Article examines the circumstances of the inspection and seizure of the relics of St. Sergius of Radonezh by the Soviet authorities in the in the midst of the campaign for the opening of the relics of Orthodox saints, the place of this action in the general anti- ecclesiastical policy of the Soviet government. Particular attention is paid to the attempts of the Orthodox clergy and believers to defend the saint's relics from seizure and abduction from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, as well as the efforts of the hierarchy of the Church to bring them back in a short period of warming of the church-state relations in the second half of the 1940s.