Key Documents On Russian Orthodox Church’s Promotion Of Russian Nationalism Published – OpEd

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Much as it is doing now, the Russian Orthodox Church in the last decades of the Russian Empire played a key role in the promotion of Russian nationalist movements, including some of the most extreme and anti-Semitic. Much of what it did is well-known, but a new book fills some key gaps.

A group of St. Petersburg scholars have published an 800-page volume on The Orthodox Church and Russian Nationalism (Second Half of the 19th to the Beginning of the 20th Century) (in Russian; St. Petersburg: Vladimir Dal, 2021). The book includes 94 texts of Orthodox hierarchs, missionaries, priests and theologians.

Its compilers included only those texts which are little known, a principle of selection that makes this book especially important for those concerned about the role of the Church in Russian nationalism and the place of nations and nationalism in Christianity more generally (ruskline.ru/news_rl/2021/06/30/pravoslavnaya_cerkov_i_russkii_nacionalizm).

The documents, many unpublished for more than a century, are introduced by a 100-page essay prepared by the compilers on the Church’s understanding of nationalism. It puts these works in context and presents arguments both in favor and against the Church’s thinking and role from the time of Alexander II to the end of the Russian Civil War.

Paul Goble

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. Most recently, he was director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Earlier, he served as vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. He has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Goble maintains the Window on Eurasia blog and can be contacted directly at [email protected] .

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