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The paper focuses on the analysis of the creative work and the reconstruction of the biography of the Ural Old Believer writer Vladimir Georgievich Tokmenin (born in 1932, died after 2003). He worked under pen name of Irodion Ural'skii. The main work of Irodion is an interpretation of the Apocalypse according to the comments by Andreas of Caesarea. The writer made many efforts to 'alert' humankind about the plots of the devil. He spread his works in the form of manuscripts spread among the Old Believers of Russia. Some of them are kept in the Depository of the Laboratory for Archaeographic Studies of the Ural Federal University (Ekaterinburg, Russia). The most complete reflection of Irodion's views is in the book he gave the Laboratory in 2001. Appearance and spreading of communist and socialist ideas were signs of the strengthening of the Antichrist's power for Irodion. The main point of his theory is an explanation of Chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation by John the Apostle, where the latter writes about a 7-headed and 10-horned beast appearing from the water. Irodion considered that the beast was the Soviet power, its horns were the leaders of the communist party and government. Irodion interpreted the Antichrist as an evil divided into parts. Patriarch Nikon was the first Antichrist and the last one was Gorbachev. The most detailed description of political figures considered as heads of the beast was made for the following persons: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Gorbachev. Irodion believed that Russia was the only preserver of the true faith. So he thought that events in Russia connected with deviation from the true faith initiated the end of the world. Irodion saw signs of the forthcoming end of the world in many realities of the present. Great influence on the formation of the views of the writer had the works by the English poet of the 17th century J. Milton, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Most part of the Old Believers' history passed under the sign of persecutions, including the period of the formation of Soviet power in Russia. The Old Believers, mostly quite wealthy people, were declared kulaki, their property' was confiscated, many of them were imprisoned or exiled. The author of the paper believes that this circumstance connected with large Soviet atheistic propaganda became the reason for the creation of such an essays as the Explanatory Apocalypse by Irodion Uralskii, where traditional Medieval forms of self-expression were used for speaking about the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Germany is one of the most secularized regions in the world. The paper argues that this development was the result of not only a political conflict, fought with repression and pure power, but also an ideological conflict. The institutional conflicts between churches and the state were intertwined with ideological conflicts, above all the devaluation of religion by scientistic arguments. Since the second half of the 19th century numerous organisations engaged in the promotion of science as an explicit counterpart to traditional religion. During the existence of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), thismovement took off in the country's institutions.The article outlines this development by focussing on the Urania. Founded in 1888 to provide scientific knowledge without an anti-religious agenda, in 1954 the Urania was resurrected in the GDR to propagate the “ScientificWorld-View." The Urania tried to combine popular scientific themes (astronomy, aerospace) with a particular interpretation referring to theWissenschaftlicheWeltanschauung. The article analyses the program and work of the Urania until the end of the GDR. Finally it presents research results to show how this promotion of scientism contributed to the East German secularization process on an individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first decade of the 20th century Russians enjoyed a predominant position on Mount Athos. There were more Russian monks than Greek, their monastic establishments had turned into flourishing economic enterprises, flooded with pilgrims, the mainstay of the venture. The intention of this paper is to study the origin and the social, cultural and political bases of this apparent success, to trace influences of governmental and ecclesiastic bureaucracies, and to find out, if there were attempts at transforming this position of soft power into a firm stronghold of imperial politics. The infrastructure organised for providing transport, shelter and food, as well as the pilgrims' temporal and spiritual experiences were points of equal interest. Besides the rich scholarly literature, the main sources used for this study were published correspondences, diaries and memoirs, materials from contemporary periodicals, and especially the travellers' and pilgrims' reports. After Russia's defeat in the Crimean War Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich had conceived the encouragement of pilgrimage to Mount Athos as part of a wider scheme for regaining lost imperial positions in the Christian East. Yet open hostility of the Greek, and more covert opposition of the Russian monks caused the failure of a program, fairly successful in Palestine, on Mount Athos. Instead, the Russian monks could develop a network of their own, satisfying the pilgrims' temporal and spiritual needs right from their starting points in Russia up to the "Celestial Queen's terrestrial appanage". According to the regulations of Mount Athos all these services were provided free of charge. With donations of the pious from all layers of Russian society, however, the "Russian Athos" turned out a to be tremendous economic success, independent of government subsidies and influences. Governmental offices and ecclesiastic hierarchy with few exceptions kept a distrustful distance from this achievement of Russian civil society, which Greek jealousy nicknamed "peasants' empire". Far from making use of this cultural asset in the Eastern Mediterranean, the bureaucracy of the established church, helped by official diplomacy, initiated the collapse of the "Russian Athos" even before World War I, and the Bolshevik seizure of power broke its lifeline connecting it with Russian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with Russian Orthodoxy in the Baltic Provinces of the Russian empire, a topic rarely addressed in scholarly literature that usually focuses on Lutheran Estonians and Latvians whereas their orthodox compatriots are neglected. However, the scope of this text is limited since it concentrates on the question if orthodoxy actually brought Estonians and Latvians closer to Russia. In other words, did Orthodoxy play the role ascribed to it in Russian nationalist discourse, namely did it “russify” the Baltic provinces? After a short discussion of the emergence of Orthodoxy as a religious factor in the region during the mass conversions of Estonians and Latvians in the 1840s, the article provides some basic information about the orthodox population of the Baltic Provinces. Then it goes on to introduce the Riga Theological Seminary established in 1850 as a school for the local orthodox clergy initially meant for Russians, but also for Estonians and Latvians. However, according to an anonymous brochure supposedly written by an orthodox Latvian in 1882, there were many conflicts on ethnic grounds among the orthodox elites in the Baltic provinces. This brochure namely defended the impact of Estonians and Latvians on the Riga Seminary against accusations of their Russian brothers in faith who blamed all problems of Orthodoxy in the Baltic provinces solely on the non-Russian clergy. Although we still do not know enough about the history of this institution, it is indicative of the self-awareness of the seminarists of local origin that the anonymous author uses one of the key-terms of the Russian “language of assimilation” (Austin Jersild), “sblizhenie” (“confluence”), in a quite unusual way since in his usage, priests of Russian origin in the Baltic borderland had to adapt oneself to local circumstances. Thus even people who supposedly were chosen by the Russian imperial elites as proponents of Russia’s mission in the non-Russian peripheries, already prior to Alexander’s III centralising reforms in the Baltic provinces decidedly protested against any attempts to simply impose Russian customs and traditions on the local environment. When in 1908 a congress of the Riga eparchy seriously debated the introduction of Lutheran patterns of choir singing in orthodox services in order to make the latter more attractive to the local population, it thus admitted quite pragmatically that the orthodox objective in the Baltic provinces should only be to save and to care for what had already been achieved. As the conclusion shows, however, still on the eve of the First World War in orthodox discourse a “natural” form of Russification of Estonians and Latvians remained the ultimate goal of the imperial orthodox idea. As this paper argues, this vision considerably underestimated the level of self-awareness reached by Estonians and Latvians already by the 1880s.

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The article discusses a 14-point position paper on the separation of church and state entitled "A Free Church in a Free State," produced by the Church Commission of Germany's Federal Democratic Party (FDP). The so-called "Church Paper" calls for strictly state rather than clerical responsibility for education, health care, and social assistance. The paper also seeks the cessation of the German state's role as a collector of churches' tithing taxes.

Copyright of Historische Zeitschrift is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Author-supplied Abstracts.)

Copyright of Historische Zeitschrift is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article examines the dispute between Jewish rabbis and representatives of the Protestant church in 19th century Bavaria, Germany, over the robes and other vestments worn by the rabbis. It recounts how the rabbinical robes resembled those worn by Protest clergy of the officially sanctioned state church, which led to a court case taking place in Bayreuth, Germany in 1886. The persons, locations, and institutions involved are examined from Bavarian state and church archives.