Female Monasticism in Revolutionary Times: The Nizhnii Novgorod Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross, 1917–1935

Abstract

AbstractEven though after the October Revolution in 1917 the Bolsheviks enjoyed uninterrupted power and pursued radical secularist objectives, the majority of female monastic communities in Nizhnii Novgorod province were able to survive much longer than their counterparts in the French and Mexican Revolutions. Using the Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross as a case study, this article shows how—despite extremely challenging conditions and the hostility of the Soviet state—female monastic communities proved to be remarkably resilient and managed to exploit openings created by both the Bolsheviks’ strategy for subverting them and conflicts between Soviet authorities. The resiliency of the community at the Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross stemmed from the solidarity, flexibility, and leadership skills it cultivated prior to World War I through the combination of its religious character and practices and its communal organization. By the early 1920s, the community had adapted effectively to post-civil war Soviet urban conditions and was able to survive local attempts to dissolve it. But by the late 1920s, the survival of the community had become intolerable for Soviet authorities, who—like the revolutionary regimes in France and Mexico—ultimately resorted to compulsory means to “liquidate” the community between 1927 and 1935.