Jennifer Hedda His Kingdom Come. Orthodox Pastorship and Social Activism in Revolutionary Russia. Northern Illinois University Press DeKalb, IL 2008. IX. ISBN: 978-0-8758-0382-1

Herausgegeben im Auftrag des Osteuropa-Instituts Regensburg
von Martin Schulze Wessel und Dietmar Neutatz

Band 58 (2010) H. 4, S. 627–627

Jennifer Hedda His Kingdom Come. Orthodox Pastorship and Social Activism in Revolutionary Russia. Northern Illinois University Press DeKalb, IL 2008. IX, 297 S. ISBN: 978-0-8758-0382-1.

“His Kingdom Come” is a thoroughly researched and well designed monograph on the social and political aspirations of many St. Petersburg Orthodox clergy, laity, and even some bishops, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The evidence in support of the book’s hypotheses has been drawn from an impressive array of sources, including documents found in the Russian State Historical Archive, published reports of Synodal committee meetings, newspaper articles, brochures, and memoirs. In addition, copious footnotes and a lengthy bibliography include almost all the secondary works other authors have completed on this and related topics over the last twenty years. In fact, a full one-third of the book consists of its academic apparatus.

Professor Hedda begins with a discussion of the activity among young priests and laypersons that revealed pathos and rendered assistance to working families in the industrial areas of St. Petersburg, a new environment for a Russian church long accustomed to dealing with problems arising from isolated rural life. Among other things, she examines the founding and expansion of parish charities, particularly the Society for Moral-Religious Enlightenment, the new courses on homiletics introduced by socially conscious professors at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, organized efforts to encourage temperance, and the gradual inclusion of pastoral care to a parish priest’s traditional duty as liturgical celebrant. The results of Jennifer Hedda’s research confirm and considerably expand the argument first advanced by the late Jacob Walkin who believed pre-revolutionary Russian society was beginning to organize into professional and commercial associations free of government inspiration and outside government control, a necessary step toward forming a democratic polity.

The second phase of Jennifer Hedda’s book approvingly reviews the careers of a number of special clergymen who may well be classified as political liberals, or even radicals, considering the circumstances of the times. She presents them as necessary players (moral leaders, using one the author’s expressions) in the new parish activities taking place among the voluntary organizations discussed earlier in the narrative. Among other names, Grigoriy Petrov, Georgiy Gapon, Peter Kremlevskiy, and Mikhail Semenov are brought up. This section concludes with a careful and well documented discussion of the Group of St. Petersburg Priests critical of the government’s arbitrary tactics as well as the political compromises made by the Orthodox hierarchy during the events surrounding the Revolution of 1905.

Without question, these special priests cited by the author were engaged in the community activities they hoped would create “a new vision of the church’s work” in Russia, but is Jennifer Hedda correct to tie them ideologically to the overall social outreach movement encouraged by the church and outlined in the first part of her study? These priests called for a complete separation of church from state, but when general church councils did assemble they followed tradition and asked only to loosen, never to sever bonds with the state. These priests also wanted “to change the world in order to realize the Kingdom of God on Earth,” but their so-called modernity was often seen by Orthodox faithful as a threat to reduce Christianity to a strictly socio-political virtue. In other words, is there some doubt about the author’s suggestion that successful efforts at Christian charity in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg went hand-in-hand with the enthusiasm of liberal politics?

John D. Basil, Columbia, SC

Zitierweise: John D. Basil über: Jennifer Hedda His Kingdom Come. Orthodox Pastorship and Social Activism in Revolutionary Russia. Northern Illinois University Press DeKalb, IL 2008. IX. ISBN: 978-0-8758-0382-1, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. Neue Folge, 58 (2010) H. 4, S. 627–627: http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/JGO/Rez/Basil_Hedda_His_Kingdom_Come.html (Datum des Seitenbesuchs)