THE STRUCTURE AND FEATURES OF THE CHURCH-ADMINISTRATIVE LANDSCAPE OF NORTH OSSETIA IN THE 1920s–1930s

	ISSN 2223-165X
	Izvestiya SOIGSI

Home Editorial board Publication ethics Current Information Archive Peer review guidelines Contacts Address: Pr. Mira, 10, Vladikavkaz, 362040, RNO-A, Russia E-mail: soigsi@mail.ru	DOI: 10.46698/VNC.2026.99.60.012 THE STRUCTURE AND FEATURES OF THE CHURCH-ADMINISTRATIVE LANDSCAPE OF NORTH OSSETIA IN THE 1920s–1930s Sinanov, Boris A. Izvestia SOIGSI. 2026. Issue 60 (99). P.38-52. Abstract: This article analyzes the structure, characteristics, and dynamics of the church-administrative situation in the 1920s and 1930s within what is now North Ossetia. In the early 1920s, amidst an atmosphere of atheistic state policies and mass antireligious campaigns, church unity weakened, resulting in the emergence of two main currents, referred to in church-historical literature as the Renovationist Church (liberal) and the Patriarchal Church (conservative). Their views and actions differed in their attitude toward Soviet power, the form of supreme church governance, the marriage of the episcopate, the second marriage of clergy, and so on. Internal church unrest was actively supported by state security agencies, which placed their bets on Renovationism. The Renovationist movement of the 1920s and 1930s was significant. The Renovationist movement reached southern Russia and the North Caucasus, where the Renovationist North Caucasus (Caucasian) Metropolitanate was established in 1924, incorporating the Vladikavkaz and Pyatigorsk (Terek) dioceses. The ecclesiastical authority of these two Renovationist dioceses extended to the territory of today’s North Ossetia. As the study demonstrates, the region’s religious landscape was not limited to the Renovationist jurisdiction and the fragments of the Patriarchal Church of St. Sergius, whose parishes continued to exist on a semi-legal and even illegal basis. Materials from the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF), documenting the struggle of believers of the Georgian Church of St. Nina and the Greek Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos in Vladikavkaz against the closure of their churches, help to more fully understand the diversity of canonical forms of subordination in the region. A key episode in the struggle between the two communities of believers to preserve their churches is their appeal for assistance not only to the highest secular but also to the highest ecclesiastical authorities—the Catholicos-Patriarch of Georgia and the representative of the Patriarch of Constantinople in the USSR. In the context of this, the article analyzes inter-Orthodox relations, which help to reveal the complexity and contradictions of the ecclesiastical question in the Russian Church, as well as the attitudes of other Local Orthodox Churches. Keywords: North Ossetia, Vladikavkaz, Russian Orthodox Church, Renovationism, Patriarchal Church, Georgian Church of St. Nina, Greek Dormition Church, Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarchate of Constantinople. Language:: Russian Download the full text For citation:: Sinanov, B.A. The structure and features of the church administrative landscape of North Ossetia in the 1920s–1930s // Izvestiya SOIGSI. 2026. Iss. 60 (99). Pp. 38-52. (in Russian). DOI 10.46698/VNC.2026.99.60.012 + References 1. Gorobets, A.A. Istoriya Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi v Severnoi Osetii (1917-1924 gg.) [History of the Russian Orthodox Church in North Ossetia (1917-1924)]. Thesis abstract of the candidate dissertation (in History). Vladikavkaz, 2004. 24 p. 2. Pantyukhin, A.M. Obnovlencheskoe dvizhenie Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi v 20-40-e gg. XX v. (na materialakh Stavropol’ya i Tereka) [The Renovation Movement of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s–1940s (based on materials from Stavropol and Terek)]. 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