Fadeyev Ivan; Shebalin Dmitry

Exarch L. Fedorov on the religious policy of soviet authorities: “The government themselves regulate the dogmata of the Church in a way that seems most beneficial...”

Abstract

This article analyses a document that has up to now been unknown to the present-day historiography, i.e. a letter from the head of the Russian Catholic Apostolic Exarchate of Russia Leonid Fedorov in which he reports about the state of aff airs in the Catholic community after the advent of Soviet authorities as well as about the measures being taken by the government towards the gradual limitation and then the actual elimination of the Greek-Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite in the territory of Russia. The hopes of believers for the liberalisation of attitudes to the Catholic Church on the part of the Bolsheviks and the expansion of the range of their rights and opportunities after the change of the political regime in the country were not fulfi lled. The article concludes that Exarch L. Fedorov was one of the fi rst religious fi gures (given the date of writing the letter) to see this tragic trend for Greek Catholics through the prism of the features of the Soviet secularist project as a political religion; he did realise their destructive role for the development of Christianity in Russia. Drawing on the letter of the Exarch, the article concludes that the Soviet state acted consciously in order to deprive the church of its public status and authority. While at the offi cial level, during negotiations with representatives of the Holy See, Soviet diplomacy did not inform about the state’s intentions to interfere in the Catholic Church’s internal jurisdiction, L. Fedorov in his report described the real state of aff airs in the country, i.e. the essence of the anti-religious policies carried out by Soviet authorities and their intention to turn the Church into a social institution in the service of Soviet society. The article examines the phenomenon of the Soviet government through its attitudes to and relations with religious institutions and the ways of survival of the church in the new conditions.

Keywords

Roman Catholic Church, Russian Catholic Church of Byzantine Rite, Russia-Vatican relations, Russian Catholic Church, Leonid Feodorov, Soviet policies towards religion, religious freedom

References

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Information about the author

Fadeyev Ivan

Academic Degree: Candidate of Sciences* in History;
Place of work: Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences; 32A Leninskii prospekt, Moscow 119334, Russian Federation;
Post: senior research fellow;
ORCID: 0000-0003-2202-2246;
Email: london.rbw@gmail.com.

*According to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011, the degree of Candidate of Sciences (Cand.Sc.) belongs to ISCED level 8 — "doctoral or equivalent", together with PhD, DPhil, D.Lit, D.Sc, LL.D, Doctorate or similar.

Shebalin Dmitry

Academic Degree: Candidate of Sciences* in History;
Place of work: Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences; 32A Leninskii prospekt, Moscow 119334, Russian Federation;
Post: junior research fellow;
ORCID: 0000-0001-6082-1562;
Email: dmitry.shebalin@gmail.com.

*According to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011, the degree of Candidate of Sciences (Cand.Sc.) belongs to ISCED level 8 — "doctoral or equivalent", together with PhD, DPhil, D.Lit, D.Sc, LL.D, Doctorate or similar.

Acknowledgments

This study has been supported by the Russian Science Foundation (no. 19-189-00482) for the project: “Entangled Histories: Russia and the Holy See, 1917–1958”.