Chapters 4-11 of "In the Catacombs" (S.V. Shumilo)

The chapters below are from the 2011 book "In the Catacombs" by S.V. Shumilo. It has been kindly translated by Seraphim Larin.

Chapter 4: The Ministry of the Catacomb Church in the 1930s

When examining the Church situation of the 1930’s, it’s worth paying attention to the fact that the indiscriminate arrests of the members of the True Orthodox Church [also known as the Catacomb Church], didn’t bring a total demise of the Church’s opposition, but rather brought about the underground Church in the USSR. Finding themselves in exile at the end of 1930, the Bishops called upon the faithful flock to go into the catacombs, following the example of the Christians of old.

Thus, it was on the blood and sufferings of the holy Christian martyrs that the Catacomb Church was formed.

A valuable witness from our times is that of Professor I.M. Andreyev, who migrated overseas after the war. He had been a member of the Russian Orthodox Catacomb Church. In 1947, he published his recollections about the Catacomb Church in the USSR, where he noted: 

“Private church services in parishioners’ homes in Petrograd began as far back as 1928. After 1930, the number of secret church services increased significantly. And from 1937, the Catacomb Orthodox Church was fully formalized. In the rest of Russia – especially in Siberia, the Catacomb churches were established somewhat earlier… Secret Bishops and a huge number of secret priests appeared… Between 1937 and 1941, there was an extraordinary number of church services performed in Petrograd and the surrounding region. Church services were taking place everywhere! They were held even in the quarters of several academies – Professors of the Military-Medicine Academy and Petrograd University, in the building of Sea Technology, the submarine school, school of Water Transport, in hospitals, some institutional buildings where entry was only allowed through a permit…

The persecution of the Catacomb Church, which Metropolitan Sergius acknowledged as “counter-revolutionary” and Her adherents as “political criminals” - he handed them over to be torn to pieces by the God-fighting authority – they were exceptionally brutal… That’s why from 1939, the Catacomb churches became very vigilant and to join them was extremely difficult. But the genuine seekers did find them. And if the number of the secret Catacomb church services in 1939 fell significantly, their spiritual quality grew dramatically… It’s completely impossible to determine – even approximately, the percentage of the faithful that left for the Catacomb Church. Only one thing can be said: only the best left – and they were millions. Unable to expose all of them and eradicate them, the Soviet authorities began to deny the existence of the Catacomb Church, calling it a myth”.

I.M. Andreyev with Elena

Just as it was in Soviet times, currently the Sergianist Moscow Patriarchate is strongly attempting to reject the existence of the Catacomb Church in the USSR, promoting a false myth that apart from their Moscow Patriarchate, there was no other Church in the country. In this regard, it will be interesting to become acquainted with the various witnesses of the underground conditions of True Orthodox Church.

Thus, D. Pospelovsky, while being critical toward the Catacomb Church, at the same time remarks:

“Apparently, the Soviet government was afraid that the whole Church would go underground, because a official and strictly controlled Church presented less of a danger than a catacomb one”.

To replace the monasteries which were closed by the Soviet government in the ‘30’s, many secret monastic fraternities appeared – some in the depths of the Siberian taiga, and others – in the cities… The deceased Professor Krypton describes one such secret women’s monastery in Leningrad, where the church services and even singing was performed in a whisper. This monastery had several such secret fraternities scattered within different dwellings of the city… When the Catacomb Bishop Peter (Ladygin) – who was ordained with the blessing of Patriarch Tikhon – was released after a lengthy prison sentence, the faithful created a dugout for him in Orenburg, where he lived and prayed with a small group of students.

In 1937, the NKVD started to pursue him, but the interrogation of hundreds of people in this regard, led them to nothing - even though he maintained contact with hundreds of faithful throughout the region. In 1943, he relocated to Tian-Shan and established a secret monastery in the mountains, where there were nearly 300 monks ordained by him. In 1951, the monastery was discovered by a helicopter, which resulted in all the monks being sentenced to long prison sentences.

Vladyka Peter Ladygin

Mark Popovsky wrote the following about the Catacomb Church:

“The Catacomb, or underground, Church came into being in the ‘20’s. Suddenly one, then another priest would disappear from his parish; settle in some covert place and begin his dangerous life of a fugitive. Huts as secret chapels began to spring up on the outskirts of towns. In these chapels, they conducted Church services, heard confessions, gave Holy Communion, baptized and ordained new priests. Passing on secretly the door-knock of recognition, the people from nearby districts and regions began to congregate in these chapels. They went there for consolation, conversation, for ‘joy from church services’. They brought children and old folk. Nobody knows how many such secret chapels existed in the country”.

Our previously mentioned Professor I.M Andreyev, recalled his attendances at these secret church services of the Catacomb Church:

“My friends and I had ceased going to the Sergianist churches since the end of 1927, i.e. 10 years already, and this was the routine. I arrive secretly at one of my friend’s houses in Petrograd. A secret nun visits her house. She in turn takes me to the clandestine church service of the Catacomb Church. As we travel, I ask no questions and am not interested where we are going. I purposely don’t want to know because if later – God forbid, I will be arrested, even under torture I would not be able to divulge information about where I had been.

It’s late at night…Dark. We board a train at one of the stations and travel for more than an hour. We alight at some small sub-station and trek 2-3 kilometers in the dark. We arrive at some small village. On the edge of the village there is a hut. The night is dark and quiet. A soft knock on the door. It opens and we enter the hut. We walk into a clean room with all the windows heavily curtained. In one corner there are several icons with lit lampadas. There are 15 people, mostly women wearing scarfs, 3 middle-aged men and several children 12-14 years of age…

The night vigil begins. Pronouncements and singing are done in a whisper. Emotional tears can be seen in many eyes… prayer comes easily! Nothing distracts or disturbs. Never and nowhere have I experienced so clearly and deeply the legitimacy of Saint John of the Ladders’ demand: “Enclose your mind in the words of prayer!”

It’s impossible to impart what I experienced at this night vigil. At its conclusion, I drank a cup of tea with some bread and kissed everyone three times on the cheeks… Dawn was breaking. Walking back quietly with my nun. Tranquility and focus reside in my soul. We get on the train and depart for Petrograd. I walk over to another platform and head home”.

The witness of the catacomb pastors about the catacomb service during the Soviet period is just as valuable. Thus, in his report of April the 27^th 1993 to the Archbishops Council of the ROCOR, Archbishop Lazarus (Zhurbenko +2005) of Odessa and Tambov recalled his service to the Catacomb Church in the USSR:

“The churches in the catacombs were collapsible and portable – very simplistic: Antimins, Cross, Gospel, essential utensils, essential church service books, vestments, a few candles, incense burner and incense. All the essential utensils were in a smaller form than normal size. Church services were performed secretly, in half-voices, either at night or during the day, depending on the given circumstances of the time and place. Children were not taken there for fear of being found out through them. Loyal children and close friends received Holy Communion in another house so that they would not remember the address. The “Catacombniks” were watched by the Moscow Patriarchate and the KGB. They had a whole network of informers – Bishops, priests, nuns and parishioners, who maintained surveillance on those who didn’t go to the churches of the Patriarchate. The Catacombs were ascribed with “connections with Western countries”, “espionage”, “betrayal of the Fatherland”, “Facism” etc - which were criminal and punishable charges. Every person was watched and they kept strict tabs on every citizen using: the passport system, permits, passes, going to work, tickets for the military, the sick had to have a certificate confirming their inability to work etc... If you were not working, you were persecuted and taken to court. Icons were hidden in drawers; construction of houses was closely watched, the dimensions of rooms measured to ensure there were no hidden areas not manifested in the plans. Men were not allowed to grow beards, fearing they may be secret priests, and were carefully watched; if a woman dressed modestly, she was suspected of being a secret nun and they too were closely watched by their neighbors who were committed informers”.

Vladyka Lazarus Zhurbenko

This is how the future Archbishop of Chile but then Archimandrite Leonty (Filipovich, +1971) recalls his time in the Catacomb Church:

“Living in an illegal position and serving a very small number of my faithful parishioners, I didn’t always have an opportunity to go and secretly visit my nearest fellow priest. If I did this - having failed to sustain my loneliness – and engaged in conversation with someone like me, just to strengthen myself, I prompted an unpleasant anxiety in him: Has the neighbor noticed the arrival of an unfamiliar face or, has some undercover agent noted my arrival through his secret surveillance of the house? Etc... I too had a similar outlook. I tried to avoid meetings with the clergy at large or their friends. Through others, news reached me that there was somewhere a priest that was conducting church services secretly, but I had no wish to know who he is and where he was from, or in what house he held church services, because I didn’t know whether I could withstand the interrogation and not betray him should I be caught”.

Archbishop Leonty of Chile

Equally valuable written witnesses about the Catacomb (i.e. underground) service of the T.O.C. in the ‘30’s, have been preserved in the recollections of Protopriest Michael Polsky, Duchess N.V. Oorusov, V. Valsilievsk and many others. As well, many manuscripts of recollections by the Catacomb pastors have been preserved. Many of the direct eye-witnesses of those times are still alive – Catacomb true-Orthodox Christians, whose recollections provide invaluable witness to the existence and deeds of the Catacomb Church. But the most irrefutable witness about the Catacomb Church are the thousands of criminal charges against the Bishops, pastors and laity of the T.O.C., which to this day are preserved in the archives of the government - these are not available to the public.

As can be seen from the NKVD dossiers, the massive repressions against the T.O.C. peaked at the end of 1930. During this period, indiscriminate arrests began against formerly convicted “enemies of the people”. As a rule, they were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences (10-25 years) or capital punishment. Practically all the true-Orthodox Bishops and the majority of priests were arrested. The majority of these accepted a martyr’s death for Christ and for True Orthodoxy. Those priests and laity that remained free were forced to go deep into the underground – into the catacombs. This was the True Church –  the “chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:1-4), “the woman fled into the wilderness from the dragon” (Rev. 12:6), but without the outward forms of “institutes” and “administrations”.

As a result of the barbarous persecution and repressions against the True Orthodox Church in the USSR, She ceased to exist as a visible “institution”, having fled into the “catacombs” by applying Patriarch Tikhon’s Decree No. 362 “About self-rule”. This gave the Chekists the reason to confirm that the True Orthodox Church is no longer existed in the USSR. However, the Church is found where the Eucharist is performed and not where there is an outward organizational structure. And the Eucharist was being performed continuously in the T.O.C. communities right up unto the fall of Communism and beyond. Akin to the Christian communities in the initial decades, the True Orthodox Church continued to fulfill Her service, only now in conspiratorial and underground conditions, without outward “institutional” or “administrative” appearances, earning the unusual name – “Catacomb Church”. Under such conditions, it was impossible to have an objective centralized structure. As in the first centuries, the T.O.C. presented Herself as catacomb fraternities, scattered throughout the USSR, which were united not administratively but through witness in faith, and spiritually - through the Eucharist, and that is why She carried such a responsible name – the True Orthodox Church.

With regard to the situation of the T.O.C. in the USSR, it’s necessary to pay attention to the appearance of a communication of the second half of the 1990’s, stating that the so-called “Nomadic churches” traveled throughout the various corners of the land for the whole of 1928.

A more careful analysis of such information forces the conclusion that it doesn’t correspond with reality. Of course, in relation to the flare up in the Church (caused by the Sergianist upheaval between 1928 and 1930), Diocese Councils and meetings did take place in various dioceses, where questions about church life were discussed and consequent decisions made. There were also Bishop’s Conferences, particularly in Petrograd and other cities. Exiled Bishops on Solovki held continuous conferences, as well as in other places of exile. However, these measures did not assume the characteristics of an all-Russian and general-Church Council and more often than not, they had a local and Diocesan significance. More than that, at the very beginning, the ideologues of the T.O.C. refused the idea of the centralization of Church authority, opposing it with decentralization and local self-rule in accordance with Patriarch Tikhon’s Decree No. 362.

Thus, in the January of 1928 act of departure of the clergy of the Voronezh Diocese from Sergius Stragorodsky, Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh) wrote the following resolution: “Govern yourselves, independently – otherwise you will destroy me and yourselves”.

St. Joseph, Metropolitan of Petrograd

In sending similar answers to other Bishops who were in accord with him, he showed that he was opposed to the centralization movement. Thus, when Bishop Barlaam (Lazarenko) of Maikop (he looked after the parishes of the Kuban and the North Caucasus) came to Archbishop Dimitry (Lubimov) who was head of the “Josephite” parishes in Petrograd in March of 1928, they held a conference, “where it was agreed that he would act in a manner applicable to local conditions and to a large degree, independently”.

Likewise, on the 20^th of January Bishop Seraphim (Samoilovich), former surrogate to the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, wrote from exile to his “Beloved in Christ Bishops, Priests and laity of the Orthodox Russian Church”:

“…Concerning the governance of Church matters as pertaining to administration, we recommend to all of the faithful in God, to adopt the directions of the May 1922 call of the reposed - his Eminence Metropolitan Agathangel of Yaroslavl, and our circular of  December 16/29 1926, appealing in extreme need to his Eminence Metropolitan Joseph (of Leningrad), from whom we took the rights of the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, and with whom we are in the same situation of exile”.

St. Seraphim, Archbishop of Uglich as a young monk (in the center)

This is what Archbishop Andrew (Ukhtomsky) of Ufa wrote in 1928 regarding the anti-Sergius opposition:

“The Church is such an entity that it doesn’t need any outer administrative underpinning. The Church is the Pillar of Truth! It only needs an inner cleansing of its life: and this cleansing is produced through non-other than the process of Her inner life, but is never charged through orders from superiors”.

St. Andrew, Archbishop of Ufa

This essentiality to decentralize the Church authority was more clearly and fully revealed by one of the father-founders of the Catacomb Church – Metropolitan Cyril (Smirnoff) of Kazan, when he wrote in February of 1934:

“However, just as with everything akin to Renovationism, we cannot acknowledge the church administration which has been renovated by Metropolitan Sergius as our Orthodox administration coming by right of succession from His Holiness, Patriarch Tikhon.  And therefore, remaining in canonical unity with Metropolitan Peter, the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, under the present impossibility of contact with him, we acknowledge as the only legitimate thing the organization of the church administration on the foundation of the Patriarchal Ukase of November 7/20, 1920.”.

St. Cyril, Metropolitan of Kazan

In accordance with these precepts of the exiled Catacomb Bishops, this illegal practice spread throughout the whole country. In relation to this, there is an interesting narration of one of the eyewitnesses in the 1930’s, who had served his time in Stalin’s concentration camp for belonging to the T.O.C., and who eventually migrated overseas during the war years. According to him, in 1937, in a clearing camp near Irkutsk, 6 exiled Bishops of the Catacomb Church had a secret conference [this is the Synod of Ust-Kut], at which the condemnation of the Sergianist schism was confirmed, and their followers were forbidden to accept the mysteries “from the clergy legalized by the anti-Christian State”. Apart from this, they made the decision to preserve their independence as a branch of the Catacomb Church, and their prayerful unity: “All branches of the Church which are on the common trunk – the trunk is our pre-revolutionary Church – are living branches of the Church of Christ. We give our blessing to common prayer and the serving of the Divine Liturgy to all priests of these branches.”.

Moreover, an indicative witness may be found in the 1947 writings of Professor I.M. Andreyev’s:

“There was no administrative center and control in the Catacomb churches. Metropolitan Cyril and Metropolitan Joseph were regarded as administrators. The Locum Tenens Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsa was looked upon as the head of the Church”.

The witness of Professor Andreev, most accurately reflects the position of the T.O.C. during the times of Stalinist repressions. We once again underscore that the underground T.O.C. under such repressive conditions, consciously had no outer “institutional” or “administrative” structures. The T.O.C. Catacomb communities differed from the Renovationists and Sergianists, because they were not united administratively but through confession, spiritually, Eucharistiscally. 

To have an objectively centralized structure under the conditions of these most horrific repressions, was not only impossible but also dangerous. In their activities, the Catacomb Bishops and priests of the T.O.C. relied on the Ukaz of Patriarch Tikhon, No. 362 “About self-rule”, and consequently adhered (in relation to the extraordinary situation – persecution) to the practice of the “temporary decentralization” of Church life, which by itself excluded the necessity to convene the higher administrative organs – Councils, as well as the centralization of its own secret Church life.   

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 Chapter 5: The Catacomb Church during the War

With the outbreak of World War II, the Soviet regime's repression against the TOC intensified. In prisons and camps, mass executions of certain categories of prisoners immediately took place, including the clergy of the TOC. This was quite characteristic in regions, where the war front was approaching. Apart from this, according to the Soviet wartime laws, all TOC adherents that refused to serve in the army due to religious convictions, were shot. Likewise, clerics, and the most active members of the TOC, who were discovered by the NKVD through the denouncements of the “voluntary helpers” of the Chekists in the rear were shot – while other members of these catacomb communities were sent to camps to serve extremely long sentences.

Assisting in the repressions against TOC’s adherents was their precarious position and the tightening of the passport regimen.

An example is the fate of the prominent Moscow Catacomb priest – Father Sergius Mechev. He was arrested on the 7th of July, 1941 and imprisoned in the Yaroslavl prison: he had been hiding in a remote village when this secret priest was mistaken by the villagers for a “German spy”. He was then  handed over to the NKVD and was executed. A similar fate was shared by the Catacomb priest Father Andrei Boychuk who was from Kiev: on the 7th of May, he was tracked down and arrested. By a decision of the NKVD, he was shot on the 7th of July 1941. Likewise, the Catacomb priest in Moscow – Father Alexander Gomanovsky (in secret monasticism Daniel), was hunted down and imprisoned where he subsequently died. In the province of Kostromsk, Father Alexander (Bogoslavtsef) and many others suffered the same fate. As did Archbishop Barlaam (Ryashentsev) who died at the beginning of the war. He was arrested by the NKVD in July 1941, and on the 26th of August, was sentenced to death. This was later commuted to 10 years in a labour camp. He died in Vologda prison on the 20th of February 1942.

In addition to the intensification of repressions against TOC’s followers who were “at large”, the attitude towards those of them who were already in prison and exile became tougher. Thus in the Obozersk labour camp in Arhangelsk province, “Josephite” Most Reverend Father Dimitri Shpakovsky from Kiev, died on the 15th January 1942. At the beginning of 1940’s, the former Vicar of Kiev-Pechersk monastery – Arhimandrite Macarius (Velichko) died in prison after being arrested and jailed in 1937 for belonging to TOC in the Oster Chrnigov province. Many other TOC’s priests that were arrested at the end of the 1930’s were executed while in labour camps. Apart from that, other imprisoned TOC adherents shared the same fate for refusing to work on Sundays and other Church feast days because of their religious belief – they were called “refusers”.

Even in blockaded Leningrad, the true-Christians were actively persecuted. Hence, on the 17th July 1942, on the northern fringes of Leningrad, NKVD arrested Arhimandrite Claudius (Savinsky), Monk Eudoxius (D’eshkin) and A.F. Chistiakoff, at whose house they found a small Catacomb church in the attic. By the decision of a military tribunal, on the 15th August 1942, all three were executed by firing squad. In 1943, in the city of Leningrad, a well-known Catacomb confessor – Father Michael Rozhdestvensky, was arrested. This is what his parishioners recalled:

“Right from the beginning, Fr.Michael remained in the besieged city, and secretly continued to conduct Church services at private homes; he was denied the right to get a daily ration of 125 grams of bread, which every working townsperson had a right to receive. It’s indeed a miracle that he survived the terrible winter of 1941-1942. However, in 1943, on the day of Baptism of our Lord and during the Church service – before the Cherubim was sung, there was a loud knocking at the door and Fr.Michael was arrested by the NKVD agents before the eyes of the frightened parishioners. On the way to prison and in the “black crow” (prison van), one of the agents said to the arrested Fr. Michael:

“Michael Vassilievich, how lucky you are…”

As it happened, the day before, 5/18 January, the blockade was broken and the death penalty revoked!

“If we were able to arrest you yesterday morning, you would have undoubtedly been executed” – explained the interrogator.

Under such “fortuitous” circumstances, after – at the time – quick “trial”, Fr. Michael was sentenced to 10 years in the Vokrutinsk labour camp, after which I 1953 - he was again sentenced to a further 10 years on the basis of false accusations against him…”.

With regard to German occupied territories: the situation was quite the opposite as there was freedom of religion, which allowed many Catacomb clergy to emerge from underground and openly conduct services. After the retreat of the Soviet soldiers from cities and villages, local churches started to reopen that were previously closed by the Bolsheviks. For propaganda value, the German High Command welcomed the religious activity of the population and granted them permission to restore their churches.

As eyewitnessed by many individuals, after many years of persecution and terror – for the first time, the townsfolk had the opportunity to attend church services without fear. The population commenced to restore churches with unprecedented enthusiasm. This is how an eye-witness priest recollected those events when he arrived at Pskov in 1941: “When we arrived at Pskov, tearful parishioners came up to me in the streets for a blessing. At the first church service, all the present laity went to Confession…It wasn’t the priests that came to spiritually strengthen the people, but the people that were there, strengthened the priests”. Between August and November 1941, this priest alone, baptised 3500 children.

Similar scenes were enacted in other occupied territories. Thus, in only one Kiev Diocese, where in 1940 there remained less than 10 active churches: in 1942, there were 8 monasteries and 318 churches re-opened, serviced by 434 priests. By the middle of 1943, the number of Orthodox parishes grew to 500 and priests, to 600. Before World War II, the Diocese of Zhitomir had 2 parishes: by 1943, there were nearly 300. This is how the ruling Bishop Leontius (Filipovich) recalls those times: “The inspirational Church feeling during the short-lived period of German occupied territories i.e. when the Church was temporarily free of Bolshevik yoke, confirmed that the Orthodox people was able to preserve in their spiritual catacombs, a pure faith unsullied by the Soviet contamination”.
In relation to the massive opening of churches, there was acritical shortage of priests to serve in them. That’s why, quite often, people willing to serve as priests were ordained. Very often priests were obliged to travel to their parishioners in many villages, baptising 150 to 200 people in a day: conducting Confessionals and church services under open skies. Thus, Protopriest Vladimir Benevsky from Poltava, (he was a stonemason before the war), baptised 2500 people in Polktava shortly after the arrival of the German forces. Because of the large number of people that converged on the city wishing to be baptised, this Mystery was performed as in ancient times – in the river.

The restoration of the destroyed church-parish life in many regions was headed by TOC clergy, who emerged from their catacombs.

It’s worthy to note that even before the arrival of German forces, the Sergius Bishops and priests – headed by Metropolitan Nicholas (Yarushevich), retreated with the Soviet forces. That’s why many dioceses in occupied territories didn’t have ruling Bishops.

In the Ukraine, the Catacomb clergy entered into communion – even before the war – with the Hierarchs that served in the Western Ukrainian territories occupied by Poland (in the structure of Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church), and that’s why they had not participated in the Sergius Declaration and its pro-Soviet politics.

The initial suggestion was that the Church in the Ukraine be headed by the existing illegally held position Archbishop Anthony (Abashidze). However, the German authorities didn’t even allow the publication of this in the Ukrainian press, prompting historians to “give the understanding that the formation of an opposition for a hierarchy control in the eastern regions may become Governor-Generals”. In 1941, a Council of Western-Ukrainian Orthodox Bishops that resided in territories under German control was convened in the Pochaevsk monastery. Despite Sergius’s appointment of Metropolitan Nicholas (Yarushevich) as Exarch of the Ukraine, the Council selected Metropolitan Alexis (Gromadsky) as head of the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine, and declared his self-rule.

Apart from that, the Council revoked the commemoration of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) in all the parishes and dioceses on the Ukraine territory. The MP refused to accept the decision by the Pochaevsky Council, and continued to regard Metropolitan Nicholas (Yarushevich) as Exarch of the Ukraine, while the majority of the Bishops-autonomists, and fell under censure for “betrayal of the Fatherland”and “assisting Fascism”. As A.V.Pisarev noted, “In its administrative decisions, the Autonomous Church was completely independent, and that’s why the spiritual circumstances were far different to that of the MP. With the arrival of German forces, the commemoration of the MP Hierarchs (calling upon the people to partisan struggle and loyalty to the Soviet authorities) ceased. As there had been no contact with Moscow under German occupation, the Autonomous Church didn’t appear formally self-governing, although in fact it was independent from Moscow”. This last fact was the reason why the majority of Ukrainian Catacomb clergy, having emerged from underground, acknowledged Metropolitan Alexis (Gromadsky) and his Hierarchy.

One of the first to unite with the “autonomous” was the moderate wing of the Ukrainian “non-commemorationists” with the head Bishop Anthony (Abashidze) who didn’t recognise nor commemorate Met.Sergius (Stragorodsky), but preserved their prayerful communion not only with “Josephites”, but also with “Sergianists”. The decision of the Pochaev Council to refuse to commemorate Met. Sergius (Stragorodsky) in all the parishes and dioceses throughout the Ukraine was adopted due to the influence of the group of “non-commemoratives”, after which they massively flooded into the Ukrainian Autonomous Church. Their example was followed by the representatives of other True-Orthodox groups. Coincidentally, two Bishops from the Polish Autocephalous Church – Policarp (Sikorsky) and Alexander (Enozemtsev) didn’t recognise the Pochaev Council’s decision and declared that they would re-establish the Ukranian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). In February 1942, they held a Council in Pinsk, where they united with the surviving self-governing UAOC clergy of “Lipkov consecration”, accepting their ordination and consecrating new Bishops. The restored UAOC was headed by Bishop Polycarp. Later, Bishop Theophil (Buldovsky) (of the Lubensk schism), attached himself to UAOC, declaring himself as a Metropolitan. Thus, the schism was set between the “autonomous” and the “autocephalous”. The occupying German authorities supported in all sorts of ways the division of the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine, and obstructing all their efforts to unite. As Hitler prescribed the politics to be applied in all occupied territories: “We must try to avoid for one Church to satisfy the religious needs of large areas: every village must be turned into an independent sect”. The Ukrainian Catacomb clergy reacted negatively to such anti-stand against the Church. In as much as UAOC “new formation” accepted “self-ruling” clerics, the Catacombites refused to into communion with “autocephalists”, preferring the “autonomists”. At the Chernigov assembly of the “autonomists”, they were supported by the “pillars of TOC’: Hegumen Alipius akovenko), Archimandrite Lawrence (Proskura), Priest Nikita (Lehan), and Hegumen John (Seletsky), becoming the Secretary to Bishop Veniamin (Novitsky) of Poltava. In Zhitomir – Archimandrite Leontius (Fillipovich), who was ordained as Bishop of Berdich. In the Soomsk region, Archimandrite Nectarius (Nuzhden), Hegumen Anthony (Veter) who refused to accept Met. Sergius’s Declaration and other inhabitants from The Glinsk wilderness retreat, who were trying to re-establish it. Similar happenings were occurring in other regions of the Ukraine.

During this period, many impostors appeared on the scene projecting themselves as TOC Bishops and Priests. Thus, with the German occupation in Alexandrovsk, the married “renovationist” Archbishop Nicholas (Avtonomov) hid his marital status and began presenting himself as a Catacomb Bishop of TOC. Metropolitan Alexis of the Ukrainian Autonomous Church accepted him in this role and he was appointed to head the Mozirsk Diocese. Later, with the death of Metropolitan Alexis, Nicholas Avtonomov was exposed as an impostor, disrobed and forbidden to conduct Church Services. However, in his role as Bishop of the Ukrainian Autonomous Church, he had time to ordain a number of priests for the Catacomb Church. In Gomel, Maxim Evtihievich Golubev (born in 1910) was ordained as priest by him. After the return of the Soviets, he went with the Catacomb Church having refused to join the MP. For the rest of his life, Fr. Maxim, served underground, spiritually nourishing one of the Catacomb fraternities in Gomel. During the secret Church Services, he commemorated the First Hierarch of ROCA. However, other Catacomb priests in Gomel and other regions would not accept him as a priest because of his uncanonical ordination. He died in Gomel in 1999. Concerning to Nicholas Avtonomov: he tried to join ROCA in 1944. With this in mind, he wrote to ROCA in the name of Metropolitan Anastasius (Gribanovsky), and even tried to enlist the help of General P.Krasnoff and the head of the “Church Evaluator” to support his application. However, after extensive investigation into this matter, the ROCA Synod refused him on the 11th October 1944 on the grounds that: “in view of his nonconformity with the canonical Orthodox Bishops”. On the 9th April 1945 the ROCA Synod refused his request for a review. After this, N.Antonomov went over to the Roman Catholics and was elevated by Pius XII to the rank of Metropolitan with the task of nourishing Russian and Ukranian Greco-Catholics in Germany. He was arrested there by the American Occupying Administration on the grounds of espionage for the USS. He died in 1979 in the USA.

It’s worthy to note that not all Catacomb TOC pastors accepted the “autonomists”. Thus the former Vicar of Kiev-Pechersk monastery, Archimandrite Anthony “Zhertienko” 1950), left the underground at the beginning of the war in 1941, and returned from Harkov to Kiev, where he wanted to head up Pechersk monastery. Because he didn’t acknowledge the authority of local Bishops, he separated from the brothers, who chose Archimandrite Valerie (Ustimenko) as the vicar. After this, he wrote a letter to ROCA’s Metropolitan Seraphim (Liade’) of Berlin and organised a fraternity on the outskirts of Kiev, in a village of Mishelovka, where he conducted Church Services in a former school hall, which was converted into a church. During Church Services, he commemorated the mentioned ROCA’s Metropolitan. Upon the return of the Soviet authorities, he relocates from Kiev to Harkov and finds himself in an illegal situation, but continues to conduct secret Church Services until his death in 1950.

In Harkov where the German’s were supporting autocephalous Metropolitan Theophilus (Buldovsk) (so called “Lubenski schism”), he was handed by them all the churches in the region, while practically all the TOC priests remained in a Catacomb state. The occupied forces created a Religious Section headed by A, Lebedinsky, who handed out official permissions to open churches and the right for the priests to conduct Church Services, on the condition that they acknowledge Metropolitan Theophilus. More than this, this Religious Section appointed priests to various parishes only after they had received a letter of blessing from Met. Theophilus. In November 1941 an appropriate circular was issued and sent to all the priests with instructions for their “unconditional performance”. In essence, such actions of the new authorities didn’t differ from that of the Bolsheviks, when only the “renovationists” and “Sergianists” supported this.

Naturally, the dictates prescribed by the occupying forces could not be fulfilled by the Catacomb clergy, and that’s why they remained in a catacomb situation as before.

Thus, Monk Seraphim (Zagorovsky), consentient with Archimandrite Anthony (Zheretienko), with the appearance of the occupying Germans, returned to Harkov and established a secret women’s monastery: “Quiet wilderness” in honour of the Icon “Quest for the Fallen”. Archimandrite Nektary (Chernobyl) recollected about the last period in Fr.Seraphim’s life: “During the German occupation, he returned to Harkov and established a house-church. I used to go there with others and have Confession and Holy Sacraments”. Eyewitnesses remember that when the German soldiers visited him, they were amazed by the staret’s appearance, who was in continual prayerful state, and they used to take off their boots before entering so as not to disturb him. In the summer of 1943, with the advent of the Red army, he migrated to Poland where he died.

Apart from Fr.Seraphim, there were two more Catacomb priests remaining in Harkov – former inhabitant of Kiev-Pechersk monastery, Monk Amphilochius (Furrs), and former Vicar of the Moscow Saint Daniel Monastery, Archimandrite Tikhon (Baliaev). At the same time, Fr.Seraphim remained in contact with a Father Paul (Volodin), who during the occupation performed Church Services in a distant village even though he didn’t acknowledge Metropolitan Theophilus (Buldovsk).

The “Catacombists” also didn’t recognise the hierarchy of the new-styled Rumanian Church, who received the dioceses of the eastern Ukrainian Odessa, Herson and part of Nikolaevsk from the Germans. A similar situation occurred in the Don. Here the position of TOC became more complicated in relation to the occupying forces giving the Diocese authority to the former “renovationist” Bishop Nicholas, whom they categorically rejected as being without grace.

Apart from this, in the words of I.Osipova, the politics of the occupying authorities directed – above all else - their support for the nationally orientated groups of the Orthodox Church, which complicated the situation for TOC in the Baltics.

A different situation existed in the North Caucuses and Kuban where nearly all the local Cossacks belonged to TOC, while the townspeople and immigrants – to the “Sergianists” and “Renovationists”.

Initially, the environment for TOC was quite favourable in the Orlov, Smolensk and Belostok-Grodnen Diocese, having entered into the structure of the Middle-European Metropolitan district of ROCA. However, the German Command changed its attitude toward the opening of a ROCA Diocese in Russia, and began to seriously hinder the activity of ROCA in the Western-Russia lands.

While the TOC clergy in Voronezh, Briansk, Belgorod, and Kursk districts enjoyed favourable conditions, they had their difficulties. Officially, the Kursk and Voronezh Diocese were handed over by the Germans to Harkov autocephalous Metropolitan Theophilous (Buldovsk). But the “Catacombites”, who occupied many churches, refused to commemorate him during Church Services, while some Catacomb clergy didn’t emerge from the underground.

The situation in Belarus was developing in an unequivocal manner. On the one hand, the local Bishops pronounced their independence from the MP, and often supported TOC by even ordaining priests for them e.g. in 1942, Bishop Pancratius ordained Fr.Theodosius (Goncharov – born in 1910 in Sherstin Gomelsk district). He was appointed vicar of a church in Red Gomelsk district. With the arrival of the Red Army, he entered into a Catacomb situation and was accepted by TOC’s Fr.Hilarion (Andrievsk) from Voronezh. He died on 15th Nov. 1972.

On the other hand, in the same district of Gomelsk, the well-known starets Fr.Theodore (Rafanovich) was forced to once again to be in a Catacomb situation during the occupation as he was pursued by both the Germans and Red partisans.

It’s worthy to note that the partisan terror was inflicting serious damage to the Church. As the Patriarchal historian V.Tsipin notes: “The occupants weren’t the sole masters of the occupied territories. Across the vast territory a partisan war was being waged. The partisans not only hid in the forests, from which they made their strikes against the Germans, but they occupied villages, districts, various places, and committed audacious diverse acts at railway lines and in townships… The local populace were obliged to regard them as a real force… Not one person from the partisan movement sympathised with the Orthodox Church. The core of the partisan detachments was made up of warring atheists”.

TOC adherents and the population in general, often became casualties from partisan terror acts. In turn, the responsive terror from the German occupants also resulted in thousands of peaceful inhabitants, among who were true-Orthodox Christians. As one of TOC’s adherent from Chernigov – P.Pashenko recalled: “In a village of Kozar, Nosovsk district, the partisans killed a passing German. The Germans responded drove all the inhabitants and the priest out of the village, and set fire to the church. They also torched the village Pisk, as well as in the Bahmachsk and Basanks regions”. There was also serious damage inflicted on TOC fraternities by the forcible expatriation of villagers to labour camps in Germany.

TOC was in an extremely difficult situation in occupied Pskov, Novgorod, Leningrad and Kalinin regions, where the occupying authorities completely supported the MP Exarch – Metropolitan Sergius (Voskresen). As a consequence, many TOC’s clergy in this region could not leave their underground situation. As well, as Professor I.M.Andreev (Andreevsky) recounts that despite the insistent demands by the Patriarchal Exzarch Met.Sergius, the true-Orthodox priests that succeeded in beginning to perform Church Services in some of the opened churches, categorically refused to commemorate the Locum Tenens from Moscow: “Thus, for example, despite the strictest order to commemorate the Soviet Metropolitan Sergius, the Diocesan Protopriest Fr.V., (in the town of Solts Novgorod, former Most Reverend of the churches in Minsk and then becoming a Catacomb priest), categorically refused to commemorate Metropolitan Sergius. This occurred in 1942. in 1943 and 1944, he secretly started to commemorate Metropolitan Athanasius (head of the Overseas Russian Church”.

The Catacomb Monk Tikhon (Zorin) also refused to subordinate himself to the Most Reverend Sergianist. In 1943 he and many parishioners were relocated by the Germans to Latvia, where they were forced to work on the defence installations at a station at Vetsaul station.

Because of the counteractive actions of the occupying command, the situation of TOC’s clergy in the north-west remained quite unfavourable. Even those priests who attempted in 1941 to emerge from underground were quickly forced to return to their Catacomb status. Bishop Macarius (Vassiliev), who attempted to restore the contact with ROCA’s Metropolitan Seraphim (Liade’) of Berlin, head of the Middle-European District. The monk sent by him
was taken off the train and turned back.

As M.V.Shkarovsky rightly noted: “Because the large part of TOC’s fraternities in the Leningrad district remained underground during the German occupation, allowed them to prolong their activities – even after the end of the war, despite the deaths of their leaders”.

These observations by the historian, very accurately reflect the situation of TOC’s fraternities that have experienced the German occupation – not only in the Leningrad district but in other regions. The emergence of the Catacomb priests and fraternities from underground that crossed over into a legal status and joined the autonomous hierarchs in the Ukraine, Belarus, North Caucus and other regions, had to leave before the returning Red Army who cruelly repressed all those that couldn’t migrate in time. The emergence of the Catacombites from underground after the war - with their rejection of conspiratorial habits and openness in daily practices, made them vulnerable to the partisan and Soviet penalising institutions. That’s why the post-war period is renowned for the massive vanquishment of TOC’s fraternities.

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Chapter 6: The Catacomb Church in the post-war period

 With the advance of the Soviet army, immediate repressions ensued in the liberated territories. The Priests and faithful of TOC that emerged from underground during the German occupation, were subjected to especially zealous “cleansing”. In accordance with war-time laws, many were shot without trial in the first days in taken cities and populated areas. Thus on the 20th Sept. 1943 with the taking of the village Svin in Chernigov, the Red soldiers killed Hegumen Alipius (Yakovenko) with hand grenades. In the same year, ProtoPriest John Shmon and many others were executed.

Advancing Soviet army into occupied territories forced many Orthodox Priests and faithful to migrate overseas, where they attached themselves to ROCA and other Orthodox jurisdictions. Identifying and destroying refugees became the work of a special punishing counter-intelligence unit under the title of “DETOS” (Death to Spies), which was created on Stalin’s orders in 1943, controlled by special sections of NKVD USSR. It is known that more than 100 clerics and Catacomb activists were either arrested in the Soviet zone in Germany, or handed over by the Americans or English: and were later shot or sent to labour camps for lengthy periods.

Many true-Orthodox Christians were persecuted through accusations of supporting “Vlassovists”, “Krassnovists” – (Generals who fought against the Soviets), “Forest brothers” and other anti-Bolshevik units; others for “betraying the Fatherland” and “spying”. It’s practically impossible to determine accurately the number of TOC’s followers being persecuted between 1942 and 1944, inasmuch as during this period, the NKVD arrested and executed them not on the basis of them being accused of “belonging to TOC, but on the standard charge of “assisting the Fascists” and “betrayal of the Fatherland”. With that, these accusations applied to everyone that worked during the occupation period in an official institution or department, or to those that simply sought help from the occupying forces.

The intensification in repression assisted the renewal of the passport system for the population of the former occupied territories. On the 3rd April 1942, under the NKVD USSR Order No.0114, saw the implementation of temporary instructions “on the re-establishment of the working passport in those areas that have been liberated from the German-Fascist seizers”. According to the data of the Main Administrative Section of the NKVD USSR Militia, in the tally of the population of those areas that were liberated from the German occupants, the Bolshevik militia determined: 66,500 people “had worked in servicing the German Army and in German institutions”, 12,800 people whose close relatives left with the Germans, nearly 2000 people of “criminal element”, 3,300 deserters from the Red Army, and avoiding the mobilisation call. In 1944, these were the following figures: 22,700 avoided the mobilisation call, 18,700 deserters, 19,500 criminals, 66,100 people “that worked in German establishments, 34,300 lackeys and aiders to the German forces”, 419 traitors and family members. The tragic fate of these people ended in Soviet labour camps and prisons. A substantial percentage of them were TOC adherents, who were regarded as “traitors to the Fatherland” and helpers of Fascism”.

The identification process in the liberated regions by the NKVD was often assisted by partisans as well as Sergius clerics. During arrests, TOC’s adherents didn’t identify themselves as such, and as a consequence, were not included in the numbers arrested that belonged to the Catacomb Church.

Here is a characteristic example, which will explain the position of TOC’s clergy during those years. This is how the Catacombists recall their situation: “When the Soviet godless authority was changed to a German one, Fr.Nikita (Lehan) had an opportunity to openly conduct Cgurch Services. He served in a village called Belousovka, where he had many spiritual children who had remained faithful to True Orthodoxy… After the war ended, he was again arrested. Before this happened, he was free to remain a Priest and serve officially in church, provided he joined the Communist Party. Of course, Fr.Nikita refused this proposal…” For refusing to commemorate the Soviet Patriarch and declining to join the Party, Fr.Nikita was sentenced to 25 years in a labour camp. Similar fate was shared by hundred’s of TOC’s clergy.

With the arrival of the Soviet authority, once again the clergy faced a choice: acknowledge the “Soviet Church” or go underground. Despite many temptations offered by the authorities, many Priests chose the latter choice.

On the whole, the post-war period for the Catacomb Church was pronounced in the weakening of its position: faithful and clergy were once again arrested on massive scales: in many regions, the parishioners were obliged to resettle in villages and towns that were not ravaged by war, while part of the Catacomb clergy and laity, migrated overseas where they entered into the ROCA’s composition. The suspended (for many years) system of conspiracy and contact between underground groups was reactivated, which was extremely dangerous under the given unlawful conditions.

In the words of I.Ossipova, “From Autumn 1941, arrests of Moscow Patriarchate clergy ceased, but didn’t apply to TOC’s unlawfully serving clergy. From 1941 to 1945, the official tally recorded by government safety instrumentalities of these arrested clergy numbered more than 7,500.

Another historian, M.Shkarovsky noted that “the persecution of secret clergy especially intensified in the autumn of 1943. The Soviet authorities, in line with a radical improvement of relations with the Moscow Patriarchate, attempted in 1943-1946 to destroy the “Catacombs”, which they did achieve in many areas”.

This can be seen when in Feb. 1943, in the town of Monastirshin in Orichevsk zone (Kirov region), the faithful declined to participate in collection of moneys for the war effort. As it was discovered that in this town, the vicar of the local church – Father Vassily (Perminov), was a supporter of anti-Sergius Bishop Victor (Ostrovsky). Having found this out, on the 5th April 1943, the authorities handed the church over to the MP, while Fr.Vassily was arrested. In relation to the protests by the faithful, on the 24th November 1943, the president of the Council on Russian Orthodox Church Affairs, G.Karpov explained to the Kirov empowered Council in regard to Fr.Vassily that he belonged to the “Victorites” – “… group that is hostile to the Soviet authority and who still holds to this position, and in relation to this, is influencing the faithful”. Karpov recommended also to “… sending there a Priest through the local Bishop, who would be able to convince the faithful that the ‘Victorites’ were schismatics”. Looking at the overall situation, this was the last example of lawful church service performance in the USSR by a representative of an official Church opposition. Father Vasilly was sentenced to be shot, but this was commuted to 10 years in a labour camp. He died in 1944 in Vorkutlag.

Besides the new repressions against TOC, a serious ordeal was experienced in those years through the theatrical “election” of the new head of MP – Patriarch Alexis (Simansk), in which the eastern Patriarchs participated who were invited by the Stalinist government. Believing in the promise of a new Patriarch and receiving expensive gifts from Stalin himself, some Catacomb pastors – headed by Bishops Athanasius (Saharov) and Gabriel (Abalimov), acknowledged Alexis as Patriarch. Even the well-known Catacomb confessor Monk Guria (Pavlov) initially “believed in the re-birth of the Russian Church” and attempted in 1945 to enter the clergy ranks in the Diocese of Gorky, and later the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. However, he was refused because he didn’t have a passport.

The majority of Catacomb Priests that emerged from underground and attached themselves to the MP, found themselves in a foreign environment: many of them were accepted into its ranks, while those that dared to show disagreement, were arrested by the NKVD and exiled to labour camps.

Even more cruel repressive measures were organised against the clergy that refused to recognise the new Soviet Patriarch. In all the formerly occupied territories, the clergy were systematically called up by the newly appointed Sergius Bishops and Most Reverends, who demanded their acknowledgement of Patriarch Alexis - in writing. Those who refused were arrested, and only a few succeeded in hiding and joining the Catacombs. And as Professor I.Andreev wrote that after the election of Patriarch Alexis in 1945, the clergy that were in labour camps, were also subjected to a special “re-registering” process whereby the NKVD agents asked them whether they acknowledge the new Patriarch Alexis. Those who refused had their sentences increased, or were shot summarily, while those who agreed, were often released before serving their sentences in full and appointed to parishes.

A Catacomb confessor, Sergei Stepanovich Denisov, who spent time in labour camps in the 1940’s for belonging to TOC, recalled how he was summoned to have a chat with his “godfather”.

“Sergei Stepanovich, we know that you are a church-going person who knows the Church Services and Church regulations. Currently (this was after the war), we have decided to open churches. However, we don’t have enough Priests. If you agree to conduct Services, we will release you”.

“Citizen commander, first tell me: the Church which I will be serving – is it united with the authorities?”

“But of course it’s united”.

“And are the authorities united with Christ?”

He laughed and said: “No”.

“Well, and we cannot be united with you because you are godless”.

“To you, everything is clear. Go and sit out your sentence…”

In those years, such oppressed confessors in Soviet labour camps numbered many. This was witnessed even by Sergius Bishops. Thus, after being released from confinement, Bishop Manuel (Lemeshevsky) in his letter to the MP administrator N.Kolchitsky wrote the following: “I certainly heard a massive amount of censure from the faithful in the labour camps because I subordinated myself to the ‘Communist-Soviet Patriarch’: that I remained loyal to him and didn’t join the opposition”. Likewise, Bishop Athanatius (Saharoff) that joined the MP wrote to Patriarch Alexis: “During my stay in imprisonment, I frequently met with clergy and faithful who because of their zealousness about purity of faith… while well-disposed toward me, didn’t accept my blessing and didn’t want to be with me in prayerful communion as a Bishop that commemorated the name of Your Holiness”.

 Inasmuch as the labour camps were overflowing with Priests and faithful refusing to recognise the “Soviet Patriarch”, many of them were sentenced without any legal process, and subjected to: beatings, bashed to death, worked till they dropped, starved them and refused them any medicinal help with their illnesses. This resulted in a heavy death-toll among them. Those who did survive these inhuman treatments, had either their sentences extended, or were shot. As M.V.Shkarovsky noted: “Between 1944 and 1945, a series of fabrications against the counter-revolutionary Church organisations were introduced, through which many clergy were sentenced to extended periods of punishment or were shot”.

An unknown Catacomb Bishop wrote a letter at the end of 1940’s to F.M: “For the sake of the truth about the “Moscow Patriarchate”, many had suffered. As a rule, Bishops and Pastors that refused to acknowledge the “Moscow Patriarchate” as a Church-canonical institution, would not be found at liberty but in captivity: in bitter labour: in isolated regions. Everyone that spoke out against the “Moscow Patriarchate” and censuring her activists, were severely oppressed. Today, for us Orthodox Christians, the words of the law of “Freedom of religious practice” must be understood as freedom to praise the “Moscow Patriarchate”: “Patriarch Alexis” and his colleagues. But a word spoken against the “Patriarchate and Patriarch is regarded as a crime. And if you only knew how many are suffering today just because their religious consciousness cannot accept that the “Moscow Pagtriarchate” is the incarnation of Orthodoxy in Russia”.

Although the change in Stalin’s politics toward the Moscow Patriarchate saw the release from labour camps and prisons of many Sergius clergy during 1943-1945 and post-war period, over a three year period – 1946 to 1948, there were more than 4300 cleric s arrested around the country. In the words of the historian I.Osipovva, “the big number of those arrested were secret clergy of the TOC”.

Thus, in one Moscow region alone, where there were 10 active Catacomb clergy in 1941, an indiscriminate programme of searches in 1945 saw all of the TOC clergy arrested. In their concluding accusations by the MGB USSR against the Moscow group of TOC clerics indicated:

“In the period from March to May 1946, the Management of MGB USSR arrested illegal Priests for their anti-Soviet activities. They were Krivolutsky V.V., Gabrianik A.I. and their adherents… in total, 17 individuals. The result of the investigation into the hidden activists in Moscow and headed by illegal Priests of the anti-Soviet underground Church, whose participants – of hostile disposition toward the Soviet authorities and not recognising the legal Church but created underground churches in private homes of their adherents, where besides holding private Services, conducted anti-Soviet agitation… On the outlined basis and governed by Statute 208 and order of NKVD USSR of No. 001613 on 1941 and consequential matter No. 8303 of accusation against Krivolutsky V.V. and others, numbering 17 individuals, to be directed for examination by a Special Conference, and having offered to apply the death penalty”.

In supporting “its Church”, the Soviet authorities revealed a new active eagerness in its battle with the Catacomb communities of TOC. In the middle of 1940’s, the NKVD-MGB and Council for TOC Affairs, created special commissions that conducted surveillance, exposure and liquidation of such groups. The NKVD had a Special Section 5 that was in charge of the operations. The seriousness of concern over the activity and spread of the Catacomb Church’s influence, and the application of measures by the Soviet regime to combat them, is witnessed in a report dated 5th October 1944 from the President of Special Section 5 – NKVD General Karpov, to the Deputy President of Soviet People’s Committee of USSR, Molotov.

It says: “… In regions where there are insignificant number of active churches, and where there are no churches: there are massive spread of Church Services in private homes of the faithful, or under open sky – in cemeteries and church buildings, which attract hundreds of faithful. With that - in all these cases, unregistered clergy are invited by the faithful to conduct these services… which are systematically done in a row. In the main, the actions of these unregistered church groups and clergy that are in them are predisposed toward opposing the legal Patriarchate Orthodox Church, condemning it for its loyalty to the Soviet authorities… Being under the influence of these groups, a great number of these faithful fanatics sharply differ from faithful groups that are under the influence of the patriotic (pro-Soviet) inclined clergy of the legal Church. This situation attracts all types of recidivism (reverting) to a significant religious stimulant in the form so-called “renovation” of icons: spreading letters from “Saints”; conducting services in the fields close to wells: various prophesies, as well as agitating about the persecution of religion and Church in the USSR”. Noting the ineffectiveness of the use of brutal force, because “…the faithful seek fulfilment of their spiritual needs in the underground, organising “forest”, “cave” and “catacomb” churches, the General presents a Jesuit proposal in the battle and the establishment of control over the faithful: “… For the purpose of combating illegal church groups: we should widen the net of active churches to 2 or 3 per region in areas where they are widely dispersed, and not stopping there - increasing the opening of churches in districts where there is already a significant number of active ones”.

In aiming to control the actions of the faithful and weaken the activities of TOC communities in the 1940’s, MP again began to open churches in many regions of the country. Thus, between 1944 and 1947, there were 1270 churches handed over to the MP. In return, the clergy were obliged to inform local sections of the NKVD (re-organised in March 1946 into MGB) of all the details of the church-parish activities.

The report by the MGB head of the Altai region reads: “With an aim to sever the influence of the anti-Soviet elements over the faithful, with the government’s permission, between 1943 and 1944, a number of churches were opened where patriotic activity was carried out – aimed at the moral-political binding of the faithful… In all these active churches, the clergy systematically appeared before the faithful with religious-patriotic sermons”.

Apart from utilising the MP for controlling the faithful, the Soviet sections of Government Security apparatus began an active programme of exposing and liquidating underground TOC fraternities. The execution of this task was revealed in a secret letter from Beria addressed to Stalin, which informed that “NKGB of USSR unearthed anti-Soviet sectarian organisation of “True Orthodox Christians”, made up mainly of diehards and individuals formerly tried for anti-Soviet activities. Groups of this organisation can be found in some districts of Riyazan, Voronezh and Orlov provinces”.

The active participants of this organisation are in an illegal situation… The sectarians are living a parasitical lifestyle and are conducting anti-Soviet work: they pay no taxes; they don’t fulfil governmental obligations; they shun service in the Red Army; they ignore summonses by various Soviet departments, and don’t accept Soviet documents.

Because of fear of Soviet influence on their children, they don’t allow their children to attend school instead bringing them up in a spirit that is hostile to the Soviet authorities.

The arrests of these participants are not yielding the necessary effect on the members of the organisation, because of their belief: “Whoever is arrested and sitting in prison – has been chosen by God and is on the cross, and he or she is ensured of the Heavenly Kingdom”.

Taking into consideration the contaminating effect from the organisation on the collective farms in regions of Ryazansk, Voronezh and Orlov, the NKVD have made a decision to gather all the participants of the organisation “True Orthodox Christians”, together with members of their families and resettle them in the Omsk, Novosibirsk regions; Altai and Krasnoyarsk provinces, and disperse them onto special settlements, where they will be under surveillance of NKVD”.

Beria suggested to Stalin to forcibly deport TOC adherents from 83 centres and 538 households – this action to be realised in one day, on the 15th July 1944. This involved some 1673 individuals. This proposal received Stalin’s approval. In the words of I.Osipov: “In the summer-autumn period of 1944, massive arrests and deportation of TOC communities took place in many regions of European parts of USSR. Many clergy and TOC activists were either shot or sentenced to 10-25 years in harsh labour camps. In summation, many illegal TOC communities that existed in these European parts of the country were in fact destroyed”.

Even today, we have eye-witnesses to these tragic events, like a Catacomb confessor Sergey Stepanovich Denisov recalls:

“In 1944, all the faithful that were being sent out from Lipetsk and Ryazansk provinces were gathered at the station Lebedianka. At 5 o’clock in the morning, some 5000 people were collected from their homes. At the station, they prayed and read Akathists. Just before this manhunt, my father and I hid in a “funeral” cellar. We sat and waited till the next day arrived. Suddenly, there is someone crawling toward us – it was my friend from the Berehidno village, Sergey Morozov. He later became a Catacomb Priest and died just recently. He knew of this “funeral” cellar and announced: ‘come out – everybody has been taken away’. So we emerged from there, and left to live in another place – in the Priadihin and Orlov regions. At first, we lived in a hay loft, and in winter, we made our way to a pigsty that only had 1 piglet – there were seven of us. We were disc overed there by the president of the local collective and were arrested. The people gathered and were shouting at us as though we were animals. We were taken to Orel and imprisoned. There were ten of us in the cell… there were several Priests…”

In these recollections, the real number of people being deported was significantly higher than that Beria relayed to Stalin in his secret letter. S.Denisov recounts that at the station Lebedianka alone, there were 5000 assembled there. As M.V.Shkarovsky notes with regard to the genocide of TOC’s faithful: “Probably, this would have been the sole example at that time of the massive deportation of the Russian populace. The growing influence of the Catacomb Church at the opening years of the war was a serious worry to the high authorities”. In 1944, a large part of the True-Orthodox Christians in the non-occupied European parts of the USSR was deported or imprisoned in labour camps. The following two years saw a brutal persecution of the True-Orthodox Christians that were found in the formerly occupied territories”.

Thus between 4 and 20 March, TOC Priest Alexander Bakalinsky, Monk Jacob (Moskvit) and Monk Erasmus (Prokopenko) and others were arrested in Kiev and its districts.

In 1945, one of the most authoritative hierarchs in TOC – Bishop Peter (Ladigin), was hunted down and arrested for belonging to TOC, and was sentenced for 5 years to a Central Asia labour camp.

On the 13th January 1945, arrested in the Voronezh region for belonging to TOC were Priest John Skliarov, Monk Anthony (Girchev), Abbas (Chernih) and a group of Catacomb Monks. While the majority received sentences of 8 years in labour camps, where many of them perished, Monk Anthony was tortured to death on the 17th April before his exile to the camp. In the following year, in the Voronezh region: “Under the control of MGB, there were 11 anti-Soviet ‘TOC’ groups uncovered and liquidated, which numbered 50 people in total”. They received sentences ranging from 6 to 10 years in labour camps.

On 11th February in the Tambov region, the Caatacomb ArchimandriteAlexander (Filipenko) was hunted down, arrested and sentenced to 10 years in a labour camp.

Having escaped from the camp, the fleeing Bishop Peter hid in the hills of Tian-Shan, where he established a secret monastery, some 8 days travel from Dzhelalabada (“Kirghiz USSR). In November 1951, the monastery was discovered by a military helicopter and destroyed, while a launched manhunt resulted in most of the inhabitants being arrested and exiled to labour camps. Bishop Peter managed to avoid the dragnet and escape to Belarus and in Kuban, continuously changing his address. Being practically the sole canonical hierarch in the Catacomb Church at the beginning of the 1950’s, he – in essence, became Her First Hierarch. A variety of catacomb groups united under his omophorion, and he ordained more than10 secret priests. He died in Glazov (Oodmurtia) in 1957.

On the 11th February 1946, in the Tambovsk region, Catacomb Archimandrite Alexander (Filipenko) was hunted down, arrested and sentenced to 10 years in a labour camp. On the 21st April 1946 in the town of Podmoskoviye, Priest Vladimir Krivolutsky was arrested for belonging to the TOC and sentenced to 10 years in labour camps. On the 17th May 1946, the well-known Moscow Catacomb Priest was hunted down, arrested and imprisoned, where he died on the 9th September 1952.

In 1946, Catacomb Monk Seraphim (Shevtsov) was arrested in the Harkov region and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment. As one follower remembers: “At his trial in Kiev, the General offered Fr.Seraphim his own parish, provided he registers and conducts his Services with the other priests that signed under Met.Sergius’s “Declaration”. Fr.Seraphim rejected this offer and was exiled to serve out his time”. In those years, such propositions were offered to practically all the arrested TOC Priests. Some agreed to this condition, but there were many that refused, preferring jail and even execution for their belief and ideals. They were punished with exceptional cruelty.

Active actions by the NKVD-MGB in uncovering and liquidating underground TOC pockets were organised throughout the whole country. Hundreds of Catacomb Priests and thousands of laity were sentenced to lengthy periods in labour camps, where many perished in confinement.

On the 14 February 1947, in his summarised account for year 1946, MGB General Karpov wrote with satisfaction that the inner work “facilitated the reduced the growth of the underground Church in the country”.

However, the following year saw the continuation of repressions against TOC. On 9th April 1948, in response to the Central Committee’s request for a report from the Voronezh VKP Department of Propaganda and Agitation on the situation in their region, it responded: “Together with the officially active Orthodox churches in the region, there exists a great number of secret groups of Orthodox faithful, among which the most numbered are called “True-Orthodox Christians” (shortened to TOC). They confess the Orthodox Faith, but don’t acknowledge the present active churches because they are bound to the “godless Soviet authority and Communists”… Over a period of 15 months beginning in 1947, the MGB Department uncovered and liquidated some 11 anti-Soviet groups of “True-Orthodox Christians”… Members of these groups, systematically participated in clandestine gatherings, where along with prayers, they discussed initiating various forms of anti-Soviet activities among the population. During the elections of official organs of the Soviet Authorities, they called upon the people not to participate in them: not to work in the collectives: refuse to pay taxes and government levies. They also carried out activities to recruit new participants into the anti-Soviet groups”.

Analogous reports came forth from other regions of the country, from Viteb, Penzensk, Riazansk and other areas. In its addendum notes on the 6th April 1948 to the report by the MGB Administration for the Altai district, they point to: “There is a part of the Orthodox faithful that have been caught up under the influence of the anti-Soviet element, which is boycotting the re-opening of churches, motivated by the fact that Services are being held there for the Soviet authority. In 1946, the clandestine Church groups numbered 138 at the time, whereas at the present time, there are only 32. This sharp decline of these secret groups is the result of the application of prophylactic measures on the part of the MGB”. Notwithstanding the application of repressive “prophylactic measures” taken by the MGB, the remaining 32 groups contained more than 1500 faithful.

As M.Shkarovsky notes; “In the second half of 1948, the situation became more complicated. In relation to the change in the government’s Church politics, conditions turned to the worse, and with the cessation of the opening of new churches, a definite “rows of growth” of the Catacomb Church occurred. On the 5th August 1948, General G.Karpov wrote to the Cabinet Ministers of USSR that the Council of TOC Affairs “finds that MGB and MVD of USSR must jointly develop measures for the liquidation of every type of clandestine deviated religious Services and rites in secret houses of prayer”. Karpov was referring to the large scale of like activity, and was pointing out that in the Raziansk region where there were 86 official active churches; there were also 193 populated centres where Services are being conducted by unregistered Priests. In November 1948, the MGB commander of the Tulsk region, reported on the activities for the past period of “church illegals” and itinerant monks, noting the actions of 30 Orthodox Priests that do not acknowledge the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1949, in the Gobelsk region, there were 4 such priests that conducted secret Services.

On the 25th April 1949, an alarmed G.Karpov sent a special secret informative note to the Soviet Ministers of the USSR “On the religious survivors that are expressed in the fulfilment of rites and massive prayers for the secret (unregistered) Church, and on those individuals that are engaged in clandestine Church activities”. In this note, the following was underscored:

“Apart from the registered churches, monasteries and clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, which were fully authorised by the Council to conduct surveillance and effect measures against the strengthening of the Church’s influence over the populace, as in the various districts, there appears to be a significant number of individuals have been exposed that are outside the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, who are carrying out illegal “Church ceremonies” and other priestly responsibilities. These individuals…are conducting illegal prayer meetings - in most instances – in those populated centres where there are no functioning churches”.

…And if the activities of the registered houses of prayer, churches and clergy, as well as other authorised Soviet local organs function under surveillance, then those illegal houses of prayer and their unregistered clergy are acting without any control and unhindered, except in cases where the MGB apparatus intervenes.

These actions over many years by the secret prayer houses, caves, secret huts etc… present themselves extremely damaging politically, because the organisers of these houses of prayer and their clergy often have very favourable grounds for their activities, while the local agencies – including administrative, don’t know how to combat them”.

According to the words of M.Shkarovsky, the battle of the Soviet agencies with TOC is greatly hampered by the difficulty in uncovering these secret fraternities. G.Karpov wrote that the predominant number of them is located in one area, and at the end of the 1940’s, the especially strong activities by the Catacombites appeared in the districts of Voronezh, Tambov, Litsepk, Ryiazan and other areas.

In 1950, repressive actions against TOC by the MGB continued. As noted by M.V.Shkarovsky that in 1950-1953 period, a new wave of mass arrests of Catacombites rolled across the country. Thus in January 1950, there was a criminal law No.688 passed by the MGB in the Saratov district, under which some 120 people were arrested. Among those arrested “for participating in the anti-Soviet Church organisation TOC”, was novice Theodosius (Zhurbenko, future Catacomb Bishop Lazarus) the spiritual son of, and ordained by, the Catacomb Starets Monk Theodosius (Kashin). On the 13th January 1951, after special deliberations by the MGB, he was sentenced under Statutes 58-10 and 58-11 to 10 year’s incarceration in the Karagandin labour camp. The other True-Orthodox Christians received sentences ranging from 5 to 10 years.

Beside this, in September-November 1950, the Military Tribunals of the MVD convicted tens of True-Orthodox Christian groups in the Yaroslav, Tambov and Ryaznsk provinces, during which 2 of their leaders were killed in detention. Similar courses of action were taken in other provinces and regions throughout the USSR – right up to Stalin’s death in 1953.

In 1950, Monk Vissarion (Markov, in Shema Seraphim), was again narrested and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in Potmensk labour camp for organising “underground TOC cells. On the 13th February 1950, in the Tatarsk region, 17 people were arrested and convicted and sentenced for belonging to TOC: Hegumen Paisius (Rozhnov), Monks Gennadius and Philaret and 5 others to 10 years; 6 individuals to 8 years; 3 others to 5 years. In the summer of 1951, 5 more TOC activists in this province were arrested and sentenced: 4 persons to 25 years in labour camps and I to 10 years. On the 4th January 1951, Catacomb Monk Anuvius (Kapinus) was arrested in the Voronezh province, followed shortly with arrests of further 10 individuals from his community. They all received 5 to 10 year sentences in labour camps. As shown in the conclusion of the charge sheet: “Kapinus A.A was the ringleader of the so-called True-Orthodox Christians anti-Soviet organisation, which was created by him with the aim to sabotage the promotion of government measures”.

On the 24th January 1951, Monk Tikhon (Zorin) and 6 of his fellow helpers were tracked down and arrested in Leningrad. He was accused of “uniting the participants in the previously destroyed by the MGB anti-Soviet TOC formations”, and gave material aid to “the repressed for their anti-Soviet Church activities” etc. In October, Father Tikhon and three representatives of the fraternity were sentenced to 25 years in labour camps and confiscation of their belongings; 3 others to 10 years and one woman, to 8 years. Sentences were to be served in a Special MVD USSR labour camp in the Irkutsk province.

27th March 1951, the Catacomb Priest Theodore Smirnoff was arrested in the Kostromsk province and sentenced to 10 years in a labour camp. At the same time, charges were laid against 14 Nuns from a secret TOC monastery. On the 25th April 1951, Monk Metrophanes (Vassilieff) was sentenced to 10 years in a labour camp for belonging to TOC. On the 23rd December 1951, Monk Guria (Pavlov) was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in a labour camp. As well, 10 individuals associated with him were also arrested.

A manhunt was launched for a well-known Catacomb Priest Alexander (Turuntaevsky). Continually on the run, he simulated suicide by leaving his clothing and documents on the banks of a river with an accompanying note that read: “I am tired of living under the Soviet rule!”… Upon discovering the clothing and the note, everybody decided that he drowned himself. However, the Priest swam across the river and hid in various villages and townships. In Omsk, he changed his name to “Orlov”, and under this name secretly lived and served in Siberia. This was one of the few instances where the Catacombites were able to outfox the repressive Soviet agencies and disappear.

During the 1951-1952 period, manhunts for TOC adherents continued throughout the land. Thus, in November 1951, using a helicopter, the militia uncovered a TOC monastery in the hills of Tian-Shanya (Kirgiz USSR) that was headed by Bishop Peter (Ladigin). Manhunts were organised for the monastics in the hills, and those caught received lengthy prison sentences. In the same year of 1951, in company with other members of the fraternity, the secretly ordained (by Bishop Peter) Monk Timothy (Nesgovorov). On the 9th December 1952, one of the last remaining TOC Bishops - Bishop Sergius, was tracked down and arrested in the Klints Briansk province. On the 13th April 1953, he was sentenced to 25 years labour camp with confiscation of his possessions. He served his time in the Dubrav labour camp where he died on the 16th April 1955.

These are only some examples of repressive measures taken against TOC at the beginning of the 1950’s.

In the spring-summer of 1951, the Agency for TOC Affairs completed an investigation. In its report there was a summarised notation that the number of unearthed secret houses of prayer have been reduced by two and half times in comparison with the number that existed in 1949.It was also noted that the number of TOC adherents have been halved in the Tambovsk and other regions.

And still, despite the active repressive measures taken by the Soviet agencies, they couldn’t eradicate TOC fully. Thus, as M.Shkarovsky informs at the beginning of 1953 that in observing the active actions of the True-Orthodox Christians in a series of districts in the country, the Soviet Agency for TOC Affairs wrote: “The Tikhonites are enemies of the Soviet authorities: they don’t join the collective farms: opposed to anything new: avoid Council elections: shun census, accounting and other requirements”. The March report to N.C.Khruschev from the Divisional head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, and Department of Sciences and Culture, underscored the existence of “a large number of nomadic (not registered) priests, who were unearthed by the hundreds in 1953”.

In order to curb the intensification of TOC’s influence, many of Her jailed adherents had their sentences extended. Catacomb priests found themselves jailed for life: as one sentence was served, they received another one, causing many to die in labour camps. Thus, after serving his 10 year term from 1943, the well-known Catacomb confessor - Father Michael Rozhdestvensky was served with another 10 year sentence in 1953 in the Vokrutinsk labour camp. There were very many similar cases.

With regard to these tragic events, an unknown Catacomb Bishop A. at the end of the 1940’s and beginning of 1950’s, in his letter to F.M. wrote: sabre-rattling

“Moscow Patriarchate is self-congratulatory noisy and sabre-rattling with the armaments of civil authorities, is the self-congratulatory. At the same time, the remaining faithful to Christ and His Church, the clergy roams and hides in impenetrable places, being cruelly persecuted by the “eye” of the Moscow Patriarchate servants. In denying their true obligations, they hunt down true pastors, catch them and hand them over to be tortured.

Where possible, the persecuted pastors offer to Christ the Holy Sacraments in hiding places. Alas, in these reverent Church Services, everything is “not like before”, i.e. there are nearly no worshippers and no former elegance and jubilation. The Service is conducted in a barely audible voice in the presence of only 2-3 worshippers. There are many that crave to pray there… but this would incur the attention of many watchers.

Often, very often, the priests that remained faithful to Christ and His Church were persecuted with unbelievable cruelty, and they had no place where they could rest their heads. Life was very harsh for these good pastors! They are in constant state of apprehension and danger…

Perhaps, such pastors have remained few in number. Much money has been allocated to catch them. There are many “workers” that are labouring in this activity. Already, not one or two Orthodox pastors have been seized and jailed for a slow or not slow elimination. Already, the time has come of such repressive measures against the Orthodox Christians that the pages of the Church’s early history pale into insignificance. The picture of the Orthodox Church’s situation in Russia becomes more distressing if we add many facts about the Judean efforts serving the Moscow Patriarchate. These servants, moved by a satanic spirit were more assiduous in their persecutions of Christians than the Orthodox enemies themselves.

Here, I was speaking about the persecuted clergy of Christ’s Church that were enduring this while being “free”. The huge majority of pastors and archpriests were in prison from which there was no release until death. Great is the number of these Heavenly citizens that are truly not of this world! Their deeds of confession and torture for the Church are celebrated throughout the whole land”.

In these persecutions, the Catacombites repeatedly witnessed the active participation of representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate. These facts support the archive documents. Thus, in a secret memo to the Soviet Ministry of USSR, directed by the President of the Council for TOC Matters, General Karpov concerning “the massive prayers by the secret (unregistered) Church and of the individuals involved in the clandestine Church activities” stated:

“Those authorised by the Soviet… were unable to elicit facts (clandestine Church activities) and under these given circumstances, used fragmented data received from clergy and faithful that they came into contact with in the course of their work.

In their letters to the Soviet, the Patriarch and Episcopate repeatedly asked for administrative measures to be applied to those who conducted, which they called, “unilateral Services”, and to those clergy that conducted “rites” without being registered. In 1949, even the Synod twice adopted decisions on this particular subject…

In the opinion of the Soviet, the organisational battle against these superstitions must go along the path of political-enlightening work at those locations and particular individual instances, while the administrative measures have to be applied by the militia and prosecutor’s office”.

This document demonstrates graphically who really stood behind the indiscriminate manhunts by the NKVD-MGB, and arrests of TOC adherents in the 1940’s – 1950’s.

And still, despite the cruel persecutions and the resultant absence of a centralised Church management and administrative unity, TOC remained the sole spiritual being in the USSR that didn’t serve the theomachist regime. In going underground, Her clergy and faithful destroyed the NKVD-KGB plans for a full subordination of the Church to them and Her following gradual destruction. In private conversations, even the Soviet Patriarch Alexis (Simansky) silently acknowledged the rights of the Catacomb Church. As the Church Patriarchate historian D.Pospelovsky writes that Kiev’s Metropolitan John (Sokolov) - who was hostile toward TOC – complained about the activities of the True-Orthodox Christians in his area to Patriarch Alexis in a conversation, and received the following confidential response: “You shouldn’t complain but thank God that your Diocese has so many courageous Christians who haven’t bowed down to the spirit of atheism like we have done. One day, their prayers will save our Church”. It’s difficult not to agree with this evaluation. As this historian declares: “The spiritual life of the Catacomb, unofficial Church was more intense than that of the open, more controlled by the authorities. As an example, She continued to engage in the religious upbringing and educating children, which was impossible under the conditions of the official Church”.

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Chapter 7: The Catacomb Church in the years of Khrushev's "Thaw"and Brezhnev's "Stagnation"

After Stalin’s death in 1953, massive arrests in the country began to slowly cease as the “de-Stalinalisation” commenced. During 1955-1956, many clergy, monastics and laity from TOC received amnesty. As noted by M.Shkarovsky, “new activities by the Catacomb Church began in the middle of 1950’s. Hundreds, possibly thousands of clergy and missionary-faithful were released from labour camps that made up a significant part of the “prisoners for faith”. In the words of one commentator, “approximately from 1957, reports by the KGB, party sections and government departments, became agitated from the information of the secret activities of the True-Orthodox Christians. In November, all the departments of the USSR Communist Party Republics sent to the head of the Sector for Agitation, K.U.Chernenko, reports about the situation of the religious life in their regions”. The accounts, in part, reported specifics about the activities of the underground TOC communities. On the 25^th November 1957, K.Chernenko received information regarding the unification of religious groups from the President of the Council on matters of religious cults, A.Puzin. In the words of M.Shkarovsky, he was underlining that “groups of True-Orthodox Christians that didn’t acknowledge the Soviet authority and broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church, can be found in the Chernigov, Harkov and Tambovsk regions”. 

 

During this period, the Soviet authorities in the Ukraine were seriously concerned at the activities of the underground communities of True Orthodox Church – True Orthodox Christians, and this is witnessed by the declaration of the Authorised Council on matters of religious cults at the Moscow conference of Soviet Ministers in November1959. In his words, “among the unregistered groups of believers, it’s imperative to turn serious attention to the activities of the ‘True-Orthodox Christians’ and other groups, inasmuch as these ‘sects don’t recognise the Soviet legality. The essence of the main argument was that “these sects abide in the orbit of operations of enemy counter-espionage agencies (American and Western German); the court cases that were held in the Ukraine involving the leaders of these sects, uncovered their ties – in particular with America, Western Germany, Canada and others…” 

 

It’s worth noting that these similar accusations aimed at TOC, were heard not at the apex of Stalin’s repressions, but during the so-called “Khrushchev’s thaw”. From this, it can be seen that despite the condemnation of Stalin’s repressions and partial rehabilitation of their victims, the hostile stance of the Soviet regime toward TOC remained unchanged. 

 

The repressions against TOC followers were generated by decrees from Moscow. For a long period, officials in various positions didn’t know how to deal with them in relation to the “new course” of the CPSU. Thus, on the 19^th December 1957 in the Tartar SUR, acting on the neighbour’s betrayal, the militia burst into the home during a secret Church Service. They checked the documents of those present, made a list of their names and then detained the visitors for interrogation after which they offered them to leave town immediately. It appeared as though the troubles were over. However, the local militia sent their account to their superiors, who at the beginning of March 1958, ordered the search of 15 True-Orthodox Christian’s homes where photographs, letters and religious literature was seized, while on the 28^th of March, a Catacomb priest Philaret (Rusakov) and a group of TOC adherents were arrested in the town of Yamashi. In the same year they were sentenced jail terms ranging from 10 to 25 years. The majority of additional arrests in Autumn of faithful received terms of 5 to 10 years in labour camps. In November 1958 to May 1960, arrests were extended in the Tartar Republic of many TOC community members, who received 5 to 25 years in labour camps. In February 1959, similar arrests of TOC followers were initiated in the Lipetsk region. 

 

 On the basis of archives Professor A.N.Kolodny informs that in 1958, Special Soviet Sectors in the Ukraine uncovered an illegal TOC group in the Habarovsk region, headed by Bezhutrim, Semenenko and Chichkalem. In the words of the investigator, “This was a whole underground group with an underground church and monastery”. This data supplements that of Professor L.M.Shugaev’s, which elaborates that the group “was engaged in re-establishing an underground TOC in the Harkov region. It had registered apartments and an established Catacomb church, where molebens were conducted and literature of religious nature was stored”. 

 

Many TOC communities in the Harkov region were headed by Hieromonk Seraphim (Shevtsov), who passed away in 1955. His supporters described how during the Khrushev era, “when it was extremely dangerous to gather for prayer in private homes due to the persecution by the Soviet authorities, Batushka decided to excavate a cave. Not far from Harkov was a village called Tishky where there was a high hill with a road running past the length of it. In the large backyard of the home that was situated there – where father Seraphim lived temporarily, very thick bushes grew in the middle of the hill. It was decided that in this unobserved spot to dig this underground area. This was dug very carefully and long, under Batushka’s directions. When this was done, the excavated cellar measured the size of a large room. The air to the catacomb was pumped artificially as a normal ventilation system was impossible. But the icons were in their places; the image-lamps and candles were burning and Liturgies were performed. This went on for a time. Then one day, an unknown woman came with a group of adherents. When the priest saw her, he asked his parishioners: “Who did you bring? Gather up everything quickly – we are leaving this place”. In the early morning, even before sunrise, all the faithful with icons in their hands led by Father Seraphim, quietly walked out of the cellar and walked through the surrounding fields, covered with sunflower seed plants and corn, (which was the height of a person) and through the outlying forest – slipping through the clutches of the KGB agents that had surrounded the house but didn’t notice the departing group. That new woman was the wife of a local priest of the Sergian Church. She shared her knowledge of the catacomb Church with her husband, who in turn informed the KGB”. 

 

The KGB hunted Father Seraphim for a very long time, but couldn’t find him. His location came to light a year after his death in 1955. As witnesses recall that “not knowing that he died, the Sectors of Internal Affairs kept looking for him”. When finally his grave was discovered, the army was called to lift the coffin from the grave. When the digging reached his coffin, one of the corners had rotted away, exposing a gap from which came and aromatic fragrance… Upon opening the coffin, they found the body in a condition as though it was buried yesterday. When the commander was told that the body had been interred for one and a half years, he was outraged and said: “This cannot be”. When he was finally convinced of the veracity of what was stated, he was totally perplexed. The body was quickly taken away. This happening was watched by a large gathering of townspeople from Chuguyev, some 45 kilometres from Harkov. Today, the location of Father Seraphim’s resting place is unknown. The commander only said one thing: “We will make sure that no crowds will come to his grave”. 

 

 In 1958, Catacomb priest Father Nikita (Lehan) was once again arrested in Moldavia where he was hiding. In the same year, a TOC group was discovered in the Lugan region, headed by Sorokin, Belih and Tsimbal. In the words of A.N.Kolodno this group “had their own printing press and printed anti-Soviet literature, appealing to overseas to the overseas public”. G.Tsimbal was brought to account for his authorship of “Manifest of Orthodox Christians”, which expounds a short history of TOC and the basis of Her credo. During the KGB operations in the Soomsk region, a number of activists of the underground TOC community “Stephanites” (who were followers of Father Stephan Podgorny) were arrested and accused of espionage and anti-Soviet activities. 

 

 In February 1961 i.e. at the peak of “Khrushchev’s thaw”, attention was paid in the KGB account regarding the TOC activities in the Karandin region. KGB operatives reported to the CC CPSU that in the period of August-September 1956, public court cases were held in Temirtau and three Karandin regions involving 41 TOC activists. As reported by M.V.Shkarovsky, more than half were sentenced for expulsion from the regions for 5 years. Some of the members of the community were denied parental rights. Alma-Atinsk studio even made a provocative film titled “A soul from darkness”. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 1960s, the activities of illegal groups (numbering more than 250 members) continued in 5 working villages at Temirtau. Their head was a priest that served out his sentence – Archimandrite Alexander (Fillipenko). In the words of M.V.Shkarovsky, despite the repressions, these groups had a secret women’s monastery, houses of prayer and a rather large underground monastery in Matalurgichesk. Representatives of these TOC communities, avoided the census in 1959, refused to receive Soviet documents, serve in the Army and participate in social activities. They had ties with underground TOC in Tambovsk, Harkov and Gorkov regions. During September and November 1960, all leaders of the Karandin TOC communities were arrested. 

 

As Professor D.V.Vedeneev informs, the situation at the end of the 1950’s in the USSR, according to the KGB tally, there were “up to 300 local TOC groups with more than 6000 participants who held postions that were extremely antagonistic to the canonical Church. 

 

Soviet investigators, A.I.Demianov and N.F.Zibkovets reported that Siberia had tens of underground TOC monasteries and communities, which even had theological courses. Large hotbeds functioned in the Voronezh, Tambovsk, Kursk, Lipets and Riazan regions, as well as in the Urals, Kuban, North Caucus, Byelorus and the Ukraine. 

 

Thus, in 1959 the following were unearthed in the Ukraine: 14 TOC communities of more than 200 in the Chernovsk region; 13 communities in the Poltava region; 3 communities in the Kirovogradsk region and 1 community in the Tcherkask region. The situation on the 1 January 1962, as reported by the KGB departments with regard to unearthing the activities of underground TOC communities in the Ukraine, revealed: I in Kiev; 2 in Kirovogradsk; 2 in Crim; 4 in Odessa. Apart from this, the situation at 1 January 1965 is reported as having uncovered 19 TOCh. communities of (around 272 individuals) in the Vinitsk region; 3 in Odessa; 3 in Chernigovsk etc… The report in 1973 informs about the activities of 5 TOCh. Communities in Chernigovsk region; 2 in Hmelnitsk region, while in 1977, 3 communities are reported in the Chernigovsk locality of the Zhitomirsk region. 

 

 In L.M.Shugaev, all this data is conditional and doesn’t reflect the real situation in the TOC-TOCh. Communities. In her words, “the activities of the TOCh. Communities functioned under a complete ban. That’s why it’s practically impossible to give a precise geographic spread and their composition in the Ukraine”. 

 

In order to elicit and study the activities of the underground TOC and TOCh. Communities, at the end of 1950’s and the beginning of 1960’s, the KGB gave their blessing to the especially organised religious-sociological expeditions in the regions of Tambovsk, Voronezh, Lipetsk and Riazan, by the Institute of history from the USSR Academy of Sciences. At the same time, during this period, there were massive arrests in these and other provinces of participants of “anti-Soviet underground Church members and supporters of the so-called True Orthodox Church of Tikhonite orientation." 

 

On the 20^th August 1961, the KGB sent a report to the CC CPSU regarding the “fanatical activities of the Church members”, which noted the actions of the underground activities of the TOC-TOCh groups in many regions of the country, and proposing the commencement of a campaign against them. 

 

On the 10^th of November 1963, the president of the KGB V.Semichastny directed to the CC CPSU, another detailed report detailing the TOC activities in Ivanovsk, Kemerovsk, Permsk, Novosibirsk, Cheliabinsk regions and also in Kazakhstan.The KGB head informed them of the facts concerning the dissemination of anti-Soviet pamphlets by the TOCh. followers; the sabotage of elections of Soviet bodies, and even damaging 3 statues of Lenin in 1961. In one of the KGB reports “about the antagonistic displays of the sect” in Central Asia from the 29^th January 1964, states that in Kirgiz, these “antagonistic works” were performed by an active, clandestine group of True-Orthodox Christians, who had special stockpiles and hiding places. The arrests of the principals and application of prophylactic measures, succeeded in ending their activities”. 

 

As M.Sharovsky notes, “at the animation of the True-Orthodox Christians activities, the authorities reacted with a third after the war “crusade” against the Catacomb Church. 1 It lasted from 1958 to 1964. While the firing squad didn’t apply, the most severe penalty measures were confined to life sentences in labour camps, psychiatric institutions and exile. Apart from 25 year sentences, shorter sentences began to apply, which were continually extended so that people were “behind bars” for 10 years. 

 

Between 1950 and 1960, 300 Catacomb women laity and nuns were sent to a strict women’s camp in Mordovia. In the middle of 1960’s, this special zone for the faithful was removed, and the “prisoners for faith” transferred to the zone for political inmates on the Potma island. In 1968, the significant number of the 1500 prisoners in the 11^th camp section were made up of clergy of different confessions, including from the Catacomb Church that were serving 25 year sentences. 

 

 In 1961, persecution of underground Christians was legalised officially in the USSR. In the “Instructions on employment of legislation on cults” on the 16^th March 1961, which was confirmed by the decree of the Soviet for ROC matters, and the Soviet for religious cults, TOC and TOCh and others were classified as “sects, whose creed and activity carry anti-government and fanatical character”. This document banned the legalisation of designated religious groups; while under the law, activities of religious organisations and unregistered (illegal) cults was categorically forbidden and any violation of it was subject to criminal charges. Thus, from 1961, massive persecutions against the TOC-TOCh adherents began throughout the country with accusations of violations of the cult legislature and of non-registration of communities. This directly affected TOC-TOCh who had refused Soviet passports and the regular “passportisation” of the populace. For refusing to be registered and receipt of a passport, many of them were subject to new arrests and imprisonment. But most of all, from the 4^th May 1961, this law affected TOC-TOCh under the heading “freeloaders”, under which their clandestine priests and monks were regarded as such for their refusal to work in Soviet enterprises and collectives. 

 

Additionally, in 1964, a decree was issued on a legislative level that would remove parental rights to a child if it is brought up in the faith and attended Church Services. With this, the children of TOC-TOCh followers were forcibly placed in children’s homes through the “people’s courts”. Often, the parents were placed in psychiatric hospitals. 

 

As noted by I.Osipov, “in mid 1964, the country was awash with antireligious hysteria. However, after Khrushchev’s removal in Autumn of 1964, the tension surrounding the religious problem was alleviated through a number of measures… From that time, they deployed a more temperate tactic of slowly ousting the religious organisations from the country’s social life. In 1965, many priests of the official Church were released from camps and prisons, but did not apply to the secret priests and laity of TOC. Persecutions against them continued”. 

 

In relation to the period of Brezhnev’s “stagnation”, TOC’s followers were as previously, subjected to all types of oppression and discrimination. Catacomb Archbishop Lazarus (Zhurbenko) recalled how during a secret Church Service in a private house in the Ukraine, the local militia appeared suddenly. The priest that was performing the Service – Hieromonk Theodosius Agapit (Zhidenko), was a former member of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery. “The neighbours that know the local residents, informed the authorities that there many people come to this house. Loud knocking, militia, everyone’s documents were examined”. While no one was imprisoned, everyone had problems. All lost their jobs – doctors, engineers, teachers, and Monk Theodosius “was confined to an old people’s institution without visiting rights, so as to limit access to him”. However, the faithful spirited him away, and he eventually died in Irpen near Kiev”. 

 

This is one of few occasions when the TOC followers in the USSR were subjected to relatively “humane” punishment: and even then because the local militia didn’t realise that they were dealing with TOC and not the MP. Had the informant gone to the control section of the KGB and not the local militia centre, the majority of participants at the Service would have been punished severely, including prison terms. 

 

Although there have been rare instances of a similar nature. As one parishioner of Father Nikita’s (Lehan) of Harkov recalls: “Our priest lived undercover trying not to leave the house in the daytime. None the less later, the faithful realised that there was a priest living with us and started to come around for prayers. Before long, the neighbours and the whole street knew that we held prayer sessions; people began to talk and the first persecutors were “ours”: two widows whose husbands were killed in the war. The lodged five protestations against us which stated that there was a clandestine priest living with us: that we pray at night: that we don’t vote and don’t fly flags on Soviet holidays. There were other declarations against the neighbours. However, all these declarations fell into the hands of our local militiaman, who happened to be a secret faithful. He came to us and warned us to be more careful and relocate the priest to another place. We did that. This was a true miracle from God, which saved Father Nikita from arrest. We then began to move to a new location so as to get away from the widows, otherwise they would never rest easy and keep on writing. The Lord helped us as we found an inexpensive house, and with the help of some good people, bought it. Thus, Father Nikita began to live in this new home: serve Church Services and nourish the ever-growing parishioners. Even so, due to the continued persecutions, at times he had to hide in the attic or leave the township for a few months… This was in the beginning of the 70’s. 

 

At the beginning of the 70’s, the persecutions of TOC-TOCh followers are again intensified. 

 

Thus on the 16^th July 1969, at the All Soviet conference, the president of the Council of religious matters V.A.Kuroyedav noted: “We have facts which talks about the resurgence of activities by the True-Orthodox Christians, who in a series of instances where they conduct themselves openly and brazenly”. 

 

The cruel attitude toward TOC during the times of “Khrushchev’s thaw” and “Brezhnev’s stagnation” was tied in with at the time of Khrushchev’s massive closure of active MP churches and divestment of registration for legal communes. From the 14,477 MP churches that functioned in 1949, only 7,523 remained opened in 1966. Correspondingly, more than 7000 MP priests and parishes were deprived of their registrations. The closure of churches was implemented with agreement of the MP authorities, which evoked a feeling of opposition among the priests, who were suffered most through the massive closure of churches. Priests that were the opportunity to lawfully conduct Church Services were dismissed summarily by their Bishops. 

 

Many of them were forced to seek civilian jobs in Soviet businesses and institutions. Many resigned publicly and renounced their faith. But others (mainly from the rural areas), continued to nourish their flock outside of churches. The country saw the appearance of a significant number of “unregistered communes”, who began to drop out from the control of authorities, as well as the MP hierarchs. According to Soviet statistics, on the 1^st June 1962, there were 199 such unofficial parishes unearthed in the autonomous Republics of the USSR, compared to 177 official (registered) ones. In the remaining part of the country, there were more unregistered parishes; in the Gorkovsk region – 136 to 50 officials: in Ulianov – 64 to 16: Penzensk - 52 to 29. In the whole of the Russian Soviet Federation of Soviet Republics, there were more than 670 unregistered communes: in the Ukraine – 89 and 17 in Kazahstan. 

 

Often, the clergy disgusted with the behaviour of their ruling hierarch, not only commenced to hold unsanctioned Services in private homes, but ceased commemorating those Bishops that have betrayed their clergy. Thus in Chernigov in the 1960’s, Hieromonk Tikhon and Protopriest Alexander Makov crossed over into an illegal situation and ceased to commemorate the ruling MP Bishop. Many of such priests joined TOC. Thus in Kirovo, Protopriest Alexander Hademsky and Priest Mitrofan Koval forfeited their registration and joined TOC. There were many faithful laity that went over with such priests. Often, not having support from the MP clergy and hierarchy, “unregistered” communities turned to the catacomb true clergy for their spiritual nourishment, thereby joining with TOC. Apart from this, having forfeited their registration and their churches, some MP priests attempted to establish personal independent groups. Thus, Hieromonk Gennadius (Sekatch) and Theodosius (Gumenikov), having served in an MP church at Verbovka before it was closed, created a personal following known as “Sekachovites”. Akin to them, was an illegal group called “Alfeyevites” (named after Hieromonk Alfeyev Barnaulsk): “Cherubimovites” (after Cherubim Decktiar): “Leontevites” (after Leonty Gritysan) and others. 

 

The massive closures of churches resulted in the escalation of illegal and uncontrolled (by the authorities) church life – the exit of many of them into underground and even joining TOC – aroused a serious concern among the Soviet agencies. After all, the uncontrolled and illegal Church activity, presented a huge danger by far for the totalitarian regime, than a legal and controllable one. The existence of organised underground TOC formations, having a rich expertise in illegal operations posed an extreme danger: should the “unregistered” communities – on the grounds of dissatisfaction and antagonism – decide throughout the land to collectively join TOC, this could erupt into a similar movement to the 1930’s “uncommemorativites”. And it would require a new campaign of mass terror and repression throughout the land – as it was in the Stalin era – in order to crush and annihilate it. The Soviet Safety agencies would not allow this. That’s why at the very beginning of the Khrushchev era, harsh attempts were undertaken in order to completely liquidate TOC. 

 

All this was done as one of the reasons that the faithful TOC-TOCh in the USSR, despite the beginning of “Khrushchev’s thaw”, were not only denied basic rights of freedom of conscience, but were also subjected to persecution from the KGB and MVD. 

 

Apart from attempts to liquidate TOC, Government Safety agencies undertook operations to split TOC. With this in mind, enlisted agents (MP priests as a rule) under the guise of Catacomb Bishops, who injected discord and schisms in the TOC communities. Many TOC followers regarded Seraphim Pozdeev, Gennadius Secatch, Cherubim Degtiar, Anthony Chernov, Vincent Chekalin and others as being such individuals. 

 

The difference in the applied methods was that if in Stalin’s era, a statement of “belonging to TOC” ensured the firing squad for the suspect or 5 to 25 year term in a labour camp – in accordance with 58-10 Statute of the Criminal Code (participation in an anti-Soviet organisation and anti-Soviet activities), in Khrushchev’s times, more times then not, the monastics and faithful were accused of violating the laws on cults and labour – “sponging” i.e. refusal to work in Soviet organisations and on collective farms, which in those years carried capital punishment. Apart from this, the TOC youth quite often were often called to account for their refusal to serve in the Soviet Army and take the oath of allegiance. Thus, at the beginning of the 1960’s, in the village of Brilevk in the Mogilevsk region, a TOC parishioner was shot by the militia for attempting to escape after refusing to join the Soviet Army on the grounds of his convictions. 

 

As well, TOC-TOCh followers were often prosecuted for refusing to accept passports and identification papers - “vagabondism” and etc… During 1974 to 1976, regular passport reforms obliged everyone to re-register and receive new passports – even for those inhabitants in village areas. As was noted in the declaration by the Departmental administrative sections of the CC CPSS: KGB, MVD: prosecutor’s and court divisions: “‘Passportising’ village inhabitants will improve the organisational accounting of the populace and will facilitate a more successful uncovering of anti-social elements”. 

 

During this period, there were less accusations of belonging to the “anti-Soviet underground” and “anti-Soviet activities and agitations”. Officially, the majority of reports stated that anti-Soviet underground in the USSR was finished, and that’s why all dissident and unreliable individuals were brought to criminal accountability under different statutes. Violation of legislature on cults and labour: receipt of “unearned income”: refusal of paying taxes: refusal of education in Soviet schools: refusal to serve in the Soviet Army: evasion of registration and receipt of a Soviet passport: sabotage of government measures and refusal to participate in voting and in Communist demonstrations – all this could become the cause for criminal  or administrative punishment of the faithful. However, quite often, the followers of TOC-TOCh didn’t attract criminal or administrative accountability: on the basis of a fabricated medical conclusion by a health commission, the faithful were declared insane and forcibly placed in psychiatric hospitals, where they were kept for years with the mentally deranged, and administered with heavy doses of psychotropic drugs etc… Few could withstand such torture. People either became deranged or died slowly. Psychiatric hospitals were located throughout all the regions in the USSR, and each one at one time held TOC-TOCh followers. Regretfully, details about these sufferers and their numbers are practically impossible to determine, inasmuch as many of them were not sent there for criminal matters, and were not subject to such accusations. 

 

Recollections of one such dissident of his stay in a special Soviet psychiatric hospital as a “prisoner for faith” has been preserved. In them, Priest Vladimir Soloviev spent 12 years in such MVD hospital at Sichev, were he was subjected to continuous mockery. In spite of this, he ceaselessly and ardently prayed whole 24 hours, standing hours on end on his knees, ignoring the jeers and physical blows by the nurses and inmates. He was subjected to continual beatings, both from the guards and the main doctor Liamts. “He was released from Sitchevsk hell after 12 years, but was held in the Gideonovsk psychiatric hospital at Gideonsk for a further 12 months.  There was a huge overcrowding at this centre, and many were without a bed. The head medical officer said at the outset to the priest that: “As you are a Saint, you can survive without a bed”. Consequently, Fr. Vladimir slept on the floor without a mattress for over a year. “Upon his release, they didn’t send him to his native village at Gzhatsk, but to a Siberian psychiatric colony for the aged, where he was destined to die”. 

 

This is just one example of how the Communist regime was annihilating Orthodoxy in the USSR during the “Khrushchev’s thaw” and “Brezhenev’s stagnation” era. 

 

As a result, the massive repressive measures by the Soviet authorities against priests and active parishioners of the Catacomb Church succeeded in achieving a substantial reduction in the numbers of “headless underground groups”. 

 

So as not to allow the complete annihilation of TOC in this period, the surviving catacomb true-Orthodox pastors and faithful were forced to go deeper underground, isolating themselves from the outside world and going into suspended animation until better times. 

 

As the Soviet researcher L.P.Mitrohin wrote in 1961: “The special character of the activities of TOC was determined by Her specific features. She existed in the form of small groups, confined like monastics and usually headed by a nun. Acceptance into the group and allowance to attend gatherings was conducted in strict individual order, and only upon the recommendation of one of their own. Usually, a swearing an oath before the cross was required, in which the entrant gave a promise not to disclose the existence of the group. In Her activities, TOC strictly adhered to conspiratorial methods in Her work. Her members called secret meetings, conducted correspondence with one another with the aid of printers and through affiliated individuals. Activities of TOC leaders were kept strictly secret – even from the rank and file members”. 

 

Father Tikhon (Zorin) of the Catacomb Church and living incognito in Leningrad can serve as a demonstrative example of the conspiratorial activities, who was even forced to dress in “women’s rags”. His spiritual son, A.P.Soloviev recollects: “I met Father Tikhon in 1964, after his release from the second arrest… He was still drifting from one home to another of the faithful. This was already very difficult and dangerous for him because last time he was tried for this. Furthermore, he didn’t have permission to live in Petersburg… I started going to him when he secretly appeared at a house on the Catherine canal (at that time – Griboedov canal) in Petersburg. Imagine a long corridor with many doors: this signifies a great diversity of people. There was a 20 square metre room, which was occupied by Kcenia Petrovna ( I think her surname was Savelieva). She was the one that accommodated Fr.Tikhon upon his release. This was like living on a barrel of gunpowder: in the centre of town, before the eyes of Godless individuals… To go outside was simply dangerous, so that when he had to go outside for toilet reasons, Batushka was dressed in women’s clothing with a scarf to cover his face. The other tenants regarded that Kcenia Petrovna had an old, limping relative living there temporarily… It was there at the Griboedov canal that I had my first confessional before Father Tikhon…” 

 

Because of the danger of sudden house searches and arrests, Services in the TOC Church – as in the 1930’s – were conducted at night, in half-whispers, in darkness apart from a few lit candles. With this, the secret TOC priests utilised home-made, portable (collapsible) altars: instead of Iconostasis – folding screen (and more often without one): church utensils in smaller and simpler forms so that they could be easily gathered and hidden from outsiders. 

 

The methods employed in their strategies varied greatly.  Thus, in the 1960’s, on the edge of the village of Chechevits in the Mogolevsk region, a peasant Nicholas Kozeko harboured a “passportless” Catacomb Hegumen Anthony in his house: the kitchen being outfitted as a church with easy access to the forest, and this is where Fr.Anthony resided. Under the large stove, a secret hiding place was created so that Fr.Anthony could hide there when any outsiders came to the house. A door bell was installed at the gate, connecting it to the house and the kitchen. That’s why when outsiders came and rang the bell outside the established  manner, Fr.Anthony immediately retired to the secret place or the forest. These clandestine measures saved him from the militia on a number of occasions. This was related to the author by Fr.Anthony. At the same time, the author was shown the secret place under the stove. 

 

Recollections on the Catacomb Church were also preserved by Hieromonk Guria (Pavlov) in Chubashy. In the words of L.Sikorsky, the secret church was fitted out in a small shed: “This church was completely tiny – in all, a few square metres… The shed where it was located, was situated at the end of the yard. The small window that looked out at the yard, but it was difficult to look inside the shed. The shed had a hidden door. When a Church Service commenced, the main door was locked from the outside with a padlock, while entry to the church was through the hidden door, which was in distinguishable and part of the wall. Consequently, if an outsider gained entry to the yard would notice the padlock and assume that the shed was locked”. 

 

Valuable witness was also preserved about Hieromonk Philaret’s (Metan) clandestine catacomb service, who after the war, lived in the village Dobrianka in the Chernigov region, and later in the town of Ahturka in the Soomsk region. The author of these lines came to know quite closely the last Deveyevo monastery nun, catacomb confessor Matushka Seraphima (Koorkaik) who had close ties for a long time with Father Philaret and the catacomb TOC communities. After the closure of the monastery in 1927, Matushka Seraphima rejected Sergianism and with the blessing of Startsa Nectarius (Tikhon) and dedicated all her life thereafter to the Catacomb True Orthodox Church. In 1950 through to 1970’s, she had a close tie with Fr.Philaret (Metan). Inasmuch the priest was under close surveillance, he practically never left his house. He conducted Services secretly in his room, while maintaining contact with his parishioners through Matushka Seraphima. At prearranged days, she would enter Fr.Philaret’s garden and leave the parishioners’ letters and confessionals in a hollow log, then return after a while to collect the Holy Gifts and Fr.Philaret’s pastoral preceptorials and letters, which she then delivered to the faithful. 

 

Often, being under harassing conditions and without pastoral nourishment, many communes stored sufficient Holy Gifts and Myrrh for many years, as well as independently and without a priest, performed by “laity rite” Church Services, and even the Mysteries   of Baptism, Confessionals and Holy Communion. These acts were forced measures, determined by existing conditions of persecution and enforced underground reality. A letter from Hieromonk Hilarion (Andrievsk) from Voronezh – one of the TOC leaders of those times – in which he explains in detail how imperative it is to manage the commune in the absence of a priest, and how to accept the previously prepared Holy Communion. These “autonomous” communes - at the very first opportunity - attempted to establish communion with Catacomb priests from other regions, although there were instances where not trusting unknown pastors (because of the existence of false KGB or MP agents), some of them remained in a “priestless” situation. The number of these instances was not many. 

 

Often, the true-Orthodox faithful refused not only to accept a Soviet passport (they were called “passportless”): join collective farms: work in Soviet institutions, but even use Soviet currency. As a rule, these conservatively-minded faithful were found in villages, especially in Siberia and Northern Caucus, as well as other regions in the USSR. There were especially many Catacomb monks hiding in the Caucus mountains. They were numbered in the hundreds, so the militia conducted dragnets in helicopters and forcibly removing them from the mountains. Akin to the ancient Old Calendarists, many TOCh hid in inaccessible parts of the Siberian taiga, where there were many monasteries and Catacomb churches. However, they too were caught by helicopters. 

 

In order to feed themselves and their families, the true-Christians (so-called “peasant-individuals”) held personal small husbandry holdings, worked the market gardens as well as hiring themselves out as “handyman labour” – stonemasons, plasterers, timber cutters, woodworkers etc… “Members of the TOC called upon the faithful to refuse any type of collaboration with the Soviet authorities: any participation in government elections: any type of work in Soviet enterprises or institutions, and boycotting the establishing of collective farms”. 

 

As the Catacomb Archbishop Lazarus (Zhurbenko) recounts: “Priests did not accept Party members – until you leave it and repent, don’t come up to the Chalice. They also told the Young Communist League members: first leave, then…” TOC regarded membership in the Communist Party, Young Communist League and the Pioneers as being a sin, as well as participation in Soviet elections, 1st of May and October demonstrations. Participation in any of them called for obligatory repentance during Confession, as well as a possible penance. 

 

This question was an extreme matter of principle. At the time, there were many instances of ROC MP Sergius episcopate and clergy being members of the Communist Party: collaborating with the Communist authorities with their repressive sections, receiving medals and decorations from them. In turn, TOC conditions for membership of the Church required the refusal to have any affinity for, or participation with, the “theomachist Communism” in any shape or form. 

 

Naturally, these and like feelings of the TOC-TOCh followers, evoked extreme unease from the totalitarian regime. 

 

As previously noted, to ensure a more successful exposure of the illegal communes of the Catacomb Church, even the enrolled representatives of the MP – with the participation of MGB-KGB – conducted the so-called “battle with sectarianism”.

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8. The Catacomb Church during the “Bishopless” period. Spawning of self-created Movements and the battle against them within TOC.

  With the change in the religious politics at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s, the regular campaigns in the closure of MP churches was pushing the country’s religious life into an underground existence, forcing the Soviet regime to apply even greater force against the “dissident” Catacomb Church. As noted by the patriarchal historian D. Pospelovsky: “Apparently the Soviet government was concerned that the whole Church may go underground, because an official and strictly controlled Church presented a lesser danger than an underground one”.

 Another historian, M.Shkarovsky notes: “Having been significantly reduced numerically during the first post-war decade, this (Catacomb) movement once again begins to grow in the 1950s. As hundreds of followers were released from camps, the KGB, Party and Government bodies became agitated because of the reports coming in, showing the illegal activities of the True-Orthodox faithful. In the beginning of the 1960s, the Catacomb movement received a new impetus for its development. When as a result of the persecutions and the massive closure of churches, thousands of priests were left with no churches or registrations; the majority did not shed their rank, but continued to secretly service the spiritual needs of the faithful – away from government authorities… While the authorities launched new crusades against the inspirited activities of the True-Orthodox Christians, the Catacomb movement was not destroyed”.

 As a result of politically planned measures by the Soviet regime, at the end of the 1950s, the canonical Episcopate of TOC was practically fully destroyed in prisons and camps. The last unimpeachable canonical Hierarch and actually TOC’s First Hierarch, was Bishop Peter (Ladigin) upon whose death the succession of pre-revolutionary canonical hierarchy was actually severed in the Catacomb Church. 

 This fact gave licence to the Soviet agencies of Government Safety, the Moscow Patriarchate and other Soviet religious operatives to confirm that from the end of 1950s, TOC ceased to exist in the USSR. However this prosaic approach didn’t address the real situation.  

 Atheistic conviction didn’t allow comprehension of the universal principle of catholicity and Church singularity, which embodies the principle that if one of the local Churches exhausts its Hierarchy due to persecution, it doesn’t mean that it automatically ceases to exist. Through the spiritual unity with other Orthodox Churches (in this case ROCA), She continues to be preserved even in the temporary absence of a Hierarchy. The only sole reason of the total disappearance of a separate local Church is if She deviated from Orthodoxy, and the abandonment of Her congregation. If the Orthodox congregation and clergy are preserved, the Church is preserved through their presence.

 In accord with the teachings of the Holy Fathers, the “body of the Church” is “God’s people”. As noted in 1848 by the Pastoral Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs: “With us, the keeper of the faith – the very body of Christ, is the very God’s people”.

 In the presence of this “God’s people”, of those true Orthodox clergy, monastics and laity, this “small remnant” of true confessors and martyrs, TOC continued Her “catacomb” existence for all those years of theomachist persecutions. In TOC, the liturgical life continued uninterrupted, which made up the core of the mystical being of the Orthodox Church as “Christ’s Body”. Orthodox Theology teaches that: “The Church creates the Eucharist, and the Eucharist creates the Church”. This explanation by the Holy Fathers very accurately characterises the situation of the Catacomb Church, who, as in the initial centuries of Christianity, appeared as catacomb communes of the faithful, scattered throughout the vast territory of the USSR: united not administratively or institutionally, but confession in faith, spiritually, Eucharistic ally – that’s why She received such a responsible name – True-Orthodox Church.

 In examining the period between the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s, it’s essential to note that at that time in the USSR, there remained a large number (more than a 100) canonical catacomb priests of the old “Tikhonite-Josephite” ordination. It’s the presence of these numerous catacomb pastors-confessors, who maintained a secret communion among themselves that the authentic and hidden True-Orthodox Church was preserved. All of them not only abided in a prayerful communion with one another, but were in a prayerful communion with ROCA and commemorated their First Hierarchs and Bishops. This compensated for the temporary absence of Episcopate in TOC.

 One of the less vocal spiritual leaders of the “Tikhonite” Catacomb Church at the time was Starets Fr.Hilarion (Protopriest John Andrievsky) from Voronezh. As L.E.Sikorskaya notes: “Because of the conditions of growing persecutions, it was necessary at times to transfer the administration of the Church to priests, but of course without the full powers of a Bishop”.

 If before the Second War Petrograd was the centre for TOC, the position had changed after it. After the most brutal repression and crackdown in Petrograd, there wasn’t one catacomb priest left. The illegal TOC centre relocated to Voronezh, where the ruling Hierarch was Bishop Alexis (Booye), who was appointed by TOC’s Bishop’s Council in Petrograd in 1928, governing all the Josephite parishes in southern Russia as well as fulfilling the responsibilities of the Exarch of Ukraine.

 After the War, TOC’s position in this region was the strongest, which after the destruction of TOC centres in Petrograd, Moscow and other cities, assigned NKVD-MGB departments to give special attention to the Central-Black Soil region in Russia. M.V.Shkarovsky informs that “in 1944, a large part of True-Orthodox Christians in the non-occupied European part of the USSR, were either deported or confined to camps. The following 2 years saw a cruel persecution of true faithful in the former occupied territories. In Stalin’s “special file”, stored in the Government archives of the Russian Federation, contains a document about the deportation of these faithful in 1944. Simultaneously, some 1673 persons from 87 populated centres were transported to the East”. 

 Despite the frenzied arrests and deportations of true faithful in the second half of the 1940s, it failed to crush TOC in this region. As noted by the same Shkarovsky: “The Central Black Soil region (second in importance in terms of Josephite activities), became the main “base” of the Catacomb Church. This was even acknowledged by the Soviet researchers. In 1967, A.I.Klibanov wrote that “here was the most significant and active hearth of these currents (TOC and TOCc), that have spread far beyond the boundaries of the Black Soil Centre”.

 From 1935, the Voronezh catacombites were headed by Hieromonk Hilarion (Protopriest John Andreevsky), appointed in 1925 and spiritual father to the repentant clerics-renovationists with the right to join the Church. In 1928, he was one of the initiators for unification of the Voronezh diocese clergy with Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd. He supported the close relationship with Archbishop Dimitri (Lubimov), Archbishop Procopius (Titov), Bishop Alexis (Booye), Bishop Damascus (Tsedrick) and Bishop Joseph (Popov). As Father Hilarion wrote in one of his letters in 1958: “I was entrusted with Hierarchal accreditation – to protect and preserve Holy Orthodoxy in the diocese of Bishop Joseph, established in September 1935. Not having a safe harbour at that time (after his exile), I declined for many reasons. But I was told firmly: “Do what you can”. I remember, in 1938 I wrote to Bishop Parthenius requesting the removal of my accreditation. But he replied that he cannot do this as the only one who can, is the one who entrusted him originally. However, there was talk that Bishop Joseph died in prison. Consequently, this burden remains with me to this day”.

 During periods when Hieromonk Hilarion was under arrest, he was replaced by Archimandrite Nikander (Sturov), who was put forward as a candidate for a secret Bishopric in TOC by Archbishop Demetrius (Lubimov), although the ordination never occurred. As the Voronezh catacomb Mother Superior recalls: “Archimandrite Nikander received the keys of administration of the Orthodox Church in Voronezh from Patriarch Tikhon – the right to accept and include in Orthodoxy anyone from any schisms”.    

 Upon his release from his imprisonment in the 1950s, Fr.Hilarion again headed the Voronezh region. At the time, no non-abridged TOC diocese centres survived in the country. Commissioned by a Bishop’s blessing of Russian New Martyrs and Confessors, he re-established the TOC Voronezh Administrative Centre after the war, and was acknowledged by the entire True Orthodox Church. In communion with him were the catacomb confessors: Protopriest Michael (Rozhdestvensky) from Petrograd, Hieromonk Tikhon (Zorin) from the Novgorod region, Archimandrite Alexander (Fillipenko) from Karaganda region, Hieromonk Timothy (Nesgovorov) from Ufy, Hieromonk Bessarion (Markov, in schema Seraphim) from Tambov, Hieromonk Philaret (Metan) from the Sumsky region, Hieromonk Theodore (Rafanovich) from the Gomelsk region, Priest Vladimir (Veselovsky) from Kiev, Priest Nikita (Lehan) from Harkov, Priest Andrew (Hrisanov) from Chuvashin and many others. Father Hilarion was assigned responsibilities of a “fully authorised” by the Josephite Bishops, and had their blessing to accept anyone from any schism, and receive into the True Orthodox Church clergy that have repented. It was for this reason that as being “fully authorised”, many catacomb confessors from all parts of the USSR were drawn to him and receive his blessing. He received many into TOC from their schisms, including from the MP. He was fully empowered to decide and receive or not the clergy into communion that came to him. Thus he took into spiritual union with Fr.Anubius (Kapinus), Fr.Theodore (Goncharov) from Gomeliya and others. Others approached him to be tonsured: Fr.Hilarion was tonsured into schema with the name of Anuvius (Kapinus) with the name of Ambrose: Fr.John as Hilarion from Tula, Fr.John Skliarov with the name of Ignatius, and many others.

 After the being released in 1956, Fr.Hilarion tirelessly attempted to establish ties with the True Orthodox Bishops. However, after the death of Bishop Peter (Ladigin) in 1957, he wasn’t able to find anyone. He attempted to come into communion with Archbishop Anthony (of Golinsk-Mihailovsk). However, there were bad comments about him circulating among the catacombites. In particular, it wasn’t positively known about the validity of his Bishopric rite (one of the versions was that he was ordained in the Gregorian schism), while another being suspicions about his ties with the MP, where he was regarded as being retired.         

 Father Hilarion entered in to correspondence with Archbishop Anthony during the latter’s tenure in exile. Upon his return from confinement in 1956, he entered into communion with him in Mitchurinsk. Archbishop Anthony awarded Fr.Hilarion with a mitre and palitsa, and appointed him as his replacement. Being “fully authorised”, Archbishop Anthony started sending him on probation and testing period – priests newly ordained by him, Fathers Procopius and Seraphim: sent the banned from serving Church h Services, Fr.Kosma for Confession: deliberated about the question of receiving Fr.Theodore (Goncharov) from Gomelsk into communion and other issues. However, Archbishop Anthony’s biography was so tangled and obscure Fr.Hilarion was forced to send him a letter, where in the name of other catacomb priests, he requested Vladika to answer a raft of questions and dispel any confusion and suspicions as to their validity. In part, he asked for more accurate information about who, where and when he was ordained as Bishop, as well as providing a more detailed biography. But there was no response. On the 22nd July 1960, he again turns to Archbishop Anthony in bewilderment because after 2 years, he had received no answers to the presented questions. This detailed letter numbered 37 pages. Not receiving a reply even to this letter, Fr.Hilarion severed his communion with Archbishop Anthony and forbade the catacomb clergy to have any communion with him.       

 A week before he died, Starets Hilarion summoned Hieromonk Ambrose (Kapinus) – former Colonel in the White Army and secretly ordained in 1929 in Petrograd by one of the TOC leaders – Archbishop Demetrius (Lubimov). He entrusted him with “Church keys of administration” (as he was indeed their custodian), with the words: “From the first day of the Church schism, Orthodoxy was not disrupted: this golden thread is alive, and all Church matters I hand over to you until the appearance of an Orthodox Bishop. And to search for one is necessary” – and put his cross around Fr.Ambrose’s neck. Thus, the spiritual nourishment was transferred to Hieromonk Ambrose. Under his leadership, several secret conferences of TOC clergy were held in Voronezh, where discussions on primary issues of Church life was discussed, and in part, on the establishment of communion with ROCA.

 After the death of Hieromonk Ambrose in 1966, the spiritual administration of TOC communes passed to the catacomb Starets Hieromonk Ignatius (Skliarov) from the Voronezh region, and after his demise – to the catacomb Starets Hieromonk Seraphim (Hieromonk Bessarion Markov) from Tambov. In the middle of the 1970s, the latter accepted into communion after his confessional, Hieromonk Lazarus (Zhurbenko), who received his rank from the ardent Bishop Veniamin (Novitsky) through the blessing of ROCA Archbishop Leontius of Chile. Starets Seraphim spent nearly 30 years in Soviet camps and prisons. He nourished spiritually very many Catacomb communes in Moscow, Karagand, Viatka, Tambov, Mordovia, Vologodsky, Voronezh, Nizhegorodsky, Vladimir and other regions. Submitted a request to Archbishop Leontius of Chile to be taken in under his Omophorion. In the middle of the 1970s, tonsured into schema with the name Seraphim by Hieromonk Lazarus (Zhurbenko), to whom he bequeathed the spiritual nourishment of his catacomb faithful. He was the 85 years old. Up to 2011, Hieromonk Seraphim’s (Markov) flock was spiritually nourished by Hegumen Nestor (Lozhkin), who was secretly ordained into priesthood by Bishop Lazarus (Zhurbenko) back in the beginning of the 1980s.      

 In the Ukraine, a latent TOC centre was situated in the Harkov region, where the authoritative catacomb priest Nikita (Lahan) operated illegally. At this time, many catacomb widowed communes – from the Ukraine to the Chuvasy - go over to be under his spiritual nourishment. As the followers of Fr.Nikita recall: “True-Orthodox Christians from Siberia, Central Asia, Chuvasy, Central Russia and other regions received spiritual nourishment… He was awaited everywhere by the faithful for christening, weddings, funeral services. When Batushka arrived at far distant places, he didn’t serve Liturgy but gave Holy Communion from the spare Hosts he brought with him. Many times you had to hide when the neighbours or the militia disrupted the secret Church Service”. 

 In Harkov, there were whole pilgrimages arriving from different ends of USSR to visit Fr.Nikita, as recalled:

“At Easter, in the village of Lizogubov where Batushka was serving, there were up to 100 people gathered from different areas, and it was just a part of his flock. This village had no church so when the Batushka’s followers arrived and gathered at the bus stop, people were surprised in seeing many women, wearing long dresses with heads covered with scarfs. Because of this, the bus stop was named “Station of saints”. There were also informants who informed the local authorities, who made inquiries. But once again, through God’s will, the local head was a faithful and a decent human being, who reported to the centre (with big risk to himself and his family) that there were no “religious gatherings” at the given village. Even his wife, in walking past Fr.Nikita’s house, crossed herself. All the people in the village were decent Christians. Many of Fr.Nikita’s followers resettled in this village, which was practically completely faithful to the Catacomb Church. Thanks to his missionary work, Batushka was known to the catacomb Christians throughout the entire country as he compiled many booklets and leaflets, which were greatly loved by the faithful because they were sourced by the” true word”.  

 It’s worth noting that in the 1930s Harkov was the TOC’s spiritual centre in the Ukraine. It was here that Bishop Paul (Kratirov) and many other exiled priests functioned. After the war, the following clergy acted illegally: Archimandrite Anthony (Zhertienko), Archimandrite Tikhon (Baliaev), Priest Paul (Volodin), Hieromonk Seraphim (Shevtsov), Hieromonk Amphilocius (Foors), Hieromonk Pachomius (Petin) and others. As in the 1930s, the TOC centre in Belarus was preserved in the Gomelsk province. In the 1970s and 1980s the following clergy served there illegally: Hieromonk Theodore (Goncharov), Priest Alexander (Suhotsky), Hegumen Anthony, Hieromonk Veniamin (Rusalenko) and others. At one time, the well-known Petrograd catacomb confessor Priest Michael (Rozhdestvensky) was hiding in the Gomelsk region. As much as circumstances allowed, the majority of clergy in Harkov and Gomelsk provinces maintained a rapport among themselves, as well as with the TOC clergy in Voronezh and other regions.

 Apart from the listed clergy from the regions of Voronezh, Harkov and Gomelsk, it’s known that in the aforementioned period, the following authoritative catacomb TOC pastors were involved in underground activities: Archimandrite Alexander (Filipenko), Hieromonk Theodosius (Belov), Hieromonk Metrophanes (Doos), Hieromonk Elias (Kuznetsov), Father Anatole of Gremiatchev, Priest Nikita of Tambovsk, Protopriest Alexander (Nademsky), Protopriest Gabriel from Poltava, Hieromonk Pimen (Zavada), Priest Metrophanes (Koval), Hieromonk Sim from Togutinsk, Hieromonk Sergius (Gumilevsky), Priest Peter (Vinokurov), Hieromonk Simeon from Abhazsk, Hieromonk Pimen (Vahrushev), Priest Vladimir  (Veselovsky), Priest Phillip (Anikin), Protopriest Nikita (Ignatiev), Hieromonk Timothy (Nesgovorov), Hieromonk Nicodemus (Konuhov), Hieromonk Tikhon (Zorin), Hieromonk Alexander (Orlov), Father Michael from Ufim, Priest Phillip (Sichev), Priest Andrew (Hrisanov), Hieromonk Gerasimus (Zamesin), Hieromonk Anthony (Tser) from Prichelesk, Hieromonk Theoctistus (Privalov), Priest Alexander (Bakalinsky), Hieromonk Pachomius (Petin), Priest Gregory (Sokruta), Hieromonk Guria (Pavlov), Hieromonk Gabriel (Zinchenko) and many others. In the words of Archbishop Lazarus (Zhurbenko), there were more than 40 catacomb TOC priests of the old “Tikhonite” succession that were serving illegally in the 1960s and 1970s throughout the USSR. Sadly, in the mid to the end of 1970s, the majority of them reposed, leaving no more than ten serving catacomb pastors of the old “Tikhonite-Josephite” succession. 

 

 After the death of Bishop Peter, these “Tikhonite” Catacomb Church pastors were left without any canonical Bishop’s spiritual nourishment, so apart from commemorating ROCA’s First Hierarchs, they continually searched for a true Orthodox Hierarch in the USSR. Unfortunately, instead they encountered Hierarchs either with dubious canonicity or with transparent adventurers, impostors and agents. It was apparent that after Bishop Peter, there were no more active TOC canonical Bishops left, otherwise such a Bishop would have undoubtedly been found. However, as it became known recently, there were old Bishops alive: Barnaby (Beliayev), Demetrius (Lokotko) and Nicholas (Muraviev-Uralsky), but all of them distanced themselves away from Church activities after their release from camps, making their existence unknown to the many TOC communes. For example, Bishop Nicholas (Muraviev from the Urals) was listed as retired in the MP records. Having been received his freedom in 1956, he no longer served as a clergyman but obtained a job in his civilian profession – a doctor at the hospital in Uglich. It was here that he died on the 30th March, 1961.  Those Bishops that promoted themselves in the 1950-1960 era as “catacombites”, were very quickly revealed as impostors and agents. Thus, the “Tikhonite” clergy of the old establishment didn’t recognise the canonically dubious Archbishop Theodosius (Bahmetiev), because he received his succession either from autocephalousites or renovationists. The majority also didn’t recognise the self-styled Archbishop Seraphim (Pozdeev), as well as ordained by them Bishops Alphaeus and Gennadius, who had established their personal uncanonical movements – “patriarchal catacombs”.

 This is how the period was seen through the recollections of catacombite L.E.Sikorskaya: “In 1970, a whole series of new Bishops appeared, headed by Metropolitan Gennadius (Sekatch), former Moscow Patriarchate clergyman. However, their ordination including Gennadius’s was received from none other than Seraphim (Pozdeev), which aroused much doubt among all the catacombites. The personal meeting between Father Guria (Pavlov) and Gennadius (Sekatch) produced not only the dispelling of doubt, but on the contrary: it convinced Father Guria of Gennadius’s invalid rank of ‘Hierarchy’, and from then on, he didn’t treat him seriously”.  

 The suspicions of the catacombites regarding self-styled Seraphim Pozdeev and the branches of “Alfeevites” and “Sekachevites”, were confirmed in our times when access to many archives was made possible. In the year 2000, the Institute of History and Archaeology of the Ural division of RAN, published archive material where the activities of Pozdeev were acknowledged by him as being self-styled and fraudulent.

 With Archbishop Anthony (of Golinsk-Mihailovsk) that appeared amid the catacomb community in the 1950s, the matter was more complicated with regard to doubts by the many catacomb faithful as to his legality of succession. To this day, the biography of this hierarch is full of “blank spots”. 

 One of the versions is that Archbishop Anthony was posited by the “Gregorians”. At his trial in 1950, he denied the actuality of his ordination, declaring that he acted in the capacity of a Bishop under a false name and documents. In February 1950, he was arrested by the UMVD in the Saratov region for participating in the “anti-Soviet Church organisation of ‘TOC’”. There were 120 arrests in the region with regard to this matter. Many catacombites, arrested with regard to Archbishop Anthony’s activities, and being witnesses to his confession of being a self-styled Hierarch, were deeply disappointed and ceased to trust him. That’s why, when Archbishop Anthony was released from captivity, the majority of TOC catacomb communes refused to acknowledge him as a lawful Hierarch. As mentioned previously, one of the first to sever communion with him was the leader of the Voronezh catacombites, Hieromonk Hilarion (Andreevsky). Following his example were: Priest Michael (Rozhdestvensky), Priest Nikita (Lehan), Hieromonk Nocodemus (Konuhov), Hieromonk Theodore (Rafanovich) and many others. Keeping himself separate, Hieromonk Guria (Pavlov) also refused to recognise Anthony: “After release from the labour camp, Father Guria found out about this catacomb Bishop Anthony, and went especially to meet him in Kiev. However, after a lengthy discussion, he realised that he couldn’t acknowledge him as a canonical Bishop”.      

 Unfortunately, the question of succession with Archbishop Anthony has not been resolved to this date. The possibility is not excluded of him attempting to hide his clergy status and confuse the court proceedings by maligning himself. Unfortunately, the question of Archbishop Anthony’s succession has not been cleared up to this day and in the absence of authentic documentation, is extremely complicated to prove. Consequently, it’s impossible to unequivocally reject the proposition that he indeed was a self-styled Bishop, which in the case of the NKVD recruit, false Archbishop Seraphim Pozdeev turned out to be true. Also, another big uncertainty has been injected into this matter in the form of the published recollections in the Moscow Patriarchate of Archbishop Anthony’s cell attendant – Abbess Antonia (Suheah), at whose house he lived in a village Butcha, close to Kiev. He resided there for the last 15 years of his life, during which time she accompanied him on all his travels. She affirmed the fact that Archbishop Anthony indeed belonged to the MP, and was listed there as retired, although he spiritually nourished the catacombites “so that they don’t fall away completely from the Church, and instructing them to go to their churches”.

 This is attested to by another Archbishop Anthony’s postulant – Nun Seraphim (Zrazhevskaya). Both are alive to this day with Abbess Antonia being head of an MP women’s monastery. There are other names of individuals that were known to Archbishop Anthony, who not only confirmed the given attestations but are themselves are currently serving the Moscow Patriarchate: Protopriest John Chizhenok, Hegumen Michael (Lapteev), Hieromonk Sergius (Akintipov) and others.

 On the 5^th September 2009, 120 years from date of birth of Archbishop Anthony, a theological conference was held in the hall of Kiev-Pechersk monastery with Metropolitan Vladimir’s (Sabodan) blessing, which was dedicated to the memory of Archbishop Anthony. Taking part were priests and Bishops of UOC (MP), who at the end of the conference, boarded the monastery bus and travelled to Lestnuyou Buchy, close to Kiev where Archbishop Anthony is buried. Bishop Hilary Makarovsky, representative of the Synodal Department of UOC (MP), in company with the other clergy, served a requiem service for him. As a result of the conference, under the redaction of Archimandrite Nestor (Somenoka), Professor of Kiev Theological Academy and the blessing of UOC (MP) representative, Metropolitan Vladimir (Sabodan), a collection of stories about Archbishop Anthony was published, in which the following is noted: 

 “On the 20^th June 1956, Archbishop Anthony was released from confinement under amnesty activated by the High Medical Special Commission. Due to his poor health, Vladika Anthony was unable to perform Church Services. The information regarding the performance of Church Services and other matters, he wrote directly to the Moscow Patriarchate, and later on travelled to Moscow himself. Patriarch Alexis (whom he knew personally when they were youths), wasn’t in the city, as he was on holidays in Odessa. He was greeted by Metropolitan Nicholas (Yarushevich) of Krutitsk and Kolomensk. Upon returning home, the Patriarch was disappointed in missing Archbishop Anthony and sent him Church Service books and blessed him, at his request, to serve in home conditions and not in churches”.

 Because the authors of the above collections are not supported by any archival documents, their veracity is very hard to determine. It’s also possible that the authors have somewhat exaggerated the situation, attempting to present Archbishop Anthony as one of the “dissenting” Hierarchs of ROC MP, ostensibly blessed by Patriarch Alexis to embed himself in the Catacomb TOC communes and through this, reunite them with the Moscow Patriarchate. The truth of the matter can only be resolved through the KGB and Moscow Patriarchate archives. However, many catacomb priests that were ordained by Archbishop Anthony (there were nearly 25), categorically deny that he belonged to the MP, and reject any such information. But more than that, after his death, 14 of the priests that he ordained in 1977 followed the example of the other catacomb priests of the “Tikhonite-Josephite” succession who had illegally lodged a petition to the Bishop’s Council, asking to be accepted into a prayerful communion with ROCA. If Archbishop Anthony did indeed belong to the MP, it’s unlikely that he would ordain so many TOC applicants who after his death, would have joined the MP and not ask to be taken in under ROCA Omophorion.

 Another possibility cannot be excluded that after his release, Archbishop Anthony indeed tried to join the MP, but later on, sided with TOC and began to ordain priests for the widowed communes. This version is promoted by a Golinsk ordinant – Hegumen Anthony from Belarus, who in 1993 related to this author how in the ‘60s Archbishop Anthony commemorated a Bishop John in his secret Church Services, then in the middle of the ‘60s – the First Hierarch of ROCA, Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky). Inasmuch as Archbishop Anthony lived in Butcha near Kiev, and Kiev’s Metropolitan was John (Sokolov), then it can be assumed that “Vladika John” that Archbishop Anthony commemorated could have been Kiev’s Metropolitan. It was only after his removal from the Kiev Cathedra that he completely detached himself from the MP and began to commemorate the First Hierarch of ROCA – Metropolitan Philaret. However, even here everything is not quite simple, because in 1966, the Metropolitan of Kiev was also Philaret (Denisenko). That’s why which Philaret Archbishop Anthony commemorated is difficult to determine. In any case, he asserted to Abbess Antonia and other catacomb clerics that it was the First Hierarch of ROCA.

 Whatever the case may have been, because of the discrepancies in his biography and ordination, Archbishop Anthony’s name carried serious discord in the Catacomb Church in 1950-1970 years. As noted before, even though Archbishop Anthony did nourish many catacomb True-Orthodox Christians, the majority of the catacomb clergy of the old posit did not recognise him. Many catacomb clerics left Archbishop Anthony in the 1960s, while some that have been ordained by him, even ceased to perform Church Services. The first to leave Archbishop Anthony was the authoritative catacomb confessor Fr.Michael from Donbas, with whom the Archbishop lived and served Church Services in the house for many years. Archbishop Anthony not only ordained him but promoted him as a candidate for a Bishopric order, intending to secretly ordain him by himself. However, Father Michael (Nyechitalenko) sceptical of the canonicity of Archbishop Anthony, ruptured his communion with him and even took off his priestly rank, dying as rank parishioner of the Russian True-Orthodox Church (RTOC). Following Fr.Michael’s example, other authoritative catacomb confessors divested themselves of priestly rank: Fr.Demetrius and Fr.Seraphim – both ordained by Archbishop Anthony. Among like others, Monk Theodosius (Zhurbenko) left him upon his release from a labour camp in mid 1950s.                         

 As an annotation, it is interesting to note that in the village of Irpen near Kiev where Archbishop Anthony lived for 15 years, two authoritative catacomb priests lived and served the catacomb faithful during this period: Hieromonk Theodosius (Zhidenko) and Priest Alexander (Bakalinsky), who also didn’t recognise Anthony and refused to have any communion with him.                            

 Thus, seemingly attempting to help the widowed catacomb communes but for reasons of obscurity of his biography and doubts over his Bishop’s succession, was not acknowledged by the majority of the catacomb clergy of the old “Tikhonite-Josephite” posit. In fact, Anthony created a separate branch (known as “Tolinsites”, which after his death in 1976, gradually fell apart. Some clerics joined the MP, but the bulk of them – following the example set by other catacombites that didn’t recognise Archbishop Anthony, went under the ROCA Omophorion. Their petition to the ROCA Synod was signed by 14 priests that were ordained by Archbishop Anthony: Hieromonk Michael, Hieromonk Nathaniel, Hieromonk Raphael, Hieromonk Nicholas, Hieromonk Sergius, Hieromonk Nicholas, Hegumen Nicholas, Hieromonk Epiphanius, Hieromonk Barsanuphius, Hieromonk Michael, Hieromonk Vassily, Hieromonk Prochorus, Priest Alexis, Hegumen Anthony. The responding resolution of the ROCA Synod dated 7^th December 1977, pointed out:

 “In trusting the witness of the fourteen priests of the correct secret ordination of their deceased head Anthony (Galinsky) as a Bishop and his service – to accept them in prayerful communion, advising them that they can perform all the Church Services, according to the Church rules covering such Services as priests, as well as giving the right to the monastic priests the right to tonsure monastics, of which they will be notified in the same order as their petitions were received”.

 In this way, the “Golintsy” attempted to settle their canonical situation, and re-establish communion with the catacomb priests of the old succession who had already in 1960s, entered into communion with ROCA. Although not all the catacombites that were up to this point of time in communion with ROCA acknowledged such a decision by the overseas Synod. That’s why on the 18^th May 1990, the Bishop’s Synod was forced to retract this determination, having ruled:

 “At the present time, with the availability of new data, the Bishop’s Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, cannot fully recognise Anthony’s (Golinsky-Mikhailovsky) canonical placement as a Bishop… In relation to new revealed particulars, the Bishopric rite of Anthony (Golinsky-Mikhailovsky) appears very doubtful, especially as there is no written data that confirms his canonical ordination”. 

 In accordance with ROCA Synod’s re-declaration, in the 90’s some of the catacomb “Golinsky” priests underwent a supplementary Church rite with the aim of amending their ordination. Some are still serving to this day under ROCA Omophorion.

 Apart from this, at the end of 1970, Hieromonk Epiphanius (Kaminsky) and Barsanuphius (Yakovlev) went over to the “Sekachevites”, where they were made Bishops, while at the beginning of the 1990s, Priest Valentine (Aristov) went over to ROAC, where he became a Bishop in 1999.

 The absence of a canonical Bishop was deemed by the majority of TOC followers as being a    most serious threat to the Church. In this given situation, some of  the catacombites even agreed to connect themselves to dubious Bishops, so long as they were under a Bishop’s Omophorion. However, the majority of the catacombites continued to search canonical Bishops, rejecting the newly appearance at the time of impostors/“Bishops”: Seraphim Pozdeev, Gennadius Sekach, Theodosius Gumenikov, Alphaeus Barnaulsk and others. As the catacombite Abbess Makaria recounts that after the death of Hieromonk Hilarion’s death, the representatives of the catacomb communes, in trying to carry out his final wish by assertively trying to find a surviving canonical true Orthodox Bishop, “instead ran into the uncanonical, the dubious and the impostor”.

 According to Abbess Makaria, they travelled to Bishop Theodosius (Bakhmatiev) who worked as a watchman in Krasnoyarsk, but then couldn’t recognise him. His Bishop’s succession was not confirmed because he at different times to different people put forward different versions of his ordination. Judging on given information, he received his succession either from autocephalousites or renovationists, which is why TOC didn’t acknowledge him. This is how Abbess Makaria recalled the event: “Having received the blessing from Fr.Hilarion, they began to search for an Orthodox Bishop. They heard about a certain Theodosius that lived in Krasnoyarsk, and worked as a watchman. They got to see him, questioned him, he made out that he was Theodosius of Kiev-Pechersk. After making inquiries, found him to be a fraudster, and all contact with him was terminated”.

 Today, for those who didn’t belong to the Catacomb Church during the Soviet repressions and didn’t live a secretive church life, it would be difficult to understand the reasons for such a stringent attitude of the catacomb True-Orthodox Christians toward the question of Apostolic Succession, and the non-recognition of the appearance in the 1970s of new the new pseudo-catacomb Hierarchs and groups, such as the “Sekachites”, “Alfeevites” and others. In the beginning of the 21^st century, when Communist repressions are judged only through text books and recollections, this question may seem to be “insignificant", which many judge with ease those catacomb pastors and faithful who didn’t agree with a close association with “Sekachevites” and other self-appointed fraudsters that at the end of 1970 and beginning of 1980, were assisted by Special Services to even simulate the outward appearance of an “organised” structure of the Catacomb Church in the USSR.

 In order to understand the atmosphere that reigned in those years, we will bring a characteristic example in the life one of the catacomb Josephite ascetic Fr.Tikhon (Zorin) from the Novgorod province, written by his spiritual son A.P.Soloviev (1910-1998):

 “They confined Fr.Tikhon alone in a cell. Soon after another arrested individual arrives, and presents himself as Bishop Theodosius – naturally, as a Josephite, and adds that he will be released in 2-3 days, and asks if he wants him to contact anyone that can help. Not feeling any treachery, Fr.Tikhon gives him all the addresses: sends him to his most trusted people and writes them notes not to refuse him anything but trust him as they do him, Fr.Tikhon… Of course this was a catastrophe. While the Judas was soon recognised for what he was, the loss was immense.

 Upon his release, Fr.Tikhon suffered very deeply because of his mistake, and travelled east to Josephite Bishop Peter for repentance”.

 In the 1960-1970 period, the appearance of self-styled “Bishops” among the Catacomb Church, acquired a repetitious character. Obviously, this was a planned campaign by the Soviet repressive Special Services, endeavouring with the help of these self-styled-minions to finally destroy and corrupt the underground TOC internally. As noted previously, it was for this reason that the survived illegal communes and clergy of the “Tikhonite-Josephite” succession, were more watchful with regard to “Bishops” who didn’t have succession from the old canonical Bishops, or documents confirming their posit (Apostolic Rule 33).

 So as not to allow TOC to degenerate into a self-anointed instrumentality, the catacomb clergy attempted to convince the disgraced Bishops from the official Church, who were in sympathy to the catacombites, to come over to TOC. However, this wasn’t met with success.

 Thus, in the middle of the 1960s, due to the recommendations of Archbishop Leontius of Chile, Monk Theodosius (Zhurbenko) visited MP Archbishop Germogene (Golubev) - who was “retired” by the Patriarch to the Zhirov monastery in Belarus - for talks on behalf of the catacomb clergy. In blessing him to undertake the journey, Fr.Michael (Rozhdestvensky), he said: “Go, and maybe he will come over to us”. Having received the delegate with goodwill, Archbishop Germogene characterised the situation of the “official Church”: “They have driven us into a quagmire, encircled us with barbwire, and we now drink the rotten water…” When Monk Theodosius offered him once again to return to the Catacomb Church and become Her head, he replied that he is under constant surveillance by the KGB: “I am not a needle in a haystack: they will find me, and they will find all of you”.

 Inasmuch as the search for canonical Bishops of “Tikhonite-Josephite” succession was fruitless, and the number of old clergy in the 1960s noticeably diminishing (the old priests were dying while there was no one to ordain new ones), the hidden TOC communes in many regions of the country were left without any spiritual nourishment, and were in a so-called “autocephalous” state. Many True-Orthodox Christians in many areas were dying without Confession and Holy Communion: burials were conducted without an officiating priest: children remained un-baptised (people themselves immersed them 3 times without Chrismation). Not knowing where to find a catacomb priest after the death of an individual, the laity was forced to perform the funeral with “Laity burial rites”. As Abbess Makaria of the Voronezh catacombs recalls: “There was a time when there was not one unconfined priest: that’s why there were years when we couldn’t have Holy Communion, so we prayed in “private corners”.  

 The Soviet researchers, counting on the results of the religious-sociological expeditions by the Historical Institute of AN SSSR, noted a sharp reduction in the number of TOC followers during this period. Thus, A.I.Klibanov asserted that in the 1950s, according to approximations there were 3000 TOC followers in the Central-Blacksoil region in Russia, calling TOC Herself as the “third largest religious group in the region”. As well, he noted that “the youth constituted the most active organisational and evangelising strength of the True-Orthodox Christians in the Tambov, Lipetsk, Riazans and Voronezh areas”. However, the same Klibanov notes that at the end of the 1960s and beginning of 190s, the number had been reduced to 1500. At the same time, the data produced by the Soviet researchers, cannot be accepted without question. However, in general terms the tendency is reflected correctly. Indeed, in the 1970s the number of TOC followers declined sharply. This can be seen in even a single example of Voronezh. The catacomb TOC Abbess Myrope (Nuzhnzyza) – lay-sister of Voronezh Abbess Makaria (Chebotarev), confirms that “when Fr.Hilarion (Andriev) was here, we had several thousand parishioners…”

 Another Soviet researcher A I.Demyanov, himself coming from a family of True-Orthodox Christians but later falling away from his faith, informs that if from the end of the 1940s up to the beginning of the 1960s, while 40% to 60% of the TOC followers were aged up to 30 years old that took a most active participation in the life of the Church, the beginning of the 1970s, the survived illegal communes were made up of 70% of elderly people over 50 years of age. C.Mashenko, presents analogous 1978 data on an example of Chernigovshin. In his own words: “What happened was a sharp collective reduction in the number of True-Orthodox Christians. In Chernigovshin, there are 4 times less than before. Anther thing – religious communes have disappeared. Separate faithful pray at home. The composition of TOC has changed severely. Whereas before in 195, 29% were aged between 16 and 30, now people under 30 number less than 1 %. Thus, there was a sharp fall in the ideological propagation among the young generation”.

 This sharp contrast between 1950s and 1970s in the decrease of the TOC-TOCc number of faithful, was due in the first instance by the increasing persecutions and cruel repressions against them. Apart from that, the enforced departure underground, increase in machinations and self-isolation, by themselves limited the possibility of influx of new strength especially of the youth. Of no lesser importance were the “headless” catacomb communes - as a result of repressions, and the demise of the old generation of the “Tikhonite” clergy and the absence of their successors. Under such conditions the communes were in fact destined for a reduction in numbers, secrecy and limited to the more active and loyal old parishioners. It’s also worthy to note that amid such negative consequences, having mistrust toward the “outsider” priests or not knowing where they came from, many faithful were forced to isolate themselves in their few groups that have survived and enter into an “autocephalous” (without a head) situation and performing the Church Services by “secular rites”. With prolonged (decades) absence of contact with other catacomb communes and clergy, some of the communes (as a rule made up of uneducated peasants) there was a possibility of an emergence of personal beliefs and traditions of a eschatological-apocalyptical character, evolving into full self-isolation and refusal to any rapport with other catacomb communes and refusal of the clergy and Mysteries. At the same time, while such cases did occur (especially in the villages); they were not of a systematic character. In the majority of cases, the catacomb TOC communes at the first opportunity, re-established communion with like catacomb communes and their clergy.  

 As an example, we will bring the recollections of one of TOC ascetics, Voronezh catacomb Abbess Makaria (Chebotarev). Relating how the catacomb commune that she was in charge of was forced to hide for a long period, remaining without a priest: “All these grim years we lived in constant fear: we were all kept under strict observation, and if some Orthodox priest did appear, we shielded him: went to pray and conduct church matters only at night: carried our confessions and partook of Holy Communion. With the blessing of the priest, the nuns themselves handed them down to the faithful. But there were times when there was not one liberated priest and as a consequence, we didn’t have any Holy Communion for several years and forced to pray in private”.

 Recollections of the lengthy period of existence without pastoral spiritual nourishment are related by Archbishop Lazarus (Zhurbenko): “The catacomb life was very onerous, and the most difficult aspect was the absence of Holy Communion. I of course was able to have Holy Communion with my own priests – sometimes once in 3 years, sometimes two years and sometimes more often. Not to the Sacrament of Christ is very agonizing… you become not yourself. I remember once, when I was a priest in the catacombs, I didn’t serve Divine Liturgy for a full year as the opportunity wasn’t there to do so. Thus I wasn’t myself and nearly went out of my mind. As soon as I did serve, it was as though the weight of a mountain was lifted off my shoulders. We had people that had no Holy Communion for 20, 30 and 40 years and all due to one reason: they didn’t have our priests. There were places like the town of Nikolaev in the Ukraine: one priest was arrested and the other died: and that’s how they remained. Of course, they sought a priest as they didn’t reject the clergy. Just to think the purity they maintained – they are simply confessors, martyrs. They read the Hours, Liturgy, Vespers – however without Confessionals and without Holy Communion. They repented and of course prayed, cried - and yet didn’t go to the Sergianists. What, I go to a militiaman and confess to a red pop (clergyman)?”

 We knew where and what commune existed in the country, and where at any given moment you could find our priests. We would write down our confession, seal it in an envelope and a nun would travel throughout the land to a priest. The priest nominates the day to all those who confessed to stand on their knees and read the Rules. The priest would read each confessional at home and at the nominated time, he would have a general Confessional and granted all of them absolution through the Prayer of Release. Meanwhile, at that given hour, we would stand on our knees in various townships beseeching God to forgive our sins. Then we would partake of Holy Communion that was stored. We would place the Sacraments on the Gospel on the open page which read: “Take, eat; this is my Body” (Mat. 26:26). We would take a clean piece of paper, place the Holy Host on it – only not with our hands but with a spoon or simply pour it from the container: then each one who fasted and prepared himself/herself, came up and picked the Sacrament with their lips just as it was done in the ancient Christian days. Desert dwellers also had Holy Communion in this manner. A priest couldn’t get there and give them Holy Communion, yet they sustained Orthodoxy”.

 It can be seen from these recollections that the situation for the majority of True-Orthodox Christians was enforced and determined by the persecutions and difficulties of catacomb existence. Of course, because of a perfunctory approach to the essence of this situation by the N KVD-KGB investigators as well as by the personnel of the sections dealing with religious matters, an impression was formed that the True-Orthodox Christians deteriorated into a “without pop” state, and that the interconnection between the “sects” had been lost. 

 However, it was indeed this mistaken impression intentionally created for the personnel in the Special Section, which suited the True-Orthodox Christians. The external absence of contact between the catacomb communes, didn’t allow the KGB through accusations to incriminate them in the creation of “organising anti-Soviet underground organisations”, which meant this offered a chance to avoid imprisonment. That’s why very often arrested catacombites themselves painted this scenario during interrogation, so as to lead their interrogators into errancy, and thereby not to betray catacomb priests and other catacomb communes.  The reaction from the mistaken impression by the indicated stereotypes, worked its way into the Soviet atheistic-religious literature and later, into the works of the contemporary researchers, unfamiliar with the real life and existence of the Catacomb Church in the USSR.              

 Therefore it has to be acknowledged that the confirmation by a series of researchers is erroneous and apochryphal when stating that after 1950, TOC finally “ceased to exist” and that the remaining catacomb communes deteriorated into “sectarianism”, showing themselves as a “degraded Church practice”, “unsociable” and “a mutation of Church life”, while their “eschatological consciousness, in crossing into extremes, inevitably acquired a marginal form”.

 Similar confirmations regarding all the TOC communes, is not only not in accord with reality, but are ignorant and are sooner recognised as an inheritance of the Soviet politico-idealogical label and cliché. 

 In returning to the TOC situation in the period of 1950 to 1970s, it’s worth noting that apart from constant repressions, the atheistic “work over” (down to collective mocking, contempt, intimidation and outright bashing), of the faithful children in schools and institutions, pioneer and komsomol cells, had a significant influence in reducing Her numbers. As a result of such prepense actions, the youth quite often succumbed to the schools atheistic re-education, and began to be ashamed of their parent’s faith and even fall away from the Church. This problem was characteristic not only to the Catacomb Church, but to the official MP Church. As C.Mashenko noted in 1978: “An important role played in the children’s avulsion from religion were the collective teaching schools, who under party organisations conducted and are continuing to conduct constant work with the faithful… Thanks to such detailed and intense atheistic labours, the absolute majority of Soviet people have broken away from religion”. 

 Memories remain how after komsomol gathering either at school or club, the village youth would collectively roam from house to house of True-Orthodox Christian homes  and inflicted pogroms – smashed windows, burst into homes, ripped icons off walls, threw out belongings, dug channels in front of the house etc…

 Such massive psychological and physical terror quite often resulted in many children of True-Orthodox Christians, falling away from the faith and even disowning their parents. Thus, a family (wife and daughter) of a catacomb priest Fr.Nikita (Lehan), fearing repressive repercussions because of his arrest, disowned him and refused to associate with him – even after his release. This is how his parishioners remember this:

 “After his confinement, Fr.Nikita arrived at the village Ovsuky where he began his pastoral path. When he arrived at his house, it appeared that shortly after his arrest, his wife re-married, gave the house to the school, thereby leaving Batushka without a family and home. Batushka also had a daughter Galina. She was studying in Dnevopetrovsk University. He journeyed to her in the hope that at least his daughter would bring joy to her father.

 But the daughter said: “Let this meeting be the last. I am ashamed before the teachers and students that my father is a priest… And in such a scruffy appearance…” The last hope collapsed - the daughter has rejected her father! What to do? Where to go? He roamed like a vagabond for a long time, until at last he arrived at Harkov. Nevertheless, Batushka continued to agonise over his daughter. Once, in trying to return her to her faith, he wrote her a very lengthy apologetical article. He wrote how many famous people in the history of Mankind believed in God and cited different examples. Alexandra Petrovna Sh. Brought this article to his daughter. But upon reading it, the daughter became very angry and said that if her father was here, then mother would again have him put in jail”. Later, in order to see his daughter, Fr.Nikita had to arrive in the town secretly and look upon her around corners from a distance… She flatly refused to see him.

 Such happenings during “reigning atheism” and persecutions against the Faith were fairly wide-spread. This impacted on the numbers of TOC-TOCc followers, especially among the young.  

 Apart from this, the influence of Brezhnev’s politics aimed at the actual destruction of villages was quite telling, resulting with the village youth attempting in great numbers to escape the slavery of collective farms by relocating to the towns and cities. This also had an impact in the reduction of TOC parishioners, whose bulk of faithful were precisely preserved in villages after the war years.

 With regard to the Soviet statistical data about the reduction of the TOC followers in the examined period, it must be said that in general terms, it does correspond with the real situation. At the same time it would be a mistake to trust them totally. All these publications were embellished with exaggerations and embroidery, inasmuch as they were written with one goal – to report to the Party hierarchy about the “fulfilling the 5 year Plan”: receive due awards, prizes and advancement along the career ladder.

 At the same time, in these reports there is no trace back and not without reservation of the achievement of “victories” of the Communist regime. Thus, in 1978, the same C.Mashenko states:

 “The weakening of religious faith in the significant part of the True-Orthodox Christians, and the changes in their psychology and activities are enormous. At the same time, this doesn’t at all mean that among them there are no fanatics, who are preaching eschatological viewpoints: people with fairly deep mystical sentiment and superstition…It’s important to remember that the followers of this creed have remained: that the individual fanatics don’t want to reconcile themselves with the socialist reality. Intensification of individual exertion with such faithful is an important task for the propagandists of atheism. But it shouldn’t be brought down to just conversations with the faithful. It’s important that before all else, is to entice them into socially-beneficial endeavours (not in prison-correctional colonies? Author): elevate their political, general-educational and cultural level. With this, lecturers and agitators must lean on the active help from the Party, Komsomol and Professional Union of the whole society”.

 Similar public appeals on the part of the Soviet press, gives witness not only to the fact that in 1978 the Soviet authorities have been unable to completely liquidate the underground TOC-TOCc communes, but they also reflect the existence of serious unease on the part of the regime’s representatives about the continuance of the Catacomb Church in the USSR: otherwise they wouldn’t have decided to write about this to the whole world. And it’s worthy to note that their unease was not without foundation. Notwithstanding the massive destruction of the TOC-TOCc followers by the Soviet Safety Section, they not only didn’t cease their activities but they were actively undertaking measures in re-establishing the underground Church organisation, as well as establishing ties with the anti-Soviet overseas Church émigré.

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9. Secret ties between the Catacomb Church and ROCA. 

In speaking about the secret ties between TOC in USSR and Russian Overseas Church in 1969, Professor I.M. Andreev (Andrievsky) wrote: “The secret, Catacomb Church recognises the Russian Overseas Church as Her blood sister and blesses all overseas Russian Church-going people to enter only this Church’s bosom… The whole Catacomb Church and the majority of Russian Orthodox faithful attend (through fear of the Judean, or through insufficient canonical awareness) Soviet churches, while commemorating Metropolitan Anastasius, regarding him as the First Hierarch of the whole Russian Church”.    

In the situation where as a result of repressions against the Catacomb Church in the USSR and She was without a single Bishop, the TOC clergy endeavoured to reconcile with ROCA, thereby emerging from the canonical crisis that had arisen. Furthermore, it’s worthy to note thatthe TOC Catacomb clergy regarded themselves as confessors of True Russian Church, and sought brotherhood not with any local Church, but specifically with ROCA as they recognised an ideological and spiritual unity with Her. It is for this reason that during Soviet times, the Catacomb confessors didn’t turn to the Greeks or Rumanian Old Calendarists for their ordination needs, even though they were known through the Soccamp, and it would have been alot easier and safer to remedy their relationship than with the “Russian White Guardsmen” immigrants outside the “Iron Curtain”. As the immigrant Russian writer N.L.Kazantsev wrote on the subject: “Not one of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia ever stood under the alien Omophoron in Greece, Jerusalem, Bulgaria or Rumania. They all remained in the Russian Catacomb Church and through self-denial, carried the “deed of Russianism” (according to Archimandrite Constantine Zaitsev’s expression). They didn’t even think about severing ties with the mystical body of the Russian Church and uniting with a foreign Local Church. It is for this precise reason that the Russian Catacomb Church always felt Her spiritual unity with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and commemorating Her First Hierarchs. 

The true Catacomb clergy and the faithful were informed of ROCA’s activities: Her Synod and Hierarchs: of their position and solidarity with the Catacomb Church in the USSR through the radio translated “western waves”. Through the Russian language radio transmissions on “Voice of America”, “BBC”, “Freedom Radio”, “Free Europe”, “Radio Canada” and others, ROCA clergy and parishioners conducted special reports about the life of the Russian Overseas Church: of persecutions against the Faith in USSR, as well as transmitting translated Church Services and sermons. Despite attempts by the KGB to suppress these transmissions through “muffled waves”, the faithful found ways of how to overcome this. Each night, they attempted to catch “free voices” on their short-wave radio transistors. At that time, this was the sole gulp of freedom and source of genuine information in the USSR. As recalled by A.Belgarodskaya: “Even in the most remote settlements, where some Catacombites didn’t even have electricity, they had transistorised radio receivers. There were no obstructing apparatuses as such, but despite the powerful interference stations, which muffled the transmissions in the Russian language from the West, they could still hear Fr.Victor Potapov and other religious broadcasts. The information on the activities of the Synod and First Hierarchs outlined by the transmissions, was first heard by the listeners, and through them, all the Catacomb Christians with their clergy”.         

However, this contact with ROCA was one way. That’s why with “Khrushev’s thaw”, the Catacombites repeatedly made attempts to establish direct contact with ROCA. This was achieved in 1962, when through the means of encrypted correspondence from the Catacombites, contact was established with ROCA Archbishop Leontius (Filipovich) of Chile, through whom the future spiritual governance and communion of TOC  with the Russian Overseas Church was realised. In the 1930s, Archbishop Leontius was the spiritual son of the Catacomb Archbishop Anthony (Abashidze), who served in Zhitomir and migrated overseas during the war and attached himself to ROCA. Because of his background, he knew and understood quite well the needs of the Catacomb Church. 

The spiritual son of  the Catacomb Startsa Heiromonk Theodosius (Kashin) of the Caucus – Catacomb confessor Theodotius Zhurbenko (having served 5 years in Stalin’s labour camps for “belonging to TOC and future Catacomb Archbishop Lazarus, President of the TOC Synod),  established and maintained this contact with Archbishop Leontius in the beginning of the 1960s. 

Monk Theodosius maintained his links with Archbishop Leontius of Chile through Mount Athos Archimandrite Eugene (Zhukov), who before the Revolution, served at a Caucus Cossack village. At that time, his associate was Starets Hiermonk Theodosius (Kashin), who was then to become the future spiritual father of Fr.T. Zhurbenko. He often visited Fr.Eugene and they conducted Services together and partook of Holy Communion. Fr.Eugene attached himself to the “Josephites” and was appointed rural dean in the Kuban. He was arrested in 1936, but being a Greek citizen, was deported to Greece. 

Archbishop Lazar recollected that in 1933, Archimandrite Eugene was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in Marein labour camps, where he spent 3 years. At the time, Greece had an exchange of Greek Communists with Greek citizens arrested in the USSR. Taking advantage ofhis Greek citizenship, he was exchanged for Greek Communists shortly after which, he returnedto Mount Athos. 

In 1962, Archimandrite Eugene sent a letter to his former parishioner at an address in the Kuban, where Monk Theodosius (Zhurbenko) was the head of the Catacomb commune. This is how the ten-year long correspondence was formed. It was indeed the Mount Athos Archimandrite Eugene (Zhukov) emerged as the intermediary between TOC in the USSR and the Russian Overseas Church.   

As Archbishop Lazarus recalls: “We wrote our letters in code as we couldn’t write openly. Batushka or Vladika on agreed designations of “babushka” and “tetia Newra”. Old women usually assisted as less attention was paid to them. One pious old-woman/nun would be selected from some commune… We would write down our Confessions, seal them in one envelope and so as not to raise any suspicion, she would travel across the whole province and post it in another region”. 

Having established an encoded correspondence with Archbishop Leontius (Filipovich) through Archimandrite Eugene, and having received a blessing from the Catacomb Starets, Monk Theodosius began risking his life by fulfilling the dangerous job (in those days) of fixed obedience. As mentioned previously, so as not to arouse any suspicions that could be raised with the Militia or KGB, letters were written and sent in the names of various old women and from different townships. Owing to the restoration of the regular secret contact with the RussianOverseas Church, the continuity of the majority of the Catacomb clergy of “Tikhonites-Josephites”, completely established the necessary commemoration of the ROCA First Hierarchsduring Church Services, thus preserving the canonical unity with the fullness of Orthodoxy.  

As A.V. Psarev notes that after the re-establishment of correspondence with Archbishop Leontius, he became an active participant in the lives of the clergy and laity of the Catacomb Church. Unable to visit the USSR, he secretly accepted under his Omophorion many Catacomb priests that were left without canonical Bishops after the death of Bishop Peter (Ladigin +1957). Due to the widowed state of the country’s Catacomb Church, the True-Orthodox clergyand faithful began to regard Archbishop Leontius of Chile as their Hierarch. 

Thus in the 1960s, thanks to the efforts of the future Catacomb Archbishop Lazarus, a secret spiritual communion was established between the widowed TOC in USSR and the Russian Overseas Church, and the commemoration of ROCA’s Hierarchs. Having himself been accepted under Chile’s Archbishop Leontius’ Omophoron, Monk Theodosius (Zhurbenko) also mailed him a Petition about settling the canonical position and accepting under his holy Omophoron Fr.Ambrose: Fr.Ignatius (Skliarov) from Voronezh: Fr.Michael Rozhdestvensky from Petrograd: Fr.Nikita Lehan from Harkov: Fr.Alexander (Orlov) from Siberia: Fr.Bessarion(Markov) from Tambov: Hiermonk Timothy (Nesgovor): Hieromonk Gerasimus (Zamesin) andmany other Catacomb priests.

Due to Vladika’s letters from the free world, true faithful of the Catacomb Church behind the Iron Curtain were kept informed about the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church – about events of those times that were happening in the Orthodox world. The Catacomb clergy turned to him with mailed requests to accept their Confessions and release them “in absentia”, as well as other matters that only a Bishop can resolve. There were also inquiries about Russian Bishops and priests that were ordained by them in Russia. Finding himself thousands of kilometres in Chile, Archbishop Leontius continued to “catacomb-like” serve in the Motherland.  

In essence, from that moment, the period of “Bishopless” in TOC ceased inasmuch as one of the ROCA Hierarchs secretly took upon himself to the spiritual tendance of the TOC communes.  

It’s also worthy to add that in the 1960’s, the introduction into TOC communes Church Services the commemoration of Archbishop Leontius of Chile, as well as Metropolitan Anastasius (Gribanovsk) as First Hierarch, helped to strengthen unity between the communes ofthe Catacomb Church as well adjusting their canonical position and freeing them from their enforced Church-Canonical self-isolation.  

As a footnote – it was through Archbishop Leontius’ that established the invisible spiritual unity of True-Orthodox Church in the USSR and with Old Calendarist True-Orthodox Church of Greece (TOCG): secret ordination of Bishops which he performed at the bequest of the Council of clergy, monastics and laity of the Greek Church. 

Akin to the result of the persecutions against TOC in the USSR which left Her without one canonical Bishop, thus in Greece the Old Calendarist Church was spent of hierarchal continuity,which was re-established with the help of Archbishop Leontius. In his letter to Monk Theodosius (Zhurbenko), Vladika Leontius explained thus: “On Mount Athos, the wolf Athenogoras is driving everybody with his reforms into hell…” 

Archbishop Leontius intended to secretly visit USSR in order to perform ordinations for the Catacomb Church. However, unlike Greece, it was impossible to cross the USSR border legally. Unable to visit the USSR, he gave his written blessing to turn to the enforced practice of being ordained by MP Bishops that have not been tainted by ecumenism or collaborating with the Communist authorities.   

As mentioned before, Archbishop Leontius directed Monk Theodosius (Zhurbenko) for talks with his former cellmate, fiery Archbishop Germogene (Golubev), listed by the MP “for rest” and sent to a monastery in  Zhirovitsk under “house arrest”. With the agreement of Fr.Michael Rozhdestvensky and other Catacomb priests, T.Zhurbenko gave him a proposal to join TOC and become Her head. However, while Vladika Germogene greeted the delegate with goodwill,he was forced to refuse the offer due to him being under constant surveillance and inability to leave the monastery.   

Following this, Archbishop Leontius sent T. Zhurbenko a letter of recommendation to his former cellmate, ardent Bishop Veniamin (Novitsk) of Irkutysk, who had suffered twelve years in Stalin’s concentration camps at Kolim. During the German occupation, Bhp.Leontius was under obedience to Bishop Veniamin, who was the Vicar of Pochaevsk monastery, and later was ordained by him as Bishop. Bishop Veniamin’s secretary was the well-known TOC activist Hegumen John (Seletsky). While after the war he went into an illegal position, he continued to be Bhp.Veniamin’s Confessor, who used to visit him every year at Ternopolsk region - right up to the Hegumen’s death in 1971.  

Archbishop Leontius blessed T. Zhurbenko to be ordained by Archbishop Veniamin, sending a letter to him requesting this. Such a blessing from a ROCA Bishop was called for because prior to the declaration of Anathema on Ecumenism in 1983, the Russian Overseas Church regarded the Moscow Patriarchate as the “imprisoned part of the Russian Church”. It was on this basis that Archbishop Leontius blessed the enforced receipt of ordination from a Bishop, who was not stained with collaboration with the Communist authorities, and who had spent 12 years in Stalin’s concentration camps for his Faith. With that, he didn’t send him to the first Bishop that he would meet, but to his former cellmate, who had ordained him as a Bishop during the war years, and in whom he was completely confident as being trustworthy.

Cellmate and secretary to Archbishop Leontius from times of World War 11, ROCA Archimandrite Veniamin (Voznuke) remembers about the event: “Vladika Leontius sent T. Zhurbenko to Bishop Veniamin because there were no canonical Hierarchs remaining. While forced to serve in the MP,  Vladika Veniamin was completely opposed to Her apostasy”.

Thus, in 1971, when the majority of old TOC priests died and there was nobody to give spiritual nourishment to the Catacomb faithful, through the active participation of Archbishop Leontius, Lazar was secretly ordained for the Catacomb Church as a priest, who later became Archbishop Lazarus and Head of the Bishop’s Synod of the Russian True-Orthodox Church. 

As noted previously, this step was taken under compulsion because the majority of the old Catacomb priests left this life in the 1960s. At the end of 1970s, the situation became extremelycritical: there were only 10 priests left for the entire country, while there was no one or no where to ordain the young candidates. If it wasn’t possible to join some other Catacomb priest –and the path “without priests” didn’t suit, it was necessary to find other means to re-establish a complete liturgical life. In such extreme canonical situation, a decision was made to accept the MP ordination with the intention to later return to TOC and nourish Her widowed faithful. 

Similar occurrences in the history of the Orthodox Church have been recorded on many occasions, and like in the East (where it’s known that because of the absence of canonical Bishops, there were holy Fathers that accepted ordination from Monophysites and Arians), in Russia, in the 16th century in the Ukraine, as a result of the Eastern Church becoming Uniate, there was not one Orthodox Bishop left.     

This was also practiced by the Catacomb Church. It’s also known that the same Archbishop Anthony (Golinsky) that nourished the TOC faithful, continued to maintain relations with some MP Bishops, directing to them True-Orthodox Christians for their recommendations for entry into seminaries and accepting ordinations in the MP. In particular, there is an authentic happening with Ivan Chizhenko from Svetlogorska region, having entered a Moscow seminary with Archbishop Anthony’s blessing, was ordained there: although afterwards he rejected TOC and continues to serve the MP to this day.

It’s pointless talking about the similar practices adopted by the canonically doubtful semi-catacomb groups i.e. so-called “Sekachevs” and “Alfeevs”: many of their “clandestine Bishops”even after accepting “clandestine Bishop’s ordination”, continued as before to serve as a common parish priest of the MP (Anthony Piletsky, Cherubim Degtiar, Adrian Lapin, Eugene Zhiganov and others).

On the whole, at the end of 1960s and beginning of 1970s, when the old canonical priests have all but died out, the instances of True-Orthodox Christians enrolling in the “official Church” seminaries became wide-spread. This characteristic was revealed in the archives of A.Fedulov of Volunsk region - an authorised official on Church matters who compiled a dossier on one of the seminarians in Lutskoy Seminary: “Vassily Vladimirovich Daniluke… Son of a fanatically religious family and belonging to the current from the True-Orthodox Church. Enrolled in the seminary in 1960. Work done with him did not yield any results upon his departure.

Not having any prospect of receiving spiritual tutoring and gain experience in pastoral functions without the threat of being arrested, many Catacombites were forced to turn for help to the decent clergy and Bishops of the “official Church”.

Thus, it is well-known that Metropolitan Tetri-Tskaroisky Zinovi (Mazhuga) tonsured at Glinsk wilderness supported close relationships with the Catacomb True-Orthodox Christians in the Caucus, occasionally tonsuring them or ordaining them.

Often, the old Catacomb priests treated the enforced initiatives of the young with disapproval, although in separate instances they agreed with them and accepted them back through repentance. There was nowhere to go. While there was a host of faithful, there were no more than ten old clergy alive. Consequently, many followers of the Josephite-Kirill tradition regarded the enforced measures of being ordained by the “official Church” as one of the ways out of the difficult canonical position that has fallen in the 1960-1970s on the widowed Catacomb Church. At the time, Kazan Metropolitan Kirill’s ecclesiastical view on this question had a wide circulation among the Catacombites. Thus, the last Metropolitan Joseph’s (Petrovih) ordinant, authoritative Catacomb spiritual father, Fr. Michael Rozhdestvensky, in quoting Met. Kirill of Kazan, says: “He who goes to a Soviet church through ignorance, maybe does receive grace: But he who knows and knowingly associates with her – this is for his condemnation. However, not everyone will perish there, and not everyone will be saved here: on judgment day, there will be questions asked about works, and love”.

In those years, the Church divisions were not very evident. Having being ordained before 1927,many old priests of the “official Church” recognised the rights of TOC and treated Her with sympathy, but because of the persecutions, were undecided in joining Her. Many of them were similarly persecuted: that’s why TOC never judged them and treated them with condescension and love. During the period of Khrushchev’s persecutions and massive closure of legal churches, some of these pastors, being at variance with the official politics, were denied registration and counted as “redundant”, went over into an illegal position by joining TOC. Many devoted parishioners of these priests departed with them. There were also known cases where not fin ding any support from the Patriarchal Hierarchy, the so-called “unregistered” communes turned to the Catacomb clergy for their spiritual sustenance. The flow of “new strength” from the “official Church” into TOC was viewed as typical for those times.

Consequently, there is nothing extraordinary in that after some hesitancy, it was decided to turn to the enforced practice of accepting ordinations from ROC MP Hierarchs that haven’t been stained through collaboration with the KGB. As noted previously, this beginning received a direct written blessing from Archbishop Leontius of Chile, sent with T. Zhurbenko for his tonsure to his former cell-mate, past prisoner of Stalin’s concentration camps, ardent Bishop Veniamin (Novitsk). Having familiarised himself with Archbishop Leontius’ letter, agreed to help TOC’s representatives, and in 1971 ordained T. Zhurbenko (Theodosius in civil life, now Lazarus as a monastic). 

Realising that there were no Catacomb Bishops in the USSR and in the near future would not be found anywhere, some Catacombites agreed with Archbishop Leontius’ proposal of enforced measures to supply the needed clergy.

At the same time, not all Catacomb pastors agreed with such enforced measures, like being ordained by MP Bishops, which in turn provoked a pronounced controversy. Nonetheless, after some discussions, Hiermonk Lazarus (Zhurbenko) was accepted through a Confessional in his existing rank, and was able to commune with TOC’s clergy through Hiermonk Timothy (Nesgovorov) and Hiermonk Bessarion (Markov). However, as an example, Catacomb Hiermonk Guria (Pavlov) didn’t recognise MP’s ordinations. Being “passportless” from 1940s, Fr.Guria carried himself somewhat apart from many Catacomb pastors who were not denied passports. Rejecting categorically the grace of MP Mysteries, he refused to serve with the Catacomb pastors that have accepted their rank in the “official Church”. It was for this reason that in 1990, he refused to recognise ROCA that accepted MP priests in their existing rank, without re-baptising and re-ordaining them. But these incidents were minor in number, and at the first opportunity, the majority of Catacombites attempted to unite with ROCA.

Returning to TOC in the mid-1970s, Hiermonk Lazarus established a number of secret monasteries in Kuban. At the request of the well-known Catacomb Starets-confessor Bessarion Markov) from Tambov, Fr.Lzarus inducted him into schema with the name of Seraphim. Sometime later, he entrusted his Catacomb faithful to Fr.Lazarus for their spiritual nourishment.Before his death, he directed his flock to receive their nourishment from Fr.Lazarus, ordinant Bishop Peter (Ladigan), Fr.Timothy (Nesgovorov) and others. Thus, at the end of 1970s, many widowed Catacomb communes – from Siberia and Kazakhstan to Kuban and the Ukraine – came over to Fr.Lazarus for spiritual guidance. They all didn’t recognise the newly appeared false Catacomb self-created groups “Posdeevites”, “Sekatchevites”, “Alfeevites” and others, adapted for spiritual unity with ROCA.

At the end of 1970s, following the example of these historically TOC Catacomb communes, commemoration of ROCA First Hierarchs was also introduced by the above-mentioned semi-underground movements of “Sekatchevites” and “Alfeevites”.  

Apart from this – as noted previously, in those years attempts were made to establish communion with ROCA, thereby resolving the positions of the Catacomb clerics that were ordained by the deceased Archbishop Anthony (Golinsky). 

With regard to the request by the Catacombites to the ROCA Synod, the long-serving Secretary of the ROCA Synod – Washington Bishop Gregory (Count Grabbe) had this recollection:“At the end of 70s and beginning of the 80s, a possible contact between USSR and the West emerged. Accordingly, at the beginning of the 80s, there was a request to the Synod by a group of 14 clergy from the Catacomb Church, who in the name of Fr.Lazarus (Zhurbenko) informed Metropolitan Philaret that their Bishop died and they were unable to find his replacement: that’swhy they are requesting to be accepted under their leadership. Contact with them was conducted through the deceased Archbishop Anthony of Geneva and Western Europe, and one of his clergy who often travelled to the USSR. 

After deliberations about this matter by the Bishops Council, it was decreed to secretly induct a Western-Europe cleric into monastics and ordain him as Bishop as he had a sister living in the USSR, making it easier for him to obtain a visa into the USSR. This secretly ordained Bishop was charged by the Council to secretly ordain Fr.Lazarus as a Bishop so he may become head of the Catacomb clergy and the communes… Today, without placing anyone in danger, we can state that the Western-European Diocese priest was Vladimir Prokopief, who became Bishop Barnabas and who performed the Bishopric ordination of Bishop Lazarus”.

 

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10. ROCA Bishops Council in 1981 and the re-establishment of the Catacomb Church Hierarchy 

The Council of the Russian Overseas Church, which is mentioned by the Secretary of  ROCA Synod Bishop Gregory (Count Grabbe) of Washington, was held on the 10th October 1981, under the chairmanship  of the First Hierarch of ROCA, Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky). At this historical Council, a Council act was performed, glorifying and sanctifying them as New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, having suffered at the hands of the theomachist Soviet USSR authority. 

The other most important act of this Council was its` avowal of full singularity of ROCA with the persecuted True-Orthodox (Catacomb) Church in the Motherland. 

The ROCA’s Bishops Council’s decree issued on the 22 October 1981 states:

“The following resolution was adopted from Geneva’s Archbishop Anthony’s report on the subject of the Catacomb Church in Russia:  

 

In deliberating on the position of the Catacomb Church in Russia, the Bishops Council, calls upon God’s blessing on those Catacomb pastors, who continue their service in exceptionally difficult conditions, motivated by their faith and loyalty to the Holy Church and readiness to observe their faith even unto death. May the Lord help them carry their cross to the end without lapsing into compromises. The Council calls upon God’s blessing on them and their labours”.

 

The Council’s resolution on the 27th October 1981 states:

 

“We call upon God’s blessing on those, who, not fearing persecutions, distance themselves from all compromises with political Godlessness, embodied in the Moscow Patriarchate, and as with all Her acts, we recognise them as being uncanonical and ineffectual”.   

Inasmuch as the talks were about persecuted TOC’s Catacomb pastors, then from a conspiratorial perspective and for their safety, their actual names were not stated and the formulation of resolutions carried in general terms.  

 In 1981, without any vocal announcements, ROCA’s Council decided to give the brotherhood extended help to the persecuted Catacomb Church for Her rebirth and re-establishment of Her Canonical Episcopate that had been depleted in the years of persecution. With this aim in mind, and the blessing of Saint Philaret (Voznesensky), the Bishops Council of ROCA decided to secretly ordain Catacomb Church’s Archimandrite Lazarus (Zhurbenko) in the USSR as a Bishop “for the revival and administration of the Church in Russia, thereby re-establishing the canonical Church leadership in TOC”. This was the most propitious moment in all the existing years of the Soviet regime. 1981-1982 – the last years of Brezhnev’s rule and life on earth, whose leadership of the Communist regime, characteristically became an agony for many. During this period, more opportunities are opened for overseas tourists to visit USSR, just as there were for the Soviets to visit the West. In the course of these travels by overseas and Soviet tourists – apart from “deficient” goods – they quite often attempted to illegally bring in Bibles and other religious literature, which they distributed them among their relatives and friends. Active overseas contact, which included with ROCA representatives, was being realised and through dissident self-protecting unifications, which were proliferating throughout the whole of USSR and often involved Catacomb participation. The closest contact with the dissident circles in the USSR was upheld by the ROCA Western-European Diocese, who was the Deputy Head of ROCA’s Synod, Archbishop of Geneva and Western-Europe – Anthony (Bartoshevy). Through them, Archbishop Anthony illegally sent out religious literature (printed by the Overseas Church) to USSR: collected reports on repressions on religious grounds, and supported contacts with the Catacombites.   

This mission was made easier because the sister of one of the Western-Europe Diocese’ priest, Protopriest Vladimir Prokopiev, worked in the French Embassy in Moscow. Due to this, Pro.Vladimir could regularly visit USSR without any hindrance, under the guise of a tourist. Consequently, after deliberations by the ROCA Bishop’s Council, it was decided for Pro.Vladimir to secretly take monastic vows, and then ordained him as Bishop (in secret monastics, Barnabas), so that in one of his regular visits to the USSR, he would secretly perform a secret Bishopric ordination of Archimandrite Lazarus (Zhurbenko). 

The secret mission of re-establishing the canonical Hierarchy in the Catacomb Church was successfully accomplished after 6 months: on the 10th May 1982, in the house of Nun Theodora in Moscow, an illegal Bishopric ordination of Fr.Lazarus took place, for the True Orthodox Church.  

A.G.Shatilova, daughter and records manager of ROCA Secretary Bishop Gregory (Grabbe), recalls the secret ordination of Bishop Lazarus: “The ordination of Lazarus went through Vladika Anthony of Geneva. Metropolitan Philaret participated in this to a certain extent: we received in the Synod that which was sent by Bishop Anthony… The ordination of Lazarus was known to Metropolitan Philaret, Archbishop Vitaly, Anthony of Geneva and I, because I typed out the documents. This was the decree by the Council”. Archbishop Mark of Berlin likewise recalls the events through which ROCA “tried to help the Catacomb Church by having ordained Bishop Lazarus for Her spiritual nourishment”. With this, talks were had about re-establishing a Hierarchy specifically for TOC and not the establishment of a parallel ROCA structures within the USSR. As noted by Archbishop Mark: “ROCA didn’t want to create a parallel Hierarchy within the confines of Russia”. 

With regard to the above, the Synodal Testimonial states the following: “Archimandrite Lazarus (Zhurbenko) has been chosen in the Catacombs, confirmed and designated to be the Bishop of God-saving town of Tambov by the official assignment to the Holy Apostolic Eastern Church, by the synergetic all-accomplishing and all-holy Spirit, in the summer from incarnation of God’s Word 1982, month of April on the 27th day, in the city of Moscow, where he was ordained by the Hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church Overseas, by the ruling of the Bishops Council in 1981. The ordination of his Eminence Lazarus held in unusual circumstances, brought about by difficulties of current times and requiring the ordination be made secretly”.

Another Synodal document No.11/35/R/ confirms: “Bishop Lazarus (Zhurbenko) has been ordained as Bishop by the decree of the Bishops Council of the Orthodox Church Overseas for the regeneration and governance of the Church in Russia”.  

In relation to the secret ordination of Bishop Lazarus, on the 14th August 1990, the Synodal Chancellery issued a clarification by stating that it was performed “by the directive of the Bishops Council of the Russian Orthodox Church overseas”, “so that the Church life of the Catacomb Church in Russia can be regularised”.

As an analogue and in witness on the 5th October 1989, an issue signed by ROCA’s First Deputy of the Hierarch states: “His Eminence Bishop Lazarus has been canonically ordained by the Episcopate of the Russian Orthodox Church Overseas and assigned to serve the Catacomb Orthodox Christians of the Russian Church”.  

It’s worth noting that in 1982, soon after the secret ordination of Bishop Lazarus for the Catacomb Church, the newly-painted image of the Iversk Icon of the Mother of God in Montreal (Canada) - glorified as “Montreal Icon”, began to shed myrrh profusely. Presently, a copy of this Icon painted by its custodian Joseph Muntz and given in 1993 to Archbishop Lazarus in the Ukraine, was also found to be miracle-working. 

Apart from the ordination of Bishop Lazarus, there was also an intention to secretly ordain another several Catacomb Hierarchs so as to fully re-establish the Hierarchy and Church governance of TOC. Bishop Lazarus then nominated two Catacomb priests as candidates for ordination into the Bishopric – Fr. Michael Rozhdestvensky (1901-1988) from Petrograd, and Fr. Nikita Lehan (1893-1985) from Harkov. However, their followers declined to have a direct and open contact with the newly-arrived overseas Bishop Barnabas (Prokofy) for the ordination, as they feared that the KGB could track down and expose their secret communes. At the same time, these close followers didn’t allow their 2 priests to meet the visiting ROCA Bishop from France. This became known only after the fall of USSR by the very same parishioners in Petrograd and Harkov. Consequently, there was time for only one ordination as the Bishop’s visa was for a short period, which made it impossible for him to wait for an opportune moment as Bishop Lazarus’ candidates at this stage had not agreed to be ordained. Added to this, Fr. Michael and Fr. Nikita were not monastics, and according to their parishioners, they both refused not only a Bishopric ordination, but also to become monastics. Because of their physical frailty - both were in their eighties, they couldn’t bear the present heavy burden of these new responsibilities. Thus, despite the efforts of Bishop Lazarus to ordain a number of Catacomb Bishops, up to 1990, the only canonical Bishop remaining in the USSR was himself. It was only in November 1990 that an opportunity arose, when the ROCA Synod ordained another Bishop for the Catacomb Church – spiritual son of the Catacomb Starets Theodore (Rafanovich) from Belarus – Bishop Veniamin  (Rusalienko), Bishop Lazarus’ Vicar Bishop. 

 

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11. Catacomb Church in the 1980s and beginning of 1990s.

 With regard to the Church, it’s in concordant with the Holy Fathers’ reasoning – “The Church is where the Bishop is”. That’s why from the moment Lazarus was ordained a Bishop, there was an immediate formation of a Catacomb Church nucleus around him as a canonical Catacomb Hierarch, which continued in unity with ROCA. Following this, over a relatively short time, over 50 historical TOC communes rallied under his omophorion in Kuban, Northern Caucus, Ukraine, Central-Blacksoil part of Russia, Belarus, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Baskir, Udmurty,  Chuvashy and other regions. Among them were communes of “Buevtsev”, “Josephites”, “Kirillites”, “Victorites” and “Andrewites”.

 From the moment of his secret ordination in 1982 and up to 1990, Bishop Lazarus (Zhurbenko) of Tambov and Morshansk, as Hierarch of the Catacomb Church in the USSR, actually had neither direct contact with the ROCA’s Synod nor receiving any directives or help, but on the grounds of Patriarch Tikhon’s Decree, effectuating his clandestine, catacomb service on autonomous basis as was required by TOC.

 The gradual regeneration and growth of the Catacomb Church begins with the establishment of Her canonical Hierarchy. With great risk to his life, the secret Bishop Lazarus travels to the TOC catacomb communes that are scattered throughout the land: secretly performs Church Services at night, gives sermons, gives Holy Communion and ordains new catacomb priests. For the period from 1982 and 1990, Bishop Lazarus ordains more than 10 clerics. Many other catacomb priests joined him through their ordination being rectified, as they were ordained by uncanonical catacomb Hierarchy of “Sekachevites”, “Alfeevites” and other groups, which arose as a result of the eradication of the canonical TOC Episcopate.

 As noted previously, the consequence of a 20 year period of Hierarchal “widowhood” developed a wide-spread appearance of self-exaltation within TOC and began to threaten Her with a degeneracy of sectarianism. Applying great effort in overcoming this dangerous development in TOC, Bishop Lazarus paid particular attention to the question of Apostolic Succession, canonical ordination and rectifying the ordination of those catacomb clerics who didn’t go through this procedure. Thus, after a meticulous examination, it was found impossible to acknowledge the legality of those Hierarchs who received their succession from Seraphim Pozdeev, Gennadeus Sekach and Alphaeus Barnaulsk. Bishop Lazarus spoke openly about this, and offered to correct their canonical situation. Instead, the followers of these pseudo-Hierarchs created an enmity against the canonical catacomb Bishop. Some followers of Archbishop Anthony (of Golinsk-Mikhailovsk) deemed to be ordained in the “Gregorian Schism”, likewise refused to have their ordination corrected. Inasmuch as this was one of the major conditions for acceptance into communion with ROCA (see: Inquiry of ROCA Chancellery Bishops Council No.  4/77/133 at 2/15 August 1990), many of them didn’t join Bishop Lazarus. In mid 90s, some of them joined ROCA’s Bishop’s Conference through a supplementary ordination. However, there were those that acknowledged Bishop Lazarus immediately. Among them were such authoritative priests like Fr. Michael, Fr. Demetrius and Fr.Seraphim, who had ceased to serve as priests because of their doubts about the canonicity of their ordination. As previously noted, Archbishop Anthony planned to appoint Fr.Michael (Nyechitalenko) as his deputy after solely ordaining him as a Bishop. Fr.Michael refused the offer. 

 After his secret Bishop’s ordination, Bishop Lazarus - as before – continually hid from the Soviet authority’s persecution.

 During this period, the agonised regime, although with reduced activity and cruelty, still continued to persecute the catacomb Christians. As M.V. Shkarovsky comments: “the last massive eruptions of disobedience by the True-Orthodox Christians to the authorities that happened 1981, was over the exchange of passports… In some regions, the refusal of receiving the passport assumed such a widespread practice that the local vast media warned of criminal prosecutions against the ‘refusers’ and the disentitlement of their pension”.

 In accordance with the passport reforms of 1974, every person reaching the age of 16, was obliged to have a Soviet passport. “Passportisation” had to be concluded in the middle of the 1980s. However, in rejecting the Soviet line, many True Orthodox Christians sought to delay the receipt of the “red passport” with its five-pointed star, which was regarded by the Catacombites as “Satan’s pentagram”. In the mid-1980s, those Catacombites that had already received their passport, often announced their rejection of the Soviet citizenship. A characteristic example is put forward by A.Berman, who related that in 1984, the following declaration was received by the regional passport office in the town of Cheboksar:

 “In the Lenin’s region, To the head of the Passport Office in Cheboksar, From God’s servant, Kuznetsova, Anastasia Semenovna.

 Declaration: I, God’s servant Kuznetsova, Anastasia Semenovna am rejecting the Soviet citizenship and rejecting the Soviet passport as this document represents a total renunciation of God, of the Holy Baptism and Heavenly Kingdom: I reject it thrice, as I am not a citizen of the USSR but an Orthodox Christian. I believe in the Holy Indivisible Trinity: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and wish to remain with God.  Amen – Kuznetsova”. 

 Similar declarations raised a furore among the local officialdom. An investigation began by the department for religious matters. As stated by the empowered Gromov in his report: “In the town of Cheboksar, there are people that in referring to their belonging to the True Orthodox Christianity, are rejecting the Soviet passport and handing them in to the Passport Office as a Satanic document, and at the same time rejecting in writing their Soviet citizenship”. In order to check such incidents, Gromov suggests: “With the above-mentioned individuals, there is a need to urgently organise a check on their place of residence and their individual work… And the organiser and leader punished through administrative measures, and if necessary – as a criminal category. The important thing is – it’s essential that a strong control be organised over their activities”.

 In the words of M.V.Shkarovsky: “in 1980-1984, the final wave of persecutions against the “Catacombs” had arrived. In the 1980s, the Catacombites attracted several statutes of the Criminal Code, covering: Not conforming to the legislature on cults, anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, being without passports, absence of ID papers, being parasites, being vagrants, refusal to serve in the Army etc…”.

 From the beginning of 1983, the persecution against the Catacombites, dissidents and in general – dissenters especially intensified when KGB G. Andropov became head of the CC CPSU. With his appointment to power, once again exacerbated anti-religious persecutions. Over this period the number of imprisoned individuals for conducting missionary and catechistical activities, publishing and distribution of religious literature, exceeded 400. In those years, the groups that were in particular subjected to persecution were True-Orthodox, Baptists-“initiatives”, Greco-Catholic and others. In that period, they made up the bulk of prisoners for their faith. 

 Even after 1985, when the M.C. Gorbachev became the Secretary-General of the CC CPSU and the so-called “Perestroika” and “freedom of conscience” was announced, the pressure on the TOC followers was maintained. Based on eye-witnesses, we can only imagine about this period when Bishop Lazarus was being tracked down in an attempt to arrest him once again: persecuting his followers, trying to elicit information of his hideaways and his conducting secret Church Services.

 Thus, in 1987, George Stepanovich Chesnakov was arrested in Voronezh. When he was just 14 years, his whole family was arrested for “belonging to TOC” and exiled to Siberia where he grew up. Twenty seven of his kin were executed. He was spiritually nourished by the Catacomb Bishop Lazarus, who often served Services at his house. Then in 1987 - 6 months after Bishop Lazarus’s last visit, G.C.Chesnakov was arrested because of some informer (possibly a neighbour). They interrogated him to reveal “That person who visited him half a year ago”. The KGB found out that a Catacomb Hierarch who conducted secret meetings, preached, conducted Services, and then vanished. Try as they did, they couldn’t find him. George Stepanovich was held in interrogating isolation for nearly 1 year, during which time he was tortured, mocked, had his veins cut as they continued to try and extract the information as to the habitat of the Catacomb Hierarch, his name, family, contacts… However, George Stepanovich didn’t respond – didn’t betray. After a series of severe torture sessions, the faithful confessor lost consciousness and the tormentors though that he was close to death. When the para-medics were removing the body, they were told: “Take him, the dog has died”. But George Stepanovich survived and is currently continuing to be nourished by RTOC. And it was he that related the above. And because of his personal suffering experience for the persecuted True-Orthodox Hierarch, no amount of defamation or obloquy will be able to push him away from his spiritual father. 

 In another instance, which happened in the first half of 1980s in the township of Voronezh involves Hegumen Nestor (Lozhkin). During a secret night Service conducted in his house by Bishop Lazarus, there was a sudden arrival of militia, obviously alerted by an informant. Thanks to Fr.Nestor’s quick thinking in speaking to them in the doorway, thus giving time for Bishop Lazarus to escape through the back window and hide in the fields. Unable to find the Hierarch, the militia arrested Fr. Nestor. Taking him into their custody they attempted to elicit who is their Hierarch and where he is hiding. However, he didn’t confess anything to them including the fact that he was a secret TOC priest.  

 During the years of Soviet persecution and secret Church Services, those who shared their full bitterness with the Catacomb Bishop Lazarus, not only know through words how it really was. Their recollections serve as authoritative witness to these events.

 The persecutions and oppression of TOC continued right up to the collapse of the USSR. Supporting the MP far and wide and helping to strengthen Her monopoly in the collapsing country, the Soviet regime continued its policy of persecution of the True Orthodox Christians, denying them the opportunity to emerge from underground: secure empty Orthodox churches and become active in the re-birth of the True Orthodox Church.

 Remaining in a position without rights, the Catacomb Church – as in the past, continued their Church Services at night, under the threat of militia dragnet and oppression. Thus, in the beginning of 1990s i.e. before the complete collapse of the USSR in September 1991, the author had the opportunity to attend catacomb Church Services, conducted under strict conspiratorial conditions. These secret Services were performed in one of the distant villages, which even the buses do not service. The faithful would gather at the bus depot in small groups of 2 or 3 and gave the appearance of not knowing one another. Sitting alone and dressed in civic attire was the catacomb priest. His long grey hair was hidden under a village cap, while his long beard was tucked under his high-collared shirt, giving an appearance of being short. Consequently, he looked like any other old villager. Aboard the bus (half the passengers were TOC faithful), we travelled from the regional depot to the end of the route at village A. Here, everybody would disembark in similar groups and disperse in various directions, each toward a pre-nominated spot, where they were met by guides. In the evening, they would be guided along forest trails around various villages until they arrived at a designated one. Each group travelled at different times so as not to give an impression that there was a large gathering. One of the houses on the fringes of that village was the church. The faithful arrived at the church in various ways – some along the road while others, through the surrounding vegetable gardens, so as not to attract attention to the villagers. The house was situated in an isolated position and had no neighbours, making access to it through the forest quite unnoticeable. The village itself had many catacomb faithful, which made the situation much easier. Once everybody had arrived, the Service would commence at midnight. The Service was conducted by the catacomb priest Fr.Nestor (Lozhkin). The service was performed in half-voices with all electric lights switched off and the interior lit by a few candles. All the windows were blacked out with curtains so that even if a passer-by came up to the house, he would not be alerted to something suspicious. The interior of the church was quite plain: a small portable altar, home-made utensils in reduced size: a small home-made Antimins, a number of candles and icons. The church was overflowing with the faithful. Inasmuch as the Service was conducted in a half-whisper, it was necessary to hear every word with bated breath. The danger of a militia appearance gave a sharp edge to the present anxiety. One remembers how the grey-haired and good-natured Batushka – full of love and openness, would sternly ask during a Confessional whether your were a member of the Octoberites, Pioneers or Komsomols? While I refused to join the Komsomols through conviction, due to my youth, I did join the Pioneers and Octoberites, for which he applied an epithema (act of penance by prayer or act) for committing such sin. Repentance of “Soviet” sins was the main condition in order to remain in TOC. The Liturgy ended at dawn. This was followed with a common Christian repast, during which the old folk shared their spiritual experience with the younger generation, recounting the suffering and persecution of the faithful by the godless. By mid-morning, breaking up into the same groups as they arrived, they departed along the same route that they had come.

 Thus, during all these godless years, these old folk preserved true Orthodoxy in the catacombs.

 In speaking about the situation of the faithful in the USSR during the stated period, it’s necessary to pause on those processes, which began in the country from the second half of the 1980s and which eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian regime.

 Substantial changes began in the USSR as a result of the nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl atomic reactor in the name of Lenin. The huge explosion of the atomic reactor, released a massive amount of radiation: contaminating a huge area: the increased infection and deathly toll on the people: incompetence of the Soviet authorities to deal with this tragedy, turned out to be fatal to the agonised Communist regime. 

 The Soviet massive media kept quiet for a long time about what happened, which exacerbated the disillusionment, suspicion and distrust by the citizens. Throughout the land, radio ham operators were trawling the “western waves”, obtaining the truth about the tragedy. Initially, the population in general was “fed” not the official Soviet propaganda, but hearsay and information obtained from western radio transmissions. On the basis of fear and helplessness: increasing numbers of sickness and dying among the populace, religious feelings began to grow strongly. Many rushed to be baptised and have their children baptised, ordered Panihidas (Service for the reposed) and Moleben (Service for the living)… a quote from the Gospel became known very quickly and very popular: “Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter” (Rev. 8:10-11). This apocalyptic prophesy assumed a special actuality, inasmuch as the translation of the Ukrainian word “Chernobyl”, means one of the varieties of wormwood.

 The initial Communist nomenclator spasmodically attempted to crush the ever-growing religiousness of the country’s population. A whole series of articles appeared in the Soviet press, about the essentiality of strengthening the struggle against “religious superstitions”. At the end of September 1986, the Second Secretary of CC CPSU E.Ligachev, confirmed the anti-religious political direction of the Party, subjecting the creative intelligentsia to sharp criticism for “flirting with God” and coming forth about the essentiality of returning to religious ethics. At the same time in November 1986, the Secretary General of CC CPSU,  M.Gorbachev officially announced the imperative need to activate an ideological battle against the emerging religious feelings in a section of the citizens, and intensifying atheistic propaganda in the spirit of Marxist-Lenin morals. The regulatory units of the CPSU, immediately picked this up as being a call for the beginning of new anti-religious campaigns.

 However, the society’s concern that was brought about by the Chernobyl catastrophe, the growing list of infected people and the death toll, forced the Party to reverse their approach and search for new avenues of getting out of the created crisis.

 Chernobyl inflicted a crushing blow to the ruling political system, which exposed its full bankruptcy and ineptitude. This created the process of gradual emancipation of the citizens and the formation of opposition parties in regard to the ruling regime. The Gorbachev specious declarations of “pluralism” and “glasnost” aimed at pulling the wool over the eyes of overseas governments, began a real and uncontrollable circulation in society.

 At that time, the excessive militarised “planned economy” of the USSR was suffering a serious crisis which threatened to bankrupt the country. The collapse of the Communist regime became inevitable. In endeavouring to save the situation, the CC CPSU headed by M.Gorbachev saw the necessity to reduce the “arms race” and normalise relations with the USA.   

 So that the USA President Ronald Reagan agreed to a two-sided talks concerning the “arms race”, a proposal was presented to the Central Committee and the KGB of the return of the tested use of the Church for the creation of a “democratic” image of the Soviet regime, employed so successfully by Stalin during the war years. Thus, an idea arose within the CC CPSU of pomposity of an official celebration in Moscow in 1988 of the 1000 year Baptism of Kiev-Russ.

 Especially triumphant preparations for the jubilee had to be undertaken by the overseas ROC MP dioceses with the aim of attracting the heads and representatives of the overseas Orthodox and heterodox Confessions. For the whole of 1987, the internal politics of the USSR was spent in the regime with active preparations for the Church celebrations, and at the same time, talks with the USA government.

 To reiterate, this entourage was essential for a change in the West’s attitude toward USSR as a “democratic” and “rightful” government. In December 1987, the Communist leader made an official visit to the USA. Among the people accompanying the Secretary General of the Central Committee, were representatives of the KGB, party workers, and a multitude of delegates representing the major Faiths in the USSR, where the leading role was played by the ROC MP. While Reagan and Gorbachov held talks, a joint ecumenical prayer was performed in the national Washington Cathedral (Episcopalian Church) by the Hierarchs and clergy of the USSR and USA.

 When the USA President was to visit the USSR in June 1988, Moscow prepared itself for an ostentatious celebration of 1000 year Baptism of Kiev-Russ, with the participation of 211 delegates from 89 countries, as well as 446 foreign correspondents. In the words of the Soviet religious observer M.Bessonov, the celebrations had the characteristics of “large church-political acts”.

 Despite the meticulous preparations, Ronald Reagan’s visit to the USSR was on the verge of breakdown. Three weeks before the visit, Reagan received a resolution from the USA Congress, which condemned the Soviet regime for its persecution of their dissenters, including those on religious grounds. As well, it contained a call to the USA administration to refrain from participating in the official jubilee celebrations in the USSR. It was only the Moscow Patriarchate authority’s adjuratory assurance of a full “freedom of conscience and religious organisations” in the USSR that changed Reagan’s position, who agreed to visit Moscow and sign the bilateral agreement.

 The only dissenters that refused to participate in the pretentious Soviet “Church-political acts”, were the Constantinople Patriarch, Hellas Church and ROCA. Despite receiving an official invitation, the First Hierarch of ROCA Metropolitan Vitally (Ustinov) and other Hierarchs did not go to Moscow. One of the reasons being the continuing persecution of the Faith in the USSR and oppression against the Catacomb Church with regard to Her followers, which continued to experience repression and suppression.

 In contrast to the “government’s” ROC MP, the Catacomb Church didn’t have the opportunity to triumphantly mark the 1000 year Baptism of Kiev-Russ. Still, this jubilee was celebrated in the “catacombs”.

 In the official organ of ROCA – “Orthodox Russia” of 1990, the recollections of how the Catacomb Church in 1988 celebrated this jubilee was preserved:    

 “Her 1000 year jubilee was celebrated by our persecuted Russian Church was greeted in the catacombs. Over all this time of oppression that were so long-lasting and cruel, which were never experienced in the history of our Church, She was imbrued with the blood of the Russian Holy New Martyrs and Confessors, and whitened Her vestments with their holiness and fidelity to the Holy Orthodoxy to the end.

 She survived this fire of ordeal and suffering – the agony being not only physical but moral, and is preserved to this day by the power of the Blood of Christ that created Her. She is saved, and we believe so will Russia be saved, because the power of the Church is not in Her outward service and in the patronage of the powerful in this world, but in the true confession of the Holy Faith and the continuous following of Her Head – Christ.

 When you enter a catacomb church, you are involuntarily gripped with a spiritual trepidation. Today, there are not many spread throughout the vast areas of long-suffering Russia, but they do exist, where secret Services are conducted on monastic orders – lengthy Services, God-fearing and reverence… Night vigil is being performed. It is conducted by the catacomb Bishop (Bhp. Lazarus – author). Late at night. There is no electric lights – only lit candles. Singing and exclamations are in half-voice so as not to be heard in the street. The small building of the house-church is fully packed with the faithful, leaving very little room for the Bishop and clergy to emerge on to the raised platform. Many secret nuns are present, these selfless myrrh-bearing women, on whom a huge life’s cross had been placed – monastic deed of fasting and prayer, coupled with obedience, concernment and labours for arranging life in the catacombs. All the gathering are in a joyful and triumphant mood, because today is not an ordinary Sunday’s night vigil, which comes with the Exaltation of the precious and Life-giving  Cross, but they are also gathered to prayerfully mark the 1000 year old jubilee of our spiritual mother – Russian Church.

 We know that all of 1988 has been a jubilee for all of Christian Russia. But specifically on that day, the day of Exaltation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross, that the baptism of the Russian people took place in the Dnepr, as though indicating the fate of our Church at the end of the world: Her crucifixion on the Cross: carrying Her Cross in an apostate world, and victory over the devil by Her Cross… Words of the Apostle are recalled, who wrote as though for our consolation: “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor. 4:8-9).

 Despite the extremely incommodious catacomb situation, there was no awareness of lack of church completeness. The house-church itself with its small altar: mobile iconostasis: modest church utensils: performance of service with fervency in the realisation that this constrainment and internal paucity is endured for the sake of fidelity to Christ’s Church – create an impression, allow a feeling that you are in the midst of the Roman catacombs, or with our sufferers for Christ who in order to elicit a priceless treasure – Christ’s grace, went away from life’s earthly turmoil into dales in deep forests. Standing before you were contemporary followers of the countless new confessors, who in our times of brutal repression travelled through villages and towns, supporting among the people the flame of living Faith – True Orthodoxy. The exact performance of the Service attunes the soul toward prayer by the very spirit of the Catacomb Church. You somehow seem to forget that there is that tumultuous world with its unsolvable problems, which grow daily to a point where it seems that it will explode at any minute. Yet how everything can be resolved so simply: just come to Christ genuinely, divesting yourself of the proud “I” – the ancient man – and there are no problems except one: how to cleanse the soul stained with sin.

 The Deacon slowly reads: “In peace let us pray to the Lord…” At this moment, there is a strong desire for concentrated prayer, because in the catacomb church, there are harmonious and spiritually formalised entreaties. Entreaties before God’s Altar for the whole world: for all of Christ’s Church… “Of the persecuted Episcopate of the Russian Church…” “Of the Bishop’s Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad…” the deacon continues assiduously. How comforting and pleasant to hear the words of these entreaties, that show the prayerful communion of the persecuted Catacomb Church in Russia and the Russian Overseas Church, standing firmly for the purity of Orthodoxy. This communion in prayer to God shows and underscores their spiritual unity. We can see that before the Lord stands our sole spiritual Mother – persecuted, in suffering from the godless, but conquering the devil and his wiles in the world: the true Russian Orthodox Church, in the Motherland and in dispersal. It is indeed specifically our Greco-Russian Church, which was charged for us to hold by the great God’s chosen venerable Saint Seraphim of Sarov.

 The Catacomb and all his assistants emerge onto the elevated rostrum. The Glorification is sung several times. The Holy Trinity is exalted as having gathered into one Orthodox Church: the Mother of God is exalted as the Mistress of Her house – Holy Russia: all the Saints are exalted that have shined in the Russian Land: likewise the New Martyrs and Confessors, having shown us the way to the Heavenly Kingdom.

 “We exalt you, Holy Russian New Martyrs and Confessors, and commemorate true suffering that you have endured for Christ”. And here is the cardinal moment of the Service – the raising of the Cross, which is the sign of the Church. The grey-haired Vladika stands in the middle of the church holding the Cross and being supported under each arm by the priests. With the singing of 100 times of “Lord have mercy” begins the slow blessing of the faithful with the Cross on all four sides. All the faithful froze in their prayers and spiritual veneration. Vladika quietly pronounces: “Pray more fervently at this moment”. Tiredness is forgotten from this prolonged Service, yet it is after midnight.

 This secret prayerful gathering-Church Service, coupled with various difficulties and worry of being noticed or held by the Soviet godless agencies, creates the opportunity to feel being next to Christ blessing His true followers. Ardency appears and a desire to follow the Lord and perform God’s work, not noticing any difficulties”.

 Thus, having laid aside all passions and earthly cares”, with a pure heart, faith and trepidation, the True-Orthodox Christians greeted the Jubilee in the “catacombs”, in the USSR…

 On the whole, the celebration of the 1000 year Baptism of Kiev’s Rus, had a special implication and meaning in the lives of the country’s population as well as in the history of Orthodoxy in the USSR. Society began a gradual, re-assessment of many values non-controlled by the “top”, leading to a growth of protesting anti-communist feelings: massive civil acts of disobedience: spontaneous meetings and demonstrations: weakening of persecutions against the “dissenters”, and in three years, the complete collapse of the Communist regime and USSR itself. These changes invariably affected the Catacomb Church.

 As M.V.Shkarovsky notes: “the moment the Soviet authority fell, the secret Church not only didn’t cease to exist, but was in the ascendancy”. 

 With the easing of persecutions during the so-called years of “perestroika”, the Catacomb’s Vladika’s new lot in the 1990s became the new mission of heading up not only the Catacomb Church, but also those, as well as those lawful communes of Orthodox faithful, who have ascertained the destructiveness of Sergianism and abandoned the “Soviet Church (Moscow Patriarchate), as well as the newly formed communes, formed by those who have recently turned to the Faith. The serving of this development was not simple, just as it was with serving in the catacombs because it was essential to preserve and retain the compatibility of both methods of serving the True Orthodox Church: lawfully and unlawfully.

 At the end of 1990, the number of requests from the MP clergy and dioceses had grown to such an extent, that the ROCA Archbishop’s Council recommended to Bishop Lazarus that he emerge from the catacombs, and undertake the formation of legal diocese structures.

 Another not so insignificant historical event of that period was that in the initial years of the Catacomb Church’s existence, her secret Bishop Lazarus of Tambov and Morshanks was able to travel to New York in 1990 for ROCA’s Bishop’s Council, where before all the overseas Bishops, he presented an address about the True Orthodox Church in the Motherland and his compatriots. Inasmuch as the secret Bishopric ordination of Bishop Lazarus in 1982 was performed by one Bishop – due to the then existing circumstances – a supplementary rite was performed over him at the ROCA Council to complete the initial ordination. Thus, the Bishop of the Catacomb Church was accepted into the framework of the ROCA’s Bishop’s Council as a qualified canonical Hierarch, until the complete and estimable re-establishment of the Hierarchy and TOC Church governance in the Motherland.

 There was also a triumphant glorification of the Venerable Startsi of Optina monastery, in which solemnity the Catacomb Bishop Lazarus participated.

 Apart from Bishop Lazarus (Zhurbenko), a certain Vincent (Chekalin) arrived from Russia for the Roca Council, presenting himself as a Catacomb Bishop of Tulsk and Yasnopoliansk and under the guise of a “TOC Hierarch”, attempted to enter the ROCA framework. However, thanks to Bishop Lazarus’ participation in the Council, V. Chekalin was exposed as an impostor after he attempted to steal an antimins and altar utensils from the Synodal church in New York, for which he was ejected in disgrace. But this didn’t impede him to continue presenting himself as a “ROCA Bishop”. Thus, upon returning to the USSR in 1990, Chekalin under the guise of “ROCA Hierarch” and in concord with the retired former ROC MP Bishop John (Bodnarchukom), they perform the Bishopric ordination of two initial Bishops for the newly-created Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), thereby establishing the beginning of its continuity.

 Having discovered that V. Chekalin is performing Bishopric ordinations in ROCA’s name, the Hierarchal Synod of ROCA issued an announcement on the 7^th September 1990 which stated: “The Hierarchal Synod is informing clergy and laity of all Orthodox dioceses that Vincent Chekalin – who promotes himself as a Bishop of the Catacomb Church and as being recognised as such by the Russian Overseas Church, in reality is not so as all the Mysteries that he performs cannot be acknowledged as having grace… The ROCA Hierarchal Synod forewarns of even greater canonical errors in view of the fact that the person being ordained, may not have the grace of Apostolic Succession”.

 Inasmuch as the question of legality of Apostolic Succession was of primary importance in accepting communion with the representatives of the various catacomb origins, Bishop Lazarus turned to the ROCA Synod at the Bishop’s Council with a request to give a canonical clarification as to how to accept communion with the requesting clerics from “Golinsk”, “Sekachev” and “Alfeev” groups.

 Having examined this question, ROCA Council’s ruling on the 15^th May 1990 (Protocol No.6) determined that “The Council cannot accept the ordinations as canonical” of these catacomb groups. On the grounds of this conciliar ruling, the ROCA Synod in the same year turned to the active “Sekachev”, “Alfeev” and other catacomb hierarchs in Russia with a recommendation to correct their ordinations through the canonical hierarch in the USSR – Bishop Lazarus. In part, one of the ROCA documents reads: “The Bishop’s Synod, in desiring Church unity of the flock, carrying its confessional cross in the Russian catacombs, calls upon all the catacomb hierarchs – for the sake of the Holy Church’s welfare – to attest to the authenticity of their Apostolic Succession by presenting convincing proof of their ordination, or adopt measures to correct their ordination”.

 Apart from this, with regard to the “Sekachev”, “Alfeev” hierarchs and groups emanating from them, the ROCA Synod ruled that “in the absence of these necessary documents (or inability to present them), it finds it impossible to acknowledge the effectiveness of Apostolic Succession and canonical ordination of these catacomb hierarchs”. With regard to this, “the Bishop’s Synod has ruled that the clergy (priests and deacons) of the above-mentioned consecrations, and who want to enter into communion with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad – if they have no canonical impediments toward this - must regularise their canonical status by being consecrated by the hierarch, recognised by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad”.

 With regard to the clergy of “Golinsk position”, the ROCA Synod has expressed its doubt concerning the legality of Archbishop’s Anthony (Golinsk-Mihailovsk) succession, inasmuch as stated in the documents “there had been no written data confirming the canonical ordination”. Their ruling on 18^th May 1990 states: “The Bishop’s Synod calls to the clergy, known as “followers of Archbishop Anthony (of Golinsk), to regularise their canonical situation through a call to his Eminence Bishop Lazarus of Tambovsk and Morshansk”.

 Aside from approaches to the various catacomb groups in the USSR, the ROCA Synod in 1990 condemned the “Moscow Patriarchate”, spawned by Stalin in 1943, underling that it’s impossible to regard it as our “Mother-Church”.

 Beside this, Bishop Lazarus raised the question at ROCA Council of the Acceptance Rite applied to the MP clergy, inasmuch as this has become a live issue. Up to now, ROCA has accepted MP clergy without a separate Acceptance Rite – even without any repentance. Consequently, according to Bishop Lazarus’s suggestion, the clergy that come over from the MP, the Acceptance Rite that was applied to the “renovationists” in the 1920s by the Russian Church will be applied to them as well.

 With regard to the requests by MP clerics about their coming over, the Council insisted that Bishop Lazarus emerged from the catacombs and begin a legal Church establishment in the Motherland.

 Being given a choice – remain a secret catacomb Bishop or reveal himself and take charge of the construction of the Church in the Motherland, he was compelled to choose the latter – although it wasn’t an instant decision. Before adopting this decision in 1990, he held a Conference of all the catacomb clergy, where he held consultations with them concerning this matter. As nearly all of them expressed a desire to remain in a catacomb state, he supported their request and said he would appoint a catacomb Bishop for them. The candidate for this position put up by the Council was a catacomb Hieromonk Veniamin (Rusalenko), who came from a family of catacombites and was a spiritual son of the well-known catacomb Starets Hieromonk Theodore (Rafanovich) of Belarus. The Catacombites invited an official representative from the ROCA Synod and petitioned him for the Synod to ordain another Bishop for TOC. The request was realised, and on the 28^th November 1990, Bishopric Rites were performed over Bishop Veniamin (Ruslanko) to spiritually nourish the Catacombites, and he was appointed as Bishop of Gomelsk, Vicar to Bishop Lazarus.

 Thus, at the end of 1990, there were two active canonical Hierarchs of the True-Orthodox Church in the USSR.

 Despite the given difficulties in the beginning of 1990s and situation in general, the process of re-birth of the True-Orthodox Church in an agonised USSR continued. A new stage of existence had begun in the wake of collapse of the once monolith Communist regime – the breakdown of USSR into separate states and determinations regarding freedom of conscience and religious organisations. New trials and tribulations appeared before the Church, which She had to overcome over the ensuing years.   

 An unheard of 70 year persecution against faith in Mankind’s history and cruellest repressions couldn’t break or destroy the Catacomb Church in the USSR. Akin to the Apocalyptic woman (Rev. 12:6), she hid in the “wilderness”, catacombs, where she continued to preserve the sources of faith and spiritual traditions. The existence of the Catacomb Church is one of the few examples that didn’t cease Her activities: that didn’t obliterate (despite all the efforts of the repressive Soviet machinery) the anti-Soviet underground Church and Her opposition.

 Beginning with the end of 1920s, the “Tikhonite” True Orthodox Church, was nearly the sole spiritual organisation in the USSR, not serving the theomachist regime. In practical terms, it proved the established Truth enunciated by Christ: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Mat. 16:18).

 The survival of the Catacomb Church in the USSR over all these years is quite unique, having no analogous example in the world’s history in terms of enduring the scale of such suffering, which in turn presents an enormous interest for historical, philosophical, theological and cultural conciseness and research. As M.V. Shkarovsky notes: “The history of the Catacomb Church remains the most enigmatic and unresearched subject. The past of this mysterious Church is tightly bound with current times. The Catacomb Church, especially in the face of True – Orthodox communes, was the most comprehensive, ensuing form of mass opposition to the Soviet authorities for Her entire 70 plus years… Intrepidity of the “Catacombites” and their undoubted firmness in faith has created an obligation for us to preserve the memories of those names, which probably will be made known to us in the next world”.

 Continuing the sacrificial deeds of the first Christian Martyrs, the True-Orthodox Christians in the USSR, endeavoured to preserve the inner spiritual freedom and independence from “this world”, having placed their opposition by going into the “catacombs”. In essence, they had rebirthed in the Church the inheritance of the times of the heathen persecutions. This was the return to the traditions of Christianity in the initial years. It’s not by chance that the very word “catacomb” was adopted from that era. Study of the history and the inheritance from the Catacomb Church during the Soviet persecutions, gives us an opportunity to get answers on this period as well as on Her contemporary being.