Nothing is new under the sun: part 1

The Bolshevik authorities launched an active struggle against the church with the church opposition called the “Free Church Brotherhood”. They declared themselves church reformers: they demanded the abolition of the hierarchal order of the Armenian Church, the class of high-ranking spiritual authorities, the order of celibacy, the abdication of the Catholicos of All Armenians and the election of a new Catholicos, who would be “of the people”, finally, “return the church to the believers” and limit the Armenian Church to the borders of Soviet Armenia. The task set before them was, in particular, to collect false accusations against the monks of St. Etchmiadzin and to forge manuscripts. The St. Gregory the Illuminator Church in Yerevan was given to the “Free Church Brotherhood” by the decision of the City Council. This sect did not have a long life. Its leader, Bishop Ashot Shakhyan, in 1927, before his death, wrote a petition to Catholicos Gevorg V, where he confessed the wrongness of his step and asked to return his title. The defrocked bishop dies in solitude, abandoned even by his political patrons.

Source: RA Ministry of Internal Affairs, National Archives and National Archives