The Moscow patriarchate in the context of the foreign policy of the Soviet state: problems of inter-church interaction with the Romanian church in 1945-1948

The final stage of the Second World War launched the transformation of the world order, and the Soviet Union was one of the figures of this shift. The geopolitical influence of the USSR, which extended to Eastern Europe, covered all spheres of the socio-political life of the countries of people’s democracy. To achieve geopolitical goals, the Soviet government used the potential of the Moscow Patriarchate, which was assigned the role of the center of world Orthodoxy. The factors of interchurch discourse were the actual problems of the struggle against Catholicism and the attitude towards the ecumenical movement. During 1945-1948 the relationship between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Romanian Orthodox Church was not very active and did not extend beyond formal dialogute, due to the personal attitude of the Romanian Patriarch Nicodemus to Communism. The Romanian government and Prime Minister Petru Groza personally had a significant influence on the tactics of inter-church cooperation of Patriarch Nicodemus. The visits of Patriarch Nicodemus to Moscow and Patriarch Alexy to Bucharest, as well as exchanges of church delegations were major inter-church events of the period under review.