Collaboration Between the Hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Highest- Ranking Church and State Officials Across Europe Throughout the 1930s: Based off of Metropolitan Anthony’s (Khrapovitsky) Correspondence

This article features the 1934 correspondence between Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) and Archbishop Panteleimon (Rozhnovsky), where they explore the governance issues of the Polish Orthodox Church’s dioceses in light of its goals for achieving autocephaly. This began at the Synod of Bishops in Warsaw in 1922, with the adoption of the concordat and “The Temporary Provisions for the Relationship between the Church and the State.” The Russian Ort hodox Church Abroad found itself directly involved in these processes, including in the territories of the Grodno Diocese, which, before the conclusion of the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 (on the end of the Polish- Soviet War), belonged to the Russian Empire. In the late 192 0s and 1930s, Poland exerted strong pressure on the clergy of the Grodno Diocese and made persistent attempts to polonise the Orthodox Church. The corresponde nce outlines the failed attempt to appoint Metropolitan Panteleimon (Rozhnovsky) as Head of the Grodno Diocese and highlights Metropolitan Eulogius’s (Georgievsky) proposal to lead the parishes in the Western European Exarchate in Germany. Within the correspondence, Metropolitan Anthony makes several crucial observations about the religious landscape in Europe during the 1930s, particularly focusing on the ‘idolization of Hitlerism’.