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Church of Russia

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The Russian Church (20th century): NPOV
When in 1921-1922 the Soviet government demanded that church valuables be given in aid to the population starving because of the failure of crops in 1921, a conflict erupted between the Church and the new authorities who decided to use this situation to demolish the Church to the end. By the beginning of World War II the church structure was almost completely destroyed throughout the country. There were only a few bishops who remained free and who could perform their duties. Some bishops managed to survive in remote parts or under the disguise of priests. Only a few hundred churches were opened for services throughout the Soviet Union. Most of the clergy were either imprisoned in concentration camps, where many of them perished, or hid in catacombs, while thousands of priests changed occupation. World War II forced Stalin to mobilize all the national resources for defense, including the Russian Orthodox Church as the people's moral force. This process, which can be described as a "patriotic union", culminated in Stalin's receiving on September 4, 1943, Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan [[Sergius I (Stragorodsky) of Moscow|Sergiy Stragorodsky]] and Metropolitan [[Alexei I (Simansky) of Moscow|Alexy Simansky]] and [[Nicholas (Yarushevich) of Kiev|Nikolay Yarushevich]].
The Russian clergy outside the USSR, who rejected demands of loyalty to the Soviet Communist authoroties put forth by Sergiy Stragorodsky in 1927 (in the so called [[Declaration of 1927]]), instituted an unrecognized formed the [[Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia]].
==The Russian Orthodox Church today==
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