The Soviet Seizure and the Return

In December 1918 the Bolsheviks seized the incorrupt relics of St. Alexander from the Svir monastery — one of the opening acts of the Soviet campaign to discredit and liquidate the relics of the Russian saints. The relics were subjected to “scientific examination,” taken to Petrograd, and lost from public knowledge for eighty years, until their rediscovery, identification, and return to the monastery in 1997–1998. This file reports the ordeal soberly and both-sides, with the incorruption claims presented as attested, not certified.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox

The Anti-Relic Campaign

The seizure of St. Alexander’s relics belongs to a deliberate Soviet policy. In the years after the 1917 Revolution, the Bolshevik state waged a campaign against the relics of the Russian saints (the vskrytie moshchei, the “opening of the relics”), which ran especially from 1919 to 1922: shrines across Russia were opened, often before cameras and commissions, in order to expose the relics to public view, subject them to “scientific examination,” and so — the state hoped — discredit the veneration of the faithful as superstition. Many relics were confiscated and transferred to anti-religious museums or medical and scientific institutions (this is the well-documented history of the Soviet anti-relic campaign; obitel-minsk.org, “The Miracles, Visions and Blessings of St Alexander of Svir,” on the campaign of 1919–1922; and the general histories of the Soviet persecution of the Church).

St. Alexander’s relics were among the first and most prominent targets. The incorrupt relics at the Svir monastery were exactly the kind of shrine the campaign was designed to attack — a widely venerated incorrupt body whose discrediting would strike at the veneration of relics generally.

The Seizure of December 1918

The Bolsheviks removed the relics of St. Alexander from the Holy Trinity Alexander-Svirsky Monastery in December 1918 — the date is given as 20 December 1918 — after several earlier attempts to confiscate them had been resisted (obitel-minsk.org, on the removal of the relics from the Svir Monastery on 20 December 1918 after several unsuccessful attempts). The relics were then subjected to examination as part of the campaign. The devotional accounts note, with some irony, that the “scientific” tests conducted on the relics of the saints — intended to expose them as frauds — in a number of cases instead confirmed the genuineness and preservation of the relics; and that Alexander’s relics were among those the examinations did not manage to discredit (obitel-minsk.org). Per METHODOLOGY §4, this is one side of a contested history and is reported as the devotional and monastic sources present it, named as such.

After the examination, the relics were taken to Petrograd (Leningrad). There, according to the account of the rediscovery, they were stored — anonymously, their identity obscured — at a military medical institution, the Military Medical Academy, where they remained, unknown to the faithful, for the better part of a century (obitel-minsk.org; and the monastery’s own account of the rediscovery). For eighty years the fate of St. Alexander’s relics was a matter of loss and rumor: seized, examined, and vanished into the Soviet state’s institutions.

The Rediscovery and Return, 1997–1998

With the fall of Soviet power and the reopening of the Svir monastery in the 1990s, a search was undertaken for the lost relics. The account of the rediscovery holds that in December 1997 a body corresponding to St. Alexander was located in the collection of an anatomical museum attached to the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg; that it was examined and identified; and that its state and features were found to correspond to the description recorded at the 1641 uncovering — the relics reported still incorrupt, as they had been when confiscated (obitel-minsk.org; the monastery’s account of the 1997 second uncovering and the 1998 return). Following the identification, the relics were returned to the Holy Trinity Alexander-Svirsky Monastery, where they were enshrined in November 1998 and where they are venerated today (obitel-minsk.org; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander-Svirsky_Monastery).

[Disputed: the identification and the incorruption of the rediscovered relics. The account of the 1997 rediscovery — that the body found at the St. Petersburg military medical institution is that of St. Alexander, matching the 1641 description, and still incorrupt — is the account given by the monastery and the Church that received and enshrined the relics, and is received in the veneration of the faithful (obitel-minsk.org). It rests on the identification made at the rediscovery; the incorruption is reported as attested and venerated, not as an independently certified scientific finding. This collection reports the rediscovery, identification, and return as the Church’s account, names it as such, and does not certify the identification or the incorruption as adjudicated fact (per METHODOLOGY §3.5 and §4).]

Both Sides, Soberly

The honest reading holds the reverence and the caution together. On the one side, the return of the relics in 1998 was received by the Russian Church and the faithful as a genuine restoration — the recovery of a venerated saint’s incorrupt body after eighty years of Soviet captivity, and a sign of the Church’s resurrection after the persecution. The account is coherent, the identification was made by those who had every reason to get it right, and the veneration is real and ongoing (obitel-minsk.org; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander-Svirsky_Monastery).

On the other side, the collection does not present the identification or the incorruption as scientifically certified. The relics passed through eighty years of anonymous storage in state institutions; the identification rests on the correspondence with the 1641 records and on the judgment of those who conducted the rediscovery; and the incorruption is a venerated claim, not a laboratory verdict. There is, in the nature of the case, no way to place beyond all question that the body enshrined in 1998 is the same body buried in 1533 and uncovered in 1641 — though the Church that venerates it holds that it is. The collection therefore reports the whole modern history as the Church’s account, received in veneration, and pins the contested points (the identification, the incorruption) to that account rather than certifying them (per METHODOLOGY §3.5 and §4).

The Meaning of the Ordeal

The story of the relics — seized to be discredited, examined, hidden for a lifetime, and at last returned to the monastery — has become, in the Church’s telling, a parable of the whole Soviet persecution and the survival of the Russian Church through it. The state that set out to expose the relics as fraud and to end the veneration did not succeed; the relics returned, and the veneration with them. Whatever the historian’s proper caution about the identification and the incorruption, the arc of the story — a saint’s relics carried through the persecution and restored — is itself a fact of the Church’s recent history and part of why St. Alexander is venerated with fresh intensity in post-Soviet Russia (see Assessment).

See Also

References

  • “The Miracles, Visions and Blessings of St Alexander of Svir.” obitel-minsk.org/en/st-alexander-of-svir-hermit-and-miracle-worker. (The 20 December 1918 seizure; the anti-relic campaign of 1919–1922; the storage at the Military Medical Academy; the 1997 rediscovery and the 1998 return.)
  • “St Alexander of Svir – Mystic and wonderworker.” relicsofthesaints.org, 1 July 2025. (The relic history and the return.)
  • “Alexander-Svirsky Monastery.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander-Svirsky_Monastery. (The seizure, the reopening of the monastery, and the enshrined relics.)
  • METHODOLOGY.md §3.5 and §4, this repository.