After the establishment of Soviet power, Orthodox communities faced sweeping persecution: the closure of churches and monasteries, the confiscation of church property, and the arrest and execution of clergy and faithful.
In these new conditions, differing approaches to relations with the state emerged within Orthodox society.
Some churchmen sought to preserve the possibility of open worship through agreements with the authorities. Others held that any interference by the state apparatus in matters of church faith and government was unacceptable.
The events of 1927 proved especially significant, when Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), who was then administering the Moscow Patriarchate, published a declaration of loyalty to the Soviet authorities.
The document provoked serious disagreement within the Church.
Some of the clergy and laity refused to accept the course in relations with the state chosen by the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate. Certain communities ceased open worship and continued their religious life in secret.
These groups have entered history under the collective name of the True Orthodox, or Catacomb, Church.
The catacomb movement was not a single centralised organisation. It brought together various communities, spiritual traditions and groups of believers who sought to preserve their religious independence under pressure from the state.
It is with this experience of resistance to the subjection of the Church to political power that the AOC connects one of the most important strands of its spiritual inheritance.
For the future founders of the Apostolic Orthodox Church, the memory of persecution and of the independent Orthodox communities became the ground of their conviction that church life must be built on faith, conciliarity and the free choice of the human person, and not on a coercive state system.