MOSCOW: October 5, 2011
A New Monograph on the Russian Church Abroad is Published

As reported by the official website of Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY, a monograph entitled The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, 1925 - 1938. Jurisdictional Conflicts and Relations with the Moscow Church Authority has been published by St Tikhon's Orthodox University.  

Its author, Andrey Alexandrovich Kostriukov, is a Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Research Department of Modern History of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Associate Professor at the Department of History of the Russian Orthodox Church of St Tikhon's Orthodox University. AA Kostriukov is known to researchers by his publications on the history of the Russian Orthodoxy in the diaspora, including two books, The Russian Church Abroad in the First Half of the 1920’s and Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev): His Life, Ministry, and Ideology as well as several dozen articles on the history of Russia and the Russian Church.

This monograph continues the examination of the theme of separation between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Synodal administration abroad, previously discussed in Kostriukov’s book The Russian Church Abroad in the First Half of the 1920’s.

In his new study, the author examines the relationship of the bishops in the diaspora with the Moscow ecclesiastical authorities, and also analyzes conflicts between the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia with Metropolitans Evlogy (Georgievsky) and Platon (Rozhdestvensky). Drawing on official documents, as well as private correspondence of church hierarchs, the author examines these relationships with great detail. The book challenges several existing myths about ROCOR, which have been prevalent in Soviet literature and which continue to appear in various publications to this day.

Kostriukov draws on numerous archival sources as well contemporary periodicals of the Russian emigration. Archives consulted during this research include the State Archives of the Russian Federation, the Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary Archives, the Archive of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, and others.

Several rare documents on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad are presented in the addendum, many of which have not been previously published. In particular, the author presents the personal correspondence between the Serbian Patriarch Varnava (Rusich) and Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodsky), which was conducted by the hierarchs the early 1930’s, and dealt with the question of ROCOR’s canonicity. Among other documents included is a Synodal decree of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad from 1938, originally not designated for publication, on the recognition of Metropolitan Kiril (Smirnov – canonized among the Russian New Martyrs) as Patriarchal.

www.hts.edu