Counter-reformation in Russian Orthodoxy: Popular Response to Religious Innovation, 1922-1925

Abstract

In March 1922 (in the very heat of the campaign to confiscate Church valuables), L.D. Trotskii sent a memorandum to the Politburo, arguing that the “proletarian revolution had finally reached the Church.” Indeed it had: over the next few years the Russian Orthodox Church would undergo tremendous convulsions and intense internal conflict. In May 1922, amidst a violent confrontation with the bolshevik state over the seizure of Church valuables, a small group of radical priests took control of the Church and engineered a temporary but controversial withdrawal of Patriarch Tikhon from active leadership. Their aim was not only to end the conflict with Soviet authorities (by recognizing its legitimacy and endorsing its confiscation of church valuables), but also to implement fundamental reforms in Russian Orthodoxy.