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  • Bodies Like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia by Robert H. Greene
  • Leonid Heretz
Bodies Like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia. By Robert H. Greene. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2010. Pp. xii, 299. $42.00. ISBN 978-0-87580-409-5.)

Until recently, the role of religion in Russian history has received inadequate attention from scholars, and all sorts of hoary and dubious generalizations (including the persistent idea that paganism or atheism lurked under the Christianity of the pre-revolutionary Russian peasantry) could flourish in the secondary literature because of the dearth of reliable information. The situation has been much remedied over the past twenty years, and with this book Robert Greene makes a major contribution to the ongoing effort at filling the many gaps in our understanding of religion in the Russian past. Greene is the first Western scholar to attempt a comprehensive treatment of one of the most important aspects of Russian Orthodox piety—the veneration of the saints and of their relics—from the late Imperial period through the Revolution and into the early years of Bolshevik rule. He begins by giving a psychologically insightful description of the cult of the saints, showing how it functioned as a crucial part of a vibrant popular piety that was being enhanced rather than weakened by modernizing change (improved communications, [End Page 371] for example, facilitated pilgrimage and the dissemination of reports of miracles). Greene then turns to issues of policy and investigates the question of how the Imperial and then the Bolshevik regimes attempted to act upon this important element of the culture of the people whom they governed. Greene shows how the last emperor, Nicholas II, presided over a veritable flurry of canonizations (seven, as opposed to the four that had been done in the preceding two centuries), in part for the purpose of buttressing the sacral foundation of the monarchy (without adducing much by way of argumentation Greene judges the policy to have been a failure in that regard), but also in response to the wishes of great numbers of ordinary believers. The most interesting and original part of the book examines the campaign of “exhumation” that the Bolsheviks conducted in their first years in power. If the Church taught, and the faithful believed that the bodies of saints were preserved incorruptible as a visible sign of God’s favor, then, militant atheists reasoned, the exposure of relics as decayed or fraudulent would shatter popular religiosity. In telling the dramatic story of how that idea was tested and found wanting, Greene produces a narrative of high analytical and literary merit.

One substantive criticism that can be made of the book is that it focuses so much on relics as to neglect other important issues and that its chronological parameters, although admirably broad, are too strong. In particular, the epilogue and conclusion (“The Passing of the Saints?”) might leave the nonspecialist reader with a somewhat false impression. Green ends by contrasting the crude debunking strategies of the exhumation campaign with the more sophisticated ways in which the museums of atheism of the 1930s inculcated the materialistic/scientific worldview. The Soviets did succeed in creating a secular society, although they achieved that end not so much by displays of Foucault’s Pendulum (which Greene uses as a concluding symbol for effective atheistic education) as by brutal persecution that rendered the practice of religion impossible for most people. Even so, the Bolshevik triumph was not complete or final—in today’s Russia, the major sanctuaries built around relics draw a constant stream of pilgrims. Greene gives no indication of that fact, although his book would certainly equip readers to understand how such a thing is possible.

Leonid Heretz
Bridgewater State University
Bridgewater, MA
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