Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905-1946

3. Ecclesiastical Civil War

3. ECCLESIASTICAL CIVIL WAR As factions for and against the renovationist revolution coalesced in the summer of 1922, every group claimed that truth was on its side. No group was willing to compromise its position, so the factions continued to splinter. Red priests attacked one another with as much venom as they did anyone who continued to honor Patriarch Tikhon. Radical reformers embraced the rhetoric and methods of class warfare in the church. Others responded with more moderate agendas that advocated an equal voice for parishioners in church affairs or the reconstruction of Orthodoxy based on Christian socialism. From August 1922 to May 1923, Orthodox believers engaged in a struggle that threatened the movement for reform and Bolshevik plans for controlling religion. Conflict encouraged party officials to take direct action in preventing renovationism from self-destruction. At stake was the future of a Bolshevik Orthodox Church. The Living Church Congress Krasnitskii’s Living Church Group sparked civil war in the church by attempting to put parish clergy in leadership positions around the country. Krasnitskii made a fiercely partisan appeal in hopes of enlisting ordinary believers for the reformist cause. He wrote, “The Orthodox white parish clergy are openly and freely speaking out (vystupaet) for the first time in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. . . . Together with the laboring peasantry, the clergy gets its crust of bread by the sweat of its brow, through hard work.” He further emphasized the similarities between clergy and ordinary Russians by reminding his readers that sons of clergy such as the revolutionary writer Nikolai Chernyshevskii had suffered under tsarism and had fought for a just social order. Drawing on Bolshevik revolutionary rhetoric, Krasnitskii affirmed that “the Living Church is the church of the laboring masses.” The Central Committee of the Living Church Group accepted Krasnitskii ’s analysis and called on all parish clergy to join the movement. It admitted that mistakes had been made during the initial period of white clergy rule but reaffirmed that its primary goal was to enlist the support of the parish clergy, not the monks and “bourgeoisie” who formerly controlled the church. A monastic episcopacy in particular could never be trusted to help the renovationist movement because it had lost too much power and privilege under the new regime. The Central Committee pointed to Vvedenskii as an example of the fate of those who had hopes of enlisting the “free-thinking” monks in the renovationist cause, referring to Vvedenskii’s temporary excommunication and the head injury he received from an irate laywoman during Veniamin’s trial.1 In the face of continued lay and episcopal opposition, leaders of the Living Church Group advised white clergy to band together and form local Living Church cells, once again taking their inspiration from the success of the Bolsheviks. These groups were instructed to inform the center of their legislative needs for achieving control of both parish and diocesan administration. Such control would give them financial independence and the freedom to promote the renovationist program for change.2 The Living Church Group completely adopted the view that the parish clergy were the vanguard for revolutionary change. This prompted Iaroslavskii to scribble on the front page of a later issue of Zhivaia tserkov’, “Priests (popy) of the world, unite!”3 Clerical unity was the goal of the First All-Russian Congress of White Clergy of the Living Church, held in Moscow from August 6–16, 1922.4 In actuality, the Congress provoked open ecclesiastical warfare. The gathering started on an optimistic note with a grand celebration of the Divine Liturgy. Thousands attended, and Krasnitskii preached. Formal proceedings then began at the Third House of Soviets, formerly the Moscow Theological Academy, with 150 voting and 40 nonvoting delegates from twenty-four dioceses in attendance. Participants included a number of bishops (Antonin Granovskii, Evdokim Meshcherskii, Ioann Al’binskii, Ioannikii Chantsev, Vitalii Vvedenskii, and others) as well as representatives of the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria . Delegates split into six working commissions charged with preparing reports and resolutions for the plenary sessions that convened approximately every third day. Each commission worked out issues in an assigned area: legal-canonical, economic, episcopal affairs, charity and preaching, administration, drafting a charter. The opening session on August 6 established the stance of the Congress with regard to the rights of bishops versus the rights of white clergy. ECCLESIASTICAL CIVIL WAR 75 Krasnitskii started with a speech...