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, have moved to an illegal position since the 1920s. 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 adopted anti-Soviet positions. During the Cold War 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, tr. istinno-pravoslavnaya tserkov) is synonym for 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]