1943 Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church

The 1943 meeting of the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church held on September 8, 1943, was the first sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church since the 1917–18 Local Council.

[1] The assembly also excommunicated everyone who collaborated with the Axis powers,[2] and reestablished the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The assembly was attended by 19 bishops: all the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church who at that time held their positions on the territories not occupied by Nazi troops, except Bishop Photius (Topiro) of Kuban and Krasnodar, whose reasons of absence are unknown, and Archbishop Barlaam (Pikalov) of Sverdlovsk, assigned to his office from the Komi ASSR field-crop-walkers one day before the opening of the Council.

Besides the bishops Archpriest Nikolai Kolchitsky, rector of the Yelokhovo Cathedral in Moscow also participated in the assembly.

He became a Synod member as the head on the Property Management Directorate of the Moscow Patriarchate.