The repressive policy of the Soviet government towards the Church and clergy in 1918-1941 . (on the example of the Tobolsk diocese)

Tatarnikova Anna Ivanovna PhD in History Senior Scientific Associate, Tobolsk Complex Scientific State of Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 626152, Russia, Tyumen region, Tobolsk, Ak. Yu. str. Osipova, 15 tatob777@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

The Orthodox Church has played an important role in the life of the Russian people, the development of national culture and the state for many centuries. Being one of the authoritative social institutions, the church has repeatedly acted as a consolidating force in the difficult moments of the history of the Russian state.

Unfortunately, in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church itself (hereinafter referred to as the ROC) there are many tragic pages associated with persecution, seizure of church lands, persecution of individual representatives of the clergy. However, the most tragic period in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church is considered to be the rule of the Bolsheviks, for whom the church was the main ideological opponent.

The apogee of the persecution of the Soviet government against the church and clergy was 1937-1938, which saw the most mass arrests and executions of clergy.

Unfortunately, in Russian historical science, the problem of political repression against the church and its ministers in 1918-1941 became relevant only in the last years of Mikhail Gorbachev's rule, when, in the wake of democratization and the abolition of censorship, they began to openly talk about the millions of victims of Stalinism. In the second half of the 1980s, the materials of the NKVD archives were declassified, which allowed historians to begin studying previously closed information. The consequence of this was the appearance of a number of works devoted to the Soviet period of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church (studies by L.M. Demin, N.E. Yemelyanov, V.A. Tsypin, M.V. Shkarovsky, etc.) ^{[2; 3; 4; 19; 20]}, in which the relations of the state and the church were considered, the position of the clergy was characterized, the persecution of believers.

The works of A.V. Chernyshov, A.A. Petrushin, V.V. Dronova, G.Y. Koleva are devoted to the study of the situation of the church and the clergy of the Tobolsk diocese ^{[18; 12; 2; 7]}. The researchers characterized the categories of repressed clergy, their gender and age composition, examined the process of seizure of church values and closure of churches.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to put a "fat dot" in the study of the topic, since not all archives are open, many data are classified, which means that the true scale of the tragedy of the people, including the clergy, caused by repression has not yet been determined.

Thus, the relevance of the topic of repression against the church and clergy is primarily related to the gaps in the research literature in the study of the mechanisms and results of repressive policies in certain regions of the country. In addition, the relevance of research within the framework of the stated issues is determined by the need to preserve the memory of the innocent victims of the punitive measures of the Soviet state carried out with the aim of destroying the undesirable (including anti-Soviet) influence of the ROC and its representatives on the population of the country.

The object of this study is the repressive policy of the Soviet government in 1918-1941, the subject is the church and clergy of the Tobolsk diocese.

The aim of the work is to study the influence of the repressive policy of the Soviet government on the situation of the church and clergy in the Tobolsk diocese in the 1918-1941's.

The chronological framework of the work covers the period from 1918 to the end of 1941. The choice of the lower boundary of the study is explained by the adoption on January 20, 1918 of the "Decree on the separation of church from state and school from church", which marked the beginning of the deployment of anti-religious and anti-church propaganda. The upper boundary (1941) was caused by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and the change, in this regard, of the state church policy.

The territorial scope of the work includes the south-eastern part of the modern Tyumen Region, which was part of the Tobolsk Diocese during the period under review. 

The sources for writing this work were: normative legal acts of the highest authorities in the field of implementation of repressive policy ^{[11, pp. 286-287]}; information contained in the lists of those executed during the Great Terror (1937-1938) in the Tyumen region ^{[5; 6]}; materials of the periodical press of the 1920s-1940s, which presented information about the anti-religious and anti-church propaganda of the Soviet government (newspapers Pravda, Trud, Atheist, etc.).

The methodological basis of the study consisted of: the method of problem-chronological study of the topic, which allowed to consider the repressive policy in its sequential development; the historical-comparative method used to determine the scale of political repression and its consequences; the local-historical method, which made it possible to consider the situation of the church and clergy during the years of repression at the local level; the method of graphical visualization of data, used to build a diagram and demonstrate statistical indicators.

The scientific novelty of the work consists in the introduction into scientific circulation of new documents (the martyrology of those shot in the Tyumen region in 1937-1938), which help to reveal the research topic more deeply, to comprehend what was happening. It is also an innovation that, using the example of a single region within the boundaries of the Tobolsk diocese, the gender and age composition of church servants sentenced to execution has been studied.

The main directions of the policy of the leadership of the party and the state in relation to the Church and clergy in 1918-1941 .

In October 1917, as a result of a coup d'etat, Bolsheviks came to power in Russia, positioning themselves as atheists and fundamentally rejecting religion. The new ruling power almost immediately began to openly demonstrate its irreconcilable position regarding religion and the church.

Already in January 1918, a decree was adopted on the separation of the church from the state, the school from the church ^{[11, pp. 286-287]}. The process of large-scale seizure of church lands and property (including temples) has begun.

On February 14, 1919, the People's Commissariat of Justice adopted a resolution on the autopsy of the relics ^{[16, pp. 504-506]}. The implementation of this document resulted in a campaign to open, seize and liquidate the relics of revered saints of the Russian Orthodox Church. The anti-church policy of the Soviet government was perceived by many believers as an outrage on their religious feelings, anti-government protests broke out in the country, which were soon suppressed.

In February 1922, the Decree of the Central Executive Committee on the seizure of church valuables was promulgated under the pretext of helping the starving of the Volga region and other regions. The devastation of Orthodox churches was accompanied by repression against representatives of the clergy. During this campaign, an attempt was made to discredit and remove Patriarch Tikhon (Bellavin) from the church administration, to create a completely loyal Renovationist church to the Soviet authorities and, thereby, to introduce a schism into the existing church.

The result of the Soviet government's anti-religious efforts was not long in coming: by the early 1930s, there were almost as many Renovationist dioceses and churches in the country as there were Orthodox ones.

The Gregorian schism, which arose in 1925 in the Urals and negatively affected the unity of the church, was also aimed at the internal destruction of the ROC.

During the years of collectivization and "dekulakization", the situation of the church and clergy continues to deteriorate. Stalin's associate L. M. Kaganovich calls the church "the only legal counter-revolutionary force" ^{[18, p. 421]}.

On April 8, 1929, the Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the SNK "On Religious Associations" was issued, which imposed a ban on charitable activities and private religious education. In the same year, most of the bishops who did not offer prayers for the state were arrested.

In the autumn of 1929, an "anti-kolokol" campaign is organized in the country: bell ringing is prohibited, bells are removed from churches, melted down for the needs of industrialization.

In 1930, clergy and clerics deprived of voting rights under the Constitution of 1924 were obliged to pay a tax to the treasury – 75% of "unearned income". The social consequences for the "deprived" were severe: they were evicted from large cities during the "purges", their children were deprived of the opportunity to enroll in technical schools and universities, etc. ^{[10, pp. 83-84]}.

It is important to note that the state persecuted not only the "deprived", but also their family members. There are facts of forced official divorce of priests with spouses, issued in order to make life easier for his wife and children.

Often, children refused deprived parents. For example, a student of the Tyumen Agricultural College Tarkov Semyon Nikolaevich wrote in his statement: "...The material connection with my father (the regent of the church-folk choir, not the psalmist) is completely broken, and I live in an apartment with him only because there were no places in the college dormitory ..." ^{[18, p. 103]}.

Thus, the lishenets became an outcast in Soviet society.

On December 5, 1931, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up in Moscow. Since 1932, within the framework of the five-year plan for the development of the national economy, the implementation of the policy of destroying all temples began.

In 1936, as a result of the adoption of the new, "Stalinist" Constitution, the category of "deprived" was abolished. This news was received by many former prisoners and their relatives, including the clergy, with glee, because, according to the Constitution, they received full civil rights, and, at the same time, hope for a life without deprivation, threats and fear.

However, as subsequent events showed, the joy was short-lived.

After the 1937 After the All-Union Population Census, the Soviet authorities intensified the persecution of the church and the clergy. This was due to the fact that the majority of the population of the atheistic atheist state in the questionnaire in the paragraph about religion indicated that they were believers (56.17%). In fact, the percentage of believers was higher, given that some people in a situation of terror evaded the answer about faith ^{[9, p. 422]}.

The failure of all previous anti-religious activities of the Soviet leadership was obvious. In this regard, it was decided to conduct a new repressive campaign against the church. This campaign was called the era of the "great terror" (the second half of the 1930s), because it was carried out with particular cruelty.

The number of people arrested on political charges in 1937 increased almost tenfold compared to 1936. Extrajudicial execution has become widespread. For this purpose, so-called "troika" and special commissions were created in the center and on the ground, by the decision of which hundreds of thousands of innocent people were deprived of liberty and shot. There were quite a few clergy among them.

As a result of the persecution of the church, the Soviet government destroyed a significant part of the temples in the country, and the survivors were boarded up or given over to warehouses of construction or other materials. If by the beginning of 1917 There were 60 thousand temples in the Russian Empire, then by 1939 about 100 temples remained open throughout the country ^{[3, p. 249]}. More than a hundred bishops, tens of thousands of clergy and hundreds of thousands of Orthodox laity were shot.

In the first months of the Great Patriotic War, the state continued its repressive policy towards the church.

Only after it became known that the Germans condone the opening of churches and 3,732 churches were opened in the occupied territories, that is, more than in the whole of Soviet Russia, and on the territory of Russia proper, without Ukraine and Belarus, the Germans contributed to the opening of 1,300 churches, the Soviet leadership reconsidered its position regarding the church ^{[3, p. 249]}.

The Church and clergy of the Tobolsk Diocese during the years of repression (1918-1941)

The events of October 1917 – early 1918 and the rise to power of the Bolsheviks were perceived ambiguously by Siberians. Some believed that political changes in the country would benefit and ease the financial situation of people, others made gloomy predictions about the future prospects of life. It is obvious that in the first months of Soviet power, neither the church, nor the clergy, nor the Orthodox laity could even imagine what kind of future awaits them under the atheist Bolsheviks.

During the Civil War on the territory of the Tobolsk province, power alternately passed from white to red, from red to white. The change of power was accompanied by terror on both sides, but it was the "red" terror that was merciless to the local clergy, and not only to the supporters of the whites.

When the White Army began to lose its positions in Siberia, Bishop Irinarch of Tobolsk, aware of the atrocities of the Reds against the clergy and the destruction of churches, issued a message to the pastors of the Tobolsk diocese on July 23, 1919. In it, he called on the clergy "to the last minute" to keep the steering wheel of pastoral ministry, to put aside personal accounts, narrowly-everyday interests for a while, and to remain at their post until the last ^{[2, p. 61]}.

Faced with the intransigence of the Bolsheviks in relation to religion and the church, in August 1919, the evacuation of the parish rural and urban clergy, deans of the Tobolsk province, teachers of the Theological Seminary began in the diocese. In the same year, the most valuable property of the Tobolsk churches was evacuated.

Almost immediately after the establishment of Soviet power in Tobolsk on December 11, 1919, Archpriest Yevgeny Feniksov, acting rector of the cathedral, was arrested and sent to prison. In January 1920, a priest from the Yalutorovsky district, John Yakovlev, was arrested and imprisoned in a Tyumen workhouse ^{[2, p. 61]}.

At the end of 1922, the seizure of church valuables began in the Tobolsk diocese, as well as throughout the country. The churches of Tyumen suffered the most from this, in which, according to A.A. Petrushin's research, over 50 feet of silver, 5 feet of gold, 1,609 valuable stones and 195 diamonds were seized ^{[12, p. 83]}.

The next step in the fight against the church was the mass closure of churches both in rural and urban areas, which began after the adoption in January 1929 of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) circular "On measures to strengthen anti-religious work". If by 1912 there were 28 Orthodox churches, 1 monastery and 7 chapels in Tobolsk ^{[17, pp. 24-25]}, by the end of the 1920s all of them were closed except for the church in the name of the seven Youths of Ephesus in the Zavalny cemetery. Crosses, fences, and doors were torn down from other churches. In the Sofia-Assumption Cathedral in the 1930s, special settlers were placed for temporary residence, later the building was used as a grain warehouse.

Not only the church as a religious building was persecuted, but also its servants. Representatives of the clergy were actively involved in labor duties, and in some cases criminally liable for allegedly counter-revolutionary propaganda carried out among the population. Most of the repressed clergy were rural clergy, which was explained by the collectivization policy carried out in 1929-1930.

On July 30, 1937, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N.I. Yezhov issued operational order No. 00447, according to which all NKVD units were to launch an operation to repress former kulaks, active anti-Soviet elements and criminals ^{[8, p. 56]}. The "churchmen" were also classified as anti-Soviet elements. All of the above categories were divided into two groups: the first, the most hostile – to be shot and the second, less active, but still hostile – to be imprisoned in camps for a period of 8 to 10 years. All republics, territories and regions received their quota of repressed persons. Employees of the NKVD were allowed to use physical force on those under investigation. The operation was supposed to be carried out in a 4-month period.

According to the order from Moscow in the West Siberian Region, it was necessary to repress 17,000 people. Of these, 5,000 should be shot, 12,000 should be sent to camps for a period of 8 to 10 years, and the most socially dangerous of them should be sent to prisons ^[13].

The author of this publication analyzed the data of the list of those executed in the Tyumen region, published in 1999 ^{[5; 6]}. Among those who died at the hands of the NKVD during the "great terror" (1937-1938), 176 people were found who were current or former priests, deacons, psalmists, as well as former monks/nuns.

All of them were shot by the decision of the "troika" of the Omsk NKVD for anti-Soviet activities.

Based on the calculations made, it turned out that the youngest of the executed was only 33 years old, the oldest was 84. The average age of the executed church servants was 57 years.

The ratio of executed church representatives by age group is shown in the diagram (diagram 1).

Figure 1

The ratio of representatives of the clergy of the Tobolsk diocese shot in 1937-1938 by age groups, people.

The chart data show that persons aged 51 to 60 years (35.8%) prevailed among those shot, the group of persons aged 61 to 70 years (28.4%) was in second place, 41 to 50 years (19.3%) were in third place, 71 to 80 years (7.9%). The fifth place was taken by the repressed under the age of 40 (6.9%), the sixth – aged 81 years and older (1.7%).

Of the 176 sentenced to death, 30 (17%) were women. They were mostly former nuns.

When analyzing the list of those executed, it turned out that entire families of clergy representatives often fell under the millstones of Stalin's repressions. For example, in 1937, the Zaborovsky family was shot – a brother and three sisters. The first to be arrested (September 2, 1937) was Georgy Vasilyevich Zaborovsky, a priest in the village of Preobrazhenskoye, Tobolsk district. He was shot on September 15, 1937. His three sisters – Neonila, Zoya and Maria – were arrested on the same day, October 22, 1937. All of them were former nuns. The sisters were shot on the same day – November 10 , 1937 .

The Burtsev family, who lived in the village, did not escape execution. Gotoputovo of Sorokinsky district. The husband, Terenty Ivanovich, a priest, was arrested on July 31, 1937, shot less than a month and a half later – on September 11, 1937. Terenty Ivanovich's wife, Claudia Alexandrovna, a priest, was arrested on February 13, 1938, shot on March 15 of the same year.

Representatives of the highest clergy of the Tobolsk diocese were sentenced to death. For example, Archbishop Artemiy (Ilyinsky) of Tobolsk and Siberia, against whom the sentence was carried out on August 30, 1937.

All the sentences against the clergy were passed by the so-called "troika" of the NKVD and were carried out within a period of 2 to 35 days. The "troika" consisted of the chief, the secretary of the regional committee and the prosecutor. The verdict was not subject to appeal.

The very fact that a person belongs or belonged to the clergy or openly professed his faith condemned him to execution or exile.

Unfortunately, because of the classified archival data, it is not known for certain how many priests of the Tobolsk diocese escaped the fate of those shot and were sent into exile for 8-10 years. It seems that their number was very impressive.

Despite the persecution by the state, the former clergy and parishioners continued to pray and observe fasts, to live with faith in their souls.

In the city of Tyumen, the "lishenets" appointed as a copyist, Andrei Arzhilovsky, noted in his diary: "On January 1, 1937, Happy New Year! Anyway, we celebrate and expect the best from life. On census business, I go around the 15 houses assigned to me. I see that many people live worse than us. Despite 20 years of re-education, there are still a lot of believers, and they confidently answer the questionnaire question - We believe!" ^{[15, p. 94]}.

Conclusion

The conducted research showed the tragedy of the events of 1918-1941, caused by large-scale punitive measures of the Soviet leadership in order to retain power, suppress all resistance and eradicate anti-Soviet elements.

About 39 million people were subjected to repression. The victims of the repressions included the executed "enemies of the people", as well as those who died in camps from diseases and difficult working conditions, destitute, victims of hunger, etc.

The Bolsheviks' coming to power in October 1917 marked the beginning of one of the most tragic periods in the thousand-year history of the Russian Orthodox Church. Trying to eradicate religion, the Soviet state did everything to destroy the church as a social institution.

Legislative acts, anti-religious propaganda, seizure of church valuables and closure of churches, arrests of clergy, intimidation, disenfranchisement, executions were used as measures to combat the church…

The anti-church policy of the Bolsheviks led to the mass closure of churches in the country. In the period from 1917 to 1939, the number of churches decreased from 60 thousand to 100.

In the Tobolsk Diocese, the number of churches functioning by the end of the 1920s also decreased significantly.

Former and current clergy were subjected to repression, which peaked in 1937-1938. The results of the analysis of the data of the list of those executed in the Tyumen region, published in 1999, showed that among the dead at the hands of the NKVD during the "great terror" were 176 people who were current or former priests, deacons, psalmists, as well as former monks/nuns.

The youngest of the executed was only 33 years old, the oldest – 84. The average age of the executed church servants was 57 years. And of the 176 people sentenced to death, 30 (17%) were women. 

The result of the destructive policy of the Soviet government was that by 1942 there was not a single ruling bishop left in Siberia, and all dioceses, including Tobolsk, were abolished. 

 Nevertheless, the repressions carried out against the church failed to destroy the religious consciousness of the population. Even under the threat of exile and execution, believers continued to pray at home, secretly celebrate church holidays, and read religious literature.

The clergy continued to provide all possible assistance to all those suffering, carrying out their mission, despite the danger of falling under the flywheel of Stalin's repressions.

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