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MOSCOW (AFP) - The domestic and exiled branches of the Russian Orthodox Church were formally reunited here Thursday, ending an 80-year split over communism and sealing a reconciliation strongly backed by the Kremlin.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, and the leader of the church's branch in exile, Metropolitan Lavr, signed the reunification agreement during an elaborate ceremony in Moscow's largest cathedral.

"By this Act, canonical communion within the Local Russian Orthodox Church is hereby restored," the act read, according to a transcript published on the web site of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

The agreement, which became possible following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, welcomes almost half a million believers back into the Moscow fold and ends decades of recriminations over collaboration with the Bolshevik regime.

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia was formed by clergy who fled the atheist Bolshevik Revolution and split with the Moscow patriarchate after its 1927 declaration of submission to the Soviet authorities.

After decades of acrimony, contacts between the Churches were officially renewed in 2003, with the two agreeing to call the 1927 declaration "a tragic compromise."

The reunification is an important symbolic victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who attended the service. He regards the Orthodox Church as a key pillar of post-Soviet Russian society and has prioritized the promotion of Russian culture abroad.

The unification deal was sealed in 2006 when 150 delegates from North and South America, Australia, Europe and ex-Soviet republics voted in favour at the conference in San Francisco.

However, some elements of the emigre clergy remain against the move, suspecting some Orthodox priests who also served during the Soviet regime of collaborating with the KGB secret service.