Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars by Valerie A. Kivelson , Robert H. Greene (review)

Abstract

MLRy ioo.i, 2005 271 with the hybrid character ofhis works, which transcend all genre conventions. The ensuing chapters on The Emigrants, The Rings ofSa turn, Vertigo,and Austerlitz offerex? cellent introductions to Sebald's prose works: each chapter manages to engage with the thematic concerns of each text without losing sight of overriding thematic and stylis? tic concerns. Each chapter finishes with a brief summary ofthe reception ofthe prose works in the English-speaking countries and, to a lesser extent, in Germany. McCulloh shows convincingly why Sebald's works should not be conflated with Holocaust literature, a trend in much ofthe British and American reception. With the exception of two minor factual lapses (the German publication date of Die Ausgewanderten was not 1993 but 1992, and the reference to Zweig in the Bereyter story is not to Arnold Zweig, as McCulloh has it,but to Stefan Zweig, who committed suicide in 1942), the book is virtually error-freeand carefully produced. Its selective bibliography provides a commentary which should prove especially useful to undergraduate students of Se? bald. The book offersa stimulating and well-written introduction to Sebald's writings. University College Dublin Anne Fuchs Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars. Ed. by Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene. University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2003. xii + 291 pp. ?36.5o(pbk?i6.5o). ISBN0-271-02349-x(pbk0-271-02350-3). This is a truly wonderful book, which should prove a welcome addition to the bookshelves of any teacher or student of Russian culture. There are very few good sur? veys of Russian Orthodoxy available in English, and most students are still relying on Fedotov's inspirational but occasionally misleading Russian Religious Mind (first published in 1946) for insight into what he termed 'the subjective side of religion' (George P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind: Kievan Christianity, the Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries (New York, Evanston, IL, and London: Harper Torch Books, 1960), p. ix)?piety and culture rather than organized structures and dogma. As the editors rightly observe in a satisfyingly comprehensive introduction, re? ligion has often been marginalized in textbooks and general histories of Russia, or presented in 'formulaic stereotypes' representing Russian Orthodoxy as a rigid hier? archy of obscurantist and ritual-obsessed clergy, responsible for isolating Russians from the West. Contributors to this volume challenge these stereotypes and the 'dualistic models' of Russian culture (p. 15) that have predominated in studies of Russian faithforover a century. Reflecting the current academic preference forstudies of 'lived Orthodoxy' ratherthan institutional histories, this collection aims to provide a general survey of 'the role of religion in the lives of Russians and non-Russians, Orthodox believers and sectarians, clerics and laity, elites and commoners, men and women' (p. 5), offeringsome excellent insights into the way that Russians experienced?and shaped?Orthodoxy under the Tsars. Contributors?weighty US scholars all?explore subjects as diverse as lay female spirituality, the transmission of ideas by murals, and the baptism of pagan communi? ties on the fringes of empire. Difficult concepts are challenged ('binary oppositions', 'double-belief, 'conversion', 'popular culture'), and new approaches to old problems are demonstrated. Eve Levin's wittyand fascinating exploration of the transformation of unidentified corpse into saint demonstrates the changing concerns of Orthodox hierarchs in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; William Wagner's close study of a Nizhegorod convent from 1807 to 1935 reveals the extraordinary resourcefulness and adaptability ofthe nuns to economic, social, and political change; Daniel Kaiser's study of marriage and birth patterns in early modern Russia seeks to dispel the myth that Orthodoxy was of little importance to a fundamentally superstitious populace. 272 Reviews A short review is no place to enumerate a collection like this?suffice it to say that there are no 'duds' in this volume, and while readers may spot the omission of their favourite topic (music, magic, the celebration of seasonal festivals, perhaps), there is a diversity that both satisfies and challenges. My own complaint is that the majority of papers focus on the seventeenth century and later?Michael Flier's examination of the Apocalypse in Russian historical experience before 1500, to a lesser extent Isolde Thyret's...