Exile and Teaching

Freed from Dachau in 1945, Nikolai chose not to return to the new communist Yugoslavia, which regarded him as an enemy. He emigrated to the United States in 1946 and spent his last decade as a refugee teacher in the Orthodox seminaries of the American diaspora — St. Sava’s in Illinois, St. Vladimir’s, and St. Tikhon’s in Pennsylvania.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox (glorified 2003)

The Refusal to Return

Liberated by American forces in the spring of 1945 (see Imprisonment in Dachau), Nikolai faced a changed homeland. Yugoslavia had been taken over by the communist-led Partisans under Josip Broz Tito, and the new regime was hostile to the Serbian Orthodox Church and specifically to Nikolai, whom it regarded and would brand as a reactionary, a nationalist, and a collaborator — a “traitor” in the official memory that would prevail for the next four decades (Jovan Byford, Denial and Repression of Antisemitism: Post-Communist Remembrance of the Serbian Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović, CEU Press, 2008, on the communist-era construction of Nikolai as “traitor”; “Nikolaj Velimirović,” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org, on his never returning to socialist Yugoslavia).

Nikolai never returned to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Wikipedia, “Nikolaj Velimirović”). Whether this is best described as a principled refusal to live under and legitimize an atheist regime that persecuted the Church, or as a well-founded fear of persecution and worse had he returned, the sources present it as of a piece: a churchman who had opposed one totalitarianism (Nazism) from a prison cell was not willing to submit to another (communism), and he chose exile instead. This decision defined his last decade and also, in the communist reading, sealed his condemnation at home.

Emigration to the United States (1946)

In 1946 Nikolai emigrated as a refugee to the United States (Wikipedia, “Nikolaj Velimirović”; OrthodoxWiki, “Nicholas (Velimirović) of Žiča,” orthodoxwiki.org). He joined the substantial Serbian Orthodox diaspora in North America and, more broadly, the world of the Russian and pan-Orthodox émigré Church that had taken root in America after the Revolution and the Second World War — a world of displaced hierarchs, refugee faithful, and struggling but vital seminaries. For a man of Nikolai’s learning and stature, this world had an obvious need and an obvious place: the formation of Orthodox clergy in the New World.

The Teaching Years

Nikolai spent his American years teaching in the Orthodox theological schools of the diaspora. The seminaries associated with his name in this period are three (Wikipedia, “Nikolaj Velimirović,” listing his teaching at St. Sava’s, St. Tikhon’s, and St. Vladimir’s; OrthodoxWiki, “Nicholas (Velimirović) of Žiča”):

  • St. Sava’s Serbian Orthodox Seminary / Monastery at Libertyville, Illinois — the center of Serbian Orthodox life in America, the natural home for an exiled Serbian bishop, where he was closely associated and where he would first be buried (see Repose at South Canaan).
  • St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary — the pan-Orthodox (originally Russian-metropolia) seminary in the New York area that became, in these decades, the intellectual center of Orthodox theology in America under figures such as Georges Florovsky and, later, Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff.
  • St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and Monastery at South Canaan, Pennsylvania — the seminary of the Russian-metropolia (later OCA) tradition, where Nikolai served in his final years and where he died in 1956; he is associated with the rectorship/deanship there in the accounts of his last period.

In these settings Nikolai was a teacher, preacher, and elder to a generation of American Orthodox seminarians across jurisdictional lines — Serbian, Russian, and others — at a formative moment for Orthodoxy in America. His presence linked the older world of Serbian and pan-Orthodox churchmanship to the emerging American Orthodox Church, and he is remembered in American Orthodox circles (the Orthodox Church in America notes his service as a former dean of St. Tikhon’s Seminary) as one of the significant hierarch-teachers of the mid-century diaspora (Orthodox Church in America, “Serbian Patriarchate to canonize Bishop Nicholai Velimirovic, former Dean of St. Tikhon Seminary,” oca.org).

A Diminished but Fruitful Exile

The American years were, in worldly terms, a diminishment: the most celebrated churchman of interwar Serbia, the leader of a mass movement and a bishop of historic sees, ended his life as a refugee teacher in borrowed institutions, exiled from a homeland where his name was anathema. Yet the exile was fruitful. Nikolai continued to write and preach in these years, and his influence on American Orthodoxy — and, through the diaspora and the eventual collapse of communism, back upon Serbia — was real. It was also in the diaspora that the posthumous rehabilitation of his memory would begin: the émigré Serbian Church kept his reputation alive when it was suppressed at home, and it was in the diaspora (West Germany) that the contested Words to the Serbian People would be published in 1985 (see Words to the Serbian People). The exile that ended his public career thus also preserved the memory that would, decades later, issue in his glorification (see Glorification 2003).

See Also

References

  • “Nikolaj Velimirović.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org. (The refusal to return to socialist Yugoslavia; the 1946 emigration to the United States; teaching at St. Sava’s, St. Vladimir’s, and St. Tikhon’s; used to locate these facts.)
  • “Nicholas (Velimirović) of Žiča.” OrthodoxWiki, orthodoxwiki.org. (The emigration and the seminary teaching.)
  • Orthodox Church in America. “Serbian Patriarchate to canonize Bishop Nicholai Velimirovic, former Dean of St. Tikhon Seminary.” oca.org. (His association with St. Tikhon’s Seminary as a former dean.)
  • Byford, Jovan. Denial and Repression of Antisemitism: Post-Communist Remembrance of the Serbian Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović. Budapest–New York: Central European University Press, 2008. (The communist-era construction of Nikolai as “traitor” and the diaspora preservation of his memory.)