Scholarship on Russian Orthodox monasticism is far less developed than that of Christian monasticism in Western Europe. The collapse of communism, however, has led to a revival of interest in its history. This chapter surveys the history of monasticism in Russia until the Revolution of 1917, together with the historiography of distinct periods in that history. One period that has received particular attention is the golden age of Russian monasticism in the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, from the revival initiated by St Sergius of Radonezh to the great monastic leaders, Nil Sorskii and Joseph Volotskii. Another current interest is the revival of monasticism in the nineteenth century, when forces of modernity such as greater social mobility, modern transport, and the rise of literacy fuelled stories of living spiritual elders and the miraculous workings of saints’ relics, bringing both pilgrims and recruits in great numbers to Russian monasteries.
The revolution of 1917 ended a dynamic period of monastic growth in Russia and brought to power a government that was militantly anti-religious. It eliminated all monasteries in the first decade after the revolution, and it persecuted monastics in the 1930s. A limited number of monasteries were tolerated after the Second World War until the end of the Soviet period. Since the collapse of communism, however, Russian monasticism has experienced a significant revival. In Romania, monasticism has always been central to Orthodoxy. Because Romania became communist after the Second World War, the persecution of monasticism was less severe there than in the Soviet Union, and there was greater continuity with the pre-communist past. Monasticism continues to enjoy a significant presence in contemporary Romania. Historians have only just begun to study the fate of monasticism under communism, and sociologists and ethnographers are engaging in promising studies of contemporary monastic life in Russia and Romania.
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