This Essay on the pending ROCOR-MP Union is by permission from
ROCOR Scholar Dr. Eugene L Magerovsky, Ph.D. in Russian Foreign
Affairs (Columbia, 1975). Dr. Magerovsky is now Vice-President of
the Association of Russian-American Scholars. Formerly of New York
and Fordham Universities, he had taught Russian History and Russian
Political Science at the Graduate School of Georgetown University.
Dr. Eugene L Magerovsky is currently also Vice-President of the
Russian Expert Commission Abroad, an inquiry into the fate of the
remains of the members of the Russian Imperial House murdered by the
Communists on July 17th, 1918, in Ekaterinburg, Russia. He now
resides in Kinnelon, New Jersey, with his family and attends ROCOR's
Novo-Diveevo Church in Spring Valley, New York.
NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR UNITY
By Dr. Eugene L. Magerovsky (ROCOR)
The Moscow Patriarchate with President Putin in the lead is
presently conducting a vehement campaign whose purpose is the full
unification of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad with the Russian
Orthodox Church in Moscow. It would seem that, under normal
conditions, the possibility of joining the diaspora with the
metropolia would be welcome. But unfortunately, it will soon be a
hundred years that the conditions in Russia have not been normal.
The golden crowned vaults of stone cupolas with Christian crosses
have not always been an indication of inner piety. Quite the
opposite at times.
Let us conduct a small history lesson. For two centuries our church
was subordinated to the government in the form of the Holy Synod,
under its secular Chief Procurator. When the Patriarchate was
restored, St. Tikhon was elected Patriarch at the All-Russian Church
Council of 1917-18. But the same year also saw the seizure of power
by the Bolsheviks and the beginning of the systematic persecution of
the church and the almost total extermination of the clergy, which
led to its withdrawal underground. Then Patriarch Tikhon was
obliged to issue his decree stating that when contact is lost
between the center and outer legal church authorities, then the
local church authorities can act independently until these contacts
are restored.
Thus the Higher Ecclesiastical Authority was formed on territory
occupied by the Whites in the Civil War and subsequently emigrated
together with the Whites to establish itself in Sremske-Karlovice,
Yugoslavia. When it became clear that the atheist Bolshevik regime
had become firmly entrenched in Russia, the Ecclesiastical Authority
became the Synod of Bishops Abroad. When the Communist Tito came to
power in Yugoslavia, the Synod moved to West Germany, and from there
to America, where it became to be known as the Russian Orthodox
Church Abroad.
After the death of Patriarch Tikhon at the very dawn of the Soviet
regime, subsequent incumbents changed one after another as the
Bolsheviks killed them or sent them to prison, until there remained
only the Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky to assume the authority
of the Patriarch. Strictly speaking there were others, but although
he himself was in prison, he quasi-legally declared himself head of
the church. Whether independently or whether following the
instructions, it is said, of the Soviet bureaucrat Comrade Tuchkov,
in 1927 he wrote a letter to the Soviet authorities …quot; a sort of
Declaration …quot; which stated that “your pains and sadness are our
pains and sadness, and your joys are our joys,” and gave himself and
the church over to the total disposal of the atheistic Soviet
regime. It is said to have been a pact with the devil. But this not
only failed to placate Soviet antireligious policies, but rather it
allowed them to develop even more, such that by the beginning of the
1940s, according to Fr. Ardov, there were only three or four
parishes left throughout all of Russia at that time.
The most terrible temptation befell the church in 1943, when Stalin
decided to employ it as a lever to enslave and dupe the people even
more, all in order to get greater collaboration from his people in
his struggle with Germany. Since the country was officially
atheistic, the Patriarchate had for all practical purposes ceased to
exist after the death of Tikhon in 1925. Stalin then summoned
Sergius Stragorodsky to one of his regular night consultations in
September 1943, together with several Church hierarchs “willing to
collaborate”, and with them he drew up a plan for a restored Moscow
Patriarchate, now consisting of “obedient” bishops, almost all of
whom were recruited by organs of the secret police--the NKVD. It is
said that the Soviet bureaucrats Karpov and Kuroedov were the
inspiration behind this affair.
What is more, a specifically Soviet Russian situation in church
relations came to pass at this moment and has continued for over a
half century whereby the untainted, truly religious, ascetic and
secretly prayerful flock has fallen into the hands of a pseudo-
hierarchy thoroughly seduced by Soviet central authorities. I know
of no other state except the Soviet Union where such a system could
exist for so long. It is interesting that Stalin laid down, and
subsequent Soviet leaders further developed the condition in their
organization of the church whereby the apparent to all
“Patriarchate” was subordinated to the semi-public state
“Kuroedov Department,” or the so-called “Committee for Religious Affairs,”
which in reality managed church policy and directed it according to the atheistic interests
of the Soviet state. Precisely this merging of “Partriarchal” and “Synodal” principles can still
be observed in the organization of the church even today.
From the outside everything looked quite nice and neat in the newly
minted Moscow Patriarchate, since each hierarch knew his role and
played it as a matter of life and death. This took place in
internal affairs, when the secrets of the confessional were
systematically divulged, or in the “election” of a new Patriarch
with the “blessing” of atheistic authorities, and it occurred,
ultimately, in foreign settings as well, in work with the World
Council of Churches. The Moscow Patriarchate demonstrated special
zeal in the seizure of church property located abroad, which émigrés
had earlier succeeded in preserving from Soviet hands. And it was
doing this not even for itself, but for the atheistic state, because
in the USSR all property belonged to the state. It is extremely
interesting that with minor exceptions this continues even up to the
present day, despite all the regime changes.
But let us return to our tale. Over a period of more than fifty
years a system has been put together in which the congregation has
managed to expand somewhat and even disassociate itself to some
degree from the state, while being still subjected to temporary, yet
intensive persecution as, say, during Khrushchev’s attack on the
church or during Brezhnev’s “period of stagnation.” Among the
masses of this same …quot; now “officially permitted” …quot; church
thereappeared without doubt a series of heroic laymen and truly dedicated lower
clergy.
Yet the church hierarchy, especially its bishops,
continued to be either the direct creation of atheistic authorities
or to be totally corrupted by personal dependency on them. In this
way a system was developed whereby the KGB or the NKVD, through
its “church” organs, exerted dual influence on the congregation at
large: from above, hierarchically, through “its own” bishops, who
were its subordinates, and through intelligence gathering, among the
masses, with the help of a web of secret informers and their
assistants. From the outside there was the complete appearance of a
relative freedom of religion. In this way there developed a
distinctive church divide in Russia, which continues to this day …
quot;an uncorrupted, truly faithful congregation and its priests, and the
corrupted higher episcopacy.
The events of 1991 are difficult to describe with the usual
terminology. There were indeed some changes, but a great deal
remained from the previous Soviet regime. The one-sided "concordat"
of Sergius Stragorodsky, spiced with Stalin’s agreement and the
founding of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1943, continues in force. The
Patriarch Alexis II recently delivered a speech in praise of Sergius
on the sixtieth anniversary of his death. He has also sent a
telegram of thanks to Yassir Arafat for transferring to the
Patriarchate our church lands in the Holy Land. Although there have
been frequent press reports that the Patriarch somewhere condemned
Sergius’ 1927 Declaration, I keep trying but still cannot locate the
place and text of this condemnation. All the "Red" bishops, who
comprise approximately sixty percent, have retained their positions.
Not a word is said about the fact that the Moscow Patriarchate
itself is a Stalinist creation which ought to be somehow returned to
its normal condition.
Let’s conduct an experiment: if we were in the position of the
Moscow Patriarchate at the end of 1991 and the beginning of 1992,
what would we have done immediately after the change in power?
First of all we would have abolished the Declaration of Metropolitan
Sergius by declaring it contrary to all Christian principles and we
would have conducted a series of prayer services of repentance.
Then, insofar as the Moscow Patriarchate is a “poisoned fruit from a
poisoned tree,” we would have dissolved it by replacing the
Patriarch with a temporary locum tenens or incumbent of the
Patriarch’s seat. We would then have called for an All-Russian
Church Council, which would elect a new Patriarch who would be a
worthy successor to St. Tikhon. Simultaneously with establishing
this incumbency, we would have retired all bishops without exception
who had stained their chasubles by serving atheistic authorities.
We would also have proclaimed that we would not tolerate a
government that allowed the portraits, statues, titles, music and
all sorts of symbols of the atheistic Communist past to remain.
This is what we would have done. One may ask whether the Moscow
Patriarchate undertook at least one of these steps? If not, why
not? And why does it, nonetheless, so insist on its desire to unify
with us and to absorb us, but at the same time continue its attempts
to confiscate our last property in the Holy Land? Does it not seem
that the Soviet regime has already fallen and there is no longer any
need to confiscate anything from the émigrés?
Not only do the Soviet symbols remain, but so do its laws as well.
For example, all churches built before 1917 are “state historical
objects” which belong to the state. Poor Empress Maria Fedorovna,
apparently, upon her “arrival” in the former USSR will also be
interred in a “state historical museum,” which is the Sts. Peter and
Paul Cathedral and where her husband, Alexander III, now lies.
The “privatization” of churches, i.e. their transfer into the hands
of their original owners, was halted in St. Petersburg in 2002. In
the legislation of the state, which is not even called Russia, the
Russian Federation is declared to be the successor-state of the
RSFSR and the USSR, and the Russian Empire, which existed two
hundred years, and another eight hundred before then, seems not to
have existed at all. The “Kuroedov Department,” which joined the
church and the state with the predominance of the latter, also
continues its life, although under a different name, as is the case
with a series of other no less odious departments. Truly, “round
and round it goes, ever returning on its course.”
From all that the Moscow Patriarchate can and wishes to do at the
present time, it is clear that it will in no way come out against
the neo-Soviet regime that has established itself in the country.
It will obediently follow the secular authorities, shutting its eyes
to one thing and purposely not noticing the other. Putin, of
course, who crosses himself correctly and kisses the Patriarch’s
hand, has distanced himself to a great degree from Stalin and even
Gorbachev in his relations with the church, but he still does not
even come close to, say, Alexander III. The Czar was a profoundly
pious individual, but for Putin this is only a charade. It appears
that all the talk about unification is the same sort of charade.
In general, one somehow has no wish to join the “Stalinist tree,”
and if one adds to this the “Red” bishops, the “mummy” on Red
Square, the Soviet national anthem and the red flag which are
constantly and automatically inserted into all this, then it simply
makes one sick. Yes, the faithful Russian masses are innocent of
the affairs of their hierarchs and doubtless Divine Grace is present
in their churches in some inscrutable way. But we, after all, have
been offered to join with the Moscow Patriarchate and not with
them. For a long time now, since the time of the “catacomb church,”
we have shared with them all their terrors and the passions of their
sojourn under the Soviets. We do not have to join with them since
we have always been one with them. The Moscow Patriarchate,
however, has taken no steps to somehow “normalize its status,” but
on the contrary continues to demonstrate its fidelity to the words
and deeds of Metropolitan Sergius and prepares to “forget” about its
own Stalinist origins.
Another matter is no less disturbing. The deliberate and
increasingly profound return of everything Soviet, from the higher
state apparatus to even the ordinary “militia,” which is what in
Russia they keep calling the police. The term had sunk into oblivion
some fifteen years ago even in the nations of Eastern Europe and its
use in Russia now arouses justifiable misgivings in us.
Unfortunately, the church in any state is almost always thought of
together with the state in which it is located, because it is the
state that usually governs church forms and relations. Therefore,
if we were to unite with the Moscow Patriarchate, we would thus be
uniting with a semi-legal church of a newly “Sovietized” state. Do
we really need that? Would it not be better for us to wait for some
time to pass, at which point the church and state, we hope, will
come to their senses, and everything will return to some kind of
more or less normal course, which does not now exist and which is
not anticipated soon?
Thank God, we have somehow existed independently for 87 years
without the Stalinist legacy and, with God’s help, we will continue
to exist. And, perhaps, we will hold on until that time when we can
really and truly unite with the original Russian Orthodox Church, if
it remains intact as such, and not with some sort of surrogate, but
without any of the reservations or conditional or concessive
proposals which are apparently necessary in our present
conversations. An example for us all is the conduct of the Russian
Orthodox Archepiscopacy in France and Western Europe (formerly
the “Evlogian”), which did not unite with the Moscow Patriarchate
despite all its promises, and which continues to exist under the
spiritual jurisdiction of the Exarchate of the Ecumenical Orthodox
Patriarch in Constantinople (Istanbul).
Taking into consideration all that was said before, one has to
remember one unique condition which developed. When in 1943 Stalin
created the Moscow Patriarchy he did not realize the full import of
what he was doing. This is very clear now. The main thing was that
he was creating such an institution in an anti-religious, godless
state, one of the main purposes of which was the eradication of all
religions. He thought that he was organizing a governmnetal
structure totally “obedient” to him and helping him further to
marshal his forces against his war with Germany. Possibly, he also
thought he was acquiring another means of influencing the world
religious community which he could now also use for military
purposes.
It seems that he viewed this newly created body only from the top,
concetrating on the top governmental level of “People’s
Commissariats”, “Ministries” or dioces, and not paying much
attention to its local intitutions, such as parishes which were
historically the centers of religious life. He created a special
state “church-bureacracy”, full of NKVD- and, later, the KGB-men.
In general, he was looking more at the top levels of this
organization than its lower rungs. He also did not seem to pay any
attention to the contents of the old ecclesiastical texts which have
been used in church services for centuries. Therefore, very soon old
customs, habits and practices gradually found their way back into
the prayerful folk. Of course, the vigilant eye of the NKVD or the
KGB kept watch over their behavior, but the country was large and
one cannot pay attention to absolutely everything. So that if not
true freethinking, then at least a certain church outlook, created
by these texts, gradually began to penetrate into the masses.
This was a long process, lasting almost fifty years and moving in
wave-like fashion, with its nadirs and its zeniths. At the same
time, the character of the Soviet power and state was also changing.
The active embittering of the system of terror, which reached its
apogee in the year of Stalin’s death in 1953, gradually gave way to
merely trying to keep the Soviet system within certain bounds. The
state institutions of suppression were slowly getting the idea that
it wasn’t necessary anymore to threaten the population with loss of
liberty or life to keep it in check, that there are other more
effective methods to ensure the “proper behavior” of the Soviet
populace. There also appears a rather rare but as very significant
phenomenon…quot;the “atoning KGB-man”, reminiscent of the “atoning
gendarme” of the past, who finds his present police duties
burdensome and thusly rocks the entire system of naked terror.
“Good behavior” was also achieved by using the top strata of the
church hierarchy, at the controlling positions of which sat
the “red” bishops. A “red” bishop was a person who had completed
NKVD training, then entered a seminary or even an allowed for this
purpose church academy, depending on the kind of work he was sent to
perform. Later the “red” bishops could be volunteers, coming not
only from the secret police ranks but also external sources.
Nevertheless they would prove to be good keepers of the social order
for their political bosses. In this fashion the entire top church
hierarchy was corrupted by direct or indirect collaboration with the
godless powers that be. The lower rungs of the hierarchical ladder
were affected by this to a much lesser degree and, at times,
remained almost totally unaffected. These were, mainly, the small
parishes and little monasteries. Therefore, when the Soviet Union
fell in 1991, these “lower rungs” of the ecclesiastical ladder,
mainly parishes and small monasteries, were liberated from the
directpolitical controls, which remained in the dioceses, metropolies and
higher, since the personnel there was still old, Soviet. This seems
to continue to the present day.
With the disappearance of the Soviet Union, those of us living
abroad had a faint hope that the “Soviet church”, too, would fall,
especially since it had in its lower rungs almost totally liberated
itself from its Stalinist constraints and was ready, together with
its “red” bishops, to fall by the wayside. But to reform the lower
rungs is evidently much easier than the upper echelons and we are
now still standing at that point. At the higher echelons there
existed another form of attraction…quot;the “warm soft spots” that
wedded some people to them, to leave which, especially during the years
of the financial uncertainty in the Russian Federation, was hardly
desirable.
And since these “spots” were still old Soviet ones and covered by
the old “nomenklatura” perks, to remain at such a “warm
spot” was very beneficial. Therefore the “red” hierarchs, on the
whole, remained in their old positions. Only a very small group of
them did make sounds renouncing their former masters, but most just
stayed put. Such is the situation to the present day.
What kind of relations can we have with a church like that? I think
this question is already being answered by us individually. Some of
us attend the Moscow Patriarchy churches and even take communion in
them. Others avoid them, but do not shun their priests, should they
meet them on some neutral ground. Still others do not go to their
churches and avoid any contact with their clergy. This is
approximately the whole scale of our relationships with the Moscow
Patriarchy. But, of course, we cannot even hope to have any talks
with them about us joining it right now.
Before we could merge, the Moscow Patriarchy has totally to
restructure itself. First of all, it has to purge itself of
its “red” bishops.
Second, it should denounce its pact with Antichrist, the 1927
Declaration by the metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) and the
establishment together with Stalin of the Moscow Patriarchy in 1943.
Third, it has to accept that all of the fifty years of its existence
were spent under the godless yoke of the Soviet power, without any
ability to freely address the world and to speak its mind. The
Patriarchy should announce that during a special church service
clearly, loudly, openly and publically.
Fourth, it should complete sever its ties with the Soviet past, stop
participating in purely state occasions and cease to mark such dates
as, for example, the 30-th anniversary of the establishment of the
anti-terrorist military group “Alpha”, founded by a Communist,
Andropov.
Fifth, it should establish in its churches at least a weekly
commemoration of the millions of nameless innocent victims of the
godless regime, martyred and driven to death at the hands of
Communists.
Sixth, the church should be returned to the state it was in during
the stewartship of St. Patriarch Tikhon. Only then will it be
possible for us to talk about some kind of union.
Eugene L Magerovsky
Kinnelon, New Jersey
