ANTI-RELIGIOUS CAMPAIGNS, a set of measures of the Soviet government in 1917 - the late 1930s, aimed at eliminating the church from the spheres of civil and state life and stopping the activities of all confessions.

In 1917-18 The first decrees of the Soviet government implemented a number of measures aimed at separating church and state. Although these measures were directed primarily against the Russian Orthodox Church (the number of Germans who professed Orthodoxy was extremely small), they affected all confessions that existed on the territory of the former Russian Empire, including religions considered traditionally “German”: and its directions, such as , Mennonite (see ), Adventism (see ) etc., as well as the Roman Catholic Church, to which approx. 25% of Russian Germans. According to the Decree on Land (dated October 26, 1917), monastery and church lands were declared national property. By the decrees of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars “On divorce” (December 16, 1917) and “On civil marriage, on children and on maintaining registers of deeds” (December 18, 1917), church marriage, along with mandatory civil marriage, was recognized as a private matter of the spouses, marriage registration books , births and deaths according to the rites of any religious cult were transferred to city, district and volost zemstvo councils, cases of divorce carried out in spiritual consistories of various confessions were subject to transfer to local district courts. Parishes were prohibited from keeping church records in German.

By the Decree “On Freedom of Conscience, Church and Religious Societies,” religion was declared a private matter of every citizen, the church was separated from the state (Article 1), which meant: the exclusion from all official acts of any indication of the religious affiliation or non-belonging of citizens; ensuring “the free performance of religious rites... insofar as they do not violate public order and are not accompanied by an encroachment on the rights of citizens and the Soviet Republic” (Article 5); abolition of a religious oath or oath (Article 7); conduct of civil status acts exclusively by civil authorities (Article 8); separation of school and church (ban on teaching religious doctrines in all state and public, as well as private educational institutions); the subordination of all church and religious societies to the general provisions on private societies and unions (Article 10); deprivation of church and religious societies of the right to own property, their lack of legal entity rights (Article 12); all the property of church and religious societies existing in Russia was declared national property, buildings and objects of worship were given for the free use of religious societies according to decrees of local and central government authorities (Article 13).

Parochial schools and gymnasiums were subordinated to the People's Commissariat of Education, as a result of which only the Evangelical Lutheran Church lost St. 1 thousand church schools. Publishing houses, printing houses, charitable institutions (schools for the deaf and dumb, nursing homes, orphanages, etc.) came under the jurisdiction of the Soviet authorities. At the same time, the bank investments of religious societies were confiscated. By a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of March 30, 1918, loans from special funds (the so-called church sums) were closed, and the amounts were credited to the treasury. The principle of separation of church and state was enshrined in the Constitution of the RSFSR (adopted by the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets on July 10, 1918), monks and clergy of churches and religious cults were deprived of voting rights (Section 4, Chapter 13, Article 65).

However, in practice, all confessions experienced unlawful interference from the state. The affairs of religious organizations in different years were handled by the following authorities of the Soviet state: the Liquidation Department for the implementation of the decree “On the separation of church from state and school from church” (1918-24) and the Department of Worship (1923-24) under the People's Commissariat of Justice; in 1921-38 - bodies of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee: Secretariat for Religious Affairs under the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (1924-29), Standing Commission on Religious Affairs under the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (1929-34), Standing Commission on Religious Affairs under the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (1934-38) , as well as the Special Church Department in the NKVD (1938-43).

In mid-1918, mass persecution began against religious organizations, accompanied by anti-religious propaganda in the press: inventories and confiscations of church property were carried out, religious educational institutions were closed, show trials and executions of the clergy began. In 1919, the Archbishop of the Mogilev Catholic Diocese, Baron von Ropp, was arrested; while in prison, the Superintendent General of the Moscow Evangelical Lutheran Consistory P. Villigerode committed suicide. According to the order of the People's Commissariat of Justice, parish councils were obliged to report to state authorities all information about persons over whom religious rites were performed; Protestant and Catholic clergy were required to provide information about confirmants; The period of pre-confirmation education for young people was reduced.

A.K. caused numerous protests from international religious organizations. On March 24, 1918, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin sent Cardinal Caspari (in response to his telegram dated March 12, 1919) information about the arrested Catholics, but stated that there was no persecution of the church in the RSFSR. In the fall of 1918, the leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church sent a number of petitions to the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR with a petition to suspend the implementation of the Decree on the separation of church and state, citing the conditions Peace of Brest-Litovsk. The Roman Catholic Church made a similar request to the Soviet government. In 1919, the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in the RSFSR sent a memorandum to the authorities (“Historical Note on the Separation of Church and State in Bolshevik Russia”), which criticized the foundations of Soviet legislation on religion and the church. (This document served as one of the evidence for the prosecution during the consideration by the Collegium of the Supreme Court on March 21-26, 1923 of the case on the counter-revolutionary organization of the Petrograd clergy).

According to the “Rules on the weekly day off and on the name and number of other holidays” (published in Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on December 5, 1918), the number of religious holidays was limited to ten per year. By a resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR dated February 9, 1925, the number of non-working religious days was reduced to 8, and since 1929 a ban on their celebration was introduced. Clergymen were subject to general labor conscription, and the time of worship was postponed if it coincided with the time of socially useful work (clarification of the 5th Department of the People's Commissariat of Justice dated April 8, 1920). Servants of religion, as having “unearned earnings” and engaged in “unproductive labor,” could not enjoy “full civil rights” (clarification of the 5th Department of the People’s Commissariat of Justice dated April 14, 1920). It was in 1918-20 that most of the German clergy emigrated.

With the outbreak of famine in the Volga region in 1921, religious organizations of the country organized assistance to the starving population, despite this, churches were subjected to forcible confiscation of property under the pretext of hiding valuables during the fight against famine (Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee “On the confiscation of church valuables for the needs of the hungry” dated February 23 1922). The result of the campaign was the weakening of the economic position of the church.

A new round of anti-religious action followed in January - March 1923: “Methods, forms, tactics of anti-religious work are determined by the entire totality of the combat situation... A decisive struggle “against the priest” is necessary, whether he is called a pastor, rabbi, patriarch, mullah or dad..." (I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov). What followed was the widespread deployment of anti-religious propaganda in periodicals, the mass production of anti-religious brochures (over 25 titles), the disruption of religious services, and the staging of blasphemous trials.

On March 21-26, 1923, a show trial took place in Moscow of the head of the Roman Catholic Church in the USSR, Archbishop Jan Ciepljak, and 13 Catholic priests in the case of church values ​​and counter-revolutionary propaganda (Prelate Butkevich and Ciepljak were sentenced to death, the latter, thanks to the intervention of international religious and public organizations; in April 1924 he was deported to Poland). In April 1923, the newspaper Pravda (regarding the trial of the Catholic clergy) published an article about the need to pass a verdict on the Pope, which served as the beginning of a campaign to stage the trial of the Pope (at Komsomol “Red Easters”, in proletarian clubs) .

As a result of persecution, the number of Catholic and Lutheran clergy by the mid-1920s. decreased by more than 2 times. In 1924 there were approx. 80 (out of 200) Lutheran pastors are of German nationality.

In April - July 1923, all religious societies were required to undergo re-registration in provincial or regional executive committees (Instructions on the procedure for registering religious societies of April 27, 1923 on the implementation of the resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of August 3, 1922). By Circular of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee No. 206/16 of August 8, 1923, the clergy were denied the right to be members of trade unions and housing associations; clergy were not covered by social insurance, they could not join the ranks of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of January 21, 1921), receive an old-age pension, and their children were not allowed to study in higher educational institutions.

The bodies of Soviet power supported various kinds of opposition movements among one or another confession (see, for example, ).

By the Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of April 8, 1929 “On Religious Associations,” the functions of the church are limited to “satisfying the religious needs of believers in the prayer building”; Without permission from the authorities, religious associations were prohibited from holding general meetings (Article 12), convening congresses and meetings (Article 20), publishing religious literature, organizing mutual aid funds and engaging in charity (Article 17). Subsequently, at the 14th All-Russian Congress of Soviets (May 1929), Art. 4 of the Constitution of the RSFSR, which previously guaranteed “freedom of religious and anti-religious propaganda”, and from now on - “freedom of religious confessions and anti-religious propaganda”. The main tasks in the fight against religion were determined at the 2nd Congress of Militant Atheists (June 1929). In 1929-30 a wave of arrests and convictions of clergy of all faiths swept across the country (according to official data sent by M. M. Litvinov to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in 1931 in the USSR there were 32 Evangelical Lutheran and 33 Catholic clergy of German nationality in special camps in the USSR; the party added 32 more names to the list). Since the summer of 1929, the closure of churches and houses of worship, as well as religious publications (for example, the magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church “Our Church”, etc.), and religious educational institutions has become widespread (the Evangelical Lutheran Seminary at the Church of St. Anne was deprived of its building in Leningrad, by the beginning of 1930 most of its students and teachers were subjected to administrative expulsion, and in 1935 the seminary was closed). A number of decrees and circulars from party and Soviet authorities continued to restrict the activities of the clergy. By the Decree of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (December 1929) “On the regulation of bell ringing in churches,” bell ringing was limited, and in a number of places, bell ringing was prohibited, and the removal of bells from churches began. Temples were rebuilt as warehouses, garages, or simply scrapped as not meeting the requirements of socialist architecture. In March 1931, the People's Commissariat of Justice issued a decree authorizing the removal of scarce building material from churches.

Religious persecution in the USSR caused protests from international church organizations in 1930. In February 1930, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, A.I. Rykov, in response to a letter from Pope Pius XI, sent a message to the vicar general, in which he officially denied the existence of religious persecution in the USSR.

In May 1932, the “godless five-year plan” was announced: according to the government’s plans, by May 1, 1937, “the name of God must be forgotten” throughout the USSR. Since 1933, the clergy was actually faced with the need to act illegally (itinerant priests, organizing prayer meetings in private homes, etc.). In 1937, anti-religious campaigns were headed by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs N. I. Ezhov. Mass arrests of the clergy and the closure of the last churches followed. In 1917-37 was closed approx. 1,200 churches and houses of worship of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, more than 4,200 Catholic churches (for example, 3% of the pre-revolutionary number of churches remained in Ukraine). Of the 350 Lutheran pastors, more than 130 were arrested, of whom approx. 40 were shot or died in custody; St. 100 people emigrated. By the end of the 30s. The Evangelical Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches in the USSR ceased to exist; The governing bodies of Mennonites, Baptists and other Protestant denominations were also liquidated. They officially stopped calling themselves believers ca. 1 million Lutheran Germans (1923) and approx. 11 million Catholics. The revival of church communities among Russian Germans began only in the 2nd half of the 1950s.

Lit.: Persits M. M., Separation of church from state and school from church in the USSR, M., 1958; Valentinov A., Religion and the Church in the USSR, M, 1960; Alexandrov Yu. A., Decree on freedom of conscience, M., 1963; Shakhnovich M.I., Communism and religion, Leningrad, 1966; Alekseev V. A., Illusions and Dogma, M., 1991; Odintsov M. I., State and Church 1917-1938, M., 1991; Evangelische Christen in der Sowjetunion, Berlin, Moskau, 1947; Gutsshe W., Religion und Evangelium in Sowjetrußland zwischen zwei Weltkriegen 1917-1944, Kassel, 1959; Maurer H., Die evangelisch-lutherische Kirche in der Sowjetunion 1917-1937, in: Kirche im Osten, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1959; Kahle W., Geschichte der evangelisch-lutherischen Gemeinden in der Sowjetunion. 1917-1938, Leiden, 1974; Gabriel A., Geschichte der Kirche Osteuropas im 20. Jahrhundert, Paderborn-München-Wien-Zürich, 1992; Stricker G., Religion in Russia. Darstellung und Daten zu Geschichte und Gegenwart, Gütersloh, 1993; Das Gute behaltet. Kirchen und religiöse Gemeinschaften in der Sowjetunion und ihren Nachfolgestaaten. Herausgegeben von H.-J Diedrich, G. Stricker, H. Tschörner, Erlangen, 1996.

O. Litzenberger(Saratov).

Archpriest Vyacheslav Perevezentsev. Today our guest is Father Alexander Mazyrin, a teacher at St. Tikhon's Orthodox University, a teacher of Church history, modern Church history. And today we will talk about a topic that, as it seems to me, is very important, because there are a lot of pages in this modern history of ours, that is, history, literally, of which we are, one way or another, contemporaries, which for us, due to understandable , and sometimes not very clear reasons, are not fully known. And, in particular, we are talking about church persecution. And today’s speech by Father Alexander will be devoted specifically to the persecution of Russia, the Church’s response to these persecutions, and a comparison of persecutions in different periods of modern Church history. I think that it will take about an hour for Father Alexander’s message, and then, it seems to me, it would be very good if you could ask your questions both about what you will hear now, and those questions that you would like to ask our guest. Let's start.

Priest Alexander Mazyrin. Thank you very much, Father Vyacheslav, thank you, dear brothers and sisters, for your interest in the topic of persecution of the Russian.

The relationship between Soviet power and the Russian Church from the very beginning, literally, from the very first days, began to develop as an acute conflict. It seems that the starting point, the reason for this was the ideological incompatibility of the Bolshevik teaching with the Orthodox faith, and, in general, with religion. The leader of Bolshevism, Lenin, expressed a characteristic judgment on this matter back in 1913 in a letter to the writer Gorky. I will quote: “ Every little god is corpse depredation, every religious idea, every idea about every little god, every flirtation even with a little god is the most unbearable abomination. This is the most dangerous abomination and the most vile infection." And it is not surprising that, having come to power, Lenin and his associates immediately began to fight what they considered this “unbearable abomination.” The persecution of the Bolsheviks began literally in the very first days of Soviet power, and was carried out in various forms. First of all, this was manifested in the legislative activities of the Bolsheviks. It is known that the first Soviet decree was the “Decree on Peace”, the second decree, adopted on October 26, that is, a day after the coup, was the “Decree on Land”. So, already in this decree it was said: “All appanage and monastery, church lands, with all their living and dead inventory, estate buildings and all accessories, are transferred to the disposal of volost land committees and district councils of peasant deputies until the Constituent Assembly.” The Constituent Assembly, as is known, was dispersed by the Bolsheviks in January 1918. But it is noteworthy that already on the second day, with the stroke of a pen, all church land holdings with everything that was on them, since everything is on the ground, it turns out that all church property was immediately confiscated from the Church. Initially, however, only on paper, but quite quickly the Bolsheviks began to put this program into practice. And then, in November and December, in January there followed a whole series of Bolshevik decrees, one way or another, directed against the Church - decrees on marriage, decrees on theological schools, decrees on the military clergy, and so on. The apotheosis of such anti-church lawmaking by the Bolsheviks was the famous decree on the separation of the Church from the state and the school from the Church. A decree that Lenin personally edited and to which the Bolsheviks had special attention. This decree not only deprived the right to own any property, the decree emphasized that a religious society, in general, does not have the right of a legal entity. De jure the Church, as a single organization, from the moment of the publication of this decree in Soviet Russia, as it were, no longer existed. The Bolsheviks agreed to deal only with local religious societies, that is, in fact, with parishes. The Higher Church Administration, the Diocesan Administration, and even the Deanery Administration - all this turned out to be outside the law. The Local Council, which was held in Moscow at that time, quickly and sharply responded to this Leninist act, declaring that “The Decree on the separation of Church and State represents, under the guise of a law on freedom of conscience, a malicious attempt on the entire structure of life of the Orthodox Church and an act of open persecution against it. Any participation, both in the publication of this legislation hostile to the Church, and in attempts to implement it, is incompatible with belonging to the Orthodox Church. And brings upon guilty persons of the Orthodox confession the gravest ecclesiastical punishment, up to and including excommunication from the Church,” the council decided on January 25, 1918, that is, two days after the decree was issued.

There could be no doubt that the Bolsheviks sought to destroy, as stated in the conciliar definition, the entire structure of life of the Orthodox Church. The 8th department of the People's Commissariat of Justice, which was supposed to implement this decree, was directly, without mincing words, called Liquidation. That is, the Bolsheviks, in general, did not hide from anyone what they had prepared for the Church - liquidation. The program of the CPSU (b), adopted at the congress in March 1919, directly stated that “ In relation to the CPSU, it is not satisfied with the already decreed separation of the Church from the state and the school from the Church" The party, according to this program, saw its goal as “ in the complete extinction of religious prejudices", as was said. To make it clear to everyone, the head of the 8th department of the People's Commissariat of Justice, Liquidation, Krasikov explained: “ We, communists, with our program and all our policies, expressed in Soviet legislation, outline the only, ultimately, path for both religion and all its agents - this is the path to the archive of history" At the same time, formally, despite such open fight against God, formally the Soviet government did not persecute religion as such. The decree on the separation of Church and state prohibited any local laws or regulations that would constrain or limit freedom of conscience. And also in the constitution of the RSFSR, adopted in the summer of 1918, it was said that freedom of religious and anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens. Later, however, already in the 1920s and 30s, the wording was somewhat adjusted, and they no longer spoke of freedom of religious propaganda, they only spoke of the possibility of worship. But, nevertheless, freedom of conscience was always postulated in Soviet constitutions - from the first to the last. At the same time, the constitutions of 1918 and 1925 enshrined the deprivation of voting rights of a number of groups of Soviet citizens, including monks and spiritual ministers of Churches. That is, there was a fairly large category of people called “disenfranchised”. In practice, the “disenfranchised” were limited not only in their voting rights, but also in many other ways - they did not receive pensions, benefits, or food cards, which, in fact, in conditions of famine and the Civil War was a matter of life and death. On the contrary, taxes and other payments for the “disenfranchised” were significantly higher than for other citizens. It was extremely difficult for the children of the “disenfranchised” to obtain an education beyond primary education. That is, it was not formally prohibited to study in schools and even universities, including the children of the clergy. But at the same time it was stated that there were not enough places for everyone, and therefore the Soviet government would first of all provide educational opportunities for the children of workers, and the children of exploiters - in the last place. Which in practice, as a rule, meant never. It was only by the constitution of 1936 that all Soviet citizens were formally equalized in rights, but this did not mean an actual end to the persecution of Church servants, which we will talk about later.

The adoption of anti-church legislation was accompanied by the deployment of atheistic propaganda, and in the most offensive forms for believers. So, from the end of 1918, a noisy campaign began to open the holy relics. Over two years, 66 autopsies were carried out in the territory occupied by the Reds. According to the NKVD circular, after the opening, the relics were to be exhibited in an exposed form either in the same place, or delivered to a museum or other public buildings for public permanent inspection. This is a decree of 1919, and in 1920, in July, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a resolution on the liquidation of the relics on an all-Russian scale. Liquidation meant not just the opening of the relics, but their removal from the Church. It was obvious that this kind of activity of the Bolsheviks fundamentally contradicted even their own declared principle of separation of Church and state. In this regard, Patriarch Tikhon was forced to appeal to the decree. He wrote to the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Kalinin: “ Relics and icons, and wax candles - all these are objects of worship. And the persecution of relics is an act that is clearly illegal from the point of view of Soviet legislation" However, the resolution on the Patriarch’s letter was brief: “ Leave without consequences" And this noisy anti-church campaign continued. Atheistic printed materials were published in huge quantities - books, brochures, magazines, newspapers, posters. There were dozens of names of all-Russian and all-Union atheist magazines alone. The most famous magazine (and newspaper of the same name) “Bezbozhnik” has been published since 1922. “Atheist at the machine”, “Rural atheist”, “Anti-religious”. Even the magazine “Godless Crocodile” was published. In 1925, the existing “Society of Friends of the Newspaper “Atheist”” was transformed into the “Union of Atheists.” And in 1929, this organization was renamed the “Union of Militant Atheists.” The renaming spoke for itself.

An issue of the newspaper “Bezbozhnik”, published shortly before the start of the Great Patriotic War

In addition to anti-church legislation and propaganda, in their fight against the Bolsheviks, they no less actively used mass terror. This terror was also launched from the very first days of Soviet power. On October 25, 1917 (old style), they seized power in Petrograd, and already on October 31, that is, less than a week had passed, in Tsarskoye Selo the Red Guards, on the orders of Commissar Dybenko, shot Archpriest John Kochurov, the first new martyr of the Russian Church. On January 25, 1918, on the day the Bolsheviks captured Kyiv, near the walls of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the oldest hierarch of the Russian Church, the honorary chairman of the Local Council, which was then held in Moscow, Metropolitan Vladimir (Epiphany) of Kiev and Galicia, was killed. The Bolsheviks officially disowned this murder, but it is obvious that if it was not committed directly by them, it was the result of revolutionary violence encouraged by them. Patriarch Tikhon responded to the development of this violence as harshly as his position allowed. On January 19, 1918, he issued a message in which he declared: “ Stop, madmen, stop your bloody reprisals. By the authority given to us by God, we forbid you to approach the Mysteries of Christ, we anathematize you" The Bolsheviks were not directly mentioned in the Patriarchal message, but among other atrocities that the Patriarch denounced, the message mentioned the shooting of the Moscow Kremlin cathedrals, the seizure by the godless rulers of the darkness of this century of monasteries revered by believers, and such as the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, declaring them somehow , supposedly, public property. In other words, the activities of Soviet power were directly listed. An attempt to seize the Lavra in Petrograd took place very shortly before, on January 13, 1918, and ended in casualties. Accordingly, there is every reason to consider Soviet power anathema. The council that met on January 20 first heard the message of the Patriarch and expressed its full agreement. That is, this was not the private opinion of the Patriarch, it was an expression of the conciliar voice of the Church. On January 22, a resolution was adopted: “ The Holy Council of the Orthodox Russian Church lovingly welcomes the message of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, punishing evil villains and denouncing the enemies of the Church of Christ". Evil villains However, the cathedral curse did not stop. Since the fall of 1918, the Bolshevik government has already openly switched to a policy of red terror. The Cheka Weekly, then published, regularly published long lists of executed hostages, among which representatives of the Church occupied a prominent place. So, for example, in No. 6 of the Cheka Weekly for October 1918, it was routinely reported that the Nizhny Novgorod Gubernia Cheka executed 41 people from the enemy camp. The list began like this: “ 1. Augustine, archimandrite. 2. Orlovsky Nikolai Vasilievich, archpriest…" and so on. There are 41 names in total. The total number of victims among the clergy, monastics, and active laity quickly went first to dozens, then to hundreds, and by the end of the Civil War to thousands. More than 20 people were executed among Orthodox bishops alone in 1918–22, approximately one in seven.

Even when the main battles of the Civil War ended, Lenin, already quite ill and unable to personally participate in Politburo meetings, could not curb his pathological bloodthirstiness towards the Church. In March 1922, he wrote in a secret letter to members of the Politburo regarding the then launched campaign of confiscation of valuables, supposedly to save the starving. But in reality, the Bolsheviks pursued completely different goals in this campaign. Lenin wrote: “ The confiscation of valuables, especially the richest laurels, monasteries and churches, must be carried out with merciless determination, of course, stopping at nothing, and in the shortest possible time. The more representatives of the reactionary bourgeoisie and the reactionary clergy we manage to shoot on this occasion, the better. It is now necessary to teach this public a lesson so that for several decades they will not dare to think about any resistance"There is not a word about saving the hungry in this letter from Lenin. The culmination of the campaign of confiscation of church valuables was supposed to be the show trial of Patriarch Tikhon and his subsequent execution. However, this did not happen.

The struggle for international recognition and the launched New Economic Policy (NEP), which provided for a certain internal liberalization, prompted the Bolshevik leadership, in which Stalin’s role became increasingly important, to postpone the implementation of Lenin’s anti-church guidelines until later. From this, of course, it does not at all follow that Stalin was somehow softer towards the Church than Lenin. He also believed that the destruction of the Church was one of the most important tasks of Soviet power. But only if Lenin and Trotsky were ready to see task No. 1 in the struggle, then Stalin and his like-minded people believed that there were more important tasks - the task of strengthening power, strengthening the internal position of the Bolsheviks, strengthening the international position. And when these tasks are solved, we can return to the fight against the Church. The internal party struggle that developed since 1922 led to the fact that the attention of the Bolshevik leaders to the Church noticeably weakened. As a result, the period from 1922 to 1927 was a time of sorts of respite for the Church. Nevertheless, anti-church attitudes did not disappear anywhere.

In September 1927, in a conversation published in Soviet newspapers with the first American workers’ delegation, Stalin frankly stated: “ The Party cannot be neutral in relation to the bearers of religious prejudices and in relation to the reactionary clergy, who poison the consciousness of the working masses. Have we suppressed the reactionary clergy? Yes, they suppressed it. The only trouble is that it has not yet been completely eliminated". It should be noted that in the transcript of Stalin’s conversation with the American delegation these cannibalistic words - “ The trouble is that the clergy has not yet been completely eliminated" - No. But when this conversation was being prepared for publication, Stalin himself personally introduced them, and as a result this phrase ended up in all the main Soviet newspapers of that time. Of course, one could wonder who is included in the composition “ reactionary" clergy? The practice of the actions of the Soviet government and individual statements of its prominent representatives show that faith itself was a “reactionary” phenomenon in the eyes of the Bolsheviks. A “reactionary”, “counter-revolutionary” is anyone who does not fully share the Bolshevik atheistic ideology. Regardless of how loyal to the authorities, in civil terms, a believer might be, by virtue of his religiosity he was considered an enemy by the Bolshevik authorities. And only a matter of tactics was the order of striking him, who would be eliminated first, who - second. Ultimately, religion as such was subject to liquidation. From the end of the 1920s, the process of eliminating the “reactionary”, as Stalin put it, clergy again began to gain momentum, and executions of Church ministers resumed. The attack on the peasantry, collectivization, launched at that time, also implied a sharp increase in anti-church terror. The total number of those arrested for their faith during the period of collectivization significantly exceeded the number of those repressed during the Civil War, according to some estimates - by 3 times. Despite the fact that the number of victims for their faith during the Civil War is estimated to be up to 10 thousand.

During the period of relative weakening of terror in the 1920s, that is, during the NEP period, the secret activities of the GPU bodies, aimed at discrediting and disintegrating the Church from within, became one of the most important areas of the fight against it. The plan to implement a large-scale schism in the Church was proposed in 1922, in connection with the campaign of confiscation of church valuables, by the second person in the party at that time - Trotsky. In March 1922, Trotsky proposed to the Politburo " bring down the counter-revolutionary part of the clergy, in whose hands the actual control" Trotsky proposed to highlight what he called “ Smenovekhov clergy, conciliator”, tuned to contact with the authorities. At the same time, this is the same Smenovekhovskoe"Trotsky proposed to consider the clergy as " the most dangerous enemy of tomorrow" That is, Trotsky proposed changing tactics - instead of delivering a frontal attack on the Church, as was practiced during the Civil War - dividing the Church and destroying it piece by piece. Moreover, destruction with the help of the “church members” themselves, those of them who were ready at the cost of actually betraying their fellows to save themselves and assist the atheistic authorities in their fight against. After the Politburo approved Trotsky's plan, a campaign was launched to instill a renovationist schism. Probably, many have heard about the renovationists, however, there is often no idea of ​​who they were such are quite far from what this phenomenon actually was. Many people think that the Renovationists are those who, as their very name implies, sought in some special way to renew the life of the Church, first of all, the divine service, to translate it into the Russian language, somehow simplify it and adjust it to modern times. The renovationist programs, indeed, contained such provisions, but in reality, the renovationists did not undertake any reforms, with the exception of the introduction of a married episcopate and the second marriage of the clergy. The essence of renovationism was not at all some kind of church modernism. She, as the Council described in 1918, was in “church Bolshevism”: ready to cooperate with the atheistic authorities and, moreover, even try to achieve some selfish goals, relying on this atheistic authorities. The task of the renovationists was to identify the so-called “church counter-revolutionaries” and their subsequent condemnation on behalf of the Church. Thus, in July 1922, in Petrograd, a revolutionary tribunal sentenced 10 church ministers, led by Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd, to death, allegedly for resisting the confiscation of church valuables. The day after this verdict was pronounced by the tribunal, the renovationist VCU [ higher church administration - ed.] decided: “ The former Metropolitan of Petrograd Veniamin, convicted of treason against his archpastoral duty, will be deprived of holy orders and monasticism" Others convicted with him as clergymen were also “defrocked.” And the laity, condemned with Metropolitan Benjamin, were excommunicated by the Renovationists from the Church.

In May 1923, renovationists held a false council, at which similar decisions were made against Patriarch Tikhon. It was announced that from now on it was not Patriarch Tikhon, but the defrocked layman Vasily Bellavin, as Saint Tikhon was called in the world.

It is not difficult to guess what the attitude towards the Renovationists was among the Orthodox people. Even among the GPU employees themselves, the renovationists evoked a feeling of disgust. In the review of the GPU for August 1922, which was prepared for the party and Soviet leadership, it was said about them: “ True zealots of Orthodoxy do not go to them. Among them is the last rabble, who have no authority among the believing masses" Patriarch Tikhon and the bishops and priests who remained faithful to him, whom renovationists and atheists began to pejoratively call “Tikhonites,” were perceived by believers in a completely different way.

During his lifetime, Patriarch Tikhon was revered by many as a saint. Renovationist churches, although handed over everywhere by the authorities to the schismatics, stood empty, while the few churches remaining with the “Tikhonovites” were overcrowded.

Last but not least, it was precisely this failure of the renovationists among the people that prompted the Bolshevik leadership to change tactics in 1923. The Politburo never decided to finally sanction the execution of the Patriarch, and in the summer of 1923 he was released. But at the same time, the authorities tried in every possible way to discredit him in the eyes of believers. Patriarch Tikhon was systematically forced to take steps that were supposed to alienate church zealots from him. The first such act was the Patriarch’s repentant statement, which he wrote in June 1923, appealing to the Supreme Court with the statement “ From now on I am not an enemy of Soviet power" The Patriarch's position was indeed not uncompromising. But Saint Tikhon was far from being ready to serve the Bolshevik government, as the renovationists did. " I wrote that I am no longer an enemy of Soviet power, but I did not write that I am her friend“, he said in his circle.

The authorities continued to persecute the Patriarch in every possible way, and only in April 1925 they saved him from a new arrest, for which everything was already prepared and an investigative case had already been opened. Moreover, it is possible that this death was not natural. Although there is no documentary evidence on this matter, there was, nevertheless, personal evidence that Patriarch Tikhon was poisoned. Indeed, the authorities, having failed to subjugate the Patriarch to themselves, and not daring to deal with him openly, were very interested in his elimination through poisoning.

Patriarch Tikhon and Hieromartyr Peter (Polyansky), Metropolitan of Krutitsky. Trinity, 1924.

With regard to the successors of Patriarch Tikhon, the first of whom was the patriarchal locum tenens Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky), and then his deputy, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), the authorities continued the policy, the meaning of which was very well expressed by the head of the secret department of the OGPU Deribas. He wrote in a secret note to his colleague about the success of his Ukrainian colleagues in the fight against the Ukrainian autocephalists, the so-called “Lipkovites,” named after the head of these autocephalist self-saints, Vasily Lipkovsky: “ We were in vain to worry about the results of the “Lipkovism” pogrom; they turned out to be brilliant. And the reprisals were trivial, and there was very little noise. And, meanwhile, they brought the autocephalists to both knees, did what we want to do with the Tikhonites, but we just can’t". Deribas wrote this in 1926. Thus, the task that the OGPU set for itself in relation to the Patriarchal Church, in such figurative language as Deribas, boiled down to " put on both knees“with minimal noise and reprisals, as was done with the Ukrainian autocephalists. However, the authorities were never able to cope with this task; they could not do without repression.

Patriarch Tikhon’s successor, Metropolitan Peter, firmly took a position, the meaning of which was that counter-revolution is not a sin and it is not the Church’s job to fight it. The authorities demanded from him church condemnation, first of all, of the Russian foreign episcopate for its anti-Soviet activities. Metropolitan Peter did not even go so far as to dismiss the head of the Russian Church Abroad, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), from the Kyiv See, which he had occupied since 1918, although he had not appeared in Kiev since 1919. And therefore, it was probably possible to formally dismiss him, but Metropolitan Peter even refused to do this, declaring that the Church does not judge for political crimes. Such an unyielding line of Metropolitan Peter led to the fact that, having governed for only 8 months after the death of the Patriarch, from April to December 1925, he was arrested and was never released.

The head of the Russian Church, which not everyone knows, spent 12 years in unbearable, inhuman conditions, mostly in solitary confinement. He was offered freedom, a return to control, in exchange for secret cooperation with the OGPU. However, Metropolitan Peter answered Menzhinsky, the chairman of the OGPU, that " This kind of occupation is not similar to his nature and is incompatible with his titles". He was kept in basement cells, he did not see sunlight for years, but the atheists were unable to break him. And, in the end, in October 1937, Hieromartyr Peter was shot, like many other hierarchs, priests and laity. It is impossible. agree with the statement of some authors that the hierarchy of the Russian Church in the 1920s capitulated to Soviet power.Neither Metropolitan Peter, nor other candidates for locum tenens indicated by Patriarch Tikhon - Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov), Metropolitan Agafangel - nor many other hierarchs of the Russian Church were not broken by the authorities. As Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh), another candidate for deputy patriarchal locum tenens, wrote: “ The death of martyrs is a victory over violence, not a defeat" It was precisely the martyrdom and confessional feat of the Russian Church that became the main response to persecution. And it was precisely the feat of the martyrs that, ultimately, surpassed this satanic malice of the persecutors, and became the rock on which the Russian Empire stood.

Hieromartyr Kirill (Smirnov), Metropolitan of Kazan. Photo from the investigation case.

But among our hierarchs there were also those who considered it necessary to make all sorts of compromises with the atheistic authorities, unless these compromises affected the essence of faith. It should be noted, however, that the atheistic authorities were of the last interest in matters of doctrine. The Bolsheviks did not care how many hypostases and natures were confessed in Christ Jesus, and so on. The Bolsheviks tried in every possible way to transform the Moscow Patriarchate into a puppet structure, obedient to Soviet state security in everything. And there were some hierarchs who, unlike the patriarchal locum tenens, believed that it was possible to cooperate with the bodies of the OGPU and the NKVD if it was done in the interests of the Church, if with the help of such cooperation it would be possible to remove at least part of the church structure from the attack of the Bolsheviks. In 1927, the deputy patriarchal locum tenens, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), took such a compromise position. In his circle, he directly said that his attitude towards Soviet power was based on maneuvering in order to preserve the Church in difficult modern conditions for it. Maneuvering, of course, is not capitulation, although for many church zealots such an ultra-flexible policy of Metropolitan Sergius caused a very great temptation. Since the end of 1927, a significant number of divisions and departures from Metropolitan Sergius have occurred in the Russian Church precisely due to the rejection of his pro-Soviet policies. However, despite all the compromises that Metropolitan Sergius made, repressions against the Church did not weaken. And in the late 1930s they reached their peak.

Fragment of the “Certificate of the 1st Special Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR on the number of those arrested and convicted in the period 1921–1953 in cases of the NKVD bodies” (GARF, f. 9401, op. 1, d. 4157, pp. 201–205), which provides summary data for the years of the Great Terror. The certificate was drawn up on December 11, 1953.

The years 1937 and 1938 went down in our history as the time of the so-called Great Terror. Not least of all, this terror was directed against the Church. In the now well-known secret operational order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov, signed in July 1937, “ About the operation to repress former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements“The “church members” were also included in the number of those repressed. All of them, the most hostile, were subject to immediate arrest and subsequent execution. The less hostile, as stated in the order, were sentenced to 8 or 10 years in concentration camps. For 1937, according to NKVD statistics, in at that time, of course, strictly classified, and now already published, the NKVD authorities arrested 33,382 clergy... In 1938, 13,438 people were arrested for “church-sectarian counter-revolution.” Someone says that under Stalin there were no persecutions against? These figures simply and clearly refute this kind of reasoning. In 1937, 44% of the total number of sentences were capital punishment - execution. In 1938, the percentage of execution sentences increased to 59. As a result of the Great Terror, the Orthodox Church, like other religious organizations in the USSR, were almost completely defeated. By the beginning of World War II, throughout the entire territory of the USSR, only four Orthodox bishops remained in the departments: Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) of Moscow, Metropolitan Alexy (Simansky) of Leningrad - two future Patriarchs, and one vicar each, and one and the other. For the entire Soviet Union! Metropolitan Sergius joked darkly in those years that the ruling Orthodox bishop closest to him to the East of Moscow was his namesake, Metropolitan Sergius of Japan. And so it was. Throughout the entire Soviet Union, out of approximately 50 thousand churches that existed before the revolution, several hundred remained unclosed by the end of the 1930s. There were several thousand officially unregistered. But in the vast majority of them there were no services for the simple reason that there was no one to serve - the clergy had been exterminated. " As a result of our operational activities, - Yezhov reported to Stalin at the end of 1937, - the episcopate of the Orthodox Church was almost completely eliminated, which significantly weakened and disorganized the church". In relation to the bulk of the population, targeted anti-religious work, of course, gave a certain result; the number of atheists, and especially among young people, grew. However, as the All-Union population census conducted in January 1937 showed, Russia was far from becoming atheistic country. On Stalin’s initiative, the question “On attitudes towards religion” was included in the census questions, Stalin himself insisted on this. Despite rumors that everyone who registered as a believer “must be taken away,” only 42% of the total called themselves non-believers number of respondents. Approximately the same number, 42%, called themselves Orthodox. The remaining 16% were from other faiths and managed to evade the answer. Thus, the absolute majority of the population, despite all the anti-church terror, were not afraid to openly testify to their faith, respectively, about the rejection of the atheistic ideology of the Bolsheviks. This is January 1937, and one must assume that such census results not least prompted Stalin and his henchmen to deploy the spearhead of the Great Terror, including against the Church. However, although the Russian was almost completely eliminated physically by the end of the 1930s, the Bolsheviks were unable to break it spiritually.

Extract from the protocol: “...Accused of conducting counter-revolutionary agitation against the Soviet regime and the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks,” encouraging women to take their children to church.”

And then, already at the critical moment of the Great Patriotic War, the authorities had to reckon with the religiosity of the people. It was impossible to fight against the cruelest external enemy and against one’s own population, which for the most part remained believers. Anti-religious propaganda was sharply curtailed. The last issue of the magazine “Bezbozhnik”, which is symbolic, was published in June 1941. The authorities could not, in such a critical situation, refuse to help the Church in the patriotic mobilization of the population to fight the external enemy. In addition, the need to counter fascist German propaganda cannot be underestimated.

Germany's victory in the war, if it had happened, would, of course, have had the most catastrophic consequences not only for Russia as a country and Russians as a people, but also for the Russian Church. The Nazi regime, by its nature, by its ideology, is absolutely incompatible with Christianity. However, for propaganda purposes in the occupied territories, the Germans tried in every possible way to use the religious factor to their advantage. And, literally, from the first days of the start of the war, churches began to open in these territories, first in the hundreds, and then in the thousands. And, of course, Stalin had to think - what to oppose to this German propaganda? And if Hitler opens churches, Stalin has no choice but to do the same. And as a result, churches that were closed during the war began to open in a number of places, although in an order of magnitude smaller numbers than in the occupied territories. Another important factor that forced Stalin to outwardly change his policy towards the Church was the desire to win over Western allies towards the USSR. And, in general, the desire to involve the Orthodox and other religious organizations in propaganda campaigns in the interests of Soviet foreign policy, this factor was especially significant in the 1940s. Taken together, these factors prompted Stalin to significantly adjust his policy towards the Church during the war, moving from its destruction to its use. Full control over the revived church structures was called upon to be exercised by the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, specially established under the Council of People's Commissars.

On the part of the Moscow Patriarchate, which survived the Great Terror, Stalin’s “new course” was received with enthusiasm. Metropolitan Sergius, who became Patriarch in 1943, accepted the terms of the unspoken “concordat”: willingness to participate in the foreign and domestic political events of the Soviet government in exchange for a clear mitigation of the conditions for the existence of the Church in the USSR. The Moscow Patriarchate became involved in serving what was later called Stalin's cult of personality. Just look at the “Journals of the Moscow Patriarchate” of that time, the late 1940s – early 1950s. In them we see a lot of materials, designed in the same style that was then characteristic of all publications in the Soviet press, approximately the same expressions addressed to Stalin that were then heard from Soviet writers and composers, scientists, and so on. Of course, this caused a certain temptation in the church environment; the Russian emigration reacted especially sharply: after the funeral services celebrated for Stalin in 1953, the Russian Church Abroad finally broke off prayerful communication with those in Russia. And now one often hears, mainly from intelligent people: “How could the Orthodox hierarchy humiliate itself so much in such extreme forms of servility before Stalin?” But it must be borne in mind that by that time, by the 1940s and 50s, the Orthodox hierarchy had experienced extreme selection in relation to itself during the Great Terror. The absolute majority of this hierarchy was simply exterminated at the end of the 1930s. All those who were organically incapable of praising Stalin simply did not live up to that time, but the most adaptable remained and those who were ready for such forms in relations with the authorities. However, it must be said that even such figures as, for example, Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) of Krutitsky, even they were not guaranteed from clashes with the authorities in the future. There is a fairly widespread stereotype, including in the church environment, about Stalin, who in reality supposedly had nothing against the Orthodox Church, but only sought to overcome the difficult legacy of Lenin, Trotsky and others. And when, in the end, it was possible to do this, then all the problems of relations between the Church and the authorities ceased. Voices were heard, and still are heard, that compare Stalin almost with the second Constantine or even the second Moses, who led his people out of slavery. But even simple statistics clearly indicate that the last five years of Stalin’s life, from 1948 to 1953, were a time of continued obvious persecution of the Church. Repressions continued, arrests continued, including of bishops, and the usual sentence in the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s was no longer ten years in labor camps, as in 1937–1938, but twenty-five. After 1948, not a single new temple was opened in the country, and hundreds were closed. In 1945, there were more than a hundred active monasteries in the country, and almost all of them were located in the territory that was subject to German occupation. By the time of Stalin's death, of these 100, 40 had already been closed, and at the beginning of Khrushchev's rule 60 remained. All these facts indicate that Stalin, just as he was a fighter against God from his revolutionary youth, remained so until his death. With all this, he was a very prudent, of course, politician, and in the situation when he realized that it was more profitable for him not to destroy, but to use it in his own interests, he did it. When it became clear that much could not be achieved with the help of this policy, then repression was resumed again.

To a large extent, the myth of the good Stalin was facilitated by the fact that his successor Nikita Khrushchev pursued an openly anti-church policy. The Khrushchev persecutions became the last attempt of the Soviet government to put an end to it in a historically short time. This was caused primarily by doctrinal motives. You all obviously know that by 1980, Khrushchev promised to build communism. Communism and religion were considered absolutely incompatible; by the time communism was built, religion was supposed to disappear in Soviet society. They fought against religion as one of the social vices, along with drunkenness, parasitism, prostitution (so, all this was listed separated by a comma). However, Khrushchev’s persecutions were carried out in fundamentally different forms than Lenin’s and Stalin’s. If in the Leninist and Stalinist periods the main weapon used by the authorities in the fight against the Church was terror, then Khrushchev (who, it must be said, was no less involved in Stalinist terror than Beria) nevertheless, after exposing the so-called cult of personality on The 20th Party Congress could no longer openly use this form of struggle, even if it wanted to.

Of course, the authorities could not completely abandon repression, and therefore there were arrests under Khrushchev, but the scale of these arrests was completely different. If I told you the numbers of those arrested in 1937–1938 - these are tens of thousands - during the period of Khrushchev’s persecutions several hundred ministers of the Church were arrested. Mainly during the time of Khrushchev, the fight against it was carried out with the help of economic, administrative and ideological measures. We started with economic measures - we sharply increased taxes tenfold, primarily on church candle production, on monasteries, on monastic farms. Massive atheistic propaganda was launched. Under Khrushchev, its scale surpassed even that of the most unbridled 1920s and 1930s. Scientific atheism became a compulsory subject in all Soviet universities. In the fight against the Church, the authorities actively tried to involve church renegades - apostates. The clergy were in every possible way persuaded to renounce their rank, from the Church, from God - a public renunciation. And in some cases, the total number of which reaches approximately 200, this was possible. The fight against the Church was mainly carried out by administrative methods - the closure of churches, monasteries, and seminaries. During the years of Khrushchev’s persecution, 5 out of 8 seminaries were closed. Of the 60 monasteries, by the end of Khrushchev’s reign, 16 remained open and active. The number of parishes decreased from 13,500 to 7,500, that is, almost 2 times. And the number of registered clergy decreased in approximately the same proportion; the rest were simply deregistered and could no longer serve officially. Thus, Khrushchev’s persecution dealt a very significant blow to the Church, and unlike the period of the 1920–30s. these persecutions did not provide the Church with that great host of confessors and martyrs with whom the Russian Church was enriched during the persecutions of Lenin and Stalin. Although there was also opposition to Khrushchev’s persecution in church circles - both in the lower ranks of the church and on the part of individual hierarchs. And even Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich), who in the 1940s and 1950s most actively defended the interests of Soviet foreign policy, protested in these new Khrushchev persecutions, which turned into disgrace, resignation and death for him under strange circumstances. Although not on the same scale as in previous years, nevertheless, this confessional response of the Church continued to be heard. As a result, it was precisely this resilience of the church people that allowed the Church to survive during the Khrushchev persecutions. They were abruptly curtailed immediately after Khrushchev's resignation. The new Soviet leadership, although it did not abandon the postulates of the Communist Party program and the education of the population in an atheistic spirit, nevertheless already realized that it would not be possible for Soviet power to do away with the Church in any tangible historical perspective. Thus, the Church managed to survive. I'll stop here, thank you for your attention. Do you have any questions?

But, having been employees of these bodies for many years, actively working for them, largely saving themselves at the cost of the betrayal of others, they did not abandon this type of activity and found themselves already in the bosom of the Russian Church. That is, in fact, there were liquidators, including among the hierarchy. An example is a bishop like Joasaph (Lelyukhin), ordained in the 1950s, during the period of Khrushchev’s persecutions. He was transferred in the late 1950s to the Dnepropetrovsk department. At that time it was one of the largest dioceses. During the two years of his bishopric, the number of parishes decreased by six times. The Commissioner wrote to the center that “ Archbishop Joasaph is completely under our control, listens to all our instructions, and is only afraid that he will get it from the patriarch for too many closed churches. And therefore he asks to intercede for him before the Patriarch through the Council on Affairs of the Russian Church" They interceded for him. And as a result, two years later, when the Kiev See was already vacant, he became Metropolitan of Kyiv. Since Patriarch Alexy I was already sick and old, it could be assumed that Lelyukhin was being promoted to Patriarchy. But the Lord did not allow it, and His Holiness Alexy I survived him. But this is such a pathological case, and there were few such, in general, quite outspoken accomplices of the atheistic government among the bishops, perhaps only a few people.

There were those who resisted the authorities in every possible way, who, due to some oversight of the authorities, were at one time allowed to become bishops and directed all their strength to defending church interests. The most striking name of the post-war period is Archbishop Ermogen (Golubev).

Archbishop Ermogen (Golubev)

Under the conditions of Khrushchev’s persecution in his Tashkent diocese, he not only did not allow a single church to be closed, but managed, under the guise of repairs, to actually build a new cathedral in Tashkent. But he was eventually removed and, in fact, for the last years of his life he was under house arrest in the Zhirovitsky Monastery. The bulk of the bishops tried not to enter into an open conflict, but to build relationships with the commissioner, with the KGB. They obviously wrote some reports. But at the same time they tried to minimize the harm that the authorities tried to cause to the Church. So the collaboration could be different. Already in the early 1990s, Archbishop Chrysostom of Vilna and Lithuania gave an interview with the very catchy title “ I collaborated with the KGB... but was not an informer" That is, there were different gradations here. In percentage terms, it is very difficult to say how many there are. Among the bishops, one way or another, it is obvious that the majority interacted with the authorities. Among the ordinary clergy, according to the estimates that can be made, there is obviously already a minority here. Although, of course, the authorities tried to introduce their people into this environment, especially into some responsible positions. But even in those cases where it can be considered with a high degree of probability that this or that priest collaborated with the authorities, this does not mean that he was an atheist and an enemy of the Church; many tried to somehow benefit the Church in this way. That is, peculiar, but... Subsequently, and when Soviet power fell, such people, as a rule, showed themselves quite well during the period of church revival that came after Gorbachev’s perestroika.

Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens (since 1943 - Patriarch)

– Father Alexander, can you say a few words about Patriarch Sergius?

I AM. A few words, of course, are difficult, since a lot can be said about him. Of course, this is one of the most outstanding hierarchs of the Russian Church of the 20th century, and perhaps not only of the 20th. Both in terms of his scholarship and in terms of his church activity. A hierarch to whom no one, and even his most extreme critics, could make any personal claims. Known as an ascetic, a man of prayer. But at the same time, Metropolitan Sergius (more precisely, the Patriarch, but for most of his ministry he was a metropolitan and therefore most often we call him that) was known since pre-revolutionary times as a particularly flexible hierarch. It was with all the changes in the political situation, with all the vicissitudes, that he was almost the only one of the highest hierarchs who managed to stay afloat. And under the Holy Synod, and under the Provisional Government, and under the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and Stalin. I was ready to make very deep compromises. Obviously, he considered himself, if not the most, then one of the most sophisticated hierarchs in church politics and, in general, he was. And therefore, apparently, he thought that he, better than anyone else, would be able to build relations with the atheistic authorities, would be able to find those forms of compromise that, in the end, would allow the Church as an organized structure to survive, and therefore he made such compromises, which repelled church zealots from the Moscow Patriarchate. But, nevertheless, with all his compromises, he never made any doctrinal deviations. And although the Moscow Patriarchate suffered a very strong moral damage, nevertheless, it is, of course, impossible to argue, as some extreme critics do, that because of this it has lost its very churchliness and turned into some kind of pseudo-church structure. And therefore, extremes must be avoided here, both in his positive and negative assessments. We must soberly assess the situation and his role in our history.

– Could you say a few words about the Hieromartyr Hilarion?

I AM. Hieromartyr Hilarion is also, undoubtedly, one of the most prominent representatives of our hierarchy, the best graduate of the Moscow Theological Academy for many years of pre-revolutionary history, and a wonderful confessor. After the release of Patriarch Tikhon in 1923, he was his closest assistant in the management of the Moscow diocese. But the authorities did not want to tolerate such people for long in the Patriarch’s circle. And therefore, already in November 1923 he was arrested and sent to the Solovetsky camp. Only shortly before his death in 1929, he was taken from there and died in a prison hospital in Leningrad. This is briefly about his life. In general, a lot has been written about him, so it’s not difficult to find information.

Hieromartyr Hilarion (Trinity) in the Solovetsky camp

– Father Alexander, was Stalin’s attitude towards the Russian Church one-sided? Did the Georgian Church and other Christian churches suffer? Do they have their own new martyrs?

I AM. The Georgian Church also has them [ Orthodox - ed.], and the Armenian one. The Georgian Church, since it is numerically significantly smaller than the Russian one, by the end of the 1930s was simply on the verge of complete extinction. No concessions were made in the fight against Georgia, as well as in Armenia. Almost the same thing happened as here with us. And during the time of Khrushchev there was even a moment when a movement arose in the Georgian Church for a return to the fold of the Russian Church. The number of parishes decreased so much that it seemed that the Georgian Church would disappear just a little longer. And therefore they believed that it was necessary to quickly return to the Russian Church and somehow try to survive there. And the authorities prevented the reunification of the Georgian Church with the Russian Church. But on the part of the Church itself there was such a movement.

– And in the Brezhnev and post-Brezhnev eras, was there also some kind of stagnation in relation to the Church? Neither here, nor here, or still some have emerged some warming or... Has open persecution stopped?

I AM. As for the Brezhnev era. Firstly, everything that was taken from the Church under Khrushchev was not returned. What was planned to be taken away in the near future, for example, was supposed to close the Leningrad Academy, the Pochaev Lavra, many churches were scheduled for immediate closure - this was abandoned. In general, they tried to fight quietly, without unnecessary publicity, so as not to create unnecessary tension in society and so that unwanted questions did not arise abroad in relation to the government’s policies. Parishes were closed even under Brezhnev, but they closed as if naturally, since the population moved from dying villages to cities; 50 to 100 churches a year were closed simply because there were no parishioners left in rural areas. And in cities for a long time they were not allowed to open new churches. The situation was typical during the Brezhnev period, when for a regional center, perhaps even with a population of a million, there was one functioning church, and not in the center, but somewhere on the outskirts, in a cemetery.

Some progress began to be observed already in the 1970s. Beginning in 1972, the number of clergy began to increase little by little. The number of churches decreased, and the number of ordinations increased. Then, in the second half of the 1970s, churches began to open in some places. Somewhere they allowed to open a second temple. Somewhere, especially along the Soviet-Chinese border in the Far East, temples were opened to show that this was Russian soil. In addition, the authorities gradually came to understand that the Russian Orthodox Church did not pose any threat to the Soviet state. On the contrary, all its oppression contributes to the growth, first of all, of sectarianism. Hare Krishnas, Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists and others, taking advantage of the lack of temples in one area or another, developed their activities. But for the authorities, these sects were much more dangerous. And at some point the authorities realize this and begin to look at the Russian Church differently. Then, at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, a number of important events took place in the international arena - the Islamic revolution in Iran, the deployment of troops to Afghanistan. And, it would seem, they brought these Afghans a new happy life - they built hospitals and schools for them. Instead, a powerful partisan movement unfolded against Soviet power and Soviet troops. And, it is clear that all this was inspired by external forces, but because of what? Due to the fact that the religious factor came to the fore. The same applies to the Catholic Church - the election of Pope Wojtyla [ John Paul II – ed.], the beginning of unrest in Poland, unrest that was largely supported by the Catholic Church. All this showed that the role of the religious factor in international politics is growing sharply. And it is not the Orthodox Church that the Soviet government needs to fear in all these events. This contributes to the fact that already in the 1980s the government’s policies began to change noticeably. This was especially facilitated by the approaching anniversary of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus'. Initially, people started talking about this future anniversary back in the late 1970s. Initially, the authorities tried to minimize the public outcry from this anniversary: ​​“There will be no celebrations, neither at the state level, nor at the public level. Well, if you want, at your place, there, at the church level, somehow mark it. Soviet society has nothing to do with this.” But it soon became obvious that this would not work. Interest in the Church grew and by 1988 it was simply explosive. And then, already under Gorbachev, the authorities had to finally and radically change their policy and, in fact, abandon the monopoly of communist ideology and allow the possibility of a church mission. And soon after this, Soviet power finally fell, and found itself in fundamentally new living conditions. Actually, like the whole country, the whole society.

– How is the Ukrainian question explained in church life today...?

I AM. Wait and see.

– And yet, what do you think?...

I AM. What's happening? What is happening is happening before our eyes in these days, in these hours, and in these minutes. And therefore the situation is unfolding rapidly, and what is happening in Kyiv and in the West of Ukraine, of course, is fraught with simply catastrophic consequences.

– Father Alexander, I have two questions, if you please? First, we will return to Kyiv again, but not about the future, since we don’t know it yet, but about the past. You mentioned the circumstances of the martyrdom of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kyiv and Galicia. There are different assessments of who is actually to blame for his death: the Bolsheviks, local anarchists, and part of the blame lies with the monks. How could you comment? And in this regard, you said that even if these are not Red Army soldiers, in any case, the Bolsheviks are responsible for creating such an atmosphere.

I AM. Yes.

– We now see what is happening in Kyiv. And then in Kyiv events began to happen, in general, not in October, but rather in February. And therefore, what is the responsibility of the Bolsheviks for the death of the first bishop?

I AM. Officially, the Bolsheviks immediately disowned them and said that they did not know what kind of people they were. It is possible that these were revolutionary anarchists, who were then, by the way, in alliance with the Bolsheviks. It is known that these armed people who came to the Lavra entered into communication with part of the brethren, the lower classes of the Lavra, who began to complain about the metropolitan. That the metropolitan oppresses them, and so on, and so on. Then they said: “ We shot our bourgeoisie, we’ll shoot yours too" They did just that - they took him out and shot him. At the same time, the brethren did not intercede in any way for the metropolitan. By that time, the Lavra brethren had also been significantly revolutionized. On the one hand, on a social basis, and on the other hand, on a national basis. Metropolitan Vladimir was perceived by part of the Ukrainian brethren as alien to Ukraine, and this also played a role. And therefore, of course, the circumstances here are not completely clear, no one caught these killers by the hand, we do not know their names. But, in itself, it is significant that this happened on the day the Bolsheviks captured Kyiv, or more precisely, on the night after the Bolsheviks captured Kyiv. In conditions of such rampant revolutionary violence, which the Bolsheviks encouraged in every possible way.

- Thank you. Second question. But before I ask him, I want to say that my great-great-uncle was a priest in Belyov, and he was executed in 1937, so I also have scores to settle with this government. So, from the very beginning, you showed from a historical perspective how the Soviet Bolshevik government suppressed. This is, of course, fair, but I want to get to the bottom of the reasons. After all, not only external manifestations are important to us, but also what led to them. In this regard, there is a point of view that what happened to us has parallels with the situation when a woman who has had several abortions complains why she has such bad children, one is a thief, the other is a drunkard. And they answer her: they were good, but you yourself killed them.

My second question is about the role of the episcopate of the Church in the overthrow of the monarchy. And here again Metropolitan Vladimir comes to mind. March 4, 1917, by the way, tomorrow is the anniversary, he presided over the first meeting of the Holy Synod after the overthrow of the monarchy, after the abdication of the sovereign emperor. Babkin mentions an episode when the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Prince Lvov, began to remove the imperial chair, which symbolized that the emperor was the head of the Church. Then Metropolitan Vladimir gladly joined him and helped him get rid of the symbol of the old government. It is also known that when during the council [ Local Council of 1917–18 - ed.] the question was raised about what to do with the oath of God-anointed authority on the cross and in the Gospel, then the moderator of the meeting shook him up. In addition, none of our bishops, including Patriarch Tikhon, tried to contact the imprisoned Emperor. It is clear that there, before the throne of God, somehow all these contradictions will be resolved. Nevertheless, she welcomed February, as can be seen by looking through any “Diocesan Gazette” for 1917, and she was, in part, preparing for the overthrow of the monarchy. So it turned out, as a result, that they did not want God’s chosen power, and in return they received another, God-fighting one. The question, perhaps a little exaggerated: what right does the Church have to ask the Soviet government that the government turned out to be bad, when the Church renounced the tsarist government, which defended it - with its problems, with its troubles? So tnank you.

I AM. First, I note that the story of the chair, which Metropolitan Vladimir allegedly helped Chief Prosecutor Lvov remove, was described in the newspaper Birzhevye Vedomosti and has no documentary evidence.

– But there are many such private episodes …

I AM. We must treat this as ordinary newspaper information from a period of strong revolutionary ferment. As for Patriarch Tikhon, he became the first prominent public figure to publicly condemn the murder of the emperor in Moscow. And he immediately served a memorial service for him. But, as for February 1917 in general. Indeed, in the circles, first of all, of the highest hierarchy, and not only the hierarchy, and the clergy, first of all, the capital and city, and the church intelligentsia, there was strong dissatisfaction with the position of the Church under the synodal system , excessive, as it seemed, dependence on chief prosecutors, on interference in the internal church affairs of secular authorities. Such dissatisfaction and, perhaps, irritation was strong. This discontent was especially fueled in the last years of the Romanov rule by the behind-the-scenes activities of Rasputin, which actively influenced the course of church affairs. This caused outrage and indignation. All this was layered on top of the very difficult external situation during the First World War, incredible disasters that no one expected, for which no one was prepared. The whole people groaned from this situation. And of course, all this was passed on to the church, including the hierarchy. And therefore, by the end of February 1917, dissatisfaction with the Tsar, and especially the Tsarina, was almost universal. There is a popular theory by Babkin, whom you mentioned here, that, they say, it was almost the hierarchy that became the head of the anti-monarchist conspiracy. That the priesthood and the kingdom are two eternal competing charismatic institutions. That for a long time the priesthood was in a subordinate position to the kingdom. And so it waited for an opportune moment of weakening the monarchy in order to strike at it. Babkin's theories, of course, do not stand up to criticism. Even if we look at how events unfolded during the February revolution.

One can make claims against the Holy Synod; I do not idealize its position at all, but it actually acted only in the role of an observer. He did not take any action in defense of the monarchy, but no one took it then. Everyone turned away from the king, starting with his close relatives. The entire House of Romanov, except the royal family, swore allegiance to the new government in the very first days after the February Revolution. Parties and public organizations took the oath, and I’m not talking about the army. And the last in this series to speak out in support of the Provisional Government was the Holy Synod. Yes, I issued a message: “ The will of God has been accomplished, Russia has embarked on the path of a new life" And then there was an appeal to the flock to come out in support of the Provisional Government. But did the Synod have an alternative at that moment? Of course, the Provisional Government was revolutionary, and, generally speaking, not legitimate. But the emperor transferred, albeit under pressure, albeit forced, but still transferred power to this government through his brother Mikhail, whom he instructed to stand at the head of the Russian monarchy, who, in fact, was already in alliance with the new figures who came to authorities. And there was no other government at that moment, and the country was in a world war. Actually, the emperor gave up power, thereby hoping to save the country from defeat and defeat in the war, and decided to sacrifice himself for the sake of the country. He was assured that it was precisely because of his figure that society was split and could not bring the war to a victorious end. And the king decided to sacrifice himself. Well, we know what happened next. It was a tragic mistake. First of all, the tsar’s tragic mistake. And in that situation the Synod had no choice but to act...

- Well, what’s the mistake?

I AM. Where is the mistake? There was no need to give up power.

- What could he do if everyone wanted?

I AM. Stand until the last. What could he do...

– The renunciation was signed in pencil.

I AM. With a pencil. Yes, and not in form, and, in general, this is not a renunciation, but some kind of note addressed to the commander. In general, this was an illegitimate act. The tsar did not have the right to abdicate, certainly for the heir, this was not provided for by any laws. In that tragic situation, of course, there is a temptation to find those to blame, as Babkin does. That the conspirators are bishops, and all the blame is on them. But, in fact, everyone was to blame, in one form or another, from the top to the bottom.

– Father Alexander may have asked a lot, the last question. Maybe there is some information about Stalin’s views... It’s no secret that in his youth he studied at a seminary and was still somewhat of a believer. Did he remain a believer to the end? And this struggle with has grown into such an open act of struggle with God? Or he simply became an atheist and that’s it.

I AM. Not really. He was no longer a believer from his youth; in fact, while still a seminarian, he lost faith and testified to this. And in all subsequent years, he, in general, did not reveal his faith in any way. Fight against God, open atheism - yes, this manifested itself very often in his actions right up to his death. But name some episodes in which Stalin behaves like a believer...

- No, faith does not yet mean that a believer and a worshiper, faith is just like demons believe, in this sense.

I AM. Well, it looks like he didn’t even believe it anyway.

- This is interesting.

I AM. Because I didn't tremble.

– How did he manage to conquer the social world? And what is the reason for the people’s love?

I AM. To Stalin?

- To Stalin, yes.

I AM. Firstly, this love has been nurtured over decades. Literally, from infancy, from childhood, this was instilled in Soviet people.

– (voice from the audience) A poem taught in kindergarten before the war: “ Is it true that Lenin did everything for children the same way as Stalin does now?“I was in kindergarten before the war. This has been brought up since childhood...

I AM. And this brought its own successes. In general, you can raise a person to be anyone. Moreover, indeed, before our eyes there were outstanding achievements, first of all, victory in the War, the creation of nuclear weapons to achieve parity with America. In general, yes, there was something to be proud of for our country. And all this was presented as the merit of Stalin.

- Tell me, please, but, after all, the second part of the question is how can one condemn such a state, which, in fact, in the person of Stalin, simply, well, a huge host of saints, thanks to his activities, shone. Now, I know that many people, so to speak, are grateful to him for this. Say something, two words, please.

I AM. In this case, the logic is quite interesting: thanks to Comrade Stalin for our host of new martyrs. You know, following the same logic, we can say: thank you to Judas because, thanks to him, the redemption of the human race was accomplished. If he had not betrayed Christ, Christ would not have been crucified, our salvation would not have happened... Thank you to Pilate for condemning Christ to death? Thanks to the Jewish elite who insisted on this verdict? So what? I don’t know if I answered your question or not? Of course, what the Russian Church and Russia experienced in the 20th century was not some kind of historical accident. This tragedy of the Russian people is the result of centuries of gradual departure of the Russian people from Christ, betrayal of their calling. In 1919, at the height of the Red Terror, in the midst of a campaign to open holy relics and mockery of Patriarch Tikhon, he issued a message to his flock, which began with the amazing words: “ The Lord does not cease to show mercy to His Russian Orthodox Church. He allowed her to experience her loyalty to Christ not only in the days of external prosperity, but also in the days of persecution" Patriarch Tikhon perceived what he experienced then as a manifestation of God’s great mercy. The Patriarch wrote that no one and nothing will save Russia until the Russian people cleanse themselves of their many years of ulcers and repent. And only this repentance of the Russian people will mean the beginning of healing. But such repentance was very far away. And therefore... Of course, responsibility for everything that happened lies with the entire people, and with the Church too - with bishops and priests. Responsibility for the fact that they could not properly spiritually educate their flock, could not protect them from sliding into the whole nightmare that the country experienced, especially in the 1920s, during the Civil War. But the Lord allowed us to experience all this and, indeed, in the end we have such a great host of saints that no other local church has. But is it necessary to thank Stalin for this? This logic doesn't make sense to me.

– Father Alexander, I think that there is absolutely no need to thank Stalin for this. But answering the question whether Stalin was a believer, I want to read an excerpt from an interview with Patriarch-Catholicos of Georgia Ilia II, which he gave to a journalist of the RussiaToday channel in 2013. This is a bishop who has 100% authority in Georgia; he had a campaign several years ago that when a third child is born, he becomes that child’s godfather. That is, everyone in Georgia loves him, he is an indisputable authority. He was asked a question about Stalin, and this is what he answered: “ Stalin is an outstanding personality; such people are rarely born. He knew the significance, the global significance of Russia... He was the same for everyone, treated everyone equally– says Patriarch Elijah, – He did not single out Georgia in any particular way. But during the Second World War, in percentage terms, Georgians died the most.– And the last phrase, – He was a believer, especially at the end. So I think"

I AM. His Holiness Elijah, of course, has the right to think so. But, I’m saying that I don’t know any documentary evidence of that time or at least those who personally communicated with Stalin and could somehow cite some episodes in which his faith would be revealed. And now, of course, after 60–70 years, you can evaluate it any way you like.

I AM. Yes, Stalin understood that such an appeal would mean a lot to the people. He cannot be denied the ability to feel the masses. But after his appeal “ brothers and sisters...”, that he called upon Christ and the Russian saints to help? Of course not!

Archpriest Vyacheslav Perevezentsev . Father Alexander, thank you very much! I think there may still be a lot of questions. And the theme of church history, and of the new martyrs, and, in general, of our, in fact, contemporary history, it can never be exhausted. And for us, such meetings are an opportunity, in fact, to think about it, look for answers, talk to each other and, perhaps, even disagree with each other on something, look for this truth. And it seems to me that this should be done. And for my part, I want to say that I think that we will organize such meetings and, perhaps, Father Alexander will also agree to visit us. And we can ask him our questions. And other people who are professionally involved in history... Because you understand perfectly well that it is very important when we try to find answers for ourselves and proceed not only from some emotions, that is, myths, legends, of which, of course, there are a lot. And history, although peculiar, is still science, right? There are facts and there are historical documents. And when we try to evaluate certain events, we must, first of all, appeal to this. Therefore, meeting with historians, in this sense, it seems to me, is very important for all of us. I want to thank you again.

Abbreviations

AP RF – archive of the President of the Russian Federation

VChK - All-Russian Extraordinary Commission

VTsIK – All-Russian Central Executive Committee

VCU - “higher church administration” (renovationist)

GPU – State Political Administration

GARF – State Archive of the Russian Federation

Gubernia Cheka - provincial emergency commission (provincial branch of the Cheka)

d. – business

storage unit – storage unit

ITL - forced labor camp

l. – leaf

op. – inventory

NKVD - People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs

PSTGU (PSTBI) – Orthodox St. Tikhon State University (theological institute)

publ. – publication

RCP(b) – Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)

f. – fund

Central Archive FSB - the central archive of the Federal Security Service

Central Committee - central committee

CPA IML – Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism [under the CPSU Central Committee]

I believe that it is necessary to postpone the Tikhon trial due to the height of agitation abroad (the Butkevich case) and the need to more carefully prepare the trial. F. Dzerzhinsky from 1917 to 1952 // Theological collection. Vol. 3. M.: PSTBI Publishing House, 1999. P. 264.

Cm.: Shkarovsky M. V. Russian Orthodox under Stalin and Khrushchev: (State-Church relations in the USSR in 1939–1964). M.: Krutitskoye Patriarchal Compound; Society of Church History Lovers, 2005. P. 398.

Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, based on the fact that the renovationist movement played its positive role at a certain stage and in recent years no longer has the same significance and basis, and taking into account the patriotic positions of the Sergius Church, he considers it advisable not to interfere with the collapse of the Renovationist Church and the transition of the Renovationist clergy and parishes to the Patriarchal Sergius Church.” On this paragraph I. Stalin wrote: “ Comrade Karpov. I agree with you" At the Local Council in November 1944, bishops from former renovationists made up more than half of the participants. Subsequently, many of them were dismissed by Patriarch Alexy I. ( Demidova N.I. Personnel policy of the Moscow Patriarchate and the composition of the episcopate of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1940 - 1952: abstract. dis. for the job application scientist step. Ph.D. ist. Sci. pp. 16–17)

Babkin M. A. Priesthood and kingdom(Russia, beginning of the 20th century - 1918) Research and materials. M.: publishing house Indrik, 2011. Criticism of the views of M.A. Babkin by PSTGU employees: Gaida F. A. Priesthood and kingdom in the fantasy genre // Orthodoxy and the World, 12/11/2013; Repnikov A.V., Gaida F.A. Review by: M. A. Babkin. The clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and the overthrow of the monarchy (beginning of the 20th century - end of 1917) // Domestic History. 2008 No. 5. P. 202–207 [Full text of the article];

Having learned about the execution of the tsar, Patriarch Tikhon said a short word after the Divine Liturgy in the Moscow Kazan Cathedral: “ The other day a terrible thing happened - the former sovereign Nikolai Alexandrovich was shot, and our highest government, the executive committee, approved this and recognized it as legal... But our Christian conscience, guided by the word of God, cannot agree with this. We must, in obedience to the teaching of the word of God, condemn this matter. Otherwise, the blood of the executed will fall on us, and not just on those who committed it. Let them call us counter-revolutionaries for this, let them throw us in prison, let them shoot us. We are ready to endure all this in the hope that the words of our Savior will be applied to us: Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it! ()" (Mikhail Polsky, protopresbyter. New Russian martyrs. Georgianville, 1957. T. 1. P. 282–283; vol. 2. pp. 315–316).

Nicholas II himself subsequently regretted this step. As his aide-de-camp Colonel A. A. Mordvinov wrote " Subsequently, being in distant Siberia, the sovereign, according to the testimony of close people, did not cease to worry about doubts associated with his abdication. He could not help but be tormented by the consciousness that his departure, caused by the “sincere” insistence of people “ardently loving their homeland,” did not serve for the benefit, but only to the detriment of their sacredly revered Russia“The abdication of Nicholas II. Memoirs of eyewitnesses, documents / Intro. Art. L. Kitaeva, M. Koltsova. – M.: TERRA – Book Club, 1998. – p. 117.

Priest Vladislav Musikhin, a teacher of the history of the Russian Church at the Yekaterinburg Theological Seminary, answers questions from viewers. Broadcast from Yekaterinburg. Broadcast June 4, 20104

Hello, dear viewers! The program “Conversations with Father” is broadcast on the Soyuz TV channel. Timofey Obukhov in the studio.

Today, as a guest, I am pleased to welcome Priest Vladislav Musikhin, rector of the Church of All Saints at the Northern Cemetery in Yekaterinburg, teacher of the Yekaterinburg Theological Seminary on the subject "History of the Russian Church" XX century".

Father, hello! Bless our viewers.

Good evening. God bless you all.

The topic of our conversation today is “Khrushchev’s persecution of the Church,” since 2014 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the removal of N.S. Khrushchev from all positions. We know him as the initiator of the persecution that the Russian Orthodox Church endured in those years.

Indeed, October 14 this year marks the 50th anniversary of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev’s resignation from all his posts. We know that this is the day of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. Of course, the then rulers of the country did not time their resignation to coincide with this date; it turned out to be providential. We know that the Mother of God is the patroness of our land, and the Russian land is often called one of the inheritances of the Mother of God.

If we talk about the persecution itself, it lasted for six years from 1958 to 1964. There was a whole complex of reasons why Khrushchev and his inner circle initiated the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Firstly, it must be said that the Russian Orthodox Church and other religious organizations were persecuted in one way or another throughout the entire period of Soviet power. The goal was the gradual eradication of all religious ideas, not only the elimination of religious institutions, but also the eradication of all religious ideas and beliefs. We know that this task has not been resolved throughout all 70 years; there were simply more “calm” times when the fight against faith was limited to such phenomena as: atheistic education from childhood, anti-religious propaganda, and restrictions on the activities of religious organizations. There were periods when administrative pressure, repression, and all kinds of control over the activities of religious organizations increased. One of such periods, one might say, the last serious period of persecution, was the Khrushchev persecution from 1958 to 1964.

There was a whole range of reasons why Khrushchev set the task of eradicating religion in the country in the near future. One of the reasons was that Nikita Sergeevich was a kind of romantic utopian; he sincerely believed in the possibility of building a bright communist future, the possibility of a communist paradise on earth: when there are no commodity-money relations, universal happiness will reign and the like.

According to Marxist-Leninist ideology, there can be no place for any religion under communism. Since the accelerated task of building communism was set by a certain date - approximately by the end of the 70s - beginning of the 80s of the XX century, by the same date it was planned to complete the fight against religion. Many people know that Khrushchev promised to show the last “Soviet priest” on television in 1980. The promise was made in the early sixties; this was a specific goal, since the construction of communism was directly related to the fight against religion.

Question from a TV viewer from Stavropol: Please tell me why in Soviet times the expression “religion is the opium of the people” was popular?

This expression was once uttered by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. There may be some truth to this: opium relieves suffering, and was used for severe pain. According to our anti-religious rulers, this was the only function of religion. The people lived hard in tsarist times, and religion was needed in order to provide temporary psychological assistance in their suffering and sorrow.

We, as believers, know that this is only a small part of religion. If we have our faith, then all the “action” is worthless, then, indeed, there will be deception. We know that every believer has experienced a mystical experience of a meeting with God, which cannot be expressed in words, he firmly knows that God exists, and the memory of this meeting is retained by a person forever, even if, due to his sins, he departs from God and the Church. Having experienced a personal meeting with God, he will no longer be able to become a completely unbelieving person.

During the reign of Lenin and Stalin, in the 20-30s, the “Union of Militant Atheists” was organized - an organization of an all-Union scale, which simultaneously included more than five million people throughout the Soviet Union. This huge organization was engaged in the publication of anti-religious literature: books, magazines, and patronized many anti-religious theaters, exhibitions, museums and the like.

At the end of 1931, the so-called “godless five-year plan” was announced. It was the time of five-year plans in the country. For the next five years, the goal was set for the complete destruction of all religions in the Soviet Union. The task is completely utopian, since it was necessary not only to close all churches and church institutions, to destroy all priests, but also, as it was declared, “by May 1, 1937, the name of God should be forgotten throughout the entire territory of the USSR.” Even the memory of God had to be erased from consciousness.

It was possible to drive the Church into the catacombs, to completely destroy the visible legal organization, but to completely destroy the faith itself was unrealistic.

- Question from a TV viewer: My question about Nikolai’s timeII. Back in 1904 Nikolai II wrote in a letter to Pobedonostsev that he wanted to hold a Church Council, but more than ten years passed before the Local Council took place. Could you explain the attitude of the Tsar himself and this delay in holding the Council, and could this fact be reflected in the state of the people that made the revolution in our country possible?

Firstly, I will say right away that I do not know about the existence of such a letter from Nicholas II in 1904 to the chief prosecutor of the Synod, Georgy Pobedonostsev.

I can tell you what I know: in 1905, when the first revolution took place, manifestos on religious tolerance, the State Duma, and so on were adopted. In particular, very broad freedom was given to many religious organizations not of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church remained in its previous position: it was state-owned, the most massive, but at the same time it was subordinate to the state and dependent on state power. As a result, the question arose that the Russian Orthodox Church also needs to be given freedom. For more than two hundred years, from the time of Emperor Peter I, from the establishment of the Holy Synod in 1721, the Church was in such a subordinate position.

The question was raised that it was necessary to convene an All-Russian Local Council in order to resolve all the issues that had accumulated over two centuries in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church: its relations with the state, internal issues: diocesan, parish life, and so on. What did they start writing to Nicholas II about? The leading member of the Holy Synod, Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky), wrote. The Emperor generally reacted positively to the idea of ​​the Council, but since there were troubled events after the revolution of 1905, he said that it was necessary to wait some time.

Chief Prosecutor Pobedonostsev was a strong opponent of the convening of the Local Council and the restoration of the patriarchate, and he had enormous influence on the sovereign, which must also be taken into account.

In 1907, the Synod again appealed to the emperor with a request to convene the Council in the near future. The emperor again postponed the convocation; it is difficult to indicate the reason. Years passed, there were two Pre-Conciliar bodies in preparation for the Council: the Pre-Conciliar Presence, the Pre-Conciliar Conference. In 1914, the Pre-Council Meeting ended its work, the First World War began, and the Council was never created until February 1917, when the revolution and the abdication of the Emperor took place. It was impossible to put it off any longer. According to the coronation act of Paul I in 1799, the emperor was officially the head of the Church. After the emperor left the political scene, the Church was virtually beheaded. It was necessary to urgently convene a Council, first of all, in order to resolve issues of the leadership of the Church, and then to resolve all the issues that had been raised at the beginning of the century.

Question from a TV viewer: Is it true that on Trotsky’s initiative a monument to Judas was erected in one of the cities of the then Soviet Union?

There is a saying that “the most terrible persecution of the Church is the absence of persecution.” Christ said: just as they persecuted Me, they will persecute you too. What is your opinion?

I heard about the monument to Judas, I saw publications, but I did not study this issue in detail. As far as I know, it did not last long, because the monument to the traitor - a clearly negative figure among the people - did not add respect to the existing government.

Persecution has a purifying effect in many ways. In times of persecution, it is clear who is who. As long as there is no persecution, there can be, as the Savior says, wolves in sheep’s clothing in the Church, that is, they can be there formally. In the face of persecution, when there is a choice between preserving one’s own comfort, well-being or devotion to faith, Christ, the Church, a person reveals himself as he really is. From the first days of post-revolutionary persecution, there were clergy who stopped serving, went to secular work, and sometimes even began to join the ranks of the persecutors and join the Bolshevik Party.

We know that in 1922 a renovationist schism arose, which was provoked by the Soviet intelligence services with the aim of destroying the Church. During the campaign to confiscate church valuables in the spring of 1922, the priests most loyal to this action were identified, who were promised all kinds of incentives and benefits, and who agreed to carry out all orders of the authorities. Church power was seized: Patriarch Tikhon was arrested, they seized the Patriarchal Office and declared that the full power was now in their hands. Only thanks to the devotion of the people to the canonical church authority, the foundations, canons and dogmas of the Orthodox Church, which these renovationists tried to reform, why they are called that, this schism choked and did not achieve its goals.

As for the Khrushchev persecutions, at that time there was individual, targeted work with each priest. There were not as many priests in the country as in the 20-30s; throughout the Soviet Union there were just over ten thousand clergy, and most of them served in Ukraine. Each priest was met by an authorized representative, a representative of the KGB, and other organizations, who persuaded with “carrot and stick” to renounce God and the Church and join the ranks of atheist anti-religious people who travel with lectures throughout the country, talk about the fact that there is no God, and tell how they used to deceive people. Out of ten thousand, about two hundred clergymen were persuaded to the path of betrayal - this is about 2%. It’s difficult to judge whether it’s a lot or a little, but it was a fact.

We can say that persecution is a test, and few survive these tests. Many of those who renounced, repented and returned to the Church, some, on the contrary, completely despaired and ended, like Judas, in suicide. The cases were different, but none of them ended their lives safely.

Question from a TV viewer from the Stavropol Territory: When there are political disputes, it is always a struggle for power. But why is it that religious topics are always touched upon, especially Christian ones, as at the present time: in Syria, in Ukraine. As if people don’t know what they are doing, because even now the politicians of Kyiv are proclaiming Orthodoxy, while they are not believers?

The TV viewer has already answered the question, citing the words of the Savior that they do not know what they are doing. Of course, the evil one also tempts people.

This is also evidence that the religious component is important in our time; it largely determines the meaning of our lives. And it can be good, as in the Christian faith, or it can be inverted, when a person serves evil, but justifies it with his religious beliefs, such as Islamic terrorists in Syria who take hostages, kill people and believe that they are serving God. We remember the words of the Savior that times will come when “everyone who kills you will think that by doing so he is serving God.” This has happened in history, is happening and, unfortunately, will happen.

Therefore, proper religious education is very important. Not a single world religion teaches evil, to kill in the name of one’s religious beliefs. These are all distortions, perversions of religion. A person actually serving Satan, the enemy of the human race, continues to think that he is serving God. We see this in Syria and other places. According to statistics, Christianity remains the most persecuted religion in the world.

The Lord predicted persecution, and the Apostle Paul said that everyone who wants to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. We must always remember this, it has always been, at all times, even if we live in an outwardly prosperous society, where there is no persecution, as was the case in pre-revolutionary Russia, which was an Orthodox country. A godly person striving for salvation will experience some kind of oppression, which is incited by the enemy of the human race. People, without realizing it, may be tempted by the evil one to act against this person.

Question from a TV viewer from Karelia: I am 61 years old, and I was baptized precisely in Khrushchev’s times at home, without a priest and without a godfather. Do I need to be baptized again?

During the Khrushchev persecutions, children were completely excommunicated from the Church. In most dioceses it was strictly forbidden to allow children into churches. There were orders, prohibitions and threats to the priest and bishop. Since the priests themselves would not fulfill such demands, a policeman was stationed near the temple, who did not allow underage young people into the temple.

Of course, under these conditions it was very difficult to baptize a child, an infant. There was even a danger of deprivation of parental rights of those parents who introduced their children to the Church. Such cases actually happened. Everything belongs to the state, and the child too, first of all, is a Soviet citizen who should be raised in atheism, and not religious obscurantism, as it was called then.

As we know, out of need, due to circumstances, a child can be baptized by any Orthodox Christian with three times immersion in water, with the baptismal formula “the servant of God is baptized.” Of course, this baptism must be supplemented with those prayers that are said by the priest in the church, and most importantly, supplemented with the Sacrament of Confirmation, which is performed immediately after the Sacrament of Baptism.

You must definitely come to the temple of God, tell your story and ask that the baptism that was performed on you be completed, because without this you cannot proceed to other sacraments, first of all, confession and communion. It is necessary to undergo chrismation.

Question from a TV viewer from Kamensk-Uralsky: The Gospel says to forgive your enemies. Why is it still impossible to bury Lenin in a Christian manner and keep him in a mausoleum?

This question should not be asked of the Church. As far as I know, both Patriarch Alexy II and Patriarch Kirill have repeatedly spoken about the need to bury Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Another question is about Christian burial if the person himself rejected Christianity. How pleasing to his soul will be the Christian burial of the Church, which he hated, because we cannot violate the free will of a person.

The question is not whether we forgive, the Lord forgives everyone. Does the person himself need forgiveness?

It would probably be advisable to bury V.I.’s body. Lenin, but this question is largely political. As far as I know, our state does not dare to do this while there are enough people in the country with communist beliefs, for whom “Lenin is our everything,” in order to avoid social discontent. The time will come - of course, they will bury him. When this is done will be decided by the state.

Do you think that the people who were in power, Nikita Sergeevich’s entourage, including himself, did they really not have an encounter with God in their lives?

Of course, we cannot know this; it is hidden from people’s eyes. Apparently, they didn’t survive, or someone did, and then, like Judas, he walked away from God and the Church and consciously fought.

Many believe that once a person has come to know God, he can no longer become a persecutor and a God-fighter. But this is not so, we know that demons, who are individuals and know perfectly well that God exists, they consciously fight with Him. As the apostle says: even the demons believe and tremble.

I think that such a tragedy can happen in a person’s life when a person begins to consciously fight with God. He cannot deny the obvious evidence of the existence of God, but at the same time he deliberately continues his fight against God. This is probably evidence of human depravity. We are all sick, we all carry a nature corrupted by sin to one degree or another. If a person does not fight, does not repent, does not try to improve, he can gradually reach a devil-like state, as the holy fathers said about this. We know that the Antichrist, who will come in the last times, will be a conscious enemy of God.

People who fought with the Orthodox Church, believers, committed great sins. Will their living children and grandchildren have to answer for their sins?

It's impossible to say for sure. From the Old Testament we know that the sins of the fathers will be reflected on the children until the fourth generation. The son is not responsible for his father. This does not mean that the son will actually be punished, but the depravity that the person bore is one way or another transmitted genetically. From Adam and Eve, we all carry a nature corrupted by sin. From medicine we know that if a person, for example, suffered from deep alcoholism, then his children will be prone to it, and it is better for them to abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages.

Of course, if among our ancestors there were persecutors, those who were, perhaps, on firing squads, and a person knows about this, then, first of all, we can help our ancestors with our own Christian life. Not even so much by prayer for them, because they were conscious atheists, but by their Christian lives. There is a lot of evidence when a person, by his own righteous life, brought to God people who were related by blood, but who were far from God.

We are well aware of the expression of St. Seraphim of Sarov: “Acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved.” This applies not only to our lives now, but also to our relatives. My opinion is that a person who is saved may not save relatives who were fighters against God, but to one degree or another he will alleviate their fate. It is difficult to talk about this specifically, because only the Lord Himself knows about it.

Question from a TV viewer from St. Petersburg: My childhood was during the times of Khrushchev’s persecutions, and I see the role this played in my life. I remember the emotional processing of children's consciousness by anti-religious propaganda, when in the third grade we read a story about how a grandmother crushed her granddaughter with a string from a cross. Since that time, such a rejection of God and the Church has formed.

My parents are conscious communists, and their life, like the life of my children, cannot be called happy. I am 56 years old, I have two children, two years ago I began to become a church member, the Lord led me to Himself in incredible ways, but my children cannot come to God. Maybe we need to talk more about the terrible consequences that unbelief leads to.

Thank you for your personal testimony. With age comes the realization that nothing happens without consequences. Seventy years of persistent atheistic propaganda, the complete influence on people in order to convince them that religion is only negative, have not passed without a trace. It’s been a quarter of a century since anything like this has happened at the state level, but still a lot of people continue to treat the Church with great prejudice. Despite everything that the Orthodox Church does, the stereotypes of that time remain alive. Even smart, educated people cite stupid arguments not only from Khrushchev’s time, but also from the 20s and 30s. It will probably take a long time for them to disappear.

Question from a TV viewer from Moldova: In 2012, I became paralyzed and can’t walk. One day I accidentally turned on the Soyuz TV channel and now I watch it all the time, I want to understand the Orthodox faith and how to pray correctly. I really want to go to church, but, unfortunately, I can’t move. What will you advice me?

Nothing just happens. The Soyuz TV channel is just an example of the positive impact on a person who learns about God. Although the person has not yet fully become a church member, including because it is difficult for him to do so physically. But his soul seeks God, seeks the Truth. Let the seeker find, as the Lord said. The Lord knows your ailments and knows your desire to strive for Him. As John Chrysostom says, the Lord kisses a person’s intentions. Of course, the Lord accepts your intention with joy.

We must try to find out through loved ones and relatives where the nearest church is, try to invite a priest, invite. If you have not yet been baptized, ask to be baptized, invite you to receive communion at home. There are probably social services that would help those who need church care.

The most important thing is personal desire for God and prayer. We know that in ancient times the desert fathers, who were far from churches, were awarded communion from the Angels of God themselves for their holy, righteous ascetic life. We meet such cases in the Lives of the Saints.

We must always remember that if our loving Father allowed such a serious illness, it means that this is necessary for the salvation of a person, and can lead him to salvation with the right attitude towards this without much difficulty. The Lord gives everyone his own cross: some must work hard and help their neighbors, while for others it is enough to simply endure the illness that the Lord sent, and through this they are also honored with the Kingdom of Heaven.

Thank you for your detailed answers. Our transfer has come to an end. Please say a few goodbye words to our viewers.

I would like to congratulate all our viewers on the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, which continues these days until the Feast of the Trinity, Holy Pentecost, when we will all pray for the grace of the Holy Spirit to be sent down to us. I congratulate you all on the upcoming Feast of the Holy Trinity. God bless you all.

Presenter: Timofey Obukhov.

Transcript: Yulia Podzolova.

Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign (Khrushchev's persecution of religion, Khrushchev's persecution of the Church) - a period of intensified struggle against religion in the USSR, the peak of which occurred in 1958-1964. Named after the leader of the country of that period - First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev, who is credited with a public promise by the end of the seven-year plan, that is, by 1965 (in some sources - by 1975, by 1980), “to show the last priest on TV.”

Many researchers and religious leaders agree that the Khrushchev campaign was the most difficult time for religious organizations in the USSR after the Great Patriotic War.

American historian Walter Zawatsky suggested that one of the reasons for the start of the campaign was Khrushchev’s struggle for power. Against the backdrop of the exposure of Stalin’s cult of personality and the collective leadership of the country proclaimed after Stalin’s death, Khrushchev gradually pushed his competitors away from power, switched to sole rule and began to impose his own cult of personality. At the same time, as Zawatsky wrote, “if Stalin remained restrained and silent, then Khrushchev’s irrepressible nature forced him to “gush” all the years of sole governance of the country, right up to the very moment of his removal from the post of head of the Soviet state.

The second reason, which a number of researchers write about, was ideological in nature - by the end of the 1950s, Khrushchev began to hatch plans for a systematic transition from socialism to communism, within which religion no longer had a place in the new, communist society: “He was a convinced communist , and it was his devotion to the communist ideology that explains not only the excesses in educational and agricultural policies, for which Khrushchev suffered greatly, but also the completely unjustified attack on religion from a political point of view... religion turned into unnecessary ballast and an extremely convenient scapegoat,” wrote Zawatsky .

Historians have identified several features specific to this campaign.

The essence of the new political course was defined in the Third Program of the CPSU, adopted in 1961. Here religion is called “remnants of capitalism in the minds and behavior of people,” and the fight against these remnants is “an integral part of the [CPSU] work on communist education.”

According to historian Elena Panich, the word “education” became the key word in the new CPSU Program. It meant that now the party intends not to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat, but to educate worthy members of a socialist (and in the future - communist) society. The “moral code of the builder of communism” prescribed in the same Program of the CPSU stipulated that members of a socialist society must combine “spiritual wealth, moral purity and physical perfection.”

The second feature of the campaign was its unprecedented scope. The fight against religion was carried out not only by the law enforcement system, but also by party and Soviet authorities, management and collectives of enterprises, trade unions, Komsomol, and public organizations. “This totality of persecution was supposed to create for believers an atmosphere of rejection, cultural isolation, in which they would feel like second-class citizens, outcasts from society, unworthy to enter a bright future together with the rest of the people. One Soviet poetess wrote in those years: “You can pray freely, but in such a way that God alone hears,” noted historian Vladimir Stepanov.

The third distinctive feature of the campaign was its focus. According to historian Tatyana Nikolskaya, this campaign was waged against all religions and confessions of the USSR, but at the same time it had a pronounced anti-sectarian character. So, if in the 1930s the terms “church members” and “sectarians” sounded equally negative, now the word “sectarians” sounded especially abusive. A significant number of anti-religious publications in the media, literary works and films were dedicated to them. The Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Aleksey Puzin, noted in a closed report in 1964 that mainly “sectarians” were illegally brought to justice.

Leningrad Commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs N.M. Vasiliev in 1965 stated the prevailing stereotype: “” .

Among ordinary people, and often also leading workers of the party-Soviet apparatus, under the influence of the press or other factors, it is generally accepted that believers of the Russian Orthodox Church are one thing, other confessions are also tolerated, but sectarians are some kind of incomprehensible monstrosity, and, despite on a conscientious attitude to work, discipline, sectarian believers, in comparison with other believers, are placed in the category of persons who do not deserve full political trust

On July 7, 1954, the CPSU Central Committee issued a resolution “On major shortcomings in scientific-atheistic propaganda and measures to improve it.” It noted the revival of the activities of “the church and various religious sects” and the increase in the number of citizens practicing religious rites. In this regard, party and Komsomol organizations, the Ministry of Education and trade unions were ordered to carry out anti-religious work “systematically, with all perseverance, through the method of persuasion, patient explanation and individual approach to believers.”

However, at that time the leadership of the country was still collective, and four months later (November 10, 1954) a new resolution was adopted “On errors in conducting scientific-atheistic propaganda among the population.” It condemned the use of slander, insults, and administrative interference in the activities of religious organizations, “instead of developing systematic painstaking work to promote natural science knowledge and the ideological struggle against religion.”

As a result, large-scale persecution never began. According to historian Dmitry Pospelovsky, “the period of 1955-1957 can be considered the most “liberal” for believers after 1947.”

The anti-religious campaign began in full after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, when Khrushchev’s power strengthened. The beginning of the campaign can be considered the release of the secret resolution of the CPSU Central Committee “On the note of the department of propaganda and agitation of the CPSU Central Committee for the Union Republics “On the shortcomings of scientific-atheistic propaganda”” dated October 4, 1958. It obliged party, Komsomol and public organizations to launch a propaganda offensive against “religious relics.”

The central bodies of religious organizations in the USSR were close to liquidation due to repressions in the 1930s. However, during the Great Patriotic War, Joseph Stalin’s policy towards religion softened: in 1943, on Stalin’s initiative, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church was held, which elected Metropolitan Sergius to the Patriarchal throne, and in 1944 the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists was created - a body , leading the United Evangelical Christians and Baptists (to which some Pentecostals were later added). The activities of the All-Union Council of Seventh-day Adventists (which, however, was dissolved in 1960) also resumed.

Legal religious leaders found themselves in a difficult position: being believers, they were forced to constantly balance between the interests of believers and the political line of an atheistic state. On the one hand, the presence of centralized leadership allowed confessions to exist legally, which in itself meant a lot in an aggressive environment. On the other hand, in an effort to continue to remain legal, they were forced to seek compromise, sometimes going too far.

After the start of the campaign, throughout 1959, Patriarch Alexy I tried to achieve an audience with Khrushchev, but to no avail. He had to meet with the Chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church Georgy Karpov and his successor Vladimir Kuroyedov.

In 1960, Kuroyedov carried out an operation to remove the second person of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Nikolai of Krutitsy and Kolomna, from all his posts, who refused to meekly cooperate with the authorities in their measures to “restrict religious activity.”

In 1961, under pressure from Kuroyedov, the Patriarch limited the role of rectors in parishes to purely liturgical and pastoral duties, transferring all economic and financial functions to the executive bodies of the religious community (parish), that is, the parish council and the elder, who were actually appointed by state authorities. In order to obtain “unanimous approval” of these anti-canonical innovations from the episcopate, the Patriarch helped Kuroyedov convene the bishops at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra on July 18, 1961 and, under the pretext of participating in divine services, held a Council of Bishops there, organized in deep secrecy. An attempt by individual bishops, led by Archbishop Ermogen (Golubev), to achieve their abolition in 1965, after the removal of Khrushchev, was suppressed by the authorities.

Pressure was also exerted on other Christian denominations. Thus, in December 1959, at the Plenum of the All-Union Church of the Great Patriotic War, “in an atmosphere of pressure from outside,” the “Regulations on the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists in the USSR” and the “Instructive Letter to the Senior Elders of the All-Union Christian Baptist Church” were adopted. There it was recommended to limit admission to baptism for young people under 30 years of age, not to bring children to services, to “eliminate” speeches by visiting preachers, home meetings, trips to other communities, helping those in need, and even reciting poetry. Elders were required to “restrain unhealthy missionary manifestations” (that is, not actually preach to unbelievers) and “strictly observe the legislation on cults” (that is, carry out legal rather than spiritual work). These demands went against the creed and beliefs of evangelical Christian Baptists. Dissatisfaction in the communities with these documents, coupled with general dissatisfaction with the methods of Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign, led to unexpected and extremely undesirable consequences for both the state and the leaders of the All-Russian Christian Baptist Church in the form of the creation of an illegal opposition Council of Churches of the ECB.

“The Truth about Sectarians”, “Whom the Word of God Serves”, “My Break with the Shaker-Shaking Sectarians” - “anti-sectarian” books published by the Primorsky Book Publishing House in 1958-1959 as part of Khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign

Before the Great Patriotic War, the main body of anti-religious propaganda was the Union of Militant Atheists, but during the war it suspended its activities, and subsequently its functions were transferred to the Knowledge Society. It wasn't that widespread. The competence of the society included organizing anti-religious lectures, training lecturers and preparing methodological literature. Under the auspices of the society, the popular science propaganda magazine “Science and Religion” was published.

However, the main role in propaganda was played not by lectures, but by works of cinema, literature and a wave of anti-religious publications in the media. Soviet writers, filmmakers, and journalists received a social order to produce anti-religious works.

During this period, the stories “Miraculous” and “Extraordinary” by V. F. Tendryakov, “The Sinner” by N. S. Evdokimov, “Clouds over Borsk” by S. L. Lungin and I. I. Nusinov, “Save our souls!” appeared. S. L. Lvova and others.

Many of them were made into films. For example, the film “Clouds over Borsk” became a cult film of that time, despite the obvious absurdities of the plot and the authors’ ignorance of the object of their work (for example, during the course of the film, Pentecostals, completely inexplicably from the point of view of their faith and simply common sense, try to crucify the main character Olga) .

Media publications of that time were characterized by high emotionality; they were no longer aimed at proving the truth of atheism, but at inciting hostility towards believers in the rest of the population. In relation to believers, emotional epithets such as “obscurantists”, “saints”, “fanatics”, etc. were often used.

An important role in the propaganda part of the campaign was given to anti-religious speeches by former clergy and believers who had renounced God. The renunciation of God by Archpriest A. A. Osipov, a professor at the Leningrad Theological Academy of the Russian Orthodox Church, in December 1959 received great resonance. Protestants had many such cases. Newspapers of that time often printed and reprinted similar stories (articles from republican newspapers were reprinted by regional ones, regional newspapers were reprinted by regional ones), many of these articles were then published in separate printed collections.

Some of those who renounced actively participated in the campaign against their former co-religionists: they acted as prosecution witnesses in trials against believers, and wrote anti-religious literature. Thus, A. A. Osipov continued to write anti-church books until his death, and even became a co-author of the “Atheist’s Handbook”, which was published many times in the USSR.

The motives for speaking out against former co-religionists could be different. According to the testimony of N.P. Gorety, presbyter of the Pentecostal community in Nakhodka, their local “renouncer” Fyodor Myachin was in conflict with his community due to adultery. While working as a driver, he had an accident. And a local KGB officer promised him to release him from criminal liability in exchange for “exposing the fanatical Pentecostals.” Myachin agreed and became the author of the book “My break with the shaking sectarians” (see illustration).

Cinema expert Alexander Fedorov stated: “Targeted as much as possible to directly reflect the political decisions of the “tops,” Soviet anti-religious films of the 1950s - 1980s era fulfilled the functions intended for them “from above”: they accused the church and believers of various sins and tried to inspire atheistic views to a wide audience." Characterizing the creative level of their creators, Fedorov noted: “One cannot help but admit that outstanding screen masters generally sought to distance themselves from anti-religious themes. The atheistic government order was carried out mainly by second- and third-line filmmakers.”

Individual episodes ridiculing and denigrating “clergy” were interspersed in films that were generally far from anti-religious themes. For example, “Beware of the car”, “Queen of the gas station” and others.

One of the main directions of the campaign was the liquidation of local religious organizations. The Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Council for Religious Affairs (in 1965 united into one Council for Religious Affairs) took measures to deregister (and refuse to register) religious communities, closing monasteries, temples, houses of prayer, mosques, synagogues .

During the Khrushchev campaign, 10,000 (half of those operating after the war) churches of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) were closed. Of the eight theological seminaries of the Russian Orthodox Church that operated in 1947, only three remained after the Khrushchev campaign (two of them were attached to academies). Cathedrals were closed in Riga, Chisinau, Poltava, Vinnitsa, Novgorod, and Orel. The number of urban and especially rural churches has sharply decreased, with Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova suffering the greatest damage. In 1963, the total number of Orthodox parishes in the USSR was reduced by more than half compared to 1953. In 1959, the Russian Orthodox Church had 63 monasteries and monasteries (of which 40 were in Ukraine, 14 in Moldova, three in Belarus, four in the Baltic republics and two in the RSFSR). By the mid-1960s, only 16 monasteries remained, the number of monastics who retained monastic registration decreased from 3,000 to 1,500. By 1961, 8,252 priests and 809 deacons had “registration” (the right to perform divine services), by 1967 there were 6,694 priests and deacons - 653. The number of bishops was also reduced - a number of dioceses in Ukraine (Dnepropetrovsk, Sumy, Khmelnitsky) and in the Russian Federation (Izhevsk, Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk) were forced to switch to the position of “temporarily controlled” by bishops of neighboring dioceses. The Kiev and Leningrad metropolitans were left without suffragan bishops. The Ukrainian Exarchate was deprived of the opportunity to publish the journal “Orthodox Bulletin”, published since 1946.

In a number of regions, Protestants, despite a large number of [ ] believers, there was not a single legal community (for example, in the Primorsky Territory). As a result, communities were forced to hold services illegally. At this time, the practice of holding religious services in forests spread. Other places were also looked for, for example, the Vladivostok community of Evangelical Christian Baptists held services for several years - in the open air, on the ruins of a house of prayer, which the city authorities demolished and forbade restoration.

During the anti-religious campaign, many churches that had been closed before the Great Patriotic War were demolished. Among them are many valuable architectural monuments - the Trinity Cathedral in Strelna, the Church of the Savior on Sennaya and the Greek Church on Greek Square in St. Petersburg, the Resurrection Cathedral - the oldest building in Krasnoyarsk, the Assumption Church in Petrovsky in the Moscow region and others. At the same time, there was a massive demolition of churches and houses of prayer that were in operation before the start of the campaign, but closed in the period 1959-1964, including the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Preobrazhenskoye in Moscow, and the Kazan Church in Pskov.

The fight against religion was largely carried out at the expense of funds seized from the religious organizations themselves, which were placed under unrelenting financial control. The parishes were forced to transfer a significant part of the donations of believers to God to the “Soviet Peace Fund,” which, in fact, turned into a “black fund” of the CPSU.

In October 1960, the Criminal Code of the RSFSR was updated. Among the innovations was an amendment to Article 142 (“Violation of laws on the separation of church and state”), the punishment for which was increased to three years in prison. Article 227, which punishes the creation of a group (including a religious one) that “causes harm to health” and encroaches on the personality and rights of citizens, provided for up to five years in prison. Given the intensity of the anti-religious campaign, these articles were often interpreted too broadly. In 1961-1964, 806 believers were convicted under these articles, while some of them were subsequently found innocent - partially or completely. For example, two activists of the Pentecostal community in the city of Myski, Kemerovo region, sentenced to five years in 1963, were released in 1965. Five Seventh-day Adventists from the Irkutsk region, sentenced to various terms in 1963, received early release or full rehabilitation.

Worship service on the ruins of a house of prayer, illegally demolished by city authorities in 1959

Often ordinary criminal articles were used against believers. For example, in Vladivostok, three evangelical Christian Baptists - Shestovskoy, Moskvich and Tkachenko - were each sentenced in 1963 to one year of actual imprisonment for hooliganism. When their community was holding a service on the ruins of a house of prayer demolished by order of the city administration, a local television crew was stationed on the roof of a nearby barn, filming for another “anti-sectarian” film. Three believers stopped the crackling camera and took the tape from the operator to present it as evidence to the police. It was this act that was regarded as “hooliganism.”

Even official employment did not always save one from deportation. The decree of May 4, 1961 could interpret official employment as creating the appearance of conscientious work.

Quote from a collective letter to the newspaper from seventh-graders - classmates of Lyuba Mezentseva from Nakhodka, who in January 1961 renounced her Pentecostal parents and expressed a desire to live in an orphanage

It was more difficult with the children of believers who received religious education in the family. This issue could be resolved by provoking a conflict between children and parents. So, for example, when in January 1961 in Nakhodka, seventh-grader Lyuba Mezentseva renounced her Pentecostal parents and expressed a desire to live in. IN.

“There are many known cases of children being forcibly taken away from their parents and placed in boarding schools. The Voyev children (1961, Nakhodka) ran away from the boarding school several times, but they were caught with dogs and sent back. There is also a known case where the authorities decided to take away an unborn child after he reached 9 months of age.”

The procedure for removing children often took place by inspiring the verdicts of public courts, while the believers themselves were exposed as insane and evil fanatics.

State power demanded unconditional political loyalty from religious leaders; They, seeking a compromise with the authorities, sometimes made decisions that ran counter to the interests of their confession.

As a reaction to this, an opposition movement arose among Protestants in the USSR, which led to the split of the AECB and the formation of an alternative inter-church body - the Council of Churches of the ECB (SC ECB) [com. 1], therefore, if local churches manage to violate them in the practice of everyday life without much damage to themselves, then this state can be considered normal. The second point of view did not immediately, but gradually, take shape among the opposition movement and was actively preached by supporters of the Council of Churches. It was that it was necessary to organize a mass movement of believers with demands to change Soviet legislation. But for this, in their opinion, it was first necessary to eradicate the opportunism of the ASCEB ministers, which allowed this institution to exist under the conditions of a totalitarian state and which the Council of Churches considered a sinful deviation from God's truth."

The ECB SC first announced itself in 1961 (at that time the elders at the head of the movement were called the “Initiative Group”), and by 1963 it was finally formed and published the first issue of its official printed organ - the magazine “Bulletin of Salvation” (published under the name “ Messenger of Truth" to this day).

The ECB SC ignored Soviet legislation on religion. The publishing house “Christian” was created - a network of underground printing houses in different parts of the USSR, printing spiritual literature, first with primitive hectographs (“blue”), and then at a higher printing level. The Council of Relatives of Prisoners was created at the ECB SC - a body that provides assistance to believers who, as a result of persecution, find themselves in prison, and their families. Almost all churches included in the ECB SC did not have registration (later, the lack of state registration of churches became a fundamental requirement for churches). Divine services were held in apartments, private buildings, and sometimes in a clearing in the forest. In 1966, the ECB Central Committee organized a mass protest near the building of the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow.

Similar movements, although not as massive, arose in other faiths. Pentecostals have a brotherhood of unregistered communities, now formalized as the United Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith. In addition, the movement of “emigrationists” became widespread among Pentecostals, who openly fought for the right to emigrate from the USSR for religious reasons. The Seventh-day Adventists also had their own “unregistered” movement. Among the Orthodox, the “catacomb communities” that had existed since the 1920s were replenished with priests who were deprived of registration and the opportunity to serve legally under Khrushchev.

The massive anti-religious campaign left a deep imprint on the public consciousness. Propagandists who sought not only to prove the erroneous views of believers, but also to ideologically justify in the eyes of society violent methods of fighting religion, partially succeeded in achieving this. Soviet anti-religious films (“Clouds over Borsk”, “The Miracle Worker”, “Armageddon”, “The Sinner”, “The End of the World”, “Flower on the Stone”), in combination with other means of propaganda, caused a negative attitude towards believers even at the everyday level.

Thus, Varvara Goretaya (the wife of the presbyter of the Pentecostal community in Nakhodka N.P. Goretogo), after sending her husband to a forced labor camp, was left alone with six children and could not find work for a long time. Then she finally managed to get a job as a nurse at a children’s hospital. After some time, the head physician of the hospital told her: “I would love to transfer you to the kitchen, such honest and skillful people are really needed there, but I can’t, since you are a Baptist (Baptists were often called all “sectarians,” whether they were Adventists or Pentecostals ), and people know that you can poison your milk." This was said to a mother with many children, who raised her children in very difficult conditions.

However, sometimes anti-religious propaganda also had the opposite effect, awakening people’s interest in believers. N.P. Goretoy recalled: .

“The KGB organs in the newspapers Nakhodkinsky Rabochiy, in the regional Pravda Far East, poured large tubs of the most fetid mud on us, Far Eastern Pentecostals. But “every cloud has a silver lining,” says the old Russian proverb. Few people knew about our prayer meetings in Nakhodka, in a village called Americanka. And since the address of our house of worship was in the newspapers, many became interested in what kind of people we were.”

In 1964, even before Nikita Khrushchev’s removal from power (October 1964), the anti-religious campaign began to decline (it is possible that the initiative to slow it down did not come from Khrushchev himself). However, the stability of the relations between the state and believers built in the post-war period was violated: the state received extremely undesirable illegal organizations like the ECB SC and its analogues in other faiths, consisting of people deeply convinced of their rightness, sacrificial and disciplined. Until the fall of Soviet power, the state was never able to cope with these organizations. Most likely, the anti-religious campaign did not lead to a significant reduction in the number of believers. Moreover, in some areas during the Khrushchev period the number of baptisms even increased. For example, in the Tambov region in 1957, 32.9% of children born were baptized, and in 1964 - 53.6% of children born.

The anti-religious campaign showed that it is extremely difficult to destroy religion, and henceforth the Soviet state was forced to behave more carefully

Khrushchev's persecution of the Church is one of the darkest pages in our history. The destruction of churches that stood in the 1920-1930s, atheistic hysteria in the media, zealous Komsomol members at church fences, taking “note” of everyone who came to the service... And although on October 14, 1964, on the holiday, Khrushchev was removed from power, persecution of the Church and believers continued for many years.

About why N.S. Khrushchev took up arms against the Church, how church life changed as a result of the reforms carried out, whether society obeyed the order to become atheists without exception, and whether, finally, Khrushchev himself was an atheist - we talk with professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences Olga Yuryevna Vasilyeva.

– Olga Yuryevna, the topic of persecution of the Church during the Khrushchev “thaw” has been studied quite well, we know their causes and consequences. And yet I wanted to dwell on them once again: why did Khrushchev start the persecution? Why did you change your policy towards the Church so dramatically?

– Indeed, now, thank God, thanks to the fact that research on this topic has been and continues, quite a lot has been written about it. And speaking about the reasons, we must not forget that Khrushchev, while fighting the “remnants of Stalinism,” also fought against balanced state-church relations. There was a lot of personal stuff in this: fear and hatred. And secondly: these voluntaristic ideas of his were very much felt by him; he sincerely believed that by 1980 he would build a pre-communist society where there would be no place for religion.

The fight against the Church is in line with Khrushchev’s fight against the “personality cult of Stalin,” with what Stalin did and what policies he pursued. During the war and post-war years, Stalin, one might say, rehabilitated the Church. 1943–1953 is the golden decade of relations between the Church and the state, no matter how paradoxical it may sound. Never before or after in the 20th century have there been such relations - balanced, understandable to both sides. The state understood the participation of the Church in the war and in post-war life; it was clear how it was perceived by the public consciousness. By the way, there are a huge number of interesting documents indicating that the special services of that time, on the direct orders of Stalin, monitored how the people reacted to the Council of Bishops of 1943, to the election of Sergius as Patriarch, to the Local Council of 1945. If Stalin had not been interested in this, no matter from the point of view of domestic and foreign policy, it is unlikely that this information would have been collected.

Khrushchev perceived equal and balanced relations between the Church and the state as a “relic of Stalinism” that must be overcome

The position of the Church in the state that had developed by that time, and the even and balanced attitude towards it, was also perceived as a “relic of Stalinism” that must be overcome. The idea was, in general, politically “correct”; Khrushchev, as a politician, found the right move, although I don’t think he did it himself; perhaps someone suggested it to him. And the personnel changes made it possible to rely on new people who came to power - former Komsomol leaders, who, of course, wanted to push aside the “old guard”.

– Please remind our readers when and how it all began.

– Already in 1954, the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a resolution on strengthening atheistic propaganda. By the way, V.M. Molotov then said: “Nikita, don’t take such drastic steps, this is a mistake, it will quarrel between us and the clergy.” To which Khrushchev responded in his characteristic laconic manner: “There will be mistakes, we will correct them.” But he did not attack the Church until he concentrated power in his hands. Only when he became the first in both the party and the Council of Ministers did he begin to think directly about what to do with the Church, how to remove its influence on society and - and this was the main thing - how to make people forget the historical role that it played during the war and post-war years. One way to do this is to weaken the Church economically. And ideas about the income of the Church were exaggerated and did not correspond at all to what was in reality. When Khrushchev thought about how many donations were coming to the Pochaev Lavra - rubles, “three rubles” and “fives”, it probably seemed to him that the amount was simply enormous. It is no coincidence that the first blows will fall on candle factories and monastic farms, and then legal measures will be taken against the Church, with which they will try to squeeze the Church out of public consciousness and the public field.

And it was done beautifully. I will repeat once again that I do not believe that all this was Khrushchev’s personal initiatives - someone suggested. By the way, Nikita Sergeevich, in his memoirs, which were published by his son, allegedly on the basis of tapes exported abroad, said that he had nothing against the Church. True, these memories are hard to believe. But all this is speculation, this is not important - what is important is the facts. And these are the facts.

A technique was used that the Bolsheviks always resorted to, namely: protest from the ranks of the party, “voice of the people”

In 1959, a technique was used that the Bolsheviks had always resorted to, namely: protest from the ranks of the party, “the voice of the people,” so to speak.

On March 5, 1959, the then Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party of Moldova D. Tkach wrote a letter to the Central Committee. Of course, this letter was inspired, it was a very thoughtful move, because it was necessary to somehow prepare the country for changes. After all, Khrushchev could not just say: “Today it was like this, but tomorrow it will be different.” If only because he is the leader of a huge power and he was not indifferent to his political image. And he cared very much about him - this is noted by everyone who knew him.

So, a letter is written saying that in relations with the Church the state needs to return to the legal norms of the pre-war period, which are now de facto violated.

Let me remind you that in August 1945 and January 1946, resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Ministers were adopted on church organizations, which granted them the limited right of a legal entity. This, of course, was a Stalinist act. And this changed the position of the Church, which, according to the decree of 1918 and the resolution of 1929, was deprived of the right of a legal entity. Now the Church was allowed to purchase vehicles, although limited; the purchase of houses and new construction were allowed, and the Councils of People's Commissars of the republics were obliged to provide material and technical assistance to the Church and allocate building materials for church needs.

And so D. Tkach complains that the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church recommended not to interfere with some freedom of monastic activity, but, in the opinion of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldova, the implementation of these recommendations will lead to the fact that the clergy will strengthen its influence on the people. What Tkach offers is especially important. Because he sets out the proposal as follows: the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldova asks the Central Committee of the CPSU to cancel the decisions of 1945-1946, as well as all orders of the Chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church G. Karpov of 1958-1959, which are also aimed at increasing the authority and strengthening the Church. That is, to deprive the Church of the right of a legal entity.

You see how interesting everything turned out: there was a signal from the spot about a violation of the law, and now it is important to move along this path.

– What were the consequences of this speech by Comrade. Weaver?

– Two documents were adopted that I consider extremely important. On January 13, 1960, the Central Committee issued a decree “On measures to eliminate violations by the clergy of Soviet legislation on cults,” which very clearly states that the Church violated Lenin’s decree of 1918 and the decree of 1929. And what is very important: here for the first time a deeper thought is heard (I think that the advisers, smart people, knew well what to emphasize): this resolution indicated that the Regulations on the Administration of the Russian Orthodox Church of 1945 contained a blatant violation, namely: the point according to which the rector manages the parish, and above all financially. And this blatant violation needs to be corrected.

And exactly one year later, a decree “On strengthening control over the activities of the Church” was issued. And together, these two documents formed the basis of the very one about which so much has been written.

The date was clearly indicated: by 1970, an end to all violations. Provisions were formulated that, of course, were aimed at undermining intra-church life: a radical restructuring of church governance was carried out.

– What changes did this reform introduce?

The clergy were equated with uncooperative artisans of the artia, “the voice of the people”

– Firstly, the rectors of the churches were removed from the financial, economic and administrative activities of the parishes; secondly, the parish was governed by elected bodies - the famous executive committee “troikas”. Point three: blocking all channels of the Church’s charitable activities. Point four: elimination of benefits for clergy when collecting income tax from them: now they will again be taxed as non-cooperative artisans.

This point contained another very important detail, which also applies to people living today - older church people, and at that time young people who helped in churches. These people - candle makers, cleaners, watchmen, altar servers - were removed from state social services, they actually found themselves outside the legal zone. Their work books were taken away, therefore it was as if they were not working. And, as you know, parasitism in the USSR was punishable not only by eviction “to specially designated areas” - that is, administratively, but also as a criminal offense.

The next thing is to protect children from the influence of religion. Here the imbalances were such that, for example, the Kuibyshev Regional Committee was forced to adopt special documents restraining zealous performers, because the fathers and mothers of a huge number of Protestant and Orthodox families were deprived of parental rights.

It is clear that these are all steps to action, a road map, as they say now, which should lead to the main goal - changing the consciousness of the people. But change is always difficult. And as history shows, all such attempts, as a rule, are unsuccessful.

To stimulate this process of changing the consciousness of the people, the Institute of Scientific Atheism was created.

– What did this institution do?

– I would like to immediately speak out in defense of many of the actions of the Institute of Atheism: most of the materials produced by the institute were in the “DSP” format - that is, labeled “For official use”, even digests, so it is unlikely that the general public could get acquainted with them. The Institute conducted very important research (their results have been preserved), especially in the sociology of religion and psychology of religion; A considerable amount of field work was done. Many materials have now been “declassified” and published, so those who are interested can get acquainted with the work of the institute. In addition, the institute published the “Library of Russian Religious and Philosophical Thought.” Plus the magazine “Science and Religion”, which began to be published then and is published to this day.

But what kind of people are we? Zealous. There were some kinks in places. And we must pay tribute to the same magazine “Science and Religion” that wrote about these excesses.

– At the same time, a census of churches and parishes was carried out. What were its results?

In 1960 there were 13,008 Orthodox churches, but by 1970 only 7,338 remained

– Yes, the command was given to look at how many churches and parishes were registered. It turned out that there are a lot of unregistered people. They were closed. And if you look at the statistics, compare how many Orthodox churches there were in 1960 and how many remained by 1970, the picture appears simply fantastic. In 1960 there were 13,008 Orthodox churches, and by 1970 there were only 7,338! Moreover, I am sure that many churches could have been saved. But they were not registered. By the way, some churches in the outback were not registered even by 1991.

We went through it like a roller coaster. Just like that - once! – and closed almost half of them on a legal basis.

It was necessary, of course, to close the monasteries too. Khrushchev understood perfectly well that monasteries are a light to the world. Therefore, the fight against the monasteries was terrible. 32 Orthodox monasteries, including the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, were closed. The number of seminaries was reduced: at first there were 8, but 3 remained. At the same time, there was a steady reduction in the quality and quantity of students studying in them - so that there was no rotation of personnel, so that there was no one to replace the aging and dying priests. But the problem with personnel in the Church at that time was already very acute.

But the worst thing was different: it was decided to carry out a radical restructuring of the Church through the hands of the Church. Through the Synod and Council of Bishops in 1961, at which the decision was pushed to abolish the provision on the rector as the head of the parish. And the Church was able to close this topic only at the Local Council of 1988 once and for all.

I think that Suslov also played a significant role in this process - already under Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. After all, under Brezhnev, 50 churches were deregistered per year during the entire time he was in power. For many years everything continued to follow the well-trodden path.

– What changes in public consciousness took place at this time?

– Changing public consciousness was not so easy. On a legal basis, it was easy to deal a crushing blow to the Church.

Yes, society was, of course, at a crossroads. After all, it came thick and fast: Komsomol weddings, public reprimands, if not outright persecution for baptisms, funerals... Every Wednesday information was submitted to the executive committees about how many were baptized, how many got married, how many were buried, how many communists were present in the church... There was just such hysteria in the press -That.

– Probably some cliches, stereotypes about the Church formed at that time are still alive?

– Yes, we are now speaking in exactly the same cliches that the propagandists of that time tried to use. There is no need to make people simpler and stupider than they really are.

In the localities, of course, as a rule, they took it in their face and were too servile. It got to the point that when a priest’s son died in one of our southern regions, the village council forbade him to perform a funeral service and even serve a litiya. Of course, the priest violated the ban. And the believers of this village wrote a letter to the journal “Science and Religion”. And this situation was discussed and had resonance.

Yes, Khrushchev also asked Gagarin whether he saw God when he flew; there was also “I’ll show you the last priest”... But! Khrushchev himself was a very crafty man, because when the humanist Giorgio la Pira, the mayor of Florence, met with Khrushchev, he told him that he had prayed to the Mother of God since his youth.

– How did the Church defend itself during this period?

– I’ll start with specific facts, with the Conference of the Soviet Public for Disarmament, held in Moscow on February 16, 1960. Patriarch Alexy I speaks. His words were heard by the whole world: “The Church of Christ, which considers the good of people as its goal, experiences attacks and reproaches from people, and, nevertheless, it fulfills its duty, calling people to peace and love. In addition, in this position of the Church there is much comfort for its faithful members, for what can all the efforts of the human mind against Christianity mean if its two-thousand-year history speaks for itself, if all the hostile attacks against it were foreseen by Jesus Christ Himself and gave the promise of steadfastness Church, saying that even the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church.” He said this from a high platform. Everyone heard it.

Let us also remember the speeches of Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) and his interview with the BBC. Let us remember the Council of 1961. Everyone sits in silence, and the patriarch stands up and says: “The council understands the gravity of the decision made,” and ends with these words: “An intelligent rector, a reverent performer of divine services and, most importantly, a man of impeccable life will always be able to maintain his authority in the parish. And they will listen to his opinion, and he will be calm that economic worries no longer fall on him and that he can completely devote himself to the spiritual leadership of his flock.” In my opinion, this is the guiding thread for priesthood ministry in any setting.

Let me remind you of the speeches of Father Gleb Yakunin, Solzhenitsyn, publications in Novy Mir by Tvardovsky and other sixties activists. Many of them went through the camps, and there, in the camps, they became churches. They understood what was happening.

And the people were not silent. Remember the events in Novocherkassk. It is known that, besides Novocherkassk, there were more than 20 such cities.

– Please remind me what happened there.

– Shooting of workers who demonstrated. They were against the economic policy pursued by the state, which raised food prices, and against the lack of it.

So there was resistance to the authorities.

– Olga Yuryevna, how did Khrushchev himself feel about the history of Russia, towards the Russian people? Did he understand that O is the essence of our civilization? And what kind of person was this anyway?

– Khrushchev was a politician, a great politician, whatever one may say. He probably had an inner political instinct. For me, as a historian, he is a political and large-scale figure.

Unfortunately, there are very few memories of him. There are memoirs he narrated on film, saved and taken by his son abroad (I have already mentioned them), but how much one can believe what he says there is a question.

Khrushchev, of course, loved his country. And he was not indifferent to what the world would say about her. He wanted our country to be no worse than others. “Catch up and overtake” - this was his sincere desire.

As for religion, the only evidence that Khrushchev prayed is a letter from Giorgio la Pira. Is it possible to draw any conclusions based on this document? Hard to say. We can only guess.

But Khrushchev started a process that continued even after his removal from power, because this policy was designed for 20 years.

– In his famous speech at the UN in 1960, Khrushchev said, addressing representatives of the countries of the capitalist camp, that peace exists, I quote: “not by the grace of God and not by your grace, but by the strength and intelligence of our great people of the Soviet Union and all the peoples who are fighting for your independence." How would you, as a historian, comment on these words? After all, there is such a semantic inversion when he talks about the peace that the victorious Soviet people brought.

– Politics and diplomacy are a delicate matter. After all, when Khrushchev made this speech, he spoke not as a private person, but as a statesman on a global scale, as the leader of a huge country. I don’t think that these words, spoken from the high rostrum of the UN, can be used as an argument when discussing whether Khrushchev was an atheist at heart or a believer. Yes, there is a letter from Giorgio la Pira. Did Khrushchev lie to him? Most likely, unlikely. But it doesn't prove anything either.

I in no way want to denigrate or whitewash Khrushchev. We simply do not have the opportunity to either refute or confirm his words. It is true that he loved his country. The fact that he believed that his country was great - and I also think so - is true. He loved science and was in awe of it. He also loved power.

The only indication of his faith that I have come across over many years of research is a letter from the mayor of Florence, Giorgio la Pira. I’ll quote it verbatim now – it’s interesting. It's so touching. By the way, La Pira wrote to Khrushchev many times, this is one of the letters. From March 14, 1960: “Dear Mr. Khrushchev! With all my heart I wish you a speedy recovery. You know, and I have already written to you about this several times, that I have always prayed to the Madonna, the tender Mother of Christ, to whom you have treated with such love and such faith since your youth, so that you could become the true creator of “universal peace” in the world.” .

Here's a riddle for you: what exactly did Khrushchev say, and why does La Pira remember this conversation?

– And the last question, of a more general nature, but arising from our entire conversation. In your opinion, how much does the personality of the ruler determine the course of history of the country and people? And shouldn’t a ruler be aware of his responsibility to the people?

– That is, this is a question about the role of the individual in history. Of course, the role of personality in history - all theories speak about this - is certainly very great.

Now regarding the second question: about the extent of the individual’s responsibility to the people. She is, of course, huge. It is no coincidence that our emperors, upon being crowned kings, prayed in the altar of the Assumption Cathedral for the people entrusted to them. And a secular leader has an equally great measure of responsibility.

But no one has canceled the role of the people in this “dialectic,” and a people like ours deserves responsible rulers. We love strong personalities - strong in every way. But not a single historical, large-scale personality has remained in history if she did not rely on the foundations of social justice, on the ideological foundations shared by society, which are the pulse of its life. A ruler who relies in his activities, first of all, on moral foundations, spiritual foundations, receives the support of the people.