Research for this article was supported in part by a grant from the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX), with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the United States Information Agency. Research was also supported by a faculty fellowship from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation. None of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed here.

1. For example, the bishop of Kishinev (Moldavia) stated in 1947 that he had dedicated his full efforts in the two years after Moldavia had been liberated (in August of 1944) to filling parishes with canonically qualified priests. In those two years approximately half of the parishes had been supplied (Zhurnal moskovskoi patriarkhii, 8 August 1947, 42). The Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Oktiabr'skoi Revoliutsii, Vysshikh Organov Gosudarstvennoi Vlasti i Organov Gosurdarstvennogo Upravleniia SSSR, Sovet po delam religii pri Sovete Ministrov [hereafter cited as Arkhiv] gives the following figures: 269 registered priests and 582 active churches and 8 prayer houses on 1 April 1946. The 350-odd inactive churches and prayer houses were not carried forward on the council's registration rolls. Counting inactive churches and prayer houses, the total was 938 (f. 6991s, op. 2, vol. 1, d. 60, Report of Commissioner Romenski, 1-2). A church is a consecrated edifice with a priest and a congregation, that is, a society of at least twenty local citizens registered with the authorities. A priest and congregation may meet in a prayer house, which can be a converted cottage, pending acquisition of construction of a proper church; a prayer house may even be an unconsecrated building used on a long-term basis.

2. P. Vasilev interview of M. Odintsov, “Uniaty,” Argumenty i fakty, no. 40 (469), 7-13 October 1989, 7.

3. Pashkin, council report of 6 May 1961, Arkhiv, f. 6991s, op. 2, vol. I, d. 263, 46; f. 6991s, op. 2, vol. I, d. 78, 84, 89.

4. Ibid., d. 207, 263, 200, 207, 226. See also op. 4, vol. I, d. 573-575.

5. Struve, Nikita, Christians in Contemporary Russia, trans. Lancelot Sheppard and A. Manson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967), 296 Google Scholar; Pospielovsky, Dimitry, The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917-1982, 2 vols. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984) 1: 206.Google Scholar

6. A. Veshchikov. “Etapy bolshogo puti,” Nauka i religiia, November 1962, 60. An English translation appears in Religion in Communist Dominated Areas, no. 149, 24 December 1962, 7.

7. Iurii Degtiarev, “Neukosnitel'no sobliudat’ zakon,” Religiia v SSSR, June 1989, 3.

8. The only consecration that might have been a new church was the consecration on 22 October 1950 of the Novye Senzhary prayer house in the Poltava diocese: Zhurnal moskovskoi patriarkhii. May 1951, 65. The parish priest conducted regular services on the eve of the consecration, so it would appear that the church was reconsecrated after reconstruction and repair.

9. Garadzha gave veiled statistics in “Pereosmyslenie,” Nauka i religiia, January 1989, 3. He said that between 1950 and the end of 1964 an “average” of 420 Orthodox churches a year were closed. The Spravochnik propagandista i agitatora (Moscow, 1966), 149-150, gave 7, 500 functioning Orthodox churches for 1965. Fifteen times 420 is 6, 300. (In context, it was clear that his years were inclusive, so the number was for fifteen years not fourteen.) Adding 6, 300 to 7, 500, one gets 13, 800.

10. Iurii Khristoradnov, interview, Pravitel'stvennyi vestnik, no. 20, October 1989, reported by Keston News Service, no. 338, 16 November 1989, 10.

11. Arkhiv, f. 6991s, op. 2. vol. I, d. 180, 206, 263; op. 4, vol. I, d. 574; Spravochnik propagandista i agitatora, 149-150.

12. Degtiarev, “Neukosnitel'no sobliudat’ zakon,” 3.

13. Volodymir Karlovych Tancher, Osnovi ateizmu (Kiev: Vydavnytsvo Kyivskogo Universytetu, 1961), , 181. Tancher's figure was in other descriptive material that mentioned seven functioning seminaries, a fact that would suggest that the passage was written after the Kiev seminary was closed in 1960 and before the Saratov and Stavropol’ seminaries were prepared for closing in the early months of 1961. Russia Cristiana ieri e oggi, no. 14 (February 1961), 16, already reports the closing of the second seminary, and the May issue of the Zhurnal moskovskoi patriarkhii, 38, lists only five seminaries when inviting prospective students to apply. Moreover, Tancher's footnotes have quite a few citations of contemporary newspapers and periodicals, the last dated 7 December 1960. Tancher may have, therefore, completed his text at around the turn of the year. Quite a few scholars have assumed that Tancher was referring to the situation late in 1961, when many hundreds, if not thousands, of churches had already been closed in the Khrushchev assault.

14. Iudin, N. I., Pravda o Peterburgskikh “Sviatyniakh” (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1962 Google Scholar; this work was transmitted to the printer on 12 October 1961, 8. Konstantin Kharchev of the Council for Religious Affairs published a table of statistics in 1987 stating that 11, 742 Orthodox societies were registered in 1961, a figure about 170 units higher than the archive figure but, nevertheless, very close to it. Kharchev, Konstantin, “Guarantees of Freedom,” Nauka i religiia, 11 November 1987, 21-23Google Scholar, translated in Religion in Communist Dominated Areas 26 (Fall 1987): 119.

15. Spinka, Matthew, The Church in Soviet Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 119 Google Scholar. Bogolepov, Aleksandr A., Tserkov’ pod vlastiu Kommunizma (Munich: Institut po izucheniia SSSR, 1958), 52.Google Scholar

16. Nathaniel Davis, “Religion and Communist Government in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe” (Ph.D. diss., Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1960). On Poisson tables see Molina, E. C., Poisson's Exponential Binomial Limit (New York: Van Nostrand, 1942 Google Scholar.

17. Arkhiv, f. 6991s, op. 2, vol. 1, d. 182, 206, and 263. Davis, “Religion and Communist Governments,” 520. I took data from thirty-one dioceses in the Russian republic and Central Asia, where German forces had not penetrated into the districts.

18. Cheboksary diocese: Davis, “Religion and Communist Government,” 37 churches; arkhiv, 41 churches. For other dioceses the corresponding figures are Gor'kii, 51, 48; Moscow, 192, 211; Novosibirsk, 54, 56; Riazan', 69, 76; Saratov, 42, 45; Tambov, 48, 48.

19. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, 206n26. See also Fletcher, William C., A Study in Survival: The Church in Russia, 1927-1943 (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 114 Google Scholar; Lowrie, Donald A. and Fletcher, William C., “Khrushchev's Religious Policy, 1959-1964,” in Aspects of Religion in the Soviet Union, 1917-1967, ed. Richard H. Marshall, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 151–152.Google Scholar

20. Stroyen, William B., Communist Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church, 1943-1962 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1967), 80Google Scholar.

21. Fletcher, Study in Survival, 114; Lowrie and Fletcher, “Khrushchev's Religious Policy, 1959-1964,” 151-152; Gleb Rar, “Skol'ko v Rossii pravoslavnykh khramov?” Posev, January 1974, 39-44.

22. New York Times, 28 November 1945, 25.

23. Georgi G. Karpov, interviewed by C. L. Sulzberger of the New York Times on 7 June 1945, described by Dallin, David J., The Changing World of Soviet Russia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1956), 282 Google Scholar.

24. Strohm, John L., Just Tell the Truth (New York: Scribner and Sons, 1947), 175 Google Scholar. See also Lowrie and Fletcher, “Khrushchev's Religious Policy, 1959-1964,” 151 -152.

25. Fontanieu, Pierre, “Le probleme religieux en URSS,” Christianisme social 63 (January-February 1955): 60 Google Scholar; Curtiss, John Shelton, The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), 305Google Scholar, quoting Dean Andrei Sergeenko of the Patriarchal Western European Exarchate.

26. For 25, 000, see Timasheff, Nicholas S., “Urbanization, Operation Antireligion and the Decline of Religion in the USSR,” American Slavic and East European Review 14 (April 1955): 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newsweek, 18 October 1954, 31. For 20, 000, see Jackson, Joseph H., The Eternal Flame (Philadelphia: Christian Education Press, 1956), 64 Google Scholar, quoting Metropolitan Nikolai; Paul B. Anderson, “Churchmen Visit Russia,” Christian Century, 18 April 1956, 480.

27. For example, Zhurnal moskovskoi patriarkhii, 8 August 1957, 32, quoted Bishop Paul of Finland that there were 22, 000 Orthodox churches in the Soviet Union.

28. Veshchikov, “Etapy bolshogo puti,” 57 (RCDA, 3).

29. Hebly, J. A., The Russians and the World Council of Churches (Belfast: Christian Journals Limited, 1978), 114.Google Scholar

30. For example, Metropolitan Nikolai was on the official Soviet commission investigating the Katyn massacre and must have understood that the commission's report was false. Nikolai also made public allegations about a wide variety of international political issues over the years and must have known that some were false. No doubt he felt he had to pay this price to support his church's interest, welfare, and survival.

31. The oblast figures are taken from council figures for 1 January 1958 and 1 January 1966. F. 6991s, op, 2, vol. I, d. 206, and op. 4, vol I, d. 573-575.

32. Op. 2, vol. I, d. 206, and op. 4, vol. I, d. 573-575. The dozen oblasti are Cherkassy (236 to 75), Chernigov (360 to 160), the Crimea (48 to 14), Dnepropetrovsk (180 to 26), Khar'kov (158 to 77), Khmel'nitski (393 to 140), Kiev (348 to 141), Kirovograd (155 to 58), Lugansk (188 to 56), Odessa (295 to 84), Poltava (262 to 62), and Zaporozhe (106 to 9). While Lvov-Drogobych lost less than half its churches (1266 to 689), the numerical loss of almost 600 is notable.

33. See Michael Bourdeaux, Patriarch and Prophets: Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church (London: Mowbrays, 1975), 32, 125-154.

34. Only oblasti with at least five church closings are listed. For example, two of the four churches in Murmansk oblast were closed, but this number may not be statistically significant. Murmansk is in the diocese of Arkhangelsk, and eighteen of twenty-five churches in that oblast remained open.

35. Arkhiv, f. 6991s, op. 2, vol. I, d. 206.

36. All figures are for churches, priests, and deacons within the Soviet Union as the statistics of the Soviet government do not normally include Russian Orthodox churches and clergy in foreign countries. The figure for priests includes bishops. This figure is approximate, since the church commissioners in several of the smaller districts apparently failed to report or their reports were not filed in the district-by-district compilations and I estimated figures for these districts. Estimates had to be made for only four of the smaller districts, so the margin of error is a fraction of a percentage at most; f. 6991s, op. 4, vol. I, d. 572-575.

37. The Odessa figures are 115 priests, 10 deacons, and 84 churches. Kherson oblast, which was a part of the diocese of Odessa, had 47 priests and 2 deacons for 60 churches. Lugansk-Voroshilovgrad, which was administered by the metropolitan in Odessa, though a separate diocese, had 79 priests and 16 deacons serving in 66 churches.

38. The 1 January 1966 figure is 197 priests and 5 deacons, serving 223 churches.

39. Data for the number and distribution of functioning churches in the 1980s—including the millennial year—is taken from my manuscript, which is pending publication.

40. Russian Orthodox Bishop Ioann (Bodnarchuk) of Zhitomir proclaimed the reestablishment of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church in October 1989 and was officially removed by the Holy Synod in Moscow in consequence. The autocephalous church had been suppressed at the end of World War II after the Soviet authorities charged it with collaboration. Since October 1989 widely separated localities in the Ukraine have reported the establishment of autocephalous parishes and autocephalous priests officiating at public ceremonies. See R. Vadimov, ‘ “Khranit apostol'skie zavety,” Moskovskii tserkovnyi vestnik ezhenedei'nik, no. 4 (1990): 2 Google Scholar; Geruk, S, “Vremia Edineniia, a ne Rozni,” Moskovskii tserkovnyi vestnik ezhenedei'nik, no. 9 (1990): 3 Google Scholar; Ekspress-Khronika, no. 46, 12 November 1989, 3; no. 7, 13 February 1990, 3, and no. 16, 17 April 1990, 2.

41. Ekspress-Khronika, no. 46, 12 November 1989, 2; no. 7, 13 February 1990, 1, 3; no. 16, 17 April 1990, 2, 3; “Ne Dopustit bratoubiistva,” Moskovski tserkovnyi vestnik ezhenedei'nik, no. 16 (1989): 7; Vadimov, R, “Eto agressiia,” Moskovski tserkovnyi vestnik ezhenedei'nik, no. 1 (1990): 7; no. 4 (1990): 2–3Google Scholar; “Zapadnaia Ukraina: Na volne ekstremizma,” Moskovski tserkovnyi vestnik ezhenedei'nik no. 8 (1990): 6; Komsomol'skaia pravda, 24 March 1990, 1. A view sympathetic to the Ukrainian Roman Catholics, which rejects Russian Orthodox allegations of Roman Catholic-instigated violence, is presented by Bojcun, Marko, “Ukrainian Catholics Reject Orthodox Violence Claims,” Keston News Service (commentary), no. 341, 11 January 1990, 21-22.Google Scholar

42. Ekspress-Khronika, no. 7, 13 February 1990, 1.

43. In the postwar period Lvov and Drogobych have sometimes been separate oblasti and sometimes one. The name of Stanislav was changed to Ivano-Frankovsk, but it is the same territory. In the territories of trans-Carpathia, Drogobych-Lvov, Stanislav-Ivano-Frankovsk, and Ternopol', the figures were 3, 001 Ukrainian Catholic (Uniate) priests and 327 Orthodox, a ratio of about nine to one. The figures are given in a report by A. Pashkin of the council, dated 2 September 1958 (f. 6991s, op. 2, vol. I, d. 206).

44. In 1958 4, 383 churches were registered in the western Ukraine (including Volynia, where the Orthodox have historically outnumbered the Uniates) and 13, 413 in all of the Soviet Union.

45. The I January 1966 figures were 2, 756 churches in the western Ukraine out of 7, 500. Even without the 194 churches in Volynia, the figure is over a third of the total (f. 6991s, op. 4, vol. I, d. 574).