Michail Dolbilov / Darius Staljunas [Darius Staliūnas]: Obratnaja unija. Iz istorii otnošenij meždu katolilcizmom i pravoslaviem v Rossijskoi imperii, 1840–1873. [Die umgekehrte Union. Aus der Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Katholizismus und Orthodoxie im Russländischen Reich, 1840–1873]. Vilnius: Lietuvos Istorijos Instituto leidykla, 2010. 274 S. ISBN: 978-9955-847-32-8

Michail Dolbilov / Darius Staljunas [Darius Staliūnas]: Obratnaja unija. Iz istorii otnošenij meždu katolilcizmom i pravoslaviem v Rossijskoi imperii, 1840–1873. [Die umgekehrte Union. Aus der Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Katholizismus und Orthodoxie im Russländischen Reich, 1840–1873]. Vilnius: Lietuvos Istorijos Instituto leidykla, 2010. 274 S. ISBN: 978-9955-847-32-8.

The Russian Empire was a multi-confessional state and nowhere did it encounter greater problems than in the western provinces. This borderland posed a critical ethno-confessional challenge; the state regarded Poles and Catholics to be the dynamo of dissent that culminated in the rebellion of 1863. That rebellion was a watershed in modern Russian history, impelling the state to launch a full-scale assault on both Polish culture and Catholicism, the latter resulting in the closure of 375 churches and monasteries in the northwest by mid-1869 (p. 200 n).

This superb documentary history provides a close study of Catholic proposals for a “reverse union” – that is, not the conversion of Catholics to Orthodoxy, but the creation of a “Russian Catholic Church” (Rossiiskaia kafolicheskaia tserkov’). This proposal, first articulated in 1840 by the ex-Uniate and bishop of Minsk, Antonii (Zubko), but revised and circulated in a key anonymous memorandum in 1865, envisioned the creation an alternative Catholicism. This “Russian Catholic-Orthodox Church” would be free of papal control (which purportedly undermined political loyalty), would emerge after a voluntary initiative from loyal Catholic subjects, would convoke a ruling council of clergy and laymen (to ordain bishops and modify dogma and ritual), and over time would create a new hybrid confession for the northwestern provinces. That new confession would ensure the political loyalty of Catholics and, over a twelve-year term, gradually lead to a mixed Catholic-Orthodox religious practice.

This volume, which consists of a long introductory essay and publishes six key documents, seeks to elucidate the emergence, conception, and impact of this proposal for “reverse union.” The authors conducted research in archives in four countries (Russia, Lithuania, Poland, and France), concentrating their attention mainly on an 1865 memorandum (“How to Terminate the Abnormal Situation in the Western Provinces”). They underscore the ambivalence in the proposal (just how Orthodox were these new Uniates to become?) as well as the tendency to rely on the secular state, not the Orthodox Church and clergy, in achieving its goal. The memorandum avers that a substantial number of Catholics in the northwest were willing to adopt the hybrid faith, above all for purposes of proving their political loyalty to the state. The authors also labor to identify the author of the 1865 memoranda and, on the basis of textual comparisons, conclude that it was the work of Adam Honory Kirkor (a Catholic writer, journalist, publisher, and ethnographer). Although several others collaborated (including some reputed earlier to be the author of the memorandum), it is argued that Kirkor was the most active exponent of this idea and the probable author of the texts (pp. 49–73). The principal motive, it is argued, was a desire to blunt the fierce russification and repression of the Catholic Church, especially under General-Governor K. P. Kaufman (pp. 81–85): the reverse union, Kirkor may have thought, was preferable to total annihilation of Catholicism (pp. 8, 74–81, 97–98). The authors note, however, that the proposal elicited virtually no interest in St. Petersburg (pp. 91–92), partly because the government looked askance at any scheme to assign initiative to the Catholics, partly because it embraced the idea of Russia as a “confessional state” and hence presupposed an institutional Catholicism as a necessary instrument for governance and control.

The documents published here (nearly two-thirds of the entire text) are a model of careful, critical textology. Each document is meticulously reproduced and annotated, with an explication of terms and critical evaluation as to accuracy.

A so well-researched and insightful volume as this stimulates the appetite for more. Above all, one wonders about the meaning of these documents: given that the state ignored them and that they remained known to few (at least before the Russian Jesuit, J. Martinov, published a revised version in French in 1873), what was the significance of the 1865 memorandum? Moreover, the analysis here is largely intratextual, but it might have been framed in a larger context. Thus, so far as the Catholics are concerned, the memorandum may also reflect broader anti-papist sentiments that were gaining currency – even before the First Vatican Council and the declaration of papal infallibility in 1870. The latter precipitated the Old Catholic movement, and these memoranda from the 1860s foreshadow the rise of Old Catholicism (which, indeed, elicited growing attention from the Orthodox Church in later decades). As for the Russian state, the authors note they were disinclined to empower Catholics, but it would have been worthwhile to underscore the government’s visceral distrust for things Polish and Catholic after the rebellion of 1863. It also bears noting that the russification of the northwest in the 1860s, directed at achieving depolonization and decatholization, marked a radical departure from current state policy; at this very time, for example, St. Petersburg was making unprecedented concessions to the Baltic Germans, even suspending prosecution of Lutheran pastors for facilitating apostasy. But high-ranking officials obviously saw no reason to reverse russification in the northwest; even when apprised (as in the case of P. A. Valuev), they ignored these memoranda. As a result, the proposals for a “reverse union” left a tiny archival footprint and did not even elicit much in the way of critique and repudiation.

Still, this is an impressive piece of research on a little-known facet of the confessional struggles in the Russian Empire in the mid-nineteenth century.

Gregory L. Freeze, Waltham, MA

Zitierweise: Gregory L. Freeze über: Michail Dolbilov / Darius Staljunas [Darius Staliūnas]: Obratnaja unija. Iz istorii otnošenij meždu katolilcizmom i pravoslaviem v Rossijskoi imperii, 1840–1873. [Die umgekehrte Union. Aus der Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Katholizismus und Orthodoxie im Russländischen Reich, 1840–1873]. Vilnius: Lietuvos Istorijos Instituto leidykla, 2010. 274 S. ISBN: 978-9955-847-32-8, http://www.oei-dokumente.de/JGO/Rez/Freeze_Dolbilov_Obratnaja_unija.html (Datum des Seitenbesuchs)

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