Orthodoxy and Russianness

Partly in reaction to Western trends, partly inspired by them,, nineteenth-century Russian Orthodoxy, writes Orlando Figes ( Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia ) retreated into Russianness:

“the Russian church grew introspective and withdrawn, more intolerant of other faiths, and more protective of its national rituals. It became a state and national Church. Culturally the roots of this went deep into the history of Byzantium itself. Unlike the Western Church, Byzantium had no papacy to give it supranational cohesion. It had no lingua franca like Latin – the Russian clergy, for example, being mostly ignorant of Greek – and it was unable to impose a common liturgy or canon law.”

This retreat was not without its benefits. It gave shape, for instance, to the nationalistic Christian imaginations of Gogol and Dostoevsky.