Abstract
Prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, scholars had devoted little attention to the modern history of Russian Orthodoxy and, implicitly, regarded it as of little significance Such neglect dates back to pre-revolutionary historiography, which essentially ignored the Orthodox Church – partly because of the anti-religious bias broadly shared in the intelligentsia, and partly because of the restrictions on access to ecclesiastical archives (then still under tight church control). Even a modicum of scholarly interest vanished after 1917; apart from anti-religious tracts, Soviet historiography on modern Russia ignored the church or at most made derisive passing remarks. Not until the 1970s did Soviet scholars evince interest in modern religious history. To be sure, they were principally concerned with the dissenting Old Believers, but they also took into consideration the church itself. Although that research slowly expanded in the 1980s, even before perestroika, it remained a marginal element when compared with the massive research on other problems. Not that Western scholarship had much reason to boast of greater productivity; rather, it either cloned the research of pre-revolutionary scholars or (in the spirit of the Cold War) battled distortions in Soviet historiography. Only in the last decade has Russian Orthodoxy finally become a major focus of research. If nothing else, that research has posed a challenge to antireligious assumptions and encouraged historians to give more attention to the role of the church and religion – in politics, social relations, and culture.