On the Eve of the Catastrophe: Church and Power in the Last Years of Imperial Russia. Review on the book: Freeze G. "Destructive Piety": The Russian Church and the Fall of the Empire: Collection of Articles/Gregory Freeze; tr. from English A. Glebovskaya, M. Dolbilova; ed. P. Rogozny. St. Petersburg: Publishing house of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2019. 352 p. (The era of wars and revolutions; issue 12)

The article gives a high assessment to the collection of articles by the American historian G. Freeze, which is completely devoted to various issues of church-state relations in the last decades of the existence of the Russian Empire during the Civil War. The purpose of the article is to critically analyze the works of G. Freeze and, on the basis of the concepts proposed by him, try to characterize the role of the Orthodox clergy in the events of the Russian Revolution and fratricidal confrontation. The huge contribution of G. Freeze to the study of this issue is noted. In fact, the American professor became a pioneer in working with archival documents on Russian church history of the synodal period, and his views on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church became a noticeable phenomenon in historiography. It is noted that G. Freeze acted as a kind of revisionist of the concept of the Church as a "servant of the monarchy", which was fundamental for Russian historical science in the first decades of Soviet power, and was also actively used in the works of R. Pipes. G. Freeze in his articles consistently defends the thesis of the independence of the Church, of its special place in the imperial structure, which has allowed for a certain independence in defending its positions. This is proved, among other things, by the examples of several canonizations of saints during the reign of Nicholas II, when the will of the secular authorities not only caused a heated public discussion, but also met with sharp opposition in hierarchal circles. The review examines and analyzes the changes that took place within the Church and influenced its position in relations with the central government and with other classes of Russian society. It is shown that the crisis of church life manifested itself especially sharply in the first years after the collapse of the monarchy in Russia. This, in particular, manifested itself in open speeches by ordinary clergy against bishops, in the democratization of parish life, and in discussions about the participation of the clergy in divorce proceedings. The ideas expressed in G. Freeze's articles are compared with data taken from the works of leading experts in the history of the Church and social and political life (N.N. Smirnov, S.L. Firsov etc.). The main conclusion that the researcher comes to can be formulated as follows: due to the peculiarities of the policy of the Russian monarchy in relation to the Church and the clergy, and also due to complex processes directly in the spiritual environment, by 1917 the clergy were no longer a political ally of the monarchical forces, and therefore in some cases welcomed the revolution. The change in the political system in Russia to a large extent contributed to drastic changes in parish life, in particular, to the weakening of the power of bishops in the regions.