Correct, I Do Have One Small Sin: From 1913 to 1917 I Was a Minister of Religion"
The fates of parish priests in the post-revolutionary period are little studied in national historiography, especially of those who abandoned ministering in the Soviet period, though their percentage was quite high. Studying the subject is all more difficult because sources remain virtually unresearched. The published documents are to designate another significant field of study. The documents collection introduced into scientific use for the first time is of biographic character. Coming from the fonds of the State Historical Archive of the Chuvash Republic, it is a case-study of one of the RSFSR national autonomies. The focus of attention is the hard destiny of a former Chuvash priest who laicized voluntary after the October Revolution. Bom in a peasant family, he ministered only a couple of years, and yet this fact predetermined many hardships of his life under the new order. Despite all his constructive efforts and work in the Soviet educational system and various governing bodies of the Chuvash autonomous region (created in 1920), he got "purged" out of Soviet establishments, lost electoral rights and was dispossessed together with another "formers". The published documents show that these "persecutions" appeared as a bolt from the blue to K.M. Nikishev, who served the Soviet power faithfully and loyally. He did not see them as part of punitive and repressive policy of the Soviet state in general, but as abuse of authority or mistakes of the local administration. Believing in justice of superior authority, he ever tried to assert his rights and challenged the decision of the administration.