Abstract

This dissertation examines a variety of currents in imperial Russian thought (1825-1905) that placed religious freedom, i.e. freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and religious toleration, at the center of public debates about legislative reform and, by the turn of the century, revolutionary politics. Free communion with God, usually within the confines of a theonomous church, was commonly understood to offer each human unlimited personal sanctity as a creature created in the image and likeness of God, access to eternal, transcendental moral values around which to create an ethical community, the means by which Russia could return to the proper course of historical development, and the process by which each person could attain higher levels of consciousness. Religious freedom in this sense was thought to constitute the best means for the individual to liberate himself from bureaucratic heteronomy and restrain himself from the excesses of radical autonomy, all the while facilitating the process by which Russia entered the modern era.

GEC