Beginnings and first period (1920s–1930s) In 1919–1920, the
Cheka officials began actively seeking contacts with those representatives of the Orthodox clergy who, in their opinion, were suitable for the role of destroyers of the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church. The first attempts to introduce an element of disorganization into the church environment, acting through hierarchs (or former hierarchs) from the patriarch's entourage, were not crowned with success. Therefore, the Cheka decided to act through the young white parish clergy, who are revolutionary in relation to possible intra-church transformations, leading the case to eventually quarrel between "the priests and the episcopate", married ("white") and monastic ("black") clergy. The special VI branch of the GPU became the coordinating center of all efforts to split the Church through the
GPU (
OGPU since 15 November 1923) headed by
Yevgeny Tuchkov. The general management of the process of the split of the Church was concentrated (although not immediately) in the hands of the
Politburo of the
Central Committee (personally responsible –
Leon Trotsky). By the spring of 1922, the necessary organizational preparations for striking the Church were completed. The right moment to start was needed. Such an opportune moment soon presented itself on the occasion of the launch of a campaign to seize church valuables. As a special representative of the Council of People's Commissars, Leon Trotsky led the work of the Commission on Accounting and Concentration of Values. On January 23, 1922, the members of the Commission agreed that work on the removal of valuables from existing religious institutions should begin in the near future in the two or three most important regions of the country (
Moscow,
Petrograd,
Novgorod). Among the preparatory activities included work with representatives of the Church: "If necessary, individual representatives of the clergy may be involved, who, contrary to the anti-Soviet clergy, would sharply defend the government's measures, thus introducing a split among the clergy." After the
events in Shuya on March 15, 1922, where the commission for the seizure of valuables faced massive and stubborn resistance of believers, Leon Trotsky on March 17, 1922, in a letter to
Lev Kamenev,
Vyacheslav Molotov and
Timofei Sapronov, formulated 17 theses containing detailed instructions to the party-Soviet and Chekist bodies regarding the forms and methods of expropriation of church valuables (the leadership of the campaign was henceforth in the hands of party organs). Among other things, it was proposed to "decisively split the clergy" by taking under the protection of state power those clergy who openly advocate the transfer of church wealth to the state. In the same month, the so-called "Petrograd Group of Progressive Clergy" was formed. The first program document of the group was the declaration on
famine relief dated March 24, 1922, was signed by 12 clergymen. The participants of the Petrograd group immediately became active:
Alexander Vvedensky and
Alexander Boyarsky made reports almost daily, urging them to give away church values.
Vladimir Krasnitsky did not make reports, but he tied ties with various institutions, in particular with the Cheka, which was then located on
Gorokhovaya Street, 2. It was Krasnitsky who became the main organizer among the participants of the Petrograd group. Under his leadership, which, however, was disputed by Vvedensky and Boyarsky, the Petrograd group became the center of the nascent renovationist movement. This move was quickly (18 June 1922) denounced by Agathangel as unlawful and uncanonical. However, for a brief time it seemed that the Renovationists had gotten the upper hand. The Renovationists, with full support of Soviet authorities, seized many church buildings and monasteries, including the famous
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in
Moscow. In many dioceses, the married ("white") clergy was encouraged to take church government into their own hands, without approval of their diocesan bishops. Simultaneously, these bishops were often threatened and pressed to recognize the authority of the
Supreme Church Administration (SCA). In effect, this resulted in "parallel" church administrations existing in one diocese and one city, one supporting the SCA and the other supporting the canonical bishop. This campaign of terror had its effects: by the summer of 1922, more than 20 hierarchs had recognized the canonical authority of SCA, the most notorious of whom was Metropolitan
Sergius (Stragorodsky) of
Nizhny Novgorod, the future Patriarch. In many large cities, all of Orthodox church properties were in the hands of Renovationists. Before convening any general council to discuss their measures, the Renovationists began to implement radical reforms aimed at what they perceived to be the interests of the married clergy. Among the measures, changing the traditional order of ecclesiastic life were: :* Permission for
monastics (including bishops) to marry, while retaining their episcopal and clerical ranks; :* Permission for the clergy to marry after their ordination, to remarry or to marry widows; :* Permission for the married priests to be consecrated as bishops (Christian Orthodox tradition is that only monastics may be Bishops). The last decision sparked a number of consecrations of "married bishops" throughout the country, especially in
Siberia. As a result of its promulgation, of 67 bishops that arrived to the
Second Moscow Council in April 1923, only 20 had been ordained before the
schism. The consecration of the "married bishops" without waiting for a conciliar decision on changing appropriate Canons met with opposition even among many Renovationist leaders and those "married bishops" later received a second laying on of hands before the Council opened. The
I Renovationist (or officially
"II All-Russian" Council) met in
Moscow between 29 April and 8 May 1923. Its most controversial and infamous decision was to put
Patriarch Tikhon (who was under house arrest, awaiting trial) on ecclesiastic trial
in absentia for his opposition to
Communism, and to strip him of his
episcopacy,
priesthood and
monastic status. The council allowed the marriage for episcopate and second marriage for priests. Monasteries "as having deviated from the pure monastic idea" were ordered to be closed. The Council then resolved to abolish the
Patriarchate altogether and to return to the "collegial" form of church government. The Supreme Church Administration was renamed to the Supreme Church Council, still under the chairmanship of Antonin (Granovsky).
Patriarch Tikhon, who was visited by delegation from the council, refused to recognize the authority of this council and the validity of the "court" decision, due to many irregularities in canonical procedure: essentially, the decision had no effect on the life of the Patriarchal or "Tikhonite" Church. On June 24, 1923, a power struggle among the factions resulted in the forced resignation of Metropolitan Antonin (Granovsky). On June 29, 1923, he declared his "Union for Church Renewal" autocephalous and soon reverting to his previous title of "bishop", engaged in a series of radical liturgical experiments: e.g., moving the altar table to the middle of the church, among other changes. He made one of the first translations of the
Divine Liturgy into modern
Russian. His group disintegrated in 1929. The telling blow against Renovationism was the return of
Patriarch Tikhon to active duty in June 1923 when, under international pressure, he was released from house arrest. Already by that time, large passive resistance to the Renovationists, especially in rural areas, had undermined their efforts to "take over" the Russian Church. On 15 July 1923, the Patriarch declared all Renovationist decrees, as well as all their sacramental actions (including
ordinations) to be without grace, due to the "trickery" by which they tried to seize power in the Church and to their complete disregard for the
canons. In August 1923, the council of
Russian Orthodox bishops, returned from exile and imprisonment, confirmed Tikhon's decision, proclaiming the Renovationist hierarchy as "unlawful and without grace". Some of the churches were returned to the "Tikhonites" (as Renovationists called the "Patriarchal" Church at that time), and many bishops and priests who had been pressed to support the
schism, repented and were received back into
communion. In addition to ecclesiological experimentation, the 1920s, the Renovationist Church had some activity in the fields of education and apologetics. Particularly, in 1924 the church was allowed to open two institutions of higher learning: the
Moscow Theological Academy and the
Theological Institute in Leningrad. Some contacts were made with other portions of the Christian East: thus, the
II Renovationist Council (a.k.a.
III All-Russian Council), convened in Moscow in 1–9 October 1925, was marked by the presence of the representatives from the
Patriarchates of
Constantinople and
Alexandria who concelebrated the
eucharist with other members of the Renovationist Synod. In the second half of the 1920s, the canonical
Russian Orthodox Church started making steps toward some form of
rapprochement with the Soviet regime. Significantly, in 1927, the Deputy Patriarchal
Locum Tenens, Metropolitan
Sergius Stragorodsky issued a "Declaration" proclaiming absolute loyalty of the Church to the
Soviet government and its interests. Subsequently, a Synod formed by Sergius, received recognition from the Soviets. This had effectively put the Renovationist Synod out of place as the chief spokesman for the alliance between the Church and the Soviet state, and it was then that the Renovationist movement began its rapid decline.
Decline (1930s–1940s) By the mid-1930s the general failure of the movement had become evident. Having failed to attract the majority of the faithful, the movement ceased to be useful for the Soviet regime and, consequently, both the "Patriarchal" Church and the Renovationists suffered fierce persecution at the hands of Soviet secret services: church buildings were closed down and often destroyed; active clergy and laity were imprisoned and sometimes executed. At the same time, trying to "win back" more traditional
Russian Orthodox, the church had abandoned all attempts at ecclesiastical or liturgical reform, with the exception of the concessions previously made to married clergy. Instead, the Renovationist Church made attempts at imitating external liturgical and organizational forms of their opponents from the "Patriarchal" Church. In 1934, the Renovationist Synod issued an infamous decision declaring the "allegiance to the old church" (
староцерковничество), i.e., the Patriarchal Church, to be a "heresy" and a "schism". The mastermind behind that decision, Metropolitan
Nikolai (Platonov) of Leningrad resigned from episcopacy in 1938, publicly denounced the faith and became an infamous propagator of
atheism. The Renovationist church continued to dwindle in numbers; the process intensified starting in 1939, when the Synod forbade the diocesan bishops to do any priestly
ordinations without its approval. The final blow to the movement came with the beginning of the
Second World War in 1941. The Metropolitan's residence had to be relocated due to evacuation. Therefore, the Synod had difficulties contacting and controlling its clergy in the parishes. More importantly, in its efforts to seek moral and financial support from the
Eastern Orthodox Church,
Joseph Stalin decided to turn to the more popular and traditional
Russian Orthodox Church led by
Sergius, rather than to its largely unsuccessful rivals. On 8 September 1943, Stalin met with three chief hierarchs of the "Patriarchal" Church and promised to make concessions to the Church and religion in general in exchange for its allegiance and support. One of the effects of this unlikely
concordat was that the days of the Renovationist movement were numbered. What followed was a deluge of Renovationist clerics seeking reconciliation with Sergius. As a general rule, the Patriarchal Church considered all sacraments celebrated by Renovationists "null and void", hence these receiving clergy were received in those orders in which they happened to be upon the moment when they joined the schism (i.e. 1922). The only exception was made for Metropolitan
Alexander Vvedensky, who was regarded as the ‘father-founder’ of the schism. Vvedensky refused to come into the Moscow Patriarchy as a layman, and died unreconciled. In 1943, the Renovationist church had 13 active hierarchs and 10 more bishops, retired or in exile. By 1945 only three bishops remained, one of whom was retired. In Moscow, only one church remained under Renovationist control; the rest of the church properties had been returned by the Soviet government to the Moscow Patriarchy while Vvedensky was in evacuation. Vvedensky died of a stroke on July 8, 1946, with his church in complete disarray. By this time, almost all the Renovationist parishes and clergy had been annexed to the Moscow Patriarchate. After that scattered and isolated communities left in the country, headed by priests, who, in case of repentance, were defrocked for canonical reasons. The last Renovationist bishops to recognize the patriarchal Church were Archbishop Gabriel (Olkhovik) (1948) and Seraphim (Korovin) (August 1, 1948) and Alexander (Shcherbakov) (April 17, 1949). The last Renovationist hierarch in the USSR was Metropolitan Philaret (Yatsenko) of Krutitsy, who considered himself the head of the Renovationist Church. He died in early 1951, leaving no successors. == Leadership and administration ==