La Politique Russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) by Laura Pettinaroli (review)

Laura Pettinaroli, history associate at the Catholic Institute of Paris, has written a monumental history of the Holy See’s Russian policy from 1905 to 1939. It is valuable because of its thoroughness, balance, and use of archives in Russia, France, and especially Vatican City. The author’s work is unparalleled in presenting new material and in explaining the Holy See’s bureaucracy, decision-making process, and the singular importance of the popes and the Pro Russia Commission, which was set up by Pius XI in 1925, in crafting Vatican policy toward Russia.

The author divided the history of the period between the Revolution of 1905 and the eve of World War II into three parts: 1905 to 1917, 1917 to 1928, and 1928 to February 1939, when Pius XI died. Part 1 describes the Holy See’s policy of attempting to adjust to the dramatic changes in Russia in the years before World War I—the 1905 Revolution, the October Manifesto, the Duma, and the policy of religious toleration. As the war approached, Nicholas II backed away from toleration and then made the supreme error of going to war in 1914 in spite of the lesson of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 that had produced revolution in 1905 and nearly toppled his government.

The second part of the book covers the Holy See’s policy toward the provisional government that took power in February 1917. The regime’s policy of religious liberty and separation of church and state delighted the Church, but its error of continued involvement in World War I allowed the Bolshevik (Communist) Party of Lenin to replace it in October 1917. For the Catholic Church, the communists were anathema. They aimed to wipe out not only religion but also private property. Here Pettinaroli carefully chronicles the persecution of the Church, the removal of the hierarchy and priests, and the Vatican’s efforts to engage the Kremlin and to defuse or circumvent its persecution of the Church. The author describes the Vatican’s famine relief effort in Soviet Russia; creation of the Pro Russia Commission; and the extraordinary partnership between Pius XI and Bishop Michel d’Herbigny, the French Jesuit who tried surreptitiously to rebuild the Catholic hierarchy in Soviet Russia in the mid-1920s. Pettinaroli’s work is the fullest treatment of d’Herbigny to date.

The final section covers the persecution of the 1930s, the frustrated efforts of the Vatican to stop the communist onslaught, and the history leading to World War II. The book is a detailed description of the evolution of Vatican policy in Russia, going from a missionary attempt to broaden contacts and conversions in Russia before World War I to attempts at working with the governments of Russia, including the Bolsheviks, to utter anguish and shock with the realization that the regime of Lenin and Stalin was not simply a localized attack on the small Russian Catholic Church but rather a global revolution that aimed to replace religiously-based orders with a communist order led by Moscow.