У цій статті досліджено роботу в Києві громадських комісій сприяння, що здійснювали контроль
за православними громадами в межах застійної політики «послаблення впливу церковників у рамках
закону». На підставі архівних джерел та еґо-свідчень проаналізовано методики тиску, що
застосовували комісії (адміністрування, втручання, фінансовий нагляд тощо), а також слабкі
сторони їхньої роботи («паперовий контроль», брак відповідних знань, «добровільно-примусова»
робота у вихідні).
Following Nikita Khrushchev’s downfall in 1964, the aggressive anti-religious campaign led by him was
replaced by a new approach toward Russian orthodoxy: “decrease the church influence within the
boundaries of the law.” This new policy in the Late Soviet period (“Zastoy”) demanded from the Council
for Religious Affairs to take everyday control over each orthodox community throughout the USSR in order
to look for formal reasons to close church buildings or disband executive institutions of religious
organizations. However, as party leaders realized fairly soon, the Council and its plenipotentiaries in the
regions were unable to perform such duties due to the lack of human resources. Even despite expanding the
Council`s authority and increasing the stuff number in the 1970s, “the religious situation” remained
“uncontrollable.”
Trying to resolve this problem, the leaders of the Soviet Union reanimated the idea of “assistance
commissions” – volunteer bodies that had been used by local executives in several regions of the USSR
during the first years of Khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign. These commissions aimed to supervise
religious communities and were planned to provide help for plenipotentiaries of the Council for Religious
Affairs. In Kyiv, the city with a “complicated religious situation,” commissions were banded in the beginning
of the 1970s, and by the end of 1979 the total amount of those volunteers watching over 10 orthodox
communities exceeded one thousand people.
The volunteers of commissions were responsible for overseeing every part of Church life: from accuracy
in filling in the financial documentation or the content of sermons and up to hue of paint on the church walls,
or excursions in acting parishes. Simultaneously, as Alexei Yurchak outlined, “the late soviet period was
especially full of paradoxes and inconsistencies… when strict state control combined with numerous
freedoms from it.” In addition, control policy toward religion based on unpaid semi-volunteer work was not
an exception.
As the following article will show, quite often the commissions supervisors were inadequate in doing
their job: they did not understand sermons due to lack of religious education; they had not been paid for
spying on the church; and, as the consequence, they ignored additional voluntary-compulsory work on
Sundays as well as they oftentimes reported about activities they had not actually done or even planned to.
This article is based on a synthesis of archival documents (the Council for Religious Affairs Archive,
local executives’ archives), ego-evidences, and provides the reader with an outline of how assistance
commissions worked in late soviet Kyiv, and of their weak features.
