This is because people who called their existence "catacomb" compared it with the life of early Christians, who allegedly secretly gathered during the persecution to hold religious ceremonies in the catacombs of Rome. So, the persecutions that befell the Church under Soviet rule were likened to the persecutions of the first centuries of Christianity. According to historian , the term "catacombs" and its derivatives were a local Petrograd/Leningrad neologism, where there were many active church intellectuals who could appreciate the diversity of meanings associated with this word. Meanwhile, in the 1920s and 1930s, the term "catacomb church" was not widely used; other expressions were used more often. In letters sent during 1923 to the Commission for Religious Cults under the Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR from North Caucasus and from Middle Asia, and later from the Central Black Earth Region, there were references to "Old Orthodox" and "True Orthodox Christians" who opposed themselves to the Renovationists. In these documents, it is not the legal position of the parish that comes to the fore, but its attitude to the Renovationist Higher Church Administration and attitude to the "Living Church". In addition, opponents of the Renovationists used the self-designation "Tikhonites". The term "Catacomb Church" began to be actively used in the works of , a figure of the Josephite movement who fled to Western Europe in 1944, under the influence of whose works this term became widespread in emigrant periodicals. Other emigrants of the second wave of Russian emigration noted the purely foreign nature of the expression "catacomb church". Since its resumption in 1947, the magazine Orthodox Russia had been running the column "And the Light Shines in Darkness" with the subtitle "Soviet Catacombs of the Spirit", in which everything related to the everyday side of the underground Soviet church life was published. The catacomb church was described as the only force opposing the godless regime. In the works of Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) authors, the typical image of the catacomb church was formed: ecclesiastical and political opposition to the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate, illegality from the point of view of Soviet legislation, and consistent anti-Soviet sentiments of its members. Such "catacombists" were perceived as a staunch fighter against the regime. In this form, the expression "catacomb church" became an instrument of ideological polemics used by the ROCOR. According to the ideologists of the ROCOR, the powerful