Documents of the Special Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of the Bolsheviks under the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in South Russia (1919) from the State Archive of Russian Federation as a Source on the History of Parish Churches and Monast
| 01 October 2024
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Publication of archival documents
Ageev E.A.,
Frolovo, Russian Federation
Documents of the Special Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of the Bolsheviks under the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in South Russia (1919) from the State Archive of Russian Federation as a Source on the History of Parish Churches and Monasteries of the Volgograd Metropolitan in Days of the Civil War
Abstract
The researchers of the history of the Orthodox Church in the Civil War in the Don region encounter difficulties with sources. The author introduces into scientific use and analyses documents on scholarship of the Don region parish churches status during the Civil War in the territories controlled by the White movement. The documents are stored in the State archive of the Russian Federation in the fond of the Special Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of the Bolsheviks under the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in South Russia. The questionnaires of the Don region churches answer questions about persecution by the Bolsheviks. Collected by the Commission in 1919 by mailing, they have never been studied or published. The documents collection assembled by the Special Commission is quite unique, unequaled in territory and subject coverage. The study strives to estimate the persecution of Orthodox parishes and clergy by the Bolsheviks. The results of the study have not yet been fully processed. Collected data requires systematization and further study. The author turns to it in order to remedy the lack of information on the history of Orthodox parishes and monasteries in the Eastern districts of the Don region (later of the Tsaritsyn province). New, previously unknown facts on persecution of the Church in the territory of Ust-Medveditsky and Second Don districts have been discovered, including information on the destruction and damaging of temples in fighting, looting, arrests and executions of clergy. Besides questionnaires, the author analyses investigatory records of the Special Commission of Inquiry containing eyewitness testimonies of the Red Army actions in the stanitsa Ust-Medveditskaya, among others in the Transfiguration Convent. The facts show that, despite overall hostile attitude of the Red Army to the Church, in some places, for instance in the Ust-Medveditsky Monastery, there were no persecutions. The author proposes to systematize and publish the discovered documents, which are a valuable source for studying the history of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Civil War on the territory of the Volgograd and Rostov regions.
Keywords
Source, archive, Civil War in Russia; the White movement; region of Don cossacs; Russian Orthodox Сhurch; persecutions.
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About the authors
Ageev Evgenij Anatol`evich, priest, post-graduate of the Ss Cyril and Methodius School of Post-Graduate and Doctoral Studies, Frolovo, Russian Federation, 8-961-657-92-85, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it