement in, 154–56

513

cholera epidemics, 194 The Christian (journal), publication of, 284 Church Council of 1917–18, National, 300–303 Church Council of 1667, 14, 15 clerical estate. See parish clergy Cluny monastery, 327 coenobium monasteries, 19 Coenobium of the God-Loving Theotokos, 85–87, 107, 109, 225, 226, 339, 465n39 College of Economy, 17 Commissariat of Enlightenment, 306, 307, 314, 324, 327 Commissariat of Justice: conflicts with, 327; and monastic lands, 331–32; and Sergius relics, 312–13, 323, 325; Trinity-Sergius, liquidation of, 294, 298, 319 Commissariat of Land, 331–32 Commission for the Preservation of Monuments and Artistic Treasures of the Moscow Soviet, 306 Commission for the Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquities at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 306–10, 311, 320, 322–23, 324, 340 communes, 331–32 Communist Party, 355 Complaints Bureau, 321, 324–25 conscience, freedom of, 264–65 Constitution of 1936, 353, 355 convents: administration of, 21; cenobitic rule in, 20; in nineteenth century, 19 conversion to Orthodoxy, 212 correctional measures. See discipline and correctional measures Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs, 369, 372, 373 Counter-Reformation, 172 cures, miraculous. See miraculous healing Curtiss, John Shelton, 294, 303 Daniil (Sokolov), 95, 97, 102–6, 110, 240, 440n89 “decree on land,” 294

514

index

defrocking of monks, 164–65 deification (theosis), 8, 10, 74, 196 Deism, 37 dekulakization, 352 demonic possessions, 200–202, 206 Descent of the Holy Spirit, Church of the, 61, 62f, 377, 378f de-Stalinization, 373 Diaries (Prishvin), 329, 351–52 Diomid (Egorov), 349, 467n80 Dionisii (Archimandrite; seventeenth century), 25, 76, 337 discipline and correctional measures: AllRussian Congress of Monastic Clergy recommendations for, 235, 236; at Makhrishchskii Monastery, 157, 162, 163–64, 225–26; for monks, 156–58, 162–65; for pilgrims, 210–12, 434n140 divorce and divorcees, 128, 129, 217, 419n52 Dmitrii Donskoi of Moscow, 12 doctors, role for pilgrims of, 209–10, 219 Dorimedont (Chemodanov), 371 Dormition Cathedral (Uspenskii Sobor) of Trinity-Sergius, 25, 175, 182, 242, 268, 368 Dormition of the Theotokos, Church of the (at Gethsemane Skete), 76–77, 340 Dosifei (Archimandrite; treasurer), 260 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 1–2, 3, 6, 137, 385 drunkenness: All-Russian Congress of Monastic Clergy discussion of, 235, 236–37; Antonii’s (Medvedev) problems with, 42; correctional measures for, 163; miraculous healing of, 203; rejection of monastic candidate because of, 133; Zinovii’s problems with, 158–61 Duma (parliament), 256, 257–58, 261–62, 264 “Easter Eve” (Chekhov), 156 Ecclesiastical Regulation (Church charter), 15 education of monks, 131–33, 138, 154–55. See also schools Efimov, Ivan, 108 Efrosin (Danilov), 468n92

Egypt, Christian monasticism in, 9 Eiler, A. A., 284, 296 elders: of Gethsemane Skete, 75, 92–109, 110; in nineteenth century, 74–75; revival of institution of, 2, 3; role of, 6; as spiritual guide to candidates, 140; of Zosimova Hermitage, 238–52. See also starchestvo Elizabeth (Romanov), 16, 351 Elizaveta Feodorovna (Romanov). See Romanov, Elizaveta Feodorovna Emancipation of the Serfs, 137, 171, 218, 264 eremitical monasticism, 9, 233 Ershov Pond, 26, 29, 30 Evdokim (Meshcherskii), 102, 104–5, 230–31, 414n138 Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle against Speculation and Counterrevolution. See Cheka fasting as novitiate norm, 144 Feast of the Dormition, 80 February Revolution, 280–81, 289, 291 Fedor (tsar), 25 “feminization” of monastic revival, 3 Feodor (Pozdeevskii), 313 Feodosii of Kievan Caves, 10 Feodot (Kol’tsov), 89–90, 411n90 Feofan the Recluse, 146–47, 149, 151, 239, 241, 377, 423n120 Feognost (prior of Trinity-Sergius), 376 Filadel’f (Mishin), 371 Filaret (Amfiteatrov), 77 Filaret (Drozdov), 33–44, 57–63, 75–92, 139–41, 213–15; and Antonii’s (Medvedev), 37–40, 62–63; on brotherhood of monks, 161; canonization of, 377; on cenobitic monasteries, 20, 23; contemplative life of, 29, 75, 222; and Daniil (Sokolov), 102–3; death of, 61; and Filipp-Filaret, 83–86, 87, 409n60; and Gethsemane Skete, 75–84, 87–88, 91, 100–102, 109–10, 249; and miraculous healing, 199, 208, 213–15, 220; monastic communities, rules and discipline for, 139, 140–41, 164, 237, 421n81; on

index monks’ education levels, 132; as museum, living chambers of, 340; and Paraclete Hermitage, 89–90, 411n90; on pilgrims, 188, 429n47; portrait of, 36f; relics of, 377–79, 386; and tonsure of monks, 116; and Toviia, 33; Trinity-Sergius, expenditures at, 49; Trinity-Sergius, philanthropic activity at, 57–58, 59, 60, 61; Trinity-Sergius, recovery of, 35–44, 70–71; veneration of, 204 Filipp-Filaret (Filippushka Khorev), 83–87; and Chernigov Skete, 104; and Coenobium of the God-Loving Theotokos, 225; elder, conflict as, 98; at Gethsemane Skete, 83–87, 95, 110; tonsure of, 409n60; and Zosimova Hermitage, 106, 107, 238 Filippova, Aleksandra, 411n100 Filippushka. See Filipp-Filaret (Filippushka Khorev) Firsov, A. A., 203, 213 Five-Year Plan, 347, 353 Florenskii, Pavel, 306–12; Aleksii (Solov’ev), visiting of, 244; arrest of, 349; and Isiodore, 105; and monasteries in Russian culture, 293; and Sergius relics, 313, 317, 328; Trinity-Sergius, Commission for the Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquities at the, 306–8; Trinity-Sergius, liquidation of, 321, 322, 324, 462n143; Trinity-Sergius as “living museum,” 309–12, 327 Florovsky, Georges, 385 “formers” (byvshie), 347–48 France, monastic orders in, 31–32 freedom of conscience, 264–65 “Freedom of Conscience Has Its Limits” (Nikon [Rozhdestvenskii]), 264 Freemasonry, 37, 265, 266 French Revolution, 338, 365 Fudel’, Iosif, 248 Galaktion (Hieromonk), 86, 107, 157, 225 Galkin (Gorev), Mikhail: and “living museum” idea, 311–12; and Sergius relics,

515

313–18, 327, 328; Trinity-Sergius, liquidation of, 319, 320, 322, 323 gambling, 203 Gapon, Georgii, 256 Gedeon (Cherkalov), 364 Gedeon (Smirnov), 364 Gellner, Ernst, 4 geographical origins of monks, 123–26, 124–25t, 137–38 Georgia, independence struggles in, 257 Georgii (Potapov), 358, 364 German (Gomzin), 147–72, 238–53, 336–38; and Aleksandr (Strygin), 149–51, 239, 423n120; and Aleksii (Solov’ev), 243–44; career path of, 238–41; conflict over leadership, 245–51; death of, 337–38; and Hesychasm, 147–49; as typical recruit, 134; at Zosimova Hermitage, 109, 238, 245–51, 253, 334, 336–38 Gerontii-Grigorii, 95, 97 Gethsemane Agricultural Collective, 332 Gethsemane-Chernigov Skete, 375 Gethsemane Skete, 7, 73–110, 79f, 338–41; asagricultural collective in the 1920s, 338–40; anchorites and hermitages, 87–92; Bolshevik search of, 303–5; Chernigov Icon, 92–94; contemplation and stillness at, 75–92; establishment of, 44; holy fools and cave dwellers, 83–87; Holy Synod’s review of, 225, 226; icons and elders at, 75, 92–109, 110; in late nineteenth century, 100–106, 110; local populations, conflicts with, 288–89; monastic candidates to, 121; Varnava (Merkulov) at, 94–100, 110; and Zosimova Hermitage, 106–9 Getty, Arch, 355 Glazov, General, 266–67 Glebov, Petr. See Pavel (Glebov) glossary of names and terms, 389–95 God’s Field (journal), founding of, 265 Goldfrank, David, 423n109 Golovina, E. I., 38 Golubinskii, E. E., 12, 43, 69 Golubtsova, Mariia, 335–36

516

index

Gomzin, Gavriil. See German (Gomzin) A Good Word to New Novices (Antonii [Medvedev]), 142 Gorbachev, Mikhail, perestroika under, 374 Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie (security services, GPU), 347, 349 Got’e, Iurii, 325 Governing Council (Uchrezhdennyi Sobor): and anti-Soviet literature, 308; and Antonii (Medvedev), 40, 399n22; and Chernigov Icon, 94; establishment of, 28; and Gethsemane Skete, 100, 101–2; and Makhrishchskii Monastery, 53; and Paraclete Hermitage, 89; renaming of, 397n103; on “revolutionary tax,” 309; and tonsure of monks, 117; Trinity-Sergius, administration of, 37, 61; Trinity-Sergius, memorial celebration at, 67 GPU (Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie, security services), 347, 349 Great Reforms, 40, 120 Great Terror, 350, 355–67, 382. See also terror and monastic revival Great War, 275–80, 276–77t Greene, Robert, 208, 312, 434n138 Gregorian calendar, 344 Gruzinskii, Prince, 38 Gulag, 347, 352, 353, 356, 364, 365 Gurevich, D. M., 306 Gurii (Egorov), 368, 370–71 Harris, Ruth, 218 healing, miraculous. See miraculous healing Hefner, Robert, 5 The Herald of Europe (periodical): article criticizing monasteries in, 53–54, 55; article on pilgrims to monasteries in, 174 hermitages: and anchoritic monasticism, 15–16; and Gethsemane Skete, 87–92; as monastery type, 19. See also individual hermitages, e.g., Zosimova Hermitage hermits, 146

Hesychasm, 145–52; development of, 10; as monastic path, 156; as mystical prayer, 145–52; revival of, 6, 377, 384–85 hesychia (“stillness”), 10, 74 Historical Description of the Kozel’sk Vvedensk Optina Hermitage (Leonid [Kavelin]), 64 holy fools, 83–87 Holy Mountain Monastery, 33, 112 Holy Spirit Church. See Descent of the Holy Spirit, Church of the Holy Synod: on Antonii’s (Medvedev) service to Trinity-Sergius, 62–63; data on monastic recruits, 118; establishment of, 15; on exiles as monks, 416n10; and Gethsemane Skete, 77–78; on icon processions to local villages, 195–96; investigation of monastic disorders, 223; and miracles, 172–73, 213–15; monasteries, founding of, 16, 18; monastery administration by, 21, 23, 61, 223–27; and Paraclete Hermitage, 90; power of, 172–73; and public schools, 58; and school-organized pilgrimages, 270–71; and stavropegial monasteries, 19; subsidies by, 24; Synodal Commission of 1901, 223–27; and tonsures, 115–17, 416n15; and Trinity-Sergius, 27; and Varnava’s burial place, 99; and Zosimova Hermitage, 107, 108 Holy Trinity–Saint Sergius Lavra. See Trinity-Sergius Lavra Home for the Poor, 59–60; expansion of, 186; financial support of, 299, 300; Varnava’s (Merkulov) death at, 99; women at, 59–60, 63, 187, 436n170 hospitals, 60, 61, 63, 229–31, 275, 276t human rights groups, 382, 474n45 Iakov (Marochkin), 364 Icon of the God-Loving Theotokos, 85 Iconostasis (Florenskii), 310 icons: at Gethsemane Skete, 75, 92–94; miraculous, 92–109; processions to local villages, 194–96. See also individual icons,

index e.g., Chernigov Icon of the Mother of God idiorhythmic monasticism, 13, 14–15, 20, 83, 233 Ieronim (Kiselev), 470n123 Ilarion. See Makarii-Ilarion Ilarion (Hieromonk), 161 Il’inskaia, Ekaterina, 271–72 Iliodor (Hegumen), 305, 332 Imperial Military-Historical Society, 267 imprisonment of monks, 162–63 indictments of monks (in 1937), 362–64 Innokentii (Oreshkin), 352–53 Innokentii (Veniaminov): and Adrianova’s miraculous healing, 93; and Antonii (Medvedev), 61; canonization of, 379; and disciplinary measures for monks, 158; and Gethsemane Skete, 101–2; and Leonid (Kavelin), 64; tomb of, 377–79; and tonsure of monks, 117; TrinitySergius, report on income at, 55; and Zosimova Hermitage, 107–8, 343 Internal Affairs Commissariat. See NKVD Internal Affairs Ministry, 264 interrogations of monks (in 1937), 358–62 “In the Service of the World—In the Service of God” (Kruglov), 228, 232 Ioann (Hieromonk), 239, 441n111 Ioann (Razumov), 371 Ioannikii (Metropolitan of Moscow), 67 Ioannikii (Kashtanov), 468n92 Iona (Firguf): and conflicts with local populations, 286–87, 289, 454n175; revolutionary authorities, conflict with, 282; Zosimova Hermitage, conflict at, 245–47, 249–51, 441n111 Iosif (Evseenok), 371, 372 Iosif (Volotskii), 13–14 Ippolit (Iakovloev), 357 Isiodore, 105 Iuvenalii (Polovtsev), 142, 143–45, 422n91 Ivanov, Sergei, 208, 213, 214 Ivanova, Lidiia, 470n123 Ivan the Terrible, 25, 175

517

Iverskaia Icon of the Mother of God, 97 Izrail (Andreev), 288–89, 303–5, 332, 340–41, 352–53 Jesus Prayer, 145, 147–49, 150–51 Jews, 266, 345 John Chrysostom, 248 John of Kronstadt, 257 Joseph II, 31 Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, publication of, 369 Kalinin, Mikhail, 321 Kapterev, N., 230 Kapterev, Pavel, 12, 307, 311, 313, 458n62 Karpov, Georgii, 369 Kavelin, Konstantin, 64 Kavelin, Lev A. See Leonid (Kavelin) Kazakhstan, exiles to, 354 Kazanskii, P. S., 42, 55 Kazantsev, V. S., 161–62 Khorev, Filipp. See Filipp-Filaret (Filippushka Khorev) Khot’kov Convent, 178, 180, 190, 195, 271 Khrushchev, Nikita, antireligious campaign of, 373, 374 Kievan Caves Lavra, 10–11, 54, 169–70, 198 Kireevskii, Ivan, 64 Kirill (Pavlov), 374 Kliuchevskii, Vasilii, 13, 69, 173, 218, 326, 386–87 Kloss, B. M., 11 Kollontai, Alexandra, 297 Komarovskii, Vladimir, 342 Korbukha, summer palace at, 26, 75, 77 Korolev, Ivan, 88–89, 90 Kostomarov, G., 348–49, 429n47 Krasnogorsk Square (Sergiev Posad), 47–48, 376 Krasnopol’skii, P., 128 Kronid (Liubimov), 275–77, 282–85, 292, 329–30, 357–67; and Aleksii (Solov’ev), 336; and Bolsheviks, 292, 308, 329–30; canonization of, 380–82; career path

518

index

Kronid (Liubimov) (continued) of, 275–77; and Church Council, 301, 302; and exposing of Sergius relics, 313, 314, 315, 316; in Great Terror, 357–58; indictment of, 362–64, 366–67; interrogation of, 358–61, 366; and Leonid (Kavelin), 66; and miraculous healing stories, 197, 199, 203, 209, 211–12, 215, 432n90; and peasant’s seizure of monastic lands, 288; revolutionary authorities, conflict with, 282, 283, 284–85; and Sergius, spirit of, 387; and Toviia’s retirement, 255; TrinitySergius, liquidation of, 321 Kruglov, A., 228–29, 232, 253 kruzhka (donations divided among monks): deprivation of, 159, 160, 163, 224; increase in, 136; as motivation to enter monastery, 168; at shtatnyi monasteries, 233 Ksenofont (Bondarenko), 358, 359–62, 364, 366, 381–82 Kudashkin, F., 134 Kukuevskoe Cemetery, 354–55, 365 Kulikovo Field, Battle of (1380), 12, 267 Kuznetsov, I., 129 Kuznetsov, N. D., 301 “Labor Artel of Trinity-Sergius Lavra,” 332 land, decree on, 294 Land Committee of the Rogachevskii Provisional Executive Committee, 288 landownership, monastic: Bolsheviks’ land confiscation, 294–95, 298–99, 303, 306, 309; Catherine the Great’s confiscation of, 16–18; economy and wealth of, 23–24; Iosif Volotskii’s view of, 14; peasants’ land seizure, 287–88, 289–90, 291; reduction in, 16–17; and social class, 10; of TrinitySergius, 45–48, 400n48 Latkov, A. A., 68, 406n149 lavra, definition of, 396n86 Lavrentii (Nosonov), 364 Law Code of 1649, 14 learned monks, 21–22, 28, 234

Lenin, Vladimir: monasticism, suppression of, 369; and Sergius relics, 314, 318, 323, 324, 326; statue of, 376; Trinity-Sergius, liquidation of, 324, 327, 370 “Lenin Orphanage,” 339 Leonid (Kavelin), 34, 63–66, 91, 98–99 Leonid (Nagolkin), 64 Leonid of Dmitrov, 67 Leontii (Lebedenskii), 66, 67–68, 132, 187 Lepeshkin, Semen, 77, 78 Life of Jesus (Renan), 284 Life of Saint Sergius, 284 Lipovans, 80, 81, 408n31 “Liquidation Commission,” 294, 298 “Liquidation Committee,” 311 “Liquidation Department,” 331 Lisovoi, N. N., 15 literacy levels, 131–33, 138 literature, popular religious, 192–94, 218 Liubimov, Aleksei, 134 Liubimov, Konstantin. See Kronid (Liubimov) “living museums,” 309–28 Loginova, Matrona, 85 Lopnov, Aleksei, 161, 425n156 Lossky, Vladimir, 385 Lourdes, pilgrimages to, 218, 219, 436n170 Lunina, Anna, 59 L’vov, V. N., 283 Makarii (Bulgakov): and Gethsemane Skete, 100, 102, 249; and Sergius relics, 269; and Varnava (Merkulov), 98 Makarii (Ivanov), 64 Makarii (Morzhov): arrest of, 352–53; revolutionary authorities, conflict with, 282, 283 Makarii-Ilarion, 80–81, 88, 91, 103 Makarios of Corinth, 394n52 Makarov, Mikhail, 271–72 Makhra. See Makhrishchskii Monastery Makhrishchskii, Stefan, 27, 248 Makhrishchskii Monastery: Antonii (Medvedev) at, 75; budgets of, 53, 55;

index discipline and correctional measures at, 157, 162, 163–64, 225–26; fires at, 442n128; founding of, 27; German’s (Gomzin) transfer to, 247–48; Holy Synod’s review of, 225–26; and icon processions to local villages, 196, 431n87; monastic candidates at, 123, 125–26; reopened as nunnery, 376; revolutionary authorities, conflict with, 282–83 Maksimilian (Marchenko), 349, 354, 467n80, 469n100 male monasticism: All-Russian Congress of Monastic Clergy focus on, 233; contemplative nature of, 3; in nineteenth century, 18–19; numbers in, 113, 415n4 Manifesto of August 6, 1905, 257 Mansurov, Sergei, 307, 322, 323, 342, 458n66 manteinyi monks, 113, 114 Maria Theresa, 31 Mariia Aleksandrovna, 60 marital status of monks, 128–29 Masons. See Freemasonry Mavrikii (Poletaev), 354, 365, 468n95, 474n44 medicine, relationship to miraculous healing, 209–10, 219 Medvedev, Andrei. See Antonii (Medvedev) Melkhisedek (Likhachev), 352–53 Memorial (human rights group), 474n45 Merkulov, Vasilii. See Varnava (Merkulov) Methodism, 4–5 Meyendorff, John, 385 Miasnikov, Aleksandr, 202–3, 209, 210, 211 Mikhail Alexandrovich (Romanov), 281 Mikhei (Vladimirskii), 468n92 Military-Revolutionary Committee, 295, 296, 308–9 Miller, David, 12 Milovidov, Ioann, 94 miraculous healing: by Chernigov Icon, 92–94; doctors and medicine, role of, 209–10, 219; molebens for, 201, 202, 205, 207, 211, 213; monasteries’ role in, 212–18,

519

219–20, 435n160; as motivation for pilgrimage, 171; punishment and conversion, 210–12; by saints, 197–208, 211; by Sergius, 92, 196, 204–8, 211, 216–17, 219; in Shmelev’s Pilgrimage, 191 Mitrokhin, Nikolai, 371, 471n13 Mitskevich, S., 318 Moisii of Optina, 334, 395n70, 400n39 molebens (prayer services): for miraculous healing, 201, 202, 205, 207, 211, 213; pilgrims’ use of, 169–70, 182, 183–84 Mol’ver, P. N., 325 Monarchist Congress, 272 Monarchist Party, 262–63 Monarchist Union, 262 monasteries: administration of, 21–23; poverty in, 53; role in miraculous healing of, 212–18, 219–20, 435n160; types of, 19–23. See also specific monasteries (e.g., Trinity-Sergius Lavra) and specific types of monasteries (e.g., shtatnye monasteries) Monastery Chancellery (Prikaz), 14, 15, 16 Monastery Letters (Antonii [Medvedev]), 215 The Monastery Refectory (Perov), 54 monasticism, politics in, 7, 254–91; February Revolution, 280–81, 289, 291; Great War, 275–80, 276–77t; local populations, conflicts with, 286–90, 291; 1907–13 period, 261–68; pilgrimage after 1905, 268–74; revolutionary authorities, conflict with, 282–85; Revolution of 1905–7 and its aftermath, 255–74, 261t, 290, 291; schism within community, 285–86; war and revolution (1914–17), 274–91. See also male monasticism; monasticism, reform in; monasticism, reviving monasticism, reform in, 7, 221–53; and Aleksii (Solov’ev), 241–44, 251–52; AllRussian Congress of Monastic Clergy, 232–38; crisis, responses to, 222–38; monastic question, debate on, 227–32; Synodal Commission of 1901, 223–27; at Zosimova Hermitage, 238–53

520 index monasticism, reviving, 1–32; development of Russian, 8–9; in early Church and Byzantium, 9–11; economy and landownership, 23–24; in eighteenth century, 14–18; monasteries, types of, 19–20; monastery administration, 21–23; in nineteenth century, 18–19; Platon as archimandrite, 28–32; Sergius and monastic expansion in Muscovy, 11–14; Trinity-Sergius Lavra to nineteenth century, 24–28 Monastic Life (Iuvenalii), 142 monks, 7, 111–68; age of, 115, 126–27t, 126–28, 136, 419n45; alcohol abuse of, 158–61; celibacy of, 157–58, 230; community life of, 139–42, 421n81; conflicts between, 161–62; discipline and correctional measures for, 156–58, 162–65; education of, 131–33, 138, 154–55; geographical origins of, 123–26, 124–25t, 137–38; and Hesychasm, 145–52; indictments of, 362–64; interrogations of, 358–62; learned, 21–22, 28, 234; manteinyi monks, 113, 114; marital status of, 128–29; monastic profession in Russian Orthodoxy, 113–17; motivations for entering monastery, 134–36, 167–68; Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and typology of, 165–67, 168, 426n175; and novitiate, 113–16, 126–28, 136, 142–45; previous careers of, 130–31; rasophore novices, 113–14; rejections by monasteries of, 133; salaries of, 51–52, 53–54, 55, 402n77; schemamonks, 113, 114–15, 416n9; social origins and profile of, 113–39, 119t, 122t; spiritual life of, 139–68; Toviia’s monastic career, 152–56; Trinity-Sergius brotherhood of, 117–18; “typical,” 134, 165. See also tonsure of monks; individual monks “Monks in the Service of the Neighbor” (Evdokim), 230 Moscow Bulletin (Moskovskie vedomosti; newspaper): Aleksii‘s (Solov’ev) seclusion discussed in, 252; conversion story in, 212; Novoselov as editor of, 248

Moscow dioceses, monastic candidates from, 123–24, 125–26, 134 Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory, 93–94, 299 Moscow Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, 283 Moscow Theological Academy, 28, 31, 43, 69, 241 Mount Athos, 10, 18, 170 Mozharova, Elena, 336 Murav’ev, P., 134 Muretov, Mitrofan, 432n97 Muretova, Mariia, 199–200, 205, 432n97 Muscovy: monastic expansion in, 11–14; Trinity-Sergius in, 25 Museum Affairs and Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquities, Department of: and Commissariat of Enlightenment, 327; and exposing of Sergius relics, 314; Trinity-Sergius, Commission for the Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquities at the, 306, 307; TrinitySergius, liquidation of, 322, 323, 324 “My Diaries” (Nikon [Rozhdestvenskii]), 263, 279 Mytishchi springs, 190 Nakhimov, Admiral, 64 namestnik. See priors Napoleon Bonaparte, 31, 70 Narkomiust Instruction, 303, 306 National Council of the Russian Orthodox Church (1917–18), 285, 300–303 Naum (Baiborodin), 374 Nechaev, Vasilii, 242 NEP. See New Economic Policy “Nest of Black Hundreds near Moscow“ article, 348 Nestor (Balashov), 470n123 Nettle, Henrietta, 107, 415n156 New Economic Policy (NEP): and antireligious propaganda, 331; cultural contradictions of, 345–46; economic efforts in, 330, 343, 352; failure of, 347, 350

index New Hotel (Sergiev Posad), 47, 48, 49, 182 New Jerusalem Monastery, 64 “new martyrs” at Butovo, 383, 384f Nicholas I: and Gethsemane Skete, 76; and monastic landownership, 23; “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality” motto under, 183; and public schools, 58; restrictions on tonsure under, 116; rigidity of, 40; and Russian culture, 109; TrinitySergius visit of, 41 Nicholas II: abdication of, 281, 283; Church Council, opposition to, 300; and Duma, 258; monastery visits of, 96, 266; and monastic scandals, 223; and Orthodoxy as symbol of national monarchy, 183; and Revolution of 1905–7, 256; TrinitySergius, commemoration of siege of, 267 Nifont (Mamaev), 470n123 Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain, 394n52 Nikodim (Monin), 364 Nikolaevskii Ugreshshkii Monastery, 395n70 Nikon (Patriarch), 64 Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), 165–68, 192–94, 228–38, 263–67, 227–81; in 1907–13 period, 263–66; and All-Russian Congress of Monastic Clergy, 232–33, 234–36, 238; apocalyptic vision of, 290–91; articles in Trinity Word, 263, 278; in February Revolution, 281; on monastic ideal, 168, 228–32, 252–53; and monks’ education, 132; on Rasputin, 280; and Toviia’s retirement, 255; and Trinity Leaflets, 186, 192, 193–94, 228, 258; and typology of monks, 165–67; in World War I, 278–79 Nilova Hermitage, 343 Nil Sorskii, 13–14, 233 Nilus, Sergei, 212, 266, 283, 354 NKVD (Internal Affairs Commissariat): executions by, 364–65; in Great Terror, 357–58; Kronid’s arrest and indictment, role in, 360, 362–63, 366–67; TrinitySergius monks, arrests of, 354 nobles. See aristocracy

521

novitiates: acceptance into, 113–14; length of, 114, 116, 126–28, 136; norms for, 142–45 Novoselov, Mikhail, 244, 248, 250 obediences (poslushanie): in community life, 140, 141; definition of, 421n79; of heavy labor, 163; reform of, 222; in Toviia’s monastic career, 152, 154; of typical monk, 156; willing fulfillment of, 224 October Manifesto, 256 Old Believers, 38, 80, 81, 212, 224, 264–65 Old Hotel (Sergiev Posad), 47, 182 Olimpiada, 38 Olimpii (Hegumen), 158, 163 Olsuf ’ev, Dmitrii, 248 Olsuf ’ev, Iurii, 307, 321, 322, 323, 342, 458n62 Optina Hermitage, 2, 64, 395n70 Order “Concerning the Punishment of Former Kulaks, Criminals, and Other Anti-Soviet Elements,” 356 Orlova-Chesmenskaia, Anna, 48, 59, 401n59 orphanages, 59–60, 61, 339 “The Orthodox Ideal of Monasticism” (Nikon [Rozhdestvenskii]), 228 “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality” motto, 183, 279 Pachomius, 9 Paisii (Velichkovskii): and hesychia, 74; Philokalia, translation of, 18, 80, 394n52; revival of elders under, 2, 385; writings of, 64 Palamas, Gregory, 10 Paraclete Hermitage, 87–91; Bolshevik search of, 305; founding of, 88–90, 89f, 109; Holy Synod’s review of, 225; isolation of, 91; monastic candidates to, 125; reopening of, 375–76 parish clergy: marital status of, 128–29; monastic recruits from, 119–21, 123, 130, 135, 137; previous careers of, 130; and Revolution of 1905–7, 256–57 Paul I, 23, 28, 30 Paul of Aleppo, 25

522

index

Pavel (Glebov): and pilgrims, 187; as TrinitySergius archimandrite, 66–70; and Zosimova Hermitage, 106, 108, 238, 239, 245, 246, 249–50 peasants: and exposing of Sergius relics, 315, 318; joining monasteries, 121, 123, 137, 167, 237, 419n39; length of service, 395n76; and miraculous healing, 197–98, 432n92; and monastic landownership, 24; monastic land seizure by, 287–88, 289–90, 291; on shtatnye monasteries, 17; at TrinitySergius, 26. See also serfs and serfdom perestroika, 374 “Peresvet” club for troubled teens, 376 Perov, Vasilii, 54, 137 Peter I (Peter the Great), 15–16, 56–61, 74, 171–72 Peter III, 16 philanthropy: under Bolsheviks, 301; monasteries’ development of, 227–28; and monastic ideals, 229–31, 233; Rostislavov’s criticism of monastic, 55; social services, 227–30; at Trinity-Sergius, 41, 56–61, 71, 72, 376 Philokalia (anthology of spiritual writers), 56–61, 80, 394n52 Philotheos of Constantinople, 11 Piatnitskaia Church, 351, 362 Pietism, 37 piety. See popular piety Pilgrimage (Shmelev), 97, 189–92, 272 pilgrims and pilgrimages, 7, 169–220; to Chernigov Caves, 106; doctors and medicine, role of, 209–10, 219; food for, 58, 61; to Gethsemane Skete, 92; and icon processions, 194–96; income from, 54–55, 273–74; to Lourdes, 218, 219, 436n170; and miraculous healing, 197–208, 211; monastery, role of, 212–18, 219–20, 435n160; after 1905, 268–74; and popular religious literature, 192–94, 218; punishment, conversion, and reciprocity, 210–12; school-organized, 270–72; Shmelev’s Pilgrimage, account in,

189–92; to Trinity-Sergius, 35, 52, 71–72, 173–220, 181f, 268–74, 277–78, 372; Varnava’s service to, 94, 95–97, 100; to Zosimova Hermitage, 109 Pilgrims’ Hostel (Trinity-Sergius), 68, 68f Pimen (Miaskinov), 395n70 Pimen (Izvekov), 373 Pimen (Khmelevskii), 373–74 Platon (Klimov), 469n100 Platon (Levshin), 28–32, 35, 57, 204, 433n117 Plow and Hammer (newspaper), attack on “formers” in, 348 Pobedonostsev, K., 116 Pochaev Lavra, 262 Pokrovskii, M. I., 342–43 Politburo, 350 pomysli (urges), 148, 423n109 Popov, I. V., 321, 323, 325 Popular Orthodox Leaflet (journal), publication of, 284 popular piety: icons in, 92; miraculous healing in, 215, 220; pilgrimages in, 171; relics in, 319, 327; superstition in, 172–73 Porfirii, 341 poslushanie. See obediences possessions, demonic, 200–202, 206 poverty in monasteries, 53 prayers: in Hesychasm, 145–52; Jesus Prayer, 145, 147–49, 150; as norm for novitiate, 144–45; by pilgrims, 177 Precepts on Prayerful Activity (German [Gomzin]), 147, 151 priests. See parish clergy princely monasteries, 11, 13 priors (namestnik): creation of post of, 28; meaning of term, 397n99; significance of position, 37, 71 Prishvin, Mikhail, 329, 351–52 Prokof ’ev, Chairman, 284 Prokopii (Hieromonk), 107–8, 225 Prokopovich, Feofan, 172 propaganda, antireligious: in Constitution, 350; ineffectiveness of, 346, 347; purpose of, 331, 342–43

index property taxes, 51 prosphora (blessed bread): expenditures for, 50, 402n64; income from sale of, 27, 46, 54, 183–86; purpose of, 396n93 Protasov, N. A., 76, 78 Protasov, N. D., 306 Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Nilus), 266, 448n62 Provisional Government, 281, 282, 286, 289, 291 Psaev, Flor, 198–99, 205, 208, 211, 215, 432n95 public schools, 58–60, 61 punishment. See discipline and correctional measures railways: influence on pilgrimages of, 171, 178, 182; investment in, 186; and miracle stories, 218 rasophore novices, 113–14, 154 Rasputin, Grigorii, 262, 275, 280, 281 Rastopchin, 31 Red Army, 304, 315–16, 319–20, 325 “Red Terror,” 303, 356 Refectory Church, 175, 177f relics, 24, 53, 112, 170–73, 177, 363; of Antonii (Medvedev), 377–79, 386; attack on, 268; of Filaret (Drozdov), 377–79, 386; at Gethsemane Skete, 82, 409n48; veneration of, 3, 6, 171, 194, 205–8. See also relics of Sergius of Radonezh relics of Sergius of Radonezh, 180f, 183–90, 196–216, 268–71, 312–28; and Aleksii (Solov’ev), 243; and antireligious campaigns, 328, 342, 351, 352; during dekulakization, 352; exposing of, 282, 291, 292, 312–19, 327–28, 379; importance of, 327; miraculous healing by, 92, 204, 216; pilgrimages to, 72, 221, 268–70, 343, 383; removal of, 319, 320–21, 322–26; return of, 368, 370; in the Trinity Cathedral, 30, 175; veneration of, 12, 196, 200, 273 Renan, Ernest, 284 Renovationists, 331, 344, 362

523

Revolution and the Church (Galkin), 315 Revolutionary Committee. See MilitaryRevolutionary Committee “revolutionary tax,” 309 Revolution of 1905–7, 255–74, 291 “The Right and the Left” (Nikon [Rozhdestvenskii]), 279 Rogozhskaia Church of Saint Sergius, 333 Roman Catholicism, 3, 212 Romanov, Elizaveta Feodorovna, 244, 248, 249, 250, 277 Romanov, Mikhail Alexandrovich, 281 Romanov, Sergei Alexandrovich, 187, 221 Romanov Dynasty: commemoration of, 266; Kronid’s connection to, 358 Rosenthal, G. Ia., 322 Rostislavov, D. I.: biographical details, 403n84; on monastic income, 54–56, 61; on motivations of monks, 135, 137; on pilgrims, 177–78, 183, 186 Rozanov, Vasilii V., 458n66 Rozanova, Tat’iana, 307, 322, 458n66 Rozhdestvenskii, Nikolai. See Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) Rublev, Andrei, 12, 221, 222, 326 “Rules for Improving Monastic Brotherhoods in Moscow“ (Filaret [Drozdov]), 139 Rumiantsev, G., 68, 186 Rus’: commemoration of baptism of, 374; monasticism in, 10–11; Tatars’ domination of, 12 “Russian Athens,” 311, 312 The Russian Church and the Soviet State (Curtiss), 294 The Russian Monk (journal), founding of, 235 Russian Orthodoxy: contemplative monasticism in, 3; conversion to, 212; monastic profession in, 113–17 Russian People’s Union of Archangel Michael, 263 “Russian Vatican,” 312 Russo-Japanese War, 254, 256

524 index Sabler, Vladimir, 98, 273 Saint Filaret the Generous chapel, 61, 62f, 377 The St. Petersburg Bulletin, Antonii’s (Medvedev) article in, 54, 402n83 Saint Petersburg Seminary, 35 saints: canonization of, 377–83, 386; deification of, 196; miraculous healing by, 197–208, 211; ways of approaching, 205–8. See also specific saints, e.g., Sergius of Radonezh salaries of monks, 51–52, 53–54, 55, 402n77 Samarin, Iurii, 242 Sarov Hermitage, 38, 109 savings accounts, 27 Savvino-Storozhevskii Monastery, 66 schema, great, 81, 86, 255, 335, 353 schemamonks, 86, 88, 89, 91, 95, 97, 107, 108, 113, 114–15, 416n9 schisms within monastic community, 285–86, 331 Scholasticism, 37 schools: monasteries running, 229–31; nationalization of, 303; pilgrimages organized by, 270–72; public, 58–60, 61; secularization of, 265. See also education of monks secularization: “all-out secularization” under Stalin, 329, 350–55; by Bolsheviks, 295; by Catherine II (Catherine the Great), 2, 16–17, 31–32, 171; of Church schools, 265; impact of, 34; models of, 4; and monastic wealth, 53–54; by Peter the Great, 15; in Russia, 5; at Trinity-Sergius, 26–27, 49 Sedova-Trotskaia, Natal’ia, 306, 313 Seletskii, V. S., 297–98, 306 Separation of Church and State, Decree of, 299, 303, 321, 326 Serafim (Chichagov), 300–301 Serafim (Glagolevskii), 213–14 Serafim (Hieromonk), 157, 159, 223, 424n145 Serafim (Krest’ianinov), 364

Serafim of Sarov, 165; and Antonii (Medvedev), 38, 43, 63, 143, 379; and contemplative monasticism, 229; and hesychia, 74; and monastic resurgence, 17, 100; worldly service of, 231 serfs and serfdom: abolition of, 121; emancipation of, 137, 171, 218, 264; and philanthropy, 57. See also peasants Sergei Alexandrovich (Romanov), 187, 221 Sergiev. See Sergiev Posad “Sergiev Affair” of May 1928, 348–50 Sergiev Posad (later Sergiev, Zagorsk): Bolsheviks in, 295–96; conflicts with monastery and, 286–90; income from, 45, 47–48, 52; landownership in, 27, 56; in mid-1920s, 341–46; modernization of, 218; pilgrims to, 190–91; prison in, 51, 60; renaming of, 351; revolutionary unrest in, 258–60; town status of, 26 Sergiev Posad Club of Amateur Fishermen, 263 Sergii (Hieromonk), 43, 239, 242 Sergii (Liapidevskii), 239, 242 Sergii (Stagorodskii), 331, 345, 360, 369 Sergius of Radonezh, 11–13; cenobitic rule of, 13, 14; on charity, 58, 61; coffin in Church of the Transfiguration, 30–31; contemplative life of, 76, 79, 222; cult of, 198, 313, 432n92; driven out of Trinity Monastery, 248; icon of, 194–95; miraculous healing by, 92, 196–219; and monastic expansion in Muscovy, 11–14; and pilgrims, 173, 196–220; statue of, 376; veneration of, 25, 202, 386–87. See also relics of Sergius of Radonezh “Shakhty“ show trial, 347 Shaposhnikov, Dmitrii, 108 Shcherbatova, Princess, 95 Shed Row (Sergiev Posad), 47, 47f, 69 Sheremetev, D. N., 111 Sheremetev, S. D., 43, 86–87, 400n34 Shevzov, Vera, 172 Shik, Mikhail, 323, 345 Shmelev, Ivan, 96–97, 100, 189–92, 272

index “shriekers,” 200 shtatnye monasteries (state-funded monasteries), 17, 19, 233 Sidorov, Sergii, 344, 345 “The Significance of Saint Sergius of Radonezh for the Russian People and State” (Kliuchevskii), 173 Simon (Kozhukhov), 333–35, 336–38, 343–44, 346 Simonov monastery, 436n162 skete form of monasticism, 13, 14, 19 Skvortsov, V. M., 232, 439n55 Slavophiles, 109–10 Smaragd (Hieromonk), 279–80, 285–86, 290 Smirnov, S., 230–31 Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God, Church of the, 70, 108 Smolensk-Zosimova Hermitage. See Zosimova Hermitage social origins of monks, 118–23, 136–37 social services, monasteries’ development of, 227–30 Society of Workers and Employees of the Lavra, 287, 296–97 Sokolov, Dimitrii. See Daniil (Sokolov) Solovetskii Monastery, 7, 171, 186, 226–27, 400n49 Solov’ev, Feodor. See Aleksii (Solov’ev) Solov’ev, Vladimir, 137, 242 Soloviev, Sergei, 39–40 “Something about the Secret of Lawlessness” (Nikon [Rozhdestvenskii]), 266 Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, 296 Special Commission on the Affairs of the Orthodox Clergy, 120 Spiritually Beneficial Reading (journal): articles on ideal of monasticism in, 228; founding of, 242 Spiritual Regulation of 1721, 115 springs, holy, 190, 191 Stalin, Joseph: and Church relations, 369–70, 372–73; de-Stalinization, 373; in

525

Great Terror, 356, 382; power consolidation of, 346; on quality of life, 367 starchestvo (spiritual eldership), 5, 100, 129, 145, 148, 233, 374, 380; All-Russian Congress of Monastic Clergy discussion of, 234–35, 236, 237, 238; contemplative spirituality of, 152; and daily Confession, 96; nineteenth century development of, 74–75; revival of, 301, 311, 377, 384–85; Synodal Commission’s recommendations for, 227; Varnava’s (Merkulov) experience of, 95, 98–99; at Zosimova Hermitage, 238–40, 241, 252. See also elders State Historical Museum (Sergiev-Posad), 376 state subsidies: in monastery administration, 24; for monks’ salaries, 51; and numbers of monks, 34; Rostislavov on, 54; at Trinity-Sergius, 26–27, 45, 52 stavropegial monasteries, 19, 21, 22 Stefano-Makhrishchskii Monastery. See Makhrishchskii Monastery Stoliarov, Petr, 200–202, 213, 268, 432n104 Striapcheskoe podvor’e (Moscow compound), 48 Studite Rule, 9, 10, 11–12 subsidies. See state subsidies suicides, 204 superstitions: Bolsheviks’ opposition to, 312, 317, 318, 327; and miraculous healing, 213, 218, 219; and popular piety, 92, 172–73 Sychev, Nikolai, 357, 364 Symeon the New Theologian, 10 Synodal Commission of 1901, 223–27 Talitsa springs, 190, 191 Tatars’ domination of Rus’, 12 Tatishcheva, Countess, 48, 59 taxes: property, 51; revolutionary, 309 terror and monasticism, 8, 329–67; and black hundreds, 347–50; and Gethsemane Skete, 338–41; Great Terror, 350, 355–58, 365, 367; indictments under, 362–64,

526 index terror and monasticism (continued) 366–67; interrogations in, 358–62, 366; secularization under, 329, 350–55; Sergiev in mid-1920s, 341–46; survival or revival in 1920s, 330–46; and Trinity-Sergius brotherhood, 346–67; Zosimova Hermitage, end of, 333–38 Theodore the Studite, 9 Theological Herald (journal): articles on monastic ideal in, 229; publication of, 284 Theophan the Recluse. See Feofan the Recluse theosis. See deification Tikhomirov, Lev, 248 Tikhon (Obolenskii), 301 Tikhon (Belavin), 252, 285, 299, 335, 336, 360, 380; and exposing of Sergius relics, 313, 314; Gregorian calendar, adoption of, 344; on Sergius, 387; Trinity-Sergius, liquidation of, 323, 324–25, 326; TrinitySergius preservation commission, 307 Tikhon of Zadonsk, 17 Time of Troubles, 266–67 Tolgskii Monastery, 67 Tolstoi, M. V., 37, 40–41, 42–43, 398n7, 399n27 Tolstoy, D. A., 404n117 Tolstoy, Leo, 137, 284 Tomashevskii, Il’ia, 332 tonsure of monks: age at, 126–28, 127t, 419n45; education required for, 132–33; by monastic community, 121, 122t; new name, acceptance of, 114; procedures for, 115–17, 416n15; prohibition on, 16 Toviia (Trofim Tsymbal), 33–35, 65–70, 73–75, 111–13, 169–71, 269–75; and Aleksii (Solov’ev), 243; and Antonii (Medvedev), 40, 42, 61–62; career path of, 7, 33–34, 112–13, 152–56, 254–55, 383, 443n8; death of, 255, 444n10; decision-making of, 221–22, 225, 436n2; on defrocking of monks, 164; early life of, 111–12, 121, 167; educational background of, 132; and

Filaret’s (Drozdov) death, 61; and Gethsemane Skete, 74; on Leonid (Kavelin), 64, 66; and Monarchist Union, 262; on monastic life, 73–74, 135, 237; on Pavel (Glebov), 67, 69; and pilgrimages, 169–71, 174, 270–71, 272–74; portrait of, 153f; and revolutionary unrest, 259–60; TrinitySergius, memorial celebration at, 68; on World War I, 278; Zosimova Hermitage, conflict at, 245–47, 250–51 Trade Row (Sergiev Posad), 69, 70f trains. See railways Transfiguration, Church of the, 30–31 “Transforming the Historical-Artistic Treasures of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra into a Museum” decree of April 20, 1920, 324, 325, 327 Tretiakov, Pavel, 242 Tretiakov gallery, 326 Trinity Cathedral, 30, 161, 174, 175, 178–79f, 199, 201, 212, 216, 221, 267–69, 271, 315–16, 323–26 Trinity Leaflets (Troitskie listki; periodical), 192–94; and Bolshevik searches, 305; confiscation of printing house of, 284; distribution of, 186, 429n47; editorial office of, 69; founding of, 66, 228; miraculous healing accounts in, 216; and Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), 186, 192, 193–94, 228, 258; as popular religious literature, 192–94, 430n67, 430n71; revolutionary authorities, conflict with, 283; “Trinity Manifesto” in, 257, 258; in World War I, 275 “Trinity Manifesto,” 257–58 Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 7, 33–72; All-Russian Congress of Monastic Clergy at, 232, 236–37; archive at, 403n93; and Bolsheviks, 292–328; buildings at, 174–75, 175–81f, 386f; commemoration of siege of, 267–68; Commission for the Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquities at, 306–10, 311, 320, 322–23, 324, 340; correctional measures at, 162–64; economic development and wealth at, 41, 44–63,

index 46t, 71–72, 401n53; establishment of, 12–13; expenditures at, 46t, 49–53, 50t, 401n60, 402n68; Filaret (Drozdov) and Antonii (Medvedev) at, 35–44, 61–63, 70–71; in Great Terror (1937–8), 355–58; Holy Synod’s review of, 223–25, 227; Labor Artel of, 332; landownership of, 45–48, 400n48; Leonid (Kavelin) at, 63–66; liquidation of, 319–26, 327–28; as “living museum,” 309–28; local populations, conflict with, 286–90; memorial celebration at, 67–69, 173, 187–88; monastic candidates at, 121, 123, 125–26, 133, 138; in 1907–13 period, 262–68; in 1914–17 period, 274–91, 276–77t; in nineteenth century, 63–72; Pavel (Glebov) at, 66–70; philanthropy of, 41, 56–61, 71, 72, 376; pilgrimages to, 35, 52, 71–72, 173–220, 181f, 268–74, 277–78, 372; Platon as archimandrite of, 28–32; in pre-nineteenth century, 24–28; printing house, confiscation of, 284–85; and regeneration of Russian people, 383–87; revival of, 8, 368–87; and Revolution of 1905–7, 257–61, 261t; rules for community at, 141–42; schism within community of, 285–86; in terror decade (1928–38), 346–67 Trinity Word (Troitskoe slovo; journal), 235, 263; confiscation of printing house of, 284; founding of, 235; Nikon’s (Rozhdestvenskii) articles in, 165–67, 263–66, 278–81 troika (Great Terror), 356, 364 Troitskie listki. See Trinity Leaflets (Troitskie listki; periodical) Troitskoe slovo. See Trinity Word (Troitskoe slovo; journal) Trotsky, Leon, 306, 313 Trubetskaia, K. P., 341 Trubetskoi, Prince, 323 Trushin, A. A., 373–74 Tsymbal, Trofim. See Toviia (Trofim Tsymbal) Tsypin, Vladislav, 390n6

527

Uchrezhdennyi Sobor. See Governing Council Union of Russian People, 262 United States, religion’s role in, 4 Uspenskii Sobor. See Dormition Cathedral (Uspenskii Sobor) of Trinity-Sergius at Gethsemane Skete Uvkin, Zakhar. See Zinovii (Uvkin) Vanhanen, Oskar, 296, 316 Varfolomei (Remov), 313, 323, 337, 343, 464n32 Varnava (Merkulov), 94–100, 106, 110, 137, 380 Vasil’eva, Irina, 216–18, 268, 315 venereal disease, 202, 210 Veniamin (Fedchenkov), 240 Veniamin (Milov), 372, 432n90 Verkhovtseva, Natal’ia, 340–41, 344, 349 Verkhovtseva, Vera, 340–41, 344, 349 Vikentii (Sulenin), 470n122 Viola, Lynne, 354–55 Vladimir (Bogoiavlenskii): and Aleksii‘s (Solov’ev) seclusion, 251; and Monarchist Congress pilgrimage, 272; monastic question, debate on, 231; and monastic rules and correctional measures, 141, 158, 163; and Varnava (Merkulov), 99; Zosimova Hermitage, conflict at, 246–47, 248, 249, 250–51 Vladimir (Terent’ev), 468n92 Vladimir dioceses, monastic candidates from, 123–24, 125–26, 134 Vladimir Ecclesiastical Consistory, 196 “The Voice from the Community of Saint Sergius on the occasion of the Manifest of August 6” (“Trinity Manifesto”), 257–58 Volkov, Sergei, 269, 315–18 Vvedenskii, A. I., 228 Vvedenskii, D. I., 96, 348 Vyksunskaia Women’s Community (Vyksunskii-Iverskii Convent), 99, 100, 109

528

index

widowers, 128–29 women: and All-Russian Congress of Monastic Clergy, 233; and “feminization” of monastic revival, 3; at Gethsemane Skete, 80, 87, 101, 106, 182, 341; at Home for the Poor, 59–60, 63, 187, 436n170; at Paraclete Hermitage, 89, 90; visiting monks, 141. See also women’s religious communities women’s religious communities (zhenskaia obshchina): charity work of, 60; as type of monastery, 19–20; Varnava’s founding of, 95, 97–99, 100 Worker’s Paper (newspaper), attack on “formers” in, 348, 349 World War I, 275–80, 276–77t World War II, 369, 370 Worobec, Christine, 172, 197, 200, 208, 451n117 Wynot, Jennifer, 352

Zagorsk. See Sergiev Posad zashtatnye monasteries (non-state-funded monasteries), 17, 19 Zhuravskii, A. V., 295 Zinovii (Uvkin), 134–35, 159–61, 163, 164, 168 Zosima, 106–7, 108, 238, 375 Zosimova Hermitage, 106–9, 238–53, 332–38; conflict at, 245–51, 253; elders of, 238–52; end of, 333–38; and Filipp-Filaret, 87; and Gethsemane Skete, 106–9; Holy Synod’s review of, 225, 226; monastic candidates at, 123, 125–26; monks of, 119, 136, 148, 157, 159, 167, 343, 344, 352, 353, 371; Pavel’s (Glebov) support of, 69–70; reopening of, 375. See also Aleksii (Solov’ev); German (Gomzin) Zyrianov, Pavel N., 24, 400n49