On October 16, 1799, the independent Saratov and Penza diocese was separated from Tambov.

However, “due to the lack of convenient premises for bishops and a spiritual consistory in Saratov,” the first bishop of the new see, Gaiy (Tokaov), achieved the move of the see to Penza and in 1803 the name of the diocese was changed to Penza and Saratov.

The Secret Committee on Cases of Dissenters drew special attention of Emperor Nicholas I to the strengthening of the schism in the Saratov Oblast, as a result of which the sovereign ordered on October 20, 1828 to restore an independent department in Saratov.

By the end of the 1930s, there was not a single functioning church left in the Saratov diocese; most of the clergy were either shot or were in camps and exile.

During wartime, church-government relations began to gradually change, but the bishop appointed to Saratov in 1941, after a four-year break, could not arrive in his cathedral city, since there were no functioning churches either in it or in the Saratov Oblast.