After the death of
Patriarch Tikhon in April, 1925, and the arrest and imprisonment of the
patriarchal locum tenens, Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsa, in December,
1925, True Orthodoxy in Russia was without a first-hierarch living in freedom
and able to administer the Church. By the middle of 1926, Metropolitan Sergius
(Stragorodsky) of Nizhni-Novgorod had established himself as the leading Russian
hierarch, although he was neither patriarch nor patriarchal locum tenens,
but only a deputy of Metropolitan Peter. As such, he did not have the authority
to undertake any important steps in Church matters without the express
authorization of Metropolitan Peter.

Lev Regelson has argued[1]
that Metropolitan Peter’s action in appointing deputies was not canonical, and
created misunderstandings that were to be ruthlessly exploited later by
Metropolitan Sergius. A chief hierarch does not have the right to transfer the
fullness of his power to another hierarch as if it were a personal inheritance:
only a Council representing the whole Local Church can elect a leader to replace
him. Patriarch Tikhon’s appointment of three locum tenentes was an
exceptional measure, but one which was nevertheless entrusted to him by – and
therefore could claim the authority of – the Council of 1917-18. However, the
Council made no provision for what might happen in the event of the death or
removal of these three. In such an event, therefore, patriarchal authority
ceased, temporarily, in the Church; and there was no canonical alternative,
until the convocation of another Council, but for each bishop to govern his
diocese independently while maintaining links with neighbouring dioceses, in
accordance with the Patriarch’s ukaz no. 362 of November 7/20, 1920.

In defence of Metropolitan
Peter it may be said that it is unlikely that he intended to transfer the
fullness of his power to Metropolitan Sergius, but only the day-to-day running
of the administrative machine. In fact he explicitly said this later, in his
letter to Sergius dated January 2, 1930.[2]
Moreover, in his declaration of December 6, 1925, he had given instructions on
what should be done in the event of his arrest, saying that “the raising of my
name, as patriarchal locum tenens, remains obligatory during Divine
services.”[3]
This was something that Patriarch Tikhon had not insisted upon when he
transferred the fullness of his power to Metropolitan Agathangelus in 1922. It
suggests that Metropolitan Peter did not exclude the possibility that his deputy
might attempt to seize power from him just as the renovationists had seized
power from the patriarch and his locum tenens in 1922, and was taking
precautions against just such a possibility.

The critical distinction
here is that whereas the patriarchal locum tenens has, de jure,
all the power of a canonically elected Patriarch and need relinquish his power
only to a canonically convoked Council of the whole local Church, the deputy of
the locum tenens has no such fullness of power and must relinquish such
rights as he has at any time that the Council or the locum tenens
requires it. Nevertheless, the important question remains: why did Metropolitan
Peter not invoke ukaz no. 362 and announce the decentralization of the
Church’s administration at the time of his arrest? Probably for two important
reasons:

(1)The restoration of the patriarchate was one of the main achievements of
the Moscow Council of 1917-18, and had proved enormously popular. Its
dissolution might well have dealt a major psychological blow to the masses, who
were not always educated enough to understand that the Church could continue to
exist either in a centralized (though not papist) form, as it had in the East
from 312 to 1917, or in a decentralized form, as in the catacombal period before
Constantine the Great and during the iconoclast persecution of the eighth and
ninth centuries.

(2)The renovationists – still the major threat to the Church in Metropolitan
Peter’s eyes – did not have a patriarch, and their organization was, as we have
seen, closer to the synodical, state-dependent structure of the
pre-revolutionary Church. The presence or absence of a patriarch or his
substitute was therefore a major sign of the difference between the true Church
and the false for the uneducated believer.

There is another important
factor which should be mentioned here by way of introduction. Under the rules
imposed upon the Church administration by Peter the Great in the eighteenth
century, the Ruling Synod was permitted to move bishops from one see to another,
and even to retire, ban or defrock them, in a purely administrative manner. This
was contrary to the Holy Canons of the Church, which envisage the defrocking of
a bishop only as a result of a full canonical trial, to which the accused bishop
is invited to attend three times. Peter’s rules made the administration of the
Church similar to that of a government department – which is precisely what the
Church was according to his Reglament. It enabled the State to exert
pressure on the Church to move and remove bishops in the speediest and most
efficient manner, without the checks and balances – and delays – that following
the Holy Canons would have involved. This was bad enough in itself, even when
the State was kindly disposed towards the Church. It was catastrophic when the
State became the enemy of the Church after 1917… Now Patriarch Tikhon, while not
rescinding Peter’s rules, had opposed the pressure of the State, on the one
hand, and had preserved the spirit of sobornost’, or conciliarity, on the
other, consulting his fellow bishops and the people as far as possible. But the
danger remained that if the leadership of the Church were assumed by a less holy
man, then the combination of the uncanonical, Petrine rules, on the one hand,
and an increase of pressure from the State, on the other, would lead to
disaster…

The fall of the Moscow
Patriarchate took place as a result of a decisive movement by Metropolitan
Sergius and a small group of likeminded hierarchs towards a reconciliation
between the Orthodox Church and the God-hating Soviet power and their close
collaboration in support of the revolution. It was not authorized by
Metropolitan Peter, who remained in prison until his martyric death in 1937. And
it was in any case contrary both to the dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox
Church, and to the anathema of Patriarch Tikhon of January 19 / February 1, 1918
- which was supported by the Local Council of the Russian Church then in session
in Moscow - against any such collaboration. It was imposed upon the Church
without any conciliar consultation, and the dissidents – who included most of
the senior bishops – were ruthlessly disposed of – forcibly retired, banned or
defrocked – without the possibility of a trial by their fellow-bishops or appeal
against the verdict. The decisions of Sergius and Synod were still more
ruthlessly followed up by Soviet power, which cast all those who opposed “our
Sergius” into prison or exile, where the great majority of them perished.

*

Of course, the Soviets
would have preferred to act through the canonical leader of the Church,
Metropolitan Peter, rather than a deputy. For that would have given their
take-over of the Church greater “canonicity”. However, in December, 1926, when
the Soviet official Tuchkov proposed to Metropolitan Peter, who was in prison in
Suzdal, that he renounce his locum tenancy, Peter refused, and then sent a
message to everyone through a fellow prisoner that he would “never under any
circumstances leave his post and would remain faithful to the Orthodox Church to
death itself”.[4]

This was a blow to the
Soviets: while continuing to try and persuade Metropolitan Peter – through the
well-known methods of torture – to change his mind, they would have to try and
find another man to act as the Judas of the Russian Church. Fortunately for
them, however, on January 1, 1927, while he was in Perm on his way to exile on
the island of Khe in Siberia, Metropolitan Peter confirmed Sergius as his
deputy. This suited the Soviets perfectly, because Sergius was well-known even
from the pre-revolutionary period for his “leftist” views, and had even been a
leader of the pro-Soviet renovationist schism in 1922.

Though he came to regret
this decision, Metropolitan Peter was not able to revoke it officially from his
remote exile. And the Soviets wasted no time in imprisoning Sergius, so as to
remind him, if he needed reminding, who the real powers in the land were… After
three months in prison, Sergius emerged in April a devoted servant of the
revolution…

While Sergius was in
prison, Archbishop Seraphim of Uglich had been managing affairs as his
deputy. At the beginning of March he was summoned from Uglich to Moscow and
interrogated for three days by the GPU. Evidently, they were thinking that if
Seraphim might also be useful to them, they might not need Sergius…

But they were mistaken.
Seraphim was offered a Synod, and indicated who should be its members. Seraphim
rejected this list, and put forward his own list of names, which included
Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan, probably the most authoritative hierarch in Russia
and one of Patriarch Tikhon’s three locum tenentes (the others were
Metropolitan Agathangel of Yaroslavl and Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsa).

“But he’s in prison,” they
said.

“Then free him,” said the
archbishop.

The GPU then presented him
with conditions for the legalization of the Church by Soviet power. This would
have involved surrendering the Church into the power of the atheist. Arfed
Gustavson writes: “He refused outrightly without entering into discussions,
pointing out that he was not entitled to decide such questions without the
advice of his imprisoned superiors. When he was asked whom he would appoint as
his executive deputy he is said to have answered that he would turn over the
Church to the Lord Himself. The examining magistrate was said to have looked at
him full of wonder and to have replied:

“’All the others have
appointed deputies…’

“To this Seraphim
countered: ‘But I lay the Church in the hands of God, our Lord. I am doing this,
so that the whole world may know what freedom Orthodox Christianity is enjoying
in our free State.’”[5]

Another account of this
dialogue was given by Archbishop Seraphim’s senior subdeacon, Michael
Nikolaevich Yaroslavsky: “For 100 days Vladyka Seraphim happened to rule the
whole of the Russian Orthodox Church. This was in 1926. Metropolitan Sergius was
in prison, everybody was in prison…

“And so, as he had been put
in charge, Vladyka told me that at that time the authorities offered him, as the
Primate of the Church, a Synod of bishops. He did not agree and immediately
received three years in Solovki camp. He did not betray the Church, but…
declared the autocephaly of each diocese, since each Church Primate was another
candidate for prison…”[6]

This was a decisive moment,
for the central hierarch of the Church was effectively declaring the Church’s
decentralization. And not before time. For with the imprisonment of the last of
the three possible locum tenentes there was really no canonical basis for
establishing a central administration for the Church before the convocation of a
Local Council. But this was prevented by the communists. As we have seen, the
system of deputies of the deputy of the locum tenens had no basis in
Canon Law or precedent in the history of the Church. And if it was really the
case that the Church could not exist without a first hierarch and central
administration, then the awful possibility existed that with the fall of the
first hierarch the whole Church would fall, too…

The communists also wanted
a centralized administration; so Tuchkov now turned to Metropolitan Agathangelus
with the proposal that he lead the Church. He refused. Then he turned to
Metropolitan Cyril with the same proposal. He, too, refused. The conversation
between Tuchkov and Metropolitan Cyril is reported to have gone something like
this:-

“If we have to remove some
hierarch, will you help us in this?”

“Yes, if the hierarch
appears to be guilty of some ecclesiastical transgression… In the contrary case,
I shall tell him directly, ‘The authorities are demanding this of me, but I have
nothing against you.’”

“No!” replied Tuchkov. “You
must try to find an appropriate reason and remove him as if on your own
initiative.”

To this the hierarch
replied: “Eugene Nikolayevich! You are not the cannon, and I am not the shot,
with which you want to blow up our Church from within!”[7]

*

On April 2, 1927
Metropolitan Sergius emerged from prison, ready to be the shot that would blow
up the Orthodox Church from within… He was released from prison on condition
that he did not leave Moscow – although before his arrest he had not had the
right to live in Moscow. However, the investigation of his case was not
discontinued, showing that the authorities still wanted to keep him on a
leash... Five days later, Archbishop Seraphim handed over to him the government
of the Russian Church. And another six days later, on April 13, Metropolitan
Sergius announced to Bishop Alexis (Gotovtsev), who was temporary administrator
of the Moscow diocese, that he had assumed the post of deputy of the patriarchal
locum tenens.[8]

On May 16 Sergius asked the
NKVD for permission to hold a preliminary meeting with six or seven hierarchs
with a view to inviting them to become members of a Synod and then to petition
the government for registration of the Synod. The NKVD immediately agreed,
acknowledging receipt of one rouble for the certificate. “Thus a one-rouble
certificate inaugurated the history of the legalized Moscow Patriarchate.”[9]

On May 18 the meeting took
place, and the hierarchs agreed to convert their meeting into a temporary
Patriarchal Holy Synod. The members of this Synod, according to Archbishop
Seraphim’s subdeacon, were precisely those hierarchs that had been suggested to
Archbishop Seraphim, but whom he had rejected… As the Catholic writer Deinber
points out, “when the names of the bishops invited to join the Synod were made
known, then there could be no further doubts concerning the capitulation of
Metropolitan Sergius before Soviet power. The following joined the Synod:
Archbishop Sylvester (Bratanovsky) – a former renovationist; Archbishop Alexis
Simansky – a former renovationist, appointed to the Petrograd see by the Living
Church after the execution of Metropolitan Benjamin [Kazansky]; Archbishop
Philip [Gumilevsky] – a former beglopopovets, i.e. one who had left the
Orthodox Church for the sect of the beglopopovtsi; Metropolitan Seraphim
[Alexandrov] of Tver, a man whose connections with the OGPU were known to all
Russia and whom no-one trusted…”[10]

On May 20, the OGPU
officially recognized this Synod, which suggested that Metropolitan Sergius had
agreed to the terms of the legalization of the Church by Soviet power which
Patriarch Tikhon and Metropolitan Peter had rejected. One of Sergius’ closest
supporters, Bishop Metrophanes of Aksaisk, had once declared that “the
legalization of the church administration is a sign of heterodoxy”… In any case,
on May 25 Metropolitan Sergius and his “Patriarchal Holy Synod” now wrote to the
bishops enclosing the OGPU document and telling them that their diocesan
councils should now seek registration from the local organs of Soviet power.
Some hierarchs hastened to have their diocesan administrations legalized. But as
it turned out, the OGPU was in no hurry to register diocesan councils before
their membership had been established to the OGPU’s satisfaction…

“In 1929, when the results
were already obvious, [the Catacomb] Bishop Damascene (Tsedrik) wrote this in
his ‘Letter to the Legalized Ones’: ‘Fathers and brothers! While it is still not
too late, do think and look into the essence of the ‘legalization’ that was
graciously granted to you, lest you should later bitterly repent of the mistake
that all of you with Metropolitan Sergius at your head are now committing! What
you are accepting under the name of ‘legalization’ is, in essence, an act of
bondage that guarantees you no rights whatsoever, while imposing upon you some
grievous obligations. It would be naïve to expect anything other than that. The
Communist Soviet Power is frank and consistent. It openly declared itself
hostile to religion and set the destruction of the Church as its goal. It never
stops stating openly and clearly its theomachistic tasks through its top
governmental representatives and all of its junior agents. This is why it is
very naïve and criminal to believe that the so-called legalization by the
Soviets is even partially seeking the good of the Church.”[11]

In June, 1927 Sergius wrote
to Metropolitan Eulogius of Paris directing him to sign a declaration of loyalty
to the Soviet power. He agreed… On July 14, in ukaz№
93, Sergius demanded that all clergy abroad should sign a formal pledge to cease
criticizing the Soviet government. It also stated that any clergyman abroad who
refused to sign such would no longer be considered to be a part of the Moscow
Patriarchate. This ukaz, which completely contradicted his previous
ukaz of September 12, 1926, which blessed the hierarchs abroad to form their
own independent administration, even included the actual text of the pledge that
was to be signed: “I, the undersigned, promise that because of my actual
dependence upon the Moscow Patriarchate, I will not permit myself in either my
social activities nor especially in my Church work, any expression that could in
the least way be considered as being disloyal with regard to the Soviet
government.”[12]

The clergy abroad were
given until October 15 to sign this pledge. The ROCOR
Council of Bishops, in their encyclical dated August 26, 1927, refused this
demand and declared: "The free portion of the Church of Russia must terminate
relations with the ecclesiastical administration in Moscow [i.e., with
Metropolitan Sergius and his synod], in view of the fact that normal relations
with it are impossible and because of its enslavement by the atheist regime,
which is depriving it of freedom to act according to its own will and of freedom
to govern the Church in accordance with the canons."[13]

However, Metropolitan
Eulogius of Paris, agreed to sign, “but on condition that the term ‘loyalty’
means for us the apoliticisation of the émigré Church, that is, we are obliged
not to make the ambon a political arena, if this will relieve the
difficult situation of our native Mother Church; but we cannot be ‘loyal’ to
Soviet power: we are not citizens of the USSR, and the USSR does not recognise
us as such, and therefore the political demand is from the canonical point of
view non-obligatory for us…”[14]

The impossible demands that
Sergius’ appeal for loyalty to the Soviet Union placed on hierarchs living
outside the Soviet Union was pointed out by the future hieromartyr, Archbishop
John of Latvia, to Metropolitan Eleutherius of Lithuania: “As far as I know you,
your co-pastors and flock, the question of loyalty to the USSR and the openly
antitheist authorities in power there can be resolved sincerely by you only in a
negative sense. But if you and your flock were not such as I know you to be, the
confession of loyalty to the USSR and the authorities in power there would still
be impossible for you from a juridical point of view. And you and your
co-pastors and flock are obliged under oath to be faithful citizens of the
Lithuanian Republic. Simultaneous fidelity both to Lithuania and the USSR is
juridically unthinkable. But even if it were not a question of loyalty in the
sense of fidelity to the USSR where the ‘appeal’ [of Metropolitan Sergius] was
born, but in the sense of benevolence towards the USSR, then all the same you,
as a faithful son of Lithuania, cannot in the future and in all cases promise
benevolence towards the USSR…”[15]

On July 5, 1928, the
Hierarchical Synod of ROCOR decreed: “The present ukaz [of Sergius]
introduces nothing new into the position of the Church Abroad. It repeats the
same notorious ukaz of his Holiness Patriarch Tikhon in 1922, which was
decisively rejected by the whole Church Abroad in its time.”[16]
In response to this refusal, Metropolitan Sergius expelled the hierarchs of the
Russian Church Abroad from membership of the Moscow Patriarchate. So the first
schism between the Russian Church inside and outside Russia took place as a
result of the purely political demands of Sergius’ Moscow Patriarchate.

*

On July 16/29, Metropolitan
Sergius issued the infamous Declaration that has been the basis of the existence
of the Sovietized Moscow Patriarchate ever since, and which was to cause the
greatest and most destructive schism in the history of the Orthodox Church since
the fall of the Papacy in the eleventh century.

Several points should be
noted about this document. First Sergius pretended that Patriarch Tikhon had
always been aiming to have the Church legalized by the State, but had been
frustrated by the émigré hierarchs and by his own death. There is a limited
truth in this – but it was not the émigré hierarchs that frustrated the
patriarch, nor did he want the kind of legalization Sergius wanted… Then he went
on: “At my proposal and with permission from the State, a blessed Patriarchal
Synod has been formed by those whose signatures are affixed to this document at
its conclusion. Missing are the Metropolitan of Novgorod, Arsenius, who has not
arrived yet, and Archbishop Sebastian of Kostroma, who is ill. Our application
that this Synod be permitted to take up the administration of the Orthodox
All-Russian Church has been granted. Now our Orthodox Church has not only a
canonically legal central administration but a central administration that is
legal also according to the law of the State of the Soviet Union. We hope that
this legalization will be gradually extended to the lower administrative units,
to the dioceses and the districts. It is hardly necessary to explain the
significance and the consequences of this change for our Orthodox Church, her
clergy and her ecclesiastical activity. Let us therefore thank the Lord, Who has
thus favoured our Church. Let us also give thanks before the whole people to the
Soviet Government for its understanding of the religious needs of the Orthodox
population. At the same time let us assure the Government that we will not
misuse the confidence it has shown us.

“In undertaking now, with
the blessings of the Lord, the work of this Synod, we clearly realize the
greatness of our task and that of all the representatives of the Church. We must
show not only with words but with deeds, that not only people indifferent to the
Orthodox Faith or traitors to the Orthodox Church can be loyal citizens of the
Soviet Union and loyal subjects of the Soviet power, but also the most zealous
supporters of the Orthodox Church, to whom the Church with all her dogmas and
traditions, with all her laws and prescriptions, is as dear as Truth and Life.

“We want to be Orthodox,
and at the same time to see the Soviet Union as our civil Fatherland, whose
triumphs and successes are also our triumphs and successes, whose failures are
our failures. Every attack, boycott, public catastrophe or an ordinary case of
assassination, as the recent one in Warsaw, will be regarded as an attack
against ourselves…”

Protopriest Lev Lebedev
comments on this: “This murder in Warsaw was the murder by B. Koverdaya of the
Bolshevik Voikoff (also known as Weiner), who was one of the principal
organizers of the murder of the Imperial Family, which fact was well known then,
in 1927. So Sergius let the Bolsheviks clearly understand that he and his
entourage were at one with them in all their evil deeds up to and including
regicide.”
[17]

Metropolitan Sergius
continued: “Even if we remain Orthodox, we shall yet do our duties as citizens
of the Soviet Union ‘not only for wrath but also for conscience’s sake’ (Romans
13.5), and we hope that with the help of God and through working together and
giving support to one another we shall be able to fulfil this task.

“We can be hindered only by
that which hindered the construction of Church life on the bases of loyalty in
the first years of Soviet power. This is an inadequate consciousness of the
whole seriousness of what has happened in our country. The establishment of
Soviet power has seemed to many like some kind of misunderstanding, something
coincidental and therefore not long lasting. People have forgotten that there
are no coincidences for the Christian and that in what has happened with us, as
in all places and at all times, the same right hand of God is acting, that hand
which inexorably leads every nation to the end predetermined for it. To such
people who do not want to understand ‘the signs of the times’, it may also seem
that it is wrong to break with the former regime and even with the monarchy,
without breaking with Orthodoxy… Only ivory-tower dreamers can think that such
an enormous society as our Orthodox Church, with the whole of its organisation,
can have a peaceful existence in the State while hiding itself from the
authorities. Now, when our Patriarchate, fulfilling the will of the reposed
Patriarch, has decisively and without turning back stepped on the path of
loyalty, the people who think like this have to either break themselves and,
leaving their political sympathies at home, offer to the Church only their faith
and work with us only in the name of faith, or (if they cannot immediately break
themselves) at least not hinder us, and temporarily leave the scene. We are sure
that they will again, and very soon, return to work with us, being convinced
that only the relationship to the authorities has changed, while faith and
Orthodox Christian life remain unshaken… ”[18]

An article in Izvestia
immediately noted the essence of the declaration – a return to renovationism:
“The far-sighted part of the clergy set out on this path already in 1922”.[19]
So “sergianism”, as Sergius’ position came to be known, was “neo-renovationism”,
and therefore subject to the same condemnation as the earlier renovationism of
“the Living Church” received - anathema. As recently as November, 2008 the True
Orthodox Church of Russia[20]
has defined sergianism as “a neo-renovationist schism”.

The radical error that lay
at the root of this declaration lay in the last sentence quoted, in the idea
that, in an antichristian state whose aim was the extirpation of all religion,
it was possible to preserve loyalty to the State while “faith and Orthodox
Christian life remained unshaken”. This attitude presupposed that it was
possible, in the Soviet Union as in Ancient Rome, to draw a clear line between
politics and religion. But in practice, even more than in theory, this line
proved impossible to draw. For the Bolsheviks, there was no such dividing line;
for them, everything was ideological, everything had to be in accordance
with their ideology, there could be no room for disagreement, no private spheres
into which the state and its ideology did not pry. Unlike most of the Roman
emperors, who allowed the Christians to order their own lives in their own way
so long as they showed loyalty to the state, the Bolsheviks insisted in imposing
their own ways upon the Christians in every sphere: in family life (civil
marriage only, divorce on demand, children spying on parents), in education
(compulsory Marxism), in economics (dekulakization, collectivization), in
military service (the oath of allegiance to Lenin), in science (Darwinism,
Lysenkoism), in art (socialist realism), and in religion (the requisitioning of
valuables, registration, commemoration of the authorities at the Liturgy,
reporting of confessions by the priests). Resistance to any one of these demands
was counted as "anti-Soviet behaviour", i.e. political disloyalty.
Therefore it was no use protesting one's political loyalty to the regime if one
refused to accept just one of these demands. According to the Soviet
interpretation of the word: "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one has
become guilty of all of it" (James 2.10), such a person was an enemy
of the people. Metropolitan Sergius’ identification of his and his Church’s
joys and sorrows with the joys and sorrows of Soviet communism placed the souls
of the millions who followed him in the most serious jeopardy.[21]

The publication of Sergius’
Declaration was greeted with a storm of criticism. Its opponents saw in it a
more subtle version of renovationism. Even its supporters and neutral
commentators from the West have recognized that it marked a radical change in
the relationship of the Church to the State.

Thus Professor William
Fletcher comments: “This was a profound and important change in the position of
the Russian Orthodox Church, one which evoked a storm of protest.”[22]
According to the Soviet scholar Titov, “after the Patriarchal church changed its
relationship to the Soviet State, undertaking a position of loyalty, in the eyes
of the believers any substantial difference whatsoever between the Orthodox
Church and the renovationists disappeared.”[23]
According to Archimandrite (later Metropolitan) John (Snychev), quoting from a
renovationist source, in some dioceses in the Urals up to 90% of parishes sent
back Sergius’ declaration as a sign of protest.”[24]
Again, Donald Rayfield writes: “In 1927… Metropolitan Sergi formally surrendered
the Orthodox Church to the Bolshevik party and state.”[25]

On September 14/27, the
bishops imprisoned on Solovki had issued a statement, denouncing Sergius’
Declaration: “The subjection of the Church to the State’s decrees is expressed
[in Sergius’ declaration] in such a categorical and sweeping form that it could
easily be understood in the sense of a complete entanglement of Church and
State… The Church cannot declare all the triumphs and successes of the State to
be Her own triumphs and successes. Every government can occasionally make
unwarranted, unjust and cruel decisions which become obligatory to the Church by
way of coercion, but which the Church cannot rejoice in or approve of. One of
the tasks of the present government is the elimination of all religion. The
government’s successes in this direction cannot be recognized by the Church as
Her own successes… The epistle renders to the government ‘thanks before the
whole people to the Soviet government for its understanding of the religious
needs of the Orthodox population’. An expression of gratitude of such a kind on
the lips of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church cannot be sincere and
therefore does not correspond to the dignity of the Church… The epistle of the
patriarchate sweepingly accepts the official version and lays all the blame for
the grievous clashes between the Church and the State on the Church…

“In 1926 Metropolitan
Sergius said that he saw himself only as a temporary deputy of the patriarchal
locum tenens and in this capacity as not empowered to address pastoral
messages to the entire Russian Church. If then he thought himself empowered only
to issue circular letters, why has he changed his mind now? The pastoral message
of Metropolitan Sergius and his Synod leads the Church into a pact with the
State. It was considered as such by its authors as well as by the government.
Sergius’ action resembles the political activities of the ‘Living Church’ and
differs from them not in nature but only in form and scope…”[26]

According to different
sources, 17 or 20 or 26 bishops signed this epistle. However, the majority of
the bishops on Solovki did not consider Sergius’ declaration a reason for
breaking communion with him. Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan wrote to an unknown
person that the Solovki bishops wanted to wait for the repentance of Sergius
“until the convening of a canonical Council… in the assurance that the Council
could not fail to demand that of him”.[27]

*

Although the church
revolution engineered by Metropolitan Sergius and supported by the Soviets was
conceived and first brought to fruition in the centre, in Moscow, it could not
hope to succeed on a large scale if it did not also triumph in the other capital
of Russian life, Petrograd – or Leningrad, as the communists now called it. The
revolutionaries must have had good hopes of succeeding also in Petrograd. After
all, it had been the birthplace of the political revolution in 1917, and had
also been pivotal in the renovationists’ church revolution in 1922-23. But by
the Providence of God it was precisely in revolutionary Petrograd that the
fight-back began. Let us go back a little in time to see how this came to pass.[28]

By the end of 1925 the
Episcopal council of vicar-bishops that had ruled the Petrograd diocese since
the martyric death of Metropolitan Benjamin in 1922 ceased its existence – three
bishops were arrested: Benedict (Plotnikov), Innocent (Tikhonov) and Seraphim
(Protopopov). There remained only Bishop Gregory (Lebedev). Also in the city
were Bishop Sergius (Druzhinin) and Bishop Demetrius (Lyubimov). These three
were all thoroughly Orthodox bishops, who would lead the Catacomb Church after
1927 and suffer martyric deaths. However, in the spring of 1926 there returned
from exile two Petrograd vicar-bishops, Nicholas (Yarushevich) and Alexis
(Simansky). These two bishops, together with Metropolitan Sergius, would form
the core of the apostate Moscow Patriarchate in the 1940s. Alexis had already
betrayed the faith once, by removing the anathema placed by Metropolitan
Benjamin on the renovationist Vvedensky. Now he, Nicholas and a group of clergy
led by Protopriest Nicholas Chukov, who became Metropolitan Gregory of Leningrad
after the war, they represented the neo-renovationist tendency in the city who
wanted to improve relations with the Soviets and get the Church legalized by
them.

Fr. Michael Cheltsov, the
future hieromartyr, describes the incipient schism between these two groups of
bishops: “Alexis, led by the group of Fr. Chukov and co., decided to push
through the matter of negotiations with Soviet power over legalization through
the common participation of all the bishops and even through a decision by the
bishops alone. Gregory gave no reply to his invitation and did not go. Demetrius
at first suggested going, and Gregory advised him to go. Sergius of Narva,
flattered by this for him unexpected beckoning into the midst of the bishops,
was staying with me and Bishop Demetrius and on our joint advice was at the
meeting. The three bishops did not constitute an assembly. Alexis and Nicholas,
who were both sympathetic to legalization and wanted it fervently, could not
consider Sergius as their equal, and therefore without the other two considered
that the meeting had not taken place. Sergius also spoke about the necessity of
a meeting of all the bishops, but introduced the desire to bring to this meeting
some of the city protopriests. The meeting ended with nothing. But for the two
bishops – Alexis and Demetrius – it was clear that Gregory and Demetrius were
not with them, but against them.”

“Two groups became clearly
delineated: Alexis and Nicholas, and Gregory and Demetrius. Sergius, in view of
his closeness to [Protopriest Basil] Veriuzhsky [rector of the zealot Cathedral
of the Resurrection “on the Blood”] and to me, also joined the group of
Gregory…”[29]

In August, 1926 Bishop
Alexis was transferred to the see of Novogord, and Archbishop Joseph (Petrovykh)
of Petrograd was appointed Metropolitan of Petrograd. This appointment was
greeted with great joy by the faithful. However, the Soviets refused Joseph
permission to go to Petrograd - he served there only once, on September 12, the
feast of St. Alexander Nevsky, and never returned to the city again. In the
meantime, he appointed the little-known Bishop Gabriel (Voyevodin) as his
deputy.

Meanwhile, Bishop Alexis
received permission from the Soviets to stay in Petrograd and began to serve in
the churches of his friends in the city. This was opposed by Bishops Gregory and
Demetrius, who obtained from Metropolitan Joseph that bishops from other sees
(i.e. Alexis) should not be allowed to serve in the city without the permission
of Bishop Gabriel. But Bishop Alexis paid not attention to the metropolitan and
continued to serve – to the distress of the faithful.

At the beginning of the
Great Fast, 1927 Bishops Gregory and Gabriel were arrested and cast into prison.
Since Metropolitan Joseph was still in exile in Ustiuzhna, Bishop Nicholas began
to administer the diocese as being the senior bishop by ordination, and in April
received official permission to do this from Metropolitan Sergius in Moscow. On
his return to Petrograd, Bishop Nicholas began to act authoritatively and
brusquely towards his fellow hierarchs, and in August he obtained the forcible
retirement of Bishop Sergius from his see.

The previous month
Metropolitan Sergius’ Declaration had been published, and Bishop Nicholas tried
to get it distributed and read out in church. However, there was widespread
resistance to this. When Fr. Nicholas Chukov read it out, there was a great
commotion in the church. And when one of the deans, the future Hieromartyr Fr.
Sergius Tikhomirov, received it, he immediately sent it back to Nicholas and
resigned his deanery. “Whether the epistle was read out somewhere or not,”
writes Fr. Michael Cheltsov, “the mood among the Peterites against Metropolitan
Sergius and to a significant extent against our Nicholas was sharply negative.
Their Orthodoxy, especially of the former, was subjected to powerful doubt, and
trust in them was undermined. Our clergy, if they read the epistle, were all
against it.”[30]

However, it was not the
Declaration so much as the actions undertaken by Metropolitan Sergius against
Metropolitan Joseph that stirred the Petrograd flock into action. On September
12 (or 17) Metropolitan Joseph was transferred to the see of Odessa by decree of
Sergius’ Synod.

On September
17, 1927, Metropolitan Sergius, probably acting under pressure from the
authorities, transferred Metropolitan Joseph from Petrograd to Odessa. On
September 28, Metropolitan Joseph wrote to Sergius that he refused to accept it,
saying that he saw in it “an evil intrigue by a clique which did not want him to
be in Leningrad”. Then he wrote to Tuchkov asking that he be allowed to
administer the Leningrad diocese. Finally he wrote to Sergius again rebuking him
and his Synod for “a woefully servile obedience to a principle alien to the
Church”. He said that he regarded his transfer as “anti-canonical, ill-advised
and pleasing to an evil intrigue in which I will have no part”. He clearly saw
in it the hand of the OGPU, to which Metropolitan Sergius was simply giving in.

On October 21, Sergius
directed all the clergy in Russia to commemorate the Soviet authorities, and not
the bishops who were in exile. This measure greatly increased the anxiety of the
faithful. The commemoration of the Soviet authorities was seen by many as the
boundary beyond which the Church would fall away from Orthodoxy. And the refusal
to commemorate the exiled hierarchs implied that the hierarchs themselves were
not Orthodox and constituted a break with the tradition of commemorating exiled
hierarchs that extended back to the time of the Roman catacombs. Sergius was in
effect cutting the faithful off from their canonical hierarchs.

One of the leaders of the
opposition, the future hieromartyr and possibly bishop, Mark Novoselov, saw in
these events the third step in the revolution’s destruction of the Church. The
first step was the revolution’s depriving the Church of Her civil protector, the
Orthodox Christian Emperor in 1917, “thereby doubling the significance of the
pastors”. The second step was its depriving the Church of the possibility of
convening Councils, by which it “increased their [the pastors’] significance
tenfold, since it made every bishop the real guardian of Orthodoxy in his
province. The third step took place in 1927, when “under the form of the gift of
legalization the Church was deprived of this Her head,” which increased the
significance of the true pastors still more.

Sergius’ act of October 21
“depersonalized” the Liturgy, according to Mark, by “1) casting into the shade
the person of Metropolitan Peter through (a) ceasing to commemorate him as ‘our
Lord’ and (b) placing the name of Metropolitan Sergius next to it, that is, two
names in one patriarchal place, which is both contrary to the spirit of the
canons and deprives the name of the head of the Russian Church – and the
personal name of Metropolitan Peter - of its very symbolical meaning; 2)
introducing the commemoration of the impersonal name of the authorities, … and
3) casting into oblivion the names and persons who shone out in their confessing
exploit.”[31]

Hieromartyr Mark pointed
out that, while transfers of bishops took place frequently in tsarist Russia,
those were in the context of a single Church family, when Russia was as it were
“one diocese”. But the transfers in Soviet times were far more dangerous; for
when the people were deprived of their confessing bishop, whom they knew and
loved, there was no guarantee that his replacement – if there was a replacement
– would be Orthodox.

On October 25, Bishop
Nicholas (Yarushevich) proclaimed in the cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ
in Petrograd the decision of the Provisional Synod to transfer Metropolitan
Joseph (Petrovykh) from Petrograd to Odessa (the secular authorities had already
forbidden Metropolitan Joseph to return to the city). In the same decision
Bishops Demetrius and Seraphim were forbidden to leave the diocese “without the
knowledge and blessing” of Bishop Nicholas (Yarushevich). This caused major
disturbances in Petrograd. However, Metropolitan Sergius paid no attention to
the disturbances in Petrograd. Taking upon himself the administration of the
diocese, he sent in his place Bishop Alexis (Simansky). So already, only three
months after the declaration, the new revolutionary cadres were being put in
place… Then, on October 31, Archimandrite Sergius (Zenkevich) was consecrated
Bishop of Detskoe Selo, although the canonical bishop, Gregory (Lebedev), was
still alive but languishing in a GPU prison. From that moment many parishioners
stopped going to churches where Metropolitan Sergius’ name was commemorated, and
Bishop Nicholas was not invited to serve.[32]

On October 30 Metropolitan
Joseph wrote to Sergius: “You made me metropolitan of Leningrad without the
slightest striving for it on my part. It was not without disturbance and
distress that I accepted this dangerous obedience, which others, perhaps wisely
(otherwise it would have been criminal) decisively declined… Vladyko! Your
firmness is yet able to correct everything and urgently put an end to every
disturbance and indeterminateness. It is true, I am not free and cannot now
serve my flock, but after all everybody understands this ‘secret’… Now anyone
who is to any degree firm and needed is unfree (and will hardly be free in the
future)… You say: this is what the authorities want; they are giving back their
freedom to exiled hierarchs on the condition that they change their former place
of serving and residence. But what sense or benefit can we derive from the
leap-frogging and shuffling of hierarchs that this has elicited, when according
to the spirit of the Church canons they are in an indissoluble union with their
flock as with a bride? Would it not be better to say: let it be, this false
human mercy, which is simply a mockery of our human dignity, which strives for a
cheap effect, a spectre of clemency. Let it be as it was before; it will be
better like that. Somehow we’ll get to the time when they finally understand
that the eternal, universal Truth cannot be conquered by exiles and vain
torments… One compromise might be permissible in the given case… Let them (the
hierarchs) settle in other places as temporarily governing them, but let them
unfailingly retain their former title… I cannot be reconciled in my conscience
with any other scheme, I am absolutely unable to recognize as correct my
disgustingly tsarist-rasputinite transfer to the Odessa diocese, which took
place without any fault on my part or any agreement of mine, and even without my
knowledge. And I demand that my case be immediately transferred from the
competence of your Synod, in whose competence I am not the only one to doubt,
for discussion by a larger Council of bishops, to which alone I consider myself
bound to display my unquestioning obedience.”

*

On November 24 an important
meeting took place in the flat of Protopriest Theodore Andreyev, at which it was
decided to write several letters to Sergius. A few days later one such letter,
composed by Fr. Theodore and Mark (Novoselov), was read out in the flat of
Bishop Demetrius. On December 12 a meeting took place in Moscow between
Metropolitan Sergius and his leading opponents from Petrograd which deserves to
be described in detail because it marked the decisive make-or-break point
between Sergius’ Moscow Patriarchate and what became known as the True Orthodox
or Catacomb Church.

Bishop Demetrius,
Protopriest Basil Veryuzhsky, I.M. Andreyevsky and Professor Sergius Semyonovich
Abramovich-Baranovsky were received in Moscow by Metropolitan Sergius. Bishop
Demetrius handed him an appeal by six Petrograd bishops; Fr. Basil gave him one
written in the name of the clergy, which had been written by Protopriest
Theodore Andreyev; and Andreyevsky gave him one written in the name of the
church intelligentsia and written by Professor Abramovich-Baranovsky. The
letters called on Sergius to abandon his present church policy, stop
transferring bishops arbitrarily and return to the position adopted by Patriarch
Tikhon.[33]

Sergius read
everything slowly and attentively, but occasionally broke off to make a comment.

“Here you are
protesting, while many other groups recognize me and express their approval,” he
said. “I cannot take account of everyone and please everyone and each group.
Each of you judges from your bell-tower, but I act for the good of the Russian
Church.”

“We also,
Vladyko,” we objected, “want to work for the good of the whole Church. And then:
we are not just one of many small groups, but express the church-social opinion
of the Leningrad diocese composed of eight bishops – the better part of the
clergy. I express the opinion of hundreds of my friends and acquaintances and, I
hope, thousands of likeminded scientific workers of the Leningrad diocese, while
S.A. represents broad popular circles.

“You are
hindered in accepting my appeal by a counter-revolutionary political ideology,”
said Metropolitan Sergius, “which was condemned by his Holiness Patriarch
Tikhon,” and he got out one of the papers signed by his Holiness Patriarch
Tikhon.

“No, Vladyko,
it is not our political convictions, but our religious conscience that does not
allow us to accept that which your conscience allows you to accept. We are in
complete agreement with his Holiness Patriarch Tikhon (in the indicated paper).
We also condemn counter-revolutionary speeches. We stand on the point of view of
the condemnation of your declaration made by Solovki. Do you know this epistle
from Solovki?”

“This appeal
was signed by one man (Bishop Basil Zelentsov), but others approve of me. Do you
know that I was accepted and approved by Metropolitan Peter himself?”

“Forgive us,
Vladyko, that is not quite right. It was not the metropolitan himself. But did
you hear this through Bishop Basil?”

“Yes, but how
do you know?”

“We know this
from the words of Bishop Basil. Metropolitan Peter said that he ‘understands [ponimaiet]’,
but does not ‘accept [prinimaiet] you. But has Metropolitan Peter not
written anything to you?”

“You must
know that I have no communications with him!” said Metropolitan Sergius.

“They why,
Vladyko, do you say that Metropolitan Peter himself recognized you?”

“Well, what’s
special in commemorating the authorities?” said Metropolitan Sergius. “Since we
recognized them, we also pray for them. Did we not pray for the tsar, for Nero
and the rest?”

“But is it
possible to pray for the Antichrist?” we asked.

“No, that is
impossible.”

“But can you
vouch that this is not the power of the Antichrist?”

“I can vouch
for it. The Antichrist must come for three and a half years, but in this case
ten years have already passed.”

“But after
all, is this not the spirit of the Antichist, who does not confess that Christ
has come in the flesh?”

“This spirit
has always been with us from the time of Christ to our days. What antichrist is
this, I do not recognize him!”

“Forgive us,
Vladyko, you ‘do not recognize him’. Only an elder can say that. But since there
is the possibility that this is the antichrist, we do not pray [for him].
Besides, from the religious point of view our rulers are not an authority.”

“How not an
authority?”

“A hierarchy
is called an authority when not only someone is subject to me, but I myself am
subject to someone higher than myself, etc., and all this goes up to God as the
source of every authority!”

“Well, that’s
a subtle philosophy!”

“The pure in
heart simply feel this. But if one reasons, then one must reason subtly, since
the question is new, profound, complex and subject to conciliar discussion, and
not such a simplified understanding as you give it.”

“But prayer
for those in exile and prison is excluded because they have made a political
demonstration out of this.”

“And when,
Vladyko, will the tenth beatitude be repealed? After all, it, too, can be seen
as a demonstration.”

“It will not
be repealed, it is part of the liturgy!”

“Prayer for
the exiles is also part of the liturgy!”

“My name must
be raised in order to distinguish the Orthodox from ‘Borisovschina’, who
commemorate Metropolitan Peter but do not recognize me.”

“But do you
know, Vladyko, that your name is now pronounced in the renovationist churches?”

“That’s only
a trick!”

“Then
‘Borisovschina’ is also a trick!”

“Well, what
about the Synod, what don’t you like about it?”

“We do not
recognize it, we don’t trust it, but we trust you for the time being. You are
the deputy of the Patriarchal locum tenens, but the Synod is some kind of
personal secretariat attached to you, is it?”

“No, it is a
co-ruling organ.”

“So without
the Synod you yourself can do nothing?”

“[after a
long period not wanting to reply] Well, yes, without conferring with it.”

“We ask you
to report nothing about our matter to the Synod. We do not trust it and do not
recognize it. We have come personally to you.”

“Why don’t
you like Metropolitan Seraphim?”

“Can it be
that you don’t know, Vladyko?”

“That’s all
slander and gossip.”

“We haven’t
come to quarrel with you, but to declare to you from the many who have sent us
that we cannot, our religious conscience does not allow us to recognize, the
course that you have embarked on. Stop, for the sake of Christ, stop!”

“This
position of yours is called confessing. You have a halo…”

“But what
must a Christian be?”

“There are
confessors and martyrs. But there are also diplomats and guides. But every
sacrifice is accepted! Remember Cyprian of Carthage.”

“Are you
saving the Church?”

“Yes, I am
saving the Church.”

“The Church
does not need salvation, but you yourself are being saved through her.

“Well, of
course, from the religious point of view it is senseless to say: ‘I am saving
the Church’. But I’m talking about the external position of the Church.”

“And
Metropolitan Joseph?”

“You know him
only from one side. No, he categorically cannot be returned.”

According to
another account, Bishop Demetrius - who was then 70 years old - fell to his
knees before Sergius and exclaimed:

"Vladyka!
Listen to us, in the name of Christ!"

Metropolitan
Sergius immediately raised him up from his knees, seated him in an armchair, and
said in a firm and somewhat irritated voice:

"What is
there to listen to? Everything you have written has been written by others
earlier, and to all this I have already replied many times clearly and
definitely. What remains unclear to you?"

"Vladyka!"
began Bishop Demetrius in a trembling voice with copious tears. "At the time of
my consecration you told me that I should be faithful to the Orthodox Church
and, in case of necessity, should also be prepared to lay down my own life for
Christ. And now such a time of confession has come and I wish to suffer for
Christ. But you, by your Declaration, instead of a path to Golgotha propose that
we stand on the path of collaboration with a God-fighting regime that persecutes
and blasphemes Christ. You propose that we rejoice with its joys and sorrow with
its sorrows... Our rulers strive to annihilate religion and the Church and
rejoice at the successes of their anti-religious propaganda. This joy of theirs
is the source of our sorrow. You propose that we thank the Soviet government for
its attention to the needs of the Orthodox population. But how is this attention
expressed? In the murder of hundreds of bishops, thousands of priests, and
millions of faithful. In the defilement of holy things, the mockery of relics,
in the destruction of an immense number of churches and the annihilation of all
monasteries. Surely it would be better if they did not give us such
'attention'!"

"Our
government," Metropolitan Sergius suddenly interrupted the bishop, "has
persecuted the clergy only for political crimes."

"That is a
slander!" Bishop Demetrius cried out heatedly.

"We wish to
obtain a reconciliation of the Orthodox Church with the governing regime,"
Metropolitan Sergius continued with irritation, "while you are striving to
underline the counter-revolutionary character of the Church. Consequently, you
are counter-revolutionaries, whereas we are entirely loyal to the Soviet
regime!"

"That is not
true!" exclaimed Bishop Demetrius heatedly. "That is another slander against the
confessors and martyrs, those who have been shot and those who are languishing
in concentration camps and in banishment... What counter-revolutionary act did
the executed Metropolitan Benjamin perform? What is 'counter-revolutionary' in
the position of Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsa?"

"And the
Karlovtsy Council [of the Russian Church in exile], in your opinion, also did
not have a political character?" Metropolitan Sergius interrupted him again.

"There was no
Karlovtsy Council in Russia," Bishop Demetrius replied quietly, "and many
martyrs in the concentration camps knew nothing of this Council."

"I
personally," continued the bishop, "am a completely apolitical man, and if I
myself had to accuse myself to the GPU, I couldn't imagine anything of which I
am guilty before the Soviet regime. I only sorrow and grieve, seeing the
persecution against religion and the Church. We pastors are forbidden to speak
of this, and we are silent. But to the question whether there is any persecution
against religion and the Church in the USSR, I could not reply otherwise than
affirmatively. When they proposed to you, Vladyka, that you write your
Declaration, why did you not reply like Metropolitan Peter, that you can keep
silence, but cannot say what is untrue?"

"And where is
the untruth?" exclaimed Metropolitan Sergius.

"In the
fact," replied Bishop Demetrius, "that persecution against religion, the 'opium
of the people' according to Marxist dogma, not only exists among us, but in its
cruelty, cynicism and blasphemy has passed all limits!"

On December 15 Tuchkov,
having received a secret report from Petrograd on this meeting with Sergius,
wrote the following in his own handwriting: “To Comrade Polyansky. 1. Tell
Leningrad that Sergius had a delegation with such-and-such suggestions. 2.
Suggest that the most active laymen be arrested under some other pretenses. 3.
Tell them that we will influence Sergius that he ban certain of the oppositional
bishops from serving, and let Yarushevich then ban some of the priests.”[34]

Having failed
to convince Metropolitan Sergius, on December 26 Bishops Demetrius of Gdov and
Sergius of Narva separated from Sergius: “for the sake of the peace of our
conscience we reject the person and the works of our former leader, who has
unlawfully and beyond measure exceeded his rights”.

Sergius soon began issuing
bans against the True Orthodox bishops. But the True Orthodox paid no attention
to them. On December 30 Archbishop Demetrius wrote to Fr. Alexander Sidorov, a
priest in Moscow, who had been threatened with defrocking: “May the Lord help
you to remain in peace and unanimity in the firm confession of the purity and
truth of the Orthodox faith, helping each other with love in everything. Do not
be disturbed by any bans that the apostates from the faith of Christ are
preparing for you. Any ban or defrocking of you by Metropolitan Sergius, his
synod or bishops for your stand in the Truth has not reality for you.
As long as there remains just one firmly Orthodox bishop, have communion with
him. If the Lord permits it, and you remain without a bishop, then may the
Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, be with you all, inspiring you to solve all
the questions which you may encounter on your path in the spirit of True
Orthodoxy.”

Again, on
January 4/17, 1928 he wrote “to Father Superiors” that he was breaking communion
in prayer with Metropolitan Sergius “until a complete Local Council of the
Russian Church, at which will be represented the entire active episcopate - i.e.
the present exile-confessors - shall justify by its conciliar authority our way
of acting, or until such time as Metropolitan Sergius will come to himself and
repent of his sins not only against the canonical order of the Church, but also
dogmatically against her person (blaspheming against the sanctity of the exploit
of the confessors by casting doubt on the purity of their Christian convictions,
as if they were mixed up in politics), against her conciliarity (by his and his
Synod's acts of coercion), against her apostolicity (by subjecting the Church to
worldly rules and by his inner break - while preserving a false unity - with
Metropolitan Peter, who did not give Metropolitan Sergius authorization for his
latest acts, beginning with the epistle (Declaration) of July 16/29, 1927).
'Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions' (II Thessalonians
2.7).”[35]

On Christmas Day, 1927/28,
Metropolitan Joseph officially supported the actions of Bishops Demetrius and
Sergius. In a letter to a Soviet archimandrite, he rejected the charge of being
a schismatic, accused Sergius of being a schismatic, and went on: “The defenders
of Sergius say that the canons allow one to separate oneself from a bishop only
for heresy which has been condemned by a Council. Against this one may reply
that the deeds of Metropolitan Sergius may be sufficiently placed in this
category as well, if one has in mind such an open violation by him of the
freedom and dignity of the Church, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. But beyond
this, the canons themselves could not foresee many things, and can one dispute
that it is even worse and more harmful than any heresy when one plunges a knife
into the Church’s very heart – Her freedom and dignity?… ‘Lest imperceptibly and
little by little we lose the freedom which our Lord Jesus Christ, the Liberator
of all men, has given us as a free gift by His Own Blood’ (8th Canon
of the Third Ecumenical Council)… Perhaps I do not dispute that ‘there are more
of you at present than of us’. And let it be said that ‘the great mass is not
for me’, as you say. But I will never consider myself a schismatic, even if I
were to remain absolutely alone, as one of the holy confessors once was. The
matter is not at all one of quantity, do not forget that for a minute: ‘The Son
of God when He cometh shall He find faith on the earth?’ (Luke 18.8). And
perhaps the last ‘rebels’ against the betrayers of the Church and the
accomplices of Her ruin will be not only bishops and not protopriests, but the
simplest mortals, just as at the Cross of Christ His last gasp of suffering was
heard by a few simple souls who were close to Him…”[36]

*

Meanwhile, antisergianist
groups were forming in different parts of the country. Thus between October 3
and 6, 1927 an antisergianist diocesan assembly took place in Ufa, and on
November 8 Archbishop Andrew of Ufa issued an encyclical from Kzyl-Orda in which
he said that “even if the lying Sergius repents, as he repented three times
before of renovationism, under no circumstances must he be received into
communion”. This encyclical quickly circulated throughout Eastern Russia and
Siberia.

In November, Bishop Victor
of Glazov broke with Sergius. He had especially noted the phrase in the
declaration that “only ivory-tower dreamers can think that such an enormous
society as our Orthodox Church, with the whole of its organisation, can have a
peaceful existence in the State while hiding itself from the authorities.” To
Sergius himself Bishop Victor wrote: “The enemy has lured and seduced you a
second time with the idea of an organization of the Church. But if this
organization is bought for the price of the Church of Christ Herself no longer
remaining the house of Grace-giving salvation for men, and he who received the
organization ceases to be what he was – for it is written, ‘Let his habitation
be made desolate, and his bishopric let another take’ (Acts 1.20) – then
it were better for us never to have any kind of organization. What is the
benefit if we, having become by God’s Grace temples of the Holy Spirit, become
ourselves suddenly worthless, while at the same time receiving an organization
for ourselves? No. Let the whole visible material world perish; let there be
more important in our eyes the certain perdition of the soul to which he who
presents such pretexts for sin will be subjected.” And he concluded that
Sergius’ pact with the atheists was “not less than any heresy or schism, but is
rather incomparably greater, for it plunges a man immediately into the abyss of
destruction, according to the unlying word: ‘Whosoever shall deny Me before
men…’ (Matthew 10.33).”[37]

At the same time
antisergianism began to develop in the Ukraine with the publication of the
“Kievan appeal” by Schema-Archbishop Anthony (Abashidze), Bishop Damascene of
Glukhov and Fr. Anatolius Zhurakovsky. They wrote concerning Sergius’
declaration: “Insofar as the deputy of the patriarchal locum tenens makes
declarations in the person of the whole Church and undertakes responsible
decisions without the agreement of the locum tenens and an array of
bishops, he is clearly going beyond the bounds of his prerogatives…”[38]
In December the Kievans were joined by two brother bishops – Archbishops Averky
and Pachomius (Kedrov).[39]

The Kievans were supported
by the famous writer Sergius Alexandrovich Nilus, who wrote to L.A. Orlov in
February, 1928: “As long as there is a church of God
that is not of ‘the Church of the evildoers’, go to it whenever you can; but if
not, pray at home… They will say: ‘But where will you receive communion? With
whom? I reply: ‘The Lord will show you, or an Angel will give you communion, for
in ‘the Church of the evildoers’ there is not and cannot be the Body and Blood
of the Lord. Here in Chernigov, out of all the churches only the church of the
Trinity has remained faithful to Orthodoxy; but if it, too, will commemorate the
[sergianist] Exarch Michael, and, consequently, will have communion in prayer
with him, acting with the blessing of Sergius and his Synod, then we shall break
communion with it.”

On February
6, 1928 the hierarchs of the Yaroslavl diocese, led by Metropolitan Agathangel,
signed an act of separation from Metropolitan Sergius. Metropolitan Joseph also
signed the document. Two days later he announced to his Petrograd vicars,
pastors and flock that he was taking upon himself the leadership of the
Petrograd diocese. This persuaded the authorities to arrest him on February 29,
and send him again to the Nikolo-Modensky monastery. On March 11 Metropolitan
Sergius and his Synod placed Metropolitan Joseph under ban.

In the birth of the
Catacomb Church in 1927-28 we can see the rebirth of the spirit of the 1917-18
Council. In the previous decade, the original fierce tone of reproach and
rejection of the God-hating authorities, epitomized above all by the
anathematization of Soviet power, had gradually softened under the twin
pressures of the Bolsheviks from without and the renovationists from within.
Although the apocalyptic spirit of the Council remained alive in the masses, and
prevented the Church leaders from actually commemorating the antichristian
power, compromises continued to be made – compromises that were never repaid by
compromises on the part of the Bolsheviks. However, these acts did not cross the
line separating compromise from apostasy. That line was passed by Metropolitan
Sergius when he recognized the God-cursed power to be God-established,
and ordered it to be commemorated while banning the commemoration of the
confessing bishops. At this point the spirit of the Council flared up again in
all its original strength. For, as a “Letter from Russia” put it many years
later: “It’s no use our manoeuvring; there’s nothing for us to preserve except
the things that are God’s. For the things that are Caesar’s (if one should
really consider it to be Caesar and not Pharaoh) are always associated with the
quenching of the Spirit.”[40]
Again, as Protopresbyter Michael Polsky wrote: “The Orthodoxy that submits to
the Soviets and has become a weapon of the worldwide antichristian deception is
not Orthodoxy, but the deceptive heresy of antichristianity clothed in the torn
raiment of historical Orthodoxy…”[41]

Already by 1928
Metropolitan Sergius’ church was a Sovietized institution. We see this in the
official church calendar for 1928, which included among the feasts of the
church: the memory of the Leader of the Proletariat Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (on
the 32nd Sunday after Pentecost), the Overthrow of the Autocracy (in the Third
Week of the Great Fast), the memory of the Paris Commune (the same week), the
Day of the Internationale and the Day of the Proletarian Revolution.[42]

By the end of
the 1920s there were vigorous groups of True Orthodox Christians in every part
of the country, with especially strong centres in Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev,
Voronezh, the North Caucasus, Kazan, Ufa, Orenburg and the Urals… It remained now to unite these
scattered groups under a common leadership, or, at any rate, under a common
confession, through the convening of a Council of the Catacomb Church… Now we
can infer from a remark of Hieromartyr Maximus of Serpukhov, the first secretly
consecrated bishop of the Catacomb Church, that there was some Catacomb
Council in 1928 that anathematized the Sergianists.[43]
Another source has described a so-called “Nomadic Council” attended at different
times by over 70 bishops in 1928 which likewise anathematized the Sergianists.
But hard evidence for the existence of this council has proved hard to obtain,[44]
and there are reasons for suspecting the authenticity of the council protocols.[45]

A “Little Council” of
Catacomb bishops took place in Archangelsk in 1935 and proclaimed:
“We declare Metropolitan Sergius, who has violated the
purity of the Orthodox faith, who has distorted the dogma of Salvation and of
the Church, and who has caused a schism and blasphemed against the Church of
Christ and Her confessors, and in scattering the Church has also blasphemed
against the Holy Spirit, to be deprived of communion in prayer with us and with
all the Orthodox bishops of the Russian Church. We commit him to ecclesiastical
trial and ban him from serving. The bishops who think like Metropolitan Sergius
are accepted by us into canonical and prayerful communion in accordance with the
rite of reception from renovationism.”[46]

How many bishops supported
Sergius? Out of the approximately 150 Russian bishops in 1927, 80 declared
themselves definitely against the declaration, 17 separated from Sergius but did
not make their position clear, and 9 at first separated but later changed their
mind.[47]

On August 6, 1929 Sergius’
synod declared: “The sacraments performed in separation from Church unity… by
the followers of the former Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh) of Leningrad, the
former Bishop Demetrius (Lyubimov) of Gdov, the former Bishop Alexis (Buj) of
Urazov, as also of those who are under ban, are also invalid, and those who are
converted from these schisms, if they have been baptized in schism, are to be
received through Holy Chrismation.”[48]

However, as even the
sergianist Bishop Manuel (Lemeshevsky) had to admit: “It is the best pastors who
have fallen away and cut themselves off…”[49]

In 1929, the Bolsheviks
began to imprison the True Orthodox on the basis of membership of a
“counter-revolutionary church monarchist organization, the True Orthodox
Church”. The numbers of True Orthodox Christians arrested between 1929 and 1933
exceeded by seven times the numbers of clergy repressed from 1924 to 1928.[50]
Then in 1929 5000 clergy were repressed, three times more than in 1928; in 1930
– 13,000; in 1931-32 – 19,000.[51]

Vladimir Rusak writes: “The
majority of clergy and laymen, preserving the purity of ecclesiological
consciousness, did not recognize the Declaration… On this soil fresh arrests
were made. All those who did not recognize the Declaration were arrested and
exiled to distant regions or confined in prisons and camps. [In 1929] about 15
hierarchs who did not share the position of Metropolitan Sergius were arrested.
Metropolitan Cyril, the main ‘opponent’ of Metropolitan Sergius, was exiled to
Turukhansk in June-July. The arrest procedure looked something like this: an
agent of the GPU appeared before a bishop and put him a direct question: what is
your attitude to the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius? If the bishop replied
that he did not recognize it, the agent drew the conclusion: that means that you
are a counter-revolutionary. The bishop was arrested.”[52]

It is hardly a coincidence
that this took place against the background of the collectivization of
agriculture and a general attack on religion[53]
spearheaded by Yaroslavsky’s League of Militant Godless (who numbered 17 million
by 1933). Vladimir Rusak writes: “1928, the beginning of collectivisation.
Stalin could no longer ‘leave the Church in the countryside’. In one interview
he gave at that time he directly complained against ‘the reactionary clergy’ who
were poisoning the souls of the masses. ’The only thing I can complain about is
that the clergy was not liquidated root and branch,’ he said. At the 15th
Congress of the party he demanded that all weariness in the anti-religious
struggle be overcome.”[54]

Also in 1928, economic
cooperatives and all philanthropic organizations were banned.[55]
But this was only the beginning: the real killer was collectivization, which,
together with the artificial famine that followed, claimed as many as 14 million
lives. Collectivization can be seen as an attempt to destroy religion in its
stronghold, the countryside, by destroying the economic base of village life and
forcing all the villagers into communes completely dependent on the State. The
peasants, led by their priests, put up a fierce opposition to it, and many were
brought to trial and sentenced to the camps.

Husband writes: “On 8 April
1929, the VtsIK and Sovnarkom declaration ‘On Religious Associations’ largely
superseded the 1918 separation of church and state and redefined freedom of
conscience. Though reiterating central aspects of the 1918 separation decree,
the new law introduced important limitations. Religious associations of twenty
or more adults were allowed, but only if registered and approved in advance by
government authorities. They retained their previous right to the free use of
buildings for worship but still could not exist as a judicial person. Most
important, the new regulations rescinded the previously guaranteed [!] right to
conduct religious propaganda, and it reaffirmed the ban on religious
instructions in state educational institutions. In effect, proselytising and
instruction outside the home were illegal except in officially sanctioned
classes, and religious rights of assembly and property were now more
circumscribed.”[56]

“Henceforth,” writes
Nicholas Werth, “any activity ‘going beyond the limits of the simple
satisfaction of religious aspirations’ fell under the law. Notably, section 10
of the much-feared Article 58 of the penal code stipulated that ‘any use of the
religious prejudices of the masses… for destabilizing the state’ was punishable
‘by anything from a minimum three-year sentence up to and including the death
penalty’. On 26 August 1929 the government instituted the new five-day work week
– five days of work, and one day of rest – which made it impossible to observe
Sunday as a day of rest. This measure deliberately introduced ‘to facilitate the
struggle to eliminate religion’.

“These decrees were no more
than a prelude to a second, much larger phase of the antireligious campaign. In
October 1929 the seizure of all church bells was ordered because ‘the sound of
bells disturbs the right to peace of the vast majority of atheists in the towns
and the countryside’. Anyone closely associated with the church was treated like
a kulak and forced to pay special taxes. The taxes paid by religious leaders
increased tenfold from 1928 to 1930, and the leaders were stripped of their
civil rights, which meant that they lost their ration cards and their right to
medical care. Many were arrested, exiled, or deported. According to the
incomplete records, more than 13,000 priests were ‘dekulakised’ in 1930. In many
villages and towns, collectivisation began symbolically with the closure of the
church, and dekulakization began with the removal of the local religious
leaders. Significantly, nearly 14 percent of riots and peasant uprisings in 1930
were sparked by the closure of a church or the removal of its bells. The
antireligious campaign reached its height in the winter of 1929-30; by 1 March
1930, 6,715 churches had been closed or destroyed. In the aftermath of Stalin’s
famous article ‘Dizzy with Success’ on 2 March 1930, a resolution from the
Central Committee cynically condemned ‘inadmissible deviations in the struggle
against religious prejudices, particularly the administrative closure of
churches without the consent of the local inhabitants’. This formal condemnation
had no effect on the fate of the people deported on religious grounds.

“Over the next few years
these great offensives against the church were replaced by daily administrative
harassment of priests and religious organizations. Freely interpreting the
sixty-eight articles of the government decree of 8 April 1929, and going
considerably beyond their mandate when it came to the closure of churches, local
authorities continued their guerrilla war with a series of justifications:
‘unsanitary condition or extreme age’ of the buildings in question, ‘unpaid
insurance’, and non-payment of taxes or other of the innumerable contributions
imposed on the members of religious communities. Stripped of their civil rights
and their right to teach, and without the possibility of taking up other paid
employment – a status that left them arbitrarily classified as ‘parasitic
elements living on unearned wages’ – a number of priests had no option but to
become peripatetic and to lead a secret life on the edges of society.”[57]

Religious life did not
cease but rather intensified in the underground. Wandering bishops and priests
served the faithful in secret locations around the country. Particular areas
buzzed with underground activity. Thus Professor Ivan Andreyevsky testified that
during the war he personally knew some 200 places of worship of the Catacomb
Church in the Leningrad area alone. Popovsky writes that the Catacomb Church
“arose in our midst at the end of the 20s. First one, then another priest
disappeared from his parish, settled in a secret place and began the dangerous
life of exiles. In decrepit little houses on the outskirts of towns chapels
appeared. There they served the Liturgy, heard confessions, gave communion,
baptized, married and even ordained new priests. Believers from distant towns
and regions poured there in secret, passing on to each other the agreed knock on
the door.”[58]

Even patriarchal sources
have spoken about the falsity of Sergius’ declaration, the true confession of
those who opposed him, and the invalidity of the measures he took to punish
them. Thus: “Amidst the opponents of Metropolitan Sergius were a multitude of
remarkable martyrs and confessors, bishops, monks, priests… The ‘canonical’ bans
of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) and his Synod were taken seriously by no
one, neither at that time [the 1930s] nor later by dint of the uncanonicity of
the situation of Metropolitan Sergius himself…”[59]
And again: “The particular tragedy of the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius
consists in its principled rejection of the podvig of martyrdom and
confession, without which witnessing to the truth is inconceivable. In this way
Metropolitan Sergius took as his foundation not hope on the Providence of God,
but a purely human approach to the resolution of church problems… The courage of
the ‘catacombniks’ and their firmness of faith cannot be doubted, and it is our
duty to preserve the memory of those whose names we shall probably learn only in
eternity…”[60]

*

This persecution began to
arouse criticism in the West – specifically, from Pope Pius XI and the
Archbishop of Canterbury. On February 14, 1930 the Politburo decided “to entrust
to Comrades Yaroslavsky, Stalin and Molotov the decision of the question of an
interview” to counter-act these criticisms. The result was two interviews, the
first to Soviet correspondents on February 15 and published on February 16 in
Izvestia and Pravda in the name of Sergius and those members of his
Synod who were still in freedom, and a second to foreign correspondents three
days later.

In the first interview,
which is now thought to have been composed entirely by the Bolsheviks with the
active participation of Stalin, but whose authenticity was never denied by
Sergius[61],
it was asserted that “in the Soviet Union there was not and is not now any
religious persecution”, that “churches are closed not on the orders of the
authorities, but at the wish of the population, and in many cases even at the
request of the believers”, that “the priests themselves are to blame, because
they do not use the opportunities presented to them by the freedom to preach”
and that “the Church herself does not want to have any theological-educational
institutions”.[62]

This interview, writes Fr.
Stefan Krasovitsky, “was especially absurd and scandalous in the eyes of the
simple people in that the universally venerated chapel of the Iveron Icon of the
Mother of God had just been destroyed. As N. Talberg writes, ‘the Russian
people, fearing not even the chekists, demonstrated their attitude to him
(Metropolitan Sergius)… When Metropolitan Sergius went to serve in one of the
large churches of Moscow, the crowd whistled at him in the streets, which had
never happened before in spite of the most desperate agitation of the atheists.
Bishop Pitirim, one of those who had signed the declaration in the press, was
also whistled at and met in the same way. Paris-Midi for March 5 (№
1392) informed its readers of the insults Metropolitan Sergius had been
subjected to by his flock in Moscow. Vozrozhdenie for March 6 (№ 178)
printed the report of the Berlin Lokale Anzeiger to the effect that when
Metropolitan Sergius ‘came out of the altar to serve the Liturgy, the crowd
began to whistle and showered him with brickbats: “traitor”, “Judas”, “coward”,
etc. The noise was so great that Metropolitan Sergius was not able to serve and
went into the crowd to pacify them. But the aroused parishioners tried to tear
his vestments from him, spat at him and wanted to take off his patriarchal
cross. Metropolitan Sergius had to leave the church. He tried to serve the
Liturgy in another church, but the believers boycotted his service.’ The Roman
newspaper Today (№ 64), reporting the same incident, added that ‘not one
person’ appeared at the service arranged by Metropolitan Sergius for the other
church.”[63]

Commenting on the
interview, Archbishop Andrew of Ufa wrote: “Such is the opinion of the
false-head of the false-patriarchal church of Metropolitan Sergius… But who is
going to recognize this head after all this? For whom does this lying head
remain a head, in spite of his betrayal of Christ?… All the followers of the
lying Metropolitan Sergius… have fallen away from the Church of Christ. The Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church is somewhere else, not near Metropolitan Sergius
and not near ‘his Synod’.”[64]

In May, 1932, Stalin
declared an anti-religious five-year plan: by 1936 the last church was to be
closed, and by 1937 the name of God would no longer be pronounced in the Soviet
Union. By the beginning of 1933 half the churches in the land had been closed or
destroyed.[65]
But the census of 1937 established that two-thirds of the peasantry and
one-third of the city-dwellers still maintained their faith in God. This
impressive figure owed nothing to Sergius’ pact with the State, which divided
the faithful and gave the atheists a powerful weapon against them.

In 1933 Metropolitan
Sergius stated officially that he “as the deputy of Metropolitan Peter, had not
only the temporary authority of the First Hierarch but the Patriarchal Power as
well”. He also declared that Metropolitan Peter, the lawful First Hierarch, did
not have the right “to interfere in the administration of the Church or even
correct the mistakes of his deputy.”[66]
As a result of this shocking statement, Bishop Athanasius (Sakharov) of Kovrov
broke communion with Sergius, as he stated in a letter to him on his return from
exile in December, 1933.

In April, 1934 Sergius’
Synod gave him the title of Metropolitan of Kolomna – Metropolitan Peter’s see –
thereby making him in effect an “adulterer bishop”. In 1935 Metropolitan Peter
returned to Moscow and met Metropolitan Sergius. The latter asked him to
recognize the new construction of Church life and to agree to the convening of a
Council. On his side, Metropolitan Peter demanded that Sergius return Church
power to him. Sergius refused, and Peter returned to the camps. In August, 1936,
the NKVD spread the rumour that Metropolitan Peter had died. The Sergianist
Synod promptly – and completely uncanonically – passed a resolution transferring
the rights and duties of the patriarchal locum tenency to Metropolitan Sergius.
In fact, Metropolitan Peter was not martyred until October, 1937. So at this
point Sergius not only de facto, but also de jure usurped the
position of the canonical leader of the Russian Church.

*

In view of this further
departure of Metropolitan Sergius from the holy canons, it may be asked what was
the reaction of the leading hierarchs of the Catacomb Church – Metropolitan
Peter of Krutitsa, the patriarchal locum tenens and de jure leader
of the Church, Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd, her de facto leader, and
Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan, the first locum tenens appointed by
Patriarch Tikhon and the favoured candidate of the Russian episcopate for the
role of patriarch.

Metropolitan Peter’s
attitude was particularly important to ascertain in view of the fact that both
the True Orthodox and the sergianists formally acknowledged him as the Church’s
first hierarch. Earlier, Bishop Damascene of Glukhov had claimed to have made
contact with him through his cell-attendant, who reported that Metropolitan
Peter expressed disapproval of Sergius’ policies. Thus on January 22, 1928 he
wrote to a certain N. “For a first-hierarch such an appeal [as Sergius’
declaration] is inadmissible. Moreover, I don’t understand why a Synod
was formed from (as I can see from the signatures under the appeal) unreliable
people. Thus, for example, Bishop Philip is a heretic… In this appeal a shadow
is cast upon me and the patriarch, as if we had political relations with abroad,
whereas the only relations were ecclesiastical. I do not belong to the
irreconcilables, I allowed everything that could be allowed, and it was
suggested to me in a more polite manner that I sign the appeal. I refused, for
which I was exiled. I trusted Metropolitan Sergius, and I see that I was
mistaken.”

On September 17, 1929, the
priest Gregory Seletsky wrote to Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd on behalf of
Archbishop Demetrius (Lyubimov): “I am fulfilling the request of his Eminence
Archbishop Demetrius and set out before you in written form that information
which the exiled Bishop Damascene has communicated to me. He succeeded in making
contact with Metropolitan Peter, and in sending him, via a trusted person, full
information about everything that has been taking place in the Russian Church.
Through this emissary Metropolitan Peter said the following to him: ’1. You
Bishops must yourselves remove Metropolitan Sergius. ’2. I do not bless you to
commemorate Metropolitan Sergius during Divine services…”[67]

In December, 1929
Metropolitan Peter wrote to Sergius: “Your Eminence, forgive me magnanimously if
by the present letter I disturb the peace of your Eminence’s soul. People inform
me about the difficult circumstances that have formed for the Church in
connection with the exceeding of the limits of the ecclesiastical authority
entrusted to you. I am very sorry that you have not taken the trouble to
initiate me into your plans for the administration of the Church. You know that
I have not renounced the locum tenancy, and consequently, I have retained for
myself the Higher Church Administration and the general leadership of Church
life. At the same time I make bold to declare that your remit as deputy was only
for the management of everyday affairs; you are only to preserve the status quo.
I am profoundly convinced that without prior contact with me you will not make
any responsible decision. I have not accorded you any constituent right as long
as I retain the locum tenancy and as long as Metropolitan Cyril is alive and as
long as Metropolitan Agathangelus was alive. Therefore I did not consider it
necessary in my decree concerning the appointment of candidates for the
deputyship to mention the limitation of their duties; I had no doubt that the
deputy would not alter the established rights, but would only deputize, or
represent, so to speak, the central organ through which the locum tenens
could communicate with his flock. But the system of administration you have
introduced not only excludes this: it also excludes the very need for the
existence of the locum tenens. Such major steps cannot, of course, be
approved by the consciousness of the Church. I did not admit any qualifications
limiting the duties of the deputy, both from a feeling of deep reverence and
trust for the appointed candidates, and first of all for you, having in mind at
this point your wisdom. It is burdensome for me to number all the details of
negative evaluations of your administration: the resounding protests and cries
from believers, from hierarchs and laypeople. The picture of ecclesiastical
division that has been painted is shocking. My duty and conscience do not allow
me to remain indifferent to such a sorrowful phenomenon; they urge me to address
your Eminence with a most insistent demand that you correct the mistake you have
made, which has placed the Church in a humiliating position, and which has
caused quarrels and divisions in her and a blackening of the reputation of her
leaders. In the same way I ask you to suspend the other measures that have
increased your prerogatives. Such a decision of yours will, I hope, create a
good atmosphere in the Church and will calm the troubled souls of her children,
while with regard to you it will preserve that disposition towards you which you
deservedly enjoyed both as a Church figure and as a man. Place all your hope on
the Lord, and His help will always be with you. On my part, I as the
first-hierarch of the Church, call on all clergy and church activists to
display, in everything that touches on the civil legislation and administration,
complete loyalty. They are obliged to submit unfailingly to the governmental
decrees as long as they do not violate the holy faith and in general are not
contrary to Christian conscience; and they must not engage in any
anti-governmental activity, and they are allowed to express neither approval nor
disapproval of their actions in the churches or in private conversations, and in
general they must not interfere in matters having nothing to do with the
Church...”[68]

On February 13/26, 1930,
after receiving news from Deacon K. about the true state of affairs in the
Church, Metropolitan Peter wrote to Sergius: "Of all the distressing news I have
had to receive, the most distressing was the news that many believers remain
outside the walls of the churches in which your name is commemorated. I am
filled with spiritual pain both about the disputes that have arisen with regard
to your administration and about other sad phenomena. Perhaps this information
is biassed, perhaps I am not sufficiently acquainted with the character and aims
of the people writing to me. But the news of disturbances in the Church come to
me from various quarters and mainly from clerics and laymen who have made a
great impression on me. In my opinion, in view of the exceptional circumstances
of Church life, when normal rules of administration have been subject to all
kinds of distortion, it is necessary to put Church life on that path on which it
stood during your first period as deputy. So be so good as to return to that
course of action that was respected by everybody. I repeat that I am very sad
that you have not written to me or confided your plans to me. Since letters come
from other people, yours would undoubtedly have reached me..."

On August 17, 1930, after
again refusing to renounce the locum tenancy, Metropolitan Peter was imprisoned
in the Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg prisons in solitary confinement with no right
to receive parcels or visitors.

On March 11, 1931, after
describing the sufferings of his life in Khe (which included the enmity of three
renovationist priests), he posed the following question in a letter to J.B.
Polyansky: "Will not a change in locum tenens bring with it a change also
in his deputy? Of course, it is possible that my successor, if he were to find
himself incapable of carrying out his responsibilities directly, would leave the
same person as his deputy - that is his right. But it is certain, in my opinion,
that the carrying out of his duties by this deputy would have to come to an end
at the same time as the departure of the person for whom he is deputizing, just
as, according to the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, with his departure the
synod created by him would cease to exist. All this and other questions require
thorough and authoritative discussion and canonical underpinning... Be so kind
as to bow to Metropolitan Sergius on my behalf, since I am unable to do this
myself, and send him my fervent plea that he, together with Metropolitan
Seraphim and Archbishop Philip, to whom I also bow, work together for my
liberation. I beseech them to defend, an old man who can hardly walk. I was
always filled with a feeling of deep veneration and gratitude to Metropolitan
Sergius, and the thought of some kind of worsening of our relations would give
me indescribable sorrow."

We have no direct evidence
for Metropolitan Peter’s views after 1931. Indirectly, however, we can infer
that his attitude towards Metropolitan Sergius hardened. For, as Professor Ivan
Andreyev witnesses, “approval of the position of Metropolitan Joseph [whose
views on Sergius were known to be uncompromisingly severe] was received from the
exiled Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsa and from Metropolitan Cyril”.[69]
Moreover, “from the fact that in the last years secret relations were
established between Metropolitan Peter and Metropolitan Joseph, we may
conjecture that Metropolitan Peter gave his blessing, in the event of his death,
to Metropolitan Joseph’s heading the Russian Church in his capacity as
Extraordinary Locum Tenens. This right was accorded to Metropolitan
Joseph, as is known only to a few, by a Decision of the Local Council of 1917-18
dated January 25, 1918.”[70]

*

Metropolitan Cyril, like
Metropolitan Peter, at first took a relatively “lenient” attitude towards the
sergianists. Thus in 1934 he wrote: “If we reproach them for not resisting, and,
therefore, of belonging to heresy, we risk depriving them of the psychological
opportunity to reunite with us and losing them forever for Orthodoxy.” This
relative leniency has been exploited by those who wish to make out that the MP
is a true Church even now, nearly eighty years after Sergius’ declaration.
However, there are several reasons for thinking that Cyril was less “moderate”
than he has been made out.

First, as his
correspondent, another Catacomb hierarch said, he was being “excessively
cautious” because of his insufficient knowledge of the Church situation from his
position in exile. Secondly, he was in the unique position of being the only
legal locum tenens that was able to correspond and reason with Sergius.
He therefore naturally steered the dialogue to the theme of the canonical rights
of the locum tenentes and their deputies, convicting Sergius of
usurpation of the power of the First Hierarch. Concentrating on the
canonical-administrative aspect of the matter, without entering into the
dogmatic aspect of Sergius’ subordination to the atheists, was bound to lead
to a less serious estimate of his sin. Nevertheless, in 1934 he wrote that while
the Sergianist priests administered valid sacraments, Christians who partook of
them knowing of Sergius’ usurpation of power and the illegality of his Synod
would receive them to their condemnation.

Several points made by
Metropolitan Cyril in his correspondence with Metropolitan Sergius are of vital
importance in evaluating the status of the Moscow Patriarchate.

The first is the priority
of “the conciliar hierarchical conscience of the Church”. As he wrote in 1929:
“Church discipline is able to retain its validity only as long as it is a true
reflection of the hierarchical conscience of the Conciliar [Sobornoj]
Church; discipline can never take the place of this conscience”. Sergius
violated the hierarchical, conciliar conscience of the Church by his disregard
of the views of bishops equal to him in rank.

The second is that a
hierarch is justified in breaking communion with a fellow hierarch, not only for
heresy, but also in order not to partake in his brother’s sin. Thus while
Metropolitan Cyril did not consider Sergius to have sinned in matters of faith,
he was forced to break communion with him because “I have no other means of
rebuking my sinning brother”. If clergy have mutually opposing opinions within
the Church, then their concelebration is for both “to judgement and
condemnation”.[71]

Again, in November, 1929,
Metropolitan Cyril refused to condemn Metropolitan Joseph and his supporters,
who had broken communion with Sergius; and he did not agree with the bishops in
exile in Tashkent – Arsenius (Stadnitsky), Nicodemus (Krotkov), Nicander
(Fenomenov) and others – who condemned Joseph, considering their hopes of
convening a canonical Council to be “naivety or cunning”.[72]

Thirdly, while Metropolitan
Cyril did not deny the sacraments of the sergianists, he did so only in respect
of those clergy who had been correctly ordained, i.e. by non-sergianist
hierarchs.

A fourth point made by the
metropolitan was that even when such a break in communion occurs between two
parties, both sides remain in the Church so long as dogmatic unanimity is
preserved. But this immediately raised the question: had Sergius only sinned
“administratively”, by transgressing against the canons, as Metropolitan Cyril
claimed (until 1934, at any rate), or had he sinned also “dogmatically”, by
transgressing against the dogma of the One Church, as Archbishop Demetrius of
Gdov, among others, claimed?[73]

In about the middle of the
1930s Metropolitan Cyril issued an epistle in which he called on the Catacomb
hierarchs to confirm his candidacy as the lawful patriarchal locum tenens
in the case of the death of Metropolitan Peter. We know the reaction of one
hierarch, Archbishop Theodore of Volokolamsk, to this epistle. He was not
enthusiastic, because he considered that in times of persecution a centralized
administration was not obligatory for the Church.[74]
In any case, at some time in the 1930s, as we have seen, both Metropolitan Peter
and Metropolitan Cyril came to accept that Metropolitan Joseph should
lead the Russian Church in the event of Metropolitan Peter’s death.

Metropolitan Cyril’s
position hardened towards the end of his life. Thus in March, 1937 he wrote:
“With regard to your perplexities concerning Sergianism, I can say that the very
same questions in almost the same form were addressed to me from Kazan ten years
ago, and then I replied affirmatively to them, because I considered everything
that Metropolitan Sergius had done as a mistake which he himself was conscious
of and wished to correct. Moreover, among our ordinary flock there were many
people who had not investigated what had happened, and it was impossible to
demand from them a decisive and active condemnation of the events. Since then
much water has flowed under the bridge. The expectations that Metropolitan
Sergius would correct himself have not been justified, but there has been
enough time for the formerly ignorant members of the Church, enough incentive
and enough opportunity to investigate what has happened; and very many have
both investigated and understood that Metropolitan Sergius is departing from
that Orthodox Church which the Holy Patriarch Tikhon entrusted to us to guard,
and consequently there can be no part or lot with him for the Orthodox. The
recent events have finally made clear the renovationist nature of Sergianism. We
cannot know whether those believers who remain in Sergianism will be saved,
because the work of eternal Salvation is a work of the mercy and grace of God.
But for those who see and feel the unrighteousness of Sergianism (those are your
questions) it would be unforgiveable craftiness to close one’s eyes to this
unrighteousness and seek there for the satisfaction of one’s spiritual needs
when one’s conscience doubts in the possibility of receiving such satisfaction.
Everything which is not of faith is sin…”[75]

This is an important
document, for it shows that by 1937 Metropolitan Cyril considered that enough
time had passed for the ordinary believer to come to a correct conclusion
concerning the true, “renovationist” – that is, heretical – nature of
Sergianism. So from 1937, in Metropolitan Cyril’s opinion, “the excuse of
ignorance” was no longer valid. What had been involuntary ignorance in the early
days of the schism was now (except in exceptional circumstances caused by, for
example, extreme youth or mental deficiency) witting ignorance – that is,
indifference to the truth or refusal to face the truth.

*

On November 20, 1937,
Metropolitans Joseph and Cyril were shot together in Chimkent. Following on the
shooting of Metropolitan Peter on October 10, this meant that all of the holy
patriarch’s locum tenentes, both “ordinary” and “extraordinary”, were now
dead… The martyrdom of the last de jure and de facto leaders of
the Catacomb Church meant that the True Russian Church’s descent into the
catacombs, which had begun in the early 20s, was completed. From now on, with
the external administrative machinery of the Church destroyed, it was up to each
bishop – sometimes each believer – individually to preserve the fire of faith,
being linked with his fellow Christians only through the inner, mystical bonds
of the life in Christ. Thus was the premonition of Hieromartyr Bishop Damascene
fulfilled: “Perhaps the time has come when the Lord does not wish that the
Church should stand as an intermediary between Himself and the believers, but
that everyone is called to stand directly before the Lord and himself answer for
himself as it was with the forefathers!”[76]

This judgement was
supported by ROCOR at its Second All-Emigration Council in 1938: “Since the
epoch we have lived through was without doubt an epoch of apostasy, it goes
without saying that for the true Church of Christ a period of life in the
wilderness, of which the twelfth chapter of the Revelation of St. John
speaks, is not, as some may believe, an episode connected exclusively with the
last period in the history of mankind. History show us that the Orthodox Church
has withdrawn into the wilderness repeatedly, from whence the will of God called
her back to the stage of history, where she once again assumed her role under
more favourable circumstances. At the end of history the Church of God will go
into the wilderness for the last time to receive Him, Who comes to judge the
quick and the dead. Thus the twelfth chapter of Revelation must be understood
not only in an eschatological sense, but in a historical and educational sense
as well: it shows up the general and typical forms of Church life. If the Church
of God is destined to live in the wilderness through the Providence of the
Almighty Creator, the judgement of history, and the legislation of the
proletarian state, it follows clearly that she must forego all attempts to reach
a legalization, for every attempt to arrive at a legalization during the epoch
of apostasy inescapably turns the Church into the great Babylonian whore of
blasphemous atheism. The near future will confirm our opinion and prove that the
time has come in which the welfare of the Church demands giving up all
legalizations, even those of the parishes. We must follow the example of the
Church prior to the Council of Nicaea, when the Christian communities were
united not on the basis of the administrative institutions of the State, but
through the Holy Spirit alone.”[77]

Perhaps the most striking
and literal example of the Church’s fleeing into the wilderness is provided by
Bishop Amphilochius of Yenisei and Krasnoyarsk, who in 1930 departed into the
Siberian forests and founded a catacomb skete there in complete isolation from
the world.

However, the catacomb
situation of the Church did not mean that it could no longer make decisions and
judgements. Thus in this period the following anathema attached to the Order for
the Triumph of Orthodoxy in Josephite parishes was composed: “To those who
maintain the mindless renovationist heresy of sergianism; to those who teach
that the earthly existence of the Church of God can be established by denying
the truth of Christ; and to those who affirm that serving the God-fighting
authorities and fulfilling their godless commands, which trample on the sacred
canons, the patristic traditions and the Divine dogmas, and destroy the whole of
Christianity, saves the Church of Christ; and to those who revere the Antichrist
and his servants and forerunners, and all his minions, as a lawful power
established by God; and to all those… who blaspheme against the new confessors
and martyrs (Sergius of Nizhni-Novgorod, Nicholas of Kiev and Alexis of Khutyn),
and to… the renovationists and the other heretics – anathema.”[78]

Again, Divine Providence
convened a Council of the Catacomb Church in July, 1937, in the depths of
Siberia:- “In the last days of July, 1937, in the Siberian town of Ust-Kut, on
the River Lena (at its juncture with the River Kut), in the re-grouping section
of the house of arrest, there met by chance: two Metropolitans, four Bishops,
two Priests and six laymen of the secret Catacomb Church, who were on a stage of
their journey from Vitim to Irkutsk, being sent from Irkutsk to the north.

“It was difficult to
anticipate a similarly full and representative gathering of same-minded members
of the Church in the near future. Therefore those who had gathered decided
immediately to open a ‘Sacred Council’, in order to make canonical regulations
concerning vital questions of the Catacomb Church. The time of the Council was,
as it seemed, limited to four hours, after which the participants in the Council
were sent in different directions.

“The president was
Metropolitan John (in one version: “Bishop John”), and the Council chose the
layman A.Z. to be secretary. The resolutions of the Council were not signed:
A.Z. gave an oath to memorize the decisions of the Council and to pass on to
whom it was necessary whatever he remembered exactly, but not to speak at all
about what he confused or could not remember exactly. A.Z. in his time succeeded
in passing on the memorised decisions of the Church. His words were written down
and became Canons of the Church. Among these Canons were some that are
especially necessary for the Church:

“1. The Sacred Council
forbids the faithful to receive communion from the clergy legalized by the
anti-Christian State.

“2. It has been revealed to
the Sacred Council by the Spirit that the anathema-curse hurled by his Holiness
Patriarch Tikhon is valid, and all priests and Church-servers who have dared to
consider it as an ecclesiastical mistake or political tactic are placed under
its power and bound by it.

“3. To all those who
discredit and separate themselves from the Sacred Council of 1917-18 –
Anathema!

“4. All branches of the
Church which are on the common trunk – the trunk is our pre-revolutionary Church
– are living branches of the Church of Christ. We give our blessing to common
prayer and the serving of the Divine Liturgy to all priests of these branches.
The Sacred Council forbids all those who do not consider themselves to be
branches, but independent from the tree of the Church, to serve the Divine
Liturgy. The Sacred Council does not consider it necessary to have
administrative unity of the branches of the Church, but unity of mind concerning
the Church is binding on all.”[79]

Thus Sergius was to be
condemned, not only because he was a usurper of ecclesiastical authority
(although he was that), nor because he violated the sacred canons (although he
did that), but because he imposed on the Church an heretical attitude towards
the antichristian authorities. As Hieromartyr Bishop Mark (Novoselov) said
during interrogation: “I am an enemy of Soviet power – and what is more, by dint
of my religious convictions, since Soviet power is an atheist power and even
anti-theist. I believe that as a true Christian I cannot strengthen this power
by any means… [There is] a petition which the Church has commanded to be used
everyday in certain well-known conditions… The purpose of this formula is to
request the overthrow of the infidel power by God… But this formula does not
amount to a summons to believers to take active measures, but only calls them to
pray for the overthrow of the power that has fallen away from God.”[80]

Again, in another catacomb
document dating from the 1960s we read: “Authority is given by God in order to
preserve and fulfill the law… But how should one look on the Soviet authority,
following the Apostolic teaching on authorities [Romans 13]? In
accordance with the Apostolic teaching which we have set forth, one must
acknowledge that the Soviet authority is not an authority. It is an
anti-authority. It is not an authority because it is not established by God, but
insolently created by an aggregation of the evil actions of men, and it is
consolidated and supported by these actions. If the evil actions weaken, the
Soviet authority, representing a condensation of evil, likewise weakens… This
authority consolidates itself in order to destroy all religions, simply to
eradicate faith in God. Its essence is warfare with God, because its root is
from Satan. The Soviet authority is not authority, because by its nature it
cannot fulfill the law, for the essence of its life is evil.

“It may be said that the
Soviet authority, in condemning various crimes of men, can still be considered
an authority. We do not say that a ruling authority is totally lacking. We only
affirm that it is an anti-authority. One must know that the affirmation of real
power is bound up with certain actions of men, to whom the instinct of
preservation is natural. And they must take into consideration the laws of
morality which have been inherent in mankind from ages past. But in essence this
authority systematically commits murder physically and spiritually. In reality a
hostile power acts, which is called Soviet authority. The enemy strives by
cunning to compel humanity to acknowledge this power as an authority. But the
Apostolic teaching on authority is inapplicable to it, just as evil is
inapplicable to God and the good, because evil is outside God;
but the enemies with hypocrisy can take refuge in the
well-known saying that everything is from God. This Soviet anti-authority is
precisely the collective Antichrist, warfare against God…”[81]

The Ust-Kut Council may be
seen as confirming the sixth canon of the “Nomadic Council” of 1928, which
defined the essence of Sergianism as its recognition of Soviet power as a true,
God-established power. It also harks back to the seventh canon of that Council,
which declared: “The anathema of January 19, 1918 laid by Patriarch Tikhon and
the Holy Council on the former Christians who became blasphemers, is confirmed.
Since Soviet power is a blaspheming and Christ-persecuting power, the action of
the anathema very much applies to the God-fighting power, and one must pray not
for it, but for the deliverance of people from the bitter torment of the godless
authorities and for the suffering land of Russia. We establish the reading of a
special prayer for the persecuted and much-suffering Church after the service.”[82]

*

If Metropolitan Sergius
thought that his betrayal of the True Orthodox Christians would “save the
Church”, the next few years would prove him terribly wrong. From 1935 the
Bolsheviks began to repress all the clergy, sergianist as well as True Orthodox.
According to Russian government figures, in 1937 alone 136,900 clergy were
arrested, of whom 106,800 were killed; while between 1917 and 1980, 200,000
clergy were executed and 500,000 others were imprisoned or sent to the camps.
The rate of killing slowed down considerably in the following years. In 1939 900
clergy were killed, in 1940 – 1100, in 1941 – 1900, in 1943 – 500. In the period
1917 to 1940 205 Russian hierarchs “disappeared without trace”; 59 disappeared
in 1937 alone.[83]
By 1939 there were only four bishops even of the sergianist church at liberty,
and only a tiny handful of churches open, in the whole of the country. By 1938,
according to T. Martynov, most of the 180,000 priests from before the revolution
had been killed.[84]

The situation was no better
with regard to churches. There were no churches at all in Belorussia (Kolarz),
“less than a dozen” in Ukraine (Bociurkiw), and a total of 150-200 in the whole
of Russia.[85]
In all, the numbers of functioning Orthodox churches declined from 54,692 in
1914 to 39,000 at the beginning of 1929 to 15, 835 on April 1, 1936.[86]

And yet the census of 1937
established that one-third of city-dwellers and two-thirds of country-dwellers
still confessed that they believed in God. Stalin’s plan that the Name of God
should not be named in the country by the year 1937 had failed…

But what of the future?
What hopes did the Christians of the Catacomb Church nurture with regard to a
deliverance from their terrible sufferings? If some, like Bishop Maximus of
Serpukhov, were pessimistic about the future, thinking that the very last days
of the world had been reached[87],
others prophesied the resurrection of Holy Russia before the end, such as Bishop
Victor of Glazov. Eldress Agatha of Belorussia, who was starved to death by the
authorities in 1939 at the age of 119, told her spiritual children concerning
the Soviet Church: “This is not a true church. It has signed a contract to serve
the Antichrist. Do not go to it. Do not receive any Mysteries from its servants.
Do not participate in prayer with them.” And then she said: “There will come a
time when churches will be opened in Russia, and the true Orthodox Faith will
triumph. Then people will become baptized, as at one time they were baptized
under St. Vladimir. When the churches are opened for the first time, do not go
to them because these will not be true churches; but when they are opened the
second time, then go – these will be the true churches. I will not live to see
this time, but many of you will live to this time. The atheist Soviet authority
will vanish, and all its servants will perish…”[88]

However, the immediate
outlook at the end of the thirties was bleak indeed. E.L., writing about
Hieromartyr Bishop Damascene, comments: “He warmed the hearts of many, but the
masses remained… passive and inert, moving in any direction in accordance with
an external push, and not their inner convictions… The long isolation of Bishop
Damascene from Soviet life, his remoteness from the gradual process of
sovietization led him to an unrealistic assessment of the real relations of
forces in the reality that surrounded him. Although he remained unshaken
himself, he did not see… the desolation of the human soul in the masses. This
soul had been diverted onto another path – a slippery, opportunistic path which
led people where the leaders of Soviet power – bold men who stopped at nothing
in their attacks on all moral and material values – wanted them to go… Between
the hierarchs and priests who had languished in the concentration camps and
prisons, and the mass of the believers, however firmly they tried to stand in
the faith, there grew an abyss of mutual incomprehension. The confessors strove
to raise the believers onto a higher plane and bring their spiritual level
closer to their own. The mass of believers, weighed down by the cares of life
and family, blinded by propaganda, involuntarily went in the opposite direction,
downwards. Visions of a future golden age of satiety, of complete liberty from
all external and internal restrictions, of the submission of the forces of
nature to man, deceitful perspectives in which fantasy passed for science… were
used by the Bolsheviks to draw the overwhelming majority of the people into
their nets. Only a few individuals were able to preserve a loftiness of spirit.
This situation was exploited very well by Metropolitan Sergius…”[89]

Sergius has had many
apologists. Some have claimed that he “saved the Church” for a future
generation, when the whirlwind of the persecution had passed. This claim cannot
be justified, as we have seen. It was rather the Catacomb Church, which, as
Alexeyev writes, “in a sense saved the official Church from complete destruction
because the Soviet authorities were afraid to force the entire Russian Church
underground through ruthless suppression and so to lose control over it.”[90]
As St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco wrote: “The Declaration of
Metropolitan Sergius brought no benefit to the Church. The persecutions not only
did not cease, but also sharply increased. To the number of other accusations
brought by the Soviet regime against clergy and laymen, one more was added –
non-recognition of the Declaration. At the same time, a wave of church closings
rolled over all Russia… Concentration camps and places of forced labor held
thousands of clergymen, a significant part of whom never saw freedom again,
being executed there or dying from excessive labors and deprivations.”[91]

Others have tried to
justify Sergius by claiming that there are two paths to salvation, one through
open confession or the descent into the catacombs, and the other through
compromise. Sergius, according to this view, was no less a martyr than the
Catacomb martyrs, only he suffered the martyrdom of losing his good name.[92]
However, this view comes close to the “Rasputinite” heresy that there can be
salvation through sin – in this case, the most brazen lying, the sacrifice of
the freedom and dignity of the Church and Orthodoxy, and the betrayal to
torments and death of one’s fellow Christians! Thus Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev
was betrayed by "Bishop" Manuel Lemeshevsky.[93]
And more generally, Metropolitan Sergius' charge that all the catacomb bishops
were "counter-revolutionaries" was sufficient to send them to their deaths.[94]

Sergianists
are constantly trying to prove that the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius,
though disastrous for the Church, was nevertheless motivated by the purest of
feelings. Apart from the inherent improbability that an action motivated by the
purest of feelings - and therefore inspired by the Grace of God - would bring
disaster, both physical and spiritual, to thousands, if not millions of people,
we have seen that Sergius was an opportunist from the beginning, from well
before the revolution.

Further proof
of this is provided in the Memoirs of Princess Natalya Vladimirovna
Urusova: "The personality of Metropolitan Sergius was of the basest, crawling
before the authorities. Many people asked each other: 'Does Metropolitan Sergius
really take part in the persecutions and the destruction of churches?' Some did
not admit that he took an active part in this, but, unfortunately, they were
wrong. He completely sold himself to satan. I can cite a case personally known
to me which confirms the fact of his participation in these works.

"In the
church of St. Nicholas the Big Cross there chanted in the choir a young girl,
very humble and nice. The whole of her family was religious, and consequently
did not recognize the sergianist church. We got to know each other, and I and
Andryusha would often go to their dacha near Moscow. Verochka worked in the main
post office in Moscow, she was welcoming and good-looking. Once there came to
her department on service matters a GPU boss. He was attracted to her and began
to talk with her. To her horror and that of her family, he asked for their
address. Unexpectedly he came to the dacha, thoroughly frightening everyone, of
course. After all, it was impossible ever to know the intentions of these
terrible people. Having said hello, he brought out a box of pastries, which no
simple mortal could get at that time, and gave it to Verochka, asking her to
accept him as a guest. He began to come often and to court her. Probably
everyone was quietly and secretly crossing themselves, praying to be delivered
from this guest. But there was nothing to be done. He looked about 30, with
quite an interesting appearance. Almost immediately they set off on a walk
without Verochka's father and mother, while Andryusha and I hurried to leave.
Verochka said that she could have liked him, but the single thought that he was
not only the boss of a GPU department, but, as he himself said, in charge of
Church affairs, repulsed and horrified her. He proposed to her. She refused.
'How can I be your wife, when you are not only not a believer, but a persecutor
of the Church, and I can never under any circumstances agree with that.' During
their conversations he tried by every means to draw her away from faith in God,
but she was unbending, the more so in that she was one of the beloved spiritual
children of the murdered Fr. Alexander. He did not give up, but threatened to
shoot her and himself. Moreover, he once even got out his revolver and pointed
it at her. He continued to visit her. The family's situation was terrible. They
couldn't think of sleeping or eating. They spoke only about one thing: how it
would all end, with his taking revenge or his leaving them in peace? Verochka
rushed around like a trapped bird trying to extricate herself from the claws of
a hawk. Once when she was working (at the post office) she was summoned and
given a note to go immediately to the GPU at the Lubyanka... It turned out to be
his office. He ordered her to take up the telephone receiver. Then he took up
another and summoned Metropolitan Sergius. "Listen to the conversation," he told
her. The conversation was about the destruction of one of the churches in
Moscow. Sergius not only did not register any protest, but took part in this
terrible affair and gave his agreement. "Did you hear?" said the boss. "That's
the kind of clergy you bow down to." She replied that this conversation could
not shake her faith in God, and that even before she had not recognized
Metropolitan Sergius, while now she was convinced that she had not been mistaken
about him… “[95]

Sergius made the basic
mistake of forgetting that it is God, not man, Who saves the Church. This
mistake almost amounts to a loss of faith in the Providence and Omnipotence of
God Himself. The faith that saves is the faith that “with God all things are
possible” (Matthew 19.26). It is the faith that cries: “Some trust in
chariots, and some in horses, but we will call upon the name of the Lord our
God” (Psalm 19.7). This was and is the faith of the Catacomb Church,
which, being founded on “the Rock, which is Christ” (I Corinthians 10.7),
has prevailed against the gates of hell.

But Sergius’ “faith” was of
a different, more “supple” kind, the kind of which the Prophet spoke: “Because
you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death, and with hell we have an
agreement; when the overwhelming scourge passes through it will not come to us;
for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter’;
therefore thus says the Lord God,… hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and
waters will overwhelm the shelter. Then your covenant with death will be
annulled, and your agreement with hell will not stand; when the overwhelming
scourge passes through you will be beaten down by it…” (Isaiah 28.15,
17-19)

Through Sergius, the Moscow
Patriarchate made an agreement with hell. We know already that it will not stand
in God’s eyes. We await its being crushed by it…

[6]
Tape recorded conversation with Protopriest Michael Ardov in 1983, Church
News, vol. 13, № 11 (112), p. 6.
According to the same source, Vladyka Seraphim mentioned Metropolitan Cyril.
“But he is behind bars,” Tuchkov said. “He is behind your bars, and you
must release him,” said Seraphim.

“According to a letter written by Archbishop Seraphim a few days after his
Lubyanks interview, Tuchkov said to him ‘at parting’: ‘We don’t harbour evil
thoughts; we are releasing you and assign to you Uglich as your place of
residence; you can officiate wherever you want, but under no circumstances can
you govern. You should neither appoint, nor transfer, nor dismiss, nor reward.’
‘But what about enquiries from the dioceses, current affairs,’ asked Archbishop
Seraphim. ‘You cannot stop life, it will claim its own.’ ‘Well, you can make
purely formal replies. After all, you have declared autonomy. So what do you
want? You have left no deputies. So you should act accordingly: you must not
send around any papers on the new government system. You can write to the
dioceses that “since I have refused to govern, you should manage on your own in
your localities.” But it comes into your head to write something, send it to me
with a trusted man, I’ll look through it and give you my opinion… As for now,
goodbye. We’ll buy you a ticket and see you to the railway station. Go back to
Uglich and sit there quietly.’” (in Fr. Alexander Mazyrin, “Legalizing the
Moscow Patriarchate in 1927: The Secret Aims of the Authorities”, Social
Science: A Quarterly Journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences, no. 1,
2009, p. 3. The article was first published in Russian in Otechestvennaia
Istoria, no. 4, 2008).

[14]
Protopriest Vladislav Tsypin, Istoria Russkoj Tserkvi 1925-1938 (A
History of the Russian Church, 1925-1938) Moscow: Monastery of the Meeting of
the Lord, 1999, p. 383. Monk Benjamin (op. cit., p. 172) writes that on
September 13, Metropolitan Eulogius wrote to Sergius asking that he be given
autonomy. On September 24 Sergius replied with a refusal.

[20]
At its Council in Odessa under the presidency of Archbishop Tikhon of Omsk and
Siberia.

[21]
St. John Cassian writes: “You should know that in the world to come also you
will be judged in the lot of those with whom in this life you have been affected
by sharing in their gains or losses, their joys or their sorrows…” (cited by S.
Brakus, [ROCElaity] FW: Communists and Spies in cassocks, January 8, 2007).

[26]
Regelson, op. cit., p. 440. The Solovki bishops affirmed the civic
loyalty of the Orthodox Church to the Soviet State. But, as M.B. Danilushkin
points out, “the tone of these affirmations was fundamentally different than in
the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius. Recognizing necessity – mainly the
inevitability of civil submission to the authorities – they decisively protested
against the unceremonious interference of the authorities into the inner affairs
of the Church, the ban on missionary activity and the religious education of
children, firmly expressing their position that in this sphere there could be no
compromise on the part of the Church. Although the Declaration of Metropolitan
Sergius recognized the religious persecutions in the USSR, it called, not the
state, but the believers, to peace. In this consists the fundamental difference
between the two documents…” (Istoria Russkoj Tserkvi ot Vosstanovlenia
Patriarshestva do nashikh dnej (A History of the Russian Church from the
Reestablishment of the Patriarchate to our Days), vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1997,
p. 291).

[43]
His words, as reported by Protopresbyter Michael Polsky (Novie Mucheniki
Rossijskie, Jordanville, 1949-57, vol. II, p. 30), were: “The secret,
desert, Catacomb Church has anathematized the ‘Sergianists’ and all those with
them.”

[44]
Our information about this Council is based exclusively on Archbishop Ambrose
(von Sievers), “Katakombnaia Tserkov’: Kochuiushchij Sobor 1928 g.” (“The
Catacomb Church: The ‘Nomadic’ Council of 1928”), Russkoe Pravoslavie
(Russian Orthodoxy), № 3 (7), 1997 ®, whose main source is claimed to be the
archives of the president of the Council, Bishop Mark (Novoselov), as researched
by the Andrewite Bishop Evagrius. Some historians, such as Pavel Protsenko
(“Skvoz’ mif ob ‘Istinnoj Tserkvi’”, Russkij Pastyr’, 35, III-1999, pp.
84-97), dismiss the authenticity of the Council completely. Others, such as
Osipova (“V otvet na statiu ‘Mif ob “Istinnoj Tserkvi”’” (In Reply to the
Article, “The Myth of ‘the True Church’”), Russkoe Pravoslavie (Russian
Orthodoxy), № 3 (7), 1997, pp. 18-19) and Danilushkin (op. cit., p. 534)
appear to accept the existence of this Council. But it is difficult to find
anything other than oblique supporting evidence for it, and von Sievers has
refused to allow the present writer to see the archives. A Smirnov (perhaps von
Sivers himself) writes that the “non-commemorating” branch of the Catacomb
Church, whose leading priest was Fr. Sergius Mechev, had bishops who “united in
a constantly active Preconciliar Convention” and who were linked with each other
by special people called ‘svyazniki’” (“Ugasshie nepominaiushchie v bege
vremeni” (The Extinguished Non-Commemorators in the Passing of Time), Simvol
(Symbol), № 40, 1998, p. 174).

[45]
“We cannot believe that in the Act of that Council, which was allegedly
undersigned by 70 hierarchs of the Greco-Russian Church, the Savior’s name was
written as Isus, the way Old Rite Believers wrote it, and the way
Ambrosius himself does. Furthermore, the hierarchs could not have unanimously
excommunicated the Council of 166-1667 as ‘an assembly of rogues’. The Council
could not have agreed to recognize all Onomatodox believers as ‘true believers’,
thus easily ending the stalemate unresolved by the Council of 1917-1918. The
procedure of assignment by hierarchs of casting vote powers to their proxies,
which violated the provisions of the 1917-1918 Local Council, could not have
been adopted without any deliberation or objections at all. The seventy
attending hierarchs could not have been unaware of the fact that only the First
Hierarch, Metropolitan Peter, had the power to convene a Local Council…” (Vertograd
(English edition), December, 1998, p. 31).

[47]Pravoslavnaia Rus' (Orthodox Russia), №
14 (1587), July 15/28, 1997, p. 7 ®. These figures probably do not take into
account all the secret bishops consecrated by the Ufa Autocephaly. In 1930
Sergius claimed he had 70% of the Orthodox bishops (not including the
renovationists and Gregorians), which implies that about 30% of the Russian
episcopate joined the Catacomb Church (Pospielovsky, "Mitropolit Sergij i
raskoly sprava" Metropolitan Sergius and the schisms from the right), Vestnik
Russkogo Khristianskogo Dvizhenia (Herald of the Russian Christian
Movement), № 158, I-1990, p. 70). According to the Catholic Bishop Michel
D’Erbigny, once the Vatican’s representative in Russia, three quarters of the
episcopate separated from him; but this is probably an exaggeration (D’Erbigny
and Alexandre Deubner, Evêques Russes en Exil – Douze ans d’Epreuves
1918-1930 (Russian Bishops in Exile – Twelve Years of Trials, 1918-1930),
Orientalia Christiana, vol. XXI,
№
67)

[48]
The area occupied by the “Bujevtsy” in Tambov, Voronezh and Lipetsk provinces
had been the focus of a major peasant rebellion against Soviet power in 1921. It
continued to be a major stronghold of True Orthodoxy for many decades to come.
See A.I. Demianov, Istinno Pravoslavnoe Khristianstvo, 1977, Voronezh
University Press ®; "New Information on the True Orthodox Christians", Radio
Liberty Research, March 15, 1978, pp. 1-4; Christel Lane, Christian
Religion in the Soviet Union, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978. ch. 4;
"Registered and unregistered churches in Voronezh region", Keston News
Service, 3 March, 1988, p. 8.

[53]
Although the Protestants had welcomed the revolution and thus escaped the
earlier persecutions, they were now subjected to the same torments as the
Orthodox (Pospielovsky, "Podvig very", op. cit., pp. 233-34).

[64]
Zelenogorsky, M. Zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’ Arkhiepiskopa Andrea (Kniazia
Ukhtomskogo) (The Life and Activity of Archbishop Andrew (Prince Ukhtomsky),
Moscow, 1991, p. 216. According to Archbishop Bartholomew (Remov), who never
joined the Catacomb Church, the whole activity of Metropolitan Sergius was
carried out in accordance with the instructions of the Bolsheviks (Za Khrista
Postradavshie (Suffered for Christ), Moscow: St. Tikhon’s Theological
Institute, 1997, p. 220).

[65]
Radzinsky, however, claims that by the end of 1930 “80 per cent of
village churches were closed” (Stalin, New York:
Doubleday, 1996, p. 249).

[68]
Gubonin, op. cit., pp. 681-682, 691-692. Protopresbyter Michael Polsky (Novie
Mucheniki Rossijskie (The New Martyrs of Russia), op. cit., p. 133)
reported that Metropolitan Peter had written to Sergius: “If you yourself do not
have the strength to protect the Church, you should step down and hand over your
office to a stronger person.”

[69]
Andreyev, “Vospominania o Katakombnoj Tserkvi v SSSR” (Reminiscences of the
Catacomb Church in the USSR), in Archimandrite Panteleimon, Luch Sveta v
Zaschitu Pravoslavnoj Very, v oblichenie ateizma i v oproverzhenie doktrin
neveria (A Ray of Light in Defence of the Orthodox Faith, to the Rebuking of
Atheism and the Rebuttal of the Doctrines of Unbelief), Jordanville, 1970, part
2, p. 123.

[83]A document of
the Commission attached to the President of the Russian Federation on the
Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repressions, January 5, 1996;
Service Orthodoxe de Presse (Orthodox Press Service), № 204, January, 1996,
p. 15 (F). According to another source, from October, 1917 to June, 1941 inclusive, 134,000
clergy were killed, of whom the majority (80,000) were killed between 1928 and
1940 (Cyril Mikhailovich Alexandrov, in V. Lyulechnik, “Tserkov’ i KGB” (The
Church and the KGB), in
http://elmager.livejournal.com/217784.html). According to a third source (Kharbinskoye
Vremia, February, 1937,
№ 28), in the nineteen years of Soviet terror to that date there were killed:
128 bishops; 26.777 clergy; 7.500 professors; about 9.000 doctors; 94.800
оfficers;
1.000.000 soldiers; 200.000 policemen; 45.000 teachers; 2.200.000 workers and
peasants. Besides that, 16 million Russians died from hunger and three million
died in forced labour in the camps. (Protopriest John Stukach, “Vysokomerie kak
prepona k uiedineniu” (Haughtiness as an obstacle to union),
http://catacomb.org.ua/modules.php?name=Pages&go=page&pid=1357.

[91]
St. John Maximovich, The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. A Short History,
Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1997, pp. 28-29. Even a recent
biography of Sergius by an MP author accepts this fact: “If Metropolitan
Sergius, in agreeing in his name to publish the Declaration of 1927 composed by
the authorities, hoping to buy some relief for the Church and the clergy, then
his hopes not only were not fulfilled, but the persecutions after 1927 became
still fiercer, reaching truly hurricane-force in 1937-38.” (Sergius Fomin,
Strazh Doma Gospodnia (Guardian of the House of the Lord), Moscow, 2003,
p. 262)

The heart of the
Orthodox Christian is gripped with great
sorrow – and not a little anger – when he looks at the truly catastrophic
state of the Orthodox Church today. Many, very many are the lost sheep
looking around in desperation for a priest or bishop who will provide the
minimum of pastoral care. Few, very few are the priests and bishops who
provide even that minimum. If we narrow the meaning of “the Orthodox Church”
to exclude the clearly heretical churches of World Orthodoxy, and restrict
it those “True Orthodox” Churches that are not in communion with World
Orthodoxy, then the spectacle is hardly more encouraging: scandals abound,
heresies and schisms multiply, the love of many has grown cold. It appears
that now “Thou hast cast us off and put us to shame, and wilt not go forth,
O God, with our hosts. Thou hast made us to turn back before our enemies,
and they that hate us took spoils for themselves. Thou hast given us up as
sheep to be eaten, and among the nations hast Thou scattered us” (Psalm
43.10-12).

The worst thing of all is
that so few seem to care; a kind of torpor has overcome us, a
faintheartedness in the face of the catastrophe that threatens us all with –
why should we be afraid to say it? – the eternal torments of hell…

There are two standard
solutions offered to this problem in relation to True Orthodoxy: we shall
call the one the clerical solution, and the other the lay solution.

The clerical solution is
that the jurisdiction that they rule is, if not perfect, at any rate the
most canonical to be found, and that the solution for the clergy of other
jurisdictions is to repent before them, or at any rate seek union with them.
The more rigorist clergy insist that their own jurisdiction is the only True
Church, at any rate on the territory of the given Local Church, so that
“repent”, rather than “seek union”, is the operative word. The less rigorist
do not insist on this (at least openly), but still insist that their
jurisdiction and its ecclesiology must be the core around which “the
gathering of the fragments” must take place… The lay solution (which is also
put forward by some clergy) arises out of frustration at the manifest
failure of the proposed clerical solutions so far. It declares that the
clergy of different jurisdictions must simply humble themselves, forget –
or, at any rate, ignore – their differences, come together in a conference
without preconditions and there attempt to combine into a single
jurisdiction. The assumption behind this solution is that the great
majority, if not all, of the True Orthodox jurisdictions have essentially
the same faith and together already constitute the One True Church, even if
that inner, mystical unity is not yet manifest in administrative unity.[1]

I believe that both
solutions to the problem are vain for essentially the same reason: they
underestimate the obstacles to unity that exist both within and between each
jurisdiction. The essential problem with the clerical solution is that, even
if we believe that there is one jurisdiction in each given territory that is
more canonical than the others, and therefore the natural core around which
the other jurisdictions on that territory must unite, - and my personal
belief is that there is
such a jurisdiction in both Greece and Russia - there still exist
major problems that give members of other jurisdictions just reason to pause
before joining it. Therefore the first priority must be to
remove these internal problems first, before attempting to make disciples
and converts of the other, less canonical jurisdictions. Otherwise, we are
simply preparing the ground for further schisms in the future, leading to a
still deeper, and still more dangerous degree of disillusionment… The
essential problem with the lay solution is analogous: although some of the
differences that divide the jurisdictions are clearly the result of personal
pride or stubbornness on the part of individual hierarchs, and therefore
should be remediable with a little more flexibility and humility on all
sides, this is clearly not always the case. In some cases, the differences
go deeper, and a simple-minded call to “forgive and forget” is inadequate.
In fact, we have to admit that some of the breaks in communion are
justified, even necessary from a canonical point of view – and if we do
not attempt to keep the holy canons, we are lost before we even begin.

Let us now look briefly
at some of these more intractable problems – but without naming names (even
if the names will be known to many), because the purpose of this article is
not to lambast individual hierarchs or jurisdictions, but to draw general
conclusions applicable to all:-

a. In one jurisdiction,
the chief-hierarch, though dogmatically Orthodox and with undoubted
apostolic succession, is a homosexual who
has only escaped a just prison sentence by the skin of his teeth. Moreover,
he has succeeded in expelling dissidents by methods that no Orthodox
Christian can recognize as just or canonical. The other hierarchs of his
jurisdiction lack the strength to bring him to canonical trial, either
because they have known, but done nothing about, his crimes for a long time,
and are therefore partly guilty themselves, or because they know that they
would be unjustly deprived of their sees if they attempted, however
belatedly, to bring him to book. In this situation, it is hardly surprising
or reprehensible that the leaders of other jurisdictions hesitate to seek
union with him. The Augean stables need to be cleansed before other, fresh
horses can be introduced into them

b. In other
jurisdictions, schisms have taken place on the grounds of the sympathies of
the chief hierarch with anti-semitism, or Stalinism. Such sympathies are
undoubtedly reprehensible, and it is difficult to criticize those who wish
to distance themselves from them.

c. In another
jurisdiction that is Orthodox from a dogmatic point of view and with
undoubted apostolic succession, a senior hierarch with extreme nationalist
views has been allowed for many years to control the “foreign policy” of the
jurisdiction together with one of its major foreign dioceses. This has had
catastrophic consequences both for the missionary work of the Church and for
its relations with other Local Churches. The other hierarchs again seem
incapable of acting in accordance with the canons in order to relieve this
hierarch of the duties that he has manifestly failed to fulfil. And again,
it is not surprising or reprehensible that other hierarchs and
jurisdictions, for whom missionary work is not an “optional extra”, and who
believe that the Catholicity of the Church
should be proclaimed in deed as well as word, hesitate to seek union with
this jurisdiction as long as it is dominated by this extremist hierarch.

d. Another jurisdiction,
while impeccable in its rejection of ecumenism and sergianism, and very
active in missionary work, has become a conduit for the heretical
soteriology of the ecumenist John Romanides that threatens to undermine the
central dogma of Christianity.

e. Another group of
jurisdictions has still not made up its mind to declare World Orthodoxy
outside the True Church, although the heresy of ecumenism is now almost a
century old. If this were simply a tendency towards liberalism, a humble
fear of making categorical statements of condemnation, or a desire not to
make the conversion of people from World Orthodoxy more difficult than it
need be, this would be a less serious matter – such liberals have been found
within the Church in every epoch of her history. But when this liberal
tendency is taken as a justification for schism from other, less liberal
jurisdictions who believe – rightly – that World Orthodoxy is graceless;
when this liberal tendency is given a quasi-dogmatic basis in a new, elitist
teaching on the nature of the Church (as consisting of three layers:
“healthy” Orthodox, “sick” Orthodox and “sick” heretics, none of which are
in communion with each other); and when it is denied that anyTrue Orthodox Church has the canonical right
to anathematize heretics, then the matter becomes more serious and cannot be
swept under the carpet.

These are only some of
the more intractable problems that divide the True Orthodox. It would be
naïve to think that they can be solved simply by all the jurisdictions
getting round a table. Where bilateral talks have failed (we have more than
one example in 2009 alone), multilateral talks are bound to fail.
Moreover, multilateral talks aiming at not less than the complete “melting
down” and “reforging” of True Orthodoxy are irresponsible nonsense. For they
imply the need for revolution rather than evolution in
inter-jurisdictional relations that is reminiscent more of renovationism
than of True Orthodoxy.[2]

What is needed is
unilateral talks – that is, talks within each jurisdiction rather
than between them – to root out the serious problems we have pointed to. Not
only would this be the fulfilment of the Lord’s command to remove the beam
from one’s own eye before attempting to remove the mote from one’s
neighbour’s: it would make each jurisdiction more attractive to the others
and thereby create a real desire for unity rather than the present
fear of disunity…

*

Speaking about a
“clerical” and a “lay” solution raises the question of the relationship
between, and relative responsibility of, the clergy and the laity.

St. Cosmas of Aitolia
said that in the last times the clergy and the laity would distrust each
other; and it must be admitted that this prophecy has been fulfilled in our
time. The clergy, especially those that advocate the rigorist version of the
clerical solution, tend to blame the clergy of other jurisdictions for the
present catastrophe. Sometimes, however, echoing the Pharisees of Christ’s
time, they also blame the laity, declaring that “the people that knoweth not
the law is cursed” (John 7.49); they are “unstable”,
“jurisdiction-hoppers”, who should simply listen to their priests and obey.

But attacks by the clergy
on the laity are rare – and with reason. For it is generally understood that
simply to get a general, objective idea of the rapidly changing
jurisdictional situation – who’s who, and who stands for what, and who has
been condemned for what by whom – is a major intellectual task requiring
personal contacts and theological and linguistic skills for which few of the
laity are well equipped. And if they ask the clergy, they will get very
different pictures from different clergy – and even from the same clergyman
at different times if he, too, has been a “jurisdiction-hopper”.

So even if it remains
true that a people usually gets the leaders it deserves (for “as with the
people, so with the priest” (Hosea 4.9)), the primary responsibility
must remain with the priesthood. It could not be otherwise in a hierarchical
religion such as Orthodoxy in which no priest can be removed, or new one
installed, except at the hands of priests. So if the responsibility borne by
the priesthood is not just an empty phrase, and if the priests are truly the
leaders of the people, who have it within their power, with God’s
help, to initiate change and turn the situation around in a way that is not
given to the people, it is necessary to exhort and rebuke the priests first
of all. Thus the Prophet Hosea says: “It is you, priest, that I denounce.
Day and night you stumble along, the prophet stumbling with you, and you are
the ruin of your people. My people perish for want of knowledge. As you have
rejected knowledge, so do I reject you from the priesthood; you have
forgotten the teaching of your God” (Hosea 4.4-6). Again, the Prophet
Malachi declares: “Now, priests, this is a warning for you. If you do not
listen, if you do not find it in your heart to glorify My name, says the
Lord of Hosts, I will send the curse on you and curse your very blessing.
Indeed, I have already cursed it, since there is not a single one of you who
takes this to heart…” (Malachi 2.1-2).

The role of the laity
need not be as passive as it is often made out to be. The “royal priesthood
of the laity” is not a myth, and should not be mocked – as one True Orthodox
priest has recently mocked it in public. The 1848
Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs specifically emphasized that the
truth of the Church is supported and maintained by the whole body of the
Church. If the laity cannot remove bad priests or install new ones, they at
any right have the right – nay rather, the duty – to lobby for
change. In the epoch of the Ecumenical Councils,
it was the lay monks who were at the forefront of the struggle for the
defence of Orthodoxy against heresy. In the 1920s in Greece and
Romania the movement in defence of the Old
Calendar was essentially a lay movement with only a handful of priests and
no bishops. And St. Joseph of Petrograd foresaw the possibility of a time
when only a few laity would remain faithful to Christ: “Do not forget
that for a minute: 'The Son of God when He cometh shall He find faith on the
earth?' (Luke 18.8). And perhaps the last 'rebels' against the
betrayers of the Church and the accomplices of her ruin will be not only
bishops and not archpriests, but the simplest mortals, just as at the
Cross of Christ His last gasp of suffering
was heard by a few simple souls who were close to Him.”

But even when all
exhortations have failed, and the best efforts of the laity to get their
priests to act in defence of Orthodoxy have failed, it is essential not to
relapse into torpor, into a kind of despondency that deadens the heart and
paralyzes the will. One of the most subtle temptations of our time is the
idea that we should concern ourselves only with our own problems, and not
worry about the problems of others, but “leave all that to God (or the
priests)”. And yet a certain measured indignation at the horror of the
present situation must be considered an entirely appropriate response, and a
lack of indignation - a sign of spiritual insensitivity. It is is not a sign
of pride, still less of sinful rebellion against lawful authority, but of
that most cardinal of virtues – love for our neighbours as ourselves. After
all, did not the Apostle Paul say: “Who is
offended, and I burn not?” (II Corinthians 11.29)?

For a people that has not
lost the capacity to feel sorrow and indignation at the absence of a clear
witness to Orthodoxy in the world, and at the loss of so many sheep
wandering around without a shepherd, for whom the words of David are so
appropriate: “I looked upon my right hand [i.e. towards the Orthodox], and
beheld, and there was none that did know me. Flight hath failed me, and
there is none that watcheth out for my soul” (Psalm 141.60) – for
such a people there is still hope of redemption. For only such a people have
a living faith in the Lord’s promise: “The gates of hell shall not prevail
against the Church” (Matthew 16.18). Only such a people can be
the Church.

We do not know from where
redemption will come. It may come from a hierarch, so far unknown or little
known to the world, who rises above the general level of mediocrity and
finally succeeds in “gathering the fragments”, or from an Orthodox tsar who,
as the first layman of the Church and “bishop of those outside the Church”,
forces the hierarchs to remove the scandals in their midst. This only
do we know for certain: that “it is time for the Lord to act; for they have
dispersed Thy law” (Psalm 118.126), that “it is better to trust in
the Lord than to trust in man” (Psalm 117.7), and that when earthly
hierarchs fail above them stands “the Vladyka above all Vladykas, “the
Shepherd and Bishop of our souls” (I Peter 2.25), the Head and
Bridegroom of the Church for Whom all things are possible, the Lord Jesus
Christ…

United Kingdom

December 15/28, 2009.

*

[1]
For the distinction between the Church as an inner, mystical organism and
the Church as an external organization, see Hieromartyrs Bishop Mark
(Novoselov), Letters to Friends.

It’s truly sad to realize that there are
people in this world that can neither live with the truth, nor refrain from
destroying it in pursuit of earthly gains. The KGB operatives – and lets face
it, that’s what they truly are – that have set up an internet shop under the
soccer club sounding name – ROCOR UNITED – once again have reared their
grotesque head through a pathetic expose` titled “The Anti-ROCOR schism in
Australia – Part 1”.

Having learnt nothing from my sound critique
of their maiden publication – but that is the usual KGB response to undisputable
facts – they have now decided to continue their “modus operandi” by releasing an
article that is full of half-truths, mistakes, innuendoes, distortions and
outright lies.

Before continuing, please note that all
emphases have been made by the writer.

Revealing a display of dilettante
capabilities, the writer refers to Fr.John’s surname as “Stukach” – a rude and
careless mistake – because the CORRECT spelling is “STUKACZ”. But then again,
KGB lackeys were never prone to enunciate the truth or be correct in their
declarations.

However, there is more, which must have
entailed hours of laborious rummaging through rubbish bins to summarise the
following spine-chilling revelation: “Our Sydney correspondent has learned that
recently the Stukachevites (sic), through their relations with the protestants
and generous donations from former parish committee members of St.Peter and
Paul, have purchased an old Methodist church…” Once again, apart from the fact
that a well-trained monkey could have gleaned this information from public
records, their ignorance and careless approach is seen in the expression of the
word “Protestants” with a SMALL p, and referring to Saints Peter and Paul with a
singular St. They obviously disregarded my former advice when I
suggested that they attend a night school for English students, as their current
crop of mistakes and distortions are quite pathetic and infantile. At the same
time, the statement that it’s a Methodist church is incorrect, as it belonged to
the Presbyterian Church!!

Notwithstanding this, let us now attend to
the intended meaning of the article that is heavy on expressions, but very short
on truth.

Let us begin with the opening paragraph:
“Following the REUNION of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROCOR) and the
Moscow Patriarchate (MP)…” the writer shows a pathetic and crude illiteracy in
endeavoring to present a rosy picture of MP’s legitimacy through its past unity
with ROCOR!

Pray tell, when was ROCOR and MP as one in
the past???, because that is what the author is declaring. According to
Chamber’s dictionary, “reunion” means: “ a union after
separation”. Consequently, can this “intelligent” scribe present some facts that
would show that ROCOR and MP were one?

What a clumsy and inept attempt to distort
and mislead, as well as to treat its readers as illiterate ignoramuses! And if
once was not enough, the article repeats this totally misleading insult in:
“..positively welcomed the REUNION of the 2 parts of the Local Russian
Church”. To compound this further, it treats us to a third serving of the lie:
“..the first discussions of REUNION began in 2000…”!!!

As facts have it, MP came into being in 1927
through “met”.Sergius agreement with the satanic soviet regime, to be the head
of their instrumentality – the Moscow Patriarchate. Whereas ROCOR, was formed years earlier! Consequently, to suggest that ROCOR and the MP were
one Church is not only a crude nonsense, but an outright lie!

Throwing caution to the wind, the writer then
reveals his extraordinary, even somewhat jaw-dropping prescience by declaring:
“Stukach (sic), who long had a reputation as an anti-establishment man, already
had plans to rebel against the rightful church (sic – small c)
going back to when the first discussions of REUNION began in 2000”. These
are strong words, but where are the FACTS?? While discussions with the MP did
commence illegally by archbp.Mark of Berlin in 2000, the ROCOR
Synod had no intention – at that stage – to UNITE (note – not “REUNITE”). In
fact their Epistle, as published in “Pravoslavnaya Rus”, stated that they
regarded the MP as being a “SOVIET CREATION” that was formed to
serve their anti-Christian interests!! And this declaration carried the
“capable” “met”Hilarion’s signature!! Can the author point out how this “soviet
creation” became the TRUE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH? What canonical
procedure has it experienced to make it CANONICALLY LEGAL??? It’s
akin to saying that one can turn a “sow’s ear into a silk purse”!!! Of course
Fr.John was against UNIFICATION in the year 2000… but then again so was the
WHOLE ROCOR SYNOD !!! The writer then turns his literary bile against Fr.John’s
receipt of a mitre from “met”Hilarion, by insinuating that he shouldn’t have
accepted it, because “he already had every intention of leaving ROCOR”. If
that’s the case, then why did “met”Hilarion award him the mitre in the first
place? This doesn’t sound like an act of an “able” hierarch - one who hands out
honours to priests that are on the eve of creating a “schism”!! Perhaps it was a
misguided act of inducement to stay with the ROCOR Judases?

The article’s “Aided and abetted by priests
Konstantinoff and Tsukanov, Stukach(sic) engaged in campaign of deceit and
panic-mongering among the less informed members of his Strathfield parish that
the MP for example, would ‘seize all our property’ and ‘send KGB agents into our
midst’..”, certainly hits the nail on the head. The writer is obviously
desperate to mollify the masses by making light of the true situation that now
exists in ROCOR (MP). If any responsible reader takes the time to analyze the
unification agreement, he or she will realize that apart from baptisms,
marriages and funerals, the ROCOR clergy have NO RIGHTS whatsoever -UNLESS
SANCTIONED (blessed) BY THE MP. One doesn’t have to take my word for it – just
EXAMINE THE WORDING, and apply common sense to what has been decided.
“pat”Kirill Goondaev has ABSOLUTE CONTROL, because the agreement states that
without his confirmation, all practical rights of ROCOR are extinguished. In
effect, this means that yes – the statement “seize all our property” is a legal
reality, while “send KGB agents into our midst” has been established through key
replacements of clergy throughout the structure of the ROCOR – including the
Seminary at Jordanville. Meanwhile, the ROCOR clergy that followed the MP have
been morally disabled and otherwise rendered inoperative, except for their
obsessional dishonesty in justifying their act of betrayal.

The brazen lie by the author in stating that
the Russian True Orthodox Church and Her current head, Archbishop Tikhon, are
uncanonical, borders on lunacy, because ROCOR Herself stated recently that RTOC
is canonical!!

She should be, considering that She is the
TRUE continuance of the pre-revolution Russian Orthodox Church – even though She
was in the catacombs during the satanic communist rule and lost Her
administrative structure. Whereas the author’s MP remains a Stalinist creation,
with all its past close associations with satanic activities of Her masters,
hailing, praising and praying for their continuing successes in persecuting the
Catacomb Church.

While empty phrases like “self-styled”
“Bishop” Tikhon of RTOC only reflects the absence of truth in the writer, facts
show that Archbishop Tikhon – apart from his acknowledged canonical
lineage, is a cleric of imposing confidence and convincing authenticity in both
areas of truth and authority, while his measured and definitive responses to the
MP’s puerile attacks, reflect a keen mind and impressive scholarship – which is
more than can be said of his detractors and their CEO – “pat” Kirill Goondaev.

The statements made by the author of this
publication, is a classic example of a pseudo-analytical mind based on
distortions and a KGB agenda. The purpose of the article is to further twist,
misrepresent and generally confuse the reader. Examine the declarations – WHERE
ARE THE FACTS AND WHERE ARE THE RESPONSES TO THE TRUE CONDEMNATIONS OF GOONDAEV
AND HIS OPERATIVES?? There are none because truth has very little currency in
the KGB’s operations!

Also, while on the subject of canonicity,
it’s curious that the writer doesn’t touch upon “pat”Kirill’s elevation to the
patriarchal throne. While casting fabricated aspersions from a lofty moral
ground at Archbishop Tikhon’s canonical status, he conveniently ignores the
PATENTLY UNCANONICAL election that brought his boss - Kirill Goondaev - to his
state of “holiness”. As reported on all the internet sites, participants in this
election - in TOTAL VIOLATION of Church Statutes - included many businessmen
and oligarchs, who cast their votes for their fellow tobacco, vodka and oil
entrepreneur. This obviously relegates Rocor United’s bold statement of being
“an independent stream of news and commentary” to the comic sections of
responsible publications.

Dear reader, please don’t accept what I write
but inquire, examine and analyse. Anyone who accepts blindly what I say is as
“judicious” as those MP followers that are all about memories, myths and
self-delusions, and are motivated more by misspent fervour and physical opulence
than by facts. They have lost their power of lucid response to valid indictments
of their concessions to the vulgar spirits of the age – personified by the MP.

The author likens Fr.John to David Koresh – a
comparison beyond rational thought – brought about, no doubt, by an irrational
mind that should be reclining on a psychiatrist’s couch, explaining to his
qualified listener why he used to pull wings off flies in his boyhood days. Even
a seasoned and restrained MP individual would be unable to see the connection
between the two. However, a desperate mind resorts to desperate measures.

The whole tone of the article reeks of
unfounded innuendoes against the truth and the promotion of the MP, which in
reality is a religiously grotesque organization that has been made attractive
through pomp and ceremony, and the balm of time. It’s an ongoing attempt to
remove the reality of its gory embryonic beginning and slavish services to the
past and present godless regime – the blasphemous services that will remain
damned in perpetuity.

I sincerely hope that all my comments and
evaluations be subject to scrutiny and assessment – it’s an approach of an
evaluative and responsible mind. Don’t take my words at face value but
investigate, just as you equally shouldn’t accept the writings by this MP
adherent but question the veracity of the “revelations”.

One has to ask as to why so much time and
effort has been directed through violent physical persecutions within the RF
boundaries against a “misguided minority”, and concentrated printed
persecutions against still smaller “misguided minorities” abroad, if they are
insignificant and are of no consequence? Surely, numerically they are not worth
counting, when compared to the MP adherents. Yet “pat”Kirill, with the aid of
Putin’s dreaded dehumanized OMONs (security militia made up of KGB “heavies”),
continues to apply illegal force within the RF against any Orthodox Church that
doesn’t recognize his authority, thereby revealing his true nature and spiritual
barbarism.

Here in Australia, he has opened this new
“Rocor United” internet site, boasting as “the best ENGLISH LANGUAGE source” of
information. However, their activities have proven them to be a prime source of
misinformation, distortions, inaccuracies and outright lies – revealing that
their master’s undisputed and despotic authority counts for more than truth and
justice.

While well trained in the art of feigned
innocence and subterfuge, the practiced common and recognizable symptom of the
MP adherent is an outraged solemnity, as though as yet unspoken blasphemies were
trembling on unholy lips of those that refused to join “pat”Kirill Goondaev’s
religious corporation. It even somehow manages to come through in print, just as
it does in this current “informative” release.

But the real worry comes in the last sentence
of: “Stay tuned for more news on the Stukachevites (sic) and the inside
(?) story of RTOC’s Australian chapter”.

Having read the above article’s “news”, all I
can say is: “ Give us a break!.. MUST WE?”.

Let us all remember what St.Gregory the
Theologian said: “NOT EVERY ECCLESIASTICAL
UNION IS PLEASING TO GOD AND AN HONOURABLE WAR IS PREFERABLE TO A SHAMEFUL
PEACE”