Scope and Content Note
The papers of the Metropolitan Leontiĭ (1876-1965) span the years 1855-1962, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the years 1890-1960. Leontiĭ's secular name was Leonid Ieronimovich Turkevich. He assumed the name Leontiĭ (often spelled Leonty) when he took his monastic vows in 1933.
Leonid Turkevich was born in Volhynia, then part of the Russian Empire, today part of Ukraine. After seminary studies, two teaching positions, and an appointment as a parish priest in Russia, he was chosen by Bishop Tikhon of the North American diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church to become rector of the new Orthodox seminary in Minneapolis. Thereafter, Leontiĭ's life was dedicated to the Orthodox Church in America. The Russian Revolution created great chaos in the Russian Orthodox Church. The American diocese became estranged from the mother church in Russia, leading to schisms in American Orthodoxy. The confusion created by the Revolution sparked the separation of many ethnic groups from the Russian Orthodox Church into their own national churches. Within Russian Orthodoxy, the Living Church (attached to the Soviet-controlled Russian Church) and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia both claimed to hold legitimate leadership of Russian Orthodoxy in America. Most parishes, however, remained with the leadership of the original American diocese which claimed autonomy and wished to establish a pan-national American Orthodox Church. Leontiĭ, as an educator, editor of the Russian-American Orthodox Messenger, and leading advisor of the ruling bishops, advocated autonomy. When elected Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America in 1950, he continued the pursuit of full Orthodox autonomy, or autocephaly, which was eventually realized in 1970.
Almost all of Metropolitan Leontiĭ's papers are in bound volumes of correspondence records and diaries. The correspondence records are small books arranged and numbered sequentially by Leontiĭ with a comprehensive numerical listing of the Metropolitan's outgoing letters, 1921-1960. Most entries are annotated, and many, especially in the 1930s, include complete copies of letters sent.
The books containing Leontiĭ's correspondence records and diaries served a variety of purposes. Leontiĭ's poetry is scattered throughout the diaries and correspondence records. Financial notes appear in the correspondence records, and occasional correspondence records appear in the diaries.
Leontiĭ served as a representative of the American diocese at the Great Sobor in Moscow in 1917-1918. This meeting of Russian Orthodox Church leaders convened during the Provisional Government and remained in session during and after the Bolshevik revolution in October. At the Great Sobor, church leaders worked to organize the church as a body separated from the state. Metropolitan Leontiĭ's papers contain two notebooks from the Great Sobor, most of them written in Russian shorthand.
Russian shorthand also appears in several of the notebooks from Leontiĭ's student days in Volhynia and Kiev. One was kept by his brother Benedict. Benedict Turkevich became an Archpriest in the Russian Orthodox Church and preceded his brother in the North American missionary field, serving from 1898-1914. In 1914 he returned to Russia and after the Revolution settled in Warsaw, Poland.
The papers are almost entirely in Russian or Russian shorthand, with only a small amount of material in English. Many of the dates on the documents are based on the Julian calendar or written as both Julian and Gregorian dates (old style, new style).