Abstract
The years of war and revolution fundamentally transformed the Orthodox Church. Although that entailed much destruction (disestablishment and divestment of the Church; dissolution of the hereditary caste of the parish clergy; virtual elimination of monastic orders), it also represented a surge of democratization and laicization, with power shifting from a professionalized clergy to rank‐and‐file believers. That shift, conceived by Bolsheviks as a strategy for neutralizing the ‘counter‐revolutionary’ Church, actually served to reinvigorate popular Orthodoxy and provide the main dynamic for revival and survival during next seven decades of anti‐religious campaigns and persecution.