American Representatives to the USSR and the Fate of Soviet Religious Policy at the Beginning of the Great Patriotic War. From Father Leopold Braun's Correspondence of 1941

Abstract

In this article, the authors analyse and comment upon four documents from the archives of the Vatican Secretariat of State which reflect the earliest phase of US-Soviet contacts during the Great Patriotic War relating to the question of religious freedom in the USSR. The international reputation of the Soviet Union as a country of deliberate persecution of religion became a domestic political problem for the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the autumn of 1941, as its attempts to include the USSR in the Lend-Lease programme met with resistance from influential religious circles, particularly American Catholics. These circumstances led the US administration to seek the support of the Vatican, on the one hand, and, on the other, to seek statements from the Soviet leadership that would confirm the latter's commitment to the principle of religious freedom declared in Soviet law. At the same time, Roosevelt himself was convinced that a military crisis would force the Soviet Union to abandon its previous anti-religious policy. This view was also shared by the representative of the Roman Catholic Church in Moscow, the American Assumptionist Fr Leopold Braun. As can be seen from the letters published here, Fr Braun was convinced that the US administration should take immediate and vigorous steps to secure guarantees of religious freedom from the Soviet leaders. His letters were sent both to Washington and to the Vatican, where they were read as confirming the position of the American side in urging the Holy See to show flexibility towards Soviet Russia.