(Re)Constructing an Orthodox ‘Scenario of Power’: The Restoration of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate in Revolutionary Russia (1917–1918)

Abstract

The Russian Revolutions of 1917 ushered in an era of change and upheaval in Russian political and civil society. The Russian Orthodox Church was not removed from the new social and political context in which old certainties were being undermined and new systems imagined. In the heady days of October, the Church underwent its own ‘revolution’ as it elected a patriarch to lead it for the first time in over two hundred years. Through the patriarchal enthronement ceremony and the rhetoric attached to it, Church leaders advanced a new vision of Russia: one in which the Church would be a guiding moral light for the nation in tumultuous times. In this new ‘scenario of power,’ the Church reclaimed symbols and narratives that the tsars had previously used to describe their autocratic rule. Yet, in the democratizing climate of the revolution, the Church did not have exclusive control over the narrative of the patriarchate. Throughout 1917 and 1918, journalists and individuals who wrote to the patriarch advanced their own visions of the patriarchate and its role in the new Russia – visions which sometimes contradicted that offered by the Church hierarchy itself. The patriarchate became a vessel for narratives of Russia and of the revolution through which people expressed their hopes, fears, and even dreams for the future of Russia. When viewed in this light, the patriarchate itself is revealed to be not a mere holdover of the old regime or an institution of interest to those who study the Church, but rather a crucial device for revealing new voices of the Russian Revolution.