I was recently asked to give a paper in Germany to a group of friends and partners of the Lutheran church in the former Soviet Union. There was the desire from the group that I speak about Orthodoxy a bit in order to come to a fuller understanding of the post-Soviet context. I prepared this text as an oral presentation, which means I didn't follow in this text academic standards for citations; the text is also quite long. Perhaps, though, it also might be useful to those of you who are interested in learning more about the history and contemporary situation in the church in Russia. It also might give a bit of insight into the churches' actions (or lack of action) when various controversies arise.
* * *
We all know the tragic story of the repression of religion in the former Soviet Union, but what we might not always think about is the wide variety of ways this traumatic experience affects the life of the church today. To be more precise, we know of the destruction of church buildings and structures and the execution of tens or even hundreds of thousands of people based on their faith. But there is another aspect, too, I would call it the “moral” aspect, that remains in the background even as the church in many other aspects is restored. Taking a look at the life and ministry of Sergei (born Ivan) Stragorodsky will help us come to a fuller understanding of what the church went through and some of the problems it faces today.
I'd like to begin with a quote from Sergei's "Declaration of Loyalty" from 1927
For anyone who knew Sergei in the first decade of the 20th century (when he served for a time as Rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy) or in the second (when he led the Orthodox mission board, was made Archbishop and then Metropolitan), his declaration of 1927 would have been quite a surprise. His life reflects the tempestuous times -
Sergei had served in Japan (becoming fluent in the language) in a period when the Russian Empire was trying to increase its influence in the Pacific region; after returning to Russia, he got involved in the most important cultural and political events of the day. He was one of the main initiators of a series of meetings between church leaders and the intelligentsia which strove to build bridges of understanding between the two groups (the "Religious-Philosophical Dialogs.") Those in the tsarist government who were responsible for the church (and most especially the reactionary Ober-Procurator, Konstantin Pobedonostsev) believed that any dialog with liberals (let alone compromise or reform) would be dangerous for both the state and for Orthodoxy, but Sergei consistently fought for renewal of the church. He was the major author of a 1904 request to the tsar that a synod of the Russian Orthodox Church be called as soon as possible in order to do away with the current system (under which the church was a part of state bureaucracy), and "demanded an immediate council of clergy and laity for the renewal and liberation of the whole church organism." Although Nicholas II said that he favored reform of the church, he constantly put off the synod until "calmer times." Because Nicholas' reign was anything but calm, the council was not called until after he had already abdicated the throne. During the years intervening years, Sergei became heavily involved with the planning of the first Synod of the Russian Orthodox church since the 17th century. Not only did he side with those who suggested significant changes in everyday life of the church (e.g., making Russian the primarily language of worship in the place of Old Church Slavonic), he also believed that the laity should have a major voice and vote in the decisions of the upcoming synod.
After the Revolution these desires to bring about real reform in the church led him to participate in the council, which tried to carry out its business in the midst of the revolutionary chaos of 1917-18). Though the council was not able to address many of the questions on its very wide agenda, it did manage to restore its pre-Petrine structures and elect a Patriarch (Tikhon). While this might seem to us to be a step backward toward the old ways, in fact it was a move intended to free the church from state attempts to control and limit its intended reforms. This was not enough for Sergei, though, and this led him to join, for a period of just over a year, a splinter group called the "Living Church." It appears that Sergei saw the enormous influence of a reactionary form of Orthodoxy taking hold in the official church and felt that the best way to move forward was to leave the Moscow Patriarchate.
But Sergei was sorely disappointed in his experience. There, together with sincere reformers, he found an even greater number of power-hungry and /or ignorant revolutionaries. The reformers fought among themselves, too, and splinter groups splintered even more. It also became clear fairly quickly that the Bolsheviks planned to use the “Living Church” and other groups as a way to “divide and conquer” Orthodoxy. Suffering complete disappointment, Sergei returned to his roots. By the autumn of 1923 he repented before Tikhon and was accepted back into the leadership of the Patriarchal church.
From this moment on, it seems, Sergei is convinced of the necessity to save the structures of the Moscow Patriarchate, and that unity among Orthodox Christians is essential for Christianity in Russia to survive.
And by this time, of course, there was a real question about whether or not Orthodoxy could survive. The Bolshevik regime was placing enormous pressure on the church, though it was not yet confident enough in its powers to start an all-out, frontal attack. Although you probably know this already, let me remind you a bit of the ways the Soviet leaders tried to destroy Christianity in the country from the time of the revolution until the end of the 1930s.
In 1918 Lenin issued an edict of separation of church and state. While this could be interpreted either as a step toward neutrality in regards to religion or even a positive thing, in fact it was meant to strip away the church's legal status and begin the process of taking away its material possessions. Throughout the 1920s various excuses were found by the government to repress the church – it was rich while the people were suffering from famine (in the Volga region 1921-22 and in the Ukraine and central Russia in the early 1930s), the church's precious medals were needed for state purposes, church leaders were involved in “anti-Soviet activities,” etc. During the early 1920s this was not a major priority of the government, but by the mid-20s there was a huge propaganda campaign organized against the church. In addition, it was at this time that clergy (and leaders in the hierarchy in particular) were being arrested. Between 1925 and 1927, 117 of the 160 bishops of the Moscow Patriarchy were in prison.
This was the church-wide context of Sergei's “Declaration of Loyalty.” But making the situation even more difficult was the fact that he himself had spent two terms in prison by this time, Patriarch Tikhon had passed away, and there was great confusion regarding who was now the legitimate leader of the Moscow Patriarchate. Sergei was one of the candidates for that position, and the government decided that it was with/through him that they would work. The secret police threaten Sergei, saying that they would arrest the rest of the bishops that remained free and would hand over congregations to splinter groups if there was no clear sign from the Moscow Patriarchate that they supported the Soviet government. Sergei took the hint and wrote and draft statement that he found to be an acceptable expression of the church's position to the state. In it he basically repeated the views of Patriarch Tikhon, that the church was “inherently neutral” in questions of politics. His draft was not accepted, however, and he was arrested once again. This time a draft was written for him (probably by the secret police), and Sergei eventually agreed to sign it and issue the text as the “Declaration of Loyalty.”
Sergei knew that by taking this step he would be condemned by many church leaders and also that there was a large chance that the government would not fulfill their promises of making life easier for Orthodox Christians (e.g., by allowing them to officially register as legal entities and by freeing arrested bishops) after the publication of the "Declaration." At the same time he felt that this was the best way to maintain the church and its structure - despite his earlier progressive stance, he was typically Orthodox in thinking that even bishops that were approved by the Soviet secret police were better than no bishops at all insofar as bishops guaranteed the survival of the church. In short, then, there doesn't seem to be much evidence of Sergei's personal ambition in issuing the "Declaration." Instead he was doing what he thought best for the survival of the church.
Yet, there were no immediate positive affects for Orthodox believers after the publication of the "Declaration." In fact, the 1930s make the 20s look like child's play in regards to the repression of the church. At the beginning, the Bolsheviks believed that the church would collapse in on itself once the material possessions were gone. But neither that nor massive propaganda approved terribly effective in destroying the church. By the end of the 1920s, too, the government knew that its efforts with encouraging splinter groups were no longer productive, and that open repression of the church led believers to go "underground," and the "catacomb church" was more difficult to control. New efforts (starting in the 1920s but spreading in the 1930s) were directed at the repression of individual believers - people were kicked out of the party and then lost their jobs for perhaps baptizing a child or visiting the cemetery. New and enormous tax burdens were place on clergy. Not paying these taxes helped the government have an excuse for another and even more effective method of repression - to arrest local clergy (since Orthodox parishes functioned very poorly without a priest). According to the best statistics we have, in 1928 1500 were arrested; in 1929 - 3000; in 1930 -13,000; and in 1931-32 -19,000 more. As priests "disappeared" local officials found it much easier to close down parishes. By 1933 only around 20% of pre-Revolutionary churches were still open. In 1936 there seemed to be a new effort for the mass liquidation of all religions; the Stalinist regime tried to collapse ALL power into one place. Between 1918 and late 30s, approx. 42,000 Orthodox clerics were killed. But soon the wider political situation of the Soviet Union and its neighbors changed, and this had a large effect on the place of Orthodoxy in the country.
During the 1930s, Sergei did the best he could to maintain a holding pattern, to somehow keep some sliver of church life alive. He also tried to distance himself from anti-Soviet agitation from Christian groups (including Orthodox Christian groups) abroad. One of “his” most infamous acts of these years was a supposed interview with the western press in which he declared that there was no and never had been any repression of the church in Russia (this in response to the Pope's and the Archbishop of Canterbury's calls for Christian nations to stand up against Stalin's repression of the church). Only in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union has been possible to prove that these declaration were made in Sergei's name, but did not come from his hand – they were falsifications written by KGB agents, though Sergei had no way of bringing this fact to light without threatening his own position and the position of the church as a whole.
In addition Sergei tried to gain support among conservatives through taking the unusual step of condemning emigre theologian Sergei Bulgakov, whose theology of Divine Wisdom ("Sophiology") was the apogee of the movement known as the "Russian Religious Renaissance,"a movement that Sergei himself had been very close to in those long-past days of the early 20th century when he tried to build bridges between the church and educated society. Here Sergei, it seems, was overcompensating to prove his (capital and small "o") orthodoxy to those who condemned him for various reasons. In these years, it seemed that the only possible maneuvering for Sergei was to condemn those whom the Stalinist regime also found reason to condemn.
As I mentioned earlier, the situation changed for the Orthodox church only at the end of the 1930s, when new territories were added to the Soviet Union. This provoked a new religious policy on the part of Stalin insofar as he knew that in places like western Ukraine, outright attacks on religion would cause him many problems. This situation became even more intense after Nazi forces advanced and occupied former Soviet territories. There civilians could see a marked difference in the way the church was treated by the state, and this had a certain effect on morale. One example, from the Kiev region:
1917 1940 (USSR) 1942 (Nazi occupation)
Churches 1710 2 318
Monasteries 23 0 8
Priests 1435 3 437
Monks and nuns 5193 0 387
Given this reality, Stalin eventually decided the church would be a useful instrument to improve the image of the Soviet government along the front lines of the war.
In addition, the Orthodox Church (under Sergei's active leadership) also proved to be a significance force in encouraging patriotic feelings in the country. On the day the Soviet Union was attacked, Sergei issued a statement calling all Orthodox believers to defend the homeland - "our Orthodox church has always shared the fate of the people. Together with the the people the church went through trials and was comforted by its successes. And the church will not leave the people even now. It blesses with a heavenly blessing the upcoming heroism of all the people." This time around, it wasn't a KGB statement, but his own personal initiative. He and the few other leading bishops left alive and free (a total of 4!) organized offerings to help pay for the war effort. Sergei petitioned Stalin to allow the Church to open a bank account for donations as the church plans to finance the building of a division of tanks (40); Stalin agreed. This not only had the effect of drawing Stalin's attention to the potential usefulness of the church, it also de facto meant that the church could act as a legal entity (i.e., by having a bank account) for the first time in decades. The tone toward the church in the Soviet press changed almost immediately - there were now very few attacks on Orthodoxy.
Sergei continued to support the war effort. A typical example - just after Novgorod was overrun by the Nazis, Sergei made an emotional appeal to the clergy of the Moscow region: "just recently in St. Sophia's Cathedral in Novgorod the Great, in a place where for almost a thousand years the Orthodox liturgy was celebrated, a Lutheran pastor has served [i.e., presided at the liturgy]. Let the same not be repeated here, in the heart of holy Rus." Sergei
fails to mention two things: 1. there had been numerous Lutheran congregations in Novgorod, all of which were shut down by the Soviets 2. The Soviets had shut down St. Sophia's itself and turned it into an anti-religious museum in 1929. Another example, from a statement issued in November 1942: "On this 25th anniversary of the Republic of the Soviets, in the name of our Clergy and of all the believers of the Russian Orthodox Church, faithful children of our Fatherland, I salute with cordiality and piety, in your person, the leader chosen by God [emphasis added], the leader of our military and cultural forces, who is guiding us to triumph over the barbarous invasion, to the prosperity of our country in peace, towards a radiant future for its peoples. May God bless by success and glory your valorous exploits for our Fatherland."
At any rate it wasn't until 1942 that the regime began to openly acknowledge the Orthodox Church as a partner in the war effort. In that year permission to celebrate the Easter vigil in the capital was given for the first time. By the fall of 1943, Stalin was ready to "reward" the Orthodox church for its efforts, and the "directed rebirth" of the church began. On September 3, 1943, the three functioning Orthodox Metropolitans met with Stalin to determine the conditions of the church's new status, and a few days later church leaders met to officially elect Sergei as patriarch, more than 15 years after he took the reins of what was left of church administration. (Stalin was particularly open to allowing this to happen at this time since later that month a delegation from the Anglican Church would be visiting). The gathered clergy issued a statement - "We are deeply touched by the sympathetic relationship of our Leader of all the people - the Head of the Soviet government, J.V. Stalin - to the needs of the Russian Orthodox Church and to our humble efforts, ...we give our synod-wide thanks to the government."
By early 1945 the number of active bishops had more than doubled, and there were more than 10000 functioning churches in the USSR (granted most were in the newly occupied territories, but there was a limited degree of church-openings in Russia proper as well). Over the next 10 years over 70 diocese were organized, dozens of monasteries were re-opened, tens of thousands of priests were able to serve, many of them after having studied in one of the newly-opened seminaries. The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate came out regularly, and splinter groups from the Moscow Patriarchate were eliminated or driven underground. At the same time, everything that the official church did was carefully controlled; no bishops were appointed without KGB approval, and the church remained on very shaky legal ground. (There is one interesting story about the church's vulnerability in those days: Stalin asked - "Why don't you have enough personnel?" He knew perfectly well why - these people had been executed according to his orders in the preceding years. But Sergei found a different answer - "One of the reasons is that we prepare a priest [for service] and instead he becomes a Marshal of the Soviet Union."This was a not-so-veiled reference to Stalin himself, who as a young man had studied in seminary. Stalin apparently liked the answer and allowed the church to open up a theological institute in Moscow.)
There are diametrically opposed interpretations of Sergei's actions as leader of the church. Some feel that he was a traitor to the faith, while others believe that all the compromises he made were worth it in order to guarantee the survival of the Russian Orthodox church. In any case it is clear that his leadership set the tone for the relationship between the church and the government until the end of the Soviet period.
While it is outside of the realms of this meeting, those who are familiar with Russian history know that, while Sergei's experiences were extreme, they fall within the pattern of church/state relations established in Russia for many centuries. And while the Patriarchate could occasionally act as a force counter to the tsar in Russia's first Patriarchal period (as was the occasion, however rarely, in the Byzantine Empire from which Russia inherited its Eastern Christian tradition), after Peter the Great the Church was always at the mercy of the state. Patriarch Tikhon's attempt to establish the "inherently neutrality: of the church in the early Soviet period is outside of the tradition of Russian Christianity. And this was not just the position of politicians - as a rule church leaders have also believed that it is in the best interests of the faith to be close to those in power.
Knowing this history help us understand the life of the Russian Orthodox Church today. For example one can find a number of parallels between the path of Patriarch Sergei and the current Patriarch, Kirill. Both spent years serving the church abroad and did much to build bridges between the church and educated members of society. Both, after becoming the leader of the church, seemed to have found it necessary to “prove” their Orthodoxy. Both Sergei and Kirill were correct in their analysis that there was a danger of splinter groups forming on the “right wing” of the church. Sergei especially thought about the underground church, while Kirill had to deal with the effects of a situation that began shortly before his election – the activity of Bishop Diomid from Anadyr and Chukotka (Far East), who became a “non-commemorator,” i.e., he stopped praying for the Patriarch, because of the latter's “heretical” stance on certain issues (e.g., openness to dialog with other confessions.) And as Sergei was assisted by Stalin, the current Patriarch also receives much support from the country's most powerful leader, President Putin. It is not surprising that when a group like Pussy Riot comes along and aims their criticism directly at the heart of the the problem - the close relationship between the church and the state - the government takes swift and decisive action to silence them.
When we take this situation into account we can come to a better understanding of the barriers for reform in the Russian Orthodox Church today, as well as the difficulty it has in finding a critical, prophetic voice. The Lutheran Church in Russia comes from a similar background, and in some ways faces a similar challenge. At the same time, though, the utter lack of power of our church can be used for the sake of the Gospel – if other Christians find it hard to turn a critical eye toward the government and society, might we find the courage to step into that void?
* * *
We all know the tragic story of the repression of religion in the former Soviet Union, but what we might not always think about is the wide variety of ways this traumatic experience affects the life of the church today. To be more precise, we know of the destruction of church buildings and structures and the execution of tens or even hundreds of thousands of people based on their faith. But there is another aspect, too, I would call it the “moral” aspect, that remains in the background even as the church in many other aspects is restored. Taking a look at the life and ministry of Sergei (born Ivan) Stragorodsky will help us come to a fuller understanding of what the church went through and some of the problems it faces today.
I'd like to begin with a quote from Sergei's "Declaration of Loyalty" from 1927
We want to be Orthodox, and at the same time to see the Soviet Union as our civic Fatherland, whose triumphs and successes are also our triumphs and successes, whose failures are our failures. Every attack against the Union whether it be war, boycott or any other public affliction... will be regarded as an attack against ourselves.These may seem like very strange words from a person who lived in at a time and in a country that executed some of the worst (probably the worst) repressions of Christians in all history. We might be more surprised still when we know more about the person who was the purported author of the text - Sergei Stragorodsky, a church leader whose path led him to be a missionary, a seminary rector, a progressive bishop ...and at the end of his life, Patriarch under Stalin.
 |
| Sergei Stragorodsky |
 |
| Konstantin Pobedonostev |
After the Revolution these desires to bring about real reform in the church led him to participate in the council, which tried to carry out its business in the midst of the revolutionary chaos of 1917-18). Though the council was not able to address many of the questions on its very wide agenda, it did manage to restore its pre-Petrine structures and elect a Patriarch (Tikhon). While this might seem to us to be a step backward toward the old ways, in fact it was a move intended to free the church from state attempts to control and limit its intended reforms. This was not enough for Sergei, though, and this led him to join, for a period of just over a year, a splinter group called the "Living Church." It appears that Sergei saw the enormous influence of a reactionary form of Orthodoxy taking hold in the official church and felt that the best way to move forward was to leave the Moscow Patriarchate.
But Sergei was sorely disappointed in his experience. There, together with sincere reformers, he found an even greater number of power-hungry and /or ignorant revolutionaries. The reformers fought among themselves, too, and splinter groups splintered even more. It also became clear fairly quickly that the Bolsheviks planned to use the “Living Church” and other groups as a way to “divide and conquer” Orthodoxy. Suffering complete disappointment, Sergei returned to his roots. By the autumn of 1923 he repented before Tikhon and was accepted back into the leadership of the Patriarchal church.
 |
| Sergei and Patriarch Tikhon |
And by this time, of course, there was a real question about whether or not Orthodoxy could survive. The Bolshevik regime was placing enormous pressure on the church, though it was not yet confident enough in its powers to start an all-out, frontal attack. Although you probably know this already, let me remind you a bit of the ways the Soviet leaders tried to destroy Christianity in the country from the time of the revolution until the end of the 1930s.
In 1918 Lenin issued an edict of separation of church and state. While this could be interpreted either as a step toward neutrality in regards to religion or even a positive thing, in fact it was meant to strip away the church's legal status and begin the process of taking away its material possessions. Throughout the 1920s various excuses were found by the government to repress the church – it was rich while the people were suffering from famine (in the Volga region 1921-22 and in the Ukraine and central Russia in the early 1930s), the church's precious medals were needed for state purposes, church leaders were involved in “anti-Soviet activities,” etc. During the early 1920s this was not a major priority of the government, but by the mid-20s there was a huge propaganda campaign organized against the church. In addition, it was at this time that clergy (and leaders in the hierarchy in particular) were being arrested. Between 1925 and 1927, 117 of the 160 bishops of the Moscow Patriarchy were in prison.
This was the church-wide context of Sergei's “Declaration of Loyalty.” But making the situation even more difficult was the fact that he himself had spent two terms in prison by this time, Patriarch Tikhon had passed away, and there was great confusion regarding who was now the legitimate leader of the Moscow Patriarchate. Sergei was one of the candidates for that position, and the government decided that it was with/through him that they would work. The secret police threaten Sergei, saying that they would arrest the rest of the bishops that remained free and would hand over congregations to splinter groups if there was no clear sign from the Moscow Patriarchate that they supported the Soviet government. Sergei took the hint and wrote and draft statement that he found to be an acceptable expression of the church's position to the state. In it he basically repeated the views of Patriarch Tikhon, that the church was “inherently neutral” in questions of politics. His draft was not accepted, however, and he was arrested once again. This time a draft was written for him (probably by the secret police), and Sergei eventually agreed to sign it and issue the text as the “Declaration of Loyalty.”
Sergei knew that by taking this step he would be condemned by many church leaders and also that there was a large chance that the government would not fulfill their promises of making life easier for Orthodox Christians (e.g., by allowing them to officially register as legal entities and by freeing arrested bishops) after the publication of the "Declaration." At the same time he felt that this was the best way to maintain the church and its structure - despite his earlier progressive stance, he was typically Orthodox in thinking that even bishops that were approved by the Soviet secret police were better than no bishops at all insofar as bishops guaranteed the survival of the church. In short, then, there doesn't seem to be much evidence of Sergei's personal ambition in issuing the "Declaration." Instead he was doing what he thought best for the survival of the church.
Yet, there were no immediate positive affects for Orthodox believers after the publication of the "Declaration." In fact, the 1930s make the 20s look like child's play in regards to the repression of the church. At the beginning, the Bolsheviks believed that the church would collapse in on itself once the material possessions were gone. But neither that nor massive propaganda approved terribly effective in destroying the church. By the end of the 1920s, too, the government knew that its efforts with encouraging splinter groups were no longer productive, and that open repression of the church led believers to go "underground," and the "catacomb church" was more difficult to control. New efforts (starting in the 1920s but spreading in the 1930s) were directed at the repression of individual believers - people were kicked out of the party and then lost their jobs for perhaps baptizing a child or visiting the cemetery. New and enormous tax burdens were place on clergy. Not paying these taxes helped the government have an excuse for another and even more effective method of repression - to arrest local clergy (since Orthodox parishes functioned very poorly without a priest). According to the best statistics we have, in 1928 1500 were arrested; in 1929 - 3000; in 1930 -13,000; and in 1931-32 -19,000 more. As priests "disappeared" local officials found it much easier to close down parishes. By 1933 only around 20% of pre-Revolutionary churches were still open. In 1936 there seemed to be a new effort for the mass liquidation of all religions; the Stalinist regime tried to collapse ALL power into one place. Between 1918 and late 30s, approx. 42,000 Orthodox clerics were killed. But soon the wider political situation of the Soviet Union and its neighbors changed, and this had a large effect on the place of Orthodoxy in the country.During the 1930s, Sergei did the best he could to maintain a holding pattern, to somehow keep some sliver of church life alive. He also tried to distance himself from anti-Soviet agitation from Christian groups (including Orthodox Christian groups) abroad. One of “his” most infamous acts of these years was a supposed interview with the western press in which he declared that there was no and never had been any repression of the church in Russia (this in response to the Pope's and the Archbishop of Canterbury's calls for Christian nations to stand up against Stalin's repression of the church). Only in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union has been possible to prove that these declaration were made in Sergei's name, but did not come from his hand – they were falsifications written by KGB agents, though Sergei had no way of bringing this fact to light without threatening his own position and the position of the church as a whole.
In addition Sergei tried to gain support among conservatives through taking the unusual step of condemning emigre theologian Sergei Bulgakov, whose theology of Divine Wisdom ("Sophiology") was the apogee of the movement known as the "Russian Religious Renaissance,"a movement that Sergei himself had been very close to in those long-past days of the early 20th century when he tried to build bridges between the church and educated society. Here Sergei, it seems, was overcompensating to prove his (capital and small "o") orthodoxy to those who condemned him for various reasons. In these years, it seemed that the only possible maneuvering for Sergei was to condemn those whom the Stalinist regime also found reason to condemn.
As I mentioned earlier, the situation changed for the Orthodox church only at the end of the 1930s, when new territories were added to the Soviet Union. This provoked a new religious policy on the part of Stalin insofar as he knew that in places like western Ukraine, outright attacks on religion would cause him many problems. This situation became even more intense after Nazi forces advanced and occupied former Soviet territories. There civilians could see a marked difference in the way the church was treated by the state, and this had a certain effect on morale. One example, from the Kiev region:
1917 1940 (USSR) 1942 (Nazi occupation)
Churches 1710 2 318
Monasteries 23 0 8
Priests 1435 3 437
Monks and nuns 5193 0 387
Given this reality, Stalin eventually decided the church would be a useful instrument to improve the image of the Soviet government along the front lines of the war.
In addition, the Orthodox Church (under Sergei's active leadership) also proved to be a significance force in encouraging patriotic feelings in the country. On the day the Soviet Union was attacked, Sergei issued a statement calling all Orthodox believers to defend the homeland - "our Orthodox church has always shared the fate of the people. Together with the the people the church went through trials and was comforted by its successes. And the church will not leave the people even now. It blesses with a heavenly blessing the upcoming heroism of all the people." This time around, it wasn't a KGB statement, but his own personal initiative. He and the few other leading bishops left alive and free (a total of 4!) organized offerings to help pay for the war effort. Sergei petitioned Stalin to allow the Church to open a bank account for donations as the church plans to finance the building of a division of tanks (40); Stalin agreed. This not only had the effect of drawing Stalin's attention to the potential usefulness of the church, it also de facto meant that the church could act as a legal entity (i.e., by having a bank account) for the first time in decades. The tone toward the church in the Soviet press changed almost immediately - there were now very few attacks on Orthodoxy.
Sergei continued to support the war effort. A typical example - just after Novgorod was overrun by the Nazis, Sergei made an emotional appeal to the clergy of the Moscow region: "just recently in St. Sophia's Cathedral in Novgorod the Great, in a place where for almost a thousand years the Orthodox liturgy was celebrated, a Lutheran pastor has served [i.e., presided at the liturgy]. Let the same not be repeated here, in the heart of holy Rus." Sergei
 |
| Artistic representation of St. Sophia's in the 1940s. |
At any rate it wasn't until 1942 that the regime began to openly acknowledge the Orthodox Church as a partner in the war effort. In that year permission to celebrate the Easter vigil in the capital was given for the first time. By the fall of 1943, Stalin was ready to "reward" the Orthodox church for its efforts, and the "directed rebirth" of the church began. On September 3, 1943, the three functioning Orthodox Metropolitans met with Stalin to determine the conditions of the church's new status, and a few days later church leaders met to officially elect Sergei as patriarch, more than 15 years after he took the reins of what was left of church administration. (Stalin was particularly open to allowing this to happen at this time since later that month a delegation from the Anglican Church would be visiting). The gathered clergy issued a statement - "We are deeply touched by the sympathetic relationship of our Leader of all the people - the Head of the Soviet government, J.V. Stalin - to the needs of the Russian Orthodox Church and to our humble efforts, ...we give our synod-wide thanks to the government."
There are diametrically opposed interpretations of Sergei's actions as leader of the church. Some feel that he was a traitor to the faith, while others believe that all the compromises he made were worth it in order to guarantee the survival of the Russian Orthodox church. In any case it is clear that his leadership set the tone for the relationship between the church and the government until the end of the Soviet period.
While it is outside of the realms of this meeting, those who are familiar with Russian history know that, while Sergei's experiences were extreme, they fall within the pattern of church/state relations established in Russia for many centuries. And while the Patriarchate could occasionally act as a force counter to the tsar in Russia's first Patriarchal period (as was the occasion, however rarely, in the Byzantine Empire from which Russia inherited its Eastern Christian tradition), after Peter the Great the Church was always at the mercy of the state. Patriarch Tikhon's attempt to establish the "inherently neutrality: of the church in the early Soviet period is outside of the tradition of Russian Christianity. And this was not just the position of politicians - as a rule church leaders have also believed that it is in the best interests of the faith to be close to those in power.
Knowing this history help us understand the life of the Russian Orthodox Church today. For example one can find a number of parallels between the path of Patriarch Sergei and the current Patriarch, Kirill. Both spent years serving the church abroad and did much to build bridges between the church and educated members of society. Both, after becoming the leader of the church, seemed to have found it necessary to “prove” their Orthodoxy. Both Sergei and Kirill were correct in their analysis that there was a danger of splinter groups forming on the “right wing” of the church. Sergei especially thought about the underground church, while Kirill had to deal with the effects of a situation that began shortly before his election – the activity of Bishop Diomid from Anadyr and Chukotka (Far East), who became a “non-commemorator,” i.e., he stopped praying for the Patriarch, because of the latter's “heretical” stance on certain issues (e.g., openness to dialog with other confessions.) And as Sergei was assisted by Stalin, the current Patriarch also receives much support from the country's most powerful leader, President Putin. It is not surprising that when a group like Pussy Riot comes along and aims their criticism directly at the heart of the the problem - the close relationship between the church and the state - the government takes swift and decisive action to silence them.
When we take this situation into account we can come to a better understanding of the barriers for reform in the Russian Orthodox Church today, as well as the difficulty it has in finding a critical, prophetic voice. The Lutheran Church in Russia comes from a similar background, and in some ways faces a similar challenge. At the same time, though, the utter lack of power of our church can be used for the sake of the Gospel – if other Christians find it hard to turn a critical eye toward the government and society, might we find the courage to step into that void?
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