Missionary Work in Siberia and Alaska.

To trace all the further history of Russian missionary work would carry us too far afield; Glazik's excellent book (see Bibliography) covers the field. In every century there have emerged from Russian missionary work impressive Christian personalities who have been unjustly overlooked or forgotten by Western church historians. In the fourteenth century there was Stefan of Perm, in the sixteenth St. Gury, in the seventeenth Bishop Filofey Lechinsky, the “beacon light of the Siberian peoples.” We shall give a brief account of just one of these great missionaries, Innokenty Venyaminov (1797-1879), who in the nineteenth century carried the gospel of the Orthodox Church to Kamchatka, the Aleutians and to then Russian Alaska.

Innokenty, born in 1797 in a village of the Siberian province of Irkutsk, early proved to be a man of extraordinary versatility; he was artisan and artist, philologist and natural scientist, theologian, pastor and prince of the Church in one person. After his marriage in 1821 he was consecrated a priest and assigned to a church in Irkutsk. In 1823 he undertook missionary work in the Aleutians. He preached to the Aleuts in their native tongue and made a first translation into Aleut of the catechism, the historical books of the Bible, and various New Testament writings. In a relatively short time he succeeded in establishing a model Christian community among this hitherto neglected population. He visited one island after the other, and also made a journey to the American mainland, where he converted the pagan tribes of Alaska and “after suitable examination and admonition,” baptized them.

Along with his missionary activity, Innokenty also devoted himself to geographical and linguistic studies of these territories. He wrote Notes on the Islands of the District of Unalaska and a grammar of Aleutian based on the dialect of the Fox Islands. In addition he was the author of a religious primer for his native Christians, Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven. This book, which sets forth in simple terms the fundamental truths of Orthodox Christianity, became exceedingly popular after it was published in 1841 in a Russian and an Old Church Slavonic translation. Later it was translated into many of the other languages of the Russian missionary churches; by 1881 it had appeared in twenty-two editions, including one in German which was used as a devotional manual in the German Protestant congregations of the Black Sea region.

After ten years of activity on Unalaska, the largest island of the Aleutians, Innokenty moved to Novo-Arkangelsk (now Sitka) on Baranof Island. Here, too, he prepared the first grammar of the Koluschan language in order to be able to preach the Christian gospel to the people in their own tongue. He then undertook the long journey to St. Petersburg to put the spiritual and material needs of his vast diocese before the Holy Synod and propose measures that would place the Orthodox Church upon a firmer footing and guarantee its further expansion in America. Returning to the Aleutians, he resumed his missionary work with renewed impetus and remarkable success. He continued his linguistic labors as well, translating for the Koluschans the evangelical and apostolic pericopes. [6] Under his supervision the mission on the American mainland also made great progress. From 1842 his missionaries worked in the river valley of the Kuskokwim, with Nushagak as their center, from 1845 in the Kenai Peninsula, and from Ikogmut up the Yukon. In 1859 he divided the American missionary territory from the Kamchatka eparchy, establishing it as the vicariate of Sitka and consecrating the previous rector of his native seminary, Archimandrite Pyotr, as first episcopal vicar.

The American mission was seriously hampered after 1867 by the sale of the Russian territories in America to the United States. Innokenty attempted to conserve as many gains for the faith as possible. He raised the vicariate of Sitka to the rank of an independent diocese. When in 1872 the bishop of this diocese abandoned his seat in Novo-Arkangelsk in order to devote himself principally to the Russian communities in California and Canada, the Orthodox cause in Alaska went into a decline. It was not until 1900 that Alaska, on the urging of the Orthodox Missionary Society in Moscow, was once more assigned its own episcopal vicar.

In 1850 Innokenty, who had meanwhile launched a successful mission in Kamchatka, was appointed archbishop. This promotion spurred his zeal still further. He traveled to the extreme north of Siberia to extend his work to the region around Anadyr. In 1852 he succeeded in transferring the whole province of Yakutsk to the diocese of Kamchatka, and moved his episcopal seat to Yakutsk. From this new center the missionary work among the pagans of his eparchy was extended and consolidated. In 1855 he undertook a new mission into the Amur territory. By the Treaty of Aigun between Russia and China in 1858, Russia received the lands between Ussuri and the Sea of Japan. Innokenty thereupon moved to Blagoveshchensk on the Amur and proceeded to reorganize the Church of eastern Siberia. By this time he was nearly blind, his sight having been almost completely destroyed by long treks over the dazzling snowfields of the north. Nevertheless, at the age of sixty-three he traveled to Japan, at sixty-five to Kamchatka, and at seventy into the interior of the Amur territory, forever occupied with preaching and teaching, forever afire with new missionary plans and new scholarly tasks.

The death of Filaret, the Metropolitan of Moscow, ushered in the last decisive change in his eventful life. Recognized by all as the most important personality in the Russian episcopate, Innokenty was elected Metropolitan of Moscow at the age of seventy-one. Having attained the highest office in the Russian Church, he was in a position to entrust his missionary schemes to a permanent organization. He founded the Orthodox Missionary Society, which had its formal inauguration in Moscow on January 25, 1870. Thenceforth it was to be the headquarters of missionary work throughout the Russian Empire. Innokenty likewise instituted mission celebrations with sermons and collections to be held annually in all parishes on the “Sunday of Orthodoxy.” In this way he imbued the entire Church with the spirit that had dominated his own tremendous missionary activity: the conviction that all Orthodox Christians were obligated to participate in missions in one way or another.

By the end of his life — he died in 1879 — Innokenty had built a firm ecclesiastical foundation for the principle of missionary work. However, the missionary activities of the Russian Orthodox Church were not destined to come to full flowering; the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 put an end to all such projects. Since then the transformation of communications and the industrial development of Siberia have resulted in vast population shifts. Huge new industrial centers have sprung up, vast tracts of land have been put to the plow, and hordes of Russian engineers, workers and peasants have poured into Siberia. The whole nature of the missionary problem in Siberia has consequently changed. The present Orthodox Church of Russia, persecuted for so many years and lacking recruits, has proved unable to cope with this new situation.

The work of Innokenty represents only one small segment of the enormous, quiet, self-sacrificing work on the part of Russian Orthodox missionaries. The establishment of Orthodox churches in Peking, Japan and Korea, which survive to this day, is testimony to the effectiveness of this mission beyond the borders of Russia herself.

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