Arrest of a Priest for Counter-Revolutionary Speech
Nerchinsk Extraordinary Investigation Commission, Decree on the Arrest of the Priest Znamenskii for a Counter-Revolutionary Speech. April 28, 1918
This decree was issued by the Nerchinsk Extraordinary Investigation Commission on April 28, 1918, ordering the immediate arrest of Father Iakov Znamenskii for his Palm Sunday sermon. Accused of making counter-revolutionary statements about the confiscation of church property and calling on Orthodox believers to defend their faith, Znamenskii was to be detained in jail "for the entire period of the revolution." This case from the Trans-Baikal region of Siberia exemplifies how local Bolshevik authorities swiftly criminalized religious speech that challenged the regime's anti-church policies, using newly established extraordinary commissions to suppress any perceived opposition from the clergy.
On 28 April 1918 an extraordinary investigation commission attached to the Nerchinsk district Soviet department for the struggle with counterrevolution and speculation, having received accurate testimonies that the priest of the Nerchinsk church Iakov Znamenskii today, 28 April, during a service (on Palm Sunday), allowed himself to preach about: the persecution of the church by Bolshevik power and that their power had removed all the gold and vessels and that now they had nothing for all the citizens to take communion from, in addition he said that they had taken away the frames from the icons and declared that you, citizens of the Orthodox faith, must defend the faith of Christ.
The commission finds in this case that the open counter-revolutionary speech by Znamenskii is connected with the events caused by the speech of the adventurist Semenov and international capital, and decreed: to detain the priest Iakov Znamenskii under guard in Nerchinsk jail for the entire period of the revolution, having granted him the right to petition before the soviet about his fate.
A copy of this decree to be sent for enactment to the head of the Nerchinsk jail and for information to the district Soviet department.
Chairman of the Commission
[Dmitrii] Komogortsev
Source: Felix Corley, ed. Religion in the Soviet Union: an Archival Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1996).