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Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; Русская православная церковь, abbreviated as РПЦ), alternatively legally known as the Moscow Patriarchate (Московский патриархат), is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The primate of the ROC is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus'.

The Christianization of Kievan Rus' commenced in 988 with the baptism of the Rus' Grand Prince of Kiev—Vladimir the Great—and his people by the clergy of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The ecclesiastical title of Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' remained in the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate until 1686.

The ROC currently claims exclusive jurisdiction over the Eastern Orthodox Christians, irrespective of their ethnic background, who reside in the former member republics of the Soviet Union, excluding Georgia. The ROC also created the autonomous Church of Japan and Chinese Orthodox Church. The ROC eparchies in Belarus and Latvia, since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, enjoy various degrees of self-government, albeit short of the status of formal ecclesiastical autonomy.

The ROC should also not be confused with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (or ROCOR, also known as the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad), headquartered in the United States. The ROCOR was instituted in the 1920s by Russian communities outside the Soviet Union, which had refused to recognise the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate that was de facto headed by Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky. The two churches reconciled on 17 May 2007; the ROCOR is now a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Kievan Rus'
The Christian community that developed into what is now known as the Russian Orthodox Church is traditionally said to have been founded by the Apostle Andrew, who is thought to have visited Scythia and Greek colonies along the northern coast of the Black Sea. According to one of the legends, Andrew reached the future location of Kiev and foretold the foundation of a great Christian city. The spot where he reportedly erected a cross is now marked by St. Andrew's Cathedral.

Transfer of the see to Moscow; de facto independence of the Moscow Church
As Kiev was losing its political, cultural, and economical significance due to the Mongol invasion, Metropolitan Maximus moved to Vladimir in 1299; his successor, Metropolitan Peter moved the residence to Moscow in 1325.

In 1439, at the Council of Florence, some Orthodox hierarchs from Byzantium as well as Metropolitan Isidore, who represented the Russian Church, signed a union with the Roman Church, whereby the Eastern Church would recognise the primacy of the Pope. However, the Moscow Prince Vasili II rejected the act of the Council of Florence brought to Moscow by Isidore in March 1441. Isidore was in the same year removed from his position as an apostate and expelled from Moscow. The Russian metropolitanate remained effectively vacant for the next few years due largely to the dominance of Uniates in Constantinople then. In December 1448, Jonas, a Russian bishop, was installed by the Council of Russian bishops in Moscow as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia (with permanent residence in Moscow) without the consent from Constantinople. This occurred five years prior to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and, unintentionally, signified the beginning of an effectively independent church structure in the Moscow (North-Eastern Russian) part of the Russian Church. Subsequently, there developed a theory in Moscow that saw Moscow as the Third Rome, the legitimate successor to Constantinople, and the Primate of the Moscow Church as head of all the Russian Church. Meanwhile, the newly established in 1458 Russian Orthodox (initially Uniate) metropolitanate in Kiev (then in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and subsequently in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) continued under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical See until 1686, when it was provisionally transferred to the jurisdiction of Moscow.

Autocephaly and schism

Several years after the Council of Pereyaslav (1654) that heralded the subsequent incorporation of eastern regions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth into the Tsardom of Russia, the see of the Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' was transferred to the Moscow Patriarchate (1686).

Peter the Great
Peter the Great (1682–1725) had an agenda of radical westernization of Russian government, army, dress and manners. He was trying to make Russia a power that could rival Europe in battles and politics. Peter was not religious and had a low regard for the Church, so he put it under tight governmental control. He replaced the Patriarch with a Holy Synod, which he controlled. The Tsar appointed all bishops. A clerical career was not a route chosen by upper-class society. Most parish priests were sons of priests, were very poorly educated, and very poorly paid. The monks in the monasteries had a slightly higher status; they were not allowed to marry. Politically, the church was impotent. Catherine the Great later in the 18th century seized most of the church lands, and put the priests on a small salary supplemented by fees for services such as baptism and marriage.

Expansion

In the aftermath of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, the Ottomans (supposedly acting on behalf of the Russian regent Sophia Alekseyevna) pressured the Patriarch of Constantinople into transferring the Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' from the jurisdiction of Constantinople to that of Moscow. The handover brought millions of faithful and half a dozen dioceses under the ultimate administrative care of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' (and later of the Holy Synod of Russia), leading to the significant Ukrainian presence in the Russian Church, which continued well into the 18th century, with Theophan Prokopovich, Epiphanius Slavinetsky, Stephen Yavorsky and Demetrius of Rostov being among the most notable representatives of this trend. The exact terms and conditions of the handover of the Kiev Metropolis are a contested issue.

In 1700, after Patriarch Adrian's death, Peter the Great prevented a successor from being named, and in 1721, following the advice of Theophan Prokopovich, Archbishop of Pskov, the Holy and Supreme Synod was established under Archbishop Stephen Yavorsky to govern the church instead of a single primate. This was the situation until shortly after the Russian Revolution of 1917, at which time the Local Council (more than half of its members being lay persons) adopted the decision to restore the Patriarchate. On 5 November (according to the Julian calendar) a new patriarch, Tikhon, was named through casting lots.

The late 18th century saw the rise of starchestvo under Paisiy Velichkovsky and his disciples at the Optina Monastery. This marked a beginning of a significant spiritual revival in the Russian Church after a lengthy period of modernization, personified by such figures as Demetrius of Rostov and Platon of Moscow. Aleksey Khomyakov, Ivan Kireevsky and other lay theologians with Slavophile leanings elaborated some key concepts of the renovated Orthodox doctrine, including that of sobornost. The resurgence of Eastern Orthodoxy was reflected in Russian literature, an example is the figure of Starets Zosima in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov.

In the Russian Orthodox Church, the clergy, over time, formed a hereditary caste of priests. Marrying outside of these priestly families was strictly forbidden; indeed, some bishops did not even tolerate their clergy marrying outside of the priestly families of their diocese.

Fin-de-siècle religious renaissance

In 1909, a volume of essays appeared under the title Vekhi ("Milestones" or "Landmarks"), authored by a group of leading left-wing intellectuals, including Sergei Bulgakov, Peter Struve and former Marxists.

It is possible to see a similarly renewed vigor and variety in religious life and spirituality among the lower classes, especially after the upheavals of 1905. Among the peasantry, there was widespread interest in spiritual-ethical literature and non-conformist moral-spiritual movements, an upsurge in pilgrimage and other devotions to sacred spaces and objects (especially icons), persistent beliefs in the presence and power of the supernatural (apparitions, possession, walking-dead, demons, spirits, miracles and magic), the renewed vitality of local "ecclesial communities" actively shaping their own ritual and spiritual lives, sometimes in the absence of clergy, and defining their own sacred places and forms of piety. Also apparent was the proliferation of what the Orthodox establishment branded as "sectarianism", including both non-Eastern Orthodox Christian denominations, notably Baptists, and various forms of popular Orthodoxy and mysticism.

Russian Revolution and Civil War
In 1914, there were 55,173 Russian Orthodox churches and 29,593 chapels, 112,629 priests and deacons, 550 monasteries and 475 convents with a total of 95,259 monks and nuns in Russia.

The year 1917 was a major turning point in Russian history, and also the Russian Orthodox Church. In early March 1917 (O.S.), the Tsar was forced to abdicate, the Russian empire began to implode, and the government's direct control of the Church was all but over by August 1917. On 15 August (O.S.), in the Moscow Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin, the Local (Pomestniy) Council of the ROC, the first such convention since the late 17th century, opened. The council continued its sessions until September 1918 and adopted a number of important reforms, including the restoration of Patriarchate, a decision taken 3 days after the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd on 25 October (O.S.). On 5 November, Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow was selected as the first Russian Patriarch after about 200 years of Synodal rule.

In early February 1918, the Bolshevik-controlled government of Soviet Russia enacted the Decree on separation of church from state and school from church that proclaimed separation of church and state in Russia, freedom to "profess any religion or profess none", deprived religious organisations of the right to own any property and legal status. Legal religious activity in the territories controlled by Bolsheviks was effectively reduced to services and sermons inside church buildings. The Decree and attempts by Bolshevik officials to requisition church property caused sharp resentment on the part of the ROC clergy and provoked violent clashes on some occasions: on 1 February (19 January O.S.), hours after the bloody confrontation in Petrograd's Alexander Nevsky Lavra between the Bolsheviks trying to take control of the monastery's premises and the believers, Patriarch Tikhon issued a proclamation that anathematised the perpetrators of such acts.

The church was caught in the crossfire of the Russian Civil War that began later in 1918, and church leadership, despite their attempts to be politically neutral (from the autumn of 1918), as well as the clergy generally were perceived by the Soviet authorities as a "counter-revolutionary" force and thus subject to suppression and eventual liquidation.

In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.

Under Soviet rule

The Soviet Union, formally created in December 1922, was the first state to have elimination of religion as an ideological objective espoused by the country's ruling political party. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated materialism and atheism in schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organized religions were never outlawed.

Orthodox clergy and active believers were treated by the Soviet law-enforcement apparatus as anti-revolutionary elements and were habitually subjected to formal prosecutions on political charges, arrests, exiles, imprisonment in camps, and later could also be incarcerated in mental hospitals.

However, the Soviet policy vis-a-vis organised religion vacillated over time between, on the one hand, a utopian determination to substitute secular rationalism for what they considered to be an outmoded "superstitious" worldview and, on the other, pragmatic acceptance of the tenaciousness of religious faith and institutions. In any case, religious beliefs and practices did persist, not only in the domestic and private spheres but also in the scattered public spaces allowed by a state that recognized its failure to eradicate religion and the political dangers of an unrelenting culture war.

The Russian Orthodox church was drastically weakened in May 1922, when the Renovated (Living) Church, a reformist movement backed by the Soviet secret police, broke away from Patriarch Tikhon (also see the Josephites and the Russian True Orthodox Church), a move that caused division among clergy and faithful that persisted until 1946.

Between 1917 and 1935, 130,000 Eastern Orthodox priests were arrested. Of these, 95,000 were put to death. Many thousands of victims of persecution became recognized in a special canon of saints known as the "new martyrs and confessors of Russia".

When Patriarch Tikhon died in 1925, the Soviet authorities forbade patriarchal election. Patriarchal locum tenens (acting Patriarch) Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky, 1887–1944), going against the opinion of a major part of the church's parishes, in 1927 issued a declaration accepting the Soviet authority over the church as legitimate, pledging the church's cooperation with the government and condemning political dissent within the church. By this declaration, Sergius granted himself authority that he, being a deputy of imprisoned Metropolitan Peter and acting against his will, had no right to assume according to the XXXIV Apostolic canon, which led to a split with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia abroad and the Russian True Orthodox Church (Russian Catacomb Church) within the Soviet Union, as they allegedly remained faithful to the Canons of the Apostles, declaring the part of the church led by Metropolitan Sergius schism, sometimes coined Sergianism. Due to this canonical disagreement it is disputed which church has been the legitimate successor to the Russian Orthodox Church that had existed before 1925.

In 1927, Metropolitan Eulogius (Georgiyevsky) of Paris broke with the ROCOR (along with Metropolitan Platon (Rozhdestvensky) of New York, leader of the Russian Metropolia in America). In 1930, after taking part in a prayer service in London in supplication for Christians suffering under the Soviets, Evlogy was removed from office by Sergius and replaced. Most of Evlogy's parishes in Western Europe remained loyal to him; Evlogy then petitioned Ecumenical Patriarch Photius II to be received under his canonical care and was received in 1931, making a number of parishes of Russian Orthodox Christians outside Russia, especially in Western Europe an Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox churches in Western Europe.

Moreover, in the 1929 elections, the Orthodox Church attempted to formulate itself as a full-scale opposition group to the Communist Party, and attempted to run candidates of its own against the Communist candidates. Article 124 of the 1936 Soviet Constitution officially allowed for freedom of religion within the Soviet Union, and along with initial statements of it being a multi-candidate election, the Church again attempted to run its own religious candidates in the 1937 elections. However the support of multicandidate elections was retracted several months before the elections were held and in neither 1929 nor 1937 were any candidates of the Orthodox Church elected.

After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. In the early hours of 5 September 1943, Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky), Alexius (Simansky) and Nicholas (Yarushevich) had a meeting with Stalin and received permission to convene a council on 8 September 1943, which elected Sergius Patriarch of Moscow and all the Rus'. This is considered by some as violation of the Apostolic canon, as no church hierarch could be consecrated by secular authorities. A new patriarch was elected, theological schools were opened, and thousands of churches began to function. The Moscow Theological Academy Seminary, which had been closed since 1918, was re-opened.

In December 2017, the Security Service of Ukraine lifted classified top secret status of documents revealing that the NKVD of the USSR and its units were engaged in the selection of candidates for participation in the 1945 Local Council from the representatives of the clergy and the laity. NKVD demanded "to outline persons who have religious authority among the clergy and believers, and at the same time checked for civic or patriotic work". In the letter sent in September 1944, it was emphasized: "It is important to ensure that the number of nominated candidates is dominated by the agents of the NKBD, capable of holding the line that we need at the Council".

Persecution under Khrushchev
A new and widespread persecution of the church was subsequently instituted under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. A second round of repression, harassment and church closures took place between 1959 and 1964 when Nikita Khrushchev was in office. The number of Orthodox churches fell from around 22,000 in 1959 to around 8,000 in 1965; priests, monks and faithful were killed or imprisoned and the number of functioning monasteries was reduced to less than twenty.

Subsequent to Khrushchev's ousting, the Church and the government remained on unfriendly terms until 1988. In practice, the most important aspect of this conflict was that openly religious people could not join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which meant that they could not hold any political office. However, among the general population, large numbers remained religious.

Some Orthodox believers and even priests took part in the dissident movement and became prisoners of conscience. The Orthodox priests Gleb Yakunin, Sergiy Zheludkov and others spent years in Soviet prisons and exile for their efforts in defending freedom of worship. Among the prominent figures of that time were Dmitri Dudko and Aleksandr Men. Although he tried to keep away from practical work of the dissident movement intending to better fulfil his calling as a priest, there was a spiritual link between Men and many of the dissidents. For some of them he was a friend; for others, a godfather; for many (including Yakunin), a spiritual father.

According to Metropolitan Vladimir, by 1988 the number of functioning churches in the Soviet Union had fallen to 6,893 and the number of functioning convents and monasteries to just 21. In 1987 in the Russian SFSR, between 40% and 50% of newborn babies (depending on the region) were baptized. Over 60% of all deceased received Christian funeral services.

Glasnost and evidence of collaboration with the KGB
Beginning in the late 1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the new political and social freedoms resulted in the return of many church buildings to the church, so they could be restored by local parishioners. A pivotal point in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church came in 1988, the millennial anniversary of the Christianization of Kievan Rus'. Throughout the summer of that year, major government-supported celebrations took place in Moscow and other cities; many older churches and some monasteries were reopened. An implicit ban on religious propaganda on state TV was finally lifted. For the first time in the history of the Soviet Union, people could watch live transmissions of church services on television.

Gleb Yakunin, a critic of the Moscow Patriarchate who was one of those who briefly gained access to the KGB's archives in the early 1990s, argued that the Moscow Patriarchate was "practically a subsidiary, a sister company of the KGB". Critics charge that the archives showed the extent of active participation of the top ROC hierarchs in the KGB efforts overseas. George Trofimoff, the highest-ranking US military officer ever indicted for, and convicted of, espionage by the United States and sentenced to life imprisonment on 27 September 2001, had been "recruited into the service of the KGB" by Igor Susemihl (a.k.a. Zuzemihl), a bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church (subsequently, a high-ranking hierarch—the ROC Metropolitan Iriney of Vienna, who died in July 1999).

Konstanin Kharchev, former chairman of the Soviet Council on Religious Affairs, explained: "Not a single candidate for the office of bishop or any other high-ranking office, much less a member of the Holy Synod, went through without confirmation by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB". Professor Nathaniel Davis points out: "If the bishops wished to defend their people and survive in office, they had to collaborate to some degree with the KGB, with the commissioners of the Council for Religious Affairs, and with other party and governmental authorities". Patriarch Alexy II, acknowledged that compromises were made with the Soviet government by bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate, himself included, and he publicly repented for these compromises.

Patriarch Aleksey II (1990–2008)

Metropolitan Alexy (Ridiger) of Leningrad, ascended the patriarchal throne in 1990 and presided over the partial return of Orthodox Christianity to Russian society after 70 years of repression, transforming the ROC to something resembling its pre-communist appearance; some 15,000 churches had been re-opened or built by the end of his tenure, and the process of recovery and rebuilding has continued under his successor Patriarch Kirill. According to official figures, in 2016 the Church had 174 dioceses, 361 bishops, and 34,764 parishes served by 39,800 clergy. There were 926 monasteries and 30 theological schools.

The Russian Church also sought to fill the ideological vacuum left by the collapse of Communism and even, in the opinion of some analysts, became "a separate branch of power".

In August 2000, the ROC adopted its Basis of the Social Concept and in July 2008, its Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights.

Under Patriarch Aleksey, there were difficulties in the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican, especially since 2002, when Pope John Paul II created a Catholic diocesan structure for Russian territory. The leaders of the Russian Church saw this action as a throwback to prior attempts by the Vatican to proselytize the Russian Orthodox faithful to become Roman Catholic. This point of view was based upon the stance of the Russian Orthodox Church (and the Eastern Orthodox Church) that the Church of Rome is in schism, after breaking off from the Orthodox Church. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, while acknowledging the primacy of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia, believed that the small Roman Catholic minority in Russia, in continuous existence since at least the 18th century, should be served by a fully developed church hierarchy with a presence and status in Russia, just as the Russian Orthodox Church is present in other countries (including constructing a cathedral in Rome, near the Vatican).

There occurred strident conflicts with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, most notably over the Orthodox Church in Estonia in the mid-1990s, which resulted in unilateral suspension of eucharistic relationship between the churches by the ROC. The tension lingered on and could be observed at the meeting in Ravenna in early October 2007 of participants in the Orthodox–Catholic Dialogue: the representative of the Moscow Patriarchate, Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, walked out of the meeting due to the presence of representatives from the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church which is in the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. At the meeting, prior to the departure of the Russian delegation, there were also substantive disagreements about the wording of a proposed joint statement among the Orthodox representatives. After the departure of the Russian delegation, the remaining Orthodox delegates approved the form which had been advocated by the representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Ecumenical See's representative in Ravenna said that Hilarion's position "should be seen as an expression of authoritarianism whose goal is to exhibit the influence of the Moscow Church. But like last year in Belgrade, all Moscow achieved was to isolate itself once more since no other Orthodox Church followed its lead, remaining instead faithful to Constantinople."

Canon Michael Bourdeaux, former president of the Keston Institute, said in January 2008 that "the Moscow Patriarchate acts as though it heads a state church, while the few Orthodox clergy who oppose the church-state symbiosis face severe criticism, even loss of livelihood." Such a view is backed up by other observers of Russian political life. Clifford J. Levy of The New York Times wrote in April 2008: "Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin's surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers. [...] This close alliance between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church has become a defining characteristic of Mr. Putin's tenure, a mutually reinforcing choreography that is usually described here as working 'in symphony'."

Throughout Patriarch Alexy's reign, the massive program of costly restoration and reopening of devastated churches and monasteries (as well as the construction of new ones) was criticized for having eclipsed the church's principal mission of evangelizing.

On 5 December 2008, the day of Patriarch Alexy's death, the Financial Times said: "While the church had been a force for liberal reform under the Soviet Union, it soon became a center of strength for conservatives and nationalists in the post-communist era. Alexei's death could well result in an even more conservative church."

Patriarch Kirill (since 2009)

On 27 January 2009, the ROC Local Council elected Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus′ by 508 votes out of a total of 700. He was enthroned on 1 February 2009.

Patriarch Kirill implemented reforms in the administrative structure of the Moscow Patriarchate: on 27 July 2011 the Holy Synod established the Central Asian Metropolitan District, reorganizing the structure of the Church in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. In addition, on 6 October 2011, at the request of the Patriarch, the Holy Synod introduced the metropoly (Russian: митрополия, mitropoliya), administrative structure bringing together neighboring eparchies.

Under Patriarch Kirill, the ROC continued to maintain close ties with the Kremlin enjoying the patronage of president Vladimir Putin, who has sought to mobilize Russian Orthodoxy both inside and outside Russia. Patriarch Kirill endorsed Putin's election in 2012, referring in February to Putin's tenure in the 2000s as "God's miracle". Nevertheless, Russian inside sources were quoted in the autumn 2017 as saying that Putin's relationship with Patriarch Kirill had been deteriorating since 2014 due to the fact that the presidential administration had been misled by the Moscow Patriarchate as to the extent of support for pro-Russian uprising in eastern Ukraine; also, due to Kirill's personal unpopularity he had come to be viewed as a political liability.

Schism with Constantinople
In 2018, the Moscow Patriarchate's traditional rivalry with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, coupled with Moscow's anger over the decision to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian church by the Ecumenical Patriarch, led the ROC to boycott the Holy Great Council that had been prepared by all the Orthodox Churches for decades.

The Holy Synod of the ROC, at its session on 15 October 2018, severed full communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The decision was taken in response to the move made by the Patriarchate of Constantinople a few days prior that effectively ended the Moscow Patriarchate's jurisdiction over Ukraine and promised autocephaly to Ukraine, the ROC's and the Kremlin's fierce opposition notwithstanding.

While the Ecumenical Patriarchate finalised the establishment of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine on 5 January 2019, the ROC continued to claim that the only legitimate Orthodox jurisdiction in the country, was its branch. Under a law of Ukraine adopted at the end of 2018, the latter was required to change its official title so as to disclose its affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church based in an "aggressor state". On 11 December 2019 the Supreme Court of Ukraine allowed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) to retain its name.

In October 2019, the ROC unilaterally severed communion with the Church of Greece following the latter's recognition of the Ukrainian autocephaly. On 3 November, Patriarch Kirill failed to commemorate the Primate of the Church of Greece, Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens, during a liturgy in Moscow. Additionally, the ROC leadership imposed pilgrimage bans for its faithful in respect of a number of dioceses in Greece, including that of Athens.

On 8 November 2019, the Russian Orthodox Church announced that Patriarch Kirill would stop commemorating the Patriarch of Alexandria and all Africa after the latter and his Church recognized the OCU that same day.

On 27 September 2021, the ROC established a religious day of remembrance for all Eastern Orthodox Christians which were persecuted by the Soviet regime. This day is the 30 October.

Russian invasion of Ukraine
Metropolitan Onufriy of Kyiv, primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) (UOC-MP) called the war "a disaster" stating that "The Ukrainian and Russian peoples came out of the Dnieper Baptismal font, and the war between these peoples is a repetition of the sin of Cain, who killed his own brother out of envy. Such a war has no justification either from God or from people". He also appealed directly to Putin, asking for an immediate end to the "fratricidal war". In April 2022, after the Russian invasion, many UOC-MP parishes signaled their intention to switch allegiance to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The attitude and stance of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to the war is one of the oft quoted reasons. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Lithuania, Metropolitan Innocent (Vasilyev), called Patriarch Kirill's "political statements about the war" his "personal opinion". On 7 March 2022, Aleksandrs Kudrjašovs, head of the Latvian Orthodox Church, condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On 27 February 2022, a group of 286 Russian Orthodox priests published an open letter calling for an end to the war and criticised the suppression of non-violent anti-war protests in Russia. On 6 March 2022, Russian Orthodox priest of Moscow Patriarchate's Kostroma Diocese was fined by Russian authorities for anti-war sermon and stressing the importance of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". Some priests in the Russian Orthodox Church have publicly opposed the invasion, with some facing arrest under the Russian 2022 war censorship laws. In Kazakhstan, Russian Orthodox priest Iakov Vorontsov, who signed an open letter condemning the invasion of Ukraine, was forced to resign. Former Russian Orthodox priest Father Grigory Michnov-Vaytenko, head of the Russian Apostolic Church — a recognized religious organization founded by other dissident priests such as Father Gleb Yakunin — said that "The [Russian Orthodox] church now works like the commissars did in the Soviet Union. And people of course see it. People don't like it. Especially after February [2022], a lot of people have left the church, both priests and people who were there for years."

Patriarch Kirill has referred to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as "current events" and has avoided using terms like war or invasion, thereby complying with Russian censorship law. Kirill approves the invasion, and has blessed the Russian soldiers fighting there. As a consequence, several priests of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine have stopped mentioning Kirill's name during the divine service. The Moscow patriarchate views Ukraine as a part of their "canonical territory". Kirill has said that the Russian army has chosen a very correct way.

Kirill sees gay pride parades as a part of the reason behind Russian warfare against Ukraine. He has said that the war is not physically, but rather metaphysically, important.

In the days after the world learned about the 2022 Bucha massacre by Russian invaders of Ukraine, Kirill said that his faithful should be to ready "protect our home" under any circumstance.

On 6 March 2022 (Forgiveness Sunday holiday), during the liturgy in the Church of Christ the Savior, he justified Russia's attack on Ukraine, stating that it was necessary to side with "Donbas" (i.e. Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic), where he said there is an ongoing 8-year "genocide" by Ukraine and where, Kirill said, Ukraine wants to enforce gay pride events upon local population. Despite the holiday being dedicated to the concept of forgiveness, Kirill said there can't be forgiveness without delivering "justice" first, otherwise it's a capitulation and weakness. The speech came under international scrutiny, as Kirill parroted President Putin's claim that Russia was fighting "fascism" in Ukraine. Throughout the speech, Kirill did not use the term "Ukrainian", but rather referred to both Russians and Ukrainians simply as "Holy Russians", also claiming Russian soldiers in Ukraine were "laying down their lives for a friend", referencing the Gospel of John.

On 9 March 2022, after the liturgy, he declared that Russia has the right to use force against Ukraine to ensure Russia's security, that Ukrainians and Russians are one people, that Russia and Ukraine are one country, that the West incites Ukrainians to kill Russians to sow discord between Russians and Ukrainians and gives weapons to Ukrainians for this specific purpose, and therefore the West is an enemy of Russia and God.

In a letter to the World Council of Churches (WCC) sent in March 2022, Kirill justified the attack on Ukraine by NATO enlargement, the protection of Russian language, and the establishment of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. In this letter, he did not express condolences over deaths among Ukrainians.

Kirill participated in a Zoom video call with Pope Francis on 16 March 2022, of which Francis stated in an interview that Kirill "read from a piece of paper he was holding in his hand all the reasons that justify the Russian invasion."

Representatives of the Vatican have criticized Kirill for his lack of willingness to seek peace in Ukraine. On 3 April, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said there was a strong case for expelling the Russian Orthodox Church from the WCC, saying, "When a Church is actively supporting a war of aggression, failing to condemn nakedly obvious breaches of any kind of ethical conduct in wartime, then other Churches do have the right to raise the question ... I am still waiting for any senior member of the Orthodox hierarchy to say that the slaughter of the innocent is condemned unequivocally by all forms of Christianity."

The Russian Orthodox St Nicholas church in Amsterdam, Netherlands, has declared that it is no longer possible to function within the Moscow patriarchate because of the attitude that Kirill has taken to the Russian invasion, and instead requested to join the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Russian Orthodox Church in Lithuania has declared that they do not share the political views and perception of Kirill and therefore are seeking independence from Moscow.

On 10 April 2022, 200 priests from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) released an open request to the primates of the other autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Churches, asking them to convene a Council of Primates of the Ancient Eastern Churches at the Pan-Orthodox level and try Kirill for the heresy of preaching the "Doctrine of the Russian world" and the moral crimes of "blessing the war against Ukraine and fully supporting the aggressive nature of Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine." They noted that they "can't continue to remain in any form of canonical subordination to the Moscow Patriarch," and requested that the Council of Primates "bring Patriarch Kirill to justice and deprive him of the right to hold the patriarchal throne."

When the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) removed itself from the Moscow Patriarchate on 27 May 2022, Kirill claimed that the "spirits of malice" wanted to separate the Russian and Ukrainian peoples but they will not succeed. The Ukrainian church released a declaration in which it stated "it had adopted relevant additions and changes to the Statute on the Administration of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which testify to the complete autonomy and independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church." The church did not publish its new constitution. Although in this Ukrainian Orthodox Church clergymen now claims that 'any provisions that at least somehow hinted at or indicated the connection with Moscow were excluded' the Russian Orthodox Church ignores this and continues to include UOC-MP clerics in its various commissions or working groups despite these individuals not agreeing to this nor even wanting to be included. Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said that the patriarch's legitimization of the "brutal and absurd war" is "a heresy."

Kirill supported the mobilization of citizens to go to the front in Ukraine, he urged citizens to fulfill their military duty and that if they gave their lives for their country they will be with God in his kingdom.

North Macedonia and Bulgaria expelled senior members of the Russian Orthodox Church for acts contravening their national security in 2023, raising questions about the church using their position to spy and to spread Russian political propaganda. In 2023 Patriarch Bartholomew criticised the Russian church, which he says is teaching a "theology of war". "This is the theology that the sister Church of Russia began to teach, trying to justify an unjust, unholy, unprovoked, diabolical war against a sovereign and independent country – Ukraine." In January 2024, the senior priest of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Ostankino, Moscow, was removed from his post for calling for peace.

During the World Russian People's Council headed and led by Kirill of late March 2024 a document was approved that stated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a "Holy War". The document stated that the war had the goal of "protecting the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West, which has fallen into Satanism". The document also stated that following the war "the entire territory of modern Ukraine should enter the zone of Russia's exclusive influence". This was to be done so "the possibility of the existence of a Russophobic political regime hostile to Russia and its people on this territory, as well as a political regime controlled from an external center hostile to Russia, should be completely excluded". The document also made reference to the "triunity of the Russian people" and it claimed that Belarusians and Ukrainians "should be recognised only as sub-ethnic groups of the Russians".

Structure and organization

The ROC constituent parts in other than the Russian Federation countries of its exclusive jurisdiction such as Ukraine, Belarus et al., are legally registered as separate legal entities in accordance with the relevant legislation of those independent states.

Ecclesiastiacally, the ROC is organized in a hierarchical structure. The lowest level of organization, which normally would be a single ROC building and its attendees, headed by a priest who acts as Father superior (настоятель, nastoyatel), constitute a parish (приход, prihod). All parishes in a geographical region belong to an eparchy (епархия—equivalent to a Western diocese). Eparchies are governed by bishops (епископ, episcop or архиерей, archiereus). There are 261 Russian Orthodox eparchies worldwide (June 2012).

Further, some eparchies may be organized into exarchates (currently the Belarusian exarchate), and since 2003 into metropolitan districts (митрополичий округ), such as the ROC eparchies in Kazakhstan and the Central Asia (Среднеазиатский митрополичий округ).

Since the early 1990s, the ROC eparchies in some newly independent states of the former USSR enjoy the status of self-governing Churches within the Moscow Patriarchate (which status, according to the ROC legal terminology, is distinct from the "autonomous" one): the Estonian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate, Latvian Orthodox Church, Moldovan Orthodox Church, Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) (UOC-MP), the last one being virtually fully independent in administrative matters. (Following Russia's 2014 Invasion of Ukraine, the UOC-MP—which held nearly a third of the ROC(MP)'s churches—began to fragment, particularly since 2019, with some separatist congregations leaving the ROC(MP) to join the newly independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) despite strident objections from the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian government. )

Similar status, since 2007, is enjoyed by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (previously fully independent and deemed schismatic by the ROC). The Chinese Orthodox Church and the Japanese Orthodox Churches were granted full autonomy by the Moscow Patriarchate, but this autonomy is not universally recognized.

Smaller eparchies are usually governed by a single bishop. Larger eparchies, exarchates, and self-governing Churches are governed by a Metropolitan archbishop and sometimes also have one or more bishops assigned to them.

The highest level of authority in the ROC is vested in the Local Council (Pomestny Sobor), which comprises all the bishops as well as representatives from the clergy and laypersons. Another organ of power is the Bishops' Council (Архиерейский Собор). In the periods between the Councils the highest administrative powers are exercised by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, which includes seven permanent members and is chaired by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Primate of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Although the Patriarch of Moscow enjoys extensive administrative powers, unlike the Pope, he has no direct canonical jurisdiction outside the Urban Diocese of Moscow, nor does he have single-handed authority over matters pertaining to faith as well as issues concerning the entire Orthodox Christian community such as the Catholic-Orthodox split.

Orthodox Church in America (OCA)
The OCA has its origins in a mission established by eight Russian Orthodox monks in Alaska, then part of Russian America, in 1794. This grew into a full diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. By the late 19th century, the Russian Orthodox Church had grown in other areas of the United States due to the arrival of immigrants from areas of Eastern and Central Europe, many of them formerly of the Eastern Catholic Churches ("Greek Catholics"), and from the Middle East. These immigrants, regardless of nationality or ethnic background, were united under a single North American diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church.

During the Second World War, the Patriarchate of Moscow unsuccessfully attempted to regain control of the groups which were located abroad. After it resumed its communication with Moscow in the early 1960s, and after it was granted autocephaly in 1970, the Metropolia became known as the Orthodox Church in America. But its autocephalous status is not universally recognized. The Ecumenical Patriarch (who has jurisdiction over the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America) and some other jurisdictions have not officially accepted it. The Ecumenical Patriarch and the other jurisdictions remain in communion with the OCA. The Patriarchate of Moscow thereby renounced its former canonical claims in the United States and Canada; it also acknowledged the establishment of an autonomous church in Japan in 1970.

Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR)
Russia's Church was devastated by the repercussions of the Bolshevik Revolution. One of its effects was a flood of refugees from Russia to the United States, Canada, and Europe. The Revolution of 1918 severed large sections of the Russian church—dioceses in America, Japan, and Manchuria, as well as refugees in Europe—from regular contacts with the main church.

On 28 December 2006, it was officially announced that the Act of Canonical Communion would finally be signed between the ROC and ROCOR. The signing took place on 17 May 2007, followed immediately by a full restoration of communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, celebrated by a Divine Liturgy at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, at which the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexius II and the First Hierarch of ROCOR concelebrated for the first time.

Under the Act, the ROCOR remains a self-governing entity within the Church of Russia. It is independent in its administrative, pastoral, and property matters. It continues to be governed by its Council of Bishops and its Synod, the Council's permanent executive body. The First-Hierarch and bishops of the ROCOR are elected by its Council and confirmed by the Patriarch of Moscow. ROCOR bishops participate in the Council of Bishops of the entire Russian Church.

In response to the signing of the act of canonical communion, Bishop Agathangel (Pashkovsky) of Odesa and parishes and clergy in opposition to the Act broke communion with ROCOR, and established ROCA(A). Some others opposed to the Act have joined themselves to other Greek Old Calendarist groups.

Currently both the OCA and ROCOR, since 2007, are in communion with the ROC.

Self-governing branches of the ROC
The Russian Orthodox Church has four levels of self-government.

The autonomous churches which are part of the ROC are:

 * 1) Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), a special status autonomy close to autocephaly
 * 2) Self-governed churches (Estonia, Latvia, Moldova, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia)
 * 3) Belarusian Orthodox Church, an exarchate; Patriarchal Exarchate in South-East Asia; Patriarchal Exarchate in Western Europe; Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa
 * 4) Pakistan Orthodox Church
 * 5) Metropolitan District of Kazakhstan
 * 6) Japanese Orthodox Church
 * 7) Chinese Orthodox Church
 * 8) Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox churches in Western Europe

Although the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) claims that 'any provisions that at least somehow hinted at or indicated the connection with Moscow were excluded' (following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine) the Russian Orthodox Church ignores this and continues to include UOC-MP clerics in various commissions or working groups despite these individuals not agreeing to this nor even wanting to be included.

Canonization
In accordance with the practice of the Orthodox Church, a particular hero of faith can initially be canonized only at a local level within local churches and eparchies. Such rights belong to the ruling hierarch and it can only happen when the blessing of the patriarch is received. The task of believers of the local eparchy is to record descriptions of miracles, to create the hagiography of a saint, to paint an icon, as well as to compose a liturgical text of a service where the saint is canonized. All of this is sent to the Synodal Commission for canonization which decides whether to canonize the local hero of faith or not. Then the patriarch gives his blessing and the local hierarch performs the act of canonization at the local level. However, the liturgical texts in honor of a saint are not published in all Church books but only in local publications. In the same way, these saints are not yet canonized and venerated by the whole Church, only locally. When the glorification of a saint exceeds the limits of an eparchy, then the patriarch and Holy Synod decides about their canonization on the Church level. After receiving the Synod's support and the patriarch's blessing, the question of glorification of a particular saint on the scale of the entire Church is given for consideration to the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In the period following the revolution, and during the communist persecutions up to 1970, no canonizations took place. In 1970, the Holy Synod decided to canonize a missionary to Japan, Nicholas Kasatkin (1836–1912). In 1977, St. Innocent of Moscow (1797–1879), the Metropolitan of Siberia, the Far East, the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and Moscow was also canonized. In 1978 it was proclaimed that the Russian Orthodox Church had created a prayer order for Meletius of Kharkov, which practically signified his canonization because that was the only possible way to do it at that time. Similarly, the saints of other Orthodox Churches were added to the Church calendar: in 1962 St. John the Russian, in 1970 St. Herman of Alaska, in 1993 Silouan the Athonite, the elder of Mount Athos, already canonized in 1987 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. In the 1980s the Russian Orthodox Church re-established the process for canonization; a practice that had ceased for half a century.

In 1989, the Holy Synod established the Synodal Commission for canonization. The 1990 Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church gave an order for the Synodal Commission for Canonisation to prepare documents for canonization of new martyrs who had suffered from the 20th century Communist repressions. In 1991 it was decided that a local commission for canonization would be established in every eparchy which would gather the local documents and would send them to the Synodal Commission. Its task was to study the local archives, collect memories of believers, record all the miracles that are connected with addressing the martyrs. In 1992 the Church established 25 January as a day when it venerates the new 20th century martyrs of faith. The day was specifically chosen because on this day in 1918 the Metropolitan of Kiev Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) was killed, thus becoming the first victim of communist terror among the hierarchs of the Church.

During the 2000 Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, the greatest general canonization in the history of the Orthodox Church took place: not only regarding the number of saints but also as in this canonization, all unknown saints were mentioned. There were 1,765 canonized saints known by name and others unknown by name but "known to God".

Icon painting
The use and making of icons entered Kievan Rus' following its conversion to Orthodox Christianity in AD 988. As a general rule, these icons strictly followed models and formulas hallowed by Byzantine art, led from the capital in Constantinople. As time passed, the Russians widened the vocabulary of types and styles far beyond anything found elsewhere in the Orthodox world. Russian icons are typically paintings on wood, often small, though some in churches and monasteries may be much larger. Some Russian icons were made of copper. Many religious homes in Russia have icons hanging on the wall in the krasny ugol, the "red" or "beautiful" corner. There is a rich history and elaborate religious symbolism associated with icons. In Russian churches, the nave is typically separated from the sanctuary by an iconostasis (Russian ikonostas, иконостас), or icon-screen, a wall of icons with double doors in the centre. Russians sometimes speak of an icon as having been "written", because in the Russian language (like Greek, but unlike English) the same word (pisat', писать in Russian) means both to paint and to write. Icons are considered to be the Gospel in paint, and therefore careful attention is paid to ensure that the Gospel is faithfully and accurately conveyed. Icons considered miraculous were said to "appear". The "appearance" (Russian: yavlenie, явление) of an icon is its supposedly miraculous discovery. "A true icon is one that has 'appeared', a gift from above, one opening the way to the Prototype and able to perform miracles".

Bell ringing
Bell ringing, which has a history in the Russian Orthodox tradition dating back to the baptism of Rus', plays an important part in the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Ecumenism and interfaith relations
In May 2011, Hilarion Alfeyev, the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and head of external relations for the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, stated that Orthodox and Evangelical Christians share the same positions on "such issues as abortion, the family, and marriage" and desire "vigorous grassroots engagement" between the two Christian communions on such issues.

The Metropolitan also believes in the possibility of peaceful coexistence between Islam and Christianity because the two religions have never fought religious wars in Russia. Alfeyev stated that the Russian Orthodox Church "disagrees with atheist secularism in some areas very strongly" and "believes that it destroys something very essential about human life."

Today, the Russian Orthodox Church has ecclesiastical missions in Jerusalem and some other countries around the world.

Membership
The ROC is often said to be the largest of all of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world. Including all the autocephalous churches under its supervision, its adherents number more than 112 million worldwide—about half of the 200 to 220 million estimated adherents of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Among Christian churches, the Russian Orthodox Church is only second to the Roman Catholic Church in terms of numbers of followers. Within Russia the results of a 2007 VTsIOM poll indicated that about 75% of the population considered itself Orthodox Christian. Up to 65% of ethnic Russians as well as Russian-speakers from Russia who are members of other ethnic groups (Ossetians, Chuvash, Caucasus Greeks, Kryashens etc.) and a similar percentage of Belarusians and Ukrainians identify themselves as "Orthodox". However, according to a poll published by the church related website  in December 2012, only 41% of the Russian population identified itself with the Russian Orthodox Church. Pravmir.com also published a 2012 poll by the respected Levada organization VTsIOM indicating that 74% of Russians considered themselves Orthodox. The 2017 Survey Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe made by the Pew Research Center showed that 71% of Russians declared themselves as Orthodox Christian, and in 2021, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) estimated that 66% of Russians were Orthodox Christians.

authors: Чръный человек

title: Russian Orthodox Church


text:
Berchtesgaden

Berchtesgaden is a municipality in the district Berchtesgadener Land, Bavaria, in southeastern Germany, near the border with Austria, 30 km south of Salzburg and 180 km southeast of Munich. It lies in the Berchtesgaden Alps. South of the town, the Berchtesgaden National Park stretches along three parallel valleys.

The Kehlstein mountain (1835 m), with its Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest), is located in the area.

Etymology
Berchtesgaden, Upper Bavaria (Achental), earlier Perchterscadmen, Perhtersgadem, Berchirchsgadem, Berchtoldesgadem; the word underwent a Latin distortion of Old High German parach, Romance bareca 'hay shed'. After the basic meaning was forgotten, a variant word of Old High German gadem 'room, one-room hut' was added, implying the same meaning: 'hay shed'. Cf. Old High German muosgadem 'spice room'.

There was a folk etymology that supported a derivation based on the legendary figure of Frau Perchta (Berchta), a woman (Holle < Holda 'well disposed, dear') with good and bad changing features, who was venerated on Perchtertag (Epiphany) and was sworn to during the Perchta procession.

History
The first known record of the area, from 1102, mentions the area's rich salt deposits. Salt mining began in the area in 1517, and subsequently produced much of Berchtesgaden's wealth.

The town and its surroundings belonged to the Berchtesgaden Provostry, an independent state of the Holy Roman Empire (called Fürstpropstei Berchtesgaden) and was ruled by the Prince-provost of the Augustine monastery in the town. It remained independent until the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss in 1803. During the Napoleonic wars, Berchtesgaden changed hands a few times, such as in 1805 under the Treaty of Pressburg, when the area was ceded to Austria.

Berchtesgaden came under the rule of the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1810. It soon became popular with the Bavarian royal family, the House of Wittelsbach, who often visited Königssee and maintained a hunting residence in the former Augustine monastery (still used today by Franz, Duke of Bavaria). Tourism began to evolve and several artists came to the area, which reportedly gave rise to Malereck ("painters' corner") on the shore of the Königssee in nearby Schönau am Königssee. The most famous author who lived in Berchtesgaden was Ludwig Ganghofer.

Nazi era

Adolf Hitler began vacationing in the Berchtesgaden area in the 1920s. He purchased a home in the Obersalzberg above the town on the flank of the Hoher Goll and began extensive renovations on his Berghof in the following years. As other top Third Reich figures, such as Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, and Albert Speer, began to frequent the area, the Nazi Party began to purchase and requisition land in the Obersalzberg.

To serve as an outpost of the German Reichskanzlei (Imperial Chancellery), Berchtesgaden and its environs (Stanggass) saw substantial expansion of offices, security, and support services, mainly on the Obersalzberg. Included in the town were a new railway station, with a reception area for Hitler and his guests, and an adjacent post office. The Berchtesgadener Hof Hotel, where famous visitors such as Neville Chamberlain and David Lloyd George stayed, was substantially upgraded.

Berchtesgaden was where Adolf Hitler met Neville Chamberlain in 1938 before the Munich Agreement; see Berchtesgaden meeting.

Even though a feared Alpine Fortress last stand of the Nazi Regime in the Alps failed to materialize late in World War II, the Allies launched a devastating air raid on the Berchtesgaden area in the spring of 1945. The 25 April bombing of Obersalzberg did little damage to the town. On 4 May, forward elements of the 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division arrived and received the town's surrender.

Post–World War II
After the war, Berchtesgaden became a military zone and most of its buildings were requisitioned by the U.S. Army. Hotel Platterhof was rebuilt and renamed the General Walker Hotel in 1952. It served as a U.S. Armed Forces Recreation Center through the Cold War and beyond. Remnants of homes of former Nazi leaders were demolished in the early postwar years, though traces of some remained. In 1995, fifty years after the end of World War II and five years after German reunification, the AFRC Berchtesgaden was turned over to Bavarian authorities to facilitate military spending reductions mandated within the Base Realignment and Closure program by the US Congress and Pentagon during the administration of President Bill Clinton. The General Walker Hotel was demolished in 2000–2001.

In 1986, Berchtesgaden was a first-round candidate city to host the XVI Olympic Winter Games to be held in 1992. The vote eventually went to Albertville, France, in October of that year.

Berchtesgaden today

The Hotel Türken, which was near the Nazi buildings and was often used by the SS and then by the Generalmajor of the Police, was badly damaged in 1945. It was rebuilt in 1950 and reopened as a hotel before Christmas. Visitors can still explore the historic underground hallways and tunnels that had been used by the Nazis.

In 1972, local government reform united the then-independent municipalities of Salzberg, Maria Gern and Au (consisting of Oberau and Unterau) under the administration of the town of Berchtesgaden. Another suggested reform uniting all remaining five municipalities in the Berchtesgaden valley (Bischofswiesen, Ramsau, Marktschellenberg and Schönau) failed to gain enough popular support; it passed in Berchtesgaden but failed everywhere else.

The Berchtesgaden National Park was established in 1978 and has gradually become one of Berchtesgaden's largest draws. Mass tourism is confined to a few popular spots, leaving the rest to nature-seekers. Other tourist draws are the Königssee, the salt mine, the Kehlsteinhaus, open seasonally as a restaurant, and the Dokumentationszentrum Obersalzberg museum about the area's history, operated by the Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte since 1999.

Recreational and competitive sports have grown in importance. The town's ski slope is popular. The Königssee bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton track has hosted ski-running and several international events and competitions. Berchtesgaden's most famous sports personality is Georg Hackl, a multiple Olympic medal winner. The city is home to the International Luge Federation (FIL).

Unlike the northern part of Berchtesgadener Land and the Salzburg area, Berchtesgaden has virtually no manufacturing industry.

Berchtesgaden Central Station is connected by the Salzburg–Berchtesgaden railway to the Rosenheim–Salzburg railway at Freilassing.

The Bavarian state government facilitated the erection of a hotel, which opened in 2005 and is operated by the InterContinental Hotels Group. Since May 2015, the hotel has been the Kempinski Berchtesgaden.

Geography
Berchtesgaden's neighbouring towns are Bischofswiesen, Marktschellenberg, Ramsau, and Schönau am Königssee.

The municipality counts the following villages which are (Ortsteil): Am Etzerschlößl, Anzenbach, Hintergern, Metzenleiten, Mitterbach, Oberau, Obergern, Obersalzberg, Resten, Unterau, Untersalzberg I, Untersalzberg II, and Vordergern.

Notable people

 * Wolfgang Bartels, (1940–2007), Olympic alpine skier bronze medalist
 * Karl Bartos, (born 1952), electronic musician, former electronic percussionist in the band Kraftwerk
 * Sigmund Freud, (1856–1939), psychoanalyst, owned a house for family holidays in Schönau near Obersalzberg. His villa was taken over during the Second World War by Heinrich Himmler.
 * Franz Graßl, (born 1965), ski mountaineer
 * Judith Graßl, (born 1968), ski mountaineer
 * Georg Hackl, (born 1966), first Winter Olympics competitor to win five consecutive medals with consecutively two silver and three gold medals in the men's single luge event
 * Adolf Hitler, (1889–1945), leader of the Nazi Party and German dictator 1933–1945; owned the Eagle's Nest mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden
 * Kathrin Hölzl, alpine ski racer and gold medalist in the giant slalom at the 2009 World Championships
 * Princess Irmingard of Bavaria, Nazi resister and survivor of Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg and Dachau concentration camps
 * Katrya Hrynevycheva, Ukrainian writer and community leader.
 * Jutta Kleinschmidt, (born 1962), German offroad automotive racing competitor
 * Toni Kurz, (1913–1936), German 20th century mountaineer
 * Patric Leitner, five-time winner of luge World Cup and four-time World Championship titles (in men's doubles with Alexander Resch)
 * Felix Loch, four-time luge gold medalist (two in singles and two in mixed team) FIL World Luge Championships
 * Manuel Machata (born 1984), German former bobsledder
 * Peter Öttl, Grand Prix motorcycle road racer
 * Hans Plenk, Olympic bronze-medalist in the men's single luge event
 * Romy Schneider, (1938–1982), German-French film actress
 * Kaspar Stanggassinger, (1871-1899), Redemptorist priest, declared Blessed in 1988
 * Silvia Treimer, ski mountaineer
 * Hermann von Barth, (1845–1876), German 19th century mountaineer
 * John Allan Wyeth (1894–1981), American war poet and Post-Impressionist painter, was a regular visitor to Berchtesgaden, where he would indulge in his passion for landscape painting, during the 1930s.

Toy symphonies
in the 1760s several anonymous toy symphonies (including the famous Toy Symphony often attributed to Haydn or Leopold Mozart) were composed at Berchtesgaden, then a manufacturing centre for toy instruments. Some of the instruments used for these can be seen in the Museum Carolino Augusteum in Salzburg.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Berchtesgaden


text:
Darmstadtium

Darmstadtium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Ds and atomic number 110. It is extremely radioactive: the most stable known isotope, darmstadtium-281, has a half-life of approximately 14 seconds. Darmstadtium was first created in 1994 by the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in the city of Darmstadt, Germany, after which it was named.

In the periodic table, it is a d-block transactinide element. It is a member of the 7th period and is placed in the group 10 elements, although no chemical experiments have yet been carried out to confirm that it behaves as the heavier homologue to platinum in group 10 as the eighth member of the 6d series of transition metals. Darmstadtium is calculated to have similar properties to its lighter homologues, nickel, palladium, and platinum.

Discovery
Darmstadtium was first discovered on November 9, 1994, at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research (Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany, by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg, under the direction of Sigurd Hofmann. The team bombarded a lead-208 target with accelerated nuclei of nickel-62 in a heavy ion accelerator and detected a single atom of the isotope darmstadtium-269:

Two more atoms followed on November 12 and 17. (Yet another was originally reported to have been found on November 11, but it turned out to be based on data fabricated by Victor Ninov, and was then retracted.)

In the same series of experiments, the same team also carried out the reaction using heavier nickel-64 ions. During two runs, 9 atoms of were convincingly detected by correlation with known daughter decay properties:

Prior to this, there had been failed synthesis attempts in 1986–87 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna (then in the Soviet Union) and in 1990 at the GSI. A 1995 attempt at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory resulted in signs suggesting but not pointing conclusively at the discovery of a new isotope formed in the bombardment of  with, and a similarly inconclusive 1994 attempt at the JINR showed signs of  being produced from  and. Each team proposed its own name for element 110: the American team proposed hahnium after Otto Hahn in an attempt to resolve the controversy of naming element 105 (which they had long been suggesting this name for), the Russian team proposed becquerelium after Henri Becquerel, and the German team proposed darmstadtium after Darmstadt, the location of their institute. The IUPAC/IUPAP Joint Working Party (JWP) recognised the GSI team as discoverers in their 2001 report, giving them the right to suggest a name for the element.

Naming
Using Mendeleev's nomenclature for unnamed and undiscovered elements, darmstadtium should be known as eka-platinum. In 1979, IUPAC published recommendations according to which the element was to be called ununnilium (with the corresponding symbol of Uun), a systematic element name as a placeholder, until the element was discovered (and the discovery then confirmed) and a permanent name was decided on. Although widely used in the chemical community on all levels, from chemistry classrooms to advanced textbooks, the recommendations were mostly ignored among scientists in the field, who called it "element 110", with the symbol of E110, (110) or even simply 110.

In 1996, the Russian team proposed the name becquerelium after Henri Becquerel. The American team in 1997 proposed the name hahnium after Otto Hahn (previously this name had been used for element 105).

The name darmstadtium (Ds) was suggested by the GSI team in honor of the city of Darmstadt, where the element was discovered. The GSI team originally also considered naming the element wixhausium, after the suburb of Darmstadt known as Wixhausen where the element was discovered, but eventually decided on darmstadtium. Policium had also been proposed as a joke due to the emergency telephone number in Germany being 1–1–0. The new name darmstadtium was officially recommended by IUPAC on August 16, 2003.

Isotopes
Darmstadtium has no stable or naturally occurring isotopes. Several radioactive isotopes have been synthesized in the laboratory, either by fusing two atoms or by observing the decay of heavier elements. Eleven different isotopes of darmstadtium have been reported with atomic masses 267, 269–271, 273, 275–277, and 279–281, although darmstadtium-267 is unconfirmed. Three darmstadtium isotopes, darmstadtium-270, darmstadtium-271, and darmstadtium-281, have known metastable states, although that of darmstadtium-281 is unconfirmed. Most of these decay predominantly through alpha decay, but some undergo spontaneous fission.

Stability and half-lives

All darmstadtium isotopes are extremely unstable and radioactive; in general, the heavier isotopes are more stable than the lighter. The most stable known darmstadtium isotope, 281Ds, is also the heaviest known darmstadtium isotope; it has a half-life of 14 seconds. The isotope 279Ds has a half-life of 0.18 seconds, while the unconfirmed 281mDs has a half-life of 0.9 seconds. The remaining isotopes and metastable states have half-lives between 1 microsecond and 70 milliseconds. Some unknown darmstadtium isotopes may have longer half-lives, however.

Theoretical calculation in a quantum tunneling model reproduces the experimental alpha decay half-life data for the known darmstadtium isotopes. It also predicts that the undiscovered isotope 294Ds, which has a magic number of neutrons (184), would have an alpha decay half-life on the order of 311 years; exactly the same approach predicts a ~350-year alpha half-life for the non-magic 293Ds isotope, however.

Predicted properties
Other than nuclear properties, no properties of darmstadtium or its compounds have been measured; this is due to its extremely limited and expensive production and the fact that darmstadtium (and its parents) decays very quickly. Properties of darmstadtium metal remain unknown and only predictions are available.

Chemical
Darmstadtium is the eighth member of the 6d series of transition metals, and should be much like the platinum group metals. Calculations on its ionization potentials and atomic and ionic radii are similar to that of its lighter homologue platinum, thus implying that darmstadtium's basic properties will resemble those of the other group 10 elements, nickel, palladium, and platinum.

Prediction of the probable chemical properties of darmstadtium has not received much attention recently. Darmstadtium should be a very noble metal. The predicted standard reduction potential for the Ds2+/Ds couple is 1.7 V. Based on the most stable oxidation states of the lighter group 10 elements, the most stable oxidation states of darmstadtium are predicted to be the +6, +4, and +2 states; however, the neutral state is predicted to be the most stable in aqueous solutions. In comparison, only platinum is known to show the maximum oxidation state in the group, +6, while the most stable state is +2 for both nickel and palladium. It is further expected that the maximum oxidation states of elements from bohrium (element 107) to darmstadtium (element 110) may be stable in the gas phase but not in aqueous solution. Darmstadtium hexafluoride (DsF6) is predicted to have very similar properties to its lighter homologue platinum hexafluoride (PtF6), having very similar electronic structures and ionization potentials. It is also expected to have the same octahedral molecular geometry as PtF6. Other predicted darmstadtium compounds are darmstadtium carbide (DsC) and darmstadtium tetrachloride (DsCl4), both of which are expected to behave like their lighter homologues. Unlike platinum, which preferentially forms a cyanide complex in its +2 oxidation state, Pt(CN)2, darmstadtium is expected to preferentially remain in its neutral state and form instead, forming a strong Ds–C bond with some multiple bond character.

Physical and atomic
Darmstadtium is expected to be a solid under normal conditions and to crystallize in the body-centered cubic structure, unlike its lighter congeners which crystallize in the face-centered cubic structure, because it is expected to have different electron charge densities from them. It should be a very heavy metal with a density of around 26–27 g/cm3. In comparison, the densest known element that has had its density measured, osmium, has a density of only 22.61 g/cm3.

The outer electron configuration of darmstadtium is calculated to be 6d8 7s2, which obeys the Aufbau principle and does not follow platinum's outer electron configuration of 5d9 6s1. This is due to the relativistic stabilization of the 7s2 electron pair over the whole seventh period, so that none of the elements from 104 to 112 are expected to have electron configurations violating the Aufbau principle. The atomic radius of darmstadtium is expected to be around 132 pm.

Experimental chemistry
Unambiguous determination of the chemical characteristics of darmstadtium has yet to have been established due to the short half-lives of darmstadtium isotopes and a limited number of likely volatile compounds that could be studied on a very small scale. One of the few darmstadtium compounds that are likely to be sufficiently volatile is darmstadtium hexafluoride, as its lighter homologue platinum hexafluoride is volatile above 60 °C and therefore the analogous compound of darmstadtium might also be sufficiently volatile; a volatile octafluoride  might also be possible. For chemical studies to be carried out on a transactinide, at least four atoms must be produced, the half-life of the isotope used must be at least 1 second, and the rate of production must be at least one atom per week. Even though the half-life of 281Ds, the most stable confirmed darmstadtium isotope, is 14 seconds, long enough to perform chemical studies, another obstacle is the need to increase the rate of production of darmstadtium isotopes and allow experiments to carry on for weeks or months so that statistically significant results can be obtained. Separation and detection must be carried out continuously to separate out the darmstadtium isotopes and have automated systems experiment on the gas-phase and solution chemistry of darmstadtium, as the yields for heavier elements are predicted to be smaller than those for lighter elements; some of the separation techniques used for bohrium and hassium could be reused. However, the experimental chemistry of darmstadtium has not received as much attention as that of the heavier elements from copernicium to livermorium.

The more neutron-rich darmstadtium isotopes are the most stable and are thus more promising for chemical studies. However, they can only be produced indirectly from the alpha decay of heavier elements,  and indirect synthesis methods are not as favourable for chemical studies as direct synthesis methods. The more neutron-rich isotopes 276Ds and 277Ds might be produced directly in the reaction between thorium-232 and calcium-48, but the yield was expected to be low. Following several unsuccessful attempts, 276Ds was produced in this reaction in 2022 and observed to have a half-life less than a millisecond and a low yield, in agreement with predictions. Additionally, 277Ds was successfully synthesized using indirect methods (as a granddaughter of 285Fl) and found to have a short half-life of 3.5 ms, not long enough to perform chemical studies. The only known darmstadtium isotope with a half-life long enough for chemical research is 281Ds, which would have to be produced as the granddaughter of 289Fl.

title: Darmstadtium


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Broca's area

Broca's area, or the Broca area (,  also,  ), is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually the left, of the brain with functions linked to speech production.

Language processing has been linked to Broca's area since Pierre Paul Broca reported impairments in two patients. They had lost the ability to speak after injury to the posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pars triangularis) (BA45) of the brain. Since then, the approximate region he identified has become known as Broca's area, and the deficit in language production as Broca's aphasia, also called expressive aphasia. Broca's area is now typically defined in terms of the pars opercularis and pars triangularis of the inferior frontal gyrus, represented in Brodmann's cytoarchitectonic map as Brodmann area 44 and Brodmann area 45 of the dominant hemisphere.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has shown language processing to also involve the third part of the inferior frontal gyrus the pars orbitalis, as well as the ventral part of BA6 and these are now often included in a larger area called Broca's region.

Studies of chronic aphasia have implicated an essential role of Broca's area in various speech and language functions. Further, fMRI studies have also identified activation patterns in Broca's area associated with various language tasks. However, slow destruction of Broca's area by brain tumors can leave speech relatively intact, suggesting its functions can shift to nearby areas in the brain.

Structure
Broca's area is often identified by visual inspection of the topography of the brain either by macrostructural landmarks such as sulci or by the specification of coordinates in a particular reference space. The currently used Talairach and Tournoux atlas projects Brodmann's cytoarchitectonic map onto a template brain. Because Brodmann's parcelation was based on subjective visual inspection of cytoarchitectonic borders and also Brodmann analyzed only one hemisphere of one brain, the result is imprecise. Further, because of considerable variability across brains in terms of shape, size, and position relative to sulcal and gyral structure, a resulting localization precision is limited.

Nevertheless, Broca's area in the left hemisphere and its homologue in the right hemisphere are designations usually used to refer to the triangular part of inferior frontal gyrus (PTr) and the opercular part of inferior frontal gyrus (POp). The PTr and POp are defined by structural landmarks that only probabilistically divide the inferior frontal gyrus into anterior and posterior cytoarchitectonic areas of 45 and 44, respectively, by Brodmann's classification scheme.

Area 45 receives more afferent connections from the prefrontal cortex, the superior temporal gyrus, and the superior temporal sulcus, compared to area 44, which tends to receive more afferent connections from motor, somatosensory, and inferior parietal regions.

The differences between area 45 and 44 in cytoarchitecture and in connectivity suggest that these areas might perform different functions. Indeed, recent neuroimaging studies have shown that the PTr and Pop, corresponding to areas 45 and 44, respectively, play different functional roles in the human with respect to language comprehension and action recognition/understanding.

The Broca's area is about 20% larger in women than in men.

Language comprehension
For a long time, it was assumed that the role of Broca's area was more devoted to language production than language comprehension. However, there is evidence to demonstrate that Broca's area also plays a significant role in language comprehension. Patients with lesions in Broca's area who exhibit agrammatical speech production also show inability to use syntactic information to determine the meaning of sentences. Also, a number of neuroimaging studies have implicated an involvement of Broca's area, particularly of the pars opercularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus, during the processing of complex sentences. Further, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments have shown that highly ambiguous sentences result in a more activated inferior frontal gyrus. Therefore, the activity level in the inferior frontal gyrus and the level of lexical ambiguity are directly proportional to each other, because of the increased retrieval demands associated with highly ambiguous content.

There is also specialisation for particular aspects of comprehension within Broca's area. Work by Devlin et al. (2003) showed in a repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) study that there was an increase in reaction times when performing a semantic task under rTMS aimed at the pars triangularis (situated in the anterior part of Broca's area). The increase in reaction times is indicative that that particular area is responsible for processing that cognitive function. Disrupting these areas via TMS disrupts computations performed in the areas leading to an increase in time needed to perform the computations (reflected in reaction times). Later work by Nixon et al. (2004) showed that when the pars opercularis (situated in the posterior part of Broca's area) was stimulated under rTMS there was an increase in reaction times in a phonological task. Gough et al. (2005) performed an experiment combining elements of these previous works in which both phonological and semantic tasks were performed with rTMS stimulation directed at either the anterior or the posterior part of Broca's area. The results from this experiment conclusively distinguished anatomical specialisation within Broca's area for different components of language comprehension. Here the results showed that under rTMS stimulation: To summarise, the work above shows anatomical specialisation in Broca's area for language comprehension, with the anterior part of Broca's area responsible for understanding the meaning of words (semantics) and the posterior part of Broca's area responsible for understanding how words sound (phonology).
 * Semantic tasks only showed a decrease in reaction times when stimulation was aimed at the anterior part of Broca's area (where a decrease of 10% (50 ms) was seen compared to a no-TMS control group)
 * Phonological tasks showed a decrease in reaction times when stimulation was aimed at the posterior part of Broca's area (where a decrease of 6% (30 ms) was seen compared to control)

Action recognition and production
Experiments have indicated that Broca's area is involved in various cognitive and perceptual tasks. One important contribution of Brodmann's area 44 is also found in the motor-related processes. Observation of meaningful hand shadows resembling moving animals activates frontal language area, demonstrating that Broca's area indeed plays a role in interpreting action of others. An activation of BA 44 was also reported during execution of grasping and manipulation.

Speech-associated gestures
It has been speculated that because speech-associated gestures could possibly reduce lexical or sentential ambiguity, comprehension should improve in the presence of speech-associated gestures. As a result of improved comprehension, the involvement of Broca's area should be reduced.

Many neuroimaging studies have also shown activation of Broca's area when representing meaningful arm gestures. A recent study has shown evidence that word and gesture are related at the level of translation of particular gesture aspects such as its motor goal and intention. This finding helps explain why, when this area is defective, those who use sign language also have language deficits. This finding, that aspects of gestures are translated in words within Broca's area, also explains language development in terms of evolution. Indeed, many authors have proposed that speech evolved from a primitive communication that arose from gestures. (See below.)

Speaking without Broca's area
Damage to Broca's area is commonly associated with telegraphic speech made up of content vocabulary. For example, a person with Broca's aphasia may say something like, "Drive, store. Mom." meaning to say, "My mom drove me to the store today." Therefore, the content of the information is correct, but the grammar and fluidity of the sentence is missing.

The essential role of the Broca's area in speech production has been questioned since it can be destroyed while leaving language nearly intact. In one case of a computer engineer, a slow-growing glioma tumor was removed. The tumor and the surgery destroyed the left inferior and middle frontal gyrus, the head of the caudate nucleus, the anterior limb of the internal capsule, and the anterior insula. However, there were minimal language problems three months after removal and the individual returned to his professional work. These minor problems include the inability to create syntactically complex sentences including more than two subjects, multiple causal conjunctions, or reported speech. These were explained by researchers as due to working memory problems. They also attributed his lack of problems to extensive compensatory mechanisms enabled by neural plasticity in the nearby cerebral cortex and a shift of some functions to the homologous area in the right hemisphere.

Stuttering
A speech disorder known as stuttering is seen to be associated with underactivity in Broca's area.

Aphasia
Aphasia is an acquired language disorder affecting all modalities such as writing, reading, speaking, and listening and results from brain damage. It is often a chronic condition that creates changes in all areas of one's life.

Expressive aphasia vs. other aphasias
Patients with expressive aphasia, also known as Broca's aphasia, are individuals who know "what they want to say, they just cannot get it out". They are typically able to comprehend words, and sentences with a simple syntactic structure (see above), but are more or less unable to generate fluent speech. Other symptoms that may be present include problems with fluency, articulation, word-finding, word repetition, and producing and comprehending complex grammatical sentences, both orally and in writing.

This specific group of symptoms distinguishes those who have expressive aphasia from individuals with other types of aphasia. There are several distinct "types" of aphasia, and each type is characterized by a different set of language deficits. Although those who have expressive aphasia tend to retain good spoken language comprehension, other types of aphasia can render patients completely unable to understand any language at all, unable to understand any spoken language (auditory verbal agnosia),  whereas still other types preserve language comprehension, but with deficits. People with expressive aphasia may struggle less with reading and writing (see alexia) than those with other types of aphasia. Although individuals with expressive aphasia tend to have a good ability to self-monitor their language output (they "hear what they say" and make corrections), other types of aphasics can seem entirely unaware of their language deficits.

In the classical sense, expressive aphasia is the result of injury to Broca's area; it is often the case that lesions in specific brain areas cause specific, dissociable symptoms, although case studies show there is not always a one-to-one mapping between lesion location and aphasic symptoms. The correlation between damage to certain specific brain areas (usually in the left hemisphere) and the development of specific types of aphasia makes it possible to deduce (albeit very roughly) the location of a suspected brain lesion based only on the presence (and severity) of a certain type of aphasia, though this is complicated by the possibility that a patient may have damage to a number of brain areas and may exhibit symptoms of more than one type of aphasia. The examination of lesion data in order to deduce which brain areas are essential in the normal functioning of certain aspects of cognition is called the deficit-lesion method; this method is especially important in the branch of neuroscience known as aphasiology. Cognitive science – to be specific, cognitive neuropsychology – are branches of neuroscience that also make extensive use of the deficit-lesion method.

Newer implications related to lesions in Broca's area
Since studies carried out in the late 1970s it has been understood that the relationship between Broca's area and Broca's aphasia is not as consistent as once thought. Lesions to Broca's area alone do not result in Broca's aphasia, nor do Broca's aphasic patients necessarily have lesions in Broca's area. Lesions to Broca's area alone are known to produce a transient mutism that resolves within 3–6 weeks. This discovery suggests that Broca's area may be included in some aspect of verbalization or articulation; however, this does not address its part in sentence comprehension. Still, Broca's area frequently emerges in functional imaging studies of sentence processing. However, it also becomes activated in word-level tasks. This suggests that Broca's area is not dedicated to sentence processing alone, but supports a function common to both. In fact, Broca's area can show activation in such non-linguistic tasks as imagery of motion.

Considering the hypothesis that Broca's area may be most involved in articulation, its activation in all of these tasks may be due to subjects' covert articulation while formulating a response. Despite this caveat, a consensus seems to be forming that whatever role Broca's area may play, it may relate to known working memory functions of the frontal areas. (There is a wide distribution of Talairach coordinates reported in the functional imaging literature that are referred to as part of Broca's area.) The processing of a passive voice sentence, for example, may require working memory to assist in the temporary retention of information while other relevant parts of the sentence are being manipulated (i.e. to resolve the assignment of thematic roles to arguments). Miyake, Carpenter, and Just have proposed that sentence processing relies on such general verbal working memory mechanisms, while Caplan and Waters consider Broca's area to be involved in working memory specifically for syntactic processing. Friederici (2002) breaks Broca's area into its component regions and suggests that Brodmann's area 44 is involved in working memory for both phonological and syntactic structure. This area becomes active first for phonology and later for syntax as the time course for the comprehension process unfolds. Brodmann's area 45 and Brodmann's area 47 are viewed as being specifically involved in working memory for semantic features and thematic structure where processes of syntactic reanalysis and repair are required. These areas come online after Brodmann's area 44 has finished its processing role and are active when comprehension of complex sentences must rely on general memory resources. All of these theories indicate a move towards a view that syntactic comprehension problems arise from a computational rather than a conceptual deficit. Newer theories take a more dynamic view of how the brain integrates different linguistic and cognitive components and are examining the time course of these operations.

Neurocognitive studies have already implicated frontal areas adjacent to Broca's area as important for working memory in non-linguistic as well as linguistic tasks. Cabeza and Nyberg's analysis of imaging studies of working memory supports the view that BA45/47 is recruited for selecting or comparing information, while BA9/46 might be more involved in the manipulation of information in working memory. Since large lesions are typically required to produce a Broca's aphasia, it is likely that these regions may also become compromised in some patients and may contribute to their comprehension deficits for complex morphosyntactic structures.

Broca's area as a key center in the linking of phonemic sequences
Broca's area has been previously associated with a variety of processes, including phonological segmentation, syntactic processing, and unification, all of which involve segmenting and linking different types of linguistic information. Although repeating and reading single words does not engage semantic and syntactic processing, it does require an operation linking phonemic sequences with motor gestures. Findings indicate that this linkage is coordinated by Broca's area through reciprocal interactions with temporal and frontal cortices responsible for phonemic and articulatory representations, respectively, including interactions with the motor cortex before the actual act of speech. Based on these unique findings, it has been proposed that Broca's area is not the seat of articulation, but rather is a key node in manipulating and forwarding neural information across large-scale cortical networks responsible for key components of speech production.

History
In a study published in 2007, the preserved brains of both Leborgne and Lelong (patients of Broca) were reinspected using high-resolution volumetric MRI. The purpose of this study was to scan the brains in three dimensions and to identify the extent of both cortical and subcortical lesions in more detail. The study also sought to locate the exact site of the lesion in the frontal lobe in relation to what is now called Broca's area with the extent of subcortical involvement.

Louis Victor Leborgne (Tan)
Leborgne was a patient of Broca's. At 30 years old, he was almost completely unable to produce any words or phrases. He was able to repetitively produce only the word temps (French word for "time"). After his death, a neurosyphilitic lesion was discovered on the surface of his left frontal lobe.

Lelong
Lelong was another patient of Broca's. He also exhibited reduced productive speech. He could only say five words, 'yes', 'no', 'three', 'always', and 'lelo' (a mispronunciation of his own name). A lesion within the lateral frontal lobe was discovered during Lelong's autopsy. Broca's previous patient, Leborgne, had a lesion in the same area of his frontal lobe. These two cases led Broca to believe that speech was localized to this particular area.

MRI findings
Examination of the brains of Broca's two historic patients with high-resolution MRI has produced several interesting findings. First, the MRI findings suggest that other areas besides Broca's area may also have contributed to the patients' reduced productive speech. This finding is significant because it has been found that, though lesions to Broca's area alone can possibly cause temporary speech disruption, they do not result in severe speech arrest. Therefore, there is a possibility that the aphasia denoted by Broca as an absence of productive speech also could have been influenced by the lesions in the other region. Another finding is that the region, which was once considered to be critical for speech by Broca, is not precisely the same region as what is now known as Broca's area. This study provides further evidence to support the claim that language and cognition are far more complicated than once thought and involve various networks of brain regions.

Evolution of language
The pursuit of a satisfying theory that addresses the origin of language in humans has led to the consideration of a number of evolutionary "models". These models attempt to show how modern language might have evolved, and a common feature of many of these theories is the idea that vocal communication was initially used to complement a far more dominant mode of communication through gesture. Human language might have evolved as the "evolutionary refinement of an implicit communication system already present in lower primates, based on a set of hand/mouth goal-directed action representations."

"Hand/mouth goal-directed action representations" is another way of saying "gestural communication", "gestural language", or "communication through body language". The recent finding that Broca's area is active when people are observing others engaged in meaningful action is evidence in support of this idea. It was hypothesized that a precursor to the modern Broca's area was involved in translating gestures into abstract ideas by interpreting the movements of others as meaningful action with an intelligent purpose. It is argued that over time the ability to predict the intended outcome and purpose of a set of movements eventually gave this area the capability to deal with truly abstract ideas, and therefore (eventually) became capable of associating sounds (words) with abstract meanings. The observation that frontal language areas are activated when people observe hand shadows is further evidence that human language may have evolved from existing neural substrates that evolved for the purpose of gesture recognition. The study, therefore, claims that Broca's area is the "motor center for speech", which assembles and decodes speech sounds in the same way it interprets body language and gestures. Consistent with this idea is that the neural substrate that regulated motor control in the common ancestor of apes and humans was most likely modified to enhance cognitive and linguistic ability. Studies of speakers of American Sign Language and English suggest that the human brain recruited systems that had evolved to perform more basic functions much earlier; these various brain circuits, according to the authors, were tapped to work together in creating language.

Another recent finding has showed significant areas of activation in subcortical and neocortical areas during the production of communicative manual gestures and vocal signals in chimpanzees. Further, the data indicating that chimpanzees intentionally produce manual gestures as well as vocal signals to communicate with humans suggests that the precursors to human language are present at both the behavioral and neuronanatomical levels. More recently, the neocortical distribution of activity-dependent gene expression in marmosets provided direct evidence that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which comprises Broca's area in humans and has been associated with auditory processing of species-specific vocalizations and orofacial control in macaques, is engaged during vocal output in a New World monkey. These findings putatively set the origin of vocalization-related neocortical circuits to at least 35 million years ago, when the Old and New World monkey lineages split.

title: Broca's area