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ROCOR historian Fr. Alexey Young, in his history of the ROCOR, writes: "In the early 1920s, the American Church came under the jurisdiction of the Administration Abroad, which took an active administrative role in overseeing its American 'branch'—particularly on disciplinary questions such as divorce and the establishment of a new See in Alaska" (Young, p. 33). Young then writes that Platon was appointed by the Church Abroad as the leader in North America, but unbeknownst to his fellows in the Synod, "was at the same time seeking official appointment directly from Patriarch Tikhon himself. When the Patriarch refused to interfere in the decision of the Church Abroad, saying he 'did not wish to go over their heads,' Platon suddenly produced an ''ukaz'', allegedly from Tikhon, appointing him as sole and independent head of the Church in America" (ibid.). Young continues, writing, that at first the ROCOR synod accepted the decree in good faith, but its authenticity was called severely into question when in 1924 "an actual decree from the Patriarch in Moscow deposed Platon 'for having engaged in public acts of counter-revolution directed against the Soviet government'" (ibid.). An American court also ruled subsequently that the ''ukaz'' produced by Platon was a forgery. "To deal with this embarrassment, Platon convoked the Detroit ''Sobor'' in April of the same year, with the purpose of declaring the Russian Church in America 'temporarily autonomous'—that is, free of ''both'' Moscow and Karlovci" (ibid.). This sobor is listed in the archives of the OCA as the "4th All-American Sobor."
In 1926 in Karlovtsy, the ROCOR bishops met together. Platon was present and asked to renounce the "temporary autonomy" that had been proclaimed by his council in 1924. Upon his refusal, the assembled bishops condemned the Detroit sobor as "extremely dangerous and harmful for the interests of the Russian Church in America" (quoted in Young, p. 34). Platon responded with another sobor in America in January of 1927 which labelled the ROCOR as "uncanonical." One of Platon's bishops, [[Apollinary (KoshevovKoshevoy) of San Francisco|Apollinary (KoshevovKoshevoy)]], dissented, proclaiming his loyalty to the ROCOR, and was expelled from the Metropolia.
That the Metropolia was part of the ROCOR during this period is attested to by St. [[John Maximovitch]] in his reference to the 1926 split: "Notwithstanding the departure from the Church Abroad — and, one may say, from the Russian Church altogether — of Metropolitans Evlogy and Platon with their followers, the Russian Orthdox [''sic''] Church Outside of Russia remains the free part of the Russian Church."[http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/roca_history.aspx]