Boris Perchatkin

Катунина Е.В. Деятельность Уполномоченного Совета по делам религиозных культов в Крыму в 1944-1946 годах

· Crimea, Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults under the USSR Council of Ministers

In recent years, many domestic and foreign scholars have paid particular attention to the relationship between the Orthodox Church and the state during the Soviet era. Several candidate and doctoral dissertations have been defended based solely on Crimean materials on this problem. In the dissertation research of R. Beloglazov, B. Zmerzly, and Yu. Katunin, various problems of the activity of religious organizations in Crimea in the 1920s–1930s have been analyzed in sufficient depth. In the publications of Zh. Katalinskaya, the problem of the relationship between the Orthodox Church and the state in Crimea in the 1940s–1960s has been examined.

However, the problem of the state’s attitude toward religious cults that operated on the territory of the USSR remains practically unstudied today. Despite a fairly large body of works on the history of the relationship between religion and the church, it can be stated that today there is no serious scholarly research devoted to this problem.

The Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults, established under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, was responsible for organizing work with numerous non-Orthodox confessions. The activity of this important state body, which exercised oversight functions over Protestant and other religious groups, requires serious study and coverage in academic and popular literature. In our opinion, this research topic is undoubtedly quite relevant.

The aim of this article is, based on the study of archival materials, to analyze the religious situation in Crimea in the first post-war years and to examine the main directions of the activity of the commissioner of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults.

To achieve this aim, several tasks must be carried out, namely: to identify the religious organizations that began their activity on the peninsula during the fascist occupation; to examine the authorities’ attitude toward religious cults in the first months after the peninsula’s liberation; to analyze the religious situation in Crimea in the last year of the Great Patriotic War.

In the early 1920s, numerous religious organizations operated on the peninsula. Thus, in 1924, 154 Orthodox churches and 438 Muslim mosques were actively functioning in Crimea. Alongside them, the parishes of the following religious organizations operated on the peninsula: 2 Old Believer communities, 5 Evangelical communities, 17 Catholic and 71 Lutheran communities, 22 Jewish communities, 4 Baptist communities, as well as 13 organizations of adherents of other cults [1].

The policy of confrontation with the church pursued by the Bolshevik state in the 1920s–1930s led to the elimination of all religious organizations in Crimea by the beginning of 1939. Only a single church continued to operate on the territory of the old cemetery in the city of Simferopol – the Church of All Saints, which belonged to the Renovationist movement of the Orthodox Church [2].

During the occupation of 1941–1944, with the active support of city and district administrations, the activity of most religious parishes that had previously operated on the peninsula was restored. The only exceptions were the Jewish and Krymchak communities, which were shot in the course of the “ethnic cleansing” of Crimea by early 1942. Orthodox churches, Islamic mosques, and communities of Old Believer and Protestant organizations were most actively restored during the occupation. The Romanian troops played a special role in the revival of religion on the peninsula. In the areas where Romanian units were stationed, work was carried out to revive many Orthodox parishes. However, the Romanians played the most significant role in the restoration of the Old Believer church in the village of Mama-Russkaya. Such active participation of the German and Romanian authorities in restoring churches can be explained by the fact that, according to Rosenberg’s concept, a religious worldview was to become the spiritual foundation of the life activity of the occupied population.

Given the patriotic positions taken by the leaders of most confessions during the Great Patriotic War, Stalin and his entourage changed their attitude toward religion and the church. For the first time after many years of persecution, a period of “warming” began in the state’s relations not only with the Russian Orthodox Church but also with other religious associations. To coordinate work with religious organizations, the following structures were created: on September 14, 1943 – the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, and on May 19, 1944 – the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR [3]. Commissioners were appointed in all regions to head this work on the ground.

After the liberation of the peninsula, the position of the commissioner of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults was also introduced in Crimea. I. Makedonov was appointed to it. His functions included issues related to the consideration of believers’ petitions for the opening of religious buildings and the registration of religious communities, the conclusion of lease agreements for the use of prayer buildings, and monitoring compliance with legislation on religious cults, etc.

In his reports to Moscow, the commissioner for the affairs of religious cults for the Crimean ASSR refers to a number of problems that confronted him immediately after his appointment to this position. In order to study and analyze the religious situation, he travelled quite often to various districts of Crimea, where he encountered a host of violations of legislation in the sphere of religious cults. Thus, he established that many unregistered communities were actively conducting their activities on the peninsula, including: the Jewish community of the city of Simferopol, the community of Evangelical Christians and Baptists in the settlement of Kolay, Azov District, the community of Pentecostals in the city of Feodosia, and the community of Seventh-day Adventists in the city of Dzhankoy [4].

In many communities, worship services were conducted by persons who did not have the appropriate documents from higher religious centers and were not registered with local authorities. These included: the Jewish community of Simferopol [5], the Old Believer community of the Belokrinitsky Concord in the village of Mama-Russkaya, Primorsky District [6], etc.

In many regions of Crimea, private houses whose owners had not yet returned from evacuation were used as prayer buildings (the community of Evangelical Christians and Baptists in the settlement of Saki) [7].

Children who did not attend school took an active part in many worship services (the community of Pentecostals uniting believers of the villages of Mitrofanovka and Grigoryevka, Nizhnegorsky District) [8].

Having no staff of his own, the commissioner counted on the active assistance of local authorities. However, in practice, the situation was completely different. In his reports to Moscow, I. Makedonov notes that in most districts of the peninsula the activities of religious communities were not monitored by district and city authorities. Many district executive committees either did not respond at all to the commissioner’s inquiries or sent replies with great delay [9]. According to the commissioner, the situation was particularly disheartening in Dzhankoy District. When visiting the Dzhankoy District Executive Committee, I. Makedonov discovered that the reason for the delay in responding to his inquiries was the absence of elementary record-keeping in the office work. Documents were stored in a chaotic state, and many of his inquiries had simply been lost. The executive committee staff did not inform the district’s higher leadership about his appeals. Very often, employees of the executive committees responsible for this area of work, in violation of the instructions existing at that time, delayed the consideration of documents necessary for the registration of communities, without giving them any progress for several months. This led to the fact that, thanks to bureaucratic red tape on the ground, many communities repeatedly received warnings from the commissioner about the illegality of their activities.

Such negligent attitude of the local leadership of Crimea toward the registration of religious organizations can be explained by the following reasons: first, the war was still ongoing, and therefore the entire activity of local authorities was reduced to solving the complex tasks of supplying the front with food, uniforms, and munitions; second, the process of restoring the national economy destroyed during military operations had begun in Crimea; third, in the first days after the peninsula’s liberation, hundreds of thousands of people were illegally deported from Crimea to other regions of the country, as a result of which the economy was bled white, and therefore urgent issues of providing agriculture and industrial enterprises with cadres of workers and specialists had to be resolved, which consumed the main attention of the leaders of party and state authorities. Considering these and other factors, many leading officials of Crimea considered the activities of the few non-Orthodox communities to be of secondary importance and did not attach particular significance to their activities. Only by the beginning of April 1945 was the commissioner able to ascertain the true state of religiosity on the peninsula and to establish the time of the creation of communities during the occupation. In total, 23 religious communities (not counting Orthodox churches) were operating in Crimea in April 1945.

During the occupation of 1941–1944, the activity of the following parishes was restored on the peninsula:

1941 – in April 1941, the community of Pentecostals of the city of Feodosia was registered with the city administration (presbyter – E.S. Yegorov); December 1, 1941 – the community of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the city of Saki (presbyter – P.M. Shokha); in December 1941 – the community of Seventh-day Adventists of the city of Dzhankoy (presbyter – M.S. Zozulya) and the community of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the city of Feodosia – exact date unknown (presbyter – K.E. Kushtarev);

1942 – in January 1942, the community of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the city of Stary Krym was registered (presbyter – N.I. Stetsenko); on February 11, 1942, the community of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the city of Sevastopol resumed its activity (presbyter – F.T. Mukomelov); in March 1942 – the community of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the city of Yalta (presbyter – P.I. Shishov); in April 1942 – the community of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the settlement of Kolay (presbyter – L.I. Voyevodkin); in April 1942, the Karaite kenesa was opened in Simferopol (gazzan – Ch.B. Shamash); the community of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the settlement of Nizhnegorsky was opened on December 12, 1942; on December 25, 1942, the community of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the city of Simferopol was registered (presbyter – G.P. Kostyukov). In 1942, the community of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the city of Dzhankoy and the settlement of Novosyolovskoye (presbyter – G.Z. Silchenko) was registered – the exact registration date is not indicated in the documents;

1943 – the activity of the following religious communities was resumed: the Karaites of the city of Yevpatoria – November 10, 1943 (gazzan S.F. Dzhigit) and the community of Evangelical Christians in the city of Bakhchisaray – April 27, 1943 (presbyter P.M. Khanin) [10].

In 1944, after the liberation of Crimea, 5 religious organizations began to operate on a de facto basis, without registration with the authorities – 4 communities of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (in the cities of Simferopol, Yevpatoria, Kerch, and the settlement of Ichki, Sovetsky District) and the Jewish community of Simferopol [11].

Once a quarter, the commissioner for the Crimean Oblast sent a report on his activities to Moscow to the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults, in which he analyzed the religious situation on the peninsula, reported on his business trips to the regions of the oblast, and provided personal data on the most active participants of religious associations. For each of the reports, instructions on further activities were sent to his address from Moscow, or additional information was requested. The reports of the commissioners, stored in the fonds of the State Archive in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, are an important historical document that allows us to reconstruct the picture of the activities of the peninsula’s religious organizations in the last year of the war and in the first post-war months. Despite the fact that the commissioner gave his own vision and his own assessment of events in the religious life of the peninsula in the reports, he was obliged to do so fairly objectively, since his information was also checked by other organizations, which he calls “neighbors” in his reports. The commissioners’ reports, as a historical document, enable us not only to examine concrete examples of the activities of each religious organization but also to analyze the trends in the relationships between religious communities and their higher structures, on the one hand, and the state, on the other.

Thus, in a regular report on the state of religiosity in Crimea for the period from October 15, 1944, to July 1, 1946, I. Makedonov notes that due to “literate youth from technical schools, higher educational institutions, etc.” there was a certain increase in the number of Evangelical Christians-Baptists religious organizations on the peninsula [12]. The commissioner explains this trend by the absence of cultural and educational work among the rural population, which the leaders of many communities actively exploit. According to the commissioner’s information, in 1946 each member of the ECB was supposed to bring at least 2 new believers into the community [13].

It should be noted that the reports sent by the commissioner to the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR contain serious errors and inaccuracies. Thus, in the report on the beginning of the activities of each religious organization during the occupation, he provided specific dates indicating not only the year but also the specific day and month of their registration with the German administration. These dates were established by the commissioner based on interviews with the leaders of the communities. Unfortunately, today we cannot verify with documents the specific date of the beginning of the activities of each religious organization, since the archives of the occupation authorities have not been preserved; therefore, we are forced to use the data provided by the commissioner. Of all the information he provides, the dates of the beginning of the activities of two organizations are questionable – the Pentecostals of the city of Feodosia (April 1941 is indicated) and the Evangelical Christians of the city of Sevastopol (the date February 11, 1942 is indicated) [14].

The date of the beginning of the activity of the Pentecostal community in Feodosia – April 1941 – can be attributed to technical errors or misprints, since this time was not yet connected with military actions, and the policy of persecution of religion and the church was in full swing in the USSR; therefore, there can be no talk of any activity of this community.

The date associated with the beginning of the activity of the Evangelical Christian community in the city of Sevastopol also raises doubts. February 1942 was a time of the fiercest fighting during the defense of Sevastopol, and therefore it is difficult to assert that at that time in the besieged city, under conditions of continuous military operations and bloodshed, a community of believers could begin its activity. Even if this did happen, it is in no way connected with the fascist occupation authorities. Subsequently, the commissioner sent a more precise date for the registration of this community to Moscow. This community received permission for official activity already during the period of the full German occupation of the Black Sea Fleet base.

On February 22, 1945, the Committee for the Affairs of Religious Cults under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR sent a directive letter to Crimea, in accordance with which district and city executive committees were obliged to register all ministers of cult and to obtain from them documents confirming that they had been appointed to the positions of ministers of cult by the corresponding religious centers. However, by May 1945, only the gazzan of the Karaite community of Simferopol, Ya.B. Shamash, had formalized such documents [11].

In the second quarter of 1945, the community of Old Believers of the Belokrinitsky Concord, which operated in Primorsky District, as well as the communities of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of Leninsky District and Seventh-day Adventists of the city of Yevpatoria, applied to the commissioner regarding registration. However, considering that the submitted documents did not meet the requirements of the instruction developed in 1944 by the Council for Religious Cults, according to which the registration of new and the re-registration of already existing communities was carried out, the commissioner returned the documents to the believers for further revision.

Thus, having briefly analyzed the religious situation and the activity of the commissioner of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults in Crimea, we can conclude that during the period from May 1944 to May 1946, thanks to his efforts, work was carried out to study the religious situation and to identify the organizations created on the peninsula during the Hitlerite occupation. Due to the numerous and complex issues related to the restoration of Crimea’s economy and the deportation of the population from the peninsula, the local authorities in 1944–1946 practically did not pay due attention to the activities of religious communities.

Sources and Literature

  1. State Archive of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (GAARK). – f. R. 663. – op. 10. – d. 1124. – l. 5.
  2. GAARK. – f. R. 663. – op. 18. – d. 46. – l. 175.
  3. Odintsov M.I. State and Church in Russia: The 20th Century. – Moscow, 1994; Yunusova A.B. Islam in Bashkiria.
    1917–1994. Ufa, 1994.
  4. GAARK. – f. R. 3295. – op. 2. – d. 1. – l. 4.
  5. Ibid. – f. R. 3295. – op. 2. – d. 1. – l. 6–7.
  6. Ibid. – f. R. 3295. – op. 2. – d. 4. – l. 24.
  7. Ibid. – f. R. 3295. – op. 2. – d. 1. – l. 3.
  8. Ibid. – f. R. 3295. – op. 2. – d. 1. – l. 8.
  9. Ibid. – f. R. 3295. – op. 2. – d. 1. – l. 16.
  10. Ibid. – l. 4.
  11. Ibid.
  12. Ibid. – l. 6.
  13. Ibid.
  14. Ibid. – d. 4. – l. 116.
  15. Ibid.

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