On May 15, 1944, Patriarch Sergii died. On the same day an extraordinary meeting of the Holy Synod was held. In accordance with the will of the late patriarch, it elected the Metropolitan of Leningrad, Alexii (Simanskii), as locum tenens. This act removed most of the complications that the Russian hierarchy or the Soviet government could face while arranging the issue of succession. On the one hand, it demonstrated a devotion to a tradition introduced by Patriarch Tikhon himself. On the other hand, it was in harmony with Stalin’S view that Alexii (Simanskii) was more appropriate as the leader of the future Orthodox Vatican than Nikolay (Yarushevich), who had become better known as a churchman involved in Soviet political activities.106 ACcording to the Bishop of York, Garbett, who met both Russian hierarchs during his visit to Moscow in 1943,
Alexii has not got the statesmanlike ability of Nikolai, but I felt he was in some ways the most cultured of the Metropolitans. A really good man, very courteous and dignified, and I should think a man of very strong convictions and piety.107
Most probably the impression that Metropolitan Alexii made on foreigners was the reason for the Kremlin’s choice. The new locum tenens was engaged in religious and ecclesiastical matters, but he avoided any involvement in political affairs. During the interregnum, Karpov kept the foreign journalists away fTom Alexii and transferred their requests for interviews to Metropolitan Nikolay (Yarushevich) or to Father Nikolay Kolchitskii, who was in charge of the patriarchal office.108 AT the same time, the locum tenens status did not guarantee that Alexii would become the next Patriarch of Moscow. According to the rules adopted by the Great All-Russian Ecclesiastical Sobor (1917-1918), the patriarch had to be elected by a secret ballot among several candidates. Therefore, the CAROC took care of this problem. In November 1944, a special episcopal conference, convoked in Moscow, changed the procedure by introducing an open vote ballot. ' 09 Archbishop Luka (Voyno-Yasenetskii), who opposed the innovation, was not allowed to take part in the patriarchal elections in the beginning of 1945. ' 10 The conference also discussed a draft statute of the Russian Orthodox Church that concentrated the administrative power of the church in the hands of the patriarch and his synod. ' 11 At the same time, the territorial and hierarchical structure of the Moscow Patriarchate was reshaped to reflect that of the Soviet state. In this way, the new statute served to legalize state control over the church.
According to Karpov, the local church sobor, held in Moscow from January 31 to February 2, 1945, was “a starting point for the restoration oF [full-scale] international relations of the Russian Orthodox Church.”112 Although there was no need for the heads of other Orthodox churches to attend the election of the Russian Patriarch, special measures were taken to ensure their presence.113 The patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, as well as the heads of the Balkan Orthodox churches and representatives of Russian church communities outside the Soviet Union, were invited to Moscow with the Kremlin’s consent. Despite the war and some ecclesiastical obstacles, most autocephalous Orthodox churches were present at the forum: the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, envoys of those of Constantinople and Jerusalem, the Patriarch of Georgia, the chairman of the Serbian Synod Metropolitan Josif, and a Romanian hierarch. Because of the ongoing war, the event was not attended by the heads of the Albanian and the Greek Orthodox churches, but they also recognized the newly elected patriarch, Alexii, as the canonical head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Very important in this regard was the congratulatory letter of Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens and Greece, who saw in the patriarchal elections of Alexii “a return of the Russian Church to its previous place among the Orthodox churches and its historical reunion with the patriarchates of the East.”114
During the patriarchal elections, the Soviets sought to persuade their foreign guests that there was no religious persecution in the USSR. They also used the presence of so many Orthodox foreign prelates to create an image of the Moscow Patriarchate as the leader of world Orthodoxy. According to Karpov, during their visit most guests agreed with the idea of moving the ecumenical center of Orthodoxy from Constantinople to Moscow. The time was also used to negotiate the isolation of the Karlovci Synod, which had found asylum in Munich after the end of the war. The Moscow Patriarch asked his foreign colleagues to interrupt their relations with its chairman, Metropolitan Anastasii. After the sobor, the leaders of the delegations signed an address to all people of the world. It contained a prayer for the defeat of Hitler’s tyranny and accusations against the Vatican for its support for Nazi Germany.115
The Soviet government saw the church forum as a great success. According to the CAROC’s chairman, the future international activity of the Moscow Patriarchate had to be developed in the followinG directions:
1. Reunion of the Russian Orthodox Churches abroad with the Moscow Patriarchate;
2. Establishment of close and friendly relations with the Orthodox Churches in the Slavic countries;
3. Further strengthening of the relations [of the Moscow Patriarchate] with the heads of the other autocephalous Churches and of [its] influence in settling international church questions.116
On April 10, 1945, Stalin gave an audience to Patriarch Alexii, Metropolitan Nikolay, and Father Nikolay Kolchitskii. In the course of their discussion the tasks of the Russian Orthodox Church in the international sphere were clarified.117 The participants agreed that the success of the Orthodox Vatican project depended on the international prestige of the Moscow Patriarchate. One of the tools for its achievement was the exchange of church delegations. According to the Kremlin, foreign visits to Moscow had to precede Russian visits abroad. It was also decided that the latter were to be launched only after the victory over Nazi Germany. In this way, visits of foreign church dignitaries to Moscow could be presented as a pilgrimage to the center of Christianity as a whole.
In his turn, Patriarch Alexii had to demonstrate the new might of his church as the leader of postwar Orthodoxy. Such a policy stemmed from the shared view of the Soviet state and church leaders that the Patriarchate of Constantinople had de facto lost its “ecumenical” authority, while the ancient Orthodox patriarchates in the Middle East were too weak to take this responsibility.118 Following this plan, the new Patriarch of Moscow demonstrated international mobility that had no precedent in Russian church history. He made his first trip abroad soon after the fall of Berlin. From May 28 to June 10, 1945, he visited the Orthodox patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem in the Middle East. A year later Alexii was a guest of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (May 20 to June 3, 1946). A similar propinquity between his international visits and the celebrations of the victory over Nazi Germany marked his visit to the Romanian Orthodox Church, held fTom May 30 to June 11, 1947. This combination of unprecedented ecclesiastical diplomacy with Stalinist propaganda about the Red Army as the savior of mankind from the Nazi menace had a double effect on the world community: It strengthened Soviet influence and laid the groundwork for the Orthodox Vatican project. Finally, the exchange of church visits was managed so as to guarantee an active balance of the Moscow Patriarchate in international affairs. From the spring of 1945 until the end of 1946, Russian church visits outnumbered the foreign ones: The Moscow Patriarchate sent seventeen delegations (with 52 clerics) to America, Britain, France, China, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and the Middle East countries, while fourteen foreign delegations (with 51 clerics) came
To MoscoW.119
The thirD direction in Alexii’s postwar policy concerned the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church at home and abroad. In this regard, he continued the line of his predecessors. The new patriarch further developed the policy of Sergii (Starogorodskii) of raising the canonical authority of the Moscow Patriarchate at home and abroad. Within the postwar Soviet territories, Alexii accomplished one more task by reuniting the Uniates in Ukraine and Transcarpathia. At the same time, the Soviet victory allowed Alexii to execute the will of Patriarch Tikhon in restoring the territorial integrity of the Russian Orthodox Church. In January 1946, Alexii proposed to Karpov that active measures be undertaken for the return of the historical Russian dioceses in North America, Finland, and Poland under the jurisdiction of the Moscow mother church.120 In this regard, the Moscow Patriarch was guided by the view that “the Orthodox Church in the USSR is the legitimate and only successor of all the rights of the previous
Pre-patriarchal or Synodal Russian Church.”121 His major argument was that by sending their representatives to his 1945 elections, all autocephalous Orthodox churches had recognized him as the legitimate leader of that imperial body. On these grounds he considered himself eligible to restore the territorial jurisdiction of the synodal Russian Orthodox Church; this is the same jurisdiction that was received by Tikhon upon his enthronement as Patriarch of Moscow in 1917. In this respect, Alexii’s postwar program revealed continuity with the positions of his predecessors. Like Tikhon and Sergii, he condemned as anticanonical the move of the Orthodox Church in Finland to place itself under Constantinople’s jurisdiction (1923) and the autocephaly that the same Patriarchate of Constantinople granted to the Orthodox Church in interwar Poland (1924). Patriarch Alexii, however, did not stop here, but expanded the territorial jurisdiction of his church over territories that did not belong to it in 1917 (e. g., postwar Czechoslovakia). Furthermore, the postwar restoration drive of the Moscow Patriarchate revealed its ambition to take back all properties and material assets abroad that had ever been owned by the Russian Orthodox Church. Finally, the totality of this restoration also embraced the Russian diaspora. In this respect, Alexii continued the interwar efforts of Sergii (Starogorodskii) to subject the emigre churches of Metropolitan Evlogii in Western Europe and Metropolitan Theophil in North America to the Moscow patriarchal throne. At the same time, unable to crush the Karlovci resistance, the new Russian Patriarch tried to persuade the heads of the other autocephalous Orthodox churches to cease their communion with Metropolitan Anastasii and his supporters.
What is unique in the postwar ecclesiastical policy of Alexii was his acceptance of Stalin’s plan for a transfer of the ecumenical dignity of the Patriarch of Constantinople to that of Moscow. Pursuing this aim, the Moscow church leadership went beyond canonical norms in its relations with the other Orthodox churches. Although the outbreak of the Cold War ruined this plan, in the summer of 1948 Patriarch Alexii succeeded in becoming the actual leader of the Orthodox churches in the Eastern European states from the Soviet bloc. Under the guidance of the CAROC, and with the assistance of the local communist parties, it began to determine their agenda, especially on the international front. All of these activities are the object of more detailed analysis in the next chaPters.
World History
