[Florin-Ionut]

I found an interesting post on orthodoxchristianity.net, regarding the frequency of receiving Communion in Russia over the last three centuries:

"This comports well with what I know, and I would be interested to hear what others have to say about this.

It would seem that from the earliest days of the church, weekly communion was expected. The catechumens and those who were not members of the Church were dismissed; only the faithful remained for Communion and from the language of the prayers, which speak of making one worthy to partake, and thanking God for what one has just received, it seems that the expectation is that everyone who was present from that time forward was there for the purpose of communing. And I would be interested in hearing from others how the 1:1 confession/communion requirement became established. It doesn't seem that it was always that way during the earliest times, and it doesn't seem that it was almost presented as a "reward" for having fulfilled other requirements, but as a sacrament which contained the power of healing. Otherwise, some of the pre-communion prayers don't make a lot of sense.
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The tradition of "infrequent communion" in the Russian Orthodox Church may stem, at least in part, from the events of the early 1720s. At that time, as is well known, Tsar Peter the Great abolished the then vacant-Patriarchate of Moscow and replaced it with a government department, the Most Holy Synod, which was a sort of college of bishops and clergy led by a civil servant appointed by the Tsar, given the title "Procurator of the Most Holy Synod."

This arrangement lasted from 1721 until 1917, when the Patriarchate was restored following the Russian Revolution. The Most Holy Synod implemented a number of rules, including requirements that priests keep registers of births, marriages, and deaths. A copy of these was kept at the parish and then, each year, the priest made a copy of these records for the previous year and mailed them to the diocesan consistory, where they were filed. Furthermore, to maintain the Orthodoxy of the population, the Most Holy Synod decreed that the people must commune yearly, in their village parish church, and that they must confess to the priest preparatory to this communion. The priest was, again, responsible for making a list, the "Confession List" ("исповедные ведомости"), which had everyone listed who lived in the boundaries of the parish, by household, with their name, patronymic, and age. (These records are great for genealogy!) The priest was responsible for seeing to it that each person confessed during Lent each year or, if they didn't, noting in the record why they did not make their confession. These lists were then forwarded annually to the diocesan consistory for review. (I think it helped them determine whether there might be subversive elements in the village.) With the collapse of the Russian Empire, the archives of the diocesan consistories were transferred to the USSR's various governmental archives. Since 1991, they are accessible to the public.
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I think that these directions were carried out in such a way that the villagers were convinced that this confession and communion should be carried out once annually, and, in many cases, the "minimum" requirement became the "standard" requirement. This, in turn, was transplanted to America by the immigrants.

The churches I'm familiar with now are trying to reverse the trend that developed under the rule of the Most Holy Synod, and restore weekly communion unless someone has committed a grave sin that would counsel against it. In this understanding, confession should be made as-needed, at least monthly. This I analogize to the old maxim, "Take a bath once a week on Saturday night, whether you need it or not." The idea is that, of course you need a regular bath, as you get dirty every day, but that the state of your dirtiness, whether a little better or worse, doesn't dictate whether you might need a good cleansing anyway. There is always SOME dirt there, in other words -- something that needs cleaning/healing."