The Relics, 1920–1991: Confiscation, Loss, and Return

The Soviet trajectory of St. Seraphim’s relics: their opening and confiscation at Sarov in December 1920 during the anti-relics campaign, their removal to anti-religious museums in Moscow and their disappearance from the record, the closure of Sarov and its transformation into the secret nuclear city Arzamas-16, the rediscovery of the relics in late 1990 in a storeroom of the former Kazan Cathedral in Leningrad, their official return to the Church on 11 January 1991, the great cross-country procession of 1991, and the translation to Diveyevo on 1 August 1991 under Patriarch Alexy II. Documented history and pious tradition are kept distinct, and the dates are those held in common with this repository’s other anchors.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (canonized 1903)

The 1920 Opening and Confiscation

The Bolshevik campaign of vskrytie moshchei — the mass public opening of relics — was launched by a resolution of the Collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Justice on 16 February 1919, reinforced by a Sovnarkom decree of 30 July 1920 “on the liquidation of relics on an all-Russian scale,” with the stated purpose of discrediting the Church by exposing venerated relics as ordinary bones rather than incorrupt flesh, and of eradicating their veneration as a tool, in the campaign’s language, “for obscuring the consciousness of the working people.” The official liquidation department reported some 63 public openings between autumn 1919 and autumn 1920 (Orthodox Encyclopedia [Pravoslavnaya entsiklopediya], “Vskrytie moshchei”; Drevo, tracing figures to the journal Revolyutsiya i Tserkov’).

St. Seraphim’s relics were among the last and most prominent. They were opened on 17 December 1920 (N.S.) at Sarov Hermitage — not at Diveyevo, with which the site is sometimes conflated — by order of the local Temnikov uyezd Soviet congress, and were left “exposed for viewing” despite mass protests of believers (Orthodox Encyclopedia; Drevo). The opening act recorded a human skeleton lacking hands and feet, two locks of reddish hair, a tooth, and a copper cross on a chain; the closing act noted the white silk mittens and slippers in which the remains had rested (tainadiveevo.ru, citing the 1920–1921 acts).

Disappearance: The Moscow Museum Trail

The relics were sealed and removed in August 1921 and formally seized again in 1927, when a commission ordered “the skeleton called the relics of Seraphim of Sarov, with all its vestments” sent to Moscow for the anti-religious museum (tainadiveevo.ru; Safonov). In the late 1920s they were put on display in Moscow at the Strastnoi (Passion) Monastery, then housing an anti-religious museum, and passed to the Central Anti-Religious Museum (opened 1929 in the same convent). They likely remained there until the Strastnoi Monastery was demolished in 1934 — after which they vanish from the documentary record. Patriarch Alexy II later testified that the relics were moved to a former cathedral-turned-museum on the Neva (Leningrad) but, evidently, were “hidden by someone’s pious hands immediately upon arrival, because the holy remains appeared in no inventories or lists” (Dmitry Safonov, “The Second Uncovering of the Relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov,” Pravoslavie.ru, drawing on Alexy II’s own account).

Sarov’s Closure and the Nuclear City

Sarov Hermitage itself was closed by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s (the closure was multi-stage; 1927 is the most commonly given date, aligning with the final seizure of the relics that year), its buildings used in turn as a labor commune and a munitions plant. Then came one of the sharper ironies of the Soviet century. By a USSR Council of Ministers decree of 9 April 1946, the former monastery site was chosen — for its isolation behind the old monastery walls and the surrounding protected forest — as the home of KB-11, the secret design bureau for the first Soviet atomic bomb, the institution that became VNIIEF (the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics). The site became a fully closed restricted zone in 1947, known as Arzamas-16 (also Kremlyov; today again Sarov), and there, under Igor Kurchatov and the chief designer Yulii Khariton, the first Soviet atomic bomb (RDS-1) was developed and then tested on 29 August 1949 (VNIIEF official history). The hermitage of Russia’s most beloved monk of peace, where his relics had been opened to discredit the Church, had become the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear arsenal — a factual irony, not a legend.

The Late-1990 Rediscovery

In late 1990, as the staff of the Leningrad Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism prepared to vacate the Kazan Cathedral, they found in a storeroom — where tapestries were kept — relics sewn into burlap. The single identifying clue was an embroidered inscription on a mitten: “Venerable Father Seraphim, pray to God for us!” The relics bore no museum inventory tag, consistent with their having been deliberately concealed (Safonov, Pravoslavie.ru; RIA Novosti).

The authentication proceeded by document. Patriarch Alexy II sent two hierarchs — Bishop Evgeny of Tambov and Michurinsk and Bishop Arseny of Istra — to examine the find, and then personally compared the recovered remains against two archival acts: the 1903 canonization and uncovering act, and the 1920 opening (vskrytie) act. He established “complete correspondence” between the documented description (the condition of the skeleton, the copper cross, the vestments) and the relics found in the storeroom (Safonov, Pravoslavie.ru; RIA Novosti). The match thus rests on the embroidered mitten together with the act-to-act comparison; the “fragrance and sense of grace” reported by the examining hierarchs is a testimonial observation, and no forensic or anthropological examination is documented in these sources — a distinction worth keeping.

The Return and the Translation

The relics were ceremonially handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church at the Kazan Cathedral on 11 January 1991 (RIA Novosti; OrthoChristian). On the evening of 6 February 1991 they were borne from the Alexander Nevsky Lavra to the railway station and brought to Moscow, arriving 7 February and enshrined for veneration in the Epiphany (Bogoyavlensky) Patriarchal Cathedral for several months (Moscow Diocese, moseparh.ru).

The great summer procession (krestny khod) departed Moscow on 23 July 1991, led by Patriarch Alexy II, traveling by stages with services at each stop — Noginsk, Orekhovo-Zuevo, Vladimir, Bogolyubovo, Vyazniki, Nizhny Novgorod, Arzamas — to Diveyevo. The relics reached Diveyevo on 30 July and were placed in the Trinity Cathedral; the festive Patriarchal Liturgy on the monastery square was celebrated on 1 August 1991 (New Style) — 19 July (Old Style) — the feast of St. Seraphim and the anniversary of the 1903 glorification, Patriarch Alexy II presiding before tens of thousands of pilgrims (moseparh.ru; OrthoChristian). These dates — the rediscovery in late 1990, the return on 11 January 1991, and the translation to Diveyevo on 1 August 1991 — are those held in common with this repository’s other accounts (see Russian Monasticism).

Tradition holds that St. Seraphim foretold that his relics would rest at Diveyevo and that “Paschal hymns would be sung in the middle of summer”; the August 1991 translation, with its Paschal singing, is venerated as the fulfillment. This is recorded here as pious tradition rather than documentary history (moseparh.ru; and see the provenance discussion in Attested vs. Attributed).

Diveyevo Today

The Holy Trinity–St. Seraphim–Diveyevo Convent (the Serafimo-Diveyevsky Monastery), reopened in 1991, is now among the largest pilgrimage centers in Russia; St. Seraphim’s relics rest there alongside the relics of the Diveyevo women saints. Orthodox tradition counts Diveyevo as the “fourth lot (udel) of the Theotokos” — after Iveria/Georgia, Mount Athos, and the Kiev Caves Lavra — a designation derived from an apparition reported to the convent’s foundress, Mother Alexandra, and bound up with St. Seraphim’s directives concerning the Holy Kanavka (the ditch he had the sisters dig around the convent). The “fourth lot” tradition is recorded here as pious tradition (Diveyevo Monastery official site; obitel-minsk.com). The return of the relics in 1991 belongs to the broader post-Soviet revival of Russian monasticism (see Post-Soviet Revival).

See Also

• Canonization 1903 — the glorification whose anniversary the 1991 translation deliberately marked
• Russian Monasticism — the repository’s anchor account of the relics’ rediscovery and return
• Post-Soviet Revival — the reopening of Diveyevo within the wider revival
• Attested vs. Attributed — the “summer Pascha” prophecy associated with the translation

References

• Safonov, Dmitry. “Vtoroe obretenie moshchei prepodobnogo Serafima Sarovskogo” [The Second Uncovering of the Relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov]. Pravoslavie.ru (grounded in Patriarch Alexy II’s testimony and the archival acts).
• Pravoslavnaya entsiklopediya [Orthodox Encyclopedia], s.v. “Vskrytie moshchei” (campaign decrees; the 63 openings of 1919–1920; the 17 December 1920 opening at Sarov).
• Drevo, “Vskrytie moshchei” (corroborating the campaign figures, tracing to Revolyutsiya i Tserkov’).
• Moscow Diocese. “Perenesenie moshchei prepodobnogo Serafima Sarovskogo iz Moskvy v Diveevo” [The Translation of the Relics of St. Seraphim from Moscow to Diveyevo]. moseparh.ru (procession route and dates).
• RIA Novosti. Reference article on the rediscovery and return of the relics, 15 January 2011.
• VNIIEF (All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics). Official institutional history (KB-11, 1946; Arzamas-16; RDS-1, 1949).
• OrthoChristian.com. “Diveyevo Celebrates Anniversary of the Return of St. Seraphim’s Relics” (English corroboration of the 11 January and 1 August dates).
• Diveyevo Monastery official site; obitel-minsk.com (the “fourth lot of the Theotokos” tradition).
• tainadiveevo.ru (texts of the 1920–1927 opening and seizure acts).