On Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:44:11 -0800 (PST) Chris Doss
<lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> It's interesting that, in the period of great turmoil
> before 1917, the Russian Orthodox clergy showed this
> division. The Church at the village level was so
> leftist that the Church hierarchy felt compelled to
> purge it periodically. There was a lot of material
> being written and preached at the village level about
> the People of Christ being oppressed by the Tsar,
> about how the message of Christ meant being liberated
> from the wealthy and powerful, and so forth. This is
> the reason that the 1905 pogroms targeted seminarians.
> And the closet Marxist seminary Stalin attended was
> more the rule than the exception.
>
>
That sort of thing had been true for a long time in Russia. In the late 19th century, so many of the young Russian radical intellectuals were
were former theology students or at the very least the sons of priests, that the term "seminarist' was often applied colloquially to label young intellectuals with revolutionary political views.