Matthew Lee Miller. The American YMCA and Russian Culture: The Preservation and Expansion of Orthodox Christianity, 1900–1940.

Abstract

Most students of the history of film in the twentieth century, not to mention serious scholars of modern Russian history, will have seen the classic silent film The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, created and directed by Lev Kuleshov and shown to Russian audiences in 1924. This film parodies a wealthy young American as he travels to Soviet Russia for the first time, arriving intent on heaping scorn on the new regime but leaving with an appreciation for what the country had accomplished under V. I. Lenin. What is generally not noticed in this film, Mathew Lee Miller points out in the introduction to this arresting new study, is that “Mr. West” was the “President” of the Young Men's Christian Association—the YMCA. Utilizing the resources of the Kautz Family YMCA Archives at the University of Minnesota and two underutilized but very rich collections in Paris (those of L'Institut de Theologie Orthodoxe Saint-Serge and Action Chrétienne des Etudiants Russe), as well as the Paul Anderson Papers of the University of Illinois and printed primary materials documenting the YMCA's work in Russia and with Russians in Europe from 1900 to 1940, Miller makes two strong arguments concerning the YMCA's impact and significance. First, he documents in considerable detail the organization's philanthropic work with Russian students, workers, soldiers, POWs, and intellectuals in imperial, revolutionary, and Soviet Russia. Second, and perhaps most provocatively, he argues that the YMCA shifted from its original Protestant but nondenominational Christian “mission” stance to one embracing Russian Orthodoxy. In the process the YMCA helped to “preserve” and “expand” Orthodoxy, especially during the Russian Civil War and Russian emigrations following the revolutionary upheavals of 1917 and beyond.