Martyrdom as a Renunciation of Personal Ascetic Feat: G. P. Fedotov in the Debate on the Church Policy of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky)

Abstract

This article attempts to reconstruct the evolution of G. P. Fedotov’s views on the phenomenon of martyrdom within the context of the 1928–1931 debates in the émigré press concerning the assessment of the church policies of Patriarch Ti­khon (Bellavin) and Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky). It examines the polemic between G. P. Fedotov and his main opponents — I. A. Lagovsky and M. A. Kallash (M. Kurdiumov) — in the journals Put’ (The Way) and Vestnik RSKhD (Journal of the Russian Student Christian Movement) in 1930–1931, which raised questions about the possibility of different interpretations of martyrdom in light of the demands of the contemporary historical situation in Soviet Russia. The article analyses Fedotov’s views, which sought to juxtapose the modern situation both with the experience of the persecuted Early Church and with the position of the Russian Church during the Mongol-Tatar yoke, a period that required cooperation with a non-Ortho­dox authority for the sake of preserving the church institution.

The arguments put forth by the defenders of Metropolitan Sergius’s ecclesiastical line are shown to involve attempts to describe “quiet martyrdom” as an alternative to open witness, implying a renunciation of personal ascetic feat for the Church’s benefit. The historical context of M. A. Kallash’s publications is considered. Her position, expressed in 1931 in the article “On Christian Maximalism” regarding the actions of Metropolitan Sergius, is compared with her earlier attempts, articulated in the 1928 publication “The Feat of St. Sergius of Radonezh and the Case of Metropolitan Sergius”, to find analogies for the current situation in church history. The continuity between M. A. Kallash’s stance and the views expressed in N. A. Berdyaev’s 1927 article “The Cry of the Russian Church” is also traced. The connection of the theses advanced by I. A. Lagovsky and M. A. Kallash to the ideas of contrasting Christian ascetics and the intelligentsia from S. N. Bulgakov’s pre-revolutionary 1909 article “Heroism and Ascetic Feat” is noted.

In opposition to this position, the article examines G. P. Fedotov’s endeavour to establish a criterion for distinguishing a “middle path” of saving the Church (through compromise with a state authority hostile to the Church) from a compromise that constitutes a betrayal of the martyrs. It also offers a characterization of Fedotov’s key theses articulated within this polemic: the impossibility of extending the definition of “martyrs” to the clergy of Soviet Russia on the basis of a class criterion, and the indication of the danger of the Church losing its symbolic thinking, manifested in the readiness to justify apostasy from the faith.