Hyacinthe Destivelle's study of the great Russian church council of 1917–1918—arguably the most significant reformation council in that church's history—is modest in its goals and refreshingly forthright about its modesty. In 160 pages of translated sources and 190 pages of analysis, Destivelle approaches the council only “from the point of view of its decrees,” eschewing the viewpoints of individual participants and the larger “historical perspective” that a larger body of sources would require (2). He offers a “synthetic presentation . . . rather than a thesis,” limiting himself to “commentary on the actual texts of [the council's] decisions” (4). These texts, Hyacinth concedes, “are only imperfect reflections on the council's work”; they represent only the “culminating point of the debates within the council” (71).

Destivelle's study is, nevertheless, a valuable contribution to Russian church history, and it provides contributions and insights that belie its modesty. He opens with a concise and lucid summary of the state of the Russian church in the early twentieth century. Citing the nineteenth-century flowering of Russian religious philosophy, energetic debates about the subjugation of church to state, the Slavophile movement, the growth of parish schools, a new emphasis on missions, the explosion of monasteries, and the development of the starets tradition, Destivelle asserts that, “In spite of its many problems, the Russian Church in the nineteenth century underwent a remarkable renewal” (11). In fact, it was not a “crisis in the Church but rather its renewal that allowed it to envisage” the preconciliar work of 1905 that laid the groundwork for the council of 1917–1918 (52).

Destivelle identifies “conciliarity” or the search for sobornost—that exceptionally Russian notion of a deep, ineffable, anti-individualistic spiritual community, based on consensus and common values rather than hierarchy or legal norms—as the guiding ideal behind the council's work. While the challenge of achieving such an ideal is clear throughout, Destivelle makes a compelling case that the ideal—however well or poorly realized in various instances—did, indeed, motivate disputants on most sides of most questions. Commitments to conciliarity surfaced again and again in the search for a new model of church governance, the “renewal” of pastoral activity, and proper relations between church and state (4).

Destivelle argues persuasively that the council would not have taken shape but for the revolutionary environment of the early 1900s (19). “The revolution wormed itself into [the church's] heart” (51). The council “did not come about in spite of the upheavals of 1917, but rather thanks to these upheavals” (52). Ultimately, Bolshevik persecutions of the church impelled the council to find consensus: “the increasing menace of a common enemy progressively bonded together the different ranks of the clergy” and thus facilitated fruitful compromise (62).

Destivelle presents a number of other interesting arguments. First, the restoration of the patriarchate was never a sure thing (76–80), especially given fears about inadvertently birthing a new papacy; the pro-patriarchal party succeeded thanks, in large part, to the search for stability in the face of Bolshevik persecutions (81–82). Second, the council evidenced a serious, thoughtful, and somewhat unexpected commitment to improve preaching (124). Third, new freedoms granted to Old Believers following the 1905 revolution constituted a threat to the established church, since its members, unlike the Old Believers, remained subject to the state; this threat provided a strong impetus for the church to reexamine and reform its relation to the state (24–25). Fourth, the reform of the church constituted an essential piece of Prime Minister Sergei Witte's reform agenda; his support for the council was crucial (26). Fifth, laity exercised significant influence in the council's work (92, 95). And sixth, the council struggled, largely unsuccessfully, to make sense of the February and October revolutions of 1917—it remained flummoxed and often out of touch with the new reality, issuing multiple demands that, in retrospect, stood no chance in the new political environment (137–139).

A couple of arguments would benefit from more evidence. While Destivelle contends that the council “was especially innovative in its desire to promote the participation of women in Church” (132), his examples strike this reader as examples of well-meaning, but wary sincerity, rather than true innovation. And his assertion that the council “anticipated the extraordinary ecumenical convergence” (xvi) of the decades following would be stronger with examples other than the council's exceptionally cautious engagement with Anglicans Old Catholics (121–123). Destivelle's overarching critique of the council arrives somewhat obliquely, that is, through his critique of other critiques. Destivelle agrees with Nikolai Afanasiev and Alexander Schmemann that the council's preoccupation with equitable representation (particularly for the laity) risked violating its commitment to sobornost: in being “guided by the principle of representation [and] positing the lay people as the co-governors together with the bishops,” wrote Afanasiev, “the council failed to see that the principle of representation, as a principle based on law, cannot have any application in the Church” (176). Schmemann largely agreed. Destivelle agrees that Afanasiev and Schmemann identified a real conundrum that threatened to undermine the council's larger goals, but he rightly concludes that “the Russian Church had to assume the inheritance of two centuries of forced secularization of its administration, the situation of a clergy divided into narrow casts, and a strong democratic pressure from within, which could have led to nothing less than a schism.” It simply could not “ignore these historical facts in the name of an idealistic and, ultimately, disincarnate conception of the Church” (179).

Destivelle's book—tidy, demure, focused, and more concerned with outcomes than the messy processes leading to those outcomes—is a very different book from James Cunningham's The Gates of Hell: The Great Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1917–1918 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2002). Cunningham's book, assembled from his research notes by Keith and Grace Dyrud following his untimely death in 1994, is a sprawling, messy, rich account of debates in the council—at times gripping, and at times overwhelmed by minutia. Like many posthumous works, it lacks a clear argument; yet its patchwork assemblage is a virtue of sorts, offering a you-were-there account every bit as uncertain and tentative as the proceedings it describes.

Taken together, Destivelle's and Cunningham's books provide the most complete portrait to date of the council's processes and achievements. One hopes for a future synthesis of the two, which places the council more centrally in the surrounding political and social milieu: Cunningham clearly wanted this, and Destivelle, to his credit, appears to want it as well (4). The Moscow Council represents an important and welcome step toward that goal.