THE SCALE OF THE RED TERROR AGAINST THE ORTHODOX CLERGY IN THE PETROGRAD PROVINCE IN 1918

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the thesis that 550 representatives of the orthodox clergy were shot in Petrograd in the first years after the 1917 revolution. This thesis is widespread in the journalistic and scientific literature. For the first time, official statistics on executions by the Cheka of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church in 42 regions of Soviet Russia during 1918 are published (from the Central Archive of the FSB). Sources of personal origin (diaries and memoirs of clerics who witnessed the post-revolutionary religious life in Petrograd, as well as the memoirs of prisoners of the Cheka), official Church statistics, religious journalism of the 1920s, archaeological research data, coupled with modern research and reference publications testify to the unreliability of the thesis about the execution of 550 representatives of the Church. The use of mathematical statistics methods makes it possible to estimate the number of these victims as no more than 40 people.