Stanford University

Graduate Student, History

Thesis Title: Providential Empire: Russia's Religious Intelligentsia and the First World War

About

Contact: cstroop@gmail.com

Significance of Research:

          My research engages the intersections of traditionalist Christianity, politics and society in the early twentieth century. It focuses on the emergence of this kind of Christianity and its propagation by public intellectuals as a response to the perceived cultural and civilizational threat of nihilism. In taking seriously and unpacking the ideational content of this traditionalist Christianity, particularly in exploring the "politics of Providentialism," my research shows why the phenomenon is is (at least latently) inherently ideological (which does not make it in any way less genuinely religious).
          The broadest importance of my research lies in highlighting the social significance of this phenomenon in comparative perspective, and in uncovering some of the social and intellectual origins of our current post-secular moment. In addition, it elucidates the ways in which religion can inform, shape, and be shaped by nationalism without being reducible to it. My work contributes to flourishing scholarship on the politics of Orthodox Christianity in late imperial Russia, to emerging scholarship on Russia and World War I, and to the study of politicized traditionalist Christianity in modern European history. It makes original contributions to the study of modern Christianity, media, and nationalism, and also brings the concept of Providence into intellectual history.



Dissertation 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 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 history and notes how the broad mentality of Russian religious philosophers was not exclusively Russian, but was a socially significant twentieth-century phenomenon.