"Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond [syndesmos] of peace." (Ephesians 4.3)
SYNDESMOS History
SYNDESMOS, The World Fellowship of Orthodox Youth, was founded in 1953 in Paris by a group of young theologians from Finland, France, Greece and Lebanon. Aspiring to “serve as a bond of unity (Greek syndesmos) among Orthodox youth movements, organisa
SYNDESMOS aims
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I. Orthodox ecclesial self-awareness
The current article deals with the prise de conscience a pan-Orthodox ecclesial identity among the Russian emigration and intellectual from the Balkan Orthodox churches between 1920 and 1953. The topic itself, Orthodox ecclesial self-awareness, is not easily defined. The Church may be described in terms of the eternal, sacramental nature of the body of Christ, of the societies in which the Church exists or by a description of concrete believers. Is a more general definition of Orthodox identity, emanating neither from cultural specifics nor from contrasts with others, possible at all?
In a recent study John Erickson, Dean of St. Vladimir's theological seminary, describes how over the centuries, the self-understanding of the Orthodox Church often developed in opposition to others, underscoring contrast rather than defining its essence proper. "To a high degree," he writes, "Orthodox ecclesial identity in its external aspect has been formed in the context of Christian divisions. The characteristics by which not only outsiders but also we ourselves identify the Orthodox Church most often are those which make us different from other Christian groups." [1] Limiting one's self-understanding to refutation and contradiction not only means to define oneself a contrario. It also implies that one adopts the conceptual language of one's presumed adversaries, the framework set by the refuted arguments, and hence a shift away from one owns initial position, or identity (emulation). According to Erickson, over much of the past centuries, "through emulation and contradiction, Orthodox ecclesial identity continued to develop in counterpoint with Roman Catholicism and to a lesser degree with Protestantism." [2]
Not all encounters are polemics, however, and often they prove essential for defining the essential. The doctrine of the Church found its expression in reaction to doctrines that contradicted the possibility of salvation in Christ. In the twentieth Century, the Orthodox Church experienced at least two encounters with a decisive impact for its self-understanding. Through the Ecumenical Movement, it encountered other Christian confessions in a new way. At the same time, the re-discovery of the liturgical, spiritual and theological legacy of the Church Fathers meant a new encounter with its own heritage. The latter encounter, although challenging, has been thoroughly beneficial. Better knowledge of the life, worship and thought of the early Church greatly facilitated attempts to address challenges of contemporary life in the spirit of Orthodox tradition. The fruits of the work of many (Orthodox and non-Orthodox) patrologists, blended in a neo-patristic synthesis, as Fr Georges Florovsky called it [3] , have greatly enriched Orthodox church life. The ecumenical dialogue is still far from being such a synthesis: the Orthodox often feel constrained to function within a framework set by the non-Orthodox, using a conceptual language and practices poorly adapted to the ethos of the Orthodox Church [4] . Ecumenical debate on matters of faith and order and social justice have sometimes failed to reflect the Orthodox conception of Church and society, its belief that the whole created world can, and should be sanctified by the Church, in a comprehensive synthesis of life, or culture.
The current study will examine an exception to this rule, an example how the involvement of Orthodox youth movements from all over Europe in the ecumenical dialogue between 1920 and 1953 enriched their search for Orthodox life and culture. In particular it will discuss the role of the Russian emigration to this process in the persons of Fr Basil Zenkovsky and Leon Zander, whose vision and efforts built a network that later grew into SYNDESMOS, the World Fellowship of Orthodox Youth. Their vision was grandiose and went beyond their lifetime [5] ; indeed, it animates SYNDESMOS to this day. The present study aims to present some of the thought and action of this valuable chapter of Orthodox history, using a substantial number of quotes from rare sources such as archive materials, interviews, personal letters and periodicals [6] .
II. The return of Russian the intelligentsia to the Church
It is not by chance that Russian intellectuals played a key role in establishing pan-Orthodox contacts. Developments in 19th and early 20th-Century Russia had prepared them for a role as mediators between their Church and modern societies.
The Russian emigrants had left behind a society marked by multiple ruptures. The cultural elite of the country acutely felt its distance from the masses of the people, recognising its ordeal yet separated from it by a cultural, as well as a social divide. The estrangement between the people and the upper layers of Russian society that had been Europeanised since Peter the Great, was painful for many intellectuals and fed their wish to return to a wholesome, comprehensive society and culture. With many European societies in crisis, they looked towards traditional folk culture for alternatives. Fr Georges Florovsky characterises the atmosphere of the time as follows: "A way out of the crisis that had immersed Europe was sought for in a 'return,' in the strengthening of social bonds, in the re-establishment of the wholeness of life." [7] A rift was perceived between life and culture, between European forms and a distinct, specifically Russian, substance. Adversaries and supporters of an europeanisation of Russia shared the concern for overcoming this rift - choosing to be either a Western or a Russian society. "Western" and "Russian" culture found themselves as fundamentally "incompatible worldviews [8] " in the understanding of many philosophers, be they "Westernisers" or "Slavophiles."
But to what culture could the Slavophiles "return"? Did they not belong to the same westernised elite as their philosophical adversaries? Was not their conscious, philosophical choice for a Russian identity a sign that they had lost their very russianness? The philosopher Basil Rozanov said that the Slavophiles had been "so passionately attracted to everything national and had viewed it with such a deep understanding and high esteem exactly because their vital link with it had already been - maybe irrevocably - severed, because they had once believed in the universality of European civilisation, plunged into it with all the might of their talents and passionately touched its deepest foundations, which reveal themselves only to great minds, but are never touched with impunity.." [9] Nearly a century later, Fr Basil Zenkovsky similarly stated that "Western culture cannot be embraced in a 'neutral' way." [10] In retrospect, he considered that "the Russian catastrophe (the Russian Revolution, HB) opened and laid bare a deep spiritual disease which goes back to the seventeenth Century. Did not Russian nineteenth-century culture, however brilliant its individual features may have been, carry within itself a lethal venom that poisoned the Russian soul? Long before the visible catastrophe, our spiritual catastrophe had already taken shape, and we will need more than mere political order and social reconciliation; first and foremost we must return to spiritual health, and find the way to the source of this health." [11]
Many thinkers looked for this source of spiritual health in traditional Russian culture, and ultimately in one of its key shapers - the Orthodox Church. Coherence in society was expressed by the notion of catholicity/conciliarity, or sobornost [12] . The notion of sobornost, initially an ecclesiological concept from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, was used to describe society as a body, organically gathered around a common culture, heritage and belief. Exploring the social and cultural implications of this theological notion on their "difficult way through modernity to Orthodoxy and back [13] ," these thinkers also helped bridge another rupture: the rift between Russia's intellectual and ecclesiastical elite. Both groups found each other in the conviction that conciliar Christianity was at the core of Russian culture. "The Slavophile movement," Fr Florovsky said, "was and attempted to be a religious philosophy of culture." [14] Its founder, Alexis Khomiakov, "resounded as a reminder of ecclesial piety, a reminder of the ecclesial experience as the source and heart of true theology. This marked the return from the schools to the Church. [15] " Thinkers turned towards the Church for coherence of culture and society. The Church in its turn wished to contribute to thought and creativity, to once again be an inspiration of contemporary life [16] . Thus the idea grew that a contemporary Orthodox culture could be the heart of a new Russia, traditional but not traditionalist, inspiring modernity rather than opposing it. In 1860, Fr Theodore Bukharev formulated a vision that was to be the "flame of the cultural elite of the Russian nation" [17] for decades to come: the ecclesialisation (churchification, воцерковление, оцерковление) of life [18] .
III. The "churchification of life"
The renewed interest of philosophers for sobornost helped regain consciousness of the its theological depth as well. Sobornost was once more recognised as a key notion of Orthodox anthropology, ecclesiology and soteriology. As an ecclesiological concept, we find sobornost in the reply of the Orthodox Patriarchs of the East to the Encyclical letter of Pope Pius IX in 1848. Against the doctrine of papal infallibility, the Patriarchs - inspired by their Russian contemporary, Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow [19] held that "the preservation of faith resides in the total body of the Church, that is to say, in the people itself." [20] This is not be understood as democracy, but rather of the "living multiple unity of many, living a unique, all-encompassing life, the catholicity (sobornost) of the Church, in the image of the divine Trinity." [21] According to St. Gregory of Nyssa, the fallen image of God in Adam is restored by Christ in the community, the sobornost of the Church [22] . Indeed, the notion of catholicity allows seeing the Church "not as an institution but as new life with Christ and in Christ, driven by the Holy Spirit." [23] This body, vivified by the Holy Spirit, holds a living memory of faith, its Tradition. "The Apostles did not leave us words," said Khomiakov, "but a patrimony of inner life." [24] The theme of "living Tradition" was chosen by Fr Georges Florovsky for the Congress of theologians in 1936 as well as for an anthology of teachers at the St. Sergius Institute in Paris. [25]
Yet catholicity is not a mere plural notion either. In Orthodox anthropology man himself, created in the image of the divine Trinity, is conciliar by nature and only for this reason is capable to communicate. Russian thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century concluded that "in his deepest essence, man is an ecclesial, a communal and, as we would say today, liturgical being." [26] "There are two types of self-consciousness," Fr Georges Florovsky stated; "individualism and catholicity (in the sense of universality, sobornost). A 'catholic consciousness' is no 'collective consciousness' or 'general consciousness'; my 'ego' is not abolished nor dissolved in a 'we'; it does not become a mere agent of the consciousness of my race. On the contrary, the personal consciousness finds its fulfilment in a catholic transfiguration, abandons isolation and estrangement and opens up to the fullness of other individuals: as Prince S. Trubetzkoy worded it so well, it 'holds a council with all within itself'." [27]
This "new life with Christ and in Christ" is not limited to mankind alone. In a daring article, Fr Basil Zenkovsky wrote, "The 'catholicity' of the Church is first and foremost an expression of its universal (ecumenical) spirit. Its catholicity lies not in its exterior expansion in the world; on the contrary, its spread rather reveals and expresses its resolve to gather and to sanctify the whole world and to save it by the power of its grace. This resolve of the Church to save the whole world corresponds to the fact that the whole world is already present within the Church, even though the world is not aware of it, and to a considerable extent does not even desire this. But the Church, established by our Saviour, has become the soul of the world, its hidden centre, the place where God and man meet, and therefore the place where the world can be illuminated and humanity deified. In it, everything can be churchified for it is already present there, not in its reality, which so often drags behind the Church, but in its ideal side, non-incarnated but already taking flesh. The Church has become the mother of all, and the work of churchification is an accomplishment of our sonship in Christ. Everything can and should be transfigured in order to become free in Christ; in the Church we march towards freedom; by ecclesialising ourselves, our lives and the world we accomplish our freedom, we accomplish our catholicity (sobornost)." [28] The belief in the universal value of Christ as the principle of creation and the basis of human fellowship means that no side of life can remain neutral to salvation: "All of culture can be ecclesialised. Christ is 'the way, the truth, and the life' and the light of Christ should illuminate every thing and every one." [29]
In the above-mentioned understandings of sobornost we already find the basis of the eucharistic ecclesiology of Fr Nicholas Afanasiev [30] , the notion of the double economy of Christ and the Spirit in Vladimir Lossky's work and the theology of personhood of Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon. They also explain the extraordinary importance attached by Slavophiles, Russian religious philosophers and the youth workers of the Russian emigration to the ecclesialisation of life and culture and the creation of an Orthodox culture.
A last dimension of the word sobornost, conciliarity, is the word "council." With an enhanced awareness of the conciliar character of the Orthodox Church, frustration with the Synodal system of administration grew and the thirst for a Church council - local, and, who knows one day, ecumenical - became stronger. One of the theses of the volume Vekhi (Landmarks, 1908) that marks the transition of several leading philosophers towards Orthodoxy, is the need for a council. When in 1902 and 1903, prominent hierarchs and philosophers met at the famous Religious-philosophical encounters in St. Petersburg, the writer Dimitry Merezhkovsky felt how "the walls moved aside, infinite expanses unfolded and our modest gathering became the antechamber of an ecumenical council, an encounter of Church and culture." [31] Although the Russian authorities sanctioned pre-conciliar consultations in 1906 and 1912 [32] , the Russian Church was not to live its first conciliar experience until the very days of the 1917 cataclysm and the fall of monarchy. The ordination of Serge Bulgakov during the council marked the reconciliation between Church and culture [33] , and at the same time its forced end: freed from the control of the state, the Russian Orthodox Church now turned to face persecution [34] . Rather than constructing a new culture transfigured by Christ, Russia exiled its leading religious thinkers and destroyed all attempts at a creative renewal of Church and culture [35] . Hope for building a contemporary Orthodox culture in Russia seemed lost forever.
IV. Orthodox culture as the basis for educational work among the emigre youth
A close friend of the Zander family, Mrs Elena Bobrinskoy, marked that "if for the majority of Russian emigrants life abroad was a tragedy, and the very best minds and talents often could not find a use for themselves and perished in misery and total loneliness, the same could not be said of Leon and Valentina Zander. Their life in exile was extraordinarily fruitful, most probably because they had chosen the blessed way that could not be taken away from them: the service of the Church." [36] In exile, the Church was the natural centre where Russian community life concentrated. With the deep wounds of the Revolution and the civil war fragmenting the Russian community, the role of the Church as an uniting element was central. "Unity among the Russian emigrants may be achieved only by spiritual means, and Russians should seek it around the Orthodox Church," Berdyaev wrote in 1925 [37] . He saw unity around the Church not as a mere means to overcome sectarian and political divisions, but rather as the condition sine qua non for the emigrants to preserve their heritage and prepare for its revival in Russia. "Our task lies neither in political activities nor in patriotic declamations," wrote Leon Zander. "Only by serving the Church and adhering to what is eternal we dwell in the motherland and are of use to it." [38] In 1930, the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSCM, see below) stated that "we must take the blows of atheism upon ourselves; it is our sacred charge, our obligation before our fatherland to carry our movement to Russia and become participants in the building of its Orthodox culture." [39]
In preparing a future reconstruction of Russia on spiritual foundations, the first concern of the adherents of an "Orthodox culture" was to create "laboratories of Orthodox life" where younger generations could grow in their attachment to the Church. One of the prime architects of these laboratories was Fr Basil Zenkovsky, a prominent educator, thinker and youth worker. "Our times demand particular care of the Church for the youth," he wrote in 1934, "to gather their bewildered, lonely and often barren souls within the Church. The time has come for a formidable task: inner mission." [40] In 1923 he became one of the founders and the life-long President of a movement of Orthodox students and intellectuals, the Russian Student Christian Movement. The movement was part of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) and actively participated in ecumenical exchanges. With Leon Zander he stood at the origins of St. Sergius' theological Institute in 1925-26. In 1927, he established an Orthodox Pedagogical Bureau at St. Sergius' Institute in Paris. Fr Zenkovsky was driven neither by ideological concern for the construction of "Holy Russia" nor the wish to create armies of young men willing to combat Bolshevism: his concern for Orthodox culture came first of all from a profound interest in the spiritual needs of the emigre youth. He thoroughly studied their situation, condition and needs [41] using all pedagogical means at his disposal [42] . The result of research was disturbing. The shocks of the war, the revolution, the civil war and the loss of their country had left many young Russians apathetic towards life. Injustice and an ideological vacuum led to indifference. In a 1929 survey, nearly 60% of the Russian youth in exile claimed to be non-believers or only nominally Orthodox [43] . Zenkovsky wrote, "We have to admit that there exists a certain Orthodox secularism, born not out of opposition to the Church but out of indifference towards it." [44] "Only when we will be deeply aware of the horrifying disarray of our situation we can truly deal with questions of accomplishing truth in life [45] ". Rather than experiencing the inner rupture of nineteenth-century Russia, the entire world of Russian emigre youth had been turned upside down. "The emigre youth," wrote Berdyaev, "has been condemned to experience an open rupture of unprecedented intensity and scale." [46] Nothing was self-evident for them any more: the young generation was torn apart by the ruptures between Eastern and Western culture, Eastern and Western Christianity and, more fundamentally, between their lives and the Church.
Pastoral work among this generation led Zenkovsky and his collaborators to the conclusion that an undiscerning assimilation of Western culture would not be without impact on religious life. Lessons of "Orthodox religion" within a fundamentally different society were insufficient to "keep the flame of the idea of an Orthodox culture burning." [47] Some conclusions: "Having initially attempted to introduce elements of religious education into existing educational practices, experience brought the staff of the Orthodox Pedagogical Bureau to the conviction that their aims could not be achieved in this way, but than an integral system of religious education is needed." [48] "In its spiritual illness, its extremism and its primitive atheism, the youth confront us with the issue of Orthodox culture, a matter that Russian religious and philosophical thought has long been working on." [49] "Orthodox can not live according to the principles of a civilisation that is alien to the spirit of Orthodoxy and remain faithful to their Church. Thus religious education touches upon a much wider issue and becomes a matter of the utmost complexity and difficulty." [50] "The Russian youth outside Russia, while remaining Orthodox, receive a Western education and upbringing, which inevitably leads to a spiritual shock; it is inevitable because of the collision between Orthodoxy and Western Christianity. We see the consequences all too well: we lose our youth on the paths of civilisation, or rather on their fringes, before they are lifted up to the summit of this civilisation, that is to say, to the level of perceiving its inner crisis. The appeal of the West on our youth more often than not leads to the loss of its Orthodox spirit. It would be an acknowledgement of the weakness of Orthodoxy if we were to shield our youth from the immense life of the non-Orthodox world, but in order for this encounter to bear fruit, differing spiritual experiences should be approached with a critical mind and in full possession of our forces. One must possess what is 'one's own' in order to benefit from what is 'the other's'. It is possible that the Russian emigration has an important task to accomplish here: to discover, reveal and bring up to date the forces or Orthodoxy, while loving the West, in the very shock of the collision with its culture." [51]
According to Zenkovsky, considering faith and culture as private matters of individual citizens would lead to their separation, to the secularisation of life and ultimately a civilisation without God: "What is our fundamental disease? I believe that the essential cause of the weakening of ties between our youth and the Church lies in the fact that some sides of culture are insufficiently impregnated with Orthodoxy. In other words, Orthodox culture is underdeveloped. There is a vast contrast with the West with its mighty and outwardly appealing culture. It is not surprising that Orthodox youth (in all countries where there is such youth) experiences the influence of the West. Yet Western culture is so deeply permeated with (Roman) Catholic Christianity that one cannot grasp it in a "neutral" fashion. The question raised here cannot be resolved by an excessive love for the West while remaining faithful to Orthodoxy (both in an outwardly manner), for Western culture, stripped of its religious essence, becomes a culture without God." [52]
Research among emigre youth convinced Zenkovsky that they indeed felt a need for such an "Orthodox culture". "Secularisation, the exclusion of the Church from the cultural realm and the consequent spiritual duality are unacceptable for youth." [53] "The outward ruptures which young Russians are forced to live through, their fate to live a broken and evaporated existence, have strengthened their thirst for an inner wholeness and sanctification of life." [54] The confessor of the Russian Christian Student Movement in France, Fr Serge Tchetverikov, characterised the needs of the emigre youth as follows: "With barren and shattered souls, sometimes agitated and sometimes openly disbelieving, young Russians arrived abroad. But it was impossible for them to remain in such a state of mind. It was impossible for the instinct of life, goodness, truth and love not to raise its voice again in their souls. Sprouts of faith and hope once again appeared in the hearts of our youth; faith in God and righteousness grew anew. Their souls were thirsty for healing and appeasement." [55] This thirst for wholeness was not exclusively an Orthodox concern, it characterised the entire post-war period. Addressing Orthodox youth workers in 1930, Dr. W. Visser 't Hooft gave the following analysis of the way young Christians experienced the rise of secularism: "In times of revolution, when the spiritual foundations of the life of nations are unsettled, relations between the Church and youth always take a disconcerting acuteness. The Church faces a youth that seems incapable or unwilling to understand its message. Youth are at a loss to find connections between the faith of their fathers and life, between their personal life and their surroundings. It is clear that today we are passing through an era of radical transformations. The conflict between Christianity and culture has taken an exceptional gravity. In Orthodox countries like in the West, the chasm between Christian tradition and political, social, artistic and intellectual life seems to grow ever deeper. This is why the relation between Church and youth is a burning issue today. It is not the fault of the youth. Young people are no less open to the Christian truth than in the past. They simply find it far more difficult to understand what it is the Church has to offer. In their families, in school, in their entire social life they encounter ideologies that contradict or deny the fundamental truth of Christianity. Where will they find a place for God and for His Church in today's world? At the same time, youth are too sincere to see the Church as a mere appendix to life. They know very well that either the world or the Church must be wrong. For whom will they choose? Facing this worsening situation, the Church cannot limit itself to a purely conservative attitude. It has to fight for its Master and charge forward." [56]
The Russian Student Christian Movement and the Russian Theological Institute in Paris were conceived by Basil Zenkovsky and Leon Zander respectively as a "laboratory of Orthodox culture [57] " and a "breeding-ground" of Orthodox theological thought [58] . For Zenkovsky, the life-long President of the RSCM, "The principal theme of the movement, the transfiguration of life, is at the same time the central theme of all our youth work." [59] Students from all parts of the Russian emigration (France, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Germany, Estonia, and Latvia) joined the movement and showed great enthusiasm for the development of Orthodox culture. At the 1930 conference of the RSCM, a number of Russian thinkers and youth created a League of Orthodox Culture: "We witness a vivid interest towards the League among many members of the RSCM," Zenkovsky wrote. "The question of ecclesialisation of life, which has become the motto of the movement, is essentially a matter of creating an Orthodox culture. A considerable section within the RSCM is profoundly aware of the need to raise our understanding of the cultural tasks facing us." [60] "Days of Orthodox culture" were organised [61] at St. Serge and soon beyond the frontiers of France. The most important moments in the life of the movement were the conferences, where "in a prophetic way, the depth and purity of Church life encountered the very fullness of life; the conferences themselves already embodied a partial and temporary state of ecclesialisation." [62] They also marked the spiritual growth of the younger generation in the perspective of a spirituality that was neither individualistic nor otherworldly but prospected transfiguration of life in the spirit of Christ. "Youth movements are a living protest against the hideous reality of today and also correct it," Zander wrote; "their aim is to create a new man who could in his turn, create a new culture." [63] The younger generation presented, as it were, a first image of this new man: "contemporary youth," Zenkovsky stated, "is much more complete than preceding generations; it cherishes this newly found wholeness and sets it off against the ambiguity and brokenness of their fathers." [64] "It is amazing how easily and naturally our youth achieves things which not so long ago were conceivable only to those who had spiritually matured and enjoyed exceptional mystical gifts." [65] He saw the movement as the "dawn before the rising of the long-awaited Russian sun, [66] " a starting point for a possible spiritual renewal in Russia. "The spirit of a new Russian life already animates our youth and we feel its timid heartbeat; this organic joining together of the ecclesial ethos with the spirit of freedom, of healthy conservatism with creative impulses, permits us to believe that new life in Russia may indeed be built upon the living and working principles of the Church. This perspective has revealed itself in a modest and timid movement among students. Time will show how Russia itself will react to it." [67] The success of the RSCM in total isolation from Russia brought Berdyaev to lament "the horrifying contrast between how things are (in the USSR) and how they should be (in the RSCM)." [68]
But what exactly did this "Orthodox culture" encompass? What were the consequences of Fr Zenkovsky's idea that culture could neither be reduced to a non-religious Privatsache (a private affair) - as he viewed the essence of Protestant cultures [69] -, nor to the servant of theocratic attempts towards the superficial construction of the Kingdom of God (as he described the "Roman Catholic cultural idea, quite distinct from Roman Catholicism itself" [70] )? Zenkovsky saw religion as the fundamental force in human cultures. He viewed Orthodox culture as the transfiguration of all domains of life in an absolutely free relation between Church and creativity. "The world cannot be forced to adopt any given forms of life: the world may only be transfigured." [71] In a 1938 study on "The totalitarian idea and the problem of education, [72] " he juxtaposes the emerging totalitarian ideologies, "claiming the right to influence and control man's inner life, [73] " and Christian wholeness in freedom (or organic completeness), which he describes as "the Christian 'totalitarian idea,' which applies to man in the completeness and unity of his outer and inner life. [74] "
Just as Fr Georges Florovsky perceived the rediscovery of the patristic heritage as a dynamic synthesis between the spirit of the fathers and the challenges of modernity, Zenkovsky saw the achievement of a contemporary Orthodox culture as a creative synthesis of its fragmented components in a global, catholic (or, as we would say today, holistic) perspective. "We find ourselves facing a task that the Christian East has faced in the past and which it brilliantly succeeded to resolve," he wrote in 1923: "incorporating the essential elements of Hellenistic culture and shaping them into an organic synthesis in the spirit of Christianity. We, the Orthodox of modern times, find ourselves facing the task of reshaping the principles of Western culture which, even though raised on Christian foundations and engaged in many issues of Christianity, have developed in a process of deep fragmentation and struggle and have reached a profound inner tragedy. We find ourselves facing 'independent science,' 'autonomous ethics,' 'free creativity,' 'neutral states' built upon the foundations of the struggle and individual interests of economics and 'humanitarian' (i.e. non-religious) education; we find ourselves facing a deep mystical connection between Western Culture and Christianity, yet at the same time an intense struggle within the modern Western conscience about ways of secularisation. It is impossible for us not to accept and love Western culture, but neither can we avoid seeing it as a 'cemetery' where the former wholeness and organic concord of its Christian culture have been buried." [75] This ambitious programme closely related to the programme of Fr Florovsky's neo-patristic synthesis: in 1937 he wrote that "the time has come when truly every issue of learning and life must have and receive a Christian answer, be incorporated into a synthetic tissue and the fullness of our confession. The time is coming when theology will cease to be a private, individual affair. once again it will become a common action, a universal and catholic vocation." [76]
Debate rose, however, on the feasibility of this transfiguration of man, human culture and finally all of creation by the Spirit of God residing in His body, the Church. Fr Zenkovsky himself raised the question, whether it was realistic to hope that fallen humanity would "find its creative strength, its impulse, its existential force in the Orthodox faith." [77] Given the fallen state of creation and man, wouldn't the attempt to create an Orthodox culture be an attempt at the very same "outward construction of the Kingdom of God" of which Zenkovsky accused European culture? If Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholic culture are not the same, how then were Orthodoxy and Orthodox culture to be related? Not by chance the very first issue of Put' contained an article by Berdyaev entitled The kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Cesar. At the "Day of Orthodox Culture" in 1930, Berdyaev expresses his doubt about the feasibility of an Orthodox culture on earth, quoting the antinomy between the eternal Church and the ever-changing preoccupations of human culture. "Culture," he said, "doesn't want to know about the eschatological nature of the Church, its apocalypse; it attempts to settle in time - forever. Yet culture itself is passing through its own apocalypse. Russia's most elevated culture has always been characterised by doubt about its own attainability. There is a great and positive sense to failures of culture. Culture can grow only in freedom of creativity. But freedom inevitably develops hand in hand with secularisation, as a result of the fragmentation of the principle of wholeness. The question rises, whether Orthodox culture is possible at all." [78] In other words, freedom of creativity and salvation in the Church are incompatible. At the same conference Fr Serge Bulgakov proposed a nuance, introducing the incarnation as a link between the fallen categories of worldly culture and the eternal nature of the Church. First of all he distinguished between civilisation as the adaptation of mankind to the conditions of physical life, and culture as the dynamic connection between the Creator and man. Man, he stated, is called to be co-creator with God: "It would be utopian and blasphemous to think that mankind could free itself from the yoke of original sin, from the yoke of civilisation and transform its entire life into a liturgy, into culture. But it has been granted to man to walk along this path and to conquer ever-new realms in this direction. Yet what is the ultimate aim of culture? The final aim of culture is god-manly action, which is to say, humanising the world and deifying man. In this sense, culture has no boundaries at all. Christ has become a true man and He has humanised the life of the entire world." [79] Fr Zenkovsky replied to Berdyaevs opposition between free creativity and salvation not only on theological grounds but also by mentioning the pressing pastoral need for cultural wholeness in Christ. "Even among those who see the erroneousness of the viewpoint that cultural creativity and salvation are incompatible," he said, "some do not feel impelled to overcome this divide. For the youth, things are quite different. Their situation requires prompt and decisive measures." [80] Their convictions indeed compelled Fr Zenkovsky and Zander to act, as we shall see below.
V. The encounter with the other local Churches
Between 1923 and 1939, a vast network of Orthodox organisations and conferences spread over Europe around issues of Orthodox youth work and Orthodox culture. Its establishment and work were intimately related to yet another aspect of the notion of sobornost: the Ecumenical [81] Movement. The Russian emigration and its youth organisations played a central role in this process. Already from the nineteenth century, encounters with Anglican and Roman Catholic ecclesiology had stirred a renewal of the Orthodox consciousness in Russia - one may mention the correspondence between Khomiakov and William Palmer, [82] - but rarely such contacts had had an official status or went beyond contradiction and refutation. The catastrophes of the early twentieth century and the ensuing thirst for peace and reconciliation [83] opened the door for the great ecumenical conferences of the 1920's, while the forced exile of hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Russians made the encounter of Eastern and Western Christianity a daily reality. Apart from their mission of incarnating the ideal of sobornost in a renewed and transfigured Russian culture, many emigrants also saw a second mission closely related with the catholic nature of the Orthodox Church: the unity of Christendom. "It is not by accident that Russians have been brought in close contact with the Western world and with the Christians of the West. Orthodoxy has a universal significance and it cannot continue to live in a state of ethnical confinement and isolation," Berdyaev wrote in 1925 [84] . Fr Zenkovsky considered that "Orthodoxy has a unique mission in the achievement of Christian unity on earth." [85] The encounter of Russian believers in exile and Western Christianity essentially took shape within two processes of major importance: the ecumenical conferences of the 1920s and 1930s and the ecumenical youth movement.
This is certainly the place to pay tribute to the contribution made by Protestant youth organisations to the survival and growth of Orthodox spiritual life in exile between the world wars. None of the key institutions of Orthodox life in exile could have been so efficiently established without the self-sacrificing help of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) and many others. The goodwill and the thirst for contact expressed by Western Christians who had not previously known about Orthodoxy is striking. "Western Christians are convinced that Orthodoxy has a message of life for youth," W. Visser 't Hooft stated in 1930. [86] This conviction was sufficient to offer assistance to the Orthodox, fraternal help rather than a means of influencing the vulnerable immigrants. It is significant that all three factions of Russian Church life abroad, the Constantinopolitan Exarchate, the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Russian Church in Exile, acclaimed YMCA and WSCF President Dr. John Mott, for organising help to the Russians [87] . Mott deeply valued equal and mutual relations with the Orthodox. In 1933 he noticed with satisfaction that YMCA had been "deeply influenced by the great Russian Diaspora and by the inspiring work of many Russian thinkers and scholars. The work of YMCA among the millions of prisoners of war and its material contribution to the normalisation of life after the war helped to open doors and to establish an understanding and a unity of hearts among the peoples of East and West." [88] The list of achievements of YMCA for the benefit of Russians in exile is impressive indeed. During the war, an entire Russian section supported Russian prisoners of war. From 1921, YMCA founded the Russian Polytechnic School of Correspondence Courses which offered thousands of Russian emigrants all over the world a solid professional education. Russian schools were opened in Estonia, Bulgaria, Poland and Germany. Its Russian printing press, the famous YMCA-Press, started as a publishing house for Russian textbooks and Bibles before becoming the main editor of religious and dissident writers abroad. Student centres were opened in Prague, Berlin and Paris. Hundreds of students received grants through the "Russian Student Fund". The Russian Orthodox Theological Institute (St. Sergius) in Paris, the Russian Academy of Religious Philosophy, its review Put' ("the Way"), the Russian Student Christian Movement, the Orthodox Pedagogical Bureau all became possible with the financial support of Western, mainly American Protestants [89] . "It is impossible," writes the present Dean of St. Sergius' Institute, "to separate the establishment of the Institute from the Ecumenical movement. From its very first years, the Institute could only exist with the self-sacrificing and fraternal help of non-Orthodox churches, while the professors of the Institute took part in all international ecumenical encounters in order to witness the fullness and the truth of Orthodoxy." [90]
WSCF and YMCA had been active in Russia since the visits of Mott there in 1899 and 1909, during which student groups were established in several Russian cities. These groups were received into the WSCF as the Russian Student Christian Movement in 1913 [91] . Likewise, a Russian department of the YMCA (Mayak, "the Beacon") had existed since 1900 [92] . The interconfessional methods of these circles, although attended predominantly by Orthodox youth, were characteristic for their Protestant origins and leadership. A turning point for the RSCM was the encounter between Russian students and Mott at the World conference of the WSCF in Peking in 1922. By then, YMCA and WSCF groups in Soviet Russia had been closed down [93] and their foreign staff expelled. Russian students were represented at the conference by Leon Zander and Vladimir Krylatov from Vladivostok (still in the hands of the White armies), Leon Liperovsky from Shanghai and Alexander Nikitine from a group of RSCM exiled in Bulgaria. Zander, a young teacher of philosophy at the Petrograd University in exile had been a member of a philosophical circle in St. Petersburg [94] . In Peking he discussed the spiritual needs of the Russian youth in exile with Mott and expressed his conviction that a school of higher education for training future clergy and teachers abroad and structures of youth ministry among the emigre youth were needed [95] . Mott agreed and in the same year sent Liperovsky to Europe to prepare a Christian conference of Russian students. Zander and Krylatov followed shortly [96] .
The conference took place in Pserov, Czechoslovakia in October 1923. It gathered a group of prominent Russian thinkers, who decided to revive the Russian Student Christian Movement with a new identity and direction. First of all, the conference marked a turning point of the RSCM towards the Orthodox Church. The Russian SCM became an Orthodox movement, which meant that a member SCM appeared within the World Student Christian Federation with a confessional, as well as a national character. Secondly, the movement formulated three directions of work, all of which were closely related with the renewed understanding of sobornost: responsibility for the fate of the Church in Russia (i.e. preparing for its reconstruction); a deepened eucharistic consciousness; affirmation of the universality of Eastern Orthodoxy and the inherent effort to re-establish unity with Western Christianity. The motto of the movement became the ecclesialisation of life, one of the key themes at the conference [97] . In an address, Anton Kartashov discussed ways of rebuilding Russia on the foundations of Orthodoxy. Basil Zenkovsky, then still a professor at the Russian Pedagogical Institute in Prague, was elected President. In the same year he edited a collection of texts under the title Orthodoxy and Culture, containing two fundamental texts: Orthodoxy and Culture and The concept of Orthodox culture. [98] Russian student groups all over Europe soon joined the RSCM. WCSF had found a member, and YMCA a partner organisation within the Orthodox Church. The encounter proved beneficial for both sides.
The work of YMCA in the Orthodox Balkan countries, Greece and among Russians in exile following World War I had not been altogether successful. It encountered mixed reactions from the side of local believers and Church authorities. The principle of "interconfessionalism" (belief in Christ as the sole binding factor) and the use of Protestant methods and literature caused accusations of proselytism rather than recognition of Christian fellowship [99] . In 1926, the Russian Karlovcy synod and the synod of the Bulgarian Church banned their youth from participation in YMCA activities [100] . The RSCM intervened in an attempt to explain the specificity of Orthodox youth to the YMCA and helping it find ways of work adapted to their needs. In collaboration with YMCA Russian Secretary Gustave Kullmann and Life & Work Youth Secretary Willem Visser 't Hooft, it also brokered a series of official meetings between Church leaders with ecumenical youth organisations - in Denmark in 1926 (with WSCF [101] ), Sofia in 1928, Athens in 1930 and Bucharest in 1933 (with YMCA). As a result, YMCA agreed to adapt to the specific conditions of Orthodox countries. A 1933 Charter between YMCA and the Orthodox churches of the Balkans stated that YMCA work, leadership and ethos in such countries should be essentially Orthodox in character, have the support of local Church authorities, allow for confessional subgroups, reject proselytism and conduct Bible studies in a spirit conform with the Orthodox understanding of Scripture. The Charter received the blessing of the Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, Alexandrian and Russian emigre hierarchy (except the Karlovcy Synod) [102] and opened the way for fruitful co-operation. YMCA made a great effort to adapt its methods to Orthodox Christianity and local cultures [103] . The RSCM also played a decisive role in the establishment of the Anglo-Russian Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius in 1929, whose publication was appropriately named Sobornost. In general one may state that the contribution of the Orthodox SCM presence in WSCF and YMCA was to help these movements grow from non-theological "interconfessional" (and predominantly Protestant) movements into truly ecumenical organisations where an encounter between confessions could take place in the perspective of achieving Christian unity [104] . By 1933, all YMCAs in Orthodox countries had acquired a distinct Orthodox character, though their activities were open to all.
The Russians, and soon all local Orthodox churches in Europe, benefited in many ways from their presence in the ecumenical movement. First of all, they discovered other forms of pastoral work with youth than education and ministry. "It is a fact, wrote Zenkovsky in 1930, that our attention towards the youth and its spiritual ways was a result of the influence of Western Christian organisations." [105] In November 1926, Gustave Kullmann took Zenkovsky and Liperovsky to the United States for a nine-month encounter with youth work there [106] . The establishment of the Orthodox Pedagogical Bureau (Религиозно-педагогический кабинет по работе с православной молодежью) at St. Sergius in the autumn of the next year was a direct result of the visit. The Bureau was to function as the "scientific educational council of the RSCM elaborating the ideological foundations of its pedagogical work." [107] It existed until 1964.
The ecumenical encounter also made the Russian emigrants aware of the Orthodoxy, rather than Russian Orthodoxy of their faith. Pre-World War I reflection on Orthodox catholicity, or sobornost, had mainly focused on the unity between religion and culture, or the universal importance of Christianity for the salvation of the world. Although the RSCM confessed the universality of Orthodoxy, other local Orthodox Churches had not really been part of its scope. This lack of awareness reflected a wider reality in the Orthodox churches at the time. Although contacts had never completely severed - several hierarchs of the Antiochian, Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian Churches had been educated in pre-Revolutionary Russia [108] -, in the early twentieth century the Orthodox Churches had by and large become strangers for each other. The ecumenical conferences of the twentieth century meant a significant change. "For already 250 years," wrote Anton Kartashov in 1932, "the Eastern Churches, separated by Turkish subjugation and local nationalistic interests and conflicts, have not even expressed the desire to meet at a joint council. Nationalism and provincialism are so deeply rooted in them that gigantic efforts will be required to overcome them." [109] In 1928, the Bulgarian theologian Stefan Zankov acknowledged that "Secularisation, as well as general tendencies of internal and external, confessional and moral division of the past centuries have caused a situation in which we Orthodox hardly know one another and where we barely sense our mutual interconnectedness." [110] The ecumenical movement provided both the context and the means through which the Orthodox discovered one another. It was during ecumenical encounters that the Orthodox discovered - often to their own surprise - that they shared the same fundamental belief and ethos. When in 1936 the first Conference of Orthodox Theologians for centuries was held in Athens, Prof. H. Alivisatos made special mention of the merits of the Ecumenical Movement. "Why, at this pan-Orthodox congress," he stated, "should I mention the ecumenical movement? (.) Because at these international encounters, for the first time in modern times, theologians from different parts of the Orthodox Church, who until then had not known of each other's existence, encountered and discovered each other. More than that: in these alien surroundings, the Orthodox theologians spontaneously and naturally united to support the Orthodox points of view and behaved like one group." [111] Following the founding conference of Faith and Order in Lausanne in 1927, Nicholas Arseniev wrote, "The members of the most divers Orthodox churches very acutely felt their unity and their belonging to the one Orthodox Church. We experienced it as some pre-conciliar consultation, leading the way for a council of the entire Orthodox Church." [112]
At the level of the youth movement, the experience was the same. At the Sixth WSCF South Eastern European Student Conference in Bulgaria in 1926, "the Bulgarian Serbian, Greek, Romanian and Russian youth completely forgot about politics and became conscious of their authentic unity in the Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy here revealed itself not as a state religion or a form of national folklore, but as a living truth that embraces all classes, ages and professions without distinction." [113]
The question might rise whether the Orthodox could only experience this unity in the encounter with the non-Orthodox. In other words, did the Orthodox need the contradiction of the others to feel so united? It would be certainly do injustice to the Orthodox participants in the early ecumenical movement to describe their role in terms of mere contradiction. They were profoundly convinced of the need for Christian unity and had indeed contributed to the establishment of the movement. For many Orthodox, participation in the ecumenical movement was a natural consequence of the sobornost, the catholicity of the Church, one which they viewed in terms of soborovanie, or conciliation. Secondly, at the conferences the Orthodox discovered more than their common stand in the face of other confessions. Youth workers discovered the similarity between the spiritual crisis that the Russian youth in exile and the youth traditional Orthodox countries was experiencing. It transpired that both exile and the raising secularism of the post-war period were making heavy marks on the ways young people lived their faith. In 1930, Zenkovsky wrote: "Those involved with youth in Orthodox countries know very well that its spirituality often develops in a tragic way and remains far from the Church. A divide has arisen between the spiritual fertility of Orthodoxy, which often remains concealed, and the cultural basis that underlies the life of intellectuals, and to a certain degree of the peoples of Orthodox countries. This contrast has become so large that a rupture between life and the Church becomes an ever more realistic threat. The situation is virtually the same in all Orthodox countries. It is essential for all the Orthodox to become aware of the gravity of the current situation and search a solution. For too long, the Orthodox have experienced a purely spiritual unity, without an outward expression. The time has come when outward (visible) unity is indispensable." [114] The conclusion that all local churches suffered the same difficulties naturally led to the desire for closer co-operation in the pedagogical field. "Already long ago, wrote Zenkovsky, we recognised the need to gather all local Orthodox Churches in the field of youth work. Their unity remains solid despite their extreme national fragmentation, but this inner unity must find a fitting expression in those areas where joint efforts, the mutual exchange of experience and creative development of new solutions is necessary." [115] "An integral system of Orthodox religious education is so important for the future destiny of Christianity as a whole that it can be only be achieved by the concerted effort of all living forces of Orthodoxy and the co-operation of all local churches on this issue." [116] "I have come to the conviction that we can achieve our common difficult Orthodox task only by the coalition of all the Orthodox." [117]
At the same time it is clear that without the help of the non-Orthodox, the Orthodox found it excessively difficult to overcome the barriers that "nationalism and provincialism" imposed on pan-Orthodox co-operation. The encounter between YMCA and Orthodox hierarchs in 1930 was greeted as a major ecumenical encounter, but also as a rare occasion that brought Orthodox hierarchs together. The attempts between 1921 and 1932 to convene preparatory meetings for a future general council of the Orthodox Church did not succeed [118] . At the same time, in the encounter with the non-Orthodox, the variety of positions of the Orthodox Church towards Western Christianity made closer collaboration an ecumenical need as well. "A creative revival of the Orthodox world is a precondition for the success of the ecumenical endeavour," Florovsky wrote in 1937; "we should not merely refuse or refute Western solutions and errors but also help overcome and surmount them in a creative effort." [119] Kartashov added: "we face a formidable task: the inner unification of the Orthodox East." [120] Thus efforts to bring together the "living forces" of the Orthodox Church proved beneficial for both the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox. They helped the Orthodox deepen their understanding of the catholicity of the Church and helped build pan-Orthodox support for the ecumenical movement in the Balkans, Greece and among the Russian emigration.
VI. The idea of "Western Orthodoxy"'
Besides the revived conciliar conscience and the ecumenical movement there is a third process among the Orthodox in the emigration that deserves to be mentioned, even though its impact on pan-Orthodox relation dates from after World War II. Thought about the relation between Orthodoxy and culture as well as the encounter with other Orthodox helped the Russian emigration to widen their understanding of their Church as "Russian" only. It also awoke awareness of the fact that the new homelands of the emigration were by no means "neutral" from the Orthodox point of view: France, Great Britain and many other countries had deep roots in the undivided Church. In many places of their new homelands, emigrants discovered shrines where saints of the first centuries were venerated. Out of interest for the "Orthodox" roots of Western Europe and the consciousness of the universality of Orthodoxy a movement was born that strove to revive local Church life as it had been at the time of the undivided Church. In 1925, a group of young Russians in France established the Photian Brotherhood, which was to count among its members such eminent theologians as Vladimir Lossky. The Manifesto of the Brotherhood claimed that "The Orthodox Church is not only Oriental, she is the Church of all peoples on earth, in East and West, in North and South; every nation has its rights in the Orthodox Church, its autocephalous constitution and may preserve its own customs, rites and liturgical language." [121] The Brotherhood actively worked to discover and revive the liturgical customs of the Church of Gaul and translated Orthodox services in French. In 1928, a working group started compiling materials about pre-1054 saints in France. [122]
Although after the schisms in the emigration the Photian Brotherhood chose to belong to the Moscow Patriarchate, similar openness towards other rites in the Orthodox Church could be found in all Russian jurisdictions. In 1926, Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky endorsed Metropolitan Dionysius' decision to allow two Polish Catholic priests who had become Orthodox to maintain the Roman Mass. "Even before Photius," he wrote, "the Roman rite was different from the Greek and Russian typicon." [123] A French-language parish was established at the RSCM offices in 1927. Its dean Fr Lev Gillet, a French convert, wrote in 1928: "Orthodoxy is neither Byzantine nor Slav; it is universal and the task of Western Orthodox is to create a type of Orthodoxy proper to the West which, by means of a return to traditional local sources might significantly differ from the Oriental rite." [124] Gillet was actively involved in the work of the Pedagogical Bureau [125] and was to play an important role in later ecumenical pan-Orthodox relations. Fr Serge Bulgakov celebrated a French liturgy in St. Sergius in 1927 and was the spiritual father [126] of a group of novices who sought to revive the Benedictine monastic tradition in the Orthodox Church [127] . In Great Britain, 1935 the emigrants Bolshakov and Solomentsev established the "St. Benedict Brotherhood" with the same aim [128] .
In 1936, the Photian Brotherhood sponsored the passage of a group of Western Christians to Orthodoxy, headed by Louis-Irenee Winnaert. The group was received into the Moscow Patriarchate as the 'Western Orthodox Church.' [129] From the death of Winnaert in the same year, the group was headed by Fr Jean Kovalevsky (himself a graduate of St. Sergius) and enjoyed a semi-autonomous status in the jurisdiction. Although the later destine of the "Western Orthodox Church" proved difficult [130] , it played an important role in widening the cultural horizon of many Orthodox. Particular mention should be made of the Theological Institute St. Denys established by the Church in 1944, gathering leading personalities from various jurisdictions and even confessions. The value of this process for pan-Orthodox co-operation only became apparent after World War II.
VII. The international conferences
Soon after the creation of the RSCM and the Pedagogical Bureau, their concerted efforts with ecumenical youth structures produced a series of conferences with a vast impact on youth work in all local churches. The most important took part in Bania Kostenec (Bulgaria, 1926), Thessalonica (1930), Bucharest (1933), Dassel (Germany, 1936) and Amsterdam (1939). Some of them were exclusively Orthodox, other were ecumenical. I will give a short overview of each.
Bulgaria 1926
Following the 1925 RSCM conference in Hopovo, Bulgaria, Peking "veteran" Alexander Nikitine took the initiative for a Balkan conference of Orthodox students. The conference followed the WSCF South East Europe Student Conference in Bania Kostenec [131] . At the Hopovo meeting there had been Russian students from Sofia and Belgrade; in addition, Nikitine was in charge of a Bulgarian student group in Sofia [132] . The conference was organised with the help of WSCF and gathered Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek, Romanian and Russian students. Both Zenkovsky and Zander attended. The conference was conceived as an attempt to gather Orthodox students around their common faith, and this approach proved a success (see the quote above). Zander estimated that it "might have an enormous significance for overcoming the nationalism and chauvinism that are so strong on the Balkans." [133] The participants expressed their conviction that "those youth groups that consider themselves Orthodox should be in some way connected." [134] Practical steps in this direction were discussed between groups [135] and the wish was expressed to hold encounters on an annual basis. Participants also discussed the participation of Orthodox youth in the work of YMCA, which served as the starting point for the ensuing encounters between Orthodox leaders and the organisation (1928, 1930, 1933). Following the Bulgarian conference, a missionary student association was established in Romania by Prof. Ispir [136] . According to Roman Catholic observers, the results of the conference "were so beneficial and durable that thousands return to the Church. The Romanian intelligentsia is moved by a deep the Christian revival." [137] In the autumn, Zander took part in the WSCF encounter that planned the 1927 Anglo-Russian encounter that in its turn led to the establishment of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius two years later. In November 1926, Zenkovsky and Liperovsky left for six months to the United States, following which the Pedagogical Bureau was founded in 1927.
Thessalonica 1930
From all pre-World War II meetings, the meeting in Thessalonica is by far the best documented. Its co-organiser, the Youth Commission of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, published a volume with the proceedings of the conference, which even after seventy years makes interesting reading [138] . The meeting had been jointly prepared by the secretary of the Youth Commission, W. Visser 't Hooft, and the staff of the Pedagogical Bureau in Paris [139] . Visser 't Hooft visited Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria in the course of 1929,while the Bureau published several issues of its Bulletin in French in the course of 1930. In the course of 1930, it prepared both the YMCA meeting in Athens and the Thessalonica conference, thus "moving beyond the limits of Russian Orthodoxy to the Orthodox Church as a whole." [140] Although in the end only Russians, Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians could take part, the Thessalonica conference, which focused on religious education, was of a high level. Zander and Zenkovsky gave a vivid description of their work among the Russian youth, while the president of the Orthodox Youth Union in Greece, Fr Angelos Nissiotis, discussed his movements' attempts to bring the Church to the youth, and vice versa. Zankov and Pachev gave preoccupying presentations of the Church and youth in Bulgaria. Looking back on the conference, Visser 't Hooft wrote: "The main impressions from my contacts with the Orthodox world were the following. First, it was wrong to state that the Orthodox Churches were petrified; on the contrary, there were many signs of spiritual vitality. At the same time, a critical situation had appeared where the youth was concerned. The Orthodox peoples are passing through a rapid secularisation. I also discovered that there was an important lack of communication between the Orthodox churches. Most encounters took place not through Orthodox initiative, but through ecumenical organisations. The time had come to strengthen those bonds." [141] The conference asked that the Ecumenical Youth Commission "act as an intermediary between Orthodox youth movement until the moment when their international relations will be resolved in a more definitive fashion." [142] In the years after 1930, the Commission played an important role in strengthening inter-Orthodox contacts It also counted several Orthodox among its members: Nicholas Zernov (Russian), Fr Stephan Zankov (Bulgarian), Nicholas Popescu (Romanian), Fr Basil Zenkovsky [143] . Besides its value for Orthodox educators, the conference's principal value was the network it put in place. Both on the level of understanding and of activities, the movements had found each other. Youth groups were now in frequent communication through the Youth Commission and its activities, youth work was discussed in an international language (French) in the Bulletin, and the movements visited each other's activities. Zankov attended the 1930 RSCM conference and joined the League of Orthodox culture consisting of Fr Serge Bulgakov (President), Berdyaev, Florovsky, Ilyin, Vysheslavstev, Zenkovsky and Mother Maria (Skobtsova). Fr Joseph Zhidek from the Czechoslovakia established a Czechoslovak League in early 1931 [144] . In Greece, 1930 was the year that Apostoliki Diakonia, still an important movement of "inner mission," was created [145] .
After the Conference, Zenkovsky came to the conclusion that the "common difficult Orthodox task can only be achieved by the coalition of all the Orthodox." [146] The very fact that the three founders of SYNDESMOS in 1953 were a Russian student of Zenkovsky [147] (Meyendorff), the Greek son (Nikos) of Fr Angelos Nissiotis and an Arab inspired by the Athens 1930 Proceedings (Khodre) [148] shows that he succeeded in passing on his conviction.
Bucharest 1933
The 1933 meeting between Orthodox Church leaders and the World Committee of the YMCA worked out the agreement on the work of YMCA in Orthodox countries [149] . Since the Orthodox delegations were made up of Hierarchs and youth leaders alike, it also proved an important occasion to deepen contacts between pedagogues and youth movements. A pan-Orthodox pedagogical youth committee was established under the Presidency of Zenkovsky and counted Russian, Romanian, Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian members [150] . The Bulletin of the Pedagogical Bureau was to serve as its periodical [151] . From now on, it carried regular chronicles of youth work and Church life in all Balkan Orthodox churches.
Shortly after the Bucharest meeting, Zenkovsky submitted a memorandum to the WSCF and "Life & Work" on "the necessity to create Orthodox pedagogical centres in all Orthodox countries." [152] The memorandum stated that "Certainly the creation of a system of Orthodox education is not inspired by the desire to separate and estrange ourselves from the Christian West, by the desire to isolate the Orthodox world. We are in need, on the contrary, of a synthesis of all that healthy and creative Christian forces in the West have produced in the field of educational sciences. At the same time, such a synthesis should be organically related to the anthropological and philosophical concepts of the Orthodox Church." [153]
Again, as after the 1926 conference in Bulgaria, the impact of the meeting can be traced in different places. In Romania, 1933-34 witnessed the establishment and/or growth of a whole number of Orthodox youth movements, such as the Fellowship of Orthodox Youth in Romania (FOR) [154] , the youth group "Patriarch Miron" [155] , the Association of Students of Theology [156] and the controversial "Army of the Lord" (Ostea Domnului), which by 1933 counted over 70,000 members [157] . In 1934, the Romanian missionary student association (see above) held an Orthodox missionary conference that underscored the need of preparing Orthodox missionaries for the re-evangelisation of Russia after the fall of Communism [158] . In the same year, Zankov organised a Balkan conference under the auspices of the Ecumenical Youth Commission, also in Romania [159] . A seminar on religious education was held in Sofia [160] . 1935 saw an English-language publication of the Romanian Church. In Greece, the youth organisation Anaplasis (est. 1886) decided to establish a Bureau of Orthodox Education in close co-operation with the Paris Bureau [161] . In Bulgaria, a Serbian-Yugoslav encounter was organised by Zankov and Zernov [162] . With a common vision found and co-operation well under way between Orthodox Hierarchs, the Ecumenical Youth Commission, YMCA, WSCF and youth movements from Greece to Estonia (the RSCM had branches all over Europe), one may say that between 1933 and 1936, conditions for pan-Orthodox exchange were better than at any other point during the twentieth Century.
Dassel 1936
Proof of this are two key conferences organised in 1936: the famous Congress of Orthodox Theologians (November 1936, Athens) and the meeting of Orthodox pedagogues at the YMCA centre in Dassel, Germany, in June of the same year. This is not the place to discuss the Athens conference; it is, however, worth noticing that its organising committee included Zenkovsky, Zankov, Ispir and Alivisatos [163] , who had been pursuing the idea for several years before its realisation [164] . The proceedings of the conference were published in 1938 under the title Church and Culture [165] . One of its less-known sides, the Athens conference included a session of the heads of pedagogic and missionary departments of all participating faculties, thus connecting theological and pedagogical co-operation [166] . The group "closed a close alliance, and chose the Pedagogical Bureau as its centre." [167] The ground for the Dassel conference had been prepared by the ever-increasing student contacts since 1933. In July 1935 there was the Life and Work Student Conference in Herzeg Novi, Yugoslavia, where an Orthodox sub-meeting of Russian, Greek, Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Albanian Orthodox students took place [168] . Zander proposed that Orthodox student groups all over the Balkans and in Greece unite in a confessional sub-section of the WSCF [169] . The RSCM was well placed to suggest such a structure: by 1936, the movement itself was running student and youth events in France, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Germany and Finland. The spring of 1936 witnessed a Romanian-Bulgarian exchange in Sofia and an ecumenical student conference in Neamts, Romania [170] .
The pedagogical conference in Dassel was conceived as a follow-up to the 1930 conference of pedagogues and was to deal specifically with issues of religious education. For financial reasons it was combined with a YMCA meeting on the same issue. In the beginning of 1936, the Pedagogical Bureau engaged in communications with the Hierarchy and youth movements on the Balkans to prepare the meeting [171] . Despite the strong network and good preparation, increasing political tensions prevented the Romanians and Serbs to participate. Still the attendance was impressive: Zenkovsky, Zander, Archimandrite John Shakhovskoy (the future Archbishop of St. Francisco) on behalf of the Russian emigration; Fr Angelos Nissiotis, Prof. Bratsiotis, Dr. Kotsonis (the future Archbishop Hieronymos of Athens) and Dr. Trembelas on behalf of Zoi, the Orthodox Youth Union and the University of Athens; Fr Stephan Zankov, Fr Christo Dimitriev and Mr. Gurnadiev on behalf of the Bulgarian youth. The meeting discussed methods and problems of youth work in the three countries, in particular ways to address the growing estrangement between youth, society and contemporary culture [172] . All organisations presented their methods and problems and underscored the need for better training of clergy and youth workers. The conference affirmed Zenkovsky's 1933 recommendation for pedagogical offices to be established at universities in Orthodox countries, co-ordinated by a central pan-Orthodox Pedagogical Bureau [173] . At the same time, education led the way to debate on global challenges facing the Orthodox Church. "Not educational programmes," Zenkovsky stated in his the initial address, "but the essence of Orthodox culture is what we must discuss at conferences like ours." He proposed the following lines of debate around the issues of culture and education: 1) definition of Orthodox culture 2) its relation with other Christian cultures 3) the universality (catholicity) of Orthodoxy 4) the feasibility of realising on earth "the heavenly light that reveals itself in the Church and which nourishes the dream of churchifying life" 5) preconditions for the development of an Orthodox culture 6) real answers to the challenges of secularisation 7) involvement of the Church in politics [174] .
With the rise of nationalism and National Socialism in several Balkan countries (and certain sections of the Russian emigration [175] ), discussion on culture naturally led to discussion about nationalism. The conference did not stand alone in this: the next year, Bratsiotis, Zankov and Zenkovsky (as well as Ispir and Alivisatos) were to take place in the Faith and Order conference in Oxford on "Church, Nation and State." [176] Zenkovsky underscored the danger of nationalism becoming a religion, although he also considered that a spiritual approach of the nation might prove the starting point for its transfiguration. Yet it had to be admitted that "in practice Orthodox countries are more familiar with the nationalisation of the Church than with the churchification of the nation." [177] Zander upheld the role of religious work in maintaining the Russian identity of the emigre youth, but was retorted by Zenkovsky and Bratsiotis (who at the 1935 Herzeg Novi conference had already spoken on the same issue). "The body of the Church," Bratsiotis held, "is the entire people of God and not a single nation. When the nation as a group of individuals become too strong within the Church, thus introducing phyletism and paganism, this must be corrected by raising its ecumenical and catholic awareness" [178] (i.e. their sensitivity for its sobornost).
Like the conferences in Bulgaria, Thessalonica and Bucharest, Dassel was followed by a series of local and international initiatives. A continuation committee decided to work towards maximum Orthodox involvement in the 1938 YMCA conference. The presence of Romanians, Bulgarians, Serbs and an Indian at the annual conferences of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius in 1937 and 1938 made Zernov declare that the Fellowship had indeed become an Anglo-Orthodox (and not an Anglo-Russian organisation) [179] . A seminar at the Paris Bureau engaged in deeper study of culture and religion. In Berlin, Archimandrite John Shakhovskoy established the magazine Letopis' (the Chronicle), "a periodical of Orthodox culture." [180] When in 1937, Shakhovskoy visited the youth movements in Greece, he wrote: "Here it is, the Orthodox culture that we have been preaching with ideas sometimes too subtle; here it is, simple and accessible." [181] Archimandrite Lev Gillet published a French translation of Fr Bulgakov's Orthodoxy, which was to have a great impact outside Russian Orthodoxy [182] .
The greatest merit of the conference was its universal recognition. Even though only Russians, Greeks and Bulgarians attended, its resolutions received the support of the Patriarchs of Romania and Serbia, the Archbishops of Athens and Sofia and Metropolitan Eulogius. Youth movements had achieved a high degree of pan-Orthodox co-operation. Yet political tides were shifting.
Amsterdam 1939
By 1937/38, Orthodox youth groups all over Europe were working to prepare their participation in the World Conference of Christian Youth planned for 1938 [183] . The continuation committee of Dassel initially planned to hold an Orthodox conference in the context of the World Youth Conference; later the idea rose to conduct a separate Orthodox conference with the Orthodox member groups of WSCF and YMCA in Serbia. The conference was planned for Easter 1938 in Yugoslavia [184] . In early 1938, Zenkovsky travelled to Zagreb to discuss the project with the local movements and Hierarchy [185] . Yet with tensions rising in the Balkans after the Yugoslav failure to ratify the 1935 Concordat, things were getting more difficult and national sentiments become more acute. Zernov considered the plan "too ambitious, pointing to the barriers of chauvinism which must be overcome if the conference is to have its deserved success." [186] The meeting was postponed to September 1938, then Christmas 1938 [187] and finally put on hold by the Serbian Synod [188] . Thus the organising committee returned to the initial idea of stimulating Orthodox involvement at the World Conference of Christian Youth, which finally took place in Amsterdam in 1939.
The conference was jointly organised by YMCA, YMWA, WSCF and the Ecumenical Youth Commission. Its theme, "Christ Victor," reflected the menace of war that hung over Europe. Orthodoxy took part in an unprecedented manner, with 100 out of 1400 participants being Orthodox from Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and from Russian emigre communities in seven different countries. Political events prevented the Greeks from participating [189] . Through the involvement of Orthodox in the preparation process, the conference broke with the practice of interdenominational worship and allowed participants "to share in the fullest expression of the worshipping life of each of the main Christian traditions." [190] The celebration of an Orthodox Liturgy in the Concertgebouw on 31 July 1939 for many was an unforgettable encounter with the worship of this little-known Church. There were addresses by Liliana Miron from Romania and Archimandrite Cassian (Bezobrazov) from Paris.
The Amsterdam conference was full of hope and anxiety. Its Orthodox participants and their full involvement reflected the achievements of pan-Orthodox youth co-operation since 1923. At the same time, the approaching war marked their end. Difficult times were coming for Europe, and for Christians in particular. Archimandrite Cassian closed his address to the conference, Christ is Lord, with the words "Let us not forget that we bear the name of Christ. Once it was a name that was laughed at, and it has become so again in our day. At the present time, when obedience to Christ leads inevitably to the way of martyrdom, let us remember that the tokens of the royalty of Jesus were a crown of thorns, a scarlet robe and a reed in His hand, and that it was a board attached to the Cross which bore His royal title." [191]
Between 1923 and 1939, a series of ecumenical, theological and pedagogical conferences had established a network of prominent Orthodox thinkers and workers from all local Orthodox Churches in Europe. There is little doubt that through the RSCM and the Pedagogical Bureau, the Russians formed the core of this network and a link with the non-Orthodox world [192] . "In exile," Zander wrote in 1945, "deprived of our country and with little hope of ever returning there, it always was a joy for us to serve Orthodoxy beyond the limits of our national community." [193] With no country of their own, the Russian emigration attempted to carry its ideals of the ecclesialisation of life and a contemporary Orthodox culture to those countries where they might bear fruit. The network was an important vehicle for enhancing awareness of the unity of the Orthodox Church, developing common ways of addressing the challenges of ecumenism and secularisation and improving youth ministry. By 1938, everything seemed ready for a pan-Orthodox youth organisation, but this process was abruptly broken off by the war and communism [194] . What was left of the network after the war?
"Our lives are full of disappointments," Zander wrote in 1945 [195] . The Russian emigrants saw their efforts undone by a new rupture, worse than the Russian Revolution: the Soviet occupation of all Eastern and Central Europe. Ivan Lagovsky, RSCM leader and correspondent of the Educational Bureau in Estonia, was arrested and executed in Leningrad in 1941 together with three other RSCM leaders [196] . In Romania, Orthodox priests who had co-operated with YMCA were subjected to intimidation from the side of the Soviet occupier. Metropolitan Irinej of Novi Sad was deposed and imprisoned, as were Metropolitan Stephan of Novi Sad and Metropolitan Dyonisius of Warsaw. In July 1945, the Russian Hierarchy asked Zankov to prepare a memorandum on the ecumenical movement for the Synod in Moscow, yet all the same condemned the ecumenical dialogue and cut off the Balkan churches' participation in the movement [197] . Zankov was sidetracked and contacts with Orthodox outside the Soviet block severed.
Still, the above-mentioned letter of Zander was no letter of mere grief. Indeed, it replied to an unexpected signal that the idea of Orthodox culture and pan-Orthodox co-operation was not dead after all. In the course of 1945, Zander and many other Orthodox personalities in Western Europe and Greece received letters from Edouard Laham, a young student of medicine in Beirut in charge of the international department of the "Orthodox Youth Movement" (Mouvement de la jeunesse orthodoxe - MJO) of the Patriarchate of Antioch. From the letters they learned about a group of young Lebanese who had been at the point of turning their backs on the Orthodox Church for its lack of pastoral guidance and spirituality, when the encounter with the "Russian religious revival of the twentieth century" revealed their own tradition to them in a different light. An Egyptian Greek-Catholic priest who worked with the youth in the "Action Catholique" showed the boys issues of the periodical Irenikon of the Benedictine abbey of Amay and a booklet of the "Western Orthodox Church" of Irenee Winnaert [198] . Through Irenikon, they discovered other books about Orthodoxy. "It is hard to imagine the immense impact of Fr Bulgakov's book Orthodoxy among the Orthodox milieus," wrote Laham [199] . "We understood the spirit of the Orthodox Church, and we were enchanted by it. We discovered and experienced this spirit in Bulgakov, in The Church of the East by Arseniev, The Eastern Orthodox Church by Zankov and works of Winnaert." [200] "In the East, he wrote to Zander, we Orthodox consider the entire Russian emigration as an immense missionary body, providentially dispersed throughout the world to make our Orthodoxy known." [201]
The proceedings of the 1930 Thessalonica conference stimulated the youth to create a youth group, a movement in order to "fight against an exterior political or social understanding of religion, against the fossilised understanding of an Orthodoxy composing merely a nation, a party of a social class in society." [202] The Mouvement de la Jeunesse Orthodoxe (MJO) placed itself explicitly in the continuation of the conferences of the pre-World War II period. Its work evolved around six fundamental principles, among which: III) "The MJO aims to work towards the development of an Orthodox culture based upon the spirit of the Church." VI: "The MJO is related to the world-wide Orthodox movement." [203] At a time when the "world-wide movement" seemed to collapse, a small group of Lebanese teenagers ventured to revive its spirit. "Our movement," writes Laham, "concerned as it is with the need for all movements of Orthodox renewal to atone their work, has entered into relations with the West as soon as postal communications resumed." [204] In the course of two years, Laham and his MJO Department of Foreign Relations entered into communications with Orthodox in France, Great Britain and Greece. Of particular interest is their correspondence with the Western Orthodox St. Denys Institute and Benedictine monks in Paris on the issue of universal Orthodoxy and local culture. Not only this prompted MJO to leave the French-speaking circles of the Action Catholique to become a movement of Arab Orthodoxy; the young Lebanese even attempted to act as spokesmen for the idea of Western Orthodoxy [205] .
Laham proposed to his correspondents to hold a follow-up meeting of the Dassel conference as soon as possible [206] . Understandably, the unexpected letters from Lebanon brought great joy to those who had been active before the war. "Your letter has given me great spiritual comfort," Zander writes to Laham in 1945. "The knowledge that our work and experience have not been in vain and that somewhere, as a result of our struggles, Church life is stirring, makes our lives meaningful." [207]
IX. From Beirut to Paris: the birth of SYNDESMOS
Zander, however was not to limit himself to passive joy. In the same letter, he offered his help with the establishment of a centre for Russian-Arab translations (which indeed was established) and invited the MJO to send three students to St. Sergius. He acted swiftly and efficiently, and by the end of 1945, the emigre press had spread the word about the MJO [208] . By January 1946, Nicholas Zernov invited three youth from MJO to the annual gathering of the Fellowship of St. Albans and St. Sergius [209] . Another Russian living in England, Nadezhda Gorodetzky, invited the movement to send three girls to the pan-Orthodox centre for young women that she was establishing in Oxford (St. Macrina House). The girls arrived in December 1946 and spent a year in the UK [210] . They attended Bible courses by Fr Lev Gillet who at the time was in Great Britain. In the summer of 1946, three MJO members Albert Laham, Gabriel Saade and Georges Khodre took part in the Fellowship meeting in Abingdon, England. The voyage brought them in contact with many of those they had read about. They encountered the Russian emigration in the persons of Zander, Zernov, Vladimir Weidle, Boris Bobrinskoy and Pierre Struve, Western Orthodoxy in the person of Yvonne Winnaert, Alexis van den Menbrugghe, Ambroise Fontrier and Therapont Hummerich, and even some Romanian and Bulgarian refugees [211] . On their way back, the three passed through Paris, Switzerland [212] and Athens [213] . From then, things went very rapidly. Khodre and the two others went to study at St. Sergius in 1947. The MJO had been strengthened in its conviction that a fellowship of Orthodox youth movements was a necessity. It had also found partners with a common vision with whom the task could be undertaken. In a 1947 letter to the MJO General Secretariat [214] , Georges Khodre writes:
"A universal federation of orthodox youth movements
"Leading idea - Provincialism, abuse of the principle of autocephaly, discords of language and race, conflicts between churches and jurisdictions are the plague of the orthodox world. Phyletism seems to be our practical heresy. The Church always allies with the State, the nation or the race. In order for the Church to fulfil its mission on earth, the unity of the Orthodox churches must be achieved. Only when Orthodoxy is one, it can witness its faith before the heterodox. We should fight with vigour against the evils from which universal [215] Orthodoxy suffers.
"At the same time, youth groups are working in isolation. They would profit much from knowing each other, loving each other, harmonising their methods and unifying their aims. For the greater benefit of the Church.
"In view of these essential aims and acknowledging that youth movements are the active elements within the churches, it is imperative to create a federation for these ecclesiastical movements.
"The Service for external relations and the news we received by its means has raised in us a spirit of sympathy towards all active forces of the Church in the world, in particular towards the youth movements. Abingdon and Switzerland have strengthened us in this idea. For the first time, non-Antiochian Orthodoxy revealed itself to us. We felt the unity between all of us, especially because we were placed in front of non-orthodox. Greece and the Russian Orthodox are completely in favour of the idea of federation. All correspondence we receive expresses the same concern for unity.
"However, this federation can be set up only after a strong preparation. Together with a young theologian from Paris, Cyril Eltchaninov, I came to the following conclusions:
". To enter into friendly relationships with all orthodox movements. Paris will communicate with Greece.
. Try to make all movements meet at the Second World Conference of Christian Youth in Oslo (22-31 July 1947) and to lay the fundament there for a congress of orthodox youth.
. In Oslo, to create a preparatory commission for the congress and the development of the themes, spirit, work and statute of the federation. This commission would consist of members of each movement and would work by means of correspondence.
. From this congress, a federation would be born with a centre some place.
. To edit, in view of the establishment of friendly ties, a newsletter in French [216] to be sent to our correspondents and sister movements. The newsletter would give our news and would have as its main theme: the unity of the orthodox churches.
. To work by all possible means in order to spread the idea of a universal federation."
Former SYNDESMOS President Dr. Manos Koumbarelis describes the further course of events as follows. "In July 1947, the Second Christian World Youth Conference took place in Oslo and gathered 45 Orthodox participants. They discussed, at an unofficial level, the idea of a network of Orthodox youth movements. This was repeated at a lower level at the First General Assembly of the WCC in Amsterdam in 1948. Fr Alexander Schmemann was elected Vice-President of the WCC Youth Department Committee with Khodre and Nikos Nissiotis as members. The Department was eager to have a pan-Orthodox Youth Organisation as a partner. In September 1948, it received a proposal stating that: Orthodox young people gathered at the Amsterdam Assembly agreed in principle that an Orthodox International Conference should be held. However, they foresaw a number of obstacles and therefore decided first of all to prepare a smaller international youth consultation with limited aims. There they could consider the possibility of holding a larger conference in an Orthodox country at a later time. Possible date and place: Bossey, Switzerland, 8-13 January 1949." [217]
The Bossey conference gathered 28 Orthodox from nine different countries and origins. It combined veterans of the pre-World War II period, Fr Basil Zenkovsky and Leon Zander with a new group of enthusiastic youth, among whom Nikos Nissiotis, John Meyendorff, Fr Alexander Schmemann and Georges Khodre. To the immense joy of Zenkovsky and Zander, the new generation was just as inspired by the vision of Orthodox Sobornost as the youth they had worked with a quarter century before. In his report about the conference, Nissiotis describes the themes of the conference as follows: "What are we, the Orthodox, going to do to avoid our sickness, namely, our indifference to one another, the one Orthodox Church to the other? What service can our youth offer today to the Orthodox Churches? How can we co-operate more effectively in our local Orthodox Churches, to help their work for the youth and to build brotherly contacts with the other Orthodox Churches? [218] " The conference agreed that an international federation was indeed a necessity and decided to hold an Orthodox youth conference as soon as possible. Their aims were kept modest. "After each international gathering, we are accustomed to make dreams for the future, Nissotis writes. In this case, let's not express them. It is better to allow the reality of the future to speak for itself." [219] Khodre shared the same prudence: "this conference will have been beneficial only if its spirit will prevail in the active circles of the Church and its youth." [220]
In the course of 1950, 1951 and 1952, Nissiotis, Meyendorff and Khodre met several times in order to prepare an international conference of Orthodox youth. At a preparatory meeting in 1952, the name "Syndesmos" ("the bond of peace," cf. Eph. 3,4) was conceived by Nissiotis. A Western European congress in 1953 organised by the RSCM in Sevres laid the foundation for the Fellowship and established its aims and purposes. The conference focused on three topics that ever since have been central to SYNDESMOS: the catholicity of the Church, Mission and Youth Ministry. Although strictly speaking a following conference in 1954 was the first General Assembly of SYNDESMOS, 1953 is generally considered its foundation year. John Meyendorff served as its first President until 1964, to be succeeded by Edouard Laham's brother Albert. In July 2003, the 17th SYNDESMOS General Assembly will celebrate its 50th anniversary. The vision of Orthodox co-operation of Zander, Zenkovsky and many others has indeed gone beyond their lives.
In a process little known to the reviving Churches of Eastern Europe and indeed to the Russian emigration itself, a small number of Russian Orthodox thinkers brought a significant contribution to the revival of the ecclesiological self-awareness of the Orthodox Church between the wars. Originating from the quest for a renewed Russian culture, their vision, organisational skills and concern for young people placed them at the core of a network of meetings, publications and organisations focusing on four key issues:
. The unity and universality of the Orthodox Church
. Orthodoxy as the foundation for life and culture in contemporary society (Orthodox Culture and the ecclesialisation of life)
. Pastoral work with Orthodox youth
. The quest for Christian unity.
Research in archives in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania and Greece may modify the conclusions of this article on the central role of the Russian emigration in the "pre-history of SYNDESMOS." Yet there can be no doubt about the crucial role played by Zenkovsky and Zander. Zenkovsky was as the heart of all the encounters, publications and conferences mentioned above (YMCA, WSCF, RSCM, St. Sergius Institute, Fellowship of St. Albans and St. Sergius, Ecumenical Youth Commission, League of Orthodox Culture, Pedagogical Bureau, Life & Work, Faith & Order, Congress of Theologians, Put', etc.). Zander functioned as the administrator of the network, thanks to whom we possess a detailed image of the facts, substance and faces of this adventure today. They form a heritage that deserves to be known and a foundation for the continuous service of SYNDESMOS to Orthodox unity and youth work today.
* Adapted from an Address at the international Symposium Aspects of the cultural and religious life of the Russian Diaspora in Europe in the twentieth Century organised by the Institute for Eastern Christian Studies and the Hernen Foundation at Hernen Castle, 1-2 March 2002
[1] John Erickson, 'The formation of Orthodox ecclesial identity,' in Proceedings of the colloquium on the Life and Witness of the Orthodox Church: Towards a Prospective Reflection, Balamand Lebanon July 1997' (Balamand, [in press])
[2] ibid.
[3] Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual and Orthodox Churchman, ed. Andrew Blane (Crestwood, NY, 1993), p. 154.
[4] WCC Orthodox task force, 'Orthodox-WCC Relations,' in Turn to God, rejoice in Hope - Orthodox reflections on the way to Harare, (Geneva, 1998) pp. 171-178; 'Statement of the pan-Orthodox consultation in Thessaloniki, 29 April-2 May 1998', ibid. pp. 136-138.
[5] Letter of Leon Zander to Edouard Laham, 26/8/1945: 'Since our co-operation will certainly go beyond our lives, we should have no fear of grand undertakings'.
[6] The main archives consulted are: Archives of St. Sergius' Theological Institute (Paris), Archives of the World Student Christian Federation (Geneva), Archives of the Ecumenical Youth Commission of Life & Work (Geneva), Archives of SYNDESMOS (Athens), Archives of the Mouvement de la Jeunesse Orthodoxe (Beirut), private archives of Albert Laham (Geneva).
[7] O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), p. 250
[8] ibid., p. 249
[9] quoted in O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), p. 253
[10] Basil Zenkovsky, 'La conference de Salonique,' Bulletin du Bureau de pedagogie religieuse, 1, (1930), p. 2
[11] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Religioznoe Dvizhenie sredi russkoi molodezhi,' Put' 1 (1925), p. 93
[12] The Slavonic and Russian translation of kaqolikoY", соборный, underscores the conciliar, rather than the universal meaning of the term.
[13] O. Sergii Bulgakov, Pravoslavie (Paris, 1985), p. 10
[14] O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), p. 253
[15] O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), p. 284
[16] Words of Bishop Sergii (Stargoroskii), secretary of the 1902-3 Religious-Philosophical gatherings, quoted in O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), p. 471
[17] Georgii Fedotov, 'Doklad na s'ezde pravoslavnoj kul'tury,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D 8 (1930) p. 13
[18] in O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), p. 344
[19] P. Boris Bobrinskoy, Cours d'ecclesiologie orthodoxe (not published) (Paris, 1998), ch. IV p. 41
[20] L'encyclique de 1848, Contacts 49 (1965) p. 45
[21] O. Sergii Bulgakov, Pravoslavie (Paris, 1985) p. 36
[22] St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation of Man, ch. XXII, quoted by J. Meyendorff, 'La Catholicite de l'Eglise,' Syndesmos 1 (1953) p. 3
[23] O. Sergii Bulgakov, Pravoslavie (Paris, 1985) p. 27
[24] O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), p. 283
[25] P. Boris Bobrinskoy, Cours d'ecclesiologie orthodoxe (not published) (Paris, 1998), ch. IV p. 42
[26] P. Boris Bobrinskoy, Cours d'ecclesiologie orthodoxe (not published) (Paris, 1998), ch. IV p. 40; P. Basile Zenkovsky, 'La Sobornost dans la nature de l'homme,' Dieu Vivant 27, pp. 66-80
[27] O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), p. 506
[28] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Svoboda I sobornost',' Put' 7 (1927) p. 14
[29] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Ideia pravoslavnoi kul'tury,' in Pravoslavie ikul'tura (Berlin, 1923) or in Pravoslavie: "pro et contra (St. Petersburg, 2001) p. 262; Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Education de la jeunesse et culture orthodoxe,' in Jeunesses Orthodoxes, (Geneva, 1931) p. 91
[30] See, for instance, O. Georgii Florovskii, 'Evkharistiia I sobornost,' Put' 19 (1929) p. 4
[31] Quoted in: O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937) p. 470
[32] Nicholas Zernov, The Russian religious renaissance of the twentieth Century (London, 1963) pp. 70 and 81
[33] O. Sergii Bulgakov, avtobiograficheskie zametki (Paris, 1947) p. 41
[34] ibid., p. 38
[35] In 1923, the Soviet authorities exiled several leading thinkers, among whom N. Berdiaev, S. Bulgakov and N. Lossky by ship from the Crimea. In the same year, the Petrograd Theological Institute, created in 1920 by believers from all sections of society, was closed down. Sergii Bezobrazov, 'Russkii pravoslavnyi bogoslovskii institut v Parizhe,' Put' 1 (1925) p. 97
[36] Elena Bobrinskaia, Biografiia L. A. Zandera (address at memorial conference, St. Petersburg, 17 February 1993) p. 1
[37] Nikolai Berdiaev, 'Dukhovnye zadachi emigratsii,' Put' 1 (1925) p. 3
[38] Lev Zander, 'Chetvertyi s'ezd v Klermone,' Put' 9 (1928) p. 76
[39] 'Doklad o. Vasiliia Zen'kovskogo na vos'mom obshchem s;ezde R.S.Kh. Svizheniia,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 11 (1930) p. 27
[40] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Ot redaktsii,' Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu 1 (1934), p. 3
[41] no author, 'Soveshchanie v Afinakh,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 6 (1930) p. 10-11
[42] Basil Zenkovsky, 'La conference de Salonique,' Bulletin du Bureau de pedagogie religieuse 1 (1930) p. 3
[43] Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. April (1929)
[44] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Russkaia khronika,' Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu 2-3-4 (1936), p. 28
[45] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Fakty i razmyshleniia o sovremennoi molodezhi,' Put' 8 (1927), p. 81
[46] Nikolai Berdiaev, 'Illiuziia I real'nost' v psikhologii emigrantskoi molodezhi,' Put' 14 (1928), p. 5
[47] Georges Fedotov quoted by Leon Zander, 'S'ezd pravoslavnoi kul'tury,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 8 (1930) p. 13
[48] Basil Zenkovsky, 'Bureau de pedagogie religieuse,' Bulletin du Bureau de pedagogie religieuse 1 (1930) p. 14
[49] Basil Zenkovsky, 'Education de la jeunesse et culture orthodoxe,' in Jeunesses orthodoxes (Geneva, 1931) p. 87
[50] Basil Zenkovsky, 'La conference de Salonique,' Bulletin du Bureau de pedagogie religieuse 1 (1930) p. 3
[51] A. Tchetverikova, 'Notre jeunesse,' Bulletin du Bureau de pedagogie religieuse 1 (1930), p. 11
[52] Basil Zenkovsky, 'La conference de Salonique,' Bulletin du Bureau de pedagogie religieuse 1 (1930), p. 3
[53] Basil Zenkovsky, 'Education de la jeunesse et culture orthodoxe,' in Jeunesses Orthodoxes (Geneva, 1931), p. 80
[54] Nikolai Berdiaev, 'Illiuziia I real'nost' v psikhologii emigrantskoi molodezhi,' Put' 14 (1928), p. 5
[55] O. Sergii Chetverikov, 'Zadachi dvizheniia,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 5 (1928), pp. 1-8
[56] Willem Visser 't Hooft, 'Preface,' in Jeunesses Orthodoxes (Geneva, 1931) pp. 3-4
[57] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Doklad na godichnom s'ezde R.S.Kh.D v 1930 g.,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 11 (1930), p. 29
[58] no author, 'Pamiati L.A. Zandera - biograficheskie dannye,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 75-76 (1965) p. 29
[59] no author, 'Religiozno-pedagogicheskoe soveshchanie,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 1 (1931) p. 23
[60] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Doklad na godichnom s'ezde R.S.Kh.D v 1930 g.,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 11 (1930), p. 29
[61] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'activites,' Irenikon 4 (1935), p. 402; no author, 'Den' pravoslavnoi kul'tury,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 7 (1930) p. 12
[62] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Religioznoe dvizhenie sredi russkoi molodezhi v emigratsii,' put' 1 (1925), p. 92
[63] Leon Zander, 'Le probleme pedagogique en dehors de l'ecole,' in Jeunesses orthodoxes (Geneva, 1931), p. 151
[64] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Fakty i razmyshleniia o sovremennoi molodezhi,' Put' 8 (1927), p. 75
[65] Leon Zander, 'Le probleme pedagogique en dehors de l'ecole,' in Jeunesses orthodoxes (Geneva, 1931), pp. 97-98
[66] ibid. p. 97
[67] ibid. p. 101
[68] Lev Zander, 'Chetvertyi s'ezd v Klermone,' Put' 9 (1928), p. 76
[69] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Ideia pravoslavnoi kul'tury,' in Pravoslavie i kul'tura (Berlin 1923; reprint in Pravoslavie, Pro et Contra, St. Petersburg 2001), pp. 268-269
[70] ibid. p. 266
[71] no author, 'Religiozno-pedagogicheskoe soveshchanie,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 1 (1931) p. 23
[72] W. Zenkovsky, 'The totalitarian idea and the problem of education,' in Church, Community, and State in relation to Education (London, 1938), pp. 27-62
[73] ibid., p. 34
[74] ibid., p. 37
[75] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Ideia pravoslavnoi kul'tury,' p. 276
[76] O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris 1937), p. 516
[77] Basil Zenkovsky, 'Education de la jeunesse et culture orthodoxe,' in Jeunesses Orthodoxes (Geneva, 1931), p. 88
[78] Nikolai Berdiaev, 'Doklad v den' pravoslavnoi kul'tury,' Put' 8 (1930), p. 14
[79] quoted in Bulletin du Bureau de pedagogie religieuse 2 (1930) pp. 12-13
[80] Basil Zenkovsky, 'Education de la jeunesse et culture orthodoxe,' in Jeunesses Orthodoxes (Geneva, 1931) p. 91
[81] It is not by chance that the notion ecumenical (universal, catholic) was chosen for this movement, as it refers to the key notion of conciliarity.
[82] cf. O. Georgii Florovskii, 'L'ocumenisme au XIXe siecle,' Irenikon 27 (1954) p. 267
[83] The 1920 Encyclical letter of the Ecumenical Patriarch specifically mentions the example of the League of Nations. See also the speech of H. Alivisatos at the Conference of Orthodox Theologians (Athens 1936), Russie et Chretiente 1 (1937), p. 67
[84] Nikolai Berdiaev, Dukhovnye zadachi russkoi emigratsii, Put' 1 (1925), p. 5
[85] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Doklad.,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 11 (1930), p. 29
[86] Willem Visser 't Hooft, 'Preface,' in Jeunesses orthodoxes (Geneva, 1931), p. 7
[87] cf the letter of Patriarch Tichon on the occasion of the publishing of an English-language Orthodox service book by YMCA in 1919: "Dr. Mott, whom I esteem very highly;" 'Obrashchenie Mitropolita Antoniia R.S.Kh.Dvizheniiu,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 10 (1926), p. 25: "I openly consider the YMCA staff who work on issues pertaining to Russian theological circles as friends of the Orthodox Church." Metropolitan Eulogius frequently participated in encounters of WSCF and YMCA.
[88] Words from World Youth 7 (1933), quoted in Soveshchanie v Bukhareste - printsipy, tseli I programmy YMCA v pravoslavnykh stranakh (Paris, 1933), p. 6
[89] no author, Osnovy deiatel'nosti Khristianskogo Soiuza Molodykh Liudei (Paris, 1929) pp. 51-67
[90] O. Boris Bobrinskii, L.A. Zander v zhizni Sviato-Sergievskogo bogoslovskogo instituta I v ekumenicheskom dvizhenii (address at memorial conference, St. Petersburg, 17 February 1993) p. 1
[91] Nikolai Zernov, Khronika sem'i Zernovykh (Paris, 1973), pp. 97-103
[92] Osnovy deiatel'nosti Khristianskogo Soiuza Molodykh Liudei YMCA (Paris, 1929), pp. 51-52
[93] During the KGB interrogation of RSCM members Lagovsky, Penkin and Dezen in 1941, mention was made of the apprehension of RSCM members who had remained in Russia. See Tamara Miliutina, Liudi moei zhizni (Tartu, 1997), p. 133
[94] Elena Bobrinskaia, Biografia L.A. Zandera (address at memorial conference, St. Petersburg, 17 February 1993) pp. 4 and 6
[95] O. Boris Bobrinskii, L.A. Zander v zhizni sviato-Sergievskogo bogoslovskogo instituta I v ekumenicheskom dvizhenii (address at memorial conference, St. Petersburg, 17 February 1993), p. 2
[96] Vladimir Krylatov, 'O vozniknovenii Dvizheniia,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 102-102 (1971), pp. 329-330
[97] Nikolai Zernov, Khronika sem'i Zernovykh (Paris, 1973), pp. 97-103
[98] Pravoslavie i Kul'tura (Berlin, 1923)
[99] Osnovy deiatel'nosti Khristianskogo Soiuza Molodykh Liudei YMCA (Paris, 1929), pp. 57-61
[100] Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 10 (1926), pp. 24-25; Irenikon 10-12 (1928), p. 548
[101] O. Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'S'ezd v Afinakh,' Put' 22 (1930), p 118
[102] Soveshchanie v Bukhareste - Printsipy, tseli I programmy YMCA (Paris, 1933); Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 6 (1930), p. 10
[103] Letter of Greek YMCA (XAN) Secretary Prof. Alivisatos to E. Laham, 25/1/1946
[104] O. Boris Bobrinskii, L.A. Zander v zhizni sviato-Sergievskogo bogoslovskogo instituta I v ekumenicheskom dvizhenii (address at memorial conference, St. Petersburg, 17 February 1993), p. 8
[105] O. Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'S'ezd v Afinakh,' Put' 22 (1930), p 117
[106] Lev Zander, 'S'ezd o Rossii,' Put' 9 (1928), p. 79
[107] Basile Zenkovsky, 'Bureau de pedagogie religieuse,' Bulletin du Bureau de pedagogie religieuse 1 (1930), p. 12
[108] Among them Patriarch Alexander III of Antioch and the Dean of the Athens University. See Prof. Nicolas Arsenjev, 'Impressions sur le congres theologique orthodoxe d'Athenes,' Irenikon 4-5 (1937), p. 451
[109] Anton Kartashev, Na putiakh ko vselenskomu soboru (Paris, 1932), p. 12
[110] o. Stefan Tsankov, 'Tserkovkoe edinstvo v sovremennom mire,' in Khristianskoe vossoedinenie (paris, 1933), pp 121-130
[111] Quoted in Russie et Chretiente 1 (1937), p. 68
[112] Nikolai Arsen'ev, 'Lozanskii s'ezd,' Put' 10 (1928), p. 110
[113] Lev Zander, 'Tri studencheskikh s'ezda,' Put' 5 (1926), p. 81
[114] Basile Zenkovsky, 'La conference de Salonique,' Bulletin du Bureau Pedagogique 1 (1930), p. 2
[115] Basile Zenkovsky, 'Editorial,' Bulletin du Bureau Pedagogique 1 (1934), p. 3
[116] Basile Zenkovsky, 'Le Bureau de pedagogie religieuse,' Bulletin du Bureau Pedagogique 1 (1930), p.15
[117] Closing speech of Fr Basil Zenkovsky at the Conference of Orthodox Pedagogues (Dassel 1936). See D.C.L, 'Le congres de Dassel et le travail de pedagogie religieuse dans l'Orthodoxie (Zoi, etc.),' Irenikon 2 (1938) p. 166
[118] See Fr Georges Tsetsis, 'Pan-Orthodox Conferences,' in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva, 1991), also Irenikon (1921-1939) and Anton Kartashev, Na putiakh ko vselenskomu soboru (Paris, 1932)
[119] O. Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), p. 515 [120] Anton Kartashev, 'S'ezd v Anzherone,' Put' 2 (1925), p. 86 [121] Maxime Kovalevsky, Orthodoxie et Occident (Suresnes, 1994), p. 23 [122] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse,' Irenikon 3-4 (1928), p. 182 [123] No author, 'Khronika tserkovnoi zhizni,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 10 (1926), p. 26 [124] Lev Gillet quoted in the Parish Bulletin of the first French parish. See Maxime Kovalevsky, Orthodoxie et Occident (Suresnes, 1994), p. 26 [125] Gillet was in charge of the publication of the Bureau's bulletin. See Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu, 1 (1934), rear page [126] Letter of Fr Jean Peterfalvi to Edouard Laham, 17/7/1945 [127] Maxime Kovalevsky, Orthodoxie et Occident (Suresnes, 1994), p. 72 [128] Letter of Serge Bolshakoff to MJO, 24/12/1945. See also Irenikon 2 (1936), p. 215 [129] Decree nr. 1249 of Metropolitan Sergius, quoted in Maxime Kovalevsky, Orthodoxie et Occident (Suresnes, 1994), p. 400 [130] excluded from Moscow in 1953; under Constantinople 1953-1954; no canonical status 1954-1959; under the Russian Synod in exile 1959-1966; no canonical status 1966-1970; under the Romanian Church 1970-1988; no canonical status 1988-present [131] Lev Zander, 'Tri studencheskikh s'ezda,' Put' 5 (1926), p. 82; See also Sixieme Conference Internationale du sud-est de l'Europe, Bania-Kostenec, Bulgarie, 9-16 mai 1926 (WSCF Geneva 1926) [132] Boris Vysheslavtsev, 'Balkanskie vpechatleniia,' Put' 8 (1927), p. 136 [133] Leon Zander, 'Tri studencheskikh s'ezda,' Put' 5 (1926), p. 82 [134] Leon Zander, 'Tri studencheskikh s'ezda,' Put' 5 (1926), p. 81 [135] Sixieme Conference Internationale du sud-est de l'Europe, Bania-Kostenec, Bulgarie, 9-16 mai 1926 (WSCF Geneva 1926), p. 26 [136] Dom M. Schwartz, 'Chronique religieuse roumaine,' Irenikon 3 (1935), p. 267 [137] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religeuse orthodoxe,' Irenikon 5 (1927), p. 293 [138] Jeunesses Orthodoxes (Geneva, 1931)[139] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, Memorandum Vysokopreosviashchenneishemu Mitropolitu Evlogiiu o neobkhodimosti sozyva obshchepravoslavnogo tserkovnogo soveshchaniia po voprosu o rabote s det'mi, (no date, but between September 1928 and early 1930)
[140] Basil Zenkovsky, 'Bureau de pedagogie religieuse ,' Bulletin du Bureau de pedagogie religieuse 1 (1930), p. 13 [141] Willem Visser 't Hooft, Memoires (Kampen, 1952) p. 61-62 [142] Resolution IV of the Conference. Jeunesses Orthodoxes (Geneva, 1931), p. 31 [143] Minutes of the the Ecumenical Youth Commission of Life & Work, 1933-1939[144] Lev Zander, 'Liga pravoslavnoi kul'tury,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 8 (1931), p. 36
[145] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religeuse orthodoxe,' Irenikon 1 (1948), p. 81
[146] Protokol obshchepravoslavnogo soveshchaniia po religiozno-pedagogicheskim voprosam, sostoiavshegosia v Dassele v iiune 1936 goda, p. 43. See also D.C.L., D.C.L, 'Le congres de Dassel et le travail de pedagogie religieuse dans l'Orthodoxie (Zoi, etc.),' Irenikon 2 (1938), p. 166
[147] See the necrology of Zander by Meyendorff in Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. 75/76 (1965): "The encounter with Zander was one of the decisive moments in my life. He struck me by the width of his culture and knowledge but also by the impression that in the Church he was totally at home. For me, Zander remained the personification of Orthodox philosophy combined with genuine simplicity, kindness and humility."
[148] Letter E. Laham to L. Zander 24/12/1945
[149] D.C.L, 'Le congres de Dassel et le travail de pedagogie religieuse dans l'Orthodoxie (Zoi, etc.),' Irenikon 1 (1938), p. 45
[150] Letter of B. Zenkovsky to H.L. Henriod (WSCF; Life & Work), 12/6/1933.
[151] Bulletin du Bureau de pedagogie religieuse 1 (1934), p. 2
[152] Letter & Memorandum of B. Zenkovsky to H.L. Henriod (WSCF; Life & Work), 19/7/1933
[153] ibid.
[154] Dom M. Schwartz, 'Chronique religieuse roumaine,' Irenikon 5-6 (1933), p. 472
[155] No author, 'Khronika raboty pravoslavnykh tservei,' Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu 1 (1934), p. 20
[156] No author, 'Iz zhizni rumynskoi tserkvi,' Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu 2 (1934), p. 16
[157] Dom M. Schwartz, 'Chronique religieuse roumaine,' Irenikon 5-6 (1933), p. 494. See also No author, 'Khronika raboty pravoslavnykh tservei,' Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu 1 (1934), p. 21. This mass movement was challenged by many for its political and puritanistic ideology, although in the beginning it had the support of respected Church leaders such as Archimandrite Scriban. In the course of the 1930's it acquired a proncouncedly Fascist character and was prohibited.
[158] Dom M. Schwartz, 'Chronique religieuse roumaine,' Irenikon 3 (1935), pp. 265-269. The Conference, organised in co-operation with the Bucharest Committee, stated - quite accurately - that "when the freedom of religion will be re-established in Russia, missionaries from all over the world will go there, more than anywhere else on earth."
[159] Minutes of the the Ecumenical Youth Commission of Life & Work, no date, 1935
[160] Letter & Memorandum of B. Zenkovsky to H.L. Henriod (WSCF; Life & Work), 19/7/1933
[161] No author, 'Khronika raboty pravoslavnykh tservei,' Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu 1 (1934), p. 19
[162] Minutes of the the Ecumenical Youth Commission of Life & Work, 7/3/1935
[163] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Relations interorthodoxes,' Irenikon 2 (1936), p. 206
[164] cf. Vasilii Zen'kovskii, "S'ezd v Afinakh,' Put' 22 (1930), p. 124: "After the encounter between YMCA and the Orthodox leaders, the Athens Theology Faculty hailed their colleagues from abroad. During the ceremony the need for a conferene of Orthodox theologians was voiced. May God grant this idea to be realised soon!" In the course of March 1935, Zankov visited all Balkan Orthodox Churches to discuss a possible Balkan Association of Theology Professors (Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 3 (1935), p. 289).
[165] Eglise et Culture, Actes du 1er Congres de la Theologie Orthodoxe (Athens, 1938)
[166] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse orthodoxe,' Irenikon 2 (1938), p. 168
[167] Letter of B. Zenkovsky to Dr. Espy, 24/12/1936
[168] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 5 (1935), p. 529
[169] Boris Pliukhanov, R.S.Kh.D. v Latvii I Estonii (Paris, 1993), p. 247
[170] Minutes of the the Ecumenical Youth Commission of Life & Work 28/3/1936
[171] Vasilii Zen'kovskii, 'Zapiska religiozno-pedagogicheskogo kabineta o sozyve obshchepravoslavnogo soveshchaniia po rabote s zhenskoi molodezh'iu,' Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu 2 (1935), p. 20; No author, 'Russkaia khronika,' Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu 2-3-4 (1936), p. 27
[172] Protokol obshchepravoslavnogo soveshchaniia po religiozno-pedagogicheskim voprosam, sostoiavshegosia v Dassele v iiune 1936 goda, p. 3
[173] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 2 (1938), p.164
[174] Protokol obshchepravoslavnogo soveshchaniia po religiozno-pedagogicheskim voprosam, sostoiavshegosia v Dassele v iiune 1936 goda, p. 10
[175] cf. Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 3-4 (1928), p. 180
[176] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 4-5 (1937), p. 396.
[177] Protokol obshchepravoslavnogo soveshchaniia po religiozno-pedagogicheskim voprosam, sostoiavshegosia v Dassele v iiune 1936 goda, p. 7
[178] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 2 (1938), p. 162
[179] ibid. p. 478
[180] ibid. p. 167
[181] Strannik (pseudonym of O. Ioann Shakhovskoi), title unknown, Letopis' 1 (1937), quoted in Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 6 (1937), p. 51
[182] P. Boris Bobrinskoy, Cours d'ecclesiologie orthodoxe (not published) (Paris, 1998), ch. IV p. 43; Letter of E. Laham to L. Zander, 24/12/1945
[183] Minutes of the the Ecumenical Youth Commission of Life & Work 4/2/1938; Podgotovitel'nyi konspekt k s'ezdu pravoslavnoi molodezhi (Paris, 1938)
[184] Minutes of the the Ecumenical Youth Commission of Life & Work 25/7/1937, 9/10/1937
[185] No author, 'Khronika,' Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu 2 (1938), p. 23
[186] Minutes of the the Ecumenical Youth Commission of Life & Work 25/7/1937
[187] Minutes of the the Ecumenical Youth Commission of Life & Work 1/9/1938
[188] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 4 (1938), p. 383. See also Minutes of the the Ecumenical Youth Commission of Life & Work 23/8/1938
[189] Nikolai Zernov, 'Vsemirnyi s'ezd khristianskoi molodezhi,' Put' 61 (1940), p. 23
[190] Ans van der Bent, From generation to generation: The story of youth in the World Council of Churches (Geneva, 1986), p. 16
[191] Archimandrite Cassian, Christ is Lord, proceedings of the World Conference of Christian Youth (Amsterdam, 1939), p. 8
[192] cf. Lev Zander, 'Tri studencheskikh s'ezda,' Put' 5 (1926); Alexandra Tchetverikova, 'Notre jeunesse,' Biulleten' religiozno-pedagogicheskoi raboty s pravoslavnoi molodezh'iu 2 (1930), p. 11
[193] Letter of L. Zander to Patriarch Alexandros III of Antioch, no date, 1945
[194] Letter of H. Alivisatos to E. Laham, 25/1/1946
[195] Letter of L. Zander to E. Laham, 26/8/1945
[196] Tamara Miliutina, Liudi moei zhizni (Tartu, 1997), pp. 129-134
[197] Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 1 (1945), p. 375; Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 4 (1947), pp. 429 and 437; Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 2 (1948), p. 206; Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 3 (1948), p. 312; Hieromoine Pierre, 'Chronique religieuse d'actualites,' Irenikon 4 (1948), p. 420.
[198] Interview with Edouard Laham, 19/10/1997.
[199] Letter of E.Laham to L. Zander, 24/12/1945
[200] Letter E. Laham to A. Fayad,6/9/1945
[201] Letter of E. Laham to L. Zander, 24/12/1945
[202] Letter of E. Laham to S. Bolshakoff, 6/8/1945
[203] Principles of the MJO, printed on the membership booklet of E. Laham
[204] Letter of E. Laham to A. Fayad, 6/9/1945
[205] The only Orthodox diocese at present to possess Western-rite parishes is the Antiochian Archdiocese in the US.
[206] Letter of E. Laham to L. Zander, 24/12/1945
[207] Letter of L. Zander to E. Laham, 26/8/1945
[208] Marina Trubetskaia, 'Siriiskoe dvizhenie molodezhi,' Vestnik tserkovnoi zhizni (= Vestnik R.S.Kh.D.) 5 (1946), pp. 25-27
[209] Letter of invitation of N. Zernov, 1/2/1946
[210] Correpondence between Gorodetzky and MJO 1945-1946
[211] Signatures on MJO membership booklet of E. Laham
[212] They took part in the W.S.C.F General Assembly in Bossey, together with Boris Bobrinskoy and Pierre Struve (Letter of Fr Boris Bobrinskoy, 4/4/2002)
[213] Letter to review "Aktines," 11/3/1947
[214] Letter of Khodre to MJO GS, 30/31947
[215] French: ecumenical.
[216] No traces found in pre-SYNDESMOS archives.
[217] Manos Koumbarelis, Elements from the prehistory and the life of SYNDESMOS (Introductory lecture at the "Consultation of Orthodox Youth Workers", Bossey, Switzerland, 27 March - 2 April 1999), (Bossey, 1999), p. 3 (available at www.syndesmos.org)
[218] quoted in Koumbarelis 1999
[219] ibid.
[220] Georgii Khodr, 'S'ezd pravoslavnoi molodezhi,' Vestnik R.S.Kh.D. (1949, no number), p. 22
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