Christianity in The Soviet Union - World War II Rapprochement

World War II Rapprochement

The USSR annexed new territories including Eastern Poland, the baltic republics and a portion of Finland in 1939-1940. Anti-religious work in these territories was lax in comparison with the rest of the country, which as a whole experienced a decline in persecution after the annexations. The regular seven-day work week was brought back in 1940.

Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and many churches were re-opened under the German occupation. Stalin ended the anti-religious campaign in order to rally the country and prevent a large base of Nazi support (which existed in some areas in the early stages of the invasion). In September 1941, three months after the Nazi attack, the last antireligious periodicals were shut down (officially because of a paper shortage. Churches were re-opened in the Soviet Union and the League of the Militant Godless (LMG) was disbanded. Emelian Yaroslavsky, the leader and founder of the LMG, who had led the entire national anti-religious campaign in the 1930s, found himself writing an article in praise of Orthodox Christian Fydor Dostoevsky for his alleged hatred of the Germans

The German forces, while allowing much greater religious tolerance, attempted to sever the Orthodox church's loyalties to the Patriarch in Moscow during the occupation, sometimes with threats. Ukrainian Banderist nationalist partisans killed a number of clergy under the occupation who retained loyalty to the Patriarch. The Germans, while allowing the reopening of churches and religious life in the occupied region, did not allow for seminaries to reopen due to the occupation objective of eliminating education for the Slavic peoples, which would be reduced to no more than the first two primary school grades.

Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort and presented Russia as a defender of Christian civilization, because he saw the church had an ability to arouse the people in a way that the party could not and because he wanted western help. On September 4, 1943, Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky), Alexius (Simansky) and Nikolay (Yarushevich) were officially received by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin who proposed to create the Moscow Patriarchate. They received a permission to convene a council on September 8, 1943, that elected Sergius Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. The church had a public presence once again and passed measures reaffirming their hierarchical structure that flatly contradicted the 1929 legislation and even Lenin's 1918 decree. The official legislation was never withdrawn, however, which is suggestive that the authorities did not consider that this tolerance would become permanent.

This is considered by some violation of the XXX Apostolic canon, as no church hierarch could be consecrated by secular authorities. A new patriarch was elected, theological schools were opened, and thousands of churches began to function. The Moscow Theological Academy Seminary, which had been closed since 1918, was re-opened.

Many surviving clergy could return from camps or prisons, although a significant number (especially those who did not recognize Sergii's 1927 loyalty pledge) remained and were not allowed to return unless they renounced their position. Some clergy that had not recognized the 1927, such as Bishop Afanasii (Sakharov) recognized the validity of the new election and even encouraged those in the underground church to do so as well, but were not allowed to return from exile even still.

Even after the rapprochement, there was still use of terror tactics in some cases. After the Red Army recaptured occupied territories, many clergy in these territories were arrested and sent to prisons or camps for very long terms, allegedly for collaboration with the Germans, but effectively for their rebuilding of religious life underneath the occupation.

For example, Riga priest Nikolai Trubetskoi (1907–1978) lived under the Nazi occupation of Latvia, and when the Germans retreated out of Latvia in 1944, he escaped out of a German evacuation boat and hid behind to await the Red Army, but he was arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to ten years of hard labour for collaboration with the enemy. This was because under the occupation he had been a zealous pastor and a had done very successful missionary work. In reference to missionary work in the occupied territory near Leningrad he wrote 'We opened and re-consecrated closed churches, carried out mass baptisms. It's hard to imagine how, after years of Soviet domination, people hungered after the Word of God. We married and buried people; we had literally no time for sleep. I think that if such a mission were sent today to the Urals, Siberia or even the Ukraine, we'd see the same result.'.

Metropolitan Iosif (Chernov) (1893–1975), the Bishop of Taganrog before the War, had spent nine years in Soviet prisons and camps by the time Germans occupied the city. He used the opportunity of the occupation to very actively revive church life and suffered threats from the Nazis for remaining loyal to the Patriarch in Moscow. After the Nazis retreateed, he was sentenced to eleven yars of hard labour in Eastern Siberia for reviving church life. He was released in 1955. Archbishop Veniamin (1900–1976) of Poltava lived in the territory that belonged to Poland from 1921 to 1939. He was consecrated a bishop in 1941 just before the invasion, and he suffered some pressure from the occupying forces to break relations with the Patriarch in Moscow, but he resisted. After the Germans retreated he was arrested and imprisoned for twelve years in the Kolyma camps, from which experience he never physically recovered and lost all of his hair.

These mass arrests were echoed in territories that were not even occupied by the Germans. For example, in April 1946 there was a wave of arrests in Moscow of clergy that belonged to Bishop Afanasii's group that had returned to the official church; they were sentenced to long terms of hard labour. Many laity were arrested and imprisoned as well including the religious philosopher SI Fudel; most of them had already been in prison and few of them would see freedom until after Stalin died. The spiritual father of the group, Fr Seraphim (Batiukov), had died in 1942, but his body was dug up and disposed of elsewhere in order to prevent pilgrimages to his grave by people who believed him to be a saint.