Conclusion

The development of the Russian Orthodox Church in the first half of the twentieth century reveals a consistent policy in the sphere of its jurisdiction and authority. Neither the restoration of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1917 nor the collapse of the Russian Empire and the establishment of new independent states in its western borderlands were followed by a renunciation of the Russian Orthodox Church’s pastoral and administrative rights over the Orthodox communities in the former Russian imperial territories or over its Far Abroad structures (i. e., the Western European parishes, the North American Archdiocese, the missions in the Middle and the Far East). The only concession that Patriarch Tikhon made to the adherents of his church who remained outside the interwar Soviet territories was to grant them a certain measure of internal autonomy. A more serious deviation from this position was the recognition of the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church by Patriarch Sergii in 1943. This act, however, was not regarded as a betrayal of the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church. In fact, by this gesture the Moscow Patriarchate demonstrated the inferior position of the Georgian Orthodox Church, thus suppressing the historical seniority of the latter, which had been created centuries before the Russian.

Undertaken fTom the perspective of the post-1917 dissolution of the Russian Orthodox Church, the detailed analysis of the efforts of the Sergian church administration to spread and strengthen its jurisdiction and authority beyond the interwar Soviet borders sheds new light on its collaboration with Stalin. It reveals that the church not only executed the Kremlin’s orders in this endeavor but also pursued its own specific interests. In particular, the Sergian administration sought to restore the jurisdiction and authority of the Russian Orthodox Church from imperial times. In this regard, the analysis hints that already in the early 1930s, Metropolitan Sergii (Starogorodskii), then still acting as deputy locum tenens, used the assistance of the Soviet regime to place Russian parishes in Western Europe and North America under his authority.

This partnership becomes especially evident during the first Soviet occupation of the western borderlands (1939-1941), when only the Sergian church administration received access to the local Orthodox communities. to this, the Moscow Patriarchate restored its canonical and administrative jurisdiction in Estonia, Latvia, Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, and Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia. In this regard, it is important to point out that Metropolitan Sergii (Starogorodskii) followed the ecclesiastical policy of Patriarch Tikhon, who justified the granting of autonomy to the Orthodox churches in the interwar Near Abroad on the basis of the political sovereignty of their states. On the one hand, by reinstating Moscow’s jurisdiction over these religious bodies, Metropolitan Sergii restored the integrity of the canonical Russian Orthodox Church, extending almost to the former imperial borders. On the other hand, he repudiated the right of such foreign bodies as the Romanian Patriarchate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the autocephalous Polish Orthodox Church to take care of communities of believers that had been historically connected with the Russian Orthodox Church. Finally, on the domestic fTont the Sergian church administration took advantage of the Renovationists, its major opponents in the Soviet Union.

The Nazi invasion on June 22, 1941, left no other choice to Metropolitan Sergii but to continue his collaboration with the Soviet state. In this regard, the analysis goes beyond the secular view thaT this behavior sought to ensure “the Church’s continued survival as an institution in Soviet society.” ' It reveals that among other things, the patriotic activities of the Sergian church administration and the active involvement of its hierarchs in the fight against the foreign aggressor also sought to preserve the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate over the Orthodox communities in the Baltic region, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova. In this sense, the partnership with the Soviet state was essential for the restoration of the control of the Moscow Patriarchate over these areas. At the same time, the analysis also indicates that during the Nazi occupation of the western borderlands (1941-1944), many Orthodox clerics, Russian and non-Russian, supported and respected the Moscow Patriarchate as their canonical mother church.

Finally, the collaboration of the Sergian church administration with the Soviet state was also necessary for overcoming its international isolation. Before 1941, a significant part of the Russian diaspora did not recognize Metropolitan Sergii (Starogorodskii) as the canonical leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. At the same time, the Orthodox world was not unanimous in its view of the legitimacy of the extension of Moscow’s jurisdiction over the Orthodox churches in Estonia, Latvia, and parts of interwar Poland and Romania. This situation changed after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. While the Karlovci Synod and the Romanian Orthodox Church took the side of the invaders, Metropolitan Sergii (Starogorodskii) immediately protested against the assault on his people and country. He also condemned the Nazi conquest of foreign nations, thus attracting their sympathies as well as those of the Anglo-Saxon world. Meanwhile, the alliance of Stalin with Churchill and Roosevelt gave an additional boost to the international reputation of the Moscow patriarchal locum tenens.

Indeed, Soviet diplomacy played an important role in the recognition of Metropolitan Sergii (Starogorodskii) as the legitimate leader of the Russian Orthodox Church by world Christianity. In fact, before 1945, the Orthodox churches were not able to provide effective support to the Moscow Patriarchate because most of them had fallen under Nazi occupation. Under these circumstances, its international isolation was overcome thanks to contacts established with the Church of England in 1942. These were skillfully used by the Moscow church and state authorities to gain international recognition of Metropolitan Sergii (Starogorodskii) as the legitimate archpastor of the Russian Orthodox Church. The friendship with the Church of England, which was widely noted by the Moscow Patriarchate and Soviet propaganda, assisted in making a positive shift in the attitude of the Russian diaspora in Great Britain and the United States toward Metropolitan Sergii. His election as Patriarch of Moscow in 1943 further nurtured his reputation and facilitated the activities of the Moscow Patriarchate on the international fTont. In domestic terms, this act assisted the consolidation of the Orthodox believers in the Soviet Union around the new patriarch. Having the support of the Soviet state, Patriarch Sergii quickly healed the domestic schisms and guaranteed the leading position of his church in regards to the other religious denominations.

After Patriarch Sergii’s death in 1944, the Moscow Patriarchate was headed by Alexii (Simanskii). In many respects, he continued the efforts of his predecessor to enhance the leading position of his church in the Soviet Union by subjugating the Ukrainian Uniates (Greek Catholics). His attempts to restore the pre-1923 jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate over the Orthodox churches in postwar Finland and Poland, however, did not meet with such success. Alexii fully failed in the first case, while in the second he was forced to compromise by granting autocephaly to the Polish Orthodox community anew, that is, as if the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople had not done it before. At the same time, the negotiations of the Moscow Patriarchate with the Karlovci Synod, the Western European Orthodox Russian Exarchate, and the North American Metropolia to return under its jurisdiction reached a dead end. These failures were partly compensated by the establishment of Moscow’s exarchates in Central and Western Europe and another in the Far East.

While the patriarchs Tikhon and Sergii had concentrated their efforts on preserving and restoring the canonical jurisdiction and administrative authority of the Russian Orthodox Church within the framework of the old imperial tradition, Patriarch Alexii went beyond this pattern. Under his guidance, the Moscow Patriarchate overstepped the limits of canon law and Orthodox ecclesiology and openly engaged in activities that served the ends of Soviet foreign policy. In 1946 he expanded the jurisdiction of his church beyond the new Soviet borders by taking the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia away fTom the Serbian Patriarchate and placing it under Moscow’s jurisdiction. In a similar way, the Russian Orthodox communities in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were subjected directly to Moscow church headquarters.

The most profound feature of Alexii’s policy, however, was his ambition to expand the authority of his church over the whole Orthodox world. With the assistance of the Soviet state and the communist parties who came to power in Eastern Europe, he engaged the Orthodox churches of Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Albania with Stalin’s project for the elevation of the Moscow Patriarchate into an Orthodox Vatican. Although Alexii failed to assume the ecumenical status of the Patriarch of Constantinople, He secured the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate over the Orthodox churches in the so-called people’s democracies. By signing the resolutions of the panOrthodox conference held in July 1948, they were turned into satellites of the Moscow Patriarchate. In this way, in the beginning of the Cold War the Orthodox world was divided again. This politicization of the Moscow Patriarchate was an innovation that marked its behavior during the Cold War. Under its influence, political arguments replaced the previous canonical and ecclesiological reasoning In the rhetoric of the Moscow Patriarchate. It returned to the latter only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when its jurisdiction and authority over the Orthodox communities in the Near Abroad were again called into questioN.2