The Lavra under Assault

The destruction of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra as a working monastery in the first Soviet decade — the 1918 raid and the killing of Fr. Skipetrov, the 1922 confiscation of church treasures, the Renovationist seizure of its churches, the arrests of clergy, and the steady administrative strangulation that drove out the monks and finally closed the house. This file supplies the documented historical context for the monastery in which Seraphim served and from which he withdrew around 1930.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (20th-c. elder; Soviet period)

The First Blow: 1918

The Alexander Nevsky Lavra was among the very first targets of the Bolshevik assault on the Church. In January 1918, days after the Decree on the Separation of Church and State, Red Guards and sailors attempted to requisition the Lavra’s buildings; in the resulting clash with the crowd that gathered to defend it, the priest Fr. Pyotr Skipetrov was shot and killed (Pospielovsky, The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1984, vol. 1, ch. 2; Davis, A Long Walk to Church, 2003). The attempted seizure was, for the moment, beaten back by popular resistance, and it helped to provoke Patriarch Tikhon’s famous anathema of 19 January 1918 against the persecutors of the Church (on Tikhon, see St. Tikhon of Moscow). But the episode set the pattern: the Lavra would be fought over for the next fifteen years and lost piece by piece.

The Confiscations of 1922

In 1921–1922 a catastrophic famine in the Volga region gave the regime its pretext for a wider assault. Under cover of famine relief, the state ordered the confiscation of church valuables — including consecrated vessels — and Lenin, in a secret directive of March 1922, explicitly seized the occasion to crush clerical resistance, calling for the shooting of as many “reactionary clergy” as possible (Pospielovsky 1984, vol. 1, ch. 3; the Lenin letter is a standard document of the period). The Lavra, with its accumulated treasures, was stripped under these measures, and the confiscation campaign in Petrograd led directly to the trial and, in August 1922, the execution of the city’s metropolitan, the New Hieromartyr Benjamin (Kazansky) of Petrograd (Pospielovsky 1984, vol. 1; on the New Martyrs, Orthodoxy: New Martyrs and Confessors).

The Renovationist Schism

Hard upon the confiscations came the Renovationist schism of 1922 — a state-sponsored “Living Church” movement that, with the backing of the secret police, seized control of much church property and administration while Patriarch Tikhon was under arrest (Pospielovsky 1984, vol. 1, ch. 4; Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, 1986). The Renovationists took over churches across Petrograd, and the Lavra’s churches were contested ground in the struggle between the schismatics and the canonical Church. The biographies present Seraphim as firmly on the canonical side, refusing the schism (see Spiritual Father in the Time of Terror; Filimonov, Vyritsa Elder St. Seraphim). The Renovationist movement would wither over the following decade, but in the 1920s it added internal schism to external persecution as a pressure on faithful monks and clergy.

Strangulation and Closure

Through the later 1920s the Lavra was administratively strangled. Its monks were progressively expelled or arrested, its buildings requisitioned for secular use, its monastic community reduced and finally dispersed. The brotherhood was effectively dissolved by the end of the 1920s, and the Lavra ceased to function as a monastery; its principal church, the Trinity Cathedral, was closed in the early 1930s and given over to non-religious use, and the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky had already been removed in a propaganda spectacle in 1922 (Pospielovsky 1984, vol. 1; Davis 2003; standard accounts of the Lavra’s closure). The monastery would not be returned to the Church and reopened until the very end of the Soviet period.

This is the collapse against which Seraphim’s withdrawal must be read. He did not leave a flourishing monastery for the country; he left a monastery being dismantled around him, at a moment when his own health was failing. The retirement to Vyritsa around 1930 coincided with the effective end of the Lavra as a living house (see Retirement to Vyritsa). The elder carried the Lavra’s tradition of confession and counsel out of the dying monastery and into a small town — where, paradoxically, it would reach more people than ever.

The Wider Pattern

The fate of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra was the fate of Russian monasticism in miniature. At the Revolution the empire had over a thousand monasteries; by the end of the 1920s nearly all had been closed, their communities scattered, their buildings seized, many of their monks and nuns imprisoned, exiled, or shot (Pospielovsky 1984, vol. 1; Davis 2003, ch. 1; on the full persecution, Orthodoxy: Soviet Persecution). The dispersal of monastics into the towns and villages — where some, like Seraphim, became hidden elders ministering quietly to the faithful — was one of the unintended consequences of that destruction. The persecution that emptied the monasteries seeded the country with secret centers of prayer.

See Also

References

  • Pospielovsky, Dimitry. The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982. 2 vols. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1984. (The 1918 raid and Fr. Skipetrov; the 1922 confiscations and Lenin’s directive; Metropolitan Benjamin; the Renovationist schism; the closure of the monasteries.)
  • Davis, Nathaniel. A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003. (The dismantling of monastic life in the 1920s–1930s.)
  • Ellis, Jane. The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. (The Renovationist schism and the church-state struggle.)
  • Filimonov, Valentin P. Вырицкий старец преподобный Серафим [Vyritsa Elder St. Seraphim]. St. Petersburg, 1990s–2000s. (Seraphim’s refusal of the Renovationist schism; the conditions of his departure.)