"Looking back to 1937": inquest files of Perm priests suffered during the Great purge

Abstract

The subject of the essay is the history of mass repressions towards clergy in Perm during the Great Purge. The documents from the funds of the Perm State Archives of Contemporary History (PermGANI) are under investigation. General statistical data on repressions towards Perm clergymen, documentary records on the methods of local departments of NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), the samples of denouncements to the authorities and information about Perm clergymen suffered from the 1937 mass terror are presented. The connection between the terror policy of Stalin and his encirclement and the results of the All-Soviet Union Population Census of January 1937, when 56.7% of the country population considered themselves to be religious despite all anti-religious campaigns, are traced. The second reason of the Great Purge was likely to be the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which were supposed to take place in December, 1937 and by that time the purge of people supposed to be “hostile” should be over. A thesis of Aleksander Mazyrin, a historian of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the changes in the State strategy towards the Church (turning from the provocation of the internal splits to its total destruction) is justified. The 1937 documents from PermGANI contain both the files of “Tikhonovtsy”, “Sergiantsy” and “truly orthodox Christians”. Old Believers, “Viktoriantsy” and “the Renovationists”, who had been used as a kind of ram against “right” Tikhonovtsy’s wing by the authorities, were among the political prisoners. The evidence connected with the Great Purge must be carefully analyzed but should not give the impetus to arouse the feeling of revenge.