Georgy Ivanovich Maximov was born in 1861 in Stanitsa Nogavskaya in the Don Host Oblast of the Russian Empire to a Cossack family.

In 1919, he became the 23rd Bishop of the Yekaterinoslav and Novomoskovsk (1919 – November 1920)[1] After the October Revolution in 1917, Germogen condemned Bolsheviks′ campaign against Cossacks in the course of the Russian Civil War.

In the spring of 1920, he went from Novorossiysk to Yalta by boat (from whence the final evacuation of the White Guard troops took place in November 1920), then on to Constantinople and later to the city of Thessaloniki, Greece.

[4] Later that year, he was elevated to the rank of Archbishop and appointed to a position in the United States, but he declined to assume it citing illness; afterwards he resided in the Novo Hopovo monastery, Serbia, in retirement.

On 3 April 1942, the Ante Pavelić government of the Independent State of Croatia adopted a law that established the "Croatian Orthodox Church".

[13] On 15 December 2010, the Synod of Bishops of the Russian True Orthodox Church issued an official document of the suspension of that Act: "The Synod regrets the hasty decision and requests forgiveness from the clergy and laity of the brotherly Serbian True Orthodox Church (SIPC) and hereby suspends the Act".