In the mid-17th century the Russian Orthodox patriarch Nikon came into violent conflict with the Russian tsar Alexis. Nikon, pursuing the ideal of a theocratic state, attempted to establish the primacy of the Orthodox church over the state in Russia, and he also undertook a thorough revision of Russian Orthodox texts and rituals to bring them into accord with the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy. Nikon was deposed in 1666, but the Russian church retained his reforms and anathematized those who continued to oppose them; the latter became known as Old Believers and formed a vigorous body of dissenters within the Russian Orthodox church for the next two centuries.
In 1721 Tsar Peter I (the Great) abolished the patriarchate of Moscow and replaced it with the Holy Governing Synod, which was modeled after the state-controlled synods of the Lutheran church in Sweden and Prussia and was tightly controlled by the state. The chief procurator of the synod, a lay official who obtained ministerial rank in the first half of the 19th century, henceforth exercised effective control over the church's administration until 1917. This control, which was facilitated by the political subservience of most of the higher clergy, was especially marked during the procuratorship (1880–1905) of the archconservative K.P. Pobedonostsev.
In November 1917, following the collapse of the tsarist government, a council of the Russian Orthodox church reestablished the patriarchate and elected the metropolitan Tikhon (Tikhon, Saint) as patriarch. But the new Soviet government soon declared the separation of church and state and nationalized all church-held lands. These administrative measures were followed by brutal state-sanctioned persecutions that included the wholesale destruction of churches and the arrest and execution of many clerics. The Russian Orthodox church was further weakened in 1922, when the Renovated Church, a reform movement supported by the Soviet government, seceded from Patriarch Tikhon's church, restored a Holy Synod to power, and brought division among clergy and faithful.
After Tikhon's death (1925) the government forbade patriarchal elections to be held. In 1927, in order to secure the survival of the church, Metropolitan Sergius formally expressed his “loyalty” to the Soviet government and henceforth refrained from criticizing the state in any way. This attitude of loyalty, however, provoked more divisions in the church itself: inside Russia, a number of faithful opposed Sergius, and abroad, the Russian metropolitans of America and western Europe severed their relations with Moscow. Then, in 1943, benefiting from the sudden reversal of Joseph Stalin's (Stalin, Joseph) policies toward religion, Russian Orthodoxy underwent a resurrection; a new patriarch was elected, theological schools were opened, and thousands of churches began to function. Between 1945 and 1959 the official organization of the church was greatly expanded, although individual members of the clergy were occasionally arrested and exiled. The number of open churches reached 25,000. A new and widespread persecution of the church was subsequently instituted under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev (Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich) and Leonid Brezhnev (Brezhnev, Leonid Ilich). Then, beginning in the late 1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev (Gorbachev, Mikhail), the new political and social freedoms resulted in many church buildings being returned to the church, to be restored by local parishioners. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 furthered the spiritual progress, and in 2000 Tsar Nicholas II, the Russian emperor who had been murdered by the Bolsheviks (Bolshevik) after the October Revolution of 1917, and members of his family were canonized by the church.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 had severed large sections of the Russian church—dioceses in America, Japan, and Manchuria, as well as refugees in Europe—from regular contacts with the mother church. A group of bishops who had left their sees in Russia gathered in Sremski-Karlovci, Yugos., and adopted a clearly political monarchist stand. The group further claimed to speak as a synod for the entire “free” Russian church. This group, which to this day includes a sizable portion of the Russian emigration, was formally dissolved in 1922 by Patriarch Tikhon, who then appointed metropolitans Platon and Evlogy as ruling bishops in America and Europe, respectively. Both of these metropolitans continued intermittently to entertain relations with the synod in Karlovci, but neither of them accepted it as a canonical authority.
After World War II the patriarchate of Moscow made unsuccessful attempts to regain control over these groups. In 1970 it finally recognized an autocephalous Orthodox Church in America, thereby renouncing its former canonical claims in the United States and Canada; it also acknowledged an autonomous church established in Japan that same year. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, discussions concerning the reunification of the churches were initiated. In 2007 the churches were reunited when canonical communion was restored between the Russian Orthodox church and the church outside Russia.
Nikon
▪ Russian patriarch
original name Nikita Minin
born 1605, Veldemanovo, Russia
died Aug. 1 [Aug. 27, New Style], 1681, en route to Moscow
religious leader who unsuccessfully attempted to establish the primacy of the Orthodox church (Russian Orthodox church) over the state in Russia and whose reforms that attempted to bring the Russian church in line with the traditions of Greek Orthodoxy led to a schism.
Nikon (Nikita) was born in the village of Veldemanovo, near Nizhny Novgorod, the son of a peasant of Finnic stock. After acquiring the rudiments of an education in a nearby monastery, Nikon married, entered the clergy, was appointed to a parish in Lyskovo, and then settled in Moscow. The death of all three of his children moved him to seek repentance and solitude. For the next 12 years, from 1634 to 1646, he lived as a monk (it was at this point that he adopted the name Nikon), as a hermit, and finally as an abbot in several northern localities. In 1646 he went on monastic business to Moscow, where he made so favourable an impression on the young tsar Alexis and on Patriarch Joseph that they appointed him abbot of the Novospassky monastery in Moscow, the burial place of the Romanov (Romanov Dynasty) family.
During his stay there, Nikon became closely associated with the circle led by the tsar's confessor, Stefan Vonifatyev, and the priests Ivan Neronov and Avvakum Petrovich (all, like him, natives of the Nizhny Novgorod region). This group of priests strove to revitalize the church by bringing about closer contact with the mass of the faithful, and they also sought to purify religious books and rituals from accidental errors and Roman Catholic (Roman Catholicism) influences. With their backing, Nikon became first metropolitan of Novgorod (1648) and then patriarch of Moscow and all Russia (1652).
Nikon accepted the highest post in the Russian church only on condition that he be given full authority in matters of dogma and ritual. In 1654, when the tsar departed for the campaign against Poland, he asked Nikon to supervise the country's administration as well as watch over the safety of the tsar's family, and in 1657, with the outbreak of the new war with Poland, he invested Nikon with full sovereign powers. Enjoying the friendship of the tsar, the backing of the reformers, and the sympathy of the population of Moscow, Nikon stood at the pinnacle of his career.
It was not long, however, before Nikon alienated his friends and infuriated his opponents by his brutal treatment of all those who disagreed with him. On assuming the patriarchate, he consulted Greek scholars employed in Moscow as well as the books in the patriarchal library and concluded not only that many Russian books and practices were badly corrupted but also that the revisions of the circle of Vonifatyev had introduced new corruptions. He then undertook a thorough revision of Russian books and rituals in accord with their Greek models, which he believed were more authentic, to bring them into line with the rest of the Orthodox church. Assisted by Greek and Kievan monks and supported by the Greek hierarchy, he next carried out several reforms of his own: he altered the form of bowing in the church, replaced a two-fingered manner of crossing oneself with a three-fingered one, and ordered that three alleluias be sung where Moscow tradition called for two. A council of the Russian clergy that he convened in 1654 authorized him to proceed with the revision of liturgical books. He next began to remove from churches and homes icons that he considered incorrectly rendered. To quell mounting opposition to these moves, he called in 1656 another council, which excommunicated those who failed to adopt the reforms.