YAKOV KROTOV

RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY:

THOUSAND YEARS IN TWO THOUSAND WORDS

History is not a homogeneous mass. Different kinds of human activities have each their rises and falls. Only gathered they constitute an image of homogeneity. Gather in a hall hundred clocks all depicting different times, and they will ring without interruption.

The history of Russian Church seems to be homogeneous mass, following the turns of the history of Russian state. Actually, this history had its own rises and falls. They went it turns, but that doesn't mean that it was a senseless movement, an eternal repetition. The pendulum goes one and the same way, but still the clocks go ahead. Now on the clock of Russian Orthodox history it is three p.m. We raised three times, three times went down. Each time something new was created, new step was made forward, something was supplemented to what was gained before.

Several words of close meaning come to mind when people think about Russia: servility, passivity, slavery, humbleness. Not all of them are misleading. History of Russian Orthodox mentality -- and it is also history of Russian mentality -- if we judge it in terms of passivity and activity, subordination and domination, self-refusal and self and self-esteem is really oriented towards the firsts. That doesn't mean that Russian enjoy slavery, humiliation or paralyses any more than other nations. It means that not internal, but external circumstances of Russian history are very peculiar.

Once American electric company got a big problem with transporting the part of a giant electric equipment from one city to another. Some very low overpass came on the way. It was impossible to destroy the overpass, to dissect the weight, it was too expensive to change the root. Then someone proposed to let the air out of the tires. The total height diminished at several inches only, but this was enough for track to go under the overpass quietly. In this case Americans overcame the obstacle in typically Russian Orthodox way. They have not "overcame," they "undercame." From the Russian point of view, typically American way on this situation will be to call Batman, who will take the track over the overpass. Russians prefer to crawl under the obstacle, not to jump over it.

Russian Church history began in 988, when Great Prince Vladimir was converted and ordered his subjects to be baptized. Christianity came to Russia from Byzantium. First bishops, priests, icon-painters were Greeks. Russian princes invited Greek monks to become the abbots of the monasteries, which they founded on their expense as their private enterprises. For five centuries afterward Russian state struggled to make Russian Church dependent not on Constantinople, but on itself. But this was only the periphery of the Church history, although most bright and visible.

First rise of the really meaningful spirituality is connected with the name of St. Antoniy of Caves. Antoniy became a monk in the famous Greek monastic center Mount Athos, returned to Russia and, as his Life states, visited all monasteries in Kiev, then Russia's capital, in order to find most contemplative. But he found only, that all these monasteries where completely dependent from their founders and masters - aristocrats, they were more social than spiritual entities, designed to be signs of prestige.

This was the first low overpass in Russian history: all social life was dominated by aristocracy (in modern times, nomenclature.) Not the civil society, but police state developed. What was the way out? To devote life to active struggle with these totalitarian tendencies?

Antoniy founded his own monastery not far from Kiev, but in most unusual way: in caves, artificially created deep in the earth, a kind of special catacombs. This act can be interpreted differently: as a result of desire to oppose existing system or as a retreat from opposition. The last is true. Antoniy didn't want to oppose anything, that is why he nominated one of his pupils as abbot and gave to him the power and obligations to communicate with aristocracy. But he himself remained in caves, and for several generations after him the contemplative life remained an ideal to his monastery. This ascetic life was not original in itself; it was usual Eastern morbid of flesh. Original was the relation of the asceticism with the specific Russian conditions: not to oppose power, maintain the best possible relations with it, but also try to remain independent as far as possible in as many relations as possible. Antony didn't try to turn his "track" on other road, to flee somewhere in wilderness; nor he tried to destroy the "overpass" which was on his way. He only let the air come out of his tires, bowed to powers, but only in order not to be bothered by them.

It is very characteristically, therefor, that it was the monk of St. Antony's monastery, St. Nestor, who wrote the Life of the Stt. Boris and Gleb, who became first canonized saints of the Russian Church. These two sons of St. Prince Vladimir had been murdered by their brother in 1015, immediately after Vladimir's death. People venerated them mainly because Boris and Gleb refused to struggle with unjust brother and met the killers sent by him humbly, in tears. They imitated Christ because combined kingsly origin with innocent sufferings, taken on their free will.

The monastery of St. Anthony came to a spiritual decline by the mid-12th century. Majority of monks stopped practicing rigid ascetic way of life. The monastery became a cradle of bishops, and therefor career goals became primarily. It is important to mark that this decline took place a hundred years before the Tatar invasion in 1237. The deserting of the country was not the reason of spiritual decline.

The next turn of the wheel took place in the beginning of XIV century, when a monk Dionisiy (later saint bishop of Suzdal) founded a monastery near Nizhniy Novgorod. It was a first monastery founded after a long time of monastic decline. The friends and pupils of St. Dionisiy, their pupils, spiritual sons and grandsons founded more than 200 monasteries in the following 150 years. But the name of Dionisiy was practically forgotten. The symbol of the new spiritual rise became the name of St. Sergiy of Radonezh. He founded a monastery not far from Moscow, and Moscow, not Nizhniy Novgorod happened to become a center of Russian State in XV-XVII centuries.

St. Sergiy and other Fathers Founders of this great monastic wave in the relations with state power and aristocracy followed the pattern, elaborated by St. Anthony. They founded monasteries always not far, a mile or two, from the capitals of different princes, sometimes very tiny. As St. Sergiy, they participated to some extent in state life: gave their spiritual authority to the princes, baptized their children, mentored them without a great success. They followed the colonization streams to the Russian North, and kept themselves on some neutral distance from the secular environment, being simultaneously part and out of it. In this sense St. Anthony established for Russians (not only monks) a pattern of relations with the state and society, just as Washington, when he first time decided not to go to the Congress, created an eternal precedent to other American presidents.

St. Sergiy had another overpass in front. He was challenged with the problem of creating a type of behavior inside the community. Not the state power, but collective spirit, aggressive, attempting to destroy personality in the warm womb of interpersonal net, was then a main challenge. It was not only a monastic problem. XIV century in Russia was a time of constituting of peasant's and cities communities with a very rigid regulations of life, practically denying the privacy, appraising strong leadership and strict subordinance to it.

The brothers of St. Sergiy's monastery of Trinity two times rebelled against their abbot. They wanted Sergiy to be more totalitarian as an administrator and provoked different abuses. St. Sergiy let the air out of his tires: he left the monastery twice, and twice founded new monasteries. Twice he returned after the Great Prince of Moscow urged him to return. It became usual to other Fathers Founders to live not in the monastery which they founded but in a little cabin half a mile from it. Thus they showed a practical example of how to coexist with the aggressively collectivist milieu without direct attempts to change it, but also without acceptance of its spirit.

The symbol of this spiritual mode can be seen in the most famous Russian icon of Old Testament Trinity, created by St. Sergiy's pupil, St. Andrey Rublev (the monastery of St. Sergiy is dedicated to St. Trinity.) The figures of three angels in Abraham's house are situated around the table in harmony and complete equality without similarity. They constitute a community where no one attacks anybody and no one lacks personality.

The spiritual rise ended in the beginning of XVI century. Last representatives of it were Stt. Nil of Sora and St. Joseph of Volok. They stood for opposite types of monastic order. St. Joseph founded a monastery with rigid discipline and obedience to abbot. St. Nil created a monastery where brothers lived absolutely isolated from each other and gathered together only on Sundays. These opposite orders, resembling opposition of Trappists and Benedictines, were similar in a sense that both, although by different means, tried to prevent appearance of collectivist spirit.

Stt. Nil and Joseph were friends; quotations from the works of Nil were vastly used by St. Joseph. They hold opposite views on second-rate problems. For example, Joseph defended the rite of monks to own land and serfs, Nil denied it. It is most characteristic that pupils of these great men concentrated on this last question, formed two parties, and struggled with each other using even court intrigues till both parties have vanished. The core of Christian life was forgotten.

Again, it is worth mentioning that political and economic development went in its turn. First half of XVI century was a period of great economical rise, the end of the century witnessed economical crises caused by the terrorist policy of Ivan the Terrible and followed by the civil war in the beginning of XVIIth century. Spiritually yet society was oriented towards the past: it was in this epoch when the term "Saint Russia" -- "Svyataya Rus'" -- came into being.

Instead of spiritual wealth people created cultural, literary, artistic phenomenas. It was in this epoch when the great cathedrals which came to be a symbol of Saint Russia were constructed, when the esthetic style of Russian Orthodoxy was created. But this wonderful shell was already empty. Just the same, the symbol of British empire, London Parliament was build when the decline of empire began. People expressed their awareness of crises in brilliant nostalgic sayings: "Previously vessels were made of wood, priests of gold" (really, St. Sergiy committed Eucharist in wooden vessel) and "Previously the criminals hanged on the crosses, now crosses are hanging on criminals."

The third turn of the wheel began in XIXth century and again was connected with monasteries, which can be cold not only accumulators of medieval Christianity, but also polygons where spiritual weapons were tried. In 1820-s elders ("startsy") appeared in Russian monasteries. Most famous among these was recently canonized Amvrosiy from Optina monastery.

Elders were monks with big spiritual experience (this doesn't mean old literally), who themselves practiced so called "mental prayer" and helped their lesser brothers in doing so. "Mental prayer" is Eastern Orthodox meditation, excluding concentration on any images, and replacing different meditation themes with concentration on instant repetition of one short prayer: "Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me." This created very special kind of spirituality, which is still present on Mount Athos, for example. In XIXth Russia this spirituality received a specific ministry.

In 1861 Tzar decreed liberation of 50 millions of Russian serves, who constituted the majority or Russian population. The Great Liberation radically changed the life of peasants, who were not prepared to live free from their masters and from the will of peasants communities, who often were obliged to migrate to towns. It destroyed the medieval patterns of behavior, according to which all people were included in some entities. Aristocracy, merchants, intellectuals also found themselves in new circumstances. Everybody got the challenge of dealing with problems on personal account, of growing interpersonal alienation, characteristic for the industrial society.

It was an epoch of great social changes, when in all European countries individual faced great psychological difficulties, connected with the new level of personal liberty. In 20th century people find help in such circumstances in psychological cabinets. But Church came to help first. The role of spiritual mentors grown vastly. Elders were engaged deeply in counseling laymen and laywomen of all classes. This was met with indignation by the majority of monks, who stated that parish clergy must give spiritual guides to laity. In theory it was absolutely correct, in practice parish clergy was absolutely untrained spiritually and hardly could give any advice.

The response of elders to the challenge of industrial society was characteristically Russian Orthodox. "Let the air out of your tires," struggle with your own proudness and don't mind about the sins of others. Elders didn't reject the necessity of career-making, they simply were silent about this matter. They only called people to make a lemonade out of lemon, to make a humility out of alienation: learn to live alone, independently of others, learn to be responsible to God without a collective, but not in opposition to collective or to any other person, learn to be superman without thinking about yourself as a superman, without even dreaming to be a superman, without supercilium and with constant view on yourself as the greatest sinner at one side and God's worker on the other.

This wave, this third turn of the wheel is still in move. Partly it began vanishing before the revolution, immediately after Amvrosiy's death (1890.) Partly it not vanished, but dispersed in tens of parish priests who at last began working as spiritual mentors.

My personal Christian experience is connected with Russian Orthodox tradition formally and in content. Formally, my spiritual mentor and Godfather, late Fr. Alexander Men, was a successor of "catacomb" priest-mentors, who mostly were heirs of elders of Optina. I was converted and baptized in the age of 18, when I graduated the school and was going to enter the University to become a historian. I was a member of Communist Youth Union, and my first impulse was to declare loudly about my conversion.

Fr. Alexander stopped me, as he stopped many other intellectuals who worked in the sphere of "ideology" incompatible with Christian beliefs. He pointed out that first I must receive education in order to be professional historian, not a dilettante with only some knowledge of Christianity. This was a direct realization of the principle "let the air out of your tires," as applied to the relations with the State (St. Antoniy.)

Later I was fired two times, later I got some discrepancies with KGB, but they appeared not on my will, but in the will of the State. I was not aggressive, active in struggling with the State, as well as Fr. Alexander himself. Those people who took a Western style of behavior, who became active dissidents, risked greatly in Russian conditions, risked not only to get into prison, but to loose their soul, to become proud of themselves as martyrs and confessors, to stop being creative Christians and become fighting Pharisees.

It was and it is harder to learn to live on a country with dominating collective spirit and still remain a Christian, to learn to coexist with the parish community without the loss self-identity. It means not one decision, but many years of instant struggle with inner resentment, cynicism, jealousy, orientation toward others, attempts to be equal to others. Many pupils left Fr. Alexander because they became jealous to him, wanted to win the reputation of second Men', of even to overcome him.

The future of Russian Orthodoxy is as uncertain and vague as a future of any other Christian confession in any period of history, Russian Orthodoxy is most similar to Roman Catholicism in rites, attitudes toward hierarchy. It social role is similar to the role of Episcopalian church in United States of Roman Catholic Church in Italy. It is very respectable denomination, and respectability for the majority of modern people is a very negative factor when Christianity is concerned. But the spiritual experience of Russian Orthodoxy is even greater than its respectability, and its future is directed not towards museums but toward Christ.

1994