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This church had almost no following among the people, and a number of [[clergy]] who had been in the movement in good faith repented and returned to the Orthodox Church. The few who tried to exist in the state run church of the atheistic government were used by the state against those faithful to Patriarch [[Tikhon of Moscow|Tikhon]]. The government knew the renovation (reformation) would cause division and weakening to government opposition. As the leader of the party said, "I will smite the shepherd and scatter the sheep", Patriarch Tikhon was arrested and isolated from the populace and the Church was given to the wolves. But even by the late twenties, it became of little use to the state.
Renovationism is considered to be a reform movement that originated in to the projects of religious reformation reforms of the late 19th and early 20th century, but modern Church historians dispute this. Although in the initial period, the ideologists of Renovationism came up with programs of reforms, they, with the exception of the introduction of a married episcopate and second (and sometimes, third) marriage for the clergy, either were not implemented at all or were curtailed. According to modern researchers in the Russian Orthodox Church, the main content of the renovationism schism was the recognition of the "justice of the social revolution that took place in the country", agreement with the new government in Soviet Russia, the search for a new "symphony" with it, the desire for the governmentalization of the Church, active cooperation with the GPU/OGPU/NKVD.
== History ==
