KARTASHEV, ANTON V

KARTASHEV, ANTON V., Russian lay theologian, historian, educator (1875–1960). In Russia he graduated from Perm Seminary (1894) and St. Petersburg Theological Academy (1899) where his professors included the historian V. V. Bolotov and the Hebraist I. G. Troitsky. He stayed on at the Academy as a docent for Russian Church history, edited the journal Vestnik, and taught at the Advanced Courses for Women. In 1909 he became president of the St. Petersburg Society for Religion and Philosophy. He was forced to resign his Theological Academy position because of differences with the Holy Synod, whereupon he assumed the chair of ecclesiastical history at Bestuzhev Institute and remained there until 1918.

He served as associate to the ober-procurator of the Holy Synod, V. N. Lvov, and succeeded him for ten days. Then on 5 August 1917, he became head of a new department when the duties of the ober-procurator were absorbed by the Ministry of Religious Confessions under the Provisional Government. He used his authority to declare the Holy Synod an autonomous body awaiting a gathering of an All-Rus-sian Sobor to establish an appropriate administrative body. The All-Russian Sobor-which Kartashev had advocated for some time-convened on 16 August 1917 in Moscow and he gave the welcoming address. When the Bolshevik government closed all public Orthodox theological institutions, he joined the private Petrograd Theological Institute.

In January 1919, because of the Bolshevik threat, he left the country to settle in Paris, and became instrumental in the founding of St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute (q.v.) and served as professor there from 1925 until his death. Although by vocation a church historian, he was also a professor of Old Testament at the Institute until that subject was taken over by B. I. Sove around 1930. He was also a principal leader of the Russian Christian Students’ Movement and an active ecumenist. His principal works are Essays on the History of the Russian Church (1959) in two volumes and an important history entitled The Ecumenical Councils (in Russian).