Inakomysliashchie and Orthodoxy – the Case of the Priests Nikolai Eshliman and Gleb Iakunin

Abstract

The article deals with the phenomenon of “religious dissidents”, who called themselves inakomysliashchie. This phenomenon arose in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1960s and lasted until the mid-1980s. Who may be called and characterized as “religious dissident”? Religious dissidents were laypeople as well as clergy, who described themselves as orthodox Christians who ‘fought’ against their own church as well as against the Soviet state power. On the one hand they reproached the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) for fraternizing with the atheistic rulers of the Soviet Union instead of defending the church. On the other hand they accused the church - as well as the state representatives - of disregarding their own and common laws. Denunciations of this kind against state authorities were risky for the church as a whole because arguments and reports blaming authorities for violating laws were questioning the stable but difficult state-church-relationship, its status quo. The church hierarchy was fearing that this relationship could jeopardize the status quo of the ROC. Though mainly lay people were fighting against the hierarchy of the church, also a bishop (Ermogen [Golubov]) and some priests were accusing the church and state hierarchies of not acting according to their own canons resp. laws. Focusing on a joint action taking place in 1965, this article argues that the priests Nikolai Eshliman and Gleb Iakunin presented themselves both as loyal citizens of the Soviet Union and religious believers. They adjusted not only their argument, but also their language towards their counterparts and acted as pravozashchitniki in a double way: they publicly defended their rights against the state and the church. By circulating open letters in Samizdat and western press organs and by sending them to ecclesial and secular authorities, they tried to build up pressure on the authorities. In their letters they linked the role of the ROC in the past (and present) with the Russian people and emphasized the benefits for the state from cooperation with the church; they outlined a model of a mutually beneficial state-church-relationship.