Rodzianko: An Orthodox Journey from Revolution to Millennium, 1917-1988

by Larry Witham

Vladimir Rodzianko, a prominent Orthodox priest, is known in the Soviet Union, Europe, and the United States. His notoriety begins with a prominent family line that extends back to the birth of the Russian nation. After his family fled the Bolshevik revolution, his career evolved from emigre priest to Russian-language broadcaster for the BBC and finally as a ruling bishop in America. By recounting Rodzianko's life, a parallel story emerges-the story of the Russian Orthodox Church from the 1917 Revolution to the Christian Millennium there in 1988. This story concludes in June 1990 with the election of a new Russian Orthodox patriarch in the era of glasnost. Moreover, this is a biography of a priest, Russian emigre, and broadcaster who confronts the reality of the Orthodox church under communism, a situation so problematic that it has created martyrs and traitors inside the USSR and has deeply divided Christians in the West.

262 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 1990

About the author

Larry Witham is an author, editor, journalist, and artist. His new novel, The Haunted Artist (2025) is the fourth in the Julian Peale Art-Crime Investigator Series. Witham is the author of nineteen books (six of them novels), and was a finalist in the 2015 Pen Literary Awards for biography. He began his writing career as a daily newspaper reporter in Washington D.C. Witham has received several national awards for his newspaper work and books, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for a newspaper series he co-wrote. He was Project Editor for the ten-volume Templeton Press science-and-religion series. A painter by avocation, his new novel character, Julain Peale, investigates crime and intrigue in the artworld. Witham lives with his wife in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C.