Abstract
This study upends the conventional view about Konstantin Pobedonostsev’s power over the Russian Orthodox Church and instead emphasizes organizational demography—aging and service structure. Revisionist scholarship has shown that the Church significantly expanded its social mission, but emphasizes the barriers of state tutelage and, especially, the machinations of an all-powerful procurator. This essay suggests an alternative explanation: an over-aged, over-tasked, but under-funded episcopate found it difficult to perform traditional, let alone the massive list of new tasks. Appeals for state support had scant effect; the main exception was the parish school, which the regime encouraged for its own political purposes. Frustration with the state (more inclined to appease confessional foes than to aid the Church) explains why conservative prelates, not just liberal priests, gravitated toward opposition and rebellion during the last decade of the ancien regime.