Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas

Herausgegeben im Auftrag des Osteuropa-Instituts Regensburg
von Martin Schulze Wessel und Dietmar Neutatz

Band 58 (2010) H. 4, S.  587–588

Thomas Marsden Afanasii Shchapov and the Significance of Religious Dissent in Imperial Russia, 1848–70. ibidem-Verlag Stuttgart 2008. 112 S. ISBN: 978-3-89821-862-7.

In this short but ambitious study, Marsden dis­cusses Afanasii P. Shchapov’s views of the raskol based on a “close inspection of the dis­courses with which Shchapov engaged” (p. 12). Marsden then compares Shchapov’s “different discourses” (pp. 76, 79) with those of other rad­ical thinkers (e.g., Herzen and Ogarev) and offi­cial interpreters (e.g., Mel’nikov). Finally, he delves into the little explored world of mid-nine­teenth-century religious dissent to establish how Shchapov’s interpretations correlated with the self-perceptions and aspirations of ordinary dissenters.

Marden argues that “Shchapov’s thought changed significantly” (p. 95). In his early work Shchapov emphasized dissenters’ resentment of the state and their rebelliousness, an interpreta­tion Marsden assumes derived from official dis­courses branding dissenters as rebels (pp. 33, 36, 40, 48). Following the 1861 Emancipation, Shchapov shifted his focus to the raskol’s “po­lit­ical ideology” (p. 49) and its “democratic” potential for Russia’s oppressed (pp. 52–54). Later he adopted the methods of “scientific eth­nography […] to evaluate the relationship between the people and progress” (p. 13). Com­paring Russian dissenters – especially their levels of education and forms of self-organiza­tion – with their European counterparts among the working class, he became convinced of “the ‘otherness’ of the [Russian] people and their need for guidance” (p. 81).

However, Marsden provides little evidence for his contention that Shchapov’s thinking evolved from “ideals […] which were wide­spread in radical thought” (p. 54) to views held by enlightened government officials after the end of serfdom (pp. 79, 84). An exception is his useful analysis of “Obshchee Veche”, a paper published by Herzen and Ogarev in London. Like Shchapov the London emigrés “saw mil­lenialism as central to the revolutionary import­ance of dissent” (p. 45) and they forged Old Be­liever writings to encourage “dissenters to take up arms” (p. 46).

Marsden asserts that Shchapov and other radicals failed to understand the raskol, in par­ticular “popular religion” (p. 12) and “raskol society” (p. 46). He argues – again without much evidence – that dissenters’ “opposition was purely religious” (p. 95). It is noteworthy that Marsden ignores Shchapov’s own evidence for the participation of raskol’niki in armed up­risings, banditry, and other violent conflicts. He also pays no attention to Shchapov’s pioneering reconstruction of raskol society: its women, merchants, patronage networks, supra-regional networks, ethnic affiliations, and anti-clerical­ism. As a historian of the seventeenth and eight­eenth centuries, was Shchapov’s “failure” per­haps that he projected his findings about the pre-modern raskol onto the nineteenth century? Or was he correct in assuming that dissenters played a leading role in peasant revolts follow­ing the 1861 Emancipation? Marsden fails to explore these crucial questions because he fo­cuses on Shchapov’s “discourses” rather than on the dissenters themselves.

Georg Michels, Riverside, CA

Zitierweise: Georg Michels über: Thomas Marsden Afanasii Shchapov and the Significance of Religious Dissent in Imperial Russia, 1848–70. ibidem-Verlag Stuttgart 2008. ISBN: 978-3-89821-862-7, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. Neue Folge, 58 (2010) H. 4, S. 587–588: http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/JGO/Rez/Michels_Marsden_Afanasii Shchapov.html (Datum des Seitenbesuchs)