An essay in universal history

36. THE VOICE OF MOUNT ATHOS

Now the lifting of the anathemas in 1965 had caused the majority of monasteries, sketes and dependencies of Mount Athos – always in the forefront of the struggle for the faith against ecumenism - to cease commemorating the patriarch. On November 13, 1971 a special session of the Holy Assembly, the governing body of Mount Athos, resolved that “on the issue of resuming the commemoration of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, each Holy Monastery, as a self-governing entity, is to remain free to choose a course of action in accordance with its conscience”.⁴⁶⁹ However, although Esphigmenou, along with other monasteries, remained faithful to this resolution, the abbots of St. Paul’s and Xenophontou monastery were removed and replaced by hand-picked appointees.

In 1972 Esphigmenou raised the flag “Orthodoxy or Death” over the monastery in protest against the joint prayer service held by Athenagoras and the Pope, and broke communion with the other monasteries. However, in July Athenagoras died, and hopes were raised that his successor, Demetrius, would abandon his predecessor’s uniatism and return to Orthodoxy. But these hopes were dashed when, at his enthronement speech on July 5/18, the new patriarch affirmed his commitment to Ecumenism and the WCC, and spoke about “the pressing need to initiate dialogues first of all with Islam, and then with the other great monotheistic religions.”⁴⁷⁰ Later that year Demetrius addressed the Mohammedans on one of their feasts: “The great God whose children we all are, all of us who believe in and worship him, wishes us to be saved and to be brothers. He wishes this to be so even though we belong to different religions. In these religions, however, we have learned both to recognize the holy God as the beginning and end of all, to love each other and to think only good things – which things let us practise towards each other.”⁴⁷¹
This did not prevent the Sacred Community of the Holy Mountain from issuing an encyclical to the monasteries on July 8/21, instructing them to resume the commemoration of the Ecumenical Patriarch. “A new climate has been established between the Holy Mountain and the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” the encyclical stated. “With the death of Patriarch Athenagoras, the reasons which led certain holy monasteries to break off the commemoration of their bishop’s name now exist no longer.”
Nevertheless, even after this statement and the visit to the Holy Mountain of an exarchate from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in September, seven monasteries still refused to commemorate the patriarch. And one of them, Esphigmenou, began to commemorate the Old Calendarist Archbishop Auxentius instead.⁴⁷²
In September, 1973, another exarchate arrived on the Holy Mountain. It condemned Esphigmenou’s rebellion. Then, “on 11 March 1974 the Ecumenical Patriarch wrote to the Holy Community, announcing his decision. Penalties were imposed on thirteen monks. These included Archimandrite Athanasius, Abbot of Esphigmenou, the two epitropoi and the secretary of the monastery, who were to be expelled immediately from the Mountain... Archimandrite Eudocimus, Abbot of Xenophontos, was to be deposed and expelled from his monastery, but permitted to live in some other Athonite House. The abbots of the two other communities – Archimandrites Dionysius of Grigoriou and Andrew of St. Paul’s – were to be deposed unless within two months they resumed the commemoration of the Patriarch’s name…
“On the arrival of the Patriarch’s letter, the police cut the telephone line to Esphigmenou and installed a guard outside the monastery. Meanwhile the monks kept the gates closed and hung from the walls a large black banner inscribed ‘Orthodoxy or Death’. They warned the civil governor that they would resist any attempt to effect a forcible entry. In a declaration smuggled to the outside world, they stated that they continued to regard themselves as canonically subject to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but did not recognize the present occupant of the Patriarchal throne, since ‘he is an enemy of Orthodoxy’.”⁴⁷³
The monks of Esphigmenou were encouraged in their stand by a great miracle worked by the Holy Martyr Agathangelus, a monk of Esphigmenou. At the most critical moment in the struggle, the monks on entering the sanctuary were met with a great fragrant cloud. On examination, they found that the cloud was coming from the relics of St. Agathangelus; and they took this to mean that the saint was approving of their struggle against the greatest heresy of the age…

37. ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN DISSIDENCE

The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia may have crushed the Czechs temporarily, but in the Soviet Union it gave new zeal to the dissident movement. Thus already on August 25, 1968 a small demonstration by Pavel Litvinov and Larisa Daniel against the invasion took place on Red Square. In their trial, to which no Western correspondents were allowed, they were each sentenced to several years of exile. In the same year Anatoly Kuznetsov fled to the West, declaring: “It is impossible to be at the same time a Soviet citizen and a decent person.”

Dissidence took several forms: movements for freedom from literary and artistic censorship (Solzhenitsyn, Rostropovich, Sinyavsky and Daniel), for national liberation (Jews, Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars), for religious freedom (Catholics in Lithuania, Baptists in the Volga region and Siberia, Orthodox in the major Russian cities). While all these various movements were tinged with dissatisfaction with the Soviet order and all appealed to the concept of human rights, they did not at any time coalesce into a movement to overthrow the Soviet order, that is, into counter-revolution. But this did not stop the Soviet authorities from treating them as rebels and counter-revolutionaries. A particularly alarming development became publicly known at this time: the deterntion of dissidents in special psychiatric hospitals, where they were injected with drugs in order to destroy their minds and their faith. In June, 1971 the ROCOR Synod of Bishops issued a special statement condemning this barbaric practice.⁴⁷⁴
The only movement that radically rejected the legitimacy of the Soviet regime while embracing the pre-revolutionary ideology of the Russian Orthodox Autocracy was the True Orthodox or Catacomb Church. They were supported by ROCOR in the West. But the True Orthodox Christians remained in the underground without engaging in open dissident activity…
The dissident movement in the official Orthodox Church began, among the clergy, with the 1965 open letter of the Priests Nicholas Yeshliman and Gleb Yakunin to President Podgorny, in which they protested against the subservience of the Church to the State, particularly in not resisting the Khrushchev persecution, in giving control of the parishes to the State-controlled dvadsatsky, in the handing over of lists of those baptized to the local authorities, in not letting children and adolescents under 18 participate in church life, and in ordaining only those candidates to the episcopate and priesthood who were pleasing to the Council for Religious Affairs. This letter was ignored by the patriarchate, and in 1966 both priests were forbidden from serving.
Among the laity, the most significant dissident was the philosopher Boris Talantov, who was imprisoned for exposing the activities of the Kirov Bishop John in the closing of churches and suppression of believers. He was slandered publicly on the BBC by Metropolitan Nicodem of Leningrad, and was eventually sent to prison in Kirov, where he died in 1971.
In an article entitled “Sergianism, or adaptation to atheism”, which had the subtitle “The Leaven of Herod”, Talantov denounced Metropolitan Sergius’ 1927 declaration as a betrayal of the Church, and the MP as “a secret agent of worldwide antichristianity”. Sergianism had not only not “saved” the Church, but, on the contrary, had assisted the loss of true ecclesiastical freedom and turned the Church administration into the obedient tool of the atheist authorities. “Metropolitan Sergius,” he wrote, “by his adaptation and lies saved nobody and nothing except himself.”
In another samizdat article entitled “The Secret Participation of the Moscow Patriarchate in the struggle of the CPSS against the Orthodox Christian Church” Talantov wrote: “The Moscow Patriarchate and the majority of bishops participate in organized activities of the atheist authorities directed to the closing of churches, the limitation of the spreading of the faith and its undermining in our country… In truth the atheist leaders of the Russian people and the princes of the Church have gathered together against the Lord and His Christ”.⁴⁷⁵
In 1972, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote an open “Lenten Letter” to Patriarch Pimen, describing the patriarchate as being “ruled dictatorially by atheists – a sight never before seen in two millenia!” “The Russian Church,” he wrote, “expresses its concern about any evil in distant Africa, while it never has anything at all to say about things which are wrong here at home.” And he went on: “By what reasoning is it possible to convince oneself that the planned destruction of the spirit and body of the church under the guidance of atheists is the best way of preserving it? Preserving it for whom? Certainly not for Christ. Preserving it by what means? By falsehood? But after the falsehood by whose hands are the holy sacraments to be celebrated?”⁴⁷⁶
Solzhenitsyn’s appeal “not to live by the lie” was seen by some to lead logically to the adoption of a catacomb existence for the Church. Thus Fr. Sergius Zheludkov replied: “What are we to do in such a situation? Should we say: all or nothing? Should we try to go underground, which in the present system is unthinkable? Or should we try somehow to accept the system and for the present use those opportunities that are permitted?”⁴⁷⁷
Two main streams were discernible in the religious dissident movement, who may be called, recalling the debates of the nineteenth-century intelligentsia, the Westernisers and the Slavophiles.⁴⁷⁸
The Westernisers were mainly concerned to correct abuses within the Church, to re-establish freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. They sought and received much support in the West, and were in turn much influenced by modern western modes of thought, especially – and in this they departed from traditionally Orthodox modes of thought – Ecumenism. The Slavophiles were less well received and understood in the West. Their main emphasis was on the restoration of traditional Russianness – Russian religion, Russian art and architecture, Russian culture in all its forms, which Soviet culture had so damaged and distorted.
The two streams were not always sharply differentiated and could fuse together in the thought and activity of a single man. Thus Solzhenitsyn, though usually considered to be a Slavophile, nevertheless shared many of the characteristics of the westernizing dissidents, not only in his human rights activity, but also in his Ecumenism. And, purified of their heterodox elements, both streams could be said to tend (unconsciously as yet) towards the True Orthodox Church, which remained more radical and still more courageous in Her confession than the dissidents and more truly representative of the best of Old Russia than the Slavophiles.