About the claims of the Soviet government to the churches at Russian embassies (based on the example of the church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Sofia, 1934)

The article deals with Russian embassy churches, which served Russian colonies in different countries before the First World War, and after the war - representatives of the Russian Orthodox Emigration. The fate of these churches was different in different countries. The following documents are kept in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF, case 221): minutes of meetings of the Parish Council, correspondence of Bishop Seraphim (Sobolev) and the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad with the chairman of the Holy Bulgarian Synod, Metropolitan Neophyte and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria, Mr. Batolov, materials for the report of Y. P. Grabbe to the Synod of Bishops and letters from others. (In the article, the letter of the Chairman of the Holy Bulgarian Synod is presented in translation from Bulgarian.) From the case materials, details of the solution of the issue of embassy churches in different countries, for example, in France, Argentina, Greece, Romania, become known. In 1934, the problem of the Soviet government’s claims to the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Sofia (Bulgaria). The submitted documents shed some light on the history of the issue. The solution found by the Bulgarian Holy Synod was the only one of its kind, it was a kind of “exchange” of churches: as a result of the persistent efforts of Bishop. Seraphim (Sobolev) and the joint actions of the Bulgarian Holy Synod and representatives of the Bulgarian government, the temple at the former Russian embassy was transferred to the disposal of Metropolitan Stefan of Sofia and was reopened for worship; in return, the metropolitan provided the Russian refugees with the ancient Bulgarian church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker opposite the Metropolitan House. The issue is considered in the context of the norms of Orthodox canon law, as well as the norms of civil law, including the codes of the Russian Empire and Soviet decrees.