Cleansing NEP Russia: State Violence Against the Russian Orthodox Church in 1922

Abstract

This essay offers a case study of how the Bolshevik state reacted to popular, sometimes violent, opposition and resistance to its policies during the early period of New Economic Policy. The case study concerns the ruling Bolshevik Party's repressive approach to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1922. This culminated in show trials and executions of clergy and lay believers in response to resistance throughout the country to the state's campaign of collecting church valuables that year, ostensibly to provide relief for victims of a catastrophic famine that afflicted much of southern Russia in 1921–1922.

Notes

Much of the research for this essay was undertaken with the financial support of the Irish Research Council. The author would like to thank the editors of this collection, especially Sarah Badcock, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

¹ On the theatrical, educative qualities of the Soviet show trial, see Cassidy (2000) and Wood (2005).

² See the range of perspectives on this topic discussed by, for example, Gerasimov (2009), Kotsonis (1999) and Beer (2008).

³ This was due to the commonly held perception that Communists were Jews.

⁴ This distinction was brought to my attention by Christopher Read.

⁵ See, for example, V. I. Lenin, ‘Telegram to Evgenia Bosch’, Vol. 36, p. 1, Marxists Internet Archive, available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/, accessed 10 September 2008. Page numbers follow printed format from this online edition of Lenin's Collected Works.

⁶ See for example Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (hereafter RGASPI), fond 5, opis' 1, delo 2618, listi 7, 29–30 ob. Strictly speaking, the ‘black’ and ‘white’ clerical divide referred to monastic and non-monastic (married) clerics.

⁷Leninskii sbornik, Vol. 35, Moscow and Leningrad, 1945, p. 233; V. I. Lenin, ‘To V. M. Molotov. Between April 9 and 21 1921’, Vol. 45, p. 1, available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/works/lenin/, accessed 10 September 2008.

⁸ However see further in Finkel (2007), Ryan (2012, ch. 8) and Nechaev (2004, p. 310).

⁹ V. I. Lenin, ‘Third Congress of the Communist International’, Vol. 32, p. 3, available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/works/lenin/, accessed 10 September 2008.

¹⁰ V. I. Lenin, ‘Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)’, Vol. 32, Part I, 2, pp. 9–13, available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/works/lenin/, accessed 10 September 2008.

¹¹ V. I. Lenin, ‘Seventh Moscow Gubernia Conference of the Russian Communist Party’, Vol. 33, p. 13, available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/works/lenin/, accessed 10 September 2008.

¹² See V. I. Lenin, ‘From a Letter to I.S. Unshlikht’, Vol. 45, available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/works/lenin/, accessed 10 September 2008.

¹³ Edward Roslof argues that Tikhon was also motivated by a desire to demonstrate to believers within Russia and in exile his and the Church's independence from the regime, and to maintain the Patriarchate's authority (Roslof 2002, p. 42).

¹⁴ There are no reliable figures for the number of summary executions and deaths (Daly 1997, p. 257). Certainly hundreds of arrests followed incidents of resistance.

¹⁵ This was a much-inflated estimate as it turned out; in fact, much of the Church's valuables had been confiscated by the state since 1917.

¹⁶ V. I. Lenin, ‘On the Significance of Militant Materialism’, Vol. 33, pp. 2–3, available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/, accessed 10 September 2008.

¹⁷ See Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (hereafter GARF), f. A353, op. 6, d. 30, l. 3.

¹⁸ In fact, Trotskii thought that a theoretical-propaganda campaign against the renovationists and the Church as a whole should be prepared.

¹⁹ ‘K voprosu ob iz'yatii tserkovnyikh tsennostei’, Izvestiya VTsIK, 24 March 1922.

²⁰ ‘K voprosu ob iz'yatii tserkovnyikh tsennostei’, Izvestiya VTsIK, 24 March 1922.

²¹ For an excellent discussion of how state violence was justified and often rendered morally pure in Soviet ideology, especially through literature, see Tolczyk (1999).

²² ‘Genshtab kontr-revolyutsii’, Izvestiya VTsIK, 6 May 1922.

²³ ‘Genshtab kontr-revolyutsii’, Izvestiya VTsIK, 6 May 1922.

²⁴ ‘Kontr-revolyutsiya pod tserkovnyim flagom’, Izvestiya VTsIK, 9 May 1922.

²⁵ ‘Genshtab kontr-revolyutsii’, Izvestiya VTsIK, 6 May 1922.

²⁶ ‘Kontr-revolyutsiya pod tserkovnyim flagom’, Izvestiya VTsIK, 9 May 1922.

²⁷ ‘“Svyateishaya” kontr-revolyutsiya. Za chto?’, Pravda, 9 May 1922.

²⁸ ‘“Svyateishaya” kontr-revolyutsiya. Tserkov’ i krov', Pravda, 9 May 1922.

²⁹ GARF, f. A353, op. 6, d. 11, l. 78.

³⁰ GARF, f. A353, op. 6, d. 11, ll. 76–77.

³¹ GARF, f. A353, op. 6, d. 11.

³² GARF, f. A353, op. 6, d. 11, ll. 131–36. These comments were in relation to the cases of Chukov and Petrovskii, defendants at the Petrograd trial. Chukov was in fact sentenced to death, but his sentence was later commuted.