Catacomb Church
The Catacomb Church (Russian: Катакомбная церковь, romanized: Katakombnaya tserkov') as a collective name labels those representatives of the Russian Orthodox clergy, laity, communities, monasteries, brotherhoods, etc., who for various reasons, moved to an illegal position from the 1920s onwards. In a narrow sense, the term "catacomb church" means not just illegal communities, but communities that rejected subordination to the acting patriarchal locum tenens Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) after 1927, and that adopted anti-Soviet positions.