In the twentieth century, severe persecution of the Orthodox Church took place in Russia. In their scale, fanaticism and cruelty, they are comparable to the persecutions of the first centuries of Christianity that took place on the territory of the Roman Empire.
Before the revolution and the Civil War, the Orthodox Russian Church (as it was officially called at that time) was the largest religious organization in the Russian Empire, virtually inseparable from the state-bureaucratic machine of the country. According to the publicist Dmitry Sokolov, which was published in his work “The Russian Orthodox Church in the Period of Persecution,” by 1917 there were 117 million Orthodox Christians in Russia, living in 73 dioceses. In 1914, the Church had 54,174 churches with a staff of more than 100,000 priests, deacons and psalmists, which included three metropolitans, 129 bishops and 31 archbishops.
Background. The Church and the February events of 1917
It is traditionally accepted that the persecution of the Orthodox Church began in Russia after the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. However, this is not quite true. We can observe the first signs of persecution starting in February of the same year, when the Provisional Government that came to power decided that it had the right to distort the life of the Church in any way it liked, to interfere in its internal life. After the February Revolution, the Russian state lost its legitimate Tsar - the Anointed of God, who holds the world back from the forces of evil. The Provisional Government, however, illegally decided to appropriate royal functions to itself, openly interfering in the life of the Church.
Having dissolved the old composition of the Holy Governing Synod, the Provisional Government removed 12 bishops from their departments, who were suspected by the government of disloyalty to the new government. In virtually all dioceses, power was transferred from bishops to church-diocesan councils, which was a gross violation of canon law. By 1917, there were three metropolitans in Russia, but not one of them, by the will of the Provisional Government, became part of the new Holy Synod. At the same time, in favor of new “democratic” trends, the Provisional Government introduced four priests into the Synod. This was a direct violation of canon law and church discipline. As D. Sokolov emphasizes in his work, “these actions of the government grossly violated church canons.”
Parish schools, which were previously under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Russian Church, have now lost its tutelage. As a result, more than 37,000 parochial, second-grade and church-teacher schools came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Education. Their total property was estimated at 170 million rubles.
In order to reduce the degree of influence of the Orthodox clergy, the Provisional Government sent church commissars to individual dioceses, which was also gross interference in the affairs of the Church. In addition, the “democratic” government initiated the holding of several Old Believer congresses. The purpose of such a step is to weaken the position of the official Church.
On October 21, 1917, a tragic and in its own way significant event occurred, which foreshadowed further brutal persecution of the Church. A drunken, maddened soldiery desecrated the greatest shrine in the very heart of Moscow - the honest relics of St. Hermogenes, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. This blasphemy took place in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. The Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper described the events in the following words: “The unheard-of blasphemy committed over the relics of St. Hermogenes by two deserter soldiers was far from accidental. It, like the sun reflected in a drop of water, reflected all the horror of our time. In that great turmoil of the seventeenth century, a brutal madman raised his sacrilegious hand, armed with a knife, against the holy Patriarch; in the current turmoil, three centuries later, again the drunken rage of the Russian “thieves” falls on the imperishable remains of the great patriotic martyr.”
Literally four days after this tragic event, a revolutionary coup took place in Petrograd, marking the beginning of the hitherto unheard of Bolshevik persecution of the Church.
And these persecutions were not long in coming. Almost a week after the October Revolution, the first murder of an Orthodox priest occurred. On October 31, 1917, the Bolsheviks killed Archpriest Ioann Kochurov (now glorified in the ranks of the holy martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church).
Anti-church decrees of the Soviet government
The first steps of the new government were decrees directly or indirectly directed against the positions of the Orthodox Church. Thus, already on December 4, 1917, that is, almost a month after the coup, the Bolshevik government adopted the “Regulations on Land Committees,” which contained a clause on the secularization of church lands. Soon, on December 11, a decree was adopted according to which all religious educational institutions were closed, and their buildings, property and capital were confiscated. This decree virtually liquidated the entire system of spiritual education in Russia.
A little later, on December 18, 1917, the Bolshevik government adopted a decree “On civil marriage and registration,” and on December 19, 1917, a decree “On divorce.” Registration of acts of civil status, all divorce cases were transferred according to these documents from spiritual-administrative institutions to civil institutions.
In the new year of 1918, the anti-church policy of the new government had its logical continuation. Thus, already at the beginning of January 1918, the Synodal Printing House was confiscated from the Church, and many house churches were closed, following the court churches. Somewhat later, on January 13, 1918, the Bolsheviks issued a decree on the confiscation of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in Petrograd. In order to carry out this decree, the Red Guard militants carried out an armed attack on the holy monastery. During the armed conflict, the rector of the Sorrow Church, Archpriest Peter Skipetrov (now glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church in the host of holy martyrs), was mortally wounded, trying to shame the unruly revolutionary thugs.
Finally, on January 23, 1918, the Bolshevik government adopted a decree “On the separation of the Church from the state and the school from the Church.” As the publicist D. Sokolov notes in this regard, the Church, in accordance with this law, “was actually deprived of the right of a legal entity.” She was forbidden to have any property. All the property of religious societies that existed in Russia was declared national property, that is, nationalized by the state. The new government hastened to take advantage of this decree. Almost immediately, about six thousand churches and monasteries were confiscated, and all bank accounts of church parishes and monasteries were closed. The Bolshevik government banned the teaching of the Law of God in schools. In addition, the country prohibited the teaching of religious teachings in churches and at home. It should be noted that in fact, under the pretext of separation of Church and state, the Bolsheviks tried to outlaw the very concept of Russian Orthodoxy.
According to the materials of the Special Commission under the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, “the separation of the Church from the state<…>resulted in a fierce persecution against the Church and in the actual powerless and persistent interference of state power in the affairs of the Church, legally separated from the state.”
As Abbot Damascene (Orlovsky) notes in his now famous work “Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Period,” the first practical result of the implementation of the new decree was the closure of theological educational institutions in 1918, including diocesan schools and churches attached to them. The only exception was the Kazan Theological Academy. Thanks to the efforts of its rector, Bishop Anatoly (Grisyuk), of Chistopol, it continued its work until 1921, when Bishop Anatoly and the academy’s teachers were arrested on charges of violating the decree. In fact, since 1918, spiritual education and scientific church activities have been stopped in the country. The same can be said about book printing, since since 1918 any publication of Orthodox literature has turned out to be practically impossible.
By the summer of 1920, all the main property of the Orthodox Church had been nationalized by the Bolsheviks. As V.B. points out. Romanovskaya in her work “Freedom of conscience in Soviet Russia and repressions against the Russian Orthodox Church in the 20s”, in Moscow alone the following were confiscated from the Church: 551 residential buildings, 100 retail premises, 52 school buildings, 71 almshouses, 6 orphanages, 31 hospital.
Physical destruction of representatives of the Orthodox clergy and laity
Almost immediately after the October Revolution, a whole series of arrests and murders of representatives of the Orthodox clergy began in the country. On December 20, 1917, in Sevastopol, the rector of the cemetery church of the Ship Side, Father Afanasy Chefranov, was murdered. Having accused him of violating the confidentiality of confession of the arrested sailors of the cruiser "Ochakov", as well as of administering Holy Communion and confessing to a man sentenced to death, Father Afanasy was shot right on the church porch.
The terrible murder took place on Easter night in 1918. In the village of Nezamaevskaya, Priest John Prigorovsky was buried alive in a dung pit. First, the priest's eyes were gouged out, his tongue and ears were cut off.
At the Sinara station near Yekaterinburg on June 10, 1918, Archpriest Vasily Pobedonostsev was hacked to death. Three days later, on June 13 of the same year, priest Alexander Arkhangelsky was shot in Shadrinsky district.
In the village of Verkh-Yazva, Cherdyn district, Perm province, at the beginning of September 1918, a food detachment under the command of E. I. Cherepanov killed priest Alexei Romodin on the porch of the church. Local peasants were going to bury him, but were dispersed. Around the same time, the priest of the village of Pyatigory, Father Mikhail Denisov, was shot. By order of the district Cheka, on September 19, nuns Vyrubova and Kalerina were shot, who were making their way, as official secular reports stated then, “to restore the dark masses against the power of the soviets”...
The bishops of the Orthodox Church were subjected to especially terrible persecution. Thus, on January 25, 1918, according to the old style, Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia Vladimir (Epiphany) was brutally tortured to death in Kyiv. The Bishop was taken out of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra through the All Saints Gate and brutally killed between the ramparts of the Old Pechersk Fortress, not far from Nikolskaya (later Lavrskaya) Street. Six bullet holes and several puncture wounds were found on the Metropolitan’s body.
On June 29, 1918, the Bolsheviks drowned Bishop of Tobolsk and Siberia Hermogenes (Dolganov) with a stone around his neck in the river. Archbishop Andronik (Nikolsky) of Perm was subjected to especially cruel torture. His cheeks were cut out, his eyes were gouged out, his nose and ears were cut off. Then, in such a mutilated state, he was taken around Perm, and then thrown into the river. A number of other bishops of the Orthodox Church also suffered martyrdom. Among them are the holy martyrs: archbishops - Omsk and Pavlodar Sylvester (Olshevsky), Astrakhan Mitrofan (Krasnopolsky); bishops - Balakhna Lavrenty (Knyazev), Vyazemsky Macarius (Gnevushev), Kirillovsky Varsanuphiy (Lebedev), Solikamsky Feofan (Ilmensky), Selenginsky Ephraim (Kuznetsov) and others.
Many monasteries were also subjected to severe Bolshevik persecution. So, in October 1918, the Bolsheviks plundered the Belogorsky St. Nicholas Monastery. Archimandrite Varlaam, the abbot of the monastery, in a pillowcase made of rough linen, was drowned by fanatics in the river. On October 26-27, 1918, the entire monastery complex was subjected to severe destruction. Having desecrated the throne of the temple, the persecutors took away shrines and plundered the library, as well as the monastery workshops. Some of the inhabitants of the monastery were shot, the other part was thrown into pits and filled with sewage. Some monks were taken under escort to Perm for forced labor.
As evidenced by the materials of the Special Commission under the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, “during the looting of the Tikhvin convent near Ekaterinoslav, the Red Army soldiers pestered the nuns with vile proposals and even attempted rape. Everything was destroyed and torn apart by them, the altar and the throne were stabbed with a dagger. In the abbess's cell, the image of the Savior and the Mother of God was pierced with bayonets, and holes were made in place of the mouth and lit cigarettes were placed in them. The same blasphemy was carried out in one of the rural churches of the Bakhmut district of the Ekaterinoslav province, and under the desecrated icon of the Savior there was an inscription: “Smoke, comrade, while we are here: if we leave, you won’t smoke.”
Repressions against the clergy continued in subsequent years. So, on August 5, 1919, near the city of Lubny, 17 monks of the Mgar Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery were shot. The monastery was plundered and desecrated, and was destroyed.
Many monasteries were officially liquidated by the new authorities. Thus, according to data at the end of 1920, 673 monasteries were destroyed in the country, and in 1921 another 49. True, some monasteries managed to temporarily adapt to new conditions. Many monasteries were officially registered as agricultural artels, which gave them the opportunity to continue to exist for several more years. However, by the end of the 1920s. Almost all such “artels”, which actually continued to exist as real monasteries, were liquidated under various pretexts by the Soviet government. A huge number of monks and nuns found themselves on the streets and were forced to eke out a miserable existence. In just a few years, in Russia and then in the USSR, the institution of monasticism, which had been created over many centuries through the efforts of thousands of Russian ascetics, was virtually liquidated.
According to the publicist D. Sokolov, “the question of the total number of clergy killed by the Bolsheviks during the Civil War still remains unclear, or at least controversial.” According to some sources, in 1918, 827 priests and monks were shot, in 1919 - 19, and 69 were imprisoned. According to other sources, however, in 1918 alone, 3,000 clergy were shot, and other types of repression were applied to 1,500. In 1919, 1,000 clergy were shot and 800 fell victims to other punitive measures. By the end of 1919, in the Perm diocese alone, 2 bishops, 51 priests, 36 monks, 5 deacons and 4 psalm-readers were killed.
Hegumen Damascene (Orlovsky) provides interesting data in this regard. By September 20, 1918, official information was submitted to the Local Council and the Supreme Church Administration, according to which there were 97 people killed for the faith and the Church. At the same time, the names and official positions of 73 killed were accurately established, and the names of 24 people were unknown by this time. 118 people were under arrest.
The number of lay people who fell victims of the Red Terror is almost impossible to accurately calculate. For example, on February 8, 1918, a religious procession in Voronezh was shot. Representatives of the delegation of parishioners, who asked the authorities for the release of Bishop Hermogenes of Tobolsk, were brutally tortured.
In fairness, it should be noted that most of the above facts testifying to atrocities against representatives of the clergy and laity were manifestations of aggression of a cruel crowd propagated by revolutionaries, that is, arbitrariness. However, the Bolshevik government actually pandered to the base instincts of the crowd, as if covering up vile murders and abuse of the innocent, trying not to interfere in what was happening. One could even say that the Soviet government approved of these numerous murders. The reprisals against the clergy were encouraged by Soviet leaders and declared “a matter of honor, pride and heroism.” IN AND. Lenin, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, also actually approved of repressions against the clergy and recommended in secret directives to the chairman of the Cheka F.E. Dzerzhinsky, under any pretext, to shoot as many representatives of the Orthodox clergy as possible.
In particular, on May 1, 1919, Lenin sent a secret document to Dzerzhinsky. In it, he demanded “to put an end to priests and religion as quickly as possible.” The Bolshevik leader believed that members of the clergy should be “arrested as counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs, shot mercilessly and everywhere. And as much as possible." In fact, the leader of the Soviet state called for the murder of clergy. In addition, in the same document, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars gave a number of unambiguous instructions regarding monasteries and churches. “Churches,” Lenin ordered Dzerzhinsky, “are subject to closure. The temple premises should be sealed and turned into warehouses.”
During the years of the Red Terror, murders of Orthodox clergy and laity became completely commonplace. The hitherto unprecedented desecration of Orthodox churches, desecration of icons and honorable relics, as well as the complete destruction of Orthodox churches also gained enormous scope. As follows from the materials of the Special Commission under the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, “in the Kharkov province, in the temple built at the Borki station in memory of the rescue of the Royal Family in a train crash, the Bolsheviks, led by Dybenko, blasphemed and robbed together with their mistresses for three days in a row. Wearing hats with cigarettes in their teeth, they cursed Jesus Christ, the Mother of God, tore sacred vestments into pieces, pierced with a bayonet the famous icon of the Savior by Makovsky; in one of the aisles of the temple they built a latrine.”
Already during the Civil War, as well as subsequently, facts related to the desecration by the new authorities of the honest relics of the holy saints of God became unprecedentedly widespread. In particular, on April 11, 1919, at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, on the initiative of the Bolshevik government, the relics of the greatest Russian saint, St. Sergius of Radonezh, were opened. An unprecedented blasphemy was carried out in the presence of the presidium and members of the local provincial executive committee, representatives of the Communist Party, members of the so-called “Technical Commission for the opening of relics,” representatives of volosts and districts, doctors, representatives of the Red Army, believers, members of trade unions and the clergy. The perpetrators of this heinous act dismantled the shrine containing the relics of the saint. Everything that happened was captured on film. After the recording was shown to the “leader of the world proletariat,” he exclaimed with satisfaction that he had watched this film with great pleasure. During the period from February 1, 1919 to September 28, 1920, in the territory controlled by the Bolsheviks, 63 public openings of holy relics were carried out by the new authorities.
Persecution of the Church in the early 1920s.
In 1921-1922 In Russia, tormented and exhausted after the bloody Civil War, an artificially created famine broke out. It covered a total of 35 provinces of European Russia with a population of about 90 million people. The consequences of the famine were used by the Bolshevik authorities to initiate another round of persecution of the Orthodox Church. Thus, already on February 23, 1922, the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR “On the procedure for the confiscation of church valuables” was promulgated. According to this document, the Church had to transfer to special authorized bodies of the Soviet government all the valuables at its disposal, as well as liturgical objects.
Naturally, believing Orthodox Christians reacted extremely painfully to yet another Bolshevik innovation directed against Orthodoxy. In particular, on March 15, 1922, mass unrest occurred in the city of Shuya. A detachment of armed Red Army soldiers surrounded the local Resurrection Cathedral, and believers sounded the alarm. Hundreds of people ran to the square in front of the temple at the call of the bell. The people, enraged by the blasphemy, began throwing stones, logs, pieces of ice, etc. at the soldiers. In order to pacify the popular uprising, the authorities were forced to transfer two trucks with machine guns. The cathedral's bell tower was first fired upon with machine guns, and then fire was opened on the crowd. According to the investigation, from the believers side only those registered in the hospital turned out to be eleven people, of whom five were killed; on the part of the Red Army - three people were seriously beaten and twenty-four lightly beaten. The scale of the popular protest of believers in Shuya was striking in its scale: only according to official data from the GPU (most likely underestimated), approximately a quarter of the city’s residents came to the square.
Similar events occurred in other settlements of Russia. The most massive demonstrations of believers against the confiscation of church valuables took place in Smolensk, Orel, Vladimir and Kaluga. In total, between 1922 and 1923, 1,414 clashes between authorities and believers were recorded. In general, by the end of 1922, the Bolshevik authorities confiscated sacred objects and jewelry from the Church for an amount unprecedented at that time - over 4.5 million gold rubles.
Simultaneously with the process of confiscation of church valuables, trials of the clergy began, which took place throughout Russia. Thus, on May 29, 1922, Metropolitan Veniamin (Kazan) of Petrograd and Gdov was arrested. He was accused of resisting the seizure of church valuables by the authorities. On July 5, Bishop Veniamin, and with him nine other clergy, were sentenced to death. For six of them, execution was commuted to imprisonment. The rest of the clergy, including Bishop Veniamin himself, were taken from prison on the night of August 12-13, 1922 and shot near Petrograd. The exact place where the archpastor was killed is unknown. According to some reports, it could have happened at the Porokhovye station of the Irinovskaya railway. Now Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd and Gdov is glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church in the host of holy martyrs.
In connection with resistance to the seizure of church values, the Bolsheviks initiated 250 cases. By mid-1922, 231 trials had taken place, with 732 people in the dock, many of whom were subsequently shot. In 1923, the VI Department of the Investigation Department of the GPU handled 301 investigative cases, 375 people were arrested and 146 people were sent abroad. In 1922, 2,691 Orthodox priests, 1,962 monks, 3,447 nuns and novices were shot in court alone. There were also numerous extrajudicial reprisals against representatives of the Orthodox clergy and laity, which largely outnumbered the number of those repressed by the courts. Thus, in the same year of 1922, at least 15 thousand representatives of the clergy were killed.
Results
The main result of the Bolshevik persecution of the Church during the Civil War and in the first post-war years was the unprecedented ruin of the Church. So, for example, entire districts of a number of dioceses, such as Perm, Stavropol, Kazan, were completely deprived of clergy.
Relations between the state and the Russian Orthodox Church have always been characterized as unstable and undulating - each new ruler had his own attitude towards faith and it was his attitude that became decisive. Some kings gave lands to parishes and exempted them from taxes, others took everything, but it was the rule of the Bolsheviks that marked a terrible period in the history of Orthodoxy. Bloody persecution - this is how the 20th century in the USSR can be characterized for the Russian Orthodox Church.
Monastic shop. CHOOSE a blessed gift for the soul
DISCOUNTS until the end of the week
The beginning of the infringement of Christianity in Rus'
It is generally accepted that the persecution of Orthodoxy in Russia began in 1917 with the Red Revolution and the arrival of the Bolsheviks, but this is not so. The Orthodox were ridiculed and experienced difficulties much earlier and throughout the history of their existence, however, those problems were temporary and usually ended with a change of ruler.
Persecution of the church began with the reign of Emperor Alexei (father of Peter I)
The clergy believes that the terror of the Russian Orthodox Church began much earlier, during the reign of Peter I and continued throughout the entire 18th century, and the Bolsheviks were only a consequence of those persecutions, and their power became the most destructive.
On a note! Many fathers believe that the revolution is a punishment for the imperial court, which neglected faith in God.
The first signs of persecution can be found by familiarizing yourself with the reforms of various rulers of Rus':
- In 1503, under the reign of John III, the Russian Orthodox Church was deprived of its monastic possessions.
- In 1721, under Peter I, the patriarchate was abolished and the Holy Synod was created.
- In 1730-1740 under the reign of Anna Ioannovna, there was a general reduction in the number of monks and their forced inclusion in the state army. Confiscation of property and lands belonging to monasteries.
- The accession of Elizabeth Petrovna to the throne and her reign during 1741 - 1761. brought relief to the believers, but at the same time the Freemasons strengthened at the court, which accelerated the split between the authorities and the metropolitans.
- In 1764, after the accession of Catherine the Great, more than 2/3 of all monastery farmsteads were closed, parish lands were taken into the treasury, and monastery staffs were established.
Simultaneously with tough reforms and laws that tighten the functioning of the Russian Orthodox Church, a mass of heresies are spreading in Rus' that undermine the foundations of churches and the faith of Christians in general. During the 17th-18th centuries, not only was a huge heritage destroyed, but numerous clergy were executed or sent into exile, starting with Patriarch Nikon, who was deprived of his status and sent into exile, where he died in 1666.
The creation of the Holy Synod significantly influenced the position of the church in the state. As a result of its creation, leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church were subjected to secular trials, and all cases of defense of Orthodoxy and resistance to Protestantism were classified as criminal and political. Many monks, hierarchs and clerics were subjected to torment and torture, sent into exile and died a violent death.
Theologians are mostly inclined to believe that persecution began with the reign of Emperor Alexei Mikhailovich, when Russia began to slowly succumb to the influence of Western Europe. As you know, it was the Catholics and Protestants of Europe who were categorically dissatisfied with the existing interaction between the clergy and the authorities in the empire, so they took a lot of steps to destroy it.
Read about other religions:
The history of persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church in the twentieth century
Any persecution always began with lies and slander. If in the first centuries the lie about cannibalism among Christians was widespread, then in Soviet times there was an opinion that believers were narrow-minded and stupid people who wanted to overthrow socialism and bring capitalism to the country. The intelligentsia waged an active struggle against believers - they fought against faith with poems by Mayakovsky and Bedny, films by Eisenstein, and stories by Gorky.
The Soviet government viewed religion as a social relic
Moreover, much worse was the inaction of all other representatives of this educated class. Many churches were closed, hundreds of people were killed, all valuables were taken away and more than 1000 members of the clergy were exiled, and the creative intelligentsia simply tried not to notice this.
The main reasons for persecution in the USSR can be called:
- Fear of government officials to lose influence or share it with the Russian Orthodox Church.
- Fear of losing power due to possible anti-revolutionary activities of the church.
Fear of losing influence on the people led the Bolsheviks to the decision to destroy religious organizations. They succeeded in this - no one persecuted Christians so sophisticatedly: reproach, discredit, denunciations, arrests, torture, hard labor, executions. At the same time, the communists not only fought from the outside - they did a huge amount of work to infiltrate and disintegrate the parishes from the inside.
Lenin period
Lenin's position in relation to the church is quite transparent - he considered religion to be the opium of the people and called for a fight against religious prejudices. His main idea was to fight with “quiet methods” - propaganda and inciting the population against the clergy. He viewed faith as a religious prejudice and sought to raise the general consciousness of the masses so that they would independently begin to fight the Russian Orthodox Church. This allowed him to somewhat hide his positions and not attract loud attention from the public, which at that time did not yet submit so unconditionally to the highest authority.
In 1917, all land resources owned by the Russian Orthodox Church were nationalized in accordance with the decree “On Land”. The clergy, for their part, sought to occupy a privileged position and at the Council of December 2, 1917, adopted the corresponding provisions, however, the Bolsheviks refused to agree with them and mutual antagonism intensified. Already in February 1918, the board adopted the Decree “On the separation of church from state and school,” which deprived the church of property rights and consolidated the secular character of the country.
During the reign of V.I. Lenin also faces a campaign to uncover the relics - targeted actions to destroy valuables.
Seizure of church valuables
The civil war and the general religiosity of the people prevented active actions of the communists against the faith and there were no high-profile campaigns to seize property, although it was during the Civil War that a lot of bloody clashes between the clergy and the army took place. After the end of the revolution and war, already at the end of the 1920s, the process of destroying the Russian Orthodox Church began again, but this time it did not stop and almost destroyed it in the USSR. Impunity led to an attack on the peasantry, its partial humiliation through collectivization, and sharply increased anti-church terror. During this period, the number of those arrested for their faith was 3 times higher than the number of those repressed during the Civil War.
Stalin period
Stalin, like his teacher Lenin, believed that the destruction of the Church was an important and necessary condition for the formation of the Soviet leadership. Although initially the struggle for international recognition, attempts to bring the country out of a deep crisis (NEP policy) somewhat weakened the persecution. In 1922 - 1927 there was a noticeable pause in matters of religion.
At this time, the GPU began its work - the state political administration, whose activities were the deliberate discrediting and decomposition of the Church from within. Under Stalin's rule, Trotsky's plan (it dates back to 1922) began to be put into action and its result was the emergence of a renovationist clergy - figureheads introduced reforms, trying to make churches and parishes more modern (according to them), but in fact they brought confusion and subjugated the clergy communist party.
In 1929, the campaign for the total destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church began again.
In the 1920s and 1930s, most churches were rural, and active collectivization simply destroyed them, as well as possible defenders of the faith. Along with the destruction, robberies and destruction of parishes, clergy are also destroyed - more than 10,000 clergy were arrested, exiled to Siberia or shot. Rural priests, even those who were loyal to the Soviet regime, were destroyed (after 1929, every third one was shot), the entire clergy was enrolled as counter-revolutionaries.
Times of Revolution and Civil War
Despite all the efforts of the Bolsheviks, in December 1937, during a survey of the population, more than 58% (2/3 of rural and 1/3 of urban) admitted themselves to be believers, despite the risk of arrest and execution. In the closed documentation of the communists of that time, only 10% of the population was recognized as atheists, despite 20 years of anti-religious activity. After such statistics, Stalin decides to conduct a repressive campaign against such anti-Soviet elements.
As a result of the arrests, the unwanted authorities were sent to prison for 8 and 10 years, and most of the clergy were executed. The campaign lasted from August 1937 to the spring of 1938 and brought terrifying results - more than 32,000 believers were arrested, half of them were executed. The Great Patriotic War and the subsequent years of reconstruction brought a relaxation of terror.
Stalin's rule was characterized by extreme cruelty in general: the bloody imposition of Soviet power by exterminating all dissenters or those suspected of anti-state activities led to the almost complete destruction of the peasantry (which was the main stronghold of the Russian Orthodox Church), the intelligentsia and the clergy.
Khrushchev period
Khrushchev's coming to power not only did not ease the pressure on the RPU, but, on the contrary, marked a new wave of terror. It was Nikita Sergeevich who made the famous promise to show the last priest on TV, because by 1980 he promised to build a pure communist regime in the USSR. The only difference between Khrushchev’s persecutions and Stalin’s was the absence of blood, since Nikita Sergeevich chose economic and propaganda methods of struggle.
Propaganda in 1953-1964 reached unprecedented proportions. As a result of active actions of the state apparatus during the reign of Khrushchev:
- The number of monasteries decreased by 4 times, and the number of parishes by 2 times.
- 5 of the 8 seminaries that opened after the war were closed.
- 5-6 books with anti-religious content were published per day (!).
- Believers were registered as dangerous social elements.
- The monks of the Pochaev Lavra were forcibly removed and registered in mental hospitals. Believers were forcibly treated with psychotropic drugs.
- Defenders and people devoted to the faith were thrown into prison and tortured in an attempt to turn them into renunciants.
- More than 200 ministers renounced their faith and were anathematized.
- 1,234 people were convicted on religious grounds.
Despite the active efforts of the authorities (anti-religious propaganda was incredibly powerful in those years) and the loss of half of the property (by 1966, out of 13,478 churches in the country, only 7,523 remained), as well as many casualties, the religiosity of the population did not decrease. According to parishes, in these years, on the contrary, the number of rituals performed has increased.
Persecution became a litmus test for many: some gave their lives and freedom for the privilege of being called a Christian, while others chose to renounce the Savior Christ and become traitors, serving a destructive and bloody power.
The current situation and the danger of new persecution
The collapse of the USSR brought freedom to the Russian Orthodox Church and returned its numerous property. For 10-15 years after the schism, the church existed peacefully and restored lost churches and monasteries. However, for several years now, public attacks on the Russian Orthodox Church have resumed, in which the direction and ideological basis are clearly visible.
Despite the strength of Christianity in Russia, Bolshevism bore fruit and today almost half of Russians declare themselves atheists, screaming about the violation of their freedoms. Christianity actually limits a person, but these restrictions act for the good, they strive to reduce the anger of the human heart and its lust.
It should be understood that history is cyclical and it is quite possible that atheistic sentiments in society may soon bring a new round of persecution of Christians. The world has traditionally resisted the light of God's love. Christ himself predicted suffering for the faith, and every Christian today should be ready to give his life for Him.
Persecution of the Church in Russia in the 20th century
In the twentieth century at the Local Council of 1917–1918. the patriarchate in the Russian Church was restored. The first patriarch was the one elected by the Moscow Council Metropolitan Tikhon (Bellavin).
The Local Council of 1917–1918, held in Moscow, began its activities in conditions of obvious oppression of faith by the Provisional Government(ban on teaching the Law of God in educational institutions, transferring the premises of parochial schools to the Ministry of Education, etc.). The Council ended in conditions of civil war and war against the Orthodox Church, openly declared by the Bolshevik authorities
- separation of Church and state,
- nationalization of all church property,
- mass repressions against the clergy,
- closing of churches
The misfortune that befell the Church contributed to a special unanimity among the participants of the Local Council. The main thing that the Council managed to accomplish was restoration of the patriarchate. From the moment of his election, Saint Tikhon bore the heavy cross of patriarchal service in the conditions of the widespread departure of the people from the faith and the fierce struggle of the Soviet regime against the Church.
Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church was carried out by the Soviet government
and the Provisional Government
Patriarch Tikhon in one of his first messages stated that P The Orthodox Church is not a participant in the political struggle; The saint ordered the clergy to refrain from any political actions. Guarding this position, His Holiness the patriarch refused to convey the blessing to one of the leaders of the White movement. But the Bolsheviks viewed the Church as one of the main opponents and declared the entire clergy counter-revolutionary.
The first victims of the ongoing struggle against the Church were those who were brutally murdered in Tsarskoye Selo in October 1917 Archpriest John Kochurov and shot in Kyiv in January 1918 Metropolitan of Kyiv Vladimir (Epiphany). Patriarch Tikhon in February 1918 issued a message with a sharp tone, in which he excommunicated all those who shed innocent blood from church communion and called on all the faithful children of the Church to stand up for its defense.
During the civil war, many clergy, monks and nuns were brutally tortured:
- they were crucified on the Royal Doors,
- cooked in cauldrons with boiling resin,
- scalped
- strangled with stoles,
- “communed” with straightened lead,
- drowned in ice holes,
- impaled
In the summer of 1918, the Royal Family was killed in Yekaterinburg: the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna and their five children - Tatyana, Olga, Maria, Anastasia, Alexei. They were killed as a symbol of Orthodox Russia and divine establishment of royal power. At the same time, the Empress's sister, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, died at the hands of assassins. His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon was not afraid to publicly condemn the execution of the Tsar and his family and blessed the clergy to pray for their repose.
The imperial family was shot as a symbol of Orthodox Russia
During the years of severe famine in the Volga region in 1921–1922, the authorities tried to crush the Church: while the Orthodox Church actively participated in the transfer of aid to the famine-stricken, by order of V.I. Lenin, the confiscation of all church valuables was announced due to the fact that the Church was hiding from suffering people their wealth. The new rulers of the country were not concerned about the suffering of the inhabitants of the starving areas. Them it was necessary to destroy the Church and take possession of its values to use the proceeds to start a world revolution.
The implementation of Lenin's instructions for the forced confiscation of church valuables met with resistance from believers. Many laymen and clergy died during the seizure campaign. Show trials were organized in different cities. Only 14 death sentences were imposed in Moscow and Petrograd. Among those executed in this case Metropolitan of Petrograd Benjamin (Kazan)). When asked by the tribunal about himself, he said: “What can I say about myself? I don’t know what you will tell me in your verdict: life or death. But no matter what you say, I will cross myself and say: glory to God for everything.” At this time, Patriarch Tikhon was also arrested, and a trial was being prepared against him with an inevitable death sentence. But under the influence of foreign policy requirements, the Bolsheviks were forced to release the Patriarch.
Over the course of several years of his reign, Saint Tikhon was able to create the basis for the development of church life in new conditions - without patronage and protection from the state; he was able to preserve the unity of the Russian Church, which the Bolsheviks tried to split with the hands of some liberal clergy who made a deal with conscience and power - so-called renovationists . By participating in divine services and publishing patriarchal messages, Saint Tikhon strengthened the believers and with his fearlessness left an example of the faithful confession of Christ. In 1989, Patriarch Tikhon was canonized.
The Bolsheviks tried to split the church with the hands of liberal clergy
During the persecution of the Church, the outskirts of the country were covered with numerous concentration camps. One of the most famous is Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp(abbreviated as SLON), created by the Bolsheviks in 1923. Former The Solovetsky Monastery became a place of exile and death of hundreds of people, among whom were the best representatives of the Russian clergy, intelligentsia, and peasantry.
Solovki was considered the most terrible place quarantine company on Anzer Island, located in the Golgotha-Crucifixion Skete. Sick prisoners died from cold, hunger, abuse and disease. The prophecy given two hundred years before the creation of the concentration camp came true, when the Mother of God appeared to Hieromonk Job on Mount Golgotha-Crucifixion and predicted: “This mountain will henceforth be called Golgotha, and a church and the Crucifixion monastery will be built on it, and it will be whitened with innumerable suffering.”
The mass extermination of the clergy and laity, organized by the Soviet government, continued until the “reign” of N. S. Khrushchev, when the nature of the persecution changed - from now on they were carried out primarily ideologically.
Physical persecution of the Soviet government against the Russian Church occurred before Khrushchev
In the anniversary year of 2000, the Russian Church glorified the feat of those who suffered for their faith from the Soviet regime. But since it is impossible to restore the names of all the victims and find out the details of their feat, they were canonized as Council of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
- Go to church!- One of the partners once told me when it came to a decrease in income in one of the business areas. Then he spent half an hour talking about the decline of morals, about the fact that businessmen rarely go to church, and the situation needs to be somehow corrected: after all, only the church is capable of uniting the nation, improving personal life and, naturally, improving things in business. At some point, I couldn’t understand: in front of me was a forty-year-old IT specialist or a seventy-year-old grandmother?!
In fact, I have a positive attitude towards religion and I myself am Orthodox. I just never considered the church as a tool for solving my personal life problems, and especially as a tool for improving business processes. Religion for me - this is a corner of calm where you can renounce the everyday bustle and reflect on eternal themes (forgiveness, love, help).
Church ministers seem to me to be specialists who can help just find this peace of mind and teach us to renounce everyday life for the sake of these few minutes a day of bright thoughts. I may be wrong, but how can someone really help me make business decisions who has no idea what a modern online business is, let alone the nuances? And in general, it’s strange when priests try on the image of consultants on all issues relating to the lives of believers, especially business and politics.
This is what an ordinary priest looked like in the 40s of the last century. Shows the way to the partisans
Religion - opium for the people. After all, what a capacious phrase! Indeed, when a person is absolutely deprived of the ability to take responsibility for his own life, he subconsciously looks for someone who will, as it were, accept this responsibility. Let's say a man doesn't have the willpower to divorce his wife. He's a weakling in life. I went to church, asked the priest for advice, and he answered that, they say, throw away your bad thoughts and live in peace with your wife. What will a person do? Most likely, he will continue to tolerate his boring wife.
Religious figures and USSR Secretary General Comrade Leonid Brezhnev
Or politics. In any secular state, the church is definitely not a place for agitation, and church ministers cannot be agitators, but in Russia things work differently! No, no, and the priest will say a few words about the stability built by Petrov-Ivanov-Sidorov. No, no, and he will praise the governor, who spent money on a new temple. In the Caucasus, everything is clear - There can be only one choice, and we will all vote for such and such a person!
So that's what's interesting. In the USSR they fought against religion, in every possible way preventing the spread of the influence of the church on the population. Still, most of the priests were not born in the USSR (let’s say, the clergy of the 40s and 50s), and they also remembered the Tsar and the Fatherland. And these were huge risks for the newly born country. What if the priest begins to teach young people that Lenin - it's just a bald guy, it's communism - something secondary (compared to faith, for example)? And if tomorrow there really is an order to go and kill opponents of communism, what will such believers say?! That they cannot kill because their faith prohibits it? In addition, priests in the Soviet era were not agitators.
It turns out that religion was banned in the USSR because the country’s leadership simply had no real leverage over the church? It was difficult to hook priests on the financial needle back then: consumerism did not develop at all (and was actually prohibited in the USSR), and, accordingly, no one demanded the construction of new churches. Temples were turned into warehouses, gyms, concert venues or clubs. The Central Committee of the CPSU tried in every possible way to destroy the very channel of communication between an uncontrolled small group of priests and a large group of believers.
Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ (Cathedral of Christ the Savior) after an explosion in the 30s of the last century
Nowadays temples are being built on every available corner. The number of Orthodox priests alone exceeds 33,000 (this is only priests and deacons), and the total number of personnel supporting the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia, I think, is significantly higher than 100,000 people. The state encourages church activities in every possible way, both financially and through its decisions regarding the allocation of land, for example. It is obvious that anger has changed not even to mercy, but to generosity.
Modern priests live much better than their colleagues from the USSR
It turns out that the connection between the church and the people has not only been restored, but has also strengthened significantly since the times of the USSR. What changed? Is the state concerned about the peace of mind of its citizens, or has an approach been found in which the church and the government act together? It turns out that the increased level of consumerism has added to the priests’ desire to live better: to have Mercedes, villas, yachts? And the increased demand for goods also gives rise to a very specific supply of these goods in exchange for something?
How do you feel about religion in general and the Russian Orthodox Church in particular? Do you often attend church: do you take your family to the service or not? And most importantly, how has the church changed since the times of the USSR? Are there any of my readers who can make a comparison?
The existing stereotypes regarding communists sometimes prevent the restoration of truth and justice on many issues. For example, it is generally accepted that Soviet power and religion are two mutually exclusive phenomena. However, there is evidence to prove the opposite.
The first years after the revolution
Since 1917, a course was taken to deprive the Russian Orthodox Church of its leading role. In particular, all churches were deprived of their lands according to the Decree on Land. However, this did not end there... In 1918, a new Decree came into force, designed to separate the church from the state and school. It would seem that this is undoubtedly a step forward on the path to building a secular state, however...
At the same time, religious organizations were deprived of the status of legal entities, as well as all buildings and structures that belonged to them. It is clear that there could no longer be any talk of any freedom in the legal and economic aspects. Further, mass arrests of clergy and persecution of believers begin, despite the fact that Lenin himself wrote that one should not offend the feelings of believers in the fight against religious prejudices.
I wonder how he imagined it?... It’s difficult to figure it out, but already in 1919, under the leadership of the same Lenin, they began to open the holy relics. Each autopsy was carried out in the presence of priests, representatives of the People's Commissariat of Justice and local authorities, and medical experts. There was even photo and video filming, but there were cases of abuse.
For example, a member of the commission spat on the skull of Savva Zvenigorodsky several times. And already in 1921-22. open robbery of churches began, which was explained by urgent social need. There was famine throughout the country, so all church utensils were confiscated in order to feed the starving people through their sale.
Church in the USSR after 1929
With the beginning of collectivization and industrialization, the issue of eradicating religion became especially acute. At this point, churches were still operating in some rural areas. However, collectivization in the countryside was to deal another devastating blow to the activities of the remaining churches and priests.
During this period, the number of arrested clergy increased threefold when compared with the years of the establishment of Soviet power. Some of them were shot, others were forever “closed” in camps. The new communist village (collective farm) was supposed to be without priests and churches.
Great Terror of 1937
As you know, in the 30s, terror affected everyone, but one cannot fail to note the particular bitterness towards the church. There are suggestions that it was caused by the fact that the 1937 census showed that more than half of the citizens in the USSR believed in God (the item on religion was deliberately included in the questionnaires). The result was new arrests - this time 31,359 “church members and sectarians” were deprived of their freedom, of which 166 bishops!
By 1939, only 4 bishops survived out of the two hundred who occupied the see in the 1920s. If previously lands and temples were taken away from religious organizations, this time the latter were simply destroyed physically. So, on the eve of 1940, there was only one church in Belarus, which was located in a remote village.
In total, there were several hundred churches in the USSR. However, this immediately begs the question: if absolute power was concentrated in the hands of the Soviet government, why did it not destroy religion completely? After all, it was quite possible to destroy all the churches and the entire episcopate. The answer is obvious: the Soviet government needed religion.
Did the war save Christianity in the USSR?
It is difficult to give a definite answer. Since the enemy invasion, certain shifts have been observed in the “power-religion” relationship, even moreover, a dialogue is being established between Stalin and the surviving bishops, but it is impossible to call it “equal”. Most likely, Stahl temporarily loosened his grip and even began to “flirt” with the clergy, since he needed to raise the authority of his own power against the backdrop of defeats, as well as achieve maximum unity of the Soviet nation.
“Dear brothers and sisters!”
This can be seen in the change in Stalin's behavior. He begins his radio address on July 3, 1941: “Dear brothers and sisters!” But this is exactly how believers in the Orthodox community, in particular priests, address parishioners. And this is very jarring against the backdrop of the usual: “Comrades!” The Patriarchate and religious organizations, at the behest of “from above,” must evacuate from Moscow. Why such “concern”?
Stalin needed the church for his own selfish purposes. The Nazis skillfully used the anti-religious practices of the USSR. They almost imagined their invasion as a Crusade that promised to free Rus' from the atheists. An incredible spiritual upsurge was observed in the occupied territories - old churches were restored and new ones were opened. Against this background, continued repression within the country could lead to disastrous consequences.
In addition, potential allies in the West were not impressed by the oppression of religion in the USSR. And Stalin wanted to enlist their support, so the game he started with the clergy is quite understandable. Religious figures of various faiths sent telegrams to Stalin about donations aimed at strengthening defense capabilities, which were subsequently widely circulated in newspapers. In 1942, “The Truth about Religion in Russia” was published in a circulation of 50 thousand copies.
At the same time, believers are allowed to publicly celebrate Easter and conduct services on the day of the Resurrection of the Lord. And in 1943, something completely out of the ordinary happens. Stalin invites the surviving bishops, some of whom he releases the day before from the camps, to choose a new Patriarch, who became Metropolitan Sergius (a “loyal” citizen who in 1927 issued an odious Declaration in which he actually agreed to “serve” the church to the Soviet regime) .
At the same meeting, he donates from the “lord’s shoulder” permission to open religious educational institutions, the creation of a Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, and transfers the former building of the residence of German ambassadors to the newly elected Patriarch. The Secretary General also hinted that some representatives of the repressed clergy could be rehabilitated, the number of parishes increased and confiscated utensils returned to churches.
However, things did not go further than hints. Also, some sources say that in the winter of 1941, Stalin gathered the clergy to hold a prayer service for the granting of victory. At the same time, the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God was flown around Moscow by plane. Zhukov himself allegedly confirmed in conversations several times that the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God was flown over Stalingrad. However, there are no documentary sources indicating this.
Some documentary filmmakers claim that prayer services were also held in besieged Leningrad, which can be completely assumed, given that there was nowhere else to wait for help. Thus, we can say with confidence that the Soviet government did not set itself the goal of completely destroying religion. She tried to make her a puppet in her hands, which could sometimes be used for gain.
BONUS
Either remove the cross or take away your party card; either a Saint or a Leader.
Of great interest not only among believers, but also among atheists are the ideas in which people strive to understand the essence of being.
