The council, preparation for which had begun in the early 1900s, opened when antimonarchist sentiments both in society and in the Church were dominant. The Bolsheviks, whose actions were directly condemned by the council (or personally by the Patriarch), did not put direct obstacles to the sessions of the council. The Council acted in response to some of these events. The Council coincided with important events in Russian history such as the continuation of the war with 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 the separation of church and state and the beginning of the Civil War. The council's sessions were held from August 1917 until mid-September 1918, mainly in the Moscow Diocesan House in Likhov Lane in Moscow. 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. Its most important decision was to restore the Patriarchy in the Russian Church, thereby ending a period of c.

It opened on 15 August 1917 ( O.S.) in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. The 1917–1918 Local Council of the Orthodox Church of Russia (Russian: Поместный собор Православной российской церкви) was the first Local Council of the Russian Church since the end of the 17th century.

Patriarch management