Orthodox Sisters: Religion, Community, and the Challenge of Modernity in Imperial and Early Soviet Russia

Orthodox Sisters explores the relationship between women, religion, and social, cultural, and economic change between 1700 and 1935 through the experiences of Orthodox convents in Nizhnii Novgorod diocese. Focusing primarily on the Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross, William G. Wagner places the women’s experiences in the broader context of developments in female monasticism and religious life in Russia, as well as in Europe and North America over the same period.

This is the first comprehensive study that follows a Russian convent through all the stages of its life--from its origins in the eighteenth century to its flourishing at the turn of the twentieth century, to its resistance to Soviet assault, and, finally, to its rebirth in the 1920s. By the late nineteenth century, the Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross and the other convents and women’s religious communities in Nizhnii Novgorod diocese constituted a reimagined form of a traditional Orthodox monastic community. Wagner shows how these nuns and novices adapted to the conditions of emergent modernity in a distinctively Orthodox way.

When almost everything but their communal life, work, and worship and their sacred spaces had been stripped away and they were subject to the socialist state’s efforts at subversion, the sisters of the Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross and the other convents in the diocese created an authentic Christian community that gave their lives a collective meaning. In this way they were able to lead a rewarding life and survive the early years of Soviet Russia.

William G. Wagner was a celebrated historian of modern Russia, recently focusing on religion and modernity. He studied at Haverford College and Oxford University. In 1980, he joined the History faculty at Williams College, and later served as Brown Professor of History, Dean of the Faculty, acting President, and Professor Emeritus.

Christine D. Worobec is Board of Trustees and Distinguished Research Professor Emerita at Northern Illinois University. Her most recent book, coauthored with Valerie A. Kivelson, is Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine.

Roy R. Robson is Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State Abington. His books include Solovki and Old Believers in Modern Russia.