“THE LORD SEER-OF-HEARTS HOLDS ME IN HIS RIGHT HAND…” (TO THE BIOGRAPHY OF ARCHPRIEST VASILY NIKULCHEV)

Abstract

This article is part of a series of publications, which the author devoted to the fate of a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, who followed the path of a confessor after the revolutionary events of 1917. In the publication, the researcher focuses on the events of life of the Kuban Archpriest Vasily Timofeevich Nikulchev (1876–1949). Before the revolution, Father Vasily’s life was filled with unremarkable activities of a rural pastor and, if not for the change of the political system and the wave of persecution of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, it would hardly have become interesting for a historian. During the Civil War, the priest was arrested, convicted and sent to serve his sentence in the walls of the once flourishing women’s monastery — the Kazan Convent, which then housed the Ryazan provincial concentration camp. The conditions of imprisonment made the priest nearly disabled. Returning to the Kuban in 1922, he was forced to join the representatives of Renovationism. In 1930, being a Renovationist priest in the Pshekhskaya village, Father Vasily was again arrested, convicted and sent to the Far East. After imprisonment he was supported by his sons. During the occupation of the Kuban, Priest Vasily Nikulchev repented of being in the Renovationist schism and returned to priestly duties, but the repressions broke his fortitude and strength of mind, so when the front approached, the priest left his service and had to flee, eventually he found himself in a Nazi camp. In 1945, Father Vasily was liberated by the Soviet Army and returned to the Kuban, receiving a parish in the village of Kavkazskaya. In the process of studying the biography of Archpriest Vasily Nikulchev, the author used data from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, State Archive of the Krasnodar Territory, State Archive of the Ryazan Region, State Archive of the Stavropol Territory, and State Archive of the Tula Region, as well as copies of the criminal cases of Priest Vasily Timofeevich Nikulchev from the Archive of the Federal Security Service Directorate for the Krasnodar Territory. At present, information about Father Vasily and his difficult fate is little known in the Kuban. With this publication, the author seeks to revive the lost memory of the confessor’s path of the priest who died in 1949.

Keywords

• kuban diocese
• novomikhailovskaya village
• romanovsky farmstead
• renovatio¬nism
• repression
• great patriotic war
• transnistria
• nazi concentration camp