Parties, Personalities, and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.
The consistory was main diocesan administrative and judicial organ in the Russian Orthodox Church from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth. The 1721 Spiritual Regulation of Peter I marked a new period in the history of the administrative life of the Orthodox Church. Although the Regulation did not refer specifically to a consistory, nineteenth-century Russian church historians cited Clause 5 in the section pertaining to bishops as pointing to the eventual consistory. Diocesan administration changed only gradually in the eighteenth century. In many ways it came to mirror the provincial government administration, as well as the collegial organization of the church’s higher administrative body, the Holy Synod. Although the consistory can be seen as part of the modern institutional church, nineteenth-century churchmen often associated it with an ancient form of church government (a council of presbyters) described in the writings of such early Christians as Ignatius of Antioch, Cyprian of Carthage and Ambrose of Milan.
During the early decades of the eighteenth century, diocesan boards were referred to by various names. A 1744 directive called for a uniform name-“consistory”-for all such diocesan boards. An 1832 directive reiterated this directive for the Kiev, Chernigov, and Kishinev dioceses. The responsibilities and rules governing the consistory were finally standardized in 1841. This statute was revised in 1883 and remained in effect until 1918.
Consistories were organized into two parts: a collegial board (usually three to five members;
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more if local circumstances demanded) and a chancery office. The management of the consistory’s day-to- day business fell to a chancery office staffed by lay clerks and overseen by a secretary. At first, members of the consistory’s board were drawn mostly from the monastic clergy. By 1768, that trend was reversed, and a 1797 directive instructed that at least half of the consistory’s members be chosen from among married parish priests. Deacons were not eligible to serve on consistory boards. In theory, the bishop presided over the consistory, and no decision could be put forward without his ratification. In practice, however, the issue of authority was not always so clear. For instance, the diocesan bishop nominated members for the board, but the Holy Synod confirmed them. Similarly, while responsible to the bishop, the secretary was nominated by the ober-procurator and confirmed by members of the Holy Synod.
The consistory oversaw a wide range of affairs. These included the growth and preservation of the Orthodox faith (and the teaching and preaching that helped to achieve these ends); liturgical schedules; the maintenance and decoration of churches; the recommendation of candidates for clerical positions; the dissemination of episcopal and synodal directives; and the collection of records from parishes. As an ecclesiastical court, the consistory was concerned with certain issues relating to marriage and divorce; birth, baptismal and death records; crimes and misdemeanors involving clergy; complaints against clergy for negligence in their liturgical or pastoral responsibilities; and disputes among clergy over the use of church property. Although the consistory’s judicial concerns lay primarily with clergy, laity became involved when the issue of penance (epitemiya) arose.
The chancery processed numerous requests, petitions, and reports by dividing them among various “tables.” Members of the consistory’s board were assigned to oversee these tables but, in practice, preparing a case for presentation and resolution depended largely on lay clerks. Once cases were ready for review, members of the board, at least in theory, were supposed to review and decide on them collectively. The secretary oversaw the decision-making process and helped to resolve cases that members could not decide unanimously. The diocesan bishop was to review and ratify all decisions.
The consistory became a subject of debate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Churchmen often complained that the consistory’s formalism and lack of efficiency caused ill relations between parish clergy and laity on the one hand and the diocesan administration on the other. Churchmen were also concerned about the bureaucratic quality with which serious issues of Christian life were often decided, with seemingly no attention to scripture or canon law. Low pay for consistory employees did not help matters, and complaints of bribes were not uncommon. Evaluations of the consistory were determined in large part by the evaluator’s perspective and understanding of episcopal authority, the relationship between the central, diocesan, and even more regional church administrations, and the involvement of laity in the management of diocesan affairs. Most churchmen maintained that the consistory’s judicial and administrative functions should be separated and independently overseen, as they had been in the civil sphere since 1864. In 1918, the All-Russian Church Council carried out sweeping church administrative reforms, and the consistory ceased to exist. In its place, the Council established a separate local diocesan court, a diocesan council and a diocesan assembly. See also: RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cunningham, James W. (1981). A Vanquished Hope: The Movement for Church Renewal in Russia, 1905- 1906. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Freeze, Gregory L. (1977). The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Freeze, Gregory L. (1983). The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Muller, Alexander V., ed. and tr. (1972). The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
The All-Russian Constituent Assembly, which opened and closed on January 5, 1918, was elected to draft a constitution for the new Russian state. Prior to 1917, most oppositionist parties agreed that a democratically elected assembly should determine Russia’s political future. Just after the February Revolution, State Duma and Petrograd Soviet
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leaders who created the Provisional Government specifically tasked it with prompt elections to the Constituent Assembly. During 1917, virtually all political parties indicated their intention to participate in them and to abide by the results. Still, moderate Provisional Government ministers, fearing the results of democratic elections and preoccupied with the war, postponed the elections, undercutting the government’s legitimacy and precipitating a shift of support to radicals. By the early fall of 1917, Bolshevik, Left Socialist Revolutionary (Left SR), and other supporters of “soviet power” and an “all-socialist government” proclaimed that only the Provisional Government’s overthrow would bring about the Constituent Assembly, still viewed as final arbiter of Russia’s fate.
The elections, with over 60 percent voter participation, occurred on November 12, 1917, after the overthrow of the Provisional Government, seemingly fulfilling the radicals’ predictions. The elections awarded the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) a huge vote from the empire’s peasants. The Bolsheviks did well among urban laboring populations and soldiers at the fronts, whereas the liberal Constitutional Democrats received support from educated and prosperous middle classes. Far rightist parties did poorly, as did the formerly popular Mensheviks. Overall, the SRs and their Ukrainian, Armenian, and other ethnic allies received more than 50 percent of the votes cast, as opposed to the Bolsheviks’ 25 percent. In response, the Bolsheviks and Left SRs alleged that the SR Central Committee had undercut Left SR representation by placing moderate SRs on party candidate lists.
The Constituent Assembly, with its effective SR majority, met on January 5 in Petrograd and elected the SR leader Victor Chernov as chair. After lengthy deliberations and the withdrawal of the Bolshevik and Left SR factions, the Leninist government declared the session closed and placed guards around the locked building. Thus inglori- ously ended Russia’s most democratic electoral experiment until the 1990s. Presumably, the assembly would have written a constitution in a socialist and democratic spirit. Although some Petrograd workers demonstrated in support of the Constitutional Assembly (and were dispersed by deadly fire), the nation’s population responded weakly. This passive reaction reflected in part a common misunderstanding of the assembly as a government in competition with the still popular Soviet government. Many SR delegates withdrew to the Volga region, where, by the late summer of 1918, they formed a government in Samara, which they hoped would be based upon a quorum
