Abstract
With the fall of Tsarist Russia and the chaos which ensued after the Great War, the Roman Catholic Church began serious missionary efforts to convert Russia to Catholicism. As the Bolsheviks continued to solidify their seizure of power, the opportunity for conversion receded. In response, the Pontifical Commission for Russia, headed independently by the Jesuit bishop Michel d’Herbigny, managed the meager gains it made but perhaps more importantly, planned for a future in which the Church could resume its missionary activity. The cornerstone of this planning was the training of “Russian Rite” priests at the Russicum. Much of the scholarship on this theme has examined this from an ecclesiological or anticipatory Cold War perspective. This article, contrarily, examines the so-called Russian Mission of the Catholic Church from a cultural perspective through an analysis of Rev. Walter Ciszek, S.J., who spent almost twenty-three years inside the USSR, many of them inside the Soviet prison and GULAG system. The article contends that Ciszek was ill-prepared by the Church for his mission, significantly based on soft-Orientalist dynamics at work in the Russicum.
