1917–18 Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church

Its most important decision was to restore the Patriarchate in the Russian Church, thereby ending a period of c. 300 years when the Russian Church was governed directly by the Emperor through the Most Holy Synod as a result of Peter the Great's ecclesiastical reforms.

The Council coincided with important events in Russian history such as the continuation of the war with Imperial Germany, the Kornilov affair in August 1917, the proclamation of the Republic in Russia (1 September 1917), the fall of the Provisional Government and the October Revolution, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, the publication of the Decree on Separation of Church and State and the beginning of the Civil War.

The council, preparation for which had begun in the early 1900s, opened when antimonarchist sentiments both in society and in the Church were dominant.

It was attended by the head of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, Interior Minister Avksentiev, representatives of the press and the diplomatic corps.

The debate on the restoration of the Patriarchate was not a foregone conclusion at the beginning: opponents of the patriarchate pointed to the threat that it could pose to the conciliar nature of the Russian Church and even to the danger of absolutism in the Church; Professor Nikolai Kuznetsov believed that there was a real danger that the Holy Synod, as an executive authority acting in the period between the Councils, might turn into a simple advisory body under the Patriarch, and that that would also be a diminution of the rights of bishops members of the Synod.