Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T04:23:24.120Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Monasteries without Walls: Secret Monasticism in the Soviet Union, 1928–39.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Jennifer Wynot
Affiliation:
Assistant professor in the Department of History at the Metropolitan State College of Denver.

Extract

When discussing the state of religion during the Soviet period, those following the traditional historical interpretation have held that the Communist Party successfully eradicated religion, particularly Russian Orthodoxy. While vestiges may have remained in rural areas, the Russian Orthodox Church as an institution was destroyed. Churches and monasteries stood in ruins as testaments to the victory of atheism over religion.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Such interpretations were primarily found in work of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Curtiss, John S., The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917–1950 (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1965). Although this is a very well-researched work, its author did not have access to the archival resources that are now available.Google Scholar

2. For more on the monastic revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Meehan, Brenda, Holy Women of Russia (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper, 1993);Google ScholarHerman, Abbot, “Bishop Theofan the Recluse: Instructor of Monastic Women,“ The Orthodox Word, Mar.–Apr. 1987, 83; Fr. Sergei Chetverikov, Starets Paisii Velkhovskii (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1980).Google Scholar

3. For more on the phenomenon of monastery communes, see Wynot, “Keeping the Faith.”Google Scholar

4. Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Most Recent History (RTsKhIDNI), fond 17, opis 60, d. 509, 96–99.Google Scholar

5. Anna, Monakhina (Tepliakova), Vospominanie (Moscow: “Novaia Kniga,“ 1998), 12.Google Scholar

6. A term describing a person deprived of his or her civil rights, such as the right to vote and the right to live in a city.Google Scholar

7. Levitin-Krasnov, A. E., Likhie gody, 1925–1941, (Paris: YMCA, 1977), 194.Google Scholar

8. Interview with Mother Serafima, All Saints Church, Moscow, 26 August 1996.Google Scholar

9. These lectures have recently been compiled into two volumes, entitled Monastyr' v Miru [Monasteries in the World] (Moscow: Trim, 1995).Google Scholar

10. Monastyr' v Miru, 8, 12.Google Scholar

11. Herman, Abbot, “New Russian Confessor Archpriest Valintin Sveritsky,“ The Orthodox Word, July—Aug. 1983, 133.Google Scholar

12. Anna, Monakhina, Vospominanie, 75.Google Scholar

13. Serafima, Mother, interview.Google Scholar

14. Serafima, Mother, interview.Google Scholar

15. Ignatia, Monakhina, “Vysoko-Petrovskii monastyr v 20–30x gody“ [Vysoko-Petrovskii monastery in the 1920s and 1930s], Alfa i Omega (1996): 116.Google Scholar

16. Ignatia's, Mother memoirs have recently been published in their entirety. Monashestvo poslednikh vremen [Monasticism in times past] (Moscow, 1998) tells her life story and mainly focuses on her experiences in Vysoko-Petrovsky monastery.Google Scholar

17. Ignatia, Mother, Monashestvo poslednikh vremen, 114.Google Scholar

18. Taisia, Monakhina, Russkoe Pravoslavnoe Zhenskoe Monashestvo XVII–XX vv. [Russian Orthodox Women's Monasticism, Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries] (Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1992), 262.Google Scholar

19. Taisia, , Russkoe Pravoslavnoe Zhenskoe Monashestvo, 275.Google Scholar

20. Serafima, Mother, interview.Google Scholar

21. Levitin-Krasnov, , Likhie Gody, 222.Google Scholar

22. The League of the Militant Godless was a state-sponsored anti-religious organization dedicated to spreading anti-religious propaganda throughout the Soviet Union. It was formed in 1922 under the direction of Emelian Yaroslavsky and disbanded in 1941.Google ScholarFor more on the League, see Peris, Daniel, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

23. Tsipin, Fr. Vladislav, Istoriia Russkoi Tserkv (Moscow: Valaam Monastery, 1997), 9:197.Google Scholar

24. Anna, Monakhina, Vospominanie, 19.Google Scholar

25. Anna, Monakhina, Vospominanie, 6, 14.Google Scholar

26. Serafima, Nun, Zhizneopisanie Mat'ia schemamonakhinin Fomary (Moscow, 1991), 6.Google Scholar

27. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, The Gulag Archipelago (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 2:420–21.Google Scholar

28. Reznikova, Irina, Pravoslavie na Solovkakh (St. Petersburg: Memorial, 1994), 41.Google Scholar

29. Much has been written about the Constitution of 1936. For a full English translation of the Constitution, see “The New Soviet Constitution“ (New York: Soviet Russia Today, 1936).Google ScholarFor the text in Russian, see Istoriia sovetskoi konstitutsii v dokumentakh, 1917–1956 (Moscow, 1957), 345–59.Google ScholarFor a full text of Stalin's speech, see Stalin, J. V., On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R. (Moscow, 1936).Google ScholarFor Western contemporary commentary, see Barnes, Kathleen, “The Soviet Constitution of 1936,“ in Research Bulletin on the Soviet Union 1, no. 9, 30 Sept. 1936;Google ScholarStarr, J. R, “New Constitution of the Soviet Union,“ American Political Science Review, 1936, 1143–152;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBeatrice, and Webb, Sidney, Soviet Communism: A New Soviet Constitution: A Study in Socialist Democracy (New York: H. Holt, 1937).Google Scholar

30. Stalin, J. V., On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R: Report Delivered at the Extraordinary Eighth Congress of the Soviets of the U.S.S.R, November 25, 1936 (Moscow, 1936), 40.Google Scholar

31. Kalinin, , quoted in article in Izvestiia, 7 June 1936.Google Scholar

32. The results of the 1937 census were not published. Only recently has the information been made available to the public. For a full account of the 1937 census in English, see Poliakov, I. A., Zhiromskaia, V. B., and Kiselev, I. N., “A Half-Century of Silence: the 1937 Census,“ Russian Studies in History 31 (1992): 398.Google ScholarFor a more general guide to the methodology of Russian and Soviet censuses, see Clem, Ralph, ed., Research Guide to the Russian and Soviet Censuses (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986).Google ScholarFor works in Russian, see Poliakov, I. A., Vodarskii, E., eds., Vsesoiuznaia perepis' naseleniia 1937: Kratkie itogi (Moscow: Akademia Nauk, 1991).Google Scholar

33. Russian Archive of the Economy (RGAE), fond 1562, opis 329, d. 285, 62.Google Scholar

34. The Tablet, Dec. 1995, 168. The Tablet is a British Jesuit publication that covers religious issues around the world.Google Scholar

35. Printed in The Tablet, 1 July 1939, 12.Google Scholar

36. Tsipin, Istoriia Russkoi Tserkv, 252.Google Scholar

37. Serafima, Nun (Bulgakova), Diveevo Predaniia (Moscow, 1996), 53.Google Scholar

38. Tsipin, Istoriia Russkoi Tserkv, 255.Google Scholar

39. Tsipin, Istoriia Russkoi Tserkv, 258.Google Scholar

40. Sergeev, I., “Monastyr'-priton,“ Bezbozhnik, Feb. 1941, 7.Google Scholar

41. Timasheff, N. S., Religion in Soviet Russia, 1917–1942 (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1942), 81.Google Scholar

42. For examples, see “Gruppa monkhin' v Solovetskom kontslagere,“ Pravoslavnaia Rus' (Paris), 16 Aug. 1947, 911;Google Scholar“Matushka Maria Gatchinskaia,“ Pravoslavnaia Rus' 1 Feb. 1952, 10–12.Google Scholar

43. See Gaex-Torn, Nina, “O verakh,“ excerpt from Soprotivlenie v GULAGe (Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, 1992), 228.Google Scholar

44. Ignatiia, Mother, “Vysoko-Petrovskii Monastyr,“ 162.Google Scholar

45. Leonty, Archbishop, unpublished memoirs, 41.Google Scholar

46. Ignatiia, Mother, “Vysoko-Petrovskii Monastyr,“ 162.Google Scholar

47. Andreev, I. M., Russia's Catacomb Saints (Platina, Calif.: St. Herman of Alaska, 1982).Google Scholar

48. Orlovskii, Damaskin, Martyrs, Confessors, and Blessed Ascetics of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Twentieth Century (Tver: Bulat, 1996), 2:13, 15.Google Scholar

49. Interview with Serafima, Mother.Google Scholar

50. Vladimirovna, Tatiana, “Optina Elder Sebastian: Schema-Archimandrite of Karaganda“ The Orthodox Word July—August 1990, 235–36.Google Scholar

51. See Stramara, Daniel, “Double Monasticism in the Greek East: Eighth through Fifteenth Centuries,“ The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 43 (Spring-Winter 1998): 185202.Google Scholar