CERTIFIABLY ORTHODOX: Reversion to Orthodoxy and the Challenge of Existential Eschatology in 1930s and 1940s Bessarabia

Forced reversion to Orthodoxy was one of a number of instruments deployed by the Romanian state to counter religious dissent in the interwar and wartime periods. Based on archival examples of Inochentist practices of resistance, this article argues that eschatology was an important factor influencing Bessarabian peasants’ rejection of the Romanian national project. Taking account of the distinct brand of existential eschatology characteristic of Inochentism helps us grasp both the power of religious commitment to override calls for ethnic or national solidarity and the inability of the Romanian state and Orthodox Church to persuade peasants that it was in their existential interest to support and participate in the new political order.