Under Communism (1917 – 1991)
Under Communism (1917–1991)
The period of Communist rule over traditionally Orthodox lands, beginning with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and lasting in various forms until the collapse of the Soviet bloc between 1989 and 1991, constitutes one of the most severe and systematic persecutions in Christian history. Unlike earlier regimes that subordinated Orthodoxy within a religious hierarchy, Communist governments were explicitly atheistic and ideologically committed to the eradication of religion itself.
Churches were confiscated or destroyed, monasteries dissolved, theological schools closed, and tens of thousands of bishops, priests, monks, and faithful were imprisoned, exiled, or executed. In the Soviet Union, the Church was driven nearly to extinction by the 1930s, surviving only through clandestine worship, compromised institutional arrangements, and the witness of innumerable new martyrs and confessors.
In 1914, the Russian Orthodox Church possessed approximately fifty-five thousand churches across the Russian Empire. By 1939, at the height of Stalin’s anti-religious campaigns, fewer than five hundred churches remained legally open, with the vast majority closed, destroyed, demolished, or repurposed by the state.
Yet Orthodoxy endured precisely where Communist ideology sought its annihilation. The faith was preserved not primarily through official ecclesiastical structures, many of which were infiltrated, coerced, or manipulated by the state, but through the quiet fidelity of families, underground monastic life, and the spiritual endurance of those who suffered imprisonment in labor camps.
The Gulag became an unintended place of Christian witness, where bishops, peasants, theologians, and ordinary believers shared the same confessions, prayers, and hope. The emergence of the so-called Catacomb Church demonstrates that Orthodoxy, stripped of buildings, legal recognition, and public voice, remained alive as a sacramental and ascetical reality rather than a cultural or political institution.
The Communist era decisively refutes the claim that Orthodoxy depends upon state power, ethnic privilege, or cultural inertia for its survival. For nearly three quarters of a century, the Church existed under regimes that were not merely indifferent but actively hostile, employing surveillance, propaganda, psychological coercion, and violence in an effort to extinguish belief.
When Communist governments collapsed, Orthodoxy emerged rapidly and recognizably the same, rebuilding churches, restoring monastic life, and openly venerating the New Martyrs and Confessors of the twentieth century. This continuity through attempted eradication stands as historical testimony that the life of the Orthodox Church is sustained not by political protection, but by fidelity to Christ preserved through suffering.