Confiscation of Church Reaches in Donetsk Region

Abstract

The article is devoted to Bolshevik state campaign of seizing church reaches in Donetsk region. The article describes arrangement and implementation stages of the campaign, the attitude of faithful people and clergy towards the campaign, etc. The author illustrated that local authorities presented the campaign as will of the Soviet people, whilst in reality it met the resistance of both clergy and laity. The author believes that specific features of the campaign were to a large extent defined by the fact that there were very few churches in industrial Donetsk region. Due to this fact church reaches were sometimes seized more than once. Sometimes this resulted in complete devastation of churches. In the author’s opinion the unwillingness of the local authorities to permit laymen buy out church reaches was caused by the same reason.

Keywords

• confiscation of church reaches
• church property
• acts of the confi scation of church reaches
• faithful
• clergy
• laity
• famine of 1921–1922
• famine relief
• Donetsk region
• Mariupol
• Svyatogorsky lavra