In Chapter 8 (pp.210-255), Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev surveys some of the most important literary figures of Russian history during the synodal period, and well-known to world literature. Writers such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Leskov, and Chekhov. Sometimes the poets reflect the deep religious heritage of Orthodoxy, while at other times these poets express a chasm of cynical influence that departed from the life of the Church.
Unlike the history in the chapter on Orthodoxy in Rus’, secular literary culture develops with inspiration from literary and social movements in western Europe. While Francis of Assisi and St. Mikhail the Holy Fool for Christ in Novgorod could criticize the worldliness and terrible examples of the monarchs during their times, the idea of secularism didn’t exist until the monarchy or a strong executive leader, like a CEO or Elon Musk, was overthrown as a governing body. This institution, like a modern, monarchic company, was abolished along with Christianity from the public sphere. The Russian intelligentsia are like the Enlightenment thinkers, scholastics, monastics who were the intellectual rivers of power in a culture. The reforms of emperor Peter I made secular culture possible. Russian monarchy accepted secularism along with a sort of conciliar ecclesial body called the Synod who was oversaw by the oberprocurator – “the eye of the emperor.” There were lot of questionable elections and political maneuvering that involved how the Orthodox hierarchy would function within the Synod. In 1723, the abolishment of the Moscow patriarchate was acknowledged by the patriarchates of Constantinople and Antioch who called the Russian Synod the “sister in Christ.” Synod simply means gathering, and instead of a more solid authority coming from the patriarch, the synod would become more liquid and collegial in nature. This was Tsar Peter’s vision for the Russian Church to avoid a confusion between two highly concentrated centers of power. Metropolitan Hilarion identifies this idea of Peter’s as a Protestant influence. Ancient Rome and Byzantium had the concept of dual consuls or dual emperors for a long time. Our own political system seems to monopolize on the idea that competing and “parallel” governing bodies, the three branches, will safeguard any one person or corporation form rising to the top. But maybe Peter the Great foresaw that competition would eventually lead to a sole victor, and one of those would either be the monarch or patriarch as the supreme ruler of the country. The old Byzantine ideal of symphony was abandoned in Russia with the loss of the patriarchate and the adoption of the synod.
History has shown that many empires and monarchies supported within its structures a multi-ethnic and multi-religious, mostly minority status, society with vibrant economic exchange. At other times not so much. All ideologies, as it seems from this zoom in view of history in Russia and France, that come after this movement could be said to be post-monarchical from an historical perspective: secularism, communism, democracy, capitalism, fascism, nationalism. Many of these philosophies the Russian intellectuals reacted and synthesized from neighboring Europeans. This chapter offers a survey of Russian literature, and many of the writers interact with these concepts or their influences and associated ideas. The Church, the heavenly Jerusalem, is above these considerations and eternal, not limited like what has been instituted by mankind and our worldly wisdom.
Before Russians lived mostly within Orthodoxy and monarchy as well as strong noble families called boyars who seemed to have been absorbed either into the monarchy of Muscovy or into the later intelligentsia. Other cultural pursuits did not exist on the horizon yet, as Metropolitan Hilarion would like us to remember. Peter I favored a French attitude toward art, music, education, philosophy, and religion. That isn’t necessarily a negative development as long as it respected Orthodoxy’s importance, and there are many saints and martyrs from the lands of the Anglo-Normans, the Franks, the Gauls and the Merovingians who are Orthodox. Peter the Great borrowed many social styles and ideas from the greatest European minds and powers of his time. An oversight that resulted from these western reforms were that they contributed to revolutionary ideas as a consequence. It’s not clear if Metropolitan Hilarion sees western influence in itself as the cause of later societal decay and decline in Orthodoxy or if it’s simply the result of political strife between the intelligentsia and the royal family.
From the chapter itself, it sounds as if western European culture was imposed unwillingly onto Russian society from the top down. Rather than view the situation as a foreign cultural movement infecting Russian society, it might be better to analyze it from the view that Orthodoxy could’ve converted French intellectual traditions and political developments through literary works, philosophical texts, and poetry. That’s what many Russian writers have done. This transformation and common ground that they’ve created between Orthodoxy and western Europe is something to appreciate and study. Many Russian intellectuals weren’t as open as others to Europe. Some Russians saw a clash where others saw a closeness between the French, or Franco-Latins as A. Trubetskoi pejoratively called them. Russia has become a real civilization that straddles both the Silk Route and the European continent, which is exactly what many European explorers had achieved by navigation rather than by land. So, in many respects, Russians are much akin to Europeans and Asians, and for this reason a tradition arose that began to refer to Russia as one of the Eurasian civilizations. Several topics within this chapter bring out this tension or unison, however we may want to interpret, during 19th c. Russian culture. First, some writers sought to unite Orthodoxy under the Pope of Rome to create a super-state religion of the world. Second, some writers advanced the idea that Sophia or Wisdom was a personification of the female side of God, and they introduced a fourth person into the Holy Trinity similarly to the filioque controversy. Third, there were arguments between so-called cultural Westerners and Slavophiles. The former embraced a more western European culture and the latter generally favored a more Russian nativist perspective regarding the identity of Russians that was rooted in Orthodoxy and peasant farming as well as other pan-Slavic philosophies. These ideas are two sides of the same nationalist coin. Nationalism is again another by product of the Enlightenment. This chapter can show us that Orthodoxy develops in diverse environments and cultures; there is no deus ex machina that one or another form of government can save the Orthodox Church. There also isn’t any determinism for us in American culture. Many of us such as the Silicon Valley elite, Harvard intellectuals, the media ministers, the caesar-like CEOs, big corporations, the legal powerhouses, the myriad of cultural movements aiming at what is thought to be good could all some day convert. We could use our powers, strength and unity in Orthodoxy. Our culture could convert, not like the forced baptisms or imperial decrees. But just as the most powerful empire we’ve studied, ancient Rome, was taken by the love of Christians. That’s the value of studying Metropolitan Hilarion’s volumes. We don’t have to limit ourselves to an obsession with recent tweets or events. Christian history doesn’t have to end at the 18th c., 17th c. or even the 15th c. We can choose not to ignore what has happened in the 7th c. during Iconoclasm, Late Byzantium, the Crusades, Hesychasm, and Peter’s Russian Empire. History isn’t a weapon, which is how it can be used recklessly. But it can be a wealth of wisdom if used rightly. All of these events somehow shape Orthodoxy in the 20th c. and the persecutions of the faith in Russia. But it also marks the renewal of Russian Orthodoxy in many ways. Orthodoxy also started to spread to western and eastern cultures around the globe, as we will read in the next chapter. Orthodoxy is the Kingdom of God. It’s not of this world but of the age to come. Many kingdoms and empires over the ages have attempted to extend power and rule by incorporating and changing the conquered to become like the victors. This was the general procedure for the Roman empire — to make the whole inhabited world Roman. In the same way, in the end of time, just as the Son is subject to the Father, so too all of humanity, both the sinners and righteous as the scriptures teach, will be subject to God the Father.