The truth about the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet period.

http://www.bogobloger.ru/2011/04/blog-post_09.html
I read this heartbreaking story about the persecution of Christians in North Korea.
In some way, this publication was for me, if not a revelation, then a very interesting discovery: it turns out that Christians were oppressed mainly only in the Soviet Union and North Korea.
And everything that happened before and after socialism turns out to be God's Grace.
Millions of Russian peasants who died during hunger strikes that took place in tsarist Russia with unenviable constancy in 1901: "In the winter of 1900-1901, 42 million people were starving, of which 2 million 813 thousand Orthodox souls died." . man". Modestly, as about something ordinary) apparently does not count. The tsarist government and the tsar himself did not lay down two fingers to somehow help their fellow believers dying of hunger. It is not clear where the Orthodox Church was in all this. Apparently the clergy had more important things to do at that time. Like the tsarist government, which considered the revolutionary and working-class movement a much greater evil than the starvation of millions of its fellow believers. In the language of lawyers, the behavior of the tsarist government in relation to the starving peasants is called criminal inaction.
Apparently, Bloody Sunday, the Lena massacre, the massacre to which the Russian tsar doomed his army and people to World War I, thus paying for French and British loans (the French, the Belgians and the British did not cash in on Russia receiving orders from the tsarist government for enslaving - again for Russia, conditions. It was also desirable for them to receive their interest. For reference: Russia entered the First World War, yielding, for example, in artillery, even to Romania, not to mention Germany or Austria-Hungary) ...
In modern Russia, extinct villages and towns are everywhere, old people dying of malnutrition and lack of medicine, street children and the homeless. All this, apparently, is not called persecution of Christians (and at the same time of Muslims and all other peoples living in Russia).
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, during which thousands of innocent people died, is also apparently not considered persecution of Christians. Like thousands of Serbs, dismantled for organs and sold into slavery, thanks to NATO's concern for justice in the region.
All of the above is not a persecution of Christianity at all. The real persecution was exclusively in the Soviet Union, and also in North Korea.
I don’t know about North Korea, I have never been there, but I remember a lot about the Union. For example, the churches that I loved to visit since childhood: I liked church, especially church singing and church painting. No one expelled me or my classmates for attending church either from the pioneers or from the Komsomol. Moreover, I know for certain that many party officials baptized and married their children in the church. And there is no need to talk about the Soviet Baltic states.
In a word, the churches were open and no one punished us for visiting the temples. True, they demanded that we learn mathematics and natural Sciences and not the law of God. It is a pity, of course, that in the history lessons we were introduced to the myths and legends of Ancient Greece, but at the same time there was no place for the history of religions in the school curriculum. As a result of this, in my opinion, a clear gap in education, our school trips to museums were much less useful than they could be. How, for example, can one understand the ideas underlying the creations of medieval masters without knowledge, well, at least general, according to the New Testament?
Yes, and we would all understand each other much better now: Muslims and Christians, Jews and Buddhists, if at school we were given at least general information on the history of religion.
But at that time, our parents were absolutely sure that the time of religion had passed and the future belonged to science.
The atheism of the older generation, the people I grew up among, was, as far as I can tell now, that they were completely indifferent to matters of religion. At the ministers of worship, whether Christians, Jews or Muslims, they looked either mockingly or condescendingly.
It was later, during the so-called "Perestroika", that we suddenly learned about the terrible persecution of the Bolsheviks against the Church. About the executed priests and destroyed temples.
But is it worth blaming all this on the Bolsheviks alone?
Even the great Talleyrand, who certainly knew a lot about politics, said one of his remarkable phrases: "Bayonets are good for everyone, except for one thing: you can’t sit on them." This fully applies to the Bolshevik terror - the basis Soviet power as they try to convince us.
I do not think that the Bolsheviks could have held power in such a huge country as Russia by terror alone. The Bolsheviks stayed in power primarily because they were able to find effective solutions to the most vital problems facing the country: to lead the war-exhausted country out of the bloody slaughter, to resume the work of enterprises, to organize the supply of cities with food, to free the devastated peasant farms from debt bondage to the landowners.
And if the Bolsheviks had not coped with these tasks, then they would certainly have suffered the same fate as the Provisional Government, and before it, the tsarist government.
As for the persecution of the church, the destruction of churches and the murder of priests, I think it is unlikely that all this would have been possible without the wide participation and support of the general population, and above all the peasantry.
Without such support, the Bolsheviks would hardly have decided on the confiscation of church property for the needs of industrialization and on other, no less decisive, harsh, and sometimes cruel measures.
Why did the Russian peasants, known for their piety, allow such a development of events?
Is it because the Orthodox Church, as well as the Catholic Church and any other, has always been too closely connected with the authorities and far from the people, remained indifferent to the misfortunes of ordinary people, while drowning in luxury?
Power and wealth change a person, make him completely different. Isn't it for the same reason that the descendants of the Bolsheviks eventually fled?
With collapse socialist system the place of communist ideology was again taken by Orthodoxy. Not even twenty years have passed, and accusations of contempt for the people, neglect of justice in the name of power, of greed are heard against the Church from all sides ...
Is history taking another turn?

Reviews

Well done, Vlad. I was also lucky to be born into an atheist family. Father and mother graduated from the same agronomic college in Murom and went to the North Caucasus. Direction naturally. Never heard of God from them. The only thing I heard from my grandmother was that one should not blaspheme. Grandmother did not go to school, but she read voraciously and told us a lot about Pinkerton and other pre-revolutionary adventures. A lecture on religion was read to me by a housekeeper whom working parents were forced to invite. The gloomy old woman, who made many bows in the evenings in front of the photo icons, was still that teacher. When I put it in my pants, she put me in a basin and, before washing, she fed me with it. I told my mother about it 60 years later. That's how I failed to be friends with God. Well, God be with him. All the best. Sincerely.

Unfortunately, Dmitry, there are enough such "educators" even among atheists. To be honest, I do not have such a rejection of religion. There is enough charlatanism and self-interest everywhere, but both Christianity and Islam, in my opinion, found and find such a wide response in the hearts of people precisely because they express the aspirations of ordinary people: a fair trial, protection of the poor, honest, benevolent attitude of people towards each other. Don't forget that up until the middle of the nineteenth century, the vast majority of people in the world were illiterate. Marxism was clearly too tough for them.)))
But again, theory is theory, declarations are declarations, but in reality everything is completely different. Jesus and his disciples were poor and despised money because they lived a spiritual life. This circumstance does not seem to worry much about the Fathers of the Church today.

Either you did not understand me, or I forgot to say that I do not reject religion at all. I perfectly understand that the bang ceased to be an animal when he came up with the gods, when he at least somehow began to explain the world. There was no exact knowledge and there never will be, but attempts to explain the world have been and will be. My attitude to religions is determined by the fact that it is used as a military uniform, so that it is easier to aim at the enemy and not hit your own. That is, religions do not unite, but separate people, although it is listed in the humanities. Marxism could become a single religion, but it also divides. When humanity will live up to a single religion or atheism, it is unknown and certainly not to wait. Newton was a true Christian and even tried to figure out how God works, and what can be expected from ordinary people. Blessed are those who believe. All the best. Sincerely.

Starik 31 09/01/2012 19:03 Alleged violations.

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Hegumen Damaskin (Orlovsky)

church historian, hagiographer, candidate of historical sciences. Secretary of the Synodal Commission of the Moscow Patriarchate for the canonization of saints.

With the advent of Soviet power, persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church began. The persecution, which began at the end of 1917, assumed a mass and fierce character already in 1918, when a decree was adopted on the separation of the Church from the state, which placed the Church in a powerless position, and continued throughout the entire Soviet period, i.e., seventy years.

From 1923 to 1928, hundreds of clergy and laity were arrested, but there were almost no death sentences; the same was true from 1934 to 1936. Sometimes persecution took on an almost exclusively administrative character, as was the case in the 1970s and 1980s, when arrests of clergy and laity became sporadic.

In some periods, the authorities pursued the goal of arresting as many clergy and laity as possible, arrests then numbered in the tens and hundreds of thousands, and for many ended in martyrdom. So it was in Russia immediately after the establishment of Soviet power, when entire districts of such dioceses as Perm, Stavropol, Kazan, were deprived of clergy. This period lasted until 1920, and in those territories where the Bolsheviks seized power later, such as in the Far East, the time of severe persecution fell on 1922. It was the same during the campaign organized by the Soviet authorities to confiscate church valuables in 1922, when many trials were held throughout the country, some of which ended with a death sentence.

A similar all-Russian campaign, which led to mass arrests and executions, was carried out in 1929-1931, in some areas it continued until 1933. And finally, in 1937-1938, most of the clergy and laity were arrested and almost simultaneously more than two-thirds of the churches operating in 1935 were closed.

According to some sources, 827 clergy were shot in 1918, 19 in 1919 and 69 imprisoned. According to other sources, 3,000 clergy were shot in 1918, and 1,500 were subjected to other repressions. In 1919, 1,000 clergymen were shot and 800 were subjected to other repressions.

The official data submitted to the Local Council and the Supreme Church Administration by September 20, 1918 were as follows. There were 97 people killed for the faith and the Church, of which the names and official position of 73 were precisely established, and the names of 24 people were unknown by that time. 118 people were under arrest at that time. Of the well-known archpastors who suffered martyrdom during this period of persecution, there were holy martyrs: Metropolitan Vladimir of Kyiv (Bogoyavlensky); archbishops: Perm and Kungur Andronik (Nikolsky), Omsk and Pavlodar Sylvester (Olshevsky), Astrakhan Mitrofan (Krasnopolsky); Bishops: Balakhna Lavrenty (Knyazev), Vyazemsky Macarius (Gnevushev), Kirillovsky Varsonofy (Lebedev), Tobolsk Hermogen (Dolganev), Solikamsky Feofan (Ilmensky), Selenginsky Ephraim (Kuznetsov) and others.

First bottom line The effect of the decree was the closure in 1918 of theological educational institutions, including diocesan schools and churches attached to them. The only exception was the Kazan Theological Academy, which, thanks to the efforts of its rector, Bishop Anatoly (Grisyuk) of Chistopol, continued its work until 1921, when Bishop Anatoly and the teachers of the academy were arrested on charges of violating the decree on the separation of the Church from the state. Practically since 1918 spiritual education and scientific church activity were stopped. The same can be said about book printing, since 1918 any publication of Christian literature has become impossible. Only in 1944, with the permission of the authorities, the Theological Institute and pastoral courses were opened, which in 1946 were transformed into the Theological Academy and Seminaries.

In accordance with the decree, the teaching of the Law of God in schools was prohibited. According to the clarification of the People's Commissariat of Education dated February 23, 1918, the teaching of religious doctrines to children under 18 years of age should not take the form of ... properly functioning educational institutions, therefore, the teaching of religious doctrines in churches and at home was prohibited. In the development of the decree, the People's Commissariat for Education of March 3, 1919, decided:

“Prohibit persons belonging to the clergy of all their clans, all faiths, to hold any positions in all schools ... Those guilty of violating this prohibition are subject to the court of the Revolutionary Tribunal.”

Meetings of parishioners took place in many cities, expressing their negative attitude towards the decree in general and, in particular, towards the issue of separating the school from the Church. On February 4, 1918, the general meeting of the parishioners of Novo-Nikolaevsk unanimously decided:

“The separation of the Church from the state is considered tantamount to the separation of the soul from the body, the Russian person, as an Orthodox Christian and as a citizen, cannot be divided ... Church property is the property of a believing people ... Eliminating the Law of God from among the mandatory subjects school course is a persecution of the legitimate desire of believing parents, who provide funds for the maintenance of schools, to use organized means for the education and upbringing of children ... "

The Peasant Congress of the Kazan Province decided to recognize the Law of God as a compulsory subject in schools. The workers of Kazan in the amount of 14 thousand turned to the commissioner for public education with the demand to keep the teaching of the Law of God in schools. In Orenburg, in 1918, meetings of the parents of all schools were held, who unanimously spoke in favor of the obligatory teaching of the Law of God. Similar meetings were held in Vladimir, Ryazan, Tambov, Simbirsk provinces, in some educational institutions in Moscow. None of the wishes of the people was satisfied. The Criminal Code of the RSFSR, adopted in 1922, introduced an article that provided for punishment of up to 1 year in prison for teaching “religious doctrines” to minors.

Simultaneously with the adoption of the decree on the separation of the Church from the state, the authorities tried to seize the Alexander Nevsky Lavra with the help of an armed attack, thus making it clear that they would stop at nothing in their measures to implement the decree. During the capture of the Lavra, the Archpriest of the Sorrowful Church, Pyotr Skipetrov, was mortally wounded, trying to reassure the Red Guards.

In 1918, religious processions were held in many cities of the country in the form of a protest against the seizure of church property. They were held in Moscow, Petrograd, Tula, Tobolsk, Perm, Omsk and other cities. Tens of thousands of people took part in them. In some cases, such as in Tula and Omsk, the processions were shot by the Red Guards.

In April 1918, a commission was created in the People's Commissariat of Justice to implement the decree on the separation of the Church from the state, later renamed the VIII department, called the "liquidation" department. “The instruction prepared by this department dated August 24 (30), 1918 on the procedure for applying the decree already provided for a number of harsh confiscation measures, including the seizure of capital, valuables, and other property of churches and monasteries.” Moreover, during the requisition of monastic property, the monasteries themselves were to be liquidated. From 1918 to 1921, more than half of the monasteries in Russia were nationalized - 722.

In the second half of 1921, famine broke out in the country. By May 1922, about 20 million people were starving in 34 provinces of Russia and about a million died. The famine was not only the result of the drought, but also the result of the civil war that had just ended, the brutal suppression of peasant uprisings, and the merciless attitude of the authorities towards the people, which took the form of various economic experiments. The Holy Patriarch Tikhon was one of the first to respond to the people's grief and already in August 1921 he addressed the flock, to the Eastern Patriarchs, to the Pope of Rome, to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of York with a message in which he called for assistance to the country dying of hunger.

The authorities were against any participation of the Orthodox Church in cooperation in helping the starving, and in the person of Dzerzhinsky they formulated the following position in December 1921:

“My opinion: the church is falling apart, therefore (hereinafter it is emphasized in the document. - I.D.) we need to help, but in no way revive it in an updated form. Therefore, the church policy of collapse should be carried out by the V.Ch.K., and not by anyone else. Official or semi-official relations with priests are unacceptable. Our bet is on communism, not religion. Only V.Ch.K. can tack. for the sole purpose - the decomposition of the priests.

On February 6, 1922, Patriarch Tikhon addressed the Orthodox Christians for the second time, urging them to help with their donations:

“Given the hardship of life for each individual Christian family due to the depletion of their funds, we allow the clergy and parish councils, with the consent of the communities of believers who are in charge of the temple property, to use the precious things that are in many churches that do not have liturgical use (pendants in the form rings, chains, bracelets, necklaces and other items donated to decorate holy icons, gold and silver scrap) to help the starving.

On February 23, 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a decree on the seizure of church valuables. Having received a detailed development of the Politburo and the GPU, this decree became a tool with which the authorities made an attempt to destroy the Church. On March 17, 1922, L. D. Trotsky proposed a plan for organizing the seizure of church valuables, which went far beyond the boundaries of the direct seizure of valuables. Trotsky wrote: “In the center and in the provinces, create secret leading commissions for the seizure of valuables, similar to the Moscow commission of Sapronov-Unshlikht. All these commissions must necessarily include either the secretary of the Gubkom or the head of the agitation and prop department... In provincial cities, the commissar of the division, brigade, or head of the political department is involved in the commission... At the same time, to split the clergy, showing decisive initiative in this regard and taking under the protection of the state power those priests who openly speak in favor of the withdrawal ... "

The content of the activities of the commission for the seizure of church valuables was formulated with the utmost clarity by Trotsky in a note to the Politburo: “Our entire strategy in this period should be designed for a split among the clergy on a specific issue: the seizure of valuables from churches. Since the issue is acute, the schism on this ground can and must take on a very acute character, and that part of the clergy who will speak out in favor of the withdrawal and help the withdrawal will not return back to the clique of Patriarch Tikhon. Therefore, I believe that the bloc with this part of the priests can be temporarily brought to the point of introducing them into pomgol, especially since it is necessary to eliminate any suspicions and doubts about the fact that the values ​​allegedly seized from churches are not spent on the needs of the starving ... "

In March 1922, the commission began to confiscate valuables from churches; despite the attempts of the clergy to prevent excesses, in some places the commissions for the confiscation clashed with the faithful. Such clashes took place on March 11 in Rostov-on-Don, on March 15 in Shuya and on March 17 in Smolensk.

On March 19, Lenin wrote his famous letter, in which he finally substantiated the meaning and goals of the campaign to confiscate valuables: “All considerations indicate that later we will not be able to do this, because no other moment, except for a desperate famine, will give us such a mood among the broad peasant masses, which would either provide to us the sympathy of this mass, or at least would provide us with the neutralization of these masses in the sense that victory in the struggle against the seizure of valuables will remain unconditionally and completely on our side ... Therefore, I come to the unconditional conclusion that we must now give the most a decisive and merciless battle against the Black Hundred clergy and crush its resistance with such cruelty that they will not forget it for several decades. Lenin proposes that after the seizure of church valuables, several trials should be carried out, which should be completed by executions not only in Shuya, but also in Moscow and "several other spiritual centers."

And such processes were carried out. Some of them, such as Moscow, Petrograd, Smolensk, ended in death sentences for some of the accused. At that time, the Holy Martyr Veniamin (Kazansky), Metropolitan of Petrograd, Archimandrite Sergius (Shein), and laymen Yuri Novitsky and John Kovsharov were shot in Petrograd. Archpriests Alexander Zaozersky, Vasily Sokolov, Christopher Nadezhdin, Hieromonk Macarius (Telegin) and layman Sergiy Tikhomirov were shot in Moscow. The rest were sentenced to imprisonment and exile in remote wilderness places. If the first stage of the persecution of 1918-1920 most often took place without observing any legal formalities, then the persecution of 1922 was carried out with the involvement of courts and revolutionary tribunals.

As for the number of victims during this period, in one of the latest studies N. N. Pokrovsky, commenting on the data of modern historical science on this issue, writes: “The documents of the Politburo and Lubyanka do not yet make it possible to determine the numerical characteristics or the number of clashes between believers and the authorities , neither the number of those killed and wounded in these clashes, nor the number of repressed. From one work on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church to another, the testimony of an active participant in the events of the “Living Church” Protopresbyter V. Krasnitsky passes that during the seizure in 1922, 1,414 bloody incidents occurred in the country. Often (although not always accurately) the information of the priest Mikhail Polsky, who fled from Russia, is given that in 1922 the total number of victims who died in clashes and were shot in court was 2,691 white clergy, 1,962 monastics, 3,447 nuns and novices; only 8,100 victims. In the literature there are also references to the fact that in connection with the seizure of church property in 1922, 231 court cases were held in the country, in which 732 people were sentenced ... "

As a result, church items worth 4,650,810 rubles were seized. 67 k. in gold rubles. Of these funds, it was decided to spend 1 million gold rubles on the purchase of food for the starving, around which an agitation campaign was launched. The main funds were used for the seizure campaign itself, or more precisely, for the campaign to split the Russian Orthodox Church.

But the authorities did not limit themselves to direct repressions against the clergy and believers, there was a plan to destroy the church administration, and for this a group of clergy was formed into a separate organization, to which the Soviet authorities began to provide certain patronage. Trotsky, formulating the position of the Politburo on this issue, wrote:

“The Church ... now stands face to face with the proletarian revolution. What could be her future fate? Two currents are outlined: clearly, openly counter-revolutionary from the Black Hundred-monarchist ideology and - "Soviet". The ideology of the "Soviet" clergy, apparently, is similar to Smenovekhov's, that is, bourgeois-compromising. If the slow-moving bourgeois-compromising Smenovekhov wing of the church had developed and strengthened, it would have become much more dangerous for the socialist revolution than the church in its present form. For by assuming a patronizing "Soviet" coloration, the "advanced" clergy thereby opens up the possibility of penetrating into those advanced strata of the working people who constitute or should constitute our support.

Therefore, the Smenovekhi clergy must be regarded as the most dangerous enemy of tomorrow. But just tomorrow. Today it is necessary to overthrow the counter-revolutionary part of the churchmen, in whose hands the actual administration of the church is. In this struggle, we must rely on the Smenovekhi clergy, without being politically biased, and even more so in principle ...

The famine campaign is extremely beneficial for this, because it sharpens all questions on the fate of church treasures. We must, firstly, force the Smena Vekhov priests wholly and openly to link their fate with the question of the seizure of valuables; secondly, to force them to bring this campaign within the church to a complete organizational break with the Black Hundred hierarchy, to their own new council and new elections for the hierarchy.

On March 14, the GPU sent out cipher telegrams to some major provincial cities calling for the clergy to Moscow, who had agreed to cooperate with the GPU. Priests Vvedensky and Zaborovsky were called to Moscow from Petrograd, and Archbishop Evdokim from Nizhny Novgorod with the clergy who shared his views. “It was decided to hold a meeting of the “progressive clergy” in Moscow, the organization of the case was entrusted to the head of the Moscow Chekists, F.D. Medved.

On April 11, 1922, the GPU issued an instruction on holding an organizational meeting of the “Moscow opposition group of the clergy”, which stated in particular: “The urgent task in the matter of splitting the clergy is to give the Soviet opposition some sort of formalized and organizational character, at least on a local scale to start. To this end, it is necessary, through the mediation of an unconditionally firm and resolute priest, to induce the Moscow opposition group to adopt a resolution, a statement (at least for the first time not for publication), with the following content:

Relations between the Orthodox Church and the Soviet state became absolutely impossible due to the fault of the leading hierarchs of the church. On the issue of famine, the leaders of the church took a clearly anti-people and anti-state position and, in the person of Tikhon, essentially called on the faithful to revolt against the Soviet regime ... Salvation consists in immediately courageous decisive elements taking practical measures to renew church hierarchy with the help of even a local council, which should decide the fate of the patriarchate, the constitution of the church and its leadership ... "

On April 20, 1922, a meeting of representatives of the GPU and the “revolutionary clergy” represented by Kalinovsky, Borisov, Nikolostansky and Bishop Antonin (Granovsky) took place at the apartment of the priest S. Kalinovsky, who fully agreed with the representatives of the GPU regarding the struggle against the Patriarch and the patriarchal administration.

Describing the mechanism by which the Renovationist movement was created, as well as how and for what purposes the Renovationist cathedral was assembled, the head of the VIth Department of the Secret Department of the OGPU Tuchkov wrote: “Before the creation of the Renovationist church groups, the entire management of the church was in the hands of the former Patriarch Tikhon, and hence the tone of the church was clearly given in an anti-Soviet spirit. The moment of seizure of church valuables served in the best possible way to the formation of renovationist anti-Tikhon groups, first in Moscow, and then throughout the S.S.S.R.

Until that time, both on the part of the organs of the GPU and on the part of our party, attention was paid to the church exclusively for informational purposes, therefore, in order for the anti-Tikhon groups to master the church apparatus, it was necessary to create such an information network that could be used not only for the aforementioned purposes, but also to lead the whole church through her, which we have achieved ...

After that, and having already a whole network of information, it was possible to direct the church along the path we needed, so the first renovationist group was organized in Moscow, later called the "living church", to which Tikhon transferred temporary control of the church. It consisted of 6 people: two - bishops - Antonin and Leonid and 4 priests - Krasnitsky, Vvedensky, Stadnik and Kalinovsky ... priests by their supporters... This was the beginning of the split of the Orthodox Church and the change in the political orientation of the church apparatus...

In order to finally strengthen their position and obtain the canonical right to lead the church, the Renovationists began work on the preparation of the All-Russian Local Council, at which questions were to be decided mainly about Tikhon and his bishops abroad, the final establishment of the political line of the church and the introduction of a number of liturgical innovations into it ... »

“The council announced the deprivation of the patriarch of his rank, priesthood and even monasticism with the return “to a primitive worldly position”; the very restoration of the institution of the patriarchate by the Council of 1917–1918. was proclaimed by the Renovationists as a "counter-revolutionary act". The Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the OGPU organized a visit to the arrested patriarch by a delegation of the cathedral to present these decrees. The Patriarch inscribed on them his resolution on their non-canonicity, if only because the 74th Apostolic Canon requires his obligatory presence at the council for the possibility of justification.

The council adopted some reforms, such as the second marriage of the clergy, the white episcopate, the transition to new style, but the discussion of Krasnitsky's proposal for deeper reforms was postponed ... "

On June 26, 1923, Patriarch Tikhon was released from prison and immediately sent messages to the All-Russian flock. His main concern after his release was to overcome the Renovationist split. With the utmost clarity, the Patriarch outlined in his message of July 15, 1923, the history of the seizure of church power by the Renovationists. “And how did they take advantage of the seized church power? wrote the Patriarch. – They did not use it to build the Church, but to sow in Her the seeds of a pernicious schism; to deprive the sees of Orthodox bishops who remained true to their duty and refused to obey them; to persecute reverent priests who, according to the canons of the church, did not obey them; to plant everywhere the so-called "Living Church", ignoring the authority of the Universal Church and striving to weaken the necessary ecclesiastical discipline; in order to give triumph to his party and forcibly, ignoring the conciliar voice of all believers, to realize its desires in life.

By all this they separated themselves from the unity of the body of the Universal Church and were deprived of the grace of God, which dwells only in the Church of Christ. And because of this, all orders of the illegitimate power that has no canonical succession, which ruled the Church in Our absence, are invalid and void! And all the actions and sacraments performed by bishops and priests who have fallen away from the Church are without grace, and the believers who participate with them in prayer and the sacraments not only do not receive sanctification, but are condemned for participating in their sin ... "

Shortly before the death of the Patriarch, the OGPU decided to initiate proceedings against him, accusing him of compiling lists of repressed clergy. On March 21, 1925, the Patriarch was interrogated by an investigator. But the case did not develop due to the death of the Patriarch on April 7, 1925. Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky) of Krutitsy, who became Patriarchal Locum Tenens after the death of Patriarch Tikhon, continued the work of healing the schism, taking a strictly ecclesiastical position towards the Renovationists. “The accession to the Holy Orthodox Church of the so-called Renovationists is possible only on the condition that each of them individually renounces his delusions and brings repentance to the whole people for his falling away from the Church. And we unceasingly pray to the Lord God, may He return the lost to the bosom of the Holy Orthodox Church…”

From October 1 to October 10, the Renovationists held their 2nd council in Moscow, which was attended by more than three hundred people. Among other things, the goal of the Renovation Council was to slander the Patriarchal Church and Metropolitan Peter. Speaking at the council, Vvedensky declared: “There will be no peace with the Tikhonovites, the top of the Tikhonovism is a counter-revolutionary tumor in the Church. To save the Church from politics, a surgical operation is needed. Only then can there be peace in the Church. Renovationism is not on the way with the top of the Tikhonovshchina!” The renovationists at the cathedral, characterizing Metropolitan Peter, said that he "relies on people who are organically connected with the old system, dissatisfied with the revolution: former homeowners and merchants who still think to reckon with the modern government."

During 1925, Metropolitan Peter made attempts to normalize relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state, trying to get a meeting with the head of the Soviet government, Rykov. At the same time, he began to draw up the text of the declaration, which was actively discussed with the bishops living in Moscow at that time.

The state has taken an irreconcilable position towards the Church, choosing only the forms and terms for its destruction. Even during the life of Patriarch Tikhon, when it became clear that the Renovationist movement had collapsed, the Anti-Religious Commission decided at a meeting on September 3, 1924: Tikhonov's hierarchy".

After the death of the Patriarch, the OGPU came to grips with the organization of a new schism, which later received the name "Gregorian" after the head of the schismatic Provisional Supreme Church Council, Archbishop Gregory (Yatskovsky). After the negotiations between the OGPU and the leaders of the schism were completed, the Anti-Religious Commission decided at a meeting on November 11, 1925: in opposition to Peter ... to publish in Izvestia a number of articles compromising Peter, using for this the materials of the recently ended Renovationist Cathedral. View articles instruct vols. Steklov I.I., Krasikov P.A. and Tuchkov. They should also be instructed to review the prepared opposition group (Archbishop Gregory. - I.D.) declarations against Peter. Simultaneously with the publication of the articles, instruct the OGPU to begin an investigation against Peter.

In November 1925, those bishops, priests and laity were arrested who, to one degree or another, assisted Metropolitan Peter in managing the Church. Archbishops Procopius (Titov) and Pachomius (Kedrov), Bishops Guriy (Stepanov), Joasaph (Udalov), Parthenius (Bryansky), Ambrose (Polyansky), Damaskin (Tsedrik), Tikhon (Sharapov), German (Ryashentsev), Nikolai were arrested (Dobronravov). Among the laity, Alexander Samarin, former chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod before the revolution, and assistant chief prosecutor Pyotr Istomin were arrested.

On December 9, 1925, the Anti-Religious Commission, at a meeting that took place that day, decided to arrest Metropolitan Peter and support the group of Archbishop Gregory. In the evening of the same day, Metropolitan Peter was arrested.

On December 22, 1925, an organizational meeting of the hierarchs was held, which created the All-Russian Central Council of Churches, headed by Archbishop Gregory (Yatskovsky). Having made an unsuccessful attempt to seize the highest church authority, this group of hierarchs took shape in an independent trend, and over time they “not only become even more isolated, but even dare to create their own pseudo-hierarchy, implanted by them following the example of the Renovationists, in parallel with the Orthodox episcopate, located on the territories entrusted to him. departments".

The authorities, however, in their efforts to destroy church administration were not satisfied with the Renovationist and Gregorian schisms and began to actively work to achieve a severance of relations between the Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) of Nizhny Novgorod, and the candidate for the post of Locum Tenens according to the will of Patriarch Tikhon, Metropolitan Agafangel of Yaroslavl ( Preobrazhensky). To achieve the goal, the OGPU detained Metropolitan Agafangel in Perm, where Tuchkov repeatedly met with him, who offered him, in view of the arrest of Metropolitan Peter, to take the post of Locum Tenens. On April 18, 1926, Metropolitan Agafangel issued a message in which he announced his accession to the post of Locum Tenens. On April 24, 1926, the Anti-Religious Commission decided: “The line pursued by the OGPU to decompose the Tikhonov part of the churchmen is recognized as correct and expedient.

Lead a line towards a split between Metropolitan Sergius (appointed by Peter as temporary Locum Tenens) and Metropolitan Agafangel, who claims to be the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, simultaneously strengthening the third Tikhonov hierarchy - the Provisional Supreme Church Council, headed by Archbishop Gregory, as an independent unit ... "

It was not possible to form a new church movement of the OGPU, already on June 12, 1926, Metropolitan Agafangel refused the post of Patriarchal Locum Tenens. But the authorities did not abandon their plan to create a new split. In 1927, their interference in church administration and in the appointment of bishops to sees, the arrests of undesirable bishops, and the declaration of loyalty published against this background by the Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Sergius on July 29, 1927, led to confusion among the Orthodox and created considerable disagreement among the hierarchs. However, in this case, the authorities failed to form an unauthorized church group that would have decided to create a parallel hierarchy, and the discussion ended in the martyrdom of most of its participants.

In 1928, the authorities began to prepare for a large-scale expulsion of peasants, most of whom were Orthodox, who had preserved the old, religious way of life at the household level, that is, for whom faith was not only a way of thinking, but also a way of life corresponding to it.

In many villages, not excluding the most deaf ones, there were church elders, twenties were active, many monasteries had not yet been closed and dispersed, which in the twenties received from the authorities the legal status of cooperatives, partnerships and communes. At the end of 1928, the Politburo began preparations for the persecution, which was based on a document outlining its boundaries and scope. The document was instructed to be written by Kaganovich and Yaroslavsky; a preliminary draft version was agreed with Krupskaya and Smidovich. On January 24, 1929, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks approved the final text of the decree, which was sent to all the Central Committees of the National Communist Parties, regional committees, regional committees, provincial committees and district committees, that is, to all representatives of power in Soviet Russia. The document was called "On measures to strengthen anti-religious work."

This document marked the beginning of mass arrests of clergy, laity and the closure of churches, and it, in particular, wrote: “... the strengthening of socialist construction, the socialist offensive against the kulak-Nepman elements is causing resistance from the bourgeois-capitalist strata, which finds its vivid expression on the religious front , where there is a revival of various religious organizations, often blocking each other, using the legal status and traditional authority of the Church ...

People's Commissar Vnudel and the OGPU. Do not in any way allow religious societies to violate Soviet legislation, bearing in mind that religious organizations ... are the only legally operating counter-revolutionary organization that has influence on the masses. The NKVD should pay attention to the fact that residential commercial municipal premises are still being rented out as prayer houses, often in working-class areas. Schools, courts, civil registrations must be completely removed from the hands of the clergy. Party committees and executive committees need to raise questions about the use of registry offices in order to combat clericalism, church rituals and remnants of the old way of life. Cooperative organizations and collective farms should pay attention to the need to take over vegetarian canteens and other cooperative associations created by religious organizations ... Kuspromsoyuz to take care of creating new handicrafts in areas where religious objects, icon painting, etc. are made ...

The factions of the councils need to take the initiative to develop a number of measures, around which it would be possible to organize the broad masses to fight against religion, the correct use of former monastic and church buildings and lands, the establishment of powerful agricultural communes in former monasteries, agricultural stations, rental centers, industrial enterprises , hospitals, schools, school dormitories, etc., not allowing under any guise the existence of religious organizations in these monasteries ...

Secretary of the Central Committee L. Kaganovich

“To submit to the next Congress of Soviets of the RSFSR a proposal to amend paragraphs 4 and 12 of the Constitution of the RSFSR as follows: at the end of paragraph 4, the words “and the freedom of religious and anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens”, replace with the words “and the freedom of religious belief and anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens."

On July 4, 1929, the chairman of the anti-religious commission, Yaroslavsky, submitted a memorandum to the Politburo on the activities of the anti-religious commission for 1928–29. In it, he wrote, in part:

“With regard to monasteries, the ARC instructed a special commission with the participation of the NKVD and the OGPU to find out the exact number of monasteries that have not yet been liquidated and prepare the question of turning them into Soviet institutions (for hostels, for juvenile colonies, for state farms, etc.), heading for something to dissolve the elements of monasticism concentrated in them, which still often cover up their reactionary activities with the signboard of labor communes ... "

Repressions increased, churches were closed, but from the point of view of Stalin and the Politburo, the actions of the clumsy anti-religious commission only interfered with the full-scale rollout of the persecution of the Orthodox Church, which would not only repeat the persecutions and executions of clergy in 1918 and 1922, but should have significantly exceeded them in scale, for in this case the bulk of the laity, the peasantry, was affected. On December 30, 1929, the Politburo of the Central Committee adopted a resolution on the liquidation of the anti-religious commission and the transfer of all its affairs to the secretariat of the Central Committee (subsequently, a commission on cult issues was created under the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR). Thus, the management of persecution was going to a single center.

On February 11, 1930, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR approved the corresponding resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR "On the fight against counter-revolutionary elements in the governing bodies of religious associations", which read:

“In order to combat attempts by elements hostile to Soviet power to use religious associations as strongholds for conducting counter-revolutionary work, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decide:

Propose to the governments of the Union republics to immediately instruct the bodies registering religious associations to review the composition of the governing bodies of these associations in order to exclude them from them (in accordance with Articles 7, 14 of the RSFSR Law on Religious Associations of April 8, 1929, similar articles of the laws of other republics ) - kulaks, disenfranchised people and other persons hostile to Soviet power.

Prevent further penetration into these bodies of these persons, systematically refusing to register their religious associations in the presence of the above-mentioned conditions…”

Communist newspapers began to publish materials about the closure of churches, and boasted of the breadth and scope of persecution, which, in this case, could lead to the opposite results. Unlike Trotsky, who was a supporter of agitation campaigns, both Lenin and Stalin acted with the help of secret resolutions adopted by a narrow circle of people, which were then brought to the appropriate institutions, and it was their job to carry out the campaign of closing and destroying churches resolutely and to the end. . And therefore, when the newspapers began to be overwhelmed by a wave of reports about the lawless closing of churches, on March 25, 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee, on one of the cases of such reports, decided:

To the editors of Rabochaya Moskva. For the report published in Rabochaya Moskva on March 18 about the mass closing of churches (56 churches), reprimand the editor of the newspaper Rabochaya Moskva, comrade Lazyan, with a warning that if such reports are allowed in the future, the question of his expulsion from the party will be raised ... "

The persecution began in 1929 and continued until 1933. Many clergy during this time were arrested and exiled to camps, many were martyred there. During the period from 1929 to 1933, about forty thousand church clergy were arrested. In Moscow and the Moscow Region alone, four thousand people were arrested. Most of those arrested were sentenced to imprisonment in concentration camps, the rest were shot. Those who were sentenced to imprisonment and lived to see the persecution of 1937 suffered a martyr's death at that time.

Finally, in 1935, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks summed up the results of the anti-religious campaigns carried out over the past few years, and one of the final documents was drawn up before the start of new persecutions in 1937. In this document, the persecutors testified to the enormous spiritual strength of the Russian Orthodox Church, which allowed it, despite the constant oppression of the state, arrests, executions, the closure of churches and monasteries, collectivization, which destroyed a significant part of the active and independent laity, to keep half of all the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church. In this document, the persecutors wrote:

“Over the past period, all organizations conducting anti-religious work have sharply weakened their activities. The Union of Militant Atheists is in a state of almost complete collapse, the trade unions do not conduct anti-religious work. The Komsomol does not deal with it either. Narkompros completely abandoned this work.

Meanwhile, according to the available data, it is clear that priests and sectarians of various stripes have a dense network of strongholds for their work and not only enjoy influence among certain groups of the population, but are trying to strengthen their positions by increasing their activity.

In the Ivanovo region in 1935 there were up to 2000 prayer buildings and more than 2500 ministers of worship, in the Gorky region - up to 1500 prayer houses and more than 1500 ministers. By Leningrad region in 1936 there were more than 1,000 churches and more than 2,000 clergy; there were more than 19,000 people.

There are at least 25,000 prayer houses throughout the country (in 1914 there were up to 50,000 churches). The following data testify to the still existing religious influences. In the city of Pskov, out of 642 people born during the 6 months of 1935, 54% were baptized in churches, and 40% of the dead were buried according to a religious rite. In the Amosovsky village council of the Pskov region, 75% of peasant children attend church. 50% of children go to confession and take communion…

An indicator of the strengthening of religious influences and the activity of believers is the growth of complaints and a sharp increase in the number of visitors to the commission on cult issues under the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The number of complaints reached 9221 in 1935 against 8229 in 1934. The number of walkers in 1935 reached 2090 people, which is twice as many as in 1934.

Until 1932, the union of atheists had 50,000 grassroots cells, about 5 million members, and about 2,000,000 members in groups of "young militant atheists" ... Out of 5 million members, barely 350 thousand remained.

... A significant influence on the weakening of anti-religious work and the collapse of the union of atheists was exerted by insufficient control and leadership on the part of local party organizations, as well as the presence of sentiments that the fight against religious influences is over and anti-religious work is already a past stage.

At the beginning of 1937, a census of the population of the USSR was carried out. For the first time, at Stalin's suggestion, the question of religion was included in this census. This question was answered by all citizens, starting from the age of sixteen. The government, and especially Stalin, wanted to know - what are their real successes in twenty years of struggle with faith and the Church, who do people call themselves, living in a state that professes militant atheism as a religious surrogate. The total population of sixteen years and older in Soviet Russia was 98.4 million people in 1937, of which 44.8 million were men and 53.6 million were women. 55.3 million identified themselves as believers, of which 19.8 million were men and 35.5 million were women. A smaller, but still quite significant part, 42.2 million, classified themselves as unbelievers, of which 24.5 are men and 17.7 are women. Only 0.9 million people did not wish to answer this question. But that was not all: 41.6 million, or 42.3% of the total adult population of the country, and 75.2% of all who called themselves believers called themselves Orthodox. 0.14 million, or 0.1% of the total adult population, identified themselves as Armenian Gregorians, 0.5 million as Catholics, 0.5 million as Protestants, 0.4 million as Christians of other confessions, 8.3 million as Mohammedans, and Jews. - 0.3 million, Buddhists and Lamaists - 0.1 million, others and inaccurately indicated religion - 3.5 million people.

From the census, it clearly followed that the population of the country remained Orthodox, retaining its national spiritual roots.

The efforts made since 1918 in the field of struggle against the Church and the people, carried out both with the help of the courts and with the help of extrajudicial administrative persecution, did not lead to the desired result, and based on the population census data, we can say that they failed.

From this census, the extent of the failure to build godless socialism in the country became obvious to Stalin, and it became clear how mercilessly and bloody a new persecution and an unprecedented war with the people must be, as a result of which - not a camp, not hard labor awaited the rebellious (and the recalcitrant not on deeds, but only ideologically, different in their faith), but sentences to death and death. Thus began a new, last such persecution, which was supposed to physically crush Orthodoxy.

At the beginning of 1937, the authorities raised the question of the existence of the Russian Orthodox Church as All-Russian organization. As before, in cases of large-scale decisions being made, those that are called historical and national and lead to the death of millions of people (for the sake of maintaining power), Stalin entrusted the initiative to raise the issue to another, in this case Malenkov.

“It is known that the hostile activity of the clergy has seriously revived lately.

I want to draw your attention to the fact that the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of April 8, 1929 “On Religious Associations” contributes to the organization of churchmen. This decree creates an organizational basis for the registration of the most active part of the churchmen and sectarians.

Article 5 of this decree reads: “To register a religious society, its founders in the amount of at least 20 people submit to the bodies listed in the previous (4) article an application for registration in the form established by the NKVD of the RSFSR.”

As you can see, the very procedure for registration requires organizational formalization of the twenty most active churchmen. In the village, these people are widely known as "twenties". In Ukraine, to register a religious society requires not twenty, but fifty founders...

I consider it expedient to cancel this decree, which promotes the organization of churchmen. It seems to me that it is necessary to eliminate the "twenty" and establish a procedure for registering religious societies that would not register the most active churchmen. In the same way, it is necessary to put an end, in the form in which they have developed, with the governing bodies of the clergy.

By decree, we ourselves created a widely branched, legal organization hostile to the Soviet regime. In total, there are about six hundred thousand people in the USSR who are members of the "twenty".

Head Department of Leading Party Organs of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Malenkov ". Stalin's resolution of May 26, 1937: "To members of the PB from comrade Malenkov." The members and candidates of the Politburo were acquainted with the note: Andreev, Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Kalinin, Kosior S.T., Mikoyan, Molotov, Petrovsky, Postyshev, Stalin, Chubar, Eikhe.

N. Yezhov, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, responded to this note by Malenkov. On June 2, 1937, he wrote to Stalin:

“Having read the letter from Comrade Malenkov regarding the need to cancel the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of April 8, 29, “On Religious Associations,” I think that this issue was raised quite correctly.

The Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of April 8, 29, in Article 5 on the so-called "church twenty" strengthens the church by legitimizing the forms of organization of church activists.

From the practice of combating church counter-revolution in past years and at the present time, we know numerous facts when an anti-Soviet church activist uses the legally existing “church twenty” as ready-made organizational forms and as cover for the interests of the ongoing anti-Soviet work.

Together with the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of April 8, 29, I also find it necessary to cancel the instruction of the permanent commission under the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on cults - "On the procedure for implementing the legislation on cults."

A number of paragraphs of this instruction puts religious associations in a position almost equal to Soviet public organizations, in particular, I mean paragraphs 16 and 27 of the instruction, which allow religious street processions and ceremonies, and the convening of religious congresses ... "

According to government commission for the rehabilitation of victims political repression in 1937, 136.900 were arrested Orthodox clergy, of which 85.300 were shot; in 1938, 28,300 were arrested, 21,500 were shot; in 1939, 1,500 were arrested, 900 were shot; in 1940, 5,100 were arrested, 1,100 were shot; in 1941, 4,000 were arrested, 1,900 were shot.

In the Tver region alone, more than two hundred priests were shot in 1937 alone. In the autumn and winter of 1937, the NKVD officers barely had time to put their signatures under the “investigative” papers, and in extracts from the acts on the execution of the death sentence, the secretary of the Troika always put 1 am, because writing this figure was spent the least time. And it turned out that all those sentenced in the Tver region were shot at the same time.

By the spring of 1938, the authorities considered that the Russian Orthodox Church had been physically destroyed and there was no need to maintain a special state apparatus to supervise the Church and enforce repressive orders. On April 16, 1938, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the SSR decided to liquidate the commission of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the SSR on cult issues. Of the 25 thousand churches in 1935, after two years of persecution in 1937 and 1938, only 1,277 churches remained in Soviet Russia, and 1,744 churches ended up on the territory of the Soviet Union after the annexation of the western regions of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states.

Thus, in all of Russia in 1939 there were fewer churches than in Ivanovo Region alone in 1935. It can be said with certainty that the persecution that befell the Russian Orthodox Church at the end of the thirties was exceptional in its scope and cruelty, not only in the history of Russia, but also in the scale of world history.

In 1938, the Soviet government ended a twenty-year period of persecution, as a result of which the process of destruction was brought to a point of irreversibility. If the churches that were given for storage or destroyed could be restored or rebuilt in the foreseeable future, then more than a hundred bishops, tens of thousands of clergy and hundreds of thousands of Orthodox laity were shot, and this loss was irreplaceable and irreplaceable. The consequences of these persecutions are felt to this day. The mass destruction of saints, enlightened and zealous pastors, many ascetics of piety lowered the moral level of society, salt was chosen from the people, which put them in a threatening position of decay. Moreover, the authorities were not going to stop the process of closing churches, it continued and it is not known what it would have come to if it had not been for the Great Patriotic War.

However, neither the beginning of the war, nor the defeat of the first months, nor the abandonment of vast territories to the enemy in the least influenced the hostile attitude of the government of the Soviet state towards the Russian Orthodox Church and did not prompt the authorities to stop the persecution. And only after it became known that the Germans condoned the opening of churches and 3,732 churches were opened in the occupied territories, that is, more than in all of Soviet Russia, and on the territory of Russia itself, without Ukraine and Belarus, the Germans contributed to the opening of 1,300 churches, - The authorities have revised their position.

On September 4, 1943, Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky), Alexy (Simansky) and Nikolai (Yarushevich) met with Stalin. On the morning of the next day, the NKGB of the USSR, on the orders of Stalin, allocated a car with a driver and fuel at the disposal of Metropolitan Sergius. It took the NKGB one day to put the mansion given to the patriarchate in order, and on September 7, Metropolitan Sergius and his small staff moved to Chisty Lane. And already at eleven o'clock the next day, the opening of the Cathedral of Bishops and the elevation of Metropolitan Sergius to the rank of patriarch was scheduled.

Thus, the Soviet government demonstrated to the world a change in its attitude towards the Russian Orthodox Church, that now it is loyal to it, however, having exhausted all its loyalty with an empty declaration. While churches continued to open and be restored on the territory occupied by the Germans, neither Stalin nor the Soviet government were going to open churches, limiting themselves to the benefits of representative activity of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad. Throughout the Great Patriotic War, the arrests of the clergy did not stop. In 1943, more than 1,000 Orthodox priests were arrested, 500 of them were shot. In 1944–1946, the number of executions per year was over 100.

In 1946, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church submitted to the Politburo a report on its work and on the situation of the Russian Orthodox Church and believers in Soviet Russia:

“... As you know, the Orthodox religion in our country is professed by a significant number of the population, and therefore the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole is the most powerful in comparison with other religious associations existing in the USSR.

Moreover, practice has shown that, although over 29 years undoubted and great success has been achieved in terms of a sharp decrease in religiosity in the country, religious prejudices and religion are still far from over, and the methods of rough administration, often used in a number of places, have not justified themselves ...

As of January 1, 1947, there were 13,813 Orthodox churches and prayer houses in the USSR, which is 28% compared to 1916 (excluding chapels). Of these: in the cities of the USSR there are 1352 churches and in workers' settlements, villages and villages - 12.461 churches ...

Discovered by the Germans in the occupied territory (mainly in the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR) - 7,000; former Uniate parishes reunited with the Orthodox Church (western regions of the Ukrainian SSR) - 1,997.

Their distribution across the republics and regions is extremely uneven.

If on territory of the Ukrainian SSR there are 8,815 churches in operation, then on the territory of the RSFSR only 3,082, and then about 1,300 churches were opened during the period of occupation ... "

AT explanatory note two years later, in 1948, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church gave the following data on the number of churches and prayer houses in Soviet Russia:

“... On January 1, 1948, there were 14,329 active churches and prayer houses in the USSR (11,897 churches and 2,432 prayer houses, which is 18.4% of the number of churches, prayer houses and chapels in 1914, when there were 77,767).

The number of churches in the Ukrainian SSR is 78.3% of their number in 1914, and in the RSFSR - 5.4% ...

The increase in the number of active churches and prayer houses occurred for the following reasons:

a) during the war, 7,547 churches were opened on the territory subjected to German occupation (in fact, even more, since a significant number of churches ceased to function after the war due to the departure of the clergy along with the Germans and as a result of us seizing school, clubs, etc. from religious communities - buildings occupied by them during the occupation as prayer houses);

b) in 1946, 2,491 parishes of the Uniate (Greek Catholic) Church in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR converted to Orthodoxy;

c) for 1944–1947 1,270 churches were reopened with the permission of the Council, mainly in the RSFSR, from where there were numerous and persistent requests from believers.

The territorial distribution of active churches is uneven. For example. In the regions and republics that were occupied during the war, there are 12,577 active churches, or 87.7% of all churches, and 12.3% in the rest of the territory of the Union. 62.3% of all churches are in the Ukrainian SSR, with the most a large number of churches in the Vinnitsa region - 814 ...

On January 1, 1948, there were 11,846 registered priests and 1,255 deacons, and a total of 13,101 people, or 19.8% of their number in 1914 ...

As of January 1, 1948, there were 85 monasteries in the USSR, which is 8.3% of the number of monasteries in 1914 (1,025 monasteries).

In 1938, there was not a single monastery in the USSR, in 1940, with the entry into the USSR of the Baltic republics, the Western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, the BSSR and Moldova, there were 64 of them.

During the occupation of the Ukrainian SSR and a number of regions of the RSFSR, up to 40 monasteries were opened.

In 1945 there were 101 monasteries, but in 1946-1947. 16 monasteries liquidated…”

From the middle of 1948 the state exerted increasing pressure on the Church. On August 25, 1948, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church forced the Holy Synod to make a decision to ban religious processions from village to village, spiritual concerts in churches during non-liturgical hours, trips of bishops to dioceses during rural work, and prayer services in the fields. Despite numerous requests from believers to open churches, from 1948 to 1953 not a single church was opened.

On November 24, 1949, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church submitted a report to Stalin stating:

“... The Council reports that in accordance with the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated December 1, 1944 No. 1643 - 48 / s, starting from 1945 (that is, the Great Patriotic War has not yet ended, and the Soviet government has already decided to close open without his permission of churches. - I. D.), and especially in the last two years, public buildings occupied by them during the occupation as prayer houses were confiscated from religious communities, based on the need to return these buildings to the Soviet authorities.

The German occupiers, widely encouraging the opening of churches (10,000 churches were opened during the war), provided religious communities for prayer purposes not only church buildings, but also premises of a purely civilian nature - clubs, schools, orphanages, as well as those converted before the war for cultural purposes. former church buildings.

In total, 1,701 such public buildings were occupied for prayer purposes in the temporarily occupied territory, of which at present, that is, by 1/X-1949, 1,150 buildings, or 67.6%, have already been withdrawn and returned to state and public organizations. Of these: in the Ukrainian SSR - 1025 out of 1445; in the BSSR - 39 out of 65, in the RSFSR and other republics - 86 out of 191.

In general, this seizure was organized and painless, however, in some cases, rudeness, haste and arbitrary actions took place, as a result of which groups of believers appealed and continue to appeal to the Council and central government bodies with complaints about the seizure of buildings and rude actions.

For example, in the Gomel region in 1948 and seven months of 1949, the Regional Executive Committee and the District Executive Committees decided to seize 39 buildings from church communities, which is 60% of all existing churches and prayer houses in the region. The Council agreed to the removal of buildings in 16 cases ... "

In turn, on July 25, 1948, Minister of the Ministry of State Security Abakumov submitted to Stalin an extensive memorandum, which outlined the essence of the relationship between the Church and the state:

“The Ministry of State Security of the USSR has materials that clergymen and sectarians have recently significantly stepped up work to cover the population with religious and hostile influence.

Under the guise of religious beliefs, church-sectarian elements are indoctrinating unstable individuals, especially among young people, drawing them into their groups and communities. Komsomol members, members and candidate members of the CPSU (b) also fall under the influence of churchmen.

A significant role in the dissemination of the doctrine and the organization of hostile work is played by persons from among the religious activists who were previously subjected to repression for anti-Soviet activities and returned to the region after serving their sentence.

Religious indoctrination of the population by churchmen and sectarians is carried out through broad religious propaganda carried out by clergy, preachers, monastic elements and fanatical believers in churches and mosques, in legally and illegally operating prayer houses.

In a number of cases they organize religious education for children and youth in illegal circles and schools.

At the same time, churchmen and sectarians, using the prejudices of believers, conduct religious indoctrination of the population by organizing religious processions, special prayers for sending down rain, "updating" icons, "prophecies", etc. with the participation of various "holy fools", hysterics, "ascetics "and" saints "...

Churchmen and sectarians, first of all, seek to use legal opportunities to expand religious activities, open new churches and prayer houses...

In a number of regions, the clergy, striving for the greatest coverage of the population with religious influence, arrange religious processions and prayers, which lead to mass absence from work of collective farmers and disruption of field work ...

It should be noted that in some cases, representatives of local authorities provide significant assistance to churchmen in opening churches, mosques and prayer houses, providing transport, building materials for the repair of church buildings, etc.

At the same time, some representatives of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Council for Religious Affairs under the regional executive committees do not properly perform the functions assigned to them ...

As a result of the work of the MGB bodies to identify and arrest the anti-Soviet element among churchmen and sectarians, during the period from January 1, 1947 to June 1, 1948, 1968 people were arrested in the Soviet Union for active subversive activities, of which: Orthodox churchmen - 679 people ... "

Throughout the post-war period there were arrests of Orthodox priests. According to the summary report of the GULAG on October 1, 1949, the number of priests in all camps was 3,523 people, of which 1,876 priests were in Unzhlag, 521 people were in the Temnikovsky camps (Special Camp No. 3), 266 people were in Intinlag (Special Camp No. 1) , the rest in Steplag (Special Camp No. 4) and Ozerlag (Special Camp No. 7). All of these camps belonged to the category of penal servitude camps.

In October 1948, the Chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church began to urgently advise Patriarch Alexy "to think over the amount of measures that limit the activities of the Church to the church and the parish." Repeated attempts by the First Hierarch to meet with Stalin ended in failure. It was also forbidden that the Church could perform as part of her liturgical activities - religious processions, except for Easter, trips of the clergy to settlements for the spiritual guidance of believers, the maintenance of several churches by one priest, which, in the absence of a priest, could lead to their closure. The authorities endlessly diversified the forms of persecution of the Church. Thus, in 1951, the tax was increased, which began to be imposed on deductions parable in favor of the diocese, requiring the payment of this tax for the previous two years.

The process of closing temples continued. As of January 1, 1952, there were 13,786 churches in the country, of which 120 did not function, as they were used to store grain. Only in the Kursk region in 1951, during the harvest, about 40 functioning churches were covered with grain. The number of priests and deacons decreased to 12,254, leaving 62 monasteries, only in 1951 8 monasteries were closed.

On October 16, 1958, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted new resolutions directed against the Church: “On monasteries in the USSR” and “On taxation of income from enterprises of diocesan administrations, as well as income from monasteries.” They provided for the reduction of land allotments and the number of monasteries. On November 28, the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a resolution "On measures to stop the pilgrimage to the so-called" holy places ". In order to stop the pilgrimages of believers to the 700 holy places recorded by the authorities, they took a variety of measures - the springs were covered up and the chapels above them were destroyed, they were fenced off, around which police guards were placed to prevent believers. In those cases when the pilgrimage could not be stopped, its organizers were arrested.

By November 1959, 13 monasteries had been closed. Some cloisters were closed during the day. When the Rechulsky monastery was closed, about 200 nuns and a large number of believers tried to prevent this and gathered in the church. The police opened fire and killed one of the pilgrims.

Seeing the turn it's taking new wave persecution, Patriarch Alexy made an attempt to meet with the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, N. S. Khrushchev, to discuss the problems that had arisen in the relationship between the Church and the state, but this attempt ended in failure.

In 1959, the authorities deregistered 364 Orthodox communities, in 1960 - 1398. A blow was dealt to theological educational institutions. In 1958, in 8 seminaries and 2 academies, a little more than 1,200 people were studying in the full-time department and more than 500 in the correspondence department. The authorities took tough measures to prevent young people from entering religious educational institutions. In October 1962, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church informed the Central Committee of the CPSU that out of 560 young men who applied in 1961-1962. applications for admission to the seminary, 490 were taken away as a result of "individual work" with them. Kyiv, Saratov, Stavropol, Minsk, Volyn seminaries were closed. By the autumn of 1964, the number of students compared with 1958 had more than halved. In 3 seminaries and 2 academies there were 411 full-time students and 334 part-time students.

16.03. In 1961, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution "On strengthening control over the implementation of legislation on cults", which provided for the possibility of closing churches without the consent of the Council of Ministers of the Union republics on the basis of only resolutions of the regional (territorial) executive committees, subject to the coordination of their decisions with the Council for Russian Orthodox Affairs Churches. As a result, 1,390 Orthodox parishes were deregistered in 1961, and 1,585 in 1962.

In 1961, under pressure from the authorities, the Holy Synod adopted a resolution "On measures to improve the existing system of parish life", which was then adopted by the Council of Bishops. The practical implementation of this reform led to the removal of the rector from the management of parish activities. The leaders of the entire economic life of the parish were the elders, whose candidatures were necessarily agreed with the executive committees. In 1962, strict control was introduced over the performance of trebs - baptisms, weddings and funerals. They were recorded in books with the names, passport details and addresses of the participants, which in other cases led to their persecution.

On 10/13/1962, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church informed the Central Committee of the CPSU that since January 1960 the number of churches had decreased by more than 30%, and monasteries by almost 2.5 times, while the number of complaints against the actions of local authorities had increased. In many cases, believers resisted. In the city of Klintsy, Bryansk region, a crowd of thousands of believers prevented the removal of crosses from a recently closed church. To subdue her, combatants and units of the military unit, armed with machine guns, were called. In other cases, such as, for example, when trying to close the Pochaev Lavra, thanks to the stubborn resistance of the monks and believers, it was possible to defend the monastery from closing.

On July 6, 1962, two resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU appeared, calling for the introduction of tough measures to curb the spread of religious ideas among children and youth. A proposal was put forward to deprive the parental rights of those parents who raised their children in a religious spirit. Parents were called to school and to the police, demanding that they not take their children to the temple, otherwise they threatened to forcibly place the children in boarding schools.

During the first 8.5 months of 1963, 310 Orthodox communities were deregistered. In the same year, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra was closed. In 1961-1964, 1,234 people were convicted on religious grounds and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment and exile.

By January 1, 1966, the Russian Orthodox Church had 7,523 churches and 16 monasteries left. By 1971 the number of parishes was reduced to 7274. In 1967 the Russian Orthodox Church had 6694 priests and 653 deacons. In 1971 there were 6,234 priests and 618 deacons registered.

Such was the true attitude of the godless state towards the Church, far from liberalism and tolerance. Of these decades, the persecution of the first twenty years was especially cruel, but of these the most merciless and bloody were the persecutions of 1937 and 1938. These twenty years of unceasing persecution gave the Russian Orthodox Church almost the entire host of martyrs, placing it on a par with the ancient churches in terms of the greatness of martyrdom.

Notes:

Investigation case of Patriarch Tikhon. Sat. doc. M.-Yekaterinburg. 1997, p. 15.

TsGIA. F. 833, op. 1, unit ridge 26, l. 167–168.

Samara Diocesan Gazette. 1924. No. 2.

News of the Yekaterinburg Church. 1918. No. 7.

Petrograd Church Bulletin. 1918. No. 18.

Religion and school. Petrograd. 1918. No. 5–6. S. 336.

Kremlin archives. In 2 books. / Book. 1. The Politburo and the Church. 1922–1925 M.–Novosibirsk. 1997, p. 21.

Shkarovsky M.V. Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin and Khrushchev. M. 1999. S. 77.

Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin. History of the Russian Church 1917–1997. M. 1997. S. 71–72.

Kremlin archives. In 2 books. / Book. 1. The Politburo and the Church. 1922–1925 M.–Novosibirsk. 1997, p. 9.

There. Book. 2. P. 11.

There. Book. 1. S. 133–134.

There. Book. 2. 1997. S. 51.

There. Book. 1. S. 141–142.

There. Book. 1. S. 78.

There. Book. 1. S. 81–82.

There. Book. 1. S. 162–163.

There. Book. 1. P. 44–45.

There. Book. 2. S. 185–186.

There. Book. 2. S. 395–400.

There. Book. 1. S. 99–100.

Acts of His Holiness Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, later documents and correspondence on the canonical succession of the Supreme Church Authority 1917–1943. Collection. Ch. 1, 2. M.: St. Tikhonovsky Theological Institute, 1994. S. 291.

There. S. 420.

Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin. History of the Russian Church 1917–1997. M. 1997. S. 133.

Hieromonk Damaskin (Orlovsky). Martyrs, confessors and ascetics of piety of the Russian Orthodox Church of the XX century. Book. 2. Tver. 1996. S. 13.

There. S. 350.

Acts of His Holiness Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, later documents and correspondence on the canonical succession of the Supreme Church Authority 1917–1943. Collection. Ch. 1, 2. M .: St. Tikhonovsky Theological Institute, 1994. S. 817.

Hieromonk Damaskin (Orlovsky). Martyrs, confessors and ascetics of piety of the Russian Orthodox Church of the XX century. Book. 2. Tver. 1996, p. 15.

APRF. F. 3, op. 60 units ridge 13, l. 56–57.

There. L. 58.

There. L. 78–79.

There. Unit ridge 14, l. fifteen.

There. L. 12.

I. Osipova. “Through the fire of torment and the water of tears…”. M. 1998. S. 26–27.

APRF, F. 3, op. 60 units ridge 14, l. 34–37.

There. Op. 56, unit ridge 17, l. 211–214.

There. Op. 60 units ridge 5, l. 34–35.

There. L. 36–37

Alexander N. Yakovlev. "According to the relics and oil." M. 1995. S. 94–95.

There. pp. 95–96.

APRF. F. 3, op. 60 units ridge 1, l. 27–31.

There. Unit ridge 6, l. 2–6

There. Unit ridge 11, l. 80–82.

There. Unit ridge 14, l. 62-66, 68-69, 71-76, 81-84, 89.

“I would like to name everyone by name…” According to the materials of investigation cases and camp reports of the GULAG. M. 1993. S. 193.

Shkarovsky M.V. Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin and Khrushchev. M. 1999. S. 342–346, 363, 365, 368–369, 371, 375–379, 382, ​​384–385, 387, 391.
Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin. History of the Russian Church 1917–1997. M. 1997. S. 417.

Over the past two decades, about 2,000 martyrs and confessors have been canonized as saints.

The Church is always persecuted. Persecution is the law of Her life in history. Christ said: "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36); “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” (John 15:20).

After a relative calm in the Russian Empire, the best people of the Church felt the coming suffering. “General immorality is preparing apostasy on a huge scale… The current ascetics have been given the path of sorrows, external and internal…” – wrote St. Ignaty Brianchaninov several decades before the revolution.

S. I. Fudel noted that 60% of the students of the imperial school graduated with knowledge of only Old Testament. That was the program. New Testament they taught only in the upper grades, where many children no longer went, as they had to work. Most people before the revolution did not know Christ at all. Holy Russia was dying from within, before the First World War, mass suicides among young people, sexual corruption of the masses were recorded. Everything felt spiritually unsatisfactory. Spiritual desiccation was noticed and warned about the coming disaster by the bearers of holiness in the 19th - early 20th centuries. Seraphim of Sarov, Ambrose of Optinsky, John of Kronstadt and others, thinkers F. Dostoevsky, V. Solovyov predicted hard times. Barsanuphius of Optinsky said: “... Yes, mind you, the Colosseum is destroyed, but not destroyed. The Colosseum, you remember, is a theater where ... the blood of Christian martyrs flowed like a river. Hell is also destroyed, but not destroyed, and the time will come when it will make itself known. So the Colosseum, perhaps, will soon thunder again, it will be resumed. You will live until these times ... "; “Mark my word that you will see the day is fierce.” And again I repeat that you have nothing to fear, the grace of God will cover you.”

The "Day of Fierce" came four years after the death of St. Barsanuphius.

The martyrdom of the Church began with a murder in front of own son priest John Kochurov, then followed by the terrible murder in Kyiv of Metropolitan. Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky). At the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917–1918, where the patriarchate was restored for the first time in 200 years, Met. Act 85 was dedicated to Vladimir. Many were perplexed why they could kill the lord who led a righteous life, then they did not yet understand that it was possible to be killed just because of a righteous life.

“The pure and honest, church-minded, truthful, humble Metropolitan Vladimir immediately grew up as a martyr in the eyes of believers, and his death, like all life, without posture and phrase, cannot pass without a trace. It will be a redeeming suffering, and a call, and an excitation to repentance, ”the future schmch wrote at that time. John Vostorgov.

During the first half of 1918, under the control of the Bolsheviks, a series of murders of the clergy swept through the entire territory: His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon on March 31 served an amazing funeral Liturgy for 15 martyrs, by that time known. The first to be mentioned was Mr. Vladimir. His Holiness was co-served by those, many of whom were also destined to become martyrs.

The Bolsheviks called Patriarch Tikhon Enemy No. 1 of Soviet power, he deprived the repressive bodies of political “grounds” for arrests, as he was the first to declare: “Priests in their rank should stand above and beyond any political interests, they should remember the canonical rules of the Holy Church, with which she forbids his servants to interfere in political life countries". At the highest church level, it was shown that believers are being destroyed in camps and prisons or without trial or investigation, not for political, but for atheistic motives.

Already at this time, from the lips of the Patriarch and the priests there is a call to be faithful to God until death. “You, flock, should form around the pastors that squad, which is obliged to fight for the faith and the Church in the unity of the whole church. There is an area - an area of ​​​​faith and the Church, where we, pastors, must be ready for torment and suffering, must burn with the desire for confession and martyrdom ... ”- the schmch broadcast from the pulpit. John Vostorgov. Apparently, a feeling of close torment hovered in the atmosphere. Shmch. Nikolai (Probatov) wrote about the situation in the army in 1917: “Priests are no longer needed here, they are now rather inhabitants of Heaven than of earth.”

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the execution of the Imperial family was carried out in the basement of the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg. The Bolsheviks in the press reported only about the execution of Tsar Nicholas II. Only later, A.V. Kolchak conducted an investigation and discovered that the entire Royal Family had been killed. The cathedral decided to serve a memorial service for the murdered everywhere, realizing that this could be followed by repression.

Terror was officially announced in the summer of 1918 - the murders of bishops, priests, monastics and the most active laity began.

The victims of the Red Terror prompted His Holiness the Patriarch to issue a formidable message on the anniversary of the October Revolution. In terms of the depth of insight into the future, it covered all subsequent years of persecution, showing the atheistic face of Soviet power.

The patriarch-confessor wrote: “Bishops, priests, monks and nuns are executed, who are not guilty of anything, but simply on a sweeping charge of some kind of vague and indefinite counter-revolution.<…>Hiding behind various names of indemnities, requisitions and nationalization, you pushed him to the most open and shameless robbery.<…>By tempting the ignorant and ignorant people with the possibility of easy and unpunished gain, you befogged their conscience and drowned out the consciousness of sin in them... You promised freedom... A great blessing is freedom, if it is correctly understood as freedom from evil, turning into arbitrariness and self-will. But you did not give such and such freedom<…>Not a day passes without the most monstrous slander against the Church of Christ and its ministers, vicious blasphemy and blasphemy being placed in your press organs.<…>You have closed a number of monasteries and house churches without any reason or reason.<…>We are going through terrible time your dominion, and for a long time it will not be blotted out from the soul of the people, darkening in it the image of God and imprinting in it the image of the beast.

They fought with God through all the mechanisms of state bodies, the power was by nature theomachy. Let's outline the persecution system:

1. Anti-church laws.
2. Artificial creation of a renovationist split.
3. Propaganda of godlessness.
4. Underground work.
5. Open repression.

Anti-church laws in the first years after the revolution

Let us cite some anti-church laws for a general understanding of the direction of the legislative creativity of the "people's" authorities in relation to the Church.

In 1917, a decree “On Land” was issued, according to which all property was taken away from the Church.

At the beginning of 1918, a decree “On the separation of the Church from the state and the school from the Church” was issued. His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon addresses the authorities and the people on January 19, 1918, through private press organs: “The most severe persecution has also been raised against the Holy Church of Christ: the sacraments of grace that sanctify the birth of a person or bless the marital union of a Christian family are openly declared unnecessary, holy temples are either destroyed by guns, or robbed and blasphemously insulted, saints revered by the believing people of the monastery are seized by the godless rulers of the darkness of this age and are declared some kind of supposedly national property; schools maintained at the expense of the Orthodox Church and preparing pastors of the church and teachers of the faith are recognized as superfluous. The property of Orthodox monasteries and churches is confiscated under the pretext that it is the property of the people, but without any right and even without the desire to reckon with the lawful will of the people themselves...”. This statement spread throughout the state.

"one. The decree on the separation of the Church from the state, issued by the Council of People's Commissars, is, under the guise of a law on freedom of conscience, a malicious attempt on the entire order of life of the Orthodox Church and an act of open persecution against her.

2. Any participation both in the publication of this legalization hostile to the Church, and in attempts to put it into practice, is incompatible with belonging to the Orthodox Church and brings punishment on the guilty up to excommunication from the Church (in accordance with the 73rd rule of the holy apostles and 13th rule of the VII Ecumenical Council )".

At the end of April 1918, newspapers reported on the local implementation of the Decree on the separation of the Church from the state, which would become a touching page in the history of pastors and flocks: to which the Vladyka-Patriarch calls the faithful sons of the Church. The parishioners sharply criticized the decree, interpreting it as an open persecution of the Orthodox Church. Meetings in cities and villages of the clergy and laity passed a verdict that all the people following them were ready for the feat of the cross, proclaimed by the patriarch.

During the implementation of the decree, the relics were opened and desecrated in order to undermine the authority of the Church in broad popular circles. At the same time, new decrees were issued: on compulsory labor service for priests and “on the transfer of worship in connection with work” (any Easter Sunday can be abolished by declaring a labor Sunday).

The life of the confessor Athanasius (Sakharov) tells us an amazing story: “In 1919, for propaganda purposes, the so-called demonstration of the opened relics to the people took place: they were put on public display in the nude. To stop the outrage, the Vladimir clergy established a watch. The first duty officer is hierom. Athanasius. People crowded around the temple. When the doors opened, oh. Athanasius proclaimed: “Blessed is our God…”, in response he heard: “Amen” - and a prayer service began for the saints of Vladimir. Entering people reverently crossed themselves, bowed and placed candles at the relics. So the supposed desecration of the shrines turned into a solemn glorification.

In 1920, two decrees were issued: the first, forbidding bishops to move priests without the permission of a group of believers - the so-called. twenty, and the second, openly atheist, - "On the liquidation of relics."

Many martyrs were given to the Church in 1922 by the decree “On the seizure of church valuables in favor of the starving”: at that time, 8,000 clergy were shot.

Among other things, already in this period, temples began to be subject to exorbitant taxes: the incredible high cost of insurance, the tax on singers, income tax (up to 80%), which led to their inevitable closure. In case of non-payment of taxes, the property of clergymen was confiscated, and they themselves were evicted to other regions of the USSR.

Artificial creation of a renovationist split

As part of the plan to destroy the faith in church circles, the authorities initiated a schism in the "Living Church", or "Renovationists". All the dissatisfied clergy and laity gathered. Some near- and non-church intellectuals strove, in the words of one author of those years, "to save the Church, instead of being saved in the Church themselves." The schismatics became the executioners of the Orthodox Church. It was they who often pointed to the zealous clergy, which the authorities destroyed, wrote denunciations and were accusers, seized churches.

L. Trotsky at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on March 20, 1922, proposed "to make a split in the clergy, showing a decisive initiative in this regard and taking under the protection of state power those priests who openly speak in favor of the seizure of church property." The schism was created and supported by the authorities, among the people they were called "red priests", "living churchmen". By 1922, they occupied up to 70% of the churches of the entire Russian Church. There is only one church in Odessa where St. righteous Jonah did not belong to them. After the return of many Renovationists to the Church (after 1923 and beyond), they became a stronghold of the agents of the GPU (KGB). The traitors were often feigned "repentant" schismatics, who brought their leaven into the church dough.

In the memoirs of that time we find examples of the closure of churches by means of renovationists: “Representatives of renovationism came to an Orthodox church with an order from the authorities to transfer the church to their twenty. So Vvedensky settled down. Soon the temple, which fell into the hands of the renovationists, was closed.

The schismatics stood up for the "renewal" of the Church. Their plan included:

- revision of the dogmas, where, in their opinion, capitalism and neoplatonism reign;
- changing the understanding of the Last Judgment, heaven and hell as moral, not real concepts;
- supplementing the doctrine of the creation of the world with information that everything was created with the participation of the forces of nature (materialistic concept);
- the expulsion of the spirit of slavery from the Church;
- Declaring capitalism a mortal sin.

In the church canons it was planned:

– introduction of new rules and cancellation of the Book of Rules;
- the spread of the opinion that each parish is, first of all, a labor commune.

Irreligion propaganda

A mockery of religion was actively introduced into the upbringing of a Soviet person. In the lives of many new martyrs we read about ridicule and mockery associated with wearing priestly clothing, the cross (for example, see the life of Hieromartyr Jacob (Maskaev)). In addition, anti-religious newspapers were published in millions of copies: “Godless”, “Godless at the machine”, “Godless crocodile”, “Anti-religious”. Anti-religious museums were created that shocked the whole world with blasphemy (in one row were placed naked holy relics, the body of an undecayed counterfeiter found in the basement and a mummified rat). All together created a picture, thanks to which, according to the authorities, they should have forgotten about God.

“Behind the enlightened scoffing at the Orthodox priests, the meowing of the Komsomol members on Easter night and the whistling of the thieves on the transfers, we overlooked that the sinful Orthodox Church nevertheless grew up daughters worthy of the first centuries of Christianity, the sisters of those who were thrown into the arena to the lions” , - wrote A. I. Solzhenitsyn in the famous "Gulag Archipelago".

Underground work

Today, instructions are known about the creation of an agent network among the clergy. The texts demonstrate the seriousness of the intentions regarding the destruction of the Church. Here are a few excerpts:
“The task set is difficult to accomplish… in order to successfully conduct business and attract the clergy to cooperation, it is necessary to get acquainted with the spiritual world, to find out the character of bishops and priests… to understand ambition and their weaknesses. Popov, perhaps, quarrel with the bishop, like a soldier with a general.

Since 1922, the Sixth Department of the secret department of the GPU was created, which set the goal of disintegrating the Church. This department in various modifications, but with one task - to destroy or discredit the Church, was headed by odious personalities E. A. Tuchkov, G. G. Karpov, V. A. Kuroyedov.

In the early 1920s, sixty commissioners with assignments from Tuchkov left for the dioceses to persuade priests and bishops to switch to renovationism. A network of agents is being created to attract the clergy to the living church.

In the 70s in the USSR, the idea of ​​underground struggle remained tenacious, as in the early years of the revolution: “There are criminals who pose a serious threat to security ... But they undermine our system. At first glance (they) look perfectly safe. But make no mistake! They spread their poison among the people. They are poisoning our children with false teachings. Killers and criminals work openly. But these mean and smart. The people will be poisoned spiritually. These people I am talking about are “religious” – believers” (Sergey Kurdakov. Forgive me, Natasha).

open repression

As already mentioned, the terror was officially announced in the summer of 1918 - the "official" murders of bishops, priests, and believers had already begun.

“We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. Do not look at the investigation for materials and evidence that the accused acted against the Soviet regime. The first question is what class does he belong to, what is his origin, profession. These questions should determine the fate of the accused” (Chekist Latsis M. Ya. Newspaper “Red Terror” (Kazan)).

The methods of torture used in the Cheka could compete with the torture of pagans during the first centuries of Christianity. The head of the Kharkiv security officers, S. Saenko, smashed the heads of his victims with pound weights, in the cellars of the Cheka, many remains of human bodies were found with skin removed from their hands, chopped off limbs, crucified on the floor. In Sevastopol they drowned, in the Urals and Siberia they crucified on crosses, in Omsk they ripped open the stomachs of pregnant women, in Poltava they impaled ...

In Odessa, the "hostages" were thrown alive into steam boilers and roasted in the ship's oven. According to the memoirs of Odessa residents, priests were drowned in the area of ​​the Polytechnic University, and seminarians were shot and drowned on the seashore opposite the 1st station of B. Fontana and the seminary, where now Agricultural University at which the Odessa Seminary consecrated the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors.

Every day those who were the foundation of the Church were taken away. In the resolutions of the All-Russian Local Council we find the rules according to which the community, deprived of the temple, gathers around its pastor and performs divine services in houses and apartments. In settlements where the flock did not rise to defend their pastor, the Council decided not to send a priest anymore.

Repressed clergy of the Odessa region from 1931–1945.

The newspaper statements of those years directly called for hatred: “It is already clear to everyone that the music of the bells is the music of the counter-revolution ... Now, when the investigation is underway, when the work teams are leaving for the region, we must take all measures to burn out the hornet’s nest of the fist with a red-hot iron, priests and fists. The iron hand of the proletarian dictatorship will severely punish those who harm our socialist construction.”

With the beginning of collectivization in 1929, a new round of persecution appeared. This time they touched the villages more, the church life in the village had to disappear. In 1929, changes were made to Art. 4 of the Constitution of the USSR, which declares freedom of religious confession and anti-religious propaganda. Unbelief can be preached, but faith can only be confessed, which in practice meant a ban on talking about God, visiting houses with rites, ringing bells.

40 thousand people from the clergy were arrested, 5 thousand of them were shot. By 1928, 28,500 churches remained (this is half of the number compared to 1917).

Prot. Gleb Kaleda recalls: “In 1929, I asked my mother a question: “Mom, why are they arresting everyone, but not arresting us?” - that's the impression of the child. The mother replied, “But we are not worthy to suffer for Christ.” All my first five confessors died there, in prisons and camps: some were shot, some died from torture and disease. In 1931, there was a conversation between the mother and one of the girls from the community of Fr. Vasily Nadezhdin. She said: “How I envy those who are there, in prison. They suffer for Christ.” The mother said: “Do you know that after all, those who dream of being arrested for their faith and get there, they [and according to the experience of the first centuries] often renounce Christ and experience arrest more difficultly than those who tried by hook or by crook to avoid arrest. . So it was in the first centuries.

In 1931, the OGPU declared: "Religious organizations are the only legally operating, counter-revolutionary organization that has influence on the masses ...". Arrests, torture and executions of believers continued.

“The radical destruction of religion in this country, which throughout the 20s and 30s was one of the important goals of the GPU-NKVD, could only be achieved by mass arrests of Orthodox believers themselves. Intensively confiscated, imprisoned and exiled were monks and nuns, who so blackened the former Russian life. Church assets were arrested and tried. The circles were expanding - and now they were rowing simply believing laymen, old people, especially women who believed more stubbornly and who are now also called nuns in transit and in camps for many years ”(A. I. Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago).

In the early 1930s, the Union of Militant Atheists, founded in 1925, consisted of about 6 million people, and there were 50 anti-religious museums. This organization bore the imprint of party work. In 1932, a congress of the organization of atheists was held, at which it was decided to declare the second five-year plan "the five-year plan of godlessness." It was planned: in the first year to close all theological schools (at that time only the Renovationists remained); in the second - to close the temples and stop the production of religious products; in the third - to send the clergy abroad (i.e., beyond the border of freedom to camps); in the fourth - to close all the temples, in the fifth - to consolidate the successes achieved; in 1937 - to shoot 85 thousand, most of whom by that time were in camps and exiles.

In 1937, not a single bishop was ordained, but 50 were shot. Since 1934, there has not been a single monastery in the Russian Orthodox Church. However, the census on January 7, 1937 (on Christmas Day) showed that faith was not torn out of the people, 56.7-57% recognized themselves as believers, 2/3 of the rural population (most of the scientists who conducted the census were shot). On July 3, 1937, Stalin signed an order on mass executions and on the conduct of cases of those sentenced to execution by administrative procedure, through "troikas". The time has come for mass merciless persecution, when the local bodies of the NKVD were obliged to draw up certificates for all clergy and believers for their subsequent arrest.

Statistics of repressions from 1937 to 1941.

As soon as the arrests and executions of 1937 ended, on January 31, 1938, the Politburo of the Central Committee adopted a new decision - “on approving an additional number of those subject to repression ... in order to complete the entire operation ... no later than March 15, 1938.”

They repressed the clergy, their relatives, as well as the laity, bearing church obedience or regularly attending the temple. It was the genocide of the Russian Orthodox Church, the destruction of the clergy and believers as a class. Patriarchate under Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) was a legal body of the illegal Church - the temples were run by the "twenty", who were not subordinate to the Patriarchate, but to the People's Commissar for Religious Affairs.

The martyrdom of the Russian Church: by 1941, 125 thousand were killed for their faith, this is 89% of the clergy in 1917.

By 1941, between 100 and 200 active churches remained in the USSR, if we do not include the liberated territories of Western Ukraine and Bessarabia. The next five-year plan ended in 1942, it was planned to destroy all religious organizations.

Temples were closed, but catacomb (underground) churches and monasteries appeared, operating from home. The place where the believers lived became a temple. In the biography of St. Sevastian Karaganda, we find information that every day before the start of the working day he served in different parts of the city in different dugouts and huts. All this was done covertly, trying not to leave any traces for the state investigation agencies.

The persecution was terrifying, but for the believers they were a ladder with which they went to the Lord to the Kingdom of Heaven. The path was up, and therefore there were difficulties to the point of exhaustion. The warrior of Christ takes risks and strains every minute, especially if the Lord judged him to live in times of persecution. The new martyrs invariably called for love and patience: “Be patient, do not get irritated, most importantly, do not get angry. You will never destroy evil with evil, you will never drive it out. It is afraid only of love, afraid of good.

Preparing to accept the priesthood at that time, a person was also preparing for trials. Many took the priesthood and became martyrs. Being ordained at this time was the beginning of Calvary. The priesthood shared the same bunks with the believing people and died in the same camp hospitals. All ministers are our relatives and our saints. Holy New Martyrs and Confessors, pray to God for us!

Priest Andrei Gavrilenko

Note:

1. It must be taken into account that out of 132 repressed, 23 were convicted twice, and 6 three times. At the same time, Bessarabia, that is, almost half of the Odessa region, until the summer of 1940

In the first years after the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, their religious policy changed direction several times. The desire to put an end, first of all, to the Russian Orthodox Church, as the dominant religious organization in the country at the time of the revolution, remained stable. To achieve this goal, the Bolsheviks tried, among other things, to use other religious denominations.

However, in general, religious policy was consistently aimed at eradicating religion as incompatible with Marxist ideology. As historian Tatyana Nikolskaya noted, “there was virtually no equality of religions in the USSR, since atheism became a kind of state religion, endowed with many privileges, while other religions were subjected to persecution and discrimination. In fact, the Soviet Union was never a secular state, although it declared this in its legal documents.”

1917-1920 years

Legislative acts adopted immediately after the revolution had a dual character. On the one hand, a number of legislative acts corresponded to the model of a secular European state. Thus, the "Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia" provided for the abolition of "all and any national and national-religious privileges and restrictions." Later, this norm was enshrined in the first Soviet Constitution of 1918. The institution of civil (non-church) marriage was also legalized, the ROC was separated from the school.

On the other hand, from the very beginning the Bolsheviks made no secret of their hostile attitude towards religion in general and towards the Russian Orthodox Church in particular. So, in Art. 65 of the same Constitution of 1918, based on the principle of dividing society into "close" and "alien" classes, "monks and spiritual ministers of churches and cults" were deprived of voting rights.

Russian Orthodox Church

According to the historian Dmitry Pospelovsky, initially Lenin, “being a prisoner of Marxist ideas, according to which religion is nothing more than a superstructure on a certain material basis,” hoped to do away with the ROC by simply taking away its property. Thus, the Decree “On Land” of 1917 nationalized monastic and church lands.

The Bolsheviks did not accept the definition of the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of December 2, 1917, which establishes the privileges of the Russian Orthodox Church over other confessions (primary public law position, the preservation of a number of government posts only for the Orthodox, exemption from duties of priests and monks, etc.), which is even more increased mutual antagonism. However, not all Orthodox supported the idea of ​​continuing the privileged position of the ROC in the new state - there were those who hoped for a spiritual renewal of the church in conditions of equality.

Soon after the decision of the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church (dated December 2, 1917) was issued, the Bolsheviks adopted the Decree on the separation of the church from the state and the school from the church (January 23 (February 5), 1918), which consolidated the secular nature of the state. At the same time, this Decree deprived religious organizations of the right of legal personality and property rights. All buildings that previously belonged to religious organizations became the property of the state, and the organizations themselves from that time began to use them on the basis of free rent. Thus, religious organizations lost their legal and economic independence, and the state received a powerful lever to put pressure on them. This model of economic relations between church and state existed until the very fall of the Soviet system.

However, in the very first years of their power, taking into account the Civil War and the religiosity of the population, the Bolsheviks did not actively campaign to take away buildings from religious organizations.

Campaign for the opening of the relics

The campaign for the opening of the relics had a propaganda character and began in the autumn of 1918 with the opening of the relics of St. Alexander Svirsky. The peak of the campaign came in 1919-1920, although some episodes took place in the 1930s.

On February 16, 1919, the collegium of the People's Commissariat of Justice adopted a resolution on organizing the opening of the relics of saints in Russia, and determined "the procedure for their inspection and confiscation by state bodies." The opening of the relics (removal of covers and vestments from them) was to be carried out by the clergy in the presence of representatives of local Soviet authorities, the Cheka and medical experts. Based on the results of the autopsy, it was prescribed to draw up an act.

The opening of the relics was accompanied by photography and filming, in some cases there was gross blasphemy on the part of the members of the commissions (during the opening of the relics of St. Savva of Zvenigorod, one of the members of the commission spat several times on the skull of the saint). Some arks and shrines, after examination with the participation of representatives of the church, ended up in state museums, nothing more was known about the fate of many made of precious metals (for example, on March 29, 1922, a multi-pood silver shrine of St. Alexy of Moscow was dismantled and seized from the Donskoy Monastery). The relics, like artefacts, were then placed under the glass showcases of various museums, as a rule, museums of atheism or local history museums.

Protestants

As for Russian Protestants, they were completely satisfied with their equal rights with the Russian Orthodox Church, especially since the principle of separation of church and state is one of the key principles for Baptists and their kindred Evangelical Christians. They had little property suitable for Bolshevik expropriations. And the experience of survival and development in an atmosphere of persecution and discrimination, acquired before the overthrow of the monarchy, in the new conditions gave them certain advantages over the Russian Orthodox Church.

In addition, part of the Bolshevik leaders, headed by V. I. Lenin and the main Bolshevik "expert on sectarians" V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, according to the Soviet-Russian religious scholar L. N. Mitrokhin, "flirted" with the Protestants, trying to use them in their purposes.

“In the early years, the main task was to retain power, to achieve victory in the outbreak of civil war. Mitrokhin noted. - Therefore, the number one target remained the Russian Orthodox Church, which openly condemned the October Revolution and the cruelty of the Soviet regime.<…>Accordingly, official publications about Orthodoxy were riddled with irreconcilable enmity and class hatred. They placed special emphasis on the "counter-revolutionary" activities of the church - often very tendentiously. This tone continued after the church declared its allegiance. Articles about sectarians looked different. Although attempts to attract "indignant sectarians" to the side of the Social Democracy did not give serious results, in an atmosphere of the most severe struggle for survival, the Bolshevik leadership could not neglect the "elements of democratic protest" and tried to use them, especially in cooperative building.

On this wave, even the Decree “On exemption from military service on religious grounds” of January 4, 1919 was adopted, according to which a pacifist believer, by a court decision, had the right to replace military service with an alternative “sanitary service, mainly in infectious hospitals, or other generally useful work at the choice of the conscripted person” (p. 1) True, in practice, far from everyone was able to realize this opportunity - local authorities often did not know about this Decree or did not recognize it, punishing “deserters” up to execution.

At the same time, as noted by the historian Andrei Savin, “a loyal attitude towards the evangelical churches was never the only dominant line in Bolshevik politics. "an attempt to adapt religion to new conditions", "another form of anti-Soviet movement of kulak elements in the countryside"".

Muslims

According to Dmitry Pospelovsky, in their fight against the Russian Orthodox Church, the Bolsheviks were also looking for support (or at least neutrality) from Muslims and Jews. For this purpose, in 1918, the Commissariat for the Affairs of Muslim Nationalities was created, headed by Mullah Hyp Vakhitov.

Jews

For the Jews, a "Jewish section" was created in the CPSU (b). True, this section did not represent Judaism as a religion, but Jews as a nationality. Moreover, this section was supposed to fight against Judaism and promote the secularization of the Jews. However, if the authorities could solve the issues of closing churches, mosques and prayer houses on the ground on their own, then it was possible to close the synagogue only with the approval of the Jewish section of the CPSU (b).

1921-1928

In October 1922, the first meeting of the Commission for the Separation of Church and State under the Central Committee of the RCP(b), better known as the Anti-Religious Commission under the Central Committee of the RCP(b), took place. Chekist Yevgeny Tuchkov headed the commission. Throughout the 1920s, this commission was actually solely responsible to the Politburo of the Central Committee for the development and implementation of the "church" policy, for effective fight with religious organizations and their "harmful" ideology, for coordinating the activities in this area of ​​various party and Soviet bodies.

Campaign to confiscate church valuables

In 1921-1922, due to crop failure, the damage suffered as a result civil war, as well as the food policy of the Bolsheviks during the years of war communism, famine broke out in the country. The Russian Orthodox Church from the very beginning tried to organize charitable assistance to the starving. In July 1921, Patriarch Tikhon, together with the writer Maxim Gorky, appealed to the American people with a request to help those in need. The appeal was published in The New York Times and other foreign newspapers, and was also distributed by Soviet diplomats through diplomatic channels. A number of steps were taken by the Church to mitigate the effects of the famine.

Despite the position of the Church, under the pretext of fighting hunger, the Bolsheviks launched a large-scale campaign to confiscate church valuables. Later, Joseph Stalin frankly admired the skillful pushing of the Church and the starving:

“We succeeded in countering the religious aspirations of the priests with the needs of the working population. Here are the jewels in the church, you need to withdraw them, sell them and buy bread. Feelings of hunger, the interests of hunger were opposed to the religious aspirations of the priests. It was a clever question. This is not against theoretical considerations, they went to the priests, but on the basis of hunger, crop shortages, crop failures in the country. Jewels in the church, give them, we will feed the people, and there is nothing to cover against this, there is nothing to object to, even the most believing person - hunger.

After the February Revolution of 1917, the Russian Orthodox Church experienced a new split. The Renovationists sharply criticized Patriarch Tikhon, set themselves the goal of democratizing the entire church organization and collaborated with the Bolsheviks and the NKVD.

The beginning of the split

The idea of ​​the reformation of the Russian Orthodox Church has long wandered in the minds of the intellectuals of the Russian Empire. But the first organizations ready to translate theory into practice appeared only during the years of the first revolution. And after the February events of 1917, the trend took shape in the "Union of Democratic Clergy and Laity." This small group will soon receive the support of the Bolsheviks, because the members of the "Union" advocated the independent existence of church and state, in contrast to the All-Russian Local Council. It is worth recalling that this Council sat for a whole year, deciding spiritual and church affairs after the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne. This Council did not recognize the Soviet decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the separation of church from state and school, and the leaders of the "Union of Democratic Clergy and Laity" warmly welcomed it. Thus, a new major schism was outlined in the Russian Orthodox Church, where the so-called Renovationists came to the forefront. Their leader was the priest Alexander Vvedensky, and the cradle of this movement was Petrograd.

After the All-Russian Local Council ceased to exist, the Soviet authorities began to pursue an active anti-church policy. While the revived patriarchate became one of the main "counter-revolutionary" enemies, the Renovationists came in handy to the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Moreover, they received comprehensive support from the NKVD and the Soviet party elite. So, in 1919, Alexander Vvedensky personally talked with the chairman of the Comintern and the Petrograd Soviet, Grigory Zinoviev, about the alliance between the Renovationists and the Bolsheviks, because at that time the church had not yet completely lost its positions. According to the memoirs of Vvedensky, Leon Trotsky was also involved in the split of the church. Once, he somehow telegraphed members of the Politburo in 1922: “I repeat once again that the editors of Pravda and Izvestia do not sufficiently realize the enormous historical importance of what is happening in the church and around it ... The smallest Genoese rubbish occupies whole pages, while the deepest spiritual revolution in the Russian people (or, rather, the preparation of this deepest revolution) is relegated to the back of the newspapers.

Renovator Alexander Vvedensky conducts service

Alexander Vvedensky was the main ideologist of Russian renovationism

Fight with Patriarch Tikhon

The Russian Renovationist Church had a spiritual and political enemy in the person of the patriarchate, established by the All-Russian Local Council to replace the long-term Synod. This Council also elected its Patriarch Tikhon, who also became the main ideological opponent of the Renovationists. Soon Tikhon, like many other churchmen, was arrested by the Soviet authorities. Alexander Vvedensky himself in May 1922 made a visit to the imprisoned patriarch, demanding that he resign and accusing him of the wrong policy that led to the split. After the deposition of the patriarch, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Mikhail Kalinin, received a board of renovationists and announced the establishment of the VCU - the Supreme Church Administration, which consisted entirely of supporters of Vvedensky. They, in turn, with the help of the GPU under the NKVD, took possession of the entire patriarchal inheritance: from the office to the parishes themselves. The temples were transferred to the Renovationists for perpetual and gratuitous use. By the end of 1922, the renovationists received two-thirds of the eighty thousand operating churches. This is how the Bolsheviks made the Renovationists their partners. But this did not give guarantees that the newly minted churchmen themselves would not be written off.

The Arrest of Patriarch Tikhon, One of the Principal Opponents of Renovationism

Renovators of the Russian Orthodox Church were allies of the Bolsheviks

Split in split

But the Renovationist movement had a number of shortcomings, which later had a very strong impact on their activities and existence in general. For example, the Renovationist Orthodox Church lacked a clear structural organization. In addition, many renovationists pulled the blanket over themselves, which led to internal strife. Here Bishop Anthony created his "Union of Church Revival" - an organization that was going to rely on the laity, and not on the clergy. And other renovationists joined Vvedensky and Alexander Boyarsky, who founded the Union of Communities of the Ancient Apostolic Church. In short, fragmentation reigned within Renovationism: there were many circles and groupings that had different views on the development of the church. While some advocated the liquidation of monasteries and the institution of monasticism in principle, others sought a kind of synthesis of communism and the democratic way of life of the first Christians.

The renovationists, trying to gain a foothold in the minds of ordinary people, continued to fight against the remnants of the patriarchate. The Local Council of the Renovationists, opened in Moscow in April 1923, declared the imprisoned Patriarch Tikhon "an apostate from the true precepts of Christ." But despite this, Patriarch Tikhon of the same year was released from prison, which was a big blow to the renovationist church. Many hierarchs, clerics and priests repented of their sin of apostasy and went over to Tikhon's side. The crisis within the Renovationist was growing stronger, because its leaders, due to their own ambitions, did not want to compromise with each other. Soon the liberated patriarch forbade having prayerful communion with his opponents at all. Who knows how the struggle between the two churches would have developed in the future, if not for quick death Tikhon.

Filled with enthusiasm at the death of the patriarch, the Renovationists held a new cathedral, but this was the last event for this church of this magnitude. Tikhon's associates invited to the meeting refused to go to the world. And such drastic reforms as the resolution of second marriage and the transition to the Gregorian calendar did not meet with the expected support from the population.

The Russian Orthodox Church was subjected to all sorts of criticism

The Renovationists called Tikhon "an apostate from the true laws of Christ"

Renovationism was steadily on the decline. The mass repressions of the NKVD in the 1930s caused irreparable damage to the Renovationists, even though they willingly cooperated with the authorities. Even later, the Soviets took a course towards rapprochement with the patriarchate, leaving the reformers out of their area of ​​attention. By the autumn of 1944, the only parish in Moscow remained from this entire movement, where Alexander Vvedensky, the ideological inspirer of the movement, served. His death two years later would mark the end of the history of the Russian Renovation Church.

By 1944, the Renovationists had only one church in Moscow.