Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia

by Laurie Manchester

Overview

Holy Fathers, Secular Sons is the first study of the Orthodox clergy’s contribution to Russian society. Prior to the 1860s, clergymen’s sons were not allowed to leave the castelike clergy in large numbers. When permission was granted, they responded by entering free professions and political movements in droves. Challenging the standard view of educated pre-revolutionary Russians as largely westernized, secular, and patricidal, Laurie Manchester demonstrates that the clergymen’s sons did retain their fathers’ values. This was true even of the minority who became atheists. Drawing on the clergy’s commitment to moral activism, anti-aristocratism, and nationalism, clergymen’s sons believed they could, and should, save Russia. The consequence was a cultural revolution that helped pave the way for the 1917 revolutions.

Using a massive array of previously untapped archival and published sources—including lively first-hand autobiographical writings of over two hundred clergymen’s sons—Manchester constructs a composite biography of their childhoods, educations, and adult lives. In a highly original approach, she explores how they employed the image of the clerical family to structure their political, professional, and personal lives. Manchester’s work provides a window into an extremely significant but little-known world of Russian educated culture while contributing to histories of lived religion, private life, and memory, as well as to debates over secularization, modernity, and revolution. Holy Fathers, Secular Sons powerfully challenges the assumptions that radical change cannot be inspired by tradition and that the modern age is inherently secular.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875803807
Publisher:	Northern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	01/28/2008
Series:	Studies of the Harriman Institute
Edition description:	1
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Laurie Manchester is Assistant Professor of History at Arizona State University. The author is the receipient of the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, AAASS, and the Stanford University Center for Russian and East European Studies, 2009 (the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables     ix
Preface     xi
Introduction     3
The Backdrop     14
Popovichi and Their Fathers Judge Other Social Estates     38
Prescriptive Norms for the Sacred Estate     68
Clerical Childhood as Heaven on Earth     94
Martyrdom, Moral Superiority, and a Bursa Education     123
Holy Exodus     155
The Search for Secular Salvation     179
Conclusion     211
Glossary     219
Data on Identifiable Popovichi's Personal Texts     221
Notes     231
Works Cited     255
Index     279

What People are Saying About This

Nadieszda Kizenko

"A significant contribution to the field-in fact it carves out a new field. The extent of clerical influence, and what exactly constituted clerical influence, have until now remained neglected."--(Nadieszda Kizenko, University at Albany)

William G. Wagner

"The author forces a major reconsideration of our understanding of the intelligentsia ... she draws judiciously on recent theories regarding the formation of memory and the relationship between memory, history, and identity, on literary forms and the formation of modern selfhood, on the relationship between religion and modernity, and on the social and cultural construction of gender."--(William G. Wagner, Williams College)

Gregory L. Freeze

"This wide-ranging, original volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the role that Russian Orthodoxy, through priests' offspring, played in that country's social and cultural history. It is a model of definitive, exhaustive archival research."--(Gregory L. Freeze, Brandeis University)

Editorial Reviews

Well written, argued, and footnoted, and deserve[s] a place in the canon of primary studies of Russian history.

Choice

Manchester has made a major contribution to the historiography not only of Russia, but of European modernity. Manchester's work supplements and corrects the works of earlier cultural historians, such as Reinhard Bendix and Liah Greenfeld, who have tried to discern religion's role in the rise of modernity.

Church History

The author's scholarly apparatus, her extensively documented sources material, and her cultural and sociological analysis offer a coherent and convincing picture of a previously unstudied social class... Her study of the popovichi's contribution to the Russian intelligentsia, Russia's revolutionary path, and national identity forges a crucial missing link in Russian culture's evolutionary chain.

Slavic and East European Journal

This wide-ranging, original volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the role that Russian Orthodoxy, through priests' offspring, played in that country's social and cultural history. It is a model of definitive, exhaustive archival research.

Brandeis University

Manchester has made a major contribution to the historiography not only of Russia, but of European modernity. Manchester's work supplements and corrects the works of earlier cultural historians, such as Reinhard Bendix and Liah Greenfeld, who have tried to discern religion's role in the rise of modernity.

-- "Church History"

The author's scholarly apparatus, her extensively documented sources material, and her cultural and sociological analysis offer a coherent and convincing picture of a previously unstudied social class... Her study of the popovichi's contribution to the Russian intelligentsia, Russia's revolutionary path, and national identity forges a crucial missing link in Russian culture's evolutionary chain.

-- "Slavic and East European Journal"

This wide-ranging, original volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the role that Russian Orthodoxy, through priests' offspring, played in that country's social and cultural history. It is a model of definitive, exhaustive archival research.

-- "Brandeis University"

Well written, argued, and footnoted, and deserve[s] a place in the canon of primary studies of Russian history.

-- "Choice"

From the Publisher