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Basic history;

The Russian church got started in North America while alaska was still part of Russia. That missionary church was pretty wide spread and active by the time of the 1917 revolution.

During the 1917 revolution many priests and bishops managed to escape as the Soviets took control (sadly thousands did not).

Anyway in the subsequent years after the revolution the churches outside Russia were governing themselves until some point when the militant athiests would be gone and the church could be re-established.

This group split into two churches (over numerous issues polical and religious). The OCA (Orthodox Church in America also known as the metropolia) and ROCOR (the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, also call the SOBOR).

In the meantime Stalin allowed the church to reopen during WWII in Russia though it was compromised to say the least. This church became known as the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) (which sort of recycled a name that had already gone out of use before the revolution)

By 1970 the OCA was willing to look past this and re-entered communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.

ROCOR began pondering a similar step following the fall of communism but for obvious reasons no one was so naive to think that the church had overnight become free and independant of the government; discussions however have been in the works off and on since 1991 (and probably before then even).

In 2001 in response to moves toward reunification some anti-reunion folks literally came up to ROCOR in NYC at night and took the just retired Metropolitan Vitaly literally in his pajamas and drove into the night. Shortly thereafter ROCE (or ROCOR-V) emerged with Metropolitan Vitaly aledgedly at its head.

Last year it was announced that on May 15 of this year the two will be reunifying (not simply being in communion; ROCOR will again be part of the Moscow Patriarchate-Russian Church).