Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of
KONSTANTIN GAVRILKIN
The Russian Orthodox Church (hereafter, ROC), also known as the Moscow patriarchate, is ranked fifth in the listing of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches (after Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem). The largest multinational church in the world, it has jurisdiction over most of the Orthodox parishes in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and other territories of the former Soviet Union (except for Georgia, which has its own autocephalous church), as well as a number of parishes in various regions of the world, organized in dioceses or under the direct authority of the patriarch of Moscow. There are also a number of ecclesiastical entities that emerged after the breakdown of the ROC caused by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and incessant persecution of the church by the Soviet government (Tsypin 2006). Some were part of the massive Russian diaspora, others emerged from the Catacomb movement (Beglov 2008).
An outline of the history of the ROC helps to understand the difficulties ncountered when dealing with the complex phenomenon of Russian Orthodoxy.
EVAN RUS LATE 9TH-EARLY 13TH CENTURIES
In 988, Vladimir, the Grand Prince of Kiev (980–1015), ordered the inhabitants of the capital to be baptized in the Dnieper river, following his own baptism in Chersonesus earlier that year. There were, however, Christians in Kiev already by the mid-10th century, and their numbers grew after the conversion of Vladimir’s grandmother Olga, who ruled in Kiev from 945 to 963 and was baptized in Constantinople in 954 (Golubinskii 1901). The missionary work of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, and especially their disciples in Bulgaria, who translated the basic corpus of Christian texts, including the liturgy, into Slavonic in the late 9th and early 10th centuries, were factors that eased the Christianization of the region. The mission was sponsored by the patriarchate of Constantinople, which exercised control over the ecclesiastical life of Ancient Rus and appointed all the Metropolitans “of Kiev and All Rus” until the mid-15th century (on the profound Byzantine legacy in Ancient Rus, see Thomson 1999).
Under Vladimir and his dynasty, Kiev and then such cities as Novgorod, Pskov, Vladimir, Rostov, and Suzdal’ gradually emerged as important regional centers of Christian culture and spirituality. Kiev’s Monastery of the Caves (later known as Kievo-Pecherskaia Lavra), founded in 1051 by St. Antonii Pecherskii, played a key role in shaping Russian monastic traditions and creating an original Christian literature, with its monks becoming the first Russian chroniclers, hagiographers, and spiritual writers. he Mongol invasion of 1220–40 left most of the Kievan Rus in ruins. Afterwards came a short period of control by the principality of Vladimir-Suzdal’, but in 1238 its capital, Vladimir, was itself destroyed, and in 1240 Kiev suffered a similar fate. After that point there followed dynastic and political reorganizations, and the northeastern lands became increasingly dominated by Moscow (Fennell 1983). Having recognized the long-lasting changes in the Russian political landscape, Maksim the Metropolitan of Kiev (1283–1305) abandoned the impoverished old capital and moved to Vladimir in 1299. His successor,
Plate 58 The Danilovsky Monastery, Moscow. Home of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate. Photo by John McGuckin.
Metropolitan Peter (1308–26), moved his court to Moscow permanently. RISE OF MOSCOW:
14TH-MID-15TH CENTURIES
The presence of the metropolitan’s court in Moscow increased the authority and ambition of the local Muscovy princes to unify the land under their sole rule. The metropolitans, in turn, used the new situation to secure the stability of the ROC and inspire unity among the divided Russian principalities. Most of them, such as Theognostus (1328–53) and Photius (1408–31), were Greeks from Constantinople who were able to use diplomatic skill, wisdom, and personal courage in dealing with the rival Russian rulers on the one hand, and the Golden Horde on the other (Meyendorff 1981). Some were locals, like Metropolitan Aleksii (1354–78), who prior to his election was for many years an assistant to Metropolitan Theognostus and, at the latter’s advice, was appointed his successor, ruling with authority and insight and striving to unite the Russian lands in their fight against Tatar oppression. His contemporary, St. Sergius of Radonezh (d. 1392), inspired a massive monastic movement that covered Russian territories with hundreds of monasteries, spreading the influence of hesychasm and ecclesiastical culture and further colonizing the land. The building of monasteries was accompanied by a broader cultural revival, one of the most remarkable examples of which was St. Andrei Rublev (d. 1430) and his school of iconography.
Plate 59 Patriarch Kiril, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Photo by John McGuckin.
During the reign of Vasilii II (1425–62), the ROC underwent a dramatic change that redefined its identity. In the 1430s, Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologus negotiated with Rome regarding the reunification of the Western and Eastern
Churches in order to save Constantinople from the looming takeover by the Ottoman Turks. His chief negotiator at the Council of Basle in 1434 was Bishop Isidor, who in 1437 was sent by the emperor to Moscow as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia in order to bring Muscovy into the union with Rome for the goal of the rescue of Constantinople. At the Council of Florence in 1439, Isidor was one of the chief Greek spokesmen for the reunion, and, upon signing the agreement, he was made by Pope Eugene IV the papal legate to All Russia and Lithuania and, later, Cardinal-Priest. When Isidor arrived in Moscow in the spring of 1441 as cardinal and papal legate he announced the union with Rome as official Orthodox Church policy. Vasilii II and the council of the Russian bishops rejected Isidor’s authority: he was deposed and imprisoned, but allowed to escape in the autumn of 1441. At the end of 1448, a few weeks after the death of the Byzantine “unionist” Emperor John VIII, the council of the Russian bishops finally decided to act independently, and elected Jonah, Bishop of Riazan (who had been the local candidate to the metropolitan’s office since 1431), who thus became the first head of the ROC not affirmed by Constantinople. The Church of Constantinople itself eventually rejected the union with Rome (1472), but its synod refused to recognize the ROC’s claim to independence until the late 16th century.
Plate 60 The Monastery of the Holy Trinity, Sergiev Posad, one of the homes of the Moscow Patriarch. Photo by John McGuckin.
In 1458 the uniate patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory III Mamma, who was living in Rome under papal protection, appointed the Bulgarian Gregory II as Metropolitan of Kiev, Galicia, and All Rus. Recognized by the Polish King Casimir IV, and with a unionizing policy in mind, Gregory’s legitimacy was rejected by Moscow, and its choice of metropolitan Jonah was reasserted. The de facto existence of two Russian metropolias was finally resolved by all involved parties in 1460. And in 1461, after the death of Metropolitan Jonah, the Russian bishops elected Archbishop Theodosius of Rostov with the title “Metropolitan of Moscow and all Rus.”
INDEPENDENCE: 1448–1589
The fall of Constantinople in 1453 made Muscovy the only free Orthodox country. Its leaders turned the tragedy of Constantinople into Moscow’s triumph, claiming that their country providentially became the sole successor of the fallen Byzantine Empire. Ivan III (1462–1505) assumed firm control over most of the Russian lands through marriage, purchase, or war, tripling the size of the state. In 1478–88 he also crushed the Republic of Novgorod, which immediately became the source of a significant and lengthy ecclesiastical and political crisis, caused by the so-called “heresy of Judaizers” (Klier 1997), instigated (to believe Joseph of Volotsk, its chief prosecutor and author of Prosvetitel’ [The Enlightener], a polemical treatise against the “Judaizers”) by a certain learned Jew, Skhariia (Zacharia), who in 1470 came to Novgorod from Kiev. Under his influence, some Orthodox clergy secretly embraced a “Judaic faith” (circumcision and other customs and rituals) and secretly rejected Christian teaching on the Trinity and divinity of Jesus, icon veneration, monasticism, and church sacraments. Two of them, the priests Denis and Aleksei, were eventually brought by the Grand Prince Ivan III to Moscow to serve in the capital’s cathedrals, where they managed to attract a significant group of followers in high places: the list of suspects included the Metropolitan of Moscow Zosima (1490–4), members of Ivan III’s family, and his high officials. The Judaizers capitalized on the absence of the full Bible in Slavonic and a rudimentary knowledge of theology among the locals. To neutralize their influence, Archbishop Gennadii of Novgorod organized a circle of translators, both Orthodox and Catholic, to collect existing biblical texts and translate the missing ones, and by 1499 he assembled the first full Slavonic Bible. Historians argue that Gennadius’ reliance on the expertise of a certain Dominican monk, Veniamin, could explain the favorable view of the Spanish Inquisition that he and Joseph of Volotsk seemed to display in their arguments and actions against the Judaizers, who were subjected to execution, imprisonment, and exile.
Simultaneously, Russian ecclesiastics were involved in the dispute regarding the nature of monastic life in relation to land ownership. Joseph of Volotsk and his party, heavily dependent on state protectionism, defended the vast monastic estates, covering one-third of the country at the time, as the basis of monasteries’ wellbeing and intense involvement in social welfare. Their opponents, led by Nil Sorskii, defended contemplative monasticism and warned of the corruption of the church by power, both economic and political. The two parties also sharply disagreed in their attitude to heretics in general and to the Judaizers in particular. Joseph of Volotsk praised the Inquisition and justified violence against the heretics (including their public burning at the stake), while Nil Sorskii argued for tolerance and the arts of non-violent persuasion. The Josephites, as they were called, won the support of the Grand Prince and dominated the ecclesiastical life of Muscovy in the 16th century, for most of which Muscovy was ruled by two people: Vasilii III (1506–33) and his son, Ivan IV (1533–84). Crowned tsar in 1547, Ivan IV greatly expanded the state by war and conquest, and completed Muscovy’s transition to autocracy by destroying regional elites and replacing them with his own appointees.
As long as it elevated and strengthened their authority, both subscribed to the ideology of Joseph of Volotsk, who, like his followers, was hopeful that a symphony of church and state in Muscovy was in sight. The whole 16th century, however, provides examples of how Russian rulers constantly kept their metropolitans in check: the latter always ran a risk of being deposed, imprisoned, and exiled (like Varlaam, 1511–21, or Ioasaf, 1539–42, or Dionisii, 1572–81), or even killed (like Philip, 1566–8), regardless of the significance of the issues involved.
Metropolitan Makarii (1542–63), himself a Josephite, became the most important figure in his century’s Russian ecclesiastical, as well as cultural, life. While archbishop of Novgorod (1526–42), he initiated a complex program of collecting and organizing all available translations of ecclesiastical texts, as well as Russian original literature (compiled in the Velikie Minei-Chet’i). His further significance as the metropolitan was demonstrated graphically, one might argue, by the fact that Ivan IV’s turn to uncontrollable violence (the so-called Oprichnina) took place after the metropolitan’s death in December 1563. Makarii presided over a number of local councils – in 1547, 1549, 1551, and 1553–4 – some (the so-called zemskie sobory) with the ecclesiastical and secular authorities gathering together for the purpose of resolving both religious and secular issues. Among other actions, the councils canonized many Russian saints, certified legal codes (both secular and ecclesiastical), organized the life of monasteries and their estates, and codified liturgical rites and the calendar. Makarii also supervised an extensive building of new monasteries and churches throughout Muscovy.
AUTOCEPHALOUS PATRIARCHATE: 1589–1720
During the reign of Tsar Feodor 1 (1584–98), when the government was controlled by his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov (himself a tsar in 1598–1605), Russian authorities on a number of occasions attempted to engage the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem in negotiations regarding the establishment of the office of patriarch of Moscow and, de jure, recognition of the ROC’s autoceph- aly. Only in 1589, however, when Patriarch of Constantinople Jeremiah II came to Moscow for help and alms after several years of harassment by the Turkish sultan, did the tide turn. Jeremiah had little choice but to agree to enthrone Job, metropolitan of Moscow since 1586, as the first Russian patriarch. The synods of Constantinople in 1590 and 1593 (in the latter case, with all Eastern patriarchs in attendance) confirmed Job’s enthronement, accorded the ROC the fifth place in the diptych of the Orthodox Churches, and accepted the Muscovites’ designation of their destiny, the only Orthodox country in the world, as now being the “Third Rome,” the successor of Constantinople (i.e., the “Second,” or New Rome, as the Greeks called their capital).
The 17th century became for the ROC a time of change and crisis. Several factors played a role in compromising what, after the establishment of the Russian patriarchate in 1589, looked like a bright and promising future. First were the developments in the neighboring Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where the metropolia of Kiev broke down under pressure from the Polish government and Catholic propaganda, led by the Jesuit Order. By the 1590s many of the previously Orthodox nobles converted to Catholicism, practically all the Orthodox bishops favored the union with Rome, and only a few self-organized Orthodox brotherhoods, with the support of the monasteries and a few landowners, engaged in active self-defense through education and the printing of Orthodox literature, encouraged to that end by the patriarch of Constantinople. The declaration of the Union with Rome, signed by the Kievan hierarchy at the Synod at Brzezno (Brest), allowed the Polish authorities to deny the weakened Orthodox community in the Commonwealth their own legal hierarchy. Only in the early 1630s did the Polish King Ladislas IV (1632–48) agree to the consecration of Peter Moghila as Orthodox metropolitan of Kiev (1633–46) in the jurisdiction of Constantinople. Moghila believed that, in order to survive in Poland, the Orthodox needed education first and foremost, modeled after the European universities. He turned around the Kiev Orthodox Academy by introducing an eleven-year course of study and set it on the path to becoming an intellectual center of Eastern Orthodoxy for years to come. One of the immediate results of the Russo-Polish War of 1654–67 and Russia’s annexation of the Left-Bank Ukraine was the migration of Ukrainian learned ecclesiastics, associated with the Kiev Academy, to Moscow at the invitation of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich Romanov (1645–76) and his successors. Shortly after, they began to play prominent roles in ecclesiastical affairs, theology, and education (Saunders 1985). But their dominance and undermining of local (and “older,” as their defenders claimed) traditions of religious and cultural practice began to generate strong resistance and opposition in Muscovy, erupting in the later 17th century in relation to the reforms of Patriarch Nikon (1652–66).
Another important factor was the increased authority of the Moscow patriarch, especially in the Time of Troubles (1603–13) and its aftermath. First, both Job (d. 1607) and Hermogen (1606–12) rejected two pretenders to the Moscow throne who relied on Polish troops and managed, albeit for a short time, to usurp the throne. Both ecclesiastics, together with Filaret, father of Tsar Michael Romanov (1613–45) and who would be a future patriarch himself (1619–33), became symbols of national resistance against the imposters and the Polish occupation. After the election of his son as the tsar in 1613, Filaret became the administrator of state affairs, accumulating in his hands that extensive personal authority which was later claimed for himself and his office by Patriarch Nikon, enthroned by Tsar Aleksei Mihailovich (1645–76).
By the mid-17th century the ROC was in need of reform. Liturgical abuses of various kinds, low moral standards, use of conflicting editions ofliturgical texts, translated from varying sources both by Ruthe- nian and Muscovite printers, and the absence of the recognized experts in Greek and Latin to verify translations, created a conflictual situation requiring radical intervention. As soon as he was installed as patriarch, Nikon claimed absolute authority and power over the reform project, making changes in liturgical books according to the new Greek editions. The opponents of changes argued, however, that the traditional Russian practice originated from the earlier Greek sources and that the new editions all came from the Catholic countries and could not be relied on. Unwilling to take Nikon’s side without negotiations, Tsar Aleksii eventually grew weary of the patriarch’s overbearing personality, his constant demands of obedience, and refusals to collaborate. In 1666 Nikon was deposed and imprisoned in Ferapontov
Monastery. Simultaneously, at the councils of 1666–7, the new rites were approved and the old ones condemned, together with the previous councils that endorsed them (the famous council of 1551, led by Metropolitan Makarii of Moscow). The opponents of the new practices were subjected to various forms of punishment after their refusal to accept the reforms. The leaders of what became known as the “Old Belief” (staraia vera, or staryi obriad) were executed, imprisoned, or exiled, while thousands escaped abroad or to Siberia; the persecution of the Old Believers continued until the 1905 Edict on Religious Tolerance.
SYNODAL PERIOD: 1721–1917
Peter I, who was in conflict with Patriarch Adrian (1690–1700) for most of the 1690s, did not allow for the election of his successor. Instead, in 1700 he established a commission for drafting new legislation limiting the privileges of the church and introducing taxation of dioceses. The reform, however, was delayed until 1721, when a manifesto on the establishment of the Spiritual Collegium (later, the Holy Governing Synod) was published, abolishing the office of the patriarch. In 1722 Peter I introduced the office of Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod (oberprokuror), who was directly appointed by the emperor from the ranks of career bureaucrats to supervise the daily operations of the holy synod. Until 1917 all resolutions of the synod of the ROC were published with the logo: “By decree of His Imperial Majesty.” Soon after, he also secured the agreement of the Eastern patriarchs to treat the synod as the legitimate successor of the Russian patriarch in all ecclesiastical affairs of the ROC.
The state’s encroachment on the ROC reached its peak after the ascension to power of Catherine II (1762–96), who in 1764 initiated a full secularization of ecclesiastical lands (they were confiscated with the attached serfs, almost a million of them) and sharply reduced the number and size of monasteries by dividing them into several categories: shtatnye (supported by the state) and zashtatnye (self-supporting), with each category subdivided into three classes according to the permitted number of monastics. The reform had a devastating effect on ecclesiastical life in general and monasticism in particular. Its opponents were subjected to a brutal persecution which made most of the bishops unwilling to voice their objections publicly, especially after what happened to the metropolitan of Rostov, Arsenii Matsisevich (d. 1772), who was deposed and imprisoned for the rest of his life.
Peter’s reforms, and their later augmentations, created a centralized administrative system with effective control over all dioceses of the ROC (previously covering an enormous territory, they were gradually reduced in size, as were the number of parishes). On the parish level, the state’s attempt to increase parishes’ size by reducing their number in order to improve the clergy’s material support, proved difficult. The liturgical burden of the priests increased considerably and left them with little time for educational and catechetical activities. Another government objective – the raising of the level of clerical education – was addressed only from the early 19th century onwards, when reforms in church education raised educational standards and significantly increased the number of seminary graduates among the clergy. This in turn, however, led to a new set of problems related to the hereditary structure of Orthodox clergy, a dynastic clerical tradition solidified by the legislation of the 18th century (Freeze 1977). Church schools, where only sons of the clergy could study, produced too many seminary graduates with a limited number of parishes to go to. Also, their appointment had little to do with professional or moral qualifications. Rather, it was based on the candidate’s willingness to marry a priest’s daughter and inherit the parish in due time (almost always, only after the death of the incumbent family-related priest). Even then, parish economy provided no adequate material support for priests, trained in superfluous subjects according to a Latin curriculum that laid emphasis on classical languages, as well as on agronomy, mathematics, medicine, and physics. In addition, priests depended on peasants’ voluntary payments for services or on the small produce the priest’s family could grow on the tiny land allotment belonging to the church, leaving little time for pastoral service.
Efforts by the government of Tsar Nicholas I (1825–54) to solve such problems proved insufficient (Freeze 1983: 3–187). A new attempt at reform of the ROC was made during the reign of Alexander II (1855–81), who had inherited the Russian Empire in a state of deep crisis, something that was abundantly revealed to him during the disastrous Crimean War (1853–6). The government was forced to reexamine the whole foundations of the Russian social and economic order, based on the labors of millions ofenslaved serfs. Then the policy of glasnost’ (openness) was deployed to engage the educated elite, alienated by Nicholas I, in debating the problems faced by the country. Major changes, initiated by the government, included the emancipation of the serfs (1861), establishment of representative local government (1861–4), and creation of an independent judicial system (1864), as well as the reforms of education (1863–4), municipal government (1870), the military (1874), and, finally, the ROC. While the reforms set the country on the path of rapid industrialization, they created new problems, caused by the inadequate legislation relating to the more than 20 million former serfs who were declared free without the legal right to the land they had formerly toiled. Millions moved to the sprawling cities and joined the quickly growing Russian proletariat, feeding the social unrest and the stormy revolutionary movement. This, in turn, gave rise to nationalism, xenophobia, and stubborn opposition to the reforms among the upper classes, thus further polarizing and destabilizing the country. On March 1, 1881, the very day when Alexander II approved a proposal for further and more substantial liberalization of the state policies on all levels – from the political structure of the empire to peasant land ownership – he was killed by a terrorist bomb, and the country was pulled back in the opposite direction by his son, Alexander III (1881–94), and his grandson, Nicholas II (1895–1917).
In the period of the Great Reforms, Russian ecclesiastics (bishops, priests, seminary professors, and synodal officials), as well as state bureaucrats and intellectuals, representing both liberal and conservative wings, got an opportunity openly to debate the situation of the church. The majority argued for the relaxation of state control over the church or even for the latter’s full independence. The government, however, needed to make the church a more effective pastoral, educational, and ideological institution, providing Russian society with social and political unity and stability, which seemed to it to require more effective state control over the church.
These contradictory objectives defined the trajectory and dynamic of the reforms attempted in the 1860s and 1870s (Freeze 1983: 191–347). Parish councils were established in 1864 with the expectation that they would focus on improving the material conditions of clergy and schools.
The new seminary statute (1867) opened church schools to students of all social groups (estates), while allowing seminarians also to enter the universities. The ban on hereditary transfers of parishes (1867) was followed by a reorganization of the parishes in general (1869): cutting down their number, increasing the average size, and limiting clerical positions within them, aiming to improve the material conditions of the priest. A set of additional measures freed clerical children from previous limitations imposed by law: they were now free to pursue career and marriage outside of the clerical estate (1869–71). Parallel positive developments included the revival of preaching, mission, charity, and conciliar practices (such as the institution of diocesan councils).
A slow implementation of the reforms made their results visible only in the late 1870s to 1880s. Although the priesthood became a vocation and the identity of the Russian clergy was greatly strengthened in the public eye, the reforms disrupted the functions of many of the institutions they aimed to improve. Parish councils spent most of their allotted money on decorations, rather than on priests and schools. The best students were leaving seminaries to pursue secular careers through university education. Academic standards in seminaries declined and they experienced acute reductions in enrollment, and the resulting lack of candidates for ordination began to affect dioceses. If priests wanted their sons to study at seminaries, they now had to pay for them (prior to the reform, it was free). Closure of many parishes was accompanied by a widespread bitterness of affected parishioners who were neither consulted nor provided with means of traveling to now-remote parishes. It was not surprising that the parish clergy, who suffered the most by losing privileges of free seminary education, and who now faced a shortage of parish appointments, were among the largest group who saw the reforms as a disaster for the ROC. There were, however, positive developments in the life of the ROC as well. Many bishops and priests now came to service in the ROC from non-priestly backgrounds, and one could find among them charismatic figures of both peasant and aristocratic origin. Revival of monastic spirituality led to the repopulation of many previously deteriorated monasteries. Russian missionaries labored in various regions of the multiethnic and multireligious Russian Empire, as well as abroad (such as in Japan and the United States). Numerous charities were administered by the ROC on behalf of the poor and destitute families, mostly in the industrialized urban areas. The remarkable advancement in critical religious and theological studies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in the areas of church history, patristics, and comparative religion (albeit for missionary purposes), was another positive result of the educational reform of the 1860s. The Russian religious renaissance of the early 20th century would not have been possible without the groundwork provided by the graduates of the reform theological schools who served as professors in many Russian universities.
The appointment of K. P. Pobedonostsev, one of the major promoters of counterreforms under Alexander III, as chief procurator of the synod (1880–1905), reversed the changes of the reform period. The new statute of theological schools (1884) simplified the curriculum with a focus on “spiritual formation” rather than scholarly training, cancelled elections of rectors and deans, and gave overall control over the schools to diocesan bishops instead of faculty. Seminarians were no longer allowed to leave for universities. Seminaries were changing into caste training institutions once again, with rigid disciplinary regimes, places that were intolerant of critical thinking. In the late 1890s and 1900s riots and clashes between administrations and seminarians took place in a number of seminaries; in some schools, fewer and fewer students sought ordination, such as in the seminary of Blagoveshchensk, where no priest could be found among any of its graduates between 1903 and 1913 (Smolich 1996).
These and similar changes in other areas, suffocating creativity and initiative, as introduced by Pobedonostsev’s policies, became another proof of the detrimental effects of state control over the church. A growing number of ecclesiastics, both liberal and conservative, began to raise voices in support of restoration of the office of Russian patriarch and called for a return to the principle of the administration of the ROC on the basis of canon law, rather than on the confusing, restrictive, and often arbitrary policies of the state. The whole synodal period became subject to critical reevaluation in the reign of Nicholas II, especially after the country’s defeat in the war with Japan, and the political crisis of the revolution of 1905. The unrest was aggravated by the inconsistent policies of the imperial government, oscillating between reform and reaction. In the polarized empire, nationalist and monarchist groups sought the support of the church in their struggle against liberalism and socialism, while representatives of the liberal wing within society and the ROC were increasingly critical of the state policies and doubtful that the autocratic monarchy of the Romanovs was capable of leading the country out of its political and economic crises, especially as they had been exacerbated by World War I.
The empire’s collapse in 1917 gave the ROC a chance finally to convene the All-Russian Church Council of August 1917-August 1918, which restored the office of the patriarch and proposed significant changes in the administration of the church on all levels. However, immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 the ROC came under increasing attack from the Soviet government, which immediately declared a separation of church and state only to unleash systematic propaganda against the church with openly repressive policies in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1918–22. Within twenty years, the country with more than 50,000 churches would see most of them destroyed or converted for different use (with only a few hundred deliberately kept open for propaganda purposes). Under the increasingly violent hostility of the Soviets most of the ROC’s 200,000 clergy and monastics were killed or imprisoned, and around 1,000 monasteries closed (except for those in the territories that became independent).
SOVIET PERIOD: 1917–1988
The collapse of the Russian Empire and the Bolshevik Revolution disturbed the unity of the ROC. The Civil War, with quickly shifting frontlines and local governments and dislocation of hundreds of thousands, made it impossible for Patriarch Tikhon and the synod of the ROC to maintain normal communications with various dioceses in regions affected by unrest and bloodshed, or taken over by foreign armies, or even belonging to a separate state. In a few years a number of Orthodox entities in now independent and sovereign countries (Poland, the Baltics, Bessarabia, Ukraine, Georgia, the Far East) declared their independence from the administration of the ROC, which had no capacity to control the situation or assist them, or else they joined the patriarchate of Constantinople. Already in 1920, Patriarch Tikhon decided to give the former dioceses of the ROC freedom to choose their own course of action: he issued a decree allowing diocesan bishops, who had no more contact with the administration of the ROC, to pursue the best solution to their immediate problems by uniting with the bishops of neighboring territories.
Some of the bishops, clergy, and the faithful began to reorganize already in the course of the Civil War but later, forced to escape, continued to maintain their temporary jurisdictional affiliations. The largest group ofthe Orthodox, represented by a group of exiled Russian bishops, took the next step when in 1920, in Constantinople, creating the Synod of the Russian Church in Diaspora (later, the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia, or ROCOR), including also the Russian dioceses in Finland, China, Japan, and Manchuria. Led by Metropolitan of Kiev Antonii Khrapovitsky, in 1921 they moved to Yugoslavia. In 1936 a group led by Metropolitan Evlogy joined the patriarchate of Constantinople and has remained in its jurisdiction to this day. During and after World War II, a substantial number of Russian emigres moved farther west into Europe, or to the Americas and Australia. Another part of the ROC, the American metropolia, maintained its operational independence from both the Moscow patriarchate and the ROCOR, until it was granted formal independence by the Moscow patriarchate in 1970, becoming the Orthodox Church in America (its autocephalous status has not been recognized by Constantinople and several other churches). After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it took more than fifteen years to see the ROCOR and the Moscow patriarchate sign the Act of Reunion in 2007, with ROCOR retaining its operational autonomy according to the agreement.
The main body of the ROC, led by Patriarch Tikhon, was subjected to brutal persecution. Within a few years of 1917, all theological schools were closed, printing of religious literature was prohibited, and most of the active and noteworthy clergy and monastics who had survived murder, torture, and execution were imprisoned in concentration camps. A short-lived attempt of the Renovationist movement, or the so-called “Living Church” (obnovlentsy), supported by the Soviet government so as to gain the trust of the Russian Orthodox and, simultaneously, pose as the “new,” progressive church that embraced the Soviet ideology, ended in disgrace, soon exposed as a puppet organization controlled by the Soviet secret police.
With the beginning of World War II and the German occupation of a substantial part of the Soviet Union, thousands of churches were reopened in the occupied territories, reigniting anti-Soviet sentiments among the local population. To counteract the success ofthe Nazis in the region and encourage local support for the retreating Soviet troops, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin met with a few Russian bishops in September 1943 and agreed to give the ROC some freedom in exchange for their visible public support of the regime. A few days later, the church council was convened and Sergey Stragorodskii (1867–1944), metropolitan of Moscow, who in 1927 had issued a “Declaration of loyalty to the Soviet government” (further antagonizing the Russian Orthodox outside the Soviet Union), was elected patriarch, only to die in 1944. In 1945 Alexey (Simanskii), metropolitan of Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg), was elected patriarch (1945–70). Although thousands of churches were reopened, many bishops and priests released from prisons and camps, and a few theological schools and monasteries reestablished in the postwar years, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1953–65) subjected the ROC to another wave of persecution that lasted, with different degrees of intensity, until the perestroika initiated under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–91).
CURRENT PERIOD
The beginning of the latest period of Russian Church renaissance could be linked either to the celebration of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus or to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when liberalization of Soviet policies towards the ROC gradually led to the latter’s full independence. The year 1990 marked the election of Aleksii II as Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia (1990–2008), and he it was who oversaw the revival of the ROC after decades of violent and systemic repression, with the restoration of thousands of churches and monasteries, and the reopening of numerous dioceses and theological schools. Among other things, the ROC initiated the ongoing canonization of thousands of Russian Orthodox clergy and laity who had been persecuted and killed during the Soviet period, on the basis of the archival documents dispersed throughout the country.
Since the 1990s the ROC has had to deal with intra-Orthodox jurisdictional conflicts with the ecumenical patriarchate (over Estonia and Ukraine) and the Romanian Orthodox Church (over Moldavia); some of them are still unresolved. There are also, internally, a few minority groups (often vaguely) linked to the Catacomb movement of the Soviet period, claiming the status of the “true Orthodox Church” and accusing the ROC of being a “grace-less” political institution that has betrayed “true Orthodoxy.” The ROC has also been deeply affected by the tides of widespread xenophobia, nationalism, fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and even fascism that have washed over Russian society in the traumatic post-communist years. Since the collapse of the Soviet regime, the ROC has been also increasingly criticized in the Russian democratic press for being more interested in state protectionism, rather than in its own moral integrity and issues of spiritual freedom, criticized for restoring and guarding its privileged status, rather than addressing systemic social and economic problems, causing child abuse, alcoholism, prostitution, and drug use of catastrophic proportions. The church started to make its stance clearer in significant policy documents addressing moral and social problems, especially in the so-called “Social Contract Document” issued by the synod in recent times. In addition, as in other multiethnic and multireligious countries, the ROC has also been confronted with the increasingly difficult problem of finding a proper way for conducting missionary work without being accused of proselytizing among other religious minorities. It has objected loudly to proselytism from Catholic and Protestant “missionaries,” which it sees as taking advantage of its long years of martyrdom, and often of being wholly ignorant of its enduring deep Christian roots in Russian culture and life.
The present leader (as of 2009) of the ROC is Patriarch Kiril. In terms of its institutional structure, the ROC is administered on the basis of the Church Statute of 2000 and includes the direct administration of all Orthodox parishes in Russia (or jurisdictional guidance for the autonomous churches, including the Autonomous Church of Japan; the self-ruling Churches of Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, and Ukraine; the Belorussian Exarchate). The ROC has 160 dioceses, including all regions of Russia; 24 synodal departments; 788 monasteries, 30,142 parishes; and numerous educational institutions of various types and levels such as universities, institutes, academies, and seminaries.
SEE ALSO: Berdiaev, Nikolai A. (1874–1948); Constantinople, Patriarchate of; Khomiakov, Aleksey S. (1804–1860); Men, Alexander (1935–1990); Moghila, Peter (1596–1646);
Non-Possessors (Nil Sorskii); Possessors (Joseph Volotsk); St. Andrei Rublev (ca. 1360–1430); St. Elizaveta Feodorovna (1864–1918); St. Filaret (Philaret) Drozdov (1782–1867); St. Ignatius Brianchaninov (1807–1867); St. Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833); St. Sergius of Radonezh (1314–1392); St. Theophan (Govorov) the Recluse (1815–1894); St. Tikhon (Belavin) (1865–1925); Solovyov, Vladimir (18531900); Ukraine, Orthodoxy in the; United States of America, Orthodoxy in the
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Aleksii, Patriarch of Moscow (ed.) (2000)
Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia: Russkaia
Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’. Moscow: Pravoslavnaia Etsiklopediia.
Beglov, A. L. (2008) V poiskakh “bezgreshnykh katakomb.” Tserkovnoe podpol’e v SSSR. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskoi Patriarkhii.
Fennell, J. (1983) The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1200–1304. London: Longman.
Franklin, S. (2002) Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950–1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Franklin, S. and Shepard, J. (1996) The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200. London: Longman.
Freeze, G. L. (1977) The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Freeze, G. L. (1983) The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth- Century Russia: Crisis, Reform and Counter Reform. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Golubinskii, E. E. (1901) Istoriia Russkoi Tserkvi. Tom 1. Period pervyi, Kievskii ili domongol’skii, 2nd edn. Moscow: Universitetskaia tip.
Klier, J. D. (1997) “Judaizing Without Jews? Moscow-Novgorod, 1470–1504,” in G. D. Lenhoff and A. M. Kleimola (eds.) Culture and Identity in Muscovy, 1359–1584. Moscow: ITZ- Garant, pp. 336–49.
Kosik, V. I. (2008) Russkoe tserkovnoe zarubezh’e: xx vek v biografiiakh dukhovenstva ot Ameriki do Iaponii. Moscow: PSTGU.
Meyendorff, J. (1981) Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations
in the Fourteenth Century. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Pliguzov, A. (1992) “Archbishop Gennadii and the Heresy of the ‘Judaizers’,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 16: 269–88.
Plokhy, S. (2006) The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saunders, D. (1985) The Ukrainian Impact on Russian Culture, 1750–1850. Edmonton: CIUS Press.
Smolich, I. K. (1996) Istoriia Russkoi Tserkvi, Vol. 1. Moscow: Izd-vo Spaso-Preobrazhenskogo
Valaamskogo monastyria.
Thomson, F. J. (1999) The Reception of Byzantine Culture in Medieval Russia. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Press.
Tsypin, V. (2006) Istoriia Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi: Sinodal’nyi i noveishii periody, 2nd edn. Moscow: Izd-vo Sretenskogo monastyria.