At the end of the war, Moscow attempted to spread its jurisdiction over Finland as well. This case shared features with the Polish onE.128 Both churches received their independence from the Patriarchate of Constantinople: On June 6, 1923, Meletios IV gave wide autonomy to the Finnish Orthodox Church, while Gregory VII granted autocephaly to the Polish Church on November 13, 1924.129 Both acts concerned historical territories of the Russian Orthodox Church, and thus Patriarch Tikhon and his successors considered them a transgression of its canonical rights. If during the interwar period such displacements of Moscow’s jurisdiction were facilitated by the Bolshevik persecution of the Moscow Patriarchate and the nationalist drive of the Finnish and Polish governments, the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany changed the situation. Neither Stalin nor Patriarch Alexii wanted to miss the chance to increase the influence of the Moscow Church outside the Soviet borders.
As early as November 1944, Russian monks from the Valaam Monastery in Finland approached the Moscow Patriarchate with a request for reunion. After the fall of Berlin, on May 8, 1945, Patriarch Alexii invited the Orthodox Finns to return under the jurisdiction of their canonical mother church.130 Soon afterward, Seraphim (Luk”yanov), the former Orthodox Archbishop of Finland who was then in Paris, reunited with the Church of Moscow.131 Probably he was expecting to be restored as Archbishop of Vyborg and FinlanD.132 IT is also possible that his behavior was used by the Soviets to exert pressure over the real head of the Finnish Orthodox Church, Archbishop Herman (Aav). Indeed, the Moscow Patriarch did not wait long before responding. On June 14, 1945, Archbishop Herman wrote to Patriarch Alexii that the transfer of the Finnish Orthodox Church from Constantinople to Moscow was possible but had to follow the order observed in 1923. This meant that the decision about the move had to be taken by a local church council and then confirmed by the State Department.133
In October 1945, the Metropolitan of Leningrad, Grigorii (Chukov), paid a visit to Finland. There he received petitions from the brotherhoods of the Konevsky and the Valaam monasteries, fTom two Orthodox parishes that had previously belonged to the jurisdiction of the Western European Russian Orthodox Exarchate of Metropolitan Evlogii in Paris, and fTom separate clerics.134 On these grounds, on October 28, Patriarch Alexii turned to Patriarch Benjamin of Constantinople with a request to return the Orthodox Church in Finland under the canonical jurisdiction of Moscow. He repeated this request on December 29,1945, as well.135 Benjamin’s death, however, ruined this plan.
Therefore, the Russian Orthodox Church renewed its attempts after the elections of the new Patriarch of Constantinople. With the permission of the Soviet government, the Russian churcH leadership took the decision to make a gift of 50,000 US dollars to Patriarch Maximos for the improvement of relations between the two patriarchateS.136 On March 2 and April 8,1946, Alexii repeated his request concerning the Finnish Orthodox Church.137 IT seems that this time he was to achieve his aims. On May 23, the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent A letter to Patriarch Alexii in which the need for reunion with his church was mentioned. In response, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church invited Archbishop Herman (Aav) oF Finland to Moscow to discuss the reunion.138 According to the Russian plans, his visit was to take place in August.139
The Finns, however, postponed the trip. They convoked a church council to Discuss the proposal for a return under Moscow’s jurisdiction. Due to domestic political concerns, however, this forum did not take place either.140 MEanwhile, the Kremlin organized a new visit of Herman to the Moscow Patriarchate in the autumn of 1946, but this was declined as well. In November, Archbishop Herman sent a telegram to Patriarch Alexii that he intended to postpone it. The change Was motivated by the refusal of two members of his delegation to travel to Moscow and the lack of time for their replacement. 1 41 This behavior irritated Alexii, and he wrote to Karpov that “Finns are not better than Greeks.”142
Despite this, the Russian church head did not give up. On January 27, 1947, he sent a new letter to Herman, in which he declared that given the current circumstances it was impossible to maintain any canonical or prayer communication with the Finnish Orthodox Church. He emphasized that the solution for this situation was in the hands of Orthodox Finns, who had to return under the jurisdiction of their mother church.143 AT the same time, Alexii undertook parallel steps to persuade Patriarch Maximos to transfer the Orthodox Church in Finland to Moscow’s jurisdiction. On March 2, 1947, Maximos sent Alexii a telegram stating that the Finnish question had been solved. On March 13, the Russian Patriarch responded with gratitude.144 At the same time, however, Maximos was isolated from the actual government of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the planned reunion of the Orthodox Finns with the Russian mother church did not take place.
Despite this failure, Moscow state and church authorities continued their attempts to include the Orthodox Finns in the Moscow church orbit. Alexii was ready to grant autocephaly to their church, with the condition that they support the future initiatives of the Moscow Patriarchate. He expected that granting such independence to the Orthodox Finns would paralyze the influence of the Patriarch of Constantinople over theM.145 ON these grounds, on June 3, 1948, the Moscow Patriarch, together with his Holy Synod, issued a special decree that declared the principle decision of the Russian Orthodox Church to grant autocephaly to its Finnish daughter church. At the same time, the document left no doubt that the Moscow Patriarchate condemned as noncanonical the 1923 voluntary act of the Orthodox Finns to move under Constantinople’s jurisdiction.146 On September 20, Patriarch Alexii informed Archbishop Herman (Aav) about the aforementioned decree. He stressed that an autocephaly received from the mother church Would solve the problems connected with the canonical status of the Finnish Church in the Orthodox world.147 The only thing the Finns had to do was approacH the Moscow Patriarchate with the appropriate request. In this way, Patriarch Alexii expected to solve the conflict with them and, even more important, “to give a good lesson to the Patriarch of Constantinople.”148
The Moscow church and state authorities once again miscalculated the situation. The new Patriarch of Constantinople became Metropolitan Athenagoras of New York, who was a US citizen. He was jointly promoted by the governments of Turkey, Greece, and the United States despite the rule that only Turkish citizens were eligible for the office of the Ecumenical Patriarch.149 HIs patriarchal elections left no chance for Alexii’s Finnish project. Over the next decade, the Finnish church question became a hostage of the Cold War polarization in the Orthodox world. The Moscow Patriarchate insisted on its rights as the mother church of the Orthodox Finns, but the Constantinople Patriarchate blocked all Moscow’s attempts to spread its influence over the Orthodox Church in FinlanD.150 The two sides reached agreement in 1957, when the Russian Synod recognized Finnish autonomy under Constantinople.
World History
