Changing Attitudes to Monasteries in the Peasant Communities of the Arkhangelsk Province in the Early 20th Century

Abstract

The decay of the patriarchal rural life, which intensified at the turn of the 19th century, caused a transformation in religious beliefs among the peasantry. The establishment of Soviet rule accelerated the changes in the position of the Orthodox clergy, parishes and monasteries. The author examines the reasons behind this process, which was affected by the economic, political and intra-church transformations in the life of Russian society. Further, the consequences of changes in the religious sentiments of peasants are explored, such as the decline in the clergy’s authority, separation of church life from everyday life of the peasant community, and secularization of peasant consciousness, which facilitated the claims of local residents for monastic property. Cases of plundering by local dwellers in 1917–1918 are studied using the examples of the following men’s monasteries: Onega Cross Monastery, Archangel Michael Monastery, Kozheozersk Monastery, Krasnogorsk Monastery, and Pechenga Monastery, as well as women’s Kholmogory Monastery. The peasants tried to justify their actions by saying that they had the right to take away land and property from the monasteries according to the decree “On the Separation of Church from State and School from Church”. The author comes to the conclusion that cases of disorderly conduct towards northern monasteries were recorded long before the revolutionary events of 1917. In the early 20th century, some monasteries turned to the police or volost authorities for protection. All Arkhangelsk monasteries were closed after the end of the allied intervention and the ouster of the White Guard. Subsequently, monastic lands were taken over by agricultural communes and artels consisting of local residents and controlled by the Soviet government, while the monastics were dismissed. This article broadens our understanding of the reasons behind the changes in the peasants’ religious worldview and highlights the most striking facts of interaction between northern monasteries and local peasants during the period under study. The results can fill the existing regional information gaps in the history of interactions between northern monasteries and the local population in the early 20th century and help to understand the building up of relationships between the reviving northern monasteries and the local population today.