The History of the Russian Church Diaspora in the Third Quarter of the 20th Century in a New Monograph by the Moscow Researcher A. A. Kostryukov

Abstract

The article analyzes the new book “The Russian Church Abroad under Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky), 1964–1985” by the Moscow historian A. A. Kostryukov. Despite the presence of a number of works on the history of the Russian Church Abroad in the 1960s–1980s, major studies that comprehensively characterize the period of the reign of Metropolitan Filaret, before the appearance of the book by A. A. Kostryukov, was not in historiography. The absolute merit of the monograph under review is an objective and unbiased study of the relationship of the Russian Church Abroad with the Moscow Patriarchate and other Local Churches, as well as the exposure of myths, misconceptions and the identification of “blank spots” in relation to a number of topics important for the history of the Church Abroad: the condemnation of ecumenism, unfulfilled hopes in relation to the “catacomb church” in the USSR, on the canonization of the royal family, the new martyrs and confessors of Russia. The monograph also outlines the key problems and important events in the history of other branches of the Russian Church Abroad in the last quarter of the 20th century — the Western European Exarchate of Russian Parishes, which was administratively subordinate to the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the North American Metropolis, which in 1970 received from the Moscow Patriarchate the status of autocephalous (independent) under the name of the Orthodox Church in America. Thus, A. A. Kostryukov studied the complex processes concerning the entire Russian church diaspora, including its connections and relations, both with the Moscow Patriarchate and with other Local Churches and, above all, with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. On the whole, the work under review is the first fundamental work on the history of the Russian Church Abroad in the third quarter of the 20th century.