The Orthodox Church in Lithuania During the Soviet Period

Abstract

The present article deals with the history of the Orthodox Church in Lithuania between 1944 and 1990, focusing mainly on the exceptional situation of Orthodoxy conditioned by the Soviet attempts to exploit it via internal policy in the republic. Consolidating the Stalinist regime in occupied Lithuania in 1944–1948, the government demanded Orthodox archbishops start ‘the struggle against reactionary Catholicism’, i.e., start a critique of its dogmas, to bring the whole faith into disrespect, etc. Nevertheless, even though it enjoyed state support the Orthodox Church was too weak to compete successfully with Catholicism which remained dominant in the country. Small in number, Russian-speaking, alien to Lithuanian society and culture and lacking intellectual potential, the Orthodox Church failed to cope with the task. Besides, strengthening the position of Orthodoxy was not acceptable to the leadership of Soviet Lithuania. Though subsequently not directly protected, but having already strengthened its structures, the Orthodox Church continued to enjoy its favourable political image as a religion ‘less harmful’ to the interests of the state than Catholicism. Accordingly, the consequences of the antireligious campaign, conducted in the entire Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964, were minimal in the Lithuanian eparchy. Some of the reforms were not implemented here altogether. In Lithuania the attention of the Soviet regime was concentrated mainly on the struggle against Catholicism, and Orthodoxy for a long time remained outside the sphere of atheistic propaganda. As time went by the Orthodox eparchy was put into the shade entirely by the concern of the KGB and the commissioners about the growing underground of the Catholic Church in Lithuania. Meanwhile the structure of the Orthodox Church in Lithuania suffered comparatively insignificantly (only four parish churches were closed). The Orthodox communities shrank mainly as a result of the rising secularization and urbanization of society. Only communities in the major towns retained their former vitality.