“What Kind of Antichrist Is This? I Don't Recognize Him”: Patriarch Tikhon and Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) in Their Struggle Against the Notion of a “Spiritual Antichrist”

In the 20th century, the Russian Orthodox Church experienced two internal revolutions. During the first of these, in 1917–1918, the Patriarchate was restored. However, the revolutionary processes gave rise to myths, some of which persist to this day. One of them concerns the Antichrist-like nature of the Soviet government. This myth was shaped by a complex of ideas about a spiritual collective Antichrist, born out of Russian religious radicalism from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The idea of a spiritual Antichrist presupposes that the surrounding reality, including the state and society, is already seized by a collective, spiritual Antichrist, understood as apostasy, a universal turning away from God. These same ideas were actively propagated in the anti-Soviet Orthodox underground, now not concerning Russian tsars, but Soviet leaders instead. The issue of using the anathema pronounced by Patriarch Tikhon against the Soviet government in 1918 is closely linked to such a worldview. In reality, the anathema was not only rescinded by him in 1923 after his release from imprisonment, but also acknowledged as erroneous. Patriarch Tikhon made it clear that the Church offered prayers for the Soviet government. Upon Lenin’s death, condolences were sent by him to the government of the USSR. A special place in the spiritual evaluation of authorities is occupied by the fact of persecutions and new martyrdom. Undoubtedly, the scale of such persecutions in the Soviet period surpasses anything that came before. Nevertheless, persecutions and martyrdom in Russia after 1917 are not something unprecedented. In 1917, many martyrs who suffered under tsarist rule were glorified by the Old Believers. The spiritual truth of this martyrdom formed the self-awareness of the Old Believers throughout the pre-revolutionary era, just as the self-awareness of the modern Russian Orthodox Church is based on the spiritual endeavor of the new martyrs and confessors of the 20th century. Patriarch Tikhon and later Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) called not only for normalizing relations with the Soviet government, observing its laws and regulations, but also for praying for it. Such a position corresponds to the traditional view of the government as an act of God’s Providence, dating back to St. John Chrysostom. Opponents of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), including bishops imprisoned on the Solovetskie Islands, also did not consider the Soviet government to have an Antichrist-like character and advocated for normalizing relations with it. Thus, in the activities of Patriarch Tikhon and the future Patriarch Sergius, the legacy of ideas of Russian religious radicalism was rejected.

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