Very Rev. D.
Konstantinov
RELIGIOUS
PERSECUTION
IN U.S.S.R.
The following
article by the Very Rev. D. Konstantinov is based not only on reports
from the Soviet press, but also on data drawn from communications dispatched
secretly by Christians in the U.S.S.R. to the Orthodox Patriarchs of
Constantinople and Antioch and the Secretary General of the United Nations.
These latter
communications were received in the first instance by the Orthodox Bishop
of Geneva and Western Europe, Anthony (Bariashevich), who called a press
conference at which their importance was pointed out by the Very Rev.
A. Trubnikov (see “VESTNIK SHVEITSARSKOGO VIKARIATSTVA,” Geneva,
1964 No. 6, p. 18). The originals of these communications were sent
to the United Nations and to the two Patriarchs.
HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
Religious persecution in the
Soviet Union has almost half a century’s history behind it. Beginning
in the twenties, it developed during the period before World War II
into an unbridled reign of terror, and Stalin’s attempt to destroy
the Church by “administrative methods” was cut short only by the
German invasion of Soviet territory in 1941, at which time no more than
a few hundred remained of the 54,000 churches which had previously existed.’
However, strange it may sound,
the German invasion brought the destruction of the Church, already largely
completed, to a halt, and spelled the beginning of a new period of life
for the Russian Orthodox Church. An entirely new situation within the
country arose, which led to a change of attitude (though not of heart)
toward the Church and religion as a whole on the part of the Soviet
authorities. The fact that during this crisis all antireligious propaganda
was officially declared undesirable, shows how necessary the Church
had become to the secular authorities; the latter’s position had became
so insecure, that they were compelled to mobilize every force they could,
and it was natural that they should turn to the Church, aware of her
tremendous spiritual power over the people. The result was (symbolically
expressed at least) the signing of a kind of concordat which imposed
a number of demands on the Church in exchange for the acknowledgment
of her right to exist.
In drawing up this document,
Stalin hardly supposed that he was permitting a change in relations
that was to last even during several post-war years. Communist dictatorship
regarded the change of official attitude toward the Church only as a
temporary measure, to be terminated at the end of the war. However,
after the war was over, Stalin thought it inexpedient for a number of
reasons to tear up this secret agreement and return to the policy of
persecution. Apart from this, he evidently underestimated the spiritual
power of the Church, even when she was enslaved, and it was not until
several years after Stalin’s death that the secular authorities came
to their senses and reversed their attitude.
COUNTER-ATTACK
AGAINST RELIGION
The counter-attack was conceived
as a resumption of anti- religious propaganda. The preparations, incidentally,
were slow and careful, consisting primarily in the mustering and retraining
of pro-pagandists, who had become disorganized during the long “truce.”
During World War II antireligious
publications had been discontinued and the cadres of militant atheists
and all those connected in one way or another with dissemination of
atheism were switched to other jobs and occupations. Thus, when the
Communist regime decided to resume antireligious propaganda, it was
faced with considerable difficulties — lack of trained personnel and
the need to train new cadres. Physical and administrative pressures
were not planned. The Communist regime expected that atheistic propaganda
would sufficiently reduce Church activity.
This move was prompted by a
number of considerations. Firstly, throughout the postwar years the
number of churches and prayer houses in active use had been showing
a sharp increase, and there were no indications that this increase would
slow down. 2
growing attraction of religion for the people. Active participation
of Soviet citizens in the life of the Church has shown that the spiritual
needs of the people are far from being satisfied. Communist dictatorship
had ample proof of new spiritual victories of the Church.
Secondly, the prestige of the
Church among the people had grown. Missionary work and the creation
of new parishes were bringing fresh contingents of believers into the
fold of the Church. Christian ideas were popularized among broad masses
of people and discussed in Soviet intellectual circles.
Thirdly, religious instruction,
both at the lowest level, where children were being privately taught
the elements of religion, and the highest level, where the newly opened
theological academies and seminaries were demonstrating how a certain
section of Soviet youth was drawn to religion and prepared to devote
itself to its service, was making it clear that Soviet youth of all
ages was tending to move away from the official Communist ideology.
In a word, the Russian Orthodox
Church, despite the serious limitations imposed on its activity, had
launched an offensive which was growing in strength and effectiveness,
and the commencement of a counter-attack in the form of a propaganda
barrage was considered necessary by the atheistic secular authorities.
The post-war era is characterized
by the support of the Church which came from the people. This active
assistance has in recent years reached proportions of the true religious
struggle between the believers and the authorities. In spite of every
effort, notwithstanding the variety of forms used, the propaganda campaign
launched by the Communist regime was admitted by the Soviet leaders
themselves to have proved unsuccessful, and in late 1959 and early 1960
it became necessary to resort to more decisive measures.
CURRENT PERSECUTION
Some are inclined to link the
present persecution of religion in the USSR with former premier Khrushchev,
whom they regard as its chief instigator and organizer. There is no
doubt that Khrushchev was, and is, an atheist, and it is quite possible
that he, proceeding from a hatred for religion, was an active opponent
of it. Antireligious persecution became intensified, however, not with
Khrushchev’s accession to power but somewhat later, becoming associated
with the last years of his rule. It seems quite clear, therefore, that
the intensification of these persecutions was due to some bigger factor
than Khrushchev’s personal attitude to religion; indeed, in general
it may be said that to seek the causes of the more important events
in the life of the Church in the character of individuals is a doubtful
proceeding.
The persecutions started in
fact when it became clear that the ideological counter-attack had failed
and that only a return to Stalin’s well-tried methods might have the
desired effect. Fairly refined techniques accompanied by unceremonious
interference were adopted, and here it would seem only too likely that
Khrushchev had a hand in the organization of active measures.
The secular authorities violated
the “concordat” concluded during the war while insisting that the
Church continue to carry out her obligations under this agreement. The
beginning of the new campaign was marked by the disgrace which overtook
Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) of Krutitsa and Kolomna, the Patriarch’s
right hand and co-leader of the Orthodox Church in Russia. Having rendered
the secular authorities many services by his participation in the “peace
campaign,” Nikolai nevertheless revolted against the persecutions
and this was enough to put an end to his career. His death in 1962 was
sudden and mysterious, but before that, many members of the clergy,
including some bishops, had been arrested and arraigned on trumped-up
charges, as for example Archbishop by (Kresovich).
The Russian Orthodox Church,
although the chief religious denomination in the USSR, was not the only
one to be subjected to persecution. As distinct from the prewar persecutions,
the present campaign has been proceeding in the face of active opposition
from the people but without provoking any explicit reaction from the
West. These circumstances have not been without their effect upon the
actions of the Soviet authorities: while the active opposition of the
people has to some extent been exerting a curbing influence, the absolute
indifference of the free world has enabled the secular authorities to
proceed without hindrance in other cases.
The campaign of religious persecution
has taken the following forms:
1. Monasteries, churches and
other places of worship are closed on all kinds of pretexts: by the
beginning of 1964, their number was only half that in 1958.
2. The training of priests
and others desiring a religious education is reduced to the minimum
by forcibly closing half of the existing theological schools: instead
of eight seminaries, there are now four 3
only three.
3. Missionary work is categorically
forbidden. Sermons in church are also subject to censorship, and a preacher
is threatened with a court trial if he says anything that displeases
the secular authorities. Teaching the Scriptures to children is absolutely
forbidden.
4. The holding of services
and prayers outside officially recognized places of worship is also
forbidden, and difficulties are put in flip way of those who would hold
memorial services for the dead in cemeteries. The secular authorities
go so far as to lay down the times when services may or may not be held.
Violation of these instructions brings reprisals such as the closure
of the church concerned and the loss of the priest’s right to conduct
services.
5. In almost all cases, rites
such as baptism, weddings, or memorial services for the dead are permitted
only on condition that those requesting the rite are registered by name;
there persons are then subjected to reprisals at their place of work.
6. All religious organizations
are forbidden to perform any kind of charitable or social work.
7. Parents who attempt to bring
up their children in a religious spirit ore brought before the courts,
which hand the children over to a state boarding school. Religious—minded
young people are subjected to all kinds of impediments to prevent them
from continuing their studies.
8. In 1932, a secret government
circular was sent to all members of the episcopacy restricting the admission
of young people to ecclesiastical rites. According to this document,
children and adolescents between the ages of three and eighteen years
should not be admitted to a church, and on no account should they be
given Communion. If any between these ages are present when a service
is due to begin, they should be invited to leave the church, and in
the event of refusal they should be removed by force. In any event,
the priest is not allowed to officiate until they have left. (This instruction
is carried out strictly despite requests and protests from parents.)
Further, children may be baptized only up to the age of one-and-a-half
years. 4
9. The arrest, imprisonment
or banishment to labor camps of bishops, priests and believers continues
unabated.
10. “Individual” antireligious
propaganda, designed to make believers break with religion — ostensibly
by “persuasion,” but in fact by means of threats and violence —
has been stepped up to an extreme degree. Atheist agitators visit believers
at their homes or places of work and “persuade” them to abandon
religion. In the USSR, as in any other totalitarian country, these methods
of “persuasion” are inevitably coupled with violence and threats:
cases are known in which people who were subjected to humiliating “individual”
treatment have left their homes and disappeared.
Everything and everyone having
anything to do with religion is subjected to undisguised repression,
which so far has left almost untouched only the buildings and institutions
which are needed to persuade foreign tourists that the freedom of religion
is respected; these include certain churches in Moscow, Leningrad and
other large cities, the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra at Zagorsk and a few
other institutions.
The purpose of the antireligious
campaign of terror, which is being relentlessly carried out, is the
total and final annihilation of all religious institutions in the near
future. This has been quite openly stated during the last few years
by many Soviet leaders. The USSR has to enter “the realm of Communism”
completely “purified from the leftovers of capitalism.”
DESTRUCTION
OF CHURCHES
The forcible closure and destruction
of churches continues apace, as may be seen from reports in the Soviet
press as well as from missives dispatched to the West by groups of believers,
private correspondence, the impressions of visitors to the USSR, etc.
On the night of July 10, 1964,
i.e., on the eve of SS. Peter’s and Paul’s Day, the Church of SS.
Peter and Paul on the Preobrazhen skaya Square in Moscow was blown up,
on the pretext that the site was required for the building of an entrance
to the underground railroad. The church of the former Donskoi Monastery,
in Moscow, is “half closed,” services being permitted there only
on important holidays. The reason for this is evidently a desire to
stop the people from visiting the tomb of Patriarch Tikhon, who is buried
there.
According to press reports,
the Church of the Holy Trinity in Leningrad was recently destroyed,
so that now this city has no more than sixteen churches of all denominations
open.
In May 1964, three churches
were destroyed in Kiev, where this sort of thing is proceeding with
especial rapidity, according to visitors’ reports. The number of churches
surviving there is now only seven, whereas up to 1960 it was twenty-eight.
Despite numerous protests,
the Orthodox cathedral in Riga has been closed and converted into a
planetarium. A Protestant church in the same city has been converted
into a concert hall.
In the middle of last year,
only two churches were open in the town of Saratov. In March 1964, only
one church was still open in the city of Smolensk (pop. 170,000). In
Odessa (pop. 604,000), seven churches are still open, whereas in 1960
there were nineteen. In Novgorod, the Cathedral of St. Nicholas was
closed in 1963, leaving only one church, that of St. Philip, in this
large city.
In Minsk (pop. over 250,000),
of the five churches extant in 1960 only two are left; two of those
closed were immediately demolished. In the whole of Byelorussia there
were nine hundred churches in 1962; three hundred of them have been
closed during the last two years.
About one hundred and fifty
parishes of the two hundred in existence roughly two years ago survive
in the diocese of Stavropol and Baku. Only one church remains in Sochy;
two small churches are open in the city of Khabarovsk (pop. 200,000).
In general, it may be said
that the action taken against religion is particularly energetic in
the provinces; in many provincial cities not a single place of worship
remains. Chernigov (pop. 120,000) is an example. In large rural areas,
those who would go to church have to cover distances of many tens of
kilometers. Such a situation is reminiscent of that before the outbreak
of World War II.
One petition sent by believers
to the free world states that in the Soviet Union as a whole two thousand
churches were closed in the course of last year.
years no less I loin half the churches and monasteries formerly in existence
destroyed.
In Catholic areas, the onslaught
is no less violent. In Latvia, for example, there were 580 Catholic
churches in 1960, and in 1964 only seventy-five remained.
The methods employed for securing
the closure of churches have remained unchanged. In many cases, the
closure is ordered on the grounds that the site is required for other
purposes such as (in the cities) the widening of a street or the laying
out of a park, a square, etc. In others, the authorities gradually raise
the tax imposed on the church from month to month until it becomes impossible
for the congregation concerned to meet the payment. The authorities
then close the church. In practice, there is no redress to be obtained
from the courts. Sometimes the authorities declare that the congregation
is too small and that the “workers,” i.e., the majority, are demanding
that the church be closed. Cases are not infrequent where an official
commission comes to inspect the church and declares that it is in a
dangerous condition; here, too, the church has to be closed.
In recent years, another method
has also been employed. Under some pretext, the priest in charge is
deprived of his “registration,” e g., cf a document issued by the
local secular authorities entitling him to hold services. When this
happens, the secular authorities for some reason propose that new elections
be held to the “council of twenty” (dvadtsatka), a body roughly
corresponding to a parish council. In order to hold such an election,
a parish meeting has to be called, and for this, permission has to be
obtained from the local soviet cr executive committee. When representatives
of the parish council apply to the authorities for such permission,
they are told to apply to the local official for ecclesiastical affairs.
This official also refuses them the permission and refers them back
to the soviet, and the process is then repeated. Time is wasted in fruitless
applications; the church stands empty because the priest cannot hold
services; and the dvadtsatka is not elected for lack of permission to
hold a parish meeting. After six months have passed, the official for
ecclesiastical affairs demands the keys of the church and declares it
closed, since according to the law a church has to be closed if it stands
empty for six months.
During the whole of this bureaucratic
procedure, the secular authorities put nothing on paper; everything
is done orally, o that the congregation is not in a position to prove
anything. 7
by this and the other methods enumerated.
A similar fate has befallen
or is in store for the monasteries:
the Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra,
which is held in especial reverence, the Monastery of St. Michael in
Odessa, the Nunnery at Ovruch, and many others have already been closed,
and the Pochayev Lavra (Ternopol Oblast) and the Pskovo-Pechersky Monastery
are faced with the threat of closure. 8
eye particularly on the Pochayev Lavra, where the monks have been subjected
to undisguised pressure. Many of them have been forced to go to work
in factories, being permitted to return to the monastery for the night.
Some, however, were removed from the monastery and ordered to move to
another locality, without being offered any assistance in finding work.
Only a few have been given a negligible old age pension.
Many monks have had their “passports”
taken away from them and have been ordered to leave the monastery and
town. They are obliged to lead a wandering life. They cannot resort
to the parishes, for these have in many cases ceased to exist. Monks
refusing to leave the monastery or the town have been tried and sentenced
to imprisonment; the more obstinate of them have been sent to psychiatric
hospitals. In order to persuade the residents to leave the L the secular
authorities have forbidden fuel to be brought into its grounds in winter,
and the monks must spend the winter in unheated cells. As a result of
all these measures, only thirty or forty old men are left of the two
hundred monks who were once there. The monastic buildings stand almost
empty, and it seems likely that the secular authorities will take them
over for their own needs.
The Pochayev Lavra is an important
place of pilgrimage, but the monastery’s guest rooms have been converted
into a polyclinic and local inhabitants have been forbidden to accommodate
pilgrims for the night. Those who did offer them a night’s lodging
have been fined, some losing their houses and being forced to move from
the town. If the weather were suitable, pilgrims have settled down for
the night in the fields or woods outside the town; some of them entered
the monastery and lay down to sleep beneath the walls of the church.
At night, the militia arrived in trucks and took away those who did
not manage to escape. All those caught were fined and forcibly removed
from the town. If any of the pilgrims ignored the demands of the militia
and returned to the monastery, they were arrested once more and tried
for violating the passport regulation.
RELIGIOUS
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
The Soviet government is opposed
to the religious upbringing of children. At the present time wide use
is being made by Soviet courts of Article 227 of the Criminal Code of
the RSFSR, which was modified and supplemented by the RSFSR Supreme
Soviet in July 1962. According to the Soviet press, these modifications
were designed to protect freedom of conscience and promote the legitimate
rights and interests of citizens.
A closer examination, however,
shows the matter in a different light. Article 227 defines as criminal:
…the organization or leadership
of a group, whose activities, conducted under the guise of preaching
religious doctrines and observance of religious rites, are associated
with the doing of harm to citizens’ health or with the attraction
of minors into this group. 9
Consequently, the baptism of
a child in a church or of adults in a river or lake becomes a criminal
offence if any of those baptized subsequently fall ill. The most important
point, however, is that this article of the Criminal Code opens up unlimited
possibilities for punishing the bringing up of children in a religious
spirit.
There were press reports of
a certain carpenter, I. Shevchenko, who was a member of the “council
of twenty” of a parish in Stavropol, and who brought up his six children
in a strictly religious spirit and married his daughter to a student
of a seminary. The press asserted that the daughter had been “forcibly
married” and demanded that Shevchenko be brought to trial under Article
227.
In another case, P. Samartsev,
an Old Believer in the town of Boguruslan, who had been educating his
children in a religious spirit, forbade them to wear the red ties of
the Pioneers. “Public opinion” in Boguruslan demanded an explanation;
the case eventually came before the courts, and Samartsev had to give
in and renounce the further religious upbringing of his children.
In 1962 a forester in the Pustoshka
region, Pskovsk Oblast, named Dimitry Sokhranyayev, was tried for giving
his children a religious upbringing involving daily prayers, the observance
of fasts, frequent visits to the church, Communion, reading of Scriptures,
etc. The court concluded that fasting had had a harmful effect upon
the children’s health and that the fulfillment of religious duties
was distracting them from their work at school. The parents were therefore
deprived of their parental rights and the children were sent to a state
boarding school. 11
A case involving the leaders
and other active members of the Pentecostal Brethren was examined in
1962 by the Kharkov Oblast Court. What they were accused of was not
stated in the Soviet press, but it was reported that they had been bringing
up their children in a religious spirit, and the court therefore decided
that the children be removed from their control.
the same time in the Tambov Oblast.13
before a “comrades’ court” of giving his son a religious education
and preparing him for service in the Church. During the trial, Lizunov
defended his parental rights and delivered a confession of faith. The
court ordered the case to he transferred to the regular (people’s)
court with the recommendation that Lizunov be deprived of his parental
rights and the boy sent to a state boarding school.
During the last three years,
such trials have been held all over the Soviet Union.
It has been stated previously
that children are not allowed to enter the Church. The responsibility
for carrying out these orders rests with church-elders. In an appeal
to the free world, written by F. K. Warava of Minsk, Byelorussia, the
following typical scene is described: in front of the local Russian
Orthodox Cathedral a representative of the authorities checks those
who come to pray, making certain that children are not admitted to the
church. If, however, some children manage to slip by, this official
calls a senior elder and rebukes him for disobeying the regulation.
Children are then hastily removed from the church.
Such is the situation to this
day.
PERSECUTION
OF THE CLERGY
There is a special camp for
members of the clergy in the steppes of the Sea of Aral, to which location
it was transferred from the Solovki Island (oldest concentration camp
in the USSR). Its inmates comprise about thirty thousand monks, nuns
and members of the priesthood.
As already mentioned, numerous
bishops and priests have been brought to trial in various parts of the
country, in addition to the frequent cases in which measures have been
taken without recourse to a court decision.
Three years ago, Archbishop
Venedict (Polyakov) was arrested for resisting the closure of churches.
He was released a year and a half ago, but not allowed to exercise his
functions. He died in December 1963.
Similarly, Archbishop by Iov
(Kresovich) of Kazan was arrested, ostensibly for failing to pay the
income tax, but actually for resistance to the destruction of churches.
Sentenced to three years imprisonment he is now at liberty, but is also
forbidden to serve his Church.
Archbishop Andrei (Suchenko)
of Chernigov, who resisted closing of his churches, was arrested in
1961, brought to trial on drummed-up charges and sentenced to eight
years’ imprisonment. He is now a prisoner in the town of Mikun, in
the Komi ASSR.
Instances may also be cited
of measures taken against priests and monks. Many monks of the Pochayev
Lavra are serving their third prison terms for refusing to leave the
monastery and settle outside the town of Pochayev. One of them is the
monk-deacon Apelii, who was sentenced on the first occasion to six months,
on the second to one year and on the third, in January 1964, to two
years of hard labor. The priest-monk Dionisii received one year’s
hard labor for refusing to leave the monastery. For participating in
the composition of a protest to the United Nations about religious persecutions
in the USSR, the monk-deacon Andrei, of the same monastery, was sentenced
on July 13, 1964, to three years’ hard labor. During the preliminary
investigation of his case, Andrei was subjected to torture in an attempt
to discover the names of all those who had contributed to the protest.
For refusing to leave the monastery,
Father Iosif, an old man who enjoyed universal respect, was beaten up
and thrown out of the monastery, and forbidden to return under pain
of arrest. Despite his advanced years, he is now obliged to lead a vagabond
life.
Soviet antireligious literature
is full of attacks against the clergy, accusing them of the most varied
vices, immorality, parasitism, greed, “deceiving the workers,” etc.
Even those parish priests, however, who have not been subjected to repressive
measures, are reduced in status to the position of employees. The Soviet
legal code deprives them of virtually all prerogatives, which are transferred
to the churchwardens and parish councils, the parish priest retaining
only the function of conducting services. 15
PERSECUTION
OF LAYMEN
Members of the laity, especially
of the younger generation, are also not spared. On Easter Saturday,
1964, for example, members of the druzhina (voluntary police)
took up their positions outside the Orthodox Church in the town of Slonim
(Grodno Oblast), and refused entry to young people. The Easter services
were interrupted again in 1965 by bands of militant atheists in Moscow
and some of the provincial centers.
Religious beliefs of young
people infuriate the Communist dictatorship. The case of Oleg Rodionov,
a boy in the eleventh grade of School No. 496, was discussed not long
ago in the Soviet press. Oleg had always been one of the best pupils,
but during his final examinations it became known that he believed in
God. Hearing of this, some of the teachers changed their attitude to
him, the teacher of social science in particular being sarcastic at
his expense. The headmaster ordered Oleg’s name to be removed from
the list of those awarded prizes for good work. Indignant at the unjust
treatment meted out to him, his schoolmates went to the editorial offices
of a newspaper and registered a protest, which eventually attracted
public attention. 16
A certain Lyudmila O. was a
fifteen-year-old pupil at a commercial school at Tyumen. Her fellow
pupils and the school authorities noticed that Lyudmila had ceased attending
students’ evening gatherings and extramural activities. After some
investigation, it was said that she had become “obsessed with religion,”
and in the course of conversation on the subject she declared that if
she had to choose between the commercial school and the Church she would
prefer the latter. The school authorities decided to bring pressure
to bear on the girl and deprived her of her scholarship, ostensibly
for poor progress. As she was an orphan, the scholarship was her only
means of subsistence; nevertheless she accepted the situation and left
the school. 17
A loader named Viktor Lebedev,
of the town of Uren (Gorky Oblast), was converted to religion under
the influence of acquaintances. No longer interested in his work, he
wanted to take monastic vows but was unable to do so as he was married.
He then took up preaching, with considerable success. This attracted
the unfavorable attention of the authorities, who told him that he was
not to leave the town; then they put him down as a “parasite” and
decided to banish him, as a result of which he was forced to flee.
The Soviet press also reported
the case of a young girl named Anna Skorik, who was subjected to various
persecutions on account of her beliefs. These included various “methods
of persuasion” at school, which even the press acknowledged to be
crude. The girl was dismissed from her work and brought to court for
organizing illegal prayer meetings; her sister also lost her job.’
In the appeal to the United
Nations and the Orthodox Patriarchs from the people of Pochayev there
is a description of the tragic fate of a girl named Martha. She was
refused by the police the documents which would enable her to find lodging
near the monastery. Discovered by a patrol in an attic of a private
home, she was thrown out, tried to escape, was caught and severely beaten.
Martha died in the hospital from injuries received during the beating.
The examples cited here is
only a small part of what might be related with regard to the fate of
religion in Communist countries. New instances of religious persecution
are received almost daily. Information of this kind cannot serve merely
as the object of dispassionate research, and it is cited here with the
purpose of rendering definite assistance to the Church and to believers
in the Soviet Union. Under the circumstances, this assistance can only
take the form of mobilizing public opinion in the free world in support
of the right to freedom of conscience, which is given such short, shrift
in the USSR. The Soviet regime cannot afford to ignore (his opinion
and adapts its policies to it.
FOOTNOTES
1 According
to Nauka i religiya, 1962, No. I PP. 56-60, the number of parishes of
the Russian Orthodox Church in the USSR had by 1941 been reduced to
one-twentieth of the number during the NEP period Since the number of
Orthodox churches and therefore parishes in pre Revolutionary Russia
was 54,174 and increased during the NEP period by about 20 percent,
i.e., by about 11,000, there must have been some 3,200 left in 1941.
By that year, however, the territory of the USSR embraced the western
regions of the Ukraine and Byelorussia, the Baltic countries and Moldavia,
which also possessed a number of Orthodox parishes (the Western Ukraine
and Western Byelorussia alone contained 1,200). This justifies the view
that Orthodox parishes on Soviet territory proper in that year did not
exceed 2,000.
2 In
the petition of the Moscow Patriarchate for admission to the World Council
of Churches, it was stated by Patriarch Aleksii in 1956 that there were
20,000 Orthodox churches, 30,000 priests, 73 dioceses and forty monasteries
in the USSR (see Digest des Ostens, Konigstein/Taunus, 196!, No. 7,
p. 79, and Walter Kolarz, Die Religionen in der Sowjetunion, Freiburg-Basle-Vienna,
1963, p. 37).
3 Zhurnal
Moskovskoi Pafriarkhii, 1964, No. 3, p. 24.
4 confirmation
of the existence of this document, see Kosomolskaya hi 1963, No. 15-16,
p. 54.
5 For
the text of the appeal sent by believers in the USSR to the Patriarchs
of Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople and others and to the United Nations,
see Possev, Frankfort on Main, 1965, No. 1-2.
7 This
method of closing churches is described in the appeal addressed by believers
in the USSR to the World Council of Churches, which held one of its
sessions in Odessa in February, 1964. The appeal was studied at a conference
on the state of religion in the USSR, summoned by the University Southern
California at Los Angeles in December, 1964.
8 Sovetskaya
Rossiya, November 18, 1964.
9 Nauka
i religiya, 1963, No. 5, p. 47.
10 Komsomolskaya
pravda, July 3, 1963.
11 Selskaya
zhizn, June 14, 1962.
12 Komsomolskaya
pravda, June 21, 1962.
14 Komsomolets
Tadzhikistana, May 20, 1964.
15 Zhurnal
Moskovskoi Patriarkhii, 1961, No. 8, pp. 10 and 15-17.
16 Komsomolskaya
pravda, September 6, 1964.
17 Literaturnaya
gazeta, October 20, 1962.
18 Sovetskaya
Rossiya, September 27, 1962.
19 Selskaya
zhizn, June 28, 1962.
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