The study of Orthodoxy in the Baltic remains trapped by several conventions. One of these is the general preference of scholars to focus on the political story within which the Orthodox Church was entwined, whether the story concerned revolves around the Russification of the 1880s and 1890s or the policies of the independent Latvian and Estonian republics. Another is the tendency to isolate Orthodoxy from other confessional influences, by which I mean those occurring in the Lutheran and Catholic churches which predominated in the region. Finally, the region has attracted no shortage of Orthodox academics whose main interest is to present their ‘side’ within an on-going confessional battle (either between Orthodoxy and non-Orthodoxy or between the various branches of Orthodoxy which now operate in the Baltic).
Regrettably, the recent book by V. I. Musaev does not avoid these potholes, but instead trips over them in a rather willy-nilly fashion. Firstly, though, a description of the book’s contents. Musaev sets himself the task of focusing on Orthodoxy in the Baltic region from the late imperial period to the middle of the inter-war period. This, it should be said, does him credit: most works tend to focus on the revolution and subsequent wars of independence as an impenetrable boundary between two overwhelmingly different eras. However, the reality was considerably different, as trends originating in the imperial period continued to operate deep into subsequent eras. His structure is defined by both this chronological approach to Baltic Orthodoxy and by his relatively broad geographical scope, which includes the Lithuanian provinces of the Russian Empire. So, for example, the first two main chapters focus on the Baltic provinces (Estland, Livland, and Kurland) and Lithuania in the imperial period. This is an odd approach, since the generally prevalent view in the historiography is that the policies of the imperial government towards these two areas were quite distinct: after all, the Baltic provinces were regarded as belonging to the ‘cultural zone’ of the Lutheran German landowning aristocracy, while Lithuania was generally placed within the orbit of the Polish Catholic elite. The latter actively rebelled against the Russian Empire, while the former were generally acquiescent, coming to be regarded as an enemy thanks to an exclusionary Russian nationalism heavily based in Slavophile ideology. While I do not deny there were certainly commonalities in the approach of the imperial government to these regions, it does seem a strange decision to shove them together into a single account, especially since Musaev does nothing at all to draw out the reasons for the similarities and differences in the governance of these zones, but is simply content to place them into self-contained chapters with self-contained narratives.
This peculiar geographical perspective is perhaps the most outstanding element of Musaev’s book: regrettably, nothing else is particularly noteworthy. The account of Orthodoxy in the Baltic immediately (and uncritically) fastens itself to late imperial scholarship, repeating late 19th-century narratives of Orthodoxy’s embattled position in the region from the early medieval period onwards. When he reaches the 18th century, Musaev contents himself with listing: listing the achievements of each bishop, listing the policies of the Russian imperial government, listing the legislative acts of the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian republics. Later portions of each chapter do make movements towards understanding religious life in the multi-confessional region, but these limit themselves to statistics and the Orthodox perspective. Little is done to try and present everyday religious life. Few, if any, documents are subjected to analysis, and are instead stated as fact. And speaking of documents, the research is insufficiently broad: Musaev has limited himself to the archival depositories in St Petersburg and Moscow, without reference to local documents available from Tartu and Riga. This is just about justifiable for the imperial period: for the inter-war era, it is a considerable lapse. It goes without saying that all his documents are in Russian, not Latvian, Estonian, or Lithuanian, although he has been broader with his historiography, citing a few works in English and other languages.
Such a volume might not be without its uses, especially as a textbook. Musaev’s dates, figures, and facts are exact and supported with archival documentation. The chronology is clear. The book offers little to scholars who already know the printed sources and the historiography, but it does present a clear schematic history of Baltic Orthodoxy, useful for students attempting to navigate the tricky reefs of this subject for the first time. What diminishes this value of the work is that, all too often, it descends into apologia for the Russian (and specifically the Russian) Orthodox Church. So, for instance, we are told that the local Orthodox Church bore no responsibility for Russification in the 1880s: all of this came from the local governors, the imperial government, the Synod, and the Synodal ober procurator. Never mind that the best in recent research (I have in mind the articles of Aleksandr Polunov) show quite clearly that the russifying zeal of church figures like the bishops Donat (Babinskii-Sokolov) and Arsenii (Briantsev) not only met the expectations of the central government, but dangerously exceeded them, putting the entire russifying project in jeopardy because of their tactless energy.
In sum, Masuaev has managed to present a clear chronological account of Baltic Orthodoxy in the late imperial and inter-war periods through rather limited archival research. However, his book is a symbol of what the field needs to overcome, not what it needs to be.
Author: J. M. White