The Eastern Romanophile: Slavic Ecumenism in the Thought and Poetry of Viacheslav Ivanov

• In Event: Religion and the Russian Silver Age

Abstract

Arguably one of the most significant personal decisions Viacheslav Ivanov made after immigrating from the Soviet Union to Rome was his entry into the Catholic Church in 1926. Ivanov did not consider his conversion to be a rejection of Orthodoxy, for he specifically joined an Eastern Catholic Church that would allow him to retain the liturgical language, rituals, prayers, etc. that he had enjoyed as an Orthodox Christian. Indeed, reflecting on the experience of becoming Catholic, Ivanov “felt, for the first time, Orthodox in the fullness of this word’s meaning, in full possession of the sacred treasure which was mine since my baptism.” Rather than an opportunistic conversion motivated simply by an émigré-exile’s desire to assimilate, this paper will argue, Ivanov’s formal acceptance of Catholicism can be seen as the organic development of pro-Catholic, ecumenical motifs that had already been present in his pre-emigration, “Slavophile” poems and essays.

Author

• Melvin Thomas, Princeton U