Faith in Revolution: Individual Believers Reflect on Bolshevik Rule, 1917-1922

• In Event: All Power to the Soviets: Power and Authority in the Russian Revolution

Abstract

It is well known that Orthodox believers were among the Bolsheviks’ earliest and most visible opponents in 1917 and early 1918. Widespread demonstrations by the Orthodox emerged after the official declaration of church and state, and Orthodox discontent intensified with Bolshevik targeting of individual clergy, the campaign to “unmask” the saints, and the state’s expropriation of church valuables. But as this paper will discuss, the diaries of Orthodox believers’ written between 1917-1922 reveal a meaningful degree of diversity among the faithful’s responses to the experience of Bolshevik rule, and a closer look at these responses leads to a more nuanced understanding of the moral and spiritual dimensions of early socialist society.

Author

• Page Herrlinger, Bowdoin College