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    Holy Fathers, Secular Sons
    Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia

    Laurie Manchester (Author)

    9780875806655

    Paperback / softback, published 3 January 2008

    302 pages
    22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.907 kg

    Well written, argued, and footnoted, and deserve[s] a place in the canon of primary studies of Russian history.

    (Choice)

    This wide-ranging, original volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the role that Russian Orthodoxy, through priests' offspring, played in that country's social and cultural history. It is a model of definitive, exhaustive archival research.

    (Brandeis University)

    The author's scholarly apparatus, her extensively documented sources material, and her cultural and sociological analysis offer a coherent and convincing picture of a previously unstudied social class... Her study of the popovichi's contribution to the Russian intelligentsia, Russia's revolutionary path, and national identity forges a crucial missing link in Russian culture's evolutionary chain.

    (Slavic and East European Journal)

    Manchester has made a major contribution to the historiography not only of Russia, but of European modernity. Manchester's work supplements and corrects the works of earlier cultural historians, such as Reinhard Bendix and Liah Greenfeld, who have tried to discern religion's role in the rise of modernity.

    (Church History)

    Holy Fathers, Secular Sons is the first study of the Orthodox clergy's contribution to Russian society. Prior to the 1860s, clergymen's sons were not allowed to leave the castelike clergy in large numbers. When permission was granted, they responded by entering free professions and political movements in droves. Challenging the standard view of educated pre-revolutionary Russians as largely westernized, secular, and patriarchal, Laurie Manchester demonstrates that the clergymen's sons did retain their fathers' values. This was true even of the minority who became atheists. Drawing on the clergy's commitment to moral activism, anti-aristocratism, and nationalism, clergymen's sons believed they could, and should, save Russia. The consequence was a cultural revolution that helped pave the way for the 1917 revolutions.

    Using a massive array of previously untapped archival and published sources—including lively first-hand autobiographical writings of over two hundred clergymen's sons—Manchester constructs a composite biography of their childhoods, educations, and adult lives. In a highly original approach, she explores how they employed the image of the clerical family to structure their political, professional, and personal lives. Manchester's work provides a window into an extremely significant but little-known world of Russian educated culture while contributing to histories of lived religion, private life, and memory, as well as to debates over secularization, modernity, and revolution. Holy Fathers, Secular Sons powerfully challenges the assumptions that radical change cannot be inspired by tradition and that the modern age is inherently secular.

    Table of Contents
    List of Illustrations and Tables
    Preface
    Introduction
    Chapter 1: The Backdrop: Clerical Life and Representations of Popovichi
    Chapter 2: Popovichi and Their Fathers Judge Other Social Estates
    Chapter 3: Prescriptive Norms for the Sacred Estate
    Chapter 4: Clerical Childhood as Heaven on Earth
    Chapter 5: Martyrdom, Moral Superiority, and a Bursa Education
    Chapter 6: Holy Exodus: Leaving the Clergy to Impose Clerical Traditions
    Chapter 7: The Search for Secular Salvation
    Conclusion
    Glossary
    Data on Identifiable PopovichiÆs Personal Texts
    Notes
    Works Cited
    Index
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