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in Samara and Saratov provinces. A reluctant
convert to revolutionary terrorism, she became a
member of the Central Committee of the PEO -
PLE ' S WILL , the group that assassinated ALEXANDER
II in 1881. She was arrested in 1883 and tried the
following year. Her death sentence was com-
muted to life imprisonment, which she began to
serve in solitary confinement at Schlusselburg
Fortress. Twenty years later, she was sent into
exile, then released after the 1905 Revolution.
She joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party in
1908, but left soon after the disclosure of the
AZEV affair. Revered as a heroine of the revolu-
tionary movement, she traveled widely outside
of Russia between 1906 and 1915, lecturing and
raising funds for the revolutionary cause. After
the OCTOBER REVOLUTION , she worked for the
cause of non-Bolshevik revolutionaries, first as
honorary president of the Political Red Cross,
then for the Society of Political Exiles. She wrote
her memoirs and spent her last years in a special
home for old revolutionaries. She died on the eve
of the German invasion in 1941, 10 days before
her 89th birthday. She is buried in Moscow's
Novodevichi Cemetery.
was imprisoned by the Polish king Sigismund III,
who held him hostage while trying to place his
son Wladyslaw on the Russian throne. While in
prison, Filaret's son Michael was elected czar of
Russia by the ZEMSKII SOBOR of 1613, an event
that formalized the end of the Time of Troubles
and the beginning of a new Russian dynasty.
Filaret was not freed by the Poles until 1619,
after the signing of an armistrice between Poland
and Russia. Back in Moscow, he was appointed
patriarch as well as given the title Great Sov-
ereign. From 1619 until 1633, Russia essentially
had two rulers with two courts, although the
experienced and forceful Filaret was the true
power behind the throne.
Filaret (1782-1867)
(Vasili Mikhailovich Drozdov)
theologian and ecclesiastical leader
A distinguished leader of the 19th-century Rus-
sian Orthodox Church, Filaret was known for his
gift of oratory and biblical scholarship. He was
born Vasili Drozdov and graduated from the Trin-
ity Monastery near Moscow in 1803. In 1808 he
took his monastic vows, at which time he
adopted the name Filaret. That same year he
began to teach philosophy at the St. Petersburg
Theological Academy, eventually becoming its
rector. In 1818 he was appointed to the Holy
Synod, the governing body of the Russian Ortho-
dox Church. From 1819 to 1821, when he was
transferred to Moscow, Filaret was archbishop of
Tver. In 1826 Filaret became metropolitan of
Moscow, a post he held until his death. In 1823
he first published an influential Catechism, which
after several revisions was adopted as a standard
school textbook in 1839. Filaret was the driving
force behind the translation of the Bible from Old
Church Slavonic into modern Russian, a project
that was heatedly opposed by traditionalist mem-
bers of the clergy, but was finally completed in
1858. A modernizer in some respects, Filaret was
less tolerant of Old Believers. In July 1856 he was
instrumental in reversing the ruling that had
allowed OLD BELIEVERS to conduct services in
their Rogozhsk suburb of Moscow seven months
Filaret (1554?-1633)
(Feodor Nikitich Romanov)
patriarch and coruler
Filaret was a pivotal figure in the turbulent
events of the TIME OF TROUBLES that ended with
the election in 1613 of his son MICHAEL ROMANOV
as czar. Born Feodor Nikitich Romanov, he was
the nephew of Anastasia Romanova, the first
wife of IVAN IV . During the reign of his cousin
FEODOR I (r. 1584-98), he served in various
capacities as a military and diplomatic adviser.
After Feodor's death he was banished to a north-
ern monastery by his rival Boris GODUNOV and
forced to take monastic vows, at which time he
adopted the name Filaret. Filaret reemerged as a
power broker following Boris Godunov's sudden
death in 1605 when the first FALSE DMITRII freed
a number of Godunov's former rivals. Filaret was
appointed metropolitan of Rostov. In 1610, dur-
ing the latter stages of the Time of Troubles, he
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