CRRC, American Councils and ARISC are pleased to announce the 1st session of the Spring 2025 Tbilisi Works-in-Progress series!
This week’s session will be in a virtual format.
Russia’s Other Eastern Church: The Armenian Confession and the Romanov Empire
Paul Werth, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Wednesday, January 15, 2025 at 18:30 Tbilisi time (9:30 am EST)
Imperial Russia is rightly regarded as an Orthodox Christian country, but this book project insists that it had more than one eastern creed. Deeply implicated in the empire’s governance and geopolitical ambitions was Russia’s other eastern church: the Armenian Apostolic confession. Combining matters of religious doctrine, geopolitics, and imperial rule, this project offers a deep exploration of Russia’s engagement with the South Caucasus and the experiences of Armenians across the Romanov empire (and beyond) in the long nineteenth century. The product of work in six archives, it argues that two key factors—the theological proximity of the Armenian confession to Eastern Orthodoxy and the trans-imperial character of the Armenian religious community—framed Russia’s relationship with the Armenian church and promoted both partnership and conflict between the two. Implicated in the study are a broad range of key issues in the history of Russia, the Caucasus, and Eurasia more broadly: the role of doctrinal differences in constituting religious community; the challenge of nationalism for modernizing multinational empires; the implication of religion in Eurasian geopolitics and diplomacy; the links between Russia and the wider world; modes of contact among Armenians across imperial borders; and the presence of democratic elements in tsarist Russia’s autocratic system. This discussion presents the study in broad strokes, as the author—trying hard to be interesting and relevant—begins the task of writing the book after keeping it on the backburner for over a decade.
Paul W. Werth is professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and was supported by ARISC for research in the South Caucasus in 2023. He has written about religious freedom and confessional politics in the Russian Empire and is the author of the forthcoming How Russia Got Big: A Territorial History (Bloomsbury, 2025).
*************
Works-in-Progress is an ongoing academic discussion series based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that takes place at the CRRC office at Chavchavadze Ave. 5 and online. It is co-organized by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). All of the talks are free and open to the public.
In observation of the spirit of the Chatham House Rule, the talks will not be recorded, and we courteously request that the other participants refrain from recording and/or distributing recordings as well. The opinions expressed in WiP talks are those of the speakers alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC, ARISC or of American Councils.
