(dukhovnyja utchilishsha) of which there are 185, with 1302 instructors, and which are maintained at an expense to the state of 6,153,353 roubles yearly; in the ecclesiastical seminaries, of which there are 57, with 866 instructors and 20,500 students; and also in the ecclesiastical academies of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kieff, and Kazan, in which there are 120 instructors and 862 students; these academies possess very valuable libraries, and have professors of great scientific merit. The seminaries both morally or intellectually are in a wretched condition; from these seminaries the moral and intellectual shortcomings of the Russian clergy are derived, their students, as a rule, entering the priesthood without the least vocation. In 1906-08 these institutions became hotbeds of revolutionists, and even of anarchists. The ecclesiastical sciences are cultivated in the academies, which publish periodicals of great merit, as the "Khristianskoe Tchtenie" (Christian Reading) at St. Petersburg; the "Bogoslovski Viestnik" (Theological Messenger) at Sergievsk Posad; the "Trudy" (Works) of the Ecclesiastical Academy of Kieff, and the "Pravoslavnyi Sobesiednik" at Kazan. Other important periodicals are the "Strannik" (St. Petersburg Traveller), the "Tcherkovnij Viestnik" (Ecclesiastical Messenger), the "Cerkovnij a Viedomosti" (Ecclesiastical News), the organ of the synod at St. Petersburg; "Dushepoleznoe Tchtenie" (Edifying Reading), at Moscow, and the "Khristianin" (The Christian), at Sergievsk Posad. Among the most famous professors of the ecclesiastical academies of the present day, mention should be made of the great exegete Nikolai Glubokovski, the canonists Zaozerski and Berdnikoff, the historian Znamenski, etc. The most famous of them all, at present, is the archpriest Malinovski. A comprehensive study on the Russian seminaries and academies may be found in the work "La Chiesa russa", pp. 541-679.
The educating influence of the Russian clergy upon the people is very slight. On the other hand the bureaucracy would suppress any effort of the clergy to give to the people a higher sense of its rights. The clergy maintains a great many elementary schools, the number of which was much increased in the time of Pobiedonostseff. These establishments are divided into schools of two classes, and schools of one class; of the former there are 672, with 77,000 students of both sexes; while there are 25,425 one-class schools, with 1,400,000 students of both sexes; and in addition 13,650 schools in which reading is taught, with 436,000 pupils. There are 426 secondary schools, with 22,300 students, the yearly maintenance of which costs a sum of 17,000,000 roubles.
The apostolic work of the Russian clergy has small result. The internal missions are against the Raskolniki, the mystic and the rationalist sects, the Mohammedans, the Catholics, the Lutherans, and the Jews. The missionaries direct their efforts towards the conversion of dissidents to Orthodoxy rather by the assistance of the police and by human means than by a supernatural spirit and by convincing arguments. All efforts, not excluding deportation to Siberia, have failed to secure the conversion of the Raskolniki, who since 1905 have enjoyed a certain liberty, and at the present time maintain a great propaganda. Their number is estimated at 15,000,000. Among Catholics and Lutherans the Russian missions are without effect; in fact since 1905 many of the Orthodox have embraced Catholicism or Lutheranism. For three centuries Russian missionaries have worked for the conversion of the Mohammedan Tatars; but the trivial nature of the propaganda among that people was shown in 1905, when 500,000 Christian Tatars returned to the faith of Islam.
The foreign missions of Russia are in North and South America, Japan, Corea, and Persia. In North America the efforts of the Orthodox missionaries are directed to the conversion of the Uniate Ruthenians who emigrate to that continent. In other countries their efforts are almost without result, with the exception of Japan, where Ivan Kasatkin, who is now an archbishop, and who went to those islands in 1860, succeeded in establishing a Japanese branch of the Orthodox Church, which numbers about 30,000 adherents and about 40 native priests (cf. "La Chiesa russa", pp. 397-539).
The Church of Russia is the support and strength of Orthodoxy, which, counting Russians, Greeks, and Rumanians, has more than 110 millions of adherents. The conversion of Russia to Catholicism, therefore, would end the Eastern Schism. But the hour of a reconciliation between the East and the West is yet far distant, however much desired by Catholics and also by Russians, such as Vladimir Soloveff. There is no doubt that among the cultured classes of Russia there are to be found persons who desire this union, and who readily recognize the defects of their national Church; but there is no movement towards union with Catholicism. As a rule, the cultured classes of Russia are contaminated with the poison of infidelity; while the lower classes are slaves of superstition or ignorance, and most attached to the formalities of their rite. They are the easy prey of the rationalist or mystic Russian sects. Possibly Russia would have been Catholic if, after the Union of Brest, politics and human passions had not rendered the condition of the Uniates most unhappy, and placed obstacles in the way of the development of the Ruthenian clergy. But it is useless to lament the past; and every effort should be made that the latent religious forces of Russia may some day find their full development in union with Catholicism under a single shepherd.
