“We don’t need any hostile priests”: the evolution of religious policy of soviet authorities in 1922 with security services in Kuban’ region as an example
Abstract
This article analyses the evolution of the religious policy of the Soviet government in 1922 and the role of security organs (ВЧК, ГПУ) in the implementation of the new course of relations with the church. The campaign to confi scate church valuables, which actually became the state robbery of churches, was not a strategic result of the supreme power, but only an instrument of Lenin’s attack on the Church, in the process of which a more important task became apparent, i.e. to institutionalise the diff erentiation of the clergy and the division of its administrative apparatus. The implementation of these plans led in practice to the formation of a new mechanism, i.e. an interaction between the party and the state security organs in the sphere of religious policy. Within the framework of the new model, the State Political Directorate (ГПУ) received offi cial authorisation to manage internal church aff airs using specifi c methods of investigative work, and local offi cials were appointed by the State Political Directorate to control church policy. Exercising their authority to decentralise church government, local security organs switched to using a clergy-based intelligence network, which established control over the administration of dioceses. The fi rst step in the systematic work was dealing with “church” data as with a separate corpus of information and the establishmentl of its structure, the maintenance of which was entrusted to the VI division of the Secret Department of the State Political Directorate.
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