ABSTRACT
Sergei Chapnin, previously a ‘Moscow insider’ as the editor of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, linked the Sourozh crisis to the Kremlin's foreign policy and ‘the strategic objectives of Patriarch towards the diaspora’. He connected it to an increased tendency towards vertical power within the Moscow Patriarchate and concluded, The life of Diocese of Sourozh is now organized the very same way as the church in Russia. Dioceses and parishes are just cells of Putin's ‘Russian world’. Organized uniformly, they are conveniently arranged for centralized management from Moscow. The Cathedral in London is now just one of these cells. The new Bishop of Sourozh invited Patriarch to personally make sure this is so. No more rebels, no more dissent.5 To be able to assess this critique, it is necessary to grasp the multiple viewpoints and overlapping concepts associated with the idea of the Russian World and assess how they affected the events in Britain and elsewhere in the diaspora.
