Providential Empire: Russia's Religious Intelligentsia And

PROVIDENTIAL EMPIRE: RUSSIA’S RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENTSIA AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HISTORY AND HUMANITIES Christopher A. Stroop May 2012 © 2012 by Christopher Alan Stroop. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/fm654bm2833 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Robert Crews, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Gregory Freidin I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Nancy Kollmann Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii Abstract “Providential Empire: Russia’s Religious Intelligentsia and the First World War” analyzes and contextualizes controversial commentary on the First World War by Russian religious philosophers, primarily Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdiaev, Vladimir Frantsevich Ern, Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov, Prince Evgenii Nikolaevich Trubetskoi, and the Symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov. Examining the prominence of the concept of Providence in their thought, the dissertation shows how Christian Providentialism can become the basis of an ideological worldview. Belief in the ability of the human mind to perceive the hand of God in history and unfolding events, along with belief in the need to interpret this ostensible evidence of the hand of God as callings to which individual believers or collective actors, such as nations, are meant to respond, leads to the emergence of a “politics of Providentialism.” While expressed in a specifically Russian idiom and shaped by a specifically Russian context, the religious intelligentsia's politics of Providentialism was not unique to Russia, and was derived naturally from a traditionalist Christianity that arose in late modern Europe to stand against the perceived cultural threat of nihilism. This politics of Providentialism was one of the defining characteristics of the late imperial Russian religious intelligentsia, and, a socially significant phenomenon, it had a substantial presence in late imperial Russian civil society. This dissertation highlights this social significance by situating Russian religious philosophy in its institutional context. It also demonstrates that the politics of Providentialism that informed Russian religious-philosophical war commentary was integral, rather than tangential, to Russian religious thought. Because the Russian religious-philosophical iv project was deeply shaped by Christian Providentialism, it could not but be socially engaged. In other words, Russian religious philosophers’ mentality demanded social action, while their ideological journalism was derived from their mentality. They naturally attempted to use previously existing institutions, and also newly founded institutions, to propagate their Providentialist worldview, the widespread acceptance of which they considered necessary for Russia’s healthy future development. In the years between 1905 and 1914, the religious intelligentsia gradually came, through Providentialist reasoning, to espouse an ever more explicit Russian national messianism. It was natural for its members to map this messianism onto the Great War once it broke out. For them, the clash between Russia and Germany was literally a clash between Christianity and godlessness. World War I represented divine punishment on modern civilization for its godlessness, and they understood Russia’s calling in the war as a calling not only to defeat Germany, but in the process also to revive the Christian roots of European civilization. A Russian and Entente victory, they believed, would usher in spiritual transformation and a new, more harmonious era in which Russia would play a leading role in the European community of nations and in spreading Christian civilization through imperialism. “Providential Empire: Russia’s Religious Intelligentsia and the First World War” explores in detail the formation of the intellectually sophisticated worldview that underlay these controversial positions , and then proceeds to trace the contours of the commentary in which the views were espoused across the course of Russia’s participation in the war. In the process, it highlights the significance of religious public intellectuals in modern v history and notes how the broad mentality of Russian religious philosophers was not exclusively Russian, but was a socially significant twentieth-century phenomenon. vi Acknowledgments It is axiomatic and cliché, but nevertheless true, to observe that the production of a dissertation is a long-term process to which numerous individuals and institutions besides the author contribute, without which the author may well not have produced a dissertation at all, or would, perhaps, have produced an entirely different one. Moreover, the production of a dissertation is a process intimately bound up with the process of becoming a scholar. I mean the word “becoming” here in an essentially Hegelian sense, something I’m sure my friends and colleagues Arie M. Dubnov, Shimshon Ayzenberg, and James Redfield—fellow travelers in heady, usually bi- weekly excursions into Hegel’s corpus, organized by Shimshon, this spring quarter, 2012—will appreciate. Researching, writing, re-writing, and organizing the dissertation represents just one stage in this process, which begins well before the dissertation is conceived and indeed well before graduate school, or even college. To acknowledge everyone who contributed to this becoming will prove impossible, but I still wish to recall the longer-term processes that can be seen, in retrospect, to have constituted the process that led to me becoming the scholar who has produced this dissertation, in addition to crediting those who have aided me in the narrower process of working on the dissertation itself. I must begin by acknowledging the privilege of a warm and loving childhood in which my parents, David Stroop and Teresa Stroop, encouraged me in the intellectual pursuits for which I showed aptitude from an early age. I did not lack books. In fact, my mother occasionally had to tell me, “Take your nose out of your book and be sociable,” and this gentle rebuke was, in a way, another kind of vii education. My maternal grandmother, Mona Walker, provided me with many books and magazine subscriptions, and my late maternal grandfather, Dorsal Walker, modeled an excellent work ethic. My late paternal grandfather, Walter “Bud” Stroop, impressed upon me the importance of reading the classics, while my late paternal grandmother, Nancy Stroop, always encouraged me to follow my dreams. While all of my relatives were supportive, I must also single out Joe Shea, Mary Jo Shea, Thomas Buchanan, and Kevin Wedmore for modeling how one can take pleasure in intellectual and political discussion and debate. From early childhood, Joe, Mary Jo and Tom encouraged my pursuit of knowledge, and, while at the time I often thought I would follow in Joe’s footsteps and study the natural sciences, somehow I ended up following in Tom’s in becoming a historian. Looking back to high school, I must thank Judy Birkel for inspiring a love of foreign languages and foreign travel; Dorothy Easterly, Theresa Board, Ruth Hubbard and David Head for inspiration and valuable training in writing, editing, and public speaking; and Thomas Wright for sparking an interest in Russia in a way that, looking back, seems strangely contingent and accidental. In my childhood, I also observed at close hand the intersections between Christianity and politics in the United States, something I eventually sought to understand historically and sociologically, as I tried to situate my experience. Without that background, I most likely would not have developed the research interests I did, and this experience has certainly shaped my interest in and perspective on Russian religious thought. My critical engagement with politicized Christianity and fundamentalism accelerated during my undergraduate days, during which I was viii supported by the Whitinger Scholars Program at Ball State University. Through classes, conversations, advising, teaching assistantships and an undergraduate research fellowship, I benefitted from the mentorship of Daniel Goffman, Christine Shea, James Ruebel, Joanne Edmonds, Adrienne Jones, Jim Jones, Kevin Smith, Carolyn Malone, Ronald Warner, Anthony Edmonds, and others involved with the Honors College, the Department of Modern Languages and Classics, and the History Department. Dan, Ron and Tony became especially trusted friends and mentors, something for which I will always be grateful, and, for

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