Fuel on the Fire?: Orthodox Church Reactions to the Guerrilla War in Macedonia and the Pogroms in Russia, 1905-1908

• In Event: Religious, Class, and National Solidarity and Conflict in the Eastern European-Ottoman Borderlands, 1848-1939

Abstract

The Eastern Question historiography, whether Balkan, Russian, or Western, recognized the centrality of religion in the Great Power rivalry in the Ottoman domains but only as a pretext for intervention into the Sultan's realm. There has been little scholarly attention, however, devoted to understanding how the Russian church leadership made sense of the tragic events in Macedonia and of the anti-Semitic pogroms during the 1905 Revolution at home. This paper will examine whether leading Russian, Greek, and Bulgarian prelates and related language church-affiliated periodicals justified various outbreaks of ethnic violence or criticized them as antithetical to Christianity.

Author

• Denis V. Vovchenko, Northeastern State U