Defending Orthodox Strongholds: Lev Tikhomirov on Issues of Church and State Policy

Lev Aleksandrovich  Tikhomirov, a  revolutionary,  and later a major conservative  notionalist and public figure, had done a lot to defend the interests of Orthodoxy in Russia and to protect it. The article examines  this direction of Tikhomirov’s literary and journalistic heritage in connection with his biography. Unlike most politicians of the  conservative camp,  Tikhomirov started analyzing Russia’s policy in the newly annexed territories  (the  Western Caucasus, Central Asia and the Ussuri Region) with the focus on the religious component of this issue as early as the first years after his return to Russia from emigration. He argued the point that the geopolitical consolidation of the  Russian Empire on the  national outskirts  was impossible without  strengthening its socio-cultural and, first of all, religious influence there.  Later, he concentrated on the fight against  V.S. Solovyov, V.V. Rozanov and especially L.N. Tolstoy’s “religious intellectualizing”, which had strayed  far from true Orthodoxy. The ideas he expressed in these  discussions had laid the  foundation for his theory  of the  monarchical  state-hood. Relying on the historical experience of the country’s development, Tikhomirov noted  In his fundamental  study “Monarchical Statehood” (1905), that  Russia was  a country  with particularly favorable  conditions  for the  formation  of a monarchical form of government. Among the conditions necessary to develop an ideal type of monarchy, Tikhomirov gave the first place to the religious principle. The article also draws  attention to his publicistic work in 1905-1908 and considers the projects he proposed for the transformation  of relations  between the  church and the  state. Here, the period of his work as an editor and publisher of the Moscow Vedomosti newspaper from 1909 to 1913 stands out from the rest. At that time, the newspaper used to pay a great amount  of attention to the analysis of the church policy of the country and to very harsh criticizing of the religious legislation discussed from the rostrum of the State  Duma. After his retirement at the end of 1913, Tikhomirov had settled in Sergiev Posad, where he worked on his historiosophical  work “Religious and  Philosophical Foundations of History”. Tikhomirov finished his earthly journey in 1923 and was buried in Sergiev Posad. At present,  his intellectual legacy concerning the  organization  of the  church and state policy and the  role of the Russian Orthodox  Church in the life of the Russian society is a focus of interest and demand.

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