The attempt to legalize the church administration of the Leningrad’s diocese in 1926 as the prehistory of the “josephite-alexis” division
Abstract
The article deals with the failed attempt to organize and legalize the Leningrad’s diocesan administration of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1926. At the suggestion of OGPU the group of Leningrad’s clergy has propounded legalization. Bishop Alexius (Simanskiy) became the leader of the group in the summer of 1926. The initiative group’s activity aroused suspicion of the part of the Leningrad clergy assuring a top church management to transfer bishop Alexey to another diocese and to appoint Joseph (Petrovyh) to be a Leningrad metropolitan. The conflict situation was complicated by the provocative politics of a state authority. It prevented metropolitan Joseph from carrying out his duties of ruling archbishop and, on the contrary, permitted the initiative group to hold a meeting led by bishop (archbishop) Alexius. All attempts of church workers to find the unconflicted way out were unsuccessful. The author analyses arguments of supporters and opponents of the diocesan legalization, estimates the correlation between personal and based on principles motives. He investigates the position of church authority represented by metropolitan Sergey (Stragorodskiy). The author considers either side was not unjust one in the Leningrad church collision in 1926. Only the politics of the soviet power that used legalization as the demoralization’s instrument of the Church was defi nitely malicious.
