Orthodoxy and the Soviet Regime: From Conflict to Adaptation

ABSTRACT

The Soviet authorities applied the most rigid model of state–confessional relations—segregation—to the Russian Orthodox Church. They emphasized the complete exclusion of the church from public life and its subsequent liquidation. By 1919 the Church was already publicly avoiding conflict with the Soviet authorities; its attempts at adaptation, however, were unsuccessful. By 1939, the church organization in the Soviet Union was practically eliminated, though the majority of the population still believed in God. This fact, as well as foreign-policy interests and the loyalty to the state exhibited by the majority of believers during the war, led to a softening of the segregation model and to the church’s adaptation to operating within the Soviet state.

KEYWORDS:

• Russian Orthodox Church
• Soviet Union
• Lenin
• Stalin
• socialism

Notes

1. On the state-confessional relations models, see S. Ferrari, “Evropeiskaia model’ tserkovno-gosudarstvennykh otnoshenii. Chast’ I. Evropeiskaia model’ otnoshenii mezhdu gosudarstvom i religiiami,” Nauchnyi biulleten’ “Sravnitel’noe pravo,” 2005 (February 25); A.Iu. Grigorenko, “Osnovnye tipy i modeli godustarstvenno-tserkovnykh otnoshenii v sovremennom mire (XX–XXI veka),” Vestnik Russkoi krhistianskoi gumanitarnoi akademii, 2015, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 140–144.

2. V.I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 48 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1970), pp. 226–227. (For “little god,” Lenin uses the common diminutive “bozhen’ka,” meant to express a kind of endearing if not childlike quality—ironically here, of course. Similarly, he uses a colloquial word for priest, “pop,” with a disdainful tone.—Trans.)

3. Akty Sviateishego Tikhona, Patriarkha Moskovskogo i vseiia Rossii, pozdneishie dokumenty i perepiska o kanonicheskom preemstve vysshei tserkovnoi vlasti, 1917–1943, ed. M.E. Gubonin (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo PSTBI, 1994), p. 83.

4. Bog sudil mne byt’ ispovednikom. Zhitie sviashchennoispovednika Romana Medvedia (Moscow: Regional’nyi obshchestvennyi fond “Pamiat’ muchenikov i spovednikov Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi,” 2020), p. 266.

5. V.N. Murav’ev, Sochineniia (Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2011), vol. 1, p. 192.

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8. Akty Sviateishego Tikhona, Patriarkha Moskovskogo i vseiia Rossii, p. 164.

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16. The author references the somewhat condescending term for the peasant women’s protests against collectivization, the “bab’i bunty.” “Baba” is a dismissive term for women, implying their ignorance, hysteria, etc.—Trans.

17. V.S. Batchenko, Vlast’ i vera: antireligioznaia politika i ee vospriiatie naseleniem Zapadnoi oblasti, 1929–1934 gg. (St. Petersburg: Petroglif, 2019), pp. 187–239.

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19. N. Emel’ianov, “K voprosu o chisle novomuchenikov i ispovednikov Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi v XX veke,” Materialy XV Ezhegodnoi Bogoslovskoi konferentsii PSTGU (Moscow, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 265–271.

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23. Pomestnyi sobor Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi. Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, 6–9 iiunia 1988 goda. Materialy (Moscow: Izdanie Moskovskoi Patriarkhii, 1990), pp. 86–91, 116–117.