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| Fr. Seraphim Rose (on the left) and Boris Tantalov (on the right) |
"We have nothing to silence, since more blood has been shed than necessary.... Heroism is worthy to be noted on an equal footing with failures. It is, without exception, necessary to aim at recording the historic truth inviolably." - His Majesty, St. Tsar Nicholas II
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| St. Nicholas |
Note: the title of this post is reflective of particular information contained within the following
texts. However, (some of) the texts themselves are presented in a more complete form - for they
contain much spiritually beneficial information. It is hoped that by presenting such information -
some people may be helped: to acknowledge certain historical truths (however unpleasant they may be), to begin to honor those who stood for and in the Truth, and finally, to see the fallacy (lies) expressed within the "official" versions of such historical happenings. These "official versions" are,
of course, also the historical "soviet versions" - which are sadly believed by many even in our
contain much spiritually beneficial information. It is hoped that by presenting such information -
some people may be helped: to acknowledge certain historical truths (however unpleasant they may be), to begin to honor those who stood for and in the Truth, and finally, to see the fallacy (lies) expressed within the "official" versions of such historical happenings. These "official versions" are,
of course, also the historical "soviet versions" - which are sadly believed by many even in our
own days (2019).
(The sources of all the information in this post are Fr. Seraphim Rose, Boris Tantalov, and Archbishop Lazar (Zhurbenko.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fr. Seraphim Rose wrote in his book "Russia's Catacomb Saints":
In recent years a marvellous witness has come out of the enslaved Soviet Union: a long series of protests from Orthodox laymen—and a few of the clergy—against the continued persecution of the Christian faithful by the Soviet Government and by its 'State Church,' the Moscow Patriarchate.
(The sources of all the information in this post are Fr. Seraphim Rose, Boris Tantalov, and Archbishop Lazar (Zhurbenko.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fr. Seraphim Rose wrote in his book "Russia's Catacomb Saints":
In recent years a marvellous witness has come out of the enslaved Soviet Union: a long series of protests from Orthodox laymen—and a few of the clergy—against the continued persecution of the Christian faithful by the Soviet Government and by its 'State Church,' the Moscow Patriarchate.
But how can this be?—a 'Church' that persecutes its own faithful? The layman Boris Talantov, now in prison in the USSR for 'anti-Governmental activity,' has carefully analyzed this question and found the explanation to lie in 'Sergianism,' i.e., the attitude of those who accept the principle of the 'Declaration' made by Metropolitan Sergius in 1927 that the Soviet Union's "joys and successes are our joys and successes, and its misfortunes are our misfortunes," which in effect made the Moscow Patriarchate the obedient tool of Communist purposes, which function it has continued to serve down to the present day. Boris Talantov in a recent article has stated that "the roots of the serious ecclesiastical crisis which has now been revealed were planted precisely by Patriarch Sergius… Objectively, this address (the Declaration of 1927) and the ensuing activity of Metr. Sergius was a betrayal of the Church." Further, according to Talantov, most of the churches that remained open after the persecution of the '30's no longer recognized Metropolitan Sergius as their head.
It is these clergy and laymen who do not recognize the official 'Moscow Patriarchate' who comprise the underground or 'Catacomb Church' in the USSR. It is today an 'illegal' Church in the USSR and for obvious reasons very little can be said about its present extent, organization, etc. But there are nonetheless at least three sources of reliable information about it: (1) the letters and petitions of bishops and delegations of clergy and laymen who protested the Declaration in 1927 and broke off communion with the official Soviet Church—these hierarchs and faithful were apparently in the majority, and the Soviet Church attained its present ascendancy and 'canonicity' in the USSR through the Government's arrest and murder of the leading anti-Sergianists; (2) statements in the recent Soviet press concerning the arrest and imprisonment of members of underground churches and monasteries belonging to the 'True Orthodox Church' of 'Tikhonites' who refuse to recognize the Moscow Patriarchate; the Communist Government considers this Church of such importance that it published a general account and historical summary of it in the 'Atheist Dictionary,' printed in Moscow in 1964 for the guidance of anti-religious activists; (3) the statements of those who have been members of the Catacomb Church in the USSR and have then come to the West. The united testimony of these sources leads one to the conclusion that the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union is a submerged iceberg, a reality of which only a small portion is visible on the surface. Only when Russia, in God's time, will be freed of the tyranny of Communism and its obedient 'Patriarchate' will the secret life of Russian Orthodoxy be made fully known.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Concerning Princess Natalia Urusova (†1964), Fr. Seraphim Rose wrote:
"From her childhood she led a highly spiritual life, something rare for someone of high society at her time. After the Second World War, having lost all of her six children (three of her sons were martyred for Christ), she wrote her complete biography, which was never fully published. Her book is a highly moving piece of evidence concerning the price Orthodox Christians had to pay to be in the saving enclosure of the True Orthodox Church.
Due to her spiritual training she was able to discern quite easily the falseness of the Sergianist position, and in her book she offers a first-hand account of how Metropolitan Sergius personally, without pressure from the authorities, suggested which churches should be closed or blown up, and which clergy should be arrested. Hence it is not strange that her book has never been published. It is a mother’s lamentation over the death of her catacomb children.
She has provided information on the following New Martyrs: Metropolitan Joseph, Child Sergius
and Elder Anatole (of Optina), Priest Vladimir, Abbess Antonina, Priest Alexander - who drew fire from heaven while celebrating the Liturgy on a stump in the midst of a forest, and Archbishop Barlaam.
In the last days of her life she wrote profound poetry which reflected the hopelessness of Orthodox
Christians in the free world, simply because it was apparent to her that they were losing the savor of True Christianity - Orthodoxy. Archbishop Averky (of Jordanville), her spiritual father, entrusted her memoirs to the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood for publication, expressing his hope that this book would see light in the English language for the preparation of our neophytes and converts for martyrdom."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Concerning Nun Veronica Kotlarevsky (†1952), Fr. Seraphim Rose wrote:
"An actress in the world, she was converted to Orthodoxy... She became closely associated with
prominent Orthodox believers, and because of her close association with holy men and women of the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra, she herself was arrested during the Holy Night [information concerning this "Holy Night" may be found below] and suffered for many years in various prisons in the Sarov-Sanaxar Temnikoff concentration camps.
During the Second World War she escaped to Europe and spent her last years as a nun in Paris, where Helen Kontzevich, having befriended her through their common interest in patristics - persuaded her to write her memoirs of the suffering Russian Church. These memoirs were published by “Russian Life” in 1954 in San Francisco; however, a good portion of them, due to jurisdictional church politics, were lost and only fragments of them were ever separately published, mostly by I.M. Andreyev in the “Vladimirsky Calendar.”
Unfortunately, her testimony of how Patriarch Alexis had direct responsibility for the outcome of
Holy Night, was omitted due to the spirit of Sergianism in the free world..."
Concerning this 'Holy Night': "The date was February 18, 1932 (new style). It is a radiant and yet
a terrible date, the Passion Friday of Russian monasticism - ignored by all and almost unknown
to the whole world - when all of Russian monasticism in a single night disappeared into the concentration camps. It was all done in the dead of night and with the full knowledge of Metropolitan Alexis (who later became Patriarch) - about which there is sufficient evidence."
The monastics were "arrested ... as vicious criminals whose very presence was a threat to society;
they were treated as deadly insects which must be stamped out.
The wave of arrests, like thunder, rolled over the Russian land, striking chiefly the monastic population which so recently had been the glorious guardian of the nation’s morals and values. It also struck many of the white clergy and laymen who, in one way or another, were close in spirit to monasticism ... All were sent to the Kazakhstan region from where almost no one ever returned...
By this time, of course, all of Russia’s 1,400 monasteries - not counting sketes and newly-formed
monastic communities - were closed and, with a handful of exceptions, obliterated.
‘‘We all,’’ recalls a witness, “felt miserable during this frightful period, almost to the point of nausea. Everyone felt as though they [the authorities] had sadistically spit into our souls or beaten our mothers to death before our very eyes. It was a terrible feeling of hurt and rage, and yet one was helpless. I experienced this frightful state during that spring of 1932”.
Little did these people suspect that soon after this “Holy Night”, the freedom-loving United States of America was to recognize the Soviet tyranny as a lawful government. And all the while, the puppet-bishops of Sergianism declared throughout the whole world that Christians in Russia were free.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The laymen Boris Tantalov (†1971) of the Moscow Patriarchate, whom Fr. Seraphim Rose refers to
as a "fearless confessor of the holy Orthodox Faith" wrote in the 1960's:
"The Church Administration headed by Metropolitan Sergius not only did not defend the
believers and clergy who went to concentration camps for accusing the arbitrariness and violence of the civil authorities, but even spoke out itself, with slave-like servility, for the condemnation of such people as counter-revolutionaries.
Metropolitan Sergius, in the Theophany Cathedral in Moscow, with a cross in his hands, came out with a declaration that there was no persecution at all against believers and their organizations in the Soviet Union, and there never had been any. Individual clergymen and believers, according to his assurance, were tried not for faith, but for counter-revolutionary manifestations against the Soviet regime. Such a declaration was not only a monstrous lie, but also a base betrayal of the Church and believers. By this declaration Metropolitan Sergius covered up the monstrous crimes of Jospeh Stalin and became an obedient tool in his hands...
The Appeal of Metropolitan Sergius to the believing citizens of the USSR on June 22, 1941, was received by true believers as a new cringing before the despotic regime and a new betrayal of the Church's interests. All believers in Russia regarded and regard the Second World War as the wrath of God for the immense lawlessness, impiety, and persecution of Christians which occurred in Russia from the beginning of the October Revolution. Therefore, not to remind the people and the government of this in an hour of dreadful trials, not to call the people to repentance, not to demand immediately the restoration of churches and the rehabilitation of all innocently condemned citizens of the USSR, was a great sin, a great impiety. Metropolitan Sergius again revealed himself to be an obedient tool of the atheist regime, which at that moment wished to use for its own ends the religious feelings of its citizens with the fewest possible concessions from atheism...
Patriarch Sergius, and later Patriarch Alexis, gathered and placed new bishops who, as distinct from the former bishops - who as a rule perished in the concentration camps (there were, of course, exceptions) - were obedient to the Patriarchate and assimilated well the leaven of Herod, i.e. - adaptation to the mighty of this world [to the Red Antichrist]...
In essence adaptation to atheism represented a maniacal union of Christian dogmas and rites with
the socio-political views of the official ideology of the Communist party...
Adaptation to the atheist regime was clearly and precisely set forth in the book, "The Truth about
Religion in Russia", published under the editorship of Patriarch Sergius in the last years of his life, with the participation of Metropolitan (now Patriarch) Alexis and Metropolitan Nicholas.
In this book Patriarch Sergius and Metropolitans Alexis and Nicholas categorically affirm that there has never been any persecution of Christians in the USSR, that information in the Western press about these persecutions are malicious inventions of the enemies of the Soviet regime, that bishops and priests during the years 1930-41 were sentenced by Soviet courts exclusively for their counter-revolutionary activity, and that the Church Administration itself at that time was in
agreement with their being sentenced...
The most courageous fighters for truth and Christian faith are declared in this book to be
schismatics, "politicians," and practically heretics. This book should be anathematized; it will be an eternal shameful memorial of Patriarch Sergius. And now with full justification we can call
adaptation to the atheistic regime by the name of Patriarch Sergius - Sergianism...
The adaptation which was planted by Metropolitan Sergius has resulted in the fact that, beginning in 1960, the Moscow Patriarchate and the majority of bishops objectively have secretly participated in all actions of the [Soviet] Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church - a participation directed toward the closing of churches, the limitation of the propagation of the faith, and the undermining of the latter among the people...
With the aim of limiting the propagation of faith and undermining it among the people, the bishops have unconditionally submitted to all the oral directives of the authorities, which have been directed toward the limitation and undermining of faith, and they have demanded the same thing of priests. Thus, for example, Bishop John of Kirov firmly declared to his priests that any one of them who will not unconditionally fulfill the directives of the authorities will be forbidden to serve as a priest.
At the same time, the priests and bishops, in fulfilling the oral directives of the authorities, presented these directives to the people as if they came from the Church Administration and not from the civil regime, and they even uncanonically demonstrated their lawfulness and necessity...
The Moscow Patriarchate has made the rejection of Christian apologetics, of the ideological battle with atheism, the chief principle of its activity, both within the country and outside...
The activity of the Moscow Patriarchate abroad is directed, in the first place, to covering up, by means of shameless lying and slander, the mass illegal closure of churches, the oppressions of believers and their organizations and the secret administrative measures directed toward the undermining of faith within the USSR.
In the second place, the activity of the Patriarchate is directed to defecting as much as possible, by
means of deceit and lying, the development of the Christian movement in the whole world onto a
fallen path and thereby undermining it.
Such, for example, was the proposal of the Moscow Patriarchate at the Rhodes Conference of Orthodox Churches to renounce Christian apologetics and the ideological battle against contemporary atheism.
The activity of the Moscow Patriarchate abroad is a conscious betrayal of the Russian Orthodox
Church and the Christian faith. She steps forth on the world arena as a secret agent of worldwide
anti-Christianity."
Boris Tantalov died (in prison) in 1971 of heart disease. In the Soviet system he died in
disgrace, as a political criminal, having been in prison since September, 1969, for writing a series
of extremely outspoken and detailed accounts of the persecution of the Orthodox faithful by the
atheist regime and by the leading hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate - a “crime” known in the
Soviet Union as “anti-Soviet activities.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is these clergy and laymen who do not recognize the official 'Moscow Patriarchate' who comprise the underground or 'Catacomb Church' in the USSR. It is today an 'illegal' Church in the USSR and for obvious reasons very little can be said about its present extent, organization, etc. But there are nonetheless at least three sources of reliable information about it: (1) the letters and petitions of bishops and delegations of clergy and laymen who protested the Declaration in 1927 and broke off communion with the official Soviet Church—these hierarchs and faithful were apparently in the majority, and the Soviet Church attained its present ascendancy and 'canonicity' in the USSR through the Government's arrest and murder of the leading anti-Sergianists; (2) statements in the recent Soviet press concerning the arrest and imprisonment of members of underground churches and monasteries belonging to the 'True Orthodox Church' of 'Tikhonites' who refuse to recognize the Moscow Patriarchate; the Communist Government considers this Church of such importance that it published a general account and historical summary of it in the 'Atheist Dictionary,' printed in Moscow in 1964 for the guidance of anti-religious activists; (3) the statements of those who have been members of the Catacomb Church in the USSR and have then come to the West. The united testimony of these sources leads one to the conclusion that the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union is a submerged iceberg, a reality of which only a small portion is visible on the surface. Only when Russia, in God's time, will be freed of the tyranny of Communism and its obedient 'Patriarchate' will the secret life of Russian Orthodoxy be made fully known.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Concerning Princess Natalia Urusova (†1964), Fr. Seraphim Rose wrote:
"From her childhood she led a highly spiritual life, something rare for someone of high society at her time. After the Second World War, having lost all of her six children (three of her sons were martyred for Christ), she wrote her complete biography, which was never fully published. Her book is a highly moving piece of evidence concerning the price Orthodox Christians had to pay to be in the saving enclosure of the True Orthodox Church.
Due to her spiritual training she was able to discern quite easily the falseness of the Sergianist position, and in her book she offers a first-hand account of how Metropolitan Sergius personally, without pressure from the authorities, suggested which churches should be closed or blown up, and which clergy should be arrested. Hence it is not strange that her book has never been published. It is a mother’s lamentation over the death of her catacomb children.
She has provided information on the following New Martyrs: Metropolitan Joseph, Child Sergius
and Elder Anatole (of Optina), Priest Vladimir, Abbess Antonina, Priest Alexander - who drew fire from heaven while celebrating the Liturgy on a stump in the midst of a forest, and Archbishop Barlaam.
In the last days of her life she wrote profound poetry which reflected the hopelessness of Orthodox
Christians in the free world, simply because it was apparent to her that they were losing the savor of True Christianity - Orthodoxy. Archbishop Averky (of Jordanville), her spiritual father, entrusted her memoirs to the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood for publication, expressing his hope that this book would see light in the English language for the preparation of our neophytes and converts for martyrdom."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Concerning Nun Veronica Kotlarevsky (†1952), Fr. Seraphim Rose wrote:
"An actress in the world, she was converted to Orthodoxy... She became closely associated with
prominent Orthodox believers, and because of her close association with holy men and women of the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra, she herself was arrested during the Holy Night [information concerning this "Holy Night" may be found below] and suffered for many years in various prisons in the Sarov-Sanaxar Temnikoff concentration camps.
During the Second World War she escaped to Europe and spent her last years as a nun in Paris, where Helen Kontzevich, having befriended her through their common interest in patristics - persuaded her to write her memoirs of the suffering Russian Church. These memoirs were published by “Russian Life” in 1954 in San Francisco; however, a good portion of them, due to jurisdictional church politics, were lost and only fragments of them were ever separately published, mostly by I.M. Andreyev in the “Vladimirsky Calendar.”
Unfortunately, her testimony of how Patriarch Alexis had direct responsibility for the outcome of
Holy Night, was omitted due to the spirit of Sergianism in the free world..."
Concerning this 'Holy Night': "The date was February 18, 1932 (new style). It is a radiant and yet
a terrible date, the Passion Friday of Russian monasticism - ignored by all and almost unknown
to the whole world - when all of Russian monasticism in a single night disappeared into the concentration camps. It was all done in the dead of night and with the full knowledge of Metropolitan Alexis (who later became Patriarch) - about which there is sufficient evidence."
The monastics were "arrested ... as vicious criminals whose very presence was a threat to society;
they were treated as deadly insects which must be stamped out.
The wave of arrests, like thunder, rolled over the Russian land, striking chiefly the monastic population which so recently had been the glorious guardian of the nation’s morals and values. It also struck many of the white clergy and laymen who, in one way or another, were close in spirit to monasticism ... All were sent to the Kazakhstan region from where almost no one ever returned...
By this time, of course, all of Russia’s 1,400 monasteries - not counting sketes and newly-formed
monastic communities - were closed and, with a handful of exceptions, obliterated.
‘‘We all,’’ recalls a witness, “felt miserable during this frightful period, almost to the point of nausea. Everyone felt as though they [the authorities] had sadistically spit into our souls or beaten our mothers to death before our very eyes. It was a terrible feeling of hurt and rage, and yet one was helpless. I experienced this frightful state during that spring of 1932”.
Little did these people suspect that soon after this “Holy Night”, the freedom-loving United States of America was to recognize the Soviet tyranny as a lawful government. And all the while, the puppet-bishops of Sergianism declared throughout the whole world that Christians in Russia were free.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The laymen Boris Tantalov (†1971) of the Moscow Patriarchate, whom Fr. Seraphim Rose refers to
as a "fearless confessor of the holy Orthodox Faith" wrote in the 1960's:
"The Church Administration headed by Metropolitan Sergius not only did not defend the
believers and clergy who went to concentration camps for accusing the arbitrariness and violence of the civil authorities, but even spoke out itself, with slave-like servility, for the condemnation of such people as counter-revolutionaries.
Metropolitan Sergius, in the Theophany Cathedral in Moscow, with a cross in his hands, came out with a declaration that there was no persecution at all against believers and their organizations in the Soviet Union, and there never had been any. Individual clergymen and believers, according to his assurance, were tried not for faith, but for counter-revolutionary manifestations against the Soviet regime. Such a declaration was not only a monstrous lie, but also a base betrayal of the Church and believers. By this declaration Metropolitan Sergius covered up the monstrous crimes of Jospeh Stalin and became an obedient tool in his hands...
The Appeal of Metropolitan Sergius to the believing citizens of the USSR on June 22, 1941, was received by true believers as a new cringing before the despotic regime and a new betrayal of the Church's interests. All believers in Russia regarded and regard the Second World War as the wrath of God for the immense lawlessness, impiety, and persecution of Christians which occurred in Russia from the beginning of the October Revolution. Therefore, not to remind the people and the government of this in an hour of dreadful trials, not to call the people to repentance, not to demand immediately the restoration of churches and the rehabilitation of all innocently condemned citizens of the USSR, was a great sin, a great impiety. Metropolitan Sergius again revealed himself to be an obedient tool of the atheist regime, which at that moment wished to use for its own ends the religious feelings of its citizens with the fewest possible concessions from atheism...
Patriarch Sergius, and later Patriarch Alexis, gathered and placed new bishops who, as distinct from the former bishops - who as a rule perished in the concentration camps (there were, of course, exceptions) - were obedient to the Patriarchate and assimilated well the leaven of Herod, i.e. - adaptation to the mighty of this world [to the Red Antichrist]...
In essence adaptation to atheism represented a maniacal union of Christian dogmas and rites with
the socio-political views of the official ideology of the Communist party...
Adaptation to the atheist regime was clearly and precisely set forth in the book, "The Truth about
Religion in Russia", published under the editorship of Patriarch Sergius in the last years of his life, with the participation of Metropolitan (now Patriarch) Alexis and Metropolitan Nicholas.
In this book Patriarch Sergius and Metropolitans Alexis and Nicholas categorically affirm that there has never been any persecution of Christians in the USSR, that information in the Western press about these persecutions are malicious inventions of the enemies of the Soviet regime, that bishops and priests during the years 1930-41 were sentenced by Soviet courts exclusively for their counter-revolutionary activity, and that the Church Administration itself at that time was in
agreement with their being sentenced...
The most courageous fighters for truth and Christian faith are declared in this book to be
schismatics, "politicians," and practically heretics. This book should be anathematized; it will be an eternal shameful memorial of Patriarch Sergius. And now with full justification we can call
adaptation to the atheistic regime by the name of Patriarch Sergius - Sergianism...
The adaptation which was planted by Metropolitan Sergius has resulted in the fact that, beginning in 1960, the Moscow Patriarchate and the majority of bishops objectively have secretly participated in all actions of the [Soviet] Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church - a participation directed toward the closing of churches, the limitation of the propagation of the faith, and the undermining of the latter among the people...
With the aim of limiting the propagation of faith and undermining it among the people, the bishops have unconditionally submitted to all the oral directives of the authorities, which have been directed toward the limitation and undermining of faith, and they have demanded the same thing of priests. Thus, for example, Bishop John of Kirov firmly declared to his priests that any one of them who will not unconditionally fulfill the directives of the authorities will be forbidden to serve as a priest.
At the same time, the priests and bishops, in fulfilling the oral directives of the authorities, presented these directives to the people as if they came from the Church Administration and not from the civil regime, and they even uncanonically demonstrated their lawfulness and necessity...
The Moscow Patriarchate has made the rejection of Christian apologetics, of the ideological battle with atheism, the chief principle of its activity, both within the country and outside...
The activity of the Moscow Patriarchate abroad is directed, in the first place, to covering up, by means of shameless lying and slander, the mass illegal closure of churches, the oppressions of believers and their organizations and the secret administrative measures directed toward the undermining of faith within the USSR.
In the second place, the activity of the Patriarchate is directed to defecting as much as possible, by
means of deceit and lying, the development of the Christian movement in the whole world onto a
fallen path and thereby undermining it.
Such, for example, was the proposal of the Moscow Patriarchate at the Rhodes Conference of Orthodox Churches to renounce Christian apologetics and the ideological battle against contemporary atheism.
The activity of the Moscow Patriarchate abroad is a conscious betrayal of the Russian Orthodox
Church and the Christian faith. She steps forth on the world arena as a secret agent of worldwide
anti-Christianity."
Boris Tantalov died (in prison) in 1971 of heart disease. In the Soviet system he died in
disgrace, as a political criminal, having been in prison since September, 1969, for writing a series
of extremely outspoken and detailed accounts of the persecution of the Orthodox faithful by the
atheist regime and by the leading hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate - a “crime” known in the
Soviet Union as “anti-Soviet activities.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 |
| Archbishop Lazar (Zhurbenko) |
Archbishop Lazar (Zhurbenko)* of the Russian Orthodox Catacomb Church reveals:
"The catacomb believers feared the Moscow Patriarchate priests even more than the police. Whenever a priest came for some reason or other, he was met by a feeling of dread. The catacomb
people would say, 'A red detective has come.' He was sent deliberately, and he was obliged to
report everything to the authorities. Not infrequently, hierarchs and priests told the people outright, directly from the ambo, 'Look around, Orthodox people. There are those who do not come to church. Find out who they are and report to us; these are enemies of the Soviet regime who stand in the way of the building of socialism'. We were very much afraid of these Sergianist-oriented priests."
people would say, 'A red detective has come.' He was sent deliberately, and he was obliged to
report everything to the authorities. Not infrequently, hierarchs and priests told the people outright, directly from the ambo, 'Look around, Orthodox people. There are those who do not come to church. Find out who they are and report to us; these are enemies of the Soviet regime who stand in the way of the building of socialism'. We were very much afraid of these Sergianist-oriented priests."
*Vladyka Lazar was made a Bishop for the Catacomb Church by the ROCOR in the early 1980's.