Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905-1946

6. Liquidation

6. LIQUIDATION In religion, as in all aspects of Soviet society, 1929 was the year of the Great Turn. The religious NEP was abandoned when the state “substituted itself for society, to become the sole initiator of action and controller of all important spheres of life.”1 Stalinist zeal for building “socialism in one country” resulted in a policy guided by the slogan “the struggle against religion is a struggle for socialism.”2 The state imposed tighter restrictions on the practice of religion as it pushed the country into rapid industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. A new campaign by the party-state to form a godless country transformed into a campaign of terror against religious leaders in the second half of the 1930s. Political activists branded all religious organizations as anti-Soviet, therefore making them targets for liquidation. The secret police apparatus crushed all forms of organized religion , and national leaders publicly claimed victory over religious superstition by 1940. The situation changed dramatically immediately after the Germans invaded in June 1941. Orthodox Christianity in particular became a major source of support for a Russian government that faced annihilation . Churches reopened by the thousands on both sides of the front, forcing Soviet leaders to formulate a new modus vivendi for working with organized religion. Red priests repeatedly attempted to adapt to all these changes. They never gave up on their ultimate goal of blending Orthodoxy with Soviet Communism, even when the definition of Soviet communism continued to change. This chapter will explore the twists and turns of history between 1929 and 1946 as advocates of church renovation tried to reconcile their vision of Orthodoxy with a state that actively worked for their liquidation. “A state of lawlessness” Backers of the Stalinist cultural revolution showed growing disdain for legal propriety toward religion in 1929–1930 and sealed off possible av- enues for the resurgence of renovationism. The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) led the charge for administrative ways to close parish churches out of a growing irritation with the tenacity of religious belief . Russian historian M. I. Odintsov chronicles attempts during NEP to draft national legislation for regulating activities of “religious cults.” He attributes the failure in drafting such laws to an attitude within the NKVD that “what was needed were not laws but a state of lawlessness” for the complete eradication of religion. The commissariat blocked general legislation that would restrict its activities; instead, it favored departmental instructions and secret circulars that prevented believers from hiding behind their supposed legal rights. Those tactics complemented the government’s overall strategy for making the parish church a religious “reservation,” that is, a place where unacceptable religious practices could be contained and limited.3 That approach fit perfectly with the rules of class warfare in a country that saw itself in a state of emergency. Popular sensibilities were already under attack from a war scare and street demonstrations in 1927. The procurements crisis threatened supplies of food for the cities. Show trials for Shakhtyites and other “bourgeois” specialists from the old technical intelligentsia fed fears that enemies were hiding within the country.4 NKVD statements that all religious believers were politically disloyal resonated with the frenzy of 1928–1929. At a critical juncture in debate about policy options, the NKVD produced a report to prove the treachery of religious groups. This document claimed that believers everywhere were joining forces against Soviet power and preparing antigovernment demonstrations. Believers purportedly pressured local officials during the election campaign for local soviets, set up underground counterrevolutionary organizations, distributed anti-Soviet leaflets, used terror against activists in the campaign for atheism, and joined together to block church closings or build new churches.5 Similar claims of political subversion by Orthodox groups figured prominently in the agitation and propaganda campaigns of the late 1920s. The Soviet press frequently published accounts that depicted widespread efforts by Orthodox clergy and laity to use village soviets in defense of their religious interests.6 Officials interpreted church activity as an organized, conscious attempt to undermine religious policy at the local level. Rural believers were seen in dualistic Soviet terms, that is, as older, mostly female , wealthy, uneducated peasants who stood opposed to younger, mostly male, poor, educated, atheistic, urban workers. Such dichotomies lay at the foundation of Soviet ideological interpretations surrounding the dialectical struggle that gripped the nation beginning in the late 1920s. 170 RED PRIESTS The charge of...