Yesterday the Protection of the Mother of God was celebrated. On this day in 1964, a plenum of the CPSU Central Committee was held, which removed Nikita Khrushchev from all posts of General Secretary. This suddenly and ingloriously ended one of the most severe persecutions in the modern history of the Russian Church. Believers immediately saw in this the obvious intercession of the Queen of Heaven, because the persecution had lasted for six years, it seemed that there would be no end to it, and indeed one day “the last priest would be shown on TV.”

The date of the official beginning of the persecution can be considered October 16, 1958, when the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted resolutions on the situation of monasteries and on the tax treatment of Church income. 12 days earlier, the Central Committee of the CPSU issued a secret decree “On the shortcomings of scientific-atheistic propaganda,” ordering all party and Soviet bodies to launch an offensive against “religious relics.”

During the persecution, the number of churches and monasteries decreased by half. More than 1,200 people were imprisoned, including several bishops. In the country of physicists and lyricists, the “Thaw”, “July Rain”, monks were put in psychiatric hospitals and pumped full of psychotropic drugs, pilgrims were subjected to violence by police and Komsomol activists, churches and priests were attacked with complete inaction and the tacit encouragement of the authorities, sometimes to disperse Residents who opposed the closure of churches had to bring in army units. The attempt to finally resolve the church issue was carried out harshly.

We recall five stories that happened during the Khrushchev persecution with famous people of the Church and vividly characterize that time. Five examples of determination. Three of them show that the persecutors, as a rule, counted on the absence of resistance, were not ready for resistance and were afraid of it. If they were opposed, they retreated, no matter how absurd and impossible this may seem in a country like the USSR. And the other two stories are that the most important and most difficult thing during persecution is the priest’s determination in the morning to perform a prayer service for those who attacked him at night, and the determination to preach in an empty church without electricity, because suddenly at least someone came , whom he does not see in the dark.

Metropolitan Nikodim. The wheels touch the ground - accelerate!

The “Seagull” of Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) is later than the car discussed below. Several years ago it was renovated for use in the motorcade of His Holiness the Patriarch on most solemn occasions. In the photo: the arrival of Patriarch Kirill at the Great Easter Vespers at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, April 15, 2012. Photo: press service of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'.

How Komsomol activists greeted the new Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod Nicodemus, recalls Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, now His Holiness the Patriarch, in the collection “Man of the Church”:

“Already at the entrance to the St. Nicholas Cathedral, at its fence, Metropolitan ZIM was met by a huge crowd of tipsy youth, blocking the path of the car. The Metropolitan’s driver, Mikhail Petrovich, a former fighter pilot who had gone through the war, a man of no timid nature, calmly asked the Bishop what to do. Vladyka reacted in a military manner - forward. Mikhail Petrovich moved the car towards the crowd. The distance was getting shorter. When a few centimeters remained, the nerves of those standing in the cordon could not stand it, they parted and the car drove into the fence of the cathedral.

Apparently, realizing that they had failed to stop the Metropolitan’s car, excited young people surrounded the car from all sides and began trying to lift it. At some point, the calm voice of Mikhail Petrovich informed the bishop that it was impossible to move further, since the car was lifted into the air. Vladyka was completely calm, concentrated, and collected. After waiting for some time, he said: “As soon as the wheels of the car touch the ground, accelerate.” There was no need to order Mikhail Petrovich a second time. As soon as the car was lowered to the ground, he stepped on the gas. The speed was low, so no one around the car was injured. But the driver’s decisive actions frightened the crowd, and they parted. With great difficulty, the car drove up to the altar entrance - there was no question of solemnly entering the temple from the main entrance, which was densely surrounded by unruly youth.”

Archimandrite Alipiy. The one who advances wins

Many stories have been preserved about the struggle of the abbot of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, Archimandrite Alypiy (Voronov), to save the monastery from closure. They are cited both in “Unholy Saints” and in the memoirs of the famous restorer Savva Yamshchikov. Many of them today, having not lived through that time, you read as historical anecdotes, smiling, how cleverly the monks went to vote in a religious procession or how the father governor besieged the Pskov paratroopers. But, probably, it was no laughing matter then. Let us give an example of simply a samurai’s willingness to sacrifice oneself. From the sermon of Pskov-Pechersk Archimandrite Nathanael (Pospelov) on the twentieth anniversary of the death of Father Alypiy:

““The one who goes on the offensive wins,” - Father Alypius brought this principle from worldly life, from the terrible times of the Great Patriotic War. However, he always followed it, especially when the question of unjust oppression of the monastery and believers arose.

When Father Alypiy burned the paper (with the personal signature of N.S. Khrushchev - ed.) about the closure of the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery in front of the “sovereign envoys,” he turned to them and said:
“I’d rather accept martyrdom, but I won’t close the monastery.”

When they came to take away the keys to the caves, he commanded his cell attendant:
- Father Cornelius, give me an ax here, we’ll chop off heads!

After these words, seeing the determination in the eyes of Father Alypius, those who came fled.”

St. Amphilochy Pochaevsky. People, drive them away!

Compiled in the Pochaev Lavra, the life of the saint recently glorified by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - St. Amphilochia of Pochaevsky - tells how he inspired pilgrims to drive away the policemen who came to close the Trinity Cathedral from the Lavra. At the time of the events, the Monk Amphilois had not yet been tonsured into the schema, which is why he is called Hieromonk Joseph:

“One day in the fall of 1962, the elder was called to the city of Brody, forty kilometers from Pochaev, to see a girl with a broken arm (St. Amphilohius was known as a good herbalist and chiropractor - ed.). He returned to the monastery through the gate on the economy side and did not see what was going on at the Trinity Cathedral. The monk had not yet had time to open the door of his cell when a novice came running to him and hurriedly told him that the cathedral was being taken away and the chief of police had already taken the keys from the governor. Father Joseph hurried to the temple. It was crowded there, and at the door of the Church there were about a dozen policemen with their commander.

The elder approached the boss and suddenly snatched a bunch of keys from his hands. Giving them to the young governor Augustine, who was standing right there, he said: “Here, take it and don’t give it to anyone.” He said to the perplexed policemen: “The bishop is the owner of the Church! Get out the stars! People, drive them out!” he addressed the local residents present. Inspired by the call of their beloved priest, people rushed to take the poles and rushed towards the police, who, in fear, rushed to run to the Holy Gates.”

Village priest John Krestyankin. Prayer for enemies

After leaving prison in 1955, priest John Krestyankin (later archimandrite, famous confessor of the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery) served in the Pskov and then in the Ryazan diocese. He, a former prisoner, was forbidden to live in Moscow. Since December 1959 he served in the Church of Sts. Cosma and Damian in the village of Letovo, Ryazan region. Very soon, the active priest began to receive anonymous letters, the authors of which, with the oath of “honest Komsomol”, threatened to hang him, the “bespectacled man,” from a lamppost. On New Year's Eve 1961, ill-wishers moved from words to deeds. This is what the biography of Father John says:

“Shadows in masks and robes entered the priest's house, located on the outskirts, not far from the church... After bullying him with a demand for the keys to the church and money, and having received the answer that he had neither of those, the enraged visitors tied his hands to his feet behind his back, they stuffed the cape into his mouth and staged a search-pogrom, accompanied by obscene language and beatings of the bound man. When the fruitless search ended, a sentence was passed - to kill the witness. Mocking the priest’s faith, he was thrown bound in front of the icons “to beg for paradise.” Lying on his side, the priest raised his eyes to the image of John the Theologian standing in the center, and lost himself in prayer. He didn’t remember how long he prayed, but when dawn broke, he heard movement in the room. Alexey (Fr. John’s assistant in construction work, who was tied up by the attackers during the attack, but managed to free himself - ed.) fell to him, thinking that the priest was dead, but, making sure that he was alive, with trembling hands he began to untwist the wire that was stuck in body. Without immediately coming to his senses, he freed the priest’s mouth from the rag. The two of them quickly put the ruined room in order, thanking the Lord: “The Lord punished me with punishment, but did not put me to death.”

And in the morning the priest served. And everyone in the church noted with surprise the unusual beginning of the service. Father began the service with a prayer of thanks and remembered his night visitors, whose names “You, Lord, weigh yourself.” And almost no one understood that he was praying for robbers who do not know what they are doing.”

Hegumen Seraphim (Tyapochkin). Prayer in the Dark

After returning from imprisonment and exile, Abbot Seraphim (Tyapochkin, later archimandrite) was so exhausted that the church council of the village of Rakitnoye, where he was assigned to the parish, grumbled with displeasure. What kind of priest is this, they sent some kind of “skeleton”... He spent the whole way to the village in the back of a truck. Everyone was sitting, he was the only one standing. No one gave up their seat to the middle-aged man, the priest. In Rakitnoye, for the first years, he lived in a cold house - he poured rusty water into a tin can, dipped crackers in this water and ate them. How did you have to serve? A story from the book “Belgorod Elder Archimandrite Seraphim (Tyapochkin)”:

“The head of the district allowed us to serve only at night, so that people would go to the collective farm and not to church. On Sunday it was allowed to serve until 9.00, and then the church was locked. Father Seraphim once told his grandson: “It’s good that he knew the service by heart, otherwise there are no candles, only a smokehouse. The church is empty. There is no one to sing, read, or blow the censer. But you can serve all night.” I asked: “Who should preach the sermon if it was empty?” To which I received the answer: “But there could be someone in the dark? I spoke for them.” It’s hard to imagine: a dark church, night, frost, and the priest is preaching a sermon and, I’m sure, crying as usual.”

At first it seemed that the death of Stalin opened an era of greater freedom for the Church. In 1954-1958. The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate regularly reports on the restoration and opening of churches. But only a small number of churches were built. Most of the church buildings remained completely or partially destroyed since the war 2. Since 1949, there has been a cautious decline in the number of operating churches. The growth in their number, which began in 1955, was insignificant and ended by 1957. Since 1959, the mass closure of churches, monasteries, and seminaries began.

Khrushchev's persecution of the Church was not a bolt from the blue. Already in 1950, articles began to appear saying that religion would not die out on its own in a socialist society, so anti-religious propaganda should be strengthened. It soon became obvious that propaganda alone was not enough. In the Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee of July 7, 1954 “On major shortcomings in scientific-atheistic propaganda and measures for its improvement,” it was noted that both the Orthodox Church and sectarians successfully attract the younger generation to the Church with skillful sermons, charity, appeals to each individual and religious literature. "As a result of the intensification of the church's activities, there is an increase in the number of citizens ... performing religious rites." The resolution called on the Ministry of Education, the Komsomol and trade unions to intensify anti-religious propaganda. However, disagreements within the leadership itself after Stalin’s death led to the fact that 4 months after the said resolution (November 10, 1954), a new Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee appeared (“On errors in carrying out scientific-atheistic propaganda among the population”), condemning arbitrariness, labeling and insulting believers and clergy during the anti-religious campaign 3. Attacks on the church subsided, and the period 1955-1957. can be considered the most “liberal” for believers after 1947, despite the fact that atheistic education was introduced in the army, and in 1957 the Yearbook of the Leningrad Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism began to be published, containing over 400 pages. The November resolution placed emphasis on scientific

atheistic education (and not on propaganda) and, probably, that is why it delayed the appearance of a magazine specifically dedicated to the propaganda of atheism among the masses: the magazine "Science and Religion", promised back in 1954, begins to be published only in 1959 and by 1978 reaches a circulation of 400 thousand copies. 4

It is interesting to note that in a more militant decree of July 1954, the church press was mentioned as a dangerous weapon against atheism in the USSR, although at that time it was limited to one monthly magazine with a circulation of 15 thousand copies. 5 None of the church publications ever went on public sale, and it was almost impossible to subscribe to them, while the annual circulation of atheist publications amounted to 800 thousand copies in 1950 alone. The resolution also obliged “to teach school subjects (history, literature, natural history, physics, chemistry, etc.) from the standpoint of atheism... to strengthen the anti-religious orientation of school curricula.” And in fact, any school textbook that appeared after the decree became even more irreconcilable towards religion than before. One could come across the following statements: “Religion is a fantastic and distorted reflection of the world in the human mind... Religion has become a means of spiritual enslavement of the masses” 6 .

And as often happens with political systems based on coercion and injustice, it was not the softer November decree, but the tougher July one that became the basis of the state’s policy towards the Church. As a result, state policy is no longer satisfied only with a multiple increase in the number of anti-religious lectures, the introduction of special compulsory courses on atheism in schools and universities, and the opening of the Institute of Scientific Atheism, but the so-called “individual work with believers” is expanding. Local party committees, Komsomol, branches of the Knowledge Society, as well as trade unions send their atheist members to believers known to them, in most cases their employees. They visit believers at home, try to convince them, and if unsuccessful, take “their cases” to a public court, where they publicly condemn their “religious backwardness” 7 .

Much effort was put into persuading some priests to defrock. Approximately two hundred priests agreed to this and became the authors of pamphlets and books containing attacks on religion, some soon receiving degrees in the field of atheism and occupying corresponding high positions in this new field 8.

At least two betrayals were especially painful for the Church: Professor Alexander Osipov from the Leningrad Theological Academy and a young theologian from the Saratov Seminary, Evgraf Duluman. On December 30, 1959, the Patriarch issues a decree of excommunication: “Former Archpriest... Osipov, former Archpriest Nikolai Spassky, former priest Pavel Darmansky

and other clergy who publicly blasphemed the name of the Lord are henceforth deprived of all communication with the Church... Evgraf Duluman and all other former lay members of the Orthodox Church who publicly blasphemed the name of the Lord are excommunicated from the Church" 9.

“Other former lay members of the Orthodox Church” are, without a doubt, those Soviet leaders and members of the CPSU who were baptized in childhood. In essence, this decree repeats the excommunication of the Soviet leadership committed by Patriarch Tikhon in 1918, and for those excommunicated then this act was noticeably painful, since it erected an insurmountable barrier between believers and the Soviet leadership, dividing everyone into “them” and “us,” a boundary at a much deeper level than is usually drawn between the government and the people. The regime responded with a new intensification of religious persecution in 1960-1962. After 1959, about 7 thousand churches were closed, and both creators of the post-war state policy towards the Church - Metropolitan Nikolai and Karpov (chairman of the SDROC) - were fired in 1960. On January 10, 1960, the CPSU Central Committee called for increased anti-religious propaganda, and later that month, Brezhnev, Kosygin, Suslov and Mikoyan attended a congress of the Knowledge Society 10 .

A curious picture of the struggle of believers for the Church and the changing attitude of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church to this issue is provided by a comparison of the consolidated reports of the Council for 1955 and for 1960-1962. “During 1955, the Council received 616 complaints” from believers and clergy about various types of local oppression, including 137 petitions for the restoration of churches - most of them taken away from communities in recent years for grain, clubs, etc. - which “on 124 complaints are more than the total number of complaints in the previous year. Of the 137 petitions for the opening or restoration of churches, only 41 were satisfied, i.e., about 30% of the petitions. Complaints about attempts by local authorities to interfere in the internal life of the Church are often repeated and, as a rule, receive a satisfactory resolution from the Council: the prohibition of priests without special permission to serve in the homes of believers at their invitation and where there are no registered churches, the prohibition of believers from gathering for joint prayer in one of the houses of believers and invite a priest from time to time; the requirement that parishes submit lists of their believers to the regional executive committee. The SDRPTs recognized all these demands as illegal in 1955 and canceled them. As you know, in the 60s. and later these actions will become “legal”. Speaking about red tape in resolving some conflicts, the author of the Help points to the obstruction of local Soviets. For example, in the village. Popovka, Sumy region, the local commissioner allowed believers who were going to worship in a private house to buy it and turn it into a permanent house of worship. The regional executive committee demanded that it be moved to the cemetery, since there is a school next to the house, but the regional executive committee refused to allocate the land to the community. The case dragged on for a whole year, until

was not positively resolved by the intervention of the local commissioner and the support of the central SDRPC.

A different picture is observed in 1959 and subsequent years. We have already cited the general negative dynamics of these years in the previous chapter. Here we will dwell only on some details. In one year, from January 1, 1960 to January 1, 1961, the total number of Orthodox churches in the country decreased by 1392, from 12,963 to 11,571. Proportionally, Belarus suffered the most, where the number of operating churches decreased by 212 - from 944 to 732 ; quantitatively - Ukraine - from 8207 to 7462. Not a single temple was opened for the entire year. In the RSFSR, the number of churches was reduced by 258 (2842 in 1960 and 2584 in 1961), and even more in areas that were not subject to fascist occupation; for example, in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - from 40 parishes in 1960 to 27 in 1962, in the Kirov region - from 79 to 56, etc. In fairness, it must be added that before 1959 the reduction in operating churches - in any case case, in areas where there could be no talk of eliminating the “legacy of the occupiers,” it could be justified by the migration of the population to the cities and the reduction of the rural population. So, if the absolute reduction in rural churches resumes in 1957 (11,439 churches on January 1, 1957, 11,363 in 1958, etc.), in cities and workers’ settlements the number of churches grows for another two years, though , not in accordance with the increase in urban population (1534 in cities and 571 in workers' settlements by January 1, 1959). However, then an absolute reduction begins (respectively: to 1530 and 559 on January 1, 1960, etc.), although, as is known, migration continued further. The situation with the clergy was even more catastrophic. In addition to the natural decline, which, according to Patriarch Alexy, was replenished only by 10-12% by graduates of seminaries and theological academies, only in 1960 and 1961. the number of registered clergy decreased by 1,432 and even more 11. Neither the reduction in the number of operating churches nor the deregistration of the clergy was justified by the rest of the church statistics. As shown in the previous chapter, before administrative measures were taken against potential seminarians and seminaries were closed, the number of seminarians grew and peaked in 1959. Statistics for baptisms, funerals and weddings in 1961 remained approximately at the level of 1960, despite the decrease in the number temples and other types of pressure. In 26 regions and autonomous republics of the RSFSR, the percentage of baptized people fluctuated from a minimum figure of 9.0% of newborns in the Kurgan region. up to 60% in Yaroslavl; church burials - from 7% in the Arkhangelsk region. up to 79% in Kirovskaya; church weddings - from 0.2% in the Arkhangelsk region. up to 11% in Gorkovskaya. This is if you trust the statistics of the SDRPTS. In fact, the mandatory recording of passports and other things when performing rituals had not yet been introduced, and the increasing persecution of believers clearly pushed the latter to hide their

to the extent possible, performing church rites and sacraments 12. This is especially true for marriages, since it was mainly about young people, for whom the publicity of a church wedding could result in tangible trauma in their future professional life. More indicative are the numerous reports on pilgrimages, the growing influx of believers to churches on Easter, etc. Thus, a pilgrimage from Kursk to a recognized miraculous healing spring near the Kursk root hermitage (which is 35 km from the city) attracted 8 thousand pilgrims in 1951. (minimum number) to 20 thousand in 1956 and 15 thousand in 1958, which was followed by a ban by the district council on January 26, 1959, and then the pilgrims were actively persecuted by the police (but it was not possible to finally stop the pilgrimages, despite to demolish and even cement the source) 13.

Why were priests deregistered? Here are examples. Priest V.I. Emelyanov from the city of Slobodskoye, Kirov diocese, was deregistered by the local commissioner in December 1957 for the following “crimes”: he allowed the sale in the church of photographs of the Easter procession and divine service in his church as a souvenir to parishioners, as well as Unction oils. From this example, we can conclude about the real reason for the persecution and where it came from. It turns out that between 1929 and 1938. V.I. Emelyanov spent 8 years in concentration camps and since 1939 was forced to work as a carpenter, plasterer, etc. His daughters are one a teacher, the other a doctor. A teacher who is the daughter of a priest in the same city is not allowed 14.

Another priest, ordained in 1956 and deregistered in 1961, also had a “tarnished biography” - he was a repatriate from Manchuria, born and raised in a white emigrant environment. The official pretexts are absurd, and he rejects them in a letter to Karpov: “Forcibly baptized... the driver of a church car. The children went with the star to glorify Christ. The son serves at the altar.” In fact, the driver is 21 years old and he confirmed in writing to the authorities that he was baptized at his own request and request; the priest's children actually traveled with the star to the homes of the priests and deacons of the parish to wish them a Merry Christmas; the son and another boy did not serve, but stood at the liturgy in the altar at the invitation of the rector - from him and the demand 15. The Council's reaction is unknown.

The Patriarchate received numerous complaints from the localities, group and individual. In the archives of the SDRPTS there is such a complaint from an “initiative group of believers” in Moscow, calling on the patriarch to “raise his authoritative voice, asking our government to stop all the violence committed everywhere... by the [Council] commissioners for Church affairs and other newly-minted inquisitors over church communities, from whom, one after another, church buildings are taken away and closed... We have collected numerous materials about already closed churches, monasteries, and theological schools.

details and minute data about the “mechanism” of these forced closures. ... no dishonest waste paper with scrawled “signatures” forcibly taken from cowardly, intimidated bishops will whitewash them [i.e. e. inquisitors]... and if you are powerless to protect our Church from destruction, then we will be forced to submit all this factual data about the physical extermination of our Church... to the UN forum 16.

The Patriarch was not silent. He tried to act - petitioned for an end to the persecution, at least since 1958. Other bishops tried to act in the same direction, especially Metropolitan Nikolai Krutitsky (Yarushevich), but to no avail.

The wise and quite diplomatic Metropolitan Nikolai, noticing the thickening of anti-religious clouds and, apparently, foreseeing a new wave of persecution, asked Karpov back in January 1958 the question of why the authorities do not allow the election of clergy to the Soviets, as is the case in other countries." people's democracy." He says that foreigners also ask about this, and draws the prospect of the Soviet government benefiting from speeches by the clergy from the rostrum of the Supreme Council in defense of peace and in support of Soviet foreign policy. Karpov is surprised, why would this happen all of a sudden? After all, this question had never been raised by clergy before 17. And the answer is quite clear: it would be more difficult for the authorities to launch a campaign of intense persecution against the Church when its representatives are in the legislative bodies, in plain sight.

The Patriarch sought a meeting with Khrushchev for several years to raise the issue of persecution. According to all data, including the statements of the patriarch in 1959-1961, the meeting did not take place. But in Karpov’s report on a conversation with the patriarch at his dacha in Odessa on September 10, 1958, it is said that the patriarch asked “whether he could expect a positive resolution of the questions that he left at the reception with N. S. Khrushchev in May of this year. G.?". We are talking about transferring the printing house to the Church, since its orders were fulfilled by state printing houses late and reluctantly; about the relocation of residents from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, since the construction of houses for them using church funds is being delayed; and about the opening of a number of churches, about which, apparently, the patriarch promised to take care of the believers, since, in his words, this is “the most pressing issue, putting him ... in an uncomfortable position.” Karpov immediately refuses the printing house, but promises that church orders will be executed more punctually. The resettlement of the laity promises to begin in six months. Regarding churches, he answers very vaguely that “10-12 places have been selected, for which coordination is underway with local Soviet authorities.” Nothing came of it. The 1959 document states: “P. Alexy’s request to open 13 churches throughout the USSR was rejected” 18.

And then Karpov goes on the offensive. Accuses the bishops and the church workshops subordinate to them of hiding income, reducing income from candles and selling prices for them, allegedly in order to pay less tax to the state. Requires a reduction in the number of monasteries (the number of which with monasteries is 63, which is 38 less than in 1946). He accuses the Church of “in pursuit of the number of ordinations... they ordain as priests... persons... who have returned from exile and camps,” as if preparing excuses for the future to deregister priests. Demands that 20-year-olds not be accepted into monasteries, under the pretext of the alleged need for young workers to cultivate the monastery fields. Please note that such cases have become more frequent recently. For this purpose, he proposes to accept into monasteries no younger than 40 years of age. The Patriarch agrees to a lower limit of 30 years. The Patriarch says that he is alarmed by rumors about a storm approaching the Church, and Karpov’s hints about the closure of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. And he asks to preserve at least it - the most ancient and revered Russian monastery. He talks about his desire to retire: “I have no interest in remaining a patriarch.” He proposes Metropolitan Nicholas in his place: And finally, he asks to resolve the issue of allocating a plot of land for the construction of buildings for the Kyiv Seminary, which is in terrible conditions, which has been discussed for 6 years. These addresses of the patriarch hang in the air. He acts as a supplicant, and Karpov allows himself to teach: “The Patriarch and the Synod should restore order, pull themselves together...” 19 In 1958-1959. The Church still hopes to achieve something and stop the authorities’ offensive. Local bishops complain about the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church - both in letters and in personal conversations: teachers in schools threaten children attending churches that they will be taken away from their parents and sent to boarding schools. Bishop Ermogen of Tashkent speaks about this, for example. He received many letters from parents of schoolchildren and from the schoolchildren themselves. The council responds that such threats will not be tolerated and promises that action will be taken and school principals will be warned.

Particular excitement was caused in 1958 by the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of October 16 on the introduction of large taxes on the sale of candles, which threatened to undermine the economic condition of temples, churches, parishes, and candle factories. Of interest is the decisive threat that followed this from the head of the affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate, Presbyter Kolchitsky and Bishop Pimen, the future patriarch, in the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church on October 28, 1958, that if the Council does not take measures to limit taxes on the sale of candles, then , as Kolchitsky said, “we will have to inform foreigners about the situation of our Church.” Metropolitan Nikolai Krutitsky speaks directly about the beginning of the campaign against the Orthodox Church, reinforcing his words with examples in a conversation with Karpov: a government decree on taxes on candle production,

Lands are taken away from monasteries, young monks are not accepted into monasteries, they are not registered. He talks about strengthening the so-called scientific-atheistic work, which is nothing more than persecution of the Church and the clergy. Metropolitan Nikolai complains that the anti-religious propaganda of the Knowledge society distorts articles in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, using them for crude attacks against the Church, and threatens that he will either close the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, or turn it into a purely informational-factual publication, exclude it from him all theological materials and articles, because they are used only to attack the Church 20. In 1959, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church clearly went on the offensive against the church, demanding the merger of dioceses, for example, the liquidation of the Ulyanovsk diocese and its union with the neighboring Kuibyshev diocese. The Patriarch yields; The council demands the reduction of monasteries, demands from the patriarch an order that people under 30 years old should not be accepted into the monastery. The Patriarch reluctantly agrees. He stated that he would give such instructions to the diocesan bishops. In response to the demand to close 28 monasteries and monasteries and leave only 35, in 1959 the Patriarch said that in principle he had no objection to this proposal; but this is the record of the Council of Religious Affairs. It is possible that the terms and words that the patriarch used were completely different, since several times he himself and Metropolitan Nicholas said that it was terribly difficult to make anti-church decisions, that they were complaining about the patriarch, as if he was indulging the authorities and complicit in the closure of churches and monasteries . 21

The Patriarch asks Karpov to hand over the letter that he and Metropolitan Nikolai left for Khrushchev with complaints about the persecution of the Church. Karpov replies that although he perceives this letter as a complaint against himself and his Council, the letter will be handed over. In the same petition, the patriarch says that at first they wanted to seek a meeting with Nikita Sergeevich, his reception, but then they decided to put everything in a letter, in a memo, with a request to hand it over. As far as is known, there was no reaction from Khrushchev to the memo. The Council's pressure is also expressed in repeated demands to stop all charity, even the issuance of additional amounts to the meager pensions of priests, and everything like that. They demand that the Patriarchate stop transferring sums of money in the form of subsidies to existing monasteries and parishes for repairs. The Patriarch is inclined to this and promises to order that subsidies no longer be transferred to diocesan administrations and monasteries. Thus, the leadership of the Church is retreating more and more before the onslaught of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church 22. The Patriarch gives specific examples of the most blatant persecution and persecution: for example, in the city of Cherepovets, Vologda diocese, the local commissioner demands the removal and transfer to another parish of priest Paramonov, very

popular, for whom thousands of believers strove, promising to collect 5 thousand signatures in his defense. This is due to the fact that the priest received an anonymous letter in which the author of the letter demanded 3 thousand rubles from him, threatening him otherwise with murder. The priest informed the police, and the author of this letter, an extortionist, was discovered. It turned out that this was the director of the secondary school in the city of Cherepovets Kozlov. However, instead of punishing Kozlov, the priest is removed from the parish and his transfer to another diocese is demanded. As the patriarch says, the only reason is the priest’s exposure of the school director. Bishops cite specific cases in their letters to the patriarch. For example, the Bishop of Kiev, the future Metropolitan Philaret, complains that seminarians are being summoned somewhere - obviously to the KGB - where they are putting pressure on them to leave the seminary, taking away their passports, forcing them to leave the seminary 23 .

Perhaps the most decisive action in internal negotiations between the leadership of the Church and the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church was the speech of Metropolitan Nikolai Krutitsky to this Council on November 24, 1959, when he stated that Patriarch Alexy felt very bad due to the fact that, "Giving his consent to the liquidation of dioceses and monasteries, he was forced to do this, because he considered and considers the request of the Council to be an order of the Soviet government." These words are very interesting; they characterize the tradition, which, unfortunately, has triumphed in the Russian Orthodox Church since the time of Joseph Volotsky*: to obey government orders unquestioningly.

Nicholas further says that the patriarch received many complaints from the ruling bishops, clergy and believing citizens. As a result, the patriarch found himself in a position where, in fact, he, as the head of the Church, called upon to protect the interests of the Church, became a supporter of its liquidation. The Patriarch therefore believes that it is advisable for him to resign now, so as not to witness the liquidation of the Church and not be held responsible for this before the believers and clergy. “Let this be done,” declares the patriarch, “my successor.”

Again Nikolai mentions the letter to Khrushchev, the patriarch’s desire to personally meet with Khrushchev and complain to him about the liquidation of dioceses, churches, monasteries and other things. So it is clear that there was no meeting between the Patriarch and Khrushchev, and here the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church is clearly lying or mistaken when it says that there was a meeting 24.

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*We are talking about the founder and abbot of the Volokolamsk monastery, church leader, theologian and publicist (in the world - Ivan Sanin, 1439/1440-1515). He defended the idea of ​​divinely established grand-ducal power and recognized its primacy in resolving not only civil, but also church issues. Canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.

At the beginning of 1960, the church leadership decided to bring the issue of persecution of the Church to the attention of the public. As the last trump cards of self-defense, the Church uses arguments of its significance in the history and culture of Russia, the positive role of the Church during the Second World War. Since 1958, articles have appeared in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, using precisely these arguments - the patriotic role of the Church throughout its history. On February 16, 1960, a conference of the Soviet public for disarmament took place in the Kremlin. Patriarch Alexy spoke at this conference. He used his speech to bring to public attention the tragic situation of the Church. Here are the main ideas from this historical speech:

As history testifies, this is the Church that, at the birth of Russian statehood, helped establish civil order in Rus'... strengthened the legal foundations of the family, affirmed the position of women as a legal entity, condemned usury and slavery, developed a sense of duty and responsibility in a person, and often with the help its own canons filled in the gaps of state legislation. This is the same Church that created wonderful monuments that enriched Russian culture, which to this day are objects of national pride for our people.

This is the Church that, in the era of feudal fragmentation of Rus', contributed to the reunification of the country, defending the significance of Moscow as the spiritual and civil center of the Russian land.

This is the Church that, during the difficult years of the Tatar yoke, pacified the khans, protecting the Russian people from new invasions and devastation.

It was she, our Church, who strengthened the spirit of the people with her faith... in freedom, maintaining a sense of national dignity and moral strength among the people.

She supported the Russian state in its struggle against foreign conquerors both in the Time of Troubles and in the Patriotic War of 1812. She remained with the people during the last Great Patriotic War...

In a word, this is the same Russian Orthodox Church that, all these centuries, has served primarily the moral development of our people.

The same Church... in 1948 called Christians all over the world to fight for peace.

And today our Church condemns all forms of enmity, all types of antagonism and enmity between peoples, stands for disarmament and blesses all the aspirations of peoples for disarmament; for Christianity, as a religion of love and mercy, is absolutely alien to any form of violence.

[The call of the Soviet government] to “beat swords into ploughshares”... belongs to the prophet Isaiah, whom we Christians

We call him the Old Testament evangelist, for he predicted the birth of our Savior of the world long before this event. Thus, the Bible, which is a collection of the sacred books of the Christian Church, represents the source of the idea of ​​world peace, which, in view of the development of the most dangerous types of weapons, must be recognized as probably the most important idea for humanity of our time.

However, despite all this, the Church of Christ, which strives for universal well-being, is subjected to insults and attacks from people. Nevertheless, she does not renounce her duty, calling on humanity to live in peace and love each other. The Church finds consolation in its current situation in... the words of Christ about the invincibility of the Church, when He said: “The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church.”

At the end of the patriarch’s speech, there were furious attacks on him from the audience: “... you want to assure us that all Russian culture was created by the Church... this is not true!” A real scandal broke out when Metropolitan Nicholas declared that he was the author of the speech. And this may have been the reason for his forced resignation in June of the same year from the post of chairman of the Department of International Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church. Another reason was rooted in his unpublished sermons containing attacks on atheists: “People listened to my sermons and approved of them. And this is precisely what is unacceptable to our authorities. They want silent bishops who would only serve solemnly. They cannot stand those who fight against godlessness" 25.

Although after the patriarch’s speech several laudatory articles appeared in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, the attack on the Church in 1960-1961. and the resignation of the courageous and eloquent Nicholas seemed to force Patriarch Alexy to yield to pressure. The most tragic thing for the Church was the change in the Church Regulations carried out on behalf of the Council of Bishops, which met in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra on July 18, 1961. This meeting can hardly be called a council, since the bishops arrived on telegrams from the Patriarch, which said nothing about the purpose call. The bishops arrived on the eve of the memory of St. Sergius during the all-night vigil. The next day they celebrated a long liturgy, then had lunch and after that were escorted to the meeting room, still having no idea about the agenda of the unexpected discussion: 1) expansion of the composition of the permanent Holy Synod by introducing into it the bishop-secretary of the patriarchate and the bishop responsible for external relations, ex officio in addition to 6 member bishops (3 chief metropolitans ex officio and 3 bishops elected by the Synod, per session); 2) changes to the regulations on parishes; 3) entry of the Russian Orthodox Church into the World Council of Churches; 4) about the participation of the Church in the World Christian Congress for Peace, held in Prague on June 13-18, 1961 26

We are interested here in changes in the status and organization of parishes, which deprived the parish priest of all power, transferring it to the parish council, in fact to an executive committee of three people: the warden, the assistant warden and the treasurer, elected by the parish council from among the parishioners. Parish Council meetings are called as necessary with the permission of the local or district Council. In other words, if the troika is satisfactory to the local Council, the latter may, at its discretion, cancel parish meetings indefinitely for fear that such a meeting will disapprove of the troika's activities or demand its resignation. Such cases have become common 27 . The interests of the Church and the Council, which usually consisted of atheist communists, to put it mildly, do not coincide. Secret circular 28, sent to local authorities by the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, regarding the functions of the “Auxiliary Commissions for the Introduction of Legislation on Cults,” in fact ordered these new bodies to gradually replace the existing “twenties” with new ones formed from “those citizens who will honestly implement Soviet laws, as well as your proposals and demands... Let the "council of twenty" elect its executive body. It is desirable that you take part in the election of members of this body, so that it includes those who will carry out our line"*. All financial, economic, accounting activities, including voluntary contributions to the diocese and patriarchy for the maintenance of seminaries, etc., were completely removed from the jurisdiction of the clergy and transferred to the executive troikas. The priest was now responsible only for “the spiritual guidance of the parishioners... for reverent service and satisfaction of all the religious needs of the parishioners.”

The priest was also responsible for the moral character of church employees. However, how could he fulfill this role if the new legislation did not even mention him as a participant in the general meeting or executive body? How could he state the position of the Church in a possible conflict or act as a shepherd when the executive body existed and met completely apart from him and was not responsible to him, that is, when he was not subject to either church discipline or even in practice to the local bishop ? And only on issues of an exclusively liturgical nature or in the event of a dispute on such issues between the priest and the community, one should contact the bishop, “who alone is competent

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* The author has this “New Instruction for Representatives of Local Councils on How to Deal with Orthodox Christians.” When this document was shown to Nicodemus, he stated that he did not know about it, but added that it was apparently one of the typical secret instructions of 1961 and that the commissions mentioned were created in the Khrushchev era, but by 1968 .no longer had influence. However, all available Soviet documents relating to these commissions date back to 1965-1967.

in these matters." Even the choice of a priest for a parish becomes the responsibility of the parish council, of course, "with the blessing" of the bishop and after registration with the administrative authorities. All this was presented in the patriarch's message to the bishops' council as a return to the ancient Russian and apostolic traditions of conciliarity, i.e. .to the expansion of the independence and rights of the community. This could indeed be so if it were not for the fact that for the assembly of the community the permission of openly hostile civil authorities was necessary in each individual case; if it were really a question of the community, and not about the troika, to which the management of the parish was transferred and which was entirely at the mercy of the authorized representatives of the SDRPTs; if the community meant a collection of parishioners, and not twenty; and, finally, if the parish priest was the head of the parish council and its moral and spiritual leader, as established canons.

The Patriarch stated that the need for change was dictated by allegedly numerous complaints to the Patriarchate and the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Priests criticize church councils; church councils criticize priests; "Both of them complain that the Patriarch and the Synod do not pay attention to their complaints." The Patriarch reminded his listeners that a year ago the Synod drew the attention of bishops to cases of “violations of Soviet legislation on religious associations.” In April 1961, the government informed the patriarchate that clergy continued to violate Soviet laws on religion. In fact, in the letter already quoted, Father Vsevolod Shpiller complained that the abolition of all administrative rights of the priest in his own parish by the resolution of the Synod of April 18 was explained by the discrepancy between church decrees, not to mention the canons, and Soviet laws. In this regard, the July Council of Bishops seemed to him a step forward in the sense that conciliarity and canons were mentioned at least in words 29 .

Returning to the council, we note that this was a turbulent time for priests, a time of trials when at least two bishops and many priests were sentenced to prison on false charges of embezzling church funds, concealing income, etc. 30 . Under these conditions (as even the caustic-critical samizdat admits), many bishops hoped that depriving priests of any financial responsibility would protect them from accusations of at least financial abuse 31 ; Moreover, the Soviet demand to change church regulations indirectly indicated that the authorities did not plan the immediate destruction of the entire Church, as in the 30s, but only its further enslavement. Thus, there remained hope that over time the possibility of improving the situation would appear.

The patriarch, trying to delay changes, gave in 32. Without a doubt, many bishops present at the council knew about this and shared the position of the patriarch 33.

Personnel

With the consecration in 1953 of Mikhail Chub, the first bishop to graduate from the post-war theological academy, a completely new generation of bishops, raised and educated under the Soviet regime, began, a generation that replaced the old cadres. By the end of the 60s. almost all the ruling bishops belonged to this generation. A similar process took place, of course, among the parish clergy. Moscow priest Father Vsevolod Shpiller, a re-emigrant who was educated in Bulgaria and thus had experience of life and church service both in a non-communist country and in the Soviet Union, in his report for internal use characterizes this generation of “Soviet” bishops as follows : “In our Church there are perhaps more people... who came to the Church through personal experience of one form or another of “conversion” (than in any other Church). Their childhood... environment was actively non-religious and often anti-religious.. "Suddenly they saw the Church in its truth and beauty... and joined it."

Further, Father Vsevolod Shpiller notes that they understand the Church completely differently than traditional believers. Without using the word itself, he argues that they have internally become so resigned to secular totalitarianism that they simply cannot imagine a tolerant society with two types of laws: secular and ecclesiastical. He refers to the experience of the Yugoslav-Russian canon law specialist Troitsky, who came to teach an elementary course in canon law at the Moscow Theological Academy: he discovered that his students simply did not understand what was being discussed. They could not imagine the possibility of independent institutions, with their own separate legal systems, existing in a society governed by different laws. In other words, the fact that the Church in the Soviet Union did not have the status of a legal entity seemed completely normal to the students of the 40s, that is, to the generation that was born and raised under Stalin. Accordingly, they did not perceive the Church as a social institution. They viewed it in a very narrow sense as an “assembly of believers,” which completely excludes a legal context.

Spiller further refers to specific bishops of the new generation who have the same mentality, and believes that the consequence of this will be in the future complete submission to the civil authorities - their demands, laws and order - not simply out of fear, but out of the conviction that in the state there can only be one power and one law 34.

The changes forced upon the Church in 1961 must be seen in the context of the general persecution of the Church under Khrushchev. In this context, the observations of Father Vsevolod will help us

evaluate some aspects of the persecution and avoid the simplifications characteristic of many samizdat documents, which viewed bishops solely as KGB agents and deliberate destroyers of the Church 35 .

Additional details of persecution

Officially, the Khrushchev administration proclaimed its goal to restore Leninist “socialist legality” after Stalinist abuses. However, Lenin himself believed that “the law must serve the goals of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which are not limited to the laws created by it” 36. So the persecution of the Church could and was carried out in the name of restoring “legality”. Stalin was accused of perverting Soviet laws on religion 37 . And in fact, the 1945 resolutions on the Church contradicted the 1929 legislation “On Religious Associations.” They recognized the parish priest as the owner of the parish, and the legislation recognized only “twenties” of laity. Likewise, the law that abolished the decisions of the occupation authorities during the war was used to close a large number of churches and monasteries in the former occupied territories. A special instruction dated March 16, 1961 introduced the legislation of 1929 in the part that prohibited the organization of any charitable activities and “religious centers” in parishes, as well as “providing financial assistance to parishes and monasteries that do not enjoy support local population." A resolution of the Council of Ministers actually prohibited the ringing of bells, using a more modest term - “to make a decision to limit the ringing of bells”; in 1961, an attempt was made to carry out an accounting of religious associations, prayer buildings and property (as is known, this kind of accounting was used to close churches). It confirmed the taxation of the clergy and all church income under Article 19 of the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 30, 1943, i.e. with a maximum tax of 81%. The only relief in this resolution is paragraph 6, which exempts from income tax treatment benefits issued by religious associations once a year in an amount not exceeding one month’s income, and for persons over sixty years of age, two months’ income, from which it follows that Somewhere from 1958-1959, with the beginning of persecution, taxes were levied even on treatment benefits. The resolution was signed by Khrushchev and marked “not for publication.” The fact that this document remained unknown for some time to believers and even to the leadership of the Church is confirmed by a certificate of conversations with Patriarch Alexy on April 9-10, 1961, signed by V. Furov, deputy chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church.

There are the following words: “The possibility cannot be ruled out that the patriarch knows about the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of March 16 of this year, but does not want to say it openly” 38 .

Under these conditions, the Church decided that parishes that could not support themselves should merge with neighboring churches. Abusing this instruction, local representatives of the SDROC and compliant bishops closed many rural churches, including well-off ones 39 . This was also facilitated by the rapid decline in the rural population, especially in Central Russia, the Volga, the Urals and some areas of Siberia. It would be logical to expect a corresponding increase in the number of churches in cities where the rural population migrated, but this did not happen, despite numerous petitions from believers 40 .

The laws prohibiting the religious education of youth were now not only more strictly observed, but also interpreted very broadly, even to the point of prohibiting children and youth from going to church. And although there were no written orders, according to oral orders of the authorized priests, it was forbidden for the priests to begin the service while children were in the church, as well as to give communion to young people and children. And some bishops and most priests were forced to agree with this 41. All this was accompanied by a corresponding campaign in the press, as well as local bans on boys serving at the altar on the grounds that this violated the law prohibiting children from working in the church 42. In some cases, children were taken away from believing parents under the pretext of “fanatical religious education” and placed in boarding schools 43 . In one document we come across an interesting observation that although “in two collections of party and state decrees on religion,” published in 1959 and 1965, “the Council for Religious Affairs is not even mentioned,” it was for the period 1957-1964. radically changed its functions, becoming an unofficial and illegal body of control over the Moscow Patriarchate 44. The same is confirmed by Patriarch Alexy in a conversation with Furov: “The commissioners, carrying out the will of local authorities, began to command the dioceses, regardless of the desire of believers to preserve churches and houses of worship. The ruling in the diocese is considered to be the bishop, but the bishop currently does not rule, but the bishop presides, and the commissioner governs.” In response to Furov’s excuse that churches are being closed in Ukraine, where during the German occupation, according to him, too many of them were opened, and that there are supposedly a lot of statements from the priests themselves asking to close such churches that do not pay for themselves, the patriarch responded that many churches are closed without any particular reason, and believers and clergy report oppression, ask to protect the Church, and report this to the government. He further complained that he could not get an appointment with the head of government and personally talk about the closure of churches, so

Among the believing people, they consider him, Patriarch Alexy, to be a bad head of the Church. “I do not inform, they say, and I do not enter the government with a request to support the Church.” Furov reported that the patriarch’s main support in resisting the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church and in implementing the Council’s decisions to close churches and monasteries was his personal secretary Daniil Ostapov. For resisting the closure of churches, Furov called Ostapov an “arrogant man”: “Ostapov is an evil person and is trying to resist all our activities. The impudence of this man is manifested in everything. Ostapov supports politically dubious persons in every possible way.” To these, Furov included bishops Simon and Andrei (Sukhenko), who soon ended up in a concentration camp, as well as abbot of the Pochaev Lavra Sevastyan. “He uses all sorts of slanderous and deliberately false information coming from the most rabid obscurantists in order to warm up the patriarch, restore him against the Council and the activities of local Soviet bodies and the state,” writes Furov and adds that upon the patriarch’s return to Moscow after a vacation in Odessa, it is necessary to have a conversation with him in the Council and “recommend to the Patriarch to release from the leadership of the dioceses such odious figures as Bishop Donat of Novosibirsk, Archbishop Simon of Vinnitsa, Bishop Andrey of Chernigov, Abbot of the Pochaev Lavra Sevastyan. Ostapov is interfering with all this. It is interesting that when with the Patriarch there was a conversation about moving the theological seminary, - reports Furov, - Ostapov got into the conversation and raised objections. Ostapov objects to the closure of the St. Michael's Monastery in Odessa, fights for the preservation of the Glinskaya Hermitage, against the closure of the Lipchansky Monastery. Finally, he objects to the demand of the Council for Affairs The Russian Orthodox Church to elevate Nicodemus from the rank of bishop to the rank of archbishop." He is still very young, Furov explains, he recently became a bishop, but since he is going at the head of a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church to a conference abroad, prestige requires that he be an archbishop. As we know, the Council's demand was fulfilled, Bishop Nikodim became an archbishop in 1961, so the Council put pressure on the adoption of patriarchal decisions regarding not only transfers, but also promotions and elevations to the rank of bishops. Moreover, Furov insisted that the patriarch close a number of monasteries. To this, the patriarch replied that it was extremely difficult for him, as the head of the Church, to issue such a decree, but that he would give appropriate instructions to the ruling bishops in another way - orally or through the Synod. Concluding the conversation, Furov demanded that Ostapov be humbled and threatened that opposition to the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church would lead to “corresponding consequences”; and completely go beyond any framework of Furov’s revelation that the days of the Church are numbered: “The country is building communism, the party and the state are taking care of educating people in a new society, free from

religious prejudices, and isn’t it clear what the prospects for the Church are in 20-30 years from now, when people will be atheists? Let the patriarch not be offended that people are breaking with religion and closing churches." 45 It is curious that the leaders of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, in conversations with the patriarch and other representatives of the Church, constantly assured them that they were acting strictly in accordance with the law. But we have already seen what kind of law this is: for example, the decree of March 16, 1961, which was not published anywhere and was distributed only for official use.Shafarevich in the already cited brochure indicates that in addition to this decree, 29 new articles were introduced by decree of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR of October 19, 1962 into the 1929 laws on religious associations, in other words, “believers were responsible under these articles without even knowing their content.” Such was the restored “Leninist socialist legality”!

The situation changed somewhat for the better in the post-Khrushchev era, when the Regulations on the Council for Religious Affairs (CRA) were first published in 1966 after the abolition of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church and the transfer of its functions to the CRA on December 8, 1965; and also when in 1975 a new version of the laws on religious associations of 1929 appeared. * These issues will be discussed in Chapter 13.

The fate of the seminaries

Eight years after the resumption of theological schools in the Soviet Union, the issues of theological education and upbringing have still not been resolved. This can be seen from the speech of Patriarch Alexy at the opening of the meeting of rectors, inspectors and mentors of academies and seminaries on July 18, 1953. In his speech, the patriarch said that due to the fact that for almost thirty years there was no theological science in the country, it is not developed, there was no one to move it forward, the level of theological schools and teachers turned out to be very low, most of the teachers did not have a special theological education and were not teachers or scientists in the field of theology by profession. He called not to reduce, but to increase the level of theological education, and not to lose sight of the main goal - “to prepare pastors, to give the student the basic concepts of shepherding, to equip him, first of all, with what he will need tomorrow as a clergyman of the Orthodox Church, as a preacher.” He also spoke about the unprecedented unpreparedness of students and pupils - after all, they came from

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* This refers to the resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR dated April 8, 1929, with amendments and additions introduced by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR dated June 23, 1975.

civil schools without even a basic understanding of the Church, therefore, in a short time, in 4 years, they had to make up for what was taught in pre-revolutionary times throughout their studies in primary and secondary school, and in seminary. Patriarch Alexy called for an in-depth study of the works of the church fathers and analysis of the Holy Scriptures, which are taught too superficially in the seminary. These subjects can be studied more intensively by reducing the study of schism and sect studies, which were a hot topic in pre-revolutionary Russia, but to some extent, according to the patriarch, have lost their urgency in modern times. His assurances sounded somewhat ironic that now, finally, the Church has complete freedom, which it did not have before the revolution under the Chief Prosecutor. The Patriarch called for the development of church science, taking advantage of the new freedom that did not exist before. Of course, the patriarch was forced to take into account the presence of Karpov at this meeting and talk about the “freedom and prosperous state” of schools 46.

How things stood with the “freedom of seminaries and academies” is in fact clear from the report to Karpov of the inspector of the Leningrad Theological Academy Pariysky in the same 1953, where he reported on an extraordinary incident. Unexpectedly, a group of 3rd year students from the Mining Institute came to the Theological Academy in Leningrad and wanted to inspect it. No matter how much Pariysky tried to dissuade them from this, assuring them that there was nothing interesting in the academy, they still insisted on taking a tour. They had to answer questions (the report lists a number of questions), and although the students of the theological academy did not show up during the inspection, when the guests left the building, they were followed by first one, and then another and a third of its students (they are named in the report by name and course). “They were surrounded by guests, and a general conversation ensued in the courtyard. I ordered the doorman to call Zubkov, one of these students, supposedly to the telephone, and then told Zubkov to call the others, as if to a rehearsal.” The academy students were immediately asked by the inspector what questions they were asked. In conclusion, Pariysky said: “I also reported what happened to the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU.” Here is one example of “freedom” 47.

Some concern among representatives of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church regarding the growth in the number of students in theological schools has been noticed since 1955-1956, when it became especially noticeable. The reports of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church indicate that in 1956 the number of students and listeners of theological schools almost doubled compared to 1952. The level of educational training of young people entering seminaries is growing noticeably. Thus, in 1956, 91% of students in seminaries had a complete secondary secular education. The number of young people is growing. One report states that four years ago, in seminaries and academies,

Only 126 people studied between the ages of 18 and 20, and now there are 311, or 30% of the entire composition. All this worries the Council. It is indicated that Komsomol members and people with higher education, secular professions or middle-class workers apply to the seminary, such as, for example, a grinder at the Minsk Tractor Plant, born in 1935, a member of the Komsomol. A 2nd year student of the Saratov Conservatory was admitted to the Saratov Seminary and two Komsomol members submitted applications. The sifting of applicants can be seen from the following statistics: “For the next enrollment in religious educational institutions - that is, for 1957 - 765 applications for admission were received. Compared to last year, the number of applications submitted increased by 168, and among those accepted, by 42.” This is how high the dropout rate was, and this, of course, was done by the employees of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church. There were quite a few applicants to whom the Council recommended paying special attention, that is, somehow preventing them from receiving theological education. For example: a 4th year student at a medical institute, a 4th year student at a pedagogical institute, an instructor at the district council and a former head of a club in the village council. This confuses the authorities. A memorandum compiled on Leningrad religious educational institutions for 1955-1956 is interesting. Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, where great concern was expressed about the fact that Metropolitan Gregory was admitting to the theological seminary such persons as the son of a Baptist pastor who lived in the occupied territory, and another person with a criminal record under Article 58. The commissioner of the Council was especially interested in a 35-year-old former military man, who sent a long letter in which he writes that in the war where he fought and was awarded, he came to the conclusion about the meaninglessness of life without God and strives to get into a theological academy or seminary in order to finally receive theological education and devote his entire life to serving God. This letter ends with the following words: “I turn to you not only for advice, but also for patronage, for help. I turn to you because your efforts for the benefit of the Church do not remain unknown.” The letter is addressed to the rector of the Leningrad Theological Academy. Although Metropolitan Gregory submitted a resolution: “For consideration by the Academy Council,” the inspector of Pari, apparently under pressure from the authorized Council, rejected this petition. The Commissioner complains to Metropolitan Gregory that he too widely accepts this kind of candidates into theological schools. In other words, in the opinion of the Council, only mediocrities who promise nothing in the future should be admitted to theological schools 48 . Already by 1959, the Council was trying to stop attempts to increase the number of students in seminaries and academies and expand their premises. Thus, Chernov, Commissioner of the Council for Leningrad, writes to Karpov: “The desire to expand the student population cannot be considered justified from the point of view of the Council. Moreover, the Council

insists on the immediate closure of the Leningrad correspondence department in connection with the opening of one in Moscow." A memorandum from Council member Sivenkov, sent to inspect Leningrad theological schools in the same 1959, addressed to Karpov, is already clear evidence of the Council's direct intervention in the educational process of theological schools Thus, he considers unacceptable the candidate and diploma works of seminarians and students of the academy on moral topics, in which they develop ideas that parents should actively raise children in a religious spirit, and comments: “... these works by the authors are a direct violation of Lenin’s decree on the separation of the Church from the state and the school from the Church. The authors do not recognize and condemn the organization of communist education of the younger generation in Soviet schools." He also does not like the organization of the study of the Constitution and Soviet legislation on the Church in theological schools, since both subjects are presented there in such a way "to prepare ministers of the Church for a better adaptation of religious ideology and church activity to the conditions of the socialist system" 49.

The final crackdown on seminaries begins in 1960. The files on theological educational institutions for 1960 are full of decisions by the leaders of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church on the exclusion of one or another candidate as a seminarian, after their acceptance by the seminary authorities. The pretexts used in this case by the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church were as follows: the absence of a recommendation from the ruling bishop - as if this was a matter of the Council, and not of the academic authorities; moral instability, and hence the doubt of the commissioner that the candidate will make a good shepherd. But what is meant by moral instability? Again, is this a matter for the Council, the bishop and the leadership of the seminary? Other reasons for not being admitted to the seminary are former membership in the CPSU or Komsomol. In 1960: there were many cases of priests and seminary graduates sent to dioceses at the request of the local diocesan bishop, but who did not receive registration. The bishop throws up his hands: there are 25 vacancies in the Krasnodar diocese, but he cannot register a single graduate of the seminary - the authorized representative of the SDRPs does not give them. A typical example is in the Kursk diocese, where the secretary of the Kursk regional committee Arkhipova stated that she does not want young priests - graduates of theological schools - to be sent to the Kursk diocese. Bishop Leonid of Kursk, who registered 5-6 such young priests, could not register them when they arrived. The local commissioner writes to the Council that the indicated persons should not be sent at the disposal of Bishop Leonidas.

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The death of Stalin caused profound changes in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church. Clergymen began to be released from the camps, first under amnesty, then on rehabilitation . In 1957, worship services resumed. to Troitsk. Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. All R. It was the 50s, that is. reception was increased in all 8 spirits that existed at that time. seminaries. A major event in church life was the publication of the Bible in Russian in 1956, for the first time after the restoration of the Patriarchate. The New Testament was published as a separate edition. In the 50s, the number of worshipers in Orthodox churches continued to grow. The city churches were overcrowded. On Sundays and holidays the number of communicants reached several hundred; during Lent, 15-20 thousand people took communion in Moscow churches. But a decisive majority of the parishioners were elderly women and those whose youth came from the war. Among the believers, people with little education predominated, but part of the old intelligentsia also maintained connections with the Church. New intelligentsia, images. in Soviet universities, in the 50s, almost all were outside the C-vi. In 1957, the Russian Orthodox Church had 73 dioceses, 69 men's dioceses within the USSR. and wives monasteries, mainly in the west of the country: Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. In the 2nd half. In the 50s, new bishops were consecrated. Moreover, there was a change of generations in the episcopate. The bishops left, ordained. before the revolution and in the 20-30s, Hirotonisan also left. from widowed archpriests. They were replaced by a new generation, forming. during Soviet times. In ideological In the circumstances of 1958, N.S. Khrushchev’s political program appeared, which, among other things, included the struggle for “overcoming the religious remnants of capitalism” in the minds of Soviet people. Attacks on Christianity intensified in the press. For the first time since the era of the Militant Atheist, there are anti-religious articles in newspapers and magazines. The pressure on the Russian Orthodox Church, which united most of the country's believing population, became fierce. In anti-religion. the campaign involves renegades. In 1958, an atheist paper was published. brochure, former teacher of the Odessa Seminary E. Duluman; statements by archpriests P. Darmansky, A. Spassky and Chertkov about their renunciation of God appeared in the press. 5 Dec. 1959 Pravda published an article by Prof. LDA A. Osipov, prohibited. in the priesthood for the second marriage, which. he publicly blasphemed God and the Church. After the article in Pravda, his tours around the country began. Exit. his atheistic articles and pamphlets. 30 Dec 1959 Priest. The Synod is chaired by Patr. Alexia decreed: priests who publicly blasphemed God should be considered perverts. from the rank and deprived of church fellowship and excommunicated from the Church. The closure of churches began at the insistence of public organizations. Speaking at the Conference of the Soviet public for disarmament 16 Feb. 1960, Patr. Alexy (Simansky) tried to protect the Church from unfair attacks. The Patriarch’s speech did not protect the Church, but, published in the “Moscow Magazine. Patriarchy,” she strengthened the spirit of thousands of faithful servants, embarrassed by persecution. 21 Feb. 1960 G. G. Karpov was dismissed from the post of Chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church. His successor was V.A. Kuroyedov. Since 1961, the fight against religion has become an ideological center. task of the party elite. This was sounded in N. S. Khrushchev’s report at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, in the explanations of the presenters. party ideologist Suslov, in Ilyichev’s thesis for June. Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee in 1963 that religion is the main and only thing. legally existing in the country ideologically. enemy of Marxism. In December 1965, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church was merged with the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults. A new institution headed by V.A. Kuroedov, named “Council for Religious Affairs under the USSR Council of Ministers”. Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova were especially affected. During the Khrushchev persecutions, almost half of the parishes across the country were closed. The Kiev Pechersk Lavra was closed in 1963 under the pretext of restoration and repair. They tried to close the Pochaev Dormition Lavra, but the inhabitants, led by the abbot, managed to defend it. In 1959, the Russian Orthodox Church numbered about 14 thousand parishes, in 1961 it decreased to 8 thousand parishes (by 1966, 7523 parishes remained). Accordingly, the number of serving priests and deacons decreased. By 1961, only 8,252 priests and 809 deacons remained; by 1967 there were 6,694 priests and 653 deacons. Admission to the theological seminary was reduced. In the end, 5 seminaries: Stavropol, Saratov, Kiev, Lutsk, Zhirovitsk were closed. In 1959, the Russian Orthodox Church had 47 monasteries, and by the mid-1960s. only 16 left; the number of monastics had decreased by this time from 3 thousand to approximately 1.5 thousand. The number of bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church has also decreased; many dioceses began to be governed by bishops who occupied neighboring sees. Decisive difference between Khrushchev's persecutions from those that attacked the Church in the 20s and 30s was that they passed without bloodshed and almost without arrests. True, several clergymen were put on trial (of which 2 bishops actively resisted: Archbishop of Kazan Job (Kresovich) - 3 years, Archbishop of Chernigov Andrey (Sukhenko) - sentenced to 8 years, released early), who were accused, as a rule, in financial crimes, most often related to non-payment or underpayment of taxes. Priests, deprived of the opportunity to perform divine services due to the closure of parishes, were dismissed or retired. The majority of them were elderly. Some of the middle-aged and younger priests left for secular service. Although rare, there were still renegades among them, who, unlike the first apostates of the late 50s, whose actions received publicity throughout the country, were usually content with appearances in the local press.

A. V. Elsukov

The younger generation during the “Khrushchev anti-religious campaign”

The reign of N.S. Khrushchev went down in history under the symbol of the “thaw”, the characteristic features of which were, on the one hand, the emancipation of public life and the liberalization of society, which were the result of the debunking of Stalin’s personality cult. On the other hand, it was a time of a total attack on the Church, despite democratic trends in society. As Professor M.E. Shkarovsky well noted, “the times of Khrushchev’s thaw turned into a bitter frost for representatives of various faiths.”

After a period of relatively smooth relations between the state and the Church (1943–1953), in 1958–1964 the USSR launched an unprecedented campaign of attack on religious organizations, the goal of which was the complete destruction of religion in the country.

What caused such dramatic changes in the religious policy of the state? First of all, this was due to the widespread “activation” of the Church, the restoration of church institutions in the war and post-war years, when the authorities needed the support of the Church in order to consolidate society. Monasteries, churches, and seminaries were opened, the number of believers increased, and the income of the Church grew. One should also take into account the significant religiosity of the released Gulag prisoners. Almost all statistical data from the mid and late 50s indicate an intensification of church life

Another reason was that the new leadership, led by N. S. Khrushchev, sincerely believed that Soviet society, having renounced the negative legacy of Stalin, would be able to build a new communist society. Communist ideology was considered viable and did not tolerate any religious alternatives. Not the least important reason for the attack on the Church was the economic calculations of the authorities. N.S. Khrushchev was actively looking for sources of replenishment of the state budget. One such source was the robbery of the Church in 1958–1964. The government could not resist the temptation to “put its hand into the church’s pocket.”

It should be noted that Khrushchev’s persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church differed from the pre-war persecution. According to the doctor of church history, Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin, “the decisive difference between the Khrushchev persecutions and those that befell the Church in the 20s and 30s was<…>the fact that they took place without bloodshed and almost without arrests. True, several clergymen were put on trial, accused, as a rule, of financial crimes, most often of tax evasion and concealment of income.”

One of the main “inventions” of the government in 1957–1964 was the so-called “Khrushchev church reform”, aimed at suppressing the internal vitality of the Russian Orthodox Church. The main implementer of the “reform” was the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, which, following the instructions of the CPSU Central Committee and the government, pursued a consistent policy of limiting the activities of the Church within the framework of Soviet legislation.

The atheist government, starting the persecution of religious organizations (1958–1964), could not lose sight of the upbringing of children and youth in the bosom of the Russian Orthodox Church and instilling in them a Christian worldview.

It is no coincidence that this problem came to the attention of the authorities. It was in junior church positions that future students of theological seminaries and potential clergy personnel underwent the necessary practice. By prohibiting young males from participating in services, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church sought to solve a larger problem - a widespread reduction in the number of churches and the number of clergy in the Soviet Union. One of the instructions letters addressed to the Council commissioners stated:

An issue that deserves the attention of the Council and Commissioners is the work of the clergy to attract youth and school-age children into the church for service in the church, as well as to recruit youth into religious educational institutions and for ordination. Moreover, this work has recently become quite broad, obliging us to pay attention to this aspect of the church’s activities. .

Serving young people in churches took place in almost all dioceses. Commissioner for Moscow and the Moscow Region A. Trushin reported that in 1958 cases became known when clergy “with all their might and means” attracted children to serve in their churches. For example,

a) priests of the Lefortovo church in the mountains. Moscow (Kalininsky district) attracted students from school No. 407: Aleksey Poverglo, born in 1944, Alexandra Taganova, born in 1941, Mikhail Divakov, born in 1941, and school No. 420 – Nikolai Mankov, born in 1941 .
b) ministers of worship of the church in the village of Natashino Mountains. Lyubertsy attracted Vladimir Zemskov, a 10th grade student at school 454 in the Stalin district of the mountains. Moscow and Sergei Chernogorov, a 6th grade student at school No. 15 in the city. Lyubertsy. Sergei’s father is an engineer and supposedly works in the Ministry of Power Plants.
c) the clergy of the Peter and Paul Church at the Yauz Gate attracted Kolya, a 5th grade student, whose father and mother work at the plant named after. Likhacheva.

All these children, who have come under the influence of clergy, are intensively processed by them in a religious spirit, and, as a rule, by the age of 18, due to their convictions, they strive to enter religious educational institutions and monasteries .

Many clergy paid special attention to working with children and youth. In their sermons, they often reminded parents of the need to take their children to church and teach them prayers. Before the start of the service, the priests met the believers, talked with them, praised the children for coming to church, and asked school-age children how they were studying and whether they obeyed their elders.

As examples of the clergy’s concern for educating the younger generation in the Christian spirit, the commissioner cites the following:

1. The priest of the church in Izmailovo, Fadeev, who was deregistered, tried to address issues of morality and raising children in his sermons. Fadeev explained the cases of hooliganism on the part of young people by the fact that these actions can only be allowed by people who have forgotten God, and that these criminals are the children of those parents who do not raise them in a religious spirit. “Therefore, fear this, Orthodox Christians!” - Fadeev exclaimed in one of his sermons, - and do not allow your children to be raised outside the Church. Whoever does not take his children to church will have to take this sin upon himself, and for sins, as you know, he will have to answer before God .

2. The priest of the church in the village of Turbichevo, Dmitrovsky district, Romashevich, before the start of the service, meets the youth at the entrance, invites them to go closer to the altar and often tells how he studied “spiritual sciences” .

In some churches, during the service, priests placed young people (especially children) closer to the altar, allowed them to be the first to receive communion and during veneration of the cross. For example:

3. Priest of the Church of All Sorrows on Bolshaya Ordynka mountains. Moscow Zernov introduced a “order” in his church - to place all children who came to church with their parents in a specially designated place in front of the altar and give them communion in a separate line .

4. Priest of the Kazan Church of the mountains. Dmitrov Slovinsky (now transferred to another church) at the end of the service, as a rule, approaches the children, pats them on the heads and praises them for coming to church with their mother or grandmother. When he arrives in the village for services, he gives candy to the children who ran up to him, puts them in his car, promising to give them a ride afterwards. .

And there were many similar examples.

The Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, in instructions sent to the commissioners, has repeatedly given explanations about actions in cases where it was discovered that young people were serving in the church: “it is impossible to involve children and adolescents under 18 years of age in serving in the church (subdeacons , singing in the choir, psalm-readers, readers, etc.).”

The Moscow Patriarchate, not wanting to enter into conflict with the state, made a corresponding statement on its own line. On October 23, 1959, a letter was sent to the diocesan bishops, in which, on behalf of His Holiness the Patriarch, each bishop was to pay special attention to strict compliance with Soviet legislation. The Patriarch recommended that the episcopate and clergy “no longer allow minors to serve at the altar.”

Pressure on the clergy from the authorities turned out to be effective. Teenagers were no longer allowed to serve in the church, as seen in the commissioners' reports for 1959-1960. Commissioner Trushin reported: “The cases of ministers of worship and churchmen recruiting boys and girls under 18 years of age to serve at the altar have been completely eliminated.” (It is clear that girls could not serve at the altar).

Another way to attract the younger generation to the Church was through church choirs. Experiencing a shortage of trained singers, church rectors sought to “rejuvenate” the choir groups. Singing lessons had the character of a kind of training for the Church of young personnel, including the clergy.

In 1957–1959, there were attempts by some priests to attract children both to serve at the altar - boys, and to sing in the choir - mainly girls. Thus, the priest of the church in the village of Perkhushkovo, Kuntsevo district, Afanasiev, and the priest of the Izmailovo church in Moscow, Zhukov, attracted children and young men to serve in the church. The Commissioner reported:

Recently, in these churches, from 3 to 7 boys were vested at each service and the same number of girls sang in the church choir. In their free time from the service, the children learned the rules of serving and learning church hymns. After the discovery of these facts, these actions were stopped and are not observed now .

A special category of church youth were young men of age. According to Soviet law, they had every right to work and help in the temple. Typically these were young people awaiting the opportunity to enter religious schools or be ordained.

The Commissioner for Moscow and the Region, A. Trushin, in one of his reports names a group of clergy who were involved in preparing such persons for entry into the seminary. These were: the priest of the church in Podolsk Orlov, the Znamenskaya Church in the Dzerzhinsky district of Moscow Vakulovich, the All Saints Church in the Leningradsky district of Tivetsky, the Resurrection Church in the Frunzensky district of Elkhovsky, the church in the village of Udelnaya Sobolev, the church in the city of Yegoryevsk Kovalsky and some others.

The most difficult task for the authorities was to identify the scale of the clergy’s activities in educating children and adolescents at home. Naturally, when a priest came to one of his parishioners’ home with requests, he tried, if possible, to have an instructive conversation with their relatives, including children. However, it was impossible to obtain information on this matter. The Commissioners several times asked the Council to provide recommendations on how to monitor the activities of the clergy visiting believers at home. The following answers came to this: “If you go to these houses where the priest performed services and talk with believers about this, then there may be trouble; believers may interpret this test in different ways.”

Tables for page 229:

In 1959, there was a slight decline in religious activity of all segments of the population, which was primarily due to the strengthening of anti-religious propaganda. Nevertheless, the religiosity of the population still remained high. Statistical data on church rituals for 1960–1961, on the contrary, indicate an increase in the number of religious services performed by the population. Let us present two tables characterizing the situation of church rituals in the territory of Moscow and the Moscow region by year (see on page 228).

Thus, there is an increase in the number of rituals on almost all points, with the exception of the sacrament of Wedding.

It must be said that religious rituals in Moscow and the region were far from the highest in the country. For example, in the Kirov, Volyn, Transcarpathian, Yaroslavl, Ryazan, Ivanovo, and Rivne regions, over 60% of children born were baptized annually, in the Moldavian SSR - 52%, in the Ukrainian SSR - up to 40%.

Regarding the sacrament of marriage, this is even more evident. Thus, in the Ulyanovsk region, weddings amounted to 12% in relation to the total number of marriages registered in the registry offices, in the Gorky region - 11%, in the Brest region - 14%, in the Transcarpathian region - more than 50%, in the Chernigov region - 72%, in the Ternopil region - 81%, in the Moldavian SSR 31%.

Observation of the Easter services by the Council's representatives showed that they always took place with a large crowd of people. Here is the data the commissioner provides regarding the number of people on Easter night in 1958 (in subsequent years, these indicators practically did not change).

On Saturday, April 12, at 10–11 pm, all churches in the mountains. Moscow was filled to capacity with worshippers, and those who came later filled the fence and the streets and alleys adjacent to the church, for example:
1) in the Epiphany (Elokhovsky) Cathedral there were about 5 thousand;
2) in the Pimen church (Sverdlovsk region) there were 3.5–4 thousand people;
3) in the Assumption Church of the former Novodevichy Convent there are about 3 thousand people, etc. .

It is on Easter and on the days of other main church holidays, such as the Nativity of Christ, Epiphany, Trinity and Spiritual Day, that the commissioners note the presence of a large number of children and adolescents at services. In addition, a significant number of children and adolescents attend churches before the start of the school year and before spring and autumn exams.

In 1960, the CPSU Central Committee issued a resolution “On measures to eliminate violations of the legislation on cults,” which gave a new impetus to the anti-religious campaign. With this document, the authorities began to implement a reform designed for several decades, aimed at the destruction and complete subordination of the church organization to the state. Among the main points of the developed secret plan of action was “protecting children from the influence of religion.”

In 1961, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church issued a special instruction, according to which it was not forbidden to apply coercive measures and punishment to believers. This document once again emphasized that “religious centers are strictly prohibited from organizing any circles and meetings.”

On March 16, 1961, a new closed decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On strengthening control over compliance with legislation on cults” was issued, which again emphasized that the clergy should not violate Soviet laws, including those relating to “attracting and teaching religion to children, youth, youth ".

The XXII Congress of the CPSU, held in October 1961, further intensified the persecution of the Church. At the congress, N.S. Khrushchev repeatedly spoke about the need to fight religion. “Communist education,” he argued, “implies the liberation of consciousness from religious prejudices, which still prevent individual Soviet people from fully demonstrating their creative powers...” He expressed the idea of ​​​​creating a universal system of atheistic influence, “which would cover all layers and groups of the population and prevent the spread of religious views.” According to researcher V.A. Alekseev, such attitudes towards carrying out “total” atheistic work contradicted the principles of freedom of conscience, according to which being a believer or an atheist is a personal matter for each person. This means that each person is free to determine for himself whether to go to an atheistic event or to a church service.

At the XXII Congress of the CPSU, a new program was adopted, proclaiming the construction of communism in 20 years. Citizens of the USSR were supposed to free themselves from “remnants of the old system,” including “religious prejudices.”

Theological educational institutions of the Russian Orthodox Church were among the first to suffer after the release of the new program. Their number from eight seminaries and two academies in 1958 was reduced to three seminaries and two academies for the entire Soviet Union in 1964.

In 1962, the state followed a series of measures aimed at reducing religious rituals among the population. First of all, this concerned the transfer of the clergy to fixed salaries, which entailed a decrease in the number of services performed. Fulfillment of the requirements was strictly controlled by the authorities. Information about baptized and married people was entered into special receipts. To baptize a child, it was necessary to provide his birth certificate and parents’ passports. One of the necessary conditions for baptism was also the written consent of the parents and their presence during the sacrament.

However, it should be said that these measures did not produce the expected results. According to the commissioner, the percentage of baptized children in relation to the number of births in 1962 (in Moscow only) was 34.9% (in 1961 - 43.6%); the number of weddings to the number of marriages – 0.5% (in 1961 – 0.7%); the number of funeral services for deaths is 35.9% (in 1961 – 58.5%).

What was new in the anti-religious campaign of 1961–1962 was the emergence of special commissions under district and city executive committees, which, in addition to the commissioners, were supposed to monitor compliance with Soviet legislation on cults. They studied the contingent of people attending church, the degree of influence of religious communities and clergy on youth and children, recorded the sermons of priests, identified young people who wanted to enter seminaries, monitored the performance of religious rituals, and stopped attempts to baptize children without the consent of both parents.

School teachers were involved in the anti-religious campaign; they were supposed to conduct atheistic work among students; doctors who were entrusted with the duty of “preventing the rite of baptism of children”; medical workers at antenatal clinics and children's clinics who conducted lectures and conversations with expectant mothers “about the dangers of the baptismal ritual,” as well as educational work with parents who had baptized their children, etc.

An important aspect of the anti-religious campaign of the early 60s was the introduction of new civil holidays and non-religious rituals into the life of Soviet people. Thus, Christmas was supposed to be replaced by the “New Year’s Carnival” and “Farewell to Winter,” Easter by the “Musical Spring” holiday, and Trinity by “Russian Birch Day.” The entire life of a Soviet person from birth to death was to be accompanied by new Soviet ceremonies, performed in a solemn atmosphere: registration of primary marriages and births, Komsomol weddings, coming-of-age evenings, presentation of passports to teenagers, honoring labor veterans, farewell to the Soviet Army and retirement, 25- anniversary and 50th anniversary of married life, “civil funeral services”, Labor, Spring, Harvest holidays, etc.” .

On October 2, 1962, a meeting of the Bureau of the CPSU MK “On the state and measures to improve the atheistic education of the population of the region” was held in Moscow. It outlined measures to introduce civil rituals and improve the work of registry offices.

Commissioner Trushin reported that in 1962, in almost all district and city registry offices, a wedding ritual similar to the Moscow “Wedding Palaces” was introduced. “In many cities, such as Khimki, Kashira, Kaliningrad, Klin, Zagorsk, Yegoryevsk, Zheleznodorozhny, etc., registry offices have decent premises and appropriate equipment,” the speaker noted.

In some cities, radio and local press began popularizing new civil rites. For example, in the Dmitrov newspaper “Put Ilyich” dated December 3, 1962, in the article “Be Happy,” an example was given of how the wedding ceremony of the newlyweds was solemnly held:

17 young, radiant, joyful couples went up on December 2 to the large hall of the city Palace of Culture, where marriages are registered. They are all warmly greeted by the head of the city registry office, Tatyana Fedorovna Shishkina. The newlyweds walk to the table along a soft carpet. There are flowers in their hands. Grooms wear black formal suits, brides wear white dresses. Music sounds...

Despite all the efforts of the authorities, in 1962-1963 non-religious holidays and rituals did not become widespread, with the exception of marriage ceremonies. “If a lot is already being done to introduce civil rites during marriage,” states the Moscow Commissioner, “then at the birth of a child, at funerals, very little is done. The public’s attention should also be drawn to this matter, as, of course, these civil rites will more successfully supplant the religious rites of baptism and funerals.”

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).