Patriarch Aleksei II (Ridiger) of the Russian Orthodox Church passed away on this day in 2008. The Russian imperial nobility of German ancestry, cultivated since Peter the Great, found itself in different strata of the post-Revolutionary world. Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, the President of Finland, is the most vivid example. In the world of the Russian Church, we see Fr. Alexander Schmemann in the Paris Exarchate and the OCA, Fr. George Grabbe in the ROCOR, and now Patriarch Aleksei of the Russian Church. The future Patriarch Aleksei was born in independent Estonia in 1929. His ancestors converted to Orthodoxy in the eighteenth century, and his father, Mikhail, became the first priest in the family. After the revolution, many Russians found refuge in Estonia. Among them was Aleksandr Kiselev. He became a presbyter in Estonia and then was active in General Vlasov’s Army, the North American Metropolia, and the ROCOR in the US. Aleksei (he was baptized after St. Alexis the Man of God and then tonsured after Metropolitan St. Aleksei of Moscow) served as an acolyte at St. Nicholas church in the Kopli district of Tallinn, where his father, Mikhail, was a deacon, and Fr. Aleksandr Kiselev, a priest. During World War II, Aleksei’s father was already a priest. Aleksei accompanied Fr. Mikhail in his visits to the transitional camps where the Germans kept people forcefully displaced from Russia to fill in the workforce in Germany. Soon, the political climate in Estonia changed once again. It was this new reality that defined most of Patriarch Aleksei’s life. Оn Bright Week of 1950, with special permission from the local bishop, Aleksei got married. He and his wife went to school together, and he was ordained a deacon and a priest within one week. In the same year, they divorced (his ex-wife Vere happily remarried afterward with three children). This quick marriage to a daughter of a cathedral archpriest gives the impression of a particular arrangement required for ordination. After the death of his mother in 1959, Fr. Aleksei was tonsured a monk, and two years later, he became a bishop. Archbishop Nikodim (Rotov) needed trustworthy people who would serve the Church. There is a record in Estonian archives that a person with the code name Drozdov, whose biographical data fits Patriarch Aleksei’s profile, was recruited as an agent by the KGB. It remains to be determined whether he acted consciously as an agent (the KGB may give a code name to an informer) and, if so, whether he committed harm to anyone. In 1964, Archbishop Aleksei was appointed to lead the head office of the Moscow Patriarchate. This was when he would have to show a complete willingness to cooperate with the atheist authorities. At the same time, people, like Holy New Confessor Boris Talantov (d. 1971), would petition the head office to help the faithful of the Kirov Diocese prevent the closure of the remaining churches. Speaking of this time during Great Lent in 1991, Patriarch Aleksei said: “When I was appointed bishop in Tallinn – this was in September 1961 – I was told by the local authorities that the Komsomol members intended to set up a planetarium in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Tallinn, and that Pyukhtitsa Convent, slated for eviction by October 1, would house a holiday resort for miners. I managed to convince the authorities that these actions were unacceptable. And then, during the 30 years when I was head of the Diocese of Estonia, there was not a single case where a church was closed for administrative reasons, and the number of nuns in Pyukhtitsa doubled: from 80 to 160 by 1988. This does not mean, of course, that I was free in my management of the diocese and in my work in the Patriarchate. While advocating one thing, I had to give in to something else. Were there other organizations or other people among those who had to bear responsibility not only for themselves but also for thousands of other destinies who did not have to do the same in those years in the Soviet Union? From the people who were hurt by these concessions, silences, forced passivity or expressions of loyalty allowed by the Church leadership in those years – from these people, not only before God, but before them, I ask for forgiveness, understanding and prayers.” (“Iz interv’iu Sviateishego Patriarkha Aleksiia II: Prinimaia otvetsvennost’ za vse, chto bylo,” [From Patriarch Aleksei’s Interview: "I Take Responsibility For Everything"], Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 10 [1991]) In June 1990, Metropolitan Aleksei of Leningrad became the first patriarch in the Soviet era to be elected by bishops through a secret ballot. Somehow, he would come to find common ground with another person who grew up before World War II in a small Central-European country: Metropolitan Laurus (Škurla). |
