the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

176
On the night of May 25 to 26, on the eve of Alexis' first visit to the church of
the Descent of the Holy Spirit, the whole city was filled with notices stuck to
houses and telegraph posts declaring that Alexis was a wolf in sheep's
clothing and appealing to the citizens of Kazan not to accept him. Alexis then
wrote to the renovationist "Metropolitan" Eudocimus: "I am personally
beginning to regret that I came to Kazan. Since the council negative reactions
to me, as to the usurper of Cyril's see, have increased... As long as Bishops
Joasaph and Athanasius live here, I supposed that we shall not be able to
create a single vicariate..."
Alexis also complained that the Soviet authorities were not helping him
enough against his opponents. However, when, on May 24, the renovationist
diocesan council petitioned the authorities for the removal of Igumen Pitirim,
Hieromonk John, Hierodeacon Seraphim and Hieromonk Theophanes, the
authorities responded by arresting them on June 14 for writing and spreading
anti-renovationist proclamations and for maintaining links with Metropolitan
Cyril in Ust-Sysolsk. A report to the GPU put the real reasons for the arrests
as follows: "The whole of this Black Hundreds company headed by
Archbishop Joasaph is the headquarters of every possible kind of counterrevolutionary
intrigues. After them trudge all of the reactionary clergy and
the believing masses, which is to the highest degree dangerous from a
political point of view." It is interesting that Bishop Joasaph is named
"archbishop" in this document; this showed how great was his authority
among the believers.
Bishop Joasaph was for a long time Metropolitan Cyril's deputy in the
Kazan region, and in the opinion of the Kazan renovationists he was "the
undeclared administrator of the whole of the Kazan, Mari and Chuvash
regions". The victory of the Orthodox over the renovationists in the Kazan
region was in large part owing to him. Thus it was through Vladyka Joasaph's
exhortations and his own sermons that Protopriest Theophanes converted
almost the whole of the city of Yelabuga (his native town, where his father
was protopriest in the Pokrov church) from renovationism to Orthodoxy.
Again, when Bishop Andronicus was summoned to the renovationist
diocesan council to explain his refusal to accept them, he said: "I don't want to
separate from Bishop Joasaph." From 1923, according to one source, Bishop
Joasaph was a member of the strictly anti-renovationist (and later, antisergianist)
"Danilovtsy" and "Andrewite" groups, led by Archbishops
Theodore (Pozdeyevsky) and Andrew (Ukhtomsky) respectively.
On June 30, the arrested monks were released; all of them had conducted
themselves bravely under interrogation, and none of them said a word
against Bishop Joasaph. The position of the renovationists was further
weakened when Patriarch Tikhon was released from prison and issued his
anathema against them in July. On July 17 an assembly of all the believers of
176