Church Schools Nationalized
Commissariat of Education, Transfer of Church Schools to the Commissariat of Education. December 24, 1917
Original Source: Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii rabochego i krestian'skogo pravitel'stva, 1917, No. 9, p. 131.
Owing to lack of clarity in the regulations of the former Ministries [of Education] on the question of the transfer of the control over church-parochial schools to the Ministry of Education (this fact is manifest in the receipt of numerous inquiries from the provinces), the Commissariat of Education (formerly the Ministry of Education), having reconsidered this question, resolved : to transfer to the control of the Commissariat of People's Education all church-parochial elementary schools, teachers' colleges, ecclesiastical schools and colleges, parochial schools for girls, missionary schools and academies, and other institutions which formerly were under the control of the Ecclesiastical Department. Together with them pass to the Commissariat of Education their personnel, grants, movable and immovable property ...
The question concerning the chapels of these institutions will be settled by the decree on the separation of church and state.
Source: Decrees of the Soviet Government (Moscow: Institute of Marxism-Leninism, 1957), Vol. I, pp. 210-211.