Why did Stalin revive the Church?
Opium for the people
It is worth noting that the Russian Church has been in deep crisis since the time of the Great Schism (Great split. Why did they destroy "Light Russia"; Part 2; Part 3). Since that time, the people and the government have been irrevocably moving away from each other. The best part of the Russian people is going into schism. Old Believers refuse lies, alcohol and tobacco, and create national capital based on work ethics.
There is a gradual loss of living faith and a decline in the authority of the church. Official Nikonian Orthodoxy is degenerating, becoming shallow, and becoming a semblance. The caricatured pop money-grubber, along with the corrupt official, becomes one of the most disliked images among the people. In the final we get the disaster of 1917-1920. Exploded and destroyed churches. And the complete indifference of the people.
The revolutionaries, destroying tsarism, autocracy, Orthodoxy, and “old Russia” in general, destroyed Russian civilization in general and its foundations. Russian culture, education and history. Together with the tsars, Lomonosov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Suvorov, Ushakov, Kutuzov, Skobelev and other “stranglers and holdovers” went “under the knife.”
As they sang in the International:
The whole world of violence we will destroy
To the ground, and then
We are ours, we will build a new world.
To the ground, and then
We are ours, we will build a new world.
The new world was cosmopolitan, international. Another version of “Babylon”, but under the banner of Marxism. He did not envision the preservation of historical Russia and the Russian superethnos.
However, the internationalist revolutionaries, with their outright atheism and godlessness, almost at the level of Satanism, were also disgusting to the Russian people. The basis of the Russian code-matrix is truth-justice, living according to conscience (ethics of conscience). And Russian Orthodoxy, which has absorbed the foundations of the pre-Christian Russian faith, stands on this.
Stalin and the church
Stalin was a Russian communist, that is, a spokesman for the interests of the people. Joseph was a seminarian, a poet with a certain gift. He went through a difficult and thorny path, got to know the people and their aspirations well. In addition, Russian communism (Bolshevism) in its origins had the same principles as original Christianity. Ethics of conscience and honest work. A call for justice: Jesus also expelled merchants and money-changers from the temple.
Therefore, the anti-Russian policy, which included persecution of Orthodoxy with the goal of completely destroying it as part of Russian history and culture, clearly did not suit Stalin. Already in the 1930s, on his initiative, the names of Russian commanders, heroes, the exploits of the Russian army, the names of princes and kings who worked for the strengthening of our state were returned to Soviet history and education. The “great purge” also began, when most of the Trotskyists, internationalist revolutionaries and a possible “fifth column” in a future world war were able to be neutralized (How Stalin defeated the "fifth column"; The riddle of the "great purge" of 1937 of the year).
Stalin consistently restored Russian traditions in culture, education, and foreign policy (the return of the Baltic states, Western Belarus and Ukraine, Bessarabia). Soon the time came for a radical change in the attitude of the state to the church.
During the Great Patriotic War, German propaganda, on the one hand, tried to play on the feelings of believers and the atheism of the Soviet regime. But without much success. Society in Russia, even before the creation of the USSR, treated religion formally. On the other hand, the Soviet government beat the enemy in the information war. Christians, Muslims, and other faiths actively joined the holy war against the Nazis. The Nazis with their misanthropic ideology were the enemies of all Soviet people. Religious communities actively raised funds to fight the Nazis. In total, during the war years, Orthodox believers and clergy collected more than 300 million rubles for the Defense Fund, not counting donated material assets.
Stalin's meeting with church hierarchs
On January 5, 1943, Metropolitan Sergius in a telegram asked Stalin to open a bank account for the Patriarchate for the centralized deposit of collected funds into the Defense Fund. The Supreme Commander-in-Chief agreed. The legalization process has begun. Since the spring of 1943, the country's leadership discussed options for pursuing a new course towards the church. The People's Commissariat of State Security (NKGB) collected materials on the state of affairs in the church, information about hierarchs, the patriotic activities of the clergy, etc. Stalin carefully familiarized himself with them, who was interested in the views of the clergy, their life and way of life during the war years.
On September 4, 1943, Stalin, in the presence of Vyacheslav Molotov and KGB officer Georgy Karpov, received Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky), Alexy (Simansky) and Nikolai (Yarushevich) in the Kremlin. Stalin gave a positive assessment of the patriotic activities of the church during the war years and invited the hierarchs to speak out about pressing problems.
The metropolitans proposed reviving the institution of the patriarch; open new churches and religious educational institutions; to publish a monthly magazine; provide the clergy with the right to be elected to the executive bodies (church councils) of religious societies; ease the taxation of clergy; granting parish societies the right to donate funds to religious centers; allow you to organize your production. It was also intended to create a body for interaction between the Russian Orthodox Church and the government - the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Council of People's Commissars. The council was headed by G. Karpov.
Sergius raised the issue of persecution of the clergy, the need to increase the number of parishes, the release of bishops and priests who were in exile, prisons, camps and the provision of the opportunity to unhindered worship, free movement around the country and registration in cities. Stalin promised to “study the issue.” The Supreme Commander suggested that Sergius prepare lists of priests in captivity.
Georgy Grigorievich Karpov (1898–1967). From September 1943 to February 1960 - Chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (later - under the Council of Ministers of the USSR)
Bishops' Council
On September 8, 1943, a Council was held in the new building of the Patriarchate (the former residence of the German ambassador - Chisty Lane, building 5), which brought together 19 hierarchs (3 metropolitans, 11 archbishops and 5 bishops). The Council unanimously elected Metropolitan Sergius as Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'.
The newly elected patriarch informed Stalin about the elections in a personal letter. The Council adopted:
1) a declaration on the condemnation of traitors to the faith and the Fatherland from among the clergy and believers who have stained themselves with betrayal and collaboration with the occupiers;
2) an appeal to the Soviet government, in which gratitude was expressed for attention to the “needs of the Russian Orthodox Church” and blessing for the works of the USSR government;
3) an appeal to all Christians of the world
“to unite amicably, brotherly, firmly and powerfully in the name of Christ for the final victory over the common enemy.”
The enthronement of the Moscow Patriarch with a huge crowd of believers took place on September 12 at the Epiphany Cathedral. In his first patriarchal message, Sergius called on believers to “work to cleanse the church fence of any disorder", arrange parish life according to church rules, protect the Orthodox faith, and participate in every possible way in the nationwide feat of resisting the invaders.
Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church September 8, 1943
As a result, over the next five years (1944-1948) on the territory of the Soviet Union, where at the beginning of the Great War there were, according to various sources, from 150 to 400 active parishes, hundreds of churches and even one monastery were opened - the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. Thousands of churches were registered, opened by the believers themselves in the territories occupied by the Germans. The number of Orthodox communities (including reunited Uniate ones) has grown, according to some sources, to 22 thousand. The repressed clergy were amnestied. The direct persecution of Christians by the “Union of Militant Atheists” stopped. The state stopped supporting schismatic renovationist structures, which were liquidated by 1946.
Thus, the state and the church began to coexist peacefully. Moreover, under Stalin the state supported Orthodoxy in one way or another. Under Khrushchev, who, in essence, was preparing the country for “perestroika” - collapse, Orthodoxy was again under attack. After the collapse of the USSR, the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church began. However, in the era of the dominance of Western materialism, it resulted in the commercialization of the church, which, forgetting about Russian national interests, became mired in the love of money. Again formalism and appearance, serving the interests of the “prince of this world.”
One of the areas of this crisis was the situation with the Orthodox Church in Russian Ukraine, where schismatics openly sided with the new Ukrainian Nazis - Bandera.
Information