Edinoverie, Russian Orthodoxy, and Ecclesiastical Authority at the End of the Imperial Regime

Abstract

In 1917/1918, a final effort was made to reform edinoverie, the branch of the Russian Orthodox Church which allowed the usage of the anathematised Old Believer ritual. Founded in 1800, edinoverie’s long 19th century had given rise to a series of problems intimately connected with issues of ritual, confessional identity, and ecclesiastical authority: increasingly, edinovertsy and churchmen sought reform in order to resolve these problems. In the first half of 1917, lay and clerical edinovertsy pushed forward with a radical plan “from below” to discipline edinoverie religious life, to renegotiate the place of edinoverie in the Church, and to restructure the nature of episcopal authority. This was most clearly manifested in the second national edinoverie congress of July 1917, whose main purpose was to propose a plan of reform to the Local Church Council. In this, edinoverie reflects the “church revolution” in mainstream Russian Orthodoxy, whereby parishioner and priestly groups took the initiative from the Holy Synod and episcopate to assert control over the Church. However, these plans were ultimately rejected by the Council in favour of a moderate settlement: the way in which the radical scheme challenged the authority of the Orthodox episcopate was looked at askance in the revolutionary context, where ecclesiastical authority was disintegrating across the Russian state and its previous dominions. In the case of edinoverie, therefore, the Council refused to legislate the consequences of the church revolution: however, its chosen solution ultimately collapsed under the pressure of Soviet persecutions.