The Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviet State

Abstract

The Constitution of the USSR guarantees religious freedom, but the ruling Communist Party actively encourages the disappearance of religion. In the 1930s there was comprehensive religious persecution, but despite the virtual disappearance of the Russian Orthodox Church as an institution, the believing population did not give up its faith. During World War II, Stalin adopted a new policy. He granted the churches a limited institutional existence, and in return church leaders have been expected to speak favorably of Soviet political and social realities. Only a proportion of the clergy is, however, fully acceptable to the government, and a significant number tries to serve the religious needs of its flock the best it can. The ordinary believer is treated as a second-class citizen. Individuals who try to make the plight of Soviet Christians known in the world at large or to bear witness to their faith in public can expect reprisals from the authorities.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

1. USSR, Constitution of 1979, arts. 50 and 51.

2. V. I. Lenin , “Ob otnoshenii rabochei partii k religii” (1909), in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed. (Moscow, 1961), 17:416.

3. It was revised, but not substantially altered, in 1975.

Philip Walters , “The Living Church 1922-1946,” Religion in Communist Lands, 6(4): 235-243 (Winter 1976).

5. See William C. Fletcher , A Study in Survival: The Church in Russia 1927-1943 (London: SPCK, 1965).

6. In the mid-1930s the head of the Union of Militant Godless indicated that some 57 percent of the Soviet population remained believers. The results of the 1937 census, which contained a question on religious affiliation, were suppressed, and the question did not reappear in the census of 1939.

and ibid., 5(2): 109-16 (Summer 1977).

For translations of extracts in English, see Orthodox Monitor, nos. 9-10, pp. 58-80 (July-Dec. 1980). Extracts from the report have also appeared as Rapport secret au comité central sur l'etat de l'eglise en URSS (Paris: Seuil, 1980).

9. Father Dimitri Dudko was at first moved from church to church rather than suspended from his priestly functions. Father Gleb Yakunin, although suspended as a priest by the patriarch in 1965, was later given the post of reader, and it seems that in 1978 or 1979 an offer may have been made to him by the church to reinstate him as a priest, an offer that Father Gleb allegedly turned down. Father Vasili Fonchenkov, a member of Father Gleb's Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers' Rights, was removed from his position as a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, but he still functions as a parish priest.

10.

10. D. Pospielovsky , “Mitropolit Nikodim i ego vremya,” Posev, no. 2, p. 21 (Feb. 1979).

11.

11. “Intervyu svyateishego patriarkha moskovskogo i vseya Rusi Pimena: V sluzhenii miru na zemle vidim velikuyu tsel svoyu,” Golos rodiny, no. 5 (Feb. 1978).

12.

Donald A. Lowrie and William C. Fletcher , “Khrushchev's Religious Policy 1959-64,” in Aspects of Religion in the Soviet Union 1917-1967, ed. Richard H. Marshall (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 131-155.

13.

13. David E. Powell , Anti-Religious Propaganda in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1975).

14.

14. RSFSR, Criminal Code, art. 190-1.

15.

15. Ibid., art. 70.