Russian Orthodoxy and Autobiographies in the Early Modern Period from a Mediterranean Perspective

Abstract

[Rev. of: Faith and Selfhood in a Changing Society: Autobiography and Orthodoxy in Russia from the End of the Seventeenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, ed. Laurie Manchester and Denis A. Sdvizhkov. Moscow: NLO, 2019. 408 pp. (in Russian)] The collection of papers “Faith and Selfhood in a Changing Society: Autobiography and Orthodoxy in Russia from the End of the Seventeenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century” served as a stimulus for reflection on Orthodoxy in Russia and autobiographies as a literary genre at the beginning of the early Modern Age from a Mediterranean point of view. Studying the contributions of fifteen prominent scholars from Russia, Poland, Germany, Canada and the United States on various aspects of the immensely rich Russian spiritual heritage from the mid-17th until the first half of the 20th centuries, the author recognizes their fundamental connection in a sincere interest in the gradual modernization of the Russian society, deeply rooted in the Russian Orthodox faith, as well as in the gradual development of individualism, both in its institutional and non-institutional forms: within the framework of the Russian imperial state and official patriarchal church institutions, but also on the periphery of political movements and religious sects. Despite the relatively narrow area of research devoted to various forms of autobiographies (written mainly by the clergy, less often by the members of secular aristocratic and bourgeois circles), this collection of papers represents not only a carefully written and reliable way to understand one of the fundamental aspects of the Russian spiritual culture, but it also invites for comparison with other similar environments. This prompted the author of the review to make a journey through the parallel literary world of the Republic of Dubrovnik (as the only independent Slavic state in that period, with the exception of the Russian Empire) from the 16th to the 19th centuries, with the conclusion that the predominance of biographies to the detriment of autobiographies in Dubrovnik at that time also speaks of strong pragmatism and aspiration to take care exclusively of the state interests in the literary sphere.