A while ago, on a thread about Zhabotinsky and the Black Hundreds pogroms, Chuck asked me:
"> Also were the
> Absolutists linked with the Russian Orthodox
church?"
I'm reading a compilation of essays titled "Russia under the Last Tsar: Opposition and Subversion 1894-1917" (ed. Anna Geifman), which contains a very interesting paper on the Russian Orthodox Church of the period by Gregory Freeze.
As it turns out, the majority of rank-and-file Orthodox clergy in 1905 were actually lefties and supported the revolution, or expressed neutrality. It seems that closet Marxist seminary Stalin attended was not a big exception. The upper hierarchy was conservative or far right, abd conducted purges of the lower ranks from 1905 on in order to get rid of the lefty elements. By 1917 clerical liberalism had much declined, both for this reason and because of threats and attacks on clergy by the Black Hundreds. This may explain why seminaries were a target of the pogroms.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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