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Podcast: In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Episode: Nadieszda Kizenko, "Good for the Souls: A History of Confession in the Russian Empire" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Description: From the moment that Tsars as well as hierarchs realized that having their subjects go to confession could make them better citizens as well as better Christians, the sacrament of penance in the Russian empire became a political tool, a devotional exercise, a means of education, and a literary genre. It defined who was Orthodox, and who was 'other.' First encouraging Russian subjects to participate in confession to improve them and to integrate them into a reforming Church and State, authorities then turned to confession to integrate converts of other nationalities. But the sacrament was not only something that st...