Page Herrlinger

Affiliation: History, Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Professor of History, Chair of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

I am a historian of modern Russia, and my research focuses on the intersection between religious belief and everyday life in the experience of ordinary people during the 19th and 20th centuries, including the so-called “godless”
Soviet period. I am interested in the diverse and evolving ways that individuals understood the role of God and faith in their lives, selves and communities – both what they valued as sacred, and how their beliefs gave them a framework for acting, understanding change, and structuring society. These questions are relevant to Russia’s past as well as its present, as Russians today debate the role that the Orthodox Church should play in modern society and politics, and the relationship between Orthodoxy and “Russianness.”

My recent book, Holy Sobriety in Modern Russia: A Faith Healer and His Followers (Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell UP, 2023) tells the story of a charismatic preacher and healer, “Brother Ioann” Churikov, and the thousands of Russians who found salvation through his teachings and prayers. Written as a collective biography, it follows Churikov’s grass-roots faith community through the 20th century and explores the alternative culture his followers created as an antidote to modern Russian and Soviet society. Their story is one of resilient faith and on-going persecution, both complicating and enhancing how we understand Russia’s Orthodox and socialist pasts.

In addition to lectures and seminars on Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, I teach lectures courses on European women’s history and the First World War. I also offer intermediate seminars on Germany under Nazism and the Holocaust, and an advanced research seminar on totalitarian practices under Hitler and Stalin.

In 2019 and 2022, I served as the co-director - with art historian Natasha Goldman - for two NEH summer seminars for K-12 educators, “Teaching the Holocaust through Visual Culture,” which were held at Bowdoin. For more information on the seminar and strategies for using visual materials to teach the Holocaust, see: https://courses.bowdoin.edu/teaching-the-holocaust-through-visual-culture/

My first book, Working Souls: Russian Orthodoxy and Factory Labor in St. Petersburg, 1880-1917 (Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica Publishers, 2007), addressed questions of religious (and irreligious) identity among workers in Russia’s most revolutionary and modern city, St. Petersburg/Petrograd. While documenting the remarkable vitality and diversity of urban religious life at the end of the Imperial era, it explores the various ways in which the components of workers’ religious identity – their practices, sensibilities, and beliefs about God, self and society – were transformed by the experience of modern factory life. It also considers the extent to which the evolving spiritual needs and demands of the working class laity precipitated changes in Russian Orthodoxy and the role of the Church in modern society.

Articles and Book Chapters:

“Russian Orthodox Women in Unorthodox Times: Patterns of Female Agency and Authority in the Revolutionary Era, 1917-1927,” in Religion and the Russian Revolution of 1917: Conflicts, Encounters, and Transformations, edited by Nadieszda Kizenko and Francesca Silano (Indiana University Press), expected in 2023.

"The Pious Women of an 'Unsimple Folk': Female Perspectives on Faith and Authority Among the Orthodox Laity of St. Petersburg, 1895-1917," Church and Society in Modern Russia: Essays in Honor of Gregory L. Freeze eds. Manfred Hildemeier and Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015), 113-132.

“‘Satan in the form of an angel?’ The Russian Orthodox Church’s controversial case against the Moscow brattsy, 1909 to 1913.” Religion, State and Society (June 2020) DOI: 10.1080/09637494.2020.1765683

“Healing Russia: Religious and Secular Perspectives on the ‘Miraculous’ Powers of Brother Ioann Churikov in St. Petersburg, 1894-1917,” (in Russian) in «Иррациональное в русской культуре / Сборник статей» под редакцией Ю. Маннхерц.— М.: Новое литературное обозрение, 2020 [“The Irrational in Russian Culture: A collection of essays,” ed. Julia Mannherz, (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2020).]

“Soviet Propaganda Posters,” in Art Purposes: Object Lessons for the Liberal Arts, ed. by Joachim Homann (New York: DelMonico Books, 2019), 136-7.

"Orthodoxy and the Politics of Emotion in the Case of 'Brother Ioann' Churikov and His Followers, 1910-1914," in Orthodox Parodoxes: Heterogeneities and Complexities in Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy (Brill, 2015).

“Worker Cultures in Revolutionary Russia, 1914-1922,” in Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914-1922. The Century Reappraisal (Slavica, 2014).

“Petitions to Brother Ioann Churikov,” in Orthodox Christianity in Imperial Russia: A Sourcebook on Lived Religion, ed. Heather Coleman (Indiana University Press, 2015).

“Villain or Victim? The Faith-Based Sobriety of the Factory Worker Peter Terekhovich in Soviet Russia, 1925-29.” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 65, no. 9 (November 2013): 1737-54

“Trials of the Unorthodox Orthodox: The Followers of Brother Ioann Churikov and Their Critics in Modern Russia, 1894-1914,” Russian History 40 (2013): 244-63.

“The Religious Landscape in Revolutionary St. Petersburg, 1900-1917.” Journal of Urban History 37:6 (November 2011): 842-857.

«Из истории неортодоксального православия: «преступления» братца Иоанна Чурикова и его последователей в России в 1905-1914 гг.» [“A Case of Unorthodox Orthodoxy: The ‘Religious Crimes” of Brother Ioann Churikov and his Followers in Modern Russia, 1905-1914.”] in “Vina i Pozor v kontekse traditsionnoi kul’tury,” eds. Marianna Muraveyva and Natalia Pushkareva (St. Petersburg: European University Press, 2011).

“Raising Lazarus: Orthodoxy and the Factory Narod in St. Petersburg, 1905-1914,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 52, no. 3 (2004).

“Orthodoxy and the Experience of Factory Life in St. Petersburg, 1881-1905,” in New Labor History: Worker Identity and Experience in Russia, 1840-1918, ed. by Michael Melancon and Alice Pate (Slavica, 2002).

Education

PhD, University of California, Berkeley
MA, University of California, Berkeley
BA, Yale University

History

Page Herrlinger

Selected Publications

Education