Destivelle, Hyacinthe, O. P. Michael Plekon and Vitaly Permiakov Jerry Ryan (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 4, October 2016 758 modernization (Mark Harrison) or social structure (Donald Filtzer), this has obvious justification in terms of their subject matter. On the other hand, ‘religion under Communism’, capably handled by Richard Madsen, might also have benefited from a more expansive treatment; while Soviet-focused discussions of ideology, culture and the intelligentsia do more or less exclude such major figures as Gramsci, Neruda, Lukács, Picasso, Brecht, Năzim Hikmet and even Trotskii. But it is obviously beyond the scope of a single volume to meet the personal preferences of every researcher. It is also in the nature of things that such a projectwillreflectwhatatthisstageisstillacollectiveworkinprogressonatruly transnational Communist history. Very aptly Smith entitles his introduction ‘Towards a Global History of Communism’, and both the helpful overview he provides and the collection as a whole will provide an important stimulus to a further broadening of horizons and cross-fertilization between different fields of research. Communism, as Smith reminds us, was a continuously evolving project exhibiting generic similarities which cannot however be collapsed into some ‘single essence of communist rule’. To register this complexity through a multi-themed approach while avoiding excessive repetition and overlap is some achievement. The Handbook can thus be thoroughly recommended, both for teaching purposes and as a valuable compendium for the specialist. School of Social Sciences Kevin Morgan University of Manchester Destivelle, Hyacinthe, O. P. The Moscow Council (1917–1918): The Creation of the Conciliar Institutions of the Russian Orthodox Church. Edited by Michael Plekon and Vitaly Permiakov. Translated by Jerry Ryan. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN, 2015. xviii + 447 pp. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $36.00 (paperback). More than a quarter of a century since the fall of the Soviet Union, it remains a matter for astonishment that the local (as opposed to ecumenical) Church Council held in Moscow between 15/28 August 1917 and 7/20 September 1918 should still be all but invisible in most general accounts of the Russian Revolution. ‘What history will certainly remember from this council’, declares Father Hyacinthe Destivelle, ‘is the restoration of the patriarchate’ (p. 188). In fact, many scholars have ignored that, too, along with most of the other subjects he discusses in this excellent book. As he points out, the council was not convened to restore the patriarchate, for which majority support only gradually emerged, and ‘this restoration would not have taken place so quickly REVIEWS 759 were it not for the pressure of an outside threat that made a visible authority necessary’ (p. 189). So, while paying due attention to the question of leadership, Destivelle also treats a wide range of other topics including the Church’s relationship to the state and to other denominations, the relationship between clergy and laity (not least but not only in parochial administration), the role of women in the Church, and the Church’s role in elementary education. Scholars have no excuse for ignoring the Moscow Council since the first edition of this study was published in Italian as long ago as 2003. Reissued in French three years later, it was translated into Russian in 2008. The eventual appearance of this English-language edition, apparently based on the French version, is wholly to be welcomed even at such a lengthy interval. The notes have been updated (presumably by the editors, whose contribution remains unspecified) to incorporate references to subsequent English-language research. This is usefully listed, along with Destivelle’s outstanding 2010 French-language thesis on the Orthodox theological academies, in an addendum (pp. 352–53) to the original bibliography (pp. 423–32). Nevertheless, the book survives on the lasting strengths of the text itself. Roughly half of it is taken up with a clear translation, succinctly annotated by Destivelle, of the Council’s published Statute, Definitions and Decrees. These documents are prefaced by five analytical chapters. The first, having exposed widespread dissatisfaction with the Synodal regime at the beginning of the twentieth century, highlights Slavophile ideas of sobornost´ and concludes that it was not the crisis in the Russian Orthodox Churchbutratheritsongoingrenewalthatpermittedittocontemplateacouncil in 1905. The second chapter outlines the political and ecclesiastical debates that delayed the convocation of such a council between the revolution of 1905...