V. Shvedov. The Ural Police in the Anti-Religious Campaign of 1929-1930

· Persecution, Documents, KGB, Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodox Church, Siberia, USSR

(Based on OGPU reviews and accounts of participants)

In the 1920s–1930s, the struggle against the Russian Orthodox Church and other confessions occupied a special place in the official policy of the Soviet state. The peoples inhabiting the country were being deprived of the faith of their ancestors, which had saved them during the hard times. Instead of religion, a new ideology based on atheism and godlessness was being imposed. Active anti-religious propaganda was conducted, and a ramified network of anti-religious societies and periodicals was being created. In the everyday life of Soviet people, socialist holidays were introduced in opposition to religious ones.

Churches were closed everywhere, their property confiscated. Valuables were directed to the “struggle against hunger”, holy relics were handed over to museums, and bells were sent for smelting. In February 1930, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars adopted a decree “On the Struggle against Counter-Revolutionary Elements in the Governing Bodies of Religious Associations.” After this, repressions against the clergy intensified, and the taxation of church servants increased. The procedure for closing churches was also simplified: the decision on this question was transferred to the regional executive committees (oblispolkom) and territorial executive committees (kraispolkom) of the Soviets. All these measures aroused indignation among the population. People rose en masse to defend Orthodox sacred objects. Only by armed force or under the threat of arms were the authorities able to disperse the believers, thereby making it possible to turn churches into clubs and warehouses.

The OGPU reviews and summaries on the situation in the USSR, which were prepared in those years for the country’s leadership, contain unique materials about how the population regarded the closure of Orthodox churches and temples, and about the resistance offered to the state’s anti-religious policy[1].

As these documents attest, a quantitative growth in mass outbreaks on religious grounds has been observed since the end of 1928. While in the first half of 1928, 19 mass outbreaks of this kind were registered across the country, in the second half of 1928, 24 outbreaks were registered, and from January 1 to May 10, 1929, already 37 (of which 27 outbreaks were in April–May). At the same time, in 1928, disturbances on religious grounds constituted about 6% of all mass outbreaks, and for January–May 1929, 22%[2].

The growth in the number of mass outbreaks on religious grounds was explained by employees of the OGPU Information and Political Control Department as a result of the general exacerbation of the class struggle in the countryside, the “activation of kulaks and anti-Soviet elements who sought to unite broad strata of the population around themselves and lead them into open anti-Soviet actions, playing on the religious feelings of the peasantry”[3]. Analysts attributed the leading role in the overwhelming majority of outbreaks to the clergy, merchants, and kulaks. Thus, for example, among 65 mass outbreaks in 1928–1929, the direct initiators were: clergy and churchmen – 44 cases, merchants – 5, kulaks – 21, poor and middle peasants – 4. The main contingent of participants in religious outbreaks was formed predominantly by women (counting on their lesser accountability). Men constituted only an insignificant percentage of the participants and usually played a passive role[4].

Participants in the outbreaks, as a rule, were summoned by a prearranged signal – the tocsing of church bells[5]. In some cases, the leaders of the outbreaks attempted to establish contact with other villages and draw them into joint actions. In a number of cases, mass outbreaks on religious grounds were combined with dissatisfaction among the population due to food supply difficulties, grain procurement, and so on. Therefore, many outbreaks triggered by the closure of churches took place under the slogans “Down with Soviet power!” and “Down with grain procurement!”

In the Urals, as in the country as a whole, the surge of religious outbreaks occurred in the second half of 1928 and in 1929. Thus, in Tagil at the end of 1928, clergymen were agitating among workers in favor of a protest strike against the proposed closure of churches[6]. The workers of the “Karabash” plant in Sverdlovsk Okrug decided to close the church and transfer it to a seven-year school. The commission for the reception of this church, encountering a crowd of about 150 believers, summoned a platoon of paramilitary guards. Despite this, they failed to close the church[7].

The settlement of Kumlyak in the Uysky District of Troitsky Okrug is repeatedly mentioned in OGPU summaries. At the end of 1928, a meeting of the poor (attended by 142 people) decided to close the church and transfer it to a school. Peasants – about 800 people, organized by the local priest – came out in protest. The church was not closed[8]. At the beginning of 1929, the priest twice summoned a crowd of a thousand with the tocsin. Appearing at the village council, the people protested against the work of procurement organizations and demanded the convening of a “people’s assembly.” Trying to win the support of workers, the peasants elected a delegation to travel to Zlatoust[9]. A few months later, a crowd of peasants (up to 800 people) opposed the proposed closure of the church and demanded the return of the priest who had been evicted from the village, threatening otherwise with mob justice against the chairman of the village council and the secretary of the VKP(b) cell[10].

Such disturbances, as a rule, were very acute and were accompanied by the disruption of activities being carried out in the countryside, beatings or attempted murders of Soviet apparatus workers, and, in isolated cases, the destruction of public buildings. Therefore, it was no coincidence that a special role in the anti-religious campaign was assigned to the militia.

At the turn of the 1920s–1930s, the militia occupied a special place in the system of the lower administrative apparatus. Representing state power, it was called upon to perform a security and regulatory function, ensuring safety and order in everyday life. But in practice, it had to carry out repressive duties that were not inherent to it, defending representatives of the authorities from the people.

The legal framework regulating the activities of the militia in the 1920s defined it as an armed executive body. The executive nature of the militia meant not only performing the functions assigned to the NKVD, but also assisting agencies of other departments in carrying out their assigned tasks. This led to a very low assessment of the role and place of the militia in the law enforcement system. At the Second Congress of Administrative Workers (April 1928), heads of militia bodies at various levels noted that the militia was a technical executor. “We dispatch the militia precisely to those areas of work where peasant discontent is most aroused,” noted the speakers[11].

During various campaigns, the militia was supposed to suppress all hostile actions by the population, detain and deliver violators of public order to the district department. But the guardians of order were very poorly prepared for this[12].

A district inspector complained that in the winter of 1930 he had to oppose, in one place, kulak agitation for sabotage of collective farms; priests and their accomplices preventing the closure of a church, in another; kulaks and priests resisting dekulakization, in a third; cattle slaughter, in a fourth; disturbances at a logging site, in a fifth. The leadership at the district militia department, in his opinion, helped only with “paper instructions.” Moreover, no one provided him with transport[13].

Nevertheless, the militia actively participated in rural campaigns. In 1930, the Ural regional militia sent about three thousand people to the countryside solely to combat kulak elements. This number included cadets and reservists of militia cavalry units[14]. But even deploying all reserves, the militia could not effectively counter the people’s wrath. Here is how OGPU analysts described a mass peasant uprising in the village of Cherepanovo, Botkinsky District, Sarapulsky Okrug, on June 10, 1929.

The building of the Cherepanovo church was declared unfit for further use by a technical commission in December 1928. The peasants moved the church property to one of the houses in the village, where church services were held. In June, the district committee decided to definitively liquidate the church, removing its crosses and bells. For this purpose, on June 10, a commission arrived in the village consisting of deputy militia chief Izhboldin, head of the district local economy department Kurochkin, RIK commissioner Ermolaev (who had already worked in this village during the procurement campaign), and two militiamen. Near the church, the commission members were met by a crowd of women, 40–50 in number, led by priest Krylov and two members of the church council. The crowd was hostile to the arrivals. They shouted at Ermolaev: “Beat him, then he won’t keep coming around for grain procurements!” The commission members, ignoring the crowd’s indignation, headed into the church. Ermolaev did not remove his headgear and entered with a cigarette in his mouth. The priest stopped the commission members, stating that smoking and entering with a hat on were not allowed in the church. The clergyman was immediately arrested by the commission and sent with a militiaman to the village. Seeing this, the believers rang the bell. The alarm bell gathered a crowd of up to 300 peasants at the church. Some of them were armed with stakes. A crowd from the neighboring village of Dremena also arrived at the church. The deputy militia chief sent the arrested priest on horseback to the district center of Votkinsk. Returning to the church, under pressure from the crowd, the militiaman was forced to leave the village with the other commission members. Near the Siva River, the crowd caught up with the fugitives. Holding back the crowd, the commission members drew their revolvers and started shooting into the air. This did not help. Attacking Ermolaev, the peasants smashed his head with a stake. Commission member Kurochkin was beaten with stones, and the beating stopped only after he declared that he had come to the village not to close the church, but to inspect fire safety measures. As proof, Kurochkin showed the attackers his travel document[15]. The peasants tried to throw Izhboldin into the water, but he, leaving his coat and briefcase in the crowd’s hands, jumped into the river and swam across, thus saving himself. The beaten Ermolaev saved himself from death only by undressing and also swimming across the river. After the commission members’ flight, the crowd returned to the village, where they set up a vigil near the church.

Three to four hours later, the secretary of the district committee, the chairman of the RIK, and other officials arrived in the village from Votkinsk. Near the church, they were met by a group of peasants, who again gathered the crowd by sounding the alarm bell. Despite the decision on the need to liquidate the church adopted at the village soviet plenum on June 10, the peasants continued to guard it until June 12.

Analyzing this situation, OGPU officers cite the following reasons for what happened. At the time, before sending the commission to Cherepanovo, the district OGPU commissioner had told the secretary of the VKP(b) district committee that the church closure was ill-timed, since, given the population’s discontent with the intensified pressure on grain procurements, seizing the church could only worsen the situation. The district committee secretary, ignoring the OGPU commissioner, declared that there was nothing to fear and sent the commission to Cherepanovo without coordinating the matter with the bureau of the VKP(b) district committee.

According to OGPU information, 70 percent of the population of Cherepanovo village had previously retreated with the Whites. There were neither communists nor Komsomol members in the village. All public work was led by persons hostile to Soviet power, who sat in the apparatus of rural organizations; in particular, the chairman of the village soviet, a former White, was under the influence of the church warden. The deputy chairman of the village soviet, a former White Guard volunteer, was a member of the church council. The majority of the village soviet members (also former Whites) took part in the uprising[16].

In the storage vaults of the Sverdlovsk Museum of Police History, along with materials from office documentation and personal files transferred to the museum in the late 1980s from the Information Center of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Sverdlovsk Regional Executive Committee, there are collected memoirs of people who served in the Ural police in various years. These personal-origin sources reflect individual perceptions of historical experience and present a subjective view of historical facts, yet they provide a very vivid picture of the events that took place. Here is how police veterans describe the conduct of the anti-religious campaign in the Sysert district.

In early 1930 in Sysert, posters appeared announcing that soon a public renunciation of the priesthood by Priest Ivan Lugovykh, initiated by the district party committee, would take place in the local theater. At the appointed time, nearly the entire settlement gathered in the theater: there weren’t even enough seats for the villagers – people stood both in the aisles and in the gallery. The meeting was opened by the chairman of the settlement council, Ivan Nikolaevich Pavlinov. He gave the floor to Ivan Lugovykh. He stepped up to the podium wearing a cassock, with a cross on his chest. His speech lasted at least 40 minutes. He spoke about religion. Lugovykh concluded his speech with the words: “… religion is nothing but deception, the opium of the people. I am no longer a servant of the church and I renounce my priesthood.” Taking off his cross, he placed it on the presidium table.

The hall erupted… Noise, shouts, weeping. Old men and women cried out: “Swindler!”, “Scoundrel!”, “Charlatan!”

When they had calmed down somewhat, the chair asked the citizens:

– Are there any questions or proposals?

Once again, noise arose…

– If there are no questions, there is a proposal to close all the churches, – continued Pavlinov.

The proposal was adopted by those present[17].

The next day, schoolchildren with sledges went through the settlement, collecting icons from the population. They were brought to the square in front of the district executive committee building and dumped into a common heap. There were very many icons, several hundred. By 5 o’clock in the evening, the settlement’s residents were gathered on the square, a rally was held, after which the icons were doused with kerosene and burned[18].

In March 1930, a resolution of the regional executive committee arrived in the settlement, ratifying the decision of the residents of Sysert to close the churches. The main valuables were seized from the local cathedral at night and sent to Sverdlovsk. But the believers were not about to give up. At the initiative of the cathedral warden and his daughter, a vigil was organized at the church[19].

To confiscate the remaining church property, the district executive committee formed a commission of five persons. The Sysert police was represented in the commission by the assistant chief of the district department, Ion Aleksandrovich Shevelev. The commission was headed by the chairman of the settlement council, Ivan Nikolaevich Pavlinov[20].

During the day, the commission members headed to the church. As soon as they entered the temple, the bell began to toll. People from all over the settlement began to flock to the church. By the time police reinforcements led by the chief of the district police department, Ivan Ivanovich Denisov, and the district leadership arrived on the scene, the entire porch was already filled with believers, mainly old men and women. The commission locked itself inside the church[21].

The gathered residents declared that they did not agree with the closure and that they had sent representatives to the region and to Moscow. They asked that until their return, the church not be closed and the property not be touched. The believers behaved very aggressively. I. A. Shevelev suggested that the commission members leave the church through the basement. The others did not agree with him[22].

The siege lasted more than three hours. After conferring, the district leadership decided to suspend the commission’s work and rescue it from the church. To do this, it was necessary to push back the assembled people from the porch and clear a corridor for the evacuation of those blockaded inside the building. The police officers coped with this task, and the commission members began to leave the church. Stones, milk bottles, and sticks flew at them. One old man jumped up behind Pavlinov and struck him on the head with a meter-long stick. He fell. Police chief Denisov drew his revolver from its holster and fired several shots into the air. The crowd momentarily fell back. Grabbing Pavlinov in their arms, the police officers and commission members began to retreat toward the district executive committee building[23].

The crowd of believers moved after them, continuing to throw stones. One of the stones hit policeman Batalov on the head. He fell, dropping his revolver. The wounded policeman also had to be carried away. Soon both injured men were sent to the hospital on horseback. Three hundred meters short of the district executive committee, the believers stopped. They returned to the church and set up a vigil, allowing no one near their shrine.

Police chief I. I. Denisov often marveled at the organization of this guard. “No sooner do you approach than you are already hailed,” he said[24]. Soon, operatives from the OGPU arrived from Sverdlovsk to investigate the believers’ riot. In August 1930, the case was heard by the regional court[25].

Such incidents not only seriously undermined the authority of the police among the population, but also provoked dissatisfaction with the work of this law-enforcement agency on the part of the state leadership. The low effectiveness of the internal affairs bodies’ activities during the anti-religious campaign of 1929–1930 became one of many reasons for the liquidation of the People’s Commissariats of Internal Affairs of the union and autonomous republics and the distribution of their functions among other agencies.

On December 31, 1930, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars adopted a resolution “On Measures Resulting from the Liquidation of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR and the People’s Commissariats of Internal Affairs of the Autonomous Republics.” Under this resolution, the newly created Main Directorate of Militia and Criminal Investigation under the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR was charged with directing and administering the militia and criminal investigation bodies. On December 15, 1930, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR adopted a secret resolution “On OGPU Oversight of Militia and Criminal Investigation Activities.” The OGPU of the USSR and its local organs received the right to appoint, transfer, and dismiss senior officials of the criminal investigation and militia bodies, as well as to inspect and control them. At the end of 1931, the Main Inspectorate for Militia and Criminal Investigation was established within the OGPU of the USSR. Thus, the centralization of militia bodies on a Soviet Union scale was achieved, weakening their links with authorities at various levels. A broad and active integration of militia apparatuses into political investigation began, drawing law enforcement structures into the process of ongoing bureaucratization and centralization of the state apparatus, and the formation of a command‑administrative system. This was in line with the general trend of development of society and the state. The militia was becoming a real mechanism of the repressive system, which the state needed to solve its internal political tasks.

[1] “Top Secret”: Lubyanka to Stalin on the Situation in the Country (1922–1934) / Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Central Archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation. Moscow, 2003. Vols. 6–7.

[2] See: Ibid. Vol. 7. P. 204.

[3] Ibid.

[4] See: Ibid.

[5] See: Ibid. P. 205.

[6] See: Ibid. Vol. 6. P. 541.

[7] See: Ibid. P. 595.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid. Vol. 7. Pp. 162–163.

[10] Ibid. P. 584.

[11] Organs and Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia: A Brief Historical Sketch. Moscow, 1996. P. 242.

[12] The condition and work of local NKVD organs (based on materials from October 1, 1929 to February 1, 1930) // Administrative Herald. 1930. No. 4. Pp. 60–61.

[13] In a district of continuous collectivization // Ibid.

[14] Kizilov I.I. The NKVD of the RSFSR (1917–1930). Moscow, 1969. P. 149.

[15] “Top Secret”… Vol. 7. Pp. 315–316.

[16] Ibid. P. 316.

[17] The events are reproduced from the memoirs of Ion Aleksandrovich Shevelev, who worked in the Sysert militia from 1928 to 1934 and in 1930 held the position of assistant chief of the district militia department, and of Aleksandr Kirillovich Repin, who worked in the militia bodies of the Sysert district in 1929–1930 as a precinct inspector. The materials are dated January and March 1967. They were prepared at the request of the Sysert militia department and subsequently transferred to the Sverdlovsk Museum of the History of the Militia.

[18] Sverdlovsk Museum of the History of the Militia. Auxiliary collection. File 34. Sheet 13.

[19] Ibid. Sheet 14.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid. Sheet 21.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid. Sheet 14.

[24] Ibid. Sheet 22.

[25] Ibid. Sheet 14.

Document. Archive. History. Modernity: Collection of Scientific Works. Issue 5. Yekaterinburg: Ural University Publishing, 2005. 438 pp.

(https://hist.usu.ru/dais/vols/vol5.htm)

Print, save, email .pdf