Konstantin Pobedonostsev

Abstract

Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827–1907) was trained in law in the 1840s. Following fifteen years of administrative work and research on Russian legal history, he taught civil law at Moscow University. In the 1870s, Pobedonostsev severely criticized the Judicial Reform of 1864, which, ironically, he had helped to craft. As chief procurator of the Holy Synod from 1880 to 1905, he ranked as the senior lay official in the governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church. Pobedonostsev had little faith in law as a means of human progress. He regarded law mainly as an instrument of state power, necessary to contain the human proclivity toward evil. In his assessment of the Orthodox Church’s contribution to Russian society, Pobedonostsev pinned his hopes on ordinary believers rather than the clergy, whom he generally distrusted. One of his main projects in his later years was a revised translation of the New Testament designed to integrate the Russian version more closely with the Church Slavonic text used in Orthodox religious services. In postcommunist Russia, there has been a surge of revisionist scholarship offering a more positive assessment of Pobedonostsev.