The archives of the council for religious affairs

Abstract

Since 1989 it has been possible for western scholars to work in at least a part of the archive of the Council for Religious Affairs (CRA) attached to the USSR Council of Ministers.' This research note is based upon my own experiences in the archive during July 1991, although its conclusions are limited by the relatively short period of time at my disposal on that visit. The archive is to be found in the Tsentral'ny Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Oktyabr'skoi Revolyutsii (Central State Archive of the October Revolution, TsGAOR) located in Moscow's Main Archival Administration on Bol'shaya Pirogovskaya ulitsa. Access to the archive requires, or at least did before last August's coup, a letter from a recognised Soviet institution in my case the Institute of USSR History attached to the Academy of Sciences. Once one is past the door the archivists supply one with opisi (indexes) relating to the archive fond one wishes to work in. I was given four indexes relating to the work of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church (CAROC) (1943-65) and the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults (CA RC) (1944-65).2 Two limitations of the material were immediately obvious: firstly, the apparent 25-year rule that limited access, in my case, to the period ending in December 1965 (a rule which is presumably updated each year); secondly, the fact that this was only a part of the archive, and that from the available opisi one could deduce the existence of other material still being kept from researchers without special contacts (this may have changed since the coup). From the four lists I was allowed to choose a certain number of files to work with each day. The material contained in the open section of the archive included: documents relating to the setting up and roles of the councils; instructions and rulings issued by them; correspondence with other bodies; statistical tables relating to registered places of worship, priests, monastic institutions etc.; minutes of the regular sessions of the councils (though those were absent for some years); reports from regional commissioners; summaries of conversations between council employees and church leaders; reports written by religious leaders returning from foreign visits. What is lacking is detailed material on the councils' dealings with the Central Committee apparatus and the central political leadership in general. In this report I cannot provide a detailed analysis of the material in the archive, but will simply pick out a few points of interest mainly relating to the Khrushchev period and to my own interests in religious policy making.