On March 7, 1917, the movement of church “renovationists” began in Petrograd - the All-Russian Union of Democratic Orthodox Clergy and Laity was created, led by priests A. I. Vvedensky, A. I. Boyarsky, I. Egorov. They attempted church reforms, but the result of these attempts was tragic.
By the beginning of the 20th century, many clergy began talking about the need for reforms in the Church. The years of the First Russian Revolution became for the clergy a time of hope for the revival of Orthodoxy, which meant, first of all, gaining independence in resolving internal church affairs. Even the members of the Synod, contrary to the position of the Chief Prosecutor, in March 1905 unanimously spoke out in favor of reforms, for which they considered it necessary to convene the Local Council as soon as possible.
But in 1917, many were confused. Most reformers wanted the state to help the Church free itself from supporters of the old understanding of church life.
For its part, the “Union of Democratic Clergy and Laity” proclaimed the main goal of the movement “to be in unity with the people in the great work of creating a new state system, in which the best way all pressing religious, cultural, political and socio-economic issues would be resolved.”
But the Bolsheviks who came to power decided to use the church liberals for their own purposes - to destroy the Patriarchal Church, in which they succeeded.
In preparation for the confiscation of church values, the authorities, in order to avoid a new civil war, now religious, through the hands of the renovationists, created a puppet church administration completely controlled by the regime.
On the night of May 12, 1922, priests Alexander Vvedensky, Alexander Boyarsky and Evgeny Belkov, accompanied by employees of the GPU, arrived at the Trinity Metochion in Moscow on Samotek, where Patriarch Tikhon was kept under house arrest, and accused him of a dangerous and rash policy that led to confrontation between the Church and state, demanded that he renounce his powers during the arrest. And the patriarch signed a resolution on the temporary transfer of church power to Metropolitan Agafangel (Preobrazhensky) of Yaroslavl.
And already on May 14, “An Appeal to the Believing Sons of the Orthodox Church of Russia” appeared in Izvestia, demanding a trial of “the perpetrators of church destruction” and a statement about ending the “civil war of the Church against the state.”
The next day, the delegation of the renovationists was received by the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Mikhail Kalinin. The establishment of a new Higher Church Administration (HCU), consisting entirely of renovationists, was immediately announced. And to make it easier for them to seize the patriarchal office, the patriarch himself was transported to the Donskoy Monastery.
From the secretariat of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) directives were sent to the localities on support for the renovationist structures being created. The GPU actively put pressure on the ruling bishops, forcing them to recognize the VCU and the “Living Church” established in parallel with it; persecution began against the “Tikhon’s” clergy.
The meaning of the renovation movement itself was seen by its inspirers in the liberation of the clergy “from the deadening oppression of monasticism,” which prevents them from “getting into their hands the bodies of church government and certainly gaining free access to the rank of bishop. But like any schismatics, they immediately began to split into “talks.”
Already in August 1922, Bishop Antonin (Granovsky), chairman of the VCU, also organized the “Union of Church Revival” (UCR), which saw its support not in the clergy, but in the laity - as “the only element” capable of “charging church life with revolutionary religious energy." The charter of the Central Eastern Church promised its followers “the broadest democratization of Heaven, the widest access to the bosom of the Heavenly Father.”
Vvedensky and Boyarsky organized the “Union of Communities of the Ancient Apostolic Church” (SODATS). Many smaller church reform groups appeared, and each had its own program of church reforms aimed at a radical renewal of the Russian Orthodox Church.
By the end of 1922, the renovationists, with the help of the authorities, captured two-thirds of the 30 thousand churches operating at that time. As the authorities had hoped, the campaign of looting churches and desecration of shrines did not cause mass popular protests simply because the Church was split from within, and individual pockets of resistance could easily be destroyed by the forces of the GPU.
In May 1923, in Moscow, in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the first Renovation Council was held, which passed a resolution supporting Soviet power and announced the defrocking of the “former Patriarch” Tikhon. The patriarchate was abolished as a “monarchical and counter-revolutionary way of leading the Church,” the institution of a white (married) episcopate and the Gregorian calendar were introduced, and the VCU was transformed into the Supreme Church Council (SCC).
Naturally, Patriarch Tikhon did not recognize the decisions of the Renovation Council, and anathematized the Renovationists themselves as an “illegal gathering” and “an institution of the Antichrist.”
Then, in order to counter the “Tikhonovism,” the authorities decided to give the renovationist schism a more respectable appearance, subordinating all its movements to a single central body: the All-Russian Central Council was transformed into the “Holy Synod,” and all renovationist groups were ordered to dissolve and unite their members into the “Renovation Church.” . The “Living Church”, which did not submit to this decision, simply ceased to exist without the support of the authorities.
In June 1924, the renovationist “Pre-Conciliar Meeting” appealed to the Council of People’s Commissars with a request to grant clergy the rights of members of trade unions, to allow children under 11 years of age to be taught the Law of God, to conduct civil registration, and to return confiscated goods to churches. miraculous icons and power. Naturally, all this was denied.
In October 1925, the renovationists held their second council, at which they officially abandoned all previously announced reforms not only in the field of dogma and worship, but also in the field of the liturgical calendar.
After this council, renovationism began to catastrophically lose its supporters.
Ultimately, in 1935, the VCU dissolved itself, and the renovationists were hit by a general wave of anti-church repressions, and mass arrests of their episcopate, clergy and active laity began. The final blow to the movement was the decisive support by the authorities of the Patriarchal Church in September 1943. By the end of the war, all that remained of all renovationism was the parish of the Church of Pimen the Great in Novye Vorotniki (New Pimen) in Moscow.
In the photo in the center is A.I. Vvedensky
As has already been said, within the Church, even before the revolution, there were different opinions and trends regarding its internal structure and liturgical practice. Back in 1906, a “group of 32 priests” appeared, putting forward reformist demands (marriage episcopate, Russian worship, the Gregorian calendar). However, these reform tendencies did not develop then. The Local Council of 1917 - 1918, with all its transformative activity, generally did not undertake radical reforms. In the area of worship, he did not change anything.
During the civil war and political struggle the first years of Soviet power, when a significant part of the clergy entered into an alliance with the counter-revolution, and the leadership of the Church either loudly denounced the Bolsheviks, or tried to show their neutrality, some representatives of the clergy (mainly white - capital priests) began to come to the idea of the need to cooperate with the new government , carrying out internal church reforms and adapting the Church to new conditions. In addition to the reformist impulse, these priests were also driven by exorbitant personal ambition. Until a certain point, their aspirations did not find a response from the authorities, but the struggle over the confiscation of church values, ardently supported by supporters of church renewal, created a favorable situation for the implementation of their plans. The leaders of the renovation movement quickly emerged - Petrograd Archpriest Alexander Vvedensky (who later became the sole leader of the entire movement), priest Vladimir Krasnitsky (former Black Hundred member) and Bishop Antonin (Granovsky).
During the campaign to confiscate valuables, supporters of this group repeatedly appeared in print (and official newspapers readily published them) criticizing the actions of the church leadership. They supported the conviction of Metropolitan Veniamin, but asked the authorities to commute the sentence.
On May 9, 1922, Patriarch Tikhon, as a defendant in the case, was placed under house arrest. Church administration turned out to be virtually disorganized. The leaders of the future renovationists took advantage of this situation for a rather unsightly intrigue. By agreement with the Cheka, they visited the Patriarch on May 12 and spent a long time trying to persuade him to resign from church leadership. Tikhon agreed to temporarily transfer his powers to the elderly Metropolitan of Yaroslavl Agafangel, known for his devotion to Tikhon. Tikhon temporarily handed over his office to the priests who visited him (Vvedensky, Krasnitsky and others) until Agafangel arrived in Moscow. However, the GPU authorities prohibited Agafangel from leaving Yaroslavl, and the priests who visited the Patriarch falsified his order to transfer the office to them and presented it as an act of transfer of the highest church authority. After this, they formed the Supreme Church Administration from their supporters, headed by Bishop Antonin (Granovsky). This body announced the preparation of a new local Council, at which it was supposed to resolve the issue of Tikhon’s removal and internal church reforms in the spirit of the ideas of the Renovationists. At the same time, several renovationist groups emerged. The most significant of them were the Church Revival, led by Bishop Antonin, the “Living Church”, led by Krasnitsky, and the “Union of Communities of the Ancient Apostolic Church” (SODATS), led by Vvedensky, which soon broke away from it. All of them, of course, had some “fundamental” differences from each other, but most of all their leaders were distinguished by irrepressible ambition. A struggle for power soon began between these groups, which the GPU tried to extinguish in order to direct their common energy to the fight against “Tikhonism.”
This was the beginning of the second schism of the Russian Church since the 17th century. If under Nikon and Avvakum the schismatics defended antiquity and directly challenged the authorities, then during the times of Tikhon and Vvedensky the “rebellion” was raised precisely in the name of innovation and change, and its supporters tried in every possible way to please the authorities.
In general, the GPU (its special VI department) and the so-called “Anti-religious Commission” under the Central Committee of the RCP played a primary role in all these events. The main work on the “corruption of the church” was carried out by E. A. Tuchkov, who held responsible positions in these bodies, whom Lunacharsky called “the modern Pobedonostsev.” At the same time, the “Union of Militant Atheists”, headed by Emelyan Yaroslavsky (Mineus Izrailevich Gubelman), is developing its activities. This "Union" was actually government organization and was financed from the state treasury.
Convinced of the impossibility of “neutralizing” the Church with a “frontal attack” at that moment, the Bolsheviks relied on its internal split. The secret report of the “anti-religious commission” in the Politburo on November 4, 1922 said: “It was decided to take a firm bet on the Living Church group as the most active, blocking it with the left group (SODATS - A.F.), to expand wider work on purge of the Tikhonov and generally Black Hundred elements in parish councils in the Center and locally, to carry out, through the All-Russian Central Administration, widespread public recognition of Soviet power by diocesan councils and individual bishops and priests, as well as parish councils.” The same commission decided to “carry out the removal of Tikhonov’s bishops in a sweeping manner.” Tuchkov in his secret “Report on Tikhonovism” wrote: “in my opinion, it would not be a bad idea to expel Tikhonites from the parish councils, starting this work in much the same way, that is, pitting one part of the believers against another.” Another report of the same commission stated that some of the “Tikhon’s” (i.e., those who did not recognize the VCU) bishops “were decided to be subjected to administrative exile for a period of two to three years.” The role of the renovationist VCU in these events is outlined very clearly in the document: “Measures are being taken to obtain from representatives of the “Living Church” and the VCU specific materials establishing the counter-revolutionary work of certain individuals from the Tikhonov clergy and the reactionary laity with a view to applying judicial and administrative measures to them.” . The report further stated that "for Lately One can note the unquestioning execution on the part of the VCU of all directives of the relevant bodies and the strengthening of influence on its work." It is hardly possible to say more eloquently than these documents about whose interests lay behind the reformist impulses of the renovationists. Already at that time, the VChK practiced recruiting secret agents from among the clergy. In one of the protocols of the secret department of the Cheka one can find the following curious thoughts of one speaker: “The material interest of one or another informant among the clergy is necessary... At the same time, monetary subsidies and in kind will no doubt connect them with us in another respect, namely in that he will be an eternal slave of the Cheka, afraid to expose his activities."
From April 29 to May 9, 1923, the Local Council of Renovationists was held in Moscow. The elections of representatives to this council were held under the strict control of the GPU, which ensured the predominance of supporters of the renovationist VCU. The Patriarch, who was under arrest, was deprived of any opportunity to influence the situation. The Council hastened to assure the Soviet government not only of its loyalty, but also of its ardent support. Already at the opening of the Council, the VCU turned to the Lord with a prayer to help the Council “to confirm the conscience of believers and direct them on the path of a new working community, creating happiness and common prosperity, that is, revealing the kingdom of God on earth.”
The most important acts of the Council were: condemnation of the entire previous policy of the Church in relation to Soviet power as “counter-revolutionary”, the deprivation of Patriarch Tikhon of dignity and monasticism and his transformation into “layman Vasily Belavin”, the abolition of the patriarchate, the restoration of which in 1917 was an act of “counter-revolutionary” , the establishment of “conciliar” government of the Church, the permission of white marriage episcopate and second marriages of priests (which opened the way for people like Vvedensky to the heights of the church hierarchy, and in the opinion of the “Tikhonovites” contradicted the canons of the Orthodox Church), the closure of monasteries in cities and the transformation of remote rural monasteries into unique Christian labor communes, excommunication of emigrant bishops.
The 1923 cathedral was the high point of the renovation movement. Many priests with their parishes and a significant number of bishops followed the renovationists. In Moscow during the Council, the renovationists had the majority of existing churches at their disposal. This was also facilitated by the authorities, who always gave them preference in the event of a dispute over the temple. True, the Renovation churches stood empty, while it was impossible to crowd into the remaining “Tikhonov” churches. Many priests and bishops followed the Renovationists not out of conviction, but “for the sake of the fear of the Jews,” i.e. fearing reprisals. And not in vain. Many bishops and priests devoted to the Patriarch were subjected to administrative (i.e., without charges, investigation or trial) arrest and exile only for opposing the Renovationist schism. In exile, they replenished the army of clergy already there since the civil war and the confiscation of valuables.
The arrested Patriarch Tikhon soon realized the seriousness of the situation. In addition, the “authorities” began to fear (though in vain) the strengthening of the renovationists. They needed church schism and unrest, and not a renewed Church (even a loyal one). Back in November 1922, Tikhon anathematized the “Living Church”, and later categorically refused to recognize the competence of the Renovation Council. The authorities demanded that Tikhon, as a condition of release, declare a declaration of loyalty to the Soviet regime and admit his guilt before it, dissociate himself from the counter-revolution, and condemn the church emigrants. Tikhon accepted these conditions. On June 16, 1923, he submitted an application to the Supreme Court, in which he admitted his guilt in “offenses against the political system,” repented of them and asked for release. On June 27, 1923, Patriarch Tikhon was released.
Immediately after his release, Tikhon and his supporters, the bishops, from whom he soon formed his Synod, entered into a decisive struggle with the renovationists. The Patriarch issued several appeals to his flock, the essence of which boiled down to dissociation from any counter-revolution, recognition of his own “mistakes” in the past (which was explained by the upbringing of the Patriarch and his former “entourage”), as well as a sharp condemnation of the Renovationists, whose Council he called nothing less than "gathering". The Patriarch's tone towards the schismatics became sharper and harsher.
The results of this activity were not long in coming. The return of renovationist parishes to the bosom of the patriarchal Church took mass character. Many renovationist hierarchs repented before Tikhon. The leaders of renovationism began to feel the ground for “unification.” These conciliatory attempts, however, encountered resistance from Tikhon and Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky), who was close to him. They demanded not “reunification,” but repentance of the renovationists and renunciation of the schism. Not all of the proud schismatics were ready to do this. Therefore, renovationism lasted for another two decades. The unrepentant Renovationists were banned by Tikhon from the priesthood.
Nevertheless, repressions against Tikhon's supporters continued. Tikhon was still under prosecution and therefore even remembering his name in prayers (which was mandatory for Orthodox parishes) was considered a criminal offense according to the Circular of the People's Commissariat of Justice. Only in 1924 was Tikhon’s case dismissed by the judiciary.
Wanting to cause a new schism in the Church, the authorities (in the person of Tuchkov) demanded that the Church switch to the Gregorian calendar. Tikhon responded with a polite refusal. Beginning in 1924, prayers began to be offered in churches “for the Russian country and for its authorities.” Dissatisfied priests often said "and oblasteh ey" instead.
On April 7, the seriously ill Tikhon signed a message to the flock, which in particular said: “Without sinning against our faith and church, without altering anything in them, in a word, without allowing any compromises or concessions in the area of faith, in civil matters we must be sincere in attitude towards Soviet power and the work of the USSR for the common good, conforming the order of external church life and activities with the new state system, condemning any communication with the enemies of Soviet power and overt and secret agitation against it." While scattering assurances of loyalty to the Soviet regime, Tikhon expressed hope for possible freedom of the church press and the possibility of teaching the Law of God to the children of believers.
This message is often called the “testament” of Patriarch Tikhon, for on the same day, April 7, 1925, he died.
The Bolsheviks partially succeeded in achieving their goals. Renovationist schism really seriously shook the internal life of the Church. But they clearly underestimated the commitment of the believing people to Patriarch Tikhon and the values of traditional Orthodoxy, which allowed the Church to withstand this test. The repressions only increased the authority of Tikhon’s supporters among believers. The Renovationists gained the glory of the “official” and “Bolshevik” church, which did not contribute to their authority in any way. As for the renovationists themselves, their perhaps noble initial ideas were compromised by their ambitious desire to become the “official” church under the new system. For this purpose, they entered into direct cooperation with the GPU, promoting political repression against their opponents. They fully deserved the nickname “Judas,” which believers often called them. The authorities needed a split in the Church only to “loose the soil” for materialism and atheism (Trotsky’s expression).
Seeing the main danger in the internal church schism, Patriarch Tikhon made a declaration of loyalty to the Soviet regime. This allowed him, despite all the repressions, to restore at least partially church governance and avoid complete chaos in church life. Perhaps the softening of the internal political course associated with the NEP and the strengthening of Soviet power also contributed to this decision of the Patriarch.
The Orthodox Church, unlike other Christian denominations, is called orthodox in most European languages. Nowadays, this word has acquired a negative connotation, often denoting inertia, extreme conservatism and retrogradeness. However, in Explanatory dictionary In Russian, the word “orthodox” has a completely different meaning: it characterizes strict adherence to the original teaching, its letter and spirit. In this sense, the name “orthodox” for the Orthodox Church on the part of Western Christians is very honorable and symbolic. With all this, one can often hear calls for renewal and reform in the Church. They come both from within the church body and from without. Often these calls are based on a sincere desire for the good of the Church, but even more often they are the desire of the authors of these calls to adapt the Church to themselves, to make It convenient, while discarding two thousand years of tradition and the very Spirit of God from the church body.
One of the most painful attempts to change the Church to please people was the Renovationist schism of the first half of the 20th century. The purpose of this article is to attempt to identify problems in the Russian Church that required solutions by the beginning of the 20th century, to consider how they were solved by the legitimate church leadership, primarily the Local Council of 1917-1918, and by what methods the leaders proposed to solve them various groups inside, and then outside, the Local Russian Church.
The main problems that confronted the Russian Church at the beginning of the twentieth century were the following:
· 1. On the highest church government
· 2. About relations with the state
· 3. About liturgical language
· 4. About church legislation and court
· 5. About church property
· 6. On the state of parishes and the lower clergy
· 7. About spiritual education in Russia and a number of others.
All of them became the subject of discussions at two Pre-Conciliar Meetings convened by Emperor Nicholas II in 1905-1906 and 1912. They used the materials of the “Reviews...” of diocesan bishops at the request of the Holy Synod about desirable transformations in the Orthodox Russian Church. The materials of these discussions subsequently became the basis for the agenda of the Local Council.
At the same time, in St. Petersburg, under the chairmanship of the rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, Bishop Sergius (later - His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'), religious and philosophical meetings were held, at which the largest Russian intellectuals and pastors discussed the existence of the Church in the modern world, the problems of the Church. The main conclusion that could be drawn from these meetings banned by K.P. Pobedonostsev in 1903, is the desire of the intelligentsia to adapt the Church “for themselves”, and not to accept the Church themselves with everything that She has accumulated over two thousand years of Christianity. This, it seems, was precisely what later became the reason for a large number of intellectuals and representatives of the learned priesthood and monasticism to leave for the Renovationist schism.
The movement for the “renewal” of the Orthodox Russian Church arose in the spring of 1917: one of the organizers and secretary of the “All-Russian Union of Democratic Orthodox Clergy and Laity,” which arose on March 7, 1917 in Petrograd, was priest Alexander Vvedensky, the leading ideologist and leader of the movement in all subsequent years . His colleague was the priest Alexander Boyarsky. The “Union” enjoyed the support of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod V.N. Lvov and published the newspaper “Voice of Christ” with synodal subsidies. In their publications, the renovationists took up arms against traditional forms of ritual piety and the canonical system of church government.
With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks and the outbreak of the civil war, the renovationists became more active, and new schismatic groups appeared one after another. One of them, entitled “Religion in combination with life,” was created in Petrograd by the priest John Egorov, who in his church arbitrarily removed the throne from the altar to the middle of the temple, changed the rites, tried to translate the service into Russian and taught about ordination “with his own inspiration.” . Among the episcopate, the renovationists found support in the person of the supernumerary Bishop Antonin (Granovsky), who performed divine services in Moscow churches with his own innovations. He altered the texts of prayers, for which he was soon banned from ministry by His Holiness the Patriarch. Archpriest A. Vvedensky did not stand aside, heading the “St. Petersburg Group of Progressive Clergy” in 1921. The activities of all such societies were encouraged and directed by the state authorities in the person of the Cheka, which intended “through a long, intense and painstaking work destroy and completely disintegrate the Church." Thus, in the long term, even the renovationist church was not needed by the Bolsheviks, and all the leaders of renovationism only flattered themselves with empty hopes. Patriarch Tikhon, rebuffing the encroachments of the schismatics, on November 17, 1921, addressed the flock with a special message “about the inadmissibility of liturgical innovations in church liturgical practice”: The divine beauty of our truly edifying in its content and graciously effective church worship, as it was created over centuries of apostolic fidelity, prayerful fervor, ascetic labor and patristic wisdom and imprinted by the Church in the rites, rules and regulations, must be preserved in the holy Orthodox Russian Church inviolably as its greatest and most sacred property.”1
A new round of internal church troubles, accompanied by a conflict between the Church and state power, began with an unprecedented famine in the Volga region. On February 19, 1922, Patriarch Tikhon allowed church valuables that “have no liturgical use” to be donated to the famine-stricken, but already on February 23, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided to remove all valuables from churches for the needs of the starving. All over the country in 1922-1923. There was a wave of arrests and trials of the clergy and believers. They were arrested for concealing valuables or for protesting against seizures. It was then that a new rise of the renovation movement began. On May 29, 1922, the “Living Church” group was created in Moscow, which on July 4 was headed by Archpriest Vladimir Krasnitsky (in 1917-1918 he called for the extermination of the Bolsheviks). In August 1922, Bishop Antonin (Granovsky) separately organized the “Union of Church Revival” (UCR). At the same time, the SCV saw its support not in the clergy, but in the laity - the only element capable of “charging church life with revolutionary religious energy.” The charter of the Central Eastern Church promised its followers “the broadest democratization of Heaven, the widest access to the bosom of the Heavenly Father.” Alexander Vvedensky and Boyarsky, in turn, organize the “Union of Communities of the Ancient Apostolic Church” (SODATS). Many other, smaller, church reform groups also appeared. All of them advocated close cooperation with the Soviet state and were in opposition to the Patriarch, but otherwise their voices ranged from demands for a change in the liturgical rite to calls for the merger of all religions. The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, summoned to the Lubyanka in 1922 (and soon expelled from the country), recalled how “he was amazed that the corridor and reception room of the GPU were full of clergy. These were all living churchmen. I had a negative attitude towards the “Living Church”, since its representatives began their work with denunciations against the Patriarch and the patriarchal church. This is not how reformation is done.”2
On the night of May 12, Archpriest Alexander Vvedensky with two of his like-minded people, priests Alexander Boyarsky and Evgeny Belkov, accompanied by OGPU officers, arrived at the Trinity Compound, where Patriarch Tikhon was then under house arrest. Accusing him of a dangerous and thoughtless policy that led to confrontation between the Church and the state, Vvedensky demanded that the Patriarch leave the throne in order to convene a Local Council. In response, the Patriarch signed a resolution on the temporary transfer of church power from May 16 to Metropolitan Agathangel of Yaroslavl. And already on May 14, 1922, Izvestia published the “Appeal to the Believing Sons of the Orthodox Church of Russia,” written by the leaders of the Renovationists, which contained a demand for a trial of “the perpetrators of church destruction” and a statement about ending the “civil war of the Church against the state.”
Metropolitan Agafangel was ready to fulfill the will of Saint Tikhon, but, by order of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, he was detained in Yaroslavl. On May 15, the delegation of the Renovationists was received by the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee M. Kalinin, and the next day the establishment of a new Supreme Church Administration (VCU) was announced. It consisted entirely of supporters of renovationism. Its first leader was Bishop Antonin (Granovsky), elevated by the renovationists to the rank of metropolitan. The next day, the authorities, in order to make it easier for the Renovationists to seize power, transported Patriarch Tikhon to the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, where he was kept in strict isolation. His relations with other archpastors and the remaining members of the Synod and the All-Russian Central Council were interrupted. At the Trinity Compound, in the chambers of the high priest-confessor, an unauthorized VCU was installed. By the end of 1922, the renovationists were able to occupy two-thirds of the 30 thousand churches operating at that time.
The undisputed leader of the renovation movement was the rector of the St. Petersburg Church in the name of Saints Zechariah and Elizabeth, Archpriest Alexander Vvedensky. The owner of six diplomas of higher education, who quoted “entire pages from memory... in different languages” (according to V. Shalamov), after February he joined the group of clergy, standing on the positions of Christian socialism. Vvedensky had a lot of the fashionable judicial speaker and operetta actor. One such description is the following: “When in 1914, at his first service as a priest, he “began to read the text of the Cherubic Song; the worshipers were dumbfounded with amazement, not only because Father Alexander read this prayer... not secretly, but out loud, but also because he read it with painful exaltation and with that characteristic “howl” with which decadent poems were often read.” 3
In the first years of the communists’ stay in power, Vvedensky more than once participated in very popular public debates about religion at that time, and he ended his debate with People’s Commissar A. Lunacharsky about the existence of God like this: “Anatoly Vasilyevich believes that man descended from a monkey. I think otherwise. Well, everyone knows his relatives better.” At the same time, he knew how to show off, be charming and win people over. Returning to Petrograd after seizing church power, he explained his position: “Decipher the modern economic term “capitalist”, convey it in the Gospel. This will be the rich man who, according to Christ, will not inherit eternal life. Translate the word “proletariat” into the language of the Gospel, and these will be those lesser, bypassed Lazari, whom the Lord came to save. And the Church must now definitely take the path of saving these neglected smaller brethren. It must condemn the untruth of capitalism from a religious (not political) point of view, which is why our renovationist movement accepts the religious and moral truth of the October social revolution. We openly say to everyone: you cannot go against the power of the working people.”
Even at the Kyiv Theological Academy, Bishop Antonin (Granovsky) stood out for his brilliant academic success and ambition. He became an outstanding expert on ancient languages, devoted his master's thesis to restoring the lost original of the Book of the Prophet Baruch, for which he drew on its texts, both in Greek and in Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Georgian and other languages. Based on some of the surviving texts, he proposed his own version of the reconstruction of the Hebrew original. After graduating from the academy in 1891, he taught for many years at various theological schools, surprising students and colleagues with his eccentricities. Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky) said in his memoirs: “In the Donskoy Moscow Monastery, where he lived at one time, being the caretaker of a theological school, he got a bear cub; the monks were unable to survive because of it: the bear climbed into the refectory, emptied pots of porridge, etc. But that was not enough. Antonin decided to make visits on New Year's Day, accompanied by a bear. I went to see the manager of the Synodal Office, did not find him at home and left a card “Hieromonk Antonin with a bear.” The outraged dignitary complained to K.P. Pobedonostsev. An investigation has begun. But Antonin was forgiven a lot for his extraordinary mental abilities.” Bishop Eulogius also recalled about Antonin that, when he was a teacher at the Kholm Theological Seminary, “something tragic was felt in him, hopeless spiritual torment. I remember he goes home in the evening and, without lighting the lamp, lies in the dark for hours, and I hear through the wall his loud moans: oooh-oh... oooh-oh.” In St. Petersburg, as a censor, he not only allowed everything that came for his approval to be published, but found special pleasure in stamping his visa on literary works prohibited by civil censorship. During the revolution of 1905, he refused to remember the name of the sovereign during worship, and in “New Time” he talked about the combination of legislative, executive and judicial powers as an earthly likeness of the Divine Trinity, for which he was dismissed. During the Local Council of 1917-1918. he walked around Moscow in a torn cassock, when meeting with acquaintances he complained that he had been forgotten, sometimes he even spent the night on the street, on a bench. In 1921, for his liturgical innovations, Patriarch Tikhon banned him from ministry. In May 1923, he presided over the Renovationist Church Council, and was the first of the bishops to sign a decree depriving Patriarch Tikhon of his rank (the Patriarch did not recognize this decision). But already in the summer of 1923 he actually broke with other leaders of the renovationists, and in the fall of the same year he was officially removed from the post of chairman of the Supreme Church Council. Antonin later wrote that “by the time of the council of 1923, there was not a single drunkard, not a single vulgar person left who would not get into the church administration and would not cover himself with a title or miter. The whole of Siberia was covered with a network of archbishops who rushed to the episcopal sees directly from drunken sextons.”
The former chief prosecutor of the Synod, V.N., also became a prominent figure in renovationism. Lviv. He demanded the blood of the Patriarch and the “cleansing of the episcopate”; he advised the priests, first of all, to throw off their cassock, cut their hair and thus turn into “mere mortals.” There were, of course, more decent people among the renovationists, for example, the Petrograd priest A.I. At the trial of Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd, Boyarsky testified in favor of the accused, for which he himself risked ending up in the dock (as a result of this trial, Metropolitan Benjamin was shot). The true conductor of the church schism was the security officer from the OGPU E.A. Tuchkov. Renovationist leaders in their circle called him “abbot,” but he himself preferred to call himself “Soviet chief prosecutor.”
Under the onslaught of anti-Christian and schismatic propaganda, the persecuted Russian Church did not retreat; the great host of martyrs and confessors of the Christian faith testified to its strength and holiness. Despite the seizure of many thousands of churches by renovationists, people did not come to them, and in Orthodox churches services were performed with a crowd of people praying. Secret monasteries arose; even during the reign of the Holy Martyr Metropolitan Veniamin, a secret women’s monastery was created in Petrograd, where all the services prescribed by the charter were strictly performed. A secret brotherhood of zealots of Orthodoxy arose in Moscow, which distributed leaflets against the “living church members.” When all Orthodox publications were banned, handwritten religious books and articles began to circulate among believers. In the prisons, where dozens and hundreds of confessors languished, entire hidden libraries of religious literature accumulated.
Part of the clergy, who did not share the reformist aspirations of the “living church”, but frightened by the bloody terror, recognized the schismatic VCU, some out of cowardice and fear for their own lives, others in anxiety for the Church. On June 16, 1922, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) of Vladimir, Archbishop Evdokim (Meshchersky) of Nizhny Novgorod and Archbishop Seraphim (Meshcheryakov) of Kostroma publicly recognized the renovationist VCU as the sole canonical church authority in the so-called “Memorandum of Three.” This document served as a temptation for many church people and laity. Metropolitan Sergius was one of the most authoritative archpastors of the Russian Church. His temporary retreat was probably caused by the hope that he would be able to outwit both the renovationists and the GPU standing behind them. Knowing his popularity in church circles, he could count on the fact that he would soon find himself at the head of the All-Russian Central Church and gradually be able to straighten the renovationist course of this institution. But, in the end, Metropolitan Sergius was nevertheless convinced of the disastrous consequences of issuing the memorandum and excessive reliance on his ability to cope with the situation. He repented of what he had done and returned to the fold of the canonical Orthodox Church. From the Renovationist schism, Archbishop Seraphim (Meshcheryakov) also returned to the Church through repentance. For Archbishop Evdokim (Meshchersky), the fall into schism turned out to be irrevocable. In the magazine “Living Church,” Bishop Evdokim poured out his loyal feelings towards the Soviet regime and repented for the entire Church of his “immeasurable guilt” before the Bolsheviks.
In a hurry to legitimize their rights as soon as possible, the renovationists set a course for convening a new Council. The “Second Local All-Russian Council” (the first renovationist) was opened on April 29, 1923 in Moscow, in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior taken from the Orthodox Church after Divine Liturgy and a solemn prayer service performed by the false Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia Antonin, concelebrated by 8 bishops and 18 archpriests - delegates of the Council, reading the letter of the Supreme Church Administration on the opening of the Council, greetings to the Government of the Republic and personal greetings from the Chairman of the Supreme Church Administration, Metropolitan Antonin. The Council spoke out in support of Soviet power and announced the deposition of Patriarch Tikhon, depriving him of his dignity and monasticism. The patriarchate was abolished as "a monarchical and counter-revolutionary way of leading the Church." The decision was not recognized as legitimate by Patriarch Tikhon. The Council introduced the institution of a white (married) episcopate, and priests were allowed to remarry. These innovations seemed too radical even to the renovationist “first hierarch” Antonin, who left the pre-conciliar commission, breaking with the “living church members” and branding them in his sermons as apostates from the faith. The VCU was transformed into the Supreme Church Council (SCC). It was also decided to switch to the Gregorian calendar from June 12, 1923.
Patriarch Tikhon at the beginning of 1923 was transferred from the Donskoy Monastery to the GPU prison on Lubyanka. On March 16, he was charged under four articles of the Criminal Code: calls for the overthrow of Soviet power and inciting the masses to resist legal government regulations. The Patriarch pleaded guilty to all charges: “I repent of these actions against the state system and ask the Supreme Court to change my measure of restraint, that is, to release me from custody. At the same time, I declare to the Supreme Court that from now on I am not an enemy of the Soviet regime. I finally and decisively disassociate myself from both foreign and domestic monarchist-White Guard counter-revolution.” On June 25, Patriarch Tikhon was released from prison. The authorities’ decision to compromise was explained not only by the protests of the world community, but also by the fear of unpredictable consequences within the country, and Orthodox Christians even in 1923 constituted a decisive majority of the Russian population. The Patriarch himself explained his actions in the words of the Apostle Paul: “I have a desire to be resolved and be with Christ, because this is incomparably better; but it is more necessary for you to remain in the flesh” (Phil. 1:23-24).
The release of His Holiness the Patriarch was met with universal rejoicing. He was greeted by thousands of believers. Several messages issued by Patriarch Tikhon after his release from prison firmly outlined the course that the Church would henceforth follow - fidelity to the teachings and covenants of Christ, the fight against the Renovationist schism, recognition of Soviet power and renunciation of all political activity. A massive return of clergy from the schism began: tens and hundreds of priests who had gone over to the Renovationists now brought repentance to the Patriarch. Temples captured by schismatics, after the repentance of the abbots, were sprinkled with holy water and re-consecrated.
To govern the Russian Church, the Patriarch created a temporary Holy Synod, which received powers not from the Council, but personally from the Patriarch. Members of the Synod began negotiations with the Renovationist false metropolitan Evdokim (Meshchersky) and his supporters on the conditions for restoring church unity. The negotiations were not successful, just as it was not possible to form a new, expanded Synod and the All-Russian Central Council, which would include the figures of the “Living Church” who were ready to repent - Krasnitsky and other leaders of the movement did not agree to such a condition. The administration of the Church, thus, still remained in the hands of the Patriarch and his closest assistants.
Losing supporters, the renovationists, hitherto not recognized by anyone, were preparing to deal an unexpected blow to the Church from the other side. The Renovation Synod sent messages to the Eastern Patriarchs and the primates of all autocephalous Churches with a request to restore the allegedly interrupted communion with the Russian Church. His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon received a message from the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory VII wishing him to retire from the administration of the Church and at the same time to abolish the patriarchate “as having been born in completely abnormal circumstances... and as considered a significant obstacle to the restoration of peace and unity.” One of the motives for such a message from His Holiness Gregory was the desire to find an ally in the person of the Soviet government in relations with Ankara. The Ecumenical Patriarch hoped, with the help of Soviet power, to improve the position of Orthodoxy on the territory of the Turkish Republic and to establish contacts with the government of Ataturk. In a response message, Patriarch Tikhon rejected the inappropriate advice of his brother. After this, Patriarch Gregory VII communicated with the Evdokimov synod as the supposedly legitimate governing body of the Russian Church. His example was followed, not without hesitation and pressure from outside, by other Eastern Patriarchs. However, the Patriarch of Jerusalem did not support this position of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and in a letter addressed to Archbishop Innocent of Kursk, he declared recognition of only the Patriarchal Church as canonical.
Vvedensky invented for himself a new title of “evangelist-apologist” and launched a new campaign against the Patriarch in the renovationist press, accusing him of hidden counter-revolutionary views, insincerity and hypocrisy of repentance before the Soviet regime. This was done on such a grand scale that it is not difficult to detect behind all this the fear that Tuchkov would stop supporting renovationism, which did not live up to his hopes.
All these events were accompanied by arrests, exiles and executions of clergy. The propaganda of atheism among the people intensified. Patriarch Tikhon's health noticeably deteriorated, and on April 7, 1925, on the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he died. According to the will of the saint, the rights and duties of the Patriarch passed to Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky), who became the Patriarchal Locum Tenens.
Although the death of the Patriarch increased the hopes of the Renovationists for victory over Orthodoxy, their position was unenviable: empty churches, poor priests, surrounded by the hatred of the people. The very first message of the Locum Tenens to the all-Russian flock contained a categorical refusal to make peace with the schismatics on their terms. Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) of Nizhny Novgorod was also irreconcilable towards the Renovationists, who in the past joined them for a short time.
On October 1, 1925, the renovationists convened the second (“third” according to them) Local Council. At the Council, Alexander Vvedensky announced a false letter from “Bishop” Nikolai Solovy that in May 1924, Patriarch Tikhon and Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky) sent a blessing with him to Paris to Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich to occupy the imperial throne. Vvedensky accused the Locum Tenens of collaborating with the White Guard political center and thereby cut off the opportunity for negotiations. The majority of the Council members, believing the report they heard, were shocked by such a message and the collapse of hopes of establishing peace in the Church. However, the renovationists were forced to abandon all their innovations.
Tuchkov, knowing the vulnerability of the position of the renovationists and their unpopularity among the people, did not lose hope of using the legitimate first hierarch of the Orthodox Church in his interests. Intensive negotiations between Metropolitan Peter and Tuchkov began on resolving the situation of the Orthodox Church in the Soviet state. The discussion was about the legalization of the Church, the registration of the VCU and diocesan departments, the existence of which was illegal. The GPU formulated its conditions as follows: 1) publication of a declaration calling on believers to be loyal to the Soviet regime; 2) the elimination of bishops who are objectionable to the authorities; 3) condemnation of foreign bishops; 4) contact with the government represented by a representative of the GPU. The locum tenens saw that his arrest was inevitable and close, and therefore entrusted Metropolitan Sergius of Nizhny Novgorod with the performance of the duties of the patriarchal locum tenens in case of his inability for some reason to fulfill them. The sole disposal of the patriarchal throne and the appointment by will of a Deputy Locum Tenens were not provided for by any church canons, but in the conditions in which the Russian Church lived at that time, this was the only means of preserving the patriarchal throne and the highest church authority. Four days after this order, the arrest of Metropolitan Peter followed, and Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) assumed the duties of Deputy Locum Tenens.
On May 18, 1927, Metropolitan Sergius created the Provisional Patriarchal Holy Synod, which soon received registration with the NKVD. Two months later, the “Declaration” of Metropolitan Sergius and the Synod was published, which contained an appeal to the flock to support the Soviet government and condemned the emigrated clergy. The Synod issued decrees on the commemoration of the authorities during divine services, on the dismissal of exiled and imprisoned bishops and the appointment of bishops who returned to freedom to distant dioceses, because those bishops who were released from camps and exile were not allowed to enter their dioceses. These changes caused confusion and sometimes outright disagreement among believers and the clergy, but these were necessary concessions for the sake of the legalization of the Church, the registration of diocesan bishops with their diocesan councils. The goal set by Patriarch Tikhon was achieved. Legally, the Patriarchal Synod was given the same status as the Renovation Synod, although the Renovationists continued to enjoy patronage from the authorities, while the Patriarchal Church remained persecuted. Only after the legalization of Metropolitan Sergius and the Synod did the Eastern Patriarchs, first Damian of Jerusalem, then Gregory of Antioch, send a blessing to Metropolitan Sergius and his Synod and recognition of him as the temporary head of the Patriarchal Church.
After the legalization of the Provisional Patriarchal Synod under Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) in 1927, the influence of renovationism steadily declined. The final blow to the movement was the decisive support by the USSR authorities of the Patriarchal Church in September 1943, during the Great Patriotic War. In the spring of 1944, there was a massive transfer of clergy and parishes to the Moscow Patriarchate; By the end of the war, all that remained of all renovationism was the parish of the Church of Pimen the Great in Novye Vorotniki (New Pimen) in Moscow. With the death of “Metropolitan” Alexander Vvedensky in 1946, renovationism completely disappeared.
The immortal words are perfectly suited to characterize the current state of the Russian Orthodox Church: “they have not forgotten anything and have not learned anything.” Just like a hundred years ago, the Russian Orthodox Church appears before non-believers and secular society as a servant of the state obsessed with money-grubbing and besotted with obscurantism.
Did the church have a chance to avoid its current sad fate? In the twentieth century, there was an attempt at a large-scale reformation of the Russian Orthodox Church, which, strange as it may seem, was associated with its worst enemies - the Bolsheviks.
First of all, we note that the policy of the revolutionary government towards believers in the first post-October years was incomparably more flexible than the bourgeois media are trying to present to us today. Islam, the Old Believers and some areas of Protestantism were largely seen in the eyes of the Bolsheviks as anti-imperialist and popular faiths with which they could cooperate. At the congress of Muslims held in December 1917, the Bolsheviks returned to believers the Koran of Caliph Osman, the Caravanserai mosque in Orenburg and the Syuyumbike tower in Kazan, which had once been confiscated by the tsarist authorities. Until the mid-1920s in the Caucasus and Central Asia Sharia courts operated. In 1921, the Soviet government invited Orthodox sectarians who had become victims of religious persecution to return to Russia. Tsarist Russia. People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote that the Old Believers carried “the germ of the reformation in Russia. The revolution makes reformation unnecessary, but these reformations are divided into many shades, many of which are close to us.”
The Bolsheviks had much more complex relations with the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, whose political, ideological and economic structures were connected by thousands of threads with the ruling classes and the old regime. The Catholic Church dotted all the i's back in the days of Pontiff Leo XIII, who branded communism, socialism and class struggle in one fell swoop as the path to fiery hell. In 1918, the Russian Orthodox Church in the person of Patriarch Tikhon, who anathematized the workers' and peasants' government, also expressed its attitude towards the revolution. Sadly, over the following years, the Bolsheviks had to act as the “scourge of God,” instilling in the unreasonable and sinful “holy fathers” that not only the power of swindlers and thieves, but the regime of the proletarian dictatorship comes from God.
Of course, repressions against the church clergy were an emergency measure dictated by the realities of the civil war. Being realistic-minded politicians, the Bolsheviks could not help but think about developing a long-term strategy in relation to the Russian Orthodox Church. The head of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, believed that the church should have been “fed” by his department, which consolidated a tough confrontational approach towards the Russian Orthodox Church for an indefinite period. People's Commissar for War Leon Trotsky had a different view of the problem. In his opinion, the extreme reactionary nature of the Russian Orthodox Church was a consequence of the fact that the Russian church did not go through its bourgeois counter-reformation. At this stage, the leaders of the bourgeois reform movement in the church are ready to cooperate with the Soviet government, and this should be used to disintegrate the church organization through its split.
Note that the use of schism as the most effective method the fight against the Catholic church organization after World War II was proposed by the famous Soviet intelligence officer Joseph Grigulevich (in 1952-1953, under the name Teodoro B. Castro, he represented Costa Rica under the papal throne in Rome, and then defended his Ph.D. thesis on the topic “Vatican . Religion, finance and politics" - editor's note). According to Grigulevich, “the history of the Catholic Church is full of schisms, unrest and fronts. Schisms and various fronts caused acute crises in the Catholic Church and have repeatedly threatened the existence of the Vatican itself. Over a relatively short history, one can count 28 antipopes, each of which symbolized a certain crisis in the Catholic Church. But only those splits were successful that had the support of the state apparatus.” In practical terms, Grigulevich proposed no more and no less than the nomination of a “red antipope,” adding that “Krakow is an ideal city for a new Avignon.” Unfortunately this most interesting project was never implemented.
The most important difference between the Russian Orthodox Church of the early twentieth century and the current Orthodox Church was the presence in its ranks of people ready to cooperate with the Soviet regime, not out of fear or self-interest, but due to a deep inner conviction that the ideas of social justice and collective labor do not contradict Christian doctrine.
Let's take, for example, Alexander Boyarsky (grandfather of film actor Mikhail Boyarsky - editor's note). In 1901, he was expelled from the seminary for “Tolstoyanism” and “freethinking.” Since 1915 he served in the Trinity Church in Kolpino, near Petrograd. People called Boyarsky a “working father,” and the “History of Factories and Works,” published in the thirties, noted his influence on the workers of the Obukhov plant. Under him, a free canteen, a parish cooperative, a vegetable garden and an apiary were created in the Kolpino parish. A supporter of Christian socialism, he said that he accepted everything in Bolshevism except the issue of attitude towards religion and asked not to confuse him with counter-revolutionary priests. Father Alexander said that “if any capitalist wants to be guided by Christian norms, he will go bankrupt in exactly two days.” His response to the accusation of collaborating with the Cheka became widely known: “Alexander Nevsky also went to the Horde. He had to - and he went. And we: we need it - so we run!” (A phrase that is still striking in its ambiguity and relevance today).
“A populist, a man of practical insight, who knew life well, who knew how and loved to speak simply and clearly about the most complex things, Boyarsky enjoyed great respect in the working class,” the famous dissident Anatoly Krasnov-Levitin later recalled.
However, the true leader of the renovationists was Alexander Vvedensky, who positioned himself as a Christian socialist. Even before the revolution, he became the author of publications castigating the inertia and conservatism of the clergy, the transformation of a priest into a priest. In 1917, Vvedensky founded the Workers' and Peasants' Christian Socialist Party, which took part in the elections to the Constituent Assembly.
In 1919, he met in Smolny with the head of the Petrograd party organization Grigory Zinoviev, proposing to conclude a concordat between the church and the Soviet government. Zinoviev’s answer was as follows: “A concordat is hardly possible at the present time, but I do not exclude it in the future, since in general I am a supporter of religious freedom and, as you know, I am doing everything in my power to avoid any unnecessary aggravation in relations with the church here in Petrograd. As for your group, it seems to me that it could be the originator of a large movement on an international scale. If you can organize something in this regard, then I think we will support you.”
In the twenties, Alexander Vvedensky gained wide fame as a participant in disputes on religious issues organized by the authorities. Here is how Bolshevik oppositionist Grigory Grigorov described one such dispute:
“The whole of Tomsk became excited when Metropolitan Alexander Vvedensky, patriarch of the so-called new church, arrived. ...Alexander Vvedensky is a brilliant speaker, a great scholar in the field of the history of religion, philosophy and even modern science. ...I essentially became a co-speaker of Alexander Vvedensky. Our debate lasted three hours straight. The topics of the debate were: “Is there a God?”, “The essence of religion”, “Religion, marriage and family”. Many sectarians and representatives of official science in the fields of physics, astronomy, and biology spoke at the debate. The disputes were conducted within the framework of mutual respect, no one offended the religious feelings of believers.”
In 1921, when fundraising began to help the famine-stricken Volga region, Father Alexander gave a passionate sermon about the torment of the starving people, branded the priests who did not want to share their accumulated wealth with the people, and then took off his silver cross and donated it to the fund for famine victims. Events related to the collection of funds for the famine-stricken Volga region became a turning point in the history of the church. As in the 15th century, it split into “non-acquisitive” (who called to give the wealth of the Russian Orthodox Church to the people) and “acquisitive” (who called to prevent the “robbery of the church”). But this time it was the “non-possessors” who enjoyed the support of the state.
On the evening of May 12, 1922, Archpriest Alexander Vvedensky, accompanied by Alexander Boyarsky and Evgeny Belkov, arrived at the Trinity Compound where the residence of Patriarch Tikhon was located. In the best traditions of Stevenson, the renovationists gave Tikhon a “black mark.” Accusing the patriarch of provoking a conflict with the workers' state, they demanded his abdication. After some hesitation, Tikhon signed a paper transferring church power to the Yaroslavl Metropolitan. The modern Russian Orthodox Church considers this event a key episode of the “renovationist schism.”
Over the past years, by the will of God, without which nothing can happen in the world, there has been a workers' and peasants' government in Russia.
It took upon itself the task of eliminating the terrible consequences of the world war in Russia, the fight against hunger, epidemics and other disorders of state life.
The Church actually remained aloof from this great struggle for the truth and good of humanity.
The top clergy sided with the enemies of the people. This was expressed in the fact that, at every suitable occasion, counter-revolutionary protests broke out in the church. This happened more than once. And now, before our eyes, such a difficult thing has happened with the conversion of church values into bread for the hungry. This was supposed to be a joyful act of love for a dying brother, but it turned into an organizational protest against state power...
By refusing to help the hungry, church people tried to create a coup d'etat. The appeal of Patriarch Tikhon became the banner around which counter-revolutionaries, dressed in church clothes and sentiments, rallied...
The death of those dying of hunger falls as a heavy reproach on those who wanted to use the people's disaster for their own political purposes...
The Church, by its very essence, must be a union of love and truth, and not a political organization, not a counter-revolutionary party.
We consider it necessary to immediately convene a local council to try the perpetrators of church ruin, to resolve the issue of governing the church and establishing normal relations between it and the Soviet government. Led by the highest hierarchs Civil War church versus state must be stopped...
Bishop Antonin.
Representatives of the progressive clergy
from Moscow: priest Sergei Kalinovsky;
mountains Petrograd: priest Vladimir Krasnitsky, archpriest Alexander Vvedensky, priest Evgeny Belkov, psalm-reader Stefan Stadnik;
mountains Moscow: priest Ivan Borisov, priest Vladimir Bykov;
mountains Saratov: Archpriest Rusanov, Archpriest Ledovsky.
The renovation movement, which by the end of 1922 controlled up to two-thirds of Russian churches, attracted into its ranks both true ascetics and opportunists, who saw in the “Living Church” an analogue of the “sworn priests” of the era of the Great French Revolution. They considered their task to be the modernization of the Russian Orthodox Church. This meant introducing the institution of marriage for bishops, allowing remarriage for priests, using the Russian language during services, using a modern calendar, strengthening the conciliarity of the church and eliminating the patriarchate.
Why did this so remarkable movement come to naught? First of all, we note that, unlike the Orthodox, supporters of the Renovationists were split into many groups who fiercely argued with each other regarding the nature of the reforms necessary for the Church. The same issue of translating liturgical books from Church Slavonic into Russian was fiercely debated until 1928 and ended with the actual preservation of the status quo in the practice of worship.
The second point was the softening of the position of the orthodox wing of the Russian Orthodox Church, which set a course for de facto recognition of Soviet power. Finally, the removal of supporters of the renovationists in the government apparatus - Trotsky, Zinoviev and others - from responsible positions led to the authorities adopting the “Dzerzhinsky policy” as the main method of control over the church. The Russian Orthodox Church began to gradually turn into the fiefdom of the GPU-NKVD-KGB. In turn, renovationism gradually faded away. In the early thirties, many renovationist churches were closed as part of an anti-church campaign. The last renovationist parishes, under pressure from the authorities, returned to the fold of the Russian Orthodox Church during the war years. With the death of Alexander Vvedensky in 1946, renovationism completely disappeared.
Today, the prerequisites for the emergence of a leftist movement within the Russian Orthodox Church, apparently, do not exist. It is more natural for supporters of the bourgeois reformation in the Russian Orthodox Church to take liberal bourgeois circles as their allies, rather than appeal to the oppressed. The conservative church opposition will also find allies in the ranks of nationalists and fascists. The Russian left movement must take these realities into account when forming its line in relation to the church.
A brief history of the development of the renovationist movement before the liberation of St. Hilarion (May 1922 - June 1923)
The church coup was prepared by the efforts of the GPU throughout the first half of 1922 under the leadership of the Politburo of the Central Committee, where the main ideologist and developer of the program for the destruction of the Church with the help of schismatics was L.D. Trotsky.
In the GPU, since 1921, the 6th branch of the secret department was active, which until May 1922 was headed by A.F. Rutkovsky, and then E.A. Tuchkov. In March-April 1922, the main work was carried out to recruit future renovationists, organizational meetings and briefings were held. In order to facilitate the church coup, those closest to Patriarch Tikhon were arrested, including, on the night of March 22-23, 1922, Bishop Hilarion (Troitsky) of Vereya. On May 9, the patriarch gave a receipt for the announcement of the verdict on bringing him to justice in accordance with the decision of the Supreme Tribunal and a written undertaking not to leave the place. On the same day, a new interrogation of the patriarch took place at the GPU. On May 9, at the command of the GPU, a group of renovationists comes from Petrograd to Moscow: Archpriest Alexander Vvedensky, priest Evgeny Belkov and psalm-reader Stefan Stadnik. V.D. Krasnitsky arrived earlier and already held negotiations with Tuchkov. Krasnitsky headed the Living Church group, created through the efforts of the OGPU. E.A. Tuchkov wrote about it this way: “In Moscow, for this purpose, under the direct, unofficial leadership of the OGPU, a renovationist group was organized, which later called itself the “living church”.”
A.I. Vvedensky directly called E.A. Tuchkov as the organizer of the church coup. The authorities decided to stage a pardon for priests sentenced to death by the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal, accused of resisting the confiscation of church valuables, in order to facilitate a church coup for the Renovationists. This staging was necessary in order to get Patriarch Tikhon to relinquish control of the Church. The Moscow priests sentenced to death were used by the security officers as hostages in order to blackmail the patriarch with their possible execution.
May 10, 1922 with the participation of E.A. Tuchkov's renovationists compiled the first version of an appeal to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with a request to pardon all those sentenced to death in the case of the Moscow clergy. According to the plan of the GPU, petitions were necessary to gain the authority of the renovationist group in the eyes of believers, since the authorities were preparing to satisfy their appeal, and not the request of Patriarch Tikhon. The GPU indicated to the renovationists that the authorities were ready to pardon some of those sentenced, thus initiating petitions from the renovationists.
After writing these petitions, the renovationists on May 12 at 11 pm, accompanied by E.A. Tuchkov and headed to the Trinity Compound to the patriarch. As early as May 9, the patriarch was familiarized with the verdict in the case of the Moscow clergy, as evidenced by his handwritten receipt. On the same day, he wrote a petition for pardon addressed to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, but it did not get there, but ended up in the GPU and was added to the case. Thus, the patriarch, knowing about the death sentence and that the authorities were ready to listen not to his petition, but to the petition of the “progressive” clergy in order to save the lives of the condemned, wrote a statement addressed to M.I. Kalinin on the transfer of church administration to Metropolitan Agafangel or Metropolitan Veniamin; The original of the statement also did not reach the addressee and ended up in the GPU file. On May 14, the execution sentence was upheld against five people, four of whom the renovationists asked for, five people from the “renovationist list” were pardoned. On May 18, the Politburo approved this decision. On the same day, a group of renovationists went to the Trinity Metochion and obtained from the patriarch a paper in which he instructed them to transfer “synodal affairs” to Metropolitan Agafangel. In one of his reports, E.A. Tuchkov directly names the Renovationists, who on May 18, 1922 obtained Patriarch Tikhon’s temporary relinquishment of patriarchal powers, as his informants: “The work began with the leader of the Black Hundred church movement, formerly. Patriarch Tikhon, who, under pressure from a group of priests - our informants - transferred church power to her, retiring himself to the Donskoy Monastery."
A stereotype has become established in historiography that the renovationists deceived church power from the patriarch; in this case, the patriarch is presented as some kind of naive simpleton, but this is not so. Patriarch Tikhon was forced to consciously agree to the transfer of church power, understanding with whom he was dealing; this step was the price of refusal to comply with the anti-canonical demands of the authorities and an attempt to save the lives of Moscow priests sentenced to death. In order to deprive the power of the renovationist group of legitimacy, he indicated that Metropolitan Agafangel should become the head of church administration, although he understood that the authorities would not allow him to take up these duties. Patriarch Tikhon also understood that if he refused the temporary transfer of church power, his status as a person under investigation would not allow him to rule the Church, and this would only bring on the Church new wave repression.
Later, after his release from prison, Patriarch Tikhon gave the following assessment of these events: “We yielded to their harassment and put the following resolution on their statement: “It is entrusted to the persons named below, that is, the priests who signed the statement, to accept and transfer to His Eminence Agafangel, upon his arrival to Moscow, synod affairs with the participation of Secretary Numerov." On the report of the clergy of the city of Cherepovets, which cited the opinion that Patriarch Tikhon transferred power to the VCU voluntarily, the patriarch’s hand made the note: “Not true,” that is, the patriarch himself did not believe that he voluntarily renounced the highest church authority.
On May 19, 1922, the patriarch was forced, at the request of the authorities, to leave the Trinity Metochion and move to the Donskoy Monastery, and the metochion was occupied by the renovationist VCU. After the capture of the Trinity Metochion by the Renovationists, drunkenness and theft reigned here. According to contemporaries, members of the All-Russian Central Church and the renovationist clergy regularly held drinking parties here, V. Krasnitsky stole church funds, and the head of the Moscow diocesan administration, Bishop Leonid (Skobeev), appropriated the robes of Patriarch Tikhon, which were kept in the courtyard. The Chekists themselves admitted that they relied on the dregs of society: “It must be said that the contingent of those recruited consists of a large number of drunkards, offended and dissatisfied with the princes of the Church... now the influx has stopped, because the more sedate, true zealots of Orthodoxy do not go to them; among them is the last rabble, having no authority among the believing masses.”
After Patriarch Tikhon’s decision to temporarily transfer church power to Metropolitan Agathangel, the creation of new supreme bodies of church power began. In the first issue of the magazine “Living Church”, which is not in Moscow libraries, but is stored in the former party archive, an appeal was published from the “initiative group of clergy and laity” to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with a call to create government agency“The All-Russian Committee for the Affairs of the Orthodox Church, the Clergy and Laity of the Orthodox Church, headed by the Chief Commissioner for the Affairs of the Orthodox Church in the rank of bishop.” In fact, this requirement was implemented by the authorities when creating the VCU; however, this body did not receive state status, since this would contradict the decree on the separation of Church and state, but it received full state support.
First of all, it was necessary to give the new highest church bodies the most canonical appearance possible, and for this it was necessary to obtain from Metropolitan Agafangel consent to have the Church governed by persons chosen by the authorities. May 18 V.D. Krasnitsky visited Metropolitan Agafangel in Yaroslavl, where he invited him to sign the appeal of the “progressive clergy,” which was refused, and on June 18, the Metropolitan sent out a well-known message about the non-recognition of the renovationist VCU.
The Higher Church Administration initially included persons, in the words of E.A. Tuchkova, “with tarnished reputations.” It was headed by the “chief commissioner for the affairs of the Russian Church” - the supernumerary Bishop Antonin (Granovsky). In a letter from the former renovationist priest V. Sudnitsyn dated July 5/18, 1923, “Bishop Antonin has repeatedly publicly asserted that the “Living Church” and, consequently, the All-Russian Central Council and the All-Russian Central Council, including himself, are nothing more than the GPU.” . Therefore, one cannot agree with the statements of Irina Zaikanova from the St. Philaret Orthodox Christian Institute, headed by priest G. Kochetkov, that “no one could ever accuse Antonin and his community of assisting the GPU, the reason for this is the directness and integrity of the bishop, as well as his enormous authority him in the Russian Orthodox Church and even the Soviet authorities respect him.” I. Zaikanova’s conclusions are not based on historical sources, but reflect only the author’s emotions.
In a letter to Bishop Viktor (Ostrovidov), Antonin wrote that the main task of renovationism is “the elimination of Patriarch Tikhon as the responsible inspirer of the incessant intra-church oppositional grumblings.”
Bishop Antonin was initially in opposition to Krasnitsky and the Living Church, disagreeing with the program of radical church reforms. On May 23, 1922, Antonin said during a sermon that he “was not on the same page with the leaders of the Living Church and exposed their tricks.” In a letter to Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), Antonin called Krasnitsky and his “Living Church” “the seat of the destroyers,” and explained his temporary alliance with them by considerations “ public order, so as not to split the schism among the people and not open church civil strife." The VCU was an artificially created body; its members were forced to work together by “reasons of state order,” or rather, by the instructions of the GPU.
In June 1922, Patriarch Tikhon, while under house arrest, handed over, according to the GPU, a note addressed to the clergy with a request to fight the leaders of the renovationist VCU, Bishops Leonid (Skobeev) and Antonin (Granovsky) and “turn to foreign powers.”
Antoninus was opposed to the married episcopate advocated by the Living Church. In a letter to Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) he wrote: “I still stopped the married bishop. They did the naming. I had to resort to external influence, which this time was successful.” He considered the “Living Church” to be “a priestly union that wants only wives, awards and money.”
The VCU, under pressure from the authorities, was supported by fairly authoritative bishops. On June 16, 1922, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), together with Archbishops Evdokim (Meshchersky) and Seraphim (Meshcheryakov), signed the “Memorandum of Three.” This text said: “We fully share the activities of the Church Administration, consider it to be the legitimate supreme church authority and consider all orders emanating from it to be completely legal and binding.” According to the testimony of Archpriest Porfiry of Rufimsky, who visited in June 1922 Nizhny Novgorod, the signing of the “Memorandum of Three” took place in the local unit of the GPU.
The GPU relied on strengthening the Living Church group led by V. Krasnitsky, trying to get rid of Antonin through the hands of the Living Church. Krasnitsky was made rector of the Moscow cathedral - the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. To do this, the GPU had to disperse the entire clergy of the temple. VCU dismissed three archpriests and one deacon, the rest were transferred to other dioceses.
On July 4, with the help of the GPU, a meeting of the “Living Church” was held at the Trinity Compound in Moscow. Krasnitsky told the audience that at the three previous meetings of the Living Church group, the Central Committee and the Moscow Committee of the Living Church were organized, and now the same committees should be organized throughout Russia. The renovationists did not hide the fact that they were creating their bodies in the image and likeness of Soviet and party structures, even borrowing their names. At a meeting on July 4, priest E. Belkov, “wishing to emphasize the essence of two organizations - the Living Church group and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee ... said that these organizations can be compared with those bodies in the church area that have already been created in the civil area - the Central Committee, the Russian Communist Party and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee " One of the Living Church members explained Belkov’s idea even more clearly: “The VCU is the official body of the highest church government, the Living Church group is its ideological inspirer". Thus, the VCU “living churchmen” assigned the role of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee - officially the highest Soviet body, but completely subordinate to party control. The “Living Churchers” saw their group in the image of the Bolshevik Party - the main “leading and directing” force in the church. Central Committee of the “Living Church” - imitation of the Central Committee of the RCP (b); the presidium of the Central Committee of the “Living Church” is similar to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). Krasnitsky, apparently, saw himself, as the head of the Presidium of the Central Committee, in the image of the main party leader - V.I. Lenin.
In August 1922, a congress of the Living Church took place. The congress was prepared under the full control of the GPU; still stored in the FSB archive preparatory materials to the congress. The day before, on August 3, a preparatory meeting was convened from “living church” priests, who developed an agenda that was developed taking into account Tuchkov’s instructions. The 6th department had a significant number of its secret employees and informants at the congress, so the GPU had the opportunity to direct the congress in the direction it needed. On the first day, 190 members of the Living Church group from 24 dioceses took part in the work of the congress. According to Tuchkov, up to 200 delegates were present at the congress. The congress elected V. Krasnitsky as its chairman, who demanded that all monks led by Bishop Antonin (Granovsky) retire. This was done so that the bishops would not interfere with the implementation of the tasks assigned to Krasnitsky and his comrades in the GPU. On August 8, the implementation of the program prepared by the GPU began: the congress decided to close all monasteries, of which there were many left in Russia at that time, and monks were recommended to get married; set the task of seeking a trial of Patriarch Tikhon and deprivation of his dignity; his name was forbidden to be remembered during divine services; all bishop-monks who did not support renovationism were ordered to be removed from their cathedras. On August 9, the “Greeting from the All-Russian Congress of the Clergy of the Living Church group” was adopted to the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, V.I. Lenin".
After these radical decisions were made, Krasnitsky allowed the bishops to return to the congress; In addition to the bishops installed by the renovationists, Archbishop Evdokim (Meshchersky), Bishop Vitaly (Vvedensky) and others came. Tuchkov reported with satisfaction to the leadership that all resolutions were adopted unanimously, and only on the issue of the trial and defrocking of Patriarch Tikhon, three out of 99 voters abstained. Based on the information received from the agents, Tuchkov reported: “On the sidelines of the congress, some prominent participants, including Krasnitsky, are having a heart-to-heart conversation that all resolutions are husk for the authorities, but in reality we are free. Some consider Krasnitsky’s behavior ambiguous and are surprised at his incomprehensible game.” The congress continued its work until August 17. A resolution was adopted according to which the VCU was required, even before the convening of the Council, to allow the consecration of married presbyters as bishops, to allow the second marriage of clergy, to allow monks in holy orders to marry without removing their rank, to allow clergy and bishops to marry widows; Some canonical restrictions on marriage (fourth degree consanguinity) were also abolished, and marriages between godfather and mother were also allowed.” E.A. Tuchkov, in his reports to the country's top leadership on the progress of the congress, noted that some of its delegates came here drunk.
Summing up the work of the congress, Tuchkov noted: “This congress drove an even deeper wedge into the church crack that formed at the very beginning, and carried out all its work in the spirit of the fight against Tikhonshchina, condemned the entire church counter-revolution and laid the foundation for the organizational connection of the center with localities and slightly “I almost reached an agreement before the priests joined the RCP.”
The congress elected a new VCU of 15 people, 14 of whom were “Living Church members,” only Antonin (Granovsky) did not belong to this group. Antonin was given the title of metropolitan, he was appointed administrator of the Moscow diocese with the title “Metropolitan of Moscow and All Rus'.” However, he actually lost the post of chairman of the VCU; Krasnitsky began to sign his letters and circulars as “chairman of the VCU.”
In a situation where the collapse of the renovation camp could not be prevented, the GPU decided to organize and formalize this process in such a way that it would be most beneficial to the security officers. According to Tuchkov, “the condition of the renovationists created in this way forced them, voluntarily or unwittingly, to resort to measures of voluntary denunciation of each other and thereby become informants of the GPU, which we took full advantage of... Massive open and secret denunciations of their opponents begin, they accuse each other in the counter-revolution, they begin to set believers one against another, and the squabbling takes on a massive character, there were even cases when this or that priest hid the crime of his friend for three or four years, but here he told, as they say, everything in good faith ".
Having carefully studied, with the help of his agents, the mood among the delegates of the Living Church congress, Tuchkov came to the conclusion that there are three small movements: “The first, consisting of Moscow delegates, which considers the behavior of Krasnitsky’s group to be too leftist and strives for moderation. This trend is more suitable for Antonin's policy. The second current, consisting mainly of missionary delegates, stands from the point of view of the inviolability of the canons, and there is a third current, to the left of the Krasnitsky group, which stands for preventing bishops from governing and demands an unceremonious attitude towards them. In view of the fact that these three currents have emerged only recently in connection with questions about monasticism and the form of church government, it is not yet possible to accurately indicate the persons leading these currents, since they have not yet been clearly identified. In the future, undoubtedly, these trends will become clearer and more definite.”
Immediately after the end of the congress, Tuchkov began to formalize the trends he identified into special renovation groups. Antonin received the opportunity to create his own group, the Union of Church Revival (UCR), and he announced its creation on August 20. On August 24, at a meeting in the presence of 78 representatives of the clergy and 400 laity, the central committee of the Central Election Commission was elected. The “revivalists” relied on the laity. The Regulations of the Union of Central Elections defined its task as follows: “The Union rejects caste serfdom and caste affirmation of the interests of the “white priest.” The Union strives to improve church orders according to the motto: everything for the people and nothing for the class, everything for the Church and nothing for the caste.” Antonin himself claimed that he created his group “as a counterweight to the Living Church in order to kill this bandit Krasnitsky, who emerged from the abyss.” At the beginning of September, Antonin managed to introduce three members of his group into the VCU. He sent letters to bishops asking them to help him and “organize the fathers into the Revival.”
For the left radicals, the “Union of Communities of the Ancient Apostolic Church” (SODAC) was created, the program of which was openly anti-canonical in nature and included demands for “renewal of religious morality”, the introduction of a married episcopate, the closure of “degenerate” monasteries, the embodiment of the ideas of “Christian socialism”, participation on equal terms the rights of clergy and laity in managing the affairs of communities. Initially, the union was headed by Archpriest Vdovin and layman A.I. Novikov, who had previously been a zealous “living church member.” This group announced the need to revise the canonical and dogmatic tripling of the Church. This group declared the most decisive fight against “Tikhonovshchina.”
Tuchkov reported to his leadership that these groups, like the “Living Church,” were created through his efforts: “New renovation groups were organized: “Ancient Apostolic Church” and “Union of Church Revival”... All of the above groups were created exclusively on the 6th [ sharing with the OGPU through the intelligence apparatus...”
On August 23, the founding meeting of the “Living Church” group took place, which continued its activities, now being not the only one, but only one of the renovation groups, although all renovationists often continued and continue to be called “Living Church members.”
To guide the schismatics, in September 1922, a party Commission on the Church Movement was even created - the predecessor of the Anti-Religious Commission. At its first meeting on September 27, the Commission on the Church Movement, having considered the issue “On issues of the VCU”, decided to introduce “Metropolitan” Evdokim into this structure. A fairly well-known hierarch, striving by any means for church power and having compromised himself through connections with women, Evdokim was well suited for the tasks that the GPU set for him. The course taken by the GPU at the end of September towards a new unification of the Central Church and the “Living Church” was continued. According to the decision taken“strengthen the movement of the left current”, E.A. Tuchkov sent the famous renovationist Archpriest A.I. to SODATS. Vvedensky and the Petrograd Committee of the Central Election Commission.
On September 10, a scandal occurred in the Passion Monastery: Antonin openly declared to Krasnitsky: “There is no Christ between us.” The details are contained in the report to His Holiness the Patriarch of the abbess of this monastery, Abbess Nina, and the confessor of the monastery. On September 9 and 10, the renovationist bishops, without an invitation, threatening to close the church if they were not admitted, came to the monastery and performed divine services and consecrated the widowed Archpriest Chantsev as bishop with the name Ioannikiy. On September 10, at the liturgy, “an incident occurred: at the cry of “Let us love one another,” Archpriest Krasnitsky approached Bishop Antonin for a kiss and Eucharistic greeting, Bishop Antonin loudly declared: “There is no Christ among us,” and did not give a kiss. Krasnitsky tried to extinguish the incident, pleadingly addressing: “Your Eminence, Your Eminence,” but Antonin was adamant... In a long speech at the presentation of the baton, Antonin severely criticized the “Living Church” for white and marriage episcopate, calling the leaders of the group people of low moral level, deprived understanding the idea of sacrifice... After this greeting, Krasnitsky began to speak, but interrupted his speech, since the new bishop suddenly turned pale during his speech and fainted; he was taken to the altar and brought to his senses with the help of a doctor.” The abbess wrote to the patriarch that in order to cleanse the temple from renovationist desecration, “every other day on the feast of the Passionate Mother of God after the consecration of water, the temple was sprinkled with holy water...”.
On September 12, Antonin gathered 400 representatives of the clergy and 1,500 laity at the Epiphany Monastery. The meeting asked the VCU, represented by its chairman, “Metropolitan” Antonin, to “begin the organizational work of the VCU to prepare for the speedy convening of the Local Council.” On September 22, Antonin left the VCU, and the next day the VCU, led by Krasnitsky, announced the deprivation of all his posts. Antonin announced the creation of a second VCU. Krasnitsky, having once again turned to the GPU with a request to expel Antonin, received a response that said that “the authorities have nothing against Antonin Granovsky and do not at all object to the organization of a new, second VCU.” In September, newspaper articles appeared in which the Living Church was sharply criticized.
The “Living Church” was forced to react to the creation of two other renovationist groups and, accordingly, the weakening of its positions. On September 29, the newspaper “Science and Religion” published a statement “From the group “Living Church”,” in which the criticism of this group in the newspapers was called “an obvious misunderstanding.” Members of the group emphasized that it was the “Living Church” that was the main organizer of the future local council, which the VCU was scheduled for February 18, 1923. A program of church reform was proposed, which concerned the dogmatic, canonical and disciplinary aspects of the life of the Church.
According to a report from the GPU sent to the Central Committee of the RCP(b), in October 1922, “due to civil strife among the Orthodox clergy and the reorganization of the All-Russian Central Orthodox Church, the work of the latter has weakened significantly. Communication with places was almost completely interrupted."
The authorities became aware that the division among the Renovationists was helping to strengthen the “Tikhonovites” already in September 1922. The need to quickly overcome disagreements between the “Living Church” and the Central Eastern Church was mentioned in the certificate of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at the end of September 1922. The authorities began organizing a new coordinating center for all renovation groups.
On October 16, at a meeting of the VCU, its reorganization took place; Antonin (Granovsky) again became the chairman, who received two deputies - A. Vvedensky and V. Krasnitsky; A. Novikov became the manager of the affairs of the VCU. Antonin, as a result of pressure from the GPU, was forced to abandon direct opposition to the Living Church. VCU set a course for preparing a local cathedral.
On October 31, 1922, the Anti-Religious Commission (ARC) under the Central Committee of the RCP (b), created shortly before, decided to “take a firmer bet on the Living Church group, coalition with it the left group.” The SODATS group was supposed to operate in conjunction with the “Living Church,” which was also planted by the GPU through its informants and seksots. It was also decided to “strengthen the fight against Tikhonovism, no matter what it is expressed in, although in resistance to the VCU in the center and locally,” as well as “to carry out the removal of Tikhon’s bishops with shock force.” Many bishops - members of the SCV were repressed as secret "Tikhonovites", but the union itself, led by Antonin, continued to exist. On May 4, 1923, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea decided to recognize the possibility of the activities of the SCV “on the same rights as “ZhTs” and SODAC.”
The temporary successes of the renovationists on the ground were dictated by significant support from local authorities. Priests who enrolled in the ranks of the Renovationists did so, as a rule, out of fear for their lives and the ministry that they could lose. This is evidenced, in particular, by letters from clergy addressed to Patriarch Tikhon and Bishop Hilarion (Troitsky) in the summer of 1923. Thus, priest Mitrofan Elachkin from the Klin district of the Moscow province wrote on July 13, 1923: “In February I received a form from the dean, and when asked what would happen if I didn’t fill it out, he answered: perhaps they will take away the St. myrrh and antimins. What was to be done? I decided to fill out the form. The consequences are clear. The filling caused submission, the consequence of which was my acceptance of the bigamist deacon as the VCU assigned to me. At the request of the parishioners, the bishop gave a reward for 33 years of service - a pectoral cross, but I did not put it on myself...”
In the autumn-winter of 1922, the GPU arrested almost all the bishops and many priests who did not support the VCU. Many representatives of the local clergy, fearful of reprisals, declared support for the new VCU, but the people stood firmly for the “old Church.” The population “beyond an insignificant minority has stood and stands for the integrity of the Orthodox Patriarchal Church. The clergy, on the contrary, all came under the influence of the Holy Synod,” wrote Bishop Innokenty of Stavropol and Caucasus in 1923.
The main issue that worried the ARC and the GPU was the issue related to the preparation for the local council, at which the final defeat of the “Tikhonism” was planned. The task of holding a council “for the purpose of electing a new Synod and Patriarch” was set to the GPU back in March 1922. On November 28, 1922, the ARC became concerned about finding funds “for the VCU to carry out pre-conciliar work.”
March 1 E.A. Tuchkov formulated the program of the cathedral in a note addressed to E. Yaroslavsky, which was sent to members of the Politburo. He noted that the complete abolition of the VCU is undesirable due to the fact that this will significantly weaken the renovation movement, however, despite this, Tuchkov believed that “this moment is very convenient for carrying out this, because the priests in charge are in our hands.” Thus, the central governing body of renovationism (Tuchkov calls it a “bureau”) and its local bodies had to be preserved. On March 2, 1923, Archpriest A. Vvedensky wrote a note addressed to Tuchkov “On the issue of organizing the administration of the Russian Church.” Vvedensky proposed maintaining the VCU “at least for one year until the next council.” The upcoming council, in his opinion, “should not lead to a break between the three renovationist groups... It is necessary to temporarily maintain formal unity.” Certain successes of renovationism became possible only after the creation of the united VCU in October 1922, after which the authorized representatives of the VCU began carrying out renovationist revolutions on the ground.
On March 8, 1923, this issue was considered at a meeting of the Politburo. It was decided to “recognize the need for the continued existence of the VCU,” whose rights should be preserved “in a fairly flexible form” at the upcoming local council. This formulation was consistent with Tuchkov's proposal, according to which the VCU should change its organization in order to comply with the 1918 Decree. In a report to the Politburo dated March 22, 1923, N.N. Popov pointed out that the VCU re-elected at a local council could be registered by the authorities in accordance with the procedure for registering religious societies adopted by the ARC “while retaining its compulsory and punitive rights in relation to lower church bodies,” and would represent for the authorities “a powerful means of influencing the church politics." On March 27, 1923, the ARC made a decision on the composition of the new VCU: “The composition of the VCU should be left as a coalition, that is, consisting of different church groups... the council should not elect the chairman of the VCU, but elect the VCU, which after the council will elect a chairman.” Krasnitsky was appointed as the chairman of the cathedral.
On April 21, 1923, the Politburo, at the suggestion of F.E. Dzerzhinsky, decided to postpone the trial of Patriarch Tikhon. On April 24, the chairman of the ARC, E. Yaroslavsky, proposed in this regard not to postpone the opening of the renovationist cathedral and “to take measures to ensure that the cathedral speaks out in the spirit of condemning Tikhon’s counter-revolutionary activities.”
The “Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church” began its work in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior on April 29, 1923. According to E.A. Tuchkov, about 500 delegates came to the cathedral, including 67 bishops, “most of whom were Tikhon’s dedication.” A list of 66 bishops was published in the "Acts" of the council. A handwritten list of 67 bishops (including Alexander Vvedensky) was included in an edition of the cathedral bulletins kept in the MDA library.
E.A. Tuchkov completely controlled the course of the cathedral with the help of his agents, about which he proudly wrote: “We had up to 50% of our knowledge at the cathedral and could turn the cathedral in any direction.” Therefore, “Metropolitan of Siberia” Pyotr Blinov was elected chairman of the cathedral, with the honorary chairman “Metropolitan” Antonin (Granovsky). Krasnitsky was clearly unhappy with this decision; the situation could have ended in an open break.
On May 4, 1923, this problem was discussed by the ARC. The only issue considered was the report of E.A. Tuchkov "On the progress of the work of the cathedral." The commission’s decision read: “In view of the fact that Krasnitsky, due to the decline of his authority among most of the cathedral, may try to create a scandal at the cathedral in order to discredit the chairman of the cathedral Blinov, instruct Comrade Tuchkov to take measures to eliminate this phenomenon and involve Krasnitsky in an active coordinated the work of the cathedral." How skillfully Tuchkov, with the help of his informants and secret employees, manipulated the cathedral is shown by the case of the decision to ordain Archpriest Alexander Vvedensky as Archbishop of Krutitsky. The chairman of the cathedral, Pyotr Blinov, without preliminary discussion, put the issue of Vvedensky to a vote, after which he immediately closed the meeting. Pyotr Blinov behaved equally categorically in other cases: when Bishop Leonty (Matusevich) of Volyn tried to object to the introduction of a married episcopate, Blinov deprived him of his word.
The main decision of the council, from the point of view of the authorities, was to declare Patriarch Tikhon “deprived of dignity and monasticism and returned to a primitive worldly position.” At the same time, an appeal was made to the GPU with a request to allow a delegation from the council to visit Patriarch Tikhon in order to announce the decision to defrock him. On May 7, the presiding judge in the case of Patriarch A.V. Galkin appealed to the commandant of the GPU Internal Prison with a request to allow the cathedral delegation to see the Patriarch. However, the council delegation was allowed to see the patriarch not in prison, but in the Donskoy Monastery, where he had been transported the day before in order to make him understand that he would not be returned to prison if he agreed with the decision of the false council. The delegation of eight people that came to the patriarch was headed by the false metropolitan Pyotr Blinov. The renovationists read out the council's decision to defrock the patriarch and demand that he sign that he was familiar with it. The Patriarch pointed out the non-canonical nature of the council's decision, since he was not invited to its meetings. The Renovationists demanded that the Patriarch take off his monastic robes, which the Patriarch refused to do.
The Renovation Council also legalized the married episcopate, the second marriage of the clergy, and the destruction of holy relics. The Council announced the transition to the Gregorian calendar ( a new style). This issue was resolved on March 6, 1923 at a meeting of the ARC, which decided: “The abolition of the old style and its replacement with a new one should be carried out at a local council.” The introduction of the new style was planned by the authorities as an effective measure to destroy the Orthodox Church through the destruction of its traditions.
The fact that the cathedral was a puppet in the hands of the GPU was well known in fairly wide public circles. One of the reports from the 6th branch of the SO GPU “On the mood of the population in connection with the upcoming Tikhon trial” said: “The attitude of the majority towards the cathedral is sharply negative. Antonin, Krasnitsky, Vvedensky and Pyotr Blinov are considered obedient agents of the GPU.” According to the same summary, “believers (non-renovationists) intend, if living church priests are allowed into all churches, not to attend churches, but to celebrate services with the participation of non-renovation priests in private apartments.” The council received a sharply negative assessment from the majority of believers. Thus, the believers of the city of Lipetsk wrote to Patriarch Tikhon: the council “drew a decisive line in the minds of believers between truth and lies, confirmed us, who had not sympathized with the church-renovation movement it proclaimed for a long time, cut into the heart and forced those who related to this to recoil from it.” the movement was indifferent and under pressure they frivolously became live bait.” In the note “On the Church Renovation Movement in Connection with the Liberation of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon,” dated June 28, 1923, the council is assessed as follows: “The convening of the church council of 1923 took place biasedly, under pressure. At pre-congress meetings and at meetings of deans, it was officially stated that only persons who sympathized with the renovationist movement and signed up as members of one or another of the renovationist groups could be deputies of the meetings and members of the cathedral. All sorts of measures of influence were taken... The council of 1923, convened in this manner, cannot be considered a local council of the Orthodox Church.”
In June 1923, the Politburo and the Anti-Religious Commission decided to release Patriarch Tikhon. Realizing that the release of the patriarch would be an unpleasant “surprise” for the renovationists and could undermine their position, the authorities began to strengthen the renovationist movement - the creation of the Holy Synod. On June 22, the Moscow diocesan administration dismissed Antonin and deprived him of the rank of “Metropolitan of Moscow,” and on June 24 he was removed from the post of head of the renovationist Supreme Church Council.
On June 27, Patriarch Tikhon was released from prison, and at the same time Bishop Hilarion (Troitsky), whose fight against renovationism will be devoted to our next essay, was released.
