Persecution of the True Orthodox Christians in Post-Soviet Russia
In October 1996 True Orthodox Christians were branded as ‘foreign espionage institution’ in a Russian Federation Ministry of Interior spravka. From December same year to January 1997 two True Orthodox bishops and a handful of Church members disappeared or were brutally killed. This action is described by Xenia Dennen of Keston College (nowadays Keston Institute), during the Cold War researching religion in the Communist world:
February 1997
PERSECUTION OF THE TRUE-ORTHODOX CHURCH TODAY: RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES USE
REPRESSIVE METHODS OF SOVIET PAST.
by Xenia Dennen, KNS
Grave accusations have been made in a Ministry of the Interior document dated 23 October 1996
against certain foreign religious organisations functioning in Russia, and against a branch of the
Russian Orthodox Church which in no way can be defined as foreign since it was formed in Russia
during the Soviet period in response to a particular internal political situation. This branch of the
Russian Orthodox Church, called the True Orthodox Church, was formed in 1927 when
METROPOLITAN SERGI made an agreement with the Soviet State which many Orthodox believed
to be a compromise with the atheist authorities and which they as Christians could not accept. The
canonical authority of Metropolitan Sergi to act on behalf of the Church was also questioned since he
was not recognised as the ‘locum tenens’ of the last canonically elected Patriarch, PATRIARCH
TIKHON.
This Ministry of the Interior document (No. 7/17464), signed by the Minister
A. KULIKOV, was sent to Duma Deputy VALERI BORSHCHOV (Deputy President of the
Committee for Social and Religious Organisations) who had questioned the
inclusion of a strange paragraph in a Federal programme for combatting
organized crime in Russia in a letter to the Ministry of the Interior dated
23 September 1996. The paragraph, to which Valeri Borshchov objected, named
foreign sects in general terms, as elements which contributed to the general
disorder of society and whose activities were undesirable. Certain sects were
named, however, in a Duma decree dated 13 December 1996, but not the True
Orthodox Church, whose name appears in a list of socially unacceptable sects
only in the Ministry of the Interior document or spravka dated 23 October
1996.
The Ministry of the Interior document, although compiled on the basis of
material gathered not only by the Ministry of the Interior but also by the FSB
(Federal Security Committee, formerly known as the KGB), the Ministry of
Health, the Ministry of Social Security and the General Procuracy of the
Russian Federation, seems strangely lacking in well-founded factual evidence
and generalisations are made about all sects on the basis of a few legal
cases.
The religious sects which concern the Russian authorities are said to be
asocial, to reject constitutional obligations, to ‘endanger the moral,
psychological and physical health of citizens’ and to have drawn children into
their ranks and broken up families. The following religious groups are using
humanitarian aid, this document claims, to attract Russian citizens and
particularly young people into their ranks and to ‘penetrate’ educational,
military and scientific institutions: the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Unification
Church, the Church of Christ of the Latter Day Saints, the New Apostolic
Church, and the True Orthodox Church.
‘Using religion as a cover, the foreign representatives of the above-mentioned
organisations are creating networks which enable them to gather
socio-political, economic, military and other forms of information about the
processes which define Russia’s strategic position.’
The implications of this paragraph are grave indeed–they amount to espionage.
The first four of these religious groups are foreign-based, but the True
Orthodox Church is an indigenous group with no foreign links, having broken
off relations even with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad for what it
considers to be uncanonical acts. It has no ‘foreign representatives’, it
does not ‘have significant financial resources’ nor does it ‘by means of
humanitarian aid to organisations and individuals, work actively to attract
into its ranks Russian citizens and particularly young people’. True Orthodox
Christians were decimated under STALIN during the Purges, their bishops were
martyred in the Solovetsky camp, they continued to be persecuted until the
Communist Party changed its policy on religion in 1988, and they handed down
their uncompromising faith to the next generation against the most formidable
odds and without the help of ‘humanitarian aid’.
The period of persecution under the Communist system is beginning again.
Keston Institute has received documentation from the True Orthodox Church
describing recent acts of repression committed against some of their members
by the Russian authorities. According to a letter dated 19 December 1996 from
True Orthodox BISHOP AMVROSI VON SIEVERS, a True Orthodox Christian from
Siberia who acted as a linkman (‘svyaznik’) left the bishop’s Moscow flat
after two hours at 11p.m. on 13 December. ‘Since then nothing has been seen
or heard of him.’ At 11.15p.m. the bishop sent another member of his church
to find a taxi for him. At 11.45p.m. the bishop went downstairs, was accosted
by two men who knocked him unconscious and stole the contents of his
briefcase.
In a letter dated 5 February 1997, Bishop von Sievers wrote to Keston
Institute: ‘Unfortunately the situation has become so much worse that only
Keston can help us now as it did twenty years ago.’
On 8 January he and a linkman from Siberia were arrested outside his Moscow
flat at 1p.m. and bundled into a car: ‘We were driven beyond the Ring Road
into a forest (about 50 km.) where we were searched and, as I gathered from
what they said, these KGB men were looking for documents and hunting for the
other linkman who had already gone to St Petersburg. They beat us up slightly
and
pushed us out of the car in the forest. We took about 2 hours to get back to
Moscow.’
On 10 January a True Orthodox priest, FR ANATOLI BASKAKOV, was arrested on the
pretext of checking his passport, taken off to the police section in the Kazan
Station where ‘men, who were clearly not militia but KGB officers dressed up
in militia uniform, tried to question him’. This happened at 10.45p.m.
This document continues: ‘On 31 January I received the news that BISHOP
YEVRAGI (DRENTEL’N) and two monks had gone missing, i.e. they had left Tomsk
on their way back to their monastery but had never arrived (they left Tomsk
on 12 January). On 3 February I received the news that evidently Bishop
Yevragi had been killed in the Naum district of the Tomsk region on his way
to a True Orthodox monastery in the taiga. At the same time I received news
that Bishop Evragi’s brother, BISHOP GERONTI (who had been hiding in St
Petersburg) had been killed with the linkman from Bishop Yevragi (the man who
was not caught in Moscow) who accompanied him as they were leaving St
Petersburg on 14 January. On 4 February I received telephone threats that I
would be dealt with.’
This letter to Keston Institute ends with the paragraph:’The hunt for Bishops
Yevragi and Geronti is understandable as they had serious material on the
activity of the KGB and the Moscow Patriarchate. It is also known that the
day before A. Kulikov [now Interior Minister] was given the post of
vice-premier, the private secretary of PATRIARCH ALEKSI II paid him a visit
with a memorandum against religious minorities. I was told that we were
mentioned by name.’
A document dated 6 March 1997 and signed by Bishop Amvrosi begins: ‘Once again
I appeal to Keston College as the only independent organisation which studies
religious life in the Former Soviet Union and which always publishes material
on religious persecution. The present position of the Catacomb Church of True
Orthodox Christians–the most persecuted of confessions in the history of the
Bolshevik regime–has once again drastically deteriorated. As I informed you
previously three of our linkmen were killed during 1996, and in January 1997
three linkmen, two bishops, the three men who were accompanying them
disappeared without trace. According to facts received from Siberia on 28
February, it is now definitely known that Bishop Yevragi (Drentel’n) and those
accompanying him, the monk RODION and novices NIKOLAI and ALEKSANDR, were
killed as they approached the path through the taiga (leading to the
monastery). There were reports that some explosions and shots were heard.
On 10 February the badly deformed parts of two unidentifiable bodies were
discovered in a bog. So far nothing more has been heard of Bishop Geronti and
Fr Valentin, the linkman, who disappeared somewhere near St Petersburg.’
Bishop Amvrosi states that he has been followed quite openly; he has received
threats on the telephone; his room was searched on 26 February. On 27
February as he was returning by train from St Petersburg he was summoned from
his sleeper at 3 a.m. by two people and taken to the compartment of the
carriage’s superintendent where he was beaten up and told to end his
‘anti-state activity’.
‘The severe actions of the punitive organs, sanctioned evidently from above,
are being carried out according to a well-defined programme. I do not exclude
the physical elimination of all our leaders and activists. Once again I ask
our English friends to make clear whether a restricted number of True Orthodox
Christians could be granted asylum.’
It is ironic, although understandable historically as no enemy is hated more
than the one within the gates, that a Russian Orthodox group and not a New Age
group or strange 20th century sect should be experiencing the most severe
repression today in Russia. The True Orthodox Church has always lived in the
strictest secrecy, avoiding all contact with a state which it still considers
godless. Now it has been forced to go public and appeal to the West for help
only because it finds itself ‘in extremis’.(END)
against certain foreign religious organisations functioning in Russia, and against a branch of the
Russian Orthodox Church which in no way can be defined as foreign since it was formed in Russia
during the Soviet period in response to a particular internal political situation. This branch of the
Russian Orthodox Church, called the True Orthodox Church, was formed in 1927 when
METROPOLITAN SERGI made an agreement with the Soviet State which many Orthodox believed
to be a compromise with the atheist authorities and which they as Christians could not accept. The
canonical authority of Metropolitan Sergi to act on behalf of the Church was also questioned since he
was not recognised as the ‘locum tenens’ of the last canonically elected Patriarch, PATRIARCH
TIKHON.
A. KULIKOV, was sent to Duma Deputy VALERI BORSHCHOV (Deputy President of the
Committee for Social and Religious Organisations) who had questioned the
inclusion of a strange paragraph in a Federal programme for combatting
organized crime in Russia in a letter to the Ministry of the Interior dated
23 September 1996. The paragraph, to which Valeri Borshchov objected, named
foreign sects in general terms, as elements which contributed to the general
disorder of society and whose activities were undesirable. Certain sects were
named, however, in a Duma decree dated 13 December 1996, but not the True
Orthodox Church, whose name appears in a list of socially unacceptable sects
only in the Ministry of the Interior document or spravka dated 23 October
1996.
material gathered not only by the Ministry of the Interior but also by the FSB
(Federal Security Committee, formerly known as the KGB), the Ministry of
Health, the Ministry of Social Security and the General Procuracy of the
Russian Federation, seems strangely lacking in well-founded factual evidence
and generalisations are made about all sects on the basis of a few legal
cases.
asocial, to reject constitutional obligations, to ‘endanger the moral,
psychological and physical health of citizens’ and to have drawn children into
their ranks and broken up families. The following religious groups are using
humanitarian aid, this document claims, to attract Russian citizens and
particularly young people into their ranks and to ‘penetrate’ educational,
military and scientific institutions: the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Unification
Church, the Church of Christ of the Latter Day Saints, the New Apostolic
Church, and the True Orthodox Church.
organisations are creating networks which enable them to gather
socio-political, economic, military and other forms of information about the
processes which define Russia’s strategic position.’
The first four of these religious groups are foreign-based, but the True
Orthodox Church is an indigenous group with no foreign links, having broken
off relations even with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad for what it
considers to be uncanonical acts. It has no ‘foreign representatives’, it
does not ‘have significant financial resources’ nor does it ‘by means of
humanitarian aid to organisations and individuals, work actively to attract
into its ranks Russian citizens and particularly young people’. True Orthodox
Christians were decimated under STALIN during the Purges, their bishops were
martyred in the Solovetsky camp, they continued to be persecuted until the
Communist Party changed its policy on religion in 1988, and they handed down
their uncompromising faith to the next generation against the most formidable
odds and without the help of ‘humanitarian aid’.
Keston Institute has received documentation from the True Orthodox Church
describing recent acts of repression committed against some of their members
by the Russian authorities. According to a letter dated 19 December 1996 from
True Orthodox BISHOP AMVROSI VON SIEVERS, a True Orthodox Christian from
Siberia who acted as a linkman (‘svyaznik’) left the bishop’s Moscow flat
after two hours at 11p.m. on 13 December. ‘Since then nothing has been seen
or heard of him.’ At 11.15p.m. the bishop sent another member of his church
to find a taxi for him. At 11.45p.m. the bishop went downstairs, was accosted
by two men who knocked him unconscious and stole the contents of his
briefcase.
Institute: ‘Unfortunately the situation has become so much worse that only
Keston can help us now as it did twenty years ago.’
flat at 1p.m. and bundled into a car: ‘We were driven beyond the Ring Road
into a forest (about 50 km.) where we were searched and, as I gathered from
what they said, these KGB men were looking for documents and hunting for the
other linkman who had already gone to St Petersburg. They beat us up slightly
and
pushed us out of the car in the forest. We took about 2 hours to get back to
Moscow.’
pretext of checking his passport, taken off to the police section in the Kazan
Station where ‘men, who were clearly not militia but KGB officers dressed up
in militia uniform, tried to question him’. This happened at 10.45p.m.
YEVRAGI (DRENTEL’N) and two monks had gone missing, i.e. they had left Tomsk
on their way back to their monastery but had never arrived (they left Tomsk
on 12 January). On 3 February I received the news that evidently Bishop
Yevragi had been killed in the Naum district of the Tomsk region on his way
to a True Orthodox monastery in the taiga. At the same time I received news
that Bishop Evragi’s brother, BISHOP GERONTI (who had been hiding in St
Petersburg) had been killed with the linkman from Bishop Yevragi (the man who
was not caught in Moscow) who accompanied him as they were leaving St
Petersburg on 14 January. On 4 February I received telephone threats that I
would be dealt with.’
Yevragi and Geronti is understandable as they had serious material on the
activity of the KGB and the Moscow Patriarchate. It is also known that the
day before A. Kulikov [now Interior Minister] was given the post of
vice-premier, the private secretary of PATRIARCH ALEKSI II paid him a visit
with a memorandum against religious minorities. I was told that we were
mentioned by name.’
I appeal to Keston College as the only independent organisation which studies
religious life in the Former Soviet Union and which always publishes material
on religious persecution. The present position of the Catacomb Church of True
Orthodox Christians–the most persecuted of confessions in the history of the
Bolshevik regime–has once again drastically deteriorated. As I informed you
previously three of our linkmen were killed during 1996, and in January 1997
three linkmen, two bishops, the three men who were accompanying them
disappeared without trace. According to facts received from Siberia on 28
February, it is now definitely known that Bishop Yevragi (Drentel’n) and those
accompanying him, the monk RODION and novices NIKOLAI and ALEKSANDR, were
killed as they approached the path through the taiga (leading to the
monastery). There were reports that some explosions and shots were heard.
On 10 February the badly deformed parts of two unidentifiable bodies were
discovered in a bog. So far nothing more has been heard of Bishop Geronti and
Fr Valentin, the linkman, who disappeared somewhere near St Petersburg.’
threats on the telephone; his room was searched on 26 February. On 27
February as he was returning by train from St Petersburg he was summoned from
his sleeper at 3 a.m. by two people and taken to the compartment of the
carriage’s superintendent where he was beaten up and told to end his
‘anti-state activity’.
are being carried out according to a well-defined programme. I do not exclude
the physical elimination of all our leaders and activists. Once again I ask
our English friends to make clear whether a restricted number of True Orthodox
Christians could be granted asylum.’
than the one within the gates, that a Russian Orthodox group and not a New Age
group or strange 20th century sect should be experiencing the most severe
repression today in Russia. The True Orthodox Church has always lived in the
strictest secrecy, avoiding all contact with a state which it still considers
godless. Now it has been forced to go public and appeal to the West for help
only because it finds itself ‘in extremis’.(END)
ARCHDIOCESE OF GOTHS OF TRUE ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS 