Mistakes Committed in Closing Monasteries

Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, Report of mistakes committed in conducting measures to close monasteries. July 6, 1959

 

Original Source: TsKhSD, f. 5, op. 30, d. 89, no. 339.

Not for publication
Secret
Copy No. I

To the CPSU CC

Report of mistakes committed in conducting measures to close monasteries

In accordance with the decree of the USSR Council of Ministers of 16 October 1958 in which it was proposed to study the question of the possibility of reducing the number of monasteries, the Council, with the agreement of the local organs, found it possible during 1959-60, but only by way of merger (amalgamation), to close 29 of the 63 monasteries and hermitages existing in the USSR (in 1946 there were 101 monasteries and a reduction of 33 by way of mergers took place painlessly).

Patriarch Aleksii agreed to the reduction of 29 monasteries, but expressed the wish to conduct this over the course of two to three years.

The Dep. Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, comrade F. R. Kozlov, in response to the report of the Council of 7 April 1959 No. 155/s on the question of the reduction in the number of monasteries, issued the resolution suggesting to the Councils of Ministers of the Ukrainian, Moldavian, Belorussian, Latvian and Lithuanian SSRs to decide this question in agreement with the Council.

The Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR, by a decree of 5 June 1959, No. 255-22/s, decided to close 8 of the 14 orthodox monasteries in the republic and, moreover, despite prior agreement with the Council that the closure of the monasteries must be conducted gradually during the course of 1959-60, all the same set the deadline of I July 1959 for the closure of three monasteries; of I August 1959 for two monasteries and the first quarter of 1960 for the remaining three. In fact they went ahead even more quickly.

On 3 July it was reported to the Council by telephone from Moldavia that four monasteries – Khirovskii and Varzareshtskii women’s fee paying monasteries, the Suruchanskii and Tsyganeshtskii male community monasteries had been closed, and that part of the monks of these monasteries had been transferred to others remaining in Moldavia, the other monks set up in work in collective farms and state farms. For example, of the 165 monks in the Khirovskii monastery, 60 had already been accepted by a collective farm, while from the Varzareshtskii monastery (with 100 monks) 35 people likewise joined a collective farm.

At the same time, during the liquidation of the fifth Rechulskii women’s fee paying monastery (with 225 monks), in view of the obvious haste to close it and the crude mistakes on the part of the local party and soviet organs which had not taken into account the special features of this monastery and started to close the church, a serious incident took place. Explanatory work did not take place with the believers regularly attending this church, nor with the monks, and the request to leave the monastery church for parish use was refused, although in its letter the Council had written that in cases where it was necessary, in closing the monastery the church should be left as a parish church for the population.

The nuns of the monastery, making use of these inadequacies of the local organs of power, announced to their relatives and acquaintances in the nearby villages that they were being oppressed, driven out of the monastery etc., and as a result of this many inhabitants from villages surrounding the monastery came to the monastery and organized in the monastery church a round-the-clock watch of 50 people armed with pitchforks, sticks and stones. Every time a representative of local power and society appeared and tried to close the church they rang the bells, gathered the population from the fields and allowed no-one into the church building. These actions began on 23 June. In the first 2-3 days the organizers were able to gather from 200-250 collective farm workers, among whom there were people with a dark past, and the rumor quickly spread that all nuns would allegedly be driven from their homes and sent to the north.

Many of the monastery’s nuns gave shelter for the night in their homes for those who had gathered, fed them and offered them wine.

After the explanatory work was conducted, the majority of the population returned to their villages, but in the following days right up to 2 July groups of 20-25 people continued to remain in the monastery church, and they began to terrorize the representatives of power and society. They brutally beat up an agronomist from the Frunze collective farm Budocherskii and bodily injuries were sustained by several other people. On I July militia Lieutenant Dolgan suffered serious pitchfork wounds in a murder attempt by one of the organizers of the assault, the loafer and drunkard Davyd, and the lieutenant shot this bandit in self-defense. The organizers of the disorder and hooliganism 11 in number – were arrested and an investigation is going on. On 3 July of this year it was reported from Moldavia that the Rechulskii monastery has been liquidated, the church closed and the incident brought to an end.

On 3 July I dispatched to Kishinev a member of the Council, comrade Sivenkov, who reported that many serious mistakes had been committed, among them for example: having received the decision on the closure of monasteries by means of mergers, the local authorities went on to close all the churches in the monasteries, take away the icon screens in the churches (this happened in all the monasteries closed, remove the bells (Rechulskii monastery) and they intend to take down the crosses from the monastery churches which, together with the removal of cult property, is the most painful element for the believing sector of the population and which should not be done without the special permission of the Council (decree of the Soviet of People’s Commissars of 1 December 1944, No. 1643-486).

The Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR adopted a decree on 17 June of this year to close 8 monasteries of the 40 existing in the republic during 1959, but did not establish, as the Council suggested, a timetable for the closure of these monasteries. Local regional and district organs of power are inclined to hurry to put into effect measures to liquidate monasteries and try, without prior preparation and explanatory work, to liquidate monasteries in two to three days. In the town of Kremenets in Ternopol region a large group of the town’s population organized a demonstration on 21 June against the liquidation of the Kremenets women’s monastery, while the Commissioner of the Council for the UkSSR, reporting to the Council on the provocative action in this demonstration of archbishop Pallady of L’vov and Ternopol, told the Council nothing of the attempt on the part of the local organs of power, once they had arrived in the monastery, to close it within the space of 24 hours. In the Transcarpathian region the Council of Ministers of the UkSSR decreed the closure of one women’s monastery and two women’s hermitages. They have not yet begun with the closures there, but talks with the monks of the women’s monastery of the Assumption in the village of Chervenevo of Mukachevo district about the closure have been conducted by bishop Vaarlam of Mukachevo and the Commissioner of the Council for the region. The monks have announced ‘we may have to leave our bones here, but we’re going nowhere from this monastery, the Catholics in Hungary restricted us, then the Uniates, and now we are being driven out and we don’t know why’. Indications have reached the Council that instead of transferring the monks to other working monasteries, it has been proposed to clear many of them out of the monastery and, against their wishes, transfer them anywhere – to homes for invalids, to relatives, etc.

Many complaints have been sent to the patriarch [Aleksii] and patriarchate. In his last letter to me of 24 June 1959, the patriarch writes from Odessa:

‘I must say that I am tired out here by the wails from the monasteries – the letters and even the visits of nuns complaining that they are being forcibly driven out ‘into the world’ with no regard for their age, nor for local church conditions, which arouses not only ferment among them but unrest among the people. The fact is that it seems in some places they do not consider the principle laid down by the center [i.e. Moscow] not to drive monks from the monasteries but to transfer them to other places of residence. But in Kishinev, according to the report of archbishop Nektary, they are proposing to him that monastic priests be removed from parishes and this would leave empty more than 100 parishes.’

The Council considers that during the liquidation of monasteries, difficulties and serious objections could arise in other places too, bearing in mind that the majority of monks (66 percent) are over 55 years of age and do not wish to go to a home for invalids, and in some places there are attempts to close monasteries and hermitages as quickly as possible, doing this not by means of mergers and amalgamations as the Council proposes but by dispersing the monks.

The Council considers it necessary to request that, via the CPSU CC or the USSR Council of Ministers, the party and soviet organs of the Ukrainian, Moldavian, Belorussian, Lithuanian and Latvian SSRs be warned to be more careful and gradual in putting into effect measures to close monasteries and hermitages, carrying this out only with the agreement of the Council.

KARPOV

Distribution
CPSU CC
USSR CM
CM

Source: Felix Corley, ed., Religion in the Soviet Union: an Archival Reader. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

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