Fortunes of the Orthodox Church in the former Western provinces of the Russian Empire after 1917
The article deals with the fate of the Western dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church, which after 1918 found themselves within the territory of Poland, which had regained its in-dependence. Some local bishops, backed by the Polish authorities, as well as by the Constantinople Patriarchy, stood for secession from the Russian Church and achievement of autocephaly. Resistance of the opponents of canonic break with Moscow, such as the archbishop of Lithuania and Wilno Eleutherios (Bogoyavlensky) and the bishop of Grodno Vladimir (Tikhonitsky), was broken. The process of attainment of autocephaly by the Polish Orthodox Church, initiated in 1921-1922, was completed in 1924.