ROCOR’s Glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors

In 1981, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia canonized the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, including the Royal Martyrs (Tsar Nicholas II and his family), nearly two decades before the Moscow Patriarchate did so in 2000. This act was a profound exercise of spiritual freedom by a church in exile, honoring those who had shed their blood for Christ under the atheist Soviet regime.

Tradition: ROCOR-specific

The 1981 Glorification

The Council of Bishops

At its Council of Bishops, held October 18 – November 1, 1981, at the Synodal Cathedral of Our Lady “of the Sign” in New York City, ROCOR formally glorified (canonized) the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia; the rite of glorification itself was celebrated at the All-Night Vigil and Divine Liturgy of Saturday evening, October 31, and Sunday, October 19/November 1, 1981 (Eastern American Diocese, “The Canonization of the New Martyrs by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in 1981 – How It Happened,” eadiocese.org). The decision was made under the leadership of Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky), ROCOR’s Third First Hierarch, who had long championed the cause of the New Martyrs.

Scope of the Canonization

The 1981 glorification was comprehensive in scope:

The Royal Martyrs: Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexei, and Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, together with their faithful servants who perished with them at Yekaterinburg on July 4/17, 1918.
Hierarchs: Numerous bishops who were martyred or who died in imprisonment and exile for the faith.
Clergy and monastics: Priests, deacons, monks, and nuns who suffered persecution.
Laity: Faithful Orthodox Christians, known and unknown, who died for their faith.
“And all those who suffered with them”: The canonization included a general glorification of all those who had suffered for the faith in Russia, recognizing that the full number of martyrs and confessors was known only to God.

The commemoration of the New Martyrs was established on the Sunday closest to January 25 (Old Style) / February 7 (New Style), the date of the martyrdom of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev in 1918, who is often considered the first hierarch-martyr of the Soviet period. The date itself goes back to the All-Russian Church Council of 1917-1918, which resolved on April 5/18, 1918, to establish an annual commemoration on January 25 or the following Sunday of “all confessors and martyrs who have died in the present fierce years of persecution” (All-Russian Church Council, resolution of April 5/18, 1918; cf. OCA, “New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia,” oca.org).

Liturgical Celebration

A full liturgical service (troparion, kontakion, canon, and stichera) was composed for the New Martyrs, and their celebration was added to the ROCOR liturgical calendar. Icons of the New Martyrs were painted, depicting them in traditional hagiographic style.

(ROCOR Council of Bishops, Act of Glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, 1981)

The Significance: Acting While Moscow Could Not

The Soviet Constraint

The Moscow Patriarchate in 1981 was still under Soviet control. The Soviet government would never have permitted the canonization of victims of Communist persecution, particularly the Tsar and his family, whose execution was a founding act of the Soviet state. The Moscow Patriarchate was canonically unable (in ROCOR’s view, unwilling as well) to honor those who had suffered at the hands of the regime to which it had pledged loyalty.

ROCOR’s Spiritual Freedom

ROCOR’s canonization of the New Martyrs was thus an exercise of the spiritual freedom that ROCOR claimed as its raison d’etre. Precisely because ROCOR was free from Soviet control, it could do what the Church in Russia could not: honor the martyrs.

This act reinforced ROCOR’s self-understanding as the free conscience of the Russian Church. It also demonstrated the practical importance of ROCOR’s independent existence: without a free Russian church body abroad, the New Martyrs might have waited even longer for formal recognition.

Anticipating Moscow’s Canonization

ROCOR’s 1981 glorification proved prophetic. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Moscow Patriarchate was finally free to address the canonization of the New Martyrs. At the Jubilee Bishops’ Council of August 2000, Moscow canonized the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in a massive act of glorification that included over 1,000 named saints and an innumerable host of unnamed ones.

The Moscow glorification was, in many ways, a vindication of ROCOR’s earlier action. It was also a key precondition for the 2007 reunion, as ROCOR had long insisted that Moscow’s failure to canonize the New Martyrs was evidence of residual Sergianism.

The Royal Martyrs

The Execution at Yekaterinburg

On the night of July 4/17, 1918, Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra, their five children (Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei), and four servants (Dr. Eugene Botkin, cook Ivan Kharitonov, valet Alexei Trupp, and maid Anna Demidova) were executed by a Bolshevik firing squad in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. The execution was carried out by order of the Ural Regional Soviet. [Disputed: whether the central Bolshevik leadership ordered or sanctioned the killing in advance is contested among historians – a substantial body of Western scholarship, citing among other things a passage in Trotsky’s 1935 diary, attributes the decision to Lenin and Sverdlov in Moscow, while the Russian Investigative Committee’s inquiry concluded in 2011 that, despite the post-Soviet opening of state archives, no written document has been found proving that Lenin or Sverdlov ordered the executions; Yurovsky’s own account insisted a confirming telegram from the Central Executive Committee was relayed to him through Goloshchyokin]

Canonization as Passion-Bearers (Strastoterpets)

ROCOR glorified the Royal Family as martyrs (mucheniki), emphasizing that they suffered death at the hands of God-hating persecutors.

The Moscow Patriarchate, when it canonized the Royal Family in 2000, used the category of passion-bearers (strastoterpets), a specifically Russian hagiographic category applied to those who accept suffering and death with Christian humility, even if they are killed for political rather than strictly religious reasons. The prototype of this category in Russian hagiography is the Holy Princes Boris and Gleb (d. 1015), who accepted death rather than resist their murderous brother.

The distinction between “martyrs” and “passion-bearers” reflects different emphases:

ROCOR’s emphasis: The Royal Family was killed by an atheist, God-hating regime as part of a broader persecution of the Church and the Orthodox Russian people. Their death was essentially a religious martyrdom.
Moscow’s emphasis: While the Royal Family died with Christian dignity and humility, the immediate cause of their execution was political (they were killed as representatives of the old regime). The category of “passion-bearers” honors their Christ-like acceptance of unjust suffering without requiring a demonstration that the killing was motivated purely by hatred of the faith.

Controversies

The canonization of the Royal Family has been controversial both within and outside the Orthodox Church:

Political vs. religious figure: Critics argue that Nicholas II was a political figure whose canonization risks conflating Orthodoxy with Russian nationalism and monarchism.
Nicholas’s historical record: Historians have debated Nicholas II’s competence as a ruler, including questions about anti-Jewish pogroms, the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1905, and his role in Russia’s entry into World War I. Defenders note that these are questions about political judgment, not sanctity, and that the canonization recognizes his personal piety and his acceptance of suffering, not his political achievements.
Family sanctity: The canonization of the entire family, including the children, recognizes their collective witness. The Tsarevich Alexei’s hemophilia and suffering are seen as emblematic of innocent suffering embraced in faith.

The Theological Importance of the New Martyrs

The Blood of Martyrs as the Seed of the Church

The glorification of the New Martyrs draws on the ancient Christian understanding, expressed by Tertullian, that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church” – the traditional paraphrase of his “the blood of Christians is seed” (semen est sanguis Christianorum) (Tertullian, Apologeticum 50.13; trans. ANF 3). The Soviet persecution, the most extensive and systematic persecution of Christians in history, produced a vast host of witnesses to the faith.

Continuity with Early Christian Persecution

ROCOR’s theological framing of the New Martyrs emphasized continuity with the early Church:

Just as the early Christians suffered under pagan Rome, the Russian Christians suffered under atheist Communism.
The persecutors’ methods – execution, imprisonment, forced labor, desecration of holy things – mirrored and even exceeded those of the Roman Empire.
The faithfulness of the martyrs, from hierarchs to simple peasants, demonstrated the power of God working through human weakness.

A Cloud of Witnesses

The New Martyrs are understood to constitute a “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) interceding for the Russian Church and people. Their prayers are invoked for:

The spiritual renewal of Russia after Communism
The preservation of the Orthodox faith in a secularizing world
The protection of the Church from compromise and spiritual lukewarmness

References

ROCOR Council of Bishops. Act of Glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. New York, October 19/November 1, 1981.
Eastern American Diocese (ROCOR). “The Canonization of the New Martyrs by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in 1981 – How It Happened.” eadiocese.org, 2019.
“New Glory of the Russian Church: At the Glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors.” Orthodox Life, 1981 (orthodoxlife.org).
Moscow Patriarchate. Jubilee Bishops’ Council: Act of Canonization. Moscow, August 13-16, 2000.
Roslof, Edward. Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905-1946. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
Regel’son, Lev. Tragediia Russkoi Tserkvi 1917-1945 [The Tragedy of the Russian Church, 1917-1945]. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1977. Afterword by John Meyendorff. (The author’s expanded English version, Tragedy of the Russian Church, 1917-1953, trans. K. Cook, is published on his site, regels.org.)
Tertullian. Apologeticum 50.13; trans. ANF 3.