Karpov’s plan for a world congress of churches

The Soviet victory in World War II had a contradictory effect on Russian Orthodoxy. It did not guarantee the freedom of religion in the Soviet Union that was expected by its Western allies. In fact, many foreign observers registered an increase of religious restrictions there. At the same time, the Moscow Patriarchate secured a series of benefits. It restored its jurisdiction over the former Russian imperial territories almost entirely and even expanded it beyond the postwar Soviet borders. This development gave new meaning to the 1943 concordat between Stalin and Sergii (Starogorodskii). As the war approached its close, the Soviet government intensified the use of the Russian Orthodox Church for the ends of its foreign policy. On March 15, 1945, Karpov approached Stalin with a proposal for the convocation of an international Christian congress in MoscoW.2 Its aim was to unite all non-Catholic churches against the Vatican’s pretensions to world leadership. The tentative list of participants included representatives not only from Orthodox churches but also from other Christian denominations, such as the Anglican Church, Old Believers, various Protestant and Methodist churches from Europe and the United States, and the Coptic Church. In this document, Karpov also presented the major theses of the future forum. They planned to condemn Catholic teaching about the Roman Pope as Christ’s vicar on earth as groundless; to declare the dogma of the Pope’s infallibility as contradictory to the Holy Scriptures, history, and logic; to unmask the Vatican’s involvement in fascist and antidemocratic activities, especially its support for the Nazis during the war; and so on. At the same time, the congress was to stress the contrast between the Catholic Church and the Moscow Patriarchate by pointing to the antifascist fight of the latter and the wartime support it had receiveD from non-Catholic Christians. According to Karpov, the CAROC was able to organize the forum within 5-6 monthS.3

Prepared at a time when the Red Army was victoriously advancing to Berlin, Karpov’s plan seemed to have a great chance for success. It relied on the alliance with Great Britain, thus assigning a major role to the Anglican Church. On May 5, 1945, Moscow welcomed the Dean of Canterbury, Hewlett Johnson, who as early as 1939 had expressed his pro-Soviet sentiments in a book entitled The Socialist Sixth of the World. By that time he was also “vice-chairman of the Society for Cultural Relations wIth the USSR and chairman of the Joint Committee for Aid to the Soviet Union, responsible for raising thousands of pounds for Red Army relief.”4 THe Kremlin lavished care on this guest during his two-month stay in the Soviet Union. The Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson was awarded the Banner of Labor and visited many places where foreigners had not been allowed since the BolshevIk revolution. One of them was Erevan, where the Dean of Canterbury attended the enthronement of the Catholicos, or head, of the Armenian Apostolic ChurcH.5 The event was described bY Jonson as one “used to promote the idea of the union of the other Christian Churches in opposition to a reactionary and anti-Soviet Vatican.”® ANother destination of his journey was Georgia. There he visited the birthplace of Stalin in Gory and the Tbilisi Theological Seminary, where the Soviet ruler had studied. At the end oF his stay, Johnson had a fifty-minute conversation with Stalin and Molotov on July 6.

Contemporaries were puzzled by Kremlin attention to Hewlett Johnson, who was not a significant figure in the Anglican Church. Scholars who have studied this episode, however, see some logic in It.7 In the light of access to previously classified Soviet archives available since 1991, it seems that Johnson’s visit was one of the steps taken toward the fulfillment of the CAROC’s plan for a world anti-Catholic congress scheduled for the autumn of 1945. The Anglican guest’s stay coincided with the Kremlin’s efforts to guarantee the participation of nonCatholic churches situated in lands outside Red Army control. This became the central theme of the discussions that Russian church delegates had during their trips to the Middle East and London in June 1945.

In the last months of the war, however, dissenting voices appeared in Great Britain and in the Anglican Church in particular. They criticized Metropolitan Nikolay’s claims that the Katyn atrocities were accomplished not by the Soviets but by the NaziS.8 A visit to Athens made by Archbishop Garbett in April 1945 put on trial his good relations with the Moscow Patriarchate. During talks with Archbishop Damaskinos, who was then also the regent of Greece, the Anglican representative was impressed by the strong anticommunism and anti-Russian attitude of his host. The Greek hierarch insisted that “the Soviet [regime] was Now using the Russian Church to extend its influence into the Balkans.”9 In his turn, Garbett continued to claim that “the religious revival in Russia was widespread and genuine.”10 IN his view, the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union was not a simple appendage of the state, but a religious institution similar to the Church of England. Therefore, in a letter to the British Foreign Office, Garbett expressed concern about the postwar destiny of the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union, when he expected a renewal of the antireligious activities of the Stalinist regime. ' 1 On these grounds, the Anglican Archbishop concluded that “the kind of reception that the Russian Church delegation will receive here [in Great Britain] will help to strengthen it, provided of course that we are very careFul not to do or say anything which looks as if we are supporting the Church by criticizing the State.”12

At the same time, British diplomats informed the Foreign Office that the Soviet government would probably “encourage the Russian Church in attempts to become the center of the Orthodox world.”13 ACcording to one of these diplomats, there was a parallel between the way in which the nineteenth-century irreliGious French Republic used the Catholic orders in the Middle East and the Kremlin’s postwar blessing of the Moscow Patriarchate’s delegations sent abroaD.14 Despite these warnings, the British government and the Anglican Church continued their wartime line of friendship during the visit of Metropolitan Nikolay in June 1945. They passed over in silence the Soviet role in the Katyn massacre and the revived religious repressions in Russia. At the same time, the Russian guests had an audience with King George VI at Buckingham Palace and with Geoffrey Fisher, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth Palace. On June 19 they even participated in an Anglican service in Westminster Abbey.15 This was the peak of Russian-Anglican church rapprochement. As a result, the Moscow envoys received the impression that the British government and the Anglican Church deeply esteemed the alliance with the Soviet Union and their patriarchate. The CAROC’s plan for a world anti-Catholic congress of churches seemed more possible than ever.

In the summer of 1945, however, the growing international prestige of the Moscow Patriarchate in the Middle East and the Balkans provoked some concerns among the British authorities. Yet they did not consider it necessary to intervene. According to their embassy in the Soviet Union,

The Moscow Patriarchate has its weaknesses and shortcomings and these will become increasingly evident to the Orthodox Churches in Eastern

Europe and the Levant as contacts increase. We think that we can leave it to them to prevent undue Russian penetration, without ourselves encouraging a direct conflict between our own proteges in Athens and possibly Istanbul and the proteges of the Soviet Government.16

The Kremlin also began to realize that its scenario for a world congress of churches needed some updating. Postwar developments revealed the error of Karpov’s assumption that the anti-Hitlerite rapprochement between the Moscow Patriarchate and the churches in the allied states could easily be transformed into an anti-Catholic alliance. His plan had to compete with a similar project advanced by the ecumenical movement.17 THe latter did not support the anti-Vatican fervor of the Moscow Patriarchate and united many non-Catholic churches, including Orthodox ones. A no less important weakness of Karpov’s plan was its disregard for the freedom of religion, which was a decisive prerequisite for the support of Western societies and their churches. Moreover, it did not take into consideration important theological, ecclesiastical, and historical specificities of the different Christian denominations. Instead, the CAROC’s scenario foresaw a mechanical union of a variety of churches based only on their non-Catholic nature.

This approach of the CAROC chairman reflected either a lack of knowledge or a disregard for Orthodox ecclesiology. His plan for a Moscow congress of world Christianity foresaw the participation of eleven Orthodox churches, namely, Those of Russia, Serbia, Georgia, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and FinlanD.18 THis selection, however, is problematic from the point of view of canon law. It treats autocephalous and autonomous churches as equals. It remains unclear why Karpov included the Finnish Orthodox Church as a separate participant in the forum. Being autonomous, this church had to be represented by its Russian mother church, or its eventual representatives had to be included in the group of participants representing the Moscow Patriarchate. Since 1923, however, the Constantinople Patriarchate had also claimed to be the mother church of the Orthodox Finns. Although this behavior could be regarded as a violation of the canonical ban on intervening in the territory of another autocephalous church (i. e., the Russian one), it is justifiable given the Bolshevik persecution of religion in Russia and the inability of the Moscow patriarchal throne to take care of its dioceses abroad during the interwar period. During World War II, however, the Soviet government’s demonstration of a newly favorable attitude to the Moscow Patriarchate raised the question of the return of the Orthodox Church in Finland to the bosom of its historical mother church. Therefore, after the victory over Nazi Germany, Patriarch Alexii undertook steps for the reunion of the Orthodox Finns. In the last war months, this goal seemed to be fully attainable. This may have been the reason why Karpov’s list included a separate delegation of the Finnish Orthodox Church.

At the same time, the CAROC’s chairman omitted the Orthodox churches in Poland, Albania, and Cyprus despite their wide recognition as being autocephalous in the interwar period. Keeping in mind the Moscow Patriarchate’s position that the Orthodox dioceses in Poland belonged to its jurisdiction, the absence of

Poland’s Orthodox Church from Karpov’s list comes as no surprise. Meanwhile, the exclusion of the two other churches could be explained by the lack of clarity about the postwar destiny of Albania and Cyprus. Perhaps the CAROC also lacked sufficient information about these churches. On these grounds, it is possible to suggest that Karpov omitted fTom his list Orthodox churches with an unclear status. At the same time, he included the most influential churches that had remained outside Red Army control. Their participation was essential, as they had the necessary authority to give a canonical appearance to the promotion of the Moscow Patriarchate to the status of a world leader of Christianity. This aim was not achievable by means of Soviet military power. Therefore, when the plan for a world Christian congress failed, it was replaced with a new one, which again relied on Orthodoxy. This new plan foresaw the convocation of a panOrthodox council under the aegis of Patriarch Alexii. This time, the CAROC entrusted the ecclesiastical and canonical aspects of this enterprise to the Moscow Patriarchate.