The Service and Sermons of Archpriest Tavrion (Batozskiy) and Archpriest Sergiy (Savelyev) as an Example of Strife for Spiritual Freedom Under the Communist Ideological Tyranny in Soviet Russia in the 1960s-1970s
The Service and Sermons of Archpriest Tavrion (Batozskiy) and Archpriest Sergiy (Savelyev) as an Example of Strife for Spiritual Freedom Under the Communist Ideological Tyranny in Soviet Russia in the 1960s-1970s

Summary/Abstract: This report uses the data from the sermons belonging to Archpriest Tavrion (Batozskiy) and Archpr. Sergiy (Savelyev). The focus is on their ministry in the 1960s-1970s, one of the most difficult times for the Russian Orthodox Church, when the majority of the old-school priests died in the labour camps while the young ones were the products of the Soviet system, some of them government appointees. Their unwavering faith and steadfast Christian love challenged atheistic ‘soviet spirituality’, that denied individual freedom and destroyed human spirit. In the 1960s-1970s Archpriest Tavrion was the head and Spiritual leader at the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Convent near Yelgava, Latvia, while Archpriest Sergiy served as a parish priest at the Pokrov Church in Moscow. It was this time that became for Frs. Tavrion and Sergiy final period of their life and ministry – the most spiritually significant. Most of the sermons extant was delivered during that period.

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