Orthodox Vs State

The Russian Orthodox Church versus the State: The Josephite Movement, 1927-1940
Author(s): Mikhail V. Shkarovskii

Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), pp. 365-384
Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
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The Russian Orthodox Church versus the State: The
Josephite Movement, 1927-1940
Mikhail V. Shkarovskii
Russia is embarking upon a new path of historical development. To-

day, as the country gradually liberates itself from the vestiges of a non-
democratic society, it seems especially propitious to trace the subor-
dination in the 1920s and 1930s of Russia's most important social
institutions to a nascent totalitarian regime. The Russian Orthodox
Church belongs on the list of such institutions. During its long history
it frequently exerted a stabilizing, consolidating effect on the nation,
especially during times of national crisis; even during the civil war it
maintained a neutral position. The Patriarch of the Holy Synod strug-
gled tirelessly to end fratricidal discord and alleviate what the Church
deemed an overriding obsession with political ideas. The Church
preached tolerance and brotherly love. In the 1920s, as a result of the
increase in totalitarian tendencies and a general suppression of legal
opposition, a portion of the Orthodox clergy became one of the most
important hotbeds of free-thinking opposition to the communist state.
Until 1927 government attempts to control the Orthodox Church, to
make it an adjunct of the state apparatus on the whole failed. Critical
to these attempts was that the Church make concessions, including the
"legalization" of the Provisional Patriarchal Holy Synod (Vremennyi Pa-
triarshii Sviashchennyi Sinod, abbreviated VPSS) under the Deputy of the
Patriarchal Locum tenens (DPLt), Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodskii).
The "Declaration of 1927" signified the Church's transition from an
apolitical position to one of internal spiritual solidarity with the au-
thorities. "Concessions" included in it, for example, transfers of bish-
ops for reasons of political expediency, created a new form of mutual
interdependence between the Patriarchal Church and the government;
indeed, from this point on the state almost totally controlled life in
the Church. These far-reaching changes were received negatively by
many clergymen and laity.
The unsuccessful attempts by some members of the Orthodox clergy
to protect their Church from the imposition of alien state influence,
to stem the tide of the Church's internal erosion, are of special interest.
Indeed, the events of the late 1920s may be seen as the starting point
of schisms of the Patriarchal Church. And, at present, the need for the
unification of the three existing branches of Russian Orthodoxy (For-
eign, Catacomb and Moscow) is felt more keenly than ever.
The "Nepominaiushchii" movement arose in 1927 and received its
name from the fact that its adherents were clerics who refused to "men-
tion," and thereby pray for, those individuals they felt had betrayed
"true Orthodoxy," especially Metropolitan Sergii and state authorities.
The movement was quite widespread throughout Russia, including
nearly 40 bishops who had rejected administrative subordination to
the DPLt and the VPSS, but most of whose seas lacked coordination
Slavic Review 54, no. 2 (Summer 1995)
366 Slavic Review
and cohesion. The strongest and most united group comprised the
Josephites, who took their designation from the name of their leader,
the Metropolitan of Leningrad losif (Joseph) Petrovykh. Their activity
is the subject of this analysis.
In all of Soviet historiography there are no works dedicated to this
topic. Works on Church history were generally of the nature of surveys
and bore the strong ideological imprint of the official negative attitude
toward religion.' The Church was often represented as an absolutely
reactionary institution opposed to the people (e.g. theJosephite move-
ment was termed "chernosotennyi" [black hundredist] for no reason),
while governmental agencies were unfailingly portrayed in a positive
light. More objective investigations have begun to appear quite re-
cently. Among these, the works of V.A. Alekseev and M.I. Odintsov
stand out. While they are devoted to state religious politics in the
USSR, some attention is also given to the internal situation in the
Orthodox Church itself, including a neutral approach to internal
Church conflict. But Alekseev unjustifiably refers to the "Josephite
schism" as an inconsequential occurrence in the history of Orthodoxy.2
Historical writings since the mid-twentieth century of clergy of the
Patriarchal Russian Orthodox Church (PROC) (notably those of Met-
ropolitan Manuil [Lemeshevskii], Abbot Innokentii [Pavlov], A.I. Kuz-
netsov and especially those of the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, Ioann
[Snychev]) provide us with valuable information. But, while these writ-
ings contain interesting factual data, in their conceptualization of
events their treatment of Metropolitan Sergii is apologetic and they
lack any critical approach to their subject: not only are the Josephites
described, again unreasonably, as "schismatics" but Metropolitan loann
even goes so far as to assert that they desecrated everything deemed
holy by the Orthodox Church. With these writings may be grouped the
recollections of the late Leningrad University Professor N.A. Mesh-
cherskii who, in his youth, had played an active role in the opening
stages of the Josephite movement but who later had distanced himself
from it and viewed it negatively.3
1. N.S. Gordienko, 1) Evoliutsiia russkogo pravoslaviia (20-e-80-e gody XX stoletiia)

(Moscow: Znanie, 1984); 2) Sovremennoe russkoe pravoslavie (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1988);
M.S. Korzun, Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov' 1917-1945 gg. (Minsk: Belarus', 1987).
2. V.A. Alekseev, 1) Illiuzii i dogmy (Moscow: Politizdat, 1991); 2) "Shturm nebes"
otmeniaetsia? (Moscow: Rossiia molodaia, 1992); M.I. Odintsov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov'
(Istoriia vzaimootnoshenii. 1917-1938 gg.) (Moscow: Znanie, 1991).
3. Manuil (Lemeshevskii), Metropolitan, Russkie pravoslavnye ierarkhi perioda s 1893
po 1965 gody, six vol., (Erlangen: Kafedra istorii i teologii khristianskogo Vostoka, 1979-
89); Innokentii (Pavlov), Abbot, "O deklaratsii Mitropolita Sergiia," Zhurnal Moskovskoi
Patriarkhii, no. 11/12 (1992): 70-75; A.I. Kuznetsov, "Obnovlencheskii raskol v Russkoi
Tserkvi" (ms., three vol., Astrakhan', 1956-59); Ioann (Snychev), Metropolitan, 1) Tser-
kovnye raskoly v Russkoi Tserkvi 20-kh i 30-kh godov XX stoletiia - "Grigorianskii," "Iaros-
lavl'skii," "Iosiflianskii," "Viktorianskii" i drugie. Ikh osobennosti i istoriia, (Sortavala: Izda-
tel'stvo Sortaval'skoi knizhnoi tipografii, 1993); 2) Mitropolit Manuil (Lemeshevskii),
Biograficheskii ocherk (St. Petersburg: Danza, 1993); N.A. Meshcherskii, "Na starosti ia
syznova zhivu: proshedshee prokhodit predo mnoiu.. ." (ms., Leningrad, 1982).
The Russian Orthodox Church versus the State 367
Opposing views are held by those who were permitted a few years
ago to emerge from the underground Catacomb Church. This church,
too, is subdivided into smaller movements, whose views of history do
not always coincide. Members of the so-called "Bogorodichnyi Center"
deem the Patriarchal Church one of the main pillars of communist
party rule in the Soviet Union, acting at the devil's instigation, because
of its acceptance of the "Declaration of 1927."4 The talented historian
and monk Amvrosii (Sivers), an adherent of a different trend in the
Catacomb Church, has condemned the Sergians while at the same time
trying to avoid polemical extremes. He correctly evaluates the Jo-
sephite movement in many respects but believes that it had died out
by the early 1930s. He also frequently and unjustifiably identifies the
Josephites with the Catacombists.5 A number of new anti-Sergians hold
views similar to Amvrosii's: for example, Z. Krakhmal'nikova has re-
cently connected the establishment and development of Soviet totali-
tarianism directly to the position of the Moscow Patriarchate.6
Essential contributions to the history of Russian Orthodoxy have
also been made on foreign soil, mainly by Russian emigre researchers,
who may be divided into two irreconcilable camps. Anti-Sergians (M.
Pol'skii, I. Andreev, L. Regel'son, V. Stepanov [Rusak] et al.) have per-
ceived the Deputy Patriarchal Locum tenens as betrayer of the "new
martyrs" who were languishing in corrective labor camps and have
viewed the DPLt as having made much greater compromises with the
authorities than had his predecessors. In so doing, he betrayed Patri-
arch Tikhon and Locum tenens Peter. The works of these authors are,
on the whole, dedicated to the resistance movement in the Church
(evaluations of whose scale differed greatly) and they treat the Jo-
sephite movement separately but do not analyze it in any detail.7 The
same may be said for the publications of the opposite camp. Arch-
presbyter Vasilii Vinogradov, Archpriest loann Meyendorf, Metropol-
itan Elevferii (Bogoiavlenskii) and others in general have justified the
position of Metropolitan Sergii, asserting that he in fact added nothing
to Patriarch Tikhon's declarations of loyalty.8
4. Sviashchenstvo Tserkvi Presviatoi Bogoroditsy, Krasnaia Patriarkhiia: Volki v

ovechlei shkure (Moscow: Bogorodichnyi Tsentr, 1992); Tragediia Krasnoi Tserkvi (Moscow:
Bogorodichnyi Tsentr, 1992).
5. Amvrosii (Sivers), Monk, "Istoki i sviazi katakombnoi tserkvi v Leningrade i
oblasti (1922-1992 gg.)," (ms., Moscow: 1993).
6. Zoia Krakhmal'nikova, 1) "Gor'kie plody sladkogo plena," Russkaia mysl', 1989.
20 January-20 March; 2) "Eshche raz o gor'kikh plodakh sladkogo plena," Russkaia
mysl', 1989. 23June-14July; 3) "V poiskakh obeshchannogo raia. Zametki o tserkovnoi
zhizni v Rossii XX veka," Neva, no. 10 (1992): 205-38.
7. M. Pol'skii, Archpresbyter, Novye mucheniki rossiiskie, 2 vol., (Jordanville: Sviato-
Troitskii monastyr', 1949-57); I.M. Andreev, Zametki o katakombnoi tserkvi v SSSR (Jor-
danville: Sviato-Troitskii monastyr', 1947); Lev Regel'son, Tragediia Russkoi Tserkvi 1917-
1945 (Paris: YMCA Press, 1977); Vladimir Stepanov (Rusak), Svidetelstvo obvineniia.
Tserkov' i gosudarstvo v Sovetskom Soiuze, 3 vol., (Jordanville: Sviato-Troitskii monastyr',
1987-88).
8. Elevferii (Bogoiavlenskii), Metropolitan, Nedelia v Patriarkhii (Paris: YMCA Press,
1993); "Doklad mitr. Elevferiia mitr. Evlogiiu (1928g.)," Vestnik Russkogo khristianskogo
368 Slavic Review
Western historians who are read in Russia lean in the other direc-
tion although, of course, they hold a more objective and neutral po-
sition. Among them are Dmitry Pospielovsky, Nikita Struve, I.O. Khri-
zostomus (Blashkevich), Hans-Dieter Depman and others.9 Struve has
made the argument that more than 20 bishops, imprisoned in the
Solovetskii camp in 1927, largely supported Metropolitan Sergii.
Khrizostomus asserted that the OGPU had threatened Metropolitan
Sergii with the execution of all the bishops held in the camps if he
refused to come to terms with the authorities. Pospielovsky has given
significant attention to the problems of "Church sedition" at the end
of the 1920s and many of his conclusions seem completely fair. How-
ever, in asserting that Metropolitan Sergii essentially continued the
course of Patriarch Tikhon and Locum tenens Peter, he ignores Church
tolerance of OGPU interference in Church policies after 1927. Indeed,
from this time on clerical appointments could only be made with the
sanction of appropriate state entities. One cannot agree with Pospie-
lovsky's appraisal of thejosephite movement as the most extreme right-
wing schism within Russia, nor with his assertion that Metropolitan
losif tried to form a parallel Church. Like other western scholars, Pos-
pielovsky does not have sufficient information about the genuine Cat-
acombists. One should note that, in general, extensive, foreign histo-
ries of religion have a limited source base since in the past Russian
archives could be utilized to only a small degree (see Appendix to this
article).
One of the main goals of this work is to present the Josephite
movement as an attempt on the part of some clergymen and believers
to find an independent alternative-distinct from the Sergian and Cat-
acomb variants-for the development of the Russian Orthodox Church,
be it in legal or semi-legal opposition to the consolidating totalitarian
regime. I shall also define the tactics and character of the movement
indicating serious differences, sometimes bordering on strife, which
existed between theJosephites and the Catacombists, and approximate
its previously underestimated numerical strength. I will place it in a
chronological framework and discuss the causes for the end of Jo-
dvizheniia, no. 158 (1990): 285-93; "Krestnyi put' russkoi ierarkhii, iz pisem proto-
presvitera V. Vinogradova vladyke Ioannu Shakhovskomu," Vestnik Russkogo khristian-
skogo dvizheniia, no. 150 (1987): 251-55; Ioann Meyendorf, "Sviateishii Patriarkh Ti-
khon-sluzhitel' edinstva Tserkvi," Vestnik Leningradskoi Dukhovnoi Akademii, no. 3 (1990):
30-41.
9. Dimitry Pospielovsky, 1) The Russian Church under the Soviet regime 1917-1982
(Crestwood: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1984); 2) "Mitropolit Sergii i raskoly sprava,"
Vestnik Russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia, no. 158 (1990): 53-81; 3) "Po povodu tserkov-
nogo raskola," Leningradskaia panorama, no. 3 (1991): 33-35; Nikita Struve, 1) Khristiane
v SSSR (Paris: YMCA Press, 1963); 2) "Solovetskie episkopy i deklaratsiia mitropolita
Sergiia 1927g.," Vestnik Russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia, no. 152 (1988): 207-11; 3)
"Vozvrashchenie utrachennogo," Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkhii, no. 1 (1991): 35-37;
0.1. Khrizostomus (Blashkevich), Kirchengeschichte Russlands der neustens Zeit, 3 vol.,
(Munich: A. Pustet, 1965-68); Gans-Diter Depman, "Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov'
v proshlom i nastoiashchem," (ms., Moscow, 1976).
sephitism and the consequences of its destruction. I conclude that, in

the final analysis, a viable path other than the "Sergian" for the Pa-
triarchal Church in the Soviet Union was not possible.
The unprecedented and perilous situation in which the Patriarchal
Church found itself in spring 1927 bode ill for its future, even though
the influence of its ideological enemy in the struggle for souls, the pro-
Soviet Synodal (Renovationist) Church, had long since peaked. The
Renovationist movement had formed in May 1922 with the active par-
ticipation of the authorities and had attempted a "Church Revolution,"
thereby transgressing what were for Orthodoxy basic ecclesiastical, li-
turgical and dogmatic principles, and losing contact with the laity.
Although by January 1927 Renovationist parishes comprised only 16.6
percent'0 of the country's total, their threat remained. Moreover, after
the death of Patriarch Tikhon in April 1925, the Patriarchal Church
had begun to develop centrifugal tendencies. In December that year
the OGPU had instigated the new "Grigorian Schism" in the Church
(which met with even less success than Renovationism). Constant ar-
rests of bishops who might head a supreme church administration
hindered the creation of a stable canonical center: there were thirteen
patriarchal deputies and locum tenentes, twelve of whom were in exile
or prison and the last, Archbishop Serafim (Samoilovich) of Uglich,
was so little known that most dioceses had never heard of him. OGPU
policies to liquidate the unified center of the Patriarchal Church (whose
existence was not formally recognized by the authorities) were close
to success.
Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodskii), who had occupied the post of
deputy of the patriarchal locum tenens from the end of 1925 to 1926,
was in prison when he entered negotiations with the OGPU. Threat-
ened with liquidation of the entire Orthodox hierarchy, Sergii agreed
to meet the authorities' basic demands, especially to tolerate their in-
terference in internal Church policy, in exchange for the "legalization"
of the Patriarchal Church: episcopal ordinations could only be carried
out with the agreement of the OGPU, bishops could be transferred for
political reasons, pulpits of convicted bishops could be occupied by
OGPU appointees and so forth. Metropolitan Sergii chose cooperation
with the authorities after lengthy vacillation and numerous attempts
to find a more advantageous path for the Church. He acted in order
to preserve the supremacy of "legal" Orthodoxy. Indeed, the statement
by Archpriest I. Meyendorf is not without foundation: "To agree to
the abolition of the Patriarchal 'Center' would have effected transfer
of the monopoly of the 'legalized' Church by the Renovationist 'Synod'
(recognized by the Eastern Patriarchs!), which would gradually have
been followed by all the open churches. But maintenance of the Pa-
triarchal administration presupposed state control.""l
10. Vestnik Sviashchennogo Sinoda Rossiiskoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi, no. 2 (1927): 17.
11. Lev Regel'son, 616; 414-17; A.A. Shishkin, Sushchnost' i kriticheskaia otsenka
obnovlencheskogo raskola russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi (Kazan'. Izd-vo Kazanskogo universi-
teta, 1970), 302-3.
370 Slavic Review
The experience of succeeding decades demonstrates that the only

alternative to the path chosen by Metropolitan Sergii would have been
illegal self-rule by dioceses and parishes, i.e., a Catacomb Church. And
even this avenue would have led to an impasse, by which the Church
would have become a sect. Still, millions of believers refused to rec-
ognize the Renovationists and lost the opportunity to take part in
divine service and the sacraments; and the movement was equally un-
acceptable for the majority of the hierarchy. Moreover, in the second
half of the 1930s, at the peak of NKVD terror, the possibilities for a
continuing Catacomb Church decreased significantly and the chances
for secret religious organization were quite slim. The Josephites opted
for the third path, legal opposition. Their tragic fate underscores the
impossibility of that path, too, in the Soviet reality of those years.
Despite his sagacity and skill Metropolitan Sergii was mistaken in
his belief that concessions would lead to a reduction in the repression
of the clergy. Still, in light of the following decade, when the tendency
was not state subordination but rather full destruction of Orthodoxy,
his compromise is justified in many respects since it allowed for the
preservation of the Patriarchal Church, if only in part.
On 30 March 1927 Stragorodskii was freed from imprisonment and
on 7 April Archbishop Serafim conferred on him the authority of
Locum tenens. On 20 May Metropolitan Sergii and his Synod were
officially "legalized" as the NKVD allowed them to function and as
diocesan and ecclesiastical councils began to legally organize.'2 Finally,
on 29 July Metropolitan Sergii issued his "Epistle to Pastors and their
Flocks" (the Declaration of 1927) which stated:
We must show, not by words but rather by deeds, that not only those
who are indifferent to Orthodoxy, not only those who have betrayed
it, but even its most zealous adherents can be faithful citizens of the
Soviet Union and loyal to Soviet authority ... We want to be Orthodox
and at the same time recognize the Soviet Union as our civil moth-
erland, whose joys and successes are our joys and successes and whose
failures are our failures.
In scholarly literature one encounters the assertion that the "Decla-

ration" was one of the main sources of mass discontent; it did not,
however, radically differ from analogous epistles of Patriarch Tikhon
composed between 1923 and 1925. (During the civil war the Patriarch
had sharply censured many of the actions of the authorities.) Although
it seemed ultra-loyalist, it really did not contain anything new and no
schisms would have occurred if it had expressed the full extent of the
concessions to the authorities.
There was, however, disagreement over the text of the "Declara-
tion" immediately after its publication. This discord first appeared in
one of the country's most important dioceses, Leningrad. In mid-Au-
gust 1927 a few clerics of the "northern capital" sent off a message to
12. Regel'son, 414-17; Shishkin, 302-3.
Metropolitan losif (then exiled to the Modenskii Monastery in Nov-

gorod province) detailing their disapproval of the principles of the
"Declaration." losif (the former Ivan Semenovich Petrovykh), was born
in Ustiuzhna in 1872. He had graduated from the Moscow Ecclesiastical
Academy in 1899 and had been tonsured two years later. During World
War I, while serving as Bishop of Uglich, he had become close to the
future Patriarch Tikhon, who was the then head of the Iarolsavl' dio-
cese. Under the administration of Tikhon's aide, Archbishop Agafan-
gel, losif had been named Archbishop of Rostov; upon Tikhon's exile,
losif had been appointed to administer the diocese, where he had
showed himself a decisive opponent of the "Grigorians" and had en-
ergetically supported Metropolitan Sergii against them. In August 1926
Sergii had designated Archbishop losif the Metropolitan of Leningrad.
But losif was in the "northern capital" less than three days: on 13
September, in Moscow while in transit to Rostov, he was "invited" to
the OGPU. He expressed a negative opinion about the planned "le-
galization" of the Patriarchal Church to the OGPU departmental head
of the Church division, E. Tuchkov, and, as a result, would be prohib-
ited from departing Rostov. In December 1926, upon the arrest of
Metropolitan Sergii, losif was deputy of the patriarchal locum tenens,
but he was arrested and exiled to the Modenskii Nikol'skii monastery
in Ustiuzhenskii region.'3 Despite his exile, Metropolitan losif's faith
and authority attracted a following of tens of thousands of believers.
On 13 September 1927, most likely at the insistence of the OGPU,
the Deputy Patriarchal Locum tenens and the Synod transferred losif
to Odessa. On 28 September Metropolitan losif wrote that the transfer
was not canonical, that it had been adopted under outside influence
and that it thereby would have a pernicious effect on Church organi-
zation. On 3 October the provisional director of the Peterhof diocese,
Nikolai (larushevich), reported to the Synod that the transfer of His
Eminence was causing disturbances in the city. There, as elsewhere,
Church members objected to the Deputy of the Patriarchal Locum
tenens having permitted interference in what had been important in-
ternal Church policy (in just a few months nearly 40 bishops had been
displaced). In view of the seriousness of the situation, Metropolitan
Sergii himself promptly took over the administration of the Leningrad
diocese. The situation was greatly aggravated by Metropolitan Sergii's
ukase of 21 October mandating prayer for civilian authorities during
divine service and prohibiting prayer for bishops in exile. Not only
allies of Metropolitan losif objected to this ukase but also a large num-
ber of other bishops.
It should be pointed out that state agencies originally maintained
a duplicitous position in this conflict. On the one hand, upon Metro-
politan Sergii's compromise with them, they had granted the Church
he headed several rights which it previously had lacked. But, on the
other hand, upon the tenth anniversary of the October revolution the
13. Izvestiia, 19 August 1927.
372 Slavic Review
state granted amnesty to a large number of Leningrad clergy who un-

doubtedly strengthened opposition to Metropolitan Sergii and signif-
icantly weakened the Patriarchal Church. Sergii determined to visit
Leningrad and the day of his arrival was fixed.'4 But, clearly under-
estimating the scale of possible resistance to "pro-Soviet" Church pol-
icy, the authorities prevented the visit, even though Sergii's interven-
tion into diocesan administration, in all likelihood, would have blunted
the conflict.
During the final months of 1927 discord continued to intensify.
Parishes in Leningrad sporadically refused to pray for Metropolitan
Sergii at divine service. Even lower clergy were gripped by a wave of
dissatisfaction: "Many of those pastors who, during the years of strug-
gle with Renovationism showed themselves to be staunch fighters for
the purity of Orthodoxy, now came out against Metropolitan Sergii,"
for in his policy "they saw a clear-cut distortion of the purity of Or-
thodoxy and the enslavement of the Church to the state." 15 The Pa-
triarchal Synod had made a serious tactical blunder: it had enacted
and enforced new Church policy too hurriedly, without considering
whether the faithful were ready for it.
Hoping to avert the approaching schism, at the beginning of De-
cember a group of Leningrad clerics and laymen alerted Metropolitan
Sergii to the situation and attempted to persuade him to change course.
They appealed to him in a letter written by Professor and Archpriest
V. Veriuzhskii:
1) to renounce the prospective enslavement of the Church to the State.

2) To reject proposed transfers of bishops without the consent both
of their congregations and of the concerned bishops themselves. 3)
To organize a Provisional Patriarchal Synod as it had originally been,
i.e., as a deliberative body, and to ensure that its decrees be issued
only under the auspices of the Deputy. 4) To remove troublemakers
from the staff of the Synod. 5) To universally uphold the decrees of
the Local Council of 1917-1918 [composed of lower clergy and laity]
and the authority of the dioceses in diocesan administration, the foun-
dations of the Orthodox Church and the canons. 6) To return Met-
ropolitan losif [Petrovykh] to the Leningrad pulpit. 7) To cease pro-
moting the Deputy Locum tenens. 8) To rescind decrees which had
eliminated from divine service prayer for exiled bishops and had
mandated prayer for state authorities.16
On 12 December, before there was a reply to this appeal, a signif-

icant portion of Leningrad's upper and lower clergy, as well as laity,
sent representatives to Metropolitan Sergii with three petitions, one
of which was signed by six of the eight Leningrad bishops. The meeting
14. N.A. Meshcherskii 1, 30; Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov' 988-1988, 2nd part
(Moscow: Izd-vo Moskovskoi Patriarkhii, 1988), 40.
15. Protokol sobraniia prikhodskogo soveta Pokrovskoi Kolomenskoi Tserkvi 5
aprelia 1928 (see also note 22) (TsGA SPb), f. 7384, op. 33, d. 321, 1. 159.
16. Ioann (Snychev), Metropolitan, "Raskoly," Khristianskoe chtenie, no. 6 (1991):
19.
concluded without concrete results. Two days later Metropolitan Sergii

presented to one of the delegation his response to Veriuzhskii's letter,
rejecting, in effect, all demands. "Metropolitan Sergii tried to win over
the emissary and, practically leaping around the room said: 'Well, they
persecute us and we retreat! But to make up for it we preserve the
unity of the Church!' The emissary concluded that it was impossible
to reach an agreement with Sergii." 17 The delegation returned to Len-
ingrad deeply disillusioned and with the firm intention of breaking off
liturgical communion with the Metropolitan.
On 26 December the bishops of Gdov and Narva, Dimitrii (Liubi-
mov) and Sergii (Druzhinin), took the initiative of leadership and
signed a resolution of separation:
... Not through pride, Lord let it not be so, but for the sake of peace
of conscience, we disavow the person and deeds of our former pro-
tector, who immensely and illegally exceeded his rights and initiated
great confusion . .. And so, by God's mercy, remaining in everything
obedient children of the Unified Holy Synodal and Apostolic Church,
preserving the apostolic succession through the Patriarchal Locum
tenens Peter, Metropolitan Krutitskii, and having the blessing of our
legal diocesan Metropolitan, we sever canonical communion with
Metropolitan Sergii and with all those he leads; and thus henceforth
until the judgment of a "convening of the entire Council," i.e., with
the participation of all Orthodox bishops, or until the open and full
repentance of Metropolitan Sergii before the Holy Church . . .
(It was Metropolitan losif who had given prior approval to this reso-
lution, since the Patriarchal Locum tenens, Metropolitan Peter [Po-
lianskii], had been in prison or in exile since 1925, unable to partici-
pate in Church life; he was executed on 10 October 1937 in the
Magnitogorsk prison.)
The act of separation was read aloud in the Cathedral of the Res-
urrection of Christ, which had become the center of the Josephite
movement in Leningrad; Bishop Dimitrii later declared Metropolitan
Sergii not blessed and demanded an immediate end to liturgical com-
munion with him. In response the Deputy Patriarchal Locum tenens
and the Synod issued a decree on 30 December 1927 which prohibited
the dissident Leningrad bishops and their supporters from participat-
ing in divine service. The breach became actualized and intensified.
In fact, it seemed that the majority of the "northern capital's" parishes
would desert Metropolitan Sergii. Only two bishops remained faithful
to him; four hierarchs, Archbishop Gavriil (Voevodin), and Bishops
Serafim (Protopopov), Grigorii (Lebedev) and Stefan (Bekh), did not
openly align themselves with the Josephites but reacted negatively to
many of Sergii's acts. In those churches where they conducted divine
service the bishops prayed for Metropolitan Peter only and omitted
Metropolitan Sergii entirely.
17. Lev Regel'son, 136-37.

18. Ioann (Snychev), Metropolitan, "Raskoly," 23; ibid., 27.
374 Slavic Review
The anti-Sergian movement was not confined to Leningrad. On 6

February 1928 the larolsavl' diocese, in the persons of Metropolitan
Agafangel and three of his vicars, declared itself self-governing accord-
ing to the 20 November 1920 decree of the Patriarch and the Holy
Synod granting self-governance to dioceses should there lack a can-
onical center or communication with one. The declaration of the
Iarolsavl' bishops was also signed by Metropolitan losif, who had been
residing in Rostov since the previous October. On 2 March he wrote
an epistle to the Leningrad congregation stating that he considered
decrees of Metropolitan Sergii no longer in force. He also demanded
a canonically correct decision, i.e., by a court of bishops, concerning
his transfer from Leningrad. And, until such a decision might be forth-
coming, within his rights as protector of his flock from the "tyranny"
of "Church Administrators," he entrusted temporary administration
of the diocese to Bishop Dimitrii and asked Bishop Grigorii to repre-
sent him in the governance of Aleksandr Nevskii Monastery.'9 Al-
though Metropolitan losif attempted to unite the Iarolsavl' diocese
with the Leningrad Josephites, the former chose to function inde-
pendently; on 16 May 1928 Metropolitan Agafangel and his vicars es-
sentially reconciled with Metropolitan Sergii.
Nevertheless, theJosephites succeeded in spreading their influence
beyond the Leningrad region to Voronezh, Novgorod, Tver, Vologda
and Pskov dioceses. In the city of Serpukhov, in Moscow diocese, al-
most half the churches, eight in all, allied themselves with Bishop Dim-
itrii (Liubimov); in February 1928 Bishop Maksim (Zhizhilenko) was
assigned to Serpukhov by Josephite decree. Three Moscow churches
had joined the dissenters; individual churches in Kuban' and in the
Urals joined as well. SmallJosephite communities were formed in Kiev,
Khar'kov and Krasnoiarsk. Parallel to the Leningrad rift there arose
in a number of districts of Viatka diocese a division led by three bish-
ops (the so-called "Viktorian Schism"). On the whole, the wave of de-
fections from Metropolitan Sergii involved a comparatively small num-
ber of parishes. The overwhelming majority of the Orthodox clergy
and faithful remained true to the Deputy Patriarchal Locum tenens-
more than two thirds, in fact. (In 1928 8-9% of the parishes had be-
come autocephalous, via the Josephite movement or by other means,
about 5% submitted to the Grigorian Church Council and about 16%
were subordinate to the Renovationist Synod.20)
A similar situation existed in the Leningrad diocese. Although the
"Nepominaiushchii" movement was substantially broader, according
to archival data about 45 parishes, including 15 of the city's 110, openly
joined the Josephites. Approximately 100 parish clergy and 200-300
monastics were Josephite. But the majority of Bishop Dimitrii's clergy
and parishioners of his home church, the Pokrovskaia Church in Ko-
lomna, preferred not to separate from Sergii, even though eminent
19. Ibid., 27.

20. Lev Regel'son, 270, 455.
churchmen who had served in the parish, Archbishops V.A. Akimov

and N.V. Chepurin, supported Bishop Nikolai of Peterhof. On 5 Jan-
uary 1928 a general meeting of parishioners considered the resigna-
tions of Bishop Dimitrii and two other priests and asked them to in-
stead "be in unity with the entire Orthodox Church." 2' However, the
parishioners' request had no effect and a decree dated 20 January from
"the synod" to the Regional Bureau of Registration stated that Bishop
Dimitrii and six of his followers had resigned and that "they ceased
being our coreligionists and members with us of one creed."22
Metropolitan Sergii took various concerted measures to admonish
and to exercise his authority, for example his epistle of 30 January
1928 which was read during Sunday Divine Service in almost all the
churches, "To Archpastors, pastors and faithful children of the Ortho-
dox Church of the Leningrad diocese."23 The activities of several out-
spoken bishops, allies of Metropolitan Sergii specially sent to Lenin-
grad, were effective. These included Sefafim (Chichagov), appointed as
Metropolitan, and the Bishop of Serpukhov Manuil (Lemeshevskii). Of
course, the sharply hostile position of state agencies toward the schis-
matics also had an effect.
The Josephite movement had, from the very beginning, expanded
beyond a purely religious framework and acquired an anti-state polit-
ical coloring. Some scholars believe, with some justification, that "the
core of the ideology of the Josephite schism was a negative attitude
toward national Soviet reality and that the church and canonical motifs
were merely an external covering."24 This is not completely true, al-
though during the tragic years of the "great division" the movement
had a significant social base in opposition to the authorities. Eyewit-
nesses recalled: "At that time in the Church of the Resurrection in the
Blood there were very many worshipers . . . A mass of peasants who
had been dekulakized clustered here . . . All those bearing a grudge
and dissatisfied came here as well. Metropolitan losif unintentionally
became a banner for them."25 It is significant that one of the main
"Nepominaiushchii" demands was for the enforcement of the decree
of 15 August 1918 of the All-Russian Local Council on freedom of
political activity for Church members. And state agencies, according
to archival documents, considered the Josephites their main enemies
among all religious currents and confessions.
The more active participants in the Josephite movement from
among the laity may be divided into three rough categories: represen-
tatives of the scholarly intelligentsia, who would not compromise on
21. A.A. Shishkin, 335.

22. Protokol obshchego sobraniia prikhozhan Pokrovskoi Kolomenskoi tserkvi. 5
ianvaria 1928: TsGA SPb, f. 7384, op. 33, d. 321, 1. 90.
23. Zaiavlenie prikhodskogo soveta Pokrovskoi Kolomenskoi tserkvi v raionnyi
stol registratsii. 20 ianvaria 1920, ibid. 11. 100-101.
24. Protokol sobraniia prikhodskogo soveta Pokrovskoi Kolomenskoi tserkvi. 7
fevralia 1920, ibid. 1. 147.
25. Ioann (Snychev), Archimandrite, 5.
376 Slavic Review
their religious views; fanatics among the faithful-the "blessed," the

"holy fools," the "wanderers," the "seers" and so forth; representatives
of social strata dissatisfied with the new system. It was this last group
which imparted to the movement its political coloration. Among the
Josephite clergy there was an unusually large number of idealists who
were notable for their moral purity; the monastic community was
widely represented in and provided support for the movement. Sig-
nificantly, Bishop Manuil (Lemeshevskii) expressed his grief over their
estrangement in his sermon of 29 April 1928 in the Leningrad Trinity
Cathedral: "Fallen away, split off are the best pastors who, by their
purity, stood much higher than others in the struggle against Reno-
vationism." 26
The diversity of Josephites was reflected in differences in views.
The majority looked upon Metropolitan Sergii as a bishop who had
exceeded his powers and who consequently had allowed improper ac-
tivities. But some saw him as an actual apostate of Orthodoxy, a traitor
and murderer of Church freedom, communion with whom would have
been impossible even if the Patriarchal Deputy himself had supported
Sergii's activities. The latterJosephites said:
If Metropolitan Peter were to recognize Sergii's epistle as legal and

enter into liturgical communion with him, then we would break off
liturgical communion with Metropolitan Peter and with all the clerics
who exalt his name. If all churches were taken away from us we would
then pray secretly in cellars. If we are persecuted for our faith in
Christ, then we, in imitation of first-century Christians, shall go joy-
ously to the fires and to prisons. But we shall not willingly allow the
landlord of the Church of God to be the antichrist communist Tuch-
kov. We are prepared to die for the freedom of the Church.27
It is grievous to contemplate the potential of Orthodoxy that was wasted

with the destruction of the Josephites.
The tradition of referring to the Josephites as schismatics is long
established in Soviet scholarly literature; clergy of the Moscow Patriar-
chate continue to consider them such to this day. This tradition derives
from the edict of Metropolitan Sergii and the Synod of 6 August 1929
which effectively equated the Josephites with the Renovationists and
the Grigorians:
Invalid are the sacraments celebrated in isolation from the Church

unity ... by the followers of the former Leningrad Metropolitan losif
(Petrovykh), former Bishop of Gdov, Dimitrii (Liubimov), former Ur-
azovo Bishop Aleksii (Bui), as well as the excommunicated. Those who
are converts to these schisms, if they are baptized in schism, must
accept the sacrament of Extreme Unction.28
26. N.A. Meshcherskii, 10.

27. Ioann (Snychev), "Tserkovnye raskoly v Russkoi Tserkvi 20-kh i 30-kh godov
XX stoletiia": 238.
28. Ibid.; "Raskoly," 35.
The Josephites themselves never considered themselves schismat-

ics. Thus, Metropolitan losif in a letter to Archimandrite Lev (Egorov)
in February 1928 pointed out:
... not only did we not leave, we are not leaving and never shall leave
the bosom of the true Orthodox Church. Her enemies, traitors and
murderers are those who are not with us and for us, but against us.
It is not we who enter schism by not submitting to Metropolitan Sergii.
Rather it is you, those obedient to him, who are following him into
the abyss of condemnation.29
And, in fact, the Josephites were not schismatics. Unlike the Renova-
tionists and the Grigorians, they did not claim to be the new center of
Church authority. Metropolitan losif and Bishop Dimitrii did not at-
tempt to form a parallel Church, like the Catacomb Church, which
would have existed outside the bonds of universal Orthodoxy.
By 1928 the Catacomb Church had already been in existence for
five years. This secret Church, whose services were held illegally, ap-
peared in 1922 as a reaction to Renovationism. Its members included
those who opposed the removal of church valuables and those defend-
ers of Orthodoxy who were opposed to clerics who had openly com-
promised with the "Godless" authorities, e.g. Patriarch Tikhon and the
Petrograd Metropolitan Veniamin (Kazanskii). In Leningrad province
the Catacombists were headed by Bishops Stefan (Bekh) and Makarii
(Vasillev). In 1925, preferring to continue services surreptitiously, they
had refused to recognize the Deputy Locum tenen's appointment of
Metropolitan Peter, an action which distinguished them from the Jo-
sephites, since losif always remained faithful to Metropolitan Peter.
Another important difference was that the Catacomb Church categor-
ically repudiated Soviet law concerning religious organizations, while
the Josephites, regardless of their opposition, attempted to remain
within the legal framework. The majority ofJosephite clergy complied
with the regulation that they be registered with regional inspectors for
cult affairs; parishes selected local councils (dvadtsatkas), who negoti-
ated the use of churches, etc. And there was even occasional discord
between the Josephite and Catacomb Churches. For example, in Bash-
kiriia there were both Josephite and Andreevite parishes; members of
the latter were composed of allies of the Catacomb Archbishop of Ufa,
Andrei (Ukhtomskii). In 1928, when Bishop Dimitrii assumed admin-
istration of the "Nepominaiushchii" parishes in Novgorod diocese
(against their wishes), Bishops Bekh and Makarii presumed that masses
of OGPU agents would infiltrate all legally sanctioned parishes and
from 1928 on prohibited their spiritual children from attending Jo-
sephite open churches.30 Their alternative was many years of preaching
in the "catacombs." The followers of Metropolitan losif instead en-
deavored to win over the majority of the clergy-first the episcopate-
29. Lev Regel'son, 168-69.

30. Ioann (Snychev), 36.
378 Slavic Review
and, ultimately, the upper Church administration of the existing Pa-

triarchal Church. To this end, although the actions exceeded their
authority, the Leningrad bishops not only sent archpastoral epistles to
various cities to attract clergy and laity, they also ordained priests and
even sent their Bishop Maksim (Zhizhilenko) to other dioceses.
TheJosephites also hoped to attract the so-called "Solovets" epis-
copate, those influential bishops who had been imprisoned in the ter-
rible Solovets "special purpose" camp located on the Solovki Islands
in the White Sea. In 1926-1927 more than twenty metropolitans, arch-
bishops and bishops were confined there31 and the faithful of all Russia
harkened to their opinion. Bishop Dimitrii secretly had sent an emis-
sary to the bishops in Solovets but they had condemned the Lenin-
graders. It should be pointed out, however, that their support for Met-
ropolitan Sergii was far from unconditional or unanimous. In February
1928 Metropolitan losif proposed to Bishop Manuil, just released from
the Solovets camp, that he lead those in Moscow and in southern Russia
who had broken liturgical communion with Metropolitan Sergii.
Bishop Manuil was to come to Moscow to be elevated to the rank of
metropolitan by losif. But Bishop Manuil, representative of the major-
ity of the "Solovets episcopate" who had sworn not to abandon Met-
ropolitan Sergii, refused. This lack of "Solovets-episcopate" support
doomed theJosephite movement: without it their chances of ever lead-
ing the Russian Orthodox Church were non-existent.
Most of the forty bishops who comprised the "Nepominauishchii"
movement did not ally themselves with any of the "schisms"; without
officially breaking liturgical communion with Metropolitan Sergii, they
tried to isolate themselves from him and remain on the sidelines of
Church life. In essence, they retired: there is little evidence that they
ever ordained priests or bishops.
Josephite influence reached its peak at the beginning of 1928. Then
in February Metropolitan losif was exiled again from Moscow to Mod-
enskii Monastery. In April he wrote to E.A. Tuchkov requesting that
charges against him be dismissed and that he be allowed to return to
Leningrad. He was refused; never again did he appeal to the authori-
ties. In 1929 he was arrested and exiled to Kazakhstan where he lived
for several years near the Aral Sea. On 22 September 1937 there were
new charges against him and on 20 December 1937 he was shot. To
the end he remained firm in his convictions.
The successor to Metropolitan losif as leader of thejosephite move-
ment, Bishop Dimitrii, was without sufficient episcopal authority for
the task at hand. The wide spread assertion that the Josephite move-
ment gradually disintegrated is untrue. Undoubtedly, it was ultimately
destroyed by pervasive OGPU repression, as is attested to by docu-
ments of the Central State Archives of St. Petersburg. Of the fifteen
Josephite churches of Leningrad, only four came under the adminis-
tration of Metropolitan Sergii (and were compelled to do so under
31. Amvrosii (Sivers), 46.
threat of liquidation); eleven were closed by the authorities. Some of

these joined the Josephites in fall 1928; the lower Cathedral of the
Church of the Resurrection of Christ (Malokolomenskii) in Leningrad
became Josephite on 31 October 1929,32 despite the fact that its dean,
Archbishop M.P. Chel'tsov, was an outspoken "Sergian."33 (A "new
martyr," according to Pol'skii, he was arrested four times and sen-
tenced to be shot in 1922. Finally, on 2 January 1931 he was executed
on a directive from OGPU agencies.34) But the Josephite community
of the cathedral did not waver, despite repression (in December 1930
a deacon and in June 1931 the church's precentor were arrested). The
community's income grew rapidly-from 13,000 rubles in 1930 to
26,000 for the period January-October 1931. In March 1932 the ca-
thedral was closed and demolished.35
Gradually the persecution of the Josephites had increased. Bishop
Dimitrii was arrested on 29 November 1929 on the charge that he was
"the factual leader of the church group 'The Defense of True Ortho-
doxy'; that, together with the core of this group, he had conducted
counter-revolutionary agitation to undermine and overthrow Soviet
power; that he had received clergy and managed this group throughout
the USSR." By a decree of the Collegium of the OGPU dated 3 August
1930 Bishop Dimitrii was sentenced to ten years' incarceration in a
36
concentration camp. Within a year, his replacement in the move-
ment, Bishop Sergii (Druzhinin), met the same fate as his predecessor.
Both men perished in captivity. The dean of the Resurrection of Christ
Cathedral, Archbishop V.M. Veriuzhskii, was arrested on 3 December
1929 on charges that he had "worked for 'The Defense of True Ortho-
doxy,' that he had distributed counter-revolutionary literature, subver-
sive to Soviet power, that he had received clergy from various places
in the USSR, that he had confessed to and had given instructions for
the struggle against the Soviet authorities."37 And on 18 November
1930 the authorities closed the church and turned it over to the Society
of Prerevolutionary Political Convicts.
32. Akt peredachi novomu iosiflianskomu prikhodskomu sovetu kliuchei' ot

nizhnego khrama tserkvi Voskreseniia Khristova. 31 oktiabria 1929: TsGA SPb, f. 4914,
op. 3, d. 2,1. 50.
33. Kartoteka repressirovannogo v SSSR dukhovenstva Sankt-Peterburgskogo
Nauchno-Issledovatel'skogo Tsentra "Memorial."
34. Sudebnye prigovory po sledstvennym delam protoiereia Mikhaila Chel'tsova.
Sentiabr' 1919, iiul' 1922, ianvar' 1931: Arkhiv Upravleniia Ministerstva bezopasnosti
Rossiiskoi Federatsii po Sankt-Peterburgu i oblasti, dd. P-28774, P42182, P-66675.
35. Anketa diakona K.K. Ivanova. 10 noiabria 1931: Spravka prikhodskogo soveta
nizhnego khrama tserkvi Voskreseniia Khristova o sostave khora. 17 iiunia 1931:
Spravka prikhodskogo soveta nizhnego khrama tserkvi Voskreseniia Khristova o dok-
hodakh za 1930-oktiabr' 1931 gg. 23 noiabria 1931: TsGA SPb, f. 4914, op. 3, d. 2, 11.
200, 206, 210.
36. Sudebnyi prigovor po sledstvennomu delu episkopa Dimitriia (Liubimova).
Avgust 1930: Arkhiv Upravleniia Ministerstva bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii po
Sankt-Peterburgu i oblasti, d. P-78806.
37. Sudebnyi prigovor po sledstvennomu delu protoiereia Vasiliia Veriuzhskogo.
Avgust 1930, ibid.
380 Slavic Review
But the "autocephaly" of the Josephites did not disintegrate, as

almost all researchers think. Although in 1931-1932 Leningrad and
regional parishes maintained only six churches which hadn't officially
been closed,38 Metropolitan losif's allies did not halt social activism
and their anti-government tone even intensified. The Church of Holy
Moses on Porokhovye became central to the movement; as inspectors
of cult affairs and OGPU functionaries pointed out in 1932:
... Money and food are being collected in Moses Church by "true
orthodox" churchmen for clergymen and monks repressed for their
counter-revolutionary activity . .. Moses Church was and is a place
where fanatical believers secretly take monastic vows (administered
previously by Bishop Vasilii Dokhtorov and most recently by Hier-
monk Ivanov and Anatolii Soglasnov). When OGPU agencies began
arresting especially active elements of the "true orthodox" churchmen
on 4 November 1932, Hiermonk Arkadii and Father P. Petukhov,
eluding arrest, began to serve at Moses Church ... One presumes that
those clergy who eluded arrest did not report to the Registration
Office because they considered it canonically inadmissible to do so.39
Under the totalitarian conditions of the 1930s, theJosephite movement

was a unique organization, perhaps the only semi-legal opposition in
the country. But such tactics could only temporarily be effective.
In 1932 one of the main supports of the Josephites was destroyed:
monasticism. On the terrible night of 18 February nearly all monks
who had been living in freedom disappeared into Leningrad prisons;
so did parish clergy and laymen who were connected with the mon-
asteries-in all about 500 people.40 On 21 November 1932 the Presid-
ium of the Leningrad Soviet decided to close three of the four Jo-
sephite churches in the city which had remained active, including Moses
Church. Parishioners of the church lodged a complaint with the All-
Russian Central Executive Committee but the church was closed on 25
January 1933. (The legal activity of the "Nepominaiushchii" movement
is assumed to have ended in 1933 when their last Moscow church was
closed.) At a 16 March meeting of the regional inspectors on cult affairs
the OGPU directed that "internal passports not be issued to ministers
of the cult of the Josephite denomination,' tantamount to their au-
tomatic expulsion from Leningrad.
Yet the authorities did not completely prohibit the activity of the
Josephites, who had mass support in the "northern capital." Aware
that staunch allies of Metropolitan losif in other regions had taken the
38. Spiski deistvuiushchikh khramov Leningrada i prigorodov. 1932, TsGA SPb,

f. 1000, op. 18, d. 77, 11. 3, 7.
39. Dokladnaia zapiska raionnogo inspektora po voprosam kul'tov v sektor ad-
ministrativnogo nadzora Lensoveta. 20 dekabria 1932: Spravka sotrudnika OGPU.
Dekabr' 1932, ibid. op. 50, d. 29, 1. 18, 20.
40. Anatolii Krasnov-Levitin, Likhie gody, 1925-1941 (Paris: YMCA Press, 1977),
222; N.A. Meshcherskii, 102-6.
41. Protokol soveshchaniia raionnykh inspektorov po voprosam kul'tov Lenin-
grada. 16 marta 1933, TsGA SPb, f. 7384, op. 2, d. 20,1. 5.
"Catacomb" path when legally tenable opposition was extirpated, the

authorities apparently feared a large-scale repetition of this in Lenin-
grad. Throughout the 1930s there functioned on the outskirts of the
city, in Lesnoe, a small wooden Josephite church, Holy Trinity. Many
times the fate of that church hung by a thread. But the parishioners,
who filled the church to overflowing, knew how to defend it so that,
despite repression, it attracted political enemies of the Soviet regime.
Numerous denunciations refer to the church as attended by "exiled
priests," "disenfranchised nuns," "dark personalities without pass-
ports" and so forth.42 The number of clergy gradually decreased: in
fall 1933 there were five. In March and April of 1935 when there was
a mass expulsion of the "alien population" from Leningrad-the so-
called Kirov flood-of 429 clergy almost half, 198, were sent to rural
areas.43 The last prominentJosephite figure was then dean of Trinity
Church, Archpriest Aleksandr Sovetov; frequently arrested, he was
struck from the register as a "white guard officer."44 After the terrible
year 1937 only one sacristan remained in the Holy Trinity Church,
Father Superior Archmonk Pavel (Ligor). While there were secret Jo-
sephite communities in Moscow, Kazakhstan, northwest Russia, etc.
during the second half of the 1930s, they gradually drew closer to the
Catacombists.
By 1938 the Russian Orthodox Church was, for all intents and
purposes, crushed. Still, the government had not achieved its goals:
the religious needs of an enormous number of people did not disap-
pear with the annihilation of a large portion of the clergy. "The [1937]
census demonstrated that in this huge country an enormous percent-
age of the population were believers: two thirds of the rural population
and one third of the municipal .. ," totaling 100 million people. These
figures are supported by other data.45 In reality, it was the laity who
withstood state attempts to destroy their Church once and for all. In
June 1941 in Leningrad, with a population of more than three million,
eight Orthodox churches were still active and one of those was Jo-
sephite.46 Its transfer to the Moscow Patriarchate occurred under the
quite different historical circumstances of the Great Patriotic War.
From the first days of World War II the Orthodox Church dedi-
cated itself to the defense of the motherland; this resulted in a signif-
icant change in the state policy toward religion. I.V. Stalin and the
leadership of the All-Russian Communist Party sought to unite the
faithful and atheists against Russia's enemy. The state's attempt to neu-
42. Zaiavleniia osvedomitelei inspektoru po voprosam kul'tov i v organy Narko-

mata vnutrennikh del. 1935-1936, ibid. op. 33, d. 114,11. 98, 129.
43. Spiski vyslannykh pravoslavnykh sviashchennosluzhitelei Leningrada i pri-
gorodov. Mart 1935g., ibid. d. 112,11. 2-3, 5-34.
44. Anketa protoiereia Aleksandra Sovetova. 1935, ibid. d. 114,1. 208.
45. M. Pol'skii, vol. 2: xxiv; B.N. Konovalov, K massovomu ateizmu (Moscow: Poli-
tizdat, 1974), 108.
46. Spisok tserkvei, deistvovavshikh do nachala Otechestvennoi voiny po Lenin-
gradu i oblasti, 1944, TsGA SPb, f. 9324, op. 1, d. 14,1. 8.
382 Slavic Review
tralize fascist propaganda, which had represented Germany as the pro-

tector of Christianity on the territory of the USSR, also played a role
in the policy change, as did the Soviet Union's relationship with its
allies, the US and Great Britain. In September 1943 Stalin permitted
the election of a Patriarch, whereupon churches opened and religious
literature began to be disseminated. Thus the continuation of the Pa-
triarchal Church provided the foundation from which to build, for,
had the entire Orthodox Church taken the "Catacomb" path, it is un-
likely that "Stalin would have summoned isolated groups of clergy
from the underground and would have, in any case, established a pa-
triarchal administration which would have been internally freer and
morally more pure than the 'Sergian.' 47 Moreover, as has been noted,
by 1943 there were few clerics active in the underground and no bish-
ops who could have contended for the post of Patriarch; party lead-
ership would hardly have sought the cooperation of its most notorious
"enemies" when the "pro-Soviet" Renovationists and Grigorians were
still active; and, finally, if Stalin had made overtures to an underground
branch of the "true Orthodox Church," that branch would have been
compelled to make the very compromises that Metropolitan Sergii had
also made during the "legalization" in 1927.
In those areas of the Leningrad region occupied by German forces,
the Josephites operated legally while the Catacombists preferred to
remain "underground." But the Leningrad Josephites had distanced
themselves from the military authorities of the city more than the other
Orthodox at the start of the Great Patriotic War. They had made their
first contribution of 15,000 rubles to the Society of the Red Cross only
on 2 November 1941; but by September 1943 they had contributed
137,000 rubles for defense needs.48 The Leningrad blockade was a
crisis in more ways than one: not only did more than a million die of
hunger, but patriotism and the impetus to unite fundamentally changed
the situation of the Orthodox. On 24 November 1943 the parishioners
of the last Josephite church in Leningrad sent a petition to the Len-
ingrad Metropolitan Aleksii (Simanskii):
the Dvadtsatka and the faithful of the Lesnoe Holy Trinity Church
humbly beg Your Most High Right Reverend to take our church under
your archpastoral protection and lead us spiritually. For a long time
our church has adhered to the Josephite' denomination, recognizing
as the Head of the Church The Most High Right Reverend Metro-
politan losif (Petrovykh). Having separated ourselves from the Rus-
sian Orthodox Church, which is lead by His Most Holy Patriarch of
Moscow and all Russia Sergii, we, the followers of Metropolitan losif,
have committed a great sin before the Russian Church. We have vi-
olated its unity and, at the same time, have committed no less of a
47. Lev Regel'son, 617.

48. Spravka o perechislenii v fond oborony deneg prikhozhanami Troitskoi tserkvi
v Lesnom. 20 avgusta 1943, TsGA SPb, f. 7384, op. 33, d. 126,1. 184.
sin before the Soviet authorities and the Motherland by striving to

place ourselves in a kind of isolation outside of the State . . . The
years which have passed, especially those of the Great Patriotic War,
have demonstrated the needlessness and baselessness of the existence
of the josephites.' We are the 'lost sheep' who have wandered from
their flock. While all the congregations and pastors of other churches
are ardently praying for the gift of the victory of our forces over the
bitter enemies of the entire race of man-the fascist marauders-and
contribute, according to their ability, to the Red Cross and to the
defense of our Motherland, we, the Josephites, have sat on the side-
49
lines. It is now bitter for us to acknowledge this ...
Metropolitan Aleksii, the future Patriarch, issued a resolution that very
day to accept the Holy Trinity Church community into canonical com-
munion with the Patriarchal Church. The last Josephite clergyman of
the church, Archmonk Pavel, was defrocked "for violation of his oath
before God, betrayal of conscience and coarse violation of the sanctity
of God's holy service."50 (He continued to illegally conduct religious
services in Leningrad cemeteries until the 1950s.)
Thus the Josephite movement ended in the mid-1940s as its last
representatives finally abandoned their isolation. Most of the few Jo-
sephite clergymen who had survived the camps-Archpriests Veriu-
zhskii, Kibardin, Vernustov, et al.-reconciled themselves with the Pa-
triarchate and their former congregations followed them. (For example,
in 1945 in Gatchina near Leningrad there existed within the Patriar-
chal Church a peculiar community of former Josephites led by the
priest Peter Belavskii, who had at one time been close to Bishop Dim-
itrii.) Another faction of the movement refused reconciliation and
merged with the Catacombists. The Catacomb Church was able to sur-
vive from 1922 until the present and in recent years its activities have
finally been legalized. The tragedy of the Josephites vividly demon-
strates the impossibility of a third way for the Orthodox Church, a
legal religious movement existing in opposition to both "Sergianism"
and the state.
The crushing of the Russian Church in the 1920s and 1930s (in-
cluding the destruction of the opposition clergy, among whom the
Josephites were prominent) and that Church's inner crisis resulting
from incorporation into a totalitarian society were tragic not only for
the Russian Church but also for the Russian nation as a whole: it greatly
accellerated the limitation of freedom of conscience, the establishment
of universal ideological control, and the erosion of the moral basis of
struggle and protest in the country at large.
49. Zaiavlenie prikhozhan Troitskoi tserkvi v Lesnom Leningradskomu mitro-

politu Aleksiiu s pros'boi priniat' tserkov' pod svoe pokrovitel'stvo. 24 noiabria 1943,
ibid. 11. 214-215.
50. Soobshchenie sekretaria Leningradskogo mitropolita v administrativnyi nad-
zor gorodskogo ispolnitel'nogo komiteta o rezoliutsii Vladyki Aleksiia po povodu ier-
omonakha Pavla Ligora. 28 dekabria 1943, ibid. d. 76,1. 187.
384 Slavic Review
Appendix
The main sources for this article are documents housed in the Central State Archives
of St. Petersburg (TsGASPb), the main repository for materials on this subject. Dio-
cesan officials were only recently afforded opportunity to create their own compre-
hensive archive; it contains virtually no materials for the years before 1945, so the
TsGASPb materials are practically a unique source. A large portion of this documen-
tation was previously classified and inaccessible to researchers; what was accessible
was not, for all practical purposes, put to any scholarly use. In my work as chief
archivist I had opportunity to systematically study the necessary inventories and doc-
uments.
Documents of the state regulatory agencies of religious organizations in the Len-
ingrad oblast' are also housed in the TsGASPb. The largest set of documents is located
in the collection of the Leningrad municipal executive committee (f.7384) and in the
records of the decisions of the municipal commission on cult affairs, which in 1931
had superseded the bureau of the registration of societies, unions and religious or-
ganizations, and had inherited its archives. These documents include surveillance
reports on dioceses of the "northern capital," including those of the Josephites, as
well as historical inquiries, inventories, questionnaires, membership lists of the dvadt-
satki ("the groups of twenty," religious councils or synods) and clergy, protocols of
parish meetings, personal correspondence, etc. Especially valuable is information con-
cerning religious festivals, the closing and destruction of churches, and the arrest and
exile of clergymen. Analogous information on the oblast' level is contained in docu-
ments in the collection of the Leningrad regional executive committee (f.7179).
Records of the area inspectors on cult affairs and of the bureaus of registration
have not been preserved in toto. The best collections are of the Petrograd (f.151),
Moscow-Narvskii (f.104) and October (f.4914) area executive committees of Leningrad,
which also contain little known circulars by higher governmental authorities. It must
be noted, however, that a significant portion of corresponding documents of the Vas-
ileostrovskii, Smolnya and a series of other area executive committees remain un-
available to researchers. A valuable source of information for this article is the col-
lection of the Petersburg provincial council (f.1000), including correspondence between
the Leningrad city executive committee and the OGPU from the late 1920s to early
1930s. Correspondence that would shed light on repressive anti-Church campaigns of
the second half of the 1930s has unfortunately not yet been declassified. Concerning
the years of World War II, when the last officially functioning Josephite community
disappeared, there are records of the council on the affairs of the Russian Orthodox
Church for the Leningrad oblast' (f.9324).
Important information concerning the interrogation of clergy, particularly Bish-
ops Dimitrii (Liubimov) and Manuil (Lemeshevskii), and Archpriests Vasilii Veriu-
zhskii, Mikhail Chel'tsov, is available in the archives of the bureau of the ministry of
security of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, responses to my
requests for documentation were limited to oral replies from personnel of the ministry
of security. In addition, documents pertaining to internal Church struggles during the
1920s are in the library of the Ecclesiastical Academy of St. Petersburg. Altogether
these materials currently reveal a clear picture of theJosephite movement at its center,
Leningrad. In the near future additional Church materials in the TsGASPb should be
declassified and the gradual transfer completed of the archival collections of the Pe-
tersburg bureau of the ministry of security to the TsGASPb, begun in August 1991.
TRANSLATED BY JOHN HOLMAN

Orthodox Vs State

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Orthodox Vs State

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The Russian Orthodox Church versus the State: The Josephite Movement, 1927-1940

Author(s): Mikhail V. Shkarovskii

Russia is embarking upon a new path of historical development. To-

Slavic Review 54, no. 2 (Summer 1995)

1. N.S. Gordienko, 1) Evoliutsiia russkogo pravoslaviia (20-e-80-e gody XX stoletiia)

4. Sviashchenstvo Tserkvi Presviatoi Bogoroditsy, Krasnaia Patriarkhiia: Volki v

sephitism and the consequences of its destruction. I conclude that, in

The experience of succeeding decades demonstrates that the only

In scholarly literature one encounters the assertion that the "Decla-

12. Regel'son, 414-17; Shishkin, 302-3.

Metropolitan losif (then exiled to the Modenskii Monastery in Nov-

13. Izvestiia, 19 August 1927.

state granted amnesty to a large number of Leningrad clergy who un-

1) to renounce the prospective enslavement of the Church to the State.

On 12 December, before there was a reply to this appeal, a signif-

concluded without concrete results. Two days later Metropolitan Sergii

17. Lev Regel'son, 136-37.

The anti-Sergian movement was not confined to Leningrad. On 6

19. Ibid., 27.

churchmen who had served in the parish, Archbishops V.A. Akimov

21. A.A. Shishkin, 335.

their religious views; fanatics among the faithful-the "blessed," the

If Metropolitan Peter were to recognize Sergii's epistle as legal and

It is grievous to contemplate the potential of Orthodoxy that was wasted

Invalid are the sacraments celebrated in isolation from the Church

26. N.A. Meshcherskii, 10.

The Josephites themselves never considered themselves schismat-

29. Lev Regel'son, 168-69.

and, ultimately, the upper Church administration of the existing Pa-

31. Amvrosii (Sivers), 46.

threat of liquidation); eleven were closed by the authorities. Some of

32. Akt peredachi novomu iosiflianskomu prikhodskomu sovetu kliuchei' ot

But the "autocephaly" of the Josephites did not disintegrate, as

Under the totalitarian conditions of the 1930s, theJosephite movement

38. Spiski deistvuiushchikh khramov Leningrada i prigorodov. 1932, TsGA SPb,

"Catacomb" path when legally tenable opposition was extirpated, the

42. Zaiavleniia osvedomitelei inspektoru po voprosam kul'tov i v organy Narko-

tralize fascist propaganda, which had represented Germany as the pro-

47. Lev Regel'son, 617.

sin before the Soviet authorities and the Motherland by striving to

49. Zaiavlenie prikhozhan Troitskoi tserkvi v Lesnom Leningradskomu mitro-

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