The formation of the activities of the central offi ce of the Council for Religious Affairs: the fi rst diffi culties and the ways to overcome them

Abstract

The relevance of the article is justifi ed by several circumstances. Firstly, at the referendum on amending the Constitution of the Russian Federation, our people voted for an amendment to preserve the memory of the ancestors who passed on to us the ideals and faith in God, as well as continuity in the development of the Russian state. Secondly, the history of the creation of the Council for Religious Aff airs under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and its activities are of great interest to Russian and foreign researchers due to the fact that during the Great Patriotic War, the leadership of the USSR dramatically changed the vector and quality of relations between the state and the religious organizations by the Soviet citizens. A signifi cant manifestation of the new policy of the leadership of the USSR in relation to the religious organizations was the absence of a negative reaction of the USSR authorities to the patriotic initiatives of the majority of religious leaders and the masses. Despite the fact that the vast majority of believing citizens of the USSR showed themselves to be real patriots, for more than two years the authorities did not make decisions to give state-confessional relations a higher quality at the level of laws and create new authorities that would interact with religious organizations. After a radical turning point in the Great Patriotic War, the leadership of the USSR began to build state-confessional relations through the easing of laws and the creation in 1943 of the Council for the Russian Orthodox Church Aff airs under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and Council for Religious Aff airs under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in 1944.