The Eastern Traditions Today
The revolution of 1917 ended a dynamic period of monastic growth in Russia and brought to power a government that was militantly anti-religious. It eliminated all monasteries in the first decade after the revolution, and it persecuted monastics in the 1930s. A limited number of monasteries were tolerated after the Second World War until the end of the Soviet period. Since the collapse of communism, however, Russian monasticism has experienced a significant revival. In Romania, monasticism has always been central to Orthodoxy. Because Romania became communist after the Second World War, the persecution of monasticism was less severe there than in the Soviet Union, and there was greater continuity with the pre-communist past. Monasticism continues to enjoy a significant presence in contemporary Romania. Historians have only just begun to study the fate of monasticism under communism, and sociologists and ethnographers are engaging in promising studies of contemporary monastic life in Russia and Romania.