See the editors' introduction to AK, http://krotov.info/ acts/20/1920/1922_1.html#_Toc491501082.
Compare the hesitation and division about whether to cooperate with Islamic leaders and groups in the Caucasus at exactly this period: Jeromin Petrovig, 'Bolshevik Co-Optation Policy and the Case of Chechen Sheikh Ali Mitaev', Kritika vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 729-65.; or, on the other hand, the clear-cut ruthlessness with which, say, Socialist Revolutionaries and idealist philosophers were treated, also in 1922: 'Ochistim Rossiyu nadolgo': Repressii protiv inakomyslyashchikh (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond 'Demokratiya'/ Izdatel'stvo 'Materik', 2008), e.g. docs. nos. 3, 11, 14, 75, 82.
The letter originally came out in Vestnik russkogo studencheskogo khristianskogo dvizheniya, no. 98 (1970), pp. 54-7. In the commentary
(p. 59), Nikita Struve refers explicitly to Lenin's game plan: 'Lenin himself took care that the Church had no opportunity at all to co-operate with the government in famine relief and did all he could to make sure that the removal of church valuables touched to the quick the essence of church life - the liturgy.'
Lenin alludes to Machiavelli as 'a certain clever commentator on matters of state', since the Italian political philosopher was a somewhat startling authority for a self-declared Marxist. See the text of his letter in AK, no. 23.16. This letter is invariably cited in accounts of the church confiscations, but usually as the document that initiated policy, rather than one that reflects its drift at a specific point. For an approach closer to my own, see Ryan, 'Cleansing NEP Russia'; Natalya Krivova, 'The Events in Shuia: A Turning Point in the Assault on the Church', Russian Studies in History vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 8-38. For a meticulous, archive-based study of the first period of Bolshevik governance that emphasises contingency, see Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: the First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).
At this stage, it was also already clear that the 1922 harvest would be abundant ('Prospect for the crop is now unusually favorable', wrote C. S. Gaskill on 12 May 1922 from Saratov; see Fisher, p. 297).
See e.g. KG, 23, 24, 28 March, 4 April, 9 April, 14 April, 11 May. On the Moscow show trial of clergy supposed to have resisted confiscation, see ibid. 10 May, on the Petrograd show trial, ibid., 10 June to 6 July, passim.
On the early history of militant atheism, see William Husband, Godless Communists: Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000). In fact, the militant atheist movement had limited usefulness to the central and local authorities, since its campaigns fostered social division and sometimes reproduced top-level policy and ideology in garbled form. For a detailed history, see Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithaca New York: Cornell University Press, 1998).
In comparable vein, Chernaya kniga, pp. 28-30, reported the secularisation of house churches as sacrilege, alongside defecation in church sanctuaries etc.
That said, the Church's Local Council of 1918 had conferred some limited regional powers on senior clergy, but in a context where communication with the centre was impossible because of the Civil War.
TsGA-SPb., f. 1000, op. 6, d. 266,1. 60.
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TsGA-SPb, f. 1001, op. 7, d. 1,1. 333-5. On ordinary parishioners' defence of church treasures, see also Freeze, 'Subversive Atheism', pp. 31-3. This case was reported in KG, 20 June 1922, p. 6. The person concerned is referred to here as 'Deacon Flerov', though Flerov was actually a priest (see Delo mitropolita Veniamina), so either the title or the surname is a slip. See Point 11 of the 'Determination of the Holy Council of the Russian Church on the Preservation of Sacred Church Items from Sacrilegious Seizure and Disrespect', 30 August (12 September) 1918, Svyashchennyi Sobor Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi: Sobranie opredelenii ipostanovlenii. Part 4 (Moscow: Svyashchennyi Sobor, 1918), p. 30.
The figure was mentioned by one of the lawyers, Yakov Gurovich, who is quoted in KG 4 July 1922, p. 5.
Quoted in M. V. Shkarovsky, Peterburgskaya eparkhiya v gody gonenii I utrat, 1917-1945 (St Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 1995).
The story is cited here from John McManners, Church and State in France, 1870-1914 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 141. There is a large literature on the history and consequences of the 1905 law. See, for example, Maurice Larkin, Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair: The Separation Issue in France (London: Macmillan, 1974), esp. pp. 133-226. See Larkin, Church and State, p. 152.
This mood permeated the discussions at the Church's Local Council of 1917-18.
This is particularly emphasised in Ryan, 'Cleansing NEP Russia'. A classic discussion is Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca New York: Cornell University Press, 1992).
There is now a significant body of work arguing that the Russian Orthodox Church's integration post-1943 was remarkably successfuclass="underline" see e.g. recent books and articles by Glennys Young, Tatiana A. Chumachenko, Natalia Shlikhta, Andrew Stone, and others.
Maxim Sherwood, The Soviet War on Religion (London: Modern Books n.d. [c. 1930]), p. 11, 14. The Holy Name movement was a mystical and charismatic grouping that included, for example, the distinguished Russian emigre theologian Father Sergei Bulgakov.
The figure self-identifying as believers was 56.7 per cent across the USSR, certainly an underestimate since census data was collected by means of face- to-face interview. Zhiromskaya, 'Religioznost', ibid.
TsGA-SPb., f. 7834, op. 33, d. 50,1. 98.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (1957) (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 59.
These denominations did come under all-out assault in 1935-8 in any case, as international relations worsened and members of ethnic minorities were increasingly targeted as 'foreign agents'.
As described in the authoritative biography by Daniel P. Todes, Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
See Josephine von Zitzewitz, 'The 'Religious Renaissance' of the 1970s and its Repercussions on the Soviet Literary Process', D.Phil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2009.
chapter 14. the rise of leninism: the death of political pluralism in the post-revolutionary bolshevik party
Anthony D'Agostino, Soviet Succession Struggles, Kremlinology and the Russian Question from Lenin to Gorbachev (London: Allen and Unwin, 1988), pp. 4-5 and passim.
Joseph Bradley, 'Subjects into Citizens: Societies, Civil Society, and Autocracy in Tsarist Russia', The American Historical Review, vol. 107, no. 4, October 2002, pp. 1094-1123.
Anton A. Fedyashin, Liberals under Autocracy: Modernization and Civil Society in Russia, 1866-1904 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012).
Joseph Bradley, Voluntary Associations in Tsarist Russia: Science, Patriotism and Civil Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
For a critical analysis of these developments, see Thomas C. Owen, Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855-1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Robert W. Thurston, Liberal City, Conservative State: Moscow and Russia's Urban Crisis, 1906-1914 (Oxford University Press, 1987).