Living Church

The Living Church (Russian: Живая Церковь), also called Renovationist Church (обновленческая церковь) or Renovationism (обновленчество; from обновление ‘renovation, renewal’; official name Orthodox Russian Church, Православная Российская Церковь, later Orthodox Church in USSR, Православная Церковь в СССР) was a schism in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1922–1946. Originally begun as a "grass-roots" movement among the Russian clergy for the reformation of the Church, it was quickly corrupted by the support of the Soviet secret services (CheKa, then GPU, NKVD), who had hoped to split and weaken the Russian Church by instigating schismatic movements within it. The beginning of actual schism is usually considered to be in May 1922, when a group of “Renovationist” clergy laid claims to higher ecclesiastical authority in the Russian Church. The movement is considered to have ended with the death of its leader, Alexander Vvedensky, in 1946.

While the entire movement is often known as the Living Church, this was specifically the name of just one of the groups that comprised the larger Renovationist movement. By the time of the “Moscow Council” of 1923, three major groups had formed within the movement, representing different tendencies within Russian Renovationism: 1) The Living Church of Fr. Vladimir Krasnitsky (1880–1936), lobbied for the interests of married clergy; 2) the Union of the Communities of the Ancient Apostolic Church (Союз общин древнеапостольской церкви - SODATs) of Fr. Alexander Vvedensky; and 3) the Union for the Renewal of the Church (Союз церковного возрождения) – the group of bishop Antonin (Granovsky), whose interest was in liturgical reform.