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CONCLUSION Red priests saw no inherent contradiction between radical socialism and Christianity. They consistently hoped to fuse the two, even during social upheaval, terror, and war. This attitude separated them from most Orthodox believers, lay or clergy, and caused them to be caught in the whirlwind of Russian revolutionary politics. The history of their movement reflects the complexities of a society that experienced a rapid succession of convulsions in the first half of the twentieth century. The story of red priests is therefore also complex. It is filled with tension between ideals and pragmatism , loyalty and betrayal, love and hatred, accommodation and manipulation . The movement arose out of a drive for ecclesiastical reform at the end of the imperial era and grew into a cause for sweeping changes in the structure and purpose of the church. The earliest renovationists merged reform, revolutionary ideology, and Orthodox traditions. Russia’s major political crises—the revolutions of 1905, February 1917, and October 1917—inspired attempts to involve the Russian Orthodox Church more closely with broad changes in society. These early attempts were all unsuccessful, but failure did not weaken the resolve of true believers for the cause of revolutionary Christian socialism. Their dedication to a vision for remaking the church grew as they awaited their next opportunity. Determined that the Bolshevik Revolution would not bypass the church, a small group of champions of church reform took advantage of the opening offered by political crisis and famine in 1921–1922. They eagerly formed a secret alliance with the Bolsheviks to form the Living Church, which would be an alternative to the church headed by Patriarch Tikhon. Although they would soon be called heretics, traitors, and puppets of the Communists, founders of the Living Church acted out of a sincere belief that Orthodoxy was dying and could only be revived by linking the church with Bolshevik goals for Russian society. They readily accepted government help in a crusade to save their church from the dustbin of his- tory. On alert for every opportunity, they boldly seized control of the church’s central apparatus in May 1922, when Tikhon unexpectedly abdicated the patriarchate. Zealous renovationists first tried to force dioceses and parishes to accept a radical program for religious change. The movement attracted support from parish clergy across Soviet Russia, thanks to proposals promising financial and administrative independence from both parishioners and bishops. The Living Church began imitating the successful Bolshevik Party by organizing parish clergy into a vanguard for church revolution. Revolutionary rhetoric and tactics became tightly linked. Living Churchmen formed “cells” in every diocese, and the national organization commissioned local plenipotentiaries to direct the work of renovating the church. Bishops and clergy who refused to acknowledge the authority of the new central ecclesiastical authorities were arrested or exiled by the local police. Such tactics fit Bolshevik plans perfectly. The party wanted to neutralize any threat of organized counterrevolution from the Tikhonite church through a wholesale purge of the episcopacy. Bolshevik goals in fomenting church revolution also had an international component. The Politburo had deep concerns about a conspiracy between domestic Orthodox leaders and the actively hostile émigré church community. Renovationism promised to sever connections with the Russian Orthodox Church abroad. In abetting renovationism, the government showed that its first priority was pragmatic policy (disrupting the organizational unity of the Russian Orthodox Church) and not ideology (the mass conversion of believers into atheists). Government cooperation led the renovationists to imagine that their goal of Bolshevik Christianity was attainable. They were wrong. Soviet leaders could never accept the formation of a new state church, and Orthodox believers rejected the very idea of red priests. The Communist Party’s Antireligious Commission (ARK) assumed de facto control of Orthodox affairs in order to oversee the destruction of Tikhonite church leaders and to control internal divisions in the reformist camp that threatened to destroy the movement. ARK struggled, however, with local officials who formed alliances with renovationists and permitted them to act like a state church. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of laity still loyal to traditional Orthodoxy had no interest in either religious or cultural reformation; for them, renovationism was merely a Bolshevik-backed ploy for destroying the church from within. Prospects for renovationist supremacy peaked at the national church council of May 1923. By that time, the party worried less about playing competing reformist groups against each other and more about furthering its main objective of destroying the Tikhonite church. Disorganization CONCLUSION 207 [18.119.120.120] Project...

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