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saint (he was also officially canonized) in Tikhon Zadonsky(1724-83), the prototype of Father Zosima in Dostoevsky'sBrothers Karamazov. But what the church most needed,a Leo XIII, it could not produce: it was given instead aPius IX—Pobedonostsev (1827-1907), Procurator to theSynod from 1880 to 1905. The deepest currents ofOrthodox religious life in the nineteenth century tendedto flow in new channels, through the spiritual leadershipof monastic elders, especially in Optyna monastery, and,in conjunction with them, through certain sections ofthe laity (above all the Slavophils, see p. 241), towhom belonged the three greatest religious thinkers andwriters of the century. The activity of the laity, notonly in theology and learning but also in attempts atreform in the church, continued to be a conspicuousfeature of Russian Orthodoxy during the 1905 and 1917Revolutions.When the storm of 1917 broke the Orthodox churchwas the one great institution in Russia which had remainedunaltered either by the reforms of the eighteensixtiesor by the 1905 Revolution. Freedom of consciencefor all religions in the empire had been grantedin 1905 and thereafter to a large extent allowed inpractice (with the glaring exception of the Uniats), butthe far-reaching demands put forward in 1905 forreforms in the Orthodox church and a national churchcouncil were sidetracked by the reactionaries when theyregained command. Yet the position of the church wasbecoming more undermined through the weakness ofNicholas II, "supreme defender and protector of theruling faith and guardian of orthodoxy . . . and in thissense Head of the Church,'' who notoriously yieldedmore and more to the magnetic influence, especially overthe empress, of Rasputin, a Siberian peasant debaucheeacting as ' man of God' and healer, who came to dictateappointments, high and low, in church and state alike.Rasputin was murdered in December 1916. Threemonths later Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. Bythe end of the year the Synod had been swept away. Anational church council, elected predominantly by thelaity, was set in its place together with the restored195