Archbishop of Novgorod - Soviet and Post-Soviet Period

Soviet and Post-Soviet Period

The Novgorodian Eparchy was combined again with Leningrad after the relegalization of the church in 1943. It was briefly separated in the 1950s and combined with Leningrad, again, in the 1960s. It was last separated in 1990, when it was recreated as a bishopric. It was raised to archiepiscopal level again in 1995. The current title is "Archbishop of Novgorod the Great and Staraya Russa."

From 1922-1936, thirteen bishops of Novgorod were named by the Living Church, or Renovationist Church, a movement (now deemed schismatic) that was sponsored by the Soviet authorities to split and thus weaken the Russian Church. The last of these, Veniamin Molchanov, was later Archbishop of Alma Ata, but nothing further is known of him after October 1936. He is thought to have been shot. The Renovationists fought with the patriarchal or main Orthodox Church before they were suppressed when the patriarchal church was legalized in 1943.

In the patriarchal church, Archbishop Arsenius (Stadnitsky) was one of the candidates for Patriarch in the 1917 Moscow Council, when Tikhon was elected. He, like many of the hierarchs of the church, suffered repeated arrest in the 1920s. He was exiled to Central Asia in 1926 and made Bishop of Tashkent in 1933, where he died in 1936. A plaque on the old bishop's palace in Novgorod commemorates him and there is a festival in his honor in Novgorod today. During his long, absenteee tenure as Archbishop and Metropolitan of Novgorod, the eparchy was administered by a number of vicars, including Alexius Simansky, who held the title of Arcbishop of Khutyn. Alexius was briefly Metropolitan of Novogord in 1933, and was succeeded by Venedikt, who was shot in 1937 either in Kazan or in Leningrad, although the sources conflict. After Venedict, Alexius was made Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod in 1943. He was one of the three bishops (of four still alive) who met with Stalin on September 4, 1943, a meeting which led to the relegaliziation of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1945, Alexius was elected Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus and served in that post (the longest-serving Moscow patriarch) until his deathin 1970. Patriarch Alexius II, the most recent Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus was Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod immediately before his election as Patriarch in 1990. As patriarch, Alexius II presided over the reestablishment of Novgorod as an eparchy independent of Leningrad/St. Petersburg and of the reconsecration of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom.

The current bishop is Metropolitan Lev. He was transferred from Tashkent in 1990 to be bishop of Novgorod and raised to archiepiscopal dignity in 1995, and to the metropolitan dignity in 2012. He has overseen the reopening of a number of churches in Novgorod and the eparchy, the return of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom to the Russian Orthodox Church, the opening of a seminary at the Zverin Monastery just north of the old city walls on the left bank of the Volkhov River, the reestablishment of a library in the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, and other activities in the aftermath of the Soviet persecution of the church. He has received several awards from the church and the Russian government for his activities.