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language versions followed in 1958. Extremely
well received in the West,
Doctor Zhivago
(which
was made into an acclaimed film) was the basis
on which Pasternak was awarded the 1958
Nobel Prize. Soviet literary officials immediately
began a major campaign denouncing Pasternak,
pressuring him to renounce the prize and
expelling him from the Soviet Writers' Union.
Under such pressure, he refused the prize, but
the stress of the scandal ultimately affected his
health and hastened his death, which came on
May 30, 1960, in the artists' colony of Pere-
delkino, near Moscow. His later work, including
Doctor Zhivago,
was not published in the USSR
until 1987, at which time Pasternak was also
publicly rehabilitated.
arch was abolished and replaced by a Holy
Synod, consisting of 10 clerics, later expanded to
12. For the next two centuries, the work of the
Holy Synod was supervised by the ober-procura-
tor of the Holy Synod, a lay official appointed by
the czar. This situation continued until 1918,
when a church council elected Patriarch Tikhon
to continue the Patriarchate. Upon Tikhon's
death in 1925, however, the Soviet government
prevented the election of a new patriarch, a sign
of a more uncompromising attitude toward the
church that would intensify in the 1930s.
World War II and the need to rally the Soviet
population around more traditional symbols
changed the government's policy toward the
church. In 1943, Metropolitan Sergei was elected
as the first patriarch in almost two decades.
Sergei died in 1945 and was succeeded by Alexis,
who in turn was succeeded by Pimen in 1971.
The current patriarch, Alexis II, assumed his post
in 1990 after Pimen's death, the first patriarch
since the 1917 Revolution to be freely chosen by
the church without government interference.
During the 1990s the patriarch led the church in
its attempt to reassume its former position as one
of the pillars of Russian national identity, a goal
that often led the church in appearing to be intol-
erant of other faiths, Christian and non-Christian
alike, which it felt were making inroads in Russia
at the expense of Russian Orthodoxy.
Patriarchate
The office of the head of the Russian Orthodox
Church, the Patriarchate was first established in
1589 during the reign of
FEODOR I
. Until then the
Russian Church had been in theory at least sub-
ordinate to the patriarch of Constantinople. The
establishment of a Russian patriarch was the
product of negotiations between Boris
GODUNOV
,
the de facto ruler during Feodor's reign, and
Jeremiah the patriarch of Constantinople. The
first Russian patriarch was Metropolitan Job, a
friend of Boris Godunov. Two outstanding 17th-
century patriarchs were
FILARET
, the father of
Czar
MICHAEL ROMANOV
, and
NIKON
, the force
behind the controversial reforms that split the
Russian Church in the 1660s. Filaret ruled as
great sovereign with his son, while Nikon
regarded his office as equal to or perhaps higher
than the czar's in importance.
Perhaps the implicit challenge to the czar's
authority as well as
PETER I
's own view of the
church as an obstacle to reform inspired his
actions toward the church. When Patriarch
Hadrian died in 1700, Peter kept his seat vacant
until 1721, when the Spiritual Reglament of the
Church, authored by Feofan Prokopovich, cre-
ated a new system of rule for the church. Under
the Spiritual Reglament, the office of the patri-
Paul I
(1754-1801)
(Pavel Petrovich)
emperor
The son of
CATHERINE II
, Paul reigned briefly from
1796 until 1801, when he was overthrown and
assassinated during a palace revolt. Soon after his
birth, he was taken from Catherine by Empress
ELIZABETH
and raised away from his parents. His
own son, Alexander, would later be raised by
Catherine in a similar pattern. Although he was
long reputed to have been the son of one of
Catherine's lovers, Paul grew up believing that he
was the son of Czar
PETER III
, who had been over-
thrown and assassinated in 1762. His shock at his
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