Dimitry Pospielovsky - A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory and Practice II

SOVIET ANTIRELIGIOUS CAMPAIGNS AND
PERSECUTIONS
Also by Dimitry V. Pospielovsky
A HISTORY OF SOVIET ATHEISM IN THEORY AND
PRACTICE, AND THE BELIEVER
Volume 1: A HISTORY OF MARXIST-LENINIST ATHEISM
AND SOVIET ANTIRELIGIOUS POLICIES
Volume 3: SOVIET STUDIES ON THE CHURCH AND THE
BELIEVER'S RESPONSE TO ATHEISM (forthcoming)
THE RUSSIAN CHURCH UNDER THE SOVIET REGIME
(2 volumes)
RUSSIAN POLICE TRADE-UNIONISM: EXPERIMENT OR
PROVOCATION?
RUSSIA'S OTHER POETS (co-editor and co-translator)
Soviet Antireligious
Campaigns and
Persecutions
Volume 2 of A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory and Practice, and the Believer
Dimitry V. Pospielovsky
Professor in Modem European and Russian History
University of Western Ontario, Canada
M
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©Dimitry V. Pospielovsky 1988
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Pospielovsky, Dimitry V.
Soviet antireligious campaigns and
persecutions.-(A history of Soviet
atheism in theory and practice, and the
believer; v. 2).
1. Religion and state-Soviet Union-
History-20th century
I. Title II. Series
322'. 1'0947 BL65.S8
ISBN 978-0-333-44674-4 ISBN 978-1-349-19002-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19002-7
This modest summation of the persecutions of faith in the
USSR is dedicated to Alexander Ogorodnikov, Leonid Boro-
din, Valeri Senderov, Deacon Vladimir Rusak and countless
other Christians persecuted for their faith and for spreading
the word of God in the face of militant atheism.
Contents
General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work lX
Acknowledgements XVl
Preface XVlll
1 The Early Persecutions, 1971-21 1
2 Contempt and Hate Propaganda, 1919-39 19
3 Persecutions, 1921-41 47
The NEP Era ( 1921-8) 47
1929-41 61
4 An 'Interlude': From 1941 to Stalin's Death 91
5 Renewal of the Incendiary Propaganda, 1958-

85 98
Under Khrushchev 98
After Khrushchev 108
6 Persecutions under Khrushchev 121

The Closure of the Churches 122
Demoralizing the Remaining Parishes 128
Monasteries and Pilgrimages 135
Parents and Children 142
7 Persecutions after Khrushchev 145

The Closing of Churches 146
The Orthodox 146
The Old Believers 151
The Roman Catholics 152
The 'Unregistered' Ones 154
The Uniates 157
The 'True and Free' Adventists 157
The Evangelical Christian Baptists 159
The Pentecostals 162
Persecutions of Clergy and Laity 163
Vll
Vlll Contents
Epilogue 188
Appendix 1 193
Appendix2 213
Notes and References 229
Bibliography 260
Index 265
General Introduction to the
Three-Volume Work
Religious belief and the Churches have survived in the Soviet
Union in the face of almost seventy years of continuous
persecution, unprecedented in history in intensity, although
varying in degree and thrust, depending on the external and
internal circumstances. According to approximate calcula-
tions, given in our book on the history of the Russian Orthodox
Church under the Soviets, the toll of Orthodox clergy has been
in the region of 40 000 priests, probably as many monks and
nuns, and incalculable millions oflay believers. The number of
functioning Orthodox churches has been reduced from over
60 000 (this includes parish and monastic churches and
institutional chapels) before the revolution to less than 7000 in
the late 1970s. Other religions, except perhaps the Baptists,
have seen the numbers of their churches and temples reduced
by at least the same proportion. And yet in the last decade and a
half or so, more and more voices in the Soviet Union have been
heard claiming not only religious survival but even revival,
primarily of Christianity and Islam. According to all oral
evidence, both of Soviet-Russian clergy remaining in the Soviet
Union and of recent emigres, this neophytic phenomenon is
almost entirely limited to those under 40 years of age, while
their parents mostly remain outside any religion. Hence,
whatever the numbers and proportions, the current 'churchifi-
cation' of the intelligentsia is largely not a carry-over from one
generation to the next, nor is it a simple revival of a tradition,
because the tradition of the Russian intelligentsia, at least since
the 1860s, has been predominantly one of a rather passionate
atheism and positivism. 1
The main purpose of this study is a step-by-step presentation
and analysis of the changing styles, strategies and tactics of the
I. See Vekhi,acollection of essays on the Russian intelligentsia by N. A. Berdiaev, S. N.

Bulgakov, M. 0. Gershenzon, A. S. Izgoev, B. A. Kistiakovsky, P. B. Struve, S. L.
Frank (Moscow, 1909; repr.: Frankfurt/M.: Possev, 1967). Also: Jeffrey Brooks,
'Vekhi and the Vekhi Dispute', Suroey, vol.l9, no. I (86) London, Winter 1973.
IX
x General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work
never-ending Soviet attack on religion and on believers. This

will include as detailed and documented an account as possible
of the direct persecutions, of which the most massive occurred
in the following periods and under the following pretexts:
February 1918 to late 1920. A bloody attack on the clergy and
active laity was conducted under the pretext of their opposition
to communism, their real or alleged sympathy for the Whites,
and the resistance of lay believers to the nationalization of all
church property in accordance with the Soviet decree of 23
January 1918.
1921 to 1923. This wave of arrests of clergy and laity, with
executions of some of the most influential and popular church
leaders, was officially motivated by their resistance to the
confiscation of all church plate of any value, including
liturgical vessels.
1922 to 1926. Persecution of the traditional Orthodox
Church and her faithful clergy and laity for their refusal to join
the state-supported Renovationist schism.
1926 to 1927. Arrests, exile and imprisonment of masses of
bishops, as well as some regular parish clergy faithful to them,
for an attempt to elect a patriarch secretly.
1928 to 1934. Arrest and liquidation of clergy and lay activists
for refusing to accept Metropolitan Sergii's wording of the
Declaration of Loyalty to the Soviet State and for breaking
administrative connections with him.
1929 to 1930. The beginning of mass liquidation of rural
parishes and their clergy and lay supporters under the guise of
the collectivization and 'dekulakization' campaign.
1933 to 1934. Destruction of the remaining monastic
communities and the liquidation of monks and nuns, along
with many members of the urban and rural clergy, particularly
renowned preachers and spiritual fathers.
1936 to 1939. Almost total liquidation of religious temples,
clergy and active lay believers of all faiths.
1959 to 1964. Khrushchev's physical attack on the Church
and all other religious faiths, closure and destruction of the
majority of the temples reopened during the religiously
'tolerant' era of 1941 to 195 7, arrests and deportations of large
numbers of clergy and laity-all under the pretext of imminent
construction of communism, incompatible with faith in the
Supernatural.
General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work XI
These are just highlights of the most massive attacks, which

will be accounted for and discussed in greater detail in their
proper context.
The other aim of this study is to trace the continuing religious
life in the country: how the believers preserve their faith and
even multiply their numbers in these conditions; how, if at all,
they are affected by this aggressive state atheism and anti-
religious propaganda; finally, how and why there is growing
movement of adult baptisms and return to the Church after all
these years of concerted attack, and this despite the absence of
any organized religious education.
Finding sources for this study was a complex and uneven
process. There was no problem in locating masses of the
officially printed Soviet antireligious propaganda of all cate-
gories: from the allegedly scholarly studies of the Soviet
'religiologists' to the primitive attacks on religion in the mass
press and, in particular, in the Soviet specialized general
circulation antireligious journals, newspapers, brochures and
books. The available data on the direct Soviet persecutions of
the Church are more difficult to assemble. Only a very small
percentage can be obtained from official Soviet publications.
Official admissions of persecutions have been made only
where they could be blamed on the Church's hostility 'to the
young Soviet republic' (the Civil War Years), or on the
believers' resistance to the implementation of Soviet laws on the
nationalization of church property or confiscation of church
valuables (1918 to 1922), or, finally, on Stalin's excesses. But
even the gross understatement is the rule. Therefore, most of
the material on persecutions comes from testimonies of
witnesses, unofficial letters and secret diocesan reports smug-
gled abroad, the multiple samizdat publications of the last two
decades (which even include, on occasion, internal secret party
documents not meant for print, with open admissions of
persecutions) and statements (written and oral) by the emigres
from the Soviet Union of all periods.
Most of the existing Western studies of Soviet atheism limit
themselves to the official Soviet sources. Only a small minority
of Western scholars, such as Professor Bohdan Bociurkiw, the
Rev. Michael Bourdeaux and his co-workers at Keston College,
make wide use of samizdat in reporting persecutions of religion
in the Soviet Union; however, in most cases these relate to the
xn General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work
post-Stalin era. This study uncovers a considerable volume of

direct witness and documentation on the persecutions of the
1920s and 1930s, dispersed mostly in masses of Russian emigre
publications and archival collections pertaining to the time,
and largely forgotten and ignored until now. This author
firmly believes that only a combination of the material from the
official Soviet literature with the information collected in the
above fashion, followed by a systematic study of the persecu-
tions during each separate period of Soviet history in question,
will enable the reader to gain a realistic picture of the true
horrors and magnitude of the permanent Soviet war against
the Church.
As for the life of the Church and the believer under these
conditions, their attitudes, and the religious revival of the last
decades, here again most of the information comes from
samizdat 1 from all decades of the Soviet era, as well as from
interviews with Russian churchmen and religious intelligent-
sia, both those who remain in the USSR and recent emigres.
The wartime emigres and documents of the German occupy-
ing forces during the Second World War are also very
important sources for the religiosity of the life of the Church
from the 1920s to 1940s.
Soviet-Russian fine literature (the belles-lettres), particularly
of the last decade-and-a-half, has ever more frequently
reflected the growing interest in matters spiritual, the Church,
and Christian ethics of times past and present. This source has
also been tapped for the current study.
The objective Western reader may be bewildered occasion-
ally by the obvious 'disproportion' of credibility rendered by
this author on the one hand to the official Soviet data, and on
the other, to the unofficial data of samizdat and the testimonies
of Soviet believers. The 'bias' of this book is to give more
credence to the latter and to doubt the former, even to present
evidence showing its mendacity whenever possible. There are
several reasons for this 'inequity'. First of all, there is the old
Russian saying: the one who has not been caught by the hand is
I. Although the term samizdat appeared only in the early 1960s, the Church, the
theologians and other church authors have used similar methods for the writing
and dissemination of their literature from the early 1920s, after the regime had
deprived the Orthodox Church of printing presses, to the present day.
General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work xm
not a thief. The reader will soon see that the official Soviet
claims, declarations, the writings of the Soviet 'scientists' of
atheism or, as the Soviets call them, 'religiologists', will
constantly be 'caught by the hand', mostly by comparing
contradictory and mutually exclusive statements and claims
made by such authors and institutions in different years, under
different circumstances although relating to the same events or
periods. Second, the believers, and the dissidents with their
samizdat, are the parties under attack; they have to weigh
carefully every statement they make. They are taking tremen-
dous responsibility for every one of them. One is not likely to
make frivolous irresponsible statements when the price for any
'disseminated information' that contradicts the general line of
the communist party of the given moment is loss of a job, of the
right to receive education, of liberty, and even of life on
occasion. Although errors of transmission of information and
even errors of judgement may still occur, deliberate misinfor-
mation emanating from the religious' and samizdat circles in
general is very unlikely.
The study will be far from exhaustive in its coverage, for the
following reasons. First, there is no way to achieve a quantita-
tive analysis or to assess the degree of religious or atheistic
penetration in the whole country, categories of believers, etc.,
our sample of interviewees being too limited in numbers and
categories. Second, we have extremely little information on the
parallel processes (if there are any on any comparable scale)
among the common workers and peasants; further, as our
interviewees as well as samizdat writings are limited almost
exclusively to the intelligentsia, and predominantly to that of
Moscow, Leningrad and half a dozen other major cities, we are
forced to concentrate our study and analysis predominantly on
the Russian Orthodox Church, for this is the Church which
most of the neophytic intelligentsia join; and it is her theology,
traditions and legacy which are discussed and deliberated in
almost all samizdat religious and religio-philosophic docu-
ments, as well as in the Christian-orientated works of some
officially tolerated literary and artistic figures. In addition,
although there are plenty of samizdat documents of the
I. This, of course, excludes official public statements by the official spokesmen of the
Churches, especially when they are made for the Western media.
x1v General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work
unofficial branch of the Baptist Church and of the Pentacostal-

ists coming from the Soviet Union, they are limited to petitions
against persecutions, reports on persecutions and imprison-
ments, collections of prayers and hymnals. Being neither an
intellectual nor a theological phenomenon, the sects simply
have not provided us with material which could be analyzed,
generalized and conceptualized.
Although in the chapters on religious persecutions and
antireligious propaganda the study will give brief accounts of
attacks on religions other than the Orthodox Church, the
concentration is on the Orthodox Church in all parts of the
work, whether it is the study of Soviet atheism and its attitudes
to the Orthodox Church or of the life of the Church and the
believers. The reason is that Orthodoxy is the national and
historical Church of the three core peoples of the Soviet Union:
the Great Russians (or Muscovites), the Ukrainians (or the
Little Russians), 1 and the Belorussians. In contrast to the
multireligious scene in North America and to the supra-
national character of the Roman Church in the traditionally
Roman Catholic nations of western Europe, Orthodoxy (using
the vernacular and possessing no extra-territorial centralized
Church administration) is not only a religion but a way oflife,
the very cultural matrix of the daily life in the countries where it
has become the national Church. Russian literature, art, folk
traditions, habits (where they survive), and attitudes have been
formed or at least saturated by Orthodoxy from within.
Therefore, the atheistic revolt of Marxist Bolshevism had to
match Orthodoxy in its totality in order to crush it as the
national way oflife. Being only institutionally and ideologically
antireligious as is Marxism in most other East European states,
to allow a broader scope of religious toleration than in the
USSR (in all cases except Albania) would not be effective. The
attack had to be so total as to shatter the entire national culture
in all its aspects. Hence the attempts of contemporary Russian
nationalists to reconstruct Russian culture, Russian art, litera-
ture, inevitably brings a revival of Orthodoxy, of elements of
Orthodox culture. That is why Orthodoxy is so central to any
I. The terms 'Great' and 'Little' Russians are of Byzantine origin, wherein the core
area of a nation was called 'Little' while the zones of its later imperial expansion
received the appellation 'Great'.
General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work xv
study of Russian nationalism. In fact this work, along with its

predecessor, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime (St
Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), is a rather bulky 'introduc-
tion' to a studyofRussian nationalism and its relationship to the
Orthodox religious revival, which is yet to be written.
This study is historical, hence the philosophy and the
philosophical legacy and ideology of Marxist-Leninist atheism
are only briefly discussed in a single chapter in the first volume.
A philosophically inclined reader interested in a more pro-
found study of the philosophical and ideational roots and
concepts of Marxist-Leninist atheism is strongly advised to
read James Thrower's Marxist-Leninists 'Scientific Atheism' and
the Study ofReligion and Atheism in the USSR. Dr Thrower's use of
inverted commas in the title of his book has the same
connotation as this author's preference for the term 'High
Brow' Atheism instead of'Scholarly' or 'Scientific'.
Acknowledgements
Although all the errors and shortcomings in this work are solely
my own responsibility, a number of individuals and institutions
have greatly contributed to its 'delivery' if not to its 'birth'.
Without their help the 'child' would have had many more
defects and the birth would have been much more painful.
First, I owe my thanks to Dr Edward Manukian. Chapter 1 of
Vol. 1 is largely his work. As a professional Marxologist with the
equivalent of a doctoral degree in philosophy from Leningrad
University, he was the right person to write the theoretical
chapter. My son, Andrew Pospielovsky, a fourth-year Russian
history honours student at the University of Western Ontario
at the time of this writing, compiled the bibliography, the
Appendix on Soviet antireligious legislation and the index for
the first volume, wherefore I owe him many thanks. I should
also express my deep gratitude to the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of
Western Ontario Academic Development Fund, without
whose grants the research that went into writing this study
would have been impossible. I owe my thanks to the adminis-
tration and staff of the Hoover Inst,itution Library and
Archives, the Bakhmeteff Russian Emigre Archives at
Columbia University, the Dr Lieb Archiv at the Basel Univer-
sity Library, the Widener Library and the Russian Research
Center at Harvard University, the Library of Congress and the
Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. Most of the
illustrations in this volume have been found at the Hoover
Archives, some at Harvard. I should like to thank both
institutions for allowing me to use them. Much of the first-hand
information in this study would simply not have been there had
it not been for the willing co-operation of scores of recent
Russian emigres and other persons directly involved in the life
of the contemporary Church in the USSR, who had granted
interviews or wrote letters about their experiences to this
author. I am particularly grateful to Fr. Alexander Garklavs of
Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox church, Buffalo, N.Y., for
providing me with the Metropolitan Sergii (Voskresensky)
memoranda to be found in Appendix 1 of this volume. The
Acknowledgements XVll
murdered Metropolitan was Alexander's godfather and the

mss. have been kept in his adopted father's, Archbishop John
(Garklavs) of Riga and Chicago, personal archives. Fr. Alexan-
der is a war orphan.
SOME TECHNICAL POINTS
Italics. Unless otherwise noted, all italics within quotations are

in the original. The exceptions are the normal use of italics to
indicate a title or a foreign term.
Transliterations. Generally, the Library of Congress system is

used, with the following exceptions:
In personal names 'sky' ending is used instead of 'skii'; 'ya'
and 'yu' are used in personal names to depict '10' and '11', instead
of'ia' and 'iu', e.g. Yaroslavsky, not Iaroslavskii.
'X' is used to transliterate the Russian 'ks' throughout.
A single apostrophe(') is used for both soft (b) and the hard
(7>) signs.
The Calendar. Prior to February 1918 the Julian Calendar was

used in Russia, which was thirteen days behind the Western
Gregorian one in the twentieth century. Wherever the Old
Calendar is used, it is indicated as o.s., i.e. old style.
Abbreviations. These are noted in the appropriate places in the

main text and in the notes and references whenever a certain
title is used more than two or three times. For example,
Bezbozhnik u stanka becomes Bezbust. Similarly, such oft-
repeated publication cities in bibliographical references as
Moscow, Leningrad, St Petersburg, Petrograd, New York
becomes respectively: M., L., Pbg., P., N.Y.
DIMITRY V. POSPIELOVSKY
Preface
'The Bolsheviks come out against religion not only
because of the counter-revolutionary positions of the
Church, but also because of the programme and prin-
ciples on which the Bolsheviks stand.'
(Nauka i religiia, no.12, 1985)
This book deals with the day-to-day application of the Marxist-

Leninist antireligious theories and policies catalogued, dis-
cussed and analysed in the previous volume. The structure of
this volume is of necessity monotonously repetitious, alternat-
ing between chapters on direct persecutions and those dealing
with the type of propaganda that is meant to stir up anti-
religious feelings, or at least to evoke in the reader, listener or
viewer a feeling of contempt towards the clergy and the
believers. Such propaganda aims at depicting the believers as
social misfits less than human - or 'vermin', to use Lenin's
phrase. Once this effect is achieved, injustices and cruelties
towards the clergy or the believing laity are accepted on the
same level as cruelty to animals, or even more tolerantly than
cruelty to animals. One does not despise an animal for being an
animal, but one tends to despise a human being for behaving in
a way unworthy of human dignity. Hence the first step towards
conditioning society to condone or at least passively tolerate the
persecution of groups of defenceless people is to degrade their
image so that they appear less than human. And that was the
purpose of the mass antireligious propaganda, especially
during the periods of mass persecution campaigns: 1920s,
1930s, and 1959 to 1964. Each one of these periods was
preceded and accompanied by an intensified propaganda of
contempt and hate.
Each chapter in this volume deals with persecutions or
propaganda in a certain historical period. It is hoped that the
juxtaposition of the propaganda and persecution chapters will
reveal their consistent and systematic interrelationship. The
intention of this volume is to demonstrate that in no period of
Soviet history did either the persecutions or hate-and-
contempt propaganda against the Church and the believers
XVlll
Preface XIX
ever cease completely. Both are found in the Soviet Union

today. Their forms, intensity and degree of overtness or
covertness vary from period to period, and from one confes-
sion to another, depending on the situation inside and outside
the USSR and other policy considerations.
The many sources, method of collection of material, and all
the acknowledgements gratefully mentioned in Volume 1 of
this series apply equally to Volume 2.
My particular gratitude is owed to the following persons:
Mrs Pamela Hutchins-Orr for her excellent style editing, Mrs
Deborah Kostoff for her excellent and dedicated typing and
proof-reading of the text, and to my son Andrew for again
compiling the appendices and the bibliography for this
volume.
1 The Early Persecutions,
1917-21
'We must combat religion- that is the ABC of ... Marxism.
The combatting of religion ... must be linked up with the
concrete practice of the class movement ... eliminating
the social roots of religion ... '
(Lenin, Collected Works, vol.15)
The Church was the object of persecution from the earliest

days of the revolution. The first phase, roughly between 1918
and March 1921, was part of the Red Terror of the War
Communism era. Thousands of clergy and faithful laymen
were murdered or persecuted in those years. The pretexts for
this were several. The principal ones were suspicion of
collaboration with the enemy during the Civil War, the
Patriarchal anathema pronounced on the Bolsheviks (which
was seen to undermine the prestige of the new regime in the
eyes of the largely religious population), sermons which
blamed fraternal carnage on the Bolsheviks for causing it and
on Marxist materialism for justifying it, and lastly, resistance to
the imple~entation of the 23 January (5 February) 1918
Decree on the Separation of Church and State, particularly
attempts to confiscate churches and church property.
Resistance to confiscation and to the closure of monasteries
was mostly organized by lay congregations and monastics,
assisted by the local parish priest and bishop. All these people
were subject to arrest and terror; monks and nuns were often
killed where religious houses were closed or confiscated. In
many cases the tortures, murders and vandalism were the
autonomous initiative of local anarchistic bands of army or
navy deserters calling themselves Bolsheviks. 1
Later, when the Russian Orthodox Church adopted a policy
of civic loyalty to the Soviet regime, her leaders repeatedly
declared that their earlier hostility had been motivated by the
bloodiness of these roaming partisan forces, and was not
directed against the new Soviet State per se. The Church
explained that she now realized that the central Soviet
1
2 Soviet Antireligious Campaigns
Government was not responsible for the behaviour of these

local forces, but since the new government had not condemned
them the church had assumed that they had government
sanction. 2 The fact remains that the Soviet regime has never, to
the present day, disowned these forces or disassociated itself
from them. On the contrary, many of their conveniently dead
leaders such as Chapaev or Shchors have been immortalized in
books and films. 3
The earliest and most detailed account of anti-Church terror
in the Soviet Union is contained in A. A. Valentinov's now
generally forgotten Black Book, first published in English and
German in 1924. The author recounts many examples of
murders occasioned by alleged collaboration with the 'enemy'
during the Civil War. The following illustrations show the
flimsiness of such allegations.
Germorgen, Bishop ofTobolsk, was murdered on 16 June
1918 by drowning. He and other political detainees in the
Tobolsk prison were herded into a river steamer on the excuse
that they were being evacuated because of approaching White
forces. Rocks were hung around the necks of each, and all were
pushed off the deck. Before the revolution, Germorgen had
been in trouble with the tsarist establishment for actively
opposing Rasputin and for having begged the Tsar to remove
him from court. In 1918 the Patriarch, in response to the
Bolshevik terror, appealed to his flock to organize religious
processions in the cities and villages around the country. In
Tobolsk, Bishop Germorgen was warned by the Soviets that he
would be arrested if a procession took place. Tobolsk was a
sensitive area because Nicholas II and his family had been held
there before being moved to Ekaterinburg on 27 April;
therefore the authorities were particularly wary of any public
demonstration. The Bishop ignored the warning, and on Palm
Sunday 28 April there was a great procession from the
Cathedral and around the walls of the city with banners and
hymns. Before the house of the Romanovs the Bishop raised
his arm and gave his blessing to the Royal family. This was also
the occasion of Germorgen's last sermon, in which he said: 'I
feel my passion days are approaching ... Therefore I beg you
all to lend me support by your prayers in these days,' just as
Jesus had asked His apostles to stay awake and pray for Him.
He was arrested the following Holy Week. The Soviet
government promised to release him for a ransom of 10 000
The Early Persecutions, 1917-21 3
rubles, later increasing it to 100 000. When the money was

collected and submitted, the delegation of notables and clergy
which had come to collect their bishop disappeared behind the
prison walls and apparently shared his fate. 4
Another very popular bishop savagely murdered during the
Civil War was Ioakim, Archbishop of Nizhni Novgorod. This
was a remarkable man, a scholarly theologian, a compelling
orator and an energetic missionary who had been very
successful in returning whole villages of Old Believers to the
Orthodox Church during his tenure as Bishop of Orenburg.
There is no information on Ioakim's political views but he
seems to have opposed even the first, February Revolution, for
he spent some time in gaol under the Provisional government.
During the Civil War he appeared in Crimea, which suggests
some connection with the White Forces. In any case the Reds
murdered him by hanging him head down from the iconostasis
above the central 'Royal Doors'. 5 The clergy in Crimea suffered
terrible persecutions even before the White Army began its
first operations in northern Caucasus. A priest, U gliansky, was
murdered by the Red Guards on the grounds that he used
green rather than red ribbons on his church icon lamps.
Churches in Simferopol, Feodosia and other Crimean cities
were desecrated and many of their clergy brutally murdered. 6
The first two martyr-priests in the Petrograd area were Ivan
Kochurov, an Orthodox missionary in the United States on a
visit to Russia, and Filosof Ornatsky, an eminent Petrograd
priest whose two sons were Imperial Guards officers. Ornatsky
refused to be intimidated even by the arrest and later execution
of his sons. He was arrested in the spring of 1918 after serving a
public requiem for victims of Bolshevik terror. When a
procession of several thousand faithful, carrying banners and
singing hymns, proceeded to the prison to plead on his behalf
they were assured that the priest was safe and his life was not in
danger. But such was not the case, for he was shot that night,
according to the evidence of a Che-Ka driver who was employed
to drive Ornatsky and thirty-two other victims to the site of
execution on a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Finland. When they
arrived the priest asked permission to perform a brief funeral
service and each of the victims received his blessing before
being shot. All the executed, including the priest, fell straight
into the sea below. 7
Father Vostorgov in Moscow was an outstanding teacher,
missionary and church activist. He had mastered Persian and

served for some time as an Orthodox missionary in Iran
converting local Nestorians (including three bishops) to
Orthodoxy. His sermons were famous, and as an internal
missionary he had preached in churches as far apart as
Kamchatka on the Pacific, Manchuria and Moscow. In 1913 he
established in Moscow the first theological college for girls in
Russia. He was a convinced monarchist, made fiery anti-
Bolshevik speeches at the 1917-18 Sobor and made his church
of St Basil in the Red Square a centre for right-wing elements.
His great popularity as a pastor among regular Moscow
parishioners forced the Bolsheviks to stage a blackmail
operation in order to arrest him, allegedly on the grounds of
black-marketeering. A Bolshevik agent provocateur convinced
him to negotiate a private sale of the Moscow diocesan
residence after the property had already officially been
nationalized. The Church needed money badly after the
nationalization of her bank accounts in January 1918. On 23
August 1918 Fr. Vostorgov was shot, along with the local
Roman Catholic priest Lutoslawski and his brother, two
former tsarist ministers (N. Maklakov and A. Khvostov), an
Orthodox bishop Efrem, former State Council Chairman I.
Shcheglovitov, and Senator S. Beletsky. Fr. Vostorgov con-
ducted a short funeral service, and preached a brief sermon to
the victims, calling on them to face death bravely 'as their last
sacrifice of atonement, with faith in God and in the coming
regeneration of Russia', after which each victim came forward
to be blessed by the bishop and by Fr. Vostorgov. Then the
latter turned to the executioners with the words, 'I am ready',
and was shot. 8
The material in Valentinov's book on this period is based on
the various investigations carried out by Whites and foreign
observers immediately after the reconquest of certain terri-
tories. The accounts are full of horrid details. They deal mostly
with territories which had changed hands several times in the
course of the Civil War.
During the less-than-one-year occupation of the Stavropol
diocese in 1918 the Bolsheviks killed at least fifty-two Ortho-
dox priests, four deacons and four readers. Since in this
diocese, with its large Moslem and Old Believer minorities, the
Orthodox were not an overwhelming majority of the popula-
tion, these numbers may represent over 20 per cent of the
diocesan priesthood.
The pretexts for the persecutions were many and various:
liberal and bourgeois sympathies, condemnation ofbolshe-
viks in sermons, Te Deum services for a passing White Army
detachment, protests against blasphemies.
Of some twenty concrete cases of murders of priests in the
Stavropol Diocese described in some detail in the book, only ten
could be suspected of collaboration with the enemy and then
only in the form of prayers. Priest Alexander Podolsky was
murdered for having conducted a Te Deum service for a
Cossack regiment prior to its attack on the Bolsheviks. The
Bolsheviks subsequently tortured and then murdered the
priest. When a peasant came to take and bury his body, he was
likewise shot dead on the spot by the Red murderers. Fr. Alexei
Miliutinsky was murdered for telling Red Army soldiers that
they were leading Russia to disaster and for offering prayers
for the victory of anti-Bolshevik Cossacks. Prior to his murder
he was severely tortured and partly scalped.
In addition, there are reports of murders of completely
apolitical and even left-wing priests, for example:
Priest I van Prigorsky, a man of extreme left convictions, was
dragged out of the church on the Great and Holy Saturday,
brought to the square in front of the church, where Red
Army men attacked him, cursed and beat him, mutilated his
face, and then killed his half-dead bleeding body. 9
In the Diocese of Perm', north-west Urals, during a few
months of Bolshevik rule in 1918 at least forty-two churchmen
were murdered, according to the diocesan bishop. A Che-Ka
official who defected to the Whites early in 1919, claimed that
the Che-Ka had executed 550 persons in the same province in
1918; the above forty-two Orthodox churchmen represent 8
per cent of the victims in a province where the Orthodox clergy
constituted no more than 0.0005 of the total population, owing
to very sizeable non-Orthodox minorities there (Old Believers,
Moslems, and even Shamanists and Animists). The same
source reported that there were secret instructions from Yakov
Sverdlov (then 'president' of Soviet Russia) in June 1918,
ordering the wide use of hostages consisting of industrial
entrepreneurs, members of the Liberal and Menshevik parties

and clergy. 'Very many hostages were taken out but very few
survived.' 10
Bishop Germorgen's murder was undoubtedly connected to
Patriarch Tikhon's 19January(1 February) 1918 excommuni-
cation of Bolshevik leaders and the spate of religious pro-
cessions which it generated. There were many more murders
as a result. One of these took place in the town of Chernyi Yar
on the Volga. The victim was a leading lay missionary, Lev Z.
Kuntsevich. Such huge crowds arrived at the church to hear the
Patriarch's encyclical that Kuntsevich was forced to proclaim it
outside the church. Unfortunately the Civil War front was not
far away, which made the Bolsheviks particularly sensitive to
such demonstrations of implied hostility to them. Kuntsevich
was arrested and publicly shot in the city square in July 1918
before the eyes of his wife who had been assured only minutes
earlier by the prison authorities that her husband would soon
be released.
Andronik, Archbishop of Perm', was arrested immediately
after the rite of anathema was performed in his packed
cathedral. Several different versions of his death circulated
among the local population. A widely held story that the chekists
first tortured him by cutting out his cheeks and plucking out his
eyes and then paraded him through the streets before burying
him alive, is probably related to another priest who resembled
the bishop in appearance. According to the Tobolsk diocesan
journal, Archbishop Andronik was last seen alive in prison in
December 1919. He must have been murdered soon after that.
Two Latvian chekists, later imprisoned, have stated that
Andronik's arrest had the consent of a sizeable number of the
local industrial workers. The Che-Ka took advantage of this
rare case of popular support and followed it up with mass
murders of Perm' clergy, including the vicar-bishop Feofan of
Solikamsk. The All-Russian Church Sobor, still is session in
Moscow at the time, requested and gained permission of the
central Soviet Government to send its investigating team to
Perm'. After the completion of the investigation when the team
was returning to Moscow, a Red Army detachment boarded
the train and massacred the bishop and all his assistants.
Presumably the documents they carried with them were
destroyed by the raiding party. 11
There are numerous reports of murders committed in

reprisal for sermons critical of Bolshevik terror, preaching that
the laws of God are above those of men and advising Christians
to give priority to the former in their choice of behaviour.
Bishop Makarii of Viaz'ma was a brilliant preacher much
loved by the local population. His sermons were favourite
topics of conversations in that small provincial town situated
between Moscow and Smolensk. The local Bolsheviks decided
to put an end to this, and one evening in the summer of 1918 he
was arrested. At first they kept him in the dungeon of the local
Revolutionary Committee building where he was regularly
beaten and otherwise insulted. But the bishop was too popular
to be disposed oflocally, so he was transferred to Smolensk and
there murdered with fourteen other persons in a field outside
the city. At the site he was praying for the victims, and whenever
he saw that one of the victims was losing heart, he approached
him, blessing him with the words: 'Depart thou in peace!' A
soldier who was ordered to carry out the execution later
recounted the details of the murder to his doctor. The soldier
was suffering from a mild case of TB; the doctor prescribed
him the proper treatment and regime and was certain the man
would soon recover; instead his health kept deteriorating. It
was then that he confided to the doctor that he simply could not
live any longer with the burden of having murdered a saint.
According to his story, when the bishop approached him in the
field, he gave the soldier a blessing with the words; 'My son, let
thy heart not trouble thee. Carry out the will of the one who sent
you here.' Then having come to the spot where he was to be
shot, he prayed: 'My Father, forgive them for they do not know
what they are doing. Accept my spirit in peace!' The soldier was
convinced of the bishop's sanctity, for in the darkness of the
night the bishop had sensed the disturbed state of the soldier
caused by the realization that his 'client' was the popular
bishop. Ever since then the soldier periodically saw in his
dreams the bishop blessing him in silence. 'But how can I go on
living in the Lord's world after this?' he asked; and within a few
months of giving this account to his doctor he died of
consumption. 12
N ikodim, Bishop of Belgorod, serves as a perfect illustration
of murders for purely spiritual sermons. He deliberately kept
aloof from any politics, but 'in his sermons condemned acts of
violence, plunder, murder; he appealed to his flock to

faithfully follow the teachings of Christ and give them priority
over those of men'. The local Che-Ka commandant, Saenko,
personally arrested him at Christmas 1918. The bishop was so
popular, however, that the population became violent in
demanding his immediate release. Saenko at first gave in,
warning the bishop to stop his sermons. But the same evening
the bishop made his usual sermon after vespers, whereupon he
was re-arrested. When a local priest's wife went to plead on the
bishop's behalf, Saenko killed her on the spot. The following
night the bishop was secretly murdered in the prison yard. The
bishop's hair and beard were shaved off, he was disguised in a
soldier's uniform and thrown into a common grave outside the
town the same night. But the people found out and for a long
time held daily requiems there.
The abnormal suspiciousness of the Bolsheviks, which
demonstrated their insecurity, is shown by the massacre of the
Astrakhan' clergy and their bishop, Leontii. This apparently
happened in 1919 when Astrakhan' was in the immediate rear
of the Red forces and all available space was taken up by
wounded Red soldiers. The Soviet authorities at first
cooperated, publishing his appeal in the local paper, which
ended with the words: 'I was naked and you have clothed me, I
was ill and you looked after me.' But the local Che-Ka
commandant, Atarbekov, interpreted this quotation as an
attempt to undermine the authority of the Soviet Government
and shared these suspicions with Kirov, the chairman of the
local Revolutionary Committee, who agreed with Atarbekov
and gave him a carte blanche for terror. (Kirov's immediate boss
at the time was Stalin.) Within days the bishop and most of the
Astrakhan' clergy loyal to him were 'liquidated' .' 3
The Valentinov book cites numerous cases of priests killed
for their sermons, of which we shall reproduce but two of the
most blatant savage cases. A Kharkov priest, Mokovsky, was
executed for criticizing the Bolsheviks in his sermons. When
his wife came to Che-Ka asking for the release of his body for a
Christian burial, the executioners grabbed her, chopped off
her arms and legs, pierced her breasts, and killed her. In the
Donets Coal Basin the priest, Dragozhinsky, in the village of
Popasnaia was executed for a sermon on religion and atheism
in which he quoted the words which Julian the Apostate
pronounced on his death bed: 'Thou hast vanquished, the

Galilean.' The Bolsheviks saw in this a hint that they were the
apostate who would have to repent. 14
Most common were seemingly senseless murders and
desecrations of churches. The new ideology saw religion as a
serious threat; its vitality maddened and perplexed the
Bolsheviks, and they feared its power over the hearts and
minds of the population. The Che-Ka commandant Saenko
expressed this fear when he is alleged to have shouted at the
time of Bishop Nikodim's arrest: 'It is owing to the priests and
monks that the revolution has failed.' In 1919 the success of the
revolution was still uncertain, and the Church was an impor-
tant centre of resistance to Marxist ideology as they continued
to warn that the preachers of the new secular paradise were
false prophets and their promises were lies. It was in this
context that savage brutalities against the Church were carried
out by the Bolshevik gangs.
Among the most glaring illustrations of this was the case of
the Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev, the first bishop killed by the
Bolsheviks. He was a man of forceful personality who had
made himself unpopular with the Tsar by consistently oppos-
ing the influence of Rasputin at court. For this reason he was
removed from Moscow to Kiev in 1915. Earlier he had earned
the label of 'reactionary' by condemning the 1905 Revolution
in opposition to the liberal Metropolitan Antonii of St
Petersburg. By 1917 he was embroiled in conflicts with local
Ukranian nationalists, urging him to break with Moscow, and
with a Ukranian bishop living in retirement in the Monastery of
the Caves who had ambitions to replace the Metropolitan and
was urging the Ukranian monks to turn against him. This may
account for the fact that the monastery did not actively defend
the Metropolitan when, on 25 January 1918, a group of Red
Army men led by a commissar came to the monastery and
began to agitate the monks against M. Vladimir. The Metro-
politan was severely beaten and abused by the probably
intoxicated armed Bolsheviks, dragged out behind the monas-
tery gate and shot. A passer-by witnessed the scene. The
Metropolitan first asked permission to pray, knelt, raised his
arms and said: 'Oh Lord, forgive my transgressions both
voluntary and involuntary and accept my spirit in peace.' Then
he turned toward the murderers, blessed them with the words
'May the Lord forgive you.' Shots were heard in the monastery.
Next morning his body was found in a pool ofblood. The body
was badly mutilated, evidence of torture prior to the murder or
as a form of protracted death. On 20 February 1918, Izvestia
reported the murder, denying Soviet responsibility for the
act. Is
The murder of M. Vladimir could be explained as an act of
local revolutionary vengeance against a convinced enemy of
the revolution. There were many such vicious random inci-
dents throughout the countryside. However, many murders
had no apparent cause or reason, such as those which took
place on 14January 1919 in the Estonian University town of
Tartu, when retreating Soviet troops arrested anyone they
could find and killed twenty detainees. Among them was
Bishop Platon (Kulbush) ofTallin who was discovered to have
had seven bayonet gashes and four bullet holes in his body.
With him were two Orthodox priests (Russian and Estonian), a
Lutheran pastor and sixteen laymen. 16
Monasteries were the targets of Bolshevik terror as early as
1918. One of the first to be plundered was the Holy Mountain
Monastery near Kharkov. In a nearby skete in the village of
Gorokhova a monk Izrail' was murdered for refusing to hand
over the keys of the skete cellars. In the same area a religious
procession was attacked when it rested for the night on its way:
two priests, a deacon, the owner of the cottage where these
clerics stayed, and the landlord's daughter were attacked and
killed in the night.
One Red soldier wrote to his family that having entered the
Don region in February 1918, the Reds were killing priests left,
right and centre:' I also shot a priest. We are continuing to chase
these devils and killing them like dogs.'
Prior to killing an 80-year-old monk-priest, Amvrosi, the
Reds savagely beat him with rifle-butts. Fr. Dimitri, a priest in
the same city, was brought to a cemetery, undressed, and when
he tried to cross himself before execution, a soldier chopped
off his right arm. An old innocent priest who tried to prevent
the execution of a peasant was beaten and sliced up with
swords. In the Holy Saviour Monastery a Red Army detach-
ment arrested and killed its 75-year-old abbot by first com-
pletely scalping him and then chopping off his head. In the
Kherson Province a priest was found to have been killed by
crucifixion. In a Kuban' Cossack village an eighty-year-old

retired priest was forced to put on female dress, brought to the
village square and ordered to dance. When he refused, the
Reds hanged him on the spot. 17
Whenever chekists arrived in a village they almost invariably
vented their rage on the priest. It did not matter to them
whether he was merely a harmless old man, or whether he was
the local benefactor, like Fr. Yakov Vladimirov in the Kuban'
Cossack village of Plotavy. He had raised his parishioners'
standard of living considerably above that of their neighbours
by teaching them advanced methods of agriculture and bee-
keeping. His only 'crime' was his popularity and spiritual
charisma. One day a group of chekists arrived at the priest's
home asking him for overnight hospitality. They told Fr.
Yakov they wished to discuss some business with the village
community (mir) the following day, and asked him to spend the
night at the village school, so that the village would not think
that the che kists were corrupted by the priest during the night.
The priest complied. The villagers, suspecting that all was not
well, protected him at the school by a bodyguard of sixty
persons. In the morning the chekists politely thanked the
priest's wife for her hospitality and went to the meeting. After it
they walked out with the priest. The villagers followed but soon
saw a machine-gun pointed at them by an armed detachment,
and a freshly dug ditch. The priest realized his end was coming
and crossed himself. The chief chekist took him by the hair and
shot him in the face over the ditch. Anotherchekist grabbed the
priest's wife and her 15-year-old boy. The mother was shot
before the boy's eyes. Then the chekist looked at the boy and
said: 'I don't think you should live having seen all this. Sit down
and take your boots off.' The boy did as he was told and was also
shot. But there was another, 12-year-old, son. The chekists
mistook another boy for him and shot him. The real son, Vania,
was warned by the villagers and hidden away.
Many of the murders were plain exercises in sadism: for
instance, the Voronezh chekists, as a punishment for praying for
the victory of the Whites, did not hesitate to boil seven nuns in a
kettle of tar.
The accumulation of such acts of terror across the country
moved the Arkhangelsk City Union of Orthodox Clergy and
Laity to appeal to the Paris Peace Conference for intercession
on behalf of the Church in Russia. The appeal was based on a

document which they had presented to the Provisional
Government of North Russia (headed by the socialist
Chaikovsky) on 19 April 1919. It stated among other things
that:
The regime of people's commissars not only seals up
temples, but also turns them into tea-rooms, army barracks
and even cinemas. Drunken orgies take place in desecrated
churches. The clergy is submitted to abuse and tortures ...
Fr. Shangin was murdered and his body cut up into shreds
... Arch-priest Surtsov was submitted to beatings for several
days, then he was shot and his body thrown into Pechora
River. In the town of Pechora an old retired priest, Rasputin,
was first tied to a telegraph pole, then shot dead and given to
the dogs to eat. In Seletsk Afanasii Smirnov, a psalmist, was
executed for having served a funeral litany over the body of a
dead French soldier! 8
Other acts of terror against the church were perpetrated in
connection with the nationalization of church property by the
decree of 23 January (5 February) 1918. Many times Red
troops opened fire on the crowds surrounding their church in
its defence. They also fired on the religious processions
ordered by the Patriarch and the All-Russian Sobor as a protest
against the persecution ofthe Church and as demonstration of
support for the Church. Many thousands were killed in this
way, especially in the spring of 1918. There are well-
documented reports of shooting down religious processions in
Voronezh, Shatsk (Tambov Province), and Tula (where
thirteen people were killed and many wounded, including
Bishop Kornilii). 19
The Church was harassed in the performance of its religious
function. For instance, having secularized the registration of
marriage and divorce, local Soviet governments began to force
the clergy to remarry those whose earlier church marriages
had been annulled by civil divorce. The church was only willing
to remarry those whose divorce conformed to the religious
canons. This was in opposition to the Soviet position that
'Clergymen of all Confessions ... may not refuse a religious
wedding to those who wish to have one after the conclusion of
the obligatory civil contract.'20 This contradicted the Soviet
decree on the separation of Church and State. The Church was

finally relieved of these pressures when the Patriarch and his
Synod signed a declaration in May 1920, relegating all formal
marriage and divorce proceedings to the civil authorities. 21
Religious persecution was not limited to the Orthodox
Church, although it was the most prominent target. The
official pretext was that the Orthodox Church had been the
State Church in Tsarist Russia, and thus was a 'legacy of the
reactionary past', and officially it was the reactionary class
enemies who were being persecuted, not the Church as such.
Obviously other religions of the Empire could not be sup-
pressed in this context, but as champions of an alien ideology
they were all ideological enemies of socialism in the long run.
Many instances of brutality directed against Roman Catholic
and Protestant clergy can be cited. For example, a Roman
Catholic priest, Krapiwnicki, celebrating the Corpus Christi
service in Stavropol in 1918, was dragged out of his church
during the service and brought to the local Red commandant;
he would have been executed had it not been for the
intercession of the local Polish consul. 22 Archbishop de Ropp of
the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mogilev was arrested in April
1919, although he was one of the most moderate of the Roman
bishops in Russia and had advocated loyalty to the new regime
and acceptance of its laws. InN ovember of the same year he was
exchanged by agreement with the Polish Government for
Radek, the Polish-Jewish communist then under arrest in
Poland. 23 De Ropp's arrest was an act of retaliation for the Papal
protest against the persecution of the Orthodox Church in
Russia.
In view of the fact that the non-Orthodox faiths had enjoyed
only limited rights in pre-revolutionary Russia and this could
have been expected to bear a grudge- against the Orthodox
Church, the messages of sympathy to the latter as a Church
suffering particular Bolshevik persecutions, issued by the
Roman Catholic, Evangelical and Lutheran Churches, as well
as by the Jewish Rabbinate ofPetrograd and theM uslim Imam,
gave a significant moral support to the Orthodox. 24 All of them
speak only about the sufferings of the Orthodox Church, not of
their own, which indicates that indeed there was no compari-
son between the magnitude of the persecution to which the
Orthodox Church was subjected and the hardships endured by
other religions in the country. If one bears in mind that less

than two years earlier all these religions had been under
various degrees of pressure from the Tsarist Government,
where the Orthodox Church was the established State Church,
it becomes clear that they were of the opinion that the
sufferings of the Orthodox Church after the revolution went
beyond the hardships they had suffered under the Old
Regime. Yet, as Valentinov's book bears witness, the Bolshevik
treatment of the different faiths varied from place to place. In
Kharkov the two men in charge of religious affairs in the Soviet
Executive Committee were two Jews, Kagan and Rutgaiter,
who forbade the clergy to baptize, wed or bury anyone without
the express permission of these two Bolsheviks:
For non-fulfilment of this order the clergy faced the
Military-revolutionary Tribunal [court martial]. Its strict
fulfilment meant that infants died unbaptized and corpses
decayed while the relatives waited for permission to bury
them in church. 25
The report on the situation in south-eastern Ukraine (the
Lugansk-Konets area) states: 'The Bolsheviks did not bother
other confessions except in the case of the Jewish "bourgeoise"
who were forced to perform communal work on Saturdays.' 26
In contrast, the report on the North-Caucasian area (the
provinces of Stavropol and Black Sea) says: 'The Red Army
violated not only the Orthodox clergy, but also those of other
religions as well.' 27 Returning to Lugansk, there is an interest-
ing account of how the Bolsheviks in the City Soviet suggested
converting some Orthodox churches into cinemas and civic
centres. When one ofthe members of the Soviet, apparently in
an attempt to save the churches, suggested converting the local
synagogue into a public bath, the whole question was shelved by
the presidium, and the Orthodox churches were spared. 28 It
would therefore be safe to conclude that while the attack on the
Orthodox Church during the War Communism was a con-
certed action of the Soviet Regime, in addition to individual
actions oflocal Bolshevik forces, attacks on other religions were
individual acts of local Bolsheviks.
An official Church source of that time gave the following
incomplete data on the persecution of the Church between
June 1918 andJanuary 1919:
Killed: one metropolitan, eighteen bishops, 102

priests, 154 deacons, 94 monks and nuns;
Imprisoned: ... Four bishops, 211 priests, both married
and monastic;
sequestered real estate from 718 parishes
and fifteen monasteries;
closed 94 churches and 26 monasteries;
desecrated 14 churches and nine chapels;
forbidden eighteen religious processions;
dispersed by force 41 religious processions;
interrupted church services with insults to
religious feelings in 22 cities and 96 villages.
These data do not include the Volga and Kama Regions and
several other parts of the country.' 29
By 1921 the figure of liquidated monasteries and convents
rose to 573, 30 more than twenty times the january 1919 figure.
Monasteries were being liquidated on the pretext that they
were parasitic communities. The Patriarch tried to offset this
argument by turning most of the remaining monasteries into
monastic working communes, on the model of the voluntary
Orthodox Christian agrarian communes which were in exis-
tence long before the revolution. 31 The regime responded by
accusing the Church of attempting to create her own 'state and
her separate economy within the worker-peasant state', and
forbade the creation of Church communes. 32 The aim was
obviously to deprive the Church of any stable institutions.
Monasteries, in any form, were particularly undesirable from
the regime's point of view, owing to their traditional spiritual
and intellectual prestige, and their role as centres of mass
pilgrimages. Potentially they could become co-ordinators and
centres of religious and generally Christian action (similar to
the monasteries of contemporary Poland). Owing to the
peculiar aura of the monasteries, it would be wrong to
extrapolate from the numbers of their closure (its rate in the
total number of monastic communities exceeding 50 per cent)
to other aspects of church life, and individual parish churches.
In the process of the liquidation of monastic communities
many brutalities, murders and mass executions of monks and
nuns took place. Thus, the number of clergy killed for their
faith in the period from 1919 to 1921 must certainly have
exceeded by far the incomplete estimate of 330 clergy and

monastics killed in the first year of communist persecutions.
Although, as we have seen, the Church had declared her
neutrality in the Civil War and her neutral loyalty to the Soviet
government as early as 1919, she had tried to normalize
relations with the new state by accepting the official govern-
ment explanation that the central Soviet government bore no
responsibility for the above 'local atrocities'. Later Soviet
authors would admit central responsibility for the early
persecutions. Yaroslavsky justified them by the fraudulent
charge that Patriarch Tikhon had given his blessing to the anti-
Bolshevik forces: 'We fought with arms and weapons against
the church which used weapons against us.' And he held the
whole national Church responsible for the wide participation
of those local clergy in White occupied territory who fought
with the White Army, and formed the so-called 'Jesus regi-
ments' made up entirely of clergy. 33 These were acts of local
initiatives for which the Patriarch bore no responsibility.
Second, none of the documented acts of brutalities towards the
clergy and believers related to members of these regiments.
Third, only a few victims had given even oral support to anti-
Bolshevik forces. Fourth, 'fighting with arms' does not mean
slicing up unarmed people, scalping and torturing them, or
killing priests' wives and children.
How did the churches and most of the clergy and monastics
survive this first onslaught? Some answer to this question can
be had from the following passage relating to the Lugansk
area:
The population of the village of Avdeevka protected their
church and clergy from plunder. Likewise, in response to the
decree on the separation of Church and state these villagers
resolved at their communal meetings to sustain the church
and its clergy by dues and pledges. In the village of Grishino
the population ignored the Soviet ban on aTe-Deum service,
subsequently physically protecting their clergy from Bolshe-
vik reprisals. In the city of Iuzovka (currently Donetsk) the
miners and industrial workers ... called a public meeting
even before the Bolsheviks entered the city, and issued a
resolution that if the Bolsheviks showed disrespect for the
clergy and the Church, the workers would rebel. The
resolution was handed to the Bolsheviks, whereby the

Church and the clergy were saved. 34
The same report mentions that in other places the population
was so cowed by the terror that it remained passive, only
secretly grieving over the brutalities against their Church. In
some cases weak clergymen were too ready to fulfil any orders
from Bolshevik bosses. 35
In the major cities it was the co-operation and action of the
laity which saved the churches there. In Petrograd in january
1918 Alexandra Kollontai, the Bolshevik commissar for social
welfare, sent armed troops to the Alexander-Nevski Monas-
tery to confiscate it, allegedly for social welfare purposes. Such
huge crowds gathered to defend this religious centre that even
fire opened by the Red sailors, killing a priest, could not
disperse them. Following this incident a religious procession
with Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd at its head marched
through Petrograd with several hundred thousand people
participating. Thereafter Leagues of Laymen began to be
formed in many cities to defend the Church. Over 60 000
volunteers joined the league in Petrograd, and a similar
number in Moscow. This represented 6 to 10 per cent of the
(then reduced) total population in each city. The leagues were
particularly active in preventing state agents from taking over
monastery buildings which were now officially nationalized.
According to contemporary Soviet press reports, in the four
months of February to May 1918 alone 687 persons were killed
in the clashes between these leagues and the government. 36
These ad hoc actions by laymen saved the Church in those
years; in contrast to the disenfranchised clergy, the leagues
consisted of working people who could not be easily ignored by
the Soviets.
In conclusion, while large sections of the population were
relatively indifferent to their national Church, where the
population stood up united in defence of their faith, their
resistance on behalf of the Church was sufficiently large-scale
to protect a substantial number of churches and clergy and
some 30 per cent of the monasteries and convents from
destruction or liquidation. Yet the fact that in so many places
Bolshevik attacks on the Church were not opposed indicates a
considerable religious decline. The last Russian army
chaplains confirm that when the February Revolution made

soldiers' attendance at services and acceptance of the Sacra-
ments voluntary, both declined from 100 per cent to 10. 37
Later, abhorrence of Bolshevik atrocities resulted in a notice-
able increase in Church attendance beginning from the lowest
pointin 1916-17.
In the context of persecutions in the early years of the
Revolution there is very little to be said about religious
denominations other than the Orthodox. The leader of the
Russian Evangelicals at that time, Ivan Prokhanov, wrote that
the Bolsheviks:
declared their opposition to the . . . Greek Orthodox
Church, but generally speaking in the beginning they
showed a friendly spirit to the Evangelical movement and
various other religious organizations and sects ... which
were persecuted under the Czar's regime. 38
An expert on the history of Russian and Soviet Moslems
distinguishes four periods in the Soviet Moslem policies. The
first one, 1917 to 1920, was marked by broad tolerance and
included the Soviet Government's appeal of 24 November
1917 'To All Toiling Moslems of Russia and the East';
promising them full religious rights and support in the new
socialist state. 39
2 Contempt and Hate
Propaganda, 1919-39
The beginning of the systematization and centralization of

Soviet antireligious propaganda should be attributed to the
birth in 1919 of the first specialized antireligious monthly, The
Revolution and the Church (Revolutsiia i tserkov', henceforth RiTs ),
published by the People's Commissariat ofJustice, 1 followed in
1922 by the short-lived Science and Religion (Nauka i religiia,
henceforth NiR), edited by the renegade priest Gorev-Galkin,
and specializing in condemning the Church for resisting the
state confiscation of sacramental objects from the churches,
allegedly to alleviate the famine. 2 It was replaced in the same
year by Bezbozhnik (The Godless), a wide-circulation paper at
first published thrice monthly, later becoming a weekly. 5
The contempt-and-hate campaign in the very first issues of
RiTs attempted to represent the Church, the Orthodox
Church in particular, as a fraud, and to sow division by singling
out the Orthodox Church for attack while presenting the
Protestant sects (the Churches formerly oppressed by the tsars)
as hard-working and loyal, and Moslems as supporting the
Soviets. 4
One of the first signs was the government decree of 1 March
1919 (reconfirmed in August 1920), regarding 'the complete
liquidation of the cult of corpses and mummies', ordering the
opening-up and public exposure of the saints' relics. Th~
Soviet media was particularly eager to present the relics of St
Sergius of Radonezh of the fourteenth century, Russia's most
revered national saint, as fraudulent. It claimed that there was
nothing but cotton-wool, hair, rotten bones and dust in his
shrine. Witnessing this,
Believers no longer weep, don't fall into fits of hysteria, and
don't hold a grudge against the Soviet government anymore.
They see there has been no blasphemy ... Only an age-old
fraud has been made naked in the eyes ofthe nation. 5
19
Quite the opposite story concerning the same relics comes

from the monks of St Sergi us-Trinity Monastery, the home of
these relics, who were present when the shrine was opened (a
learned monk, a bishop in retirement, and the rector of the
seminary at that monastery). According to them, when the
relics were exposed the partly decayed vestments and the
pieces of cotton-wool which the pilgrims traditionally leave on
the relics to be taken back home to rub and bless family
members, especially in sickness, were removed; underneath,
there was the excellently preserved body of the saint. The
masses of believers who had crowded the church fell on their
knees in prayer. Outside the church the mobs pulled down
from his horse Comrade Shpitsberg, the Bolshevik com-
mander of the nationalized monastery, and beat him up, along
with the soldier who had lied to the pilgrims, saying that the
relics had rotted away. Another, similar, episode concerning
the relics of two saints in the city of Vladimir (twelfth and
thirteenth centuries respectively) led the doctor who had acted
as the medical state witness to a reconfirmation of his faith,
according to his own testimony. 6
Nevertheless, there were cases of finding nothing but cloth,
rotten bones and dust in place of relics. Such was the case, if
Soviet official versions are to be believed, of an eighteenth-
century saint, Tikhon of Zadonsk, and some Novgorodian
saints. The typical RiTs's moral after one of such reports was:
'Thus the spiritual fathers have been deceiving the nation .. .'
But a few issues later it reports a trial of the Novgorod clergy
including Bishop Alexii, the furure Patriarch of Russia,
accused of having purged the Novgorod relics of all external
objects prior to the government commission inspection. At
the trial Alexii stated that most of the relics survived only in
the form of scattered bones, and, to the surprise of his
judges, confirmed that the Church did not teach that the
bodies of saints must necessarily be immune to decay, and
conversely, 'non-corruption of the body is in itself not a sign of
sainthood'. 7
Toleration of miracles would have meant a tacit admission
that there was a sphere of supernatural or at least rationally
inexplicable phenomena, inconsistent with Marxian material-
ism. According to a reliable witness, manifestations of the
Contempt and Hate Propaganda, 1919-39 21
supernatural had often occurred in the early post-
revolutionary years in the families of fanatical communists
actively hostile to the Church, where some family members
were practising Christians. The most common reports of
miracles at that time concerned the sudden renovation of a
family icon: an old darkened icon with a hardly discernible
image, would suddenly, before the very eyes of the communist,
begin to shine with fresh colours as if it had just been painted.
This often led some atheistic communists back to the Church.
The source comments: 'The Lord clearly responded to the
prayers of the repenting and suffering Russian people,
manifesting Himself to them.'
The same witness, Leontii, a Kiev monk with a graduate
theological degree who had become a bishop during the
Second World War and ended his days as the Orthodox bishop
of Chile, reported other miraculous manifestations appearing
publicly to thousands of people and causing violent reactions
from the Soviets:
the most amazing was the renovation of the Sretenskaia

church at the Sennoi Marketplace. The church had two gold-
plated domes . . . which with time became completely
tarnished as if covered by a grey paint ... Then one autumn
evening a jew living near-by saw such burning brightness of
the long-forgotten gold of the domes, that he thought the
church was on fire and called for ... the fire brigade. But
instead of fire it was found that it was the sudden brightening
of the domes. The light shone and moved in patches from
place to place on the domes as if tongues of fire. By next
morning there was already a huge crowd in front of the
church. The police were helpless ... The news reached me
by noon. I hopped on a tramway, but a long distance before
the church the tram had to stop because of the crowds. With
difficulty I reached the place on 'foot and watched the
wonderful miracle for several hours. The progression of
renovation of the gold plate continued for three days ...
There arose a mood of unusual general religious euphoria in
the city. It was a great moral boost for the believers ... and a
catastrophe for the antireligious propaganda . . . The
following day ... two articles in a local newspaper, one of
them signed by members of the Academy of Sciences, stated

that the phenomenon was caused by a rare air wave
containing a peculiar electric discharge ...
Later it became known . . . that the GPU forced the
academics to sign the article. If the renovation phenomenon
is natural, then why were the gold-plated market billboards
not similarly renovated? ... Several months later the Soviets
dynamited the church.
The author described a similar renovation of both the domes
outside and of the frescoes inside another church in Kiev. And
again, shortly afterwards this church (of the Holy Jordan) was
dynamited.
The other event which, according to Bishop Leontii, became
known in the whole Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet
Union, occurred in a village near Vinnitsa. When by order of
the provincial Soviet its representative came with a detachment
of mounted police to the village of Kalinovka to close a local
church, he was met by hostile crowds. The crowds were too big
for the police to force their way, and they retreated. Not far
from the church there stood a traditional Crucifix at a
crossroads. The retreating policemen, frustrated by their
failure, suddenly let out a volley of fire at the Crucifix:
Of all the fired bullets only one hit the target: Christ's collar-
bone. Suddenly blood gushed forth from the wound. One of
the firing policeman lost control of himself and fell off the
horse. Others took off. The crowd fell on their knees and
began to pray before the bleeding jesus. The news spread,
and by evening there were already several thousand pil-
grims. In the following few days detachments of police came
twice with the order to hack the Crucifix down, but each time
they returned without fulfilling the order. They said an
inexplicable force prevented them from approaching the
Crucifix. Articles in the local newspaper tried to explain the
phenomenon by claiming that there had been an accumula-
tion of water in the wooden cross behind the metallic figure
of Christ. Once the bullet hit the metal the water, having
acquired the rusty colour of the metal, began to seep
through.
But the blood from the Crucifix was running for several
days. Huge crowds of people were coming to the Crucifix,
bringing their own crosses and setting them up next to it.

People came in processions and prayed before the Crucifix,
dipping their kerchiefs into the miraculous blood. Day and
night religious singing was heard and burning candles were
seen on the spot, although priests were absent for fear of
reprisals. Many atheists rediscovered their faith in God
there.
Needless to say, at the very first opportunity the Soviets

destroyed the bleeding Crucifix and all the adjacent crosses.
The Soviet account of the same events was quite different.
Unable to explain the renovations of icons, a Soviet text simply
calls them fraudulent machinations of priests and kulaks to
dupe the poor peasants. The Kalinovka bleeding-Cross story is
left unexplained. It is simply stated that a commission of
experts produced a report that the dark fluid coming out of the
bullet hole in Christ's rib was not blood. The story depicts the
pilgrims as drunkards, good-for-nothings and illiterate fools.
Allegedly the Cross simply disappeared after the churchmen
and other interested elements had made enough money from
the pilgrims. The mass kissing of the Crucifix was said to result
in several thousand outbreaks of syphilis and mass robberies.
The syphilis story's purpose is clearly to show the believers as
moral scum of the nation. 8
Variations on the same theme were attacks on theology and
the seminaries, perhaps to give a rationale for the regime's
continuing refusal to allow the Russian Orthodox Church to
reopen theological schools. A 1923 RiTs editorial claimed that
'it is hard to imagine anything more repulsive than these
hundreds and thousands of corrupt young men and those who
are being corrupted to the marrow of their bones scoffing at the
believing simpletons'. The article maintained that none ofthe
seminarians, whether Orthodox or Catholic, believed in the
teachings which they used in order to exploit the dark masses. 9
But in the early stages the Soviets preferred to divide and
rule, attacking primarily the hierarchy of the Orthodox
Church as a tsarist, reactionary and counter-revolutionary
legacy. Thus one report says how a Soviet propagandist for the
Church-State separation came to a village church, and gaining
the approval of the majority of parishioners addressed them
with a speech attacking the Church as an organization in which
the clergy had been usurping power ever since the Nicean
Council's resolution that no laymen should teach in church. He
attacked the clergy which he claimed 'enslaved the lay
believers', and his appeal was not to close and discontinue
churches but to take the churches over from the clergy. 10
Another report praises a rural parish which refused to accept a
priest sent to them by their bishop but elected as their priest a
former psalmist 'who stands for the Soviet power'. Their
resolution (7 January 1920) stated that the parish did not
recognize the authority of any patriarchs or bishops over them
and would physically defend their elected priest. They had
even addressed a letter to Lenin to that effect, and their right to
control the temple and run it was subsequently confirmed by
the People's Commissariat of Justice. 11
The first (and only?) issue of NiR opened with an editorial
condemning Patriarch Tikhon and his clergy for having 'sold
their teacher', Jesus, 'to the tsar and capitalists'. The journal
implicitly supports the Renovationist-Living Church schism by
declaring: 'Everything that is alive in the church has risen
against them', that is, against the Patriarch and those who
remained loyal to him. And indeed the leading priests and
ideologists of the schism- Kalinovsky, Krasnitsk y, Vvedensk y,
Belkov-are found among the contributors to this antireligious
publication, which passed itself off as being only anti-
Tikhonite, on the grounds of the Patriarch's resistance to the
state confiscations of sacramental church objects, allegedly to
rescue the famine-stricken. 12
But we know from Lenin's secret letter to the Politburo that
his intention to confiscate church valuables was far from
philanthropic. He wanted to provoke a major conflict with the
Church, using the famine situation in order to represent the
Church as a heartless, selfish institution, and thus to decrease
her national prestige. Hence his ban on any Church participa-
tion either on the famine-aid committees or in the money and
valuables collection campaigns. 13
To give the impression that it only separated the sheep from
the goats, NiR printed the cartoon opposite, showing a
compassionate parish priest handing a chalice over to a
starving old man on the left, then being anathematized by the
Patriarch on the right. This was followed by a letter from a
priest favouring the giving-away of all church treasures,
~ko
~.
"~e -t:o
... '., Cl'oftQ.~._.,..._t·,.z~?
•
But the 'Princes of the

A humble village priest Church' anathematize the
gives away the church gold poor priest for his love
to the starving one. for the common folk.
~
(.J1
including the sacramental vessels. The letter quotes relevant

canons which forbid use of the vessels for personal secular
purposes, but not for charity. All Church fathers and the
official book of Church law, the letter continues, say that the
Church has no use for gold and 'The wealth of the Church is the
wealth of the paupers'. This, apparently renovationist, priest
condemns the Patriarch, that is the Church establishment, as if
to support the trial (reported in the same journal) of fifty-four
Moscow clergy and laity for offering resistance to the state
requisition teams. The report tries to tarnish the reputation of
the Patriarch, who was brought to court as a witness. But the
courage of Patriarch Tikhon was apparent when he took all the
responsibility upon himself:
It is I who wrote the order [to withhold the sacramental
objects from the requisition brigades] ... I personally
composed it ... Why should it matter who helped me if I am
responsible? I've signed it, and I am responsible.
At the end of his statement the Patriarch disclosed the reason
for his resistance: 'Had the Church ordered the giving-up of
the treasures, then it would not have been an act of sacrilege.'
As we know from Lenin's letter and the consequences of the
confiscations, the Patriarch, quite justifiably, did not trust the
good intentions of the state, especially after it had forcibly
closed the Church's 'committee in aid of the famine-stricken'
and had forbidden the Church to continue the collections or to
undertake any other actions in their favour. 14
The same journal published a pseudo-document, allegedly
the Patriarch's secret encyclical addressed to all Russian
bishops. It appeared under the heading 'From an Apocrypha
File', and there is a note in minuscule print at the bottom of the
page explaining that apocrypha means 'not a genuine work but
recommended by the Church for pious reading'; but the
average reader would hardly look at the note at the bottom of
the page. The fraudulent text, written in the high Russo-
Slavonic style of many church documents, is full of monarchist
zeal and praise for the White emigre clergy (the Karlovcians); it
condemns and excommunicates all those who would even
voluntarily donate any church utensils or vestments for the
famine-stricken. The gist of the concoction is that the Church is
indifferent to the suffering and deaths of millions, even happy
about the prospect that this economic catastrophe may weaken

the Soviets and bring the day of restoration of monarchy closer.
Instead of giving his signature as the real author of the parody,
Mikhail Go rev calls himself only a 'copier', while placing
Patriarch Tikhon's name as the author. The aim ofthe piece is
obvious: to confuse the readers, to leave the impression that
such a document was indeed written by Patriarch Tikhon, and
to intensify the rift between the Renovationists and the
Patriarchal Church. 15
This article at least admits that it is not genuine. The leader of
the League of the Militant Godless (LMG) did not do even that
when he deliberately lied to his audience at the LMG's Second
Congress that 'The Church . . . under the leadership of
Patriarch Tikhon blessed the counter-revolutionary rebellion
against the Soviet Power.' The truth was that Tikhon had
refused to give the blessings to the Whites or Reds, because the
Church could not participate in a divisive fratricidal war} 6
By the late 1920s, Soviet antireligious propaganda became
less selective in its attack on the Church. In 1927, on the eve of
the wholesale assault on all faiths, it began to publish a series of
articles with insulting and vulgar attacks against the very same
Renovationists whom it had presented so sympathetically only
five years earlier. Now they were particularly attacked for their
duplicity, for modernizing their appearance, their ritual,and
for pretending to be friends of the Soviet social system so that
their 'product' will sell:
The petty commercial bourgeoisie wants to live ... to enjoy
savoury foods, to make use of every cleavage ... in the Soviet
system in such a way as to make a profit without falling into
the hands of the GPU ... It is forthis 'delicate business' that it
needs a god ... to make black look white. 17
This is followed by articles denouncing in equally vulgar terms
Judaic and Moslem reformism, parallelling the Renovationist
Schism in the Orthodox Church, and presenting them all as
cheaters, greedy money-makers, capitalists' henchmen,
enemies of the working class. The context of the attack is that
the reformists' potential may be more dangerous to the Soviet
system owing to the fact that their hostility and extraneousness
to the 'new society' is less obvious. 18
The antireligious literature of the time often attacked
Christianity, in particular Orthodox Christianity, for allegedly

fomenting anti-semitism; 19 yet their anti-Judaic propaganda
has a poorly concealed anti-semitic bias in full accord with
Marx's original definition of Jews as a commercial stratum in
capitalist societies. A cartoon in Koms. pravda depicts a Jewish
shopkeeper and a rabbi discussing a deal. The caption reads: 'A
good private shop and a good commission strengthen the
Lord's presence in the heart of a man.' There was an assault on
private enterprise in 1929 and these cartoons were obviously
meant as hate-and-contempt propaganda. An example of this
is the cartoon of a Jewish-looking businessman leading one-
eyed Jehovah on a leash, walking hand-in-hand with a tsarist
gendarmerie officer, the inference being that a Jew and a
capitalist are synonymous. 20
The campaign against clergy, singling out for attack only the
clergy of the established Patriarchal Orthodox Church with an
obvious aim to break first the spine of the national Church,
gradually became less differentiated by the mid-1920's, fol-
lowed by a general assault on the clergy of all religions,
beginning roughly in 1927. The leitmotif of the early attacks is
the connection of the Orthodox Church with monarchy and
the ruling classes. After Patriarch Tikhon's encyclical on
political neutrality and disengagement of the Church, Soviet
propaganda took the line that the encyclical was only camou-
flage, and that the real essence of the Church is 'belief in an
autocratic bourgeois-aristocratic power', which the clergy
simply dares not admit openly to the toilers. The propaganda
then began to make ample use of the statements of some
hierarchs and the church press on the territory held by the
Whites, and later of the monarchist right-wing statements of
the emigre clergy of the so-called Karlovci Schism (in Yugosla-
via), largely concealing the fact that this schism had been
disowned and declared illegal by both Patriarch Tikhon and his
successors. 21 However, after the Orthodox Church had gone
out of her way to assure the regime of her loyalty, to replace the
qualified civic loyalty of Patriarch Tikhon by the wholesome
and positive loyalty of Metropolitan Sergii (1927), A. Lunin,
one of the leaders of the LMG, ridiculed Metropolitan Sergii
for turning 'Jesus into a Marxist'. This was a sneering comment
on Sergii's enforced 1930 interview with foreign correspon-
dents in which he denied any religious persecution and stated
Bourgeois: Jehovah, you must gather your whole people, find your lost children who
are hiding here somewhere. The colonel will help us. (Bezbozhnik u stanka, no. 1, 1924)
that Christianity shared many social goals with Marxism. Lunin

takes to task local atheists swayed by the 'trick' of Church loyalty
and tolerating clergy activities in reopening the formerly shut
churches.
Needless to say, the term used for all clergy by the late 1920s
became the pejorative 'pop', which in the early 1920s was

applied only to the clergy loyal to the Patriarch. Lunin called
for continued vigilance and resistance to the 'pops' and for an
end to public debates with the clergy on religion and atheism.
Otherwise, 'not only all closed churches will be reopened, but
hundreds of new ones built'. Apparently public debates
between believers and atheists, so fashionable in the early-to-
mid-1920s, began to alarm the atheistic establishment, which
by the end of the decade was seeking excuses to end them. The
'scholarly' and 'methodological' Antireligioznik found no other
logical argument against the debates except that they allegedly
'do not satisfy public demand. The godless masses are trying to
solidify their proletarian ideological positions by profound
study and serious preparation', which apparently could be
undermined by effective arguments of the clergy, for the
article attacked the appearances of a local Renovationist bishop
and preferred talks by sectarian deserters to atheism. And then
suddenly the article turned to an attack on Baptists, labelling
their leaders and activists 'lackeys of capitalism', traitors
refusing to bear arms on the side of the Soviets in the
forthcoming final war against capitalism. 22
Only a few years earlier no less a person that Piotr Krasikov,
the editor of RiTs and the head of the Commissariat ofJustice
Department of Cults, sympathetically called a sectarian group
'Toiling Sectarians' in an editorial which dealt with the New
Israel sect. This sect had resolved at its 1922 congress to
support the Soviet regime as aiming at communism, and to
amalgamate all members of the sect in agricultural communes
as a practical base for strengthening the cause of the 'future All-
Russian Communist Congress'. Krasikov's comment on the
sectarians and their resolutions was that although the idealistic
religious Weltanschauung obscures their full vision of Marxism,
Communism and materialism, these sectarian peasants were
instinctively heading in the right direction:
The ideals of the sectarians . . . have only vaguely ...
reflected their real class and mankind's interests, inasmuch
as all religions do in the positive part of their teachings.
He welcomed their decision to support and, particularly,
their decision to establish farming communes, which initiative,
in his opinion, the Soviet Government should fully support. 23
However, in 1929 the central organ of LMG, reporting on an
agricultural co-operative of a priestless Old Believer sect,
demanded that the sectarians be expelled from farm
management; 24 and in 1931 Antireligioznik presented absol-
utely all forms of behaviour and policies of the Churches and
sects as insincere, aimed at subverting the Soviet system,
whether openly anti-Soviet or pro-Soviet. The above sect of
New Israel and its communistic agricultural communes, like
those of other sects, are condemned as but a manoeuvre to
adapt to the new conditions. The Central Council of Baptists'
statements that Jesus was 'the founder of the teachings of
contemporary communist parties', and the same ideas echoed
by the Adventists are, according to the article, but insincere
attempts to curry favour with the Soviet system. The peasant
anti-alcoholic Churikov sect (which remained on the fringes of
and in communion with the main-line Orthodox Church) and
its communes in the Leningrad, Moscow and other regions,
had portraits of Marx and Lenin placed next to icons. All this
was declared by the article to be devious masks whereby the
religions try:
to retain their influence over the toiling masses ... and to
conceal their real counterrevolutionary essence ... But all
these attempts are in vain ... the toiling masses will tear off
this mask and will put an end to this masquerade of'pops' and
sectarians. The duty to the godless is more forcefully to
unmask the class essence of religion, to speed up the final
liquidation of this sworn enemy of the workers and of
socialist construction. 25
If this is an ostensibly 'scholarly-methodological journal',
what can then be expected of the mass atheistic press, aimed at
heating up a hate campaign against religion? For example, the
illustrated fortnightly Bezbozhnik in its treatment of the
Churikov peasant teetotallers admits that their commune is
highly productive and wealthy, but claims that this is achieved
by 'unpaid slave labour' of the sect members. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Churikov was deeply loved among
workers and peasants, and especially their wives, for his
effective anti-alcoholic drive.
A petty-merchant from the Volga area, Churikov, with the
support of a grand duchess and the Metropolitan of Peters-
burg, began to set up working Christian communes of sobriety

in the vicinity of Petersburg. He had a particular gift for curing
literally thousands of alcoholics by prayer, sermon, and appeal
for love of God and man and working for the communal good.
In 1916 his commune was one of the first agricultural
settlements in Russia to acquire a tractor. His agricultural
techniques were modern and highly productive. Everybody
prospered and by 1927 his fourteen agricultural communes
contained over 10 000 people. He preached 'Christ's socialism'
and practised what he preached. It was apparently the inability
of the state collective farms to compete with Churikov's
communes morally and economically that caused the mount-
ing attacks against him, his eventual execution in 1930 along
with his chieflieutenants, and the dissolution of his communes
along with all other religious farming communities in the
country. Prior to that, the Soviet press had led a campaign of
slander against the saintly old man, depicting him as a lecher
and glutton, enjoying women and luxury foods, while the rest
of the commune was forced to fast. 26
Once collective farms replaced the religious communes and
the state forced the latter into liquidation, Soviet propaganda
transformed the same sectarians and other religious
commune-builders from prosperous builders of agricultural
associations into destroyers of the same communes. In one
case, we are told, upon the dissolution of their commune the
Churikovites all joined a newly formed collective farm. They
managed to have their former leaders elected administrators
of the kolkhoz, but then they began to sabotage the harvest,
leaving crops under the snow in the fields, feeding grain to the
pigs, etc. With 'the help of religion' the sectarian kolkhoz
administrators were teaching their members to pilfer farm
property and equipment. Thus, from scrupulous and hard-
working farmers and honest peasants (see Krasikov above) the
sectarians were 'transformed' into wreckers of Soviet collectiv-
ization. Similar allegations were made regarding Orthodox
and other clergy, for allegedly penetrating collective farms and
wrecking them and their harvests from within. 27 The year is
very convenient- 1933, the year of the massive famine; so, it
was very convenient to blame the religions for that state-
organized famine.
We may remember how Krasikov was talking about 'the
toiling sectarians', the sectarian peasants with their instinctive

sense of justice ... Well, eight years later sectarianism was
transformed by Soviet propaganda into an agency of 'the
Russian bourgeoisie'. Similarly the alleged hero and patron of
the sectarians, Kerensky, the head of the Provincial Govern-
ment who had abolished the death penalty and released all
even vaguely political prisoners, was transformed into 'Keren-
sky the executioner'. 28
It was at least as early as 1925 that the Soviets began
broadening their antireligious front, gradually embracing the
Renovationists and the sectarians in their overall attack.
Apparently they thought that the Orthodox Church had been
institutionally sufficiently weakened through the schisms and
terror to allow a more general antireligious assault. On the
other hand, work had to be found for the newly founded
League of the Godless. The sectarians began to feel insecure in
the new climate. In contrast to the Orthodox, who had at first
tried to take a stance of benevolent neutrality towards the
Soviet State, and even when forced to declare total loyalty in
1927 still continued to stress the Church's incompatibility with
Marxist communism, the sectarians responded to the first
assaults by trying to assure the regime that they were close allies
of communism. An article to this effect by a Tolstoyan was co-
signed by leading personalities of the Baptist, Evangelical,
Adventist, Dukhobor, and Molokan sects. But it was useless:
'The Godless' rebuffed them, claiming bourgeois and aristo-
cratic roots of schismatic and sectarian movements in Russia's
past (class enemies), incompatibility of Christianity with
Marxism, and therefore even if sectarian communes were
prosperous, 'they cannot be exemplary' because of their
ideology. These were the first signs of clouds gathering against
the sectarians, attacks on whom became particularly vicious
from 1933. 2 ~ There may have been several reasons for that:
first, the need to justify the liquidation of sectarian farm
communes and co-operatives; and second, owing to the
decimation of Orthodox clergy and the closing of so many rural
Orthodox churches, the non-hierarchical sects begin to fill the
vacuum. And precisely because they do not depend on a
centralized hierarchy for ordination and appointment and
their unelaborate services can be performed at any home with
almost no preparation, they are more difficult to control and to
liquidate, and for this reason provoke the wrath of the

totalitarian regime.
We have already mentioned the change in attitude to the
Moslems. With the attack on the 'bourgeois-nationalist' devia-
tions in the Communist Party towards the end of the 1920s,
including the Pan-Turkic communist movement of Sultan
Galiev, the Soviets began their frontal attack against Islam.
They attacked Sultan Galiev's theory that Islam, being the
youngest of the great religions and having stronger 'civic-
political motives' than other faiths, should be treated more
cautiously by the communists, and that there should be only
very limited antireligious propaganda and no direct attacks on
Islam in the Turkic-Moslem areas of the USSR. The suppos-
edly scholarly-theoretical monthly Antireligioznik (The Anti-
religious) by 1930 rejected such exceptions and insisted that
Islam should be seen as a class foe of the toiling masses and
attacked just as indiscriminately as other religions. 30 The
earlier attacks on religious modernism-renovationism, which
had begun in 1927 and included Islamic reformism, should be
seen as a preparation for the frontal assault on Islam. The point
is that the Moslem reformists, emphasising women's role in the
mosque, for instance, had been a part of the Turanian (pan-
Turkic) movement of the pre-revolutionary epoch: a move-
ment which allied itself with Lenin and the Communist Party in
the course of the Civil War after Lenin's appeals to the Moslems
and his promises of national autonomy and religious freedom
to the Moslems. Thus we see a direct connection between the
incendiary, name-calling and label-sticking attack in the press
(1927) and its realization in terror (1929 on). In the case of
Islam it is directly linked with the physical annihilation of the
'Islamic' nationalistic communists of the Tatar-Turkic areas of
the USSR. 31
The decade of the 'final solution' of all religions opens with a
typical editorial in the fortnightly Bezbozh. entitled: 'Let the
Five Year Plan Slam Religion on the Head'. After naming
priests and sectarian leaders as chief subversive agents under-
mining collectivization, the article concludes: 'The plough and
famine gave birth to gods, while the tractor, the kolkhoz and
prosperity hit gods. They hit them very hard.' 32 But where is the
prosperity?
As prosperity evaded the socialist economy, religions began
Hail to the Five-Year Plan!
The caption over the poster reads: THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN IS A PRACTICAL PRO-
GRAMME OF STRUGGLE TO SMASH RELIGION. (Besbozhnik u stanka, no. 22,
1929)
to be used as scapegoats: priests and sectarian 'kulaks' were

accused of deliberately wrecking the harvests, sabotaging
collective farms, and other crimes. Favourite scapegoats for
poor productivity and harvest failure were religious feasts,
which allegedly brought high absenteeism and drunkenness in

the villages. 33
Lenin's dictum that religion is 'moonshine' begins to be
interpreted literally in these years, shifting the emphasis from
religious feasts causing drunkenness, to religion itself being
the dope, organically linked to alcohol, and aimed at keeping
man in a constant stupor. Such writings were often accom-
panied by blasphemous cartoons, such as depicting God
getting drunk on communion wine and ending up in a Soviet
sobering station where he is treated by hypnosis. 34
Obviously, from treating religion as a form of stupor there
remains only a short step to approaching it as a mental
disorder. And it was in the 1930s thatBezbozhnik began to depict
religion as something intrinsically linked to various forms of
psychic perversions and deviations, and even to criminal
behaviour, 35 presaging the boundless schizophrenia theories
of Professor Snezhnevsky by some two decades, 36 and their
application to religion proved to be much greater than
predicted by the 'Marxist classics'. It was therefore necessary to
find other rationales, besides the class and economic ones, for
this phenomenon. Mental deviation, criminal behaviour,
alcoholic delirium could well serve the purpose: hence, the
victory of the Yaroslavsky line in favour of a multifaceted attack
on religion and believers. 37 At first Yaroslavsky appeared to be
defending the right of religions to some degree, when he
attacked Bezbozhnik u stanka (the Work-Bench Godless, hence-
forth the Bezbust.) for promoting such slogans as: 'Down with
that crap- religion!', carried in one of the public antireligious
demonstrations. Bezbust. retorted that it hurled insults at
religion, not at believers as persons. It is the religious ideology
that should be attacked, not the clergy. It was of this personal
attack, they argued, that Yaroslavsky was guilty, since he
substituted anti-clericalism (ridiculing, abusing, and insulting
the clergy) for atheism. Likewise, they claimed the antireligious
struggle should be led only by the party and by the industrial
proletariat, not by the whole nation which Yaroslavsky was
trying to mobilize and recruit into his League of the Godless.:lx
Thus, as his publications confirm, Yaroslavsky's protestations
were but a facade in his struggle to destroy his rivals and
monopolize the antireligious front, using all methods possible
in order to whip up the nation into an antireligious frenzy. In
practice, both Bezbozh. and Bezbust. resorted to primitive

blasphemies, insulting any believer, with, for instance, car-
toons depicting the Nativity as an adulterous three-party
romance with the Virgin Mary. Caricatures of such type were a
common occurrence in the journal. 39
The same song was sung by the general mass media,
including the youth daily Komsol'skaia pravda (henceforth Koms.
pr.) and K rokodil (Crocodile) the chief Soviet satirical magazine.
Krokodil depicted the clergy as alcoholics, lechers and money-
grabbers, at least from 1922. Almost no issue appeared in 1923
without at least one caricature of the clergy or the Church. The
Koms. pr. 1929 anti-Christmas campaign practically equated
religion with drunkeness. Its parody on the Christmas Tree is
decorated with a Gospel, next to which is a criminal with a knife,
followed by a bottle of vodka hanging from a tree branch, and a
Bethlehem Star with a cross inside it crowning the ugly
company. 40
Thus it is hardly possible to speak of any differentiation in
styles, methodology and approach in different Soviet atheistic
periodicals. As we have shown, even 'sophisticated' theoretical
and methodological journals were prone to publishing direct
hate propaganda against religions and believers. It would be
more accurate to differentiate between different periods in
Soviet antireligious attacks, always keeping in mind what was
going on in the country as a whole in each particular period,
and how certain types of antireligious attacks in the press
related to practical policies regarding the Churches and
believers.
There may have been some uncertainties as to which course
to take in 1925, hence the possibility for debate between
Bezbozhnik and Bezbust. It was the year of the birth of the League
of the Godless as an organization of the masses and of the
addition of the illustrated fortnightly Bezbozhnik to the weekly
newspaper by the same name which had been appearing since
1922. Thus, Yaroslavsky's line was winning, his empire
growing, and Bezbust. might have been waging rearguard
battles against its rival. It was a battle over immediate tactics,
rather than principles, as excellently illustrated in two articles
by Yaroslavsky's deputy editor, Anton Loginov. He writes: 'it's
common knowledge that religion is opium, ... poison, stupor,
moonshine, and yet we are not supposed to insult believers'
feelings. Why should we say one thing and do another?' And

then he answers this rhetorical question simply by saying: 'Not
every stab at religion serves the aim of struggle against it ...
every "persecution of the faith" builds up religious fanaticism.'
He describes Komsomol and LG members' raids on churches:
blasphemous shouts during the service; letting out a pig in the
middle of a church. He condemns these methods only because
they are counter-productive, not because he preaches any
genuine respect for believers or their convictions. 41 Obviously,
this philosophy does not preclude any change in methodology
should it be seen to be more practical or should there be an
order from higher authorities to do so. In principle, therefore,
there is nothing unusual when the same publication which in
1925-6 preached some restraint and selectivity, a short time
later unleashed the most vulgar and nihilistic attacks on
religion and believers.
The nihilism included a campaign against iconography and
church architecture begun in 1928. The People's Commis-
sariat of Education boasted of having convinced the depart-
ment dealing with historical monuments to reduce the list of
architecturally precious churches under its protection from
7000 to 1000, automatically condemning 6000 church build-
ings to future destruction. LMG officials boasted of public
burnings of thousands of icons. The conclusion of a plenary
session of the LMG Central Council was that such destructions,
as well as public abuse of priests, are proper where they serve
the purpose of antireligious struggle, but they are wrong where
they result in support for religion. The city of Vladimir, whose
church architecture and frescoes are among the world's most
beautiful, is described in Bezbozhnik as a city disfigured by the
ugliness of the multiple churches. It is often stated that icons
are harmful because their Jesus 'is a model for slaves and a
patron of executioners'. 42 Such writings would be a premoni-
tion of and rationalization for the forthcoming mass closures
and destruction of churches and of religious art along with
them. In fact, the Bezbozhnik pages begin to be filled with
photographs of disfigured churches, turned into clubs, shops,
factories and garages, with appropriate boasting captions. 43
The illustrations on pp. 39-41 are a witness of that 'achieve-
ment'.
···" · ~~·:
The LMG concept of beauty: the Leningrad Putilov factory church on the left trans-
formed into a workers' club on the right. The author, Oleshchuk, presents this as a
model to be emulated.
F. Oleshchuk, Kto stroit tserkvi v SSSR (M.-L.: Moskovskii rabochii, n.d.) 24.
I:JQ
t..O
40
--
.
~_.- ~~'5""""·" ~'t¥:.;
..
·.u ·;:c_:c;:·~~
~
--- ..... ,
. ur Cat hedral before its dest ruction in 1931

The Moscow Christ -The-Savto
41
1931: Ruins of the Christ-The-Saviour Cathedral

As early as 1926 Loginov insisted on the replacement of an

areligious by an antireligious school; his antireligious attacks
were no milder than Kostelovskaia's of Bezbust. In 1928 at the
Fifteenth Party Congress Stalin took the Party to task, calling
for its participation in a more active and persuasive anti-
religious propaganda.
Along with the campaign for antireligious education a
campaign was led against schoolteachers of the old intelligent-
sia. It was asserted that they were active anti-Soviets and
'clericalists', surreptitiously allowing priests to contact and
spiritually influence schoolchildren. Reports appeared about
individual (always named) schools where the majority of
teachers were members of the former gentry, sons and
daughters of priests, merchants, kulaks and other 'non-socialist'
classes. In those years of dekulakization and collectivization this
meant invariably that such teachers would be sacked and, in
most cases, imprisoned or exiled. 44
As we have seen, 'all-persuasive' translates as all means to be
used against religion, including the hate-the-clergy line of
Yaroslavsky, the class-enemy line of Kostelovskaia, and
Lunacharsky's concepts of a hostile cultural phenomenon. But
hate-the-clergy is seen as effective in dividing the ranks of
believers without, allegedly, insulting the latter's personal
feelings. Henceforth, Kostelovskaia's Bezbust. was forced to
adopt this anti-clergy emphasis and specialize in it, until the
closure of the journal and its absorption by the illustrated
Bezbozhnik in 1932. Ironically, only five to six years earlier
Bezbust. had argued that such an 'unprincipled' antireligious
line played into the hands of religions.
Even as it was declared that 'the forms of antireligious work
must be brought closer to the masses', all forms of attack were
being used, especially hate and contempt directed at the clergy.
Clerics were depicted as 'direct agents of private capital' at the
height of the campaign against the kulaks and private enter-
prise. Articles on the Orthodox and the sects appeared under
such captions as: 'No favours to the class enemies ... The
enemy does not sleep!' and 'Militant godless, don't you take off
your weapons before the resisting enemy!' At the same time,
attacks against sectarian collective farms condemned them not
for inefficient work or poor productivity, but because they
prevented the penetration of antireligious propaganda into
their midst. Hence they must be abolished (and abolished they

soon were, as we know). Another antireligious page in Korns.
pr., in the relatively calm year of 1931, appears under the
caption: 'The Orthodox and the Sectarians are agents of the
Exploiting Classes'. 45
Korns. pr. instructed its readers to sacrifice their family ties for
the sake of atheism: no compromise with family religious
traditions for the sake of family unity or loving pity for the old
grandmother. Pity should not stand in the way of building
socialism: 'You must beat religion on the head every day of your
life in all its expressions in daily life.' 46
This new sinister turn was often reflected in the pages of
Bezbozhnik in the 1930s, which at the same time became less and
less dynamic, publishing only a routine of hate and insults
without any originality or search for new approaches. The still
lingering Bezbust. published a vicious attack on practising
believers among top Soviet scholars in the prestigious
Timiriazev Academy of Agricultural Sciences, menacingly (in
this climate of mounting terror) citing their names, 47 and
stressing that one of them, Professor Borisov, was even a
practising Orthodox priest. The article was unscrupulous in its
use of slander and name-calling.
The 1929-30 purge of the Russian Academy of Sciences
illustrates how such labels translated into sinister deeds in those
days. Close to 100 leading scholars of the nation (from
mathematicians to historians, from chemists to orientalists ... ),
their assistants and most talented graduate students, were
arrested on forged charges and given sentences ranging from
three years of internal exile to the death penalty. Most of them
had been practising believers; some were Orthodox clergymen
who combined their scholarly research with pastoral or
monastic functions. A case in point, showing the devious
methods used by the investigation, concerns the famous
historian Sergei Platonov, also arrested at the time. Provoca-
tively he was asked by the investigator how he, Platonov, being
so religious, could appoint Kaplan, aj ew, to the directorship of
the Pushkin House. 'What do you mean, a Jew?' asked
Platonov: 'He is married to Professor Shakhmatov's daughter
and, wearing a cassock, he reads the Psalter in the church every
lent.' This information was sufficient to send Kaplan off to a
concentration camp for five years. 48 It is in this light that more
and more reports on believers, with their names and bio-

graphies appearing in the atheists' press, become particularly
sinister in meaning: for example, a photograph of a classroom
in which one of the girl pupils is writing on the board the names
of those classmates who were seen attending the church at
Easter. 49
Any methods were now justified, any strategy, any tactic, as
long as it promised immediate results and whipped up
antireligious frenzy. Consequently, the crude anti-
Christmases and anti-Easters which the Komsomol and early
societies of atheists used to organize in the early 1920s,and
which were later condemned by the Soviet press as too crude
and ugly to be effective, were now also renewed.
Here is a description of one such 'Komsomol Christmas' of
1923 in the city of Go mel. It began by a mock trial of gods in a
city theatre. The defendants were stuffed scarecrows repre-
senting the gods of different religious, as well as the clergy:
Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish. The judges were proletarian
komsomols. The verdict: all gods and clerics must be burned at
the stake. The whole mass poured out into the streets of the city
with torches and scarecrows in their hands and shouted, 'Away
with the churches, away with the synagogues!' The effigies
were then publicly burned in a city square. All this happened on
Christmas Day. 50 By the mid-1920s, parades were replaced by
similar meetings, but only behind closed doors, and accom-
panied by antireligious lectures and poetry readings, as well as
by articles in the atheistic journals. One typical article con-
demns Christian feast days as serving the interests of the
exploiting classes alone, because the Christian Christmas
message of peace and goodwill does not distinguish between
the working classes and the capitalists, and there can be no
peace as long as the latter remain, as long as strikes go on in the
West. The article then vulgarly ridicules a church service as 'a
pop's speech embellished by an artistic entertainment of song
and recital, and concluding with an angelic resolution for
general acceptance and fulfilment'. 51
It is around 1928-30 that the same tone and type of attack on
religious feasts was resumed. Blasphemous public parades
were renewed, such as an LG parade in 1927 on the tenth
anniversary of the October Revolution, with mock-bishops,
generals and capitalists whose effigies were then publicly
burnt. 52 Now these parades, when organized at the time of
Christmas and, particularly, Easter services with the traditional
Easter processions at midnight around the church, make the
holding of the Church celebrations almost impossible. For
instance, announcements of anti-Easter campaigns state that
the parties will begin at eleven p.m. (the time of the beginning
of the Nocturns in the Orthodox Paschal celebration) and will
continue until the early morning hours, with open-air shows of
antireligious films, orchestras and dancing in the square facing
churches. Appeals are made to bakeries not to bake traditional
Easter cakes. However, in the few cases where the results are
reported, it is admitted that 'some churches' were packed to
bursting (that is, there were several thousand people in each
church), while the anti-church celebrations attracted from l 00
to 600 people. 53 The new element in the anti-feast demonstra-
tions is that they must also promote socialist competition in the
fulfilment of the five-year plans and condemn religion, clergy
and church feasts for the alleged subversion of this economic
struggle. 54
The terror that escalated throughout the 1930s and resulted
in 1939 in the physical destruction of the whole Church, and all
organized religion in the country, left no more room or reason
for debates on strategies and tactics of the antireligious
struggle. The terror at the same time demonstrated the
recognition of the failure of the verbal struggle, especially
when Yaroslavsky was forced to admit towards the end of the
decade that over 50 per cent of the population still believed in
God. Bezbozhnik of course joined the chorus condemning
Trotsky, Bukharin and other 'traitors of the communist
course' in the 1930s, and lost its own voice like the rest of the
Soviet press. 5 5 All that was left for Bezbozhnik to write about in
1939-40 were drab articles like 'Stalin on Religion', praise for
the five-year plans, and appeals to the LMG members to be
good patriots. In the words of one Western scholar:
Yaroslavskii acknowledged that it was necessary to exercise
caution ... and a policy of deep, insistent, and patient
persuasion was stressed ... Two decades of experience had
produced a chastening effect on the antireligiozniki. 56
This is academism at its ivory-tower best: hastening indeed,
when in a territory of 22 million square kilometres there
remained only several hundred of the original fifty thousand

Orthodox churches, four bishops out of the original300, some
two to three thousand priests out of the original 45 000. All
other religions were hit similarly. The only thing that remained
for enthusiasts of atheism to do was to spy out individual
believers and denounce them to the NKVD. The Church had
to be revived first, so that there would be an object for attack;
while the vulgarity of the attacks of the 1920s and early 1930s
had to wait for the Khruschev era and its new assault on
religion.
3 Persecutions, 1921-41
'To be a priest today means being a martyr.'
(E. MacNaughten, 'Informal Report of Religious Situ-
ation in Russia')
THE NEP ERA (1921-8)
The New Economic Policy (NEP) was launched by Lenin at the

end of the 1Oth Party Congress in March 1921 in response to
the economic catastrophe which the War Communist system
had brought to the country. It was also a compromise with the
general population: the country was torn by massive popular
rebellions against Bolsheviks, among which the most famous
were the Kronstadt Sailor Rebellion ofFebruary- March 1921
and the Antonov Peasant Rebellion of 1921-2 engulfing most
of the Russian Central Black Earth provinces. 1 NEP ushered in
an era of limited free enterprise in industry, trade and
agriculture, a relative relaxation of ideological controls over
the intelligentsia. The regime was trying to appear respectable
to the eyes of world public opinion in order to be diplomatically
recognized internationally and thus to win for itself a place in
the international markets. Obviously, in these conditions it was
not in the regime's best interest to continue the war communist
policy of murdering churchmen without formal trials and
plausible accusations. The fact that the persecution of the
Orthodox Church continued throughout the years of the NEP
( 1921-8), although under more 'respectable' pretexts, indi-
cates that destruction of religion, at least as an institution, was a
high priority on the communist ideological agenda of the
Soviet Government.
There were two mutually interrelated antireligious strat-
egies adopted by the regime in these years. One was under the
pretext of the campaign to confiscate church valuables,
allegedly in order to import food from abroad to feed the
famine-stricken areas. The other was connected with the
government-encouraged and -supported Church schism, the
government's legalization of the schismatic group as the only
47
legitimate Orthodox Church, and the subsequent persecution

of those who refused to recognize the schism. 2 The period
ended with the Declaration of Loyalty which the regime forced
Metropolitan Sergii, the patriarchal deputy locum-tenens, to
sign in 1927, and with the subsequent persecution of those
churchmen (predominantly bishops) who refused to recognize
the terms of the declaration and who, therefore, broke with M.
Sergii. 3
The very fertile area of the Volga Basin is subject to periodic
droughts, sometimes lasting several years in a row. The
previous local famine caused by this factor was in 1891.
Thereafter special stockpiles of grain were kept in the area to
prevent a repitition of the 1891 tragedy. All these grain
reserves were used up by the armed bands in the Civil War era,
and the droughts of 1920-22 resulted in a famine of
unprecendented proportions. It was Patriarch Tikhon who
issued an appeal on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church
'To the Peoples ofthe World and to the Orthodox Man' to help
the hungry. This was followed by his similar appeal to the major
heads of various religions outside Russia in August 1921. The
Church formed a Famine Relief Committee, but a few months
later the government ordered this committee closed, the
money collected to be handed over to the appropriate
government agency. The government insisted that the Church
hand over to it all her valuables (chalices made of precious
metals, precious stones and metals used in decorating icons,
mitres, etc.). In response, the Patriarch appealed to his parishes
on 19 February 1922 to surrender all objects of value except
those used directly in sacraments. Nine days later the govern-
ment responded by ordering the confiscation by state agents of
all church treasures including those used in sacraments. The
Patriarch issued another encyclical on the same day, urging
believers to be very generous in their donations, but not to give
up the objects used in the sacraments. The government
jumped at this as the pretext for attacking the Church. It was
obviously and deliberately heading for a direct confrontation,
for which the Patriarch and many local bishops suggested that,
in order to compensate for the sacramental objects, their
monetary equivalent should be donated instead, this was
refused, as was the Patriarch's request that Church representa-
tives be included in the government commissions inspecting,
Persecutions, 1921-41 49
confiscating and accounting for the confiscated valuables. 4

Consequently, by mid-1922 there had been 1414 bloody
clashes between the faithful and the Soviet armed detachments
protecting the confiscating commissions, and fifty-five trials of
231 group cases. 5
One of the bloodiest clashes was in the old textile-industrial
town of Shuia, not far from Moscow. According to a report in
the Soviet newspaper Izvestia on Wednesday, 15 March, the day
scheduled for the confiscation operation in the city cathedral:
large groups of people began to assemble in the church
square; many women and students. When the mounted
police appeared they were met by threatening shouts and
by hurling of rocks and firewood at them. Someone began
to ring the tocsin-bell on the belfry. The bell rang for an
hour and a half, bringing huge masses of people to the
square.
An infantry half-company and two armoured cars with
machine-guns, brought to the square, were met by a hail of
rocks and pistol-shots ... The army responded by a volley
which killed four and critically wounded ten persons. 6
The Soviet press of the time was full of similar reports about
other churches and towns across the whole breadth ofRussia. 7
The letter attributed to Lenin, which we quoted in vol. 1,
Chapter 2, plainly shows that the perseverence with which the
Soviet Government was pursuing this campaign of confis-
cations at all costs, had not been motivated by philanthropic
considerations.
Since the writing of this letter, Lenin's opinion that it would
be wiser not to arrest the Patriarch for the time being must have
drastically changed, for arrested he was on 10 May. Two days
later a group of rebel-priests in collusion with the GPU took
over the offices of the Moscow Patriarchate and set themselves
up with an interdicted bishop at the head as the Higher Church
Administration. This in essence is the Renovationist putsch.
The Renovationists declared their full loyalty to the Soviet
Government, proclaimed Marxism a social projection of
Christianity and actively supported the campaign of church-
valuables confiscations, and their leaders began to act as
witnesses for the prosecution at the trials of Orthodox clergy
and laypersons, especially in connection with the church-
valuables issue. 8 So we see that the persecutions in connection

with the valuables and with the Renovationist issue are
interrelated.
As from March 1922 Pravda and other Soviet newspapers
began to publish floods of ugly reports (usually anonymous)
against bishops, other clergymen and lay churchmen. These
mostly led to arrests and trials. The same issue of Izvestia which
reported on the Shuia incident, also published a list of' Enemies
of the People' from among the clergy, accompanied by
anonymous reports on their alleged anti-Soviet activities. The
list was headed by Patriarch Tikhon, and included the names of
twenty-seven other bishops inside Soviet Russia, all the emigre
bishops, the whole clergy of the cities of Rostov-on-Don and
Arkhangelsk, all the participants of the Clergy Conference of
Siberia, and all the monks of the Saviour Monastery in the
Iaroslavl Diocese. This is a good illustration of the sweeping
character of the campaign and the accusations.
The first widely publicized Moscow trial of 54 churchmen in
connection with the church valuables was concluded on 10
May, resulting in twelve executions (mostly clergymen) and
twenty-seven different prison sentences. The total number of
churchmen prosecuted by Soviet courts in connection with the
valuables issue between May and December 1922, according to
the data assembled by Valentinov from the Soviet press, was
708. He also cites at least four cases with undisclosed numbers
of defendants, namely, trials of groups of the clergy of
Kharkov, Novocherkassk, Irkutsk, and of a whole monastic
community in the Chernigov Province. 9 Another source gives
the figure of 732 defendents in connection with church
valuables in the first half of 1922 alone. 10 Of these, three cases
involve Roman Catholic clergy, and one, eleven jews including
a rabbi. In the case of the Orthodox defendants, at least 35
persons (23 of them clergy) were condemned to death (some
death sentences were commuted to long terms of imprison-
ment). In contrast, the six Roman Catholic clergymen received
only prison sentences of three to five years, and of the eleven
Jewish defendants, the rabbi was sentenced to three years in
prison, four were conditionally released, and the others
received terms shorter than three years. Of Valentinov's
known 708 Orthodox cases (May to December 1922) only 121
were set free after the trials. The severity of sentences meted
out to the Orthodox, contrasted with the relative mildness of
sentences given to the Catholics and the Jews, once again shows
that at that time the regime continued to see the Orthodox
Church as its main enemy.
The most notorious of the trials was that of Metropolitan
Veniamin of Petrograd with a group of leading Petrograd
clergy and theologians. Its notoriety comes from the fact that
the main victim was innocent from the point of view of the
Soviet-Marxist class theory in all its aspects. The Metropolitan
came from the humble family of a rural priest in northern
Russia. As a vicar-bishop in Petrograd Diocese he continued to
behave like a parish priest, visiting the poorest workers'
dwellings, performing the rites of baptism, marriage, funeral;
was ready to respond to any call at any time. His residence was
always full of poor and humble folk in need of help, charity, or
advice; and the bishop was always attentive, loving, generous
and caring. The flock responded to this by democratically
electing him their metropolitan in 1917, soon after the
February Revolution. This appears to have been the first free
election of a diocesan bishop by the laity and clergy since the
seventeenth century. His sermons were very simple and were
loved by the common people. In short, he did not fit at all into
the stereotype of a prince of the Church, a representative of the
ruling and exploiting classes and of the tsarist ruling circles.
But a leading churchman who had such a charismatic appeal
and following among the working masses was too much of an
ideological embarrassment for the new masters. His fate must
have been decided upon by them irrespective of how he would
react to the valuables issue.
The Petrograd section of the State Famine Relief Com-
mission (pomgol) was at first apparently not aware of the
political calculations of the Kremlin and treated the issue quite
genuinely as aiming simply at saving the hungry from
starvation. Therefore, when on 6 March 1922 the Metropoli-
tan in person presented his plan to the Commission, they
accepted it entirely; and the meeting ended with the Metropoli-
tan rising, giving his benediction to the commission and saying
with tears in his eyes that he would personally take the precious
ornaments from the most revered icons and hand them over to
the commission 'to aid the starving brothers'. His policy,
accepted by the commission, consisted of the following
conditions: that the Church was prepared to donate all her
possessions to aid the starving; that it was necessary that the act
be a voluntary donation of the Church, otherwise the peace and

order of the Church people could not be guaranteed; that for
the sake of preservation of the same peace it was imperative
that representatives of the Church participate in controlling
the further disposal of the church treasurers; that no force be
applied for otherwise he could not guarantee peace; moreover,
as a bishop he would be forced in the latter case to condemn the
actions of the state.
During the following two days Petrograd newspapers
reported the agreement in approving terms. But then Moscow
must have informed the Petrograd Soviet of its real aims in the
campaign. Suddenly the Metropolitan was told by the latter
that the clergy could not participate in the commission and that
all confiscations would be done by Soviet commissars adminis-
tratively. Meanwhile, twelve Petrograd initiators of the
Renovationist schism published a letter in the Petrograd Pravda
on 24 March condemning all clergy loyal to the Patriarch as
counter-revolutionary. The Metropolitan was so eager to
prevent bloodshed by any means in the course of the
confiscations that, using the leading schismatics as inter-
mediaries, he reached a new accord with the Leningrad Soviet,
according to which the believers could keep the precious
objects used in the Sacraments as long as they collected the
equivalent value in currency.
Peace was restored until the arrest of the Patriarch and the
seizure of his chancellery by the same Petrograd priests who led
the group which had signed the above letter. Veniamin refused
to recognize the validity of the coup and excommunicated its
perpetrators (priests Vvedensky, Belkov, Krasnitsky). The
Soviet press responded by wild attacks on the Metropolitan,
threatening him with the 'sword of the proletariat' which would
'fall on the Metropolitan's neck'. Then he was presented with
an ultimatum from the Leningrad government: either the
excommunicated priests be restored or the Metropolitan and
those close to him would be arrested, charged in connection
with the church-valuables issue, and would pay with their lives.
So much for the separation of state and religion.
The Metropolitan did not budge and a few days later he was
arrested. The trial began on I 0 June. The defence lawyer was
Ya. S. Gurovich, a jew whom the Metropolitan had personally
asked to be his barrister. It was an open trial in a hall with room
for up to 3000 people, and during this trial it was always

packed.
Everybody rose when the Metropolitan was brought in. The
Metropolitan extended his benediction to all. At the trial he
continued to stand firm on the issue of the church valuables.
The chief witness for the prosecution was one of the Renova-
tionist leaders, the Priest Krasnitsky. Gurovich ruined
Krasnitsky's attack on the Metropolitan as a reactionary and
counter-revolutionary by recalling that before the revolution
Krasnitsky had been an active member of and a chaplain to the
pogromist Union of Russian People, that he had published wild
antisemitic 'treatises' and, until November 1917, militantly
anti-bolshevik articles. Another Renovationist priest, Boiar-
sky, to the unpleasant surprise of the prosecution, presented
an impassioned plea on behalf of the Metropolitan, praising
him as an excellent human being and sincere Christian.
V vedensky, the Renovationist leader originally scheduled to be
the chief prosecution witness, at the time was in hospital with a
deep gash in his skull caused by a rock hurled at him by the
angry Orthodox city folk.
Gurovich in his defence speech, lasting nearly six hours,
rejected the indictment point by point. He stressed that the
Metropolitan had done everything to preserve peace in the city
and had achieved this despite the unco-operative behaviour of
the Soviets. He pointed out that the Leningrad city soviet had
accepted his terms; and that precisely because the prosecution
had no case against the Metropolitan, it was constantly trying to
divert the debates to historical and emigre issues unrelated to
the case. The prosecution even dared to reproach 'the Russian
Orthodox clergy for the Beilis case'. 11 But Gurovich
responded:
It is common knowledge that the Russian clergy is ...

innocent of the infamous Beilis case, its best representatives
fought against that bloody slander levelled at the Jews. The
tsarist justice officials searched in vain for a convenient
'expert' from the ranks of the Orthodox clergy for a long
time. No one agreed; and the prosecution had to settle on a
notorious Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest, Pranaitis, dug
out for this purpose from somewhere in Siberia ...
I am fortunate that in this historic and profoundly
sorrowful moment for the Russian clergy I, a Jew, can testify

to the whole world the deep gratitude of, I believe, the whole
Jewish people to the Russian Orthodox clergy for their
attitude to the Beilis case at the time.
Sobs of some defendants and members of the public forced
Gurovich to make a pause. Then he went on to characterize the
Metropolitan as a true and saintly Christian. He concluded this
passage by telling the prosecution: 'You can kill the Metropoli-
tan, but it is not in your power to deprive him of his courage and
of his noble thoughts and deeds.' Then he analyzed, in
contrast, the ignoble acts of the Renovationists and warned the
Soviets that they were not a reliable ally: the people might
follow a wealthy and successful Saul who turns into the
persecuted Paul, but it will not follow the reverse transforma-
tion, especially when this is accompanied by acts leading to the
arrest and death of their former brethren. He rightly proph-
esied the imminent failure of the renovationists. The lawyer
warned the Bolsheviks that history would condemn them for
murdering the innocent bishop, and moreover: 'The faith
grows and gains its strength from the blood of its martyrs.'
The end of his speech was drowned in the massive applause
of the whole public, including the large contingent of commun-
ists brought in as a support for the prosecution.
In his final plea Veniamin stressed that in 1917 he was
elected metropolitan by a true people's judgement, not because
of any particular talents but because they loved him:
I have worked ... for the people, bringing peace and
pacifying the masses. I've always been loyal to the state
authorities and shunned politics. Of course, I reject all
accusations. And now ... I am calmly awaiting the verdict ...
well remembering the words of the Apostle: ... if you suffer
because you are a Christian, don't be ashamed of it but thank
God'
[Peter iv, 15-16].
Another of the accused in the same group, Archimandrite

Sergii, also condemned to death, described in his plea the
essentials of the ascetic life of a monk, pointing out how little
there was that connected him to the life of this world, and he
ended by saying: 'Can it be that the court thinks that the break
of this last thread may frighten me? Do your deed. I am sorry
for you and I pray for you.'
Ten persons, including the Metropolitan, were condemned
to death. Six sentences were later commuted to long imprison-
ments; fifty-nine other defendants (plus the six with com-
muted death sentences) received prison sentences of various
lengths, and twenty-two were freed. 12
No sooner had the wave of trials and executions in
connection with resistance to the confiscation of church
valuables subsided, than the press began to accuse the clergy
and the church people of hiding away and even stealing (from
themselves- D.P.) church valuables. A series of arrests and
trials with heavy sentences on these grounds followed. At least
two bishops, numerous priests, and in many cases all members
of parish councils, were arrested and sentenced to several years
of imprisonment; eight years being the longest imprisonment
meted out in connection with these accusations, according to
Valentinov. 13 But this campaign was cut short by the failure to
conceal the massive black-market operations of Soviet officials
involved in the church-valuables operation. Soon private shops
in Constantinople, Lvov (Poland), Riga (Latvia), Kharbin
(China) and other major cities close to the Soviet borders began
a lively trade in precious Russian church artifacts. In Kharkov
alone 'several billion roubles' worth' of church valuables had
thus been stolen; and the Soviet press was forced to admit that
the criminals caught included train attendants in railway
carriages reserved for foreign diplomats and other Soviet petty
officials, who apparently purchased these treasures from
unnamed and untried higher Soviet officials. There was not a
single person associated with the Church involved in these
affairs. In another case a local communist party organization
sold a precious ancient shroud on the black market to replenish
its currency reserve. The case was reported in Pravda beause it
had caused a local believers' protest riot. 14 This shows how
justified was the Patriarch's original insistence that the confis-
cation commissions include church representatives, and also
his suspicions that charity and concern for the starving were
not first priorities in Lenin's campaign.
All in all, an unknown number oflaymen and 8100 members
of the clergy were murdered in connection with the church-
valuables issue, of which 2691 were married priests, 1962
monks and male novices, 344 7 nuns and female novices. 15

The other pretext for persecutions was claims of miracles
and mass religious rituals honouring these miracles. For
instance, an icon was found in a Tula belfry. For some reason
the local church people considered this find miraculous, and a
special service was celebrated in front of it. Consequently, the
local bishop, Yuvenalii, was sentenced to ten years' imprison-
ment; the dean of the church where the icon had been found,
Fr. Uspensky, his church warden and numerous other laymen
were sentenced to five years' imprisonment each. 16 Obviously,
dissemination of information on miracles was seen by the
regime as a vile and very effective propaganda for religion, but
since religious propaganda could not be criminally prosecuted
until 1929, claims of miracles in the atmosphere of direct
confrontation between the State and the Church must have
been treated as acts hostile to the Soviet regime. Believers
traditionally tend to view miracles as signs from God to
strengthen them and their faith in the most trying situations.
Thus, the regime could interpret these manifestations as
attempts to strengthen the believers in their struggle in defence
of the Church valuables, and against the desecration of the
churches by the state commissions.
The struggle against claims of miracles must be seen in the
same context as the campaign to compulsorily open up Saints'
relics, confiscate them from the Church and place into state
museums (as we discuss in Chapter 5). Obviously, the position
of the state was that if religion could not be liquidated, at least it
ought to be 'demysticized' . 17 This campaign also met consider-
able resistance from the believers and caused many clashes and
arrests} 8
The distinction between direct prosecutions and propa-
ganda aimed at presenting the believers as contemptible
syphylitics (see Chapter 2), semi-humans, as it were, is very
unclear, because developing such attitudes toward the be-
lievers leads to all forms of their mistreatment. A teacher who
loses his or her job because of religious convictions is a victim of
persecution. And it was with the call for an antireligious school
to replace an areligious one, from 1926 on, that teachers had to
begin to conceal their faith and to abstain from visiting
churches in order to keep their jobs} 9 Similarly, the introduc-
tion of the continuous work week in 1929 (four working days
followed by a day off) and the banning of days off on church
feast days, deprived people of the possibility of going to church
on a regular basis and brought job discrimination and
punishment in cases of truancy. This amounts to religious
persecution.
Finally, in line with Lenin's words that the communist state
should be much more tolerant towards amoral and even
criminal priests than towards those of high moral standing,
authority and popularity, the regime removed, imprisoned,
and even shot the most popular clergymen wherever it could.
Many examples have already been cited from the Civil War era
and from the fraudulent trials of the 1920s; but in all of the
latter there were formal accusations, however flimsy, uncon-
vincing and fraudulent. In the provinces, however, away from
the limelight of the major cities and the eyes of foreign
observers, a systematic campaign was led throughout the
decade to liquidate the most popular monks, to shut down the
most popular and morally authoritative monasteries. One of
the first of these to go was the Optina Monastery to which
almost every Russian literary figure of note had made
pilgrimages. The monastery, transformed into an agricultural
commune in 1922, was forced to close in the following year,
converted into a state museum and a national monument.
Many of the monks were allowed to remain as employees of the
institution; but in the same year the most popular of them, the
widely loved elder Nektarii, was arrested. Even earlier, in 1919,
a saintly thirty-year-old monk-priest Nikon had spent some
time in prison. Their only crime was that they were monks, and
popular. In 1928 the museum was closed by the state and
before 1930 all the surviving monks of that monastery were
either dispersed and in hiding across the country, or in prisons
and concentration camps. All seven churches of the nearby
town of Kozelsk, where some of the monks had served since the
closure of the monastery and the eventual expulsion of the
monastic museum employees, were shut by 1929, depriving
the whole local population not only of their former elders but
of church services as well. 20
Obviously this is persecution. Clearly, not for a moment was
there ever any real separation of Church and State in the Soviet
Union. The totalitarian system, trying to cultivate a new
materialistic faith in the people, could not tolerate a dynamic
faith in the Supernatural, capable of inspiring and leading

millions of people. The faith had to be weakened, neutralized,
turned into the private affair of an isolated individual, made as
invisible as possible, if it could not be destroyed altogether. A
schism in the Church was one of the new hopes of the regime.
The details of the schism of the Renovationists or of the Living
Church are described in my Russian Orthodox Church under the
Soviet Regime.
As was seen in the case of Metropolitan Veniamin, the
regime obliged by arresting, administratively exiling (without
trial) and even shooting those bishops and priests who
continued overtly to declare their loyalty to the imprisoned
Patriarch and those who categorically refused to submit to the
'Renovators'. It is estimated that, in addition to the 1922
church-valuables trials, 165 priests were executed after 1923,
i.e. after the church-valuables issue had subsided. 21 By early
1925 there were at least sixty-five bishops in prisons or
administrative exile in distant areas, not counting those who
had repeatedly been detained for short periods and then
released. The arrests continued. Some returned from exile in
1925, while another twenty bishops were arrested in that year,
including Metropolitan Peter (Poliansky), who became the
locum-tenens of the patriarchal throne after Patriarch
Tikhon's death in April of that year. Peter and many other
bishops faithful to him were arrested towards the end of 1925,
clearly for their refusal to come to terms with the Renovation-
ists, and accept them as a self-contained part within a
reconsolidated Orthodox Church. Now the regime wanted a
reunification: the Renovationists had failed to attract the laity,
so they ceased to be of interest to the Soviets as a separate entity;
but because of their readiness to co-operate with the authorities
and their close connections with the GPU, they would have
been very useful as activists within the regular Orthodox
Church. 22 Metropolitan Peter's intransigence in relation to the
Renovationists, as well as that of many other bishops, including
Archbishop Illarion (Troitsky) of Krutitsy, cost them their
lives: they died in exile- Metropolitan Peter in the Arctic in
193 7, lllarion in a prison transit hospital in Leningrad in
1929. 23 Illarion, as well as Peter's locum-tenens, Metropolitan
Sergii, were among the twelve bishops arrested in 1926. Now
the regime was aiming at forcing the Church hierarchy to bend
even lower in a declaration of loyalty to the Soviets than

Patriarch Tikhon had done in 1919, in 1923, and again in his
last testament in 1925. The Patriarch had emphasized the
freedom of the Church in the situation of the separation of
Church and State and the duty of her flock to be loyal to the
Soviet state in all civic matters. He had likewise declared civic
loyalty of the Church to the Soviet state, in as much as this
loyalty did not contradict a Christian's primary loyalty to God. 24
At this time bishops secretly undertook the election of a new
patriarch by means of a ballot by correspondence via trusted
messengers, travelling from one bishop to another. The arrests
of 1926-7 are mainly the state's retaliation for this secret
undertaking, discovered through the arrest and execution of
two laymen, I. A. Kuvshinov and his son, who were acting as
such messengers. Lists and names of the voting bishops were
found at the time of their arrest, which apparently had also led
to the arrest of the third messenger, the Monk Tavrion ( 1898-
1978) who subsequently spent a total of twenty-seven years in
prisons, camps and exile. 25 Consequently the number of
arrested bishops rose to 117 by April 1927 according to one
source, and to over 150 by the middle of that year, according to
another.
Metropolitan Sergii was released in 1927 and signed a
declaration at last worded in terms acceptable to the state, not
only promising loyalty, but alleging that the Soviets had never
persecuted the Church and even thanking them for the 'care'
they had shown her. But at just that time several bishops were
imprisoned for their loyalty to Sergii. 26 On 14June 1927:
three bishops and ten young promising priests were taken in
Petrograd. Some students in the Pastors' School [under-
ground Orthodox or legal Protestant?] were also seized ...
For the first time Finnish Protestants were disturbed, twenty
... being arrested.
In Odessa ... a number of priests of the Catholic Church
were taken ... [plus] three Orthodox priests were arrested
[in fact] ... it was rumoured fourteen had been taken.
In Moscow the priest, deacon and reader of the Holy
Ghost church were arrested. 27
The contemporary report, which has no claim to omniscience,
goes on enumerating individual arrests, situations of exiled
bishops, etc., but apparently its author was still unaware of the
contents of Metropolitan Sergii's Declaration of Loyalty and
reactions to it. In fact, it caused such an upheaval that schisms
on the right developed; they were conservative church move-
ments refusing to accept Sergii's policy. Consequently, most of
the bishops arrested in 1928-32 were those in revolt against
Sergii (while those who had been arrested earlier for following
Sergii continued to serve their sentence). The detained
churchmen in those years were often cynically questioned by
the GPU during the interrogations: 'what was their attitude to
"our" Metropolitan Sergii, heading the Soviet Church?'
According to internal secret statistics, 20 per cent of all the
inmates of the dreaded Solovki camps in 1928-9, or about
10 000 of the 1930 estimates of 50 000 total Solovki inmates,
were imprisoned in some connection with the affairs of the
Orthodox Church. 28 Between 1928 and 1931 at least thirty-six
additional bishops had been imprisoned and exiled, the total
number of bishops in prison and exile surpassing 150 by the
end of 1930. 29 The number of bishops breaking with Sergii on
account of the above declaration was no less than thirty-seven. 30
In the Ukraine the clergy faithful to the Patriarchal Church
began suffering mass reprisals as early as 1919-21, owing to
Soviet support for a Ukrainian nationalistic church movement,
the so-called Autocephalists (also known as Lypkivskyites),
which broke away from the Patriarch. Having achieved this
three-way split in the Ukraine (the Patriarchals, the Renova-
tionists, and the Autocephalists), this effectively weakened the
Church as an institution in general, and seeing that the vast
majority of the population in the Ukraine continued to cling to
the Patriarchal jurisdiction, 31 the Soviets lost interest in the
Autocephalists and began their selective persecution in 1924.
In addition, in the second half of the 1920s the regime began its
first manoeuvres to curb and eventually destroy local national-
ist movements, including the Autocephalist Church which was
an enclave of the most extreme Ukrainian ecclesiastical
nationalists. A wholesale persecution began: its leader was
imprisoned in 1926 and, after a number of reversals, the
Church was forced to declare its self-liquidation at its last
council in 1930. Practically all its self-appointed bishops, most
clerical and lay activists, were incarcerated, many were
executed. 32
Persecutions, 1921 -41 61
1929-41
The separation of the pre-1929 period from the post-1929 one

is somewhat artificial. A scrutiny of the few available bio-
graphies of priests and lay believers persecuted for their faith
reveals that many of them had begun their prison odyssey in
the 1920s, continuing in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and even in
the early 1960s in the few cases of those who lived long
enough. 33 Yet 1929 is a watershed of sorts.
To begin with, it was the year of the first Soviet comprehen-
sive antireligious legislation, which deprived the Church of all
rights except that of fulfilling rituals within church walls. All
pretence at a struggle between religion and atheism on equal
terms was shed once and for all: from now on only atheists had
the unlimited right to propagate their ideas, the right of
information and propaganda. The Church was not allowed
even to run study groups for religious adutls, organize picnics
or cultural circles, organize special services for individual
groups of believers, such as schoolchildren, youth, women or
mothers.
But in addition to the main laws, other instructions and
regulations- mostly of 1928-30, all of them having the force of
law- progressively straightened the situation of the Churches,
and in particular of the clergy and their families, making
arbitrary persecutions against them ever easier, particularly
after the issuing of a number of discriminatory financial, land
use and housing regulations.
The Soviet constitutions of 1918 and 1924 declared the
clergy of all ranks and religions (including monks, nuns and
novices) and their dependents 'the non-labouring elements', to
be deprived of the right to elect or be elected to any Soviet
organs of government or administration, popularly known as
lishentsy. Additional instructions stipulated that members of
rural clergy could be granted land plots for private cultivation,
but in each case only with the special permission of the county
government. Such permission could be granted only as a 'last
priority' after all the land use needs of the 'toiling elements' had
been satisfied, and only if no one in the given rural community
requested the land for their use. Should such a request arise,
the administration had the right to take the plot away from the
clergyman. The clergy had no priority of claim over any part of
the land that had belonged to the Church pnor to the

revolution.
As to co-operatives and collective farms, the 'non-toiling
elements' were deprived of the right to join them by a 1928
piece of legislation. In other words, whatever land the rural
clergy may have used for cultivation prior to the collectiviza-
tion, they would lose it now. As well-to-do farmers (Kulaks and
'sub-Kulaks') were liquidated in the course of collectivization
the village clergy lost its subsistence, as the wealthier peasants
alone could pay the monstrous taxes levied by the state on the
clergy as 'private entrepreneurs'. But even before the collec-
tivization, no rules or criteria regulated or limited the rights of
the county government to refuse a plot of land to a clergyman.
This meant that there was no limit for arbitrary decisions and
discrimination against the clergy either during or before the
collectivization.
As has already been said, the 'income' tax the clergy had to
pay was on a par with that of private entrepreneurs, which
could be as high as 81 per cent of income, but there were no
clear criteria on how personal income was to be assessed; thus a
broad avenue was opened for financial persecution. As for the
rural clergy, the 1929 regulations stipulated that they pay the
full tax on any land use, plus 100 per cent of the tax on income
received for their clerical functions, plus a special tax paid by
those deprived of the right to elect or be elected. In addition, all
church communities had to pay an annual tax on the leased
church building in the amount of 0.5 per cent of the 'market'
value of the building, arbitrarily assessed by the State Insur-
ance Office (Gosstrakh) which enjoyed complete monopoly. 34
A numberofDraconian measures were brought into force in
1929 regarding housing for clergy. Needless to say, all
residences that had belonged to the Church before the
revolution were nationalized by the 23January 1918decree. In
1929 it was decreed that clergy occupying any part of such
housing in the rural areas would henceforth pay 10 per cent of
their 'commmercial' value in rental payment per annum; while
'the toiling elements' living in the same had to pay only 1 per
centofthevalue in rentifitwasa stone house and 2 percent if it
was made of wood. As far as the urban clergy was concerned, a
decree of 8 April 1929 stipulated that none of the clergy whose
total annual income surpassed 3000 roubles could continue to
reside in any nationalized or municipalized buildings, and that

they had to be evicted by that date. No such housing could be
leased to any clergy (even earning less than the above sum) after
that date, nor would they be allowed to reside there in
apartments rented by 'toiling' individuals. The eviction 'is to be
carried out administratively without any provision for replace-
ment living space'. Henceforth priests could reside only in
rented living space in private houses, of which after the
collectivization almost nothing but semi-rural cottages
remained. Moreover, in the climate of enhanced religious
persecution not many laymen dared to offer such housing to
members of the clergy. This measure forced many priests to
'unfrock', conceal their former vocation and take on civilian
jobs.
The clergy and conscientious objectors had to pay a special
tax for not serving in the active forces, but still had to serve
(whenever called up) in the auxiliary force mobilized as labour
detachments for felling trees, mining and doing otherjobs over
a certain period of years. The size of the military non-service
tax (the clergy could not serve in the army even voluntarily,
because this privilege was reserved only for full citizens with
full voting rights) was equal to 50 per cent of the income tax on
an annual income of under 3000 r., and to 75 per cent of the
income tax over the said annual income size, but was not to
exceed a total of 20 per cent of one's income. But if the
clergyman was already paying over 80 per centofhis arbitrarily
assessed income in income tax, then together with the military
non-service tax this would amount to more than his income, not
counting the other taxes and the rent.
A stipulation was included in this decree stating that
avoidance or delays in paying this military tax should be
regarded as regular crime and punishable by imprisonment.
Finally, an instruction of 5 August 1929 deprived the clergy
of any social security rights. Up to then church councils could
insure their clergy for medical care and even for pension by
paying the required sums. From the date of this decree all such
sums paid would be kept by the state, but no insurance or
pensions provided for the clergy, even to those already in
retirement. Henceforth the clergy could be served by doctors
only privately who could charge as much as they wanted. 35
1929 was the year of the beginning of forced mass collectivi-
zation of agriculure and of destruction of all private enterprise

by a combination of absurdly exorbitant taxes and imprison-
ments, even executions for 'deliberate' avoidance of taxes,
which were often classified as deliberate wrecking activities
aimed against Soviet industrialization and the Five Year Plan.
The Church and the clergy, categorized as private enterprise
(although forbidden by the legislation to set and collect
membership dues), were treated likewise.
Collectivization often began by closing of the village church
and the deportation of the village priest as a kulak. During
this period a priest could be seen mounting the pulpit in his
underclothes- all that he had left.
Priests' wives nominally divorced their husbands in order to get
jobs to support their families and to get their children into
schools; while 'priests began to line up in rags in front of the
churches begging for alms'. 36
The Soviet press and the LMG resolutions of 1929 and early
1930 are full of such slogans as: 'let us deal a crushing blow to
religion!'; 'we must achieve liquidation of the Church and
complete liquidation of religious superstitions! '37 And, of
course, liquidation in the Che-Ka jargon meant nothing less
than execution. Indeed, Oleshchuk wrote towards the end of
the last pre-war decade about the necessity of the final
liquidation of the clergy (compare with Hitler's final solution of
the Jewish question). 3H The intensity of the attack of 1929-30
can be illustrated by the example of known individual regions
of the country. Thus, in the central Russian region of Bezhetsk
100 of the surviving 308 churches were shut in that year, as
compared with twelve closed between 1918 and 1929. In the
Tula diocese 200 out of 760 churches were closed during the
same year. The LMG press is also full of boastful reports and
photographs of demolished, dynamited churches or (more
often) of their adaptation for secular use. Priests were treated
as kulaks, and failing to pay their taxes in kind were exiled en
masse to Siberia and to prisons. All this was only temporarily
halted by Stalin's devious 'Dizziness from Success' article of 15
March 1930, calling for a slow-down in collectivization and
'condemning' the use of force. 3~ The protests of Western
Christians and Western states against the wild persecutions,
and mass public prayers in Britain, Rome and other places on
behalf of the persecuted Russian believers, contributed greatly

to this temporary halt in the antireligious holocaust. Stalin
could not afford total alienation of the West: he needed its
credits and machines for his industrialization.
The terror of the 1930s was conducted in a climate of
maximum secrecy after the bad publicity of the 1929-30
campaign. Hence, even to this day, detailed and systematic
information on terror of that decade in general and on that in
relation to the Church in particular is lacking. All we have is
multiple individual stories retold by witnesses and survivors.
And that is what this chapter, of necessity, will have to consist of.
But let us first reconstruct the trends of persecutions.
Following the round-up of the anti-Sergiite bishops, their
churches were being closed en masse and the parish priests of
these churches generally followed their bishops to exile and
prison. The last officially functioning anti-Sergiite church in
Moscow was closed in 1933; the last one in Leningrad, in 1936. 40
Once these churches were closed, they were usually either
wrecked or turned to secular use. As, following Sergii's 1927
Declaration of Loyalty, a majority of parishes both in Moscow
and Leningrad and up to 90 per cent of the parishes in those
dioceses which were headed by anti-Sergiite bishops went into
opposition, the destruction of the anti-Sergiite churches must
have diminished the number of functioning churches by a very
high proportion; although a large number of these schismatics
on the right had made peace with Sergii by 1930, when he
officially claimed the loyalty of 163 bishops and 30 000
parishes. 41
1932 was the year of a near-complete destruction of the
remaining overtly functioning monasteries. In the words of
Levitin, a well-known Russian religious author and a witness of
the time described, 'on 18 February 1932 all monks dis-
appeared behind the bars of concentration camps'. His data,
however, is based on Leningrad alone, where 318 monks and
nuns were put behind bars on that day. In addition, the
Leningrad transit prisons were bursting at the seams after that
date with monks and nuns from the Leningrad province.
(There is evidence that at least in the Ukraine some vestiges of
semi-overt monasticism survived until1935 and even 1937 .) It
was following the liquidation of monasticism that the 1929-30
wave of destruction of the rural churches reached the cities.
Levitin enumerates some twenty-two Leningrad churches

alone closed during the week following 18 February 1932.
More churches were closed during the subsequent months.
Then there was another relative lull for over two years before
the new and total assault of 1934-9 would begin. 42
In Moscow alone over 400 churches and monasteries were
dynamited. Of the total of over 600 religious communities of all
faiths in pre-revolutionary Moscow, only fifteen orthodox and
perhaps five or six communities of other faiths survived in
1939. 43 Even the Soviet general press presented occasionally
revealing statistics on the destruction of churches, For
example: 44
City or city and district Before rev. 1934-7
Belgorod and district 4 7 churches and 3 4 churches
monasteries ( 1936)
Novgorod (city) 42 churches and 3 15 churches
monasteries (1934)
Kuibyshev (former 2200 churches, 325(1937)
Samara) and its mosques and other
diocese temples
But the above table brings us only to the end of 1936; two years
of continuing and escalating liquidation of the Church were
still to come. No religions were spared, not even the Renova-
tionists, who were of no more use to the Soviets. The attack on
them began in 1934 when, according to Levitin who was then
an active Renovationist, the appearance of religiously dedi-
cated youth in its ranks, including young priests, promised a
possible transformation of Renovationism into something
more than just an obedient GPU tool. 45
The official Soviet 1941 figure of over 8000 religious
communities of all faiths, including 4222 Orthodox, included
the recently annexed territories of Moldavia, eastern Poland,
the Baltic republics and parts of Western Karelia, where the
number of Orthodox churches was well over 3000 and that of
Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish religious centres must
have been even higher. Levitin and many other Soviet citizens
estimate that there were only around a hundred Orthodox
churches still officially functioning in 1939 on the autochthon-
ous Soviet territory. Indeed, in Leningrad, of 401 Orthodox
churches functioning in 1918 only four Patriarchal and one
Renovationist parishes were still open in 1939, a little over l per

cent of the original; extrapolating this proportion nationally
one would achieve an estimate of some 500 churches for the
whole Union. But Moscow and Leningrad were the cities most
frequented by foreigners. Hence a more 'relaxed' policy
towards the Church should have prevailed in these cities than
in the rest of the country. Thus, the actual total may have been
quite close to Levitin's estimate. 46
The human toll of this holocaust must have been at least as
great. Regelson has the following statistics on the known arrests
ofbishops from 1932 on: one in 1932, nine in 1933, six in 1934,
fourteen in 1935, twenty in 1936, fifty in 193 7; eighty-six
bishops of the 163 boasted by Metropolitan Sergii in 1930 were
behind bars seven years later (ignoring the thirty-six bishops
arrested in 1928-31, since they were mostly anti-Sergiites).
Twenty-nine bishops had died during the same period, twenty-
seven were 'retired', which in most cases meant that the given
bishop was banned from functioning as a bishop by the Soviets.
This adds fifty-six bishops to the progressive 'evaporation' of
the original figure of 163; but during the same years twenty-
four new bishops were consecrated; therefore there should
have been forty-five diocesan bishops still functioning after
1937. In fact, an Act of 1January 1937, confirming Metropoli-
tan Sergii as the sole legitimate locum-tenens mentioned fifty-
one diocesan bishops. This precedes the arrest of fifty bishops
in the course of 193 7. By 1939 only four persons still occupied
the posts of diocesan bishops in Sergii's whole hierarchy. 47
Levitin adds to this that to protect themselves from the effect of
frequent arrests of bishops, throughout the 1920s a multitude
of persons were consecrated, some secretly, as 'reserve'
bishops. The practice was to have at least two to three bishops in
each diocese, so that a vicar bishop could always take the place
of an arrested diocesan one. Consequently, he believes that
there was a total of at least 290 bishops alive in the main
Orthodox Church (including those in prisons) by the early
1930s; while the Renovationists, who consecrated married
priests as bishops quite indiscriminately (partly as a way of
attracting priests from the Patriarchal Church) had 400
bishops before 1935.
In 1941 each of these Churches had about ten bishops at
large, some diocesan, others in semi-retirement serving as
regular parish priests. Thus he estimates that 280 Patriarchal

and 390 Renovationist bishops were either shot or died in
prisons in the 1930s and 1940s. 48 Probably the figure was a little
lower, owing to the rate of natural attrition (partly accounted
for by Regelson above) and to the fact that about a score of old
bishops did reappear in the 1940s and early 1950s and joined
the ranks of the Patriarchal hierarchy, some of them former
Renovationists who had to be reconsecrated. In any case, the
toll of bishop-martyrs of both factions must have been close to
600 in those dreadful years.
The toll of the parish clergy was proportionally similar.
There is no way at the present time to give an exact estimate.
But here we can again extrapolate the Leiningrad figure,
where of a hundred priests still serving the Orthodox Church
in 1935, only seven survived to 1940; and of fifty Renovationist
priests in 1935, only eight survived to 1941. Again, if anything,
the Leningrad rate of clerical survival must have been above
the average fqr the country as a whole, for the reasons
mentioned above. At the end of the 1920s the Renovationist
Church had over l 0 000 parish priests and the Patriarchal
Church over 30 000. At the above 10 per cent combined
survival rate, therefore, no less than 35 000 priests must have
been imprisoned or executed in the 1930s, not counting new
ordinations and -the toll of natural death and retirement in the
same decade. Again, a few thousand priests were released after
the Stalin-Sergii concordat of 1943. Even then, there must
have been at least some 25 000 to 30 000 martyred priests in the
1930s and 1940s. This makes a Western estimate of over 42 000
Orthodox clergy martyred by communism in Russia 49 an
understatement if we add the Civil War and the 1920s toll plus
the physical liquidation of at least twenty thousand monastics.
How could so much brutality go on? - a lot of it publicly
(destruction of churches, burning of icons, throwing out of
priests into the streets with their families), in which many
young Komsomol and LMG enthusiasts participated. In Vasili
Grossman's novel, Forever Flowing, a disillusioned and repen-
tant former collective farm enthusiast says that in order to
make the annihilation of kulaks acceptable to the other
peasants, the propaganda had to single them out from the rest
of the peasantry and brain-wash the non-kulak children and
youth, if not the mature peasantry, to see the kulaks, the nepmen
and other terrorized elements as subhumans, as vermin of

sorts. One may be sorry for the drowning of superfluous
kittens but one accepts this as a necessity; as for the destruction
of rats and their litter, one would not even think twice. And the
propaganda said that the bourgeoisie, the kulaks, were worse
than rats. 50 Well, as the posters in Chapter 2 illustrate, the
clergy, indeed the Deity as well, were treated precisely in this
way. A manual of readings for schoolchildren, likewise, tries to
evoke nothing but contempt, a sense of fastidiousness towards
the believers in its readers, when pilgrims are depicted as a
combination of morons, repulsive-looking alcoholics, syphili-
tics, plain cheaters and greedy money-grubbing clergy. 51 At the
end of the story there remains no sympathy or empathy of the
reader towards the believer: he or she is just a harmful parasite,
spreading ignorance, filth, disease; the sooner that vermin is
liquidated, the better. Yaroslavsky, the chief supervisor of all
antireligious activities and publications of the time surely could
not have been serious when he referred to the condemnation of
the use of force against religion or to close churches declared by
the Eight Party Congress. Posing as a moderate thinker, in
another textbook Yaroslavsky protests that religion is not
merely 'an invention of the priests': 'the roots of religion are
much deeper and they must be brought to the surface'. 52
He admits direct religious persecution only in the past, which
he calls 'a period of storm and thrust with the antireligious
Komsomol carnivals, mass closure of churches .. .',which he
justifies for the 1920s as having been 'to some extent a response
to the clergy's counter-revolutionary activities during the Civil
War and to the resistance of some clergy to the confiscation of
church valuables'. 53 But all this ended in 1922, while, as we have
seen above, the real mass church closures began in 1929, and
the antireligious hate propaganda intensified from that year
on, now under the pretext of the clergy's wrecking activities
against industrialization, as the posters in Chapter 2 also
illustrate.
As for the drastic reduction of the number of functioning
temples, the official propaganda claimed that it corresponded
to the decline of religiosity in the population, and that the
closures were in accordance with the will of the toilers. But here
is a story from the Soviet press from a slightly earlier period. A
church was closed in 1923 in a factory settlement not far from
Moscow, allegedly according to the decision of a workers'

meeting. But four years later a young priest collected over 2000
signatures under a petition to allow the building of a new
church, the original one having presumably been wrecked.
The signatories, the same workers and their families who had
allegedly voted to liquidate the parish, now prove so energetic
in their demands that permission is eventually granted. 54
Although the Soviet author maintains that the signatures were
obtained by fraud, this can hardly explain the perseverence of
the group. The true explanation could only be that either the
church had been shut arbitrarily against the will of the people,
or that over the short span of four years of Soviet experience
masses of non-believers returned to the faith. Most likely the
truth of the matter was that with the growing disillusionment
with socialism and materialism people were strengthened in
their faith and were now more ready to fight for it than in the
early 1920s. In the latter case, the tough legislation of 1929 and
the intensified persecutions which accompanied and followed
it can only be seen as a hysterically defensive action of a
bankrupt ideology.
Be that as it may, the atheistic press of our own day will
occassionally admit that there were persecutions in the 1930s.
Yankova, for instance, admits pre-war persecutions as a means
to refute the popular opinion that the reopening of the
churches at the end of the Second World War and immediately
following it was caused by a massive religious revival during the
war. No, says Yankova, 'the opening of the churches is not only
a sign of some revival of religiousness ... but also a manifesta-
tion of the fact that at the end of the 1920s and throughout the
1930s churches ... were shut in many places without the
approval of the believers'. Furthermore, she admits that of the
approximately 950 churches in the Riazan' diocese before the
revolution only nine or ten remained by the end of the 1930s,
while as a result of believers' petitions after the war some sixty
churches were reopened, reaching a total of sixty-nine."" This
renders the proportion of functioning Orthodox churches by
1940aslessthan 1 percentofthepre-revolutionarynumber. If
we assume that Riazan' was a typical case, and there is no reason
to do otherwise, then it brings us back to the earlier estimate of
under 500·churches functioning by 1939, much less than the
1934-6 figures would suggest.
Yaroslavsky's own estimate of believers as numbering over
50 per cent of the total population must have been on the low
side, because throughout the existence of the LMG he and his
League were boasting of their great successes in making
headway against religion; and as has been shown before, in the
atheistic euphoria of the late 1920s their estimate of the
religious sector of the population was under 20 per cent. 56 But
even taking Yaroslavsky's 1938 estimate at its face value we see
that 1 per cent of the former number of churches was serving
50 per cent of the population. This alone is a clear recognition
of direct persecutions in the 1930s, and on a colossal scale.
But shutting the churches and liquidating the clergy were
not the only means of direct persecution. The atheist press
greeted the continuous work week (nepreryvka) as a mortal blow
to religion, depriving the believers of regular Eucharist.
Cartoons depicted groups of priests in rags in front of empty
churches with signs: 'Preachers' Employment Office'. A
Christmas cartoon depicts an angel asking StJoseph whether to
blow his horn announcing Christmas. Joseph: 'No use, brother
... there is no Christmas; the continuous work week has killed
It. 57
0
'
But had it? The Soviet press itself answered this question in
the negative: Bezbozhnik for 1937-8 published cartoons on the
'roaming priests' who wander from village to village, surrep-
titiously performing religious services in believers' homes.
They are often disguised as wandering repairmen, offering to
sharpen knives or do other odd jobs, or they have to conceal
their real vocation from the authorities and the informers. 58
The notorious Oleshchuk, complaining that young people
continued to be attracted to religion and were even converting,
whether to the Evangelical sects or to Orthodoxy, tells about
priests hiring themselves out free of charge (so, the clergy is not
that greedy after all) to youth parties as games organizers,
musicians, choir directors, readers of secular Russian litera-
ture, drama-circles directors, thus bringing the rural young
into the sphere of religious influence. 59
The admission that being caught as a church member -
whether clerical or lay- was very dangerous in those days, is
contained in the following passage written in typically Aeso-
pian language, full of contradictions:
There are many regions where churches have been closed on

toilers' requests ... either because of the absence of a church
72
The slogan on the flag reads: 'I am going over to the continuous workweek'.
in the district or out of shyness (ashamed to observe religious

rituals overtly) many believers do not address themselves ...
to the local priest.
Adapting themselves to the new conditions leaders of
religious organizations ... perform many rituals in absentia.
The story gives details on how marriage ceremonies are
performed over the wedding rings sent to a distant priest by the
absentee bride and groom. Funeral services are performed
over an empty coffin into which the corpse is later laid and
buried in a secular ceremony. 60
According to official statements there have never been any
persecutions for faith in the Soviet Union, only for anti-Soviet
acts. But the most convincing evidence to the contrary is that
the majority of bishops and priests were never brought to trial
except in connection with the confiscation of church valuables.
Most of them, in the 1920s at any rate, were simply administra-
tively banished to labour camps or into internal exile for three
years, which was the maximum legal duration for administra-
tive exile in Soviet law of the time until the creation of the
N KVD in 1934, which received the right of giving administra-
tive exile for up to four years. After serving this term bishops
and priests mostly returned to their dioceses or parishes. Those
whose term ran out around 1930 were often later transported
under surveillance to an isolated village in the far north or
north-east, never to return. Such was the fate of Metropolitan
Peter and many others. The already quoted Fr. Polsky cites
numerous similar individual cases of bishops and priests, for
instance, the case of Bishop Victor (Ostrogradsky) of Glazov.
He served his first term of administrative exile in 1922-5. In
1928, following his protest against Metropolitan Sergii's
Declaration of Loyalty, he was sent to a concentration camp at
Mai-Guba. Three years later he was sent to an isolated
settlement in the Province of Arkhangelsk, and there dis-
appeared after 1933.
Bishop Alexander (Petrovsky) was consecrated in 1932 and
appointed by Metropolitan Sergii to Kharkov. In 1939 he was
suddenly arrested, never officially charged; but he soon died in
prison, naturally or unnaturally - no one knows. Then the
authorities decided to close the last functioning church in the
city. Therefore during the 1941 Lent, the parish was ordered
to pay a tax of 125 000 roubles, when the average annual wage
was about 4000. The money was collected and submitted on
time, yet the church was administratively shut just before
Easter. The Passions were celebrated in the square in front of
the church - over 8000 people participated, forming a close
circle around numerous priests dressed in civilian clothes who
quietly pronounced the prayers, picked up by the impromptu
choir of thousands of people: 'Glory to Thy passion, 0 Lord!'
The same was repeated for the Easter Resurrection service,
with an even bigger crowd .... 61
Thus the laity struggled to keep their martyred bishop's
church alive.
A blatant case of prosecution for mere popularity was that of
the priest and, later, bishop, Arkadii Ostal'sky, accused in 1922
of inciting the masses against the state. When all witnesses
refuted the charge, the prosecutor retorted that their defence
was the best indictment against the priest, because it showed his
great popularity, while 'the ideas which he so passionately
preached ... contradicted the ideas of the Soviets, therefore
such persons ... are very harmful to the Soviet State'. Fr.
Arkadii was sentenced to death, then commuted to ten years'
hard labour. On his return from the camp he was consecrated
bishop. Exiled to the Solovki camps around 1931, he returned
three years later, went into hiding, was caught and sent to a
concentration camp again. Released shortly before the Second
World War, he informed his friends that the camp administra-
tion had promised him safety and job security if he would agree
to stay in the area of the camps and give up the priesthood. He
refused. A short while later he was rearrested and disappeared.
Metropolitan Konstantin (D'iakov) of Kiev was arrested in
1937 and shot in prison without trial twelve days later.
Metropolitan Pimen (Pegov) of Kharkov was hated by the
communists because he had managed to nip the Renovationist
schisms in the bud in that city. He was arrested on a trumped-
up charge of contacts with foreign diplomats. He died in prison
in 1933.
Bishop Maxim (Ruberovsky) returned from prison in 1935
to the city ofZhitomir, to where by 1937 almost all priests from
the Soviet part ofVolhynia were expelled, a total of about 200.
In August, all of them, including the bishop, were arrested and
shot in the early partofwinterwithouttrial. Posthumously, the
Soviet press accused them of subversive acts against the state.
Antonii, Archbishop of Arkhangelsk, was arrested in 1932.
The authorities tried to force him to 'confess' that he was an
enemy of the Soviet state, but he categorically refused. In a
written questionnaire on his attitude to the Soviet Government
he responded that he 'prayed daily that God forgive the Soviet
Government its sins and that it stop shedding blood'. In prison
he was tortured by being given salty food without adequate
drink, and by shortage of oxygen in a dirty and overcrowded
damp cell without ventilation, until he succumbed to dysentery
and died.
Metropolitan Serafim (Meshcheriakov) of Belorussia was
hated by the Soviets for having returned to the Orthodox
Church with much public penance after having been a very
active leader in the Renovationist schism. Soon after the
penance he was arrested in 1924 and exiled to Solovki. Shortly
after his return he was re-arrested and shot without trial in
Rostov-on-Don along with 122 other priests and monks.
Metropolitan Nikolai of Rostov-on-Don was exiled without
trial to the Hungry Steppe in Kazakhstan, where he and other
exiled priests built huts for themselves out of clay mixed with
some local grass; this grass was also their staple food. In 1934 he
was allowed to return to Rostov and to re-occupy his post.
Rearrested in 1938, he was condemned to death, but miracu-
lously survived the firing squad. Next morning believers
picked up his unconscious body from a mass open grave and
secretly nursed him. He then served as Metropolitan ofRostov
under the German occupation and was evacuated to Romania.
His subsequent fate is unknown.
Bishop Onufrii (Gagaliuk) ofElisavetgrad was first arrested
in 1924, obviously without cause, because he had simply been
deported in a prison train from his see. A year later he was
already again the ruling bishop of Elisavetgrad. But after two
more years he was arrested once again and exiled to Kras-
noiarsk in Siberia. On return from the Siberian administrative
exile, he occupied two more episcopal sees, only to be
rearrested in the mid-1930s and deported beyond the Urals
where, according to rumours, he was shot in 1938.
Bishop Illarion (Belsky) was exiled to Solovki at least from
1929 to 1935 in retaliation for his stubborn resistance to
Metropolitan Sergii. He was arrested again in 1938, apparently
for his refusal to recognize the ecclesiastical authority ofSergii,

and shot.
Bishop Varfolomei (Remov) was shot in 1936 for the 'crime'
of having secretly organized and run for several years an
unofficial graduate theological academy when none were
permitted by the state. He was denounced by his own pupil
Alexii, a future bishop (not to be confused with Patriarch
Alexii). 62
Whereas the anti-Sergiites were arrested and even shot for
their insubordination to Metropolitan Sergii (a strange 'crime'
in a country where the Church and State are alleged to be
separated from each other), it would be wrong to think that the
position of the clergy loyal to Sergii was any more secure. A case
in point is the fate of two remarkable clergymen and close
friends: Bishop Maxim (Zhizhilenko) who had broken with
Sergii after the Declaration, and Fr. Roman Medved' who
remained loyal to Sergii. The former was arrested in 1929, the
latter in 1931. The bishop was executed in 1931; Fr. Roman was
released from a concentration camp in 1936 because of ruined
health, and died within one year. Bishop Maxim had worked as
a Moscow transit prison medical doctor-surgeon for twenty-
five years before his consecration as bishop in 1928. His
medical and humanitarian fame spread far beyond the walls of
his prison hospital. He ate prison food, slept on bare boards
and used to give away his salary to prisoners.
He returned many a criminal to Christ. Under the Soviets he
was secretly ordained priest while continuing to serve as prison
doctor. Thus he could officiate religiously to prisoners seeking
pastoral help, and hear their confessions. The Soviets could not
forgive him two 'treasons': one, that such an outstanding and
popular Soviet medical officer 'deserted' them for the Church;
two, that he chose the most militantly anti-Sergiite faction, that
of M. Joseph. Neither could they tolerate his charisma as a
bishop: in less than one year as bishop of Serpukhov all
eighteen parishes in that town and almost all churches in the
nearby towns and villages (all in the vicinity of Moscow) went
over to him from Sergii'sjurisdiction. Finally, in response to the
official Church policy since 1923 that prayers be said for the
Soviet Government at the liturgy, Bp. Maxim was said to have
been the author of a special 'prayer for the Church' (known also
as 'A Prayer for Bolsheviks'), pronounced in his and many
other churches both under Sergii and in those in opposition. It
called on Jesus to keep His word that the gates of Hell would not
overcome the Church and that He 'grant those in power
wisdom and fear of God, so that their hearts become merciful
and peaceful towards the Church'.
In one description, Bp. Maxim 'was a confessor of apocalyp-
tic mind'. In contrast, his friend who remained a stalwart and
powerful defender of Sergii's line, was described as a man 'of
spiritual sobriety and calm'. Yet, both perished at the hands of
the GPU, because they shared a common 'crime': a magnetic
personality, immense pastoral charisma, devotion and charity
which drew people to the Church. Despite the liquidation of Fr.
Roman an unofficial church brotherhood set up by him in the
1920s exists to the present day. 63
Another illustration of the similar fate of several of the most
outstanding and charismatic priests, each of whom took
different attitudes toM. Sergii's line, deserves to be mentioned.
The most famous of these were Frs. Paul Florensky and
Valentin Sventsitsky. Florensky was one of Orthodoxy's
greatest twentieth-century theologians. At the same time he
was a professor of electrical engineering at the Moscow
Pedagogical Institute, one of the top counsellors in the Soviet
Central Office for the Electrification of the USSR, a musicolo-
gist and an art historian. In all these fields he held official posts,
delivered lectures and published widely even under the
Soviets, while continuing to serve as a priest and refusing to
take off his cassock and pectoral cross even when lecturing at
the university. This brought him one arrest after another,
beginning in 1925, and concluding with his terminal incarcera-
tion in 1933 (although even in the camps he was given a
laboratory). In his last years he was apparently doing research
for the Soviet armed forces. He died in a concentration camp in
the far north in 1943. Throughout these years he never broke
his allegiance toM. Sergii and the official Church. 64
Fr. Sventsitsky was a journalist, a religious author and
thinker of Christian-socialist leanings before the revolution.
Some of his writings had brought him trouble with the tsarist
police and he was forced to live abroad for a number of years.
Immediately after the Bolshevik coup d'etat he sought ordina-
tion in the Patriarchal Orthodox Church and became its great
defender against the Renovationists, which brought his first
arrest and exile as early as 1922. He became one of the most

influential priests in Moscow, forming parish brotherhoods of
moral rebirth. In 1927 he broke with M. Sergii. In 1928 he was
exiled to Siberia, where he would die three years later; but
before his death he repented to M. Sergii, asking to be
reaccepted into the Orthodox Church, as he had understood
that schism was the worst sin in the Church: 'every schism is
separation from the True Church'. He died as a member of
Sergii's Church after having written a passionate appeal to his
Moscow parishioners to return to Sergii's fold and begging
them to forgive him for having led them in a wrong and sinful
direction. 65
Among the most outstandingly influential priests could be
also named Alexander Zhurakovsky of Kiev and Sergii Mechev
of Moscow. Fr. Zhurakovsky joined the opposition to Sergii
after the death of his diocesan bishop, who had remained loyal
to Sergii but with whom Zhurakovsky could not break because
of personal attachment (sic). Fr. Zhurakovsky was arrested in
1930 and sentenced to ten years' hard labour; suffering from
TB he had been close to breaking-point in his health by 1939
when he received another ten years without seeing freedom
even for a day. At the end of that year he died in a distant
northern camp. Fr. Sergii Mechev occupied a position in
between: he recognized the authority ofM. Sergii but refused
to utter public prayers for the Soviet Government. His arrests
began in 1922, long before the anti-Sergii split. In 1929 he was
administratively exiled for three years, but released only in
1933. The following year he was sentenced to fifteen years in a
concentration camp in the Ukraine. When the Germans
attacked in 1941 the Soviets shot him along with all prisoners
with terms exceeding ten years. 66 The only thing that these
pastors had in common was their charisma, wide respect,
devotion and love of the faithful, and unique qualities as
pastors and spiritual leaders. This was their common 'crime',
not the issue of their attitude to Sergii's loyalty to the Soviets.
Among the few bishops who had survived the tortures of
long imprisonments and returned to their arch pastoral duties
after the concordat of the Church hierarchy with Stalin, were:
Manuil (Lemeshevsky) formerly of Leningrad, the surgeon-
bishop Luka (Voino-Yasenetsky), a founder of the Tashkent
University and its first professor of medicine, and Afanasii
(Sakharov) a vicar-bishop of the Vladimir Archdiocese. The

former two had been loyal toM. Sergii throughout; Afanasii
opposed Sergii's form of the declaration of loyalty (it denied
the Church was ever persecuted by the Soviets and thereby
betrayed the martyrs), was one of the most respected leaders of
the underground Church through the early 1940s, but
returned to the Patriarchal Church on the election of Alexii in
1945, and called upon all the 'undergrounders' to follow his
example.
Bishop, later Metropolitan, Manuil became a thorn in the
flesh of the Soviet regime for his very successful struggle
against the Renovationists, which he had begun as early as 1922
when the Patriarch was in prison and hardly anyone dared to
pronounce his name publicly. It was then, when all but two or
three parishes in Petrograd were held by the Renovationists,
that he was responsible for a mass return of parish after parish
in his diocese to the Patriarchal Church. In 1923 he was
arrested and after almost a year in jail was exiled for three
years. On his return in 1927 he was not allowed to reside in
Leningrad. Appointed Bishop ofSerpukhov, although loyal to
M. Sergii, he soon found the moral compromises called for by
Sergii's new political line too frustrating. In 1929 he retired,
probably finding it morally unbearable to be in the opposing
camps with B p. Maxim (Zhizhilenko) in the same city, and later
even worse after Maxim had been arrested. Nevertheless, in
1933 he was taken out of his retirement and once again
administratively exiled for three years to Siberia. His subse-
quent respite was short: in 1940 he was rearrested, formally
charged with spreading religious propaganda among the
young, and sentenced to ten years' hard labour. Released in
1945 and appointed Archbishop of Orenburg he achieved
such success in reviving religious life there that in 1948 he was
imprisoned once again. Released in 1955, he served as
Archbishop of Cheboksary and Metropolitan of Kuibyshev.
He died a natural death in 1968 at the age of 83, leaving a
considerable volume of scholarly papers behind him, includ-
ing a multi-volume 'Who's Who' of Russian twentieth-century
bishops. 67
In December 1945 at a solemn ceremony honouring the
surgeon professor-archbishop Luka Voino-Yasenetsky with a
medal for the service he had rendered to Soviet war medicine,
Luka's response to the Soviet officials was as follows:

I have always taught and am willing to continue to pass my
knowledge on to other doctors. I have returned to life
hundreds, perhaps thousands of the wounded; and cer-
tainly would have helped many more had you not grabbed me
and, without any guilt on my part, thrown me around from
prisons to exile and back for eleven years. So many years have
been lost and so many people have not been cured by no fault
of mine whatsoever.
His first imprisonment occurred in Tashkent in 1923 when
the Renovationists felt they could not compete with this highly
prestigious young bishop-doctor, chief surgeon and professor
of medicine at the University which he had helped to establish,
and a brilliant sermoniser. His 'crime' was that he remained
faithful to the Patriarch; but officially he was accused of
treasonous ties with foreign agents in the Caucasus and Central
Asia simultaneously (sic), and exiled to a distant north -Siberian
town, Eniseisk, for three years. His freedom had been short:
1927 to 1930, when he was rearrested and without any trial
exiled to Arkhangelsk for another three years. His third and
physically harshest imprisonment came in 1937. He was
tortured for two years (many times badly beaten, interrogated
for weeks without cease- the so-called 'conveyor interrogation'
-and went on hunger strikes) in vain NKVD attempts to have
him sign false confessions. Having failed in that, the NKVD
simply deported him to northern Siberia. With the beginning
of the war his unique expertise in treating infected wounds was
suddenly remembered. Without removing from him the status
of exilee, he was brought to Krasnoiarsk and made chief
surgeon for infected wounds at the main military hospital. In
1946 the new and enlarged edition of his book on infected
wounds won him a Stalin Prize for medicine while he was the
Archbishop of Tambov. He donated the prize to war
orphans. 68
One of the most fantastic biographies is that of Bishop
Afansaii, fantastic in terms of the total duration of incarcera-
tions and in terms of his survival. As he noted in his own
curriculum vitae, at the time of release from his last imprison-
ment in 1954 he had been a bishop for thirty-three years. Of
these he had spent: 'thirty-three months performing episcopal
functions; thirty-two months at large without any occupation;

seventy-six months in exile; 254 months in prisons and slave
labour camps'.
His first prolonged incarceration occurred in 1922 when he
was arrested jointly with M. Sergii (the future Patriarch) and
two other bishops in connection with the church valuables, and
sentenced to one year of imprisonment. Five more arrests and
short periods in prisons, exile and hard labour followed during
the subsequent five years. Once he was simply told that he
would be left alone if he agreed to retire or leave his diocesan
city of Vladimir. He refused to abandon his flock voluntarily.
Again arrested in April1927, he spent some time in the same
cell with M. Sergii, but byJune of that year Sergii was released to
issue the Declaration of Loyalty, while Afansii with a number of
other bishops soon received three years' hard labour in Solovki
for belonging to Sergii's group of bishops. He suffered seven
more imprisonment and exile terms, mostly without formal
indictments, between 1930 and 1946. From this last incarcera-
tion, which included very hard manual labour and which
formally ended in 1951, he was in fact not released until 1954.
He writes that he survived all this thanks to the memory of his
faithful believers who had continued to send him generous
parcels during all these years; their love not fading away but
intensifying during the length of separation: 'I fin the first two
years and four months of imprisonment I had received
seventy-two parcels, during 1954 alone, I received 200 parcels.'
The much-loved bishop was born in 1887, died in 1962.69
The numbers of laymen, parish priests, monks and nuns
martyred by the Soviets in the 1930s and 1940s for their faith
were just too great, and the proportion of the known cases to
that of the unknown too small, to be discussed in this study.
Even the most detailed study on the subject, namely that of Fr.
Polsky, further exacerbates this disproportion. He lists over
190 priests, over 160 monks and nuns, but less than a dozen
laymen for that period. Moreover, it is more difficult to
distinguish the 'reasons' for a layman's incarceration and even
execution: whether the person was imprisoned for his or her
faith or for an act treated by the state as anti-Soviet behaviour.
For instance, in 1929 two Russian emigres came to Leningrad
from the West with forged identities to help a certain Countess
Z-n to escape, also with forged papers brought by them. The
mission was successful, but the naive woman, on arrival in a

West Eurpean capital, informed the press of all the details of
her sensational escape. Consequently, forty of her former
friends and acquaintances were arrested in 1930. Six of them,
including her parish priest, Fr. Mikhail Chel'tsov, were
executed. Now, the priest's 'crime' was that he performed aTe
Deum on behalf ofthe success of her escape. Obviously, he was
executed for performing his pastoral duty, for the Church
could not see a sin in the desire of her spiritual daughter to
change her place of residence, and the priest's duty was to pray
for the health and God's protection for any member of his
flock. But the five laymen were executed for actively helping
the woman to escape; they were considered to have engaged in
anti-state activities in terms of the Soviet law, however hideous
this might sound from the point of view of the law codes of
democratic states. 70
But even this case is an exception. Most of the other murders
or murderous incarcerations of clergy cited in Polsky's book
are not even indirectly related to 'anti-state activities'. Follow-
ing are some particularly notorious examples.
There was a highly revered convent in the vicinity of Kazan'
which the authorities had closed in the late 1920s and forced
the nuns to resettle privately in the area, but they allowed the
main cathedral of the convent to reopen once a year (its patron
saint's day?), on 14 February, when the former nuns, monks
and masses of lay pilgrims would converge on the church for
that unique service. During such a service in 1933 huge armed
GPU detachments surrounded the church and arrested
everyone coming out of it. Two months later ten monks, nuns
and lay persons were executed, and most other pilgrims
received concentration camp terms of five to ten years in
duration. Their 'crime' was: participation in an unregistered
church service. The community was not in M. Sergii's
jurisdiction. 71
A group of geologists, surveying in the Siberian Taiga in the
summer of 1933, had camped for a night in the vicinity of a
concentration camp when they suddenly saw a group of
prisoners being led by camp guards and lined up before a
freshly dug ditch. When the guards saw the geologists they told
them that these were priests, 'an element alien to the Soviet
Power'. This was the only rationalization for their execution.
The geologists were told to remove themselves to the nearby
tents. From the tents they heard how, before every individual
execution, the victim was told that were he to deny God's
existence this would be his last chance to survive. In every case,
without exception, the answer was: 'God exists'. A pistol-shot
followed. This procedure was repeated sixty times until the
whole operation was over. 72
Fr. Antonii Elsner-Foiransky-Gogol, a distant relative of the
famous Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol, was a priest in
Smolensk, with only a three-year absence (1922-5) owing to
imprisonment and exile. In 1935 his church was closed and he
moved to a nearby village. In 1937 only two churches in
Smolensk remained open. One of them lacked a priest, so the
parishioners begged Fr. Antonii to become their priest. He
agreed. At first he was registered with the Soviets as superin-
tendent of the church receiving the right to live in the vacant
superintendent's cottage. Then the parishioner began to
petition for the right to reopen the church officially for services
and to register Fr. Antonii as their priest. Several thousand
people signed the petitions, but the local NKVD refused and
warned the priest that he would suffer consequences. The
petitions reached the central government in Moscow and
received a positive reply. Thousands of people congratulated
Fr. Antonii and began to decorate the church for the first
service to take place on 21 July 1937. But the night before the
first service the priest was arrested. On 1 August the prison
authorities refused to accept a parcel for him from the priest's
wife. Fr. Antonii was shot. 73
Early in 1934 three Orthodox priests and two lay believers
were taken out of their special regime Kolyma camp to the local
OGPU administration. Each of them was asked to renounce his
faith in Jesus. Instead, all of them re-confirmed their faith,
although they were warned: 'If you don't deny your Christ,
[death] awaits you.' Without any formal charges they were then
taken to a freshly dug grave, and four were shot. One of the
three priests, however, also without any explanation, was told
to bury the dead and was spared. 74
Towards the end of the 1930s there remained only one
church open for services in Kharkov. The authorities refused
to grant registration to any priest to serve there. One such
registered priest living in the city was Fr. Gavriil. He could not
control himself when Easter Night ( 1936?) arrived. He went to

the church and began to serve the Resurrection Vigil. This was
his last service. No one saw him again. 75
In the diocesan city of Poltava all the remaining clergy were
swept up by the NKVD during the night of 26-27 February
1938. Their relatives were soon informed that all of them,
without exception, were sentenced to 'ten years without the
right to correspond'- a euphemism for the death sentence. 76
The previously described Archbishop Luka and Bp. Maxim
(Zhizhilenko) were not the only medical doctor-priests among
theGPU/NKVD/KGB victims. The Elder Sampson was born in
1898 to Count Sivers d'Espera and an English mother and
baptized in the Anglican Church. When fourteen years old he
chose to convert from Anglicanism to Orthodoxy. After
gaining a degree in medicine he went on to receive a theological
education, and in 1918 joined a monastic brotherhood near
Petrograd. In the same year he was arrested and taken to a mass
execution in which he was only wounded and covered up by
other bodies. From this heap he was rescued by fellow-monks.
In 1929 he was arrested again, by this time a tonsured monk-
priest. Released in 1934, he was rearrested two years later, and
sentenced to ten years in prison. All these years he served as a
prison doctor. The authorities refused to release him when his
time was up in 1946 because they needed his medical services.
This was in Central Asia. He decided to escape. His wanderings
without food and water through the hot Central Asian deserts,
avoidance of arrests and subsequent years of pastoral work
without any legal papers in Stalin's Soviet Union appear
miraculous indeed. To the hundreds of his spiritual children
Elder Sampson, who died in 1979, was a saint who in all his
sufferings never ceased to repeat: 'How lucky we are to be
Orthodox! How wealthy!' 77
Bishop Stefan (Nikitin) was also a medical doctor and this
helped him to survive his imprisonment working as a concen-
tration camp doctor. He retells a miracle that he experienced at
the hands of a crippled holy woman. In the camp he was too
merciful to the overworked and underfed prisoners and
periodically allowed them to stay in the hospital to recuperate.
This became known to the higher-ups and he was informed
that a new trial was probably awaiting him, with a possible
maximum sentence of fifteen years for wrecking the Soviet
industrial effort by taking workers from their jobs. His nurse.

who informed him of the danger, advised him to ask a certain
Matrionushka in the Volga city of Penza to pray for him. 'But 1
would get my 15 years before my letter reached her,' said
Bishop Stefan. The nurse retorted that all he had to do was tc
shout three times: 'Matrionushka, help me in my predica-
ment!' She will hear from thousands of miles away. Indeed, he
did not get the extra fifteen years, and on his release several
weeks later chose Penza as his post-prison residence, in order tc
meet the woman. On the train he was told by people from the
area of Penza that once he left the railway station and asked any
passer-by he would be directed to Matrionushka. This is
precisely what happened. When he reached Matrionushka's
habitation, he found the door open. There was a practically
empty room with a table in the middle. On the table stood a long
box and nobody was to be seen. He asked, 'May I come in?', and
suddenly heard a voice from the box, 'Come in Serezhen'ka'-
the voice was addressing him by his pre-monastic secular name.
He looked into the box and there was a blind woman with short
stumps instead of arms and legs. 'How do you know my name?'
he asked after greeting her. 'How could I not have known?
Haven't you called for me? And I prayed for you to the Lord.'
The two became friends, but not for long: she predicted that
she would die in prison, and indeed, 'Soon Matrionushka was
arrested, transported to a Moscow prison, and died there.' 78
As for the 'villains' and 'parasites' who were being liquidated
for 'wrecking' and 'subverting' the USSR, like I van Churikov
and his associates (see Chapter 2), such allegations became
quite plentiful in the Soviet media, particularly after 1929. As
mentioned in Chapter 2, antireligious textbooks of those years,
not to mention Bezbozhnik and other periodicals, were full of
allegations of clergy appealing to the population to sabotage
the Five Year Plan.
In 1929, according to the Soviet press, 'an important spy
organization in the Baptist community', in the pay and service
of the Polish intelligence service, was uncovered in the
Ukraine. Allegedly the organization, headed by a certain
Baptist leader Shevchuk, had a hundred secret agents serving
the Polish intelligence as spies. In return, the Poles provided
them with literature which they distributed in the Baptist
communities. The literature, allegedly, was 'not only religious
but also counter-revolutionary'. The report loses all credibility

and sense of proportion when it adds that the Baptists were
selling Soviet military secrets to the Poles, which they had
allegedly obtained from fellow Baptists serving in the Red
Army. Obviously, in the conditions of particular suspicion
towards religious believers and the search for any excuse to
prosecute them, no religious leader in his right mind would
engage in espionage, and no informed foreign intelligence
(which the neighbouring Polish intelligence service was) would
have assigned such chores to a religious leader. The motive for
this clearly fraudulent report was that at that time a majority
faction of the Baptist Church had decided to allow its members
to serve in the armed forces, depriving the Soviet propaganda
of the possibility of attacking 'the sectarians' as irresponsible
pacifists who would parasitically enjoy the security provided
them by the patriots ready to shed their blood for their fellow-
men, while cowardly and selfishly refusing to de the same. So a
new platform for attack and persecution had to be found: and
this was that the Baptists had changed their policy and agreed
to serve in the Red Army in order to subvert it and spy on it. 79
In 1930 there were at least three fraudulent show trials of
three fictitious anti-Soviet organizations, allegedly associated
with the Church. One was that of a so-called Union for the
Liberation of the Ukraine, under the pretext of which the
Autocephalist Ukrainian Church was finally quashed and
numerous leading Ukrainian nationalist lay intellectuals and
clergy executed or given long imprisonment terms. The
second trial was of an alleged liberation organization in
Leningrad, under the pretext of which many former students
of the Leningrad Theological Institute, closed by the auth-
orities in 1925, were incarcerated. The third was that of the
alleged 'Industrial Party' (liquidation of the top bourgeois
engineers and technical scientists) which the Soviet media
presented as a spy-ring financed by the Western powers and
the Vatican and co-operating with the Russian emigre clergy. xo
To justify or rationalize the mass arrests and liquidation of
the clergy and the faithful, a 'criminal record' had to be
produced showing a historical propensity to immorality,
treachery and crime of all kinds, political, economic, or regular
criminal behaviour, in religious leaders of all times. We read
that Fr. Georgii Gapon, the leader of the first St Petersburg
trade-union organization who had led the Bloody Sunday

March in January 1905 (and at the time was praised even by
Lenin), was aj apanese spy. Patriarch Tikhon is claimed to have
been 'connected with English and other capitalist agencies,
participated in the activities of the British agent Lockhart .. .'.
The list continues: 'A Leningrad Orthodox priest organized a
subversive band out of a dvadtsatka [the group of twenty
believers, responsible to the government for a church].' No
names are given, but one of its members allegedly managed to
penetrate a defence industry factory where the GPU caught
him red-handed. A Leningrad dentist is alleged to have used
her office as an espionage headquarters connected with an
underground counter-revolutionary religious organization
financed from abroad. Allegedly a number of sectarian,
Lutheran and Roman-Catholic dignitaries were likewise un-
covered as foreign spies in 1929-30.
As the story unfolds it becomes totally phantasmagoric. It is
alleged that a Leningrad priest openly appealed in his sermons
for co-operation with the Trotskyites and Zinovievites in their
struggle against the Soviets, and therefore against Stalin.
Apparently Trotsky's record as one of the most energetic and
militant atheists does not embarrass the author, who goes on to
accuse Nikolai Bukharin, 'the damned enemy of the people' of
having deliberately promoted a line of physical and extremist
attack on the Church through Korns. pr. in 1929 in order to
demoralize the godless front and strengthen the defensive
position of the believers. 81
Another report claims that a Riazan bishop was arrested with
a priest and a deacon for stealing 130 kg of silver. 82
Then we hear that a bishop Dometian (Gorokhov) was tried
for black-marketing and for writing anti-Bolshevik leaflets.
Black-marketing was the easiest possible label to stick on any
churchman, particularlyaftertheabolitionofthe NEP: the sale
of a cross or icon to a believer could be categorized as illegal
private enterprise, as these were neither produced nor sold by
the state. As to the leaflets, even according to the Soviet report
their distribution had occurred in 1928, while the trial and
sentence of execution occurred in 1932, although there is no
suggestion that the bishop was in any way hiding. The death
sentence was commuted to eight years' imprisonment, which
for him as for most other clergymen with similar sentences in
the 1930s resulted simply in a protracted death sentence. 83

Conspicuously, in the sordid year of 1937 a story appears in
Izvestia about a certain Bishop D., who may have been the same
Dometian, but changing the mode of his 'crime' now precluded
the possibility of quoting his full name. This bishop was
allegedly recruiting young people as assistants and disguising
himself as 'a famous professor Ch'. He paid three young people
and trained them to copy and distribute manuscripts for him
(early samizdat? - D.P.), but in fact 'was training cadres for
espionage and terrorism on instructions from a foreign
intelligence service'. 84 Such a loaded 'crime' in that year carried
a certain death sentence with it.
Wherever possible, VD and lechery were attributed to a
clergyman, especially a well-known and highly educated one,
for how else but by a moral decline and dishonesty can the
adherence of an intellectual to religion be explained when the
line is that religion is the domain of the uncouth exploited by
hypocritical swindlers? And thus the arrested and soon-to-
disappear Renovationist M. Serafim (Ruzhentsov) was alleged
to have led a counter-revolutionary espionage network of
monks and priests, who used altars for orgies and raped
fourteen-year-old girls, infecting them with venereal disease.
The Paris-based emigre Metropolitan Evlogii was alleged to
have commanded a Leningrad terrorist band led by an
archpriest. The Kazan Archbishop Venedict (Plotnikov),
executed in 1938, was alleged to have headed a church band of
subversive terrorists and spies."5
A bishop A. of I vanovo is reported to have formed a military
industrial espionage group under the guise of a choir of young
girls. lvanovo is a centre of the textile industry, so what sort of
military secrets were there available to those girls? The purpose
of this sort of propaganda, apparently, was not even to
convince the reader of its plausibility, but to drive a lesson
home: don'tassociate with the clergy, don'tjoin church choirs if
you want to avoid imprisonment and charges punishable by
death.
Characteristically this series of fantasies ends with Stalin's
call 'to bring to completion the liquidation of the reactionary
clergy in our country'."6
The ubiquitous Oleshchuk attacked the Church and the
clergy for 'misinterpreting' the new Soviet constitution's article
146 allowing social and public organizations to put forward

their candidates for elections to the soviets, including the
Church as a public organization. He cites the supreme
procurator Andrei Vyshinsky's statement that the only public
organizations that may forward candidates for election to the
soviets are those 'whose aim is active participation in the
socialist construction and in the national defence'. The Church
falls under neither of the categories, according to Oleschuk,
because, first, she is anti-socialist, and second because Chris-
tianity teaches to turn the other cheek, to love the enemy,
wherefore a Christian cannot be a good soldier and a true
defender of the socialist homeland. To strengthen his argu-
ment Oleshchuk told of the unmasking in 1936 of the supreme
Moslem Mufti ofU fa as a Japanese and German agent who had
turned the whole Moslem Spiritual Administration ofUfa into
a giant spy ring. A little to the west
a whole network of Orthodox priests [who were] subversive
agents was recently liquidated in Gorky. It was headed by
Feofan Tuliakov, the Metropolitan of Gorky, Bishop
Purlevsky of Sergach, Bishop Korobov of Vetluga ... The
aim ... was subversion of collective farms and factories,
destruction of transportation, collection of secret informa-
tion for espionage, creation of terrorist bands.
The practical achievement of this subversive group is alleged to
have been the burning of twelve houses of collective farmers: a
rather illogical act for secret spies aimed at destroying the
Soviet State. But the level of credibility ofOleshchuk's writings
(and along with him of the whole Soviet 'science' of atheism, for
he was one of its leaders both in the 1930s and again in the 1950s
and 1960s) is brought to naught when he adds to the above
fantasies: 'The Trotskyite-Bukharinite bandits ... have been
strengthening and supporting the reactionary clergy.' Trot-
sky, of course, was one of the most violent enemies of the
Church in the 1920s. What is behind this conglomeration of
fantasies is the cold fact of mass executions of the clergy under
the guise of sabotage.H7
To be known as a believer in the late 1930s, to be associated
with the Church, was like being infected with the plague. It was
dangerous to life to be seen having any contacts with her, as
even a fleeting visit to a functioningchurchcould mean the loss
of employment, and irreparable damage to a career; it could

lead to expulsion from an educational establishment and even
to arrest. 88 Samizdat recounts cases of wild persecutions for the
mere wearing of a pectoral cross under a shirt or blouse. 89
In the 1930s people were arrested for such things as having
an icon in the home, inviting a priest to perform a private
religious rite or service at home owing to the closure of all
churches in the district. Priests who were caught performing
such functions were inevitably incarcerated, often disap-
pearing forever in NKVD dungeons.
The available unofficial lists of clergy and laity imprisoned or
executed for nothing but their faith and for its overt witness
however incomplete and scant, make one shudder. Their main
'crime' was their personal charisma, stature, and spiritual
authority, which were undermining the effect of antireligious
propaganda. 90
4 An 'Interlude': From
1941 to Stalin's Death
Massive persecutions were halted or at least made much less
conspicuous after the annexation ofthe western territories by
the USSR between September 1939 and summer 1940. Rather
than offend the nearly twenty million newly acquired Chris-
tians by a frontal attack on the Churches and by the negation of
the Lord's Day through the five-day-week calendar introduced
in 1929-30, the regular seven-day week with Sunday as the
official day of rest was reintroduced in 1940. This was followed
by the closure of all antireligious periodicals by the end of 1941,
soon after the German attack, officially 'on account of paper
shortage'. 1 This process of Church-State rapprochement con-
tinued through the war, motivated by Stalin's realization of the
need for the Church to arouse a sense of patriotic sacrifice in
the nation (which the Communist Party was powerless to do), as
well as by the much more positively tolerant attitude of the
German occupiers to the religious desires of Soviet citizens. It
culminated in the 4 September 1944 meeting of the three
senior hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church with Stalin,
and in the subsequent election of one of them, Sergii, as the
Patriarch of All Russia less than a week later. It was thereafter
that thousands of churches could reopen and many of the
su~viving priests and bishops returned from the camps and
pnsons.
But even during this most liberal era for the Church, direct
and indirect persecutions did not entirely cease. To begin with,
numerous bishops and priests imprisoned for refusing to
recognize the conditions of Sergii's 1927 loyalty pledge,
remained in their places of exile and imprisonment, unless
they agreed to renounce their position and pledge loyalty to
Sergii. 2 But even making peace with the Moscow Patriarchate
could not bring them freedom automatically. A case in point is
Bishop Afanasii (Sakharov), the leader of one of the major
groups of 'non-commemorators' (those who had refused to
commemorate M. Sergii as the head of the Russian Church).
91
He recognized the validity of M. Alexii's election to the

patriarchal throne, and jointly with other priests sent a
congratulatory address to Patriarch Alexii from their prison
camp. Bishop Afanasii likewise sent a circular letter to the
catacomb groups under his jurisdiction asking them to come
out of their underground and to join the official patriarchal
Church. Most of them did so, thus putting an effective end to
the Catacomb Church as a cohesive and widespread institution.
Nevertheless, neither he nor his like-minded imprisoned
priests were released until their terms, based on framed-up
charges, were served fully, or until after Stalin's death. The
numerous biographies of Bishop Afanasii (see also Chapter 3),
for instance, amply demonstrate that he had been persecuted
solely for his pastoral and ecclesiastical work. He never
meddled in politics, unless an ecclesiastical disagreement with
Metropolitan Sergii's post-1927 policies can be considered a
political offence against the Soviet state. 3 According to a KGB
defector, in the Perm area of North-West Urals alone there
were still ten bishops imprisoned in 1945 in the prison camps,
of whom only one was later released. 4
Soon after the Soviets regained the territories which had
been under the German occupation, many priests and bishops
were arrested and sent to Soviet prisons and camps for very
long terms, allegedly for serving the enemy, although most of
the clergy-victims of the NKVD had remained loyal to the
Moscow Church in the face of Nazi persecutions. Their only
crime was that they had taken the opportunity of greater
religious freedom under the Germans and helped to rebuild
religious life under the occupation. The details of only a
handful of such cases are available to this author.
Fr. Nikolai Trubetskoi ( 1907 -78), a Riga priest and a
graduate of the Paris St Sergius Orthodox Theological
Academy, served the Moscow Patriarchate loyally both under
theSoviet(1940-41) and Nazi ( 1941-4) occupations of Latvia.
In 1944, when the Germans were retreating, he secretly
escaped from a German evacuation boat and hid from the
Gecnans in a Latvian peasant's house, awaiting Soviet troops,
only to be arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to ten years'
hard labour 'for collaboration with the enemy'. His real 'crime'
was his zealous pastorate and his very successful missionary
From 1941 to Stalin's Death 93
work in the German-occupied area of Russia south of Lening-

rad, where:
We opened and re-consecrated closed churches, carried out
mass-baptisms. It's hard to imagine how, after years of Soviet
domination, people hungered after the Word of God. We
married and buried people; we had literally no time for
sleep. I think that if such a mission were sent today to the
Urals, Siberia or even the Ukraine, we'd see the same result. 5
He said this shortly before his death in 1978.
But waves of arrests are rarely limited to only one area or a
single category of 'crime' in the Soviet Union, particularly in
Stalin's time when the general rule was preventive rather than
punitive terror. And so the mass arrests of clergy and lay
religious activists in the formerly enemy-occupied territories
had its echo also in the parts never occupied by the enemy. In
April1946, for instance, there was a wave of such arrests in the
area of Moscow. A number of priests who had belonged to the
Bp. Afanasii group of 'non-commemorators' and who had
recently returned to the official Church, were sentenced to
long terms of hard labour. Mass arrests were made and long
prison terms were handed out to the sizeable group of their
spiritual children, among them the lay theolgian and religious
philosopher, S.l. Fudel. The latter, as well as all the priests of
that so-called Sakharov Group (after Bp. Afanasii Sakharov),
had already served earlier prison terms. Almost none of them
would see freedom again until after the death of Stalin. Vexed
by their failure to catch the senior spiritual father of the group,
Fr. Seraphim (Batiukov), who had died in 1942, the MGB dug
out his body from the grave and disposed of it elsewhere,
probably to prevent future pilgrimages to the site, as Fr.
Seraphim was believed to be a saint by his followers. 6
Stalin was prepared to tolerate a controlled Church, but not
active priests, promoting her expansion. Such was the case of
the 'Sakharovites' (see Chapter 3 for details). In 1945 Bp.
Manuil was appointed head of the Orenburg Diocese in
southern Urals.
In the three years of his administration Bishop Manuil
managed to reopen several dozen parishes ... He raised a
great wave of religious zeal in the Orenburg Diocese ... Like

no one else, the late hierarch knew how to revitalize parish
life, how to attract talented people, how to turn lukewarm
people into enthusiasts with a burning faith, how to start fires
in ice-cold hearts.
Consequently, he was arrested in 1947 and sentenced to

another term of eight years' hard labour. Manuil had never
been under any German occupation. 7
But to return to the fates of those bishops who suffered for
the crime of not neglecting their archpastoral duties while
under the Nazi occupation, cases in point are those of the late
Iosif (Chernov) and Archb. Veniamin (Novitsky). M. Iosif
(1893-1975), Bishop ofTaganrog before the Second World
War, had spent a total of nine years in Soviet prisons and camps
by the time of the German occupation of the city. Under the
Nazis he remained steadfastly loyal to M. Sergii of Moscow,
publicly commemorating his name during church services,
suffering threats and arrests from the Germans as well. Yet he
was very active at reviving church life in the occupied territory.
This earned him another eleven years' hard labour in Eastern
Siberia until his final release in 1955. He died as the
Metropolitan of Alma-Ata and Kazakhstan.H
Archb. Veniamin ( 1900-1976) was born and lived in the
territory belonging to Poland from 1921 to 1939. In 1941 ,just
before the German attack, he was consecrated bishop under
the Moscow Patriarchate, to which he remained faithful under
the Germans as well- although the occupying forces were not
happy with that position- and while the Ukrainian Banderist
nationalist partisans directly endangered the lives of such
clerics and killed quite a few of them, including their head
metropolitan. 9 Yet soon after the return of the Soviet troops,
Bishop Veniamin of Poltava was arrested and spent the
following twelve years in the horrid Kolyma death camps,
never physically recovering from that experience, eventually
losing all his hair as a consequence of the camps and prisons. 10
The arrests of such individuals as the then student of
theology, and now priest Dimitri Dudko, for unpublished
religious poems," and of groups of Moscow University
students running a private religio-philosophic study group in
the late 1940s, should serve as another illustration that even
during this, Stalin's religious thaw, arms against religious life, if

not officially against the established Church, were never laid
down. The above study group was inspired and formed
around 1946-7, partly by Ilia Shmain a 16-17 -year-old youth
The Pope in his full regalia.

Sticking out of his pocket: 'Decree on the excommunication of communists and their
sympathizers'.
The pope has been awarded the title of American policeman honoris causa. Robert
Barret, the chief of the Washington, D.C. police, presented to him the golden crest of
the policeman. (Krokodil, no. 26, 20 September 1949)
at the time, and a Moscow University student of philology from

1948. The circle arose from Shmain's conclusion that dialec-
tical materialism, or any materialistic philosophy for that
matter, was inadequate to explain fundamental existential
questions. The group began to meet regularly to discuss art,
philosophy, and religion. Although beginning with a mixture
of Hinduism, Yogi, and various other occult ideas with abstract
and all-inclusive concepts of Godhead, the youths were
discussing, among other issues, the question of undergoing
baptism and joining the Church at the time of their arrest.
Politically they were still totally loyal to the Soviet system,
although rejecting Marxism as a philosophy but not as a social
doctrine. On 16 January 1949 they were arrested and soon
sentenced to terms of eight to ten years' hard labour in
accordance with Art. 58 - agitation and organization. The
charge: 'the submission of the teachings of Marxism-
Leninism to hostile criticism at illegal meetings' . 12
In terms of propaganda there was a new differentiation in
attacks on religion, reversing the trend of the early 1920s.
Stalin was building up his Iron Curtain. Eager to isolate his
empire and its citizens from the non-communist world and
from religious centres beyond the physical control of his
security organs, he launched a systematic smear-and-hate
propaganda campaign against the Vatican. Caricatures of
Pope Pius XII and other Roman Catholic bishops depicted
them as warmongers, and supporters of police brutalities. The
cartoon on p. 95 is typical of this propaganda. This was
accompanied by the liquidation of the Uniate Church (the
Roman Catholic Church of the Eastern Rite) in the Ukraine,
Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania and their enforced
merging with the Orthodox Church. Although theoretically
those who did not want to join the Orthodox Church had the
option to become Roman Catholics of the Western Rite,
absence of functioning temples of this rite, except in the larger
cities, incarceration of the U niate clergy refusing to join the
Orthodox Church, and the popular dedication to the Byzan-
tine ritual and church traditions by the masses of the popul-
ation, would practically preclude such a choice. 13
Attitudes to the Orthodox and the Protestants in the post-
war era were more tolerant, at least up to the time of
Khrushchev's new attack of 1958-64. Nevertheless, at least
from 1946, the Soviet press began to criticize a passive and
areligious attitude toward religion, particularly in youth
organizations (the Komsomol and the Pioneers) and at school,
demanding activization of antireligious propaganda and
education on all levels. In practical terms, local plenipoten-
tiaries of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox
Church wasted no effort in making it more difficult for bishops
and the clergy to protect the recently reopened churches from
closure (this probably applied to other religions, too). For
instance, in 1949 they managed to shut three out of the fifty-
five churches in the diocese of Crimea, probably in an effort to
scale down the prestige and achievements of its famous martyr-
bishop and surgeon Luka (see Chapter 3). In order to facilitate
the closure of churches a regulation was imposed, according to
which a church could be closed if it had not been served by a
priest on a regular basis for over six months. 14 But only the
regime was to blame for the terrible post-war clergy shortage.
The reasons for this were several. They included the mass
liquidations in the 1930s, and the fact that the mass reopenings
of churches in the 1940s were not matched by a proportional
reopening of seminaries, prevented both by the Germans
(whose policy was to limit the education of the Slavs to the first
two primary school grades) and by the Soviets. In addition
there was the great loss from the mass arrests after the war of
the majority of those clergy who had served as pastors in the
territories occupied by the enemy. They comprised the
absolute majority of priesthood in the Soviet Union, for most of
the churches had been reopened in the occupied territories.
Thus the persecution of the most dedicated and religiously
active believers and pastors never ended under the Soviets.
The use of administrative decrees and political articles of the
criminal code were but a thin disguise for religious persecu-
tions against those who saw dissemination of their faith as their
primary Christian duty, be they laymen or pastors.
5 Renewal of the
Incendiary Propaganda,
1958-85
'Should theologians explain the Universe even from the
scientific [materialistic] point of view but in the name of
religion and even God Himself ... we shall not stop our
fight against religion [because] religion will never cease to
be a reactionary social force, an opiate for the people .. .'
(Evgraf Duluman, Kiriushko and Yarotsky, Nauchno-
tekhnicheskaia revolutsiia ... )
UNDER KHRUSHCHEV
Khrushchev's brutal antireligious attacks and persecutions

went by almost unnoticed in the West, partly because the
predominantly agnostic Western media wanted to see a liberal
in Khrushchev and did not care much about religion, but partly
also because the features of antireligious campaigns promi-
nent in the 1920s and 1930s were almost absent now. True, a
special antireligious mass propaganda journal did appear in
1959. But this Science and Religion (NiR), although aggressive
and vulgar at times, as the following blasphemous illustrations
demonstrate, was not comparable to the viciousness of Bezboz-
hnik or Bezbozhnik u stanka. The methods and excuses applied in
the mass closure of churches and other forms of persecutions
will be discussed in the next chapter. Plenty of unofficial and
semi-official reports were available in the West about these
brutalities and terror. Many of them even found their way to
the Western media, yet the outside world paid little attention to
these 'unconfirmed' reports. These were several reasons why
this onslaught drew so little world public attention at the time.
First, even given the habitual Soviet custom of rewriting
history, the regime simply could not obliterate from people's
memories the patriotic behaviour of the Church in the Second
98
Renewal of the Incendiary Propaganda 99
World War, thepoliticalloyaltyoftheChurch tested by the war,

and the post-war obedient and supportive behaviour of
Church leaders in all sorts of Soviet-directed or Soviet-inspired
peace campaigns. Therefore, the new wave of antireligious
propaganda avoided attacking the Church leadership and
even from time to time had to stress the loyalty and political
reliability of the Church establishment. It limited its attacks to
individual religious activists and clergymen, and avoided
naming any names. Such roundabout attacks had only a limited
effect on the general public, and consequently even in the
Soviet Union those not directly involved in Church life in those
years were not well informed about antireligious activity.
Second, the repeated public denials of persecution and
suppression of churches by the Church hierarchy at inter-
national peace and theological conferences and in press
conferences abroad blunted the Western public's awareness
and responsiveness to the problem.
Third, the Soviet media campaign against religion, although
quantitatively quite large, was not as vicious in tone as that of
the pre-war years. No plans were openly announced to
liquidate the Church in the immediate future. No promises
were made that the word 'God' would soon disappear from the
Russian vocabulary, as had been done in the 1930s.
And finally, although highly placed officials such as Leonid
Il'ichev, the CPSU Central Committee Ideological Depart-
ment head, instigated contempt and hate against believers by
calling them 'political rascals and opportunists ... [who] cheat,
dissemble, hiding their hostility towards our political system
under a mask of religion', 1 the masses of organized and often
genuinely enthusiastic 'militant godless' were not there any-
more to pick up such commanding 'war cries' from the top.
Nor did the new antireligious attack, apparently, arouse any
enthusiasm in the Soviet artistic community, in contrast to the
pre-war years, when such talented avant-gardists as Moor
painted flashy, provocative and often talented antireligious
cartoons in Bezbozhnik, Krokodil and other periodicals, as well as
propaganda posters. Now NiR was more often forced to
employ the talents of foreign antireligious artists, for instance
those of the French communist cartoonist Maurice Henry, as
the blasphemous illustrations on page l 00, quite insulting to
religious feelings, show.
100
The Last Supper: Jesus playing card tricks
Soothsayer : 'One of the three will be famous'.
Porter
Are you unemployed? Well, pray to God,

this will be your work.
Nir (Nauka i religiia, i.e. Science and Religion) no. 11, 1968, pp. 96-7 .
The enhancement of the antireligious attack after 1958

became just another lifeless routine of the centrally planned
system. As Powell, one of the best authorities on Soviet
antireligious propaganda, says:
Although each newspaper is supposed to have a plan
governing the content and frequency of anti-religious
articles, few papers go about the task so systematically. Many
of the atheistic articles printed in the Soviet press are sent out
by the press bureau of Pravda or are prepared by TASS or
some other news agency ... A number of papers feature
regular columns devoted to religion and atheism; they are
given such names as 'The Atheist Corner' or 'The Militant
Atheist'. Most editors, however, confine their anti-religious
efforts to publishing articles prepared by TASS or to
reprinting items from other newspapers. 2
Powell further remarks that even when the official policy is to
criticize religion without insulting the feelings of believers, this
'official policy ... is violated in practice, so often ... as to cast
doubt on the authenticity of the policy' .3 The attacks were even
more unrestrained when prodded by the CPSU Central
Committee. And indeed, articles inciting contempt and hatred
for the believers appeared in ever-growing numbers in the
specialized atheistic and general Soviet press between 1959 and
1964 in particular, under such derogatory titles as: 'The Howls
of the Obscurantists', 'The Vultures', 'The Wolfish Fangs of
"God's Harmless Creatures'", 'Swindlers in the guise of Holy
Fathers', 'A Theologian-Fomenter', 'Hysteria on the March'.
Believers were called 'toadstools', 'swindlers', 'a horde', 'anti-
Soviet subhumans' (liudishki), 'wicked enemy of all that lives',
'the rot'. A secret monk becomes 'a milksop'. A theologian of a
banned Orthodox branch, the so-called True Orthodox
Christians, becomes a 'malignant'. 4 Levitin-Krasnov, who
dared to speak up for the Church at the height of Khrushchev's
persecutions in his multiple samizdat tracts, was called a
'Smerdiakov', the despicable Karamazov's bastard in Brothers
Karamazov. The man paid for his writings in defence of religion
under Soviet conditions, by losing his job as a high-school
teacher and with two prolonged imprisonments in 1949-56
and again in 1969-72. Yet NiR calls him a 'hypocrite' par
excellence. His 'hypocrisy' expressed itself, allegedly, in his
daring to teach Russian literature at school while using one

pseudonym to publish theological articles in ZhMP and
another for his samizdat apologetic essays 'full of spite and
arrogance'. Similarly as in the 1920s, one of the first manifesta-
tions of Khrushchev's antireligious attack was a campaign for
the removal of practising believers from the teaching profes-
sion. It was in 1959 that Levitin-Krasnov lost his job as a
school teacher. In the same year reports appeared 'unmasking'
secret believers among students of faculties of education. In
one reported case a Christian student was asked how she would
teach in the affirmatively atheistic school. She replied: 'I'll give
all answers in accordance with Marxism [stating that this is the
Marxist position]. What are my personal convictions is no one's
business.' The article calls for a more aggressively atheistic
curriculum at pedagogical institutes, particularly since other
students, when questioned, said they were atheists, but would
not be able 'to gain a victory in a discussion with believers'.
The attacks were slanderous in tone and often fraudulent in
content. An example is the case of Levitin, whose father was a
lawyer, a jewish convert to Christianity, of modest means and
whose mother came from a family of Russian schoolteachers.
NiR made him out to be a scion of a wealthy Russian aristocratic
family who had never forgiven the Soviet regime for depriving
them of their estates. This was said to be the motivation for his
allegedly anti-Soviet tracts. In fact, however, Levitin con-
sidered himself a Christian Marxist (moving somewhat away
from it only in the last few years in Switzerland to where he was
expelled in 1974 ). As to his pseudonyms, he used them in order
not to embarrass his school colleagues and pupils. There is no
other option for a Soviet teacher who believes in God when the
state does not permit confessional schools nor allow believers to
teach in state schools. It is the state in this case which imposed
the need for its citizens to dissemble. Yet the Soviet press always
accuses the believers of duplicity and hypocrisy, blaming their
behaviour on religious teachings. 5
Again, as in the 1920s, the general attack on religion slanders
the clergy and believing laity as lechers, drunks and parasites
who refuse to do socially useful work. 6 Hate-and-contempt
propaganda goes hand-in-hand with arrests of clergy, dis-
cussed in the following chapter. The arrest, trial, and senten-
cing of Archbishop Iov of Kazan' in 1960 and of Archbishop
Andrei of Chernigov is accompanied by slanderous articles

against them, written in accordance, apparently, with a pre-set
pattern. Both bishops had lived under the German occupation,
so both had to be accused of anti-Soviet activities. In the case of
Archbishop Andrei his imprisonment soon after the com-
pletion of theological studies under Stalin is reported as bona
fide evidence of his criminal anti-Soviet activities, although the
article appeared less than one year after the 22nd Party
Congress with its condemnation of Stalin's crimes and promise
to fully expose the invalidity of the criminal prosecutions of his
time. Both bishops are depicted as greedy lechers (one
homosexual, the other heterosexual), hated by their flocks for
their high living, conspicuous luxury, and the misappropri-
ation of diocesan funds. 'Careful' calculations are presented of
their incomes, with one careless oversight: the fact that the
clergy and their employees had to pay up to 81 per cent income
tax on their salaries is nowhere mentioned. There are other
deliberate oversights in the reports, casting serious doubts on
their reliability. Regarding Iov, it is stated in one place that he
had been consecrated bishop immediately after the war by
Metropolitan Alexii (Gromadsky)ofKiev, who in fact had been
killed by Ukrainian nationalistic partisans in 1943. The
lechery, luxury, pilfering, and accusations of materialistic
greed are a constantly repeated cliche in all such writings,
including those by ex-priests giving their reasons for deserting
the vocation. Such 'confessions' often end with appeals to
former colleagues who still remain priests, to 'stop fooling [and
abusing] the credulity of the believers. When will you stop
enriching yourselves by abusing the ignorance of the be-
lievers?' The conclusion is that the clergy are deceitful. 7 Even
the former professor of theology, Alexander Osipov, who
broke with the Church in December 1959, warned against such
oversimplifications. He warned that religion is much more
dangerous than the oversimplified image which such primitive
propaganda suggests. 'Sometimes it even attracts educated
people, intellectuals.' He protested against the tolerant atti-
tudes of children towards their believing parents or grand-
parents; referred to religion as 'dope, opium', which has a long
experience of'well thought out and skillful struggle for human
souls'. He stressed the flexibility and adaptability of the Church
which it would be wrong to see as 'a simple and senile
institution'. He approvingly referred to Il'ichev's Central

Committee Plenum speech ofJune 1963 which had stated that
'religion is the chief enemy of the Weltanschauung [Marxism]
inside the country'. Osipov contrasted the dynamism of
religion with the prevalence of bureaucratic routine and
ignorance in the atheistic camp: ignorant lecturers in atheism
confuse Jehovah's Witnesses with Old Believers; NiR pub-
lished cartoons of Evangelical Baptists praying before a row of
icons; much of the propaganda is reduced to 'priest-baiting',
while believers and clergy are often quite erroneously depicted
as either 'demoralized weaklings or as some vicious criminals
from a detective story'. Although logically all the above should
lead to the conclusion that any means should be used to kill and
destroy such an evil as religion, Osipov suddenly warned
against insulting the believer's feelings. But then, enumerating
literary works and films with an antireligious thrust, he
mentions a film The Confession, produced by the Odessa Studio,
which 'in vain depicts all seminarians as semi-idiots and rascals
... Nevertheless this film is also beneficial.' In other words,
again,just as in that debate of the late 1920s between Bezbozhnik
and Bezbozhnik u stanka, lies, slander, and incitement against
religion are permissible as long as they serve the atheist cause.
Osipov laments that 'the old guard of atheists, Yaroslavsky's
colleagues, is dying away', that is the people who had been
responsible for the most brutal physical annihilation of clergy
and believing laity, the people who had barbarously destroyed
thousands of churches and icons of unique artistic value. Thus,
Osi pov contradicts his preceding call for more sophistication in
the struggle against, what he terms (similarly to Yaroslavsky)
the most powerful internal enemy of the Soviet State. But then,
for purely practical reasons, Osipov advises thatNiR should be
reserved mostly for educational material for the atheists,
because the journal was not read by lay believers, as a rule. To
reach the latter, the real attacks, the antireligious propaganda
and agitation material, ought to appear in the general mass
media: cinema, television, theatre, and the mass press.H
Osipov may have been wrong: according to other informa-
tion, NiR is often subscribed to by believers, who make
clippings of all its quotations from the Scriptures, diverse
theological writings or saints' vitae, in lieu of unavailable
religious literature. Probably that was one of the reasons why
his advice was not heeded and NiR has continued to publish
material of antireligious propaganda and agitation along with
'educational material'.
Such antireligious agitation was often synchronized with
antireligious decrees and their implementation. Thus, a
decree of 1961 categorically reconfirmed the ban on group
pilgrimages to 'the so-called "Holy places"'. This was a blow to
one of the most ancient traditions of Russian piety. Pilgrimages
are tra<;litionally made to monasteries or churches, or sites
where according to a local oral tradition some miracle had once
occurred. In all instances they are made in particular on the
appropriate patron saint's feast-day. Now that these pilgrim-
ages were banned, a campaign of character assassination began
in the media against pilgrims and monasteries.
The monasteries were slandered also in order to rationalize
the mass forced closure of most of them during the same years.
Gne of the crudest Soviet 'religiologists', Trubnikova, pub-
lished an article at the end of 1962 slandering one of the most
nationally revered shrines, the Pochaev Lavra, as a nest of fat,
greedy, lustful loafers, allegedly raping young female pilgrims
and robbing people of their money. 9 This was at the height of
the persecution of the Pochaev monks and pilgrims, which was
often accompanied by their physical abuse by the police (see
Chapter 6). Another author issued a brochure, Truth about the
Pskov Monastery of the Caves (circulation 200 000 copies),
misrepresenting the whole history of the monastery, present-
ing it as a nest of national traitors from the Middle Ages to the
Second World War. In fact it had been a formidable fortress
defending Russia's western frontiers first from the Teutonic
and Livonian knights, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries from the Lithuanians and the Poles. The Soviet
author even accused the monastery of disloyalty for its
condemnation of Ivan the Terrible's reign of terror. 10
Soon assorted articles began to attack pilgrims and pilgrim-
ages as charlatanism, clerical swindles to extract donations,
distraction of people from socially useful work, especially on
the farms. Among these one of the most vicious was Trub-
nikova's 'Hysteria on the March', an ugly caricature of the
traditional centuries-old pilgrimage to an allegedly miraculous
spring in a Kirov Diocese village, Velikoretskoe, on one of the
feast days of St Nicholas. He is supposed to have appeared to
some believers there hundreds of years ago, and in his memory

a church honouring St Nicholas stands by that spring.
Trubnikova participated in the pilgrimage disguised as a
humble pilgrim, spying on the genuine ones and depicting
them as alcoholics, hysterical women falling into trances,
hypocrites and swindlers who simulate trances or disguise
healthy persons as invalids, who after a dip in the spring shed
their crutches and pretend to have received a sudden cure. The
author shows no compassion to these thousands of humble
believers, each going to the holy place with hopes of physical
cure or in search of help in a family crisis. For Trubnikova they
are 'a savage horde'. The story ends with alleged robberies
among the pilgrims, wild sexual orgies in cemetery woods, and
a drunken murder. A voluntary police aide rescues the author
in the middle of the night by warning her not to join a band of
the unofficial 'True Orthodox' pilgrims:
Where are you going? ... They'd easily break you there
before you could say knife . . . These 'true Orthodox'
wouldn't hesitate for a moment to gun you down. They have
no shortage of anti-Soviet subhumans.
In conclusion she makes an appeal to prevent all pilgrimages in
the country and to ban them categorically, comparing them to
locusts or worms who 'are crawling ... through forests, ...
crawling before the very eyes of the Soviet public'. 11
Trubnikova depicts the believers as an uncouth lot. She loses
her credibility when she confuses the Slavonic term for 'dying'
with the modern Russian word for 'introduction' (predstavitsia
and prestavitsia); and again when in a story on secret monastic
communities of the Old Believers she asserts that one of the
causes of the seventeenth-century Russian Church Schism was
Patriarch Nikon's attempt to abolish the annual chronology. 12
In Trubnikova's writings we see the revival of the old
Marxist-Leninist identification of religion with alcohol, crime,
mental abnormality, and disease. Trubnikova was not an
exception among antireligious Soviet authors in this respect
(neither would she have been an exception today). Countless
articles appeared claiming that the rites of all religious faiths
disseminated disease. The Judaic and Moslem rite of circum-
cision was cited as a frequent source of gangrene, often leading
to fatalities. Particularly long discourses have reappeared on
the alleged spread of infectious diseases through the Orthodox

tradition of mass veneration (kissing) of icons, crucifixes, and
relics; on the Orthodox communion in two forms (the body and
the blood) from a single common chalice; and on the general
Christian rite of baptism. It is alleged that the Orthodox and
Baptist-Evangelical rite of full immersion during baptism,
particularly in winter months, often leads to colds, influenzas,
and even pneumonias, particularly in infants, sometimes with a
fatal conclusion. In particular it is stressed that, owing to
overcrowding, sometimes twenty or thirty infants are baptized
using the same font and the same water, thus helping to spread
contagious diseases. What the authors pass over in silence is the
cause of such overcrowding: namely, Soviet closure of
churches, refusal to open or build additional churches and
baptistries, closure of seminaries, and strict limitations on the
numbers of seminarians and annual ordinations. Nor is there a
word anywhere on the notoriously unhygienic conditions in
Soviet secular communal bath houses, swimming pools and
hospitals. 13
It is not objectivity and truth that the authors are after. Their
purpose is to build up an image of believers, commonly called
for the purpose 'religious fanatics', disseminators of epi-
demics, social pests, or criminals, in order to justify their
persecution to the public and to get approval for the destruc-
tion of pilgrimage centres, churches and monasteries.
Whether the propaganda is effective enough in achieving this
aim depends on the attitude of the public to it. Il'ichev's
concern over the tenacity of the Church and her ability to
attract new believers, 14 seems to indicate the reverse. But since
this contradicts the Marxist doctrine of the inevitability of the
withering-away of religion under socialism, the process of
adult conversion had to be presented as a sort of rape,
figuratively speaking. In a story on the 'True Orthodox
Christian Wanderers', an illegal Old Believer sect, a monastic
priest is depicted as a wartime deserter from the army. In his
wanderings through the woods, hiding from the law during the
war, he comes across a band of sectarians who agree to hide
him, assuring him that life could be lived without working.
Their samizdat book of spiritual life 'breathes hatred toward
everything human, or worldly, and to things Soviet in particu-
lar!'. This deserter-turned-priest, Mina, 'has a bony predatory
nose'. His disciple, who had deserted a college to join the sect, is
'a pimply ninny'. To dispel the impression that college students
seek out God on their own, this is how this 'ninny's' conversion is
described. In the Siberian city of Novokuznetsk, Fr. Mina
meets this 'ninny in spectacles' who in the course of their
conversation 'expressed some doubt: "who knows, maybe
there is something in the sky up there ... "This is just what the
sectarians were waiting for.' Soon Mina persuaded him, and
the two were on their way to a Taiga Skete. On the way, in the
middle of the night Mina decided to baptize the new convert:
'Grasping his trembling, sweating hand in a mortal grip, Fr.
Mina dragged the convert to water.' Mina ordered him to
destroy all his papers, including the passport, but not the
money, which he took for himself, calling him a madman when
the youth wanted to destroy the money as well. And a few lines
later Mina and all his co-religionists are characterized as 'a
malicious enemy of all living things'.
It is a detective story of sorts; a series of mysterious
disappearances of young people, students, married men and
young women are being investigated. After several years of
fruitless searches a kidnapping network of sectarians is
allegedly unmasked and all their victims 'rescued' and brought
back into the secular world from their secret Siberian sketes and
underground theological schools. All the leaders are depicted
as criminals, swindlers, loafers using religion to extract money
from foolish religious simpletons. Their young converts are
'ninnies', 'infantile semi-idiots'. The state sends the former to
prison, but rescues their foolish disciples, returning them to
fruitful productive life. 15
Once again the persecution of clergy and active laity was
being justified by this kind of story, the readership was being
conditioned to accept such acts of the state as inevitable and
positive. But according to the propagandists of atheism's own
admissions, not many were convinced. 1"
AFTER KHRUSHCHEV
NiR reflected the general concensus after Khrushchev's fall

that the persecutions and brutal propaganda of hate-and-
contempt did not pay, when they published an editorial letter
to one of its former contributors, A. Ia. Trubnikova. Three

editorial authors, B. Mar'iamov, G. Ul'ianov and Shamaro
criticized Trubnikova for the very things of which their own
journal had been guilty.
First, Trubnikova was criticized for not trying to understand
the cause of the persistence of religious belief and its ability to
attract contemporary Soviet people. The implication is that the
persistence of religious belief cannot be reduced to 'survivals of
the past' alone.
Second, she was criticized for the reduction of the whole
religious phenomenon to a giant swindle of credulous fools,
along the line of eighteenth-century French materialistic
thinkers (sic); and worse: 'representing monasteries and
pilgrims in such a way as if there were no faith in God at all'.
Third, she was accused of simplified misrepresentation of
religious societies, especially of the 'true Orthodox Christian
Wanderers' as a 'secret anti-Soviet organization ... of oppor-
tunists, parasites, haters of all and everything in the Soviet
Union ... living [literally] underground ... created by kulaks
for counter-revolutionary underground subversive work'.
Finally, it was wrong and counterproductive, the editors
wrote, to represent believers as mentally handicapped sub-
humans and enemies, against whom any means may be used,
who are worthy only of 'unmasking' and contempt.
Such representation, they write, does not explain why
masses of people believe, why there are pilgrims, why people
join monasteries and dedicate themselves to God. 'You insult
not only the human dignity of believers, but also their genuine
religious convictions' . . . when describing them by rude
pejorative terms, and falsely depicting pilgrimages and life in
monasteries as drunken orgies and lechery. 17
Although the post-Khrushchev Science and Religion dis-
played a less militant and nihilistic tone, it has not consistently
avoided the 'sins' of which it so pointedly accused Trubnikova.
It often adopts the tone of a dialogue with believers. But
believers' letters are rarely printed in full; even meaningful
excerpts are an exception. At best, only those excerpts are cited
which are necessary for a response. More often only false,
imaginary, believers' assertions are printed, followed by a
disproving tirade. For example, in reply to the question that
surely God must exist since millions of people believe in Him
and they cannot all be wrong, there follows a lengthy

explanation that there have been many cases in history when
popular beliefs were proved wrong: for instance, the belief that
the Earth is flat. Throughout history there have been millions
more heathens than monotheists, but this does not prove that
paganism is true. Finally the author cites the unproved Marxist
hypothesis that early primitive man did not believe in any god,
as if this were an established fact, and primitive man a superior
model to be followed by modern man, ignoring his whole
intellectual and cultural evolution. 18
The former theologian Osipov, in a polemical work on the
'sad' fate of woman in Christianity and her liberation under
Marxism, written in response to the reproaches of some of his
female readers that there is a true 'iron curtain' in the Soviet
Union against the believers because their writings are never
published in full side-by-side with atheistic attacks on them,
justified this by stating that no theological publications would
publish articles by atheists. Thereby he asserts Marxism to be a
counter-Church, and atheism a counter-theology, particularly
when he expresses the fear that by publishing the writings of
believers a Soviet periodical would destroy its purpose, would
disseminate religious propaganda, especially since many of
these writings 'border on anti-Sovietism'. He then suggested
that his religious opponents should resort to the religious press
of the Soviet Union, as if he did not know that it was limited to
one small monthly and two even smaller bi-monthlies with a
total circulation of around 50 000 for the whole Soviet Union,
and that more than two-thirds of its content was filled by official
information and the obligatory 'struggle for peace' section,
imposed on these publications by the state. 19
To get around this dearth of religious literature, believers
resort to all forms of samizdat (do-it-yourself press), one of the
most popular forms of which are the so-called 'holy letters'- a
text from the Scriptures, prayers or writings by some Church
Fathers, handwritten, with an instruction to make nine copies
and to forward them to other addresses, or else God would
punish the receiver. Many of them, apparently, contain
excerpts from Stjohn's Revelations. NiR, attacking the letters
and the letter writers, does not cite a single one of them, but
creates situations to show how 'malicious', selfish and inhuman
are such writers. In every situation the journal cites, the letter
Renewal of the Incendiary Propaganda Ill
arrives in the middle of a family tragedy, when the receivers are

incapacitated by a grave illness or some other cause, making it
impossible to fulfil the instruction to duplicate the letter. Being
superstitious, the recipients go through agony and often are
forced to ask a schoolchild to rewrite the letter, thus trauma-
tizing the poor soul with 'religious propaganda'. In the same
vein, imports of religious literature from the West are
condemned as anti-Soviet subversion (see below). The same is
true for the Jehovah Witnesses and their literature. Agreeing
with Osipov, the journal hypocritically exclaims: 'A Weltans-
chauung ought to be disseminated only as a free influence,
without any compulsion. It ought to be accepted voluntarily,
not under threat.' 20 Unfortunately the Soviet system of
education and media monopoly offers no such options.
It is quite obvious that no genuine discussion, or dialogue,
can take place when one side possesses a monopoly of the
media; one side can lie, and the other may not expose the lies. 21
Moreover, if equal opportunity were granted to both sides,
there would be no employment for the huge army of mediocre
atheistic lecturers, writers and propagandists, about whose low
level of erudition and inability to convincingly argue with a
believer the Soviet media complains constantly. As will be
shown below, the volume and quality of more serious critical
studies of theology, church history, and believers has markedly
increased since the mid-1960s, although it is still biased and
one-sided. But the majority of Soviet religiologists are simply
incapable of such work. 22 Primitive attacks using an accumu-
lation of half a century of cliches and name-calling are much
easier. Moreover, there is a danger from the Marxist point of
view that once you begin a serious critique of religion you admit
its respectability, which is the last thing the Ideological
Commission of the CPSU Central Committee could tolerate. 23
In this dilemma NiR attempted to play the role of a friend
and kind counsellor of the reader. Their main argument was
that man turns to religion as a result of some misfortune in life,
loneliness, lack of compassion from one's colleagues, heartless
attitudes of government offices and the like. The journal
regularly publishes articles showing kind, compassionate,
spiritually rich and generous atheists. 24 As a counterforce, they
depict believers in a negative, disparaging way. Believers
continue to be shown as fanatics, intolerant and heartless
people, breaking up marriages when one of the partners is a

non-believer. In such cases believing parents disregard the
happiness or grief of their daughter or son, they counterfeit
miracles, provoke anti-Soviet and anti-socialist frenzy; even as
the teachings of Christianity, allegedly, deprive man of
courage, human pride, freedom, by preaching humility. 25
Since the late 1970s religious believers may have become more
intolerant, but the reason may be, as one ofOsipov's correspon-
dents, a 58-year-old female, pointed out in 1964, that when in
her youth the majority of the population were brought up as
systematic Christians, there was much less drinking and
debauchery and much less religious extremism. She blames the
Soviet intolerance towards the believers for the rise of the
believers' intolerance towards the atheists. Osipov's retort is
weak and unconvincing on the latter count, while he passes
over in silence the point on alcoholism altogether. 26
The other important subject that the Soviet antireligious
publications have to cope with is the rise of interest in national
culture and history, including iconography and religious art in
general, especially in those aspects of art and culture which
could be least rationalized in terms of materialism. The Soviet
press admits that fascination with religious art brings many
young intellectuals to church (as the caricature below illus-
trates). The Soviet media go out of their way to argue that
culture and religion are things totally apart, and that religion
simply bastardized art and culture. They argue that religious
artist had no way to express his talents other than through
religious symbols, by means of which, allegedly, even such
great iconographers as the monk Andrei Rublev or Theo-
phanes the Greek were expressing humanistic, secular con-
cepts.
In contrast to its former policy, NiR now dedicates many
pages to colour photographs of icons, Italian religious art,
churches and monasteries, interpreting them now as secular
art. The language may be more civilized than some of the
citations above, but the essence of this attack on religion
remains the same: that religion is a parasite on all aspects of
human progress, whether art, architecture, literature, history,
or whatever.
At the same time the journal consisently attacks museum
guides, in churches and monasteries converted into museums,
Can you imagine: it all began with an innocent collection of religious art.
(Krokodil, no. 4, February 1983, p. 6)
for giving only architectural and artistic information to the

public, and for adding an uncritical theological dimension -for
example, explaining the theology of icons, their role and
function in the Orthodox Church, explaining the theological
symbolism of church services, the purpose of monastic life and,
even, uncriticallycitingfromsaints'vitae. AccordingtoNiR, the

guides should explain 'the class character' of the Church,
monasteries, and religion. They should give a secular explan-
ation of religious art and should dwell on the history of the
usage of monasteries as prisons for heretics as feudal land
holders. 27
In contrast to Khrushchev's era, the press avoids insulting
attacks on the Church establishment, but continues to hurl
insults on the active evangelizing individual priests and laymen
(as exemplified in the above 1966 attack on Levitin-Krasnov)
and on banned sects and religions - for example, the
underground Ukrainian Uniates (Eastern Right Roman
Catholics), jehovah Witnesses, the unofficial Baptists. One of
the leaders of unofficial Baptists, while in exile in Siberia, far
from his wife and family, allegedly had a love affair with
another woman. This was immediately heralded by the atheist
press, without, however, explaining the circumstances or why
he was in Siberia to start with. This plain case of character
assassination is meant to show the underground Baptists as
lechers, and lechers cannot be Christian martyrs. 28
Soviet antireligious media's attention has been growing
towards another extremist religious outgrowth of Soviet
religious intolerance, the so-called Pokutnyky, an eschatological
sect of the banned West Ukrainian Uniates, which appeared in
the mid-1950s. The Pokutnyky activists are accused of counter-
feiting 'signs from God', such as putting a 'holy mountain' and a
stream on fire by secretly pouring petrol, inventing an
apparition of the Virgin predicting the immediate end of the
world, and terrorizing disenchanted former members of the
sect by setting their houses on fire. To convince people that the
Virgin did indeed appear to believers, a photo has been
distributed by the Pokutnyky, where, the journal alleges, the
image ofthe Virgin is simply stuck on with glue and paper to the
original picture of people praying at the foot of the 'Holy
Mountain', and then multiplied by photocopying. 29
Thus, once again, religion, swindle, terrorism, intolerance-
are all interrelated. But the Soviet state, which causes religious
persecution, terrorism and intolerance of even moderate
religious faiths such as the Eastern Roman Catholic Rite, is
never identified in connection with religious swindles.
By the same token, despite the above letter to Trubnikova,
the journal continues to describe Old Believer sects as an anti-

social and even criminal institution. A story on a suicidal_
movement in one such sect, written by Shamaro, who had nine
years earlier accused Trubnikova of falsely blackening and
distorting the world of the religious believer, is guilty of serious
distortions. This sect of Skrytniki (concealers), led by a
Khristofor Zyrianov in the woods of northern Russia, allegedly
had engaged in mass suicides from the mid-1920s to 1936.
What does not tally in this story is that although it is believed
that Soviet authorities had begun to suspect as early as the late
1920s that Zyrianov had been murdering his charges, in 1932
he was sentenced only to a few years of internal exile, and not
until1936 was real justice done. The total human toll was more
than sixty members of the sect killed. In view of the standards of
punishments applied to even innocent believers in the 1920s
and 1930s, it is incredible that Soviet justice' would have
tolerated the sect and its suspected murders for some eight
years. Apparently, the self-immolations were these religious
extremists' response to the persecutions of the 1930s, but
Shamaro deliberately extends this period into the mid-1920s to
divert guilt from the Soviet regime. Moreover, to confuse the
issue further, he calls the sect sometimes by its proper name,
and sometimes as 'The True Orthodox', 30 who in reality are
simply a branch of the regular Orthodox Church which has
refused to recognize the legitimacy of the accommodation of
the official Orthodox Church with the Soviet State.
The Old Believer sect of the 'True Orthodox Wanderers' is
confused with the 'True Orthodox' and some clergy in the
official Orthodox Church, in a novel supposedly based on true
facts, published in instalments in NiR. The plot concerns the
'vile' entrapment of a young Moscow Komsomol girl. First, she
is brought under the influence of a regular Moscow Orthodox
priest, who then sends her off with a pious woman go-between,
to a Siberian underground skete. There secret elders train her
and other girls for future missionary work and prepare her for
secret monastic vows. Severe fasting, hatred of the surround-
ing world, despotic exploitation of the young charges, banning
of all books but the Scriptures and some sectarian tracts, living
in dug-out cellars without seeing the sun, absence of smiles or
friendly words, rudeness- such is the depiction of that world of
fanatical sectarians, from whose net the girl is eventually
rescued by a group of Sherlock Holmes-like and heroic

Komsomol friends of the girl ... 31
The confusion of the world of the sectarians with the regular
Orthodox is probably deliberate, in order to throw a shadow of
suspicion on the latter as well, as if to warn the 'true Soviet
patriot' never to trust any believer. Take the case of Fathers
Nikolai Eshliman (died in 1985) and Gleb Yakunin, who had
received world-wide fame owing to their brave 1965 memor-
anda to the Soviet Government and to the Patriarch Alexii
protesting the persecution and the forced closures of the
churches and the inactivity of the Patriarchate and its bishops
in defending the Church. 32 The atheist press got busy morally
assassinating Yakunin. Allegedly he decided to become a priest
for purely pecuniary reasons. It is natural that in view of the
paucity of religious publications in the USSR an evangelizing
and missionary-oriented priest will try to acquire them from
wherever they may be available, usually from the West. The
Soviet regime treats this as a crime. So, Yakunin, Eshliman and
other active clergy and laity began to be branded as connected
with the criminal world, black-marketeers, and even with
Western intelligence services, who by secretly sending batches
of religious and theological literature into the Soviet Union
were engaging in ideological subversion. 33 Many articles,
brochures and books paint a picture of close ties between
religious dissenters and foreign intelligence services and with
such anti-communist Russian emigre organizations as NTS. 34
Descriptions of confiscations by Soviet customs officers of
caches of 'subversive' religious literature, stress their accept-
ance by wide circles of religious believers. Religious ideology is
hostile to the Marxist-Leninist ideology, runs such logic;
therefore religious believers are not sensitive to the threat of
the ideological enemy of the Marxist Soviet Union; they even
tend to feel an affinity to Western Christians. But the Vatican
and most other Western Christian establishments co-operate
with the CIA in order to infiltrate the USSR ideologically.
Orthodox priests broadcast messages to Russian Orthodox
Christians via the Voice of America and other 'subversive'
services. In short, even if a Soviet Christian is a loyal citizen in
his regular behaviour, he is considered to be the weakest link in
the Soviet defence line; he cannot be relied on and is a potential
enemy of the Soviet State. 35
For a long time the Soviet press refused to admit the growth
of religious sentiment among young generations of Soviet
intellectuals. They brushed the evidence aside as either an
empty fad or an intellectual swindle as in the Trubnikova
'report'. It is probably the flood of readers' letters, some of
which mention with concern the growing frequency of young
intellectuals turning to the Church, 36 which caused the appear-
ance in the 1970s of a special irregular publication, The World of
Man, issued by The Young Guard (Molodaia gvardiia), the
Komsomol literary monthly. The miscellany shows Nazis as
religious mystics, albeit trying to revive pagan cults, but still
religious and therefore irrational. Hence beware of the
religious mentality: it is akin to Nazism. The journal responds
to the growing interest in Russia's pre-Marxist culture by
claiming that Alexander Pushkin was an atheist, on the flimsy
evidence of his 1824 letter in which he admits his intellectual
interest in atheistic literature. An essay on Gogol, in contrast,
demonstrates the destructive effect of religion on that author.
Such writings are admittedly a response to letters from young
Soviet Komsomols to the publication who state that they see no
harm in their Komsomol friends getting married in church.
'We think it's wrong to turn away from our old traditions', they
write. And the miscellany retorts: 'Penetrating daily life
relations the religious ideology influences the views and
emotions of our youth.' 37 Unable to conceal the revival of
interest in religion among Soviet youth, the propaganda
blames it on Western ideological subversion, Western broad-
casts and Western religious organizations which smuggle
religious literature and bibles into the Soviet Union. As usual,
Soviet propagandists dress it all up as CIA and other Western
intelligence services operations, repeatedly quoting the late
General Secretary K. U. Chernenko's words at the June 1983
CPSU Central Committee Plenum:
The multiple ideological centres of imperialism are trying
not only to support but also to cultivate religiosity, givingitan
anti-Soviet nationalist orientation. 3H
NiR likewise tries to respond to the phenomenon of the
conversion to Christianity of Soviet youth. One such response
was in the form of a story of one Sasha Karpov, who had taken
monastic vows a very short while before. The obvious aim of the
story is to show that those young educated Soviets who turn to

religion are hypocrites looking for fame and distinction or
originality in society, without possessing any qualities that
would give them equivalent prestige in ordinary Soviet life. In
the course of the narrative, a few vague sentences reveal other
practising Orthodox intellectuals, without once explaining this
phenomenon satisfactorily, replacing any such explanation
with a few contemptuous and negative comments.
Sasha's mother is described as a biology teacher at a rural
school: a cold woman with no warmth for or interest in her
children. Her divorced husband was an alcoholic and did not
care for his children. On her retirement from schoolteaching
this woman, who 'for thirty whole years taught biology ... and
Darwin's theories', suddenly retired to a village where there
was a functioning Orthodox church and became a pious
parishioner, telling her surprised children: 'Probably I have
always been a believer, but have kept this to myself.' There is no
explanation that had she not kept it to herself, she would long
ago have lost her teachingjob; instead, it is left to the reader to
conclude that she has been a hypocrite and a heartless woman
all along.
Her Sasha is left on his own. He wants to prove that he has a
great talent. He tries his hand at singing, writing poetry (and
eventually singing it to his own tunes), studying at an institute
of education to become a teacher. But his endeavours prove
mediocre, and the latter career frightens him with the prospect
of hard work and an inconspicuous, very modest life in a
faraway village. Then he tries to distinguish himself as a singing
hippy, and comes across a priest, who hires him as a church
reader and singer. Six months later he breaks with the priest,
but not before getting from him a list of addresses of his
acquaintances in Moscow. Eventually he drops in on one of
them. There he finds a couple of young physicists (husband
and wife), whose apartment is full of icons and Russian
artifacts. They adore Sash a as a rural talent and seeker of truth.
He soon adapts to their religious habits by not entering the
apartment without crossing himself facing the icons, praying
before meals, and so forth. Eventually he decides to join a
monastery, after he is told that with his voice and musical talent
his monastic duty will most likely be choral singing. It is never
explained in the story why his uncle, who 'occupies a very
responsible post in a government department' and therefore is

undoubtedly a party member, not only does not seem to object
to Sasha's choice to become a religious hermit at first and a
monk in a monastery later, but even equips him for the trip,
buying warm winter clothing, supplying him with food. The
author stresses that now when Sasha visits his friends and
relatives in Moscow he deliberately wears his cassock in order to
shock everybody, and to impress them. Her unequivocal
comment on Sasha as a person and on his choice of life is:
'Everything can be turned into fraud in life, poetry, intellectual
curiosity, religious frenzy. ' 39
In addition to such stories, NiR periodically publishes
episodes from Russian history in which churchmen can be
depicted as negative and even criminal characters, in order to
remind its readers once again that Christian morals are
deficient, that the Church is a greedy parasitic institution
breeding alcoholism, fraud, crime and misanthropy not only in
the past but also in the present. 40
The official line, constantly repeated by NiR, may be that
believers' feelings ought not to be insulted, their beliefs should
be respected. 41 Yet the hate-and-contempt posture towards
religion is always present. For instance, stories about the
traumatic difficulties that believing children experience in
Soviet schools appear quite often in the Soviet press. But the
blame is always placed on the believer, not on the school. In a
novel, a schoolboy attempts suicide rather than live with the
'shameful' label of a 'religious believer'. Yet the author blames
the priest, the religious family of the boy and the family's
friends, but not the fanatically atheistic schoolteacher who is
the real cause of the conflict. Another author argues that
because of the conflict between the atheistic school and the
faith of religious children, the latter are usually less successful
in their academic pursuits than the non-believing students.
Surely it is the intolerance and aggressive ideological commit-
ment of the Soviet school to atheism which force the believer to
be constantly under stress and to conceal his real views, thereby
traumatizing his whole spiritual development. Instead, the
author blames the religious family and its upbringing for
precipitating the conflict and thus being guilty for the child's
poor showing at school. This implies that religious students all
over the world are poor scholars by definition. 42
The professional atheistic establishment is well entrenched

and well paid. It is not in their interest to show believers in a
positive light or as a constructive element in society. 43 There-
fore the religious believer will always bejudged the guilty party,
regardless of the circumstances.
6 Persecutions under
Khrushchev
Most of us in the West were totally unprepared for that fourth
antireligious holocaust in the first fifty Soviet years, and we
should hardly be blamed, for it appears that the attack was an
unexpected shock for the believers inside the Soviet Union as
well. Few of them, if any, seem to have remembered the first
signs of the gathering clouds: the two 1954 Central Committee
resolutions, mentioned in Volume 1 of this study. This is
understandable in view of the fact that in actual practice the
period between 1953 and 1957 appeared to have been the most
peaceful and even somewhat promising for the Church:
student numbers in seminaries were growing, after the near-
freeze of Stalin's last three years. Reports again began to
appear on rebuilding and repairing of churches and even on
some new church construction. Also, new bishops of the
younger generation began to be consecrated.
Yet the resolutions were there, and Khrushchev and his
ideological officials periodically reminded the population that
a decisive struggle against religion was in the offing, which
would not be limited just to propaganda. 1 This was not the
result of any external (or CP leadership) pressure on
Khrushchev ,2 but fulfilment of his longstanding atheist convic-
tions. Therefore, the idea of building the communist society
which he began to promise for the immediate future was
accompanied by his personal antireligious zeal. It was under
Khrushchev as the First Moscow City Party Secretary that in the
year 1932 alone more than 200 Orthodox churches were
dynamited in that city, including a large number of medieval
architectural and artistic treasures. 'Having gained national
power, Khrushchev carried over into our times the methods
which he had practised in his youth'. 3 The CPSU CC Com-
mittee resolution of 10 November 1954, 'On Errors in the
Conducting of Propaganda of Scientific Atheism', made it
quite clear that Khrushchev personally was the initiator of the
July resolution when the November resolution said: 'Some
speakers allow themselves to insult the clergy and the believers
121
... unfoundedly misrepresenting [them] ... as politically

untrustworthy', for it was Khrushchev who in a public address
soon after the July resolution attacked the Church, its clergy
and believers precisely in those terms. 4 Likewise, the aggress-
ively antireligious campaign promised in the July document
began to be implemented only in 1959, after Khrushchev's
complete consolidation of power following the purge of the
'Anti-Party' group of 1957 and the consolidation of the
premiership and party leadership posts in Khrushchev's hands
alone in March 1959. Moreover, the successful launching of
the first manned satellite by the Soviet Union in September
1959 may likewise have been a contributing factor, not only in
the sense that Khrushchev felt more firmly in the saddle and
conscious of the prestige he had earned when under his
leadership the USSR had overtaken the USA in the most
advanced form of competition, but also because his primitive
mind may have been sincerely impressed by the fact that the
cosmonauts had not seen God in the heavens. This did become
one of the most frequently used arguments of the Soviet
antireligious propaganda for years to come. 5 Technically, 1959
coincided with the Extraordinary 21st Party Congress, and the
launching of the Seven Year Plan as the beginning of a twenty-
year programme of constructing communism, which was to
include the annihilation of religion, for communisim could
neither be constructed nor live side-by-side with a flourishing
Church. 6
THE CLOSURE OF THE CHURCHES
There is by now a considerable amount of information and

documentation available to illustrate the processes of closure of
churches. One of the best-documented cases is that ofthe Kirov
Diocese in the north-eastern part of European Russia, thanks
to the late Boris Talantov, a mathematics teacher of Kirov who
had lost hisjob because of his faith. He was one of the first Soviet
citizens to begin to sound the alarm when the authorities
started to close churches in his diocese, by sending his reports
first to Soviet newspapers and to the central government in
Moscow. When this proved futile he began to use samizdat
channels to alert the West, for which he eventually paid with his
Persecutions under Khrushchev 123
life, dying in imprisonment in 1971. In a 1967 report he

described the persecutions in his diocese in the following
terms:
the antireligious campaign of 1959-64 was aimed primarily
at the mass liquidation of churches and religious associ-
ations. This was being fulfilled by the Council on the Affairs
of the ROC [CROCA, later Council for Religious Affairs,
CRA] and its local plenipotentiaries supported by local
governments .
. . . the following was the most usual procedure. The
provincial CROCA plenipotentiary would at his own dis-
cretion de-register the priest serving the church earmarked
for liquidation, or would move him to another parish. Then
during the six to eleven subsequent months he would refuse
to issue a registration permit to any clergy candidates
suggested by the parishioners, either stating that he owed no
explanations to them for his actions or plainly and cynically
admitting 'I shall not register anyone.'
In the years 1960 to 1963 twenty-one of the original eighty
priests of the diocese were thus de-registered, and not a
single new priest was permitted registration in their stead.
While the church remained without a priest the local
government organs used all forms of intimidation to force a
few members to quit the 'religious association' ('twenty'),
thereafter it was declared that the local religious association
ceased to exist. Simultaneously the Provincial Executive
Committee declared the church closed and the building
handed over to the local collective farm or town soviet for
other uses. Contrary to the existing laws, the religious
association in question was not informed of this decision,
which was instead directly transmitted to CROCA in
Moscow. Subsequently, the latter would de-register the
religious association in spite of its protests.
Talantov remarks that such cases could not be excused by
any lack of information: believers sent many written com-
plaints to CROCA in Moscow, as well as delegations, presenting
physical evidence that the religious association in question still
existed, that the collective farm in question did not need the
church building for a club or whatnot. In no case was the
written text of the resolutions on de-registration of a religious
society shown to its members or petitioners. The text was kept

in secret because, apparently, it was in accordance with some
secret instructions which contradicted the formal laws but
which in fact regulate Soviet life much more often than the
published laws.
The liquidation itself of the house of prayer ... would take
place under the protection of the militia, often in the middle
of the night. Believers were not allowed into the church. The
contents were confiscated without any inventory.
Talantov's description ofliquidation of individual churches
in the diocese shows the senseless barbarism of the operations:
icons were broken up and burned, service books and Scriptures
destroyed, the Communion wine consumed by the raiders.
This, he writes, occurred in all cases in the Kirov Diocese
without exception. In some cases, in addition, the very church
building would be wrecked (or burned, if it was made of wood)
-for example, the beautiful church of Zosima and Savvatii in
the village of Korshik, which was recognized as the best and
most precious example of eighteenth-century Russian archi-
tecture and art in the Kirov Province. It had been under state
protection and continued to function even under Stalin.
Despite the fact that the petitioners on behalf of this church,
closed early in 1960, had been assured by a CROCA official in
Moscow in the same year that as an architectural monument the
church would be returned to the believers and restored to its
original use, it remained shut. In 1963 its interior was totally
destroyed, and the domes cut off in the process of transform-
ing it into a collective farm club- which was unlikely, adds
Talantov: 'this renovation would cost more than building a new
club'.
By these methods the number of functioning Orthodox
churches in the Kirov Diocese was reduced from 75 in 1959 to
35 by the end of 1964; that is for a territory three times the size
of Holland and with a population of over two million. Before
the revolution there were over 500 churches in the diocese. At
least by the time of the completion of this report, remarks
Talantov, not a single one of the churches was restored to the
believers, despite hundreds of group protests, oral and
written, addressed to the central Soviet Government, to the
CROCA headquarters, to the Patriarchate, to major Soviet
newspapers, and to all sorts of local authorities. Some del-

egations consisted of several hundred people at a time (five
hundred in one case), and petitions signed by similar numbers.
None ofthe closed churches were insolvent or in ill-repair. The
shouts, insults, beatings, and other forms of intimidation to
which the most active petitioners were subjected by local
authorities resulted in several deaths, some physical injuries (at
least one for life) and nervous breakdowns. None of the guilty
officials was ever punished. 7
And this is how such violent liquidation of churches is
presented in the official press:
Conversations went around the village: Will the church
remain, or won't it? ... The church had no business to be
standing next door to the school. Moreover, in summer there
was usually a pioneer camp in the school. Finally, before the
war ... there was a cafe there, with a snack bar in the chapel.
The church at Yastrebino was opened by the Germans during
the occupation. So, 'it's an echo of the war', ran the argument
in the village ... But the weightiest argument which had an
effect even on believers,* 1 was this: the children ...
They all argued about religion, but finally arrived at the
same conclusion -a club ... You could argue about a church,
but not about a club ...
. . . By now in surrounding villages they were already
gathering signatures beneath an application to the village
soviet requesting the closure of the church. 8
The procedure is the very reverse of that described by
Talantov. But there are two characteristic features of the
campaign mentioned in this passage. One is the fact that the
church was reopened under the German occupation. The
Soviet law invalidating all acts passed by the enemy on the
Soviet soil was applied in these very years to close most of the
churches and monasteries reopened during the war on enemy-
occupied territory, although none of them was actually opened
* This is an example of the typical logical non sequitur of Soviet atheistic

propaganda. Why should a believer object to the church's presence in the
vicinity of a school? On the contrary, parents would be happy that it would
constantly remind the children of the Church's existence and hopefully
attract them.
by the enemy. It is under this thin pretext that at least '21 0

religious congregations of various denominations' were shut
down in the Odessa diocese; 9 the total number of Orthodox
churches in Belorussia was reduced from some 1200 to less
than 400. 10 The Dnepropetrovsk diocese was reduced from
180 to 40 parishes; 11 the diocese of Crimea was eventually
reduced to some 15 churches. But Kirov, of course, never was
under German occupation; hence not even semi-legitimate
excuses of the above kind could have been advanced to
'legitimize' mass church liquidations. Nor could the
nullification-of-enemy-acts law be applied to the republic of
Latvia, where only 75 of the original 500 Roman Catholic
churches remained open after 1964, or to the formerly Polish
province of Volhynia where 180 parishes were liquidated in
those eventual years: in both places the churches had been
there and had functioned before the German occupation. 12
The other argument in the same passage is that the church
was adjacent to the village school. Apparently masses of
churches could be and were closed under this pretext, because
the majority of pre-revolutionary rural schools were actually
parish schools. Obviously most of them were built next to the
church. There were many primary schools run by the church in
urban areas as well. And we know of at least one case, already, in
the 1970s, when a church in Zhitomir was closed and
dynamited on the pretext of being situated too close to a school
and thus serving as a 'corrupting influence' on children. 13
Even the Soviet press itself admitted on occasion that the
campaign was guilty of unnecessary barbarism. It printed, for
instance, an early warning by a group ofleading Soviet writers
and artists protesting the senseless dynamiting of the Ufa
Cathedral on 2 June 1956, 'a most valuable historical and
architectural monument ... destroyed, despite the protests of
the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Culture of the
USSR.' It was possible to publish the letter because it vindicated
the Soviet Government of any responsibility for this particular
barbarism, pointing out that the U fa authorities had 'no special
permission from the government, which is obligatory in every
such case. 14 However, the central government was perfectly
aware of what was going on and took no measures to rectify the
situation. Talantov's reports are not the only source of
confirmation. Another, though somewhat indirect, confir-
mation comes from an article in the prestigious official journal

of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Soviet Ethnography, in the
form of full approval of the post-1959 offensive against
religions. There is not a word of warning against offending
religious feelings. On the contrary, referring to the CPSU CC
resolution of 9 January 1960 (which all believers in the Soviet
Union interpreted as the first printed evidence of the official
approval of the persecutions), 'On the Aims of Party Propa-
ganda in the Contemporary Conditions', it says:
The Party has never reconciled itself and never will, with
ideological reaction of any kind ... The struggle against
religion must not only be continued, but it ought to be
enhanced by all possible means. 15 [italics mine, D.P.]
and this, of course, included all the brutalities and barbarisms
just described, for otherwise they would have been subjected to
criticism.
There is also indirect, but sufficiently convincing, confir-
mation in the official press that the closure of churches was just
as unwarranted in the 1960s as in the 1930s by reason of
religious decline. A brochure on the condition of the churches
in the north Russian autonomous republic of Komi states that
where there had been 150 churches before the revolution there
were only three now; but then adds that besides these three
officially registered there are over twenty unregistered Ortho-
dox communities with unofficial priests. This is in addition to
one or two 'catacomb' communities of the 'True Orthodox'
(those who do not recognize the Moscow Patriarchate). 16 In
other words, the three registered churches are insufficient for
the number of believers in that republic; while the fact that the
other twenty or so cannot gain official sanction for their
existence is evidence of harassment by the Soviet state. A book
on the Old Believers of the Trans-Baikal area admits that a
survey has indicated that the proportion of religious believers
in the city of Ulan-Ude constitutes nearly 20 per cent of the
population, while that in the rural areas is between 32 and 36
per cent. The latter were represented by two villages, both
populated by Old Believers, yet there is not a single officially
functioning Old Believer church in the area. The higher
proportion of 36 per cent in one village is explained by the fact
that there had been an open Old Believer church there until
recently, and even 'after its closure the priest, Simonov,

continued to celebrate at his home' . 17 Obviously a church closed
with 36 per cent of the population daring to declare their faith
even after its closure, could only have been shut down by force.
During the same years the cowed official representatives of
the Moscow Patriarchate continued to declare that in all but
very exceptional cases the closures were caused by a decline in
believers and resulted mostly in amalgamation of adjacent
churches. 18 Talantov describes such alleged amalgamations in
his diocese, of churches standing forty kilometres apart. 19
While the leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate were forced to
make these mendacious statements, writers belonging to the
Soviet establishment, enjoying greater freedom of speech,
came closer to the truth in the following admission:
In some places educational work with believers was being
replaced by crude administrative arbitrariness, causing
among the believers only dissatisfaction and bitterness, used
by foreign reactionary circles for anti-Soviet propaganda. 20
DEMORALIZING THE REMAINING PARISHES
As several Soviet-Russian Orthodox authors point out, the

attitudes and role of the CROCA-CRA and of its local
plenipotentiaries changed in 1960 from that of at least
allegedly impartial intermediaries between the Church and the
State to that of dictatorial administrators over the Church, local
dioceses and parishes, aiming at their destruction or at least
demoralization. 21 This coincides with the retirement of M.
Nikolai who had dared to protest against the new wave of
persecutions in his sermons. Among other things, he had been
the au tor of the Patriarch Alexii's Kremlin speech at a Soviet
peace conference in 1960, in which he openly admitted
persecutions and warned the hostile Soviet establishment
audience that whatever they did 'the gates of hell shall not
overcome the Church'. The Patriarch praised the role of the
Church as the spiritual leader of the nation throughout
Russia's history, saving her several times in periods of the
deepest national crises. 22 This was the high point of Church
officialdom's resistance to the new holocaust, resulting in
Nikolai's forced retirement and mysterious death a few months

later, and the Patriarchate's submission to the pressures,
reflected in the behaviour of diocesan bishops as well, as
described by Talantov and other writers. The result of this
submission was the acceptance in 1961 of new Church bylaws,
imposed by the Soviet regime through the CROCA, which
deprived the bishop and the priest of any effective control over
the parish, handing over all power to the lay parish executive
council of three persons; this was followed by the penetration
of the religious associations (the 'twenties') and the councils by
Soviet agents. 23
It was at this time that the CROCA plenipotentiaries virtually
appropriated for themselves the function of appointing and
removing priests by a relentless and arbitrary application of the
registration and de-registration rights. In the Kirov diocese as
well as in others this led to the removal of the most popular and
spiritually most influential priests and the refusal to register
clergy candidates chosen by the laity to replace the former
priests.
When the parishioners of the church where the priest had
been de-registered appealed to their bishop to appoint
another priest, the bishop instructed them to apply to the
provincial plenipotentiary to register the parishioners'
candidate. The plenipotentiary refused, giving no expla-
nation. Returning to the bishop the petitioners were told he
had no other candidate, was powerless against the plenipo-
tentiary, and they would have to find another candidate
themselves.
Cowed by the officials, the local bishop ordered the priests to
fulfil all CROCA plenipotentiaries' orders, or risk losing their
registration. Under the threat of de-registration the priests
ceased to deliver topical and uplifting sermons, criticizing
atheism and materialism, and limited themselves to abstract
discussions of Christian ethics. How abstract this discussion
had to be is shown by the fact that under the threat of losing
their posts, priests were forced from 1960 to speak against the
presence of beggars on church steps, and from 1963 even the
militia (police) began to raid church porches and yards
expelling them. These people were without any means of
existence, and to deprive them of the fruits of Christian charity
was the broadest possible interpretation of the 1929 laws

banning all church charity. It was obviously another means of
undermining the moral prestige both of the clergy and of the
Church in general. 24
In the conditions of great scarcity of functioning churches,
many faithful come long distances to a service, sometimes too
far to return the same day. Until 1960 it was normal practice to
let these pilgrims stay overnight at the so-called night watch-
man's hut (small houses commonly built in Russia in the church
yard). After 1960 the CROCA began to forbid the use of these
huts for this purpose across the whole Soviet Union. Fearing
reprisals, church councils began to expel pilgrims from them,
although most stood empty. In the areas where the church
councils nevertheless surreptitiously allowed the pilgrims in,
the militia would arrive at night (even in the middle of winter)
and expel these, mostly old, people into the cold. Thus they
made it almost impossible for people from afar to go to
church/5 thereby artificially reducing church attendance. This
measure must have been particularly effective in the sparsely
populated rural areas of the north, north-east, and the east,
where in this way the church's attendance and income could be
greatly reduced, thus helping the plenipotentiary to close it
under the pretext of poor attendance and insolvency. It ought
to be kept in mind that no religious organization in the USSR is
allowed to levy any membership dues or to canvas private
residences for donations to the church. The only legal income
is from voluntary donations of believers and pilgrims on the
territory of the temple or monastery.
In the Kirov Diocese from the end of 1959 priests began to
receive oral orders from the plenipotentiaries forbidding them
under the threat of de-registration, to administer confessions,
communions, baptisms, extreme unctions and other private
religious services at private homes, even to those terminally ill,
without the express permission to do so in each individual case
granted by the local soviet on request from the priest. Two
years later the clergy of the Moscow Archdiocese were even
forced to sign an unpublished pledge with similar stipulations.
The text of the pledge and the priests' signatures remained in
the hands of the CROCA without any copy given to the priest. 26
This measure, besides being an act of blatant persecution and
infringement on the alleged Church-State separation, was
once again meant to strike at the social and moral prestige of the
priest. He was made to appear a lazy selfish person who would
let a sick person die without spiritually attending to him, since
not a single priest could produce a document to vindicate
himself from such suspicions. Talantov, in fact, cites a case in
point. When a delegation of Kirov believers went to Moscow in
1963 to complain to the CROCA headquarters about this
regulation, an official responded: 'Don't you believe this. Your
priests are simply lying to you. No special government
permission of any kind is required to administer communion
or unction at private homes.' 27
The Soviet press made many admissions at the end of the
1950s and early in the 1960s of the growth of religiosity among
the young. 28 Undoubtedly this was at least partly caused by
their disillusionment with the official doctrines, particularly
after Khrushchev's condemnation of Stalin and his inability to
substantiate in practice his claims that there was a truly
attractive alternative model of Marxism-Leninism. Failing in
this, the only other alternative open to the regime to prevent
the increase of young churchgoers was to use coercion. Their
opening salvo banning the attendance of children and youths
at church services was apparently aimed at the Baptist Chuch,
as early as 1960. The probable reasons for starting with the
Baptists are several. Being a Church of adult baptism, in
contrast to the Orthodox Church, the children were not full
members; hence the Soviets must have thought the Baptist
Church might accept this pressure more readily than the
Orthodox. Second, as a fundamentalist religion, without the
complex symbolic ritualism and involved theology of the
Orthodox Church, the Evangelicals and Baptists were most
accessible to the theologically illiterate but religiously
searching Soviet youth than the Orthodox and thus were
attracting proportionally more young people than the Ortho-
dox.
Be that as it may, in 1960 the central leadership of the All-
Union Church of Evangelical Christian-Baptists (AUCECB)
issued a Letter of Instructions which, among other things,
stipulated that: sermons should cease to sound like appeals; 'an
effort must be made to reduce the baptism of young people
between the ages of 18 and 30 to the minimum'; 'Children ...
should not be allowed to attend services.' Much to the surprise
of the Soviet authorities, two years later this caused the most
significant split in the Russian Baptist Church in its history,
lasting to the day of present writing. Henceforth this other
branch of the Baptists, known at first as the Initsiativniki or
Action Group, but later adopting the name of Council of
Churches of the Evangelical Christians and Baptists (CCECB),
has become an institutionally persecuted Church in the Soviet
Union, with hundreds of its members constantly lingering on
in Soviet concentration or labour camps and prisons, 29 while in
contrast, the AUCECB enjoys more privileges than the
Orthodox Church, including the right of regular national
councils with relatively genuine elections and candidates
nominated from the floor. 30
The Baptist rebellion caused the civil authorities to use more
circumvention in imposing similar changes on the Orthodox
Church. First of all, it appears to have been only in 1962 that a
circular was addressed by the state to the Orthodox Church
instructing the priests not to conduct church services in the
presence of children and youths; although in some localities
instructions to this effect were given to the Orthodox clergy as
early as 1960 or 1961. 31 The text of the instruction was never
shown to the clergy. Instead, the plenipotentiaries generally
telephoned local priests, threatening to deprive them of their
registration if they allowed children to be present at services or
administered communion to them. In the Kirov Province
measures to prevent children and youths under the age of
twenty from attending the liturgy began to be applied as late as
the summer of 1963. 32 The first and direct attempt in Kirov
failed: women bringing children to church physically assaulted
the policemen and their Komsomol aids encircling the
churches and broke through, the policemen not daring to beat
the women in public. It was after this failure that CROCA
plenipotentiaries began to threaten the priests by telephone,
instructing them to refuse to administer communion to or
accept confessions from children and youths, even if present in
the church. The threat of de-registration and lack of support or
defence by the bishop worked. 33 Foreign diplomats remember
how they had to show their foreign passport in those days to
Komsomol patrols in front of most Moscow churches on
Sundays and feast days if they wanted to take their children to
church: the measures were applied unevenly and not uni-
formly, because numerous priests continued to administer the

Holy Sacraments to children throughout those years, and even
conduct special Te Deums for schoolchildren on the eve of the
first school day in September. 34 But the punishment for this
sort of 'crime' now became severe. In the Orenburg Diocese
alone forty-six priests were in prison in 1960. Soviet press
reported trials and prison or labour camp sentences meted out
to various clergy, among them the dean of the most popular
church in Leningrad (nicknamed Kulich i paskha), who was
given six years' hard labour, and numerous priests from
Moldavia, one from Dneprodzerzhinsk, and others. 35
Although the Soviet press did not reveal the cause of these
arrests, in other instances attempts to attract youth and
children to the church were cited as cause for imprisonment of
priests, for example in the Kalinin Province and in the town of
LikhoslavP6 The harassment of clergymen for working with
youth continues to the present day. 37 Talantov tells of two
young men in his diocese who applied to the Moscow seminary
for theological studies to prepare for priesthood. Both were
accepted, but when the local government discovered that both
young men had given up their employment to prepare for the
seminary entrance exams, they were arrested, tried as parasites
evading work, and sentenced to three years' forestry work in
the far north. The priest who had helped them to prepare for
their studies and who had given them letters of reference was
deprived of registration in 1961. 38 That the authorities were
aiming simply at depriving the Church of the most popular and
active priests is demonstrated by the case of a popular priest, T.
G. Perestoronin, arbitrarily deprived of registration in 1961 in
preparation for the arbitrary closure of the church he served
in. The priest then moved to Kirov to work as a reader in the
local church, leaving his wife and children in the parish house
in the village of the closed church. The house was built
especially for the priest by the parishioners with their own
money and labour. But the local village boss decided to throw
the woman out of the house in the middle of the winter of 1962.
The court sided with the official, threatening the poor woman
with deprivation of parental rights as a parasite. When the local
schoolmistress hired the priest's wife as a charwoman to save
her from prosecution, the village boss sacked her from the
school. Brought to such an impasse, the priest ceased working
for the Church and took a job as a plumber, whereupon all

harassment ceased, and he received the right to return to his
village and to live with his wife in his former house. 39
Bishops who had tried to resist the closure of churches and
monasteries were either forced to retire, like M. Nikolai and
Archbishop Ermogen of Tashkent, 40 or were arrested. The
very popular Veniamin (Novitsky, see above), Archbishop of
Irkutsk, was a target of Soviet press attacks, and there was an
attempt to indict him in 1961 in connection with the trial of a
church warden or guard who had inadvertently killed a
juvenile thief. The evidence apparently was too flimsy even for
a Soviet court to indict him. Nevertheless, Veniamin was such a
thorn in the CROCA-CRA eyes because of his great popularity,
spiritual leadership and resistance to atheists, that eventually,
under Brezhnev, he was removed to the much less conspicuous
diocese of Chuvashia. 41 The Archbishop Venedikt died in
prison in 1963, awaiting trial, arrested for resisting the closure
of churches. 42 Two bishops were in fact sentenced: the very
popular and energetic lov (Kresovich), Archbishop of Kazan',
who had vehemently fought against the closure of churches,
was sentenced to three years' hard labour allegedly for tax
evasion; Archbishop Andrei (Sukhenko) of Chernigov, who
had already served a term of imprisonment under Stalin, was
sentenced in 1961 to eight years' hard labour for having
resisted the closure of a monastery in his diocese. M. Nikolai, in
his last secret interview given to Archbishop Vasilii of Brussels,
confirmed that all these charges were a fraud: the bishops were
imprisoned for standing up for their Church. Soon after his
release lov was appointed Archbishop of Ufa. Had he been
truly guilty of tax evasion and stealing from the diocesan
treasury, the Church would not have reappointed him, nor
would the state have tolerated the appointment. Andrei was
likewise reappointed diocesan bishop soon after his release,
but the camp had affected his mind and he eventually had to be
retired to a monastery for mental health reasons. 43 Needless to
say, not only the Chernigov monastery but even the cathedral
of Chernigov was closed soon after Andrei's arrest. Similarly,
as this author was informed by the late M. Nikodim (Rotov),
although no churches could be closed in the Archdiocese of
Tashkent while Ermogen was there, after his forced retire-
ment the authorities came down with a vengeance closing
perhaps more than they had originally planned. 44 This shows
that unless there is a total unity of the nation with the Church
and undivided popular support for her, as in Poland, thereby
leaving no alternative for the communist regime except to
negotiate with the Church as a partner and adversary and not
as a powerless subordinate, steadfast resistance of a bishop or a
priest will simply result in his retirement and replacement by a
more com pliant one. It is probably this lesson that was drawn in
these years by the Patriarch and the rest of the bishops, hence
their compliance and lack of support for the parishes strug-
gling for survival - a reproach repeatedly levelled at the
hierarchy by Talantov, Frs. Nikolai Eshliman (deceased in
1984) and Gleb Yakunin, and many other samizdat authors. 45
It was in these years that five of the existing eight seminaries
were closed by Soviet authorities, and even in the surviving
seminaries the number of students was artificially reduced.
According toM. Nikodim, there were only seventy students at
the Leningrad schools of theology when he took over (in
contrast to 396 students in 1953 and about 400 by the time of
Nikodim's death in 1978). 46 As the above example of two
student-candidates to the seminary from Kirov shows, this
reduction of the student body was achieved by direct persecu-
tion of the candidates, as well as by preventing their registra-
tion at the seminaries by refusing to give them a residence
permit in the area where the seminary was situated. Another
ploy was to call up most of the students and candidates for
military service. Having thus emptied most of the seminaries,
the authorities then shut them down. 47
All these means of direct and indirect persecution resulted in
the reduction of functioning Orthodox churches from over
20 000 prior to 1960 to 6850 by 1972, and a simultaneous
decrease in the numbers of registered Orthodox priests (those
officially permitted to perform priestly duties) from over
30 000 to 6180. 48 Obviously this could not be explained by
attrition and a reduced number of new ordinations alone;
while the Soviet press boasted at the time that over 200
Orthodox priests resigned during the 1960s. 49
MONASTERIES AND PILGRIMAGES
Another form of persecution was the reinforcement in 1961 of

the 1929law banning all group pilgrimages, although accord-
ing to Talantov, in Kirov, at least, such a ban had been issued by

the local government as early as 1960. It expressly forbade the
believers to erect monuments to persons whom the believers
revered as saints or to care for them or to visit their graves.
Simultaneously the state began to destroy these grave-sites and
monuments. The author describes sites considered holy not
only locally but in Russia generally, situated in the Kirov
Province, some of which have been the objects of national
pilgrimages made up of scores of thousands on certain days of
the year from as far back as the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. In 1960 a beautiful eighteenth-century Trans-
figuration Chapel built on one of those sites with a traditional
pool of water formed by a natural spring considered to have
had healing powers, was closed. A year later it was blown up. 5°
Pilgrimages to this site, nevertheless, continue to the present
day, although the authorities have filled the pool and blocked
off the spring. 51
Apparently out of fear, the local bishop, the late Ioann of
Kirov, supported the Soviet authorities. On 20 May 1964, he
forbade pilgrimages in his diocese. When a group of Kirov
Christians in 1966 complained to the Moscow Patriarchate that
Bishop Ioann was acting against the interests of the Church
and should be removed, they were told he could not be
removed because the CRA categorically refused to allow his
retirement, thus admitting that the Church was being ruled by
CRA, not by the Patriarch and his Synod, who only reigned. 52
The greatest centres of national pilgrimages have always
been the monasteries and convents. And it was against them
that the government turned most vehemently in the early
1960s, reducing the number of functioning monasteries and
conventsfrom69in 1959to 17by 1965(therewereover 1000of
them in 1914). This was a protracted and apparently well-
planned campaign. First, all financial exemptions and tax
privileges granted to the monastics in 1945 and 1946 were
revoked by three different decrees of 1958. Up to 1958,
monastic institutions were exempt from paying property and
land taxes. The newly introduced land tax was to be 4000 old
roubles (400 r. after the 1961 devaluation) from one hectare.
The other exemptions which the monastics now lost had been
the bachelor and childless-couple taxes. Moreover, a decree of
16 October 1958 plainly intended to devise ways and means of
reducing the land lots controlled by the monastic institutions

and the number of functioning monasteries. 53
We are fortunate in having detailed information on what
measures have in fact been used to force a monastery to close, in
the example of the Pochaev Lavra, one of the most revered
monasteries in Russia, which despite nearly twenty-five years
of harassment and indirect persecutions, the authorities have
as yet failed to close. One ofthe reasons for its survival has been
the publicity the case has received owing to the number of its
monks and lay supporters who have written dozens of detailed
reports on these persecutions, sending them far and wide. The
other important factor is the religious devotion and support
for the monastery by the vast majority of the local population.
These citizens often confronted the militia even physically,
defending the monks, and wrote many appeals on their behalf
to the Patriarch, to the Soviet Government, the UN and other
places, giving the monks publicity through samizdat channels. 54
The troubles began in 1959, when the local soviet tried to
deprive the monastery of its livelihood by confiscating its ten
hectares of agricultural fields, its fruit orchard, including the
adjacent 'hothouse, drying room, gardener's cottage, storage
and other anciliary premises. Then they took away an apiary
containing over 100 beehives'; 55 but the community continued
to thrive thanks to the generosity of the pilgrims and local
believers. 56 In 1961 the soviet confiscated the Bishop's Palace
which had been used as a hostel for pilgrims. A year earlier it
forbade any restoration work to be carried out on the premises,
as well as any overnight visits of pilgrims anywhere on the
monastic premises. To enforce this order the militia began to
raid the monastery at night, throwing out pilgrims sleeping
either in the yard or in the main cathedral which the monks now
kept open for devotions twenty-four hours a day to allow the
pilgrims to repose there during the night. At the same time,
militia began raiding private houses in the vicinity, hunting for
pilgrims. The reports of numerous laymen as well as of the
Spiritual Council of the Lavra confirm that in these raids many
pilgrims were not only insulted verbally but also beaten so
severely as to result in several fatalities. The Spiritual Council
report also enumerates four monasteries which were closed by
the soviets in 1959, their monks having found protection at the
Pochaev Lavra, residing in the Bishop's Palace until its
confiscation the following year and expulsion of these monks

by the militia. 57
A year later, in 1962, the secular authorities began their
attack on the resident monks directly, reducing their number
by the end of the year from 146 to 36. 58 Besides the report of the
Spiritual Council summing up the harassment and persecu-
tions over a seven-year period ( 1959-66), there are a number
of earlier personal letters written by the persecuted monks,
addressed either to the Spiritual Council, the Patriarch, or to
soviet authorities. They report the deprivations of residence
permits and subsequent brutal militia expulsions of monks,
some of whom had resided there since before the war, when the
territory of the monastery belonged to the Polish state. Here
are some excerpts from the letter of one of such victims, Fr.
Ilarii:
I have been living in the Lavra since 1942. In March 1962 I
received a summons to the local militia station ... and was
told that it would soon be closed and I must return to the
place of my birth.
I refused.
Henceforth I was being summoned daily, sometimes twice
daily ... [along with] ten or fifteen other monks each time ...
Sometimes they would act kindly, saying ... [that] the
government has decided to discontinue all monasteries, 'We
don't want to throw you out in the street, and have to decide
whom to assign to an old folks home, whom to his relatives,
and who could find secular jobs for themselves.' I refused
their kindness. Then ... they began to attack and threaten
me:' ... in the 1930s we used to shoot those of your kind
without much ado; now we are talking to you, but if you will
not do as you're told, we'll apply other means'.
After that they began to make raids on the Lavra, ... check
the passports, take them away in many cases and then
deprive these monks of residence rights.
Once I was celebrating an akathist to the Virgin Mary in the
church; enters the dean, Fr. Vladislav, and orders: 'Unvest
yourself immediately, the militia wants you at 11.'
He describes how the militia called in senior monastic council
members, trying to force them to expel him from the
monastery. The Council refused. But the militia continued to
torment him by daily summonses accompanied by threats,

shouts and insults, ruining his health. Then on 1 September the
militia came by truck to the monastery, grabbed him in the
kitchen where he was working and took him to his cell where he
found fifteen militiamen waiting. They took his passport and
ordered him to leave the monastery in five minutes. He
refused. The militia grabbed his belongings and pulled him up
by force to the truck. Along with him another monk, Fr. Alipii,
was thrown onto the truck. Both were given back their
passports with stamps cancelling their residence permits in the
area. Driven for 300 km in the open truck in the rain, Fr. Ilarii
was thrown out in the middle of the street in his native village. 59
Late in 1964, roughly at the time of Khrushchev's fall from
power, the persecutions of the Pochaev monks temporarily
stopped. According to an insider's report, the respite followed
several events that could be interpreted mystically:
the daughter of one of the chief persecutors of the pilgrims
burned to death in strange circumstances. Her charred
bones were brought for burial to the Pochaev Monastery, but
her father moved from Pochaev ...
He was replaced by a military officer who, worse than his
predecessor, began to persecute not only the pilgrims but the
monks as well. Then he suddenly committed suicide, and
peace was restored in the Lavra. 60
But this peace proved to be short-lived. By 1966 Fr. Ilarii was
being persecuted again, for he had secretly returned to the
Lavra and had been given back his cell by the Father-
Superior.61 This indicates that the monastery authorities did
not agree with the actions of the soviet. The most conclusive
evidence of this is the previously cited report-complaint of the
monastic Spiritual Council of 1966, addressed to Podgornyi,
then the chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium.
The report gives some details about the expulsion of fifty-
nine monks (adding in most cases 'and others'), making a
mockery of the statement in a state-published brochure, The
Pochaev Museum of Atheism, that sixty-nine monks had left the
monastery voluntarily. 62 In addition to the methods described
in Fr. Ilarii's letter, the following means of expulsion are also
listed in the document:
( 1) 'A commission set up under the Pochaev District Military
Board ... found certain monks [three are listed, 'and others']
mentally ill, although they were completely healthy.' They
were forcefully incarcerated in a mental hospital and 'treated'
in such a way that a perfectly healthy 35-year-old monk
Golovanov died within a few months at the hospital.
(2) Another commission diagnosed six healthy monks as
carriers of 'infectious diseases' and they were sent off by force
to another hospital.
(3) On 13 March 1962 another medical commission was set
up, but now monks simply refused to appear before it,
wherefore sixteen refusers were simply expelled from the
monastery when the militia cancelled their resisdence permits.
(4) Another thirteen young monks were conscripted into the
army, but sent to fell trees in the north instead. Ofthese, three
were in very poor health, one being almost totally blind, yet 'the
doctors passed them "fit" for military service'. In fact, they were
discharged at the nearest military assembly point, and mean-
while their Pochaev residence permits were cancelled.
(5) A novice night-watchman came to the rescue of women
pilgrims who were being brutally beaten by the militia one
night in the monastery yard. The militia in response beat him
savagely, while the KGB, after the incident, confiscated his
passport and expelled him from the monastery.
(6) On 20 November 1964, four monks were attacked in their
cells, beaten up by the police and sentenced to various terms in
prison on false charges. One of the arrested monks, being too
old for prison, was placed in a mental institution. Subjected to
injections, his body swelled up and he became an invalid for the
rest of his life. His relatives were allowed to take him from the
hospital only after he signed a promise not to return to
Pochaev.
The tortures continued after Khrushchev's fall at least until
1966, and were renewed some fifteen years later; this will be
discussed in the next chapter. In the course of 1965, 'many
monks died prematurely . . . Yevgenii died after torture
outside the monastery, as did Andrei and a number of others.
Some who survived lost their good health.' Some arrests and
sentences still continued in 1966: one monk was sentenced to
two years' hard labour after he had reported the militia's brutal
beatings of pilgrims in July 1965 for spending the night at a
nearby cemetery.
Also at that time the dispersed monks were returned to the

monastery, including those having completed their army and
prison sentences. One of them, a perfectly healthy 25-year-old
novice, Grigori Unka, did not return, however: he 'died
suddenly' in prison. When his parents opened the coffin they
saw a body 'black and blue from bruises, the clothes were torn
and pierced right through the side. He ... had been tortured to
death.'
Among the regular monastic pilgrims there was a 33-year-
old woman, Marfa Gzhevskaia, who in her youth had sworn an
oath of virginity, and lived in a private home in Pochaev,
worshipping daily at the monastic churches. On 12 June 1964,
the militia raided the house where Marfa lived, found her in the
attic and threw her from there out into the yard; thence they
'dragged her ... into the garden. There they defiled her virgin
body, pulled her out on to the road half-dead and left her
there.' The following day she was found there by neighbours
who took her to a hospital, where she died:
On police instructions, however, the doctors diagnosed that
Marfa died from acute lung trouble ... covering up the
crime ... In Pochaev they similarly killed Lydia Tokmakova
... The police lay in wait at the public lavatories and picked
up those who needed to go out at night, dragging them to
[their] headquarters ... girls were raped, money con-
fiscated, and people beaten until they lost consciousness .. .
they robbed and raped Maria [Morozova], an aged nun .. .
The same happened to Maria Gerasimchuk and Yustina
Korolenko.
Several times petitioners on behalf of the monastery, both
monastics and laity, went to Moscow to seek justice. The
Patriarch expressed his condolences but was powerless to do
much more than that; although he did intercede with CROCA
on Pochaev's behalf 'saying that the monks were within their
rights to return there'. At the CROCA headquarters one of its
deputy heads, Plekhanov, shouted at the monks, accusing
them of slandering the Soviet Government. At the Supreme
Procuracy, a senior official Taran cynically advised them to
cease their complaints, for the USSR was moving toward
communism, 'when there would be no monasteries, and so
there were no grounds for their complaints'. In reprisal for
their complaints all three monks were, on their return from

Moscow, expelled from the Pochaev Monastery by the local
soviet.
Another delegation of several monks apparently reached
the public official who was their interlocutor:
speaking on behalf of the Party Central Committee, [he said]
that the latter approved of all methods of combating religion
... he added: 'In my opinion all believers are psychologically
abnormal people and it is entirely natural for them to be sent
into mental hospitals ... it is our aim to liquidate religion as
quickly as possible; for the time being we partially tolerate it
for political reasons, but when a favourable political oppor-
tunity arises we shall not only close down your monastery but
all churches and monasteries.'63
As we know (see chapter 5 ), at that very time the Soviet press
was carrying on a massive contempt-and-hate propaganda
against monaticism, full of libel against the contemporary
monks as well as the history of the institution.
PARENTS AND CHILDREN
When the authorities saw that no pressure to keep children

away from church services could succeed, because of the
resistance of parents, and because the Patriarch apparently
refused to co-operate with the Soviet authorities on this matter,
instructing parents and priests 'to administer communion to
children and let them attend church service', 64 they tried other
methods. Parents of children who openly demonstrated their
faith at school, or who refused for religious reasons to join the
pioneers (communist scouts) or to wear the pioneer kerchiefs,
began to be prosecuted by the courts or the administration.
After these prosecutions, many parents, both Orthodox and
sectarian, were deprived of parental rights and their children
were forcibly sent to closed boarding schools. One of the first
such cases reported in the Soviet press took place in 1962, when
a forester in the Pskov Province, by the name ofSokhraniaev,
was tried for allegedly forcing his two children to observe
fasting days, to attend church regularly and to act as readers of
Scriptures there. He and his equally religious wife were
deprived of parental rights and the children sent off to a

boarding school. In the following year, a group of leaders and
active members of the Pentecostal Sect were tried in the
Kharkov Province and similarly deprived of parental rights. 65
But one of the most moving accounts is that of Feodosia
Varavva, at first in Minsk and later in L'vov. A doctor's aide by
profession, she had volunteered for active military service on
30 June 1941, and worked in the front-line hospitals to the last
days of the war. Nevertheless, after the war, because of her
religious faith she was forced to work as an orderly and junior
nurse in the most infectious sections of hospitals. Nor was the
family ever given decent living quarters; they lived with two
children in a single room, a sort of corridor 19 m long by less
than 1 min width, without any conveniences, plus a tiny kitchen
without a window. Her husband, who had also served in the
army for twenty-eight years, retired as an invalid. In the course
of her petitions for a more decent apartment, a communist
neighbour reported that she was a religious believer, had icons
in the room and took her children to church. Afterthatthe local
communist office advised her husband, a CP member, to
divorce her and take the children with him; then he would be
given a flat. The husband refused. Then the activists began to
advise Mrs Varavva to give up her faith, whereafter she would
be granted both a good job and a nice flat. She refused, and all
doors were shut to her. Her problems began in 1959 when her
six-year-old son asked to be allowed to serve as a bishop's
acolyte. One day the school headmaster saw her children going
to church. He began to pester her to let her son join the
pioneers. She refused, on the grounds that this was an
antireligious organization; if he joined the pioneers he would
be lying. The headmaster threatened her with a court trial, but
she finally found an apartment in L'vov and moved there. The
teachers, in the meanwhile, both in Minsk and in L'vov, were
instigating the children against their mother.
When the Soviets began to expel children from church
services and to forbid the priests to administer the Sacraments
to them in 1961, Varavva went as far as the chief CROCA
plenipotentiary for the Belorussian Republic. Arguing that she
had the constitutional right to educate her children as
Christians, she forced him to give oral instructions over the
phone to the Minsk cathedral clergy to administer the
Sacraments to her children in the sanctuary, so that others

would not see. But Varavvacontinued to fight on principle, for
other children were still denied the Sacraments. Eventually,
the Soviet press began to write about the Varavva case,
reporting on parent-teacher meetings carrying resolutions to
deprive Varavva of her parental rights. This was in 1964. After
Khrushchev's fall the fury subsided, but at least one article on
the case was again published in 1965. It depicted the mother as
an intolerant, aggressive woman, attacking the school and the
teachers, and the latter as victims of her persecutions. The son
is presented as an atheist forced by the mother to go to church
against his will. 66
But there are many samizdat documents of the time,
especially on the Pentecostals and the opposition Baptists -
both unofficial sects- reporting forced separation of children
from their parents, both under Khrushchev and since his fall. 67
In the supercharged atmosphere of hate propaganda
against the banned sects, the Pentecostals were accused of
causing their members serious mental and physical stress by
their practice of severe fasting and by inducing a state of ecstasy
and trance during their religious services. Clergymen of the
sect have periodically been tried and sentenced to hard labour.
A case in point was trial of a Pentecostal presbyter, Kondrakov,
in the Donets Basin mining area. He was accused of having
caused reactive psychosis in his parishioners. 'Fulfilling the will
of the people, the court sentenced Kondrakov to eight years of
deprivation of freedom. '68 Indiscriminate persecution of the
Pentecostals and the banned faction of the Baptists continues
to the present day, as the following chapter will show.
7 Persecutions after
Khrushchev
Although the post-Khrushchev period saw some easing off in
government oppression of religion as far as the average
uneducated elderly believer is concerned, a selective persecu-
tion of certain religious targets not only continued to persist or
to be heard of periodically, but has even been on the rise,
particularly since the second half of the 1970s. The persecu-
tions took on a more sophisticated and sinister character, well
reflecting the style and methods of the man in charge of terror
in the USSR in the 1970s: the late Yurii Andropov, the head of
the Soviet state in 1982-3. Although attempts had already
been made in Khrushchev's time to tie the struggle against
religion to a return from Stalin's arbitrary rule to socialist
legality,' the crudeness and brutality of the persecutions
reflected the crude and primitive impulsiveness of
Khrushchev's personality more than anything else. We have
seen how the persecutors resorted to oral threats and orders
and were guided in their actions by secret instructions.
As mentioned in Volume 1 of this study, soon after
Khrushchev's fall Soviet religiologists concluded that the
persecutions had done more harm than good to the cause of
atheism, first by embittering the believers against the Soviet
state, and second, by pushing religious groups underground in
the areas where churches had been closed. Obviously an
underground church, not open to easy supervision and
control, was more dangerous than an overt one. Also, their
oppression ofthe church had only served to draw the sympathy
of the surrounding non-religious public towards the believers
and increase interest in their faith. 2 But this self-criticism did
not result in any radical reversal of state policies. There was no
large-scale reopening of the closed and destroyed churches;
none of the closed seminaries or monasteries was reopened.
However modest the church reopenings in the very first
years after Khrushchev's fall, the process was soon reversed
again, with new individual closures of churches, mostly in the
distant provinces, and consistent rejections of believers' pleas
145
to reopen old churches or to open new ones. 3 Only in the very

late 1970s and the 1980s did the pendulum again, it seems,
begin to shift positively to the churches. The Orthodox Church
built or reopened at least forty churches in the six years
between 1977 and 1983, while the official Baptists were
allowed to register 170 new communities between 1974 and
1978. 4
The reader now may ask: why then have a chapter on church
persecution in these years? The following will answer this
question.
THE CLOSING OF CHURCHES
The Orthodox
We have already mentioned the closing of the Zhitomir church

of the Epiphany, despite the vehement appeals and protests
from the believers, addressed to CRA, the UN, and to Soviet
newspapers. This happened in 1975. In 1966, on the night of
15 November, a church of the Holy Trinity was blown up in
Leningrad. When the unsuspecting believers came to their
church the following morning, they found a pile of rubble
instead. 5 One of the most malicious closures occurred in 1968
in the rural town ofKolyvan' in the vicinity of Novosibirsk. The
city of Novosibirsk was built at the end of the nineteenth
century, so early-nineteenth-century buildings constitute a
historical antiquity in that region. The beautiful large church
of Alexander Nevsky in Kolyvan' is the oldest architectural
monument in the whole province; and indeed the local CRA
plenipotentiary, Nikolaev, boasted since 1962 that he would
turn the church into a museum. First, the local fire-fighters'
service requested that a special water reservoir should be built
next to the church to protect it from fire. The church council
duly complied, but as soon as the reservior was dug, the local
militia declared the work illegal and took all building materials
away from the church council. However, allegedly because of
breaking the fire-fighters' regulations (absence of the reser-
voir), the church doors were sealed and entry banned to
believers. Six years later Nikolaev organized a barbarous attack
on the church with the help of the wreckers' brigade. The icon
Persecutions after Khrushchev 147
screen was smashed to bits, all the interior fixtures including

the floors were stolen, and the domes were dismantled. Beams
and other wooden parts of the structure were sold to the
population for a pittance. In the course of the 'reconstruction' a
falling beam killed an eight-year-old girl.
The faithful continued church services, now without a
priest, in the watchman's house in the church yard. At first, the
authorities harassed the believers, raiding the house, keeping
the organizers under arrest for several hours at a time.
Eventually Nikolaev gave in, granting the faithful a twenty-
square-metre basement in an old wooden house, the upper
floor of which is occupied by non-believers. The place is a fire
and health hazard, especially since it is always overcrowded,
with close to two hundred communicants each feast-day.
There are no hydrants in the vicinity, yet no commission is
concerned about this. Meanwhile, the desecrated and dis-
figured church of St Alexander Nevsky stands completely
unused, unattended and neglected. 6
In the town of Rechitsa in Belorussia a church was closed in
1979 in a sadistically mocking fashion. The house of prayer was
too small for the numbers. The faithful had asked for and were
granted permission to reconstruct and enlarge the building. As
soon as all the work (at the faithfuls' expense) was completed,
the house was declared a fire hazard and closed. The building is
guarded day and night by militia to prevent its occupation by
the faithful who gather for communal prayers by the church's
gate. 7
An eighteenth-century church in the village ofMshany in the
L'vov diocese was closed in March 1978 and turned into a grain
storage. A year later, believers gathered around the church
trying physically to prevent the laying into the church of a new
supply of grain. The militia was called in to disperse the crowd.
One woman was sent to jail for fifteen days for 'hooliganism'.
None of the complaints and appeals signed by over 200 people
and addressed to the Patriarch as well as to the civilian
authorities have brought any results."
These probably represent only a small proportion of the
actual church closures in the last decade and a half. We have
more reports on believers' attempts, mostly unsuccessful, to
reopen churches closed under Khrushchev or before.
There have been at least three such unsuccessful attempts in
the Volhynia Diocese, which had lost over 180 churches under
Khrushchev. One was a church in the village of Znosychy near
Rovno. Not without the local government efforts the church
had been deprived of a priest for several years, during which
the faithful took loving care of it and gathered there regularly
for prayers. From 1977 the authorities began their attempts to
wreck the church. When the population had prevented this,
the authorities laid grain into the church. The following day
the village went on strike: the adults did not show up for field
work, the children stayed out of school. The authorities were
forcedtoremovethegrain. Finally,on25Aprill979, the whole
population of Znosychy was assigned work in an adjacent
village, while their children were kept locked up at school.
During this time the church was wrecked and the site
bulldozed. The operation was carried out under the personal
command of the chief district attorney. The faithful of this and
of neighbouring villages began to gather at the site of the
former church for prayers: 'Sometimes up to twelve pilgrims
spent the night in each Znosychy house.' The authorities put up
patrols and barriers on all roads leading to the village,
preventing anybody from visiting it. The faithful began to
decorate pine trees around the church and pray under them.
The village authorities cut down all the trees. But the villagers
continue to gather regularly at the site of the former church for
communal prayers. 9
In at least two other Rovno Province villages the population
has been trying to reopen their churches closed in the early
1960s. In one case, in 1973, when the population was busy with
the harvest in the fields, the authorities dismantled the domes
and stored grain in the church. When the population protested
furiously the grain was eventually removed, but the church
remained closed. In 1978, finally, after years of complaints a
commission arrived in the village, but the village soviet
chairman pointed out only two Orthodox Christians to the
commission, claiming that believers were a tiny minority in the
village population. Although the crowd gathered outside to
protest, the commission members got into their car, paying no
attention to the protesters, and left. In the other case, the
church had actually been badly ruined in the early 1960s, but
from 1973 the faithful were appealing to all quarters for
permission to rebuild it at their own expense. All their efforts
were in vain. The officials told them to travel to a neighbouring

town for services, although the church in question had served
four villages with at least 100 practising Orthodox Christians in
each. Finally, in the autumn of 1978 a CRA representative
came and said they would soon have their church back. In the
meantime the village soviet told the villagers to append their
signatures to a pledge not to let their pigs roam the village
streets. After the villagers had signed the paper without
reading it, it turned out that they had signed a statement that no
one needed a church in the village. After that the district
authorities refused to accept any more pleas from the Christ-
ians of the village. 10 Thus tricks, lies, and abuse of peasants'
credulity from the typical arsenal of the state's struggle against
religion.
By the time of this writing there are several dozen reports of
unsuccessful attempts literally across the whole Soviet Union to
open or reopen churches. In the city of Chernigov with a
population of200 000 where, after the closure of the cathedral
in 1973, only a small wooden church remained, the faithful
have been pleading for a second church ever since 1963. They
still have not got it. 11 In the city of Gorky the population has now
surpassed 1 500 000, yet it has only three small Orthodox
churches, where before the revolution there had been over
forty Orthodox churches for a population of some 110 000.
The pleas to reopen some of the closed and unused churches in
the city for worship began in 1967 with a petition to the
provincial CRA plenipotentiary, A. P. Volkov, signed by over
1500 believers. Receiving no satisfaction, the petitioners
forwarded similar appeals to the Supreme Soviet, the CPSU
Central Committee, Pravda and the Moscow Patriarchate in the
following year, as well as a petition, signed by 36 industrial
workers, to Eugene Blake, the then WCC General Secretary.
The latter also described the subsequent harassment at work
and professional demotions to which the petitions' signers
were subjected once they had categorically refused to recant
and remove their signatures. Eventually the number of
signatories rose to 2000. The CRA officials told them to break
up into groups of twenty according to city districts. This they
soon did, forming at first five and later six such 'twenties', each
in a different city district, petitioning for the reopening of a
church in each. At the time of this writing they have not
succeeded in gaining even one of the six churches asked for. 12

Indeed, the 1975 revisions and amendments of the 1929 Laws
on Religious Associations, on the one hand grant supreme
auhtority in the matter of closing and opening a church to the
CRA, but on the other hand do not even obligate it to any
definite time-limits in which to respond to appeals and
petitions of the kind. In contrast, the 1929 regulations
stipulated the time limits and also left the responsibility for the
opening and closing of churches with the local soviets. The
believers, therefore, could then appeal to higher authorities,
whereas now there is no one to appeal to beyond the CRA,
which is both the first and last court of appeal.
The struggle to open a church in the town of N aro Fominsk
in the Moscow Province began in 1968 with an address to the
city soviet signed by twenty-four residents, asking to be
registered as the town's religious association of 'twenty'. Two
months later, in December, the city soviet received a letter of
support of the 'twenty', signed by 693 persons. The last church
in the town was shut in the early 1930s and the nearest open
church was twenty kilometres away. As the responsible
secretary of the city soviet refused to accept the petition, the
signatories addressed an appeal to the city attorney. When this
failed to draw any response an appeal was addressed to the
Moscow provincial attorney on 3 February 1969. The attorney
passed all the paperwork over to the CRA with a recommen-
dation to look into the matter. When the CRA replied to the
believers in the negative, the believers addressed a collective
letter to the local newspaper criticizing the Narofominsk city
soviet executive committee, pointing out that its incompetence
should be kept in mind during the forthcoming city elections.
The same day the petitioners received a written reply from the
executive committee that, as they had been informed earlier,
their plea could not be satisfied. And so it dragged on from one
office to another. Meanwhile the number of signatories rose by
1970 to 1443. In February 1971 an article appeared in the local
newspaper which said that the believers' petition could not be
satisfied because the former church building was about to be
transformed into a museum, and that in fact there were not that
many practising Christians in the city. The article was defama-
tory and self-contradictory. It said: 'this is a dirty business
initiated by evil people' aiming at 'heating up religious
fanaticism and to gain a cushy job in the new church'. What sort
of religious fanaticism was this, and how could anyone hope for
a cushy job if the number of religious believers in the area was as
insignificant as the paper claimed? Moreover, the plaintiff on
behalf of the signatories was Dr Boris Zuckerman (now in
Israel), a professor of nuclear physics, a man of considerable
means by Soviet standards, whose summer house,just like that
of the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, was situated in the vicinity
of the town. On 26 April 1971, there was a session of the local
court devoted to the subject. The signatories demanded the
following: first that they either be granted one of the existing
closed town churches, or be permitted to build a new one or to
rent a house- since the closest church was twenty kilometres
away, the suggestion that the believers ought to be satisfied with
that one was unreasonable; second, that the newspaper print a
denial of its original claim that the signatures were fraudulent.
The court rejected both pleas. An appeal hearing of 8 May
1971 at a higher court brought no satisfaction either. The court
stated that 240 people whose names appeared among the
signatories did not reside at the indicated addresses. The court,
however, refused to cite the names of such people and said
nothing about the remaining 1200 signatories. 13
Many more cases of such frustrated appeals to open
churches could be cited, 14 and probably many, many more are
not even known to us. But the above is a typical example of how
much bureaucracy (and expense) is involved in each appli-
cation for a church and how slim are the believers' chances of
success. Of course, the Orthodox are not the only ones whose
pleas are rejected by the authorities.
The Old Believers
The Old Believers, who had split from the state Church in the
seventeenth century, and who in some respects have shown
more independence than the post-1927 Orthodox Church,
have at least as much difficulty in preserving their functioning
churches. We have already cited the case of the Trans-Baikal
Province in Eastern Siberia where, despite the presence of
several Old Believer villages, not a single officially open Old
Believer temple remains. A 1969 Old Believer samizdat docu-
ment enumerates a number of difficulties encountered by the
Church and her members, including the probable KGB

murder of a young healthy priest after his refusal to work for
the KGB. He had been serving a community of Old Believer
repatriates from Turkey. It also tells of petitions submitted to
the state authorities to have Old Believer churches open in such
cities and towns as Alma-Ata, Barnaul, Vitebsk, Leningrad,
Dzhambul, Frunze, Beltsy and others. 15 Had they been
successful, the same authors would probably have informed us
in the same way as they managed to give publicity to the above
document.
The Roman Catholics
The Roman Catholic Church in the USSR is concentrated in

Lithuania and southern Latvia, with a sizeable sprinkling of
Roman Catholic communities in Moldavia, in the western
regions of Belorussia and the Ukraine; some Armenian
Catholic minorities are found in the Caucasus. The Catholics of
the western regions and Moldavia came finally under Soviet
control only at the end of the Second World War. For them the
Khrushchev onslaught was the first massive attack on the
Church as an institution- hence, proportionally, the particu-
larly heavy toll suffered by that Church (comparable with the
toll of the Orthodox churches in the same areas). One
illustration has already been mentioned: the decrease of
Roman Catholic churches in Latvia from 500 to 75. In
Lithuania the.decline was expressed in the forced reduction of
the number of seminaries from three to one, and of the clergy
from 1500 to 735 (or 708 according to another source) serving
628 churches. Judging by these figures, the number of
churches in pre-war Lithuania must have been at least double
the current figure.
Attempts are being periodically undertaken systematically
to persecute the Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church. Priests
are being harassed and imprisoned for preparing for First
Communion, that is by giving them basic catechetical know-
ledge. This is interpreted by the state as organized religious
instruction to minors, banned since 1918. But the task of the
regime is more difficult in Lithuania. Because there is almost as
strong a national identification of the Lithuanians with the
Roman Catholic Church as that of the Poles, the persecutions
are more difficult to pursue and they receive much wider

publicity and cause much more massive protests than in Russia.
For instance, 1344 Lithuanians signed a protest letter to the
Soviet Government over the sentencing of Prosperas B ubnis, a
priest, to one year's labour in 1971 for giving religious
instruction to children. And further, in January 1972, 17 054
Lithuanian Catholics signed a memorandum to Brezhnev,
protesting against religious persecutions, the exile of two
Lithuanian bishops, Steponavichus and Sladkiavichus, the
imprisonment of the priests Bubnis and Zdebskis, the sacking
of a teacher for her religious views, and the wrecking of
Catholic churches in the country, among other things. 16
A report of t~e Roman Catholics of Lithuania simply says:
'very many churches were closed and destroyed, the building
of new churches is not permitted; the church ofSt Kazimir has
been turned into a museum of atheism, the Vilnius Cathedral,
into an art gallery, the church of Resurrection in Kaunas, into a
radio-making factory, the Jesuit Cathedral of Kaunas, into a
sports hall'. 17 One of the worst episodes is that of the Klaipeda
Cathedral. The city had been badly damaged by the war. After
many years of petitioning the believers were allowed to build a
cathedral. Collections were made across the whole country,
and in 1961 a spacious cathedral was erected in the city. But
then the authorities began to invent bureaucratic excuses to
prevent its religious use, eventually closing and confiscating it
from the believers. Needless to say, the money and labour of
the faithful were wasted and not rewarded in any way. The
battle and petitions of the believers to have the church
reopened have continued without result into the 1980s,
although a total of 148 149 signatures were collected making
up a book of 1589 pages forwarded to Brezhnev. 18 This case is
comparable to the Kirov Province, where at least two of the
churches closed and destroyed in the early 1960s had been built
by the faithful themselves with their money and labour after
the war , 1q and this could not be shown in any way to have been
the work of the 'exploiters', of the 'tsarist reactionaries' to keep
down 'the dark masses'. But as with the Orthodox, the regime
in Lithuania has not shown any signs of reversing Khrush-
chev's acts against religion. For instance, in the village of
Zhaleyi a church was closed in 1963. But then, apparently to try
to put to an end the believers' struggle for its reopening, in 1977
the church was converted into a flour mill. But the local miller
refused to work in the church. Consequently, the mill is in
operation only four hours a week. Petitions signed by 149
Zhaleyi residents and 114 residents of a neighbouring village to
open the church have been so far in vain. 20 The situation is
much worse in those areas where the Roman Catholics
constitute a small minority. Thus most Roman Catholic
churches in western Belorussia were closed in the 1960s (a little
over 10 per cent of Belorussia's population is technically
Roman Catholic). In Moldavia, where the Roman Catholics
constitute a mere 15 000 in a population of 3 000 000, all their
churches were closed except for a small cemetery chapel in
Kishinev, the capital. Being a multi-national group, Russian is
their only lingua franca; yet their only priest, Fr. Zaval'niuk, was
forbidden around 1977 to use Russian in his sermons or
services. He was allowed to use only German or Polish,
technically the languages of most of the Catholics, depriving
the Catholics of a sense of communal unity and the church of
potential converts. Next, the priest was forbidden to visit the
provincial communities. In the biggest of them, Rashkovo, the
population decided to enlarge their temple, as it was insuf-
ficient to house all the pilgrims who came on the rare occasions
of pastoral visits. But on 25 December 1977, the church was
wrecked by a detachment of militia and a wrecking brigade
brought in from outside. On the eve of this, the whole
population was ordered to hand in their hunting rifles. Early
on 25 December, the group of religious activists who had
guarded their church from destruction day and night, were
arrested in their beds, thrown into a car and driven away for the
duration of the day, while all schoolchildren were kept at school
under lock and key. Meanwhile the wrecking was carried out. 21
These were the familiar methods also used in the Rovno
Province village of Zhosychy described earlier.
The 'Unregistered' Ones
This category includes both those religious groups whom the

Soviet Government refuses to legalize or register such as the
breakaway independent or Initiativist Baptists, the Pente-
costals and those who refuse to be registered, that is to be
controlled by an atheistic state, such as the Jehovah Witnesses
and the authentic Russian Jehovists. It also includes other

groups, such as the Buddhists, who for some reason are
allowed to exist as ethnic religions of such Soviet nationalities as
the Buriats or the Kalmuks, but forbidden to spread to other
nationalities. Although in a 1983 trial of a group of Jehovah
Witnesses it was stated that they were free to register and
become a legal Soviet religious community, in view of the
constant Soviet propaganda associating the group with its
'subversive' Brooklyn, USA headquarters it is doubtful the
regime would ever agree to register the group. It is these
'unregistered' groups that are subjected to particularly sys-
tematic persecutions. The amount of space in the Soviet press
dedicated to attacking the Jehovah Witnesses and the J ehovists
in the course of 1983-5 indicates the vitality and probable
growth of the movement. At least fifteen of their activists had
been brought to trial in the course of 1984, of whom at least
seven received prison sentences. The Soviet press, which for a
long time had criticized the masses of religious chain letters
circulating in the USSR, at last in 1985 named their source: the
Jehovists, a sect founded by a Russian artillery Captain, N. S.
Il'insky, some 150 years ago. It is very similar to the Jehovah
Witnesses but even more radical in condemning all state power
as the kingdom of Satan. Apparently such radical-
eschatological sects find a fertile soil in the intolerant world of
Marxism as a radical expression of total disillusionment with
this artificially imposed secular faith. 22
The Buddhists were subjected to a new wave of attack once
some Russian and other Soviet-European intellectuals began
to be converted to it. In 1972 one of the USSR's leading
Buddhist and Tibetan scholars, Bidia Dandaron, was arrested,
tried and sentenced to five years' hard labour. His crime was
that he was a secret Buddhist monk, lama and teacher, and that
under his influence a number of Soviet scholars of Buddhism
and Tibet converted to Buddhism and became his disciples.
Formally, other than purely religious excuses had to be found.
And the local Buriat press began a campaign, even before the
actual trial was to start, accusing Dandaron of organizing
drunken orgies under the guise of religious meetings, ofbribe-
taking, cultivating adoration of himself and 'corrupting' the
youth. Along with him twelve of his nearest academic associates
and religious followers (Russians, Lithuanians, Estonians and
others) were arrested. At the trial it was proved that Dandaron

had not touched alcohol for over three years, that none of the
converts to Buddhism was brought to the religion through
him, that there were no orgies, and that the teaching which the
press misspelled as 'Dandarism' in fact was 'Tantrism', a
Tibetan religious philosophy (the press and originally the
court accused Dandaron of forming his own subversive
teaching named 'Dandarism'). During the trial the judge made
such statements as: 'If it were in my power I would send all
religious believers to Kolyma.' When the defence pointed out
that Dandaron could not be tried as a recidivist, because after
spending nearly twenty years in prisons and camps under
Stalin (from age 24 to 43) he was fully rehabilitated, the judge
replied: 'Under Khrushchev they used to rehabilitate both the
innocent and the guilty ones.' Most of the accusations had to be
annulled as unsubstantiated. Nevertheless, Dandaron was
sentenced to five years' hard labour. Four of his disciples, active
research scholars and teachers, were sent off to forensic
psychiatric institutions; the remaining eight 'simply' lost their
jobs. 23 In 1981 or early 1982 the Soviet press reported the
disbanding of Krishna groups in Krasonoiarsk (Siberia) and
Moscow and the sentencing of their chief, a Yoga teacher E.
Tretiakov, to a prison term for'parasitism'. 'Involvement in the
Krishna movement', pontificated a Soviet newspaper, 'in-
variably leads to law-breaking, because the propagandizing of
social passivity leads to parasitism.' 24 The more probable
reason, however, for such attempts to destroy the oriental cult
in the bud is that for most Soviet intellectuals who convert to
Christianity the Yoga classes, Buddhism and Hinduism have
been first stepping-stones from materialism to spirituality. 2"
The Pentecostals, the breakaway Baptists (ECB or CC ECB ),
and the breakaway, so-called 'True and Free', Seventh-Day
Adventists (AUCTFSDA), are in many cases denied legitimiz-
ation by the authorities, but often the groups themselves refuse
to register their communities, which renders them illegal in
terms of the Soviet law, and thus facilitates their persecution.
They wish to retain their spiritual freedom, arguing that the
prerogatives of the CRA are so broad that they deprive the
registered communities of the possibility of living a full
spiritual life as a Christian community. To illustrate the
legitimacy of this position, of the over-700 priests of the legal
Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church, 554 signed a statement in

1977 refusing to accept the new laws on religious associations,
because they infringed on the internal liberty of the Church
and contravened the canon law by depriving the priest of the
control of his parish.
The state has reacted rather cautiously to this act, as it
represents the vast majority of the Lithuanian clergy and
undoubtedly has the support of most of the believers. Several
priests from among the signatories were arrested and sen-
tenced, but there had been no blanket attack on the signatories
as a body. 26 The regime could hardly have done much more in
Russia than in Lithuania had the vast majority of the Russian
Orthodox clergy been as steadfast as their Lithuanian-Catholic
confreres in opposing the 1961 bylaws and the 197 5 revisions;
but the spine of the Orthodox Church had been broken in the
1920s and 1930s by persecutions of a magnitude unknown by
the Lithuanians or by anyone who had not experienced the
pre-war Soviet persecutions.
The Uniates
The U niates were outlawed in the USSR in 1946-9 following

the congresses annulling the Uniate Churches of Galicia and
the Carpathian Ukraine, forcing both to join the Orthodox
Church. Seven bishops and some 2000 priests who refused to
do so were exiled to concentration camps and prisons. Yet the
U niate or Catholic Church of the Eastern Rite exists under-
ground to this day, even experiencing a certain renewal in the
1960s and 1970s, particularly since she is associated with the
Ukrainian nationalist identity and her renewal is so potent in
the extreme western part of the Ukraine, where the Uniate
church had been the major religious body since the early
seventeenth century. Because this church is illegal, it is
persecuted mercilessly by the Soviets, and all the places of
worship are being constantly raided and brutally smashedY
The 'True and Free' Adventists
The 'True and Free' Adventists as they call themselves, broke

away from the official Church of Seventh Day Adventists in
1924, at their Fifth Congress in Moscow, when the leadership
and the majority of the delegates declared Lenin's socialism a

blessing and Lenin a God -chosen leader, proclaiming their full
support of and dedication to the Marxist-Leninist social
system. The break between the two groups became final at the
sixth Congress in 1928 which declared it the duty of each
Adventist to serve in the Soviet Red Army and to bear arms.
This contradicted the conscientious objectionist creed of the
sect. Henceforward the TFSDA became the object of non-stop
persecutions. Its leader, the late V. A. Shelkov, eighty-four
years old in 1979, had served three sentences (one being a
commuted death sentence) totalling twenty-three years, prior
to his fourth sentence of five years in 1979 (which he did not
survive). He proved a phenomenal organizer of an under-
ground life of the sect. Despite raids, discoveries, and long
spells in prison, the sect managed to keep several printing
presses for publishing and distributing bibles and other
religious tracts. In a wave of massive arrests of Adventists in
1978-9 the KGB was apparently trying to locate, without
success, their latest printing press, 'The True Witness'. In the
course of this raid there were over 200 searches made across the
country, from Riga to Tashkent. Thirty-nine persons were
eventually tried and received various terms of imprisonment-
some for conscientious objection, although the victims asked to
be enlisted into the army construction battalions, objecting
only to bearing arms.
Despite all their severity, the authorities could not close any
Adventist temples, because, in contrast to the legal Adventists,
they have no temples, but gather on Saturdays for communal
prayers at the private quarters of some of their members.
The only crimes of this peaceful and pacifist religious
movement are their refusal to register with the state of its
terms, the printing of literature underground because they
cannot print it legally, and conscientious objection. Yet it is
endlessly and severely harassed, as demonstrated in the
description of the search of Shelkov's daughter's flat in
Tashkent, where the old man lived and was arrested at the end
of the search.
The search began on 14 March 1978, and lasted continu-
ously for four days. The twenty searchers, led by a city attorney,
were fully armed. They also had walkie-talkies, mine detectors,
floodlights, cameras, axes, crowbars and spades. In the course
of the search, floors and ceilings were cut open, walls and
chimneys ripped; blankets, mattresses and pillows unstitched;
two-metre deep holes dug out across the yard. Indeed, two
hiding places were found underground, containing suitcases
full of religious literature, tapes with sermons and psalms,
samizdat human rights documents, and underground religious
bulletins. Many tapes contained Western radio broadcasts,
presumably of a religious character. 28 Guns and mine detectors
were the only weapons of this supposedly ideological regime
against the written and spoken word.
The Evangelical Christian Baptists
The Evangelical Christian Baptists (the split-away faction) are

not against registration of their communities in principle, but
they will accept it only on their own terms, which are:
recognition of the ECB as a separate body independent from
AUCECB; official permission for periodic congresses of the
ECB; the right for free and genuine elections of the ruling
Council of Churches of the ECB, and an end to persecution of
its members; and inner freedom for the spiritual life of the
ECB communities without petty interference by the CRA and
its plenipotentiaries. 29
This inner spiritual freedom was obviously meant to include
the right to unhampered baptism of willing adults and to the
teaching of religion to willing children of Baptist parents,
which the Soviet regime categorically denies to them. Samizdat
documents, in fact, are full of reports on imprisonments for
teaching religion to children. 3°For instance, Eugene Pushkov,
a former Cheliabinsk Symphony Orchestra violinist who had
given up that post to devote himself fully to the ECB church
work, was sentenced to three years' hard labour in 1980 for
organizing Baptist youth musical-choral church groups and
for serving as an ECB pastor in the Ukrainian town of
Khartsysk. Forty-three years of age at the time of his release in
1983, he was asked by the KGB to co-operate with them- that is,
to be a KGB informer.' "I cannot compromise", was his reply.
After only twenty-five days with his wife and eight children, he
was rearrested .... Pushkov appealed his new sentence of four
years. Authorities responded by doubling it.' 51
To legitimize the persecutions, two new decrees were issued
by the RSFSR Supreme Soviet on 18 March 1966 (nos 219 and

220). The first one stipulates a fifty-rouble fine for: refusal to
register a religious community; organizing religious meetings
of youth or children; any literary or other circles under the
auspices of a religious community and organization of reli-
gious conferences, processions, and the like. The second
decree stipulates a prison sentence of up to three years for
persons repeating the above activities after having already
been fined according to the former decree. 32
Article 142 of the RSFSR Criminal Code and its equivalents
in the other Soviet republics concerning the infringements of
the laws on the separation of Church and State, actually forbids
all religious activities except 'the performance of the cult'
within the church walls. It was on the basis of this article
together with the above decrees that by mid-1967 202 ECB
members had been tried, and over 190 were actually sentenced
to terms of eighteen months to ten years of various categories of
imprisonment. 33 The total number of ECB prisoners in the
concentration (labour) camps has been growing at the follow-
ing rate:
Years Prisoners
Late 1979 87
Late 1981 120
Late 1982 165
Late 1984 over 20034
One of the most common causes of harassment has been

connected with the establishment of a house of prayer and the
problem of its registration. For instance, in the course of 1975
alone the Moscow ECB community members had to pay a total
of 4000 roubles in fines for holding religious services without a
registration permit, despite the fact that 'we have applied to the
appropriate authorities for registration many times'. In every
case the CRA's responses were nebulous and evasive, but the
KGB officials were more direct in their conversations with
some members of the community, saying: 'you shall not receive
registration as long as you remain under the Council of
Churches [the ECB ruling body]'. 35 There are many reports of
brutal and barbarous bulldozing and other forms of destruc-
tion of these unregistered houses of prayer, including those of

Vladivostok, Dzhambul, Perm', and others. In Chernovtsy
(western Ukraine) a huge tent was raised by the ECB believers,
but one morning the militia appeared. It stopped all traffic in
the area and cordoned off the tent, forbidding people in
adjacent houses to walk out, stating that there were land-mines
in the tent. Then three bus loads of college students arrived and
the destruction of the tent-church began. In five hours 1200
members of the local ECB community lost their place of
worship. Thereafter believers began to gather in the same
place for open-air worship, subjecting themselves to regular
fines for group prayers outside church walls. As in closures of
Orthodox churches the malicious sadism of local officials was
evident. For instance, 'the local government in the city of Issyk,
Alma-Ata Province, had suggested to the local ECB minister in
1974 that a permanent house of worship be built, which the
community happily did. In 1976 the authorities suddenly
began to order the believers to wreck their temple. The
believers refused.' Subsequently the building was taken away
from them and sealed. The minister was imprisoned for
breaking the laws on religious cults. 'The city government
requests that the community apply for registration.' 36 But, as
the above Moscow case shows, no applications for registration
of the independent ECB communities are ever granted.
At the same time, the Soviet press as usual engaged in
character asassination. One of the most irritating facts for the
Soviets had been the existence of ECB underground printing
presses. A Soviet newspaper spoke of the release from prison in
1977 of 'an influential leader of this sect', P. Rumachik, and
connected his name with the ECB publishing enterprise: and
then a few lines lower spoke about a 1980 KGB uncovering of
'several clandestine print shops, one of which was in Dnep-
ropetrovsk Province'. The affair was being linked again to
Rumachik and George Vins, the formerly imprisoned ECB
Council Secretary, expelled to the USA in 1979 (straight from a
prison camp). Rumachik was sentenced to another five years'
hard labour, but this was not enough. It had to be shown that
the religious connection was also politically subversive. It was
alleged that messages from Vins, illegally transmitted via
'tourists' from the USA, contained instructions to 'protest the
USSR legislation on religious cults'. Obviously, the newspaper
thought this was not subversive enough, and linked the whole
affair to Dimitry Miniakov (born 1922), an ECB pastor in
Estonia. To justify his arrest a 1978 report in an Estonian
newspaper was cited, according to which Miniakov had been
taken prisoner by the Germans in 1941 and subsequently
actively collaborated with the enemy administrators. The
article exclaimed: 'Is there any need for more proof that the
ECB Council activity has little in common with religion?' 37
This might have satisfied a Billy Graham, who upon his two
visits to the USSR declared there was religious freedom there;
but not an informed reader, who will have noticed that all three
sentences meted out to Miniakov have been for his church-
related activities. At the time of this writing his health has
rapidly deteriorated to the extent that he is unable to write
letters in his own hand anymore. 38
The Pentecostals
The Pentecostals, or, as they call themselves, Christians of the

Evangelical Faith, are that remnant of the sect who had not
merged with the Baptists in 1945 within the All-Union Council
of Evangelical Christians and Baptists formed in 1944. But
apparently after the events of 1961-2 more Pentecostals left
the amalgamated Church (without joining the independent
ECB); for it is in the 1960s and 1970s that the Pentecostals
became particularly vocal and prominent. In contrast to the
A UCECB, the Soviet state does not recognize the independent
Pentecostals, therefore they have no legal central organization
of any kind, although in some areas Pentecostal communities
have been granted registration by the local CRA. About 50 per
cent of Pentecostal communities are thus registered, mainly in
Odessa, Kiev, Rovno and numerous west Ukrainian villages.
The Pentecostals of Central Asia, Siberia and the Far East
refuse to register their communities because:
In practice registration includes a virtual ban on the religious
education of children, on youth and women's prayer
meetings, on preaching, missionary work and charity, in
addition to the practice of the most important religious
rites. 39
These objections to registration show that the nature of
persecutions of the Pentecostals are the same as those of the
independent Baptists: fines and arrests for prayer meetings at

private homes or unregistered temples. 40 In addition, Pente-
costals refuse to bear arms or to give the military oath, but agree
to serve in engineering or medical corps. In this they fall into
the same category as the Adventists and the Jehovah Witnesses,
and are similarly severely punished. 41
Numbers of unregistered communities are constantly har-
assed. Their houses are searched and all religious literature,
including bibles, confiscated. Fines, threats, and arrests are
common. 'In 1971 a firehose was used to disperse the faithful in
Chernogorsk, after which the house where the believers had
met for prayers was bulldozed.' 42
Because of a high proportion of members of German
background in the sect, some of its groups, particularly in
Siberia and the Far East, have been trying for many years to
emigrate (some to Israel, confusing it with the Biblical Israel),
and thus have in addition been persecuted for such attempts.
As recently as April1985leaders of a Far-Eastern Pentecostal
community were brought to trial for staging hunger strikes and
protest demonstrations in an attempt to emigrate to West
Germany. Their pastor, Vicktor Valter, was sentenced to five
years in a labour camp.
PERSECUTIONS OF CLERGY AND LAITY
According to a 1983 count, over 300 clergy, laity and monastics

of all religions were in prisons, labour camps or psycho-prisons
solely for practising their faith. 43 According to more recent
evidence, the actual number, particularly in psycho-prisons, is
considerably larger and has grown further since 1983. 44 But far
greater numbers of religious believers are subjected to ad-
ministrative harassment and persecutions from day to day, the
concrete examples of which reach us only sporadically.
However, they are sufficient to draw a general picture of the
situation. Grounds for such persecutions are well laid out in the
internal secret CRA reports to the CPSU Central Committee,
some of which have become available to us in the last few years.
Among the 'crimes' of the clergy, contravening the Soviet law
on religions, and therefore requiring punishment, are the
following.
First, is acts of charity. One archbishop was reported to be
secretly subsidizing repair works in the poorer parishes in his

diocese which are unable to fully fund such expenses on their
own. Individual church wardens, priests, and parish councils-
were denounced for issuing support money for the poorest
parishioners at the expense of decreasing the practically
obligatory Peace Fund contributions. In other parishes,
peasants whose houses had been destroyed by fire received
financial aid from their church. Finally, a widespread illegal
charity includes public dinners for as many as 300 parishioners
at a time, mostly moneyless pilgrims from distant villages and
towns without a functioning church. According to recent
samizdat reports, monasteries (in particular, the Pochaev Lavra
and the Kiev Ascension Convent) have lately been subjected to
harassments again, precisely for feeding such pilgrims. 45
Second, continuing group pilgrimages to venerated holy
places, is also a 'crime'. 'Such pilgrimages are usually organized
by lay believers, either fanatics or opportunists looking for
income', alleges a 1968 CRA report. Surely these are less risky
ways for opportunists to make money than by organizing
pilgrimages which have been subjected to very brutal attacks by
the militia and the Komsomol voluntary aids with much
physical injury to the participants. 46
Third, in the same category is group worship in private
residences and performance of such rites as baptism, church
marriages and funerals, either in private homes or at the
church, but without reporting these in the church register.
Naturally the clergy and parish councillors try to protect the
believers involved from subsequent harassment at work or
school, because the registry books are regularly inspected by
the soviets and thus become available to the KGB. But the CRA
official pretends that the real reason for non-registration is to
earn additional private income from the unrecorded believers'
donations. We know that this is not the case, from personal
interviews of several neophytes, who had deliberately searched
for such priests who would not register their baptism, in order
to avoid later repercussions at work. 47 But the most reliable
confirmation comes from the former Bishop of Poltava
(Eastern Ukraine), Feodosii, in his 1977 letter to Brezhnev,
where he stated that most adults desiring to join the Church
went to the retired priests for baptism, because the latter could
do this without entering the names of the newly baptized into
the registry. According to Feodosii, the provincial CRA

official, objected to this, demanding that instead the clergy
report to him about every adult baptismal candidate, thus
delaying the baptism for a few weeks, during which, the Bishop
added, the CRA agents would create such problems for the
candidate at his place of work or study that he might change his
mind. Naturally, the Bishop refused to oblige. 48
Furov, the CRA vice-chairman, includes in his report (of
1975?) a table of the steady decline of Orthodox clergy in the
USSR, from 8252 in 1961 to 5994 in 1974, as irrefutable
evidence of a dying Church. To begin with, there are a number
of logical and arithmetical errors in the table. The year 1961
happened to be the third year of Khrushchev's physical attack
on the Church, during which masses of priests were simply de-
registered, prematurely forced into retirement, imprisoned,
exiled, had to look for secular jobs in order to survive, or (the
most heroic of them) simply went into the underground,
becoming so-called wandering priests, never again appearing
on any of the CRA registers. Thus, had Furov begun with the
year 1958 instead of 1961 his decline of registered priests
would have been even more spectacular: from over 30 000 to
5994 in 1974. Then he says that 'in the lastthreeyears', 1972-5,
the rate of absolute annual decline of clergy through death and
retirement has decreased from 190 to 66; but the absolute
figures he cites for a total of these years break up into 146 new
ordinations per annum and 179 deaths and retirements; this
makes the absolute decline exactly one half of his figure of 66!
Moreover, in another place in the same secret report to the
CPSU CC he says:
The CRA plenipotentiaries, as in past years, have been
taking measures in co-operation with the local soviets to
prevent the enrolment of fanatics, extremists, and physically
abnormal persons in the seminaries.
We know that these categories mean in the Soviet context,
particularly the category of'psychotics'. And then, among the
examples of persons prevented from enrolling at the Moscow
theological seminary, Furov cites a graduate (born in 1930) of
the highly prestigious Institute of International Relations, to
which only students with politically impeccable biographies are
admitted, usually sons and daughters of highly placed per-
sonalities from the Soviet establishment. In priest's robes this

man would have been a serious embarrassment to the establish-
ment and its official values. Another rejectee was an engineer,
born in 1946, who had been guilty of anti-Soviet views. Still
another was a young village soviet deputy.
Then Furov promises to close the gaps in the CRA control
over the seminaries and seminarians, in accordance with an
apparently unprinted CRA resolution of29 July 1974, 'On the
State of Supervision over the Activities of the Theological
Educational Establishments of the Russian Orthodox Church':
- to give constant and never declining attention to the
supervision and influence in the selection and distribution of
the administrative and teaching cadres ... to the study of
their moods and to measures aimed at decreasing their
religious zeal;
-to take all the necessary measures to preclude the attempts
of fanatical persons to penetrate the seminaries, either as
teachers or as students;
-to continue the review of the teaching manuals through the
Patriarchate's Education Committee and seminary rectors
with the aim of adopting new manuals ... which would take
into consideration the need to elevate the sense of citizenship
among the teachers and the taught;
- ... to enhance the mass political education of the teachers
and the taught, as well as individual forms of work with them
aimed at the development of profound patriotic
convictions. 49
In other words, the aim is to replace the spiritual pastors with
lukewarm church bureaucrats, 'performers of the cult' in the
official Soviet jargon; and any bishop or priest who does not fit
into this category is subjected to harassment amounting to
persecution in one form or another.
Besides screening the would-be seminarians, we have seen
with what ease the most dedicated and ecclesiastically active
clerics are deprived of the right to function legally as priests. A
careful scrutiny of samiz.dat would reveal dozens of such names,
amounting to only a small fraction of the real figure. A case in
point is Vladimir Rusak, a deacon of the Russian Orthodox
Church and a graduate of the Moscow Theological Academy,
who had worked for several years on the board of editors of the
Journal of Moscow Patriarchate. In 1980 he completed a

manuscript on the history of the Russian Church under the
Soviets, calling it A Witness of Prosecution. When he confessed
this fact to his immediate superior, Archbishop Pitirim, the
editor-in-chief of the Journal, the latter begged him to destroy
the manuscript. When the deacon refused, he was simply
dismissed from his work and later sent to serve in a church in
the Belorussian city of Vitebsk under Metropolitan Filaret of
Belorussia, at that time the head of the Church's Department of
External Relations and of its parishes in Western Europe. On
28 March 1982, he delivered a sermon at a Lenten Passion
service on the passions of Christ and the suffering of the
Church in this world. He said that a Church suffering, a
Church persecuted, isspirituallystronger,closertoGod, thana
Church triumphant in this world. In this context he con-
demned the Constantinian legacy of national and state
Churches, and praised the Bolshevik Revolution for having
once again raised the sword against the Church, thus purifying
her of all but the dedicated ones. Then he elaborated on the
persecutions under Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev, and criti-
cized the official policy of the contemporary Russian Orthodox
Church (ROC for short) of disowning the new martyrs, owing
to whom in fact the contemporary Church had survived all the
attack and persecutions. He did not call for any disobedience to
the state. On the contrary, he said that now the believers were
more secure than at most times since 1917. He simply
encouraged them not to lose heart when their lives are less
comfortable than those of the atheists or when their children
are expelled from the universities for their faith. This is
normal, he said: you should not expect both an easy life in this
world and a reward in Heaven.
This was to be Deacon Vladimir's last church sermon. His
registration was immediately revoked and he was sent to a
monastery. The ruling bishop, Filaret, told Vladimir Rusak he
could not do anything for him however much he wanted to
help, for 'anonymous forces stand behind him'. In other words,
M. Filaret the head of the Moscow Patriarchate parishes in free
West European countries at the time, and the ROC chairman of
Ecclesiastical Foreign Relations is controlled by the KGB.
Filaret advised him to look for a secular job, for after such a
sermon he stood no chance of gaining any position in the
Church whatsoever, under the present regime. 50 This was, at

least, a form of criticism of the Soviet state which no totalitarian
regime would tolerate.
On the other hand, Archbishop Feodosii of Poltava, in his
1977 letter to Brezhnev, recounts completely unprovoked
forms of reduction of the numbers of clergy by the CRA. In
1960-64, until its closure, Feodosii had served as the faculty
secretary of the Volhynia Seminary in Lutsk. The provincial
CROCA plenipotentiary had tried all means possible to have
advance access to the list of seminary applicants.
Having finally gained this access he reported these names to
certain addresses [local KGB officials]; whereupon the
candidates would not receive release from work or from the
lists of military recruiting points, in other words he did
everything to prevent their arrival at the seminary. The few
individuals who nevertheless miraculously managed to
come to the seminary were then refused local residence
permits on the plenipotentiary's instructions. And thus, in
1964, the Volhynian seminary was shut down under the
pretext of lack of students.
The Bishop compares the Volhynian precedent with the
contemporary behaviour of the Ukrainian CRA plenipoten-
tiaries: there is practically a ban on new clerical ordinations in
the Ukraine, he writes. In 1975 the Poltava plenipotentiary,
I. A. Nechytailo, requested the Bishop to ordain as few priests
as possible.
Finally, Nechytailo forbade the Bishop to ordain any home-
educated candidates. Since the seminaries do not provide
enough priests, adds the Bishop, this means by 1980 twenty
churches in the diocese will be left without priests through the
process of natural attrition. 51 That is how the CRA achieves the
decline in the numbers of clergy boasted in the CRA's vice-
chairman Furov's report, referred to before.
In fact Furov proudly states that in 1974 only 30 per cent of
Ukraine's seminary candidates were accepted. 52 The infor-
mation from a reliable Church source is that in 1981, when the
total number of seminary students was almost double that of
the early 1970s, still only 20 per cent of the applicants were
accepted in the seminaries, owing to lack of space. 53 Given the
fact that an unsuccessful application to a seminary, as has been
demonstrated above, results in all sorts of harassment and

persecutions for the applicant and at least constitutes a
considerable blow to his future career in secular life54 (which is
evidence that the applicants are moved by a strong religious
motivation and devotion), it is obvious that had there been no
CRA screening and had all the able and sincere candidates
been accepted, the numbers of clergy would easily have tripled
or quadrupled.
Returning to the account of Church-State relations in
Archbishop Feodosii's report, we read that Nechytalio asked
him to close a few churches by amalgamating them with others
(although during Khrushchev's persecutions the number of
churches in the diocese was reduced from 340 to 52); to which
the Bishop replied that his function was to open churches, not
to close them, and added that each parish is of greater
importance to him than his own life, hence he would fight for
them with all his might. The result of this was the plenipoten-
tiary's report to Moscow that 'no mutual understanding exists
between him and the Bishop'. This meant, said the Bishop, that
he would soon be either retired to a monastery or transferred to
a distant and more humble diocese. His words proved
prophetic: although the Church had rewarded him for his zeal
by elevating him to the title of Archbishop less than a year after
the writing of this letter, in 1979 he was transferred to the
north- Russian diocese ofVologda with only 17 open churches.
The Archbishop (bishop at the time) lists a wide array of
direct and indirect persecutions practised by the CRA meth-
odically and almost daily. A parish priest fell ill on a Saturday
night, so the Bishop sent one of his cathedral priests to replace
him for that Sunday only. Nechytailo, the plenipotentiary,
attacked the Bishop for acting without his, Nechytailo's,
permission, and temporarily deprived the filling-in priest of
his registration, warning him that the next time he would be
deprived of it permanently. In several villages (they are all
listed by name in the report) old rural cottages were used as
prayer houses. Their roofs were leaking and their size was too
small for the thousands of believers, the proportion being one
church serving up to 26 villages. In order to replace these huts
by brick structures somewhat larger than the original huts and
with a taller ceiling for breathing comfort, the faithful had to
send delegates with petitions as far as Moscow. In one
particular case, having gained oral permission to go ahead as

early as 1971, they started raising the brick walls, then one night
the site was raided and wrecked by the komsomols and militia.
The believers had to wait another two years before the
permission was finally granted. The Bishop was accused by
Nechytailo of breaking the law, because he supported such
petitions by words of encouragement and at least in one case by
writing a petition of his own.
Another form of persecution, discreetly aiming at the
reduction of functioning churches, is the Peace Fund and the
Fund for the Restoration of Historical Monuments, to which
each church has been obliged to make regular 'voluntary'
contributions since 1968. Bishop Feodosii cites the escalation
of these contributions by the Poltava Diocese under direct
pressure from the CRA, from 36 210 roubles in 1968 to
161 328 roubles in 1976, while the total contribution of the
diocesan parishes to the diocesan centre was only 124 296
roubles. At first, he writes, the churches of the diocese were
donating 5 per cent of their income to these funds, then 10, 15
and 20 per cent of their total income, which in many cases
would result in a net annual deficit. And he cites one rural
parish whose total annual income is 3500 roubles, of which the
priest gets 1500 per annum and other church assistants are
paid 746; current repairs take 200 roubles; 'donations' to the
state funds take another 1050 at the above rate; leaving only
four roubles to pay the land rent, insurance premiums, the
clergy pension fund, etc. With such contributions to the fund
the parish will simply have to close down. Nor can the Church
reduce her pension fund, since most of the eventual clergy
pensions are no higher than thirty-five roubles per month.
Cases of persecution of clerics for their dedication and
selfless service could be cited almost endlessly, from the life of
contemporary Orthodox as well as Lithuanian Catholic,
sectarian and other Churches.
A young Kiev priest, Vasili Boiko, lost his position as the
choir director at the Virgin Mary Protection church in Kiev for
having organized a youth choir, consisting mostly of recent
converts or returned prodigals to the Church. The choir was
disbanded by the Soviets and he was sent as a reader to a
provincial church. 55
A young Kiev engineer, Zdriliuk, turned to God, joined the
Orthodox Church, and after passing the necessary theological

examinations privately, was ordained priest at thirty years of
age by Filaret, the Metropolitan of Kiev. Three years later the
republican plenipotentiary de-registered him after a police
search revealed large quantities of religious literature at his
home. Some books and brochures, including prayer books and
the like, were found in great quantity. This, and the fact that the
priest was distributing prayer books to believers, was supposed
to be proof of his 'criminal activities', in a country which claims
to have religious freedom. 56
The story of Fr. Dimitry Dudko is well known. While a priest
in a Moscow church he gained considerable popularity as a
preacher and catechist, preparing hundreds of adults for
baptism. To satisfy a growing spiritual thirst he began to hold
question-and-answer sessions instead of regular sermons at his
church. This made him very popular with the people, but
highly unpopular with the authorities. Under their pressure
the ecclesiastical administration was forced to remove him in
1973 to the rural parish of Kabanovo, eighty kilometres from
Moscow; the area is out-of-bounds to the foreigners who had
also frequented his church in Moscow. But soon people were
coming to the rural parish in no less numbers than in Moscow.
In December 1975 the local soviet forced the church council to
dismiss Fr. Dimitri from this parish as well; thereafter he was
transferred to another rural parish in the vicinity of Moscow. It
was there that he began to realize his dream of creating a well-
knit church community as the basis of the amorphous parish.
He began to publish a mimeographed bulletin, the first of its
kind since the 1920s. In his sermons and writings he attacked
state atheism in no uncertain terms, blaming it for moral
decline and rising alcoholism. In January 1980 he was arrested,
and less than six months later, broken and humiliated by his
jailors, he appeared on the state TV with a self-condemnatory
speech of apology, confusing the interests of the USSR with
those of the Russian nation, declaring himself a patriot and
condemning all his former contacts with foreigners. As a result
of this spectacle he lost all his former followers and his prestige
as a pastor and a spiritual leader. Now that he was harmless, the
regime could magnanimously forgive him and allow him to
return to his pastoral duties. 57
In the Furov report a popular priest, Fr. Vasilii Romaniuk of
the Ukrainian village of Kosmach in the Carpathians, was

criticized for organizing illegal carol-singing youth groups,
and visiting the homes of the believers at Christmas-time. The
CRA official claimed that the aim of the priest was to earn extra
money through donations. 58 But the fact is that four years later
the same priest was given two years in jail, five years in an
especially strict labour camp, plus three years of enforced
internal exile, technically for appending his signature on
behalf of a certain Ukrainian nationalist, the prisoner Valentyn
Moroz. 59 In fact the KGB must have been looking for an excuse
to get rid of the priest for many years. First, at the age of
nineteen, in 1944, having committed no crime whatsoever, he
was sentenced to ten years' hard labour in Siberia. On his
rehabilitation and return to his native land in 1959 he attended
brief pastoral courses and was ordained deacon. But the local
CROCA plenipotentiary refused to allow his ordination to the
priesthood. Only upon that official's death in 1964 could he
become a priest, an enthusiastic one at that, winning the love
and respect of the believers and the hatred of the atheists. The
latter's harassment continued. In the eight years of his parish
work he was forced to change six parishes, ending up with
another ten-year prison term in 1972 merely for expressing his
criticism of the imprisonment of someone whom he thought to
be innocent. This was obviously an excuse to eject another
zealous pastor. 5°
The Fr. Romaniuk story is not an isolated case of persecution
for religious zeal and dedication. A 31-year-old enthusiastic
priest, Fr. Pavel Adelgeim was arrested in December 1969 in
the U zbek city of Kagan where he had served as the rector of the
only local Orthodox church. The charges against him as
reported in the main Uzbek Russian language paper at the time
were confusing and contradictory. On the one hand, he was
accused of having used his charismatic qualities and prestige in
the community to attract children and teenagers to the church,
and teaching them the catechism. It is stated that he was very
successful. On the other hand, he was presented as a sadist who
enjoyed beating his wife and the very young girls whom he was
attracting to the church. However, the trial transcript and his
lawyer's and Adelgeim's appeals to the republican supreme
court, show that he had never personally beaten the girl in
question. The girl had given false evidence on the instruction
of the matron of the hostel where she wanted to live. She was
told she would surely get a room if she agreed to report that a
priest had beaten her. The real reason for his incarceration was
his writings criticizing the legal status of religion in the USSR,
calling Marxism 'an empty shell', and having contact with
Fathers Eshliman and Yakunin, the authors of the 1965
memoranda to the Patriarch and the Soviet Government on the
persecution of the Church. In fact, Yakunin's apartment in
Moscow was searched while Adelgeim was under pre-trial
investigation. According to his defence lawyer, Lev Yudovich,
the whole trial was a complete fraud, the purpose being to get
rid of a popular priest who was making religion too popular. 61
The priest was sentenced to three years' hard labour. He lost a
leg in the camp. Returned to priestly duties, he became the
second priest in the U zbek town ofFergana, where new trouble
awaited him in 1974. The parish hadjustexpelled the former
rector of the parish for dishonest financial operations, in-
appropriate observation of religious rituals, and other misde-
meanours. But the unscrupulous priest suited the atheists, and
the local CRA plenipotentiary wanted to bring him back. As the
parishioners refused to oblige, the plenipotentiary retaliated
by depriving Fr. Adelgeim of registration and replaced him by
another, unpopular and greedy, priest. 62
Most of this information was gained from the unofficial
Moscow Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers'
Rights (MCCDBR) set up in 1976 by Fr. Gleb Yakunin, an
Orthodox priest. The committee meticulously assembled all
cases it had found of abuse of believers' rights by local
administrators. At first it reported these cases to central Soviet
authorities. When this had no effect, it began to pass this
information to Western journalists and the Church bodies in
the Free World. In 1979 Yakunin was charged with anti-Soviet
agitation and propaganda (Art. 70) and sentenced to five years
in a strict regime labour camp followed by five years of internal
exile. His and his Committee's only crime was that they spoke
up for the alleged legal rights of believers of all faiths. 63 The
priest and former Soviet historian, Fr. Vasilii Fonchenkov,
who, along with another priest, Nikolai Gainov, took over from
Yakunin, lost his teaching position at the Moscow theological
academy and was soon transferred to a rural parish outside
Moscow, deliberately making his work on the committee
impossible. Thereafter the Committee worked incognito and

supplied the world with information on persecutions anony-
mously, except for the document it submitted to the Vancouver
WCC General Assembly of 1983, in which it emphasized the
escalation of persecutions in the last few years. The Committee
closely co-operates with the Legal Defence Group of the All-
Union Church of the Free Seventh Day Adventists and the
Lithuanian Catholic Committee for the Defence of Believers'
Rights. 64
Another MCCDBR memorandum reported on the three-
and-a-half-year sentence meted out in 1983 to a very popular
and dedicated Siberian priest, Fr. Alexandr Pivovarov, for
distributing religious literature free of charge to his par-
ishioners and others seeking theological education. He
acquired this literature from clandestine Moscow Orthodox-
Christian printers who had shortly before been arrested and
sentenced. He was sentenced in accordance with articles 154
(Black-marketing) and 162 (Engagement in a trade forbidden
by special laws or decrees) of the RSFSR Criminal Code,
although it was proved in the court that he had never charged
for the literature. His real 'crime' was his charisma, his ability to
draw searching people to the Church, and the fact that in the
adverse conditions of the Soviet Union he had succeeded in
legally building a church in the Siberian city ofN ovokuznetsk. 65
Indeed, such a treatment of popular and charismatic priests
is fully in line with Lenin's infamous words that an immoral
priest, guilty of seducing under-aged girls, is more desirable
for the Communist Party than a sincere, intelligent and
enthusiastic one who commands universal respect. 66
Such, among others, was the case of a remarkable priest-
monk from the Ukraine, Fr. Pavel (Lysak). Born in 1941, he
had graduated from the Moscow (graduate) Theological
Academy at the Trinity St Sergius Monastery where he was
tonsured monk in 1970, only to be expelled by order of the
secular authorities in 197 5. They also deprived him of
residence rights in the Moscow Province, where most of his
spiritual children lived. A visitor may live in a city without a
residence permit for up to three days at a time, and Fr. Pavel
was making use of this regulation, often visiting Moscow to see
his spiritual children, among whom there were numerous
young people whose relatives remained staunch atheists. It was
these atheistic relatives who helped the KGB to concoct a court

case against him by sending in slanderous reports on him.
Other false reports were obtained by extortion: arrests of
neighbours in the apartment where Fr. Pavel stayed during his
visits to Moscow, and threats of administrative imprisonment if
they did not agree to make defamatory reports on him. The
KGB madetworaidson the Moscow apartment where Fr. Pavel
had been visiting. Then they forced his landlady in the
provincial city of Kimry, where he was officially registered, to
sign a paper that he had indeed been absent from his
apartment; whereafter they changed the dates so that the
absence became five days instead of three. On 4 December
1984 he was sentenced to ten months at a labour camp for
transgressing passport regulations. 67 But, as will be shown
below, short imprisonments have lately been prolonged by re-
trials in the labour camps themselves, shortly before the first
term is due, and the prisoners sentenced to longer terms on
fabricated charges, far away from the unpleasant publicity
given to trials in the central cities. Such a fate will likely await
this widely loved and righteous spiritual father, either before
the term is due or soon after, in an isolated faraway place where
he may be forced to reside by reason of semi-legally imposed
passport and residence limitations.
This case is another illustration of the intensification of state
attacks against the monasteries, the pilgrims and the monastics.
But the most appalling case is reported to have occurred in the
summer of 1983 in the Caucasian mountains sixty kilometres
from the Abkhasian city of Sukhumi, where an unofficial
monastic community was discovered by the authorities and
dispersed. Eighteen monks, however, managed to hide in a
narrow cave, whereupon barrels of an incendiary mixture
were brought to the mouth of the cave, set ablaze, and the
eighteen monks were burned to death. 68 Harassment of legal
monasteries, their inhabitants, and particularly their pilgrims
increased considerably in the early 1980s. In October 1981
there was a police raid on the Holy Virgin Protection Convent
in Kiev on the day of the convent's patronal feast day, when
there are masses of pilgrims to whom the nuns serve a fraternal
meal after the liturgy. It is for these meals that the convent and
its abbess, Margarita, are continuously harassed and subjected
to administrative fines. Pilgrims are forbidden to remain
overnight in the convent, so police patrols make periodic night

searches and raids looking for hidden guests. 69
But it is the Pochaev Lavra that continues to be subjected to
the most violent persecution. Since the 1960-65 pogrom, the
number of resident monks surpassed fifty by the end of 1976
(there had been 149 in 1960 and some 35 in 1965). It could have
been several times as high, for on average two or three
applications are received every day; but in the course of the
whole year of 1976 the Soviets agreed to grant residence
permits only to three novices. In 1979, the Monastery Spiritual
Council addressed the Soviet Government as well as the
ecclesiastical authorities with petitions to return the monastic
hostel and fruit orchard to the monastery and to permit it to
accept novices, at least to train them for monastic life on Mount
Athos (in Greece). The hostel has been turned into a museum
of atheism and a polyclinic; and the orchard, taken over by the
state, is rapidly deteriorating, its precious fruit trees cut down.
The response of the authorities was more searches, expulsions
of pilgrims found overnight inside the church, and the
expulsion often novices. But worse was to come. During Lent
in 1981, after the expulsion of the highly revered spiritual
father Amvrosii, his library, which included numerous re-
ligious writings published abroad or circulating in samizdat,
became the object of special investigation by the KGB. A
number of monks were arrested and manhandled. One of
them, Archimandrite Alimpi, was obviously beaten to death
since he had been in perfect health and less than fifty years of
age; another, Pitirim, became mentally ill as the result of the
beatings. Four monks were expelled from the monastery in
connection with the Amvrosii affair. It may be of interest to
note that Fr. Amvrosii was born in 1937 in Siberia. He had
served in the armed forces and worked as a miner. A full-
fledged Soviet product, he enrolled at the Moscow Seminary in
1966, later going into graduate studies at the Academy. His
sermons and spiritual guidance attracted pilgrims from across
the whole Soviet Union to the Holy Trinity St Sergius Lavra
near Moscow. The authorities did not like this, and in 1976 he
was transferred to the more peripheral Pochaev Lavra, where
his sermons soon attracted the wrath of the local KGB. After
much harassment and expulsion from the monastery he went
into hiding, probably in the mountains ofCaucasus. 70 Hence, it
is possible that the brutal dissolution of this unofficial monastic

community and the murders may have been part ofthe search
for Amvrosii.
Why such a persistent harassment in particular of the
Pochaev monastery? Because of its particular spiritual prestige
and attraction for the growing numbers of faith-starved Soviet
youth and intelligentsia and for the religious population in
general. Until the pogrom of the early 1960s there had been
many highly revered monasteries and convents in the Soviet
Union. Their reduction by the Soviets from over seventy to
seventeen left only two particularly holy places of that kind for
the Russians: the Pskov Monastery of the Caves, and the
Pochaev Lavra. The KGB, however, succeeded in subjugating
the Pskov Monastery after the death of its popular abbot Alipii
(Voronov). Under the CRA pressure, an unworthy KGB
informer, Gavriil, was appointed abbot in 1978. Soon the
Patriarch's office was flooded by complaints from monks and
lay pilgrims, received in writing and by personal delegations.
Gavriil was throwing out pilgrims, harassing the most revered
monks for giving counsel or hearing confessions, forbidding
group prayers, etc. The Patriarch yielded and issued a decree
removing Gavriil from the post. But then, Furov of the CRA
took a trip to the monastery. Something happened and the
patriarch's order was rescinded. Gavriil continues to be the
abbot there, reducing the spiritual importance of the monas-
tery to the population at large almost to nil. As of February
1984, under pressure from the thirty Pskov-Caves monks who
had escaped from there and were living illegally in Moscow, the
Patriarch issued a second order sacking Gavriil, but the order
so far remains unfulfilled and at the time of this writing Gavriil
remains the abbot, and enjoys CRA protection. 71 As one
pilgrim complains: at Pochaev there are three sermons each
day; at Pskov now only one a week. 72 In 1983, reports of
manhandling and really violent beatings of monks and
pilgrims by Gavriil and his assistants have reached the West. 73
Thus, at the present time, among the male monasteries
Pochaev remains, according to reports of pilgrims, the only
truly spiritual centre among all the officially functioning male
monastic communities of the country; hence the attacks on it. 74
As the case of Fr. Pavel (Lysak) shows, even the very central
Trinity St Sergius Lavra in Zagorsk (seventy kilometres from
Moscow), a showplace for foreign tourists and one of the

patriarch's official residences, is not free from harassment and
surreptitious persecutions. According to a reliable report,
between 1975 and 1980, literally from under the nose of
Patriarch Pimen, some forty of the most charismatic monks
were expelled from it. Their only crime was their popularity
among the pilgrims, as spiritual advisers and father-
confessors. There is an unwritten rule that 'if there is a long
queue of pilgrims for confession to a certain monastic priest,
his days in the lavra are numbered'."
In other cases, particularly in places far from the eyes of
foreign correspondents, unwanted priests (as well as laymen)
simply die in mysterious circumstances. Thus, on 17 December
1978, a popular Orthodox priest Fr. Nikolai Ivasiuk, in the
Turkmen city of Chardzhou, was found sadistically murdered
in his home. His hair was torn out, his eyes plucked out; the
body bore marks of cigarette and iron burns, as well as knife
wounds and carvings. The previous night believers saw a car
pull up to the house with six uniformed militiamen leaving the
car and entering the house. Needless to say, the murderers
were never found. 76 In Vilnius, Lithuania, a very popular
Catholic priest, Bronius Lauriniavichius, a member of the
Lithuanian Helsinki-Watch Group was killed by a truck.
Witnesses saw how four men pushed the priest off the
pavement onto the throughfare when the truck was
approaching. Less than a year later, a lay dissident secular
activist, Valeri Smolkin, was advised by the KGB to emigrate or
else his fate could be similar to that of Lauriniavichius- that is,
they admitted it was a KGB murder. 77
Psychiatric abuse in relation to religious believers, especially
to those born and fully educated under the Soviet regime, is
easily rationalized in terms of the Marxist doctrine of materi-
alistic and environmental determinism. The infamous Pro-
fessor Snezhnevsky applied it to psychiatry. According to this
doctrine, any person whose ideas and behaviour deviate from
the norms and values ofthe society in which he or she has been
brought up suffers from a psychotic schizoid unadaptability to
society. 78 Obviously this theory could most conveniently be
applied to a Soviet young person, particularly with a higher
education, who became a religious believer at a mature age,
especially if he or she came from an atheistic family. It is not
inconceivable that there are many Soviet doctors and other

petty officials who, having been brought up on the Marxist
categories of thought, sincerely believe that Christian neo-
phytes with higher education, having gone through actively
atheistic and materialistic education from the kindergarten to
university, are indeed psychotic.
Although, as will be shown, such 'diagnoses' are often
applied to lay believers, they are particularly useful in dealing
with such religious eccentrics as monks and nuns or those rare
people with full higher education among the sectarian
preachers- where the usual levels of education are low. The
sects are therefore written off by Soviet propaganda as
something dark and backward.
Monks and nuns who are particularly popular among the
pilgrims and yet whose behaviour makes it extremely difficult
to charge them criminally even under Soviet conditions, are
thus removed from the scene.
In recent years two cases have been revealed: that of the
priest Iosif Mikhailov of U fa, held in the dread Kazan' psycho-
prison since 1972, and of Valeria (Makeev), a nun, held at the
same place since 1978. The latter was first accused of black-
marketing: she lived by making and embroidering various
religious articles, which she sold to believers inside the
churches. Having failed to build up a case against her, the
authorities apparently did not want to look foolish and yet were
too eager to remove her from public life to leave her alone. The
obliging 'chartered' psychiatrists pronounced her mad. At the
time of the last report, in 1981, both church and people were
still in custody. 79
Even more inconvenient to the regime are young Christian
intellectuals with higher secular education, and those well-
educated young priests who attract young Soviet intellectuals
searching for religion. A case in point was Fr. Lev Konin,
thrown into psycho-prison several times before his expulsion
to the West in 1979. He had contacts with Leningrad students,
and attended and spoke at an unofficial religio-philosophic
seminar of young Soviet intellectuals in Leningrad. 80 A former
student of history and literature, Yurii Belov, imprisoned at
the Sychevcka psycho-prison, was told in 197 4 by a representa-
tive of the central Moscow Serbsky Institute of Forensic Medi-
cine: 'In our view religious convictions are a form of pathology,
hence our use of drugs. '81 A 33-year-old doctor, Olga Skrebets,

with a Ph.D in medical sciences, was hospitalized in Kiev in 1971
and diagnosed as 'an early stage of schizophrenia' after she had
withdrawn from the CPSU for religious reasons. 82
The sectarians in Russia- Baptists, Pentecostals and Adven-
tists- are mostly working-class people and peasants with very
little education. Therefore, an educated sectarian, who is a
zealous activist and missionary, becomes particularly unde-
sirable to the state when he becomes prominent both in the sect
and outside it. How can such a person be silenced if he does not
break the law? The state declares him a psychotic and places
him behind the bars of a psycho-prison. Such was the fate of a
44-year-old Baptist, Alexander Yankovich, who had engaged
in unofficial writing and duplicating religious literature from
1957 to 1976, when he was finally caught and declared insane.
Such was also the fate ofEvgenii Martynov, a Pentecostal and a
civil engineer, thirty-five years old at the time of his incarcer-
ation in the Cherniakhovski psycho-prison in 1978. 8~ The
ordeal of an Orthodox layman, Vasilii Shipilov, began in 1939
when, as a seventeen-year-old student at an underground
seminary, he was sentenced to ten years' hard labour. Released
in 1949 he roamed the length and breadth of Siberia
'preaching the word of God and telling people about the
cruelties of Stalin's regime'. He was soon rearrested and
declared insane. Except for short intervals, he has been in
psycho-prisons since 1950, and in 1979 was still at the
Krasnoiarsk regional psychiatric hospital in Siberia, where 'the
orderlies . . . are constantly beating him . . . mocking his
religion and the rituals'. 84 The Christian Committee for the
Defence of Believers' Rights, reporting the psychiatric incar-
ceration of Sergei Galliamov, a young Bashkir intellectual who
had recently joined the Orthodox Church, stated in 1979 that
about ten young intellectual Christian converts had been
similarly treated in Bashkiria. The 'crime' of the twenty-year-
old history student Galliamov was not only that he was baptized
at eighteen, but that he spent the summer of 1978 as a pilgrim to
the few remaining monasteries, associating with the monastic
elders. He was diagnosed 'a psychopath of mixed type' and was
immediately subjected to large doses of neuroleptics, causing
nausea, high fever and heart attacks. He was released on
probation less than two months after the arrest. The doctor
warned him to keep away from his former friends and not to
visit monasteries anymore, or else 'psychopathy can easily
evolve into schizophrenia'. His name remained on the Ufa
psychiatric register; this means he could be re-hospitalized by
force at any time during the rest of his life. 85
One of the most blatant cases of psy~hiatric treatment for
religion was that administered in 1976 to a 25-year-old Moscow
intellectual, Alexander Argentov, a neophyte Orthodox
Christian from an atheistic family. He was a founding member
of the Moscow-based religio-philosophic seminar founded in
1974 and headed by Alexander Ogorodnikov, a graduate
student of cinematography, who was expelled from the
institute, along with several other students, for trying to
produce a film which aimed at reflecting the unofficial
religious life of the contemporary Soviet youth. Ogorodnikov's
religio-philosophic seminar declared itself a continuation of
the religio-philosophic societies of Moscow and Lenigrad,
dispersed by the Soviets in the 1920s. The harassment of the
seminar began in earnest in 1976 after it had shown consider-
able vitality and signs of growth, having established sub-
sections in such cities as Ufa (Bashkiria), Leningrad, L'vov
(Ukraine), Minsk and Grodno (Belorussia). 86 The arrest of
Argentov (and Fedotov, who was also locked up in a forensic
institution for some time) was a terrorist act to threaten the
seminar members with what was in store for them. Argentov
was grabbed in a military draft recruitment centre, where he
had been summoned to appear. From there he was delivered
by force to a psychiatric dispensary, where the psychiatrist on
duty told him plainly, 'We shall knock that religion out of you.'
He was then delivered, again by force, to a psychiatric hospital.
A pectoral cross was torn off his neck, and powerful neuro-
leptics were administered to him by force for the two months he
was kept in the hospital. His early release was probably caused
by the wide publicity given to the case at the time by the protests
of the unofficial Christian Committee, the seminar members,
and Argentov's parents. They were addressed to the Soviet
Government, to the Patriarch and to the World Council of
Churches. 87
As these arrests indicate, persecution of religiously active
laymen, especially young intellectuals, has also been on the
increase at least since the second half of the 1970s, rising
markedly in the early 1980s. This, no doubt, has been a

defensive counteraction of atheism against the rising tide of
conversions, religious renewal and searches among the above
groups of the population in particular. The Moscow and
Leningrad religio-philosophic seminars have already been
mentioned. Their persecutions did not stop with the detention
of Argentov and Fedotov in psycho-prisons. Simultaneously or
soon after, the chairman of the Moscow Seminar Alexander
Ogorodnikov, was forced to resign his janitor's job after it had
been found that he had used his janitor's hut for seminar
meetings. All his subsequent attempts to find a job were
frustrated by the authorities, thus making him vulnerable to
prosecution for parasitism. Indeed, in 1979 Ogorodnikov was
sentenced to one year's hard labour for parasitism. At the end
of the term, however, taking advantage of the fact that he was
still a prisoner and the trial could take place without outside
witnesses, he was re-tried, this time accused of anti-Soviet
propaganda while in prison, and given a hideous sentence of
six years' hard labour in a strict regime camp to be followed by
five years of internal exile. The purpose was, of course, to cut
him off effectively from reviving the seminar anywhere for
eleven years, and in Moscow forever: a strict regime sentence
usually deprives the victim of the opportunity of living in the
capital cities.
The Ogorodnikov Seminar's popularity and success
obviously infuriated the Soviets. Its active membership sur-
passed forty by 1979. It expanded its activities to several other
cities, including Kazan', Odessa, and Smolensk, in addition to
the ones mentioned above. In February 1979 there was a joint
conference of the Leningrad and Moscow seminars. A Lenin-
grad literary historian and learned librarian of considerable
talents, Vladimir Poresh, became the seminar's representative
there and the de facto deputy chairman of the Ogorodnikov
seminar. Tat'iana Shchipkova, a professor of French and Latin
at the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute, became its represen-
tative in that city. As she was a very popular teacher, she
naturally attracted some students to the seminar; then fol-
lowed the development of a local religio-philosophic discus-
sion group under her leadership. The regime at first reacted,
even before Ogorodnikov's arrest, with various forms of
unofficial harassment, including a severe anonymous beating
of one of its members. After this there were numerous KGB

warnings to its individual members, raids and temporary
arrests of the whole membership of the seminar during its
meetings, and expulsions from jobs. In June 1978 Shchipkova
lost her teaching position, and several students at the same
institute who had attended the seminar, including her son and
daughter-in-law, were expelled. By the end of August 1978
Shchipkova was deprived of her doctoral degree on political
grounds; and in January 1980 the 49-year-old former pro-
fessor was sentenced to three years' hard labour 'for malicious
hooliganism': during one of the police raids of the seminar
sessions she had slapped a Komsomol police aid on the face
while he was twisting her arm. Two other members of the
seminar, Sergei Ermolaev and Igor' Poliakov, were sentenced
respectively to four and three-and-a-half years' hard labour in
September 1979, allegedly for shouting anti-Soviet slogans. In
April 1980 two members of the seminar, Viktor Popkov and
Vladimir Burtsev, were sentenced to eighteen months' hard
labour each, allegedly for counterfeiting documents. A few
days later, Vladimir Poresh, the leader of the seminar after
Ogorodnikov's arrest, was sentenced to five years' hard labour
in strict regime camps followed by three years of internal exile.
Just before the completion of his term Poresh was given an
additional three years' labour camp term in October 1983. 88
this effectively put an end to the activities of the seminar to the
best of our knowledge, at least for a time. In addition, two other
active members, the already-mentioned Fedotov and Alexan-
der Kuz'kin, were forcibly placed in forensic institutions. 89 The
methods applied to the seminar members and the pretexts for
their imprisonment are excellent illustrations of how religious
believers are, and have been since 1918, persecuted and
incarcerated under fraudulent criminal charges, allowing the
Soviet Government and the cowed official Russian Church
leaders to maintain that there are no imprisonments in the
Soviet Union for one's religious faith.
Underground printing presses of the Free Adventists have
already been mentioned. The unofficial Evangelical Christian
Baptists have also been running underground presses pub-
lishing bibles and other religious literature- all under a single
title, the 'Khristianin Publishers'- despite the fact that at least
one such press was discovered by the KGB in the vicinity of Riga
in October 1974, liquidated, and its workers sentenced to long

terms of hard labour. None the less, as of February 1983 the
Council of Relatives of the Imprisoned Christian-Baptists
stated that its underground publishing house 'The Christian'
continues its work, having published nearly half a million
Gospels in ten years, despite the mounting persecutions of
Church members: of its estimated 100 000 baptized member-
ship (only adult baptisms), fifty persons were imprisoned in
1981 and seventy-three in 1982. A total of 165 members of the
Church were in prison and camps by the end of 1982, more
than 50 per cent of the total of prisoners-for-faith estimated by
the Moscow Christian Committee, as reported above. 90
The Orthodox Church appears to have come closest to
establishing her printing base in the early 1980s. In April1982
five young Orthodox Christians were arrested in Moscow
accused of having illegally possessed a xeroxing machine and
printing thousands of religious books and brochures, particu-
larly prayer books, and selling them at a profit to Christian
laymen as well as to Orthodox priests for distribution among
the faithful. V. Burdiug, the main defendant, was apparently
running quite a professional enterprise. Although it was
proved in the court that the prices for the literature were set
only to cover the costs and provide minimum survival levels for
its staff of five to eight typists, printers and binders, and
distributors, the case was a convenient one to try the defen-
dants for black-market operations, and the chief defendant, in
addition, for pilfering state property: the court conveniently
requalified a broken xerox machine written off for scrap
(which apparently the defendant subsequently repaired) into a
fully functioning office machine belonging to the state. To
demoralize the defendants as well as to lower the prestige of
Christians, false rumours were circulated during the period of
in camera investigation that all the defendants co-operated in
giving evidence against each other. In fact only one of them,
Sidorov, who had been a psychiatric patient after a suicide
attempt, broke down fully under investigation. Another, a
chauffeur who used to deliver the raw materials for the
printers and the finished goods to the customers, believed his
interrogator's lie that all the others had broken down, and
began to co-operate with the investigation, retracting his
evidence at the trial and asking the others for forgiveness. The
remammg four or five (Burdiug, Nikolai Blokhin, two

brothers, Sergei and Vladimir Budarov, and Krokhin) held
fast. Burdiugtookall the blamefortheothers, tryingtohelphis
colleagues. In December 1982 Burdiug was sentenced to four
years' hard labour, the others to three years each. Searches for
literature printed by the group were carried out (with a
considerable catch) in the houses of many believers and of some
priests, involving about a dozen families, including a nun, a
priest, a Christian poet, and (horrible dictu!) a graduate student
of CPSU history, Grigori Zaichenko. Technically speaking,
under Soviet law, this was black-market operation. But had the
Soviet state allowed the church to function normally, no need
for undercover operations would have existed. The evidence
in the court presented by witnesses and by the lawyer showed
that the motives of the defendants were religious - to serve
their Church as best they could- not to make money. 91
One of the most blatant illustrations of suppression of
religion, and persecution of those who try to promote religious
enlightenment, was the arrest in 1982 of the 53-year-old writer
and journalist, Mrs Zoia Krakhmal'nikova, formerly a success-
ful member of the Soviet UnionofWriterswho upon her adult
conversion began to apply her talents and professional skills to
the promotion of Russian Orthodoxy. She began to publish
samizdat typewritten collections of the wisdom and teachings of
the Church. Some seven such collections under the name of
Hope: Christian Readings had appeared and were in circulation
by the time of her arrest. They contained excerpts from
writings of Church Fathers as well as of modern Orthodox
theologians, articles by neophytes on what brought them to
Christianity, excerpts from the lives of popular saints, and
unpublished religious and theological writings of Russian
priests, bishops and theologians of the post-revolutionary era.
The only political element in these collections was that the latter
writings were normally accompanied by short biographical
notes on their authors, which usually revealed their martyr-
dom for faith at the hands of the Soviets. Contrary to Soviet law,
Krakhmal'nokova was never warned that her activities were
considered hostile or that a case was being prepared against
her. She was simply arrested on 4 August 1982 without any
warning, tried on I April 1983 after a long spell of in camera
investigation, and sentenced to one year in prison to be
followed by five years of internal exile under surveillance. This

meant that she would be totally isolated from normal life and
from the possibility of serving the Church until the age of
sixty. 92
A new phenomenon appeared in the early 1980s: religious
rock music, even religious rock opera- of course, unofficially.
A certain Evangelical Baptist in his thirties, Valerii Barinov,
organized a Christian rock music group, 'The Trumpet Call',
around 1982. In January 1983 he and his friend Sergei
Timokhin addressed a petition to the USSR Supreme Soviet
requesting permission for the group to give legal religious
concerts. The response was a campaign of character assassin-
ation in the Soviet press. In March 1984 the two friends were
detained in the north-western Arctic port of Murmansk,
accused of trying to escape across the border to Norway.
Although both of them vehemently denied the charges at the
trial in November, Barinov was sentenced to two and a half
years' hard labour for attempting to leave the USSR illegally.
Both prior to the sentence and after it, Barinov declared a
hunger strike, requesting either release as an innocent or
emigration papers for his family and himself. He was forced-
fed, had a heart attack probably as a result of brutal forced
feeding, and his health is in a precarious state. Barinov was
released on schedule in September 1986. 93
Among proposed future activities discussed by the defunct
Ogorodnikov seminar was the organizing of Christian youth
camps. As far as the unofficial Baptists are concerned such
camps have been an annual reality for many years, especially
for children of imprisoned Baptists, who are deprived of
regular parental Christian education. 94 But throughout the
1970s and 1980s the state continued its practice of using all
means to deprive children of the influence of and education by
their Christian parents. As mentioned in Chapter 6, cases have
been reported, especially by the unofficial Baptists and
Pentecostals, of deprivation of parental rights for religious
parents, removal of their children from them and their
placement in special boarding schools. 95 Like so many other
barbarous acts, these were rationalized in the Brezhnev era
under the new 1969 Family Code and in the Brezhnev
Constitution. Both documents oblige Soviet parents to bring
up their progeny as good communists. But the CP membership
stipulates that each communist must be an unrelenting fighter

against religious 'obscurantism', so the requirement to educate
one's children as communists means an obligation to educate
them as atheists. Thus, what in Khrushchev's time was actually
illegal or had no basis in law, and could be explained as an
arbitrary act by a local official and be corrected through courts
and a lot of unpleasant publicity, has now become a legitimate
and legal action in accordance 'with due process oflaw'. 96
In the late 1960s most of the human rights movement in the
Soviet Union developed under the slogan of defence of Soviet
legality, demanding that Soviet officials respect their own laws
and observe them. The use of written laws to persecute religion
shows that written laws are no protection for the individual in a
totalitarian state. The real 'law' is the secret internal instruc-
tion, the text of which remains unknown to the public.
Epilogue
As far as religion and antireligious Soviet policies are con-
cerned Gorbachev's second year in power has been rather
inconclusive. On the positive side was the new law permitting
teenagers to assist at church services (as acolytes, psalmists and
choir singers, presumably - in the past there have been
multiple cases of persecution of young people for such
activities) and children to be present at them. The law, as
mentioned in vol. 1 of this study, also granted for the first time a
legal person status to the lay religious associations, permitting
them now to buy, build and own church property, including
the temples. This status has not been extended to the
hierarchical side of the Chucrh (to the clergy, that is). But
besides the January 1986 issue of the Journal of the Moscow
Patriarchate the law has not appeared in any Soviet official law
books, not even in the Supreme Soviet Herald. Moreover, life in
the Soviet Union is governed not so much by published laws, as
by unpublished secret instructions on how to interpret and
apply (or ignore) the law. At the time of writing (February
1987) not a single case of a church passing into an ownership
possession of a religious society has been heard of. High level
internal Church sources, on the other hand, have confiden-
tially stated that since the Gorbachev's coming to power there
has been neither improvement, nor deterioration in the real
position ofthe Church, but that Christians ought to be ready to
expect the worst.
Although a few prisoners of conscience, inlcuding the
Russian Orthodox poet Ratushinskaia and the Baptist
Miniakov, have been released, others continue their terms in
just as terrible prison and camp conditions as before, still
others, including numerous Baptists-Initiativists, Pente-
costals, Krishnaites, and Orthodox, have been arrested or re-
arrested and sentenced in the course of 1986. According to the
latest data of the Italian Russia cristiana Institute, 123 persons
have been sentenced under Gorbachev for their religion-
related activities, leaving the total number of religious prison-
ers roughly unchanged.
188
Epilogue 189
The degree of interference into the internal life of the

Church by the Soviet state, which is a form of indirect but very
effective persecution, has not changed either. Roman Catholic
bishops of Lithuania had been denied the right to visit the
Vatican in 1986, and the Pope has failed to receive permission
to visit Lithuania in 1987- the 600th anniversary of the signing
of the treaty of royal union between Lithuania and Poland
which included a clause of conversion of Lithuania to Roman
Catholicism. (Up to that point most of Lithuania's princely and
aristocratic families had been Orthodox, while the masses
remained largely heathen.)
The state prevented the Orthodox Church from appointing
Metropolitan Fila ret of Minsk to the see of Leningrad, vacated
by the death of Metropolitan Antonii (Mel'nikov) in 1986.
Filaret (Vakhromeev) is a very popular and somewhat out-
spoken pastor, not favoured by the regime, which prefers the
much more compliant Alexii (Ridiger). It was the latter who
had to be appointed to Leningrad under the regime's pressure.
Similarly, according to internal Church sources, the Church's
choice for the next Patriarch, should the current ailing Pimen
die, is the above Filaret; but the regime opposes his candid-
ature. Its choice is Metropolitan Sergii of Odessa, too com-
pliant even for the contemporary leaders of the Moscow
Patriarchate to stomach. The fears are that the regime may
force the Synod to accept Sergii.
There has been no visible change in the profile or volume of
the antireligious publications in contrast to the general Soviet
literary and cultural scene. The Gorbachev censorship relax-
ation in the sphere of arts and his admission of a catastrophic
moral decline of the Soviet society have resulted in a flood of
literary works, plays, films and sociological articles stressing a
direct link between Christianity and national morals, Chris-
tianity and the family; and conversely, seeing the moral decline
and falling apart of the family as a consequence of atheism. 1
This has met categorical reprimands from the Party ideo-
logical establishment. The counter-attack was begun by the
veteran of the antireligious establishment, Kryvelev, in Koms-
omol'skaia pravda (30 July 1986), who condemns contemporary
Soviet writers, particularly Astafiev, Aitmatov and Bykov, for
'flirting with a god' (Lenin's phrase) and reminds them that for
a communist morals are a product of class struggle, nota legacy
of the Church. Similar attacks followed in other newspapers,

particularly in thecentra1Pravda(28 September 1986), where a
policy line editorial took Soviet literary figures to task for
confusing morals and religion and thus departing from the
'scientific' interpretation of the world. The article reminded
them of the new Communist Party Programme adopted at the
Twenty-seventh Party Congress in the Spring of 1986, which
had called on the intensification of'scientific-atheistic upbring-
ing', but then stressed the importance of 'the creation and
broad dissemination of new Soviet rituals'. In other words, the
Programme suggests overcoming the faith in a Supernatural
by a religious mythologisation of communism and its temporal
leadership.
But the call to intensify antireligious struggle and to divorce
ethics and morals from Christianity (or any other religious
teachings for that matter) did not stop on the level of
newspaper editorials, albeit as important as Pravda's. L. N.
Ligachev, the CPSU Central Committee's Second Secretary,
i.e. the man in charge of all ideological policies, without
mentioning names, picked up the attack on those men of arts
and other Soviet authors who 'encountering breaches in
socialist morals begin to call for a more tolerant attitudes to
religion, want to return to a religious morality'. He virtually
repeats all the theses of Kryvelev and of the above Pravda
editorial in his address to the All-Union Conference of the
Heads of Chairs of Social Sciences at the higher learning
centres of the USSR (Pravda, 2 October 1986), and calls for a
more intensive, effective and decisive struggle against religion
and all its influences. In a milder form this call was repeated by
Gorbachev in a speech in Tashkent (Pravda Vostoka, 25
November 1986).
What is unusual is a dualism incompatible with the principles
and practices of totalitarianism. On the one hand all forms of
religious apologia are condemned from the highest possible
party platforms, on the other, following an appeal to this effect
at the June 1986 Soviet Writers' Union Congress, a Soviet
Culture Fund was formed under the chairmanship of D. S.
Likhachev inN ovember 1986. The aim of the Fund is to protect
and finance restoration of historical monuments and the
education of the nation in the spirit of love and respect of the
national history and culture. The Fund seems to have a more
Epilogue 191
official backing and greater prerogatives than the republican

associations for the protection of historical and cultural
monuments (VOOPIK in the Russian Republic). Needless to
say, the main objectives of restoration and protection will be
churches and monasteries, and religious art; and the masses
will supposedly be educated to appreciate them in their proper
context, although exhibited as and in museums. But most
interesting is the combination of personnel in the Fund's
administrative board. The chairman is Professor Dimitri
Likhachev, a practising Christian, actively defending Christian
culture and even the positive role of the churches in the moral
upbringing of the nation in many of his latest writings and
speeches. Other members include Gorbachev's wife and
Archbishop (Metropolitan at the time of this writing) Pitirim,
the chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's Publications'
Committee and editor-in-chief of the journal of the Moscow
Patriarchate. 2 This is the first case under the Soviet regime that a
representative of the Church participates in such an official
secular body (not counting peace committees which exist for
foreign propaganda purposes alone).
Moreover, some of the attacks on religion did not remain
unanswered in the Soviet press. A Belorussian philosopher
and, horrible dictu, the antireligious Znanie Society lecturer,
Pylilo, criticised Kryvelev, flatly stating that the morality of
many people is of Christian origin and that 'the time has come
to reject the practice of unfounded denunciation of the whole
heritage of religion and its morality'. Kom. pravda counter-
attacked and stated that Pylilo should be ousted from the
Znanie Society. 3 But two months later it published two articles:
one by the occasionally controversial poet Yevtushenko, the
other by a militant atheist, philosopher Kaltakhchian.
Yevtushenko takes Kryvelev to task, hinting that he belongs to
that army of Soviet semi-intellectuals who lack real culture
owing to the one-sided Soviet education depriving whole
generations of the Christian cultural heritage. He laments the
lack of Bibles for free sale in contrast with the Qoran, which has
been officially published. Atheism, writes Yevtushenko, 'ought
to be one of the expressions of our society, along with belief in
God'. Needless to say, Kaltakhchian defends the Leninist
programme of militant atheism in the same issue of the
Communist youth newspaper. 4
The year ended just as inconclusively. The December issue

of the journal which most often publishes Russian nationalists,
Our Contemporary, came out with two articles on the tragic
demographic and family situation in the Soviet Union, linking
it to a national moral catastrophe as well as Soviet socio-
economic conditions. The authors of the more explicit of the
two articles conclude that the traditional family was held
together by:
firstly, certain economic relations strengthening the stability
of the family;
secondly, Christian ethics morally strengthening the stability
of the family;
thridly, public opinion which used to be ... 'rather severe,
unrelenting' in its requirement to live according to Christian
morals. 5
But an authorative article in Pravda about a month later,
indicates that the Party continues to be bent on a programme of
unrelenting militant atheism, will not accept the concept of an
organic connection between religion and culture and religion
and ethics. 6
Does this mean a further intensification of antireligious
propaganda and persecutions, which in the Soviet context, as
the volume has demonstrated, is inseparable from concerted
antireligious campaigns? Orin need to gain support of the non-
party masses and, particularly, of the non-party intelligentsia
for his economic reform mainly opposed by the party establish-
ment, will Gorbachev continue to tolerate the current 'dia-
logue' in the media? In the latter case the general 'climate' in
which the believers live and function is bound to become
milder.
Appendix 1
The following four documents were written by Metropolitan Sergii,Junior,
of Vilnius (Lithuania) and Exarch of Latvia of the Moscow Patriarchate
during the German occupation of the Baltic territories. M. Sergii, a Soviet
citizen and one of the only four surviving ruling bishops of the Russian
Patriarchal Church on the Soviet territory, was appointed Exarch for the
Baltic republics on their occupation by the Soviets in 1940. In 1941 he went
into hiding as the Germans were advancing, instead of retreating with the
Soviet troops.
The first document was apparently one of M. Sergii's memoranda to the
Germans on the real situation of the Church in the USSR, especially of the late
1930s, explaining and justifying the enforced loyalty ofM. Sergii, Senior, and
his Church administration to the Soviets, and thus justifying his own
continuing loyalty to the Moscow Patriarchate even under the Germans.
The second document shows his continuing apologia for his superior in
Moscow, even after the latter's anti-German propaganda statement. It is an
article in the Riga(?) diocesan journal of October 1942.
The third document, of 14 May 1943, is the Exarch's article which was
apparently printed in a German language newspaper, Neue Ordnung,
published in Croatia, according to a German caption in long hand above the
text.
The fourth document is the Exarch's most detailed analysis and account of
the history and life ofthe Church in the USSR before the war, giving details
on the legal position of the clergy and of the Church per se, or rather, lack
thereof. This report, written apparently for the Germans in january 1944,
could with only minor alterations be a description of the position of the
Church in our own days (especially after 1961), as a thoughtful reader will
undoubtedly conclude. Note that there is in that document, in contrast to
Document l, a note of doubt regarding the wisdom of the 1927 Declaration of
Loyalty, or at least a legitimization for such doubts. Four months after this last
document had been written the Exarch was brutally murdered when his car
was attacked by an armed band dressed in German uniforms. The Exarch
and all his companions were machine-gunned. The Germans declared the
murderers were Soviet partisans. The official Soviet version is that he was
murdered by the Germans. The latest samiuiat evidence indicates that the
murderers were Soviet agents indeed (Pospielovsky, Russian Church, vol. I,
232).
METRO PO LIT AN SERGII OF VILNIUS, EXARCH OF

LATVIA AND ESTONIA, UNPUBLISHED REPORT
(TO THE GERMANS) ON THE CHURCH UNDER THE
SOVIET REGIME
From the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet authorities

declared a struggle against all types of religious convictions, based upon the
193
194 Appendix 1
principle that religion is the opium of the people, as is, in general, any
idealistic Weltanschauung.
The main blow was directed against Orthodoxy. Although the Decree even
spoke of the freedom of the performance of the 'religious cult', the
authorities pursued the church activists with the utmost cruelty, covering up
their persecutions of the Church and believers by the struggle with counter-
revolution and its political opposition. Of course, no one doubted the simple
truth, that every member of the Church, and most of all her servants, were
persecuted before all else for their faith and adherence to Orthodoxy.
Such a condition existed already in 1923, that the Head of the Russian
Orthodox Church, His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, was forced to acknow-
ledge- as was the entire Church- his guilt before the Bolsheviks for 'anti-
Soviet' activity. Having made public his confession through the press, the
Patriarch expressed regret over the former position of the Church, and with
his return from house-arrest he promised to change his political course,
refusing not only active, but even passive interference with the Soviet
government.
What conditions called forth such a step by the Head of the Orthodox
Church with its flock of many millions?
The Bolsheviks, having siezed power by means of ruthless violence, and by
shedding a sea of blood of the Russian people, above all encountered the
Church's censure. Only the Church openly dared to declare the truth to them
to their face. The ruling circles and the intellegentsia either perished
honourably in the struggle with the usurpers, or were forced to flee abroad.
The voice ofthe Church remained solitary because the Russian people, worn
out by terror, could offer no real support. Hope remained alive for the first
five to ten years for assistance from the European states; but even this receded
further and further with each passing year, remaining only a distant and
perhaps insubstantial dream for the Russian people. Thus, on one side there
remained a small group of cruel usurpers - atheists - who were never
troubled by their methods of terror, and on the other 130 000 000 believing
Russian people. Meanwhile, life took its course, but each side understood the
necessity of some legal form, defining the position of the Church. This
position was especially strengthened after the recognition of the Soviet
Government by the European states. The Bolsheviks had to demonstrate
their 'tolerant' relationship to Church life.
If, in 1923, Patriarch Tikhon found it necessary to make a sacrifice of
personal humiliation for the sake of the Church, then at the moment of the
accession to the direction of the Church by Metropolitan Sergii of Nizhni-
Novgorod, one of the locum-tenens of the Patriarch, there arose with full
clarity the necessity of the stabilization of the Church administration. It is
necessary not to forget that the Bolsheviks, for reasons outlined above, had
already taken their own peculiar steps at 'legalising' the Church. Through the
agents of the Cheka they found a group of bishops and priests who
announced the deposition of the Patriarch, named themselves the 'Living
Church' or 'Renovationists', and who were already prepared to seize the
Church administration in their own hands. They even advanced the political
correctness of the Bolsheviks, and started on the path of open collaboration
with the organs of the Cheka. But this 'rebellion' against ecclesiastical truth
Appendix I 195
suffered a great defeat- the people did not follow them, and since the vile
intentions of the Bolsheviks became well known, the latter were forced to
change their tactics.
They even understood that the persecution of believers and the Church
was repeating the glorious historical page of the Christian martyrs of the past
and only strengthening the Orthodox consciousness of the Russian people.
Metropolitan Sergii, who had ascended to the direction of the Church
administration, was a man of high culture and a wide diplomatic mind, a
doctor of the historical sciences and of canon law. Having grasped the mood
of the episcopacy, the clergy, and believers, he fulfilled Patriarch Tikhon's
undertaking of the legislation of the Central Patriarchal Administration of
the Russian Church. In his declaration, founded on the true religious duties
of the Church, the Metropolitan announced both a refusal of the utilization
of his religious convictions for political goals, and the total loyalty of the
Church to the Soviet system. It must be said bluntly, that the Soviet
Government was deeply interested in establishing quiet amidst the emigre
circles and demanded appeals to these circles, which were under the
jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. The Metropolitan - the locum-
tenens of the Patriarch- agreed to this, because these anti-Soviet statements
on the part of the emigre church activists did not have any practical meaning,
but especially painfully reflected on the Church in Russia. Every anti-Soviet
statement made in exile drew forth great sacrifices from among the
episcopacy, the clergy, and even from the ranks of the believing intellectuals.
Briefly put, by the efforts ofthe Head of the Church an external agreement
with the Soviet government was reached- a certain legal status of the central
Church authority- though inwardly they undoubtedly remained enemies.
This was clear to both sides, and Metropolitan Sergii and his co-workers did
not delude themselves with the hope of the transformation of Bolshevik
cruelty into any kind of mercy.
HOW DID THIS BENEFIT THE BOLSHEVIKS?
I. Having agreed to the existence of a central Church authority, they had

the possibility of controlling the actions of this ecclesiastical authority.
2. To gain the general approval of the Western governments there now
existed the 'facade' of a free Church within Soviet conditions.
HOW DID THIS BENEFIT THE CHURCH?
There was the possibility of a united leadership, bearing in mind the

existence of ecclesiastical schisms and the atmosphere of an extreme
disintegration of church discipline. The suffering Russian people knew the
cost of this sacrifice, but they understood that for the preservation of Church
order and life this sacrifice was necessary. These very people reached a
fundamental conclusion: to unite the church masses around the genuine
source of Orthodoxy.
This step by the Head of the Russian Church drew forth the false
conviction among the leaders of Western and exiled believing circles that for
196 Appendix 1
the price of the betrayal of ecclesiastical freedom, personal well-being was

purchased.
Life itself refuted this false view. All church activists recognized the
necessity of unity with Metropolitan Sergii and they all sincerely supported
his undertaking, but their destiny did not escape the cruel punishing hand of
theCheka.
There also arose the conviction that the Moscow Patriarchate was not free
in its ecclesiastical actions. On account of their foreign-political position and
protecting the consciousness of the 'free' religious liberties of their Soviet
citizens, the Bolsheviks decided never to interfere crudely in the decisions of
the internal administration of ecclesiastical life. And was it really necessary
for them to resort to using the Moscow Patriarchate? If the animation of
ecclesiastical life in this or that place was disagreable to them, if it was
necessary to paralyze any undertaking of the Patriarchate, then the
Bolsheviks resorted to their favourite method of administrative violence -
the exiling of the bishop and clergymen, the closing of churches, and so forth.
It should also be noted that they manifested great interest in the decisions of
the Patriarchate concerning foreign questions, and then only expressed their
wishes in personal conversations with the patriarchal locum-tenens. These
conversations were always confidential, and were known of by hardly anyone
in the Church. We knew of the Bolsheviks' personal interest to place us-for
the most part the episcopacy - under their control. In that case they
recommended someone from among secular people to be placed in the
capacity of a secretary, a servant, a cell-attendant. Usually, we easily perceived
such an appearance of 'concern' and considered it for the better to have
around oneself a notorious agent, instead of a secret one who would suddenly
succeed in entering into one's confidence.
The Bolsheviks realized their fundamental control over ecclesiastical life
through the so-called 'Commission concerning the cults'. The Central
Commission was created under the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and it
further descended into a network of corresponding local commissions. The
composition of the Central Commission and of the local ones remained
secret, but they were undoubtedly ruled by the GPU-NKVD. The
Commission chose the so-called 'instructor concerning the cults', i.e. a well-
known lecturer who entered into the life of every community. Apart from the
central ecclesiastical organ- the Patriarchate- he demanded from every unit
the necessary information. Directly, they handed over to him lists of
believers, forms with the names of those who had signed agreements for the
use of a church and property, or concerning the composition of the clergy,
and so forth. The instructor entered into certain ties with separate persons of
the community, not only checking out the life of the community through
them, but also the actions of the central church authority, very often
discovering in her decrees objectionable sides. The Patriarchate presented
information concerning the composition of its members, workers, and the
status of its dioceses to the Commission under the Moscow soviet.
From the above, the Patriarchate itself, as the central ecclesiastical
establishment, existed, as far as the Bolsheviks were concerned, only as a prop
for the sake of credulous foreigners.
The Patriarchal locum-tenens, we- the episcopacy and his closest helpers-
Appendix 1 197
reconciled ourselves with this humiliation and disgrace for the sake of the
relative preservation of the Church for the Russian people and in the hope of
future deliverance from the atheistic yoke. I repeat, the position itself of the
Moscow Patriarchate did not protect her members from Bolshevik persecu-
tions at all. Many of her members suffered, many had yet to suffer, but their
hour had not yet arrived, by the will of God. Metropolitan Sergii personally
compared our position with chickens in the kitchen garden of a cook. The day
would come when even from the small garden the next victim would be
snatched. All were doomed, but the cruel cook did not lead all to the chopping
block immediately.
My accompanying service record will testify that I kept myself all of this
time enclosed within the life of the Church, never abandoning her for a piece
of bread or any personal benefit. Being the closest bishop to the Patriarchal
locum-tenens, I consciously supported his heroic feat of service to the
Russian Orthodox Church, and was convinced and remain convinced of the
correctness of his position concerning the external state ofthe Church in the
horrible conditions of the Soviet atheistic terror. As regards my direction of
the Exarchate in the Baltic territories, evidence of it exists among the organs
of the local Latvian clergy. During my three-month-long stay in Riga under
Soviet control I did not have any kind of relations with the civil authorities, for
the statute itself dealing with ecclesiastical communities was not introduced
here by the Bolsheviks.
Sergii, Metropolitan of Lithuania

Exarch for Latvia and Estonia
20 August 1941
City of Riga
THE EXARCH-METROPOLITAN SERGII'S REPLY TO THE

DECLARATION OF THE METRO PO LIT AN OF MOSCOW
We have been informed that London radio has recently broadcast the new
political declaration ofthe Metropolitan of Moscow. In this declaration it was
supposedly said that the Germans, upon seizing certain territory, are
destroying the Orthodox Church and its sacred things and are persecuting
the Orthodox people. Based upon this, the Metropolitan of Moscow
supposedly drew the conclusion that Orthodoxy, and Christianity in general
throughout the world, could only be saved by the victory of Bolshevik military
might.
In answer to this appalling declaration, we consider it to be our duty to say
the following:
During the entire time of their rule the Bolsheviks have subjected the
Orthodox Church, and in general every religion, to the cruellest of
persecutions. We know this by first-hand experience, for in the course of
many years spent in the Soviet Union serving the Church, we were subjected
repeatedly, as were others, to painful humiliations, imprisonments, and
every sort of brutality, open or secret. The destructiveness of the Bolshevik
persecution of the Church is irrefutably witnessed to by hundreds of
198 Appendix 1
thousands of executed, tortured, incarcerated, and exiled persons - true

sufferers for their faith. The world has yet to see anything comparable to the
Bolshevik's destructive rage against everything that is holy. All churches have
been plundered by the Bolsheviks, and almost all have been profaned and
closed, while many have been altogether destroyed. The Bolsheviks have
closed all the monasteries and church schools without exception, they have
destroyed the ecclesiastical press, and they have completely eliminated all
preaching. The teaching of the Law of God has been forbidden in all schools,
and children are now growing up knowing nothing about Christ, His
teaching, and His Church. And what is worse- in the last years the m<tiority of
children have not even been baptised. We can hardly be surprised, then, that
under the evil rule of Bolshevism all that is holy is being uprooted from the
soul, the people are being depersonalised and growing wild, and the soul of
the people is dying in convulsions. The Bolsheviks are systematically
exterminating Christianity. And this is natural. Communist doctrine
demands this.
The Bolsheviks cannot renounce their militant atheism and fierce hatred
toward the Church. To do this, they would be forced to renounce
communism and cease to be Bolsheviks. This is also impossible, as impossible
as it is for ice to become hot and not melt. But the Bolsheviks are capable of any
kind of sham. When it comes to lying and hypocrisy, they are unsurpassable.
This is their true element. In the course of only a quarter of a century, they
have managed to deceive Russia and the entire world. If it would prove to be
politically advantageous for them, then they would even pretend to be the
defenders of Christianity.
As the instrument of their lie, the Bolsheviks have now chosen the
Metropolitan of Moscow. They forced him to write appeals which would be to
the liking of the Archbishop of Canterbury. We have no dealings with the
latter, but we know the Metropolitan of Moscow. May God be merciful to him.
We are co-suffering with him, because we see that the Bolsheviks are forcing
him to publicly contradict his personal convictions. And having known him
for a long time, we can clearly imagine what horrible moral torments the
Bolsheviks are using to force him to utter these false words. For he knows of
no others that are worse- that without the Church Russia is a corpse, and that
under the Bolsheviks the Church is in a grave, from which she can arise and in
truth will arise together with her people only after and in consequence of the
final destruction of Bolshevik power. And he so clearly understands that to
desire the victory of the Bolshevik army means to desire the death not only of
Russia, to call for the annihilation notonlyofthe Russian Church, but that this
ultimately means to court disaster for all of Europe, and for the entire
Christian world. For the victory ofthe Bolsheviks would be tantamount to the
general destruction of Christianity. But God will not permit this victory. The
Bolsheviks are doomed.
The Metropolitan of Moscow cannot but know that his public declarations
are casting the relationship between the Germans and the Orthodox Church
in a false light. We will not speak about this question in all of its breadth, but
will limit ourselves to what is happening in our ecclesiatical jurisdiction.
In this district there are, first and foremost, the dioceses of Lithuania,
Latvia, and Estonia, united in the Exarchate which was entrusted by the
Appendix 1 199
patriarchal locum-tenens to our ecclesiastical care. Further, in our district

there now exists vast Russian territory which adjoins the countries just
mentioned, limited to the east by a linear front which extends from the
environs of Leningrad and the shores of Ladoga to Il'men and farther to the
southeast. In this territory there are several million Russian Orthodox
people, amongst which there are only about a hundred priests, but not one
bishop. Such are the fruits of Bolshevik rule. We considered it our duty to
bring this territory under our arch pastoral protection for a while, in order
slowly to begin the restoration of church life, and for this goal we sent there
missionaries from our Exarchate. These were clergymen whom the
Bolsheviks did not succeed in liquidating during the short time of their rule in
the Baltic countries. And so we are loudly testifying that within our
ecclesiastical jurisdiction the German authorities have not only not begun to
struggle against the Orthodox Church, but have, on the contrary, granted
her free development. In every possible way, they also have helped to lighten
our difficult task of liberating Russian territory from the Bolsheviks.
The German authorities are in no way violating the canonical order of our
district which, as before, forms part of the Russian Orthodox Church and
freely maintains prayerful communion with the locum-tenens of the
Patriarchal throne. During a battle, of course, churches, side by side with
other buildings as well, could suffer- this is inevitable. But the allegation that
the Germans destroyed or profaned our churches with premeditation is
simply slanderous. In Novgorod, it was Soviet- and not German- artillery
that was exploding around the St Sophia Cathedral. And this was deliberate,
allowing shell after shell to explode in this ancient holy site of ours during a
lull in the battle. On the contrary, the Germans returned to us those churches
confiscated by the Bolsheviks.
These churches had been transformed into warehouses, clubs, theatres-
now they were again consecrated, and the word of God is resounding in them.
The allegation that the Germans are in some manner oppressing the
believing laity is also slanderous.
Sergii (Voskresensky)
Metropolitan of Vilnius
Exarch of Latvia
BOLSHEVISM MUST BE SMASHED
In the world there is much evil and sorrow, but there is nothing more
frightening and pernicious than Bolshevism. Bolshevism rose up against
God and trampled down man. Bolshevism not only destroys, but corrupts. It
destroys all that is sacred and of value, by which the soul of man is alive. It
transforms free persons into faceless slaves. It poisons them with its lie, and
tortures them with its brutality. A country with Bolshevism is ruled by fear,
hidden under the mask of a manipulated devotion and dictated enthusiasm.
Fear for oneself and one's own, fear of poverty and hunger; fear of
denunciation; and fear of the GPU and before each other. In a country under
Bolshevism all are forced to dissemble and lie, in order to escape a swift
200 Appendix 1
reprisal. There people suffer not only because they are half-starving and
going about in rags, exhausted by unendurable toil, not knowing any rest and
nightly awaitng arrest; but they suffer all the more acutely and irrevocably
because they feel themselves to be a people whose dignity has been trampled
upon and who live with a contemptible fear rankling in their breasts. There
they do not know the joy of free initiative, free labour, of free creativity; they
do not have consolation in a free faith, in the freedom of the search for truth.
In a country with Bolshevism everything is reckoned and determined from
above, beginning with the doctrine of Marxism and ending with the daily
schedule of compulsory work and further with the compulsory participation
in public meetings of various sorts. There every person becomes the
unwilling screw in the iron machine of communism. And how repulsively this
machine works! Constructed with the aim of bringing order to everything, it
leads everything into disorder. A schedule established to move the entire
country forward in five years, brings destruction daily everywhere. Everyone
fears responsibility, shifting it on to the next person and thus causing
stagnation in all matters. Everyone hates their forced labour, shirking it, and
trying only to become a little less tired from their hateful drudgery. This
resulted in the breakdown of all programmes and in constant confusion.
People felt their lives becoming meaningless, ugly, and lawless, filled with
gloomy boredom and irrational fear. But they did not dare admit this. They
were compelled to maintain the pretence of happiness. As slaves they were
ordered to proclaim that they were the most free of all the peoples on earth,
that there was nothing more joyful than their suffering lives, that they loved
their hateful overlords, that Bolshevik savagery was the highest form of
culture, and that the Bolshevik humiliation of human personality raises one's
dignity.
But they hate it all! Oh, how they hate their executioners! They did not
forget, nor did they forgive their humiliations and their sufferings. And
really, could they forget and forgive? Never! Russia demands requital,
awaiting the hour of retribution. For victory over Bolshevism we, the Russian
people, are prepared for anything. And therefore Russia awaited the war,
desired the war. In the war, she saw the sole possibility to smash Bolshevism,
to enter into new open space, to a free life,and to begin anew thethreadofher
national history- that scared thread unravelled by the Bolshevik revolution.
Our Church shared this desire, because only in the military destruction of
Bolshevism did she see the path to her liberation. She was almost smothered
by the persecutions heaped on her and survived, I am determined to say, by a
miracle; a miracleofthat simple, heartfelt, unlearned faith which the Russian
people succeeded in preserving in their heart, despite all of the efforts of the
Bolshevik pogrom-makers. If the Bolsheviks would now succeed in winning
the war, then the Russian Church would be doomed to destruction. Driven
into a corner by German arms, the Bolsheviks realised that they could not
drive their slaves into battle only by machine-guns, or excite them only by the
slogans of communism. In Russia, no one has believed in these slogans for a
long time. And so the Bolsheviks began to speak of the defence of the
Homeland and Faith, appealing to feelings of Russian patriotism and
Orthodox religious sentiment. They were convinced of the strength of these
Appendix 1 201
feelings in the Russian people, and decided to exploit them. But they did not
forgive the Russian people for these feelings. For whoever had these feelings
rejected and hated both Bolshevik godlessness and the Communist Inter-
national. The vitality of these feelings in the Russian people manifested the
failure of Bolshevism, its cruel persecutions and crazed propaganda. In the
event of its victory, Bolshevism will avenge this failure- it will disperse the
Russian people throughout the world, destroy all the churches, and
annihilate the Russian clergy to the last man. For Bolshevism cannot change
or be regenerated. Its satanic nature is immutable and unchangeable. Only
naive people, deceived by Bolshevism and completely misunderstanding its
essence, could think otherwise. There are no such people in Russia. But
unfortunately, one can meet such people abroad, where they have neither
experienced Bolshevism, nor encountered it face to face.
The mendacity of Bolshevism surpasses all probability. There are people
who cannot imagine such deceitfulness. And they accept the assurances of the
Bolsheviks at face value. They think that, indeed, Bolshevism entered the war
not for the sake of international revolution and the universal triumph of the
Communist International, but for the Homeland, the Faith, and the freedom
of the people - especially the Slavs; for the self-determination of national
culture and the salvation of European civilisation and so forth- in a word, for
everything that is dear to the opponents of Bolshevism and hateful to itself,
for everything about which Bolshevik propaganda so importunately
clamours, yet insightfully allowing for the fact that by the open propagation
of internationalism, communism, and atheism it cannot presently attract to
its side public opinion in either allied Bolshevik, hostile, or neutral countries.
And so with unparalleled cynicism, Soviet propaganda is now shouting out
the very slogans for which the Bolsheviks have shot a million people, and for
which, in the event of their victory, they will yet shoot many more millions.
'Only let us win, and then we will settle all accounts'- this is the fundamental
principle of the contemporary wartime propaganda of the Bolsheviks. And
the world will suffer if it does not understand this and deceives itself!
The Bolsheviks are forcing the Church to be their accomplice in order to
further promote this deception. They are forcing the Church to call for a war
against the Bolsheviks' enemies, though they themselves are the cruelest of
her persecutors. This persecution is so monstrous that some people are
incapable of imagining its possibility and are therefore inclined to think that,
indeed, the Church in the Soviet Union is now free and that on her own
initiative and conviction is calling upon the believing people in Russia and
beyond her borders to arise in the defence of godless Bolshevism. But surely
everyone understands that this assumption is absolutely absurd, that it is
impossible for any kind of Church to support atheism by its own will. Be
assured that the voice of the Church resounding out of Russia now is
counterfeit. It is not her voice at all. It is the voice of the Bolsheviks speaking in
her name. They squeeze the throat of the Church for the words they need.
But the Church cannot speak the words she desires to. Yet I hear these unsaid
words. llere is what they say: 'Whoever believes in God - help us! Never
believe the Bolsheviks about anything! We are in captivity, we are being
tortured! They are forcing us to lie! Forgive us, for you have not experienced
202 Appendix 1
what we are experiencing! Do not nail the Church into a grave! Do not nail
Russia into a grave! Destroy the Bolsheviks! May God reward you for this! If
the Bolsheviks prevail, then we will both perish!'
Do not think that this authentic voice of the Church exists only in my
imagination and that I am speaking about something of which I do not know.
No, I know what is happening in the Soviet Union and I know that there the
Church is suffering. I know also the mind of the Church, for I have come
from there. Until 1941 -the time of my appointment to Riga- I lived in
Moscow and intimately participated in the labours of the Patriarchate,
carrying a common cross with my fellow brother-bishops. I know of the
horror there to this very day, and everything of which I am speaking is
grounded in my personal experience, accumulated at the altar, in a cell, in
prison, and in many years of personal contact with arch pastors, pastors, and
the laity of Russia scattered throughout various cities and villages. I have the
right to witness to the local life and expectations of the people and
churchmen, and I am obliged to do this, so that by my silence I do not render
indirect assistance to the diffusion of Bolshevik lies and the perpetuation of
Bolshevik persecution.
And do not imagine that the words which I am speaking were prompted or
dictated by someone from the side. No, I am now absolutely free-as free as is
my three-million-membered flock in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the vast
Russian province from Leningrad to Pskov and farther south. The German
army brought them this freedom, having driven out the Bolsheviks. Now
that, as before, we are in canonical dependence to the Mother Church in
Russia, we are able to work in the vineyard of Christ unhindered. The
Germans have returned what the Bolsheviks have deprived us of. They have
returned to us the churches taken away by the Bolsheviks and we are now able
to serve and preach in them with freedom; they have returned to us the right,
abolished by the Bolsheviks, to teach the Law of God in secular schools, to
establish our own schools for the preparation of pastors, and to publish an
unlimited number of books and newspapers with religious content. And in
truth, according to our strength, we use all of these rights of ours- we use
them and thank God Who has granted us such freedom.
We do not want to lose this freedom. Freedom is as dear to us as the air we
breathe, as life itself. Listen to what the believers in our Russian villages and
cities are saying: 'We will bear anything- not only Bolshevism!' And again:
'There is no sacrifice that is too dear to us, if it leads to victory over
Bolshevism!' You have not experienced Bolshevism. Perhaps it is not very
easy for you to understand us. But we know that an ally of Bolshevism is an
enemy of God and humanity. And whoever is able to participate in the
struggle against Bolshevism, but does not because of one pretext or another,
indirectly supports Bolshevism and- whether he likes it or not- he is helping
those who are crucifying and tormenting the Church of Christ. Do not believe
them or their agents, or those who assure you that we here are suffering from
oppression and only dreaming of the return of the Bolsheviks. This is simply
a shameless lie! We, all of us, are praying for victory over Bolshevism, for the
liberation of the Church and Homeland from the communist yoke, for the
gift of strength in this struggle with them, and for blessings upon those who
enter into this struggle. And we believe that the Lord will have mercy upon
Appendix 1 203
the Russian people and upon those people who come to our assistance; we
believe that Bolshevism will be destroyed, that humanity will be saved from it,
and that the Church of God will arise to a new, free and joyful life.
Sergii
Metropolitan of Lithuania and Vilnius
Patriarchal Exarch of Latvia and Estonia
14 May 1943
THE CHURCH IN THE USSR BEFORE THE WAR
The self-appointed goal of the Bolsheviks was to obliterate Christianity.

Renunciation of this task would have been tantamount to self-destruction for
Bolshevism. Such a renunciation was inconceivable. This is clear to everyone
who realizes the satanic essence of Bolshevism.
From what source were statements taken that Bolshevism had reconciled
itself with Christianity and had even supposedly come forward as its
defender? The Bolsheviks themselves set these rumours in motion, consider-
ing such a masquerade as beneficial for themselves due to the nature of the
times. And even earlier, in the interests of their foreign propaganda, they
feigned innocence concerning the persecution of the Church. The lie,
together with brutality, was always their favourite weapon of political action.
Besides the lie and brutality, Bolshevism availed itself of no other means.
Only by these means did it wage war against Christianity. With these tools it
attempted to root out the Orthodox faith from the Russian soul. But the
Russian soul did not betray its faith. And therefore, one can look to the
Russian future with hope.
The Orthodox Church stood and stands on guard of the Russian soul. She
herself was struck by some of the most terrible blows of Bolshevism. It
subjected the Church to the worst possible brutality and entangled her with
pernicious deception. But it enkindled in the Church the reciprocal strength
of a confessing and suffering heroism. And this spiritual strength, the
strength of righteousness is unconquerable. The flame of faith which was
arising anew in the churches blazed up on the former ruins.
Bolshevism directed its blows against all aspects of ecclesiastical life. It
drove away, exiled, and annihilated almost the entire clergy and those
members of the laity who were distinguished by their work for the Church; it
closed all the monasteries and almost all of the churches; it liquidated all
educational and charitable institutions of the Church; expropriated ecclesi-
astical property; prohibited church publications; deprived believers of the
right to conduct religious propaganda, i.e. the right to defend and spread
their faith; and organized and conducted a violent atheistic propaganda.
Bolshevism expended special efforts to destroy the internal organization
of the Church. To achieve this, it first reduced theorganizationoftheChurch
to a position of illegality, and thus unrecognized by the State. The established
Church, her canonical structure, her hierarchy, her organs, her membership
in the Universal Church, and her subdivision into dioceses, deaneries, and
204 Appendix 1
parishes were all concepts unknown to the Soviet law. To allude to such
concepts in their relationship with the Soviet State was both juridically
inadmissible and practically useless.
Only the so-called 'groups of twenty', which were at the head of separate
churches, legally existed in the Soviet Union and these groups of twenty
laymen were in no way obliged to submit even to the Patriarchate. At least this
is how conditions remained until the war. From that time, perhaps, there
occurred some kind of 'decorative' changes in their relationship of which,
however, I know nothing definite and of which, therefore, I am unable to say
anything. I speak only of what I know by my own experience acquired in the
pre-war years when I personally participated in the struggles of the
Patriarchate.
But I do not doubt that if some kind of changes did occur in the position of
the Church then, from the Bolshevik's perspective, this was only a new
simulation or a new form of malicious deception by which they always
shrouded their relationship to the Church. In actuality, the position of the
Church could not have changed and, of course, would not change as long as
the Bolsheviks ruled in Russia.
What is this 'group of twenty?' It is twenty laymen or laywomen who were
personally responsible for directing, under extremely difficult conditions, a
nationalized church temporarily leased to them by the State for the
organization of public liturgical services. The realization of just such a
procedure to open a church so that the religious rites could be served in it
depended upon the local 'commission concerning the cults'. It was also
dependent upon this commission as to whether or not a church was to be
closed at any given moment and, circumventing the authority of the
corresponding group of twenty, dismiss it from its direction. Equally as well,
the commission could, without closing the church, turn it over from one
group of twenty to another even ifthey did not belong to the same faith, or in
specific cases, to the same - using the Soviet expression - 'religious
orientation'.
The commission concerning the cults used this right extensively, as for
example when they forcibly took churches away from believers of the
'Tikhonite orientation' and handed them over to supporters of the
'Renovationist orientation'.
The commissions were made up almost exclusively of party members
active in the League of the Godless. The commission set itself the goal of
stifling the religious life of the population, over which it was commissioned to
direct a most severe supervision. In particular, the commission directed the
registration of the entire local clergy. One must bear in mind, that according
to Soviet law, the right to celebrate the religious rites was granted only to those
priests who were registered in the corresponding commission of the cults.
They could exercise this right in that church to which they had been assigned
as a priestly celebrant by the commission- to celebrate the religious rites in
other churches or outside of the churches was strictly forbidden to them.
To all intents and purposes the group oftwenty is totally dependent upon
the commission of the cults.
The composition of a group of twenty contained Soviet agents who
reported to their superiors about everything in the church, including the
Appendix 1 205
behaviour of the clergy and believers. The slightest carelessness or

impropriety in the implementation of those conditions in which a given
church was turned over to the management of a group of twenty was
sufficient to cause thechurch'sclosure, and the registered clergy, members of
the twenty and others who had ties with the church, to be exiled.
The church had to be maintained in good condition by the group of twenty
and could be closed if the authorities found that its appearance was not
properly kept up. This always gave the authorities the possibility to close the
church under the pretence that it was in danger of collapsing on the
congregation- for appearance's sake this was done by means of an official act.
Arbitrarily closing the churches under such false pretences, the Bolsheviks
contended that this measure was in no way an act of struggle against religion,
but rather one exclusively concerned with the safety of the believing
congregation.
The use of a church for liturgical services was regarded, essentially, as a
lucrative business undertaken by the group of twenty; as a 'milking' by it and
the clergy of great profits from the population and its 'religious prejudices'
or, to put it better, as a kind of shameful trade which the State tolerated as a
temporary necessity. But, showing such condescension to this deep-rooted
'vice of religiosity', the State strove to render it harmless by extracting from
the church or, more precisely, from the group of twenty, a huge tax which
must have devoured the entire net income of their 'religious enterprises'. The
rate of this tax was fixed altogether arbitrarily; however, a delay in its
payment involved the closure of a church. This allowed the authorities, with
the appearance oflegality, deliberately to fix a back-breaking tax and, under
the pretence of its non-payment, to close churches, againcontendingthat this
was being done not for the sake of the struggle against religion, but
exclusively for the defence of the material interests of the believing
population against exploitation by 'religious speculators'.
Such an excessive tax was exacted from the clergy. The income of the clergy
was considered as unearned, as if to say, fraudulent. The tax had the goal of
removing from the clergy this 'shameful' income, leaving them with a
subsistence wage. On this foundation, the Bolsheviks contended that this
taxation pressure placed on the clergy in no way served as a measure in the
struggle against religion, but was only a necessary means of the social self-
defence against the avarice of the 'priests'. A priest, not paying the tax by the
appointed date, was excluded from the registration list and deprived of the
right to celebrate the public liturgical services. Arbitrarily raising the rate of
the tax, if possible of every clergyman, so that the believers could not help
him, put him in a condition wherein with the appearance oflegality the priest
was removed from the cathedral. In the majority of cases the authorities in
just such a manner rid themselves of the most popular and authoritative
priests who refused to enter into their service, and yet were so cautious in their
activities as to rule out a political indictment which could have even a shadow
of verisimilitude.
However, political crimes were often charged against clergymen without
the slightest foundations. An objectionable clergyman is simply accused of
counter-revolutionary activities, although he has never committed any, or of
hostile intentions, although he has never had any, and for this they judge him
206 Appendix 1
and then exile him or imprison him. Bear in mind, that even of this practice
the Bolsheviks said again and again that in no way was it a measure in the
struggle against religion, but only a weapon by which people of the revolution
defended themselves against their political enemies. Actually, according to
the letter of the law, celebrating the religious rites, as such, was still not a
criminal offence- precisely speaking, there existed the notorious 'guarantee
of the freedom of the cult'- and formally the priesthood was not punished for
this, but for a host of other types of activity. In reality, the clergy were pursued
precisely for their ecclesiastical activities, but, according to an edict of the
Stalin constitution, the game being played out was that they were being
pursued for crimes unconnected with these activities.
The celebration of religious rites, as we have mentioned, was allowed in no
other than those churches specified for this. To serve in other places was to
invite punishment. Secret religious rites therefore entailed a great risk.
Stricken from the registration list a priest found himself unable to continue
his service and deprived of the means of subsistence. To find other work was
difficult for him, for he was considered socially discredited because of his
membership in the clergy. This shame spread to his children. In order to find
his daily bread and relieve the lot of his children, he was forced to cover up his
past and, so as to find work, fill out the obligatory forms with false evidence.
This again entailed a great risk, because his exposure inevitably meant a cruel
reprisal for him.
The very appointment of a priest to a church formally depended upon the
group of twenty, employing him for a determined fee. But, the decisive word
actually belonged to the commission of the cults, which could, according to its
judgement, refuse to register him. Not having secured the assent of the
commission beforehand, it was not even worth presenting him for
registration. Thus, the entire clergy was dependent upon the arbitrary will of
the Bolsheviks, who allowed some to serve legally, but removed others,
naturally preferring the worst over the better.
Under such conditions, a registered priest lived in the unceasing
expectation of repressions. With trembling, day and night, he expected
arrest, after which could follow exile or imprisonment. Fear in the face of
arrest was so great, that people not possessing any remarkable strength of
moral character were prepared to enter into any bargain with their
conscience and to grovel before the Bolsheviks, if the latter would only leave
them in peace. Therefore, among the surviving clergy registered by the
Soviet authorities there remain relatively few truly steadfast unbroken
persons, true to their lofty calling to the end.
The registered priest attached to a church committed himself to celebrate
the liturgical services. Officially, this was his only role. He had no authority at
all. He had no administrative rights. Everything was arranged and taken care
ofby the groupoftwenty, which had full authority to order the clergy about as
they so desired. The twenty was not subjected to any kind of control from the
side of the parishioners. It even imposed its will upon them. Therefore
everything depended on the personal characteristics of the twenty's
composition and on the skill of the parish dean to be on good terms with it. If
the composition of the group of twenty was good, and if the parish dean
possessed sufficient moral authority, then everything would proceed, more
Appendix 1 207
or less, beneficially. In such a case, the twenty would be transformed into a

kind of parish council under the dean, who, contrary to the official-juridicial
situation of things, would direct the parish and its life. On the other hand,
when the twenty is composed of people of a minimal churchly stability and
discipline, altogether self-willed and self-seeking- and such is the case often
enough- then the life of the parish is extremely abnormal, completely free
from the control of the clergy, and the latter have absolutely no authority or
the possibility to direct it.
Under such conditions the commissions of the cults control the groups of
twenty sufficiently enough so that according to its request, but disregarding
the will of the parishioners, a renovationist priest instead of an Orthodox
priest will be registered for a given church. In other words, the church will be
taken from the Orthodox Church and handed over to the Renovationists, to
those schismatics or, better to say, heretics, who have deviated far from pure
Orthodoxy and, together with this, have obviously become agents of the
Bolsheviks. We recall that Patriarch Tikhon forbade the Renovationist clergy
to enter into pastoral service, and that they were defrocked. Equally, the
group of twenty could, having reached an agreement with the commission of
the cults, register in the ranks of the clergy for a church such a person who,
though not belonging to the Renovationists, still did not have the canonical
right to serve. For example, a clergyman who for some fault was banned from
serving as a priest by episcopal authority; or who was defrocked; or even
simply a self-styled priest who never even belonged to the ordained ministry.
The commission of the cults, whose mission it was to struggle against
Orthodoxy, would agree to register just such a person with great willingness,
or incite and force the group of twenty to apply for his registration. Episcopal
authority could not struggle against such a penetration of various imposters
into the parish clergy.
Indeed, according to Soviet law the bishops in general had no real authority
of any kind. In this regard, the illegal position of the Church reflected upon
her life especially painfully. The lack of rights of the bishops meant that the
Bolsheviks could absolutely ignore the episcopal structure of the Orthodox
Church and in general recognize not the least juridicial authority for her
canons.
On principle, the Bolsheviks considered the canons to be the organiz-
ational regulations of an illegal, or to put it strongly, of a forbidden
association. The Church exists in the Soviet Union only as an illegal fact-for
she has no acknowledged right to exist according to the State. Therefore, in
official Soviet speech, even the very expression 'The Orthodox Church' is
absent. From the point of view of Soviet laws, the Orthodox Church, as a
legally organized whole, is non-existent, but is only an unco-ordinated, and so
an unorganized, group of believers of the 'Tikhonite orientation', to which it
is allowed, according to the observance of definite laws, to gather for liturgical
services in the churches designated for this. Those priests who were
registered in a corresponding church as 'servants of the cult' had the right to
serve in it the desired rite- 'cultic acts' -and others had the right to be present
at the fulfilment of these acts. They had no other rights. Only in this did the
'freedom of the cult' consist, as recognized by the Stalinist constitution.
From what was said above, one was certain that the so-called 'freedom of
208 Appendix I
the cult' was hemmed in by conditions which made it completely illusory,

guaranteeing nothing to practice, but being constantly and brutally violated.
At this time it must be especially emphasised that the 'freedom of the cult' in
no manner whatsoever meant freedom of belief or of religious conscience. In
particular, 'freedom of the cult' did not grant the least right ot organize the
life of a religious community on the basis of its religious profession, nor even
the right that such communities in general could exist. The cult was torn away
from its organic bond with religious life. It is difficult to imagine greater
brutality against the religious conscience. In particular, for the Orthodox
such a situation developed that here and there they could still legally celebrate
the services according to their rite- however, before the war the assigned
Orthodox churches already hardly remained- but with this they could not
legally fulfil the demands of the faith concerning the canonical structure of
the Church. They could only fulfil these demands in an illegal manner. In
particular, this concerns the exercise of, and submission to, the ecclesiastical
authority of the bishops.
Officially in the Soviet Union there simply are no bishops, and the very
word 'bishop' is unknown to the jargon of Soviet laws. The Bolsheviks
established only one expression, namely 'servants of the cult', for the
designation of the various orders of the clergy of all the confessions of faith.
All of the servants of the cult have equal rights, or to put it better, are equally
without rights. In this situation there are essentially no differences between
deacons, priests, and bishops. Each of them has the right to complete the
'cultic acts' in the church for which they have been registered -but possess
absolutely no rights beyond this. Not one of them may issue any kind of
orders. If a citizen who is by profession a servant of the cult- for example, a
bishop- refers to the 'regulations' of one of the confessions- for example, the
canons- and issues an order to other citizens who are perhaps servants of the
same confession- priests, for example- then, according to the Bolsheviks he
reveals himself to be a criminal for encroaching upon the freedom of these
citizens and for violating the State monopoly by issuing such orders, and for
attempting to establish organized associations forbidden by the State. For this
they are subjected to criminal punishment. And if citizens are found who
confess of similar orders issuing from the servant of the cult, then they too are
subjected to repressions- for, on the one hand, revealing their participation
in such an illegal association, and on the other for revealing socially
'retarded', and therefore dangerous, ideas. They are thus so damaged by
'religious prejudices' that they imagine themselves obliged to submit to
certain orders, issuing not from the State authority but from the servants of
the cult, to whom, on account of a harmful misunderstanding, they ascribe
special properties, rights, and titles- especially to the bishops.
Bearing in mind the above, legally a bishop did not have any kind of flock
and, in particular, any clergymen under his authority. He did not have the
right to issue any sort of orders in his diocese. According to the law, the groups
of twenty were completely independentofhim and between them there were
no ties of an organizational relationship. They voluntarily belonged to the
'Tikhonite orientation', but they had no right to draw any juridicial
conclusions from this. The result of such a system must be one of a full
paralysis of episcopal authority and absolute disorder in diocesan life. And
Appendix I 209
indeed, as far as the Bolsheviks were concerned, actual dioceses only existed
in the imagination of the believing people - the law did not know such
organizations.
It goes without saying that believers cannot assent to such a situation. And
therefore all dioceses continue to exist illegally. The Bolsheviks are forced to
live with this fact. They know that among the servants of the cult several of
them acknowledge the bishops, and that priests and members of the twenties
appeal to them for orders, receive them, and then pretend that they received
no such orders. They would then take the corresponding measures
according to their personal discretion. In a number of cases, especially if no
one from among the believers protests, the Bolsheviks close their eyes to
everything. They close their eyes, for example, when a group of twenty
submits a petition to register a certain priest, or to replace him by another and
so forth, by receiving an episcopal blessing for this beforehand. But it is
sufficient for a trouble-maker to make a denounciation, and the very same
bishop and those obedient to his orders will suffer repressions for such
actions. Therefore, the realisation of episcopal authority is virtually
dependent upon two conditions- on the absolute good-willed readiness of
believers to support their bishop and on the mutual trust between the bishop
and them- a trust which allows both him and them not to fear denunciations.
However, such a trust could never be absolute. The actualisation of
episcopal authority always remained a risk. In certain instances the bishop
could take such a risk, in others he could not, finding the risk to be excessively
great. Therefore, espiscopal authority is often forced to be inactive; it cannot
show itself consistently and evenly, and manifests itself only under
favourable circumstances. In connection with this, there is an absence of
regularity in the clerical work of the diocese. In general, diocesan councils,
departments, and chanceries do not exist- these are all hindered by the very
illegality of the diocese. There is no flow of regular correspondence
concerning diocesan matters. Everything is managed by the bishop himself,
who prefers to do this orally, so as not to leave any written evidence. And for
this oral management ofbusiness it is required that priests or members of the
twenty come to the bishop from their places. In view of the fact that the
dioceses are vast, but that citizens are constrained in their movement, these
trips to the bishop have the character of being more or less accidental. One
had to make use of every suitable opportunity which sometimes one was
forced to wait a long time for. Under such conditions, the direction of the
diocese was deprived of any regularity and was transformed into a kind of
continuous improvisation.
In light of the conditions described, one need not be surprised that church
discipline was shaken, but that it was not altogether destroyed. The main
credit in this situation belongs to the very body of believeing people who
demanded from their pastors purity of faith and valid liturgical services. The
Living Church movement collapsed, before all else, on account of the
opposition ofbelievers, who poured out of the Renovationist'schurches. And
by this censure, which led to the emptying of these churches and the
impoverishment of the clergy, the believers forced the clergy and the group
of twenty to consider ecclesiastical discipline, even if in a small manner.
What is more, the passive opposition of the believers turned out to be a fact
210 Appendix 1
of such great significance, that even the Bolsheviks had to take account of it.
Not wishing to annoy the believing mass excessively, the Bolsheviks were
forced to reconcile themselves with the existence of Orthodoxy and with its
victory over the Renovationists and to change their tactics in the struggle with
the Church significantly. It became clear that it was impossible to take the
Church by an open, lightning-like assault, but it was necessary to subject her
by a slow, systematic siege. This even allowed the Church, although with great
losses, to survive up to the present war, having preserved within herself a
small measure of organisation -i.e. to gain time and patiently await those
circumstances permitting her, for well-grounded reasons, to hope for the
swift destruction of Bolshevism and, together with this, for the liberation,
restoration, and revival of the Church.
Feasibly to delay and slow down the destruction of the Church undertaken
by the Bolsheviks, was always the main task of the Patriarchate. It strove to
protect the dogmatic purity and canonical integrity of Orthodoxy, to
overcome schisms, to preserve the canonically valid succession of the
supreme ecclesiastical authority, to maintain the canonically valid position of
the Russian Church ad mist the other autocephalousChurches, and to lead, in
such a manner, the Church to a better future when, following the destruction
of Bolshevism, the Church will be able to rise to a new life. In order to work for
the fulfilment of this task, it was incumbent upon the Patriarchate, before all
else, to preserve its own existence which was threatened by a great danger.
Indeed, denying the existence of the Church as a legal organization, the
Bolsheviks consistently had to deny the legal existence ofthe Patriarchate as
well. From the time of the arrest of Patriarch Tikhon ( 1922) the Bolsheviks
entered precisely upon this path, from which they were never deflected, both
from after his liberation from arrest (1923), and right up to his very death
(1925). But simultaneously Bolsheviks staged the establishment of some-
thing which was of benefit to themselves- the 'Living Church'- having
legalized the supreme organ ofits administration. The immediate task ... [of
the Bolsheviks] was the replacement or absorption of Orthodoxy by the
Renovationists. For this goal they made a whole series of attempts to hand
over into the hands of the Renovationists the administration of the Orthodox
Church. Under Patriarch Tikhon not one of these attempts succeeded. The
Patriarchate, although illegal, continued to exist, and the Bolsheviks found it
expedient to take this fact into account. They acted so for two reasons: (i)
abroad, they referred to the existence of the Patriarchate as evidence that,
despite their atheism, they supposedly did not subject the Church to
persecutions; (ii) they calculated that, nevertheless, it would turn out well for
them to hand over the Patriarchate into the hands of their agents the
Renovationists, thus destroying the Church from within.
After the death of Patriarch Tikhon, and under the locum-tenens
Metropolitan Peter (1925), the Bolsheviks continued their attempts in this
direction, but they did not achieve success. Metropolitan Peter was banished
to Siberia by the Bolsheviks and shortly afterwards died in exile. But before
his arrest he succeeded in appointing a successor to himself in the person of
Metropolitan Sergii. The latter, having shown himself to be somewhat
unyielding, was imprisoned ( 1926). But before his arrest he providently
appointed a whole row of successors, who had to consecutively take upon
themselves the responsibility ofthe leadership ofthe Church. However, the
Appendix 1 211
Bolsheviks began to subject one after another of them to arrest, so that the
Church lived without a leader and her business fell into total confusion. This
was the period when the Patriarchate simply did not exist at all, but what did
exist - and this legally - was the Renovationist administration, to which,
however, the Orthodox Church did not submit herself.
This situation turned out to be awkward for the Bolsheviks themselves. On
one side it com promised them abroad, hindering their success in propaganda
there. On the other side the Bolsheviks were convinced of the weakness of
Renovationism, of its unacceptability for stifling the majority of the
Orthodox, of the impossibility of controlling the Orthodox Church with the
help of the Renovationists. Therefore, the Bolsheviks decided to enter into a
compromise with Metropolitan Sergii, who, from his side, also came to the
conclusion that a compromise was necessary for the restoration of the
canonical administration of the Church, and her liberation from the
domination of the Renovationists. This compromise took place in 1927, and
included Metropolitan Sergii's declaration that the loyalty of believers to the
Soviet State was an obligation (Patriarch Tikhon had declared this earlier).
The Bolsheviks registered the Patriarchate as a legal institution, abandoning
all attempts to hand it over to the Renovationists. [This followed the] release
of Metropolitan Sergii from prison, which granted him the possibility of
fulfilling his responsibility as the Patriarchal locum-tenens.
Thus, the price of the political declaration of Metropolitan Sergii was paid
for by the legalisation of the Patriarchate and the liberation of the Church
from Renovationist domination. It was according to this model that further
relationships between the Patriarchate and the Soviet State were built. When
the Bolsheviks demanded certain political steps from Metropolitan Sergii, he
accepted their demands only on the condition of this or that indulgence for
the Church. I will relate an especially clear example. In 1930 Metropolitan
Sergii was forced to grant an interview to foreign journalists, and according to
the demands of the Bolsheviks he was to announce in this interview that the
Church in the Soviet Union was completely free and not subjected to
persecution. Metropolitan Sergii agreed to fulfil this demand of the
Bolsheviks on the condition that Orthodox priests would not be subjected to
the dispossession of the kulaks, such as was happening at that time, and this
condition was actually fulfilled by the Bolsheviks. At the cost of this
humiliating interview (during which agents of the CPU stood listening
behind a wall), Metropolitan Sergii saved many village priests- at that time
they still numbered around ten thousand- from destruction and death.
This example reveals that the Soviet authorities and the Patriarchate
opposed each other as two hostile powers, forced- each for their reasons -to
enter into a mutual compromise. But the Bolsheviks clearly carried more
weight in the compromise. With time this has become ever more obvious.
Having at first agreed to this compromise, and to certain concessions to the
Church, the Bolsheviks subsequently deceived the Patriarchate, making
these concessions illusory. Thus, no longer treating the rural clergy as
dispossessed kulkas, and after an interval oftime, the Bolsheviks simply began
sending clergymen into exile in great numbers and closing churches under
the pretence of certain legalities - most often for non-payment of a
deliberately back-breaking tax. It must be said that the very legalization of the
Patriarchate did not justify, in practice, those original expectations, since it
212 Appendix 1
was only the Patriarchate which became legalized.

This resulted in an absolutely paradoxical situation: the Patriarchate
turned out to be the legal organ of an illegal organization. The Patriarchate
was enabled to speak in the name of an unacknowledged Church and to
legally issue orders which, however, were not juridically obligatory. The
parish clergy and the groups of twenty preserved the full possibility to ignore
the Patriarchate if they so chose. Neither the groups of twenty, nor the parish
clergy of the individual churches, were formally subjected to the Patriar-
chate. They all remained under the exclusive authority of the corresponding
local commissions of the cults, with which the patriarchate could not
communicate.
What has been said applies equally well, to the episcopacy. A bishop, even
though he belonged to the structure of the Patriarchate - including,
evidently, the locum-tenens of the Patriarchal throne himself - was
subjected, as was every 'servant of the cult', to be registered for a particular
church, for which he had to apply to the corresponding commission of the
cults. Therefore, without the agreement of the commission of the cults not a
single bishop could be appointed, transferred, dismissed- not to mention the
fact that every one of them could at any time be imprisoned and exiled. The
bishops, including those of the inner structure of the Patriarchate, were held
fast in the grip of the Bolsheviks.
Working in the Patriarchate, we compared our position with the position of
chickens in a kitchen garden. The cook snatches his next victim from them-
one today, another tomorrow, but not all immediately. We understood
perfectly well that the Bolsheviks tolerated the existence of the Patriarchate
only for the sake of its own advantage, primarily propagandistic, and that we
were forced to be the almost powerless spectators of the continuous
suffocation of the Church by the Bolsheviks. But, for the sake of the Church,
we were all reconciled to our humiliating position, hoping in her ultimate
invincibility and trying to preserve her until better times- until the downfall
of Bolshevism.
In this, we were strengthened by the realization that the believing people,
by willingly submitting to our authority, themselves helped us to maintain on
a canonical foundation a certain minimal order in the Church, not allowing
her to crumble. This submission to the direction of the Patriarchate could not
be imputed to the believers as an illegal act because the Bolsheviks themselves
legalized the Patriarchate. The Patriarchate remained the sole legalized
organ of ecclesiastical administration, and therefore only the Patriarchate
preserved the possibility to rightly order the life of the Church and hinder
destruction by the Bolsheviks. We did not want this opportunity to escape us,
because we saw in ita definite practical value, the repudiation of which, in our
judgement, the Church should not have allowed.
Even now I think that we did not err in this regard. But all of our efforts,
sufferings, and humiliations will turn out to be, of course, in vain, if godless
Bolshevism does not fall. With its fall are tied all the hopes of the Orthodox
Russian people. I believe that the Lord will not confound our hopes.
The Patriarchal Exarch- Metropolitan Sergii

A true copy of the original
Appendix 2
The following material consists of selected examples of trials and imprison-
ments for religious convictions in the USSR in the course of (approximately)
the last five years. The illustrations were chosen from most of the existing
religious faiths there, and the writer was careful to select only those cases
where it was obvious that the victim was prosecuted for his or her active faith
alone. The list is by no means complete, but only includes some characteristic
examples of cases of blatant religious persecutions, illustrating what kind of
religious activities are subjected to persecutions and under which pretexts.
List of abbreviations used throughout this section:

gen. general
ord. ordinary
str. strict
C. C. Criminal Code
ECB Evangelical Christian Baptist
r. roubles
VSASD All-Union Council of Seventh Day Adventists
yrs years
in place of surname same surname and direct relative of
previous entry.
The following is a list of Articles referred to (summaries only,for full text refer to the
Code) in the case histories.
N ole that all Articles in the text refer to the Criminal Code ofthe RSFSR unless otherwise
noted.
From the Criminal Code of the RSFSR:

70 Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda
Agitation or propaganda, carried out for the purposes of
undermining or weakening the Soviet government . . . the
spreading for the same purposes slanderous ideas, harmful to the
Soviet governmental or social order, or the distribution or
preparation or retainment for the same purposes of literature of
harmful content.
142 The Breaking of the Laws on the Separation of Church and State
and Schools and Church.
162 Involvement in Forbidden Production.
188 Attempted Escape From Place of Imprisonment or From Under
Guard.
188-3 'Malicious' breaches of camp/prison discipline punishable by up to
three years' additional imprisonment without release. Adopted on
I October 1983.
190- I Distribution of Known False Ideas, Harmful to the Soviet
Govermental or Social Order.
213
214 Appendix 2
Systematic distribution in oral form of ideas known to be false,

harmful to the Soviet governmental or social order, or the
preparation or distribution in written, printed or any other form
of items of similar content.
206 Hooliganism
... purposeful actions, which vulgarly break the civic peace and
which express an obvious disrespect to society.
209 Systematic Vagrancy or Begging.
214 Breaking the Safety Regulations Concerning Excavation Work.
227 Encroachment Upon a Person and a Citizen's Rights Under the
Guise of Fulfilling Religious Practices
The organization or leading of a group, whose actions carried out
under the guise of performing religious acts, are aimed at bringing
harm to health of citizens, or at inciting citizens to revoke their
social participation or refuse to fulfil their civic obligations, or the
recruitment into such a group of people who are not of legal age.
From the Criminal Code of the UkSSR:

62 Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda
(see Article 70 of the C.C. of the RSFSR).
138 The Breaking of the Laws on the Separation of Church and State
and School and Church
(equivalent to Article 142 C.C., RSFSR).
187 The Non-Reporting of Criminal Acts
The non-reporting of clearly known preparations for or ex-
ecution of criminal acts, which are covered by the following
Articles ...
188 Resistance Against the Authorities or Representatives of Society
who are Defending the Social Order.
209 Encroachment Upon a Person and a Citizen's Rights Under the
Guise of Fulfilling Religious Practices
214 Systematic Vagrancy or Begging
From the Criminal Code of the LatSSR:

65 Anti-Soviet Agitation or Propaganda
(Equivalent to Article 70 C. C., RSFSR).
ABRAMOV, Mikhail Jewish Moscow

15 July 1983- arrested and sentenced to 15 days' imprisonment for
gathering with Mark FEL'DMAN and Igor BRISKMAN for private
prayers in their own homes.
AKHTEROV, Pavel A. Pentecostal Slavyansk b. 1931
Author of religious texts, including On the Path to Eternal Life (published in
Appendix 2 215
the West). Dec. 1981 sentenced to 7 yrs str. regime camp and 5 yrs exile
under article 70, for writing and distributing his book On the Path ...
ANDREI, Fr. (Anatolii SHUR) Orthodox previously a monk at the
Pochaevskaia Lavra. Nov. 1982 arrested and sentenced to 1 yr str. regime
camp under article 214. Released Nov. 1983. Rearrested Jan. 1984. The
charge and sentence remain unknown.
ANTONOV, Ivan Ia., Presbyter, ECB Kirovograd, UkSSR
July 1981 completed a 2 yrsentence, having spent a total of 15 yrs in camps
for religious reasons. Began receiving 'anonymous' death threats. May
1982 arrested again, sentenced to 5 yrs str. regime camp and 5 yrs. exile,
with confiscation of property, under article 209-1 of the C.C. of the
UkSSR. His son Pavel was also sentenced to 3 yrs gen. regime camp under
article 138-2 oftheC.C. ofthe UkSSR. He was arrested in Feb. of 1982. In
May 1986 informed of new charges awaiting him before the 1987 release
date.
ASATIAN, Fr. Ioakim Orthodox Shio-Mgvim, Georgia
7 Jan. 1982. He went to the Mamukelashvili museum/church in order to
serve the Christmas mass for which he had official written permission. The
museum's staff, however, beat up Fr. loa kim and locked him in the temple.
Had not passers-by heard his pleas for help and freed him, Fr. Ioakim
would have most likely frozen to death.
BAHOLDIN, Semen F. VSASD Tashkent, UzSSr b. 1930
An ordinary worker, engaged all his life in manual labour. He was chosen
by the authorities to be their witness against the head of the VSASD church
- V. A. Shelkov. Semen was thus arrested on 15 April1978. Despite threats,
he refused to bear false witness against Shelkov; the authorities thus
decided to make an example out of him. Before and after his conviction he
spent many days in isolation, often without food or water. In Feb. of 1979
he was sentenced to 7 yrs str. regime camp and 3 yrs exile. Despite being in
perfect health at the time of his arrest, in their desire to make an example
out of Semen, the authorities quickly drove him to a state of exhaustion.
When his wife visited him in March 1980, he was already so weak that he
had to be carried. Witnesses told Semen's family that he was feeling well on
November 10. He ate a full dinner at the prison hospital after which he
suffered severe pain and died. Six days passed before camp officials
informed relatives of the death. Semen's son and two sisters went to the
camp to discover that he had already been buried; the doctors refused to
give reasons for the death and refused to allow Semen's body to be moved to
his native town. The official death certificate states that Semen died in
Tashkent, and not in the camp (over 2000 km away).
BARATS, Vasilii M. Pentecostal Moscow
Editor of Listy, a Christian journal. Despite being an engineer he could not
find work and was forced to accept a job as a guard at a garage. He kept this
job for two months until the KGB forcibly took him to a psychiatric hospital
for three days and had him fired. 3 June 1982, had his home searched,
religious literature confiscated. 9 Aug. 1982, arrested while attempting to
board an airplane. He was beaten at the airport and at the police station.
Vasillii declared a hunger strike, which he maintained for thirteen days,
demanding to know the reason for his arrest. It was not until Aug. 23 that
216 Appendix 2
his wife was told where her husband was being held, yet still no pretext for
the arrest was given. When his wife attempted to meet with Western
correspondents she was also arrested. Vasilii is now serving a 5 yr camp
sentence. His wife, Galina, is serving a 6 yr camp and 3 yr exile
sentence.
BARINOV, Valerii A. Baptist Leningrad b. 1944
17 Jan. I983, officially requested permission to perform concerts of
religious non-political music with his band 'Trubny Zov'. 24 Jan. I983,
temporarily arrested, ten letters and three cassettes were confiscated, no
pretext given. Summer 1983, under governmental pressure, the official
Baptist church kicked him out for wearing a cross with his jeans and for
preaching to alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes and other undesirables.
II Oct. 1983, picked up on the subway and forcibly interned in a psychiatric
hospital. His wife was told by his doctor that although Valerii was not 'really
ill', his views were so deviant from the 'norm ofa Soviet man' that hem ust be
treated. Other doctors told his wife that he was perfectly healthy but that his
release was subject to the approval of a 'special commission'. After his case
received wide Western publicity, Valerii was released on Dec. 20, but he
refused to return as an outpatient for subsequent 'treatments'. In early
March I984, a visitor, claiming to be a fan from Murmansk, came to Valerii.
He convinced him to come to Murmansk, which Valerii and his friend
TIMIKHIN did on 3 March. Returning from Murmansk by train they
were arrested and charged for supposedly attempting to leave the country
illegally via Murmansk. Valerii was sentenced to 2 1/2 yrs camp, despite the
fact that the trial did not prove the charge, but rather focused on Valerii's
activity in his Christian rock group, at the last performance of which, at the
end of I983, 80 people were arrested when police attempted to disband it.
Released on schedule, 4 September I986.
BATURIN, Nikolai G. ECB Shakhty, Rostov prov. RSFSR b. I927
Secretary of the ECB churches, arrested 5 Nov. 1979. Sentenced to 5 yrs
camp,str. regime, under articles 138-2, 187-1, 209-2ofthe UkSSRC.C.,
and 190- I of the RSFSR C. C. During 198I he was twice thrown into
punishment cells for I5 days for praying and singing Christian hymns. The
punishment cells are unheated, the prisoners are left without shoes or
outer clothes. They are served one meagre meal a day- beginning only on
the second day. After a term in the punishment cell the prisoner is usually
too weak to stand, yet he is required to return immediately to work and
fulfil his full quota. With one yr left on his sentence, Nikolai was rearrested
incampon 28Sept. 1983. On 26Jan. 1984, he was given an additional3 yrs
of str. regime camp. This was his 7th trial.
BIELAUSKIENE,Jadvyga Lith. Catholic
May I983, sentenced to 4 yrs str. regime camp and 3 yrsexile: for collecting
signatures for a petition against the persecution of young believers; for her
participation in the Chronicle of the Lith. Cath. Ch.; and for assisting in the
religious education of children.Jadvyga had already spent 8 yrs in prisons.
Released in October 1986 unconditionally. Exile term cancelled.
BUDZINS'KYI, Fr. Hryhorii, Ukr. Catholic b. I900
Has spent many years in prisons and camps, and he continues to be
harassed. On 24 Sept. 1981 ,he was fined 50 roubles; on 14Jan. 1982, 10 r.;
on 21 and 28Jan. 1982,on 13Jan., 17 Feb. and 5 May 1983,hewasfined 50
Appendix 2 217
r. each time. All of the fines were for performing an unauthorized religious
service at his home. In Dec. 1983, 'thieves' broke into his home and robbed
him of 270 r. The 'thieves' acted openly and without fear despite the fact
that Fr. Hryhorii's home is subjected to 24 hr police surveillance.
BULAKH, Eduard Pentecostal b. 1941
He has a wife and three children, which, under Soviet law, automatically
exempts him from military service. In Feb. 1981, Eduard was called up for
a review. During the review the doctor ordered him to submit himself to a
psychiatric hospital for 'evaluation'. Eduard, fearing imprisonment,
refused to do so. On July II he was forcibly hospitalized but was released on
the 22nd. On 9 Sept. 1981, he was sentenced to 1 yr of prison for 'evading
military service' (refusing to submit himself to psychiatric evaluation).
When his 1 yr term had officially ended, in Sept. of 1982, Eduard received
an additional 2\/2 year term. Released in December 1984, nine months
prior to the end of the term.
BURDIUG, Viktor Orthodox Moscow
April6, 1982, arrested with Nikolai BLOKHIN, and Sergei and Vladimir
B UDAROV. Viktor was sentenced to 4 yrs camp, with confiscation of all
personal property, his three companions received terms of 3 yrs each.
They were found guilty, under article 162, of printing and distributing
very large quantities of Bibles, Psalm books, and prayer books.
DEMBITSKY, A. S. VSASD Riga
On 7 June 1980,30 people gathered at the homeofV. I. DURGUZHIENE
for private workshop. The KGB arrived, without a warrant they searched
the house, and took away nine males, who were all beaten. At the police
station they were ordered to sign previously written confessions admitting
'their presence at an illegal gathering of unregistered believers, and
promising never to repeat the offence'. The nine males refused, and
demanded to write their own statements. This they were denied but 7 of
them were released. Dembitskiy and G. E. Nikolaev continued to be held.
Nikolaev was thrown into a cell with common criminals who were
instructed to 'work him over'. When the lieutenant returned to find that
Nikolaev had not been 'worked over' he informed the other criminals that
they would not receive hot food, and then he proceeded to beat Nikolaev
himself. Nikolaev and Dembitskiy were both sentenced to 15 days'
imprisonment for singing 'anti-Soviet' hymns (Christian), for yelling 'anti-
Soviet' slogans and for general 'hooliganism' at their worship service.
DRUK, V. F. ECB Nizhnii-Marineshty, Moldavia
Drafted into the army. 13 Aug. 1981, with two months leftto his mandatory
military service, he was stabbed in the heart by another soldier, under the
orders of an officer. Druk was killed.
ESIP, Roman Ukr. Cathol. priest b. 1951
Sentenced in L'vov 28 Oct. 1981 to 5 yrs camp. gen. regime and 3 yrs exile,
with confiscation of property, under articles 138-2 and 209-1 of the
UkSSR C.C., for carrying out unauthorized religious services at people's
homes, cemeteries and in churches.
FEDOTOV, 1van Pentecostal, Bishop Maloiaroslavets, Kaluga prov. b.
1929
1980-released after I 0 yrterm. Not permitted to reside in Moscow with his
mother, moved to Maloiaroslavets. 26 Nov. 1980, due to pressure from the
218 Appendix 2
authorities he was fired from his job, despite the fact that he had nothing
but positive references. The authorities informed him that if he could not
find new employment he would be tried for parasitism. 27 Nov. I980, fined
50 r. for refusing a policeman entry into a private home during a religious
service. 2I Aprili98I, arrested. Searches conducted in connection with his
arrest at the homes of7 other believers as well as Fedotov's home revealed
Bibles, religious literature and letters from abroad. Fedotov was entenced
to 5 yrs str. regime camp and given a IOOO r. fine, under article 227. At the
trial his crimes were revealed to be (i) that he headed a scet of Pentecostals
whose membership included those who were not trade-union members (II
out of 129 parishioners), even though membership in trade unions is
supposed to be 'voluntary' in the Soviet Union, (ii) that he had attracted
others into the sect, and (iii) that he encouraged his parishioners to renege
upon their civic duties (this was not proved). Released on 21 April 1986.
GALETSKY, Rostislav N. VSASD, preacher Tresviatskaia station, Voro-
nezh prov.
1 July 1980, arrested. Sentenced to 5 yrs gen. regime camp under articles
190- 1 and 227. During the trial he had all his notes confiscated, with which
he was attempting to defend himself and expose the fabrication of the trial.
GRIGOROVICH, Stefani Ukr. -Cath. priest Mukachevo, Svaliavskoe
distr.
Has already served 4 sentences. Fr. Stefanii and his daughter Katrusia
returned their passports. Katrusia was dismissed from her 5th yr of
medical school. 7 March 1984, they were both arrested and held for three
days until they accepted their passports again. 18 March, 1984, Fr. Stefanii
was rearrested.
IVANOV, Arkady Christian b. 1931
1 Sept. 1983 - declared 'dangerous to society' for teaching religion to
children, holding prayer meetings, organizing a youth choir, and
participating in worship services. Ivanov was confined to a psychiatric
hospital. Released in Sept. 1985.
IV ASHCHENKO, Yakov Efremovich Pastor, ECB Petrovsk, Kiev
prov. b. 1932
MemberofG. Vins and Soviet Relatives of Prisoners organizations. Early in
1980 a series of searches resulted in the confiscation of religious literature.
After these searches Ivashchenko went into hiding and was not arrested
until22 May 1981. On I9 August 1981 he was tried and sentenced to 4 yrs
str. regimecampand4 yrsexileunderarticles 138-1, 187-1 and 209-1 of
the C.C. of the UkSSR. His son, Anatoly, is also an active religious youth
leader and has also been sentenced to 2 112 yr sentence.
KADUK, Vera Stepanovna VSASD Kalinin RSFSR b. 1927
Arrested 16 July 1980, kept imprisoned until her trial in March of 1981.
Sentenced to 2 yrs camp with confiscation of home and property under
article 190-1.
KAKAVTSIV, Vasilli Ukr. -Catholic, priest L'vov b. 1934
Sentenced to 5 yrs camp gen. regime and 3 yrs exile with confiscation of
property under articles 138-2 and 209-1 of the C.C. of the UkSSR, for
unauthorized performance of religious services at private homes, at
cemeteries, and in churches.
Appendix 2 219
KALIASHIN, Aleksei Aleksandrovich ECB Muron, Vladimir prov.,

RSFSR b. 1955
Arrested I Sept. I98I, sentenced to 3 yrs camp gen. regime, under article
I42-2. During his imprisonment Kaliashin refused to renounce his faith.
When he was due to be released his family travelled to the camp to meet
him. In Dec. 1984 sentenced to further 2V2 yrs without release. IO June
I985 married in camp.
KHOREV, Mikhail ECB b. I93I
Arrested in January of I980 and sentenced to 5 yrs camp. The history of his
imprisonment is one of constant harassment: he is ceaselessly subjected to
night searches and gets woken up every hour; his visitation rights are often
suspended; in I981 he was thrown into a punishment cell for I 0 days for
reading the Bible. The prison authorities responded to his demands for a
Bible by saying that, 'that is the same thing as giving vodka to a drunk'.
Khorev is nearly totally blind and after his magnifying glass was removed
from him he was unable to read or write. On 7 June I984, he was given 15
days in a punishment cell for not greeting an officer- most likely due to his
blindness. To these 15 days were first added 8 then another 9 days for
'spreading slanderous thoughts'. In July Khorev was sentenced to an
additional two months of punishment- in total he spent over I 00 days and
nights in punishment cells during the summer of I984. In late I984 money
was 'found' among his possessions - a violation of camp regulations.
For this Khorev was sentenced to an additional 2 yrs str. regime camp
on 28 January I985, when his current term was supposed to have
expired.
KHRAPOV, Nikolai pastor, ECB b. I9I4
One of ten members of the Council of Churches of the ECB Church. Died 9
Nov. 1982, while serving a 3 yr str. regime camp sentence which he had
begun in March of I980. Over his lifetime, Khrapov was sentenced to a total
of 50 yrs imprisonment.
KLIMUK, Pavel Baptist
Christian poet, published in the Baptist Herald of Truth. Arrested in Jan.
1983 in L'vov and sentenced to 5 yrs camp under article 209-2 ofthe C.C.
ofthe UkSSR. His trial was suspended six times to allow the prosecution to
strengthen its case.
KOBRYN, Vasyl' Ukr. Catholic L'vov prov. b. I938
In I983 he became the chairman of the Action Group for the Defence of
the Rights of Believers and the Church in the Ukraine. On 22June I984 he
was called out for a 'meeting' by the authorities. He was told to cease all his
human rights activities 'for the last time', as any Catholic activity in the
USSR is by its nature anti-Soviet. Kobryn was further told that the Action
Group would be liquidated, and that 'all those who are with Rome are
against us'. On 22 March 1985 he was sentenced to 3 yrscamp, gen. regime,
under article 187-1 ofthe C.C. of the UkSSR.
KOLOPOVETS, Ivan Dolgoe, Zakarpatia prov.
Member of a group which put on Christmas performances. On 6 Jan.
(Christmas Eve according to the Old Calender) 1984 he was arrested while
singing Christmas carols; other members of his group were beaten. Ivan
was sentenced to 2 yrs health-hazardous forced labour.
220 Appendix 2
KOZOREZOV, Aleksei Trofimovich ECB Voroshilovgrad, UkSSR

b. 1933
Father often. Arrested 26 Dec. 1980, sentenced to 3 yrs camp, str. regime
under articles 138-2 and 187-1 oftheC.C. of the UkSSR. 20 Dec. 1983, as
his term was almost completed, he was rearrested in camp and sentenced to
an additional! '12 yrs on 12 March 1984, under article 187- I of the C.C. of
the UkSSR. This brought the total number of trials that Kozorezov has
been subjected to to five. Upon completion of this last term, on 20 June
1985, he was released.
- - , Aleksandra Timofeevna- wife of Aleksei b. 1936
Previously received a 3 yr suspended sentence. Chairman of the Soviet of
Relatives of Evangelical Christian Baptists Prisoners. On 20 Aprill982 she
was attending a meeting of the Soviet of Relatives in Lozov, Khar'kov prov .,
UkSSr. The meeting was broken up by the authorities and seven people
were arrested including Aleksandra. Upon her husband's release, in 1985,
their house was searched and Aleksandra went underground so as to avoid
arrest.
KRAHMAL'NIKOV, Zoia Orthodox b. 1929
Wife of F. G. SVETOV. Edited and compiled ten issues of the Christian
journal Nadez.hda (Hope). Although the authorities never expressed their
opinions towardsNadezhda as being legal or illegal, nevertheless, on 3 Aug.
1982, Zoia was arrested. Searches at various private homes resulted in
confiscation of Bibles, religious and philosophical books, her and her
husband's archive of published and unpublished works, and two type-
writers. In April 1983, Zoia was tried and then sentenced to I yr
imprisonment and 5 yrs exile under article 190- I. She is serving her exile
in Altai, where she lives in a small hut with no running water. She has to
obtain her own wood for heating, grows vegetables. Dentists are unobtain-
able. Zoia is constantly 'visited' by the authorities, and although she was
granted permission to travel to Moscow to seek medical attention, the
permission was revoked shortly prior to her departure.
KRIUCHKOV, Gennady K. ECB, pastor Tula
In 1965 he became the Chairman of the Soviet of Churches of ECB. Since
1970 Gennady has been living in hiding; as a result his family is subjected to
constant persecution. The family, consisting of 15 members lived in a four-
room (plus kitchen), one-bathroom house. In 1982 half the house was torn
down by the authorities and Kriuchkov's wife is threatened with arrest as
she attempts to rebuild the home.
KUZNETSOV. Nikolai Pentecostal Riazan' prov.
On 15 March 1981, Nikolai gathered with Nikolai KOSTIANOI, and
Evgeniia NOZDRACHEV A at the home of PODOL'SKY in Riazhsk-
Posadsky for private prayers. The police arrived and ordered the prayers
stopped; they took down the names of those present and demanded that
they all should proceed to the police station with them. The believers
refused, as they had not been charged with any crime and had identified
themselves. Ten more policemen arrived and dragged the three guests to
the police station. Nozdracheva was fined 40 r. and Kuznetsov was given a
15-day sentence. To protest the breach of Soviet law and this insulting act
Appendix 2 221
against believers, Kuznetsov declared a hunger-strike for the duration of

his sentence. For this, his sentence was extended by another 15 days.
LAPAEVA, Anna Grigor'evna VSASD Solikamsk, Perm prov. RSFSR
b. 1932
Anna was detained from 16 to 25 July 1980, in a psychiatric hospital in
Perm. Upon her release, when she returned home, she discovered that her
residence had been searched - the windows and doors had been broken,
the kitchen floor was covered with dumped-out food, and everything in
her home was turned over. A search warrant was never produced to Anna.
After her release Anna fell gravely ill, but she was denied medical attention
at all four hospitals to which she went. On 22, 25 and 19 July, Anna was
called in for questioning and in August she was arrested. In November
Anna was sentenced to 2 yrs camp, gen. regime.
LEPSHIN, Anna Sergeevna VSASD Kattakurgan, Samarkand prov.
UzSSR
On 28 Feb. 1980, had her home searched during her absence. The search
was witnessed by Anna's friend Nina I. VOROPAEV A, who was hit in the
face, grabbed, and had her eyes poked. When 73-year-old Evdokiia
KIREEV A, due to the excitement, became ill, the searchers prevented her
relatives from administering her her medication.
LITVINENKO, Leonid Fedorovich Pentecostal
In prison camp, in the early spring of 1982, the camp guards demanded
that he renounce his faith in God. He refused, and was beaten and had his
ear torn off. He was left unconscious and his entire body was swollen. After
regaining consciousness Leonid was refused hospitalization until he
signed a statement promising not to reveal his attackers. When his wife
visited him, his body was so swollen that his clothes had to be cut in order to
fit over him.
LUDVIKS, Maris pastor, Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church b. 1955
In May 1984, Maris was due to serve his first service after being ordained,
when he was arrested. The exact charge remained unclear. The trial was set
for 25 Dec. 1984, but was postponed indefinitely in order to 'call further
witnesses'.
LYSENKO, Anatoli VSASD Novo-Pavlovka Sokuluksii distr. Frunze
prov., KirgSSR b. 1951
Arrested on 14 Feb. 1980. While under investigation he was declared
mentally unstable and confined to a secret psychiatric hospital.
- - , Pavel L.- brother of Anatolti b. 1952
Arrested on 13 Feb. 1980 and,like his brother, also was sent to a psychiatric
hospital. Pavel was also then tried and sentenced. In prison camp, for
refusing to work on Saturdays on religious grounds, he is beaten, tortured,
left outside in freezing temperatures, and thrown into punishment cells.
On punishment rations of bread and water, he is required to fulfil his heavy
manual work quotas.
MARINOVICH, Myroslav Orthodox
On 18 April 1982, in order to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ,
fourteen prisoners gathered together in Permskii camp 36. Myroslav
read a prayer, and then the gathering was broken up by the camp guards.
222 Appendix 2
Myroslav, ViktorNEKIPELOV, and Mykola RUDENKOwereeachgiven

15 days in the punishment cell. Oles' SHEVCHEN KO was deprived of his
annual visit and also given 10 days' punishment.
MARK US, Sergei Vladimirovich Orthodox, Moscow b. 1955
Worked in the Moscow Kolomenskoe museum of church architecture,
where he organized a youth club 'Pod Shatrom' to which he lectured on
Russia's cultural past. Markus also took his lectures to other cities and spoke
at assorted gatherings. On 9 Jan. 1984 he was arrested. When his home was
searched, all his icons, religious literature, all his family's pectoral crosses,
and his Bible, were confiscated. In July 1984, he was tried and sentenced to
3 yrs camp, gen. regime, under article 190-1. At the trial it was revealed
that Markus had expressed sympathy toward believers who were im-
prisoned in the USSR, and towards anti-Soviet actions in Poland, and that
he had said that religious freedom in the USSR was minimal. Returned to
Moscow in April 1986 after a public repentance over the TV system,
condemning past anti-Soviet activities.
MIKULIANICH, M. Jehovah's Witness Grushevoe, Tiachevsk dist.,
Zakarpatia prov.
A search at his home revealed a Bible and religious journals including
Awake. March 1984, he was tried and sentenced to 3 yrscamp, under article
209- 1 of the C.C. of the UkSSR.
MINYAKOV,DimitryV. ECB,pastor b.1921
Unable to find employment since 1960. In 1965 Minyakov played an
important role in the foundation of the Council of ECB Churches, and
since then he has been one of its major leaders. Arrested on 21 Jan. 1981
and placed in solitary confinement. He was sentenced to 5 yrscamp without
consideration of his state of poor physical health due to tuberculosis.
During Minyakov's transport to the camp he was beaten up by the guards of
the Irkutsk holding prison. Despite his poor health, he was forced to
perform full work quotas throughout 1982-4; failure to meet quotas is
punishable by being subjected to punishment cells. In Nov. 1984,
Minyakov was finally transferred to a prison hospital for his tuberculosis.
Weighing 116 lbs. he is now suspected of having lung cancer. Although
Soviet law provides for the immediate release of critically ill prisoners,
Minyakov remained unreleased.
MUZYKA, V.I. ECB Uman' Cherkassy prov. b. 1963
Drafted in 1981, and when he was sent away from his home base he was
promised that 'Alive, he would not return'. On 10 Jan. 1982, on his 52nd
day of service, Muzyka was beaten to death by other soldiers.
NAPRIENKO, Veniamin ECB, preacher Moscow
On 18 June 1984, a farewell evening was organized for the American
Council of Churches delegation at the official Moscow Baptist Church.
Veniamin managed to get into the hall with his wife, Natalia, and together
they held a banner in protest of the persecution of the unofficial ECB
Church. The banners were torn from them, but Natalia was even able to
hold a discussion with several American delegates on the persecution of the
ECB Church. Three weeks later, on July 9, Veniamin was arrested and
later sentenced to 2 yrs. In May 1985, Natalia was allowed a visit with
Veniamin; she reported that he was not being given any of her letters and
Appendix 2 223
that he had been tortured. After one beating, during which one rib was
broken, Veniamin was forced to report immediately to work. Released on
completion of his term in July 1986; but his and his family's harassment
continues. Refused residence permit in Moscow. 15-day arrest for
contravention of resid. regulations in July 1986.
OMASHVILI, Moisei Orthod. priest Saingilo, Azerbaidj, SSR
On 19 Dec. 1980, he was arrested, beaten and had his hair cut off for
placing a candle in the closed church 'Malaia Alaverdy', the church of his
forefathers. Despite the fact that there are no open churches in the area,
and despite that fact that hundreds of believers have signed petitions to
have this church opened, it remains closed.
PERCHATKIN, Boris Pentecostal Nakhodka, RSFSR
Arrested 18 Aug. 1980. Told that if he renounced his desire to emigrate
and ceased all his religious activities he would receive a 100 r. fine.
Perchatkin refused and was sentenced to 2 yrs camp, ord. regime, under
article 190-1. On release went underground. Rearrested 21 Feb. 1983,
sentenced to 18 months str. regime camps. Released on expiration ofterm,
but placed under police surveillance. 36 years old in 1983.
PILIPCHENKO, Nikolai I. VSASD Vinnitsa, UkSSr
For his presence at a religious gathering in Vinnitsa on 29 Jan. 1981, he was
fined 50 r.
PIVOV AROV, Fr Aleksandr Orthodox b. 1939
Secretary to the Archbishop ofN ovosibirsk. On 6 A pril1962, a search at his
home revealed that the priest had in his possession a Bible, prayer books,
crosses, candles, and books oflives of saints. These were confiscated as well
as some money and a typewriter. On 11 April 1983, Fr. Aleksandr was
arrested. He was tried under articles 154- and 162-2 in the fall of 1983.
The trial revealed that Fr. Aleksandr was active in assisting in the printing
and distribution of religious books, and was connected with Viktor
BURDDIUGand company (see BURDIUG). Fr. Aleksandrwassentenced
to 3 1A yrs camp, str. regime, with confiscation of property. Released in
1985, one year before the term's expiry.
PORESH, Vladimir Orthodox, Leningrad b. 1948
Edited the uncensored religious journal Obshchina and was also one of the
founders of the Christian Youth Seminar, for which he performed the role
of chairman at the Leningrad seminar of the 'Problems of religious rebirth
in Russia'. Arrested I Aug. 1979. During his 9-month detainment while
awaiting trial Poresh was not even permitted one visit with his wife. In April
1980, he was sentenced to 5 yrs camp. str. regime, and 3 yrs exile under
article 70. In camp, Poresh had his Bible and prayer book removed; he
responded by declaring a hunger strike. The authorities answered back by
first suspending his right to receive packages, then his visitation rights,
followed by a suspension of his correspondence rights, and finally by
resorting to internment in the punishment cell. In Jan. 1982, as Poresh
remained unbroken, the government tried a different tactic - he was
returned to Leningrad, allowed to rest, and fed well. He was promised that
if he admitted his guilt he would have his sentence lightened. Poresh
remained unbroken, and new tactics were abandoned- he was now sent to
the Chistopol' prison, known for its harshness. Only after a period of three
224 Appendix 2
months was he permitted to write from his new prison, but his visitation
rights remained suspended. His 5 yr prison term should have ended in
August 1984, yet Vladimir was not released- instead he was sentenced to
an additional 3 yrs imprisonment under article 188-8 for 'malicious
disobedience of the orders of the administration of a corrective-labour
institution'. Released in the spring of 1986 but banned from professional
employment.
POTOCHNIAK, Anton Catholic, priest Stryi, UkSSR b. 1912
Arrested Oct. 1983 while still recovering from a stomach operation. As a
result, the operation had to be repeated in prison. He was sentenced to a 1
yr term in a str. regime camp; he had already served 28 yrs in the Soviet
prison system. In the camp the warden refused to hospitalize Fr. Anton,
saying he was a bad influence upon the other inmates. On 14 Dec. 1983, the
warden, V. Povshenko, informed him that a new instruction had been
received on how to treat Ukranian Catholics, and that from that point on he
would have to fulfil the full work norm (Fr. Anton was 71 yrs old). Three
days of these norms and he began suffering from internal bleeding. He was
admitted into the prison hospital, but two days later, when higher camp
officials discovered that he was there, he was immediately discharged from
the hospital. On 29 May 1984, his health finally gave up and he died in
prison.
PROTSENKO, Vladimir Antonovich ECB Kuz'molovo, Vsevolozhskii
dist., Leningrad prov. b. 1928
Held gatherings and services of the Leningrad ECB church at his home.
Arrested 8 Dec 1981, and sentenced on 19 Feb 1982 to 3 yrs camp, gen.
regime, with confiscation of home, under articles 190-1 and 227-2.
Protsenko has six children, the youngest was born in 1969.
PSHONNAIA, Mariia P. VSASD Vinnitsky Hutor, Vinnitsa prov.
UkSSR b. 1940
On 28 Dec. 1980, believers had gathered at her home, police broke into the
home, conducted a search and in the process beat up Mariia's sister, for
allowing this gathering and for singing religious songs, Mariia was fined
50 r.
PUSHKOV, Evgenii N. ECB Hartsyzsk, Donetsk prov., UkSSR b. 1941
Gifted violinist, pursued his beliefs as a musical minister. 1 May 1980,
arrested at a peace gathering of youth and sentenced to 3 yrs camp.
Released same day, only to be rearrested on 27 May 1983. Under articles
187-3, 188-1 and 209-1 ofthe C.C. of the UkSSR he was sentenced to 5
yrs str. regime camp, to be followed by 3 yrs exile. Pushkov has eight
children, the youngest was born in 1981.
RAZDYMAKHO, Taisiia Andreeva VSASD Kattakurgan, Samarkand
prov., UzSSR arrested in February 1980. On 28 Feb. her home was
searched- the floors were ripped up and the yard was dug up; a Bible, a
tape recorder, identification, a savings book and some religious literature
were confiscated. There was nobody present during the search and when a
fellow believer, Aleksei SPORYKHIN, rode by the house with his son on a
motorcycle, and saw what was happening, he was grabbed and dragged
into the yard. Aleksei, a second-class invalid, was hit and stepped on when
he fell to the ground, and told to shut up when he attempted to call the
Appendix 2 225
neighbours for help. His son also had his mouth bloodied when he
attempted to call for help. A warrant for the search has never been
presented.
ROZKALNS,Janis Baptist Riga, Latvian SSR
On 6 Jan. I983, a search at his home revealed Bibles and religious
literature. On 20 Jan., Janis declared his desire to emigrate to West
Germany. On I3 April he was arrested. In Nov. I983 he was tried and
sentenced to 5 yrs camp. str. regime, and 3 yrs exile, under article 65 ofthe
C.C. of the Latvian SSR - for anti-governmental behaviour. His state-
appointed lawyer refused to discuss the case with him even once and Janis
was prevented from cross-examining the witnesses. In transit Janis fell
gravely ill, but a week passed before he was finally examined and diagnosed
with advanced pneumonia. Nevertheless, he was not admitted into the
prison hospital- the nurse informed him that the administration would
not allow it. When he arrived at his camp, 37- Perm', again a week passed
before he received medical attention.
RUMACHIK, Petr Vasil'evich ECB, presbyter Dedovsk, Moscow prov.
b. I931
Deputy and temporary chairman of the Council of ECB Churches. Also a
past contributor to Vestnik lstiny and Byulleten'. Arrested I5 Aug I980,
found with various printing equipment, sentenced to 5 yrs camp, str.
regime, under articles 162, 209-I and 277 -I. This was his fifth trial and he
had already served I 0 yrs in prison; he also suffers from very high blood
pressure. After one year of imprisonment afterthis last trial, he has had his
visitation rights suspended, he does not receive his mail and his letters to his
family are either not delivered or delayed for long periods of time and
heavily censored. Rearrested a week before the expiry ofthe sentence. On
7 Feb. 1986 sentenced to an additional5 yr str. regime camp term in Chita
(Siberia).
RYTIKOV, Pavel Timofeevich ECB Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad prov.,
UkSSR b. I930
Arrested in I979 and sentenced to 3 yrs camp for his participation in a
Christian summer camp. Released in I982, only to be rearrested on 2 April
1983 and sentenced to 2 yrscamp, str. regime, under article 2I4 of the C.C.
of the UkSSR. Released in Aprill985, upon completion ofhis sentence. On
I June I985, when police broke up a worship service, he was arrested with 8
others. After I5 days all were released except for Pavel, who was kept under
arrest for another week. Upon his release he went underground to avoid
arrest and a possible fourth trial. In Jan. 1986 rearrested. Sentenced in
April to l 1/2 yrs str. regime camps for violation of administrative
surveillance regs. Had ten children as of I980.
SHAPOKA, L'onasa Lith. Catholic, rector
On I 0 Oct. 1980 his apartment was broken into and he was beaten for a
period of over 4 hrs until he was killed.
SHELKOV, Vladimir Andreevich VSASD b. 1895
Chairman ofthe All-Soviet Church of the VSASD from I949 to 1980. Was
tried four times, the last time in 1979, for which he received a term of 5 yrs
camp, str. regime, with confiscation of property and home. Died in the
camps on 27 Jan. I980; many consider that he was killed.
226 Appendix 2
SHEVCHENKO, Oles' Christian

Arrested 31 March 1980, and sentenced 24 Dec. 1980 to 5 yrs camp, str.
regime, and 3 yrs exile, under article 62 of the C.C. of the UkSSR. Deprived
of his annual visit and given 10 days punishment for his participation in an
Easter celebration in April 1982 (see MARINOVICH). 10 March 1984,
suffered a heart attack and lost consciousness. The guard refused to call for
medical help as Oles' had already been visited by a nurse that morning. His
hands turned blue, but his life was saved thanks to some liquid ammonia
and glycerine tablets that another prisoner had. The next morning he was
still unable to get up from his bed; for this he was punished with 15 days in
the punishment cell- food only every second day.
SOLTYS, Fr. Ignatii Ukr. Catholic
Was in prison forthe following years: 1946-56, 1959-62, 1962-7, 1979-
82. One month after his release in 1982 he was rearrested and sentenced to
a f urtherterm of 5 yrs camp and 5 yrs exile, under article 209-2 of the C. C.
of the UkSSR.
SUSHCHEVSKAIA, Ol'ga D. Hari Krishna Kiev
Tried late 1985/early 1986, sentenced to 3 yrs imprisonment under article
209-1 oftheC.C.ofthe UkSSR. Shewasaccusedoforganizingand leading
a group whose actions 'are harmful to society'. As evidence, the
government claimed that the condition of a 'mentally ill' Hari Krishna had
deteriorated due to his repetition of the mantra. Konstantin GAVRI-
LIUK, who was the Hari Krishna referred to, in his testimony denied that
his condition had deteriorated, and further testified that he had been a
member of the sect for a year and a half even prior to OI'ga's conversion,
therefore she should not be 'blamed'.
SV ARINSKAS, Fr. Al'fonas Catholic- Lithuanian
Member of the Catholic Committee for the Defence of Believers Rights.
Arrested25Jan. 1983,sentenced6May 1983to7yrscamp,str. regime,and
5 yrs exile, for 'anti-Soviet activities'.
SVETOV, F. G. Orthodox b. 1928
HusbandofZoia KRAHMAL'NIKOVA. Converted as an adult, has had a
book of religious content published in the West(OpenMethe Doors); suffers
from asthma and a heart condition. Arrested on 23 Jan. 1985, in Moscow,
on the day his daughter was giving birth, and shortly after being released
from a hospital himself. Charged under article 190-1, sentenced in
January 1986 to internal exile.
SVIDNITSKY, Fr. Iosif Catholic b. 1937
In mid-may 1985, in Novosibirsk, he was sentenced to 3 yrs imprisonment,
for organizing a religious service.
TEREL YA, Iosif Catholic- Ukrainian
Founded and was the first chairman of the Action Group, in Sept. 1982,
founded the Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Believers in the
Ukraine; also believed to have compiled nine issues of the Chronicle of the
Catholic Church in the Ukraine and the first issue of the Ukrainian Catholic
Herald. Iosifhad spent, up to 1982, 18 yrs in camps, prisons and psychiatric
hospitals - over half of his life. After founding the Committee for the
Defence of Believers Rights ... in Sept. 1982, he was arrested on 24 Dec.
1982 and sentenced to I yr camp, str. regime, for 'parasitism'. In
Appendix 2 227
connection with the trial, searches were conducted at the homes of Iosifs
relatives and friends; religious literature, books, and manuscripts were
confiscated-supposedly to prove Iosifs 'parasitism'? He was duly released
in Dec. 1983. On 16 Feb. 1984, the commander of the local militia paid a
visit, late at night. In a drunken state he threatened to blow up Iosifs home,
and displayed a package of dynamite that he had brought with him. On 8
Feb. 1985, Iosif was arrested again and charged with 'anti-Soviet activity'.
In Aug. 1985 he was sentenced to7 yrscampand 5yrsexile. Of41 yrsofhis
life 18 have been spent in concentration camps.
TRIKUR, Mariya, Catholic
Mariya and her husband, Mikhail, have returned their passports- stating
that they do not wish to have anything to do with a regime that persecutes
Catholics for their faith. She has served three terms in prison, her husband
has served five. Their children have been forcibly taken away from them
and placed in boarding schools, where their pectoral crosses were
confiscated form them. Both Mariya and her husband were arrested in
Dec. 1982, and sentenced to 2 yrs imprisonment each. Both served part of
their terms in psychiatric hospitals. In April 1984, Mariya was released
from camp. On June 15, in the village of Dolgoe in Zakarpatia, she was
attacked by a policeman in the middleoftheday. Yu. Starostadragged her
through the village by her hair, to the police station, so as to have a 'chat'. He
threatened her with rape and the destruction of her home.
VARRAVIN, Vitalii Fedorovich ECB Leningrad b. 1959
Arrested 19 Feb. 1982, and sentenced to 4 yrs camp, str. regime, under
article 206. In 1984, in camp, he was beaten and spent 33 days in solitary
confinement in one 2-month period. He was also threatened with a second
term and with 'accidental death' for not 'reforming'.
VIL'CHINSKAIA, Galina V. ECB Brest, Belorussia b. 1958
Aug. 1979, she was arrested for leading Bible studies at a summer youth
camp. She spent one year in prison, awaiting trial, before being sentenced
to 3 yrs camp. After spending one year in the camp, performing 10 hours of
heavy manual labour daily under conditions of poor nourishment and
poor clothing, her hair began to fall out, she started loosing her teeth and
her gums swelled up. After repeated threats of punishment if she did not
'keep quiet about God', she was beaten to a state of unconsciousness by four
thugs, on 8 July 1982, who apparently acted upon orders of the camp
commanders. Upon completion of her sentence in 1982, Galina was
released. Police pressured her to act as a collaborator, threatening another
term. She refused, and ten weeks later after her release police 'discovered'
drugs in her suitcase at an airport security check. She received a 2 yr
sentence. Upon completion of this sentence, when she arrived home in
Nov. 1984, her parents were fined 50 r. for allowing a crowd of her friends
to gather at their home to greet Gal ina.
YAKUNIN, Fr. Gleb Orthodox
Organized and founded the Christian Committee for the Defence of
Believers Rights in the USSR in 1976. Arrested I Nov. 1979, and sentenced
to 5 yrs camp and 5 yrs exile under article 70. In 1981 he had his Bible,
prayer book and church calendar taken away from him in the prison camp
(although Soviet law does not prohibit the possession of these in prison).
228 Appendix 2
His Bible was returned to him only after an 80-day hunger strike. 1982 to
1984 were spent by Fr. Gleb in almost total isolation; his visitation and
correspondence rights were suspended. In 1982 he was sentenced to 4
months' punishment cell for 'punishable behaviour, including the
conducting of religious propaganda among youth'.
YANKOVICH, Aleksandr Baptist Moscow
April1983-given 72 hours by police to leave Moscow. He refused and was
forcibly hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. In May 1976 he had been
arrested under article 190-1 and had spent the next 4 yrs forcibly interned
in a psychiatric prison. He was released only in Sept. 1980
ZUEV, SERGEI V. Hari Krishna Moscow b. 1953
Early 1984 sentenced to 2 1/2 yrs imprisonment for his participation in the
religious sect.
Notes and References
CHAPTER 1: THE EARLY PERSECUTIONS, 1917-21
l. For example, Nikolai Shchors and Vasili Chapaev were among such
anarchistic Bolshevik leaders of semi-regular, semi-partisan forces,
depicted very well in the figure of Strelnikov in Pasternak's Doctor
Zhivago. As Pasternak mentions in the novel, most of them were quietly
liquidated by Lenin towards the end of the Civil War when, like the SA in
Hitler's Germany some fifteen years later, they ceased to be an asset, and
became a dangerous liability to the new regime. See also: M. Zalygin,
Solenaia Pad', (M.: Voenizdat, 1981) passim; S. Golosovsky and G. Krul',
Na Manyche 'Sviashchennom'; Sektantskoe dvizhenie sredi molodezhy (M.:
Mol.gvard., 1931) p. 31.
2. For example, the address of the bishops imprisoned in Solovki to the
Government of the USSR on the conditions of coexistence and co-
operation between the Soviet State and the Orthodox Church (May
1927), Regelson, Tragediia, p. 422.
3. Chapaev appears to have in fact fallen in battle with the Whites, but
Shchors is generally thought to have been one ofthe commanders killed
on Lenin'sorTrotsky'sorders, although official Soviet sources say he was
killed in battle, without saying which battle. See, Sovetskaia istoricheskaia
entsiklopediia (M., 1976) vol. 16, pp. 388-9.
4. Regelson, Tragediia, p. 239; Protopresviter M. Polsky, Novye mucheniki,
vol. l, pp. 66-8. Polsky erroneously states that during the procession the
faces of the imprisoned Tsar and his family were seen at the window of
the house watching the procession. The bishop allegedly stopped and
gave his benediction in the direction of that window. The point is that
most of the family and the Tsar had been moved to Ekaterinburg the
previous day. Soviet confirmation of the murder in: V. Arkhipenko.
'Zagovor lliodora', N.i rei., no. 9 ( 1968), p. 26; the excuse being his
alleged 'counter-revolutionary activity'; for this reason the author
justifies the murder.
5. Polsky, Novye mucheniki, vol. l, pp. 77-81.
6. Russkiie Vedomosti (Moscow) 23Jan./ 5 Feb. ( 1918). English translations in
theN. Tsurikov Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Folder B694.
7. Polsky, Novye, pp. 184-6.
8. Polsky, Novye, pp. 187-9.
9. A. A. Valentinov (ed.), Chernaiakniga(Shturmnebes) (no publication data,
probably Paris, 1925) p. 43.
10. Ibid, pp. 50-1. Based on documents collected by allied missions attached
to White Armies.
II. Polsky, Novye mucheniki, pp. 69-70. Regelson (Tragediia, p. 243) rejects
Polsky's version that Andronik had been buried alive. Apparently it was
another person, resembling Archb. Andronik, who had been killed in
this manner. See also, M. Manuil, Russkie ... ierarkhi vol. I, pp. 256-8,
229
230 Notes and References
and vol. 2, pp. 85-8. Regelson's version is based on a report in the local
diocesan journal of the time. He also cites notes for a sermon found in
Andronik's papers which illustrate his premonitions of martyrdom:
I. I am happy to be put on trial in the name of Christ and for the
Church ...
2. Counter-revolution, politics - this is none of my business; for
Russia ... will not be saved by our squabbles and despair.
3. But thecauseoftheChurch is sacred tome. Calling on everybody, I
excommunicate, anathematize those who have risen against Jesus,
who are attacking the Church ...
4. Only over my dead body will you defile the sacred. This is my duty,
wherefore I appeal to Christians to stand (for the Church) unto
death.
5. Try me, but release the others. It is their duty todoas I say, as long as
they are Christians. Otherwise anarchy, chaos ... [will prevail].
Regelson, Tragediia 243 (from: Tobol'skie eparkhial'nyia vedomosti, no. 6,
1919,p.96).
12. Polsky, Novye mucheniki, vol. 1, pp. 73-6.
13. Ibid, pp. 72 and 71; and Valentinov (on Nikodim), Chernaia Kniga, p. 36.
14. Valentinov, pp. 37,42-3.
15. Polsky, pp. 11-24; Regelson, p. 231.
16. Polsky, pp. Rl-3.
17. Valentinov,pp.31-45.
18. lbid,pp.SI-2.
19. Regelson, pp. 228-31.
20. Valentinov, pp. 26-7.
21. Regelson, p. 266.
22. Valentinov, p. 48.
23. Dennis]. Dunn, TheCatholicChurchand theSovietGovernmmt, I 9 I 9-I 949
(N.Y.: Columbia Univ. Press; distributor: E. Europ. Monograph
No. XXX, Keston Book No. 10) pp. 31-2.
24. Regelson, Tragediia, 226-7, 234.
26. Ibid, p. 42.
27. Ibid, p. 46.
28. Ibid, pp. 40-1.
30. Ibid, p. 271. Also, N. F. Zybkovets, Natsionalizatsiia monastyrskikh
imushchestv v Sovetskoi Rossii (19I7-I921) (M.: Akademiia Nauk SSSR,
1975) pp. II 0-11. He points out that the nationalization of monasteries
continued on a rapid scale beyond 1921, and by 1922 722 monasteries
were confiscated from the Church, leaving her theoretically with 531,
but a large part of the latter was in the western territories annexed by
Rumania, Poland, the Baltic states and Finland after 1918.
31. The most famous pre-revolutionary agrarian Christian communes were
founded by a pious and philanthropic aristocrat, Nepluev, with the
blessing of the Church. See: N. N. Nepluev, Trudovye bratstva ... i
khristianskoe gosudarstvo (Leipzig, Germany: Beer & Hermann, 1893);
Kratkiia svedeniia o Pravoslavnom Kresto-vouivizhenskom trudovom bratstve

(Chernigov: tip. Gubernskogo pravleniia, 1905); N. N. Nepluev, Podvizh-
nik zemli Russkoi (Sergiev Posad: tip. Sv.-Tr. Sergievoi Lavry, 1908).
Under the Soviets the Orthodox Church was denied the right to found
such communes, even as the Evangelicals and Baptists were permitted to
do so until the beginning of the mass collectivization by the state in 1929.
Between then and 1933 all religious communes were disbanded by force.
See: Putintsev, Politicheskaia rot' i taktikasekt (M., 1935) pp. 248-80; Ivan
Prokhanov, In the Cauldron of Russia, 1869-1933 (N.Y.: 1933) passim.
33. Yarosla vsk y's speech at the Second LM G Congress, Razvernutym frontom
(M.: Bezbozhnik, 1929) p. 5; also Arkhipenko, n. 4 above.
35. Curtiss, The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 48-59.
36. Ibid, pp. 48-59.
37. Archb. Ioann (Shakhovskoi), Vera i dostovernost' (Paris, 1982) p. 27. The
anonymous author of a samiuiat manuscript on the life of a Volga priest,
Fr. Sergii, also writes that the First World War caused a deterioration of
relations between the people and the priests, blaming the latter's
patriotism for the hardships of the war. A rumour was even circulating
that priests held their savings in Germany, although 'why should they
then have wanted the war', for which they were now being blamed?
Ostraia luka (Ms., Keston College Samizdat Archives) p. 163.
As to the promised moderation towards the Church, one of the reasons
fort he premature closure of the 1917 -18Soborwas not only lackoffunds
but also the fact that the Soviet Government suddenly took away from the
Sobor the building where most of its sessions were occurring. Regelson,
TraKediia, p. 241. The era of War Communism concluded with the trials
of the diocesan administration of Archangel (in Moscow) and of the
Novgorod bishops (in Novgorod). The 'crime' of the former group was
that they had sent a report on Bolshevik religious persecutions to the
Archbishop of Canterbury; that of the latter, conducting 'counter-
revolutionary propaganda' in the diocesan press. Archbishop Pavel of
Arkhangelsk, and a priest and a lay secretary, were condemned to death.
The absurdity of the punishment and of the 'crime' must have been
evident even to the Soviets, for the death sentence was commuted to a
mere five-year imprisonment. In Novgorod the trial concluded with a
conditional five-year sentence meted out to Archbishop Arsenii of
Novgorod and to his vicar-bishop Alexii (the future Patriarch).
Regelson, pp. 271-2.
38. Prokhanov, In the Cauldron, pp. 175-7. He naively bought the official
Soviet line, showed open hostility towards the canonical Orthodox
Church, calling her 'reactionary', and much preferred the 'progressive'
Renovationists, having even addressed their 'Second Sobor' of 1923 and
having been presented by M. Antonin, the Renovationist leader of the
time, with the huge Orthodox church ofSt Peter and Paul in Moscow for
the use of the Evangelicals.
39. Bernhard Wilhelm, 'Moslems in the Soviet Union', Aspects of Religion,
pp. 257-9.
CHAPTER 2: CONTEMPT AND HATE PROPAGANDA,

1919-39
1. Revolutsiia i tserkov', monthly, Moscow 1919-24; circulation, around

5000 per issue. P. A. Krasikov, editor; M. V. Gal kin (pseudonym: Go rev),
deputy editor. The former was the head of the Department for Religious
Affairs of the Soviet Commissariat of Justice and one of the chief Soviet
theorists and propagandists of atheism. Go rev was a renegade Orthodox
priest and a leading propagandist of atheism. The official purpose of the
journal was to 'popularize the separation of Church and State among the
toiling classes'.
2. Nauka i religiia, no. 1 (Moscow, 1922, circulation 50 000 copies).
3. Bezbozhnik, at first published thrice monthly, soon became a weekly
newspaper: Moscow, 1922-41 (except from Jan. 1935 to March 1938,
when it was not published). Emelian Yaroslavksy, ed. An illustrated
journal by the same name was published from 1925 to 1941 monthly,
except for 1926-32 when it was a fortnightly. Yaroslavsky was editor
from 1925 to 1932 and F. Putintsev from 1933 on.
4. 'M usulmanskoe dukhovenstvo za sovetskuiu vlast', RiTs, no. 3-5 ( 1919)
p. 59; reports on the resolution of the Moslem clergy congress of the
Kazan' Province on full support for Soviet power and condemning
counter-revolution.
5. For example, 'Vskrytie "moshchei" Tikhona Zadonskogo', 'Vskrytie ...
Sergiia Radonezhskogo', RiTs, respectively: no. 2 (1919) pp. 11-21;
no. 6-8 ( 1919) pp. 56-60.
6. A. Volkov, 'Vskrytie moshshei Prepodobnogo Sergiia Radonezhskogo',
Nadezhda, no. 5 (Russia: Samizdat) (reprint, Frankfurt/M.: Possev
Verlag, 1981) pp. 272-89. The Vladimir story originates from the late
learned Bishop-martyr Afanasii (Sakharov) who had spent over thirty
years in prisons and internal exile for his faith. A monastic priest in
Vladimir at the time, he was on duty during the opening of the relics of
the local saints- Princes Gleb (12th c.) and George- the latter killed in a
battle by the Tatars who had beheaded him by sword. Rather than allow
the Soviets to do the act in the blasphemous way, Fr. Afanasii began an
akathist service to Vladimir's saints, which led the arriving mobs to kneel,
cross themselves and pray. When the relic shrines were opened, all the
people present including the state authorities witnessed that the bodies
ofboth saints lay untouched by decay; moreover, StGleb's skin was as soft
and elastic as when living, and StGeorge's head had rejoined the body,
and yet in such an irregular manner that the scar was seen and the two
ends of the backbone did not fit. It was the state medical officer
inspecting the bodies who later admitted his religious faith had been
strengthened by the event. See, 'Krestnyi put' preosviashchennogo
Afanasiia Sakharova', VRSKhD, no. 107 (1973) p. 178. The atheistic
press, however, continued its 'unmasking' of'fraudulent' relics for many
years to come: e.g., P. Orlovets, 'Moshchi "sv." Evfrosinii', Bezbozhnik,
no. 22 (November 1928) pp. 12-13.
7. See note 5 above; and 'Tserkovniki i ikh agenty pered narodnym
revolutsionnym sudom', RiTs, no. 9-12 ( 1920) p. 46. See also Dostoev-
sky's Brothers Karamazov episode with the decaying of the just-deceased
saintly Fr. Zosima.
8. Bp. Leontii, Political Controls over the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union
(N.Y.: Columbia University, Butler Library, The Bakhmeteff Archives.
Folder: Leontii, collection: Research Program on the USSR) pp. 11-4.
Contrast M. M. Shein man and Yaroslavsk y (eds ), A ntireligioznyi krest'ian-
skii uchebnik (M. L.: Moskovskii rabochii, 1931) pp. 70-1; A. Zorich,
'"Chudo" v Kalinovke', My- bezbozhniki, I. A. Flerov (ed.), (M.: Gos.
antirel. izd., 1932) pp. 63-8.
9. Krasikov, 'Polozhenie tserkvi v Rossiiskoi Sovetskoi respublike', RiTs.,
no. 1-3 (1923) p. l.
I 0. 'Probuzhdaiushchaiasia derevnia', RiTs, no. 6-8 ( 1919) p. 61.
II. 'Ponemnogu osvobozhdaiutsia', RiTs, no. 6-8 (1919) p. 61.
12. NiR, no. I ( 1922) p. I. Statements in support of confiscations by leading
renovationists and their portraits are on pp. 41-51. Even in those early
days the regime showed from time to time that its preference for one
religion over another was only conditional and relative. Krokodil, the
Soviet satirical journal (no. 31, 19 August 1923) makes a pun on the use of
the term 'Living Church' by which the most numerous of the Reno-
vationist factions called itself, and the 'Dead Church' of the Patriarch. It
publishes a cartoon drawing of Patriarch Tikhon as a corpse with the
caption 'Dead Church', and that of Bishop Antoninofthe Renovationists
as a half-corpse with the caption 'Half-Dead Church'.
13. Pospielovsky, Russian Church ... , vol. I, ch. 3; and chapter I in this
volume.
14. Priest Piotr Vinogradov, 'Komu anafema', 'Shuiskoe krovavoe delo'; B.
Baranovsky, 'Moskovskie "ottsy" pered sudom' -all in NiR no. I, pp. 36-
8, 28, 29-33, respectively.
15. NiR no. I pp. 26-7.
16. Razvernutym frontom. 0 zadachakh i metodakh antireligioznoi propagandy (M.:
akts. obshch. Bezbozhnik, 1929) p. 5; also my Russian Church ... , vol. I,
p.39.
17. The absurdity of these assertions is more than obvious in the context of
the poverty of the Russian clergy of the period in general, as a result of the
colossal Soviet taxation on clergy which was not commensurate with their
earnings whatsoever, and of the Renovationist rank-and-file clergy in
particular because of the lack of support for the schism.
18. 'Sinagoga prispospobliaetsia', 'Obnovlentsy-obmanshchiki', 'Popy na
vybor', 'Musul'manskie obnovlentsy i krest'iane' - all in Bezbozhnik u
stanka, no. 7 Uuly 1927).
19. E.g.: In. Stukov, 'Udar po antisemitizmu- udar po religii i kontr-
revolutsii', Bezbust., no. 2 ( 1929) pp. 11-14.
20. The whole issue of Bez.boz.h. of27 September 1925 is devoted to attacking
Judaism and the contraposition of the Jewish proletariat and Jewish
capitalists; the occasion being Yom Kipur. Also: Koms. pr., no. 210 (Sept.
1929). I had a microfilm made only of the pages needed, but from mid-
1929 the newspaper discontinued the printing of the date of the paper on
each page, leaving only the cumulative number.
21. 'Pod flagom religii', RiTs, no. 6-8 ( 1919) pp. 94-6. See also, Pospielov-
sky, Russian Church, ch. 4.
22. 'Bezbozhnoe obozrenie', Bezbust., no. 9 (1930) pp. 9-16; D. Gnezdilov,
'Rukovoditeli sektantskikh obshchin g. Saratova pered sudom
obshchestvennosti', Antireligioznik, the monthly Scientific-
Methodological Journal of the LMG Central Council, no. 1 (]an. 1929)
pp. 83-5.
23. 'Trudovoe sektantstvo', RiTS, no. 1-3 (1922) pp. 26-30.
24. Bezbozhnik, no. 1 (Jan. 1929) p. 15.
25. P. Zarin, 'Politicheskii maskarad tserkovnikov i sektantov', Antirel.,
no.l0(193l)pp.9-16.
26. A. Rostovtsev, 'Kommuna "Bich"', Bezbozh., no. 18 (October 1928) p. 5;
Levitin, Likhie ... , pp. 152-5.
27. For example, the following articles in the Bezbozh. magazine: Boitsov,
'Kulaki sektanty razvalivaiut kolkhoz' (no. 6,June 1933, p. 4)- adjacent
toitisacaricatureon the Virgin Mary's Assumption (whose feast is on 15
August) which allegedly wrecks the harvest gathering; Putintsev,
'Sektanty protiv kolkhoznogo urozhaia' (no. 7, 1933, pp. 6-7); P. Zarin,
'Religiozniki protiv podniatiia urozhainosti i kollektivizatsii sel'skogo
khoziaistva' (no.24, Dec. 1929, pp.6-7); V. Shishakov, 'Religioznoe
mrakobesie v bor'be s sotsialisticheskim pereustroistvom sel'skogo
khoziaistva' (no. 19, October 1930, pp. 3-4); B. F-n, 'Tserkovniki protiv
tret'ego bol'shevitskogo seva' (no. 5-6, March 1932, p. 17); I\.G.,
'Vreditel'skaia deiatel'nost' vraga za vremia uborki khleba' (no. 17-18,
Sept. 1932, p. 20), etc.
28. A. Reinmarus, 'Sektantstvo v 1917 g.', Antirel., no. 5 (May 1930) pp. 14-
18.
29. lv. Tregubov et al., 'Sotsial'no-revolutsionnaia rol' sektantstva', and
Putintsev's and editorial responses to it. Bezbozhnik newspaper, nos 49
(150) and 50 (151) (Dec. 1925); 'Sovremennoe sektantstvo', Bezbozh.,
no. II (21 March 1926); Putintsev, 'Opyt uborki 1932 g. i zadachi bor'by s
sektantstvom', Bezbozh., no. 8 ( 1933) pp. 18-19; and his other articles in
the same publication in 1933, including nos I, 5, and especially 'Novaia
taktika sekt' in no. 6, pp. 14-15; Oleshchuk, 'Otvet baptistu', Bezbozh.,
no. 8 (Aug. 1934).
30. A. Arsharuni, 'Ideologiia sultangalievshchiny', Antirel., no. 5 (May 1930)
pp. 22-9.
31. See note 18 above; and Alexandre A. Benningsen and S. Enders
Wimbush,MuslimNationalCommu nism in the Soviet Union (The University
of Chicago Press, 1979) pp. 3-94.
32. VI. Sarab'ianov, 'Piatiletkoi po religii', Bezbozh., no. 21 (I\ovember 1929)
p. I.
33. See note 27 above. See also the Bezbozh. fortnightly, no. 3 (February
1932), where in several articles on page 19 and others, even former
priests are attacked for working in the collective farm administration,
while the latter are attacked for supplying a village priest with grain for
food; context is: let the priests starve. See also no. 6 (June 1933) articles,
'Uborka urozhaia i bor'ba s religiei' and 'Chego stoiat prazdniki', pp.
2-3.
34. Bezbust., no.l9 (1929) pp.8-10. See also, V. Shishakov, 'Religiia i
alkogolizm', Bezbozh., no. 18 (Sept. 1929).
35. For example: M. Zhurakovskaia, 'Iz tserkvi - v sumasshedshii dom',
Bezbozh., no. 1 (1934) pp. 8-9; S. Mit-v, 'Religiia i prestupnost", ibid,
no. 9 (Sept. 1933) pp. 12-13.
36. Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway, Russia's Political Hospitals (London:
Futura Publications, 1978) pp. 43-65, 220-57.
37. See Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch. 12 and Chapter 7 of the current
book, illustrating that this type of propaganda is a permanent feature of
the Soviet ideological establishment.
38. M. Kostelovskaia (editor of Bezbust.), 'Ob oshibkakh v antireligioznoi
propagande', Pravda, no. 20 ( 1925); E. Yaroslavsky, 'Ob oshibkakh tov.
Kostelovskoi', Bezbozh., no. 5 (l Feb. 1925) pp. 2-3; lv. Zyrianov, 'Ob
antireligioznoi propagande', Bezbozh., no.46 (15 Nov. 1925); 'Sten-
ogrammy Vtorogoplenuma TsSSVB',Antirel., no. 5 (May 1930)pp. 116,
122, 126-7, etc. The last pre-congress attempt by the Moscow LMG to
defend its positions against Yaroslavsky's line appeared in a Koms. pr.
report (no. 128, 1929, early June, on the eve of the Second Congress) on
the Moscow Provincial LMGCongress. It stressed thatitcontained 20 per
cent of the All-Union membership of the organization (60 000 of
300 000) and that 60 per cent of the Moscow city and region LMG were
CPSU members. It attacked the central LMG textbook for antireligious
circles, for stating that Christianity was born as a religion of the urban
proletariat and for having some good words on 'the toiling sectarian
movement which began to fight for the Soviet power from the first days
of the proletarian dictatorship'. The Moscow Congress resolved 'to take
more active and decisive measures against the Orthodox and sectarian
organizations' and to achieve 'a broad movement for the closure of
churches'. See also Chapter I in this volume.
39. See note 33 above; or Bezbust., no. 12 (December 1927) p. 3 - with
blasphemous caricatures on the Nativity and other episodes of Christ's
terrestrial life, and on Christian celebrations of the feasts. The verses
under the 'I loly Family' cartoon are from Gavriliada, a blasphemous
literary prank written by the teen-aged Pushkin.
40. Krokodil even calculated that over 40 000 Orthodox clergy consumed in
food the equivalent of9 per cent of peasants' state tax-in-kind (no. 7, 18
Feb. 1923);Koms.pr., !Jan. 1929;andothers.
4 I. See his 'Soiuz bezbozhnikov SSSR. 0 priemakh oskorbliaiuschchikh
religioznoe chuvstvo veruiushchikh', and 'Propaganda naiznanku',
Bezbozh., newspaper, respectively no. 25 (4July 1926) and no. 27 (l8July
1926).
42. M. Kovalev, 'Boloto im. gospoda boga', and B. Kandidov, 'Khristos v
zhivopisi- primer dlia rabov i pokrovitel' palachei', Bezbozh., fortnightly,
respectively no. 22 (November 1928) p. 17, and no. 17 (Sept. 1928)
pp. 1-5. Kovalev confuses the ancient Assumption Cathedral in
Vladimir with the nineteenth-century Kiev Cathedral ofSt Vladimir: he
talks about the 'ugliness' of churches in the city of Vladimir, but the
photograph in his article shows the interior of the Kiev cathedral with
frescoes by the late nineteenth-century artist, Vasnetsov.
43. Photos with captions and comments in practically every issue of Bezbozh.
in 1928and 1929. For example, in 1928: no. 3, p. 17; 4, pp. 6-8. In 1929:
3, p. 6; 6, pp. 4-6; 6, p. 9; 9, pp. 10-11; 10, p. 10; etc.
44. On Loginov: n. 40 above. On schools and teachers: Koms. pr. 21 Febr.
1929, p. 3 etc. On Stalin: 'Poslednie resheniia partii i zadachi bezbozh-
nikov', Bezbust., no. 2 (Feb. 1928) p. 2.
45. 'Poslednie resheniia'; Also, Koms. pr., nos: 130 (June 1929) p. 4; 305 (late
Nov.l930)p.3; 101 (lateAprill93l)p.2;etc.
46. I. L., 'Interesy klassa i revolutsii vyshe zhalosti k staromu ... Nash otvet
komsomolke Kon', Koms. pr. (25 Apr. 1929) p. 4.
47. 'Sviataia professura', signed by a 'Neprosveshchensky', i.e. the 'Unen-
lightened one', Bezbust., no. 3 (March 1929) pp. 6-7.
48. 'Materialy k istorii Akademii nauk', Pamiat', a samizdat historical
miscellany (Moscow, 1979) (Paris, 1981: YMCA Press) especially p. 4 76.
49. Bezbust., no. 12 (1931) p.l9.
50. Ant. Zorsky, 'Dve demonstratsii', Bezbozh., no. 8 (Feb. 1923) p. 2.
51. The 'angelic resolution' is the hymn, 'Glory to God in the Highest .. .'.
See: M. Kostelovskaia, 'Khristos rozhdaetsia' ,Bezbust., no. 12 (Dec. 1927)
p. 2; 'Komsomol'skoe rozhdestvo',Bezbozh., no. II (21 March 1926) p. 8;
N. Amosov, an editorial on the LMG anti-Christmas campaign, Bezbozh.,
fortnightly, no. 3 (Feb. 1930).
52. 'Shestvie bezbozhnikov na prazdnovanii I 0-letiia Oktiabrskoi revolutsii',
Bezbozh., no. 5 ( 1928), p. 15.
53. Koms. pr.: 11 Apr. (1929) p.4, 25 Apr. (1929) p.4; 8 May (1929) p.4;
no. I 01 (late April 1931) p. 2. The latter also complains that both the
Orthodox and the sectarian clergy continue to attract young people to
the detriment oflethargic LMG and Komsomol cells. No. 305 (late Nov.
1930) p. 3, writes that the Church and the sectarians counteract the
Komsomol quite successfully with their Khristomol organizations. But all
such religious groups were made illegal by the 1929legislation. Does the
paper infer underground activities of the Churches or is its information
simply over a year outdated? Also: Oleshchuk, 'Protiv burzhuazno-
kulatskogo rozhdestva', Bezbozh. I illustr./, no. 23 (Dec. 1931 ).
54. Oleshchuk, 'Za bol'shevitskii sev, protiv kulatskoi paskhi', Bezbozh.l
newsp./, no. 2-3 (Jan. 1933) p. 17.
55. M. Galaktionov, 'ltogi ianvarskogo plenuma TsKa i TseKaKa VKP (b)',
Bezbozh., no. I (1933) pp. 2-3; Amosov, n. 50 above.
56. Powell, Antireligious Propaganda ... (a solid book otherwise), p. 38. See:
'Moskovskomu komitetu VKP (b) 'a resolution of the LMG C. Counc.
which concludes by praising Stalin and 'Stalin's faithful disciple,
Comrade Khrushchev', Bezbozh., no. 9 (1936) p. 4. Several issues of the
journal in 1939 carry a boring serialized article 'Stalin on Religion' ....
CHAPTER 3: PERSECUTIONS, 1921-41

I. These rebellions (including the great peasant rebellion of Siberia in the
same year, the revolts of the Basmachi in Central Asia, etc.) were of more
concern and embarrassment to the Bolsheviks than the war against the
Whites. The latter could be written off as 'class enemies', but the workers
and peasants were the element in whose name and, allegedly, by whose
efforts the Bolsheviks had seized power. Particularly embarrassing were
the Kronstadt sailors who, along with the Latvian Sharp-Shooters, had
been the only effective military force in bringing Lenin to power and
protecting him in November I9I7, and now they were demanding his
and his party's resignation from power.
2. For details, see Pospielovsky: Russian Church, ch. 2; 'The Renovationist
Schism in the Russian Orthodox Church', Russian History, vol. 9, parts 2-
3 (1982) pp. 285-307.
3. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch. 4. Most of his new opponents protested
not so much against the general posture of civic loyalty, which had been
generally accepted by practically all churchmen at least since I923, as
against the mendacious assurances of the Declaration that there had
never been any religious persecutions under the Soviets; these were seen
as a betrayal of the martyrs.
4. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch. 3; Regelson, Tragediia, pp. 272-3,
278-84.
6. Valentinov, Shturm., p. 285.
7. ibid, pp. 56-77.
8. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, chs 2 and 3.
9. Valentinov, Shturm., pp. 58-72.
I 0. Regelson, p. 285, cites the figures of an official Soviet author on church
themes, Kandidov.
II. This was the case of the arrest of a Jewish Kiev worker, Beilis, in I9Il,
charged with a sadistic murder of a Christian boy. The anti-Semites tried
to accuse Beilis of an alleged Jewish ritual murder of Christian children
to use their blood in the preparation of matsos. The investigation and trial
continued until I913, when with the help of Russian Orthodox
theologians it was proved that the legend of Jewish ritual murders was
unfounded and that Beilis was innocent of the murder. Beilis was
acquitted and released.
I2. Polsky, Mucheniki, vol. I, pp. 25-57 and vol. 2, pp. 293-4; Valentinov,
Shtunn., pp. 67 -8; M. Manuil, Die russische orthodoxen Bischoefe von 1893
bis 1965. Bio-BibliograjJhie (Erlangen: Oikonomia, 1981) vol. 2, pp. I42-
5.
13. Valentinov, Shturm., pp. 68-75. His cited examples include the senten-
cing of a bishop to eight years, another bishop to six years, and a church
warden to eight years of imprisonment.
14. Valentinov, Shturm., pp. 75-8.
15. The figures are for the period 1921 to I923. See: Pospielovsky, Russian
Church, ch. I, n. 7; Polsky, Mucheniki, vol. I, pp. 2I3-I4 (details in
Appendix I); Struve, Christians, pp. 37-8.
I6. Valentinov, Shturm., pp. 68.
17. Ironically, this had also been the aim of Leo Tolstoy. See, Arkhiepiskop
Ioann (Shakhovskoi), K istorii russkoi intelligentsii (Revolutsiia Tolstogo)
(New York: Ixoyc, 1975?) pp. 40, 42, et passim.
18. Bp. Leontii, Political Controls over the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union
(New York: Columbia University, Butler Library, The Bakhmeteff

Archives. Folder: Leontii. Collection: Research Program on the USSR)
pp. 11-14. In more recent times the late Fr. Sergii Zheludkov was
deprived of his licence to serve as priest by the Soviet authorities for
having organized a pilgrimage of his parishioners to the site of an icon, or
church-dome renovation. A similar case in Yugoslavia in the late 1940s
resulted in the imprisonment of Fr. Valdimir Rodzianko, now Bp. Basil.
The latter information was supplied by Fr. Valdimir to this author. The
information on Zheludkov was supplied by Russian Orthodox Christians
who had known him in the USSR.
19. 1926-8letters from Russia in Vestnik RSKhD, no. 7 Quly 1928) pp. 12-
17; E. MacNaughten, 'Informal Report of Religious Situation in Russia',
3 October 1927, 2 (Hoover Institution Archives, Colton Collection, Box 6).
20. F. Svetov, 'Optina Pustyn' segodnia'; Anonymous, 'Zhizneopisanie
ieromonakha Nikona'; both in Nadezhda, no. 8 (Russia 1981; Frankfurt
1982) pp. 10-311.
21. Polsky,Novye,vo1.1,pp.203-17.
22. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch. 2; A. Levitin-Krasnov, Likhie gody,
1925-1941 (Paris: YMCA Press, 1977) pp.255-9; Levitin and Vadim
Shavrov, Ocherki po istorii russkoi tserkovnoi smuty ( Kuesnacht, Switzerland:
Institut Glaube ind der 2 Welt, 1978) vol. 1, pp. 77-8.
23. Polsky, Novye, vol.1, pp.125-43.
24. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, chs 3 and 4. Regelson (Tragediia, p. 542) in
his list of bishops arrested in 1926 forgets to include M. Sergii, Peter's
locum-tenens and the future patriarch.
25. Nik. Shemetov, 'Arkhimandrit Tavrion (Batozsky)', Vestnik RKhD,
no. 127 (Paris, 1978) pp. 253-5.
26. Regelson, Tragediia, pp. 568-74, particularlyp. 570; MacNaughten ms.,
1.
27. MacNaughten, 1-2.
28. Ibid, p. 599; Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vols 3-4
(New York: Harper & Row, 1975) p. 72.
29. Struve, Christians, p. 48.
30. Regelson, Tragediia, pp. 534-6. The list does not include bishops and
other clergy detained for short periods at a time (for less than one year).
31. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch. 2, pp. 73-6. Bp. Leontii, as an
illustration of the distrust of the Ukrainian believers towards the self-
proclaimed uncanonical Autocephalist Church, cites the case of the wife
of M. Lypkivsky (like the Renovationists, some of the Autocephalists'
bishops were married), who on her death-bed requested that a priest of
the Patriarchal Orthodox Church administer the last rites to her and
bury her. Her wish was fulfilled. Leontii, Political Controls 60.
32. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch. 2; Bp. Leontii, Politica/5, pp. 23-37,
and 44-65.
33. For example: Bp. Afansii (Sakharov) in VRKhD, no. 107, pp. 170-211;
priests Piotr and Ierax, V RKhD, no. 124, pp. 269-98; the Elder Sampson
(Sivers) in Nadezhda, no. 9, pp. 123-69; and others.
34. A case in point illustrating the arbitrariness of such taxes was that of The
Holy Virgin Protection Church in Kiev. The authorities suddenly
declared that the church would be taxed I 00 r. if a bishop served there.

Then, on the eve of the Paschal night service they slapped on a 400 r. tax.
The church committee refused to pay, so the state officials closed the
church preventing the Easter all-night service from being celebrated.
The church remained closed. MacNaughten ms., 4.
35. N. Orleansky,Zakonyoreligioznykhob 'edineniakhRSFSR (M.: Bezbozhnik,
1930) part 2, pp. 56-173.
36. Struve, Christians, p. 48; and Metropolitan Sergii's 1930 Memorandum
to the Soviet Government protesting the hideous taxes, inter alia Struve,
pp. 48-52. Also, a caricature on such 'unemployed' priests in rags
surrounding a chapel with the caption: 'Employment Office for Pops', in
Bezbust., no. 18 ( 1929) pp. 14-15. A casein point is cited in Levitin'sLikhie
... ,p. 72.
37. Kirill Shevich, 'Bor'ba za veru v SSSR', VRSKhD, vol. 1 Uan. 1931)
pp. 16-20.
38. Vybory v sovety deputatov trudiashchikhsia (M., 1938) pp. 49-60.
39. Chap. 2 in this volume and Shevich, 'Bor'ba ... 'pp. 19-20.
40. Regelson, Tragediia, pp. 492 and 501; Levitin, Likhie . .. , p.21 0.
41. William C. Fletcher, The Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 1917-
I970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971) pp.51-81; Regelson,
Tragediia, p. 4 77. Most probably Sergii was using early 1929 figures,
because the ensuing rural chaos caused by the collectivisation precluded
the procurement of any reliable statistics on the churches there, which
were anyhow being closed by the thousands.
42. Levitin,Likhie, pp. 222-3, 245-328; Pospie!ovsky,RussianChurch,ch. 5.
On the liquidation of monasteries, see also: Curtiss, Russian Church,
p. 267; Polsky, Novye . .. , vol. 2, pp. 168-70.
43. This is Levitin's estimate; according to another source there were nc
more than ten Orthodox churches in Moscow by early 1935. The
discrepancy may be partly explained by the fact that Levitin, a former
Renovationist, counted the seven Renovationist parishes also as Ortho-
dox, which a strict Orthodox would not do. See: 'Rasstrel prot. A
Ksenofontova i prot. N. Burdikova', Vozrozhdenie (A Russian Paris daily)
24 April 1936; Levitin, Ocherki, vol. 3, p. 346.
44. B. Sove, 'Sovremenoe polozhenie Rossiiskoi Tserkvi', Put', no. 53
(April-June 1937) p. 68; data from Izvestia, 12 Aug. 1936, and Pravda.
15 Apr. 1937.
45. Levitin, Ocherki ... , vol. 3, pp. 344-6.
46. Pospielovsky, 'More on Historic Preservation Policy in the USSR'.
Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 17, no. 4 (Winter 1975) pp. 641-9; Polsky,
Novye ... , vol. 2, p. 240; Regelson, Tragediia, p. 505; Levitin, Likhie,
p. 324; but in hisOcherki (vol. 3, pp. 344-6) Levitin contradicts himselfby
saying that of the Orthodox churches open in the 1920s, 95 percent were
closed by 1939, which should have left some 2000 functioning churches.
47. Regelson, Tragediia, pp. 550-7,502,557.
48. Levitin, Likhie., pp. 322-3.
49. Ibid, p. 322; Kurt Hutten, Iron Curtain Christians (Minneapolis:
Augsburg Publishing House, I 967), p. II.
50. Forever Flowing (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1972) pp. 143-4.
51. 'Chudo v Kalinovke' and other stories, see chap. 2 above.

52. Uchebnik dlia rabochikh antireligioznykh kruzhkov (M.: Bezbozhnik, 1930)
p. 5; Antireligioz.nyi krest'ianskii uchebnik (6th edn, M.-L., 1931) pp. 8-9.
53. Uchebnik ... raboch., p. 5.
54. M. Kol'tsov, 'Kak stroiat tserkvi', My- bezbozhniki, pp. 44-50.
55. Z. A. Yankova, 'Sovremennoe pravoslavie i antiobshchestvennaia
sushchnost' ego ideologii', VI RiA., no. 11 (1963) pp. 72-80.
56. I. Blinov, 'Along the Path which Leads to the Crumbling of Religion',
Bezbozhnik, no. 4 (20 Jan. 1931 ). Translated by the Russian Religious
Press Service, Paris; Press release, The Bakhmeteff Russian Emigre
Archives, Columbia University. Moreover, Yaroslavsky's estimate was
based on the preliminary data of the discarded 1937 census, in which
many believers concealed their faith out of fear, according to Fr. Polsky
(Novye . .. , vols 2, 24) and Levitin (Likhie, p. 312).
57. Ya. Nemukhin, 'Perekhod k nepreryvnoi proizvodstvennoi nedele i
antireligiozny front', Bezbust., no. 18 (1929) p.4; cartoon in the same
issue, pp. 14- 15; a similar cartoon of the failure of the feast of Christmas
owing to the continuous work week, ibid, no. 2 ( 1930) front page.
58. Bezbozh., no. 8 (1937) p. 14; no. 2 (1938) p. 13.
59. Vybory v sovety deputatov trudiashchikhsia i antireligioznaia propaganda (M.:
Molodaia gvardiia, 1938) pp. 3-7.
60. P. Zarin, 'Religioznye obriady zaochno', Bezbozh., no. 7 ( 1936) p. 4.
61. Polsky,Novye ... , vol. 2 pp. 78-83. This is a perfect illustration oftheuse
of the tax as a sledge-hammer to crush the Church.
62. Polsky, Novye ... , vol. 2, pp. 70-126.
63. Regelson, Tragediia, pp. 597-600 (according to that source, Bp. Maxim
wasshotattheendofl930); M. Artem'ev, 'Ova pravednika', Vozrozhdenie,
12 Dec. 1931; N. Shemetov, 'Pravoslavnye bratstva', VRKhD, no. 131
(1980) pp. 156-7.
64. For samples of his writings and encyclopaedic interests, as well as
biographical and autobiographical material on him, see VRKhD, no. 114
(1974) pp. 149-92; no. 124 (1978) pp. 341-2; no. 135 ( 1981) pp. 39-96.
Also see: Bogoslovskie trudy (M.: The Moscow Patriarchate) no. 12 ( 1974),
no. 17 ( 1977), and others; Nadezhda, no. 7 (Russia, 1980; Frankfurt,
1982) pp. 275-97.
In his 1924 C. V. sketch, Florensky lists the following positions he has
held in Soviet institutions (most ofthem simultaneously): 'lectures at the
All-Russian Association of Engineers, the Russian Society of Electro-
technics and other associations ... works for the All-Union Council of
National Economy ... lectures at the Superior Art Workshops and
develops a course on the analysis of space ... leads experimental work at
the State Experimental Electrotechnical Institute and from 1924 is the
head of the Laboratory for Material Testing there ... is a member of the
Central Electrotechnical Council ... carries on experiments and
publishes for the Special Conference on the ImprovementofProduction
Quality'.
Among his non-theological publications were: Analysis of Space in Art,
The Number as a Form, On the Peculiarities of Flat Graph Lines . .. , Materials
for the Study of the Language Spoken in the Kostroma Region, A Dictionary of
Graphic Symbols, Lectures on an Encyclopaedia ofMathematics, The Technology

ofDialectrics, Porosity of the lnsulatory Ceramics and theM ethod ofCalculation
of the Surface of Irregular Bodies, Electro-integrator, etc. Florensky,
'Biographical Data', VRKhD, no. 135, pp. 58-9.
65. N. Sventsitskaia, 'Otets Valentin', Nadezhda, no. 10 (1984) pp. 183-220;
Valentin Sventsitsky, 'Shest' chtenii o tainstve pokaianiia v ego istorii',
andS.I. Fudel', 'U sten tserkvi',ibid, no. 2 (1979)pp. 105-78and 233-4,
respectively.
66. These are but a few typical illustrations. On Zhurakovsky: 'Sviashchen-
nik Anatolii Zhurakovsky', Nadezhda, no. 10, pp. 19-82; Sv. A.
Zhurakovsky. Materialy k zhitiiu (Paris: YMCA Press, 1984). On Mechev
and his father, also a priest, who were among the most outstanding
initiators and spiritual leaders of the semi-monastic and yet worldly
church brotherhoods in Moscow, see, N. Shemetov, 'Pravoslavnye
bratstva', VRKhD, no. 131 ( 1980) pp. 158-9.
67. Anonymous, 'Preosviashchennyi Manuil Lemeshevsky', VestnikRSKhD,
nos 93 and 94 (vols 3 and 4, 1969) pp. 112-29and 154-67, respectively.
His 'Who's Who' on Russian bishops, as referred to before, is being
published at the time of this writing in Erlangen (West Germany) under
the editorship of P. Coelestin Patock, OSA, by Oikonomia, at the rate of
approximately one volume per annum. Levitin, Slovo ob umershem, MS.
(M.: Samizdat, 2June 1969).
68. Mark Popovsky, Zhizn' i zhitie Voino-Yasentskogo, arkhiepiskopa i khirurga
(Paris: YMCA Press, 1979) pp. 595-6, 14-5, 223-8, 24 7-8, 299-320.
Also, Arkhiep. Luka, 'Memuary', Nadezhda, no. 3 ( 1979) pp. 66-138.
69. Regelson, pp. 568-74; Pospielovsky, Russian Church, vol. 1, chs 4, 5 and
6; N.V.T., 'Episkop Afanasii (Sakharov)', VRKhD, no. 139 (1983)
pp. 195-217; 'Krestny put' preosv. Afanasiia Sakharova', VRSKhD,
no. 107 (1973) pp. 170-211.
70. Polsky, Novye ... , vol. II, p. 148.
71. Ibid, pp. 182-3.
72. Ibid, p. 215.
73. Ibid, pp. 210-12.
74. 'Mucheniki khristianstva XX-go veka', VRKhD, no. 134, pp. 235-45.
75. Polsky, Novye ... , vol. II, pp. 226-7.
76. Ibid, pp. 170-2.
77. 'Starets Sampson', Nadezhda, no. 9, pp. 123-69.
78. 'Matrenushka', ibid, no. 7, pp. 241-5.
79. 'The Baptist Spies. They Have Been Working for the Secret Service of
Poland', Koms. pr., no. 47 (26 Feb. 1929); cited from English translations
ms., Colton Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Box 6, Folder
'World Revolutions'.
80. See: Pospielovsky, Russian Church, vol. I, p. 178; L. Rakusheva, Komsomol
protiv religii (L., 1939), p. 41; 'Zarubezhnaia popovshchina .. .' and
"Kontrrevolutsionery ... delo 'Promyshlennoi partii"', Bezbozhnik,
no. 68 ( 10 Dec. 1930) pp. I and 2 resp. The Orthodox Church had no
officially functioning theological institute in Leningrad in 1925, only
unofficial continuing evening courses for former theology students.
81. Rakusheva, Komsomol ... , pp. 34-45.
82. Pravda, no. 263 (23 Sept. 1935); translation, Colton Coli., Box 7, Folder
'Translations'.
83. 'Chernosotenets-ofitser-spekulia nt-episkop', Bez.bozh., no. I7 -I8 ( I932)
pp. 22-3. The case is further obscured by the Patriarchate Synod's
acceptance of Bishop Dometian's alleged court confession of 'crimes
against chastity', suspending him until the time when he would be able to
appear before an ecclesiatic court in person for a hearing on the moral
issue. 'Po delu Episkopa Dometiana Gorokhova [of Arzamas]', ZhMP,
no. I3 (1933), Paris Retyping, 3-4.
84. Rakusheva, pp. 40-I, quoting lz.vestia of 22 Nov. I937.
85. Ibid, p. 41. He was rearrested in I937 and shot in I938: 'Preosvias-
chennyi Manuil.', VRSKhD, no. 93, I24n.
86. Rakusheva, pp. 42-3.
87. Vybory v sovety ... , pp. 47-8 et passim.
88. Levitin, Ocherki, vol. 3, p. 344.
89. VRKhD, no. I26, p. 249.
90. A list of known imprisoned bishops and priests up to I930, dated
Moscow, I 0 March I930, includes I97 bishops and 89 parish priests. The
author stresses it is far from complete. It includes a description of the
murder ofBp. Erofei (Afonin) on 23 Apriii928. The bishop, who had a
presentimentofhis forthcoming arrest, was making arch pastoral visits to
his diocesan villages. In one of the villages the GPU arrived to arrest him.
When they saw masses of villagers converging on the horse-cart in which
they were hauling the bishop away, they simply shot him on the spot.
Making use of the panic caused by the shooting, the GPU made a number
of arrests of peasants, sentencing each to a prison or exile term, including
the bishop's I6-year-old acholyte, sentenced to a three-year exile to the
north. 'Spisok pravoslavnykh episkopov .. .', Ms., Nicolaevsky Collec-
tion, Hoover Inst. Archives, Box 144, Folder 1, Also: Konstantinov,
Gonimai 'tserkov', p. I7.
CHAPTER 4: AN 'INTERLUDE': FROM 1941 TO

STALIN'S DEATH
I. Spinka, Church in Soviet Russia, pp. 80-87.

3. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, vol. I, chs 4 and 5, Ep. Afanasii, 'Dni i etapy
moei zhizni', Vestnik RSKhD, no.8I (1966) pp.l3-17; N.V.T., 'Ep.
Afanasii', Vest. RKhD, no.I39 (1983) pp. 195-217; V.Ia. Vasilevskaia,
'Dva portreta', V.RKhD, no. 124 (1978) pp. 269-98; Regelson, pp. 568-
74.
4. M. Polsky, Novye mucheniki rossiiskie, vol. I (Jordanville, 1949). In
Regelson's Tragediia there are biographies of at least five other bishops
who had survived into the 1940s without ever being allowed to return to
their episcopal duties. Two of them, Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov) of
Kazan' and Bishop Amphilokhii (Skvortsov) never made peace with the
Sergii-Aiexii administration. The former died in prison or exile either in
1941 or 1944, the latter in retirement in 1946. The other three, Bishop
Arkadii (Ostalsky), Archbishop Feodor (Pozdeevsky) and BishopGavriil
(Abalymov) either made peace with the Patriarchate or had never been in
opposition; yet none of them was allowed to function as a bishop: Arkadii
died in the camps or exile in the 1940s, Feodor in retirement in the late
1940s, Gavriil as dean of the Balta Monastery in 1958. None of them at
the time was older than many ruling bishops. Regelson, pp. 560, 566-7,
576, 577 and 604.
5. Nikolai Shemetov, 'Edinstvennaia vstrecha', VRKhD, no.l28 (1979)
pp. 244-51.
6. V. Alexeeva, 'Vospominaniia o khrame sv. bessrebrennikov Kira i
Ioanna na Solianke', VRKhD, no. 141 (1984) 214 n.
7. Levitin-Krasnov, 'Slovo ob umershem' (Samizdat: ms.), 1969 (?);
another, incomplete, biography in VRSKhD, nos 93 ( 1969) and 94 ( 1969),
pp.ll2-29and 154-67,resp.
8. Archb. Vasilii (Krivocheine), 'Pamiati episkopa-ispovednika', VRKhD,
no. 116 (1975) pp. 255-9.
9. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, vol. I, ch. 7; vol. 2, ch. 12.
10. Archb. Vasilii, 'Arkhiepiskop Veniamin (Novitsky)', VRKhD, no. 120
(1977) pp. 189-94.
II. See: Shemetov above, n. 5; and Sv. Dmitri Dudko, 'Pust' snovasazhaiut',
Posev, no. I 0 (October 1977) pp. 28-30.
12. Fr. Ilia Shmain's oral testimony to this author, Jerusalem, Israel, July
1983.
13. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, vol. 2, ch. 9.
14. N. Mikhailov, 'Kommunisticheskoe vospitanie molodezhi - glavnaia
zadacha Komsomola', Bol'shevik, no. 23-24 (December 1946) pp. 11-15.
He doesn't directly attack religion, but calls for an active ideological
upbringing of youth, criticizing the Komsomol for relegating this
function to schools and the school for limiting itself to strictly educational
(informationally) functions. Also, Mark Popovsky, Zhizn' i zhitie Voino-
Yasenetskogo(Paris: YMCA Press, 1979)pp. 414-21. By 1954thenumber
of open churches in Crimea was reduced to 49, despite Luka's energetic
and desperate struggle. Popovsky, p. 469.
CHAPTER 5: RENEWAL OF THE INCENDIARY

PROPAGANDA, 1958-85
I. 'Formirovanie nauchnogo mirovozzreniia i ateisticheskoe vospitanie',

Kommunist, no. I ( 1964) p. 31.
2. Powell, Antireligious . .. , p. 87.
3. Ibid, p. 92.
4. Ibid, p. 92; G. Vasil'ev, 'Bogoslov- podstrekatel', NiR, no. 10 (1966)
pp. 25-6; Alia Trubnikova, 'Klikushi v pokhode', and 'Tainik v
taburetke', Oktiabr', no. 7 (1962) pp. 130-42, and no. 9 (1964) pp. 161-
77, respectively.
5. P. Voskresensky, 'Dukhovnyi otets Vadima Shavrova', NiR, no. 5 (1960)
pp.32-7. For Levitin's rebuttal, see his 'Moi otvet zhurnalu Nauka i
religiia', (20 June 1960, Dialogs tserkovnoiRossiei (Paris: I xis 1967) pp. 43-
69; E. Baller, 'Vospityvat' voinstvuiushchikh ateistov', NiR, no. 2 (Oct.
1959) pp. 78-9.
6. Voskresensky, 'Dukhovnyi .. .', pp. 32-3; being a character assassin-
ation of the late Vadim Shavrov, a son of a Soviet general, himself a
veteran and an invalid of the Second World War whom Levitin had
baptized while they were in a concentration camp during Stalin's post-
war purges. A. Shamaro, 'Tsvet stoiachei vody', and 'Krestonosnoe
predatel'stvo',NiR, no. 9 (1960) pp. 45-50, and no. 3 ( 1961) pp. 38-43,
respectively. There he attacks the clergy of the Orenburg Diocese at the
time when, as he himself states, twenty-six priests have just been
imprisoned; and the clergy of the Belorussian archdiocese for their
alleged sell-out to the Nazis during the Second World War. In fact, the
very reverse is true regarding Belorussia (see Pospielovsky, The Russian
Church, vol. 1, ch. 7), while the Orenburg Diocese was being persecuted to
frustrate the religious revival effected by its remarkable bishop-martyr,
Manuil (Pospielovsky, Russian Church, vol. I, pp. 58 and Ill, vol. 2,
ch. 10). Religious faith is again represented as a mental malaise. Edit.,
'Dushevnobol'nye v roli sviatykh', NiR, no. 6 ( 1961) pp. 18-19.
7. L. Zavelev, 'Istoriia novogo lova', NiR, no. 7 (July 1960) pp. 36-43; M.
Khomenko, 'Zhitie vladyki Andreia', NiR, No.8 (1962) pp. 62-9; V.
Siuris, a former priest, 'Chomu ia zrixia dukhovnoho sanu?', Voiovnychyi
ateist, no. 7 (july 1961) pp. 25-7: N. Kar'kov, 'K komu zhe idti
ispovedovatsia?',NiR, no. 6 ( 1960) pp. 61-5. The fraudulence and fixed
stereotypes of such publications and clergy character-assassinations are
revealed particularly when well-known (alas, not for the average Soviet
citizen) historical facts are thus twisted: for instance, the story of the
1921-2 famine and Patriarch Tikhon 's attitude to it. Contrast: U n-
signed, 'Padenie sviateishego patriarkha', NiR, no. 3 ( 1964) pp. 88 -90;
and Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, vol. I, ch. 3. Attacks against Arch b.
lov continued even after he had served his prison term and became a
diocesan bishop once again. For example, V. Ushakov, Pravoslavie i XX
vek (Alma-Ata: Kazakhstan, 1968) pp. 52-6. Had there been any
substance in these accusations, neither of the bishops would have been
reappointed soon after their release.
8. A. Osipov, 'Bitva za dushi chelovecheskie', Oktiabr', no. 10 (1963)
pp. 163-70.
9. 'S krestom na shee', Lit. gaz., (2 Oct. 1962). Other similar slanderous
material on monasteries and pilgrimages: three letters by former
theology students, 'Podumaite o svoei sud'be!' and 'Dnevnik inokini',
NiR, no. 4 ( 1962) pp. 27-33. Particular attacks on the Pochaev Monas-
tery: lu. Melmiichuk, 'V Pochaeve kolokola zvoniat', NiR, no. 2 (1960)
pp. 57 -9; 0. Shamaro, 'Meshkantsi bratskoho korpusu', Voi. at., no. 12
(Dec. 1961) pp. 18-24; Shamaro, 'Bessilie "chudotvornykh sviatyn"',
NiR, no. I ( 1962) pp. 26-30; E. Maiat, I. Uzkov, 'Rushatsia monastyrskie
steny', NiR, no. 9 (1961) pp. 22-31.
10. Levitin,ZashchitaveryvsSSR(Paris: IX0YC, 1966)pp.32-62.
II. 'Kiikushi ... ', pp. 138-42. There is also an implied attack on the Church
Establishment when the author states that the Church only pretends not
to render direct support to pilgrimages (p. 142). The decree in question
is dated 16 March I96I: II, IO (b) which forbids 'religious centres,
religious associations, priests ... to organize believers' pilgrimages to the
so-called holy places'. Zakonodatel'stvo o religioznykh kul'takh (New York:
Chalidze Publications, 1981) p. 80. The struggle against the Velikor-
etskoe pilgrimages has continued well into the I980s. In I98I the
pilgrims were met by militia and the KGB troops, who enclosed the holy
stream in barbed wire, banning all access. Posev, no. II ( I98I) p. 3.
I2. 'Klikushi', p. I36; 'Tainik', p. I64,
I3. For example, N. Proskuriakova, 'Marnovirstvo - voroh zdorov'ia',
Voiovnychyi ateist, no. 7 (Kiev, I963) pp. I2-I5.
I4. 'Formirovanie ... ', pp. 30, 38, and others.
I5. 'Tainik', pp. I63-5 et passim. Similar slanderous stories on the Old
Believer and 'True Orthodox' hideaways in: Shamaro, 'Vernopod-
dannye bezvozvratnogo proshlogo', NiR, no.3 (I959) pp.49-54; 'Na
beregu chernoi magii', NiR, no. I ( I963) pp. 2I-9; L. Khvoiovsky,
'Byvshie liudi', NiR, no. 7 ( I964) pp. 24-32.
I6. See Volume I, chapter 4, and volume 2, chapter 7 of this present study.
I7. NiR,no.3(1965)pp.23-5.
I8. L. Pinchuk, 'Otvechaem veruiushchim', ibid, p. 25. This idealization of
the cave-man is a central anti-historical and nihilistic feature in Marxism
(from Rousseau), contradicting its Hegelian historicism.
19. Zhenshchina podkrestom (L.: Lenizdat, I966) pp. 6-27. Osipov prefers not
to elaborate on the fact that this woman, a Soviet schoolteacher with full
higher education, 'retired' in I959 after only nineteen years of work as a
teacher, the same year that Levitin-Krasnov and the late Boris Talantov
were expelled from their teaching positions for their belief in God. This
was the year of the purge of the teachers who practised their religious
beliefs.
20. E. Sergienko, 'Sviatye pis'ma', NiR, no. 4 (I977) pp. 55-8.
2I. A characteristic case is that of Levitin. Slandering him in I960 (n. 5 and 6
above), the journal not only did not withdraw its statement after he had
hand-delivered his true autobiography to its office, but continued
slandering him six years later (n. 4 above).
22. Osipov, 'Bitva', pp. I66-9.
23. In the above report Il'ichev criticizes the atheist literature for being 'too
academic'; he says that there should be a more direct attack- that is, he
advocates propaganda that would stimulate and justify persecutions.
24. NiR, therefore, relegates the crudest hate propaganda to readers' letters.
For example, the editorial in no. I2 for I967, 'Otkrovennyi razgovor',
cites inter alia a reader's letter: 'Our error is obvious: we sentimentalize,
we fear to insult the believer's feelings ... Your position is that of
pandering to the believers. NiR publishes most of its material with the
aim of presenting atheists as creative optimists, working for the good of
man, unselfish, hard-working, dedicated, while contrasting these with
alleged opposite characteristics of religious believers, under the heading
of 'The Spiritual World of Man', in almost every issue, at least in the
1980s.
25. L. Anninsky, 'Siladukhai vera v Boga',NiR, no. 10 (1965) pp. 44-7; A.

Ivanenko. 'Nad tsym varto zamyslytys', Liudyna i svit, no. 7 (July 1965);
Larisa Kuznetsova, 'Na tikhoi ulitse', NiR, no. I (1974) pp.44-9; V.
Kharazov, 'Dosadnaia istoriia', NiR, no. 7 ( 1979).
26. Osipov, Zhenshchina . .. , pp. 64-70.
27. Material of this sort, reprimanding the official guides, began to appear
under the heading of'History and the Contemporary' on quite a regular
basis from 1982: for example, no. II ( 1982) pp. 34-7, no. 1 ( 1983)
pp.39-44, no.5 (1983) pp.28-33, no. 7 (1983) pp.30-l, no.3 (1984)
pp. 25-31, no. 6 (1984) pp. 31-5. One of them denounces a museum
guide for being a religious believer, citing her explanation that the
richness of colour and artistic mastery of an iconographer were inspired
by his faith and the doctrine of the Church which he expressed in colour;
whereas the line should have been the reverse: despite the doctrine
which narrowed the possibilities of artistic expression, the artist was so
great that even within the narrow confines oficonography he managed to
achieve mastery (no. 3, 1984, pp. 26-7). Another guide said he person-
ally was not a believer but he failed to appreciate the necessity of atheist
propaganda: 'If God exists, ... then the attempts to negate this are
senseless; if He does not exist, then there is no one to struggle against.'
(NiR, no. 5, 1983, p. 31).
28. A. V. Belov and A. D. Shilkin, ldeologicheskie diversii imperializma i religiia
(M.: Znanie, 1970) p. 34.
29. M. Kosyv, 'Pokutniki-ktooni?',NiR, no. 8(1975)pp. 56-7; L.Smirnov,
'Iavlenie bogomateri s pomoshch'iu nozhnits i kleia' (including the
photo), NiR, no. 1 ( 1966) p. 95.
30. 'Stantsiia Bezbozhnik', NiR, no. I ( 1974) pp. 70-5.
31. Lev Ovalov, 'Pomni obo mne', NiR, nos 1-6 (1966), particularly nos 4
and 5, pp. respectively 80-93 and 77-89.
32. Michael Bourdeaux, Patriarch and Prophets (London: Macmillan, 1969);
Pospielovsky, Russian Church, vol. 2, ch. I 0.
33. Belov and Shilkin, ldeologicheskie, pp. 35-43; their Diversiia bez dinamita
(M.: Polit.literatura, 1972) pp. 84-99, etc.
34. In addition to the above titles, see inter alia: Belov and Shilkin, Religiia v
sovremennoi ideologicheskoi bor'be (M.: Znanie, 1971); V. V. Konik, Tainy
religioznykh missii (M.: Molodaia gvardiia, 1980); Belov, Sviatye bez nimbov
(M.: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1983); Evgenii Vistunov, Priglashenie v zapadniu
(L.: Lenizdat, 1984). The latter also contains a relatively detailed, if
falsified, history of the Narodno-trudoroi soiuz (NTS), and descriptions
(also falsified) of the Leningrad Christian-feminist movement and its
participants. All of them, as well as several Soviet citizens who had co-
operated with the NTS, are depicted as only using the label of Christians
to camouflage their subversive activities.
NTS- or, in full, the Toiling Alliance of Russian Solidarists- is a
patriotic Russian anti-communist organization working towards a
'national revolution' and moral renewal in Russia, since its foundation by
Russian emigre youth in 1930. Its underground activities inside the
USSR and among Soviet citizens abroad, its refusal'to die' in accordance
with the 'biological laws of emigrant communities', and its ability to
replenish itself from among the ranks of new waves of emigres, make it
particularly hateful to the Soviets, who constantly label it as a Western
intellegence services' front organization.
35. Belov and Shilkin, ldeologicheskie, Religiia v sovremennoi ideologicheskoi
bor'be (M.: Znanie, 1971), and Diversiia; V. V. Konik, Tainy religioz.nykh
missii (M.: Molodaia gvardiia, 1980); and a multitude of other similar
publications.
36. For example, the above-cited 'Otkrovennyi razgovor', NiR, no. 12
(1967), also quotes letters which say, for instance: 'I'm ashamed and
deeply hurt that we are approaching ... fiftieth anniversary ofthe Soviet
power without having overcome religion.' A 1984 survey of readers'
letters says that readers of the older generation express much concern
that 'some young people ... fall under the spell of religion'. For some it is
a fad, in other cases 'the youth's interest in religion is not that superficial
at all ... to a considerable extent this interest is stimulated by some ...
[Soviet) works of literature, cinema, theatre, painting': 'Chitatel' i
zhurnal', NiR, no. 9 ( 1984) p. 3.
37. Mir cheloveka, E. Romanov (ed.), (M.: Molodaia gvardiia, 1976, eire.
100 000) p. 14 et passim.
38. Cited from A. Babiichuk, 'Molodiozhy ideinuiu zakalku', NiR, no. 1
(1985) p. 10. It is interesting that the resolutions of that ideological
plen urn do not mention religion by name, but only ideological diversions
and the necessity to struggle for a better ideological education of the
Soviet people. Soviet 'religiological' publications constantly refer to that
plenum, and cite excerpts from speeches, as in Babichuk's article, in the
way of a guidance for the intensification of anti-religious struggle. In
most such quotations it is merely declared, 'as stated at the plenum', thus
giving the impression that such direct appeals were contained in oneofits
resolutions (or perhaps there was an unpublished secret resolution to
this effect as well).
39. G. Belikova, 'Strannaia sud'ba Sashi Karpova', NiR, no. 9 ( 1984) pp. 37-
40.
40. A. Shamaro, 'Delo igumenii Mitrofanii', NiR, no. 9 ( 1984) pp. 41-5; D.
Koretsky and Shamaro, '"Sviataia" Nastia',NiR, no. 3 (1984) pp. 45-50;
A. Shuvalov, 'Piushchee dukhovenstvo', NiR, no. 6 (1984) p. 40; F.
Nikitina, 'V belom klobuke s zhandarmskim axelbantom', NiR, nos 11
and 12 (1982) pp.41-3 and42-4, respectively; N. Aleev, 'Ne ukradi, a
sam ukral', Pravda vostoka ( 1 January 1970) p. 4.
41. 'Chi tate I' i zhurnal', NiR, no. 9 ( 1984) pp. 4-5.
42. Vladimir Tendriakov, 'Chudotvornaia' (The Miracle-Working Icon),
Chrezvychainoe (M.: Sovremennik, 1972) pp. 91-178; the story was first
published in the early 1960s. M. G. Pismanik, Lichnost' i religiia (M.:
Nauka, 1976) pp. 18-21.
43. In addition, there is the obligatory ideological dimension. The CPSU
Central Committee may adopt a less aggressive policy towards religion
for tactical reasons (as in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, for instance),
but to abandon its principle of hostility would be tantamount to
abandoning Marxism as the official doctrine.
CHAPTER 6: PERSECUTIONS UNDER KHRUSHCHEV
I. See his various speeches on ideological matters between I954 and I964,
and the I959 educational reform resolution, a Khrushchev pet project.
2. Bourdeaux, 'The Black Quinquennium: The Russian Church, I959-
I964', Religion in Communist Lands (henceforth RCF), vol. 9, no. I-2
(I98I) p. I8.
3. Levitin, 'Sviataia Rus' v eti dni' (Samizdat: 2I October I964), AS 7I9,
p. I5.
4. Popovsky, Zhizu' i zhitie, pp.466-7, and the above I954 Khrushchev
speech.
5. According to a private report, when schoolchildren brought this story
home and asked their grandmother why the cosmonaut Gagarin had not
seen God, she replied: 'Of course he did not, for Jesus said only the pure
in heart will see God.'
6. See the last section of this chapter.
7. Talantov, 'Bedstvennoe polozhenie Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi v Kirovskoi
oblasti i rol' Moskovskoi patriarkhii' (Kirov: Samizdat, 1966-7), Keston
College Samizdat archive (no. 739?) p. I 021; Bourdeaux, Patriarch, ch. 4.
On Talantov, see Levitin-Krasnov, Rodnoiprostor(Frankfurt!M.: Possev,
198I) pp. 293-9.
8. Bourdeaux, Patriarch, pp. I2I-2.
9. Ibid, p. 123.
I 0. F. Kovalsky, 'Pressure on the Orthodox Church in Belorussia' (Samizdat,
1965?), Keston Coil. Archives, SU Ort. 1211; see also, Pospielovsky,
Russian Church, vol. 2, p. 44I.
II. Konstantinov, Gonimaia Tserkov, p. 290.
I2. Ibid, p. 29I; Bourdeaux, Patriarch, p. 121.
13. 'Pis'mo prikhozhanki gor. Zhitomira', VRKhD, no. Ill ( 1974) p. 241;
'Razrushenie khrama v Zhitomire', Ibid, no. 116 ( 1975) pp. 230-31.
14. Bourdeaux, Patriarch, p. 119.
15. I. A. Kryvelev, 'Preodolenie religiozno-bytovykh perezhitkov u narodov
SSR', Sovetskaia etnografiia, no. 4 (1961) pp. 37-43.
16. I. V. Gagarin, Religioznye perezhitki v Komi ASSR i ikh preodolenie
(Sykty'vkar, 1971) pp. 64-73.
17. V. M. Motitsky, Staroobriadchestvo Zabaikal'ia (Ulan Ude: Buriatskoe
knigoizdatel'stvo, 1976) pp. 60-62. See also n. 28 below, on the growth
of religious observances in the late 1950s to early 1960s.
18. Statementstothepressin the West by Metropolitan Nikodim in 1964, for
instance, as heard personally by the present author in London and as
cited by Talantov, 'Bedstvennoe', pp. 26 and 27, from BBC Russian
broadcasts of that year and of 8 October 1966.
19. Talantov, ibid, p. 26.
20. T alantov, 'Bedstvennoe', p. 28, citing the Soviet author G. Z. Anashkin.
21. Shafarevich, Zakonodatel'stvo . .. , pp. 60-l; Yakunin, '0 sovremennom
polozhenii .. .',passim; V. Furov, 'Iz otcheta .. .', VRKhD, no. 130 (1979)
pp. 275-7.
22. 'Rech' Patriarkha ... Alexiia na konferentsii sovetskoi obshchestven-
nosti za razoruzhenie' (Moscow, 16 February 1960), ZhMP, no. 3 (1960)
pp. 33-5.
23. 'Deianiia Arkhiereiskogo sobora Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi', ZhMP,
no. 8 ( 1961) pp. 5- 29; 'Osnovnye voprosy deiatel'nosti Komissii sodeist-
viia pri ispolkomakh v raionnykh Sovetakh deputatov trudiashchikhsia
po kontroliu za sobliudeniem zakonodatel'stva o kul'takh', VRKhD,
no. 136 ( 1982) pp. 273-8. A more detailed discussion of this in my
Russian Orthodox Church under the Soviet . ...
24. Talantov, 'Bedstvennoe', passim. As the testimony of Fr. Konstantin
Tivetsky, a Moscow priest until his immigration to the USA in 1980 (oral
testimony to this author, San Francisco,June 1980), and documents cited
in the next chapter demonstrate, these high-handed practices continued
to this day.
25. Talantov, 'Bedstvennoe', p. 32; and multiple documents on the persecu-
tions at the Pochaev Lavra and other monasteries. Also, the oral
testimony to this author of I uri Kublanovsky, poet and historian, who
had worked for six years as a church janitor in the Moscow area and also
worked on artistic restoration in monasteries prior to his expulsion to the
West in the autumn of 1982 (Paris, August 1983).
26. Talantov, 'Bedstvennoe', p. 34; 'Otkrytoe pis'mo sviashchennikov Niko-
laia Eshlimana i Gleba lakunina Patriarkhu Alexiiu', Grani, no. 61 ( 1966)
p. 133.
27. Talantov, 'Bedstvennoe', p. 34.
28. Shafarevich, Zakondatel'stvo o religii . .. , p. 34 et passim.
29. Bourdeaux, Ferment . .. , pp. 20-1 et passim.
30. Michael Rowe, 'The 1979 Baptist Congress in Moscow .. .', Religion in
Communist Lands, no. 3 ( 1978) pp. 188-200; Pospielovsky, 'The Forty-
First All-Union Congress of the Evangelical Baptists .. .' St. Vladimir's
Theological Quarterly, no. 4 ( 1975) pp. 246-53.
31. Rev. D. Konstantinov, Gonimaia Tserkov' (New York: Vseslavianskoe izd-
vo, 1967) p. 287; he cites the 1962 date. An inside source from Belorussia
gives 1960 as the date of implementation of this measure in the
Belorussian SSR: F. Kovalsky, 'Pressure on the Orthodox Church in
Belorussia' (Keston College Archives, Su Ort. 12/ 1). As documents 713
and 717 (an appeal offour lay persons to the Eastern Patriarchs on behalf
of the Pochaev Lavra, dated 1963; and an unsigned group address oflay
Orthodox believers of the Ukraine and Belorussia to the World Council
of Churches conference in Odessa, of2 February 1964) cite 1961 as the
year of the implementation of all these oppressive measures.
32. Talantov, 'Bedstvennoe .. .', p. 35.
33. ibid, pp. 35-6.
34. Oral information to this author by a Russian Orthodox wife of an
American diplomat in Moscow. The above AS 713, and the L'vov
resident Feodosia Varavva, persistently harassed by the Soviet author-
ities and the press with attempts to deprive her of parental rights owing to
the religious upbringing of her children, state that children are
permitted to participate in church services and to receive communion
only in Zagorsk and Moscow to placate the many Western tourists,
diplomats and journalists there. Varavva, 'Vostochnym patriarkham
lerusalimskomu, Antiokhiiskomu, Konstantinopol'skomu i dr. i v

Organizatsiiu Ob'edinennykh natsii' (L'vov. Keston College Archives,
Su/Ort 11/10.3). Fr. Tivetsky maintains that pre-school special Te
Deums for school children is a common practice in most Orthodox
churches (oral testimony). The late Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad
assured this author that in his diocese children were never prevented
from coming to church or receiving communion.
35. Konstantinov Gonimaia, p. 305. The reason for so many clergy arrests in
the Orenburg Diocese may have been the fact that Manuil (Lemeshev-
sky), its ruling archbishop, had continued Patriarch Tikhon's practice of
secret ordinations of priests (unregistered and undeclared to the
CROCA plenipotentiaries) as a security in case of mass liquidation ofthe
overt clergy by the regime. See, Yakunin, '0 sovremennom polozhenii
R.P.Ts ... .', Vol'noe slovo, no. 35-36 (1979) pp. 70-1.
36. Shafarevich, Zakonodatel'stvo, p. 64.
37. See in the following chapter the case of Fr. Pavel Adel'geim. Fr. Vitali
Boiko, a church choir director at the Holy Virgin Protection church in
Kiev was fired from the position by order of the Kiev CRA plenipoten-
tiary in 1980 for having organized a youth choir in the church. The choir
was likewise dissolved by the same order. Khronika tek. sob., no. 60
(Moscow, 1980; New York, 1981) p. 73.
38. Talantov, 'Bedstvennoe .. .', pp. 21-2.
39. Ibid, pp. 22-3.
40. In 1964 the late Fr. Vsevolod Shpiller, a very prominent Moscow priest,
assured this author that Patriarch Alexii had appointed Archbishop
Ermogen to the nearby diocese of Kaluga in order to have the most
steadfast and reliable bishops around himself in that dire moment of the
regime's attack on the Church. A little more than a year later the same
Ermogen was dismissed by the same patriarch and ordered to reside in
the Zhirovitsy Monastery in Belorussia. His 'crime' was that he had led a
delegation of eight bishops to protest to the Patriarch against the 1961
Church By-Laws as being uncanonical. Bourdeaux, Patriarch . .. , pp. 34
and 239-44.
41. Unofficial information from the Russian Church sources; Bourdeaux,
Patriarch, p. 73; Archb. Vasilii (Krivocheine), 'Arkhiepiskop Veniamin
(Novitsky) (1900-1976)', VRKhD, no. 120 (1977) p. 290; Konstantinov
(Gonimaia, p. 304), erroneously states that Archbishop Veniamin was
tried in 1961.
42. Konstantinov, p. 304.
43. Bourdeaux, Patriarch ... , pp. 69-73 and 175; 'Russian Orthodox
Church Ordeal' (from a Special Correspondent), The Times (London)
Nov. 1960; Arch b. Vasilii, 'Poslednie vstrechi s mitr. Nikolaem', VRKhD,
no. 117 (1976) pp. 214-15, and his 'Arkhiep. Veniamin ... ', pp. 291-2.
44. Testimony to this author by Metropolitan Nikodim (London, 1966?).
TheChernigovCathedral, in fact, was closed in 1973, leaving only a small
church in the suburbs for the faithful. Christian Science Monitor, 2 July
1973; RCL, no. 4-5 (1974) pp. 66-7.
45. See above: Eshliman-Yakunin and Talantov. Also: Talantov, '0
polozhenii Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi v SSSR, o predatel'stve eio
upravleniia' (Kirov: Samizdat, August 1967 -March 1968; AS 745), 18 p.

46. Testimony of Fr. M., a former foreign student at the Leningrad
Theological Academy, as told personally by Metropolitan Nikodim
(testimony to this author,July 1983).
4 7. AS 717; testimony to this author by a leading official and priest of the
Moscow Patriarchate (spring 1979). Such at least was the fate of the
Minsk and Volhyhia seminaries. See also, 'Pis'mo arkhiep. Foedosiia
Brezhnevu', VRKhD, no.l35 (1981) pp. 236-7.
48. The pre-1960 figures are from the Moscow Patriarchate's official
statements (e.g., Konstantinov, p. 39). The 1972 figure quoted in a
testimony to this author by a prominent priest in the Moscow Patriar-
chate (spring 1979).
49. Soviet authors admitted later that the clerical desertions had no effect on
the faith of the believers, who retorted: 'The rascal had served us to make
money, and now he serves you to make money; the more such priests go
over to the atheists, the better for us.' D. Ushinin, 'Novye veianiia v
ateisticheskoi propagande v SSSR', Grani, no. 60 (1966) pp. 214-15.
50. Talantov, 'Bedstvennoe .. .', pp. 36-40.
51. Khronika tek. sob., no. 62 (M.: Samizdat, 1981; N.Y.C., 1982), p. 89.
52. Talantov, 'Bedstvennoe .. .', p. 40.
53. Decree No. 1159. '0 monastyriakh v SSSR', Zakonodatel'stvo o religioznykh
kul'takh (N. Y.C.: 1981 Chalidze reprint from: I uridicheskaia literatura,
M.l97l)p.36.
54. See, inter alia: the already cited AS 713 and 717; Bourdeaux, Patriarch,
pp. 74-85, 87-8, 97-116, 173-5; A. Levitin-Krasnov, Zashchita very v
SSR, Archbishop Ioann of San-Francisco, ed. (Samsidat reprint, Paris:
IXOYC, 1966) pp. 63-87; etc. On attacks on the HolyTrinity-StSergius
Lavra and the Pskov Monastery of the Caves, see also Levitin, Dialogs
tserkovnoi Rossiei (Paris: IXE>YC, 1967) pp. 35-41, and Zashchita very,
pp. 32-62.
55. Bourdeaux, Patriarch, p. 99; Kublanovsky, oral testimony to this author
(Paris, August 1983).
56. Kublanovsky, 'V Pochaevskoi lavre', Russkaia mysl' (30 June 1983) p. 7.
According to Kublauovsky's memoires, the monastic treasurer shouts to
the restorers: 'Use a lot of gold, kids, don't be stingy; the monastery has
got plenty of the stuff!' Levitin reminisces about how barbarously
neglected and ruined was the St Sergi us-Trinity Lavra when it was a state
museum during his visit there in 1937. The Church received it back in
1945, when the country was tapped to the limitbythewar. Yet within two
years the whole complex was beautifully restored by the charity of the
believers. Not a penny was spent by the state although the restoration
work cost millions of rubles. Dialog . .. , p. 41.
57. Bourdeaux, Patriarch, pp. 99-101.
58. Ibid, p. I 06.
59. Levitin, Zashchita very . .. , pp. 67-71.
60. A letter to V. M. Kamensky (a St Tikhon's Seminary professor and a
former Lithuanian diocesan secretary) from the Soviet Union. The
author, daughter of a deceased Orthodox priest in the region ofPochaev
and Kamensky's friend, was 70 years old at the time of that writing in late
1964 or early 1965. See Kamensky's Files, The Bakhmeteff Russian

Emigre Archives, Columbia University.
61. Levitin, Zashchita . .. , pp. 70-1.
62. Bourdeaux, Poctriorch, pp. 102-14.
63. Ibid, pp. 98-116.
54. AS 713, p. 3.
55. Konstantinov, Gonimaia, pp. 301-2.
56. AS 713, AS 717; Bourdeaux, Patriarch, 164-82; Valentin Shkol'nyi,
'Brat i sestra', NiR, no. 6 (1965) pp. 42-5.
37. For example: 'Vsem detiam bozhiim', Posev, no. 11 (1969) p. 12;
Bourdeaux and Katherine Murray, Young Christians in Russia (London:
Lakehead, 1976) pp.l30-37.
38. A. Khvorostianov and B. Borovik, 'lzuver poluchil po zaslugam', NiR,
no. 1 (1962) pp.81-2.
::::HAPTER 7: PERSECUTIONS AFTER KHRUSHCHEV

1. See Struve, Christians, 295-6; Marshall, Aspects of Religion, 133-4;
Khrushchev's speech at the 22nd Party Congress; Il'ichev's report,
chapter 3, current volume.
2. See D. Ushinin, 'New Currents in the Soviet Atheistic Propaganda',
Grani, no. 60 ( 1966) pp. 198-230.
3. Archb. Feodisii, 'Letter to Brezhnev', VRKhD, no. 135 (1981) pp. 221-2.
During the same years reports reached the West about the brutal closure
and destruction of close to ten Orthodox churches, mostly in distant
provinces, but some in major cities, such as The Holy Trinity church
dynamited in Leningrad in 1966, or the Epiphany church in Zhitomir
closed in 1973 and demolished the following year. This is a monthy
newspaper, organ of the Orthodox Church in America (see Biblio-
graphy) The Orthodox Church (New York, April 1967) p. 3; Khronika
tekushchikh sobytii, no. 53 (M.: Samizdat, August 1979; NYC reprint,
1980) pp. 128-9; Kathleen Matchett, 'Trends in Soviet Anti-religious
Policy', RCL, vol. 2, no. 6 ( 1974) pp. 15-16.
4. On Baptists, see, Michael Rowe, 'The 1979 Baptist Congress in Moscow
.. .', RCL, no. 3 (1978) pp. 188-200. The Orthodox figure has been
calculated by this author on the basis of data given in ZhMP in various
issues between 1978 and 1983. Kuroedov's figure in 33 Orthodox
churches newly opened or built during the same years. Religiia i tserkov' v
sov. obshchestve, p. 144.
5. Reports in Russkaia mysl', 26 January 1967; and The Orthodox Church,
April 1967, p. 3.
6. 'Kogda plachut kamni', VRSKhD, No. 104-105 (1972) pp. 142-8.
7. Khronika tekushchikh sobytii, no. 54 (M., 15 Nov. 1979; N.Y., 1980)
pp. 101-2.
8. Khronika ... , no. 53 (M., I Aug. 1979; N.Y. 1980) p. 129. Khronika,
no. 63 (M., 1981; N.Y., 1983), however, reports a similar pogrom of a
Uniate church in obviously the same village, but dates it 7 December
1977. This report (p. 112) states that since that time the believers have
sent over I 00 letters and eleven different delegations to various Soviet
offices requesting the reopening of the church, but were told on each
occasion that as long as they remained under Cardinal Slipyi ('the enemy
of the Soviet state'), they would not be allowed to reopen their church.
Since the first report spoke of delegations and petitions sent to Patriarch
Pi men, it is probable that the village had two churches, one Orthodox and
another Uniate (the latter unregistered). In the latter case the claim of a
particular persecution of the Uniates and patronage for the Orthodox
becomes questionable.
9. Khronika, no. 54, pp. 99-100.
I 0. Ibid, no. 53, pp. 128-9 and no. 54, pp. I 00-1.
II. Religion in Communist Land5, no. 4-5 ( 197 4) pp. 66-7.
12. A Letterfrom36 Gorky Orthodox Workers to ... Eugene Blake, AS 197; A Letter
.... to U Tan (UN General Secretary), AS 198; RCL, vol. 6, no. I ( 1978)
p. 67; AS 3249 (USSR, II April 1978), a document of the Moscow
Christian Committee for Defence of Believers' Rights.
13. Shafarevich, Zakonodatel'stvo ... , pp. 15-18. Also, oral testimony of a
wholly reliable source close to the Zuckerman family,July 1983.
14. 197 5-9 petitions signed by over 1200 persons requesting the opening of
a church in the village of Bol'shoi Khomutets in the Lipetsk Province to
serve a total of twelve churchless villages; 12 ex-monks of the Kiev
Monastery of the Caves and 186 laymen signed petitions in 1978
requesting the reopening of that monastery closed by the state under
Khrushchev (Posev, no. 2, Feb. 1979, p. 12). 1172 persons signed
petitions requesting the reopening of a church in the town of Kotovo in
the Volgograd Province; other groups have been requesting the opening
or reopening of Orthodox churches in at least five villages in the Rovno
Province, one village in the Kharkov Province, two in the Michurinsk
Province (Pose.•, no. 3, 1980, p. 13; and no. 2, 1981, p. 9). 419 Georgian
and Russian Orthodox believers forwarded several petitions requesting
the reopening of at least one Orthodox church in at least one of the three
districts of Azerbaidjan (Kakh, Belakan, Zakatal), where none of the
more than fifty Orthodox churches is open for service, although 20 000
Georgian and 8000 Russian Orthodox believers reside there. Two
ancient Orthodox churches were secretly blown up by dynamite there
one night in 1965 (Posev, no. 2, 1981, p. 9).
15. 'Presledovanie staroobriadtsev v SSSR', VRSKhD, no. 91-2 ( 1969) p. 85.
16. Khronika, no. 24 (Vol'noe sl., 4 ), pp. 19- 20; and almost all subsequent
issues of the publication. More detailed treatment is given in the journal,
Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church.
17. Khronika, no. 60 (M., 1980; I\. Y., 1981) p. 71; and no. 53, p. 125.
18. Ibid, no. 53, p. 126; Posev, no. 2 ( 1981) p. 9; Lithuanian Samizdat sources.
19. Safarevich, Zakonodatel'stvo, pp. 22-3; Bourdeaux, Patriarch, pp. 126-
38 and 142.
20. Klmmika, no. 48 (M., 14 March 1978) p. III; no. 49 (M., 14 May 1978;
1'\.Y., 1978)p.53.
21. Ibid, no. 48, pp. 113-15 and no. 55 (M., 31 December 1979; N.Y. 1980)
p.43.
22. Oxana Antic, 'Persecution of Jehovah Witnesses Continues', RDE-RL

Research Bulletin, RL 223/85 (9 July 1985).
23. 0. F. Volkova, 'Zaiavlenie Podgornomu i Rudenko', n.d. but late 1972,
AS 1229; twosamizdat anonymous reports on searches in connection with
'the Buddologists Affair', AS I229a and b; 'Zapis' protessa nad ... B. D.
Dandaronom' (Uian-Ude, December 1972) AS 1240; AS 1409, l409a, b
and c, and 1410. These consist of appeals by Dandaron's associates
(including those pronounced psychotic) on theirs and his behalf, a xerox
copy of a slanderous article from the Russian language Pravda Buriatii of
21 Jan. 1973, and a translation of a similar slanderous article on
Dandaron in the Buriat language newspaper, Buriaad Unen of 18 Jan.
1973 by A. Motsov and S. Sadoshenko. See also, Delo Dandarona (Firenze,
Italy: Edizioni Aurora, 1974) passim.
24. 'The Yogi with Blue Eyes or the Real Face of Krishna Devotees',
Sotsialisticheskaia industriia, 24 Jan. 1982, in Current Digestofthe Soviet Press
Abstracts, vol. 34, no. 13 ( 1982).
25. Multiple oral testimonies to this author by Soviet Christian neophytes,
including Elena and Yuri Olshansky (New York, June 1981).
26. Lithuanian samizdat and many issues of Khronika ... , including nos 49,
p. 54, and 54, pp. 92-8; also documents on the unofficially ordained
priest, Sigatas Tamkiavichus, AS 5024 and 5025 (Lithuania, 3 April
1983; RL, Materially samizdata, 5 August 1983).
27. Bohdan Bociurkiw: (i) 'The Catacomb Church: Ukrainian Greek-
Catholics in the USSR', Religion in Communi.~/ /.and.~. vol. 5, no. I ( 1977);
(ii) 'Religious Situation in Soviet Ukraine', Ukraine in a Changing World,
Walter Dushnyk, ed. (N.Y.: Ukrainian Congress Committee of America,
1977) pp. 173-90. 'Samizdat Sources Reveal Religious Persecution',
Radio Liberty Dispatch (April23 1971) pp. 4-5. An anonymous Ukrainian
samiulat tract, 'From the Life of the Ukrainian Catholic Church' ( 18 pp.,
Jan. 1980), recounts the story of the suppression of the Uniates in the
Ukraine (Galicia in 1946, Carpatho-Ruthenia in 1949), and adds details
on the continuing harassment and closure of unregistered Uniate
churches opening sporadically or continuing to exist semi-clandestinely
all these years. See Khronika, no. 63, pp. lll-2, and other issues. On the
Soviet 'interpretation' of the Uniate story, see, for instance, P. A.
Petliakov, Uniatskaia tserkov'- orudie antikommunizma i anti-sovetizma (The
Uniate Church Is a Tool of Anticommunism and Antisovietism), (Lvov:
Vyshcha shkola, 1982) passim.
28. For example: Khronika, no. 49, pp. 56-62; Council of the AII-Cnion
Church of the Free Adventists, 'The Last DaysofV. A. Shelkov', Ru.ukaia
mysl' (30 Oct. 1980) p. 6.
29. 'Believers Are Appealing for Defence against Lawlessness', Posev, no. 43
(27 October 1967) pp. 5-7; Bourdeaux, Religious Ferment in Russia
(London: Macmillan, 1968) pp. 95-124.
30. For example: Khronika, no. 43(M., 31 Dec. 1976; l'o:.Y., 177) p. 69; no. 42,
p.69.
31. Eugene Pushkov, 'Something More than Music' and editorial comments,
Prisoner Bulletin, vol. 5, no. 3 (International Representation for the
Council of Evangelical Baptist Churches of the Soviet Union, Elkhart, tr.
Ind.) pp.6-ll.
32. Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta RSFSR, no. 12 (390) p. 219.
33. 'Believers .. .', Posev (weekly), 27 Oct, 1967, pp. 6-7.
34. 'Baptisty: uspekhi i poteri', and 'Khronika', Posev, nos 8 (Aug. 1983) and
II (Nov. 84), pp. 4 and 3 respectively.
35. Khronika, no. 42, pp. 70-1.
36. Ibid, p. 69.
3 7. V. Tishchenko, 'Under Cover of a Lie', Trud, 21 May 1981, p. 4; cited
from The Current Digest . .. , vol. 33, no. 31 ( 1981 ).
38. 'Prisoner Update: Dmitri Miniakov', Prisoner Bulletin, vol5, no. 3, 4-5;
Khronika, no. 47 (30 Nov. 1977) pp. 58-9; no. 61 (16 March 1981) p.49;
no. 63 (31 Dec. 1981) p. II 0. On Graham: 'U veruiushchikh eto vyzovet
razocharovanie .. .', Russkaia mysl', no. 3538 (II Oct. 1984) p. 7; and
other sources.
39. Khronika, no.44 (M., 16 March 1977; 1\.Y., 1977) p. 71.
40. For example: Khronika, no. 39, p. 54; no. 41 (M., 3 August 1976; N.Y.
1976) pp.20-l; no. 52 (M., I March 1979; N.Y. 1979) p.l08; no. 55,
pp. 42-3; no. 56 (M., 30 Apr. 1980; N.Y., 1980) pp. 93-4.
4 I. Klmmika, no. 44, p. 72. On the imprisonment of jehovah's Witnesses for
their conscientious objection: Khronika, no. 54, p. 104; M. Derimov,
'jehovah's Witnesses in Brooklyn 1\ets', Pravda Ukrainy Qanuary 21, 22
and 23, 1983).
42. Klmmika, no. 44, p. 71; a 1983 report of the Christian Committee for the
Defence of Believers' Rights to the WCC IV General Assembly
(Vancouver, Canada), 24. VII, 1983, AS 5037.
43. The Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers' Rights in the
CSSR, 'To the Delegates and Participants of the VI WCC General
Assembly in Vancouver' (M.: Samizdat, 24.July I 983),Materialysamizdata
( 12 Aug. 1mt1), AS 5o:n.
44. The International Iluman Rights Society in Frankfurt/Main West
Germany, has 895 names of Soviet prisoners of conscience currently in
camps, jails, and psycho-prisons ( 183 cases). Of these 352 have been
incarcet·ated entirely for their religious activities. The Society believes
that the real number of Soviet prisoners of conscience, including those
imprisoned for their faith, may be more than ten times the above
numbers. 'Mrachnaia Statistika', Novoye Russkoye Slovo (New York) 9
March I 986, p. 3.
45. 'Persecution of Believers' and 'Letters of Pochaev Monks', VRKhD,
no. 135 ( 1981) pp. 250-2; 'Attack on the Pochaev Lavra', ibid, no. 136
( 1982) pp. 260-1; Khrunika, no. 63, pp. 112-13.
46. 'Persecution of Believers', VRKhD, no. 132 (1980) pp. 209-11; 'Reports
from Russia', Rus. m., 20 Nov. 1980.
4 7. For example, interview with Larisa Volokhonskaia (New York, 16 Apr.
1980), baptized in this fashion in 1972.
48. Archbishop Feodosii, 1-l'ltn, pp. 220-49.
49. C:RA Report to the CPSU Central Committee, VRKhD, no. 130 (1979)
pp.311-26.
50. 'Fr. Vladimir Rusak's Open Letter to the ... VI WCC General Assembly
in Vancouver' and his 'Lenten Sermon', Rwskaia mysl', nos 3476 (4 Aug.
1983) and 3484 (29 Sept. 1983) respectively; also, AS 5017 and 5031. In
October 1983, Fr. Rusak received a warning that unless he found a
secular job by 24 November he would be tried for parasitism. But a
clergyman has no labour passport in the USSR; without this no one may
be employed. Rus. m., no. 3493 (I Dec. 1983) p. 7.
51. Archbishop Feodosii, Letter, pp. 220-49.
52. VRKhD, no. 130, pp. 279-99.
53. Oral testimony to this author, 1982.
54. This point was stressed to this author in 1983 by a non-Russian Orthodox
cleric who had received his education at a theological academy in the
USSR, but who preferred to remain anonymous.
55. Khronika, no. 60, p. 73. The fact that the priest served merely as a church
choir director indicates that this was not the first time he was in trouble
with the Soviet authorities.
56. Khronika, no.63, pp. 112-13; VRKhD, no. 136, pp. 167-9.
57. VRKhD: no.ll7, pp.240-62; no.l30, p.370; no.ll2-113, pp.261-
8l;no.l3l,pp.285-6;no.l32,pp.230-32;no.l33,p.293.Forthefull
text of Dudko's TV 'confession' see Izvestia, 21 June 1980.
58. CRA Report for 1968 (Keston College: Samizdat Archive Ms.), 9p.
59. The same Moroz later repaid the priest by harassing him, and instigating
his equally fanatical but apparently more athletic friend Ivan I lei' to beat
up the priest in a Mordovian concentration camp, as part of their
campaign to intimidate Ukrainians and put an end to their friendship
and co-operation with the Russian and Jewish political prisoners.
Subsequently an unofficial comrade court of political prisoners of
different nationalities, including Ukrainians, deprived Moroz and He!'
of the status of political prisoners and declared them boycotted. See:
Khronika, no. 47 (1977) pp. 98-9; 'The Valentyn Moroz Saga: A
Conspiracy of Silence', Student, Canada's Newpaper for Ukrainian
Students, vol. 12, no. 61 (February 1980) pp. 8-10. Moroz now resides in
the USA.
60. Fr. Sergii Zheludkov on Fr. Vasilii Romaniuk, and other documents on
him, VRKhD, no. 117 (1976 - samizdat documents) pp. 232-9; Rom-
aniuk's letter, VRKhD, no. 129, pp. 281-3.
61. Oral testimony ofMr Lev Yudovich, currently professor at the US Army
College of Modern Languages and Area Studies, Garmisch, West
Germany. For the Soviet line, see: V. Efimov, 'From the Life of"Saint"
Paul', Pravda Vostoka, (Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 12July 1970); V. Alexeev
and N. Dmitrieva, 'Father Paul without a Mask', ibid (26July 1970). For
an independent analysis of the Soviet press on the subject, see, V.
Deriugin, 'What is the Guilt of Fr. Adelgeim?', VRSKhD, no. 97 ( 1970)
pp. 157-63.
62. Khronika, no. 25 (5 March 1972; reprint: Vol'noe slovo, no. 4, 1972) p. 39;
Khronika, no.34 (Samizdat, Feb. 1975; N.Y. 1975) pp.52-3; Vestnik
RSKhD, no. 106, pp. 320-38.
63. Khronika, no. 58 (M., 1980; l':. Y., 1981) pp. 21-3, and other samizdat
documents. Over 200 Soviet citizens signed letters protesting his
incarceration and sentence.
64. Alena Kozhevnikova, 'Interview with Vadim Shcheglov' (a member of
the Christian Comm.), Rus. m., no. 3476 (4 Aug. 83) p. 7.
65. Russk.m., no. 3481 (8 Sept. 1983) p. 2.
66. Lenin's letter to Gorky, November 1913, Collected Works (M.: Progress
Publishers, 1966) vol. 35, pp. 133-3.
67. 'K "delu" ieromonakha Pavia', VRKhD, no. 144 (1985) pp. 226-43.
68. Posev, no. 10 (October 1983) p. 12; Russk. m., no. 3481, p. 2.
69. Khronika, no. 63, p. 113.
70. Khronika,nos51,pp.121-6,and57(M.,3Aug.1980; N.Y.I981)p.66.
Documents on persecutions of the monastics and clergy, VRKhD,
nos 135, pp. 250-2, and 136, pp. 260-9.
71. Posev. no. 2 (February 1984) p. 3.
72. Fr. Gleb Yakunin, 'On the Contemporary Situation of the ROC and the
Prospects of Religious Revival in Russia'. Report to the Christian
Committee (M .. 15 Aug. 1979). Vol'noe slovo (reprint), no. 35-36 (1979)
pp. 12-13, 81-2, et passim.
73. 'A I loly Place Desecrated' (a samizdat letter dated Aprill983 and signed
'Orthodox Christians'), Rwsk. m., no. 34 76 (4 Aug. 1983) p. 6.
74. Yuri Kublanobsky's oral testimony to this author (Paris, August 1983).
Kublanovsky, one of Russia's most talented poets of the young
generation (born in 1946), and adult convert to Orthodoxy, spent most
of his free time during his last decade in Russia as a 'working pilgrim' in
monasteries and convents, not only praying, but also living there, and
doing different jobs including restoration work for them. Also, his '0
Pochaevskoi lavre' (On the Pochaev lavra), Russk. m., no. 34 71 (30 June
1983)p.7.
75. See note 67 above.
76. D Dudko, 'The New Martyr', VRKhD, no. 129, p. 280.
77. Khronika, no.63, pp. I02-3; Natalia Gorbanevskaia, 'Interviews with
Valeri Smolkin', Russk. m., no. 3471 (30 June 1983) p. 6.
78. Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway, Russia's Political Hospital5 (London:
Futura Books, 1977) pp. 23-45. On p. 44, the authors state, on the basis
of authentic data: '25 percent of the medical curriculum is devoted to
political studies: ... bases of Marxism-Leninism, political economy,
dialectical materialism, historical materialism, history of the CP, and
Scientific Atheism.'
79. Khronika, no.62 (M., 1981, 1'\.Y., 1982) p. 156; no. 53, pp.40-1; The
Christian Committee ... , An Appeal (M.: Samizdat, 24 April 1979) AS
3581.
80. Klmmika, no. 45 (M., 25 May 1977; 1'\.Y., 1977) pp. 61-2; no. 46 (M., 15
Aug. 1977; N.Y., 1977) p. 78; no.47 (M., 30 Nov. 1977; N.Y., 1978)
p. 142; no. 51 (M., I Dec. 1978; N.Y. 1979) p.l48.
81. Klmmika,no.34(M.,31 Dec.l974;N.Y., 1975)p.35;no.45,pp.62-4.
82. Khronika, no. 21 (M., II Sept. 1971; repr. in Vol'noe slovo, no. I, 1972)
p. 27.
83. Khronika, no. 49, pp. 37 -8; no. 63, pp. 212-13.
84. Ibid, no. 48, p. 87; no. 53, pp. I 05-6.
85. Ibid, no. 53, p. I 07; no. 54, pp. 84-5.
86. Ibid, no. 43, pp. 60-3; N. A. Trushin, 'Religion in the USSR: New
Believers, New Persecutions', Russkaia mysl', no. 3119 (30 Sept. 1976)
p.5.
87. 'A Letter to Fillip Potter, General Secretary of the WCC from Seven
Russian Orthodox Christians' (M.: Samizdat, 16-31 July 1976), AS
2602a; 'Six Documents on Alexander Argentov' (M.: Sanizdat, 16-31
July 1976), AS 2608; Eduard (George) Fedotov's Letter to Potter (M.:
Samizdat, Sept. 76), AS 2771; Khronika, no. 41, pp. 12-14; no. 42, p. 68.
88. I lis and similar other extensions of concentration-camp terms are based
on a new law adopted in 1983, on 'Malicious Disobedience in Labour
Camps and Punitive Colonies'. Ox ana Antic, 'Vladimir Poresh -a Victim
of the Law of "Malicious Disobedience" in Soviet Camps', RFE-RL Res.
Bul., RL 72/85 (6 March 1985); 'Est' vysshii zakon, kotoryi trebuetot nas
spravedlivosti v otnosheniiakh drugs drugom', Russk. m., no. 3 O anuary
1985)p.7.
89. Khronika, nos: 41, p. 14; 43, pp. 60-3; 46, pp. 41-2; 51, pp. 124-5; 55,
p. 35; 56, pp 51-5; 57, p. 65. Also: 'The Testimony of a Witness', Russk.
m., no. 3324 (4 Sept. 1980) p. 6; Georgi Fedotov, 'Letter to Titiana
Khodorovich' (Samizdat, 13 Oct. 1976), AS 2747b; 'The Christian
Seminar', a collection of documents from samizdat, Vol'noe slovo, no. 39
( 1980) passim. On 23 October 1984, Poresh was re-tried on fraudulent
charges, and his sentence prolonged by an additional three years at a
strict regime camp. Posev, no. I Oan. 1985) p. 8.
90. On 19 January 1980 another b1·am:h of the Khri.1tianin Publishers was
discovered by the KGB in the Dnepropetrovsk Prov. (Ukraine);
Khronika, no. 56, pp. 89-90.
91. The trial ended on 6 December 1982. When searching for religious
literature printed by the defendants, among their main recipients and
probably secondary distributors were found not only priests and nuns,
but also a doctoral student in the history of the CPSU and a militia (police)
officer. 'On ReligiousSamizdat', 'AChronicleoftheCo untry', 'The Trial
of a Group of Orthodox Christians' - all in Posev, respectively nos 6
(1982) pp.6-7; I (1983) p.9; 6 (1983) p.5. 'A Report from Moscow',
VRKhD, no. 136, pp. 277-8, unfortunately takes the official version at
face value, namely that the defendants were black-marketeers with
pecuniary aims. Subsequent information proved this version to be
wrong.
92. Felix Svetov, 'An Open Letter to Russian Writers'; 'Zoia Krakhmal'ni-
kova Sentenced'- both in Posev, resp. no. I 0 (Oct. 1982) pp. 3-5, and
no. 5 (May 1983) pp. 5-6. Also: 'Interview with Shcheglov', Rus. m., (4
Aug. 83) p. 7; Pospielovsky, Rwsian Church, vol. 2, ch. 12. Nos 8-10 of
Nadezhda had reached the West after her arrest; and nos II and 12 were
'published' in 1983-5 by her unnamed successors.
93. ()xana Antic, 'Member of a Christian Rock Group on Hunger Strike',
Radio Liberty Research (RL 233/85) 17 July 1985. Release information
supplied by Keston College.
94. Khronika, no. 54, pp. 104-5.
95. Michael Bourdeaux and Katherine Murray, Young Christians in Rwsia
(London: Lakeland & Keston, 1976) pp. 130-40; Khronika, no. 48,
p. 119, and multiple other samizdat sources, including AS 3955 (March

1980) p. 3, reporting the deprivation of a Pentecostal family of parental
rights.
96. Art. 66 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution states that it is the duty of Soviet
citizens to raise their children as 'worthy members of the socialist society',
that is of the Soviet Union. But Art. 6 says: 'The leading and guiding
force of Soviet society, the core of its political system, its state and social
organizations, is the Communist Party ... Armed by the Marxist-
Leninist teachings. Art. 25 adds that 'the unified system of education ...
serves the communist upbringing' of the citizens; therefore in the
context of these three articles the constitutional duty of Soviet parents is
to raise their children as communists. The Communist party statutes
stipulate active struggle against religion as one of the duties of a party
member.
The Family Code spells it out even more clearly. Art. 52: 'Parents are
duty-bound to raise their children in the spirit of the moral code of the
builder of communism. Art. 59 clarifies: 'Parents ... can be deprived of
their parental rights if ... they effect a harmful influence on their
children ... by antisocial behaviour.' This, by implication includes
dedication to a religious belief, since social behaviour means active
support for the buildingof atheistic communism. Kodexy (M.: I uridiches-
kaia literatura, 1979) pp. 242-3.
Epilogue
I. See the speeches from the floor at the Eighth Writers' Congress. Lit. gazeta,
2 .July 19H6, particularly those of D. Likhachev and A. Voznesensky. Also
Valentin Rasputin's novella Pozhar (The Fire) and Victor Astafiev's novel
Pechal'nyi detektiv (A Sad Detective Story), first published respectively in
Nash sovremennik, no. 7 Ouly 1985) and Oktiabr', no. I Oanuary 1986).
2. /.it. gazeta, 19 1\'ovember 1986.
3. E. Pylilo in l.itl'ratura i iskusstvo (Minsk) 5 September, 1986; response in
Kom. jmwda, 3 October 1986. As cited by Vera Tolz, 'Soviet Writers
Criticised for Christian J.enings',RadioLibertyResearch, 5 November 1986.
4. Both inKom. pravda, 10 December 1986. Cited in Fr. Kirill Fotiev, 'Sud'by
kul'tury i khristianstva', Ru.ukaia mysl', 30 January 1987, p. 5.
5. G. Razumikhina, AI. Razumikhin, '0 delakh semeinykh', Nash sovre-
mnmik, no. 12 (December 1986), p. 150. The quotation within the citation
is from V. Belov, a leading ruralist writer.
6. A. Tursunov, 'Ateizm i kul'tura', Pravda, january 1987.
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Molodaia gvardiia, 1938.
Yaroslavsky, E. 'Speech at the Second LMG Congress', Rawernutymfrontom.
M.: Bezbozhnik, 1929.
Zalygin, M. Solenaia Pad'. M.: Voenizdat, 1981.
'Zhizneopisanie ieromonakha Nikona', Nadezhda, no. 8. Russia: samizdat
1981/Frankfurt am main: 1982.
Zhurakovsky, Fr. Anatolii, Biographical:
( 1) Materialy k zhitiiu. Paris: YMCA Press, 1984.
(2) 'Sviashchenik Anatolii Zhurakovsky,' Nadezhda, no. 10, 1984.
Zybkovets, N. F. Natsionalizatsiia monastyrskikh imushchestv v Sovetskoi Rossii,
1917-1921. M.: Akademiia Nauk SSR, 1975.
Index
Academy of Sciences 43 19, 24, 26, 98-102, 104-5,
Adventists 31, 180, Appendix 2 108-16; Revolution and the
Church of Seventh Day Church (Revoliutsiia i Tserkov)
Adventists 157-8 19-20, 23, 30; World of Man
Legal Defence Group 174 117
True and Free Seventh Day and religion in art, culture, and
Adventists (AUCTFSDA) literature 112-14, 117,
156-9 189-92
Alexii, Patriarch 79, 92, 128, 231 religion as a drug 36, 37
n.37 religion as a mental disorder 36
All-Union Council of Evangelical and religious revival 117
Christians and Baptists see in serial publications:
Baptists Komsorrwl'skaia Pravdn 28,
Andropov, Yurii 145 37, 43, 87; Krokodil 37, 95,
Antireligious decrees, resolutions, 113; Soviet Ethnography 127
legistlation, and Church laws support of Renovationist schism
213-14 24,27
Decree of 23 Jan. 1918- tactics, debates over
Separation of Church and methodology: pre-
State x, I, 12-13, 16, 62 Khrushchev 36-7, 42, 44-
Decree of 1 March 1919 - 6, 56, 64, 69; under
Liquidation of the cult of Khrushchev 99, 101-4,
corpses and mumies 19 106-7; post-Khrushchev
Soviet Constitutions of 1918 and 108-11, 114
1924 61 and youth and religion 71, 108,
under Stalin 61-3, 70, 150, 117' 125
207-8 Antireligious propaganda - attacks
under Khrushchev 105, 121-2, on
127, 129, 135-6 'anti-semitism' of Orthodox
under Brezhnev 150, 157, 159- Church 28
60, 163-4, 169, 186-7,259 Baptists 30, 85-6, 114, 161-2
n.96 Bishops 87-8, 103, 134
under Gorbachev 188 Buddhists (Hare Krishna) 155-
Antireligious education 42, 102 6
Antireligious parades, meetings Christian scholars 43
44-5 Christians in kolkhozy 32, 35, 89
Antireligious propaganda Church holidays 37, 44-5
antireligious serial publications Church in connection with
45, 91, 99, 189: Antireligioznik famine relief 24-7
30-1, 34; Bezbozhnik 19, Church for alleged involvement
31, 34-5, 37-8, 42-3, 45, in intelligence organised
71, 98; Bezbozhnik u stanka criminal and blackmarket
29, 35-7, 42-3, 98; Science operations 85-9, 111,
and Religion (Nauka i religiia) 111-17
265
266 Index
Antireligious propaganda - Renovationist schism 58

attacks on - continued under Gorbachev 188
Church as scapegoat for Art and religion see Culture
economic problems 34-5, Atarbekov 8
36,45,85
clergy 28, 30, 42, 50, 69, 71, Baptists 30, 85-6, 131, 144, 146,
86-7' 88, 103 180
hierarchical structure of Church All-Union Council of Evangelical
23-5, 28 Christians and Baptists
Jehovah Witnesses Ill, ll4, (AUCECB) 131-2, 159,
155-6 162
Judaism 27-9, 44, 106 Central Council 31
Loyalty of Church 28-9 Council of Churches of the
Lutherans 87 Evangelical Christians and
miracles 21-3 Baptists (CCECB/
monasteries 50, 105, 142, 177 Initsiativniki!Unofficial
Moslems 27, 34, 89, 106 Baptists) xiv, 132, 154, 156,
Old Believers 115 159-62, 183-4, 186, 188,
Pilgrimages and pilgrims Appendix 2
105-6 Council of Relatives of the
Renovationists 27, 33 Imprisoned Christian
those refusing to recognise Baptists 184, Appendix 2
Renovationists 52 'Khristianin Publishers' 183-4,
Roman Catholic Church 44, Appendix 2
86-7, 95-6 Barinov, Valerii 186, 216
Saints 19-20 Beilis case 53-4
Sectarians 30-4, 42-3, 87, 108 Beletsky, S. 4
Sergii, Patriarch 28 Believers - statistics on numbers
theological academies and 45, 70-1, 127
seminaries 23, 86 Belkov, 24, 52
Tikhon, Patriarch, 24, 26-7, Bezhozhnik see Antireligious
50, 87 propaganda
'True Orthodox' 106-8, 115- Bezhozhnik u stanka see
16 Antireligious propaganda
Ukrainian Uniates 114 Bishops, Archbishops, and
Antireligious serial publications see Metropolitans
Antireligious propaganda Afanasii (Sakharov), and
Antireligioznik see Antireligious 'Sakharovites' 78-81, 91-3
propaganda Alexander (Petrovsky) 73-4
Anti-Sergiite schism see Schism- Alexii, Metr. (Gromadsky) of
on the right Antonov rebellion Kiev 103
47 Alexii 76
Argentov, Alexander 181-182 Alexii, Metr. (Ridiger) 189
Arkhangelsk City Union of Andrei, Archbp. (Sukhenko) of
Orthodox Clergy and Laity Chernigov 102-3, 134
ll-12 Andronik, Archbp. of Perm 6,
Arrests x, 59 229-30 n.ll
of Bishops 2, 52, 77-79, 88; in Antonii, Archbp. of Arkhangelsk
connection with 75
Index 267
Bishops, Archbishops, and Roman Catholic Bishops: De

Metropolitans - cuntinued Ropp, Archbp. 13;
Antonii, Metr. (Mel'nikov) 189 Sladkiavichus 153;
Antonii, Metr. of St Petersburg Steponavichus 153
9 Serafim, Metr. (Ruzhentsov) 88
Arkadii (Ostal'sky) 74 Serafim, Metr. (Meshcheriakov)
Dometian (Gorokhov) 87-8 of Belorussia 75
Efrem 4 Sergii, Metr. (Voskresensky) of
Ermogen, Archbp. of Tashkent Vilnius Appendix I
134 Stefan (Nikitin) 84-5
Feodosii, Archbp. of Poltava Varfolomei (Remov) 76
164-5, 168-70 Venedikt, Archbp. 134
Filaret, Metr. of Kiev 167, 171 Veniamin, Archbp. (Novitsky) of
Filaret, Metr. of Minsk 189 Irkutsk 94, 134
Germogen, of Tobolsk 2, 3, 6 Veniamin, Metr. of Petrograd
Illarion, Archbp. (Troitsky) of 17, 51-5
Krutitsy 58 Victor (Ostrogradsky) of Glazov
Illarion (Belsky) 75-6 73
Ioakim, Archbp. of Nizhni Vladimir, Metr. of Kiev 9-10
Novgorod 3 Bishops - consecration see
Ioann, of Kirov 136 Consecration
lov, Archbp. (Kresovich) of Bishops - numbers of 46, 67-8
Kazan 102-3, 134 Blokhin, Nikolai 185, 217
Joseph, Metro. 76 Borisov, Prof. 43
Konstantin, Metr. (D'iakov) 74 Budarov, Sergei and Vladimir
Kornilii, 12 185, 217
Korobov, of Vetluga 89 Buddhism 155-6
Leontii, of Astrakhan' 8 Hare Krishna 156, 188,
Luka (Voino-Yasenetsky) 78- Appendix 2
80,84,97 Bukharin, Nikolai, and
Makarii, of Viaz'ma 7 'Bukharinites' 45, 87, 89
Manuil (Lemeshevsky) 78-9, Burdiug, V. 184-5, 217
93-4 Burtsev, Vladimir 183
Maxim (Ruberovsky) 74
Maxim (Zhizhilenko) 76-7, 79, Chaikovsky 12
84 Chapaev 2
Nikodim, of Belgorod 7-8, 9 Chernenko, K. U., and religion
Nikodim, Metr. (Rotov) 134-5 ll7
Nikolai, Metr. 128-9, 134 Christian Committee for the
Nikolai, Metr. of Rostov-on-Don Defence of Believers' Rights
75 (CCDBR) 173-4, 180, 181
Onufrii (Gagaliuk) of Christian Communes of Sobriety
Elisavetgrad 75 32
Peter, Metr. (Poliansky) 58, 73, Churikov, and Churikov sect 31-
210 2,85
Pimen, Metr. of Kharkov 74 Church
Pitirim, Archbp. 167 attendance 18, 45
Planton (Kulbush) of Tallin I 0 and the Civil War x, xi, 1-6,
Purlevsky, of Sergach 89 16, 27-8, 69
268 Index
Church - continued VOOPIK- All-Russian
denials of persecutions 28-9, Association for the
59, 99, I28 Preservation of Historical
and Renovationist schism 49, and Cultural Monuments
52, 58, 77, 79 I9I
and the I905 Revolution 9 re-opening of, construction or
under German occupation 9I- enlargements of churches
3, I25, I93, I97-9, and similar attempts 70, 83,
Appendix I 93, I2I, I45-6, I48-5I,
Church and State I69-70; During I939-45;
and baptisms I4, 164-5 of old Believers churches
and burials I4, 73, I64 I 52; of Roman Catholic
and famine relief 24, 26-7, 48- churches I53-4
53, 55 resistance to destruction and
general history see Introduction, closures of Churches I, 22,
Appendix I 74, II6, I23-5, I34, I47-8
and marriages I2-I4, 73, I64 Churches and monasteries -
and miracles 2I-3, 56 transformation for alternative
reafrjJrochment during I9I4-I8 uses 38-9, 57, 64, I76; of
9I Roman Catholic churches
and saints I9-20, 56, I36 I53-4
Church publicity see Religious Civil War and the Church x, xi,
publishing l-6, I6, 27-8, 69
Churches Clergy, monks and nuns
desecration of 9, I5, 38 (Orthodox)
destruction, closure - pre- Adelgeim, Fr Pavel I72-3
Khrushchev ix-x, I, I5, Alimpi, Archimandrite I76
22, 38, 40-I, 57, 64, 66, Alipii, Fr 139, 177
69-70, 73-4, 83, 97, I2I; of Amvrosii, monk-priest
anti-Sergiite Churches 10
destruction, closure - post-Stalin Amvrosii, Fr 176-7
I23-8, I33-4, I36, I46-9, Antonii, Fr Esner-Foiransky-
I69-70, I99; in Kirov Gogol 83
diocese I22-4, I26, I36, Boiarsky, Fr 53
I 53; of Baptist prayer Boiko, Fr Vasilii, I70
houses I60-I; of Chel'tsov, Fr Mikhail 82
Pentecostal prayer houses Dimitri, Fr I 0
163; of Roman Catholic Dragozhinsky, Fr 8-9
churches I26, I52-4 Dudko, Fr Dimitri 94, I71
numbers of churches remaining Eshliman, Fr Nikolai II6, 135,
open ix, 46, 64, 66-67, 70, I73
124, I26-7, I35, I46, I49, Florensky, Fr Pavel 77
I69; of Roman Catholic Fonchenkov, Fr Vasilii 173
churches I52 Gainov, Fr Nikolai I73
preservation of as cultural, Gapon, Fr Georgii 86-7
historical or architectural Gavriil, Abbot I77
monuments 38, I90-I; Gavril, Fr 83-4
Fund for the Restoration of Golovanov, monk 140
Historical Monuments I70; Ilarii, monk-priest 138-9
Index 269
Clergy, monks and nuns Clergy - deregistration of 123,

(Orthodox) - crmtinU£d 129, 133, 167, 171
lvasiuk, Fr Nikolai 178 Clergy - numbers of 46, 68, 135,
lzrail, monk 10 152, 165
Kochurov, Fr Ivan 3 Closure of churches and
Konin, Fr Lev I 79 monasteries see Churches
Makeev, Valeria, Nun 179 Collectivisation x, 42, 62-4
Mechev, Fr Sergii, 78 Communes, Christian agricultural -
Medved', Fr Roman 76-7 attacks on 15, 30-3, 42-3,
Mikhailov, Fr Iosif 179 230-1 n.31
Miliutinsky, Fr Alexei 5 Concentration camps 60, 73-5,
Mokovsky, Fr 8 81, 83
Nektarii, elder 57 Confiscation of church property
Nikon, monk-priest 57 I, 15
Ornatsky, Filosof, Fr 3 Confiscation of church valuables
Pavel, Fr. Lysak 174 for famine relief 24, 26, 47-
Perestoronin, Fr T.G. 133-4 51, 55, 69
Pitirim, monk 176 arrests and trials in connection
Pivovarov, Fr Alexander 174 with 49-50, 53-5
Podolsky, Fr Alexander 5 resistance to 49, 55
Polsky, Fr 73, 81-2 Congresses, Party
Prigorsky, Fr Ivan 5 8th 69
Rasputin, Fr 12 lOth 47
Roman Catholic clergy: Bubnis, 15th (1928) 42
Fr Prosperas 153; 21st (1959) 122
Krapiwnicki 13; 27th (1986) 190
Lauriniavichius, Fr Bronius Consecration of new bishops and
178; Lutoslawski 24; clergy 121, 168
Zavalniuk, Fr 154; Council of Churches of the
Zdebskis, Fr 153 Evangelical Christians and
Romaniuk, Fr Vasilii I 71-2 Baptists see Baptists
Rusak, deacon Vladimir 166-8 Council of Relatives of the
Sampson, elder 84 Imprisoned Christian Baptists
Serafim, Fr Batiukov 93 see Baptists
Simonov, Fr 128 Council for Religious Affairs
Surtsov, Arch-priest 12 (CROCA or CRA) 97, 123-4,
Sventsitsky, Fr. Valentin 77-8 128-32, 141, 146, 149-50,
Tavrion, monk 59 156, 163-6, 168-70, 172, 177
Trubetskoi, Fr Nikolai 92-3 Culture- art, literature, traditions
Unka, Grigori, monk 140 ... and religion xiv, xii, 112,
Vladimirov, Fr Iakov II 189-92
Vostorgov, Fr 3-4 Culture Fund 190-1
Yakunin, Fr Gleb 116, 135, 173,
227-8 Desecration of churches see
Zdriliuk, Fr 170-1 Churches
Zhurakovsky, Fr A. 78 Destruction of churches,
Clergy Conference of Siberia 50 monasteries see Churches
Clergy consecration see Destruction, closure, of Holy Places
Consecration 136
270 Index
Ermolaev, Sergei 183 Gorbachev, Mikhail- and religion

Executions and murders 3-4, 7, 188, 190
78,82 Gorbachev, Raisa 191
ofbelievers x, 1-4,6, 10, 12, Gorev-Galkin, Mikhail 19, 27
59, 81-3, 141, Appendix 2; Graham, Billy 162
in connection with famine Grossman, Vasili 68-9
relief 50, 55 'group of twenty' 204-7
of bishops 3-4, 6-8, 15, 55, 60, Gurovich, Ya.S. 52-4
68, 74-6; Andrionik, Gzhevskaia, Marfa 141
Archbp. 6; Germogen 2-
3, 6; Maxim (Zhizhilenko) Hare Krishna see Buddhism
76-7; Nikolai, Metr. 75; Henry, Maurice 99-100
Platon 10; Varfolomei Holy Places - destruction, closure
(Remov) 76 of see Destruction
of Churikovites 32 Hope: Christian Readings see Samizdat
of clergy 3, 5, 8, 10-12, 15-16,
68, 74-5, 82, 84, 178, 183; Il'chev, Leonid 99, 104, 107
Kochurov, Fr 3; Mechev, Il'insky, Captain N. S. 155
Fr Sergii 78; Medved', Fr Imprisonment
Roman 76- 7; Ornatsky, Fr of believers 2, 55-6, 60, 82, 93,
33; Vostorgov, Fr 4; in Appendix 2
camps 82-3; in connection of bishops 15, 56, 58, 60, 68,
with famine relief 50, 55- 73-5, 79-80, 84-5, 87-8,
6; in connection with schism 92, 94, 134; Afanasii
58; of Lutheran clergy (Sakharov) 80-1, 92;
10; of Roman Catholic clergy Andrei, Archbp. (Sukhenko)
4, 178 of Chernigov 134;
of monks and nuns 10-11, 15- Veniamin, Archbp.
16, 54, 141; Alimpi, (Novitsky) 94
Archimandrite 176; from of clergy 15, 56, 68, 73-4, 77-
Caucasus underground 8, 92, 133, 153, 174,
monastery 175; in Kazan Appendix 2
82; in Rostov-on-Don 75; numbers imprisoned for faith
in connection with famine (including in psychiatric
relief 55-6 hospitals) 160, 163, 184
Industrial Party 86
Initsiativniki see Baptists
Fedotov 181-2
Intelligentsia, religious revival IX,
Fudel, S. I. 93
II 7, 156, 179
Fund for the Restoration of
Historical Monuments see
Jehovah Witnesses and Jehovists
Churches - preservation of
154-5, 222
Furov 165-6, 168-9, 171-2, 177
Jesus Regiments 16
Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate
Galiev, Sultan 34 see Moscow Patriarchate
Galliamov, Sergei 180-1 Judaism andJews 13-14,28,
Gerasimchuk, Maria 141 Appendix 2
Germans and Church see Church
under German occupation Kagan 14
Index 271
Kalinovsky 24 Lithuanian Helsinki-Watch Group

Kaltakhchian 191 see Roman Catholic Church
Kaplan 43 Living-Church see Renovationists
Karlovci 28 Lockhart, Bruce 87
Kerensky 33 Leginov, Anton 37-8, 42
Khvostov, A. 4 Lunacharsky 42
'Khristianin Publishers' see Baptists Lunin, A. 28-30
Khrushchev, Nikita, and religion Lutherans 13, 87
X, 46, 121-2, 145 Lypkivskyites see Ukrainian
reaction from West 98-9, 121 Autocephalist Church
Kirov 8
Kollontai, Alexander 17 Maklakov, N. 4
Komsomol - anti-religious activity Mariamov, B. 109
of 38, 44, 68-9, 97, 132, 164, Martynov, Evgenii 180
170 Marxism and Christianity/religion
Korolenko, Iustina 141 I, 9, 29, 33, 49, 107, 110, 122
Kostelovskaia 42 Mensheviks 6
Krakhmalnikova, Zoia 185-6, 220 Metropolitans see Bishops
Krasikov, Piotr 30, 32-3 Miniakov 188, 222
Krasnitsky 24, 52-3 Miracles 20-3, 56, 84-5
Krokhin 185 Monasteries and convents, and
Kronstadt rebellion 47 attacks against them 10, 50,
Kryvelev 189-91 82, 134-6, 164, 175-6;
Kuntsevich, Lev Z. 6 Alexander-Nevsky 17; Optina
Kuvshinov, I. A. and son 59 57; Pochaev-l.avra 105, 137-
Kuz'kin, Alexander 183 42, 164, 176-7; Pskov
Monastery of the Caves 105,
League of Militant Godless 28, 31, 177; St Sergius-Trinity 174,
33,36-9,44, 64,68, 71 176-8
Leagues .of Laymen 17 destruction, closures of, and
Legal Defence Group see similar attempts x, 1, 15,
Adventists 57,65,82, 134,136-42,177
Legislation see Antireligious numbers of monasteries and
decrees, resolutions, etc. monks 136; in Pochaev-
Lenin lavra 176
and NEP 47 resistance to closure of 134; in
and religion 1, 24, 26, 36, 49, Pochaev-lavra 137, 141-2
57, 174 transformation for alternate uses
Turanian movement 34 see Churches
Leningrad liberation organization Monastic working communes 15,
86 57
Levitin-Krasnov 65-7, 101-2 Monks see Clergy, monks, etc.
Ligachev, L. N. 190 Moor 99
Likhachev, D. S. 190-l Moroz, Valentyn 172
Literature and religion see Culture Morozova, Maria 141
Lithuanian Catholic Committee for Moscow Patriarchate 128, 136,
the Defence of Believers' 167,196-7,212
Rights see Roman Catholic Journal of the Moscow
Church Patriarchate 102, 167, 188
272 Index
Moslems and Islam 13, 18, 27, 34, 155, Appendix 2

89, 106 laity ix-x, I, 81, 143-4, 181-2,
Murders see Executions Appendix 2
Music, religious rock music- monks and nuns ix-x, I, 65,
'Trumpet Call' 186, 216 81, 105, 137-42, 175-9,
Appendix 2
Nationalism xiv-xv, 60 official admissions of xi, 70-1,
Turkic 34 73, 127-8
Ukrainian 9, 86, 157, 172 parents of religious youth 142-
Naulf.a i religiia see Antireligious 3, 186
propaganda Pentecostals 143-4, 162-3,
Nechytailo, A. 168-70 180, 186, Appendix 2
New Economic Policy 47 religio-philosophic seminar
New Israel Sect 30-3 181-3
Nikolaev 146-7 those refusing to recognize
NTS- Toiling Alliance of Russian Renovationist schism 47-8,
Solidarists 116, 246-7 n.34 58, 80
Nuns see Clergy, monks and nuns Uniates 157
youth, seminarians, and students
Ogorodnikov, Alexander 181-2, 133-5, 180-2; Moscow
186, 188 University religio-philosophic
OldBelievers 115,127-8,151 -2 study group 94-6, 181
Oleshchuk, F. 39, 64, 71, 88-9 Pilgrimages and pilgrims I 05-6,
Osipov, Alexander 103-4, 105, 130, 135-7, 140-1, 164, 175-
110-12 6
Pimen, Patriarch 177-8
Paris Peace Conference 11- 12 Platonov, Sergei 43
Party Congresses see Congresses Plekhanov 141
Peace Fund 170 Poliakov, Igor 183
Pectoral Crosses 90 Popkov, Viktor 183
Pentecostals xiv, 143-4, 154, 156, Poresh, Vladimir 182-3, 223-4
162-3, 180, 186, 188 Powell, D. 101
Persecutions of see also Arrests; 'Prayer for Bolsheviks' 76-7
Executions; Imprisonments; Preservation of churches see
Appendix 2 Churches preservation of
Adventists 158-9 Priests see Clergy
Anti-Sergiites 48, 60, 65, 67, 73, Prokhanov, Ivan 18
75-8, 91-3 Protests
Baptists 144, 159-62, 180, 184, religious processions 2-3, 6, 12,
186, Appendix 2 17
Buddhists 155-6, Appendix 2 sermons 7-8
Christian Committee 173 Western - against religious
Christian scholars 43 persecutions 64-5
Clergy ix-x, 1, 3, 57, 62, 73, Provisional Government 3
81, 133-4, 167, 170-3, Psychiatry and psychiatric hospitals,
Appendix 2 and their use against believers
for 'collaboration' during 1939- 36, 140, 156, 178-81
45 92-4, 97 publishing, religious see Religious
Jehovah Witnesses and Jehovists publishing
Index 273
Purges 43 Khristianin Publishers 183-4
Pushkov, Pastor Eugene 159 Schism - on the right 48, 60, 65,
Pylilo 191 67, 73, 76,78-81,91-3
Schoolteachers- attacks on 42,
Radek, K. 13 56, 102, 153
Ratushinskaia, Irina 188 Science and Religion see
Rebellions against Bolsheviks 4 7 Antireligious propaganda
Regelson, Lev 67-8 Seminaries see Theological
Religio-philosophic seminar 181- academies
3, 186 Sergii, Patriarch 58, 65, 67, 73,
Religious publishing 183-5, 217 77, 79, 81,91, 210
Religious revival Introduction, and loyalty to State x, 28-9, 48,
70-1,96, 117, 131, 156, 179, 59-60, 65, 73, 76, 79, 81,
181-2 194-5, 211
Renovationist - Living Church x, and Stalin concordat ( 1943) 68,
24, 27, 47, 54, 58, 66-8, 74-5, 78,91
79-80, 194-5, 211 Services- disruption of 15, 45
and campaign for confiscation of Seven Year Plan ( 1959), and
church valuables 49 religion 122
and Patriarchal Church 49, 52, Shamaro 109, 115
58, 77, 79 Shcheglovitov, I. 4
putsch 49 Shchipkova, Tat'iana 182-3
and State 24, 27, 33, 49, 58, 88 Shchors 2
Republican associations for the Shelkov, V. A. 158, 159, 215, 225
preservation of historical and Shevchuk 85
cultural monuments see Shipilov, Vasilii 180
Churches, preservation of Shmain, Ilia, Fr 95-6
Revoliutsiia i tserkov see Shpitsberg, 20
Antireligious propaganda Shuia Clash 49
Roman Catholic Church 13, 152- Sidorov 184
4, 156-7, 189 Skrebets, Olga
persecutions of Roman Catholics Smirnov, Afanasii 12
13, 24, 153, Appendix 2 Smolkin, Valeri 178
Lithuanian Catholic Committee Snezhnevsky and other
for the Defence of Believers' schizophrenia theories as
Rights 174 applied to believers 36, 178-
Lithuanian Helsinki-Watch 9
Group 178 Sobor, All-Russian 1917-18 4, 6,
Rublev, Andrei 112 12
Rumachik, Peter 225 Stalin, Joseph- and religion xi,
Rutgaiter 14 42,64-5,88,93,95-6
concordat with Sergii 68, 78, 91
Saints 19-20, 56 State Famine Relief Commission
Sakharovites see Bishop Afanasii 51
(Sakharov) State and religious youth 131-3,
Samizdat xi-xiv, xiin, 110, 144 142-4, 186
'Holy Letters' 110- 11 Students see Youth; Theological
Hope: Christian Readings academies
(Nadezhda) 185, 220 Sverdlov, Yakov 5-6
274 Index
Talantov, Boris 122-5, 128, 131, Organization 86; Union for

133, 135-6 the Liberation of the
Taran 141 Ukraine 86
Taxation, rents- and clergy, Trotsky, and Trotskyites 45, 87,
churches and monasteries 89
62-4, 74, 136, 205 Trubnikova 105-6, 109, 115, 117
Theological academies, seminaries, True Orthodox 106-8, ll5-16,
and seminarians 121, 133, 127
180 'Trumpet Call' see Music
closures of 135, 168 Turanian Movement 34
harassment and control of
students by CROCA 165- Ukrainian Autocephalist Church
6, 168-9 60, 86
Moscow Theological Seminary Ukrainian nationalism 9, 86, 157,
165 172
numbers of seminaries and Ulianov, G. 109
students 135, 152 Underground Church 79, 92,
Volhynia Seminary in Lutsk 168 127, 145
unofficial 76 Uniate Church 95, 114, 157
Theophanes the Greek 112 Union for the Liberation of the
Tikhon, Patriarch 2, 12, 13, 24, Ukraine 86
28, 50, 58, 79, 87 Union of Russian People 53
anathema to Bolsheviks 1, 6
arrest of 49, 52 Valentinov, A. A. -Rinck Book 2,
and the Civil War 16 4-5, 8, 14, 50, 55
and famine relief 26-7, 48, 55 Varavva, Feodosia 143-4
and loyalty 28, 59, 194 Vatican 86
and Renovationist schism 58 Vins, George 161
Timokhin Sergei 186, 216 VOOPIK see Churches,
Toiling Alliance of Russian preservation of
Solidarists see NTS Vvedensky, Metr. A. 24, 52, 53
Tokmakova, Lydia 141 Vyshinsky, Andrei 89
Tretiakov, E. 156
Trials see also Appendix 2 War Communism I, 47
of Ostal'sky, Bishop Arkadii 74 World Council of Churches 174
of Sergii, Archimandrite 54-5 World of Man see Antireligious
of Veniamin, Metropolitan of propaganda
Petrograd 51-5 Work week- continuous, and
of Roman Catholics 50 banning of days off on church
of Jews 50 feast days 56-7, 71, 72,91
of Zoia Krakhmalnikova 185-6
in connection with confiscation of Yankova 70
church valuables 49-50, Yankovich, Alexander, 180, 228
53-5 Yaroslavsky, E. 16, 36-7, 42, 45,
for religious publishing 184-5 69, 70-1
re-trials in camps 175, 182-3, Yevtushenko, E. 191
Appendix 2 Youth, students and religion 71,
show trials: Industrial Party 86; 102, 117, 131, 133, 135, 180-
Leningrad Liberation 2, 186
Iruiex 275
Youth, students and religion- Zaichenko, Grigorii 185

continued Zhurnal Moscovskoi Patriarchii see
Moscow University student Moscow Patriarchate
religio-philosophic study Zinoviev, and Zinovievites 87
group 94-6, 181 Zuckerman, Dr Boris 151
religio-philosophic seminar Zyrianov, Khristofor 115
181-3, 186

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What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What policies did the Soviet government pursue towards religion?

What policies did the Soviet government pursue towards religion?

SOVIET ANTIRELIGIOUS CAMPAIGNS AND

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission

First published 1988

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

1 The Early Persecutions, 1971-21 1

2 Contempt and Hate Propaganda, 1919-39 19

4 An 'Interlude': From 1941 to Stalin's Death 91

5 Renewal of the Incendiary Propaganda, 1958-

6 Persecutions under Khrushchev 121

7 Persecutions after Khrushchev 145

I. See Vekhi,acollection of essays on the Russian intelligentsia by N. A. Berdiaev, S. N.

never-ending Soviet attack on religion and on believers. This

These are just highlights of the most massive attacks, which

post-Stalin era. This study uncovers a considerable volume of

unofficial branch of the Baptist Church and of the Pentacostal-

study of Russian nationalism. In fact this work, along with its

murdered Metropolitan was Alexander's godfather and the

SOME TECHNICAL POINTS

Italics. Unless otherwise noted, all italics within quotations are

Transliterations. Generally, the Library of Congress system is

The Calendar. Prior to February 1918 the Julian Calendar was

Abbreviations. These are noted in the appropriate places in the

This book deals with the day-to-day application of the Marxist-

ever cease completely. Both are found in the Soviet Union

The Church was the object of persecution from the earliest

Government was not responsible for the behaviour of these

rubles, later increasing it to 100 000. When the money was

missionary and church activist. He had mastered Persian and

entrepreneurs, members of the Liberal and Menshevik parties

There are numerous reports of murders committed in

violence, plunder, murder; he appealed to his flock to

pronounced on his death bed: 'Thou hast vanquished, the

crucifixion. In a Kuban' Cossack village an eighty-year-old

on behalf of the Church in Russia. The appeal was based on a

decree on the separation of Church and State. The Church was

other religions in the country. If one bears in mind that less

Killed: one metropolitan, eighteen bishops, 102

exceeded by far the incomplete estimate of 330 clergy and

resolution was handed to the Bolsheviks, whereby the

chaplains confirm that when the February Revolution made

The beginning of the systematization and centralization of

Quite the opposite story concerning the same relics comes

the most amazing was the renovation of the Sretenskaia

them signed by members of the Academy of Sciences, stated

bringing their own crosses and setting them up next to it.

Needless to say, at the very first opportunity the Soviets

But the 'Princes of the

including the sacramental vessels. The letter quotes relevant

about the prospect that this economic catastrophe may weaken

Christianity, in particular Orthodox Christianity, for allegedly

that Christianity shared many social goals with Marxism. Lunin

became the pejorative 'pop', which in the early 1920s was

burg, began to set up working Christian communes of sobriety

toiling sectarians', the sectarian peasants with their instinctive

liquidate, and for this reason provoke the wrath of the

Hail to the Five-Year Plan!