„SVEŠTENIK I DRUŠTVO – ETO PAROLE“: Ruska pravoslavna zagranična crkva na Balkanu 1920–1940.
„A Priest and Society – Motto“: The Russian Orthodox Exile Church in the Balkans 1920–1940

Summary/Abstract: The Russian Orthodox Church held a place of dominant religious organisation of „Exile Rusia“ (one to the facts that 90–95% of the refugees from Russia were the adherens of the Russian Orthodox Church which in exile simbolized spiritual conections between the refugees and the Orthodox Russian Impery of Romanovs′ Dinasty and whith which tradition the overwhelming majority of Russian refugees were indentified themselves during the 1920s and 1930s). Activities of the Russian Orthodox Church had a great significance in the Balkans. Since 1920s it has influnced more then 100.000 the Russian refugees, and its centre in exile firstly was in Constantinople (1920–1921), than in Sremski Karlovci (1921–1938) and Belgade (1938–1944). Diferently from the situation in Western and Central Europe and USA, the Russian Orthodox Church in the Balkans was acted in the surrounding of the sisterly Orthodox Churches..[...] The biggest obstacles in the organization of the religious service to a great extent was made easier by the facts that in almost all capital in the Balkans (Constantinople, Athena, Sofia, Bucharest) there were the Russian churches built before the First World War. Belgrade was only exception, where no the Russian church (until the building of the Church of Trinity in 1923 on Tashmajdan), and because of that there were the great problems in the organization of the religious service. Nevertheless, the most important canon-legal guest ion that in all Balkans countries except in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, provoked the most of misunderstandings concerned the jurisdiction and the canon law of the Russian Orthodox Church related to the divorce among the Russian refugees. That question in the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was resolved by the decision of the Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which on August 13, 1921, placed under its protection the Russian Church Administration in Sremski Karlovci. The Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church leaved to the Russian Church Administration the following spheres of activities: the jurisdiction upon the Russian clergy in the Kingdom (which was not in the parish or civil service), than the jurisdiction upon the priests in the Russian Army (that did not work in the Serbian Orthodox Church's service), and also the conducting of the divorce proceedings of the Russian refugees. For the Russian Church in Exile it was very important permission, because just thanks to it, the Russian Church Administration in Serbia acquired the opportunity and the right that were deprived it of on the territories of the other Orthodox Churches in the Balkans – the right to solve the divorce disputes of the Russian refugees.

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