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Soviet Union [USSR] Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church, which has the largest religious
following in the Soviet Union, traces its origins to Kievan Rus'
when in 988 Prince, Vladimir made Byzantine Christianity the state
religion. When Kievan Rus' disintegrated in the thirteenth century,
the metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' moved to Vladimir, one of the
newly established principalities in the northeast. By the
fourteenth century, the metropolitan's seat was permanently
established in Moscow, the capital of Muscovy. Until the fall of
the Byzantine Empire, the Russian church was subordinate to the
Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul).
Afterward, the Russian Orthodox Church considered itself
independent of the church in Constantinople, and in 1589 the title
of patriarch was accorded to the metropolitan in Moscow
(see Soviet Union USSR -
The Golden Age of Kiev;
Soviet Union USSR - The Time of Troubles
, ch. 1).
The Russian Orthodox Church in Muscovy was closely tied to the
state and was subservient to the throne, following a tradition
established by the Byzantine Empire. That subservience was
reinforced during Moscow's drive to acquire the lands of Kievan
Rus', a drive that the Russian Orthodox Church supported. Another
characteristic of the medieval Russian Orthodox Church was its
emphasis on asceticism and the development of monasticism. Hundreds
of monasteries dotted the forests and remote regions of medieval
Russia. Monasteries not only served as the centers of religious and
cultural life in Russia but also played important social and
economic roles as they settled and developed their surrounding
land.
Isolated from the West, the Russian Orthodox Church was largely
unaffected by the Renaissance and Reformation and continued its
essentially inward orientation. The introduction of Westerninfluenced doctrinal and liturgical reforms by Ukrainian clergy in
the seventeenth century aroused deep resentment among Russian
Orthodox believers and clergy and led to a split within the church
(see Soviet Union USSR -
Expansion and Westernization
, ch. 1).
Peter the Great, while transforming Muscovy into the Russian
Empire, further curtailed the minimal secular power the Russian
Orthodox Church had held previously. In 1721 Peter abolished the
patriarchate and established a governmental Holy Synod, an
administrative organ, to control the church. From that time through
the fall of the Russian monarchy in 1917, the Russian Orthodox
Church remained directly under state control. Its spiritual and
worldly power was further reduced after the Bolsheviks came to
power
(see Soviet Union USSR - Peter the Great and the Formation of the Russian Empire
, ch. 1).
According to both Soviet and Western sources, in the late 1980s
the Russian Orthodox Church had over 50 million believers but only
about 7,000 registered active churches. Over 4,000 of the
registered Orthodox churches were located in the Ukrainian Republic
(almost half of that number in western Ukraine, where much of the
population remained faithful to the banned Ukrainian Catholic
Church). The distribution of the Russian Orthodox Church's six
monasteries and ten convents was equally disproportionate. Only two
of the monasteries were located in the Russian Republic. Another
two were in the Ukrainian Republic and one each in the Belorussian
and Lithuanian republics. Seven convents were located in the
Ukrainian Republic and one each in the Moldavian, Estonian, and
Latvian republics; none were located in the Russian Republic.
Because most of the Orthodox believers in these western Soviet
republics were not Russian, many resented the word Russian
in the title of the Russian Orthodox Church. They viewed that
church as a willing instrument of the Soviet government's
Russianization policy, pointing out that only Russian is used in
the liturgical services in most Russian Orthodox churches in
Ukrainian and Belorussian republics and elsewhere.
Data as of May 1989
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