Conference Talk
The New Martyrs & Confessors
A Personal Memoir of Russia's Orthodox Clergy & Elders Under Communism
Today, many nations that recently called themselves Christian are losing their spiritual and moral bearings. Early in the last century, a new stage to de-Christianize culture, science, education, and national identity began in Russia with an attempt to demolish its Orthodox Christian faith.
After the abdication of the Tsar, but before the Bolsheviks took power, the greatest and most important council in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church began on August 15, 1917. The council reinstated the office of Patriarch, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, then elected Tikhon as Patriarch and established church governing institutions. But the major value of the council's acts was to prepare the church for the coming persecution, to encourage the episcopacy, clergy, and laity to steadfastly bear witness to their faith—to prepare for martyrdom.
The Persecution
Bloody persecution began immediately after the Revolution. Priest John Kochurov, known in the United States as John of Chicago, an assistant to Patriarch Tikhon, was the first to be killed in Petrograd. The first bishop to be executed was Vladimir Bogoyavlensky, Metropolitan of Kiev, killed on January 25, 1918. This was followed by the murder of the Royal Family on July 17, 1918, mass persecutions, the massacre of clergy, and the desecration of churches and relics.
When a terrible famine spread throughout the country in 1921, the authorities, under the guise of helping the hungry, launched a campaign of "forcible seizure of ecclesiastical valuables," in reality a "legalized" robbery of the churches, during which Patriarch Tikhon and Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd were arrested.
The communists aimed to annihilate the Orthodox Church, a goal that is clearly shown in a well-known letter by Lenin, addressed to the most influential members of the party in March 1922:
Seizure of ecclesiastical valuables, specifically from the wealthiest monasteries, lavras, and churches must be conducted with ruthless determination, unconditionally, without hesitation and within the shortest possible time. The more conservative clergy and conservative bourgeoisie we kill in the process—the better. (Isvestia of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. 1990. N4. 191–194)
Show trials led to the execution of Metropolitan Benjamin (August 13, 1922) and other martyrs; many clergy and laity were arrested and exiled.
Patriarch Tikhon was sentenced to be shot, but protests in Christian Europe prevented it. On April 7, 1925 (the Feast of the Annunciation, Julian Calendar), Patriarch Tikhon unexpectedly passed away, apparently poisoned on Bolshevik orders.
Realizing that the persecutions which had been launched would make it impossible to elect a Patriarch according to church canons, the Council of 1917 had given Tikhon the exceptional right to personally appoint candidates to be a temporary office-holder (locum tenens) of the Patriarch in case he died.
Vladimir Vorobyev , Archpriest, Ph.D., president and a founder of St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological University, was born in Moscow in 1941. He serves as the rector of St. Nicholas Church in Kuznetzy, Moscow. Fr. Vladimir heads the research department of the History of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th Century at St Tikhon's. He is the chief editor of a 25-volume academic series, Documents and Materials on the History of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th Century, which includes numerous memoirs.
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