Ivanov, "Reforming Orthodoxy: Russian Bishops and Their Church, 1721-1801" (PhD diss., Yale University, 2012); Ivanov, "The Saint of Russian Reformation: Tikhon of
Zadonsk and Protestant Influences in the 18th-Century Russian Orthodox Church," in Religion and Identity in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Festschrift for Paul Bushkovitch, ed.
Their topics include expressions of non-elite identity and perspectives in pre-Petrine Russia, Tikhon of
Zadonsk and Protestant influences in the 18th-century Russian Orthodox Church, the Reformation in Finland, the rite of Orthodoxy in modern Russia, and Theodore Dreiser's Russian Diary.
In all things, men are "manager, not lord," in the formula of Bishop Tikhon of
Zadonsk. According to Pavel Buryshkin, who wrote on the attitudes and mores of the nineteenth-century commercial elite, this sort of thinking was well ingrained, as was the notion that God would ultimately hold individuals accountable for how they had managed His "estate." (77) These ideas can easily be generalized towards animals, which were clearly also a gift of God and part of His estate.
Tikhon of
Zadonsk (1724-1783) was the first great Russian staretz (elder), and his legacy was influential for centuries through the elders of Optina monastery.
(33) The influence of Catholic spirituality on St Tikhon of
Zadonsk (34) can equally be sensed.
See, for example, Vera Koroleva, ed., Sviatitel" Nikolai, mitropolit Alma-Atinskii i Kazakhstanskii (Moscow: Palomnik, 2000); and S liubov'iu k liudiam: Po vospominaniiam o skhiigumene Mitrofane (Miakitine) (
Zadonsk: Izdatel'stvo Zadonskogo muzhskogo monastyria, 2005).
In Russia itself, figures such as Tikhon of
Zadonsk and Serafim of Sarov were searching for renewed monastic life.