Introduction: The Historic Splits in the Russian Emigration

After the so-called ‘Russian Revolution’, or rather place coup d’etat, in 1917, the Russian Church in the Emigration split into three groups. These splits were purely political and based on differing attitudes to the Soviet State. However, once the Soviet Union had fallen in 1991, there was no longer any reason for those splits, except for inertia, the ‘enemy deprivation syndrome’, as it is called, the need to be ‘against’ anyone who resists global Western control (‘Globalism’). This is a phenomenon throughout the Western political elite, but also among westernised Russians. It resulted in their bloody and failed invasions of the Muslim world and in the present tragic conflict in Kiev. The latter has been used as a failed puppet and proxy to try and destroy the Russian Federation, breaking it into colonisable pieces, ready to be asset-stripped by Western mining and oil corporations, as it was in the 1990s.

The absurdity of these continuing Russian Church splits became especially obvious after the Jubilee Council in Moscow in the Year 2000, when the Church in Moscow at last openly condemned its former co-operation with the atheist State (‘Sergianism’), condemned ecumenist syncretism (‘Nikodimism’), and began the canonisation of the New Martyrs and Confessors, including that of the Imperial Family. (The number canonised is now over 30,000, and the process is continuing). Although only 57% of the small Russian émigré group in Paris returned to Moscow as late as 2018, 95% of the much larger ROCOR émigré group had formally returned in 2007. However, that was not the end of the ROCOR saga – the return was for many only formal. Since 2017, after ten years of relative stability since 2007, its bishops and 300 or so parishes, mainly very small, between 10 and 40 people in number, have been splintering into three groups.

Fragment One: The Vitalyites

We have named the first extreme after the ROCOR Metropolitan Vitaly (Ustinov) (1910-2006). He was the last pre-Revolutionary born ROCOR Metropolitan and a ferocious opponent of the Moscow Patriarchate. After agreeing to unity with Moscow in 2007, those in this extreme in fact ‘played’ the Moscow Patriarchate. Although they had signed up to unity in 2007, they simply used this canonical unity obtained for appearances. Behind the screen of canonical unity, they continued their uncanonical acts. Thus, though not concelebrating with Moscow, they can claim ‘to be in communion’ with Moscow and are therefore ‘canonical’. Though they kept a low profile at first, this became clear from 2017 on and their palace coup against the late Metr Hilarion (Kapral), whose documents they autopenned with impunity.

Composed largely of convert bishops and made up of crazy converts and CIA operatives, from 2017 on the Vitalyites, open fans of Trump, began to form yet another ‘One True Church’. They claimed to be ‘more Russian than the Russians’, (real Russians do not have to pretend) and worked to form yet another old calendarist-type, apocalyptic sect, just like the 5% who had refused to sign up to unity and left ROCOR in 2007 and immediately split into four tiny, warring groups. Vitalyite Orthodoxy is that of the ghetto and the museum and refuses to live in the real world, preferring a self-justifying, US theme-park ideal of ‘Holy Rus’. However, the present Vitalyites are unlike those far less subtle and ignorant groups who refused to sign up in 2007 and left ROCOR then, this group remained to sabotage ROCOR from inside through intrigue and deceit.

Thus, as soon as he had signed the Act of Canonical Communion in May 2007, which he had planned, the leader of this group was welcomed back from Moscow by the local Moscow Archbishop, who rejoiced and commented that ‘now we can do everything together’. That representative was shocked to hear the answer: ‘No, nothing has changed, we are not together’. This group displays the same harsh and sectarian fanaticism and cultish and judgemental phariseeism as those who had left in 2007, but works to corrupt and sectarianise the Church from inside, thinking they have outsmarted isolated Moscow, which is desperate for good PR.

These mainly Western converts display hatred for the present Russian Federation, its President, and those nostalgic for Stalin. They foolishly (or are they paid by the CIA for this stance?) also support Western propaganda efforts which call on Russian troops to leave the liberated Russian territories in the Ukraine, which had been genocided by the Kiev regime. In its hostility to the Russian Federation, this basically anti-Russian group is no different to the other Vitalyites who left ROCOR in 2007 and created similar apocalyptic ‘One True Church’ sects and rebaptise others, including Orthodox. They maintain that they are ‘the only canonical Orthodox in the world!’ This reveals their underlying, schismatic, Calvinist and Lutheran, mentality. This is not theology, it is pathology.

Fragment Two: The Neo-Sergianists

The second extreme, which is the one deliberately left in power by the bribing and flattering Vitalyites, is composed of Neo-Sergianists. They are named after Metropolitan Sergius of Moscow (1867-1944), who became Patriarch of the Russian Church for a few brief months at the end of his life by compromising with the militant atheists, receiving money and power in return. Although these ROCOR Neo-Sergianists mainly live in the USA, their view is that of Russian Federation loyalists and they have adopted the same Neo-Sergianist attitudes to wealth and centralising power as the worst elements in today’s Moscow Patriarchate. And they hold exactly the same centralist, nationalist, militarist, ritualist and clericalist attitudes which they had previously condemned, as does Moscow.

The temptations were too great for them and they succumbed. There is little spiritual and pastoral here, but, as in Moscow, much that is political. Their harsh censorship is exactly mirrored in Moscow, where, to the scandal of the faithful, the intellectuals, liberals, ecumenists and homosexuals have just censored one of the most popular akathists to the martyred Tsar. (They hate those loyal to the Tsar). The Budapest and other scandals have not yet brought them to sobriety and understanding, nor have the appalling scandals in ROCOR. Thus, Moscow is losing all Non-Russian Orthodox, in the Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics, Belarus, Central Asia and Orthodox throughout the Diaspora, just as ROCOR is losing its Orthodox too – see below.

The Orthodox or Tikhonites

Finally, there are the rest of us, the Orthodox, who resist both extremist political factions, the Vitalyites and the Sergianists. We are also called Tikhonites. Unable to agree to uncanonical ROCOR schism, sect and self-isolation, some 10% of us former ROCOR members, all Tikhonites, have already joined other Local Churches, that is, we have joined the mainstream. However, most of the Tikhonite clergy and people, even if besieged by the Vitalyite and Neo-Sergianist bishops (the two sides of exactly the same coin – extremes always meet and collude), have so far been able to remain in ROCOR. Nevertheless, their situation is becoming more and more difficult, as all five remaining Tikhonite bishops have been ‘retired’ and the last active semi-Tikhonite (though he was coloured by Neo-Sergianism too), Archbishop Peter of Chicago, passed away.

We are called Tikhonites because we are devoted to the Russian-born American citizen, missionary to Alaska, and saint, Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow (+ 1925), previously Bishop of San Francisco and later of New York. He prophesied: ‘The night will come soon, dark and long’. Indeed, it has been. Following his arrival in New York from Le Havre in December 1898, the then Bp Tikhon gathered together Russians, Ukrainians, Carpatho-Russians, Greeks, Antiochians and Serbs and created Orthodox unity in North America, before going on to become Patriarch of Moscow and a saint. It is no surprise that the present leader of the international ‘Orthodox Church in America’ is also called Metr Tikhon. We Tikhonites also much venerate the international St John (Maximovich) (+ 1966), who was also slandered, suspended and put on trial by the then ROCOR episcopate.

We Orthodox, or Tikhonites, know that the post-1917 Russian Emigration, like the Soviet Union itself, has died out and that, living in Western countries and in post-Communist times, there is no reason for us to be separated from other Local Churches. It is our destiny to work together with other Orthodox, contributing our specific liturgical identity and our devotion to the martyred Tsar and all the other New Martyrs and Confessors. As regards the tragic conflict in the Ukraine, we are not naïve and have fully understood that this a geopolitical conflict between the aggressive and greedy atheist West and the Russian State. It has nothing to do with the Ukraine as such. That is just the battlefield. We are horrified by pictures of clergy blessing weapons of war, on both sides.

As regards President Putin, we know that he is a powerful and admired Russian nationalist politician, a very cautious lawyer and a diplomat. But clearly he is not at all our long-awaited Tsar. As the contemporary Russian historian, Peter Multatuli, great-grandson of a New Martyr faithful to the Tsar, has put it: The great mission was given to us, not by rebellious human desire, but by the will of God. Our mission has nothing to do with….so-called ‘Russian nationalism’. Our mission is the rebirth of Russian Civilisation, in which all nationalities who wish so are united for life in God and with God, in the world of Goodness and Justice, in which we can stand up to the atheistic and anti-human Western ‘New Order’, whose aim is to annihilate man as God’s creation.

France, 25 October 2025