Criminal
01-18-2003, 06:22 AM
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ORTHODOX STALINISM
What's more, from the point of view of the Metropolitans present at the famous 1943 meeting with Stalin everything was quite the reverse. Judge for yourself: the "peacemaking" policy officially conducted by the Church leadership from 1927 onwards had yielded brilliant results. Persecution was ended. For the purpose of church-state coordination a special government body was formed, the Governmental Council on Russian Orthodox Church Matters. None other than Stalin himself issued the following instructions to the first chairman of the Council, Georgy Karpov:
The Council is enjoined:
to prevent direct interference in the administrative, canonical and dogmatic life of the Church and to emphasize the Church's independence;
not to peek into the pockets of the Church and the clergy;
not to stand in the way of the founding of seminaries, church industry, etc.
(Source: Tsentr Khraneniya Sovremmenoj Dokumentatsii, f.5, op.16, d.669, ll 4-5).
It would seem: what else could the Church desire after a quarter-century of ruthless persecution? In essence, the atheist state admitted defeat in its battle against the Church of Christ. "The effects of the sudden change of course were truly overwhelming", writes Metropolitan Ioann (Samoderzhavie Dukha, St. Petersburg, p.320). "Within a few short years on the territory of the USSR where according to various estimates only 150 to 400 working parishes remained by the beginning of World War II thousands of churches were reopened, and the number of Orthodox parishes rose, according to some sources, to 22,000. Holy Russia had returned to life. The Church had weathered the storm. In a war waged against Orthodoxy by atheists, a religious war unprecedented in its scale and cruelty, the atheists had been forced to retreat."
However, in order improve the lot of Orthodox believers the Church authorities were obliged to pay the high price of difficult and painful moral compromises. "We are living and will continue to live under the spell of those impressions which overcame us during our meeting with the beloved leader of the people", wrote Metropolitan Nikolai in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate ("Zhurnal Moskovoskoj Patriarchii", 1944, vol.2, p.2). "Excited and overwhelmed with joy at our meeting with Iosif Vissarionovich, we were touched to the depths of our souls not only by his attention to the needs of the Church, but also his warm concern for the everyday needs of each of us. Iosif Vissarionovich's attention and concern over the needs of the Church inspires us... The Russian Orthodox Church blesses the life and work of the great leader of our country and the Red Army." In the postwar years Metropolitan Nikolai (in his capacity as head of the OVCS) often traveled abroad on assignment. Assured of the loyalty of the Church leadership, Stalin attempted with its help to increase the USSR's influence abroad, especially in the key geopolitical regions of Europe and the Middle East. Such a state of affairs prompted certain foreign analysts to regard the Moscow Patriarchate as an "advocate for Soviet imperialism". (See, for example, W. Fletcher, The Russian Orthodox Church Underground 1917-1970, Oxford, 1971).
Indeed, in the period from 1943 to 1948 the leadership of the USSR was actively preparing for a geopolitical breakthrough to the south, to the Mediterranean. The presence in that region of a large Orthodox diaspora and the need to find a worthy counterweight to the Vatican, which in its turn was doing everything in its power to foil the plans of the Soviet leaders -- all of this involuntarily drew the Moscow Patriarchate into the maelstrom of world politics. (M.B. Shkarovsky, R.P.Ts. i Sovetskoye Gosudarstvo v 1943-1964 Godakh, St. Petersburg, 1995, p.10). Having understood this, Father Nikolai suffered greatly from the ambivalent nature of his position. One Church official of the Russian emigration who met with him in London described his impressions from that meeting: "What stunned us greatly were his pale blue eyes, which penetrated deeply into the soul of his interlocutor. One could feel the enormous inner tension of a man who had taken an great burden upon himself, carrying that burden unbendingly." True are the words of Scripture which state that under the influence of all-powerful Providence evil itself "assists Good even in the absence of good intentions". Stalin's global-scale political appetite allowed the Church not only to reacquire the unity lost in the revolutionary years, not only to nip in the bud all of the Vatican's designs on the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church, but also to fortify the foundations of dogma and step forth confidently as the unchallenged leader of the Orthodox world.
This was especially forcefully demonstrated at the Moscow Conference of Orthodox Church Leaders, which took place in Moscow in June of 1948. If the Chekists who "patronized" that event (the organization of which, by the way, was covered under a special decree of the USSR Soviet Ministry dated February 25, 1948) noted in their report that the conference "disrupted the plans of the Anglo-American reaction", contemporary Church historians are inclined to emphasize another aspect: the conference's "loyalty to Orthodox tradition, healthy conservatism and sobriety in its assessment of Western church life" (Protoierei V. Tsypin, Istoriya R.P.Ts., Moscow, 1994, p.147).
ORTHODOX STALINISM
What's more, from the point of view of the Metropolitans present at the famous 1943 meeting with Stalin everything was quite the reverse. Judge for yourself: the "peacemaking" policy officially conducted by the Church leadership from 1927 onwards had yielded brilliant results. Persecution was ended. For the purpose of church-state coordination a special government body was formed, the Governmental Council on Russian Orthodox Church Matters. None other than Stalin himself issued the following instructions to the first chairman of the Council, Georgy Karpov:
The Council is enjoined:
to prevent direct interference in the administrative, canonical and dogmatic life of the Church and to emphasize the Church's independence;
not to peek into the pockets of the Church and the clergy;
not to stand in the way of the founding of seminaries, church industry, etc.
(Source: Tsentr Khraneniya Sovremmenoj Dokumentatsii, f.5, op.16, d.669, ll 4-5).
It would seem: what else could the Church desire after a quarter-century of ruthless persecution? In essence, the atheist state admitted defeat in its battle against the Church of Christ. "The effects of the sudden change of course were truly overwhelming", writes Metropolitan Ioann (Samoderzhavie Dukha, St. Petersburg, p.320). "Within a few short years on the territory of the USSR where according to various estimates only 150 to 400 working parishes remained by the beginning of World War II thousands of churches were reopened, and the number of Orthodox parishes rose, according to some sources, to 22,000. Holy Russia had returned to life. The Church had weathered the storm. In a war waged against Orthodoxy by atheists, a religious war unprecedented in its scale and cruelty, the atheists had been forced to retreat."
However, in order improve the lot of Orthodox believers the Church authorities were obliged to pay the high price of difficult and painful moral compromises. "We are living and will continue to live under the spell of those impressions which overcame us during our meeting with the beloved leader of the people", wrote Metropolitan Nikolai in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate ("Zhurnal Moskovoskoj Patriarchii", 1944, vol.2, p.2). "Excited and overwhelmed with joy at our meeting with Iosif Vissarionovich, we were touched to the depths of our souls not only by his attention to the needs of the Church, but also his warm concern for the everyday needs of each of us. Iosif Vissarionovich's attention and concern over the needs of the Church inspires us... The Russian Orthodox Church blesses the life and work of the great leader of our country and the Red Army." In the postwar years Metropolitan Nikolai (in his capacity as head of the OVCS) often traveled abroad on assignment. Assured of the loyalty of the Church leadership, Stalin attempted with its help to increase the USSR's influence abroad, especially in the key geopolitical regions of Europe and the Middle East. Such a state of affairs prompted certain foreign analysts to regard the Moscow Patriarchate as an "advocate for Soviet imperialism". (See, for example, W. Fletcher, The Russian Orthodox Church Underground 1917-1970, Oxford, 1971).
Indeed, in the period from 1943 to 1948 the leadership of the USSR was actively preparing for a geopolitical breakthrough to the south, to the Mediterranean. The presence in that region of a large Orthodox diaspora and the need to find a worthy counterweight to the Vatican, which in its turn was doing everything in its power to foil the plans of the Soviet leaders -- all of this involuntarily drew the Moscow Patriarchate into the maelstrom of world politics. (M.B. Shkarovsky, R.P.Ts. i Sovetskoye Gosudarstvo v 1943-1964 Godakh, St. Petersburg, 1995, p.10). Having understood this, Father Nikolai suffered greatly from the ambivalent nature of his position. One Church official of the Russian emigration who met with him in London described his impressions from that meeting: "What stunned us greatly were his pale blue eyes, which penetrated deeply into the soul of his interlocutor. One could feel the enormous inner tension of a man who had taken an great burden upon himself, carrying that burden unbendingly." True are the words of Scripture which state that under the influence of all-powerful Providence evil itself "assists Good even in the absence of good intentions". Stalin's global-scale political appetite allowed the Church not only to reacquire the unity lost in the revolutionary years, not only to nip in the bud all of the Vatican's designs on the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church, but also to fortify the foundations of dogma and step forth confidently as the unchallenged leader of the Orthodox world.
This was especially forcefully demonstrated at the Moscow Conference of Orthodox Church Leaders, which took place in Moscow in June of 1948. If the Chekists who "patronized" that event (the organization of which, by the way, was covered under a special decree of the USSR Soviet Ministry dated February 25, 1948) noted in their report that the conference "disrupted the plans of the Anglo-American reaction", contemporary Church historians are inclined to emphasize another aspect: the conference's "loyalty to Orthodox tradition, healthy conservatism and sobriety in its assessment of Western church life" (Protoierei V. Tsypin, Istoriya R.P.Ts., Moscow, 1994, p.147).