Evgeniya Sergeevna Tokareva,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
History of the Catholic Church in the USSR in the 1920s − Early 1930s Through the Prism of One Fate: A Priest’s Story
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2025-3-5
The 1920s were characterized by a gradual increase in the struggle against religion and the church in the USSR, and the methods of this struggle acquired increasingly harsh violent forms. However, most of the research on this topic is based mainly on official documents of the Soviet government. There are also a number of studies based on investigative cases, which allows us to reconstruct many biographies of priests who passed through Soviet forced labor camps or died as a result of repression. Researchers have repeatedly noted the insufficiency of so-called ego documents that would make it possible to highlight this topic from the point of view of the perception of those who were subjected to repression or witnessed it. The article introduces into scientific circulation a document relating to a small group of sources on the history of the Catholic Church in Russia, namely sources of personal origin. We are talking about the memories of a Catholic priest who served in the Kamenetsky diocese in 1920–1930. Who left the USSR in 1932 as part of the prisoner exchange between the USSR and Poland. Written for the information of higher hierarchs, the document is a living memoir of a direct witness to the events related to the anti-religious policy of the Soviet government in its reflection in the policy of regional authorities. From time to time, such documents reached the Vatican, as a rule, either through diplomatic channels or from those who managed to leave the USSR. The conclusions that were drawn, both in the Vatican and by the priests themselves in the country, obviously contradicted the events taking place. Since 1917, the Catholic Church, represented by its various representatives, continued to make plans for the conversion of the Russian population to Catholicism, being confident in the inevitability of the fall of the Bolshevik government and the compromise of the Orthodox Church. This is evidenced, among other things, by the document considered in this article.
Publishing: 28/06/2025
The article has been received by the editor on 15/03/2025
How to cite: Tokareva E.S. History of the Catholic Church in the USSR in the 1920s − Early 1930s Through the Prism of One Fate: A Priest’s Story // Historical Courier, 2025, No. 3 (41), pp. 66–83. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2025/ISTKURIER-2025-3-05.pdf]
Links: Issue 3 2025
Keywords: Catholic Church in Russia/USSR; anti-religious policy of the Soviet government; Catholic clergy in Western Ukraine; Soviet-Vatican relations