ПРОЦЕСС ВОЗВРАЩЕНИЯ ЗАКРЫТЫХ ХРАМОВ ВЕРУЮЩИМ В МОСКОВСКОЙ ОБЛАСТИ ВО ВРЕМЯ ВЕЛИКОЙ ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОЙ ВОЙНЫ: ПО МАТЕРИАЛАМ ЦГАМО

Abstract

The article considers the mechanism of opening the Orthodox churches in the Moscow region during the Great Patriotic War. The main source of the research is the quarterly reports of A.A. Trushin, the commissioner of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow and the Moscow region, to G.G. Karpov, the Council Chairman, on the state of affairs and the activities of the Church in the Moscow region. Those reports contain statistical information on the number of working and closed churches, as well as on the petitions sent to the Council by believers with the requests to resume the parish life. The analyzed documents indicate that the process of returning the churches to believers started even before the formation of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, and in the period between 1941 and 1943, 44 churches were opened in the Moscow region. Later, that process continued, and by the end of 1945, the services had been resumed in 45 more churches. Thus, of the 169 churches operating in the Moscow Region in 1946, more than half were opened during the war. The material of the article is based on the archival documents of the Central State Archives of the Moscow region, largely introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.