Jewish Life in Belarus: The Final Decade of the Stalin Regime, 1944-1953

2 Soviet Policy Toward the Practice of Judaism in the Postwar Period

ChAPter 2 Soviet Policy Toward the Practice of Judaism in the Postwar Period soviet PoLiCy towArd reLigion At the end of the wAr And the CreAtion of the CArC The regime repeatedly stated that all religious denominations in the Soviet Union should enjoy equal rights, without any one of them dominating or persecuting another.1 In spring 1944, a new special state body was created, in addition to the existing Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church that had been established in 1943 to oversee and regulate all relations between the state and the Russian Orthodox Church as the country’s majority religion. The new body was called the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults (CARC)2 that derived its authority from the Soviet government. While the main office of the CARC was in Moscow, it had commissioners in each of the republics of the USSR, the one in Minsk being assigned the task of managing relations with all official religious minorities in Belarus, including Judaism, the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, Islam, Buddhism, as well as various other religious sects. 1 Russkaya pravoslavnaya tserkov, 5; Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, 6. 2 Following the Russian (and the literature in English), the name of the CARC has been translated as the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults at the Council of Ministers of the USSR. A possibly more correct version would be “Council for the Affairs of Religious Creeds,” since, however the Soviets might have viewed them, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in English are religions or creeds, not cults. 32 JEWISH LIFE IN BELARUS The CARC was responsible for drafting religious legislation, overseeing the execution of government acts and decrees, registering congregations, prayer houses and their equipment, and, in theory, was meant to provide religious communities with ritual appurtenances and religious literature. In addition, the CARC was to act as a neutral arbitrator in cases of disputes between religious communities and local Soviet authorities, and had the right to demand information from provincial party committees and Soviet state organs of power relating to the various religions. All state and public institutions and departments had to get the Council’s approval for any activity relating to religious life. As the CARC’s purpose was to exert greater control over the activities of the “minority religions,” it did not introduce changes in state policy but functioned primarily at the bureaucratic level. The commissioners of the CARC were in charge of working with religious communities at the local level. Their responsibilities included the maintenance of control over the overall state of religious communities and of any changes within them, and the coordination of communication between the state and party leadership, the local authorities, and the religious communities. The CARC was also responsible for monitoring the political views and general attitudes of all religious citizens, as well as their reaction to political and social developments in the republic. On May 19, 1944, CARC officials were appointed to the Council of the People’s Commissars (known after 1946 as the Council of Ministers) of the Union and Autonomous Republics, as well as to the Province Council of deputies; these officials were to report directly to the USSR Council of Ministers.3 It was intended to endow them with broad powers. It was made clear at the First USSR General Convention of CARC Commissioners, in July 1945, that their work with religious elements should be conducted with the utmost seriousness, as they were representing the Soviet state. At this first Convention of Commissioners of the CARC, commissioners from different parts of the country cited a number of applications from religious Jews wishing to incorporate a special prayer for Stalin’s well-being into synagogue services, similar to the one recited for the tsar prior to 1917.4 3 “About organization of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults”—Decree No. 572 of the Council of the People’s Commissars of the USSR on May 19, 1944; GARF, F. 6991, Op. 4, D. 1, 1–6 (a copy is preserved at the YVA, collection М-46/28). 4 Informative report exclusively for the CARC staff members, Moscow, June 5, 1945; GARF, F.6991, Op. 3, D. 8, 194. 33 Soviet Policy Toward the Practice of Judaism in the Postwar Period The author has several texts of prayers honoring the victory of Soviet arms under Stalin’s...