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УДК 94(470.32)«1922»
S. N. Emelyanov
The clergy and laity reaction to the confiscation of church values campaign of 1922 in the provinces of Central agricultural region
Реакция духовенства и мирян на кампанию 1922 г. по изъятию церковных ценностей в губерниях Центрального Черноземья
The article analyzes the problems which accompany the confiscation of church values campaign of 1922 in Soviet Russia. The problems are exampled with cases in the provinces of Central agricultural region. The true reasons for holding this campaign are represented using central and local archives data. There is also the clergy and laity reaction to the tactic of church values confiscation commitees in the provinces of Central agricultural region characterized.
В статье анализируются проблемы, связанные с проведением кампании по изъятию церковных ценностей в Советской России в 1922 г. на примере губерний Центрального Черноземья. На фактическом материале государственных центральных и местных архивов показаны истинные мотивы властей по проведению кампании по изъятию церковных ценностей. Дается характеристика ответной реакции духовенства и мирян на действия комиссий по изъятию церковных ценностей в губерниях Центрального Черноземья.
Key words: The Russian Orthodox church, the clergy, the laity, church values, starvation, famine relief, renovationists, the Soviet government, donations.
Ключевые слова: Русская православная церковь, духовенство, миряне, церковные ценности, голод, помощь голодающим, обновленцы, советская власть, добровольные пожертвования.
The economics of Russia damaged by the Civil War responded very bad to the recessive quantity of grain ingathering in several regions caused by crop failure. The countryside ruined by the politics of the war communism could not operatively fill the grain lacks of regions. The next drought happened in Volga region in the summer of 1921 and caused great starvation. The lack of supply covered the regions of Siberia, Crimea, some parts of Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. The starvation of about 25 million people lasted to the summer of 1922.
Due to this, the head of the Russian Orthodox church, patriarch Tikhon, applied to all Russians and blessed a donation of non-liturgical church values for famine relief [1, p. 4].
© Emel'yanov S.N., 2015
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In conditions of increasing scopes of the tragedy The Central Executive Committee produced the decree about the expropriation of museum treasures for famine relief on the 2nd of January, 1922, and the resolution - on the 26th of February, as an addition to this decree. This addition ordered local authority to expropriate from churches “all precious things made of gold, silver and gems, expropriation of which anyway would not touch the religious cult itself, and transfer those items to the departments of People's Commissariat of Finance with the special note -to the fund of The Central Commission for starving”. However the interests of the religious cult were determined according not to the church canons, but to the resolution of the government [15, p. 285-286].
In return the patriarch rose to the defense of the Church by coming out on the 28th of February with the letter “To all orthodox church loyal progenies”, where he claimed that, “from the Church point of view this act (the resolution of The Central Executive Committee - S.E.) is the act of sacrilege and we with our sacred duty are to clear the Church's opinion about this act and to let our loyal progenies know about it. Owing to the extreme hard circumstances we allowed the donations of nonliturgical and not-consecrated religious items. We still invoke believers to such donations ... But we can't adore the expropriation from the temples -even as a donation - of consecrated stuff, which is forbidden to be used in any way, but liturgical by the canons of the catholic Church, and is punishable as a sacrilege with the anathema - for laity, - and the overthrow of the dignity - for clergy” [11, p. 286-288].
The situation started to develop rapidly and came to the conflict of the 15th of March between the believers and the officials. The conflict took place on the river Shuya.
This was the “invitation” to start massive campaign on the confiscation of church values while the campaign itself was supposed to represent Church negatively and to attack its positions. The organizer of that attack was V. I. Lenin. He shared his plan with Molotov in a top-secret letter from the 19th of March, 1922.
The letter perfectly represents true goals of the church values confiscation campaign:
“... Now there's a single chance for us to defeat the enemy. I give 99 out of 100 that we will succeed... Now, exactly now, when starving people in some regions eat each other, when roads are covered with hundreds, even thousands of dead, - we can and that's why we are to expropriate church values .
We have to conduct the confiscation of church values in a quick and determined way. This will bring us the fund of several millions of golden rubles... There can't be any work done without it.
... We have to fight the clergy right now. We have to suppress their resistance in such a brutal way that they wouldn't forget it for decades”.
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These statements are followed by the tactic instructions of how to organize the campaign. There was no written reports in order not to leave evidences [12, p. 190-193].
According to the V. I. Lenin's suggestions the starvation in Russia was used for the struggle against the Church. The government of the country supposed the national tragedy to be just an opportunity to achieve their foreign and anti-clerical goals. The problems of starving regions were gone on the back burner.
The special features of believers' and clergy's reaction to the expropriation of the church values can be explored basing on the examples of the provinces of Central agricultural region. This region experienced all special features of Bolsheviks' anti-church policy.
The clergy tried to stand against the expropriation, but the methods were different. In Kursk province only the clergy of Oboyanskii uezd opposed actively though the officials expected protests to be larger [7. D. 2631. L. 117]. During the period of the expropriation campaign in Kursk, Voronezh and Tambov provinces there were only 13, 14 and 18 cases of open confrontation recorded. The clergy also agitated people against the expropriation campaign. There were 22 cases of it recorded in Voronezh province, 26 - in Kursk province and 57 - in Tambov province [2, p. 146].
The situation was influenced by the clergy's fear of repressions and the renovative split inside the Orthodox Church itself. Though there were some cases of clergy's anti-Soviet agitation, the most of them stayed calm. The laity opposed most actively. There was a case in Belgorod uyezd of Kursk province when the expropriation of church values was held with military power, but the clergy did not prove themselves at all [7. D. 2631. L. 78]. In Ampilovskaya volost of Timskii uyezd the officials were able to make an expropriation only after the arrest of 6 people [4. D. 674. L. 103].
There was only the priest of the Zamost'yanskaya church, who refused to give away the church values without a special patriarch's order in Sudzhanskii uyezd. But finally, after the talk with officials, he had to agree [4. D. 674. L. 59].
The passivity of clergy was not accidental. The anti-church terror of the first years of the Soviet period was the reason for it. One of the officials of Belgorod RCP(b) department noted that during the period of the expropriation campaign the clergy remembered the shooting down of bishop Nikon in 1918 and of two priests [4. D. 674. L. 29]. This facts influenced clergy's behavior in 1922.
Finally, it was parish who stood up for church values most actively. As an example, in the suburb of the city Korochi the parish did not let officials to expropriate church values. They applied to the fact that the Church is divided from the State [4. D. 674. L. 87]. In Oboyanskii uyezd there were the parish of the villages Samarino, Shmirevo, Homutsi and
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Kotovo, who opposed the work of the Commitee [4. D. 675. L. 159], in Kurskii uyezd - there were the parish of the village Boyevo [7. D. 2633. L. 53]. In the village Strel'na, Korochanskii uyezd, there were the priest A. Spesivtsev, the churchwarden V. Netrebenko and 12 parish arrested for opposition to the work of the Committee [4. D. 674. L. 240].
During the expropriation from the Trekhsvyatskaya church near Belgorod the crowd threw stones in the officials. The officials hardly stopped the protests [4. D. 705. L. 35].
In Sudzhanskii uyezd there were three conflicts with believers, who protested against the expropriation. As an example, the Commission decided to take 2 silver vine-bowls for communion from a church in the village Kurilovka. Nobody opposed but the church stuff suggested the officials to take the items by themselves. The officials refused and had to go away [5. D. 36. L. 160-162].
In the village Karachai-Lokni believers did not let the Commission to expropriate the icon from the local church [5. D. 36. L. 15-15 cov.].
In the town Kozlov, Tambov province, angry believers clobbered the officials who tried to expropriate church values, and broke the monument to K. Marks [2, p. 152].
Thus, as long as the government tried to hurt the Orthodox Church and the clergy and supposed their protest against the expropriation campaign to contribute to government's goals, the Commissions often did not expropriate ritual items and even precious icon chasubles. There was no contradiction in that because clergy often stayed passive unlike parish who often tried to oppose the expropriation campaign. The officials had to take people into consideration.
The officials did not want, but had to leave precious things in some churches, because in most cases they took all of valuable items from churches.
At the same time members of clergy were arrested all over Russia. On the 10th of July, 1922, the Central Executive Committee issued the decree, which gave the NKVD the right to exile without a judgment the objectionable persons for the period up to 3 years. Using this decree the officials arrested those of church stuff who might oppose the expropriation campaign [16, p. 90]. For the first half of 1922 there were 55 tribunals held. They examined 231 case of opposing the expropriation campaign and brought to account 732 people [6, p. 285].
Patriarch Tikhon was also arrested for opposing the Soviet government until June, 1923 [10, p. 353].
In the Central Agricultural region there were bishops John Zadonskii and Tambovskii Zinovii arrested. Bishop John was arrested for the propaganda of opposing the expropriation campaign in local mass-media [6. D. 7. L. 3]. Bishop Zinovii was arrested for hiding church values in the Tambov local cathedral [8. D. 462. L. 23].
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The officials also recruited members of clergy for recognizing antiSoviet tendencies in clergy's environment and for contributing to the expropriation campaign. As an example, in Oboyanskii uyezd of Kursk province the priest father Sergeev was arrested for the propaganda against the expropriation campaign. Later he was recruited by the officials [6. D. 7. L. 4].
All in all the only power, beside the state, who supported the expropriation campaign, was renovative church supported by the government. As an example the state expropriation policy was approved during the meeting of renovative clergy of Ostrogozhskii uyezd, Voronezh province [7. D. 2635. L. 47]. In Kursk diocese rennovationists from Korochanovsk convicted actions of Kursk metropolitan, who opposed the expropriation campaign, they even called him a pretender [4. D. 674. L. 241]. However the position of rennovationists hardly influenced the situation, because the most of clergy stuff did not support them.
The tension increased also with the help of the rumors. Rumor had it that the expropriated church values were sent to France and England in payment of military debts [7. D. 2634. L. 89]. In fact such rumors were kinda true. Later events represented that a part of values was really spent on the things far from the needs of starving regions.
There were 1414 bloody conflicts recorded during the expropriation campaign. 2691 priests, 1962 monks, 3447 nuns and a lot of believers dead or were shot according the sentence [14, p. 106]. However in the Central Agricultural region, such as Kursk and Voronezh provinces, the expropriation campaign was held without serious conflicts [7. D. 2633. L. 118; 10, p. 141].
The exception was Tambov province. There were two bloody conflicts recorded there: in Belorechenskaya volost and Elatomskii uyezd [2, p. 152]. Tough state policy of expropriation was held while the orthodox population of the region donated their money and products as well as church items allowed for donations by orthodox canons.
The campaign was started while church organizations all over Russia started fundraising in favor of starving in Povolzhye [3. D. 258. L. 1; 3; D. 674. L. 4-4 cov. 39]. Clergy and believers wanted to help starving people in Povolzhye without any compulsion [for example: 4. D. 674. L. 72; 7. D. 2631. L. 67, 117]. The church fundraising in the Central Agricultural region was going on in 1923 also [8. D. 462. L. 58; 8. D. 2432. L. 7].
Regarding the amount of collected values, which V. I. Lenin supposed to be millions (or even billions, as he wrote in the letter), it was far from what he expected. According to the “Izvestiya” report, it accounted only about 21 poods of gold, 23 thousands poods of silver and a few gems [14, p. 106]. There were 582 poods of silver, 13 pounds of gold and 3625 gems collected in Kursk province for the 1922 year [13,
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p. 183]; about 7 pounds of gold, about 605 poods of silver and 2472 gems - in Voronezh province.
As an example, the chief of the Graivoronskaya Commission, Krasnokutskii, noted the churches of Graivoron gave less values than they were supposed to [4. D. 674. L. 100].
However the political result existed without a doubt. The state has made one more blow to the Russian Orthodox Church. Soviet propaganda represented opposing of clergy and laity to the expropriation campaign as a fact of anti-popular nature of Church.
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