The reformist schism : a pro-communist movement in the Russian Church. The sudden appearance of the renewal movement on the Russian ecclesiastical scene in 1922 coincided with the first major offensive mounted by the government against the Church. This campaign, which culminated in the arrest of the patriarch, made it possible for this movement to take over leadership of the Church, requiring the faithful to declare allegiance to the new leadership, and to recognize the fundamental convergence of the ideals of Christianity with those of the Revolution. This factual, political dimension of the schism, which long dominated the view given of it by the contemporary observers, and later by historians, none the less obscured its strictcly ecclesiastical implications. The diverse nature of the reforms implemented, both in the ecclesiastical and the liturgical context, bore witness to a deliberate will to adapt orthodoxy to modernity.