Metropolitan Sergii spearheaded the church's decision to help the Soviet war effort. Under Sergii's leadership, the church distributed antiGerman, pro-Soviet propaganda, raised funds, and formed a special organization to look after war orphans. Taking care of its own interests at the same time, the church leadership supported the government's anti-Roman Catholic Church campaigns. In return for those efforts about
20,000 churches were allowed to reopen; parish priests were allowed to safeguard church property and carry out other church-related duties. Membership rose; and distribution of religious publications was once again allowed. This born-again alliance between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church continued postwar (with an interruption in 1954) until 1958-1959 when Khrushchev launched a harsh antireligious campaign directed mainly against Judaism and Christianity, a campaign that continued after he fell from power. In 1961 parish priests were again deprived of control over church property, and there was a new wave of church, seminary, and monastery closings. As in the past, and as with other officially registered religions, prominent churchmen and lay members went to prison and were often replaced by cooperative priests and senior clergy. Antichurch tactics included placing secret police agents in congregations to observe and inform, allowing "hooligans" to disrupt services, increasing taxation on churches, demanding that churches make certain repairs and then denying them the needed materials, prohibiting Sunday School classes, banning minors from attending services, separating children from religious parents, arrest, exile, imprisonment, and occasionally the death penalty‘s
At the same time, in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, there was a growing resistance to government domination of religion, a resistance that paralleled a rising tide of political dissidence and national hopes for independence. When Gorbachev became head of state, religious tolerance took some wobbly steps forward. The Soviet leader began working toward greater lenience for religious institutions and beliefs and in 1988 started returning churches to worshipers, but the process could be maddeningly slow. In 1989 three thousand parishioners from Ivanovo signed a letter of complaint about the overcrowding of their town's one Russian Orthodox Church, the Preobrazhensky Cathedral. On holidays the cathedral was jammed to capacity: the crush of the crowd caused a number of injuries, including fractures and concussions. Red tape prevented another church in town, which had been used for storage, from being returned to the congregation. "Nobody is openly harassing us," the letter writers pointed out, "but at the same time our problems are not being solved. Are half-baked measures really democracy?" In the end the church was not returned to its faithful until some went on a hunger strike and an influential magazine defended their actions.'®
Roman Catholic believers lived mostly along the western borders of the USSR. Their church represented a special danger to the state because its leader, the Pope, resided outside the country and so was not under the government's thumb. The fact that millions of the USSR's Roman Catholics lived in Lithuania and Ukraine made authorities uneasy about possible links between the religion and independence movements. Clergy were arrested, seminaries were closed, and as with other religions, there was secret police infiltration of the church. By 1926 there were no bishops left in the country, and by 1941 only two of the 1,200 Roman Catholic churches that had existed before the Revolution were still active. Persecution of Lithuanian Catholics receded after Stalin died, intensified under Khrushchev's antireligion campaign, and continued under Brezhnev's leadership."
The Uniate Church (also called the Greek Catholic Church, Ukrainian Catholic Church, or Eastern Rite Catholic Church) was established in 1596 when many Orthodox clergy and parishioners decided to recognize the Pope's authority while preserving most Eastern Orthodox rituals. Because this church became identified with Ukrainian nationalism, the Soviet regime was very hostile to it. In 1941 Soviet authorities arrested many Ukrainian Uniate priests, whom they either killed outright or deported to Siberia. In 1945 the government arrested and deported to prison camps (where most died) its metropolitan archbishop and all of its bishops, along with hundreds of clergy and laypeople active in the church. In 1946 the remaining priests were forced to forswear their ties with Rome and allow their church to become subordinate to the Russian Orthodox Church. However, the Ukrainian Catholic Church continued as an underground religion and continued to be a focal point for Ukrainian hopes of having a separate nation.
Autocephalous (self-governing) Orthodox Churches appointed their own metropolitans without consulting authorities from other Orthodox Churches. The Ukrainian Autocephalus Orthodox Church separated from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1919 and soon attracted Bolshevik suspicions for the same reason the regime was hostile to the Uniate Church: fear that it was nurturing a Ukrainian independence movement. By 1936, the UAOC had almost vanished under state repression but became active again when the Germans occupied Ukraine during World War II, a fact that must have further alienated Stalin, who repressed it again in 1944 along with the Byelorussian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Thousands of Ukrainian and Byelorussian Autocephalous priests were shot or sent to labor camps. Lay believers were also persecuted.
The Georgian Orthodox Church is another Eastern Orthodox autocephalous church. It was combined with the Russian Orthodox Church in 1811 but regained its independence in 1917 (after the Revolution). However, the Russian Orthodox Church did not formally recognize its independence until 1943. As with some other Soviet religions, it enjoyed a temporary respite from persecution during World War II, in return for supporting the war effort. But as soon as the war was over, tight controls were resumed. The Georgian Orthodox Church had around 2,100 churches in 1917, a number reduced to 200 in the 1980s, and they were banned from ministering to followers outside the Georgian Republic.
The Armenian Apostolic Church was the pre-Revolutionary national church of Armenia, and the Soviet government allowed it to continue as such, at the same time confiscating its property; harassing its clergy and believers; and setting tight limits on the number of churches, seminaries, and monasteries. Most Armenians belonged to the Apostolic Church, and many nonbelievers supported it as part of their national heritage.
World History
