The Global Church Era · 1917-1991 · USSR
The Russian New Martyrs & the Catacomb Church
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About This Movement
The Russian Orthodox Church went into 1917 as an established state church and came out of the Soviet century as the object of the largest persecution of Christians in history. Patriarch Tikhon issued an anathema in 1918. Clergy, monastics and laypeople were shot or sent to the camps in numbers still being counted: the Butovo firing range outside Moscow accounted for thousands in 1937 and 1938 alone, and the Solovki monastery became a prison camp. In 1927 Metropolitan Sergius issued a Declaration of loyalty to the Soviet state, and the church divided over it — those who refused went into the catacomb communities, following bishops like Joseph of Petrograd and refusing to commemorate Sergius in the liturgy. The archives opened after 1991, and with them the case files: names, charges, dates, sentences. In August 2000 the Moscow patriarchate canonized the new martyrs and confessors in their thousands.
Sources
- State archives post-1991: Butovo execution lists (1937-38), Solovki records, clergy/laity case files (primary) — These are the persecutor's own records — some of the era's most extensive documentation, but produced by the state carrying out the persecution, not by its victims.
- The church's own documents, both sides: Tikhon's 1918 anathema; Sergius's 1927 Declaration AND the catacomb/True-Orthodox rejections (Joseph of Petrograd; the non-commemorators) (primary) — The catacomb church's founding documents are this exchange itself, presented from both sides.
- Martyrologies and canonizations: the ROC Jubilee Council canonization (Aug 2000); ROCOR's 1981 parallel act; the PSTGU new-martyrs database; oral-history projects (primary)
- Father Arseny (Russian, 1990s; English translation from SVS Press) - historicity debated; Solzhenitsyn's Gulag as literary-documentary context (primary) — This is openly a composite, hagiographic account, not a straightforward historical record.
- William C. Fletcher, The Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 1917-1970 (OUP, 1971); Nathaniel Davis, A Long Walk to Church (Westview, 1995); Chadwick; CHC vol. 9 (secondary) — Fletcher wrote before the Soviet archives opened, so his methodology is now dated. Davis wrote in the archival era, after they opened.