In October 1945, Archbishop Photii (Tapiro) was sent by Moscow to investigate the state of the Russian parishes in Central Europe. His task was to join them to the Moscow Patriarchate. His first stop was Vienna, where he found two Russian churches: St. Nicholas at the former Russian embassy and the Intercession of the Holy Virgin (Pokrovskaya). In agreement with Marshall Ivan Konev and other Soviet military authorities, the archbishop proposed that the Intercession temple be closed and its movable property transferred to St. Nicholas. This decision was officially motivated by the small number of believers. The archbishop also received the supplications of the two Russian priests in Vienna to join the Moscow PatriarchatE.96
Then Photii went to Prague, where he negotiated the reunion of the parishes of Russian emigres in Czechoslovakia with the mother church. The Moscow envoy established contact with their administrator, Bishop Sergii (Korolev), who formerly belonged to the exarchate of Metropolitan Evlogii in Paris. During the German occupation, Bishop Sergii enjoyed the right to perform liturgy, whereas the Czech bishops were forbidden to do so. In October 1943, he attended the Vienna conference, convoked by the Karlovci Synod, but did not sign its verdict against Patriarch Sergii. After the war, his status was under question because he had neither Czechoslovakian nor Soviet citizenship. Moreover, he did not have good relations with Orthodox Czechs because of his criticism of some Protestant elements in their church services. The talk with Photii ended with the supplication to Sergii that he reunite with the Moscow PatriarchatE.97
Then Archbishop Photii met with other Russian exiles living in Central Europe, who also submitted supplications for reunion with the mother church: the former Bishop of Kaunas, Daniil (Yuzvyuk), Archimandrite Arsenii (Shilovskii), and some priests. Archbishop Photii ordered one of them, Protopresbyter Peter Kudrinskii, who served as assistant to Bishop Sergii (Korolev), to go to Munich in order to pay a visit to the Karlovci hierarchs. He had to deliver an appeal from Patriarch Alexii for their reunion. It is interesting that the Viennese priest A. Vanchakov was entrusted with the same mission. Father Peter Kurdrinskii, however, had an additional task—To receive the icon of the Tikhvin God’s Mother {Tikhvinskaya Bogomater’ ) fTom Bishop Yoann (Garklavs), who had taken it fTom Riga.98 According to the preliminary plan, the icon would be kept temporarily in the Dormition Church in Prague before its final return to the Orthodox Church in the Soviet UnioN.99 THe mission failed, however, and the icon was received by the Moscow Patriarchate only in 1949.100
After Prague, Archbishop Photii visited Carlsbad, Marienbad, Pilsen, and other places in order to receive written applications from Russian church emigres there. As a result of his trip, the former Archbishop of Kherson, Antonii (Martsienko), and the former Archbishop of Brest, Yoann (Lavrinenko), were united with the Moscow Patriarchate. Photii also prepared a list of those Russian hierarchs who had moved to the American zone: Metropolitan Panteleymon (Rozhnovskii), Bishop Stefan (Sevbo), Bishop Dimitrii (Mogan), Bishop Evlogii (Markovskii), and Bishop Yoann (Garklavs).101 ON the basis of his investigation, the archbishop proposed to Karpov to set up an exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate for Russian parishes in Central Europe with its administrative center placed in Vienna. Its exarch had to be a Russian from the Soviet Union and not a bishop belonging to the old or new emigres. He recommended that the Russian communities in Carlsbad, Marienbad, and Franziensbad be directly subordinated to this hierarch. In his view, there was no need to have more than two priests at each of these parishes. The unnecessary ones should be called back to Moscow and appointed somewhere else.
Soon the archbishops Daniil (Yuzvyuk), Antonii (Martsenko), and Yoann (Lavrinenko), who had submitted written applications for reunion, were invited to return to Moscow and then appointed in accordance with conditions in the Soviet Union. ' 02 In this regard, Patriarch Alexii made an interesting remark. According to him, the return of Russian emigre clerics to the motherland was an opportunity not only to use them in the local church administration but, more important, also to keeP them under surveillance; any “deviation from the line of the Moscow Patriarchate could be noticed and stopped in the very beginning.” Had these clerics been left abroad, they would have caused more harm.103
On April 2, 1946, the Moscow Patriarchate appointed Elevtherii, the former Bishop of Rostov and Taganrog, as its exarch and Archbishop of Prague. The Russian parishes in Czechoslovakia were also transferred under his supervision, while their previous administrator, Sergii (Korolev), was put in charge of the cathedral church in Prague.104 IT seems that the latter was unhappy with his lower status. Therefore, in June he was elevated to the rank of vicar of the Western European Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate and moved to Vienna. His new task was to administer the Russian parishes in Austria and eventually those in Hungary, the transfer of which to Moscow’s jurisdiction was still in the process of negotiation.105 LAter on, Vienna became the location of the office of the Central European Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate.
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