Paul W. Werth: The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths. Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. XV, 288 S., 8 Abb., 4 Ktn., 10 Tab. = Oxford Studies in Modern European History. ISBN: 978-0-19-959177-0

Paul W. Werth: The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths. Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. XV, 288 S., 8 Abb., 4 Ktn., 10 Tab. = Oxford Studies in Modern European History. ISBN: 978-0-19-959177-0.

Paul Werth is a very rare exception among historians of the Russian Empire. Most of them focus on the imperial center and its interaction with just one of the vast borderlands of the Empire, while Werth in his studies of confessional politics has produced original research on almost all of the regions of the Empire, from the Caucasus to the Baltic provinces, from the Western borderlands to the Volga region. To some extent he followed the logic of his subject, because the Romanov Empire strikes any observer with its religious diversity. By the end of the 19th century non-Orthodox subjects of the Tsars constituted almost one third of the population of the Empire.

Werth’s new book offers a broad and comprehensive overview of religious policy and of confessional institutions which were established by the Empire as mediators between the authorities and religious communities. Nine chapters describe the gradual evolution of the official policy of religious toleration until the implementation of the principle of freedom of conscience in the early 20th century. The five chapters of part 1 provide a review of the religious landscape of the Romanov Empire, discuss the institutional and legal arrangements for the regulation of foreign faiths, the problems of the Orthodox missionary activities, conversion and dissent, the discourse of religious toleration and the mostly unsuccessful attempt at reform of foreign confessions during the period of the so called Great Reforms of the 1860s. The reforms of 1860 had left mostly intact strict disciplining control of the authorities over foreign confessions. However, Werth stresses that Russia had an established tradition of religious toleration, including the dissent within non-Orthodox faiths. Orthodox proselytism was largely limited due to other imperial considerations.

Four chapters of the second part analyze the politicization of religious issues, which happened mostly due to the strong links between confession and nationality. Werth concludes that there were two main imperatives which limited freedom of foreign faiths in the Empire – the prevention of any apostasy from Orthodoxy and the prevention of any political involvement of the clergy. The second ‘sin’ was usually linked to involvement of the clergy in national movements. The most important case being the support of the uprising of 1863 by Catholic priests in the Western Borderlands.

Werth generally argues that the focus on nationality policy, which is so characteristic of the imperial studies, should be supplemented and balanced with the research of religious diversity and confessional policy. These factors were more important than nationality in the 18th century, and continued to be important up to the very end of the Empire. Werth, indeed, aims not at replacing the nationality issue with confessional policy, but at balancing these factors and showing how they were entangled in the 19th century. This puts chapter 6 Depoliticizing Piety, Russifying Faith in the very centre of the Author’s argument. Werth states that it was in the 1860’s that nationality became more important in the minds of imperial rulers than confession and started to be perceived as a category which reflects reality more deeply than religion. And, he continues, nationality at that time became intensely politicized, and religious issues were increasingly interpreted through that prism of politicized nationality. Here one would like to see more deliberation of the process and chronology of change, with Pestel and Uvarov, on the one hand, who treated nationality as the dominant factor vis-à-vis religion already in the 1820–1830s, and, with Leontiev and Rachinskii on the other hand, who refused to subjugate religion to nationality well into the 1870s.

Werth also looks at the establishment of the concept of freedom of conscience as a legislative program in the early 20th century, and the causes of a less accommodative policy since 1910. He shows convincingly that the establishment of freedom of conscience and the further implementation of this principle was not only a result of the revolutionary pressure in 1905–1906, but was also deeply rooted in ideological convictions of an important part of the imperial establishment.

It must have been a really painful task for Werth with all his immense knowledge of the subject to cut the text to a format of below 300 pages. He did it incredibly well, but still it came at a price. The book is almost sterile of any anecdotes and juicy details. Laic public might find it difficult to follow such a ‘condensed’ text. Still, beyond any doubt, this is a remarkable book, which makes an important conceptual contribution to the study of confessional policy in the Romanov Empire, and, on the other hand, provides the best point of entry into this thematic field for university students.

Alexei Miller, Saint Petersburg/Budapest