THE ORTHODOX CHURCH
IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Vladimir Moss
And unto the angel of the Church in Sardis
write:
These things saith He that hath the seven
spirits of God, and the seven stars:
I know thy works, that thou hast a name that
thou livest, and art dead.
Be watchful, and strengthen the things that
remain, that are ready to die.
For I have not found thy works perfect before
God.
Revelation 3.1-2.
On this rock I shall build My Church,
and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against her.
Matthew 16.18.
The
One, Holy, Orthodox-Catholic and Apostolic Church entered the twentieth century
in a state of external prosperity, but serious internal disorder. The Russian
empire, which contained the largest local Church and in which the great
majority of Orthodox Christians lived, was reaching the zenith of its political
and economic power. But it was riven with strife and undermined by freethinkers
and revolutionaries. In 1904-05 it was seriously shaken by defeat in the
Russo-Japanese war and the first, abortive revolution; and in 1917 it fell.
Most of the Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Arabic Orthodox lived in
the Ottoman empire. They, too, were divided: Greeks against Bulgarians, Serbs
and Arabs, and Serbs against Romanians, leading to the splitting up of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate and the creation of several autonomous Churches. In
1912-13 two Balkan wars pitted Turk against Christian, and Christian against
Christian; and in 1917, the Ottoman empire also fell.
The
“democratic” regimes that replaced the old empires – those of Lenin and Ataturk
– were unmitigated disasters for the Orthodox. Millions died, further millions
were expelled from their homes or emigrated voluntarily. This set the pattern
for the twentieth century, a century unparalleled in the history of
Christianity for its sufferings and confusion. But also for the vast numbers of
its holy martyrs and confessors…
The
first martyrs suffered in the very first year of the century: the Chinese
Orthodox of the Russian Spiritual Mission in Peking who were killed by the
Boxers.[1]
This pointed to another important aspect of twentieth-century Christianity: its
worldwide missionary activity. The Lord said: “This Gospel of the Kingdom shall
be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the
end come” (Matthew 24.14). To many, the preaching of the Gospel in the
greatest and most inaccessible of the pagan empires, China and Japan, and its
first-fruits in the form of the 222 Chinese martyrs, indicated the coming of
the end. And indeed, the twentieth century was the beginning of the end, not
only in the sense that it witnessed the planting of Orthodox missionaries,
voluntarily or involuntarily, in the furthest corners of the earth, but also in
the sense that it witnessed the appearance, for the first time in concrete
form, of the clearest and most terrible sign of the end: the Antichrist.
The
theme of the Antichrist was to dominate the twentieth century. The great
hermit, St. Seraphim of Sarov, had spoken, already in the first half of the
nineteenth century about the imminent arrival of the Antichrist, who would
remove the crosses from the churches and kill so many people that the angels
would scarcely have time to gather all the souls as they left their bodies.
This theme was taken up by such holy churchmen as St. Ambrose of Optina, Bishop
Theophan the Recluse and St. John of Kronstadt. In the year 1900 the
philosopher Vladimir Soloviev had a vision of Christians fleeing into the caves
to escape what he called “the collective Antichrist”. It was not difficult to
see the fulfillment of this vision in the appearance of Soviet power and in the
appearance, from the 1920s, of the Catacomb Church, True Orthodox Christians
who fled into the “catacombs” from the apocalyptic red beast.
In
general, the pre-revolutionary period could be described as the period of
preparation for the coming of the collective Antichrist. The reign of the meek
and gentle Tsar Nicholas II, with its increasing economic prosperity, rapid
expansion of churches and parish schools, wide missionary outreach (to Siberia,
Persia, China, Japan and America), and many glorifications of saints (beginning
with the prophet of the Antichrist, St. Seraphim, in 1903) gave an unparalleled
opportunity to tens of millions of people both within and outside the Russian
empire to come to a knowledge of the truth and be saved. But the forerunners of
the Antichrist were not inactive either: revolutionaries such as Lenin and
Trotsky, freethinkers and blasphemers such as the novelist Lev Tolstoy,
theosophists such as Blavatsky, heretics such as the Athonite “name-worshipper”
Bulatovich, and a huge army of liberals, anti-monarchists and ecumenists were
busy undermining the foundations of Church and State. In the tumult two figures
stood out as representing the two sides with especial clarity: Lev Tolstoy and
St. John of Kronstadt. The duel between these two, like that between Arius and
St. Athanasius the Great, defined the issues for the educated public.
There
were few who took the opportunities provided by the relatively peaceful
pre-revolutionary period to repent. We could mention Lev Alexandrovich
Tikhomirov, who repented of his time a revolutionary to became a prominent
champion of the Orthodox monarchy, or Michael Alexandrovich Novoselov, who
repented of his Tolstoyism to become a church publicist and later a Catacomb
Church martyr. In general, however, it took the massive shock of huge political
upheavals, like the First World War or the October revolution, to bring large
numbers of people to their senses. In this we can see the special Providence of
God, Who draws the greatest good out of the greatest evil. Thus the coming of
the Antichrist to Russia was, paradoxically, the means towards the coming to
Christ of many previously tepid and heretical Christians.
But what was this Antichrist? And in what did his – or its – antichristianity consist? Speaking very generally, we may say that “the heresy of the twentieth-century Antichrist” consisted in a distorted understanding of the relationship between the Church and the world, whereby the Church was understood as serving the world, not as its conscience, by being the salt which preserves it from final corruption and destruction, but as its pander, by conforming herself to its fallen desires and godless world-views.
This distorted understanding of the Church’s relationship with the world manifested itself in two main forms: what came to be known as “sergianism” after its leading exponent, the Russian metropolitan and later “patriarch of Moscow”, Sergius, and “ecumenism”, the world-wide movement for the reunification of the Churches. Sergianism is the teaching that the Church must work with all forms of political power, even the most antichristian, even communism; ecumenism is the teaching that the Church must compromise with all forms of religion, even the most antichristian, even paganism. The pathos of both movements is unity – unity with any power, at any price, so long as conflict is averted and peace is attained. Both propose a wholesale surrender of the Church’s truth and freedom and dignity to the dominant forces in the contemporary world: political forces in the case of sergianism, religious forces in the case of ecumenism, with the ultimate end, whether willed or not willed, of the complete secularization of the human race. Both heresies are movements of apostasy, and both attempt to justify this apostasy, “dogmatize” it, as it were – in the case of sergianism, by claiming that only such apostasy can save the Church (from destruction by communism), and in the case of ecumenism by claiming that only such apostasy can recreate the Church (from sectarian disintegration). Essentially, therefore, they are two aspects of a single ecclesiological heresy, for which the present writer has coined the term “ecucommunism”[2], a single assault on the existence and the dogma of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Let us look a little more closely at the ecumenist and communist aspects of ecucommunism.
Ecumenism attempts to destroy the notion of the Church as “the pillar and ground of the Truth” (I Timothy. 3.15) by preaching that there is no one truth, and therefore no one Church which it can be the pillar of. It maintains that all Churches – and in its more extreme, contemporary forms, all religions – contain partial or relative truths which, on being reduced to their lowest common denominator, will form the dogmatic basis of a new Church or universal religion of a new, enlightened mankind. The development of this doctrine, which first appeared in the West before penetrating into the Orthodox world, is traced especially in chapters 2, 4, 6 and 7.
Communism attempts to destroy the
moral, social and eschatological teaching of the Church by preaching a new
“revolutionary morality” whose goal is not the Kingdom of Heaven but a
communist paradise on earth. In place of the Church we have the Party, in place
of God – Fate. Communism, like ecumenism, was introduced into the Orthodox
world from the West; and we trace its struggle with the Church in chapters 1,
3, 5, and 7.
“The ideologue of ecumenism,” writes
Archbishop Averky, “which is the natural consequence of the nostalgia of the
Protestant world for the Church that they have lost, was the German pastor
Christopher Blumhardt, whom the Protestants call for that reason ‘the great
prophet of the contemporary world’. He called all the Protestants to unity for
‘the construction of the Kingdom of God on earth’, but he died before the
organization of the ecumenical movement, in 1919. His fundamental idea
consisted of the proposition that ‘the old world has been destroyed, and a new
one is rising on its ruins’. He placed three problems before Christianity: 1)
the realization of the best social structure, 2) the overcoming of confessional
disagreements and 3) the working together for the education of the whole world
community of nations with the complete liquidation of war.
“It
was in these three points that the aims of ecumenism were formulated by the
present general secretary of the Council of the ecumenical movement,
Visser-t-Hooft, who saw the means for their realization in the Church’s pursuit
of social aims. For this it is first of all necessary to overcome confessional
differences and create one church. The renewed one church will have the
possibility of preparing the way for the triumph of Socialism, which will lead
to the creation of one world State as the Kingdom of God on earth…”[3]
As we have noted, the struggle between ecucommunism and the Church was clearly foreshadowed, at the beginning of the century, by the struggle between the novelist Lev Tolstoy, who stood for a Christianity reduced to “pure” morality without the Church, the sacraments or any other other-worldly element, and St.. John of Kronstadt, who demonstrated by his wonderful life abounding in good works and extraordinary miracles, that Christianity “does not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (I Corinthians 2.5).
The
Church anathematised Tolstoy on February 20-23, 1901 as follows: “In his
writings Count Lev Tolstoy has blasphemed against the holy sacraments, denying
their grace-filled character, has not venerated the Orthodox Church as his
Church, has spoken evil of the clergy, has said that he considers that to
venerate Christ and worship Him as God is blasphemy, while saying of himself,
by contrast: ‘I am in God, and God in me’. It is not the Church that has
rejected him, casting him off from herself, but he himself has rejected the
Church: Lev himself has of his own will fallen away from the Church and is no
longer a son of the Church, but is hostile to her. All attempts of the clergy
to admonish the prodigal have failed to produce the desired fruits: in his
pride he has considered himself cleverer than all, less fallible than all and
the judge of all, and the Church has made a declaration about the falling away
of Count Lev Tolstoy from the Russian Orthodox Church”.[4]
But
the confrontation between Tolstoy and St. John of Kronstadt was only a prelude
to the titanic struggle, involving hundreds of millions of people on several
continents, which has still not come to an end today. Although the blood and
suffering caused by this conflict has been incalculable, it has, like previous
such struggles in the history of the Church, had the good consequence of
providing the opportunity, through the necessity of struggling with heresy, of
clarifying the Church’s teaching – in this case, the Church’s teaching on
herself. Thus the following questions have been posed: Is the Church One, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic, as the Nicene Creed defines her? Is she truly of Divine
origin and nature, or is she a purely human organization? Does she evolve in
her teachings and practice, or does she remain the same? Does she embrace all
the vast multitudes who call themselves Christian today, or is she the
gathering of a small faithful remnant on earth? Is she truly the only ark of
salvation, or only one of many roads leading to God?
However,
in order to understand this struggle in its full depth, it is necessary to
understand that the attack on the dogma of the Church has been only a part of a
still wider attack on the concept of Tradition
as the source of truth not only in the Church, but in all branches of
knowledge. This wider movement, which I will call, quite simply, the Revolution, has been through several
historical stages, of which the revolution in the Church accomplished by Pope
Gregory VII was the first. Papism led to Scholasticism and Humanism, then
Protestantism, Scientism, Deism, Materialism, Romanticism, Hegelianism,
Darwinism, Marxism, Freudianism, Ecumenism and, most recently, New-Ageism.
It
is beyond the scope of this work to show how all these “isms” are
interconnected and take their origin from the primal rebellion against the
Church which we call “schism”. Suffice it to say for the present that
underlying the revolution in all its stages is a single antichristian,
antitheist, man-centred philosophy.
This
philosophy can be summarized as follows: Man is his own master. If there is a
God, then he is a God in man’s own image, perhaps even of man’s own making; and
man does not depend on Him to learn the truth, for his own unaided mind is
capable of that. The wisdom of the ages is a myth; tradition is a brake on progress.
As man is a product of evolution from the lower animals, so his social and
religious and political institutions are in a process of constant upward
evolution. Therefore there is no such thing as absolute truth, no sacred,
unchanging, God-given authority. Everything is in flux, therefore everyone must
change. The only unchanging, ineluctable fact is the fact of the revolution –
the social revolution, the political revolution, the religious revolution, and
above all the scientific revolution upon which all the other revolutions are
based. Therefore the only unforgivable sin (if it is not simply a kind of
illness, which can be treated by drug-therapy in a psychiatric hospital) is the sin of counter-revolution, the sin
of being bigoted, intolerant of change, out-of-date. Everything is permitted –
the craziest of beliefs, the most deviant of life-styles – so long as it does
not stand in the way of the revolution, that revolution which is making man
master of himself and of his environment. But for those who stand in the way of
“progress”, there will be no mercy; they will be cast onto the rubbish heap of
history like the extinct species of Darwinian pre-history. For nothing must
stand in the way of man’s ascent to godlike status. Just as in physics the
anthropic principle “seems to be on the verge of substituting man for God, by
hinting that consciousness, unbound by time’s arrow, causes creation”[5],
so in life based on the scientific revolution man must substitute himself for
God, removing all those constraints associated with the Divine Creator…
After
a couple of “trial runs” in the English and French revolutions, the revolution
received its most complete incarnation in the Russian revolution of 1917, which
at the same time overthrew the primary stronghold of traditional thinking in
the world. Just as all the apostate trends of European history from the
eleventh century onwards lead up to, and find their culmination in, the Russian
revolution, so all world history since 1917 has evolved from it and under its shadow.
Now
it is commonly thought that the anti-communist coups of 1989-91 brought this
phase of history to a close. But this is a mistake. If some of the economic
ideas of the revolution have been discredited, its fundamental concepts – the
replacement of the Church by the State, God by the people, Tradition by
science, Spirit by matter – remain as firmly entrenched as ever. The Russian
revolution was like a nuclear explosion, splitting the elements not only of
religious, but also of all cultural and social life; it attempted to destroy
the faith, the family, the nation and the individual.[6]
And just as the fall-out from a nuclear explosion is felt over a wide area and
over a long period of time, so has it been with the fall-out from the Russian
revolution.
For
as the hierarchs of the Russian Church Abroad have written: “If the results of
the Chernobyl catastrophe are still making themselves known in the bodies of
the children of the surrounding region, the spiritual catastrophe of all Russia
will show its effects for a far longer period of time. Just as Chernobyl’s
radiation will continue for many years to annihilate the lives of the children
of our land with its sinister, invisible fire, it is clear that the
consequences of the spiritual catastrophe will not quickly depart from us.”[7]
In
order to understand the Russian revolution, it is necessary to understand its
roots, not only in the European revolutions of the past one thousand years, but
also in the Jewish revolution that took place one thousand years before that.
This perception is not a manifestation of “anti-semitism”, as the West would
have it; for how can a Christian historian who worships a Jewish God, and is a
member of the Church founded by exclusively Jewish apostles seriously maintain
anti-semitic ideas? It is the product of the simple but basic and
incontrovertible fact that the Russian revolution in its initial phase was the
work mainly of Jews inspired by a philosophy of history that is in essence
Jewish; and that even when the leaders of the revolution were no longer Jews,
they continued to be motivated, consciously or unconsciously, by essentially
Jewish ideas. The writer of this work is not anti-semitic, but he is anti-Judaist
in the sense that he is against the religion which is founded upon the Talmud
and which is fiercely and explicitly anti-Christian in its fundamental beliefs.
In this sense all the apostles and fathers and martyrs were, and every
consciously believing Orthodox Christian must be – anti-Judaist.
Now
when Abraham left his earthly homeland in search of a promised land in which
God alone would be King, world history began a series of violent oscillations
between the two poles: Zion and Babylon, the God-Man and the man-god, theocracy
and satanocracy.
Two
thousand years later, the God-Man Himself visited His Kingdom, and a second
series of violent oscillations took place. First, the kings of the East came to
worship Him – Babylon bowed down before Zion. Then the veil of the temple was
rent in twain, the temple itself was destroyed and the people of God were
scattered over the face of the earth – Zion became spiritually Babylon, and in
the Babylonian Talmud the Jews worked out the apostate creed of Zionism.
But
then the new Israel, “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6.16), the Church of
Christ, was born in Zion, and the former children of wrath from the Babylon of
the West, the pagan Greeks and Romans, came to bow down at her feet. And when
Constantine became king of Old Rome, even the pivot and crown of the Babylonian
system, the worship of the god-man-emperor, was transformed into its opposite
and the God-fighting satanocracy of Old Rome became the God-loving theocracy of
the New Rome.
Now,
nearly two thousands years after Christ, we are in the middle of the third
great series of violent oscillations in world history. In 1917 the God-loving
theocracy of the Third Rome, Russia, was transformed into the God-hating
satanocracy of the Babylon of the North, the Soviet Union. And the apostate
Jews took revenge on the Third Rome for the destruction of their State by the
First, Old Rome.
That
this was indeed the significance of the Russian revolution was demonstrated by
an extraordinary “coincidence” that has been little noted. On November 9, 1917,
the London Times reported two events in the same column of newsprint:
above, the Bolshevik revolution in Petrograd, and immediately below it, the
British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour’s promise of a homeland to the Jews in Palestine.
To the unbeliever, the two events seem to have no relation to each other; the
fact that they happened at exactly the same time, and under the leadership of
men from the same race and class and locality – the Jewish intelligentsia of
Western Russia and Poland – seems purely coincidental. To the believing eye,
however, they are two aspects, in two geographical areas, of one and the same
event – the event called in the Gospel “the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew
24.8), in the epistles of St. Paul – “the removal of him that restraineth” (II
Thessalonians 2.7), and in the Apocalypse of St. John – “the releasing of
the beast from the abyss” (Revelation 20.3).
Now
if we look at the event from its Jewish aspect, it looks like the triumph of a
purely national movement – Zionism. From the Russian aspect, on the other hand,
it looks like a purely political-social coup motivated by a purely secular
vision of world history – Marxism-Leninism. In truth, however, Zionism and
Marxism-Leninism are two aspects of a movement which is neither purely
nationalist nor political in essence, but religious – or rather, demonic.
This
is most clearly seen in the killing of the Tsar on July 4/17, 1918. On the wall
of his death-chamber was found an inscription which fittingly sums up the deed
from the point of view of the Jewish revolution. It was a quotation from the
German Jewish poet Heine, slightly altered to bring out the word “tsar” and
identifying the tsar with Belshazzar:
Belsatzar ward in selbiger Nacht
On the same night Belshazzar
Von seinen knechten
umgebracht. Was killed by
his own slaves.[8]
But
the truth was quite the opposite. Belshazzar hated the people of God, and his
removal opened the way for the rebuilding of the Temple of God in Zion by
Zerubbabel (which means “alien to Babylon, or confusion”). The killing of Tsar
Nicholas, on the other hand, opened the way to the destruction of Orthodox
Russia and its transformation into Babylon.
Such
a view is not confined to Orthodox Christians or “anti-Semites”. Thus Winston
Churchill wrote: “It would almost seem as if the Gospel of Christ and the
gospel of anti-Christ were designed to originate among the same people; and
that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme
manifestations, both of the Divine and the diabolical… From the days of
‘Spartacus’ Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela
Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this
worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the
reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious
malevolence and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a
modern writer, Mrs. Nesta Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable
part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of
every subversive movement during the nineteenth century; and now at last this
band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of
Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads
and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism
and in the bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and
for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it
probably outweighs all others.”[9]
Douglas
Reed writes: “The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, which wielded the supreme
power, contained 3 Russians (including Lenin[10])
and 9 Jews. The next body in importance, the Central Committee of the Executive
Commission (or secret police) comprised 42 Jews and 19 Russians, Letts,
Georgians and others. The Council of People’s Commissars consisted of 17 Jews
and five others. The Moscow Che-ka (secret police) was formed of 23 Jews and 13
others. Among the names of 556 high officials of the Bolshevik state officially
published in 1918-1919 were 458 Jews and 108 others. Among the central
committees of small, supposedly ‘Socialist’ or other non-Communist parties…
were 55 Jews and 6 others.”[11]
Even
the “pro-Semite” historian Richard Pipes admits: “Jews undeniably played in the
Bolshevik Party and the early Soviet apparatus a role disproportionate to their
share of the population. The number of Jews active in Communism in Russia and
abroad was striking: in Hungary, for example, they furnished 95 percent of the
leading figures in Bela Kun’s dictatorship. They also were disproportionately
represented among Communists in Germany and Austria during the revolutionary
upheavals there in 1918-23, and in the apparatus of the Communist
International.”[12]
Of
course, the Jewish Bolsheviks were not religious Jews, and were in fact as
opposed to Talmudic Judaism as any other segment of the population. Moreover,
as Pipes points out, “the results of the elections to the Constituent Assembly
indicate that Bolshevik support came not from the region of Jewish
concentration, the old Pale of Settlement, but from the armed forces and the
cities of Great Russia, which had hardly any Jews”.[13]
So blame for the Russian revolution must fall on Russians as well as Jews; and
in fact hardly any of the constituent nations of the Russian empire can claim
to have played no part in the catastrophe.
Nevertheless,
the extraordinary prominence of Jews in the revolution is a fact that must be
related, at least in part, to the traditionally anti-Russian and anti-Christian
attitude of Jewish culture, which is reflected in both of its major political
offspring – Bolshevism and Zionism. For, as Chaim Weitzmann, the first
president of Israel, showed in his Autobiography, the atheist Bolshevik
Jews and the theist Zionist Jews came from the same milieu, often the very same
families; so that his mother was able to witness her sons’ triumph both in
Bolshevik Moscow and Zionist Jerusalem…[14]
Moreover,
so complete was the Jewish domination of Russia as a result of the revolution that
it is really a misnomer to speak about the “Russian” revolution; it should more
accurately be called the anti-Russian, or Russian-Jewish revolution. Indeed,
the Russian revolution may be regarded as one branch of that general triumph of
Jewish power which we observe in the twentieth century in both East and West,
in both Russia and America and Israel. It is as if, by God’s permission and for
the chastisement of the sins of many nations, there arose in the Pale of
Settlement an avenging horde that swept away the last major restraining power
and ushered in the era of the Apocalypse.
If
we turn to the philosophical basis of the revolution, we find the same Jewish
element seemingly inextricably entwined with it – and this not only because so
many of the theorists of the revolution were Jews.
As
Bertrand Russell pointed out, many elements of the Marxist system are
reminiscent of Judaism: the same striving for the promised land on earth and in
time (communism and the withering away of the state); the same division of the
peoples of the world into the chosen people (the proletariat) and the goyim
(the exploiting classes), and the hatred incited against the latter; and the
same cult of the false Messiah (the infallible leader or party).[15]
Utopianism
is certainly at the heart of the philosophical system of Marxism-Leninism. Igor
Shafarevich has traced examples of utopian thought and statehood in many epochs
and geographical regions. He has concluded that it is always (a) totalitarian,
leading to the abolition of private property, the family and religion, and (b)
guided by a kind of death-wish which results in the physical and spiritual
death of the people.[16]
Under
the name of “chiliasm” or “millenarianism”, utopianism was one of the earliest
Christian heresies (with, as we might now expect, a strongly Jewish colouring).
It is possible that the addition of the phrase: “Whose Kingdom shall have no
end” to the Nicene Creed at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in
381 was aimed against this heresy.[17]
For chiliasm essentially amounted to the belief that Christ Himself will come
to earth before the Last Judgement in order to install His Kingdom physically
for a period of a thousand years, this Kingdom being characterised, according
to the heretics, by the triumph of the Jewish race and the Jewish law.
But
the Church rejected this, teaching that the true Kingdom of Christ will come
only after the Judgement, and that it will then be a spiritual Kingdom that is
“not of this world” and “has no end”. We can enter the Kingdom of God partially
before the Judgement, but only in and through the Church, which is not, and can
never be, a sensually apprehended, temporal kingdom.
Utopianism
is based not only on a heretical eschatology, but also on a false anthropology
that denies the fall of man. For utopia on earth is possible only on the
assumption that the men who live in the utopia are sinless and passionless,
being governed only by perfect love and humility. To suppose that any class of
men, once delivered from injustice and poverty, will automatically behave like
angels, is a myth. Still more mythical is the idea that the kingdom of love and
brotherhood can be ushered in by hatred and fratricidal war. The means do not
justify the ends; and the employment of evil means leads unfailingly to evil
ends.
As
Solzhenitsyn has said, the line between good and evil passes, not between
classes or nations, but down the middle of each human heart. Therefore the
final triumph of good over evil is possible only through the purification of
the human heart, every human heart.
And that is a spiritual task which is accomplished by spiritual, not material
or political means, by confession of the faith and repentance of sin, not by
rebellion against the king and the redistribution of property.
This
brings us to a still deeper flaw of utopianism – its materialism. For while the
heresy of chiliasm at any rate recognized the existence of God and the
spiritual nature of man, utopianism reduces everything to the blind determinism
of insensate matter. For the ancient heretics, utopia could only be introduced
by God, and was awarded to the righteous in response to the right use of their
freewill. For the moderns, there is neither God nor freewill – but utopia will
come in any case, as the result of the iron laws of necessity. And this
fatalistic faith both gives the revolution its frightening power – for men
acquire extraordinary self-confidence when they know that they must win in the
end – and guarantees its terrifying cruelty – for without freewill there is no
responsibility, and, as Dostoyevsky said, “if there is no God, everything is
permitted”.
“Cosmic
possession,” writes Fr. George Florovsky, “ – that is how we can define the utopian
experience. The feelings of unqualified dependence, of complete determination
from without and full immersion and inclusion into the universal order define
utopianism’s estimate of itself and the world. Man feels himself to be an
‘organic pin’, a link in some all-embracing chain – he feels that he is
unambiguously, irretrievably forged into one whole with the cosmos…
“From
an actor and creator, consciously willing and choosing, and for that reason
bearing the risk of responsibility for his self-definition, man is turned into
a thing, into a needle, by which someone sews something. In the organic
all-unity there is no place for action – here only movement is possible… There
is no place for the act, no place for the exploit (podvig).”[18]
If
chiliasm-utopianism is one of the earliest Jewish Christian heresies, the
division of the world into “clean” and “unclean” classes or nations is the
earliest, being the subject of the very first Church Council held at Jerusalem
under the presidency of the Apostle James. And if even the great Apostle of the
circumcision, St. Peter, fell, albeit temporarily into it, then it is small
wonder that apostate Jewry and the Marxist-Leninists should have perpetuated
it. Nor is such a temptation confined to the Jews: nationalism, the exaltation
of one’s own nation or class as being essentially superior to all others, is a
perennial temptation for all nations, and never more so than among certain
Orthodox nations now.
When
God commanded Noah to lead pairs both of “clean” and of “unclean” animals into
the ark, and when He commanded the Apostle Peter to eat of both “clean” and
“unclean” foods, He demonstrated that there is no essentially clean nation.
“For there is no difference; for all have sinned, all have fallen short of the
glory of God” (Romans. 3.22-23). All outside the ark, the Church of
Christ, are unclean; and all inside the Church are, if not completely clean, at
any rate in the process of being cleansed. And all, regardless of nationality,
can enter the Church. For “is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not the God of
the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God Who will
justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith” (Romans. 3.29-30). Of course,
nationalism is not always a pathological phenomenon, and has often contributed
to the saving of a nation and the buttressing of the true faith; so perhaps we
should reserve the term “nationalism” for the pathological phenomenon, while using
another term – “patriotism”, perhaps – for the positive phenomenon to which we
now wish to draw attention.
Thus
when, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Russian Emperor Nicholas I
approved of the Slavophile slogan “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Narodnost”, he
was referring by “narodnost” to the positive virtue of patriotism or
love of country. Narodnost was linked to Orthodoxy, in the minds of
Nicholas and the Slavophiles, because it was subject to Orthodoxy and exalted
the nation, not for its own sake and not in opposition to other nations, but as
the bearer of one aspect of the Divine idea of nationhood. Thus the aim of
national self-consciousness, according to this conception, is “the attainment
in the destiny and spirit of the people of that ‘which God thinks of it in
eternity’, as Vladimir Solovyov put it.”[19]
Now
the revolution strives to destroy “the Divine idea of nationhood”, the
collective personality of each nation, just as it strives to destroy the Divine
image of manhood, the individual personality of each man. Thus Lenin said that
the aim of socialism was not only the drawing together of the nations, but also
their fusion – i.e. their destruction. For, as Dostoyevsky wrote, “socialism
deprives the national principle of its individuality, undermining the very
foundations of nationality.”[20]
Of course, Lenin was not averse to approving of and stirring up the
nationalisms of the smaller nations of the Russian empire in order to destroy
the God-bearing nation that he hated and feared the most. But having stirred up
nationalist feeling, he then tried to destroy it again, subordinating the
nations to the only nation and caste of which he approved – the nation of
Jewish internationalism, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[21]
The
paradox that socialism both incites nationalism and destroys the nation is one
aspect of the general paradox of the socialist revolution, that while preaching
freedom it practises slavery, while proclaiming equality it creates inequality,
and while dreaming of brotherhood it incites fratricidal war. In the same way,
the French revolution proclaimed the freedom and equality of all nations; but
its first appearance on the international arena was in the form of Napoleonic
imperialism, which strove to destroy the freedom of all the nations of Europe.
And paradoxically, it was autocratic Russia, the conqueror of Napoleon, which
guaranteed the survival of the nations of the West, and their freedom from
totalitarianism, for at least another century.
For
the truth is that the revolution, while inciting the passions for personal and
national freedom in order to destroy the old church and state structures, was
aimed at the destruction of all freedom and individuality, both personal and
national. And while hypocritically invoking those ecumenical ideals which
Christianity gave to the world – “neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor
free, neither male nor female,” – it actually aimed at their complete
destruction by destroying the pivot upon which they all rest – “for you are all
one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3.18). Thus like the serpent in the Garden of
Eden, it promised life, but delivered death…
However, even more than its
anti-personal and anti-national passion, the deepest, most characteristic
longing of the Jewish-Russian revolution is its worship of the false Messiah.
Through its utopianism, the revolution merges the personalities of its
adherents into an elemental, all-embracing process to which they surrender
their freedom and personality. And through its class-warfare and
anti-patriotism, it destroys those last strongholds of personal and collective
freedom that stand in the way of its final victory. But what is such a
“victory”, if there is no supreme victor to whom to give the spoils, no
personal cause and leader of the victory of the proletariat? That is why the
revolution is incomplete until it has found its god, why the personal “modesty”
of Lenin had to be “corrected” by the “all-wise” Stalin, and why the collective
Antichrist of Sovietism must one day reach its apotheosis in the personal
Antichrist of Judaism…
In
The Brothers Karamazov Dostoyevsky saw this need for universal worship
that lies at the heart of the revolution. He traced its origin to the worship of
the infallible Pope of heretical Rome and, still further back, to the worship
of the imperator-pontifex maximus of pagan Rome. Deep in the soul of
man, as Blessed Augustine pointed out, there is a God-shaped hole; and if that
hole is not filled by the worship of the true God, it will be filled by the
worship of a false god; and to that god, man will give himself totally. Thus
recently, after the funeral of the dictator of the Ivory Coast (who built the
world’s largest church on the model of St. Peter’s in Rome), a young man,
beside himself with grief, threw himself into the crocodile-infested waters of
the moat round the dictator’s palace. This shows how the need for worship and
total self-sacrifice is as alive now, in our materialist age, as it has ever been.
Now
the West has ascribed the emergence of totalitarianism in Russia to the
weakness of her democratic institutions in 1917 and to her long history of
autocratic rule. The satanocracy of Bolshevism, according to this conception,
is closely akin to the theocracy of Holy Russia, both being opposed to the
“true godliness” of western democracy. Indeed, the very institution of kingship
is evil in western eyes.
In
truth, however, the very basis of society is hierarchically ordered. Thus, as Tuskarev
writes: “The cell of the State is the family. In the family the father is the
head by nature, while the son is subject to him; the authority of the father is
not the result of elections in the family, but is entrusted to him naturally by
the law of God (Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow). Just as from the extended
family of the tribe there arises the people, so out of the family headed by one
man there arises tsarist autocracy. Both the familial and the monarchical
organization are established by God for the earthly existence of the sinful,
fallen man. The first-created man, living in living communion with God, was not
subject to anyone besides God, and was the lord of irrational creation. But
when man sinned, destroying the Divine hierarchy of submission and falling away
from God, he became the servant of sin and the devil, and as a consequence of
this became subject to a man like himself. The sinful will of man requires
submission for the restraint of his destructive activity. This Divine ordinance
has in view only the good of man – the limitation of the spread of evil. And
history itself shows that whatever the inadequacies of monarchies, they bear no
comparison with that evil that revolutions and anarchies have brought to the
peoples.
“Monarchical
administration has been established by God in accordance with His likeness.
‘God being One established the authority of one person; as Almighty –
autocratic authority; as Eternal – hereditary authority’ (Metropolitan Philaret
of Moscow). Such is monarchy in general, independent of its spiritual content;
being established in accordance with the likeness of God, it already has an
educational religious significance. Christian monarchy was formed and developed
under the immediate leadership and grace-filled sanctification of the Church of
Christ, and for that reason has a special spiritual content.”[22]
The
revolution strove to overthrow this natural order, not out of a love of
democracy and the people, but in order that one people – not the Russian
people, but the Jewish – should rule over all; for, as the Talmud says, “the
Messiah is, without metaphor, the Jewish people”[23]
This was clear already in the French revolution, when, having won, by dint of
bribery, personal influence and violence, the emancipation of their race, the
Jews so abused their newly won privileges that in 1806, on returning from
Austerlitz, Napoleon was forced to convene a special meeting of the Sanhedrin
in order to ask them the straight question: are you loyal to the French State
and its laws? He received the answer he wanted; but the Jews continued to abuse
their freedom to dominate others to such an extent that he had to withdraw some
of their privileges.
In any case, even as the nineteenth-century democratic revolutions in Europe led to the emancipation of the Jews almost everywhere, the Rabbis, fearing the dissolution of the Jewish identity among the Gentiles, created the Zionist movement in order to recreate the Jewish ghettoes in Palestine. So democracy for the Jewish revolution was only a means towards the dictatorship of the Jewish “proletariat” – ultimately, of the Antichrist. As the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion put it: “From liberalism were born the constitutional states, which took the place of Autocracy which was saving for the goys [Gentiles]. And a constitution, as you well know, is nothing other than a school for scandals, quarrels, arguments, disagreements, fruitless party agitation and party tendencies – in a word, a school for everything that will depersonalise the activity of the state… By such measures we will acquire the possibility of abolishing, little by little, step by step, everything that, at the beginning when we entered into our rights, we were forced to introduce into state constitutions, for the transfer to the unnoticed removal of every constitution, when the time will come to transform every government into our autocracy…”[24]
“Depersonalised”
states are always weak states; the people cannot express their victory fully
without having a focus for it in the veneration of a leader. So the overthrow
of personal autocracy by depersonalised democracy cannot stop there, but must
go on to its ultimate consequence – satanocracy, the enthronement of the
personal Antichrist. Thus in modern times we see an ever-quickening descent
from autocracy to democracy to satanocracy. Democracy cannot be more than a
transitional phase because the rule of the people by the people is a
contradiction in terms. For “rule” means the imposition of one will on the will
of the people, while the will of the people, at least in its fallen state, is
always multiple.
That
is why the great saints of the nineteenth and early twentieth century insisted
on the necessity – the religious
necessity – of faithfulness to the Tsar. Thus St. Seraphim of Sarov said that
after Orthodoxy, faithfulness to the Tsar was “our first Russian duty and the
chief foundation of true Christian piety”. Again, St. John of Kronstadt said:
“The autocracy is the sole condition of the piety of Russia; if there is no autocracy,
there will be no Russia; power will be taken by the Jews, who greatly hate us…”
And Metropolitan Macarius, the apostle to the Altai, said: “You don’t want your
own Russian authority, so you will have a foreign power over you.” [25]
Thus,
to summarize: world history is a perennial struggle between two irreconcilable
religio-political principles: theocracy and satanocracy. Theocracy denotes the
type of society in which the whole of the life of the people, including politics,
is devoted primarily to the service of God, Who is seen as the true King of
kings and Lord of lords. Strictly speaking, a true theocracy can only be the
Kingdom of God on earth, which is the Church. However, in view of the fall of
man, and the consequent necessity of fighting wars and indulging in other such
unspiritual activities, theocratic societies from the time of the kings of
Israel have created a kind of division of labour between the Church, on the one
hand, which occupies itself more or less exclusively with spiritual matters,
and the Crown, on the other, which occupies itself with more material matters –
although Church and Crown, like soul and body, both serve the same end, in a
kind of symbiotic symphony of powers.[26]
Satanocracy, by contrast, abolishes the distinction between Church and State
and subordinates society in all its spheres to the will of the earthly ruler,
who is recognized to be the incarnation of a god (as in Ancient Babylonia and
Egypt) or of an impersonal heavenly order (as in Ancient China and the
Platonic, Aristotlean and Hegelian philosophies) or, more dynamically, of the
March of History (as in Marxism-Leninism). “Pure” satanocracies have been rare
since Christ, largely because of the power of the Orthodox Christian theocratic
ideal. But that ideal has come to be undermined by, on the one hand,
pseudo-theocracies such as Papism and Islam, and on the other, by
anti-theocratic theories which have deceitfully pretended to be compatible with
true theism, such as Protestant democracy and Jewish nationalism. Finally,
after a “trial run” in the French revolution, a “pure” satanocracy came to
power in 1917 on the ruins of the Russian theocracy. This satanocracy combined
elements of all the previous satanocracies and pseudo- and anti-theocracies:
the totalitarianism and individualist man-worship of the ancient pagan
monarchies and Papism; the fatalist determinism of Islam; the collectivist
people-worship of the Protestant democracies; and the Jewish and other kinds of
nationalism.
While,
until 1917, the revolution had made only partial inroads into the life of the
Orthodox Churches, in the next ten years it penetrated into the very heart of
her external organization, removing the last of her pious autocrats, and
eventually leading all the Local Autocephalous Churches, with the possible
exception of the Mother of the Churches, Jerusalem, to fall away from the
Truth. This has led to the arising of movements of resistance to the official,
fallen Churches, which have come to be known as “True Orthodox” or “Old
Calendar” or “Catacomb” Orthodox Churches in opposition to their
pseudo-Orthodox or new-style or above-ground official counterparts. The most
important of these have been the True Orthodox or Catacomb Church of Russia,
the True Orthodox or Old Calendar Churches of Greece and Romania, and the
Russian Church Abroad. Thus by contrast with the externally united, wealthy and
numerically large Churches of Orthodox Christendom in 1914, the picture
presented today is one of a small, persecuted and externally divided remnant.
The
main purpose of this book is to show how this change took place, how the
Orthodox Church before the revolution became the Orthodox Church in modern
times, and what are the prospects for her recovery now, at the end of the
twentieth century.
Of
course, it is easy to exaggerate the difference between then and now. Church
life on the eve of the catastrophe was, as might be expected, at a low
spiritual ebb, in spite of the external pomp.[27]
Ecumenism and socialism had already sown their pernicious seeds, especially in
the educated classes; and nationalism had already produced at least one formal
Church schism – that between the Greek and Bulgarian Churches.[28]
The catastrophe was to a large extent simply a reaping of the bad fruits which
had already been sown. Moreover, the present divisions between the True
Orthodox Churches, damaging though they are, conceal a perhaps greater unity
with regard to the main questions of the age than existed at the beginning of
the century.
The
Apostle Paul said: “There must be heresies among you, that those who are
approved may be made manifest among you” (I Corinthians 11.19). Nowhere
has the truth of these words been revealed more clearly than in our century,
when the martyrs against the heresies of ecumenism and communism have numbered
in the millions. A secondary purpose of this book, therefore, is to celebrate
the glory of this century, its new martyrs and confessors. For to chart the
triumphs of Satan while ignoring the feats of those who have conquered his
power in the most difficult of circumstances would be to distort the truth.
Christ Himself came “for the rise and fall of many in Israel” (Luke
2.34), and it is in studying the rise of some and fall of others in the Church
of the twentieth century that we ourselves come to a fuller knowledge of the
truth.
And
what is that truth which, it is hoped, this humble work will help to establish?
The truth of the Church. The truth
that, contrary to the teachings of the heretics, the Church is truly One, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic. The truth that this unity, holiness, catholicity and
apostolicity have been preserved to our day exclusively in the remnant of the
Orthodox Church known as the True Orthodox Church. The truth, finally, that in our
days of “the triumph of Satan and the power of the Antichrist”, as the
Martyr-Patriarch Tikhon said[29],
“the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church”, which is and always
will be the only ark of salvation.
Through
the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on
us!
March 20 / April 2, 2003.
Week of the Holy Cross.
St. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne.
East House, Beech Hill, Mayford, Woking, Surrey, England.
We have no king, because we feared not the Lord.
Hosea 10.3.
The mystery of iniquity is already at work, only it will not be perfected until he who now restrains is taken from the midst.
II Thessalonians 2.7.
At
the beginning of the twentieth century, the Orthodox Church in both the major
States in which she lived – the Russian and Ottoman empires – found herself in
a position of subservience to the civil government, a position that had certain
external advantages but which was contrary to the holy canons of the Church and
therefore greatly debilitated her strength in the long run.
In
the Ottoman empire, the Muslim State forbade conversions to Orthodoxy on pain
of death, restricted the Church in various other ways, and made the post of the
patriarch himself subject to the highest bidder in a way that both drained the
financial resources of the Orthodox community and made the man who was
eventually “elected” patriarch in effect a simoniac. At the same time, this
position of the patriarchate had hidden blessings which became clearer only
after the collapse of the empire. First, the Ottoman rulers provided a certain
protection from the depradations of western missionaries, who, if allowed free
access into the Orthodox lands, might well have torn a large part of the
largely uneducated flock from Orthodoxy (as happened in Transylvania, where
Ottoman power was weaker). And secondly, the millet system of
administering the empire according to religious confessions forced the Orthodox
nations together in a way which countered the centrifugal tendencies that had
already led to wars between Byzantium, Bulgaria and Serbia before the Turkish
conquest. The tragedy of Greek and Balkan Orthodoxy in the twentieth century
consisted in the fact that, while overthrowing the admittedly uncanonical
system of dependence on the Ottoman rulers, the Orthodox subjected themselves
to the still more destructive forces of nationalism, on the one hand, and
westernism, on the other.[30]
In
Russia, Peter the Great’s reglament of 1721 had abolished the
patriarchate and made the Church in effect a department of the State under the
direction of a Procurator appointed by the Tsar. Again, there were hidden
blessings in this uncanonical situation: the State supported the Church
financially, encouraging her missionary and educational work, and State
legislation muzzled the activities of sectarians and uniates on the borders of
the empire. However, by the beginning of the twentieth century these advantages
were seen by many in the Church, from the president of the council of ministers
and the Holy Synod to the Church intelligentsia and the white clergy, to be
largely outweighed by the disadvantages, which included: the impotence of the
bishops, whose administrative functions were in many cases superseded by
diocesan consistories answerable to the Procurator; the invidious position of
priests who were required by law to report on seditious activities by their
parishioners, even if this involved breaking the seal of confession; and the
identification of preachers among the heterodox as government agents, which
greatly hindered the task of converting the Muslims, Old Believers, Protestants
and Uniates.
Since
the Russian Church was by far the largest and strongest Church in Orthodoxy,
and the main bulwark of the empire on which the prosperity of the other
Orthodox Churches around the world depended, the reform of her relations with
the State and of her internal administration was a most pressing necessity. And
this was recognized by the Tsar himself, who from 1903 openly suggested both
the restoration of the patriarchate and the convocation of a Local Council. He
even proposed that he take monastic vows and become the patriarch himself – to
which the Holy Synod replied only with an astonished silence.[31]
However,
the disastrous Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5, followed by the revolution of
1905-6, arrested the reform process just as it was getting under way; for at a
time when the foundations of the State were being shaken to the core, it was
felt that to allow radical change in the Church would encourage further
destabilisation – especially when the revolutionary spirit had penetrated deep
into the Church herself. And yet the Tsar’s Toleration decree of April, 1905,
which allowed all the non-Orthodox confessions in the empire to organize
themselves autonomously and to accept converts, while keeping the Orthodox
Church chained to the State, made reform even more pressing. For only a
reformed and revitalized Church which was in harmony or “symphony” with the
State, but did not have one hand tied behind her back by a State determined to
use her for political ends, could hope to withstand the sudden resurgence of
the non-Orthodox religions, especially the uniates in the south-western regions
of the empire.
However,
in balancing the need for reform against the necessity for stability the Tsar
came down on the side of stability, and his order to convene the Council never
came. There followed a decade in which the wounds of the Church continued to
fester, and the authority of both Church and State continued to decline. And in
the end the much needed Local Council was convened, in accordance with Divine
Providence, only when the Tsar himself had been swept away…[32]
And
yet there had been spiritual gains in the pre-revolutionary period. The
pre-conciliar commission had discussed at length the main issues which were to
dominate the history of the Orthodox Church in the coming century, including
Church-State relations, the relations between the hierarchy and laypeople
within the Church (i.e. sobornost or conciliarity) and the beginnings of
Ecumenism. Many of the recommendations of the commission were eventually
adopted without major modification by the Local Council of 1917-18.
Moreover, the period had brought to
the fore several of those churchmen who would play such important roles, both
for good and for ill, in the coming struggle with the revolution: on the one
side, men such as Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky), Archbishop Anthony
(Khrapovitsky), Archbishop Theophan (Bystrov) of Poltava and Archbishop Tikhon
(Bellavin), and on the other, Bishop Antoninus (Granovsky), Bishop Sergius
(Stragorodsky) and Bishop Eulogius (Georgievsky). Thus the battle-lines for the
coming struggle had been drawn, and a discerning observer might even have
foreseen the outcome of the struggle by examining the events of 1905-07.
Especially well-known in the pre-war years was Archbishop Anthony of Volhynia. On all the major issues of the day he adopted an uncompromisingly Orthodox position. Thus he supported the Tsar and rebuked the liberal, “unchurched” part of the Russian population, writing of them in 1899: “It is no longer a people, but a rotting corpse, which takes its rotting as a sign of life, while on it, or in it, live only moles, worms and foul insects… for in a living body they would find no satisfaction for their greed, and there would be nothing for them to live on”.[33]
Another
of Vladyka Anthony’s major concerns was the defence of the Orthodox population
of Austria-Hungary. The Hungarian government and the uniates tried by all means
to prevent the return of the Carpatho-Russians to their ancestral Orthodox
faith. This led to martyrdoms, such as that of the priest Maximus Sandovich,
who had been ordained by Vladyka Anthony.[34]
“Vladyka
Anthony struggled with the unia and both by the printed word and in his sermons
he often addressed this theme. He tried by all means to destroy the incorrect
attitude towards the unia which had been established in Russia, according to
which it was the same Orthodoxy, only commemorating the Pope of Rome. With
profound sorrow and irritation he said: ‘They can in no way accept this simple
truth, that the unia is a complete entry into the Roman Catholic church with
the recognition of the Orthodox Church as a schism.., with the recognition of
all the Latin saints and with a condemnation of the Orthodox saints as having
been schismatics outside the true Church…’
“…
Vladyka Anthony also laboured much to establish in Russian society an Orthodox
attitude towards Catholicism. In educated Russian society and in ecclesiastical
circles in the Synodal period of the Russian Church the opinion was widespread
that Catholicism was one of the branches of Christianity which, as V.S.
Solovyov taught, was bound at the end of time to unite into one Christianity
with the other supposed branches – Orthodoxy and Protestantism, about which the
holy Church supposedly prayed in her litanies: ‘For the prosperity of the Holy
Churches of God and for the union of all’.
“The
correct attitude towards Catholicism as an apostate heresy was so shaken that
the Holy Synod under the influence of the Emperor Peter I and with the blessing
of his favourite, the protestantising Metropolitan Theophanes Prokopovich,
allowed Swedish prisoners-of-war in Siberia to marry Russian girls with the
obligatory conversion to Orthodoxy. Soon this uncanonical practice of mixed
marriages became law and spread, especially in the western regions. In his
diocese Vladyka Anthony strictly forbade the clergy to celebrate mixed
marriages.
“Vladyka
Anthony well knew that Catholic influence in the midst of the Russian clergy
was introduced through the theological schools: ‘We have lost (an Orthodox
attitude towards Catholicism) because those guides by which we studied in
school and which constitute the substance of our theological, dogmatic and
moral science, is borrowed from the Catholics and Protestants; we are left only
with straight heterodox errors which are known to all and have been condemned
by ecclesiastical authorities…’
“Seeing
the abnormal situation of church life in subjugated Carpathian Rus’, Vladyka
Anthony turned to the Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim III with a request to accept
the Orthodox Galicians and Carpatho-Russians under his omophorion, since the
Russian Synod for political reasons was unable to spread its influence there.
The patriarch willingly agreed and appointed Vladyka Anthony as his exarch for
Galicia and Carpathian Rus’. The Galicians, after finishing work in the fields
and in spite of the great obstacles involved in crossing the border, sometimes
with a direct danger to their lives, made pilgrimages in large groups to the
Pochayev Lavra. Many Carpatho- Russians and Galicians entered the Volhynia
theological seminary.
“Under
the influence of all these undertakings, the Orthodox movement in these areas
began to grow in an elemental manner with each year that passed. This elicited
repressions on the part of the Austro-Hungarian government, which tried to
suppress the movement. The persecution grew and soon Vladyka was forced to
speak out in defence of the persecuted Christians. In August, 1913 he published
an encyclical letter in which he eloquently portrayed all the woes and
persecutions of the Orthodox population of the western regions. In going
through the various instances of Catholics humiliating Orthodox, he cited the
following example of the firmness of the persecuted and the cruelty of the
persecutors: ‘Virgins who had gathered together to save their souls in fasting
and prayer were stripped in winter and driven out onto a frozen lake, like the
40 martyrs of Sebaste, after which some of them soon died. Thus do they torture
our Russians in Hungary and Austria in broad daylight in our civilized age…’
“But
when massive arrests and tortures of the Orthodox began, and there was a trial of
94 Orthodox in Sihet, Vladyka Anthony composed a special prayer and petitions
in the litanies, which were read in all the churches of the Volhynia diocese in
the course of the whole period of the trial, which lasted for two months.
“This
was the only voice raised in defence of the persecuted, not only in Russia but
also throughout Europe.
“The
Austro-Hungarian political circles, in agreement with the Vatican, undertook
decisive measures to suppress the incipient mass return to Orthodoxy of the
Carpatho-Russians and Galicians. It seems that they undertook diplomatic
negotiations in St. Petersburg in order to remove the main cause of the
movement that had arisen, Vladyka Anthony, from his Volhynia see.”[35]
On May 20, 1914 Archbishop Anthony was duly transferred from the see of Volhynia to that of Kharkov… However, where human leaders fail, the King of kings intervenes. The First World War, which broke out on the feast of the recently canonized St. Seraphim of Sarov, July 19, 1914, removed – temporarily, at any rate – many of the dangers which had arisen in the pre-war period and against which Archbishop Anthony had struggled. Thus patriotic emotion and reverence for the Tsar revived, and concern for the fate of the Orthodox Christians in Serbia and the south-west regions made the struggle, in the minds of many, into a holy war in defence of Orthodoxy against militant Catholicism and Protestantism.
By 1914 there were about seven million Jews in the Russian empire – the largest non-Slavic ethnic minority. Most of them lived in the Pale of Settlement. Russian law, very loosely observed, confined them to this area, but on religious, not racial grounds; Karaite Jews, who did not accept the Talmud, the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus, who were strongly tainted with paganism, and Jews who became Christians of any denomination, were given equal rights with the rest of the population.
Moreover, permission to live outside the Pale was given to various categories of Jews: Siberian colonists, domestic servants, artisans, university graduates (one-fifth of the students of Kharkov university were Jews), businessmen, industrialists, bankers and others. This meant that in spite of the discriminatory laws there were considerable colonies of Jews throughout the empire and even in the capital, which enabled them to play a prominent role in the cultural and commercial life of pre-revolutionary Russia. In all, Jews made up about a third of Russia’s total trading community.
In spite of the considerable opportunities thus presented to Jews in the Russian empire, the traditionalist, rabbi-dominated Talmudic Jews of the Pale continued to think of Christians and Christian society as unclean and despicable. “The eminent Jewish-Russian lawyer, Genrikh Sliozberg,” write Fitzlyon and Browning, “never forgot the ‘real grief’ of his family and relations when they discovered that his father had sent him to a Russian grammar school. His school uniform they found particularly irritating, sinful even. It was, they thought, ‘an apostate’s garb’, and his mother and grandmother cried bitterly every time they saw him in it.’ Again, ‘the Russian-Jewish revolutionary, Lev Deutsch, writing in 1923, clearly remembered the time when the Jews ‘considered it sinful to learn Russian, and its use was allowed only if absolutely essential and, of course, only for speaking to Christians (the goyim).’”[36]
It was in this fanatical atmosphere that Communist and Zionist propaganda made inroads into Jewish youth; and, as Chaim Weitzmann recalled in his Autobiography, zealots of both types were to be found in his own family, being united only in their hatred of Orthodox Russia.[37]
Such sentiments were bound to lead to a reaction on the part of the surrounding population. Moreover, Jewish money-lenders exploited Russian peasants who wished to buy their freedom after Alexander II’s emancipation of the serfs in 1861. The government tried to help with generous, low-interest loans, and on several occasions cancelled the debts outright; but the remaining need was filled by less generous Jews, who stepped in with much tougher, high-interest loans.
Dostoyevsky wrote: “Jewry is thriving precisely there where the people are still ignorant, or not free, or economically backward. It is there that Jewry has a champ libre! And instead of raising, by its influence, the level of education, instead of increasing knowledge, generating economic fitness in the native population, – instead of this, the Jew, wherever he has settled, has still more humiliated and debauched the people; there humaneness was still more debased and the educational level fell still lower; there inescapable, inhuman misery, and with it despair, spread still more disgustingly. Ask the native populations in our border regions: What is propelling the Jew – has been propelling him for centuries? You will receive a unanimous answer: mercilessness. ‘He has been prompted so many centuries only by pitilessness for us, only the thirst for our sweat and blood.’
“And, in truth, the whole activity of the Jews in these border regions of ours consisted of rendering the native population as much as possible inescapably dependent on them, taking advantage of the local laws. They always managed to be on friendly terms with those upon whom the people were dependent, and, certainly, it is not for them to complain, at least in this respect, about their restricted rights compared with the native population. They have received from us enough of these rights over the native population. What, in the course of decades and centuries, has become of the Russian people where the Jews settled is attested by the history of our border regions. What, then? – Point to any other tribe from among Russian aliens which could rival the Jew by his dreadful influence in this connection! You will find no such tribe. In this respect the Jew preserves all his originality as compared with other Russian aliens, and, of course, the reason therefore is that status in statu of his, the spirit of which specifically breathes with pitilessness for everything that is not Jew, with disrespect for any people and tribe, for every human creature that is not a Jew. And what kind of justification is it that in Western Europe the nations did not permit themselves to be overwhelmed, and that thus the Russian people themselves are at fault? Because the Russian people in the border regions of Russia proved weaker than the European nations (and exclusively as a result of their cruel political circumstances), for this sole reason should they be completely crushed by exploitation, instead of being helped?[38]
“And if reference is made to Europe, to France, for example, – there too, hardly has their status in statu been harmless. Of course, there, Christianity and its idea have been lowered and are sinking not because of the Jew’s fault, but through their own fault; nevertheless, it is impossible not to note also in Europe the great triumph of Jewry which has replaced many former ideas with its own.
“Oh, it goes without saying that man always, at all times, has been worshipping materialism and has been inclined to perceive and understand liberty only in the sense of making his life secure through money hoarded by the exertion of every effort and accumulated by all possible means. However, at no time in the past have these tendencies been raised so cynically and so obviously to the level of a sublime principle as in our Nineteenth Century. ‘Everybody for himself and only for himself, and every intercourse with man solely for one’s self’ – such is the ethical tenet of the majority of present-day people, even not bad people, but, on the contrary, laboring people who neither murder nor steal. And mercilessness for the lower classes, the decline of brotherhood, exploitation of the poor by the rich, – oh, of course, all this existed also before and always; however, it had not been raised to the level of supreme truth and of science – it had been condemned by Christianity, whereas at present, on the contrary, it is being regarded as virtue.
“Thus, it is not for nothing that over there the Jews are reigning everywhere over stock-exchanges; it is not for nothing that they control capital, that they are the masters of credit, and it is not for nothing – I repeat – that they are also the masters of international politics, and what is going to happen in the future is known to the Jews themselves: their reign, their complete reign, is approaching! We are approaching the complete triumph of ideas before which sentiments of humanity, thirst for truth, Christian and national feelings, and even those of national dignity, must bow. On the contrary, we are approaching materialism, a blind, carnivorous craving for personal material welfare, a craving for personal accumulation of money by any means – that is all that has been proclaimed as the supreme aim, as the reasonable thing, as liberty, in lieu of the Christian idea of salvation only through the closest moral and brotherly fellowship of men.
“People will laugh and say that this is not all brought about by the Jews. Of course, not only by them, but if the Jews have completely triumphed and thriven in Europe precisely at the time when these new principles have triumphed there to the point of having been raised to the level of a moral principle, it is impossible not to infer that the Jews, too, have contributed their influence to this condition. Our opponents point out that, on the contrary, the Jews are poor, poor even everywhere, especially in Russia; that only the very summit of the Jews is rich – bankers and kings of stock-exchanges – while the rest, virtually nine-tenths of the Jews, are literally beggars, running about for a piece of bread, offering commissions and anxiously looking for an opportunity to snatch somewhere a penny for bread. Yes, this seems to be so, but what does this signify? Does it not specifically mean that in the very toil of the Jews (i.e., at least, their overwhelming majority), in their very exploitation there is something wrong, abnormal, something unnatural carrying itself in retribution. The Jew is offering his interposition, he is trading in another man’s labor! But temporarily, this changes nothing. As against this, the summit of the Jews is assuming stronger and firmer power over manking seeking to convey to it its image and substance. Jews keep vociferating that among them, too, there are good people. Oh, God! Is this the point? – Besides, we are speaking not about good or bad people. And aren’t there good people among those? Wasn’t the late James Rothschild of Paris a good man? – We are speaking about the whole and its idea; we are speaking about Judaism and the Jewish idea which is clasping the whole world instead of Christianity which ‘did not succeed’…”[39]
“The Jewish idea”, in Dostoyevsky’s words, or “the mystery of iniquity”, in the words of the Apostle Paul, was preparing for the final assault on “that which restraineth”, the Orthodox Christian empire. And the pogroms of the oppressed Ukrainian peasantry against the oppressor Jewish money-lenders provided the excuse which international Jewry, together with its “Christian” front, the secularised intelligentsia of Russia, needed. Soon a vast campaign was being whipped up against “the sick man of Europe”, the so-called “prison of the peoples”. Jewish and Socialist propaganda distorted the significance of these events, obscuring their causes, hiding the extremely provocative behaviour of Jewish gangs, and quite unjustly accusing the Church and the State, and in particular the Tsar, of complicity in these crimes.
The innocence of the government and Tsar is illustrated by their reaction to the assassination by the Jewish revolutionary Bogrov of Prime Minister A.A. Stolypin in Kiev Opera House in 1911. Robert Massie writes: “Because Bogrov was a Jew, the Orthodox population was noisily preparing a retaliatory pogrom. Frantic with fear, the city’s Jewish population spent the night packing their belongings. The first light of the following day found the square before the railway station jammed with carts and people trying to squeeze themselves on to departing trains. Even as they waited, the terrified people heard the clatter of hoofs. An endless stream of Cossacks, their long lances dark against the dawn sky, rode past. On his own, Kokovtsev had ordered three full regiments of Cossacks into the city to prevent violence. Asked on what authority he had issued the command, Kokovtsev replied: ‘As head of the government.’ Later, a local official came up to the Finance Minister to complain, ‘Well, Your Excellency, by calling in the troops you have missed a fine chance to answer Bogrov’s shot with a nice Jewish pogrom.’ Kokovtsov was indignant, but, he added, ‘his sally suggested to me that the measures which I had taken at Kiev were not sufficient… therefore I sent an open telegram to all governors of the region demanding that they use every possible means – force if necessary – to prevent possible pogroms. When I submitted this telegram to the Tsar, he expressed his approval of it and of the measure I had taken in Kiev.’”[40]
A particularly prominent role in the Jewish question was taken by Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky), who spoke out courageously on the side of the Autocracy in the revolutionary turmoil of 1905, and was a prominent member of the patriotic “Union of the Russian People”, the so-called “Black Hundreds”. For this he was accused of anti-semitism, to which he replied: “… It is unpleasant to talk about oneself, but if you ask anyone who is close to me or knows me well: what is he most interested in? they would tell you: monasticism, communion with the Eastern Churches, the struggle with Latinism, the transformation of the theological schools, the creation of a new direction of Orthodox theology [in opposition to scholasticism], the yedinoveriye [relations with the Old Believers], the typicon of Divine services, Slavophilism, Orthodoxy in Galicia… etc. But no one would name Judophobia as one of my most important interests…
“… Concerning the Jews I delivered and published a sermon in 1903 (against pogroms), thanks to which the pogroms that enveloped the whole of the south-western region did not take place in Volhynia in that year. In 1905 in the sixth week of the Great Fast the Jews in Zhitomir shot at portraits of his Majesty and were beaten for that by the inhabitants of the suburb. The day before Palm Sunday I arrived from Petersburg and in Holy Week again delivered a speech against the pogrom that was being prepared for the first day of Pascha. This pogrom did not take place, and only after the murder by a Jewish hireling of the popular police-officer Kuyarov on the evening of Thomas Sunday, when I was leaving Zhitomir for Petersburg, did fights begin with the Jews, who later said that ‘the government deliberately summoned our hierarch to Petersburg because while he was in the city they did not beat us’. In 1907 I published in a newspaper, and then a brochure with the article: ‘The Jewish question and the Holy Bible’, which has now been reissued in Yiddish. All this, however, did not stop the liberals from printing about me that I was going in cross processions to incite pogroms. Meanwhile, all pogroms have ceased in Volhynia since the Pochayev Union of the Russian People was formed in 1906…
“… If they are talking about the limitation of rights [of the Jews], not for the highest motives of defending the poor Little Russians from Jewish exploiters, but out of hatred for the latter, then this is truly disgusting, but if the patriots do not hate the Jews, but love and pity them, but do not want to give horns to a cow that butts, then this is reasonable, just and humane…”[41]
In 1911, a Christian boy, Andrew Yuschinksy, was ritually murdered. In connection with this, in 1913, the trial took place in Kiev of a Jew named Beilis, which became an international cause célèbre. The verdict of the court was that the boy had been ritually murdered, but Beilis was acquitted (because witnesses and jurors were suborned, according to some).[42]
Now stories of ritual murder of Christian children by Jews have surfaced in many countries in many ages, leading to many formal trials and convictions. These are completely dismissed by western authors, who speak about the “blood libel” against the Jews. However, the Orthodox Church has canonized at least one victim of such a murder, Child-Martyr Gabriel of Zverki, Belorussia, to whom Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) wrote a service in 1908.[43]
It is the tendency of
prosemite authors to dismiss all this as “antisemitic lies”. However, even if
all the historical evidence of Jewish atrocities could be dismissed, it would
be surprising indeed if a religion steeped in such hate against Christ and
Christians as Talmudic Judaism did not produce acts of hatred. As long as
incitement to such acts exists in the “sacred” book of the Judaistic religion, there
must be a presumption that some of its followers may be tempted to carry them
out.
On
the other hand, it cannot be denied that Christians also acted with hatred and
committed atrocities, as in the pogroms in the Rhineland in 1096 or in Spain
leading to the expulsion of all the Jews from Spain in 1492, or in Russia
before the revolution. Hatred of enemies is forbidden by the Gospel of Christ;
so such acts, whether or not they were provoked by hatred on the Jews’ side,
cannot be condoned. But the justified horror at Christian antisemitism which
has become so de rigeur in the modern world, must always be balanced by
a similar horror at the antigentilism and antichristianity of the Talmud, the
most hateful of all “sacred” books.
Over a hundred well-documented cases of the murder of Christian children by the Jews for ritual purposes in various countries are cited by Oleg Platonov, who goes on to cite Monk Neophytus’ account as giving especially valuable evidence, not only of the real existence of this horrific practice, but also of the religious rationale behind it.
Monk Neophytus was until the age of 38 a Jewish rabbi who then became a monk of the Greek Church. His book, entitled “A Refutation of the Religion of the Jews and their Rites from the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments”, originally appeared in Moldavian in 1803 and was translated into Russian in St. Petersburg in 1913, the year of the Beilis trial:-
“The secret use of blood, which the Jews collect from Christians killed by them is a rite which they consider to have been commanded by God Himself and indicated in certain mysterious expressions in the Scriptures.
“Many scholars have written works aimed at proving, with the help of the Bible, the appearance of the true Messiah promised by God to our fathers, Who is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the All-Pure Virgin Mary. An innumerable quantity of works have also been written to refute the superstitious beliefs of the Jews and their false teachings. Many of these authors were native Jews who converted to the Christian Faith. Meanwhile, nobody has yet published anything serious concerning this barbaric mystery of blood, which is kept and used by the synagogue. If some book hinting at this mystery happens to fall into the hands of Christians, and they make reference to it, the Jews never reply in any other way than with feigned mockery or evasions, like the following: ‘But how would we kill Christians if the law forbids us to eat blood?’
“In my opinion, the reason preventing the Jews, even those converted to Christianity, from clearly exposing this is hidden either in the fact that they really were not initiated into the mystery, or in the fact that they still foolishly pity our unfortunate people, and fear to attract to it the powerful vengeance of the Christian peoples.
“But I, having by the mercy of God received Holy Baptism and monasticism, have no fear, in the interest of Christians, to declare everything that I know about these rites, which I myself zealously carried out and kept in the strictest secrecy all the time that I was a haham, or rabbi.
“But first of all it is necessary to explain that the mystery of blood is not known to all Jews, but only to the hahams, or rabbis, the scribes, or Pharisees, who for that reason are called the keepers of the mystery of the blood – a mystery which, moreover, is not contained in clear words in any of their books and which they pass on exclusively by oral tradition.
“The fathers of families initiated into the mystery pass it on only to that one of their sons whose secrecy they have tested. Also, they insist that he is obliged to pass on the mystery only under those condition and in that form, and that he should never disclose it to a Christian, even in the cruellest woes, and even for the saving of life. This revelation is accompanied by the most terrifying curses on anyone who gives away the secret. Here, for example, is how I was initiated into it myself.
“When I reached the age of thirteen, – the age at which the Jews have the custom of laying a wreath called the wreath of glory on the heads of their sons, – my father went apart with me and had a long talk with me, instilling hatred for the Christians into me as a duty laid down by God. This hatred was to go as far as killing them. Then he told me of the custom of collecting the blood of the murdered, and he added, embracing me: ‘So, my son, in this way I have made you confidant and as it were my second I.’ Then he put the wreath on my head and in great detail explained to me the mystery of the blood as the holiest of the holies and the important rite of the Jewish religion. ‘My son,’ he continued, ‘I abjure you by all the elements of heaven and earth always to keep this secret in your heart and not to entrust it to anyone, neither your brothers, nor your sisters, not your mother, nor, later, your wife, – not to any mortal, and especially women. If God gives you even eleven grown sons, do not reveal the secret to all of them, but only to one – the one whom you recognise to be the cleverest and the most capable of keeping the secret, just as I am now acting with you. You must take great car that this son of yours should be devoted and zealous for our faith. Once more I adjure you: beware of trusting women, even your daughters, your wife and your mother, but trust only the son whom you consider worthy of trust.’ ‘O my son,’ he cried finally, ‘may the whole earth refuse to accept your corpse and thrust you out from its depths, if, even in conditions of the most extreme necessity, you reveal this secret of blood to anyone besides him of whom I have spoken. Even if you become a Christian for the sake of profit or for other reasons. See that you do not betray your father by giving away this divine secret which I have revealed to you today. Otherwise may my curse strike you at the very hour at which you sin, and may it accompany you all the days of your life until death and to the ages of ages.’
“May the Father Whom I have acquired in heaven and Who is the Lord Jesus Christ turn away these curses from the head of him who writes exclusively for the sake of the benefit of the Church and the triumph of the Truth.
“The bases of this barbaric custom are the following: 1) hatred for Christians, 2) superstition, and 3) faith in the spiritual reality of Christian blood. I shall explain each of these points.
“On the first reason, which is hatred for Christians.
“The Jews as it were from their mother’s breast instil hatred of Christianity into their sons from the earliest childhood. On receiving these convictions from their fathers over a whole series of generations, they are really and sincerely convinced that to despise Christians and even to kill them is very pleasing to God, thereby exactly justifying the words of Divine redemption: ‘everyone who kills you will think that he is thereby serving God’ (John 16.20).
“On the second reason, which is superstition.
“The second reason is based on the superstitious beliefs which the Jews hold and which relate to the sphere of magic, sorcery, the kabbala and other mysterious rites. They believe that Christian blood is necessary for these diabolical operations. Out of all these superstitions I will indicate only one, which concerns the curse of God that fell on the unhappy people of Israel and which was prophesied by Moses himself in the following expressions: ‘the Lord will strike you with Egyptian leprosy… a foul leprosy on the knees and shins from which you will not be able to be healed’ (Deuteronomy 28.27, 35).
“This terrible illness always was and is very common among the Jews – much more common than they think… And when the haham visits the sick who have been struck down by it, and gives them medicines, he at the same time sprinkles them with Christian blood, if he has any, as the only means of healing…
“On the third and principal reason, which is the faith of the Jews in the spiritual reality of Christian blood.
“The main reason which compels the Jews to kill Christians and collect their blood is the faith, secretly preserved especially by the hahams, or rabbis, that Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary from Nazareth, who was condemned by our ancestors to death on the Cross, is, in all probability, the true Messiah who was for so long expected and invoked by the patriarchs and prophets. There are enough prophecies to convince them of this; especially important is the passage from Jeremiah: ‘Be amazed, O heavens, tremble and be seized with horror, says the Lord, for two evils have My people committed: they have abandoned Me, the source of living water, and have cut out for themselves broken cisterns which cannot hold water’ (Jeremiah 2.12,13).
“This prophecy is well-known and is understood in its true meaning by many rabbis, as it was very well known by Annas and Caiaphas. But, like them, from pride and hardness of heart, the rabbis do not want to recognise it, and therefore, resorting to pitiful interpretations, they have composed new rules – a real parody on the most important mysteries of the Church, so as to be saved by Christian blood, in which they see the blood of the Messiah Himself.
“In consequence of their conviction… the Jews use Christian blood at circumcision, which represents baptism; at marriage, which corresponds to this mystery among the Christians; in the unleavened bread of Pascha, which represents the Eucharist; at burials, imitating holy unction; in their lament over the destruction of Jerusalem, which represents the mystery of repentance. This is the basis of the secret, which I knew and sometimes applied with extraordinary zeal. I shall stop on each of these explanations.
“Marriage. When a marriage is concluded between Jews, the bride and bridegroom prepare for it with a strict fast for 24 hours, abstaining even from water until the setting of the sun. it is then that the rabbi appears. He takes a just-boiled egg, removes the shell and divides it in half. Then he sprinkles it, not with salt, but with a special ash, which I will say more about later. He gives half of this sprinkled egg to each spouse.
“Let us now say what this ash is. It is used not instead of salt, but instead of fresh Christian blood, being in actual fact changed Christian blood. It is precisely with the blood left over from the sacrifices carried out for the feast of unleavened bread, the more the better, that the rabbis infuse a corresponding quantity of flax or cotton thread, then they dry it and burn it. The ash is kept in bottles that are carefully sealed and given to the synagogue’s treasurer. The latter distributes it gradually to the rabbis who ask for it, or for their own use, or for sending to those countries where it is impossible to obtain Christian blood, whether because there are no Christians there or because the police have been roused to be more watchful and the Christians more careful.
“In any case, fresh blood is always preferable, but it is necessary only for the unleavened bread, and in the case of insurmountable obstacles the indicated dark ash represents an acceptable substitute.
“Circumcision. A rabbi also appears for the circumcision of children on the eighth day after birth. He puts into a cup some of the best wine he can get hold of and pours one drop of Christian blood into it. It has been collected from torture, but if that is not available, some of the above-mentioned ash is used, into which a drop of the blood of the circumcised child is added. When this is well mixed with the wine, the rabbi immerses the finger of the child into the cup and says: ‘I declare to you, child: your life is in your blood.’ And he twice repeats this rite and these words.
“Here is a superstitious explanation which the rabbis give for this ceremony amongst themselves. The Prophet Ezekiel twice said: ‘“Live in your blood!” Thus I say to you: “Live in your blood!”‘ (Ezekiel 16.6). By these words the prophet perhaps wanted to indicate the blood of Jesus Christ, Who freed from bonds the souls of the holy fathers who did not receive a water baptism; and in such a case the souls of the Jews, although also themselves deprived of the water of baptism, will be saved by the blood of a Christian baptised in water. But one of the reasons why this blood must be collected amidst the cruel sufferings of the victim is precisely the necessity of representing thereby the Passion of Christ. On the contrary, if the Prophet Ezekiel wanted to speak only about every man’s blood of circumcision, then the Jewish child will be saved by the power of the single drop of blood mixed by the rabbi in the wine with the Christian blood. What a pitiful nation!
“The anniversary of the taking of Jerusalem. The Jews again use the ash of which I have spoken on the ninth day of July, when they weep over the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. On this anniversary they use it in two ways: first, they wipe their forehead with it, which they thought would be unseemly to do with fresh blood, and secondly, they sprinkle an egg with it, and on that day every son of Israel without exception must eat a hard-boiled egg sprinkled with this ash…
“Death. A haham immediately goes to the house of him of whose death he just learned. He takes the white of an egg, mixes into it some Christian blood and a little ash and puts this mixture into the breast of the corpse, uttering the supposed words of Ezekiel: ‘I shall sprinkle you with pure blood and you will be cleansed from all your filthiness’ (Ezekiel 36.25). Ezekiel, it is true, said, not ‘pure blood’, but ‘pure water’… But by dint of this corruption of the text the Jews convince themselves that the dead man will undoubtedly be admitted to paradise.
“The feasts of Pascha and Purim. These two feasts demand the same blood ritual.
“On paschal days the Jews must eat unleavened bread, small breads prepared only by hahams, into which Christian blood has been poured. Everyone, nobles and simple people, young and old, even those without teeth, must taste of this bread, even if it only a crumb the size of an olive…
“The feast of Purim was established in memory of the deliverance from the dominion of Haman by means of Esther and Mordecai, as this is recounted in the book of Esther. As is known, this feast comes in February. The initiated Jews are then occupied, wherever they can, with seizing as many Christians as possible, especially children. However, in this night they sacrifice only one, reproducing the torments of Haman. But for this reason, while the body is hanging, all those present cover it with thousands of insults, as if they were addressing Haman himself. The collected blood is poured out by the rabbi into flour that has already been dissolved with honey, from which he then makes small breads in the form of a triangle for the sake of ridiculing the mystery of the Holy Trinity. These breads are meant, not for the Jews, but through boundless cunning they are distributed to the most eminent families, which must give them away – and these gifts are considered the height of kindness – to their friends from among the Christians. This rite is called the Bread of Purim.
“We should note that this rite does not require the application of too heavy tortures to the victim precisely because the collected blood does not have any other purpose than the one I have indicated.
“The rest of kidnapped Christians, however, are kept in secret hiding-places until the day of Pascha, which comes shortly after Purim. At this time they are all offered in sacrifice in the cruellest and most barbaric manner, and they collect their blood partly for the unleavened bread and partly for other necessities which come up in the course of the year and have been indicated above. These torments at Pascha have a definite aim – to renew the sufferings of Christ, and for that reason they must be carried out mainly on children who through their innocence and virginity better symbolise the Saviour.
“In these depressing
pourings out of blood the words of Jeremiah written in prophecy about the Jews
are justified: ‘Even on the hems of your clothes is found the blood of poor
innocent people’ (Jeremiah 2.34), and still better the words of Ezekiel:
‘You eat with blood… and shed blood’ (Ezekiel 33.25). In consequence of
these innumerable murders Israel was expelled from various states, in
particular from Spain, thereby justifying another prophecy of Ezekiel: ‘Blood
calls you to court’ (Ezekiel 30.6).”[44]
Archbishop Anthony’s attitude to Jewish blood rituals in
general, and the Beilis trial in particular, was expressed in an interview he
gave to A. Chizhevsky. After reminding his readers of how, at the request of Rabbi
Skomorovsky, he had twice, in 1903 and 1905, spoken up against the antisemite
pogroms in Zhitomir, he went on: “But in both of the above-mentioned cases of
my conversation with the rabbi, I decisively refused to say that I did not
recognize the existence of ritual murders carried out by Jews, but on the
contrary I expressed to my interlocuter my conviction that these murders exist,
perhaps as belonging to one or another sect of the Jewish religion, perhaps as
a secret of the highest spiritual government of the Jews, but there undoubtedly
have been cases of ritual murders both in recent times and in antiquity.
“When my
Jewish academic acquaintances pointed to the fact that Jewish law forbids the
drinking of the blood even of animals, so that the thought their mixing
Christian blood with the paschal matsa was absurd, I replied that what seemed
more probable to me was the link between the ritual killings and, not the
Jewish feast of Pascha, but the feast that precedes it of ‘Purim’, in which the
story of Esther, Haman and Mordecai is remembered, when the Persian king,
having executed the enemy of the Jews, Haman, allowed them, who had not long
before been condemned to general killing, to kill their enemies themselves.
Purim in 1911 [the year of the ritual killing of Andrew Yuschinsky] took place
on March 14 and 15, while the Jewish Pascha was from March 15-18…
“Already
in deep antiquity the Jews were causing various disorders against various
symbols hostile to them during this feast. Thus in 408 and 412 the Byzantine emperor issued two
special decrees forbidding the Jews from celebrating Purim and to mock
Christian crosses instead of Haman. I think that Christian children were also
killed on this feast…”[45]
At the beginning of the 20th century there arose the heresy of name-worshipping (imyaslavie or imyabozhie in Russian), which consists in the belief that the Name of God is not only holy and filled with the grace of God, but is holy in and of itself, being God Himself. It arose first in the Caucasus, and then among Russian monks on Mount Athos, with the publication, in 1907, by Schema-monk Hilarion, of a book on the Jesus prayer entitled On the Mountains of the Caucasus. This book was at first well-received and passed the spiritual censor; but later its claim that the name of God is God elicited criticism. Soon monastic opinion in Russia was polarised between those who, like the monks of the Kiev Caves Lavra, approved of the book and its name-worshipping thesis, and those, like the monks of the Pochaev Lavra and the Optina Desert, who rejected it. The heresy was condemned by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1912 (Charter No. 8522 of Patriarch Joachim III to Mount Athos, dated September 12) and 1913 (Charter No. 758 of Patriarch German V to Mount Athos, dated February 15), and by the Russian Holy Synod in 1913 (Epistle of May 18, and Decree of August 27, No. 7644)[46].
However, as Vladimir Gubanov writes, “the illiterate G.E. Rasputin interceded for the heretical name-worshippers and even tried to incite the empress to attack the fighters against the heresy of name-worshipping.”[47] In 1914 the leading name-worshippers, including Hieroschemamonk Anthony (Bulatovich), author of An Apology of Faith in the Name of God and the Name of Jesus (1913), were justified by the Moscow Diocesan Court, which declared: “… The Synodal Office has found that in the confessions of faith in God and in the Name of God coming from the named monks, in the words, ‘I repeat that in naming the Name of God and the Name of Jesus as God and God Himself, I reject both the veneration of the Name of God as His Essence, and the veneration of the Name of God separately from God Himself as some kind of special Divinity, as well as any deification of the very letters and sounds and any chance thoughts about God’ – there is contained information allowing us to conclude that in them there is no basis for leaving the Orthodox Church for the sake of the teaching on the Names of God.’ (decree № 1443 of May 8, 1914)”.
Of course,
this decree does not constitute a “justification” of the name-worshippers’
teaching, especially in view of the fact that on the same day the
Office, led by Metropolitan Macarius, affirmed that name-worshipping – “the
new false-teachings on the names of God proclaimed by Schema-Monk Hilarion and
Anthony Bulatovich” – was a heresy (decree № 1442 of May 8, 1914).
Moreover, in rejecting “any deification of the very letters and sounds
and any chance thoughts about God”, Bulatovich was obliged also to renounce his
words in the Apology: “Every mental representation of a named property
of God is the Name of God [and therefore, according
to the name-worshippers, God Himself]”, “the contemplation of the His name is
God Himself”, “the conscious naming of God is God Himself”, “Every idea about
God is God Himself”, “we call the very idea of God – God”. But did he in fact
repent?
Unfortunately, the
repentance of the name-worshippers turned out to be fictional. Bulatovich did
not repent, but concealed his heresy behind ambiguous words and phrases. Thus
on May 18, 1914, in a letter to Metropolitan Macarius, Bulatovich thanked him
for his “justification”, and nobly deigned to declare that he was now ready to
return into communion with the Orthodox Church (!). And he added: “Concerning
the Name of God and the Name of Jesus Christ, we, in accordance with the
teaching of the Holy Fathers, confessed and confess the Divinity and the Divine
Power of the Name of the Lord, but we do not raise this teaching to the level
of a dogma, for it has not yet been formulated and dogmatised in council, but
we expect that at the forthcoming Council it will be formulated and dogmatised.
Therefore we, in accordance with the teaching of the Holy Fathers, in the words
of the ever-memorable Father John of Kronstadt said and say that the Name of
God is God Himself, and the Name of the Lord Jesus is the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself, understanding this not in the sense of a deification of the created
name, but understanding it spiritually, in the sense of the inseparability of
the God-revealed Truth, Which is the Action of the Divinity.”
These words of Bulatovich show that he was not sincere in his signature below the confession of faith in God and in the Name of God, but deceived Metropolitan Macarius (who
was probably under pressure from the Over-Procurator Sabler, who was in turn
under pressure from the fervent name-worshippers Gregory Rasputin). “Mixing truth with unrighteousness” (Rom. 1.18), Bulatovich mixed Orthodoxy with heresy. Thus Orthodoxy recognises that there is a “Divine Power”
in the name of Jesus, but does not recognise that it is “Divinity”.
Again, Orthodoxy recognises that in prayer the name of God is indeed inseparable from God, but
it does not confuse the two, as
does Bulatovich. For while a shadow is
inseparable from the body that casts it, this is not to say that the shadow is
the body. Finally, Bulatovich’s “dogma” is
still not “formulated and dogmatised in council” – because it is not
a dogma, but heresy!
The Most Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church accepted
that Bulatovich and his fellows had not really repented, so they set aside
decree № 1442 of the Moscow Synodal Office, and confirmed the
sentences against the name-worshippers (decree № 4136
of May 10-24, 1914), which confirmation was again confirmed by decree № 2670
of March 10, 1916. “In this decree of the Most Holy Synod,” wrote the future
Hieromartyr Basil (Zelentsov), Bishop of Priluki, “we find a confirmation of
the basic rule that the name-worshippers must be received into ecclesiastical
communion and admitted to the sacraments of the Church only on the unfailing
condition that they reject the false teaching of name-worshipping and witness
to their faithfulness to the dogmas and teaching of the Church and to their
obedience to Church authority”
Although name-worshipping was on the agenda of the 1917-18 Council and a subcommission to study it under the leadership of Archbishop Theophan of Poltava and Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, the subcommission did not have time to complete its work before the Council was terminated by the Bolsheviks. However, on October 8/21, 1918, Patriarch Tikhon and the Most Holy Synod declared: “The Most Holy Synod does not change its former judgement on the error itself [of name-worshipping]… and has in no way changed its general rule, according to which the name-worshippers, as having been condemned by the Church authorities, can be received into Church communion… only after they have renounced name-worshipping and have declared their submission to the Holy Church… The petition of Hieroschemamonk Anthony to allow him to serve is to be recognised as not worthy of being satisfied so long as he continues to disobey Church authority and spread his musings which have been condemned by the Church hierarchy to the harm of the Church”.
After
this decision, the leading name-worshipper, Anthony Bulatovich, broke communion
for the second time with the Russian Church and was shortly afterwards killed
by robbers.
In spite of all these condemnations,
the name-worshipping movement did not die out; it survived in the Caucasus and
South Russian region (where the Tsar had transported the rebellious monks); and
the sophianist heretics Florensky and Bulgakov also confessed name-worshipping
in the inter-war period. In modern times the heresy has enjoyed a revival in
intellectualist circles in Russia, especially in the works of Hieromonk Gregory
(Lourié) of St. Petersburg, who supports the heretical views of Bulatovich,
considers Bulatovich himself to be a saint, and those who oppose his ideas,
including several hieromartyrs of the Russian Church to be “enemies of the
Name”!
One reason for the failure to stamp
out the heresy was the comparatively weak defence of the truth produced by the
Greek and Russian theologians[48],
the aura of martyrdom which was attached to the name-worshippers as a result of
their forcible expulsion from Mount Athos to Russia on a Russian cruiser, and
the fact that the heresy coincided with the end of the Balkan wars and the
transfer of Mount Athos from Turkish to Greek dominion after the Treaty of
Bucharest, which meant that mutual suspicions between the Greeks and the
Russians concerning the status of Athos hindered a united and thorough approach
to the problem. Many took up the cause of the name-worshippers as part of their
general attack on the “paralytical” Russian Holy Synod, and the whole debate
soon acquired political overtones, with the democratic and socialist left
generally taking the side of the name-worshippers and the monarchists taking
the side of the Orthodox.[49]
Patriarch Tikhon indicated that the controversy needs further study “in
essence” at a future Pan-Russian (or Ecumenical) Council. But this does not
mean, as some have claimed, that the Church has not delivered its verdict on
the question. She has delivered her verdict: but the reasons for that verdict
need to be more extensively elaborated, and the “positive” teaching of the
Church on the relationship between the uncreated and the created in prayer
needs to be expounded still more clearly and thoroughly.[50]
But
let us now turn to that phenomenon which was to sweep away the State and bring
the Russian Orthodox Church, and through her the whole of the Church of Christ
on earth, to the very edge of total destruction – the Russian revolution.
“Terrible
and mysterious,” wrote Metropolitan Anastasius, second leader of the Russian
Church Abroad, “is the dark visage of the revolution. Viewed from the vantage
point of its inner essence, it is not contained within the framework of history
and cannot be studied on the same level as other historical facts. In its
deepest roots it transcends the boundaries of space and time, as was determined
by Gustave le Bon, who considered it an irrational phenomenon in which certain
mystical, supernatural powers were at work. But what before may have been
considered dubious became completely obvious after the Russian Revolution. In
it everyone sensed, as one contemporary writer expressed himself, the critical
incarnation of absolute evil in the temper of man; in other words, the
participation of the devil – that father of lies and ancient enemy of God, who
tries to make man his obedient weapon against God – was clearly revealed.”[51]
Great lights such as St. John of Kronstadt had warned of the coming catastrophe. In 1907 Bishop Andronicus, the future hieromartyr, wrote: “It is not a question of the struggle between two administrative regimes, but of a struggle between faith and unbelief, between Christianity and antichristianity. The ancient antichristian plot, which was begun by those who shouted furiously to Pilate about Jesus Christ: ‘Crucify Him, crucify Him: His blood be on us and on our children’ – continued in various branches and secret societies. In the 16th century it poured into the special secret antichristian order of the Templars, and in the 18th century it became more definite in the Illuminati, the Rosencrucians and, finally, in Freemasonry it merged into a universal Jewish organization. And now, having gathered strength to the point where France is completely in the hands of the Masons, it – Masonry – already openly persecutes Christianity out of existence there. In the end Masonry will be poured out into one man of iniquity, the son of destruction – the Antichrist (II Thessalonians 2). In this resides the solution of the riddle of our most recent freedoms: their aim is the destruction of Christianity in Rus’. That is why what used to be the French word ‘liberal’, which meant among the Masons a ‘generous’ contributor to the Masonic aims, and then received the meaning of ‘freedom-loving’ with regard to questions of faith, has now already passed openly over to antichristianity. In this resides the solution of the riddle of that stubborn battle for control of the school, which is being waged in the zemstvo and the State Duma: if the liberal tendency gains control of the school, the success of antichristianity is guaranteed. In this resides the solution of the riddle of the sympathy of liberals for all kinds of sects in Christianity and non-Christian religions. And the sectarians have not been slumbering – they have now set about attacking the little children… And when your children grow up and enter university – there Milyukov [the future foreign minister in the Provisional Government] and co. will juggle with the facts and deceive them, teaching them that science has proved man’s origin from the apes. And they will really make our children into beasts, with just this difference, that the ape is a humble and obedient animal whereas these men-beasts will be proud, bold, cruel and unclean….”[52]
Already at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Prophet Abel had prophesied to Tsar Paul I: ‘Nicholas II will be a holy tsar, like Job the much-suffering. He will have the mind of Christ, patience and dove-like purity. The Scriptures speak about him: Psalms 90, 10 and 20 have revealed to me the whole of his destiny. He will exchange a royal crown for a crown of thorns, will be betrayed by his people as was once the Son of God. He will be a redeemer, he will redeem his people, like the bloodless sacrifice. There will be a war, a great war, a world war. People will fly through the air like birds, and swim under the water like fish, they will begin to exterminate each other with evil-smelling sulphur. On the eve of victory the Russian throne will collapse. But the betrayal will grow and multiply. And your great-grandson will be betrayed, many of your descendants will also whiten their garments in the blood of the Lamb, the peasant will seize power with his axe in madness, but he himself will later weep. A truly Egyptian punishment will begin… Blood and tears will soak the wet earth. Rivers of blood will flow. Brother will rise up against brother. And again: fire, the sword, invasions of aliens and the inner enemy of the godless authority. The Jew will beat the Russian land with a scorpion, he will take hold of her holy things, close the churches of God and execute the best Russian people. This will be allowed by God, it will be the wrath of the Lord against Russian for her rejection of her God-anointed [tsar]”.[53]
The Tsar abdicated on March 2/15, 1917, noting in his diary for the day that he was surrounded “by treason, deceit and cowardice”. And indeed, most of the leading men of the kingdom, including grand-dukes, generals, ministers and parliamentarians, had been urging him to abdicate, so for him to hold on to power would have been almost impossible, and would almost certainly have led to a civil war. It was in order to avoid civil war at a time of world war against Germany that the Tsar abdicated in favour of his brother, Great-Prince Michael.
Was he right? His advisor, the great eldress Paraskeva (Pasha) of Sarov (+1915), who had foretold his destiny at the glorification of St. Seraphim of Sarov in 1903, is reported to have said: “Your Majesty, descend from the throne yourself”.[54] However, another great eldress, Blessed Matrona of Moscow (+1952), later said: “In vain did Emperor Nicholas renounce the throne, he shouldn’t have done that. They forced him to do it. He was sorry for the people, and paid the price himself, knowing his path beforehand.”[55]
Moreover, as Mikhail Nazarov points out, the Basic Laws of the Russian Empire, which had been drawn up by Tsar Paul I and which all members of the Royal Family swore to uphold, “do not foresee the abdication of a reigning Emperor (‘from a religious… point of view the abdication of the Monarch, the Anointed of God, is contrary to the act of His Sacred Coronation and Anointing; it would be possible only by means of monastic tonsure’ [N. Korevo]). Still less did his Majesty have the right to abdicate for his son in favour of his brother; while his brother Michael Alexandrovich had the right neither to ascend the Throne during the lifetime of the adolescent Tsarevich Alexis, nor be crowned, since he was married to a divorced woman, nor to transfer power to the Provisional government, or refer the resolution of the question of the fate of the monarchy to the future Constituent Assembly.
“Even if the monarch had been installed by the will of such an Assembly, ‘this would have been the abolition of the Orthodox-legitimate principle of the Basic Laws’, so that these acts would have been ‘juridically non-existent’, says Zyzykin (in this Korevo agrees with him0. ‘Great Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich… performed only an act in which he expressed his personal opinions and abdication, which had an obligatory force for nobody. Thereby he estranged himself from the succession in accordance with the Basic Laws, which juridically in his eyes did not exist, in spite of the fact that he had earlier, in his capacity as Great Prince on the day of his coming of age, sworn allegiance to the decrees of the Basic Laws on the inheritance of the Throne and the order of the Family Institution’.
“It goes without saying that his Majesty did not expect such a step from his brother, a step which placed the very monarchical order under question… However, Great Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich also acted under duress, under the pressure of the plotters who came to his house. Kerensky admitted that this had been their aim: ‘We decided to surround the act of abdication of Mikhail Alexandrovich with every guarantee, but in such a way as to give the abdication a voluntary character’”.[56]
Truly,
the results of the Tsar’s abdication for Russia were different from what he had
hoped and believed. Instead of an orderly transfer of power from one member of
the royal family to another, Great-Prince Michael also abdicated, and the whole
dynasty and autocratic order collapsed. And instead of preventing civil war for
the sake of victory in the world war, the abdication was followed by defeat in
the world war and the bloodiest civil war in world history, with the tormented
country left in the hands of a God-fighting anti-authority, “the collective
Antichrist”.
How did the Orthodox Church react to the fall of the Orthodox monarchy? With surprising indifference in view of the enormous, indeed apocalyptic significance of the event. Sadly, even the Holy Synod failed to measure up to its responsibilities at this time. The first question that needed to be answered concerned the legitimacy of the new Provisional Government. The constitution of the Russian Empire did not allow for any transition to a non-autocratic, still less an anti-autocratic form of government. However, the Synod showed itself to be at a loss at this critical moment. At its session of February 26 (old style), it refused the request of the Assistant Procurator, Prince N.D. Zhevakhov, that the creators of disturbances should be threatened with ecclesiastical punishments.[57] Then, after the resignation of the Tsar, it refused the request of the Procurator, N.P. Raev, that it publicly support the monarchy. Rather, it welcomed Great Prince Michael’s refusal to accept the throne from his brother, offered no resistance when the Royal Throne was removed by the new Procurator, Prince V. Lvov, from the hall in which its sessions took place, and on March 9/22 published an Address to the faithful children of the Orthodox Church in which it declared that “the will of God has been accomplished” and called on the church people to support the new government. “Trust the Provisional Government,” said the Synod. All together and everyone individually, apply all your efforts to the end that by your labours, exploits, prayer and obedience you may help it in its great work of introducing new principles of State life…”[58]
“This
document, which appeared during the days when the whole of Orthodox Russia was
anxiously waiting for what the Church would say with regard to the events that
had taken place in the country, introduced no clarity into the ecclesiastical
consciousness of the people. The Synod did not utter a word about the arrest of
the Emperor and even of his completely innocent children, about the bloody
lynch-mob trials established by the soldiers over their officers or about the
disorders that had led to the death of people; it did not give a religio-moral
evaluation of the revolutionary excesses, it did not condemn the guilty ones.
Finally, the Address completely ignored the question how one should relate to
the deposition and arrest of the Anointed of God, how to conduct Divine
services in church without the important prayer for the prosperity of the
Emperor’s House…”[59]
For
the liberals in the Church, however, the Synod’s Address did not go far enough.
They wanted the removal not only of the Tsar, but also of the very concept of
Sacred Monarchy. In its sessions of March 11 and 12, the Council of the
Petrograd religious-philosophical society resolved that the Synod’s acceptance
of the Tsar’s abdication “does not correspond to the enormous religious
importance of the act, by which the Church recognized the Tsar in the rite of
the coronation of the anointed of God. It is necessary, for the liberation of
the people’s conscience and to avoid the possibility of a restoration, that a
corresponding act be issued in the name of the Church hierarchy abolishing the power of the Sacrament of
Royal Anointing, by analogy with the church acts abolishing the power of the
Sacraments of Marriage and the Priesthood.”[60]
In
the end very few refused to swear allegiance to the Provisional Government.
Among the few was Count Paul Mikhailovich Grabbe, who later raised the question
of the restoration of the patriarchate at the Local Council of the Russian
Church and some years after that received a martyr’s crown. Only slightly less
uncompromising was the leading monarchist hierarch, Archbishop Anthony
(Khrapovitsky), who on March 5/18 preached to his flock in Kharkov: “When we
received the news of the abdication from the Throne of the Most Pious Emperor
Nicholas Alexandrovich, we prepared, in accordance with his direction, to
commemorate the Most Pious Emperor Michael Alexandrovich. But now he, too, has
abdicated, and has ordered obedience to the Provisional Government, and that is
the reason, and the only reason, why we commemorate the Provisional Government.
Otherwise no power would be able to force us to cease the commemoration of the
Tsar and the Tsar’s House.”[61]
Probably
the best justification of the Synod’s line was expressed by Archpriest John
Vostorgov, who was to receive a martyr’s crown the next year: “Our former
Emperor, who has abdicated from the throne, transferred power in a lawful
manner to his brother. In his turn the brother of the Emperor, having abdicated
from power until the final decision of the Constituent Assembly, in the same
lawful manner transferred power to the Provisional Government, and to that
permanent government that which be given to Russia by the Constituent Assembly.
And so we now have a completely lawful Provisional Government which is the
powers that be, as the Word of God calls it. To this power, which is now the
One Supreme and All-Russian power, we are obliged to submit in accordance with
the duty of religious conscience; we are obliged to pray for it; we are obliged
also to obey the local authorities established by it. In this obedience, after
the abdication of the former Emperor and his brother, and after their
indications that the Provisional Government is lawful, there can be no betrayal
of the former oath, but in it consists our direct duty.”[62]
And
yet, when the foreign minister of the new government, Paul Milyukov, was asked
who had elected his government, he replied: “The Russian revolution elected
us”.[63]
But the revolution cannot be lawful, being the incarnation of lawlessness…
Therefore confusion and searching of consciences continued. This can be seen in
a letter of some Orthodox Christians to the Holy Synod dated July 24, 1917: “We
Orthodox Christians most ardently beseech you to explain to us in the newspaper
Russkoye Slovo what… the oath given to us to be faithful to the Tsar,
Nicholas Alexandrovich, means. People are saying in our area that if this oath
is worth nothing, then the new oath to the new Tsar [the Provisional
Government?] will be worth nothing. Which oath must be more pleasing to God.
The first or the second? Because the Tsar is not dead, but is alive and in
prison…”[64]
In
any case, the Holy Synod was soon to learn from its own experience what the new
government really represented. Instead of the separation between Church and
State which the government promised and so many Church leaders longed for, the
new Procurator, Prince V.N. Lvov, immediately began to act like a new dictator
worse than any of the Procurators of the Tsarist period. As we have seen, at the
beginning of his first appearance at the Synod on March 4/17, he removed the
Royal Throne (it was placed in a museum). Two days later he secured the forced
retirement of the Metropolitan of Petrograd, Pitirim, on the grounds that he
had been placed in his see by Rasputin. The removal of the highly-respected
Metropolitan of Moscow, Macarius, Apostle of the Altai, required a little more
time (he was removed from his see on March 20 and retired on April 1), and was
accomplished only after a personal visit to Moscow by Lvov to stir up
opposition to the metropolitan among his priests and laity.
Metropolitan
Macarius was never reconciled with his forced and uncanonical removal from his
see. This is what he later wrote about the Provisional Government as a whole
and Lvov in particular: “They corrupted the army with their speeches. They
opened the prisons. They released onto the peaceful population convicts,
thieves and robbers. They abolished the police and administration, placing the
life and property of citizens at the disposal of every armed rogue… They
destroyed trade and industry, imposing taxes that swallowed up the profits of
enterprises… They squandered the resources of the exchequer in a crazy manner.
They radically undermined all the sources of life in the country. They
established elections to the Constituent Assembly on bases that are
incomprehensible to Russia. They defiled the Russian language, distorting it
for the amusement of half-illiterates and sluggards. They did not even guard
their own honour, violating the promise they had given to the abdicated Tsar to
allow him and his family free departure, by which they prepared for him
inevitable death…
“Who
started the persecution on the Orthodox Church and handed her head over to
crucifixion? Who demanded the execution of the Patriarch? Was it those whom the
Duma decried as ‘servants of the dark forces’, labelled as enemies of the
freedom of the Church?… No, it was not those, but those him the Duma opposed to
them as a true defender of the Church, whom it intended for, and promoted to
the rank of over-procurator of the Most Holy Synod – the member of the
Provisional Government, now servant of the Sovnarkom – Vladimir Lvov.”[65]
On
March 13/26, Lvov’s actions were recognised to be “uncanonical and illegal” by
the Synod. On April 14/27, a stormy meeting took place between Lvov and the
Synod. The subject was the unlawful transfer by Lvov of the Holy Synod’s
official organ, Tserkovno-Obshchestvennij Vestnik, into the hands of the
renovationist Professor Titlinov, who was now using it to preach his Gospel of
“Socialist Christianity”. The next day Lvov marched into the Synod at the head
of a detachment of soldiers and read an order for the cessation of the winter
session of the Synod and the retirement of all its members with the single exception of
Archbishop Sergius (Stragorodsky) of Finland.
Thus
in little more than a month since the abdication of the Tsar, the Church had
been effectively placed in the hands of a lay dictator, who had single-handedly
dismissed her most senior bishops in the name of the “freedom of the Church”.
But who was this Archbishop Sergius, the one member of the old Synod that the
revolutionary powers did not want to
remove?
Archbishop Sergius (born 1867) was perhaps the most prominent of the learned, academic bishops of Russia after his teacher, Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky). Thanks to his erudition and the well-known “suppleness” of his views, he took a very active part in the work of the society for the rapprochement of the Orthodox and Anglican Churches. This sympathy for the ideas of the West manifested itself also in his active participation in the activities of the liberal religious-philosophical society of St. Petersburg, from whose bosom there came the heretics S. Bulgakov and N. Berdyaev and the future renovationist leader Antonin (Granovsky). His political sympathies were also leftist. Thus “when in 1905 the revolutionary professors began to demand reforms in the spiritual schools, then, in the words of Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), ‘his Grace Sergius… wavered in faith.’”[66] Again, when the revolutionary Peter Schmidt was shot in 1906, Archbishop Sergius, who was at that time rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, served a pannikhida at his grave; and he also gave refuge in his hierarchical house in Vyborg to the revolutionaries Michael Novorussky and Nicholas Morozov (a participant in the attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II). Having such sympathies, it is not surprising that he was not liked by the Royal Family: in 1915 the Empress wrote to the Emperor that Sergius “must leave the Synod”.[67]
Sergius was in favour of many of the innovations that were later to be introduced by the heretical “living church” renovationists. Thus among the suggestions made to the Pre-Conciliar Commission preparing for the Council of the Russian Orthodox Church that eventually took place in 1917-1918, we read of “a suggestion of the clergy of the cathedral of Vyborg on the longed-for reforms, presented by Archbishop Sergius of Finland to the Holy Synod on January 18, 1906:
Sergius
also called for another popular aim of the liberals – the complete separation
of Church and State.[69]
This was in complete contrast to his behaviour after the revolution, when he
was among the closest collaborators of both the Provisional Government and the
Bolsheviks. Thus
he was among those who welcomed the February revolution – although, as we have
seen, there were many other bishops and priests who did the same. And, as
Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) testified, “already in 1917 he was dreaming
of combining Orthodox Church life with the subjection of the Russian land to
Soviet power…”[70]
Already on March 7, 1917 an organisation was founded in Petrograd with the title “All-Russian Union of the democratic clergy and laity”. This organisation was the embryo of the future renovationist schism. Their supporter in the Synod was Sergius, who, together with one other member of the Synod, approved Lvov’s transfer of the Synod’s official organ, Tserkovno-Obshchestvennij Vestnik, into the hands of Titlinov.
Now
Titlinov was a professor at the Petrograd Academy of which Sergius was the
rector; the two worked closely together, being inspired by the same liberal
views. Archbishop (later Patriarch) Tikhon had protested against this transfer,
and the small number of signatures for the transfer made it illegal. Lvov,
however, in his zeal to hand this important Church organ into the hands of the
liberals, completely ignored the illegality of the act and handed the press
over to Titlinov.[71]
At
the session of April 14/27, Sergius apparently changed course and agreed with
the other bishops in condemning the unlawful transfer. However, Lvov understood
that this was only a tactical protest. So he did not include Sergius among the
bishops whom he purged from the Synod. He thought that Sergius would continue
to be his tool in the revolution that he was introducing in the Church. And he
was right in so thinking.
For
on April 29 / May 12, the new Synod headed by Archbishop Sergius accepted an
Address to the Church concerning the establishment of the principle of the
election of the episcopate, and the preparation for a Council and the
establishment of a Preconciliar Council. This Address triggered a revolution in the
Church. The revolution consisted
in the fact that all over the country the elective principle with the
participation of laymen replaced the system of “episcopal autocracy” which had
prevailed thereto. In almost all dioceses Diocesan Congresses elected special
“diocesan councils” or committees composed of clergy and laity that restricted
the power of the bishops. The application of the elective principle to almost
all ecclesiastical posts, from parish offices to episcopal sees, resulted in
the removal of several bishops from their sees and the election of new ones in
their stead.
Although
the spirit behind this revolutionary wave was undoubtedly anti-ecclesiastical
in essence, by the Providence of God it resulted in some changes that were
beneficial for the Church. Thus the staunchly monarchist Archbishop Anthony
(Khrapovitsky) of Kharkov, after being forced to retire, was later reinstated
at the demand of the people. Again, Archbishop Tikhon (Bellavin) of Lithuania
was elected metropolitan of Moscow, and Archbishop Benjamin (Kazansky) was made
metropolitan of Petrograd. However, there were also harmful changes, such as
the removal of the metropolitan of Vladimir and his replacement by – Archbishop
Sergius.[72] And, as we
shall see, the democratic revolution in the Church had a particularly
deleterious effect when combined with nationalist passions, as in Georgia and
the Ukraine.
From June 1 to 7 an All-Russian Congress of clergy and laity took place in Moscow consisting of 800 delegates from all the dioceses. This Congress carried forward the renovationist wave; and with Archbishop Sergius in charge of the Preconciliar Council, it looked as if the All-Russian Council that was being prepared would finally seal the break with the pre-revolutionary past and bring the Russian Church into the mainstream of twentieth-century ecclesiastical life, by which the liberals meant, in effect, her protestantization. But it was not to be.
On
June 20, the Provisional Government transferred 37,000 church-parish schools
into the administration of the Ministry of Enlightenment. This was disastrous
for the Church because the state’s schools were infected with atheism. It would
be one of the first decrees that the coming Council of the Russian Orthodox
Church would seek (unsuccessfully) to have repealed…
The Council, the first in the history of the Russian Church since 1666, assembled in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow on August 15/28, being composed of 564 delegates, including 350 laymen.
At the beginning there was little sign that more than a minority of the delegates understood the full apocalyptic significance of the events they were living through. On August 24 / September 6, and again on October 20 / November 2, the Council issued statements condemning the increasing violence, theft and sacrilege against churches, monasteries and priests that had been increasing ever since February. In general, however, revolutionary sentiment was dominant, and many opposed one of the main items on the agenda, the restoration of the patriarchate, on the grounds that it was a reactionary, monarchist measure (the Pre-Conciliar Council in June had called it “antichristian”!).
On October 21 / November 3, during Vespers in the Dormition cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, two people dressed in soldiers’ uniforms went up to the shrine and relics of St. Hermogen, Patriarch of Moscow, threw off the covers and began to remove the vestments. When taken to the commissariat, they told the police that “now there is freedom and everyone can do anything he wants”. Three days later a penitential moleben was carried out in front of the shrine with the holy relics. The next day, the October revolution took place.[73] St. Hermogen, who been canonized by the Church only a few years before, was notable for his refusal to recognize the government of the False Demetrius, and for his call to the nation to rise up in arms against it. For those with eyes to see the incident at his shrine just before the coming to power of the Bolsheviks was a sign that the time had come to act in his spirit, against another false or anti-government.
The
Council seemed to understand this, for after the Bolsheviks came to power a new
spirit began to prevail in it. One of the delegates, Metropolitan Eulogius of
Western Europe, described the change thus: “Russian life in those days was like
a sea tossed by the storm of revolution. Church life had fallen into a state of
disorganization. The external appearance of the Council, because of the
diversity of its composition, its irreconciliability and the mutual hostility
of its different tendencies and states of mind, was at first matter for anxiety
and sadness and even seemed to constitute a cause for apprehension… Some
members of the Council had already been carried away by the wave of revolution.
The intelligentsia, peasants, workers and professors all tended irresistibly to
the left. Among the clergy there were also different elements. Some of them
proved to be ‘leftist’ participants of the previous revolutionary Moscow
Diocesan Congress, who stood for a thorough and many-sided reform of church
life. Disunion, disorder, dissatisfaction, even mutual distrust… – such was the
state of the Council at first. But – O miracle of God! – everything began
gradually to change… The disorderly assembly, moved by the revolution and in
contact with its sombre elements, began to change into something like a
harmonious whole, showing external order and internal solidarity. People became
peaceable and serious in their tasks and began to feel differently and to look
on things in a different way. This process of prayerful regeneration was
evident to every observant eye and perceptible to every participant in the
Council. A spirit of peace, renewal and unanimity inspired us all…”[74]
The
Council was in session for over a year, until September, 1918. It thus
coincided with the most momentous events in Russian history: the war with
Germany, the fall of the Provisional Government and the Bolshevik coup,
the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and the beginning of the Civil War.
On all these events the Council was able to make declarations that expressed
the opinion of Believing Russia. In a real sense, in the absence of any other
representative assembly, it was the voice of Russia – or, at any rate, of that
large proportion of the population which had not been engulfed by the
revolutionary frenzy. As for the Bolsheviks, whose decrees with regard to the
Church were either ignored or outrightly defied by the Council, they made no
serious attempt to impede its work…
The significance of the Council for
the understanding and evaluation of the present state of the Russian Church
cannot be overestimated. It pronounced authoritatively on almost all the major
questions that were to divide Russian Orthodox Christians during the next
seventy-five years. Let us look at each of these in turn:-
1. The Election of a Patriarch.
As we have seen the pre-conciliar council in June had expressed itself strongly
against the restoration of the patriarchate, and at the beginning of the
Council proper the proposal met with considerable opposition. However, the
opposition steadily declined in strength during the autumn, largely due to the
energetic support of the patriarchate by Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) and
the future Hieromartyr Archbishop Hilarion (Troitsky). On October 30 the first
ballot produced the following result: for Archbishop Anthony – 101 votes; for
Archbishop Cyril of Tambov (the future hieromartyr and first-hierarch of the
Catacomb Church) – 27; and for the new Metropolitan of Moscow Tikhon – 23
votes. At the second ballot on October 31 three candidates were elected:
Archbishop Anthony of Kharkov, Metropolitan Arsenius of Novgorod and
Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow. On November 5, lots were drawn, and the let fell
on Metropolitan Tikhon, who was duly enthroned on November 21 in the Kremlin
cathedral of the Dormition to the sound of rifle fire from the battle for
Moscow outside. Thus was the wish of one of the peasant delegates fulfilled:
“We have a tsar no more; no father whom we love. It is impossible to love a
synod; and therefore we, the peasants, want a Patriarch.”
According
to the new constitution of the Russian Church agreed at the Council, the
Church’s supreme organ was the Sacred All-Russian Council, composed of bishops,
clergy and laity, which was to be periodically convoked by the Patriarch but to
which the Patriarch himself was responsible. Between Councils, the Patriarch
administered the Church with the aid of two permanent bodies: the Synod of
Bishops, and the Higher Church Council. Questions relating to theology,
religious discipline and ecclesiastical administration were to be the
prerogative of the Synod of Bishops, while secular-juridical, charity and other
church-related social questions were to be the prerogative of the Higher Church
Council.
On
January 23, 1918, the Bolsheviks issued their Decree on the Separation of
Church from State and School from Church. On January 25, the Council heard that
Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev had been murdered by the Bolsheviks. These events
concentrated minds on the danger the Patriarch was in; and on the same day the
Council immediately passed a resolution entrusting him with the drawing up of
the names of three men who could serve as locum tenentes of the
Patriarch in the event of his death and before the election of a new Patriarch.
These names were to be kept secret, and they were in fact published only after
the Patriarch’s death in 1925, when his will (revised by him towards the end of
1924) was read out in the presence of sixty hierarchs: “In the event of our
death our patriarchal rights and obligations, until the canonical election of a
new Patriarch, we grant temporarily to his Eminence Metropolitan Cyril
(Smirnov). In the event of the impossibility, by reason of whatever
circumstances, of his entering upon the exercise of the indicated rights and
obligations, they will pass to his Eminence Metropolitan Agathangelus
(Preobrazhensky). If this metropolitan, too, does not succeed in accomplishing
this, then our patriarchal rights and obligations will pass to his Eminence
Peter (Polyansky), Metropolitan of Krutitsa.” Since both Metropolitans Cyril
and Agathangelus were in exile at the time of the Patriarch’s death,
Metropolitan Peter became the patriarchal locum tenens.
Patriarch
Tikhon’s choice of Metropolitan Peter turned out to be inspired, although he
was not well known at the time of the Council and his meteoric rise through the
ranks of the episcopate roused some suspicion among some of the bishops. As
Regelson comments: “That the first-hierarchical authority in the Russian Church
after the death of Patriarch Tikhon was able to be preserved was thanks only to
the fact that one of the patriarchal locum tenentes Patriarch Tikhon
chose in 1918 was Metropolitan Peter, who at the moment of the choice was only
a servant of the Synod! Many hierarchs were amazed and disturbed by his
subsequent swift ‘career’, which changed him in the course of six years into
the metropolitan of Krutitsa and Kolomna… But it was precisely thanks to the
extraordinary nature of his destiny that he turned out to be the only one
chosen by the Patriarch (in actual fact, chosen
by the Council, as entrusted to the Patriarch) who was left in freedom at
the moment of the death of Patriarch Tikhon. It is difficult even to conjecture
how complicated and, besides, tragic would have been the destiny of the Russian
Church if the wise thought of the Council and the Patriarch had not been
realized in life.”[75]
2.
The Attitude towards Soviet power. The Council refused to recognize the
legitimacy of Soviet power. Thus when, on the day after the coup,
October 26, Lenin nationalized all land, making the Church’s and parish
priests’ property illegal, the Council addressed a letter to the faithful on
November 11, calling the revolution “descended from the Antichrist and
possessed by atheism”: “Open combat is fought against the Christian Faith, in
opposition to all that is sacred, arrogantly abasing all that bears the name of
God (II Thessalonians 2.4)… But no earthly kingdom founded on
ungodliness can ever survive: it will perish from internal strife and party
dissension. Thus, because of its frenzy of atheism, the State of Russia will
fall… For those who use the sole foundation of their power in the coercion of
the whole people by one class, no motherland or holy place exists. They have
become traitors to the motherland and instigated an appalling betrayal of
Russia and her true allies. But, to our grief, as yet no government has arisen which
is sufficiently one with the people to deserve the blessing of the Orthodox
Church. And such will not appear on Russian soil until we turn with agonizing
prayer and tears of repentance to Him, without Whom we labour in vain to lay
foundations…”[76]
The
Council’s decree of December 2, “On the Legal Status of the Russian Orthodox
Church”, continued to claim for the Orthodox Church the legal status of the
national Church of Russia. It ruled, on the one hand, that the State could
issue no law relating to the Church without prior consultation with and
approval by the Church, and on the other hand, that any decree and by-laws
issued by the Orthodox Church that did not directly contradict state laws were
to be systematically recognized by the state as legally binding. Church
holidays were to remain state holidays, blasphemy and attempts to lure members
of the Church away from her were to remain illegal, and schools of all levels
organized and run by the Church were to be recognised by the state on a par
with the secular schools. It is clear from this decree that the Church was
determined to go Her own way in complete defiance of the so-called
“authorities”.
On
December 11 there was published the decree transferring to the Narkompros all
ecclesiastical schools, as a result of which the Church was deprived of all its
academies, seminaries, schools and all the property linked with them. Then, on
December 18, ecclesiastical marriage was deprived of its legal status and civil
marriage introduced in its place. On January 13, Alexandra Kollontai, the
People’s Commissar of Social Welfare, sent a detachment of sailors to occupy
the Alexander Nevsky monastery in Petrograd and turn it into a sanctuary for
war invalids. They were met by an angry crowd of worshippers and in the
struggle which followed one priest, Fr. Peter Skipetrov, was shot dead.[77]
According to Figes[78],
Lenin was not yet ready for a confrontation with the Church; but Kollontai’s
actions had forced his hand, and he decided to publish a draft decree on the
Separation of Church and State.
On
January 19, Patriarch Tikhon, anticipating the decree, issued his famous
anathema against the Bolsheviks. The significance of this anathema lies not so much
in its casting out of the Bolsheviks themselves (all those who deny God are
subject to anathema, that is, separation from God, for that very denial), as in
the command to the faithful: “I adjure all of you who are faithful children of
the Orthodox Church of Christ not to commune with such outcasts of the human
race in any matter whatsoever; ‘cast out the wicked from among you’ (I
Corinthians 5.13).” In other words, the government were to be regarded, not
only as apostates from Christ (that was obvious), but also as having no moral
authority, no claim to obedience
whatsoever – an attitude taken by the Church to no other government in the
whole of Her history. The decree ended with an appeal to defend the Church, if
necessary, to the death. For “the gates of hell shall not prevail against Her”
(Matthew 16.18).[79]
January 19 / February 1 was also the day on which the Soviet State introduced the new, Gregorian calendar into Russia. Thinking “to change times and laws” (Daniel 7.25), a Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars dated Janaury 24, 1918 ordered that the day after January 31, 1918 would be February 14 – not February 1. The Church rejected the calendar change imposed by the State.[80] Thus the day on which the Soviets dragged Russia into the godless twentieth-century, thinking), they themselves were expelled from the unchanging and eternal Church of God.
It
has been argued that the Patriarch’s decree did not anathematise Soviet power
as such, but only those who were committing acts of violence and sacrilege
against the Church in various parts of the country. However, this argument
fails to take into account several facts. First, the patriarch himself, in his
declarations of June 16 and July 1, 1923, repented precisely of his
“anathematisation of Soviet power”.[81]
Secondly, even if the decree did not formally anathematise Soviet power as
such, since Soviet power sanctioned and initiated the acts of violence, the
faithful were in effect being exhorted to having nothing to do with it. And
thirdly, in his Epistle to the Council of People’s Commissars on the first
anniversary of the revolution, November 7, 1918, the Patriarch obliquely but
clearly confirmed his non-recognition of Soviet power, saying: “It is not our
business to make judgments about earthly authorities. Every power allowed by
God would attract to itself Our blessing if
it were truly ‘the servant of God’, for the good of those subject to it, and
were ‘terrible not for good works, but for evil’ (Romans 13.3,4). But
now to you, who have used authority for the persecution of the innocent, We
extend this Our word of exhortation… “[82]
Most
important of all, when the Patriarch’s decree came to be read out to the
Council on January 22 / February 4, it was enthusiastically endorsed by it in terms
which make it clear that the Council understood the Patriarch to have
anathematised precisely Soviet power: “The Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia
in his epistle to the beloved in the Lord archpastors, pastors and all faithful
children of the Orthodox Church of Christ has drawn the spiritual sword against
the outcasts of the human race – the Bolsheviks, and anathematised them. The
head of the Russian Orthodox Church adjures all her faithful children not to
enter into any communion with these outcasts. For their satanic deeds they are
cursed in this life and in the life to come. Orthodox! His Holiness the
Patriarch has been given the right to bind and to loose according to the word
of the Saviour… Do not destroy your souls, cease communion with the servants of
Satan – the Bolsheviks. Parents, if your children are Bolsheviks, demand
authoritatively that they renounce their errors, that they bring forth
repentance for their eternal sin, and if they do not obey you, renounce them.
Wives, if your husbands are Bolsheviks and stubbornly continue to serve Satan,
leave your husbands, save yourselves and your children from the soul-destroying
infection. An Orthodox Christian cannot have communion with the servants of the
devil… Repent, and with burning prayer call for help from the Lord of Hosts and
thrust away from yourselves ‘the hand of strangers’ – the age-old enemies of
the Christian faith, who have declared themselves in self-appointed fashion
‘the people’s power’… If you do not obey the Church, you will not be her sons,
but participants in the cruel and satanic deeds wrought by the open and secret
enemies of Christian truth… Dare! Do not delay! Do not destroy your soul and
hand it over to the devil and his stooges.”[83]
Although,
as we have said, it was unprecedented for a Local Church to anathematise a
government, there have been occasions in the history of the Church when
individual hierarchs have not only refused to obey or pray for a political
leader, but have actually prayed against
him. Thus in the fourth century St. Basil the Great prayed for the defeat of
Julian the Apostate, and it was through his prayers that the apostate was
killed, as was revealed by God to the holy hermit Julian of Mesopotamia. Not
only St. Basil, but also his friend, St. Gregory the Theologian, did not
recognise the rule of Julian the Apostate to be legitimate.[84]
This
and other examples show that, while the principle
of authority as such is from God (Romans.
13.1), individual authorities or rulers are often not from God, but are only allowed by Him, in which case the Church
must offer resistance to them out of loyalty to God Himself.[85]
On
January 20 / February 2, the Bolsheviks issued their decree on the Separation
of Church from State and School from Church, which was couched in terms of a
“Decree on Freedom of Conscience, Church and Religious Organizations”. This was
the Bolsheviks’ fiercest attack yet on the integrity of the Church; for it
forbade religious bodies from owning property, from levying dues, from
organizing into hierarchical organizations, and from teaching religion to
persons under 18 years of age. Thus, far from being a blow struck for freedom of conscience, it was, as
the Council put it, a decree on freedom from
conscience, and an excuse for large-scale pillaging of churches and murders,
often in the most bestial manner.[86]
The
decree elicited strong reactions from individual members of the Council. Thus
one exclaimed: “We overthrew the tsar and subjected ourselves to the Jews!” And
another said: “The sole means of salvation for the Russian nation is a wise
Orthodox Russian tsar!”[87]
The Council exhorted the faithful to protect church property, and soon there
were reports of people mobbing the officials and soldiers detailed to carry out
the decree. Several hundred thousand people marched through Petrograd in
protest.
The
section of the Council appointed to report on the decree made the following
recommendations: “The individuals wielding the governmental authority
audaciously attempt to destroy the very existence of the Orthodox Church. In
order to realize this satanic design, the Soviet of People’s Commissars
published the decree concerning the separation of the Church from the State,
which legalized an open persecution not only of the Orthodox Church, but of all
other religious communions, Christian or non-Christian. Not despising deceit,
the enemies of Christ fraudulently put on the appearance of granting by it
religious liberty.
“Welcoming
all real extension of liberty of conscience, the Council at the same time
points out that by the provisions of the said decree, the freedom of the
Orthodox Church, as well as of all other religious organizations and communions
in general, is rendered void. Under the pretense of ‘the separation of the Church from the State’, the Soviet of
People’s Commissars attempts to render impossible the very existence of the
churches, the ecclesiastical institutions, and the clergy.
“Under
the guise of taking over the ecclesiastical property, the said decree aims to
destroy the very possibility of Divine worship and ministration. It declares
that ‘no ecclesiastical or religious association has the right to possess
property’, and ‘all property of the existing ecclesiastical and religious
associations in Russia is declared to be national wealth.’ Thereby the Orthodox
churches and monasteries, those resting-places of the relics of the saints
revered by all Orthodox people, become the common property of all citizens
irrespective of their credal differences – of Christians, Jews, Muslims and
pagans, and the holy objects designated for the Divine service, i.e. the holy
Cross, the holy Gospel, the sacred vessels, the holy miracle-working icons are
at the disposal of the governmental authorities, which may either permit or not
(as they wish) their use by the parishes.
“Let
the Russian people understand that they (the authorities) wish to deprive them
of God’s churches with their sacred objects! As soon as all property of the
Church is taken away, it is not possible to offer any aid to it, for in
accordance with the intention of the decree everything donated shall be taken
away. The support of monasteries, churches and the clergy alike becomes
impossible.
“But that is not all: in consequence
of the confiscation of the printing establishments, it is impossible for the
Church independently to publish the holy Gospel as well as other sacred and
liturgical books in their wonted purity and authenticity.
“In
the same manner, the decree affects the pastors of the Church. Declaring that
‘no one may refuse to perform his civil duties on account of his religious
views’, it thereby constrains them to fulfil military obligations forbidden
them by the 83rd canon of the holy Apostles. At the same time,
ministers of the altar are removed from educating the people. The very teaching
of the law of God, not only in governmental, but even in private schools, is
not permitted; likewise all theological institutions are doomed to be closed.
The Church is thus excluded from the possibility of educating her own pastors.
“Declaring
that ‘the governmental functions or those of other public-juridical
institutions shall not be accompanied by any religious rites or ceremonies,’
the decree thereby sacrilegiously sunders all connections of the government with
the sanctities of the faith.
“On
the basis of all the above-mentioned considerations, the holy Council decrees:
“1.
The decree published by the Soviet of People’s Commissars regarding the
separation of the Church from the State represents in itself, under the guise
of a law declaring liberty of conscience, an inimical attempt upon the life of
the Orthodox Church, and is an act of open persecution.
“2.
All participation, either in the publication of the law so injurious to the
Church, or in attempts to put it into practice, is not reconcilable with
membership of the Orthodox Church, and subjects all transgressors belonging to
the Orthodox communion to the heaviest penalties, to the extent of
excommunicating them from the Church (in accordance with the 73rd
canon of the holy Apostles, and the 13th canon of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council).”[88]
These
recommendations were then adopted by the Council and became the official reply
of the Russian Church to the decree (January 25 / February 7). In the same spirit,
on April 15 the Council passed the following decree: “Clergymen serving in
anti-ecclesiastical institutions, as well as those who put into effect the
decrees on freedom of conscience which are inimical to the Church and similar
acts, are subject to being banned from serving and, in the case of impenitence,
are deprived of their rank.”[89]
Thus the decrees of the Soviet State followed by the counter-decrees of the
Orthodox Church established a state of open warfare between the two
institutions.
3. The Glorification of the New Martyrs
and Confessors. On March 31 / April 13, a Liturgy for those killed for
the Orthodox Faith and Church was performed in the Moscow Theological Academy.
On April 5/18, in a decree entitled “On Measures Elicited by the Ongoing
Persecution of the Orthodox Church”, the Council resolved:
“1.
To establish the raising in church during Divine services of special petitions
for those who are now being persecuted for the Orthodox Faith and Church and
those who have completed their lives as confessors and martyrs…
“3.
To establish throughout Russia a yearly prayerful commemoration on January 25
[the day of the martyrdom of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev], or on the Sunday
following (in the evening), of all the confessors and martyrs who have fallen
asleep in the present year’s savage persecutions.
“4.
To organize on the Monday of the second week of Pascha, in all parishes where
confessors and martyrs for the Faith and the Church finished their lives, cross
processions to the places of their burial, where triumphant pannikhidas are to
be celebrated with the specific verbal glorification of their sacred memory…”[90]
Points
3 and 4 of this decree remained a dead letter for most of the Soviet period.
However, in November, 1981 the Russian Church Abroad canonized the new martyrs,
and since then devotion to the new martyrs and observance of their feasts
steadily increased inside Russia, leading, as some have supposed, to the fall
of communism in 1991. Thus the glorification of the new martyrs, which began in
April, 1918, may be said to be the earnest of, and first step towards, the
resurrection of Russia.
These
measures implicitly condemn the attitude of the Sovietised Moscow Patriarchate,
which for decades declared that the new martyrs and confessors were “political
criminals” worthy of derision rather than praise. Beginning in 1989, the
patriarchate began to canonize a few, less controversial martyrs, and even, in
very recent years, a few genuine catacomb martyrs.[91]
Then, in August, 2000, the Royal Martyrs and many catacomb martyrs were
canonised – together with some “martyrs” who clearly submitted to the
antichristian power.[92]
In
1922 Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) wrote “If the [1917-18] Council was at
fault in anything, it was perhaps in failing to express with sufficient force
its condemnation of the revolution and the overthrow of his Majesty. Who will
be able to deny that the February revolution was as God-hating as it was
anti-monarchist? Who can condemn the Bolshevik revolution and at the same time
approve of the Provisional government?”[93]
The
Provisional government was hardly less guilty than the Bolsheviks because it
was they who overthrew the Tsar, which led to the overthrow of everything else.
For, as St. John Maximovich said: “It cannot be otherwise. He was overthrown
who united everything, standing in defence of the Truth.”[94]
In fact, according to the profound consciousness of the Church, the murder of
the Tsar and his family on July 4/17, 1918 was not the responsibility of the
Bolsheviks only, but of the whole people who, directly or indirectly, connived
at it. As St. John explained: “All the regicides in Russia’s history were
committed by some clique, not by the people. When Paul I was murdered, the
people were not even aware of it, and when they found out, they brought their
condolences and prayers to his grave for many years afterward. Alexander II’s
murder unleashed a storm of indignation in Russia, which helped strengthen the
moral fibre of the people, as became evident during the reign of Alexander III.
The people were innocent of the Tsar-Liberator’s blood. But here the people,
the entire Russian nation, is guilty of the spilled blood of their Tsar. Some
partook in the murder, others, just as blameworthy, approved of it, while still
others did nothing to interfere. All are guilty, and truly we must say: ‘His
blood be on us, and on our children’ (Matthew 27.25)…”[95]
On
hearing the news, the patriarch immediately condemned the murder. He had already
angered the government by sending the Tsar his blessing in prison; and he now
celebrated a pannikhida for him, blessing the archpastors and pastors to
do the same. Then he announced in the Kazan cathedral: “We, in obedience to the
teaching of the Word of God, must condemn this deed, otherwise the blood of the
shot man will fall also on us, and not only on those who committed the crime…”[96]
At
one point shortly after the murder of the Tsar, some member of the Council
suggested to the Patriarch that he take refuge abroad, so that he not share in
the fate of the Tsar. “The flight of the Patriarch,” replied his Holiness,
“would play into the hands of the enemies of the Church. Let them do with me
what they want.”
On
July 26 / August 8, in an address “to all the faithful children of the Russian
Orthodox Church”, the Patriarch said: “Sin has fanned everywhere the flame of
the passions, enmity and wrath; brother has risen up against brother; the
prisons are filled with captives; the earth is soaked in innocent blood, shed
by a brother’s hand; it is defiled by violence, pillaging, fornication and
every uncleanness. From this same poisonous source of sin has issued the great
deception of material earthly goods, by which our people is enticed, forgetting
the one thing necessary. We have not rejected this temptation, as the Saviour
Christ rejected it in the wilderness. We have wanted to create a paradise on
earth, but without God and His holy commandments. God is not mocked. And so we
hunger and thirst and are naked upon the earth, blessed with an abundance of
nature’s gifts, and the seal of the curse has fallen on the very work of the
people and on all the undertakings of our hands. Sin, heavy and unrepented of,
has summoned Satan from the abyss, and he is now bellowing his slander against
the Lord and against His Christ, and is raising an open persecution against the
Church.”[97]
This
address characterized Socialism in similar terms to those used by Dostoyevsky’s
Grand Inquisitor, as the temptation to create bread out of stones which Christ
rejected in the wilderness. Rather than seeking paradise in heaven and with God
through the fulfilment of His commandments, the Socialists “have wanted to
create a paradise on earth, but without God and His holy commandments”. The
result has been hell in this life and (to quote from the anathema) “the fire of
Gehenna in the life to come”.
This
went some of the way to meeting the criticisms levelled against the Patriarch
and the Council by Count Olsuphyev and Protopriest Vladimir Vostokov, that the
essence of Socialism as an antichristian heresy had been hardly touched upon.
As Fr. Vladimir said: “From this platform, before the enlightener of Russia,
the holy Prince Vladimir, I witness to my priestly conscience that the Russian
people is being deceived, and that up to this time no one has told them the
whole truth. So much has been said here about the terrors brought upon the
country by Bolshevism. But what is Bolshevism? – the natural and logical
development of Socialism. And Socialism is – that antichristian movement which
in the final analysis produces Bolshevism as its highest development and which
engenders those phenomena completely contrary to the principles of Christian
asceticism that we are living through now.
“Unfortunately,
many of our professors and writers have arrayed Socialism in beautiful clothes,
calling it similar to Christianity, and thereby they together with the
agitators of revolution have led the uneducated people into error. Fathers and
brothers! What fruits did we expect of Socialism, when we not only did not
fight against it, but also defended it at times, or almost always were shyly
silent before its contagion? We must serve the Church by faith, and save the
country from destructive tendencies, and for that it is necessary to speak the
truth to the people without delay, telling them what Socialism consists of and
what it leads to.
“We
all, beginning with Your Holiness and ending with myself, the last member of
the Council, must bow the knee before God, and beseech Him to forgive us for
allowing the growth in the country of evil teachings and violence. Only after
sincere repentance by the whole people will the country be pacified and
regenerated. And God will bestow upon us His mercy and grace. But if we
continue only to anathematize without repenting, without declaring the truth to
the people, then they will with just cause say to us: You, too, are guilty that
the country has been reduced to this crime, for which the anathema now sounds
out; you by your pusillanimity have allowed the development of evil and have
been slow to call the facts and phenomena of state life by their real names!
“We
all must unite into one Christian family under the banner of the Holy and
Life-Creating Cross and under the leadership of his Holiness the Patriarch, to
say that Socialism, which calls people as if to brotherhood, is an openly
antichristian and evil phenomenon…”[98]
The
essential incompatibility between Socialism and Christianity was never doubted
by the apostles of Socialism. Religion was called “opium for the people” by
Marx, and by Lenin – “spiritual vodka”. Again, Lenin wrote that “every
religious idea, every idea of a god, even flirting with the idea of God is
unutterable vileness of the most dangerous kind”.[99]
And in 1918 he said to Krasin: “Electricity will take the place of God. Let the
peasant pray to electricity; he’s going to feel the power of the central
authorities more than that of heaven.”[100]
For, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn says: “Within the philosophical system of Marx
and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal
driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic
pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist
policy. It is not a side-effect, but the central pivot…”[101]
That
militant atheism was the central pivot of Marxism-Leninism was to become
abundantly evident in the next seventy years. However, it was already clearly
manifest in the murder of the Tsar and his family. For by his abdication in
favour of himself and his son, the Tsar had already renounced all claims to
power, so his murder had no political advantage in view, but was an act of pure
malice. It was a trampling on the symbol of the old theocracy by the representatives
of the new satanocracy, and an important signal from the new authorities to the
people – a signal that there was no turning back. And just as the whole tragedy
of the Russian people in the years that lay ahead lay in the fact that they had
paved the way for this satanic act, the destruction of the Russian theocracy,
and cooperated with it, so the only real hope of their regeneration now lies in
their repentance of it…
The
defiant spirit of the Moscow Council and the first year of the Church’s
existence under Soviet power continued to manifest itself in the Patriarch’s
statements as the Church entered the second year of Soviet power. Now in view
of this hostile attitude towards Soviet power it might have seemed logical for
the Patriarch to bless the efforts of the White armies to liberate Russia from
the Bolshevik tyranny. There is some evidence that the did bless Admiral
Kolchak in the East[102],
but in October, 1919 he instructed the clergy to stay clear of politics and to
obey the Soviet authorities to the extent that their orders did not “contradict
the faith and piety”. Indeed, after his and the Council’s condemnation of the
treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March, 1918 the Patriarch never again made what
might have been construed as a political statement or intervention in the
political life of the country.
The
reason for this is to be found in one of the last decisions of the Council,
that of August 2/15, 1918, which constituted a refusal by the Church to engage
in politics. Past defrockings of clergy for political crimes (Metropolitan
Arsenius Matseyevich, Fr. Gregory Petrov) were recognised to be invalid. Each
member of the Church was free to engage in political activity in whatever
direction his Orthodox conscience intimated to him, but no one had the right to
speak in the name of the Church or place upon the Church the responsibility for
his own political acitivity.[103]
This
decree in no way contradicted the anti-Bolshevik anathema of January, 1918. It was
dictated by the simple fact that dioceses of the Russian Church were now to be
found in several different States, some in Soviet Russia, others in
White-occupied Russia and others still within the German sphere of influence.
Orthodox teaching counsels obedience to all legitimate authorities, and the
Church by this decree in effect legitimised Her members’ taking different
political positions in different countries, without directly antagonizing the
Soviet authorities.[104]
Another
reason why the Patriarch did not bless the White armies may have been a
prophetic intuition that they would fail. For, as Elder Aristocles of Moscow
said, “the spirit was not right,”[105]
– many of them were aiming, not at the restoration of the Romanov dynasty, but
at the reconvening of the Constituent Assembly or the restoration of the
landowners’ lands. Moreover, many of them were Freemasons. “And could he have
given [his blessing],” asks Michael Nazarov, “if there sat in the White
governments at that time activists like, for example, the head of the Archangel
government Tchaikovsky, who gave to the West as an explanation of the Bolshevik
savageries the idea that ‘we put up with the destructive autocratic regime for
too long,… our people were less
educated politically than the other allied peoples’?”[106]
In
1922, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) confirmed this verdict:
“Unfortunately, the most noble and pious leader of this [the White] army
listened to those unfitting counsellors who were foreign to Russia and sat in
his Special council and destroyed the undertaking. The Russian people, the real
people, the believing and struggling people, did not need the bare formula: ‘a
united and undivided Russia’. They needed neither ‘Christian Russia’, nor
‘Faithless Russia’, nor ‘Tsarist Russia’, nor ‘the Landowners’ Russia’ (by
which they will always understand a republic). They needed the combination of
the three dear words – ‘for the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland’. Most of
all, they needed the first word, since faith rules the whole of the state’s
life; the second word was necessary since the tsar guards and protects the
first; and the third was needed since the people is the bearer of the first
words.”[107]
Thus
one of the major consequences of the overthrow of the Tsar was that the Church,
not finding any real support for her aims in any post-tsarist political party
or movement, felt unable to bless the anti-Bolshevik forces. This is not to say
that the Church was not committed to a rejection of the Bolshevik system,
insofar as the latter, basing itself on the philosophical theory of dialectical
materialism, attacked Christ and the Orthodox Faith. But anti-Bolshevism alone
is not a positive ideal – and only that which is truly positive and spiritual
can merit the blessing of God and His Church. So there was no formal
contradiction between the politically neutral tone of the Council’s August
decree and the anti-Soviet content of the Patriarch’s October Epistle.
Nevertheless, insofar as the more-than-political and essentially anti-Christian
nature of Bolshevism was not spelled out, a chink was left in the Church’s
defences which Her enemies, both political and ecclesiastical, were quick to
exploit.
And
so the Patriarch’s anti-Soviet statements were construed as dabbling in
politics; while his refusal to bless the White armies was construed as the
equivalent of a blessing on the Soviet State. In fact, neither the Council nor
the Patriarch (in his genuine statements, as opposed to the forged will
published after his death in 1925) ever blessed or legitimised Soviet power –
which is essentially why Soviet power did not legitimise the Church as long as
it remained truly “Tikhonite”.
And
even if one of the later statements of the Patriarch, his “confession” of 1923,
which was issued under extreme pressure, can be construed as indirectly
conferring legitimacy on the State, this cannot, according to the teaching of
the Orthodox Church, be considered binding on the faithful; for no man, however
eminent, can be considered infallible according to Orthodox teaching.
For
those who were not persuaded by the Council and the Patriarch there was an even
clearer witness to the Bolsheviks’ antichristianity: their behaviour in the
Civil War and its immediate aftermath. The material damage alone was enormous.
Thus by 1921, according to Bolshakov, 637 out of 1,026 monasteries had been
liquidated. And on August 25, 1920 the Commissariat of justice ordered the
local authorities “to conduct a complete liquidation of relics”….
But
the loss in lives was still more staggering. Thus in 1918-19, according to
Ermhardt, 28 bishops and 1,414 priests were killed[108];
while by the end of 1922, according to Shumilin, 2233 clergy of all ranks and
two million laymen had been executed,[109]
and in Petrograd alone 550 clergy and monks of all ranks were shot in the
period 1917-1922.[110]
These figures prove the truth of Vladimir Rusak’s assertion: “The Bolsheviks’
relationship to the Church was realized independently of legislation. Violence,
bayonets and bullets – these were the instruments of the Bolsheviks’
‘ideological’ struggle against the Church.”[111]
At the same time Lenin viewed Islam as an ally in the spreading of world
revolution to the countries of the East, and he did not persecute the Catholics
or Protestants.[112]
However,
the direct, physical assault on the Church had failed. And with the
disappearance of all military and political opposition to the Communist party
after the Civil War, the Church remained the only significant anti-communist
force in the country. So the Bolsheviks were compelled to resort to warfare
with a far higher ideological content – a content, moreover, of a much more
sophisticated kind than had been produced before.
In
the party’s May, 1921 plenum Lenin supported a resolution calling for the
replacement of the religious world-view by “a harmonious communist scientific
system embracing and answering the questions to which the peasants’ and
workers’ masses have hitherto sought answers in religion.” The result was the suspension
of the “dilettantist” anti-religious commissions (Lenin’s phrase) which had
existed up to that time, and their replacement by a Commission on the
Separation of Church and State attached to the Politburo which lasted until
1929 under the leadership of the Jew Emelian Yaroslavsky and whose aim was
clearly the extirpation of all religion. The importance of this Commission in
the Bolsheviks’ eyes was clearly indicated by the extreme secrecy in which its
protocols were shrouded and by the active participation in it, at one time or
another, of all the top party leaders. The strategy of the Commission was
directly defined, at the beginning by Lenin, and later – by Stalin.[113]
An
important aspect of the Commission’s strategy was the tactics of “divide and rule”.
For, although physical methods continued to be applied, the Bolsheviks
recognized that such a formidable enemy as the Church could not be defeated by
direct physical assault alone, and that they needed subtler methods including
the recruitment of agents among the clergy and the creation of schisms among
them. Thus already in December, 1920, T. Samsonov, head of a secret department
of the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, wrote to Dzerzhinsky that “communism
and religion are mutually exclusive… No machinery can destroy religion except
that of the [Cheka]. In its plans to demoralize the church the Cheka has
recently focusd its attention on the rank and file of the priesthood. Only
through them, by long, intensive, and painstaking work, shall we succeed in
destroying and dismantling the church completely.”[114]
In the same month, Dzerzhinsky wrote to Latsis: “My opinion is that the Church
is disintegrating, and we must help this process, but we must by no means
regenerate it in a renovationist form. That is why the church politics of
disintegration must be carried out by the Cheka, and by no one else. Official
or semi-official relations of the party with the popes are inadmissible. We are
counting on communism, and not on religion. This manoeuvre can be carried out
only by the Cheka, with the single aim of demoralizing the popes.”[115]
Again,
in 1921, in a protocol of the secret section of the Cheka, Trotsky had
discussed recruiting clergy with money to report on themselves and others in
the Church and to prevent anti-Bolshevik agitation concerning, for example, the
closing of monasteries.[116]
But it was the Volga famine of
1921-22, in which about 25 millions were starving, that provided the Bolsheviks
with their first opportunity to inflict large-scale damage on the Church.
Solzhenitsyn
writes: “At the end of the civil war, and as its natural consequence, an
unprecedented famine developed in the Volga area… V.G. Korolenko, in his Letters
to Lunacharsky explains to us Russia’s total, epidemic descent into famine
and destitution. It was the result of productivity having become reduced to
zero (the working hands were all carrying guns) and the result, also, of the
peasants’ utter lack of trust and hope that even the smallest part of the
harvest might be left to them. Yes, and someday someone will also count up
those many carloads of food supplies rolling on and on for many, many months to
Imperial Germany, under the terms of the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk – from a
Russia which had been deprived of a protesting voice, from the very provinces
where famine would strike – so that Germany could fight to the end in the West.
“There
was a direct, immediate chain of cause and effect. The Volga peasants had to eat
their children because we were so impatient about putting up with the
Constituent Assembly.
“But
political genius lies in extracting success even from the people’s ruin. A
brilliant idea was born: after all, three billiard balls can be pocketed with one
shot. So now let the priests feed the
Volga region! They are Christians. They are generous!
“1.
If they refuse, we will blame the whole famine on them and destroy the Church.
“2.
If they agree, we will clean out the churches.
“In
either case, we will replenish our stocks of foreign exchange and precious
metals.
“Yes,
and the action was probably inspired by the actions of the Church itself. As
Patriarch Tikhon himself had testified, back in August, 1921, at the beginning
of the famine, the Church had created diocesan and all-Russian committees for
aid to the starving and had begun to collect funds. But to have permitted any direct help to go straight from the
Church into the mouths of those who were starving would have undermined the
dictatorship of the proletariat. The committees were banned, and the funds they
had collected were confiscated and turned over to the state and to the
treasury. The Patriarch had also appealed to the Pope in Rome and the
Archbishop of Canterbury for assistance – but he was rebuked for this, too, on
the grounds that only the Soviet authorities had the right to enter into
discussions with foreigners. Yes, indeed. And what was there to be alarmed
about? The newspapers wrote that the government itself had all the necessary means
to cope with the famine.
“Meanwhile,
in the Volga region they were eating grass, the soles of shoes and gnawing at
door jambs. And, finally, in December [27], 1921, Pomgol – the State
Commission for Famine Relief – proposed that the churches help the starving by
donating church valuables – not all, but those not required for liturgical
rites. The Patriarch agreed. Pomgol issued a directive: all gifts must
be strictly voluntary! On February 19, 1922, the Patriarch issued a pastoral
letter permitting the parish councils to make gifts of objects that did not
have liturgical and ritual significance.
“And
in this way matter could again have simply degenerated into a compromise that
would have frustrated the will of the proletariat, just as it once had been by
the Constituent Assembly, and still was in all the chatterbox European
parliaments.
“The
thought came in a stroke of lightning! The thought came – and a decree
followed! A decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on February
26: all valuables were to be
requisitioned from the churches – for the starving!”[117]
This
decree annihilated the voluntary character of the offerings, and put the clergy
in the position of accessories to sacrilege.
In
order to resolve the perplexities of the faith, on February 28 the patriarch
issued the following decree: “… In view of the exceptionally difficult
circumstances, we have admitted the possibility of offering church objects
which have not been consecrated and are not used in Divine services. Now again
we call on the faithful children of the Church to make such offerings, desiring
only that these offerings should be the response of a loving heart to the needs
of his neighbour, if only they can provide some real help to our suffering
brothers. But we cannot approve of the requisitioning from the churches, even
as a voluntary offering, of consecrated objects, whose use for purposes other
than Divine services is forbidden by the canons of the Ecumenical Church and is
punished by Her as sacrilege – laymen by excommunication from Her, and clergy
by defrocking (Apostolic Canon 73; Canon 10 of the First-Second Council).”[118]
Although
the patriarch did not go all the way in giving in to the Bolsheviks’ demands,
this decree nevertheless represents the first major concession made by the
Church to Soviet power.[119]
Thus no less an authority than the holy Elder Nectarius of Optina said: “You
see now, the patriarch gave the order to give up all valuables from the
churches, but they belonged to the Church!”[120]
And, as we shall see, it led not only to the plundering of the churches and the
deaths of many clergy and laity, but also, indirectly, to the appearance of the
renovationist schism.
Under
the leadership of Trotsky, but with the approval of the whole Politburo (Lenin,
Molotov, Kamenev and Stalin), the Bolsheviks now set to work. At the beginning
of March Trotsky formed a “completely secret” commission to mastermind the
requisitioning. On March 11 he wrote to the Politburo: “This commission must
secretly prepare the political, organizational and technical aspects of the
matter at the same time. The actual removal of the valuables must begin already
in March and then be completed in the shortest possible time… I repeat: this
commission is a complete secret. Formally, the requisitioning in Moscow will
take place under the direct orders of the Central Committee of Pomgol… Our
whole strategy at this time must be aimed at a schism in the clergy over the
concrete question of the requisitioning of valuables from the churches. Since
the question is a burning one, the schism on this basis can and must acquire a
very burning character, and that part of the clergy which will support the
requisitioning and aid it will no longer be able to return to Patriarch
Tikhon’s clique. Therefore I suggest that a block consisting of this section of
the priesthood should be temporarily admitted into Pomgol, especially
since it is necessary to avert any suspicion and doubts with regard to whether
the requisitioning of valuables from the churches will be spent on the needs of
the starving.”[121]
On March
13, the Politburo accepted Trotsky’s suggestion. “Moreover,” writes Gregory
Ravich, “the commission was ordered ‘to act with maximal cruelty, not stopping
at anything, including executions on the spot (that is, without trial and
investigation), in cases of necessity summoning special (for which read:
punitive) units of the Red Army, dispersing and firing on demonstrations,
interrogations with the use of torture’ and so on. The commission’s members
were, besides Trotsky, Sapronov, Unschlicht, Medved and Samoilov-Zemlyachka. It
literally rushed like a hurricane through Russia, sweeping away.. everything in
its path.”[122]
Soon
clashes with believers who resisted the confiscation of church valuables took
place. 1414 such clashes were reported in the official press. The first clash
took place in the town of Shuye on March 15. Five Christians were killed and
fifteen wounded, as a result of which a trial was held in which two priests and
a layman were condemned and executed. In 1921-23, 2,691 married priests, 1,962
monks, 3,447 nuns and an unknown number of laymen were killed on the pretext of
resistance to the seizure of church valuables in the country as a whole.[123]
On
March 19, Lenin sent a long letter to the Politburo marked “Top Secret. No
Copies to be Made”: “It is precisely now and only now, when there is
cannibalism in the famine-stricken areas and hundreds if not thousands of
corpses are lying along the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out
the confiscation of valuables with fanatical and merciless energy and not
hesitate to suppress any form of resistance… It is precisely now and only now
that the vast majority of the peasant masses will either support us or at least
will be unable to give any decisive support to those.. who might and would want
to try to resist the Soviet decree. We must confiscate in the shortest possible
time as much as possible to create for ourselves a fund of several hundred
million roubles… Without this fund, government work.. and the defence of our
positions in Genoa are absolutely unthinkable… Now our victory over the
reactionary clergy is guaranteed… It is precisely now that we must wage a
decisive and merciless war with the black-hundreds clergy and crush their
opposition with such cruelty that they will not forget it for many decades… The
more members of the reactionary bourgeoisie we manage to shoot the better.”[124]
Concerning
the Patriarch, however, Lenin said: “I think it is expedient for us not to
touch Patriarch Tikhon himself, although he is undoubtedly heading this entire
rebellion of slaveholders. Regarding him, a secret directive should be issued
to the GPU, so that all of this figure’s connections are carefully and
scrupulously observed and exposed, precisely at this moment…”
Lenin
wanted Trotsky to be in charge of the campaign against the Church; “but he
should at no time and under no circumstances speak out [on this matter] in the
press or before the public in any other manner”. This was probably, as Richard
Pipes suggests, “in order not to feed rumors that the campaign was a Jewish
plot against Christianity,”[125]
because Trotsky was a Jew.
In
addition to being the head of the secret commission for the requisitioning of
the valuables, Trotsky also headed the commission for their monetary
realization. And in a submission to a session of this commission he wrote on
March 23: “For us it is more important to obtain 50 million in 1922-23 for a
certain mass of valuables than to hope for 75 million in 1923-24. The advance
of the proletarian revolution in just one of the large countries of Europe will
put a stop to the market in valuables… Conclusion: we must proceed as fast as
possible…”[126]
If
money for purely political purposes was the Bolsheviks’ primary motive in this
matter, then they failed miserably – the sale of church valuables fetched only
about $1.5 million[127],
while Bukharin admitted to having spent nearly $14 million on propaganda during
the famine.[128] In any
case, the Bolsheviks already had in their possession Russian crown jewels worth
one billion gold rubles and jewels from the Kremlin museum worth 300 million
gold rubles – far more than the market price of the church valuables.[129]
But
if their primary motive was in fact to destroy the Church, then they also failed
– the Church emerged even stronger spiritually from her fiery ordeal. The blood
of the martyrs was already starting to bring forth fruit as thousands of
previously lukewarm Christians began to return to the Church. However, the
crisis gave a golden opportunity to the
internal enemies of the Church – the renovationist heretics.
The
idea of splitting the Church hierarchy appears to have originated in 1921 with
Lunacharsky, who since the early 1900s had been instrumental in developing a
more subtle, less physically confrontational approach to the problem of
eradicating religion.[130]
It was taken up again by Trotsky early in 1922.[131]
That
the Bolsheviks planned on using the internal
enemies of the Church at the same time that they exerted external pressure through the confiscation of her valuables is
clear from a project outlined by Trotsky to a session of the Politburo attended
by Kamenev, Stalin and Molotov on April 2. It declared: “The agitation must not
be linked with the struggle against religion and the Church, but must be wholly
directed towards helping the starving” (point 5); “we must take a decisive
initiative in creating a schism among the clergy”, taking the priests who speak
in support of the measures undertaken by Soviet power “under the protection of
state power” (point 6); “our agitation and the agitation of priests loyal to us
must in no case be mixed up”, but the communists must refer to “the significant
part of the clergy” which is speaking against the inhumanity and greed “of the
princes of the Church” (point 7); spying is necessary “to guarantee complete
knowledge of everything that is happening in various groups of clergy,
believers, etc.” (point 8); the question must be formulated correctly: “it is
best to begin with some church led by a loyal priest, and if such a church does
not exist, then with the most significant church after careful preparation”
(point 9); “representatives of the loyal clergy must be allowed to be
registered in the provinces and in the centre, after the population is well
informed that they will have every opportunity to check that not one article of
the church heritage goes anywhere else than to help the starving” (point 13).
In actual fact, according to a secret instruction all church valuables taken
from “the enemies of Soviet power” were to be handed over, not to Pomgol
or the starving, but to the Economic administration of the OGPU.[132]
The
Bolsheviks were counting on a modernist or “renovationist” faction in the
Russian Church to provide them with their “loyal” clergy. Already in the
revolutionary years of 1905 and 1917, the renovationists-to-be had reared their
heads with a long list of demands for modernist reform of the Church. And in March,
1918, Professor Titlinov, who was later to become one of the main ideologists
of renovationism, founded a newspaper in Petrograd which criticized the
Patriarch’s anathematization of Soviet power.[133]
But
the plotters had to wait until the spring of 1922, when both Patriarch Tikhon
and Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd were in prison in connection with the
confiscation of church valuables, before they could seize power in the Church.
The
spiritual calibre of the renovationists, or the “Living Church”, as their main
faction was called, can be gauged from the career of perhaps their most
moderate leader, Bishop Antonin Granovsky. In the 1905 revolution he had been
such a thorn in the side of the Church that the Holy Synod retired him.
Thereafter he refused to mention the Tsar’s name in Divine services, and in
1907 he even declared that the Tsarist regime was satanic. In 1921 he was again
retired by Patriarch Tikhon for introducing innovations on his own authority
into the Divine services. In 1922 he accepted a Soviet invitation to be a
member of Pomgol, and in the same year he appeared as a witness for the
government in the trial of 54 Shuye Christians who had resisted the
confiscation of church valuables.
And
yet Granovsky himself characterized his fellow-plotters as “the sewer of the
Orthodox Church”, the rebellion of power-hungry priests pursuing their class
interests against the bishops and monks.[134]
And indeed, this anti-monasticism was, with their socialism, one of the main
characteristics of the renovationists – Fr. George Florovsky called it
“Protestantism of the Eastern Rite”.[135]
Thus Titlinov wrote that the major task of the “Living Church” was “to free
church life from the influence of the monastic episcopate and transfer the
administration of church affairs into the hands of the white [married] clergy.”[136]
Thus
Soviet power may have been justified – in this respect, if in no other – in
counting, in E. Lopeshanskaya’s words, “on the classically Marxist ‘inner
contradictions’ and ‘class struggle’, which by its ideology was necessarily
bound to arise everywhere – including the Church – between the black [monastic]
and white [married] clergy, between the hierarchs and the priests, for the
income of the Church.”[137]
The
first shots in the battle were fired in Petrograd, which was a stronghold of
renovationism as it had been of the Bolshevik revolution. According to Levitin
and Shavrov, the initiative here came from the Petrograd party chief, Zinoviev,
who suggested to Archpriest Alexander Vvedensky that his group would be the
appropriate one for an eventual concordat between the State and the Church.[138]
Vvedensky then joined Archpriest Vladimir Krasnitsky and Bishop Antonin
Granovsky in plotting to overthrow the Patriarch.
The
leader of the Patriarchal Church in Petrograd was Metropolitan Benjamin, who
had actually come to an agreement with the local authorities concerning the
voluntary handing over of church valuables. These authorities evidently did not
yet understand that the real purpose of the Soviet decree was not to help the
starving but to destroy the Church. Having conferred with the central
authorities in Moscow, however, the Petrograd authorities reneged on their
agreement with the metropolitan.[139]
Then,
on March 24, a letter signed by twelve people, including the future
renovationist leaders Krasnitsky, Vvedensky, Belkov, Boyarsky and others,
appeared in Petrogradskaia Pravda. It defended the measures undertaken
by the Soviet government and distanced the authors from the rest of the clergy.
The latter reacted strongly against this letter at a clergy meeting, during
which Vvedensky gave a brazen and threatening speech.
However,
the metropolitan succeeded in calming passions sufficiently so that it was
decided to enter into fresh negotiations with the authorities, the conduct of
these negotiations being entrusted to Vvedensky and Boyarsky. They proceeded to
win an agreement according to which other articles or money were allowed to be
substituted for the church valuables.
Having
acquired some credit through this success, and having cemented relations with
the Soviet authorities, the group of renovationists set about seizing power in
the whole Church, taking advantage of the severe difficulties the Patriarch was
in in Moscow.
For
as well as having been under house arrest since March 19, the Patriarch had
been called as a witness for the defence in the trial of 54 Moscow Christians.
In an effort to save the accused, he took the whole responsibility upon
himself. And in one of the exchanges the essence of the relationship between
the Church and the State was expressed.
The
Presiding Judge said:
“Do
you consider the state’s laws obligatory or not?”
The
Patriarch replied:
“Yes,
I recognize them, to the extent that they
do not contradict the rules of piety.”
Solzhenitsyn
comments: “Oh, if only everyone had answered just that way! Our whole history
would have been different.”[140]
And
yet the Patriarch’s words constituted a distinct weakening of his position
vis-à-vis Soviet power when compared with the absolutely irreconcilable
position he and the Council had adopted in 1917-18; for they implied that
Soviet power was legitimate, the power of Caesar rather than that of the
Antichrist… This critical question has remained of fundamental importance in
the Russian Church to this day, under the neo-Soviet regime of Putin.
The
first instinct of the Russian Church in the face of Soviet power, as manifested
in the 1917-18 Council, has never been extinguished among Russian Christians.
It continued to manifest itself both at home and abroad (for example, in the
First All-Emigration Council of the Russian Church Abroad in 1921), both in the
early and the later decades of Soviet power (for example, among the
“passportless” Christians of the Catacomb Church). However, it was very soon
tempered by the realisation that such outright rejection of Soviet power on a
large scale could be sustained only by war
– and after the defeat of the White Armies in the Civil War there were no
armies left to carry on the fight against the Bolsheviks.
Therefore
from the early 1920s a new attitude towards Soviet power began to evolve among
the Tikhonite Christians: loyalty towards it as a political institution (“for
all power is from God”), and acceptance of such of its laws as could be
interpreted in favour of the Church (for example, the law on the separation of
Church and State), combined with rejection of its atheistic world-view (large
parts of which the renovationists, by contrast, accepted). In essence, this new
attitude involved accepting that the Soviet State was not Antichrist, as the
Local Council of 1917-18 and the Russian Church Abroad had in effect declared,
but Caesar, no worse in principle than the Caesars of Ancient Rome, to whom the
things belonging to Caesar were due. This attitude involved the assertion 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 very hard to draw. For for the early Bolsheviks, at any rate, 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.
Thus 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 (which the Christians were very eager to do), 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 (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.
In view of this, it is not surprising that many Christians came to the conclusion that there was no gain, and from a moral point of view much to be lost, in accepting a regime that made such impossible demands, since the penalty would be the same whether one asserted one’s loyalty to it or not. And if this meant living as an outlaw, so be it…
Nevertheless, the path of total
rejection of the Soviet state required enormous courage, strength and
self-sacrifice, not only for oneself but also (which was more difficult) for
one’s family or flock. It is therefore not surprising that, already during the
Civil War, the Church began to soften her anti-Soviet rhetoric and try once
more to draw the line between politics and religion. This is what Patriarch
Tikhon tried to do in the later years of his patriarchate – with, it must be
said, only mixed results. Thus his decision to allow some, but not all of the
Church’s valuables to be requisitioned by the Bolsheviks in 1922 not only did
not bring help to the starving of the Volga, as was the intention, but led to
many clashes between believers and the authorities and many deaths of
believers.
The decision to negotiate and compromise with the Bolsheviks only brought confusion and division to the Church. Thus on the right wing of the Church there were those, like Archbishop Theodore of Volokolamsk, who thought that the patriarch had already gone too far; while on the left wing there were those, like Archbishop Hilarion of Verey, who wanted to go further.
The basic
problem was that the compromises were always one-sided; the Bolsheviks always
took and never gave; their aim was not peaceful co-existence, but the complete
conquest of the Church. And so, 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…”[141]
However,
the Patriarchal Church remained Orthodox under Patriarch Tikhon and his
successor, Metropolitan Peter, for two major reasons: first, because the
leaders of the Church did not sacrifice the lives of their fellow Christians
for the sake of their own security or the security of the Church organisation;
and secondly, because, while the Soviet regime was recognised to be, in effect,
Caesar rather than Pharoah, no further concessions were made with regard to the
communist ideology.
In
order to understand the further development of the coup against the Patriarch,
we must turn to the history of that part of the Church which found itself in
diaspora.
A.F. Traskovsky writes: “The part of
the Russian Orthodox Church which was abroad already had quite a long history
before the formation of the ROCA [Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, abbreviated
to RCA in this book]. In Western Europe Russian Orthodox churches had been
built beginning from the eighteenth century at Russian embassies and holy places
which were often visited by Russians on trips abroad. In the East, thanks to
the missionary activities of the Russian Orthodox Church missions were founded
in China and Japan which later became dioceses, as well as a mission in
Jerusalem. The spread of Orthodoxy in Alaska and North America also led to the
creation of a diocese. In the “Statute concerning the convening of an
Emigration Assembly of the Russian Churches”, mention was made that in 1921
there were 15 emigration regions which had Russian bishops and 14 districts
where there were Russian Orthodox parishes but no bishops. The regions
included: North America, Japan, China, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey and the Far East. The
districts included: Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, England,
Switzerland, Czechia, Hungary, Austria, Romania, Palestine, Greece and the city
of Bizert in Tunisia. All the emigration missions, parishes and dioceses were
in canonical submission to the higher ecclesiastical authorities in Russia –
the Holy Ruling Synod until the restoration of the patriarchate in 1917, and
his Holiness the Patriarch after 1917. But then after the revolution there
began the Civil War and anarchy. The Bolsheviks began to persecute the Church.
The majority of emigration missions and dioceses found themselves either
deprived of the possibility of normal relations with the higher ecclesiastical
authorities of Russia, or such relations were exceptionally difficult. Moreover,
in Russia itself many dioceses were cut off by the front from his Holiness
Patriarch Tikhon (Bellavin)’s leadership. After the defeat of the White army, a
huge flood of emigres flooded abroad, amongst whom were not a few
representatives of the clergy, including bishops and metropolitans. On the
shoulders of the clerics who were abroad and the clergy who had emigrated lay
the burden of care for the spiritual nourishment of the huge Russian diaspora.
That was the situation in which the part of the Russian Church that was abroad
found itself on the eve of the formation of the Church Abroad.
“What
was the prehistory of the Russian Church Abroad? Her beginnings went back to
1919, in Russia. In Stavropol in May, 1919 there took place the South Russian Church
Council headed by the oldest hierarch in the South of Russia, Archbishop
Agathodorus of Stavropol. There took part in the Council all the bishops who
were on the territory of the Voluntary army, the members of the All-Russian
Ecclesiastical Council and four people from each diocesan council. At the
Council there was formed the Higher Church Administration of the South of
Russia (HCA of the South of Russia), which consisted of: President – Archbishop
Metrophanes of Novocherkassk, Assistant to the President – Archbishop Demetrius
of Tauris, Protopresbyter G. Shavelsky, Protopriest A.P. Rozhdestvensky, Count
V.V. Musin-Pushkin and Professor of theology P.V. Verkhovsky. In November, 1919
the Higher Church Administration was headed by Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky)
of Kiev and Galich, who had arrived from Kiev.
“The
aim of the creation of the HCA was the organization of the leadership of church
life on the territory of the Volunteer army in view of the difficulties
Patriarch Tikhon was experiencing in administering the dioceses on the other
side of the front line. A little earlier, in November, 1918, an analogous
Temporary Higher Church Administration had been created in Siberia headed by
Archbishop Silvester of Omsk. Later, a part of the clergy that submitted to
this HCA emigrated after the defeat of Kolchak’s army and entered the
composition of the Chinese dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church. The HCA of
the South of Russia, like the Siberian HCA, was, in spite of its
self-government, nevertheless in canonical submission to his Holiness Patriarch
Tikhon, and in this way Church unity was maintained.
“After
the defeat of the armies of Denikin, in the spring of 1920 the head of the HCA
of the South of Russia, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), was evacuated from
Novorossiysk to Constantinople[142],
and was then for a time in a monastery on Mount Athos. However, in September,
1920, at the invitation of General Wrangel, he returned to Russia, to the
Crimea, where he continued his work. The final evacuation of the HCA of the
South of Russia took place in November, 1920, together with the remains of
Wrangel’s army. On the steamer “Alexander Mikhailovich” there set out from the
Crimea to Constantinople the leaders of the HCA and a large number of simple priests.
“On
arriving in Constantinople, as Archbishop Nicon (Rklitsky) indicates in his Biography
of Metropolitan Anthony, Metropolitan Anthony ‘first considered that from
now on all the activities of the Russian Higher Church Administration should be
brought to an end and all the care for the spiritual welfare of the Russian
Orthodox people should be taken upon herself by the Church of Constantinople
and the Local Orthodox Churches in whose bounds the Russian Orthodox people
found themselves.’ However, as soon became clear, the realization of this
variant became extremely problematic in view of the fact that huge masses of
Russian refugees did not know the language and customs of those countries to
which they had come, and the nourishment of such a large flock by priests
speaking other languages (for example Greeks) presented very many problems.
Moreover, the numerous émigré Russian clergy, who were fully able to deal with
these problems, would not be involved. Therefore it was decided to continue the
activities of the Higher Church Administration.
“In
order to work out a plan of further action, the first session of the HCA
outside the borders of Russia took place on November 19, 1920… Metropolitan
Dorotheus [the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne of Constantinople]
gave his agreement [to the HCA’s decisions] and the HCA of the South of Russia
was transformed into the Higher Church Administration Abroad.
“Literally
the day after the above-mentioned session, on November 20, 1920, an event took
place in Moscow that had an exceptional significance for the Russian Church
Abroad – his Holiness Patriarch Tikhon passed decree N 362 concerning the
self-governance of church dioceses in the case of a break of communications
between this or that diocese and his Holiness the Patriarch for external
reasons over which they had no control (what they had in mind was war or
repression by the authorities). This is the main content of this decree:
“‘With
the blessing of his Holiness the Patriarch, the Holy Synod and the Higher
Church Council, in a joint session, judged concerning the necessity of… giving
the diocesan Hierarch… instructions in case of a disconnection with the higher
church administration or the cessation of the activity of the latter…
“‘2.
If dioceses, as a result of the movement of the front, changes of state
boundaries, etc., find themselves unable to communicate with the higher church
administration or the higher church administration itself together with his
Holiness the Patriarch for some reason ceases its activity, the diocesan
hierarch will immediately enter into relations with the hierarchs of
neighbouring dioceses in order to organize a higher instance of church
authority for several dioceses in the same conditions (in the form of a
temporary higher church government or metropolitan region, or something
similar).
“‘3.
The care for the organization of the higher church authority for the whole
group who are in the situation indicated in point 2 is the obligatory duty of
the eldest ranked hierarch in the indicated group…’[143]
“This
wise decree of his Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, which was passed in conditions of
anti-church terror, was given to the foreign bishops a year after its passing
with the help of Bishop Meletius of Nerchenk. It served as the canonical basis
for the formation of the Russian Church Abroad, since the émigré clergy were in
the situation indicated in points 2 and 3.
“Meanwhile
the HCA in Constantinople continued to work out a plan for its further
activities. At the sessions of April 19-21, 1921, it was decided to convene a
‘Congress of the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad to
unite, regulate and reanimate church activity abroad’, which was later renamed
the ‘Russian Church Council Abroad’, which has also become known in the
literature as the Carlovtsy Council. Soon, at the invitation of Patriarch
Demetrius of Serbia, the HCA led by Metropolitan Anthony moved to Sremskiye
Karlovtsy in Serbia – a fraternal country which in the course of many years
proved to be a reliable harbour for the leadership of the Church Abroad.”[144]
The
Emigration Council, which opened its first session on November 8/21, 1921,
called on the Genoa conference to refuse recognition to the Bolshevik regime,
to arm its opponents, and restore the Romanov dynasty.[145]
In defence of this call, which provoked the frenzy of the Bolsheviks and which
many regarded as dangerous dabbling in politics, the First-Hierarch of the
Church in Exile, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev, said: “If by
politics one understands all that touches upon the life of the people,
beginning with the rightful position of the Church within the realm, then the
ecclesiastical authorities and Church councils must participate in political
life, and from this point of view definite demands are made upon it. Thus, the
holy hierarch Hermogenes laid his life on the line by first demanding that the
people be loyal to Tsar Basil Shuisky, and when the Poles imprisoned him he
demanded the election of Tsar Michael Romanov. At the present time, the paths
of the political life of the people are diverging in various directions in a
far more definite way: some, in a positive sense, for the Faith and the Church,
others in an inimical sense; some in support of the army and against socialism
and communism, others exactly the opposite. Thus the Karlovtsy Council not only
had the right, but was obliged to bless
the army for the struggle against the Bolsheviks, and also, following the
Great Council of Moscow of 1917-1918, to condemn socialism and communism.”[146]
On
May 3 (new calendar), a secret midnight meeting of the presidium of the GPU –
Comrades Ushinsky, Menzhinsky, Yagoda, Samsonov and Krasikov – took place, at
which it was decided “to summon Tikhon and demand of him that he publish within
24 hours the expulsion from the Church, defrocking and removal from their posts
of the above-mentioned clergy [the leaders of the Russian Church in Exile]. If
Tikhon refuses to carry out the above-mentioned demands, he is to be
immediately arrested and accused of all the crimes he has committed against
Soviet power.”[147]
The signed protocol of this meeting was sent to Politburo, where it was
reviewed in the presence of Lenin on May 4. It was decided to bring the
Patriarch to trial.
On
the same day, the Patriarch appeared for the last time as a witness in the case
of the 54 Moscow clergymen. After his speech the prosecutor declared that the
Patriarch was to be put on trial in connection with the evidence he had given
during the trial. It was therefore under conditions of extreme pressure that on
May 5, Patriarch Tikhon convened a meeting of the Holy Synod and the Higher
Church Council, at which he declared (decree no. 347) that “neither the
epistle, nor the address of the Karlovtsy Synod [to the Genoa conference] express
the voice of the Russian Church”. And he ordered the dissolution of the Church
in Exile’s Higher Church Administration and the transfer of all power over the
Russian refugees in Europe to Metropolitan Eulogius of Paris.[148]
On the evening of that day, the Patriarch was interrogated by the GPU, and on
the next day he was arrested.
Decree
no. 347 has been used by the Sovietized Moscow Patriarchate and its satellites
to cast doubts on the canonicity of the Russian Church Abroad. However, (i) according
to the renovationist Archbishop Eudocimus, Patriarch Tikhon later wrote to
Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky): “I wrote that for the authorities, but you
sit down and work”; (ii) the ukaz which the Church in Exile received did not
have the Patriarch’s signature and was signed only by Archbishop Thaddeus of
Astrakhan![149]; (iii) as
Igumen Luke points out: “If one reads the decree one will see that it contains
nothing concerning violation of canons by the Higher Church Administration and
nowhere declares it to be uncanonical. No one, not even Metropolitan Eulogius
accepted the authority of the document. The Patriarch in assigning Metropolitan
Eulogius to head the parishes in Western Europe ‘overlooked’ the fact that
there were eight other dioceses in the Church Abroad and said nothing about
their leadership. This and other confused aspects of the decree only support
the universal opinion that it was issued under pressure from the Bolsheviks who
desired by all means to weaken the anti-Communist from abroad. Upon receiving
notification of his appointment as ruling bishop in Europe Metropolitan
Eulogius wrote to Metropolitan Anthony: ‘This decree amazed me by it suddenness
and simply shocks one by the possible confusion it could bring into church
life’ (exactly what the communists wanted and continue to desire in order to
eliminate any opposition to their control of the Church). ‘There is no doubt
that the decree was issued under pressure by the Bolsheviks.’ Metropolitan
Eulogius continues, ‘I do not recognize this document as having any authority
even though it might have been written and signed by the Patriarch. This
document is political and not ecclesiological…’”[150]
In
any case, the Patriarch did not actually anathematise the émigré bishops, and
so the action which was designed to placate the Bolsheviks only served to
exacerbate their annoyance.[151]
The
leaders of the Russian Church in Exile took the view – and in this they were at
first supported, as we have seen, by Metropolitan Eulogius – that the patriarch
had been acting under duress at the time. So they acted in order formally to
obey the Patriarch’s decree, while in effect ignoring it. They dissolved the
Higher Church Administration and created a Synod of Bishops presided over by
Metropolitan Eulogius in its place.
The
patriarch, as if in tacit acknowledgement of this, issued no further
condemnation of the Synod Abroad and acted in future as if he fully recognised
its authority.[152]
On
May 12, the renovationist priests Vvedensky, Belkov and Kalinovsky (who, as the
Patriarch pointed out, had but a short time before renounced holy orders),
visited the Patriarch at the Troitsky podvorye, where he was confined,
and demanded that he renounce the patriarchal throne. “After tormented
hesitations,” writes Krivova, “well knowing who lay behind this act, Tikhon was
forced to concede. But he did not renounce the throne and did not give the
reins of the Church into the hands of the renovationists. The meaning of the
Patriarch’s actions came down to a temporary departure from work, but he was
prepared to renounce the throne only ‘if the coming Council removes’ the
patriarchy from him. For the time being Tikhon was transferring power to one of
the oldest hierarchs of the Church, Metropolitan Agathangel (Preobrazhensky) of
Yaroslavl, about which he officially informed the President of the VtsIK, M.I.
Kalinin.
“However,
the authorities did not allow Metropolitan Agathangel to leave for Moscow.
Already on on May 5, 1922 V.D. Krasnitsky had arrived at the Tolga monastery
where the metropolitan was living, and demanded that he sign the appeal of the
so-called ‘Initiative Group of Clergy’. The metropolitan refused to sign the
appeal. Then, two days later, his signature declaring that he would not leave
was taken from him, and a guard was placed outside his cell and a search was
carried out.
“After
Agathangel there remained in Moscow only three of the members of the Holy Synod
and HCC, but they were not empowered to take any kind of decision that would be
obligatory for the whole Church. Thus the path to the seizure of Church power
by the renovationists was open. Using Tikhon’s temporary concession and the
impossibility of Metropolitan Agathangel’s taking the place of the Patriarch,
the renovationists declared that Tikhon had been removed and in an arbitrary
manner seized power. Arriving on May 15, 1922 at a reception with M.I. Kalinin,
they understood that Metropolitan Agathangel’s departure to Moscow was hardly
possible. The next day the renovationists sent a letter to M.I. Kalinin, in
which they declared that ‘in view of Patriarch Tikhon’s removal of himself from
power, a Higher Church Administration is formed, which from May 2 (15) has
taken upon itself the conducting of Church affairs in Russia.”[153]
On
May 18 the renovationists again presented the Patriarch with a written
statement complaining that in consequence of the existing circumstances, Church
business remained unattended to. They demanded that he entrust his chancery to
them until Metropolitan Agathangel’s arrival in Moscow, in order that they
might properly classify the correspondence received. Considering it a useful
measure, the Patriarch yielded to their request and inscribed their petition
with the following resolution: “The undersigned persons are ordered to take
over and transmit to the Right Reverend Metropolitan Agathangelus, upon his
arrival in Moscow, all the Synodical business with the assistance of secretary
Numerov.”[154]
The
next day, having obtained the Patriarch’s transfer to the Donskoj monastery,
the renovationists took over the Patriarch’s residence in the Troitsky
podvorye. On May 29 the “Living Church”, the largest renovationist grouping,
was officially created. Two days earlier, on May 27, Trotsky had written to Lenin:
“The separation of the Church from the State, which we have established once
and for all, by no means signifies that the state is indifferent to what is
happening in the Church”. He spoke about “loyal and progressive elements in the
clergy” and set the task of “raising the spirit of the loyal clergy” in
indirect ways – through the press. He complained that “the editors of Pravda
and Izvestia are not taking sufficient account of the huge historical
importance of what is happening in the Church and around her”. Trotsky fully
understood the importance of this, “the most profound spiritual revolution in
the Russian people”. Lenin commented: “True! A thousand times true!”[155]
However,
the renovationists and communists still had to neutralize the threat to their
plans posed by Patriarch Tikhon’s handing over of power to Metropolitan
Agathangelus. So Protopriest Krasnitsky was sent to Yaroslavl to negotiate with
the metropolitan. He placed a number of conditions before the Patriarch’s
lawful deputy which amounted to his placing himself in complete dependence on
the renovationists. Naturally, the metropolitan rejected these conditions. So
Krasnitsky returned to Moscow and the renovationists spread abroad the rumour
that the metropolitan was occupied “with his own affairs” and “was not
hurrying” to fulfil the Patriarch’s command.
Levitin
and Shavrov write: “… Metropolitan Agathangelus’ behaviour would indeed have
appeared quite incomprehensible if it had not been for one detail: for a month
now E.A. Tuchkov and Metropolitan Agathangelus had been conducting secret
negotiations. E.A. Tuchkov, whom the Higher Church Administration considered
their main support in negotiations with the metropolitan expressed the desire
to separate as quickly as possible from this unsolid institution [the HCA] and
support Agathangelus [?!]. However, a series of concessions was expected from
Agathangelus; he had to declare that he was renouncing Patriarch Tikhon’s
political line. After a month’s negotiations, seeing that no progress was being
made, Metropolitan Agathangelus unexpectedly [??] addressed the Russian Church
with an appeal [dated June 5/18, 1922, N 214] which was printed by some
underground printing-press and very quickly distributed in Moscow and the other
cities…
“E.A.
Tuchkov was taken completely by surprise. The HCA was also shocked.
Metropolitan Agathangelus was immediately arrested and sent into exile, to the
Narymsk region. However, the appearance of this appeal showed that the
unprincipled line of V.D. Krasnitsky was meeting with a sharp rejection in
ecclesiastical circles…”[156]
Metropolitan
Agathangelus’ epistle accused the renovationists of “revising the dogmas and
moral teaching of our Orthodox Faith, the sacred canons of the Holy Ecumenical Councils
and the Orthodox Typicon of Divine services given by the great ascetics of
Christian piety”, and gave the bishops the right to administer their dioceses
independently until the restoration of a canonical Higher Church Authority.[157]
And
so, in the year of the creation of the Soviet Union, Russia was deprived, for
the first time in her history since the Time of Troubles, of a legitimate
centralized administration in both Church and State.
In
Petrograd, meanwhile, Metropolitan Benjamin was brought to trial, accused of
resisting the confiscation of church valuables and called an “enemy of the
people”. He was given many chances to save himself in a dishonourable manner.
Thus even before the trial Vvedensky and the Petrograd commandant Bakayev had
come to him and given him the choice: either revoke the anathema against
Vvedensky or face trial. But the metropolitan refused to revoke the anathema.
Again, during the trial, the judges hinted that he save himself by naming “the
authors” of the proposition he had sent to Pomgol. The metropolitan
again refused, saying: “I alone did it – I thought everything over; I
formulated, wrote and sent the proposition myself. I did not allow anybody else
to participate in deciding matters entrusted to me as archpastor.”
It
was during this trial that the prosecuting counsel Krasikov made the following
remark: “The whole Orthodox Church is a subversive organization. Properly
speaking, the entire Church ought to be put in prison!” On the other hand, the
counsel for the defence, Gurovich, said: “If the metropolitan perishes for his
faith, for his limitless devotion to the believing masses he will become more
dangerous for Soviet power than now… The unfailing historical law warns us that
faith grows, strengthens and increases on the blood of martyrs.”[158]
Both
remarks could be said to have been prophecies – the first of the coming total
persecution that was to take place in the thirties, and the second of the final
triumph of the Church which has already begun.
In
a letter written from prison, Metropolitan Benjamin expressed the essence of
what was to become the position of the Catacomb Church a few years later: “The
reasonings of some, perhaps outstanding pastors are strange.. – ‘we must
preserve the living forces’, that is, for their sake, we must abandon
everything! Then what is Christ for? It is not the Platonovs, the Chuprins, the
Benjamins and their like who save the Church, but Christ. That point on which
they are trying to stand is destruction for the Church; it is not right to
sacrifice the Church for oneself.”[159]
The metropolitan was shot on the night of August 12 to 13, 1922.
He
was replaced by a man with the opposite philosophy – Bishop Alexis (Simansky),
the first hierarch to recognize the renovationist Higher Church Administration
and the future second Soviet “Patriarch of Moscow”. He it was, moreover, who
removed the ban placed by Metropolitan Benjamin on the renovationists and on
June 5, 1922 announced their communion “with the re-established Church”.[160]
This continuity between the leading hierarchs of the renovationists in the
early 1920s and the leading hierarchs of the sergianists from 1927 onwards
shows the inner links between the two movements. It shows that sergianism is in
fact “neo-renovationism”, the continuation of the same heretical movement in a
more subtle form.
At
this point some words should be said about the Church of Georgia, which was
going through a very similar persecution at the hands of the authorities.
Just
after the abdication of the Tsar, on March 12, 1917, an Assembly of the
bishops, clergy and laity of Georgia proclaimed the re-establishment of the
autocephaly of the Georgian Church, which, as the Georgians claimed, had never
been lawfully abolished.
In
September, a General Council confirmed the Acts of the March Council, and on
October 1 Bishop Karion Sadzaguelachvili was enthroned as Catholicos-Patriarch
in Tbilisi. The Provisional Government confirmed this election. However, on
December 29 / January 11, the Russian Church, in the person of the newly
elected Patriarch Tikhon, protested against the re-establishment of the
autocephaly, pointedly addressing Karion as only a bishop.[161]
When
the Russian Civil War began, the Georgians refused to help the Whites. For a
few months the British occupied the country, and when they left the Mensheviks
came to power. For the next few years the Georgian Church was able to live at
peace with the ruling Menshevik party.
In
February, 1921, however, the Bolsheviks invaded, and after a short war of three
weeks took control of the country. “On February 7, 1922,” writes Fr. Elijah
Melia, “the Catholicos Ambrose sent to the Interallied Conference at Genoa (the
highest degree of international jurisdiction at that time) a letter of protest
in which, recalling the moral obligations towards the nation of his charge, he
protested in the name of the people of Georgia, deprived of their rights,
against the foreign occupation and demanded the intervention of civilized
humanity to oppose the iniquity committed against Georgia. He was arrested in
February 1923 with Archbishop Nasaire and all the members of his Council. Their
trial, which took place under conditions of semi-liberty, greatly stirred up
the country.
“There
were three accusations: 1) the letter to the conference at Genoa of 1922, 2)
the concealment of the historic treasures of the Church in order to preserve
them from passing into the hands of the State and 3) the prohibition imposed
[by the] Governmental Commission for Religion against the redemption of
precious objects in favour of the starving. Archbishop Nasaire was assassinated
during the trial, most probably in order to impress the others accused. All the
members of his Council showed their solidarity with the Catholicos Ambrose, who
conducted himself heroically, assuming the entire responsibility for his acts,
which he declared to have been in conformity with his obligations and with the
tradition of the Church of Georgia in similar cases. He was condemned to eight
years imprisonment. Two members of his Council were given five and two years
respectively. The Catholicos was liberated before the term of his imprisonment
was over. He died on March 29, 1927.
“In
August 1924, a general insurrection broke out, organized by all the active
forces of the nation – the higher ranks of the army, the political parties, the
university, the ecclesiastics, the population as a whole. But the uprising was
doomed to fail, for the plot had been betrayed. The repression created
thousands of victims. Groups of partisans still operated for some time…”[162]
In
the Ukraine, meanwhile, the Patriarchal Church was struggling not only against
the renovationists, but also against the Ukrainian separatists. Three times in
this century the Ukraine has attained independence from Russia, and each time
political independence has provided the spur for ecclesiastical schism: in
1917, in 1941 and in 1990. In mid-November, 1917, a committee in charge of
convoking a council of the Ukrainian clergy and laity was organized in Kiev
under the leadership of the retired Archbishop Alexis Dorodnitsyn. Although
canonical in its origins, this committee soon turned its attention to the quite
uncanonical goal of creating an autocephalous Church of the Ukraine and the removal of the canonical leader of the
Church, Metropolitan Vladimir. These revolutionary demands were vigorously
opposed by the metropolitan until his martyrdom at the hands of the Bolsheviks
in January, 1918.[163]
In
1920 an “Independent Union of Ukrainian Orthodox Parishes” was formed, which
convoked the first council of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church in October,
1921. However, since no bishops had joined the autocephalists, they were forced
to create bishops for themselves in an uncanonical manner which no other
Orthodox Church recognized, earning for themselves the title of the “Lypkovsky samosvyaty”
after their leader Lypkovsky. Later in the 1920s a second autocephalist
movement came into being initiated by Bishop Theophilus (Buldovsky) of Lubensk,
who received consecration in the Patriarchal Church at a time when the
Lypkovsky schism was declining, but who later separated from the Church on the
same basis of Ukrainian nationalism and united the remnants of the Lypkovsky
schism to his own.
One
of the most popular patriarchal priests in the Ukraine at this time was Fr.
Basil (Zelentsov). It was largely through his influence that Buldovsky’s schism
was rejected by the mass of the people. In 1922 he was put on trial on a
political charge, and in his speech at the end of the trial he made one of the
clearest statements of how far a Christian could go in recognizing Soviet
power: “I have already told you, and will tell you again, that I am loyal to Soviet
power as such, for it, like everything else, is sent to us from above… But
where the matter touches the Faith of Christ, the churches of God and human
souls, there I have fought, do now fight, and will continue to fight to my last
breath with the representatives of this power. It would be shamefully sinful
for me, as a warrior of Christ, who bear this cross on my breast, to defend
myself personally at a time when the enemies have taken up arms and declared
war against Christ Himself.”
After
his consecration to the episcopate in 1925, Bishop Basil continued to wage a
spiritual war against the Bolsheviks, publicly calling them “apostates from
God, violaters, blasphemers of the Faith of Christ, murderers, a satanic power,
blood-suckers, destroyers of freedom and justice, fiends from hell”. He
constantly called on the people “to make them no allowances, to make no
compromises with them, to fight and fight with the enemies of Christ, and not
to fear tortures and death, for sufferings from Him are the highest happiness
and joy”. In 1930 Bishop Basil suffered martyrdom in Moscow for his rejection
of sergianist neo-renovationism.[164]
Although
the Ukrainian autocephalists were a clearly schismatic movement, they did not
share the modernist ideology of the Muscovite renovationists, and entered into
union with them only in the autumn of 1924, evidently with the aim of securing
the recognition of their own autocephaly from Constantinople, with whom the
renovationists were in communion. That is why it was not until January 5, 1924
that the patriarch extended his anti-renovationist anathema of 1923 to the
autocephalists. Even then, the autocephalists showed little animosity towards
the patriarch, and in their Second All-Ukrainian Council of 1925 the Synod
issued an epistle calling for the review of Patriarch Tikhon’s defrocking by
the renovationists.[165]
In
1929 Stalin reversed the Bolshevik regime’s tolerant policy towards the
Ukrainian autocephalists (who were in any case now largely controlled by Soviet
agents), and in January, 1930 the authorities convoked a council which
dissolved all the Church’s central and regional organs, although some parishes
continued to exist for a few more years under the strict supervision of the
authorities.[166]
In
Russia the renovationists continued to gain ground throughout 1922. On June 16,
three important hierarchs declared their full adhesion to the “Living Church”
as follows: “We, Metropolitan Sergius of Vladimir and Shuya [the future first
Soviet “Patriarch”], Archbishop Eudocimus of Nizhegorod and Arzamas and
Archbishop Seraphim of Kostroma and Galich, having studied the platform of the
Temporary Church Administration and the canonical lawfulness of its
administration, consider it the only lawful, canonical, higher church
authority, and all the instructions issuing from it we consider to be
completely lawful and obligatory. We call on all true pastors and believing
sons of the Church, both those entrusted to us and those belonging to other
dioceses, to follow our example.”[167]
The
Sergianist Metropolitan John (Snychev) wrote about this act: “We do not have
the right to hide from history those sad and staggering apostasies from the
unity of the Russian Church which took place on a mass scale after the publication
in the journal ‘Living Church’ of the epistle-appeals of the three well-known
hierarchs. Many of the hierarchs and clergy reasoned naively. Thus: ‘If the
wise Sergius has recognized the possibility of submitting to the Higher Church
Administration, then it is clear that we, too, must follow his example.’”[168]
Meanwhile,
the GPU gave valuable aid to the renovationists, arresting and sending into
exile all the clergy who remained faithful to the Patriarch. Also, they handed
over to them nearly two-thirds of the functioning churches in the Russian
republic and Central Asia, as well as many thousands in the Ukraine, Belorussia
and Siberia. However, these figures exaggerate the true strength of the
renovationists, in that their churches were almost empty while the patriarchal
churches were filled to overflowing.
At
their second All-Russian council, which met in Moscow on April 29, 1923, the
renovationists first heaped praises on the revolution, which they called a
“Christian creation”, on the Soviet government, which they said was the first
government in the world that strove to realize “the ideal of the Kingdom of
God”. And they were no less generous to Lenin: “First of all, we must turn with
words of deep gratitude to the government of our state, which, in spite of the
slanders of foreign informers, does not persecute the Church… The word of
gratitude and welcome must be expressed by us to the only state in the world
which performs, without believing, that work of love which we, believers, do
not fulfil, and also to the leader of Soviet Russia, V.I. Lenin, who must be
dear also to church people…”
Patriarch
Tikhon was tried in absentia (he was still imprisoned in the monastery),
and deprived not only of his clerical orders but also of his monasticism, being
called thenceforth “layman Basil Bellavin”. Then the patriarchate itself was
abolished, its restoration being called a counter-revolutionary act. Finally,
some further resolutions were adopted allowing white clergy to become bishops
and priests to remarry, and introducing the Gregorian calendar.
When
the decisions of the council were taken to the Patriarch for his signature, he
calmly wrote: “Read. The council did not summon me, I do not know its competence
and for that reason cannot consider its decision lawful.”[169]
46
“bishops” (out of 73 who attended the council) signed the decree condemning the
Patriarch. One of them, Joasaph (Shishkovsky), told Fr. Basil Vinogradov how
this happened. “The leaders of the council Krasnitsky and Vvedensky gathered
all those present at the ‘council’ of bishops for this meeting. When several
direct and indirect objections to these leaders’ proposal to defrock the
Patriarch began to be expressed, Krasnitsky quite openly declared to all
present: ‘He who does not immediately sign this resolution will only leave this
room straight for the prison.’ The terrorized bishops (including Joasaph
himself) did not find the courage to resist in the face of the threat of a new
prison sentence and forced labour in a concentration camp and… signed, although
almost all were against the resolution. None of the church people had any doubt
that the ‘council’s’ sentence was the direct work of Soviet power and that now
a criminal trial and bloody reprisal against the Patriarch was to be expected
at any time.”[170]
However,
already at this 1923 council the renovationist movement was beginning to fall
apart. The 560 deputies were divided into four groups: the supporters of
Krasnitsky (the Living Church), of Vvedensky (the Ancient-Apostolic Church), of
Antoninus (Church Regeneration) and of Patriarch Tikhon. When Krasnitsky tried
to take control of the council and reject any coalition between his group and
the other renovationists, a schism amidst the schismatics was avoided only by
strong behind-the-scenes pressure on his supporters from the communists, who
succeeded in regrouping them under a “Holy Synod” led by Metropolitan
Eudocimus.[171]
Meanwhile,
the pressures on the Patriarch were mounting inexorably, with daily visits from
the GPU agent Tuchkov (Tikhon called him “an angel of Satan”), who made
blackmail threats to force him to make concessions to the State. In April, the
government announced that the Patriarch was about to go on trial on charges
arising from the trials of the 54 in Moscow and of Metropolitan Benjamin in
Petrograd the previous year. However, partly because the authorities wanted to
give the renovationist council the opportunity to condemn him first, and
partly, later, as the result of an ultimatum issued by the British foreign
minister Lord Curzon, which was supported by an outcry in the British and
American press, the trial was postponed to June 17.
Volkogonov writes: “Tikhon, imprisoned in Donskoi monastery, was being subjected to the standard treatment: interrogation, threats, pressure and bribes. The interrogations went on even after Lenin had lost his faculties, as his instructions on Church affairs continued to be carried out to the letter.”[172]
On June 11 Yaroslavsky, president of the Antireligious Commission, wrote to the Politburo and Stalin: “It is necessary immediately to pass the following resolution on the case of Tikhon: 1) the investigation of Tikhon’s case must be continued without a time limit; 2) Tikhon must be informed that the penalty meted out to him may be commuted if: (a) he makes a special declaration that he repents of the crimes he has committed against Soviet power and the working and peasant masses and that he now has a loyal attitude to Soviet power; (b) he admits the justice of his being made to answer in court for these crimes; (c) he walls himself openly and firmly from all counter-revolutionary organisations, especially White Guard and Monarchist organisations, both civil and religious; (d) he expresses his sharply negative attitude to the new Karlovtsy Synod and its participants; (e) he expresses his negative attitude to the attacks by Catholic clergy (in the person of the Pope, also the Bishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Constantinople Meletius); (f) he expresses his agreement with some reforms in the ecclesiastical sphere (for example, the new style). If he agrees, we should release him and transfer him to the Valaam podvorye, without forbidding him ecclesiastical activity.”
On
the same day, Yaroslavsky wrote the following note: “A short motivation for the
proposal regarding Tikhon. 1) It is necessary that there should be some sort of
step that would justify our putting of Tikhon’s case, otherwise the impression
will be created that we were have been frightened by the threats of
Whiteguardism. 2) From conversations with Tikhon it has become clear that with
some pressure and some promises he will go along with these proposals. 3) If he
agrees, these statements of his will have enormous political significance: they
will completely confuse the plans of all the émigré gangs; they will strike a
blow against all those organisations that were oriented on Tikhon; Tikhon will
become a guarantee against an increase in the influence of the HCA [the
renovationists]; his personal influence will be compromised by his ties with
the GPU and his admissions; his statements against the Bishop of Canterbury,
Meletius, Anthony and the Pope will be a slap in the face first of all to the
English government and will deprive England’s declarations in defence of Tikhon
of all significance in European circles; and finally, his agreement with even
one of these reforms (he has agreed to recognise the new, Gregorian calendar)
will make him a ‘heretic’ – an innovator in the eyes of the True Orthodox. The
HCA will thereby preserve its former position together with a significant
diminution in its influence.”[173]
At
the beginning of June, the Patriarch fell ill, and was transferred from the
Donskoy monastery to the Taganka prison. There he was able to receive only
official Soviet newspaper accounts of the Church struggle, which greatly
exaggerated the successes of the renovationists. Feeling that his presence at
the helm of the Church was absolutely necessary, and that of his two enemies,
the renovationists and the communists, the renovationists were the more
dangerous, the Patriarch decided to make concessions to the government in order
to be released. Thus on June 16 and again on July 1 he issued his famous
“confession”, in which he repented of all his anti-Soviet acts (including the
anathema against the Bolsheviks), and “finally and decisively” set himself
apart “from both the foreign and the internal monarchist White-guard
counter-revolutionaries”.[174]
As
a result, according to Fr. Gleb Yakunin, “all the hitherto righteous and
courageous words of the patriarch censuring the moral and spiritual fall of the
people, the terrible bloody excesses and murders of innocent people, the wild
outbursts of satanic spite and hatred, the profanation of religious and
national holy things – all these words of the patriarch calling men to heed
their consciences and full of righteous indignation against the evils committed
were declared ‘antisoviet politics’ by the patriarch himself. In spite of the
greatness of the personality and exploit of Patriarch Tikhon, we must with
great sorrow admit that the principle of the use of lies and false witness for
the sake of ‘the salvation of the Church’ was applied in the Moscow
Patriarchate for the first time by him.
“In
its time Patriarch Tikhon’s ‘repentance’ did not elicit wide protests:
believers understood the extraordinary difficulty of the situation and hope
that the grievous compromise would nevertheless work for the benefit of the
Church. Besides, joy at the liberation of Patriarch Tikhon drowned all feelings
of alarm. The absence of protests was also elicited by the huge authority that
the patriarch enjoyed, and the unquestioning trust people had in all his
actions.
“Only
a few more sensitive Christians understood the terrible danger of the path
chosen by the patriarch.”[175]
However,
Archbishop Nicon (Rklitsky) takes a less severe attitude towards Tikhon’s
declaration, pointing out that: “1) it did not annul the anathema in the name
of the Russian Orthodox Church on Soviet power, 2) he did not declare himself a
friend of Soviet power and its co-worker, 3) it did not invoke God’s blessing
on it, 4) it did not call on the Russian people to obey this power as
God-established, 5) it did not condemn the movement for the re-establishment of
the monarchy in Russia, and 6) it did not condemn the Whites’ struggle to
overthrow Soviet power. By his declaration Patriarch Tikhon only pointed to the
way of acting which he had chosen for the further defence and preservation of
the Russian Orthodox Church. How expedient this way of acting was is another
question,… but in any case Patriarch Tikhon did not cross that boundary which
had to separate him, as head of the Russian Orthodox Church, from the godless
power.”[176]
Tikhon
was released on June 27, 1923, and his appearance in public – he had aged
terribly in prison – was enough to send the Living Church into a sharp and
irreversible decline.[177]
They remained dangerous as long as they retained the favour of the authorities;
but by 1926 the authorities were already turning to others (the Gregorians,
then Metropolitan Sergius) as better suited for the task of destroying the
Church. And by the end of the Second World War the last remaining
renovationists had been absorbed into the neo-renovationist Soviet Moscow
Patriarchate.
However,
the Patriarch bitterly repented of his “repentance”; he said that if he had
known how weak the Living Church really was, he would not have signed the
“confession” and would have stayed in prison.[178]
And when he was sadly asked why he had said that he was no longer an enemy of
the Soviet government, he replied: “But I did not say that I was its (i.e. the
Soviet government’s) friend…”[179]
On
July 15, the Patriarch anathematized the Living Church, declaring: “They have
separated themselves from the body of the Ecumenical Church and deprived
themselves of God’s favor, which resides only in the Church of Christ.
Consequently, all arrangements made during our absence by those ruling the
Church, since they had neither legal right nor canonical authority, are
non-valid and void, and all actions and sacraments performed by bishops and
clergymen who have forsaken the Church are devoid of God’s grace and power; the
faithful taking part in such prayers and sacraments shall receive no
sanctification thereby, and are subject to condemnation for participating in
their sin…”[180]
Large
numbers of parishes, especially in such important urban centres as Petrograd
(through Bishop Manuel (Lemeshevsky)[181])
and Voronezh (through Archbishop Peter (Zverev)[182]),
now renounced renovationism, and influential renovationist hierarchs such as
Metropolitan Sergius hastened (and yet not very quickly, as Hieromartyr Bishop
Damascene of Glukhov pointed out[183])
to make public confessions to the Patriarch.
“We
cite here an important witness of these historical events, the fellow-struggler
of Patriarch Tikhon, the confessor-archimandrite Pitirim, [who said] concerning
the ‘repentance’ of Metropolitan Sergius: ‘Sergius saw the patriarch’s firmness
and hastened to offer his repentance to the Patriarch… Patriarch Tikhon, taking
into account the great extent of the harm done… to the Church’s cause, did not
consider it possible to accept the repentance of Sergius in a private form, but
ordered him to offer repentance in the rank of a deeply penitent person… And
this deep repentance of Sergius was carried out on the appointed day in the
Donskoy monastery in the city of Moscow. A multitude of Orthodox had gathered….
After the Divine service the holy Patriarch Tikhon came out to the ambon in his
patriarchal vestments accompanied by the clergy, while the excommunicated
Sergius, standing outside the church at the threshold, crawled through the
whole church on his knees between the ranks of the people, without a ryasa and
with his head uncovered. Standing in front of the Church’s first-hierarch
on his knees, Sergius confessed his sin and asked forgiveness of his Holiness.
But the people with loud shouts drowned the words of the traitor to Orthodoxy,
Metropolitan Sergius: “Holy Vladyko, do not believe him, do not believe him!”
shouted the people. The patriarch stood without speaking, without uttering a
word. And the former Metropolitan Sergius, crawling on his knees left the
church. Then again, from the outer doors of the church, he crawled through the
whole church towards the ambon, and again asked for forgiveness. But the people
kept on rejecting him, repeating one and the same word: “Don’t believe him,
he’ll still deceive you!” And again he was forced to crawl out of the church,
so as for the third time to approach the first-hierarch of the Church who was
standing on the ambon and ask forgiveness for the apostasy he had committed.
And although the people continued to cry out to the holy hierarch: “Do not
believe him, do not believe him!”, Patriarch Tikhon turned to the people… and
pronounced the words of the Saviour: “He who comes to Me I will not cast out” (John
6.37). And finally he turned to speak to the former Metropolitan Sergius. Did
he understand his great guilt before the Orthodox Faith and Church? Did he
promise before God and the many witnesses of the Church heavenly and earthly to
carry out the commands of the Patriarch? To all this Sergius gave an
affirmative answer and confirmed that he clearly recognised his great guilt,
that he renounced renovationism and delivered it to anathema, that he would
remain until death in Holy Orthodoxy, and that he promised to carry out any
penance that his Holiness the Patriarch would lay upon him. And the Patriarch
pronounced upon him the judgement of the All-Russian Orthodox Church: “The
former Metropolitan Sergius, as having fallen away into the anti-God heresy of
living-church renovationism, and as having drawn many Orthodox priests, monks
and laity into destruction, is to remain for the rest of his life weeping for
what he has done, and from now on cannot touch church serving, but will remain
in the rank of a simple monk”. And he instructed him to remain in a certain
monastery without departing from it, in complete obedience to the father abbot.
And before Christ God and His Angels and the Holy Church the former
Metropolitan Sergius gave a promise to fulfil everything he had promised
exactly. But alas, he immediately deceived the Patriarch, broke his promise to
him, boldly trampled on the canons of the Catholic and Apostolic Church. He
deceived everyone he could deceive; he declared that “he had received complete
forgiveness from his Holiness” and began to serve. In view of the canons of the
Holy Apostles, Holy Councils and Holy Fathers, after this he is not only
considered banned, but also completely deposed, even excommunicated.
“‘And
this deception was successful, for in those days that were so difficult for the
Church, the voice of his Holiness the Patriarch could scarcely be heard beyond
the Donskoy monastery, where he lived after his imprisonment… Although the
reposed Patriarch Tikhon often warned that none of the leaders of the
renovationist false-church could be allowed to lead the true Orthodox Church.’”[184]
Some
sergianists have tried to show that Sergius did not really share the
renovationist position.[185]
However, Sergius’ published statements in favour of the renovationists,
especially his epistle of June 16, 1922 contradict this view. Moreover, the
people did not trust him, shouting to the Patriarch not to receive him; while
the renowned Elder Nectarius of Optina said that the poison of renovationism
was in him still.[186]
The
Bolsheviks continued to back the renovationists, and on December 8, 1923 issued
an instruction forbidding the commemoration of the “former” Patriarch at Divine
services in that such an act would be seen “as having the character of a
clearly political demonstration aginst the Workers-Peasants’ authorities.”[187]
Such was the popularity of the Patriarch, however, that neither the
renovationists nor the pressure of the GPU could shake the loyalty of the great
mass of the people. The Russian Church Abroad also remained loyal to him, as
did all the Autocephalous Churches except Alexandria and Constantinople. The
Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory VII recognized the renovationists and decided to
send a commission “to bring peace and end the present anomaly” – only to be
firmly rebuked by Patriarch Tikhon.[188]
“Honour
and glory to the late patriarch,” wrote Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) in
1925, “that, with all his good-natured condescension towards people, with all
his yearning for peace, he never gave an inch of ground to this barren ‘living
church’, but received penitents from her according to the rite for the
reception of heretics and schismatics, and re-consecrated churches which were
returned from them to their lawful pastors as churches ‘defiled by heretics’.”[189]
The
Patriarchal Church had triumphed.
If
the Moscow Council of 1917-18 established the fundamental position of the
Church vis-à-vis the State, the renovationist council of 1923 revealed the
basic modes of attack employed by the State against the Church, and thus
provided the Church with valuable experience for the still fiercer struggles
ahead. These basic modes of attack were:-
1. Control of the Central Church
Administration. Like the State, the Church in Her post-revolutionary
structure was a highly centralized organism. The astonishing success of the
Living Church in its early stages was partly the result of its usurpation of
the central administration and the confusion this engendered in both the higher
and the lower ranks of the faithful. The Patriarch was in prison, and some
reports said that he had resigned, others – that he had been killed. Although
the patriarchal locum tenens, Metropolitan Agathangelus, circulated a
secret order directing the bishops to rule their dioceses independently in accordance
with the Patriarch’s ukaz no. 362 of November 7/20, 1920, the habit of
looking to the centre for all major directives was difficult to break. This
habit was broken, for some, only after the still greater shock of the events of
1927, when another unscrupulous hierarch, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky),
took control of the central administration of the Church.
2. The Façade of Canonical Orthodoxy.
The renovationists originally put on a mask of canonical Orthodoxy, claiming to
have received power by legal transfer from the Patriarch. Very soon, however,
they threw off this mask – wherein lay their fundamental mistake. Thus, as we
have seen, the crudity of their attacks on the basic dogmas of the Faith and on
monasticism repelled the people. In future, the GPU would take care that their
candidate for the leadership of the Russian Church would have at least the
appearance of canonical and dogmatic Orthodoxy.
3. The Lure of State Legalization.
In spite of the Patriarch’s “confession”, the Patriarchal Church never received
legalization by the State during his lifetime. This meant that the Church was
always as it were in the wilderness, without the favour and security enjoyed by
the renovationists. The depths to which the renovationists were prepared to go
in order to win this security is illustrated by the pannikhida they celebrated
for Lenin after his death, in which they described his soul as “essentially
Christian”! In the same vein was Vvedensky’s speech to the 1923 council, in
which he said: “We must turn to the government with words of deeply felt
gratitude. The Church is not persecuted, whatever the calumnies of the foreign
propagandists may say. Everyone in Russia can voice his conviction. We must
direct this message of thanks to the only Government in the world, which,
though it does not believe in God, yet acts in accordance with love, which is
more than we, who believe, can claim for ourselves.”[190]
Ironically,
therefore, as Fr. Aidan Nichols has pointed out, the renovationists came “to resemble
the pre-Revolutionary establishment in their spirit of subordination to the
State.”[191] The
Patriarchal Church, however, gained in spiritual authority. For, already in the
early 1920s, the view was current that the faithful were living, in the Patriarch’s
words, “in the years of the triumph of Satan and of the power of the
Antichrist”. So the “Living Church”, in coming to terms with Soviet power, was,
as the Patriarch said, “an institution of the Antichrist”.[192]
The Patriarchal Church, on the other hand, was like the woman fleeing into the wilderness from the red dragon (Revelation 12); and it was still to her that the faithful children of the Church clung.
[1] “The First Chinese Orthodox Martyrs”, Chinese Herald, June, 1935 ®; Orthodox Life, vol. 29, no. 1, January-February, 1979, pp. 14-18; The True Vine, N 8, Winter, 1991, pp. 42-51.
[2] V. Moss, “Ecucommunism”, Living Orthodoxy, September-October, 1989, vol. XI, no. 5, pp. 13-18. (Sources in Greek marked (G); Latin (L); French (F), Bulgarian (B), Serbian (S) and Russian (R)).
[3] Averky, “On the situation of the Orthodox Christian in the Contemporary World”, in Istinnoe Pravoslavie i Sovremennij Mir, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1971 ®.
[4] Vladimir Gubanov (ed.), Nikolai II-ij i Novie Mucheniki, St. Petersburg, 2000, p. 701 ®.
[5] Marek Kohn, “Joyfully back to Church?”, New Statesman and Society, May 1, 1992, p. 32.
[6] See I. Shafarevich, Sotsializm kak yavlenie mirovoj istorii, Paris: YMCA Press, 1977, and his contributions to A. Solzhenitsyn (ed.) Iz-Pod Glyb, Paris: YMCA Press, 1974 ®.
[7] Orthodox Life, vol. 41, no. 6, November-December, 1991, p. 10.
[8] See Nicholas Kozlov, Krestnij Put’, Moscow, 1993; Enel, “Zhertva”, Kolokol’, Moscow, 1990, N 5, pp. 17-37, and Michael Orlov, “Ekaterinburgskaya Golgofa”, Kolokol’, 1990, N 5, pp. 37-55 ®.
[9] Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920; quoted in Douglas Reed, The Controversy of Zion, Durban, S.A.: Dolphin Press, 1978, pp. 272-273.
[10] However, Lenin was partly Jewish. His grandfather was called Israel before his baptism by an Orthodox priest, and his father’s name was Moishe Blank. See Lina Averina, “Yevrejskij koren’”, Nasha Strana (Israel), January 22, 1997 ®.
[11] Reed, op. cit., p. 274.
[12] Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919-1924, London: Fontana Press, 1995, pp. 112-13. Jews – even religious Jews – continued to play a major role in the Communist parties of Eastern Europe until well after the Second World War. For example, Moses Rozen became a member of the Romanian Communist Party after the war, and continued to serve the Romanian Communists even after becoming Chief Rabbi of Romania in 1948, and continued to have a strong influence after the fall of Ceausescu in 1989. See Pyatnitsa (Israel), N 69, January 22, 1997, p. 8 ®.
[13] Pipes, op.cit., p. 113.
[14] Weitzmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weitzmann, New York: Harper, 1949.
[15] Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, London: Allen Unwin, 1947, p. 383
[16] Shafarevich, “Sotsializm”, in Solzhenitsyn, A. (ed.) Iz-pod Glyb, Paris:YMCA Press, 1974; Sotsializm kak yavlenie mirovoj istorii, Paris: YMCA Press, 1977 ®.
[17] However, Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia writes (personal communication, 21 January, 1997): “It seems more probable that it was directed against the theories of Marcellus of Ancyra (who was not a millenarian); Marcellus and his followers are mentioned in Canon One of the 381 Council. J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, takes the view that the clause in question is aimed against Marcellus. Brian E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology, says nothing about any condemnation of millenarianism in 381.”
[18] Florovsky, “Metaphyzicheskie predposylki utopizma”, Put’, June-July, 1926, p. 30 ®).
[19] Quoted in Borisov, “Natsional’noye vozrozhdeniye i natsiya-lichnost’”, in Solzhenitsyn, A. (ed.) Iz-pod Glyb, Paris: YMCA Press, p. 202 ®.
[20] Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, 1877; translated by Boris Brasol, Haslemere: Ianmead, 1984, p. 738.
[21] I. Shafarevich, “Obosobleniye ili sblizheniye”, in Solzhenitsyn, A. (ed.), Iz-pod Glyb, Paris: YMCA Press, 1974 ®.
[22] Tuskarev (Bishop Dionysius (Alferov)), Tserkov’ o Gosudarstve, Staritsa, 1992, pp. 9-10 ®.
[23] Quoted in Elizabeth Dilling, The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today, The Noontide Press, 1983.
[24] Protocol 10, in Begunov, Yu.K., Stepanov, A.D., Dushenov, K.Yu., Tajna Bezzakonij, St. Petersburg, 2000, pp. 174, 176 ®.
[25] Quoted in Sergius Fomin, Rossia pered vtorym prishestviem, Sergiev Posad: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1993, p. 100 ®.
[26] See I.N. Andrushkevich, “Doktrina sv. Imperatora Yustiniana Velikago”, Pravoslavnaa Rus’, No. 4 (1529), February 15/28, 1995, pp. 4-12 ®.
[27] For the situation in Russia at the time, see Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov’s letters quoted in M. Novoselov, Pis’ma k Druzyam, Moscow, 1994, pp. 94-95, V. Verkhovtseva, “Nyeskol’ko slov o nashem dukhovenstve (Khram Khrista Spasitelya)”, in Bessmertny, A.R. & Filatov, S.B. (eds.) Religia i demokratia, Moscow: Progress, 1993, pp. 141-148, and S. Golubtsov, Moskovskoe dukhovenstvo v predverii i nachale gonenij, Moscow, 1999, pp. 7-12 ®. For the situation in Constantinople early in the twentieth century, see Peter Botsi, Gerontas Ieronymos o isykhastis tis Aiginas, Athens, 1991, pp. 58-77 (G).
[28] See K. Dinkov, Istoriya na B’lgarskata Ts’rkva, Vratsa, 1953, chapter 2 (B).
[29] Quoted in L. Regelson, Tragedia Russkoj Tserkvi, 1917-1945, Moscow: Krutitskoye Patriarsheye Podvorye, 1996, p. 313 ®.
[30] See Sir Steven Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity, Cambridge University Press, 1968; Charles Frazee, The Orthodox Church and Independent Greece 1821-1853, Cambridge University Press, 1969.
[31] See M.V. Danilushkin (ed.), Istoria Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi, 1917-1970, Saint Petersburg: Voskreseni, 1997, pp. 67-69 ®.
[32] See James Cunningham, A Vanquished Hope: the movement for Church renewal in Russia, 1905-1906, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981; Alexander Bogolepov, Church Reforms in Russia, 1905-1918, Bridgeport, Conn.: Publications Committee of the Metropolitan Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of America, 1966.
[33] Quoted in N. Talberg, Istoria
Russkoj Tserkvi, Jordanville, 1959, p. 831 ®.
[34] See Holy New Hieromartyr Maximus Sandovich, Liberty, Tenn.: St. John of Kronstadt Press, 1998.
[35] Holy New Hieromartyr Maximus Sandovich, op. cit., pp. 48-50.
[36] Kyril Fitzlyon and Tatiana Browning, Russia Before the Revolution, Harmondsworth: Penguin books, 1977, p. 46.
[37] Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weitzmann, New York: Harper, 1949.
[38] Dostoyevsky is here speaking about the situation of the Russians in the Ukraine in the seventeenth century especially, when they were under Polish political domination.and Jewish economic domination.
[39] Dostoyevksy, The Diary of a Writer, March, 1877, II, 3; translated by Boris Brasol, Haslemere: Ianmead, 1984, pp. 648-651.
[40] Massie, Nicolas and Alexandra, London: Book Club Associates, 1967, p. 229.
[41] Pis’ma Blazhenneishago Mitropolita Antonia (Khrapovitskago), Jordanville, 1988, pp. 37, 39 ®.
[42] On this trial see Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Dvesti let vmeste (1795-1995), part 1, Moscow: “Russkij Put’”, 2001, pp. 444-451 ®.
[43] S.V. Bulgakov, Nastol’naya Kniga dlya Svyashchenno-Tserkovno-Sluzhitelya, Kharkov, 1900, p. 143 (in Russian). For ritual murders demonstrated in court, see Dal’, V. Rozyskanie o ubiyenii yevreev khristianskikh mladentsev i upotreblenii krovi ikh, St. Petersburg, 1844; Rozanov, V. Obonyatel’noe i osyazatel’noe otnoshenie yevreev k krovi, St. Petersburg, 1913; O. Platonov, Ternovij venets Rossii, Moscow, 1998 (in Russian).
[44] Platonov, op. cit., pp. 748-754.
[45] Archbishop
Anthony, in Zhizn’ Volynii, № 221, 2 September, 1913 ®.
[46] See Ekklesiastiki Alitheeia, N 16, April 20, 1913, pp. 123-125, N 19, May 11, 1913, pp. 145-146, N 11, N 24, June 15, 1913, pp. 187-191, March 15, 1914, p. 119 (G); “О lzhe-uchenii imyabozhnikov”, Tserkovnie Vedomosti, № 20, 1913 ®.
[47] Vladimir Gubanov (ed.), Nikolai II-ij i Novie Mucheniki, St. Petersburg, 2000, p. 770 ®.
[48] The best effort was by S. Troitsky
in one of the three reports attached by the Russian Holy Synod to their
decision of 1913: “Afonskaia Smuta”, Tserkovnie Vedomosti, N 20,
1913, pp. 882-909 ®.
[49] See Constantine Papoulides, Oi Rossoi
onomolatroi tou Agiou Orous, Thessaloniki, 1977 (G).
[50] See V. Moss, “The Name of God and the Name-Worshipping Heresy”,
[51] Metropolitan Anastasius, Conversations with My Own Heart, Jordanville, 1948, p. 123 ®; translated in Living Orthodoxy, N 101, vol. XVII, no. 5, September-October, 1996, p. 9.
[52] Bishop Andronicus, “Russkij grazhdanskij stroj zhizni pered sudom khristianina”, Fryazino, 1995, pp. 24-25 (R).
[53] In Gubanov, op. cit., p. 30.
[54] In Gubanov, op. cit., p. 70.
[55] In Gubanov, op. cit., p. 62.
[56] Nazarov, Kto naslednik rossijskogo prestola&, Moscow: “Russkaia Idea”, 1996, pp. 68-69 ®.
[57] A.D. Stepanov, “Mezhdu mirom i monastyrem”, in Tajna Bezzakonia, St. Petersburg, 2002, p. 491 ®.
[58] Quoted by Oleg Lebedev, “Mezhdu Febralyem i Oktyabrem”, Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 13 November, 1996, p. 5 ®.
[59] Danilushkin, op. cit., p. 88.
[60]
Quoted in Tamara Groyan’s work on Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, Tsariu
Nebesnomu i Zemnomu Vernij, Moscow: Palomnik, 1996, p. 142 ®. Italics mine (V.M.).
[61] Pis’ma Blazhenneishago Mitropolita Antonia (Khrapovitskago), op. cit., p. 57 ®. Cf. Victor Antonov, “1917 god: Arkhiepiskop Antonij i Fevralisty”, Vozvrashchenie, N 2 (6), 1994, p. 25 ®.
[62] Quoted in Groyan, op. cit., p. 128.
[63] Quoted in G.M. Katkov, Fevral’skaia Revoliutsia, Paris: YMCA Press, 1984, p. 370 ®.
[64] In Groyan, op. cit., pp. 122, 123.
[65] Quoted in Groyan, op. cit., pp. 183-184. Bishop Gregory Grabbe called Lvov “a not altogether normal fantasiser” (Russkaya Tserkov’ pered litsom gospodstvuyushchego zla, Jordanville, 1991, p. 4 ®).
[66] “Preemstvennost’ Grekha”, publication of the parish of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, Tsaritsyn, p. 7 ®.
[67] A. Paryaev, “Mitropolit Sergij Stragorodskij: Nyeizvestnaya Biographiya”, Suzdal’skie Eparkhial’nie Vedomosti, N 1, September, 1997, pp. 12-15 ®.
[68] Suggestions of the Diocesan Hierarchs on the Reform of the Church, St. Petersburg, 1906, vol. 3, p. 443 (in Russian).
[69] See V ob’iatiakh semiglavago zmiia, Montreal, 1984, p. 14 ®.
[70]
Preemstvennost’ Grekha”, op. cit., p. 7.
[71] See “K 80-lyetiyu Izbraniya Sv. Patriarkha Tikhona na Svyashchennom sobore Rossijskoj Tserkvi 1817-18gg.”, Suzdal’skie Eparkhial’nie Vedomosti, N 2, November, 1997, p. 19 ®.
[72]
The electors in Vladimir rejected beforehand all candidates who had displayed
monarchist or “reactionary” tendencies before the revolution. The liberal
Sergius was therefore a natural choice. See Paryaev, op. cit.
[73] Lebedev, op.
cit.
[74] Translated in Nicholas Zernov, “The 1917 Council of the Russian Orthodox Church”, Religion in Communist Lands, vol. 6, no. 1, 1978, p. 21.
[75] Regelson, op. cit., p. 67.
[76] Translated in Zernov, op. cit.
[77] Pipes, op. cit., p. 343. According to Regelson (op. cit., p. 226), this took place on January 19.
[78] Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, London: Pimlico, 1997, p. 528; Archpriest Michael Polsky, The New Martyrs of Russia, Wildwood, Alberta: Monastery Press, 2000, pp. 91-92.
[79] Russian text in M.E. Gubonin, Akty Svyateishego Patriarkha Tikhona, Moscow: St. Tikhon’s Theological Institute, 1994, pp. 82-85 ®.
[80] Fr. Alexander Lebedev writes: “The Sobor addressed the issue three days after the Decree was signed, at its 71st Session on January 27, 1918. The need for a prompt decision by the Church on how to relate to the civil calendar change was clear – the change was to take place four days later.
“It was decided to send the issue to a Joint Session of two separate Sections of the Sobor – the Section on Divine Services and the Section on the Relationship of the Church to the State.
“This Joint Session of the two Sections met two days later, on January 29, 1918 and heard two major reports, one by Professor S.S. Glagolev, entitled ‘A Comparative Evaluation of the Julian and Gregorian Styles’, and one by Prof. I.I. Sokolov, entitled, ‘The Attitude of the Orthodox East to the Question of the Reform of the Calendar’.
“Neither of these presentations in any way supported the introduction into Church life of the Gregorian Calendar – quite the contrary. Prof. Glagolev concluded, ‘The Gregorian Calendar, in addition to being historically harmful, is astronomically useless’… Professor Sokolov concluded: ‘Therefore, the controlling voice of the Orthodox East, both Greek and Slavic, is expressed as being not only against the Gregorian calendar, as a creature of the inimical to it [the Orthodox East] Catholic West, but also against a neutral or corrected calendar, because such a reform would deleteriously affect the ecclesiastical life of the Orthodox peoples.’
“Finally, the Joint Session of the two Sections prepared a Resolution on the issue of calendar reform.
“It decreed that the Church must stay with the Julian calendar, basing its decision on the following:
“1) There is no reason for the Church not to have a separate ecclesiastical calendar different from the civil calendar.
“2) The Church not only is able to preserve the Old Calendar, – at the present time it would be impossible for it to move to the new calendar.
“3) The introduction of the new calendar by the Russian Church would cause it to break unity with all of the other Orthodox Churches. Any change in the calendar can only be done by mutual agreement of all the Orthodox Churches.
“4) It is impossible to correlate the Orthodox Paschalion with the Gregorian Calendar without causing grave disruption to the Typicon.
“5) It is recognised that the Julian Calendar is astronomically inaccurate. This was noted already at the Council of Constantinople in 1583. However, it is incorrect to believe that the Gregorian Calendar is better suited for ecclesiastical use.
“In conclusion, the Joint Session resolved to maintain the Julian Calendar.
“The Council, in full session, approved this Resolution of the Joint Session.” (“St. Patriarch Tikhon and the Calendar Question Part 1”, orthodox@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU, 10 July, 2002).
[81] Gubonin, op. cit., pp. 280, 296.
[82] Gubonin, op. cit., p. 151.
[83] “Iz sobraniya Tsentral’nogo gosudarstvennogo arkhiva Oktyabr’skoj revolyutsii: listovka byez vykhodnykh dannykh, pod N 1011”, Nauka i Religia, 1989, no. 4 (R); partly translated in Arfed Gustavson, The Catacomb Church, Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1960, p. 9. One member of the Council said: “If the father, mother, brothers and sisters did not receive the returning evil-doer, but expelled him, saying: ‘You are a scoundrel, your hands are covered in blood, you are not our son, nor our brother,’ the disorders would cease” (Deyania Sobora, vol. 6, p. 40).
[84] V.A. Konovalov, Otnoshenie khristianstva k sovyetskoj vlasti, Montreal, 1936, p. 35 (R). As Bishop Gregory (Grabbe), the foremost canonist of the Russian Church Abroad, wrote: “With regard to the question of the commemoration of authorities, we must bear in mind that now we are having dealings not simply with a pagan government like Nero’s, but with the apostasy of the last times. Not with a so far unenlightened authority, but with apostasy. The Holy Fathers did not relate to Julian the Apostate in the same way as they did to the other pagan Emperors. And we cannot relate to the antichristian authorities in the same way as to any other, for its nature is purely satanic.” (Pis’ma, Moscow, 1998, p. 85 (R))
[85] V.A. Konovalov, op. cit., p. 35.
[86] Professor Ivan Andreyev, “The Catacomb Church in the Soviet Union”, Orthodox Life, March-April, 1951. For details of the destruction wrought against the Church in these years, see Vladimir Rusak, Pir Satany, London, Canada: Zarya, 1991 (R).
[87] Deyania Sobora, p. 159 (R). In reply to this remark, Protopriest Ilya
Gromoglasov said: “Our only hope is not that we may have an earthly tsar or
president… but that there should be a heavenly Tsar, Christ”.
[88] Deyania Sobora, p. 159, pp. 177-179.
[89] Bogoslovskij Vestnik, N 1, 1993, p. 217 ®.
[90] Regelson, op. cit., pp. 236-237.
[91] For example, Hieromartyr Victor, Bishop of Glazov and Vyatka, perhaps the very first bishop to separate from Metropolitan Sergius in 1927. See Anna Ilyinskaya, “Obretenie chestniykh moshchej svyashchenno-ispovednika Viktora Vyatskago”, Pravoslavnaia Rus’, N 17 (1638), September 1/14, 1999, pp. 5-7; K.V. Glazkov, “Tserkovnoye pochitaniye novago syashchenno-ispovednika Viktora i novomuchenikov v Rossii”, Pravoslavnaia Rus’, N 17 (1638), September 1/14, 1999, pp. 5-8) ®.
[92] See the prophetic remarks of Fr. Oleg Oreshkin on this subject in “Ierei Oleg otvechayet na voprosy redaktsii”, Pravoslavnaia Rus’, N 23 (1452), December 1/14, 1991, p. 7 ®.
[93] “Tserkovnost’ ili politika?”, Pravoslavnaia Rus’, N 9 (1558), May 1/14, 1996, p. 4 (R).
[94] “Sermon before a pannikhida for the Tsar-Martyr”, Arkhiepiskop Ioann, Arkhipastyr, Molitvennik i Podvizhnik, San Francisco, 1991, p. 125 (R). Cf. Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev): “There is no need to say how terrible a ‘touching’ of the Anointed of God is the overthrow of the tsar by his subjects. Here the transgression of the given command of God reaches the highest degree of criminality, which is why it drags after it the destruction of the state itself” (Russkaia Ideologia, St. Petersburg, 1992, pp. 50-51) (R). And so, insofar as it was the disobedience of the people that compelled the Tsar to abdicate, leading inexorably to his death, “we all,” in the words of Archbishop Averky, “Orthodox Russian people, in one way or another, to a greater or lesser degree, are guilty of allowing this terrible evil to be committed on our Russian land” (Istinnoe Pravoslavie i Sovremennij Mir, Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1971, p. 166 (R)).
[95] Cited in Orthodoxy America, June, 1987, pp. 10-11.
[96] Gubonin, op. cit., p. 143.
[97] Regelson, op. cit., p. 52; Gubonin, op. cit., p. 146.
[98] Cited in Anonymous, V Obyatiyakh Semiglavago Zmiya, op. cit., pp. 22-23.
[99] Lenin, Letter to Gorky (1913), Collected Works (second edition, 1926-1932), vol. 17, pp. 81-86 (R). Cf. S.G. Pushkarev, Lenin i Rossia, Frankfurt: Possev-Verlag, 1986, introduction (R): R. Wurmbrand, Was Karl Marx a Satanist?, Diane books, 1978.
[100] Liberman, S.I. “Narodnij komisar Krasin”, Novij zhurnal, N 7, 1944, p. 309 ®; quoted in Volkogonsky, D. Lenin, London: Harper Collins, 1994, p. 372. According to another version of this anecdote, Lenin said: “The peasants should pray to it; in any case they will feel its effects long before they feel any effect from on high” (S. Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism, Cambridge, Mass., London, England: Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 124).
[101] Solzhenitsyn, Acceptance Speech, Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, 1983; Russkaia Mysl’, no. 3465, 19 May, 1983, p. 6 (R).
[102]
Fr. Stefan Krasovitsky writes that while the patriarch did not bless the
Volunteer Army of Denikin in the South of Russia, he did send his blessing to
Admiral Kolchak in Siberia (“Otvyet apologetu kommunisticheskoj ideologii”, Pravoslavnaia
Rus’, 1553, February 15/28, 1996, p. 15 (R)). According to another source,
he sent Bishop Nestor with an icon of St. Nicholas to Kolchak in Omsk with the
following instruction: “Tell the people that if they do not unite and take
Moscow again by armed force, then we will perish and Holy Rus’ will perish with
us” (Vladimir Gubanov, Nikolai II i novie mucheniki, Moscow, 2000, p. 131 ®).
[103] Regelson, op. cit., p. 250.
[104] A similar situation had arisen in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, when the Orthodox archbishop of Japan, Nicholas Kasatkin, counselled the Japanese Orthodox priests within his jurisdiction to pray for the success of the Japanese army, although he, being a Russian, felt unable to do that personally.
[105] Quoted in Sergius Fomin, op. cit., p. 229.
[106] Nazarov, Tajna Rossii, Moscow: “Russkaia Idea”, 1999, pp. 85-86 (R). A.D. Stepanov writes: “The officials of ‘the old regime’ were not honoured by the leaders of the White army. Civil posts under Denikin were occupied mainly by cadets” (op. cit., p. 493).
[107] “Tserkovnost’ ili politika?”, Pravoslavnaia Rus’, N 1558, May 1/14, 1996, p. 4 (R).
[108] Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ i kommunisticheskoe gosudarstvo, 1917-1941, Moscow: Terra, 1996, p. 69 ®.
[109] Gustavson, op. cit., p. 34.
[110] Anatoly Latyshev, “Provyesti besposhadnij Massovij Terror Protiv Popov”, Argumenty i Fakty, 26, 1996 (R).
[111] Rusak, Pir Satany, op. cit.
[112] Latyshev, op. cit.
[113] S. Savelyev, “Bog i komissary”, in Bessmertny A.R. and Filatov, S.B., Religia I Demokratia, Moscow: Progress, 1993, pp. 164-216 ®.
[114] Quoted in Edward Radzinsky, Stalin, New York: Doubleday, 1996. p. 244.
[115] Protopriest Vladislav Tsipin, “Obnovlenchestvo. Raskol i ego Predistoria”, Pravoslavnaia Beseda, 1994, N 3, p. 31 ®.
[116] N.A., “Nye bo vragom Tvoim tajnu povyem…”, Vestnik Germanskoj Eparkhii Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi za Granitsej, 1992, no. 1, p. 17 (R). Cf. Grabbe, op. cit., p. 42.
[117] Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, London: Fontana, vol. 1, pp. 342-344.
[118] Gubonin, op. cit., p. 190; quoted in “Mucheniki Shuiskie”, Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo Dvizhenia, 170, III-1994, p. 182 (R).
[119] One concession to the Antichrist invariably leads to others. Thus on February 24, 1923 the GPU agent Jacob Savlovich Agranov forced the Patriarch to make further concessions on this issue. “From the point of view of the Bolsheviks,” writes N. Krivova, “Tikhon’s epistle of February 28, 1922 was incorrect juridically speaking, for according to the decree of 1918 on the separation of the Church from the State Church property passed to the State and was declared the heritage of the State. Tikhon testified that in the Church canons there are no indications to the effect that State power in the event of the confiscation of Church valuables during popular disturbances should turn to the Church authorities for agreement. Although of course the Patriarch very well understood that the valuables taken from the Church would not be used for aid to the starving. And nevertheless he declared that the Soviet government need not turn to the Patriarch for agreement to the requisitioning. They managed to get an analogous testimony from the Patriarch’s closest colleague, Archbishop Nicander (Fenomenov).
“Thus the GPU obtained a most important testimony from the Patriarch to the effect that he was guilty in issuing an appeal with regard to the requisitioning of Church valuables, that the use of the Church valuables for the needs of the starving was not sacrilege and did not contradict the Church canons” (Vlast’ i Tserkov’ v 1922-1925gg., Moscow, 1997; quoted in S. Golubtsov, op. cit., pp. pp. 151-152).
[120] Matushka Evgenia Grigorievna Rymarenko, “Remembrances of Optina Staretz Hieroschemamonk Nektary”, Orthodox Life, vol. 36, no. 3, May-June, 1986, p. 39.
[121] Op cit., pp. 184-85. See also Gregory Ravich, “Ograblennij Khristos, ili brillianty dlya diktatury proletariata”, Chas-Pik, no. 18, p. 24 (R).
[122] Ravich, op. cit., pp.24-25.
[123] Ibid., p. 26. According to another estimate, the antiChurch campaign cost the lives of 28 bishops and 1,215 priests – over 8000 people altogether (Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919-1924, op. cit., p. 355). According to a third estimate, up to 10,000 believers were killed (V. Petrenko, “Sv. Patriarkh Vserossijskij Tikhon”, Vestnik I.P.Ts., N 1 (11), 1998, p. 27 ®.
[124] Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij, vol. 45, p. 666, cited in Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo Dvizhenia, no. 94, pp. 54-60, Regelson, op. cit., p. 314 (R), an Richard Pipes The Unknown Lenin, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996, p. 134. Volkogonov said that he had seen a document in which Lenin requested that he be informed on a daily basis how many priests had been executed (Literator, August 31, 1990, p. 4, in Pipes, The Unknown Lenin, p. 11, note).
This was not the first time Lenin had demonstrated his bloodthirstiness in relation to the Church. In an order dated May 1, 1919, marked “strictly secret” and addressed to Dzerzhinsky, he said that “it is necessary to finish with the priests and religion as quickly as possible. Priests should be arrested as counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs, they should be shot mercilesslyand everywhere. And as many of them as possible. The churches are subject to closure. The buildings of the churches should be sealed and turned into warehouses” (in “Dokumenty svidetel’stvuyut”, Vestnik I.P.Ts., N 3 (17), 1999, p. 76 ®.
[125] Pipes, The Unknown Lenin, op. cit., p. 155. Volkogonov (op. cit., p. 380) agrees with this opinion.
[126] “Mucheniki Shuiskiye”, op. cit., p. 190.
[127] According to another estimate, between four and ten million dollars. See Pipes, op. cit., p. 355. For another estimate, see Volkogonov, op. cit., p. 381. Rukh (N 34, November 4, 1996) reports that the Bolsheviks received a “profit” of 2.5 million gold rubles, while killing 40,000 priests, deacons and monks (in Vestnik I.P.Ts. (Odessa), N 1, 1997, p. 45 (R)).
[128] Richard Joseph Cooke, Religion in Russia and the Soviets, p. 149.
[129] Pipes, op. cit., p. 355.