Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/308

Rh the Russian people, and for better comprehension of the continued eccentric, fantastic manifestations of a religious character, it may be observed that while the ultimate results of the thorough transformation of national life, still progressing, will be to calm and pacify the agitation which it excites, for the time being it tends to encourage and stimulate aspirations for new things, and these aspirations, in accordance with the character of the race, invariably assume religious guise and expression. Although socialistic ideas, and tendencies of an economic and practical nature, are engrafted upon the doctrinal teachings of many of the new sects, there is among the people a deep-seated, devotional craving which the formalism of the Raskol, and the rigidity of the State Church with its official clergy, fail to satisfy, which inevitably finds relief in new creeds and more spiritual religions, and to which education only can give intelligent direction.

The attitude of the State towards the Raskol and the various independent sects has varied according to the necessities of the times and the circumstances of the moment.

The tsar Alexis and his son, Feodor, persecuted dissenters as heretics and enemies of religion. Peter the Great pursued them as perturbators of the public peace and opponents of imperial reform, or he tolerated them as industrious, tax-paying subjects, sources of income for his impoverished exchequer. Catherine II. and her successors have treated them alternately with kindness or with severity, endeavoring at one time to allure them back into the Church, and at another solicitous only to bring them into submission to civil authority.

During this latter period, that is, since Catherine's accession to the throne, the policy of the government