Nicholas (Yaruschewitsch)

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Metropolitan Nikolai ( russ. : Митрополит Николай, actually Boris Dorofejewitsch Jaruschewitsch , Russian Борис Дорофеевич Ярушевич, also known as. Boris Yarushevich reproduced) (* December 31, 1891 jul. / 12. January  1892 greg. In Kovno , Lithuania , † December 13 1961 in Moscow ) was a Russian Orthodox theologian and metropolitan .

Life

Nikolai was born the son of a clergyman and graduated from the Spiritual Academy in Saint Petersburg in 1914 . The monk Nikolai then taught at the seminary in Petersburg and subsequently held several spiritual offices: in 1922 he became bishop of Peterhof near Petersburg, in 1935 archbishop of Novgorod and Pskov . He denied to Western correspondents that there was church persecution in the Soviet Union under Stalin ; rather, the youth growing up in the Soviet system show the “true human face”.

After the annexation of eastern Poland by the Soviet Union in October 1939, he became exarch of western Ukraine and Belarus . He operated the "reunification" called compulsory integration of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church , which is subordinate to the Vatican , into the Russian Orthodox Church controlled by the Moscow Kremlin .

Just in time before the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 (" Operation Barbarossa "), he was able to flee to the east and was appointed Metropolitan of Kiev . He called on the faithful to trust the leadership of Stalin and donate money for tanks for the Red Army . He personally handed over several of these tanks to the combat troops of the Soviet armed forces.

In 1942 he became a member of the Extraordinary State Commission set up by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to document the crimes of the German occupiers on Soviet territory and the damage they caused. In January 1944 he was part of the Burdenko Commission , the Soviet special commission to investigate the Katyn massacre , which, under the leadership of the chief surgeon of the Red Army, Nikolai Burdenko , declared that the mass murder of around 4,400 Polish officers and ensigns had been committed by the German occupiers.

Also in January 1944 he became Metropolitan of Krutitsy and Kolomna and thus de facto deputy to the Patriarch of Moscow. In the same year he became head of the Foreign Office of the Moscow Patriarchate (1944 to July 1960).

In 1950 he became a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in the communist-dominated World Peace Council . Together with the writer Ilja Ehrenburg , he appeared at events of the pro-Soviet peace movement. In 1952 he participated in the Moscow campaign against the Madden Commission , the US Congress' investigative committee into the Katyn massacre.

As head of the Foreign Office, he tried to establish relationships with Western churches through numerous trips abroad. With this in mind, in 1958 he held the first official conversation between the Russian Orthodox Church and representatives of the World Council of Churches in Utrecht . Metropolitan Nikolai represented the policy of compromise between the Russian Orthodox Church and the communist regime by working in system-friendly bodies such as the President of the All-Slavic Committee and member of the World Peace Council. But he was also a militant advocate of Orthodoxy and his willingness to compromise had its limits where he saw the Orthodox faith threatened. According to documents from the Mitrokhin archives , he had close ties to the Soviet secret services and the KGB valued him as an effective " agent of influence".

In 1960 he lost his offices. He died on December 13, 1961 in Moscow's Botkin Hospital. A heart attack was given as the cause of death, but there were rumors of an unnatural death. Metropolitan Nikodim was his successor as head of the Patriarchate's Foreign Office .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical data, unless otherwise stated, according to> Novomučenniki i Ispovedniki Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Cerkvi XX veka St. Tikhon University, Moscow
  2. ↑ Jerome Davis : Behind Soviet Power. Stalin and the Russians. West Haven, Conn. 1949, p. 90.
  3. ↑ Bohdan R. Bociurkow, The Orthodox Church in Ukraine since 1917, in: Church in the East. Studies on Eastern European Church History and Church Studies , 15 (1972), p. 42.
  4. ^ Mitropolitan Nikolaj (Jaruševič). Peredača na front tankovoj kolonny imeni Dmitrija Donskogo www.pravmir.tu, May 8, 2011
  5. ↑ Natalia S. Lebiediewa, Komisja Specjalna i jej przewodniczący Burdenko, in: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), pp. 56, 70-72.
  6. ^ The Peace Partisans Die Zeit , March 1, 1951.
  7. ↑ Glos świadka in: Trybuna Ludu , March 7, 1952, p. 2
  8. ↑ Christopher Andrew / Vasili Mitrokhin : The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. New York 1999, p. 486.
  9. ↑ Dimitry Pospielovsky: The Orthodox Church in the History of Russia. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1998 ISBN 978-0-88141-179-9 , p. 316.
personal data
SURNAME Nicholas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nikolai; Jaruschewitsch, Boris Dorofejewitsch (real name); Yarushevich, Boris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian Orthodox theologian and metropolitan
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Kovno , Lithuania
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1961
Place of death Moscow