Aft er a century of near silence on religious issues in Muscovite history, a new surge of interest in matters spiritual and cultural has launched a renaissance of scholarship on the subject. Current debates about Muscovite religion and spirituality are located primarily in two clusters, the first concerning the nature of Russian Orthodox theology, a more or less elite affair, and the second concerning popular religion and spirituality. Contesting within the first cluster are strongly divergent opinions about the nature of Orthodoxy's fundamental precepts. This debate focuses in large part on Orthodoxy's eschatological vision. One group of scholars describes the Orthodox eschatological outlook as "tragic extremism," imbued with a "grim and desperate" historical consciousness, reinforced by anticipation of "the horrors of apocalypse should [Muscovy] fail in her mission." 1 At the other extreme, a more positive reading characterizes Orthodoxy as a religion of beauty and optimism, resting on a triumphal eschatology in which a pious tsar leads a devout flock of believers confidently through the Last Days, to imminent and guaranteed glory and salvation. This latter stance is gaining acceptance as research demonstrates the centrality of an optimistic eschatology in official court rhetoric and imagery. 2 Associated I would like to thank the many people who have helped and criticized this article:
Comparative analyses traditionally have done Russian history no favors. Invidious comparisons have situated Russia firmly in a context of backwardness relative to the West. The term ‘medieval’ customarily applies to Russia until the era of Peter the Great, that is, until the early eighteenth century, and even the least condemnatory scholars point out similarities between Muscovite Russia of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries and early medieval tribal formations of northern Europe. Along with ‘backwardness,’ comparative history has customarily found in Russia an example of extraordinarily oppressive autocratic despotism, while at the same time, and omewhat contradictorily, decrying the incompetence and rampant corruption of the central state apparatus. These and other unflattering comparative generalizations arose in the observations of Western travellers who recorded their impressions of Russia in the early modern period and have continued in the writings of scholars and journalists to this day.
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