Newly opened archival documents indicate that Stalin started drawing up his plans for the postwar world in the spring of 1943. He undertook special steps to dispel the distrust of his allies, as well as among the people in Eastern and Central Europe, through which the Red Army’s road to Berlin was to pass. The spread of Soviet influence in these areas was assisted by the anti-Nazi fight of the conquered nations. A sense of common destiny increased their sympathy to the heroic fight of the Russian people against Hitler. A no less important factor, especially in the Balkans, was the common Orthodox faith. All this gave birth to Stalin’s idea of an “Orthodox Vatican.”
On June 5, 1943, the State Committee of Defense issued a secret decree for the improvement of Soviet intelligence activities abroad. It included, for the first time, religious institutions in the scope of Soviet foreign policy.7 ON September 4, Malenkov, Beriya, and Karpov were invited by Stalin to his dacha in Kuntsevo to discuss the new policy in the religious sphere. They paid special attention to the relationship between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Orthodox churches in Eastern Europe. In this regard, Stalin proposed the establishment of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church (CAROC). According to the
Soviet leader, the major task of this body was to mediate the relations between the government and the patriarcH.8 AT the same time, the council had no right to take decisions alone, but had to submit their preliminary versions to the government and only then to transmit the Kremlin’s final resolution to church leaders for fulfillmenT.9
After these talks, Karpov invited the locum tenens Sergii (Starogorodskii) and the metropolitans Nikolay (Yarushevich) and Alexii (Simanskii) to visit StaliN.10 The meeting took place on the same day and continued almost two hours.11 Stalin expressed the gratitude of his government for the church’s help in the war efforts and encouraged his guests to speak about the problems of their church. The locum tenens asked the consent of the state for convoking a church sobor for the election of a new patriarch. Stalin promised to help and asked about the most urgent problems that had to be settled before the patriarchal elections. The metropolitans Pointed out that the number of acting Russian bishops was not sufficient for the sobor and asked for the release of arrested and exiled Orthodox bishops.12 The title of the future patriarch was also discussed. On this occasion Stalin proposed that the formula used by Tikhon—“Patriarch of Moscow and All Rossia”—be replaced with “Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’.” The change was justified by the necessity of avoiding an association with Rossia, a name used by the Russian emperors. Instead, Stalin gave preference to Rus’ as associated with Kievan Rus’, where the predecessors of the contemporary Great Russians (velikorossy), Ukrainians (malorossy), and White Russians (byelorusy) were still a single and undivided people. ' 3 FInally, the date of the sobor was discussed. According to the metropolitans, they needed at least a month to prepare it. Stalin, however, urged them to proceed with “Bolshevik pace” and scheduled the forum for September 8. The church leaders seemed to be satisfied by this decision. According to a scholar who studied this episode, “For Sergii to be received in the Kremlin, in the palace of power which had sought to annihilate the Church, and to be given the possIbility of electing the patriarch, was a success arising fTom the political suffering which had begun in 1923.”14
After arranging the sobor, Stalin moved to other issues. He agreed with the Necessity of organizing theological courses for the education of new clerics and even suggested the opening of several ecclesiastical seminaries and academies. He also gave his consent for the publication of a monthly journal by the Moscow Patriarchate. In addition, Stalin promised to discuss with the government the reopening of some Orthodox churches that had been closed after 1917. He even proposed that the Moscow Patriarchate should operate with financial means for its own ends and declared that the state would transfer the necessary amounts to the “church center.” He also asked about the living conditions of the church leaders, and they were soon supplied with everything necessary. At the same time, the patriarchal office was moved into the building of the former German embassy in Moscow. At the end of their conversation with Stalin, the metropolitans were informed of the decision to set up the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, chaired by G. Karpov, to whom they had to submit their requests in the future.15
It seems that the date of the meeting was carefully chosen. Before the opening of the Soviet archives, it was connected mainly with the Tehran Conference of the “Big Three” in December 1943. The currently open archives, however, reveal new insights. On July 26, Molotov was officially informed by the British ambassador, A. C. Kerr, of the arrival of an Anglican Church delegation to Moscow on September 15.16 AT the end of August, the locum tenens Sergii was allowed to return to Moscow, while his opponent, the Renovationist leader A. Vvedenskii, was detained in Ulyanovsk.17 In this way, Stalin made his final choice between the Sergian Church and the Living one, giving his full support to the former, which was respected by the whole Christian world, while dooming the latter to disappear. Probably Mussolini’s fall and the armistice signed with the Western Allies by the new Italian government of Marshall Pietro Badoglio on September 3 were also taken into consideration. Given their negative attitude to religious persecutions in the Soviet Union, Stalin wanted to prevent an agreement between the Roman Pope and the Western Allies. This was most probably the reason for Stalin’s suggestion, made during his conversation with the three metropolitans on September 4, to turn the Moscow Patriarchate into an Orthodox Vatican.
The Russian Orthodox Church sobor for the election of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’ started on September 8. In an official letter to the heads of the other Orthodox churches, Sergii informed them that after receiving the support of the leader of the Soviet government, he “dared to convoke the sobor Of the Right Reverent hierarchs of our [Russian] Church to solve pressing ecclesiastical questions.”18 THe fact that this forum was convened by the locum tenens alone, however, was against the rules adopted by the Great All-Russian Ecclesiastical Sobor (1917-1918). To some degree this approach could be excused by the lack of an acting Holy Synod and Russian Orthodox Church Council. Under such extraordinary circumstances, Orthodox tradition allows for the use of the principle of economy, which permits some deviations from the strict observance of canon law for the good of the church as an instrument of God’s justice. At the same time, the fact that the main candidate for the Moscow patriarchal throne himself had initiated his own election and enthronement provokes serious concerns.
The sobor was attended by only nineteen hierarchs, whose work was marked by extraordinary expediency (Figure 5.1). In a single day, they heard the report of the locum tenens on the patriotic activities of the church and the paper of the Metropolitan of Leningrad about the duties of true Christians to their church and motherland. Then, Metropolitan Alexii presented the participants with the proposal to elect Metropolitan Sergii as Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’. He justified the choice with the fact that this hierarch “had already been a bearer of the patriarchal duties.” Therefore, he concluded that there was no necessity to observe all the details that usually accompanied the act of election. According to the published sobor proceedings, Metropolitan Sergii was unanimously elected as Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’. Then, on his proposal, they constituted a Holy Synod as a consulting body at his see. In the end, the sobor issued a declaration against traitors of the fatherland, an address of gratitude to the Soviet government,
Figure 5.1 The hierarch participants in the Russian church council for the election of Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’ (September 8, 1943).
And an appeal to Christians all over the world.19 The enthronement of the new patriarch took place on September 12, the day on which the church commemorated St. Alexander NevsKii, the guardian of Russia against the Teutons.20
According to the official view of the Moscow church leadershiP, the patriarchal election of Sergii “did not make significant changes in its ecclesiastical government.”21 It reduced the novelty to the change in his title and the reference to Sergii as “Holiness.” The new patriarch also mentioned that his new status meant only more responsibility than that of the locum tenens, whose acts were subject to the assessment of the hierarch who would become patriarch. On a broader scale, the forum was presented as a continuation of the patriotic efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church to sustain the war against the invader. A more careful readinG of the sobor documents, however, reveals a departure from the principles ofcollective ecclesiastical government adopted by the Great All-Russian Ecclesiastical Sobor (1917-1918). If Tikhon was obliged to rule the Russian Orthodox Church together with the Holy Synod and a church council, Sergii acted as a single trustee of the dioceses in all Rus’ and the Orthodox nations there, including those in Western Ukraine and Belarus that were about to be liberated from the Nazi occupatioN.22 Quite different was the Western world’s perception of the patriarchal election of Sergii. It was regarded as an act of “restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church.” It is interesting that it is mostly today that scholars are inclined to link the restoration of the patriarchate with the Soviet reoccupation of the western borderlands.23 Meanwhile, some contemporary British newspapers equated it with “a religious occupation of the Balkans.”24
World History
