Patriarch Alexey II A Man of Saintly Compromise

Patriarch Alexy Spent His Life Breaking Down the Wall between Church and Society

The death of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Alexy II marks an end of an era not only in the life of the church, but of the country itself. Elected to the position of the patriarch by the Local Council in 1990, Alexy presided over the rebirth of the Russian Orthodox Church following 70 years of communist persecution, when it was declared a “vestige of the past.” It so happened that this rebirth coincided with one of the most troubled periods of Russia’s history, when the empire collapsed, Russia returned by and large to its 17th century borders, and tension in society was extremely high.

For 18 years, patriarch Alexy had to be not only a clergyman, but also a diplomat, defending the mostly Russian Orthodox Christian communities in the other republics of the former Soviet Union, and a peacemaker, stepping in as an intermediary during the failed coups in Moscow in 1991 and 1993. During his tenure, the number of people identifying themselves as Christian believers in Russia quadrupled, and the Russian Orthodox Church again became the most influential Orthodox Church in the modern world, with tens of millions of active followers.

Alexei Mikhailovich Ridiger was born in 1929 in Tallinn, Estonia, into a family of Russian émigrés, Russian gentry’s members of German origin who fled from St. Petersburg fearing communist reprisals. Mikhail Ridiger, the future patriarch’s father, worked at a factory in Estonia before becoming a clergyman in 1940. When the Soviet troops entered Estonia in 1940, the family nearly escaped arrest by Joseph Stalin’s secret police. Raised in the traditions of Russian pre-revolutionary intelligentsia in an independent Estonia, Alexy often struck people by his “non-Soviet” sense of dignity and tact, which made him different from many other members of the clergy.

Since a very early age, the future patriarch took part in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church in Estonia. When the Soviet troops entered Tallinn at the end of World War II, he worked as a sacristan at a Russian church in Tallinn. In 1947 Alexei Ridiger began his studies in a seminary in Leningrad (former St. Petersburg). Having graduated from the seminary and the St. Petersburg Orthodox Christian Academy, Alexy was ordained a deacon, and upon his ordination as a priest in 1950 was sent to his native Estonia to serve at an Orthodox church in the small town of Johvi. In 1961 he took the veil, and in 1961 he became the bishop of Tallinn and Estonia. This was the beginning of the reign of Nikita Khrushchev, an ardent enemy of the Orthodox Church, who promised the whole world to put an end to this “superstition” in a few years.

Years of difficulties for a clergyman in an atheist state followed. In his memoirs, Alexy wrote: “I started my service for the church at a time when people were no longer shot by firing squads for their beliefs… But only God knows what each of the clergymen who stayed in Russia had to go through.” People who hastily accuse Alexy and other clergymen of his generation of cutting secret deals with the Soviet authorities should bear this phrase in mind before passing judgments.

As the deputy head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchy, Alexy was charged with receiving foreign delegations. In 1962, when his father was bedridden following a heart attack, Alexy had to accompany a delegation from the German Democratic Republic to the Uspensky monastery in Estonia, which the Soviet authorities wanted to turn into a health resort. There was no other way to save the saint place. Positive articles in the East German press followed, and the monastery remained open. But Mikhail Ridiger died the same year.

In the Soviet times, the church was separated not only from the state, but also from society. “Clergymen were only allowed to ‘fight for peace,’ this was the only kind of social activity we could get involved in,” said the Archpriest Arkady Shatov, the head of St. Dmitry’s parish in the First Moscow City Hospital. “No charity or, heaven forbid, religious education for the young was allowed.”

Just like during his patriarch’s tenure, in his early years in church Alexy used every opportunity to break down this wall between the church and the people. In 1960, speaking at a conference for disarmament in the Kremlin, he addressed millions of Christian believers in Russia over the heads of Soviet activists present in the hall. “In the church’s present position, there is a certain consolation for its members. What are all the efforts of secular inventiveness against Christianity? Two thousand years of history speak for themselves!” Under Khrushchev, this was a dangerous statement to make.

In 1964, Alexy was made archbishop and served as the Chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchate under Patriarch Alexy I and Pimen from until 1986. He busied himself with problems of paying the priests’ pensions, helping the old and the disabled. For nine years, Alexy worked side by side with the patriarch Alexy I, a representative of the “old” Russian clergy who survived the revolution, repressions, the war, and the closure of churches under Khrushchev. This was one more link of the future patriarch to old Christian Russia. In 1986, Alexy was made the archbishop of St. Petersburg and Ladoga, located in close proximity to his old fiefdom of Estonia. Traditionally, this is considered to be one of the most honorable offices at the Russian Orthodox Church.

When in the years of perestroika the church became “rehabilitated,” Alexy vigorously embraced democracy and the opportunities which it offered to the church. In 1989 he was elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies, the Soviet Union’s first and last democratically-elected parliament. He became a member of the boards of the first Soviet charity organizations. Later, opponents would accuse him of bringing the church too close to the state. But bringing the church and the society closer to each other without having more or less friendly relations with the state was impossible, especially in the years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency.

“In fact, the degree of the Russian Orthodox Church’s involvement in state affairs is exaggerated,” said Alexei Makarkin, the vice-president of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies. “I would rather speak about a kind of cooperation that benefitted both sides. Some church hierarchs made overtures to the state, but the state never shared power with them, using the church for its own agenda.”

In 1990, Alexy was elected the patriarch of Russia by the Local Council. “This was a truly democratic election,” said Maxim Shevchenko, currently an anchor on Russia’s Channel One and formerly a journalist covering religious issues. “There were two other powerful candidates, Ukrainian Metropolitan Filaret and Antony (Bloom) from Great Britain. The state’s Council on Religious Issues was against Alexy’s candidacy. But he was voted in as a compromise candidate.”

Compromise – this was the key word in Alexy’s governing style at the Moscow Patriarchy. In the country where after 70 years of atheism all kinds of religious ignorance and superstition flourished, one could not expect from all the church members instant saintliness and an enlightened approach to problems of the day. Going against the wishes of some of the church’s “grass roots,” Alexy spoke out against anti-Semitism and other unseemly conspiracy theories widespread in Russia. He established an excellent working relationship with the leaders of Russia’s Muslim and Jewish communities. Under him, the Russian Orthodox Church adopted its first Social Doctrine, giving guidance to believers not only in their religious life, but also in business, social and family affairs.

“When Alexy was elected, the church was just getting out from the dark corner where it had been banished to for decades,” Maxim Shevchenko said. “When he left it, the church was, by all opinion polls, the most respected institution in the country. This fact speaks for itself.”