64 ROSSIYA
but as enemies of the established social and political order. As so often in the of
Russian civilization, the highest ideals were used to justify the most vulgar acts
of violence.
For practical purposes, the principle of Orthodoxy fell heaviest on those
people whose beliefs were closest to the dogmas of the official religion without
actually coinciding with them. It left the Muslims largely alone, and came to a
ready modus vivendi with the Protestants. It encouraged rather more suspicions
about Jews and Roman Catholics, both of whom professed 'orthodoxies' of
their own. But against the Greek Catholic Uniates it aroused feelings of un-
limited hostility. Thus, whilst the Protestants of the former Republic found
ready employment in the Tsarist service, and the Jews and the Roman Catholics
suffered from sporadic discrimination, the Uniates were systematically perse-
cuted. After the Third Partition, the Jews were confined to a Pale of Settlement
whose eastern boundary coincided with the frontier of the old Republic; but it
was only in brief periods, under Nicholas I and Alexander III, that any pressure
was brought on them to submit to Christian baptism. The Catholics encoun-
tered constant obstacles to promotion in the Army or Bureaucracy. Their clergy
were controlled, and deprived of their estates, their dioceses were reorganized;
their contact with Rome was circumscribed. Papal bulls could not be published
in Russia without the assent of St. Petersburg, and were often ignored or coun-
termanded. Yet the Jesuit Order was not dissolved as elsewhere, and was
recruited by the Empire for services in the educational sphere. The Uniates
enjoyed no such ambiguities. As descendants of communities which had once
adhered to the Orthodox faith, they were seen not as heretics but as renegades.
Catherine deposed all but one of the Uniate bishops, and subordinated the eccle-
siastical hierarchy to a Consistory entirely dependent on the State. In the 1770s
and 1790s, and again in the 1830s and 1860s, the soldiery was called in to effect
mass conversions. Books were burned; churches destroyed; priests murdered;
services conducted according to the Orthodox rite under the shadow of bayo-
nets. In 1839, all contact between the Uniate Church in Russia and the Vatican
was severed. In 1875, the Union of Brest was itself officially annulled. By 1905,
when a decree of religious toleration was finally exacted, no more than zoo,ooo
Uniates were left to practise their faith openly. In all these religious policies,
there is no doubt that the prime motivation was political. For this reason, the
bogus 'Principle of Orthodoxy', as a state ideology, needs to be clearly dis-
tinguished from the genuine principles and practices of the Orthodox Church.
Needless to say, it nicely contradicted the Polish traditions of plurality, individ-
ual conscience, and toleration. (See Chapter 7.)
The principle of Autocracy should not be confused with the general theory of
Absolutism as known in Western Europe. Absolutism in France or Spain or
Austria developed as an antidote to the excessively divisive tendencies of the
estates and fiefs of the medieval period. Although divine blessing was invariably
invoked for the new practices, there could never be any complete identity of
interest between Church and State, between the Vatican in Rome and