THE ORTODOX CHURCH IN THE URALS DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
By the summer of 1941, everything indicated that the Russian Orthodox Church was finishing its last months, if not days. Two decades and more of total persecution by the militant atheists in power had brought it literally “to its last stand”. The vast majority of Orthodox churches were closed, ruined, desecrated, or even demolished to the ground. According to some reports there were only two active churches for the entire vast territory from the TransUrals to the Pacific Ocean. The situation was no better with the clergy. Many thousands of them in earlier years were either shot or sent to camps (in fact, to a slow death), and those who remained free were forced to abandon their church ministries... But suddenly there came a turning point marked by the exact date - June 22, 1941, when the attack on the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany began the Great Patriotic War which raised the question of the very existence of our country and its multinational people. In this situation the authorities had involuntarily to think about muting internal divisions. The fight against religion was quickly curtailed, and in the end (two years later) the Orthodox Church was given "most favored treatment"... The clergy en masse took a patriotic stand from the early days of the war forgetting all past offenses and fully embracing the slogan "Everything for the front, everything for victory”. Some of its representatives fought with dignity in the ranks of the active army, others worked selflessly on the home front and those in church service (very few of them at first, but then their number grew steadily) were everywhere collecting funds for the defense. And their contribution to the Victory was greatly appreciated by the Soviet government; for the first time since 1917 clergy received government awards... In this article it is provided a comprehensive look at the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War within the borders of the "Great Urals" (and the territories surrounding it). Along with a synthesis of materials previously published the composition of the clergy serving at that time in a number of Ural regions was analyzed for the first time on the basis of the Ural Church-Historical Society database which, in particular, allowed to conclude about its multiple quantitative reduction and a sharp decline in qualitative level in comparison with the pre-revolutionary period.