The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

In the early 1920s, Russian church communities in Europe found themselves in a quite extraordinary situation, requiring a complete reorganisation of their structures, both at the diocesan and parish levels. Having kept alive their memory of the 1917–1918 Moscow Council, many ecclesiastical figures in emigration viewed its decisions as reliable guidelines for creating a new church structure. Later on, however, the jurisdictional divisions followed, highlighting the two opposite attitudes to the Council s heritage. Some considered it necessary to implement its decisions, whereas others preferred to change or even abolish the norms elaborated at the Council. This article explores how the Moscow Council served as a starting point in organising various ecclesiastical jurisdictions in emigration in the 1920s–1930s and how these institutions carried out or not its decisions.