Design

The Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War.

The Church is often called the “second power”; most secular tsars perceived Orthodoxy as a tool for maintaining their autocracy. The authorities tried not to spoil relations with the Orthodox Church. Representatives of the clergy had privileges and a special status. Orthodoxy has always brought peace of mind and a sense of protection from above into the difficult life of the Russian peasant. The church was involved in charity work, and children were given primary education in parochial schools. She often stood up for the offended, one way or another, gave her assessment of political transformations, that is, she took an active position in the life of the state.

The Bolsheviks, when they came to power, did not openly advocate atheism, although their leaders had long ago lost touch with religion. The first events also said nothing about the colossal disruption that would unfold in the coming years. IN AND. Lenin wrote on November 20, 1917 in an address “To all working Muslims of Russia and the East”: “Muslims of Russia, Tatars of the Volga region and Crimea, Kyrgyz and Sarts of Siberia, Turkestan, Turks and Tatars of Transcaucasia, Chechens and highlanders of the Caucasus, all those mosques and whose prayers were destroyed, whose beliefs and customs were trampled upon by the tsars and oppressors of Russia! From now on, your beliefs and customs, your national and cultural institutions are declared free and inviolable."

One of the first decrees of the Soviet government was the decree on the separation of church and state of January 23, 1918. The decree itself did not carry an anti-religious, anti-church connotation. In most European countries, the church was separated from the state back in the era of bourgeois revolutions. Western society is undoubtedly secular in nature. But in most countries, the state officially supports those religious organizations that are most consistent with national interests and traditions. In England it is the Anglican Church (its head is the Queen), in Sweden, Norway, Denmark it is Lutheran; in Spain, Portugal - Catholic, etc. As for Eastern societies, they are characterized by the inseparability of the secular and religious spheres of life. Consequently, the act of separation of church and state in Russia meant a movement in a Western direction.

However, this act was accepted and in fact became the legislative basis for persecution against the church. The first to come under attack was the Orthodox Church as the official church of old Russia. In addition, other churches were located in territories where there was not yet Bolshevik power. The closure of churches, the confiscation of church valuables, and reprisals against clergy began already in the first months after the October events of 1917. On October 13, 1918, Patriarch Tikhon addressed the Council of People's Commissars with a message in which he wrote: "...Bishops, clergy, monks and nuns are being executed , not guilty of anything, but simply on a sweeping accusation of some vague and indefinite counter-revolutionism."

On the territory of pre-revolutionary Russia there were 78 thousand Orthodox churches, 25 thousand mosques, more than 6 thousand synagogues, 4.4 thousand Catholic churches, more than 200 Old Believer churches of Georgia and Armenia. The number of churches in Russia by 1941 had decreased by 20 times. Most of the temples were closed in the 30s. By 1938, more than 40 thousand houses of worship were closed. These are not only Orthodox churches, but also mosques, synagogues, etc. In 1935-1936. The government banned the activities of the Synod and the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. In 25 regions there was not a single functioning temple, and in 20 regions there were 1-5 temples.

The clergy were also destroyed. IN AND. Lenin, in a secret instruction dated August 19, 1922, wrote: “The more representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie we manage to shoot on this occasion, the better.” Thus, the clergy and the bourgeoisie are concepts of the same order for Lenin. This is true from the point of view of civilizational affiliation. The creation of a new one could be successful only if the spiritual foundation was destroyed and its carriers were destroyed.

In 1926, the “Union of Atheists of the USSR to Fight Religion” was created, which was then renamed the “Union of Militant Atheists.” The number of its members grew: 1926 - approximately 87 thousand people; 1929 – more than 465 thousand; 1930 – 3.5 million people; 1931 - approximately 51 million. The growth in the number of active fighters against religion shows how rapidly the spiritual sphere was collapsing. It is curious that pro-Western movements in Christianity, especially such as Baptistism, which seemed stupid and savage, were persecuted most cruelly. However, it was not possible to eliminate religion.

Half-strangled religious confessions were nationalized, subordinated to party-state control and carried out in their activities only those things that did not contradict socialist ideology, that is, in practice there was not separation from the state, as the Decree of 1918 provided, but the subordination of the church to the state.

In an effort to keep their inner world in balance, many people stubbornly clung to traditional religious beliefs. Anti-religious campaigns, while achieving some success, in a number of cases caused the opposite reaction. Previously banned materials from the 1937 All-Union Population Census show that, despite the obvious fear of revealing adherence to religion, a significant part of the population admitted that they believed in God. Of the nearly 30 million illiterate adults (over 16 years of age), more than 25 million (84%) are registered as believers. Of the 68.5 million literate population, 30 million (44%) were also believers.

Generations that grew up in Soviet times had no idea about the role of traditional religions in society and perceived the activities of church organizations negatively. However, that part of society that had lost contact with traditional religion accepted a new one. It had its own paraphernalia: red corners, portraits and monuments of leaders, etc. Its own ritual, its own dogma. Marxism-Leninism was only an outer shell, under which traditional Russian values were often hidden.

The idea of the messianic, saving role of Russia was transformed into the idea of the USSR as the vanguard of the world revolution, which should pave the way to the future for all peoples and help them on this difficult path. Internationalism in fact turned out to be the basis for a harsh Russification policy and the imposition of the Russian model. Leaders, who were perceived as bearers and interpreters of higher values, also became objects of worship. The process of charismatization of the leaders began immediately and gained momentum as the Bolshevik Party consolidated its hold on power. Gradually V.I. Lenin developed into a charismatic leader and then, after his death, was canonized as the new Christ or Prophet Muhammad.

IN AND. Lenin always behaved like a prophet, surrounded by disciples and followers, and not like the leader of a political party. It is well known that in the Bolshevik Party and in his circle he did not tolerate people who disagreed with him and showed independence in judgment and behavior. This resulted in constant splits, exceptions, and demarcations, starting from the Second Congress of the RSDLP and until the end of his life.

The formation of the image of a charismatic leader began after the Bolsheviks came to power. However, little was achieved during Lenin's lifetime. In the full sense of the word, he became a charismatic leader, almost a god, after his death. "Lenin lived, Lenin is alive, Lenin will live!" - this slogan could be found both on the streets of the capital and in a small village. Why not “Christ is Risen!”

New leader I.V. Stalin took over as a faithful disciple, a faithful Leninist. His charismatization occurred in the 30s. He became a god during his lifetime. His portraits hung everywhere, and monuments were erected in cities and towns. Cities, streets, schools, factories, collective farms, divisions, regiments, etc. were named after him. The press glorified the leader. Here are lines from the pages of the Pravda newspaper. January 8, 1935: “Long live the one whose genius led us to unprecedented successes - the great organizer of the victories of Soviet power, the great leader, friend and teacher - our Stalin!” March 8, 1939: “Let the father live, long live our dear father - Stalin the sun!”

The deification of the leaders imparted “holiness” to the regime. In the mass consciousness, this meant the adoption of new values and new life guidelines. The system, which was largely based on violence, acquired a spiritual basis.

It is characteristic that during the war years the emphasis was placed on the Russian people. Russian patriotism became one of the most important sources of victory. I.V. constantly addressed the Russian theme. Stayin, especially in the first, most difficult period of the war, on November 6, 1941, he spoke about the impossibility of defeating “... the great Russian nation, the nation of Plekhanov and Lenin, Belinsky and Chernyshevsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy, ... Suvorov and Kutuzov.”

Christianity has always carried a charge of great moral strength, which was especially important during the war years. They drew consolation and strength from religion for life and work in the most difficult conditions of war. The Russian Orthodox Church called for humility and patience, for mercy and brotherhood. The war revealed the best features of Russian Orthodoxy.

In 1943, the orders of A. Nevsky, A. Suvorov, M. Kutuzov, and other prominent Russian military leaders and naval commanders were established, the St. George Ribbon was introduced, and the pre-revolutionary uniform of the Russian army was returned. Orthodoxy received greater freedom than other faiths. Already on June 22, 1941, the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius made an appeal to believers, calling on them to stand up for the defense of the Motherland in their hands and take part in raising funds for the defense fund.

A number of telegrams from representatives of the Orthodox clergy with messages about the transfer of funds for defense needs in the first months of the war appeared on the pages of the central newspapers Pravda and Izvestia, information about the work of the Orthodox Church was also given there, and biographies of the newly elected Patriarchs Sergius and Alexy were published. That is, the patriotic activities of the Church were covered in the press and recognized by the authorities. Dozens of clergy were released from the camps, including 6 archbishops and 5 bishops.

On Easter 1942, Moscow allowed unhindered traffic throughout the city throughout the night. In 1942, the first Council of Bishops during the entire war was convened in Ulyanovsk. In the spring of 1943, the government opened access to the Iveron Mother of God icon, which was brought from the closed Donskoy Monastery for worship at the Resurrection Church in Moscow.

For the period from 1941 to 1944. The church contributed more than 200 million rubles to the country's defense fund. In the very first years of the war, more than three million rubles were collected in Moscow churches for the needs of the front and defense. The churches of Leningrad collected 5.5 million rubles. The church communities of Nizhny Novgorod collected more than four million rubles for the defense fund in 1941-1942. During the first half of 1944, the Novosibirsk diocese collected about two million rubles for wartime needs. With funds raised by the Church, an air squadron named after Alexander Nevsky and a tank column named after Dmitry Donskoy were created.

Here are some more examples. Bishop Bartholomew, Archbishop of Novosibirsk and Barnaul, called on people to donate to the needs of the army, performing services in churches in Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Barnaul, Tyumen, Omsk, Tobolsk, Biysk and other cities. The fees were used to purchase warm clothes for soldiers, maintain hospitals and orphanages, restore areas damaged during the German occupation and help disabled war veterans.

Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad remained with his flock in besieged Leningrad throughout the siege. “...ignites the hearts of soldiers by the spirit of unity and inspiration that now lives the entire Russian people,” read his address to believers on Palm Sunday.

On September 4, 1943, Stalin met with the highest hierarchs of the Orthodox Church. It marked a warming in relations between the authorities and the church. The regime decided to use traditional religion to mobilize forces and resources in the fight against the external enemy. By order of I.V. Stalin was given the task of restoring the normal practice of religious rites “at a Bolshevik pace.” A decision was also made to create theological academies in Moscow, Kyiv and Leningrad. Stalin agreed with the clergy on the need to publish church books. Under the patriarch, it was decided to form the Holy Synod of three permanent and three temporary members. A decision was made to form the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In general, it should be noted that the war had a significant and positive impact on the relationship between the Orthodox Church and the Soviet government. After the war, the People's Commissariat of Education issued a decree on the preferential admission of front-line soldiers to educational institutions. In this matter, the church followed the decision of the authorities; a lot of front-line soldiers were studying at the seminary at that time. For example, I.D. Pavlov, the future Archimandrite Kirill, he became the confessor of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II.

During the war years, there was a legend among the people that during the attack on Moscow, an icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God was placed on a plane, the plane flew around Moscow and consecrated the borders, as in Ancient Rus', when an icon was often taken to the battlefield so that the Lord would protect the country. Even if it was unreliable information, people believed it, which means they expected something similar from the authorities.

At the front, soldiers often made the sign of the cross before battle - asking the Almighty to protect them. The majority perceived Orthodoxy as a national religion. The famous Marshal Zhukov, together with the soldiers, said before the battle: “Well, with God!” The people maintain a legend that Zhukov carried the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God along the front lines.

During the “period of change” (1917-1941), the Bolsheviks abandoned the traditional Russian religion. But during the war, “the time to collect stones,” it was necessary to return to the original Russian, traditions helped unite the people on the basis of a common, common religion. Hitler understood this well. One of his instructions was that the fascists should prevent the influence of one church on a large area, but the emergence of sects in the occupied territories, as a form of schism and disunity, should be encouraged.

Stalin did not organize church revival, he restrained it. In the Pskov region, before the arrival of the Germans, there were 3 churches, and by the time the Soviet troops returned, there were 200 of them. In the Kursk region, before the Germans, there were 2, but there were 282, but in the Tambov region, where Soviet power remained unchanged, there remained 3 churches. Thus, the first 18 churches were allowed to open only almost six months after Stalin’s meeting with the metropolitans by a resolution of the Council of Ministers of February 5, 1944. And of the total number of requests from believers for the opening of churches received in 1944-1947, the Council of Ministers satisfied only 17%.
On November 16, 1948, the Synod was forced to make a decision to prohibit turning sermons in churches into lessons on the Law of God for children. Moreover, in the late 40s and early 50s, churches again began to be taken over for clubs and warehouses. In 1951, during the harvest in the Kursk region alone, by order of the district executive committees, about 40 buildings of existing churches were covered with grain for many months. Communists and Komsomol members who performed religious rites began to be persecuted. A new wave of arrests of the most active clergy began. For example, in September 1948, Archbishop Manuil (Lemeshevsky) was arrested for the seventh time. If on January 1, 1949, there were 14,447 officially opened Orthodox churches in the country, then by January 1, 1952, their number decreased to 13,786 (120 of which were not operational due to their use for grain storage).

During and after the war, Stalin's policy towards the Church saw two turning points. Today, the positive turnaround of 1943-1944 is more often remembered, but we should not forget the new “ice age” that began in the second half of 1948. Stalin wanted to make Moscow an Orthodox Vatican, the center of all Orthodox churches in the world. But in July 1948, the Pan-Orthodox Conference (with the participation of Metropolitan Elijah) did not lead to the result expected in the Kremlin: the hierarchs of churches that found themselves far from Soviet tanks (primarily Greece and Turkey) showed intransigence. And Stalin, realizing that he would not be able to use religious resources in global politics, sharply lost interest in church affairs. So, the cynical pragmatism of Stalin’s church policy during the war and the immediate transition to new persecutions in 1948 indicate that Stalin did not have any ideological crisis, conversion, or return to faith.

Several departments were responsible for the implementation of religious policy in the occupied territory of the Nazis - from the special Ministry of Religions to the military command and the Gestapo. In the occupied territories, at the beginning of the war, the Germans allowed churches to operate. Some priests accepted fascist culture, citing the fact that the Church was being persecuted in Russia. And yet, most clergy showed themselves humbly during the war, forgetting past grievances. The Nazis stopped the practice of opening churches because the priests conducted patriotic sermons among the population. Now priests were beaten and shot.

The Orthodox Church united with the secular authorities in the fight against the fascists. The war was declared holy, liberating, and the Church blessed this war. In addition to material assistance, the Church morally supported people at the front and in the rear. At the front they believed in the miraculous power of icons and the sign of the cross. Prayers acted as peace of mind. In their prayers, the rear workers asked God to protect their relatives from death. The Orthodox Church made a significant contribution to the all-Soviet struggle against the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. The position of the Orthodox Church in Soviet Russia strengthened for a time. But the government followed, first of all, its own interests, and this strengthening was only temporary. Ordinary people often believed in God and relied on him as support from above.

To the 75th anniversary of the counter-offensive near Moscow

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the threat of complete destruction loomed over the Russian Orthodox Church. The country declared a “godless five-year plan,” during which the Soviet state was supposed to finally get rid of “religious remnants.”

Almost all the surviving bishops were in camps, and the number of operating churches throughout the country did not exceed several hundred. However, despite the unbearable conditions of existence, on the very first day of the war, the Russian Orthodox Church, in the person of the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), showed courage and perseverance, and discovered the ability to encourage and support its people in difficult times of war. “The protection of the Most Holy Virgin Mother of God, the ever-present Intercessor of the Russian land, will help our people survive the time of difficult trials and victoriously end the war with our victory,” with these words Metropolitan Sergius addressed the parishioners gathered on June 22, Sunday, at the Epiphany Cathedral in Moscow. The bishop ended his sermon, in which he spoke about the spiritual roots of Russian patriotism, with words that sounded with prophetic confidence: “The Lord will grant us victory!”

After the liturgy, locked in his cell, the locum tenens personally typed the text of the appeal to the “Pastors and flock of Christ’s Orthodox Church,” which was immediately sent out to the remaining parishes. In all churches, a special prayer for deliverance from enemies began to be read during services.

Meanwhile, the Germans, having crossed the border, were rapidly advancing through Soviet territory. In the occupied lands they pursued a well-thought-out religious policy, opening churches and conducting successful anti-Soviet propaganda against this background. Of course, this was not done out of love for Christianity. Wehrmacht documents released after the end of the war indicate that most of the open churches were subject to closure after the end of the Russian campaign. Operational Order No. 10 of the Reich Main Security Directorate speaks eloquently about the attitude towards the church issue. It stated, in particular: “... on the German side, in no case should there be any explicit support for church life, the organization of divine services or the holding of mass baptisms. There can be no talk of re-establishing the former Patriarchal Russian Church. Particular care should be taken to ensure that, first of all, no organizationally formalized merger of the Orthodox Church circles that are in the stage of formation takes place. Splitting into separate church groups, on the contrary, is desirable.” Metropolitan Sergius also spoke about the treacherous religious policy pursued by Hitler in his sermon at the Epiphany Cathedral on June 26, 1941. “Those who think that the current enemy does not touch our shrines and does not touch anyone’s faith are deeply mistaken,” the bishop warned. – Observations of German life tell a completely different story. The famous German commander Ludendorff... over the years came to the conviction that Christianity is not suitable for a conqueror.”

Meanwhile, the propaganda actions of the German leadership to open churches could not but cause a corresponding response from Stalin. He was also encouraged to do this by those movements for the opening of churches that began in the USSR already in the first months of the war. Gatherings of believers were held in cities and villages, at which executive bodies and commissioners for petitions for the opening of churches were elected. In rural areas, such meetings were often headed by collective farm chairmen, who collected signatures for the opening of church buildings and then themselves acted as intercessors before the executive bodies. It often happened that employees of executive committees at various levels treated favorably the petitions of believers and, within the framework of their powers, actually contributed to the registration of religious communities. Many churches opened spontaneously, without even having legal registration.

All these processes prompted the Soviet leadership to officially allow the opening of churches in territory not occupied by the Germans. The persecution of the clergy stopped. The priests who were in the camps were returned and became rectors of the newly opened churches.

The names of the shepherds who prayed in those days for the granting of victory and, together with all the people, forged the victory of Russian weapons, are widely known. Near Leningrad, in the village of Vyritsa, there lived an old man known today throughout Russia, Hieroschemamonk Seraphim (Muravyev). In 1941 he was 76 years old. The disease practically did not allow him to move without assistance. Eyewitnesses report that the elder loved to pray in front of the image of his patron saint, the Monk Seraphim of Sarov. The icon of the saint was mounted on an apple tree in the garden of the elderly priest. The apple tree itself grew near a large granite stone, on which the old man, following the example of his heavenly patron, performed many hours of prayer on sore legs. According to the stories of his spiritual children, the elder often said: “One prayer book for the country can save all the cities and villages...”

In those same years, in Arkhangelsk, in the St. Elias Cathedral, the namesake of the Vyritsa elder, Abbot Seraphim (Shinkarev), who had previously been a monk of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, served in the St. Elijah Cathedral. According to eyewitnesses, he often spent several days in the church praying for Russia. Many noted his foresight. Several times he predicted the victory of the Soviet troops when circumstances directly pointed to a sad outcome of the battle.

The capital's clergy showed true heroism during the war. The rector of the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at the Danilovskoye Cemetery, Archpriest Pavel Uspensky, who lived outside the city in peacetime, did not leave Moscow for an hour. He organized a real social center at his temple. A 24-hour watch was established in the church, and a bomb shelter was set up in the basement, which was later converted into a gas shelter. To provide first aid in case of accidents, Father Pavel created a sanitary station, where there were stretchers, dressings and all the necessary medicines.
Another Moscow priest, rector of the Church of Elijah the Prophet in Cherkizovo, Archpriest Pavel Tsvetkov, established a shelter for children and the elderly at the temple. He personally carried out night watches and, if necessary, took part in extinguishing fires. Among his parishioners, Father Pavel organized a collection of donations and scrap non-ferrous metals for military needs. In total, during the war years, the parishioners of the Elias Church collected 185 thousand rubles.

Fundraising work was also carried out in other churches. According to verified data, during the first three years of the war, the churches of the Moscow diocese alone donated more than 12 million rubles for defense needs.

The activities of the Moscow clergy during the war period are eloquently evidenced by the resolutions of the Moscow Council of September 19, 1944 and January 3, 1945. about awarding about 20 Moscow and Tula priests with medals “For the Defense of Moscow.” The authorities' recognition of the Church's merits in defending the Fatherland was also expressed in the official permission for believers to celebrate church holidays and, first of all, Easter. For the first time during the war, Easter was openly celebrated in 1942, after the end of the fighting near Moscow. And of course, the most striking evidence of the change in the policy of the Soviet leadership towards the Church was the restoration of the Patriarchate and the opening of the Theological Seminary for the training of future clergy.

The new vector of church-state relations ultimately made it possible to strengthen the material, political and legal position of the Russian Orthodox Church, protect the clergy from persecution and further repression, and increase the authority of the Church among the people. The Great Patriotic War, becoming a difficult test for the entire people, saved the Russian Church from complete destruction. In this, undoubtedly, the Providence of God and His good will for Russia were manifested.

Each era in its own way tested the patriotism of believers, constantly educated by the Russian Orthodox Church, their willingness and ability to serve reconciliation and truth. And each era has preserved in church history, along with the lofty images of saints and ascetics, examples of patriotic and peacemaking service to the Motherland and the people of the best representatives of the Church.

Russian history is dramatic. Not a single century has passed without wars, large or small, that tormented our people and our land. The Russian Church, condemning the war of aggression, has at all times blessed the feat of defense and defense of the native people and the Fatherland. The history of Ancient Rus' allows us to trace the constant influence of the Russian Church and great church historical figures on social events and the destinies of people.

The beginning of the twentieth century in our history was marked by two bloody wars: the Russian-Japanese (1904) and the First World War (1914), during which the Russian Orthodox Church provided effective mercy, helping war-dispossessed refugees and evacuees, the hungry and wounded, creating There are infirmaries and hospitals in the monasteries.

The 1941 war struck our land as a terrible disaster. Metropolitan Sergius, who headed the Russian Orthodox Church after Patriarch Tikhon, wrote in his Appeal to pastors and believers on the very first day of the war: “Our Orthodox Church has always shared the fate of the people... She will not abandon her people even now. She blesses with heavenly blessing the upcoming national feat... blesses all Orthodox Christians for the defense of the sacred borders of our Motherland...” Addressing Soviet soldiers and officers brought up in the spirit of devotion to another - the socialist Fatherland, its other symbols - the party, the Komsomol, the ideals of communism , the archpastor calls on them to follow the example of the Orthodox great-grandfathers, who valiantly repelled the enemy invasion of Rus', to be equal to those who, through feats of arms and heroic courage, proved their holy, sacrificial love for her. It is characteristic that he calls the army Orthodox; he calls for sacrificing oneself in battle for the Motherland and faith.

At the call of Metropolitan Sergius, from the very beginning of the war, Orthodox believers collected donations for defense needs. In Moscow alone, in the first year of the war, parishes collected more than three million rubles to help the front. 5.5 million rubles were collected in the churches of besieged, exhausted Leningrad. The Gorky church community donated more than 4 million rubles to the defense fund. And there are many such examples. These funds, collected by the Russian Orthodox Church, were invested in the creation of the Alexander Nevsky flight squadron and the Dmitry Donskoy tank column. In addition, the fees were used to maintain hospitals, help disabled war veterans and orphanages. Everywhere they offered up fervent prayers in churches for victory over fascism, for their children and fathers on the fronts fighting for the Fatherland. The losses suffered by our people in the Patriotic War of 41-45 are colossal.

It must be said that after the German attack on the USSR, the position of the Church changed dramatically: on the one hand, the locum tenens Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) immediately took a patriotic position; but, on the other hand, the occupiers came with an essentially false, but outwardly effective slogan - the liberation of Christian civilization from Bolshevik barbarism. It is known that Stalin was in panic, and only on the tenth day of the Nazi invasion he addressed the people through a loudspeaker in an intermittent voice: “Dear compatriots! Brothers and sisters!...". He also had to remember the Christian appeal of believers to each other.

The day of Hitler's attack fell on June 22, this is the day of the Orthodox holiday of All Saints who shone in the Russian land. And this is not accidental. This is the day of the new martyrs - the many millions of victims of the Lenin-Stalinist terror. Any believer could interpret this attack as retribution for the beating and torment of the righteous, for the fight against God, for the last “godless five-year plan” announced by the communists. All over the country, bonfires of icons, religious books and sheet music of many great Russian composers (Bortnyansky, Glinka, Tchaikovsky), the Bible and the Gospel burned. The Union of Militant Atheists (LUA) organized bacchanals and pandemoniums of anti-religious content. These were real anti-Christian sabbaths, unsurpassed in their ignorance, blasphemy, and outrage against the sacred feelings and traditions of their ancestors. Churches were closed everywhere, clergy and Orthodox confessors were exiled to the Gulag; There was a total destruction of the spiritual foundations in the country - honor, conscience, decency, mercy. All this continued with manic desperation under the leadership first of the “leader of the world revolution”, and then of his successor, J. Stalin.

Therefore, for believers, this was a well-known compromise: either unite to resist the invasion in the hope that after the war everything will change, that this will be a harsh lesson for the tormentors, perhaps the war will sober up the authorities and force them to abandon the atheistic ideology and policy towards the Church. Or recognize the war as an opportunity to overthrow the communists by entering into an alliance with the enemy. It was a choice between two evils - either an alliance with the internal enemy against the external enemy, or vice versa. And it must be said that this was often an insoluble tragedy of the Russian people on both sides of the front during the war. But the Holy Scripture itself said that “The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy...” (John 10:10). And the treacherous and cruel enemy knew neither pity nor mercy - more than 20 million died on the battlefield, tortured in fascist concentration camps, ruins and fires in place of flourishing cities and villages. Ancient Pskov, Novgorod, Kyiv, Kharkov, Grodno, and Minsk churches were barbarically destroyed; Our ancient cities and unique monuments of Russian church and civil history were bombed to the ground.

“War is a terrible and disastrous business for those who undertake it needlessly, without truth, with the greed of robbery and enslavement; all the shame and curse of heaven lies on him for the blood and for the misfortunes of his own and others,” he wrote in his address to to believers June 26, 1941 Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad and Novgorod, who shared with his flock all the hardships and deprivations of the two-year siege of Leningrad.

On June 22, 1941, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) had just served the festive liturgy when he was informed about the beginning of the war. He immediately delivered a patriotic speech-sermon that in this time of general trouble, the Church “will not abandon its people even now. She blesses...and the upcoming national feat.” Anticipating the possibility of an alternative solution for the believers, the bishop called on the priesthood not to indulge in thoughts “about possible benefits on the other side of the front.” In October, when the Germans were already standing near Moscow, Metropolitan Sergius condemned those priests and bishops who, finding themselves under occupation, began to collaborate with the Germans. This, in particular, concerned another metropolitan, Sergius (Voskresensky), exarch of the Baltic republics, who remained in the occupied territory, in Riga, and made his choice in favor of the occupiers. The situation was not easy. Incredulous Stalin, however, despite the appeal, sent Vladyka Sergius (Stragorodsky) to Ulyanovsk, allowing him to return to Moscow only in 1943.

The Germans' policy in the occupied territories was quite flexible; they often opened churches desecrated by the communists, and this was a serious counterbalance to the imposed atheistic worldview. Stalin also understood this. To confirm Stalin in the possibility of changing church policy, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) on November 11, 1941. writes a message in which, in particular, he seeks to deprive Hitler of his claims to the role of defender of Christian civilization: “Progressive humanity declared a holy war on Hitler for Christian civilization, for freedom of conscience and religion.” However, the topic of protecting Christian civilization was never directly accepted by Stalinist propaganda. To a greater or lesser extent, all concessions to the Church were made by him until 1943. cosmetic nature.

In the Nazi camp, Alfred Rosenberg, who headed the Eastern Ministry, was responsible for church policy in the occupied territories, being the governor-general of the “Eastern Land,” as the territory of the USSR under the Germans was officially called. He was against the creation of territorial unified national church structures and was generally a convinced enemy of Christianity. As is known, the Nazis used various occult practices to achieve power over other peoples, and even the mysterious SS structure “Ananerbe” was created, which made voyages to the Himalayas, Shambhala and other “places of power”, and the SS organization itself was built on the principle of a knightly order with corresponding “initiations”, hierarchy and represented the Hitlerite oprichnina. His attributes were runic signs: double lightning bolts, a swastika, a skull and crossbones. Anyone who joined this order clothed himself in the black vestments of the “Fuhrer's Guard”, became an accomplice in the sinister karma of this satanic semi-sect and sold his soul to the devil.

Rosenberg especially hated Catholicism, believing that it represented a force capable of resisting political totalitarianism. He saw Orthodoxy as a kind of colorful ethnographic ritual, preaching meekness and humility, which only played into the hands of the Nazis. The main thing is to prevent its centralization and transformation into a single national church. However, Rosenberg and Hitler had serious disagreements, since the former’s program included the transformation of all nationalities of the USSR into formally independent states under the control of Germany, and the latter was fundamentally against the creation of any states in the east, believing that all Slavs should become slaves of the Germans. Others must simply be destroyed. Therefore, in Kyiv, at Babi Yar, machine gun fire did not subside for days. The death conveyor here worked smoothly. More than 100 thousand killed - such is the bloody harvest of Babyn Yar, which became a symbol of the Holocaust of the twentieth century. The Gestapo, together with their police henchmen, destroyed entire settlements, burning their inhabitants to the ground. In Ukraine there was not just one Oradour and not just one Lidice, destroyed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe, but hundreds. If, for example, 149 people died in Khatyn, including 75 children, then in the village of Kryukovka in the Chernihiv region, 1,290 households were burned, more than 7 thousand residents were killed, of which hundreds of children. In 1944, when Soviet troops fought to liberate Ukraine, they everywhere found traces of the terrible repressions of the occupiers. The Nazis shot, strangled in gas chambers, hanged and burned: in Kyiv - more than 195 thousand people, in the Lviv region - more than half a million, in the Zhytomyr region - over 248 thousand, and in total in Ukraine - over 4 million people. Concentration camps played a special role in the system of Hitler's genocide industry: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, Salaspils and other death camps. In total, 18 million people passed through the system of such camps (in addition to prisoner of war camps directly in the combat zone), 12 million prisoners died: men, women, and children.

The organization of Ukrainian nationalists (OUN) was also an accomplice of the fascists. The OUN had its headquarters in Berlin, and since 1934. was part of the Gestapo staff as a special department. In the period from 1941 to 1954. The OUN killed 50 thousand Soviet soldiers and 60 thousand civilians of Ukraine, including several thousand children of Polish and Jewish nationality. It is possible that these “patriots” would not have acted so cruelly if they had been restrained from unbridled violence by the Greek Catholic Church. During the ugly massacre of Lvov professors in 1941, the UGCC did not condemn the pogromists and did not prevent the bloodbath. And on September 23, 1941 Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky sent Hitler congratulations on the occasion of the capture of Kyiv. He, in particular, wrote: “Your Excellency! As the head of the UGCC, I convey to your Excellency my heartfelt congratulations on the capture of the capital of Ukraine - the golden-domed city on the Dnieper, Kiev... The fate of our people has now been given by God primarily into your hands. I will pray to God for the blessing of a victory that will guarantee lasting peace for your Excellence, the German army and the German nation." Then campaigning began for those wishing to join the ranks of the SS division “Galicia”. Uniate priests, the episcopate and personally Metropolitan Sheptytsky were forced to take the path of blessing the fratricidal massacre. Recruitment points were located directly in Uniate parishes.

In the city of Skalata, a local Uniate priest submitted an anti-Semitic petition to the occupiers. In the city of Glinany, priest Gavrilyuk led a group of OUN members who killed all the Jews living in the city. And in the village of Yablunitsy, the local Uniate pastor provoked nationalists against defenseless Jews who were drowned in the Cheremosh River.

No matter what the “lawyers” of the OUN-UPA say today, who are trying to rehabilitate the militants as fighters against the German occupiers, they even awarded them the status of veterans today, but real veteran liberators will never “fraternize” with the “forest brothers.” At the Nuremberg trials, among other issues, the topic of the OUN was raised. Former Abwehr employee Alfons Paulus testified: “...In addition to the group of Bandera and Melnik, the Abwehr command used the church...Priests of the Ukrainian Uniate Church were also trained in the training camps of the General Government, who took part in carrying out our tasks along with other Ukrainians. ..Arriving in Lviv with team 202-B (subgroup 11), Lieutenant Colonel Aikern established contact with the Metropolitan...Metropolitan Count Sheptytsky, as Aikern told me, was pro-German, provided his home for team 202...Later Aikern as chief teams and the head of the OST department ordered all units subordinate to him to establish contact with the church and maintain it.” An indispensable ritual of the OUN legionnaires was to take the oath to the Fuhrer, in which Ukraine was not mentioned in a single word.

The Nazis proclaimed: “Germany is above all!” Where the nation is “above all” - above Christianity with its ethical laws and anthropological universalism, above the postulates of morality and norms of human society, “above everything called God or holy things” (2 Thess. 2:7), above FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, - there, nationalism turns into Nazism, and patriotism into chauvinism and fascism.

A gloomy autumn day. A column of exhausted, beaten and hungry people walked to Babi Yar along the sad road of death, under the escort of Germans and policemen. There were also Orthodox priests in this column who were sentenced to death as a result of denunciations by OUN members. Among the suicide bombers was Archimandrite Alexander (Vishnyakov). The story of his tragic death is recorded according to eyewitnesses who miraculously escaped death: “The column was divided. The priests were led forward to the edge of the cliff. Archimandrite Alexander was pushed out of the general group and taken about 30 meters away. Several machine gunners dispassionately and clearly shot at the group of priests. Then Ukrainian policemen in embroidered shirts and armbands approached Father Alexander and forced him to strip naked. At this time, he hid his pectoral cross in his mouth. The police broke down two trees and made a cross out of them. They tried to crucify the priest on this cross, but they didn’t succeed. Then they twisted his legs and crucified him on the cross with barbed wire by his arms and legs. Then they doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. So, burning on the cross, he was thrown into a cliff. At that time the Germans were shooting Jews and prisoners of war.” Gabriel Vishnyakov learned the truth about the death of his father from Bishop Panteleimon (Rudyk) in December 1941.

The essence of the ideology of racial superiority and hypertrophied nationalism was brilliantly shown by director Mikhail Romm in the epic film “Ordinary Fascism.” In these children's eyes, wide with horror, there is a reproach to all humanity. To paraphrase F.M. Dostoevsky, who spoke about the exorbitant price of one child’s tears, how can one not recall one of Hitler’s orders, which said: “Taking into account the fierce battles taking place at the front, I order: take care of donors for the army officer corps. Children can be used as donors as the healthiest element of the population. In order not to cause any special excesses, use street children and children from orphanages.” Meanwhile, the German government, through its direct intervention in the affairs of the Church, deliberately aggravated the already difficult situation in Ukrainian Orthodoxy. It registered two denominations as equal in rights: the Autonomous Orthodox Church, which based its canonical position on the decisions of the Local Council of 1917-1918, as well as the autocephalous one, based on the movement of schismatic self-saints by Lipkovsky V. The head of the Autonomous Church in the canonical care of the Russian Orthodox Church was Archbishop Alexy ( Hromadsky), whom the Council of Bishops in the Pochaev Lavra confirmed in the rank of Metropolitan-Exarch of Ukraine on November 25, 1941.

In Ukraine, church dual power was established, since, with the blessing of His Beatitude Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), the obedience of the exarch was performed by Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) of Kiev and Galicia. In 1943 Vladyka Sergius was elected His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'.

The Reichskommissariat “Ukraine”, led by the executioner of the Ukrainian people Erich Koch, following the instructions of A. Rosenberg to encourage anti-Russian sentiments among the population, supported the autocephalous schismatic movement. Rosenberg sent a directive letter to Ukraine dated May 13, 1942. with a direct indication that Ukrainians should have their own church structure, antagonistic to the Russian Orthodox Church. However, many bishops of the autocephalous schismatic church felt the inferiority of their canonical status. Reports from the German SD security service reported that on October 8, 1942. In the Pochaev Lavra, a meeting took place between Metropolitan Alexy (Hromadsky) and two autocephalist bishops, during which an agreement on unification took place. But the overwhelming majority of the hierarchs of the Autonomous Ukrainian Church rejected this plan, believing that in this case autocephaly would gain control over the Autonomous UOC.

Archbishop of Lvov and Galicia Augustine (Markevich) writes in the Bulletin of the press service of the UOC No. 44, 2005. : “The influence of autocephalists and autonomists in various regions of Ukraine was distributed unevenly. The overwhelming majority of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine remained within the Autonomous Church.

In Volyn, where both church centers were located, the Autonomous Church had unconditional predominance in the areas located near the Pochaev Lavra. The northwestern regions were the basis of autocephaly. In Left Bank Ukraine, supporters of the Autonomous Church prevailed everywhere, with the exception of the Kharkov diocese.”

In Kyiv, parishioners did not accept autocephaly. The people of Kiev have always been distinguished by high canonical discipline. When the Soviet government in every possible way supported the self-sanctified Lipkovites, renovationists, “Living Churchers,” who, in essence, represented neo-Protestantism of the “Eastern Rite,” the people of Kiev simply did not go to their churches. So they radically “voted with their feet” against their lies.

The imposition of the Gregorian calendar by the occupation regime was a blatant violation of church norms and traditions. As one of the evidence, we cite the bulletin of the Security Police and SD dated September 21, 1942: “In mid-December 1941, some local commandants (in Strugaz and Ostrov), citing orders from a higher authority, demanded that the Orthodox celebrate all church holidays, as well as Christmas, in the Gregorian style. This demand caused a storm of indignation among the believers: “Even the Bolsheviks did not commit such violence against the Church... We will not submit...” The priest, not wanting to either violate church order or enter into conflict with the German authorities, had to leave Strugi. After this, the local commandant ordered to bring a priest from a neighboring village and forced him to conduct a Christmas service according to the Gregorian calendar... There were no parishioners that day, and the few who, out of fear of the commandant, attended the service were very upset and embarrassed.”

By that time, in addition to the autocephalous schismatic movement of Polycarp (Sikorsky), another schism was operating on the territory of Ukraine - the false church of Bishop Theophilus (Buldovsky), called the Lubensky schism, or in common parlance - “Buldovshchina”. Buldovsky proclaimed himself Metropolitan of Kharkov and Poltava. Shkarovsky M.V. in the book “The Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin and Khrushchev” he writes: “In general, the share of supporters of the autocephalous church by 1942. could not exceed 30%. Even in the Zhitomir diocese it was only a quarter, and in the more eastern regions it was even lower. Thus, in the Chernigov diocese there were practically no autocephalous churches.”

It must be said that the autocephalous structures did not bother themselves with conflicts with the Germans on a canonical basis. They ordained married priests as bishops and did not interfere with the introduction of the new style, not to mention the abolition of the Church Slavonic language in divine services.

Ukrainian monasticism showed complete rejection of autocephaly. The occupation regime put a barrier to the spread of monasticism, in every possible way preventing the tonsure of people of working age as those evading labor service and deportation to Germany to the labor front. Members of the OUN, although they were at enmity with each other (for example, Melnik and Bandera), but as representatives of the civil administration under the occupation regime, they clearly supported autocephaly. S. Petlyura’s nephew Stepan Skrypnyk became a notable person in the UAOC Sikorsky. Since July 1941 he was a representative of A. Rosenberg's ministry at Army Group South and was a trusted official on the organization of civil administration in Ukraine. Soon Sikorsky “ordained” Skrypnik to the “bishop” rank under the name Mstislav.

Let us note once again that the Nazis actively used the religious factor in their policy of conquest and occupation, skillfully inciting the religious antagonism of ethnic groups to set them against each other: Catholic Croats against Orthodox Serbs, Muslim Albanians against Montenegrins, Lutheran Balts against Orthodox Russians , Galician Uniates - to Catholic Poles. Himmler personally agreed to the formation of the three-thousand-strong SS regiment “Galicia”. The text of the oath of the SS Galicians is interesting: “I serve you, Adolf Hitler, as the Fuhrer and Chancellor of the German Reich with loyalty and courage. I swear to you and will obey you until death. May God help me." In addition to the SS division "Galicia", there were special Abwehr battalions "Nachtigal" and "Roland", which were part of the punitive regiment "Brandenburg - 800" and other formations of Ukrainian collaborators.

The people suffered victory. Once upon a time, the magazine “Atheist” in the June 1941 issue. wrote: “Religion is the worst enemy of patriotism. History does not confirm the merits of the church in the development of true patriotism” (Evstratov A. Patriotism and religion II Atheist, 1941. No. 6).

When the hour came to fight the Hitlerite plague, the main anti-fascist and patriot sat in the Kremlin, shackled by moral paralysis, while the country was tormented by invaders. If our soldiers returned from captivity - to their native rear - the Gulag, oblivion, and death awaited them. Losses, grievances, deep grief and national sorrow, the early gray hairs of mothers and widows accompanied the war. She was accompanied by destroyed temples and desecrated shrines, the Holocaust of the Jews and the burning of Khatyn, the ovens of Buchenwald and the desperate courage of a simple soldier. “The darker the night, the brighter the stars - the greater the sorrow - the closer God is” - therefore, with all their formidable might, the people rose to fight the tyrant and crushed the fascist Moloch. For, according to the patristic saying: “God is not in power, but in truth.” And how can one not recall the lines of Marina Tsvetaeva (after all, a poet in Russia is more than a poet):

These are the ashes of treasures:
Loss and grievances.
These are the ashes before which
To dust - granite.
The dove is naked and light,
Not living as a couple.
Solomon's Ashes
Over great vanity.
sunsetless time
Terrible chalk.
So, God is at my door -
Once the house burned down!
Not suffocated in the trash,
Master of dreams and days,
Like a sheer flame
The spirit is from early gray hairs!
And it wasn't you who betrayed me,
Years, to the rear!
This gray hair is a victory
Immortal powers.

Victor Mikhailovich Chernyshev professor of theology

Relations between the Soviet government and the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Great Patriotic War caused an increase in religious sentiment in the country. On the very first day of the war, the locum tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna Sergius (Stragorodsky), appealed to church pastors and believers to stand up for the defense of the Motherland and do everything necessary to stop the enemy’s aggression. The Metropolitan emphasized that in the ongoing battle with fascism, the Church is on the side of the Soviet state. “Our Orthodox Church,” he said, “has always shared the fate of the people... Do not abandon your people now. She blesses all Orthodox Christians for the defense of the sacred borders of our Motherland.” Pastoral messages were sent to all church parishes. The overwhelming majority of clergy from their pulpits called on the people to self-sacrifice and resistance to the invaders. The church began collecting funds necessary to arm the army, support the wounded, sick, and orphans. Thanks to the funds raised by the church, combat vehicles were built for the Dmitry Donskoy tank column and the Alexander Nevsky squadron. During the Great Patriotic War, hierarchs of other traditional faiths of the USSR - Islam, Buddhism and Judaism - took a patriotic position. Soon after the invasion of Hitler's troops into the territory of the Soviet Union, the Main Directorate of Reich Security of Germany issued special directives allowing the opening of church parishes in the occupied territories. Father Sergius’s special appeal to believers who remained in enemy-occupied territory contained a call not to believe German propaganda, which claimed that the Wehrmacht army entered the territory of the Soviet Union in the name of liberating the church from atheists. In the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, the German attack on the Soviet Union was perceived differently. For a long time, the Church Abroad did not express its attitude towards the war. However, Hitler’s leadership was unable to obtain from the head of the Russian Church Abroad, Metropolitan Anastasy (Gribanovsky), an appeal to the Russian people about the assistance of the German army. Many hierarchs of the Church Abroad took an anti-German position during the war. Among them was John of Shanghai (Maksimovich), who organized money collections for the needs of the Red Army, and Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev), who forbade emigrants to fight against Russia. Metropolitan Benjamin, who was in America, carried out enormous patriotic work among the Russian colony in America; at the end of 1941, he became the honorary chairman of the Russian-American “Committee for Assistance to Russia.” Many figures of the Russian Orthodox Church took an active part in the European Resistance Movement. Others made their contribution to the cause of comprehensive assistance to the Soviet Union in countries such as the USA and Canada, China and Argentina. The sermon of Metropolitan Nicholas of Kyiv and Galicia in the Church of the Transfiguration about the responsibilities of believers in the fight against fascism stopped the activities of the “Union of Militant Atheists” (established in 1925), and closed anti-religious periodicals. In 1942, Metropolitans Alexy (Simansky) and Nikolay were invited to participate in the Commission to investigate the atrocities of the Nazis. The threat of a fascist invasion, the position of the Church, which declared the war against Germany “sacred” and supported the Soviet government in the fight against the enemy, forced the leaders of the USSR to change their attitude towards the Church. In September 1941, on September 4, 1943, the three highest hierarchs of the Russian Church, led by Metropolitan Sergius, were invited by the head of the Soviet state, J.V. Stalin, to the Kremlin. The meeting indicated the beginning of a new stage in relations between state power and the Church. At the mentioned meeting, a decision was made to convene a Council of Bishops and return the surviving bishops from exile. The Council of Bishops took place on September 8, 1943. Built at the expense of funds collected by the Russian Orthodox Church, 19 bishops took part in it (some of them were released from prison for this purpose). The council confirmed Metropolitan Sergius as patriarch. In October 1943, the Council for Religious Affairs under the Government of the USSR was created. On November 28, 1943, the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On the procedure for opening churches” was issued. According to this decree, churches began to open in the country. If in 1939 there were just over 100 churches and four monasteries operating in the USSR, then by 1948 the number of open churches had increased to 14.5 thousand, with 13 thousand clergy serving in them. The number of monasteries increased to 85. The growth of religious educational institutions was also observed - 8 seminaries and 2 academies. The “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate” began to appear, and the Bible, prayer books and other church literature were published. Since 1943, due to the destruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 1931, the Elokhovsky Epiphany Cathedral, where the Patriarchal Chair was located, became the main temple of the country. After the death of Patriarch Sergius on May 15, 1944, Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad and Novgorod became locum tenens of the Throne, according to his will. On January 31 - February 2, 1945, the First Local Council of the Russian Church took place. In addition to the bishops of the Russian Church, the cathedral was attended by the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, and representatives of other local Orthodox churches. In the “Regulations on the Russian Orthodox Church” approved at the Council, the structure of the Church was determined, and a new Patriarch was elected. This was the Metropolitan of Leningrad, Alexy (Simansky). One of the priority areas of his activity was the development of international relations with Orthodox churches. Conflicts between the Bulgarian and Constantinople Churches were resolved. Many supporters of the Church Abroad, the so-called Renovationists and Grigorievists, joined the Russian Orthodox Church, relations with the Georgian Orthodox Church were restored, and in the churches in the territories liberated from occupation the clergy was cleared of fascist collaborators. In August 1945, according to a decree of the authorities, the church received the right to acquire buildings and objects of worship. In 1945, according to a decree of the authorities, the church received the right to acquire buildings and objects of worship. The decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 1946-1947 were received with great enthusiasm in the church environment of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USSR and abroad. on the right to grant Soviet citizenship to citizens of the Russian Empire living abroad. Metropolitan Evlogy was the first Russian emigrant to receive a Soviet passport. After many years of emigration, many bishops and priests returned to the USSR. Among them were Metropolitan of Saratov - Benjamin, who arrived from the USA, Metropolitan Seraphim, Metropolitan of Novosibirsk and Barnaul - Nestor, Archbishop of Krasnodar and Kuban - Victor, Archbishop of Izhevsk and Udmurtia - Yuvenaly, Bishop of Vologda - Gabriel, who arrived from China, Archimandrite Mstislav, who came from Germany, rector of the Cathedral in Kherson, Archpriest Boris Stark (from France), Protopresbyter Mikhail Rogozhin (from Australia) and many others. As the years of the Great Patriotic War showed, religion, which contained enormous spiritual and moral potential, which it has retained to this day, helped our people withstand the aggression of Nazi forces and defeat them.

Historical sources:

Russian Orthodox Church and the Great Patriotic War. Collection of church documents. M., 1943.

Seryugina Alexandra

Victory in the Great Patriotic War was not easy: huge losses, devastation and the nightmare of concentration camps went down in the history of the Fatherland forever. The most important role in the outcome of the war was played by the heroism of the people, their dedication and fighting spirit. This heroism was inspired not only by patriotism and the thirst for revenge, but also by faith. They believed in Stalin, in Zhukov, and they also believed in God. More and more often we hear from the media about the contribution of the Russian Orthodox Church to the victory. This topic has been poorly studied, since for a long time in our country little attention was paid to the church, many religious traditions were simply forgotten, since the official policy of the state was atheism. Therefore, materials about the activities of the church during the war years were accessible to few people and were kept in archives. Now we have the opportunity to obtain reliable information and give an objective assessment of the role of the Orthodox Church in the Great Patriotic War. Was there really a significant contribution? Or maybe it's just a myth?

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Research

The Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War

Seryugina Alexandra,

8th grade student

GBOU Secondary School No. 1 "OTs"

railway Shentala station

Scientific adviser:

Kasimova Galina Leonidovna,

history and social studies teacher

GBOU Secondary School No. 1 "OTs"

railway Shentala station

Introduction.	C 3
Chapter 1. Church and power.	C 5
The position of the Church before the war. 1.2. Church and government during the war
Chapter 2. Church and people.	From 11
2.1. Patriotic activity of the Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War. 2.2. Faith in God at the rear and at the front.
Conclusion.	From 16
Sources	From 18
Application.	From 19

Introduction.

Currently, many scientists and ordinary people note a decrease in humanity in society (crime is growing, people’s indifference to each other). For a long time, Orthodoxy in Russia personified humanistic principles. The Church has not lost its role in our time. Therefore, the topic of the work is relevant, the history of the Church is the history of spiritual culture, and if we want to live in a humanistic society, this history must not be forgotten.

Target: determine the patriotic role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Great Patriotic War, in raising the morale of the people.

Tasks:

1) To monitor the relationship of the Russian Orthodox Church with the authorities in the pre-war period and during the Great Patriotic War, to determine the main trends and changes in these relationships.

2) Identify the main directions of patriotic activity of the Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War.

3) Find out and analyze evidence about the population’s attitude towards Orthodoxy in the time period under study.

Hypothesis:

I assume that during the Great Patriotic War there was a change in the attitude of the authorities towards the church. The Church was active in patriotic activities, and faith in God morally supported people in the rear and at the front.

Chronological framework:

The main attention in the work is paid to the period of the Great Patriotic War in Russia - 1941-1945. The pre-war period from 1917 is also considered, since without this it is impossible to reveal some aspects of the work.

Research methods:analysis, systematization, description, interviewing.

Review of sources

Material on aspects of Orthodoxy during the Great Patriotic War is dispersed in various publications. We can say that the topic of the work is new and little researched.

The documentary film “For Our Friends” is dedicated to the Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War, as well as the feature film “Pop”...

The work used data from collections of materials from scientific conferences “Church and State: Past and Present”, “Samara Region: History in Documents”. Information was used from the manual for theological seminaries “History of the Russian Orthodox Church”, etc. Part of the material used in the work is contained in scientific journals. In the article by T.A. Chumachenko “The Soviet State and the Russian Orthodox Church in 1941-1961.” from the scientific and theoretical journal “Religious Studies” (No. 1, 2002) the magazine of Russian writers “Our Contemporary” (No. 5, 2002) published an article by Gennady Gusev “The Russian Orthodox Church and the Great Patriotic War”, in which the author cites historical documents of 1941 -1946: messages from the church lover Sergius to the people, Stalin’s telegram to Sergius. The work also contains information from the Internet. These are excerpts from the books of M. Zhukova and Archpriest V. Shvets about the role of Orthodoxy on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War and among the rear. In the article “Was there a godless five-year plan?” posted on the websitewww.religion.ng.ruand in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, historian S. Firsov writes that, despite the oppression of the Church under the communist government before the war, the population believed in God.

Many works of fiction have been written about the war. The work uses the memories of participants in the Great Patriotic War from the book by S. Aleksievich “War does not have a woman’s face.” Other works of art by such authors as Mikhail Sholokhov (“The Fate of a Man”), Vasil Bykov (“Obelisk,” “Alpine Ballad”), and Viktor Astafiev (“Cursed and Killed”) also help to comprehend the magnitude of the human tragedy of the Great Patriotic War. .

Chapter 1. Church and power

1.1. Position of the Church before the war

Russia adopted Orthodoxy as the state religion in 988. At that time, this was necessary to maintain statehood. A common faith helps unite people. Now Russia is a country with more than a thousand years of Orthodox history. Orthodoxy has always brought peace of mind and a sense of protection from above into the difficult life of the Russian peasant. The church was involved in charity work, and children were given primary education in parochial schools. These were the main activities of the local Orthodox churches, but in addition to this, clergy and bishops were involved in many other affairs of the dioceses. They often stood up for the offended, one way or another, gave their assessment of political transformations, that is, they took an active position in the life of the state. Ho

With the advent of the new government in 1917, the position of the Church in Russia sharply worsened. With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, difficult times came for the Church. In the conditions of the post-revolutionary period, the new government did not want to allow Orthodoxy to exist on a par with the unified communist ideology of Marxism. Religion was declared a relic of tsarism.

At first, the Bolsheviks did not have a clear program for the destruction of the Orthodox Church. But since 1922 they had this program, and soon the implementation of anti-religious decrees began. In 1922, a Commission for the Separation of Church and State (Anti-Religious Commission in 1928-1929) appeared under the Central Committee of the RCP (b).

An atheistic union was created with the printed publication “Atheist” ( Appendix No. 1)

In 1922, a Decree was issued on the confiscation of church valuables. ( Appendix No. 2) Officially, this was due to the famine of 1921; unofficially, the authorities perceived the confiscation of church values as a way to weaken the influence of the Church in Russia.

In March 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued a resolution “On the fight against distortions of the party line in the collective farm movement.”( Appendix No. 3 ) In it, the Central Committee demanded “a decisive end to the practice of closing churches administratively.” But the process did not stop, but, on the contrary, only accelerated.

Priests continued to be exiled and shot. The repressions of the 30s affected most of the churchmen. Thus, among the hierarchs, 32 people were arrested in 1931-1934, and in 1935-1937. - 84. As a rule, they were charged with “counter-revolutionary and espionage activities.”

The policy of militant atheism did not bring the expected results. This is evidenced by the 1937 population census. On the personal instructions of Stalin, a question about religious beliefs was included in the census questionnaires. The results, corrected by the authorities, are as follows: of the 30 million illiterate people over 16 years of age, 84% recognized themselves as believers, and of the 68.5 million literate people - 45%. (3) This was less than during the heyday of Orthodoxy. But these results clearly did not live up to the expectations of the atheists. .( Appendix No. 4)

The position of the church in our region.

In our area, before the revolution, in the period from 1850-1910, churches were built from good brick in the villages of Old Shentala, Kondurcha Fortress, Tuarma, New Kuvak. In other settlements there were prayer houses of wooden construction.

Churches and houses of worship in large settlements in our area were built in the period 1850-1910. Solid brick temples of God adorned the territories of the villages of Old Shentala, Kondurcha Fortress, Tuarma, New Kuvak. In other settlements there were prayer houses of wooden construction.

As a rule, the walls inside the church were painted with paintings of the Old and New Testaments. The Gospel was valuable. The vestments of the priests were rich. At that time, government agencies were loyal to the church and believers.

After the revolution, attitudes towards the church changed. On the ground, village activists rushed things I. This happened in the village of Bagan, in the village of Rodina, where in 1928, at a meeting of citizens, they were the first in the area to decide to transfer the church building to a cultural and educational institution.

When this issue was decided, the following were present at the meeting: 623 men, 231 women, out of a total of 1309 voters enjoying the right to vote.

And surprisingly, the clergyman Rozhdestvensky himself said in his report that he really intoxicated the population in order to profit and get money for subsistence from these false sermons. Most likely, pressure was put on him.

At that meeting it was decided: “Having heard Rozhdestvensky’s report “Religion and the Church,” we, citizens of the village of Bagan and the village of Rodina, were convinced that religion and the church are opium for the people, and therefore we unanimously renounce the church and transfer it with all its property under cultural property. - educational institution...

Chairman of the Vodovatov meeting; members Skvortsov Vasily Kosmin Fedor, Pogyakin Taras, Mokshanov Naum; Secretary of AoGolube"(State Archives of the Kuibyshev Region f. 1239, op.Z, d. 7, sheet 83-C.

The question of religion in the country is becoming more acute. On May 28, 1933, the 6th Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks recognized the need to remove bells from existing and inactive churches to provide bronze for industrial enterprises.

After such a decision, some of the churches in our area were demolished, the materials were used for the construction of schools and club institutions.

The destruction of churches did not proceed at the rate the atheists wanted. On October 21, 1933, the second document of the party commission of the Kuibyshev region appeared, where among the shortcomings in the work of the party bodies the following was noted: of the remaining 2234 churches and prayer buildings existing in the region, 1173 were closed, of which only 501 buildings were converted into cultural | educational institutions.

Then came the second stage of the destruction of God's temples. In the village of Tuarma, a church was completely destroyed. Whole bricks were used for the construction of a livestock farm; the remaining fragments of bricks were transported on carts to lay the Tuarma-Balandaevo road.

The foundation of a hospital under construction in the regional center was built from the bricks of the Staroshentalinskaya church. A similar fate befell the Saleika Church, which was erected in 1912. As old-timers say, there were 4 bells in the church, one of them weighed 26 pounds, and the others were much less. And so, on orders from above, in 1937, the bells were removed by I.P. Pomoschnikov and V.S. Sidorov. The people were completely outraged by the event.

They began to dismantle the church in the village of Novy Kuvak. But, apart from removing the domes and bells, the destroyers did not go any further, since the temple was built from excellent folding material, and the cement was mixed with egg solution and whey. For many years this church served as a cultural institution.

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, there was not a single functioning church left in the area.

1.2. Church and Power during the Great Patriotic War

« Brothers and sisters! I am addressing you, my friends."

Stalin began his famous address on July 3, 1941 with the words “brothers and sisters.” This is how Orthodox priests addressed parishioners. With these words, Stalin supports the unity of Russians in the fight against the invaders.( Appendix No. 5)

The years of the Great Patriotic War became a turning point in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, when, after many years of persecution that brought the church to the brink of destruction, its position radically changed, and a long process of revival began, which continues to this day.

With the outbreak of war with Germany, the position of the church in Soviet society changed. The danger looming over our country, the need for national unity to defeat the enemy, and the patriotic position of the Russian Orthodox Church prompted the Soviet government to change religious policy. Parishes that had been closed in the 1930s began to reopen; many of the surviving clergy were released from the camps and were able to resume serving in churches. At the same time, there is a gradual replacement and restoration of archiepiscopal sees that had previously ceased to exist. Bishops who returned from camps, exile, and forced “retirement” were appointed to them. The people openly flocked to the church. The authorities highly valued her patriotic activities in collecting money and things for the needs of the front. The church was given the printing house of the Union of Militant Atheists. In 1942, it published a large book entitled “The Truth about Religion in Russia.”

September 12, 1941 Archbishop Andrei (Komarov) ( Appendix No. 6 ) was appointed ruling bishop of the Kuibyshev diocese. In October 1941, Bishop Alexy (Palitsyn)(Appendix No. 7) appointed Archbishop of Volokolamsk.

Fearing the possible success of the German offensive on Moscow, the government in early October 1941 decided to evacuate the leaders of church centers to Chkalov (Orenburg). This was done for the sole purpose of preventing the possibility of the church hierarchs being captured by German troops in the event of the fall of the capital and their further use by the Germans. Metropolitan Sergius in writing instructed Archbishop Alexy of Volokolamsk to be his representative in Moscow. He was given instructions in the event of occupation to behave with the Germans as foreigners, having only business relations. However, due to the illness of Metropolitan Sergius(Appendix No. 8), the authorities decided to place the evacuated hierarchs not in distant Orenburg, but in closer Ulyanovsk. Correspondence from other dioceses arrived there, bishops came with reports.

In the first two years of the war, with the permission of the authorities, several bishops' sees were again replaced; Archbishops John (Sokolov), Alexy (Sergeev), Alexy (Palitsyn), Sergius (Grishin), Bishops Luka (Voino-Yasenetsky), John ( Bratolyubov), Alexander (Tolstopyatov). In 1941-1943, episcopal consecrations were also carried out, mainly of widowed elderly archpriests who took monastic vows a few days before and managed to receive spiritual education in the pre-revolutionary era: Pitirim (Sviridov), Grigory Chukov, Bartholomew (Gorodtsev), Dmitry (Gradusov), Eleutheria (Vorontsova). Permission to replace dowager sees and to make new episcopal consecrations was a step towards the church on the part of the Soviet authorities, designed to demonstrate a favorable attitude towards it.

Very important for the church was the opportunity that arose then to open new parishes and resume services in abandoned, neglected churches. Metropolitan Sergius instructed Archpriest Alexy Smirnov to open parishes in villages neighboring Ulyanovsk. At the direction of the locum tenens, he accepted the keys to the temple in the village of Plodomasovo and began to perform priestly duties. In March and September 1942, bishops' councils of the Russian Orthodox Church were held in Ulyanovsk. They were organized in an extremely short time with the help of the authorities.

In the spring of 1942, in respect of the requests of believers, night travel around Moscow on Easter was allowed. And on September 4, 1943, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin received three metropolitans and kindly discussed with them the situation of the church, proposing effective measures aimed at its revival. The famous Ofrosimov mansion in Chisty Lane, where the German embassy had previously been located, was placed at their disposal. It was allowed to convene a Council of Bishops to elect a patriarch and form the Holy Synod under him.

The Council of Bishops took place 4 days after the meeting in the Kremlin - on September 8, 1943, in which 19 bishops participated. Metropolitan Alexy made a proposal to elect Metropolitan Sergius as patriarch, which met with the unanimous approval of the bishops.(Appendix No. 9) From a religious and civil standpoint, the Council condemned the traitors to the Motherland who collaborated with the fascists: “Anyone guilty of treason against the general church cause and who has gone over to the side of fascism, as an opponent of the cross of the Lord, shall be considered excommunicated, and a bishop or cleric defrocked.”

On December 15, 1943, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin received a letter from the hierarchs of the Orthodox Church:

“To the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Marshal of the Soviet Union Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

Attaching an appeal to the pastors and believers of the liberated Donbass, as well as a welcoming address from the congress of district deans in the Stalin (now Donetsk region) region, we notify the head of the Soviet state that we have opened bank accounts to accept donations from churches for the construction of a tank column named after Dmitry Donskoy, as well as to Red Cross hospitals. In a short period of time, more than one hundred thousand rubles have already been deposited. Except Togo, Churches everywhere take constant patronage of hospitals, systematically put in their efforts to collect food, things, linen, wash linen, and the like.

We assure you as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Marshal of the Soviet Union, that our assistance will increase every day and the patriotic impulse of the many thousands of believers in Donbass will strengthen the general confidence that by the force of arms of our invincible, world-famous Red Army under your brilliant command and with God's help, the enemy ours will be completely destroyed.”

By the end of the war, there were 10,547 Orthodox churches and 75 monasteries operating in the USSR, while before the start of World War II there were only about 380 churches and not one active monastery. Open churches have become new centers of Russian national identity

Vivoly:

So, the communist government fought against Orthodoxy as a relic of tsarism and an ideology incompatible with Marxism. Even before the war, after the population census, the authorities began to think about the need to change the tactics of religious activity. According to the 1937 census, the majority of respondents remained Orthodox. The policy of militant atheism did not bring the expected results. With the outbreak of the war, radical changes occurred in the position of the Church in Russia. The authorities began to encourage her activities. The single Orthodox religion contributed to the unification of the Orthodox people in the fight against Hitler. In addition, the government needed to show potential allied countries that Russia respected the principles of democracy, such as freedom of religion. However, on the one hand, easing the pressure on the Church, the authorities, already during the war, sought to strengthen atheistic work through educational activities. This suggests that with the end of the war, the authorities were not ready to continue the initiated policy of loyalty to religion. In the post-war period, the desire of the authorities to prevent insults to the Church, which was strengthened during the war, remained. But militant atheism was replaced by a new policy of scientific and educational form of struggle against Orthodoxy.

Chapter 2. Church and people

2 .1. Patriotic activity of the Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War

Already on June 22, 1941, the head of the Orthodox Church in Russia, Sergius, addressed the pastors and believers with a message, typed in his own hand and sent to all parishes. In this message, he expresses confidence that “with God’s help, this time too they (the Russian people - author’s note) will scatter the fascist enemy force into dust.” The Metropolitan recalls the names of Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy and epic heroes. He recalls “countless thousands of our Orthodox soldiers” who sacrificed their lives for the sake of faith and homeland. Sergius calls on everyone in the “difficult hour of trial” to help the Fatherland in whatever way he can.

The messages of the clergy to the people, as well as the appeals of the secular authorities (Molotov, Stalin), contain the idea that “our cause is just”, the war of the Russians with the fascists is a holy war of the people with a single Motherland, a single faith against pagan Satanists. The Nazis declared their campaign on Russian soil to be a “crusade,” but the Russian Orthodox Church denied this.

During the war years there were many messages similar to this, designed to boost morale. But already in this, the very first, the Russian Orthodox Church outlined its position during the war. The Church is inseparable from the state and, along with the rest, it must work for the benefit of common victory. "

The results of the Church’s patriotic activities were also materially tangible. Although considerable funds were required to restore churches after their massive destruction, the Church considered it wrong during the war and in the period of post-war devastation to care about its own well-being rather than the people’s.

Bishop Bartholomew, Archbishop of Novosibirsk and Barnaul, called on people to donate to the needs of the army, performing services in churches in Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Barnaul, Tyumen, Omsk, Tobolsk, Biysk and other cities. The fees were used to purchase warm clothes for soldiers, maintain hospitals and orphanages, restore areas damaged during the German occupation and help disabled war veterans.

In the very first years of the war, more than three million rubles were collected in Moscow churches for the needs of the front and defense. The churches of Leningrad collected 5.5 million rubles. The church communities of Nizhny Novgorod collected more than four million rubles for the defense fund in 1941-1942. During the first half of 1944, the Novosibirsk diocese collected about two million rubles for wartime needs. With funds raised by the Church, an air squadron named after Alexander Nevsky and a tank column named after Dmitry Donskoy were created.

Many clergy themselves directly took part in the hostilities and made a great contribution to the cause of Victory.

Priest Fyodor Puzanov ( Appendix No. 10), a participant in two world wars, awarded three St. George Crosses, the St. George Medal of the 2nd degree and the medal “Partisan of the Patriotic War” of the 2nd degree. He took holy orders in 1926. In 1929 he was sent to prison, then served in a rural church. During the war, he collected 500,000 rubles in the villages of Zapolye and Borodich and transferred them through the partisans to Leningrad to create a tank column of the Red Army, and helped the partisans.

Archimandrite Alypiy (in the worldIvan Mikhailovich Voronov)(Appendix No. 11) was on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War since 1942. He went through the combat route from Moscow to Berlin as part of the Fourth Tank Army. Participated in many operations on the Central, Western, Bryansk, and 1st Ukrainian fronts. Order of the Red Star, medal for courage, several medals for military merit.

Archimandrite Nifont (in the world Nikolai Glazov) ( Appendix No. 12) received a pedagogical education and taught at school. In 1939 he was called to serve in Transbaikalia. When the Great Patriotic War began, Nikolai Glazov initially continued to serve in Transbaikalia, and then was sent to study at one of the military schools.

After graduating from college, anti-aircraft artilleryman Lieutenant Glazov began fighting on the Kursk Bulge. Soon he was appointed commander of an anti-aircraft battery. Senior Lieutenant Glazov had to fight his last battle in Hungary near Lake Balaton in March 1945. Nikolai Dmitrievich was wounded. At the end of 1945, a very young senior lieutenant returned to Kemerovo, on whose jacket were the Orders of the Patriotic War, the Red Star, medals: “For Courage”, “For the Capture of Budapest”, “For Victory over Germany”. He became a psalm-reader in the Church of the Sign of the Sign in Kemerovo.

(Appendix No. 13) She went to the front from her third year at the Moscow Aviation Institute and was sent to reconnaissance. She took part in the defense of Moscow and carried a wounded man out from under fire. She was sent to the headquarters of K. Rokossovsky. She took part in the battles at Kursk and Stalingrad. In Stalingrad she negotiated with the Nazis, calling on them to surrender. Reached Berlin.

2.2. Faith in God at the rear and at the front

Orthodoxy, like any other religion, exists for people. What was the attitude of the population towards Orthodoxy in Russia and the Soviet Union during the war?

Faith in God in the rear and at the front took slightly different forms. Old men, women and children remained in the rear. They worried about their loved ones who were at the front, but they could not protect them from death. All that remained was to pray, to ask God to protect and save. Who can make the war end? Stalin? Hitler? For people, God turned out to be closer than Stalin or Hitler. . Prayers helped to find at least minimal peace of mind, and this turned out to be very expensive in turbulent wartime.

Of course, there were those who remained convinced atheists during the war. But most of the rear people believed in God as the last hope for justice, a protector from above.

During the war years, there was a legend among the people that during the attack on Moscow, an icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God was placed on the plane, the plane flew around Moscow and consecrated the borders. Let us remember the history of Ancient Rus', when an icon was often taken to the battlefield so that the Lord would protect the country. Even if it was unreliable information, people believed it, which means they expected something similar from the authorities.

At the front, soldiers often made the sign of the cross before battle - asking the Almighty to protect them. The majority perceived Orthodoxy as a national religion.

The famous Marshal Zhukov, together with the soldiers, said before the battle: “Well, with God!” The people maintain a legend that Zhukov carried the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God along the front lines. Not long ago, Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) confirmed this. In Kyiv there is the miraculous Gerbovetsky Icon of the Mother of God, which Marshal Zhukov recaptured from the Nazis.

In the book “Russia before the Second Coming,” Archpriest Vasily Shvets cites the memories of one of the soldiers who participated in the assault on Konigsberg. When the strength of the Soviet soldiers was already running out, the front commander, officers and priests arrived with an icon. They served a prayer service and went with the icon to the front line. The soldiers were skeptical about this. But the priests walked along the front line, under fire, and the bullets did not hit them. Suddenly the shooting from the German side stopped. The command was given to storm the fortress. Most likely, the events during the oral transmission were embellished, but from the fact that such stories were widespread among the people, we can conclude: people believed.

Conclusions:. The Orthodox Church united with the secular authorities in the fight against the fascists. The war was declared holy, liberating, and the Church blessed this war. In addition to material assistance, the Church morally supported people at the front and in the rear. At the front they believed in the miraculous power of icons and the sign of the cross. Prayers acted as peace of mind. In their prayers, the rear workers asked God to protect their relatives from death.

Conclusion

So, summarizing the material of the work, we can draw the following conclusions. In the history of the Russian Orthodox Church there was a period of communist oppression. After the revolution, churches were closed, anti-religious decrees were issued, organizations for anti-religious work were formed, and many clergy were repressed. The most plausible explanation for this is that the authorities did not allow the existence of any other ideology other than Marxism in communist Russia. Traditionally in Russia they believed in God. Widespread anti-religious activities did not bring the expected results. Clandestine religious work was carried out; according to the 1937 census, the majority of Soviet citizens identified themselves as Orthodox. With the outbreak of the war, the Church acquired a new status. She united with the authorities and began active patriotic activities. Temples were reopened, the authorities began to show their positive attitude towards Orthodoxy. At that time, unity was necessary, the unification of the population in a sacred struggle. Orthodoxy is the traditional universal religion of the Russian people. During the war, assistance to the Orthodox Church consisted of two directions - spiritual and material. Considerable sums were collected for the needs of the front. Orthodoxy helped people find relative peace of mind and hope for the victory of Russia and the Soviet Union. In the rear, many prayed for the front-line soldiers. At the front they often believed in the divine power of icons and crosses (attributes of religion). Answering the question about the topic of the work, we can say, arguing with numerous facts, that the Orthodox Church made a significant contribution to the fight against the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. The position of the Orthodox Church in Soviet Russia strengthened for a time. But the government followed, first of all, its own interests, and this strengthening was only temporary. Ordinary people often believed in God and relied on him as support from above.

Used sources:

Internet resources

Literature:

1. Alexievich S. War does not have a woman’s face. - M., 2004. - pp. 47, 51, 252, 270.

2. Gusev G. Russian Orthodox Church and the Great Patriotic War //

Our contemporary. - 2000. - No. 5. - pp. 212-226.

3. . Tsypin V. History of the Russian Orthodox Church: a textbook for

Orthodox theological seminaries. - Moscow: Chronicle, 1994. - pp. 109-117.

4. Chumachenko T.A. The Soviet state and the Russian Orthodox Church in

1941-1961 // Religious Studies. - 2002. - No. 1. - pp. 14-37.

5. Yakunin V. Changes in state-church relations over the years

Great Patriotic War // Power. - 2002. - No. 12. - p.67-74

6. Timashev V.F. How it was. - Book LLC, Samara, 2001. – p.102-

105.

Applications

Appendix No. 12

Archimandrite Nifont (in the world Nikolai Glazov)

(1918-2004)

Appendix No. 13

(1921-2012)

Appendix No. 1

Appendix No. 2

№ 23-41

Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) “on the assistant to Comrade Trotsky for the confiscation of valuables.” From the minutes of the Politburo meeting No. 5, paragraph 8
dated May 4, 1922

TOP SECRET

8. - About Comrade Trotsky’s assistant in confiscating valuables.

Instruct the Organizing Bureau to find two assistants to Comrade Trotsky within 3 days to work on confiscating valuables.

SECRETARY OF THE Central Committee

L. 61. Typewritten copy of a later extract on the letterhead of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - RCP (Bolsheviks) of the 1930s. Below are handwritten notes referring to the resolution of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), protocol No. 14, paragraph 2 of May 5, 1922 and to the resolution of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), protocol No. 15, paragraph 4 of May 8, 1922. (see note to No. 23-41).

APRF, f. 3, op. 1, d. 274, l. 7. Draft minutes of the Politburo meeting. Handwritten original on a sheet of lined paper. At the bottom left is a note about the mailing list: “Orgburo. Trotsky." For a list of those present, see No. 23-40.

№ 23-42

Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on the progress of the campaign to confiscate church valuables. From the minutes of the Politburo meeting No. 5, paragraph 15
dated May 4, 1922

TOP SECRET

15. - About the campaign to confiscate church valuables. (Comrade Trotsky).

Having heard a report on the progress of the campaign to confiscate valuables, the Politburo notes the extreme slowness and sluggishness of its implementation and brings this to the attention of all its participants.

SECRETARY OF THE Central Committee

L. 62. Typewritten copy of a later extract on the letterhead of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - RCP (Bolsheviks) of the 1930s.

APRF, f. 3, op. 1, d. 274, l. 14. Draft minutes of the Politburo meeting. Handwritten original on a sheet of lined paper. At the bottom left is a record of the mailing: “Members of the commission: Comrade Trotsky, Sapronov, Yakovlev, Unshlikht, Beloborodov, Kalinin.” For a list of those present, see No. 23-40.

Appendix No. 3

№ 118

Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the fight against distortions of the party line in the collective farm movement 1 *

All national Central Committees, regional and regional committees, secretaries of district committees with the obligation to make a copy of this directive and send it to the secretaries of district committees.

Stating that in a short period of time the party has achieved the greatest successes in the matter of collectivization (over 50% of farms have already been collectivized, the five-year plan has already been more than doubled), the Central Committee considers the most important task of the party to consolidate the achieved successes, strengthen the positions gained for the further successful development and strengthening of collectivization . This task can only be accomplished through a decisive, merciless struggle against the distortions of party policy in the collective farm movement. K obliges party organizations, under the personal responsibility of the secretaries of district, district and regional committees:

1. Focus all attention on the economic improvement of collective farms, on organizing field work, on strengthening political work, especially where elements of forced collectivization were allowed, and ensure, through appropriate economic and party-political measures, the consolidation of the achieved successes of collectivization and the organizational and economic development of the x artels.

2. Correct the mistakes made in practice and eliminate contradictions with the charter of the artel in the area of socialization of poultry, cows, small livestock, household land, etc. etc., that is, return all this to the collective farmers for individual use, if the collective farmers themselves demand this.

3. When carrying out contracting of agricultural products, prevent the closure of markets, restore bazaars, and do not restrict peasants and in particular collective farmers from selling their products on the market.

4. Immediately stop forced collectivization in any form. Resolutely fight against the use of any kind of repression against peasants who do not yet go to the collective farm. At the same time, carry out further hard work to involve the peasantry in collective farms on the basis of voluntariness.

5. In accordance with the previous directives of the Central Committee, ensure the actual participation in the governing bodies of collective farms of both poor and middle peasants who are capable of organizing agricultural production, encouraging their activity and initiative in every possible way.

6. Immediately check the lists of dispossessed people and correct the mistakes made in relation to the middle peasants, former Red partisans and family members of the Red Army and Red Navy (private and command), returning the confiscated property to them.

7. In view of the facts noted in a number of areas that kulaks were sent out without clothing and food, take all necessary measures to correct these mistakes, and the OGPU propose not to accept kulaks for deportation from those areas where such phenomena will be allowed.

8. Immediately check the lists of those deprived of voting rights and correct mistakes regarding middle peasants, teachers and other workers. To propose to the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR to issue a special resolution on the restoration of the rights of those illegally deprived and on strict compliance with the established procedure for deprivation of voting rights and control over this by higher Soviet bodies 107 .

9. Decisively stop the practice of closing churches administratively, fictitiously covered up by the public and voluntary desire of the population. Allow the closure of churches only if the overwhelming majority of peasants truly desire it, and not otherwise than after the approval of the relevant decisions of the gatherings by the regional executive committees. For mocking antics against the religious feelings of peasants, bring the perpetrators to the strictest responsibility.

10. Strictly guided by the rule about preventing kulaks and other persons deprived of voting rights from entering collective farms, allow an exception from this rule for members of those families that include Red partisans, Red Army soldiers and Red Navy men (private and command personnel) dedicated to the cause of Soviet power), rural teachers and female teachers, subject to their guarantee for their family members.

11. To oblige the editors of Pravda, based on this resolution, to adopt an appropriate tone, to highlight the tasks of the party in the collective farm movement in accordance with these directives, and to systematically expose the distortions of the party line.

Appendix No. 4

V.B. Zhiromskaya

Doctor of Historical Sciences, Institute of Russian History RAS,

Leading Researcher

"Historical Bulletin", No. 5 (1, 2000), website of the Voronezh diocese, November 2000.

THE RELIGIOUSNESS OF THE PEOPLE IN 1937

(Based on materials from the All-Union Population Census)

The first Russian census in 1897 asked about religion, which was determined either by parents or by ethnicity. In the 1937 census, respondents had to first determine their attitude towards religion, and then believers had to name their own religion. The question about religion was introduced into the census form personally by Stalin, who edited the last version of the questionnaire on the eve of the census. None of the statisticians dared to object to him. The population aged 16 years and older was surveyed. We cannot know what considerations Stalin was guided by when he posed this question, but the thesis about the “complete atheism of the population,” which the census was supposed to confirm, was deliberately advertised in the mass media. However, this kind of expectation was not met.

The census took place on the night of January 5-6 and was well received by the population; people willingly answered all questions. The exception was the question of religion. In many areas, especially rural areas, it caused a stir. It is not difficult to understand the reasons for this if we recall the situation in the country in those years (forced relocations of the dispossessed, the growing wave of repression, etc.), as well as the official attitude towards religious beliefs as “a relic of the past in the minds of backward people.” The respondents were put in a difficult position. On the one hand, they feared for themselves and for their family and friends, and on the other, “God’s punishment” for renouncing the Faith.

As stated in the documents, many priests from the church pulpit called on believers to answer frankly the question about religion, since they also hoped for the opening of churches10. Their calls were regarded by local authorities as “provocative” and “aimed at disrupting the census.” In cases where priests were engaged in such “agitation” not in the church, but went from house to house, the “relevant authorities” dealt with them11.

There were also opportunistic considerations on the part of the population: it is better for non-believers to sign up, then the cooperatives will provide more goods; or you have to register as believers, since in the event of war and the victory of Hitler’s Germany, non-believers will be shot (western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, BSSR)12.

Finding themselves in such a difficult situation, believers behaved differently. However, most of them did not hide their beliefs. The enumerators give typical answers in the Perm region: “No matter how much you ask us about religion, you won’t convince us; write us as believers,” or: “Even though they say that all believers will be fired from the construction site, write us as believers”13. There was a case when all seven women who lived in the same room in the dormitory of the Promodezhda factory (Perm) registered as believers14 Be that as it may, 80% of the population surveyed answered the question about religion20. Only 1 million people chose to remain silent, citing the fact that they are “responsible only to God” or that “God knows whether I am a believer or not.” A significant part of those who refused to answer were schismatic Old Believers and sectarians.

According to the census, in the USSR there were more believers among people aged 16 years and older than non-believers: 55.3 million versus 42.2 million, or 56.7% versus 43.3% of all those who expressed their attitude towards religion21. In reality, there were, of course, even more believers. Some of the answers may have been insincere. In addition, it is more likely that those who did not answer the question about religion were mostly believers.

The census has preserved for us valuable information about the sex and age composition of believers of different faiths. There were more women who recognized themselves as believers than men: 64% versus 36% (of all believers)22.

Let us consider the age composition of believers23. The largest age groups among literate and illiterate believers were groups of men and women aged 20-29 and 30-39 years. The groups of people over 50 years of age accounted for a small percentage of believers among the literate and a slightly larger percentage among the illiterate. Among believers, almost 34% were 20-29 years old and more than 44% were 30-39 years old. Elderly people, over 50 years old, were about 12%. In the latter case, of course, the small number of elderly people in the age structure of the population affects it. However, even taking this into account, one cannot help but admit that the opinion that believers are exclusively elderly people did not correspond to reality.

Another common stereotype in the propaganda literature of those years was the idea that the bulk of believers were elderly women, and illiterate ones at that. Census data suggested otherwise. Among all believers, more than 75% of men aged 16-49 were literate, and 88% of women of this age were literate. Consequently, among the believers, a significant part were men and women of young and mature age, trained to read and write.

Among literate religious men under the age of 30 there were 32.6%, and among literate women of this age - 48.4%. These were mainly those who had studied at schools or had completed them. At that time, primary education predominated. But there were many who studied at technical schools and universities, especially at the age of 19-25. In other words, among people of such a young age there were few “who read syllables and knew how to write their last name,” i.e. who have only gone through educational program school. Naturally, the illiterate believers were mostly elderly and much less young. Although neither the 1937 census nor the 1939 census that took place immediately after it showed “complete” literacy, the coverage of the population, primarily young people, with universal education was very wide.

Data from the 1937 census indicate that religiosity also increases with age. Among literate men, the proportion of believers increases sharply when moving from 20-29 years to 30-39 years. In literate women, this transition is observed at a younger age: from 16-19 years to 20-29 years. This is explained by the earlier maturity of women in connection with marriage and motherhood and the associated responsibility and anxiety for the lives and fates of children, for maintaining a home, etc.

Among illiterate men and women, the proportion of believers increases evenly from one age group to another. This may be due to the fact that there are slightly more believers in youth groups than in literate groups. Of interest is the analysis of the data in Table. 1.

Table 1

Ratio of believers and non-believers among age groups of both sexes24

From the data in table. 1 we can draw the following conclusion. Firstly, the illiterate and uneducated were less influenced by an atheistic upbringing, and among them there were more believers; secondly, nevertheless, there is not a single age group in which there would be no believers; their number is significant even among young people who are literate and educated

Appendix No. 5

Appendix No. 6 Appendix No. 7

Bishop Andrei governs the Kuibyshev diocese,

Appendix No. 8

Patriarch Sergius

Appendix No. 9

Council of Bishops 1943