The Foreign Press about the Change of Attitude of Soviet Power to Orthodoxy in 1943 (According to TASS)

Abstract

The article analyzes a selection of materials of the foreign press, made by the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) in 1943 on the reaction to the change in the attitude of the Soviet government to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). It is presented in one of the files of the state archive of the Russian Federation (SARF). In the collection mentioned, there are notes and articles of various editions of the countries of Europe, and also the States of North and South America, Africa, Australia. The claimed problems have not been seriously analyzed from the scientific point of view so far. The author notes that the negative and positive assessments of the transformation of the religious policy of the USSR were clearly divided into the two camps: the countries that supported the USSR in 1943 and the countries that had opposite views. The rhetoric of the press in the United States, Canada and England differed significantly from that one in Europe as a whole, and even more in Nazi Germany, Italy and Romania. The press of countries that were far away from the events, for example, the States of South America or Australia, reflected a neutral attitude to what was happening. Against this background, all actions of the Soviet authorities were assessed as superficial, temporary, and “fake”. According to the critics, they were forced. In reality, there was no question of freedom of religion in the USSR. In turn, the press of the allied countries relatively highly appreciated the changes in the policy of the Soviet state. It is obvious that the problems stated in the title of the article require further serious scientific analysis, which implies a large volume of work with foreign media of the time under consideration and with archival sources. Keywords: religion, Orthodoxy, freedom of religion, Patriarch, Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, mass media