Formation and Early Years
In 1920 near the end of the Russian Civil War, after the White Russian Army under Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak was defeated and the Bolsheviks occupied Siberia, a mass exodus of Russian refugees moved into Manchuria. Over ninety thousand refugees settled in Harbin, Shanghai, Dairen, Hailar and the smaller towns along the Chinese branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway within three years. Lacking adequate lodgings or employment many migrated to America, Europe or Australia.
Also in 1920 the Soviet government revealed that it was hostile to the Russian Orthodox Church. On November 7, 1920, Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, issued an ukase (decree) instructing all Orthodox Christian bishops currently under the authority and protection of his Patriarchate, should they be unable to contact the Higher Church Administration, to seek protection and guidance by organizing among themselves.
Among some Russian Bishops and other hierarchs, this was interpreted as an authorization to form an emergency synod of all Russian Orthodox hierarchs to permit the Church to continue to function outside Russia. To add urgency to the synod's motives, in May 1922, the Soviet government proclaimed its own "Living Church" as a "reform" of the Russian Orthodox Church.
On September 13, 1922, Russian Orthodox hierarchs in Serbia met in the town of Sremski Karlovci and established a Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad, the foundation of ROCOR. In November 1922, Russian Orthodox in North America held a synod and elected Metropolitan Platon as the primate of an autonomous Russian exarchate in the Americas. This led to a three-way conflict in the United States among the Exarchate, ROCOR (sometimes known as "the Synod" in this period), and the Living Church, which asserted that it was the legitimate (Soviet-government-recognized) owner of all Eastern Orthodox properties in the USA.
Read more about this topic: Russian Orthodox Church Outside Of Russia
Famous quotes containing the words early years, formation, early and/or years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“... the mass migrations now habitual in our nation are disastrous to the family and to the formation of individual character. It is impossible to create a stable society if something like a third of our people are constantly moving about. We cannot grow fine human beings, any more than we can grow fine trees, if they are constantly torn up by the roots and transplanted ...”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)