Soviet Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church (1917–1991)

The Soviet persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church was one of the most sustained and devastating campaigns against a religious body in history. Tens of thousands of clergy and monastics were killed, the vast majority of churches and all monasteries were closed, and the Church was reduced to a fraction of its former size. The period also produced the New Martyrs and Confessors — a host of saints whose blood, in Tertullian’s phrase, became the seed of the Church’s revival.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (with critical significance for ROCOR’s self-understanding)

The Bolshevik Assault on the Church (1917–1929)

The Decree on Separation (January 1918)

The Soviet government’s Decree on the Separation of Church from State and School from Church, issued on January 20/February 2, 1918 (drafted by a commission of the Council of People’s Commissars that included P.I. Stuchka, A.V. Lunacharsky, P.A. Krasikov, and the jurist M.A. Reisner, and signed by Lenin), was far more radical than similar Western legislation on church-state separation. Its key provisions:

The Church was stripped of the status of a legal person (juridical entity), meaning it could not own property, enter into contracts, or conduct business.
All church property — churches, monasteries, seminaries, liturgical objects, libraries — was declared the property of the state. Religious communities could use buildings only with government permission, which could be revoked at any time.
Religious instruction was banned in all schools, public and private. Teaching religion to minors was progressively restricted and eventually criminalized.
Civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths replaced church registration.
Religious oaths were abolished.

The decree’s implementation was accompanied by widespread violence: seizure of churches, desecration of relics, destruction of icons, and attacks on clergy.

(Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, vol. 1, ch. 2; Curtiss, The Russian Church and the Soviet State, chs. 2–3)

The Campaign Against Church Valuables (1922)

In 1921–1922, a catastrophic famine struck Russia, killing millions. The Soviet government, led by Lenin, used the famine as a pretext to demand the confiscation of all church valuables — including consecrated liturgical vessels — ostensibly for famine relief.

Lenin’s secret letter of March 19, 1922 (to members of the Politburo, not published until the Soviet era’s end) revealed his true purpose: “It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most savage and merciless energy… so as to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles.” Lenin explicitly called for using the famine as a pretext to “crush” the Church’s resistance (Lenin to Molotov for the members of the Politburo, March 19, 1922; first published in Izvestiya TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 4; English translation in Pipes, ed., The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive, 1996).

Patriarch Tikhon permitted the surrender of non-consecrated valuables but refused to hand over consecrated items (chalices, patens, etc.), as their surrender would constitute sacrilege. This refusal became the pretext for arrests and show trials. Thousands of clergy and laity were arrested; many were executed, including Metropolitan Benjamin (Kazansky) of Petrograd, who was shot on the night of August 12–13, 1922 (July 31 O.S.), along with Archimandrite Sergius (Shein) and the laymen Yuri Novitsky and Ivan Kovsharov, for resisting confiscation. Metropolitan Benjamin was canonized as a hieromartyr.

(Daly, “‘Storming the Last Citadel’: The Bolshevik Assault on the Church, 1922,” in Brovkin, ed., The Bolsheviks in Russian Society, 1997, pp. 235–268; Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, vol. 1, ch. 3)

The Renovationist (Living Church) Schism

The Soviet secret police (GPU/OGPU) actively promoted schism within the Church as a strategy to weaken it. The most significant result was the Renovationist or Living Church (Zhivaya Tserkov) movement, which emerged in 1922.

The Renovationists were a group of clergy who, with Soviet backing, seized control of the Church’s administrative apparatus while Patriarch Tikhon was under arrest. Their program included:

Recognition of the Soviet government’s legitimacy
Liturgical reforms (use of the vernacular, married episcopate, calendar reform)
“Democratization” of church governance (weakening episcopal authority)
Condemnation of Patriarch Tikhon and his supporters as “counter-revolutionaries”

The Renovationists held a council in 1923 that claimed to depose Patriarch Tikhon and abolished the Patriarchate. At their peak, the Renovationists controlled a significant number of churches, partly because the state transferred parishes to them by force.

However, the Renovationist movement was widely despised by the faithful laity, who recognized it as a tool of the atheist state. When Patriarch Tikhon was released from arrest in 1923, parishes rapidly returned to patriarchal jurisdiction. The Renovationist movement gradually withered and was effectively dead by the 1940s, when its remaining leaders were absorbed back into the Moscow Patriarchate.

(Roslof, Red Priests, chs. 3–7; Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, vol. 1, chs. 3–5)

The New Martyrs and Confessors

The scale of the Soviet persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church was staggering:

Clergy killed: Tens of thousands of clergy (bishops, priests, deacons, monastics) were executed, died in labor camps, or perished in prisons between 1917 and 1941. [Disputed: the state Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression chaired by Alexander Yakovlev concluded that some 200,000 priests, monks, and nuns were killed over the Soviet period, with church-commission figures for 1937–1938 alone of roughly 168,300 arrested and over 100,000 shot (Yakovlev, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia, 2002); lower academic estimates put clergy killed in the 1930s–1940s at roughly 25,000–30,000, while Davis estimates about 80,000 clergy, monastics, and church activists killed by the end of the 1930s (Davis, A Long Walk to Church, 2nd ed., 2003, ch. 1).]
Bishops: Of the approximately 130 bishops of the Russian Church on the eve of the Revolution (official Synod figures for 1914), only four remained at liberty and openly functioning by 1939: Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky), Alexius (Simansky), Nikolai (Yarushevich), and Sergius (Voskresensky) — and all four lived in daily expectation of arrest (Davis, A Long Walk to Church, 2nd ed., 2003, ch. 1; some counts give “three or four”).
Churches destroyed or closed: Before 1917, the Russian Empire had 54,174 churches (Holy Synod report for 1914). By 1939, the number of officially functioning churches had been reduced to a few hundred at most. [Disputed: Davis estimates 200–300 churches still functioning in the entire USSR in 1939 (A Long Walk to Church, 2nd ed., 2003, ch. 1); other estimates run as low as about 100.]
Monasteries: All approximately 1,025 monasteries and convents were closed by 1939 (see Russian Monasticism).
Seminaries: All theological schools were closed.

The Church venerates these victims as the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia (Novomu-cheniki i Ispovedniki Rossiiskie). They were formally canonized en masse by ROCOR in 1981 (a pioneering act) and by the Moscow Patriarchate in 2000. The number of named saints in this group exceeds a thousand, but they are understood to represent a much larger host of unnamed martyrs.

Notable New Martyrs include:

Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) of Kiev (d. 1918): The first hierarch martyred, killed outside the Kiev Caves Monastery.
Metropolitan Benjamin (Kazansky) of Petrograd (d. 1922): Shot for resisting confiscation of church valuables.
Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky) of Krutitsy (d. 1937): Patriarch Tikhon’s designated successor as locum tenens, who spent years in prison and exile before being executed.
Archbishop Hilarion (Troitsky) (d. 1929): A brilliant theologian and ecclesiologist who, after six years in the Solovetsky camp, died of typhus in a Leningrad transit prison on December 28, 1929, while being transported to exile.
The Royal Martyrs: Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children, murdered in Yekaterinburg on July 4/17, 1918. They were canonized as Passion-Bearers by the Moscow Patriarchate in 2000. ROCOR had canonized them as martyrs in 1981.

(Polsky, The New Martyrs of Russia, Montreal: Monastery Press, 1972; Yakovlev, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia, 2002, ch. on the clergy)

Metropolitan Sergius and the Declaration of Loyalty (1927)

Background

After Patriarch Tikhon’s death in 1925, the Church’s leadership passed through a series of locum tenentes (temporary administrators). Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky) of Krutitsy, Tikhon’s designated successor, was arrested almost immediately. He in turn designated Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) of Nizhny Novgorod as deputy locum tenens.

The Declaration

On July 16/29, 1927, Metropolitan Sergius issued his famous (or infamous) Declaration of Loyalty (Deklaratsiya), which included the following key statements:

Gratitude to the Soviet government for its “attention to the spiritual needs” of the Orthodox population.
An affirmation that the joys and successes of the Soviet Union were the joys and successes of the Church, and its setbacks were the Church’s setbacks.
A call for all clergy to demonstrate “sincere loyalty” to the Soviet government.
A requirement that emigre clergy sign loyalty oaths to the Soviet government or be removed from the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate.

(Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, vol. 1, ch. 5; the text of the Declaration is reproduced in various sources)

The Controversy: “Sergianism”

Sergius’s Declaration divided the Russian Church profoundly:

Supporters argued that Sergius was acting out of pastoral economia (flexibility for the sake of the Church’s survival). Without some modus vivendi with the state, the Church would be entirely destroyed. The Declaration was a necessary evil to preserve the sacramental life of the Church — the Eucharist, baptism, ordination — under impossible conditions.
Opponents argued that the Declaration went far beyond prudent accommodation. It was not merely political compliance but a theological lie — claiming that the Church’s joys were the joys of an atheist, persecuting regime. It compromised the Church’s prophetic witness and amounted to a spiritual capitulation.

The term “Sergianism” (sergianstvo) came to denote the policy of compromising the Church’s truth and freedom for the sake of institutional survival and cooperation with a hostile state. This term has been applied more broadly to any situation where church leaders subordinate the Church’s spiritual mission to political expediency.

ROCOR’s position: The Declaration of 1927 was a primary reason for ROCOR’s refusal to maintain communion with the Moscow Patriarchate. ROCOR viewed Sergianism as a fundamental betrayal that compromised the Moscow Patriarchate’s spiritual freedom. The 2007 Act of Canonical Communion between ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate addressed this issue, though disagreements about its significance persist.

(See also ROCOR; Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, vol. 1, chs. 5–6)

The Catacomb Church

In response to the Declaration of 1927, a significant number of bishops, clergy, and laity broke communion with Metropolitan Sergius and went “underground,” forming what became known as the Catacomb Church (Katakombna-ya Tserkov). These communities continued to celebrate the sacraments in secret — in homes, forests, and hidden locations — without registration or recognition by the Soviet state.

The Catacomb Church was not a single organized entity but a loose network of communities, some loyal to Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh) of Petrograd (the “Josephites”), others to various imprisoned or exiled bishops, and some functioning with minimal hierarchical structure. Many members of the Catacomb Church perished in the camps.

The exact extent of the Catacomb Church is difficult to determine, as secrecy was its essential condition. It is recognized by both ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate as a legitimate witness to the faith under persecution, though questions about specific groups and their canonical status remain complex.

(Regelson, Tragedy of the Russian Church; Shkarovskii, Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ pri Staline i Khrushcheve, 1999 — in Russian; no English translation has been published)

The Wartime Rapprochement (1943)

On September 4, 1943, Stalin summoned the three surviving senior hierarchs of the Russian Church — Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), Metropolitan Alexius (Simansky) of Leningrad, and Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) of Kiev and Galicia — to the Kremlin for a late-night meeting. (The memorandum of G.G. Karpov, the state official who arranged and recorded the meeting, confirms that these three metropolitans were the only hierarchs present.) This meeting marked a dramatic reversal in Soviet policy toward the Church.

Reasons for Stalin’s Reversal

The wartime thaw was motivated by pragmatic considerations:

Patriotic mobilization: The Church had played an important role in rallying patriotic sentiment during World War II. Metropolitan Sergius had issued a pastoral letter on the very day of the German invasion (June 22, 1941), calling the faithful to defend the homeland. The Church raised funds for the military (notably for a tank column named after Dmitry Donskoy).
Occupied territories: In German-occupied Soviet territories, churches had reopened massively, and the population had flocked to them. Stalin needed to compete with this religious revival.
International relations: Stalin wanted the Russian Church to be presentable for diplomatic purposes, especially in relation to Eastern Europe and the ecumenical movement.

Results

Following the September 1943 meeting:

A council of bishops was convened that elected Metropolitan Sergius as Patriarch (September 8, 1943). He died on May 15, 1944, and was succeeded by Patriarch Alexius I (Simansky) in 1945.
Theological schools were reopened (the Moscow and Leningrad Theological Academies and several seminaries).
Some monasteries were reopened (the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, the Pochaev Lavra, and a small number of others).
The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (Zhurnal Moskovskoy Patriarkhii) resumed publication.
A government body, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church (later the Council for Religious Affairs), was established to manage state-church relations — in practice, to control and monitor the Church through KGB-connected officials.

The price was continued subservience to the state. The Moscow Patriarchate was expected to serve Soviet foreign policy interests, suppress dissent, and refrain from any criticism of the regime.

(Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, vol. 2, chs. 1–2; Chumachenko, Church and State in Soviet Russia: Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the Khrushchev Years, ed. and trans. Roslof, 2002, chs. 1–3)

Khrushchev’s Renewed Persecution (1958–1964)

Under Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet regime launched a renewed campaign against the Church, breaking the wartime detente:

Church closures: Approximately two-thirds of all functioning churches were closed between 1958 and 1965. The number of registered Orthodox churches dropped from approximately 22,000 in 1959 (Pospielovsky, A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Antireligious Policies, 1987, p. 83) to 7,873 by 1965 (Chumachenko, Church and State in Soviet Russia, 2002, p. 187).
Monastery closures: The number of functioning monasteries dropped from 69 in 1958 to 17 by 1965 (Pospielovsky, Soviet Antireligious Campaigns and Persecutions, 1988, p. 136).
Seminary restrictions: Enrollment in theological schools was severely restricted through bureaucratic interference and intimidation.
Propaganda: An aggressive campaign of atheist propaganda was launched. It was conducted not through the prewar League of the Militant Godless (dissolved in 1947), but through its institutional successor, the Znanie (“Knowledge”) Society, and the new mass-circulation journal Nauka i religiia (“Science and Religion,” founded 1959), and was accompanied by staged public “renunciations” of faith by clergy.
Parish governance: A 1961 reform, imposed by the state and reluctantly accepted by the Moscow Patriarchate, stripped parish priests of administrative control over parishes, transferring power to parish councils (dvadtsatki) that could be more easily manipulated by state agents.

A boast often attributed to Khrushchev — that he would soon show the Soviet people “the last priest” on television — is widely circulated but not found in any primary source; no contemporary record of him saying it has been located, and the attribution became common only from the 1990s. Whatever his exact words, his persecution left the Church greatly weakened but far from extinct.

(Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, vol. 2, chs. 4–6)

The Church Under Brezhnev and Late Soviet Rule (1964–1988)

After Khrushchev’s fall in 1964, overt persecution eased somewhat, but the Church remained under heavy state control:

Patriarch Pimen (Izvekov, patriarch 1971–1990): Generally viewed as compliant with the state, though the degree to which this reflected personal conviction versus coercion is debated.
KGB infiltration: It is now well documented that the KGB maintained agents within the Church’s hierarchy and used the Church for intelligence purposes, particularly in the ecumenical movement and international relations.
Dissidents: A new generation of Orthodox dissidents emerged, including Fr. Gleb Yakunin (who documented persecution and was imprisoned), Alexander Solzhenitsyn (whose 1972 Lenten Letter to Patriarch Pimen challenged the hierarchy’s silence), and Fr. Dimitry Dudko (who held popular question-and-answer sessions before being arrested and forced to recant).
Underground activity: The Catacomb Church continued in diminished form. Underground monasticism and samizdat (self-published) religious literature circulated clandestinely.

The Church survived, but in a greatly diminished and compromised state. The question of how deeply the Patriarchate’s collaboration with the Soviet state had corrupted its spiritual life remains a painful and contested issue in Russian Orthodox self-understanding.

(Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, vol. 2; Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History)

References

Chumachenko, Tatiana A. Church and State in Soviet Russia: Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the Khrushchev Years. Edited and translated by Edward E. Roslof. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002.
Curtiss, John Shelton. The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917–1950. Boston: Little, Brown, 1953.
Daly, Jonathan W. “‘Storming the Last Citadel’: The Bolshevik Assault on the Church, 1922.” In The Bolsheviks in Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars, edited by Vladimir N. Brovkin, 235–268. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Davis, Nathaniel. A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003.
Ellis, Jane. The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
Lenin, V.I. Letter to Molotov for the members of the Politburo, March 19, 1922. First published in Izvestiya TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 4; English translation in Pipes, Richard, ed., The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Polsky, Michael (Archpriest). The New Martyrs of Russia. Montreal: Monastery Press, 1972.
Pospielovsky, Dimitry V. A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Antireligious Policies (A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory and Practice, and the Believer, vol. 1). New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
Pospielovsky, Dimitry V. Soviet Antireligious Campaigns and Persecutions (A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory and Practice, and the Believer, vol. 2). New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.
Pospielovsky, Dimitry V. The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982. 2 vols. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.
Regelson, Lev. Tragedy of the Russian Church, 1917–1945. Paris: YMCA Press, 1977.
Roslof, Edward E. Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905–1946. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
Shkarovskii, M.V. Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ pri Staline i Khrushcheve: Gosudarstvenno-tserkovnye otnosheniia v SSSR v 1939–1964 gg. Moscow: Krutitskoe patriarshee podvor’e, 1999. (In Russian; no English translation.)
Ware, Timothy (Kallistos). The Orthodox Church. New edition. London: Penguin, 1993.
Yakovlev, Alexander N. A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Translated by Anthony Austin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.