Catacomb Church

The Catacomb Church (Russian: Катакомбная церковь, romanized: Katakombnaya tserkov') as a collective name labels those representatives of the Russian Orthodox clergy, laity, communities, monasteries, brotherhoods, etc., who for various reasons, moved to an illegal position from the 1920s onwards. In a narrow sense, the term "catacomb church" means not just illegal communities, but communities that rejected subordination to the acting patriarchal locum tenens Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) after 1927, and that adopted anti-Soviet positions. During the Cold War of 1947-1991 the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (the ROCOR) popularized the term in the latter sense, first within the Russian diaspora, and then in the USSR (by sending illegal literature there).^[1] The expression "True Orthodox church" (Russian: истинно-православная церковь, romanized: istinno-pravoslavnaya tserkov) is synonymous with this latter, narrower sense of "catacomb church".^[2]

The historian Mikhail Shkarovsky [ru] argues that "the catacombness of the Church does not necessarily mean its intransigence. This term covers all unofficial and therefore not state-controlled church activities".^[3]

Organizationally, the Catacomb Church communities were usually not interconnected.^[4]

Unofficial Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Judaic and Uniate groups in the Soviet Union also engaged in similar Catacomb-like activity.^[5]

From the 1990s some (though not all) Catacomb Church groups began emerge from the "underground" and to affiliate with various more-mainstream Orthodox bodies.^[6]