My thanks to Heather Coleman, Gregory L. Freeze, William Husband, Diane P. Koenker, Lynn Mally, Edward Roslof, Tom Trice, Andrew Verner, Mark von Hagen and Benjamin UrofF for having read earlier incarnations of this essay. Laurie Manchester and Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal also provided useful information. Part of this research was delivered to the AAASS annual conference in Phoenix in November 1992. The International Research and Exchange Board (with funds from the NEH and the Department of State [Title VIII]), the Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad Program of the Department of Education, the International Studies Program at the University of Illinois and the NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers have all provided support for this project. Final revisions were made possible through a grant from the Hoover Institution (with funds from the Department of State [Title VIII]).

1. I stand at the crossing of all roads, And, bowing deeply, I ask forgiveness from all… . and man, and beast, and the dust—forgive me! As the sun calls to the grass, whisper to my heart—brother! And bless me on my New Path!

2. For the most recent accounts of bolshevik depredations against the Church, see Ol'ga Vasil'eva, “Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ i sovetskaia vlast’ v 1917–1927 godakh,” Voprosy istorii, no. 8 (1993): 40–55; idem., “Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ v 1927–1943 godakh,” Voprosy istorii, no. 4 (1994): 35–46; Alekseev, V.A., Shturm nebes otmeniaetsia (Moscow: Rossiia Molodaia, 1992)Google Scholar; Alekseev, V.A., Illiuzii i dogmy (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1991)Google Scholar; Odintsov, M.I., Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ (Istoriia vzaimootnoshenii, 1917–1938) (Moscow: Znanie, 1991).Google Scholar

3. On the stages of the antireligious propaganda campaign and the League in general, see Daniel Peris, “Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless and Bolshevik Political Culture in the 1920s and 1930s,” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994; idem, “The 1929 Congress of the Godless,” Soviet Studies 43, no. 4 (1991): 711–32; Alekseev, op. cit.; Vorontsov, G.V., Leninskaia programma ateisticheskogo vospitaniia v deistvii (1917–1937 gg.) (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1973)Google Scholar; Curtiss, John Shelton, The Russian Church and Soviet State, 1917–1950 (Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1953).Google Scholar

4. This essay is based on documents held in the following archives: Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (RTsKhlDNI), Moscow; Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv obshchestvennykh dvizhenii g. Moskvy (TsGAOD g. Moskvy), Moscow; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), Moscow; Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA), St. Petersburg; Muzei istorii religii (MIR), St. Petersburg); Partiinyi arkhiv Iaroslavskoi oblasti (IaPA), laroslavl'; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Iaroslavskoi oblasti (IaSA), laroslavl'.

5. The laroslavl’ League of the Godless is described at length in Peris, “Storming the Heavens. “

6. On this early period, see Mally, Lynn, Culture of the Future (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990 Google Scholar; Hagen, Mark von, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990 Google Scholar; Stites, Richard, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford, 1989.Google Scholar

7. For a discussion of this dilemma, see Siegelbaum, Lewis, Soviet State and Society between Revolutions, 1918–1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 54–61, 115–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “The Problem of Class Identity in NEP Society,” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Rabinowitch, Alexander and Stites, Richard, eds., Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 18–22 Google Scholar; Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “Stalin and the Making of a New Elite, 1928–1939,” in The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 149–70Google Scholar; Lewin, Moshe, “Society, State and Ideology during the First Five-Year Plan,” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 67–70.Google Scholar

8. For the prerevolutionary clergy, see Freeze, Gregory L., The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-reform (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. The same was true of the regime's worker core which had not been near a stanok in years (see Fitzpatrick, “The Problem of Class Identity in NEP Society,” 16–22).

10. Read, Christopher, Religion, Revolution, and the Russian Intelligentsia (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 57–94 Google Scholar; Jutta Scherrer, Die Peterburger Religiös-Philosophischen Vereinigungen: Die Entwicklung des religiösen Selbstverstdndnisses ihrer Intelligencija—Mitglieder (1901–1917), vol. 19 of Forschungen zur osteuropä ischen Geschichte (Berlin, 1973).

11. For a parallel but limited compromise in the regime's ideological training apparatus, see Michael Fox, “Political Culture, Purges and Proletarianization at the Institute of Red Professors, 1921–1929,” Russian Review 52, no. 1 (January 1993): 23–24.

12. Freeze, The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth Century Russia, 450–55; Curtiss, John Shelton, Church and State in Russia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), 195–235, 308ffGoogle Scholar.

13. For a collection of contemporary newspaper reports, see Valentinov, A. A., Chernaia kniga (Paris: Izd. Russkago natsional'nago studencheskago ob “edineniia, 1925)Google Scholar. See also Lev Regel'son, Tragediia russkoi tserkvi, 1917–1945 (Paris: YMCA Press, 1977 Google Scholar; Pol'skii, M., Novye mucheniki rossiiskie (Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1949 Google Scholar; and Levitin-Krasnov, A. and Shavrov, V., Ocherki po istorii russkoi tserkovnoi smuty (Kusnacht: Institut Glaube in der 2. Welt, 1977)Google Scholar.

14. I.Ia. Trifonov, “Raskol v russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi (1922–1925),” Voprosy Istorii, no. 5 (1972): 66–67, 77.Google Scholar

15. For example, “Begstvo dukhovenstva,” pravda, no. 51 (4 March 1918); Bezbozhnik (20 May 1923): 3; ibid. (11 November 1923); Leningradskaia pravda (15January 1925); “Raspad Tserkvi,” Bezbozhnik, no.4 (25 January 8 [1925]): 8; “Begut s tonushchego korablia,” ibid., no. 47 (22 November 9 [1925]): 8; ibid., no. 2 (10 January 14 [1931]): 3.

16. Martsinkovskii, V. F., Zapiski veruiushchego: Iz istorii religioznogo dvizheniia v Sovetskoi Rossii (1917–1923) (Prague, 1929), 13.Google Scholar

17. On the Renovationists, see Edward Roslof, “The Renovationist Movement in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1922–1946” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994); Pospielovsky, Dimitry, The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982 (Crestwood: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), 1: 43–92.Google Scholar

18. Biographical Report, RTsKhlDNI, based on Galkin's party file.

19. Ves’ Peterburg, 1913, part III, 133; Ves1 Petrograd, 1915, part I, 810, and part III, 139.

20. Serafim of Sarov had been canonized in a major public ceremony in June, 1903 in part to help legitimize the faltering autocracy (see G.L. Friz, “Tserkov', religiia i politicheskaia kul'tura na zakate starogo rezhima,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 2 [1991]: 107–19).

21. RGIA, f. 472 (Chancellery of the Ministry of the Imperial Court), op. 50, d. 1606, 11. 1–6.

22. M.G. “Pervye shagi na puti k otdeleniiu tserkvi ot gosudarstva,” Pravda, no. 205 (3/16 December 1917). Although the article was signed only M.G., Pravda identified the author as a priest. See also O. Brushlinskaia, “la chuvstvuiu pravdu vashego dvizheniia,” Nauka i religiia, no. 11 (1987): 5.

23. The other members of the commission were P.I. Stuchka, M.A. Reisner, P.A. Krasikov and A.B. Lunacharskii (Brushlinskaia, “la chuvstvuiu pravdu vashego dvizheniia,” 5; and Biographical Report, RTsKhlDNI).

24. J Rothenburg, oshua, “The Legal Status of Religion in the Soviet Union,” in Marshall, Richard Jr.,, ed., Aspects of Religion in the Soviet Union, 1917–1967 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 63–72, 437–38.Google Scholar

25. The paper's masthead identified it as a publication of the “All-Russian Society for the Dissemination of Christian Literature.” Ten issues appeared between January and March 1918.

26. Znamia Khrista, no. 3–4 (4/17 February 1918); no. 7 (25 February/10 March 1918); no. 10 (18/31 March 1918).

27. Letter of 5 May 1918 (MIR, f. 2 [Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich], op. 4, d. 106, 11. 2, 4–5).

28. GARF, f. A-353 (people's commissariat of justice), op. 2, d. 688, 1. 6.

29. Ibid., op. 2, d. 688, 1. 48; op. 3, d. 800, 1. 20; Biographical Report, RTsKhlDNI.

30. Odintsov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov', 17. Examples of his reports are published in “Tserkov’ otdeliaetsia ot gosudarstva: Doklady eksperta Narkomiusta M.V. Galkina, 1918 g.,” htoricheskii arkhiv, no. 6 (1993): 162–70; and ibid., no. 1 (1994): 136–47.

31. Revoliutsiia i tserkov', nos. 9–12 (1919–20, actually published in 1921): 72; “O likvidatsii moshchei,” O religii i tserkvi: sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1965), 105–9; Vorontsov, Leninskaia programma ateisticheskogo vospitaniia, 72–74.

32. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 4 (1990): 194. At this time, Gorev also wrote Tserkovnye bogatstva i golod v Rossii (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1922). On the seizure of church valuables, see Alekseev, Illiuzii i dogmy, 191–222.

33. Izvestiia, 28 March 1922.

34. Nauka i religiia, no. 1 (26 June 1922).

35. This commission, created in 1922 and chaired by Emel'ian Iaroslavskii, coordinated the regime's policies in regard to religion and the dissemination of atheism. It was disbanded in 1929. In October 1922, Gorev was considered for the position of secretary of the new commission ( “Ne stesniaias’ nikakimi sredstvami: Materialy Komissii TsK RKP[b] po voprosam otdeleniia tserkvi ot gosudarstva, Oktiabr'-dekabr’ 1922 g.,” htoricheskii arkhiv, no. 2 [1993]: 79–80, citing RTsKhlDNI f. 5, op. 2, d. 55, 11. 41–42). In the early 1920s Gorev did serve on the Moscow party committee's antireligious commission (Vorontsov, Leninskaia programma ateisticheskogo vospitaniia, 60–61).

36. Gorev's case was serious enough to merit charges being brought before the Party's central control commission, which apparently rendered a verdict unfavorable to him. After his removal, Gorev moved laterally, heading Rabochaia gazeta's party life department from June 1926 until March 1928. At this point, Gorev slipped several rungs down the bolshevik ladder, quietly spending the next fifteen years as a low-level activist in Ukraine. From 1928 to 1931 he served as a propagandist-antireligionist for the Union of Miners in the Donetsk basin towns of Gorlovka and Artemovsk; for the rest of the 1930s, Gorev held a variety of propagandist and teaching positions in Khar'kov. During the first two years of World War II, he resumed League service as chairman of the all-but-defunct Novosibirsk provincial council. After the war, Gorev returned to Kharkov where he died in 1948 (GARF, f. R-5407 [central council, League of the Militant Godless], op. 1, d. 10, 1. 18; f. R-5407, op. 1, d. 16, 1. 76; RTsKhlDNI, f. 17, op. 60 [Central Committee, agitation-propaganda department], d. 792, 1. 29 and Biographical Report, RTsKhlDNI).

37. RGIA f. 796 (Most Holy Governing Synod), op. 188, 1. 7035, 1. 86.

38. Ibid., d. 7035, 11. 116–122, 125.

39. Vladimir Ern, Pastyr’ novogo tipa (1907). Brikhnichev is also mentioned in Scherrer, Die Peterburger Religios-Philosophischen vereinigungen, 150, 158.

40. Brikhnichev's party file and autobiography (RTsKhlDNI, f. 17, op. 100, [Lichnye dela na rukovodiashchikh rabotnikov nomenklatury TsK] d. 6940).

41. In the Moscow directory for 1927 and 1928, Brikhnichev is still associated with the literacy campaign. In 1929, he is listed without affiliation (Vsia Moskva [1927], V, p. 242; ibid. [1928], V, p. 235; ibid. [1929], IX, p. 245).

42. RTsKhlDNI f. 89 (Emel'ian Iaroslavskii), op. 4, d. 147, 11. 7–8; d. 163, 11. 10–13.

43. The relationship of Mariia Kostelovskaia, a Moscow party activist, to the League is discussed below; Iaroslavskii (1878–1943) was born Minei Izrailevich Gubel'man.

44. RTsKhlDNI f. 17, op. 60, d. 793, 11. 128–132.

45. At the League's congress in April 1925, Gorev mentioned that Brikhnichev had fallen ill with “a psychological disorder” and had been sent to Odessa for a cure (GARF f. R-5407, op. 1, d. 7, 1. 12).

46. These activists were Brikhnichev himself, Mikhail Gorev, Fedor Putintsev, K.N. Luknitskii, Mikhail Osipovich (Anton) Loginov and Kobetskii. Other names appearing on League documents frequently included Vladimir Feofilaktovich Zybkovets, V.P. Brusenin and Zyrianov. laroslavskii attended only the most important meetings (GARF, R-5407, op. 1, d. 1).

47. Levitin and Shavrov, Ocherki po istorii russkoi tserkovnoi smuty, 1: 126–30. Another member of the original Renovationist troika, Evgenii Belkov, apparently renounced his ordination in January 1925 (I.Ia. Trifonov, “Raskol v russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi,” 77, citing Leningradskaia pravda, 15 January 1925).

48. MIR, f. 29, op. 3, d. 1, 11. 1-lob, 27 May 1924. The other author was Mikhail Arkhangel'skii, who identified himself as a former archpriest and missionary.

49. GARF f. R-5407, op. 1, d. 16, 11. 77, 81–82. Kalinovskii's subsequent fate is unknown.

50. Biographical Reports, RTsKhlDNI and TsGAOD g. Moskvy (with reference to f. 4, op. 2, d. 98, 11. 137–138), as well as an interview with Oleshchuk's son, Iurii Fedorovich Oleshchuk, 25 May 1992, Moscow. There is some discrepancy in these records, with one biographical report indicating that Oleshchuk was executive secretary from 1925 to 1932 and from 1935 to 1941, while the other indicates that he occupied the post from 1927 to 1941. During World War II Oleshchuk worked in the agitprop apparatus of the Central Committee. From 1943 until 1947, when the League was formally dissolved, Oleshchuk served as acting chairman and then chairman of the League. He later served as a high official in the League's successor organization, Obshchestvo znaniia (knowledge society) and as deputy editor of the main postwar antireligious journal, Nauka i religiia (Science and Religion). Retiring in 1965, Oleshchuk died in Moscow in 1977.

51. A. Gindin and G. Gindin, Petr Krasikov: zhizn’ i revoliutsionnaia deiatel'nost’ (Krasnoiarsk: Krasnoiarskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1972), 3, 5–6.Google Scholar

52. A minor staff member of the central council in the early 1930s, Intsertov also came from a clerical background. He was removed from the central council in February 1933 when it revealed that he had been an officer in the Imperial Army and had briefly served in the White Army. The bill of indictment also stated that Intsertov's father had been a priest (GARF f. R-5407, op. 1, d. 96, 11. 15–16).

53. Ibid., f. A-353, op. 2, dd. 687–689; op. 4, d. 422; f. R-5407, op. 1, dd. 1–3.

54. For an overview of this conflict, see Delaney, Joan, “The Origins of Soviet Antireligious Organizations,” in Marshall, Richard H. Jr., , ed., Aspects of Religion in the Soviet Union, 1917–1967 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 103–30Google Scholar; Savel'ev, S.N., “Em. Iaroslavskii i preodolenie anarkhicheskikh vliianii v antireligioznoi rabote SSSR,” Ezhegodnik Muzeia istorii religii i ateizma, 7 (1963): 36–50.Google Scholar

55. Anatolii Lunacharskii, commissar of enlightenment, had been a God-builder early in the century (see Read, Religion, Revolution and the Russian Intelligentsia, 77–94).

56. M. Kostelovskaia, “Ob oshibkakh v antireligioznoi propagande,” Pravda (25 January 1925): 2; Em. Iaroslavskii, “O metodakh antireligioznoi propagandy (vynuzhdennyi otvet tov. Kostelovskoi),” ibid. (29 January 1925): 2–3.

57. RTsKWDNI f. 17, op. 60, d. 791, 1. 52; Antireligioznik, 8, 1926, 62–79. The conflict resurfaced at the League's congress in June 1929 and, although the pressure on specialists was much greater at that time, the League's central leadership still repudiated Komsomol's charges (see Peris, “The 1929 Congress of the Godless “).

58. Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931, especially her essay, “Cultural Revolution as Class War,” 8–40.

59. Kozlov, V. A., Kul'turnaia revoliutsiia i krest'ianstvo, 1921–1927 (po materialam Evropeiskoi chasti RSFSR) (Nauka: Moscow, 1983), 39 Google Scholar; and Pethybridge, Roger, The Social Prelude to Stalinism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1974), 207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60. IaPA, f. 1, op. 27, d. 1733, 11. 38–39.

61. Otchet Iaroslavskogo gubkoma VKP(b): za period V/24-IV25 (laroslavl': 1925), 36–37.

62. This particular issue is discussed in greater detail in Peris, “Storming the Heavens” , 205–55.

63. IaSA, f. 3362, op. 1, d. 3, 1. 13, 29, 29ob. At this time, Pereslavl’ belonged to Vladimir province; it became part of laroslavl’ oblast’ in 1936, at which time its earlier records were transferred to the laroslavl’ archive.

64. Ibid., d. 4, 11. 69–88.

65. Ibid., d. 11, 1. 42.

66. For example, as indicated in IaPA f. 229, op. 9, d. 87, 1. 232ob; IaSA f. 2410, op. 1, d. 13, 1. 138; ibid., f. 3362, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 85ob; d. 4, 1. 177; ibid., f. 3378, op. 1, d. 4, 1. 1.

67. IaPA f. 1, op. 27, d. 2491, 1.75; d. 2746, 1. 54; IaSA f. 3362, op. 1, d. 2, 1. 171; Otchet Iaroslavskogo Gubernskogo Komiteta VKP(b) za period ianvaria noiabria 1927 (laroslavl', 1927), 75.

68. GARF f. R-5407, op. 1, d. 16, 1. 77.

69. Em. Iaroslavskii, “Antireligioznaia propaganda v sisteme partstroitel'stva,” Kommunisticheskaia revoliutsiia, no. 13 (1929): 40–41.

70. GARF f. R-5407, op. 1, d. 14, 1. 71; RTsKhlDNI f. 17, op. 113 (central committee, antireligious commission), d. 871, 1. 22. Another source identifies a congress of former clergy in Voronezh on 15–16 August 1928 (Pravda o religii: sbornik, compiled by L.I. Emeliakh [Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1959], 360).

71. IaSA f. 3362, op. 1, d. 14, 1. 16.

72. Ibid., d. 12, 11. 3, 5.

73. GARF f. R-5407, op. 1, d. 45, 1. 29. The reference to Prudovskii does not indicate whether his removal was linked to his background.

74. IaSA f. 3363, op. 1, d. 7, 11. 20, 46.

75. Peris, “Storming the Heavens,” 135–141.

76. GARF f. R-5407, op. 1, d. 28, 1. 57.

77. RTsKhlDNI f. 89, op. 4, d. 135, 11. 1–2. Iaroslavskii's reply is not preserved in this file.

78. GARF f. R-5407, op. 1, d. 75, 11. 11–13; d. 87, 11. 4–6; RTsKhlDNI f. 89, op. 4, d. 139, 11. 3–6.

79. GARF f. R-5407, op. 2, d. 347, 11. 2–5.

80. Ibid., d. 348, 11. 18–19.

81. “Instruktsiia o vyborakh v sovety” (Postanovlenie prezidiuma TsIK SSSR 281X26, Sobranie zakonov SSSR 1926 g., no. 66, art. 501), article 14, confirmed by the 3rd Session TsIK SSSR III sozyva 17II27 (Sobranie zakonov SSSR, no. 12, art. 128), in Sistematicheskoe sobranie deistvuiushchikh zakonov SSSR. Prodolzhenie pervoe (Moscow: Postoiannaia komissiia po sistemizatsii i kodifikatsii zakonodatel'stva SSSR pri upravlenii delami SNK SSSR, 1927), 179–84.

82. All of these letters (GARF f. R-5407, op. 2, dd. 347–348) are from the first few months of 1930, suggesting that others may not have survived.

83. GARF f. R-5407, op. 2, d. 348, 11. 12–13. Antireligious universities were series of lecture courses offered in the evenings or on Sundays.

84. Ibid., 11. 14–15.

85. Levitin-Krasnov and Shavrov, Ocherki po istorii russkoi tserkovnoi smuty, 3: 347.

69. Platonov perished in Leningrad during the blockade. He is said to have returned to his former church, the Andreevskii Sobor on Vasil'evskii Island, to die.

86. Biographical Report, IaPA.

87. IaPA f. 272, op. 35, d. 5283, 11. 3ob, 5–9, 23–23ob.

88. Kukushkin, G, “O bezdel'nikakh i ‘voinstvuiushchikh durakakh',” Severnyi rabochii, no. 121 (28 May 1937): 2.Google Scholar

89. On this theme, see Roger Pethybridge, The Social Prelude to Stalinism. The phrase “utopia in power” is borrowed from Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr Nekrich, Utopia in Power, trans. Phyllis B. Carlos (New York: Summit Books, 1986).

90. On the different approaches by various institutions to antireligious propaganda, see Alekseev, Shturm nebes otmeniaetsia; and Peris, “The 1929 Congress of the Godless. “

91. The instability and conflicted nature of social and cultural policy in this period is an important theme of Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society between Revolutions. Stites reviews many of these different experiments in his Revolutionary Dreams.

92. For a recent discussion of this issue, see Rowney, Don K., “The Scope, Authority, and Personnel of the New Industrial Commissariats in Historical Context,” in Rosenberg, William G. and Siegelbaum, Lewis H., eds., Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 131–34, 137–43.Google Scholar

93. Alekseev, Shturm nebes otmeniaetsia, 48–49, citing the Saratov oblast’ Party Committee archive, f. 439, op. 1, d. 19, 1. 36ob.

94. See Peris, “Storming the Heavens,” 205–55.

95. Tumarkin, Nina, Lenin lives!: The Lenin cult in Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.Google Scholar