Details that were kept silent - Professor of the Kyiv Theological Academy Viktor Chernyshev.

Each era in its own way tested the patriotism of believers, constantly educated by the Russian Orthodox Church, their willingness and ability to serve reconciliation and truth. And each era has preserved in church history, along with lofty images of saints and ascetics, examples of patriotic and peacemaking service to the Motherland and the people of the best representatives of the Church.

Russian history is dramatic. Not a single century has passed without wars, large or small, that tormented our people and our land. The Russian Church, condemning the war of aggression, has at all times blessed the feat of defense and defense of the native people and the Fatherland. The history of Ancient Rus' allows us to trace the constant influence of the Russian Church and great church historical figures on social events and the destinies of people.

The beginning of the twentieth century in our history was marked by two bloody wars: the Russian-Japanese (1904-1905) and the First World War (1914-1918), during which the Russian Orthodox Church provided effective mercy, helping refugees and evacuees disadvantaged by the war , hungry and wounded soldiers, created infirmaries and hospitals in monasteries.

Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky)

“On June 22, at exactly 4 o’clock, Kyiv was bombed...” How did the Church react?

The 1941 war struck our land as a terrible disaster. Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), who headed the Russian Orthodox Church after Patriarch Tikhon (Bellavin), wrote in his Appeal to pastors and believers on the very first day of the war: “Our Orthodox Church has always shared the fate of the people... She will not abandon her people even now. She blesses with heavenly blessing the upcoming national feat... blesses all Orthodox Christians for the defense of the sacred borders of our Motherland...”

Addressing Soviet soldiers and officers, brought up in the spirit of devotion to another - the socialist Fatherland, its other symbols - the party, the Komsomol, the ideals of communism, the archpastor calls on them to follow the example of their Orthodox great-grandfathers, who valiantly repelled the enemy invasion of Rus', to be equal to those who performed feats of arms and with heroic courage he proved his holy, sacrificial love for her. It is characteristic that he calls the army Orthodox; he calls for sacrificing oneself in battle for the Motherland and faith.

Transfer of the tank column “Dimitri Donskoy” to units of the Red Army

Why did the Orthodox collect donations during the war?

At the call of Metropolitan Sergius, from the very beginning of the war, Orthodox believers collected donations for defense needs. In Moscow alone, in the first year of the war, parishes collected more than 3 million rubles to help the front. 5.5 million rubles were collected in the churches of besieged, exhausted Leningrad. The Gorky church community donated more than 4 million rubles to the defense fund. And there are many such examples.
These funds, collected by the Russian Orthodox Church, were invested in the creation of a flight squadron named after. Alexander Nevsky and a tank column named after. Dmitry Donskoy. In addition, the fees were used to maintain hospitals, help disabled war veterans and orphanages. Everywhere they offered up fervent prayers in churches for victory over fascism, for their children and fathers on the fronts fighting for the Fatherland. The losses suffered by the country's population in the Patriotic War of 1941-1945 were colossal.

Address of Metropolitan Sergius

Which side should you be on: a difficult choice, or a compromise?

It must be said that after the German attack on the USSR, the position of the Church changed dramatically: on the one hand, the locum tenens Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) immediately took a patriotic position; but, on the other hand, the occupiers came with an essentially false, but outwardly effective slogan - the liberation of Christian civilization from Bolshevik barbarism. It is known that Stalin was in panic, and only on the tenth day of the Nazi invasion he addressed the people through a loudspeaker in an intermittent voice: “Dear compatriots! Brothers and sisters!..". He also had to remember the Christian appeal of believers to each other.

The day of Hitler's attack fell on June 22, this is the day of the Orthodox holiday of All Saints who shone in the Russian land. And this is not accidental. This is the day of the new martyrs - the many millions of victims of the Lenin-Stalinist terror. Any believer could interpret this attack as retribution for the beating and torment of the righteous, for the fight against God, for the last “godless five-year plan” announced by the communists.
All over the country, bonfires of icons, religious books and sheet music of many great Russian composers (D. Bortnyansky, M. Glinka, P. Tchaikovsky), the Bible and the Gospel burned. The Union of Militant Atheists (LUA) organized bacchanals and pandemoniums of anti-religious content. These were real anti-Christian sabbaths, unsurpassed in their ignorance, blasphemy, and outrage against the sacred feelings and traditions of their ancestors. Churches were closed everywhere, clergy and Orthodox confessors were exiled to the Gulag; There was a total destruction of the spiritual foundations in the country. All this continued with manic desperation under the leadership first of the “leader of the world revolution”, and then of his successor – I. Stalin.

Therefore, for believers this was a known compromise. Or unite to resist the invasion in the hope that after the war everything will change, that this will be a harsh lesson to the tormentors, that perhaps the war will sober up the authorities and force them to abandon their atheistic ideology and policy towards the Church. Or recognize the war as an opportunity to overthrow the communists by entering into an alliance with the enemy. It was a choice between two evils - either an alliance with the internal enemy against the external enemy, or vice versa. And it must be said that this was often an insoluble tragedy of the Russian people on both sides of the front during the war.

What does Scripture say about the Patriotic War?

But the Holy Scripture itself said that “The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy...” (John 10:10). And the treacherous and cruel enemy knew neither pity nor mercy - more than 20 million died on the battlefield, tortured in fascist concentration camps, ruins and fires in place of flourishing cities and villages. Ancient Pskov, Novgorod, Kyiv, Kharkov, Grodno, and Minsk churches were barbarically destroyed; Our ancient cities and unique monuments of Russian church and civil history were bombed to the ground.
“War is a terrible and disastrous business for those who undertake it needlessly, without truth, with the greed of robbery and enslavement; all the shame and curse of heaven lies on him for the blood and for the misfortunes of his own and others,” he wrote in his address to to believers June 26, 1941 Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad and Novgorod, who shared with his flock all the hardships and deprivations of the two-year siege of Leningrad.

Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) during the Great Patriotic War - about the war, about duty and the Motherland

On June 22, 1941, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) had just celebrated the festive Liturgy when he was informed about the beginning of the war. He immediately delivered a patriotic speech-sermon that in this time of general trouble, the Church “will not abandon its people even now. She blesses... and the upcoming national feat.” Anticipating the possibility of an alternative solution for the believers, the bishop called on the priesthood not to indulge in thoughts “about possible benefits on the other side of the front.”

In October, when the Germans were already near Moscow, Metropolitan Sergius condemned those priests and bishops who, finding themselves under occupation, began to collaborate with the Germans. This, in particular, concerned another metropolitan, Sergius (Voskresensky), exarch of the Baltic republics, who remained in the occupied territory, in Riga, and made his choice in favor of the occupiers. The situation was not easy. And the incredulous Stalin, despite the appeal, sent Vladyka Sergius (Stragorodsky) to Ulyanovsk, allowing him to return to Moscow only in 1943.
The Germans' policy in the occupied territories was quite flexible; they often opened churches desecrated by the communists, and this was a serious counterbalance to the imposed atheistic worldview. Stalin also understood this.

In order to confirm Stalin in the possibility of changing church policy, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) wrote a message on November 11, 1941, in which, in particular, he sought to deprive Hitler of his claims to the role of defender of Christian civilization: “Progressive humanity declared a holy war for Hitler for Christian civilization, for freedom of conscience and religion." However, the topic of protecting Christian civilization was never directly accepted by Stalinist propaganda. To a greater or lesser extent, all concessions to the Church until 1943 were of a “cosmetic” nature.

"black sun", an occult symbol used by the Nazis. The image on the floor in the so-called Obergruppenführer Hall at Wewelsburg Castle, Germany.

Alfred Rosenberg and the true attitude of the Nazis towards Christians

In the Nazi camp, Alfred Rosenberg, who headed the Eastern Ministry, was responsible for church policy in the occupied territories, being the governor-general of the “Eastern Land,” as the territory of the USSR under the Germans was officially called. He was against the creation of territorial unified national church structures and was generally a convinced enemy of Christianity. As you know, the Nazis used various occult practices to achieve power over other nations. Even the mysterious structure of the SS “Ananerbe” was created, which made voyages to the Himalayas, Shambhala and other “places of power”, and the SS organization itself was built on the principle of a knightly order with the corresponding “initiations”, hierarchy and represented the Hitler oprichnina. His attributes were runic signs: double lightning bolts, a swastika, a skull and crossbones. Anyone who joined this order clothed himself in the black vestments of the “Fuhrer's Guard”, became an accomplice in the sinister karma of this satanic semi-sect and sold his soul to the devil.
Rosenberg especially hated Catholicism, believing that it represented a force capable of resisting political totalitarianism. He saw Orthodoxy as a kind of colorful ethnographic ritual, preaching meekness and humility, which only played into the hands of the Nazis. The main thing is to prevent its centralization and transformation into a single national church.

However, Rosenberg and Hitler had serious disagreements, since the former’s program included the transformation of all nationalities of the USSR into formally independent states under the control of Germany, and the latter was fundamentally against the creation of any states in the east, believing that all Slavs should become slaves Germans. Others must simply be destroyed. Therefore, in Kyiv, at Babi Yar, machine gun fire did not subside for days. The death conveyor here worked smoothly. More than 100 thousand killed - such is the bloody harvest of Babyn Yar, which became a symbol of the Holocaust of the twentieth century.

The Gestapo, together with their police henchmen, destroyed entire settlements, burning their inhabitants to the ground. In Ukraine there was not just Oradour, and not just Lidice, destroyed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe, but hundreds. If, for example, 149 people died in Khatyn, including 75 children, then in the village of Kryukovka in the Chernihiv region, 1,290 households were burned, more than 7 thousand residents were killed, of which hundreds of children.

In 1944, when Soviet troops fought to liberate Ukraine, they everywhere found traces of the terrible repressions of the occupiers. The Nazis shot, strangled in gas chambers, hanged and burned: in Kyiv - more than 195 thousand people, in the Lviv region - more than half a million, in the Zhytomyr region - over 248 thousand, and in total in Ukraine - over 4 million people. Concentration camps played a special role in the system of Hitler's genocide industry: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, Salaspils and other death camps. In total, 18 million people passed through the system of such camps (in addition to prisoner of war camps directly in the combat zone), 12 million prisoners died: men, women, and children.

Each era in its own way tested the patriotism of believers, constantly educated by the Russian Orthodox Church, their willingness and ability to serve reconciliation and truth. And each era has preserved in church history, along with lofty images of saints and ascetics, examples of patriotic and peacemaking service to the Motherland and the people of the best representatives of the Church.

Russian history is dramatic. Not a single century has passed without wars, large or small, that tormented our people and our land. The Russian Church, condemning the war of aggression, has at all times blessed the feat of defense and defense of the native people and the Fatherland. The history of Ancient Rus' allows us to trace the constant influence of the Russian Church and great church historical figures on social events and the destinies of people.

The beginning of the twentieth century in our history was marked by two bloody wars: the Russian-Japanese (1904) and the First World War (1914), during which the Russian Orthodox Church provided effective mercy, helping war-dispossessed refugees and evacuees, the hungry and wounded, creating There are infirmaries and hospitals in the monasteries.

The 1941 war struck our land as a terrible disaster. Metropolitan Sergius, who headed the Russian Orthodox Church after Patriarch Tikhon, wrote in his Appeal to pastors and believers on the very first day of the war: “Our Orthodox Church has always shared the fate of the people... She will not abandon her people even now. She blesses with heavenly blessing the upcoming national feat... blesses all Orthodox Christians for the defense of the sacred borders of our Motherland...” Addressing Soviet soldiers and officers brought up in the spirit of devotion to another - the socialist Fatherland, its other symbols - the party, the Komsomol, the ideals of communism , the archpastor calls on them to follow the example of their Orthodox great-grandfathers, who valiantly repelled the enemy invasion of Rus', to be equal to those who, through feats of arms and heroic courage, proved their holy, sacrificial love for her. It is characteristic that he calls the army Orthodox; he calls for sacrificing oneself in battle for the Motherland and faith.

At the call of Metropolitan Sergius, from the very beginning of the war, Orthodox believers collected donations for defense needs. In Moscow alone, in the first year of the war, parishes collected more than three million rubles to help the front. 5.5 million rubles were collected in the churches of besieged, exhausted Leningrad. The Gorky church community donated more than 4 million rubles to the defense fund. And there are many such examples. These funds, collected by the Russian Orthodox Church, were invested in the creation of the Alexander Nevsky flight squadron and the Dmitry Donskoy tank column. In addition, the fees were used to maintain hospitals, help disabled war veterans and orphanages. Everywhere they offered up fervent prayers in churches for victory over fascism, for their children and fathers on the fronts fighting for the Fatherland. The losses suffered by our people in the Patriotic War of 41-45 are colossal.

It must be said that after the German attack on the USSR, the position of the Church changed dramatically: on the one hand, the locum tenens Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) immediately took a patriotic position; but, on the other hand, the occupiers came with an essentially false, but outwardly effective slogan - the liberation of Christian civilization from Bolshevik barbarism. It is known that Stalin was in panic, and only on the tenth day of the Nazi invasion he addressed the people through a loudspeaker in an intermittent voice: “Dear compatriots! Brothers and sisters!...". He also had to remember the Christian appeal of believers to each other.

The day of Hitler's attack fell on June 22, this is the day of the Orthodox holiday of All Saints who shone in the Russian land. And this is not accidental. This is the day of the new martyrs - the many millions of victims of the Lenin-Stalinist terror. Any believer could interpret this attack as retribution for the beating and torment of the righteous, for the fight against God, for the last “godless five-year plan” announced by the communists. All over the country, bonfires of icons, religious books and sheet music of many great Russian composers (Bortnyansky, Glinka, Tchaikovsky), the Bible and the Gospel burned. The Union of Militant Atheists (LUA) organized bacchanals and pandemoniums of anti-religious content. These were real anti-Christian sabbaths, unsurpassed in their ignorance, blasphemy, and outrage against the sacred feelings and traditions of their ancestors. Churches were closed everywhere, clergy and Orthodox confessors were exiled to the Gulag; There was a total destruction of the spiritual foundations in the country - honor, conscience, decency, mercy. All this continued with manic desperation under the leadership first of the “leader of the world revolution”, and then of his successor, J. Stalin.

Therefore, for believers, this was a well-known compromise: either unite to resist the invasion in the hope that after the war everything will change, that this will be a harsh lesson for the tormentors, perhaps the war will sober up the authorities and force them to abandon the atheistic ideology and policy towards the Church. Or recognize the war as an opportunity to overthrow the communists by entering into an alliance with the enemy. It was a choice between two evils - either an alliance with the internal enemy against the external enemy, or vice versa. And it must be said that this was often an insoluble tragedy of the Russian people on both sides of the front during the war. But the Holy Scripture itself said that “The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy...” (John 10:10). And the treacherous and cruel enemy knew neither pity nor mercy - more than 20 million died on the battlefield, tortured in fascist concentration camps, ruins and fires in place of flourishing cities and villages. Ancient Pskov, Novgorod, Kyiv, Kharkov, Grodno, and Minsk churches were barbarically destroyed; Our ancient cities and unique monuments of Russian church and civil history were bombed to the ground.

“War is a terrible and disastrous business for those who undertake it needlessly, without truth, with the greed of robbery and enslavement; all the shame and curse of heaven lies on him for the blood and for the misfortunes of his own and others,” he wrote in his address to to believers June 26, 1941 Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad and Novgorod, who shared with his flock all the hardships and deprivations of the two-year siege of Leningrad.

On June 22, 1941, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) had just served the festive liturgy when he was informed about the beginning of the war. He immediately delivered a patriotic speech-sermon that in this time of general trouble, the Church “will not abandon its people even now. She blesses...and the upcoming national feat.” Anticipating the possibility of an alternative solution for the believers, the bishop called on the priesthood not to indulge in thoughts “about possible benefits on the other side of the front.” In October, when the Germans were already standing near Moscow, Metropolitan Sergius condemned those priests and bishops who, finding themselves under occupation, began to collaborate with the Germans. This, in particular, concerned another metropolitan, Sergius (Voskresensky), exarch of the Baltic republics, who remained in the occupied territory, in Riga, and made his choice in favor of the occupiers. The situation was not easy. Incredulous Stalin, however, despite the appeal, sent Vladyka Sergius (Stragorodsky) to Ulyanovsk, allowing him to return to Moscow only in 1943.

The Germans' policy in the occupied territories was quite flexible; they often opened churches desecrated by the communists, and this was a serious counterbalance to the imposed atheistic worldview. Stalin also understood this. To confirm Stalin in the possibility of changing church policy, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) on November 11, 1941. writes a message in which, in particular, he seeks to deprive Hitler of his claims to the role of defender of Christian civilization: “Progressive humanity declared a holy war on Hitler for Christian civilization, for freedom of conscience and religion.” However, the topic of protecting Christian civilization was never directly accepted by Stalinist propaganda. To a greater or lesser extent, all concessions to the Church were made by him until 1943. cosmetic nature.

In the Nazi camp, Alfred Rosenberg, who headed the Eastern Ministry, was responsible for church policy in the occupied territories, being the governor-general of the “Eastern Land,” as the territory of the USSR under the Germans was officially called. He was against the creation of territorial unified national church structures and was generally a convinced enemy of Christianity. As is known, the Nazis used various occult practices to achieve power over other peoples, and even the mysterious SS structure “Ananerbe” was created, which made voyages to the Himalayas, Shambhala and other “places of power”, and the SS organization itself was built on the principle of a knightly order with corresponding “initiations”, hierarchy and represented the Hitlerite oprichnina. His attributes were runic signs: double lightning bolts, a swastika, a skull and crossbones. Anyone who joined this order clothed himself in the black vestments of the “Fuhrer's Guard”, became an accomplice in the sinister karma of this satanic semi-sect and sold his soul to the devil.

Rosenberg especially hated Catholicism, believing that it represented a force capable of resisting political totalitarianism. He saw Orthodoxy as a kind of colorful ethnographic ritual, preaching meekness and humility, which only played into the hands of the Nazis. The main thing is to prevent its centralization and transformation into a single national church. However, Rosenberg and Hitler had serious disagreements, since the former’s program included the transformation of all nationalities of the USSR into formally independent states under the control of Germany, and the latter was fundamentally against the creation of any states in the east, believing that all Slavs should become slaves of the Germans. Others must simply be destroyed. Therefore, in Kyiv, at Babi Yar, machine gun fire did not subside for days. The death conveyor here worked smoothly. More than 100 thousand killed - such is the bloody harvest of Babyn Yar, which became a symbol of the Holocaust of the twentieth century. The Gestapo, together with their police henchmen, destroyed entire settlements, burning their inhabitants to the ground. In Ukraine there was not just one Oradour and not just one Lidice, destroyed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe, but hundreds. If, for example, 149 people died in Khatyn, including 75 children, then in the village of Kryukovka in the Chernihiv region, 1,290 households were burned, more than 7 thousand residents were killed, of which hundreds of children. In 1944, when Soviet troops fought to liberate Ukraine, they everywhere found traces of the terrible repressions of the occupiers. The Nazis shot, strangled in gas chambers, hanged and burned: in Kiev - more than 195 thousand people, in the Lviv region - more than half a million, in the Zhytomyr region - over 248 thousand, and in total in Ukraine - over 4 million people. Concentration camps played a special role in the system of Hitler's genocide industry: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, Salaspils and other death camps. In total, 18 million people passed through the system of such camps (in addition to prisoner of war camps directly in the combat zone), 12 million prisoners died: men, women, and children.

The organization of Ukrainian nationalists (OUN) was also an accomplice of the fascists. The OUN had its headquarters in Berlin, and since 1934. was part of the Gestapo staff as a special department. In the period from 1941 to 1954. The OUN killed 50 thousand Soviet soldiers and 60 thousand civilians of Ukraine, including several thousand children of Polish and Jewish nationality. It is possible that these “patriots” would not have acted so cruelly if they had been restrained from unbridled violence by the Greek Catholic Church. During the ugly massacre of Lvov professors in 1941, the UGCC did not condemn the pogromists and did not prevent the bloody massacre. And on September 23, 1941 Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky sent Hitler congratulations on the occasion of the capture of Kyiv. He, in particular, wrote: “Your Excellency! As the head of the UGCC, I convey to your Excellency my heartfelt congratulations on the capture of the capital of Ukraine - the golden-domed city on the Dnieper, Kiev... The fate of our people has now been given by God primarily into your hands. I will pray to God for the blessing of a victory that will guarantee lasting peace for your Excellence, the German army and the German nation." Then campaigning began for those wishing to join the ranks of the SS division “Galicia”. Uniate priests, the episcopate and personally Metropolitan Sheptytsky were forced to take the path of blessing the fratricidal massacre. Recruitment points were located directly in Uniate parishes.

In the city of Skalata, a local Uniate priest submitted an anti-Semitic petition to the occupiers. In the city of Glinany, priest Gavrilyuk led a group of OUN members who killed all the Jews living in the city. And in the village of Yablunitsy, the local Uniate pastor provoked nationalists against defenseless Jews who were drowned in the Cheremosh River.

No matter what the “lawyers” of the OUN-UPA say today, who are trying to rehabilitate the militants as fighters against the German occupiers, they even awarded them the status of veterans today, but real veteran liberators will never “fraternize” with the “forest brothers.” At the Nuremberg trials, among other issues, the topic of the OUN was raised. Former Abwehr employee Alfons Paulus testified: “...In addition to the group of Bandera and Melnik, the Abwehr command used the church...Priests of the Ukrainian Uniate Church were also trained in the training camps of the General Government, who took part in carrying out our tasks along with other Ukrainians. ..Arriving in Lviv with team 202-B (subgroup 11), Lieutenant Colonel Aikern established contact with the Metropolitan...Metropolitan Count Sheptytsky, as Aikern told me, was pro-German, provided his home for team 202...Later Aikern as chief teams and the head of the OST department ordered all units subordinate to him to establish contact with the church and maintain it.” An indispensable ritual of the OUN legionnaires was to take the oath to the Fuhrer, in which Ukraine was not mentioned in a single word.

The Nazis proclaimed: “Germany is above all!” Where the nation is “above all” - above Christianity with its ethical laws and anthropological universalism, above the postulates of morality and norms of human society, “above everything called God or holy things” (2 Thess. 2:7), above FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, - there, nationalism turns into Nazism, and patriotism into chauvinism and fascism.

A gloomy autumn day. A column of exhausted, beaten and hungry people walked to Babi Yar along the sad road of death, under the escort of Germans and policemen. There were also Orthodox priests in this column who were sentenced to death as a result of denunciations by OUN members. Among the suicide bombers was Archimandrite Alexander (Vishnyakov). The story of his tragic death is recorded according to eyewitnesses who miraculously escaped death: “The column was divided. The priests were led forward to the edge of the cliff. Archimandrite Alexander was pushed out of the general group and taken about 30 meters away. Several machine gunners dispassionately and clearly shot at the group of priests. Then Ukrainian policemen in embroidered shirts and armbands approached Father Alexander and forced him to strip naked. At this time, he hid his pectoral cross in his mouth. The police broke down two trees and made a cross out of them. They tried to crucify the priest on this cross, but they didn’t succeed. Then they twisted his legs and crucified him on the cross with barbed wire by his arms and legs. Then they doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. So, burning on the cross, he was thrown into a cliff. At that time the Germans were shooting Jews and prisoners of war.” Gabriel Vishnyakov learned the truth about the death of his father from Bishop Panteleimon (Rudyk) in December 1941.

The essence of the ideology of racial superiority and hypertrophied nationalism was brilliantly shown by director Mikhail Romm in the epic film “Ordinary Fascism.” In these children's eyes, wide with horror, there is a reproach to all humanity. To paraphrase F.M. Dostoevsky, who spoke about the exorbitant price of one child’s tears, how can one not recall one of Hitler’s orders, which said: “Taking into account the fierce battles taking place at the front, I order: take care of donors for the army officer corps. Children can be used as donors as the healthiest element of the population. In order not to cause any special excesses, use street children and children from orphanages.” Meanwhile, the German government, through its direct intervention in the affairs of the Church, deliberately aggravated the already difficult situation in Ukrainian Orthodoxy. It registered two denominations as equal in rights: the Autonomous Orthodox Church, which based its canonical position on the decisions of the Local Council of 1917-1918, and also the autocephalous one, based on the movement of the schismatic self-saints of Lipkovsky V. The head of the Autonomous Church in the canonical care of the Russian Orthodox Church was Archbishop Alexy ( Hromadsky), whom the Council of Bishops in the Pochaev Lavra confirmed in the rank of Metropolitan-Exarch of Ukraine on November 25, 1941.

In Ukraine, church dual power was established, since, with the blessing of His Beatitude Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), the obedience of the exarch was performed by Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) of Kiev and Galicia. In 1943 Vladyka Sergius was elected His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'.

The Reichskommissariat “Ukraine”, led by the executioner of the Ukrainian people Erich Koch, following the instructions of A. Rosenberg to encourage anti-Russian sentiments among the population, supported the autocephalous schismatic movement. Rosenberg sent a directive letter to Ukraine dated May 13, 1942. with a direct indication that Ukrainians should have their own church structure, antagonistic to the Russian Orthodox Church. However, many bishops of the autocephalous schismatic church felt the inferiority of their canonical status. Reports from the German SD security service reported that on October 8, 1942. In the Pochaev Lavra, a meeting took place between Metropolitan Alexy (Hromadsky) and two autocephalist bishops, during which an agreement on unification took place. But the overwhelming majority of the hierarchs of the Autonomous Ukrainian Church rejected this plan, believing that in this case autocephaly would gain control over the Autonomous UOC.

Archbishop of Lvov and Galicia Augustine (Markevich) writes in the Bulletin of the press service of the UOC No. 44, 2005. : “The influence of autocephalists and autonomists in various regions of Ukraine was distributed unevenly. The overwhelming majority of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine remained within the Autonomous Church. In Volyn, where both church centers were located, the Autonomous Church had unconditional predominance in the areas located near the Pochaev Lavra. The northwestern regions were the basis of autocephaly. In Left Bank Ukraine, supporters of the Autonomous Church prevailed everywhere, with the exception of the Kharkov diocese.”

In Kyiv, parishioners did not accept autocephaly. The people of Kiev have always been distinguished by high canonical discipline. When the Soviet government in every possible way supported the self-sanctified Lipkovites, renovationists, “Living Churchers,” who, in essence, represented neo-Protestantism of the “Eastern Rite,” the people of Kiev simply did not go to their churches. So they radically “voted with their feet” against their lies.

December 18, 1941 Metropolitan Alexy (Hromadsky) appointed Archbishop Panteleimon (Rudyk) to Kyiv. However, representatives of the Melnikovsky OUN, who received leading positions in the city administration and created the so-called. “Ukrainian Church Council” began to threaten Archbishop Panteleimon and demand that he move to their schismatic camp. The OUN members allocated three churches to the autocephalous schismatics. This is all that could be done at that time, since the people of Kiev negatively perceived the idea of ​​autocephaly. Vladyka Panteleimon had 28 churches under his omophorion, including the St. Sophia Cathedral, and famous shepherds served under him, such as priest Alexy Glagolev and priest Georgy Edlinsky - sons of holy martyrs, highly authoritative shepherds and confessors. However, the flock did not obey the “strange voice” (John 10:5), preferring real priests rather than those who boldly seized such a right for themselves.

The imposition of the Gregorian calendar by the occupation regime was a blatant violation of church norms and traditions. As one of the evidence, we cite the bulletin of the Security Police and SD dated September 21, 1942: “In mid-December 1941, some local commandants (in Strugaz and Ostrov), citing orders from a higher authority, demanded that the Orthodox celebrate all church holidays, as well as Christmas, in the Gregorian style. This demand caused a storm of indignation among the believers: “Even the Bolsheviks did not commit such violence against the Church... We will not submit...” The priest, not wanting to either violate church order or enter into conflict with the German authorities, had to leave Strugi. After this, the local commandant ordered to bring a priest from a neighboring village and forced him to conduct a Christmas service according to the Gregorian calendar... There were no parishioners that day, and the few who, out of fear of the commandant, attended the service were very upset and embarrassed.”

By that time, in addition to the autocephalous schismatic movement of Polycarp (Sikorsky), another schism was operating on the territory of Ukraine - the false church of Bishop Theophilus (Buldovsky), called the Lubensky schism, or in common parlance - “Buldovshchina”. Buldovsky proclaimed himself Metropolitan of Kharkov and Poltava. Shkarovsky M.V. in the book “The Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin and Khrushchev” he writes: “In general, the share of supporters of the autocephalous church by 1942. could not exceed 30%. Even in the Zhitomir diocese it was only a quarter, and in the more eastern regions it was even lower. Thus, in the Chernigov diocese there were practically no autocephalous churches.”

It must be said that the autocephalous structures did not bother themselves with conflicts with the Germans on a canonical basis. They ordained married priests as bishops and did not interfere with the introduction of the new style, not to mention the abolition of the Church Slavonic language in divine services. Ukrainian monasticism showed complete rejection of autocephaly. The occupation regime put a barrier to the spread of monasticism, in every possible way preventing the tonsure of people of working age as those evading labor service and deportation to Germany to the labor front. Members of the OUN, although they were at enmity with each other (for example, Melnik and Bandera), but as representatives of the civil administration under the occupation regime, they clearly supported autocephaly. S. Petlyura’s nephew Stepan Skrypnyk became a notable person in the UAOC Sikorsky. Since July 1941 he was a representative of A. Rosenberg’s ministry at Army Group South and was a trusted official on the organization of civil administration in Ukraine. Soon Sikorsky “ordained” Skrypnik to the “bishop” rank under the name Mstislav.

March 28, 1942 His Beatitude Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) again addressed the Ukrainian flock with an assessment of the anti-canonical activities of Polycarp Sikorsky. In his Easter message, the head of the Church wrote: “The real culprits of Ukrainian autocephaly should be considered not so much Bishop Polycarp or Metropolitan Dionysius, but rather the political club of the Petliurist party, settled in the German General Government in Poland... To top it all off, now we hear that the bishop Polycarp went to the fascist authorities and repeated the words spoken long ago: “What do you want to give and I will betray Him to you?” What else can one call Bishop Polycarp’s conspiracy with the fascists after everything that they are doing before our eyes, on our land, if not the most treacherous betrayal of the people’s cause, and therefore the cause of Orthodoxy?”

Let us note once again that the Nazis actively used the religious factor in their policy of conquest and occupation, skillfully inciting the religious antagonism of ethnic groups to set them against each other: Catholic Croats against Orthodox Serbs, Muslim Albanians against Montenegrins, Lutheran Balts against Orthodox Russians , Galician Uniates - to Catholic Poles. Himmler personally agreed to the formation of the three-thousand-strong SS regiment “Galicia”. The text of the oath of the SS Galicians is interesting: “I serve you, Adolf Hitler, as the Fuhrer and Chancellor of the German Reich with loyalty and courage. I swear to you and will obey you until death. May God help me." In addition to the SS division "Galicia", there were special Abwehr battalions "Nachtigal" and "Roland", which were part of the punitive regiment "Brandenburg - 800" and other formations of Ukrainian collaborators.

The people suffered victory. Once upon a time, the magazine “Atheist” in the June 1941 issue. wrote: “Religion is the worst enemy of patriotism. History does not confirm the merits of the church in the development of true patriotism” (Evstratov A. Patriotism and religion II Atheist, 1941. No. 6). These words were spoken a few days before the start of the war. So the communists tried to take away even the right to patriotism from the Church. The authorities went so far as to classify Metropolitan Sergius himself among the fascists! This is evidenced by a file stored in the NKVD archives in Moscow. According to the charges fabricated against Metropolitan Sergius and his closest associate Metropolitan Alexy (Simansky), they and other “church members” were part of the Moscow church-fascist center, which trained “sabotage personnel” and plotted “terrorist acts against the leaders of the party and government,” in which they were insidiously helped by the British embassy. The execution in this case on October 4, 1937 shows that the authorities were not joking. the elderly Metropolitan of Nizhny Novgorod Feofan (Tulyakov). The valiant security officers would have shot the Primate himself, but then political expediency prevailed.

When the hour came to fight the Hitlerite plague, the main anti-fascist and patriot sat in the Kremlin, shackled by moral paralysis, while the country was tormented by invaders. If our soldiers returned from captivity - to their native rear - the Gulag, oblivion, and death awaited them. Losses, grievances, deep grief and national sorrow, the early gray hairs of mothers and widows accompanied the war. She was accompanied by destroyed temples and desecrated shrines, the Holocaust of the Jews and the burning of Khatyn, the ovens of Buchenwald and the desperate courage of a simple soldier. “The darker the night, the brighter the stars - the greater the sorrow - the closer God is” - therefore, with all their formidable might, the people rose to fight the tyrant and crushed the fascist Moloch. For, according to the patristic saying: “God is not in power, but in truth.” And how can one not recall the lines of Marina Tsvetaeva (after all, a poet in Russia is more than a poet):

These are the ashes of treasures:
Loss and grievances.
These are the ashes before which
To dust - granite.
The dove is naked and light,
Not living as a couple.
Solomon's Ashes
Over great vanity.
sunsetless time
Terrible chalk.
So, God is at my door -
Once the house burned down!
Not suffocated in the trash,
Master of dreams and days,
Like a sheer flame
The spirit is from early gray hairs!
And it wasn't you who betrayed me,
Years to the rear!
This gray hair is a victory
Immortal powers.

Victor Mikhailovich Chernyshev professor of theology

Plan

Introduction

1. Russian Orthodox Church on the eve of World War II (1937-1941)

1.1. Bolshevik terror and the Russian Orthodox Church

1.2. Beginning of World War II. Russian Orthodox Church and Bolshevik propaganda in the near abroad.

2. Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945)

2.1. The reaction of the Russian Orthodox Church to the country's entry into the great battle.

2.2. Religious policy of Nazi Germany in the occupied territories

3. Changes in the policy of the atheistic state in relation to the Russian Orthodox Church during the Second World War

3.1. A turning point in relations between the Church and the Bolsheviks

3.2. Russian Orthodox Church under His Holiness Patriarch Sergius

3.3. The period of triumph of the Red Army. Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Alexy I.

4. Attitude towards the Russian Orthodox Church during the apogee of Stalinism (1945-1953)

Conclusion

Applications

Bibliography

Introduction

Forever and ever, remembering the gloom

Ages that have passed once and for all,

I saw that it was not to the Mausoleum, but to your altar

The banners of the enemy regiments fell.

I. Kochubeev

Relevance of the topic:

The Russian Orthodox Church played an important role during the Great Patriotic War, supporting and helping the people to withstand this unequal battle with extermination, when it itself was subject to persecution not only by the enemy, but also by the authorities.

Nevertheless, during the Great Patriotic War, the Church addressed its parishioners with a call to defend the Motherland to the end, for the Lord will not leave the Russian people in trouble if they fiercely defend their land and fervently pray to God.

The support of the Russian Orthodox Church was significant, its power was also appreciated by the Bolsheviks, therefore, during the most intense period of the war, the atheist state suddenly changed the course of its religious policy, starting cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church. And although it did not last long, this fact did not pass without a trace in the history of our country.

In this regard, this essay has the following objectives:

1. Consider the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church on the eve of World War II.

2. Analyze the policy of the Bolsheviks in relation to the Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War.

3. Establish the relationship between the situation on the WWII fronts and the relationship between the Bolsheviks and the Church.

4. Draw conclusions about how the atheism of the Bolshevik system affected modern Russian society.

1. Russian Orthodox Church on the eve II World War (1937-1941)

1.1. Bolshevik terror and the Russian Orthodox Church

The results of the census signaled a colossal failure of the “Union of Militant Atheists.” For this, the union of five million people was subjected to “cleansing”. About half of its members were arrested, many were shot as enemies of the people. The authorities did not have any other reliable means of atheistic education of the population other than terror. And it fell upon the Orthodox Church in 1937 with such total coverage that it seemed to lead to the eradication of church life in the country.

At the very beginning of 1937, a campaign of mass church closures began. At a meeting on February 10, 1937 alone, the permanent commission on religious issues considered 74 cases of liquidation of religious communities and did not support the closure of churches only in 22 cases, and in just one year over 8 thousand churches were closed. And, of course, all this destruction was carried out “at the numerous requests of the working collectives” in order to “improve the layout of the city.” As a result of this devastation and ruin, about 100 churches remained in the vast expanses of the RSFSR, almost all in large cities, mainly those where foreigners were allowed. These temples were called “demonstrative”. Slightly more, up to 3% of pre-revolutionary parishes, have survived in Ukraine. In the Kyiv diocese, which in 1917 numbered 1,710 churches, 1,435 priests, 277 deacons, 1,410 psalm-readers, 23 monasteries and 5,193 monastics, in 1939 there were only 2 parishes with 3 priests, 1 deacon and 2 psalm-readers. In Odessa, there is only one functioning church left in the cemetery.

During the years of pre-war terror, mortal danger loomed over the existence of the Patriarchate itself and the entire church organization. By 1939, from the Russian episcopate, in addition to the head of the Church - the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Sergius, 3 bishops remained in the departments - Metropolitan Alexy (Simansky) of Leningrad, Archbishop of Dmitrov and administrator of the Patriarchate Sergius (Voskresensky) and Archbishop of Peterhof Nikolai (Yarushevich), administrator of the Novgorod and Pskov dioceses.

1.2. The beginning of the Second World War. The Russian Orthodox Church and Bolshevik propaganda in the near abroad

On September 1, 1939, the Second World War began with the attack of Nazi Germany on Poland. Not only in human life, but also in the life of nations, the destinies of civilizations, disasters come as a result of sins. The unparalleled persecution of the Church, the civil war and regicide in Russia, the racist rampage of the Nazis and the rivalry over the spheres of influence of the European and Pacific powers, the decline of morals that swept through European and American society - all this overflowed the cup of God’s wrath. There were still 2 years of peaceful life left for Russia, but there was no peace within the country itself. The war of the Bolshevik government with its people and the internal party struggle of the communist elite did not stop; there was no peaceful silence on the borders of the Soviet empire. After the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and 16 days after the German attack on Poland, the Red Army crossed the Soviet-Polish border and occupied its eastern voivodeships - the original Russian and Orthodox lands: Western Belarus and Volyn, separated from Russia by the Treaty of Riga (1921) of the Soviet government with Poland, as well as Galicia, which for centuries was separated from Rus'. On June 27, 1940, the Soviet government demanded that Romania, within four days, clear the territory of Bessarabia, which belonged to Russia until 1918, and Northern Bukovina, cut off from Rus' in the Middle Ages, but where the majority of the population had Russian roots. Romania was forced to submit to the ultimatum. In the summer of 1940, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which belonged to Russia before the revolution and civil war, were annexed to the Soviet Union.

The expansion of the borders of the Soviet state to the west territorially expanded the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Moscow Patriarchate received the opportunity to actually manage the dioceses of the Baltic states, Western Belarus, Western Ukraine and Moldova.

The establishment of the Soviet regime in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus was accompanied by repressions. In Volyn and Polesie alone, 53 clergy were arrested. However, they did not destroy the church life of Western Rus'. Almost all parishes that survived during the Polish occupation were not closed by the Soviet authorities. Monasteries also continued to exist; True, the number of inhabitants in them was significantly reduced; some were forcibly removed from the monasteries, others left them themselves. Land plots and other real estate were confiscated from monasteries and churches, churches were nationalized and transferred for use to religious communities, and civil taxes were established on “clergy.” A serious blow to the Church was the closure of the Kremenets Theological Seminary.

Bolshevik propaganda through newspapers and radio tried to discredit the Orthodox clergy in the eyes of the masses, to kill faith in Christ in the hearts of people, the “Union of Militant Atheists” opened its branches in the newly annexed regions. Its chairman, E. Yaroslavsky, lashed out at parents who did not want to send their children to Soviet atheistic schools that had opened in the western regions. In Volyn and Belarus, brigades were created from hooligan teenagers and Komsomol members who caused scandals near churches during services, especially on holidays. For such atheistic activities for the celebration of Easter in 1940, the “Union of Militant Atheists” received 2.8 million rubles from the state treasury, which was not rich at that time. They were spent mainly in the western regions, because there the people openly celebrated the Resurrection of Christ and Easter services were performed in every village.

In 1939–1941 In legal forms, church life was essentially preserved only in Western dioceses. More than 90% of all parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church were located here, monasteries operated, all dioceses were governed by bishops. In the rest of the country, the church organization was destroyed: in 1939 there were only 4 departments occupied by bishops, including the head of the Church, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna, about 100 parishes and not a single monastery. Mostly elderly women came to the churches, but religious life was preserved even in these conditions, it glimmered not only in the wild, but also in the countless camps that disfigured Russia, where priest-confessors cared for the condemned and even served the liturgy on carefully hidden antimensions.

In the last pre-war years, the wave of anti-church repressions subsided, partly because almost everything that could be destroyed was already destroyed, and everything that could be trampled was trampled. The Soviet leaders considered it premature to strike the final blow for various reasons. There was probably one special reason: the war was raging near the borders of the Soviet Union. Despite the ostentatious peacefulness of their declarations and assurances of the strength of friendly relations with Germany, they knew that war was inevitable and were unlikely to be so blinded by their own propaganda as to create illusions about the readiness of the masses to defend communist ideals. By sacrificing themselves, people could only fight for their homeland, and then the communist leaders turned to the patriotic feelings of citizens.

2. Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945)

2.1. The reaction of the Russian Orthodox Church to the country's entry into the great battle

On June 9/22, 1941, All Saints' Day, the Great Patriotic War began. For the second time in the 20th century. Germany entered into a mortal struggle with Russia, which turned into a national disaster for the Germans. The leaders of Nazi Germany openly rejected Christian moral values ​​and tried to revive the ancient German pagan cult. In their propaganda appeals to the Russian people, the Nazis, speculating on the tragic events of Soviet history, sought to appear in the guise of defenders of religion, but the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Sergius, on the very first day of the war wrote a “Message to the Pastors and Flock of Christ’s Orthodox Church,” in which he called on the Russian people to defend the Fatherland:

“Fascist robbers attacked our Motherland... The times of Batu, the German knights, Charles of Sweden, and Napoleon are being repeated. The pathetic descendants of the enemies of Orthodox Christianity want to once again try to bring our people to their knees before untruth... With God's help, this time too he will scatter the fascist enemy force into dust... Let us remember the holy leaders of the Russian people, for example, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, who laid down their souls for the people and the Motherland... Let us remember the countless thousands of simple Orthodox soldiers... Our Orthodox Church has always shared the fate of the people. She endured trials with him and was consoled by his successes. She will not leave her people even now. She blesses with heavenly blessing the upcoming national feat. If anyone, then it is we who need to remember the commandment of Christ: No one has more sowing love, but whoever lays down his life for his friends(John 15:13). For us, the shepherds of the Church, at a time when the Fatherland calls everyone to heroic deeds, it would be unworthy to just silently look at what is happening around us, not to encourage the faint-hearted, not to console the saddened, not to remind the hesitant of duty and the will of God. And if, moreover, the shepherd’s silence, his lack of concern for what his flock is experiencing, is also explained by crafty considerations about possible benefits on the other side of the border, then this will be a direct betrayal of the Motherland and his pastoral duty... Let us lay down our souls together with our flock. .. The Church of Christ blesses all Orthodox Christians for the defense of the sacred borders of our Motherland. The Lord will grant us victory"

Unlike Stalin, who took 10 days to address the people with a speech, the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne immediately found the most precise and most necessary words. A quarter of a century before the fascist aggression, when the Bolsheviks were openly preparing the military defeat of Russia, the pastors of the Church inspired the Orthodox Russian people to repel the enemy, who was even then coming from Germany. The patriotism of the Church is traditional. The leader of the communists, who led Russia to defeat in the First World War, catastrophe and collapse, and shortly before the Patriotic War argued that such concepts as the Motherland and patriotism, bourgeois and false, were now not easy to combine in his speech the name of a militant atheist and the founder of the party Bolsheviks with the holy names of Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy. Not by coincidence, but by deliberate borrowing, Stalin repeated some thoughts of the head of the Orthodox Church in his address to his compatriots. In a speech at the Council of Bishops in 1943, Metropolitan Sergius, recalling the beginning of the war, said that there was no need to think about what position our Church should take, because “before we had time to somehow determine our position, it had already been determined - the Nazis attacked our country is being devastated, our compatriots are being taken captive."

On June 26, the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne performed a prayer service for the victory of the Russian army in the Epiphany Cathedral; at the end, Metropolitan Sergius expressed the hope that just as a thunderstorm refreshes the air, so a real military thunderstorm will serve “to improve our spiritual atmosphere.” These words express a judgment about the state of society on the eve of the war, in which there was general fear, denunciation, extrajudicial murders were committed, and the hope that the war would bring with it changes for the better for the Church of Christ. In all the Orthodox churches of the Russian land that have not yet been destroyed or desecrated, a prayer was read with minor changes during the service, which was compiled during the Patriotic War of 1812 (see Appendix 1). It was mainly peasants who were mobilized into the Red Army, who, at least in the older generations, still remained faithful to the Orthodox Church. Front-line life in the hourly expectation of death, suffering from wounds, and the death of fighting friends awakened religious feelings and thoughts in Russian soldiers; during the war, religious sentiments among the people deepened and intensified.

The first months of the war were a time of defeats and defeat of the Red Army. The entire west of the country was occupied by the Germans. The mother of Russian cities, the original capital of Rus', Kyiv, was taken. The northern capital of the lost Russian Empire is blocked. In the fall of 1941, the front line was approaching Moscow. In this situation, Metropolitan Sergius drew up a will on October 12, in which, in the event of his death, he transferred the powers of Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne to Metropolitan Alexy (Simansky) of Leningrad. On the Feast of the Intercession of the Mother of God, Metropolitan Sergius addressed a message addressed to the Orthodox and God-loving flock of Moscow. Metropolitan Sergius expressed firm confidence in the final victory of Russian weapons, sternly warned the faint-hearted against betrayal and, mentioning the pastors who cherish hopes of changing the situation of the Church for the better in the event of Hitler's victory, threatened them with defrocking and ecclesiastical judgment. At the conclusion of the message, he blessed the selfless defenders of the Holy Church and Motherland.

This was the farewell address of Metropolitan Sergius of Moscow to the capital's flock before the evacuation from Moscow. Back on October 7, the Moscow City Council ordered the evacuation of the Patriarchate to the Urals in Chkalov (Orenburg); the Soviet government itself moved to Samara (Kuibyshev).

On November 24, Metropolitan Sergius addressed, together with Metropolitan Nicholas of Kiev and Galicia, Archbishops Andrei of Kuibyshev, Sergius of Mozhaisk and John of Ulyanovsk, with a new message to the flock: “Hitler’s Moloch continues to broadcast to the world that he raised the sword “to defend religion” and “salvation” supposedly desecrated faith. But the whole world knows that this fiend of hell only covers up his atrocities with the false mask of piety. In all the countries he enslaved, he commits vile outrages against freedom of conscience, mocks shrines, destroys the churches of God with bombs, throws Christian shepherds into prison and executes, rots in prison believers who rebelled against his insane pride, against his plans to assert his satanic power over all earth. Orthodox Christians who fled from fascist captivity told us about the fascists' mockery of churches... It is clear to the whole world that fascist monsters are satanic enemies of faith and Christianity. The Russian people, everyone who cherishes our Fatherland, now has one goal - to defeat the enemy at all costs.”

In his Easter message, the high priest revealed the anti-Christian orientation of Nazi ideology: “The fascists, who had the audacity to recognize the pagan swastika as their banner instead of the Cross of Christ, cannot win. Let's not forget the words: You will win. It is not the swastika, but the cross that is called upon to lead our Christian culture, our Christian “living.” In Nazi Germany they claim that Christianity has failed and is not suitable for future world progress. This means that Germany, destined to rule the world of the future, must forget Christ and follow its own new path. For these crazy words, may the righteous Judge strike Hitler and all his accomplices.”

After these words of Metropolitan Sergius, many remembered that not only the leaders of Nazi Germany argued that “Christianity has failed and is not suitable for future world progress.” And to everyone who heard this message read out in Orthodox churches, it was clear that it was not the fascist swastika, nor the red pentagram, but the cross that was called upon to “lead our Christian culture.”

On the first anniversary of the Great Patriotic War, Metropolitan Sergius issued two messages - one for Muscovites, and the other for the all-Russian flock. In his Moscow message, the Locum Tenens expressed his joy at the defeat of the Germans near Moscow. In a message to the entire Church, its head denounced the Nazis, who, for propaganda purposes, arrogated to themselves the mission of defenders of Christian Europe from the invasion of communists, and also consoled the flock with the hope of victory over the enemy. In his Christmas message of 1943, Metropolitan Sergius wrote that we now not only believe, but also see that victory has definitely passed to our side. The Easter message of 1943 ends with the words: “With God's help, our valiant Russian army will drive out the fascist evil spirits from the borders of our Motherland. May God rise again and let His enemies be scattered(Ps. 67.2).” In a message compiled for the second anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, Metropolitan Sergius asked the Lord for blessings for the continuation of “patriotic feats both at the front and in the rear, and may the Lord grant that the third year of military suffering that is beginning will become for us a year of victory.”

The closest associates of the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitans Alexy (Simansky) and Nikolai (Yarushevich), also addressed patriotic messages to the flock.

Throughout the terrible days of the blockade, Metropolitan Alexy (Simansky) of Leningrad was not separated from his flock. At the beginning of the war, there were five active Orthodox churches left in Leningrad: St. Nicholas Morskoy, Prince Vladimir and Transfiguration Cathedrals and two cemetery churches. The city's churches were overflowing with worshipers and communicants. Even on weekdays, mountains of notes about health and repose were given. The temperature in the temples often dropped below zero, and the singers could barely stand on their feet from hunger. Due to frequent shelling and bomb explosions, the windows in the temples were broken by an air wave, and a frosty wind blew through the temples. Metropolitan Alexy lived at St. Nicholas Cathedral and served there every Sunday, often without a deacon. With his sermons and messages, he supported courage and hope in people left in inhuman conditions in the blockade ring. On Palm Sunday, his archpastoral address was read in Leningrad churches, calling on believers to selflessly help soldiers through honest work in the rear.

2.2. Religious policy of Nazi Germany in the occupied territories

In the first months of the war, the German Wehrmacht occupied vast territories in the west of the country - almost half of the European part of the Soviet Union: the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, and the western regions of the Russian Federation. On the Karelian Isthmus and in Karelia, Finnish troops fought on the side of Germany. In Moldova, Transnistria, Crimea, and southern Ukraine, German troops were reinforced by Italian, Romanian and Hungarian units. In Transcaucasia and the Far East, Türkiye and Japan posed a constant threat.

In all the cities and in many villages abandoned by the Soviet administration, priests were announced who were either exiled there, or hiding underground, or earning a living by some kind of craft or service. These priests received permission from the occupation commandants to perform services in closed but not destroyed churches.

The goal of the war for Hitler and the leadership of the Nazi party was the dismemberment of our country and the enslavement of the Slavic peoples, therefore, in the event of a German victory, the Orthodox Church, the highest national shrine of the Russian people, was threatened with severe persecution. But fascist ideologists covered up their predatory war in the name of God and called it a crusade against communism. For propaganda purposes, the occupation authorities issued permits to open churches. Rosenberg outlined the basic principles of German religious policy in the occupied territories: 1) religious groups are strictly prohibited from engaging in politics; 2) religious groups should be divided according to national and territorial characteristics; 3) religious societies should not interfere with the activities of the occupation authorities.

The believing people, hungry, poor, devastated by war, selflessly worked to restore the churches of God, decorated them with icons that had survived in their houses and donated ones, and brought liturgical books that had been hidden in secret. Divine services were performed in churches overcrowded with people. A great multitude of people, both children and adults, were baptized. In Ukraine and Belarus, almost everyone who came from Orthodox families, but did not receive baptism during the years of persecution of the Church, was baptized within a few months after the German occupation. Many believers came to the festive services, processions of the cross were held, in which thousands of Orthodox Christians took part.

The opposite was also observed. The new Soviet intelligentsia, urban working youth, under the influence of atheistic propaganda, for the most part turned away from the faith of their fathers. In Kyiv, 26 churches were opened, except for St. Andrew's Church, all the rest were on the outskirts. For a large city this was still small compared to provincial cities, but these churches were not filled with praying people even on Sundays.

By giving permission to open churches, the German occupiers, to put it mildly, did not set an example of Christian morality and Christian mentality. In the front line, where power was in the hands of the military administration, Orthodox Christians met with sincere sympathy from the Germans, but in the deep rear, where party functionaries and SS units set the tone, only propaganda and political considerations dictated to the occupation authorities a certain tolerance towards the Orthodox Church .

In the occupied territories, most of the Soviet legislation was retained, which turned out to be very convenient for the new owners, including Lenin’s decree “On the separation of the Church from the state and the school from the Church.” It was forbidden to teach the law of God in elementary schools and vocational schools. As in Germany itself, children were raised in a National Socialist, racist and neo-pagan spirit.

Gross mockery of the feelings of believers and the believers themselves were a daily reality in the occupied territories. Thus, in Vasilkov, during the harvest, the authorities of the regional agricultural department prohibited religious services even on Sundays. When people who came to pray began to ask the local priest to serve mass, the head of the department ordered the people to be dispersed from the church with whips.

Guerrilla warfare raged throughout the vast territory of the occupied lands, and the local population had to reckon with the partisans as a real force. But the partisans were not united; they acted under different banners and with different goals.

In the east of Ukraine and Belarus, the Soviet partisan movement predominated, organized by underground fighters left behind by the communists during the retreat; These detachments included officers and soldiers who had escaped from captivity, as well as local residents, first of all, of course, communists and Komsomol members. In the west of Belarus, Polish partisans and underground fighters operated, whose goal was the revival of the Polish state, and within the borders that it occupied before 1939, therefore, although the Soviet and Polish partisans had a common enemy, their interests did not coincide. The Polish underground saw its opponents not only in the Germans and Soviet partisans, but also in the local population.

In Ukraine, an insurgent movement of Ukrainian nationalists - Bendera and Melnikovites - arose. The Bendera movement did not immediately become partisan and hostile to the Germans; at first, they pinned their hopes on the help of the occupiers in creating an “independent independent Ukrainian state,” naively believing that for fascist Germany, a sufficient reward for a difficult bloody war would not be the colonization of Ukraine, but the formation of a Ukrainian state friendly to Germany .

None of the partisan movements sympathized with the Orthodox Church. The core of the Soviet partisan detachments were militant atheists. Orthodox canonical priests died due to the fault of both the invaders and the partisans, but the real terror against them was unleashed by Ukrainian nationalists in the interests of the autocephalous group.

The outrages of schismatics in Ukraine caused a quick and harsh reaction from the hierarchy of the Russian Church. On February 5, 1942, the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Sergius, addressed the Orthodox flock of Ukraine with a message in which he denounced the canonical groundlessness of the unauthorized actions of Polycarp (Sikorsky) (see Appendix 2)

The influence of autocephalists and autonomists was distributed unevenly in different parts of Ukraine. But the overwhelming majority of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine remained within the Autonomous Church.

At the end of 1942, the attitude of the German authorities towards the two church groups in Ukraine changed noticeably. The general strategic line to divide and rule in the occupied lands remained, of course, unchanged, but the previous focus on supporting predominantly autocephalists gave way to a more favorable attitude towards the Autonomous Church. The reason for the change was that the autocephalists, closely associated with Ukrainian political nationalism, were gradually turning into a force in opposition to the Hitler regime.

Over time, Ukrainian nationalists began an armed partisan struggle against both the occupiers and the Red partisans. The autocephalous bishops Mstislav (Skrypnik) and Platon (Artemyuk) maintained contact with the Ukrainian nationalist partisan movement. The administrator Polycarp (Sikorsky) undoubtedly sympathized with them. The Autonomous Church, which united people of sincere and deep religiosity, tried to remain as apolitical as possible from the beginning to the end of the occupation, and the German authorities over time began to consider it more acceptable to themselves. At the beginning of the war, the occupiers encouraged the Germanophile Ukrainian nationalism of the autocephalists.

In October 1943, the German occupation authorities formed the Belarusian Central Rada - a kind of puppet government headed by President Radoslav (Roman) Kazimirovich Ostrovsky. A department for church affairs was created under the Rada, which gathered Belarusian activists who had long been at war with the Orthodox clergy of Belarus.

The territories of Moldova, Northern Bukovina and the Odessa region during their occupation were included in the Romanian state. The Romanian Patriarchate extended its jurisdiction to them without agreement with the Moscow Patriarchate. As the front approached, the majority of the Romanian clergy fled to the west, to Bessarabia, then to Romania. Priests of Russian and Ukrainian origin remained in the parishes, who, of course, enjoyed incomparably greater trust and love of the people.

The occupied Baltic states, like Belarus, were part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland (East). The leading bishop in the Baltic states was the exarch of Latvia and Estonia, Metropolitan of Vilna and Lithuania Sergius (Voskresensky). When the war began, Metropolitan Sergius was supposed to be evacuated from Vilnius, but he wished to remain with his flock and, in order to avoid evacuation, hid in the crypt of the cathedral. After the capture of Vilnius, the German authorities arrested Bishop Sergius, but after 4 days he was released and was able to fulfill his duties in managing the churches of the Baltic states. He was allowed to remain in canonical obedience to the Moscow Patriarchate and to lift up the name of the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne during divine services. Metropolitan Sergius (Voskresensky) had to pay for the tolerant attitude of the occupation authorities towards his canonical connection with the Patriarchate with a number of public statements directed against the government of the Soviet Union, waging war with Germany, and assurances of loyalty to the German authorities. In a circle of completely trusted people, he said: “It was not such people who were deceived... but these sausage makers are not difficult to deceive.”

3. Change in the policy of the atheist state towards the Orthodox Church (1943-1944)

3.1. A turning point in relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Bolsheviks

The consistently patriotic position of the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church during the days of the war did not go unanswered by the Soviet authorities. In 1942, there were clear signs of a softening of the government's anti-church policies; True, these were more demonstrative gestures than real steps towards the many millions of believing people who shed blood for the salvation of the Fatherland, and therefore, as it turned out, for the preservation of Soviet power.

On November 7, 1942, newspapers published an anniversary greeting to J.V. Stalin on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution from Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Kallistratus (Tsintsadze), from the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Sergius, from Metropolitan Nicholas of Kyiv and from Alexander Vvedensky. As a contemporary wrote, who read these telegrams with surprise: “What was unexpected was not that church leaders express feelings of devotion and patriotism - this has been customary since the 20s, what was new was that in response to these loyal assurances they did not respond with spitting and ridicule, but they print it on the first page."

But more important for the Church was the opportunity that arose then to open several new parishes and resume worship in abandoned, neglected, unused churches. In addition to permission to replace dowager sees and new episcopal consecrations, another act of the Soviet government, designed to demonstrate a favorable attitude towards the Orthodox Church and other religious communities, was the almost complete cessation of anti-religious attacks in the periodical press. The "Union of Militant Atheists" ceased to exist without official dissolution. In 1943, its permanent leader Emelyan Yaroslavsky died. Some anti-religious museums were also closed, but, of course, not the one that was located in the Kazan Cathedral in Leningrad.

What prompted the Bolshevik government to change its policy towards the Church? The reasons for this were different. First of all, it became an unaffordable luxury to simultaneously wage a war against Germany and wage a war with one’s Orthodox people. Over a quarter of a century, the majority of the clergy have proven their apoliticality and willingness to sacrifice many things, but not faith itself; During the war years, the patriotism of archpastors and shepherds turned out to be compatible with Soviet patriotism - both the communists and the believing people sincerely wanted the defeat of the fascists.

The softening of the anti-religious policy of the authorities was also a consequence of the serious metamorphosis that Soviet ideology underwent already in the mid-30s. After hopes of a world revolution had vanished like smoke, bizarre changes occurred in the ideology of the Bolshevik Party. The remnants of revolutionary internationalism and natural love for the motherland, although it had lost its nationally Russian and imperial features, were combined by communist ideologists in the new concept of “Soviet patriotism.” From the mid-30s. Soviet propagandists, in addition to the rebels and revolutionaries who were revered since 1917, also extracted from the history of the country other examples worthy of imitation: portraits of Suvorov and Kutuzov, whom the Marxist historian of the 20s. M.N. Pokrovsky branded them as imperialists, chauvinists, stranglers of freedom, who ended up in Stalin’s office. The names of the holy princes Alexander Nevsky and Demetrius Donskoy were mentioned in a positive context, and even the Baptism of Rus' began to be written in history textbooks as a relatively progressive event. Thus, Soviet ideology, in the struggle for survival, revealed its adaptability to circumstances, and during the war years it turned out to be quite flexible and even with a liberal tint in relation to the Church.

There was another, diplomatic, underlying reason for changes in government policy towards religious communities in the country. US President F. Roosevelt's plans to declare war on Germany, widely discussed in America, met with objections from the American Council of Churches of Christ, which at its conference adopted a resolution stating that US participation in the war on the side of the Soviet Union was unacceptable simply because the Soviet Union - This is a godless state. After this, Roosevelt instructed the US Ambassador in Moscow to collect and present material that would show that the situation of religious communities in the USSR complies with democratic standards. Of course, Roosevelt was well aware of the real situation of the Church in the USSR, but entry into the war, conditioned by political calculations, had to be presented to the Christian public in the United States as a manifestation of concern for the situation of believers in the Soviet Union.

The concerns of religious circles in America came to the attention of the Soviet leadership; and one of the results of this was the publication by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1942 of the book “The Truth about Religion in Russia,” intended mainly for distribution abroad. Both the preface of Metropolitan Sergius and the articles in the book contained, of course, half-truths about the position of the Orthodox Church in Russia and were intended for an intelligent reader, but the publication of this book drew attention to the very fact of the existence of the Church in our country. The partial normalization of relations between the state and the Church should also have encouraged patriotic emigration to reconcile with the Soviet regime. The improvement of the position of the Church also facilitated the propaganda tasks of the Soviet leadership among the Orthodox Balkan peoples at a time when Romania was at war with the Soviet Union, occupying Bessarabia, Transnistria and a significant part of Ukraine, including Odessa, and Bulgaria, without declaring war on the Soviet Union, was an ally of Germany in the fight against their neighbors of the same faith - Greece and Yugoslavia.

At the end of August 1943, the civil authorities invited the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), to return to Moscow. On September 4, a representative of the Council of People's Commissars of the Union called the Patriarchate and reported the government's desire to receive the highest hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Sergius thanked for the attention to the needs of the Church and expressed the wish that the visit take place without delay. The head of the 4th Department of the III Directorate of the NKVD for the fight against church-sectarian counter-revolution, Colonel G. G. Karpov, called the Patriarchate after a conversation with Stalin and on his orders.

Later Karpov wrote down the contents of the conversation. Stalin said that “it is necessary to create a special body that would communicate with the leadership of the Church.” Karpov proposed to form a department for religious affairs under the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the model of the Commission for religious affairs under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, but Stalin decided that it would be a Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church not under the Supreme Council, but under the government.

Their conversation with Stalin, V.M. Molotov and G.G. Karpov about the relationship between the Church and the state continued for about two hours in a huge wood-panelled office. “Briefly noting,” as Karpov writes, “the positive significance of the patriotic activity of the Church during the war, Stalin asked Metropolitans Sergius, Alexy and Nikolai to speak out about the urgent but unresolved issues that the Patriarchate and they personally had.” Metropolitan Sergius said that the most important and urgent question is about the central leadership of the Church, that he has been the Patriarchal Locum Tenens for almost 18 years and thinks that it is hardly possible anywhere else that since 1935 there has been no Synod in the Church. He asks permission to convene a Council of Bishops, which will elect the Patriarch and form the Holy Synod under the head of the Church as an advisory body consisting of 5-6 bishops. Stalin agreed with the metropolitan’s proposal and also allowed him to accept the title “Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'.” We agreed that the Council of Bishops would meet in Moscow on September 8. Metropolitan Sergius refused subsidies.

Then the issue of opening religious educational institutions was discussed. Metropolitan Sergius declared the need for the widespread opening of theological schools, since the Church lacks cadres of clergy. Stalin suddenly broke the silence: “Why don’t you have personnel?” - he asked, taking the pipe out of his mouth and looking intently at his interlocutors. Alexy and Nikolai were embarrassed... Everyone knew that the cadres had been killed in the camps. But Metropolitan Sergius was not embarrassed: “We don’t have personnel for various reasons. One of them: we are training a priest, and he becomes a marshal of the Soviet Union.” A satisfied smile touched the dictator's lips. He said: “Yes, yes, of course. I am a seminarian. I heard about you then.”

Metropolitans Sergius and Alexy asked Stalin for permission to open theological courses in several dioceses. As Karpov writes, Stalin, agreeing with this, at the same time asked why they were raising the question of theological courses, while the government could allow the organization of a theological academy and the opening of theological seminaries in all dioceses where this was needed.

Metropolitan Sergius spoke about resuming the publication of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. “The magazine can and should be published,” said Stalin. Metropolitan Sergius raised the most important issue for the Church about the opening of parishes and the resumption of normal parish life in the country. Metropolitans Alexy and Nikolay noted the uneven distribution of churches in the Soviet Union and expressed the desire, first of all, to open churches in regions and territories where there are none at all or where there are few of them.

Metropolitan Alexy took upon himself the risk of raising the most painful and risky topic with Stalin. He asked for the release of bishops who were in exile, prisons and camps. Stalin replied: “Imagine such a list, we will consider it.” Metropolitan Sergius raised the issue of the right of clergy to free residence and movement within the Union, the lifting of restrictions related to the passport regime for them, and that the authorities allow those clergy who have been released from prison to worship. Stalin suggested that he study this issue.

Following this, Metropolitan Alexy spoke about the financial problems of the Church and the structure of church government. Metropolitan Nicholas asked to give dioceses the right to open candle factories. According to Karpov, Stalin once again emphasized that the Church can count on the full support of the government in all matters related to its organizational strengthening and development within the USSR. It is necessary to ensure the right of the bishop to dispose of church funds and not create obstacles to the organization of seminaries, candle factories, etc.

Turning to the personal circumstances of the hierarchs’ lives, Stalin noted: “Comrade Karpov reported to me that you live very poorly: your apartment is cramped, you buy food at the market, you don’t have any transport. Therefore, the government would like to know what your needs are and what you would like to receive from the government." Metropolitan Sergius asked to provide the former abbot's building in the Novodevichy Monastery for the location of the Patriarchate. “The premises in the Novodevichy Convent,” Stalin replied, “Comrade Karpov looked, and they are not at all comfortable, they require major repairs, and in order to occupy them, a lot of time is still needed. It is damp and cold there. After all, we must take into account that these buildings were built in the 16th century. The government can provide you tomorrow with a completely comfortable and prepared premises: a three-story mansion in Chisty Lane, which was previously occupied by the former German ambassador Schulenburg. But this building is Soviet, not German, so you can live in it completely calmly. At the same time We are providing you with the mansion with all the property and furniture that is in the mansion, and in order to have an idea of ​​this building, we will now show you its plan.”

Stalin did not ignore the supply of food to the Patriarchate; he promised to provide 2-3 passenger cars with fuel in the coming days. Then Stalin asked Metropolitan Sergius and his companions if they had any other questions for him, or if the Church had any other needs. All three stated that they no longer have any special requests, but sometimes in the localities there is an overtaxation of the clergy with income taxes. And then Stalin informed the metropolitans that the government was going to form a Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church and proposed to appoint G. G. Karpov as its chairman. This proposal alarmed them: Karpov was known in church circles as a security officer who handled the affairs of clergy with extreme cruelty. But “all three,” as Karpov writes, “stated that they were very grateful to the government and personally to Comrade Stalin for this and very favorably accepted the appointment of Comrade Karpov to this post.” Stalin suggested selecting 2-3 assistants who would be members of the Council, forming an apparatus, but remembering that Karpov was not the Chief Prosecutor and that through his activities he should more emphasize the independence of the Church.

At the end of the conversation, Stalin suggested that Molotov draw up a draft communiqué for radio and newspapers. Stalin and Metropolitans Sergius and Alexy took part in the discussion of the text of the communiqué. The text was published the next day in Izvestia. Stalin escorted the metropolitans to the door of his office, and taking Metropolitan Sergius “by the arm, carefully, like a real subdeacon, he led him down the stairs and said to him goodbye: “Vladyka! That's all I can do for you at the moment."

The moment in the history of the Russian Church was truly historical. The government, allowing the election of the Patriarch and the opening of parishes and theological schools, openly recognized the impossibility of the Bolshevik plans to completely destroy the Church and eliminate it from the life of the people. Essentially, the terms of a kind of “concordat” were concluded, which the state authorities basically observed until the beginning of Khrushchev’s persecutions.

The change in the policy of the atheist state towards the Orthodox Church in 1943 was a tactical step under the pressure of military circumstances. The Marxist idea of ​​class solidarity of the proletariat crashed against the “Myth of the 20th Century” by Rosenberg, the ideologist of the German workers’ socialist party (that was the name of Adolf Hitler’s party). Stalin had to appeal to the historical memory and national self-awareness of the Russian people, and here it was impossible to discount the Russian Orthodox Church, especially since in the first days of the war it was she, defeated and legally non-existent, who was the first to call on the Orthodox people to defend the Fatherland.

The Council of Bishops took place four days after the meeting in the Kremlin - on September 8, 1943 in the new building of the Patriarchate in Chisty Lane. This was the first Council after 1918. It was opened by the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Sergius, with a brief report “On the activities of the Orthodox Church during the two years of the Patriotic War.” This was, of course, not a report in the generally accepted sense of the word, because there was no opportunity to speak openly about the life of the Church in the years following the Local Council of 1917–1918, and there were other topics besides the patriotic service of the Church during the war, Metropolitan Sergius did not touch upon it. He said in particular: “I have issued twenty-three different messages on different occasions, and their theme, of course, is the same: hope in God that He, as in the past, will not leave us now and will grant us the final victory. Our the people willingly responded to our call. We called upon them to make sacrifices for the needs of the war... These were the sacrifices of ordinary pilgrims who made their usual contribution... Random donations amounted to millions. I... at one time turned to our church society "with a proposal to raise funds for the construction of a tank column named after Demetrius Donskoy. I was guided by the desire to repeat the example of St. Sergius, who sent his two schema-monks to the battlefield." The report ended with a reminder of the favorable meeting for the Church in the Kremlin.

Then the Council heard a report by Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad, “The duty of a Christian to the Church and the Motherland in the current era of the Patriotic War.” Comparing the Great Patriotic War with the Patriotic War of 1812, Metropolitan Alexy defined the moral conditions for the success of Russian weapons, common to all times, these are “firm faith in God, who blesses a just war; religious uplifting of the spirit; consciousness of the truth of the war; consciousness of duty to God and the Motherland. This is an inexhaustible source, never diminishing, a source of faith with an impulse of repentance, correction of life, desire for moral purity. It is nourished and warmed by prayers, deeds and - together - finds its expression in them." Then Metropolitan Alexy spoke about the election of His Holiness the Patriarch, for which the Council of Bishops was convened. Metropolitan Sergius was elected. Then the Holy Synod under the Patriarch was elected from three permanent and three temporary members. The Local Council provided for a more independent status for the Synod.

But the bitter experience acquired by the Russian Church in the terrible 20s and 30s showed the special responsibility of the high priest’s ministry, since in times of persecution, with external and internal schisms and divisions, for the multi-million flock the main spiritual guideline, helping to discern where the Orthodox Church is , and where the schisms were, there was the personality of the first bishop - Patriarch Tikhon, then Metropolitans Peter and Sergius.

The Council’s appeal to the Soviet government said: “Deeply touched by the sympathetic attitude of our national leader, the head of the Soviet government, I.V. Stalin, to the needs of the Russian Orthodox Church and to the humble labors of our humble servants, we bring to the government our all-conciliar sincere gratitude and joyful assurance "that, encouraged by this sympathy, we will increase our share of work in the national feat for the salvation of the Motherland. May the Heavenly Head of the Church bless the works of the government with his constructive blessing and may he crown our struggle for a just cause with the longed-for victory and liberation of suffering humanity from the dark bonds of fascism."

3.2. Russian Orthodox Church under His Holiness Patriarch Sergius

The enthronement of the newly elected Patriarch took place in the Epiphany Patriarchal Cathedral on August 30 (September 12) on the day of remembrance of Saint Prince Alexander Nevsky, the heavenly patron of the Russian land. His Holiness Patriarch Sergius informed the Eastern Patriarchs about his election and enthronement, sending them letters of notification. Return telegrams of greetings from the Patriarchs were received from Istanbul, Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem, as well as congratulations from the heads of heterodox Churches and from other church leaders of the Christian East and West.

Patriarch Sergius addressed his first message to his flock on the day of his enthronement. In it, he not only informed the people of God about his election and appointment and asked the flock to pray for him, but also, mainly, focused attention on the moods, on the painful ulcers of church life, which stemmed from the extremely abnormal conditions in which the Church was placed and which were the result of cruel persecution against her. The Patriarch calls on sincerely believing lay people to be vigilant, to monitor the actions of parish councils, which were already decisively different from the selflessly devoted Church of the twenties of the 20s and 30s; now, as a rule, they were selected by the authorities that controlled church life.

On October 8, 1943, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church was formed under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR under the chairmanship of G. G. Karpov. It was Karpov who Stalin instructed to implement a new policy towards the Church, which in literature was called the “concordat”. The absolute omnipotence of Stalin and the Politburo excluded any possibility for the Church to effectively insist on observing its rights and fulfilling the terms of the agreement. There was essentially no agreement; there was a broad gesture of the “most august” mercy of the godless government towards the Church it persecuted. One cannot think that it stemmed from Stalin’s personal tyranny and caprice. Behind this was a sober political calculation and an understanding that the eradication of religion is a utopian and unattainable goal. In turn, according to the contents of the message to the flock issued by Patriarch Sergius on November 7, the day of the October Revolution, one can judge what steps towards the government were taken by the church authorities in the spirit of an unspoken “concordat”.

There is no assessment of the October Revolution in this message - the date of November 7 is designated simply as the anniversary of the Soviet state. The policy of the Soviet government is praised for organizing resistance to the enemy and for the fact that it “encouraged the cultural development of each tribe and nationality in the national spirit... At an outsider’s superficial glance, such freedom seems to lead to a weakening of internal ties between parts of the state, threatening its disintegration And suddenly, instead of a poorly united mass of different tribes, our Union met enemies inextricably welded by the selfless love of all tribes for the common Motherland, their readiness to make any sacrifice, if only the Motherland was free from the fascist yoke. Where did such unanimity come from? What force could so to unite our seemingly disparate tribes? Of course, much of this is explained by the wise national policy of the government, which gives each tribe the opportunity to feel at home on Soviet soil... But faith does not hesitate to show us the highest reason from which the wise policy itself comes.

On November 28, 1943, Council of People's Commissars Resolution No. 1325 "On the procedure for opening churches" was adopted. The procedure was complex and, of course, was designed to slow down the process of returning the Church to its ruined churches, but the process itself was still set in motion.

On September 12, 1943, the first issue of the renewed “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate” was published. The first issues of the magazine published official church materials from the Bishops' Council of 1943, addresses of the Patriarch, articles devoted mainly to the patriotic service of the Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War, and reports on the destruction of churches and monasteries by the Germans.

After the election of the Patriarch, contacts of the Russian Church with other Orthodox and heterodox Churches became more intense. On the agenda was the issue of normalizing relations with the Georgian Church, whose unauthorized separation in 1917 was not recognized by either Patriarch Tikhon or the Local Council that was meeting at that time. In October 1943, Patriarch Sergius sent Archbishop Anthony (Romanovsky) of Stavropol to Tbilisi for negotiations with Patriarch Kallistratos of Georgia. These negotiations culminated in the resumption of canonical communion between the Russian and Georgian Churches.

3.3. The period of triumph of the Red Army. ROC under

Patriarch Alexy I

The end of 1943–1944 was a time of continuous victories of Russian weapons over the aggressor troops. In the fall of 1943, Eastern Ukraine was liberated. On November 6, the Red Army took Kyiv, and on February 2, 1944, Lutsk. In the spring of 1944, Soviet troops reached the state border; On July 27, Lviv was cleared of Germans. On August 23, Kharkov was captured by the Red Army.

Most of the bishops and almost all the clergy of the Autonomous Church remained in their homeland when the Germans fled from Ukraine. Many of the clergy were arrested by the NKVD on suspicion of collaboration with the occupiers, which, as a rule, was expressed only in the fact that the priests opened churches and performed divine services with the permission of the German authorities.

In 1944, the Red Army advanced almost unstoppably to the west; the outcome of the war was already predetermined. The Easter message to the flock of His Holiness Patriarch Sergius in 1944 ended with an expression of gratitude to God for His blessings and a call to prayer for all who bear the cross of serving God and their neighbors. Patriarch Sergius performed divine services almost all days of Holy and Easter Week. The works of His Holiness on the current management of the Russian Orthodox Church also followed their course.

On May 15, Archimandrite John (Razumov) found His Holiness lifeless. On May 16, the remains of Patriarch Sergius were transferred for burial from the Patriarchate to the Epiphany Cathedral. A countless crowd of Orthodox believers awaited the coffin at the cathedral.

On the day of the death of Patriarch Sergius, his will, drawn up at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, was opened. In accordance with the will of the deceased high priest, the Holy Synod confirmed Metropolitan Alexy (Simansky) of Leningrad as Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne.

Telegrams and letters expressing condolences on the occasion of the death of His Holiness Patriarch Sergius were sent by Patriarchs Benjamin of Constantinople, Christopher of Alexandria, Alexander of Antioch, Timothy of Jerusalem, Georgian Kallistratus, Coptic Macarius; hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate who served abroad: Metropolitans Veniamin (Fedchenkov), Sergius (Tikhomirov), Bishop Theodore (Tekuchev); Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, embassies of Great Britain, Canada and China in Moscow, head of the French military mission in Moscow E. Petty.

On May 28, Metropolitan Alexy addressed the archpastors, shepherds and faithful children of the Russian Orthodox Church with his first epistle, announcing that he had assumed the duties of the primate of the Church, and promised to follow the path outlined by Patriarch Sergius, calling on his flock to do the same. The locum tenens of the patriarchal throne repaid a debt of love and gratitude to his deceased predecessor for his wise high priestly service. The war was still ongoing, and the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church called on the believing people to strengthen their prayers for the victory of Russian weapons. He repeated his call in a message on the eve of the third anniversary of the start of the war.

4. Attitude towards the Russian Orthodox Church during the apogee of Stalinism (1945-1953)

In 1944, the liberation of Ukraine ended; in May, the Red Army broke through the German defenses between Vitebsk and Orsha and launched a rapid offensive to the west. The front line moved beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. In July of the same year, the Allies opened a second front in Western Europe. The final stage of the Second World War began. When news of the Anglo-American landing in France arrived in Moscow, the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne sent a telegram to the British Ambassador in Moscow A. Kerr and through him to the Archbishop of Canterbury with “a prayerful heartfelt wish for God’s help and great success to the valiant fraternal allied armies in the sacred the feat of liberation of European peoples from the worst enemy of civilization - fascism."

After the entry of the Red Army into Belarus, the Belarusian bishops moved to Grodno, and from there on July 7, 1944 they were evacuated by the Germans to Germany. Among them was the head of the Belarusian Church, Metropolitan Panteleimon (Rozhnovsky). In August 1944, the Red Army, having liberated Moldova, crossed the Prut and entered the territory of Romania. Metropolitan of Chisinau of Romanian jurisdiction Ephraim (Tighineanu) and his vicars left Moldavia along with Romanian troops and authorities.

On September 8, the Red Army crossed the Romanian-Bulgarian border and began to advance into the interior of the country, without encountering real resistance from the Bulgarian troops. The new government broke the alliance with Germany and declared war on it. The Primate of the Bulgarian Church, Metropolitan Stefan, blessed the new state policy. In the fall of 1944, the Red Army liberated the Baltic states, with the exception of the Courland Peninsula, where the remnants of the defeated German troops resisted until May 1945.

The situation in Estonia was more complicated than in Lithuania and Latvia, where during the occupation a split occurred and part of the parishes led by Metropolitan Alexander (Paulus) separated from the exarch of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Sergius (Voskresensky).

On November 21–23, 1944, a Bishops' Council was held in the Patriarchate building in Chisty Lane. On November 24, Chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church G. G. Karpov, in particular, said: “The Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War showed how it, together with all the people, loves its Motherland and defends it by all means available to the Church.. German policy sought to use the Russian Orthodox Church as a weapon to achieve its predatory plans, to fight against Soviet power, against the Soviet people... But it ran into an insurmountable obstacle - the love and loyalty of the clergy and believers to their Motherland... Those phenomena , which are now taking place in the life of the Church, in the relationship between the Church and the state, do not represent something accidental, unexpected, are not temporary in nature, are not a tactical maneuver, as some ill-wishers try to present this matter or as it is sometimes expressed in philistine reasoning. These events follow from a trend that had emerged even before the war." G. G. Karpov’s speech at the meeting with the participants of the Council inspired the bishops with hope for the sustainable nature of changes for the better in the church policy of the Soviet leadership.

Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad was elected Patriarch. His enthronement took place on February 4, 1945 at the Epiphany Cathedral in Moscow. It was a day of great celebration for Orthodox residents and guests of the capital. There were then more than 5,000 pilgrims in and around the temple.

The historical significance of the Local Council of 1945 is not limited to the replacement of the patriarchal see and the adoption of the “Regulations on the management of the Russian Orthodox Church,” which streamlined parish life. The Council was evidence that the supervised Church, which experienced terrible persecution, remained alive by the grace of God that abided in it.

On April 10, 1945, a meeting between Patriarch Alexy and Stalin took place, in which Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) and Protopresbyter Nikolai Kolchitsky, manager of the affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate, participated from the church side; The government, besides Stalin, was represented by V. M. Molotov. The conversation discussed issues related to the patriotic activities of the Church at the final stage of the war; Stalin said that the Russian Church had to make a huge contribution to strengthening the international positions of the Soviet state and establishing external contacts. The possibility of expanding the network of theological schools and the creation by the Church of its own publishing and printing base were also discussed.

Conclusion

On May 9, the Great Patriotic War ended with the unconditional surrender of Germany and Patriarch Alexy addressed the all-Russian flock with words of joy and pride for the victory of Russian weapons: “Glory and thanks to God! Remembering with reverence the exploits of our valiant army and those of our loved ones who sacrificed for our happiness of temporary life in the hope of receiving eternal life, we will never stop praying for them and in this we will draw consolation in the sorrow of the loss of those dear to our hearts and strengthen our faith in God’s endless mercy towards them, who have departed to the heavenly world, and in God’s omnipotent help to us, left for the continuation of earthly achievements and for the improvement of life throughout the world."

The softening of state policy towards the Orthodox Church forces the authorities to legalize in 1945 the remaining Baptist communities, to which Pentecostals organizationally joined, the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists becoming the coordinating center. Some Seventh-day Adventist communities were also able to obtain official registration (for obvious reasons, beyond the Ural Range). The awakening of religious life in the first post-war years came to an abrupt end in 1950.

Having survived the revolution and the terrible fratricidal massacre of the civil war, the horror of mass repressions and the terror of collectivization, Russia showed miracles of heroism and courage on the fields of the Second World War - the Great Patriotic War, saving its Western allies. It would seem that the times of mutual hostility should have become a thing of the past, giving way to a new alliance sealed with great blood. But no. Before the roar of the last battles had died down, the Western allies radically changed their attitude towards Russia. Independent and strong – no one needed her.

“By sowing chaos in Russia,” said American General Allen Dulles, head of US political intelligence in Europe, who later became director of the CIA, in 1945, “we will quietly replace their values ​​with false ones and force them to believe in these false values. How? We will find our like-minded people, our assistants and allies in Russia itself. Episode after episode, the grandiose tragedy of the death of the most rebellious people on earth, the final, irreversible extinction of their self-awareness, will play out. From literature and art, for example, we will gradually erase their social essence. Let's wean artists off, let's discourage them from engaging in depictions and researching the processes that take place in the depths of the masses. Literature, theaters, cinema - everything will depict and glorify the basest human feelings. We will in every possible way support and raise the so-called creators who will plant and hammer into human consciousness the cult of sex, violence, sadism, betrayal - in a word, all immorality.”

Did they succeed? Looking at our modern society even with the “naked eye” it is easy to answer this question. It is more difficult to answer why this happened. Our country won the great unequal battle, but could not withstand peacetime. Or maybe it’s all about what we believe?...

Sources and literature

1. Sources

1.1. http://www.kds.eparhia.ru/bibliot/istorserkvi/cupin/

1.2. http://www.bogoslov.ru/biblio/text/255665/index.html

1.3. http://www.sotnia.ru/ch_sotnia/t2001/t9312.html

2. Literature

2.1. Anti-religious (magazine). 1929, no. 9. P.106-107

2.2. Anti-religious (magazine). 1938, No. 5. pp. 15-16

2.3. Badak A.N., Voynich I.E., Volchek N.M. World History: The Eve of World War II. – M.: AST, 2002. – 528 p.

2.4. Demin V.N. Secrets of the Russian people. – M.: Publishing House “Veche”, 2005. – 320 p.

2.5. Perevezentsev S.V. Russia. Great destiny. – M.: White City, 2005. – 704 p.

V. Tsypin “History of the Russian Church 1917-1997”

From the message of Metropolitan Sergius to the flock, November 24, 1941.

A policy that assumes equality of parties and mutual obligations.

His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy noted that the military and labor feat of our people during the war years became possible because the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army and Navy, as well as home front workers, were united by a high goal: they defended the whole world from the deadly threat hanging over it threats from the anti-Christian ideology of Nazism. Therefore, the Patriotic War became sacred for everyone. “The Russian Orthodox Church,” the Message says, “unshakably believed in the coming Victory and from the first day of the war blessed the army and all the people to defend the Motherland. Our soldiers were preserved not only by the prayers of their wives and mothers, but also by the daily church prayer for the granting of Victory.” In Soviet times, the question of the role of the Orthodox Church in achieving the great Victory was hushed up. Only in recent years have studies begun to appear on this topic. Portal editors "Patriarchia.ru" offers his commentary on the Message of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy regarding the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Great Patriotic War.

Fantasy versus document

The question of the real losses suffered by the Russian Church in the Great Patriotic War, as well as the religious life of our country in general during the years of the struggle against fascism, for obvious reasons, until recently could not become the subject of serious analysis. Attempts to raise this topic have appeared only in recent years, but they often turn out to be far from scientific objectivity and impartiality. Until now, only a very narrow range of historical sources have been processed that testify to the “works and days” of Russian Orthodoxy in 1941 - 1945. For the most part, they revolve around the revival of church life in the USSR after the famous meeting in September 1943 of J. Stalin with Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky), Alexy (Simansky) and Nikolai (Yarushevich) - the only active Orthodox bishops at that time. Data about this side of the life of the Church are quite well known and do not give rise to doubt. However, other pages of church life during the war years have yet to be truly read. Firstly, they are much less well documented, and secondly, even the existing documents have hardly been studied. Now the development of materials on the church-military theme is just beginning, even from such large and relatively accessible collections as the State Archives of the Russian Federation (works by O.N. Kopylova and others), the Central State Archives of St. Petersburg and the Federal Archives in Berlin (primarily works by M.V. Shkarovsky). Processing most of the church, regional and foreign European archives from this point of view is a matter for the future. And where the document is silent, imagination usually roams freely. In the literature of recent years, there has been a place for anti-clerical speculation and unctuous pious myth-making about the “repentance” of the leader, the “love of Christ” of the commissars, etc.

Between the old persecutor and the new enemy

When addressing the topic “The Church and the Great Patriotic War,” it is truly difficult to maintain impartiality. The inconsistency of this plot is due to the dramatic nature of the historical events themselves. From the first weeks of the war, Russian Orthodoxy found itself in a strange position. The position of the highest hierarchy in Moscow was unambiguously formulated by the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Sergius, already on June 22, 1941, in his message to the “Pastors and flock of Christ’s Orthodox Church.” The First Hierarch called on the Orthodox Russian people to “serve the Fatherland in this difficult hour of trial with all that everyone can” in order to “dispel the fascist enemy force into dust.” Principled, uncompromising patriotism, for which there was no distinction between the “Soviet” and the national hypostasis of the state that clashed with the Nazi evil, will determine the actions of the hierarchy and clergy of the Russian Church in the unoccupied territory of the country. The situation in the western lands of the USSR occupied by German troops was more complex and contradictory. The Germans initially relied on the restoration of church life in the occupied territories, since they saw this as the most important means of anti-Bolshevik propaganda. They saw, obviously, not without reason. By 1939, the organizational structure of the Russian Orthodox Church was practically destroyed as a result of the most severe open terror. Of the 78 thousand churches and chapels that operated in the Russian Empire before the start of the revolutionary events, by this time there remained from 121 (according to O.Yu. Vasilyeva) to 350-400 (according to M.V. Shkarovsky). Most of the clergy were repressed. At the same time, the ideological effect of such an anti-Christian onslaught turned out to be quite modest. According to the results of the 1937 census, 56.7% of USSR citizens declared themselves believers. The result of the Great Patriotic War was largely predetermined by the position that these people took. And in the shocking first weeks of the war, when there was a total retreat of the Red Army on all fronts, it did not seem obvious - the Soviet power brought too much grief and blood to the Church. The situation in the western territories of Ukraine and Belarus, which were annexed to the USSR immediately before the war, was especially difficult. Thus, the situation in the west and east of Belarus was strikingly contrasting. In the “Soviet” east, parish life was completely destroyed. By 1939, all churches and monasteries here were closed, since 1936 there was no archpastoral care, and almost the entire clergy was subjected to repression. And in Western Belarus, which until September 1939 was part of the Polish state (and it also did not favor Orthodoxy), by June 1941 there were 542 functioning Orthodox churches. It is clear that the majority of the population of these areas had not yet undergone massive atheistic indoctrination by the beginning of the war, but they were deeply imbued with the fear of an impending “purge” by the Soviets. In two years, about 10 thousand churches were opened in the occupied territories. Religious life began to develop very rapidly. Thus, in Minsk, only in the first few months after the start of the occupation, 22 thousand baptisms were performed, and 20-30 couples had to be married at the same time in almost all the churches of the city. This inspiration was viewed with suspicion by the occupiers. And immediately the question of the jurisdictional affiliation of the lands on which church life was restored became quite acute. And here the true intentions of the German authorities were clearly outlined: to support the religious movement solely as a propaganda factor against the enemy, but to nip in the bud its ability to spiritually consolidate the nation. Church life in that difficult situation, on the contrary, was seen as an area where one could most effectively play on schisms and divisions, nurturing the potential for disagreement and contradictions between different groups of believers.

"Natsislavie"

At the end of July 1941, the main ideologist of the NSDLP, A. Rosenberg, was appointed Minister of the Occupied Territories of the USSR at the end of July 1941. The earliest circular of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security concerning religious policy in the East dates back to September 1, 1941: “On the understanding of church issues in the occupied regions of the Soviet Union.” This document set three main goals: supporting the development of the religious movement (as hostile to Bolshevism), fragmenting it into separate movements in order to avoid the possible consolidation of “leading elements” to fight against Germany, and using church organizations to help the German administration in the occupied territories. The longer-term goals of the religious policy of Nazi Germany in relation to the republics of the USSR were indicated in another directive of the Main Directorate of Reich Security of October 31, 1941, and concern about the massive surge in religiosity was already beginning to show through: “Among the part of the population of the former Soviet Union, liberated from the Bolshevik yoke, there is a strong desire to return to the authority of the church or churches, which especially applies to the older generation.” It was further noted: “It is extremely necessary to prohibit all priests from introducing a shade of religion into their preaching and at the same time take care to create as quickly as possible a new class of preachers who will be able, after appropriate, albeit short training, to interpret to the people a religion free from Jewish influence. It is clear that the imprisonment of “God’s chosen people” in the ghetto and the extermination of this people ... should not be violated by the clergy, who, based on the attitude of the Orthodox Church, preach that the healing of the world originates from Jewry. From the above it is clear that the resolution of the church issue in the occupied eastern regions is an extremely important task, which, with some skill, can be perfectly resolved in favor of a religion free from Jewish influence; this task, however, has as its prerequisite the closure of those located in the eastern regions churches infected with Jewish dogmas." This document quite clearly testifies to the anti-Christian goals of the hypocritical religious policy of the neo-pagan occupation authorities. On April 11, 1942, Hitler, in a circle of associates, outlined his vision of religious policy and, in particular, pointed out the need to prohibit “the establishment of single churches for any significant Russian territories.” In order to prevent the revival of a strong and united Russian Church, some schismatic jurisdictions in the west of the USSR were supported, which opposed the Moscow Patriarchate. Thus, in October 1941, the General Commissariat of Belarus set as a condition for legalizing the activities of the local episcopate that it pursue a course towards autocephaly of the Belarusian Orthodox Church. These plans were actively supported by a narrow group of nationalist intelligentsia, which not only provided all possible support to the fascist authorities, but also often pushed them to more decisive actions to destroy canonical church unity. After the dismissal of Metropolitan of Minsk and All Belarus Panteleimon (Rozhnovsky) and his imprisonment by the SD, in August 1942, with the zeal of the Nazi leadership, the Council of the Belarusian Church was convened, which, however, even experiencing powerful pressure from rabid nationalists and occupation authorities, postponed the decision on the issue of autocephaly until the post-war period. In the fall of 1942, Germany's attempts to play the anti-Moscow "church card" intensified - plans were being developed to hold a Local Council in Rostov-on-Don or Stavropol with the election as Patriarch of Archbishop Seraphim (Lyade) of Berlin, an ethnic German belonging to the jurisdiction of the ROCOR. Bishop Seraphim was one of the bishops with a vague past, but clearly pro-fascist sympathies in the present, which was clearly manifested in the appeal to the foreign Russian flock, which he published in June 1941: “Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ! The punishing sword of Divine justice fell on the Soviet government, on its minions and like-minded people. The Christ-loving Leader of the German people called on his victorious army to a new struggle, to the struggle that we have long thirsted for - a sacred struggle against the atheists, executioners and rapists entrenched in the Moscow Kremlin... Truly, a new crusade has begun in the name of saving peoples from the power of the Antichrist ... Finally, our faith is justified!... Therefore, as First Hierarch of the Orthodox Church in Germany, I appeal to you. Be part of the new struggle, for this struggle is your struggle; this is a continuation of the struggle that began back in 1917, but alas! - ended tragically, mainly due to the betrayal of your false allies, who in our days have taken up arms against the German people. Each of you will be able to find your place on the new anti-Bolshevik front. “The salvation of all,” which Adolf Hitler spoke about in his address to the German people, is also your salvation—the fulfillment of your long-term aspirations and hopes. The final decisive battle has come. May the Lord bless the new feat of arms of all anti-Bolshevik fighters and give them victory and victory over their enemies. Amen!" The German authorities quickly realized what an emotional patriotic charge the restoration of Orthodox church life in the occupied territories carried and therefore tried to strictly regulate the forms of worship. The time of holding services was limited - only in the early morning on weekends - and their duration. Bell ringing was prohibited. In Minsk, for example, the Germans did not allow crosses to be erected on any of the churches that opened here. All church property that ended up on occupied lands was declared by them to be the property of the Reich. When the occupiers considered it necessary, they used churches as prisons, concentration camps, barracks, stables, guard posts, and firing points. Thus, a significant part of the territory of the oldest Polotsk St. Euphrosyne Monastery, founded in the 12th century, was allocated for a concentration camp for prisoners of war.

New mission

A very difficult feat was undertaken by one of the closest assistants of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), Exarch of the Baltic States Sergius (Voskresensky). He is the only active bishop of the canonical Russian Church who remained in the occupied territory. He managed to convince the German authorities that it was more profitable for them to preserve the dioceses of the Moscow, rather than the Patriarchate of Constantinople, an “ally” of the British, in the north-west. Under the leadership of Metropolitan Sergius, extensive catechetical activity was subsequently launched in the occupied lands. With the blessing of the Bishop, in August 1941, a Spiritual Mission was created in the Pskov, Novgorod, Leningrad, Velikoluksk and Kalinin regions, which by the beginning of 1944 managed to open about 400 parishes, to which 200 priests were assigned. At the same time, most of the clergy of the occupied territories more or less clearly expressed their support for the patriotic position of the Moscow hierarchy. There are numerous - although their exact number cannot yet be established - cases of execution by the Nazis of priests for reading the first letter of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) in churches. Some church structures legitimized by the occupation authorities almost openly - and with the ensuing risk - declared their obedience to Moscow. Thus, in Minsk there was a missionary committee under the leadership of Bishop Panteleimon’s closest associate, Archimandrite (later martyr) Seraphim (Shakhmutya), who, even under the Germans, continued to commemorate the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius during divine services.

Clergy and partisans

A special page in Russian church history during the war was assistance to the partisan movement. In January 1942, in one of his messages to the flock remaining in the occupied territories, the Patriarchal Locum Tenens called on people to provide all possible support to the underground struggle against the enemy: “Let your local partisans be for you not only an example and approval, but also an object of constant care . Remember that every service rendered to the partisans is a merit to the Motherland and an extra step towards our own liberation from fascist captivity.” This call received a very wide response among the clergy and ordinary believers of the Western lands - wider than could be expected after all the anti-Christian persecutions of the pre-war period. And the Germans responded to the patriotism of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian priests with merciless cruelty. For promoting the partisan movement, for example, in the Polesie diocese alone, up to 55% of the clergy were shot by the Nazis. In fairness, however, it is worth noting that sometimes unreasonable cruelty was manifested from the opposite side. Attempts by some members of the clergy to stay away from the struggle were often assessed - and not always justifiably - by the partisans as betrayal. For “collaboration” with the occupiers, in Belarus alone, underground units executed at least 42 priests.

Church contribution More than a dozen books will, of course, be written about the feat that hundreds of monastics, church and clergymen, including those awarded orders of the highest dignity, suffered in the name of the Motherland. If we dwell only on some facts of a socio-economic nature, then we should especially note the burden of financial responsibility for supporting the army, which the Russian Orthodox Church took upon itself. By helping the armed forces, the Moscow Patriarchate forced the Soviet authorities to at least to a small extent recognize its full presence in the life of society. On January 5, 1943, the Patriarchal Locum Tenens took an important step towards the actual legalization of the Church, using the fees for the defense of the country. He sent a telegram to I. Stalin, asking for his permission for the Patriarchate to open a bank account into which all the money donated for the needs of the war would be deposited. On February 5, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars gave his written consent. Thus, the Church, although in a detrimental form, received the rights of a legal entity. Already from the first months of the war, almost all Orthodox parishes in the country spontaneously began collecting funds for the established defense fund. Believers donated not only money and bonds, but also products (as well as scrap) made of precious and non-ferrous metals, clothes, shoes, linen, wool and much more. By the summer of 1945, the total amount of monetary contributions for these purposes alone, according to incomplete data, amounted to more than 300 million rubles. - excluding jewelry, clothing and food. Funds for defeating the Nazis were collected even in the occupied territory, which was associated with real heroism. Thus, the Pskov priest Fyodor Puzanov, close to the fascist authorities, managed to collect about 500 thousand rubles. donations and transfer them to the “mainland”. A particularly significant church act was the construction, at the expense of Orthodox believers, of a column of 40 T-34 Dimitri Donskoy tanks and the Alexander Nevsky squadron.

The price of ruin and sacrilege

The true scale of the damage inflicted on the Russian Orthodox Church by the German occupiers cannot be assessed with accuracy. It was not limited to thousands of destroyed and devastated churches, countless utensils and church valuables taken away by the Nazis during the retreat. The Church has lost hundreds of spiritual shrines, which, of course, cannot be redeemed by any indemnities. And yet, the assessment of material losses, as far as possible, was carried out already during the war years. On November 2, 1942, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Extraordinary State Commission was created to establish and investigate the atrocities of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices and the damage they caused to citizens, collective farms (collective farms), public organizations, state enterprises and institutions of the USSR (ChGK) . A representative from the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) of Kiev and Galicia, was also included in the Commission. The Commission's staff developed an approximate diagram and list of crimes against cultural and religious institutions. The Instructions for the Registration and Protection of Monuments of Art noted that damage reports should record cases of robbery, removal of artistic and religious monuments, damage to iconostases, church utensils, icons, etc. Witness testimony, inventories, and photographs should be attached to the acts. A special price list for church utensils and equipment was developed, approved by Metropolitan Nicholas on August 9, 1943. The data received by the ChGK appeared at the Nuremberg trials as documentary evidence of the prosecution. In the appendices to the transcript of the meeting of the International Military Tribunal dated February 21, 1946, documents appear under numbers USSR-35 and USSR-246. They show the total amount of “damage to religious cults, including heterodox and non-Christian denominations,” which, according to ChGK calculations, amounted to 6 billion 24 million rubles. From the data given in the “Certificate on the Destruction of Religious Buildings” it is clear that the largest number of Orthodox churches and chapels were completely destroyed and partially damaged in Ukraine - 654 churches and 65 chapels. In the RSFSR, 588 churches and 23 chapels were damaged, in Belarus - 206 churches and 3 chapels, in Latvia - 104 churches and 5 chapels, in Moldova - 66 churches and 2 chapels, in Estonia - 31 churches and 10 chapels, in Lithuania - 15 churches and 8 chapels and in the Karelo-Finnish SSR - 6 churches. The “Reference” provides data on prayer buildings of other faiths: during the war, 237 churches, 4 mosques, 532 synagogues and 254 other places of worship were destroyed, a total of 1027 religious buildings. The materials of the ChGK do not contain detailed statistical data on the monetary value of the damage caused to the Russian Orthodox Church. However, it is not difficult, with a certain degree of convention, to make the following calculations: if during the war years a total of 2,766 prayer buildings of various denominations were damaged (1,739 losses of the Russian Orthodox Church (churches and chapels) and 1,027 of other denominations), and the total amount of damage was 6 billion. 24 million rubles, then the damage to the Russian Orthodox Church reaches approximately 3 billion 800 thousand rubles. The scale of destruction of historical monuments of church architecture, which cannot be calculated in monetary terms, is evidenced by the incomplete list of churches damaged in Novgorod alone. German shelling caused enormous damage to the famous St. Sophia Cathedral (11th century): its middle chapter was pierced by shells in two places, in the northwestern chapter the dome and part of the drum were destroyed, several vaults were demolished, and the gilded roof was torn off. St. George's Cathedral of the Yuryev Monastery is a unique monument of Russian architecture of the 12th century. - received many large holes, due to which through cracks appeared in the walls. Other ancient monasteries of Novgorod were also severely damaged by German bombs and shells: Antoniev, Khutynsky, Zverin, etc. The famous Church of the Savior-Nereditsa of the 12th century was reduced to ruins. Buildings included in the ensemble of the Novgorod Kremlin were destroyed and severely damaged, including the Church of St. Andrew Stratilates of the 14th-15th centuries, the Church of the Intercession of the 14th century, and the belfry of the St. Sophia Cathedral of the 16th century. etc. In the vicinity of Novgorod, the Cathedral of the Cyril Monastery (XII century), the Church of St. Nicholas on Lipna (XIII century), the Annunciation on Gorodishche (XIII century), the Church of the Savior on Kovalevo (XIV century), the Church of the Assumption on Gorodishche (XIII century) were destroyed by targeted artillery fire. Volotovo Field (XIV century), St. Michael the Archangel in the Skovorodinsky Monastery (XIV century), St. Andrew on Sitka (XIV century). All this is nothing more than an eloquent illustration of the true losses that the Russian Orthodox Church suffered during the Great Patriotic War, which for centuries had been building a unified state, deprived of almost all its property after the Bolsheviks came to power, but considered it an absolute duty to rise to the top during the years of difficult trials. All-Russian Golgotha.

Vadim Polonsky

Today, rarely anyone has any clear idea about the position of the Orthodox Church during the Nazi occupation of the western territories of the Soviet Union. It is known that with the arrival of the occupiers, churches began to be opened there, and services were resumed there. Maybe the Nazis patronized Orthodoxy? Not at all. In their religious policy, Hitler and the fascist elite pursued far-reaching goals, but they were well hidden. The Nazis treated Christianity of all denominations - Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism - with contempt and hatred. They extended to him their attitude towards Jewry, their extreme Judeophobia, and considered all Christian denominations to be branches of Judaism, since the Savior was a Jew according to the flesh. Their goal was to create a new religion, the religion of the “eternal Reich” based on a combination of ancient Germanic pagan beliefs and occult mysticism.

Since both in Germany and throughout Europe many people were still committed to their national Christian traditions, the Nazis planned to use all confessions and movements that separated from them, including any schismatics and sectarians, in order to create this new religion, using the ancient principle - “ divide and rule".

They intended to put all Christian churches under their control, to achieve their division, dismemberment into the smallest possible, supposedly independent “autocephalies”. They wanted to recruit and secretly take into service the most ambitious, selfish or cowardly churchmen, so that they would gradually, systematically carry out the ideas of the new religion through preaching and gradually introduce changes in church life right down to liturgical texts, statutes, etc. Transformation of all life and activities the Christian Church (essentially, their undermining) in the direction they needed - that was the goal of the Nazis when their occupation administration allowed the opening of churches. According to the Nazis, for the conquered peoples, for those whom they considered “Untermensch” (inferior race), such as all the Slavs, for them religious freedoms were supposed to become a temporary, “transitional” phenomenon. Imaginary loyalty to the Church, deception of the population and clergy, who were unaware of the far-reaching goals of the occupiers, allegedly opposing religious freedom to the anti-religious ideology of the Soviet state - this is what the confessional policy of the Nazis represented.

Of course, these plans were completely utopian and unrealistic. But the fascists began to implement them immediately, without taking into account the loyalty and devotion to the Church of its ministers and their flock. Several departments were responsible for the implementation of religious policy in the occupied territory of the Nazis - from the special Ministry of Religions to the military command and the Gestapo. Disagreements and friction often arose between them, mainly regarding means and methods of work, tactics in specific situations. This was successfully used by Orthodox bishops who had to bear the heavy cross of caring for their flock under occupation. A short story follows about some hierarchs who accomplished the feat of loyalty to the Mother Church - the Russian Orthodox Church and the Fatherland, and served them even until death.

Metropolitan Sergius

Metropolitan Sergius, Exarch of the Baltic States in 1941 - 1944 (in the world Dmitry Nikolaevich Voskresensky) was born in Moscow into the family of a priest. Graduated from seminary. After the revolution, he entered Moscow University, from which he was expelled (from the 3rd year of the Faculty of Law) as the son of a “clergyman.” In 1925, he took monastic vows at the Moscow Danilov Monastery. He was the spiritual son of the famous Archimandrite George (Lavrov), and shared his residence in the monastery cell with the later revered ascetic and perspicacious elder Pavel (Troitsky).

In 1930, he was appointed rector of the cathedral in Orekhovo-Zuyevo and assistant on legal issues to the Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) - the future Patriarch Sergius. In 1931, he became editor of the short-lived magazine of the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1932, Archimandrite Sergius was transferred to Moscow as rector of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Sokolniki. In this church in October of the following year, his episcopal consecration as Bishop of Kolomna, vicar of the Moscow diocese, took place. The rite of consecration was performed by several bishops, led by Metropolitan Sergius and the hieromartyr, Metropolitan of Leningrad Seraphim (Chigagov). Before the start of the war, Archbishop Sergius (Voskresensky) of Dmitrov was the manager of the affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1940, he was sent to Western Ukraine and Belarus, then to Latvia and Estonia, after their annexation to the USSR, to familiarize himself with the situation of the Church there. On February 24, 1941, Metropolitan Sergius was appointed to the See of Vilna and Lithuania and the title of Exarch of Latvia and Estonia was added. With the outbreak of the war, Metropolitan Sergius did not evacuate, but remained under occupation. His further fate is extraordinary and tragic. A man of strong will, an unusually flexible and courageous mind, courage, and, of course, strong faith, Metropolitan Sergius heroically and sacrificially fulfilled his duty as a shepherd and head of the Exarchate and did many things that now seem beyond human strength. He managed to successfully resist the tactics of dismembering church and administrative units pursued by the Nazis. He not only kept the entire Exarchate intact, not allowing it to be divided into several pseudo-independent churches-dioceses, but was also able to resist local nationalist tendencies that could lead to an intra-church split. He managed to defend church unity not only within the territory of the Exarchate, but also its unity with the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1943, Metropolitan Sergius even managed to appoint a new bishop to the Riga See - John (Garklavs), whom he soon prudently included among the possible successors in the event of his death. The great merit of Metropolitan Sergius was his care for Red Army prisoners of war. The Nazis imposed a categorical ban on communication between the Orthodox clergy and prisoners of war, but for some time Metropolitan Sergius achieved its abolition within the Exarchate he headed.

Metropolitan Sergius took charge of the occupied part of the Pskov, Novgorod and Leningrad regions, where over 200 churches were opened. They sent a group of priests to Pskov, and the activities of the Pskov Spiritual Mission turned out to be very beneficial. There is direct evidence that the Mission’s work in the parishes even served as a cover and contributed to the partisan movement. Metropolitan Sergius opened theological courses in Vilnius. The courage, flexible mind and extraordinary courage of Metropolitan Sergius allowed him to defend the interests of his flock before the occupation authorities for almost three years. In Moscow, he was put on trial in absentia, “as having gone over to the side of fascism.” But in reality, Metropolitan Sergius served the Church and the Fatherland. After the war, there were rumors that he celebrated the victories of the Red Army in a narrow circle and even sang the famous “Little Little Blue Handkerchief.” This is most likely a legend, but a very characteristic legend, testifying to his reputation as a patriot.

The Nazis planned to hold a bishops' meeting in Riga with the aim of getting Metropolitan Sergius and the bishops to renounce their canonical connection with the Moscow Patriarchate, but it was thwarted by the Exarch. Metropolitan Sergius understood that he was risking his life, and prudently drew up a spiritual will, in which he indicated successively his three successors in case of death - Archbishop Daniel of Kovno (Kaunas), Bishop John of Riga and Bishop Dimitri of Tallinn. Documents have been preserved in the Berlin archives indicating that Metropolitan Sergius and his activities were like a thorn in the side of the occupation authorities. Among these documents there is information collected by the Nazis about Metropolitan Sergius, which includes listening to Moscow radio and singing a song popular in the Red Army. And they decided how to deal with him in Berlin.

On April 29, 1944, on a deserted section of the Vilnius-Riga highway, the car of the Patriarchal Exarch of the Baltic States, Metropolitan Sergius, was shot by machine gunners. Metropolitan Sergius and his companions died. The murder of the head of the Exarchate was attributed by the fascists to local nationalist partisans - the “green brothers”. The administration of the Exarchate was taken over by Archbishop Daniel, as the first of three bishops indicated in the will of Metropolitan Sergius. The grave of the murdered hierarch is located in Riga, at the Pokrovskoye cemetery.

What would have happened to Metropolitan Sergius if he had lived to see the imminent arrival of the Red Army? Most likely, he would have been repressed on the formal charge of collaborating with the occupiers. But such a case testifies to his loyalty to the Motherland and its Church. In 1942, a certain Archimandrite Hermogenes arrived at the Pskov mission from Germany, who was convinced that the “Moscow Church” was “red”, and potential Vlasovites should be called upon to “liberate the Motherland.” But after communicating with Metropolitan Sergius, this erring but honest monk decided to move to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, to Metropolitan Sergius, which he did. And he no longer remembered the purpose of his previous “mission.” In the churches headed by Metropolitan Sergius of the Exarchate, throughout the occupation, prayers were offered for the Motherland Church, they prayed for the salvation of the Fatherland and worked for its salvation. Nowadays the Orthodox people of the Baltic countries keep his memory. In the history of the Patriotic War, the name of Metropolitan Sergius (Voskresensky) is next to the heroes who gave their lives for the Motherland, for its Victory.

Archbishop Daniel

The biography of Archbishop Daniel (in the world Nikolai Porfiryevich Yuzvyuk) is somewhat unusual for a bishop. He was born in 1880 in the family of a psalm-reader, and graduated from theological school at the Holy Dormition Zhirovitsky Monastery in Western Belarus. Worked as a teacher. In 1914, he entered legal courses in Petrograd. After the revolution, he worked in Kharkov, then in Vilnius, where from 1925 he taught at the Theological Seminary. In 1939, he became the secretary of Metropolitan Eleutherius (Epiphany) of Vilna, then became the “right hand” of Metropolitan Sergius (Voznesensky). Metropolitan Sergius was a very decisive bishop. In April 1942, he tonsured his secretary Nikolai Porfirievich Yuzviuk into monasticism with the name Daniel, in the same year, in a matter of days, he elevated him to the rank of priesthood from hieromonk to archimandrite and installed him as Bishop of Kovno, Vicar of the Lithuanian Metropolis . Having a faithful assistant in the person of Bishop Daniel, Metropolitan Sergius held a congress of Orthodox bishops in Riga in August 1942, which determined the integrity of the entire Exarchate, its loyalty to the Moscow Patriarchate and, as a consequence, the loyalty of its laity to their united Fatherland. The merit of Bishop Daniel in holding the congress of bishops and in its good results is very great. And all the activities of Metropolitan Sergius could not have been so successful if he had not had such a reliable comrade-in-arms next to him. It is no coincidence that Bishop Daniel was listed first in the spiritual will of the Exarch and became the successor of Metropolitan Sergius after his martyrdom. In the rank of Archbishop of Kovno, he was the temporary administrator of the Lithuanian Metropolis and the acting Exarch of the Baltic States. Archbishop Daniel did everything to preserve the work of Metropolitan Sergius. Circumstances were such that he had to leave the department temporarily. The situation at the end of the war was changing rapidly. Archbishop Daniel was unable to return to the see because the front line had changed. In May 1945, he was in a displaced persons camp in Czechoslovakia. In October 1945, he restored communication with the Moscow Patriarchate and in December 1945 received an appointment to the Pinsk See. But in 1949, when a new wave of repression began, Archbishop Daniel was arrested, convicted and served a prison term until 1955. Upon his release, the Church was unable to return the now elderly bishop to any department. In 1956, Archbishop Daniel was retired, at the request of the atheistic authorities, to the remote, outlying city of Izmail. All that was achieved for him was the right to serve in the city cathedral. Then Archbishop Daniel stayed for a short time in his native Zhirovitsky monastery and, finally, in the St. Michael's Monastery in the village of Aleksandrovka near Odessa. Archbishop Daniel soon lost his sight. Presumably this is a consequence of the conditions of detention. In 1964, he was awarded the right to wear a cross on his hood. This is all that at that time, under the dominance of state atheism, the Church could reward the archpastor-confessor, whose feat she always remembered. Archbishop Daniel died in the Alexander St. Michael's Monastery on August 27, 1965, on the eve of the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God.

The memory of Archbishop Daniel (Yuzviuk), a collaborator and assistant of Metropolitan Sergius (Voskresensky), who stood for loyalty to the Mother Church and the Fatherland under conditions of occupation, will be holy for all the faithful children of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Metropolitan Alexy

A difficult biography of another wartime Exarch - the Patriarchal Exarch of Ukraine in 1941 - 1943. Metropolitan Alexy. It reflected, as if in a mirror, the complexities of the life of Orthodoxy in Western Ukraine. The future exarch (in the world Alexander Yakubovich or Yakovlevich Hromadsky) was born in 1882 into a poor family of a church psalm-reader in the village of Dokudowo in Podlasie, Kholm diocese. He graduated from the seminary in Kyiv and the Kyiv Theological Academy. Since 1908, he was a priest of the cathedral in the city of Kholm, a teacher of the law at the Kholm men's gymnasium, and an observer (nowadays this position would be called “curator”) of theological educational institutions of the Kholm diocese. In 1916, Archpriest Alexander Gromadsky left Kholm, served in churches in Bessarabia (now Moldova), and in 1918 became rector of the theological seminary in Kremenets. In 1921, he was widowed, took monastic vows with the name Alexy, and soon in April 1922 he was installed as Bishop of Lutsk, vicar of the Volyn diocese.

In October 1922, Bishop Alexy participated in Warsaw in the notorious council of bishops of the dioceses located on the territory of the then newly formed Poland. Then Metropolitan George (Yaroshevsky) of Warsaw, carried away by his ambitious desire to become the head of an independent church, followed the lead of the secular authorities and proclaimed the self-imposed autocephaly of the Polish Church, without turning to his legitimate head, Patriarch of Moscow St. Tikhon. To give the appearance of legality, Metropolitan George, under pressure from the civil authorities, invited the Ecumenical (Constantinople) Patriarch Meletios (Metaxakis), who in February 1923, without any canonical (legal) basis, “granted” autocephaly to the Polish Church. A number of other Local Churches (Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Serbian) did not recognize this “act”. Back in 1927, Metropolitan Dionysius (Valedinsky), successor of George (Yaroshevsky), traveled to the heads of these Churches, trying to achieve their recognition.

Unfortunately, Bishop Alexy of Lutsk sided with the autocephalist bishops, became a member of the autocephalous Synod, deputy chairman of the Metropolitan Council, and in 1927 accompanied Metropolitan Dionysius on his journey. In the autocephalous church he became a bishop, then archbishop of Grodno, and in 1934 - archbishop of Volyn. In Western Ukraine, the so-called “Ukrainization” of the Church was carried out. Nationalist tendencies were pursued, dividing the historical unity of all-Russian Orthodoxy; even in Divine services, the Church Slavonic language was replaced with Ukrainian. Archbishop Alexy actively “implemented” this Ukrainization. In 1939, when Poland was divided between Germany and the USSR, Western Ukraine was occupied by the Red Army. Archbishop Alexy was arrested in August 1939, but was soon released, and in 1940, after communicating with Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) of Kiev, who had the gift of persuasion, he transferred to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, remaining in the same Volyn and Kremenets departments. Soon the war began, the occupation of Ukraine, and the best part of the biography of this hierarch dates back to this time.

The occupation fascist regime decided in its religious policy in Ukraine to rely on the Polish autocephalist Metropolitan Dionysius (Valedinsky), to support his church to begin with, and then “cut” it into parts - Ukrainian “autocephaly” (created in 1942), Belarusian. And they, in turn, are divided according to “local characteristics,” etc. Archbishop Alexy did not recognize the claims of Metropolitan Dionysius and took a number of effective measures to establish canonical norms of church life in Ukraine. On August 18, 1941, he, as the senior bishop by consecration, convened and held a bishop's meeting in the Pochaev Lavra, at which the status of the autonomous Ukrainian Church in canonical dependence on the Moscow Patriarchate was determined. On November 25, 1941, this decision was corrected. For the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, the status of the Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate was adopted, i.e. the situation was restored to the pre-occupation time. Alexy (Hromadsky) was elected Exarch, and was soon elevated to the rank of Metropolitan of Volyn and Zhitomir, as a rank befitting the position of Exarch. At the same time, no “transfer” to the Kyiv See was made, since the bishops recognized this transfer as the prerogative of the head of the entire Russian Orthodox Church. The great merit of Metropolitan Alexy was the unification of bishops faithful to their canonical duty, and with them their clergy and laity. Observance of fidelity to the Mother Russian Orthodox Church by the Exarchate headed by Metropolitan Alexy was also observance of fidelity to the Fatherland, spiritual and moral opposition to the occupiers. At the end of Metropolitan Alexy’s life there was a difficult moment when all his beneficial activities were in jeopardy. He signed a preliminary agreement on unification with the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, created in 1942 - it was headed by bishops Alexander (Inozemtsev) and Polycarp (Sikorsky). Metropolitan Alexy heeded their arguments and promises that with this unification each side would remain autonomous, that both sides would be able to help each other in difficult wartime conditions. But the bishops, on whom Metropolitan Alexy relied and who supported him, convinced him that the agreement would turn into deception, the churches of the exarchate would be captured by autocephalists, and unrest would begin, which would play into the hands of the Nazis. Metropolitan Alexy annulled the agreement and finally broke all contacts with the autocephalists. He did not yet know that by doing this he was signing his own death warrant. On May 8, 1943, during a trip around the diocese on the road from Kremenets to Lutsk in the forest near the village. Smyga Metropolitan Alexy was killed by Ukrainian nationalists. Probably, the occupation authorities wanted the murder of the First Hierarch of Ukraine to look like an internal Ukrainian “showdown.” But objectively, the murder of Metropolitan Alexy was retribution for undermining the religious policy of the Third Reich. The activities of the Exarch and the martyrdom of Metropolitan Alexy cover his past sins of participation in the schism of the Polish “autocephalists.”

Of course, Metropolitan Alexy (Hromadsky) was not such a powerful personality as Metropolitan Sergius (Voznesensky), but they are related by the commonality of accomplishing the feat of loyalty to the Church and the Fatherland under conditions of occupation and a common fate. Even the form of killing both Exarchs is common. And the memory of Metropolitan Alexy (Hromadsky), who suffered for serving the Orthodox Church and our united Fatherland during the Great Patriotic War, will be preserved in all future times.

Archbishop Benjamin

Archbishop Veniamin (in the world Sergei Vasilyevich Novitsky) was born in 1900 in the family of an archpriest in the village of Krivichi, Minsk province. He graduated from the theological seminary in Vilnius and the theological faculty of the University of Warsaw in 1928. He was a village teacher and psalm-reader. In 1928, he took monastic vows at the Holy Dormition Pochaev Lavra. From 1934 he was rector of churches in Ostrog, then in Lvov, and dean of parishes in Galicia. Since 1937 - Archimandrite, Master of Theology for work on canon law. In the Pochaev Lavra he organized missionary courses to educate the Uniates. He taught at the Lavra monastic school. He was a great connoisseur and lover of church singing and organized choirs in all churches, where he was rector of the Pochaev Lavra. A few days before the start of the war, on June 15, 1941, he was consecrated in the Lutsk Cathedral as Bishop of Pinsk and Polesie, vicar of the Volyn diocese. The consecration was presided over by Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) of Kiev, Exarch of Ukraine. Bishop Veniamin chose the Pochaev Lavra as his residence, where on August 18 and November 25, 1941, with his active participation, episcopal conferences were held that determined the loyalty of Orthodox Ukraine to the united Russian Orthodox Church under conditions of occupation. In August 1942, Bishop Veniamin was appointed to the Poltava See. In September 1943 he returned to the Pochaev Lavra.

All the activities of Bishop Veniamin (Novitsky) during the occupation were aimed at preserving the norms of church life and preserving church unity with the Moscow Patriarchate, and this was, under the conditions of occupation, maintaining loyalty to the united Fatherland. The merit of Bishop Veniamin must be recognized both for his weighty persuasive word and opposition to the preliminary agreement that was imposed on Metropolitan Alexy (Hromadsky) by the Ukrainian autocephalists. The authority of Bishop Veniamin greatly influenced the preservation of the true independence of the Church in Ukraine from all kinds of attempts to split it.

But during the war, the service of Bishop Benjamin was not appreciated. In 1944, he was summoned from Pochaev to Kyiv and here arrested on charges of collaboration with the occupiers. Bishop Veniamin was unjustly convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison, which he served in difficult conditions in Kolyma. But upon his release in 1956, he was immediately elevated to the rank of archbishop and appointed to the Omsk See. The authorities did not allow the honored bishop to return to his native land, where he was remembered and revered as a confessor. It was only allowed to appoint him to remote eastern departments. In 1958, he was transferred to the Irkutsk See, in addition, Archbishop Veniamin was also entrusted with the vast territory of the Khabarovsk and Vladivostok diocese for temporary administration. Here, during a trip around the diocese, Bishop Benjamin came under severe radiation, as a result of which he suffered greatly. All his hair fell out and his neck became bent, but to the surprise of the doctors, he not only remained alive, but also continued his feat of archpastoral service.

Archbishop Benjamin remained at the Irkutsk See for 15 years. The Church, as best it could in those years of prevailing state atheism, celebrated the great merits of the suffering archpastor. A cross to be worn on the hood, the Order of St. Vladimir, 1st degree - these are the awards that testify that Archbishop Benjamin was not forgotten, he was remembered and his great feat was highly valued by the Church. Only in 1973 was it possible to transfer the already elderly bishop from the Far East to central Russia, to the Cheboksary See. Confounding all the doctors' predictions, Archbishop Benjamin did not die soon. Despite his poor health, he did not interrupt his archpastoral work, did not retire, and continued serving until his death on October 14, 1976 (on the Feast of the Intercession of the Mother of God). His funeral service was performed by Archbishop John (Snychev) of Kuibyshev, the future Metropolitan of St. Petersburg. Archbishop Veniamin (Novitsky) was buried in the Vvedensky Cathedral in Cheboksary. The name of Archbishop Veniamin (Novitsky) should shine in our grateful memory among the names of those hierarchs who defended the independence of our Church under occupation, who strengthened their flock in loyalty to the Mother Church and the Fatherland.

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