Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia Denounces Putin’s Re-Stalinization Policies

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 6 – The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) has denounced recent changes in Russian government policy regarding the victims of Soviet-era political repressions and moves to rehabilitate Stalin, a denunciation that strains the status of ROCOR as an autonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

            In a statement posted on its website, the ROCOR synod denounced the re-Stalinization of Russia being carried out under Putin’s orders – on that policy, see svoboda.org/a/ochenj-podlaya-istoriya-v-rf-stirayut-pamyatj-o-massovyh-repressiyah/33117449.html – and warned that it could lead to disaster (synod.com/synod/2025/20250605_synodstatement.html).

            The synod explicitly criticized the erection of monuments to Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, “whose inhuman and anti-Christian crimes can be counted among the gravest of the 20^th century and the revocation of the rehabilitation of victims of Stalin’s repressions over the last several years.

            "We are well aware of the paths of the church people thrown abroad by the revolution and then by the war. They are our ancestors,” the statement continued. “We know the complexity and tragedy of those times, of that century. For decades we experienced the slander of the godless regime on ourselves.”

            And it concluded that if Moscow’s current policy continues, Russia “instead of being a bright beacon of Orthodox truth … will become a dark spot among the nations of the world,” words that call into question ROCOR’s relationship with the Moscow Patriarchate as well as with the Kremlin.

            ROCOR was created after the Bolshevik revolution and stood against the Soviet state and the Moscow Patriarchate after the latter was restored in 1943. With the collapse of communism, the Moscow Patriarchate sought to bring ROCOR back into its fold, something that the leadership of ROCOR agreed to with the right of autonomy in 2007.

            Even that was too much for many in ROCOR and that émigré church suffered a schism. But this latest declaration may mean that ROCOR as a whole will denounce the 2007 agreement. At the very least, it is yet another loss for the Moscow Patriarchate and its efforts to expand its influence abroad.