Kazakhstan, Orthodoxy in

SERGEY TROSTYANSKIY

Having been a subject of missionary activities from as early as the 4th century, Central Asia has a long history of Christianity. The terri­tories of Turkestan (a region of Central Asia inhabited by Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and others) lay at the very heart of the Great Silk Road, the network of trade routes connecting Asia with the Mediterranean world. Starting from the 4th century the Silk Road channeled the missionary activities of the Syrian Christians (largely Nestorians, or Chaldaeans) who first introduced Christianity to these ter­ritories. From the 4th until the 6th centuries, therefore, it may be assumed that the popula­tion of Central Asia in general and of Kazakhstan in particular knew a Christian presence. This situation changed dramatically in the 6th century as Sufi Muslim missionaries started to make inroads there and established Islam as a dominant religious tradition.

Another more recent turning point in the religious history of Kazakhstan grew out of the external threats posed by the nomadic tribes of Kalmykia in the 18th century. The Kazakhs at that time asked for protection from the Russian government and received it. As a result, by the mid-19th century Kazakhstan was completely integrated into the Russian Empire. Many Russians came to Kazakhstan attracted by the new opportunities. Moreover, Russian military settlements were established all across Turkestan. Among the new settlers the vast majority were Orthodox, and brought with them a desire to establish churches and schools. In addition, the Orthodox Missionary Society, established in 1870, was active in Kazakhstan from the second half of the 19th century onwards. Russian missionaries converted many Kazakhs to Orthodoxy. Even­tually, in 1871, the Turkestan eparchy of the Russian Orthodox Church was established.

Thus, at the end of the 19th century, Orthodoxy found its canonical place in Kazakhstan and became the second major reli­gious movement witnessed there after Islam.

Before the 1917 Revolution, Orthodoxy in Kazakhstan flourished under the protection of the tsars. However, the events after 1917, with the oppression of the church in Russia, meant also a significant diminishing of ecclesiastical life in Kazakhstan. After World War II, however, Orthodoxy in Kazakhstan was revitalized by the establishment of the new Kazakh eparchy and the ruling eparch, Archbishop Nikolai.

In 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviets, Kazakhstan became an independent country and declared religious freedom. Since then Orthodox life in Kazakhstan has been flourishing. Many Orthodox churches and religious institutions were restored. Orthodox education regained a formal place in Kazakh social life (it had formerly been declared illegal under the Soviet system). As a consequence, a significant segment of the population that had once self-identified as atheist or non-religious was brought back to the church. In 2003 the Russian synod established the metropol­itan district in Kazakhstan which includes the Astana, Urlask, and Shymkent eparchies.

As of today, Orthodoxy in Kazakhstan is represented primarily by the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church and by Commu­nities of Old Believers (opponents of the 17th-century ecclesiastical reforms of the Russian Patriarch Nikon). Approximately one-third of the population of Kazakhstan identify themselves as Orthodox Christians, including Kazakh, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and other ethnic groups, with a total of just under 6 million believers. Orthodoxy remains the second largest reli­gious movement in Kazakhstan after Islam. The Kazakh metropolitan district of the Russian Orthodox Church lists 281 active religious associations, including churches, monasteries, convents, a spiritual academy, a theological missionary college, and numerous Sunday schools.

SEE ALSO: Islam, Orthodoxy and; Old Believers; Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Sadvokasova. Z. T. (2007) Religioznaya Ekspansia Tsarisma v Kazaxstane. Almaty: Kazak Universiteti.

Trofimov, Y. F. (1996) Religia v Kazaxstane. Almaty: Odilet Press.

Khomiakov, Aleksey S. (1804–1860)

KONSTANTIN GAVRILKIN

Aleksey S. Khomiakov, a Muscovite land­owner with broad intellectual interests, is mostly known as one of the founders of the Slavophile movement with its belief that Russia’s identity was shaped by its East­ern Orthodox tradition, and that her authentic political, social, economic, and cultural life had been seriously disrupted and corrupted by the westernizing policies of Peter the Great and his heirs. He studied a variety of subjects – theology, philosophy, history, art, literature, science, medicine, engineering, and agriculture – but left no systematic study of any kind, as the eight-volume collection of his works attests, consisting as it does of essays, corre­spondence, drafts of unfinished works, and various notes. His religious views were shaped by a strict Orthodox upbringing and an intense lifelong study of church history and the fathers of the church.

Khomiakov’s reputation as an Orthodox theologian rests on a number of ideas, especially ecclesiological, articulated in The Church is One and a few polemical essays, articles, and correspondence with Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians. He believed that the church was a “spiritual organism,” the unity in grace of free rational beings, embodied historically in the Orthodox Church, with its ethos of “unity in plurality,” which was well expressed in the term “catholicity” (Rus. sobornost’). This vision of Orthodoxy is deliberately and polemically contrasted by Khomiakov with the depiction of the Roman Catholic Church as a schismatic patriarchate which substitutes the spiritual unity in freedom, characteristic of the early church, with a compulsory “monarchic” rule, in short an ethos of “unity without freedom.” This deviation, in turn, generates a Protestant revolt, which he sees as continuing to fragment Western Christianity with an ever-increasing loss of the sense and con­cept of the church as “unity in love and freedom” and a turn towards ecclesial identity as “freedom without unity” (Khomiakov 1997).

Khomiakov’s critics, while recognizing the importance of his attempt to renew discus­sion on the nature ofthe church, pointed out that his ecclesiological polemic with Western Christianity was self-serving rather than open to dialogue. On the one hand, an ide­alized Eastern Orthodoxy was compared to the historic shortcomings of Catholicism and Protestantism, presented as embodi­ments of opposite qualities (Solovyov 1901: 170–1). On the other hand, while in the writings addressed to the Russian public Khomiakov recognized the oppression of the Russian Church by the state and the absence of sobornost’ and freedom in her life, when he spoke “before the West,” as Berdiaev says, “he pretended that every­thing was fine in the East” (1971: 85).

Khomiakov’s theological texts, first printed in Berlin in 1868, were allowed to be published by the censors in Russia only in 1879 with a disclaimer, mandatory for sub­sequent reprints, that “the vagueness and imprecision of some expressions were due to the author’s lack of proper theological education” (Khomiakov 1907). His ideas had a very limited impact on Russian academic theology: in their essence, they repeated a century-long Orthodox ecclesiol- ogy, while in style and form of argumentation Khomiakov’s “freshness” (to use Berdiaev’s term) appealed mostly to lay intellectuals dissatisfied with the very dry academic liter­ature on ecclesiology then prevalent.

SEE ALSO: Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Berdiaev, N. (1971) Aleksei Stepanovich Khomiakov. Westmead, UK: Gregg.

Khomiakov, A. S. (1907) Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Vol. 2: Sochineniia bogoslovskie, 5th edn. Moscow: Kushnerev.

Khomiakov, A. S. (1997) “French Writings,” in B. Jakim and R. Bird (eds.) On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader. Aleksei Khomiakov. Ivan Kireevsky. With Essays by Yury Samarin, Nikolai Berdiaev, and Pavel Florensky. Nudson, NY: Lindisfarne Books, pp. 55–139.

Solovyov, V. S. (1901) “Slavianofil’stvo i ego vyrozhdenie,” Sobranie sochinenii 5: 161–223. St. Petersburg: Obshchestvennaia pol’za. Tsurikov, V. (ed.) (2004) A. S. Khomiakov: Poet, Philosopher, Theologian. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Seminary Press.